“I am, of course, as a good citizen, eager to help the cause of justice,” she said to Parcolet. “But these gentlemen will understand that nothing can be more distasteful to me than any publicity.”
“That, madame, is clear,” Hanaud said swiftly. “And happily His Highness the young Rajah of Chitipur is even more anxious that the utmost secrecy should be preserved. A whisper in the newspapers, and his position is prejudiced, and, it may be, his throne lost.” Madame de Viard made a movement up on her sofa.
“His Highness...” she murmured.
“Nahendra Nao, Prince of Chitipur,” said Hanaud.
“He might lose his throne?”
“And with it the power to reward his friends with the jewel of the Order of his Kingdom,” said Hanaud gravely; and again Madame de Viard started upon her couch, and her eyes opened wider, and she drew a breath. Already she was pinning the Order upon her bosom.
Not for nothing was Madame de Viard née Tabateau. Hanaud had counted on her birth. Who could stand superior in a jeweller’s hierarchy to a Prince of the East with his fabulous gems and his treasure of gold. The Rue de la Paix was hushed in reverence and hopeful smiles at the mere name of such a one. And an Order, with a jewel attached to it! Madame de Viard’s mouth watered at the prospect.
“But how, monsieur, can I help His Royal Highness?” she asked. “Only tell me!”
Hanaud rejoiced when he heard “Royal” added to the title. Aware of the folly of spreading butter thin, he had almost applied it himself. But once again truth paid. It was so much better that Madame de Viard should apply it than that he should.
“I am here to tell you. I saw the Prince this morning. I said to him: ‘Madame de Viard,’ and he repeated my words. He added,” and Hanaud leaned forward impressively: “‘That is a name not to be forgotten.’”
“He said that?”
“He said that,” and Mr. Ricardo stirred uneasily. Hanaud was really going too far. He could not possibly have mentioned Madame de Viard’s name to Nahendra Nao, for he did not know of Madame de Viard’s existence until after he had left the Prince. But before he could interrupt, a quite malignant glance from the Inspecteur Principal warned him to keep his mouth shut. “And what made you mention my name?” Madame asked, now quite bewildered.
“Ah! We come to it,” cried Hanaud, and he hitched his chair forward. “Madame, two nights ago a ball was given at a house across the river.”
There crept into the woman’s face a look of wariness. She was suddenly upon her guard.
“Yes,” she answered.
“You were present.”
“Monsieur, when one marries the Doctor of a Department, one does many things from a sense of duty which are not agreeable.”
“But you were present?”
“I was.”
“And a bottle of champagne was upset?”
“Ah!”
Madame de Viard jerked round like an automaton towards Mr. Ricardo. She threw him an annihilating glance, and he squirmed and writhed in his chair. “Basilisked again!” he murmured unhappily.
“So the little gentleman who plays the bridge also tells the stories,” she said vindictively.
“And a young lady, in a boy’s dress of the eighteenth century, sprang to her feet,” Hanaud went on persistently.
“No doubt at such a party, such things would happen,” she replied disdainfully.
“But you saw her?”
“It is possible.”
“And having seen her, madame, you cried out in a very startled voice: ‘Mon Dieu!’ Madame de Viard, what did you see that made you utter that cry?”
Madame de Viard was at the end of her evasions. Hanaud’s voice demanded, compelled an answer. His steady eyes held her to the question. She might twist, and blink her eyes, and twitch her fingers, and tap upon the gilt arm of the couch. Hanaud was waiting, ready to wait apparently for a fortnight. Madame de Viard did not think to deny the exclamation, nor to make light of it. She had let the moment go when that would have been possible.
“Monsieur,” she said at last, “yes, I saw something which startled me. But I am under a promise. I gave my promise to Papa. I should not have been startled at all — for I should not have seen what I saw — unless my papa could trust me to keep the promise which he was going to ask me to give.”
The answer sounded involved, but Hanaud was not disheartened. He knew now for certain that he had taken the right point of departure.
“So it was Monsieur Tabateau who made you promise?”
“My papa, yes,” said the grenadier.
“To keep his secrets?” Hanaud pressed her.
Madame de Viard shook her head at him archly. Did he not as good as hold the ribbon of an Order in his hand?
“I shall show you.”
She got up from the eau-de-nil couch and hurried out of the room. When she returned she was carrying in her hand a long book, like a washing book. But it was bound in red leather, and the edges were gilt.
“I keep a diary,” she explained. “I was brought up when I was a child to record in it the events of each day, and such reflections upon the conduct of life as occurred to me.”
“What an admirable training!” cried Hanaud enthusiastically, as he reached out his hands for the book.
“Assuredly!” exclaimed Parcolet the Commissaire, beaming, since that was the line to take. “If only the young people of to-day were submitted to that discipline, should we not find them more orderly and methodical?”
“But much more censorious and judgmatical,” said Mr. Ricardo stoutly. He was unable, malignant glances from Hanaud or no, to endure this adulation of a very offensive female, and besides, he held a brief for the young.
Hanaud glared at him. Parcolet the Commissaire was shocked. Madame de Viard looked about the room, bending her head a little as though she had heard a kitten mewing. But Mr. Ricardo was going to be neither basilisked nor abashed. He let himself go. He was going to show her that a little gentleman could bite. He sniffed the air of that close and unventilated room.
“If you are looking for the cat, madame, I think it must be the dead thing behind the panels,” he declared.
Madame de Viard gave him her attention for the first time that afternoon. She looked him over, and grinned at him devouringly.
“There is nothing dead behind the panels, monsieur, but perhaps there ought to be,” she said.
Mr. Ricardo was ashamed of his friend and of the Commissary. For both of them were flung into paroxysms of sycophantic laughter.
“What a reply!” said Parcolet in a loud aside.
“Paris, my dear Commissaire. The quick wits of Paris,” Hanaud explained.
Mr. Ricardo thought their conduct completely revolting. Had they no dignity! He flung himself back in his chair. Meanwhile Hanaud kept his hands outstretched for the diary.
Madame de Viard turned over the pages until she came to the first pages of the book.
“There!” she said, and she gave it open into Hanaud’s hands. From the chair on which he sat, Ricardo could see lines of Indian ink thick as enamel across the page.
“I wrote down what happened upon that day when I got home in the afternoon,” she continued. “At dinner Papa told me to forget the day altogether, and that night before I went to bed I blotted out what I had written.”
Hanaud examined the page. He even took it to the window in order to examine it the better. He brought it back, and with a bow handed it back to her.
“Madame, I make you my compliments. The censor at Moscow could not have done better work.”
But he was elated. Mr. Ricardo knew the signs — a jauntiness in the step, and a ring in the voice, an amusement in the eyes. He could not read one word of what was written and erased. No, not one. But something else had made up for the erasures.
“Now what?” Ricardo asked of himself. He put himself into an attitude of thought, the attitude of Rodin’s Le Penseur, as nearly as he could assume it with his clothes on, a thumb at
his jaw, a finger at his brow. “Let me consider.”
And for a while he must be left considering.
Hanaud meanwhile came dramatically to a decision.
“Madame de Viard, I shall be frank with you. The rope of pearls belonging to the Maharajah of Chitipur, and lent by him to his son that he might appear with fitting ceremony on State occasions, was stolen from the Château du Caillou on the night of Mr. Stallard’s ball.”
A cry burst from the woman’s lips.
“Stolen!”
“Stolen.”
Hanaud proceeded to give a sketch, which lost nothing in the poignancy of its details, of the fate which awaited the young Rajah if he returned home without it.
“The poor youth!” she said.
A Royal Highness in a gaol. Unthinkable.
“The East!” said Hanaud, shaking his head.
“Yes, it is not the West,” said Parcolet.
“How true!” murmured Mr. Ricardo.
But Madame de Viard had an idea.
“But you must see Papa!” she exclaimed. “I shall give you a letter to him...”
Hanaud saw no hope in that procedure.
“I leave the scene of the crime when every hour is of importance? I go to the Rue de la Paix? I, Hanaud! And what of those busy journalists from whom nothing can be hid? And the Order, madame? Must I say to the Prince: ‘You must erase from your memory the name of Madame de Viard, even as she erased the story from her diary. Tabateau is your man, the admirable, frankly spoken Tabateau.’”
This was more than Madame de Viard could endure. Filial respect was the cardinal motive of her life, her strong suit, in fact, but if ribbons and orders were going it was infinitely better that she should wear them than Papa. Papa was getting old; Papa was famous amongst the world’s great tradesmen; Papa already had a wisp of red ribbon in his button-hole; whereas Madame de Viard — and at this point in her reflections she once more cried out: “Wait!” and departed from the room.
This time her absence was more prolonged, and her activities more audible.
“‘Alio! ‘Alio! ‘Alio! ‘Alio!” and a great ting-tinging of telephone bells occupied some minutes. Then it seemed that connection was established, for her voice ceased to be heard. She returned triumphant.
“Papa consents, if my statement is looked upon as confidential.”
“Yes,” said Hanaud. But his voice was doubtful and his face grave, and he must qualify his acceptance of Papa Tabateau’s condition.
“It is from every point of view desirable that the whole affair should be confidential, and trouble will be taken to stifle any scandal, even if justice gets a little the worse for wear. I belong to the Fourth Section of my Department, and foreign Princes are my charge. I know. But it might be impossible. I must say that. We are in deep waters — how deep we are not yet sure. There are crimes which may not be concealed.” Madame de Viard was disturbed. But she was not going to be balked of her ribbon now.
“I shall not anticipate anything so alarming,” she said, and she took her place again upon the couch. “I shall tell you why I exclaimed ‘Mon Dieu!’ in a voice so startled. As the girl in the boy’s dress sprang to her feet, the lace fall of her cravat caught upon one of the ornamental buttons of her coat and twisted it aside. I saw that she was wearing concealed in the folds of her cravat the rope of pearls of the Maharajah of Chitipur.”
“You are sure of that, madame?”
“There could not be two such ropes.”
Mr. Ricardo could not remain silent. His friend Hanaud must not be led astray. His task was difficult; the most meticulous exactitude was required.
“Madame de Viard,” he cried, “could have had but a glimpse of those stones at the best. They might very well have been beads.”
“Beads!”
It would be impossible to convey the accent of scorn with which the word was launched at Mr. Ricardo. She turned to him and he shaded his eyes with his hand. He was being basilisked. He wouldn’t have it.
“Monsieur, I think, knows jewels as he knows the bridge,” she said derisively. “Beads!” She turned again to Hanaud and Parcolet, as though it was a physical relief to remove her eyes from Ricardo.
“I must tell you Papa always said that no Tabateau had ever had a sharper eye for a false stone than I. He offered, indeed, to take me into his business, so completely he trusted me. I had seen the great necklace only once before, it is true, but I could not mistake it again. It was wound in three coils round that girl’s neck, and as the great bow of her cravat was twisted aside, I saw that the rest of the rope disappeared into the ballet-shirt she was wearing.”
Hanaud was satisfied. He looked at Ricardo.
“When you went out on to the terrace, and before you lit your cigar, you looked at your watch, I think?”
“Yes. It was a few minutes after half-past twelve.”
“Very well. We can be sure that at half-past twelve Lydia Flight was wearing the Chitipur pearls. That is settled.”
He turned again to the blotted page in the diary.
“I come now, madame, to a point of the greatest importance,” he said, and Ricardo sat forward in his chair. He was going to learn now why Hanaud had been so elated by the sight of the diary, even though the passage he was looking at was nothing but a smother of ink.
“Yes,” said Madame de Viard.
“The day on which you saw these pearls was the twenty-seventh of January.”
“Yes.”
“Of this year.”
The 27th of January! Mr. Ricardo made a calculation, and came to the conclusion that that wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all. He had listened with the greatest care to the story which Hanaud had told to him in the restaurant at Havre. It was not until some time in February that Nahendra Nao had lent the rope to Elsie Marsh. It was not until late in March that he had taken them back discoloured and spoilt. He had shown them to Crevette in Bond Street early in April, upon his return to London. It was clear, then, that Tabateau must have had them in his possession, to see if he could restore them, some time towards the end of March. Thus Mr. Ricardo argued very reasonably, and he could not go on allowing Hanaud to make such mistakes. He would be hurt in his career. The 27th of January — nonsense! There was no reason in the world why Nahendra Nao should entrust the Luck of his Principality to Tabateau before the end of March.
“But...” he began, and Hanaud held up his hand.
“The twenty-seventh of January,” he repeated firmly; so firmly that Ricardo retired from the discussion. “I should be glad, madame, if you could tell me how you came to see this great chaplet on that day.”
“I was at our house in Passy,” Madame de Viard said. “Papa had gone to his office as usual at nine o’clock in the morning. At a quarter to twelve he rang me up and told me that he had something to show me that I should never see again. I was to take the car and drive to the Rue de la Paix at once. When I got there, Papa took me into his private office at the back of his shop, locked the door, and took the pearls from his safe.”
“You admired them, madame?”
“I had never seen anything like them. I cried out with wonder at them. It was not only their size, or the way they were matched. But the purity of their colour and the delicate sheen made them utterly marvellous. I was allowed to handle them, and I could have gone on handling and feeling them, and however long one held them, they were still cold to the touch. Beads indeed!” And she turned and hissed the offending word at the unhappy Ricardo. She might be a basilisk. At this moment she was a cobra, and of the most poisonous variety.
As she spoke, Hanaud kept nodding his head, as if these were exactly the words which he was expecting her to speak.
“And how long had Monsieur Tabateau been in possession of that rope?” he asked, as soon as she had finished.
“He had received it only that morning.”
“Then, you say, he locked it away again and took you out to luncheon.”
“Yes, monsieur,
and something very interesting happened.”
Hanaud, who had been on the point of putting another question, leaned back.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Papa took me to the Café de Paris,” she continued, “and whilst we were eating a young Indian gentleman, very good-looking and elegant, came in with a girl. Some people, no doubt, would call her pretty, but she was too common a little thing to please me. Papa asked the waiter to find out who the Indian gentleman was, but the waiter did not have to find out. The Indian lunched at the Café de Paris every day, and with that girl. He was the young Rajah of Chitipur.”
“Ah!” cried Hanaud, in a voice which was fierce with excitement. “Then Monsieur Tabateau had not until that moment seen Nahendra Nao?”
“Not till that moment.”
“Then who brought the rope of pearls to Monsieur Tabateau? Were you told, madame? It is of the last importance.”
Assuredly Madame de Viard had been told. It was the young Rajah’s secretary, a man older than the Prince and with a name so uncouth and unpronounceable that she could not be expected to remember it.
“Scott Carruthers,” cried Hanaud. “Major Scott Carruthers!”
“That was it, monsieur.”
“You are sure?”
“Now that you speak it, yes.”
“And why did he bring it?”
Madame de Viard hesitated.
“It is delicate, monsieur.”
“But you have Monsieur Tabateau’s permission,” Hanaud urged.
“I’m not sure that he would have given it if he had anticipated this question, Monsieur Hanaud.”
She wanted to answer it. That was clear. She wanted that imaginary ribbon. Every now and then her fingers went to her bosom to feel it there. But on the other hand she was her father’s daughter. She was née Tabateau, and she had the pride and tradition which belonged to Tabateau’s high position in the trade.
“You see, Monsieur Hanaud, the business of a great jeweller requires that the customer should have complete confidence in him. I mean, not only in his honesty and judgment but in his silence. A loquacious jeweller, monsieur! How long would it be before his stock was sold by the receiver? And his name despised?”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 132