Chapter Eighteen
In which the Mask is Raised
Three days had passed.
Two curious things happened while we were sitting in the atrium of the Casino in Monte Carlo during the interval.
In the first place Paulton’s friend, Henderson, whom I had met only on that one occasion in the fumoir of the hotel, happened to saunter in. He looked hard at both of us, but either did not recognise us – a thing that I think hardly possible – or else deliberately cut us.
Later, I went over to the buffet with Faulkner, for the play was not interesting, and we had decided to leave. A dozen men stood there, talking, and suddenly I caught the word “D’Uzerche.”
They were talking of the fire three days previously. Anxious to hear all I could about Château d’Uzerche, I moved a little nearer.
“They’ve not discovered the Baronne’s body,” I heard the young Frenchman say, “and apparently no one else was burnt. I wonder if those old rumours one heard about the Baronne were really true?”
“What rumours?” his companion, a bald-headed gambler, asked. “I don’t seem to remember hearing any.”
“You mean to say you have never heard the stories that everybody knows?” the first speaker exclaimed. “My dear fellow, where do you live?”
“In Paris as a rule,” his friend answered drily. “I returned here last week.”
“Ah, pardon me, I had forgotten. Well, it has long been common talk – ”
He lowered his voice and spoke into his companion’s ear. I approached as near as I dared, but I could not catch a word.
“You can’t mean it!” his friend exclaimed. “Surely it isn’t possible!”
“Everything is possible, mon cher ami,” the first speaker said. “The less possible things seem, generally the more possible they are. I shall be anxious to hear what is found inside the safe that the newspapers say has been discovered amongst the débris. If it is not claimed it will, I take it, be the duty of the police to open it.”
“But surely it will be claimed.”
“I doubt it under the circumstances. I believe the rumours to be true.”
An electric bell rang arrogantly, in warning that the curtain was about to rise, and some moments later the atrium was half deserted.
I told Faulkner what I had heard. He seemed in no way surprised.
“I thought it inadvisable to tell you this before,” he said after a pause, “but now that you have got wind of it I may as well tell you the rumours – or rather the chief one. The rest don’t matter. The Baronne de Coudron was known to be extremely rich, yet a few years ago she was quite poor. She bought the Château d’Uzerche recently. How and where she suddenly got the money is a mystery that has puzzled everybody, and rumours have been afloat that she obtained it by means which could lead her to penal servitude. But of course nobody knows anything definite – so nobody dares do more than insinuate.”
“The gendarmes seemed to know something definite,” I said.
“Yes, and much use they made of it! Paulton is most likely safely back in England by now.”
“They can arrest him there of course.”
“They can – but will they? Do you think officials capable of being hoodwinked as these gendarmes were, will have acumen enough to catch a clever man like Paulton? We must admit that he is clever.”
The more I saw of Faulkner, the more I grew to like him. Singularly undemonstrative in ordinary conversation, he recalled to my mind a blacksmith’s forge that is covered and banked up with cold, wet coal, but that burns so fiercely within. What had first attracted me to the lad had been his amazing coolness in the face of death, a coolness that amounted to indifference. I could picture him under fire, calmly rolling a cigarette and telling others what to do. Yet he was not a soldier. Like myself he was merely an idler. Leaving out the Houghton Park incident, I have myself only once been under fire. It was not on a battlefield, though not far from one – the field of Tewkesbury. It was during a big rabbit shoot, when two of the guns fired straight at me simultaneously, and the rabbit they killed rolled over on to my feet, dead.
My conduct was not heroic on that occasion I am afraid. With one bound I sprang behind a big elm, and, from that position of safety, hurled vituperation at my unintentional assailants, ordering them to desist. It took me some moments to convince myself I had not been hit, but the shock to my system was, I confess, considerable.
From the theatre we strolled through the big doors into the Salles de jeux. I tossed a hundred-franc note on the rouge and left it there. Red came up six times, and I gathered up my winnings.
The ball clicked again the seventh time, and black came up!
An old man with fingers like claws, and horribly long and dirty nails, introduced himself, engaged me in conversation, and ended by trying to induce me to partake in his infallible system for winning at roulette!
What a lot of rubbish has been written about the Rooms at Monte! The first time I went there – when I was quite a youth – I expected to find a sort of Aladdin’s palace, myriad glittering lights everywhere, gorgeously-dressed women sparkling with diadems and precious stones.
Instead, I sauntered into a series of large, lofty, heavily-gilded rooms with an atmosphere one could cut with a knife, in which were several long tables with people sitting round them, quite common-looking people, and anything but smart; the majority of the women were bloused and skirted tourists. One might have mistaken the scene for a number of board-meetings in progress simultaneously, but for the fact that in the centre of each table sat men in funereal black who, at intervals, droned monotonously through their noses —
“Messieurs, faites vos jeux.”
And then a little later —
“Rien n’va plus!”
Then the click of the ball, and the jingle of money lost and won.
It was one of the greatest disillusionments I have ever experienced. There was nothing in the least exciting, nothing sensational. There was a rustle of notes, and the whole scene was sordid, debasing. I can remember only one other disillusionment that has given me so great a shock. I experienced that the first time I visited Niagara Falls. I had seen pictures in plenty of the Falls, and had based thereon my idea of what the Falls would look like when I got there.
I arrived at noon, eager to gaze upon “Nature’s Marvellous Phenomenon,” as the booklet of the Railway Company described it. The first thing I saw was a truly gigantic hoarding-board advertising somebody’s lung-tonic, alongside it one recommending some one else’s Blood Capsules, and then, whichever way I looked, the landscape, which should have been gorgeous, was disfigured by similar announcements. Even the water was spoilt, for some of the falls being harnessed to dye-works, ran in shades of dirty greens and reds and yellows, and when I wanted to go under the main Falls I found I must buy a ticket at a box-office and go down in a lift. Never, I remember thinking, have the words, “Where only man is vile,” been more applicable than at Niagara.
But this is an aside. Elated at my success at roulette, a game which generally bores me, for I generally lose, I suggested to Faulkner that we should go together to some haunt of amusement more exhilarating than the Casino.
“What about the ball down in La Condamine to-night?” he asked, looking at me oddly.
“Ball?” I said. “What ball? I didn’t know there was one.”
“Oh, yes there is. It isn’t an aristocratic ball, you know. Far from it. I’ve lived out here a good deal, and got to know my way about. It is rather an expensive form of amusement, but as you have made two hundred and fifty-six pounds in ten minutes, you may as well spend a pound or two that way as any other. I think you will afterwards admit it has been an ‘experience’.”
I did admit it – and a great deal besides. It was the most “unconventional” ball I had ever attended, or have attended since. We picked up a number of acquaintances, eight or ten in all, and went boisterously down to La Condamine. The gay supper was most enjoyable. Most of the women’s dresses were suitable for warm climates, being conspicuous by their scantiness, rather than by their beauty. Some wore the black loup over their eyes. At supper I sat beside a girl whose identity was thus concealed. She had a wonderful figure, and her thick dark hair hung in two long plaits down below her waist. About her movements there was something that seemed familiar to me, and in vain I tried to recollect when I had met her before, and where. At last my curiosity outran my discretion.
“Take off your mask,” I said to her in French. “I’ll give you two louis.”
“Give them to me,” she said, also in French, the only language she had talked, “and I will take it off.”
I did so.
“Don’t be too surprised,” she exclaimed in broken English with a ripple of laughter. She pulled up the mask, then twisted it off, and I found myself seated beside Lady Thorold’s maid, Judith, whom I had last seen at the hotel on the night the Baronne de Coudron had arrived.
I confess that I was considerably annoyed.
I am not, I am thankful to think, one of those men who like to behave absurdly with domestic servants, especially with other people’s servants.
I had never liked this girl, she had always struck me as being hypocritical and designing, and though now she looked extremely pretty, judged by a certain standard, I could not dispel from my thoughts the picture of the demure maid with downcast eyes, whom a casual observer probably would not have looked at twice.
Her manner was the reverse of demure, nor were her eyes downcast. They struck me as being the most brazen eyes I had seen for a long time as they gazed unflinchingly up into my own. Much as I knew, I disliked her, I could not, at that moment, help noticing those strangely dark eyes of hers, now so full of laughter and wickedness; also the singular evenness of the small white teeth; the natural redness of the full lips; the clear, olive complexion, and the thick mantle of long, blue-black hair. Yet I did not admire her in the least. Oh, no. If her appearance struck me as remarkable and not wholly unpleasing, it was only for a brief instant.
“Have you left Lady Thorold’s service?” I asked, loud enough for others to hear. I thought that, at any rate, would be a nasty snub. Instead, she laughed immoderately. So, to my surprise, did her friends who had overheard my question.
“Ah, monsieur, but you are too drôle!” she exclaimed, as she stopped laughing. “I was not in Lady Thorold’s service, or in la Baronne de Coudron’s or in anybody else’s. I have never been in service. I – in service? I? Pah!”
She made a gesture of contempt.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I was Lady Thorold’s friend, her very intimate friend, and la Baronne de Coudron’s too, and – and other people’s. I am no servant, I assure you! m’sieur.”
I stared at her.
“You little impostor!” I said after a pause.
She laughed, and took my arm confidingly.
“I have always liked you, I have really,” she said in a coaxing undertone. “You are not like other men. You are not always trying to make love to everybody. Ma foi! How I detest some of your countrymen, they make themselves too ridiculous when they come to France.”
“You seem to know a lot about them,” I answered, for want of something better to say.
“Bien! I can assure you!” she replied, to my surprise, quite bitterly. Then she said quickly, in her broken English as though anxious to change the subject —
“You want Mademoiselle Vera – eh?”
“What do you mean?” I gasped, amazed.
“What I say. You want her. Well, she is quite near here.”
“Near here!”
“Mais oui. Pay me enough, and I will take you to her – now.”
I was panting with excitement. With an effort I controlled myself. It was clear to me that this woman knew a great deal. She might indeed be able to clear up the whole mystery of Houghton Park if she were paid enough, perhaps also the mystery connected with Château d’Uzerche.
Yes, I would humour her. If it became necessary, I would pay her the highest sum she might ask for, that I was in a position to pay. But first to meet my darling again. How I longed to see her once more, after all those mysterious happenings!
“How much do you want?” I asked abruptly.
She named an absurdly large sum. Eventually we came to terms, and I paid her in French notes.
“Très bien!” she said, as she stuffed the money into some queer corner in her brief skirt. “You are a gentilhomme, not like ze others. Mais oui.”
Then she rose, signalled to me with her eyes, and I followed her out of the room.
Chapter Nineteen
More Revelations
Eagerly I strode out after her.
We went a short distance along the road to the left, then turned again to the left and halted before a large white house. Up two flights of stairs she led me, along a short corridor, and through two rooms. She opened the door at the further end of the second room, and then motioned to me to enter.
Seated at a table, playing cards, were Paulton, Violet de Coudron, Vera Thorold and the Baronne. Violet and Vera were in evening gowns – Vera in turquoise blue. The sight of the Baronne sitting there, alive and uninjured, so astounded me that I remained speechless. Paulton sprang fiercely to his feet.
“Who brought you up here?” he exclaimed furiously. “Who?”
The door had remained open. A ripple of laughter behind me made me cast a hurried glance that way, and I saw Judith convulsed with amusement. She recovered her composure in a few moments, and came in.
“I have carried out my threat,” she said in French quickly, addressing Paulton. “You brought it entirely upon yourself by your niggardliness. Mr Ashton is generous – and a gentilhomme.”
Paulton clenched his fist.
“Yes,” the French girl went on, looking at him fearlessly, “you are quite right to restrain yourself. It would be a bad night’s work if a tragedy were to happen here. At the château it was different. You had it your own way there – up to a point.”
The man became blasphemous, and I saw Vera wince. Her eyes were set upon mine, in mute appeal.
The truth flashed in upon me. Paulton ran this private gaming establishment. The Baronne presumably was his partner. Judith was an accomplice. But the two girls? What part did they play? It was horrible finding Vera here, yet my faith in her never wavered. I knew she must be there against her will, that eventually she would explain all. And seeing what I had seen of Violet, I felt equally sure that circumstances which she too could not prevent were responsible for her presence.
I suppose most men who self-complacently term themselves “men of the world,” would have laughed outright at what they would have called my “blind belief in innocence,” had the circumstances been related to them. For here were two young girls mixing with the lost souls of Monte Carlo, and apparently enjoying themselves. On the face of it, my confidence seemed quixotic, I admit, but there are times when I trust my instinct rather than even circumstantial evidence. And up to now my instinct has generally proved correct.
This was no time for deliberate thought, however. I knew I must act quickly, and for once I was able to come to a decision with remarkable promptitude. Obviously Paulton and the Baronne were there in hiding. They knew they were liable at any moment to be arrested. And, thanks to Judith, I had discovered their place of concealment.
“You know there is a warrant out for the arrest of you both,” I said, facing them fearlessly. “I can at once inform the police of your whereabouts – or I can say nothing. It is for you to decide which I shall do.”
The Baronne looked at me, as I thought, imploringly.
“If Vera Thorold comes away with me at once, and you undertake never again to molest her, your secret will remain safe, so far as I am concerned. If you refuse to let her come, then you will be arrested at once.”
The tables were, indeed, strangely turned. A few days previously these two adventurers had held me at their mercy, and Faulkner too. Now I could dictate to them what terms I chose.
I saw a look of dismay enter Violet de Coudron’s eyes, and I guessed the reason of it. She and Vera had become close friends, and now Vera was to go from her. It seemed dreadful to leave a young, beautiful, refined girl like Violet in the control of these ghouls, yet I could not suggest their surrendering her too, for was she not the Baronne’s niece? And was the Baronne actually a Baronne – or was she merely an adventuress? I had looked up her name and family in the “Almanack de Gotha,” and she seemed to be all right, but still —
Then an idea came to me. I would, with Vera’s help, and Faulkner’s, try to steal the girl away if she should express a wish to leave those unhealthy and unholy surroundings. It would be almost like repaying Paulton and the Baronne in their own coin. These and other thoughts sped through my mind with great rapidity.
“Well,” I said quickly, addressing Paulton again, “what is your answer? Am I to betray your whereabouts, or not?”
He still hesitated, still loth to decide. Then suddenly he exclaimed abruptly —
“Take her. I shall be even with you soon, never fear. I shall be even with you in a way you don’t expect.”
I smiled, thinking his words were but a hollow taunt. Later, however, I also realised to the full that his had been no empty boast.
The two girls left the room, and both returned wearing hats and sealskin coats over their evening gowns. Then, linking my arm in that of my beloved, we descended the stairs together.
At last she was saved from that scoundrelly gang who seemed to hold her so completely in their clutches, she was still mine – mine!
At Judith’s suggestion we walked back to where the ball was in progress. As a matter-of-fact I was undecided how next to act. Besides, I wanted to see Faulkner, who was awaiting me.
So we went back, and seated with Vera and Judith, I had a long chat with the latter, about many things. She told me much that interested me. Paulton and the Baronne ran this establishment, as I had guessed, and often made it their headquarters. They had several assumed names. They had run similar secret gaming-houses in Paris, Ostend, Aix and elsewhere. In this particular house they lived in a big, well-furnished flat overlooking the harbour of Monaco. Vera and Violet had each a bedroom, and shared a sitting-room. Since they had met for the first time, some weeks previously, they had become great friends – in fact almost inseparable. Both had been staying at the Château d’Uzerche when the fire had broken out, and she, Judith, had been there too. It had been Vera’s voice we had heard calling for help before we suspected the alarming truth. She had been overcome by smoke in her own room – it was just before that she had called for help – and almost stifled. No lives had been lost. There had been only five servants at D’Uzerche that night, and they had all escaped. The Baronne had, it seemed, escaped by turning sharp to the right into a lumber-room, almost directly she had rushed out of the room. From the lumber-room she had scrambled through a skylight on to the roof, entered another skylight immediately above a rusty iron fire staircase, the existence of which everybody else had forgotten, and so made her way out of the building in safety.
I inquired about the man and woman struggling in the dark.
She smiled when I referred to this, and, pulling up her short sleeve – it reached barely to her elbow – displayed several horizontal streaks of a deep purple which looked like bruises.
“I was that woman,” exclaimed Judith quietly. “The man was Dago, and these are the marks his fingers left upon me when he gripped me and fought with me. Are you surprised I have to-night so readily betrayed his hiding-place?”
“Not so very readily,” I said, thinking of the sum of which she had mulcted me before she would speak at all.
Guessing my thoughts, she laughed.
“Still, m’sieur,” she said, “you will admit that you have received full value for your money, n’est-ce-pas?”
During this conversation, carried on in one of the ante-rooms within earshot of the music in the ballroom, Vera sat almost in silence. I grew to understand the woman Judith better, indeed almost to like her. She said little about herself, though I questioned her frequently concerning her own life. She seemed more inclined to talk of other people, and their doings. One thing I did gather was that she belonged to a gang of male and female adventurers, who probably stood at nothing when they had an end to gain. To this gang belonged also the Baronne, Paulton and Henderson. Whether Sir Charles Thorold was, or was not, in some way mixed up in this gang’s schemes I could not ascertain for certain, though several times I tried to. For about Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, Judith seemed unwilling to speak.
I had a long and confidential chat with Vera. Ah! that hour was perhaps full of the sweetest happiness of my life. She was mine – mine! It was past three in the morning when we paused for a few moments in our animated conversation. “Ah, here comes your friend,” exclaimed my sweet beloved.
Faulkner, passing the open door, had caught sight of us and strolled in. Violet de Coudron was with him. She looked dreadfully tired, I thought, though this did not greatly detract from her very exceptional beauty.
Briefly, I told Faulkner all that had happened.
“It is fortunate we are not conventional,” he said lightly, when I had outlined my plan. “What food for scandal some people would find in all this. I think, after all, that our visit here to-night has not been wholly unprofitable – eh? You may be surprised to hear that this new friend of mine” – and he indicated Violet de Coudron, seated beside him – “has arranged to leave the Baronne for good and all. She tells me she leads an awful life here, and that when Vera is gone – ”
“But you have known Vera only a few weeks,” I interrupted, addressing Violet.
“Yes,” she answered sadly, with her pretty accent, “and those are the only weeks of comparative happiness I have had. I couldn’t stay here with these people without her. I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. Oh, if you only knew all I have been through – all I have been forced to endure since the Baronne adopted me!” And she hid her face in her hands.
“Adopted you!” I exclaimed. “You said you were the Baronne’s niece.”
“I said so – yes. I always said so, because she made me, and I passed always as her niece. But I am not. I can scarcely remember my parents. All I can recollect is that they were very poor – but oh, so kind to me! I remember their kissing me passionately one day, with tears streaming down their cheeks – it was evening, and nearly dark – and telling me that they had to go away from me, that probably we should never meet again in this world.”
“How old were you then?” I asked, much interested.
“I could not have been more than six, possibly seven. It was in Rouen. They took me to a big, fashionable street I did not remember having ever been in before, kissed me again and again once more, stood me by the porte-cochère, and rang the bell. Then they went hurriedly away. By the time the bell was answered, they had disappeared. I was questioned by a tall man-servant – after that, I don’t exactly recollect what happened, except that the Baronne adopted me. She lived in the big house.”
“And it was in Rouen, you say?”
“Yes, in Rouen.”
“Do you think you would recognise it if you saw the outside of it again?” I asked quickly.
She paused.
“I think I should,” she said thoughtfully, “though we did not stay there long – not more than a few months. Why do you ask?”
“Only,” I answered, “because I have an idea. But now let us leave this place. It is nearly four o’clock.”
Yes, we were a truly unconventional quartette.
The hotel people were surprised, on the following morning, to find one of our two rooms occupied by two fair visitors, while in the other Faulkner and I slept, tucked up together. But in gay, reckless Monte nobody is surprised at anything.
That an attempt would at once be made to discover Violet’s whereabouts and get her back, we knew. For that reason we had arranged to leave for Paris by the mid-day rapide.