He took his time to elaborate that better way, partly because he was seriously concerned for the safety of Ariadne, and partly because once Archie Clutter was put upon his trial, some mud must attach to all whose names were involved in the affair. No doubt, too, the position in which he found himself tickled his humour. To play Providence to two of the loveliest girls in London, who sat at his feet in the most exquisite attire and with big wistful eyes implored him to rescue them from their troubles, was to him a very congenial business; and he was not averse to prolonging it.
“Listen, children!” he said. “I have a good many houses, here and there. Kind friends, of whose kindness I keep due and proper account, so that in time they may be paid, go about saying that I have them because I am afraid of a Revolution and wish to have as many burrows as possible against the day when it breaks out. As a matter of fact, I can’t resist a house which promises me solitude.”
He saw Ariadne and Corinne glance at one another in dismay, and continued with a laugh.
“You’re afraid that I have gone off my head. I am telling you the sober truth. I have never had any solitude in my life. I probably should be bored to death after two days of it. But there it is. A dream of mine which comes back and comes back. To get away and sit quietly down and really reach the mentality of Shakespeare and the Bible — just those two books.”
For a moment the yearning was upon him now, was audible in his voice, and visible in his eyes, so that Ariadne, who knew him well, saw him suddenly for the first time.
“So when I come across a house just suited to that purpose, I have got to buy it. And of course the first thing that happens when I have bought it, is that you all come down and have supper there, and there’s an end of my monastery. But “ — and he leaned forward shaking his finger at them— “the perfect house is one neither you nor any of my kind friends know one little thing about.”
He rose and fetched an atlas.
“It’s in France. You see the advantage of that, Corinne? It’s the one country into which a convict escaped from Cayenne dare not follow you, even if, instead of your thirty pounds and your few jewels, he had the Bank of England in his pocket.”
“Oh!” said Corinne, clasping her hands together. “You would lend it — just for a time?”
Culalla opened his atlas and placed it on a stool in front of the two girls. He pointed to the Province of Provence.
“There!” he said. “I came upon the house by accident when I was motoring to Cannes. It’s just across the river from Avignon, its tiny park runs down to the Rhône. It is perfectly furnished in the Empire style. I bought it just as it stood, lock, stock and barrel, four years ago, and I have slept in it, I think, for a couple of nights.”
He added a few details. There were a man and his wife in the lodge at the gates of the park, who would look after them until they secured servants in Avignon. Meanwhile, he himself would stir up all his interests and friends in France to secure that the authorities should move for the extradition of Archie Clutter.
“You see, there wouldn’t be a new trial. Evidence of his conviction I at Grenoble, his escape and his identification — it wouldn’t occupy more than a dozen lines in a newspaper. It would be a formality. As soon as that is done — a few weeks, for I have got influence in France — you can come back.”
The two girls accepted his offer with enthusiasm.
“Very well,” said Culalla. “Now the essential thing is that you should go at once, and go very secretly.”
But Ariadne was the quickest to perceive a way of fulfilling those conditions. The first treasure hunt was fixed for that night. She would pick up Corinne, as indeed it had already been arranged that she should do, after her dance at the club. She would drive her to the rendezvous in Portman Square. She would keep in the pack of cars for a while, and at the first opportunity she would branch off for the Dover road.
“That’s splendid!” Culalla exclaimed. He himself was getting excited over this plan of escape. He rang the bell for his butler, and had the Southern Railway Guide brought to him, and feverishly looked up the Continental services.
“Yes, you can catch the ten o’clock boat to-morrow morning from Folkestone to Boulogne.”
“And Ariadne’s car?” Corinne asked.
“Take it with you! Why hurry once you are across? Why not motor to Avignon? In this weather what could you do that is more attractive?”
Ariadne sprang at the idea. It altered the whole spirit of the affair for her. It turned a desperate flight into a lively escapade. The roads of France, its avenues of trees still green, the little towns, the little inns, perhaps a circus at night in the market-place — Ariadne clapped her hands.
“That’s the life for me,” she cried, and stopped, rather annoyed with herself. For it had suddenly occurred to her that for the full enjoyment of that run, she would have liked yet a third person to bear them company.
Corinne was doubtful upon one point.
“Ariadne can stow her luggage away in her car before she starts from home,” she said. “But I am likely to be watched. I packed a suit-case this morning and took it to the club, for I could not sleep in that house again; but if the commissionaire is seen to be putting it into Ariadne’s car—”
“Yes, that wouldn’t do,” Culalla interrupted. He lit a fresh cigar whilst he pondered over that problem. Yes, if these two girls were seen to be escaping, there would be made a desperate attempt to stop them. Archie Clutter and his kind were bound to have weapons and would use them.
“I’ve got it,” he said in a moment. “You’ll have to go home, Corinne, this afternoon. What do you usually do when you are dancing?”
Corinne’s face had fallen, but she answered:
“I usually get home at half-past five, rest for a couple of hours, eat a light dinner, and then go on to where I am dancing.”
Culalla nodded.
“I am afraid you must do that this afternoon. You’ll be quite safe, of course. It will be daylight. Besides, you’ll want to arrange with your servants. You had better get them out of the house to-morrow morning. Meanwhile, if you’ll give me a note to the secretary or the commissionaire, I’ll send up my man to fetch your luggage. Clutter can hardly watch your house and the club and you, too, into the bargain.”
Thus, then, it was arranged. Culalla’s servant was to fetch Corinne’s suit-case, travel by the evening train with it to Folkestone, order them rooms in the hotel on the pier, be on hand when they arrived at three in the morning, put the car on board the steamer, and see them off.
“You have passports, both of you?” he asked.
“Yes,” they replied.
“Very well, I’ll send a telegram to-morrow morning, as soon as I hear from you at Boulogne, to make sure that the house shall be ready for you,” he said. “The Villa Laure, Villeneuve-les-Avignon. That’s the address.”
And from the Villa Laure at Villeneuve-les-Avignon a letter reached Strickland a week afterwards.
XXIII. COWCHER (GEORGE)
STRICKLAND HEARD THE history of the flight to France later in the day from Lord Culalla, to whom Ariadne commended him. Her letter contained only the briefest epitome. She was more concerned to take up the tale at Boulogne and recount the journey through France, in which her gipsy soul had fairly revelled. Strickland seemed to hear her cry “Ouf!” draw a long breath, and shake a world of boredom off her slim shoulders. The two fugitives had slept the first night at St. Germain-en-Laye, and pushing on betimes the next morning they had taken their breakfast at Fontainebleau in the garden of the famous hotel with the red awnings, in front of the Castle gates. They reached Moulins that evening and found a circus in full blast, a proper circus with broad-backed horses and tissue-paper hoops and sylphs who jumped through them, and a clown — divine Ariadne lost her heart to him — and a strong man to whom Ariadne would have lost her heart if she had not already lost it to the clown, and a lady in a silk hat and a tailored riding outfit who did the haute-êcole on a bri
ndled steed. On the third day they ran through Roanne and Valence and Orange, and at sunset came to the City of the Popes, with its barrack of a palace frowning on the Rhône. They had slept a night at the Hotel de l’Europe, and recrossing the next morning the long bridge across the river, had driven for two kilometres along the bank to the Villa Laure.
As to the villa itself, it had no doubt its advantages until this troublesome business was at an end. But there was no village near, consequently no circus, and not even an estaminet. There were no servants to be obtained in the neighbourhood, and, indeed, if there had been, for so short a stay it was hardly worth while seeking to obtain them. Nor did it matter, for the wife of the gardener at the lodge kept the place like a new pin and cooked admirably besides.
“The days will be splendid here. The park is just a huge meadow studded with trees where cattle feed. There is a shrubbery and a garden at the end of the house and a terrace overlooking the Rhône, which flows not a hundred yards away from the windows.”
Yes, the days passed easily enough, but Ariadne found the nights overlong. That was clear. The house was built towards the far end of the park. Half a mile separated it from the lodge and the gates; and where Ariadne was bored by the loneliness, Corinne was frightened by it. As soon as darkness came, therefore, they retired upstairs to the private suite of rooms upon the first floor arranged for the owners and locked themselves away from the rest of the empty house until the morning. It was all wonderfully peaceful, of course. The hush of the nights was not so much a negation of sound as an activity of silence. You could hear the cattle cropping the grass far away in the darkness of the park. But — but, Strickland was sure that Ariadne would once more cry “Ouf!” draw a long breath, and shake a world of boredom off her shoulders, when the two gentlemen of Cayenne had returned to their normal duties.
Strickland at this point reflected with some amusement that probably Corinne was by now wearing a little thin. As a sparkling firefly, she was exquisite; as a solitary companion, she was likely to fall short of the requirements. He was contented with her, however, for one reason. She was still afraid, and so brought about their early retirement to that upstairs suite. Even so, Strickland disliked intensely the picture which the letter evoked — the two girls barricaded in a corner of an empty house set in a lonely park. It was a creepy business. Something ought to be done about it. He turned back to the letter, and there in the last few lines was the suggestion that he himself should go and see about it. “What an amazing coincidence!” he said to himself.
“There is no reason why you shouldn’t come,” she wrote meekly, and Strickland had little difficulty in interpreting that sentence. Julian Ransome had put an end to the ill-assorted arrangement. The Gallant Adventure was never, after all, to put out to sea.
“It’s all wrong,” Strickland said to himself, and tried desperately hard to be sorry. “Twenty-one should marry twenty-nine. However—”
He resumed his perusal of Ariadne’s letter; and found those few lines extremely intriguing. The invitation was written in the same meek, almost hesitating, note which was so utterly alien from her ordinary mood. As a rule she would have claimed his presence, probably on a post card, and not greatly bothered her head whether it suited his convenience or not. Now she suggested his coming with a constraint and awkwardness which were familiar to him just because he and she had experienced them once before — on the morning when they had driven down the Portsmouth road to Ripley. Was this shyness in his favour or to his disadvantage? He could not but ask himself that question. Was it a manoeuvre in that much-written-about battle between sex and sex? Or was it an old-fashioned lavender-scented notion that what she was willing to give he must not be too crudely prompted to ask? He came to the conclusion that only in Avignon could that question be answered.
Meanwhile he chased Lord Culalla over the telephone from address to address, and ran him to earth in the house at Kew.
“I thought that I might hear from you about this time,” said Culalla with a laugh. “Will you come out here and lunch to-day at half-past one?
“Yes.”
Culalla added some instructions as to the route and rang off. Strickland gave an order to his servant to pack a couple of suit-cases. “I shall probably be going off to the South of France.”
“You will take me with you, sir?” asked the man.
“I think not, Soames,” he said. “Not this time.”
He wanted no gossip to follow upon his departure, and his visit to Peacock Farm had quite poisoned his mind. He could not have his coat and hat taken from him by a footman in the hall of any house without wondering whether that man, too, did not assist Caroline Beagham to hear things in Mayfair. He spent the rest of the morning collecting money and letters of credit at his bank, making sure that his passport was in order and copying out at his club a list of trains to the Continent. Then he ran down in his car to Kew, and was disappointed to find a medley of a dozen people beside his host. Culalla came forward.
“I had an opportunity of meeting you for a few moments at the Choral Benevolent Dinner,” he said cordially in his ringing metallic voice. “You were very generous to me, I remember. We will talk after luncheon. Meanwhile I have a question I would like to ask you,” and he had led the way into the dining-room.
Strickland was to be set an examination paper. He remembered Cowcher (George) writing upon that habit of Culalla’s to Caroline Beagham. And his thoughts switched into a speculation as to which of these four men waiting at the table was Cowcher (George). He would like to know him by sight so that he might never engage anyone even faintly resembling him. He was not given time, however, to make any close observation. He was seated just one place away from Culalla, and the first course was hardly served when his thesis was set to him.
“You have been in Burma, Colonel Strickland, Ariadne tells me,” and somewhere behind him a plate clattered upon the floor. “That’s Cowcher (George),” Strickland said to himself, but his manners forbade him to turn.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Then I should like to have your views with reference to the mentality of Europeans in the East who become Buddhist monks.”
Strickland looked round at his fellow-guests for help. Every eye was averted from him. They had all passed through the same ordeal and might at any moment be expected to undergo another. It was Strickland’s turn, and he must speak up to the best of his ability.
“Its rather a large subject,” he murmured.
“It is, indeed. So take your time, Colonel Strickland! Cowcher, some champagne for Colonel Strickland.”
At last Strickland saw Caroline’s correspondent — a fat, placid, suety man with large smooth cheeks, small eyes and a bald head. He filled Strickland’s glass with a steady hand, just as, no doubt, he had filled Corinne’s on that night when she had sprung hysterically to her feet and uttered her damnable admission. She may have been sitting on this very chair. The windows stood open then as now. Only the lawn was warm with sunlight and noisy with birds now instead of quiet under the moon, and the river ran flashing in gold instead of shining in silver. Strickland found it a little difficult to concentrate upon his theme, but he happened to know of one case to the point, and so passed his examination with honours.
The rest of that company drifted off when luncheon was over, some to coffee upon the lawn, others upon their various occasions. Strickland was left alone at the table with Gulana, and moved up to his side.
“Yes, we’ll have our coffee and cigars here, Cowcher,” said Culalla, and as soon as they were alone: “I know that you will be anxious to hear all that I have to tell you about our charming fugitives, Colonel Strickland.”
“I heard from Ariadne this morning enough to inform me how much her friends owe to you, Lord Culalla. But I know no details of their flight.”
Culalla supplied them in their order until the story was complete.
“So there the two girls are in the Villa Laure, as safe as canaries in a cage,” he s
aid with a smile as he pushed the decanter of liqueur brandy towards his visitor. “But that’s not all, of course, that has been done. There’s the other side of the affair.”
“Archie Clutter,” said Strickland.
“Yes, Archie Clutter and his little friend Hospel Roussencq. There were two steps to be taken. First, to persuade the French to apply for their arrest and extradition; then to locate and keep a watch on the men themselves. For the first I set to work through influential friends of mine in Paris, and I can assure you at once that there’s no difficulty there. That part of the scheme will go through. Meanwhile I put some watch-dogs of my own on the two gentlemen of Cayenne, who were found to be living at a little foreign restaurant in Soho. Their movements were interesting. The day after Clutter paid his visit to Corinne they bought each a new outfit at a misfit shop in Bedford Street, Strand — clothes, shirts, collars, underclothes, hats, sticks, gloves and suit-cases — the whole equipment of a man going upon his travels and travelling light. The next day, dressed out in their new clothes, they set out to sell Corinne’s jewellery. They had some little difficulty over that. But in the end they succeeded. They sold the lot — the emerald ring, the diamond sunburst ear-rings and all — in a coffee-shop in Hatton Garden, and they got a fair price, considering the suspicious character of the sale. Over two hundred pounds. The night after, Clutter paid his second visit to the house in South Audley Street and found the house locked and empty. Then little Hospel Roussencq trailed you for a day.”
“Me?” exclaimed Strickland in surprise.
“Yes. It’s clear that they guessed Corinne had given their pretty plan away to Ariadne, and they hoped, no doubt, you would lead them to the place where the two girls had taken cover. Roussencq never lost sight of your movements the whole day.”
“What day was that?” Strickland asked curiously.
“Three days ago. To-day’s Thursday. It was Monday.”
Strickland recalled his doings throughout that day. They had been quite commonplace — his club, a luncheon-party, an afternoon at Ranelagh, then a dinner and a theatre. But it was uncomfortable to know that someone had trod at his heels throughout all those hours and that he had never once suspected it.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 81