The Silver Dragon

by Jean S. MacLeod

  “Yes.”

  “Adele!” He leaned over the table, imprisoning her fingers in his. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be more helpful at this stage. I could have gone to the police right away and enlisted their assistance, of course, but I feel there’s another way to do this. A way that would be easier for you. Will you come back to the villa with me this morning and take another look around? You were desperately tired yesterday after the journey.” She knew that he had been disappointed the day before because their first contact with Les Rochers Blanches had been unproductive, and she could not refuse him this second attempt. If it should also prove unfruitful, perhaps he would then agree to call the whole thing off, hand her over to the proper authorities and continue with his holiday.

  “I’ll get my coat,” she said.

  He was waiting for her on the steps of the hotel, with the car parked under a handy pin parasol nearby. The covered-in terrace was now very busy and she was glad that they had breakfasted early. Somehow, just now, every interested glance felt like a stare of curiosity. Her amnesia seemed to be written plainly on her pale anxious face for all to see.

  She hurried into the car and soon they were threading their way through the thickening traffic of the Lower Corniche toward Villefranche.

  The town at this early hour was not as busy as it had been the afternoon before. The cafes were deserted and only the odd matelot wandered idly along the narrow sidewalk toward the harbor and a waiting ship.

  The car turned almost abruptly into the road along the headland. It had seemed farther along the coast that first time, when they had been looking out for it in the waning afternoon light, but soon they were turning once more under the swinging sign and driving toward the villa.

  This morning there could be little doubt about why Les Rochers Blanches had been given its descriptive name. The entire headland looked white and glittering in the morning sun and even the water of the hidden bay was unbelievably blue.

  The villa itself, however, was still wrapped in a remote silence, still closely shuttered, still aloof. Adele’s heart sank as she looked at it.

  “I can’t even hope to find anything here,” she said. If I belonged I think I would know.”

  They walked slowly to the edge of the terrace, looking down at the-sea. Beneath them lay a narrow strip of beach, its white pebbles dazzlingly bright even where they ran down into the translucent water. A wooden landing wharf on wheels was the only sign that the bay had ever been used by a small craft, which was all it could accommodate.

  “It’s just about deep enough for a small yacht to anchor down there,” John reflected, lighting a cigarette. “The entrance isn’t wide enough for anything else to come through with safety, but it would certainly be a sheltered haven once you were in.”

  A sheltered haven! The words tore at Adele’s heart, for that, surely, was what she wanted most at this present moment. To know that she belonged somewhere, that there were people who cared about her— loved her.

  An overwhelming desire for love and protection took possession of her and she turned away to hide the sudden tears in her eyes. It was no use feeling sorry for herself, she tried to argue against the almost physical pain in her breast. Self-pity wouldn’t help, and it was not exactly complimentary to John, who had been more than kind to her.

  She turned to find him gazing with narrowed eyes toward the entrance to the bay, and suddenly the silence all around them was shattered by the staccato beat of an engine.

  A launch came in between the headlands, churning up a broad wake on the still blue water. It made straight for the wooden wharf, cutting a direct pathway across the bay. The engine was throttled back and it took a wide sweep to come alongside.

  Then, as if some warning had been given, it turned in a close arc past the landing wharf and picked up speed again.

  While they watched, it circled the bay and sped back through the gap between the headlands to the wider reaches of the sea.

  It was several minutes before John spoke.

  “That was a furtive sort of maneuver, if ever I saw one,” he remarked involuntarily. “They were going to land and changed their minds.”

  “As soon as they saw us standing here,” Adele said, feeling suddenly cold. “Could they have recognized us, do you think?”

  “Not from that distance, and they wouldn’t know me in any case, but they would certainly be able to see us standing here. We would be fairly well silhouetted against the house.”

  “Do you think they were ... the owners?”

  “I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so, or they would have come ashore.” John looked decidedly puzzled. “After all, we are the intruders, aren’t we?”

  It was an unfortunate remark. Adele turned sharply toward the villa.

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” she confessed stonily. “Guilty of intrusion. John—” she turned to face him “—I’ve no right to be here.”

  “Perhaps not,” he conceded doggedly, “but I’ve got to prove that to my own satisfaction. This address is practically all we have to go on, and we’ve got to sift every ounce of evidence we can lay our hands on. We can’t afford to pass up the smallest clue.”

  He took her by the arm, leading her around the gable end of the villa to the sheltered garden behind it where a blaze of color greeted them. Flowering shrubs of every description were banked against the dark background of the pines, yellow and pink and delicate mauve blossoms making a living bouquet of color and fragrance against the somber green. Flowers and creepers ran riot along the back of the house in the narrow borders and over the white stucco walls, cascading from trellises and urns and steps in a gay abandonment of natural growth, which suggested that they had been untended for weeks.

  Yet there was no definite air of neglect about the garden. The winding pathways had been swept clear of fallen leaves and there were very few weeds visible. The orchard trees had been carefully pruned to produce a heavy harvest of fruit, and along a sheltered wall an espalier peach spread out its gnarled arms to the sun.

  They walked until they came to a wall with a door in it, which took them out on the headland above a steep flight of steps cut from the rock and dropping directly down into the sea. They were outside the bay and there seemed no point in their being there except as an extra landing place when it was impossible to take a boat in between the headlands to the shelter of the bay itself.

  John looked down at Adele and she felt guilty and distressed as she shook her head.

  “I thought it might have rung a bell,” he said, closing the door behind them. “But no matter. We can try again.”

  Once more he had been disappointed, and she felt as if she had failed him in some personal way.

  “Do you think the launch has been here before?” she asked unsteadily as they made their way back through the garden.

  “Undoubtedly. That was an expert job.” His brown eyes narrowed as he scanned the windows at the rear of the villa. “I’m convinced it has been in and out of the bay many times.”

  To their surprise they came around the end of the house to find a small dark woman in her middle forties coming toward them along the driveway. She had evidently been inspecting John’s car and she blinked at them shortsightedly in the bright sunshine. The unrelieved black dress she wore and the heavy marketing basket over her arm suggested that she might be some sort of domestic servant.

  “I am the caretaker,” she informed them when John looked at her inquiringly in his turn. “I come to look after everything for my sister. She is in the hospital at Nice,” she added importantly. “She break her leg. I take care of Mr. Cabot till she well enough to come.”

  The name electrified them both. John took Adele’s hand and drew her forward.

  “This is Miss Cabot,” he said. “We’ve just arrived from Switzerland—rather unexpectedly.”

  The woman shaded her eyes with her hand, staring at Adele.

  “Madame Cabot, surely?” she suggested. “I have hear my sister spe
ak of Monsieur Cabot’s wife, but never of a sister. N’importe,” she added with a philosophic shrug. “I could be mistaken, to be sure!”

  Adele felt petrified. There was no ring on her finger, but suddenly she was remembering the wedding ring in the green morocco jewel case. It seemed now that she should have been wearing it.

  Turning to John, she found him looking decidedly nonplussed. She had not mentioned that disturbing ring to him. When she had discovered the scrap of paper with the address on it, the ring had seemed comparatively unimportant, although the thought of it had troubled her once or twice since. She told him about it now.

  The caretaker had moved away to open the side door of the villa and suddenly Adele felt trapped. She drew back out of the shadow of the house.

  “I ... can’t go in,” she said breathlessly.

  “Why not?” John put a compelling hand under her elbow. “This is what we have been looking for. Apparently you do belong.”

  His voice had been quietly insistent, but there was a new hardness in it that distressed her. Did he think that she had deliberately deceived him about the ring?

  He led her into the green twilight of the shuttered house, while the stout little Frenchwoman bustled off in the direction of the rear premises to rid herself of her basket and coat.

  “It’s fantastic!” Adele pushed open the nearest door. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “You’ve got to accept it for the present,” he told her, “without the details. We can’t very well question a servant about something we ought to know. In any case, she’s only a locum. We might have made a few judicious inquiries if it had been her sister, but we would only further confuse the old dear if we started explaining the situation to her now.”

  He took a quick turn around the lavishly furnished room, opening one of the windows that led directly onto the terrace.

  “It seems as if you’ve come home,” he said. “All we have to do now is get you settled in and wait for ... your husband to turn up.”

  She caught her breath. His back was toward her and she could not see his expression, but she imagined his mouth to be tightly set. Her own heart was seething with a tumult of emotion. The announcement of her marriage had meant nothing to her at first, but soon she would be meeting a stranger who would be her husband.

  Swiftly she pressed the back of her clenched hand against her lips, as if to stifle the cry of protest which rose to them.

  “I can’t believe it,” she repeated. “It all means nothing to me.”

  John came to stand beside her, taking her hand. They could hear the caretaker opening up the rest of the house.

  “This can’t be goodbye,” he said gruffly. “I can’t leave you here alone like this.”

  She turned from him.

  “You must go,” she told him in a frozen voice. “There’s no need for you to get any further involved.”

  “I am involved.” He scratched his head ruefully. “Right up to the neck!” His smile was a little wry. “You don’t really expect me to go, do you?” he amended. “I’ve always made it clear that your case is of absorbing interest to me, and I promised the professor a detailed report.”

  She smiled, thinking how genuine he was and how kind.

  “I think you ought to stay here,” he said, “now that we’ve established your identity.” He lit a cigarette, but almost immediately crushed it into an ashtray on the table between the two long windows. “I’ll get back to Nice and settle things at the hotel. You’ll want your suitcase.” He moved toward the open window, anxious to leave now. “I’ll bring it back as quickly as I can,” he promised. “I’d like to get in touch with the professor, though, and you don’t have a phone out here. I’ll call the clinic from the hotel.”

  “Will you ... come back for some lunch?” It seemed strange to be inviting him to share a meal with her in a house she did not recognize.

  He shook his head, glancing at his watch.

  “I’d better have something at the hotel,” he decided. “It’s eleven o’clock now. By the time I get to Nice it will be almost twelve.”

  Watching as he drove away, she felt a ridiculous sense of betrayal. She was alone, but she was quite sure that he would come back, if only to deliver her suitcase.

  Restlessly she made a complete circuit of the villa. There were six bedrooms leading off the wide hall, which ran along the head of the magnificent staircase, each one meticulously tidy and coldly impersonal, so that she did not stop to wonder which was her own.

  On the ground floor there were three large reception rooms, a wide marble-pillared hall and the kitchens at the back of the house. The kitchen windows were the only ones overlooking the garden. All the other windows faced south across the bay toward the distant blue gleam of the Mediterranean.

  Coming back to the kitchens, she looked in at the open door, attracted by the savory smell of coffee and herbs. The dark-eyed little caretaker was preparing a meal.

  “I wonder if I should remember your name?” she asked with an apologetic smile.

  “Maria,” the little woman supplied cheerfully, wiping her hands on the large coarse apron she wore to protect the black dress. “Annette’s sister,” she added, as if she thought it might be necessary to repeat her former statement to someone who apparently forgot so easily.

  “You speak very good English, Maria,” Adele remarked. “Have you lived in England?”

  “For seven years,” Maria told her proudly. “Before I married I live with an English lady in Manchester. I cook for her,” she added by way of further explanation.

  “I see.”

  There were so many other questions she wanted to ask, Adele thought, but she had to decide against the impulse, contenting herself with an inquiry about the absent Annette instead.

  “She will be in hospital for three ... maybe four weeks,” Maria told her quite cheerfully. “You want me to come and cook for you instead ... yes?” she asked, answering her own question.

  “I think that might be an excellent idea, Maria,” Adele found herself saying.

  Suddenly she wanted to laugh, a little hysterically, it was true. Here she was engaging staff without any knowledge of what the master of the house might say, without even knowing the sort of person he liked to have serve him. Without even knowing what he himself was like.

  Confused and nervous, she began to count the hours until John’s return, but the entire afternoon slipped past without any sign of an approaching car. She walked down to the bay and across the crunchy white pebbles to the water’s edge, climbing back up the tortuous path to the terrace edge where she had stood with the doctor that morning watching a white launch retreating toward the open sea.

  The garden seemed the most deserted place she had ever walked in, but she spent an hour there, waiting and listening with a steadily mounting sense of impending disaster.

  What had happened to John? What could have happened to him? How isolated, how deserted a house could feel without a telephone! Why was Les Rochers Blanches cut off from its neighbors in such a way?

  Desperately she sought the shelter of the kitchens and Maria’s tuneless singing. The lunch Maria had prepared for her had been excellent and now she produced a well-made pot of tea and some crisp, newly baked cakes, setting the tray down before the wood fire she had lighted in the smaller of the two sitting rooms.

  It was a man’s room, Adele decided, looking around with a new curiosity. Deep rawhide chairs surrounded the open hearth, chosen more for comfort than elegance, and there was a large square desk between the two long windows and books lining most of the space on the other two walls. The desk was unadorned save for a silver lamp topped by an austere red shade and a curious-looking table lighter that had claimed her attention as soon as she had entered the room.

  It was fashioned in the shape of a dragon. The idea had obviously sprung from the horn of an animal of the gazelle family. It formed the body and long tapering tail. The dragon’s head, wings and feet had been fashioned in silver
by some expert craftsman. The flame from a lighted wick sprouted from the monster’s mouth when lighted. A small silver snuffer was attached to the body by a slender chain.

  The ornament fascinated her. When she had finished her tea she crossed to the desk and stood with the dragon in her hands, examining it carefully in the fading light. Surely an unusual sort of thing like this should knock at the door of memory, she thought, feeling all the old uncertainty flooding over her again. Surely, somewhere, there must be some point of contact.

  Then, quite distinctly, she was aware of being watched. With her back turned to the windows, she felt the flesh prick along her spine, and small beads of moisture gathered on her upper lip. It was not John. There had been no sound of a car.

  Pale and shaken, she wheeled around to confront the man standing just outside the windows in the gathering dusk.

  Silhouetted against the pale wash of the Mediterranean sky and the distant headland, he looked abnormally tall. His long loose-limbed body and thin bronzed face with its keenly searching blue eyes was typically British, but that, she found, was the only reassuring thing about him.

  Slowly he pushed back the window and stepped into the room, and automatically she backed away from him until she reached the door. With a gesture that was almost defiant, she switched on the central lights.

  “Good evening!” His smile was suavely assured as he advanced into the room and drew up under the crystal chandelier where she could see him to the greatest advantage. “I trust you are making yourself comfortable?”

  Adele’s heart began to pound hard against her ribs. In that split second she imagined she had seen him somewhere before—a photograph, perhaps, in a newspaper?

  “Who are you?” she demanded almost hysterically as he extracted a cigarette from a thin gold case that he had taken from the inside pocket of his traveling coat.