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Title: The indiscretions of a lady's maid

Being some strange stories related by Mademoiselle Mariette Le Bas, femme-de-chambre

Author: William Le Queux

Release date: December 30, 2025 [eBook #77575]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Eveleigh Nash, 1911

Credits: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INDISCRETIONS OF A LADY'S MAID ***

THE INDISCRETIONS OF

A LADY’S MAID

“THE MASTER OF MYSTERY”

WILLIAM LE QUEUX’S NOVELS

“Mr. William Le Queux retains his position as ‘The Master of Mystery.’... He is far too skilful to allow pause for thought: he whirls his readers from incident to incident, holding their attention from the first page to the close of the book.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

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THE INDISCRETIONS

OF A LADY’S MAID

BEING SOME STRANGE STORIES RELATED BY

MADEMOISELLE MARIETTE LE BAS

FEMME-DE-CHAMBRE

AND CHRONICLED BY

WILLIAM LE QUEUX

“Nobody in a large household knows so much, or sees so much, as Madame’s maid—especially if Madame is ‘chic’ and inclined to be—well a trifle vain and frivolous, as is so often the case.”

LONDON

EVELEIGH NASH

1912

Second Impression.

Copyright in the United States of America

by William Le Queux, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

PAGE

I

MADAME’S GENTLEMAN FRIEND

7

II

THE WARDROBE DRAWER

31

III

LITTLE MRS. OTWAY

55

IV

THE NOAH’S ARK

80

V

GUILTY BONDS

108

VI

THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR

137

VII

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

161

VIII

WHAT WAS IN THE STRONG ROOM

184

IX

CONCERNS TWO VISITORS

207

X

CONTAINS SOME REVELATIONS

219

XI

A QUEER MÉNAGE

233

XII

A PEER OF THE REALM

257

XIII

CONCERNING MADAME’S LUGGAGE

268

XIV

MADAME AND THE BUTLER

287

XV

THE PEOPLE AT LANCASTER GATE

309

CHAPTER I

MADAME’S GENTLEMAN FRIEND

APRIL 10TH

Là! là! To-day, the 10th of April, at half-past three o’clock, I have entered upon my new situation—the seventeenth in the five years I have been in service as femme-de-chambre.

Though only a lady’s maid, I suppose I ought to introduce myself to those messieurs et mesdames who may be interested in reading my various adventures in England and elsewhere.

My name is Mariette Le Bas, daughter of Jacques Le Bas, peasant-proprietor of Pont-Pagny, near Auxerre in the Yonne, aged twenty-four, dark hair, bonne taille, good needlewoman and hair-dresser, and the holder of the highest references, including one from the wife of one of your English Cabinet Ministers—who, by the way, was a most evil-tongued person. I speak French, Italian, English, and a little German, am told I am a good reader, and the wages I demand are forty-eight pounds a year.

Nobody in a large household knows so much, or sees so much, as Madame’s maid—especially if Madame is chic and inclined to be—well, a trifle vain and frivolous, as is so often the case. I have spent the greater part of my time in the service of English ladies, and I have seen some strange things.

Some of them I will relate, and you will, I think, agree that if the servants’ hall may not be an exactly romantic place, yet there is as much scandal and gossip there as in the drawing-room.

The last post I held before coming here, to the excessive dullness of Bournemouth, was with a certain Mrs. Engleheart, who lived in a smart, prettily-furnished house in Cleveland Square, and whose husband was engaged in business in the City.

Ah! oui, I remember well how, after being engaged through the registry office of old Mrs. Banks—who, as you know, if you read the advertisement columns, makes a speciality of foreign maids—I arrived one wintry afternoon with my trunk on the top of a four-wheeler. The manner in which the butler, a snappy old Englishman named Francis, looked at me when I entered aroused my curiosity. Madame was quite affable, about my own age, a rather pretty blonde, who possessed a very smart collection of gowns, and who knew how and when to wear them—which, alas! few women do. She delighted in the daintiest of linge intime, and was a mistress whom a foreign femme-de-chambre could appreciate, and who did her maid great credit—which cannot be said of several of the coarse, over-dressed dowagers in whose service I have been.

Monsieur, too, was quite pleasant and chatty when, on his arrival for dinner, I was introduced to him. He was about thirty, tall, clean-shaven, well-groomed, and rather good-looking.

As I left the room, however, I heard him say to his wife in Italian, a language of which he believed me ignorant—

“Benissimo! She is really smart. I wonder if she’ll keep a still tongue?”

As the days went on I found the place an almost ideal one. Madame was kind, and never exacting. Monsieur, who was absent all day, was always polite, and sometimes smiled at me, while the other four servants, all of them recent arrivals, expressed themselves quite contented. The only person for whom I held an instinctive dislike was the butler, Francis. He was too prying, too inquisitive regarding my family, my past situations, my friends in London, and whether I had had any little affair of the heart, as we say in French.

Parbleu! He was a bald-headed man, and his moustache was dyed. I was surprised to discover that when he waited at table he was on terms of remarkable familiarity with his mistress and master. I actually once overheard him speaking with Madame in the drawing-room as though he were her equal.

The Englehearts had a good many friends, mostly smart people, including many rather foppish young men about town. Madame went out with Monsieur almost every evening, supping two or three times each week at the Savoy or Carlton or Waldorf, and often not returning home till three or even four o’clock. Yet each morning, punctually at half-past nine, Madame’s husband kissed her good-bye, and took his taxi-cab to the City, leaving her to her own devices.

What was his profession I tried in vain to learn. To a lady’s maid Madame’s husband is often an enigma. One day, while seated at table in the servants’ hall, I expressed wonder as to Monsieur’s vocation, whereupon Francis looked up from his place sharply, saying—

“What does that concern us? The master is a gentleman. I’ve been in his service these eight years, and I know. All you have to do is to keep a still tongue—and you’ll be well paid for it.”

It was curious that the finances of my master and mistress seemed to fluctuate. At one time everything was sacrificed for economy, and at others they were recklessly extravagant.

One day Madame had gone out alone to lunch with friends when, on glancing in a little drawer on the dressing-table, I found something which caused me to ponder. It was Madame’s wedding-ring. On two other occasions I found it in the same place. She seemed to have contracted a habit of leaving it behind when she went out! Figurez-vous!

I had been in the Englehearts’ service about a month when, one morning, Madame made the welcome announcement that we were to start for Monte Carlo next day. Très bien! The trunks were fetched in feverish haste from the lumber-room, and I commenced to pack. Madame’s best robes—three or four of them by the best couturières of Paris—I folded, she assisting me in eager excitement, and Francis packing Monsieur’s crocodile suit case.

Three days later we installed ourselves in one of the most expensive suites at the Hôtel de Paris, opposite the Casino.

On the day following, while I was lacing Madame’s corsets, she said—

“Mariette, I shall only require you in the morning, and to dress me again at six each evening. Therefore you can have the whole of each day to yourself. Here, in Monte Carlo, there is very little for a maid to do, so, if I were you, I should run over to Nice or to Mentone. You will find life there much more pleasant, and, with the trams, all the places are nowadays so accessible.”

I had been on the Riviera half-a-dozen times before, and knew it well. Yet, somehow, this generosity of hers in the matter of leave struck me as a little peculiar. Did she wish to get rid of me?

Very soon I decided that such was the case, for, curiously enough, Monsieur used to leave Monte Carlo each morning about eleven, generally taking the rapide to Nice, while Madame amused herself across at the Rooms as best she could.

For a chic, well-dressed young lady like Madame amusement would not be difficult. Indeed, she quickly formed the acquaintance of quite a number of people, and she played constantly at roulette or trente-et-quarante. What was the extent of her losses I have no idea, for servants are debarred entrance to the Casino. Yet each evening, as I dressed her long, luxuriant hair, she generally bewailed her bad luck. As the days passed she developed a chic almost unparalleled in my experience. She used the best products of Lentheric or Houbigant, and patronised Hartog and the Maison Lewis, running up heavy bills which Monsieur willingly paid. Indeed, I believe I can say, without contradiction, that she was the best-dressed woman at Monte Carlo that season. The set she had entered was certainly one of the gayest, for about her there hung half-a-dozen wealthy men of various ages—those idlers who bask in the smiles of a pretty woman.

Monsieur’s attitude was always one of utter unconcern. His eyes seemed closed to his wife’s flirtations, which were outrageous, especially with a certain clean-shaven, pale-faced young American who was immensely wealthy. His name was Oswald B. Ogden, and he had, a few months before, inherited a colossal fortune from his father, who was one of the princes of Wall Street, for he had two years previously made over a million and a half sterling by cornering leather. The young man had been on the Riviera the whole season, and had become most popular everywhere. All the women with marriageable daughters buzzed about him, but his only intimate friend seemed to be my pretty young mistress.

Truly they were a charming, well-dressed pair. I saw them together everywhere, seated together on the terrace, at the café, at Ciro’s lunching, or out in Mr. Ogden’s big yellow motor-car. More than once he had the audacity to send Madame a big basket of roses or carnations, yet Monsieur never objected. Really some husbands are so easily blinded by their wife’s kisses. Ah! if you would watch domestic happiness, and realise the deep cunning of a clever woman, you should become a femme-de-chambre. Your eyes would be opened to a good deal of the unsuspected.

For fully three weeks Madame and the young American were inseparable. Monsieur went almost daily over to Nice; so constantly, indeed, that it seemed as though business took him there.

Of a sudden Madame’s leniency of manner towards me changed; for one evening, while fastening her corsage, she suddenly exclaimed in a petulant tone—

“Mariette, you go over to Nice far too much. I suppose you’ve found a lover there, eh?”

“Madame is quite mistaken,” I replied, laughing; “I have no lover. My cousin Justine is in service with the Baronne Montvallier, at the Villa Magnan, and I go often to see her.”

“Well, I think, in future, you had better remain here. I so often want you,” she said.

“As Madame desires,” was my reply.

Nevertheless, as that was Justine’s night out, I went over to Nice as usual after Madame had gone with Mr. Ogden to dine at the Hermitage. Justine went with me to the Casino Municipal for an hour, and afterwards we strolled back in the moonlight along the wide, palm-lined Promenade des Anglais.

We were chatting and laughing, for as we had passed a gentleman he had spoken to us, as is the habit of the vieux marcheur in France. We had, however, hurried on, when, of a sudden, I caught sight of two other gentlemen approaching us, one of whom I recognised by his white felt hat was my master.

The form of the other seemed familiar, yet I did not at first realise whom it could be. The pair were deep in conversation, Monsieur Engleheart striking his open palm with his fist as though clenching an argument.

Then, as they passed, the moonlight fell full upon their faces, and in an instant—ah! voilà! I saw that my master’s companion was none other than Francis, our butler at Cleveland Square!

Extraordinaire!

I could scarce believe my eyes. There, walking beside Monsieur Engleheart, on terms of equality, was Francis, dressed fashionably, wearing a smart straw hat stuck jauntily upon his head and swinging his cane with all the carelessness of an idler.

I halted for a second, utterly stupefied, then, next moment, hurried on, for fortunately they had not seen me.

Tiens! What could this mean?

I recollected the familiar attitude of Francis towards my mistress, and the air of proprietorship, unbecoming a servant, with which he went about the house. I also recollected his advice to me to “keep a still tongue.”

I resolved to watch; therefore, excusing myself to Justine that I had to catch my train, I left her and, turning, followed the pair. Was the reason of Madame forbidding me to come to Nice because she did not wish me to discover Francis’s presence!

The two men walked leisurely along the Promenade, engrossed in their conversation. Then suddenly they halted, and after a few moments parted, Francis turning back in my direction.

I drew into the shadow beneath one of the big palms which line the handsome roadway, and watched him cross and enter a big new hotel which faced the sea.

It was, I saw, the Hôtel Royal—the same hotel where Oswald Ogden had a suite of rooms.

So when he had passed in I also crossed, and approaching the gold-laced concierge who was standing outside the door, asked in French—

“Could you tell me the name of the gentleman who has just entered? I am a femme-de-chambre, and my mistress is anxious to ascertain.”

I added those words, knowing that one servant is always ready to give information to another.

“The gentleman in the straw hat. Ah! That is Monsieur Vernon—un Anglais, très riche.”

“You have Monsieur Ogden, the rich young American here. Is Monsieur Vernon a friend of his?”

“Oh, yes, a very intimate friend. They are always motoring together.”

I thanked him, and, passing outside, strolled slowly back towards the station, absolutely convinced that some plot was in progress. But its nature I failed to imagine.

As the warm, fevered days of winter gaiety went on, Madame grew more irritable, more addicted to nerves, fuller of fads and fancies. Her dresses did not suit her, so she ordered two new evening gowns from Migno, in Nice, and an exquisite hat.

Mr. Ogden liked her in turquoise, so she ordered yet another gown of pale turquoise chiffon, an exact replica of a beautiful creation that Mademoiselle Helya Terry, one of the leaders of the mode, was wearing on the stage at the Gymnase in Paris.

Yet she grew melancholy. Her losses at roulette were severe, I supposed. Besides, I had a suspicion that there was a little difficulty about that week’s hotel bill. A letter from Griffiths, the head housemaid at Cleveland Square, told me that mysterious persons had been calling of late, inquiring for Monsieur. It seemed as though financial difficulties had again arisen, for two writs had been left at the door. Francis, or “Mr. Jennings,” as Griffiths called him, had gone on a holiday to his brother at Yarmouth, and things at Cleveland Square were horribly dull. The others, she said, envied me the sunshine, the flowers, and the gaiety of the Riviera. I read and re-read that letter, full of gravest doubts.

Evidemment, Madame in the last few weeks had developed certain idiosyncrasies. She had taken to standing before the long mirror, admiring her bust and her waist. Indeed, she said to me one day—

“Mariette, tell me the truth now; I wear my clothes properly, do I not? If I don’t, just tell me.”

“Madame wears her robes perfectly,” was my prompt reply, as I placed her black silk stocking upon her white, well-shapen foot. “I have never seen an English lady who looks so tout à fait parisienne,” I declared.

This was in no sense of flattery, for Madame Engleheart, wherever she had learnt the art of dressing, dressed uncommonly well. Ah, you should have seen her! She was très chic.

I espied Francis another afternoon, a week later, seated at one of the tables in front of the Café de la Régence, in Nice. He was with Monsieur, smoking leisurely and drinking bock, while Madame was, I supposed, lunching with Mr. Ogden at Ciro’s, or at the Reserve over at Beaulieu, as had now become their daily habit.

That same night, while I was arranging Madame’s hair, she being already in her robe de nuit, a marvel of delicate lingerie adorned with pale blue ribbons, Monsieur suddenly entered, pale and agitated.

“I want to speak to you, dear. I——” he said, and then he glanced apprehensively at me.

“Mariette,” she exclaimed, “you can go. Good-night.”

I put down the brush, and, wishing my master and mistress bon soir, promptly retired.

But, having traversed the corridor some distance, I crept back to the door and listened.

I was rewarded. They were speaking low and earnestly—so low that I had great difficulty in catching any words. But by placing my ear at the key-hole—for which I hope in the circumstances the reader will forgive me—I overheard Monsieur exclaim—

“Look here, Lucy! This game is all very fine, but it can’t last any longer. Francis is determined—so am I. We must make hay while the sun shines. If we don’t act quickly the golden chance will slip through our fingers.”

“If you hurry it, you’ll spoil it, mark me,” was Madame’s quick reply.

“Francis has all in his hand at present—but it won’t be for long,” Monsieur said. Then he added: “I hope that girl Mariette doesn’t suspect anything, eh?”

“Not in the least,” laughed my mistress. “She is such a good girl that evil never enters her mind.”

“But she knows that Oswald is always with you. She must have seen that. Francis’s advice is to discharge her at once. Give her five hundred francs, and let her go.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” was my mistress’s reply. “Mariette is a treasure. I will not part with her. Besides, she is pretty, remember—so she may be useful in several ways.”

Then she dropped her voice to a whisper, and though I strained my ear at that key-hole for a long time I heard no more.

What ingenious manœuvre was intended? I was not alarmed, for in my capacity of femme-de-chambre I had witnessed many strange things, some of which it is my intention to relate in these reminiscences.

The mystery of it all kept me in constant reflection. That the young American was aware that Madame was married was, of course, certain. Still, friendships at Monte Carlo are often strange ones, and where Prince Rouge-et-Noir reigns manners are slightly different from those in any other part of the world.

Next afternoon, about two o’clock, Madame sent for me.

“Ecoutez, Mariette,” she said. “I want you to go over to Nice at once for me, and find Mr. Ogden at the Hôtel Royal. Wait for him if he is out, and deliver this note—into his own hand, remember. There may be a reply. Of that, I am not certain. But you must find him before dinner—you understand?”

“Perfectly, Madame,” was my reply, and I took the note, dressed myself, and went by the next train to Nice, hoping perhaps to see Francis. But he was invisible.

I had no difficulty in finding the young American, for he was seated at one of the little tables in the garden facing the Promenade, chatting with a fair-haired man about his own age, and smoking a cigarette.

“Ah! Mariette,” he exclaimed with his slight American drawl, jumping up as I approached. “Say, how is Madame? I haven’t seen her these three days.”

“Madame is quite well,” I replied. “I have a note for you, m’sieur.”

He took it eagerly, broke it open, and glanced at its contents. Then instantly his face fell; he grew as white as paper.

“Anything the matter, old chap?” asked his friend.

“No, nothing,” he managed to stammer. “Nothing,” and he smiled grimly. Then, turning to me, he said—

“Mariette, walk with me outside on the Promenade. I want to speak to you.”

Willingly I strolled at his side, and when we were out of hearing, he said in a strange, hard voice—

“I want you to tell Madame that I must see her to-night. I will be on the lower terrace in front of the Casino at Monte Carlo at eleven. Tell her that—but not before Mr. Engleheart, you understand.” He seemed apprehensive, and much perturbed by Madame’s note.

“Certainly, m’sieur,” I replied. Then he slipped a louis into my hand, and left me.

When Madame entered her room that evening, and I told her his request, she flew into a great rage, threw her hat-pins so viciously upon the dressing-table that she broke a new bottle of “Idéale,” tore her veil, and in throwing her hat upon the bed broke one of the feathers.

“So he orders me to meet him!” she cried. “It has come to this, eh? He is not a gentleman. These rich Americans are always impossible people.”

Whether Madame met him I am unaware. All I know is that she entered the hotel shortly before one o’clock in the morning, and had a long and animated discussion with Monsieur.

On the following evening, as I sat at dinner with the maids and valets a message came to me that Madame required me at once, and, on entering the room, I found her bustling about.

“We must start packing at once, Mariette,” she said. “We are returning to London by the Côte d’Azur express at 7.24 to-morrow morning.”

From this, I concluded she had quarrelled with Oswald Ogden and had resolved to return home.

Next day’s journey up to Paris was—as you know from experience—long and fatiguing. At the bookstall at Lyons I bought a Daily Mail, and was idling over it, being in the same compartment as Madame and Monsieur, there being no second class on the day rapide.

Suddenly, under the “Mondanités” I read the following paragraph—

“The announcement was confirmed in New York yesterday by Mr. Charles H. Dominick, the President of the Philadelphia Railway, that his only daughter, Miss Gloria Dominick, is engaged to be married to Mr. Oswald B. Ogden, of New York, whose father, it will be remembered, cornered leather two years ago, and who died recently, leaving his son over five millions sterling.”

For a moment I held my breath. Tiens! Tiens! Ah! la vie est vraiment trop dure! Then, as Monsieur was asleep in his corner, I handed the paper across to Madame and pointed to the paragraph.

“Yes,” she said in a hard, low voice. “I already know.”

And then she lapsed into silence, thoughtfully gazing out of the window.

Enfin, on arrival at Cleveland Square, Francis, grave and urbane as usual, opened the door with a low bow and words of welcome, as though he had not seen his master or mistress since our departure. But Madame’s irritability increased. She complained of one servant after the other in turn, and for the first few days gave us a most uncomfortable time. To a certain Mrs. Cooper, a friend who visited her, I heard her admit that she had lost over a thousand pounds at the tables, a fact which did not surprise me in the least.

Monsieur, too, seemed anxious and worried. Strange men called, and were closeted with him in his study, whilst Madame received hosts of telegrams at all hours.

One evening, after we had been at home about a week, it being my night out, I had been over to Hoxton to see an old fellow-servant. On my way back, about ten o’clock, I turned into Cleveland Square, at that hour quiet and deserted, when I passed a man who appeared to be idling beneath the lamp-post a short distance from the house.

Our recognition was mutual. It was Madame’s friend of Monte Carlo, Mr. Ogden. I noticed, too, another man was idling near, the same fair-haired man whom I had seen with him in Nice.

In an instant he was at my side.

“Mariette,” he exclaimed, “you must not say you have seen me. Say, is your mistress well? Is she likely to come out, upon any pretext, to-night, do you think?”

“Madame is quite well,” was my reply. “But she has friends to dinner this evening—two gentlemen. So she will remain at home.”

He sighed, apparently much disappointed.

Then he pressed a sovereign into my hand, saying—

“Not a word that you have seen me—eh?”

And I promised. Afterwards, he rejoined his friend, who had been standing back in the shadow.

A few days later Madame rang for me to the drawing-room in the afternoon, and said—

“I expect Mr. Ogden at nine o’clock to-night, Mariette. Answer the door if any one rings, will you? Francis has gone out this evening.”

He had gone out, I supposed, to avoid recognition.

Madame seemed in high spirits, and laughed heartily with Monsieur. Then she crossed to the piano and played a gay chanson. They afterwards dined together and drank champagne. Apparently Monsieur was in funds again.

A few minutes after nine the front-door bell rang, and I admitted the wealthy young American, conducting him to the study, where Madame, who looked very sweet in a gown of pale carnation chiffon, awaited him.

He bowed on entering, and I was about to retire when Madame exclaimed—

“Mariette, I wish you to remain here.”

“Why?” asked the young man, surprised. “How can we discuss the matter before her?”

“There is surely nothing to discuss. Besides Mariette knows of our friendship,” was her quick reply, as she drew herself up.

“Pardon me, but there is something to discuss, and if you are not averse to Mariette hearing the truth—well, I’m not, I assure you,” he said with a short laugh.

“The matter is quite simple, is it not? I think that my husband is behaving most handsomely to both of us. Few men are so lenient as he.”

“My dear Mrs. Engleheart,” he said, “I know I’m in a hole; I quite admit that. Yet I can’t quite see why you’ve invited me to your house. Surely our discussion would have been much better if held somewhere else. But as you wish, let us by all means review the situation. Your husband has, unfortunately, got hold of those silly letters of mine to you, and will sue for a divorce, and at the same time hand copies of my letters to Miss Dominick. That, I admit, is most unfortunate—for him.”

“For him!” she cried. “Why is it not unfortunate for me—and for you, engaged to be married, as you are?”

The young man, whose hands were behind his back, pulled a wry face.

“Your husband asks five thousand pounds for those letters—eh?”

“Yes, and I sincerely hope you have come prepared to pay him, and so end all this terrible fuss and worry. It is really awful for me, I assure you, Oswald. Think of the scandal,” she exclaimed.

“I shall not pay a red cent, my dear little woman,” was his cool response.

She looked at him in blank dismay.

“Perhaps you had better tell my husband that yourself,” she managed to exclaim, flushing angrily, and she rang the bell, whereupon Monsieur came in at once from the dining-room.

The meeting between the two men was cool in the extreme. In a few brief words Madame explained the young American’s unfortunate refusal to accept the terms offered, whereupon Monsieur turned savagely upon their visitor, abused him, and said that he should send the letters at once to his fiancée.

Oswald Ogden took the castigation quite coolly. He calmly lit a cigarette, offering neither apology nor defence.

When Monsieur, crimson with anger and bluster, paused for breath, he coolly replied—

“My dear sir, pray keep cool. It is I who ought to create the scene—not you.”

“Not me!” shrieked the injured husband. “Why——”

“One moment,” laughed the young American. “Yours has been an intensely amusing game of blackmail, and I give your wife credit for being a deuced sharp woman. But I’ll trouble you to hand me over five hundred pounds by twelve o’clock to-morrow, otherwise I shall lay information and have you both arrested.”

“Why—what do you mean?” blustered Monsieur, thrusting his head forward into the other’s face.

“I mean, sonny, that instead of plucking a pigeon, as you’ve so often done before, this time you’ve caught a wasp,” was his reply. “You can send the letters to Miss Dominick, if you like. She’ll be amused with them, no doubt. Every woman dearly loves a scandal. But the fact is, I’m not the Oswald Ogden that they thought me to be down at Monte Carlo! Because you knew that Oswald Ogden of New York had become engaged to old Charles Dominick’s daughter you thought to play a devilish clever game. But I saw through it. A pal of mine recognised you; so I waited for you to open your mouth. You’ve done so, and I’ve jumped down your throat for five hundred of the best and brightest. That will just about pay the expenses which your precious wife ran me in for—see?” and he laughed in triumph.

Madame and Monsieur exchanged glances.

“Now,” went on Madame’s gentleman friend, “you’ll have to find that five hundred before twelve to-morrow, or I shall go to the police with your letters demanding your terms. I shall stand no nonsense. Guess neither you nor that clever old blackguard, your butler, who came out to nobble on to me, will like a visit from the police, will you? You’ve played the game once too often this time. So cough up, or prison—whichever you like.”

Oh! là! là! I left the room, and a couple of hours later left the house with my trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, unable to get any wages due to me.

Two days afterwards I called, hoping to obtain my money from Madame, but, au contraire, the blinds were down, and there was a man in possession. Pensez-vous! Madame and Monsieur had, he said, disappeared in the night, leaving many debts behind in Bayswater.

Ma foi! He had the laugh—did Madame’s gentleman friend!

CHAPTER II

THE WARDROBE DRAWER

OCTOBER 9TH

Oui, vraiment! One meets with some strange mistresses, and sometimes unearths some ugly family skeletons.

I have some curious recollections of the Allardyces.

Within a fortnight of leaving the service of Madame Engleheart I found myself engaged by Lady Allardyce, who lived with her husband, Sir Hubert Allardyce, at Branksome Court, on the highlands above Bournemouth.

A fine house with high turrets, reminding one of a French château, standing in beautiful, well-kept grounds; valuable old furniture, stained glass, a host of servants, several motor-cars, and six men in the gardens. One hundred francs a month—four pounds sterling—washing, and beer—ugh! your English beer!

On arrival one morning very contented with my new place, her ladyship saw me at once in her dressing-room—a pretty room with pale-green-and-cream silk upholstery. She was a stout, full-faced, pleasant-voiced woman, with skin just a trifle too white, her lips a little too red, hair a shade too blonde, but nevertheless exceedingly well preserved—frou-frouante even, with a certain commanding presence and, for an Englishwoman, a considerable chic.

Perhaps I possess a keen eye. I have been told so.

It is only necessary for me to glance around a home, and more especially the mistress’s dressing-room, and I can quickly form a pretty accurate opinion of the habits and manners of the family. I rarely make a mistake, for, be it remembered, I have had a long experience of the disorganised existence, the intrigues, the hatred, the fevered life of Englishwomen of the upper class. It is curious, but nevertheless a fact, that there exists a kind of freemasonry, spontaneous yet indescribable, between the old domestics and the newcomers. By the first look the new arrival is put au courant with the spirit of the household.

In the glance which the butler gave me on entering the back door of the Allardyces, I read the expression: “This is a curious house, from top to bottom. There is no security that you will remain very long. But it is amusing, nevertheless.”

Therefore, on entering my lady’s cabinet-de-toilette I was, in a measure, prepared by the vague impressions I had gathered below—which was, of course, nothing in particular. Only from the first moment that I entered Branksome Court I instinctively knew that there was some mystery within.

Lady Allardyce was writing letters at a small bureau. Upon the pale blue carpet were thrown several white fur rugs, and the arm-chairs were snug and cosy. In a small cabinet I noted some dainty bric-à-brac, while on a pale green silk chaise longue lay a pet Pekinese.

Madame, raising her blonde head, exclaimed—

“Ah! Mariette. So you have arrived—eh? You must have left London quite early.” And she smiled pleasantly.

In her eyes showed that strange, inexpressible look which spoke mutely of an interesting past. Have you ever noticed that expression in a woman’s eyes—a certain deep unfathomable glance betraying a subtle ingenuity—perhaps even double-dealing.

She rose and leisurely examined me, my face, my shoulders, and my profile, muttering to herself from time to time.

“Ah, yes! She is really not half bad. Indeed, she is rather good-looking. She’ll suit me. Excellent!”

Then brusquely she asked—

“Your friends live over in France, I suppose, Mariette?”

“Yes, Madame, in the Yonne,” I answered, in wonder at her manner of speaking to herself.

As I spoke she regarded me from head to toe, then to herself said—

“Yes, she is good-looking. Decidedly handsome for a French girl.”

Next second she addressed me, saying with a smile—

“The fact is, Mariette, I never like any but good-looking girls about me. It is so much more pleasant, so much more artistic.”

I was about to protest that my face was not so remarkably handsome. My previous experience of mistresses had been that they had sneered at any good features I might possess. It had only been the male servants who had told me that I was handsome. Strange that English men-servants are so very fond of the French femme-de-chambre!

But Madame continued to examine me minutely, then regarding my black dress, she asked—

“Is that your best gown?”

“Yes, my lady,” was my reply.

“H’m! It is not very smart. I will see that you have others. Your linen, too?” and taking my skirt in her hand she lifted it.

She said nothing, only made a grimace. She saw my English moire jupon, with the flannel one beneath—in true style of the foggy island.

“No, Mariette,” she remarked at last, “I cannot allow you to go about like that. Come, help me.”

She opened a big wardrobe, and pulling forth a long drawer full of perfumed chiffons and delicate underwear, she emptied the contents pell-mell upon the floor, saying—

“Take the lot to your room. No doubt they will have to be altered to fit you, but that is only a small affair. They will all come in useful, without a doubt.”

With murmured thanks I regarded the heap upon the floor—silk stockings, satin corsets, underwear of finest batiste and lace, pretty blouses, and lovely underskirts fanfreluches. From them arose a sweet perfume—a new scent like a basket of fresh flowers which I had not before met with—the perfect odeur d’amour.

My lady noted my confusion and said in explanation—

“You see, Mariette, I only like pretty, well-dressed girls about me. You will note that in this house. They must all be elegant. Perhaps I am a little exacting; indeed, it is almost a mania with me. I only like pretty things, so all my maids are good-looking and elegant. You are dark. See! Here is a red silk under-skirt for you. Take it, and have it altered to fit you at once.”

“Really, Madame is extremely kind,” I managed to exclaim. “I do not deserve all these favours. I hardly——”

“If you serve me well,” said Lady Allardyce, “you will find me a good mistress. But, remember, never let me see you looking prim and dowdy, like the ordinary lady’s maid. I want you always to appear chic and smart—and to use this.” And she handed me a big and expensive bottle of one of the latest and most fashionable perfumes.

Surely it was a very remarkable situation, I thought. But Madame gave me no time for reflection. She chatted on, in an easy, familiar, almost maternal manner, giving me certain intimate details regarding her mode of living. Then she showed me her bedroom adjoining, her hats, her wardrobes and their contents, and where everything was kept. Afterwards she said—

“Every woman—no matter who, maid or mistress—should always be well dressed.”

And then she conducted me to my own room, at the end of a long corridor in the same wing of the house.

That evening I dressed my lady in a magnificent gown of black net and sequins—for there was a dinner-party—and, later on, in the servants’ hall I learnt something regarding the ménage.

Monsieur had been in the Diplomatic Service—British Minister to one of the South American republics—but had retired when, by the death of a near relative, he had inherited Branksome Court and a very comfortable income.

I met Monsieur in the up-stairs corridor late that evening. He was a short, stout, somewhat pompous man with a red, plethoric face, a broad expanse of shirt-front, and a tiny white moustache. His air was that of a bon vivant, and his dress was smart, even dandified. His monocle was held by a narrow black silk ribbon, and his dress-cravat was neatly tied. He had the air of a Government official and the sturdy uprightness which betrays the golfer.

He stared at me in surprise, but said nothing.

They entertained the haut monde of Bournemouth, it seemed. I saw some of the gowns that night. Bon Dieu! they were of a style forgotten in Paris. Truly the English couturière is a droll person.

A fortnight went by. Whenever I mentioned my lady in the servants’ hall my companions shrugged their shoulders and pulled grimaces. There was something mysterious about that ménage, but what it was I failed to discover. Both Monsieur and Madame were eminently notables of Bournemouth—that invalid town of much réclame. We had family prayers each morning in the dining-room, for Monsieur was a churchwarden, and Madame was constantly assisting at charity bazaars and church teas.

Madame always treated me with greatest consideration; and Monsieur, I found, beneath a rather austere exterior, was extremely kind and pleasant. He was always joking good-humouredly.

Yet the atmosphere of mystery about them increased rather than diminished.

Madame seemed, somehow, to regard me with a slight distrust. Why, I cannot tell.

One day, however, I noticed her extremely pale and nervous. A luncheon party she postponed by telephone on account of being unwell, and spent all the morning in the chaise longue before the fire in her dressing-room.

“Mariette!” she called to me. “Come here. I wish to speak to you.”

“Oui, Madame.”

“Mariette,” she went on, raising her eyes to mine, “I have come to the conclusion that you suit me admirably, yet—yet I am still just a little doubtful regarding your loyalty to myself.”

“Madame has no need to be anxious upon that score,” I assured her. “No mistress has ever been more kind and considerate.”

“I like you, Mariette, because your eyes are not always upon the men. Henry, the footman, is hanging after every girl. I note, however, that you keep him at arm’s length, and you never look into your master’s eyes.”

“I hope, Madame, that I am not a flirt,” I said modestly. “I know my place.”

“Well, if I trust you further, Mariette, I hope you will never betray my confidence,” she said softly, “never tell a soul—not even the master or any of them in the servants’ hall—eh?”

“I promise, Madame.”

“Then, I want you to do something for me this afternoon—something in strictest confidence. Go on the Pier, and at three o’clock take a seat in the first sheltered recess from this end, on the right-hand side where the skating is allowed. You will carry this bag,” and she showed me a bright mauve bag with a small watch let into the side. “The person you will meet will recognise you by this. You will either take a verbal message for me, or else you will be given a note. Will you assist me in strictest confidence?”

“Of course, I will do exactly as Madame orders,” was my quick response, for my curiosity was now aroused.

Eh bien! I went to the Pier, found the seat indicated, and settled myself upon it, displaying my mauve bag. A strong east wind was blowing, and the band was playing to a rather poor audience. I eyed each passer-by expectantly, but without result, until I began to fear that the mysterious appointment would not be kept.

At last a queer, ill-dressed little old woman in faded black bonnet and shabby jacket, trimmed with rabbit’s-fur, hobbled along and took a seat beside me.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, in a low, squeaky voice. “You are Lady Allardyce’s new maid, I see—the French girl we’ve heard about—eh?”

I admitted that I was.

“Will you give your mistress this message—that Mr. Charles must have what she promised to-night. He will wait for her in the Invalids’ Walk at nine o’clock. He must see her. It is most urgent.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yes, young woman,” was her snappy response. “Tell her that. She’ll understand.” And the ugly old person gave vent to a low, dry laugh. When, half-an-hour later, I stood in Madame’s boudoir and gave her the message, she went pale to the lips.

“I go to the Invalids’ Walk at night! I—I can’t do that!” she cried. “It’s monstrous! Why, I should be recognised in an instant. No, Mariette, you must go and meet him—humour him—make love to him, if necessary—for my sake.”

“I do not understand Madame’s meaning,” I said much puzzled.

“Simply this, Mariette. The gentleman in question admires a pretty face—and—well, I shall not be in the least annoyed if you flirt with him.”

“But—Madame——”

“Ah, of course, you cannot understand!” she exclaimed. “Well, this gentleman and I are—are very great friends. Sir Hubert must never know—you understand? My future, Mariette, is in your hands. If—if any discovery were ever made you could easily declare that the gentleman was your lover—that he came to Bournemouth—to this house in order to visit you—eh?”

“And by such declaration save Madame’s reputation?” I remarked. “Parfaitement!”

My lady nodded. I saw by her manner that she was terribly anxious. That old woman’s message was suspiciously like a threat.

That night, at nine o’clock, I sauntered along the Invalids’ Walk, that pretty pine-clad valley through which the Bourne brook flows, where, by day, pale-faced consumptives enjoy the sunshine and by night amorous couples stroll beneath the electric lamps.

I sat upon a seat beneath one of the lamps, and displayed my violet bag, when, after ten minutes or so, a tall, well-dressed, refined, and extremely good-looking man, glanced at me in surprise, crossed, and seated himself beside me. He was about my own age, and had the easy manner of a gentleman.

“You are Mariette, I presume?” he asked, lifting his hat politely.

Then, when I admitted that I was, and that I bore a message from Madame, he laughed, and with a sigh exclaimed—

“More excuses, I suppose?”

I explained that Madame feared recognition, but that she would meet him on the following night at ten o’clock, in the lower grounds of Branksome Court, at a spot I indicated.

He smiled faintly, apparently disappointed; but next instant the shadow passed, and he looked at me with merry, mischievous glance.

He was pleased to meet me, he declared. He liked French people. He had heard of me, and he hoped I was happy with Madame. Et patati ... et patata!

And, in the end, he invited me to take a stroll with him, which I did. He was très gentil, was Monsieur. And yet was it not strange that I, Madame’s maid, was walking out with Madame’s lover? Oh là! là!

Truly the ménage of the Allardyces was a strange one.

We went for quite a long walk through the gardens in the direction of Branksome Court, and once or twice he placed his hand upon my arm to emphasise his words, and squeezed it.

He had travelled a great deal. I, who have been about, and know Continental hotels pretty well, am quick to realise the cosmopolitan. Monsieur Charles was a man after my own heart. Perhaps I might have fallen in love with him, only—well, I was only a femme-de-chambre. His name was Shaw—Charlie Shaw—he told me. He lived sometimes in London, but was mostly on the Continent. And he spoke French very well.

“You will, I hope, Mariette, be good and faithful to Madame,” he said, growing serious again. “She has had much trouble with her maids. The last was far too flighty, and aroused Madame’s jealousy. Sir Hubert is only human, after all, and few men can resist a pretty face. The worst of it is that Lady Allardyce will always have good-looking girls about her.”

“That is not judicious,” I laughed, “if Monsieur is susceptible.”

“Exactly. Well, good-bye, Mariette,” he said, suddenly halting. “Here’s something to buy yourself a pair of gloves.” And he pressed into my hand half a louis in English.

When, later, I told Madame of what had transpired she seemed greatly relieved.

Next evening, Monsieur—poor unsuspicious Monsieur—had some men friends in to smoke, and Madame retired early, pleading migraine. Then swiftly she slipped on a dark gown and crept through the conservatory, while I remained on guard. Afterwards, when I had seen her flit down the drive in the shadows, and on down the step hill among the pines, I breathed more freely, and stood gazing away to where the myriad lights of Bournemouth lay deep in the valley by the sea.

An hour later the butler locked the conservatory door, but when he had gone I unlocked it again, and in the darkness awaited Madame’s return.

When we had mounted to her dressing-room I noticed that her eyes were red and swollen. She was very nervous, and had been crying. Why, I wondered? Had she quarrelled with Monsieur Charles?

Three weeks went by uneventfully. My lady never mentioned Mr. Shaw; yet I saw that, day after day, she seemed to grow paler and more apprehensive. For hours she would sit in her boudoir staring into the fire without uttering a word. Something was seriously troubling her.

Twice she went on mysterious visits to London unknown to Monsieur. Why?

One afternoon, when Madame had gone out en automobile with Monsieur, for a run through the New Forest, I chanced to note that in one of the drawers in the big wardrobe—a drawer which Madame always kept locked—the key had been inadvertently left.

As my lady had told me that particular drawer was her private one, which the key to the others would not fit, my curiosity, naturally, was aroused, and, unlocking it, I ventured to peer within.

Its contents were what I might have expected—quantities of old letters done up in bundles and many odds-and-ends, souvenirs without doubt. As I turned them over I came across a photograph of Mr. Shaw, evidently taken some years before; but, when my fingers touched the bottom of the drawer, it sounded hollow. Then I noticed that it was more shallow than it should be. It had a false bottom! What secrets of Madame’s were concealed below?

Quickly I drew out the drawer, removed the contents, and with some manipulation lifted out the mahogany board, when my eyes fell upon a miscellaneous collection of jewels, splendid diamond necklaces, ornaments for the corsage, brooches of rubies and emeralds, hundreds of fine rings and bracelets set with diamonds, sapphires, opals and emeralds, together with several screwed-up packets of newspaper. One of the latter I opened. It was full of unset stones, most of them of great size and value.

As I took up the treasures by handfuls I found beneath them a small, but very serviceable plated revolver, several curious-looking steel tools such as I had never seen before, and a black velvet loup, or half-mask, such as is worn at the carnival balls in the Midi.

Figurez-vous my blank astonishment! Was this secret hoard the proceeds of many robberies? Some of the larger stones in the more costly ornaments had been knocked from their settings, while the revolver, the mask, and the burglarious implements told their own tale.

Was Madame, the exemplary wife of his Excellency the ex-Minister, actually a jewel thief? Quelle drôle d’idée!

I placed one of the diamond necklets around my own throat and went to the mirror to admire it. May I be forgiven! Even in the grey light of afternoon the stones were full of fire. To whom, I wondered, had it belonged?

As I stood staring at my reflection, I suddenly heard Madame’s voice speaking with Monsieur. She was ascending the stairs slowly, on account of her heart. Quick as lightning I tore off the jewels, replaced the false bottom in the drawer, flung in the letters and odds-and-ends, and locked it back in its place.

Then, throwing myself into the chair near the fire, I sank my chin upon my breast, and closed my eyes in pretence of being asleep.

All this was accomplished none too quickly, for next instant my lady swept into the room.

“Why, Mariette!” she cried. “Asleep! How lazy! I thought you were at needle-work!”

I stirred slowly, opened my eyes in surprise, and then jumped up, as though startled.

“Pardon, Madame!” I exclaimed. “I—I was not very well, and I must have dropped off to sleep.”

But my lady only gave vent to a grunt of disapprobation, and I at once began my duties, helping her off with her motor-coat and veil.

Suddenly her eye caught the key in the drawer, and she started, glancing apprehensively at me; but, without remark, she removed it and locked it safely in her jewel-case.

Peugh! it was this mystery which I had scented ever since I had crossed the threshold of the Allardyces. Eh bien! I would watch.

One day I overheard Monsieur and Madame having a few high words.

“Well?” I heard Madame exclaim angrily. “You married me for my money, after all! Why treat me to all these long eulogies of your first wife? They are really wearisome, Hubert. I don’t know how you would have got on without my money. Why, you’d have been in the Bankruptcy Court long ago!”

And they jangled on as they sometimes did, each trying to mix politeness with sarcasm. Every femme-de-chambre quickly learns the family secrets.

Most mistresses have manias in more or less pronounced form. Some have a mania for cleanliness, some for wearing jewels, some for perfumes, some for economy, and some for fresh air. The mania of Lady Allardyce was the elegant dressing of her maids, who, when they went down into the town, presented the appearance of ladies.

And yet the kitchen fare was of the plainest, even most wretched description.

Bournemouth society is a curious set—circles within circles. The retired butcher’s wife from Manchester will not know the retired baker’s wife from Newcastle. It apes Brighton, and yet is so horribly provincial—suburbanly provincial. Ah! yes, the English are a droll people. Oh! the churches and chapels and the Sunday silk hats in Bournemouth, the big prayer-books carried to Sunday parade, and the ugly old ladies who hold little courts because they happen to be wives of Jubilee knights! Extraordinaire!

And Madame was the centre of it all.

Day after day, as I dressed my lady or undressed her, handed her her face-cream—which I got for her from Paris—sewed lace into her blouses, or repaired her lingerie, I used to glance at that locked drawer in the wardrobe—and wonder.

One evening she sent me at eight o’clock to the Arcade, there to meet Monsieur Charles.

He was punctual, smart, well-dressed, très gentil as ever. He greeted me merrily, and as we walked out of the light and along the main street he handed me a small brown-paper packet for Madame. I felt something hard inside.

He plied me with many questions concerning Madame—and Monsieur—yet somehow, in what manner I could not tell, he seemed to have altered.

“Mariette,” he said earnestly at last, “I want to take you into my confidence. The fact is that Madame refuses to see me, and sends you as her deputy. Now I must see her. I want to speak with her very seriously. Will you help me?”

“Help you, m’sieur?” I exclaimed. “How?”

“If Lady Allardyce will not come to see me, then I must go to see her,” was his reply. “I shall be near the conservatory door at twelve o’clock to-morrow night. You must be there, Mariette, to let me in and conduct me to her.”

“Ah, non, m’sieur, impossible!”

“I say yes, Mariette,” he declared, with a quiet smile, patting me upon the shoulder. “You will be there to meet me—at twelve o’clock.”

“Not if Madame objects.”

“Lady Allardyce will not meet me out because she fears recognition. She will not object to meeting me in her own house—if you take care that Sir Hubert knows nothing,” he added meaningly.

“It is as Madame wishes,” I said, and then, with a cheery laugh, he squeezed my hand. At the corner of Branksome Park Road we parted, and half-an-hour later I gave Madame the little packet—a little present, without a doubt. She made a little grimace.

Oui, vraiment, I was in the midst of an ingenious intrigue. Nobody would suspect Madame of possessing a lover.

Next night, when every one had retired and all was quiet, I unlocked the conservatory door, and Monsieur Charles, creeping silently across the lawn, entered noiselessly, and was conducted by me to Madame’s boudoir where she received him.

I heard her affectionate greeting, how she kissed him fondly as soon as he entered.

Then I discreetly withdrew to the head of the broad, thickly-carpeted staircase, taking up my post in the darkness, ready to warn Madame should unsuspecting Monsieur by chance emerge from his room, which was on the opposite side of the house. Pauvre Monsieur!

The lady of the house can do little, indeed, without the connivance of her femme-de-chambre. The judicious husband is the one always friendly and generous with his wife’s maid—if he wishes to know what transpires in his absence.

The quiet was unbroken save for the slow, solemn ticking of the big grandfather clock below in the front hall, and I suppose I had been there for perhaps a quarter of an hour when, of a sudden, I heard a sound below, and peeping over the balustrade, was, to my amazement, the flash of a bull’s-eye lantern.

Two strange men were moving noiselessly, having entered, I suppose, by the conservatory. They were conversing in whispers.

In fright, I slipped along to Madame’s boudoir, and tapped, interrupting a tête-à-tête, saying in a low whisper, “It is I—Mariette!”

Whereupon, in alarm, my lady at once opened the door, quietly asking what was the matter.

I told her of the two strangers below in the hall, when, in an instant, Monsieur Charles’s face went as pale as death.

“Then they have seen me!” he gasped. “They are here! I’m lost!”

“You must escape—fly!” Madame urged, white and trembling. “Down the back stairs.”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, “they must not arrest me here. They’ve followed me from Paris! I suspected it when I was watched on the Calais boat. But they must not take me here. Think of the terrible scandal—for you!”

“Arrest?” I gasped, looking from one to the other. “Are those men the police?”

“I fear they are, Mariette,” said Madame. “But I will go below and speak to them while you get Mr. Charles out by the stairs, past the butler’s room.”

It was an exciting moment, for on the slightest noise Madame’s husband would most certainly appear.

I slipped forth from the room, followed by Monsieur Charles on tip-toe, and we had traversed the whole length of the dark corridor without a sound.

Ah! Quel malheur! Quel grand malheur! We were suddenly confronted by the two men who had come up the staircase we intended to descend! The lantern was flashed full into our faces.

“I am a police officer,” exclaimed the elder of the pair, “and I arrest you, George Gamlen, alias Shaw, upon a warrant issued in Paris for the theft of certain jewellery belonging to the Baronne Veuillot, at Versailles, and upon other similar charges.”

“Hush!” I cried. “Dieu! not so loud. You will wake Sir Hubert!”

At that instant Madame flew along to me, and, taking me aside, whispered, “Say that Mr. Charles is your lover. It will clear me when they give evidence at the police court.”

Therefore, in accordance with her wishes, I pretended to be deeply in love with the prisoner, and admitted that he had come to the house in order to visit me clandestinely.

“Make no noise, messieurs!” I urged frantically. “Bon Dieu! I shall be dismissed!”

“I think, Lady Allardyce, that this arrest is rather opportune,” said the detective to Madame when we were in the hall below a few moments later, and out of hearing. “This gentleman probably had an eye upon your jewels also. We have ascertained that he has been in the habit of crossing from France and coming here to Bournemouth, and that the Paris police strongly suspect that he has carried with him stolen property from time to time. Has he given any of it to you, mademoiselle?” inquired the detective, turning to me. “If so, your best plan would be to restore it at once, or you, too, may find yourself under arrest.”

“He has never given me any jewellery,” I declared with truth.

Then we entered the dark drawing-room. There was a pathetic leave-taking between us, and we watched the detectives and their prisoner pass out of the conservatory into the night.

Next evening the papers reported how, at Bow Street, the police had given evidence of arresting one of the most daring jewel thieves in Europe at Branksome Court, Bournemouth, where he had gone to visit the French femme-de-chambre, but ostensibly to commit a robbery. The police declared the prisoner to be an Englishman of good birth and head of a dangerous and most ingenious gang, who had been responsible for many great jewel robberies during the past four or five years.

A week later Monsieur and Madame suddenly left Bournemouth for a long tour in India and Japan, Madame’s doctor having ordered her abroad as she was suffering from nerves.

After I had packed her trunks, Madame made me a very handsome present and told me, with deep regret, that Monsieur would not allow her—after the scandal of Monsieur Charles’s visit to me—to keep me in her service.

Therefore I must leave her. Eh bien! It was only what I had expected.

“But, Mariette,” she added, her hand placed tenderly upon my shoulder as she looked straight into my eyes, “you have saved me! Sir Hubert knows nothing—he suspects nothing. He must never suspect the truth. Heaven knows, I have tried all I could to shield Mr. Charles, to hide his thefts, to assist him—ah! to reform him! But, alas! all to no purpose. Poor Charles! You may imagine what I feel—my chagrin, my sorrow—what a terrible blow all this has been to me. Charles is—is my son!”

Three months later Monsieur Charles was transported from Paris to Devil’s Island, and for aught I know to the contrary, the stolen jewels still repose in the bottom of that locked wardrobe drawer at Branksome Court.

Flûte!

CHAPTER III

LITTLE MRS. OTWAY

JUNE 23RD

Tiens! My next experience was, indeed, a strange one.

Quickly back in London after leaving Lady Allardyce’s service, I had, with my excellent testimonials, no difficulty in obtaining another situation.

This time I found myself engaged by a lady named Otway, who lived at the Park Lane end of Grosvenor Street. A large house, toilettes by Worth, hats from the Rue de la Paix, smart dinner parties, brilliant entertainments every Wednesday, grand chic!

Madame was not more than thirty—petite, fair-haired, with limbs full-sized and shapely. Her head was small and gracefully poised, her neck long, her features regular, her smile fascinating. Her complexion was fair as a lily, with a faint rose blush to brighten it. Superbe!

In the first hour of my arrival I found upon her dressing-table Crême Floreine and a bottle of Rose d’Orsay. This discovery was, in itself, sufficient to stamp her as smart. She had an abundance of soft wavy hair, well arranged to suit the oval form of her expressive and intelligent face, while the mode in which it was dressed, with all the chi-chi, was the latest in Paris.

From the first moment I knew that Madame would do me credit. No second glance was required to ascertain that her couturière was not English, and that she was well used to a maid of the first order, like myself.

And so I had quickly settled down to my duties, enthusiastic, quick-handed and content.

From Joseph, the butler, I learnt that Monsieur, a tall, thin-faced and extremely active gentleman, was proprietor of a great daily journal, one of the most powerful political organs in England, and that he was one of those many men in London who have by a lucky hit got rich quick. Within ten years, by giving the public what it wanted, he had become a millionaire.

Now it is a curious anomaly in social life that while the prosperous business-man finds it extremely difficult, notwithstanding his money-bags, to enter the inner ring of London society, unless either son or daughter sell themselves for a title, yet the proprietor of any daily newspaper steps at once across the gulf, is received, even hailed, by the smartest and most exclusive set, and his wife—though she may have been bred in Brixton—is affectionately called “My dear” by dowager-duchesses.

So in the case of the Otways.

Madame, it was whispered, had been the daughter of a small grocer—what you call “stores”—at Lower Sydenham, while clean-shaven Monsieur had started life as junior clerk in an insurance office. Yet now at forty he controlled one of the several London newspapers which claim the largest-circulation-in-the-world, and was busy distributing charitable donations of a thousand pounds at a time in order to attract public attention and claim a baronetcy from his Party.

The evening of my arrival happened to be a Wednesday—the day of the weekly entertainment. The hall, staircase and reception-rooms were hung with choice roses, while about the whole place was a sweet perfume, an air of unbridled luxury and wealth. Half smart London came there to listen to the splendid music in the drawing-room. The fees to the great violinist and the renowned pianist must have run into hundreds—unless, perhaps, they performed for nothing in order to secure in Monsieur’s journal flattering notices of their public entertainments. Bien sûr, to the rich newspaper proprietor half the world falls upon its knees in these days when geniuses are so easily manufactured by “boom” and the press-agent.

But of Madame Otway I have nothing to complain. Mais non.

Monsieur, whose fine library was really the editorial room of the great offices somewhere in Fleet Street, received many strange men between the hours of six and eight each evening. Hinkson, the footman, was always busy opening the door to them, and telephones were ringing all the time. Monsieur’s room, with its ever-clicking news and stock-exchange “tapes” in the corner, was then a perfect hive of industry. Oui, vraiment, it was a house of business at that hour.

Those who came and went were of all classes, from shabby and beery broken-down journalists, to Cabinet Ministers and political peers with axes to grind.

It must not be supposed, however, that Monsieur devoted his whole time to the progress of his journal. Au contraire, he went everywhere, motored a great deal in his big six-cylinder, enjoyed himself hugely, and left Madame a great deal to her own devices.

Quite two months was I in Madame’s service before I began to know her. True, she occupied with consummate tact the position which money had so suddenly given her, yet she was extremely reserved, and would go out and return day after day without ever once letting drop where she had been, or what she had been doing.

More than once in her absence Monsieur, when he had encountered me, had spoken cheerfully and had shown himself très gentil. Curious that it might seem, yet he somehow appeared as though he wished to make friends with me. Moi, I gave him no encouragement. With the femme-de-chambre any such encouragement is always fatal. And I think I know my place too well.

Flirtation with a good-looking male servant is, of course, permissible, but with Monsieur, never.

It may have been because of my somewhat dignified attitude towards Monsieur that Madame grew at last less frigid. She would often laugh and gossip with me as I dressed her pretty hair, buttoned her blouse, or laced her shoes, while every now and then she would make me little presents of trifles of left-off clothing. The perquisites of the femme-de-chambre can always be turned into money, and fortunately for me Madame quickly flung aside a gown or blouse. Worth’s bill was never questioned by Monsieur, who was shrewd enough to know that half his power lay in his wife’s success.

Madame, like most mistresses, was a person of moods, and subject to headaches, real or imaginary. Diable! the cachet of antipyrine was ever at hand.

Though devoted to Monsieur, she was inclined to be—well, a trifle skittish. A woman cannot deceive her femme-de-chambre for very long. Often have I laughed at the ingenuity of some of my mistresses in their vain attempts to hide their secrets from me. They always forget that a woman has a far keener sense of intuition than a man, and that what may be hidden from Monsieur, the husband, is as open as the light of day to the girl who dresses her hair.

Secrets! Bon Dieu! I have known many. I have witnessed some amusing comedies, and more than one tragedy.

I admit, however, that I was entirely unsuspicious of Madame Otway until one evening, while brushing her motor-coat, I found a letter crumpled in the pocket—a brief little affectionate note from Isaac Blumfeld, the well-known financier, who lived around in Park Lane, and who very often dined en famille with Monsieur and Madame.

He was a short, thick-set, thick-speaking man, with a red, rather pimply, face, and an oleaginous and pompous manner. Un snob! It was said that he had once been an acrobat, until fortunate speculations in South Africa had brought him his huge fortune.

The Blumfeld group were well known in the City, but owing to certain reports he was never received by the smart set who came so regularly to Grosvenor Street every Wednesday.

And so Madame was on friendly terms with Monsieur, unknown to her husband! Pas extraordinaire!

I replaced the letter and shrugged my shoulders. Madame’s little affairs of the heart did not concern me. She was a kind, generous mistress. Assez!

An hour later, as I sat mending some lingerie in the dressing-room, Monsieur entered, saying—

“Mariette, send down your mistress’s fur motor-coat to the car. I’m going to pick her up at the theatre, and she’ll be cold.”

“Oui, m’sieur,” I replied, and then went along to get the coat. But before I handed it to him I took possession of the letter.

And I burned it.

Next evening Madame went forth alone in a walking gown, Monsieur having been called to Glasgow on business. I knew that she went to dinner with old Isaac Blumfeld at a snug little restaurant in Clifford Street, where neither would be recognised.

She returned about ten, slipped on a smart evening gown and went out to a bridge-party at old Lady Staverton’s, in Mount Street. She was an inveterate player, and often won large sums, as I knew sometimes when she came home.

I had dropped off to sleep before the fire, for it was past three when she returned, tired, short-tempered, and with a bad headache.

She looked so very pale and distressed that I asked whether she were not well, to which I received a snappy reply. So I held my tongue, wondering what had happened.

Next morning before luncheon, while dressing her hair as she sat before her big toilet-table upon which were ranged the massive silver requisites, Madame suddenly said—

“Mariette, have you ever been in love?”

Love! Moi! The question nonplussed me. I felt the colour rising to my cheeks and was compelled to give an affirmative, if halting, response.

Madame sighed, and remained silent for some moments.

“Ah!” she said at last, “though you may have loved, you cannot have realised the perils consequent upon a forbidden affection.”

I made no reply, but I knew too well to what she alluded. She was a young and pretty dame du monde, and surely it was not surprising.

“Mariette,” she said, turning to me and fixing me with her fine big eyes, “I—well, to tell you the truth I am in a great difficulty—a very great difficulty. I wonder whether, if I asked you to help me, you would ever betray me?”

“Madame, I have never yet betrayed any confidence with which my mistresses have entrusted me,” I said, not without some little dignity.

“I know, Mariette. I read honesty in your face,” she hastened to say. “Help in this unfortunate affair will mean my salvation.”

I knew that Monsieur entertained no suspicion of what might be in progress, therefore her attitude puzzled me. I had never dreamed for a moment that the stout, over-dressed financier was her admirer; but on the contrary, had believed that the Honourable Frank Carew, of the Foreign Office, was the most-favoured cavalier. The last-named, a tall, handsome, dark-haired, well-groomed young fellow, was for ever hanging at Madame’s heels, and very often took her out to the theatre, or brought her home from parties or dances.

One night I had noticed when he bade her farewell in the hall that her hand had rested in his just a second longer than it might have done. And from that I had formed my own conclusions.

Chacun son idée! But that letter of Isaac Blumfeld’s had been sufficient to place all doubt at rest.

Madame was, I believe, about to reveal to me some further secret, when there came a tap at the door, and Hinkson announced that Lady Staverton was below, and wished to see Madame very urgently.

My mistress started, turned slightly pale, and after a moment’s hesitation gave orders for her to be shown up-stairs.

“You may go, Mariette,” she added curtly. “I shall want you again presently.”

So I finished Madame’s hair hurriedly, helped her off with her lace dressing-jacket and handed her a warm wrap. Then as I left I encountered the thin-faced, middle-aged woman upon the threshold.

When at last my bell rang and I re-entered the room I found Madame bathing her face in eau-de-Cologne, her eyes betraying signs of recent tears.

“Mariette,” she said one day about a fortnight afterwards, “Do you know Mr. Blumfeld’s house in Park Lane—the big white one on the corner, with the glass-covered verandah?”

“Oui, Madame.”

“Well—I want you to do something in strict secrecy,” Madame said, “for my sake, to help me.”

“Volontairement.”

“Remember, the servants must know nothing, otherwise they will talk. You will not say a word to Hinkson. Promise me.”

“Madame may repose the most perfect confidence in me,” I assured her. “Am I not Madame’s femme-de-chambre?”

“Well, what I want you to do may strike you as somewhat curious—yet it is highly necessary. All depends upon it—upon your shrewdness,” she said. “I want you to put on another dress and go and watch outside Mr. Blumfeld’s to see whether a gentleman calls there—a gentleman you have seen here—Mr. Carew. You know him, of course.”

“Parfaitement, Madame.”

“You must go now, as soon as possible, and watch the house—if necessary till midnight. Mr. Carew has left his rooms, and I am unaware of his whereabouts. I shall remain here awaiting your report. If he calls, then hurry round at once in a taxi and let me know. Or—or better. I think he does not know you. If you see him in the street, go straight up to him and tell him that, before he enters Mr. Blumfeld’s, a friend wishes to see him. Suggest that he goes somewhere to await the mysterious friend—the lounge of the Criterion is quiet. Send him there—and come round to me at once.”

“Bien, Madame; and my dress?”

“Put on your best dress. The police will not then suspect you of loitering. If so, refer the constable to me. They all know my husband. So run along, eat your lunch quickly, and go out to watch.”

My mission was certainly of interest. I swallowed my meal quickly, dressed, and telling Hinkson that I was going out upon an errand for Madame, hurried along Grosvenor Street into Park Lane, where, turning to the left, was soon before the big white mansion of the great financier—a mansion well known, I expect, to most readers of these my memoirs.

As idling opposite by the park railings I watched the big front-door of Blumfeld’s house, I saw several persons arrive and depart; a man in a yellow motor-car, two telegraph messengers and a tall, rather elderly lady in a hansom. To the latter the footman announced “not at home,” and the same reply was given to two other men of distinctly business air. And though I never relaxed my vigilance all the cold, dry afternoon, yet Madame’s friend did not come.

Your London policeman is always suspicious of the loitering woman. I had attracted the attention of the constable on the beat. Therefore, just as twilight was falling, I was compelled to go within the park-railings and watch from there.

It grew dark soon after four o’clock, the street-lamps were lit, but the traffic of taxis and motor-buses remained unceasing. The few people passing up and down in the Park had gradually disappeared, while I remained there alone upon the iron seat, watching eagerly from out the darkness.

Suddenly, about six o’clock, just as rain began to fall, I saw a tall, well-dressed young man in soft felt hat and dark overcoat approach the house from Piccadilly.

Ere I recognised that it was the man for whom I was watching, he had ascended the steps.

In an instant I had dashed along the railings to the nearest gate in an endeavour to prevent him from entering. But unfortunately, before I could gain the house, he had been admitted. Isaac Blumfeld was evidently at home to him.

I hailed a passing taxi, and within five minutes had told Madame. She started, put on her hat and coat hurriedly, and sped round to Park Lane.

When she returned half-an-hour or so later, I found her in her boudoir white as death and trembling in every limb.

“Madame is unwell!” I cried in alarm. “May I telephone for the doctor?”

“No, Mariette,” she responded in a low, hard voice, and as she turned to me I saw that she had strangely altered. Her countenance bore a haunted, haggard look, and she seemed greatly agitated. “No, there is no necessity. All the doctors in the world can—can be of no avail!”

“But cannot I assist Madame?” I urged in alarm. “Let me order something.”

“No. I—I want no dinner. I’ll go to my room,” and with uneven steps she walked along to her dressing-room, where I divested her of coat and hat, and soon she was lying upon the couch in her pretty pink kimono.

Ma foi! What could have happened!

I sat with her all that evening, but she hardly spoke a dozen words; she lay with her eyes fixed upon the fire in thoughtful silence.

About eleven o’clock, just as I had taken in a cup of hot milk to her as usual, Monsieur, who had returned, burst in, crying—

“I say, Lucy! A most terrible thing has happened. Carr, the news-editor, has just rung up to tell me that poor old Blumfeld has been found dead in his library! The butler was speaking with him just after six, but at half-past he went in again with a telegram, and found him dead on the floor—shot. The curious feature of the affair was that Blumfeld is said to have received a mysterious visitor by appointment, and opened the door to this unknown person himself. The police suspect murder.”

Madame sat open-mouthed, a deathlike pallor upon her cheeks. For a second her startled eyes met mine, then she sat rigid, staring straight at her unsuspecting husband.

“Murder!” she echoed. “They suspect!”

“Yes; awful, isn’t it? He was such a good old sort, too. I suppose I’ll have to go to the funeral.”

And then Monsieur hurried back to the library, where several callers awaited him.

Madame, rising, staggered across to the door and turned the key.

Then she said in a hoarse whisper—

“Mariette, you—you alone saw Mr. Carew enter there. While your lips remain closed he is safe!”

“Madame need have no apprehension,” I replied. “I have already forgotten all that I saw.”

“And you will continue to assist me?” she asked eagerly. “Ah! you do not know how strange are the facts, or how great the sacrifice.”

“Madame has but to command. I am her servant,” was my brief response.

She reflected a moment, then rose and passed into her bedroom. Five minutes later she returned with a sealed note, saying—

“Take this at once to Mr. Carew. You know where he lives—in Carlos Place. Give it into his own hand. If he is not at home, wait until he returns.”

Twenty minutes later I rang at the door of the rooms of Madame’s admirer. I was invited by his man into an ideal bachelor’s abode, a book-lined room, which smelt strongly of cigars, and where the pictures and photographs were mostly of my own sex—some, perhaps, a little risky.

Presently Monsieur came in, his face almost transparent in its paleness, and starting in surprise at finding a visitor. Next second he smiled pleasantly when I explained who I was, and taking Madame’s note he broke it open and eagerly read it.

His brows contracted, and he bit his lip.

“Your mistress says that we can trust you implicitly,” he said, as he closed the door and looked straight at me. He had fine dark eyes, and was très gentil.

“Oui, m’sieur.”

“A certain—well—a certain unfortunate affair will be in the papers to-morrow,” he said hesitatingly in a hard, strained voice. “Some inquiries may be made. Possibly they will be awkward ones, mademoiselle. If the truth became known it would not only mean ruin to your mistress and to myself, but there would be exposed a great secret which, at all hazards, must be kept. I want to speak quite frankly, so that you may realise the true seriousness of the situation. With a word I could clear up the whole matter, but by doing so that secret—a great and most important one—would become revealed. The irony of the whole thing is that your master is seeking to learn that secret, to publish it in his paper and create a sensation through the country. He little dreams that he is working in direct opposition to your mistress, who, for the preservation of her own honour, must, of necessity, prevent the truth from becoming known.”

“But what is the secret, m’sieur?” I inquired eagerly.

“Ah! That, I regret to say, I am not permitted to divulge. Sufficient for you to know that your mistress and I have united to safeguard it. Yet, by our joint action, many evil-disposed persons will probably scent scandal.”

Madame had spoken of a sacrifice. Had this young man sacrificed himself for her sake? Vraiment! The mystery of it all became very puzzling.

“Your mistress was in peril—a deadly peril,” he added slowly, “—until this evening. The danger has now been removed.”

“By the death of Isaac Blumfeld,” I said, in a low meaning whisper.

He nodded gravely, but no word escaped his pursed-up lips.

“Mariette,” he said at last, “you are loyal to your mistress, and are prepared to help her—are you not?”

“Certainly, m’sieur.”

“To assist her, you must also assist me,” he declared quickly, in a voice that betrayed eagerness and apprehension. “If there are any inquiries, Mariette, will you be prepared to declare that from half-past five o’clock till seven this evening you were here in my rooms with me?”

“M’sieur!” I cried, with indignation.

“I know it is much to ask of you,” he said, très sérieux. “I am asking you to condemn yourself in order—well, to—to save me!”

“To save m’sieur!” I echoed, pretending not to understand.

“Yes, yes,” he cried quickly. He seemed very nervous and unstrung. “Later on you shall know everything. For the present I only desire to be assured that I may rely upon you to prove that I was at home here between half-past five and seven.”

“But I returned to Grosvenor Street before half-past six.”

“Who saw you?”

“Only Madame. I remained in her room while she went out for half-an-hour—round to Monsieur Blumfeld’s.”

“To Blumfeld’s!” he cried, starting quickly. “Did your mistress go round to Park Lane after six o’clock?” he demanded in amazement.

“Certainly she did.”

He sank back in his arm-chair with a deep sigh, covering his face with both his hands.

“Then she knows—she—she suspects?” he asked of me suddenly, regarding me with a strange expression.

“Suspects what?”

“That Isaac Blumfeld——”

“I know nothing, m’sieur,” I declared. “Nothing,” I protested.

“Ah, yes, Mariette,” he said very earnestly, with an attempt to smile, “you are diplomatic. You know nothing—good—and you will stand my friend—and Madame’s friend also, will you not?” he added appealingly, holding forth his hand.

I was silent. Truly I had been drawn into a pretty complication. My word could save an assassin! Pensez à ça!

His hand was stretched towards me, but I shrank from taking it.

I merely replied that, in order to shield Madame from any unpleasantness, I was willing to do as he requested.

By this he became at once reassured. He poured out a glass of wine and insisted that I should drink it, while he swallowed a liqueur-glass of cognac to steady his nerves.

“I shall not write to your mistress,” he said. “Letters are always dangerous. Tell her that I shall lunch at the Berkeley to-morrow, and ask her to meet me there by accident. Tell her that I acted as I promised. She will understand.”

Then, with reiterated expressions of thanks, and confidence in my judgment, he wished me a laughing bon soir, and bowed me out.

Malheureusement, next day in the papers I read of the discovery of the mysterious murder of Isaac Blumfeld, and the search for the missing visitor suspected of the crime. Just before six, it appeared, the great financier had told the butler that he expected a visitor, and would open the door himself. This was not unusual, for the deceased, like other financiers, had been in the habit of receiving strange people in strictest secrecy—people who were supposed to furnish him with confidential information—and the library being close to the front door, these persons arrived and departed without being seen by the servants.

The tragic affair was shrouded in mystery, and, as such, was made the most of by the Press.

Madame put on a smart walking-gown and her sables and went forth to the Berkeley about one o’clock, not returning till half-past three. Afterwards, when we were alone in the boudoir, she said—

“Mariette, Mr. Carew has told me of your generous promise. You do not know what great assistance you are now rendering us. You will be well rewarded—never fear.”

“I look for no reward,” I replied. “I know Madame is very unhappy, and it is surely my duty to help her.”

“Hardly your duty to be ready even to lie to save a man for whom you have no affection,” she remarked kindly.

“For Madame’s sake,” I said simply.

Autre chose. I could only put the crime down as being due to jealousy. To me, it now seemed plain that Monsieur Carew had made a secret appointment with Blumfeld, and that Madame had, by some means, learnt of it. The two men had quarrelled, and the younger had raised his weapon and fired.

If not, why did Monsieur Carew so earnestly beseech of me to tarnish my own reputation by clearing him of suspicion?

Ah! quel monde! An anxious week went by. The coroner’s jury had returned a verdict of “Wilful murder against some person unknown,” and the dead man had been buried, Monsieur following at the funeral.

One night three weeks later Monsieur Carew came to dine at Grosvenor Street, and Madame’s husband seemed particularly cordial.

When they returned to the library to smoke, I went down at Madame’s suggestion and listened eagerly at the door.

After some desultory conversation, I heard Monsieur exclaim in a persuasive way—

“My dear Carew, you know the truth. You could easily get me a copy of those documents. I’d make it well worth your while.”

“Thanks, but I’m not so desperately hard-up as I was a little time ago. I got two or three rather good tips on the Stock Exchange.”

“Glad to hear it; nevertheless, I’m very anxious, you know, to publish the whole thing. It would create such a scandal that our political opponents would be ruined and crushed. It would turn the elections in our favour.”

“And I’m afraid you would be ruined also, while at Downing Street they would know that I had betrayed them.”

“Ruined! How?”

“Well, among the official correspondence there unfortunately is a report from one of the embassies concerning certain heavy subsidies paid to your journal by a foreign power, in consideration that you foster the belief that the country is perfectly safe from attack—rather damaging, in face of the belief in your unwavering patriotism.”

“Good heavens!—but how do you know this?” gasped Monsieur, alarmed.

“The papers have been through my hands, and——”

“Come, Carew, now out with it, man! I see by your face there’s something wrong. Tell me the truth, and let me face the music. Who knows this beside yourself?”

“An enemy knew—but, fortunately, you have been saved.”

“Saved! Who saved me?” he cried.

“Ask your wife to come here. If she permits, then I will speak.”

I heard the bell ring, so I slipped away.

Presently I caught the frou-frou of Madame’s skirts as she passed along the hall, and next moment I was again listening at the door.

“Yes, Frank—speak, if you like,” I heard her say in a low, hoarse voice quite unusual to her.

“Then simply this, Otway,” explained the young man. “Your wife, I believe, lost heavily at bridge at Lady Staverton’s a few weeks ago, and that old scoundrel Blumfeld offered to lend her the money to pay. She accepted, rather than admit to you she had been gambling. I, too, was hard up, and a month ago, I’m sorry to confess, sold to Blumfeld for a big price a copy of that secret treaty you want, together with all the correspondence.”

Whereupon Madame interrupted.

“With the letters he threatened me,” I heard her declare. “He vowed that if I refused to meet him in secret he would publish the whole of the official correspondence, and ruin you, Jack! He had lent me money, and I had fallen entirely into his power.”

“Well?” asked Monsieur hoarsely.

“I defied him, and I told Frank, who—who came forward as my friend.”

“Your friend—my enemy, eh?” snarled Monsieur.

“Perhaps, Otway, I had better reveal the truth—make a clean breast of it,” exclaimed the young man. “When your wife told me the use to which the secret information was to be put I was horrified. I thought he only wanted it for financial reasons. Therefore I made an appointment to see the fellow in secret, and came from Paris for that purpose. Your wife knew I was coming. The fellow opened the door to me, and I, having raised all the ready money I possibly could, endeavoured to buy back the copy of the treaty and the correspondence. But unfortunately he would not part with them. I failed, and so after a quarter of an hour, I left.”

“Listen,” I heard Madame again interrupt. “On that evening I also had an appointment with the man who intended to crush and ruin us both, Jack,” she said. “He watched me as I passed his window, and opened the door to me. Alone in his room, for Frank had gone, I begged him to have pity upon me, and give me back those incriminating papers. He had them spread before me upon his table, and answered brutally that as I had refused to meet him in secret he should, that same night, hand them over to an opposition newspaper. He—he seized me by the wrist, and tried to kiss me. In desperation I drew your revolver, which I had taken with me, and threatened to shoot myself. He tried to get possession of it, but—I—I struggled—and—and in the struggle, Jack—it went off! In horror, I saw him stagger back and sink to the floor—dead! I hardly know what I did next, save that I seized the papers lying upon his table, and stole noiselessly out. No one saw me enter; no one saw me leave! And—and no one knows the truth!”

Both men uttered cries of dismay. It was evident that Monsieur Carew was quite as much astounded at the confession as was her husband.

“And does no one suspect you, Lucy?” asked Monsieur in a low, strained voice.

“Nobody—except, perhaps, Mariette. I was compelled to take her into my confidence.”

“Then we must not take any risks. Mariette must be paid well and dismissed,” Monsieur said in a decisive tone. “If she remained, it would constantly remind us both of the very ugly affair. To-morrow I shall give her a little present of a hundred pounds.”

Eh bien! And this Monsieur did, in Madame’s presence, after breakfast on the following morning.

Pou!—Pou!!—Pou!!! Mort aux Juifs!

CHAPTER IV

THE NOAH’S ARK

FEBRUARY 16TH

Ecoutez! I will tell you another little histoire.

Madame was ultra-chic and très intelligente.

As I stood for inspection before her in her private sitting-room at the Savoy Hotel in London, I noted that she was but little more than thirty, with clean-cut features, wide-open, fearless eyes, dark brows and lashes, pretty bronze hair, a straight nose slightly retroussé at the tip, a firm mouth, but still kissable, and rather prominent rounded chin—une jolie figure, une jolie taille.

She was dressed in a well-cut, tailor-made gown of cinnamon brown, and as she looked at me she struck me as a femme du monde of strong independent spirit, determined to go her own way, and have a good time.

Mrs. Ashley-Bond was her name. Not until after she had seen me and engaged me at the bureau de placement, did I discover, to my joy, that Madame had let her house somewhere in North Devon—and she and her husband lived always in hotels, travelling hither and thither.

“You are used to travelling, you say?” Madame asked, as she concluded her inspection. “We are on the Continent about six months in the year, and spend each season in London.”

“Oui, Madame. I have travelled a great deal. I went to India and Australia with Madame Henshaw, an American lady. I gave you her testimonial.”

“Perfectly satisfactory,” she replied. “But, Mariette, what I want to impress upon you from the very first is that I forbid all flirtations. Constantly moving as we do, I know quite well that a smart French girl like yourself must have many admirers in the housekeeper’s room. You will be proof against all flattery, I sincerely hope.”

“I have had sufficient experience, Madame. I am fully able to take care of myself,” was my rather dignified reply.

“Then I hope I shall never have occasion to utter reproof,” she said. “My husband is just now in Germany. He will join me next week.”

And then I entered upon my duties.

From the first I realised that Madame was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan. She spoke French and German fairly well, and by the labels with which her luggage was plastered, it was plain that they stopped at only first-class hotels. They had evidently wandered from Lisbon across to Budapest, and from Constantinople up to Stockholm.

Vraiment I had secured just the situation for which I had been longing!

If a mistress never travels and never goes to country-houses, then the life of her femme-de-chambre soon becomes unbearable. My ideal life is Monte Carlo in spring, London in the season, Aix afterwards, a short spell in Paris, Trouville in July, then Scotland, and Paris for Christmas, and this apparently was just the kind of nomad existence led by the Ashley-Bonds.

We occupied one of the most expensive suites in the Savoy, and on the first day I was with Madame I saw a bill of Shepherd’s in Cairo for four thousand francs. Ma foi, there was no lack of money. They practically rolled in it!

Madame had many friends, both in the hotel and out of it. She was very intimate with a lady staying in the hotel, a Madame Courtenay, who had a suite on the same floor. She was rather older, very dark, slightly given to stoutness and of Hebrew type, yet of quite good style. But her husband was a short, podgy, round-faced man with a pair of sharp black eyes and a turned-up moustache.

Each evening I dressed my mistress in a different toilette, and she went out to dine, or to the theatre, usually returning to take supper in the gay restaurant with Monsieur and Madame Courtenay.

As the days went by I realised that between my mistress and Madame Courtenay a very close friendship existed. She was ever closeted in Madame’s room, and often their conversation was in an undertone so that I should not overhear.

Madame usually spoke with me in French. It kept her in practice, she said. She had imbibed all the true chic of the Parisienne, and by living so much on the Continent she knew and used all the most fashionable perfumes and adjuncts to the toilette. Quickly I realised that I could tell her little that she did not know. Her hats were mostly from Lewis, in Monte Carlo, and her demi-toilettes from Sert Migno, in Nice. She knew the Riviera as well as I did, and she wore her gowns perfectly.

No woman in the restaurant of the Savoy had greater success than she, for each evening when after supper she went forth into the lounge to enjoy her cigarette with Madame Courtenay, all eyes were upon her. Her figure was superb; her smartness unequalled.

Unlike most of les Anglaises I have served, she possessed a keen sense of humour, and frequently she made me laugh. Yet somehow her friendship with Madame Courtenay struck me as curious, even suspicious. Tiens! I do not know the reason, but I had a very strong feeling that Madame’s friend and her husband were not exactly what they represented themselves to be.

Perhaps it was because one afternoon, when out for a walk in Oxford Street, I came across Madame Courtenay talking earnestly with a low type of foreigner, who looked suspiciously like a second-class hotel servant out of employment. She did not see me, and I was careful to escape observation. Yet when she returned to the hotel she rushed in at once to Madame, and for some time conversed with her in whispers. Extraordinaire? Ah! oui.

Monsieur returned from Berlin next day.

Un bel type, about forty—of military appearance, alert, well-set-up, smart, with a heavy fair moustache.

Among the men in the hotel, and especially with the cosmopolitan crowd in the American bar, he was highly popular. Without doubt he was a gentleman, full of genuine bonhomie. Yet, though a week passed, he never once went out with Madame.

She always went forth alone, or with her friend Madame Courtenay.

My master and Monsieur Courtenay seemed bosom friends. They went about together, often out to Hounslow, in the suburbs, and each day lunching or dining with men whose acquaintance they formed casually. What Monsieur’s business was, if he had one, I failed to discover.

One afternoon, however, Madame gave me a surprise. She had been out to luncheon, and on returning met Monsieur in the hall. He had been awaiting her. They had a hurried conversation, and then Madame and I ascended together in the lift. On gaining her room Madame Courtenay was there. They spoke together quickly and excitedly. Then I was called in, and Madame said—

“Mariette, we are going abroad. To-night you must leave Liverpool Street by the Harwich route for Basle, and go on to Milan. You will take my two big trunks—go to the Hôtel de Milan and await us there.”

“Oui, Madame.”

And then she set about her packing in frantic haste, being assisted by Madame Courtenay.

Bon Dieu! Had something happened? In a quarter of an hour Monsieur burst into the room and swallowed a glass of brandy. Then he gave me two ten-pound notes for my expenses, saying—

“Look here, Mariette, I’m doing some very important financial business, and I don’t want the people in Italy to know who I really am. So when we arrive, I shall be Captain Hugh Atherton, and my wife will be Lady Hylda Atherton, daughter of the Earl of Ilfracombe. You understand—eh? You’re a good girl, and you know how to keep a still tongue, I believe. You can take one of your mistress’s trunks with you, and one of my kit-bags.”

“I am in Madame’s service. Is it not my duty to be silent?” I said.

Mystère! Why did I not travel with Madame? I was her maid. Why was I sent by a roundabout route? Did they intend to escape from the hotel in secret?

And yet it is not the duty of a femme-de-chambre to question the motives of master or mistress. So I simply packed, and soon after eight o’clock that evening left for Liverpool Street Station in a cab.

The North Sea was at its worst, and the crossing from Harwich was affreux. Heureusement, I never suffer from mal-de-mer, nevertheless, I was glad to enter the Basle express at Brussels, and throughout the next day and night travelled by Strasburg into Switzerland. From Basle I went on to Lucerne, and after dinner at the big buffet proceeded, by the winding Gotthard, down to noisy Milan.

Milano! Ugh! Abominable! Tramways, dust, and ogling young men with six sous in their pockets. The city is the most vulgar in all Europe.

According to instructions I engaged an expensive suite of rooms, and four days after my arrival Monsieur and Madame came in great style. Their personal appearance was so much altered that I stood aghast. Monsieur was now clean-shaven, and wore gold-rimmed pince-nez, while Madame had lost her chic, and presented the usual appearance of the blouse-and-skirt tourist.

Tourists! Bon Dieu! Have we not all met them! They carry two blouses only, and wash their linen in the bath-rooms. En pension by coupon!

The title of my mistress, combined with the remarks I had let drop in the housekeeper’s room, caused the management to treat them with greatest deference.

This sudden transformation of my master and mistress greatly puzzled me. Had I met them in the street I probably should not have recognised them. One thing, however, seemed clear, that they had for some very urgent reason escaped from England.

Full of natural curiosity I wrote to a chauffeur at the Savoy whose acquaintance I had made, and from him received a reply saying that as far as he could discover, there was nothing wrong. Mr. Ashley-Bond had simply come down one evening, paid his bill, and within a quarter of an hour had, with his wife, left the hotel.

Our rooms overlooked the busy Via Alessandro Manzoni, close to the shabby but renowned La Scala, and Madame spent many hours reading at the window, while Monsieur was absent the greater part of each day.

“I expect you regard it as strange why my husband and I have so altered our appearance, Mariette,” Madame exclaimed one evening, while I was brushing out her hair. “The fact is, a year ago I married without my father’s consent. He does not know I am married, for he believes me still to be in America with my aunt. But we fear that a detective he has employed is now searching for us, and if he finds us, then he will, no doubt, cut me out of his will. He is an invalid, and the doctors have only given him six months longer to live.”

“But your aunt, will she not say that you are missing?” I suggested.

“Of course she will not. I have arranged with her. I left her in New York, and crossed to California. Thence I went to Japan, and in Hong Kong joined my husband. We were married there in assumed names, and for over a year have been hunted from place to place. My aunt pretends that I am down in Mexico, travelling with some friends, but we have reason to believe that my father suspects the truth. If it is confirmed by this private inquiry agent, then it means that the fortune I should inherit will go to charity.”

I nodded, in pretence of believing the romantic story. It hardly coincided with what she had told me regarding the house in Devonshire.

If you know Milan, you of course know Biffi’s great café in the Galleria Mazzini, that huge glass-roofed arcade which is one of the finest in the world. It was at Biffi’s where Monsieur seemed to spend his days idling over cigarettes and vermouth in company with several rather elegant young Italians.

More than once when out on errands for Madame to Bocconi’s, the great emporium in the Piazza, I had passed the café and seen him seated there with his newly-found friends.

Three weeks passed, and I noticed that Madame was daily becoming more anxious. She went sometimes with Monsieur to the Lirico, the Manzoni, or the Teatro dal Verme, but in the day-time she had her meals in private and scarcely ever went out. She seemed to grow strangely nervous and apprehensive, and consumed innumerable cigarettes. Tant pis.

One afternoon, while I sat tacking in some lace in Madame’s gown, there came a knock at the door, and to my surprise there entered an elderly, rather shabbily-dressed, woman, who, next moment, I recognised as Madame Courtenay.

Her appearance, too, had been completely altered!

The two ladies greeted each other with great enthusiasm, and then I was sent from the room. I crept back and listened outside.

All I heard was much excited whispering.

And presently I learnt that Madame Courtenay, without her husband, had taken up her abode at the Métropole, in the Piazza del Duomo.

Extraordinaire! There was something in the wind, but what I could not discover.

Madame and her friend became inseparable. Once, when I entered the room suddenly, Madame Courtenay had a large, square, official-looking envelope in her hand, which she quickly hid from my gaze. Pourquoi?

Two evenings each week I was allowed out, and upon one occasion after we had been there nearly three weeks, an exciting incident occurred.

I was alighting from a tram in front of the cathedral, when a man snatched my little bag-purse. In a moment a rather well-dressed man, who had been my fellow-passenger, dashed after the thief, who dropped the bag and managed to escape. The gentleman picked up my bag, and returned it to me, when, to my surprise, I found he was French.

He began to chat, and as he was going in the same direction, walked at my side.

He was a pleasant man, about forty-five, with a dark, pointed beard, and of distinctly commercial appearance. Indeed, he told me that his name was Pégard, and that he was traveller for a Lyons firm of silk-manufacturers and that he came to Milan once each year. In reply, I explained my position, and what had brought me to Italy. After a pleasant walk up the broad Corso Venezia, we suddenly encountered Monsieur, who passed without recognising me. I said nothing, for I was glad to have thus escaped. Presently, it being time for my return, we retraced our steps to a snug little café behind the Arcade, and there Monsieur Pégard would insist upon me taking a grenadine.

While we sat together he asked me many questions concerning Monsieur and Madame, how long I had been in their service, by what route did I come to Italy, and why we were there in Milan. He seemed strangely inquisitive, but I replied to the best of my knowledge, although somehow he hesitated to believe me.

“Mam’zelle will meet me again to-morrow—eh?” he asked at last. “Come, I will take no refusal.”

“Mais non! I shall not be out to-morrow, m’sieur.”

“Then the day after to-morrow—under Bocconi’s portico at seven o’clock,” he urged.

So with some little reluctance I promised. He was refined, très gentil—so unlike the valets and hotel servants whom I so constantly met.

Yet as I walked alone back to the hotel, I reflected that some of the leading questions he had put to me were rather curious ones. They seemed to betray an even greater knowledge of Monsieur and Madame than I myself possessed!

On entering Madame’s room I found all in disorder. She and Monsieur were busy packing—cramming everything into the trunks, without troubling to fold them.

“Pack your box quickly, Mariette,” Madame said. “We have only forty minutes for the train!”

In surprise I obeyed, and ere long we were all three in a cab on our way to the station.

I was in the train, travelling first-class with them, ere I knew our destination. It was Rome.

Through all that night and greater part of next day we went by way of Bologna to Florence. There, instead of proceeding south to the Eternal City, we alighted, and crossing the city took a slow train across the Apennines to Faenza and old-world Rimini on the Adriatic, where we put up at an ancient and uncomfortable place called the Aquila Nero.

“By Jove, Dolly!” I heard Monsieur say to Madame on the night of our arrival, “we had a narrow squeak. It was fortunate I met Mariette. I wonder what questions he asked her?”

“Better say nothing,” Madame said. “We’re safe. Surely that’s sufficient. Maud got away all right. She’s in Venice long ago. After the little business there she’ll nip over to Trieste, or to Abbazia.”

“Where’s Ted?”

“Oh, he’ll keep away from her. He’s waiting in Bordeaux to hear from us. I’ll wire him in a couple of days.”

Eh bien! I was not mistaken. Evidemment the pleasant Monsieur Pégard was an agent of the sûreté! The little attempt to rob me had, no doubt, been arranged in order that he might make my acquaintance. I recollected with what consummate ingenuity he had questioned me.

We remained in Rimini for two days to rest, then proceeded by that long slow line of railway which runs the whole length of Italy by the Adriatic shore through Ancona to Brindisi. There we remained for another day’s rest, and Monsieur visited the bank; then on across to Reggio. Thence we crossed the beautiful straits to Messina, scene of the recent earthquake, on and on, still beside the sea, until at last we found ourselves established in one of the most delightful hotels in all Europe, the Villa Igiea, the broad terrace of which is lapped by the waves of the bright-blue bay of Palermo.

On the evening of our taking up our quarters there, while Monsieur and Madame were below dining in the restaurant, I found the stout leather kit-bag of Monsieur unlocked—the one I conveyed from London to Milan. So I opened it and peered within.

A suit of pink pyjamas lay on top, with a folded dressing-gown, but when I drew them aside I started and held my breath.

The sight that met my eyes staggered me.

The bag was filled with large neat bundles of English, French and Italian bank-notes. In that unlocked bag were hundreds of thousands of francs—wealth enormous, such as I had never before gazed upon.

Surely it was gross carelessness to leave open in a hotel such a vast fortune.

I took out one packet of English notes. They were fully two hundred, each for ten pounds. Another packet was of French notes of cinq-cent francs. Mon Dieu! It was pleasant to feel them between one’s fingers!

Then, hearing a footstep, I reclosed the bag, and descended to have my dinner, preferring not to remain alone there and court suspicion of having discovered what that precious valise contained.

How foolish Monsieur was! He always allowed it to travel with the other baggage!

When I returned, I found both Madame and Monsieur in the room. He had evidently discovered that the bag had been left unlocked, for as I entered his keys were in his hand.

They had both considerably altered their appearance since we had left Milan, and on the following morning, as I stood at my window gazing out upon the beautiful flower-adorned terrace with its roses and oranges and the bright sunlit sea beyond, I fell to wondering why the Ashley-Bonds carried their wealth about with them in that way instead of depositing it in some bank.

Ah! ma foi! Life in Palermo La Felice, so called on account of its delightful climate, was very agreeable. It was the height of the winter season in Sicily, and as the Villa Igiea is the centre of gaiety the days passed pleasantly enough.

Madame had resumed her smartness, and wore some of her most chic toilettes at the evening concerts and dances, which were constantly being given at one or other of the best hotels.

In the housekeeper’s room we were also a gay crowd, for few second-rate servants find themselves at the Villa Igiea.

Each afternoon I was allowed out for a couple of hours, and generally spent the time walking about the handsome streets with one or other of the maids.

About ten days after our arrival I chanced to be passing along the busy Corso Vittorio, when I saw Madame seated in an open cab outside the Banca d’Italia. She was extremely well dressed, and was in the act of acknowledging the salutes of two cavalry officers who were passing, and whose acquaintance she had made at the dance on the previous evening.

Being accompanied by a young English chauffeur from the hotel, I drew back and looked into a shop window in order not to pass her.

A few seconds later Monsieur emerged from the bank, entered the cab, and the vehicle drove on. The incident would have passed at once from my mind had not I, an hour later, seen Madame, still seated in the cab, before the door of the Banca Commerciale in the Via Materassi. Again Monsieur came forth, smiling happily, and again the cab drove on, stopping again at a small private bank close to the busy cross-ways known as the Quattro Canti.

It appeared as though Monsieur must be experiencing some difficulty with his banking business.

Indeed, on the following afternoon, they visited the Bank of Sicily, for I overheard Madame refer to it on their return about four o’clock.

No further word had been spoken regarding the flight from Milan, yet apprehensions of the mysterious Pégard often arose within me. Monsieur had now, I believed, deposited all his money in one or other of the banks, for the kit-bag lay open and empty.

That evening Madame took great trouble with her hair and put on her turquoise gown, one of Doeuillet’s latest creations, for there was a smart dance at the Prefecture, and she and Monsieur had been invited. She took a nip of eau de Carmes, and was in excellent spirits, laughing and chatting the whole time I had been putting the ribbons in her lingerie. I had been powdering her neck and arms, and after giving a final touch to the laces upon the bodice, it being the first time the gown had been worn, I stepped back to admire the effect.

“C’est ça! Madame will be the best-dressed lady to-night,” I declared. “This model has never yet been seen in Palermo.”

She smiled, being fond of a little flattery.

“Yes, Mariette, I want to be noticed by other women. It pleases me.”

I had noticed with much amusement how, because of her title of “milady,” all the English visitors at the hotel buzzed about her. Indeed, she herself had been laughing over it not half-an-hour before.

“And now, Mariette,” she said, suddenly growing serious, after admiring herself in the glass, “listen. I want you to go on an important message for me. You must leave by to-night’s boat for Naples. It sails at eleven o’clock. You do not object to travelling?”

“To Naples, Madame!” I echoed.

“Yes. You will be there early to-morrow morning,” she said. “You know our friend Mr. Courtenay—you saw him often at the Savoy?”

“Parfaitement, Madame.”

“Then go to Naples, and thence take the train to Genoa. You will find him awaiting you at the Hôtel de Londres, opposite the station. I have a parcel I wish you to deliver to him.”

She passed into the adjoining room, which was occupied by Monsieur, and a few seconds later returned with a brown-paper parcel about half a metre long and a quarter deep. As I took it I found it contained something rather heavy, and by its feel was packed in straw.

“It will not break easily,” she remarked. “But be very careful of it. You can place it in your trunk among your clothes.”

“Then I am to take my trunk?”

“Yes; we shall remain here a few days longer, then we shall come on to Genoa. You will await us there, at the Londres.”

“Bien, Madame.”

At that instant Monsieur entered, and I thought I detected meaning glances exchanged between the pair.

Monsieur handed me three hundred francs in Italian notes to pay my expenses, and then wishing me bon voyage, the pair descended in the lift as they were dining at the Hôtel des Palmes before going on to the Prefecture.

In preference to placing the parcel in my trunk, I found it would just go into my small black bag in which I generally take a few necessaries for the night when travelling. Wherefore, just before ten, having packed all my belongings, I drove down to the pier and went on board the Navagazione Generale steamer which sails nightly for Naples, and as I stood on deck I was soon afterwards watching the myriad lights of Palermo disappearing at the stern.

Half-an-hour later, however, it blew bitterly cold, therefore I went below to my cabin, and took out the parcel in order to get at what I had in my bag.

As it lay upon my narrow berth I became seized by sudden curiosity as to what it might contain. That there was a straw wrapping was plain—and it was rather solid, like earthenware.

At last, however, I could not resist the temptation to look within; therefore I carefully untied the string, and, opening it with great caution, made an amazing discovery.

It was a child’s Noah’s Ark, apparently of tin or sheet-iron. The roof was painted vermilion, the sides white, with one small black window. Yet it was closed in such a manner that I could discover no opening—a puzzle sans doute.

Another mystery! For a full hour I sat examining it closely, but by no means could I find the hidden spring, if one there was. It was, no doubt, of German or Swiss make, for it differed in no other particular from the thousands I had seen in shop windows, save that it was of iron, instead of wood.

Vraiment, a strange present to send to a man!

With great care I replaced it in its straw wrappings, and tied it up just as neatly as it had been when given to me. Then, pondering deeply, I wrapped my head in a shawl and turned in, merely loosening my corsets.

As we went farther out the sea became more rough, until we were rolling heavily, as is always the case on that mail route.

About seven o’clock we passed Capri, rising like a jewel from the soft grey effect of sky and sea, while an hour later I landed at Naples and drove at once to the station, whence the express for Rome was about to start.

In the buffet I swallowed my café-au-lait, and very soon was seated alone in a second-class compartment on my way northward.

A four-day-old copy of the Matin was the only French paper I had been able to buy, and I had very soon read it from end to end. Then, my eyes falling upon my black bag on the seat before me, I sat plunged for a long time in deep reflection.

At dawn on the following day, fagged out and dishevelled, I alighted at the great bustling station at Genoa, and followed my luggage upon a barrow across the piazza, past the great white statue of Christopher Columbus, to the Hôtel de Londres.

Having secured a room, I inquired if Monsieur Courtenay were there, but received a negative reply. No visitor of that name was known.

So I ascended to my room, made myself presentable, and waited. I had been in Genoa twice before, therefore the town possessed no attractions for me. With the exception of those in the Via Roma, there are few shops of interest.

On the afternoon of the second day, however, as I was crossing the pretty garden in the Piazza Corvetto, a man, who presented the appearance of an Italian workman, raised his cap to me and halted.

I started, for next moment, to my surprise, I recognised our friend of the Savoy Hotel, the Monsieur whom I was in Genoa to meet.

“Ah! Mariette,” he laughed. “I see you would have passed me by unnoticed—eh?”

“I certainly would, m’sieur,” was my frank reply. “I have been awaiting you at the Hôtel de Londres. I have a packet which I have brought from Palermo.”

“Good,” he said. “I only arrived here this morning from Turin. I prefer not to go to your hotel in these clothes. How did you leave your master and mistress?”

“They were quite well,” I replied.

“They are in Tunis. I had a telegram from them to-day at the Poste Restante.”

“In Tunis?” I cried, greatly surprised.

“Yes. They are going from there to Algiers, and will cross to Marseilles. In the telegram they say they wish you to go to Marseilles and there await them next week at the Hôtel Louvre et Paix. As for the parcel, you had better bring it out to me. I will wait for you, say under the portico of the church of the Annunziata—you know—at this end of the Via Balbi.”

“Certainement, m’sieur. At what time?”

“In an hour—at five o’clock,” he said. And as I looked at him I could not help expressing admiration of the perfect picture of the average Italian workman he presented. I recollected, however, that he spoke Italian wonderfully well.

But why, I wondered—why all that precaution and mystery? In ordinary life Monsieur Courtenay was most elegant, even dandified.

I inquired after Madame, and he told me she was back in London, staying at the Waldorf Hotel.

“I, too, shall return to London to-night,” he added.

“Not in those clothes!” I said, whereupon he laughed heartily, and we parted.

At five o’clock we met again at the spot appointed. He was then dressed differently, in a dark blue suit and soft grey hat of the approved British tourist pattern.

I gave him the precious parcel containing the mysterious Noah’s Ark, and after thanking me he hurried off down the Via Balbi, in the direction of the railway station. It was also my way, but as he did not invite me to accompany him I sauntered on after him, wondering what that Noah’s Ark could contain. Quel drôle de type!

Next morning, in accordance with my instructions, I left Genoa for Marseilles, there to await Madame.

Oh, mon Dieu! What a railway! One hundred and fifty tunnels between San Pier d’Arena and the frontier at Ventimiglia. Then a glorious run along the Côte d’Azur, past Mentone, Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes, under the Estrelles, and out at last to Marseilles, the Liverpool of France.

On arrival on the Monday I was handed a letter from Madame, telling me to wait there, as she and Monsieur would arrive next Saturday.

Next morning, having been for a stroll up that lively thoroughfare of handsome shops, the Cannebière, I returned to the big Hôtel Louvre et Paix—where half the visitors were English from the arriving mail-boats from India—and ascended in the lift.

Hardly had I entered my room when there came a tap at the door, and on opening it I was confronted by two rather meanly-dressed men, one of whom explained that he was an officer of the brigade mobile of police, and that I must consider myself under arrest.

Diable! Imagine my feelings! I protested in violent indignation; but, nevertheless, I was quietly driven to the dépôt, where, on being ushered into the bureau of the chief of police, I was amazed to find my friend, Monsieur Pégard, the commercial traveller from Lyons.

“Well, mam’zelle!” he laughed, as I was given a seat. “I’m very sorry to have given you a fright like this. I’ve only had you brought here to ask you just a few questions. If you are honest in your replies you may afterwards go.”

“But, m’sieur!” I cried, “why am I brought here?”

“Have patience, and you shall know,” he said. Then he put a great number of questions to me concerning the recent movements of Monsieur and Madame, who, he added, had slipped through his fingers in Milan.

“Where have you been recently?” he inquired.

I told him how I had been sent from Palermo to Genoa in order to meet Monsieur Courtenay, and deliver to him a parcel.

“Did you know what it contained?” asked the agent of the sûreté.

“A curious present—a Noah’s Ark?”

“And what was within?”

I declared my ignorance.

“Well, the fact is,” he said, “I arrested the Englishman at the frontier at Modane two days ago, and he fortunately had the Noah’s Ark in his possession. On opening it I found one hundred and seventy thousand francs in French and Italian bank-notes.”

“Eh, bien?”

“The truth is, mam’zelle,” he said, “we are extremely anxious to find your master and mistress, who are wanted by half the police of Europe.”

“Wanted,” I gasped. “What for?”

“Monsieur Ashley-Bond—or Captain Atherton, as he calls himself—is an expert forger of ten-pound Bank of England notes, one of the most expert we know. The London police have discovered the house in Hounslow, near London, where great quantities of spurious notes have been manufactured by him. Their mode of operating was to print a large number, and distribute them to the Courtenays and two other persons, and then, taking some themselves, they would set out across Europe, visiting various banks and money-changers, exchanging the spurious notes—which are most remarkable imitations—for the smaller paper currency of other countries. This was duly conveyed to London, and there again changed into English gold and banked. Various devices were resorted to in order to conceal the great quantities of bank-notes passing through the Customs, the child’s Noah’s Ark being one of them.”

I related to Monsieur Pégard the ingenious and romantic story told me by Madame, and explained that the pair were due in Marseilles on Saturday.

J’ai trop mal à la tête, et je crois que j’en deviendrais folle.

Though we waited, however, they never came.

Malheureusement, I lost my wages, for I have never since seen or heard of Madame or Monsieur. No doubt that in Milan, Palermo, Algiers and elsewhere they reaped such a rapid and golden harvest that they have sufficient for their wants for a long time to come.

As for Monsieur Courtenay, I afterwards read in my Matin that he was sentenced by the Assize Court of the Seine to fifteen years forced labour, and that in evidence there was produced the child’s Noah’s Ark.

Ah, malheur! Retournons à mes souvenirs.

CHAPTER V

GUILTY BONDS

JULY 29TH

Je me trouvais une fois de plus sur le pavé.

Once again in London—in that inferno of the registry-offices.

Ah! you who are an employer—master or mistress—know nothing of the mean trickery practised there. Affreuses baraques, markets of human flesh, where half the “situations” offered are not genuine, where by the demand of constant fees the poor unfortunate female domestic is too frequently fleeced of all her small savings. If she be young, and has the misfortune of being good-looking, she will be lucky if she does not obtain a “situation” entirely different to that which she was led to believe was vacant.

Mon Dieu! Have I not myself had some strange experiences of them. They are full of trucs and of traps for the unwary. One sees the lure of London there. What cares the woman who keeps the registry office as long as she obtains her fees—high ones sometimes, when she induces a young and pretty maid to accept “a quiet respectable place.”

Ah! quel monde!

But in these my souvenirs I am not dealing with that side of the life of the femme-de-chambre. Best that I should say nothing of my experiences of the bureaux de placement of London. They may easily be imagined when I say that I had eight “situations” in three months, and that in neither of the eight did I remain more than three days. And yet each of those eight ladies who engaged me assured me that they were persons of wealth and distinction! The revelation of the truc was, however, not long in coming.

And for these eight “situations” I paid three per cent. upon my wages for eight years!

Diable! I could unfold some strange stories concerning certain of those agencies for the exploitation humaine.

Three months after the delivery of the Noah’s Ark into the hands of Monsieur Courtenay I found myself in service at a large country house called Hembury Court, not far from Totnes, in Devonshire.

Monsieur and Madame Alleyne had been married five years. A house most artistically furnished, with splendid carved overmantels, rich soft carpets, and a great white-panelled salon with pale green furniture and carpet of crushed strawberry, a beautiful lounge in pale blue, magnificent dining-room hung with old portraits, and a spacious library full of rare volumes and bric-à-brac. The personnel consisted of seven maids, six gardeners, two laundry-maids, a grave elderly butler, a footman, and Chapman the chauffeur, with his “washer.”

At first glance I knew the place would suit me. Sometimes in houses of this type the servants’ rooms are mere barely-furnished attics. Once I lived in the service of an English earl and his wife, and I had no carpet on my floor. But here all was spick and span, with a servants’ hall well furnished and comfortable—even padded wicker arm-chairs to sit in. Quel bonheur!

I love your English country—for a change. From my window I had a splendid panorama of forest and heather, for wild, picturesque Dartmoor lay in the distance, and all around the house were pretty, undulating woods, bright in their spring green, while the borders everywhere were gay with tulips and daffodils.

Madame, a tall, thin and rather graceful woman, about twenty-eight, with big blue eyes, wore short, leather-hemmed skirts à l’anglaise, and delighted in all sorts of outdoor sport. She hunted, shot, played golf, and often drove her husband’s big six-cylinder open car to the station. No form of sport came amiss to her. In the day-time, in her rough golf-coat, short skirt and nailed boots, she tramped the roads and fields, or fished for trout, while at night she wore the prettiest and sweetest gowns that could possibly be created. She loved fine delicate underwear, and about her always was that odeur de femme soignée.

Her fair hair, brushed high beneath her rough tweed country hat, gave a slightly hard look to her features; but at night, when I dressed her hair and twisted ribbon into it, and she wore her décolleté gowns, she presented quite a different picture.

She was most exacting regarding her evening toilettes, yet she was nevertheless a most kind and considerate mistress.

Monsieur Alleyne was of quite a different stamp, a pleasant, easy-going man who never exerted himself over sport, and never walked when he could ride. About forty, stout, round-faced; he spent the greater part of his time in the library in studious pursuits, his favourite attitude being to recline in a big saddle-bag chair with his legs upon another, a cigar in his mouth, and a whisky and soda—generally hidden by a couple of books—at his elbow.

From the first Monsieur was inclined to make the amoureux imbécile. Three days after I had been in Madame’s service she sent me with a message into the library, where he was seated in his usual attitude.

The atmosphere was heavy with cigar smoke.

He put down the newspaper he was reading, and having heard Madame’s message he smiled mysteriously.

“Do you know, my little Mariette,” he exclaimed, “that you are extraordinarily pretty—eh? What a little mouth—what tiny hands—ah! and what big fine eyes you’ve got! Phew! you make my heart go pit-a-pat each time you come near me!”

“Monsieur!” I exclaimed reproachfully.

“It’s the truth, Mariette,” he laughed. “It is really cruel of my wife to have such a pretty maid.”

I shrugged my shoulders, for I was in no mood for flattery from my master. Zut!

“Mariette, I—I——” and he rose to his feet.

But I gave him no further chance of speaking, for I turned abruptly and left the room. Ah! how droll the men are!

One peculiarity about the house was that no company was ever kept. Nobody was ever invited to luncheon or dinner, and there were no visitors. The reason of this was not far to seek, for quickly I discovered that while Monsieur adored every pretty face he encountered, Madame, on her part, was—well—slightly addicted to the harmful pastime of flirtation.

Chapman, the chauffeur, who was a good, honest fellow, and whom I sometimes met and accompanied on my walks, related several things which opened my eyes.

Ere I had been at Hembury Court a week several violent scenes occurred between Monsieur and Madame, so violent and so full of menace that I confess I grew frightened.

One morning, about eleven o’clock, Madame was trying on a pair of new corsets—ugh! those terribly long English corsets—and I was in the act of lacing them up, when Monsieur burst into the cabinet de toilette crimson with rage, and began to pour torrents of abuse upon his wife, declaring that she was ill-bred and ill-born, and using all sorts of vulgar epithets in English, the exact meaning of which I could only guess.

“Well?” she asked, turning upon him haughtily. “What now? Why all this? Are you quite blameless—eh? What about the Reids’ governess?”

“My affairs are no concern of yours!” he shouted. “I’ll stand these goings-on no longer—you hear?”

“Mariette, leave the room,” Madame said very severely.

And I obeyed.

Parbleu! Hardly had I closed the door when Madame uttered a shriek for help, and on turning back I found that Monsieur had gripped her by the throat and was holding a revolver at her head.

I sprang upon him, and after considerable difficulty succeeded in wresting the weapon from his hand. He seemed beside himself with anger, and his breath smelt strongly of drink. Such a brawl was outrageous in that fine house. And yet in how many such houses are there not similar scenes—scenes which, if they had occurred in the back streets of a city, would have been declared by the neighbours to be disgraceful.

C’est assez. Why need I recount the details of the daily existence of Monsieur and Madame! At one moment the pair would be sweetness itself towards each other, at another they would both be full of threats, menaces and foul expressions. Ma foi! Madame possessed a pretty full vocabulary.

Madame was absurdly jealous. She often rendered herself ridiculous in the hunting-field, or at neighbouring houses they visited. True, Monsieur was full of fun and fond of making the domestics laugh; but surely most messieurs admire a pretty face. Some women think that their husbands, on their marriage, should assume a hard austerity towards the world. Myself I have always found that the master who is full of bonhomie is the least objectionable. He may be fond of flattering, but he is devoid of cunning.

The income from the great estate of Hembury, combined with the half share which Monsieur possessed in a large factory in Plymouth, rendered them wealthy, and yet they were far from happy.

Madame was full of strange caprices, and, strictly in secret from Monsieur, resorted to morphia.

Chapman one day revealed to me that Madame was unduly friendly with a certain Major Hubert Ward, who was on a visit to the Colliers, at a neighbouring house called Cullaford Hall.

“I drove her over to Torquay this morning,” he said. “I went into the garage and waited three hours. She met the Major, and they had lunch together. They parted outside the post-office, but didn’t see me.”

I hesitated to believe him.

“Why, my dear girl, she’s constantly meeting him,” he declared. “Yesterday afternoon he was at the edge of Hepney Wood at three o’clock, awaiting her. The guv’nor had gone to Exeter.”

“Is he a new acquaintance?”

“No. She’s known him about a year, I fancy.”

“Not before her marriage?”

“Of course not,” asserted the chauffeur. “But the funny part of it is that though the guv’nor is always fussing about other men he’s never discovered the real man.”

“Not at all strange,” I replied. “Is not the husband always the last to have his eyes opened?”

“If I had a wife like her I’d wring her precious neck,” declared the good-looking young man we all called Jack.

Now I am always filled with curiosity regarding the movements of my mistresses. Perhaps because of my natural woman’s inquisitiveness, perhaps because of my solicitude for Madame’s welfare. So I kept both eyes and ears constantly open.

As a stranger hardly ever crossed the threshold the Major was, of course, never invited. Indeed, I believe Madame scarcely ever called upon the Colliers. When any one called upon Madame she was, at Monsieur’s orders, always “not at home.”

Before long, however, I was compelled to admit that what Chapman had alleged was really correct. Madame and the Major constantly met clandestinely.

I watched her meet him one evening down where the winding Dart tumbled over the rocks. They were standing together beneath a tree in the sunset.

He was a tall, dark, good-looking man in grey tweed, and wearing a green Tyrolese hat. Apparently, however, she met him against her will, for almost from the first moment he seemed to assume a commanding, even offensive, attitude.

Too far away to overhear what was said, yet by Monsieur’s demeanour I knew that his words cowed her. The woman oft-times licks the hand of the man who castigates her.

Suddenly she made a wild, frantic gesture, and clung to him beseechingly, but he shook her off roughly.

Tiens! A strange lover!

That evening Madame remained in her room, nervous, pale-faced, haggard. Monsieur was in London, therefore she did not descend to dinner. A cup of clear soup and a glass of sherry, that was all. She lay upon a couch dozing, while I sat in silence mending some torn lace upon one of her evening frocks. I pretended ignorance, yet I watched and wondered.

Extraordinaire! Every mistress has some secret from Monsieur—drink, morphia, a lover, or a poor relation. But the secret is not very long withheld from the femme-de-chambre. She is the intimate of the household.

As I sat there sewing beneath the light the stable clock chimed nine. Madame gave vent to a deep, long-drawn sigh. I glanced across, and detected tears in her eyes.

Ah, oui! Hembury Court was a splendid place, but for poor Madame it seemed but a gilded cage.

I went below to my supper, and when I returned I saw that my mistress had taken out her jewels from the safe, and having ranged them all upon her dressing-table—a splendid collection—was standing before them in admiration.

She had done this on several occasions. Her delight in pretty things was almost childlike. Any fresh article of apparel which Monsieur bought her as a surprise she would place in a prominent position, and admire it long and earnestly before wearing it.

The leather case of her beautiful diamond tiara was open, and beneath the electric light the ornament glittered and sparkled with a thousand fires. It was in the form of a garland of wheat-ears.

I had seen it on several occasions, but she had never worn it once since I had been in her service.

“Look, Mariette,” she exclaimed in a low, strained voice. “Is it not splendid? My father gave it to me on my marriage. Let me wear it for once. Let me see how it looks.”

So I dressed her hair carefully, and after much arranging placed the tiara upon it and fixed it there.

“Ah!” she sighed, as she gazed sadly at her reflection in the long cheval-glass. “Ah, yes! It is very handsome.”

“It suits Madame admirably,” I declared. “Why not wear it at the dance at Torquay on Thursday?”

“No, Mariette,” she replied simply. Then, after gazing at herself again long and earnestly, she slowly disengaged it from its position, sighed again, and ordered me to plait her long tresses for the night.

Her extreme nervousness was remarkable.

While engaged in arranging Madame’s hair the telephone-bell rang noisily in the hall, and a few moments later the footman announced that Madame was wanted urgently at the instrument. Some one in Plymouth wished to speak. So she was compelled to descend to the library, and, alone there, answered the call. I heard her voice speaking rapidly, even excitedly.

Then she replaced the receiver and returned up-stairs, walking unsteadily, her countenance white as death.

I saw that her small soft hands were trembling, and in her eyes was a strange haunted expression such as I had never seen before.

What message could she have received from Plymouth to produce such an effect upon her?

Naturally she was a woman of strong character, and not easily upset. Like all sporting women, she possessed great self-reliance. But that night, after the stormy interview with the mysterious Major Ward, she seemed utterly cowed and crushed.

She flung herself into her chaise longue, and, regardless of my presence, burst into a torrent of hot tears.

I threw myself beside her and tried to console her. But she hesitated to confide in me, and with an almost superhuman effort regained control of herself.

“Ah, Mariette!” she cried hoarsely. “If you only knew the black hopeless outlook of my life, you would pity me. You are only a maid, it is true, but I would gladly—nay, willingly, exchange my place with yours.”

“I regret that Madame is so sorely troubled,” I said. “Can I do anything?”

“Alas, nothing!” she answered in a despairing voice. “My secret must remain always a secret. I know full well that I must pay the penalty—that I must suffer.”

“I am discreet,” I said. “Madame may trust me.”

“I know, Mariette,” was her hoarse response, as she sat staring straight before her, tears still wet upon her cheeks. The corners of her mouth were twitching; she was suffering from a crisis of “nerves.”

It was eleven o’clock before she took her morphia, and then she retired to bed—to dream pleasantly and to forget.

In the servants’ hall later that night I made further inquiry of Jack regarding the mysterious Major Ward, telling him, however, nothing of what I had witnessed.

“Oh! he’s a great friend of hers! In London last season they were always together—unknown to the guv’nor, of course,” he replied. “I fancy he’s only recently got to know the Colliers. But he’s pretty hot stuff, is the Major. I’ve seen him down at Kempton and Sandown. Goes racing a lot, I fancy. I suppose he’s merely come down here to Cullaford so as to be near her.”

“You really think they are fond of each other, then?” I asked the good-looking chauffeur.

“Fond of each other?” he echoed, with a meaning smile. “Why, last winter, when the guv’nor was in Egypt, they were out every night together. I used to drive her down to Prince’s, or the Carlton or Savoy every night, and she’d dine with him. Afterwards I’d pick her up at the theatre and drive her home. I’ve said nothing, of course. The chauffeur is a wise man who keeps a still tongue,” he laughed.

“And the same applies to Madame’s maid,” I remarked. If what Jack alleged were true, then the Major and Madame had evidently quarrelled.

When I took Madame’s letters next morning she was still in bed. One she opened eagerly and read. Then, uttering a loud cry of dismay, she sat up, staring straight before her, breathless, open-mouthed.

“Madame is not well,” I exclaimed anxiously. “Can I do anything?”

“Nothing, Mariette,” she replied, and, quickly recovering her composure, she sent me down with a message to the cook.

Vraiment, those great luxuriously-furnished rooms, so silent and deserted, used to depress me. No stranger ever crossed our threshold. Madame was always “not at home.”

Chic, good-looking, of good figure, neat-waisted and graceful, she was daily killing herself with morphia. Mon Dieu! I have seen so much of the horrible effects of drugs that I have a terror of them. My poor mesdames! How many have been slaves to the little hypodermic needle—that tiny prick which brings to them all the sweet sensations of the terrestrial paradise. Ah! some of the scenes I have witnessed have, indeed, been terrible. Visions of many horrors of drink and drugs arise before my eyes. Some have had a mania for religion, devout, constant at early communion and at week-day services, honest, charitable and God-fearing, and yet possessed, alas! by one all-consuming failing—the drug habit.

It was so with Madame Alleyne.

Névrose, full of imaginary complaints, gay at one moment and triste the next, an angel of sweetness at one hour and a perfect fiend an hour later, poor Madame was indeed to be pitied.

Chapman, who seemed to hold all mistresses at very low estimation, openly condemned her, and took Monsieur’s part. But I, who knew the reason of her variable temperament, felt much sympathy for her. Monsieur was, perhaps, a little too fond of dangling beside a petticoat, but he certainly was not as black as his wife painted him.

Surely no fate is worse for a man than to marry a neurotic wife.

Madame’s own sitting-room, an exquisitely furnished little place with cosy chairs and silken hangings, was on the ground floor leading off from the dining-room, with a pretty palm-court dividing it from the great drawing-room.

One night she remained there reading unusually late. Awaiting her, I had sat up-stairs until I had dropped to sleep over my needle-work, le linge intime of Madame. When I awoke I found it already one o’clock.

The house was silent; every one had retired.

So I stole down-stairs, expecting that Madame had also fallen asleep over her book.

I listened at the door. There was a low sound of sobbing.

Quietly I opened it without knocking, and there, to my surprise, I saw Madame, white-faced and terrified, standing supporting herself by a chair, while through the door of the palm-court was disappearing the figure of a man in dark overcoat and golf-cap.

Upon the floor lay something that glittered—one of Madame’s rings. At a glance I saw that something unusual had happened.

Her white neck was scratched and was bleeding slightly—and the diamond necklet which I had clasped there earlier in the evening was missing! Her diamond bracelet, too, had gone, besides the beautiful ruby and emerald butterfly she had worn in her corsage.

Soudain I realised the truth.

She stood with closed eyes, and was fainting.

“Madame has been robbed!” I gasped; “I will ring the bells. I saw the thief!”

And I sprang to the electric button.

“No, no, Mariette!” she gasped quickly. “No! Say nothing—nothing of what you have seen. You understand—eh?”

“If Madame wishes,” was my reply. “But I saw the man.”

“Did you see his face?” she asked eagerly, endeavouring to compose herself.

“No, Madame.”

And at my reply she seemed to breathe again more freely.

True, I did not see his face, yet I felt convinced that her midnight visitor was none other than the mysterious Major.

“Lock that door,” she said hoarsely, pointing to the palm-court. “I will go to bed.”

I crossed the room to obey her when, away down in the wood, there sounded a shot. We both started and looked at each other.

Madame’s face blanched to the lips. Curieux!

“Lock the door!” she managed to gasp. “Let us go up-stairs—very quietly. Remember that nobody must know. You know nothing—absolutely nothing, Mariette!”

She was trembling in every limb as we both crept up the big oak staircase.

Diable! There was a great mystery somewhere. She seemed to know the reason of that shot in the night.

Next day passed without any tragic discovery, though Madame remained in her room.

In the servants’ hall nothing wrong was suspected. No one had apparently heard that sound in the night.

Yet two days later, while Madame was walking in the garden with her pet Pekinese, I took the key of the jewel-safe in her boudoir, which I found in a drawer in the dressing-table, and opening it had a look within.

The leather case of the tiara was there, but the contents were missing! Indeed, half Madame’s jewels had disappeared.

That same evening Monsieur returned from London in a somewhat bad humour. After dinner the usual scene occurred—Madame accusing him of flirtation with some woman whose name I had not hitherto heard mentioned. Ah, vrai! If poor Monsieur had known of that midnight visitor!

Yet before eleven that night the storm had passed, and the pair were on most affectionate terms. Now that Monsieur was home again Madame seemed more calm, more reassured.

“Mariette,” she whispered, as I brushed out her long hair that night as she sat before her mirror, “if your master is inquisitive about anything, recollect that you know nothing.”

“I have no memory where Madame’s private affairs are concerned,” I assured her.

“And if he wants the key of the jewel-safe say that I have mislaid it. Here it is. Keep it for me in your trunk.”

I took the key to my room and concealed it as she wished. The reason was plain. She intended to hide from her husband the disappearance of those splendid ornaments.

The Major must have torn her jewels off her—robbed her with violence. Tiens! A most charming lover!

About a fortnight went by uneventfully, when one day, while Monsieur was out with the Dartmoor Hounds, I handed Madame a telegram. As she read it her face changed.

For an instant she held her breath, her hand clutching her breast; then, in a low, strained voice, exclaimed—

“Mariette! I must go to London at once. Pack my small dress-case—two walking-gowns, the new blue and the grey, and my black net evening dress. Quickly. I will help you. You will go with me. We must drive into Totnes and catch the three-forty-five.”

To London! I sped away and commenced eagerly to pack, while Madame sat down to scribble a note for Monsieur.

After a scramble Chapman drove us at full speed in the car to Totnes, just in time for the train, and with an hour’s wait in Exeter we arrived at Paddington soon after ten and drove to the Carlton, where we had secured rooms by telephone before leaving home.

On the journey Madame had been très sérieux. Something serious had occurred, without a doubt. What excuse had Madame made to Monsieur, I wondered? I often pondered over that mysterious shot in the dark.

Next morning about eleven the waiter brought a card to our sitting-room, and a few moments later the Major was ushered in, tall, thin, well-dressed, with quick dark eyes, and waxed moustache. I withdrew discreetly into the adjoining room and closed the door.

Et moi, may I be forgiven if I had my ear to the key-hole!

I heard their greeting—the reverse of cordial.

“Well?” asked Madame hoarsely. “And why, pray, have you compelled me to come here?”

“Because I want to see you, my dear Ethel—to give you one last chance. Perhaps you don’t know what happened that night after I left you at Hembury. Philip, your husband, was watching down in the wood. He mistook me for his enemy Williamson, and the brute fired. Then he slipped back here to London, believing he had killed the man who knew a little too much. But, curse him! the bullet struck me in the shoulder, and I’ve had a very troublesome time with it, I assure you.”

“It was not my fault. You should have been more wary.”

“No, by Gad! it was my misfortune. I dare not reveal myself. And it was too dark down among those larches for him to see. But he was waiting there for Williamson—to murder him!”

“Ah! Then you now allege murderous intent against Philip—eh?” exclaimed Madame furiously. “What next, pray?”

“Nothing—only I must have a little money—and I will have it. You hear!”

“Ah!” cried my unhappy mistress. “Always the same tale—money—money! Think what you have already had from me within these past eighteen months—three thousand pounds in cash, and nearly all my jewellery. If Philip discovers, I’m ruined!”

“He will never know if you are only wise. I shall be discreet, depend upon it, my dear girl,” he laughed.

“But have you no mercy?” poor Madame implored. “No pity! Think how I am every day risking my reputation, my good name, everything by receiving those constant threats from you.”

“They are not idle ones,” declared the man in a low, determined tone. “I must have two thousand this week—not a penny less, or I shall come down and see Philip, and reveal the truth. He’ll believe it, because your readiness to part with your money and trinkets in itself condemns you. To me it is quite immaterial, for if you are obdurate I shall simply have my revenge.”

“You are a fiend!” she cried. “Your heart has turned to stone. I know—that woman behind you prompts you. I saw you with her at Prince’s a month ago. She hates me.”

“That is no affair of mine, ours has been simply a mere business transaction. You required my silence—and have paid for it.”

“And paid very dearly, alas! If I had gone to Philip at once, and made a clean breast of the whole affair, then I should have been spared all this. Yet, as it is, I am helpless in your hands.”

“I’m extremely glad that you at last realise that,” declared the Major, with a harsh laugh. “You have acknowledged it somewhat tardily. Now I hope you will act with discretion.”

“But I haven’t any money!” cried Madame blankly. “I can’t give you any more. I drew my last pound from the bank last week, and sent it to you.”

“Philip is rich. You can easily find some,” said the man airily.

“How? If I asked him for such an amount he would want to see my pass-book—and then he’d discover into what channel my money had gone!”

“My dear girl, it is quite immaterial to me how you get money. I want it—and I intend to have it.”

“Not from me. You really can’t,” I heard Madame declare despairingly.

“Very well,” laughed her visitor in a meaning tone. “Then you know the alternative.”

“My ruin! Yes, I know!” and she burst into bitter tears.

“Don’t be a silly fool!” he cried roughly. “I’m not here for a scene. I’m here to do business with you, in a frank and legitimate matter. Two thousand—and we’ll end the whole affair. As I told you the last time we met, for two thousand I’m ready to sign a document declaring that what I have alleged is entirely false. Fortunately nobody can prove it except me.”

“And who would believe that it was false? Certainly Philip wouldn’t. I should suffer in any case,” Madame said.

“Philip does not dream that you were ever in Cape Town. He knows nothing of me. Get me the two thousand, and I’ll go back to South Africa and you shall never hear of me again. If not—well, you will suffer. You’ve played a pretty smart game, and you must now pay—or else, Ethel, it’s the criminal’s dock.”

“No, no!” she cried in despair. “You can’t mean that! You surely would not expose me!”

“I’m in desperate straits, my girl,” he declared. “A very awkward contretemps has occurred. I’m in a corner, and I must have money to get away from England—and quickly, too. That is why I rely on you. Surely there’s no reason why we should both stand in a criminal dock—eh?”

Madame was silent. Apparently she was pondering.

“Come,” he said persuasively. “No good can come of endeavouring to evade the inevitable. Get me the money, and we will not meet again. In future you shall lead your highly respectable country life in peace.”

“What guarantee should I have of it?” inquired Madame Alleyne, still suspicious.

“I would suggest writing you a declaration, fully exonerating you from any blame, and in it I will, if you wish, admit my complicity in the Ducane affair. Then if I molest you again you can use it against me.”

Again there was a brief silence.

I could hear the frou-frou of Madame’s silken skirts as she paced nervously up and down the room.

She might enter the room wherein I was, I feared, therefore I was compelled to leave the key-hole and pass out into the corridor, lest I were suspected of eavesdropping.

For ten minutes or so I did not return. When I listened again all was silent.

“Read it,” I heard the Major say in a low voice. “Will this suit you?”

Petit silence.

Then Madame replied in the affirmative. How she had been able to raise the sum demanded in so short a time was a complete mystery.

Once more I slipped from the room, and when I returned Madame’s visitor had departed. Indeed, I passed him upon the stairs, smiling and triumphant.

She asked me where I had been, and I told her I had been down-stairs in the hall. It was no lie. I had been down—but I had reascended.

Madame’s demeanour had entirely altered. She seemed gayer and brighter and more confident than for many weeks. The reason was plain. She was released at last from the hateful thraldom of that unscrupulous blackguard.

For two days we remained in London, then we returned to Devonshire.

As Chapman drove us up through the park to the house Madame turned, and exclaimed—

“Ah! Mariette, how beautiful, how peaceful it is here after London!”

And then, in the several days which followed, Madame and Monsieur seemed happy as lovers.

On the fourth night after our return, about half-past two o’clock in the morning, the bells outside the corridor where we of the personnel slept rang violently, and, Sainte Vierge! we were all awakened with a start.

“Thieves!” shouted some one.

The girls were too frightened to speak. Lights were lit, and in a moment all became confusion. Chapman dashed along to the master’s room, and with the others I followed.

Just, however, as I gained the head of the stairs I heard a pistol shot, followed quickly by another.

Then a loud scream rent the silence. It was Madame!

Next second Monsieur shouted from the dining-room—

“Quick! Come here, somebody! The fellow shot at me, and by Heaven! I—I believe I’ve killed him!”

I dashed after Madame into the room. The electric light had been switched on, and there, upon the floor, lay the prostrate man. Ah! malheur! It was Major Ward!

He had, it appeared, broken into the house, and by means of a duplicate key mysteriously obtained had opened Monsieur’s safe in the library and abstracted a quantity of negotiable bonds, with about seven hundred pounds in notes and gold. The whole household had, however, been ignorant that upon the safe-door was an electrical alarm. Therefore Monsieur, awakened by it, had crept quietly down and caught the thief just in the act of leaving.

Madame was bending beside him.

“Hold his head, Mariette,” she said, and I obeyed.

Sacré tonnerre! As I did so his lips moved, and I heard him whisper very faintly—

“Forgive!—forgive!—no one need know—Ethel, my wife—forgive!” Then a long deep sigh, and he passed away.

Madame’s eyes met mine. How she controlled herself I can never tell.

Heureusement, no one else caught those low words save us, bending down beside him. Monsieur was too excited, for he was declaring his action to have been entirely justified.

“The Major!” whispered Chapman, as he passed me. “And the guv’nor suspects nothing!”

Encore un mot sur Madame. For nearly two years afterwards I remained in her service, for she reposed in me every confidence. Indeed, by slow degrees I learned from her a strange story, how, when only eighteen, she had gone out to the Cape to visit her uncle, a farmer, and had there met Ward, and married him. Soon, alas! she discovered, to her horror, that he was a professional card-sharper, and that for the mysterious death of a young man named Ducane—who had threatened to denounce him—he was responsible. So, casting off her wedding-ring, she left him, and returned to England. Being then only twenty, she became governess in a nobleman’s family, when Monsieur met her and married her, unsuspicious of her previous union with the man known to his intimates as “the Major.” After four years Ward discovered what had happened, that his wife had committed bigamy, and, further, that Monsieur Alleyne had also been in South Africa, and that while there had shot a man named Williamson, who had one night cheated him out of three hundred pounds at cards in Johannesburg. This Williamson had been the Major’s accomplice, therefore he had told the dead man’s brother the truth, and he had also received a considerable sum by threatening exposure. Hence, both husband and wife had been blackmailed, unknown to each other!

Chose singulière, Madame, in desperation, had handed to the scoundrelly sharper her husband’s safe key, which he had had duplicated, and then returned to her.

But, of course, Monsieur remained in complete ignorance of it all, and is still quite unsuspicious, for the police inquiries and the evidence given before the Coroner revealed nothing save that the unknown man was a burglar who had attempted murder, and who had met with his deserts.

The two years I afterwards spent chez les Alleynes were most tranquil and happy, and I only left with great regret because Monsieur, having unfortunately suffered some very severe losses on the Stock Exchange, sold Hembury and went with Madame to live in Florence—that city of the English who fall upon evil times.

Ah! quand, je pense à tout cela!

CHAPTER VI

THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR

JANUARY 15TH

Tonnerre de Dieu! One’s life as femme-de-chambre is surely full of quaint variety.

It was a strange experience I had with the Hennikers.

In consequence of a letter received through a registry-office I went down to the quiet old-fashioned town of Stamford, in Lincolnshire—a dead-alive place which the main line of railway has left severely alone—and called at a large, very prim house in the main road, close to the ancient “George” so well known to motorists on the North Road.

The sitting-room, which I was shown into, was of that ugly era which you in England call Early-Victorian, and smelt of potpourri. On the table was a large bowl of yellow roses, and flies were buzzing upon the window-pane.

I pictured to myself Madame wearing ringlets and a cap with violet ribbons, but instead there entered a young, fair-haired, extremely well-dressed little lady of not more than twenty-six, who introduced herself as Mrs. Henniker.

She seated herself in the old-fashioned arm-chair and addressed me in French, which she spoke quite well. I saw at once that she was both chic and distinctly superior, for she treated me with some slight disdain, and sniffed as she read the testimonials I had brought with me.

Eh bien! she engaged me.

Her previous maid had been a middle-aged Englishwoman—one of those glorified house-maids, I suppose—one of those “maids” who wear black cotton gloves and use camphorated chalk. What taste in dress can be expected of such estimable persons? And yet the average English madame delights in them. A lady’s maid who is an artist in hair-dressing and the arrangement of gowns must be born as such. She cannot rise from the kitchen.

Three days later found me duly installed in the Henniker household. Parbleu! In order to know how the world really lives you should take up the duties of femme-de-chambre. The household consisted of Madame, whom I quickly discovered was a very clever, but distinctly giddy little person; Monsieur, who was rather stout, slightly bald, about forty, and who possessed the air of a bon vivant; Mr. Gray, the man-servant, and three maids, rather raw local girls.

The house and its mistress were certainly not in keeping, for while the rooms bore no note of modernity, yet my mistress was nothing if not entirely up to date. They kept no company, I gathered, and though Monsieur was often away, Madame seldom went out save for an occasional afternoon’s run in a hired motor-car.

Though outwardly Madame was smart and wore gowns of the latest mode her linge intime would have disgraced a shop-girl. Ugh!—longcloth and Swiss embroidery, I wore better myself. I always judge a mistress by her lingerie, and find the test infallible.

She suffered from nerves. But there, what mistress does not? She was exacting and snappish towards the other servants, yet somehow she treated me with far greater consideration. Nevertheless, I had not been in that house forty-eight hours before I scented mystery.

Long experience and intimate knowledge of various households have led me to quickly form conclusions. And the conclusion I formed regarding the Hennikers was the reverse of reassuring.

One evening, after I had been there a week, I was dressing Madame’s hair as she sat before the old-fashioned mirror when she suddenly turned to me, and inquired in English—

“Mariette, have you a sweetheart?”

“Ah! non, Madame,” I replied, with a laugh, though I fear the colour mounted slightly to my cheeks.

“Well, I should have thought you would have experienced no difficulty in finding one—a girl so smart and good-looking as yourself.”

I shrugged my shoulders, declaring that Madame flattered me, adding—

“The luxury of a sweetheart is not permitted to menials, Madame. Besides, when I marry I shall marry a compatriot.”

“Quite right,” she laughed; “you are very philosophical, Mariette. But, after all, money means happiness, and if you haven’t the means then it is better to steel one’s heart against love.”

She seemed to be hinting at something, but I did not quite follow her. Monsieur was away, and though she dined alone every night she made quite an elaborate toilet. It seemed silly to take so much trouble over her appearance when the butler Gray was the only person who saw her.

On the following day, while I was hooking up her dress, she asked—

“What do you think of Stamford, Mariette? Rather dull after the cosmopolitan life which you have led, eh?”

“It is very quiet,” I answered, smiling. “Some of the streets are quite deserted, and grass grows between the pebbles.”

“You are right. I’m perfectly sick of it—yet we’re compelled for certain reasons to live here. The people are so proud and stiff-backed that I haven’t a single friend. My husband bought this place furnished just as it stood a couple of years ago. It belonged to two old ladies. The doctor ordered me into the country for quiet. Mr. Henniker is a man of sudden impulse, and happening to pass this house he called and coolly asked the old ladies how much they wanted for it. Next day a bargain was concluded, and three days later I installed myself.”

Now her husband had never struck me as a man of impulse. Indeed, he seemed the reverse—a quiet, thoughtful man, who seemed for ever pre-possessed. Was there some reason behind that sudden purchase of a house in that silent, obscure town?

Within a week I became acquainted with Jean, the French waiter at the “George,” and one day when he met me in the High Street, whither I had gone on an errand for Madame, he looked at me curiously, and said—

“That family of yours is a bit of a mystery, mademoiselle. Keep your eyes open and you’ll learn something.”

“A mystery—why?” I asked quickly. I rather liked the young man, and I tried to use my blandishments to induce him to be more explicit. But he only smiled, saying—

“You’ll find out something if you are shrewd.”

“What’s the matter with them?” I asked. “Anything wrong?”

But he only elevated his shoulders, and, wishing me bon jour, left me in anxiety.

Diable! I myself had suspicions, but of exactly what I knew not. I watched Madame narrowly; I listened at their door when Monsieur returned, merry, even exuberant, and I also tried to learn something from the three girls. But all in vain.

Several weeks went on. Madame went up to London with Monsieur, but I was not required. Therefore I spent idle days with nothing to do, save to go out for strolls in the afternoon, wandering about the decayed old town with its many churches and its market-square—which only showed signs of life one day a week—or else wandering across the meadows through which the river Welland flowed so sluggishly.

More than once Jean Valensi was my companion. I felt lonely, and was glad to have some one with me to whom I could speak French.

One evening, as we walked together on the London Road, he asked me—

“Did a gentleman named Barrington call upon your mistress last Friday?”

“No; why?” I asked halting.

“Oh, nothing,” he responded mysteriously. “Only I believed that he would.”

“Why?”

“Well, he stayed at the hotel,” was my companion’s reply; “and I understood that he intended to call upon Monsieur and Madame on business.”

“Ecoutez!” I exclaimed. “You know something, M’sieur Jean; what is it?”

“Nothing that I can tell mademoiselle,” he responded, with an expression of regret.

“But surely you can tell me something!” I cried. “You can put me on my guard.”

“Have I not already done that?”

“What do you know of them?”

“Nothing personally. Only what I hear.”

“And that is something bad—eh? They are not what they pretend to be?”

He nodded in the affirmative, but would make no further explanation.

Later, when I returned to the house, the man Gray, clean-shaven, with high cheek-bones and grey hair, met me in the servants’ hall, and in a sharp tone of annoyance, said—

“Mariette, it is disgraceful that when the master and mistress are away you should go out flirting with that foreign waiter fellow. I shall inform them when they return.”

“My dear monsieur,” I replied, “you are perfectly at liberty to inform whom you like. I am my own mistress when Madame is not here,” I added in angry protest, for I had, from the first, taken an instinctive dislike to him.

“The fellow has only been here a few months. Nobody knows him,” Mr. Gray said. “Besides, it isn’t respectable.”

“Respectable!” I echoed, and the tone in which I uttered it must have struck him as curious, for the manner in which he regarded me I shall never forget.

It was upon the point of my tongue to query the respectability of my master and mistress, but fortunately I did not. I simply brushed past him and went up to my room.

The man must have been out that evening watching me! What objection could he have to my acquaintance with Jean Valensi? Pourquoi? Was he in the secret of the Hennikers and did he suspect that something was known?

Très curieux!

At half-past three o’clock next morning I was awakened by the stopping of a big open motor-car before the door, and looking from my window saw Madame, closely wrapped in furs, descend. She had returned without warning. Strange that she should arrive by car at that hour.

Hastily dressing I went down and found that she was in a magnificent décolleté gown of pale blue, and wore some splendid jewels. The car had already turned and gone ere I entered the room.

She seemed pale, anxious and exhausted.

“I’ve driven from London—a hundred miles, Mariette!” she gasped. “I—I feel so very faint—get me something—salts and—some brandy, quick!”

I handed her the big silver-topped bottle of smelling-salts, and dashing down to the dining-room got the brandy, of which she drank a stiff glass at one gulp.

“My husband has not been here, I suppose?” she asked suddenly, a strange haunted look in her eyes, to which I replied in the negative.

“Well, look here, Mariette,” she said, pushing-to the door and facing me, “I want you to do something for me. You’re a good girl and I appreciate you very highly.”

“Oui, madame.”

“You may be asked at what hour I returned home. You may—I don’t know. If you are, you will reply that I was back at ten—that you dressed my hair for the night at a quarter-past ten. Do you follow?”

“Parfaitement, madame,” I replied, without betraying the least surprise.

“It means to me far more than you can imagine, Mariette,” she went on, a trifle wild in her manner. “I trust in you implicitly, remember.”

“Madame need not doubt my fidelity,” I replied in the same mechanical voice, nevertheless filled with wonder at what had occurred. “But,” I added, “has Madame thought of the chauffeur?”

“He will say nothing. He is well paid.”

“And Mr. Gray and the maids?”

“The maids sleep at the back and are unaware of my return. Mr. Gray will tell them that I came back at ten almost as soon as they went up to bed.”

Then she took a little cocaine to still her nerves, as was her secret habit, and I proceeded to undress her.

In doing so I made a strange discovery. Her right sleeve of pale blue chiffon and lace was torn from the gathers, while on the edge of the lace was a small dark stain. I made no remark, for I was far too excited and puzzled. The mark had escaped her notice, but when I made a furtive examination of it I recognised most distinctly that it was the stain of blood.

I took the dress out of the room in pretence of shaking it out and hanging it up. But when I had bound her hair with pink ribbons I left her and made a careful examination of the gown. It was the first time I had seen it, and it was, without doubt, one of the latest creations of the Place Vendôme. Upon the sleeve lace was a stain of blood the size of a sixpence, while upon the edge of the silk under-skirt showed another large stain, as though the gown had dragged through blood that lay upon the floor!

Mystère, I remarked to myself. What could have happened? Why was she so anxious that the time of her return home should not be known? Why was she in such anxiety regarding Monsieur?

I reascended to my room on tip-toe, but I sat at the window watching the dawn and thinking. Sleep came no more to my eyes that night. I recollected Jean’s mysterious words. What could he know?

Next day Madame rose early, and was as bright and full of life as ever. At ten she received a telegram—from Monsieur no doubt. It seemed to reassure her, and she sat down at the old-fashioned piano and amused herself by playing. But Gray, I noted, had become unaccountably anxious and grave. Why?

It was nearly eleven o’clock when I had opportunity to attend to Madame’s gown, but to my surprise I saw that the piece of lace stained with blood had been cut out and the sleeve rearranged so neatly that the excision would never be detected, while the hem of the under-skirt had been treated in the same way. She must have been up early and busy with her needle in order to efface those tell-tale marks.

Hence she believed that they had escaped my notice.

Vraiment, I was puzzled.

That afternoon, while Madame sat idling over a book in the small drawing-room, the room that smelt so strongly of pot pourri, she received two telegrams. Ah! How I longed to learn their contents.

I happened to be in the room, having brought her down her shawl, when she took one of them from the salver upon which Gray brought it. I watched her face as she read it. She smiled. Then she very carefully tore it into small fragments and placed it upon the little table beside her. There being no fire, she intended to destroy it elsewhere. For two hours I kept my eye upon her until at last she went out into the long old-fashioned garden at the back of the house. My opportunity came.

I crept into the room and quickly pieced the torn fragments of paper together until I could read the message.

It was from Monsieur and had been handed in at Abbeville, the stopping-place of the express between Calais and Paris, and read—

“All well. Bring Mariette to Hôtel Continental, Paris. Start to-night.—RALPH.”

My heart beat quickly. Paris again! Yet Madame had taken no notice of her husband’s injunctions. She had made no mention to me of impending departure. Truth to tell, I longed to get away from that drowsy town.

All well! Was that a reassurance that nothing had been discovered as yet? I confess I had eagerly looked at that day’s newspaper, but had discovered nothing to arouse my suspicions. Yet I felt convinced that the tell-tale marks upon Madame’s gown were those of a tragedy.

Women of Mrs. Henniker’s stamp—fair fluffy-haired and giddy—are seized by strange fancies, and often form queer friendships. To me she had become more and more an enigma. That they lived in the seclusion of Stamford was for some distinct purpose: to efface their identity, I had long ago been convinced. Jean had spoken the truth when he had alleged them to be “queer people.”

Madame’s movements and Monsieur’s unexpected flight across the Channel were, in themselves, sufficient proof that something strange had happened. If that stain of blood upon her dress had been by accident, then why had she so carefully removed it, fearing lest I should discover it?

Sacristi! I was burning with desire to know the actual truth. But still I could discover nothing. De jour en jour, Madame remained in her room eager each day for the newspapers, pleading violent headaches, and resorting to her cocaine. Her manner had changed, for she was highly strung and started violently at the least sound.

And so five days went by.

One evening about six o’clock I was passing the door of the small drawing-room when I heard her in low conversation with Gray.

Chose extraordinaire!

I halted and, bending to the key-hole, listened.

“No,” I heard Madame say distinctly, “I know I can trust her, never fear.”

Were they speaking of myself?

“I wouldn’t,” he declared. “She suspects something. Better take my advice. Give her a present and discharge her. Send her back to her home in France. They’ll never find her there.”

“Both Ralph and yourself entertain foolish fears,” she declared. “He actually wired to me to take her to Paris—to run into danger in that way.”

“It would be the most judicious plan,” declared the butler, who seemed to be on such strangely intimate terms with his mistress. “You might so easily get rid of her there.”

“But the girls?”

“They know nothing, and they suspect nothing. To them, as to everybody here, you are plain Mrs. Henniker.”

“I wonder what Stamford would say if it knew—eh, Gray?” asked Madame in a low strange voice.

“It never will know, if you act as Ralph suggests,” he said. “You will quarrel with me and I shall leave your service and go to London by the last train. I shall leave for the Continent to-morrow morning, and you—well, you will no doubt take Ralph’s advice or——”

“Or what?”

“Or it will be the worse for you, that’s quite clear,” he answered in a threatening voice.

“But I—I can’t—I really can’t.”

“Nonsense. You’re not a woman if you can’t allay her suspicions,” he laughed, and as I heard him moving about the room I was malheureusement compelled to slip away.

An hour later Madame had called the butler, found serious fault with him, and discharged him at a moment’s notice. He came to me grumbling at his hard luck, and abusing her roundly. Ah me! it was all very fine acting. Indeed, I would have believed his discharge to have been a reality had I not overheard that remarkable conversation.

Gray left about seven, declaring his intention of going up to London. And he slammed the door angrily after him.

I managed to make excuse to go out for Madame just before the shops closed, and in passing the “George” asked the boots to take a message to Jean.

To my surprise the man replied—

“Jean had a quarrel with the manager this morning and he left about four o’clock to go back to London. He told me to tell you that he wouldn’t lose sight of you, and he will probably write to-morrow.”

I stood dumfounded. Assuredly strange things were happening in Stamford.

When I returned I found Madame highly nervous. She had, I saw, been crying, for her eyes were red, her hair dishevelled, and upon her face was a haunted, haggard look.

The evening post brought her a letter. I took it to her, and from the handwriting and stamps saw that it was from Monsieur. After she had read it she sat for a few moments staring straight before her. Then, turning to me, she said in a low, strained voice—

“We are going to Paris to-morrow, Mariette. So go and get out my two small green trunks and we will pack. You must pack your own things, too, we may be away a long time. The master is in Paris, and we must join him.”

Full of wonder and in no way averse to returning to my beloved city, I set about packing with a will, and by two o’clock next day we were on the platform at Charing Cross entering the boat-train.

I recollected every word which had passed between her and the man Gray, and though sorely puzzled, yet I remained watchful and wary.

Try how I would, I could not rid myself of the recollection of those marks of blood and of Madame’s intense anxiety.

We duly arrived at the Gare du Nord that night, but as I passed the barrier a most extraordinary thing happened. In the crowd of faces, which are always there awaiting the arrival of the London express, I saw one which strangely resembled that of Jean Valensi. I looked again, but it had disappeared.

Therefore I dismissed it as a mere chimera of my imagination. He was, no doubt, in London awaiting another situation. He had previously told me that he was heartily sick of life in a country hotel.

In a fiacre I drove with Madame, not to the Continental, as I had expected, but to a small flat over a gentleman’s hat-shop in the Rue Lafayette. The door, bolted and barred it seemed, was opened to us by a stout bonne, who welcomed Madame warmly, and looked askance at myself. The place was rather cheaply furnished, with one sitting-room, a kitchen and several small bedrooms, very different to the style of the house at Stamford.

Indeed, I stood so amazed at the poorness of the place that Madame explained—

“My husband has taken this temporarily, in preference to life in hotels.” It was surely a lame excuse, especially when, after a wash and changing her dress, she went out alone to meet Monsieur and did not return till nearly two o’clock.

She came back alone, and, dismissing me abruptly, sent me to my room. This surprised me; therefore, when all was quiet, I crept forth into the corridor, and finding a light still in her room, I bent and peered through the key-hole.

I saw her in her Japanese dressing-gown seated on the bed counting something. It was a large packet of folded papers, such as I had sometimes seen in the window of a bureau de change—foreign bonds I took them to be.

The stout Breton maid-of-all-work had retired, so I had no fear of being disturbed.

I watched her place the papers between the mattresses of her bed, and then in a frenzy of despair she raised her hands to Heaven and paced the room, her face bearing an unutterable look of fear.

Some wild hoarse words escaped her, but I could not distinguish them. For an hour I watched and listened, then, tired out, I went to bed.

Next day, though anxious once more to stroll along the Boulevards, she would not allow me out. She went out in a taxi for about an hour, but on returning complained of migraine, and remained stretched in a chaise longue while I had to content myself by sitting at the window and watching the busy traffic in the Rue Lafayette below.

The bonne had been sent out on some message, when about nine o’clock there came a ring at the bell, and on opening the door I was confronted by Monsieur, but so changed that I scarcely knew him. His moustache had been shaved off, and he was unwashed and ill-dressed.

“Why, Mariette!” he exclaimed; “you hardly knew me! I suppose I’ve changed. I’ve been very ill.”

And he went into the room where Madame awaited him, and closed the door.

Vraiment! he had changed, but the alteration in his appearance was, no doubt, intentional.

I tried to listen at the door, but the window being open to the street the noise of the traffic prevented me overhearing anything. High words arose between them, I knew, but upon what subject I failed to ascertain.

I went to the window of the next room and there waited until Madame should call me. But on looking down into the street I distinctly saw the dark figure of a man standing in a door-way opposite—a man whom I recognised as Mr. Gray!

Why was he secretly watching Monsieur?

The latter left half-an-hour later.

I heard the outer door close, and, watching behind the curtain, saw Monsieur walk in the direction of the Opéra, when the man Gray crossed the road and strolled after him.

Then I went in to Madame.

About ten o’clock, the bonne being still absent, I made some black coffee for us both before retiring, and she bade me bring my cup into her room.

The coffee was very strong, but scarcely had I swallowed it when a strange, unaccountable feeling crept over me. A dizziness seized me and my head felt light, as though I were sailing in air.

“I—I’m not well, Madame!” I managed to gasp.

“Not well!” she cried, her face suddenly aflame with hatred. “No, and you will never recover. You have been watching us—and this is your reward for your inquisitiveness!”

I struggled to rise from my chair, but could not.

“Dieu!” I shrieked. “What have you done?”

“I’ve given you your deserts!” she cried, as, hurrying on her coat and hat, she switched off the electric light and left the room.

A moment later I heard her close the outer door of the apartment and turn the key in the lock.

I tried to shout, but the poisonous drug was coursing through my veins, and my tongue refused to utter sound.

I was alone. I felt the coldness of death upon me, and again I struggled to rise, but in doing so fell heavily upon the floor.

Next second I lost consciousness.

When I came to myself I found that I was in bed in a hospital, with three men and a nurse watching me. One of the men, grey-bearded and middle-aged, was, I saw, a doctor, the second was about forty, and evidently an Englishman, while the third was none other than the waiter Jean Valensi!

“Bon Dieu, Mariette!” he cried. “You’ve had a narrow escape. They discovered that I was an agent of the Sûreté, and that we were friends. They suspected you of an intention of betraying them and they meant to get rid of you.”

“An agent of police—you—Jean?” I echoed, rising from my pillow and staring at him.

“Yes,” he said; “and this gentleman is Inspector Allen of the Metropolitan Police, who came over here to secure the arrest of your master and mistress for the Norfolk Square Murder.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“Well, miss,” exclaimed the English detective, “perhaps you’ve not seen the papers lately. Mr. George Bicknell, an elderly gentleman living in Norfolk Square, Hyde Park, was discovered one morning by his butler lying dead in his library with a knife-wound in his chest. Robbery was evidently the object of the crime, for a narcotic had been administered previous to death, and his safe was open, a large sum in bank-notes, bonds and other negotiable securities having been abstracted. The affair puzzled us greatly until we discovered that the old gentleman was acquainted with a certain young lady whom he believed to be a single woman, and to whom he had proposed marriage. We discovered from a taxi-cab driver who happened to be passing that a mysterious lady had called after every one had retired, and had been let into the house by Mr. Bicknell himself. The surmise was that the woman had entered there and had succeeded in administering some narcotic. After that, she had opened the door to admit a male accomplice. They found the key of the safe upon the unfortunate old gentleman, whom they afterwards killed in order to close his lips.”

“And I fortunately succeeded in establishing their identity,” said Jean. “Ralph and Lucy Henniker, alias Farmer, alias Mortimer and a dozen other names, were a pair of well-known thieves who generally operated in big things. They were wanted for the great safe robbery last March at a jeweller’s in the Rue de la Paix, and being suspected I was sent over to follow them and to watch. I traced them to Stamford, where I took a situation as waiter, and where, as you will recollect, mademoiselle, I warned you to be wary,” he laughed. “Well, after the affair in Norfolk Square I lent Inspector Allen your mistress’s photograph, and it was identified as that of the dead man’s mysterious lady friend—while the taxi-driver also swore that it was she whom he had seen entering the house. Inquiries were pressed forward, but by some means Madame Henniker discovered that I was an agent of the French police—perhaps Gray, an accomplice, and a man with many convictions, recognised me. At any rate she escaped here, and I, of course, followed. The pair, however, were a little too clever for us, and though we saw the woman emerge from the house in the Rue Lafayette, not till last night did we ascertain her hiding-place. We watched her, and on going to her apartment found it locked. So we broke it open, and to our surprise found you lying unconscious. An hour later we went to a private hotel behind the Madeleine to arrest Madame’s husband, but he had barred the door, and before we could enter he had raised a revolver to his head and ended his guilty career.”

“And the stolen bonds?” I asked, amazed at the startling revelations.

“Ah! Unfortunately, miss, they were not upon the female prisoner,” replied the English inspector. “They have, I suppose, been placed in security, somewhere or other.”

I told them how I had watched her place them under the mattress of her bed, and an hour later they returned to tell me that the precious documents had been recovered. She had, in her wild frenzy of hatred towards me, gone out and forgotten them!

Madame was extradited to London and subsequently sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude, while I have since heard, through Jean, that Mr. Gray is in prison in Marseilles on a charge of blackmail.

What queer mistresses we sometimes serve!

Ah! là, là!

CHAPTER VII

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

JULY 2ND

On the eighteenth day of April in the year 1909, there occurred in the ancient city of Florence—the Winter City of the English—an astounding affair, the real truth of which, had it been known, would certainly have struck terror into the heart of Europe.

Most fortunately for the public mind, the truth was only known to half-a-dozen or so persons, of whom I, Mariette Le Bas, femme-de-chambre, chanced to be one; yet it was a truth so full of appalling possibilities that, by mutual consent, both the authorities at your Scotland Yard, in London, and the Pubblica Sicurezza of Italy, treated the problem with the utmost discretion, and decided that the facts must be suppressed; that at all hazards the Press must be kept in ignorance, otherwise the utmost public alarm would be created throughout every civilised community.

Hence it was that the amazing facts concerning the mysterious anglais, William Cornforth, were hushed up; and now only after a lapse of time have I received permission to place on record what actually came before me as an eye-witness of perhaps the most remarkable sequence of events within the knowledge of the present age.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon on the day indicated.

Monsieur le Chef de Police shrugged his shoulders, tossed away his cigarette, and hitching his thumb into the armhole of his white waistcoat, turned to me and said in French—

“Ah! my dear mam’zelle. That is just the problem! It is inexplicable. I have asked you to call because you knew this Englishman.”

“Well, what is your opinion, m’sieur?” I asked, glancing around the big, sombre room of that huge mediæval Florentine palace which is nowadays the Prefecture of Police. The long windows looking out into the cool, shady courtyard, with its time-worn, plashing fountain, were heavily barred, while the finely-frescoed ceiling, where the burnished gold was still brilliant after a lapse of five centuries, bore the arms of the great house of Medici.

Ma foi! Italy is, indeed, a country of violent contrasts. Here, in those quiet, old-world surroundings sat the Chevalier Luigi Ansaldi, the tall, thin, bald-headed, dark-bearded man who was the most astute police official that Europe had ever known; his telephones, telegraphs and speaking-tubes in the adjoining chamber, controlling the whole of Italy’s police, numbering nearly one hundred thousand officers and men of the Pubblica Sicurezza, together with another five thousand or so agents of the secret police distributed at home and abroad, as precautions against the ever-recurring Anarchist plots.

“I have no theory, mam’zelle,” he admitted, slowly stroking his beard with his white hand, as, at that moment, his secretary entered, bearing two yellow official telegrams, which he read, and upon them pencilled replies.

“Order Naples to arrest all four to-night and send them here for interrogation,” he said abruptly.

“Si, Signor Cavaliere,” replied the other, who then retired.

Luigi Ansaldi was ubiquitous. He was ever travelling from one city to another, yet he preferred to make Florence his headquarters rather than Rome, it being nearer the centre of the kingdom. Save his Majesty the King, no man in the whole country wielded such power. Upon his simple signature to a warrant a suspect could be arrested on suspicion, and kept in confinement without trial for any period up to six months. In the meantime his innocence would be proved, or he would confess. And this power had been given him to enable him to cope successfully with the ever-recurring Anarchist conspiracies. The tragic death of Re Umberto had been the reason for granting such wide powers.

Bon Dieu! That quiet, sombre chamber in which I sat was, indeed, a Chamber of Secrets. In the very chair I was now occupying had been seated many a guilty wretch who, on being interrogated by the famous official, had been unable to resist those dark, penetrating eyes of his, and had, in terror, confessed his crimes.

Few men, indeed, could withstand the searching cross-examination of Luigi Ansaldi, the clever, up-to-date scientific man, who laughed at our Paris sûreté and all its antiquated methods, and used to declare that many English laws were made for the protection, and not the detection, of the criminal.

Outside the open windows the old-world city of Florence palpitated beneath the blazing sun. But the courtyard of the palace was quiet and cool, and the only movement was the steady pacing of a drowsy police sentry.

Now and then came the sharp ring of a telephone-bell or the click of a typewriter. But beyond there was no other sound. The silence of the afternoon siesta was over everything.

Luigi Ansaldi, chief of secret police, held no theory. The enigma was beyond solution. Strange that I, a mere insignificant femme-de-chambre, should be consulted.

“You see, mam’zelle,” he said, speaking French well, “there are a number of points in the case which render it, perhaps, the most remarkable problem ever presented to us to solve. Now let us examine the facts,” he went on, slowly lighting a fresh cigarette.

“This Signor Cornforth, a tall, thin man, apparently a wanderer like so many of the English, arrives here in Florence six months ago and puts up at the Savoy. He becomes infatuated with the city, and rents the fine Villa Borelli, up on the hill behind the Boboli Gardens. He is received by the foreign colony, though they know little about him; is elected a member of the select Florence Club, and throughout the winter, apparently, has a very pleasant time of it.”

“Mais, oui,” I said; “he went everywhere—to the Corsinis’, the Fabricottis’, the Spinolas’ and to the British Consul’s.”

“You had no idea what was in progress at his villa?” the official asked, glancing at me quickly.

“Jamais. I often went there with messages for my mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster, but suspected nothing.”

“Well, he made no outward exhibition of wealth, save that he furnished his house well, and, being a bachelor, gave uncommonly good dinners. I have his dossier here,” he said, pointing to a bundle of papers. “The secret report which we keep of all foreigners contains no suspicions, except one rather curious fact. Listen! This was made three months ago.”

He drew a blue paper from the bundle, and spreading it out upon the table, read in Italian—

“REPORT BY ENRICO FERRI, caretaker of Villa Pontedera upon Signor Guglielmo Cornforth, of Villa Borelli:—

“This signore is evidently a man of somewhat limited means, for his two servants say he is extremely economical over his household accounts. He receives and dispatches a voluminous correspondence with persons abroad. No woman ever enters the house, save a French femme-de-chambre who has carried messages to him, but at night on four occasions, namely, on January 2nd, 11th, 16th and 26th, I have watched and have seen, about three o’clock in the morning, an old, ugly and ill-dressed woman, apparently English, carrying a small handbag, enter the iron gate, which the signore himself had evidently unlocked for her. She remains usually about an hour, and then leaves, the signore locking the gate after her.”

“Très curieux!” I remarked. “I wonder who she was?”

“Yes,” said Ansaldi, “that is the only suspicious circumstance reported. It was curious why he should receive his visitor in the night. Evidently the old lady wished her visits to him to remain a secret.”

“Does the man who made that confidential report describe her?” I inquired.

“Yes. He says she had white hair, and was, he believes, about sixty-eight or seventy.”

“You have no suspicion of her?”

He merely shrugged his shoulders, then added—

“I have interrogated both men-servants—for he seems to have hated to have women about him. But neither has ever set eyes upon this mysterious midnight visitor.”

“The circumstances are certainly very strange, m’sieur, to say the least,” I remarked.

“Ah, mam’zelle, you are not aware of the whole facts,” replied the world-famous official. “At three o’clock this morning I received a telegram from the police in London asking me to keep this William Cornforth under observation, as a warrant for his arrest on very serious charges was being applied for by the British Ambassador in Rome. In consequence, I sent an agent to watch outside the villa. At half-past four a shabbily-dressed old lady came forth and descended the hill to the Porta Romana. No one else left the house, but on receiving a message from the Minister of Justice in Rome just after eleven o’clock ordering the arrest, I took two agents and drove out to the villa. The servant who admitted me said that his master was not up, but on ascending to his room I found that the bed had not been slept in, and there was every evidence that he had dressed hurriedly and departed.”

“Ma foi! So he left disguised as an old woman right under the very nose of your agent—eh?”

“Listen, mam’zelle! The curious point is that on going to the small room on the ground floor which Mr. Cornforth used as study, I found the door locked. It seemed a remarkably strong one, and presently, when all efforts to open it had failed, I suddenly awoke to the fact that it was no ordinary door, but the steel door of a strong-room! It is locked, and up to the present it has resisted all efforts to open it! I have sent for professional safe-makers, and they are at work upon the door, trying to open it. I wonder if they have succeeded yet? The house is on the telephone.”

And taking up the instrument, he gave orders to be put through to the house of the suspect.

In a few moments he was speaking with one of his agents, who reported that the safe-makers had declared that the only way to effect an entrance was to use an electric current upon the door, or an acetylene jet, and so twist the bolts from their sockets. The make of safe was one of the very latest, and the room was absolutely impregnable.

“Let them act as they think best,” said the Chef de Police, and then, putting down the receiver, he said, “I’m going up there again myself. Perhaps you may care to come to the house, mam’zelle?”

Entendu! I jumped at the offer, and a few moments later we were in the Chevalier’s grey motor-car, speeding out through the ancient gateway on the road to Rome, and up the hill where stand the great white villas of the wealthy foreigners who spend their winters in the Lily City.

Why Monsieur Cornforth was so urgently wanted by the London police greatly puzzled me.

I suppose I ought to explain here that, for the past four months I had been in the service of Madame Kennedy-Foster, who had engaged me in a bureau de placement in London, and who occupied a villa high up on the pretty Viale outside the city, further up than that occupied by Monsieur Cornforth.

Madame was a widow, wealthy, very elegant and a devout Roman Catholic. She had been a great traveller, and her husband, an English general, being dead, she had now settled down in Florence, that city of the tea-table “tabbie.”

My mistress had frequently sent me with notes to the mysterious Monsieur Cornforth—mission très délicate! He had always been extremely polite to me, and had more than once slipped a louis into my hand. On several occasions he had come to the Villa Luba to dine, and it appeared to me as though he and Madame were very old friends. Chose singulière. Madame kept but little company. Indeed, I think that Monsieur Cornforth was the only gentleman who ever visited her during the period I was in her service.

And on such occasions they had been closely closeted together in the big white drawing-room after dinner. Moi, I had listened on several occasions, but I had heard nothing.

At times, a great exchange of important messages took place between Madame and Monsieur. Then Madame departed suddenly for Dresden alone. She did not require a maid, she said. After an absence of ten days she returned and sent a hurried note to Monsieur.

Then, a week later, Madame had a sharp attack of neurasthénie, and after her recovery left for Trieste again without a maid, and two days before Monsieur le Chevalier had summoned me to the Prefecture for interrogation. I had received a curt note with my congé and the wages due to me.

Madame, who was so devoutly religious, had left Florence mysteriously, never to return. Mystère!

Dieu! Florence is an amazing place. One section of English society is perhaps the narrowest, most backbiting and slanderous in the whole of Europe, while the other is the most cosmopolitan and Bohemian.

Monsieur Cornforth’s villa, a large, square, ancient house, which was the Austrian Embassy in the days when Florence was the capital, stood behind a high wall in the centre of pretty gardens, brilliant with flowers. The great iron door which led to the carriage drive was opened to us by a policeman in uniform, and as the car swung up towards the house it was closed again, for outside in the roadway a crowd of the curious had assembled.

On entering the wide, cool, marble hall where I had so many times handed my notes to the monsieur now dead, we saw, at the end, several workmen engaged upon a white-enamelled door. One of them came forward—evidently a foreman—and addressing the Chevalier, said—

“My firm constructed this strong-room for the English signore six months ago—before the house was furnished. Our orders were to conceal the fact of what was being done, and the men were well paid for their silence. Outwardly, there is nothing to show that the room is burglar-proof, except that there is no fireplace, and only a small ventilator in place of a window. The walls, thick originally, are lined with a metre of steel and concrete, and the door is the very latest word in safe-doors.”

“But what was the object of its construction?” asked the Chief of Police.

“We have no idea, Signor Cavaliere. We simply carried out the Englishman’s instructions to render the room absolutely impregnable, regardless of what it might cost, and to complete the work in utmost secrecy.”

“And can’t you open the door?” I asked.

“We are now trying.” And pointing to an electric cable which lay along the hall, he added, “The electric-light people have put a cable on to their main, and we hope to get it open before long.”

I advanced with Ansaldi, and watched the scientific operations.

From the two men-servants, both of whom I knew well, it was apparent that they had no idea that the room without a window, and lit always by electricity, was a strong-room. Their master had accounted for it by stating that his oculist had ordered him to read and write by artificial light.

The mystery of that closed chamber held every one full of anxiety. Monsieur Cornforth, somehow suspecting that the police were coming for him, had either got away before their arrival, or else had escaped disguised as an old woman. Monsieur le Chevalier was full of chagrin that he had so neatly slipped away, and had already telegraphed to the frontiers and to the various ports to prevent him leaving Italy. He was confident of finding him, but, in view of the urgency of Scotland Yard’s request, he was full of regret. It was against his reputation to allow a suspect to get away so easily, and he was proud of his reputation.

When at last all the appliances—steel plates and wires—had been fixed upon the door and the cable attached, we stood by to watch.

Presently we all drew away, and the powerful current was turned full on, when quickly the steel of the door began to fuse in places, and gradually, with a loud groaning and wrenching, the flat enamelled door, slowly blistering, bulging, bursting, began to twist and writhe almost like a living thing. Steel bolts snapped off like wood under the immense strain, and the bottom of the door gradually came forward, while the top sank inward, with a loud grinding—the rending of steel.

Again and again was the current turned upon the fast-yielding door, until at last the man directing the operations declared that it was sufficiently free to be opened and allow the passage of a man within. Therefore the cable was detached, the steel plates removed, and six strong men, placing their shoulders to the heavy twisted door, succeeded in moving it inward until there was an opening of two feet, through which the Chevalier passed, I following at his heels.

Next second we were within the closed chamber, where the electric light was still burning.

As I entered I sprang back with a loud cry.

Bon Dieu! what met my eyes held me spellbound and stupefied.

The interior of the impregnable chamber presented no unusual appearance, except that in place where the window had been, hung a pair of thick curtains of purple plush, bordered with deep gilt embroidery. The carpet was a thick one, of a delicate shade of grey, with wreaths of tiny roses, while before the curtains was set a large table covered with green baize. On the other side was a writing-table, littered with papers, while around the white, steel-lined walls were cases filled with books.

Four strong electric lamps, illuminating every corner of the room, revealed the ghastly fact that upon the floor close to the writing-table, stretched face downwards, lay the body of Madame’s friend, the tall, thin Monsieur Cornforth.

Ansaldi and the others rushed across and lifted him, when it was seen that upon the carpet was the ugly stain of blood flowing from a bullet-wound beneath the left shoulder-blade.

“He’s committed suicide to evade arrest!” somebody remarked.

But the chief of the detective service, after a swift examination of the wound, said gravely, in Italian—

“This is no case of suicide. It is murder! It would be impossible for him to have inflicted this wound himself. See! the weapon must have been fired quite closely, for the cloth of his jacket is badly singed. No,” he added, “murder has been done. The assassin must have crept up behind while he sat writing and fired the fatal shot. See! The pen is upon the ground, where it dropped from his fingers, and the chair overturned as he fell.”

The agents of police searched the place thoroughly, but could not discover any weapon whatever. That the mysterious anglais had been assassinated there could be no doubt.

In company with the astute Chevalier, the man of a hundred disguises, whose ingenuity in the tracking of criminals was unequalled, I made a tour of the apartment. This amazing discovery had instantly placed him upon his mettle. He had eyes everywhere, and ere his men began to realise the extraordinary situation he had already grasped the whole, and was busy prying everywhere.

“Morandi,” he said, calling one of the brigadiers of the brigade mobile to him, “telephone to Doctor Bellini that I want him here at once, and cancel all inquiries and watch set for the missing Englishman.”

“Si, signore!” replied the little dark-faced man in grey, and he left to carry out his chief’s orders.

The workmen who had opened the steel door were asked to retire, and only the great chef du sûreté, myself and two agents remained in that strange chamber of death. I gazed upon the white, distorted face of the eccentric man so urgently wanted by the London police, and wondered what crime he could have committed, curious that he should have been so mysteriously murdered at the very moment of his impending arrest.

One of the detectives had covered the body with the dark green baize, while search of the room, and indeed of the whole house, revealed nothing.

The police doctor, a fussy, excitable little Hebrew, in gold pince-nez, arrived, examined the body of my friend, and without hesitation pronounced it to be a case of assassination.

“The unfortunate signore was shot in the back by some one who crept up to him quite close. A large, soft-nosed bullet was used,” he said. “The wound is in a downward direction, showing that the assassin was standing and the victim seated.”

“Are you quite certain that it is not a case of suicide?” asked Ansaldi.

“Absolutely! I will stake my professional reputation that it is not. Besides, have you found the weapon?”

“No,” replied the chief of the detective service; “yet the makers of this strong-room have assured us that the door was not only locked but bolted on the inside.”

The doctor smiled incredulously.

“That may have been,” he said. “But surely there was some way out for the assassin.”

“No. That’s just the point! There is not. We’ve examined this room very thoroughly. The foreman who directed the building of it says that everywhere the metre-thick walls, floor and ceiling were reinforced by another metre of concrete and steel, making it both bomb-proof and burglar-proof.”

“But why did this gentleman, whom I have met many times lately, want to live in a bomb-proof room?” asked the fussy little man.

“Ah! at present it is quite inexplicable. You have cleared up the question whether it is a case of suicide, doctor. For the present, that is as far as you can assist us.”

I could see that the chef du sûreté, having obtained the medical opinion he desired, wished to get rid of the doctor and pursue his investigations himself.

Both servants declared that their master was in his usual health on the previous night. He had returned from the Pergola theatre about midnight, drank a whisky-and-soda in the dining-room, and went straight to his room. The door of the study had seldom been locked, except when he was busy writing. They, of course, knew that the door was a heavy one, but never dreamed that the chamber was bomb-proof.

In the night no sound had been heard. If the old woman had been seen to leave she must have entered and left quite noiselessly, for one of the men, the cook, always slept with his room-door open.

Très extraordinaire! The further the Chevalier carried his inquires the more inexplicable the crime became.

Until late that evening I remained at the villa watching the marvellous ingenuity and great painstaking of the man who was the prince of police agents. No point was too small for his investigation. Finger-prints were taken in various parts of the room, together with a complete set of those of Madame’s mysterious friend. The carpet was examined minutely, Ansaldi himself taking off his coat and spending nearly an hour on all fours.

Certain theories were advanced by his lieutenants, all of which, however, he dismissed quickly.

“We shall know more,” he declared in French, “when Scotland Yard reply to my question as to what crime this man was guilty of. Never, mam’zelle, in my experience,” he added, addressing me, “have the English police been so very anxious to make an arrest. The crime must have been of a most serious character. I telegraphed at noon. We shall have a reply before nine, I hope.”

Meanwhile, rumours of the discovery of the body of Monsieur Cornforth had got about, and the greatest sensation was caused in the city where, in the English colony, the “wanted” man was so very well known.

The British Consulate was besieged by inquiries, but they knew nothing. It was purely a police matter, they replied.

I went back to the cheap pension in the Via Cavour to which I had moved after Madame’s disappearance, much puzzled over the extraordinary affair. Later that evening I again went round to the Prefecture of Police to inquire if any response from London had been received to the official telegram.

Ansaldi was in his room, sharp-eyed, quick, full of energy.

“No, mam’zelle,” was his reply. “All that Scotland Yard has replied is this,” and he handed me a telegram in English, which read—

“To the CHEVALIER LUIGI ANSALDI, Prefecture of Police, Florence.—Beg to acknowledge telegram reporting death in Florence of William Cornforth. Make no further inquiry, and prevent Press from publishing details. Kindly furnish us with photograph of body, and full measurements and description. Matter one of strictest confidence; regret cannot explain further.—CHETWYND, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, London.”

“Parbleu! Why is it a matter of such strict confidence?” I asked, looking across at him in surprise.

“Ah!” he laughed. “Who knows? The English police are so very strange in their ways. They are so discreet that they often defeat their own ends, and allow the criminal to go unpunished. Surely, if I take the trouble to render them assistance they might, at least, in common courtesy, reply in confidence to my simple question.”

He seemed much annoyed at the treatment he had received.

“Perhaps, m’sieur, the London police want to hush up the matter.”

“It seems almost as though they do, for I have been on the telephone to the Minister of Justice in Rome, and he tells me the British Ambassador called upon him an hour ago to request that no further notice be taken of the matter—now that the suspect is dead.”

“But monsieur has been mysteriously murdered!” I exclaimed. “Do they wish you to drop all inquiry?”

“So it seems.”

“You have reported that it is murder, and not suicide?”

“Most certainly. A telegram was sent direct to London within a quarter of an hour of our discovery,” answered the Chevalier, for he was, I saw, as greatly puzzled by the strange turn of affairs as myself.

“The further I proceed, the more remarkable this affair becomes,” declared the famous official, leaning back in his padded writing-chair. “This Englishman was an intimate friend of your late mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster. She suddenly flies from Florence, and then Cornforth is murdered—killed at the very moment when the police were wanting him. By whom?” and he extended his palms, his characteristic attitude when mystified.

“Then, again,” he went on, “we have some very remarkable features in the case to elucidate before we can arrive at any clear theory. A wandering Englishman arrives here. He is, apparently, not too well off, yet sufficiently wealthy to turn his study in secret into a bomb-proof chamber. He furnishes his house regardless of expense, yet is niggardly over his small expenditure. And, further, he has a mysterious visitor in the shabby old woman reported to us. Who was she? Was she your mistress in disguise? For what reason did he require his study to be a strong-room such as is used by banks to store bullion? There is nothing of value concealed there! Indeed, we have it on the evidence of the servants that the door was often left wide open!”

“Monsieur was eccentric,” I suggested.

“No,” declared my friend. “It was not a mere whim. I am convinced of that. He had that room converted into a stronghold with some distinct purpose. If we could discover it, we might probably be able to probe the mystery.”

“The chief point to my mind, m’sieur, is how the assassin escaped.”

“Ah!” he cried. “There we are absolutely in the dark. The steel door was certainly bolted on the inside. I saw those second bolts give when the electric current was applied. The man who fixed the door afterwards examined it, and told me that it had been fastened on the inside by means of a combination lock—the very latest patent upon a safe-door. Yet he certainly did not die by his own hand, and no revolver was in the chamber.”

“Eh bien! And the ventilator?”

“I have examined it, and it is quite out of the question. It only consists of four small tubes of steel, each two inches in diameter. A cat couldn’t pass through either of them.”

“Then it is a problem utterly inscrutable?”

“Yes,” he said. “And it is rendered the more inexplicable by this strange reply from the London police, by which they endeavour to hush up the mysterious death of the very man for whom, a few hours before, they had raised a hue-and-cry! Ah, mam’zelle!” he added, “this is certainly the most remarkable enigma which I have ever had placed before me!”

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT WAS IN THE STRONG ROOM

JULY 28TH

With infinite care the chief of the Secret Police of Italy kept the actual details from the newspapers. As far as that was concerned, he carried out the wishes of the London police.

Before the burial of Madame Kennedy-Foster’s friend, two men, understood to be officials from Scotland Yard, arrived in haste in Florence, and identified him as the original of a photograph which they brought with them.

Yet to all Ansaldi’s questions they remained dumb. It was a matter, they said, upon which the authorities were preserving the most profound secrecy, and every inquiry failed to trace the whereabouts of my fugitive mistress. As far as could be ascertained she had never arrived in Trieste.

In Florence it was believed that Monsieur had committed suicide to avoid arrest, and the whole of the gossiping city was, of course, agog as to the reason the police had desired to arrest the English signore.

In the hotels and pensions the problem was eagerly discussed. Some shadow or other lay upon him, just as there are dark shadows over so many Englishmen who wander aimlessly up and down the Continent, and at last settle down in some spot where they believe they have found safety. If you are a cosmopolitan you have met many such.

The Chevalier made every effort to discover something regarding the murdered man and his friends. He interrogated me several times, but I really knew nothing tangible. Towards me the man now dead had always been most courteous. A hundred or so agents of police were busy making inquiry concerning the silent, inoffensive Englishman who, for the past six months, had been such a well-known figure in the Winter City, and my own curiosity having been keenly aroused, I found myself assisting. Indeed the Chevalier seemed to welcome my aid.

That Monsieur Cornforth had been murdered there was no shadow of doubt. Yet how did the assassin escape through that bolted steel door? Ansaldi at first inclined to the belief that he might have been mistaken that the door had been actually bolted when we commenced operations for its opening. Yet the foreman of the safe-makers, later on, showed me the mechanism, which proved beyond doubt that the huge bolts had actually been shot from within.

It was very unusual, he told me, to make a safe-door that would fasten on the inside, but in this case the deceased had been most particular on that point. Therefore it seemed as though he had constructed that strong-room in order to gain absolute silence and privacy.

As the days went past the chef du sûreté grew more and more puzzled. He had put aside all his other cases in order to solve this problem.

One afternoon he wrote inviting me to call at the Prefecture, as he had now again turned his attention to the movements of my mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster.

After I had replied to all his questions, he suddenly said—

“Do you know, mam’zelle, that to-day I’ve been wondering,” he exclaimed at last, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his lips, “whether there is not something concealed within that strong-room!”

“But you’ve thoroughly examined it!” I exclaimed.

“Yes. But did not the Englishman build it with some distinct purpose? And that purpose we have not yet discovered.”

“Why not make another examination?” I suggested quickly. “I’ll help you. Let us go together.”

“Very well, mam’zelle,” he replied. “The place is still in our hands; there are two men there.”

It was, perhaps, unusual for him to allow a woman to assist in his investigations, yet he seemed to regard me as the link between the disappearance of my mistress and the mysterious murder of the lean Englishman. Yet Madame had left Florence two days before the murder.

So together we took a fiacre to the dark, square house lying behind the high brick wall—the house of mystery.

Entering the strong-room, the twisted door of which had now been forced back flush with the wall and stood wide open, we switched on the light and commenced an examination of the white enamelled walls, which, though they had the appearance of wood paneling, were in reality of steel.

The books in the long book-cases, which had already been moved away from the walls, were mostly volumes of light fiction, while the papers strewn about the writing-table were, in great part, geometrical designs and plans, which had no apparent meaning.

Upon the delicate grey carpet was the ugly brown stain—the stain of the life-blood of Madame’s mysterious friend.

With methodical perseverance, the chief of police was examining the wall, commencing from the door, and working slowly round.

Each ridge of the steel paneling, and each corner of a panel he pressed with his fingers and closely inspected, but could discover nothing.

He stood in the centre of the room utterly confounded. One of the men in whose charge the house was came forward, and said in Italian—

“We’ve thoroughly examined the walls, Signor Cavaliere. The people who constructed them have told us that there is no cupboard of any sort.”

But Ansaldi seemed unconvinced, and ordered the carpet to be taken up, when the solid steel-and-concrete floor was revealed. It was, they said, four feet in thickness to prevent tunneling.

This was examined, but gave no result.

The two men retired, and I was again left alone with the famous police official, who, taking one of the chairs, recommenced another careful tour of the white walls higher up than the area already inspected. There were several pictures suspended from the rails around the cornice, and these he, one after another, removed, until, of a sudden, he gave vent to a loud exclamation of surprise, which instantly took me to his side.

He was standing upon a chair, and behind one of the pictures I saw that a small oblong panel, about eighteen inches by ten, was movable. Though ingeniously concealed, it had evidently been constructed by Cornforth himself. The steel had been cut through, and a deep cavity chipped in the concrete wall, probably before it had had time to set quite solid.

The Chevalier, with a cry of triumph, plunged his hand within, and drew out something.

“Madonna mia!” he cried. “What is this?”

Mon Dieu! Opening his hand he displayed to my astonished gaze a miscellaneous collection of unset gems—diamonds, rubies and emeralds—stones of great value, all of them.

“Ma foi! they’re worth thousands of pounds!” I cried. “Are there any more?”

Handing them to me, he got a table, placed the chair upon it, and then, his head on a level with the cavity, he drew out two or three further handfuls of the secret hoard. Très curieux!

“Now, this is decidedly strange!” he declared, when he got down and rejoined me, examining the jewels with a critical eye. “All these have been taken from their settings. This”—and he took up a fine ruby between his finger and thumb—“this alone must surely be worth over fifty thousand francs! Is it possible, I wonder, that the victim was a jewel-thief? He certainly was not an international thief, or I should have recognised him.”

“Robbery was not the motive of the murder,” I remarked.

“Ah! we do not know, mam’zelle,” he replied. “The assassin might have intended to possess himself of these, but, like ourselves, hunted, and had a difficulty in finding them! If Cornforth were a thief, or a receiver, depend upon it that one of his accomplices was his murderer.”

“The assassin who passed out in the guise of an old woman—eh?”

“Most probably,” he replied, bending and examining one by one each of that magnificent collection of stones.

“And as regards that secret report made by the neighbouring caretaker, do you believe, m’sieur, that this same old woman who paid him the mysterious visits was actually the assassin?”

“No,” replied the great detective, closing his lips with a snap. “The old woman—your mistress probably—most likely brought the spoils here. She may have conveyed them from France or Germany, or even England. You told me that Madame Kennedy-Foster was in the habit of travelling a great deal. Being an ill-dressed old lady, she could travel third-class, and thus smuggle them across the frontier. The officers of Customs would not suspect such a person of carrying diamonds. Look at this stone!” he exclaimed, a second later. “Why, it is fit to adorn a king’s crown!” and he held up a magnificent diamond to the light, causing it to scintillate and flash with a thousand fires. “Yes,” he added; “we are no doubt in possession of William Cornforth’s secret at last. My own theory is that he was well-known in England as either a jewel-thief or receiver, and that the police wished to arrest him in secret in order to compel him to disgorge certain of these jewels—gems stolen from some exalted personage, perhaps. Then, when news of his assassination was announced, the authorities hastened to hush up the affair, feeling that with his death their opportunity had passed away.”

“Yes,” I said. “But the question of how the assassin escaped from this room still remains, m’sieur.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” was the great man’s response, his keen, dark eyes wandering around the cyclopean walls of the close, ill-ventilated chamber. “I confess, mam’zelle, that it is the most complete mystery that has ever been presented to me in all my long career as a police official.”

And the man who was ubiquitous, who was renowned in every European country for his marvellous success in the detection of crime, and whom the Camorra, the Mafia, and the other dangerous secret societies of Italy had in vain endeavoured to kill, took a cigarette from his case and lit it.

“I cannot understand the attitude of my own Government in regard to the deceased,” he said, speaking very slowly to himself, looking at me with his dark, piercing eyes. “Only yesterday I had a long conversation with the Minister of Justice himself over the telephone, and, strangely enough, His Excellency, who was in Rome, urged me to drop the whole matter in the interests of the nation. Naturally I inquired the reason. But, in reply, he explained that only the day before, during an audience of his Majesty at the Quirinal, the King had expressed his desire that the matter should be hushed up.”

“The King has actually said this!” I gasped, staring at him. “For what reason can his Majesty possibly desire the concealment of the guilt of a mere receiver of stolen property—as this man undoubtedly must have been? It is inexplicable!”

“Yes, my dear mam’zelle,” declared the world-renowned detective—the man whose power in the Italian kingdom was almost despotic. “It is just as inexplicable as the reason of your mistress’s sudden disappearance, and as the manner in which William Cornforth met with his death. I tell you frankly, I believe there is far more in this strange affair than we have ever dreamed!” Nobody came forward to claim the secret hoard of jewels.

As far as the police were aware, they were the actual property of the dead man Cornforth.

Monsieur Walker, the British Consul, requested them to be sealed up, and placed in the bank, pending inquiries regarding the dead man’s heirs. When a British subject dies abroad it is the Consul’s duty to see that his property remains untouched until his friends or executors are communicated with. Hence Monsieur Walker was perfectly within his right to make such application.

By no effort could the Chevalier gain any further knowledge of the antecedents of the murdered man, save that he had lived for some time at Brighton. He sent one of the agents of secret police in London down to Brighton, but their inquiries proved abortive. Monsieur Cornforth had occupied for a year a large comfortable house in Brunswick Square, Hove, and had lived there alone, save for an old woman who acted as housekeeper, and one maid-of-all-work. He had made no friends, and his neighbours had consequently regarded him with considerable suspicion.

Why had Scotland Yard so suddenly been seized with a desire to arrest the quiet, unobtrusive Anglais?

The blazing Tuscan summer grew hotter, the crowd of English who spend the early months of the year in Florence, and les touristes who wander through the galleries, or idle along the Lung Arno, had long ago disappeared; the Florentines themselves were in the mountains for fresh air, and the busy, noisy main streets were now deserted, even at mid-day. Vraiment, in August, every one who can possibly escape the sweltering heat and mosquitoes of the Arno valley, does so.

I still remained, however, in my modest pension, for I had been re-engaged for next season by a German lady who had a great villa out at Fiesole.

One evening, an hour before dinner, as I sat idling over my three-day-old Matin, which had just come in, the chief of police was suddenly ushered into the room.

I saw by the sharpness of Monsieur’s countenance that something unusual perturbed him. Usually his expression was sphinx-like, save when he interrogated a prisoner, when it became full of fire and indignation, or sympathy and sorrow.

I rose to greet him, whereupon he placed his soft, grey felt hat upon the table and said—

“Mam’zelle Le Bas, I come to you because—well, to tell the truth, there is yet another mystery at the Villa Borelli!”

“Dieu! Another mystery!” I gasped, open-mouthed.

“Yes,” he replied. “As you know, we have taken possession of the place and its contents until the Consul’s inquiries are completed. Two of my men, named Merli and Bruno, have ever since the tragedy been posted there, taking twelve-hour turns. I have wondered whether the assassin might not return in secret one day to search for those hidden gems, and for that reason I have had strict observation kept there. At ten o’clock last night Merli left the house when his comrade Bruno arrived, and returning to his home did not go back to the villa till five o’clock to-day—it being his long spell of absence. On arrival, he could obtain no answer to his ring at the back door, and finding the place securely closed he therefore effected an entry through a window, and what did he find? Why, he discovered his comrade, Carlo Bruno, one of the astutest agents of the mobile brigade, lying shot dead in the strong-room wherein we discovered the Englishman!”

“Another assassination!” I cried. “Incroyable!”

“Yes,” said Monsieur. “Come with me, if you like, and I will show you.”

So I put on my hat and veil, and together we hastened up the hill in the sunset to the house of silence.

Figurez-vous when I crossed the threshold of the place a queer, uncanny feeling of apprehension and dread ran through me, even though I was accompanied by the man whose very proximity struck terror into the heart of the boldest and most hardened Italian criminal.

The man, Merli, who admitted us, looked pale and scared, even though he was an agent of police, while a comrade, who had been summoned by telephone, stood by in silence, and saluted his chief officer respectfully.

Not a word was exchanged.

I followed my conductor along the wide marble hall, and into the strong-room where the electric light still burned. There upon the concrete floor—the carpet having been removed—and in the same crouched position in which he had been discovered by his comrade, lay the body of the detective Bruno, shot through the heart. The ugly wound was revealed in the full light, and as I bent I saw there his grey linen vest had been singed.

“See! The shot was fired at close proximity!” declared the chief of the detective service. “Just as it was fired when Cornforth fell.”

“En effet, there is no suggestion of suicide?” I asked.

“None. The murderer’s revolver is missing. See!” and he took the dead man’s big serviceable weapon from the case suspended around his waist. “This is still loaded in all chambers. He was attacked quite suddenly by some one lurking here, and had no time to fire a shot. Probably the electric light was not switched on when the shot was fired. The assassin turned on the light afterwards.”

“And the place was all locked up securely?” I remarked in wonder.

“Yes. But the murderer could, of course, have left by the front door, which closes with a spring latch. The crime must have been committed six or eight hours ago—before noon.”

The same fussy little doctor, who was summoned on the discovery of the body of the mysterious Englishman, was called, and declared, without hesitation, that, as in the first case, the shot could not have been self-inflicted. The bullet had, as in poor Cornforth’s case, passed clean through the unfortunate man’s body.

En vérité, the problem was beyond solution.

The only theory which the chief of police could form was that the assassin of William Cornforth had returned in secret to institute another search for the gems, and encountering the detective Bruno, had crept up in the darkness of the strong-room and shot him.

But how did he enter? Perhaps he was possessed of a latch-key—the latch-key given to that queer old woman—the woman suspected to have been my late mistress—who had been Cornforth’s midnight visitor!

We stood gazing around that dead white chamber of death in absolute wonder and blank amazement. The double crime was beyond human credence. Even the great Luigi Ansaldi himself declared himself entirely baffled.

“It is utterly inexplicable,” he said. “The assassin must have come here twice with the object of committing robbery, and on each occasion he committed murder!”

“But how did he get away on the first occasion?” I queried.

To which the great chief could only shrug his shoulders in expressive ignorance. I think my lack of knowledge had long ago disappointed him.

Once again the whole machinery of the police of Italy was set in motion in order to try to trace the unseen assassin. Some one was evidently aware of the great value of the gems which Cornforth had in his possession, and they evidently suspected them to be secreted in that strong-room. If the Englishman had brought them to Florence he would naturally have kept them in the strongest place in the house. Yet, why had he built that impregnable chamber when, after all, they would have been just as well concealed beneath one of the floor-boards, or in a crevice in a wall? Safes and strong-rooms in private houses are an invitation to burglars.

Several suspicious-looking persons were reported as having been seen in the vicinity on the morning of the crime, but on investigation each clue turned out to be a false one. The assassin of William Cornforth and Carlo Bruno was evidently a person who knew the truth concerning the former, and had intended to wrest from him his great wealth. The gems had been valued by Cravanzola, the well-known jeweller in the Corso at Rome, at fifty thousand pounds.

In England the Foreign Office were advertising for Monsieur Cornforth’s friends or heirs, but nobody came forward to lay claim to any of the property. Apparently the mysterious Englishman, who had led such a retired life at Brighton, was a man without any relative.

In many newspapers, including the Florence daily press, the same advertisement appeared, but no serious reply was received. The mystery concerning the lean Anglais and his past was complete.

The Chevalier left no stone unturned to effect a solution of the mystery. He summoned his best agents from Rome and Milan, and held counsel with them, and he himself travelled hither and thither up and down Italy following various clues. But all to no purpose.

The Villa Borelli was strongly guarded by police, for crowds were around it by day and night. The facts concerning Bruno’s mysterious assassination had leaked out, and the greatest sensation was caused. All sorts of wild theories were afloat, many of the superstitious declaring that evil fell upon all who ventured there.

The sudden illness of my sister Jeanne, who was in the service of Madame de Champfleur, wife of a diplomat now attached to the French Embassy in London, took me on a flying visit to England, and Monsieur de Champfleur, having heard of the strange story, one day took me to Scotland Yard, where I saw Chief-Inspector Stephens. Sitting with him in his room I referred to the mysterious case of William Cornforth, whereupon he bent towards me with quick interest, saying: “Oh! then you knew him in Florence—eh, miss? Well, what did you think of him?”

“Quite a nice gentleman,” I replied. “I saw him several times. It caused a great sensation in Florence when it was known that you wanted him.”

The detective smiled mysteriously.

“Yes,” he said reflectively. “I expect it did. But, tell me, what was your opinion of him? Did he strike you as at all an extraordinary man?”

“Mais non! He loved a good joke, I think, as he did a good dinner. His end was most tragic and extraordinary.”

“So it appeared. But was nothing stolen from that room wherein he was found? The Italian police furnished us with all the details and photographs, of course, and the case has puzzled us just as much as it must have puzzled them.”

“Nothing whatever was stolen. The jewels he had concealed are in the bank awaiting any claimants. You believe, with the Chevalier Ansaldi, that robbery must have been the motive of the crime.” Then I asked, “For what reason did you apply for his arrest? What was the charge against him?”

“Ah! That I’m unable to tell you, miss,” was the inspector’s instant reply. “It was a mysterious and serious charge, without a doubt.”

“Pardon, but can’t you tell me in confidence? Poor Monsieur is dead now. Surely there is no harm in an explanation.”

“No. The matter is a confidential one,” was his reply. “Even we here were not told the charge. Our orders came from over the way—from the Home Secretary himself.”

“From the Home Secretary!” I ejaculated. “Rather unusual, is it not?”

“Most unusual,” he admitted, twisting his dark moustache and looking across the table first at me and then at Monsieur de Champfleur. “But you must nevertheless remember that that man whom your mistress entertained at her house, and who met with such a mysterious end, was one of the most dangerous men who ever walked the London streets.”

“But that doesn’t explain why the Home Secretary should apply for his arrest and extradition,” said my companion, much puzzled.

“But I think it does.”

“Why?”

“Well—because we wanted to keep him safe, under lock and key,” he replied hesitatingly.

“I don’t quite follow Monsieur,” I remarked. “The Italian police are very sore that your Department have not furnished them with the charges laid against the dead man.”

“What was the good after he had died?” asked the detective.

“Eh bien! It seems to me, Monsieur, that you here at Scotland Yard were secretly glad when you heard of his tragic end.”

“I must admit that we were not sorry,” Stephens replied. “It saved a great deal of distasteful explanation.”

“Distasteful! Pourquoi?”

“Because the Home Office were most anxious that the real truth should not go forth to the public.”

“Why?”

“Well, because if what I suspect be correct, the real truth concerning the mysterious Englishman would have created the greatest alarm. The whole country would have been terrified at the thought of such a man being at liberty in their midst.”

“Diable! Was he such a monster, then?”

“Monster does not adequately describe him. He was criminal by instinct—the most formidable, terrible, and relentless of any recorded in the annals of crime. Is it any wonder, miss, that we were not sorry at receiving the news of his mysterious death?”

“He surely could not have gained early knowledge of the order to arrest him?” I queried.

“He may have done. He was such a remarkable person that I could imagine him capable of taking every precaution against surprise. Yet I confess, the manner in which he was assassinated is, to me, a complete enigma, as it is to the Chevalier Ansaldi. No doubt somebody knew of those jewels, and intended to get hold of them. The same hand that shot Cornforth also shot the policeman—I feel certain of that. To tell the truth, I’m sorry I’m not in Florence to assist in the inquiries. It is certainly a most interesting case.”

Enfin, I pressed him to tell me more about Monsieur Cornforth, but he only repeated that he was a most remarkable man, whose death was a distinct advantage to civilised society.

Inspector Stephens declared that nobody there at Scotland Yard knew the exact charges against him. The order from the Home Office to the Commissioner of Police had been brief and decisive, namely, that the Italian authorities were to be approached with a view to Cornforth’s immediate arrest, and that no money was to be spared in bringing him to England at as early a date as possible. Stephens himself had been dispatched to Florence, and had got as far as Basle when he was stopped by telegram, the report of the “wanted” man’s death having reached London.

“I suppose, miss,” he added, “that the Chevalier Ansaldi holds some theory of how the assassin got out of the strong-room, eh?”

“The chef du sûreté has no theory,” I replied. “What explanation can there be? I saw with my own eyes that the great steel door was bolted on the inside. Therefore how could the assailant have escaped?”

The inspector only raised his dark eyebrows. “It is an absolute enigma,” he admitted, “an enigma as complete as was the dead man himself.”

“You kept the whole affair very cleverly from the press,” I said.

“Certainly. We had no intention of alarming the public unduly—and I repeat, they would have been greatly alarmed had they but the slightest suspicion of the extraordinary truth.”

“Monsieur excites my curiosity,” I exclaimed, laughing.

“Well, I’m sorry, miss,” he replied, with a slight sigh; “sorry, too, I can’t satisfy your curiosity. But, as you know, here we are compelled to keep secrets strictly—more especially if the secrets come to us through official sources.”

I mentioned the suspicion of the old lady, who visited the house clandestinely—the woman suspected to have been my mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster.

His lips were pressed closely together, and for a few moments he remained silent.

“It may be, of course,” he said, “that the woman brought him the gems in secret, but I am inclined to believe that she was the means by which he communicated with other persons, believing he himself was being watched.”

“Then those other persons would, in all probability, know something concerning him?” I exclaimed quickly.

“Of course they would.”

“Voilà! Cannot they be found?”

“It is for the Chevalier to find them, miss. He is astute. He will probably do so. Yet, even then, it will be to their own interests to remain silent.”

“The old woman was seen to pay midnight visits to the villa,” I remarked. “She may have been my mistress.”

“Which goes to prove the soundness of my theory,” he said, looking me straight in the face. “It is a pity we cannot find this Mrs. Kennedy-Foster.”

“But the jewels?” I asked. “Are they the proceeds of robberies?”

“Perhaps. I can tell you that William Cornforth was no ordinary criminal. His equal has never lived.”

“Eh bien! And why would the truth concerning him be so alarming to the public?”

“For several reasons. So remarkable a personage was he, that while he lived society lay at his mercy. His methods were so subtle, unscrupulous and unsuspected that the cleverest among us would find ourselves at fault. The world has had many famous criminals, and not a few have passed through our department here,” added the police official, “but the man who was a menace to his fellows, and whose daring and cunning were unequalled, was he who escaped us and went to live in Florence as William Cornforth!”

CHAPTER IX

CONCERNS TWO VISITORS

SEPTEMBER 2ND

About a week after my visit to Scotland Yard a strange incident occurred. I was seated one afternoon in my modest lodgings off the King’s Road, Chelsea, when a card bearing the name “Karl Flugel” was brought to me by my landlady.

My visitor, on being shown in, proved to be a queer-looking old gentleman, with longish fair hair and fair beard, and a pair of grey eyes which beamed forth from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. He was curiously dressed, for though it was a warm day he wore a thick blue reefer jacket, almost like an overcoat, but cut very short and adorned by flat, wide braid. It was an amazing coat, of a cut that I had never seen before, either in England or out of it. His trousers were of light grey flannel, and he wore white spats over his patent-leather boots, which gave him an appearance très drôle.

Behind him stood a pretty, fair-haired girl, well-dressed en deuil, and wearing a big black hat—a girl whose face struck me as particularly sweet and charming. I judged her to be about twenty, extremely dainty, graceful and refined.

Flugel, speaking French with a German accent, was profuse in his apologies for disturbing me, and at first I could not quite make out the reason he had called. But soon afterwards, when both had seated themselves, he suddenly looked straight at me through his pince-nez and said—

“The object of my visit, I fear, mademoiselle, you may regard as somewhat strange. The fact is, mademoiselle, I have heard that you were acquainted with a very dear friend of mine, recently dead—Monsieur Cornforth.”

Dieu! At mention of that name my heart beat quickly. Here was actually one who had been the friend of the mysterious deceased!

I fear I did not control my surprise, for I noticed a faint smile overspreading his fresh-coloured features. The girl raised her eyes to mine for a second, and then dropped them.

“It is true that I know Monsieur Cornforth,” I said, much interested. “I only returned from Florence ten days ago.”

“I understand,” he remarked, “that you live in Florence with Madame Kennedy-Foster, eh? A very delightful old city. So full of ancient charm. And, of course, you have been to the Villa Borelli?”

“Mais oui,” I replied. “In fact, I was present with the police when the body of your unfortunate friend was found.”

“Ah, yes!” sighed my visitor. “It was very sad—very sad. I was amazed when I received the telegram announcing his death.”

I wondered who had sent the queer old gentleman the news. As far as I was aware the police telegram was the only intimation of the strange affair that had gone to England.

“Then news was conveyed to m’sieur?” I remarked. “Who sent you word?”

“A person who was in Mr. Cornforth’s confidence,” was his guarded reply. He was not to be caught napping, evidently. The girl’s eyes were wandering round the room.

“And how were you aware that I knew Monsieur Cornforth—or that I was staying here?”

“Cornforth himself told me that he knew you. But,” he added evasively, “the real object of my call is to learn some actual details regarding my dear friend’s mysterious end. I can discover nothing tangible. But you, who were present with the police, evidently know the truth. If you do, may I ask you to explain it to me—his friend?”

“Certainement,” I said. “I think the Italian police are most anxious to meet somebody who was the dead man’s friend. They have been advertising for his relatives—but without success.”

“Yes, yes,” he laughed, as though enjoying the discomfiture of the police. “I saw the advertisements, and they much amused me. They show how utterly ignorant the police are concerning the deceased or his antecedents. Fancy advertising for the heirs of William Cornforth! Oh, it is really too amusing!” he laughed.

“Pourquoi?” I asked, in some surprise. “A quantity of valuable property was found in the house and taken possession of by the British Consul. They belong to somebody.”

“They belong to this young lady here—Miss Cornforth—the dead man’s only child,” Flugel replied, introducing his companion.

I expressed my sympathy with her in her bereavement, whereupon I saw that tears were welling in her big blue eyes, as she said in a faltering voice—

“Mademoiselle, my father was, unfortunately, a rather erratic man. I had not seen him for two years. I did not even know that he was living in Florence. I believed he was leading a secluded life, buried somewhere in a London suburb. He was not fond of the society of his fellow-men.”

“Extraordinaire! And yet in Florence he went out a great deal. In the short time he lived there he became most popular in a rather exclusive set.”

“Miss Agnes has been living in Yorkshire with an aunt,” the old man explained. “Poor Cornforth was—well, just a trifle eccentric. Yet he was one of the most remarkable men in Europe.”

I nodded. Inspector Stephens had also told me how remarkable he was as a daring and dangerous criminal.

I looked at the pretty, modest fillette before me, surprised that she could be the daughter of a man who had been described as a veritable fiend.

In response to the German’s appeal, I gave a minute description of the curious circumstances in which the mysterious Cornforth had been discovered, and how all the searching police inquiries had proved abortive. I could see it was painful to Mademoiselle Agnes, yet it struck me that the old man was secretly exulting in causing the girl unhappiness. Why, I could not exactly tell.

A son tour I noticed a queer, wistful look in her gaze when her eyes met mine—an expression of terror combined with weariness. She seemed to hold her companion in mistrust, and I wondered whether she were not there against her will, compelled to hear from me the tragic details of her lost father’s death.

“He was wanted by the police,” remarked Flugel, heedless of the girl’s feelings. “And it was surely not surprising.”

“I don’t quite follow m’sieur,” I said. “Of what crime was he accused?”

But the old fellow only laughed, beaming at me through his spectacles. And, like Inspector Stephens, he refused to reply directly to my question.

Curieux! There really seemed a conspiracy of silence on every hand.

“You referred to the fact that certain jewels were discovered in the house,” Monsieur Flugel said presently.

“Mais oui, gems worth several thousands.”

“Where did they find them?”

“Secreted in a cavity of the concrete wall of the strong-room,” I replied. “It puzzled the police why he should have caused his study to be converted into an impregnable chamber,” I added.

“That surely does not puzzle Scotland Yard,” he remarked quietly. “The Italian police are, of course, ignorant of the true facts. The strong-room was constructed with a distinct purpose.”

“Par exemple the domestics say that it was only closed at certain times. At others, the door stood open, and the servants passed freely in and out.”

“Exactly. He would not always keep it locked, for he did not wish to unduly excite suspicion.”

“Of what?”

“Of the extraordinary truth.”

I described the dramatic sequel to the affair—the shooting of the police agent Bruno in the same room, whereat the jeune fille sat staring at me, as though in terror.

“Was the poor man actually found shot—just as my dear father had been?” she gasped quickly.

“Mais oui, mademoiselle, in a very similar manner,” I replied. “It has greatly puzzled the police, for the affair is quite unaccountable, except perhaps that somebody knew of the hiding-place of those gems and desired to get possession of them.”

“But you say that the body of the police agent lay there six or seven hours undiscovered. Surely the assassin had sufficient time to search the place?”

“Ah, non! The jewels had already been removed to the bank,” I answered.

The old man was silent, and stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“The jewels were Cornforth’s,” he said at last; “therefore they rightly belong to Miss Agnes. If sold, they would realise for her a comfortable fortune—is that not so?”

“Parfaitement.”

“And yet the most unfortunate point is that this young lady cannot come forward and claim relationship.”

“Pourquoi non?”

“For several reasons.”

“No,” cried the girl. “I—I could not acknowledge my poor father, because—because they would compel me to yield up his secret.”

“His secret,” I cried. “Parbleu! What secret did he possess?”

“One that, if it were known that I was still alive, they would compel me to disclose.”

“Still alive,” I echoed. “Then are you believed to be dead, mademoiselle?”

She nodded in the affirmative, overcome by emotion.

“So now you understand the situation?” said the man Flugel to me. “Miss Agnes cannot claim her dead father’s property herself, and she is, of course, anxious to obtain it in some roundabout way, without the authorities knowing that she is Mr. Cornforth’s daughter.”

“I don’t quite see how that is to be accomplished, m’sieur. Mademoiselle will have to prove relationship.”

“Which she can do quite easily. There are persons who can, and who would, no doubt, be only too willing to identify her.”

“Bien sûr, but I cannot see why she does not risk it,” I remarked.

“My dear mademoiselle,” he cried, “is it likely that she would boldly go forward and place herself at the mercy of the police. You don’t know the true seriousness of the affair, or you would never suggest that.”

“Tiens! I’ve been trying to learn the truth,” I laughed. “But you reveal nothing.”

“Is it likely that I would reveal the secret of my dead friend?” he asked reproachfully.

“Mais non; but if the jewels are to be inherited by Mademoiselle Agnes, then most certainly the truth must be told.”

“It is a truth entirely unsuspected,” he said. “The Italian police, with the Chevalier Ansaldi at their head, are extremely shrewd and clever, but I tell you they will never discover the true story of the murders in the strong-room at the Villa Borelli.”

“Zut! They evidently know at Scotland Yard,” I remarked.

“No. They are in complete ignorance. They know that Cornforth and Bruno were both assassinated, but by whom they are quite as much in the dark as you are,” he declared.

“Bien, and who, pray, is aware of the truth—the murderer, and——”

The old man’s eyes became filled with a peculiar light as he sat near the window. I saw a curious change in his features. His eyebrows contracted and his mouth hardened.

“Well,” he said hesitatingly at last, “the only man who can solve the mystery is myself. The fact is—I know the truth!”

“Diable! Then why don’t you make a statement to the police?” I cried eagerly. “Surely the assassin should be arrested and punished.”

“I have no incentive to assist the police. Scotland Yard hounded down my friend, therefore why should I help them?”

“In order to avenge the death of your friend,” I said quietly.

“Yes—do,” cried the girl, appealing to her companion. “Go to Scotland Yard and tell them what you know.”

But the crafty old German only shook his head, saying—

“If the police desire information, they must pay for it. I am acting in your interests, my dear Miss Agnes. If the authorities, in order to learn the truth, care to hand over half the jewels to you, and half to myself, then I could reveal to them the actual facts. But that is impossible—because you must still remain dead. The secret in your possession is worth even more than all the jewels found in your father’s house.”

Mystère. What great secret could it be that she should prefer to lose a fortune rather than reveal her identity to the authorities?

The situation was extraordinary.

I had already discerned that Monsieur Flugel was a keen and cunning old man, whose intention was to profit by his knowledge, whatever it might be. In reply to my questions, I learnt that the girl lived at a small village three miles from York, and had for a couple of years been earning her living as a school-teacher. During her father’s residence in England they had lived at Brighton, where Flugel had been her father’s constant companion.

I tried to persuade the old man to go with me to see Inspector Stephens, but he ridiculed the suggestion.

“No,” he replied. “To make any statement would probably reveal the fact of Miss Agnes being still alive—a risk which she cannot afford to run.”

“Ecoutez. Why is she believed to be dead?” I demanded. “In what manner was she supposed to die?”

“By drowning—eighteen months ago,” was his response. “She went out for a swim while staying at the house of an old schoolfellow at Sheringham, but never returned. It was all arranged, and completely deceived the press and the police. Search was made for the body, but it was not recovered till a month afterwards, when that of a young woman was actually washed up near Hunstanton, and was buried as that of Agnes Cornforth.”

“Et pourquoi?”

“Because, mademoiselle, we knew that, sooner or later, she would be arrested—just as they tried to arrest her father. So we conceived the idea of thus escaping further inquiry,” my visitor answered.

“Then they do not suspect you of possessing any secret knowledge of Monsieur Cornforth or his doings?”

“No,” laughed the old man. “That’s just the amusing point. They suspect other people who know nothing, but have never suspected me.”

“Alors, if the police knew that Mademoiselle Agnes were still alive, would the result be so very serious?” I inquired, looking the girl straight in the face as I spoke.

“Yes—very. They must never know that. I—I intend to preserve my father’s secret at all hazards,” she cried. “I would commit suicide rather than betray it into their hands,” she added vehemently, in a tone which showed that she meant what she said. “Therefore,” she added, “I trust to you to preserve my secret—to tell the police nothing of my visit to you.”

“Moi, I shall certainly respect your wishes, mademoiselle,” I replied. “But somehow I cannot help thinking that your father’s assassin ought to be brought to justice.”

“Alas!” she said, shaking her head in sorrow. “That can never be—never without disclosing the fact that I am still alive. If that were known I should find myself under arrest in two hours. Ah!” she added, “you do not know the remarkable nature of my father’s secret.”

“Whatever it is, mademoiselle, I confess I am in favour of avenging his death.”

But she shook her head, declaring in a hoarse, strained voice—

“Ah! that can never be done—never!”

CHAPTER X

CONTAINS SOME REVELATIONS

DECEMBER 22ND

In November I went back to Italy, to enter the service of the German lady named Staben, at Fiesole.

I saw the Chevalier, and told him of my visit to Scotland Yard, though I said nothing of what Flugel or Mademoiselle Cornforth had told me. I had given a pledge of secrecy, and, though much against my inclination, I felt in honour bound to keep it.

Twice we met accidentally, and our conversation drifted to the mystery of the Villa Borelli. He always declared it to be inscrutable.

Whenever I passed that silent, deserted villa, which was now to let, my mind wandered back to that most inexplicable mystery. Nobody would rent the place because of the tragedy that had occurred there, and through the past summer the once well-kept garden had been allowed to become overgrown by a tangle of weeds. Its grimness and neglect often caused a shudder to run through me as I went by.

Hélas! Before my eyes at such times would rise the pale, sweet countenance of the daughter of the murdered man.

One evening in mid-December I received a note asking me whether I could obtain leave and run round to the Prefecture of Police.

“I want to tell you something, mam’zelle,” the Chevalier said, when I entered his bureau, “something which will interest you greatly, I believe. What do you think? We have made an arrest in connection with the affair of the Villa Borelli!”

“Tonnerre de Dieu! An arrest!” I gasped.

“Yes; and moreover I feel sure the suspect can tell us something—something we do not dream. I would like you to give your opinion,” and he touched the electric button on his table.

Upon the threshold a detective appeared instantly.

“Bring in the prisoner you’ve just taken away,” commanded the official. “I’ve forgotten a question.”

Then, when the door had closed, he leaned back lazily in his chair, explaining that, just after five o’clock on the previous night a man passing the deserted villa thought he saw the flicker of a light in one of the upper windows visible from the road, and informed a policeman on duty at the Porta Romana. Assistance was obtained, and the villa searched, when, to the horror of the searchers, they found in the strong-room—that fatal chamber—an elderly man lying dead—shot through the back!

“Dieu! A third victim!” I cried, taken aback.

“Yes. At first the men searching were too surprised to think of anything else, when one of them heard a movement in the darkness, and turning on his lantern there was revealed the presence of a second person, whom they promptly arrested and brought here. I was out at the time, and only came in half-an-hour ago. Then I sent word to you——”

The door reopened, and, glancing behind me, I saw two police officers in uniform, who had between them a pale, trembling woman.

In an instant the recognition was mutual. It was Mademoiselle Cornforth!

“You!” she gasped, staring at me. “You—mademoiselle!”

And then she rushed across to greet me, crying—

“Help me! help me, mademoiselle—I beg of you! I was foolish to go there—yet I was seized by curiosity to see the room wherein my father had been struck down.”

“Your father!” exclaimed the Chevalier, looking at me in surprise. “What does this mean, mam’zelle?”

I was silent. What could I say?

“I went with Mr. Flugel—at his request. We went there in secret, because he wanted particularly to examine my father’s study—the strong-room wherein he died,” the girl explained. “We entered the place through a window, and Mr. Flugel, after exploring the ground-floor, found the room. I looked around it and then ascended to the next floor, to see what the rooms were like above. When I returned, to my horror I found my companion lying upon the floor shot. Yet I had heard no sound, though, being up-stairs and the swing-doors in the hall closed, perhaps I had not noticed it.”

“But why were you there, signorina?” asked the Chevalier, looking at her very seriously. This third mystery had, I saw, entirely upset him. There was something weird and uncanny about the Villa Borelli which even he, fearless as he was of assassins’ knives or bullets, held in dread.

“I must refuse to say,” was her prompt reply in English, for she only spoke a few words of Italian.

“Then I fear I must detain you until you are in a better mood,” he said politely. “Are you not aware that we have been advertising in various parts of the world to find you?”

“I know it, but I had no wish to come forward.”

“Why?”

“For reasons of my own.”

The famous official was silent for a few moments, thinking deeply.

“Well, signorina,” he said at last, “perhaps you, who are in possession of some exclusive knowledge, will give me your theory regarding this assassination of your companion. Who was he?”

“My father’s most intimate friend.”

“And who would have an incentive to assassinate him?”

“Nobody, as far as I know. He had no enemies. But,” she added, “may I be permitted to ask you a question in return? When my poor father was found, did the doctor say that the bullet had penetrated him?”

“Certainly. It had gone clean through his body.”

“And the bullet was found in the room?”

“No. Curiously enough, though we plainly discerned a dark mark upon the white enamelled steel where the projectile had evidently struck, yet the bullet itself was not found,” was the answer of the Chief of Police.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “I thought as much! The mystery was increased because no weapon and no projectile could be discovered—eh?”

“Exactly.”

“Then Mr. Flugel must have died in the same manner as my father and the police agent,” she said reflectively.

A pause ensued, broken only by the slow pacing of the police sentry outside in the dark courtyard.

“Why don’t you tell the Chevalier what you know, mademoiselle?” I urged. “Do not remain in this position. I feel sure the Chevalier Ansaldi will respect your confidence if there is any information you do not wish transferred to England. The Italian police have no great love for Scotland Yard.”

“Mademoiselle speaks the truth, signorina,” asserted the Chevalier. “Any fact you reveal to me I shall regard in strictest confidence.”

But she again remained silent.

“Tell me,” I urged, “how did Flugel know of my knowledge of your father?”

“My father wrote and told him. He feared that Madame Kennedy-Foster had discovered his secret, owing to some words she let drop while discussing with him a certain scientific subject. So he wrote to Flugel for his advice. And the latter—well, I know he urged that both Madame and yourself should be silenced—killed,” she said.

“Killed!” I gasped. “Bon Dieu! Why should I be murdered?”

“In order to protect my father’s secret.”

“Tiens! What was his secret?” I demanded breathlessly, my curiosity now aroused to breaking-point.

She hesitated. Then she said—

“If you reveal it to the London police, I shall be arrested as the only person living besides themselves who is in possession of it. They intend that it shall be repressed at all hazard.”

“C’est entendu. But what is it?” I again demanded.

“If you tell us, I promise to regard your confession as absolutely sacred,” the Chevalier assured her, while I, on my part, repeated my promise of strict secrecy.

“Well,” she said very reluctantly at last, after a great struggle with herself. “Perhaps I should only be doing right if I revealed it, and prevented any further development of the mystery. Will you take me back to the Villa Borelli?”

“Most certainly,” cried Ansaldi eagerly, and in a few minutes his own motor-car was outside awaiting us, while three agents of police were ordered to follow in another car.

Through the ill-lit streets of the old-world city we tore, awakening the echoes, until presently we drew up outside the iron gate of the House of Death.

We all three entered, and were there met by two police officers, who had re-taken possession of the fateful premises.

There I saw the dead body of Flugel lying in the salle-à-manger covered with a table-cloth, but as we entered the strong-room a loud cry of horror from the girl caused us to halt.

“Have a care!” she shrieked. “Do not enter there before me.” Then, going in alone, she stood for a second against the door-way, looking around the weird apartment. Afterwards she moved slowly to the electric-light switches beside the door and manipulated them. The lights were switched off one by one, and then on again.

“Now,” she said, “you can come forward in safety.”

We advanced, both much surprised at her action, when, turning suddenly, she asked—

“Have you examined that wall yonder?” and she pointed to the left-hand side of the room, near the writing-table.

The Chevalier replied that he had thoroughly examined it.

“Well, I would make a further examination,” she suggested. “Have some chisels brought, and see if there is not another cavity behind that steel paneling.”

This was eventually done. We standing by in wonder, when of a sudden, one of the men working gave vent to an ejaculation of surprise, for behind a piece of the steel panel that was found movable, though it fitted most exactly, was revealed a large electric battery.

With a will the men worked when, to our amazement, we realised that behind that wall were whole rows of electric batteries fully charged, and all connected up, capable of developing an enormous current, in addition to that from the electric-light installation, which could be turned on by one of the light-switches.

“What does this mean?” Ansaldi inquired of the dead man’s daughter.

“Remain patient, and see,” was her response.

Evidemment the wall was in sections, with the steel panels removable, allowing the batteries to be charged or taken out for cleaning. Yet the whole thing was so carefully concealed that on the previous occasion when the walls had been examined nothing suspicious had been discovered.

One of the men, who had borrowed a pick-axe and was working with all his might upon a panel which sounded hollow, succeeded in wrenching it open, and as he did so his implement, twisting inward, broke up some delicate glass, a quantity of which also fell out upon the concrete floor and broke.

“Ah!” shrieked the girl, “Have a care! For Heaven’s sake have a care! See what has been done!” and she bent to carefully pick up some fragments of glass vacuum tube, while at the same moment I saw, remaining in the hole in the wall now disclosed, part of a curious-looking apparatus, evidently in connection with those rows upon rows of strong batteries.

“See!” cried the girl, in deepest distress. “It is broken—irretrievably broken! The irresistible power has gone for ever, and the only man who knew the complete secret of its construction is dead!”

“But what is it?” I asked in surprise, as I stood in wonder at her side, gazing upon the heap of broken glass tubes.

“It is the secret which the British Government, suspecting that my father held it, wished to secure,” she answered. “They thought, because he came abroad, they having once refused to deal with him, that he intended to dispose of it to a foreign Power. But they were wrong. My father came here to live and to work in the secrecy of this strong-room, which he had built to experiment in and further perfect his discovery. And my mother as a widow, living under the assumed name of Mrs. Kennedy-Foster, resided close by up at the Villa Luba.”

“The Signora Kennedy-Foster was his wife!” cried Ansaldi amazed. “What was his discovery?”

“He had succeeded in doing what all scientists had hitherto failed to accomplish, and what all scientists, ever since the discovery by Marconi of wireless telegraphy, have been seeking to discover, namely, the means by which the Hertzian rays could be concentrated and directed. My father had discovered it, and on doing so was startled to find that an unseen power, the irresistible potency of which was unsuspected by the world, lay in his hands. Nothing could resist the deadly ray of electricity emanating from this innocent-looking apparatus. Steel would melt like water, the explosives on board the greatest battleship afloat could be fired by simply directing the current upon it from any distance at which the vessel could be seen. Whole armies could be wiped out in a flash by the silent and unseen current, or the population of hostile cities swept away like flies! Nothing could withstand it. Well, I much fear that my father experimented with it in secret, and people lost their lives. Several mysterious murders were committed in London and the assassin never discovered. They were regarded as mysteries by Scotland Yard, until a young scientist pointed out that they might have been caused by any one who had actually discovered the mode of harnessing and directing Hertzian rays. This aroused the suspicions of the police who, having some slight evidence of my father’s discovery, denounced him as a most ferocious criminal, who had sacrificed human life in the course of his experiments. In fact, they feared him, and the Government, seized by panic, resolved, at all hazards, to possess themselves of the terrible invention, rather than allow it to go into the hands of any foreign Power. My father offered it to the War Office, but having been denounced as a criminal, the authorities refused to treat with him. Hence the later action of the Home Secretary in demanding his arrest.”

“But why was he killed just at that time?” I asked eagerly, utterly amazed at her revelations.

“He, unfortunately, had neglected to turn off the additional electric-light current by this switch,” she explained. “When alone, locked in this room experimenting, he would turn on all the current possible, and from this delicate apparatus he had sufficient power to annihilate an army. In the night my mother, passing as Mrs. Kennedy-Foster, had been in the habit of visiting him disguised as an old woman, bringing him in secret various electrical parts, which were made for him in Milan and Paris. On the night of his death my mother had visited him, and he had, no doubt, forgotten to turn off the switch, therefore from the apparatus in its place of concealment there emanated a deadly unseen ray which, as he seated himself in his writing-chair over yonder, passed clean through him, causing a wound much resembling a revolver-shot, and singeing his clothes. Again the same thing happened in the case of Bruno, and again to Flugel, who was searching in order to possess himself of the apparatus, with a sinister object. It is a great escape for you all that neither of you has passed through the exact line in which that fatal ray became directed, otherwise others of you would certainly have fallen victims. See!” she added, pointing to a dark-brown spot upon the concrete floor which the police had hitherto taken for a bullet-mark. “This is the mark where the ray fell upon the concrete, causing it to slowly crumble and decay. There is no danger now,” she added, taking some of the secret apparatus from the cavity in the wall and placing it upon the table. “The most intricate part—the part of which I have no absolute knowledge and which was unknown to all save my dead father—is the portion lying there broken.”

“Then the secret of this most deadly discovery is irretrievably lost—eh?” asked the Chevalier, bending eagerly towards her.

“Yes. Happily for the world, or its possibilities in the hands of the unscrupulous would surely have been terrible. Life or property would never be secure,” she declared.

“And am I forbidden to divulge this to Scotland Yard?” asked the Chevalier.

“Yes. I hold you both to your promise,” she said quickly. “The jewels you discovered were my father’s, for he was a diamond merchant in Hatton Garden before he took up electricity as a hobby. I shall not, however, claim them, for I prefer that the London police should still remain in the belief that I lost my life by drowning. It is true that I am in possession of the greater part of my father’s secret, for, with Flugel, I assisted him in the construction of his first satisfactory apparatus. But I will never betray it, for in the interests of humanity I feel it is far better that the terrible discovery of such means of destruction should be lost to the world for ever.”

To-day, as I close this chapter of mes souvenirs, I have received a letter from Mademoiselle Agnes, telling me that she has rejoined her mother in Brussels, where they intend to live in future.

Madame is a real widow now. Pauvre Madame! Recollections of her often cross my mind. Et Monsieur?

Perhaps after all it is as well that the world has lost the advantage of his terrible secret.

My life up here in beautiful Fiesole with Frau Staben is too triste. I prefer more movement, and a mistress more chic. Peugh! those blouse-and-skirt Germans!

Ah! oui. I shall give notice to-day.

I am sick and tired of Firenze la Bella.

CHAPTER XI

A QUEER MÉNAGE

SEPTEMBER 6TH

The Shorlands!

Madame was very sweet and winning, but Monsieur was always a mystery.

He was about forty, tall, bony, yet robust. His hair was black, slightly tinged with grey at the temples, which brightened the darkness of his complexion. His rather prominent eyes were black, of an opaque blackness when their glance was tired, yet, somehow, a secret force seemed to animate them, giving an ardent, yet gloomy, character to the features. He was always alert and full of energy, his forehead ample and well defined, his nose aquiline, his chin long, showing an obstinate will.

And he always seemed to regard me with distinct suspicion.

True, I was Madame’s femme-de-chambre, hence he believed, I suppose, that she had taken me into her confidence.

The ménage of the Shorlands’ was a rather curious one. Monsieur and Madame lived in Albert Hall Mansions, which—as you know—are a big pile of red-brick facing the Memorial, in Kensington Gore. They rented it, I believe, from a retired judge who had gone to New Zealand to visit his son for a couple of years. A très joli apartment extremely well furnished, solidly and rather severely, as became a criminal judge.

I obtained the situation through a well-known agency in Edgware Road.

I say that the ménage was a trifle irregular, because of the mysterious movements of Madame.

She was a short, rather stout, fair-haired, over-dressed little person, with a fat hand and a snub nose. She deluded herself into the belief that she was good-looking, but oh! her face! Well, it was what we should vulgarly call in France “porky”—that is, bloated and mottled in such a manner that no face-cream and powder could effectually hide it.

Her habit was to speak sharply, almost snappishly, indeed so much so that in the first hour I was at Albert Hall Mansions I felt half inclined to “answer her back.”

But I did not know her. Ma foi! I did not. Perhaps it would have been better for me if I had never known her.

Bien! The days went by. Our personnel consisted of the chef, housemaid, John the man-servant and myself, yet the meals were served with a stateliness that would have befitted a château on the Loire.

In the cuisine no economy was practised, for Monsieur dearly loved good things; while Madame’s wardrobe was filled to overflowing with rich furs and smart gowns from the best houses in Paris.

Vraiment! she had a neat figure, had Madame, even though she was too short of stature and her nose was so markedly tip-tilted.

Her movements were truly mysterious. She came and went alone at all hours. She would rise at four in the morning and go out alone, returning in time for breakfast, or she would dress herself in a walking-gown at midnight and go forth, not to return until mid-day. Where she went, or what she did, greatly puzzled me.

Yet, from the first, she had given me to understand that I was not paid to reason, only to serve her as femme-de-chambre.

Monsieur was entirely complacent. He never troubled whither she went, or when she returned. He would sit at home and read, and never care at what hour Madame returned. His only care seemed to be that the front door was left unbolted for her to enter.

Bien! Therefore I scented mystery. Surely you also would have done so had you been in my place.

More than once I set myself to watch her. Slipping out after her late one night I followed her in a taxi. She had exchanged a pretty pale-blue dinner-gown for a neat black dress, and wearing a close-fitting hat and black jacket she looked very much like a superior maid herself.

She took a taxi from the rank and drove away, while I took another, and told the man to follow his friend.

First we went swiftly up Park Lane, and then, heading due north, passed through Highgate on to the North Road, continuing through Finchley to Whetstone, where, turning sharply to the right up a pleasant road of detached houses, we found ourselves passing a railway station, which I recognised as Oakleigh Park.

Beyond, on the right, lay Barnet Valley, and away to the north the houses of New Barnet. In a few moments we swung into the main road from Enfield, where, turning again to the left, my driver suddenly pulled up short.

“The lady’s got out at that white ’ouse at the end of the road, miss. I’d better get back to Oakleigh Park station and wait for you there—eh? If I wait ’ere I’ll be spotted.”

Evidemment this was not the first occasion that my driver had followed another cab.

I turned on my heel, and in the night strolled to the house where my mistress was calling.

My main fear was that she might glance out of the window, for the night was bright and moonlight. Fortunately a high privet hedge divided the garden from the road. As I passed I noted that, approached by a well-kept gravelled path, a small newly-built house lay, covered with ivy, behind which was a pleasant garden filled with flowers.

Who lived there? I wondered. Who could be Madame’s friend whom she had gone there to visit clandestinely—and at that hour!

The bright green taxi was drawn up against the gate, and the man was idly smoking a cigarette at the steering-wheel, therefore to slip within the garden and try and peer between the blinds was impossible.

So I was compelled to wait in the vicinity until about an hour later I saw her come forth and dismiss her cab, showing that she was remaining there the night.

I waited until four o’clock in the morning, but in vain. Then I returned to Albert Hall Mansions.

Madame returned about half-past nine, and sat with Monsieur at breakfast as though she had been calmly at home all the night.

Extraordinaire!

Moi, I was much mystified, but I resolved to watch and to wait.

The London season was drawing to a close.

It had been an exceptionally brilliant one, they said, for the principal hostesses had outvied with each other in entertaining; of balls there had been many that had been noteworthy, and in no previous season during my long service in London families had luxury and extravagance run such riot.

Vraiment! Thousands stood starving below those brilliantly-lit windows of the Savoy and Cecil, where smart London laughed and supped; but what does London care for outcasts such as those? They are the unemployed whom the smart woman, in her ignorance, believes to be the drunken and worthless scum of the metropolis.

Little Madame Shorland moved in quite a good set. She was really not more extravagant than any other woman who went to Dover Street or the Place Vendôme for her gowns, and to Bond Street and the Rue de la Paix for her hats.

She was always exquisitely gowned, and her taste in dress was perfect. And she always did me credit, I am very proud to declare.

Sometimes she would take me out with her when driving in the smart electric landaulette she so frequently hired. She hated to be alone, and Monsieur would scarcely ever drive out with her. He was a morose person, was Monsieur.

One afternoon we had stopped at Rumpelmeyer’s and were having tea when there entered a tall, fair-haired, clean-shaven young man, with an extremely well-dressed, rather handsome young woman.

The latter, recognising my mistress, came over effusively with outstretched hand, exclaiming, with a pronounced American accent—

“My! Mrs. Shorland! I’m real glad to see you. My husband and I called on you yesterday.”

“I was out—so sorry,” replied Madame, at the same time acknowledging the well-groomed, clean-shaven man’s bow.

Then the lady introduced her husband as “Mr. Lindermann,” and I quickly knew they were Mr. and Mrs. John R. Lindermann, of Pittsburg. The name of Lindermann is, as everybody knows, synonymous of great wealth. Old Silas Lindermann had died a year before, and his colossal fortune, derived from iron, had been inherited by his son John, the keen-eyed young man before us.

The pair were of a pronounced “loud” type, such as one meets constantly at the Carlton, the Savoy, and the Ritz during the season.

Madame seemed to be very intimate with them, especially with the young millionaire’s wife, yet I had never heard her speak of them before, and could only suppose that the friendship had been formed that season.

As we sipped our tea, Lindermann remarked that they had been in “Eu-rope” a year, and were just now at the Ritz.

Mrs. Lindermann chattered on in a high-pitched American voice that could be heard all over the room, when Lindermann himself suddenly said—

“My wife wants to take a chat-too in the Forest of Fontainebleau for the summer,” he explained. “Do you know it, Mrs. Shorland? What’s it like?”

“Delightful,” declared Madame. “In my younger days in Paris we often spent Sunday at Barbison, Marlotte or the Gorge de Loup. The forest is perfectly lovely—especially if you have a car.”

“We’ve got one. We brought it over, and went touring on it down in Italy. It was fine. But, say! Lady Sybil’s dining with us to-morrow night and going to the new piece at the Gaiety. Will you join us?”

Madame thanked him, and accepted. A friendship with a millionaire is always useful.

As I drove with Madame back I made discreet inquiry regarding the Lindermanns, and what she thought of them.

“Oh! they’re not our sort, of course, Mariette. But we must tolerate them, as they may be useful,” she laughed.

Another little histoire. One evening, four days after the encounter at Rumpelmeyer’s, Madame had given me leave to go out until eleven, but I had returned just before seven as I had forgotten a letter I wanted to post.

When close to Albert Hall Mansions I saw her emerge, therefore I drew back, so that she should not see me. She had, I noticed, put on that same plain black gown, and she carried in her hand a large bag. Turning, she walked in the direction of Knightsbridge, where she hailed a taxi, ordering the man to close it.

That action aroused my suspicion.

I hailed another taxi, and again followed her to that suburban house at Oakleigh Park.

I was impatient to discover the motive of these secret visits. Now, in the evening light, I saw, as I approached cautiously, that beyond the house lay a paddock, and by squeezing through the hedge, I could cross the grass, out of sight of the taxi-driver, and thus gain the side of the house. In half an hour it would be sufficiently dark for my purpose.

Bien! I passed on, and, when out of sight of the idling driver, I waited.

Darkness was a long time in falling that hot, breathless night. It is astonishing how slowly the daylight fades when one is watching.

Enfin, the dusk grew deeper; night crept on. Then, as silently as I could, I walked stealthily back under the shadows. The taxi driver had not lighted his lamps, preferring to wait until his fare emerged. Quietly I entered the paddock, and, slipping across the grass, gained the side of the detached house, close to a window, through which, approaching carefully, I peered.

It was a small, plainly furnished study, but no one was there.

Keeping still out of sight of the taxi-driver, I crept along the strip of garden beneath the windows in front of the house, where I could hear voices, until I got to a window whence a light shone out across the lawn.

The drab holland blind was down, but the edge was of lace insertion. Therefore, as I raised my head above the sill, I could see all that was in progress within the room.

What I witnessed caused my heart to leap.

In a big grandfather chair near the fireplace, propped up with pillows, sat a thin, pale-faced man of about sixty, evidently suffering from illness, for he moved his wasted hand languidly as he spoke to Madame, who was seated near him with her hat off, and with a look of keen anxiety upon her face.

The man was in a dark blue dressing-gown, and even as I looked I saw my little friend tenderly place a hassock beneath his slippered feet. As she did so he stretched forth his hand, and, placing it upon hers, looked into her face with an expression of deep thankfulness. For a moment he held her hand in his as she stood beside him. Then he slowly carried it to his lips.

I could hear that he spoke low, soft words, but what they were I could not distinguish.

She stood gazing at him in silence, and I saw that tears were welling in her eyes. For fully ten minutes she stood beside him sighing, with her lips pressed together, in a valiant effort to restrain her emotion.

Suddenly he raised his thin white finger towards a big dark-blue-and-white Chinese ginger-jar which stood upon a shelf in the centre of the big carved buffet on the opposite side of the room. She crossed to it, and, taking it down, removed the lid. Then, placing her hand within, she drew forth something which she carried across to the invalid.

It was, I saw, a small oblong box of dark green leather, which, on being opened, disclosed two short strings of very fine pearls of the same size and quality.

The white-haired invalid took them in his hand, exhibiting them in his palm beneath the light, while Madame bent to examine them, shaking her head in doubt. The invalid had evidently put to her a question to which she could give no reply.

At last he selected the shorter of the two strings, and after scrutinising them, mutely handed them to her. The other he placed back in their box, which she, in turn, restored to the jar, while the pearls he had given her she secreted in the breast of her silk blouse.

Ma foi! the whole proceeding was a strange one. What could it all mean?

Madame had reseated herself, apparently quite at home, and they were discussing something very seriously. Mine was a tantalising position, for I was unable to distinguish a single sentence.

Darkness had now fallen completely. Once a tap came at the door, and a nurse in uniform entered to ascertain whether her patient required anything. On another occasion the telephone on the writing-table near the window rang, and the nurse entered to answer it.

Then the invalid and his visitor were again left alone, and Madame seemed to be endeavouring to cheer up the man who had given her that couple of dozen fine pearls.

Again he had tenderly kissed her soft white hand, and his dark, deep-sunken eyes were fixed upon her. He had evidently been a good-looking man before the ravages of his illness had altered his countenance and given it the haggard, shrunken appearance it now presented.

She took up her hat, thrust the pins into it, and began to adjust her veil before the mirror over the fireplace, while I still crouched watching.

I saw her wish him good-bye, standing for some moments while the invalid clasped her hand.

Then I watched her bend with her hand upon his shoulder, and it seemed as though she urged him to be of good cheer.

Lower and lower she bent, till her full red lips met his.

I held my breath. This, then, was the reason of her secret visits!

I hardly know what happened in those moments that followed, save that I heard the rustle of her silk skirt close to me, and that, a few seconds later, the red back-light of the taxi was disappearing down the road.

I crept forth, and found that the name upon the gate was “Allandale.” Then I rejoined my taxi, and drove round until we found the nearest shops.

At four likely places I made inquiry, but without any result until, at a newsvendor’s, the man behind the counter said—

“Yes, miss. I serve ‘Allandale.’ There’s an old invalid gentleman lives there.”

“What is his name?” I inquired eagerly.

“Mr. March, miss. He’s lived there about two years, I think.”

“Is he married?”

“No, miss. He’s got an old woman as housekeeper, and can only go out in one of those long invalid carriages. They say he’s got something wrong with his spine. I supply him with lots of papers. Reading seems his only recreation, poor man,” added the newsvendor.

Then, after a further chat, I re-entered my taxi, and we sped back again down the hills to London.

What I had seen had increased the mystery.

Madame was quite unsuspicious that I had been watching her. Women are so seldom suspicious of their servants.

On the next night she was absent till morning, yet Monsieur slept calmly at home, not in the least perturbed by her non-return! Ah! truly some of the ménages of London are distinctly curious. You read strange things in your daily paper, but ma foi! they are not half so strange as the happenings in real life.

Madame Lindermann called one afternoon while I was attending upon Madame. She was sitting in the room while I tied Madame’s veil, when suddenly she exclaimed—

“Say, Mrs. Shorland, my husband has had a letter from his agent in Paris by to-day’s mail saying that he’s found a nice place for us in Fontainebleau Forest—the Chat-too de Bouligny, somewhere near a place called Marlotte.”

“I know it!” I exclaimed. “The most lovely part of the forest, Madame.”

“Looks fine from the pictures he’s sent. I’ve taken it for the summer. You’ll come over with us for a few weeks, now do, won’t you?” urged Mrs. Lindermann, who wore a wonderful gown of cream lace, that must have cost a good many thousand francs.

“I’ll be most delighted,” declared my mistress. “I love Fontainebleau.”

“Madame will enjoy it,” I declared. “It’s a perfect spot for the summer, and one can so easily run into Paris.”

On the following Monday therefore Madame and I travelled together to Paris, where, at the Gare du Nord, we found Lindermann’s fine car waiting to take us across the city and out to Fontainebleau.

It proved a delightful run, and soon after six o’clock we found ourselves at the great Château de Bouligny, about two miles from the pretty riverside village of Marlotte. It was a splendid place, the residence of the Comte de Bouligny, who, being in the Diplomatic Service, was abroad.

The Americans had apparently installed themselves rapidly, for there seemed to be a host of servants, and as we drove up before the great turretted house, our host and hostess came forward gaily to welcome us.

The Counts of Bouligny were one of the oldest families in France, and the château, filled with antiques, was a most delightful residence, situated on a slight eminence, with the lovely forest stretching in every direction.

Madame was the only guest, and after dinner in the huge oak-panelled salle-à-manger the trio played billiards.

Next day they took a long motor drive, through the forest to Recloses, Arbonne, and thence by Barbison to Chailly, returning by the lovely Route de Melun and the Route de Moret, past the picturesque village of Veneux-Nadon, and home.

Madame declared herself delighted. The day was perfectly cloudless, and the wonderful forest, perhaps the prettiest in all Europe, looked its best. For my own part I confess I enjoyed myself on that day, and on the many days that followed. There was a particularly good-looking valet-de-chambre. Assez!

Lindermann received daily visits from a tall, thin, well-dressed American named Lamb, his agent, with whom he spent an hour in the library each day.

“I’ve got so many interests that I’m continually being worried,” he explained one morning. “They’ll never let me alone. But Lamb’s a hustler—one of the smartest in Parrus.”

Madame led a pleasant life in those warm summer days, motoring each afternoon, lunching on the terrasse, and playing bridge or billiards in the evening.

One night, after I had retired, I sat in my room writing my diary. Then I turned out my lamp and strolled out on to the balcony to gaze over the forest, lying silent and weird in the bright moonlight.

Eh, bien, I had been there perhaps ten minutes, when suddenly I heard a light footstep on the gravel below, and saw Lindermann, still in his evening clothes, cross the drive hurriedly and slip across the grass towards the big gates which opened into the road.

Where could he be going at that hour? My curiosity was aroused, and I at once crept down the wide staircase, and followed him. Walking on the grass in my slippers I made no noise. I saw his dark figure pass through the gate, and I hurried forward to watch.

He walked about three hundred yards along the white forest road in the direction of Marlotte, when, from the shadow emerged a man whose face I could not see.

But, curiously enough, I heard Lindermann speaking in perfect French, a language which he had pretended to me not to know!

I halted and listened again. Yes! There was no doubt. The American, who spoke French splendidly, was upbraiding the man for not keeping an appointment on the previous night.

“There was danger, mon cher ami,” the stranger replied. “I did not wish to run any risk. It was certainly not wise in our mutual interests, you know.”

This clandestine meeting was curious, without a doubt, but when a man is a millionaire, I remembered, he often is compelled to hide from his right hand what his left hand is doing.

Therefore, at the time, I did not regard the circumstance as anything really remarkable. It was only in the light of later events that a strange truth became revealed.

Lindermann was often absent in Paris—transacting business with Lamb. One day, when he was at home, they had motored to Chartres, and, having lunched at the old-world Hôtel de la Poste covered with ivy, they went south to Arrou, and got back to the château rather late; indeed, only just in time to scramble into their clothes before the great gong in the turret went for dinner.

Lindermann’s wife looked particularly smart in a low-cut gown of carnation pink, her only ornament being one that she had worn on the one occasion when they had dined at Albert Hall Mansions, an antique crucifix set with magnificent emeralds, and suspended around her white neck by a thin gold chain. I recollected that Madame had remarked what an exquisite thing it was, whereon Lindermann had told her—

“Yes. It’s real fine, ain’t it? It belonged to Marie Antoinette, and was her talisman. She carried it with her at her execution in 1793. I bought it from the Janssen collection in Berlin a year ago.”

And as Madame’s hostess now sat beneath the shaded lamplight at the head of the table, I saw that the jewel of the ill-fated Queen of Louis XVI. gleamed with a green mystic light, which ever and anon caught one’s eye. That jewel worn by the Queen when she bravely faced the mob of women at Versailles, when she had dismissed Turgot and Necker in disgrace, and when, with horror, she had seen the head of her favourite Princess Lamballe flourished before her prison window, now graced the neck of the ostentatious wife of an American iron-master!

Madame was in excellent form that evening when I peeped in. Her conversation was brilliant, and they all laughed at her witticisms.

A long motor drive had been planned for the morrow, so they retired early.

At nine next morning, after breakfast, Madame, in her country kit of blouse, skirt and motor hat, approached me.

“Where’s the nearest post-office, Mariette?” she asked hurriedly.

“Down at Marlotte, a mile away, Madame.”

“I want to go there. Come with me,” she urged. “I can get back before the car is ready.”

So we walked along the shady forest road together to that picturesque village, so beloved by the Paris artists, and at the bureau de poste she dropped a thick heavy letter into the box.

Was it, I wondered, a letter to that haggard invalid out beyond Barnet, who had so tenderly kissed her upon the lips?

And as I strolled at her side on the way back I remained silent in wonder. What was her secret? Every mistress has some secret.

Lindermann had been suddenly called to Paris by telegram, but nevertheless the two ladies spent a delightful day travelling on the wide Lyons road to Auxerre, returning by Tonnerre and Joigny.

They found Lindermann at home on their return, but when about half-way through dinner I heard the sound of an approaching motor-car, and a few moments later Henri, the butler, approaching his master, whispered something in his ear.

He started from the table and came out, almost falling upon me. A few seconds later he went back, exclaiming—

“Say, Ida! Lamb’s come down to say that your mother got to Paris this evening very ill. She’s at the Athenée. He saw there wasn’t a train back till midnight, so he’s brought his car.

“My mother ill!” gasped Mrs. Lindermann, starting from the table in sudden alarm. “What’s the matter?”

“A sudden seizure in the train coming from Cherbourg. She only landed from New York this morning, it seems.”

“Let’s go at once,” she cried. “You’ll excuse us, won’t you, Mrs. Shorland?” And they both hurried out.

Five minutes later we watched them set out, each taking a dressing-case.

“Mrs. Lindermann told me that she expected her mother soon,” remarked Madame to me as she returned to the dinner-table. “This will no doubt be a great upset for them.”

I suppose we had been up-stairs in Madame’s room nearly an hour when Henri suddenly entered, saying in French—

“There is a gentleman who desires to speak with Madame. He has asked for Monsieur Lindermann, and now asks for you.”

Madame gave orders for him to be admitted, whereupon there entered a rather short, dark-eyed, little man in sombre black, while I saw a second man standing in the hall outside.

“You are Madame Shorland?” he said abruptly in French. “And Mademoiselle is Madame’s maid—eh? Is not that so? Well, Madame, I am Jacques Lesage, divisional inspector, Prefecture of Police, Paris.”

Madame drew a long breath. In an instant the light faded from her cheeks.

“I must apologise for disturbing Madame, but I am here in connection with a great robbery of jewels.”

I had risen prepared to defend my little mistress. I saw that he regarded us both with suspicion.

“Bien,” Madame said boldly. “And what have we to do with it, pray?”

“You are friends of the couple Lindermann,” said the detective. “They were warned an hour ago, and for the present have escaped.”

“Then, Monsieur is in search of Lindermann?” I gasped.

“Certainly. He and his wife, with a man who goes under the name of Lamb, are expert American thieves. Six months ago a case in the jewel-room of the Musée du Louvre was broken open, and among other very valuable objects the emerald crucifix of Marie Antoinette was abstracted. How the theft was accomplished we have not yet ascertained. We know, however, that Lindermann disposed of four antique rings in London a month ago, and that the woman carried some of the property to Brussels. Probably part of it, or of the proceeds of other robberies, is concealed here; therefore my men will search the place. I have sent a man to Moret with orders to telephone to the Hôtel de l’Athenée.”

Madame and I stood staring at the man, utterly dumfounded at those revelations.

Then, as he went out to direct his men to search the splendid old château, I called after him—

“Madame Lindermann wore the crucifix last night at dinner.”

But when he had passed down the hall, Madame whispered in my ear, smiling grimly—

“The crucifix is well on its way to London, Mariette. We posted it in Marlotte this morning!”

Horrible affair. We were both taken to the Prefecture of Police, in Paris, but by preserving strict silence we were released after only a few hours’ detention, and returned to London.

It was not long, however, before I discovered that Monsieur and Madame Shorland were actually members of an expert gang of daring jewel-thieves, and that Mr. March, the mysterious invalid up at Oakleigh Park, was Madame’s father—one of the best-known receivers of stolen jewels in London.

Moreover, the Paris police, having released us, discovered their error two days later, and telegraphed frantically asking Scotland Yard to effect the arrest of my master and mistress.

But, alas! they had already both disappeared, and, as far as I know, have never since been heard of.

I paid a visit to the interesting invalid up at Oakleigh Park, and from him received my wages—a substantial sum in order, I suppose, to secure my silence.

Surely it was no affair of mine. Madame had been very kind and generous towards me. Was it not my duty therefore to be loyal to her?

Perhaps in this you may differ?

But what would you have done in the circumstances—if you had been a femme-de-chambre? Mais oui, some of my adventures in London have, indeed, been strange ones!

CHAPTER XII

A PEER OF THE REALM

APRIL 5TH

Bon Dieu! Little Lady Lydgate was indeed extravagant.

Among the whole of your English aristocracy surely no woman could have been more reckless.

Superbe! Tonnerre de Dieu! was she not one of the beauties of England? Daughter of the hook-nosed old Countess of Hannaford, her eldest sister had married a duke, while she had become wife of the young Earl of Lydgate.

She was twenty-six, and had been married five years when she engaged me as femme-de-chambre.

Half the illustrated journals in England published her photograph—you have no doubt seen and admired her face many times—while in the society-columns her doings were always chronicled for the delectation of the bourgeoisie of suburbia.

On her marriage she went home to Lydgate Hall, the great ancestral seat of the Lydgates from the days of Henry VI, the huge mansion in Shropshire which, even to-day, is regarded as one of the show-places of England, like our châteaux of Touraine.

Milady, soon after I entered her service, sent me from London down to the château to fetch a small trunk that she stored away in an attic.

Malheureusement, a year before she had engaged me she had left Lydgate, never to return, and, with her husband, had taken up her abode in a bijou house in South Street, Park Lane.

Ma foi! the fine old château was one of the most magnificent I had ever seen. Its great vaulted hall was full of the armour of the dead-and-gone Lydgates and their retainers, while the historical associations of the grand old place were, indeed, important in the history of England. I bought a guide-book and read all about it. The Earls of Lydgate had ever been a proud and independent race, yet, quel malheur! owing to milady’s unbridled extravagance, her heavy debts at bridge and on the turf, the mortgagees had foreclosed, and the great estate now had a brand-new American owner, Mr. Silas B. Shaw, the millionaire store-keeper of Chicago.

Many of the noble oaks in the park had been cut down and turned into money, while most of the pictures, some by Reynolds and one by Frans Hals, had been knocked down at Christie’s in order to temporarily stave off financial embarrassment. But ruin had come, and surely that little white-enamelled house in South Street must have felt very close and irritating after such a stately mansion as milord’s home.

Au contraire, she never fretted for a single moment. Tall, slim, fair-haired, with a perfect figure, and a chic remarkable, her reverse of fortune did not seem to trouble her in the least. She was ever gay and light-hearted, full of high spirits, and dined out nearly every night. Possessing a host of friends among the smarter set, she and her husband—whom she affectionately termed “Tubby”—went everywhere.

Diable! The position was, indeed, pitiable. When she married, his lordship—one of the best-tempered, easy-going of men—possessed that great estate, with an ample income, and was full of all the traditions of his noble race. Yet within five years she had made ducks and drakes of everything, and he had been compelled to part with every stick in order to evade bankruptcy.

At Monte Carlo her losses during two seasons had been colossal, while at the various houses in London where bridge was played for high stakes she was known to be the most reckless of players.

Pauvre Monsieur! I pitied him. He was très gentil always, a perfect gentilhomme, long-suffering and entirely devoted to her. He saw none of her faults. His eyes were closed to her outrageous flirtations, to her reckless extravagance, and to her careless disregard of all conventionalities.

Bref, I had not been a day in milady’s service before, by a coup d’œil, I realised that she entertained no affection for the honest, upright Monsieur she had so utterly ruined. Ah! what havoc a pretty woman can cause in the world! Vraiment her face was perfect, and she was très elegant from the velvet in her soft hair to the tip of her tiny patent-leather shoe. Toilettes, linge, chapeaux, all were from maisons of the first order in Paris, but when the bills would be settled was quite another matter.

For the Countess of Lydgate to wear their creations was a valuable réclame in England, a fact which nobody was more keenly aware of than my gay little mistress herself.

With the remnant of the Earl’s fortune the small house in South Street had been furnished with exquisite taste and greatest luxury. Art nouveau was the predominating note everywhere.

We, of the personnel, discussed among ourselves milady’s unbridled extravagances and the blindness of Monsieur.

Old Mr. Thompson, the butler, hated her. A tall, grave-faced, white-haired old man, he was a typical servant of days long past. For forty-eight years he had been in the service of the Lydgates, being butler to milord’s father. Born and bred upon the estate, like his father before him, he had commenced work as a stable lad, and then had become under-footman, rising until he had become major-domo and entrusted with everything.

Proud of his long service, he had been compelled to stand by and witness the sweet-faced milady bring his young master to ruin. Was it therefore surprising that as we servants sat at table he would often break forth into bitter invectives against her, and even curse her openly.

Milady instinctively knew that Thompson detested her, and seemed rather amused by it. I had suspicion that she had tried to induce the Earl to get rid of him, but her husband had refused point-blank.

Mr. Silas B. Shaw of Chicago had, I know, offered the old man double wages to return to Lydgate, but he had indignantly refused. To us he often declared that he would stand by his young master until the end.

I admired the fine old fellow. He was true, honest, loyal and devoted to his master—which cannot be said of most butlers—but towards milady his haine was intense.

Among the smart young aristocratic idlers about town Lady Lydgate—or “Angel,” as she was familiarly known—was voted good fun. They danced with her, flirted with her, took her to theatres and to the Savoy or the Carlton afterwards, and now that she was “hard-up, poor dear,” gave her a good time.

Though half-a-dozen admirers were constantly hanging at her heels and calling at South Street, milord took no notice. He often went off yachting or shooting with his friends, and left her to her own devices.

Eh bien! As you may easily imagine, it was not long before I knew more concerning milady than she believed. She would send me off with notes hither and thither, and more than once I found some prettily-worded messages in her pockets, and on her writing-table. Quoi encore?

One day when I had dressed milady gaily and she had gone forth in the hired car to lunch with somebody at Claridge’s, Thompson took me aside, and asked me in confidence what I knew.

I made evasive replies. It was never my habit to discuss my mistress’s private affairs, I said.

“But, Mariette,” he cried, glaring at me fiercely, “you know that she has no love for him. Look how she disregards her two poor children, little Lord Staverton and Lady Enid. They’ve been thrown upon old Lady Middlecoombe’s hands, and she hasn’t seen them for a year. It’s disgraceful.”

I shrugged my shoulders. The old man was always criticising her actions.

“I quite agree, Thompson,” I said. “I wonder milord does not open his eyes.”

“Ah, mademoiselle, if he did,” declared the old man sadly, “the shock would kill him. He loves her so.”

“Bien sûr,” I said. “I call it scandalous!”

“And so it is, mademoiselle,” he cried, striking the dining-table fiercely with his fist. “She’s ruined my poor young master, and now she flirts with every good-looking young fellow she comes across. Women such as she possess the power of the very Evil One himself. I—I’d—by God!” cried the old fellow. “I feel as though I—I could strangle her!”

And his thin, bony hands clenched themselves, while his eyes flashed angrily with a murderous fire of hatred in them.

That afternoon, plus tard, when milady returned she seemed rather cross and upset. Milord was away at Cowes, spending the week-end.

“Mariette,” she said, as I was about to get out her black net evening-gown from the wardrobe, “I’ll put on my blue serge walking-dress to-night, and go and dine alone in some restaurant. Captain Fletcher was to have taken me to dinner at the Ritz and on to the Opera, but he’s been called back to his regiment at York, so I’m alone to-night. And I really can’t bear to be waited upon by Thompson—he’s such a cantankerous old imbecile. I always wonder whatever Lord Lydgate can see in him to keep him. I expect you must have most uncomfortable times with him in the servants’ hall.”

Moi, I only smiled. What could I reply?

More than once milady had sought to ascertain from me what Thompson had said concerning her. But it is the duty of a femme-de-chambre to be discreet—extremely discreet.

Alors I evaded her question and began to tell her of a new toilette-cream about which my sister Jeanne had written me—a new product of Lentheric which greatly interested her. C’est une idée.

And so she put on a walking-gown—fine blue serge, with broad black braid, one of Doeuillet’s—and after I had pinned her veil and placed a single drop of Rose d’Orsay—that hall-mark of the chic woman—upon her handkerchief, she slowly drew on her long white gloves.

Thompson came, with servile politeness, to inquire if her ladyship were dining at home, whereupon his mistress snapped back that she was not.

“It isn’t a very gay function—dinner alone, with you to wait on me!” she added. “When I’m alone you look like a funeral mute!”

The old man bowed and descended the stairs, muttering to himself. I heard it, but, fortunately perhaps, milady did not.

After she had gone out Thompson came to me, with a sigh.

“Ah, mademoiselle! when I recollect the dear old days at Lydgate my blood boils. She now insults me—she who has brought us to bankruptcy! My poor young master!”

Chose singulière! I thought I detected hot tears welling in the old man’s eyes.

One afternoon—it was the first of October—Lord Lydgate had gone down by car into Berkshire to have the first day with the pheasants on the estate of a friend, while milady had left to spend the day with some people living at Richmond.

About three o’clock the car unexpectedly returned, and we were startled by seeing milord being lifted from it, and carried up the steps.

A l’instant the truth was told. There had been an accident, and milord had been shot in the side. Thompson was beside himself with grief. The household was all confusion, and as soon as Monsieur had been put to bed a well-known surgeon was telephoned for from Harley Street.

He came, a thin-faced, alert man, but half-an-hour later, when he emerged from the room, I overheard him say to the grave old butler—

“You had better summon her ladyship as soon as possible, Thompson. I fear the worst—the wound is a most dangerous one, and much aggravated by the journey back from Berkshire.”

“Mariette, telephone to m’lady,” the butler said to me in a hard voice.

Vite I went into the hall and obeyed at once. But though I got through to the house of milady’s friends at Richmond, I received a reply that they had not seen her there that day, and had no idea where she was.

Juste Ciel! When I told Thompson he seemed relieved.

“A good job,” he declared. “We can do without her hateful presence.”

At six o’clock two surgeons held a consultation, and an operation was performed, yet at seven came the dread news from the sick room that milord was unconscious and slowly sinking.

Just after half-past seven a messenger-boy brought a note in milady’s handwriting, addressed to milord.

I handed it to Thompson, who was standing alone in the dining-room, and who, after glancing at it, cried—

“My poor master will, alas! never live to read what this contains. I will open it.”

With thin, trembling fingers the old man tore it open and read the message.

He stood rigid, open-mouthed, pale as death, while the note fell from his nerveless fingers to the floor.

I picked it up and looked at it.

Then we exchanged glances in silence. Tiens! The truth was out! C’est ça!

It was milady’s adieu! La malheureuse Comtesse had left for Paris that afternoon—with Captain Fletcher.

Old Mr. Thompson, with pale face, slowly ascended the stairs to his young master’s room.

He entered alone, while I remained outside.

I heard the poor old fellow sobbing bitterly as he threw himself beside the bed where lay the dying earl. He had grasped the white, inert hand and was kissing it fondly.

“My boy!” he cried hoarsely in his emotion. “My poor boy! Thank God that you will never know! My poor Hubert—my—my poor dear son!”

I crept away down the stairs. Assez.

But a quarter of an hour later Mr. Thompson descended to us in the kitchen, grave-faced, sad, yet perfectly calm.

“I regret to tell you,” he announced in a low voice, “that our poor master, the seventeenth Earl of Lydgate, is dead!”

Quel monde! Ah! Quel monde!

CHAPTER XIII

CONCERNING MADAME’S LUGGAGE

AUGUST 29TH

Madame Houget was French, like myself, but her accent was Provençal. She, with Monsieur her husband, came to London frequently to spend the early summer, and usually took a furnished house somewhere on the north side of Hyde Park.

When I entered her service they were living in quite a bijou little place in Gloucester Terrace, one of those white, clean-looking houses which strike the observer as being so extremely snug.

And so it was.

Très content, I entered upon my duties as Madame’s maid, and within a few hours of my arrival congratulated myself that enfin I was in a highly respectable family.

Madame was rather stout, but she dressed decidedly well, and judging from the table and from her jewellery there was no stint of funds. Monsieur was a short, bald-headed man of Hebrew type. He wore a profusion of jewellery, and dressed rather flashily—the reverse of Madame, who was always so quiet and gentil.

Madame soon showed herself extremely friendly towards me. She invariably spoke French with me, and quickly gave me to understand—just as most mistresses do—that she would repose confidence in me.

Eh! bien. She was extremely kind and considerate, while Monsieur was fond of joking and was extremely affable towards me.

At the bureau, before I was engaged, I was given to understand that Monsieur Houget was a rich manufacturer of Lyons, and each year he spent four months in London in pursuit of his business.

One evening, while I was brushing out Madame’s hair, she was glancing at an illustrated paper, when her comments in French to Monsieur were caustic and amusing.

“These papers,” she declared, “simply exist for the self-glorification of women struggling to get into society. Look at these portraits—all paid for—portraits of nobodies in somebody’s latest creation! If an Englishwoman in the suburbs gets a full-page portrait in one or other of these so-called ladies’ papers her friends are all envious, and she rises at once in the social scale of Streatham. Poor things! They’re ignorant that their cook, if she wore a decent gown, could show her face in the same paper for a matter of a guinea or two. Again, those ‘types of English beauty,’ as they call them, are mostly paid for. The real beauties of England are not found in the aristocracy or the upper middle class. They are faked beauties, like faked photographs. Ah!” she sighed, “what terrible humbugs we all are, Pierre.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t think you are a humbug, for I’ve never met a woman more plain-spoken, or with more common-sense, than yourself.”

“If we had not been humbugs we should, by this time, have passed through the Divorce Court, and been judicially separated. The papers would have published our portraits beside those of footballers and murderers. Now-a-days the Divorce Court is deemed no disgrace. A woman, in order to obtain notoriety, will seek it purposely, and commit perjury just as easily as she says her prayers in church on Sundays.”

I laughed discreetly at her philosophy. She was always amusing. I delighted to hear her criticisms of women. Madame was always just and outspoken, yet with an utter absence of ill-nature. She regarded life from the point of view of the man-in-the-street, and more than once had she argued in a manner quite Socialistic.

That evening there was a small dinner party, a loud-speaking Italian woman and her two daughters. She was the Princess di Lastra a Signa, and mon Dieu! she had more than a suspicion of a moustache. Her two daughters, black-haired, straight-backed, rather gawky girls, were also introduced—the elder, the Principessina Claudia, and the younger, the Principessina Vittorina.

The stout mother seemed to be an old friend of Madame’s. Indeed, in a few moments I heard that they had met in Rome three years ago, and Madame had often been a guest at the grim old palace on the Corso.

Madame started chatting with the girls, but though they spoke French fairly well, their empty-headedness was typical of the Italian aristocracy, whose girls seem to be educated in the art of inane conversation.

The Princess, dressed in black, wore a very fine bright sapphire pendant, a diamond tiara, and several ornaments which I saw were of great value. The girls, too, were bedecked in jewels worth a considerable sum. Indeed, as I chatted to them I was trying to recollect where I had seen the name of the Princess.

At last I remembered. In my Matin I had about a year before read an article describing the wonderful collection of antique jewellery formed by the late Prince Augusto di Lastra a Signa. The Princess had offered it to the National Museum in Rome at a very reasonable figure, but owing to want of funds they could not purchase it. The remarkable collection had been commenced by Prince Adolpho in 1725, and continued by his successors down to the present time. The collection of Greek cut gems was stated to be the finest outside the British Museum, while two magnificent antique sapphires, once the property of the great Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, were alone estimated to be worth several hundred thousand francs.

I looked at the chattering old Princess again. She wore the great sapphires as earrings, and they were no doubt marvellous stones, such as I had never before seen.

Presently Madame turned to her husband, saying—

“Do you know, Pierre, the Princess is going to Vallombrosa for the summer—the place where the leaves are thick, you know.”

“That’s in Italy, not far from Florence,” he said.

“Yes,” exclaimed the Princess in French, “I have a villa there where we always spend the summer. I go next week, and I am trying to persuade Madame Houget to come with me for a week or so. It would do her good. The mountain air is excellent, and the chestnuts make it so shady in the hot weather.”

I saw that Madame, who had no plans for the immediate future, was favourably disposed towards the suggestion.

“But Florence is an oven just how,” Madame said.

“Granted,” she replied. “Yet Vallombrosa is delightful, I assure you. The Embassy people generally go up there, or to Camaldoli, in order to escape the heat of Rome.”

The Princess’s words seemed to decide her, for after a little more persuasion she agreed to go on the following Tuesday, leaving London at eleven, crossing Paris that same evening, and travelling by the Italian night express from the Gare de Lyon at ten-thirty, and joy! she decided to take me.

Therefore, on Tuesday morning, at eleven, we all five assembled at Victoria.

I saw to the registration of Madame’s two good-sized cane trunks covered with green canvas, but as I was having them weighed she came up to me in the bustling crowd and said—

“Register them only to Pisa, Mariette. We must change there for Florence.”

“But, Madame, the Princess has registered hers to Florence.”

“Do as I tell you, Mariette. Don’t argue. Say nothing—not a word.”

So I obeyed her, and, after obtaining the baggage-ticket, joined the party, who had already taken their seats in a reserved compartment.

Madame was in fine form, and kept us laughing merrily as we ran down to Dover. The old Princess was particularly tickled by her description of a week-end she had spent with some people at Taplow, while the two straight-backed girls actually laughed. Affected innocence and undisguised angularity are the distinctive characteristics of the daughters of the Italian aristocracy. At school they are taught to scorn their inferiors, to worship their own armorial bearings, and never to smile in company. There are districts in Italy where even one’s kitchen-maid actually refuses to go on an errand without a chaperone!

The Channel behaved well, and we were comfortably settled in the Paris express, when the Princess suddenly looked up from her Petit Parisien, and exclaimed—

“Madonna mia! There’s been another theft on the railway! A German lady’s trunk has been rifled and her jewellery stolen. How is it the police can never catch the scoundrelly thieves?”

“The railway servants commit the thefts, no doubt,” Madame declared, without the movement of a muscle.

“Well, mother,” exclaimed the thin-faced, sallow-looking Claudia, “I hope they won’t touch anything of yours.”

“No fear of that, my dear child,” replied the Princess. “My trunks are marked fully with my name. The railway servants would reflect twice before they dared touch a trunk bearing a princely title, for they know that most searching inquiry and exemplary punishment would result. It is different with the trunks of common folk.”

“But the Princess Lubanoff’s jewels were stolen between Paris and Nice last winter, mother,” her younger daughter reminded her.

“She was only a Russian. Titles there don’t count.”

“And in your country, Princess, there are lots of people with very short purses and abnormally long titles,” Madame ventured to remark. “I once had a coachman who was an Italian count, and had his armorial bearings embroidered upon his pyjamas, as seems the fashion in Italy.”

Whereat we all laughed.

“Well,” exclaimed the Princess, “I packed up my jewellery myself in my heaviest trunk. I don’t think I need have any fear—need I, Madame Houget?”

“Not at all, dear Princess. Your daughters are only trying to disturb you,” she said. “Personally, however, I always put my own poor little trinkets in this little jewel-bag, which either I, or Mariette, carry. It is so much safer.”

“I think I shall do so, now that robberies seem to be of almost daily occurrence,” was the stout woman’s reply; and then they all lapsed into silence again, engrossed in books and papers purchased at Calais.

Dinner we had on our way across Paris. We went to a small but very excellent restaurant behind the Opera, and later we entered two auto-cabs, and subsequently left the Gare de Lyon for Modane, having berths in the wagon-lit. The Princess and her younger daughter occupied one compartment, Madame and Claudia were in the next, while I had a berth with another maid at the further end of the car.

Through part of that night, as the wheels ground and roared beneath me towards the frontier I knew so well, I lay awake, wondering for what reason I had been taken. I cared little for Italy in summer. Vallombrosa, with its chestnut forests and walks beneath the pines was delightful, it was true, but I much preferred the gaieties of Aix or Trouville, or even the kursaal music of Homburg, Carlsbad, or any of the hundred-and-one other bads which doctors recommend, and receive a quid pro quo for so doing.

Tiens! Madame Houget had made up her mind suddenly to go to Vallombrosa, and in that very suddenness I scented some ulterior motive.

But at last I dropped off to sleep, to awake in the Alps with the train still speeding through the grey morning, and already near the frontier.

Before the coming of the polite Italian douaniers the ladies were already sitting over their café-au-lait, and as the “visit” was made in the train, we were untroubled until our arrival at Turin at two in the afternoon. We were compelled to wait for a couple of hours, when our sleeping-car was joined to the Rome express.

More than once her Highness expressed apprehension as to the safety of her jewels, but I did not deem it wise to inform her of a little incident which had come to my notice just before we left Turin.

Chose singulière. I was passing down the platform, when I saw a German lady talking excitedly with three railway officials at the door of the baggage-office. She was pointing to her trunk, and, knowing the German language, I overheard her declaring that her jewellery had been stolen during the transit of her box from Paris by the same train in which we had travelled!

Indeed, I recognised her as one of our fellow-passengers in the wagon-lit. She was having great difficulty in making the men understand her fully, and my first impulse was to halt and offer her my services as interpreter. But as our train was just leaving, I hurried along and entered the car.

At Genoa we dined in the station buffet, and were soon on our way through the many stifling, ill-ventilated tunnels beside the sea between that city and marble-built Pisa, the dull, old-world city of the Cemetery and the Leaning Tower.

Hardly had we left Genoa, however, before Madame was taken very ill. The zampone had upset her, and certainly she seemed very unwell. As we passed through tunnel after tunnel during that long, hot summer’s evening, with now and then a second’s glimpse of the Mediterranean, blood-red in the breathless after-glow, her indisposition increased, and we all became very alarmed.

She was pale as death, and at Spezia she declared that she would alight at Pisa, where we should arrive at eleven-five, see a doctor, and remain there the night.

“You’ll remain with me, Mariette,” she said. “I won’t trouble the Princess. We’ll come on to Vallombrosa next day. There’s sure to be a good doctor in Pisa, for there’s a medical school there, I believe.”

At first the Princess and her daughters refused to leave their guest, but Madame insisted, assuring them that we would come on together next day.

Then the Princess wished to leave Claudia behind, saying—

“You must really have one of us with you, my dear.”

“Mais non! You’re too kind, Princess,” declared Madame, looking pale as death, and sniffing the big bottle of salts from her dressing-bag. “I won’t interfere with your arrangements in the least. Why should I? It’s only that horrible railway-buffet dinner that has upset me. I shall be better in the morning.”

“I insist that Claudia stays with you in Pisa. If necessary, she can come on to Florence by the early train. It leaves Pisa at five-forty. I’ve been looking up the time-table.”

I saw that Madame was much annoyed.

“But I really don’t want anybody, Princess,” she declared, petulantly. “Please let me have my own way.”

“Madame is always used to having her own way,” I urged. “She’s been spoilt ever since she was a child!”

“She will not have her own way in this,” declared the Princess, firmly. “If she refuses to have Claudia, we’ll all stay the night at the Victoria.”

Madame, seeing no way out, therefore accepted Claudia’s proffered services with profuse thanks, though I could see that, within her heart, she hated the idea.

Enfin, when the train at last ran into the great, echoing station of Pisa, we all alighted. The Florence train was waiting, and while the Princess and Vittorina entered it, with many good wishes for their guest’s quick recovery, we three crossed to the hotel.

The Princess’s daughter, being in her own native land, was soon at the telephone ringing up Professor Somebody, while Madame sat in a collapsed condition, declaring that she felt on the point of death.

I grew alarmed, and was pleased when, half-an-hour later, a brown-bearded, pleasant-looking man arrived and duly prescribed for her.

“The Signora will quickly recover,” he assured me in Italian. “But she must have rest. She must remain here for, say, three days, and I will see her to-morrow at noon.”

“Is there anything serious, Professor?” asked Claudia.

“Nothing whatsoever, I assure you.”

“Then you’ll, of course, continue your journey by the five-forty,” urged Madame, who evidently wished to get rid of her.

She wished to remain, but Madame declared that she was already getting better, and after the three days ordered by the Professor would go on to Vallombrosa.

This assurance at length satisfied the thin-faced girl, and I saw her, with much relief, into the Florence train.

On my return to Madame’s salon I found her face much brighter. She had suddenly become her old self again.

“Where’s my baggage-ticket, Mariette?” was her first question.

When I produced it, she said—

“Send a porter across for my trunks. I shall stay here for three days, because that ass of a doctor says so. There’s nothing whatever the matter with me.”

“What?” I cried, staring at her.

“Of course not, Mariette, you little fool,” she laughed. “If I had not intended from the first to alight here I should not have had my trunks registered to this horribly dull hole.”

“But why, Madame?” I asked, puzzled.

“Don’t be impatient. Just go and tell the hall-porter to get my trunks from the station. And to everybody I’m pretty bad—remember.”

I laughed, and went to do her bidding.

Half-an-hour later the two cane trunks were deposited in Madame’s sitting-room, and we sat down to breakfast. During the presence of the waiter Madame assumed the attitude of the invalid, but as soon as his back was turned she became overflowing with good humour.

“I didn’t want to stay in this place three days,” she said. “It’s all through that scraggy little cat being here. She would send for the doctor, and after he came what could I do? I told him I’d been poisoned, and he believed it. Yet I only put a bit of extra powder on my face and darkened my eyes. In the daylight he might not have been deceived—eh?” she laughed.

She retired for a rest about nine, while I went out for a stroll to look at the Duomo. At eleven I returned, and found that she had arisen, and was in the sitting-room awaiting me.

“Look at that, Mariette,” she said, tossing over a telegram to me. “It’ll interest you. I trust you, you know.”

I took the message, and read in French the words—

“All my jewels stolen from my trunk. Police are utterly mystified. They say robbery must have been done in France. Are your trunks safe?—MARIA LASTRA A SIGNA.”

“That’s curious, Madame!” I remarked.

She glanced to see that the door was shut, then, taking a key from her pocket, said—

“Open that first trunk, Mariette.”

I obeyed, and after removing a silk kimono and some other things, a sight met my gaze which caused me to utter an ejaculation of surprise.

“Well, that’s some conjuring trick, Madame—isn’t it?” I asked, for my gaze fell upon fully twenty or thirty jewel-cases heaped pell-mell into the box.

I opened one of the smaller ones. It contained the Sultan’s sapphires!

Madame Houget, who had risen, was standing laughing at my astonishment.

How she had possessed herself of them was a complete mystery, for she had not left us for a moment. She had bent, and began to examine case after case—a wonderful assortment indeed, some magnificent and of great value, others paltry and almost worthless.

“Dieu!” I gasped, amazed, “you seem to have performed some magical trick!”

Hardly had I uttered the words when the waiter rapped at the door. She shut the box instantly, and when the man entered with a card, she gave orders for the visitor to be shown up.

He proved to be none other than a short little foreigner I had seen suspiciously lounging under the street-lamp in Gloucester Terrace one night.

“This is Jean—Jean Regnier,” she explained. Then turning to him quickly, she said, “I saw that woman making a fuss at Turin.”

“Yes, Madame,” was the Frenchman’s reply. “When I left at six o’clock they had already telegraphed the details of her loss to the bureau of police at the frontier.”

“Madame,” I said, in all seriousness, “do explain this.”

“Explain?” she echoed. “Can’t you see? Surely you aren’t blind?”

“I’m not blind, Madame—only puzzled.”

“Well, my dear child, to be frank, this is not the first time Monsieur Jean and I have worked together—on equal shares, of course. I provide the boxes and the skeleton-keys placed inside, and I dispose of the trinkets found; while Jean, who is baggage-porter on the express between Paris and Modane, and a friend of his, do the rest.”

“How do you mean?”

“It is quite simple,” she explained in English, “I merely register my baggage, and Jean has a key. On the journey he goes to the baggage-wagon, opens my trunk, and finds inside a bunch of skeleton-keys. With these he opens other women’s trunks and rummages them over. Whatever he finds in the way of jewellery, good, bad or indifferent, he places in my box and locks it up. He thus carries nothing upon him, while before the journey’s end I alight and claim my box. Then several persons—all unconscious until many hours afterwards, when they are hundreds of miles away—suddenly awake to find themselves minus their nick-nacks!”

The undersized little Frenchman grinned, for he understood English.

“And what are Madame’s plans?” I inquired, feeling very uncomfortable lest the Princess should return.

“Quite simple. I shall plead continued indisposition, and return. To attempt to cross the frontier with all those morocco cases would only be to court disaster, while to abandon them here would give me away. So I shall go to Genoa, take the North German Lloyd boat to Bremen, and thence to old Jacobsen in Amsterdam.”

“Madame is a perfect marvel of ingenuity,” I declared aghast.

“Haven’t I told you many times that when I want money I must have it. It’s no use being scrupulous these hard times. Other people are not, so why should I set myself on a pedestal? We’ve only taken part of the silly old Princess’s possessions. She’s horribly rich, so she can easily spare them.” Then, turning to Jean, she said: “You’re hard up, and want a bit on account, I know. I can manage two thousand francs to-day. When old Jacobsen pays up for the stuff you will come to me in London for your share.”

“Two thousand francs is quite sufficient for to-day, Madame,” said the Frenchman, cap in hand. “Madame is very genteel.”

And so Madame gave him some French bank-notes, and, all smiles, he bowed himself out of our presence.

After the doctor’s prescribed rest I escorted Madame as far as Genoa, where I saw her on board the German liner, afterwards returning home by way of Paris. She begged of me to say nothing, and as a little present pressed a bank-note for a thousand francs into my hand.

An hour afterwards I left for Turin and London.

Since that day there have been many robberies on the Italian railways, and the police are still quite mystified.

Perhaps this little histoire of mine may enlighten them.

With the feuilletoniste who writes daily in my Matin, I say, “Ah! what a droll world is ours!”

CHAPTER XIV

MADAME AND THE BUTLER

FEBRUARY 17TH

Ah! Quel monde! I have just had another strange experience.

It came about in this manner. Soon after the departure of Madame Houget I found myself again in the bureaux, and one morning was interviewed by a lady named Wentworth, tall, graceful and chic. She had luxuriant fair hair, and I could see in a moment that she was used to the services of an experienced maid.

As we sat together in the small private room of the agency, she looked me straight in the face for a few moments before speaking, and at last said—

“I have seen your excellent recommendations, Mariette, and I think you will suit me. But the fact is I am in want of a maid in whom I can repose the utmost confidence. I want a person whom I can trust with a secret in the certainty that I shall not be betrayed.”

“Any confidence Madame reposes in me I shall respect,” I replied demurely, scenting a fresh scandal.

“Well,” she said, after a few moments’ hesitation, “I was told of you by one of your late mistresses, who held you in high esteem, Mariette, and I hope that if I engage you, you will serve me equally well.”

“I always endeavour, Madame, to serve my ladies loyally,” I replied. “A secret with me is always a secret from Monsieur.”

“Ah! Then we understand each other!” she exclaimed, apparently much relieved. “You will become my maid and my confidante as well.”

“I shall be delighted, Madame,” I said. “Madame lives in the country, I presume?”

“You are very shrewd, Mariette!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “How did you know that?”

I shrugged my shoulders, replying—

“There are little things which a femme-de-chambre is quick to notice.”

“Ah! I see you are a clever girl—yes, you will suit me admirably. Now I wish to confide in you—remember what I am about to say is strictly in secret.”

I placed my finger upon my lips.

“Well, the facts are briefly these,” she said. “I am the wife of the owner of Elmhurst Court, in Sussex, with about ten thousand acres. In residence there are my husband, and daughter aged ten, the governess, and the servants. Six months ago, while dressing, I found a curious mark upon my arm, but took no notice of it. Soon afterwards, however, I developed diphtheria and very nearly lost my life. My doctors could not account for it in any way. Both the water and drainage were perfectly satisfactory, and mine was the only case in the district. My recovery was slow, and only three weeks ago I returned from Italy, where I have been spending my convalescence. Strangely enough, however, on the morning before last I found another mark upon my arm exactly similar to that prior to my serious illness. It is a mystery how it was inflicted. Just look at it, and see what you think.”

Whereupon she took off her coat, rolled up the sleeve of her blouse, and showed me upon her right arm just below the vaccination marks two curious scarlet spots about half-an-inch apart, just like the marks of a serpent’s tooth.

“It looks like a snake-bite, doesn’t it?” she said, to which I responded in the affirmative.

I examined the surface of the skin. There were two distinct punctures, slightly inflamed, but too clearly done and too small to have been inflicted by a reptile’s tooth.

“Bon Dieu! They probably have been done by some insect—a spider, for instance,” I remarked. Yet I certainly had never seen such a mark upon human flesh before. “It has been proved, I believe, Madame, that certain insects can convey the microbe of diphtheria. Did you tell your doctor of it?”

“I did, but he only laughed at me. Nevertheless, I feel much alarmed, now that I find a second puncture upon my arm in nearly exactly the same place as the first.”

I admitted that there was something uncanny about the occurrence. Madame, in reply to my questions, could not recollect feeling any pain, hence I could but conclude that it was inflicted while she was sleeping. She seemed unnerved, fearing that she was about to be again stricken down by the deadly malady, in which case, weakened as she was, she would no doubt succumb.

“I have a habit of locking my door at night, therefore no intruder could enter my room. Hence it must be, as you suggest, Mariette, due to some poisonous insect. The curious point of it, however, is that I do not sleep in the same room as I did when I noticed the first puncture.”

“Madame feels no ill effects?” I asked.

“None—as yet,” she replied seriously.

“It may be a mere coincidence,” I said in an endeavour to improve her despondent frame of mind.

But she shook her head, declaring that the bacilli of some deadly disease had been injected into her blood by an unknown agency.

“Then do you suspect an attempt upon your life?” I asked.

“Well, that is just what I want to know, Mariette,” she said. “What do you think?”

“At present, the affair seems distinctly mysterious,” I replied. “Is there any reason why your life should be taken? Have you any enemy capable of such an action?”

She shifted uneasily in her chair, and was silent for a few moments. Then, not without some reluctance, she replied—

“Well—the fact is, I do suspect an enemy.”

“Whom?”

“I do not wish to say,” she responded evasively.

“Some one who would profit by your death—eh?”

“No. That’s the curious discrepancy in my suspicion. The person would not profit, but lose considerably, by my decease.”

“Is it a relative?”

“Excuse me, Mariette, if I decline to answer.”

“Of course, Madame,” I said, “your private affairs are no concern of mine. I do not ask for the sake of prying, but merely to obtain information to aid me in forming a conclusion. What do you wish me to do?”

In reply she urged me to go with her down to Elmhurst and look at the room in which she slept, a course to which I consented.

The remainder of that day I spent strolling in the London streets. The mystery, as it stood, was a somewhat curious one, and yet, after all, the marks might have easily been inflicted by an insect. No. If my new mistress was in such fear of another attack of some fell disease, why did she not name the person of whom she held suspicion?

Did she suspect her own husband? He certainly would lose by her decease, as she explained to me.

If she suspected her husband she certainly would not tell me. Therefore, I decided that such was the fact.

Bien! Next morning I met her at Victoria Station, and we travelled together down to Crawley, whence the car took us another six miles to Elmhurst, a magnificent old Elizabethan house in the centre of a fine park—one of the finest places in the county.

Captain Wentworth, her husband, did not impress me favourably. He was a short, thick-set, ferret-eyed man, with a thin nose, a hard mouth, and a line between his eyes indicative of bad temper.

Yet he was quite affable, and, welcoming me, expressed a hope that I should remain with them for a long time.

In the afternoon I took a tour round the house, which I found even finer and more full of valuable works of art than I had imagined. Magnifique! The house had been the gift of Queen Elizabeth to the first Lord Elmhurst, one of her favourites, and had been in the family for many generations until purchased by Captain Wentworth ten years before.

The room in which my mistress had been sleeping when she received the first mark upon her arm was in the east, or modern wing of the house. I examined it thoroughly, but could detect nothing suspicious. There was only one door, and upon that was a patent lock which showed no sign of ever having been tampered with.

The room in which she was at present sleeping was some distance away, nearly in the centre of the house. It was a large, pleasant apartment, overlooking the broad park, and had recently been modernised, with a dressing-room and bath-room adjoining. Like the other, both doors of the bedroom bore patent locks of the best pattern, a fact which caused me some reflection, for people do not usually put street-door latches upon their bedroom doors.

This, however, was quickly accounted for by a remark of my mistress’s.

“You see those are patent locks, Mariette,” she said. “I had them put on because, as you notice, my safe is here,” and she pointed to a small green-painted safe in a corner. “I keep my jewels there, and I think it best to put good locks on the doors.”

“Whatever locks Madame puts on would not protect the safe from professional safe-breakers,” I remarked, with a smile.

“Well, anyhow,” she said, “they would prevent any one entering here while I am sleeping, wouldn’t they?”

I shook my head dubiously.

“If you left the keys in, they could be opened from the outside, while if the keys were out, they might be opened with duplicates. I see there are no bolts,” I remarked.

“No. I’ll have some put on to-day,” she said. “I had never thought of that.”

Then presently she called the butler Ford, and ordered some one to go down to the village and fetch the carpenter.

Enfin, I had been at Elmhurst four days, idling about, with my eyes very much open. I passed all the servants in review, one by one, but there was no suspicion. Indeed, what suspicion could there be, if, as was so feasible, the punctures had been inflicted by an insect?

In reply to my questions while I was dressing Madame’s hair one morning, she said that she had told her husband nothing of the fresh mark upon her arm, fearing to unduly alarm him. He was not strong, she said, and the doctor always feared a shock because of his weak heart.

His doctor, I learnt, was named Emmott, of Cavendish Square. Therefore there was no suspicion that he had had any hand in this suspected subtle attempt at assassination.

Extraordinaire! All my surmises were based upon such flimsy evidence that I began to laugh at my own theories as utterly unsound. There was, as a matter of fact, no actual evidence that the first puncture had anything to do with the subsequent attack of diphtheria. It was mere surmise.

This I pointed out to Madame, but she only shook her head, as though certain of the origin of the disease.

Could it be that Madame knew more than she had explained to me? Could it be that she had felt the sharp touch of a hypodermic needle? She had admitted her suspicions of some person she refused to name, thus showing that she was, at least in some things, a secretive woman.

In the course of careful inquiries I made during the week I was Madame’s femme-de-chambre, I discovered that Mrs. Wentworth was of an extremely quarrelsome turn of mind, that disagreements between she and her husband were frequent—so much so that Miss Wylde, the governess, had given notice to leave. I learnt, too, that Mrs. Wentworth was “horrible jealous” of her husband, and further, that she had probably some cause. It seemed that Miss Wylde’s predecessor had been a young French lady of peculiar attractiveness.

“And,” added my informant, the rustic under-gardener, with a laugh, “the captain is a good judge of a pretty face.”

“Where is this Mademoiselle now?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. She got sent out at a moment’s notice by the captain’s wife. A bit ’ard on ’er, I think, for she was very nice, was Mademoiselle.”

“What was her name?”

“Perrin—Lucie Perrin. She went back to France, so I ’eard.”

“How long ago did that happen?”

“Oh, perhaps eight months. It wor’ just before Lady Day, I remember. And the most funny part of it all is that the disagreement arose out of a cake.”

“A cake!” I ejaculated. “How?”

“Well, according to what Mr. Ford, the butler told me, it appears that when the birthday cake was carved, Mademoiselle found in her portion a splendid diamond ring—and Mrs. Wentworth accused her husband of placing it there. That was the commencement of the jealousy.”

“Were there no other presents in the cake?”

“None. The captain denied that he put in the ring, and there the affair remained a mystery—only Mademoiselle had the ring, and wore it.”

Madame had told me nothing of this, though I gave her every opportunity to do so. Therefore I became suspicious that if there had been any foul play, it was in this direction that I ought to seek the motive.

I left Elmhurst, with Madame’s connivance, at the end of the week, but I did not at once leave the neighbourhood. Inquiries I subsequently made, however, negatived the idea that Mrs. Wentworth’s suspicions had any foundation, for it seemed that a certain young man named Alfred Ackland, the son of a neighbouring squire, had become deeply attached to Lucie Perrin, and that the pair had often been seen by the villagers walking together in places where they had believed themselves unobserved.

Diable! I suppose I had returned to London about ten days and was still much puzzled regarding the affair, when one day I received a telegram from Madame, and in response went down to Elmhurst. There I found her lying in bed suffering from what the doctor had on the previous day diagnosed as typhoid.

“Did I not tell you, Mariette,” she said faintly, “that I had been again innoculated with some disease? They mean to kill me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked quickly. “Tell me.”

But she only sighed and turned uneasily in her bed, saying—

“I—I am a doomed woman.”

“But tell me your suspicions. Then I shall probably be able to get at the truth. You have an enemy—one whose sole desire is to encompass your death by means that shall appear natural. You have heavy insurances, I suppose?” Truth to tell, I had not been idle.

“You have made inquiries about them, eh?” she asked quickly.

“I have all the numbers of the policies in the various offices. They total over thirty thousand pounds,” I said. “In whose favour have you made a will?”

“That is my affair,” she snapped.

Madame was still disinclined to tell me anything which might serve me as a clue to the would-be assassin.

That there was foul play was now perfectly plain, for was not Madame again stricken down by one of the most dangerous of fevers?

Her husband, unlike his usual self, was highly concerned about her, and tended her night and day, although two nurses were in attendance.

I turned up the sleeve of her nightdress to look again at the mysterious mark, and there, to my entire surprise, I found a third, evidently quite recent, close to the second. Mystère!

She was unaware of it, and when I pointed it out to her she lay staring at me utterly dumfounded and terrified.

The matter had grown more mysterious, and I confess that I had become very much puzzled.

Of the whereabouts of the French governess I could learn nothing. I remained in the house for several days, but the state of my mistress grew worse, and the two doctors became apprehensive, while Captain Wentworth and the faithful Ford were full of anxiety and dread lest a fatal issue should result.

Madame was delirious, therefore I ran up to London in order to transact some private business, and again returned to Elmhurst to fulfil a promise I had made to remain near her.

The crisis of the disease was a grave one. One day at noon a nurse came to me saying that the doctors had agreed that she could not possibly live till evening, therefore things looked blackest. Poor Madame! She had been struck down by a hand unknown and unsuspected. The first attempt not being successful, the second and third innoculations had accomplished the object.

And her enemy was a person whom she refused to name.

I kept all my information to myself, remaining alert and watchful. My presence in the house was accounted for by the story she had told Captain Wentworth of how she had found a treasure of a maid, and that she wished me to be near her during her illness.

The fateful day wore slowly on, and happily, quite contrary to the medical men’s expectations, her strong constitution withstood the strain. At midnight came a turn for the better, and with noon next day came a marked improvement. From that moment she made slow progress.

When at last I was allowed in the darkened room she gripped my hand, and in a low, appealing whisper said—

“You will protect me, Mariette, won’t you? You won’t allow them to do it again.”

She spoke in the plural. Then her suspicion had fallen upon more than one person!

I promised, and she gripped my hand in silent thanks.

All through the month of December, during Madame’s convalescence, I remained at Elmhurst. Yet I was just as much in the dark as to the motive of the crime, or its perpetration, as I had been on the first day when she had told me about it.

I was frank with her, and told her so. But she urged me to persevere, adding bitterly—

“If you discover who has tried to take my life—if it is the person I suspect—then, by heaven! I will have my revenge.”

During the weeks of Madame’s illness the grey-haired butler proved an invaluable servant, and was entirely devoted to his mistress. He was a quiet-mannered, highly-respectful person, with dark side whiskers and a sleek, even pompous, appearance. And though this was the man who had gossipped about his master’s affairs in the Elmhurst Arms, yet I could only believe that he had done so after his tongue had been loosened by sundry strong drinks.

Vraiment I liked the man for his quiet manner and his entire devotedness. He was frequently up all night attending to his mistress’s wants, while the captain was always full of his praises.

A month passed. A change for the better had occurred, and Madame became so well that she could now come down-stairs to meals, and it had been arranged that she was to go to Hyères to avoid the rigours of the English winter.

The greater part of the first day on which she came down-stairs I spent with her beside the boudoir fire, but at night we kept up an occasion to celebrate her marvellous recovery.

It was a purely family dinner, consisting of my master and mistress, Miss Wylde and her pretty fair-haired charge.

Served by Ford in that long old room which had echoed to the laughter of many a hundred bygone feasts, the meal was essentially of the good old-fashioned kind, satisfying, if indigestible, as judged by the standards laid down by to-day’s food-cranks.

They were a merry party, all welcoming Madame back again to the table after her long illness, and raising their glasses to her better health.

Then, following the dainty dinner, Ford entered, carrying upon his tray an ice pudding.

Peeping through the crack of the door, I glanced towards Monsieur, seated at the head of the table, before whom the grave, silent butler placed the ice. Were his thoughts, I wondered, running in the same channel as my own?

Ford handed the clean plates to his mistress, who at once commenced to serve out the pudding, first to her husband, then to Miss Wylde and Doris. Afterwards, upon the remaining plate, she placed the last portion, and all took up their forks and spoons.

That instant I entered the room, exclaiming suddenly—

“No one must eat this!” and I added firmly, “Charles Ford, stand there! I accuse you!”

The confusion my words caused may well be imagined. The ladies shrieked, believing I had taken leave of my senses, while little Doris clung to her father in fright.

“What do you mean, Mariette?” gasped Monsieur, pale and startled.

“Shall I speak, M’sieur?” I asked him.

For a second he hesitated.

“No,” Madame answered hoarsely. “Not here—not before them, Mariette. Come into my boudoir and explain there.”

“I should prefer that the others left the room,” I said, still with eyes turned upon the grey-faced butler. He stood before me as though dazed, his face white as a sheet, his grey eyes staring at me in terror.

“Will you please leave us?” Madame said, addressing her husband.

“Of course, dear,” he said; “but all this seems very strange. I—I really don’t understand why Mariette should upset our night in this tragic and unaccountable manner?”

“I will explain later on, Monsieur,” I exclaimed, my eyes still fixed upon the exemplary Ford.

With the governess and little Doris, Captain Wentworth rose and left in indignation at my sudden threatening of the old servant. Then, when the door had closed behind them, I turned to my mistress and said—

“Please be very careful to preserve your plate, Madame.”

“Why?” she asked in surprise. “I don’t understand!”

“Ecoutez, Madame. You consulted me some time ago concerning a certain matter, and I have since made diligent inquiry and kept vigilant watch. Three days ago this exemplary servant of yours, Mr. Ford, was granted a day’s holiday, and went up to London to see his brother. The fictitious brother whom he desired to see was a Frenchman named Gervais, a student of bacteriology, living in London because there is a warrant out for him in France. Ford brought away from that house in Earl’s Court Road a tiny tube filled with gelatine, in which were cultivations of a deadly malady. It was his fiendish idea to administer them to you at the moment of your joyfulness at recovery—at your dinner to-night. Look! Examine your plate well, and tell me what you find.”

Madame took her plate beneath the stronger light beside the overmantel, and examined her plate carefully.

“Yes!” she gasped. “There are certainly some tiny scraps of a colourless jelly. The ice pudding seems to have covered some of them!”

Ford stood blanched and trembling beneath my unsparing denunciation.

“You fiend!” shrieked his mistress, turning upon him. “Then it is you—you who have innoculated me so secretly when I have dozed in my boudoir, in the hope that I should die—you—the woman to whom you owe your life and liberty!”

“Pardon, madame,” I said, interrupting. “Would it not be judicious to say the least possible about this affair—for your husband’s sake?”

“I shall say what I like, Mariette,” she replied angrily. “That man is a murderer!”

“I know,” I said. “Probably I know more than you think.”

“Oh, what do you know?” she asked, not without a twinge of sarcasm. This latter rather piqued me.

“Très bien,” I said. “If you wish that I should speak openly, I will do so. You have not been exactly frank with me, Madame, and had it not been that your life was at stake, I should have refused to carry on the inquiry. But as I saw that murder was intended by some unknown person, and without motive, I prosecuted my inquiries. Their result has been, to say the least, curious. I found that that man yonder was not your servant at all, but your partner in certain very shady gambling transactions in an illicit gaming-house you own in Hamburg, unknown to your husband, and from which you derive your income. From Consols your husband believes it to be. Four years ago a Frenchman named Perrin was robbed and killed there—killed under circumstances which left no doubt that your partner was the murderer. Under threats of closing the house and placing the evidence you had in the hands of the Hamburg police, you compelled him to give up his share of ownership, and to serve you here as your servant. You——”

“Ford killed him! He has admitted it!” interrupted my mistress. “I took the poor fellow’s daughter as governess in order to keep her from starvation, but that man played a shabby trick upon me. He placed a diamond ring in a cake as though it were a present from my husband, which naturally aroused my jealousy.”

“That matter does not concern the present affair,” I replied. “This man Ford saw that if you died, he would again become proprietor of the lucrative establishment in Hamburg, and at the same time your lips would be closed, and he would be revenged upon you for your action in depriving him of half the profits for several years, and for compelling him to become your servant.”

Ford tried to speak, but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

At last he managed in wild, abrupt words, to crave forgiveness of the woman whom he had tried to kill by such insidious means.

But the other only turned upon him fiercely, denouncing him as an assassin.

“Madame,” I said, “I have kept my promise to you, and have performed my duty. It now remains with you what action you will take against this man. Remember, however, that your husband is in ignorance of everything—believing that your income is derived from legitimate business.”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely, “for my husband’s sake—for the sake of little Doris—I suppose I must still allow the fellow his liberty.” Then, looking across at the assassin, she said, “Go, you murderous brute! And if ever you cross my path again, by Heaven, I’ll shoot you like a dog!”

The grey-faced old scoundrel slunk out, and when the door had closed my mistress said in a low, confidential tone—

“Of course, Mariette, not a word must be breathed about this! My husband must never know. I admit all you have said against me, but I’ve resolved to give up the place in Hamburg. I can live quite comfortably without it. By Jove! I’ve had a narrow escape. Come, let’s go up-stairs to my room. I’ve a headache, and I’m tired.”

For my silence I received next day an English bank-note for one hundred pounds.

Oh, là là!

CHAPTER XV

THE PEOPLE AT LANCASTER GATE

JUNE 11TH

I obtained the situation as maid to Miss Rutherford-Morgan through the medium of the Morning Post.

She lived with her father in one of those large houses in Lancaster Gate, a pretty dark-haired girl of twenty-two.

When I arrived, with my trunk on the top of a four-wheeler as usual, a big green motor-car was standing at the door, and there descended the steps a middle-aged round-faced jovial-looking man, clean shaven, spruce in dress, and wearing round, gold-rimmed glasses. I saw that only one arm—the left—was in his thick grey motor-coat, for the right was in a black sling beneath.

He was very helpless, having recently broken his arm. Behind him came a well-dressed young lady, his daughter. She wore a splendid seal-skin coat reaching to her heels, and behind her pale-blue motor veil I discerned that she was uncommonly good-looking.

They were my master and young mistress, Mr. and Miss Rutherford-Morgan.

Mademoiselle spoke briefly with me, then she entered the car with her father and drove off, leaving me to settle myself to my new work.

They were not back before an hour previous to dinner, and as I dressed her I found she was a particularly chic and gay little person. From the first moment I took to her. She liked smart frocks and hats, and seemed to possess a most extensive wardrobe. From her conversation she seemed to be a constant play-goer, and presently she said—

“I shall want you, Mariette, to come out with me in the car very often. My father, who is such an invalid with his broken arm, does not care much for motoring, and I hate going about alone.”

“Bien, Mademoiselle,” was my response. I loved to ride en automobile.

Mais oui, my new situation was full of rosy promise.

There seemed but little mending to do. Some pressing of ribbons and laces, and a little repairing of chiffon upon the demi-toilettes; but the duties were certainly not exacting, and the pay most generous. English ladies pay well for a French maid of the first order.

Monsieur, the father of Mademoiselle, frequently complained of his arm. He carried it in a sling and was unable to move it. He had, it seemed, been knocked down by a cab in Piccadilly and sustained a compound fracture.

Almost from the first I went out with Mademoiselle Violet, accompanying her upon long runs in the car to Hitchin, Dorking, Tunbridge Wells, Hindhead, Oxford, and other places frequented by motorists.

Twice when we had arranged to go out together Mademoiselle’s father had suddenly changed his mind and, it being bright weather, had come with us.

On the first occasion we ran down to Guildford, and had lunched at the Angel, when he and Mademoiselle Violet went out to re-enter the car to return home. The “boots” was not outside as usual. Therefore Monsieur went to open the door for his daughter, and chose extraordinaire! he used his right hand in doing so. Yet, next second, he replaced it in the black sling, and held it there as before.

Again, another strange incident occurred about a week later. We had gone down to Brighton one Sunday, and put up at the Métropole as usual. Monsieur’s arm had been rather painful for several days, hence we had not been out. Indeed, that morning, when I had respectfully asked him how he felt, he had replied—

“None too grand, Mariette, I’m sorry to say. My arm doesn’t get better at all. I’ve got no use in it.”

And yet that same afternoon, on searching for him in the crowded Métropole at Brighton, I saw him in the smoking-room seated with his back to me, writing a letter!

Mystère!

Mademoiselle had gone out along King’s Road with a young gentleman friend she had met at the Métropole, a Monsieur Cave. I had seen him once before, and I did not like him. He was a blagueur, over-dressed and somewhat caddish in his manners.

I could never see what attraction she found in him.

A fortnight later, as I was walking in Westbourne Grove and looking into Whiteley’s windows, it being my afternoon out, a tall elderly monsieur raised his hat, and addressed me by name, saying he wished to have a few moments private conversation with me.

“I think, Mademoiselle,” he said, “that you know a young man named Cave—a friend of your mistress—eh?”

In surprise, I admitted that I did.

“Well,” he said, “the fact is I am a solicitor,” and he handed me his card, “and I am deputed to make some inquiries as to the young man’s mode of life. He has a very wealthy aunt, a client of mine, who is about to make a will in his favour; but she desires to know something of his ways of living. My client lives in Scotland, an infirm old lady. You, of course, know where young Cave lives.”

“In Ebury Street, Number 44a. I took a note there for Mademoiselle the other day.”

“Exactly; I thought you could perhaps watch and give me some information. I will make it worth your while. Cave is rather sweet on her, eh?” he asked.

“I think so,” I laughed, and then the solicitor, whose name was Percival, after asking a number of other questions and urging me to assist him in his inquiries, turned and left me.

Next day was Mademoiselle’s birthday, and she had arranged that I should go with her in the car for a long run.

Just, however, as we were going out Monsieur met us in the hall, and said—

“I’ll come out with you, dear, if you’ll wait while I get on my coat. I want to do a little shopping.”

Then later on, when he was sitting in the car, he turned to Edwards, the chauffeur, and said—

“We’ll do some shopping this morning. Go first to Horton Brothers, the jewellers, in Old Bond Street.”

Mademoiselle was sitting opposite me, and on our way up Grosvenor Place she remarked with enthusiasm—

“Really my father is awfully good, Mariette. He’s going to buy me a splendid birthday present—a diamond necklet.”

I congratulated her and she chatted until, after threading the unusually congested traffic, we at last pulled up before the well-known jewellers.

No jewellery was displayed in the windows, which were merely closed with brown wire blinds bearing the name “Horton Brothers. Diamond Merchants.”

I suppose I had waited in the car for perhaps twenty minutes when a constable came up and asked us to move on for we were blocking the traffic at the narrowest part of Bond Street. Compelled to go round into Clifford Street I walked back to the shop, and going in told Monsieur where we were.

As I entered father and daughter were seated at a small glass-covered counter with several splendid diamond necklets displayed before them, while Mr. Horton, the senior partner, was attending to his customers himself.

“This,” he was saying, holding one of the necklets in his hand, “is worth two thousand pounds. But, as I tell you, owing to the slump in diamonds, I’m prepared to take seventeen hundred-and-fifty for it. And more, if your daughter don’t like it in twelve months’ time I’ll buy it back from her at the same figure. I’ll give you a written agreement. I can’t say more, can I?”

Monsieur was haggling over the price. He wanted it for sixteen hundred, but the dealer remained obdurate.

“It’s a really handsome present for your daughter,” Mr. Horton was saying, with a laugh, holding it up to the light by the two clasps and then placing it against the dark-blue velvet stand shaped like a woman’s neck.

“They’re the best Cape diamonds, and you may call in any independent expert you wish before taking them away,” he added.

“I do not doubt you,” replied his customer. “Your reputation in the trade is so very high that surely nobody could doubt your word.”

“Some persons would,” laughed the dealer. “It is so very easy in our trade to deceive all but experts. I must admit not one man in a million can tell a notable diamond at first glance.”

But I went back to the car in Clifford Street, reflecting that Mademoiselle was a very lucky young person to receive such a handsome birthday present.

I had waited another twenty minutes or so when Mademoiselle came around the corner with a note in her hand.

“I want Edwards to take this round to Horton’s head office in Hatton Garden and bring back a reply at once,” she said to me. “We are waiting here till you get back.”

“Bien, Mademoiselle,” I said, and Edwards started his engine and we drove off, with the letter.

We had but little difficulty in finding the office of Horton Brothers, apparently a rather dingy first-floor suite in that colony of diamond dealers. Edwards took the note up-stairs, and after waiting ten minutes or so was given a square sealed packet addressed to Mr. Henry Horton, Old Bond Street, with injunction to be careful of it.

I supposed it to be another necklet which the firm had in stock there, and which Mademoiselle wanted to see.

On coming slowly along Clifford Street I saw the tall, well-dressed figure of Mademoiselle impatiently waiting us. So I pulled up and gave her the packet with which she disappeared around the corner and into Horton’s shop.

About ten minutes afterwards both father and daughter returned to the car, and as Mademoiselle entered, she exclaimed with delight—

“Oh, Mariette! dad has bought me such a lovely present.”

“Drive to the Dieudonne,” said her father to Edwards, “we’ll lunch there.”

So I went round with them to the restaurant, where the pair descended, leaving me to drive round to Lancaster Gate to get my lunch.

“You had better remain at home this afternoon, Mariette,” said Mademoiselle. “I shall be back about three.”

So Edwards and I drove off.

I waited till evening—nay, till night, but neither Mademoiselle or Monsieur returned. I went to the Dieudonne next day, but neither had been seen there.

This caused me to wonder greatly. What could have happened?

On the third day, about eleven o’clock in the morning, the butler told me that a gentleman wished to speak with me in the dining-room.

So ascending from the kitchen I found two strangers awaiting me. One of them was Mr. Henry Horton.

“That’s the woman!” he exclaimed, pointing to me.

“Dieu! What does this mean?” I cried, starting in surprise.

“It means, Mademoiselle Le Bas, that I’m a detective officer,” the other explained, “and you are arrested on a charge of being an accomplice with others in a very ingenious piece of fraud. You’ll have to come to the station with me.”

I protested loudly; but I was compelled to go with the pair in a cab to Vine Street Police Station, where I was seen by Mr. Percival, who now revealed to me the fact that he was not a solicitor, but a detective.

I was not long, of course, in convincing the police of my innocence of any criminal action.

Presently, however, before I was released, Detective-inspector Percival said—

“I had my suspicions of Cave, who was through my hands about three years ago. But he was evidently watchful. He somehow knew that I had seen you, and, smelling a rat, made himself scarce. Your employers, Rutherford-Morgan and his daughter, were, we’ve since discovered, none other than Dick Traill and Lily Mayhew, both celebrated jewel thieves, members of the Shorland gang, who are wanted in nearly every European capital.”

“The Shorland gang!” I recollected my strange experience of Monsieur and Madame Shorland. I gasped, utterly amazed. “Diable!”

“Yes. And their game this time was, to say the least, extremely ingenious. Traill or his confederates—who are ever on the watch for a coup—evidently discovered that at the head office of Horton Brothers a big sum in cash is usually kept in the safe for the purpose of buying diamonds from the Dutch dealers. Pretending his arm was broken, Traill went with his female accomplice to the Bond Street shop and there saw Mr. Henry Horton. He picked out a necklet and agreed to pay sixteen hundred-and-eighty pounds for it. Then he explained that he would have to send his chauffeur to his brother’s for the sum in cash, and he asked Mr. Horton to write a note for him. His daughter said she had unfortunately fallen at the rink on the previous day and hurt her wrist. So the pair were both incapable. Horton wrote the letter for Mr. Rutherford-Morgan, who addressed his brother as ‘Dear George,’ and asked Mr. Horton to sign it ‘Your affectionate brother, Harry.’ The letter was addressed to ‘Henry Rutherford, Esq., 305, Newgate Street, E.C.’ Then the customer’s supposed daughter took it outside to you, and——”

“But the letter we took was addressed to Mr. George Horton, of Horton Brothers!”

“Of course. That was the trick! The girl changed the envelopes as she went around to Clifford Street, and you delivered the letter asking for eighteen hundred pounds in notes to be sent by bearer, to Mr. George Horton, the writer’s brother! He always signed himself ‘Harry,’ and the letter being perfectly genuine his brother had no suspicion that it was not an actual transaction until at night when the brothers met at their club.”

I stood dumfounded.

“Yes, Mademoiselle,” the detective added, “it was a very neat bit of business. All three have gone—got clear away to the Continent, no doubt. The irony of it, however, is that Messrs. Hortons’ own money paid for Miss Violet’s birthday present!”

Drôle, n’cest pas?

To-morrow I am leaving London to return home to Pont-Pagny. I have saved a few thousand francs, so I shall not again go back to service.

Assez!

THE END

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.

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Table of Contents

THE INDISCRETIONS OF A LADY’S MAID

“THE MASTER OF MYSTERY”

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I MADAME’S GENTLEMAN FRIEND

CHAPTER II THE WARDROBE DRAWER

CHAPTER III LITTLE MRS. OTWAY

CHAPTER IV THE NOAH’S ARK

CHAPTER V GUILTY BONDS

CHAPTER VI THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR

CHAPTER VII THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

CHAPTER VIII WHAT WAS IN THE STRONG ROOM

CHAPTER IX CONCERNS TWO VISITORS

CHAPTER X CONTAINS SOME REVELATIONS

CHAPTER XI A QUEER MÉNAGE

CHAPTER XII A PEER OF THE REALM

CHAPTER XIII CONCERNING MADAME’S LUGGAGE

CHAPTER XIV MADAME AND THE BUTLER

CHAPTER XV THE PEOPLE AT LANCASTER GATE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE