She stood for a moment, her head flung back, her body erect, her eyes liquid and starry, offering herself to him. Guy Stallard took her by the elbow.
“We have things to talk over, Lucrece,” he said in a quiet, unyielding voice. He moved into the saloon. Lucrece Bouchette threw a glance about the river. It was warm, it was dark, the sky was patterned with innumerable stars, the tide tinkled against the sides of the boat. It was the hour and the place for lovers; and in Lucrece Bouchette passion had never run so high as it was doing now. It seemed that danger gave an edge to it, and fired her with excitement.
She followed Guy Stallard into the saloon. She sat beside Scott Carruthers, hardly aware that he was present. Guy Stallard was opposite to her and her eyes coveted him.
“The idea isn’t working out properly,” said Stallard, and suddenly looked round. “Where’s Parcolet’s golliwog policeman? Can he hear us?”
Perrichet had once more fallen astern. He could keep better watch upon the house-boat from the service barge aft. He was at this moment lighting a pipe, and Guy Stallard could see his rustical countenance red in the light of the match.
“No, he can’t hear us, and he wouldn’t understand if he did.”
Stallard left the door of the saloon open to the warm and fragrant air. He returned to his seat.
“Things are not quite going according to plan,” he said smoothly. “The young Rajah has called in Hanaud, and when Hanaud is called in, I understand that one has to be careful.” He suddenly turned upon Lucrece Bouchette. “You didn’t raise an eyebrow when I mentioned Hanaud. How did you know that he was here?”
“Lydia Flight told me.”
“Then Lydia’s here?” Stallard asked eagerly, and looked round the saloon, as though he would find her behind a basket of roses.
“She was here,” Lucrece answered. “She arrived late this evening, when it was growing dark. She packed up a few clothes and went ashore again. She had kept her car waiting.”
“And where did she go?”
“I understood Paris,” said Lucrece Bouchette.
“And you let her go?” Stallard cried angrily.
The blood rushed into the face of Lucrece, as she answered:
“How could I keep her? She meant to go. She was in despair. She had searched Havre, and had travelled to Trouville, she only came back here in the hope that Oliver Ransom had returned. She had a hope that she might hear of him in Paris. She meant to go. Besides, it was better for all of us that she should go.”
“Why?”
Stallard put his question with an abrupt truculence.
“Because she had an appointment with Hanaud, which she didn’t keep,” Lucrece answered with an unpleasant smile of triumph. “What’s your Hanaud going to think now?”
Guy Stallard flung himself back discontentedly.
“Oh, she had an appointment with Hanaud?”
“Yes.”
“And she didn’t keep it?”
“No.”
“She made the appointment when she lunched with him?”
“Yes. At the Restaurant du Sceptre at Havre.”
“Lucrece” — and Guy Stallard leaned suddenly forward over the table, his eyes boring into hers. “Are you sure that Lydia Flight has gone? It isn’t like her. I can’t see her doing it. Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Lucrece furiously. “She left her car at the end of the little footpath, came on board, packed up her clothes, and was off. My belief is,” and Lucrece’s mouth smiled with the pleasure of the knowledge that she was going to hurt, as she herself was hurt, “that she hated the sight of the lot of us, of you like the rest. That she was mad to be rid of us all, of you like the rest. That there’s just one person she’d tramp barefoot to find, not you, nor any of us. But Oliver Ransom.”
Stallard did not answer her. He sat watching her with a sullen face and smouldering eyes.
“I don’t trust you, Lucrece,” he said. “You’re a vindictive little devil. It would amuse you to be cruel, eh? You’d get some real pleasure out of cruelty, wouldn’t you?”
He sprang up suddenly and made for the inner door of the saloon. Lucrece Bouchette never stirred a finger. Yet she suffered an extraordinary metamorphosis. Her face became a mask, the delicate skin and tender flesh hardened to smooth wax; and now that there was no play of lip or nostril or jaw, the East and the West were divided in her features as unmistakable as two countries by a coloured frontier line in an atlas; the round forehead and the long almond liquid eyes slightly upslanting at the outer ends, and the flattish cheek-bones of the East, the straight nose, the short upper lip, the full red mouth and the oval jaw of the West, made an effect so bizarre that even Scott Carruthers at her side, who had seen her in moods so multitudinous, was astonished. A stranger had appeared. There was no expression whatever upon her face, her eyes glittered, but there was neither fear nor hate nor anger nor any emotion in the glitter.
At the door Guy Stallard flung back towards her. If he had hoped for some revelation in her face, he was to be disappointed. He met the silent indifference of an idol.
“I am going to see for myself!” he shouted, and flung the door open. It gaped upon a black and empty passage stretching forward towards the bows.
“Where’s the switch?” he asked, as he disappeared from the view of the saloon. Scott Carruthers heard his hand flapping on the panels of the walls. From a distance came the sound of a door closing, the snap of a switch, and the voice of Marie, Lucrece’s Javanese maid. “Does monsieur want anything?”
“Yes. The cabin of Mademoiselle Flight.”
“This one, monsieur. I have not had the time to set it right.”
“So I see.”
A few moments’ silence followed. Scott Carruthers pictured Stallard standing in the doorway looking into a cabin where clothes had been chosen and packed in a hurry and the rest left in disorder. Another voice became audible, but a much more distant voice. It came, indeed, from the intelligent Perrichet, who found himself in his dinghy just under the window where there seemed to be some commotion.
“Can I help you, monsieur? Monsieur le Commissaire told me to help if there was any need.”
“Well, there isn’t any need,” cried Stallard angrily.
A door was slammed, the door of Lydia’s cabin. Stallard was in the passage again.
“For a fool, that policeman’s pretty slippy,” he said shrewdly. “No high jinks on the Marie-Popette to-night without that fellow doing some of the jinking, what?” He turned back into the saloon. A click, and the passage was in darkness again. A sound of a door closing away forward towards the bows. Marie had gone again into her room. Stallard flung the door of the saloon to and the latch snapped into its socket in the jamb with a sharp crack.
“Well, you’re right,” he said roughly to Lucrece.
“She’s gone. But look you here, Lucrece! You’re playing tricks, and tricks are not to be. We can’t afford ’em. That detective Hanaud’s a little too bright. He has picked over all that his Mickey Mouse has told him” — oh, what a godsend that Mr. Ricardo was not present to hear himself so ignominiously described!— “and he has guessed a thing or two. He put us both through the mangle this afternoon, I can tell you. What was the meaning of that stunt of yours last night?”
“Stunt?” Lucrece asked.
She was taking life again now. The frontier line was fading. East and West were melting again into one oddly attractive face. The immobility of an idol was passing from her.
“Stunt, Guy? I don’t understand.”
“You understand very well,” he contradicted bluntly. “This staging of Lydia Flight on an aquaplane board last night.”
Lucrece knotted her forehead in bewilderment.
“Lydia wasn’t aquaplaning last night,” she said.
“I know that now as well as you do. She was at Trouville. But why were you pretending that she was here? Why were you showing her off to everybody in the hotel? Because that’s what you were
doing, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Lucrece returned without any discomposure. “I never said it was Lydia. I never pretended that it was.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Elsie Marsh.”
A cry of surprise broke from Scott Carruthers. Guy Stallard himself was in an angry perplexity.
“Why in God’s name did you send for Elsie Marsh?”
“I didn’t,” Lucrece Bouchette replied. “She came without warning. She asked if she could stay the night. I had room. I let her stay.”
“Why did she come?”
“I didn’t ask her. I supposed that she came for the same reason that brought her before. She hoped to find the young Rajah here and get hold of him again.” Lucrece certainly had an answer ready for every question which Stallard put to her.
“Where is Elsie Marsh now?”
“She went back this morning.”
“How?”
“By the charabanc to Rouen.”
“A short visit, what?”
“No doubt. But Nahendra Nao wasn’t here.”
And there she might have left the discussion. Stallard was mystified still, and still uneasy, but he had come to the end of his questions. Lucrece, however, was not content.
“It’s not my fault, if some people in the hotel mistook Elsie Marsh for Lydia, is it?”
And at once Stallard came back at her.
“But you meant them to make that mistake,” he said sharply, and for the first time Lucrece flinched.
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” she cried. “I never gave a thought to it.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Guy Stallard.
She had another challenging question on the tip of her tongue. But some remnant of prudence stopped her from asking it. Guy Stallard, however, in his next words implied her question, and gave the best answer which he had to give.
“Though why you should want them to make that mistake, I am damned if I know yet,” he said gloomily. He got to his feet. “Harvey Carruthers there is about dead, and we’ve had no dinner. So we’ll go, but remember this, Lucrece, we’re not out of the wood yet. Hanaud’ll put you through the hoops to-morrow and you’re not to get fresh with him. I know a dangerous man when I see him, and he’s one. Stick to your simple tale — the tale you’ve given us to-night. Harvey’s going to see Nahendra Nao to-morrow morning. And by tomorrow night we may trot out our bugles and blow the All’s Clear. But till then, watch it, and no fancy poodle-tricks!”
The blood mounted into the face of Lucrece Bouchette, and spread over her throat. Scott Carruthers saw that flush of anger and resented the words which provoked it as deeply as she did herself.
“Lucrece doesn’t indulge in poodle-tricks,” he said sharply.
“Oh?” Stallard replied. “You give me news.”
He strolled out of the saloon. Scott Carruthers stayed for a few moments after he had gone.
“You mustn’t mind him, Lucrece. He’s a bully, you know. He hasn’t been used to people like you, my dear. If you’re king of a dung-heap on Dartmoor, you can’t help bringing a whiff of the midden along with you, when you’re king of the castle.”
“Especially if it’s the Castle of the Big Pebble,” said Lucrece.
She tried to smile. She tried to recapture some shadow of the passion which had once made this man the pivot of her heart. But it could not be done. He was broken. He had no confidence in himself any longer, and that distrust reacted inevitably upon her. She had begun to despise him. She wondered that she had ever thought him the star to which her chariot might be harnessed.
“All right, dear. Good night! You look as if you hadn’t slept for a week,” and her voice was the soothing, indulgent voice which one uses to a child.
Perrichet helped them to cast off.
“Monsieur need not fear for the house-boat,” he cried in a loud voice so that Lucrece Bouchette might hear it clearly. “I shall watch. A splash in the water of a fish jumping, I shall investigate it.”
The launch moved away down the river. Perrichet retired to the side of the service barge. Lucrece was left alone in the lighted saloon, her slim body shaking, her face stormy. She sat down in the seat where she had sat before. Opposite to her Guy Stallard had sat. She reached out a hand and turned out the light. For a little while the darkness about her was absolute. Then at one point it thinned. An oblong of it, the doorway, shaped itself. Beyond the oblong a man cupped a lighted match in his hands and lit a pipe; Perrichet in his dinghy.
Lucrece was still sitting in her place when the grey of the morning crept over the water and into the saloon. Her maid Marie found her in it when the day was broad. She had turned idol once more. Only the glitter of her eyes and the slight lift and fall of her breast showed that she lived and was awake.
Perrichet in his dinghy was chatteringly awake, too. The patience of the East on this night had met its match.
Half an hour later Marie rushed again into the saloon.
“They are coming, madame! What shall I do?”
There was no time to do anything at all.
CHAPTER XXII
A NIGHT IN THE FOREST OF BROTONNE
THE LAUNCH SLID quite silently away from the hard at half- past one in the morning. It showed neither its white light on the mast nor its navigation lights at the sides, nor any lamp in its cabin. Yet there were passengers in the cockpit, Hanaud, Parcolet and Ricardo, and on the roof of the cabin and in the bows, Durasoy and two other gendarmes, armed and in uniform. Orders had been given that none should speak.
All Caudebec was long since in bed; the ferry had ceased to ply; and only the stars wheeling overhead mitigated with their glimmer the darkness of that hour. On the black river between the forest-covered hills, the launch was lost at once. The tide was running down to the sea, and the engine was put at slow. The pilot kept to the right bank even at the elbow where the river bent in a wide sweep to the left. Somewhere now on the opposite side the House of the Pebble stood within its park walls, but it must be taken on trust. For not a window shone.
The pilot edged the launch across the midstream towards the opposite bank. Mr. Ricardo was in a ferment lest the pulsation of the screw should wake some light sleeper in the dark house. At every moment he expected a line of windows to leap into a blaze and voices to hail them from the shore. The purpose of this expedition he did not know and he did not care to know. It was secret, it was undertaken in the dead of night, it was a step in the solution of a mysterious crime. That was enough. He thought of his friends asleep in their distant homes, and pitied them for their dull lives. He and the agents of the Law were awake, doing the World’s work. Almost he tittered aloud in his excitement. “Mincing Lane has come to the forest of Brotonne,” he was thinking, “just as once Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane;” and whilst he was putting that witticism into a pigeon-hole of his memory for future use, a light, very low down, flashed and went out and flashed again.
The launch headed towards it, its engine was silenced — a splash no louder than is made by the leap of a big fish, and the launch swung round upon its anchor until its nose met the stream. The dinghy had been towed along behind it. Its painter was drawn in, and the whole party went ashore. The forest guard, in a velveteen coat and leather gaiters, carried a gun under his arm.
“How did you discover that your dog had been shot?” Hanaud asked in a quiet voice.
“I missed him this evening,” the man answered. “I searched and found him. I left the body where I found it. It is near here. There may be better places for you gentlemen to land, but none so close.”
“We’ll follow you.”
Behind the forest guard they climbed the bank, crossed the road, and then in single file followed a narrow path between the trees. No one talked; the path itself was rough and steep enough to keep them silent. The forester’s lantern lit up the great smooth boles of the beech trees and the undergrowth, and threw a bright gloss upon the roof of leaves above their heads. After they had climbed for s
ome twenty minutes, the forester turned off from the path to his right. He scrambled up a bank and stopped. The retriever lay stretched upon its side. There was dried blood upon the body, none upon the ground.
“It was not shot here, messieurs,” said the guard. “It was dragged, the poor beast, in a sack. Look!”
He moved a step or two away and held his lantern low. A strip of yellow plaited sacking shone in the light, and the brushwood itself was broken down, as though something heavy had been pulled across it.
“Are we near the Château du Caillou?” Hanaud asked.
“It is a little below us and in front of us.”
“Your retriever, my friend, was killed on the other side of the house, and at a spot still deeper in the wood. I saw a wisp of smoke float out above the trees. If you lead us to the big rock, I think that I can find the place. In half an hour we shall have some light.”
The forester led them back to the path and stalked on. At the landing place in the open, there had been a freshness in the air which told of morning near at hand. Here under the trees it was as hot as a sultry day. Mr. Ricardo began to feel oppressed, and his chest to labour, as they moved over the uneven ground. Happily, however, Parcolet the Commissaire was in no better case, and a whispered message was passed up the file. The woodman’s long, swift stride slackened, and in a little while Mr. Ricardo could see his hand as something pale, and that people were moving in front of him. The guard stopped, opened the door of the lantern, and blew out the candle. A grey and misty light was invading the aisles of the forest like a tranquil sea. The trees thinned; ahead the forest guard lifted a warning hand. They were at the back of the corner of the park wall now. Looking down, Mr. Ricardo could see it and the dark patch of the postern gates breaking the level of the brick wall.
And suddenly they all stopped as one man. For from the courtyard on the other side of the wall a small harsh sound was borne to their ears. It was a grating sound, the sound of a key turning in a rusty lock.
“Down, all,” Hanaud whispered; and he pressed Mr. Ricardo down beside him. “Don’t show your faces, and not a sound!”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 140