He came up behind her and caught her to him, kissing her hungrily. For a moment or two she yielded, and then she turned and gently held him off. She was suddenly a little frightened. So much violence and haste, and so much patience and discretion needed if they were to tread with safety the winding perilous way which he had laid out across their chart of life.
“We must be careful, dear,” she whispered, looking him in the eyes. “There’s the pit in front of us, and very near.”
“That’s all right,” he returned confidently.
She still held him at arm’s length, looking at him from those long eyes which seemed always to hold a riddle and keep its secret. He could carry her off her feet now. She was moving with her head clear into dangers which she could not define, and at his bidding. Suppose that midway in the journey she had exhausted her interest, the stimulation she got from him, her power to respond? What would he be like then? She smiled suddenly. She was seeing again his hands curving and his fingers twitching, and his face convulsed as he thought of Elsie Marsh. He was certainly not losing his interest for her yet.
“Run along, Harvey.” She dropped her hands from his shoulders. “If I am to be ready by nine, I’ve got to hurry.”
It was nearer ten, however, when she sat down to dinner with Nahendra Nao and Scott Carruthers. Lucrece Bouchette had of course met the young Indian often enough during his stay in Paris, but tonight she might have taken him for a more sedate and elder brother. Over there, he had been boyishly arrogant, a trifle noisy with his shrill laugh, obviously the King of the Castle. This evening he was quiet, with a simple dignity which sat on him well. He had no reproaches for Elsie Marsh, and no hysterical blame for himself.
“We are taking a long chance, Lucrece — may I use that name? A very long chance. But it is the only one we have, and I shall be more grateful than I can say, if you will help.”
Indeed Lucrece Bouchette felt more than a twinge of remorse as the dinner progressed, but she was launched. It was agreed that she should make some small purchases at Monsieur Crevette’s. She should speak of her need for a companion on a tour she proposed to make in the South of France. Crevette would remember Lydia Flight, and give her the girl’s address. So far there was no trouble. The meeting took place and the engagement was made. Then, however, the difficulties began. Monsieur Crevette opened very delicately the proposal that on this tour Lydia Flight should wear the Chitipur pearls. At once, said Monsieur Crevette:
“She dig her toes in. She is poor, yes. She need the money, yes. But the responsibility, no, and again no, and for the third time, no! I show her the pearls. They look no more than pearls of the Arcades, not? But suppose they get better? she ask. I say you send her with a detective, and she give me the bird. Everyone in five minutes would know that she had a private detective, and would wonder why, and would find the answer. She put it all in two words. Im. Possible.”
“It’s quite true, of course, even to-day,” said Carruthers gloomily. “Private enquiry agents would have to be unusual people to hide up their job in the South of France, and they aren’t unusual people.”
Then when they were on the edge of despair, magic helped them. Scott Carruthers called it magic. He had been brought up in a strictly evangelical school, and he thought “Providence” an ill-omened word to use in connection with his plans. He met in the smoking-room of a club much frequented by Service officers home from the East an invalided Captain of the Bengal Police — Oliver Ransom. Ransom had by now quite recovered his health, his circumstances were suitable, he had manners and good breeding and a pleasant way with him. Instead of masquerading as a courier or a chauffeur he could be one of the party. He was the ideal of Carruthers’s search. The only drawback to the choice of him was that in more than one difficult case in India he had been guilty of an ingenuity and courage which had brought the malefactors to their proper conclusion. However, one can’t have everything, and over a dinner-table for two in the club, Carruthers noticed a certain delicacy of mind in Oliver Ransom, a suggestion of an essayist gone astray in Scotland Yard, which he set against the man’s prowess as a policeman.
“After all,” he said, whilst he looked over the rim of his wine-glass at Oliver, “Indian criminals are fairly simple liars. They get off not because of the cleverness of their crimes, but because the police muddle up the whole case by lying too.”
“That is undoubtedly true,” Ransom answered, and Carruthers realised with a start that he had been talking aloud, whereas he had thought to be communing with himself. However, the opportunity was a good one, and he took it, He told the story of Nahendra Nao and Elsie Marsh. Oliver Ransom was languidly interested. He had heard of the Chitipur pearls, of course. It was going to be awkward for the young Rajah when he should return home.
“Awkward for me, too,” added Carruthers. “We start back at the end of August.”
Not so very long a time, to be sure, and the fee would be good and the part of the world in which it was to be earned pleasant. But socially he was not too easy a companion. Those whom he liked, he liked well, but he did not fit comfortably into a general circle.
“As to these two ladies—” he said.
“They are both charming,” Carruthers interrupted.
“I don’t even know their names,” Oliver continued.
“If that’s all your trouble, it can be quickly cured. One is Madame Lucrece Bouchette; the other, the companion, is the singer, Lydia Flight.”
To Major Scott Carruthers’s delight, Oliver Ransom spilled his wine over the table-cloth. Then he blushed like a girl, and was very much annoyed.
“You might just as well meet these two ladies before you make up your mind, mightn’t you?” said Carruthers carelessly. He had his fish unexpectedly on his hook now, but not yet in the creel. “You could take your books with you, since you’re reading law. What about the four of us dining together?”
Oliver Ransom saw no objection whatever, and Scott Carruthers went back to Nahendra Nao in better spirits than he had known for a week. They dined in the grill-room of the Semiramis, where there is sufficient movement and clatter for two people to talk intimately together even when they are only four at the table. Lucrece and Scott Carruthers, after the first courses had set them all at their ease, left Lydia Flight and Oliver Ransom to work out their problem for themselves. It happened — it is continually happening and no one is going to say why, and anyway no explanation is needed — the pair fell into step at the hors-d’oeuvres and were old friends when the coffee was reached. In the interval Lydia had dug Oliver Ransom’s history out of him, told him nothing of her own, and had laughed with a lovely ripple of the voice which must not sing, at the idea of this mad pilgrimage along the south coast of France whilst the spring rounded into summer, she with a priceless jewel about her throat and not sixpence in her pocket, he the body-guard and policeman with Elphinstone on Contracts in his hand.
“It would be fun,” said she with a little smile, and wistfully.
“Wouldn’t it!” said he.
“But—” and she stopped, suddenly grown serious.
“What sort of ‘but’ is that?” Oliver Ransom asked. “When you come to my age, you will recognise that more ‘buts’ turn into ‘ands’ than you had any idea of.”
Lydia looked at him with admiration. Young people in step discover wit very easily in each other.
“This but. When and where will you study your law?”
“In the morning,” he said. “On the terrace.”
“What terrace?”
“The terrace where you’re doing your knitting.”
She laughed, and then looked him over, and said quietly:
“I think I should not mind the responsibility so much if we went together.”
She had a tempting picture before her, olive and orange groves and summer seas, and this man beside her, and that young woebegone Indian Prince here in London gradually recovering from his despondency. If only the experiment would prove successful. It
had — yes — on other occasions it had.
“We’ll give it a chance,” she said.
Oliver Ransom took her back to her lodging, with the whole business settled. Nahendra Nao was to keep as far away from his pearls as possible, lest the quality of the big beads which Lydia Flight was wearing should be suspected. Major Scott Carruthers would go to and fro, but as far as possible he would be with the travellers. They were to start for Beauvallon in four days’ time.
Later that night in her apartment, Lucrece Bouchette put a question to Carruthers, which she had had on the tip of her tongue ever since they had left her in the hall.
“What’s to happen to those two, Harvey?”
Scott Carruthers raised his eyebrows.
“Ah!” he said. “Yes. We shall have to think about that, shan’t we?”
Lucrece Bouchette had an odd sensation that the room had suddenly grown cold. She saw Scott Carruthers gently swaying backwards and forwards from his heels to his toes and from his toes to his heels, with a proper perplexity in his face, and his eyes following the pattern of the carpet. But he didn’t perplex Lucrece. Oh, he had had the thought a long time since, what must happen to those two when the pearls were healed and the pilgrimage at an end.
“I should be sorry if—” she began, and she broke off with a shiver. Certainly the fire had gone out and the room was very cold. Lucrece Bouchette was sorry for those two — just now. But the spring was to round into summer. There were months to pass before anything could happen to them. It was possible that when the time came she might not be even sorry.
This odd caravan, then, started off at Beauvallon, and sauntered along the Riviera. Undoubtedly the pearls were healing. The discolorations had gone, the yellow sickly look was fading. Lydia Flight wore them night and day, hiding them as best she could under her shirt by day, and under a neck-wrap in the evening. Monsieur Crevette, who was taking a holiday at Monte Carlo, motored over to Mentone when they were staying there, and was enraptured.
“At the end of July, madame,” he said.
“July!” This was early in June; Oliver Ransom and Lydia Flight were so sunk in love that the remotest hotels, the loneliest beaches, filled them with delight. All that they needed was Schubert and moonlight, whilst on the other hand, Lucrece Bouchette could have screamed from sheer boredom.
“At the end of July, madame. I give you my word, the word of Crevette.”
Lucrece knew another word of another person which would have aptly expressed her sentiments. But she did not utter it. There were two more months, then, and Monte Carlo was forbidden. She herself might run over for the day, but it was the last place in the world where Lydia Flight could trot about with the old Maharajah’s pearls swinging from her neck.
“Major Carruthers,” Monsieur Crevette continued. “He comes to-morrow, I think.”
Scott Carruthers, in fact, sent a telegram the next day, and arrived upon the day after in time for lunch.
“I have an idea,” he said genially, as he sat upon the terrace of the hotel overlooking the sea. He had a cocktail at his elbow, and the little party grouped about him. “The crowds’ll be coming with the bathing season. We ought to migrate a bit — what?”
He spread a map out upon the iron table, and ran his eyes up and down it and across it.
“Any fancies?” he asked, looking towards Lydia Flight and Oliver Ransom. They had no suggestions to make. They were in Paradise anywhere. “You, Lucrece?”
He turned his eyes towards her, and saw her grow a little pale under the tan of her cheeks.
Scott Carruthers had another idea. It seemed to leap out of the map at him.
“What about a house-boat on one of the rivers? Isn’t that an idea? For the last month, eh? That rope is getting pretty noticeable.” He leaned back in his chair and pursed up his lips, and took a pencil from his pocket. “Let me see. We’d want room for the four of us, and for your maid, Lucrece, on the boat. Then there’d have to be a smaller boat with the kitchen and rooms for the servants — unless, of course, we could get local people who could sleep ashore.”
“That would be best, of course,” said Lydia Flight; and Lucrece Bouchette shot one sharp glance at her from her sidelong eyes in which horror struggled with contempt. What a fool! she was thinking.
“You’d want a launch, of course, to get you about.”
“I could look after that and drive it,” cried Lydia Flight. “Lucrece drives a car, too. We could always get somebody to clean it.”
Scott Carruthers looked up at Lucrece, and his eyes widened as he looked at her.
“Does that suit you, too, Lucrece?” he asked gently, and she could do no more than nod. “A very great deal depends, of course, upon everything going through during the last month, doesn’t it?” he said easily.
Lucrece Bouchette moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. Carruthers had his plan settled to the last detail. She was sure of it. She was equally sure that she was not yet to be told what it was. At that moment she almost hated him. She knew that she was horribly afraid of him, as she watched him looking up and down the map as if in doubt where the houseboat should be moored. She heard him saying again, with his face convulsed and his voice violent: “I’m not going back to Chitipur! I’ve had eight mortal deadly years of it.”
“Well, that’s settled, then,” he said cheerfully. “A house-boat, a tender, an oil launch and a dinghy.” He turned towards Lydia Flight with a laugh. “The day you hand over those pearls to His Highness, Lydia, you can go aquaplaning again in the best evening frock you’ve got.”
Lydia Flight threw back her head and laughed. “You saw that picture of me at Nassau?”
“Who didn’t?” Carruthers asked.
“I was mad at that time. I had come down from New York, knowing that I had played the fool with my voice, and that I mustn’t sing for a year. I was desperately unhappy. There wasn’t any crazy thing which I wouldn’t have done, just to buck myself up for a moment.”
But Scott Carruthers was not listening very attentively. He was making notes on the back of the list of cocktails of the requirements of the house-boat. Then he resumed his study of his maps.
“The question is now, where we should moor it,” he said. “If we could settle that, we can go to luncheon with an easy conscience.”
“One of the mouths of the Rhone,” Oliver Ransom suggested.
“Yes, yes,” said Carruthers. “But a little uninteresting, all that country. Flat, I think.”
Lydia Flight exclaimed:
“I know. The inlaid water at Arcachon. Pine trees all round it. Lovely!”
“Let me see,” said Carruthers. “Where is Arcachon, now? Oh, yes! There!” And he stabbed the butt of his pencil down upon the place. He seemed very much inclined to vote for that suggestion.
“But it’s a long way from England. I thought that if we could be nearer... You see, His Highness will be anxious. We have got to consider him, haven’t we?” He was very kind, but he made Lydia Flight imagine herself to be the most selfish little beast on earth. She had a beautiful white skin, and the blood mounted into her neck and face until she was as red as a tulip. “Now, he is invited to Goodwood, and Goodwood takes place in the last week of July. I thought that if we were somewhere near, and he could come over and pick up his chaplet really completely restored as soon as Goodwood was over, it would be a great relief to him.”
As he spoke, he lifted his head and looked straight at Lucrece Bouchette. He was announcing to her that the last few days of July would be the days in which his plans would reach their fruition. He put his finger again on the map.
“The Seine’s the river we want,” he said. “The lower reaches between Rouen and Havre-de-Grace. His Highness can slip over to Havre or Trouville from Southampton after the racing is over. See?”
He ran the butt of his pencil round the bends of the great waterway, and stopped.
“There’s the place,” he said excitedly. He had obviously just made a discover
y. He was surprised to find this particular place in this particular spot. “Caudebec!” he cried, and he bent his head down to the map, the better to read the name. “Caudebec-en-Caux,” he read slowly. “I’ve heard of it.” He swung round enthusiastically to Lydia and Oliver Ransom. “You’ll love it! It’s a beautiful little old dead-alive town where artists go. It has got a tiny perfect cathedral you could almost put on a tray. I want to see it myself. What do you all say? Caudebec? Then Caudebec it is, and we can go in to luncheon.”
Oliver Ransom and Lydia Flight passed out of the sunlight over the sill of the French window. Scott Carruthers stepped close to Lucrece Bouchette. Into his unnoticeable face there came a light which quite transfigured it. He stood with his hands clenched and rocked himself gently from his heels on to his toes, and from his toes back to his heels.
“The end of July, Lucrece,” he whispered. “Then — all over!”
Oliver Ransom and Lydia Flight had vanished altogether out of his thoughts. Nahendra Nao? Well, he would still have a place — a sort of a place — in the plans of Scott Carruthers.
“You are frightened, Lucrece,” he went on.
Lucrece Bouchette nodded her head slowly.
“I am.”
But he did not understand why she was frightened. It was not out of pity for the young couple who had just passed out of the sunlight of the terrace to the cool shadows of the dining-room. Nor was it from any dread of discovery. She was frightened because when this crime — and that there was to be a crime she had no doubt — was completed, she would find herself linked for ever by the bond of that crime, to a man to whom she was beginning to trace her horror of the whole affair. Was she tiring of him? She asked herself that question as she stood opposite to him, her long eyes smiling to cloak her question. Was she even beginning to feel a distaste for him?
However, in the early days of July a house-boat, elaborate with awnings and flowers, the Marie-Popette, was moored to the big square wooden piles just above the town of Caudebec, a fast motor launch was tied up on one side, a dinghy on a painter trailed behind; and close behind that, a smaller house-boat was tied, in which were the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. All, in a word, was set for the great event upon which Major Scott Carruthers had spent so much forethought.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 122