Complete Works of a E W Mason

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Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 127

by A. E. W. Mason


  “I suppose that Major Carruthers will be here in time for dinner,” said Oliver Ransom.

  “Oh, I hope so,” said Stallard. “He ought, indeed, to be here already. I’ll ask.”

  He went out through the lounge. It was close upon seven o’clock now.

  “I shall go and tidy up, even if I am not to dress,” said Lucrece Bouchette as she rose. “You have seen your rooms, and know where you are? Right! We’ll meet down here, then.”

  She strolled off, and left Lydia and Oliver together.

  “Let us have a look at the rose garden,” said Ransom. “I think we have time.”

  They stepped off the terrace out on to a gravel path which turned and twisted amongst banks of roses, red and yellow and pink. Lydia turned and looked towards the house. No one was overlooking them whom she could see. Certainly no one could overhear.

  “Yes?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I think that I was alarmed without reason,” said Oliver. He was anxious to spare her, and spoke therefore in a casual tone which did not deceive Lydia in the least. “But we might as well get away at the first chance.”

  “Yes.”

  “The gates will be open, of course, when the guests begin to arrive. They will be open for them to go away.”

  “They are shut now?” Lydia asked, bending over a rose the better to smell its fragrance.

  “Yes.”

  “Locked?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was wiser not to make sure?”

  “I thought so.”

  They strolled on side by side for a few yards. The light tone with which Oliver Ransom had begun, he was unable to sustain. He knew, moreover, that there was little need to sustain it. The hard bright flame which had fired Lydia to confront the first audience at the Costanzi Theatre, was burning steadily in her now. She had felt and even betrayed the artist’s sinking heart and quivering nerve on the eve of the ordeal. Now that the ordeal was beginning, she had her wits as sharp and her courage as quick as ever in the rest of her life.

  “You have a plan?” she asked, and she buried her nose in a big yellow flower, and inhaled its perfume with delight.

  “A bit of one. We can’t be very precise. This entertainment,” and he glanced upwards towards the rope above her head, “is to follow on the supper.”

  “Yes.”

  “Something will be said about it, no doubt. We shall be asked to take our places on the terrace, shan’t we? Everyone will jump up. I’ll upset a glass of wine at our table — a full glass, or a bottle.”

  “Over me?” cried Lydia with a little grimace.

  “Yes.”

  “And my fine dress?”

  “I’ll buy you another.”

  “Darling!”

  In front of the windows they played their parts. If anyone watched them there was to be seen a couple of lovers laughing in a rose garden on a summer evening.

  “As the guests crowd out on to the terrace, we’ll slip upstairs.”

  “Unnoticed?”

  “It oughtn’t to be difficult.”

  “No. I shall have the excuse, too, of my wet coat.”

  “How long will it take you to change?”

  “I must have that Gloire de Dijon, Oliver. I think I may steal that, don’t you? About seven minutes.”

  “I am going as a chauffeur. So I shan’t have to change. I’ll wait for you outside your door.”

  He bent the spray down towards them and cut off the rose to which Lydia had pointed, smelt it, and handed it to her. “Exquisite, and therefore for you,” he said.

  “And this?” she said. “I am going to put it in your button-hole.”

  “Thank you. Then we must trust to chance. If I can wheel the car out of the garage...There are bound to be other cars in the courtyard. Chauffeurs in attendance — too many for anyone to try to stop us.” Lydia pinned the stem of the rose under the lapel of his coat.

  “There! You look half a bridegroom already, my dear.” She gave his coat a pat. “Yes, we shall go straight to Trouville.”

  “Hand over the chaplet to the hotel manager, and tell him to lock it up for the young Rajah in his safe.”

  “And we should be free of it. Oh!”

  She drew a breath of relief, as though she saw the safe-door closing upon it, as though she held the manager’s receipt for it in the palm of her hand.

  “If for some reason we can’t escape that way, we must slip down to the river. There’ll be a launch or two waiting to take people back to Caudebec.”

  Lydia shook her head.

  “Guy Stallard’s launch! We couldn’t trust to it!”

  “Perhaps Mr. Ricardo’s too.”

  Lydia laughed joyously, and for the moment she was not acting at all.

  “I’m all for Mr. Ricardo’s launch,” she cried.

  “Hush!” said Oliver. “We ought to go in, oughtn’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  She slipped her hand into his and walked towards the windows of the lounge. But when they had crossed half the distance, she stopped.

  “There’s something I don’t understand. This rope I am wearing — it’s beyond value in some ways. I mean, I can understand any money being spent to keep it.”

  Oliver Ransom stopped and in his turn swung round quickly to face her. He did not interrupt. He waited indeed, as if he knew just what she was going to say.

  “I can understand Nahendra Nao going to any expense,” she continued. “But if our fears are right, don’t you think a great deal of money is being spent to steal it?”

  Oliver nodded his head.

  “Yes, I do. I’ve been wondering about that myself. You see, there’s one horrible possibility, isn’t there?”

  For a moment Lydia did not answer. She looked to this side and to that, with a puckered forehead, as though from some quarter surely she could draw an answer different from the one which stood and stared at her.

  “We had better face it, my dear,” said Oliver.

  “That it’s Nahendra Nao’s own money which is being spent?”

  “Yes.”

  Her voice sank to a murmur which was almost inaudible.

  “And it’s being spent by Scott Carruthers.”

  The suspicion which had been gathering for some days in each of their minds, was out now. And their knowledge that each had surely considered and rejected and considered it again, gave to it now almost the strength of a certainty.

  “Yes, but even so,” Oliver Ransom exclaimed, “we haven’t got the whole truth. There’s more than we suspect, I’m sure. If there’s a plan, it’s too elaborate, too worked out, for a theft even of that chaplet to explain it. If that were my last word, I should say there’s some plot of which the theft of that chaplet is only a step.”

  And now Lydia whispered “Hush!”

  But no one was watching them from any windows. No one sought to overhear a word of their conversation. Guy Stallard had gone straight from the terrace through the lounge and the hall to the courtyard. The little garage assistant had laid aside his hose and his clogs, and was standing with his hand upon the door of the tool house close by the postern gate into the forest.

  “Nick,” Mr. Stallard cried, but the little man looked over his shoulder towards the garage.

  “Nick,” Mr. Stallard repeated, and he crossed the courtyard.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Nick, touching his forehead. “A little ‘ard o’ ‘earing, nowadays, sir, old Nick Furlong.”

  Guy Stallard grinned.

  “But willing, Nick.”

  “And I do say, sir, pardon the play on me names, one willing Furlong’s worth a couple o’ lazy miles.”

  “You damned old rascal,” said Mr. Stallard, bursting out into a laugh, and he continued on the same level of voice with the same pleasant humour on his face: “That fellow saw me, Nick. He saw me from the top windows — saw me up in the woods.”

  “Oh?” said Nick Furlong, thrusting out his lower lip. “Birds?”

/>   “Yes.”

  Nick Furlong tilted his cap on one side and scratched his head.

  “I never could understand about birds. A nice mouse, now, you can make a friend of a mouse and keep ’im in your shirt. I’ve done it myself. But birds! I don’t like their beady eyes. In’uman, you might say, sir. So that bloke saw you?”

  “Yes.”

  “D’you think he’s wise to anything? An Indian flattie, ain’t he? Hugh! I should bother my ‘ead about him.”

  “I’m not bothering my head, but I’m taking no risks,” said Mr. Guy Stallard. “He was staying with the Doctor, you know.”

  Nick Furlong’s face lit up.

  “Now there’s a bit of nasty work, sir,” he said venomously. “Never gave you credit for an innocent thought, did he? A cold and sneery God-damned bloke” — Nick Furlong spat to give due emphasis to his words. “Always picking on you for something, just because you wasn’t brought up in the same circle as himself. People who smoke ‘Avana cigars ought to take the bands off. Why? I asks. What’s the use of me paying fourpence for a ‘Avana cigar if I’ve got to take the band off before I smoke it? I wants to know.”

  “I can’t answer that one, Nick,” said Mr. Stallard. “But I reckon the Doctor did a bit of showing off and talking to his friends. Psychology stuff! And I’m taking no risks.”

  He repeated that phrase without stressing it, but Nick Furlong understood that the argument was closed.

  “All right, Mr. Stallard. His little musical box see you too?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve got other plans for her, Nick.”

  He turned and went back into the house. Nick Furlong pulled at his long lower lip.

  “Five foot eleven,” he said discontentedly. It seemed to him almost inhuman that an Indian flattie should measure up to five feet, eleven inches. “Oh, well, hit goes!”

  He spat on his hands and retired into the tool shed.

  CHAPTER X

  A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE

  MR. RICARDO DID hire a launch for that evening and brought over in it to the Pebble Castle the last stragglers amongst Mr. Stallard’s guests. Night was still at odds with day when Mr. Ricardo pushed off from the Caudebec hard, and as his launch swept round the bend of the river, the blaze of lights in the high gallery still fought with the afterglow of the sunset. A little pier jutted out into the Seine with a private gate upon the road, and a motor carried the guests up the hill to the courtyard. There were some cars from the neighbourhood with their chauffeurs, as Oliver Ransom had foreseen.

  Mr. Guy Stallard received his guests at the top of the big staircase. Wearing a high stock, a frilled shirt and the black pantaloons of the eighteen-twenties, he was more Byronic than ever. His dark hair was parted on one side and pomatumed.

  “One of the Aisles of Grease,” Mr. Ricardo murmured brightly. He followed the stream into the gallery and watched for a little while the usual medley of these affairs — blackamoors, pirates, columbines and houris. Mr. Ricardo looked about for his little friend Lydia Flight, and saw her dancing with Oliver Ransom. She was wearing the white satin of the young Octavian in The Rosenkavalier, when he is presenting the silver rose, and a cravat of batiste was wound about her throat under the high collar of the coat, and tied in a huge bow under her chin. She was looking quite lovely, Mr. Ricardo thought, with a colour in her cheeks and a sparkle of excitement in her eyes; and he was not surprised to hear Guy Stallard at his elbow say:

  “I am going to take that young lady away from her boy friend. Wouldn’t you do the same, Mr. Ricardo, if you were the host instead of me?”

  “And if I were your age,” Mr. Ricardo answered politely. “As it is, I am afraid that I should feel a little ridiculous if I were still indulging in the light fantastic, eh?” And he tittered modestly.

  For a moment Mr. Stallard was baffled. Such phrases no doubt were seldom heard in the copper fields of Arizona. Then he grasped Ricardo’s meaning.

  “You don’t dance? Then the host’s privileges must wait upon the host’s duties. You play bridge?”

  “Just a normal game,” said Mr. Ricardo, who rather fancied himself as a bridge player.

  Guy Stallard took his guest by the arm and led him downstairs into the lounge. There was one table already occupied, and a second set out. Stallard busied himself in collecting three others, and Mr. Ricardo found himself in partnership with a Madame de Viard; and from that moment his evening became a continuous descent of the long stairs of melancholy. Heaven forbid that a full account should ever be given of his desperate efforts to enliven the slow and portentous game which was played that evening. Let one sad instance suffice. He was playing the hand, and Madame de Viard was dummy. She was something of a grenadier with a long, sallow face, black unfriendly eyes, and more than a suggestion of a black moustache. A daunting woman, but Mr. Ricardo had collected four tricks from dummy and saw his way to making game. He encouraged himself to make a little jest. He said:

  “Maintenant ou est-ce que nous irons pour le miel?”

  The silence of the frozen North received those words. His partner stared at him as if he was a natural. Mr. Ricardo made the gravity of the situation worse by a nervous giggle. He then led out of the wrong hand and went one down.

  The rubber was hardly over when Guy Stallard reappeared. The doors of the supper-room were thrown open, and to Mr. Ricardo was allotted the duty of attending upon Madame de Viard. Ricardo was a gallant little gentleman. Moustachioed ladies were never favourites of his, and he especially disliked them at meals. But he stifled a sigh and offered his arm. Madame de Viard shot at him a glance — a basilisk glance he considered it — and sighed quite openly.

  “I do not think that this party is one to be remembered with pleasure,” she said. “At all events by a woman who has moved in a different world in Paris.”

  “No?” said Mr. Ricardo. He could not with honesty declare that he was enjoying himself.

  “No,” said Madame de Viard.

  The supper-room was a long room alongside the lounge, running from the garden terrace through almost the whole depth of the house. Double doors from the lounge opened into it, and on the opposite side towards the courtyard end was the service door. It was a charming room panelled in dark lustrous wood with a painted railing and its two long windows opened upon the terrace. A waiter led Madame de Viard and her companion to a small table for two just below the doors. Ricardo had his back to the wall, the open windows upon his right, and the room with its tables in front of him. He was, in fact, occupying exactly the position which perfectly satisfied him. He could observe the guests, their whims and behaviour, he could fit them into little stories of his imagining and take no responsibility for any one of them whatever. Unfortunately he was hampered by a censorious and moustachioed lady.

  “The ceiling, I take it,” he said, “is by Cottele de Meaux.”

  “The supper is certainly by the Railway Buvette,” Madame de Viard replied, as she drank her cup of consommé.

  He noticed that at a table laid for four near the centre of the room, Guy Stallard, Lucrece Bouchette, Lydia Flight and Oliver Ransom had taken their seats.

  “So you are of Paris, madame?” Mr. Ricardo continued. “The Ville Lumière?”

  It has been said that he had the proper phrases at the tip of his tongue.

  “Yes, and anyone who has moved in the great world of Paris — the real Paris, monsieur” — this to keep Mr. Ricardo in his place if he fancied that he knew anything of Paris except the Place de l’Opera, the Boulevard des Italiens and such sham-wicked places in Montmartre as industrious French people instituted to ease the pockets of the foreigners— “must realise that this is a party definitely of the second class. Nice people smile but they do not guffaw. No! There are artists here. They will throw bread before the supper is over.”

  “I have many friends among artists,” said Mr. Ricardo stoutly.

  “Ah!” said she disdainfully. The basilisk eye swept over him. “I am not astonished.”
/>
  For herself she had never mixed with such people. Her papa would never have allowed it. But when one marries a little doctor of the provinces, what is one to do?

  “Monsieur de Viard is then the Medical Officer of the district?” Mr. Ricardo asked.

  “Yes. So you see!”

  No more clearly or unpleasantly could she have declared that she had been sent in to supper on the arm of the last of the Has-Beens. Mr. Ricardo, however, was not to be put down. He bridled. He replied with spirit.

  “But, madame, you must pardon me if I point out that you are entirely wrong. The young lady at the table there is an operatic singer of high distinction. Your host is a millionaire from Arizona. The supper comes from a famous restaurant and not from the Railway Buvette, and, honestly, you are one of the worst bridge players that I have ever seen.”

  “Monsieur, that is enough,” she replied, drawing herself up with dignity. She looked around the room, throwing up her chin like a horse. Then she spread out her hands. “And I — think of it — I am a Tabateau.” Mr. Ricardo refused absolutely to be impressed.

  “A Tabateau,” he repeated carelessly.

  He saw Guy Stallard rise from his table, and beckon forward a guest from the doorway. He heard Mr. Stallard say: “You must take my place — Mr. Horne, isn’t it? Yes. I saw a most admirable one-man show of yours, I think at the Leicester Galleries. Charming!” Stallard pressed the artist down by the shoulders into his seat. “Madame Bouchette will look after you. I have to see that my tight-rope dancer has arrived from Rouen sober.”

  He moved away and so resolved a tiny little problem which had plagued Mr. Ricardo beyond its merits. Ricardo had not been able to make out why he rather disliked Guy Stallard. He was friendly, well-mannered, quiet and more than usually handsome, and the touch of roughness in his phrases and the unmistakable look of pain in his eyes were fast disappearing as Arizona was left farther and farther behind. Yet Mr. Ricardo was not at ease with him. Something offended him and he realised what it was. There was an excess of elegance in Guy Stallard’s movements. He was too graceful to be permissible. His elegance amounted to slinkiness. Ricardo watched him moving in and out amongst the tables, a god, but a slinky god. Byron without his limp and with a sort of dancing-master’s finish which certainly Byron never had.

 

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