Читать книгу Crime & Mystery Collection: 110+ Thrillers & Detective Tales in One Volume (Illustrated Edition) - E. Phillips Oppenheim, E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 26

Table of Contents

WITH vehement gestures and shaking voice, Vittorio—Peter Hames’ almost too perfect butler—sought out his master in the studio of his hillside villa and burst into a stream of agonised words.

“But out in the road, Monsieur—they fight like madmen. They kill one another.”

“Those road-men fighting again? Well, why didn’t you stop them?” Peter Hames queried, knocking out the ashes from his pipe.

Vittorio’s gesture of protest was almost sufficient without words.

“One is of a huge size, Monsieur,” he announced, “and neither of them are road-men. If Monsieur does not wish to interfere, perhaps with a revolver he could frighten them.”

Peter Hames hurried out, followed at a respectable distance by Vittorio, whose firm intention it was to watch what might happen from behind the iron gates. The former quickened his pace as, over the low wall, he saw the swaying figures of the combatants. For once Vittorio had not exaggerated. The two men—one a head and a half taller than the other—struggling now in close grip, were savagely in earnest. Blood was streaming from the faces of both of them; the dust of the road was churned up by their straining feet. The smaller man had evidently been down once, and, although he was fighting the more fiercely of the two, he was obviously on the point of exhaustion. Peter Hames strode across the road, seized his antagonist by the collar, and dragged him back.

“You’ve had enough of this, you two,” he declared. “Break away! Do you hear?”

The answer was a vicious left-hand jab, which Peter Hames only escaped by a quick leap to one side. He retained his hold, however.

“You’ve both had all that’s good for you,” he repeated firmly. “Besides,” he added to his captive, “you’re big enough to kill that man.”

“I’m going to when I get my wind again,” was the furious retort.

The threatened combatant stumbled to the low wall which protected the garden of the villa. He sat down and buried his face in his hands. Suddenly, Hames, looking from one to the other, realised that they both belonged—externally, at any rate—to his own class. He had expected to find a fight between two of the peasants of the district, but, notwithstanding his torn raiment and disfigured face, he recognised the man seated upon the wall as a well-known figure in the Principality—a retired English soldier of some distinction. His opponent, although something about him seemed vaguely familiar, was a stranger, but his clothes and linen, crumpled though they were, were of the best. Peter released the latter, and, keeping between the two, addressed the man with whom he had some acquaintance.

“What the mischief’s all this about, Colonel?” he asked.

The pathetic figure upon the wall looked up wearily. There was something very like tears in his eyes.

“I can’t kill him,” he lamented. “Not like this, anyhow. I shall kill him before long, but every day he lives is a day of agony.”

The younger man stole forward.

“So you’re going to kill me, are you?” he demanded.

“You’ll be lucky if you live for a week,” replied the Colonel. “I’m afraid,” he added, turning to his rescuer, “you’ll have to leave us alone, Hames. It’s not your affair.”

His opponent approached, swinging one arm viciously—a clean-shaven, rather full-faced young fellow, well over six feet and broadly built.

“Out of the way!” he shouted.

Peter Hames made no movement.

“Look here,” he insisted, “listen to me for one moment. This fight has gone far enough and has got to stop. If you come a step nearer, I shall knock you down, and—listen—I don’t want to butt in without giving you a word of warning—I held the championship for Harvard for two years, and I am in pretty good training at the present moment. You seem to be fairly well knocked about already, but you’re only asking for trouble if you come any nearer to me.”

“You’re that damned painter fellow, Hames,” the young man muttered, looking him up and down.

“You have the advantage of me, but you’ll be staring at the sky in another minute if you are not careful.”

“What the hell do you want to interfere for, at all? It’s not your business.”

“Isn’t it?” Peter Hames rejoined. “Well, I’m making it mine. When I see a youngster of your size attacking an older man, a head and a half shorter, I have something to say. What I suggest,” he continued, turning to both of them, “is that you should come into my villa here, have a wash and brush up, and shake hands over a drink.”

Whatever the nature of their hate may have been, it was at least mutual. Neither of them relaxed in the slightest degree.

“You are doubtless one of these kind-hearted persons,” the Colonel said coldly, “who interfere in matters concerning which you know nothing. I am temporarily without the means of killing him, and at the moment my physical strength is not enough. All the same, before long, if I have to drag him from under the skirts of one of his verminous womenkind, I shall kill him.”

The threatened man flinched.

“You see,” he cried, turning to Hames, “that is what he’s out for—murder. I must protect myself. Stand away whilst I make an end of him.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” was the prompt retort. “You know what will happen to you if you touch him.”

“What about him then? You heard what he said he was going to do to me?”

“Men say more than they mean at times like this,” Peter Hames soothed him. “One thing I can assure you of, and that is, whatever may happen to you, Colonel Rawson will never shoot you in the back.”

“Why should I wait to give him the advantage of a weapon?” the other demanded angrily. “I’ve got him beaten now. I’m going to put him out of the way.”

“You’ll get the worst thrashing of your life if you talk like that,” Hames warned him. “I’m going to take Colonel Rawson into my villa and give him a drink. You can come too if you like.”

“You leave us alone to settle our own affairs,” was the surly reply. “I don’t want to come inside your damned villa and I don’t want a drink.”

Peter Hames helped the Colonel to his feet, took him by the arm, and led him to the gate, which he pushed open. Then he turned around to the other man, who was lingering in the rear.

“Are you coming in too?” he invited.

It was lucky for Peter Hames that he turned around as he spoke. The young man had made a sudden dive down to the ground, caught up a huge jagged flint lying with a pile of others for manipulation by the road-menders, and, with it protruding from his hand, made a leap towards his adversaries. Hames, displaying an unexpectedly long reach, leaned forward, and caught him a lightning-like blow on the point of his jaw. He swayed, staggered, and the stone dropped from his fingers. Slowly he collapsed on to the pavement. The Colonel stood looking down at him with the gleam in his eyes of that awful lust to kill which flares up in a human being sometimes once in a lifetime.

“Blasted toad!” he muttered savagely. “He’s barely thirty years old. If he lives to be sixty, every day will be a day of evil.”

Peter Hames threw open the garden gate and ushered in his guest. Vittorio, who had been watching from a safe distance, at once disclosed himself.

“Look after this gentleman, Vittorio,” his master enjoined. “Take him to the lavatory first and give him a stiff whisky and soda. Here, let me help you, sir, as far as the door,” he went on, suddenly aware that his companion was retaining consciousness only with the greatest effort. “We’ll have the drink first, Vittorio. Hurry away and get it.”

They reached a divan, on to which the fainting man sunk with a groan of relief. Within a few seconds, Vittorio was back again with a whisky and soda upon a tray. Colonel Rawson took a long gulp from the tumbler which his host handed to him and became almost at once a changed man.

“What became of—Salvador?” he asked a moment or two later. “I went queer in the head as we were coming through the gate. I can’t remember.”

“If you mean the young man with whom you were fighting,” Peter Hames replied, “he came too near me and he is lying in the road. Now, if you’ll step into the lavatory with Vittorio and get cleaned up a little, I’ll go and look after him.”

Rawson rose to his feet, and, leaning on the butler’s arm, disappeared, carrying his refilled tumbler in the other hand. Peter Hames turned back to the gate, passed out into the road, and looked about in not unnatural astonishment, for neither on the road itself, nor in the pathway, nor on the empty rock-strewn hillside opposite could he see the slightest sign of the man whom he had knocked out. Colonel Rawson’s enemy had disappeared.

The affair savoured of the marvellous. Peter Hames found it impossible to believe the evidence of his own eyes. He crossed the road and examined the country from the other side. He clambered a little up the slope, looking around him all the time warily. He walked to the bend of the road and back, without sight of any human being save a carload of returning golfers. Then he attempted some amateur detective work. He examined the dusty road in front of the villa, near the heap of flints. There were marks of a car having gone down the hill recently and having stopped close to the spot where his late assailant had been lying. There were marks, too, where it had been restarted. Peter Hames shrugged his shoulders.

After all, it was perhaps for the best that these two men should be separated. He returned to the villa, taking the precaution to lock the wooden gate on the inside. He found Vittorio waiting for him in the hall.

“What have you done with the gentleman?” lie

Vittorio was once more all excitement.

“He washed his hands, sir, bathed his face, finished his whisky and soda, and insisted upon leaving by the path which leads from the orchard down to the lower road. He would not even stay for an act of politeness. ‘Tell your master,’ he said, ‘we shall meet again.’ He was hoping to be able to hire a car at La Turbie, I think.”

Peter Hames mixed himself a drink and turned to go back to his work.

“The next time, Vittorio,” he enjoined, “you see two men fighting outside the villa—”

“Have no fear, sir,” the man interrupted vehemently. “I shall leave them alone, if they kill themselves. Ingrats!”

“At last!” Peter Hames sighed, as he mounted a stool at the Café Régal and ensconced himself upon it.

Mademoiselle Anna, who was seated by his side, paused in the use of her lipstick, closed her shabby little vanity case, and looked at him a trifle insolently.

“What do you mean by ‘at last’?”

“I mean that I have been coming here three or four times a week for a month without catching a glimpse of you. To-day you are here.”

She smiled—a cleverly forced gesture of her presumed profession.

“How flattering!” she murmured. “And now that you have found me?”

He ordered a drink, and glanced enquiringly towards her. She shook her head.

“I take nothing but syrups here,” she explained. “They don’t lend themselves very well to conviviality, but they are safe. What did you want to say to me?”

“Several things. First of all, when can we dine again?”

“I am not so sure that it is good for my resolutions to dine with you,” she demurred. “My double life is difficult enough at times.”

“Does it amuse you so much?” he asked.

“It has points,” she acknowledged.

“Yesterday,” he confided, “in the Daily Mail I read about a grand dinner given by some noble lady at her château, and amongst the list of the guests I saw your name and the name of Colonel Rawson.”

She looked at him now with a different expression in her face.

“Why do you couple him with me?” she enquired. “There were twenty other guests.”

“Colonel Rawson happens to be concerned in a queer little incident which took place outside my villa the other day. The affair might almost be called mysterious. The solving of mysteries is the passion of your life. When I saw your two names together, it seemed to me a coincidence.”

“Tell me of the affair outside your villa?” she begged.

He told her of the fight and of the disappearance of the two combatants. She listened without moving a muscle of her face, but he knew her well enough by now to realise that she was interested.

“Well?” she asked, when he had finished.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“The incident seemed to me to have singular points,” he said. “I wondered whether you knew anything about it.”

She fitted another cigarette into her tube, lit it, and smoked thoughtfully.

“Yes, I know a little about the affair,” she admitted. “You have been very frank with me. I will return the compliment. You want to know what the quarrel was about, I suppose, and what has happened to both of them since?”

“I don’t even know who the other man was,” he confided.

She raised her eyebrows.

“I am surprised at that,” she observed. “I should have thought that you would have found the affair worth following up.”

“How could I?” he pointed out. “Rawson treated me discourteously enough. He just nods when we meet and has never even apologised for leaving my house without a word of acknowledgment. From the other man I scarcely expected civilities, because I hit him very hard, but somehow I thought I should have heard from him again.”

“There is a humorous side to this episode,” she volunteered, “and because I like you very much, Mr. Peter Hames, because I think you are a sportsman, and because I like being with you occasionally, I shall take a slight risk and ask you to dine with me at the Café de France to-night at half-past eight. The humorous side of it I will explain then. You will see both the combatants in this Homeric struggle—who seem, by-the-by, to have treated you rather badly—and I think I can promise you, at any rate, a smile.”

“To dine with you will be happiness without anything else,” he said boldly.

“You mustn’t take too much for granted,” she warned him, with some asperity in her tone. “I have nothing to promise you except a dinner, for which you will probably pay, but I can perhaps satisfy your curiosity concerning that extraordinary fight. I think even fate owes it to you that you learn the sequel. Whether you will be in at the death, I don’t know. We shall see.”

“May I fetch you from anywhere?” he asked, as he saw her preparing to slip from her stool.

She glanced deprecatingly at him.

“You know very well that you may not,” she replied. “The day you discover my address will be an unfortunate one for you if you really value our acquaintance.”

“I value our acquaintance,” he affirmed, “because I trust that it may lead to the gates of friendship, and I shall value our friendship when you may condescend to bestow it upon me, because I trust that that will lead—”

She flitted away with a little backward gesture of reproof. He watched the swing doors close and his sentence remained unfinished.

The Café de France was moderately well filled when they took their places at nine o’clock that evening, at a table which Sybil had insisted upon engaging herself. From the first, Peter Hames’ interest in that extraordinary combat, which had taken place in the road outside his villa, was requickened, for the reason that, only a few yards away from them, on the edge of the dancing floor, Colonel Rawson was seated at a small table alone, dressed with precise rare, severe, and with all trace of his wounds effaced; whilst, exactly opposite, on the other side of the room, at a more retired table, two young men were seated, the face of one of whom was instantly familiar. Hames gave a little start.

“Why, over there, with the dancing professional,” he pointed out, “face to face with Rawson, is the man with whom he was fighting!”

She nodded.

“I thought you’d recognise him,” she remarked. “He also is a dancing professional and a very well-known one.”

“Tell me some more about them, please,” he begged. “Remember, I know nothing. I have been treated, I think, a little unfairly. I saved Rawson from being battered to death, anyway, and I thought he might have looked me up to explain his sudden flight. He not only hasn’t been near me, but when I saw him in the Hotel de France bar the other day, he just nodded and moved away. I thought I’d rather played the Good Samaritan.”

“So you had,” she assured him. “But Colonel Rawson, on one subject at any rate, these days, is crazy. Until that is dealt with, I don’t think he’ll be much use to any one.”

“What’s the idea of his patronising this restaurant at all, if he hates the young man so terribly?” Peter Hames asked.

She hesitated.

“I don’t know quite everything,” she admitted—“not as much as I hoped to—but I can tell you this. Colonel Rawson has engaged that table for every evening and he never misses. He has declared, and I am certain that he means to keep his word, that if that young man—whose name, by-the-by, is Donald Salvador—attempts to dance with any one here except the professional danseuse, he will shoot him on sight.”

Peter Hames whistled softly to himself.

“The idea being to drive him out of the place, I suppose.”

“You see he was getting, if one may believe gossip, very large sums from some of his clients for dancing. For the last few days, he hasn’t dared leave his seat. He dances with the little girl professional and if anyone sends for him he has to make some excuse. At twelve o’clock Colonel Rawson moves on to the Carlton, in case Salvador should go there. He behaves in exactly the same way and exactly the same thing happens. For a week now, Salvador, who is, amongst the old ladies here, at any rate, the most popular and adored of the professional dancers, hasn’t earned a penny.”

Peter Hames leaned back in his chair and laughed.

“It is damned funny,” he muttered.

The service of dinner continued. In due course the orchestra, which had been playing more serious selections, changed over to jazz music. The other professional at once rose and approached a client. Salvador, with a wicked glance at his enemy, followed suit by bringing one of the professional danseuses on to the floor. Peter Hames nodded in full appreciation of the situation as he watched.

“I must say one thing, I never saw a man dance like that before,” he confessed.

“That’s rather the point,” Sybil observed. “He is the most marvellous performer that any one has ever seen here. He has no manners to speak of and his good looks are of a questionable type, but I should think no one in the world has ever danced this ordinary stuff better.”

Peter Hames watched the young man who was rapidly becoming his bête noire closely. The latter was well over six feet, with pallid, puffy cheeks, dark eyes which were well enough, but insignificant features. His sleek black hair was brushed back from his forehead in the fashion of the moment and he grew very short side whiskers. He glanced once towards them and his expression was venomous.

“The fun will begin presently,” Sybil remarked coolly. “Of course, I don’t suppose there’s a soul understands the situation in this place except you and me, but, although we are so near tragedy the whole of the time, one can’t help appreciating the other side of it. Look, down there is old Mrs. Robinson. She comes from Leeds, her husband was a millionaire, and she would be willing at the present moment to give Salvador a mille if he would dance with her half a dozen times. Salvador would be uncommonly glad of the mille, for, like all his class, he’s pretty extravagant, but, so far, he has valued his skin too much.”

“How long have you known all about this?” Peter Hames asked.

She shook her head. “The question remains unanswered.”

“Well, can you tell me why this virulent hatred?” She shook her head again.

“I can tell you nothing for the moment. If the affair develops, as I fear it may, everyone will know the whole story. Until then, I am very much afraid that there is nothing to do. I am always trying,” she added thoughtfully, “to hit upon some plan to save Colonel Rawson, and if I see the slightest hope I shall probably ask you to help me. Watch! Mrs. Robinson has sent across to Salvador.”

A maître d’hôtel had approached the table at which Salvador was seated. He evidently delivered a message. The dancing professional shook his head. The maître d’hôtel turned to the manager. There was a lively discussion between the two and the latter himself moved over to the table. A short argument ensued. Afterwards, Salvador, very unwillingly, rose to his feet. He crossed the room towards where Mrs. Robinson was seated, and as he did so Colonel Rawson’s right hand slid into the pocket of his dinner jacket. A steely light flashed into his eyes. One could almost see him tensing himself for the aim, imagine the craving of that blood lust in his veins. Nothing was to happen, however. After two or three minutes’ conversation, which was obviously composed on Salvador’s part of profuse apologies, he bowed and returned to his place, leaving a very disappointed lady behind. He did his best to walk indifferently, but it was easy to see that he was furiously angry. He was biting his lip and there was a dull streak of colour in his cheek. He shot one more vicious glance towards Colonel Rawson and simultaneously the latter’s expression of cold indifference deserted him. He smiled quietly, whole-heartedly, but murderously.

“An affair of this kind,” Peter Hames confessed, “gives me a sort of mental indigestion. I am afflicted with a curiosity which is eating into my very existence. I am asking myself all the time what could be the cause of this quarrel between an elderly and puritanical English soldier, and a gigolo?”

“I admit that my silence is rather hard upon you,” she conceded, “especially since you’ve told me about the fight. Would a dance be any compensation?”

He rose promptly and, with Sybil willing and anxious to continue dancing, the affair of Colonel Rawson and the professional became of less importance. Upon several occasions, Salvador was sent for from different corners of the room, but each time, with an angry glare across the way he refused to dance. The manager expostulated with him. Even his fellow dancing professionals demanded an explanation. Finally he lost his temper. He sat alone like a sulky but vicious animal. Not even a bottle of champagne sent him by one of his unknown admirers soothed him. He drank it freely enough, but nothing could induce him to leave the place until the evening was over.

“Of course, I owe you an explanation, I know,” Sybil repeated once more, as, almost the last to go, they stood waiting for a voiture. “Be patient for a short while, will you? I hate words. Soon I shall show you a little picture—a picture that speaks for itself. Then you will understand.”

He ventured to raise her fingers to his lips as he placed her in the carriage and, in obedience to her gesture, simply waved the man up the hill.

“I seem to spend a great deal of my time being patient where you are concerned,” he observed a little ruefully. “So long as I win out in the end, though, I won’t worry.”

Peter Hames’ steady heart gave a joyous little beat as, in turning the corner of the sunny street leading into the Boulevard des Moulins, he came face to face with Sybil. There was a moment’s irresolute anxiety. Sometimes it was her pleasure to know him; sometimes she wrapped herself in mystery and passed on with sightless eyes. To-day, however, she stopped. She checked abruptly his few stammered words of greeting.

“What luck!” she exclaimed, laying her hand lightly upon his arm. “Walk with me, please. I was sending you up a note this morning. You have seen the drama of that quarrel by the roadside. You have seen the blend of humour and tragedy in the Café de France. There had to be a pause then, but now I can show you the pathos of it all—the pathos with perhaps a volcano underneath.”

She led him a few steps down the hill and turned in at the small shop, in the window of which were a few hand-worked linen handkerchiefs. The interior was almost devoid of merchandise, except for some very beautiful specimens of needlework upon the counter. Peter Hames’ eyes, however, from the moment of his entrance, never wandered from the figure of the girl who was seated behind the counter. The sheer beauty of her face thrilled him—the beauty and something else. She was bareheaded, and her simply arranged fair hair had obviously never known the coiffeur’s devastating touch. Her complexion was so exquisite that it was almost transparent, pale, with the slightest tinge of colour in it—the texture and shade of a wild rose. Her eyes were clear, almost too large, luminously hazel, with a minute splash of deep brown. Her features were of delicate mould, her lips without colouring, a trifle pale, but the curve of her mouth soft and passionate. She smiled as she saw Sybil, and Peter Hames, who was not a very fanciful man, thought that it was like the smile of an angel. She spoke sometimes in French, sometimes in English.

“But you have come to see my once more opening day! It is too wonderful! It is better than the hospital, this! I am much happier.”

“You are a great deal better,” Sybil observed, patting the girl’s wasted fingers, “and I hear that you have done some wonderful work.”

“I am as well as I shall ever be,” the girl sighed, “and as happy.”

“Plenty of customers, I hope?”

“The Colonel has been in. He would buy everything, but I would not let him. He is always too good to me. There has been no one else, but indeed I have orders—I cannot work too much.”

“You have no handkerchiefs you could sell me?” Peter Hames enquired.

She pointed to a very small pile. “These I made in hospital. They are for sale, if you wish.”

Peter Hames bought them promptly. The girl looked up at Sybil and there was something pleading, something of doglike devotion in her expression.

“Mademoiselle, my Good Samaritan,” she said, “I tell the Colonel this morning and I tell you—soon I shall be happy again, but I cannot stay here.”

“Do you want to leave us?” Sybil asked deprecatingly.

“I wish to go away,” the girl confessed, with moist eyes. “Perhaps back to Avignon, to Beauvais—what does it matter?—but here I cannot stay. Where I go there will be forgetfulness. Before I go, there is one thing would make me happy. I spoke to Monsieur le Colonel, who has been like God to inc. He will consent it you will.”

“Then I am sure I shall,” Sybil predicted cheerfully.

“Once before I leave here forever,” the girl went on, with a little quiver in her tone, “once before I forget, let me go where he dances. I have a frock. I have been saving it for this. I have everything. And Madame Gounod will be with me. Let me go and dance with him once more. One dance—that is all. Perhaps I am not strong enough for more. Then I will go away and I will forget.”

Sybil toyed with one of the handkerchiefs on the counter in front of her. There was a faint frown of distress upon her forehead.

“Are you sure that you’re wise?” she remonstrated. “He is not worth such a souvenir. You know that.”

“I know that,” the girl admitted, “but I wish it—oh, I wish it, as I hope for heaven.”

“Louise,” Sybil persisted, and there was such a softness in her tone that Peter Hames felt a little shiver in his heart, “it would not be good for you, dear, because you have finished with those things in your life. It would not be good for him because it would make forgiveness seem too easy.”

Great tears filled the girl’s eyes.

“Oh, I wish it,” she cried—“I wish it. Mademoiselle, you will not be cruel.”

Sybil, who knew the truth, felt her judgment leaving her.

“If the Colonel consents,” she yielded—“yes.”

The girl drew a tremulous sigh of ineffable content. She caught Sybil’s hands and kissed them.

“Now I am quite happy,” she murmured. “Everything will be as I should wish it.”

She stood up to bow them out and Peter Hames realised, with a little shock, that she was slightly—very slightly—deformed. He realised, too, the real meaning of that complexion.

“You will come that night?” she begged. “You must not come near me, for I know that you would not speak to him—neither you nor the good Colonel—but let me know that you are there.”

“Of course we will,” Sybil promised. “It shall be when you wish.”

They walked down to the boulevard and across to the Gardens, with lagging footsteps. Upon one of the benches they seated themselves for a moment.

“You scarcely need much more in the way of explanation,” she said.

“Very little, I am afraid.”

“Louise was always a protegée of Colonel Rawson’s,” she confided; “also, in some degree, of mine. She has tuberculosis, of course, but we thought we might have cured her. We set her up in that little shop, and, by some wicked chance, that beast Salvador—the most successful, the most run-after of all these gigolos on the Riviera—must catch a glimpse of her face one day. He entered—I suppose the beast has some charm—he taught her to dance. Curiously enough, to see her dance is the most amazing thing in the world. If she had health, she would be as successful as he is. I saw them dance together once. I hated it, but it was wonderful. —It is even worse than the usual thing. He took money from her. He took her savings. She went to hospital, broken-hearted, penniless, and—”

“I understand,” Peter Hames murmured. “I wish to God I had known when he stood up to me for a minute in the road outside my villa.”

“Colonel Rawson has sworn to break him or to kill him,” she continued. “I think he will keep his word. At any rate, Salvador dare not dance with any of his old clients. Do you mind going away now, please? You see, I have told you what no one else knows and the child is proud—and she was a very good child. Hurry away now, please, and if this horrible thing comes off, you can be my escort.”

“There is nothing in the world I could do?” he asked, as he rose with reluctance to his feet.

“No one,” she announced sadly, “can replace the petals on a rose.”

The commencement of the evening at the Café de France was very much like the previous ones. Salvador dined with the other dancing-men, biting his nails and scowling fiercely over at the solitary table where Colonel Rawson, dressed with the utmost precision, with a white gardenia in his buttonhole, sat with his hand straying now and then to his jacket pocket. It might have been a very profitable evening indeed, for four times messages were brought across to Salvador, which he was obliged to ignore. The manager’s patience was exhausted. He came to the table, obviously lost his temper, and delivered an ultimatum. After his departure, Salvador sat pulling out his underlip, desperately perplexed. He was to risk that bullet—or go. At no other place in Europe was there as much money waiting for him as here. A motor-car he had been promised—not a French affair, but an English Bentley—an appartement for the season, a visit to the bank. Every night these women seemed to go crazy at the sight of his dancing, until at last he had left off taking even a danseuse on to the floor. If there was murder to be done, perhaps it was better that he should do it. He looked across at his enemy and the thoughts in his heart were as evil as the glint in his eyes. It was because of his absorption that he saw nothing of the entrance of Louise and Madame Gounod.

Peter Hames felt a catch at his throat as he looked up and saw Louise. Madame Gounod was an elderly lady, neatly dressed in black silk, and of unremarkable appearance. Louise, on the contrary, seemed to him the most beautiful thing who had ever crossed the portals of any restaurant on earth. Her deformity was almost unnoticed beneath the lilac-coloured shawl she wore. Her eyes, notwithstanding their too hard brilliancy, were shining like stars, and her lips were parted in an eager, expectant little smile. Her dress was simple enough—of white georgette—and she wore no jewels whatever; but there was a murmur, almost a shiver of admiration, as the manager, who had had his instructions, hurried forward to lead her to a table. She waved her hand to Colonel Rawson. She kissed her fingers to Sybil. Then she glanced towards Salvador. He looked at her, stupefied. What was in her face was untranslatable, but she certainly smiled, although the curl of her lip seemed for a moment to be inspired rather by torture than happiness. She paused for a moment before taking her chair, and Madame Gounod stretched out her arm.

But if for an instant her courage seemed to fail her, it came back again quickly. She seated herself, beamed as she pointed out the bottle of champagne standing in the ice, and clapped her hands at the sight of the caviar. Salvador’s eyes had followed her with a dazed, half-frightened gleam. Taking note of the wine and ordered dinner of his enemy seated opposite, and Sybil and Peter Hames a few yards away, uneasy thoughts seemed to come to him. Surely he would never be allowed to resume his conquest? What was the meaning of it—a meeting like this—his enemy—one of his poor victims? Why on earth hadn’t he had the sense to leave the weakling alone—and that prize-fighter Peter Hames!

For a time, however, everything proceeded as usual. At a whispered word from Sybil, Peter crossed the floor and asked Louise to dance. She rose cheerfully. A new experience in life came to her partner. Save for the touch of her, and the soft cling of her fingers, and a little breath of respiration, he might have been alone. Her feet moved over the floor with a lightness which was almost inhuman. It was like dancing with a spirit. He whispered a clumsy compliment and she smiled.

“Dancing is easy to me,” she said, “when the music is as I love it.”

He took her back to her place, and she thanked him prettily and with perfect composure. Colonel Rawson beckoned to a maître d’hôtel.

“A piece of paper and a pencil,” he directed.

Both were at once forthcoming. He wrote eight words steadily and firmly.

“You will dance the next waltz with Louise.”

“Take that across to Monsieur Salvador,” he told the man, twisting it up. “No answer.”

The waiter obeyed. Salvador read the few words and was conscious, for a moment, of a chill feeling at his heart. What was the meaning of it, he asked himself—his enemy to send him back to her? Did they recognise, then, that after all he was powerful, that for a word from him women would bite the dust, sacrifice honour and dignity, even the good-will of their friends? He shrugged his shoulders. Well, they had desired it. Louise should have her moments of happiness.

There were two more dances. Then the violinist stepped forward and played the first few bars of a very popular but very musical waltz. Salvador rose to his feet. He advanced on to the floor. Every one watched him with interest, for many rumours had been going around during the last few days. Colonel Rawson remained motionless, his steely eyes following his progress. As he approached the table where Louise and her chaperone were seated, her hand for a moment sought her heart. Then she was herself again. She received him with a little smile and rose to her feet. They floated off.

“What a damned fool that man is!” Peter muttered. “If they danced together like that, a plain waltz, they would make a furor, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“There has never been anything like it,” Sybil echoed.

Most of the guests were content to watch, Louise’s head was a little thrown back. Salvador held her in the modern fashion, drawing her a little closer with the sway of the music. Twice he whispered to her but she appeared to be deaf. Her feet seemed somehow or other apart from the floor. For all her delicacy and fragility, they were at one corner of the room one minute, and away at the other end almost directly. When the music ceased, they paused in the centre of the floor. The colour had ebbed from her cheeks and her left hand slipped downwards. Every one was clapping, including Salvador. They started off again and danced perhaps half a dozen bars….

There were three people in the room, possibly, who saw what had happened, but Colonel Rawson was one of them, for it was opposite his chair. The handkerchief which she had been carrying during the pause fell away, her left hand flashed suddenly backwards, and something thin—shining like a ribbon of steel—was driven with a strength which seemed incredible right under the shoulder blade of her partner. He gave a long gasp, a little cry, let her go, and fell swaying upon the floor, to lie there in a crumpled up heap. She turned to Colonel Rawson, who had sprung to his feet.

“I say that if any one should kill him and should suffer for it, it is me. In hospital they showed me where. It is complete.”

It certainly was, for Salvador was dead before they could carry him to the cloakroom.