Читать книгу Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo - Le Queux William - Страница 3

Hugh Henfrey, startled by the sudden shot, shouted for assistance, and then threw himself upon his knees beside the prostrate woman.

From a bullet wound over the right ear blood was slowly oozing and trickling over her white cheek.

“Help! Help!” he shouted loudly. “Mademoiselle has been shot from outside! Help!”

In a few seconds the elderly manservant burst into the room in a state of intense excitement.

“Quick!” cried Hugh. “Telephone for a doctor at once. I fear your mistress is dying!”

Henfrey had placed his hand upon Mademoiselle’s heart, but could detect no movement. While the servant dashed to the telephone, he listened for her breathing, but could hear nothing. From the wall he tore down a small circular mirror and held it against her mouth. There was no clouding.

There was every apparent sign that the small blue wound had proved fatal.

“Inform the police also!” Hugh shouted to the elderly Italian who was at the telephone in the adjoining room. “The murderer must be found!”

By this time four female servants had entered the room where their mistress was lying huddled and motionless. All of them were in deshabille. Then all became excitement and confusion. Hugh left them to unloosen her clothing and hastened out upon the veranda whereon the assassin must have stood when firing the shot.

Outside in the brilliant Riviera moonlight the scent of a wealth of flowers greeted his nostrils. It was almost bright as day. From the veranda spread a wide, fairy-like view of the many lights of Monte Carlo and La Condamine, with the sea beyond shimmering in the moonlight.

The veranda, he saw, led by several steps down into the beautiful garden, while beyond, a distance of a hundred yards, was the main gate leading to the roadway. The assassin, after taking careful aim and firing, had, no doubt, slipped along, and out of the gate.

But why had Mademoiselle been shot just at the moment when she was about to reveal the secret of his lamented father’s death?

He descended to the garden, where he examined the bushes which cast their dark shadows. But all was silence. The assassin had escaped!

Then he hurried out into the road, but again all was silence. The only hope of discovering the identity of the criminal was by means of the police vigilance. Truth to tell, however, the police of Monte Carlo are never over anxious to arrest a criminal, because Monte Carlo attracts the higher criminal class of both sexes from all over Europe. If the police of the Principality were constantly making arrests it would be bad advertisement for the Rooms. Hence, though the Monte Carlo police are extremely vigilant and an expert body of officers, they prefer to watch and to give information to the bureaux of police of other countries, so that arrests invariably take place beyond the frontiers of the Principality of Monaco.

It was not long before Doctor Leneveu, a short, stout, bald-headed little man, well known to habitues of the Rooms, among whom he had a large practice, entered the house of Mademoiselle and was greeted by Hugh. The latter briefly explained the tragic circumstances, whereupon the little doctor at once became fussy and excited.

Having ordered everyone out of the room except Henfrey, he bent and made an examination of the prostrate woman.

“Ah! m’sieur,” he said, “the unfortunate lady has certainly been shot at close quarters. The wound is, I tell you at once, extremely dangerous,” he added, after a searching investigation. “But she is still alive,” he declared. “Yes—she is still breathing.”

“Still alive!” gasped Henfrey. “That’s excellent! I—I feared that she was dead!”

“No. She still breathes,” the doctor replied. “But, tell me exactly what has occurred. First, however, we will get them to remove her upstairs. I will telephone to my colleague Duponteil, and we will endeavour to extract the bullet.”

“But will she recover, doctor?” asked Hugh eagerly in French. “What do you think?”

The little man became serious and shook his head gravely.

“Ah! m’sieur, that I cannot say,” was his reply. “She is in a very grave state—very! And the brain may be affected.”

Hugh held his breath. Surely Yvonne Ferad was not to die with the secret upon her lips!

At the doctor’s orders the servants were about to remove their mistress to her room when two well-dressed men of official aspect entered. They were officers of the Bureau of Police.

“Stop!” cried the elder, who was the one in authority, a tall, lantern-jawed man with a dark brown beard and yellow teeth. “Do not touch that lady! What has happened here?”

Hugh came forward, and in his best French explained the circumstances of the tragedy—how Mademoiselle had been shot in his presence by an unknown hand.

“The assassin, whoever he was, stood out yonder—upon the veranda—but I never saw him,” he added. “It was all over in a second—and he has escaped!”

“And pray who are you?” demanded the police officer bluntly. “Please explain.”

Hugh was rather nonplussed. The question required explanation, no doubt. It would, he saw, appear very curious that he should visit Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo at that late hour.

“I—well, I called upon Mademoiselle because I wished to obtain some important information from her.”

“What information? Rather late for a call, surely?”

The young Englishman hesitated. Then, with true British grit, he assumed an attitude of boldness, and asked:

“Am I compelled to answer that question?”

“I am Charles Ogier, chief inspector of the Surete of Monaco, and I press for a reply,” answered the other firmly.

“And I, Hugh Henfrey, a British subject, at present decline to satisfy you,” was the young man’s bold response.

“Is the lady still alive?” inquired the inspector of Doctor Leneveu.

“Yes. I have ordered her to be taken up to her room—of course, when m’sieur the inspector gives permission.”

Ogier looked at the deathly countenance with the closed eyes, and noted that the wound in the skull had been bound up with a cotton handkerchief belonging to one of the maids. Mademoiselle’s dark well-dressed hair had become unbound and was straying across her face, while her handsome gown had been torn in the attempt to unloosen her corsets.

“Yes,” said the police officer; “they had better take her upstairs. We will remain here and make inquiries. This is a very queer affair—to say the least,” he added, glancing suspiciously at Henfrey.

While the servants carried their unconscious mistress tenderly upstairs, the fussy little doctor went to the telephone to call Doctor Duponteil, the principal surgeon of Monaco. He had hesitated whether to take the victim to the hospital, but had decided that the operation could be done just as effectively upstairs. So, after speaking to Duponteil, he also spoke to the sister at the hospital, asking her to send up two nurses immediately to the Villa Amette.

In the meantime Inspector Ogier was closely questioning the young Englishman.

Like everyone in Monte Carlo he knew the mysterious Mademoiselle by sight. More than once the suspicions of the police had been aroused against her. Indeed, in the archives of the Prefecture there reposed a bulky dossier containing reports of her doings and those of her friends. Yet there had never been anything which would warrant the authorities to forbid her from remaining in the Principality.

This tragedy, therefore, greatly interested Ogier and his colleague. Both of them had spent many years in the service of the Paris Surete under the great Goron before being appointed to the responsible positions in the detective service of Monaco.

“Then you knew the lady?” Ogier asked of the young man who was naturally much upset over the startling affair, and the more so because the secret of his father’s mysterious death had been filched from him by the hand of some unknown assassin.

“No, I did not know her personally,” Henfrey replied somewhat lamely. “I came to call upon her, and she received me.”

“Why did you call at this hour? Could you not have called in the daytime?”

“Mademoiselle was in the Rooms until late,” he said.

“Ah! Then you followed her home—eh?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

The police officer pursed his lips and raised his eyes significantly at his colleague.

“And what was actually happening when the shot was fired? Describe it to me, please,” he demanded.

“I was standing just here”—and he crossed the room and stood upon the spot where he had been—“Mademoiselle was over there beside the window. I had my back to the window. She was about to tell me something—to answer a question I had put to her—when someone from outside shot her through the open glass door.”

“And you did not see her assailant?”

“I saw nothing. The shot startled me, and, seeing her staggering, I rushed to her. In the meantime the assailant—whoever he was—disappeared!”

The brown-bearded man smiled dubiously. As he stood beneath the electric light Hugh saw doubt written largely upon his countenance. He instantly realized that Ogier disbelieved his story.

After all it was a very lame one. He would not fully admit the reason of his visit.

“But tell me, m’sieur,” exclaimed the police officer. “It seems extraordinary that any person should creep along this veranda.” And he walked out and looked about in the moonlight. “If the culprit wished to shoot Mademoiselle in secret, then he would surely not have done so in your presence. He might easily have shot her as she was on her way home. The road is lonely up here.”

“I agree, monsieur,” replied the Englishman. “The whole affair is, to me, a complete mystery. I saw nobody. But it was plain to me that when I called Mademoiselle was seated out upon the veranda. Look at her chair—and the cushions! It was very hot and close in the Rooms to-night, and probably she was enjoying the moonlight before retiring to bed.”

“Quite possibly,” he agreed. “But that does not alter the fact that the assassin ran considerable risk in coming along the veranda in the full moonlight and firing through the open door. Are you quite certain that Mademoiselle’s assailant was outside—and not inside?” he asked, with a queer expression upon his aquiline face.

Hugh saw that he was hinting at his suspicion that he himself had shot her!

“Quite certain,” he assured him. “Why do you ask?”

“I have my own reasons,” replied the police officer with a hard laugh. “Now, tell me what do you know about Mademoiselle Ferad?”

“Practically nothing.”

“Then why did you call upon her?”

“I have told you. I desired some information, and she was about to give it to me when the weapon was fired by an unknown hand.”

“Unknown—eh?”

“Yes. Unknown to me. It might be known to Mademoiselle.”

“And what was this information you so urgently desired?”

“Some important information. I travelled from London to Monte Carlo in order to obtain it.”

“Ah! Then you had a motive in coming here—some strong motive, I take it?”

“Yes. A very strong motive. I wanted her to clear up certain mysterious happenings in England.”

Ogier was instantly alert.

“What happenings?” he asked, for he recollected the big dossier and the suspicions extending over four or five years concerning the real identity and mode of life of the handsome, sphinx-like woman Yvonne Ferad.

Hugh Henfrey was silent for a few moments. Then he said:

“Happenings in London that—well, that I do not wish to recall.”

Ogier again looked him straight in the face.

“I suggest, M’sieur Henfrey”—for Hugh had given him his name—“I suggest that you have been attracted by Mademoiselle as so many other men have been. She seems to exercise a fatal influence upon some people.”

“I know,” Hugh said. “I have heard lots of things about her. Her success at the tables is constant and uncanny. Even the Administration are interested in her winnings, and are often filled with wonder.”

“True, m’sieur. She keeps herself apart. She is a mysterious person—the most remarkable in all the Principality. We, at the Bureau, have heard all sorts of curious stories concerning her—once it was rumoured that she was the daughter of a reigning European sovereign. Then we take all the reports with the proverbial grain of salt. That Mademoiselle is a woman of outstanding intellect and courage, as well as of great beauty, cannot be denied. Therefore I tell you that I am intensely interested in this attempt upon her life.”

“And so am I,” Hugh said. “I have a strong reason to be.”

“Cannot you tell me that reason?” inquired the officer of the Surete, still looking at him very shrewdly. “Why fence with me?”

Henfrey hesitated. Then he replied:

“It is a purely personal matter.”

“And yet, you have said that you were not acquainted with Mademoiselle!” remarked Ogier suspiciously.

“That is quite true. The first time I have spoken to her was this evening, a few minutes before the attempt was made upon her life.”

“Then your theory is that while you stood in conversation with her somebody crept along the veranda and shot her—eh?”

“Yes.”

Ogier smiled sarcastically, and turning to his colleague, ordered him to search the room. The inspector evidently suspected the young Englishman of having shot Mademoiselle, and the search was in order to try and discover the weapon.

Meanwhile the brown-bearded officer called the Italian manservant, who gave his name as Giulio Cataldi, and who stated that he had been in Mademoiselle Ferad’s service a little over five years.

“Have you ever seen this Englishman before?” Ogier asked, indicating Hugh.

“Never, until to-night, m’sieur,” was the reply. “He called about twenty minutes after Mademoiselle’s return from the Rooms.”

“Has Mademoiselle quarrelled with anybody of late?”

“Not to my knowledge, m’sieur. She is of a very quiet and even disposition.”

“Is there anyone you know who might possess a motive to shoot her?” asked Ogier. “The crime has not been committed with a motive of robbery, but either out of jealousy or revenge.”

“I know of nobody,” declared the highly respectable Italian, whose moustache was tinged with grey. He shrugged his shoulders and showed his palms as he spoke.

“Mademoiselle arrived here two months ago, I believe?” queried the police official.

“Yes, m’sieur. She spent the autumn in Paris, and during the summer she was at Deauville. She also went to London for a brief time, I believe.”

“Did she ever live in London?” asked Hugh eagerly, interrupting Ogier’s interrogation.

“Yes—once. She had a furnished house on the Cromwell Road for about six months.”

“How long ago?” asked Henfrey.

“Please allow me to make my inquiries, monsieur!” exclaimed the detective angrily.

“But the question I ask is of greatest importance to me in my own inquiries,” Hugh persisted.

“I am here to discover the identity of Mademoiselle’s assailant,” Ogier asserted. “And I will not brook your interference.”

“Mademoiselle has been shot, and it is for you to discover who fired at her,” snapped the young Englishman. “I consider that I have just as much right to put a question to this man as you have, that is”—he added with sarcasm—“that is, of course, if you don’t suspect him of shooting his mistress.”

“Well, I certainly do not suspect that,” the Frenchman said. “But, to tell you candidly, your story of the affair strikes me as a very improbable one.”

“Ah!” laughed Hugh, “I thought so! You suspect me—eh? Very well. Where is the weapon?”

“Perhaps you have hidden it,” suggested the other meaningly. “We shall, no doubt, find it somewhere.”

“I hope you will, and that will lead to the arrest of the guilty person,” Hugh laughed. Then he was about to put further questions to the man Cataldi when Doctor Leneveu entered the room.

“How is she?” demanded Hugh breathlessly.

The countenance of the fussy little doctor fell.

“Monsieur,” he said in a low earnest voice, “I much fear that Mademoiselle will not recover. My colleague Duponteil concurs with that view. We have done our best, but neither of us entertain any hope that she will live!” Then turning to Ogier, the doctor exclaimed: “This is an amazing affair—especially in face of what is whispered concerning the unfortunate lady. What do you make of it?”

The officer of the Surete knit his brows, and with frankness replied:

“At present I am entirely mystified—entirely mystified!”