Читать книгу Floating Peril - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Lucienne de Montelimar, a dazzlingly attractive young woman, with her yellow-gold hair, her deep brown eyes and her perfect complexion only beautified by its coat of sunburn, sat upon the topmost of the steps leading from the château grounds to the private dock and gazed thoughtfully across the bay to where, at about a hundred yards’ distance, the Bird of Paradise lay at anchor. In something like thirty seconds after her arrival, Hamer Wildburn had dived from his boat with a terrific splash and was swimming powerfully towards her. She welcomed him with the smile which had already turned the heads of half the young men in Paris.

“You are swimming well this morning,” she approved. “I am afraid that if we race, you will beat me. Nevertheless, we shall try presently.”

“You have some time to spare to-day?” he asked eagerly.

“An incredible amount,” she assured him. “My father started early this morning to motor over to some forest lands where he hopes later on to find pheasants. Mother has gone to Cannes, and when she starts doing a tour of the dressmakers’ shops, there is no telling what will become of her. Anyway, I know that if she is lunching at all, she is lunching with my aunt at La Napoule. I am neglected. In a day or two the house will be full. At present there is no one of account.”

“If the honest endeavours of one worthy young man can save you from feeling the chill of loneliness,” he promised her, “I am at your disposition.”

She looked at him speculatively.

“I am not sure,” she said. “There are some quite agreeable English people who proposed themselves for a bathing party and there is a Thé Dansant at the villa of the people on the hill. Besides, I have so much time on my hands that you will probably get tired of me. Enfin, if I let you stay with me all the day, you will use up that wonderful vocabulary of French!”

“Try me,” he begged. “I read and live and think nothing but French now. I am almost prepared to be naturalised. Furthermore, if you trust yourself to me, I will tell you breathless stories—wildly exciting ones—of things which have happened to me here within a kilometre of your château. Monte Cristo isn’t in it.”

She sighed, although the twinkle in her eyes was scarcely one of melancholy.

“More women are conquered by curiosity than by anything else in the world,” she declared. “Very well, I agree. But I am dying to swim, even before I listen to your adventures.”

She dived from the stone quay. He followed her and they hurried towards the open sea, the faint tang of an easterly breeze in their faces, the sunshine glorious in her hair and deepening the tan upon his naked back, the love of living and of each other in their hearts. There was nothing in their conversation, however, to indicate their beatific condition. Perhaps at that time they scarcely realised it themselves.

“Look out for the wash from that speedboat,” he advised. “I am coming the other side of you.”

“Look down, Hamer,” she cried once. “There is a green carpet of leaves at the bottom of the sea, twenty feet down. Just the colour of my bathing suit too. I should love to go and walk about there.”

“I will buy you a diver’s outfit,” he promised.

“It must be a green one,” she insisted. “To-morrow you must teach me that crawl. I don’t do it properly.”

He lay on his back and lazed for a moment.

“Lucienne,” he asked, “you are sure you are real? You have not just stolen up out of those forests underneath?”

“I am so real that I am hungry,” she declared. “I suggest that we turn. Tell me, whose is the yacht that came in this morning?”

“It belongs to a very distinguished person—one of your greatest statesmen—Mermillon.”

She looked across at the boat with interest.

“Father knows him quite well,” she said. “I hope he will come to the château.”

“I see in the French paper this morning,” Hamer remarked, “that he is cruising in search of a complete rest. Throw your body out straighter, Lucienne. That’s marvellous.”

“Let us go a little nearer to the Aigle Noir,” she proposed. “I should like to see Monsieur Mermillon. They say that he and the President between them have saved France during the last crisis.”

“French politics get me all confused,” he confessed. “Don’t talk too much, Lucienne. There is a stiffish current now for a few minutes.”

She made a grimace but she obeyed. Soon they were swimming with their faces to the plage, with the dark line of trees and the hidden Estérels before them.

“I think this is the most beautiful spot on the coast,” he said enthusiastically.

“So do I,” she agreed. “What have you for lunch?”

He reflected for a moment.

“Plenty of fish, anyway,” he confided. “We had a good haul this morning. Then, there is a cold chicken I didn’t touch yesterday, and heaps of fruit and vegetables.”

“Delicious,” she murmured, turning on her back for a moment. “Anyway, I sha’n’t be able to wait till luncheon time. I’m too hungry. I shall have one of your breakfast rolls, if you have not eaten them all, and an early cocktail.”

“You are the sort of girl,” he declared, “a fellow ought to marry.”

“Why don’t you then?” she asked. “You have all day to try and make me fall in love with you.”

“That sounds a trifle old-fashioned but very exciting,” he gasped. . . . “Now, if you look up, you can see Mermillon. He is very elegant in what looks like white linen but I think it is white tussore or something of that sort. The shorter, thick-set man sitting with him is the Baron de Brett.”

“What—the banker?” she exclaimed.

“Banker, speculator, millionaire and secret hoarder of gold—all these things and a little more.”

She looked at the two men curiously. De Brett had already called his host’s attention to the pair and was staring at the girl with unashamed admiration. Mermillon, who was reading from a pile of papers, his secretary standing by his side, only glanced at them for a few seconds.

“Baron de Brett used to be a friend of Mother’s,” the girl confided. “I do not think I like him very much. 38 All the same, I am afraid I am going to be faithless to you, Hamer. I adored the way Mermillon looked as though I were a performing sea lioness and then went on with his work. He has never looked up since, either.”

Wildburn, who had been swimming under water for a few seconds, came up and recovered his breath.

“I was thinking of drowning myself,” he told her, “but I have changed my mind. I remembered a passage in a modern novel I was reading last night,—at least, I don’t remember the passage, but I remember the sense of it. One chap knows all about women and he is giving a younger chap a lesson. ‘Indifference as a weapon to excite interest in the opposite sex no longer leads to success,’ he said. ‘The latest fashion is all the old stuff over again. Shyness, sentiment, moonlight walks, simple nervous love-making.’”

“Commencing with holding hands under the table, I suppose,” she mocked.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “the fashion of the moment is the young for the young. Girls have left off falling in love with hoary-headed sinners. They are not looking any longer for a man with experience. The fashionable passion of the moment is for innocence.”

“You must lend me that book,” Lucienne gasped, as she clutched at the chains of the Bird of Paradise. “It ought to have quite a vogue down in this part of the world.”

They stood together upon the deck for a moment—a splendid sight in their bathing suits, upon which and their limbs the sea shine was still glistening.

“What you need,” he observed thoughtfully, “is a peignoir.”

“Nice thoughtful boy,” she assented. “Do you see a rather attractive-looking young woman in black seated 39 on those steps, with a huge bathing bag, gazing anxiously in our direction?”

“I do,” he admitted.

“Well, that is Annette, my faithful maid, who is there according to orders. If you will kindly send your dinghy across for her, I will borrow your cabin and change.”

He gave a brief order and the dinghy shot out.

“There are two of my breakfast rolls left for you,” he told her. “I am now going to make the cocktails.”

“Well,” she said, smiling, “whether you make love to me the new way or the old way, I think we are going to have a very happy time.”

They were young and already sufficiently in love to be content with that monosyllabic and purely personal exchange of remarks which goes to make the conversation of young people in their position. They chattered in the canoe which they took out after the early cocktail and rolls, made fun of one another’s occasional mishaps with the paddles, attempted hair-raising feats of racing, to the terror of competing craft, then each in turn tried paddling alone.

“Fine exercise,” she told him encouragingly, as he struggled against the current.

“I would sooner do deep breathing exercises on the boat,” he groaned.

They showed one another strange evolutions and contortions on the deck. Each performed incredible feats. Each welcomed the call to luncheon when it came. It was not until they had finished and were seated in two chaises longues in the sunshine that they gave a serious thought to the world about them.

“Now tell me about these strange adventures of yours, 40 Mr. Monte Cristo,” she begged. “I am happy and lazy and perhaps a little sleepy; otherwise I am all attention.”

“You may be sleepy but I do not think you will go to sleep,” he assured her. “How is this picture for a start? A very beautiful woman in full evening dress, wearing even her jewels, hanging on to my chains at three o’clock this morning, with a canoe turned upside down, drifting behind her?”

“You are not in earnest?” the girl exclaimed.

“Absolutely.”

“Did she come on board?”

“Of course she did. She came out to pay me a call.”

Lucienne sat up in her chair.

“Go on with that story, please!”

“She came with a request. I refused it. We drank some coffee together. Really, I am rather ashamed to admit this, but I was not expecting anything of the sort—she positively and absolutely, in the most melodramatic fashion, drugged me! When I had slept it off, in about an hour’s time, she had turned my whole cabin and saloon upside down and disappeared.”

“Of course, you dreamt all this,” Lucienne declared incredulously.

“I dreamt nothing,” he insisted.

“Do you know who she was?”

“Not the slightest idea. She didn’t leave a card.”

“Are you going to do anything about it? You have sent for the gendarmes—yes?”

“Not likely! For one thing, I don’t suppose anyone would believe my story, and for another—what’s the good? She didn’t steal anything, that I can see.”

“What was the request she made that you refused?”

“She wanted to buy the boat.”

Lucienne leaned over and took his wrist in her hand.

“Pulse quite normal,” she observed. “There is no exaggeration in what you tell me? It is a true story?”

“Absolutely.”

“To buy the boat,” Lucienne repeated in amazement. “Why didn’t she send an agent or come in the daytime?”

“I’m telling you all I know,” he assured her. “I will pass on to the next adventure when we have finished with this one.”

“What—two in one night?”

“Well, the second one took place this morning, to be exact,” he admitted. “You know the yacht that came in with Edouard Mermillon and the Baron de Brett on board? We saw them while we were swimming.”

“Of course.”

“Somewhere about half-past eight this morning,” he continued, “Mermillon and the Baron arrived here in a dinghy to pay me a call.”

“But, my dear friend, what an honour!” she exclaimed incredulously.

“Yes, I suppose it was,” he agreed. “I had not looked at it from that point of view.”

“What did they want?” she asked.

“To buy my boat.”

Her brown eyes were suddenly larger than ever. Her eyebrows were raised, her forehead wrinkled. She was tantalisingly beautiful and much too engrossed in Wildburn’s story to notice that he was holding her hand.

“What on earth did they want your boat for?”

“Monsieur Mermillon wished to make a present of it to his nephew who comes of age next week. He offered me about three times what I gave for it.”

“What did you say?”

“I refused. I do not want to sell it, anyway. I do not want to move a foot or a yard from this place. I dare say, if the château had not been up there,” he went on, looking through the trees, “and you had not been in the château, and we were not both fond of swimming—well, I might have looked at the matter differently. As it is, no one buys my boat. No one is going to send me away.”

“That is a great compliment to me,” she acknowledged. “It appears incredible. You throw away money, which they say is all that you Americans think of, just to play in the sunshine here with me.”

“I happen to like being with you, Lucienne,” he pleaded. “I happen to like the days we spend together here better than anything in the world that money could buy.”

“And they tell me,” she sighed, “that American men do not know how to make love.”

“Making love is not a matter of nationality,” he assured her. “You just have to feel what you say. That’s all.”

“I am beginning to be afraid,” she whispered. “In France, we are not quite so direct as this.”

“Our way is better,” Wildburn declared confidently. “We wait until we are sure of ourselves and then we speak.”

“Then, as I am sure that I should like another cup of coffee and I see that there is some, may I ask you for it?”

He prepared it carefully and handed it to her without a word. She took a cigarette from the opened box and lit it. When she broke the silence, her speech was a little uncertain, although her voice was soft. There was a note almost of pathos in her tone.

“I have not met many of your country people, Hamer,” she said, “but I know there is much freedom between all 43 you young people—men and girls. Is this the way you talk to your girl friends?”

“Not unless we happen to mean what we are saying,” was his prompt assurance.

“Are you sure that you meant what you said to me?”

“Every bit of it and a great deal more.”

She laid her hand once more upon his.

“Keep the rest. Keep it back just a little time. We are so happy here.”

“You will still come to swim and pass your time with me?” he begged.

“So long as I can,” she promised. “In a few days’ time the château will be filled with guests. That is a different thing. Just now, let us go on pretending that we are children and play together. Soon, very soon perhaps, if you still wish to, we will talk more seriously.”

Her fingers were cold upon his firm hard flesh. Although he pretended not to notice, he could see the rapid rising and falling of her small bosoms. Discretion or insight—some gift of the gods—guided him. He was content to wait. Furthermore, he helped her out of the labyrinth of emotion into which they had wandered.

“Now will you tell me what you think of my twenty-four hours’ adventures?”

There was a very sweet light in her eyes and he was conscious of her gratitude. For several moments she was silent. Her face was hidden behind her beautifully shaped enamelled vanity case. He looked away towards the distant mountains of the Italian frontier and watched the efforts of a small sailing yacht to elude the mistral and enter the bay. Presently she closed the case with a snap.

“Tell me, Hamer,” she asked. “Do you carry treasure on board?”

“Not in a general way,” he assured her. “I have nothing but a man’s ordinary jewellery, a few possibly rare books and my wearing apparel.”

“Then what do these people want to buy your boat for?”

“Can’t imagine. But for your visit, I should have been thinking of nothing else. I tell you frankly, though, I have not the slightest idea. There is nothing that I can see about her in which she is different from any other boat of her class. She was built by Englishmen, which might make her a trifle more valuable, but that would scarcely account for this rush of would-be purchasers.”

“To whom did she belong before you bought her?”

“A very pertinent question,” he approved. “A Frenchman named Dupont. She was built for him specially and he took the most meticulous interest in every one of the smallest details of her construction. He made one trip in her, professed himself satisfied, paid for her in cash, planned a cruise for the following week, left Marseilles and disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” she repeated. “Isn’t that rather difficult?”

“He did it, anyway. The boatbuilder discovered that his addresses were false, his name was false and no one knew anything about him in the quarter where he was supposed to live. In due course, after the legal formalities had been attended to, she came on the market. That’s how I bought her.”

“There was a mystery about her from the first, then,” Lucienne observed. “Did you buy her furniture and fittings and all that sort of thing?”

“Practically,” he assured her. “Of course, I added a 45 few oddments myself. I had her painted a different colour and had the cupboards put in. She is an ordinary schooner yacht, just under thirty tons, soundly and strongly built, but not a loophole of mystery anywhere about her construction.”

“And yet,” Lucienne murmured, “you have had one wild woman attack you at three o’clock in the morning, France’s premier statesman and one of the world’s greatest financiers—all offering you two or three times as much as she is worth! Hamer, if I were you, I would sell her and get out of it.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he promised. “I will sell her to the first person who tells me the truth as to why they want to buy her.”

Lucienne rose to her feet.

“A wonderful idea,” she approved. “Except, if I were you, I would not sell her to that little man in the dinghy below. He has been round twice while we have been talking, and I don’t like the look of him.”

Hamer Wildburn leaned over by her side. Below them a pale-faced, dark-eyed man with a mass of black hair unshaded from the sun, dressed in violently red trousers and blue shirt open at the neck, came drifting by in a small rowboat. He looked up at Wildburn and attempted some form of salute.

“A beautiful leetle boat,” he called out. “I like to see over—yes?”

Wildburn shook his head.

“Sorry,” he refused. “She is not on exhibition.”

“Pardon, Monsieur,” the man remarked, rowing, however, nearer to the steps, as though he failed to understand.

Wildburn addressed him rapidly in French.

“No one is allowed on board,” he said, “so get away from there, please.”

“Perhaps afterwards,” the little man begged. “Monsieur will understand that I am interested in ships of this class. I know all about engines. I could perhaps suggest—”

“My boat pleases me as it is,” Wildburn interrupted. “Let it be understood, my friend, that neither you nor any other casual visitors are going to set foot on board. Off you go!”

The man made a sulky withdrawal. Wildburn and the girl exchanged glances.

“I think you were quite right,” the latter approved. “I have never seen that man before but he is detestable. If there was anything evil to be done upon your boat, he would be the man to do it.”

“He won’t have the chance,” Wildburn assured her confidently.

A small boat from the château landing stage came alongside and Lucienne’s maid extended her hands regretfully.

“Mais, Mademoiselle,” she announced, “you are urgently needed at the château. Madame la Duchesse has telephoned from Cap d’Ail. The Comtesse de Larigny has arrived with two friends and they are walking in the grounds. Madame has telephoned to beg that you will entertain any visitors until she returns. There was the yacht of the Marquis de St. Pierre in the harbour and someone landing as I left. I thought it best to warn Mademoiselle.”

“Quite right, Annette,” her young mistress agreed. “Au revoir, my dear host,” she added, clasping her two hands for a moment over his. “If our evening swim does 47 not arrive, still there is to-morrow. I think you have let loose within me a spirit of mischief, amongst other things. I shall swim out before the telephone or callers have become a nuisance and stay until I am fetched. That will please you—yes?”

“It will make me very happy,” he assured her.