Читать книгу Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo - Le Queux William - Страница 5

Three days later. On a cold afternoon just as the wintry light was fading a tall, dark, middle-aged, rather handsome man with black hair and moustache, and wearing a well-cut, dark-grey overcoat and green velour hat, alighted from the train at the wayside station of Wanborough, in Surrey, and inquired of the porter the way to Shapley Manor.

“Shapley, sir? Why, take the road there yonder up the hill till you get to the main road which runs along the Hog’s Back from Guildford to Farnborough. When you get on the main road, turn sharp to the left past the old toll-gate, and you’ll find the Manor on the left in among a big clump of trees.”

“How far?”

“About a mile, sir.”

The stranger, the only passenger who had alighted, slipped sixpence into the man’s hand, buttoned his coat, and started out to walk in the direction indicated, breasting the keen east wind.

He was well-set-up, and of athletic bearing. He took long strides as with swinging gait he went up the hill. As he did so, he muttered to himself:

“I was an infernal fool not to have come down in a car! I hate these beastly muddy country roads. But Molly has the telephone—so I can ring up for a car to fetch me—which is a consolation, after all.”

And with his keen eyes set before him, he pressed forward up the steep incline to where, for ten miles, ran the straight broad highway over the high ridge known as the Hog’s Back. The road is very popular with motorists, for so high is it that on either side there stretches a wide panorama of country, the view on the north being towards the Thames Valley and London, while on the south Hindhead with the South Downs in the blue distance show beyond.

Having reached the high road the stranger paused to take breath, and incidentally to admire the magnificent view. Indeed, an expression of admiration fell involuntarily from his lips. Then he went along for another half-mile in the teeth of the cutting wind with the twilight rapidly coming on, until he came to the clump of dark firs and presently walked up a gravelled drive to a large, but somewhat inartistic, Georgian house of red brick with long square windows. In parts the ivy was trying to hide its terribly ugly architecture for around the deep porch it grew thickly and spread around one corner of the building.

A ring at the door brought a young manservant whom the caller addressed as Arthur, and, wishing him good afternoon, asked if Mrs. Bond were at home.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply.

“Oh! good,” said the caller. “Just tell her I’m here.” And he proceeded to remove his coat and to hang it up in the great flagged hall with the air of one used to the house.

The Manor was a spacious, well-furnished place, full of good pictures and much old oak furniture.

The servant passed along the corridor, and entering the drawing-room, announced:

“Mr. Benton is here, ma’am.”

“Oh! Mr. Benton! Show him in,” cried his mistress enthusiastically. “Show him in at once!”

Next moment the caller entered the fine, old-fashioned room, where a well-preserved, fair-haired woman of about forty was taking her tea alone and petting her Pekinese.

“Well, Charles? So you’ve discovered me here, eh?” she exclaimed, jumping up and taking his hand.

“Yes, Molly. And you seem to have very comfortable quarters,” laughed Benton as he threw himself unceremoniously into a chintz-covered armchair.

“They are, I assure you.”

“And I suppose you’re quite a great lady in these parts—eh?—now that you live at Shapley Manor. Where’s Louise?”

“She went up to town this morning. She won’t be back till after dinner. She’s with her old school-fellow—that girl Bertha Trench.”

“Good. Then we can have a chat. I’ve several things to consult you about and ask your opinion.”

“Have some tea first,” urged his good-looking hostess, pouring him some into a Crown Derby cup.

“Well,” he commenced. “I think you’ve done quite well to take this place, as you’ve done, for three years. You are now safely out of the way. The Paris Surete are making very diligent inquiries, but the Surrey Constabulary will never identify you with the lady of the Rue Racine. So you are quite safe here.”

“Are you sure of that, Charles?” she asked, fixing her big grey eyes upon him.

“Certain. It was the wisest course to get back here to England, although you had to take a very round-about journey.”

“Yes. I got to Switzerland, then to Italy, and from Genoa took an Anchor Line steamer across to New York. After that I came over to Liverpool, and in the meantime I had become Mrs. Bond. Louise, of course, thought we were travelling for pleasure. I had to explain my change of name by telling her that I did not wish my divorced husband to know that I was back in England.”

“And the girl believed it, of course,” he laughed.

“Of course. She believes anything I tell her,” said the clever, unscrupulous woman for whom the Paris police were in active search, whose real name was Molly Maxwell, and whose amazing career was well known to the French police.

Only recently a sum of a quarter of a million francs had fallen into her hands, and with it she now rented Shapley Manor and had set up as a country lady. Benton gazed around the fine old room with its Adams ceiling and its Georgian furniture, and reflected how different were Molly’s present surroundings from that stuffy little flat au troisieme in the Rue Racine.

“Yes,” he said. “You had a very narrow escape, Molly. I dared not come near you, but I knew that you’d look after the girl.”

“Of course. I always look after her as though she were my own child.”

Benton’s lip curled as he sipped his China tea, and said:

“Because so much depends upon her—eh? I’m glad you view the situation from a fair and proper stand-point. We’re now out for a big thing, therefore we must not allow any little hitch to prevent us from bringing it off successfully.”

“I quite agree, Charles. Our great asset is Louise. But she must be innocent of it all. She must know absolutely nothing.”

“True. If she had an inkling that we were forcing her to marry Hugh she would fiercely resent it. She’s a girl of spirit, after all.”

“My dear Charles, I know that,” laughed the woman. “Ever since she came home from school I’ve noticed how independent she is. She certainly has a will of her own. But she likes Hugh, and we must encourage it. Recollect that a fortune is at stake.”

“I have not overlooked that,” the man said. “But of late I’ve come to fear that we are treading upon thin ice. I don’t like the look of affairs at the present moment. Young Henfrey is head over ears in love with that girl Dorise Ranscomb, and—”

“Bah! It’s only a flirtation, my dear Charles,” laughed the woman. “When just a little pressure is put upon the boy, and a sly hint to Lady Ranscomb, then the affair will soon be off, and he’ll fall into Louise’s arms. She’s really very fond of him.”

“She may be, but he takes no notice of her. She told me so the other day. He’s gone to the Riviera—followed Dorise, I suppose,” Benton said.

“Yvonne wrote me a few days ago to say that he was there with a friend of his named Walter Brock. Who’s he?”

“Oh! a naval lieutenant-commander who served in the war and was invalided out after the Battle of Jutland. He got the D.S.O. over the Falklands affair, and has now some post at the Admiralty. He was in command of a torpedo boat which sank a German cruiser, and was afterwards blown up.”

“They are both out at Monte Carlo, Yvonne says. And Henfrey is with Dorise daily,” remarked the woman.

“Yvonne is always apprehensive lest young Henfrey should learn the secret of the old fellow’s end,” said Benton. “But I don’t see how the truth of the—well, rather ugly affair can ever come out, except by an indiscretion by one or other of us.”

“And that is scarcely likely, Charles, is it?” his hostess laughed as she pushed across to him a big silver box of cigarettes and then reclined lazily among her cushions.

“No. It would certainly be a very sensational affair if the newspapers got hold of the facts, my dear Molly. But don’t let us anticipate such a thing. Fortunately Louise, in her girlish innocence, knows nothing. Old Henfrey left his money to his son upon certain conditions, one of which is that Hugh shall marry Louise. And that marriage must, at all hazards, take place. After that, we care for nothing.”

The handsome woman who was rolling a cigarette between her well-manicured fingers hesitated. Her countenance assumed a strange look as she reflected. She was far too clever to express any off-hand opinion. She had outwitted the police of Paris, Brussels, and Rome in turn. Her whole career had been a criminal one, punctuated by periods of pretended high respectability—while the funds to support it had lasted. And upon her hands had been placed Louise Lambert, the child Charles Benton had adopted ten years before.

“We shall have to exercise a good deal of discretion and caution in regard to Louise,” she declared. “The affair is not at all so plain sailing as I at first believed.”

“No. It is a serious contretemps that you had to leave Paris, Molly,” agreed her well-dressed visitor. “The young American was a fool, of course, but I think—”

“Paris was flooded by rich young men from the United States who came over to fight the Boche and to spend their money like water when on leave in Paris. Frank was only one of them.”

Benton was silent. The affair was a distinctly unsavoury one. Frank van Geen, the son of the Dutch-American millionaire cocoa manufacturer of Chicago, had, by reason of his association with Molly, found himself the poorer by nearly a quarter of a million francs, and his body had been found in the Seine between the Pont d’Auteuil and the Ile St. Germain. At the inquiry some ugly disclosures were made, but already the lady of the Rue Racine and her supposed niece had left Paris; and though the affair was one of suicide, the police raised a hue and cry, and the frontiers had been watched, but the pair had disappeared.

That was several months ago. And now Molly Maxwell the adventuress in Paris had been transformed into the wealthy and highly respectable widow Mrs. Bond, who having presented such excellent references had become tenant of that well-furnished mansion, Shapley Manor, and the beautiful grounds adjoining. For nearly two centuries it had been the home of the Puttenhams, but Sir George Puttenham, Baronet, the present owner, had found himself ruined by war-taxation, and as one of the new poor he had been glad to let the place and live upon the rent obtained for it. His case, indeed, was only one of thousands of others in England, where adventurers and war-profiteers were ousting the landed gentry.

“Yvonne is evidently keeping a good watch upon young Hugh,” remarked Benton presently, as he blew a ring of cigarette smoke towards the ceiling.

“Yes,” replied the woman, her eyes fixed out of the big window which commanded a glorious view of Gibbet Hill, at Hindhead, and the blue South Downs towards the English Channel. But all was dark and lowering in the winter twilight, now fast darkening into night.

In old-world Guildford, the county town of Surrey, with its steep High Street containing many seventeenth-century houses, its old inns, and its balconied Guildhall—the scene of so many unseemly wrangles among the robed and cocked-hatted borough councillors who are, par excellence, outstanding illustrations of the provincial petty jealousies of bumbledom—Mrs. Bond was welcomed by the trades-people who vied with each other to “serve her.” Almost daily she went up and down the High Street in her fine Rolls-Royce driven by Mead, an ex-soldier and a worthy fellow whom she had engaged through an advertisement in the Surrey Advertiser. He had been in the Queen’s West Surrey, and his home being in Guildford, Molly knew that he would serve as a testimonial to her high respectability. Molly Maxwell was an outstandingly clever woman. She never let a chance slip by that might be taken advantageously.

Mead, who went on his “push-bike” every evening along the Hog’s Back to Guildford, was never tired of singing the praises of his generous mistress.

“She’s a real good sort,” he would tell his friends in the bar of the Lion or the Angel. “She knows how to treat a man. She’s a widow, and good-looking. I suppose she’ll marry again. Nearly all the best people about here have called on her within the last week or two. Magistrates and their wives, retired generals, and lots of the gentry. Yes, my job isn’t to be sneezed at, I can tell you. It’s better than driving a lorry outside Ypres!”

Mrs. Bond treated Mead extremely well, and paid him well. She knew that by so doing she would secure a good advertisement. She had done so before, when four or five years ago she had lived at Keswick.

“Do you know, Charles,” she said presently, “I’m really very apprehensive regarding the present situation. Yvonne is, no doubt, keeping a watchful eye upon the young fellow. But what can she do if he has followed the Ranscomb girl and is with her each day? Each day, indeed, must bring the pair closer together, and—”

“That’s what we must prevent, my dear Molly!” exclaimed the lady’s visitor. “Think of all it means to us. You are quite safe here—as safe as I am to-day. But we can’t last out without money—either of us. We must have cash-money—and cash-money always.”

“Yes. That’s so. But Yvonne is wonderful—amazing.”

“She hasn’t the same stake in the affair as we have.”

“Why not?” asked the woman for whom the European police were in search.

“Well, because she is rich—she’s won pots of money at the tables—and we—well, both of us have only limited means. Yours, Molly, are larger than mine—thanks to Frank. But I must have money soon. My expenses in town are mounting up daily.”

“But your rooms don’t cost you very much! Old Mrs. Evans looks after things as she has always done.”

“Yes. But everything is going up in price, and remember, I dare not cross the Channel just now. At Calais, Boulogne, Cherbourg, and other places, they have my photograph, and they are waiting for me to fall into the trap. But the rat, once encaged, is shy! And I am very shy just now,” he added with a light laugh.

“You’ll stay and have dinner, won’t you?” urged his hostess.

Benton hesitated.

“If I do Louise may return, and just now I don’t want to meet her. It is better not.”

“But she won’t be back till the last train to Guildford. Mead is meeting her. Yes—stay.”

“I must get a car to take me back to town. I have to go to Glasgow by the early train in the morning.”

“Well, we’re order one from one of the garages in Guildford. You really must stay, Charles. There’s lots we have to talk over—a lot of things that are of vital consequence to us both.”

At that moment there came a rap at the door and the young manservant entered, saying:

“You’re wanted on the telephone, ma’am.”

Mrs. Bond rose from the settee and went to the telephone in the library, where she heard the voice of a female telephone operator.

“Is that Shapley Manor?” she asked. “I have a telegram for Mrs. Bond. Handed in at Nice at two twenty-five, received here at four twenty-eight. ‘To Bond, Shapley Manor, near Guildford. Yvonne shot by some unknown person while with Hugh. In grave danger.—S.’ That is the message. Have you got it please?”

Mrs. Bond held her breath.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Anything else?”

“No, madam,” replied the telephone operator at the Guildford Post Office. “Nothing else. I will forward the duplicate by post.”

And she switched off.