Why!because I love Dorise Ranscomb. But Louise interests me, and Im worried on her account because of that infernal fellow Charles Benton. Louise poses as his adopted daughter. Benton is a bachelor of forty-five, and, according to his story, he adopted Louise when she was a child and put her to school. Her parentage is a mystery. After leaving school she at first went to live with a Mrs. Sheldon, a young widow, in an expensive suite in Queen Annes Mansions, Westminster. After that she has travelled about with friends and has, I believe, been abroad quite a lot. Ive nothing against Louise, exceptwell, except for the strange uncanny influence which that man Benton has over her. I hate the fellow!
I see! And as you cannot yet reach Woodthorpe and your fathers fortune, except by marrying Louisewhich you dont intend to dowhat are you going to do now?
First, I intend that this woman they call Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo, the lucky woman who is a decoy of the Administration of the Bains de Mer, shall tell me the true circumstance of my fathers death. If I know themthen my hand will be strengthened.
Meanwhile you love Lady Ranscombs daughter, you say?
Yes. I love Dorise with all my heart. She, of course, knows nothing of the conditions of the will.
There was a silence of some moments, interrupted only by the pop-pop of the pigeon-shots below.
Away across the white balustrade of the broad magnificent terrace the calm sapphire sea was deepening as the winter afternoon drew in. An engine whistledthat of the flower train which daily travels express from Cannes to Boulogne faster than the passenger train-deluxe, and bearing mimosa, carnations, and violets from the Cote dAzur to Covent Garden, and to the florists shops in England.
Youve never told me the exact circumstances of your fathers death, Hugh, remarked Brock at last.
Exact circumstances? Ah! Thats what I want to know. Only that woman knows the secret, answered the young man. All I know is that the poor old guv-nor was called up to London by an urgent letter. We had a shooting party at Woodthorpe and he left me in charge, saying that he had some business in London and might return on the following nightor he might be away a week. Days passed and he did not return. Several letters came for him which I kept in the library. I was surprised that he neither wrote nor returned, when, suddenly, ten days later, we had a telegram from the London police informing me that my father was lying in St. Georges Hospital. I dashed up to town, but when I arrived I found him dead. At the inquest, evidence was given to show that at half-past two in the morning a constable going along Albemarle Street found him in evening dress lying huddled up in a doorway. Thinking him intoxicated, he tried to rouse him, but could not. A doctor who was called pronounced that he was suffering from some sort of poisoning. He was taken to St. Georges Hospital in an ambulance, but he never recovered. The post-mortem investigation showed a small scratch on the palm of the hand. That scratch had been produced by a pin or a needle which had been infected by one of the newly discovered poisons which, administered secretly, give a post-mortem appearance of death from heart disease.
Then your father was murderedeh? exclaimed the elder man.
Most certainly he was. And that woman is aware of the whole circumstances and of the identity of the assassin.
How do you know that?
By a letter I afterwards openedone that had been addressed to him at Woodthorpe in his absence. It was anonymous, written in bad English, in an illiterate hand, warning him to beware of that woman you knowMademoiselle of Monte Carlo. It bore the French stamp and the postmark of Tours.
I never knew all this, Brock said. You are quite right, Hugh! The whole affair is a tangled mystery. But the first point we must establish before we commence to investigate iswho is Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo?
SECOND CHAPTER
CONCERNS A GUILTY SECRET
Just after seven oclock that same evening young Henfrey and his friend Brock met in the small lounge of the Hotel des Palmiers, a rather obscure little establishment in the Avenue de la Costa, behind the Gardens, much frequented by the habitues of the Rooms who know Monte Carlo and prefer the little place to life at the Paris, the Hermitage, and the Riviera Palace, or the Gallia, up at Beausoleil.
The Palmiers was a place where one met a merry cosmopolitan crowd, but where the cocotte in her bright plumage was absentan advantage which only the male habitue of Monte Carlo can fully realize. The eternal feminine is always so very much in evidence around the Casino, and the most smartly dressed woman whom one might easily take for the wife of an eminent politician or financier will deplore her bad luck and beg for a little loan.
Well, said Hugh as his friend came down from his room to the lounge, I suppose we ought to be goingeh? Dorise said half-past seven, and well just get across to the Metropole in time. Lady Ranscomb is always awfully punctual at home, and I expect she carries out her time-table here.
The two men put on light overcoats over their dinner-jackets and strolled in the warm dusk across the Gardens and up the Galerie, with its expensive little shops, past the original Ciros to the Metropole.
In the big hall they were greeted by a well-preserved, grey-haired Englishwoman, Lady Ranscomb, the widow of old Sir Richard Ranscomb, who had been one of the greatest engineers and contractors of modern times. He had begun life as a small jerry-builder at Golders Green, and had ended it a millionaire and a knight. Lady Ranscomb was seated at a little wicker table with her daughter Dorise, a dainty, fair-haired girl with intense blue eyes, who was wearing a rather daring jazzing gown of pale-blue, the scantiness of which a year or two before would have been voted quite beyond the pale for a lady, and yet in our broad-minded to-day, the day of undressing on the stage and in the home, it was nothing more than smart.
Mother and daughter greeted the two men enthusiastically, and at Lady Ranscombs orders the waiter brought them small glasses of an aperitif.
Weve been all day motoring up to the Col di Tenda. Sospel is lovely! declared Dorises mother. Have you ever been there? she asked of Brock, who was an habitue of the Riviera.
Once and only once. I motored from Nice across to Turin, was his reply. Yes. It is truly a lovely run there. The Alps are gorgeous. I like San Dalmazzo and the chestnut groves there, he added. But the frontiers are annoying. All those restrictions. Nevertheless, the run to Turin is one of the finest I know.
Presently they rose, and all four walked into the crowded salle-a-manger, where the chatter was in every European language, and the gay crowd were gossiping mostly of their luck or their bad fortune at the tapis vert. At Monte Carlo the talk is always of the run of sequences, the many times the zero-trois has turned up, and of how little one ever wins en plein on thirty-six.
To those who visit Charleys Mount for the first time all this is as Yiddish, but soon he or she, when initiated into the games of roulette and trente-et-quarante, quickly gets bitten by the fever and enters into the spirit of the discussions. They produce their recordsprinted cards in red and black numbers with which they have carefully pricked off the winning numbers with a pin as they have turned up.
The quartette enjoyed a costly but exquisite dinner, chatting and laughing the while.
Both men were friends of Lady Ranscomb and frequent visitors to her fine house in Mount Street. Hughs father, a country landowner, had known Sir Richard for many years, while Walter Brock had made the acquaintance of Lady Ranscomb a couple of years ago in connexion with some charity in which she had been interested.
Both were also good friends of Dorise. Both were excellent dancers, and Lady Ranscomb often allowed them to take her daughter to the Grafton, Ciros, or the Embassy. Lady Ranscomb was Hughs old friend, and he and Dorise having been thrown together a good deal ever since the girl returned from Versailles after finishing her education, it was hardly surprising that the pair should have fallen in love with each other.
As they sat opposite each other that night, the young fellow gazed into her wonderful blue eyes, yet, alas! with a sinking heart. How could they ever marry?
He had about six hundred a yearonly just sufficient to live upon in these days. His father had never put him to anything since he left Brasenose, and now on his death he had found that, in order to recover the estate, it was necessary for him to marry Louise Lambert, a girl for whom he had never had a spark of affection. Louise was good-looking, it was true, but could he sacrifice his happiness; could he ever cut himself adrift from Dorise for mercenary motivesin order to get back what was surely by right his inheritance?
Yet, after all, as he again met Dorises calm, wide-open eyes, the grim truth arose in his mind, as it ever did, that Lady Ranscomb, even though she had been so kind to him, would never allow her only daughter to marry a man who was not rich. Had not Dorise told him of the sly hints her mother had recently given her regarding a certain very wealthy man named George Sherrard, an eligible bachelor who lived in one of the most expensive flats in Park Lane, and who was being generally sought after by mothers with marriageable daughters. In many cases mothersand especially young, good-looking widows with daughters on their handsare too prone to try and get rid of them because my daughter makes me look so old, as they whisper to their intimates of their own age.
After dinner all four strolled across to the Casino, presenting their yellow cards of admissionthe monthly cards granted to those who are approved by the smug-looking, black-coated committee of inspection, who judge by ones appearance whether one had money to lose.
Dorise soon detached herself from her mother and strolled up the Rooms with Hugh, Lady Ranscomb and Brock following.
None of them intended to play, but they were strolling prior to going to the opera which was beneath the same roof, and for which Lady Ranscomb had tickets.
Suddenly Dorise exclaimed:
Look over thereat that table in the corner. Theres that remarkable woman they call Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo!
Hugh started, and glancing in the direction she indicated saw the handsome woman seated at the table staking her counters quite unconcernedly and entirely absorbed in the game. She was wearing a dead black dress cut slightly low in the neck, but half-bare shoulders, with a string of magnificent Chinese jade beads of that pale apple green so prized by connoisseurs.
Her eyes were fixed upon the revolving wheel, for upon the number sixteen she had just thrown a couple of thousand franc counters. The ball dropped with a sudden click, the croupier announced that number five had won, and at once raked in the two thousand francs among others.
Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders and smiled faintly. Yvonne Ferad was a born gambler. To her losses came as easily as gains. The Administration knew thatand they also knew how at the little pigeon-hole where counters were exchanged for cheques she came often and handed over big sums in exchange for drafts upon certain banks, both in Paris and in London.
Yet they never worried. Her lucky play attracted others who usually lost. Once, a year before, a Frenchman who occupied a seat next to her daily for a month lost over a quarter of a million sterling, and one night threw himself under the Paris rapide at the long bridge over the Var. But on hearing of it the next day from a croupier Mademoiselle merely shrugged her shoulders, and said:
I warned him to return to Paris. The fool! It is only what I expected.
Hugh looked only once across at the mysterious woman whom Dorise had indicated, and then drew her away. As a matter of fact he had no intention that mademoiselle should notice him.
What do you know of her? he asked in a casual way when they were on the other side of the great saloon.
Well, a Frenchman I met in the hotel the day before yesterday told me all sorts of queer stories about her, replied the girl. Shes apparently a most weird person, and she has uncanny good luck at the tables. He said that she had won a large fortune during the last couple of years or so.
Hugh made no remark as to the reason of his visit to the Riviera, for, indeed, he had arrived only the day previously, and she had welcomed him joyously. Little did she dream that her lover had come out from London to see that woman who was declared to be so notorious.
I noticed her playing this afternoon, Hugh said a moment later in a quiet reflective tone. What do the gossips really say about her, Dorise? All this is interesting. But there are so many interesting people here.
Well, the man who told me about her was sitting with me outside the Cafe de Paris when she passed across the Place to the Casino. That caused him to make the remarks. He said that her past was obscure. Some people say that she was a Danish opera singer, others declare that she was the daughter of a humble tobacconist in Marseilles, and others assert that she is English. But all agree that she is a clever and very dangerous woman.
Why dangerous? inquired Hugh in surprise.
Ah! That I dont know. The man who told me merely hinted at her past career, and added that she was quite a respectable person nowadays in her affluence. Butwell added the girl with a laugh, I suppose people gossip about everyone in this place.
Who was your informant? asked her lover, much interested.
His name is Courtin. I believe he is an official of one of the departments of the Ministry of Justice in Paris. At least somebody said so yesterday.
Ah! Then he probably knew more about her than he told you, I expect.
No doubt, for he warned my mother and myself against making her acquaintance, said the girl. He said she was a most undesirable person.
At that moment Lady Ranscomb and Walter Brock joined them, whereupon the former exclaimed to her daughter:
Did you see that woman over there?still playingthe woman in black and the jade beads, against whom Monsieur Courtin warned us?
Yes, mother, I noticed her. Ive just been telling Hugh about her.
A mysterious personeh? laughed Hugh with well-affected indifference. But one never knows whos who in Monte Carlo.
Well, Mademoiselle is apparently something of a mystery, remarked Brock. Ive seen her here before several times. Once, about two years ago, I heard that she was mixed up in a very celebrated criminal case, but exactly what it was the man who told me could not recollect. She is, however, one of the handsomest women in the Rooms.
And one of the wealthiestif report be true, said Lady Ranscomb.
She fascinates me, Dorise declared. If Monsieur Courtin had not warned us I should most probably have spoken to her.
Oh, my dear, you must do no such thing! cried her mother, horrified. It was extremely kind of monsieur to give us the hint. He has probably seen how unconventional you are, Dorise.