Читать книгу Murder at Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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The young people moved off together. Of the two, the little flower picker was by far the more composed. Roger scarcely recognised his own voice.

“I don’t understand this,” he said.

“If you choose, we will sit down somewhere,” she suggested.

They found a corner in the inner portion of the bar.

“I thought you knew everything,” she went on. “Your gouvernante, Madame Vinay—”

“I only arrived home to-day,” he explained. “I came by steamer from Egypt. Every mail lately has missed me. I was obliged to change my plans more than once.”

“I see,” she murmured. “Is it possible, perhaps, that you remember a night and the morning that followed when you suddenly tired of life in your villa and the flowers and of trying to write books, and decided to travel away with your strange friend and say good-bye to no one?”

“I remember,” he admitted.

“You may also remember that you left me in charge of Madame Vinay and the Curé. Madame Vinay will tell you that she could do nothing with me. I was, in fact, very troublesome. Then Madame had an inspiration. Flowers, it seemed, were the only things I cared for. Very well. She took me to a cousin of hers—a fleuriste in Nice. She found me a post there. I unpacked the boxes of flowers in the morning and I arranged them for the shop window. The people seemed pleased with what I did. We made much business. Then, one day a woman came in who was a famous dressmaker. She asked to see the person who arranged the colouring of the flowers and their grouping—Does this weary you?”

“Please go on,” he begged.

“You have shown so little interest,” she continued quietly, “that I thought perhaps—well, n’importe. She gave me a post in her dressmaking establishment in Monte Carlo and Madame and I moved in here. I pleased her. I do not know why, except that I did my best. Lady Julia is one of her valued clients and between them they have been almost too kind to me. My patronne permits me to come to these places with Lady Julia and Madame Dumesnil, to wear her frocks in the evening and I wear them at the establishment in the daytime. I am what is called a mannequin—a living peg upon which beautiful clothes are hung. The only thing is that it does not please me to be out very much in the evening. This is the first time for a long while. I asked to come to-night. I wanted to know whether you were real or only just a dream.”

“You knew who I was then?”

“I knew.”

“And with the rest of your life?”

“I study. I have learnt this little English I sometimes speak. I have learnt to make fewer mistakes in my own language. There are many things I have tried to teach myself. I have tried to understand the different ways people have of looking at life. For that I have read books and Lady Julia is very good. She talks to me.”

He was beginning to feel dazed.

“I see that you are no longer a child,” he ventured.

“Would that be possible?” she asked gravely. “I was always older than you thought me, but I still have not very much understanding outside my work. There is one thing which has been in my mind every moment since that great pain came in the early morning when I awoke.”

“Tell me about it, please,” he begged.

“I mean when you went away without a word. I did not understand. I do not understand. I think that I never shall understand. Why did you do that? Was it to hurt me? Were you afraid of anything?”

He looked at her long and searchingly. Her eyes met his without tremor or embarrassment. He suddenly realised that there were no words with which he could make her understand.

“I left because I was afraid,” he told her.

“Afraid—of me?”

“Of what might happen between you and me.”

“But you were my god,” she persisted. “No one had ever been kind to me before. You stood up against the man whom I hated, the devil who was filling my days with black terror, who but for your coming would probably have had his way with me and dragged me down into the mud. You carried me away to safety. You lifted me to heaven and then you snapped your fingers. Why?”

“I just can’t tell you that, Jeannine,” he answered. “There are some impulses and some thoughts behind them which don’t lend themselves to explanations. But believe one thing, please. I left because you were a child and I was afraid that I might forget.”

A softer look came into her face, a smile almost of happiness played upon her lips.

“You liked me?” she asked, with a queer little shyness.

“I think I might say that I loved you.”

“And yet you went. Men are not like that—such men as I have read and heard of. You did not mean to hurt me—”

“I went away for fear of hurting you....”

Lady Julia, a little annoyed, leaning on the arm of Madame Dumesnil, presented herself.

“I said quarter of an hour,” she declared. “It is now twenty-five minutes. Jeannine, Madame is waiting to see you home. I am a stern duenna of my charge, Roger,” she went on. “I allow no young man, not even you, to be her escort.”

“I regret that I have stayed so long,” Jeannine apologised, rising to her feet.

“What has that young nephew of mine been saying to make you so pale?” Lady Julia asked curiously. “He’s a clumsy fellow. He never learnt the art of talking to women. His father knew all about it—more than any American or Englishman I ever met in my life. Say good night to him, my dear. I have an irritable chauffeur and I’m a little later than my usual time.”

Roger escorted them to the steps, then very slowly climbed the stairs into the club once more. A man brushed past him, the pink-cheeked, stout little Frenchman with the malicious eyes whom he had seen seated at the bar. Suddenly Roger remembered. A Niçois who had made money! It might seem to be a miracle, but without a doubt this was the rentier whom he had knocked down in the orange grove on the day when Jeannine had fallen into his arms!

Wandering a little restlessly about the fast-emptying Salles de Jeu, Roger came to the conclusion that except in so far as they had provided him with a certain amount of sport and enjoyment, a slice of his life had been sacrificed. He had scuttled away into safety to escape from what he looked upon as a poisonous thought which was urging him on to a poisonous action. He was back again after a period of many adventures to find the fever still in his blood, even though the danger of yielding to it might have lessened. What a development!... In a certain way he found a measure of justification for his own temporary insanity in Jeannine’s present success. That strange unwashed creature of legs and arms, of mocking lips and laughing eyes, a gamine of the flower fields, had something in her which had proved itself. It was no gross impulse which had assailed him. On the contrary, for a young man whose traffic with women had been of the slightest, he had shown a perfect genius of perception. She was off his hands now. She could have no better protectress than his aunt. She was safe, so far as she desired safety. For the rest she must choose her own life.... What a humbug he was, he reflected angrily, when he knew that the one dominant idea in his mind was when he could see her again.

He threw some plaques upon the roulette table and gathered up his not inconsiderable winnings with indifference. Erskine, who was with a party, tempted him downstairs for half an hour, where he ate sandwiches and danced to the music of an amazing band. When he came back to the gambling rooms they were almost deserted. The bar was empty save for one man—Luke Cheyne—who called to him eagerly.

“Come here, Sloane, there’s a good fellow,” he begged. “Come and sit with me for a moment. I’ve got the jimjams.”

“What about?” Roger asked, accepting the invitation. “Been losing?”

“You bet I haven’t. I’ve half a million of the best in my pocket just cashed in!”

“Too many highballs?”

“The first since we parted. I just came in to get one. You’ll join me?”

“A last one, then,” Roger stipulated. “You’re looking all in, Luke.”

“It’s just nerves,” the latter replied. “I’ve rather played the fool with the crowd I was mixed up with in New York and I’m not quite sure that I’m exactly in their good books.”

“I don’t understand,” Roger confessed. “You’re not under any obligation to any one, are you?”

“Not financially,” was the doubtful reply, “but I gave you a hint before, if you remember, Roger. I was mixed up with rather a roughish crowd in the liquor business there. I came away to get clear of it. They never complained. I’ve never had any message from them, but I’ve always had an idea that they meant getting me.”

There was a crash of breaking glass close at hand. Cheyne swung around on his stool just as the barman stood up from under the counter.

“What the hell are you doing there?” the former demanded.

“I stooped down to pick up the broken glass, sir,” the man replied.

“How long have you been there?”

“Scarcely a moment, sir.”

Cheyne looked at him suspiciously. He was a new employee, a Monegasque who had worked for some time in New York. He had bright, ferretlike eyes and a somewhat furtive manner. He picked up the broken pieces of the tumbler and disappeared.

“I’ll swear that young fellow was listening,” Cheyne muttered.

Roger was inclined to be incredulous.

“You’re all nerves, my friend,” he said. “This crowd you were speaking of in New York—they’ve got nothing definite against you, have they, except that you quit? You didn’t give them away to a competitor or the police?”

The other laughed scornfully.

“I didn’t,” he replied, “or I should never have got to Europe alive! It’s not that exactly, but the boss was a curious sort of fellow. He was as clever as hell but he hated any one to quit. He hated the idea that any one alive who had played for safety himself had the power to squeal. This is all rubbish, of course. It only comes into my head at odd times. But to-night, curiously, I was talking—”

He broke off in his speech. The barman was back, industriously polishing the counter with a serviette. Cheyne scowled at him and dropped from his stool on to the floor.

“Time we were getting along, I think,” he suggested. “Where are you staying, Roger?”

“In the Nouvel Hôtel, just along the passage here.... You weren’t going to tell me that you met one of the gang in here, were you?” he added, lowering his tone.

“Never mind,” Cheyne replied. “There are times when I wonder myself if I don’t talk too much.”

“I should have thought we were far enough away from New York,” Roger remarked. “Where are the others? Maggie and the Prince and the Terence Browns and Thornton?”

“They’ve gone up to the Carlton,” Cheyne replied. “With half a million in my pocket, I thought I’d better get back. The streets of Monte Carlo may be safe enough at night, but I should like to see a policeman about now and then.”

The head barman emerged from his sanctum, lifted the flap of the counter and came over to them. He leaned confidentially over the table at which the two men had seated themselves.

“You will excuse me, Mr. Cheyne,” he said, “but why don’t you let me get you a draft for the money you have won and lock it up here? You can have it at any time after eleven o’clock to-morrow morning and send it up to the bank. You’ll forgive my mentioning it, but it doesn’t seem a very wise thing to carry five or six hundred thousand francs about with you at this hour of the morning.”

“What’s got you talking this way, George?” Cheyne demanded.

The man hesitated.

“Well, the chief here dropped us a hint to warn our good clients, sir,” he confided. “There hasn’t been any trouble to speak of, over here, but one never knows. Just as well to be on the safe side.”

“Has there been any trouble anywhere else on the Riviera?” Roger asked curiously.

The barman hesitated again.

“Well, I believe there was a little unpleasantness at Cannes one night, sir, and there have certainly been some rough doings at Nice. The police seem to have an idea that some crooks from the other side have found their way over here.”

“Well, I’m much obliged, I’m sure, George,” Cheyne said. “If I were going out, I would do as you suggest, but I’m not. I’m going straight back to my room in the Paris along the passage.”

“You will be sleeping with it in your room, sir,” the man reminded him.

Cheyne smiled.

“With my servant in the next room and the best Smith and Wesson that was ever made under my own pillow. Don’t you bother, George; I shall be all right. If I’d joined that frisky party and gone up to the Carlton, it would have been a different matter.”

“You will excuse my mentioning it, sir,” the barman begged, as he took his leave.

“Sure,” Cheyne agreed, rising to his feet. “Are you coming, Roger?”

The two men strolled along the passage. The archbishop with the chain around his neck at the farther end bowed his adieux and accepted with becoming gratitude Cheyne’s not inconsiderable tip. They passed through the swing door and turned to the left. Roger paused before the lift and stifled a yawn.

“Would you like me to come on with you to the end of the long passage?” he asked.

His companion scoffed.

“What sort of a pussy do you think I am?” he demanded. “So long as we’re indoors, we’re perfectly safe. Good night, Roger. See you for a cocktail to-morrow morning?”

“I’m not sure,” was the doubtful reply. “I may go up and have a look at my villa. See you before long, anyway, though.”

The two men parted. Luke Cheyne went on to the end of the passage, stepped into the waiting lift and made a brief descent. He tipped the boy and glanced towards the empty chair where the fireman generally sat.

“Where’s Tom to-night?” he asked.

“Off duty, I expect, sir. It’s past four o’clock and there’s scarcely any one left in the club.”

Cheyne nodded and walked on. A few yards and he was around the corner. He could see now to the end of the passage and he noticed that the lift was not there in waiting. Somehow or other, the journey down the carpeted way seemed longer than usual to-night. It came to an end, however, in due course. The lift was still absent and Cheyne pushed the bell. Nothing happened. As a rule, one heard almost immediately the banging of the gate upstairs and the rattle of the lift on its way down. This time there was no response. Cheyne glanced at his watch and yawned. Perhaps the boy had gone to sleep. In any case, it was only a couple of flights up the winding stair. He turned to the left and began to climb. He had swung around the first curve and his foot was on the next when suddenly the lights behind him and in front went out and he found himself in complete darkness. Almost simultaneously there was a terrible pain in his left side, a sharp sound no louder than that of a child’s popgun, another spasm of pain. His knees crumpled up beneath him....

The electrician found him about a quarter of an hour later, lying like a man who had fallen backwards and broken his neck. There were two small holes in his shirtfront exactly over the heart and his pockets were empty.