Chapter Fourteen
The Perfume
I dashed across to the door. It was locked. “Now tell me, what do you make of it?” Faulkner asked, when he had looked about the unfamiliar room and stared blankly out of the window.
“The solution seems pretty obvious,” I said. “We’ve been drugged, or in some way made unconscious last night in Paulton’s car, and driven here. I distinctly remember trying to keep awake. You gave me that cigar I smoked. Was it one of your own?”
He paused, then said —
“Now I come to think of it, Ashton, I remember noticing I had three cigars in the case I left in the pocket of my overcoat when I hung it in the cloakroom. There were only two when I pulled the case out in the car. I wondered then if the cloakroom attendant had helped himself. Paulton was the first to light up, you may remember, and he offered us cigars, whereupon I said I had some, and I gave you one of mine – one of the two. It struck me that my cigar had rather a peculiar flavour, but after a while it got all right. I believe those weeds must have been slipped into my case by Paulton and my own cigars removed. The ones we smoked last night were drugged, that I will swear.”
I pulled out my watch.
“What time do you make it?” I asked. “My watch has stopped.”
He produced his own and glanced at it.
“So has mine,” he said. “It stopped at five minutes to four.”
We both sat in silence for some moments. Obviously there was nothing to be done but to wait for somebody to come. The door was locked, there was no bell in the room, and the room was on an upper floor.
Over an hour must have passed, and we had endeavoured to take our bearings.
From what we could see of the place from the high up window, it was a huge rambling old château with round turrets, and slated roofs, overlooking a large sloping park in the midst of picturesque mountains, many of which were still tipped with snow. The situation was perfect, but it was in a remote, lonely spot, without another house in sight.
In the front was a long double colonnade with a terrace which commanded a fine vista down the valley. The style was that of Louis XV, as indeed was the furniture of the room, and there were several old paintings and works of art in the apartment.
It was a huge grim place, which seemed to be half a prison, half a fortress – a place wherein dwelt the ghosts of a glorious long-forgotten past. There was an air of neglect and decay about its time-mellowed court-yard, some of the walls of which were half-hidden by ivy. One of the round towers indeed was roofless, while what had once been an Italian flower-bed was now but a wilderness of weeds.
Outside the sun shone brightly, and, from its position, we concluded the hour must be nearly noon. Then, all at once we simultaneously caught the sound of footsteps. Some one was coming very softly apparently, along a carpeted passage outside the door. I went across to the sofa, lay down, and pretended to be asleep, Faulkner following my example, lying back in the big chair. At the door the footsteps stopped. There was a pause. Then a key was inserted into the lock almost noiselessly, the lock clicked, the handle turned, and the door was pushed open a little way.
Somebody bent over me. I breathed heavily, in pretence of sleep. The footsteps moved away, and, as I parted my eyelids slightly, I saw a woman – quite a young girl. She had her back to me and was bending over Faulkner apparently to ascertain if he too, were asleep. Acting upon a sudden impulse I sprang from the sofa, ran to the door, slammed it, and stood with my back to it.
To my surprise the girl looked at me quite calmly.
“I knew you would do that m’sieur,” she said, and her voice, though she spoke with a marked French accent, was very pleasant. “Did you think that I supposed you both were asleep? Ah, non, your friend here is wide awake, though he too keeps his eyes shut and his mouth open.”
The girl was quite pretty, about eighteen I judged, refined in appearance, with large, innocent brown eyes, dark eyelashes and eyebrows, and auburn hair that turned to shining gold as the sun’s rays, entering at the window, touched it.
As she stopped speaking, Faulkner opened his eyes, sat up, and stared at her with undisguised admiration. Then, as the absurdity of the situation struck us, we both laughed.
“Whoever you are,” I said, trying to speak seriously, though, under the circumstances, and with a pretty girl staring into my face, with an expression in her eyes that was partly of amusement and partly mockery, I found it hard to do so. “Whoever you are, I should really like an explanation.”
“Explanation of what?”
“I want to know why we have been brought here – what place this is, and who had the cool impertinence to lock us in here.”
“Oh, I had the cool impertinence to lock you in,” she answered, smiling.
“You! And who are you? And whose house is this?”
“This is the Château d’Uzerche. It belongs to the Baronne de Coudron. I am the Baronne’s niece.”
“The Château d’Uzerche – eh?”
I could not for the moment, think of anything else to say. The girl spoke quite naturally, as though nothing unusual had occurred.
“I am going to bring your déjeuner in a minute,” she said, drawing down the blinds to keep out the sun. “Will you both give me your word you won’t leave this room if I leave the door unlocked? Please do – for my sake.”
She looked so captivating as she said this, her voice was so soft, and altogether she seemed so charming, that Faulkner at once answered that he had not the least desire to leave the room if she would promise to come back as quickly as possible, and to stay a little while.
“Then you will promise?” she asked, her big eyes set on his.
“How foolish! Why?” I asked, interrupting.
“Well,” she replied. “If you will remain here I will bring you a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “Somebody you know.”
“Who?”
“A great friend of yours.”
I looked at her puzzled.
“A friend – man or woman?”
“Female,” she assured us with a charming accent. “Your friend Mademoiselle Thorold.”
“Vera!” I gasped. “Is she here?”
“Yes,” was her reply. “She is here.”
How well Vera knew my character when she told me that day I was “susceptible.” I think I am dreadfully so. The look in those great brown eyes gazing into mine seemed to weaken my will until I had to answer almost sulkily —
“I suppose I must. Yes, I – well, I’ll promise for the present anyhow,” I said.
“Not to leave this room before my return?” she said.
“Not to leave this room before you return,” I repeated.
Then she left us, and we sat looking at each other like a pair of fools.
“Well,” Faulkner said. “If you can be rude to a pretty girl like that, Ashton, I can’t, and I don’t intend to be. Besides, if Vera is here, Gladys may be here also!”
“I thought you said you are engaged to be married?”
“I did. And I am. But I don’t see why, for that reason, you need call me a fool for being ordinarily polite to another woman, or to any woman, especially if we are to meet Vera.”
“You quite mistake my meaning,” I said. “I say we are a pair of fools – I am more to blame perhaps than you – for being coerced by a chit of a girl into promising to stay here, as though we were a pair of schoolboys put ‘on their honour.’ It is downright silly, to say the least. Yet we must not break our parole– eh?”
I liked Faulkner. His spirit, and his way of saying what he thought amused me. One meets so few men nowadays with pluck enough to say what they really think and mean.
The young girl, whose name was Violet – Violet de Coudron – spread the white cloth, laid the table, and herself brought in our déjeuner. What position did she occupy in the house, we both wondered. Surely there must be servants, and yet… where was Vera?
“You have to stay here until to-morrow,” she said, when we had begun our meal – the cooking was excellent, and the wine was above reproach.
“And, until then, you are under my supervision. Those are my orders.”
“Your orders, received from whom – eh?” I asked.
“Mademoiselle Thorold wishes it.”
“Were we brought here yesterday, or when?” Faulkner asked presently.
“About two o’clock this morning.”
“And what was this grim joke?”
“That I may not tell you, m’sieur,” she replied. “Indeed, I couldn’t tell you – for I don’t know. Miss Thorold knows.”
“Who lives here usually?” I asked. “The Baronne?”
“She is rarely here. But that is enough. I cannot answer more questions. Is there anything else that I can get you?”
Nothing else we needed, except tobacco, and she brought us that. Very good tobacco it was, too.
Wearily the day passed, for though the room we were in was well-furnished, there were few books in it. We could, of course, have gone out of the room, out of the house probably, but our pretty little wardress had placed us on parole.
Whether or not the house was occupied, even whether there were servants in it, we could not tell. And the matter did not interest us much. What we should have liked to know was, why we had been brought there, still more, how Vera Thorold and Gladys Deroxe were faring in our absence. During the past weeks my life seemed to have been made up of a series of mysteries, each more puzzling than the last. I was distracted.
During the afternoon, while sitting together, very dejected, we suddenly caught the faint sound of a female voice singing.
Both of us listened. It was Vera’s voice, a sweet contralto, and she was singing, as though to herself, Verlaine’s “Manoline,” that sweet harmonious song —
“Les donneurs de sérénades,
Et les belles écouteuses,
Échangent des propos fades
Sous les ramures chanteuses.
“C’est Tircis et c’est Aminte
Et c’est l’éternel Clitandre
Et c’est Damis qui pour mainte cruelle
Fait maint vers tendre.”
The girl brought us tea presently, and, late in the evening, a plain dinner. The room was lit by petrol-gas. Each time she stayed with us a little while, and we were glad to have her company. She was, however, exceedingly discreet, refusing to make any statement which might throw light upon the reason of our confinement.
How strange it all was. Vera did not appear. We laughed at our own weakness and our own chivalry.
She showed us the bedroom where we were to sleep. Beautifully and expensively-furnished, it had two comfortable-looking beds, while a log-fire burnt cheerily in the grate – for the evening after the sunshine was singularly chilly in the mountains.
“If Vera does not come by mid-day to-morrow,” Faulkner said, as we prepared to get into bed, “I shall break my parole and set out to discover where she is. Our pretty friend is all very well, but my patience is exhausted. I’m not in need of a rest cure just at present.”
We had both been asleep, I suppose, for a couple of hours, when I suddenly awoke. The room was in total darkness, but somehow I “felt” the presence of some stranger in the room. At that instant it flashed in upon me that we had left the door unlocked. Straining my ears to catch the least sound, I held my breath.
Suddenly a noise came to me, not from the room, but from somewhere in the house. It was a cry – A cry for help! Sitting bolt upright in the bed, I remained motionless, listening intently. I heard it again. It was a woman’s cry – but this time fainter —
“Help! Help!” sounded in a long drawn-out gasp – a gasp of despair.
Something moved in the darkness. Again I “felt,” rather than heard it. My mouth grew dry, and fear, a deadly fear of the unknown, possessed me.
“Who is there?” I called out loudly.
There was no answer, but the sound of my voice gave me courage. I stretched my arm out in the darkness, meaning to reach over to Faulkner’s bed and prod him into wakefulness, when by chance I touched something alive.
Instantly a cold, damp hand gripped my own, holding it like a vice, and a moment later I was flung down on my back on the bed, and held there firmly by a silent, unseen foe.
In vain I struggled to get free, but the speechless, invisible Thing pressing me down in the darkness, kept me pinned to the bed! I was about to cry out, when a third hand closed about my throat, preventing me. It was a soft hand – a woman’s hand. Also, as it gripped me, a faint perfume struck my nostrils, a perfume familiar to me, curious, rich, pungent.
And then, almost as I stopped struggling, the room was suddenly flooded with light.
Chapter Fifteen
Within an Ace
Slowly I realised that Paulton was bending over me, holding me down.
The Baronne de Coudron, upon the opposite side of the bed, had her thin, strong sinewy hands upon my throat. Beside the gas-jet a yard or two away, Faulkner stood with his hand still holding the little chain he had pulled in order to turn on the light.
Nobody spoke.
The Baronne, removing her hands from me, stood upright, big and strong, gazing down upon me still. She wore an elaborate kimono made of some soft pink Eastern material. Paulton was in evening clothes, one shirt-cuff was turned back.
“You should have taken my advice, m’sieur,” the Baronne said in her deep voice, addressing Dago Paulton. She spoke quite calmly.
Instead of answering, and without loosening hold, he half-turned, apparently undecided what to do, until his eyes rested upon Faulkner. Then suddenly, to my surprise, he released me. I got up.
“Faulkner, come here,” he said sharply.
The young man – he was in the blue pyjamas he had found laid out upon the bed when Violet de Coudron had shown us into the bedroom – looked quietly at the speaker for a moment or two, then answered with the utmost sang-froid —
“I’m not your servant, hang you! Don’t speak to me like that.”
“You may not be my servant, but I now control your movements,” Paulton retorted quickly. “Therefore you will please do what I order. I take it that you know that I brought you and Ashton over here.”
“Naturally.”
“Have you any idea why?”
“None.”
“Then I will tell you. Listen.”
He was standing beside the bed. The Baronne, near him, looked with interest at Faulkner and myself as we now stood together a yard or two away from them.
“For some months past,” Paulton said, watching me with an unpleasant expression, “you have been on intimate terms with the Thorolds.”
“Really,” I answered, shortly, “I can’t see what concern that is of yours. I have known the Thorolds intimately for a good many years. Perhaps you will tell me your reason for the extraordinary liberty you took last night in bringing us here. I consider it a gross impertinence.”
“Impertinence!” he laughed. “Let me tell you both,” he said, “that you have to thank this lady,” he turned slightly to indicate the Baronne, “for being alive to-day. When I brought you here I intended that neither of you should ever again be heard of. Your disappearance would have made a stir, no doubt, but the stir would not have lasted; you would soon have been forgotten here. Dead men tell no tales. But the Baronne interfered.”
“I’m sure we feel deeply grateful,” I answered ironically. “One would think we were conspirators, or criminals, by the way you talk. So far as I’m aware, I never set eyes on you until last night in the Hotel de Paris.”
“Quite likely,” he replied, “but that is beside the point. You possess information you have no right to possess. You know the Thorolds’ secret, and until your lips are closed I shall not feel safe.” Ah! that remarkable secret again! What on earth could it be? That was the thought that flashed across my mind, but I merely answered – “You can’t suppose I shall reveal it?”
He smiled coldly.
“Not reveal it, man, when you know what is at stake! You must think me very confiding if you suppose I shall trust your bare assurance. As I have said, I intended to – to – well, to close both your mouths.”
“Why Faulkner’s,” I asked.
“Because he is to marry Gladys Deroxe, who is so friendly with Vera Thorold, who is to be my wife. Vera knows too much, and may have told her little friend what she knows. I mistrust Vera’s friends – even her friends’ friends. You understand?”
“At that rate,” I answered, growing reckless, “you will need to ‘remove’ a good many people.”
“That is possible. It is for that reason – ”
“Oh, why talk so much!” the Baronne interrupted impatiently. “Tell him everything in a few words, and have done with it!”
“I will.” He said fiercely, “You both stand in my way. I brought you here last night to get rid of you. I came into this room some minutes ago to carry out my plan. I was going to kill you both with an anaesthetic. Then the Baronne came in, threatening to wake you if I tried to do what I had said I should. I felt you touch me in the dark, I knew we had awakened you, and at once seized you – the Baronne held your throat to prevent your calling out. Then Faulkner sprang up and turned on the light and – ”
He paused, listening. There had been another cry for help, barely audible even in the stillness of the night. He glanced at his companion. She too had heard it.
They looked meaningly at each other, but neither moved to leave the room. The cry had sounded so piteous that I should myself have rushed out to ascertain whence it came. Was it Vera’s voice? Paulton was near the door, and to have passed him would have been impossible.
Was it my Vera? The thought held me in a frenzy.
“There is only one way,” he went on, as though nothing had happened, “for you to regain your liberty. I should not offer even this, had not the Baronne persuaded me to against my better judgment.”
“What is the way?”
“You must never attempt to see Vera again. And you, Faulkner, must write at once to Gladys Deroxe and break off your engagement. It is the only alternative. Do you both agree?”
Neither of us answered. The suggestion was a childlike one.
“Is there no other way?” I asked at last in order to gain time.
“None.”
“Then I refuse absolutely,” Faulkner exclaimed hotly.
“Your proposal is ridiculous,” I declared with a grin.
Paulton turned furiously on the Baronne.
“I said what it would be!” he broke out with a curse. “Get out of my way!”
She had sprung in front of him, but he pushed her aside. Again she rushed forward to stop his doing something – we had not guessed what it was – and this time he struck her a blow in the face with his open hand, and with a cry she fell forward on to the bed.
Beside myself, I leapt forward, but Faulkner was nearer to him and I saw his fist fly out. I did not know then that Faulkner had won “friendly bouts” against professional light-weight boxers at the National Sporting Club. It was a stunning blow, Faulkner’s fist hit him on the mouth, at what boxers call the “crucial moment,” that is, just before the arm straightens. Paulton reeled backward, his lower lip rent almost to the chin.
His hand disappeared. Now it flashed out with a Browning pistol, but as the shot rang out the woman leapt to her feet and struck his arm away. An instant later Faulkner was behind him deftly twisting his left arm so that he bent backward with a scream of pain.
I had wrested the weapon from him ere he could shoot again, and as I helped Faulkner to hold him down I realised the man’s colossal strength. Mad with fury, and with blood pouring from his mouth, he struggled to get free. But the twisted arm that Faulkner still clutched tightly by the wrist with both hands, kept him down. Suddenly he changed his tactics. He had wormed himself half round on the floor, his teeth closed tightly upon Faulkner’s right shoulder.
“Twist his right arm – quick!” Faulkner shouted at me.
I did so, and the man lay flat upon his back, his two arms screwed so tightly that I marvelled they did not break.
The strange, warm smell that I had noticed in the room for the first time some minutes previously, and that had gradually grown stronger, was now so oppressive that it almost stifled us. Still holding down our man, we both glanced about the room to find out whence it came, and now we noticed that the atmosphere was foggy, or so it seemed. The Baronne was standing by us, staring down at Paulton, but not attempting in any way to help him. Her gaze was dull, almost vacant. She seemed stupefied.
An odd noise, as of distant roaring, sounded somewhere in the house. It was growing louder. All at once I saw the Baronne move quickly to the door. She listened for a moment, then turned the handle slowly.
As the door opened a little way, a cloud of dense, yellow smoke swept into the room, choking and nearly blinding us. She slammed the door and locked it.
“Dieu!” she gasped, pale as death.
And then, simultaneously, we knew the awful truth, that the château was on fire; that our only way of escape was made impassable by smoke.