Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  It had been a good scheme, he insisted sullenly. He had begun to think it out, actually, on the Maharajah’s private railway, whilst the cupolas of Chitipur were still in sight. He had taken his time over its details. There was a man whom he had known at Cambridge — George Brymer — a good- looking fellow with a way with the women who was doing his second term, this time at Dartmoor, for blackmail. He must be coming to the end of his sentence. He knew the subways of the blackmail traffic. He would be very useful. There was Lucrece Bouchette. She was poor and she hated poverty. She was devoted to him, as he to her. She would be invaluable. All the way from Bombay across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, he had polished and dovetailed and snipped off rough edges until his jig-saw puzzle was a thousand times more perfect than the twopenny-halfpenny affair which Nahendra Nao was to upset in a room of the Avenue Matignon. A copy of the Chitipur rope to be made secretly, as indistinguishable from the original as fraud and art could combine to make it. Then the theft — a mere matter of burglary as planned — then the boy Nahendra Nao persuaded to pass off the copy as the original on his return to Chitipur. And after that, blackmail and blackmail and blackmail, plus the rope itself. Well, when you found a pigeon you plucked him, didn’t you? That is, if you loathed the sight of Chitipur and wanted to live happily ever afterwards, in Paris, with Lucrece Bouchette.

  It was a fine scheme, well constructed, ingenious, flawless. It ought to have succeeded. It would have succeeded — if only he could have worked it with chessmen. But he couldn’t. He had to use men and women, and because they had passions and would sacrifice the finest scheme to gratify them, he had run full tilt on the rocks. Nahendra Nao had lent the chaplet to a miserable little high-kicking vulgar-mouthed blob of mud from a Paris music-hall. And she had reduced the value of the chaplet to precisely nil.

  “I’d have been wiser if I had put up the copy proposition at once, that early morning at the Ritz,” he said ruefully, “and not bothered about the real thing. After all, the blackmail was really the thing, wasn’t it?”

  There was no one to answer “Yes” except himself. But he responded favourably.

  However, he had coped with this wanton folly of Nahendra Nao’s. Scott Carruthers had no words sufficiently red-hot to describe the wickedness of the young Prince in risking so much to satisfy the vanity of a miserable little high-kicking etcetera, etcetera. He certainly deserved the severest censure. However, Scott Carruthers had coped with him. He had secured Lydia Flight to heal the pearls, on the condition that Oliver Ransom was her sentinel. And, in passing, let any thin-skinned censorious person get it firmly into his mind that if anything happened or had happened to Oliver Ransom, the only possible person who could be held to account for it was Nahendra Nao, for lending his chaplet to be spoilt by a miserable little etcetera, etcetera.

  Thus he, Scott Carruthers, like the strategist of mark, had been able to adapt his tactics to an emergency. The pearls had healed. They were once more exquisitely beautiful. In fact, they were once more ready and fit to be stolen. The unfortunate complication of Oliver Ransom’s presence had been arranged for. And the chaplet had been stolen. And if all the actors in the affair had been chessmen, there would have been no trouble at all.

  But there wasn’t a chessman amongst them. Nahendra Nao should have hurried to Trouville, he should have been persuaded that although Oliver Ransom and Lydia Flight between them had undoubtedly committed the theft, Ransom had disappeared with the chaplet, and it would be difficult to secure a verdict against Lydia Flight, and there would be publicity and headlines anyway in every rag of a newspaper from Kamchatka to the Antarctic Seas. And that’s just what would have happened if Nahendra Nao had been a chessman, and Scott Carruthers had made the moves. But no! Nahendra Nao must get put in touch with a detective, and the detective has a friend in that unspeakable little nonsensical busybody, Julius Ricardo! Oh! Major Scott Carruthers would have dearly loved to have wrung that pedantical patron of the arts’ abominable neck! And even so he was not at the end of his troubles.

  “Mistakes were made. I couldn’t look after everything, could I?” he asked indignantly. “That handkerchief, for instance. Of course we were all a bit flustered, what with — well, one thing and another. And very likely it’s not so serious a mistake. These sorts of handkerchiefs are sold by the million. You couldn’t fix anything on anybody through one of them. But still, someone ought to have remembered about it. I thought that I couldn’t stand the suspense a moment longer when that infernal mountebank began to pull it inch by inch out of the pocket of her coat. There was that shot in the forest, too...I wonder whether Hanaud saw that wisp of smoke curl out above the trees...Furlong, I suppose, but he must have been mad!” Scott Carruthers blew out his breath with a whistling sound. “My heart stopped...My word, I’ll have to look after myself a bit...Hindley’s the man for that kind of trouble...Wimpole Street...Yes.”

  For a little while Major Scott Carruthers was occupied with the pathos of his position. A long life of duty and toil in a dusty State of India, and then up and down Wimpole Street at five guineas a time, and no certainty that you won’t fall down dead on the steps of the consulting-room. But he came back to the tale of his mischances.

  “And this aquaplaning stunt! There’s a nice surprise to be sprung on one. What’s Lucrece after? If she had some fancy business of her own to put over, she might damned well have let us know. Lydia Flight was aquaplaning last night in front of the hotel, with the unspeakable Ricardo to explain that she did it as a rule in the Bahamas in her best evening frock! And not a word of warning! We had got to pick it up as we went along. The fact is, Lucrece doesn’t care a solitary curse whether my scheme succeeds, or what risks she runs.”

  And that was the truth. Not only of Lucrece Bouchette, but of all the actors in this grim scenario which he had plotted and staged. They weren’t chessmen, to be moved from square to square by a master’s hand and to wait patiently where they were until the master moved them. No, they were all over the board. Lucrece was throwing herself at the head of George Brymer. She was as full of languish as a girl in a crinoline, when George Brymer appeared. She simpered! Ridiculous! And he himself, her lover, he didn’t amount to a row of beans.

  On the other side was George Brymer. He wanted publicity. What did Brymer care what happened to Nahendra Nao when he got back to Chitipur? Not a thing. “What he wants is Lydia Flight sentenced to a short term for a first offence, so that he can be at the prison gates when she’s released with a fine life for a pair of acknowledged crooks opening out in front of them. Selfish, that’s what that is. But then most people are selfish;” and over this peculiar phenomenon, Major Scott Carruthers shook his head.

  “Of course Lucrece Bouchette’s wild,” he admitted. “She hates Lydia Flight. You can’t blame her, can you? And what in the world had Elsie Marsh, the high-kicking etcetera, etcetera, got to do with the affair? Elsie Marsh wouldn’t be fond of Lydia Flight, would she?” Scott Carruthers asked of the ambient air. “The skin and the quality of the blood in one case had spoilt the pearls. In the other they had restored them. No, a reasonable person couldn’t expect that Elsie Marsh should love Lydia Flight. Why, then, had Lucrece Bouchette brought them together on the Marie-Popette? For some unknown and unpalatable reason,” Scott Carruthers concluded. “A reason inapplicable to the chessmen they all ought to be.”

  So far Major Scott Carruthers was more or less clear. There remained the problem of Scott Carruthers himself. He was not at all easy about that problem. He was, frankly, disappointed with himself. First-class, absolutely first-class, in devising the scheme, “on the top of the holes,” as Hanaud would have described it, he had failed as its executioner.

  “I am the power behind the throne,” he appeased his pride with this commonplace of the ambitious.

  Certain it was that all the forcefulness and mastery which he even arrogantly displayed in the dispositions for a crime, dwindled into fear and hysteria when the crime h
ad been committed.

  “I am the man to plan, but not the man to do,” he admitted to himself as he stood on the terrace of the House of the Big Pebble, and there was infinite consolation for him in the distinction. Talleyrand, Fouche, Melbourne, Pitt, Cavour, perhaps the most illustrious of them all. He counted them up with a smile. But then Scott Carruthers, like most criminals, was something of a megalomaniac.

  Nevertheless he was afraid of himself. He had not stood up to the questions of the Inspecteur Principal of the Sûreté Generale. He had winced. He could not deny it. He was extremely dissatisfied with his behaviour. He had winced.

  At this point in his reflections, he heard a step behind him. He turned. The night had fallen. Darkness had hidden the slope of the garden and the river beyond the garden. Behind him the lounge was lighted and Mr. Guy Stallard, or George Brymer, as you prefer, was standing.

  “Oh, you’re back!” said Scott Carruthers vaguely.

  “Yes.”

  “We ought to see about dinner, what?”

  “There’s to be no dinner for us yet.”

  “Oh!” said Scott Carruthers.

  These were not pleasant words to hear, even in their simple straightforward meaning, for an orderly man who had spent a lamentably emotional day. But there was a darker and more unpleasant meaning behind them. Major Scott Carruthers braced himself to meet it by ringing the bell for another brandy and soda.

  “My third,” he said to himself as he began to drink it. “This won’t do. I am disappointed. I ought not to have wanted this. But I do.”

  Inspired by the brandy, he faced Guy Stallard.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The policeman, Durasoy, found the other four handkerchiefs in Furlong’s bedroom and took them away.”

  Major Scott Carruthers felt his knees give underneath him. He caught at the back of a chair and crumbled into it. Guy Stallard, or George Brymer, whichever name is preferred, ran his eye over him oddly.

  “It isn’t too good, is it?”

  Scott Carruthers wanted reassuring, comforting remarks, not a plain, uncompromising facing of facts.

  “But even then” — he was forced to provide his own optimism as best he could— “even then they prove nothing. Those handkerchiefs are turned out and sold by the million. Lydia Flight might own a set just as probably as Furlong. She might use them for wrapping things up in, for keeping them clean. They’ve got nothing on us there.”

  “Unless they find the sixth,” said Guy Stallard with the most humorless grin which Scott Carruthers had ever seen. If a wolf grinned he would grin like that, Carruthers thought, teeth bared, lips drawn back, and not the hint of a laugh, not a sound of any sort.

  “My God!” whispered the Major. He shut his eyes and held his forehead with his hand. “Why didn’t Furlong hide the damned things, or burn them?”

  “He never thought of it, any more than you or I.”

  “What did he say? Didn’t he object to the policeman taking them?”

  “He wasn’t there. He’s only just back. I made him look through his things, and he found the handkerchiefs gone.”

  Scott Carruthers thumped the arm of his chair, like a child in a passion.

  “Just back, damn the fellow! Back from where, I’d like to know!”

  “Back from the forest,” said Guy Stallard.

  Scott Carruthers stared. He sat with his mouth open, his body still as a paralytic’s.

  “Then it was he who fired the gun?” he whispered.

  “Yes.”

  An oath exploded in Carruthers’s mouth.

  “Damn him! What a fool!”

  “He had to,” said Guy Stallard.

  Scott Carruthers sprang up, beating the arms of his chair with the palms of his hands as he rose. All his movements were jerky and grotesque in their violence, just as there was a kind of violence displayed in him, even when he was still.

  “Had to! Tell me another. Why did he have to?”

  “The forest keeper’s dog,” said Guy Stallard grimly; and Scott Carruthers uttered a loud cry like a wail and collapsed again into his chair.

  “We have got to get away,” he stammered, the words tripping each other up. “We’ve got to go. We can’t stay here.”

  The blood had ebbed even from his lips. The colour of his face was a dirty white, his eyes were never still, his fingers palsied.

  “You had better have another drink. I’ll get you one,” said Stallard, and he left his accomplice muttering to himself: “We have got to go.”

  Scott Carruthers was in a more pitiable condition than even Guy Stallard guessed. He had a secret reason for wishing to make a quick end of the affair at any cost — a reason which he did not dare to reveal. Something had happened last night at Trouville. Something would happen again if he didn’t make haste — something which would show them all up like a glare of lightning. He might be the man to plan, he wasn’t the man to do. Stallard was marked out for that job. He himself should have kept away, should have gone to Goodwood with Nahendra Nao and left the conduct of the scheme to Stallard.

  Stallard brought him a brandy and soda, and while he drank it, explained:

  “We can’t go yet. If we tried to, we should be followed, we should be accusing ourselves. I propose that you should go over to Havre to-morrow and see the young Rajah. He doesn’t know anything about Tabateau’s imitation necklace, does he?”

  “Not yet,” Scott Carruthers agreed, being, of course, unaware that Hanaud was conversing with the Prince at that moment over the telephone.

  “Very well, then. Tell him about it. How you had it made to save the real one being risked, and how perfect a copy it is. Tell him Hanaud’s all out for a fine advertisement, that it’ll have to be known that Ransom and Lydia Flight stole it between them. We can’t avoid that now. Then later on, he can pretend that he has recovered the chaplet, and let you produce your imitation. We save everything that way.”

  “It’d be better still if the Rajah called off Hanaud altogether, and said that the rope had never been lost, wouldn’t it?”

  Stallard shook his head decidedly.

  “Too late for that, old man!”

  Scott Carruthers could not see at all that it was too late. But Stallard wanted Lydia Flight to be driven out of her world and banned from her career and her friends by the public stigma of a crime. “Lydia and I together” — Stallard saw a brilliant future for them working together the South of France and the capitals of Europe. But his only chance of securing her lay in her condemnation for theft at a Court of Assize. She would have no future left to her except this gay and dashing combination with him.

  “What we have got to do now,” he continued, “is to run up the river to the house-boat, and pronto. Lucrece is doing some funny business, and we’ve got to find out what she’s up to. Lydia aquaplaning last night! What next? We’ll get off now and have some supper when we get back.”

  Scott Carruthers agreed.

  “Yes, we can’t have surprises sprung upon us like that again,” he said. “Of course Lydia Flight wasn’t here last night. She was at Trouville.”

  “What!”

  “Of course she was. She dined with me at the Hotel des Fontaines and slept there.”

  Guy Stallard laughed in his relief.

  “I was furious with Lucrece, because Lydia might have been drowned. She wouldn’t have had much chance with that stream running, however well she swam. And I don’t want her drowned.” He caught himself up. “But what in the world was Lucrece up to? What’s she playing at? Let’s go.”

  They went down to the pier, rowed out to the launch, slipped her moorings and ran upstream to the Marie-Popette, whilst Hanaud was still busy in the office of the Commissaire Parcolet.

  As they approached the Marie-Popette, a hand torch from a dinghy astern by the service barge was turned on to them. As they made the launch fast to, the dinghy slid down to them.

  “Can I help Monsieur?” a voice from the dinghy meekly asked.


  “No, you can’t!” shouted Scott Carruthers. “And who the devil are you, anyway?”

  “Monsieur the Commissaire sent me to keep a watch on the Marie-Popette to-night, since Madame was alone on board, with only her maid to look after her.”

  “A policeman?”

  “Yes, monsieur. It is not so safe, my gentlemen, for a lady alone with her maid to look after her on a houseboat on the Seine.”

  “I suppose not,” said Scott Carruthers, sarcastically. “If the underworld of Caudebec heard of it, there would be throats cut before the morning.”

  “Very sure, monsieur. But since I am here, Madame will be able to sleep in peace.”

  Lucrece Bouchette, who had been playing Patience in the saloon, came out on to the open space of deck aft. She was dressed in an informal evening gown of grey chiffon, but she uttered no word of welcome to her visitors.

  “I am sure it’s very kind and thoughtful of Monsieur Parcolet,” said Guy Stallard. “All Madame’s friends will thank him for his consideration.”

  “Thank you, monsieur,” said Perrichet.

  The visitors stepped over the bulwarks on to the carpeted deck of the Marie-Popette.

  “We had better go into the saloon,” said Scott Carruthers, and he went in. Lucrece Bouchette laid a hand on the arm of Guy Stallard.

  “I am glad that you came,” she said, in a low and thrilling voice. There was an appeal in her eyes, an expectation in her smile, to which Guy Stallard avoided any response.

  “It was probably a mistake that we came at all,” he answered.

  “I don’t care,” she said passionately. “I am glad that you came.”