Читать книгу Murder at Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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The season to the success of which Roger and Erskine had drunk on the terrace at Juan-les-Pins, the season which Pierre Viotti had awaited so impatiently, had arrived at last, and on a certain evening early in December the round table in the centre of the Sporting Club bar at Monte Carlo was crowded with a gay little company of habitués. There were the Terence Browns—Franco-Americans and globe-trotters known in every resort in Europe, but finding in Monte Carlo, as Terence Brown frequently confided, their spiritual home. There was Lady Julia Harborough, elderly and autocratic, but exceedingly popular and still one of the leaders of the social life. There was Luke Cheyne, an American banker, a very pleasant fellow and also popular, but with the appearance of a man who was suffering from nerves or dyspepsia. He was talking to Prince Savonarilda, a tall, elegant young Sicilian, who was reported to have enormous, but unprofitable estates in Sicily and who made periodic but mysterious visits to New York. Maggie Saunders, the most sought-after young woman in the Principality, was retailing one of her marvellous stories to Lord Bradley, an English newspaper peer, who was clutching six plaques of a hundred thousand francs each which he had just won at trente et quarante. Under cover of the general buzz of conversation, Luke Cheyne was talking very confidentially indeed to Prince Savonarilda.

“What I’d like to know,” he whispered, “is just this. How do I stand with the boys? You could tell me, Prince. Don’t mind giving me a bit of a scare, if it’s coming to me. I just want to know.”

Savonarilda tapped a cigarette upon the table and lit it. To all appearance he was sublimely indifferent to the gossip of the little group from whose circle they had slightly withdrawn their chairs. All the time, however, from under his veiled eyelids he was watching—and listening.

“I think you’re all right, Luke,” he replied. “They didn’t like your quitting, of course. But we’ve quit ourselves now, so you were only anticipating. The game was getting too dangerous and you were never a fighting man, were you?”

“I never pretended to be,” Luke Cheyne reminded his companion. “That wasn’t my part of the show. Tell me, then—it seems odd to be calling you Prince—you think I’m all right to stick on here? They’re not sore with me?”

“You’re all right to stick on here till doomsday,” Savonarilda drawled, “even if some of the others are having a look at Europe. That doesn’t mean that they’re here on serious business. You should sleep at night, Luke. No one has anything against you.”

Luke Cheyne called for another drink. His spirits had risen visibly. He responded with alacrity when Lord Bradley beckoned him to draw his chair a little closer.

“We’re all wondering,” the latter observed, “how long it would take a disciplined band of criminals, such as you have on the other side, Mr. Cheyne, to break down the police of this country as they seem to have done in the States. Those little pets in the gay uniforms outside, for instance, I wonder how some cold shooting in the streets would strike them.”

“You may get it,” Cheyne rejoined grimly, “and then you’ll find out. The profession is becoming overcrowded in New York and Chicago and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear any day that a band of American crooks had made this place their headquarters. Did you read about that Englishman who disappeared last week in Marseilles?”

“Nothing in that,” Terence Brown intervened, breaking off his conversation with Lady Julia. “He was a poor man and he wouldn’t have been worth robbing.”

“That just shows you don’t read your own newspapers,” Luke Cheyne replied. “In this morning’s Eclaireur they announced that he had been paid over seven hundred thousand francs for a big land deal the day he disappeared and there is not a trace of the money in either of his banks.”

“Personally,” Lady Julia remarked, “I can’t think why Monte Carlo is such a law-abiding place. With all the money there is about, I shouldn’t be surprised any day to hear of one of you rich people being murdered in his bed.”

“We don’t carry our wealth about with us,” Bradley pointed out. “You women always have your jewellery in evidence. I would sooner insure a millionaire’s life than that of a woman who wears such diamonds as yours.”

She made a little grimace.

“How horrid of you,” she exclaimed. “You’ve probably spoilt my night’s sleep. Anyway, I’m not one of those careless women who leave their things all over the dressing table. I keep—”

She paused. Terence Brown had struck the table in front of him lightly but firmly so that the glasses jingled. He leaned toward her.

“Lady Julia,” he begged, “do please forgive a hint from an elderly person of experience. Don’t talk about what you do with your jewellery.”

“I suppose you are right,” she admitted. “Still, we are all friends here.”

“That doesn’t amount to much,” Luke Cheyne observed. “It’s generally our friends that rob us.”

“The point of the matter is this,” Savonarilda explained. “We happen to be all friends at this particular table, but there are others in the room and unless I’m very much mistaken one or two of them, at any rate, are listening to what we are talking about. This is a club in name only, you must remember. Even murderers belong to clubs and all they have to do here is to plank down their hundred francs.”

“And yet the trouble I had,” Lady Julia sighed, “to get my dear little protégée from Prétat’s a carte. First she was too young, then they objected to her because she has done a stroke or two of work now and then in the Principality and then, at last,—”

Lady Julia never finished her sentence. There was a little chorus of welcoming exclamations from the table. Every one was waving their hands and calling to a tall, sunburnt young man who had just entered the room.

“Why, it’s Roger!” Lady Julia exclaimed.

“Roger Sloane, by all that’s amazing!” Terence Brown called out.

The young man came up to them, smiling pleasantly. He was overwhelmed with greetings. A valet brought him a chair, another a glass. Lady Julia, who was his aunt, presented her cheeks. Every one else insisted upon being shaken hands with. Maggie Saunders passed her arm through his and clasped it.

“The only man I ever cared for,” she cried, “and he went away like that—” she snapped her fingers. “Vanished! Over a year ago. Not a line. Not a word. People last season got tired of asking one another—what’s become of Roger?”

“Quite right,” Terence Brown agreed. “Give an account of yourself, young man.”

“There have been several most alarming rumours,” Lady Julia sighed.

“One,” Savonarilda observed, “was that you had murdered a peasant near your villa and been obliged to go into hiding.”

“After having abducted his daughter,” some one else murmured.

“Your character would have been torn to shreds,” Lady Julia declared, “if I had not been here to protect you. Still—what did happen?”

Roger drank his wine and smiled upon them. He was looking a trifle older but the slight lines in his face were not unbecoming. He had lost all signs of easy living.

“I got rather fed up with the life here,” he explained. “One day Erskine, Pips Erskine—some of you know him, I expect; he was at Oxford with me—came along, also at a loose end. We had a night in Nice together and I suddenly felt that this atmosphere was too enervating for me to stick it any longer. Pips and I left for England a few days later by a steamer that was going direct from Monaco to London. We were going to the States after that, but Pips had to go back to Ceylon to settle things up there and I went back with him. He’d been tea planting there, poor devil. Pretty sick he must have been of it. Afterwards we went on to India and wound up in Abyssinia.”

“Good sport?” Bradley asked.

“Wonderful, and every sort of it,” Roger replied. “Snipe shooting between Colombo and Kandy, and a couple of tigers and several cheetah up North. In India I had some of the most marvellous duck shooting and three days of driven peacock. Beats all your pheasants. Then I had some good days after tiger at Hyderabad. Abyssinia was difficult and the climate pretty beastly, but I didn’t do so badly there.”

“Well, it’s good to see you back again, anyway,” Lady Julia declared.

“Where are you staying?” Terence Brown asked.

“Pips and I are both staying here for a day or two,” Roger answered. “We picked up the Franconia at Port Said and she brought us to the door. The villa will want restaffing, so I shan’t be able to go there for a few days.”

“Any work?” Bradley asked. “I could do with a good strong serial for one of my North Country papers.”

“My stuff wouldn’t suit you,” Roger assured him. “Altogether too high class! Besides, I’m beginning to lose faith in serialisation. Seems to take the gilt off the gingerbread, somehow or other.”

“You’ll refuse my good money?” Bradley grumbled.

“I daresay I sha’n’t, after a day or two in the rooms. What’s the news here?”

“Nothing much, except that we’re all shivering with terror and apprehensions,” Terence Brown confided. “Cheyne here has been warning us that crime has become an overcrowded industry in his country and that they are sending missionaries over here!”

“That’s a fact, all right,” Cheyne admitted. “The trouble about you folk in this part of the world is that the Press doesn’t help. If you have a good he-murder, you suppress it instead of advertising it.”

“What about starting a newspaper here, Bradley?” Terence Brown suggested.

“I should have as much chance of being allowed to do that as of being elected Dictator of this Principality,” Bradley remarked drily.

“Is that all the news? Is there nothing else fresh to tell me, after all these months?” Roger enquired.

“A few choice pieces of scandal,” Lady Julia confided. “They must keep though. Christos is here to-night.”

Every one was rising to their feet. There was a movement towards the door.

“What’s happening?” Roger demanded.

“The baccarat has started,” Terence Brown announced, looking back over his shoulder. “Christos is here. Christos, the philanthropist, with a few millions to distribute. Look at us all hurrying off for the crumbs!”

“All very well to laugh,” Maggie Saunders grumbled, “but they won’t keep a place for a minute.”

They trooped out. The magic name of Christos seemed to be a call to their blood. Christos was the one great banker at baccarat who had his spells of bad luck. They were all of them thirsting for his money. The home-coming of an old friend whom no one had seen for over a year had already slipped into the background of their thoughts. Gambling was in the atmosphere. It was gambling that counted. Human beings and human emotions shrank back into their proper places. Roger was back again—tant mieux! A pleasant fellow, a distinguished companion, a fine golfer and tennis player, but Christos was seated in the coveted place dominating that long green baize table, and presently the fingers of Christos were going to deal cards which meant—well, thousands, or hundreds of thousands, whichever you would. The money was there.

Roger, leaning back in his chair, found himself deserted by every one except Cheyne. The latter settled down by his side and they ordered another drink.

“Playing polo?” Roger asked.

“I played a few times at Cannes last month,” the other replied. “It didn’t go so well with me as it used to.”

“You put in a pretty good spell of work in New York, didn’t you, the last three or four years?”

Luke Cheyne nodded.

“Great city, great country,” he observed. “But no good for any one with nerves. I’m not the man I was, Sloane, when I used to play outside right against you.”

Roger yawned. Polo didn’t interest him very much these days.

“What’s all this talk about some of your bad boys from New York paying us a visit over here?” he asked.

Cheyne was silent for a moment. Turning to glance at him, Roger was sympathetically disturbed at the change in the man. He could scarcely be over thirty-five, but he had lost his poise, his directness of vision, his complexion. He looked like a man who was feverishly seeking middle age.

“To tell you the truth, I got a bit mixed up with some bootleggers myself in New York,” he confided. “Nothing serious, of course, but there was big money in it and a certain amount of sport to start with. I soon got cold feet, I don’t mind admitting it, so I cleaned up and came over here. But I get news sometimes from the other side. There are too many of them on the job there. I haven’t heard anything definite, of course,” he went on, “but I sometimes fancy that if they realised the loose money there is floating about here and the careless way people treat it, it wouldn’t be long before we had some kind of visitation.”

Roger tapped a cigarette upon the table and lit it.

“The French police wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing,” he observed.

“Wouldn’t they?” his companion answered drily. “I don’t know what they would do about it, if the right men got over. Then there’s another thing. We’re in the Principality of Monaco here and they’re very jealous of outside help.”

Roger suddenly abandoned the conversation in which he was not greatly interested.

“Luke,” he said, “you have been here for some time. Who is that plump little Frenchman with the pink cheeks and smooth face and villainous-looking eyes on the stool at the bar there? He’s done nothing but watch us in the looking glass and if ever I saw a man trying to listen, he’s doing it. I’m certain I’ve seen him somewhere before, but I can’t remember where.”

Cheyne glanced carelessly at the person whom Roger had pointed out.

“He’s a Niçois who’s made a lot of money. Gambles a bit sometimes, but I’ve never even heard his name. Aren’t you going to try your luck at baccarat?”

Roger shook his head. Somehow or other his thoughts had wandered away, back to his villa on the hillside. The sweet half-drugged perfume of orange blossoms was disturbing his senses.

“I don’t feel the urge yet,” he confessed. “I think I shall watch the people for a time. Don’t let me keep you, though.”

Cheyne sauntered off but his mind was not immediately set on gambling. He accosted Savonarilda, who was standing in the doorway and drew him a short distance down the passage.

“Marcus,” he said quietly. “Tell me. Is Viotti here?”

Savonarilda paused to take out his cigarette case. There was a curious but significant change in his manner.

“If I were you, Luke,” he advised, “I should not ask any questions. Not any questions at all. I should forget that you know a person of that name. With us, it is different. We meet as a matter of course. Let it remain like that.”

“Be frank with me, Marcus,” Cheyne begged. “I know Viotti hates any one to quit. I can’t help remembering,” he added, with a shudder, “what happened to the other two who broke away. How do I stand with him and you others? There’s no bad feeling, eh? Viotti must know that I’d as soon put a gun to my forehead as squeal. He must know that.”

Savonarilda smiled slowly and lazily. They had reached the spot where the passage branched into the Nouvel Hôtel and he swung around again, his hand upon Cheyne’s shoulder.

“Do not be foolish, my friend Luke Cheyne,” he recommended. “We’re in Monte Carlo, not on Sixth Avenue. Besides, Viotti has no ill feelings against any one. If you come across any of the others except me—you have done so already, I daresay—I should fail to recognise them. Otherwise, we are still all friends. We are taking a vacation. You have nothing to fear. Why, I should not be surprised if Viotti sent and asked you to come and see him. You were always rather a favorite of his.”

The idea of a visit to Viotti evidently made no appeal to his late colleague.

“We are better apart,” the latter said doubtfully. “Much better apart. Let me ask you one more question, Marcus. That brother of Viotti’s, who is always hanging about here—little fat man, looks like a peasant out on a fête day—what’s he doing here? Is Viotti using him for a spy?”

Savonarilda paused at the entrance to the Baccarat Room.

“You should know better than to ask me a question like that, Luke,” he remonstrated, with a certain amount of smothered irritation. “It is not discreet. It is foolish of you. Come and see if there is room at the baccarat table.”

Roger, after the departure of Luke Cheyne, was kept fully occupied for the next half-hour or so by greeting acquaintances and exchanging reminiscences. At the end of that time, a little bored with it all, he strolled into the gambling rooms, which as usual at that time of night were crowded. The greater part of the people were standing three or four deep around the baccarat table. One heard rumours everywhere of high play. A Frenchman, a noted gambler, was reported to have lost a million. A young English duke had won even a larger sum. Lady Julia beckoned to her nephew from the divan where she was seated alone.

“I have lost my mille,” she confided, with a tragic gesture. “It was most unfortunate. I followed Luke Cheyne, who had been winning heavily, and directly I put up my money he lost!”

“A mille,” Roger reminded her, “is not an irrecoverable sum.”

“It is as much as I permit myself to lose in an evening,” Lady Julia declared. “Everything is so expensive nowadays and the taxation is dreadful. Did I ever tell you about my protégée, Roger?”

“Not a word,” he replied.

“When I come to think of it, I haven’t had much chance, have I?” she went on. “Now I shall show her to you. She has only been here once before and she’s rather stupid about it. She prefers to go to bed early. Still, perhaps her profession—Here she comes! What do you think of her?”

Roger turned around. A girl was crossing the room towards them, accompanied by a voluble Frenchwoman, Madame Dumesnil, his aunt’s dame de compagnie. The latter was gesticulating and talking fast. The girl seemed scarcely to be listening. She was wearing a white dress—the fashion of the moment—designed by the cunning brain which knows how to glorify simplicity. She was without jewellery and her shining light brown hair had obviously never been touched by a coiffeur. Roger, who had known the savour of life during his last twelve months of voluntary exile, who had more than once found himself evenly balanced between life and death, felt in those few seconds such a thrill as he had not experienced since the night in his villa when he had thrown open his windows to the song of that lonely bird and the perfumes of the night. The habitude of crises, however, kept him motionless, notwithstanding his amazement. There was scarcely even gladness in his eyes.

“Jeannine,” Lady Julia said. “This is my nephew, Roger Sloane. Roger, I thought I wrote to you about my protégée, but if I didn’t, here she is. She’s a dear child but she must not be spoilt.”

Jeannine lifted her eyes. There was a gleam of subtle reminiscence in them.

“I do not think,” she said, “that Mr. Sloane will spoil me.”

“I expect he has forgotten what all you modern young women are like,” Lady Julia observed. “He has been away for a year killing wild animals—I can’t imagine why. It seems to me an incredibly brutal pastime. Madame Dumesnil, you remember my nephew? I am not very pleased with him because he suddenly deserted a charming villa here and went away without a word to any one last season. However, he is a nice lad. Sit down with me, Madame. My nephew will take Mademoiselle Jeannine for a promenade. In a quarter of an hour, Roger, please bring the child back.”