Near to him a woman sneered, and a man said, pityingly: “She was pretty, that little one. It is regrettable that she has lost.”
A few minutes afterwards Ricardo finished his cigar and strolled back into the rooms, making his way to the big table just on the right hand of the entrance, where the play as a rule runs high. It was clearly running high to-night. For so deep a crowd thronged about the table that Ricardo could only by standing on tiptoe see the faces of the players. Of the banker he could not catch a glimpse. But though the crowd remained, its units were constantly changing, and it was not long before Ricardo found himself standing in the front rank of the spectators, just behind the players seated in the chairs. The oval green table was spread out beneath him littered with bank-notes. Ricardo turned his eyes to the left, and saw seated at the middle of the table the man who was holding the bank. Ricardo recognised him with a start of surprise. He was a young Englishman, Harry Wethermill, who, after a brilliant career at Oxford and at Munich, had so turned his scientific genius to account that he had made a fortune for himself at the age of twenty-eight.
He sat at the table with the indifferent look of the habitual player upon his cleanly chiselled face. But it was plain that his good fortune stayed at his elbow to-night, for opposite to him the croupier was arranging with extraordinary deftness piles of bank-notes in the order of their value. The bank was winning heavily. Even as Ricardo looked Wethermill turned up “a natural,” and the croupier swept in the stakes from either side.
“Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Le jeu est fait?” the croupier cried, all in a breath, and repeated the words. Wethermill waited with his hand upon the wooden frame in which the cards were stacked. He glanced round the table while the stakes were being laid upon the cloth, and suddenly his face flashed from languor into interest. Almost opposite to him a small, white-gloved hand holding a five-louis note was thrust forward between the shoulders of two men seated at the table. Wethermill leaned forward and shook his head with a smile. With a gesture he refused the stake. But he was too late. The fingers of the hand had opened, the note fluttered down on to the cloth, the money was staked.
At once he leaned back in his chair.
“Il y a une suite,” he said quietly. He relinquished the bank rather than play against that five-louis note. The stakes were taken up by their owners.
The croupier began to count Wethermill’s winnings, and Ricardo, curious to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had brought the game to so abrupt a termination, leaned forward. He recognised the young girl in the white satin dress and the big black hat whose nerves had got the better of her a few minutes since in the garden. He saw her now clearly, and thought her of an entrancing loveliness. She was moderately tall, fair of skin, with a fresh colouring upon her cheeks which she owed to nothing but her youth. Her hair was of a light brown with a sheen upon it, her forehead broad, her eyes dark and wonderfully clear. But there was something more than her beauty to attract him. He had a strong belief that somewhere, some while ago, he had already seen her. And this belief grew and haunted him. He was still vaguely puzzling his brains to fix the place when the croupier finished his reckoning.
“There are two thousand louis in the bank,” he cried. “Who will take on the bank for two thousand louis?”
No one, however, was willing. A fresh bank was put up for sale, and Wethermill, still sitting in the dealer’s chair, bought it. He spoke at once to an attendant, and the man slipped round the table, and, forcing his way through the crowd, carried a message to the girl in the black hat. She looked towards Wethermill and smiled; and the smile made her face a miracle of tenderness. Then she disappeared, and in a few moments Ricardo saw a way open in the throng behind the banker, and she appeared again only a yard or two away, just behind Wethermill. He turned, and taking her hand into his, shook it chidingly.
“I couldn’t let you play against me, Celia,” he said, in English; “my luck’s too good to-night. So you shall be my partner instead. I’ll put in the capital and we’ll share the winnings.”
The girl’s face flushed rosily. Her hand still lay clasped in his. She made no effort to withdraw it.
“I couldn’t do that,” she exclaimed.
“Why not?” said he. “See!” and loosening her fingers he took from them the five-louis note and tossed it over to the croupier to be added to his bank. “Now you can’t help yourself. We’re partners.”
The girl laughed, and the company at the table smiled, half in sympathy, half with amusement. A chair was brought for her, and she sat down behind Wethermill, her lips parted, her face joyous with excitement. But all at once Wethermill’s luck deserted him. He renewed his bank three times, and had lost the greater part of his winnings when he had dealt the cards through. He took a fourth bank, and rose from that, too, a loser.
“That’s enough, Celia,” he said. “Let us go out into the garden; it will be cooler there.”
“I have taken your good luck away,” said the girl remorsefully. Wethermill put his arm through hers.
“You’ll have to take yourself away before you can do that,” he answered, and the couple walked together out of Ricardo’s hearing.
Ricardo was left to wonder about Celia. She was just one of those problems which made Aix-les-Bains so unfailingly attractive to him. She dwelt in some street of Bohemia; so much was clear. The frankness of her pleasure, of her excitement, and even of her distress proved it. She passed from one to the other while you could deal a pack of cards. She was at no pains to wear a mask. Moreover, she was a young girl of nineteen or twenty, running about those rooms alone, as unembarrassed as if she had been at home. There was the free use, too, of Christian names. Certainly she dwelt in Bohemia. But it seemed to Ricardo that she could pass in any company and yet not be overpassed. She would look a little more picturesque than most girls of her age, and she was certainly a good deal more soignee than many, and she had the Frenchwoman’s knack of putting on her clothes. But those would be all the differences, leaving out the frankness. Ricardo wondered in what street of Bohemia she dwelt. He wondered still more when he saw her again half an hour afterwards at the entrance to the Villa des Fleurs. She came down the long hall with Harry Wethermill at her side. The couple were walking slowly, and talking as they walked with so complete an absorption in each other that they were unaware of their surroundings. At the bottom of the steps a stout woman of fifty-five over-jewelled, and over-dressed and raddled with paint, watched their approach with a smile of good-humoured amusement. When they came near enough to hear she said in French:
“Well, Celie, are you ready to go home?”
The girl looked up with a start.
“Of course, madame,” she said, with a certain submissiveness which surprised Ricardo. “I hope I have not kept you waiting.”
She ran to the cloak-room, and came back again with her cloak.
“Good-bye, Harry,” she said, dwelling upon his name and looking out upon him with soft and smiling eyes.
“I shall see you to-morrow evening,” he said, holding her hand. Again she let it stay within his keeping, but she frowned, and a sudden gravity settled like a cloud upon her face. She turned to the elder woman with a sort of appeal.
“No, I do not think we shall be here, to-morrow, shall we, madame?” she said reluctantly.
“Of course not,” said madame briskly. “You have not forgotten what we have planned? No, we shall not be here to-morrow; but the night after — yes.”
Celia turned back again to Wethermill.
“Yes, we have plans for to-morrow,” she said, with a very wistful note of regret in her voice; and seeing that madame was already at the door, she bent forward and said timidly, “But the night after I shall want you.”
“I shall thank you for wanting me,” Wethermill rejoined; and the girl tore her hand away and ran up the steps.
Harry Wethermill returned to the rooms. Mr. Ricardo did not follow him. He was too busy with the little problem which h
ad been presented to him that night. What could that girl, he asked himself, have in common with the raddled woman she addressed so respectfully? Indeed, there had been a note of more than respect in her voice. There had been something of affection. Again Mr. Ricardo found himself wondering in what street in Bohemia Celia dwelt — and as he walked up to the hotel there came yet other questions to amuse him.
“Why,” he asked, “could neither Celia nor madame come to the Villa des Fleurs to-morrow night? What are the plans they have made? And what was it in those plans which had brought the sudden gravity and reluctance into Celia’s face?”
Ricardo had reason to remember those questions during the next few days, though he only idled with them now.
CHAPTER II
A CRY FOR HELP
IT WAS ON a Monday evening that Ricardo saw Harry Wethermill and the girl Celia together. On the Tuesday he saw Wethermill in the rooms alone and had some talk with him.
Wethermill was not playing that night, and about ten o’clock the two men left the Villa des Fleurs together.
“Which way do you go?” asked Wethermill.
“Up the hill to the Hotel Majestic,” said Ricardo.
“We go together, then. I, too, am staying there,” said the young man, and they climbed the steep streets together. Ricardo was dying to put some questions about Wethermill’s young friend of the night before, but discretion kept him reluctantly silent. They chatted for a few moments in the hall upon indifferent topics and so separated for the night. Mr. Ricardo, however, was to learn something more of Celia the next morning; for while he was fixing his tie before the mirror Wethermill burst into his dressing-room. Mr. Ricardo forgot his curiosity in the surge of his indignation. Such an invasion was an unprecedented outrage upon the gentle tenor of his life. The business of the morning toilette was sacred. To interrupt it carried a subtle suggestion of anarchy. Where was his valet? Where was Charles, who should have guarded the door like the custodian of a chapel?
“I cannot speak to you for at least another half-hour,” said Mr. Ricardo, sternly.
But Harry Wethermill was out of breath and shaking with agitation.
“I can’t wait,” he cried, with a passionate appeal. “I have got to see you. You must help me, Mr. Ricardo — you must, indeed!”
Ricardo spun round upon his heel. At first he had thought that the help wanted was the help usually wanted at Aix-les-Bains. A glance at Wethermills face, however, and the ringing note of anguish in his voice, told him that the thought was wrong. Mr. Ricardo slipped out of his affectations as out of a loose coat. “What has happened?” he asked quietly.
“Something terrible.” With shaking fingers Wethermill held out a newspaper. “Read it,” he said.
It was a special edition of a local newspaper, Le Journal de Savoie, and it bore the date of that morning.
“They are crying it in the streets,” said Wethermill. “Read!”
A short paragraph was printed in large black letters on the first page, and leaped to the eyes.
“Late last night,” it ran, “an appalling murder was committed at the Villa Rose, on the road to Lac Bourget. Mme. Camille Dauvray, an elderly, rich woman who was well known at Aix, and had occupied the villa every summer for the last few years, was discovered on the floor of her salon, fully dressed and brutally strangled, while upstairs, her maid, Helene Vauquier, was found in bed, chloroformed, with her hands tied securely behind her back. At the time of going to press she had not recovered consciousness, but the doctor, Emile Peytin, is in attendance upon her, and it is hoped that she will be able shortly to throw some light on this dastardly affair. The police are properly reticent as to the details of the crime, but the following statement may be accepted without hesitation:
“The murder was discovered at twelve o’clock at night by the sergent-de-ville Perrichet, to whose intelligence more than a word of praise is due, and it is obvious from the absence of all marks upon the door and windows that the murderer was admitted from within the villa. Meanwhile Mme. Dauvray’s motor-car has disappeared, and with it a young Englishwoman who came to Aix with her as her companion. The motive of the crime leaps to the eyes. Mme. Dauvray was famous in Aix for her jewels, which she wore with too little prudence. The condition of the house shows that a careful search was made for them, and they have disappeared. It is anticipated that a description of the young Englishwoman, with a reward for her apprehension, will be issued immediately. And it is not too much to hope that the citizens of Aix, and indeed of France, will be cleared of all participation in so cruel and sinister a crime.”
Ricardo read through the paragraph with a growing consternation, and laid the paper upon his dressing-table.
“It is infamous,” cried Wethermill passionately.
“The young Englishwoman is, I suppose, your friend Miss Celia?” said Ricardo slowly.
Wethermill started forward.
“You know her, then?” he cried in amazement.
“No; but I saw her with you in the rooms. I heard you call her by that name.”
“You saw us together?” exclaimed Wethermill. “Then you can understand how infamous the suggestion is.”
But Ricardo had seen the girl half an hour before he had seen her with Harry Wethermill. He could not but vividly remember the picture of her as she flung herself on to the bench in the garden in a moment of hysteria, and petulantly kicked a satin slipper backwards and forwards against the stones. She was young, she was pretty, she had a charm of freshness, but — but — strive against it as he would, this picture in the recollection began more and more to wear a sinister aspect. He remembered some words spoken by a stranger. “She is pretty, that little one. It is regrettable that she has lost.”
Mr. Ricardo arranged his tie with even a greater deliberation than he usually employed.
“And Mme. Dauvray?” he asked. “She was the stout woman with whom your young friend went away?”
“Yes,” said Wethermill.
Ricardo turned round from the mirror.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Hanaud is at Aix. He is the cleverest of the French detectives. You know him. He dined with you once.”
It was Mr. Ricardo’s practice to collect celebrities round his dinner-table, and at one such gathering Hanaud and Wethermill had been present together.
“You wish me to approach him?”
“At once.”
“It is a delicate position,” said Ricardo. “Here is a man in charge of a case of murder, and we are quietly to go to him—”
To his relief Wethermill interrupted him.
“No, no,” he cried; “he is not in charge of the case. He is on his holiday. I read of his arrival two days ago in the newspaper. It was stated that he came for rest. What I want is that he should take charge of the case.”
The superb confidence of Wethermill shook Mr. Ricardo for a moment, but his recollections were too clear.
“You are going out of your way to launch the acutest of French detectives in search of this girl. Are you wise, Wethermill?”
Wethermill sprang up from his chair in desperation.
“You, too, think her guilty! You have seen her. You think her guilty — like this detestable newspaper, like the police.”
“Like the police?” asked Ricardo sharply.
“Yes,” said Harry Wethermill sullenly. “As soon as I saw that rag I ran down to the villa. The police are in possession. They would not let me into the garden. But I talked with one of them. They, too, think that she let in the murderers.”
Ricardo took a turn across the room. Then he came to a stop in front of Wethermill.
“Listen to me,” he said solemnly. “I saw this girl half an hour before I saw you. She rushed out into the garden. She flung herself on to a bench. She could not sit still. She was hysterical. You know what that means. She had been losing. That’s point number one.”
Mr. Ricardo ticked it off upon his finger.
“She ran back into th
e rooms. You asked her to share the winnings of your bank. She consented eagerly. And you lost. That’s point number two. A little later, as she was going away, you asked her whether she would be in the rooms the next night — yesterday night — the night when the murder was committed. Her face clouded over. She hesitated. She became more than grave. There was a distinct impression as though she shrank from the contemplation of what it was proposed she should do on the next night. And then she answered you, ‘No, we have other plans.’ That’s number three.” And Mr. Ricardo ticked off his third point.
“Now,” he asked, “do you still ask me to launch Hanaud upon the case?”
“Yes, and at once,” cried Wethermill.
Ricardo called for his hat and his stick.
“You know where Hanaud is staying?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Wethermill, and he led Ricardo to an unpretentious little hotel in the centre of the town. Ricardo sent in his name, and the two visitors were immediately shown into a small sitting-room, where M. Hanaud was enjoying his morning chocolate. He was stout and broad-shouldered, with a full and almost heavy face. In his morning suit at his breakfast-table he looked like a prosperous comedian.
He came forward with a smile of welcome, extending both his hands to Mr. Ricardo.
“Ah, my good friend,” he said, “it is pleasant to see you. And Mr. Wethermill,” he exclaimed, holding a hand out to the young inventor.
“You remember me, then?” said Wethermill gladly.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 2
