“That is agreed,” said Mr. Ricardo meekly. He might have had a word or two to say, of course, if he had not been so terribly anxious to hear the rest of the story.
“Well, then! Tact is wanted. Discretion is wanted. The keenest sagacity is wanted. And authority is wanted. Where shall all these qualities be found combined in one man?”
“Where?” echoed Mr. Ricardo.
“But by a stroke of fortune, Hanaud is at Havre. He has just concluded with superb success a most difficult enquiry. Hanaud is at Havre!”
“Oh, what a blessed thing!” cried Ricardo fervently, clasping his hands together, “that Hanaud is at Havre!” Hanaud looked at him, his forehead puckered in a frown.
“You draw my leg,” he asserted.
“I do not,” said Mr. Ricardo stoutly. “And even if I were an artist, I would refuse to draw it. There are limits even to the distortions which artists allow themselves.” It seemed that Hanaud had been paid a compliment. He chuckled, he nudged Mr. Ricardo in the ribs with his elbow, a familiarity which Ricardo had never found to his liking.
“You are a comic,” said Hanaud. “But I continue. The Prince Nahendra Nao was a wise one. He telephones to the Major Scott Carruthers that he and Miss Lydia Flight shall wait for him at Trouville. But a message comes to me through the Prefect of Police at Havre that he will cross by the Southampton boat — if in a cabin-de-luxe he does not say — and see me alone this morning.”
“And he crossed?”
“Yes, he crossed.”
“And you saw him?”
“I saw him.”
“And he told you?”
“He told me of his affair with Elsie Marsh, of which I knew already,” and Hanaud explained to his companion the enlistment of Lydia Flight and Oliver Ransom and Lucrece Bouchette by Major Scott Carruthers, and their long pilgrimage, which had ended so disastrously at Caudebec.
“But of what happened on that night of Thursday at the House of the Pebble in the forest of Brotonne, I know nothing except what you have told me,” he concluded.
“And what have you done?” Mr. Ricardo enquired. “Ah! I have asked the Rajah to stay quietly at Havre. I do not want the newspapers to get busy with his name. I have asked him to send Major Scott Carruthers and Miss Lydia Flight to meet me this afternoon at the Château du Caillou.”
“I agree,” said Ricardo sententiously.
“And I am now wondering whether my friend Mr. Ricardo, who has his fingers on the pulse of this affair, will drive me back to Caudebec in his fine Rolls-Royce car and give a poor worn-out detective the benefit of his assistance.”
Ricardo could not resist the appeal. The cabin-deluxe must go unoccupied. Aix-les-Bains must wait with what patience it could. If Lydia Flight and Oliver Ransom had proved false to their trust, he would be gentle with them, but firm.
“I go with you,” he cried magnanimously. He scribbled a telegram to the patron of his hotel, re-engaging his rooms, another to the shipping company cancelling his passage; he sent a message out to his chauffeur to hold himself in readiness.
“I am ready,” he cried, thumping the table with his fist. “That is excellent,” Hanaud replied calmly, and he raised his goblet with the liqueur brandy swirling in the bottom of it to his lips. “For I have a munch.” Ricardo stared at him in perplexity.
“A munch?”
“It is my habit to make use of your English idioms,” said Hanaud.
A smile spread over Ricardo’s face.
“No, no, my friend, you have had a munch.”
“You will excuse me,” said Hanaud patiently. “I have had a lunch.”
“You have had a munch with your lunch,” Mr. Ricardo explained. “Now you have a hunch.”
Hanaud laughed and patted his friend upon the shoulder. Mr. Ricardo no more liked pats on the shoulder than he liked digs in the ribs.
“Did I not say that you were a comic!” Hanaud exclaimed agreeably. “A hunch! I know him. He is a non-conformity of the back.”
“He is also the authorised version of a guess which is generally wrong,” said Mr. Ricardo tartly. “What is this hunch?”
And all the laughter and the fun died out of Hanaud’s face. It became disconsolate and sad, the face of a lonely man.
“I laugh, yes. I make my foolish little jokes, yes. I do waggishnesses like dropping a feather I pick out of the gutter on to your white table-cloth. I must laugh. For my soul’s sake, I who live amongst crimes and squalor must laugh when I find friends to laugh with.” His eyelids half closed over his eyes: “Even though there is very little to laugh at.”
He sat and drummed with the broad tips of his fingers upon the table in a sort of rhythm; and Ricardo, in silent communication with his companion, seemed to hear the Furies, band upon band of them rushing upon them like cavalry.
“Once or twice,” Hanaud went on, “accident, destiny — God — has brought us together. And each time there has been something” — he hesitated for a word and found it— “fantastic in its horror, and dark because of some queer strain of cruelty. Yes, that’s it — of cruelty and hatred which ran through the affair like a motive in music. Well then — I am not superstitious, no — but I have my creed — and here we are brought together again. Shall we not say it? See! I am troubled. I see my dear Mr. Ricardo disappearing into the Restaurant du Sceptre, I who am on my way to a restaurant of a humbler kind. I pick up a dirty feather from the gutter and I do my waggishness. And at once you tell me much that I want to know.”
Mr. Ricardo was more than a little moved. He had seldom seen his Inspecteur Principal so troubled, his face so heavy with foreboding, his eyes so scared. He looked out of the window at his elbow, hardly knowing what to reply. He saw, without remarking them, the roof-tops of the houses about the basin, the yards of ships cutting across them, and a small purple motor-car flash across a bridge. It was an open car, driven by a girl. Ricardo suddenly leaned towards the window. The car disappeared from his sight as it reached the end of the bridge. Mr. Ricardo was in a twitter of excitement. If out of sight that little car turned to the right, then it would be lost in a maze of narrow streets. If it turned to the left, it would appear again at this corner opposite to the window, and Hanaud might have another argument to support his creed. The car did appear. It swept round the corner and with all the abruptness of its four-wheel brakes it stopped at the door of the Restaurant du Sceptre. Ricardo composed himself quickly in his seat.
“Here is a visitor who can tell you the truth about this affair,” he said; and there was a thrill in his voice which could not be disregarded.
“Where?” Hanaud asked.
“She is at this moment getting out of a car.”
“She?” Hanaud repeated. “She is getting out of a small yellow car” — rather triumphant this statement, and Mr. Ricardo must put him in his place.
“She is not. She is getting out of a small purple car.
“Well, whether purple or yellow, she is Lydia Flight,” said Hanaud testily.
“She is neither purple nor yellow, but she’s Lydia Flight,” said Ricardo. And Hanaud nodded his head thoughtfully.
“Let us be clear about her,” he said quickly. “Lydia Flight was wearing that invaluable chaplet of pearls which you thought a string of beads too vulgarly big to suit so delicate a person.”
“Yes.”
“At the suitable moment when those pearls have recovered their pristine lustre, Oliver Ransom deliberately upsets a bottle of champagne over the skirt of her coat.”
“Agreed,” said Mr. Ricardo.
“She runs upstairs to change her coat, with her sentinel Ransom, dressed as a chauffeur, at her side.”
“Perfectly.”
“A little later, when Stallard’s guests are watching the antics of a tight-rope dancer, a chauffeur in Ransom’s car dashes out along the road to Rouen and disappears.”
“That is in order,” said Mr. Ricardo.
“Lydia Flight then comes half fainting down the stairs and
cries to you: ‘Find Oliver! Where’s Oliver?’”
“Correct.”
“And besides Oliver Ransom and the yellow car, the chaplet of pearls has disappeared too.”
“Yes.”
“Lydia Flight hurries in the morning to Major Scott Carruthers at Trouville, and a telegram announcing this bad news is sent to the Prince at Goodwood.”
“So you tell me.”
“The Prince comes to Havre, and after a private interview with me, telephones to Trouville that Lydia Flight and Major Carruthers...”
“Scott.”
“I beg your pardon?” Hanaud enquired.
“Scott Carruthers,” said Ricardo. “People are apt to be touchy if you take the aristocracy out of their names.”
“The Prince then telephones that Lydia Flight and Major Scott Carruthers are to meet Hanaud at the Château du Caillou at six o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I have your authority for believing it.”
“And upon receiving this order, Lydia Flight jumps into a purple car, and comes to the Restaurant du Sceptre.”
“Your recapitulation, my dear Hanaud, is unnecessary but precise,” said Ricardo indulgently.
“Unnecessary? Hanaud speaking words without value! What a fun! No, no! For this recapitulation leads us to a question we shall do well to note. Does Lydia Flight come in a hurry to meet an accomplice secretly? Or does she come in the hope of finding a friend and an answer to a dreadful problem? Or does she come on the chance of noticing without being noticed by this terrible Hanaud?”
Mr. Ricardo giggled offensively.
“I know which of the questions Hanaud will select,” he said. “But there is another explanation which Hanaud has forgotten.”
“And what is that, if you please?”
“She may just be hungry, and wanting her luncheon.” Hanaud laughed suddenly and with relish.
“Well, I hadn’t thought of it,” he said. “So! To meet these questions, we make a little arrangement. When she comes in, you speak to her.”
“I will,” Ricardo promised.
“I put my cigar on my plate — so.” And Hanaud suited his action to his word. “You see him?”
“I see him.”
“You will continue to see him. If I take him up with my left hand, you will present me to Miss Lydia Flight. If I take him up with my right hand, you will neglect me altogether.”
Mr. Ricardo had the look of one bearing with difficulty a ridiculous companion.
“You should be acting at the Châtelet, Hanaud. You have melodrama in the tips of your fingers.”
“Of the right hand or the left?” Hanaud enquired. “Can you see the number of the purple car?”
“Yes,” said Ricardo, looking out of the window.
“Will you give it to me, please?”
“Seven, nine, six, four, R.F.6,” said Mr. Ricardo. Hanaud wrote the figures and letters down in a little pocket-book. The door of the restaurant swung open, and Lydia Flight stood upon the threshold, her glances travelling slowly round the room, as if she hoped to find there — a friend? — at all events, someone whom she knew.
At Ricardo’s side Hanaud said in a low voice:
“I shall tell you. Of all the pictures which you have shown me in your gallery this morning, this is the only one which has not frightened me.”
By this time Lydia’s eyes had reached Mr. Ricardo. He rose, and advanced towards her.
CHAPTER XIV
THE STONE OF DESOLATION
LYDIA FLIGHT WAS certainly good to see that morning. She was wearing a dark blue frock of crépe de Chine, a straw hat, and shoes to match with beige stockings, and a pair of rucked gloves of pale suede covered her arms to the elbows. The eager hope which lit her face and informed her whole aspect would have made a plain woman beautiful, and with the bright gold of her hair shining under her hat, and the delicate carnation of her cheeks, Lydia was vivid and lovely as the glint of a kingfisher above a sunlit river. Even when her hopes fell and disappointment clouded her, she held the eyes of Victor’s clients; and if Mr. Ricardo strutted rather importantly as he approached her, who shall blame him?
“You will do me the honour to lunch with me, Miss Lydia, I hope,” he said.
“But you are not alone,” said she. “I shall be interrupting you.”
“We are not talking business.”
“Besides, you have finished.”
Ricardo was a gallant creature as well as an inquisitive one.
“We will begin all over again at a word from you,” he said, “and the friend whom you expect may have arrived before we have ended.”
“I couldn’t put you to that ordeal,” she declared with a smile. But her manner was absent, and her eyes rested upon Hanaud with a curious speculation. Her scrutiny, indeed, gave Mr. Ricardo something of a shock, and took all the strut out of him. Had she in truth come to this restaurant to spy upon this Inspecteur Principal of the Sûreté?
“But I shall be happy to lunch with you, Mr. Ricardo,” and she fell in at his side.
As they approached the table Hanaud rose to his feet. He certainly held his cigar in his left hand, but whether that signified he was to be introduced or not, Ricardo had clean forgotten. In any case Hanaud should have discreetly removed himself if he had no wish to be presented, and “As for the tricks of the Châtelet,” Ricardo argued stoutly if silently, “I have no use for them.”
“Miss Lydia, this is Monsieur Hanaud,” he said.
Hanaud bowed. Lydia Flight bowed. There was neither surprise nor apprehension in her manner. Appraisement, on the other hand, was very visible. Her glance was direct and steady, and she made a little nod with her head, as if she knew very well who Monsieur Hanaud was and on what business he was set.
Ricardo fluttered about her, to put her at her ease. Now that the hope had died out of her face, it was obvious that she was tired and distressed. Her eyes were shadowed, and her manner very quiet. Ricardo called for Victor. He pulled a chair from a neighbouring table and set it with its back to the room, he ordered luncheon for her, the croustilles du batelier first, a cutlet to follow, and a glass of the Haut Brion. Whether Oliver Ransom were her accomplice or not, she was his guest, and so long as that condition lasted, sacrosanct. He chattered, more to stop Hanaud from cross-examining her, than because he had anything to say.
“You have forgotten, no doubt, our first meeting, Miss Lydia? In the cathedral at Caudebec. You must peg away at the croustilles whilst they are hot, or Victor will never smile again. Ha, ha, ha! Of course you have forgotten our meeting, but I, on the other hand, how can I not remember it?”
Lydia Flight began to draw off her gloves, but changed her mind, and tucked the fingers in under their sleeves. She looked up from her croustilles with a smile of friendliness for Ricardo. She appreciated his talkativeness for its true and kindly intention.
“I remember it as well as you do, Mr. Ricardo,” she answered. “I asked you to show me the Stone of Desolation.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t do it,” said Ricardo, more hastily than prudently. “I mean, I didn’t do it! No! I showed you something finer, something with a higher message. The window which Foulkes Eyton, Captain General of Caudebec...”
Lydia Flight looked at him so that he felt ashamed of his haste and incoherence. She seemed to be weighing the application of that fine message to herself and her distress.
“Je m’y oblige,” she said slowly and seriously. “And Priez pour moi.”
Silence followed, a silence long enough to make Ricardo uneasy, and Lydia aware that Hanaud was no longer puffing at his cigar. She said, with a pretty peremptoriness:
“Unless you smoke, I go. But I don’t want to go, for I have something to say to you.”
“Mademoiselle,” said Hanaud with a smile and a tact for which Ricardo would never have given him credit, “Je m’y oblige.”
He struck a match, and relit his cigar. Lydia watched him until she was sure that it was drawing.
“Good,” she said. She turned her head and looked behind her into the room. There were still people eating their luncheon, others smoking over their coffee and liqueurs. She shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, then,” she began, and Hanaud stopped her.
“No, mademoiselle, you shall tell me nothing here,” he said with a most disagreeable laugh. “We are to meet at six o’clock at the Château du Caillou. You shall talk to me there.”
“But I should like to talk to you before that meeting,” she rejoined quietly.
“Oho!” said Hanaud. He might just as well have said that he didn’t believe what she was saying, or what she was going to say.
As for Ricardo, he must look a little further than Hanaud. He must keep his emotions and judgments separate. Was Lydia a very astute young lady, anticipating suspicion by her frankness, or was she just a girl at her wits’ end in her need for help?
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 130