Complete works of a e w.., p.131
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 131
“Mademoiselle,” Hanaud began, “you are going back to Caudebec.”
“No!” Lydia cried. There was fear in the cry of horror. “Never!” — and Ricardo had never heard so much vehemence within a single word.
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders. He looked at Lydia Flight angrily, contemptuously.
“Very well, mademoiselle. I have my instructions. I cannot compel you. For myself, I must go now to Caudebec. Yes, that is necessary. So I shall not hear what you have to say until I meet you at the Château du Caillou — if I meet you at the Château du Caillou.” Lydia flushed red under his biting disbelief in her. But she kept her voice level and her eyes steady upon him.
“I shall certainly be at the house by six. You will cross perhaps in Mr. Ricardo’s launch? I shall go as far as Lillebonne, and cross by the ferry at Port Jerome.”
Hanaud laughed unpleasantly. Here were excuses and excuses. He was bidden to act with discretion and secrecy. No charge had been made against the girl. Well, if she didn’t appear at the house, it would not be long before he brought her back to it.
“I shall expect you, then, mademoiselle,” he said indifferently, and he turned towards Ricardo with impatience. “The most charming party must come to an end at some time,” he began, and stopped.
For Ricardo was paying no attention to him whatever. He was gazing at Lydia, his mind all at sea.
“But — but...” he stammered, and Lydia raised her eyes to his in a complete perplexity.
Ricardo had forgotten one chapter of the story he had set out to relate to Hanaud. He had forgotten and omitted it from his narrative altogether. Lydia Flight had returned to Caudebec yesterday. According to Hanaud’s story, she had arrived at Trouville on the morning after the ball, she, or Scott Carruthers using her account, had telegraphed to Goodwood from Trouville that the necklace had been stolen, and she had been definitely instructed to wait at Trouville until Nahendra Nao appeared. Yet she had gone back. She had gone back and enjoyed herself — just as if her commission had been discharged with the most perfect success. She had come into Havre again this morning.
“Yes?” Lydia asked.
“What I mean is — since you were at Caudebec yesterday evening, Miss Lydia, and obviously in the highest spirits — isn’t it odd that you can’t go back there again to-day?”
“I was in Caudebec yesterday?” she asked slowly.
“Yes.”
“You saw me?”
“Yes.”
“And I was in the highest spirits?”
“As far as I could judge, Miss Lydia. I was not face to face with you, that’s true. But I am assuming that one would need to be in high spirits before one went rushing down the Seine on an aquaplane.” And Lydia Flight’s fork slipped from her hand and clattered on the plate. She picked it up again at once, however.
“Or in very low ones,” she said.
Mr. Ricardo thought over that alternative, and accepted it.
“I see,” he said. “A reaction, a refusal to admit that one was beaten, an effort to throw off a depression.”
“So you saw me aquaplaning yesterday, Mr. Ricardo,” she went on, as she went on with her meal, her face looking down upon her plate.
“But of course I saw you,” he rejoined. “And so did everyone on the balcony of the hotel. Even though I had seen a charming portrait of you aquaplaning in the Bahamas, I was nervous, I can tell you. If there are sharks in the Bahamas, there are tides in the Seine, and upon my word, when the launch swept round at the bend of the river, I thought that you had gone. We all did.”
“No doubt,” said Lydia, and now she raised her eyes. Mr. Ricardo received a shock. Lydia was white to the edge of her lips, her great eyes were wide with dismay, and held in their depths such an appeal for help as he had never before had made to him. They were cries, loud and piteous cries; and she shivered. Mr. Ricardo was quick to seize the decanter and refill her glass.
“Come, Miss Lydia, drink this up, if you please,” he cried with all the heartiness he could command. “For this is what the doctor ordered.”
Even for such an occasion he could be trusted to be ready with the perfect cliché. But it served its turn. For Lydia drank and smiled, and a little colour flowed again into her cheeks. It seemed that she was on the point of speaking to Hanaud, but she recoiled, unable to make up her mind, and sat uneasily twisting the stem of her wine-glass round and round in her fingers. For a moment she closed her eyes tight. Then she threw back her head.
“Monsieur Hanaud,” she said, “I have changed my mind.”
“It is your privilege, mademoiselle.”
“I shall go back to Caudebec to-day.”
“I thank you, mademoiselle,” said Hanaud.
She turned and looked at the clock on the wall of the restaurant.
“I have something first of all to do here. I shall try to come to you before you cross the river to the Château du Caillou.”
Hanaud looked at her with the lids half closed upon his eyes, doubting her, appraising her.
“Very well, mademoiselle,” he said at length.
Lydia Flight drew out the fingers of her gloves and fitted them on.
“I thank you for my very good luncheon,” she said to Ricardo with a smile, as she rose to her feet, and she held out her hand to him.
“I shall see you again,” he said. “Hanaud, if I know him — and I do — will set up his headquarters in my sitting-room at the hotel. And you go back to Caudebec?”
“Yes, I go back,” she said as she buttoned her glove at the wrist. She lifted her eyes to his, and he saw again stark terror looking out of them. “Je m’y oblige,” she added slowly. Then she turned on her heel and was gone.
Old Foulkes Eyton’s motto. For a moment Mr. Ricardo had thought that she was going to add that appeal which was also inscribed upon the window: “Priez pour moi”; and he sat quite still after she had gone, his heart troubled, his judgment uncertain. It was Hanaud who spoke first.
“My friend, you may not have shown that young lady the Stone of Desolation in the cathedral, but you showed it to her very clearly to-day in the restaurant.”
Ricardo nodded his head. He was exceedingly uncomfortable.
“But how?” he asked.
Hanaud had no words with which to ease his pain.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But,” and he knocked the ash off his cigar, “this affair of a stolen rope of pearls, it is of enormous importance to Nahendra Nao, Prince of Chitipur, and to his father the Maharajah. It has traditions, it lies for centuries in his treasury, it is very important — out there. To steal it and sell it would mean a great deal of money, to people over here. Yes, but to me the interesting thing is the little drama of strong passions which is revolving about it as a pivot. Hatreds and loves, and intrigues, and — yes — and crimes, which — how shall I say it? — swirl about it, which began with it and have spread out beyond it — far beyond it. This girl here, and Oliver Ransom, Lucrece Bouchette and Scott Carruthers, Elsie Marsh and Nahendra Nao, and this unknown Monsieur Stallard and the rest of them, each with his little plan, each using this chaplet of pearls for his ends — how shall we get the truth of them? It would not be easy, if I could say to the Examining Magistrate: ‘Here, sir, is this one! It may be that she is guilty. I beg you to hold her.’ But in this case I must not do that. I must walk on tiptoe amongst the egg-shells. It is more difficult still. To get back the invaluable necklace! Fine! A good thing for Hanaud! But suppose the great crime breaks before I get it back? The crime where cruelty and passion go hand in hand. What then! I tell you I am afraid.”
And even on that hot day, in that restaurant stuffy and close with the odours of the midday meal, he shook his shoulders as though he felt the cold.
“And yet you wouldn’t hear Lydia’s story,” Ricardo exclaimed, and Hanaud laughed aloud.
“Here?” he returned. “In public? Where we must speak in undertones? Where no question can be pressed? Where she will hear her own story and recognise its weak points and remember them so that she may connect them when she hears it again? No, my friend, I do not give those advantages, especially when I have the prickles in my spine. For I, too, at this moment am seeing — oh, very clearly, the Stone of Desolation.”
Victor was hovering in the neighbourhood with his bill, and Ricardo discharged it. Victor was expecting compliments, and Victor duly received them.
“We go, now?” said Hanaud.
“Yes.”
“We pick up my bag?”
“Yes.”
“And we go to Caudebec?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Ricardo’s fine forty-nine Rolls-Royce, the latest model, was waiting at the door.
CHAPTER XV
THE IMITATION
FOR A QUITE unusual length of time Hanaud was silent. The car passed through the eastern suburbs and reached Harfleur. Beyond Harfleur, Hanaud took from his side pocket a very blue packet of very black cigarettes and extended it to his friend. Ricardo shuddered deeper into his corner. Once, on a summer day, after a good breakfast, when he was feeling very well, he had tried one, and the taste of it was sharp in his mouth each time the packet was reproduced. The paper had stuck to his lips, and little shreds of the tobacco had clung to the interstices of his teeth, and he had exclaimed: “Really! Really!” he didn’t know how many times, and the experience had been extremely distasteful to him.
“But you may,” he conceded graciously, and prepared to hold his nose. For the fizzle and smell of an abominable sulphur match would now have to be endured. But the years had brought their education to the Inspecteur Principal. Hanaud used a briquet.
“Thank you,” said Ricardo.
“I kiss your hands,” replied Hanaud.
“Absurd!” said Ricardo, and Hanaud relapsed into silence. He smoked a chain of cigarettes, till the air in the car was acrid and blue. At Lillebonne he shook himself and sat up.
“You have been wondering all this while what strange deep thoughts were occupying your Hanaud,” he said.
“It is no doubt extraordinary,” replied Ricardo, “but as a matter of fact, I wasn’t. I was wondering why Lydia Flight dropped her fork as if it burned her, when I mentioned that I had seen her aquaplaning last night.”
“And why that statement of yours persuaded her to change her mind — if she did change her mind — and to return to Caudebec — if she is returning to Caudebec,” Hanaud added. “Certainly these are questions, but we shall not get the answers to them out of our invention. ‘Je m’y oblige.’ How she said it, hein? Such a summons to her courage, and such a gasp of fear in the same breath! Let us remember how she looked when she said it, and the tone of her voice! ‘Je m’y oblige!’ And at some moment, perhaps, the reason will stare us in the face.”
“But we must begin somewhere,” Ricardo objected. “We must have a point of departure.”
“I have him,” Hanaud rejoined imperturbably. “Yes. I sit in the Restaurant du Sceptre, and I let all that Nahendra Nao told me and all that you told me, and the little which your Lydia Flight told me, and the ever so much more which she did not tell me, and your looks and your accents, go revolving round and round in my mind like the little prize tickets in the big glass globe of the lotteries. At last one slips out and at once, before he can vanish, Hanaud has him.”
He leaned back majestically in the car, folding his arms, and a small meek voice beside him and below him asked with a mock diffidence:
“And may Ricardo know what is written on Hanaud’s prize ticket, eh?”
“He may,” returned Hanaud. “Two words only, Mon Dieu.”
Ricardo sat up abruptly.
“The exclamation of Madame de Viard.”
“Née Tabateau,” Hanaud continued, “when the bottle of champagne was upset, and Lydia Flight sprang to her feet. That fancy dress, the slim legs in the knee breeches, and the silk stockings. They did not explain that cry to you.”
“No,” Ricardo admitted.
“Nor do they to me. Madame de Viard despised you all. You were not of her world, smug and proper. You were artists, boisterous vagabonds amusing yourselves in foolish vulgar ways. We of Passy and such suburbs hold us the noses when you pass. A pretty girl from the Opera dressed as a boy! We expect it. We do not sit all startled, with round eyes, and cry ‘Mon Dieu!’ We shall ask of that moustachioed lady why she cried ‘Mon Dieu!’”
Ricardo laughed in the most irritating fashion.
“And you think that she will answer? My poor friend! If ever I saw one who would not mix herself with the affairs of police, it is that one.”
“Oh?” said Hanaud. “We shall see.” And the car climbed between the trees of the forest of St. Amould to the top of the Calidu Hill, and swung down into Caudebec. It stopped at the long hotel with the balcony which faced the river.
“You will fix the rooms?” said Hanaud. “In ten minutes I return.”
He was less than ten minutes, and he came back with a small, black-bearded man in a tail-coat and a bowler hat.
“This is Monsieur Parcolet, the Commissaire of Police of Caudebec,” said Hanaud; and Monsieur Parcolet, pressing his bowler hat to his chest, bowed.
“Monsieur Ricardo is known to me as a patron of the arts and a distinguished visitor to our town,” he said very politely; and to Hanaud: “I have had instructions from the Prefect of Havre. I am at your disposal.”
They were standing in Mr. Ricardo’s fine sitting-room upon the first floor. They went down the stairs to the broad open space between the hotel and the river.
“Of course we cannot long conceal the fact that Monsieur Hanaud is with us,” the little Commissaire continued.
“It does not matter,” said Hanaud, with a wave of the hand. Ricardo curved a hand about an ear and held up the other hand to stop his companions.
“Hush! Don’t I hear the cathedral bells pealing their welcome already? There were eleven of them once. What a pity so many have gone!”
Hanaud nudged Ricardo in the ribs for the second time that day and smiled indulgently.
“My friend,” he said to Parcolet, “he makes the amusements.”
Parcolet the Commissaire was a little baffled by these exchanges, but he laughed dutifully, since so he was expected to do. He turned to the right. A few yards farther on a grove of beech trees made a shaded promenade between the roadway and the river bank. Twenty yards more, and a handsome mansion of yellow stone stood back behind a smooth green lawn. The mansion was of two storeys and ornamented in the Renaissance style, and in front of the lawn high iron railings and gates separated it from the road. Parcolet the Commissaire pushed the gate open. A broad straight gravel path led to the big door in the middle of the house.
Mr. Ricardo began to feel agitated. He could not pretend to himself that he would be well received. He would be taken for a sneak. He would be basilisked.
“I think I’ll wait for you,” he said timidly. “Out here, you know. Charming! Quite charming!”
But Parcolet held up his hands in despair and such a look of dumb reproach was directed at him by Hanaud that Ricardo could not stand out against it.
“You desert me! And at the point of departure!” that look protested. Ricardo clenched his hands and set his teeth.
“Lead on,” he cried with a gesture of Napoleon. But as he followed them, he felt like a martyr on his way to the arena.
The door was answered by a manservant.
“Madame does not receive to-day,” he said politely, and Ricardo’s heart jumped with pleasure.
So Madame still had days. But of course she would have; and indeed, he thought, there was a great deal to be said for that ancient practice.
“Well, it can’t be helped,” he said with as much regret as he could manage to work into his voice, and he took a brisk little step away from the door. But Parcolet the Commissaire was not to be dismissed so easily.
“Madame will receive me, I am sure, if you will tell her that the Commissaire of Police has called officially.”
The manservant opened his eyes wide, and ushered them into the most uninhabitable room that ever daunted three grown-up men. The parquet floor was waxed and polished to the lustre of enamel; straight chairs overloaded with needlework challenged you to sit down on one of them if you dared. A gilt couch upholstered in eau-de-nil satin flaunted its untouchability. And even on that day the air was moist and cold, and shouted that the windows had never been opened nor the fire lit upon the hearth. Hanaud shivered and said:
“We should have come in our overcoats. Madame is in her wrapper and pantoufles and will keep us waiting half an hour whilst she dresses herself.”
In time a tinkling of little ornaments announced that Madame de Viard was descending, and she entered the room dressed in puce satin, and a little flustered in manner. Parcolet spoke up at once.
“I ask your pardon for our intrusion, Madame de Viard, but not for our belief that you will help us to preserve the laws of property and order. This is Monsieur Hanaud, a Principal Inspector of the Sûreté Generale, of whom you have no doubt heard.”
Madame de Viard turned her sharp eyes upon Hanaud and made a small bow.
“And this is an English gentleman, Monsieur Ricardo, who has already given valuable evidence.”
Madame de Viard had paid no attention to Ricardo. But when she saw him now she stiffened, and made him no bow at all. A faint smile of derision curled her lips as she seemed to recognise a pigmy who had once given her a moment of amusement.
“If the little gentleman’s assistance is as remarkable as his bridge, it must be very entertaining, at all events.” She certainly was a detestable woman. Mr. Ricardo would have given much if he could have produced a crushing reply. But he could think of nothing, though he was quite sure that in the middle of the night he would wake up with a most venomous retort ready on his tongue. All that he could contrive was a little simper and an inclination of the head, which, he hoped, looked ironical. Madame de Viard turned back to Parcolet.
“I beg you all to be seated.”
She enthroned herself on the eau-de-nil couch and designated chairs for her visitors.
