When Nahendra Nao began to write his letter, Scott Carruthers went quietly away to his own bedroom and locked the door. His windows were on the garden side of the hotel, and there was no one to overlook him. From a locked trunk, he took a locked box. He unlocked it, and lifted from the bed of black velvet on which it lay, a big rope of pearls which for weight and shape and size was the twin of that spoilt chaplet now lying in its own case in the young Rajah’s bedroom. He carried it to the window and examined it for the hundredth time. The colour of its stones was perfect, like still water in moonlight, their sheen soft and delicate and lovely. He laid it upon his dressing-table, and filling the box with the velvet lining with letters, he replaced it unlocked in the trunk. It would travel with the rest of the luggage in the charge of the servant, and it would be examined at Victoria Station. He took the big chaplet into his bed with him, and later on that morning, when he rose, he slipped it into a long silk sheath which was made to hold it, coiled it about his waist, and strapped it tight. Wearing a thick overcoat, he crossed that afternoon with Nahendra Nao in the aeroplane to London.
CHAPTER IV
THE HEALER
MONSIEUR CREVETTE COULD have wept.
The pollution of the Chitipur pearls was one of the major crimes of the world; and there was no adequate penalty. Judges in the United States did certainly give ninety-nine years of penal servitude to this or that offender. But even a sentence of that severity was inadequate to meet the case of the little piece of mud that was Elsie Marsh. He was so angry that for a time he refused to offer any advice. But the quiet pertinacity of Scott Carruthers and the plight of the young Rajah brought him in the end to a more reasonable mind. He was a small bearded man rich in gesticulations, and he wore a long frock-coat with spreading skirts and a white slip in his waistcoat.
“Yes, it has happened before now,” he admitted. “There was the necklace of the Princess Meravinski. After it had gone sick, someone wore it, and in a little time it was healed. But who wore it, and how long it took, I do not know. It was in Russia, before Russia went sick. Then there were the heirlooms which Lord Chasborough gave to his young wife. Wait a little! That was in Italy. I had those pearls in my hands before and after. Yes. I find that out for you!”
In a week’s time Monsieur Crevette once more took Nahendra Nao and Major Carruthers into his private office. But he was not hopeful. He spread out his arms.
“I tell your Highness what I have found out.” He placed chairs for them, and sat down behind his table. “They were in Rome for the winter at the Excelsior Hotel: Lord Chasborough, his wife, the Count Romola, the Marquesa de Levante — quite a party. Amongst these a young lady, well-born but poor, for whom, since she could sing a little, they were arranging some private concerts amongst their friends and trying to make for her a small career. It was she who brought back to life the pearls of Lady Chasborough. Since then, she has on another occasion been the healer. But — there it is — she helped as a friend.”
“You said she was poor,” Carruthers interposed.
“And she was amongst her friends when she helped,” continued Crevette.
“She would still be amongst her friends if she helped us,” Nahendra Nao urged.
“She certainly would be,” Carruthers added with a pleasant smile which showed his teeth. “And we should see to it that every precaution was taken for her safety. This matter is almost — I don’t wish to exaggerate, but it is — almost life and death for us.”
“The fee would be in a proper proportion to the service we should be thanking her for,” said the young Indian.
“The fee!” Monsieur Crevette exclaimed. He made a good many gestures which neither of the two men who were consulting him understood at all. “Yes, the fee! I do not know the young lady. How can I ask her to come to see me, and if she comes, how can I propose to her this service and a fee?”
“Why not?” Carruthers asked abruptly. “It is a business proposition.”
“For her?” replied Monsieur Crevette.
“You said she was poor.”
“She was, and for all I know she still may be. But her condition has changed, my gentlemen. This young lady no longer needs aristocratic patrons to get up little concerts for her at private parties. She made her debut in the Costanzi Opera House at Rome, and was — what do you call it? — a riot. She has sung at Monte Carlo, at the Scala — yes, understand that, my gentlemen, at the Scala — with Toscanini to tell her off. She was Octavian in The Rosenkavalier, here in London, at Covent Garden. I was there, I see her, I kiss her the hands — a vision with a voice. She cross the ocean to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. But how shall I say to such an one: ‘Will you please for a fee restore the Chitipur pearls’? She will ask why they are spoilt. If I tell her, she will snap me off the nose — one, two, three bites — and where are we, your Highness? Where we were.”
“But you, with no nose,” said Nahendra Nao with a smile, and little Monsieur Crevette sprang to his feet.
“Aha! You take my foolish words like that, your Highness — so well, with so much spirit. Good! I do what I can for you.”
“What is her name?” Carruthers asked.
“Lydia Flight,” said the jeweller.
“And where is she?”
“Yes, she is in London. I have found that out.”
“Can you find out still more? And quite quietly? Before she is approached, I mean,” Carruthers continued.
Monsieur Crevette hunched his shoulders and arched his back.
“I shall try. Lord Chasborough, he was in my shop yesterday. In a few days he will come again. But I must tell you that these fine friends of hers are no longer such fine friends since she does not need their patronage. It was nice when they could say: ‘We have a pretty little friend here who sings a pretty little song. Will you get up a pretty little concert for her in your drawing-room, and we all take the seats?’ Very pleasant! You do your day’s good deed. But when that little amateur bursts out in a theatre, and sets an Italian audience on fire, you are not so pleased, eh? You are grumpy. You talk quickly about your new amateur. However, your Highness, I will try. I will make the discreet enquiries. You shall hear from me. Meanwhile I give you a receipt, and I lock the Chitipur pearls in my strong-room. So!”
“Yes,” said Nahendra Nao.
Monsieur Crevette’s next message had brighter news for them, at the cost of Lydia Flight. The Chasboroughs and their friends were quite reconciled now to a wider success of their protégée than they had planned for her.
“Perhaps — is it?” said Monsieur Crevette, “because, had she listened to them, a disaster might have been avoided. She sang too soon. Her Maestro was furious with her. She was not ready. In New York, the fine voice, it failed. There were — wait! I wrote the words” — and Monsieur Crevette found in a drawer a sheet of a small writing-pad, and read from it. “There were some small nodes on the vocal cords. She must not sing for a year.”
“And she has no money saved?” said Carruthers.
“How could she have saved money?” replied Crevette. “Her friends would gladly have her with them for the year, but according to his Lordship, she is as independent as the devil. A few weeks, yes; a year, never on her life. She will go as a companion to a lady, if she can find a lady who wants one.”
“You have her address?” Nahendra Nao cried eagerly.
“Yes, your Highness. His Lordship gave it to me when I said that I might perhaps have a client who would be useful.”
They were all three in the big shop on this occasion, and Carruthers leaned over the glass counter.
“Did you give that client’s name, Monsieur Crevette?” he asked.
Crevette looked at the Major with asperity, and drew himself up. It was not very high, but it was as high as he could.
“This good Major has spent some time in India — yes? And in the country places — yes? In the tents, I should think — yes? Ah, it is excusable, then. Otherwise the Major would know that jewellers
must have both tact and jewels before they can prosper in Bond Street.”
Major Carruthers was quite unruffled by the sarcasms of Monsieur Crevette. He had a gift of remaining calm when trumpery insults were offered to him.
“That’s all right then, Monsieur Crevette,” he drawled.
Monsieur Crevette turned from this insufferable Major — was he really a Major, yes? — to His Highness the young Rajah.
“Shall I write to this young lady and make an arrangement for an interview?”
“Wait a minute, if you please!”
This was an order, curt and peremptory, the order of a master. Crevette jumped in spite of himself into an attitude of attention. The drawling, equivocal Major was suddenly a Major of the guard-room. Carruthers took Nahendra Nao aside. The boy was a little reckless of consequences. He would have said “Yes” on the spot, and no plans had been made.
“You’re like Lydia Flight, Natty,” said Carruthers with a smile. “You’re singing too soon. Let’s work a scheme out properly first.”
Nahendra Nao saw the wisdom of this proposal. He asked Monsieur Crevette to wait for a day or two. But he walked out of the shop like one walking upon air. Already he saw the great rope of pearls restored to its perfect tenderness of colour and soft lustre. He was impatient of all the plans and details which must lie between that moment and this.
“You see, here’s the time coming on when everybody’s in London,” Carruthers argued. “You can’t have that girl, even if she consents to wear your pearls, wearing ’em here through the season all amongst her friends. They’ll have to know, of course, in any case. But if she’s here and there and everywhere with that rope hung about her, the secrecy won’t be kept from anyone for five minutes — especially if the stones improve. Besides...” and the Major’s face had a worried and thoughtful look, “there’s another thing.”
“What?” Nahendra Nao asked impatiently.
“She might get murdered in her bed.”
And now the young Indian’s face grew careworn and troubled.
“This is the second time that you have linked up murder with that jewel,” he said.
Major Carruthers looked at the lad sharply.
“Do you wonder, Natty? Don’t you see what it would mean to anyone who was poor? A free life where one wanted to live — just there and nowhere else, doing the things one wanted to do, and never pinched for want of a five-pound note.” He laughed, and once more ran into his odd boisterous mood, to Nahendra Nao’s surprise. “Why, Natty, it’s lucky that the one place I want to live in is Chitipur, isn’t it? Otherwise who knows what might happen?”
Suddenly the boy laid his hand on Carruthers’s coat sleeve and stopped him in the street. His gesture was impulsive, even imperious. Scott Carruthers was startled by it. So startled that as he swung round he took a short step forward and stood close up against the Indian with precisely the same thought which a boxer has in clinching with his opponent But the manner of Nahendra Nao was one of appeal rather than of menace.
“You see, Major Carruthers, the only label attached to that chaplet is ‘beautiful.’ It is an emblem of fine thought on the part of both the giver and my old ancestor who received it. I have sullied it myself, God knows! And very shamefully. That crime should follow because of that, become its token and device through my folly — that would be horrible. I hope I haven’t any more queer fancies than other people. But I think that if we stand, say, at a corner like this, and talk of crime, crime may come from any quarter, suddenly, out of the blue, as we say.”
And he looked up and about the sky, nervously, as though he lay sick in a desert and saw suddenly the great vultures gathering from nowhere over his head, darkening the air and making it vibrate with the pulsation of their wings. Scott Carruthers was to remember that strange moment afterwards; this prosaic corner of Grosvenor Square and Brook Street, the sudden vision which the earnestness of the lad raised before his eyes, and the quiver of his face.
“All right, Natty,” said Carruthers in a friendly, understanding voice. “I am sorry. We are such a long way from Chitipur that I had lost touch with it, even in thought. You are quite right, of course.”
They went on to the great hostelry where they had been staying, and mounting high within those cliff-walls of red brick surmounted by their cupolas, they sat down in their rooms above Hyde Park to elaborate their plans. In fact, however, there was no elaboration whatever. The plan was already cut and dry within the ingenious mind of Major Scott Carruthers. He did not even have to persuade, so aptly did his odd plan fit the odd predicament in which they were entangled. The kernel and heart of the plan was that since Lydia Flight wanted to act as a companion, she should act as a companion, but that she should give her performance abroad.
Consequently four days later Madame Lucrece Bouchette, of an address in the suburb of Neuilly, arrived by the boat-train at Victoria Station, and was met by Major Scott Carruthers. As he took her hand luggage from her, a middle-aged woman, squat in shape, yellowish in colour and Mongolian in features, came up to them.
“You had better see my registered luggage examined, Marie,” said Lucrece Bouchette in French, “and follow with it to—”
She looked at Major Scott Carruthers.
“To the Semiramis Hotel,” said he. He had a word for Marie, who smiled at him, and he turned to walk towards the edge of the platform, where the motor-cars were parked.
“Marie is reliable, I suppose?” he said carelessly.
“She would give her life for me,” Lucrece answered simply, as though that was nothing to be surprised about; and perhaps it was not. For if Major Scott Carruthers was so indeterminate of feature that his face was impossible to remember, Lucrece Bouchette was of a haunting beauty, whom no one could pass without turning again to take a second look at her. She was tall, long-limbed, and slender, with soft brown hair. She had grey eyes, almond-shaped and long, between thick dark eyelashes, and a rather round, low forehead. The upper part of her face, indeed, was Mongolian, but the delicately chiselled nose, the humorous mouth and the oval chin, were as definitely European. Her skin was white, and she had a natural colour in her cheeks which accompanied her words as music accompanies a voice.
“You left me in Paris in a great hurry,” she said, and again she spoke in French.
“Had to,” he answered. “When I got back to the hotel that morning, there was Natty in tears. An awful upset.” He cast a glance about the spot where they stood. Even chance listeners-in picking up a word or two which they did not understand, might do, and often had done, a deal of mischief. “I’ll tell you as we go to the Semiramis.”
The Rajah’s car pulled up at the kerb, and they got in. As the car drove away again, a transfiguration took place within it. There’s a side and facet of him which a man never shows to any but a woman, and to only a few of them. It’s very often a surprising unexpected exhibition, and the manner in which it is received marks one woman off from another, better, perhaps, than any other quality. The Elsie Marshes are not interested. They adore their own bodies and men are only valued by the service they give to the keeping of them beautiful. The one test of a man is the depth of his pocket. Otherwise they are much the same, even to their cries of passion when they are favoured and their reproaches when they are ruined.
Lucrece Bouchette, however, was of a kind which is perpetually interested, perpetually curious, and gratefully responsive to any unexpected revelation. The daughter of a Dutch sea-officer and a Javanese lady, she had been born at Surabaya twenty-eight years before; she had been married, when little more than a young, intelligent and beautiful child, to a French merchant a good many years older than herself. He had returned to France, suffered reverses of fortune, and left Lucrece with a small apartment at Neuilly and as small an income. There had been a supper party one night of January at the Café de Paris, and Scott Carruthers had driven her home from it. The undistinguished reticent stranger, starved by years of absence from his kind, had found his tongue
upon that journey. An unexpected passion had made its appeal. Now in this darkness of this smoothly rolling car he held her close to him, repeated over and over again her name in an ecstasy, and babbled like a callow boy.
But Lucrece was aware, even whilst she lay in his arms, that the man was behind the boy, that he was at heart desperate in his need of her, and set upon slaking it at every cost.
“You have been away from me a fortnight, Lucrece. Did you know that? Know it, and ache every second of the day? It’s got to come to an end, my dear. I’m never going back. I wake up at night with the horror of a thought that I am back, that as soon as the morning breaks, I’ll see the flat plains stark and brown and naked, and far away the snow on the hills. I used to have to play chess with the Maharajah by the hour. No, no, no! I’ve done with it. I am going to play another kind of chess altogether.”
In her suite at the hotel he told her of the ruined necklace.
“I could have gone round to the Avenue Matignon and strangled that girl with my own hands,” he said, his fingers working as though they clutched a throat, his face convulsed with the passion he had striven to conceal in the sitting-room in the garden court of the Ritz Hotel. “She spoilt everything, damn her!”
“Hush!” said Lucrece, nodding her head towards her bedroom, where her maid was unpacking her clothes. She added in a low voice:
“Not everything. Half of the plan remains.”
“Half’s not enough. I’ve seen you, dearest. I want everything.”
Lucrece Bouchette smiled. She was taking off her hat in front of the mirror, and she smiled and made a little grimace at his reflection.
“Greedy!”
She saw his eyes burning upon her.
“Yes.”
Then with a start he looked at his watch.
“You’ll want time for a bath, and to powder your nose. I’ll come back for you at nine. We are all three to dine together at our hotel, upstairs, and make our arrangements.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 121