Читать книгу They Wouldn't Be Chessmen - A.E.W. Mason - Страница 7

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Monsieur Crevette could have wept.

The pollution of the Chitipur pearls was one of the major crimes of the world; and there was no adequate penalty. Judges in the United States did certainly give ninety-nine years of penal servitude to this or that offender. But even a sentence of that severity was inadequate to meet the case of the little piece of mud that was Elsie Marsh. He was so angry that for a time he refused to offer any advice. But the quiet pertinacity of Scott Carruthers and the plight of the young Rajah brought him in the end to a more reasonable mind. He was a small bearded man rich in gesticulations, and he wore a long frock-coat with spreading skirts and a white slip in his waistcoat.

"Yes, it has happened before now," he admitted. "There was the necklace of the Princess Meravinski. After it had gone sick, someone wore it, and in a little time it was healed. But who wore it, and how long it took, I do not know. It was in Russia, before Russia went sick. Then there were the heirlooms which Lord Chasborough gave to his young wife. Wait a little! That was in Italy. I had those pearls in my hands before and after. Yes. I find that out for you!"

In a week's time Monsieur Crevette once more took Nahendra Nao and Major Carruthers into his private office. But he was not hopeful. He spread out his arms.

"I tell your Highness what I have found out." He placed chairs for them, and sat down behind his table. "They were in Rome for the winter at the Excelsior Hotel: Lord Chasborough, his wife, the Count Romola, the Marquesa de Levante—quite a party. Amongst these a young lady, well-born but poor, for whom, since she could sing a little, they were arranging some private concerts amongst their friends and trying to make for her a small career. It was she who brought back to life the pearls of Lady Chasborough. Since then, she has on another occasion been the healer. But—there it is—she helped as a friend."

"You said she was poor," Carruthers interposed.

"And she was amongst her friends when she helped," continued Crevette.

"She would still be amongst her friends if she helped us," Nahendra Nao urged.

"She certainly would be," Carruthers added with a pleasant smile which showed his teeth. "And we should see to it that every precaution was taken for her safety. This matter is almost—I don't wish to exaggerate, but it is—almost life and death for us."

"The fee would be in a proper proportion to the service we should be thanking her for," said the young Indian.

"The fee!" Monsieur Crevette exclaimed. He made a good many gestures which neither of the two men who were consulting him understood at all. "Yes, the fee! I do not know the young lady. How can I ask her to come to see me, and if she comes, how can I propose to her this service and a fee?"

"Why not?" Carruthers asked abruptly. "It is a business proposition."

"For her?" replied Monsieur Crevette.

"You said she was poor."

"She was, and for all I know she still may be. But her condition has changed, my gentlemen. This young lady no longer needs aristocratic patrons to get up little concerts for her at private parties. She made her debut in the Costanzi Opera House at Rome, and was—what do you call it?—a riot. She has sung at Monte Carlo, at the Scala—yes, understand that, my gentlemen, at the Scala—with Toscanini to tell her off. She was Octavian in The Rosenkavalier, here in London, at Covent Garden. I was there, I see her, I kiss her the hands—a vision with a voice. She cross the ocean to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. But how shall I say to such an one: 'Will you please for a fee restore the Chitipur pearls'? She will ask why they are spoilt. If I tell her, she will snap me off the nose—one, two, three bites—and where are we, your Highness? Where we were."

"But you, with no nose," said Nahendra Nao with a smile, and little Monsieur Crevette sprang to his feet.

"Aha! You take my foolish words like that, your Highness—so well, with so much spirit. Good! I do what I can for you."

"What is her name?" Carruthers asked.

"Lydia Flight," said the jeweller.

"And where is she?"

"Yes, she is in London. I have found that out."

"Can you find out still more? And quite quietly? Before she is approached, I mean," Carruthers continued.

Monsieur Crevette hunched his shoulders and arched his back.

"I shall try. Lord Chasborough, he was in my shop yesterday. In a few days he will come again. But I must tell you that these fine friends of hers are no longer such fine friends since she does not need their patronage. It was nice when they could say: 'We have a pretty little friend here who sings a pretty little song. Will you get up a pretty little concert for her in your drawing-room, and we all take the seats?' Very pleasant! You do your day's good deed. But when that little amateur bursts out in a theatre, and sets an Italian audience on fire, you are not so pleased, eh? You are grumpy. You talk quickly about your new amateur. However, your Highness, I will try. I will make the discreet enquiries. You shall hear from me. Meanwhile I give you a receipt, and I lock the Chitipur pearls in my strong-room. So!"

"Yes," said Nahendra Nao.

Monsieur Crevette's next message had brighter news for them, at the cost of Lydia Flight. The Chasboroughs and their friends were quite reconciled now to a wider success of their protégée than they had planned for her.

"Perhaps—is it?" said Monsieur Crevette, "because, had she listened to them, a disaster might have been avoided. She sang too soon. Her Maestro was furious with her. She was not ready. In New York, the fine voice, it failed. There were—wait! I wrote the words"—and Monsieur Crevette found in a drawer a sheet of a small writing-pad, and read from it. "There were some small nodes on the vocal cords. She must not sing for a year."

"And she has no money saved?" said Carruthers.

"How could she have saved money?" replied Crevette. "Her friends would gladly have her with them for the year, but according to his Lordship, she is as independent as the devil. A few weeks, yes; a year, never on her life. She will go as a companion to a lady, if she can find a lady who wants one."

"You have her address?" Nahendra Nao cried eagerly.

"Yes, your Highness. His Lordship gave it to me when I said that I might perhaps have a client who would be useful."

They were all three in the big shop on this occasion, and Carruthers leaned over the glass counter.

"Did you give that client's name, Monsieur Crevette?" he asked.

Crevette looked at the Major with asperity, and drew himself up. It was not very high, but it was as high as he could.

"This good Major has spent some time in India—yes? And in the country places—yes? In the tents, I should think—yes? Ah, it is excusable, then. Otherwise the Major would know that jewellers must have both tact and jewels before they can prosper in Bond Street."

Major Carruthers was quite unruffled by the sarcasms of Monsieur Crevette. He had a gift of remaining calm when trumpery insults were offered to him.

"That's all right then, Monsieur Crevette," he drawled.

Monsieur Crevette turned from this insufferable Major—was he really a Major, yes?—to His Highness the young Rajah.

"Shall I write to this young lady and make an arrangement for an interview?"

"Wait a minute, if you please!"

This was an order, curt and peremptory, the order of a master. Crevette jumped in spite of himself into an attitude of attention. The drawling, equivocal Major was suddenly a Major of the guard-room. Carruthers took Nahendra Nao aside. The boy was a little reckless of consequences. He would have said "Yes" on the spot, and no plans had been made.

"You're like Lydia Flight, Natty," said Carruthers with a smile. "You're singing too soon. Let's work a scheme out properly first."

Nahendra Nao saw the wisdom of this proposal. He asked Monsieur Crevette to wait for a day or two. But he walked out of the shop like one walking upon air. Already he saw the great rope of pearls restored to its perfect tenderness of colour and soft lustre. He was impatient of all the plans and details which must lie between that moment and this.

"You see, here's the time coming on when everybody's in London," Carruthers argued. "You can't have that girl, even if she consents to wear your pearls, wearing 'em here through the season all amongst her friends. They'll have to know, of course, in any case. But if she's here and there and everywhere with that rope hung about her, the secrecy won't be kept from anyone for five minutes—especially if the stones improve. Besides..." and the Major's face had a worried and thoughtful look, "there's another thing."

"What?" Nahendra Nao asked impatiently.

"She might get murdered in her bed."

And now the young Indian's face grew careworn and troubled.

"This is the second time that you have linked up murder with that jewel," he said.

Major Carruthers looked at the lad sharply.

"Do you wonder, Natty? Don't you see what it would mean to anyone who was poor? A free life where one wanted to live—just there and nowhere else, doing the things one wanted to do, and never pinched for want of a five-pound note." He laughed, and once more ran into his odd boisterous mood, to Nahendra Nao's surprise. "Why, Natty, it's lucky that the one place I want to live in is Chitipur, isn't it? Otherwise who knows what might happen?"

Suddenly the boy laid his hand on Carruthers's coat sleeve and stopped him in the street. His gesture was impulsive, even imperious. Scott Carruthers was startled by it. So startled that as he swung round he took a short step forward and stood close up against the Indian with precisely the same thought which a boxer has in clinching with his opponent But the manner of Nahendra Nao was one of appeal rather than of menace.

"You see, Major Carruthers, the only label attached to that chaplet is 'beautiful.' It is an emblem of fine thought on the part of both the giver and my old ancestor who received it. I have sullied it myself, God knows! And very shamefully. That crime should follow because of that, become its token and device through my folly—that would be horrible. I hope I haven't any more queer fancies than other people. But I think that if we stand, say, at a corner like this, and talk of crime, crime may come from any quarter, suddenly, out of the blue, as we say."

And he looked up and about the sky, nervously, as though he lay sick in a desert and saw suddenly the great vultures gathering from nowhere over his head, darkening the air and making it vibrate with the pulsation of their wings. Scott Carruthers was to remember that strange moment afterwards; this prosaic corner of Grosvenor Square and Brook Street, the sudden vision which the earnestness of the lad raised before his eyes, and the quiver of his face.

"All right, Natty," said Carruthers in a friendly, understanding voice. "I am sorry. We are such a long way from Chitipur that I had lost touch with it, even in thought. You are quite right, of course."

They went on to the great hostelry where they had been staying, and mounting high within those cliff-walls of red brick surmounted by their cupolas, they sat down in their rooms above Hyde Park to elaborate their plans. In fact, however, there was no elaboration whatever. The plan was already cut and dry within the ingenious mind of Major Scott Carruthers. He did not even have to persuade, so aptly did his odd plan fit the odd predicament in which they were entangled. The kernel and heart of the plan was that since Lydia Flight wanted to act as a companion, she should act as a companion, but that she should give her performance abroad.

Consequently four days later Madame Lucrece Bouchette, of an address in the suburb of Neuilly, arrived by the boat-train at Victoria Station, and was met by Major Scott Carruthers. As he took her hand luggage from her, a middle-aged woman, squat in shape, yellowish in colour and Mongolian in features, came up to them.

"You had better see my registered luggage examined, Marie," said Lucrece Bouchette in French, "and follow with it to—"

She looked at Major Scott Carruthers.

"To the Semiramis Hotel," said he. He had a word for Marie, who smiled at him, and he turned to walk towards the edge of the platform, where the motor-cars were parked.

"Marie is reliable, I suppose?" he said carelessly.

"She would give her life for me," Lucrece answered simply, as though that was nothing to be surprised about; and perhaps it was not. For if Major Scott Carruthers was so indeterminate of feature that his face was impossible to remember, Lucrece Bouchette was of a haunting beauty, whom no one could pass without turning again to take a second look at her. She was tall, long-limbed, and slender, with soft brown hair. She had grey eyes, almond-shaped and long, between thick dark eyelashes, and a rather round, low forehead. The upper part of her face, indeed, was Mongolian, but the delicately chiselled nose, the humorous mouth and the oval chin, were as definitely European. Her skin was white, and she had a natural colour in her cheeks which accompanied her words as music accompanies a voice.

"You left me in Paris in a great hurry," she said, and again she spoke in French.

"Had to," he answered. "When I got back to the hotel that morning, there was Natty in tears. An awful upset." He cast a glance about the spot where they stood. Even chance listeners-in picking up a word or two which they did not understand, might do, and often had done, a deal of mischief. "I'll tell you as we go to the Semiramis."

The Rajah's car pulled up at the kerb, and they got in. As the car drove away again, a transfiguration took place within it. There's a side and facet of him which a man never shows to any but a woman, and to only a few of them. It's very often a surprising unexpected exhibition, and the manner in which it is received marks one woman off from another, better, perhaps, than any other quality. The Elsie Marshes are not interested. They adore their own bodies and men are only valued by the service they give to the keeping of them beautiful. The one test of a man is the depth of his pocket. Otherwise they are much the same, even to their cries of passion when they are favoured and their reproaches when they are ruined.

Lucrece Bouchette, however, was of a kind which is perpetually interested, perpetually curious, and gratefully responsive to any unexpected revelation. The daughter of a Dutch sea-officer and a Javanese lady, she had been born at Surabaya twenty-eight years before; she had been married, when little more than a young, intelligent and beautiful child, to a French merchant a good many years older than herself. He had returned to France, suffered reverses of fortune, and left Lucrece with a small apartment at Neuilly and as small an income. There had been a supper party one night of January at the Café de Paris, and Scott Carruthers had driven her home from it. The undistinguished reticent stranger, starved by years of absence from his kind, had found his tongue upon that journey. An unexpected passion had made its appeal. Now in this darkness of this smoothly rolling car he held her close to him, repeated over and over again her name in an ecstasy, and babbled like a callow boy.

But Lucrece was aware, even whilst she lay in his arms, that the man was behind the boy, that he was at heart desperate in his need of her, and set upon slaking it at every cost.

"You have been away from me a fortnight, Lucrece. Did you know that? Know it, and ache every second of the day? It's got to come to an end, my dear. I'm never going back. I wake up at night with the horror of a thought that I am back, that as soon as the morning breaks, I'll see the flat plains stark and brown and naked, and far away the snow on the hills. I used to have to play chess with the Maharajah by the hour. No, no, no! I've done with it. I am going to play another kind of chess altogether."

In her suite at the hotel he told her of the ruined necklace.

"I could have gone round to the Avenue Matignon and strangled that girl with my own hands," he said, his fingers working as though they clutched a throat, his face convulsed with the passion he had striven to conceal in the sitting-room in the garden court of the Ritz Hotel. "She spoilt everything, damn her!"

"Hush!" said Lucrece, nodding her head towards her bedroom, where her maid was unpacking her clothes. She added in a low voice:

"Not everything. Half of the plan remains."

"Half's not enough. I've seen you, dearest. I want everything."

Lucrece Bouchette smiled. She was taking off her hat in front of the mirror, and she smiled and made a little grimace at his reflection.

"Greedy!"

She saw his eyes burning upon her.

"Yes."

Then with a start he looked at his watch.

"You'll want time for a bath, and to powder your nose. I'll come back for you at nine. We are all three to dine together at our hotel, upstairs, and make our arrangements."

He came up behind her and caught her to him, kissing her hungrily. For a moment or two she yielded, and then she turned and gently held him off. She was suddenly a little frightened. So much violence and haste, and so much patience and discretion needed if they were to tread with safety the winding perilous way which he had laid out across their chart of life.

"We must be careful, dear," she whispered, looking him in the eyes. "There's the pit in front of us, and very near."

"That's all right," he returned confidently.

She still held him at arm's length, looking at him from those long eyes which seemed always to hold a riddle and keep its secret. He could carry her off her feet now. She was moving with her head clear into dangers which she could not define, and at his bidding. Suppose that midway in the journey she had exhausted her interest, the stimulation she got from him, her power to respond? What would he be like then? She smiled suddenly. She was seeing again his hands curving and his fingers twitching, and his face convulsed as he thought of Elsie Marsh. He was certainly not losing his interest for her yet.

"Run along, Harvey." She dropped her hands from his shoulders. "If I am to be ready by nine, I've got to hurry."

It was nearer ten, however, when she sat down to dinner with Nahendra Nao and Scott Carruthers. Lucrece Bouchette had of course met the young Indian often enough during his stay in Paris, but tonight she might have taken him for a more sedate and elder brother. Over there, he had been boyishly arrogant, a trifle noisy with his shrill laugh, obviously the King of the Castle. This evening he was quiet, with a simple dignity which sat on him well. He had no reproaches for Elsie Marsh, and no hysterical blame for himself.

"We are taking a long chance, Lucrece—may I use that name? A very long chance. But it is the only one we have, and I shall be more grateful than I can say, if you will help."

Indeed Lucrece Bouchette felt more than a twinge of remorse as the dinner progressed, but she was launched. It was agreed that she should make some small purchases at Monsieur Crevette's. She should speak of her need for a companion on a tour she proposed to make in the South of France. Crevette would remember Lydia Flight, and give her the girl's address. So far there was no trouble. The meeting took place and the engagement was made. Then, however, the difficulties began. Monsieur Crevette opened very delicately the proposal that on this tour Lydia Flight should wear the Chitipur pearls. At once, said Monsieur Crevette:

"She dig her toes in. She is poor, yes. She need the money, yes. But the responsibility, no, and again no, and for the third time, no! I show her the pearls. They look no more than pearls of the Arcades, not? But suppose they get better? she ask. I say you send her with a detective, and she give me the bird. Everyone in five minutes would know that she had a private detective, and would wonder why, and would find the answer. She put it all in two words. Im. Possible."

"It's quite true, of course, even to-day," said Carruthers gloomily. "Private enquiry agents would have to be unusual people to hide up their job in the South of France, and they aren't unusual people."

Then when they were on the edge of despair, magic helped them. Scott Carruthers called it magic. He had been brought up in a strictly evangelical school, and he thought "Providence" an ill-omened word to use in connection with his plans. He met in the smoking-room of a club much frequented by Service officers home from the East an invalided Captain of the Bengal Police—Oliver Ransom. Ransom had by now quite recovered his health, his circumstances were suitable, he had manners and good breeding and a pleasant way with him. Instead of masquerading as a courier or a chauffeur he could be one of the party. He was the ideal of Carruthers's search. The only drawback to the choice of him was that in more than one difficult case in India he had been guilty of an ingenuity and courage which had brought the malefactors to their proper conclusion. However, one can't have everything, and over a dinner-table for two in the club, Carruthers noticed a certain delicacy of mind in Oliver Ransom, a suggestion of an essayist gone astray in Scotland Yard, which he set against the man's prowess as a policeman.

"After all," he said, whilst he looked over the rim of his wine-glass at Oliver, "Indian criminals are fairly simple liars. They get off not because of the cleverness of their crimes, but because the police muddle up the whole case by lying too."

"That is undoubtedly true," Ransom answered, and Carruthers realised with a start that he had been talking aloud, whereas he had thought to be communing with himself. However, the opportunity was a good one, and he took it, He told the story of Nahendra Nao and Elsie Marsh. Oliver Ransom was languidly interested. He had heard of the Chitipur pearls, of course. It was going to be awkward for the young Rajah when he should return home.

"Awkward for me, too," added Carruthers. "We start back at the end of August."

Not so very long a time, to be sure, and the fee would be good and the part of the world in which it was to be earned pleasant. But socially he was not too easy a companion. Those whom he liked, he liked well, but he did not fit comfortably into a general circle.

"As to these two ladies—" he said.

"They are both charming," Carruthers interrupted.

"I don't even know their names," Oliver continued.

"If that's all your trouble, it can be quickly cured. One is Madame Lucrece Bouchette; the other, the companion, is the singer, Lydia Flight."

To Major Scott Carruthers's delight, Oliver Ransom spilled his wine over the table-cloth. Then he blushed like a girl, and was very much annoyed.

"You might just as well meet these two ladies before you make up your mind, mightn't you?" said Carruthers carelessly. He had his fish unexpectedly on his hook now, but not yet in the creel. "You could take your books with you, since you're reading law. What about the four of us dining together?"

Oliver Ransom saw no objection whatever, and Scott Carruthers went back to Nahendra Nao in better spirits than he had known for a week. They dined in the grill-room of the Semiramis, where there is sufficient movement and clatter for two people to talk intimately together even when they are only four at the table. Lucrece and Scott Carruthers, after the first courses had set them all at their ease, left Lydia Flight and Oliver Ransom to work out their problem for themselves. It happened—it is continually happening and no one is going to say why, and anyway no explanation is needed—the pair fell into step at the hors-d'oeuvres and were old friends when the coffee was reached. In the interval Lydia had dug Oliver Ransom's history out of him, told him nothing of her own, and had laughed with a lovely ripple of the voice which must not sing, at the idea of this mad pilgrimage along the south coast of France whilst the spring rounded into summer, she with a priceless jewel about her throat and not sixpence in her pocket, he the body-guard and policeman with Elphinstone on Contracts in his hand.

"It would be fun," said she with a little smile, and wistfully.

"Wouldn't it!" said he.

"But—" and she stopped, suddenly grown serious.

"What sort of 'but' is that?" Oliver Ransom asked. "When you come to my age, you will recognise that more 'buts' turn into 'ands' than you had any idea of."

Lydia looked at him with admiration. Young people in step discover wit very easily in each other.

"This but. When and where will you study your law?"

"In the morning," he said. "On the terrace."

"What terrace?"

"The terrace where you're doing your knitting."

She laughed, and then looked him over, and said quietly:

"I think I should not mind the responsibility so much if we went together."

She had a tempting picture before her, olive and orange groves and summer seas, and this man beside her, and that young woebegone Indian Prince here in London gradually recovering from his despondency. If only the experiment would prove successful. It had—yes—on other occasions it had.

"We'll give it a chance," she said.

Oliver Ransom took her back to her lodging, with the whole business settled. Nahendra Nao was to keep as far away from his pearls as possible, lest the quality of the big beads which Lydia Flight was wearing should be suspected. Major Scott Carruthers would go to and fro, but as far as possible he would be with the travellers. They were to start for Beauvallon in four days' time.

Later that night in her apartment, Lucrece Bouchette put a question to Carruthers, which she had had on the tip of her tongue ever since they had left her in the hall.

"What's to happen to those two, Harvey?"

Scott Carruthers raised his eyebrows.

"Ah!" he said. "Yes. We shall have to think about that, shan't we?"

Lucrece Bouchette had an odd sensation that the room had suddenly grown cold. She saw Scott Carruthers gently swaying backwards and forwards from his heels to his toes and from his toes to his heels, with a proper perplexity in his face, and his eyes following the pattern of the carpet. But he didn't perplex Lucrece. Oh, he had had the thought a long time since, what must happen to those two when the pearls were healed and the pilgrimage at an end.

"I should be sorry if—" she began, and she broke off with a shiver. Certainly the fire had gone out and the room was very cold. Lucrece Bouchette was sorry for those two—just now. But the spring was to round into summer. There were months to pass before anything could happen to them. It was possible that when the time came she might not be even sorry.

This odd caravan, then, started off at Beauvallon, and sauntered along the Riviera. Undoubtedly the pearls were healing. The discolorations had gone, the yellow sickly look was fading. Lydia Flight wore them night and day, hiding them as best she could under her shirt by day, and under a neck-wrap in the evening. Monsieur Crevette, who was taking a holiday at Monte Carlo, motored over to Mentone when they were staying there, and was enraptured.

"At the end of July, madame," he said.

"July!" This was early in June; Oliver Ransom and Lydia Flight were so sunk in love that the remotest hotels, the loneliest beaches, filled them with delight. All that they needed was Schubert and moonlight, whilst on the other hand, Lucrece Bouchette could have screamed from sheer boredom.

"At the end of July, madame. I give you my word, the word of Crevette."

Lucrece knew another word of another person which would have aptly expressed her sentiments. But she did not utter it. There were two more months, then, and Monte Carlo was forbidden. She herself might run over for the day, but it was the last place in the world where Lydia Flight could trot about with the old Maharajah's pearls swinging from her neck.

"Major Carruthers," Monsieur Crevette continued. "He comes to-morrow, I think."

Scott Carruthers, in fact, sent a telegram the next day, and arrived upon the day after in time for lunch.

"I have an idea," he said genially, as he sat upon the terrace of the hotel overlooking the sea. He had a cocktail at his elbow, and the little party grouped about him. "The crowds'll be coming with the bathing season. We ought to migrate a bit—what?"

He spread a map out upon the iron table, and ran his eyes up and down it and across it.

"Any fancies?" he asked, looking towards Lydia Flight and Oliver Ransom. They had no suggestions to make. They were in Paradise anywhere. "You, Lucrece?"

He turned his eyes towards her, and saw her grow a little pale under the tan of her cheeks.

Scott Carruthers had another idea. It seemed to leap out of the map at him.

"What about a house-boat on one of the rivers? Isn't that an idea? For the last month, eh? That rope is getting pretty noticeable." He leaned back in his chair and pursed up his lips, and took a pencil from his pocket. "Let me see. We'd want room for the four of us, and for your maid, Lucrece, on the boat. Then there'd have to be a smaller boat with the kitchen and rooms for the servants—unless, of course, we could get local people who could sleep ashore."

"That would be best, of course," said Lydia Flight; and Lucrece Bouchette shot one sharp glance at her from her sidelong eyes in which horror struggled with contempt. What a fool! she was thinking.

"You'd want a launch, of course, to get you about."

"I could look after that and drive it," cried Lydia Flight. "Lucrece drives a car, too. We could always get somebody to clean it."

Scott Carruthers looked up at Lucrece, and his eyes widened as he looked at her.

"Does that suit you, too, Lucrece?" he asked gently, and she could do no more than nod. "A very great deal depends, of course, upon everything going through during the last month, doesn't it?" he said easily.

Lucrece Bouchette moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. Carruthers had his plan settled to the last detail. She was sure of it. She was equally sure that she was not yet to be told what it was. At that moment she almost hated him. She knew that she was horribly afraid of him, as she watched him looking up and down the map as if in doubt where the houseboat should be moored. She heard him saying again, with his face convulsed and his voice violent: "I'm not going back to Chitipur! I've had eight mortal deadly years of it."

"Well, that's settled, then," he said cheerfully. "A house-boat, a tender, an oil launch and a dinghy." He turned towards Lydia Flight with a laugh. "The day you hand over those pearls to His Highness, Lydia, you can go aquaplaning again in the best evening frock you've got."

Lydia Flight threw back her head and laughed. "You saw that picture of me at Nassau?"

"Who didn't?" Carruthers asked.

"I was mad at that time. I had come down from New York, knowing that I had played the fool with my voice, and that I mustn't sing for a year. I was desperately unhappy. There wasn't any crazy thing which I wouldn't have done, just to buck myself up for a moment."

But Scott Carruthers was not listening very attentively. He was making notes on the back of the list of cocktails of the requirements of the house-boat. Then he resumed his study of his maps.

"The question is now, where we should moor it," he said. "If we could settle that, we can go to luncheon with an easy conscience."

"One of the mouths of the Rhone," Oliver Ransom suggested.

"Yes, yes," said Carruthers. "But a little uninteresting, all that country. Flat, I think."

Lydia Flight exclaimed:

"I know. The inlaid water at Arcachon. Pine trees all round it. Lovely!"

"Let me see," said Carruthers. "Where is Arcachon, now? Oh, yes! There!" And he stabbed the butt of his pencil down upon the place. He seemed very much inclined to vote for that suggestion.

"But it's a long way from England. I thought that if we could be nearer... You see, His Highness will be anxious. We have got to consider him, haven't we?" He was very kind, but he made Lydia Flight imagine herself to be the most selfish little beast on earth. She had a beautiful white skin, and the blood mounted into her neck and face until she was as red as a tulip. "Now, he is invited to Goodwood, and Goodwood takes place in the last week of July. I thought that if we were somewhere near, and he could come over and pick up his chaplet really completely restored as soon as Goodwood was over, it would be a great relief to him."

As he spoke, he lifted his head and looked straight at Lucrece Bouchette. He was announcing to her that the last few days of July would be the days in which his plans would reach their fruition. He put his finger again on the map.

"The Seine's the river we want," he said. "The lower reaches between Rouen and Havre-de-Grace. His Highness can slip over to Havre or Trouville from Southampton after the racing is over. See?"

He ran the butt of his pencil round the bends of the great waterway, and stopped.

"There's the place," he said excitedly. He had obviously just made a discovery. He was surprised to find this particular place in this particular spot. "Caudebec!" he cried, and he bent his head down to the map, the better to read the name. "Caudebec-en-Caux," he read slowly. "I've heard of it." He swung round enthusiastically to Lydia and Oliver Ransom. "You'll love it! It's a beautiful little old dead-alive town where artists go. It has got a tiny perfect cathedral you could almost put on a tray. I want to see it myself. What do you all say? Caudebec? Then Caudebec it is, and we can go in to luncheon."

Oliver Ransom and Lydia Flight passed out of the sunlight over the sill of the French window. Scott Carruthers stepped close to Lucrece Bouchette. Into his unnoticeable face there came a light which quite transfigured it. He stood with his hands clenched and rocked himself gently from his heels on to his toes, and from his toes back to his heels.

"The end of July, Lucrece," he whispered. "Then—all over!"

Oliver Ransom and Lydia Flight had vanished altogether out of his thoughts. Nahendra Nao? Well, he would still have a place—a sort of a place—in the plans of Scott Carruthers.

"You are frightened, Lucrece," he went on.

Lucrece Bouchette nodded her head slowly.

"I am."

But he did not understand why she was frightened. It was not out of pity for the young couple who had just passed out of the sunlight of the terrace to the cool shadows of the dining-room. Nor was it from any dread of discovery. She was frightened because when this crime—and that there was to be a crime she had no doubt—was completed, she would find herself linked for ever by the bond of that crime, to a man to whom she was beginning to trace her horror of the whole affair. Was she tiring of him? She asked herself that question as she stood opposite to him, her long eyes smiling to cloak her question. Was she even beginning to feel a distaste for him?

However, in the early days of July a house-boat, elaborate with awnings and flowers, the Marie-Popette, was moored to the big square wooden piles just above the town of Caudebec, a fast motor launch was tied up on one side, a dinghy on a painter trailed behind; and close behind that, a smaller house-boat was tied, in which were the kitchen and the servants' quarters. All, in a word, was set for the great event upon which Major Scott Carruthers had spent so much forethought.

And then a middle-aged and fastidious little gentleman who had once made a fortune in Mincing Lane, and now considered himself a patron of the artists, Mr. Julius Ricardo, walked quite innocently into the very heart of the affair.