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Title: Crooks in the Sunshine
Author: Oppenheim, Edward Phillips (1866-1946)
Date of first publication: 1932
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1933
Date first posted: 9 September 2012
Date last updated: 9 September 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #986

This ebook was produced by
David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






                      CROOKS IN THE SUNSHINE

                     By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM


    McCLELLAND & STEWART LIMITED
    PUBLISHERS           TORONTO

    COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1933
    BY McCLELLAND & STEWART, LIMITED

    PRINTED IN CANADA

    T. H. BEST PRINTING CO., LIMITED
    TORONTO, ONT.




CONTENTS


        I THE SALVATION OF MR. TIMOTHY RYAN                     3

       II THE TABLE UNDER THE TREE                             39

      III FIFTY-FIFTY                                          69

       IV NO RED RIBBON FOR THE COMMODORE                     105

        V THE OBSTINATE DUKE                                  137

       VI THE SEVEN TAVERNS OF MARSEILLES                     171

      VII COMMODORE JASEN WATCHES HIS STEP                    196

     VIII THE GHOSTS OF SUICIDE CORNER                        223

       IX LORD DRATTEN'S LAND DEAL                            247

        X THE COMMODORE'S LAST CIGAR                          272




CROOKS IN THE SUNSHINE




I

THE SALVATION OF MR. TIMOTHY RYAN


"Any one else for the board? Last time of asking."

The little company of gloriously bronzed young men and women, lying on
the two rafts moored outside the rocky Paradise of the Cap d'Antibes'
bathing enclosure, bestirred themselves lazily. Passing at a snail's
pace only a few yards away was the speed boat they had been admiring
half the morning. Ben Richmond, the presiding genius of the place, who
had been careering round the bay for the last twenty minutes and had
just slipped off the plank, came swimming towards them with long easy
strokes.

"Glorious, you fellows!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "My, that old
gentleman has some engines on her. I'll swear we were doing forty at the
bends."

"How many times did they lose you?" a fair-haired girl enquired.

"They tricked me off once," the young man confessed. "Not so bad. The
fastest aquaplaning I've ever had."

The elderly gentleman in smart nautical costume leaned over the side of
the launch and repeated his invitation.

"Any one else for the board? Last round before lunch."

Ned Loyd, who had been lying prone on his back, his face upturned to the
sun, rose to a sitting posture, and, all unaware that thereby he was
making history in the criminal records of the world, held up his hand
to signify his acceptance of the invitation.

"Guess I'll have one turn," he decided lazily. "Makes you feel like a
porpoise lying here all the morning."

His sister Caroline, stretched out by his side, turned halfway towards
him. She held up her hand as though to shield her face from the burning
sunshine, but in reality to hide the faint shadow of trouble in her
eyes. She looked steadily out towards the launch, a very magnificent
affair piled with red cushions and with all the appurtenances of
nautical luxury. Two very smartly dressed young women in bathing
costumes and peignoirs were lying in wicker chairs heaped with
voluptuous-looking cushions. A third, in pyjamas of the latest cut, was
leaning over the side, smoking a cigarette. The obvious owner had turned
aside for a moment to speak with the engineer.

"I wouldn't go if I were you, Ned," the girl on the raft begged. "We
can't tell who the crowd are in that boat," she went on, under her
breath, "and it isn't worth while risking anything. Seems queer, if you
come to think of it, that they should be inviting strangers to go
aquaplaning all the morning."

Her brother, however, was already in the water, swimming to the place
where the board was floating. He turned on his back and waved his hand.

"I signalled I'd go," he said, "so I'd better have a short turn. The
skipper's a harmless-looking old duck, anyway."

It was too late now for anything further in the way of intervention.
Caroline Loyd, sitting on the edge of the raft, watched her brother
clamber on to the board, listened to the roar of the engines as the
launch started off, and still watched as, skilfully manipulating the
ropes, he rose cautiously but expertly to his feet. In a moment they
were off, Ned Loyd a graceful, swaying figure firmly established upon
the board, the nose of the boat, large though she was, slightly out of
the water, and a long trail of white, churned-up sea already behind
them. The girl kept her face averted from her immediate neighbours, for
although she had no idea why, fear, for almost the first time in her
life, had come to her.

"Who owns that boat, anyway?" she asked presently. "Does any one know?"

Apparently no one did. There were a variety of rumours passed back to
her from one or another of the loungers upon the rafts. A newcomer, who
had just swum over from the shore, brought the latest information.

"Commodore B. Jasen, he calls himself," the latter announced, as he
clambered up the steps and sank into a prone position. "They say that he
is a multimillionaire and that he has taken the Chteau d'Antibes for
the season."

A young bond salesman from Wall Street pricked up his ears.

"Commodore B. Jasen," he repeated thoughtfully. "Well, he didn't make
his money down our way or I should have heard something of him."

The girl seemed to have forgotten her sun-bathing. She stood on the edge
of the raft--a magnificent figure in her scanty but elegant swimming
costume--shading her eyes with her hand. Not once did she look away
from the boat. She watched it take a shorter run than usual towards
Cannes, watched it sweep round, leaving behind a trough of water and a
long trail of foam, watched the swaying figure of the man who, tense and
alert all the time, gripped the cords of the plane to which he seemed
somehow or other to have become permanently attached. The boat,
travelling at great speed, was almost opposite, now about quarter of a
mile away. She waved her arm--a significant and imperative signal--but
she realised, almost as she did it, that there was scant chance of any
one aquaplaning at thirty or forty kilometres an hour looking to the
right or to the left. Exactly what she had dreaded happened. The boat
failed to make the usual turn. It swept on towards the long tongue of
land known as Mosque Point, wheeled round it and out of sight. That was
the last any one ever saw of Ned Loyd, better known amongst his college
friends and the new world into which he had made tentative entrance as
"Lord God Ned."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was half an hour before uneasiness manifested itself in action,
during which time there was no sign of the return of the mysterious
launch or its aquaplaning passenger. The blue sea was as unruffled as
ever, the sunshine as fierce, the faint breath of westerly wind still
gentle and imperceptible. The majority of the bathers had taken no note
of the incident at all. They were either in the sea again, or were lying
on the rocks anointing themselves, or had clambered up to the restaurant
above. The two who were more deeply concerned--Caroline Loyd and Ralph
Joslin, a slim dark young man with the complexion almost of an Indian,
who had been lying a little apart from the others and had spoken to no
one--were already making their way along the beach through the pine
woods towards the other side of the point. The young man was only mildly
puzzled. He failed to understand his companion's emotion, or to grasp
why, through the wonderful tan of her cheeks, the pallor of fear had
begun to show itself.

"What's your worry, Caroline?" he asked. "Aquaplaning is child's
business to Ned."

"What made them drive on straight past the point?" she demanded almost
fiercely. "They always set down passengers near the rafts."

"Well, I don't see that that amounts to anything," he argued. "If the
old man's taken the Chteau d'Antibes, why they've probably gone round
there for a drink. Seems natural enough to me. Every one takes a fancy
to the lad--you know that. What are you scared of, Carrie? You're not
afraid of Ned taking the glad eye from the women?"

"Not I," she scoffed, although there was a sob in her throat. "That
isn't my business, but I've got a queer hunch, Ralph. I expect I'll be
laughing at it in a few minutes. You saw the cable about looking out for
the Lebworthy Gang?"

"Yes, I saw that," he admitted. "What about it?"

"Seeing that they were supposed to be coming out here," she went on
breathlessly, "I think Ned might have thought twice before he picked up
with a strange crowd."

Her companion laughed reassuringly.

"It's a hell of a long way from Rimmington Drive or back of Broadway to
Antibes here."

"They are all such a social lot at the hotel," she went on, almost as
though she had not heard him, "but no one seems to know anything about
these people at the Chteau. Still, it isn't likely--it isn't likely,
Ralph, is it?"

"What isn't likely?" he demanded almost roughly.

"It isn't likely that these people should have anything to do with the
Lebworthy Gang?"

"You've been reading too much crime fiction, Caroline," he expostulated.
"That crowd have had me guessing more than once, but I'm not figuring
about seeing any of them just in these particular parts. Save your
breath, kid. It's rough walking, this."

They scrambled across a stretch of shingle through somebody's garden and
on to another beach. Then something like a tragedy confronted them. They
were on the other side of the point now, but nowhere in sight of them
was anything resembling a motor launch, nor was there anywhere to be
seen the bobbing head of a swimmer!

"Don't you start worrying," Ralph enjoined cheerfully, as their eyes
swept the empty space simultaneously. "The Chteau's just round the next
corner. We'll have to make our way there somehow or other. There's a
wall to climb and somebody else's garden to cross. Guess we'd better
have telephoned."

They scrambled forwards. To avoid the wall, they entered the sea and
swam--side by side and without a word to each other--the man with
strong, fierce strokes and the girl with almost frenzied speed.
Presently they reached a long broken cluster of rocks, over which they
clambered and dropped down on to the next beach. Right ahead of them was
a small harbour in which the motor boat was lying, silent and apparently
deserted. By its side was also a small sailing craft and a dinghy, both
moored to floating buoys. They hurried along, the girl breaking into a
little run whenever there was a strip of sand. In less than ten minutes
they had reached the launch. The passengers had evidently all left, for
the decks were deserted and the cabin also was apparently empty. They
hurried down the wooden dock and stepped on board. In response to Ralph
Joslin's shout, a man in blue overalls--apparently a mechanic--thrust
his head out from the cabin.

"Hello," he challenged. "Wot yer looking for?"

"Where's the man you took aquaplaning?" Ralph Joslin demanded.

The mechanic displayed a little more of himself and stretched his long
limbs.

"Ask me another," he replied. "He waved his hand and slid off the plane
just after we rounded the point."

"Why didn't you stop?"

"Why the hell should we?" was the surly retort. "We were only thirty
yards from the shore. He got off of his own accord."

Hope shone once more in the girl's eyes. On the other hand, her
companion did not appear to share her relief.

"If your passenger got off at the point," the latter remarked, "we
should have met him."

"I can't help your troubles," the mechanic said sourly. "It's my job to
run this boat and I don't worry about what happens to the passengers,
especially when they're fools enough to go riding on them slither
boards. If he couldn't swim the thirty yards between him and the point,
he should never have got on the board.... Here's the Boss. You can ask
him anything you want to."

The man withdrew his head and shoulders and disappeared. His questioners
turned round. A very trim and precise-looking elderly gentleman, with
white hair brushed back with almost meticulous care, a white moustache
and benevolent expression, dressed in correct nautical attire, came
hurrying breathlessly down the plank walk and stepped on board.

"What's this I hear?" he asked anxiously. "They're telephoning from the
hotel to say that the young man I took aquaplaning has not returned."

"That's what we've come over about," Ralph Joslin replied. "We saw you
pass our landing places and round the point. He was holding on then and
going strong. We waited but nothing happened. You didn't bring him back
and we've seen nothing of him."

"Extraordinary," the other exclaimed. "I should have dropped him by the
raft, but I had called out a few minutes before and asked him to come
round as far as the Chteau and have a cocktail. He seemed to me to
accept, so we went straight on. When we got to the point, though, he
waved his hand, let go quite in the manner of an expert, and dived.
Naturally we came along home then. He was only a few yards from the
shore."

The girl's eyes had never left the speaker's face. She seemed to be
weighing every word he uttered.

"We have just come across the point," she said. "There wasn't a soul
anywhere about."

The owner of the launch smiled reassuringly.

"My dear lady," he explained, "the point is much longer than it seems,
and if you came the direct way, you might easily have missed your
friend. Besides, he may have taken the opportunity of staying to examine
that queer building at the end. My own guests are always curious about
it. You'd better allow me to send you back in the launch to your landing
stage, and when you get there, you will surely find the young man
waiting for you."

"Might I enquire your name, sir?" Ralph Joslin asked.

"Certainly," was the courteous reply. "Jasen--Commodore Jasen. I am very
sorry if my offer to your friend has brought you any disquietude. Tim,"
he went on, calling to the mechanic, "take this lady and gentleman back
to the Cap landing. You can manage alone for that short distance."

The man made his way towards the engine, rubbing his hands with a piece
of waste. The Commodore stepped off the launch and beamed at his
departing visitors.

"You'll find him there, all right," he called out cheerily.

There must have been something crazy in her blood that day, Caroline
Loyd told herself fiercely. Looking back, it seemed to her that there
was an almost satanic expression in that apparently bland, benevolent
face, something menacing in the simple words. She swung around to seek
consolation for her companion, but Ralph Joslin had none to offer. A
memory had come to him--a memory touched with inspiration--and he knew,
as well as though he could see it written in the flaming blue skies,
that never again in this world would he see his friend and leader, Ned
Loyd.

       *       *       *       *       *

Caroline Loyd heard all the hours of early morning strike. The long
night with its anxieties was past. It had become an accepted fact now
that her brother had disappeared. When the first shiver of light came
from the east, she found herself standing on the balcony of her room at
Cap d'Antibes. The paling stars were fading into the sky, the moon was
colourless. Away eastward the morn was strangely heralded by breaking
lines of cream-coloured foamy clouds with the faintest background of
saffron pink. It was the one hour of complete silence in the
twenty-four. She leaned forward, listening intently. A pearly mist rode
on the far seas. From somewhere behind that came the faintest sounds.
She clutched the balustrade and listened. Every moment it became more
distinct. Now she was sure. The break in the skies eastward became more
pronounced. Soon twilight was to pass and a disc of the sun would be
visible. Her beautiful eyes, strained and frantically searching, sought
to pierce those mists. All the time the sound continued, the dull
beating of a muffled engine. Even before the first gleam of sunlight had
escaped, it had slid into sight. From some errand far southwards, the
motor boat of Commodore Jasen was rushing homewards towards its
harbourage.

       *       *       *       *       *

Entirely at her ease, with scant signs of the tragedy weighing upon her
heart, a tragedy which hung, in fact, like a cloud over the whole of the
little community, Caroline, on the following evening, waited in the
shabby magnificence of the library of the Chteau d'Antibes for the man
whom she had come to see. Her eyes were dry. There were no longer any
signs of the tempest which had swept over her. The first lesson she had
learned, when she had embarked upon the life adventurous, was the lesson
of self-control. She had lost a good deal of sympathy at the Htel du
Cap d'Antibes during the last twenty-four hours; every one had thought
her inclined to be callous. No one realised from what a battlefield of
the emotions her hyperphilosophic attitude had arisen.

Hawk-faced, slim of features and of person, Jake Arnott came into the
room with his usual stealthy tread, a pantherlike effigy of a man,
notwithstanding his correct dinner attire, the monocle which hung from
his neck and the signet ring upon his little finger. He closed the door
carefully behind him.

"And what," he asked, "does Caroline Loyd want of us?"

"Nothing of you," she answered curtly. "My visit is to Commodore
Jasen."

"We have friends dining," he explained, "local notabilities with whom we
wish to stand well. It is, in fact, our dbut into local society,
stage-managed, I am afraid, by the local land agent, but still,
important to us. The Commodore thought that perhaps I might deputise."

"The Commodore should have known better," she said coldly. "He can take
his own time. I shall wait for him here."

"As you wish," he observed. "I can tell you all you want to know."

"I shall hear it," she replied, "from the man whom I hold responsible."

Jake Arnott, once, alas, graduate of Harvard, later of Chicago, now
major-domo in the house of crime, turned on his heel and left the room
without a word or gesture of farewell. The minutes passed. To Caroline,
waiting before the half-opened window, with the flash of the lighthouse
every thirty seconds travelling over the tops of the trees, and the
murmur of the sea in her ears, those minutes seemed to become
crystallised nuggets in her memory, each one with its measure of burning
passion. When at last the period of waiting came to an end, it did so
without warning. There was no sound of footsteps outside, but the door
was quietly opened and Commodore Jasen stepped deliberately in. His
dinner clothes were as immaculate as his yachting costume. His eyes
shone with sympathy. His attitude was half apologetic, half deprecating.

"Madame," he said, "a thousand apologies. If I have kept you waiting, I
regret. We have friends dining from different parts of the Riviera. It
was too late to put them off, even in face of such a tragedy."

Caroline Loyd listened. She had the air of one who had come to listen
more than to talk.

"I shall have to wait a great deal longer, Commodore," she said, with a
peculiar smile at the corner of her lips. "I think that my feet will
have to beat time through life for many years, before I gain what I seek
from you. For the present, you can guess, I think, what it is I need."

"My dear lady, in any expression of my regret--"

"Do you mind leaving off?" she interrupted coldly. "We can do without
all that rubbish. I want to hear from your own lips that you are the
person responsible for what happened yesterday."

There was a brief silence. Commodore Jasen's face had lost its
benevolent expression. There was a glint of something repellent in his
eyes. It was the same light which had flashed its terrifying message
into her apprehension, when he had waved his hand in sarcastic farewell
from the wooden quay some thirty-six hours ago. Still he persevered.

"Do you need to come here to ask that?" he demanded. "I am the lessee of
the Chteau and I am the person who was responsible for inviting your
brother to take a ride with us upon the sea."

That, for the moment, was the end of Commodore Jasen. Something seemed
to blaze out from the girl which paralysed any retort upon his part. In
the duologue, for the next few minutes, he was no longer a vital
factor.

"I know who you are, Samuel Lebworthy," she cried. "I know what you
stand for. I know where you will end. Three years' mild detention,
probably, while the others swing. You're as clever as hell--you play the
show piece always in front of the tragedy to divert people's attention.
You and I may have plenty to say to each other in the future, but don't
waste my time to-night. Answer me in plain words--exactly what have you
done with my brother?"

"He got just what was coming to him, that's all. Might come to any of us
at any time," he added, critically selecting a cigarette from his case.
"He got put away."

She listened with unchanged expression.

"You admit it?"

There was a look of gentle remonstrance in his blue eyes.

"Admit it? What a stupid word. It was quite inevitable. Ned knew that."

"Tell me how you did it," she begged. "Ned was a better man than you
with fists or a gun, and he could have swum home from your harbour."

The Commodore reflected for a moment.

"Perhaps. But no brains to speak of. I shot him through the cabin
window, with one of the new Derlicher rifles, just after we had rounded
the Point. As you people were making such a fuss we fished up the body
last night and took it out where no one is likely to find it. Anything
else?"

"You are in a hurry to return to your guests?"

"Not particularly. I am playing bridge, but my hand is down and there
are two or three to take my place. If there is anything else you have to
say, let me hear it, now that we are alone together."

"Where did Ned cross your gang?" she demanded.

"My dear young lady," he remonstrated, "it is scarcely possible that you
do not know. What has happened has been just in the ordinary course of
events. You would have thought nothing of it in Chicago, less in New
York. Ned and I got across over a certain Mr. Timothy D. Ryan, who was
our fellow passenger on the steamer. We both quite naturally marked him
down. There wasn't room for both of us. That's the long and short of it.
We had it up against Ned already and Ned went; the better man survives."

"Are you the better man?" she asked.

"Come to me," he replied, "and I'll prove it. We might even consider
giving you a small share in the Ryan business. Ned knew quite well that
we always wanted you both."

She looked at him with scorn in her eyes.

"I am perfectly satisfied with my position. I prefer to work alone. One
thing I do claim, however, and that is a half share in the Ryan
business. If you refuse to give it me, you may regret it."

He looked at her in mild amusement.

"Just what do your threats mean?" he asked. "You are perhaps thinking of
the French police? Would it be possible that you know so little of the
etiquette of our profession?"

"No," she replied. "I am not thinking of the French police. There are
surer ways than that."

"You have nothing of a gang to work with," he pointed out. "I know the
few stragglers on whom you rely, inside out. They will take you nowhere.
If you butt up against us, you will be wiped out. Come along to the
other side of the street, Caroline. We'll take care of you."

She laughed in his face.

"Is this a challenge or an invitation?" she asked.

His fingers toyed for a moment with his white moustache.

"You can take it which way you like," he said. "Come to us alone, cut
out those other suckers, and you shall stand in even shares with Jake
and myself in all fresh business. Those little witches we shipped over
from New York mean nothing to us. Who you are or where you come from,
God only knows, but you're the sort of woman we want. Make up your mind
to it and come along. I'll fetch you myself some time, if you don't."

On the table by her side was a glass which Jake Arnott had been carrying
in his hand when he had entered the room. She caught it up and hurled it
across at him. With a lightning-like dive he let it pass over his head
and splinter against the fireplace.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," he complained mildly. "We pay a very
heavy rent for this Chteau, and breakages count against us. Am I to
take it that you are not--"

"You are to take it that I am your enemy," she interrupted fiercely.
"You are to take it that whatever scheme you engage in, I shall do my
best to wreck. You are to take it that the spirits of two people dwell
in me--the spirit of Ned and my own. So that's that."

He shrugged his shoulders as he pressed the bell.

"I would rather," he said, "have had you on my side."

       *       *       *       *       *

When, a week or so later, Commodore Jasen and his friend Jake Arnott
strolled out on to the terrace through one of the mercifully opened
windows of the Salle Prive at Monte Carlo, they received a most
unpleasant shock. Caroline Loyd, in a most becoming after-bathing
costume of embroidered white serge, was lying there, gazing dreamily
away towards Italy.

"Hello," she murmured. "Where's Mr. Timothy B. Ryan?"

"What did you say?" the Commodore demanded.

"Mr. Timothy B. Ryan," she repeated. "President of the Chicago Wheat
Crushing Mills. A very important man, Mr. Ryan. I thought you were here
to look after him."

"What the mischief do you know about Tim Ryan?" Jake Arnott inquired,
his teeth and eyes glittering.

"Oh, quite a great deal," she replied. "He crossed on the same steamer
with Ned, you know, and we had some very interesting plans all arranged
with him. I can't quite get your scheme, but I know that it's something
very important. It means keeping him out of the way for a fortnight at
least, doesn't it? Well, I suppose that might be done, but I am rather
curious," she went on, with an insolent little smile, "as to how you
mere men can do it. That Zeigfeld Folly show you have over at the
Chteau won't make much impression on Mr. Timothy Ryan, I don't think."

"Curse you," Commodore Jasen muttered.

"A compliment," she acknowledged. "If I am to be cursed, I am to be
feared. In this case, I should not think there was the slightest doubt
about it. I am a very dangerous woman."

"Out with it," Jake Arnott demanded. "What's your game, Caroline? Come
over with it."

"Why on earth should I tell you?" she answered lazily. "Ned discovered
him and, if you want to know what I think about it, I believe that's the
sole reason why you bumped him off. I offered to come in fifty-fifty and
our dear friend the Commodore evaded the point."

"Well, what about it now?" the latter asked ungraciously.

She scrutinised her fingernails for a moment.

"I am inclined," she confessed, "to rescue him."

"Why?"

"He would be very grateful. Gratitude is sometimes more remunerative
even than blackmail. He is a widower. I might marry him."

They turned their backs upon her. She followed them into the room. At
the nearest table, in the most important place by the side of the
croupier, sat Mr. Timothy B. Ryan, and the stacks of chips in front of
him amounted to many thousands. He greeted his friends with a cheerful
grin. They saw, however, with sinking hearts, his eyes travel over their
shoulders, the lines of mirth fade from his face and something new
appear, something which they had never previously associated with Mr.
Timothy B. Ryan. There was a faint odour of perfume just by the
Commodore's left nostril. He felt a touch upon his shoulder.

"Won't you please present me to Mr. Ryan? I believe a friend of mine
crossed from New York with him."

Mr. Ryan rose to his feet. The fact that he had thirty _mille_ upon the
table and that the ball was spinning seemed to be a negligible
happening. He gazed instead into the face of the most beautiful woman he
had ever seen in his life, a woman too who was smiling at him.

"I don't worry about your friend, Miss Loyd," he said, "but I am surely
glad to know you."

She smiled into his face. The ball dropped into its appointed
destination. Mr. Timothy B. Ryan had lost his thirty thousand francs.
The incident left him unmoved. It seemed to him that he had found
something far more wonderful.

"The Commodore has just invited me to have a drink," she lied sweetly.
"You would not care to come with us?"

He swept his pile of chips from the table and dropped them into his
jacket pocket. A few he left to mark his place.

"A drink," he confessed, "was just what I was needing."

"You're sure you are not missing the game?" she asked.

"Miss Loyd," he declared with fervour, "I am missing nothing that won't
be made up to me a hundred times over in the bar there."

Her little laugh was a quite satisfactory response.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Timothy B. Ryan, comfortably established in the principal guest room
at the Chteau d'Antibes, yawned in somewhat aggrieved fashion as he
opened his eyes on the following morning to find his host standing by
his bedside. It was before the hour at which he had expected to be
called, and he raised himself in bed somewhat sleepily.

"You're an early bird, Commodore, aren't you?" he remarked. "I ordered
my coffee for nine o'clock."

"That's all right," the other assured him. "It will arrive in a few
minutes. I thought I would like just a short chat with you before you
get up."

"Good for you," Mr. Ryan, who had drunk a great deal of whisky the night
before, murmured drowsily. "Say, you boys got me lit up last night. I'll
be the better after a swim. Any news of the lady?"

"You will probably see her during the morning," his host confided. "She
has a good many friends over at the hotel and we all meet about cocktail
time. Meanwhile, there's just a word or two I'd like to say."

Mr. Ryan swung a couple of rather pudgy pyjama-clad legs out of bed,
stretched himself vigorously and rubbed his eyes.

"Shoot," he invited.

"Did you ever hear by any chance, Mr. Ryan, of the Lebworthy Gang? They
started in Chicago, you know, and then moved to New York."

"Yes, I have heard of them," was the prompt admission. "Who hasn't?
Pretty quiet they've been lately."

"That," Commodore Jasen explained, "is because they have once more
changed their quarters. Chicago to New York--New York to Antibes."

Mr. Timothy B. Ryan paused in the midst of a yawn.

"Who the hell are you getting at?" he demanded incredulously.

"No one," was the suave reply. "I am telling you the truth. It saves
time. You are in the hands of the Lebworthy Gang at the present moment.
It will cost you five hundred thousand dollars. Not so very much for a
man who must have cleaned up ten or twelve millions last year."

Mr. Timothy Ryan's mouth was wide open, his hands were clasping his
knees, his position on the edge of the bed was precarious and his
general appearance ridiculous.

"Are you kidding me, Commodore?"

"Not a bit of it. I am trying to save time. Explanations are so
troublesome. I thought if we could finish our little business in the way
I can suggest, you might enjoy your coffee, and I could probably, if you
behave sensibly, devise some means of pleasant entertainment for you
during the latter part of the day."

"So I am in the hands of the Lebworthy Gang, am I?" Mr. Ryan reflected.

"You are."

"And it is going to cost me five hundred thousand dollars?"

"It is."

The victim of this unfortunate circumstance scratched his head.

"How," he asked shrewdly, "do you expect to get that money from me at
all, and how, having got it, do you expect to keep my mouth shut?"

"Pertinent questions," the Commodore admitted. "I will answer you as
briefly as possible. We start with some knowledge of your affairs, you
see. Here," he went on, drawing out a cable form from his pocket, "is a
despatch written out to your firm, which will be handed in this morning
at Monte Carlo."

     "'Streak of bad luck here. Cable five hundred thousand Barclay's
     Bank, Monte Carlo. Timothy B. Ryan, Chteau d'Antibes.'"

"Good," Mr. Ryan approved. "That's the first step. The half million
dollars will be cabled over, all right. How do you expect to get the
bank to hand the money over to you?"

"You will endorse them over to us upon persuasion."

"And keep my mouth shut afterwards?"

Commodore Jasen shrugged his shoulders.

"There are men who like to live," he reflected, "and there are others
who prefer to die. You may be one of the others. There were one or two
in Chicago. There were two in New York."

"You mean you would put me away?"

"Nothing in this world," was the emphatic declaration, "would be more
certain. You might," he went on, "bring some slight inconvenience upon
us, you might even force us to change our habitation, although that I
think very doubtful, but there is nothing surer in this world--and you
know it, Timothy Ryan--than that your days upon this earth would be
numbered. You would be lying somewhere under the sunshine with a bullet
through your heart, or somewhere deep down in the Mediterranean,
surrounded by curious little fish with unpleasant masticatory habits. No
one is ever alive twenty-four hours after the Lebworthy Gang has doomed
them to die."

"Well, well!" Mr. Ryan murmured thoughtfully.

"You have to make the choice," his host went on. "I believe you are
worth something like twenty millions. You have to make your choice
whether you will go on living with nineteen million five hundred
thousand or leave twenty millions to your legatees, whoever they may be.
To a reasonable man, the choice should be simple."

"Could I have my coffee and a bath on this?" Mr. Ryan asked.

His host touched the bell.

"You can indeed," he assented.

A sombre-looking manservant answered the summons--of French appearance
but with an American accent. He arranged a breakfast table by the side
of the bed, but Mr. Ryan pointed to the recess in front of the window.

"Guess I'll taste a little of this Mediterranean breeze," he decided.
"It will cool my head off."

"You can now prepare the bath," the Commodore directed, "and put out
some suitable clothes for Mr. Ryan. Perhaps you would prefer a bathing
suit?"

"That goes all right with me," the latter agreed, stumping across the
room. "Coffee smells good."

The servant, evidently a well-trained one, produced a dressing gown in
which the visitor robed himself. The Commodore drew up an easy-chair on
the other side of the window. Together they looked out on the very
pleasant view--the little harbour below with the famous motor boat and
sailing craft, and beyond the open sea.

"Nice spot this," the prisoner observed, as he poured out his coffee.

"Charming," his companion agreed. "Very expensive to rent, though," he
went on, studying his finger nails.

"I have struck some expensive hotels," Mr. Ryan confided, as he buttered
a piece of toast, "but five hundred thousand dollars for bed and
board--for how long?"

"A week with pleasure," his host suggested.

"Well, even for a week that's a little stiff. Besides which, the great
inducement I was promised never appeared."

"Surely Zo and Laura have their attractions," the Commodore
remonstrated.

"The usual Broadway stuff," his guest criticised. "I can pack that sort
of rubbish in my own satchel any time I come across, if I want to. But
the other--" Mr. Ryan kissed the tips of his pudgy fingers out of the
window, towards the hotel where Caroline Loyd was at that moment also
looking seawards and making plans. "You might send the cable, anyway,"
he decided. "I guess they'll get it at opening time this morning.
Something like six hours behind, aren't we? They'll toot the money
across. Between now and then, I can make up my mind whether I part or
whether I take on the Lebworthy Gang."

Commodore Jasen smiled.

"You are the type of man, sir," he said, "with whom I like to transact
business."

       *       *       *       *       *

Commodore Jasen proved himself rather a severe gaoler, for it appeared
that his guest developed a headache during the morning, and it was the
Commodore who sat with Caroline Loyd at one of the tented tables in the
open-air bar at the Cap, and sipped a wonderful concoction of orange
juice at a few minutes before luncheon time. Caroline, in the opinion of
every one there, had that morning surpassed herself. Her pyjamas were
the most delicate shade of pearly pink, their cut was the last degree of
elegance. From the shine of her burnished hair to the modified polish of
her toe-nails, she was the most perfect thing that the Cap d'Antibes
could produce.

"What have you done with my admirer?" she asked querulously.

"He is awaiting a despatch from New York," was the urbane reply. "As
soon as it arrives and our little piece of business is transacted, it
will give us all the greatest pleasure to have you dine and meet him
again."

"I wonder," she reflected, "what it would be like to dine at the
Chteau."

"We should do our best to make it agreeable," her companion assured her.

"Yes," she meditated, "I am sure you would do that. You made his last
few hours agreeable to Ned, didn't you?"

Commodore Jasen showed every desire to be tolerant.

"You know perfectly well that Ned asked for it," he pointed out. "He was
already upon the black list, and we knew for a fact that he had invited
our friend Ryan to visit him at your hotel, although he was quite well
aware that we had our own plans for the entertainment of that gentleman.
You must admit that it was stupid."

"Yes, it was stupid," she agreed. "I warned him."

"We do not wish," the Commodore continued emphatically, "to run these
unnecessary risks. We do not wish to have to proceed to these extreme
measures. Year by year crime is becoming more civilised. We try to make
a fine art of it. We must have money. We collect it from those who can
afford to pay, and we prefer to cut out the rough stuff altogether. On
the other hand, when the necessity arises, you know very well what our
reputation is."

"Yes, I know," she admitted.

"We can be, and often are, absolutely and entirely ruthless," the
Commodore confided, a queer unpleasant expression tightening up the
lines of his face. "I talked it over with the others when we made this
move. We are going to work peaceably if we can, but if any one doesn't
want that sort of treatment, if there is any one who hesitates to come
across with what we want, Chicago and New York won't have anything on
Antibes."

"And what about Mr. Ryan?"

"We are hoping," the Commodore proceeded gently, dropping his voice a
little and exchanging a benevolent smile with a group of passing
acquaintances, "that there will be no trouble. We do not wish for
trouble. What we want is half a million dollars."

"And none for me," she grumbled.

"Naturally not," was the firm reply. "You can leave your friends and
come to us altogether on reasonable terms if you wish. Otherwise--hands
off!"

Caroline drew a little sigh and smoothed the silk of her pyjamas
petulantly.

"I consider that Ryan _was_ our business," she declared.

"Possession," the Commodore remarked amiably, "is nine tenths of the
law."

The under concierge from the hotel had paused at their table. He
addressed Caroline.

"There is a telephone message for Madame from Marseilles," he announced.

For a moment Caroline frowned. She glanced swiftly at her companion to
see if he had overheard. He was watching with dreamy eyes the flight of
some seagulls.

"Is the message put through down here?" she enquired.

The boy pointed to the telephone booth.

"It is here, Madame."

Caroline rose to her feet.

"I am wanted," she said. "Afterwards it is luncheon time. Au revoir,
Commodore."

He rose and bowed gallantly.

"Au revoir, Miss Loyd."

       *       *       *       *       *

The presiding genius of Barclay's Bank, Monte Carlo, was evidently of a
hospitable disposition, for a portion of the floor space of the bank was
devoted to a long table covered with copies of the latest journals and
maps and surrounded with easy-chairs. The public, clients of the bank at
any rate, were invited to treat the place as a sort of club, and as the
chairs presented a very good vantage ground for pouncing upon the
manager, or under manager, when he passed that way, the unspoken
invitation was freely accepted.

Mr. Timothy B. Ryan and Commodore Jasen sat, on the following morning,
side by side at this table. They had cleared a little space in front of
them and an official had deposited there a blotting pad, ink and pens.
Mr. Tunney, the bank manager, introduced to big business, was always at
his best.

"Yes, we received the credit before closing time yesterday," he
admitted. "Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Ryan. What can we do for
you?"

"Our friend," Commodore Jasen explained, "has been exceedingly
unfortunate at the tables. I daresay you have read of the high play at
Juan and at Palm Beach? Mr. Ryan has been a heavy loser at both Casinos,
besides losing here. I have been supplying him with money to the extent
of my means, but although I don't call myself a poor man, he has, I
confess, finished me off. His first desire, now that his money has
arrived, is to pay his debts."

The manager produced a book of blank cheque forms and laid them on the
table.

"If Mr. Ryan likes to give you an open cheque," he said, "we can cash it
at once, or you can open a deposit account with us, Commodore. You bank
at Lloyds, I think?"

"I do for the moment," the other assented. "Mr. Ryan's desire is to
transfer the whole amount of his credit into my name."

The bank manager was startled.

"The whole amount?" he repeated.

"Well, I guess so," the American sighed. "Might leave twenty thousand
dollars for some sort of side show."

"I should like a draft payable in Rome for one hundred thousand
dollars," Commodore Jasen continued, "one payable in Paris for two
hundred thousand, one payable in London for a hundred thousand, and two
millions in French money here."

The bank manager made a few notes.

"This will take a little time," he pointed out.

"Get to work at once," Commodore Jasen suggested pleasantly but with the
necessary amount of impressiveness in his tone. "Mr. Ryan and I will go
up to the Royalty Bar and see you again in half an hour."

The manager hurried away. Timothy B. Ryan bit savagely at the stump of
his cigar.

"I guess I'm making a fool of myself over this business," he muttered.
"Why should I stand for losing half a million dollars, even though you
are the Lebworthy Gang? The police here can't be such a dud crowd as not
to fasten onto a big thing when they're put wise to it."

Commodore Jasen appeared to be profoundly indifferent. He flicked a
particle of dust from the sleeve of his blue serge coat.

"We have had all this out before," he reminded his friend. "You can walk
out of the bank if you like and refuse to do another thing about it. You
will probably be alive for twenty-four hours, unless you go to the
police. You certainly won't last a week, though. It's a mortifying
experience, no doubt, to have to pay blackmail, but you have just this
consolation about it--we never touch the same person more than once."

Mr. Ryan looked more morose than ever. Suddenly his whole expression
changed. He laid down his cigar on the edge of the table, shook the ash
from his waistcoat, and, springing to his feet, held out his hand.

"If this isn't Miss Loyd," he exclaimed. "The one person I've been
wanting to see."

"Not nearly so much as I and a few other people apparently have been
wanting to see you," she replied, as she shook hands. "How are you,
Commodore? Let me present my friend--Monsieur Drouplain, Commodore
Jasen, Mr. Timothy B. Ryan."

Monsieur Drouplain, who was a short, stiff little man with closely
cropped black hair and a fierce black moustache, had apparently very
little use for Commodore Jasen. He laid hold of the American's hand and
grasped it.

"You are Mr. Timothy B. Ryan of the firm Ryan and Butler of Chicago?" he
demanded. "Is that not so?"

"Why, sure," was the hearty reply. "Fancy your knowing about my
business."

"It is rather my business to know other people's," the newcomer
murmured.

"Monsieur Drouplain," Caroline explained, "is the Chef de la Sret at
Marseilles. He is over here on account of some cables he received
yesterday from New York. You have good friends, Mr. Ryan. Some of them
over there seemed to have the idea that you were getting into trouble."

"Mr. Ryan will give me ten minutes of his time at once," the Chef de la
Sret begged, "and I will explain the matter. I am staying at the Htel
de Paris. Let us proceed there."

He led the way to the door, his grasp on his companion's shoulder a very
firm one. The latter looked back.

"I guess I can sign those documents a little later on," he called out to
his host. "Come right along down to the hotel and bring Miss Loyd with
you. We might see about a bite of luncheon."

The two men disappeared through the swing doors. Commodore Jasen had
scarcely moved in his chair. His eyes were like steel points of fire.

"Does this mean intervention on your part, Caroline?" he asked quietly.
"You know the price that you will pay? You know the unspoken rule which
exists between us and your people and every one indulging in our
activities in every city of the States and the world? You know what
resort to the police means?"

"Of course I do, my dear man," Caroline assured him, peering into the
mirror which she had drawn from her bag.

"It means death," the Commodore continued, without a quiver in his tone.
"It has meant death without a single break for the last fifteen years.
Even the police stand on one side. Not one living soul has escaped."

Caroline thrust back a refractory wisp of fair hair underneath the white
cap she was wearing.

"Untidy, aren't I?" she observed. "You see, we motored fast.... I know
perfectly well the etiquette of our profession, my friend, but you will
have to believe for a moment what you can prove afterwards with ease. It
was not I who sent for the police--I have not approached them in any
way. I have divulged nothing concerning your friend Mr. Ryan."

"Then what was the meaning of the telephone message from Marseilles
yesterday?" he snapped.

"I always knew you had exceptionally good ears," she sighed. "All the
same, you will have to take my word for it that that message had nothing
to do with the police."

The bank manager, who had an eye for feminine beauty, approached the
two. He bowed, but Commodore Jasen was in no humour to introduce anybody
to this pest of a girl--especially such a valuable acquaintance as a
banker.

"Rather a formidable piece of business you and your friend have given
us, Commodore," he remarked. "I thought I'd better tell you that it will
take at least another hour to get all the papers in order and your money
counted out. If you can bring Mr. Ryan back to sign after lunch, I think
it would be better. You see, we have a lot of tourists here this morning
too, from the American liner in port."

"I am so glad we have not to wait any longer," Caroline murmured. "I was
just trying to persuade the Commodore," she added, looking up at the
bank manager with a very sweet smile, "to take me out and give me a
cocktail."

"The Commodore," the manager declared, as he himself opened the door for
them, "is a very fortunate fellow."

Her companion objected to entering Caroline's car and they drove down to
the Htel de Paris in his own open limousine. He whispered a word to his
chauffeur as he stepped out, and the latter was visible, a few moments
later, loitering in the shadows of the bar entrance. Caroline selected
two comfortable chairs and the Commodore lighted a cigarette with steady
fingers. He had chosen a place on the right-hand side of Caroline and
within a few yards of the open door. A very close observer might have
noticed something sinister in the way his fingers were caressing the
protuberance in his hip pocket. For anything he knew, this might be a
trap, and he was not to be caught unprepared. He took swift stock of the
room and was forced to decide that there was not a suspicious-looking
person in it. Caroline herself had edged her chair a little closer to
his, as though prepared for a few minutes' intimate and pleasant
conversation. There was not a shadow of fear in her eyes, although she
must have noticed his chauffeur lounging outside and the stealthy
movements of her companion's fingers. He waited till the glasses were
placed on the table before them, then he leaned towards her.

"Caroline Loyd," he said, and his voice, although it was pleasantly
modulated, was full of menace, "if this is a trap, I want you to
understand that the first person who goes out will be you. Two of us
have you covered."

"Don't suggest such unpleasant things," she begged. "You are spoiling my
appetite and I am ravenously hungry. You've got nothing against me. I'm
even hoping that you will invite me to lunch."

"How is it that the Chef de la Sret of Marseilles has come here to
look for Ryan and it was you who received the telephone message from
Marseilles yesterday morning?" Commodore Jasen demanded. "I'm waiting
for an answer to that question and it is about time I got it. Don't
flirt about with that mirror or come any nearer to me, Caroline. I can
see him coming in just as well as you. You may think the odds are in
your favour, but they aren't. There are two others here who've got him
covered--and you too--beside myself. If it's a plant, you'll get what
you deserve from me. Stay where you are."

"My dear man," she remonstrated, "don't be absurd. _Ici, Monsieur_," she
called out.

The newcomer advanced with a smile and a bow.

"Dick," she said, "I congratulate you, for the Commodore--who is really
a very clever man--believes that you are Monsieur Drouplain, Chef de la
Sret at Marseilles! Where did you leave Mr. Ryan?"

"He's put it over the purser and got the state suite on the boat," was
the reply from the fierce little man in unexpectedly broad American.
"They're just off."

"Who is this person and what is he talking about?" the Commodore gasped.

"Well," Caroline explained, "his name is Dick Ferber. He's one of our
little lot. Four of us altogether, you know. Two we left at
Marseilles--Dick had a little business on there--Ralph is in Antibes,
and myself. Dick, shake hands with the Commodore."

"Glad to know you, I'm sure," the little man remarked with a broad grin.

The Commodore did not reciprocate. Caroline shrugged her shoulders.

"My dear man," she begged, "you must be a sport. There is nothing in our
Magna Charta against either of us outwitting the other if the
opportunity arises. If I had squealed, I knew quite well that I should
have signed my own death warrant. I never dreamed of doing such a thing.
You chose to cut me out of it and run this little affair with Mr. Ryan
by yourself. I decided to teach you a lesson and to play a hand against
you. I've played it fairly. You have lost, and Mr. Ryan, who is now on
the ocean, has saved half a million dollars. He will keep his mouth shut
and there's no trouble anywhere. What about that lunch?"

Commodore Jasen drew a long breath and summoned the barman.

"Telephone over for the _matre d'htel_," he directed, "to bring the
menu from the restaurant."




II

THE TABLE UNDER THE TREE


There were a scattered few of the little company of _al fresco_ diners
at the Restaurant de la Pomme d'Or at St. Paul, not so interested
perhaps in their dinners or their companions, who realised what was
about to happen. To the majority, however, the sudden darkness came
almost as a shock. A moment before, the whole place had been flooded
with moonlight, their plates, their fellow diners, the wine in their
glasses, the anxious face of the one overworked waiter hurrying back and
forth all plainly visible. Then, without the slightest warning, came
darkness. A fragment of inky black cloud had floated across the surface
of the moon with an amazing result. No longer could one look down upon
the valley below, stretching away towards the pastures and the flowery
land which led seawards, a vivid and brilliant picture of moonlit
beauty, every tree visible and the rise and fall of the land as easily
to be traced as at midday. Below now was nothing but a black chasm of
darkness, with an occasional pin prick of light from the cottages or
farmhouses on the hillside. Where before it seemed to be a fairy
panorama, one could lean now over the terrace wall and peer over the
edge of the world into an impenetrable gloom. The little company of
guests seated at small tables became suddenly like shadowy, unreal
figures, chaotic in shape, their faces blurred streaks of white upon the
darkness.

There was a moment or two of almost complete silence, then a little
nervous laughter. The waiter was groping his way towards the electric
switch which turned on a shaded lamp at each table. The girl who
assisted him stumbled against a tree and dropped two of the plates she
was carrying with a crash. Almost simultaneously there was another
sound, clear and vibrant with agony--without a doubt a human cry. At
first, it seemed as though it might have come from the darkness below,
then to almost every one came a feeling of shivering apprehension. It
had come from somewhere in their very midst, from one of themselves.
People began peering about with terrified eyes. Neighbours and friends
at different tables called to one another for reassurance.

The owner of the restaurant put his head out from the doorway which led
to the inside premises and called loudly to the waiter to hasten with
the switch. No one thought of eating or drinking during those tense
seconds. Every one was eager, yet fearful, for the coming of the light.
At last from the first of the tables came a flicker, and four startled
people swung round in their chairs to gaze terror-stricken into the
gloom. The same thing happened at the second and third. Then, as the
light flashed out from the fourth, the waiter stepped back with a
shout--it seemed like the scream of a woman. People rose in their places
and simultaneously through the wide-flung doors of the hotel restaurant
came a broad stream of added illumination. The fourth table was occupied
by a single man only. In the partial darkness there might have seemed
nothing unusual in his somewhat grotesque attitude. In the clearer light
one saw now that he was half sprawling across the table and that there
was a very sinister-looking glitter from something rigid between his
shoulder blades.... Several of the women began to shriek. One fainted.
The men rushed forward and would have pressed to the table itself, but
Monsieur Canis, the owner of the place, was there to push them back.

"Every one must stand clear," he insisted. "No one must come near the
table before the police. Jean has gone for the gendarmes."

"Send for the doctor too," some one called out. "The man may not be
dead."

But there were very ugly evidences upon the table that the affair was
already hopeless.

       *       *       *       *       *

The village gendarme arrived upon a scene of much confusion. Some of the
lights had refused to burn, and the whole of the little outdoor
_terrasse_, bordered with tables, and night by night an oasis of
pleasure and merriment, seemed turned into a grim and ghastly tableau in
which the figures of the seated guests had grown shadowy and sinister.
To add to the weird effect, one of the stray dogs that haunted the place
had a strain of bloodhound in him, and was seated on his haunches
howling. The perspiring official wiped the sweat from his forehead and
gave excited directions to Monsieur Canis.

"No one must leave the place," he commanded. "Those at the adjoining
tables must remain in their seats. I am going to search for the
Commissaire. Who will lend an automobile?"

There were plenty of offers, and by the time the man took his leave,
having sipped plentifully from a glass of brandy which had been thrust
into his hand, the doctor of the little hill town had arrived. The
latter was more of the _savant_ than the ordinary practitioner and he
was scared and startled at the sight which he was called upon to face.
His fingers stole tremblingly forward toward their task. His examination
disturbed nothing: it was made with the gentleness of a woman. In a very
few minutes he rose to his feet and brushed the dust mechanically from
his trousers.

"The man was killed instantaneously," he announced. "The blade of that
knife is through the heart. He could have known nothing, scarcely even
felt any pain. Who is he?"

Monsieur Canis held up his hand. It was beginning to occur to him that,
although, possibly, he was a ruined man, he was temporarily in a
position of importance.

"No questions," he insisted. "It is for the police, this. Every one must
remain in their places."

The gates into the little enclosure, closed perhaps once or twice in a
lifetime, were pushed to, but there seemed to be no one there who was in
the least anxious to leave. Most of the diners were members of the
artist colony who lived together, more or less communally, in one
establishment close at hand, and always took their evening meals at the
restaurant. There were one or two visitors from Nice, for the place had
a vogue, and a few others from Juan and Cagnes. They stood or sat about
in little groups, talking. The proprietor went from one to the other.

"If any one would wish to eat inside," he suggested, "it is possible, so
long as they don't leave the place. Nothing else can be served here.
Inside, there is emptiness."

But no one wanted to go inside.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Commissaire arrived. He sprang from the automobile and was across
the open space, round which the dining tables were arranged, in half a
dozen swift strides. He was long and lantern-jawed, with a hungry mouth
and enquiring eyes. A torrent of words streamed from his lips. The two
gendarmes whom he had brought with him and Monsieur Canis hastened to do
his bidding. In less than five minutes he had made a hurried examination
of the dead man, drawn a circle of chalk around the scene of the
tragedy, across which no one was permitted to tread, and established
himself at a table dragged into the centre of the courtyard a few yards
away. He spoke first to Monsieur Canis, who explained that no one had
witnessed the tragedy, that a passing cloud had completely obscured the
moon and, during the brief interval of darkness, the murdered man's
death cry had suddenly startled everybody. He himself, Monsieur Canis,
had been in the kitchen and had heard nothing.

"The name of the deceased?" the Commissaire barked out.

There was only one of the diners who could tell him that--a painter,
strangely attired in a workman's blouse and a pair of loose trousers.

"It was I whom he saw," he explained, "when he came to the Chteau
Pension for quarters as an artist. He told me that his name was Paul
Legarge and that he was a painter."

"What nationality?"

The other shook his head.

"He spoke French, but it was scarcely the French of a Frenchman. English
or American perhaps."

"Has any one else here spoken with the deceased?" the Commissaire
demanded.

The waiter and Monsieur Canis confessed to having exchanged banalities
concerning the view and on the matter of food. He had spoken always in
French.

"Was he dining alone?" the Commissaire asked.

"Naturally," Monsieur Canis assented.

"Who was at the table behind?" was the next question.

An _avocat_ from Nice and his lady friend acknowledged themselves. The
Commissaire took their names.

"Now, tell me," he said, hunching his shoulders and leaning forward.
"You were within two metres of this murdered man. Can you tell me that
you saw no one plunge that knife into his shoulders?"

"I saw no one," the _avocat_ declared. "Nor could any one else in my
position. It was impossible to see even the table. As for Madame, she
was facing me, with her back towards the whole affair. I neither heard
nor saw any one. I simply heard the cry and saw nothing until the lights
went on."

"And there was no one standing up or moving about the place?"

"No one except the waiter, and his hand was on the switch when the
lights went on."

The Commissaire glared round at everybody. It seemed apparent that he
considered every one of them a possible, even a probable assassin.

"It is a circumstance most extraordinary," he declared, "that in this
small place, during a temporary cessation of moonlight, a man should
have been murdered in sight of all of you and no one apparently saw the
assassin leave this place or heard anything but the cry. There is only
one conclusion," he said, stretching out his hand. "The murderer is
still present."

There was a little shiver of emotion. Every one looked fearfully around.
For the moment there was no one who was not under suspicion, from
Monsieur Canis himself and his pale-faced, weedy little waiter, to
Monsieur Plessis, the wealthy _avocat_ from Nice.

"Has this Monsieur Legarge dined here before?" the Commissaire demanded,
resuming his examination.

"Several times," Monsieur Canis acknowledged. "On the last occasion with
one of the young ladies who dance at the small cabaret up the hill."

The Commissaire grasped his pen. There were possibilities here.

"What ladies?" he demanded. "I know nothing of any cabaret show here."

"They were two young ladies who, with another one, I believe, came over
from America some months ago to entertain the guests of an American
millionaire living down at the Chteau d'Antibes--Commodore Jasen.
Chiefly, one believes, for their amusement, the Commodore permitted them
to give a small entertainment here one night a week. This Monsieur
Legarge was apparently acquainted with them, for he brought one of the
young ladies here to dine."

"She is not here to-night?" the Commissaire snapped.

"One has seen nothing of either of the young ladies for some days,"
Monsieur Canis replied.

"This unfortunate man--had he an apartment in St. Paul?"

"Barely a hundred yards away."

"Is there any one here present," the Commissaire demanded, "who can tell
me more about the dead man, or who saw anything of the event of to-night
other than has been described?"

"I saw the man come in," the notary from Nice observed. "One could
scarcely fail to remark him, for he was wearing a claret-coloured shirt
and blue trousers, as though he had come straight from the easel. He
stood by his table for several minutes before he sat down, and seemed to
be looking around, as though to know exactly who was here. He was
restless, too, for after sitting down for a few minutes, he got up and
went inside."

"That was to drink an apritif," Monsieur Canis explained. "He came to
me for it in the bar. He looked round the room as though in search of
some one and went back to his table."

"He gave you the impression of being nervous?" the Commissaire asked the
notary.

The latter assented.

"When he sat down again he even looked over the parapet, as though to
see if there was any one on the terrace below."

The Commissaire stroked his chin.

"If he was afraid of any one," he remarked, "it is strange that he
should have chosen the one table which is in some measure of
obscurity--the table under the tree."

"He had sat there on each of his previous visits," Monsieur Canis
confided.

There was an interruption and revival of interest. Police assistance had
arrived from Nice with a detective and finger-print expert. If anything
was discovered, however, there was little that found its way to the
outside public, for before they even commenced their investigations
every one had been requested to move inside. There were rumours flying
about that night, but nothing else....

The Pomme d'Or closed its doors early and from the street it seemed that
every light was extinguished. The little dancing cabaret in the quaint
Provenal barn a few hundred yards away was never opened. The
inhabitants of St. Paul were forced to discuss the tragedy which had
happened amongst them either in the streets or in their own houses. At a
little before midnight, however, the Commissaire, accompanied by a
gendarme, emerged from the side door of the Pomme d'Or and mounted the
crazy street to the house which had been indicated as the temporary
abode of the murdered man. There was a small crowd on the pavement
outside. Madame, who owned the house, was entertaining a group of
friends and gossips. The coming of the Commissaire created a fresh
thrill.

"It is you who are the proprietress of this house, Madame?" the
Commissaire enquired.

The woman acknowledged the fact.

"Monsieur le Commissaire can ask me any questions," she invited. "He was
a silent man, that Legarge, but he spoke sometimes."

"First of all," the official announced, "I wish to examine his room. I
have the key here."

The woman rose to her feet and pointed up the stairs.

"It was a habit of his," she confided, "to lock always his door when he
went out--honest people though we are. The door faces you at the corner
of the banisters."

The Commissaire mounted, followed by the gendarme. The steps were of
stone and the house was of great age. The gendarme fitted the key in the
lock and pushed open the heavy oak door. The room was in darkness, but
electric light was plentiful in St. Paul, and the gendarme soon found
the switch. A cry of amazement broke from the lips of both men almost
simultaneously.

"Now, who the devil has been here?" the Commissaire exclaimed.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" the gendarme cried.

The room was in wild disorder. Every drawer in a chest had been turned
out and its contents emptied. A despatch box had been broken open and a
collection of unimportant trifles scattered over the table.

"Touch nothing," the Commissaire ordered.

He called in Madame. With uplifted hands she screamed out her amazement.
The Commissaire had a way with women and he silenced her quickly.

"It would appear to be impossible to enter this room without a key," he
said. "Are there any except the one which I found in the dead man's
pocket and have just used?"

"There is another," Madame acknowledged.

"Where is it then?"

The woman hesitated, but there were few people who would have cared to
lie to her fierce questioner.

"There is a young lady who dances here," she confided. "I do not think
that she has often made use of it, but one night I saw Monsieur give her
his spare key."

"For the moment that will do," the Commissaire observed, feeling that he
was getting on very nicely. "Leave us."

The search of the apartment and of the belongings of the murdered man
revealed nothing of interest. His wearing apparel and linen, ordinary
enough, had apparently been bought in Marseilles. There was not the
slightest indication to be gathered from any of the objects displayed as
to his position in life, his poverty or his wealth. If he were indeed a
foreigner, he appeared to possess no passport. There were a few hundred
francs in a shabby pocketbook and a letter directed to "Dear Paul" and
signed only "Max" with no address on it, begging for the loan of a
mille. Whatever Monsieur Legarge had possessed of value had gone!

There was a knock at the door. The gendarme opened it. One of the young
painters of the place--the one who had already spoken of his brief
acquaintance with the murdered man--made tentative appearance.

"There is a thing here which might interest you, Monsieur le
Commissaire," he said politely, as he glanced around the room. "Ah yes,
I see that I was right. Tell me, Monsieur--you are a judge of art
without a doubt--what you think of the dead man's genius?"

There was a row of paintings ranged against the wall, one half finished
upon an easel. The Commissaire examined them superficially.

"I do not know why you intrude with your question," he said gruffly,
"but the work is passable. I am not an artist, but I should say that the
young man had learnt his trade."

"The fact that the paintings are here at all," the other replied, "is a
proof that he had not. Every one of those canvases, including the
unfinished one, he bought from me. You can see, if you look closely,
where my name has been scratched out."

"You mean that they are your work?" the Commissaire demanded.

"Precisely."

"But is such a thing usual that one artist should buy the work of
another?"

"Within my knowledge," the young painter declared, "such a thing has
never happened before. Yet that is what has occurred. Legarge came to me
with a story about an uncle who might come to see his work and if he
found nothing would stop his allowance. He had plenty of money at the
time. He asked me to sell him some pictures. I sold him these and he
dragged one I was halfway through from my easel."

"It is incredible," the police functionary exclaimed.

"Yet it is true," the other affirmed. "Voil, Monsieur le Commissaire,
your murdered man may have been anything in the world, but he was no
artist. He couldn't draw a line, neither could he paint."

The Commissaire stood with folded arms, staring out of the window across
the crazy street to the hills beyond. He might have been posing for a
study of a great man in thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

Commodore Jasen laid down the fishing tackle which he had been
stretching out upon the billiard table, removed his pipe from his mouth
and glanced at the card which was handed to him soon after nine o'clock
on the following morning.

       Monsieur Georges
    Commissaire de Police.

"Show the gentleman in at once," he directed. "Always pays to be civil
to the police," he added to Jake Arnott, who was lounging in a chair at
the farther end of the room.

There was a lightning-like flash from the other's eyes.

"What the hell do the police want here?" he muttered under his breath.

"So far, I haven't an idea," the Commodore replied coolly. "Together
we'll hear what the gentleman has to say."

The Commissaire was ushered in. The Commodore welcomed him pleasantly
and pointed to a chair.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he enquired.

"I am engaged in investigating an unfortunate affair which occurred up
at St. Paul last night," the Commissaire explained. "You have no doubt
heard about it. I understand that a young lady named Mademoiselle
Adams--one of the dancers, in fact, at the small cabaret there--is
staying with you. I should like a few words with her."

"By all means," Commodore Jasen assented, leaning over towards the bell
and pressing the knob. "I cannot say that the young lady is exactly
staying with me, but she, with a friend and an elderly lady who acts as
chaperone, are my guests in the annex here."

The butler presented himself, always the same--sombre, taciturn--with an
air of great reserve.

"Find Miss Adams, if she's not gone out to bathe," his master
instructed, "and ask her to come here for a few minutes. If she is not
in the place, you'd better go down to the bathing pool."

"Very well, sir."

"May I ask," the Commissaire continued, as the man left the room,
"whether it is under your auspices, Commodore, that these two young
ladies have started this cabaret entertainment up at St. Paul?"

Jasen pushed the cigar box toward his guest who, however, declined the
civility. The former considered his reply for several moments.

"Well, I don't know that I can exactly say that it was under my
auspices," he said at last, with some deliberation. "I invited the
young ladies to come here to entertain my guests in the evenings,
expecting to have a much larger house party, but that unfortunate
accident a short time ago--I daresay you remember that a young man
staying at the hotel was drowned whilst aquaplaning with us--was rather
a shock to us all, and I have not been entertaining as much as I
expected. The girls wanted to do something, as they are both very
talented, so they tried this scheme up at St. Paul."

"Was there a performance last night, can you tell me?"

"Fortunately, no."

"Then neither of the young ladies was up at St. Paul?" the Commissaire
continued.

The door was suddenly opened and Miss Zo Adams, in loose pyjamas with
very wide legs, a little cap on the side of her head which only
partially concealed her very attractive yellow hair, came gaily into the
room. She threw a kiss at Arnott and looked at the Commissaire as though
he were some sort of natural curiosity.

"Here is the young lady herself," Commodore Jasen observed, by way of
introduction. "She can answer your questions better perhaps than I can.
This is the Commissaire of Police, Zo," he continued. "You must tell
him anything he wants to know."

She threw herself into a chair and withdrew her cigarette from her lips.
To any one but the closest observer her deportment was both natural and
indifferent. The lines of her tight little mouth, however, were drawn
close together and, underneath her slightly questioning frown, her
small shrewd eyes were filled with a cautious light.

"Shoot," she invited briefly.

"The young lady speaks French?" the Commissaire asked.

"Eloquently, but with a ferocious accent," the Commodore assured him.
"Her mother was a Nioise."

Zo made a grimace at her patron. The police official asked his
questions in French which was eloquently suggestive of his local birth.

"You were acquainted with Monsieur Paul Legarge who was murdered last
night at the Pomme d'Or?"

"Yes, I knew him," the girl answered.

"When did you know that he had been murdered?"

"When every one else in the house did, I suppose--at the time of the
_petit djeuner_ this morning."

"Where and how did you meet him?"

"I never met him, if you mean by that introductions and that sort of
thing," the girl replied carelessly. "In my profession, Monsieur le
Commissaire, if a member of our small audience compliments us upon our
dancing civilly and says pleasant things, the acquaintance is made."

"It was in such fashion that you met Legarge?"

"Precisely. On the night he spoke to us, he took my friend and myself
and Madame Ferber, who goes with us every night when we dance at St.
Paul or Vence, to the Pomme d'Or for a drink after the show. I remember
thinking," she went on, "that he seemed more opulent than any of the
painters I had ever met, for he gave us champagne."

"Since then you have seen him how often?"

"I do not keep a diary," she replied. "Half a dozen to a dozen times,
perhaps. He was quite agreeable."

"Of what nationality was he?" the Commissaire asked.

She looked at him in surprise.

"Is it possible that you are ignorant of that? American, of course."

"Did you admire his skill as a painter?"

"Some of the things in his room seemed pretty good," was the indifferent
rejoinder.

"Do you believe them to be his own work?"

"And why not?"

"Why did you have a key to his room?" the Commissaire asked, with a
sudden change of subject.

The girl looked at him with upraised eyebrows.

"You are indeed inquisitive," she remarked. "Well, I am good-natured. I
will tell you. Probably not for the reason you think. We give our show
in two parts and there is nowhere to rest in the barn. Paul gave me the
key to his room so that I could go in and sit there if I wanted to be
alone between the performances."

"Was Paul Legarge your lover?" the Commissaire demanded.

"Mind your own business," the girl replied promptly.

For the first time, to judge from his set and gloomy features, it might
have been the first time in his life, the Commissaire smiled.

"You decline to answer that question, Mademoiselle?"

"I certainly do."

"Now, think before you answer this one. Were you in Legarge's room last
night?"

"I do not need to think," was the prompt rejoinder. "I was not.
Apparently the poor fellow was not there himself after dinner."

"Were you in St. Paul?"

"I was not. Ask the Commodore. Ask any one. There was no performance
last night. I dined here. Afterwards we sang songs. You do not need to
take my word. You can ask any one."

The Commissaire was disappointed.

"Do you know of any one else who has a key to the murdered man's room?"

"I do not. It is difficult to imagine that there would be more than two.
He kept one himself and the other is at the present moment in my room."

The Commissaire frowned and pulled at his under lip.

"If the young lady's word," Commodore Jasen intervened, "should need any
confirmation, I can assure you as to the truth of what she has told you.
She dined here with her young companion, Mr. Wilson, a neighbour of
ours, and myself. We had quite a pleasant little evening's music.
Certainly the young ladies were not out of our sight until long after
the murder had taken place."

The official thought of that ransacked room, remembered the key which
had been found in the murdered man's pocket, and abstained from speech.
The Commodore glanced at him deprecatingly.

"There is no reason, Monsieur," he pointed out, "for you to take the
young lady's word, or even mine. If we two are not to be believed, the
butler who waited upon us, the chef who cooked the dinner, the second
man who served the coffee and liqueurs, are all here and at your
disposal. Mr. Wilson you will know yourself where to find. It can be
abundantly proved," he concluded, "that the two young ladies dined here
and did not leave these premises until after midnight. We were inclined
to be light-hearted last night. I think it must have been half-past
twelve before we broke off."

The Commissaire listened in stony silence, saluted stiffly and turned
away.

"Mademoiselle is not leaving the neighbourhood?" he enquired, as he
waited at the door for the servant whom his host had summoned.

"You bet I'm not," the young lady assured him. "I beg your pardon," she
added, repeating her intentions in French. "So long as the bathing
remains good and the Commodore is agreeable, this is my home."

The butler threw open the door. The uninvited visitor took conventional
but ungracious leave. The Commodore resumed the unravelling of his
fishing line.

"A type," he murmured.

       *       *       *       *       *

The inky black cloud which had thrown its protecting gloom over the
murderer of the Pomme d'Or the night before had not crawled across the
sky for nothing. The flawless serenity of the long spell of summer
weather seemed at last to be disturbed. The Commissaire took his
departure from the Chteau to the salute of rolling mutterings of
thunder, and down at the Cap the bathing beaches were deserted.
Commodore Jasen, after a brief visit to the terrace, abandoned his plans
for a day's fishing with a sigh and considered the matter of a visit to
Monte Carlo. Before he could make up his mind, however, another visitor
was announced. Caroline Loyd, a little breathless from her scramble over
the rocks, was ushered in. For a moment the two men were speechless.
Then Commodore Jasen, with a smile of welcome, stepped forward and
raised his visitor's fingers to his lips.

"Our friend the enemy," he murmured. "Welcome, dear Caroline. It is not
often you favour us like this."

She nodded to Arnott and accepted a chair. She was wearing a white
pullover, a white cap of the bret type and a linen skirt. The shine and
odour of the sea still lingered with her.

"Ostensibly," she remarked, "the reason for my visit is because there
will be no more bathing at the Cap to-day. Incidentally, however, I have
come to have a very serious word with you both."

Jake Arnott strolled across the room and sat on the edge of the billiard
table close to his host. Caroline watched sympathetically his glance
towards the closed door.

"I have always the same feeling about this Chteau of yours, Commodore,"
she confided. "It seems full of corners and odd places. A perfect
Paradise for eavesdroppers, I should think."

The Commodore nodded.

"Come this way," he invited. "I approve and I agree. There is not an
indoor servant in this place who does not belong to us and who has not
been thoroughly tested, but the police have been here this morning
already, and one never knows."

He led the way to a small room which opened out from the larger
apartment and closed the door carefully. The windows here were of the
ordinary type and there was no outside terrace. The walls were lined
with bookshelves.

"This," he pointed out, "is more _intime_. May I commence by asking you
a question?"

"Just as you like," she assented.

"How did you get to know that Pullertons had sent a man over here?"

She looked at him steadily for a moment.

"How did you?" she countered.

The Commodore frowned.

"Caroline Loyd," he said earnestly, "in a matter like the one with which
we are concerned at the moment, it is necessary that there should be
complete confidence between us, because we are equally threatened. I
will give you a lead if you will permit me. Last night a man posing as
an artist and calling himself Paul Legarge was killed up at St. Paul. My
little Zo, who is one of the brightest children that ever fooled the
world, had been suspicious of him from the first. An hour before he was
killed, she had searched his room and discovered, in a secret hiding
place, his badge and the envelope of a letter which he had received only
that morning from Police Headquarters in New York."

Caroline Loyd's eyes were troubled. Her manner lost something of its
serenity.

"I thought it must be that," she murmured. "But, Commodore, aren't you
bringing the extreme measures of Chicago and New York into a country
where they are barely necessary? One might at least have had an
explanation with this man Legarge. One might have bought him, or if he
wouldn't talk reason, after all he could only cramp your style a little.
The only one of us who was liable for extradition, so far as we know,
was poor Ned, and he's gone."

The two men were equally and genuinely puzzled. There was no doubt that
their visitor was speaking in all sincerity. Jake Arnott had paused in
the act of filling a pipe and looked towards his partner for
enlightenment. He found none. The Commodore was also seeking for
understanding.

"Look here, Caroline," he said, "we don't need any dope from you. You
hate us like hell, I know that, but you will play the game. What we want
to know--Jake and I--is what have you got to complain of? The man was
just as likely to have been after you as us."

"The man ought to have had a chance," Caroline declared coldly. "I never
cared about this promiscuous killing. You know that. So long as you had
him marked down, he could never have got away."

Jake Arnott suddenly stiffened; the lines in his face seemed to grow
deeper.

"Look here," he said, "let's have this straight between the three of us.
Caroline Loyd, do you think that I or any one of our gang bumped off
that man last night?"

"Of course I do," she replied.

The Commodore shook his head slowly.

"Chuck that, Jake," he begged. "It isn't worth while with Caroline."

"Chuck it be damned!" was the fierce reply. "We're great on alibis round
here; in fact, we have built up our safety on them, but I don't need one
this time. I was down at the Casino at Juan from dinner time till three
o'clock this morning. I never went near St. Paul. If this guy Legarge
was done in by any one of our crowd, it was without my knowledge."

Commodore Jasen relapsed slowly into an easy-chair. The power of speech
appeared to have left him. Caroline stared at Arnott with wide-open
eyes.

"Damn it all," the latter went on, "there were a dozen people there saw
me dining, and a whole table full of people with whom I played 'chemie.'
There is not any one else on this outfit who would have tackled the man
except myself, unless they had orders. I should have had him this week
sure, but I was waiting for his next advices from New York. That's the
solid truth. Some one got in ahead of me."

Caroline pointed to the Commodore.

"How is it that he doesn't believe you?" she asked.

The Commodore pulled himself together.

"I believe him if he says so," he declared. "Jake's never told me a lie.
They don't pay in our profession."

"But you must have talked it over since last night," Caroline objected.
"What I mean is, that if Jake was dumb, you must have asked him
questions."

"That's just what we didn't do and never have done," Jasen pointed out
quickly. "A clean job like that is never mentioned. I am not supposed to
know what my men do. I ask for no report and none is ever made to me
unless there is a necessity. I knew that Jake was out all night, but I
thought that he was covering up his tracks after St. Paul."

Caroline looked across towards the man standing by the mantelpiece.

"If you didn't kill Legarge, who do you think did, then?" she asked.

"Why, one of your men, of course," was the confident reply. "I saw that
little chap of yours who looks like a Frenchman, up at St. Paul the
other day, and I never doubted but that he was on Legarge's track too.
When I heard the news this morning, well, I rather thought that you had
found your nerve again. That's all there was to it."

Commodore Jasen sat forward in his chair.

"This is a serious and is becoming an alarming affair," he pointed out.
"Let us have it, as it were, in black and white. Not one of us three is
fool enough to tell lies; besides, it's not done in our world. Jake, you
spent the night at Juan Casino, you never went to St. Paul, you didn't
push that knife into the New Yorker?"

"My word's good enough, Commodore," was the prompt reply. "I never set
foot in St. Paul last night, nor dreamt of going there, and I have never
set eyes on the man. As you know, it was pretty well understood between
us that he had to be given his ticket, but I shouldn't have chosen a
public place like that. You believe me, Caroline?"

"I must," she answered.

"So do I," the Commodore decided. "Now, listen here, Caroline. What
about Ralph Joslin? He would be just the sort of fellow not to let on to
you so that you should be kept clear."

"Ralph was with me from half-past seven last evening until after
midnight," Caroline affirmed. "As a matter of fact, we went over to Palm
Beach Casino."

"There we are then," the Commodore said, lighting a cigarette. "Some one
else has done our job for us. It's uncanny. I don't like the feeling."

"Damned if I do either," Jake Arnott muttered.

Caroline glanced from one to the other in some distress.

"I think it's terrible," she declared.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Commissaire of Police sat in his office, biting his nails. Never had
there been a case so full of possibilities, never one in which a swift
and prompt solution would bring such credit upon his office. Yet up till
that moment, though all manner of strange happenings were connected with
the affair, not one of them seemed to lead to a definite clue. His
assistant disturbed his not too pleasant meditations.

"Gentleman to see you, sir," he announced. "It is the Monsieur from the
Chteau d'Antibes."

The owner, even if he were only a temporary owner, of the great house of
the neighbourhood, was deserving of consideration. The Commissaire shook
hands with him once more when he was ushered in.

"I beg," Commodore Jasen said courteously, as he accepted a chair, "that
you will not consider me in any way officious, but on thinking over your
visit this morning and some of the details of this terrible affair in
St. Paul, I am emboldened to offer you a suggestion. It is an idea which
occurred to me, I must confess, only half an hour ago. I ordered a car
and came at once to see you. I may say that if it should help you, I
desire neither thanks nor credit. I pass on the idea to you--a free
gift."

"I will hear it," the Commissaire, very much to his future benefit,
conceded.

A night of inky, sulphurous blackness, low-hanging clouds, immovable,
leaning menacingly from the sky. Every table at the Pomme d'Or was
occupied, notwithstanding the tragedy of the previous night and although
it was unusual to dine out of doors under such unpromising conditions.
The shaded lights had been reinforced, but even then there were pools of
darkness in many places. Conversation everywhere was restrained and
scanty. Laughter was a thing unheard. Upon the spirits of every one
there seemed to rest the memory of the recent tragedy. In a way it was a
gruesome scene, the more gruesome because seated at the table under the
tree, the light upon his table the feeblest of all, was a man dining
alone in a claret-coloured shirt and blue trousers. There was something
almost ghoulish about the highly charged atmosphere, the spasmodic
conversation, the silences, the air of impending tragedy. One woman
found it too much for her nerves and was led out, sobbing. Her place,
however, was speedily taken by another. It was a feast of drama that
night for the guests of the Pomme d'Or.

At a table under the inner wall three men were seated together.
Commodore Jasen was one, the Commissaire was another, and Jake Arnott
the third. They had champagne in their glasses and food was placed
occasionally on their plates by the stealthy-footed, subdued waiter. No
one ate much that night, however. They were waiting for a signal which
seemed slow in coming.

Monsieur Canis emerged from his secret lurking-place and stole like a
ghost amongst his guests. The Commissaire summoned him. A big spot of
rain had fallen. There was fear of more.

"He is there?"

"He watches all the time," Monsieur Canis answered, with a shiver.

"Let it be now," the Commissaire directed, and even his voice shook
perceptibly.

The figure of the proprietor faded into the shadows. Suddenly there came
what all had been warned to expect, but all had dreaded. The lights on
every table went out.

"Such darkness," the police functionary muttered. "I never would have
believed it possible. One can understand now."

The maid went by, sobbing with hysterical fright, keeping far away from
the table by the tree, carrying a candle in her hand, which flickered
out before she had taken very many steps. There was a low murmur of
voices through the blackness. Here and there a white face was visible
where some one had struck a match. Suddenly the _Commissaire_ leaped to
his feet. There was a shout from the table under the tree. The seated
figure there had leaped to one side. There was a confused vision of men
struggling, a cry that rang through the whole place, down the hillside
and along the valleys.... The lights went on again. On the ground by the
side of the table under the tree a white-faced man with a scraggy beard
lay struggling with three gendarmes, the handcuffs already upon his
wrists, a knife by his side. Over him stood the _Commissaire_.

"Jaques Courdon," he challenged, "it was you who killed the American
artist at this table last night."

"I thought," came a pitiful voice, "that he was here again to-night."

"You came with the same idea in your mind?"

The Commissaire repeated his question, his shrill voice echoing
portentously through the courtyard. The figure on the ground rocked
helplessly from side to side.

"I thought I had killed him last night," he moaned. "I saw her steal
away from his rooms and I came here to kill him. I came up the
ramparts--I dropped over into the darkness and I thought I had killed
him--and to-night some one brought me to the gate and pointed, and he
was there in the same place! It must have been a dream!"

They hurried the man away. The Commissaire shook hands with many of the
friends who had come to his aid--supers in a very ghastly show.

"Of all the reconstructions the history of the criminal world has ever
known," the _avocat_ from Nice told him, "yours, Monsieur Georges, has
been the most wonderful. My congratulations. Many people shall know of
this."

The Commissaire flushed with gratified pride, but he glanced furtively
at Commodore Jasen. Commodore Jasen, however, was the second to
congratulate him.

       *       *       *       *       *

"That I should have lived to see the day," Caroline Loyd murmured, as
they drove down the hill, "when my friend Commodore Jasen would lend his
aid to the Law!"

"There were reasons," the latter explained. "I saw at once that if ever
gossip stirred about the tenants of the Chteau--or the lady at the
Cap--this undiscovered crime would count against us. I came up here and
made a few enquiries. I heard of this poor wretch--the Mad Baker they
call him--who lives here on sufferance amongst a good-hearted set of
neighbours. In common with every one else, the people who keep the barn
had been kind to him and he had a free seat every night my two young
protges danced. It was cruel perhaps to be amused, but many people
were amused at his outrageous infatuation. He would sit without stirring
during the whole performance, his eyes hungering after little Zo every
moment she was on the stage. He would trudge down the hill after her
till she was in her car. Once or twice she had thrown him a kind word.
Sometimes a kind word is fuel to madness.... Zo, of course, supplied
the idea. One night when she had dined with this fellow Legarge, she had
seen the lunatic hiding in the shrubs below, looking at their table and
at her companion with murder in his eyes. She said nothing for fear of
getting him into trouble, but her recollection of the incident was
opportune. For the rest, it seemed easy enough. The only trouble about
our little show was--even if the night were dark, would he come again if
he saw a figure at the table like the figure of the night before? That
idea, I will admit, we put into his mind. A gamble, surely a gamble.
_Enfin_--I have made the reputation of the _Commissaire_ for life."

"It is a very sound asset," Jake Arnott remarked, "to have friends
amongst the police."




III

FIFTY-FIFTY


The croupier, who liked to get on with the game, looked ingratiatingly
round at the little company of players at the _chemin de fer_ table.

"_Un banco de cinq mille_," he announced. "_Qui fait le banco?_"

There was no response. About a quarter of the amount was grudgingly
subscribed. The croupier appealed to the on-lookers.

"_Un banco de cinq mille_," he announced once more in parrot-like tones.
"_Qui fait le banco?_"

Caroline, with the shoe in her hand, glanced indifferently around. She
was not a great gambler. It was the third round and she was half
inclined to take in the hand. Then she caught the eye of her shabby, but
aristocratic-looking vis--vis, with whom she had already exchanged a
few courteous amenities. Perhaps he took her enquiring glance, the faint
quiver of her adorable lips, as a challenge. The fingers of his long
white hand, which were resting upon the table, trembled, and a slight
flush crept into his pallid cheeks. Five mille was a great deal of
money. Nothing, alas, to this rich new crowd, who were pushing the world
upon one side, but a great deal of money to the Marquis de St. Vran,
whose great-great-grandfather had owned the site upon which the Casino
was built and all the land between the sea and the hills. Nevertheless,
he felt that the adorable young American lady had challenged him.

"_Banco_," he said.

Even then Caroline hesitated. She had a very sure instinct in human
relations, and something told her that five mille was more than her
opponent could afford and that his bet was a gesture incited by her
simple glance of enquiry. Once more she was almost inclined to take in
the hand, but his fingers already outstretched for the cards, the
composure of his face and manner, changed her idea. He might think that
she guessed his poverty. He might, on the other hand, be wealthy,
notwithstanding his slightly worn linen, the marks of pressing upon his
admirably arranged cravat, the shine upon the lapels of his dinner coat.
She decided not to risk hurting him and she gave the cards. The Marquis
accepted them without undue haste. He glanced at them and, despite his
almost icy self-possession, there was a faint glitter in his eyes. He
turned them over and displayed a natural eight. With a little shrug of
the shoulders, Caroline threw down her own. There was a murmur around
the table. To the non-players it was just a piece of hard luck which
lent a thrill to the game. Caroline had exposed a natural nine!... The
loser looked at the cards steadily and the glitter faded from his eyes.
There was no other sign, however, of emotion. He bowed his
congratulations, counted out the two mille worth of counters in front of
him and turned to the man at the desk.

"_Donnez-moi trois mille, Monsieur_," he directed.

The official showed a curious hesitation. He looked as though about to
grope in his drawer. He whispered rapidly in the ear of an overseer
standing by. There was a brief colloquy. He was not a bad fellow, but it
was more than he dared do to disobey orders.

"If Monsieur le Marquis would apply at the desk," he suggested
respectfully.

"You have not three mille?"

"One regrets, Monsieur le Marquis."

Caroline bit her lip. She felt that she could have bitten it through for
giving the hand. Her first instinct had been correct. The Marquis rose
to his feet and leant for a moment on his heavy stick. He bowed slightly
to Caroline.

"I regret this momentary delay," he apologised. "I will return
immediately."

He walked towards the distant counter with its brass rail and
white-faced, mechanical-looking cashiers, dealing out mille notes with
Robot-like indifference. Caroline had an inspiration. She threw three
mille plaques into the bank.

"There is no need to delay the game," she said. "I will take the money
from the gentleman when he returns. I pass the hand."

Every one was relieved at not having to wait. The affair of the
_cagnotte_ was speedily arranged and the money passed over to Caroline.
She threw back a generous _pourboire_ and dropped the remainder into her
bag. She glanced over her shoulder and felt a queer shiver of sympathy.
Before the desk the Marquis, leaning slightly upon his stick and
gesticulating with his free hand, was talking to the indifferent-looking
clerk and one of the managers. No mille notes were in evidence and the
attitude of the two officials, although respectful enough, was
uncompromising. Caroline acted upon a sudden inspiration. She marked her
place, rose to her feet and made her way into the deserted bar behind.
She threw herself into an easy-chair in a distant corner and lit a
cigarette.

"_Madame prendra quelque chose?_" the barman invited, with a courteous
little bow.

"_Tout  l'heure_," she replied.

Her instinct was correct. From the window she watched the Marquis, very
pale save for one angry spot of colour on his cheek, return to his
place, whisper to the valet as he noted her empty seat and come to the
bar. He mounted the steps and made his way towards her. She made room
for him by her side.

"Let us forget that silly game," she begged. "Come and talk to me for a
while."

She saw his fine mouth quiver as he sank into the chair.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I have a confession to make to you. I owe the
authorities here a little, a very little money. They think that it is
enough. They do not wish to advance me three mille."

She laughed softly.

"How silly!" she exclaimed. "As though it mattered. As a matter of fact,
I paid it and took the bank in. It was greedy of me, perhaps, but I
wanted a rest. I wonder whether you would care to offer me an orangeade?
The three mille will do next time we meet here."

The Marquis gave the order at the counter. He drew from a slim, worn
pocketbook a card and laid it upon the table.

"Mademoiselle," he begged, "you will be so kind as to tell me your name.
I am the Marquis de St. Vran, and I live at the Chteau de St. Vran on
the hill beyond Mougins."

"My name is Caroline Loyd," she confided. "I am staying at the Cap
d'Antibes Htel. As you can perhaps tell from my accent, I am an
American, and as I have neither husband nor brother, nor any one there
who knows anything about me, they are beginning to think that I must be
an adventuress."

The waiter served her with an orangeade and handed a _fine_ to the
Marquis. The latter's fingers were still trembling as he raised the
glass to his lips, but he was full of gratitude to this beautiful young
woman who had smoothed away his humiliation. He was not as a rule
attracted by the tourists who flocked to Juan. The pyjama-clad woman at
night filled him with horror. He loved the precise ways of the older
generations. Caroline, in her black gown, her not too sunburnt neck and
arms, her kindly expression and softly modulated voice, pleased him,
apart from her actual beauty, as no other woman had done for years. She
might be, as she had confided, an American, but she might also have
stepped from one of the frames of the pictures hanging in the long
gallery at St. Vran.

"All men and women in life are better for the spirit of adventure," he
said. "I myself possessed it once. I had a great scheme for reclaiming
some of my lands, but the War came and they allowed even me to fight,
because my family had been famous as soldiers. Hence my foot and my
infirmity, for which, however, I can claim little sympathy, as it
improves every day. Tell me, Mademoiselle, if you will, where you
learned to speak French with so pleasant an accent."

She smiled.

"Not in France, alas," she confessed. "I was educated at a convent in
New Orleans. Several of the Sisters were French. I try to speak
correctly, but it is years since I was in this country.... The other
day," she went on, "I passed your Chteau, Marquis. I think it is one of
the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen."

The Marquis inclined his head. It was praise he loved to hear, but it
brought with it a certain sadness.

"It is, alas," he regretted, "only a shell, but if you would,
Mademoiselle, you can add to the very great kindness you have already
shown me. I am a middle-aged, almost an elderly man, or I would not ask
such a favour, but if you would lunch with me to-morrow--the next day if
to-morrow is inconvenient--and be content with very simple fare, I will
show you all that there is left to show of my home, which is little
enough, save for a few pictures and some very beautiful studies in
architecture. I shall have the pleasure too of discharging my debt at
the same time."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," she assured him. "About
half-past twelve?"

"At that time," he said, rising to his feet, "my gates, which are
usually inhospitably locked, will be thrown open and I shall be
awaiting your arrival. I must not detain you now from your game.
Needless to say, I shall not play again."

She understood and she took her leave. The Marquis resumed his seat and
toyed with his liqueur glass. His eyes were set, and he was still
suffering from the humiliation to which he had been subjected. He looked
through the walls and dreamed, for a few bitter moments, of the years
before the Casino had been built, when the waves came tumbling in upon
an empty beach, and when, at the sight of a Lord of St. Vran, any
passer-by would have curtseyed or doffed his hat.

All the time, from outside, came the parrot-like calls of the croupiers,
the eager voices of a common, cosmopolitan and, as they seemed to him,
an indecently clad, grotesque crowd. The world had changed!

       *       *       *       *       *

Caroline felt herself somehow a garish and meretricious fragment of the
new vulgarity which had fallen like a pest upon the earth, as, in her
forty-horse-power Hispano-Suiza, with its silver fittings and highly
polished body, she swept through the gates of St. Vran to pay her
promised visit. On either side of the lodge houses, which were
practically in ruins, were carved in now decayed masonry the St. Vran
arms. The woman who had admitted her, and who stood with one lean,
quivering hand upon the gate, seemed as though she belonged to a world
long finished with. On either side of the rough road, what had evidently
once been a park was waste land, here and there planted with vines.
There were treeless spaces where once a forest had been. Small white
plastered houses with green roofs, stark and ungracious, were dotted
about the bare hillside, with their strip of vineyard, and occasionally
a more gracious expanse of flower-growing land. There was a sawmill
buzzing by the side of a stream. A grim and merciless utilitarianism had
gripped the fair lands of St. Vran. Only the Chteau itself, with its
rounded walls, its weather-stained, well-defined minarets and tower,
remained untouched, brooding gloomily over the desecration by which it
was surrounded. Caroline shivered almost with fear as her car, with its
flamboyant expression of opulence, rolled across the weed-grown square
to the great front doors. She felt it to be almost a consolation that
the opulence itself was in some measure a sham.

The Marquis stood ready to receive her upon the threshold. An old
servant had faded literally from behind him. The former moved to hand
his guest from the car and raised her fingers to his lips.

"You are the first lady who has entered my home for years," he said.
"You are very welcome."

"I am very glad to come," she assured him. "If you knew how tired one
gets of hotels--doing the same thing, eating the same food all the time.
What a possession!

"It has been. It is still," he admitted, "a great house. It was built in
the fourteenth century. The world was very much alive then. Architects,
painters, sculptors were all crazy with their thirst for beauty. I shall
not talk about the lines of the arch, for instance, or that ceiling,
because I think you will feel them. Pintorini designed the chapel.
Nowadays curves like that do not exist."

In a sense it was terrible. He led her through great, empty rooms,
beautiful in their proportions, but stripped bare of every other
attraction. Only in the long picture gallery there were still,
notwithstanding many empty places, a few pictures.

"Much of the St. Vran collection," he told her, "was destroyed during
the Revolution. Many more pictures my ancestors sold, not for
themselves, but to aid others of our order less fortunate. My brother
and I--my brother who was head of the family before myself and who is
now dead--swore an oath that no other picture should pass out of our
possession, even though we lived by eating the roots in our last field
and drinking the wine we make on what was once our lawn."

"But surely these pictures that are left," she began hesitatingly--

"The portrait of a lady on your right there was painted by Andrea del
Sarto on his hurried way home after his visit to Francis. Yes, I know
what you are thinking. It would bring me money, of course, but there is
money that rather burns one's fingers.... Now for something a little
more cheerful! Here we pass," he pointed out, opening a great French
window, "on to our southern terrace. You see, we lunch here," he went
on, indicating a small round table. "Below us to the sea the distance is
seven kilometres. Every square metre of that land once belonged to us.
Yet it seems that a little matter of three mille--"

"Don't," she begged him.

"You are right," he agreed. "Henri and I between us have attempted the
amazing enterprise of an _apritif_. We had no ice, but we have water as
cold as ice itself from our spring. We have laid our bottles in that.
The vermouth is our own. The other ingredients I shall not specify, but
they are produced on the estate."

From a richly chased glass Caroline drank the concoction, delicately
flavoured, fragrantly sweet, a potion which might have been served by a
lover to his mistress on St. Agnes' Eve, but the headiness of which was
lost with age. The Marquis handed her to her place and the meal which
followed was certainly a change from the hotel fare to which she was
accustomed. There was a freshly caught trout with plain butter its only
sauce, yet delicious; a chicken, a poor thin affair, but with fresh
salad; a bowl of fruit and strangely tasting coffee. There was wine in
priceless decanters, but wine from which the flavour was passing or had
already passed. There were flowers upon the table in a bowl at which
Caroline looked so often that her host moved it closer to her.

"The painting round the sides," he showed her, "is by Watteau. The china
at which you are looking--you like to know these things?--is Svres. It
is pleasant to see it again. Those rings for the napkins--an
old-fashioned custom that--are three hundred years old and of solid
gold. Yes," he went on, with a quaint smile, "don't think that I am too
foolish about these things. I know, of course, that they are worth a
great deal of money. That thought only comes to me at times and I
banish it because it is an evil thought. The world thinks of nothing but
money nowadays. Well, I thank God that I am content to go on until I am
an old man and yet face the rest of my days without it. One foolish
thing I have done, and that was because in the blood of every one of my
forefathers has lurked the passion for gambling. I have no friends left
with whom to pass my time, so I have tried my luck against this modern
Juggernaut--the artificial machines of chance. With what lack of success
you yourself have seen.... And now there comes a horrible thought to me.
I have denied myself tobacco so often that I think nothing of it, but I
remember now that the modern lady smokes. I have not a cigarette to
offer you."

She passed him a well-filled case.

"The modern woman is prepared for all contingencies," she reminded him.
"Please try these. They are not very good but they are very mild."

They strolled to the edge of the terrace, where indeed the view was
marvellous. He pointed out the faint outline of the Esterel.

"Always in the shadow," he told her. "Always a different shade, from the
most delicate of greys to the deepest of purples."

They looked across at the islands in the smiling sea. There was
singularly little to be seen of the new outbreak of building eastwards,
for the corner of the hill stood out like a bluff.

"It is here I pass my days," he continued. "I have thirty or forty
books. I used to take my daily newspaper, but that I have left off. It
matters so little what happens. Are you fortified with your simple
lunch? Can you bear to hear bad news?"

"If you really have any to tell me," she assured him, "I think I can
bear it with equanimity."

"I cannot pay your three mille," he told her.

"Do you, who really are a person of detachments," she asked him, "think
that it matters?"

"Yes, it does matter," he answered. "I owe the Casino six. I should have
owed them three more but for their refusal last night. I had intended to
pay them with my quarter's rents from an outside property, which should
reach me to-morrow or the next day. That is of no consequence. You have
come for your three mille and I cannot pay you, but I can do this,
Mademoiselle, and if you will humour me, it will make me very happy.
Will you step this way?"

They passed back into the great library, the shelves of which were not
only empty but crumbling to decay. In one corner was an oaken chest,
black and with the worm holes of genuine age. The Marquis drew from his
pocket a crooked key of ancient design and fitted it into the lock.

"There are still some treasures left to the house," he sighed. "When my
time comes, the hungry dealers will find their way here, and these
things will go with the others. I know nothing of the money value of the
contents of this chest. I know this, however. Whilst I live, its
contents will be displayed in no shop windows. Will you choose
something, please, and take it instead of the money I cannot pay you?
Choose something which will be worth while, if you wish to gratify me.
The brocade you are handling belonged to one of the ladies of Marie
Antoinette's court, a St. Vran who had married a Duc de Montmorency.
There is a bundle of lace there. I know nothing of it. It may interest
you. It has a history, I believe. Then in that box--that little
coffer--that is really rather wonderful paste. Those buckles once
belonged to Marie Antoinette."

Caroline was speechless. Her fingers were passing reverently over
treasures more beautiful than she had ever seen.

"There is nothing here which I can take," she declared. "There is
nothing which I can disturb."

He leaned upon his stick and looked at her with kindly eyes. The hard
lines had left his mouth. He seemed suddenly to have become once more a
young man.

"You must please do as you are bidden," he begged. "I shall leave you to
yourself. I shall stroll upon the terrace."

He passed out and left her alone. Caroline leaned back in the chair
which he had dragged up for her and indulged in a shivering travesty of
a laugh. If only he had known! She had even stooped once--more than
once, perhaps--to what was little better than ordinary theft and she
knew something about valuable things. There was more than enough here to
pay her debt a thousand times over. She began her search for something
less valuable than the articles he had disclosed to her, and, groping
into the recesses of the box, she dragged up an old parchment. She read
its quaint French, word by word. Presently she became interested. She
was still studying it, unconscious of the flight of time, when the
Marquis returned.

"Well," he asked, "have you chosen?"

"Do you know anything about this?" she enquired, handing him the deed.

He took it into his hand and glanced it through.

"Nothing at all," he confessed. "The old French is interesting. The
lawyers in Paris took most of the documents away. This, I suppose, they
found of no value."

"It might be," she meditated.

"What I think I would like you to have," he said, "is the old miniature
at which I see you have been looking. It is of Marie Antoinette by
Fioretto. You will see on the back, on that yellow sheet of paper, the
agreement to pay Fioretto thirty pieces of gold and to give him the Farm
of the Four Hills. That is the farm on the hillside above. He had a
fancy for the place and thought he might paint there. He was paid and
you see he left the acknowledgment behind. It is a great curiosity."

"Yes," she admitted. "I have looked at it. It is, as you say, a great
curiosity and I should think it would fetch to-day--"

"Don't," he pleaded.

"At least half a million francs," she went on. "Thank you, I am
something of a thief, but only one sort of a thief. I will take this
parchment deed in its quaint French for my three mille."

He scoffed at her.

"But believe me, it is worthless," he pointed out. "Do not please
imagine that it has the slightest value. We have no claim to a single
yard of land in France except the land on which this Chteau stands. For
all that is gone we have been paid."

"I choose it," she decided.

He shrugged his shoulders and, as she rose to her feet, he locked the
box.

"More than ever," she continued, with a smile, "you will wonder, from
that strange little corner of the world in which you live mentally, at
the new race which has come upon the world. Women who can choose a few
pages of yellow parchment, when they might possess themselves of
something really beautiful! Never mind, we are all as we were made, and
beauty means something to me too."

He pushed the box back and she laid her fingers upon his arm as they
passed down the great vaulted room, where even their footsteps made
ghostly echoes.

"I have chosen my present," she said to him, "and I am taking it away
with me on one condition--a terribly modern one."

"It is granted," he promised her.

"If I should find that it has unexpected value--half of it is yours and
half is mine."

"It _has_ no value," he assured her.

"If it has unexpected value," she repeated firmly, "we divide. In
to-day's language, we go 'fifty-fifty.' You will not be too proud to
divide with me?"

They were out in the fresh air again. He raised her fingers to his lips.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "if I were ten years younger and disaster had
not overtaken my house, I would divide my life with you."

       *       *       *       *       *

To Commodore Jasen, a few afternoons later, basking comfortably in a
_chaise longue_ in a sheltered corner of the Chteau grounds, which
permitted him a spreading view of the sea, was announced a visitor. He
put down the book and rose to his feet. He recognised, to his great
surprise, Monsieur Debeney, the presiding genius of the Casino, and the
new Juan.

"Good day, my friend," the Commodore exclaimed, as he shook hands. "What
is it that has happened? What service can I have the pleasure of
rendering you? Sit down, pray."

Monsieur Debeney took off his hat, wiped his forehead and accepted a
chair. The Commodore called back the departing butler and ordered
refreshments.

"Commodore," his visitor began, "we have an impression that we have seen
you sometimes with a lady, and it has been made known to us that she
occasionally visits you--that you are, in short, a friend of
Mademoiselle Loyd who rests at the Cap d'Antibes Htel."

"The young lady has been a friend of mine since she was a child," the
Commodore assented. "I see little of her here because the crowd at the
Cap d'Antibes is a gay one and I myself prefer a more peaceful
existence, but that she is a friend of mine is the truth. Proceed,
Monsieur Debeney."

Monsieur Debeney was hot, but still pale. He had the air of a man who
took insufficient exercise. He had also the air of a man who was
suffering from a bad fright.

"Some week or two ago," he commenced, "or it may have been before that,
in the Baccarat Rooms of the Casino, this young lady made the
acquaintance of the Marquis de St. Vran.

"A resident here?"

"The Marquis," Monsieur Debeney explained, "is the representative of the
family to whom belonged for many generations the whole of the land
around here--the land upon which the Casino is built, the hotel and most
of the villas, the land through which most of the roads have been cut.
In fact, the whole place."

"He ought to be a multimillionaire," the Commodore observed.

"He is, on the other hand, living in dire poverty. He has been used to
coming down to the Casino and playing for low stakes at _chemin de fer_.
Lately he has borrowed insignificant sums, most of which have been
repaid. It happened, however, that one night about a week ago he was
owing three or four mille. He applied to our cashier for three mille to
discharge a debt, and my cashier, using in my absence his own judgment,
refused to advance the amount."

The Commodore nodded.

"It sounds hard," he observed, "but I suppose cashiers are not men of
sentiment."

Monsieur Debeney groaned and wiped his forehead with his profusely
scented handkerchief.

"If I had been there," he muttered, "if only I had been there! However,
the thing happened. The young lady whom I have mentioned was the person
to whom the money was due and with great tact and kindness--one admits
that--she covered up the incident. The Marquis invited her, it seems, to
his Chteau on the following day to receive payment. She went there to
lunch and spent a portion of the afternoon there."

"Is all this vital to the matter concerning which you have come to see
me?" Jasen enquired.

"The matter is of too vast an importance not to be told in detail," the
other groaned. "I have had no conversation with the young lady who,
perhaps properly, declines to see me, but through her lawyer I gather
that the Marquis found himself still unable to produce the three mille.
He is of a peculiar temperament, like many of our aristocracy, and I
think his father--"

"You must forgive my interruption for one moment," the Commodore begged.
"You told me a few moments ago that it was the St. Vrans who owned the
whole of the land which has become the scene of this amazing prosperity.
How is it possible then that the Marquis was unable to discharge so
paltry a debt?"

"That should be explained," Monsieur Debeney acknowledged. "It was the
father of the present Marquis who sold the property. He sold it to a
syndicate of which I was a member, and he sold it, without a doubt,
remarkably cheap. Nevertheless, it was a large sum. Unfortunately, the
late Marquis was a gambler. With the money we paid him he frequented the
casinos of northern France. He lost everything. No share of that
purchase money ever came to the present Marquis, who inherited nothing
but debts."

"I understand," his companion acknowledged. "Now please go on."

"We arrive at this point, therefore," Monsieur Debeney continued. "The
Marquis found himself unable to discharge even so paltry a debt as three
mille, but unlike his father, the present Marquis is a man of sentiment
and character. There are treasures still at the Chteau which he has
steadfastly refused to sell. One hears of old Italian masters there
locked up, but of priceless value, and other treasures. What matter? To
proceed. He opens a chest full of _objets d'art_, and he invites
Mademoiselle to choose something for herself. There was nothing there
which was not infinitely more valuable than the three mille, but the
young lady had, it seems, strange tastes. She discovered, hidden
underneath a roll of engravings, an ancient document in curious old
French, some of which she interprets. In the end she claims the document
for her three mille. Whether she made any arrangements with the Marquis,
we do not know, but he handed over the document, and she brought it away
with her."

"We approach actualities," the Commodore observed. "What was the nature
of the document?"

"It was part of the original title deeds of the Chteau. There is an old
legal term which I have forgotten, governing the conditions of sale of
any landed property in France, and in this portion of the title deeds
there is a special interdiction against any building or buildings being
erected between the Chteau de St. Vran and the sea, visible from the
Chteau, without the consent of two generations of the family."

Monsieur Debeney leaned back in his chair, once more used his
handkerchief and drank deep of the iced contents of the tumbler with
which he had just been served. Commodore Jasen whistled softly to
himself.

"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed. "And the document? Is it legal?"

"If its duplicate was deposited at Grasse, there is fear that it is
legal," Monsieur Debeney acknowledged. "We have heard privately that the
duplicate is there."

"And the result?"

Monsieur Debeney groaned.

"The result," he declared, "would be to give the owner of St. Vran--the
present Marquis--a claim to have demolished or to possess the Casino and
our great hotel adjoining, not to mention some two hundred villas and
small hotels!"

Commodore Jasen was dumb. What a woman and what luck! The expression of
placid benevolence had left his face. His eyes burnt with envious fire.
There was an ugly twist to his mouth. Not a word had Caroline said to
him of this great find of hers. He thought nothing of the agony of the
little man who had come to visit him. He was already making plans on his
own account.

"We have two lawyers from Paris staying in Nice at the present moment,"
Monsieur Debeney continued, "but they are able to give us very little
encouragement. Mademoiselle, your friend, appears to have contented
herself with the services of Monsieur Lafardire, who is the principal
lawyer in these parts."

"And what is it you want me to do?" the Commodore asked.

"We desire you to use your influence with Mademoiselle, in whose hands
the Marquis seems to have left the whole affair," Monsieur Debeney
declared eagerly. "There are wealthy men in our syndicate, and sooner
than see the town ruined, we will go from court to court of France, and
the suit may last for years. Implore her to be reasonable. If the
document is veritable, and our lawyers admit it, compensation shall be
paid to the St. Vrans or their representatives, but if the fabulous is
demanded, the place would be ruined. We could not pay. We are determined
upon that."

"Do you remember the purchase price of the property?" the Commodore
enquired.

Monsieur Debeney was not altogether at his ease.

"It was not high," he admitted. "But who could have foreseen what has
arrived--what our enterprise has produced here? At the time of the
purchase, the land was worth no more than its agricultural value. The
syndicate gave, I think, a matter of two millions for it."

There was a brief silence. Monsieur Debeney's attention seemed fixed
upon his tumbler. His host was looking at him in astonishment.

"Two millions," he gasped. "And to-day its value," he reflected,
"roughly speaking, I should think, would be at least five hundred
millions."

"To-day's value," Monsieur Debeney declared, "is entirely due to the
foresight, the sagacity and the enterprise of our syndicate. Look at the
money we have risked--the money we have spent. The Casino might have
been a failure, _Le monde chic_ might not have responded to this new
craze for summer bathing and warmer atmospheres."

"I quite agree with you," the Commodore murmured.

"The object of my visit I have now explained," Monsieur Debeney
concluded. "A woman by herself is apt to be unreasonable. St. Vran is
angry with us and the anger of such a man is a difficult matter to deal
with. Therefore I say--will you talk sense to Mademoiselle?"

"I certainly will," the Commodore promised his visitor emphatically.

       *       *       *       *       *

Commodore Jasen found Caroline just returned from Nice. She established
him on the terrace whilst she changed into a bathing suit and peignoir.

"Now," she declared, as she rejoined him, "I feel like a human being
again. Please tell me what you want."

"I have come over to ask you, Caroline Loyd," the Commodore confided,
"whether we are together in this latest enterprise of yours?"

"We certainly are not," she replied promptly. "Our enterprises are
conducted along different lines, and any idea we might have had of
joining forces ceased the day you took Ned out for an aquaplane ride."

"I have told you before," Jasen continued quietly, "that this little
corner of the country is not large enough for two bands of adventurers.
We could work together admirably, but to ask one of us to stand aside
and see the other, through sheer luck, bring off a great coup, is
scarcely reasonable. Under the circumstances," the Commodore went on,
feeling that he had made an impression, and balancing his finger tips
carefully together, "I think that a special arrangement should be made
in this case. You had the luck to stumble into the affair and you had
also the brains to work it. My establishment is much the more
expensive," he continued, with a sigh, "but that, I suppose, is my own
fault. I suggest that we work on the principle--in this case only, mind
you--of two thirds to you and one third to us. I shall make the same
proposition to you with regard to an enterprise which we are figuring
out ourselves, but in it you will take the lesser part."

Caroline was silent for several moments. Her eyes had travelled
seawards. She was looking at the exact spot at which the Commodore's
flying launch had emerged from the mists on the morning after Ned's
disappearance.

"Is that all?" she asked softly.

"It is all," was the firm reply. "Except this. You should not need
reminding that I and those who are with me are better friends than
enemies."

"I do not wish to have anything to do with you in either capacity,"
Caroline pronounced slowly. "I shall be on my guard against you all the
time and I have arranged to leave behind, if at any time I should make
an unfortunate disappearance, several clues which will be sufficient to
break up your little organisation. I do not need your help. I refuse to
have anything to do with any scheme in which you are concerned. If there
is no room for two bands of adventurers on this strip of the coast, pack
up and go. It was I who had the idea of coming here first."

"I have unfortunately," the Commodore sighed, "the Chteau on my hands
for the season. I have invested a great deal of capital in the hire of
it--also in my motor boat. Be reasonable, Caroline. You know how I feel
about you. You keep me at arm's length, but it is not really wise of
you. I am sorry about Ned, but you know the game and you know the
rules."

"I do," she admitted bitterly. "I kept my mouth shut about Ned, didn't
I, although I was fonder of him than anything else in life? I let you
get away with it, but as to working with you or taking you for a
partner--that will never happen. Besides, in this case, we are through,
as a matter of fact. Fixed. The thing's done with. You do not take a
partner into a deal when the profit is already made."

"The profit," her companion reminded her, "is not yet in your pocket."

She laughed.

"You have my answer," she said. "Now go along down to the landing stage,
step on to your magnificent launch and drive home. I am going to bathe,
but you need not ask me to ride your aquaplane board!"

They walked down the flinty path almost in silence. Caroline left her
peignoir on the rocks, poised her exquisite figure for a moment upon the
diving board and plunged into the sea. Commodore Jasen stepped into his
motor boat and, swinging her round, followed the line of the coast down
to Juan-les-Pins.

       *       *       *       *       *

Late that night Jasen received a sealed letter by the hand of a special
messenger, brought over from the principal hotel in Nice. There was no
signature to it and no commencement.

     "Record at Grasse discovered confirms and legalises document but is
     valueless without production of document itself."

After that, for two days, there was secret activity at the Chteau
d'Antibes, secret activity also at a little hotel the wrong side of the
Seine in Paris, secret activity in a small flat at Beausoleil. Then,
twenty-four hours later--sensation in Nice. In the early morning, at the
premises of Matre Lafardire, the _avocat_, one of the most perfectly
perpetrated burglaries of modern times was discovered. Both of the very
modern safes had been opened as though by the hand of a magician, and
their contents strewn upon the floor. Every drawer, tin box and
receptacle of any sort had been forced open and thoroughly explored. It
was another twenty-four hours before the lawyer and his staff of clerks
could make the desired report to the police and to the detectives who
haunted the place. In the end the news came from Matre Lafardire, who
communicated it in person, with a slight twinkle in his eyes, to the
Chef de la Sret.

"Our investigations are complete, Monsieur le Chef," he announced.
"Nothing is missing from our office but a small quantity of postage
stamps, some American razor blades and a photograph of Greta Garbo which
hung in the outer office."

"Then, for what purpose," the official demanded, "was this burglary
planned? It is a work of art. Nothing like it have I ever seen. The most
complicated locks have been opened as though with butter-smeared keys,
the hardest metal has been cut through as though it were brown paper!
Great artists have been here, Matre Lafardire. For what reason?"

Matre Lafardire shrugged his shoulders.

"I had only one document of importance," he confided, "and that was
elsewhere."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Marquis de St. Vran, as was customary with him when the weather
permitted, took his luncheon on the terrace of the Chteau. It appeared
that on that particular morning coffee was not available, so with a
little sigh, he lit a Caporal cigarette and moved his chair farther into
the sunshine. To him came bustling out the shadowy old woman who, with
the exception of her husband--now at work on the land but called into
the house on rare occasions--was the sole domestic employed in the
Chteau.

"There are two gentlemen who arrive. One is Monsieur Roubaud, the other
a stranger."

"Place chairs," the Marquis directed wearily. "I will see them."

Monsieur Roubaud, grey-haired and almost patriarchal in appearance,
whose family had been advisers to the St. Vran family for many
generations, presented himself in a state of much repressed excitement.
He introduced his companion--a younger, fine-looking man--Monsieur
Lafardire, who wore a ribbon in his buttonhole and who, besides being
the principal lawyer, was also Mayor of Nice. The Marquis waved them to
the dilapidated seats. He was a little bored by their visit, for
curiosity with him was a dead quality. He realised only that people had
been worrying him about that mouldy yellow document, which he had given
to the beautiful lady who had saved him from humiliation at the Casino,
and that he had simply passed all enquiries and letters concerning the
latter unopened on to Monsieur Roubaud, who had arrived in haste from
Paris on receipt of the first communication.

"I trust," the Marquis said, "that you gentlemen have lunched. My
housekeeping here is a very simple affair."

"We have lunched," Monsieur Roubaud assured him. "Do not disturb
yourself, I beg, dear Marquis. A great thing has happened. An amazing
thing! I ask myself whether my firm is in any way to blame, but of that
there is no proof. I beg that you will kindly listen to what Matre
Lafardire has to say."

"With great pleasure," the Marquis sighed, trying to hide his weariness.

"Monsieur le Marquis," Lafardire commenced, "I have been told that you
are not a man of business. Very well. I shall put what I have to say to
you in a few commonplace words. Your father disposed of much of the land
which you see stretching from here to the sea, to a syndicate of men
living in these parts. He was poorly paid, but, as you see, the people
who bought the land have built a casino, hotels, villas, they have made
a _plage_, they have made huge profits."

The Marquis' eloquent shoulders were for a moment raised.

"It pleased my father to do this," he said coldly.

"Now we come to the point," Lafardire continued. "Your father had no
right to make the sale at all. The solicitors for the syndicate made the
grievous error of not looking into the conditions under which the
property descended from generation to generation of your family. The
condition of the sale of any land has existed since the year 1700. It
was properly recorded at Grasse and has become a condition of the tenure
of the land. Briefly speaking, that condition is this--no building could
be erected between here and the sea without the consent of the reigning
Lord of St. Vran. Behold, Monsieur le Marquis--"

The lawyer's hand was outstretched. Away seawards the land seemed full
of life. The huge white hotel upon the hill yawned towards them, the
Casino sent out its flaunting wings on either side. The once quiet
little village had become a bustling town. Other hotels, many villas
dotted the hillside.

"What is the result of all this?" the Marquis asked, with some faint
show of interest.

"Chaos," the lawyer replied. "The land was improperly sold and
improperly bought. It was sold for something like two millions. It is
worth to-day, with what stands upon it, far more than two hundred
millions. It seems probable, Monsieur le Marquis, that if you care for
a lengthy law process, that sum of money, more or less, would certainly
become yours."

The Marquis moved uneasily in his chair. So many dreams had come to him
during these last years of solitude. This must be another of them. These
men were mocking him. Nevertheless, although he said nothing, some cloud
seemed to have been lifted from his brain. He listened now with a
different light in his eyes--a fresh measure of intelligence.

"This extraordinary situation," the lawyer continued, "appears to have
been disclosed by a document which you gave to a lady who was visiting
you. She was a very clever young lady indeed, for she realised its
possible significance and brought it to me. Whereupon I at once
communicated with Monsieur Roubaud. It seems that you gave her a Power
of Attorney to act in the matter for you?"

"A paper was sent to me from her," the Marquis agreed. "I signed it. It
was her affair. I gave her the document."

"The lady, if I may be allowed to say so," Matre Lafardire went on,
"has shown a wise discretion. I may say that the members of the
syndicate have been in a state of terror for the last few weeks, and the
matter has been complicated, gravely complicated, by an organised
burglary of my premises with the obvious intention of stealing the
document. The attempt, naturally, was unsuccessful. I do not keep
documents belonging to my clients, of that value, anywhere except in the
vault of my bank. But forgive me, this is a dissertation. This morning
the lady, whose name it appears is Mademoiselle Caroline Loyd, has, with
our approval, come to an arrangement with the syndicate, which has
already been concluded and registered. She has accepted as compensation
from the syndicate the sum of fifty millions--half of which is to be
paid to her and half to you."

The sun was warm, but for a moment the Marquis shivered.

"Half to me?" he repeated in dazed fashion.

"Certainly," the lawyer said. "She told us that that was the agreement."

"I scarcely thought that I was concerned," the Marquis faltered. "I gave
her the document. I owed her money which I could not pay. So that was
what she meant when she said 'feefty-feefty'!"

"Fifty-fifty," Matre Lafardire explained, "is an Anglo-Saxon term for
proclaiming an equal division in a deal."

"How much, then," the Marquis asked, "is my share?"

"Twenty-five millions," Matre Lafardire confided. "Twelve million five
hundred thousand francs have been paid into your account at the Crdit
Lyonnais this morning."

The Marquis held his head. Three times he repeated the sum. Then a
vagrant thought brought a queer little smile to his face.

"Sorry," he apologised. "I was thinking of the face of the bank manager.
I was compelled to ask him the other day for two hundred and fifty
francs. He gave it to me, but in doing so he had the air of a man who
was tearing the notes into small pieces and blowing them away. Twelve
million five hundred thousand francs!"

"The remainder," Lafardire concluded, "will be deposited to your credit
within seven days. The lady is being treated precisely in the same way.
There will be quittances and papers for you to sign. Monsieur Roubaud
will present them to you."

"And you will forgive a slight liberty, my dear Marquis, I am sure,"
Monsieur Roubaud intervened, drawing from his pocket a long black case
and opening it with trembling fingers. "I, as your old agent and
representative--well, we know how things are. I thought perhaps--see,
here is a cheque book. Keep that, please, locked up. I thought perhaps
thirty or forty mille in notes might make the thing seem more real.
Fifty mille I brought. Forty-five in mille notes--here they are. The
rest in smaller amounts."

The lawyer's fingers trembled more than ever, as he snapped a rubber
band around the packet and pushed it across to the Marquis.

"Unless there are questions you would like to ask us," he concluded
tremulously, "Matre Lafardire and I will take our leave. This is an
astonishing happening, Marquis, and I need not tell you how great is the
happiness of myself, my family and the firm, to see our most valued
client restored to such a great measure of prosperity. It occurs to
me--this must have been a great shock, Marquis--you would like to be
alone for a time. I shall wait upon you with my younger partner later in
the day. A domestic staff must be engaged, a car--oh, there are many
things! Life must be restablished for you. We will talk of practical
matters later on."

The Marquis rose to his feet in dignified fashion and he forgot to lean
upon his stick as he bade his guests farewell.

"I have no words," he acknowledged. "They will not pass my throat.
Matre Lafardire, I thank you for your visit and for your share in this
happening. Roubaud, old friend, we meet later in the day. I shall be
myself then. I offer no more apologies for leaving you to make your own
departure."

They faded away--Monsieur Roubaud fat and so agitated that he groped his
way across the terrace. Even Lafardire, the grave man of affairs, was
assailed by a sudden wave of rare emotion. Arm in arm they
disappeared....

The Marquis sat alone. A soft west wind was blowing in the vines which
reached almost to the terrace and rustling in the leaves of the little
bower of orange trees and cypresses below. In his pocket was that
unaccustomed roll. He took it out and examined it. Mille franc notes! He
tore one a little at the corner. There was no doubt about it. He thrust
them back into the depths and rose to his feet. He was alone in the
Chteau, for the old woman who filled the place of _bonne  tout faire_
did her modest cooking in the ruins of one of the outhouses. Alone he
began his melancholy promenade. He walked through the ruined and
tarnished suites of reception rooms. The gilt had dropped from the
panels. On the walls themselves there were great stains of damp--here
and there cracks. There was thick dust on the floor, a hole in the
corner of the first room where, for many nights, the Marquis had
watched, by the light of his solitary candle, the coming of the first of
a small company of rats. He passed on to the stately gallery, whose only
remaining beauty was its form. There was a fallen oaken beam which had
crashed on to the floor. There were empty frames, with the mockery of
dead beauties smiling their way back into the memory of the man who
paused every now and then to look upwards in his melancholy pilgrimage.
_There_ had been a Murillo, here at the end, that marvellous painting of
King Francis, the work of Andrea del Sarto, presented to the Lord of St.
Vran after he had won the great battle against the invaders on the
heights of Cimiez....

The Marquis pushed open a door half a foot thick, of which only one
hinge still did its work, but which hung bravely on. He crossed the
great hall, cold even on this brilliant day, cold and damp, with empty
leaden frames in the windows from which the stained glass had gone, many
decades ago, to the markets of the world. He passed into the banqueting
chamber where a long deal plank on trestles, at which a hundred men
might have sat, stretched only half the length of the room. He
remembered now the reason for its presence. Monsieur le Cur had begged
it for a school treat on a wet day. He looked through the space where a
window had been, into the little chapel where nothing remained but the
picture of the Virgin, curled up and blistered with damp, looking down
upon the altar. He spared himself nothing. He passed through the more
habitable rooms where the last generation and he himself had lived,
where odd pieces of furniture still remained, rooms dead with the horror
of fireless years and open windows, through which draughts and winds
had, year by year, brought their poisonous burden of rotting leaves and
dead insects....

The footsteps of the wanderer grew slower. He was fighting his last
battle with the horror with which he had been surrounded for years, and
it seemed as though success had brought defeat, for there was a hand of
ice upon his heart. He stumbled back into the sunshine, groped his way
to the edge of the terrace, leaning on his stick again now, and gazed
down the valley, gazed at the vineyards where the park land should have
been, at the razed woods which speculators had bought, listened to the
distant hum of the sawmill where birds should have sung, gazed gravely
at the hillside blistered and disfigured by the staring white villas of
the prosperous shopkeepers, over the roofs of the smaller hotels, to the
great structure upon the hills, and down to the Casino. Nothing,
nothing, could change what lay before him. Nothing could bring life to
what lay behind. Millions of bourgeois gold poured into his hands! What
for? Centuries had gone to the beautifying of the St. Vran lands, which
seemed suddenly to flow into life before his eyes, lit with the pain of
memory, from the terrace to the sea. The groves of olive trees, the
pine woods, the two old Provenal farmhouses with their meadow lands in
which cows stood deep in buttercup-starred grass. A golden strip of
cornland reached almost to the edge of the sea. Memory took him back for
a moment, from the horrified contemplation of the shattered magnificence
of his home, where dilapidation reigned instead of elegance, and dignity
had given place to sordid and humiliating ruin.... He seemed to sense
with a sort of repulsion the suave and black-coated restorer from the
establishment in the Rue de la Paix, brimful of new ideas, babbling the
modern shibboleth of interior decoration, and heedless of the fact that
no power on God's earth could bring back the beauty which the hand of
the speculator had throttled. They were there for all time--the bustling
hotels, the noisy Casino, the ugly little villas.

A fit of temporary madness seized him. He drew the fat roll of notes
from his pocket and flung them down amongst the weeds and cracked stones
of the terrace. He tore his cheque book in half, so that little
fragments of white and green paper were fluttering in the afternoon
mistral all over the place. He was glad that there was no one there to
pick up the notes, and he realised with a fierce despair that the
millions, an inevitable force, would mock him now and for ever in the
archives of the bank. He would never be able to escape from the gifts of
the gods that came too late.

Then, the world seemed suddenly different. A new peace was in his body,
a new sense of life creeping into his veins. An arm was thrust through
his, a faint breath of familiar perfume mingling with the scent of the
roses, a white, reproachful finger pointing at the torn fragments upon
the terrace.

"I was afraid you might be feeling like this," Caroline whispered.
"That's why I came."




IV

NO RED RIBBON FOR THE COMMODORE


It appeared to Commodore Jasen that the world had turned upside down,
when he woke in the small hours of the morning to find himself looking
into the barrel of a somewhat old-fashioned, but perfectly serviceable
revolver. Instinctively his right hand stole towards the stand at the
side of the bed, where, amongst other articles of possible utility, he
kept a small automatic. His action, however, had been anticipated. The
weapon had disappeared.

"You lay quite still, Guv'nor," a hard voice enjoined. "We're not
looking for trouble, so long as you do what you are told and keep
quiet."

"But what is this all about?" Commodore Jasen demanded. "What is it you
want?"

"I want, or rather we want--there are plenty of us in the house--the key
of the old wine cellar."

"Well, you want what I haven't got," was the perfectly collected reply.
"The owners of this property left me a certain amount of cellarage, but
the old wine cellar has been locked up ever since I took possession."

"Where's the key?"

"At this sacred hour of the morning," Jasen replied, "and with that most
unpleasant-looking weapon pointing at my head--I wish you'd lower it--I
can speak nothing but the truth. _I do not know._ Do you get that? I do
not know where the key of the old wine cellar is."

"Let's have a look at you and see if you are telling the truth," the
intruder remarked coolly.

He turned on an electric switch, and, in doing so, lowered the weapon
which had given the Commodore so much uneasiness. The two men were now
facing each other, the burglar leaning over the rail of the bed, and the
Commodore sitting up in his bright blue pyjamas opposite to him. The
latter looked long and earnestly at his vis--vis. Probably English, he
decided. Not very expert at his job. Certainly not a high-class gangster
by profession. The humour of the situation began to appeal to him.

"So far as regards my portion of the cellarage," he said, "you will find
it at the bottom of the steps leading out of the kitchen. We have not
troubled to fit a lock, as I have confidence in my servants. If it's a
drink you're after, pray help yourself. If champagne should be your
favorite beverage, let me recommend a small quantity of Veuve Cliquot
'19. If it's brandy, you ought to try my Armagnac--forty-eight years
old, I can assure you, and genuine."

"Chatty old person, aren't you?" the burglar observed.

"I am talkative upon occasions," Jasen admitted, "but I am not old. I am
not sure that I should be called even elderly. If you care for a little
competition, the sun will be up in half an hour; I will swim you, box
you, run with you, jump with you, for any sum you like to name."

The man at the end of the bed grinned.

"Well, you're a cool customer," he remarked. "Look here. Business. We
have not come here for nothing, me and my pal. We have an appointment
inside that wine cellar. What we didn't reckon for was it's having a
sheet-iron door. We could blow it to pieces, but they would hear the
noise up at Juan, therefore we'd rather have the key. If you haven't the
key, you must know where it is."

"My friend," Commodore Jasen began, "let me assure you--"

It was at this point that the Commodore dropped out of the conversation.
The snapped-out command to throw up his hands, which came from the
shadows of the room, was very much more like the real thing than the
burglar's rough invitation. Jake Arnott had entered the room stealthily
and crept round the screen which the Commodore had established at the
far side of his bed. Compared with the vision of his crouching figure,
his set face and his wicked-looking automatic, held in fingers which
gripped it as though in a vice, the burglar appeared almost like an
amateur. He had sense enough, however, to grasp the situation, dropped
his revolver upon the floor and raised his hands.

"What's he after?" Jake Arnott asked, crawling a little nearer.

"He says that he wants the key of the old wine cellar," the Commodore
explained.

"So did another one of them, who is looking sick on the grass outside,"
Jake Arnott confided. "Upon my word, if this isn't a queer start. I
never reckoned upon burglars in this part of the world. We didn't even
take out an insurance, did we, Commodore?"

"I don't think we did," the latter replied. "On the other hand, I don't
think we are going to lose anything."

"Not to this outfit, anyway," Jake Arnott scoffed. "I didn't waste any
gunpowder upon the young man downstairs, but I think he'll have a
headache for a week."

"Now that we can speak without embarrassment," the Commodore remarked,
sitting a little farther up in the bed, "let us try and induce our
visitor to explain to us why he is so anxious to acquire the key of the
old wine cellar."

"If I tell you, will you let me go?"

The Commodore considered the matter.

"I really do not think," he decided, "that we should be the gainers by
keeping you. You are not handsome enough for a pet--besides, I prefer
Sealyhams. We are overstaffed with servants and you would probably be
all the time worrying around that closed door. Yes, my friend. Gratify
our curiosity in the direction I have indicated, and you may assist your
sick comrade on the lawn and take him where you damn' well please."

The man at the foot of the bed looked suspiciously at his two
companions.

"Sure you're not kidding?" he asked. "You honestly don't know why Lord
Wyndham left that old servant of his here?"

"To spy on us, I expect," the Commodore speculated. "To see we don't do
any harm and try to work up the dilapidation account."

"Don't you worry," the burglar rejoined. "He left him here on guard to
see that no one tried to break into the cellar. You know very well that
there's nothing else in the house worth a tinker's damn. Why do you
suppose this man sleeps most of the daytime and spends the night
promenading the lower regions?"

"The fellow's talking sense," Jake Arnott acknowledged. "I've always
thought it was a crazy idea. There may be something in it."

The Commodore clasped his blue-clad legs in his locked hands and looked
affably at his visitor.

"What is there to guard in the old wine cellar?" he asked insinuatingly.

"I'll tell you the honest truth," the man replied. "I don't know."

"Then why were you and your companion, properly armed and no doubt with
the usual burglar's outfit, paying us the honour of this visit?" his
questioner persisted. "You were not expecting to find anything worth
while amongst the belongings of us poor tenants."

"Here's the truth," the other declared. "You can believe it or not. Old
man Wyndham's a millionaire several times over. Every one knows that.
Mean as they make 'em--a man with the mind of a shopkeeper, but all the
same a great collector. If there's a sale at Christie's of silver, old
pictures, lacquer work, miniatures, jewels--anything of that sort--you
will see Lord Wyndham's name as one of the buyers. Why, only three
months ago he gave seventeen thousand pounds for a pair of vases. He
does the same thing in Rome and the same thing in Paris. I have heard
him say at dinner time--"

"A guest of the house," Commodore Jasen murmured.

"Oh, shut up," the other interrupted. "I was temporary butler here for
three months; as long as any one could stick it, I should think. I heard
him say once at dinner that he scarcely ever bought a stock or a share,
but invested the whole of his surplus income in portable property. You
look around this place. There isn't a picture or a piece of silver, an
ornament, nothing worth a snap of the fingers. Where is it all, then?
Behind that steel door, _I_ expect. Anyhow we came to see."

"If you were once a butler here," Jasen demanded, "how is it that you
didn't know there was a steel door?"

"Because it's two years since I was in the house," the man replied, "and
that door must have been placed there within the last twelve months. Any
one can see the masonry round it is all new."

Commodore Jasen sidled out of bed and wrapped himself in his dressing
gown.

"Jake," he enjoined, "will you take our friend down and see him and his
companion off the premises? By-the-by, how did you get here?"

"We came in a fishing boat with a small auxiliary engine," the man
confided.

"Excellent. See them back into their fishing boat, Jake. Let them start
up their old engine and get away before it's light."

Jake Arnott threw open the door.

"This way," he directed shortly. "I'll show you where to find your
pal."

The two men left the room. Commodore Jasen drew his dressing gown closer
around himself, opened his window and sat out in the perfumed stillness,
his eyes fixed upon the long shaft of light eastwards. Presently he
heard the beat of a motor engine almost directly below, and in a few
minutes the boat, with a single lantern in front, glided out across the
placid waters of the bay, a spectral-like looking craft in the fading
shadows. Immediately afterwards Jake Arnott could be seen, crossing the
lawn. Commodore Jasen called to him softly and in due course he made his
appearance.

"Bring a chair out, Jake," his patron invited. "We can sit here and
watch the sun rise."

Jake Arnott was not in the mood to appreciate the beauties of nature.
His remarks about the sunrise were pungent and unprintable.

"Honest to God," he begged, "I wish you'd stop kidding. We've been here
months now--the Lebworthy Gang, mark you, or the best of it--and not
once have we touched, whereas the dame over at the hotel--"

"Yes, yes, I know all about that, Jake," his companion interrupted
soothingly. "What's your trouble at this particular moment, though? Are
you dissatisfied?"

"My bank account is," was the grim reply.

"What sort of a state is Grogan in?" the Commodore asked with apparent
irrelevance.

"He's conscious but sick."

Jasen's manner seemed suddenly to change.

"There's no one sleeping in the house except our people?" he asked.

"No one," Arnott replied hopefully. "Got an idea, Boss?"

The Commodore was already back in the bedroom. He drew on a pair of
trousers and fastened them with a belt. Then, after carefully covering
his hand with a pyjama jacket which he took from a drawer, he picked up
the revolver.

"I was trying to think of a safer way," he said slowly. "There isn't
one. Is the boat still in sight, Jake?"

Arnott nodded.

"Their engines ain't up to much."

"This is going to be a rush job," the Commodore confided. "Come with me,
Jake. Follow my lead. Where did you say Grogan was?"

"In his easy-chair against the wall, facing the door of the old cellar."

The two men descended the stairs, passed through the kitchens and went
down more stairs into the cellar. In the second crypt they came upon a
pitiful figure. Grogan, his collar torn apart and his bonds loosened by
Arnott, was groaning miserably with half-closed eyes. There were other
and sufficient evidences of his condition. The Commodore leaned over
him.

"Grogan," he enjoined, "pull yourself together, man."

The watchman's eyes opened a little wider.

"Have they gone?" he faltered.

"We've driven them off, but I fear they're coming back. Try and listen
to me, Grogan."

The man's lips moved and he raised himself a few inches. It was evident
that he was doing his best.

"They threatened that they're coming back," Jasen went on, "with the
stuff to blow that door out. You did your duty. You kept the key away
from the burglars. We'll see to the rest. Give me the keys. We'll
protect whatever may be there."

The man's head rolled on one side. He spoke with difficulty.

"Never--part with the keys--his lordship's last words."

"Listen here, Grogan," the Commodore continued soothingly. "You have
obeyed your master and you have done wonderfully, but unless you use
your common sense it will be of no good. Mr. Arnott and I will deal with
these men when they come back, but if they bring explosives with them,
and if we were to shoot down here, it would blow the place to pieces.
Give us the keys and we will move the valuables upstairs and guard them
till the police come."

"Have you sent for the police?" Grogan faltered.

"Of course we have," was the impatient reply. "They would have been here
by now if only there was an all-night telephone service."

The man groaned. He leant over on one side for a moment. His face was a
ghastly colour.

"You have done well so far, Grogan," Jasen assured him. "Don't spoil it
all. If you do not trust us with the keys, you may have to lie here and
see those two men walk inside. They will probably let you be blown to
pieces too."

"The keys," the man confided, "are in a small safe underneath my bed.
The key of the safe is under the pillow."

The Commodore turned swiftly to his companion.

"You heard, Jake," he said. "Get the keys. You know the bedroom--it
leads off the kitchen somewhere. Bring the poor fellow some brandy, but
don't be long about it."

Jake took swift leave. The Commodore looked down at the sick man and
shook his head compassionately.

"Bad luck," he murmured to himself. "Still, safety first."

He unfolded the revolver which he had been carrying wrapped up in his
pyjama jacket, wound the sleeve carefully around the butt, stepped back
a few paces and raised it. The man's eyes suddenly opened. He half sat
up. A strangled scream gurgled in his throat. He pawed the air with his
hands.

"God," he cried. "Don't! Don't!"

Commodore Jasen fired three times into the man's body, which fell over
in a limp heap. Again being careful not to touch any part of the weapon
with his fingers, he threw it a short distance away, tucked the pyjama
jacket into his dressing-gown pocket, and turned round to meet Arnott,
who was hurrying towards him.

"Put him out, have you?" the latter exclaimed.

The Commodore nodded.

"With him alive, we were for it all the time," he explained.

"Quite like old times," Arnott muttered appreciatively. "Here's the key
of the safe door. I know that, anyway. All these little ones must be for
places inside."

The Commodore paused to listen. There was silence still in the house.
They moved towards the door and Jake fitted the key. They were hard men,
both of them, and emotions seized them seldom and sluggishly,
nevertheless their half-stifled cry, as they looked inside, rang out and
awakened a hundred echoes in the low vaulted corridor.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Commissaire of Police of the district began to feel himself a very
important man indeed. This was the second murder which he had been
called upon to investigate within a few weeks. He presented himself
before the man who had assisted him to solve the first, with the nearest
approach to an amiable smile which had ever parted his lips. The
Commodore was taking his breakfast in his usual corner of the terrace
and greeted his visitor with the customary handshake.

"Sit down, Monsieur le Commissaire," he invited. "A cup of coffee?"

"I breakfasted two hours ago, sir," the latter regretted. "What I have
come to see is whether you can give me any ideas about this terrible
affair. It was really you who solved the Legarge mystery."

Jasen shook his head gently and poured himself out another cup of
coffee.

"I am afraid I cannot be inspired all the time, Monsieur le
Commissaire," he replied. "You see I had something to go by on the other
occasion."

"But this affair," the police functionary pointed out, "has taken place
in the very house you are occupying. From here you might almost have
heard the shots that were fired at the dead man."

"Quite true," the Commodore admitted, "but you see I didn't. I heard
nothing."

The Commissaire sighed.

"That is unfortunate. You have not even a hint to offer me?"

"I might be able to fix the time of the affair for you, if that's any
good," the Commodore observed, pushing back his chair and lighting a
cigarette. "I am a very good sleeper and I seldom wake, but early this
morning, without hearing any definite sounds I found myself sitting up
in bed, listening. Then I heard again the sound which must have wakened
me. It was a motor boat in my private waters, or rather the private
waters of the Chteau. I got out of bed and went out on to my balcony.
Within a few yards of the shore there was what seemed to be a fishing
boat with an auxiliary engine."

"What time was this?" the Commissaire asked quickly.

"Soon after four."

The Commissaire reflected.

"At four o'clock," he remarked, "it is still night. There were many
clouds too. How was it you were able to see the boat?"

The Commodore smiled.

"Because of the lantern hanging in front," he explained. "There was no
moon, it is true, but there was quite enough light, when one's
attention had been fixed upon the lantern, to trace the outlines of the
boat."

"Did you do anything about it?"

"What would a sleepy man do because a fishing boat was too near his
beach--or rather his landlord's beach?" the Commodore expostulated. "I
got back into bed again and went to sleep."

"It is your impression, then, that the thieves got away in that boat?"

"I have no definite impression. It seems likely."

"It appears to me to be a strange thing that not one of your servants,
whom I have interrogated, appears to have heard the discharge of the
revolver or any sound whatever."

"It is a large house," the Commodore reminded his questioner, "and the
cellars are a long way from the servants' quarters. Do I gather, then,
that you have already interrogated my staff?"

"I have seen every one of them," the Commissaire assented, "including
the two young ladies and the elderly one in the annex."

The Commodore shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of annoyance.

"In England or in America you would have come first to the master of the
house and asked for permission to interrogate the servants," he
observed.

"The law over here does not bother about permission. We act as we think
best," was the curt rejoinder.

"Have you discovered how the thieves entered the house?" the Commodore
enquired.

The other nodded.

"Simple enough," he replied. "They cut a large pane out of one of the
lower windows. But to get into the house was a child's affair. There are
other things one asks oneself."

"As, for instance?"

"Many of our French criminals," he confided, "are as bad as it is
possible for that type of man to be, but when they rob they do not often
kill. I ask myself why did they kill the watchman?"

"To get the key," the Commodore suggested.

His visitor indulged in a contemptuous little exclamation.

"How could a dead man give them a key?"

"Then perhaps they killed him because he would not give them the key."

"But what use would that be to them? It would be senseless."

"To prevent his identifying them afterwards," the Commodore ventured.

"Aha!" the other approved. "That is the only idea which I myself have
preserved. They might have got out of that, though, by wearing masks."

"It appears to me," Jasen reflected, "that the fact of their killing
him, doubtless to avoid identification, is a proof that they were not,
after all, strangers from a Marseilles gang or anything of that sort. It
seems to me proof that they were known to the watchman and that he
recognised them."

"It is a point," the Commissaire conceded.

"It would therefore seem to one a reasonable course of procedure," the
Commodore continued, "to make enquiries in the near-by ports and see
which fishing boats were out last night."

The Commissaire smiled--not pleasantly, but with an obvious sense of
amusement streaked with malice.

"Marvellous," he murmured. "You have the genius of a detective,
Monsieur."

Jasen moved irritably in his place. His visitor's manner puzzled him.

"You have perhaps already pursued that obvious course," he remarked.

"Soon after daylight," the Commissaire assented, "Jacques Barataud, one
of the worst characters amongst the boatmen, together with a
foreigner--either English or American, were detained. From here I go to
Antibes to interrogate them again. I have already had a few words with
them."

"Capital," the Commodore observed. "I congratulate you, _mon ami_. Has
any stolen property been discovered?"

The Commissaire shrugged his shoulders.

"It is early to discuss that," he pointed out, "until we know what was
in that amazing hiding place. There was nothing, however, in the boat or
on their persons of the least value."

"Well, my congratulations, in any case," the Commodore repeated. "You
evidently won't need my help this time."

The police functionary saluted and took his leave.

"One never knows," were his parting words....

The Commodore moved to the edge of the terrace, lit a cigarette, and
looked thoughtfully out across the sea. His expression was completely
serene. There was a faint drawing together of the brows, however, which
indicated concentration. He recognised the footsteps of Jake Arnott
crossing the terrace and spoke to him without turning his head.

"Has the Commissaire gone?" he enquired.

"Sure," Arnott answered, seating himself upon the topmost step.

"Did the servants line up all right?"

"Absolutely."

"Zo and Laura?"

"They couldn't help it. They never heard anything."

"What's the trouble?"

"The trouble with me," Jake Arnott replied, "is that I fancy a little
sea air--just halfway to the islands and round the bay."

The Commodore rose to his feet and the two men strolled down the path.
They talked of the mistral that might or might not develop. The
Commodore spoke pleasantly to the men at work, stopped to help an old
woman who was weeding, with her bundle. They all looked after him
admiringly. What a master!

Tim, the mechanic, who was lounging on deck, shot out his hand at their
approach, and the engine was started before they reached the quay. They
glided out from the harbour into the more troubled waters. The two men
spread themselves on the cushions aft.

"Kind of feel we can talk here," Jake Arnott remarked. "These seagulls
look knowing, but their story wouldn't cut any ice, even in a French
court. Boss, I'm not quite sure I like that Commissaire."

"I've had moments of wondering about him myself," was the thoughtful
reply. "Shoot."

"Oh, there's nothing special. Nothing to get the wind up about, at any
rate," Arnott went on, as he filled his pipe. "The only thing is, I
wondered why he went up into your room and stood out on the balcony."

"Did he do that this morning?"

"He surely did."

"He must have wanted to see how much I could see of a fishing boat that
was close in," the Commodore reflected. "Well, you can see a great deal
more than any one would imagine."

"Seems to show he's turning things over in his mind," Jake observed.
"Has he had their story yet?"

"He's put them through what he calls the first interrogation," the
Commodore confided. "That's what struck me as queer. He never told me
what I am perfectly certain one of the men must have told him--that he
had come up into my room for the keys. He never told me a word of their
story and I couldn't ask him. Now he's gone back to have another shy at
them."

"Things ought to be cast iron for us," Jake Arnott mused. "We are in a
different position from most of the guys who might put up a show like
this. They are nearly always given away by a dame or one of their own
people. There's no chance of that with us. Zo and Laura are all right,
and if they weren't, they don't know a damn' thing about it. As for the
others, well--there's only been three squeals in ten years, and they
were from outside members of the gang, not one of whom lived for
twenty-four hours. Besides, we have got the stuff."

"They know that?"

"They do. Sure," Arnott answered. "Broadman's tickled to death. He was
getting like we were--a trifle fed up--and he wants to send some money
home."

"He can have it any time," the Commodore observed.

"What about the stuff?" his chief of the staff enquired.

"The stuff is good," the Commodore acknowledged. "It's better than I
ever dreamt of, but it's none the less extraordinarily difficult. We
shall have to take a voyage out East before we begin to dispose of it."

"You're a wizard at the valuation, Boss," Arnott said. "What do you make
of it?"

"Three hundred thousand pounds," was the soft but confident reply.
"There are pink pearls and sapphires there, which must have taken many
years to collect, even if every gem merchant from Port Said to Rangoon
was working. The green emeralds I can scarcely speak about, and by the
grace of Providence they are uncut. There are half a dozen I could take
to Amsterdam to-morrow, under ordinary circumstances, and they would be
unrecognisable in a week, and fit to sell to the most captious courtesan
in Paris or South America. The stuff's all right, Jake, but--what we had
to leave behind! There's a million pounds' worth of fairly portable
things there still, if only we'd known. It would have been worth while
making this our one exploit in Europe. We could have done it
marvellously."

"Too late now," Jake Arnott said regretfully. "We are too well known as
the tenants of the Chteau, and of course, after this, every one will be
wise to the stuff."

"The pity of it!" the Commodore sighed.

"The rest of it is off the map for us," Jake Arnott decided firmly.
"We've got to go dawdling along as usual for a time. Not a servant can
leave the place, neither can you or I. Our motto must be 'Life as
usual.'"

"You are quite right, Jake," his chief agreed. "You have nothing more
definite to say about the Commissaire, then?"

"Not a thing. I just don't like his manner. Guess I'd better have a turn
on the board. It will look better. I'll pass the word to Tim."

He rose to his feet, stripped off his Lido shirt, displaying his scanty
bathing attire. The boat slackened down and the board was thrown out. He
dived and clambered on to it. In a few minutes they were off again at
top speed, Arnott swaying from side to side gracefully, his host
watching him from the stern of the boat with friendly interest. They
circled round the bay for half an hour, then the Commodore passed the
word forward and held up his hand to Jake. The boat slackened speed and
circled round. Arnott dived off the plank and swam to the side.

"I think I'll go and hear the gossip in the bar," the Commodore decided.
"You take the boat back and then send her for me, Jake. There will be
another descent upon the Chteau before long."

"Sure," Jake assented, as he scrambled on board.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Commodore was surrounded as soon as he drew near to the rocks upon
which the Cap d'Antibes bathers were lying sunning themselves. He was,
in his way, quite a popular man and had made a great many friends
amongst the _habitus_.

"I say, Commodore, they're not giving you much of a peaceful summer
vacation," a stalwart young American observed, rising to his feet.
"We're all crazy to know the truth. Was there really a burglary last
night at the Chteau?"

"There was indeed," the Commodore admitted gravely. "A serious affair
too."

"Is it true that some one was killed?" a woman asked breathlessly.

"The man whom Lord Wyndham left as caretaker was killed," Jasen
confided. "Brutally murdered, by the look of it. Shot three or four
times through the body."

"Have they got the man who did it?" some one else demanded.

"They have made two arrests. I should think they've got the right
fellows," the Commodore replied.

"But what on earth was there at the Chteau to steal?" an elderly man,
who had joined them on their way to the bar, enquired. "I have been
there once or twice to lunch with Wyndham, and a barer-looking place I
never saw."

"I have never been inside it," another one of the group observed,
"although I live not a kilometre away. I have always heard, though, that
Lord Wyndham was a great collector and had some very valuable things."

"You are both right in a way," the Commodore said, as they drew into a
little circle round one of the tables looking out seawards. "The place
looks as empty of valuables as you could possibly imagine. In fact, it
is like an American seaside boarding house. Down in the cellars,
however, there is a chamber with a steel door, and I believe that,
stored away inside, Lord Wyndham had a great collection of things he had
picked up on his travels--_objets d'art_ and jewels of every sort. These
fellows had evidently got to know about it."

"Did they get away with much?"

"No one knows," Jasen went on. "So far, the thing is pretty mysterious.
The caretaker was found shot several times through the body, by the side
of the chair where he used to sit in the passage outside the cellars.
The key of the principal door is missing from his bedroom, where he used
to keep it, but the door itself is still locked, and at present no one
knows how to get into the vault. Presumably the thieves cleared out what
they wanted, locked up afterwards, and disposed of the key somehow."

The Commodore had set the ball rolling, but he took very little part in
the babel which followed. Presently, with a word of excuse, he rose and
went to meet Caroline, who was just coming out of the dressing rooms.
She greeted him with a queer little smile.

"So you are in trouble again," she remarked.

"Come and let me tell you about it," he begged.

She hesitated, but walked with him down the room.

"This is rather against our principles," she reminded him softly.

"If we didn't break through them sometimes," he pointed out, "we should
be just as noticeable."

"Let us go outside and look at the bathers," she suggested. "Out through
the door there. The wind's getting up, and there, at any rate, we shall
be alone. The echoes in this room are awful."

They made their way on to the terraced front and leaned over the wall.
Within the last few minutes the weather had changed. There were
whitecaps all over the sea and the rafts below were beginning to dance
about like corks. The bathers had all gone in.

"There are all sorts of stories flying about," Caroline told him. "I
take it that nothing serious has happened, or you would not be here."

"There has been a raid upon his lordship's treasures," the Commodore
confided.

"The watchman was killed, I understand," she observed.

He nodded gravely.

"The fortune of war. He might have shot first."

"If it were true," she laughed, "there would be an element of humour in
the whole situation. Fancy _you_ being burgled!"

He smiled.

"The element of humour remains," he assured her. "We were burgled--a
clumsy attempt. But I don't mind confessing to you--"

"Please do not confess anything to me," she interrupted.

"Nothing to confess in the way you mean," he continued. "We actually
were burgled. Two of them. They broke in, shot the watchman, and found
the key to the vault. As they locked it up again and apparently took the
key away with them, however, no one knows what is missing."

"Except perhaps you," she murmured.

"Except perhaps me," he assented.

She sighed.

"I am a lady of fortune now," she remarked, "and I am not at all sure
that I like to be on friendly terms with any one in your profession."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Are you quitting it altogether?" he asked.

"Unless something very special, and very safe, and almost moral, comes
along," she replied. "I saw that Jake Arnott was out on the board--a
very subtle gesture, I thought, yours this morning. I knew from the
moment I saw you indulging in your innocent little recreation that you
were in this last piece of trouble. We must not stay here any longer. I
have a friend coming to lunch."

"Yes," the Commodore admitted, brushing back his white hair, which the
wind had disarranged, and replacing his yachting cap. "We are in it, but
we shall get out of it. I am not sure that it will not be one of the
neatest affairs we have ever handled."

She shook her head.

"The three shots into the body," she objected, "was rather a mistake.
Only American gangsters do that sort of thing."

The Commodore raised his cap as they parted and his smile of farewell
was both genial and affectionate.

"I like to make sure," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

There followed days of tragical rumours. A stream of gendarmes and their
superiors seemed to be all the time in and out of the Chteau. Commodore
Jasen kept out of it as much as he could. He gave a great luncheon party
at the Eden Roc, with Caroline his guest of honour, and his health was
drunk to the strains of music before the gathering broke up. His
popularity amongst the guests of the hotel and in the neighbourhood
increased daily. On all sides his friends and acquaintances deplored his
ill luck. First of all, his summer had been half spoilt by the loss of
his aquaplane passenger, Ned Loyd, and now, under his own roof, a
burglary in his temporary abode and a man shot to pieces. Hard luck
indeed, every one agreed, that these two tragedies should have happened
to a harmless, genial little person who had paid an immense rent for a
few months' sunshine and bathing and repose. So they stood up and drank
his health, and drank it again, and Commodore Jasen thanked them with
tears in his eyes, and declared that, for the first time for weeks, he
felt a human being again. He made his way homeward on foot and alone,
for Jake Arnott had not attended the luncheon, but remained--the eternal
sentry--watching the servants, watching for the newcomers, guarding
against any new and untoward happening. The Commodore knew the short
cuts and very soon arrived upon his own beach. There, on the edge of the
sea, with his head, as usual, bent downwards, stood the inevitable
figure of the Commissaire. Jasen paused and looked at him. How he was
beginning to hate the man! How joyfully his first finger could pull the
trigger of any gun that might consign him to perdition. Nevertheless,
there were no signs of these sentiments, as he picked his way over the
pebbles to within hailing distance.

"Hello, _mon ami_!"

The Commissaire turned round. There was no start or surprise in his
manner. He might even have been conscious of the Commodore's approach.
He made his way quietly towards him.

"Nothing fresh?" the latter enquired.

"Nothing," was the dreary reply. "The business presents great
difficulties."

"Is any part of the mystery to be solved, do you think," Commodore Jasen
asked lightly, "by standing here and gazing across at Antibes? You had
the air of one very deep in thought."

The police functionary shook his head gravely.

"It was you yourself," he said, "who initiated me into the finer arts of
reconstruction. I came down from the house hurriedly. I stood here, from
where the two men must have waded to the boat, for they had no dinghy. I
wondered what they would do if they had something they wanted to dispose
of hurriedly. I have been looking around to see if I could find any
traces of that object."

"What is it precisely that you are looking for?" Jasen asked.

"The key. You remember, the key has never been found. Mr. Crowhurst, the
agent, has opened the door of the chamber with his duplicate."

"I had forgotten about the key," Jasen observed. "So that is the reason
we have two gendarmes on guard before the door."

"How did you know that?" the other asked.

"Servants' gossip. When you come to think of it," the Commodore went on,
"it seems strange that the revolver, which is so much more important a
piece of evidence than anything else, should have been thrown carelessly
away down the corridors of the cellars themselves, where it was certain
to be found, and the key, the further use of which is scarcely apparent,
should have disappeared."

"There are more curious things still," the Commissaire remarked, pushing
back a long wisp of black hair from his eyes, "concerning this affair.
Four times now I have questioned those two men, and not even I, who have
some skill, have had fortune. Their story is always the same. They
failed to find the key after chloroforming the watchman, one of them
came to your room in search of it, he was surprised there by your
friend, Mr. Arnott, who had already knocked the other one senseless.
With that they were turned out of the house, they embarked in their boat
and sailed for Antibes."

Commodore Jasen smiled in mild approval.

"Why should they change such a story? It is the only one possible," he
pointed out. "I imagine that, according to them, they left the watchman
alive and the door of the treasure chamber unopened."

"That is their story," the Commissaire admitted.

"Another improbable part about it," Jasen continued, "is that they did
not attempt to explain who killed the watchman or committed the robbery,
if--as gossip tells us--a robbery was committed. Perhaps their idea is
to suggest that there was another set of criminals at work at the same
time?"

The Commissaire was walking slowly towards the house, his hands behind
his back. His head was uplifted towards the skies, that faint twist of
the mouth--an unpleasant gesture in which he frequently indulged--was
displaying his unattractive teeth.

"They are very frightened," he ruminated. "They do not talk sensibly."

"And Mr. Crowhurst, the agent," the Commodore asked, "has he completed
his inventory? I do not wish to seem inquisitive, but I think I am
entitled to your confidence as regards the details of this affair."

The Commissaire nodded gravely.

"The result," he confided, "is bad. It is very bad. There are jewels
missing valued at an enormous amount."

The Commodore's equanimity seemed at last to be disturbed.

"That means," he rejoined irritably, "that there will be no end to these
investigations. They will be going on the whole of the time. I must
have a talk with Mr. Crowhurst. I think I shall cancel my agreement and
move to the hotel."

"To the hotel," the Commissaire mused.

"Yes. Why not? I am sorry for Lord Wyndham's loss, of course, but he
should not keep such treasures in a house he lets out for six months at
a time. The tenants have a right to some consideration. Crowhurst is
still in the house, I suppose?"

"He is still there. I begged him to wait. We have a favour to ask of
you, Monsieur. I thought I should like him to be present."

"A favour?" the Commodore repeated. "You won't find me in a very amiable
mood for granting favours."

"This one, I think, will appeal to your sense of fairness," the other
declared.

They made their way into the library, where the agent--a very
worried-looking man--was writing out cables to his employer. He greeted
the Commodore with the respect and _empressement_ due to his position as
a valuable client.

"You have heard the news, sir?" he groaned.

The Commodore nodded.

"Damn' bad news for all of us," he said, with some trace of his former
irritation still lingering in his tone. "What do you suppose the value
of the missing jewels is?"

"I have only his lordship's private valuation," the agent confided.
"That amounts to something like half a million pounds sterling."

"Which means, I suppose," Jasen observed bitterly, "that this house is
to be invaded now by detectives from Paris, detectives from Lyons,
insurance men, private enquiry agents, and God knows what! I have just
told our friend of the police here that I shall move up to the hotel.
You will have to make some arrangements as regards my tenancy, Mr.
Crowhurst."

"Don't, for heaven's sake, suggest any more complications!" the agent
begged, holding his head. "We'll see how things work out. I'll undertake
that you're not worried in any way--"

"Except for just that one little matter," the Commissaire intervened.

The agent nodded uncomfortably.

"I am sure, sir," he said, "that you will forgive me, under the
circumstances, if I make a very unusual request. I promised the
Commissaire that I would put the matter to you. He finds your French is
as near as possible perfect, but he thought that perhaps I would be able
to explain the matter better."

"Go on," the Commodore directed.

"It is the matter of the revolver. The man who tells the story of having
visited you in your room swears passionately that you took it away from
him and that he never used it against the murdered man. The law demands
that such evidence as is possible should be taken--even though his
statement is improbable. The Commissaire wishes the fingerprints of
every person in the house taken and compared with the fingerprints on
the revolver. He thinks that it would make the matter so much easier if
you would consent to having your own taken first. No one then would
feel that they were under suspicion."

The Commodore stroked his white moustache. His blue eyes were fixed upon
the agent. He glanced towards the Commissaire. All the time his mind was
fixed upon a brief period--some few seconds--during which his fingers,
stretched downwards, had halted and he had wrapped the blue coat of his
pyjamas around his hand. Perhaps he might have been forgiven for
thinking that he walked hand in hand with Fate.

"The request seems a little unusual," he remarked mildly, "but I see the
point. Certainly--I consent. You had better call the servants up, so
that they can see me submit myself to this ordeal. You have your man
here, I suppose?" he added.

The Commissaire agreed. There was perhaps a shadow of disappointment in
his tone as he rang the bell.

"He is waiting outside with his apparatus," he said. "If you will be so
good as to order your servants in, the matter can proceed."

       *       *       *       *       *

The tenant of the Chteau d'Antibes, seated in his favourite sunny
corner on the following morning, reading his _Eclaireur_ and enjoying
one of his excellent cigars, looked up to greet the Commissaire.

"What, you here again!" he exclaimed, with an air of weary good humour.

The visitor nodded.

"I am here again," he admitted. "I thought you would wish to know the
result of the fingerprints examination."

"I knew it beforehand," was the indifferent reply. "None of my people
were down in the cellars that night."

"That would appear to be the case," the Commissaire reported. "The
fingerprints are very blurred, but the only ones which it is possible to
trace at all are the fingerprints of the older of the two men whom we
were holding."

"Whom you _were_ holding?" the Commodore repeated. "Do you mean that you
have let them go?"

The Commissaire sighed.

"It is most unfortunate," he said. "The two men were confined in a
reasonably guarded room in the prison, which, as you know, is
overlooking the harbour. We dared not put them in the cells until the
examining magistrate had made his report. Last night they managed to
crawl out of the window and on to a coping, and from that they both
dived into the harbour."

"Do you mean that they escaped?" the Commodore asked.

The police official shrugged his shoulders.

"A poor sort of escape," he confided. "They are both drowned. The bodies
were recovered just before I started for here."

The Commodore laid down his paper.

"God bless my soul," he murmured. "Drowned! What about the jewels?"

The Commissaire sighed once more.

"They had a matter of six hours before they were arrested in which to
conceal them. We shall commence at once a systematic search. It is
possible that, having gone further than they intended and actually
murdered the watchman, they may have thrown the jewels--in a panic--into
the sea. The search has already commenced, however. We have hope."

The Commodore rose suddenly to his feet, walked to the edge of the
terrace and picked up a pair of field glasses. He looked through them
for several moments. His companion presently joined him.

"_Mon ami_, an idea!" the Commodore exclaimed.

"Your ideas are always good," was the eager comment.

"Across from the landing place to the port--look. There are one, two,
three, four, five lobster pots. If one of those should have belonged to
either of the two men--what a wonderful hiding place!"

"And two of them did!" the Commissaire cried in much excitement.

Jasen smiled triumphantly.

"I shall not expect a reward," he observed, "as I am unfortunately
already classed amongst the millionaires, but if you discover the
jewels, I shall certainly expect to be decorated!"

       *       *       *       *       *

There was no red ribbon for Commodore Jasen.




V

THE OBSTINATE DUKE


Van Deyl, naked as the day he was born, stood in the centre of the Eden
Roc dressing room--six foot two of symmetric young manhood--and looked
around him with a discontented frown.

"Say, what's happened to this place, anyway?" he demanded. "The first
thing I hear when I arrive is that Ned Loyd--one of the best--good old
Ned!--has been drowned aquaplaning, then there has been a murder and a
great robbery up at the Chteau, and now I can't find my panties.
Something sinister in all this."

The valet, who had been assisting in the search, appeared with a very
abbreviated pair of knickerbockers, which Van Deyl accepted and buckled
on with a grunt of thanks. A friend turned round from the wash-basin.

"It does seem as though there was something queer about the place this
season, George," he remarked, rubbing his tousled hair vigorously with a
towel. "There was a murder too up at St. Paul, at that jolly little
restaurant, one night. Beastly affair. Still, there's plenty of fun
going. I'm not sure that the pace isn't even hotter than last year. My
little crowd got in at seven o'clock this morning."

"Call that a holiday," his friend grunted.

"You'll be doing the same yourself in a day or two," was the cheery
comment. "There's something about sitting up late here which seems part
of the life. Lighter drinks perhaps."

George Van Deyl stretched himself, left the room, crossed the passage
and made his way through the crowded bar towards the diving boards.
Halfway to his destination he came face to face with Ralph Joslin,
peignoir-clad and dry from a sunbath. The former paused irresolutely.

"Hello, Joslin!" he greeted him.

"Hello, George!" the other replied.

There was a moment's awkwardness, as sometimes happens when men engaged
in the secret business of the world come face to face in a public place.

"Your first visit, isn't it?" Joslin enquired.

Van Deyl nodded.

"I'm a Biarritz man," he confided. "Uncertain weather, but glorious sea
when you can get into it."

Joslin glanced around. No one appeared to be taking any notice of them.

"Still at the old shop?" he asked.

Van Deyl was mildly surprised.

"I should say not," he replied. "I quit two years after the War.
Shouldn't have stayed that long except that there were one or two
matters I wanted to clear up. I'm in Wall Street now and in the soup
with all the rest of them."

"Bad luck!" Joslin commiserated, showing signs of moving on.

"I'd like to have a few minutes with you after I've had a swim," Van
Deyl remarked.

"I shall be about," Joslin answered, without any particular enthusiasm.

Van Deyl strolled thoughtfully out into the sunshine, shielded his eyes
for a moment with his hand, then descended the stone steps and walked to
the end of one of the springboards. He hesitated for a moment, stretched
himself, and then made an unostentatious dive. His last thought as he
fell through space into the salt water was of the man he had just left.

       *       *       *       *       *

Caroline Loyd, very elegant in her green pyjamas, tightly fitting green
cap and cape, waved to Joslin as he climbed the stairs and looked around
the Eden Roc restaurant. He crossed the floor at once to the table where
Caroline was awaiting him.

"Hope I have not kept you waiting," he apologised. "I saw Van Deyl
downstairs."

"George Van Deyl?" Caroline asked.

"The same."

There was a moment's silence, followed by a discussion about lunch.

"I am afraid," Joslin went on, as soon as they had given their order,
"that our habit of occasionally interfering in other people's business
has developed in me the vice of curiosity."

"It is a very amiable failing," Caroline sighed. "It gives one so many
interests in life."

There was a brief pause. The _matre d'htel_ had stopped in passing to
offer his respectful greetings. The wine man had appeared for his
customary order. Both men presently faded away.

"Is it George Van Deyl who has stimulated your curiosity?" Caroline
enquired. "You were in X.D.O. with him, weren't you?"

"For one year only, during the war," Joslin confided. "I went back as
soon as I was fit again into active service. Van Deyl couldn't. Some of
us thought he was going to be an invalid for life about that time, but
he pulled himself together somehow or other. Says he is in Wall Street
now."

Caroline smiled.

"You appear to be rather incredulous."

"I am," he admitted. "I happen to know that he is second in command
to-day at X.D.O., and the best man they have got for foreign missions.
If you will believe me--he is staying here with the most abominable
little specimen of a man you ever saw."

"That sounds queer," Caroline commented. "George Van Deyl always used to
be very particular about his company."

"Well, you wouldn't be seen in the same party with this fellow," Joslin
declared. "He is a slimy-looking, bumptious little bounder of the worst
possible type. But--he is a multimillionaire," Joslin added. "I cannot
help thinking that George is not here with him for nothing. They have
something on. I am going to hang around after lunch and see if there is
anything to be picked up. Where can I find you later in the day?"

"In my sitting room at seven o'clock," Caroline replied. "I always try
to get an hour's rest before I change. Don't get to work too soon unless
it is urgent. I have a date for dinner."

"That's the worst of a woman," Joslin grumbled. "Always pleasure before
business."

Caroline laughed.

"Show me the business," she challenged.

       *       *       *       *       *

For one of the finest chteaux in the Alpes-Maritimes, the room in which
George Van Deyl and Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim were invited to attend the
pleasure of the man whom they had come to visit certainly lacked any
suggestions of hospitality. It was approached by a long corridor leading
from the very magnificent hall, and was a plain square apartment with
stone walls and a stone floor, in the exact centre of which reposed one
priceless rug. The walls were undecorated, of furniture there was none
except six high-backed but supremely uncomfortable Provenal chairs of
the best period, which stood primly on one side of the room, and a
further six opposite. Between them was a round table. The windows were
small and high and protected by bars. The room, but for the choiceness
of its scanty furniture, might well have been the waiting room of a
prison or some public institution.

"Say, that young man would need to get a push on if he were secretary to
an American," Mr. Essenheim remarked, glancing at his watch. "Another
ten minutes in this morgue of a room and the salt tears will stand in my
eyes. Do you reckon he knows that I am Essenheim, Chairman of the Grand
Prudential Trust?"

Van Deyl yawned.

"I don't suppose he's ever heard of the Grand Prudential Trust," he
replied.

His companion gazed at him, open-mouthed.

"Say, young fellow, are you trying to put one over on me?" he demanded.
"This Prince, whom we've come to visit, is a millionaire, isn't he?"

"He's a very rich man," Van Deyl acknowledged.

"Then you're not going to tell me that he's not heard of the Grand
Prudential Trust," Essenheim scoffed. "Where there's money the folks
know about the Grand Prudential Trust."

"Maybe," was the curt comment. "Here comes the secretary, anyway."

There were footsteps in the long passage outside, then the door was
quietly opened. The young man who had taken their message reappeared. He
was tall and good-looking in a studious sort of way. His manners were
exceedingly good. It was ominous that he held in his hand the card which
Mr. Essenheim had pressed upon him. He laid it unostentatiously upon the
table.

"I am very sorry, gentlemen," he announced. "His Highness declines to
break his rule. He has no longer any interest in outside affairs. They
are all arranged for him."

"Do you mean to say that he refuses to see me?" Mr. Essenheim exclaimed
angrily. "You showed him my card? He understands who I am and whom I
represent?"

"I daresay he does not understand that," the secretary admitted,
"because he has no interest at all in financial matters. On the other
hand, he wished me to say to you, Mr. Van Deyl, that he is anxious to
show every courtesy to a representative of your Government, but he
scarcely sees in what way he can be of service to you."

"Naturally he can't understand that before I have had an opportunity of
explaining," the young man declared eagerly. "If he will see us for five
minutes I shall deliver to him personally a message from an official in
Washington with whom he has some acquaintance, and I feel sure he will
then understand our intrusion."

"Very well, Mr. Van Deyl," the secretary acquiesced. "If you will
undertake not to be with him more than five minutes, I am to conduct you
to him."

He turned towards the door. Essenheim followed the two men.

"I beg your pardon," the secretary observed, turning round. "I fear I
did not make myself quite clear. The Prince will only see Mr. Van Deyl,
out of compliment to his official position. No one else."

"Do you mean to say that I am to sit here and wait?" Mr. Essenheim
spluttered.

"You can walk in the garden, if you please," the young man pointed out.
"I can assure you that it will not be a matter of more than a few
minutes."

Mr. Essenheim, who probably had never been so angry in his life, was
speechless. They left him there, however, crossed once more that
magnificent hall, and passed into a very beautiful apartment upon the
ground floor. Van Deyl, although he had scant opportunity to look
around, had the impression of having found his way into a palace. His
companion ushered him towards the spacious writing table at which a
tall, grey-haired man was seated. In front of the latter were three or
four photographs of pre-Rafaelite pictures, some books of reference and
a small priceless Old Master, which scarcely needed the magic scrawl of
Fra Filippo Lippi in the corner. A little to the left, through the open
window, was a stretch of beautiful country, a gleam of blue sea, between
the trees the Esterels--dim violet monsters traced against the distant
sky.

"Your Highness," his secretary said quietly, "this is Mr. Van Deyl--the
young American gentleman who wishes to see you."

The Prince, who had been writing laboriously on a large sheet of
foolscap, turned round, the black ebony pen with its gold clasps still
in his hand. He had a short, pointed grey beard as well as a mass of
grey hair, and his eyes were the eyes of a dreamer.

"Mr. Van Deyl," he said, with stiff courtesy, "you announce yourself as
an official representative of a certain branch of the United States
administration; otherwise, as is well known, I do not receive callers.
What does the American Government require from me?"

Van Deyl was somewhat taken aback. He met the question frankly, however.

"The American Government is not directly concerned in my mission," he
acknowledged, "but Mr. Essenheim, my companion, has a scheme for the
purchase of an almost defunct railway which operates close to the
frontier of a foreign country. For certain reasons it has been decided
at Washington that it would be a great advantage to us to have that
railway line restablished. Officially we can do nothing, but we are
prepared to support, to a certain extent, any private enterprise. Part
of our support is my presence here and this explanation which I am asked
to give you officially."

"And my interest in the matter?" the Prince enquired.

"You are the registered holder of a large number of the shares," Van
Deyl explained. "Why you bought them, or how they came into your
possession, no one knows, but they are registered in your name, and
dividends--in the days when there were any--have been received by you.
Mr. Essenheim cannot complete any scheme for the reorganisation of the
railway without acquiring control, and whoever desires control must
possess your shares. He is, therefore, over here with a proposition to
you to buy them."

"Then, the sooner Mr. Essenheim--or whatever his euphonious name may
be--gets back to where he came from," the Prince replied, "the better.
In these days my life is dedicated to one object. I have a man of
affairs who sees after such matters as those to which you have alluded."

"Let us, if you please," Van Deyl begged, "get into touch with him. We
have no wish to trouble you personally. Let us put the matter before him
and he can then ask for your instructions. Money is doubtless not of
much object to you," the young man added, "but you will certainly be a
great deal better off if you listen to what Mr. Essenheim has to say."

"The only thing in the world of which I have too much," the Prince
replied coldly, "is money. I should refuse to listen to any scheme
increasing my income."

Van Deyl was staggered. It was very hard indeed to adopt ordinary
business methods and modes of persuasion with any one holding such
views.

"Your shares are absolutely valueless," he pointed out desperately,
"under present conditions. They are not quoted on the Stock Exchange,
they are producing no dividends, they will never be of any value unless
the railway is reorganised. Mr. Essenheim is the man to do that and this
is the moment."

"My chief inspiration concerning this particular moment," the Prince
said gently, "is that it is an opportune one for you to take your leave.
Your request is refused. Please do not trouble me again in the matter."

He swung round in his chair. Already his eyes were searching for the
place in the manuscript where he had broken off.

"Will you at least tell me the name of your man of affairs?" Van Deyl
implored.

"Certainly not," was the cool refusal. "I should regard any further move
on your part in this matter as an impertinence. Charles," he added,
turning to his secretary, "show this gentleman and his friend out."

Van Deyl made his way back to where Essenheim was waiting and Mr. Reuben
C. Essenheim had a great deal to say. Nevertheless, it was perfectly
ineffectual. The secretary, though his manners remained pleasant, with a
couple of servants in the background, was an omnipotent force. The two
ambassadors were politely, but ignominiously, shown off the premises. As
they stepped into their car on the other side of the great iron gates,
Mr. Essenheim was still talking furiously. A young man who was making
some adjustments to his motor bicycle, which was leaning against the
wall, watched them with curious eyes as they left.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next stage in the proceedings connected with the inauspicious
mission of George Van Deyl and Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim was marked by the
following letter from an eminent firm of American lawyers established in
Paris. It was addressed to the ancient house of Lafardire and Fils of
Nice, and ran as follows:

     Dear Sirs,

     We understand that you act as agents in the affairs of the Duc de
     Sousponnier, resident at the Chteau de Sousponnier, and sometimes
     known as Prince Maurice of St. Sans. We are the European
     representatives of the Grand Prudential Trust, the President of
     which--Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim--is in this country at the present
     moment. Acting upon his instructions, we are venturing to approach
     you with regard to our client's desire to acquire a block of
     shares, namely, 4390, in the Great Eastern Railway Company of
     Texas.

     We should like to say, for your information, that the railway is at
     present inoperative. The shares of the par value of $100 are
     unquoted, and no dividend of any sort has been paid for the last
     seven years. These facts can easily be confirmed. Furthermore, a
     recent bankers' estimate of the value of the shares under present
     conditions was $12, and we venture to think that at that price
     there would be few likely purchasers. Our client, however, who has
     been exceedingly successful in various reorganisations, has
     outlined a scheme to rebuild and restablish the railway under
     entirely fresh auspices. To do so it is necessary for him to own
     control of the shares. He is a very large holder already, and has
     bought several considerable blocks at from $12 to $15 a share. He
     wishes to acquire the holding of your client, the Duc de
     Sousponnier, and for that purpose he will be glad to know at what
     price the Duc would be prepared to sell his holdings for cash. We
     are not asking you, of course, to accept our word for the fact
     which we have stated, but we should be glad if you would make the
     necessary enquiries through your bankers, and communicate with us
     as speedily as possible, as our client is anxious to return to the
     States.

     Faithfully yours,

     Bland & Henshaw.

The reply to this letter was received within a few days.

     Dear Sirs,

     We have received your communication respecting your client's
     suggested purchase of the shares in the Great Eastern Railway
     Company of Texas, held by our client the Duc de Sousponnier. We
     regret, however, to inform you that His Highness is not disposed to
     make any offer of the shares in question.

     Faithfully yours,

     Lafardire & Fils.

On receipt of this letter Van Deyl had hard work to keep his friend Mr.
Reuben C. Essenheim from precipitating himself into the sea. For
twenty-four hours he shook with fury. At the end of that time he was
himself again, and in due course another letter from Messrs. Bland and
Henshaw reached the firm of Lafardire and Fils.

     Dear Sirs [it said],

     We are in receipt of your letter of the 17th, and regret very much
     that your client will not state the price at which he is prepared
     to sell his holding in the Great Eastern Railway Company of Texas.
     The acquisition of his shares is frankly necessary before the
     reconstruction of the company can be attempted. We cannot believe
     that your client would deliberately block the development of a
     great industrial enterprise, and we trust that you will take an
     opportunity of explaining the matter fully to him. If the company
     continues moribund, the shares which you hold on your client's
     behalf will decline in value until they simply become wastepaper.
     Not only your client, but many other stockholders throughout the
     country will suffer. We are instructed to offer you in cash,
     payable at the Crdit Lyonnais within twenty-four hours of your
     agreement to sell, the sum of $50 a share for your 4390 shares,
     amounting to $219,500, or at to-day's rate of exchange Frs.
     5,487,500. We may add that this offer is one which can never be
     repeated, and which is at least five times in excess of the present
     value of the shares.

     Faithfully yours,

     Bland & Henshaw.

The reply to this was prompt and brief.

     Dear Sirs,

     In reply to your offer for our client the Duc de Sousponnier's
     holding in the Great Eastern Railway Company of Texas, our client
     wishes us to state positively that he does not intend to sell such
     holding at any price, and he desires no further communication upon
     the subject.

     Faithfully yours,

     Lafardire & Fils.

Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim was a man who had never known a day's illness in
his life, but on receipt of the translation of this letter he took to
his bed for two days and refused to speak to any one. Van Deyl, passing
his time rather warily down at the bathing club and in the Casino, came
face to face with Joslin one morning.

"What's become of your little pet?" the latter asked.

Van Deyl indulged in a grimace.

"Sulking," he announced. "He's been so used to having his own way ever
since he became prosperous, that he can't understand life over here, or
the mental outlook of people who do not think along the same lines. For
the first time in his career, I think, he is beaten, and it's going hard
with him."

"The worst of these little men who don't drink," Joslin observed, "is
that they have no other way of getting rid of their gall, so they go to
bed and very often turn sick."

"I'm the fellow who ought to be sick," Van Deyl remarked gloomily. "I
have given up my holiday to this job, I've had to cart the little
bounder around for two months with just my expenses paid, and I was to
have got fifty thousand dollars if the thing had come off."

"Tough luck!" Joslin murmured sympathetically. "When are you back to New
York?"

"Very soon, I expect. Unless I stay on here, as I think I shall, and
take a short holiday. I know exactly what will happen to my charming
companion. In another day, or perhaps two, he will get up in the morning
with either some new scheme in his mind, all cut and dried, in which
probably I sha'n't be interested, or with his passage booked and
reservations made for home."

"Can't think how you came to be mixed up with him," Joslin observed.

Van Deyl shrugged his shoulders.

"He was wished on me by the Department," he confided. "Costain himself
was very keen upon his success over here, and I fancy he thought I might
be helpful. But I've not been a damn' bit of good to anybody."

"Come and have a swim," Joslin suggested. "A bite of luncheon
afterwards, if you like."

"I'm with you," the other acquiesced.

       *       *       *       *       *

When at last Van Deyl left the raft and swam lazily towards shore with
pleasant thoughts of a cocktail and lunch in front of him, he saw a
familiar little figure waiting at the top of the steps--a small
commonplace looking man dressed in expensive clothes, utterly out of
touch with his surroundings--an object of curiosity to every one. Van
Deyl abandoned the brief sunbath he had proposed for himself and hurried
on.

"Glad to see you are better, sir," he remarked. "Had a good rest?"

Mr. Essenheim's thin lips curled in a peculiar smile.

"I do not rest," he said. "Since the time I saw you last I have had
forty-seven cables, twenty or thirty local telegrams, the visit of a
police Commissaire, a private detective and one of our own Wilberforce
men. I have now made my plans."

Van Deyl stared at him, speechless.

"You take my breath away, sir," he said at last.

"You are not of the type which understands rapid action," Mr. Reuben C.
Essenheim declared. "I have no complaint to make of you. You did what
you were expected to do. It failed. It was not your fault. Here," he
announced, drawing an envelope from his pocket, "you will find dollar
bills for all that I owe you, and what I consider a fair amount over for
expenses."

Van Deyl held the envelope in his salt wet fingers.

"And you," he asked curiously, "what are you going to do? Return to
America?"

Mr. Essenheim gravely removed his horn-rimmed spectacles. He blinked for
a moment and looked up at his questioner in blank surprise.

"Go back to America?" he repeated. "Without the Great Eastern shares? Do
you imagine that I made my millions, young man, by giving up things?"

"You have a nerve, sir," Van Deyl acknowledged. "If you get those
shares, I'll take off my hat every time I hear your name."

Essenheim smiled queerly. He was watching the approach of a motor boat
rounding the point.

"There are more roads than one to success," he said. "Au revoir, Mr. Van
Deyl. I am going with my friend Commodore Jasen to lunch at his chteau.
I see he has come for me."

The little man in his business suit, so out of place in such an
environment, descended the stone steps with pompous bearing--an object
of amazement to every one. He stepped into a dinghy and was rowed out to
the motor boat which was hovering round....

Joslin strolled up to Van Deyl and the two men stood together, the sun
blazing down unheeded upon their bare heads and the seashine of their
bodies.

"So the great Mr. Essenheim is a friend of Commodore Jasen's," Joslin
said curiously.

"First I knew of it," Van Deyl replied.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim selected the most sheltered spot in the motor
boat and established himself in it with some care.

"I am obliged to you, Commodore," he said, "for your invitation to
lunch, but I only eat once a day and I drink nothing whatever. I have
had three biscuits and a glass of Perrier with a teaspoonful of brandy
in it. That will last me until evening. I wish to speak to you alone.
Here we are alone. What could be better? We talk for ten minutes,
afterwards you go back to your chteau and send me back to my hotel."

"Just as you wish," the Commodore replied, a little shattered. "I can
make you a cocktail here if you like."

"I never touch them," Mr. Essenheim protested. "Now, Commodore, I came
over to Europe for one reason and with one intent. I wish to purchase,
preferably at my price, otherwise at his, four thousand three hundred
and ninety shares in an American Railway from a man who calls himself
the Duke of Sousponnier. He is so greedy about titles that occasionally
he is known as the Prince of St. Sans."

"I know him," the Commodore admitted. "I should never have looked upon
him as a likely owner of American Railway stock."

"He holds those shares," Mr. Essenheim went on, "and he declines to part
with them. He declines even to see me. I have approached him at his
chteau. Our lawyers have approached him with what must seem to be a
ridiculous offer. We have offered him fifty dollars a share for shares
that on the market would not fetch twelve dollars. He simply refuses to
do business."

"A most unreasonable man," the Commodore murmured. "A man in constant
ill-health, though. Before long you will probably find those shares upon
the market. If his is a French will, as I daresay you know, every
foreign share must be sold."

"Quite so," Mr. Essenheim agreed. "But the question is--how long will he
live? To me the question presents itself--how long should a man of such
obstinacy be allowed to live?"

Into Commodore Jasen's blue eyes there suddenly flashed a light of
apprehension. For many hours he had been wondering what this millionaire
financier could be wanting with him.

"I am not a man," Essenheim continued, "who accepts failure. I have
agents everywhere--friends in other worlds who have sometimes been
useful to me. I am in touch even with the private detective forces and
Police Headquarters in my own country. The wires have been buzzing round
the Htel du Cap d'Antibes while I have been lying in my room. One of
the first things I learnt, Commodore, was that a portion, at any rate,
of the famous Lebworthy Gang were supposed to be hovering around these
parts."

Still the Commodore made no remark. He tapped a cigarette upon the hard
seat and lit it.

"The Duke of Sousponnier," Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim went on, "has
offended me mortally. He refused to receive me. He left me in a waiting
room. I have never found, in the course of my life, that it pays to
allow men who have offended you to continue unchallenged. He is a sick
man, they tell me. Very well--earlier or later, what does it matter?
There is a third point--he stands in the way of a great enterprise. With
antediluvian pig-headedness he blocks progress. A man like that should
go."

"You spoke of the Lebworthy Gang," Commodore Jasen ruminated. "Have you
any real reason to imagine that any of that desperate crowd are in this
locality?"

"Not the slightest," was the emphatic response. "If they were here, I
should never know it, but I have taken out a mental policy upon the life
of the Duke of Sousponnier, and it would be worth a hundred thousand
dollars to the beneficiary."

"One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I think," Commodore Jasen
murmured.

His companion sighed.

"Say, isn't that rather a tall order?" he asked.

"Not at all," the Commodore assured him. "First of all, it would be
exceedingly difficult to get into touch with any of these desperate
fellows and secondly, well--we are not in Chicago, are we?"

Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim took out a cheque-book from his pocket and very
carefully he made out a draft to self for a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars and endorsed it. He dated it a week ahead.

"In a week," he observed, as he tore it out and passed it to his
companion, "I shall stop payment of this in Paris, but if by any chance
I should be owing that amount to the beneficiary of that life
insurance--well, the cheque could be cashed at any time at the Paris
branch of the Grand Prudential."

Commodore Jasen thrust it carefully into his waistcoat pocket. His guest
pointed to the shore.

"If you can land me," he said, "I should be glad. I have decided to move
to Nice and I have ordered my car for two o'clock. Bad news travels fast
enough through the press, Commodore. I shall not leave you my address."

       *       *       *       *       *

Van Deyl was a cheerful and welcome addition to Caroline's luncheon
table at the Cap. He made no secret of his admiration for Caroline and
talked over old times with Joslin.

"Tell me, what has become of your strange little friend?" Caroline
enquired.

Van Deyl smiled.

"He really isn't a bad sort. I was sent over from Washington to help, if
I could, in a scheme of his. I have not been able to make good and he
has given me the sack. Never mind, he did it very graciously."

Both Caroline and Joslin were interested.

"Is he going home?" the former asked. "Has he really given up his
enterprise here, whatever it may have been?"

"He didn't tell me anything about his plans," Van Deyl admitted. "He
simply wished me to understand that I had had my chance and failed and
that he was going to carry on alone. With that he left me. He embarked
on that wonderful fast motor boat with the nautical-looking gentleman
with the white moustache, who plays around here sometimes."

There was a moment's silence. Caroline shot one swift glance across at
Joslin and then looked out to sea.

"Commodore Jasen," the latter murmured.

"Yes, that is his name," Van Deyl observed carelessly. "Nice-looking old
duffer, but I don't see quite what use he is going to be to my little
friend."

Caroline was her old bewitching self as she leaned across the table, her
chin resting upon her clasped hands.

"It is your own fault, Mr. Van Deyl," she said, "if you have made us
curious. Of course, one knows what you have done during the war, and
your Washington work, and everything to do with Secret Service is so
fascinating, but when you come to connect with a man like
Essenheim--well, it does seem inexplicable, doesn't it?"

"Money," Van Deyl remarked thoughtfully, "is perhaps rather an
uninspiring power, but in our country, at any rate, it is a mighty one.
Essenheim is worth, I should think, forty millions. For that he is, in
his own circle, a kind of emperor. He commands his friends. I am not
sure whether he does not command the law. I don't know," the young man
reflected, "that there is any particular secret about our mission
here--certainly not about my part in it. Essenheim has a great scheme
for reorganising a defunct railway. What's at the bottom of that is the
only secret in the matter, and that I can't tell you. For certain
reasons, the Government approve warmly of his scheme and would very much
like it carried out. That's why I came over to help him."

"And you have failed?" Caroline asked sympathetically.

"We came across a man unlike any I have ever met before," Van Deyl
admitted frankly. "He holds four thousand three hundred and ninety
shares of the Great Eastern of Texas which we want, which are certainly
not worth more than ten dollars a share, if that, and yielding him no
dividends. He refused to sell them to-day at fifty dollars!"

"Who on earth is this imbecile?" Caroline asked, trying to keep the
intense curiosity from her tone.

Van Deyl hesitated. After all, was there any secret about the matter? He
imagined not.

"A man calling himself the Duc de Sousponnier," he confided, "also the
Prince de St. Sans. He is already enormously wealthy and he declines to
either buy or sell a share of any sort. He is writing a book and appears
to think of nothing else."

Caroline leaned back in her place. The excitement of the last few
minutes had been a strain on her nerves. She began now to see daylight.

"What a lucky man you are, Mr. Van Deyl," she murmured, "to be mixed up
with such interesting affairs."

He made a grimace.

"Well, I've had to pay for it," he reminded her. "Essenheim isn't every
one's choice of a day-by-day companion."

"What do you suppose," she asked indifferently, "Mr. Essenheim's new
scheme is?"

Van Deyl shook his head.

"I can't imagine," he said. "The Duke is supposed to be in very bad
health, so I advised Essenheim to shelve the whole thing. If the Duke
were to die, the shares would come on the market automatically. On the
other hand, I don't think he has taken my advice. He would not have
entered into all this correspondence and cabling without some object."

"It seems rather a queer anticlimax, doesn't it," Caroline mused, gazing
out seawards, "that after all these exhaustive efforts, he should spend
the morning going out to lunch with a harmless old gentleman like
Commodore Jasen?"

"If I were still interested," Van Deyl remarked, as he rose with the
others regretfully to his feet, "I should want to know something more
about Commodore Jasen."

       *       *       *       *       *

Caroline, that afternoon, picked her way through a mass of dbris and
avoided with difficulty being entangled with a crowd of workpeople, who
were dealing with the reconstruction of the Chteau de St. Vran. She
found the Marquis, or Armand, as she now occasionally called him,
talking to an architect and his foreman. He abandoned them
precipitately, however, and hastened towards her.

"You are so welcome, dear Mees Caroline," he said, as he bent over her
hand. "For the renovations you come early. There is much to be done
before we can even commence."

"But you," she asked--"you are feeling some interest?"

He smiled his assent. He was well and carefully dressed in country
clothes and he seemed once more a young man.

"It has come, that interest," he admitted. "You have awakened it. I wish
now, more than anything in the world, to make my home once more like the
Chteau of my fathers. Tell me, there is something I can do for you
perhaps, or you permit that we go in search of Madame, and insist upon
some English tea?"

She laughed at his somewhat anxious glance of enquiry.

"Of course you guess that I have come here for something. You are quite
right. Tell me, who is the Duc de Sousponnier who lives at the
marvellous chteau on the other side of the valley?"

"Who is he?" the Marquis repeated. "Well, my uncle for one thing, a
great scholar for another, a very rich man for a third."

"Do you ever see him?"

"Every week. He is passionately absorbed in a book he is writing--on the
Renaissance, I think--but, nevertheless, he always receives any one of
the family. I go to pay my respects generally on Friday evenings. I
always leave feeling that he has remembered me quite wonderfully in his
testament, but up till lately I have wished, oh, so much, that he would
hand out a few hundred francs on account!"

She laughed.

"Well, you are past all that now."

"Thanks to you," he murmured.

"To-day is Friday," she reminded him.

He nodded.

"I shall probably go and see him this evening."

"Will you do something for me?" she begged.

"Why, of course I will. But do you mean with my uncle?"

"Naturally," she replied. "You know how fond I am of meddling in other
people's affairs!"

"Your interference in mine was the most fortunate thing that ever
happened," he rejoined.

"Well, then, have confidence in me," she said. "I want to buy four
thousand three hundred and ninety shares which your uncle holds in an
American Railway."

"Dear me!" the Marquis murmured. "Are they very good shares?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I can only tell you this--that if he were
to get a report upon them to-day he would be told that they were worth
about twelve dollars. I would like to give him twenty dollars. If you
wish, I will divide any profit I make with you _cinquante-cinquante_!"

"Feefty-feefty," he exclaimed with delight. "Are you serious, Miss
Caroline? My uncle is an impossible man with strangers but to us of his
family he is sometimes amenable."

"Buy me those shares, Armand," she wheedled, "and I will come up and
help you every other day with your decorations."

"I shall buy them," the Marquis declared. "I shall approach my uncle
with talk, but if necessary I shall use force. I will buy them. Have no
fear. You will have to find a good deal of money."

"I have a good deal of money," she assured him.

The Marquis glanced at his watch.

"Wait for me a short time here," he begged, "and you shall accompany me.
Alas, I cannot promise that my uncle will receive you. I must leave you
in the car. But you will have early news of my effort, and--Mees
Caroline--"

"Well?"

"If I could go feefty-feefty with you--"

"In this matter of the shares?"

"No. In yourself."

The architect blundered in, but that wistful look in her eyes, the faint
pressure of her fingers, was something.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later the Marquis came down the broad paved way from the
entrance to the Chteau de Sousponnier and passed through the
wide-flung gates. Caroline had been leaning back in the corner of the
limousine, but she stepped lightly out at his gesture.

"My uncle," he announced, "would be glad to have the honour of receiving
you. He is not in one of his best moods, I fear, but he is at least
gracious."

"I shall come now?" she asked.

"At once."

They went into the chteau, escorted by bowing servants, passed without
entering the dreary waiting room, which had so much fretted Reuben
Essenheim, and into the very beautiful library where the Duke worked. He
had left his seat at the desk and was in an easy-chair, from which he
rose at once at their entrance. There was a smell of spring flowers
about the place, of violets, carnations and early roses, which haunted
her for long afterwards. The Duke himself looked old and ill.

"This is the young lady, Uncle," the Marquis announced. "You permit,
Mees Caroline, that I present my uncle, the Duc de Sousponnier--Mees
Caroline Loyd."

The Duke raised her fingers to his lips.

"You are the young lady whom, indirectly, my nephew has to thank for the
restoration of his family fortunes," he remarked.

"Very indirectly, I am afraid," she replied. "Still, it has been a great
pleasure to me. It was wonderful coming across that old document."

"I myself had heard of it," the Duke admitted. "We should have searched.
But there--we are not a business family. We are rather by way of being
fools, Miss Loyd, except sometimes a little knowledge of art, perhaps,
in the old days some skill of soldiering. By-the-by, what is this my
nephew tells me? You are so much of this modern world--that you, a young
lady of your age, you wish to buy some shares?"

She smiled.

"I do indeed," she told him. "I want to buy them for your sake, too, as
well as mine," she went on. "I think that so long as you hold them, your
life will be in danger."

The Duke looked at her curiously. This was a strange thing to hear.

"My life!" he exclaimed. "How is danger to my life connected with my
holding these shares?"

"Perhaps I should not have gone so far as that," she explained. "The
only thing is, you see, that there are some people who are desperately
anxious to have them, who would pay almost any price, and if you refuse
to sell--well, nothing but your death would bring them into the market."

"I see," he remarked. "You believe, then, that some one might attempt my
life?"

"I should not be surprised," she assured him.

He touched a bell.

"Charles," he asked his secretary, who hastened in from the anteroom,
"what shares were they that those strange people tried to buy?"

"Four thousand three hundred and ninety Great Eastern Railway of Texas,"
the young man replied. "They were bought at fifty. They are now valued
at anything between five and fifteen. The company appears to be
moribund."

"We have the documents themselves?" the Duke asked. "What is it you call
them--share certificates?"

"We have them in our own vault."

"Make up a parcel of them and present them to this young lady," the Duke
enjoined, a little wearily. "That will save my being bothered about them
any more."

"But we have not yet agreed about the price," Caroline protested, a
flash of triumph in her eyes.

"The price?" the Duke repeated. "I do not sell any of my belongings,
even my shares, Mademoiselle. They are yours with great pleasure. Keep
them, or do what you like with them, as a slight memento of the services
you were able to render to my nephew. Are other documents necessary,
Charles?"

"The transfer, which I will draw up, is all, Your Highness," the
secretary replied. "They happen to be bearer bonds of an old-fashioned
type."

The Duke glanced over at his writing table.

"I shall see you on Sunday as usual, Armand," he said to his nephew.
"Mademoiselle, your visit has been a great pleasure."

He bent over her hand. Before Caroline quite realised what had happened,
she was in a small room with the secretary, who was drawing up some
papers and making out a sale sheet of the bonds. He hurried out for a
moment to obtain the Duke's signature. When he returned, he handed her
the packet.

"But it's impossible," Caroline declared. "I must give an undertaking
to pay a certain price for them."

The young man shook his head.

"It would not be wise to insist," he said. "The Duke would be angry and
very likely take them back again. Money means nothing to him and he
hates all form of barter. You need not hesitate, Mademoiselle," he
added. "If it were necessary at any time to realise the Duke's
belongings, he would be one of the richest men in France."

"Will you do this for me?" she begged, as they walked across the
courtyard together towards the automobile. "I know that there are some
very desperate people in this country, who are so anxious to obtain
possession of these shares, or to see them upon the market, that they
might go to any lengths. Watch the Duke closely to-night and to-morrow
night."

The young man smiled.

"That sounds almost melodramatic," he observed.

"Never mind what it sounds like. Do it, please," she implored.

"The young lady is of a sagacity most astounding," the Marquis declared.
"When she speaks of a thing she has knowledge."

Maurice inclined his head.

"Every precaution shall be taken," he promised, bowing them into the
automobile....

"Well, what do you think of my uncle?" the Marquis asked, as they drove
away.

"You are both utterly and entirely ridiculous," she told him, smiling.
"You have lost touch with the world. You are survivals, but you are
adorable."

The Marquis leaned towards her. Caroline had laid her hand gently upon
his and he was very happy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Commodore Jasen was the soul of courtesy, as he rose to receive his
visitor. He moved a chair for her close to his own upon the terrace and
he knocked out the ashes from the pipe which he had been smoking.
Nevertheless, in his placid blue eyes there was a sudden steely light.
Commodore Jasen was on his guard.

"My friend," Caroline began, "few words are best. Besides, there is need
for haste. Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim, I have no doubt in the most indirect
way possible, has yet placed a certain proposition before you within the
last few days."

"Mr. Essenheim?" Commodore Jasen repeated thoughtfully. "The little man
who lunched with me."

"Cut it out," Caroline enjoined sternly, with a touch of the manner
which she had outlived. "You know I'm not squeamish. I would not
interfere in any of your schemes to save a man's life or his money, but
you don't want to run risks for nothing, do you? Mr. Essenheim wants the
shares in the Great Eastern Railway Company of Texas brought upon the
market. Well, they are on the market already. They don't belong to the
Duc de Sousponnier any longer; therefore, if by any chance a high-class
burglary, with accessories, were perpetrated to-night or any other night
at the Chteau de Sousponnier, it would simply be a washout. The shares
have been transferred to my name and they are in the safety vault of the
Bank in Juan-les-Pins where I have an account."

The Commodore was impressed. There were many things for which he hated
Caroline, and there were a few for which he loved her, but he knew very
well that there was no one in the world less likely to tell a falsehood.

"Now, Commodore," she went on, "you have not had the best of luck out
here. You are always complaining of me. I tell you I am sick of the
ordinary sort of adventure and I am thinking of backing out. I shall
hate you all my life for what you did to Ned, and yet I know that what
you did, you did according to the code. Therefore, I forget it. Stop
anything you may have started against the Duke, and I will let you in
upon this deal, fifty-fifty."

Commodore Jasen's slowly breaking smile was the pleasant gesture of a
great and benevolent man.

"You are yourself again, Caroline," he declared. "Later in the day we
will make our plans. It will take me a good many hours to stop what has
been started."

"I must know before eight o'clock that it has been stopped," she
insisted, "or I will fill the Chteau de Sousponnier with police."

"If I fail to stop it," the Commodore promised her earnestly, "I will be
there myself to prevent trouble."

Then there were many hours of strenuous search. The purlieus of Nice and
Beausoleil were carefully combed. Furious efforts were made to pick up
the trail which had been purposely dropped. It was not until after ten
o'clock that success was assured. A fast motor boat came smoothly into
the harbour at Nice and three well-dressed but dangerous-looking young
men stepped into a waiting car and were driven to a small hotel close at
hand. They entered the dimly lit lounge to be confronted by a small
group of men who had the appearance of commercial travellers. There was
a moment of uncertainty, the glitter of dull electric light on dull
metal, as the foremost of the three newcomers took note of various
unexpected things. The sound of a familiar voice, however, changed all
that. Bottles of wine were brought and emptied. A raid upon the dancing
cabarets of Nice was planned. It was disappointing, but all the same, a
night of gaiety was well enough in its way. The Chteau de Sousponnier
and its occupants remained undisturbed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Reuben C. Essenheim left for New York three weeks later with the
missing shares in his despatch box, and his great money-making scheme
for the reorganisation of the Great Eastern Railway of Texas already
launched. Nevertheless, he had met with new experiences and he was far
from happy. He had met a man who had refused to do business with him, a
woman who was as hard as himself in a deal, and he had been forced to
leave behind a million good American dollars, when he had expected to
spend fifty thousand. The fact that the little colony at the Chteau
d'Antibes were lighter-hearted and happier for his brief visit failed
entirely to alleviate his gloom, nor would it have afforded him the
slightest satisfaction if he had known that the "feefty-feefty"
negotiations between Caroline Loyd and the Marquis had advanced a step
further on his account.

Caroline and Armand de St. Vran lay side by side upon the rocks at the
Cap d'Antibes. The shine of the sea was upon their bodies and the
exhilaration and joy of it in their hearts. The Marquis was sometimes a
little shy when he found himself alone with this sweet but masterful
young woman. To-day he found courage.

"Miss Caroline," he said, "you have now so much money, and soon, when
the winter comes, I shall have a home which I dare offer even to you if
you do not want any more adventures--no?"

She laid her hand upon his. Such small endearments were quite in order
at Eden Roc.

"Dear Armand," she said, "I am almost sure. Will you wait until the
summer is past?"

He turned round a little and his eyes watched the sunshine in her hair.

"When I look at you," he murmured, "a day seems too long, but when the
summer is over, the Chteau will be finished, so I will wait."




VI

THE SEVEN TAVERNS OF MARSEILLES


"Stop!"

The single word, quivering through the pine-scented air, sounded more
like a hysterical command than an appeal. The terror underlying it,
however, and the sight of the slim, swaying figure at the side of the
road were enough for Commodore Jasen. He was startled into no amateur
indiscretions. To check a car travelling at a hundred kilometres an
hour, even along that perfect Brignolles road, is a matter which needs
unflurried nerves and gentle manipulation. His foot depressed the foot
brake but gradually, his fingers drew the hand brake slowly but smoothly
towards him. The big Hispano rocked slightly, but within fifty metres
she was quivering stationary upon the road. A second or two later she
was in reverse and crawling backwards.

The girl who had hailed it, in dust-smothered motoring clothes, with a
streak of blood on one side of her face, staggered forward from the
roadside, and, with her hands clasping the door of the car, leaned
towards its driver. As she looked into his face, her pale lips parted
and closed again. Her eyes grew larger--distended pools of shining light
into which a new and more poignant horror had crept. For, following
swiftly upon this crash into the darkness--this physical dbcle--came
the shock of recognition and of ugly memory.... Commodore Jasen was
remembering too. An ugly business, this remembering! He thrust it back.
The affair of the moment pressed. He spoke to her as one wayfarer to
another.

"What's wrong. Where's your car?"

She stood on one side and pointed downwards. The tree-bordered road
sloped almost perpendicularly some thirty feet into a field of rough
grass and bushes. At the bottom something was lying, vast and chaotic in
the darkness, a shapeless, impressive bulk somehow whispering of
tragedy. Commodore Jasen took from the case by his side an electric
torch, and, leaning over the closed door of the car, flashed it
downwards and around. The whole catastrophe seemed to leap into being.
There was the torn-up fragment of the road, the barked tree, the broken
saplings, the overturned car--a grotesque sight, the nose of its bonnet
hard up against a splintered pine. On the ground, half hidden by the
coach-work, as though he had sprung out and missed his footing, was the
sprawling body of a man lying very still.

"He is dead," she whispered, finding speech at last.

"How do you know?" Jasen demanded.

"I felt his heart and his pulse. His neck is broken and he fell on his
face. He jumped too late."

"And you?"

"I fell out when we struck the tree. I was on the near side, driving.
Afterwards the car crashed down there."

"Is it--who is he?"

"Go and see. Make sure for yourself that he is dead."

With the effort of speech and memory, the blood began to ebb once more
from her cheeks. She was a wild-looking sight in the semi-darkness, her
almost black eyes burning from their blanched setting, her hair breaking
loose on both sides from under her bret. Commodore Jasen slipped from
his place and lifted her into the vacant seat by his side. He wiped the
blood from her cheeks with his handkerchief and just in time he forced
the nozzle of his flask of brandy between her lips. The spirit gurgled
in her throat. She lay back in her place, her arms clasping the leather
case which she had been carrying....

Her rescuer stumbled down the precipitous slope. Behind him, on the hard
road above, several cars thundered by, and each time, as he heard their
warning hoot, he extinguished his torch. He reached the scene of the
final disaster and bent over the body of the dead man. He dropped on one
knee by his side and, although the few who knew Commodore Jasen spoke of
him as a callous and brutal person, his touch now was soft and gentle as
a woman's. He turned the body slightly and felt the heart--silent, as he
realised at once, for ever. Slowly his torch travelled up and down. A
bulky, ill-shaped man, flashily dressed in light tweeds, with gold wrist
watch, a diamond ring and other jewellery. The night insects came and
burred against the strange point of intruding light, an owl called
weirdly from the lower part of the brushwood, but Commodore Jasen
pursued his task and gratified his curiosity without undue haste. He
even seemed unperturbed when, after the exercise of a slight effort, he
succeeded in turning the body a little on one side, and caught a glimpse
at last of the dead man's battered face....

Either Commodore Jasen was not so inured as he imagined to horrible
sights, or the climb back to the main road was probably a little more
severe than he had anticipated, for halfway up the bank he paused and,
raising his hand to his forehead, found that unaccustomed sweat was
pouring from his forehead down his cheeks. He mopped his face carefully,
corrected a slight giddiness which had caused him to swerve from the
path, and, in the act of recovering his equilibrium, kicked some hard
substance in the undergrowth. A stone, without a doubt, he fancied. But,
nevertheless, it was a night of strange happenings. He flashed his torch
downwards--not on to the dull grey of a fallen flint, but on to the
brilliant, highly polished steel of a small, almost a dainty, but at the
same time a villainous-looking revolver. He stooped and picked it up,
turning it over almost mechanically in his fingers, with the air of one
well-used to such trifles. It was a beautiful weapon and it bore the
name of a famous New York maker. He opened the breech and stared. There
were five cartridges duly in their places and one empty barrel, and from
that empty barrel came the faint sour odour of recently exploded
gunpowder....

"Please!"

It was the girl's cry again from the highroad. Commodore Jasen answered
it firmly and, with the weapon safely bestowed in his coat pocket,
scrambled up the remainder of the precipitous ledge. The girl, once more
a human being, leaned towards him from the car. The questioning
monosyllable broke from her lips.

"Well?"

"He's dead enough," was the grim response. "I should say there never was
a neck more completely broken."

The moon, although it had not yet altogether made its appearance, was
obscured now by only a thin film of misty cloud. The intense darkness
had passed, and, in the mysterious light, he could see her face more
clearly. He took note of the anguished questioning of her pitiful eyes,
but he made no further comment. He took his place by her side and
pressed the starting button.

"What had I better do?" she asked.

"You seem to have done very well so far without advice," he replied, and
there was something more sinister than the churlishness of the words
themselves lurking underneath his silky tone. She shivered, but his
apparent unfriendliness seemed to be no surprise to her. She sat rigidly
in her place, whilst they sped on through the darkness of the
tree-tunnelled road. Once, though the night was hot, she shook as though
with cold, and he turned towards her.

"Would you like a wrap?" he enquired.

She shook her head.

"I want nothing," she said in a low tone. "I should shiver if I sat
before a furnace."

"You have cause to fear," was his calm reply.

They drove on into Brignolles. Commodore Jasen pulled up in front of a
garage where he appeared to be known. The manager hurried out to greet
him.

"There has been a serious accident," the former confided, "within a few
yards of the seventeen-kilometre _borne_ from here. You must take a
crane and a camion. You will find an overturned car about twenty feet
down in the field, with luggage and a man--quite dead."

The garage man was voluble in his exclamations and questions, but
Commodore Jasen cut him short.

"I will go myself to the Gendarmerie," he continued. "All you have to do
is to salvage the car and bring the luggage to the hotel. The police
will see about removing the body of the man."

Commodore Jasen drove on to the Gendarmerie. He entered alone and
remained absent for some twenty minutes. As the time passed by, the
girl's nervousness returned. At the sound of every motor horn she turned
fearfully around, her still terrified eyes fastened on the approaching
car, until it had arrived within recognisable distance, in some cases
even until it had passed. Her companion, upon his return, watched her
for a moment from the pavement. He made no remark, however, as he took
his place in the driving seat.

"They asked--many questions?" she demanded.

"The questions will come afterwards," he told her.

"Afterwards? That doesn't mean that I shall have to stay here?"

"It certainly does," he assured her, as they glided down the street.
"The Commissaire insisted upon it and I gave my word that you should.
There is a good hotel just outside the town. One can dine there and that
is something."

"How far are we from Marseilles?" she asked.

"About eighty kilometres," he replied.

She gripped his arm.

"Take me back there," she begged.

He turned skilfully in at the wide-open gates of the hotel gardens.

"That is quite impossible," he told her. "I have a friend to meet here,
and, apart from that, I have a few questions to ask you myself."

       *       *       *       *       *

The place presented an almost gala appearance. At least a dozen tables
upon the lawn were occupied by festive groups of diners. There was
popping of corks and laughter, hurrying waiters, strings of fairy lamps
enclosing the garden, and softly shaded electric lights upon every
table.

"This is terrible," the girl shuddered, leaning back in her place. "I
cannot bear the sight of all these people."

"Aren't you overdoing that stuff a little?" her companion asked coldly.
"I've seen you in Delaney's cellar, tuning a mandolin, I think you were,
and smoking a cigarette, with three men stretched out, whom you knew
slightly better, I fancy, than your late passenger."

The girl made use of a violent French epithet.

"I had drugs then," she muttered. "I wish to the good God I had now."

The car drew up before the door. The proprietor hastened out and
welcomed his guests with a respectful bow. Commodore Jasen, it appeared,
was well known.

"This young lady has been involved in a motor accident," her escort
explained. "We may have to remain here for the night, in which case we
shall require two rooms with baths. In the meantime, we will have that
table under the trees for dinner--what you will, but a _poulet de
maison_ and a bottle of Chambertin '11--in an hour. The young lady, I am
sure, would like to mount to her room and be quiet for a time."

"Excellent, Monsieur," the _patron_ murmured, with a bow. "The rooms
are at your disposal and my wife will look after the young lady. The
wine I shall decant with my own hands."

"I will send you some of my toilet requisites when I have parked my
car," Commodore Jasen promised, turning to the girl. "We will meet in an
hour's time."

She turned in silence to follow the landlord upstairs. On the first
landing she paused and, her fingers gripping the windowsill, she looked
with strained eyes out on to the Route Nationale. Whilst she watched, no
car turned in at the gate. She remained there, however, without any sign
of movement.

"Mademoiselle," her conductor ventured at last.

She started and turned reluctantly away from the window.

"I come," she muttered.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he descended into the lounge, Commodore Jasen stared at his
prospective dinner companion in amazement. He saw a slip of a girl,
sixteen or seventeen years old she seemed at the most, as thin as a
lath, with dead white face, large be-ringed eyes and a short black
fringe. She sprang from her chair as he entered and took his arm.

"Even though you are angry with me," she said, "even though you are my
enemy, I am glad you have come. I hate to be alone. Can we go into the
garden? I have seen your table. It is quite hidden. I want to go there."

They threaded their way amongst the festive company, across the lawn to
the retired table which she had found so attractive. A soft wind had
blown away the clouds and the moon now rose high in the sky. She drew
her chair around so that her back was towards the entrance. The palms of
her hands framed her cheeks, her elbows rested upon the table, her eyes
shone into his.

"Dear Master-in-chief of our noble profession," she murmured, "my faith
is in you. I have lost my fear. You shall be my protector."

Commodore Jasen scrutinised the _hors d'oeuvres_ with a mildly
dissatisfied expression.

"Some of that excellent _jambon de Parme_ which I saw when I came in,"
he told the waiter, "and also the _pt maison_. We will take one glass
of dry Chablis with the fish--the Chablis '21--and the Chambertin with
the chicken."

The man departed with an appreciative bow. Like all French _matres
d'htel_, he admired a client who was interested in his food. The girl
pouted.

"I was inviting you to become my protector," she complained, "and you
occupy yourself with your wine."

"My dear Jenny," he replied in his soft, measured tone, "I am not sure
whether I am a candidate for the post of your protector. You are a very
charming young lady and it may be that you have some claims upon my
protection, but you are undisciplined and disobedient. Is it not so?
Besides, you have pulled down the lightnings during the last few hours.
Your protector of to-day will need all his brain and all his courage--"

"You have both," she declared, "and you have the great advantage--you
have never been found out. You are the popular Commodore Jasen of the
Chteau d'Antibes, whom every one knows and every one visits. I am the
poor little _gamin_ of New York and Paris and Marseilles. Still, our
profession is the same, and it is right that you should protect me. And,
after all," she added, with a wicked little gleam in her eyes, "you are
not so old, nor am I so young."

Commodore Jasen was very much unmoved. He indulged in a little bow,
however, as he raised his glass to his lips.

"There will be serious matters for our discussion after dinner," he
observed. "In the meantime, I suggest that we abandon all unpleasant
thoughts. They interfere with digestion, which, for a person of my age
and habits, is an important consideration."

Jenny shrugged her shoulders and chatted airily away, sometimes patting
her companion's hand, often laughing into his face. To the scattered
little groups of diners the two presented an amusing problem. The
elderly, benevolent-looking gentleman, with the aristocratic white
moustache, the sunburned kindly face, and his--what? His niece perhaps.
Scarcely his daughter--the types were too different. Or was it perhaps a
tardy excursion of bored respectability into the world of flapperdom?
The girl had a wicked grace of her own. More than one of the diners
hoped that the pleasant-looking elderly gentleman would take care of
himself....

One by one the tables were vacated and the lights extinguished. In the
course of time Commodore Jasen and his companion were the only two
diners left. With the passing of on-lookers that benevolent expression
and the kindly light in his eyes faded from the former's face. He seemed
like a transformed being. With steady fingers he turned out the electric
lamp which was burning on the table. The moonlight, coming only in
patches through the boughs of the tree under which they sat, was now the
only illumination. The faces of the two gleamed white in the
semi-darkness. The girl, lighting a cigarette, laughed at him across the
table. After the choicely cooked dinner, the rare old wine and the
Armagnac brandy she had drunk with her coffee, she had regained her
courage.

"You should regard far more kindly your little Jenny, _mon vieux_," she
remonstrated. "Once I was altogether in your service. You were different
then--in New York, _par exemple_."

He ignored her protest completely.

"Whilst you were attending to your very effective toilet," he confided
deliberately, "the gendarmes came here."

She withdrew the long cigarette holder from between her lips.

"Why not?" she observed. "It is their business."

"Naturally," he agreed. "They wished, of course, to question you. I
explained that you were in a very nervous and incoherent state and
begged them to give you an hour or so in which to recover yourself."

"I have nothing to tell them beyond what you know," she asserted
sharply. "Why could you not have told them so and got rid of them?"

"Unfortunately they wished to hear the story from your own lips," he
said. "They may be here at any moment. Before they come, I have a word
or two to say."

"Say it with words of love, _cher matre_," she begged, caressing his
hand, and leaning with her slim, subtle body a little farther across the
table.

The flash of her glorious eyes left him unmoved.

"It is the business of men like myself and girls like yourself, I
presume, to watch for fools," he said. "We fulfil the natural law of the
world--the strong prey upon the weak."

"Is it not that you are being long-winded?" she yawned. "I should like a
glass of water."

"Presently," he replied. "You will probably need it. Talking about the
weak--you know, I daresay, that Steven Cotes was one of my men."

"Surprising," she murmured. "I cannot understand how you could put up
for even a month with such a loose-mouthed, boasting imbecile. Even
after to-day, even thinking of him as I saw him last, I can feel no pity
for him."

"Let me tell you a story, or perhaps I should say, refresh your memory,
about Steven Cotes," he begged.

She was true to her disposition. She turned upon him like a flash, her
lips were quivering, her eyes angry.

"Why trouble? I hate your smooth ways. You are like a cat, sitting there
purring, but waiting to pounce on me. I know all about Steven Cotes. He
was the braggart who swore, upon the steamer coming over to Europe, that
he would visit alone the seven taverns of Marseilles--one a night for
seven nights--with the whole of his fortune in his pocket, and--what do
you say?--get away with it. Well, he visited six of them all right.
After the seventh he got what was coming to him."

"You are remarkably, quite remarkably well-informed," Jasen admitted.

"Shut up," the girl enjoined feverishly. "I am well-informed because I
was there--and you know it."

"You make my task easier," he confided. "You make it almost pleasant.
Let me indulge in a brief effort of reconstruction."

The girl was becoming a bundle of nerves again. She was white and
shivering. She swung her chair round so as to command a view of the
entrance gates and she herself gave the single waiter left an order. Her
companion shook his head.

"Very unwise to lose control of yourself," he murmured. "Remember that
the Commissaire of Police will be here before long to question you."

"What is there in that which I should fear?" she exclaimed angrily. "All
that I have to confess is that I went to sleep driving the car. I had
too much wine, I suppose. I got more and more sleepy. I spoke to him. He
did not answer. He too was asleep. I told him that I must stop, that he
must drive. Still he did not answer, and so I drove on, and I found
myself rocking in the seat, and I went to sleep. It was terrible, but it
was not a crime."

"No, to go to sleep was not a crime," he acknowledged. "You have nothing
to fear on that account, of course. Sometimes, however, the police ask
strange questions."

"What questions could they ask?" she demanded, with stealthily
interrogating eyes.

He ignored her for the moment, leaning further back in his chair, and
gazing dreamily through the starkly motionless boughs of the tree
beneath which they were seated, to the deep blue sky.

"Reconstructions always fascinate me," he confessed. "I can see the
tawdry disorder of that seventh caf down the half-made street by the
canal. Two or three men had been drunk and there had been a fight. I am
afraid Steven himself had helped to make what he called a rough house. A
strong man, Steven, and much too clever with his fists.... He paid his
bill and swaggered out into the watery twilight. Can't you see him
grinning to himself? He had won his wager. This was the seventh tavern
of Marseilles in which he had spent a night, drank and danced at will,
carrying all the time with him, sewn up in his clothes, a quarter of a
million dollars, and two revolvers, neither of which he had been called
upon to use. He had won his wager. Twenty thousand dollars to come to
him from the boys! He strode along the narrow street, cautious even in
that moment of his triumph. He knew perfectly well that he was being
followed--it had happened nearly every night--but his hand was resting
upon his hip pocket, and the night birds of Marseilles prefer to settle
their little affairs at closer quarters. There would be plenty of time
if that slouching figure drew near enough to him for a spring."

"Who was he--the man who followed?" she demanded breathlessly.

"One of my legion--a clumsy fellow--but it was his duty not to let
Steven out of his sight. Steven was too clever for him, though. Almost a
pity he isn't here now with you, isn't it, Jenny, counting over his
fortune?"

She shuddered.

"Will you finish with this ghastliness?" she begged. "It leads to
nowhere that I can see, and I do not find it amusing."

Her companion's eyebrows were slightly raised. Then suddenly he
abandoned his deprecating air, his tone of faint banter. He spoke
seriously.

"Steven mounted the hill towards the boulevard which, if he had ever
reached it, would have meant safety. As he passed a small, disreputable
caf, from which was straggling out the last of its clients, a girl,
very chic, very attractive in appearance, richly dressed, such a girl as
he had not seen in his seven nights' wanderings, emerged from the door.
She crossed the pavement, she was in the act of entering a waiting
taxicab, when she saw Steven within a few yards of her. She swung round,
her hand upon her hip, the light of scrutiny in her eyes, perhaps the
ghost of a smile upon her lips. Steven was a fine fellow, even at the
end of a wild night, and she approved of him. She stood away from the
open door of the taxicab and extended her hand towards its interior in a
gesture of invitation.

"'If Monsieur will please to pay for the taxi,' she suggested, 'I will
drive him to his hotel. For myself, I am short of the little money.'"

"Daylight had come, his wager was won, this meeting certainly had the
appearance of being entirely accidental. Steven raised his hat gallantly
and followed this extraordinarily attractive young woman. The taxicab
drove off. Where to? Who knows? You, without a doubt, but who else? In a
sense, I suppose, Steven had won his wager, but he will never seek
payment."

"See here," she said. "You talk a great deal. Now it is my turn. Steven
Cotes made this foolish bet in the smokeroom of the steamer and in very
dangerous company. From the moment he had made it, he became the mark of
all of us. Steven Cotes was once your man, it is true, and you resented
it. You were in the hunt. You had a man in Marseilles--"

"I had a man upon that boat," Commodore Jasen interrupted softly. "It
was he who suggested the bet. I placed him there, because I knew that
Steven had never paid up his share of the last enterprise we had
together. He had a little more money than was good for him."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You have told the story very fairly," she admitted, "but with
everything in your favour you failed and I succeeded. _Voil tout!_"

"Not quite all," her companion protested, shaking his head. "It is true
that you succeeded. It may be true that I failed--but here I am. What is
your proposal?"

Her eyes flashed.

"I have none," she declared. "That is final. You failed. I succeeded.
You must make the best of it."

The Commodore sighed.

"Alas, dear Jenny!" he said almost tenderly. "You misapprehend the
situation. In a few minutes at the most the Commissaire will be here.
You will be questioned again about the accident."

"What does it matter?" she demanded. "Again I say that it is no crime to
fall asleep."

Then the Commodore thrust his hand into his trousers pocket, and, with
great deliberation, produced that small, that elegant, but very
deadly-looking revolver.

"Five chambers loaded, you see," he remarked, "and one empty. The bullet
from that one is somewhere in Steven Cotes' head."

"Where did you find that?" she gasped.

"In the long grass amongst the bushes, about twenty yards from the car.
An inadequate hiding place, my dear young lady."

In the dim light she seemed to have lost all her beauty. Her pale face
was drawn and twisted as though with pain. Only her eyes, contracted
though they were, still glowed, and in those eyes was the barely
concealed light of murder.

"What made you notice?" she asked in a low tone. "I thought, after that
awful fall--"

"I know," he interrupted quickly. "It was the singeing of his beard made
me look. Then I found the small hole."

"Don't!" she stopped him.

There was a brief silence. For a moment all life seemed to have gone out
of her.

"What is it that you propose?" she asked at length.

Commodore Jasen lit another cigar with great care and reflected for
several moments.

"In that shabby little despatch case," he remarked at last, waving his
hand towards it, "which you are very wise not to let out of your sight,
you have fifty notes of five thousand dollars each."

"But no," she interrupted sharply. "Steven changed one at Marseilles."

"Forty-nine then," he conceded. "I think it would be a graceful act on
my part to accept forty-eight and to leave you five thousand dollars as
a memento of this interesting adventure."

For an instant she seemed about to spring upon him, her fists clenched,
her bosom heaving. With a great effort she restrained herself.

"I will consent to an equal partition," she announced.

He smiled in pitying fashion. The lights of a rapidly driven car flashed
along the avenue and drew up in front of the hotel with a grinding of
brakes and a rain of small pebbles against the mudguard. Its single
occupant descended and came rapidly across the lawn.

"It is the Commissaire," Jasen said quietly. "Ten thousand for
you--otherwise the truth."

She passed the shabby despatch case to him underneath the table.

       *       *       *       *       *

The newcomer, a tall, spare man in a black suit and a bowler hat, came
hurriedly to the table.

"Pardon--it is the young lady who was concerned in the catastrophe on
the Route Nationale? I introduce myself--I am the Commissaire of Police
of Brignolles."

"We have been expecting you, Monsieur le Commissaire," Commodore Jasen
replied. "This is the young lady of whom you are in search. She is more
composed now and will be able to furnish you with an account of the
accident."

"A little later," was the breathless reply. "For the moment time
presses. I come in great haste. The man whom we believed to be dead was
in a critical state, and is without a doubt dying, but he has
unexpectedly recovered consciousness."

"What?" the Commodore gasped. "Alive?"

"You are telling us that he is alive?" the girl screamed.

"A life that hangs upon a thread," the other explained. "He is about to
make a statement, but he asks always for his despatch case. Ah, forgive
me--"

He stopped and picked up the brown wallet leaning against the
Commodore's chair, turned it over and tucked it under his arm.

"The doctor fancied that it might quieten him to see it," he continued,
"although he certainly will not be able to examine its contents. My
opinion is that he is dead by now, in which event I will bring the case
back, when I come to hear Mademoiselle's story. I will promise not to
detain you for longer than half an hour, but Monsieur and Mademoiselle
will be so good as to await my return?"

They murmured acquiescence. The Commissaire saluted stiffly and hurried
off to his waiting car. For once in his life, Commodore Jasen appeared
to be overcome with surprise. The girl was paralysed with fear. Steven
Cotes alive! Even at that moment he might be accusing her of murder.

"I have heard of miracles and I have seen strange things in the
hospital," the Commodore said at last, "but never have I heard of a man
in Steven Cotes' condition coming back to life!"

The girl was speechless. Her mind had wandered back through the hours.
She saw the flying milestones whilst she sat by his side, her concealed
hand grasping the butt of her deadly little weapon. Under the beard
where no one would see! That was the place. She remembered the very
second when she had finally found her courage. Even then she would have
drawn back, as she had done several times before, but this time she
would have been too late. He had caught some faint apprehension of her
sinister movement. His head was turning, his foot slackening upon the
accelerator. He had time to grunt--a hideous sound it was--as he felt
the cold steel upon his throat. Then she had pulled the trigger....
Ugh!--A statement! Perhaps it was made by this time. She began to shiver
violently.

Her companion had summoned a waiter and was paying his bill. He tipped
the man generously and enlarged upon the excellence of the dinner.
Smiles and compliments were exchanged, for Commodore Jasen was well
known as a generous, although infrequent, visitor. The man took
reluctant leave and Jasen felt the girl's icy fingers gripping his
wrist. Her panic-stricken eyes pleaded with his.

"Take me away," she begged. "Take me to Marseilles. I can hide there."

Commodore Jasen sighed drearily as he rose to his feet.

"Forty-seven grands gone west," he lamented. "If only you women would
leave off trying to do men's jobs!"

"Take me away," she implored, clinging to his arm. "It must be to
Marseilles. I am safe there from all the police in France. I shall live
there like a sewer rat, but they will never find me."

"Very well," he assented. "I will do my best for you, Jenny. Wait here
while I fetch the car."

He took a single step towards the avenue and stopped short on the edge
of the grass. It was partly Jenny's stifled cry of agony which brought
him to a standstill, partly the sight of the car turning in at the
avenue, the lights flashing upon the uniforms of the two gendarmes
behind. He turned and caught Jenny by the arm.

"Pull yourself together," he enjoyed sternly. "Remember, any one living
our life must be prepared to face a crisis like this now and then. I
will be responsible for the pistol. From what I remember of the man's
condition, they will never be able to swear to that pistol shot."

The girl nodded. In the presence of real danger she was a different
person. They moved forward, entered the hotel and awaited their visitors
in the lounge. One only of the three men who had been in the car
presented himself. The gendarmes remained outside.

"Mademoiselle and Monsieur," the former began gravely, "I must beg for a
few minutes of your time over this very serious and important affair."

"Mademoiselle is only too anxious to offer you all the information
possible," Commodore Jasen assured him. "I myself have little to tell
you, for I did not arrive upon the scene until after the accident. First
of all, though, relieve our minds--the condition of the unfortunate man?
There is still hope perhaps?"

The newcomer was apparently puzzled. His stiff figure was drawn upright,
his black eyes flashed enquiringly from one to the other.

"I regret, Monsieur," he said. "I fail to understand. Hope of what?"

"That the man may live," Commodore Jasen explained.

"The man who was in the motor accident?"

"But naturally."

The other shook his head gravely.

"The man was dead when we found him," he pronounced. "His neck was
broken and he was suffering from terrible wounds in the head. I do not
understand how Monsieur or Mademoiselle could have entertained any hopes
of his recovery."

The girl seemed quicker of understanding than her companion. Already she
was pacing the room with the fury of a caged tiger. The Commodore
appeared to be groping his way towards the truth.

"You are, I presume, the doctor?" he ventured. "Why do you come instead
of the Commissaire?"

The little man stared at the speaker.

"I," he announced, "am the Commissaire of Police of this district."

Then Commodore Jasen too had the air of one upon whom an unpleasant
truth is slowly dawning.

"Barely a quarter of an hour ago," he confided, "a man arrived here in a
motor car, assuring us that he was the Commissaire of the district. He
took from Mademoiselle a despatch box belonging to the unfortunate man
who, he declared, was still alive and wished to make a statement."

The Commissaire touched his short moustache with a scornful gesture.

"Monsieur has been deceived," he said. "I am the only Commissaire of
Police in Brignolles, and the man who met with the motor accident was as
dead as Julius Caesar when my gendarme found him. And since, Monsieur,"
he continued, "dead men do not make statements, it follows that your
visitor was a liar."

"And we," Commodore Jasen groaned, "are simpletons."

"That is as it may be," the little man observed. "In the meantime, as a
matter of form, I will ask Mademoiselle a few questions concerning the
accident. The affair is so simple that I shall not detain her long."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a very depressed Jenny who parted from Commodore Jasen the next
morning outside the door of the Splendide Htel at Marseilles. The
latter, however, entered the place with all his accustomed briskness and
good humour. He was warmly welcomed by the concierge and shook hands
with the reception clerk. He was obviously well known and liked--a
client who, on his not infrequent visits, chose the most expensive rooms
and tipped well and graciously. In reply to his enquiry he was conducted
at once to a salon on the first floor. Its single occupant--a tall,
well-dressed young man of spare figure--rose to his feet at once.
Commodore Jasen greeted him cheerfully and made sure about the door.

"All serene?" he enquired, without overmuch interest, for the plans of
Commodore Jasen very seldom went wrong.

"Perfectly," the young man, who bore a striking resemblance to the
pseudo-Commissaire of Brignolles, announced. "The money is here. The bag
and the rest of its contents are destroyed."

Commodore Jasen counted the money, selected two notes of five thousand
dollars each, pushed them across the table to his companion and pocketed
the rest.

"We will drink a bottle of wine together, George," he said. "Afterwards,
I shall ask you to have the goodness to see that those two notes are
handed to Mademoiselle Jenny with my compliments."




VII

COMMODORE JASEN WATCHES HIS STEP


A page boy in resplendent livery paused before Commodore Jasen of the
Chteau d'Antibes, who was entertaining a couple of promising
acquaintances in the new reception room of the Htel de Paris.

"One demands Monsieur le Commodore upon the telephone," he announced.

Jasen rose unwillingly to his feet.

"What name?" he enquired.

"Madame gave no name," the boy replied. "The call, she declared, was
urgent."

"Where was it from?" was the impatient query.

"L'Htel du Cap d'Antibes."

The Commodore hesitated no longer, but excused himself to his friends
and was shepherded to the box just outside the door. He picked up the
receiver and announced himself.

"Commodore Jasen speaking," he said. "Who is it, please?"

"Caroline Loyd," was the prompt reply. "Can you hear me?"

The change in the Commodore's tone was amazing. All his indifference and
irritability seemed to have faded away. He spoke with the utmost
_empressement_.

"My dear Caroline," he exclaimed, "what a pleasure! I heard that you
were in Paris."

"Listen," the voice at the other end replied. "I wish to see you, and
they told me at the Chteau that you were at Monte Carlo. I am coming in
to a special performance at the Opera House to-night and I will be in
the lounge of the hotel at a quarter past seven. It must be at that time
because I dine early with a friend."

There was a bitter look for a moment in Jasen's face but no reflection
of it in his suave and eager tone.

"I shall be there," he agreed....

Commodore Jasen returned to the task of cementing his acquaintance with
two swarthy-faced, glossy-haired Argentines of reputed wealth but with
undue gambling propensities. They had made very few friends in the
Principality, and had been somewhat flattered by the attentions of this
American millionaire of benevolent appearance, who was evidently a
well-known and highly respected personage. They hailed his return with
acclamation, and the senior of the two--Seor Jos de Santador--played
their trump card in the game of achieving popularity. He indicated a
very attractive young woman of the distinctly Spanish type who had just
joined them, a young woman of very elegant appearance with her tightly
fitting black dress, her ivory white skin, her dark expressive eyes and
judiciously becarmined lips, which were already smiling at the newcomer.

"You permit that I present you to my sister?" he begged. "The Commodore
Jasen--Miss Juanita de Santador."

Commodore Jasen, who, when it did not interfere with the more serious
things of life, was a fine and critical judge of the other sex, bowed
over the girl's fingers, returned smile for smile, and decided that,
should his acquaintance with these two young men develop in the matters
of which they had spoken, the whole business would be a great deal more
agreeable for Miss Juanita's association with it. A dangerous trio, the
acute and suspicious man of the world might have remarked of Jos de
Santador, Rodriguez de Santador and their beautiful sister. But
Commodore Jasen himself was no lambkin.

"You will do us the great pleasure of joining us?" the latter begged,
Juanita's hand still in his.

The invitation was cordially and gracefully accepted.

       *       *       *       *       *

At a quarter past seven precisely, Caroline Loyd, looking very beautiful
indeed, followed by her devoted friend, the Marquis de St. Vran,
descended from a car and passed through the entrance doors of the Htel
de Paris into the spacious and handsome lounge. Commodore Jasen, who had
been awaiting the arrival of the former, rose at once to his feet, a
trim and agreeable figure in his well-cut dinner clothes. His black silk
tie was a trifle larger than the fashion of the moment decreed, but
admirably arranged and impressive. His black opal studs and links, his
general air of benign good-nature completed a most attractive _tout
ensemble_. To the casual observer, his smile, as he raised the girl's
hand to his lips, was gentle and gracious. The girl, however, knew him
well, and she had seen with a pang of dread the swift, rapidly veiled
gleam of anger in his eyes as he had recognised her companion. It was
gone in a second. Nothing could have been more courteous and friendly
than his greetings.

"Delighted to see the Marquis," he said cordially. "One hears amazing
things of the progress they are making with the reconstruction of your
chteau."

"My architect is a marvel," the other replied graciously. "I trust that
some day you will accompany Miss Loyd on a tour of inspection."

"It would give me a great pleasure," the Commodore declared.

"If Mademoiselle permits," the Marquis suggested, "I will, whilst she
exchanges a few words with you, occupy myself in ordering dinner. It is
a somewhat barbarous hour to dine, but with music before us one
forgives."

"A very light dinner, please," Caroline begged.

He smiled.

"Mademoiselle shall be obeyed."

He left them, with a courteous little gesture of farewell, to meet the
_matres d'htel_ who were already hovering in the background. Caroline
looked after him with a smile at the corner of her lips and a faint
sense of personal pride in his complete restablishment. Commodore Jasen
also looked after him, but with eyes of hate.

"The Marquis is a very changed man," the latter observed quietly.

"Who would not be?" she agreed. "I did not bring you here, however, to
discuss his affairs."

"You have a proposition?" he asked eagerly.

"Certainly not," she replied. "To be frank, I doubt whether I shall ever
have another or the will to listen to one. I am not ambitious for great
wealth and I think that the love of adventure, as I used to understand
adventure, is leaving me."

"Then to what do I owe this pleasure?"

"I asked you to meet me here in order to warn you," she confided.

He raised his eyebrows.

"That sounds mysterious," he observed.

"Please do not be sarcastic," she begged. "I know that you are as clever
as Satan, but there's one thing that I don't think you _do_ know."

"Well?"

"I do not think you know that Lavalon, the French detective, who became
so famous last year and is now head of his service, and Brant, the New
York man who nearly got poor Jim, are at the present moment in the bar
of this hotel."

The face of Commodore Jasen became like the face of a sphinx. No one
could have told whether it was fear or indifference which had chilled
the blood in his cheeks. It would have been hard indeed for any one to
guess whether his companion's disclosure was news to him.

"How do you know this?" he demanded.

She smiled. It was one of those small moments of triumph which nowadays
meant nothing to her.

"There are times," she observed, "when my secret service is better than
yours. It was Dick Ferber, the last of my staff except Ralph, who had
word from Marseilles. He is in Italy by this time. He was up against
Brant in that Springfield bank affair, and Brant knows him."

"Why are you so certain that they are in the bar at the present moment?"

"I saw them as we passed by. The windows were all open. Of course, I
should not have noticed them had I not known they were in Monte Carlo.
Now let me tell you the rest. There are some Argentines here--two men
and a girl. Brant and Lavalon are interested in them."

Commodore Jasen leant towards his companion. There was a light in his
eyes which might almost have been described as dreamy. His manner, if
not exactly paternal, might well have been described as avuncular.

"You are a young woman of brains, Caroline," he said. "You have
sometimes soared up above the possibilities of dull grey matter--you
have displayed inspiration. You have set me a puzzling problem. What do
you make of it yourself?"

"I have not even attempted to study it," she confessed. "I am simply
passing on to you facts which have become known to me."

"I have already clicked with the Argentines," Jasen meditated,
"but up till now I am uncertain whether they are useful fish for
my net, or whether they are fancying that a genial--and possibly
susceptible--American millionaire has not been sent by Providence to
enlarge their own banking account."

"The girl is attractive?" Caroline asked.

"I only met her this afternoon," Jasen confided, "but I should say
amazingly so."

"That," Caroline suggested, with a glance towards the restaurant,
"should make the situation more intriguing for you."

"The personal side of it is scarcely worth considering," Commodore Jasen
pronounced. "Not, at any rate, until one has the affair focussed. In the
background we have the more sinister figures of Lavalon and Brant. Who
are they after? Do they realise, I wonder, that they are at last almost
in touch with the most famous criminal who has never yet entered the
dock or crossed the threshold of a prison? If they do, the Argentines
might well be their decoy. On the other hand, the Argentines might be
well worth looking after for their own sakes. It is a pretty problem."

Caroline, conscious of her escort waiting patiently in the background,
rose to her feet.

"I have set the pieces," she said, with a nod of farewell. "It is you
who must play the game."

       *       *       *       *       *

So Commodore Jasen sat down at the board and a very perplexing affair he
found it. He invited Mr. Jos de Santador, Mr. Rodriguez de Santador and
Miss Juanita, their sister, to dinner, but at their earnest protest he
yielded the point and allowed himself to become their guest. Jos proved
that he knew how to order food and wine, and the whole trio displayed
the decorum and excellent manners of well-bred people. Juanita, who had,
it appeared, been educated at a world-famous English boarding school,
attracted a great deal of notice, not only on account of her beauty but
because of the perfection of her clothes and the splendour of her
jewels. All through the service of the meal she was gay, and with her
guest--to whom she devoted herself--discreetly flirtatious. The latter
noticed, however, that the conversation very seldom concerned the
intimate life of his hosts or their recent doings. Only once Jos
volunteered information of any practical interest concerning themselves.
He informed their guest that, having little confidence in the immediate
future of their country, they had realised their property, so far as
possible, and were proposing to settle down in Europe. Their present
predilections leaned towards the Riviera. Juanita alone had elected for
England.

"And why England?" Commodore Jasen enquired.

She leant towards him and lowered her tone.

"Because there are no casinos there," she whispered.

"You are not fond of gambling then?"

She shook her head wearily.

"I hate it. It is my brothers for whom I fear. At home, even when the
opportunity has come, I have never seen them play. Here it is like
madness. We are rich--but I am afraid. You will talk to them perhaps?
You almost live out here and you must know how hopeless a business it
is. Will you do that for me, my kind friend?"

"Do you think that I know them well enough?" he asked, a trifle
dubiously.

"But we are not going away. You will see much of us, I hope. We shall
become, shall we not, great friends?"

He sighed.

"I hope so," he acknowledged. "But I wonder whether it would be wise. I
am very susceptible--for an elderly person--Miss Juanita."

She openly patted his hand. He was conscious of the furtive touch of her
knee under the table. The message conveyed to him by her eyes the most
modest of men could not have misconstrued.

"_Tant mieux_," she murmured. "I hope that you are as susceptible as I
would wish you to be...."

Yet she had her restraints. He took her from the Casino, where she
pronounced herself bored and unhappy, to a supper restaurant where one
danced, and her single caress vouchsafed on the way was more tender than
alluring. Her whispered speech too, after they had taken their places
and before they began to dance, was--considering its recipient--almost
pathetic.

"I am glad you live here. I hope that you will go on being kind to me.
You are so human."

The saxophone, or some other instrument of devilish import, wandered off
in search of a new discord, and the result might have been the chuckle
which nearly escaped Commodore Jasen's lips.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was one o'clock before the Santador brothers arrived. They brought
with them a young compatriot, an acquaintance, with whom Juanita danced
tangoes without pausing, until Jos recalled her to the table. He
whispered in her ear and she shrugged her shoulders.

"Commodore Jasen does not dance the tango," she said, with a note of
anger in her tone.

"This is a waltz," her brother reminded her coldly. "It was our new
friend who brought you here. You should stay with him."

She dismissed her partner and resumed her intimate conversation with the
Commodore.

"The tango is like madness to us," she whispered. "I dance it even with
professionals and forget. As for the young man--Jos's friend--I would
not cross the road to pick up his heart, yet you could ask me nothing
that I could refuse. My friend--you are my friend?"

"I hope so."

"I become desperate. This place is a hell. Again they have lost. And
I--I who do not even amuse myself--it is my money too which disappears.
Soon they will tell me, I suppose, that I must be a typist, or a
danseuse, or walk the streets, for the money they have squandered."

"They seem to have the worst of luck," Jasen reflected. "But why have
you not your own money under your own control?"

"Over here we were going to make a trust, if that is what you call it,"
she explained. "We were going to realise everything we have and divide
it into three portions. An _avocat_ was to arrive from Paris. When he
comes there will be nothing left."

Commodore Jasen murmured a few puzzled words of sympathy and presently
called for the bill. Juanita insisted on driving in his car to the
hotel. When they arrived there and she slipped out of his arms, he
wished them all good night.

"But you stay here?" Jos exclaimed, in much surprise.

"You don't leave us!" Juanita cried, seizing his arm.

The Commodore explained that he lived at Antibes and was only over for
the evening. The disappointment upon their faces was flattering but, to
a man of Jasen's somewhat suspicious nature, a little suggestive.

"Perhaps," he proposed, "I could induce you all to come over to-morrow
and spend the week-end with me. I have rather a famous country place on
the shore. If you care about bathing and that sort of thing, I can give
you as much as you want all day."

Juanita's thanks were expressed in a very torrent of gratitude. The two
young men were polite, but they glanced across at the Casino and
hesitated--a fact which puzzled their would-be host very much.

"It is very kind," Jos said doubtfully. "The trouble with us is that we
feel that there is a great deal of our money over there waiting to come
back to us."

Juanita was furious. She stamped her shapely foot upon the pavement.

"Very well," she cried. "I accept Commodore Jasen's invitation. I shall
go in any case. You, my brothers, can please yourselves. I only beg that
you leave me a little of my own money."

Jos pulled himself together. He rebuked Juanita sternly and turned to
their proposed host.

"Do not take my sister too seriously, I beg of you," he said.
"Naturally, if she wishes to go, we accompany her. We accept your
invitation with pleasure, sir."

Juanita bade him a rapturous good night, and Commodore Jasen, although
he was a very inhuman man, was conscious of a not unpleasant tingling of
the senses as he stepped back into his automobile. The sensation
lasted, however, only for a matter of seconds. Even before his chauffeur
had had time to press the starting button, he found himself intrigued by
a somewhat singular coincidence. Lavalon, the French detective, was
leaning out of the bar window, apparently watching the people coming out
from the Casino, but obviously listening to every word which had passed
between Commodore Jasen and his new friends.

The car glided off, swung presently to the right and climbed with
effortless ease into the Middle Corniche. Its occupant lit a cigar and,
leaning back amongst the cushions, set himself to study the problem
presented by the extreme friendliness of the Argentines, the presence in
Monte Carlo of the two famous detectives, and Caroline Loyd's warning.
He asked himself--

First--were his Argentine friends swindlers and Juanita an adventuress,
and he their hoped-for prey, or were they merely just what they seemed
to be--a trio of rich young people--the two brothers inveterate
gamblers, and anxious to keep friendly with him, in the hope that with
Juanita's influence they might, if necessary, have some one to borrow
money from?

Secondly--were Lavalon and Brant here on _their_ account or his? Though
the presence of the American meant the latter probably, and, although he
was full of confidence, he by no means minimised the danger.

Thirdly--was it possible that the Argentines were, consciously or
unconsciously, being made use of by the detectives to induce him to make
a _faux pas_ which would bring him under their jurisdiction? There were
subtleties in this theory which Jasen was well able to appreciate.

He went over every little incident of the evening, with almost
meticulous care. There were arguments in favour of each proposition. In
the end he reached Antibes with his problem unsolved.

       *       *       *       *       *

Very much to their host's surprise, his guests arrived on the following
morning at exactly the agreed-upon hour, namely midday. Juanita was
already prepared for bathing. Rodriguez changed and joined them down on
the portion of shore which belonged to the Chteau, but Jos, who was
clumsier of build and stouter than his brother, preferred to cruise
round in the motor boat. To all appearance the three of them enjoyed a
simple and wholesome day--mostly spent in the water. Afterwards they
motored round to Cagnes and Juan, where crowds of people of all
nationalities were gathered, and Commodore Jasen bespoke his favourite
table on the terrace for dinner that night. Throughout the whole of the
day not a single word was spoken, or incident occurred, which was in any
way suspicious. It was not until they sat down to dinner at Juan, and
Commodore Jasen discovered Lavalon and Brant at the next table but one,
that he felt any qualm of uneasiness. Not that he flinched for a single
moment. His blue eyes travelled over the two men with the usual gleam of
benevolent interest, which he apparently displayed in all his fellow
creatures. In his heart he was not afraid. Others might make mistakes
and leave loose ends for clever men to pull, but not he. He considered
now the possibility, almost the probability, that they were in these
parts on his account. He felt not the slightest disquietude. Let them
suspect what they liked. He was a murderer? Yes. A great robber?
Certainly. But what living man could raise his voice and testify against
him? Not one. There never would be one. That was the advantage of being
a killer. He tested Juanita suddenly.

"Is not that Lavalon, the great French detective, sitting over there?"
he asked.

Her eyes flashed, but it was with genuine interest. She leant towards
him.

"Where? Do show me. I have never seen a real detective."

Commodore Jasen pointed out the man with discretion. Juanita passed the
information to her brothers, who accepted it with curiosity, but
certainly no signs of fore-knowledge or fear. The _rencontre_ at least
gave him an opportunity of moving one of his pieces upon the board. It
seemed impossible that there was any connection between his guests and
the two detectives. The move, which he duly established in his mind,
left him more puzzled than ever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Juan was at its best that night. There was no gala and the music was
mercifully subdued. A few yards behind them the sea came falling upon
the sand with a soft swirl of toneless melody, a mysterious element in
the darkness which the gaily illuminated restaurant failed to pierce,
until the moon slid up from behind the Esterels and left a glittering
pathway across the bay.

"There is no other place in which to live," Juanita sighed. "Oh, my
dear host, you are so clever! Find me a potion to cure these brothers of
mine of gambling, and another," she added in a lower tone, with all the
sweetness of her eyes seeking for his, "to make you feel something of
what you say, to turn you from a courtier into a lover."

He smiled at her tolerantly.

"Are you trying to turn the head of a respectable elderly gentleman?" he
asked.

"I do not feel that you are elderly," she assured him, "and I would not
wish to feel that you were respectable."

Jos, who had been whispering with his brother, leaned across the table
and intervened a little abruptly.

"One needs an introduction to play in the Casino here?" he enquired.

His host looked at him in mock severity.

"I thought you were coming out to me for a rest from that sort of
thing."

"So we are," the young man agreed. "But one must have a look at the
Casino."

"And I made them promise that they would bring no money with them,"
Juanita observed ruefully.

"I suppose they will cash a cheque here," Jos ventured. "I kept my
promise, anyway. I only brought a few thousand francs."

Commodore Jasen was not encouraging.

"They are not very accommodating with strangers," he remarked.

"But we are your guests," the younger brother protested. "That will
surely be sufficient."

Commodore Jasen gave no sign, but inwardly he was filled with a vast
contempt. This was the opportunity for which he had been waiting. Very
soon he would be able to move another piece across the board. Meanwhile
he shook his head gravely.

"You forget," he pointed out, "that, although I am delighted to consider
you all--especially your charming sister--my _dear_ friends, as a matter
of fact, from the point of view of any third person, we are nothing but
casual acquaintances. There is, I should explain, an etiquette in these
matters on the Riviera. I cannot vouch for you anywhere until I know
something of your means."

Jos patted his stomach and inclined his head gravely.

"We are rich," he confided.

Commodore Jasen coughed--a perfectly polite but significant gesture.

"One requires for these Casinos proof," he challenged.

"Of course," Juanita murmured. "Why not tell the Commodore everything?
He is our friend," she went on, holding his hand, "whether he wants to
be or not."

"I agree," Rodriguez echoed.

Jos shrugged his shoulders.

"Very good," he assented. "Commodore, you appear to be a person of
influence here--can you arrange for a few minutes the entre to a
private room?"

"Certainly," his host assented. "As soon as we have finished dinner, I
will take you to the directors' salon. Not that we are likely to be
overheard here," he added, glancing around.

"A private room would be better," Jos insisted.

       *       *       *       *       *

Commodore Jasen had the shock of his life about an hour later when, with
the door of the directors' room locked behind them, Jos divested
himself of his coat and waistcoat. Not only was the young man wearing
the most ingenious and wonderful belt it was possible to conceive, but
every slot contained a Brazilian diamond of the purest and most
marvellous quality. One after another he produced them, until the table
held a little pyramid of flaming stones. Jasen stopped him at last.

"It is sufficient," he begged earnestly. "Tell me first of all--where
did you have that belt made?"

"It was my father's design," the young man confided. "He was the largest
diamond merchant in South America. You see, the fastening is secured
with a catch. The belt is undone and opened in a moment, but no one can
undo it without knowing the secret."

Commodore Jasen examined the catch and marvelled. He felt the remainder
of the slots. They were still packed with diamonds. Jos thrust his hand
into the pocket of his coat and produced a letter of credit. The
original amount indicated was fifty thousand pounds sterling, and
twenty-two thousand only had been drawn.

"You can vouch for us financially now?" he asked, smiling. "The diamonds
are undervalued at a million pounds, and twenty-eight thousand remain
upon the letter of credit."

"With the greatest pleasure," his host assented. "Come with me to the
cashier."

On the way there, they passed Lavalon and his companion, and Commodore
Jasen smiled.

       *       *       *       *       *

A quarter of an hour to the Chteau, ten minutes with Jake, a quarter of
an hour back again. Even then Juanita was in despair. She was wandering
dejectedly up and down in the gambling rooms, when at last Commodore
Jasen found her.

"The heavens be praised!" he exclaimed, as he linked his arm in hers.

"But where have you been?" she cried, half inclined to be petulant. "I
have searched the Casino for you in vain and here I find that the men
are terrible. Very soon I should have permitted myself to have been what
you call 'picked up' in self-preservation."

Jasen made satisfactory explanations. He had been told she was dancing:
been told that she was at the _Boule_ tables: everywhere he had pursued
a false scent: and now--there was a little dancing garden opposite, with
good music and the light ripple of wind in the trees! So they went there
and danced, and Juanita was happy because she loved to sip iced drinks
from tall tumblers, and dance. After all, she was young, and one
well-mannered man was as good as another. And how could she tell that
the particular man who was whispering affectionate things into her ear
was thinking a great deal more about a belt of diamonds than of her? At
three o'clock they visited the Casino. Neither Jos nor Rodriguez was
willing to move. They had lost, as usual, it is true, but a young
Englishman had elected to take a bank at baccarat, and they fancied
their chances against him. They would follow on presently, which was
exactly according to plan.

So Commodore Jasen and Juanita went home alone and sat on the broad
terrace, drinking cold squashes, and flirting with more or less
discretion, until the sky over Antibes was flecked with pink, till a
strange automobile rolled up and two ghastly figures arrived to tell a
terrible story of highway robbery, compared with which all their losses
at baccarat and _chemin de fer_ were as a snap of the fingers.

"A million pounds!" Jos sobbed. "The fortune of all of us. Commodore,
you can vouch for it. You have seen the diamonds. Where is the
telephone? How does one arrive at the police?"

Their host calmed them down. The theft was absurd. No one could get away
with such a quantity of diamonds. At night the telephone was
disconnected. They must rest for an hour or two, and when the morning
was properly advanced, the police would be sent for. Still dazed with
the chloroform to which they had been subjected, they were easily
induced to collapse into a coma-like state of slumber. The Commodore
himself took them to their rooms. Afterwards he descended in search of
Juanita.

       *       *       *       *       *

The inmates of the Chteau d'Antibes were not the only people in the
neighbourhood who had spent the night without rest. It was nearly seven
o'clock when the famous French detective and his friend, Brant,
descended from a closed car at the Provenal Htel and mounted a little
wearily to their rooms.

"Two hours I think we may give ourselves," Lavalon suggested.

"One hour," the American insisted.

"I have twenty-five men posted round the Chteau," Lavalon reminded his
colleague.

Brant's face, grey with fatigue, was set like granite.

"You don't quite realise what this is to me, Lavalon," he said
earnestly. "For seven years they have had it against us at Police
Headquarters that we have never once come into actual touch with the
head of the Lebworthy Gang. I have built up a case against Jasen of the
Chteau there by suppositions, by guesses, by luck. Gradually it has
become cemented into a whole. If we once get our hands on him, get him
back to New York, get him arrested on one definite charge, the rest will
be easy. I cannot run any risk. There are others of them in hiding
there. I am sure of that. I grudge taking my own eyes off the Chteau
for a moment. I shall take a bath and a cup of strong coffee and get
over there."

"Just as you like," Lavalon agreed. "I will be with you. I am not a man
to shirk in a business like this."

The two men departed to their rooms. In an hour's time, Brant was
slipping the cartridges into his automatic as they drove back again
along the road to Antibes.

"There will be just one weak point in our evidence," Lavalon remarked,
"and that will be to associate Jasen directly with the robbery."

Brant laughed scornfully.

"Dear colleague," he said, "listen. I find you down here with
instructions to enquire into the past of these Argentines. You find
everything about them satisfactory and that they are justly in
possession of a large quantity of diamonds. Very good. We meet. We speak
of this and then--the man whom I have been trailing--Jasen--makes
friends with them. He invites them to his Chteau. Why?"

"There is that very attractive young woman," the Frenchman reflected.

Brant scoffed.

"Sam Lebworthy never looked at a woman unless she could help him," he
said. "Anyhow, here they are together. Jos de Santador and Jasen go off
to a private room at Juan. What for? I know. Jos shows him the
diamonds. For Jasen goes straight from that room, and instructs the
cashier to give these young Argentines credit for a very large amount,
on his guarantee if necessary. That is proof that he had satisfied
himself. It was also a bluff. What does he do then? The Argentines go in
to play. Jasen slips out to his car and is driven furiously back to the
Chteau. He spends a short time there in earnest conversation with his
butler, who, I am convinced, was one of his gang in America. Back he
goes and takes care that the Santadors make no movement towards leaving.
He brings the girl home and waits. Your own men saw the car containing
the two Argentines held up, saw the elder one thrown to the ground, and
his belt removed."

"It will be hard to explain," Lavalon murmured, "why they did not
intervene."

"It should not be," Brant replied. "The robbery was carried out by
myrmidons. It is the arch-criminal we want--the whole world wants. We
have him now. The diamonds will be found at the Chteau, for there is no
chance for any one to leave it. Within a week I shall be on my way back
to New York with the most agreeable travelling companion I have ever had
in my life."

"There is no joy in life," Lavalon said fervently, "for one in our
profession to compare with an exploit such as this."

       *       *       *       *       *

Commodore Jasen, with Juanita by his side, and Jos and Rodriguez
opposite, was seated at the former's writing table in his study, when
Broadman threw open the door and announced the two visitors of fate. By
agreement, it was the Frenchman who opened the proceedings.

"I believe that I am speaking to Commodore Jasen," he said, addressing
the latter.

"Quite so," was the unruffled reply.

"My name is Lavalon of the French police," the detective continued. "I
believe that you," he went on, bowing to them in turn, "are Monsieur
Jos de Santador, Monsieur Rodriguez de Santador, and Mademoiselle
Juanita de Santador?"

They all assented. It seemed to Lavalon himself that there was a slight
lack of enthusiasm in their reception of him.

"I understand," he continued, "that you--Monsieur Santador--have been
robbed of a large quantity of diamonds on the road between Juan and
here last night?"

"Early this morning," Jos corrected him. "Quite true."

"The police here," Commodore Jasen intervened, leaning back, "certainly
merit our congratulations. The news has reached them quickly."

"I should like," Lavalon observed, "to have a word with your butler,
Commodore Jasen, upon this matter."

The latter touched a bell which stood upon his desk.

"With pleasure," he assented.

In due course Broadman made his appearance. It was Lavalon who
interrogated him.

"Your name is Michael Broadman?"

The man seemed surprised.

"That is so," he admitted.

"What were you doing between five and six o'clock this morning?" Lavalon
asked.

"I was out on the road between here and Juan," the butler replied
coolly.

"What were you doing there?"

"I was carrying out a little commission for my master."

Brant swung round towards Jasen.

"You hear that?" he said. "You admit that your servant was acting under
your instructions?"

"Certainly," Commodore Jasen agreed. "My butler was scarcely likely to
be wandering about the road at that hour of the morning without my
instructions or permission."

"I suppose you know," Lavalon said, moving nearer to the door, as though
to cut off any possibility of Broadman's escape, whilst at the same time
Brant edged towards the Commodore--"I suppose you know that a very
serious robbery took place upon the stretch of road you spoke of, at
precisely that hour this morning?"

"Certainly, I know, sir," the butler replied civilly. "I was there. In
fact, I was the thief."

"No, no, Broadman," the Commodore protested, "scarcely that, my man. You
were acting under my instructions."

Brant's eyes flashed.

"You admit that?" he demanded, leaning across the table towards the
Commodore.

"Of course I admit it," was the prompt reply.

Lavalon moved towards the open window and raised a whistle to his lips.
Commodore Jasen looked over his shoulder. Half a dozen gendarmes were
climbing the grassy bank which led on to the terrace communicating with
the rooms. Commodore Jasen frowned. For the first time, his composure
seemed threatened.

"Confound those fellows," he exclaimed. "They're breaking down all my
geraniums--and what are they doing here, anyway?"

"You will soon find out," Brant jeered.

"What is all this about?" Jos de Santador asked. "I have been robbed.
That is quite true. But I have not invoked the assistance of the police.
I have not even telephoned to the police station."

"I fancy," Commodore Jasen said calmly, "that these two gentlemen
belong more to the detective of fiction than of fact. They do not wait
for an appeal. They discover a crime before it is committed. Would you
be so kind, Monsieur Lavalon, as to instruct your gendarmes there to
wait upon the terrace? I do not wish their muddy feet upon my Turkey
carpet."

"A bluff like this is not going to help you, Lebworthy," Brant said
fiercely. "You're for it, and the sooner you realise that, the better."

"Lebworthy does not happen to be my name," Commodore Jasen objected,
"nor have I any acquaintance with any one who has a claim to it. You
seem to have blundered in upon this little affair on your own
initiative. However, there are, no doubt, excuses for you. Perhaps your
minds will be more at rest if the diamonds are produced. Juanita, would
you mind? You will find them in that drawer."

She patted the Commodore on the cheek, crossed the room, and returned
with the belt of diamonds. The two detectives stared at it in blank
amazement.

"These are the facts," Commodore Jasen went on, leaning back in his
chair, the tips of his fingers pressed together. "I met these young
people a short time ago and took some interest in them. I believe--Jos
and Rodriguez--you will not be offended if I say that I found you
behaving not only cruelly to your sister but most unwisely in your own
interests."

"It is the truth," Jos admitted.

"Our two young friends were, in short," the Commodore confided to the
two men, "gambling in very large sums. They would soon have come to the
end of their letter of credit and begun upon the diamonds. I must
confess to feeling a great interest in Miss Juanita here," he went on,
caressing for a moment the hand which was stealing round his neck, "and
chiefly for her sake, I invited them out here with the sole intention of
teaching them a lesson. Broadman robbed them of their diamonds on my
instigation, and after they had had a few hours' fright, I have induced
them to sign this paper, in consideration of which the diamonds are once
more in their possession. Let me read you this paper."

Commodore Jasen adjusted his seldom used monocle, and read out.

     I, JOS DE SANTADOR, and I, RODRIGUEZ DE SANTADOR, hereby pledge my
     word of honour to Commodore Jasen that I will not enter a casino or
     engage in any game of chance until the diamonds which are the joint
     property of ourselves and our sister are realised and the amount
     distributed between us in three equal portions. And I further
     pledge my word that after this has been done I will not at any time
     risk the loss of more than a thousand pounds in any two months. In
     consideration of these promises Commodore Jasen returns to us the
     diamonds in question.

     Signed, Jos de Santador,

     Rodriguez de Santador.

Commodore Jasen laid down the document and, with Juanita's arm still
around his neck, looked reproachfully at his two visitors.

"If you would kindly instruct your gendarmes to keep to the path when
they leave," he begged, "I should be glad. I do not like my flowers
broken down and I do not care to be addressed by a name to which I have
no claim. Otherwise, we are much obliged by your visit, and I think my
young friends here must appreciate your watchfulness on their behalf."

Jos was scarcely grateful.

"Quite unnecessary," he said curtly. "My brother and I are perfectly
well able to look after ourselves and our possessions."

"And in any case," Juanita added, with a flash in her eyes, as she
looked across at the two detectives, "we would be perfectly safe
anywhere, with a friend like Commodore Jasen."




VIII

THE GHOSTS OF SUICIDE CORNER


The leader of the orchestra, who was a person of much imagination,
always declared that the descent upon the Caf de Paris, during the
sacred dinner hour, of that strange flight of phantom birds, was
heralded by portents of an unusual and dramatic nature. First of all,
the wind, which, as though exhausted after a week of mistral, had shaken
neither leaf nor bough of any tree from dawn till twilight, woke, and,
as though in a hurry, brought a scurry of leaves underneath the tables
of the caf proper on to the dancing floor of the restaurant, where they
lay like dead things until swept away. Afterwards, two of the roosting
pigeons of the square, who might well have been sentinels of their
dozing fellows, flew suddenly down from their shelter amongst the
faades and spurious ornamentation of the Casino front, and drifted
solemnly over the heads of the diners, uttering hoarse cries, as though
they scented danger. Waiters paused in their hurrying to and fro, and
stood with dishes in their hands, watching the curiously circling birds.
A wine waiter, who had been serving some priceless Burgundy, went on
pouring it until the wine was trickling in a little stream across the
table-cloth on to the floor. Suddenly the pigeons disappeared, not with
any effort of slow and graceful flight, but apparently in a wild and
panic-stricken swoop. There was a disturbed murmur amongst the crowd of
diners.

"Never in my life," the manager declared, as he stood with his hands
behind his back, gazing across the strip of garden, "have I seen those
pigeons stir after they have once been to roost, till morning."

Nevertheless, the incident--although unusual--would speedily have been
forgotten, except for what followed. Circling around the square, without
formation, in ones and twos, flying wearily and giving the impression of
immense fatigue, came a flock of birds strange to Monte Carlo. They
were, or seemed to be at some distance, jet-black. They crossed the
corner of the grotesque building, spread out over the small tables where
the loungers of the place were taking their coffee, and finally floated
over the dancing floor of the space allotted to the dinner tables of the
outdoor restaurant. For a moment every one was dazed. Then a woman
shrieked, picked up her wrap and ran for the indoor portion of the
building. Meanwhile, the birds, with incredible voracity, lit almost
upon the dining tables, grubbed everywhere about the floor, scavenging,
tearing to pieces with their yellow beaks everything that seemed like
food. Two or three more women followed the first one, and the whole
place seemed on the verge of a panic, when an old resident, who was
being entertained by a Princess of the neighbourhood, rose in his place.

"The birds are harmless," he called out. "They are the hooded crows of
Corsica."

"Crows are not migratory birds," some one objected.

"Neither are these," was the prompt response. "They were probably blown
out to sea by the gale and landed upon a small steamer. There was one
entering the harbour as I came up the hill."

The explanation satisfied the intelligence of every one. They started
feeding the birds, and their male kind went in search of the deserting
women. But it seemed as though intelligence was not the only one of the
sensibilities which needed assuaging. There were perhaps sixty or
seventy people dining in scattered groups and, amongst the majority at
least, there remained something, if not of alarm, of superstitious
depression. The birds strutted and hopped here and there, differing very
slightly from the ordinary black crow of the fields, but carrying with
them an atmosphere of the unusual. It was as though they diffused
everywhere a sense of uneasiness, against which the mind was powerless
to cope.

Commodore Jasen, who was dining alone with Zo, was one of the few who
regarded the incident with indifference. He patted her hand when he
became aware of her distress.

"My dear girl," he protested, "drink a glass of your wine. Our friend
over there has given us what, I am convinced, is the correct explanation
of the arrival of those birds."

A wild-looking young man at the next table was shouting to his
companions. He was half in jest and half in earnest, but there were
drops of unusual perspiration on his forehead.

"They came over Suicide Corner," he declared. "Look at the face of that
old one there. If you look long enough, you can see it bent over the
roulette tables. I'm off!"

He threw a note upon the table and rushed away without waiting for his
hat or coat. It is hard to tell what might have followed, had the
manager not saved the situation. He strode into the middle of the
dancing floor, with the saxophone player on one side and the drummer on
the other. Together the two musicians bent to their task. With a curious
rustling of the wings, as though they rose lazily and unwillingly, the
whole flock flew away almost within reach of the hands of the crowd over
whom they passed. They made one circle and then flew steadily for the
harbour.

"Gone to book their return passage," one humourist suggested.

"Thank God, they have gone!" Zo declared fervently.

And there were a good many others who felt the same relief.

       *       *       *       *       *

The evening, after a fashion, was restablished. From most tables a
demand went out for more wine. The orchestra started one of their most
popular dance tunes. Soon the floor was crowded. Commodore Jasen rose to
his feet.

"We will dance this," he said to his companion. "Afterwards I shall be
fatigued. I shall then send for our young friend and you will open up
the business upon which we came."

The girl indulged in a characteristic grimace.

"I will do my best," she said, "only I wish that this had not happened.
I am afraid."

"What is there in life to fear?" her companion asked, as they passed
into the throng.

"It is not life of which I was thinking," she answered.

The orchestra played with furious spirit. Never had they worked so hard.
They had almost the air of revivalist musicians, as they sank exhausted
over their instruments when the end came, and for a time they were
indifferent to the vigorous clapping of hands. Commodore Jasen led his
partner to her seat. He fanned himself with his handkerchief.

"A trifle too vigorous for me," he observed, as he recovered his breath.
"Ah, I see one of the young professionals over there is free."

He beckoned to a pale-faced young man who was seated in a distant corner
alone, and who, only a few minutes previously, had been one of the most
alarmed of the spectators. Perhaps he had not yet fully recovered from
the nervous shock, for he rose almost unwillingly to his feet and
crossed the room towards his prospective clients. He bowed to Zo and to
the Commodore as to strangers and they accepted his greeting in like
fashion.

"My niece would like to dance," the Commodore told him. "I am myself a
little fatigued."

Zo surrendered herself to the young man's automatic gesture. Commodore
Jasen lit a cigar and, leaning back in his chair, watched the dancing
with benevolent interest. The encore was not a long one, and on its
conclusion the dancer brought his companion back to the table.
Commodore Jasen fingered his pocketbook tentatively.

"You will be able to dance again with my niece, I hope," he demanded.

The young man hesitated.

"I am really engaged for the evening," he explained nervously, "to the
lady who has been my patroness for the season. I ventured to dance with
Mademoiselle, as she has scarcely commenced her dinner. She is with
Princess Ostreville."

"I see," the Commodore murmured. "Nevertheless, I think if you make an
effort--say in half an hour--your patroness will spare you for a few
minutes--just a few minutes for one more dance," he went on, "and
perhaps a glass of wine."

His cold blue eyes were fixed, indifferently enough to all appearance,
upon the young man's. The latter had the air of one receiving sentence
of death.

"I will explain to Madame," he said. "In half an hour--yes--I will
return."

He bowed and hurried away. Commodore Jasen watched him thoughtfully.
There was something furtive about the young man's progress. He seemed in
a great hurry to return unmolested to his solitary table in his solitary
corner.

"I sometimes ask myself," Commodore Jasen observed, almost under his
breath, "why Michael was ever accepted, even in our lowest class. In New
York he seemed to have plenty of nerve, though. Late hours, I suppose:
lack of real employment and this puppy-dog life have had their effect."

"What do you call lack of real employment for a professional dancer?"
the girl asked him. "There is no one on the Riviera in more demand than
Michael. They say that this Mrs. Hammond has had to pay high indeed for
the right to control his movements."

Commodore Jasen stroked his moustache.

"When I said 'lack of work,'" he explained indulgently, "I meant _work_.
Nothing to do, that, you know, with the avocation of a professional
dancer. By real work I mean something entirely different."

"Has Michael ever done any 'real work' for you?" she enquired. "He does
not seem to me to have the courage."

"He performed one mission in New York quite successfully," her companion
told her. "He also carried out some very easy enquiry work here with
success. At present, I admit, he seems an inefficient sort of person.
Different kinds of enterprises, however, demand different qualities."

The girl toyed with a peach for several moments. She had the air of one
very far from being at her ease.

"There is something you still wish to say to me?" the Commodore
continued presently.

"If I might dare," she admitted. "You are dissatisfied with Michael, I
know. So far he has failed in his project, and, as you often tell us,
you have no place for failures. Even bearing that in mind, I think I
would not press him too hard to-night."

"And why not?" was the smoothly asked question.

"Because," the girl confided, "ridiculous as it may seem to you, that
poor young man is in a terrible state of nerves. I suppose it was
seeing us here, and guessing that you have come to talk to him, and
then--those birds...."

"Ah," Commodore Jasen murmured. "Those birds!"

"I know that things like that mean nothing to you," she went on, "but I
expect that he lives an altogether unhealthy life. I could feel his body
tremble when he was dancing and, although he seemed all out of
condition, his hands were as cold as ice. You can force a man into
anything, of course, but I am not sure that anything he attempted
to-night would be well done."

The Commodore looked at his companion speculatively.

"You have common sense," he approved. "You speak well enough from your
point of view. The trouble is that you do not know mine. He does, and he
knows that when he fails he disappears. Wonderful steadying effect that
has upon any sort of a creature with a spark of life still there! I ask
myself why sometimes," Jasen went on with the air of one considering an
abstruse point--"I ask myself why the ordinary human being clings so
tenaciously to life. I have never found a satisfactory answer to the
question and I daresay I never shall. But I think that to save his life,
even that young man might get the better of a fit of nerves. You will
take some coffee?"

"I will take some coffee," the girl agreed.

Presently Michael received a gracious signal from his patroness, and a
few minutes later he was escorting on to the dancing floor a rather fat,
elderly woman with a mass of too fair hair, a wickedly disported Chanel
frock and a gorgeous diamond necklace. Zo watched her curiously.

"I wonder you don't make him go for the necklace," she observed.

"Too obvious, my dear," her companion sighed. "The loss of such a
necklace would make even a woman like Mrs. Hammond vituperative.
Besides, who else but a gigolo could steal jewellery from a woman like
that? They would put him in prison before they began to look for it, and
Michael in prison, with four walls safely around him, would be rather a
dangerous proposition."

"He may very well find his way into prison on the present scheme," the
girl reflected.

Commodore Jasen smiled.

"Not if I know anything of Mrs. Hammond," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

In about half-an-hour's time Mrs. Hammond, flushed and happy with
dancing, and delighted with her dinner party, was in the humour to grant
almost any request her cavalier could make to her. She listened to what
he had to say as he held her chair, glanced across at the Commodore and
Zo, and nodded her consent. The young dancer returned to his table,
where he helped himself liberally to the contents of a bottle in front
of him, and when the music for the next dance commenced, he crossed the
floor towards the table where Zo and her escort were sitting.

"Not too long a dance," the Commodore enjoined, as they prepared to
leave him. "Let us have time for a little conversation."

The young man shivered slightly and, as many other people had done that
evening, he glanced towards the particular corner over the caf from
which those birds had first made their appearance.

"We will dance the first part only," he promised.

"Dance the second part," Jasen suddenly proposed. "I have friends here
with whom I might talk later. Sit down. _Matre d'htel_, another glass.
Good. Now make your report."

The dreaded moment had come. Michael had not the least desire to drink,
but he swallowed a glass of the wine which had been poured out.

"Everything has been done," he announced at last. "I have followed
instructions carefully. But, Commodore," he went on, leaning over the
table, "I do not think--I honestly do not think that the scheme will
work."

"And just why not?" was the cold demand.

"You do not understand Mrs. Hammond, sir," the young man continued
eagerly. "I know she is fond of me up to a certain point. She would have
been fond of any young man who danced with her and flattered her and
played the rle I have had to fill. But she has not a great deal of
heart, really, and it is not a personal affection. It is just the
getting what she wants. When it comes to my disgrace, or parting with a
large sum of money, she will only laugh. She loves her money, sir."

"I have ascertained," the Commodore observed, "that she is worth a
million pounds--that is fifty thousand a year. She may love her money,
Michael, but she loves you a little, too. Yes?"

The world who saw that smile upon Jasen's lips might have thought it a
pleasant gesture, but Zo and the young man seated within a few feet of
him knew better.

"Because she is rich," the latter went on, "it does not follow that she
is not sometimes terribly mean. If we take a taxi, she won't let me give
the man a reasonable tip. The servants at the hotel hate her. She gives
nothing to the croupiers, however much she wins. Sometimes I am ashamed
to pay the bills at the restaurants and I slip something of my own in
with the change."

"What an unpleasant old lady!" the Commodore sighed. "However, it all
fits in with my idea of her psychology. You often find a person who is
mean in small things is a spendthrift in large ones. We are not trying
her too high. We shall ask for only half a million. You should be worth
that to her, Michael. You young men, unless you have some one of
intelligence behind you, never know how to make use of your
opportunities."

There was something hopeless about Commodore Jasen's tone--a note half
of irony and yet with a background of unshakable determination. Michael
recognised it, as many others in life had done before him.

"I think you are wrong, sir," he said, "but you are the master."

"The mistakes I have made in life," Jasen said, "have been very few. In
this case, you need have no fear. I have watched Mrs. Hammond. She is a
foolish woman. She may need skilful handling, but I have the skill. I
think I may say without boasting," he wound up, his voice seeming to
wander out in little silver threads from his partially closed mouth,
"that I have never failed to kill my man when killing has been
necessary, and I have never failed to receive all that I asked in any
case of barter."

The young man rose to his feet. He fingered his tie nervously and
afterwards held out his arms. Zo and he floated away amongst the
throng. Commodore Jasen watched the lady whom they had been discussing.

"A common enough type out here," he reflected. "Wealthy, without social
gifts or position--an easy prey for any adventurer."

He caught a glimpse of her sideways, as she leaned over to speak to her
hostess, and for the first time he realised the one strong feature of
her face--her jaw. Michael probably earned his money, he decided. For
the young man's sake he rather regretted that jaw.

Zo and her partner returned at the end of the encore. The latter
accepted a glass of wine and sat with his back to the dancing floor.
Very reluctantly he drew from his pocket two folded slips of paper and
passed them across the table. Commodore Jasen studied them carefully and
transferred them with dexterous fingers to his waistcoat pocket.

"Ridiculously easy," he murmured. "Your distressed appearance, my young
friend," he went on, glancing at him keenly, "is perhaps so much to the
good. Keep it up, but don't overdo it."

"When are you going to see Mrs. Hammond?" Michael asked fearfully.

"To-morrow evening."

"I am supposed to be dining here with her--a quiet dinner," Michael
volunteered. "I don't suppose she will come. I am more likely to receive
a visit from the gendarmes."

Jasen smiled scornfully.

"There will be no gendarmes," he assured the dancer. "She may be angry,
but you will probably know how to console her. An extra glass or two of
champagne, your vows for the future, a little more _empressement_ during
the dance! There is nothing, I am sure, which I can teach you."

"You taught me something in New York I wish I had never learnt," was the
bitter rejoinder. "You taught me to be dishonest."

The Commodore shook his head.

"My dear young man," he said, "you needed no lessons. Your environment
here, your profession--well, they would neither of them entitle you to
membership of the Y.M.C.A., would they? Now, try and throw away that
woebegone air for a time. Remember that you have a hundred thousand
francs coming to you. My men do not work for nothing, as you know."

Michael rose to his feet. Curiously enough, he, like so many others that
evening, glanced for the second or third time towards that corner of the
caf round which the flight of birds had circled.

"Still superstitious?" Jasen asked with faint sarcasm.

The young man shivered.

"I am not the only one who was scared to-night," he answered, as, with a
bow to Zo, he took his leave.

Mrs. Hammond received her visitor on the following evening affably and
even with enthusiasm. She cut short his opening words.

"I know all about you, Commodore," she said. "You have that beautiful
chteau at Antibes which belongs to Lord Somebody-or-other. I have seen
you out there, bathing. I have seen you here too, often," she added,
with a slight smile. "Once with that beautiful girl from the Cap, who
was at the Opera the other night with the Marquis de St. Vran, and last
night--with a very pretty little lady last night!"

The Commodore smiled.

"When one gets on in years as I, alas, have done," he confided, "one
feels that one must take hold of one's opportunities. You are a widow, I
believe, Mrs. Hammond. When you have reached my years of--indiscretion,
I suppose you would say--you will realise that."

"No one would ever accuse you of not making the best of things," she
declared. "Do make yourself comfortable in that easy-chair. The Princess
was talking to me a great deal about you last night. She complains that
you do not go to her parties as often as you used to. What about ringing
for a waiter? It is almost cocktail time, isn't it?"

"You are very kind," the Commodore replied, "but I think not, if you
will excuse me just at present. The fact of it is, Mrs. Hammond," he
went on, "I am charmed with this opportunity of making your
acquaintance, but I ought to tell you at once that my visit to you is
not altogether on a pleasant subject."

"Hoity-toity!" the lady exclaimed. "What's all this about? What
unpleasant subject can there be for us to discuss?"

"At any rate," her caller remarked, with a smile, "if the subject does
turn out to be unpleasant--perhaps it won't--I may be completely
mistaken--we will at least contrive to discuss it amiably."

"My dear man," the lady begged, "don't talk in riddles any longer for
the sake of being polite. I know who you are. I am very pleased to see
you here and to add you to my list of acquaintances. I shall listen to
everything you have to say with the utmost respect, because every one
has such a high opinion of you. Let's get it over--the unpleasant part
at any rate."

"The unpleasant part," Commodore Jasen admitted, "is connected with a
young man who goes by the name of Michael, I believe. His name is really
Michael Brennan. Mikkie he used to be called."

"Michael, my dancer at the Caf de Paris!" Mrs. Hammond exclaimed. "The
young man who was dancing with me last night and whom I saw at your
table?"

"Precisely."

"What on earth can you have to say disagreeable about him?" she asked,
with slightly heightened colour.

"About him personally--nothing," the Commodore replied. "I have known
him for some years. I knew him in New York. He has always struck me as
being a very well-behaved and well-brought-up young man. I have taken,
in fact, quite an interest in him. I daresay though, even you--although
a woman very seldom hears of these things--have an idea that he has been
rather foolish lately?"

"I don't know what you are talking about," the lady rejoined. "I thought
he seemed very queer last night, but he has Irish blood in him and those
beastly birds had got on his nerves. Irish people are always
superstitious, aren't they?"

"He was certainly upset," the Commodore agreed, "but I do not think it
was altogether the birds. I understand that you and he have been quite
friends, Mrs. Hammond. Why not? A very well-brought-up and well-behaved
young man. Still, I should have thought that, seeing so much of him, you
would have gathered that he has been in trouble lately."

"I know that he has been hard up," Mrs. Hammond admitted. "He told me
so. He has had to sell his little car. I don't mind telling you,
Commodore--you are a man of the world and a good sort--I gave him a
cheque for fifty thousand francs to buy a new one.

"It is a good deal to give a dancer, I know," Mrs. Hammond went on. "But
I believe in paying for the things you get in life. A woman in my
position cannot go traipsing about into restaurants and dancing places
by herself. I just send for Michael and go where I please and when I
please. I have been thinking often that I really don't pay him enough. I
ought to give him a salary. If I took a stuck-up young woman companion,
who would not be a bit of use to me, I would probably have to give her
four or five hundred a year, and that young man--who is jolly useful--I
pay generously, of course, but it is practically only his dancing fees
he gets from me."

"I am glad to hear you talk like this, Mrs. Hammond," her visitor said.
"It shows me that I have to do with a sensible woman. I am afraid that
what I have to say, however, will be a shock to you."

"Well, get on with it and don't talk so much, then," she said irritably.
"Oh, I know you are trying to be very polite and nice and all that, but
you are getting me worked up. If Michael's done anything wrong, I want
to hear what it is."

"I am very much afraid," the Commodore told her, "that Michael has
forged your name to a cheque for a much larger amount than fifty
thousand francs."

"God bless my soul!" she gasped. "You don't mean that?"

"I do indeed," was the grave assent.

Mrs. Hammond, who had been lounging skittishly on the end of the sofa
with a cigarette in her mouth, collapsed on to a chair and threw the
cigarette into an ash tray. Some of her high colour had faded.

"Forged my name!" she repeated. "Michael! I cannot believe it. How do
you come to be concerned in this, Commodore?"

"In this way," the latter explained. "As I told you, I knew the lad in
New York, and I see him here every now and then. I am not like a great
many people with a prejudice against professional dancers. I have always
looked upon him as a decent young chap and I have had him over to swim
and lunch and play a few sets of tennis more than once."

"Very nice of you too," the lady murmured. "I think I know a gentleman
when I see one and I am not ashamed to take Michael anywhere."

"Quite right of you," Jasen approved warmly. "Well, when he was over
about a week ago, he showed me this cheque of yours for the car and
asked me if I would kindly cash it."

"Why didn't he take it to the bank himself?" Mrs. Hammond demanded.

"Simply because," the other explained, "he is a little sensitive about
money affairs, as you know. He banks at the same bank and they know that
he is a professional dancer. I do not think he wanted to pay in a cheque
from a client for that amount. He asked me if I would put it through my
Paris bank--which I was very pleased to do."

"And you gave him the money?"

"And I gave him the money. But naturally that is not the transaction I
have come to see you about."

"There is another cheque, you say? Forged? Tell me about that."

"You must prepare yourself for something of a shock," the Commodore went
on. "As I told you, I thought the young man looked very depressed last
night. This morning, before ten o'clock, he was over at my place in a
taxicab. He looked upon me as the oldest friend he had and he made--up
to a certain point--a clean breast of it. He has been gambling, Mrs.
Hammond. Evenings when you have not been dancing or wanted him, he has
gone into Nice and stayed there, playing all night. He has been playing
up at Beausoleil here too, and the fact of the matter is that he has
lost a great deal of money. He has borrowed from every friend he has.
The amount he owes me has nothing to do with the matter and I will not
refer to it. I would have let it stand over as long as he had wished,
but he is also in the hands of a lawyer money-lender in Nice, who
threatens to sue him and send him to prison unless he pays. The long and
short of it is that he brought me a cheque this morning--a cheque of
yours--for five hundred thousand francs, and asked me to change it in
the same way as I had done the other."

"A cheque of mine for five hundred thousand francs," the lady repeated
in a stunned tone.

Commodore Jasen opened his pocketbook and produced it. She read it over,
word by word, and gazed at her own signature as though stupefied.

"Amazing," she muttered. "I should have sworn that was my writing. I
should never have believed that any one--much less Michael--could have
imitated it like that."

She unlocked a drawer in a cupboard and drew out a cheque book. She
looked back through the counterfoils.

"Yes," she admitted. "There was a loose cheque. I remember I took it
with me to Juan-les-Pins the other night, in case I was short, and as I
did not use it, I put it back in the cheque book. Go on, please."

"I went to my bank at Juan," the Commodore continued, "and I drew out
five hundred thousand francs and gave them to Michael, who was with me.
I took him back to lunch at the Chteau and I cross-questioned him
closely about your cheque. I cannot say I have ever had a single
suspicion about the boy, but I did not feel like paying that cheque in,
and as I happened to have plenty of money there, I didn't. As you see, I
have kept it, although I have given him the money for it. After lunch,
we went together to Nice, and I personally saw him pay off the amounts
he owed. Then I brought him on to Monte Carlo, although I did not intend
to come in again so soon, and on the way he broke down. I tried to cheer
him up, but it could not be done. 'You ought to be thankful,' I told
him, 'that you have such a wonderful friend, and that now you owe nobody
in the world anything except her.' I can assure you, Mrs. Hammond,
although I am a hard man, I was sorry for him that moment. He burst into
tears.

"'Yes,' he confessed, 'Mrs. Hammond has been the best friend I ever
had.'

"He even went so far as to tell me that he cared for you more than any
one else in the world; and then he took my breath away. He confessed
that he had forged your name to the cheque."

"That cheque which you have in your pocketbook?" she faltered.

The Commodore nodded.

"I know what you are thinking," he sighed. "I have parted with my five
hundred thousand francs and all I have is this forged cheque."

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"There is only one thing I can do," he replied. "I am a wealthy man in a
way, but I cannot possibly afford to lose five hundred thousand francs.
I shall present the cheque in the hope that he has taken sudden leave of
his senses and that you really did give it to him. If the bank refuses
to pay it, Michael must take the consequences. I am fond of the lad, but
I am not a philanthropist to that extent."

Mrs. Hammond sat quite quiet for several minutes and, something of a
physiognomist as he certainly was, Commodore Jasen could only speculate
as to the nature of her thoughts. Presently she looked across at him.
Her manner had lost something of its decision and her jaw was less
prominent.

"You were telling me what he said to you about me," she began
hesitatingly.

"To me that makes the situation even sadder," the Commodore replied,
with a very convincing sigh. "The lad is evidently terribly attached to
you. He seems to have had no other affairs whatever. Every penny of his
money has gone in gambling. There is no doubt whatever about his
affection for you."

Mrs. Hammond rose abruptly to her feet.

"I see that you have already changed for dinner, Commodore," she said.
"Will you do me a kindness? Wait here for me half an hour whilst my maid
puts my things on, and escort me to the Caf de Paris, where I promised
to meet Michael. I will make up my mind what I shall do before I come
down and we can see him together."

"I will wait for you with pleasure," the Commodore promised.

       *       *       *       *       *

At ten minutes to eight Mrs. Hammond reappeared. She was dressed in
black and was followed by a maid, carrying the usual collection of
trifles. She dismissed the latter at once and opened her bag.

"Commodore Jasen," she said, "you wish to save Michael, I suppose?"

"I certainly do, so far as I am concerned," he assured her.

"Very well, then," she decided. "I have made up my mind to forgive him.
If you will hand me over that cheque," she went on, bringing out a great
bundle of notes from her case, "I will give you three hundred thousand
francs in bank notes, and a draft on New York payable to me, and which I
have endorsed, for five thousand dollars. I shall still owe you a little
money, and as soon as you can work out how much it is, I will give you a
cheque. Is that satisfactory to you?"

"Absolutely," the Commodore assented.

He drew the cheque from his pocketbook and passed it over to his
companion. She occupied herself tearing it into small pieces, whilst the
Commodore filled his pockets with the notes.

"Come along," she invited. "We will walk over to the Caf de Paris. The
sooner we let Michael know that everything is well the better."

The Commodore was a graceful and willing cavalier. As they crossed the
square he touched her arm.

"Mrs. Hammond," he said, "I offer you my congratulations. You have done
a very fine thing in a very fine way. You have certainly made the young
man your slave for ever."

She was a woman in whose face there was seldom any marked expression,
but at that moment it seemed to him that her lips twitched and there was
certainly a very soft light in her eyes. She quickened her pace. Just as
they began to pass through the little network of tables, however, their
way was blocked. People were all rising to their feet and gazing to the
far end of the caf, exactly as they had peered the night before. The
black crows of Corsica were once more in evidence. They passed over the
heads of Mrs. Hammond and Commodore Jasen, and once more they found a
scattered resting place amongst the tables of the outdoor restaurant and
on the dancing floor. Mrs. Hammond shivered as she heard the fluttering
of their wings.

"How I hate those birds!" she exclaimed. "There was one actually sat for
a moment on our table last night and looked at us. I felt as though what
that man was saying was the truth--that they had come from Suicide
Corner and were all the black spirits of the place. What was that?"

"Some one dropped something, I think," the Commodore replied
nonchalantly.

His companion quickened her pace. They reached the enclosure but there
was no welcoming _matre d'htel_ to greet them. Every one seemed to be
crowding round the table where Michael usually sat. By chance the crowd
parted for a moment. They saw the young man sprawling forward, his hands
hanging helplessly by his side, the revolver still smoking two feet away
upon the pavement. On the table in front of him, undisturbed even by the
report, one of the oldest and wickedest-looking of the birds had
alighted, and was perched, with his beak half open, and the light of
all the evil in the world shining out of his angry eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

"He was afraid," the lady sobbed, as Commodore Jasen escorted her back
to the hotel half an hour later, "that I should never forgive him! If
only he had waited!"

"At any rate," her companion reminded her piously, as he felt his
pockets, "it would be, I am sure, some consolation to him to know that
his debts are all paid."




IX

LORD DRATTEN'S LAND DEAL


Lord Dratten began to lose just a little of his robust assurance as his
Rolls Royce glided up the ascent from Villefranche, and the white villas
of Beaulieu became visible on the hillside. It was an enterprise indeed,
this to which he was committed! Never had he known his companion more
charming, never had she seemed to him more utterly desirable. That she
was beautiful he, in common with the rest of the crowd at the Cap
d'Antibes, had always known. That she had charm, the whole world
recognised, a charm which even he, a coarse-fibred person, had felt from
the first moment he had ever spoken to her. But this morning it seemed
to him that he had discovered a new attraction. The courtesy which she
owed him as her prospective host had seemed to him tinged with a
delightful savour of coquetry, a personal and wholly inspiring thing.
There had been times previously when her aloofness had damped his
ardour. This morning his confidence was in a measure restablished. Yet,
as they slackened speed, and the car swung through the tall, iron gates
leading down to the Rserve, he was conscious once more of a most
unaccustomed quiver of nervousness. He had just sensibility enough to
realise that there was something about his companion which placed her
quite apart from the women whom he had known and trifled with. He had to
recall an old club aphorism to restore his confidence. "All women are
alike _au fond_"! Of course they were!

Caroline gave a little cry of delight as she caught sight of the low,
picturesque restaurant, with its setting of brilliantly hued flowers,
quaint statuary, well-trimmed trees and shrubs. Through the windows were
opaque visions of the sea, flawlessly blue.

"How delightful!" she exclaimed, "I never saw such an enchanting place
in my life. How good of you to bring me!"

Lord Dratten smiled,--a smile which somehow gave the impression that he
believed himself to be the only man in the world who would have thought
of taking her to the Rserve at Beaulieu, and the only man in the world
generous enough to invite a guest there. He was a fine fellow in his
way. Six foot three, with bulky shoulders, large body, head with a mass
of brown hair, features not perhaps so good. There had been some of the
young set at Antibes who had called him "a bumptious old ass," and there
were certainly one or two who, in spite of his financial success, had
found him stupid. Caroline herself, notwithstanding her good manners,
had been wondering half the time during their drive why she had accepted
his invitation. The car came to a standstill in the gardens, but some
distance from the restaurant. A smiling commissionaire in brilliant
scarlet livery threw open the door of the vehicle with a flourish, and
Lord Dratten swung his large and somewhat clumsy body out on to the
avenue. Caroline accepted his hand and alighted gracefully.

"Why do we stop here?" she asked, as soon as her escort had finished
giving directions to the chauffeur.

Lord Dratten was not at his best. Caroline's question was so direct, her
innocence so transparent. He coughed and glanced at the commissionaire,
who stepped on one side, as though inviting them to enter.

"The fact of it is, my dear Miss Caroline," he confided, in a pompous
whisper, "the best class of people--er--don't frequent the
restaurant.... I wondered whether you would not be more
comfortable--er--over here. Very pleasant rooms--all to ourselves, you
know! Good service! None of that beastly music!"

Caroline had already removed her foot from the threshold of the hotel.
She was genuinely taken by surprise, but she understood. Yet, neither by
word nor by any change in her expression did she betray the fact.

"Oh, I don't think so," she exclaimed. "It seems so dull in here and I
think the restaurant looks most attractive. I love the music too. Do you
mind?"

She was beckoning him to follow her, already a yard or two away on the
avenue, and apparently fascinated by the pool in which a small shoal of
melancholy fish were endeavouring to forget their predestined end. Lord
Dratten _did_ mind very much indeed, for he had made a special journey
over to be sure of getting his favourite suite, had whispered a word
into the ear of his accustomed waiter, and had, in short, made all his
arrangements with the care and completeness of the accomplished
_boulevardier_. Apart from his own natural disappointment, he was
conscious of the covertly smiling faces of the commissionaire and the
_matre d'htel_. His vanity was hurt. Caroline, however, was already
on her cheerful way to the restaurant and affected not to notice his
discomfiture.

"I am dying for a cocktail," she confided, "and the bar looks too
divine. How kind of you to bring me to such a charming place!"

Lord Dratten made his last effort, when the restaurant _matre d'htel_
had temporarily deserted them at the bar, to enquire whether a
sufficient number of the succulent _mesdemoiselles_ of Beaulieu could be
collected for the luncheon of two hungry people. He leaned towards his
companion in his best Lothario-like manner.

"Stuffy-looking lot of people down here, don't you think?" he whispered
disparagingly.

"Oh, I think everything here is delightful," Caroline declared with
enthusiasm. "And what a view!"

"Better from the little room I had chosen," he insinuated, with a wave
of the hand backwards. "All to ourselves, too! Just the same luncheon.
Shall I tell them to serve it there?"

Caroline remained extraordinarily dense.

"Sweet of you to think of it," she rejoined, "but I adore this room, and
the _chef d'orchestre_ and I are great friends. I know I shall enjoy the
music."

The _matre d'htel_ brought good news concerning the _mesdemoiselles_
of Beaulieu and Caroline followed him to the table. Lord Dratten tried
to console himself with the obvious fact that he was entertaining the
best-looking and most chic young woman in the place, and was
consequently the most envied man there. The fact soothed his vanity, but
nothing could have made him other than a dull companion. He talked in a
loud voice, mostly about himself and his doings, and complained without
cause when he dared. By the time the large bottle of brandy arrived, he
had almost recovered his good humour and was prepared to play his trump
card.

"By the by," he said, leaning confidentially across the table, "you
won't mind having just a look at Monte Carlo after luncheon? I want to
see my bankers there and we might have an hour at the tables afterwards.
I keep a dinner suit at the Paris--sometimes stay the night there. Bit
of a change. What do you say?"

Caroline sighed and shook her head.

"I am so sorry," she told him. "I have a dressmaker coming over from
Cannes at four o'clock and an early cocktail party. Besides, I was at
Monte yesterday and I am going again to-morrow. One can have too much of
a good thing, can't one?... May I have another cup of this delicious
coffee?"

This time Lord Dratten failed to hide his annoyance. He was distinctly
angry. The girl had no right--it seemed almost as though she were
trifling with him!

"Sorry," he persisted gruffly, "I am afraid I shall have to call there
for an hour or so. I thought you understood that."

Her amiability was unruffled.

"But what does it matter?" she protested. "_Matre d'htel_," she went
on, addressing one of the head waiters who had scarcely left her elbow,
"can you get me a taxicab to go to Antibes?"

"_Mais parfaitement, Madame_," the man replied promptly. "There is one
who waits now. I go to secure him."

He bustled off.

Lord Dratten, who understood no French, leaned across the table with
frowning face.

"What's all that about?" he demanded.

"Everything is arranged," she assured him. "My taxicab is waiting now.
So I think, dear Lord Dratten, if you will excuse me," she went on,
closing her vanity case and rising to her feet, "I had better take
advantage of its being here. Such a delicious luncheon, and _so_ many
thanks. Now I insist upon it that you do not get up. You must finish
your brandy comfortably. We shall meet again this evening. Au revoir."

She was gone with a little wave of the hand, profusely escorted by the
_patron_, the _chef d'orchestre_ and two or three _matres d'htel_. She
was already through the door at the further end of the room and stepping
into the taxicab before Lord Dratten had fully recovered himself. He
expressed his feelings in two different ways: he helped himself to a
double liqueur brandy from the big bottle, held his glass critically in
front of him, and he uttered one single but heartfelt expletive--

"Damn!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Lord Dratten's waistcoat was joyously uplifted, for the food and wine at
Caroline's return luncheon party about a week later had both been of the
best. There was a flush upon his cheeks, a moistness in his eyes. More
than ever he regretted that his little escapade with her had not been a
complete success. Few women whom he knew could have ordered a luncheon
or wines like that. She was so excellent a hostess that she ventured to
call to order two of her guests.

"Commodore," she remonstrated, "you and Mr. Crowhurst are talking
business far too much. Lord Dratten and I, and Zo too," she added, with
a glance at the girl who was seated on his other side, "are feeling
neglected."

The Commodore broke off abruptly in his conversation. A piece of paper,
upon which he had been making figures, he thrust into his pocket.

"My profound apologies, dear hostess," he said. "I am afraid that for a
minute or two I got led away upon my hobby."

Caroline nodded her forgiveness.

"Commodore Jasen," she explained to her guest of honour, "although he is
a very wealthy man, is like all Americans. Money-making is his sport. He
cannot keep away from it."

"Do you follow the market out here?" Lord Dratten asked.

The Commodore looked shocked.

"I never gamble," he said.

"The Commodore," Mr. Crowhurst intervened, "has been one of my best
clients, and one of my most successful ones in buying land out here."

"As to being successful," Jasen observed, "I am afraid no one could
claim any credit for that during the last two years. Whatever odd bit of
land you bought you made money on."

"Seems like a fairy tale," Crowhurst observed, toying with his pencil.
"I have one client--sha'n't mention his name--who settled down here
with a pension. Quite hard up he was. Couldn't even play his little game
of _chemin de fer_, and owned a motor bicycle and sidecar. Some one left
him fifty thousand francs. That's every penny he had when he came into
my office about eighteen months ago. He was a shrewd fellow, I must say
that for him, but apart from that, he acted nearly the whole of the time
upon our advice. To-day he is worth at least five millions, he has built
himself a beautiful villa and he drives a Lancia car. If he had held on
to his properties, he would have been worth to-day at least twice as
much, in three years' time three times as much."

Lord Dratten was sitting up in his chair. There was a curious light in
his eyes, which were no longer moist. He was listening intently to every
word.

"A wonderful boom down here, must have been," he observed, with clumsily
affected indifference. "All over now, I suppose, though?"

The land agent smiled in superior fashion.

"That's how I like to hear people talk," he admitted. "Keeps the prices
from soaring too much. As this is not a gathering of business people, I
don't mind telling you what my real opinion is. There's a hundred per
cent. rise to be looked for in practically every plot of land from
Frjus to Nice, and in this immediate vicinity I would venture to put it
at two hundred per cent. The figures of the last two years' transactions
would pretty near send any one crazy, and to-day, if any one comes to us
for land, or what we call a Number One class villa, we have scarcely a
thing to show to them."

"After all, I am not sure that it is to be wondered at," the Commodore
reflected. "Where in the world could you find a climate like this, so
many beautiful casinos, golf clubs, bathing spots--everything for a
man's enjoyment--so much civilisation and such an environment? It was
just a question of finding out what the summer was really like here, one
or two of the hotels keeping open, and the man at the back of Juan
Casino having the foresight to see what was coming. My dear Caroline,"
he added, rising to his feet, "I am afraid I must excuse myself. My
architect is coming to see me this afternoon. I happen to know that the
builder made half a million francs out of the villas on the last plot of
land I sold him, so I am thinking of turning greedy and building myself,
this time. After all, it is rather amusing, and one must have some
occupation."

"What about the Everett property?" Crowhurst asked.

The Commodore hesitated.

"I am more than half inclined to go for it," he admitted. "I know the
money's there. It isn't that at all. I don't like options, though. I'd
be more willing to give the four millions straight out if your client
really wants to deal."

"You will get it for that in the long run," the other argued.

The Commodore stood irresolute.

"Courage," Caroline called out.

"What are four millions?" Zo exclaimed, with a shrug of the shoulders.
"Think what you have made!"

For a moment it seemed as though the Commodore had made up his mind.
Then apparently he changed it.

"I will let you know in a day or two, Crowhurst," he promised. "After
all, I must not be greedy. I made several enemies, I am afraid, by
buying the Michael's property. A wonderful luncheon, Miss Loyd, and--as
usual--a perfect hostess!"

He took his leave. The others resumed their seats for a few moments.
Lord Dratten's eyes, although they seemed to have become smaller, were
certainly brighter. He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets.

"Reminds me of old days," he remarked. "I have been in a few land booms
in my time. Done some wonderful deals, too. Bought a bit of land in the
city once. When I bid, I never reckoned out what it would come to--it
was some thirty pounds a foot. Bought it unexpectedly one day after
lunch and had to find four hundred thousand pounds the next day."

"Wonderful!" Caroline murmured.

"It is very romantic," Zo declared. "I like to hear how rich, clever
men make money."

Lord Dratten helped himself to another cigar. He leaned back in his
chair.

"Well," he said, "that is one thing that women have not taken away from
us yet. They may write books and paint pictures and go into the House of
Commons, but they have not yet learned how to put a big business deal
through. They have not even found their way on to the Stock Exchange,"
he added, with a chuckle.... "So there has been a lot of money made
round here, Mr. Crowhurst?"

"A great deal," the latter agreed, "and there will be a great deal more.
Five years ago my father and I and an office boy ran our place. To-day
we have nine clerks, our own salaried architect, three typists, and two
men with motor cars continually going up and down the coast, and even
now we are short-handed."

"What are your business hours--your own, I mean?" Lord Dratten asked,
with well-assumed carelessness. "Supposing I wanted to come in about
renting a villa or something, when should I be likely to find you?"

"The only certainty," was the dubious reply, "would be between nine and
ten in the morning, and five and six at night. I am run off my legs most
of the rest of the time. As regards a villa, though, we have an
excellent staff who might be able to fix you up."

"I prefer to deal with principals," Lord Dratten boomed. "As a rule,
when I buy or sell or hire, there is big business in it."

"Ring up and make an appointment," Mr. Crowhurst suggested, as he bent
over his hostess' hand. "A wonderful luncheon, Miss Loyd. I have enjoyed
it thoroughly. I should not hurry away either--I am just as well out of
the office these days--but my wife wants the boat. Come across you
again, I hope, Lord Dratten."

The latter nodded.

"I might decide to have a flutter in land," he said thoughtfully. "If so
I will look you up."

Jonathan Crowhurst knew his man, and he was not surprised when, at a
quarter to ten the following morning, Lord Dratten was shown into his
office.

"What can I do for your lordship?" he asked briskly. "I can see we are
in for a busy day. Hear those telephones ringing? One would think half
the inhabitants of the United States had made up their minds to leave
their own markets alone for a bit and do a little solid speculation!"

Lord Dratten accepted a cigarette.

"Well," he said, "I am a wealthy man, you know, Mr. Crowhurst. No one
likes to have too much idle money. I have some just now. Have you
anything to suggest?"

Mr. Crowhurst did not appear to be enthusiastic.

"In a week or two's time I may have," he said. "I believe the Biot lands
will be on the market then, and we can commence doing business. Just at
present I should scarcely know what to put you on to. Of course there
are heaps of small propositions."

"No good to me," Lord Dratten interrupted. "I am a big man--in every
sense of the word," he laughed, patting his stomach, "and I like big
business. What about this estate the Commodore was speaking of
yesterday?"

Crowhurst shook his head.

"I think he means having that. He would have come to terms before now,
but he likes to do business his own way, and I must admit that the old
lady who owns the estate is one of the crankiest women I ever knew."

"It's still open, is it, then?"

"Yes, it is still open," the agent admitted, without enthusiasm. "The
only thing is, even if I felt at liberty to discuss it with you, you
would probably feel the same as I do about it."

"Let us hear the crab," Lord Dratten begged. "You don't commit yourself
to anything by talking about it."

"That's right," Crowhurst agreed. "Well, it's a matter of that large
property between Eden Roc and the Chteau. It is really the finest piece
of land on the coast and might be worth anything. The owner wants to
sell one day, and then she changes her mind. All that she will do is to
grant an option, provided a price can be agreed on."

"I don't quite follow you," Lord Dratten observed.

"You would not," the other said. "It's an old-fashioned way of doing
business. She has still got valuers on the place, you see, and she
professes that she has not made up her mind exactly what she wants for
it. Well, she will let you have an option for--say a hundred thousand
francs. That means we can't sell the estate to any one else if you are
willing to give the price that she ultimately decides upon. Her last
price was two million, seven hundred thousand francs. Very well. We had
an American from Nice who paid the hundred thousand francs and hoped to
get the property. The valuers, however, persuaded Madame that the price
was too low, and the man got the hundred thousand francs back a few days
ago. The only advantage to him was, of course, that she could not sell
it to any one else while he held the option."

"It seems a one-sided sort of arrangement," Lord Dratten reflected.

"I don't know that it is, really," Crowhurst rejoined. "She knows
perfectly well there are half a dozen people who would buy it to-morrow.
It has not been in her hands for more than a month or two and there
never has been a correct valuation. It will be decided upon the first of
the month. Very well--supposing to-day she were willing to sell you what
she calls an option at a hundred and fifty thousand francs, on the first
of next month she will tell you what she wants for the property. If you
are willing to buy it at that or any lower price that might be agreed
upon, your hundred and fifty thousand francs comes off the purchase
price. If you say it is too dear, we give you back the money, and all
that you lose is your first chance of purchase."

"Supposing you take me over and show me the property," Lord Dratten
suggested.

The agent smiled uncomfortably.

"I am afraid I could scarcely do that," he objected. "You see, we have
done some very large deals with the Commodore, and, although he hates
this option business, I honestly believe he would pay to-morrow what the
final valuation would come out at. I don't mind telling you, Lord
Dratten, that one of the valuers is a friend of mine, and they are not
putting it too high. They want the land sold and cleared out of the way.
I don't believe the final valuation will be a penny more than three
million, seven hundred thousand francs, and it is worth--mind you, I
know what I am talking about, Lord Dratten--it is worth five millions of
any one's money!"

"Well, the Commodore's had his whack," Lord Dratten persisted. "It would
do no harm to take me out and show it to me. I don't want a valuer--not
at this stage of the proceedings, anyway. I will take your word--your
written word, of course--for the number of hectares involved. You show
me the land and, if I think it is good enough, I will give you my cheque
for the amount of the option straight away."

Mr. Crowhurst seemed terribly perplexed.

"I'd sooner do anything than offend the Commodore," he remarked.

"Well, you can think about that after we have been over," Lord Dratten
pointed out. "There's no harm in my seeing the property, anyway. I will
pay you a fee for showing it to me."

Jonathan Crowhurst closed his Derby desk with a little slam.

"All right," he said. "Come on. I feel like a little fresh air this
morning, anyway."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lord Dratten was at any rate a hard worker. He walked from one end to
the other of the great stone wall which divided the estate he had come
to visit from the sea--a very solidly built affair without gate or
outlet of any sort. He tramped over the kitchen gardens, which were in a
moderate state of cultivation, he walked through the pine woods, he
studied the somewhat depressed-looking flower gardens. He paid
particular attention to the small farm and the accommodation for the
outside servants. The house itself he went over, but dismissed with a
grunt.

"Worth what it will fetch to a housebreaker," was his only comment.

It was twelve o'clock before he had finished his investigations, by
which time Mr. Crowhurst was hoarse with answering questions and
thoroughly exhausted. They stood on the broad terrace and looked out
across the Mediterranean.

"A fine sea view," Lord Dratten observed.

The agent flinched a little but said nothing. He was busy wiping the
perspiration from his forehead.

"We have gone quite as far as we need for the day," Lord Dratten
decided. "Step into my car, Mr. Crowhurst. We will drive to the hotel."

"I should like," Mr. Crowhurst admitted fervently, "to go somewhere
where we can get a drink!"

"I sympathise with you entirety," the other replied. "My motto, though,
always is 'Business First.' We will split a gin and ginger in my room."

They drove off to the hotel, where Lord Dratten led the way to his
sitting room. He gave an order to the waiter and produced pen, ink and
paper.

"Now, Mr. Crowhurst," he said, "I have inspected this property. I gather
that you are only prepared to talk business on the very strange terms
insisted upon by your client?"

"I ought not to talk business at all," the agent replied uneasily. "I
ought, at any rate, to ring up the Commodore first."

"No necessity to do anything of the sort," Lord Dratten rejoined
sharply. "One man's money is as good as another's, I suppose, and the
Commodore had his chance. You cannot name a price for the property, so I
will consider it on your own terms. What amount do you suggest for what
you call the option? It is not, of course, an ordinary option at all."

"One hundred and fifty thousand francs," Mr. Crowhurst said unwillingly.

"Very well," Lord Dratten proceeded, "I take it that this is the
understanding. I give you here a cheque for a hundred and fifty thousand
francs. If the price which your principals put forward to me within the
next week or ten days is acceptable to me, and I buy the property, that
hundred and fifty thousand francs is deducted from the purchase price.
If they ask me such a sum that I do not buy, the matter is at an end and
the hundred and fifty thousand francs is returned to me. Have I got it
rightly?"

"Quite correct," the agent admitted.

Lord Dratten wrote out the cheque and handed it across the table. He
then wrote a few lines upon a sheet of paper and passed it over to the
agent.

"The rest is up to you, Mr. Crowhurst," he said. "Sign the few lines I
have written--you see there exactly your own proposition--give me a
receipt for the cheque, finish that bilious-looking drink, and we will
go down to Eden Roc and have a swim."

Mr. Crowhurst did everything that he was bidden without enthusiasm.

"I feel you have rather had your own way with me, Lord Dratten," he
remarked, as he pocketed the cheque. "You are--if you don't mind my
saying so--a forceful man. I didn't mean to do this. How I shall face
the Commodore, I don't know."

Lord Dratten stretched himself out. He was certainly a fine figure of a
man.

"We have our own way of doing business in the City of London," he told
the agent.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the same little company who met together for lunch at the Eden
Roc some ten days later. This time it was Lord Dratten who was the host.
He sat at the head of the table--magnificent in white flannels and white
silk shirt open at the throat. He was a dominant, if not altogether a
pleasing figure. On one side of him sat Caroline, on the other Zo.
Both--to all appearance--sufficiently impressed. Commodore Jasen and Mr.
Crowhurst completed the party.

"Any more land speculations, Commodore?" his host asked him, during the
progress of the meal.

The Commodore shook his head.

"I have been gardening instead," he confided. "Unselfish work I call it
that--toiling in another man's vineyard. The only deal I was rather
anxious to bring to a head was the Everett estate, and my friend
Crowhurst here seems to have kept off the subject for the last week.
What about it, Crowhurst? Have you been able to persuade that old woman
out of her ridiculous option scheme?"

The agent drank half a glass of wine and summoned up his courage.

"There was no need to do that, Commodore. Plenty of other people willing
to humour her."

"Do you mean that you have been doing business with some one else for
that estate?" the Commodore asked with uplifted eyebrows.

"My dear fellow, I couldn't help it," Crowhurst replied. "The old lady
refused to consider any other method of doing business. She wanted to
keep the thing going as long as she could, before she named a definite
price. You hung fire at the option, so I had no alternative but to look
elsewhere. Some one else would have chipped in if I had not."

"Perhaps it would be as well," Lord Dratten said, in his resonant bass
voice from the head of the table, "to take the Commodore into our
confidence. I have purchased an option, Commodore, upon the Everett
Estates for a hundred and fifty thousand francs."

"The devil you have!" the Commodore exclaimed. "I beg your pardon, Miss
Caroline," he went on. "You must forgive me. I was a little startled. I
had no idea that the property was being offered elsewhere."

Mr. Crowhurst plucked up a little courage.

"I regret the necessity, Commodore," he said, "but it had to be done.
Madame Everett would deal on that basis. You would not make up your
mind. Every agent on the Riviera is yapping round her villa all day. I
had to go ahead."

Commodore Jasen sipped his wine and for a moment or two looked very
depressed. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know anything about business, Commodore," Caroline said gently,
"but I do not think you ought to blame Mr. Crowhurst or Lord Dratten.
You had the first chance. Mr. Crowhurst ran the risk of losing the
business altogether if he did not act and we know what sort of a man
Lord Dratten is."

The Commodore sighed.

"I suppose you are right," he admitted. "Lord Dratten, you have--as we
say in America--put one over on me! I wish you luck!"

Lord Dratten's smile was maddening. Caroline deliberately looked away.

"I have made a fortune by my business habits and methods," Lord Dratten
declared. "Every one in the city of London knows that when I am
interested, there is something doing. No one can say that I have ever
been guilty of anything like sharp practice, or that I have taken
advantage of a friend, but on the other hand I do not think you would
find any one able to boast that he got the better of me in a business
deal."

"You have certainly nipped in on me this time," the Commodore confessed.
"When is the old lady going to make up her mind, Crowhurst?"

"She made up her mind yesterday evening," the latter replied. "She fixed
the price at three millions eight hundred thousand, and at that price
Lord Dratten pronounced--'I have bought.'"

Caroline looked at him breathlessly.

"You have bought the Everett Estates?" she exclaimed.

"I have bought them for three millions, eight hundred thousand francs,"
Lord Dratten replied pompously, "less one hundred and fifty thousand
francs which I have already paid as deposit, and less a certain amount
of commission," he added, with a smile, "to our friend Mr. Crowhurst
here. Just a holiday deal, I look upon it as. Nothing tremendous. Just
something to keep one's hand in. As soon as the papers are made out, I
shall pay over my cheque and decide what to do with the property. I may
build a villa for myself. I have often thought of it. For a million or a
million and a half, one could build a very tidy little place on the
present site. I should have the advantage, Commodore Jasen," he
reflected, "of having you for a neighbour."

Commodore Jasen filled his glass and pushed the bottle across the table.

"To show that there is no ill feeling, I will drink to the health of our
new neighbour."

They all drank to him. Lord Dratten was gracious and impressive.

"If I decide to come and live here," he said, "I am sure I shall be very
happy with such nice people around me. On the other hand," he added,
"money talks. I have an idea that if I put the property into the market,
I might get even as much as five millions. I was looking around early
this morning--went out in a motor boat--there is not a property along
the coast with such a sea frontage."

There was a silence which any one else might have thought curious.
Caroline was watching a speed boat passing the rafts. Zo was bending
close over the fig which she was peeling. The Commodore was gazing up
at the ceiling. Crowhurst was fidgeting uneasily in his chair. Lord
Dratten refilled his glass. He drank the Commodore's health.

"No ill feeling, I hope, Commodore?" he said. "This option business is
not so bad after all, eh?"

"You seem to have got what you deserved out of it, anyway," was the
Commodore's gloomy reply.

       *       *       *       *       *

Caroline came in from her second bathe the following morning with
shining eyes and glowing cheeks. She ascended the stone steps gracefully
as usual, but with many a pause to exchange greetings with friends and
acquaintances. At the entrance to the bar she closed her light green
parasol and wrapped her peignoir of the same colour a little more
closely around her. She was the cynosure of a good many admiring
glances, but there was one man, who had been walking up and down the
place, who had other things in his eyes. He stopped her on the way to
the dressing rooms.

"Can I have a word with you, Miss Loyd?" he asked a little brusquely.

She looked at him with upraised eyebrows.

"Certainly you can presently, Lord Dratten," she said. "You don't expect
me to sit down like this, do you? I shall only be about ten minutes or a
quarter of an hour."

She passed on into the dressing rooms. Lord Dratten drunk a cocktail and
looked as though it had violently disagreed with him. He sat down at a
remote table near a window and awaited her coming with such patience as
he could. It was fully twenty minutes before she emerged from the
dressing rooms, immaculate in wide white silk pyjamas, her eyes and
cheeks still aglow. She paused to speak to some friends at the counter,
then she made her way to the table before which Lord Dratten was
standing.

"You want to give me a cocktail?" she asked sweetly. "Thank you so much.
I would rather have tomato juice--may I?"

He muttered an order. She looked at him in some surprise.

"Is it my fancy, or are you a little disturbed this morning?" she asked.

"I am disturbed," he replied. "I do not understand these tricks."

"Tell me all about it," she begged. "Only don't look so furious."

"It is about this Everett Estates deal, of course," he said, "and I
don't see why not one of you had anything to say about it at luncheon
time. I drove down with my architect this morning and young Crowhurst's
head man. I went straight to the sea wall to decide what entrances I
would have on to the beach and where to build my harbourage."

"Oh, but you can't have any entrances on to the beach," Caroline
exclaimed. "You can't build a harbourage either. Whatever made you think
you could?"

He was silent for a moment. There were a good many words which he
contrived to choke back.

"If a man buys an estate in an ordinary way," he said, "he expects that
the sea frontage attached to it belongs also to him. It seems that
there is some underhand work about here. We did our business quickly, I
admit, and all verification of the plans was naturally to come when I
paid the deposit for the purchase money. But only buying an option, I
just looked around and took things as they stood or seemed to stand.
This morning I have seen the original plans. The sea wall seems to bound
the property. Some one else," he went on, "who owns a wretched little
villa on the right-hand side of that dirty little road by the side of my
property, owns the frontage all the way down to the other end of my
wall."

"Didn't you know that?" Caroline asked.

Again Lord Dratten opened his lips and again he struggled with a stream
of profanity.

"Do you suppose," he asked, "that I should have been such a damn' fool
as to buy even an option on the property, if I had? What I must confess
did surprise me was to hear that you, Miss Loyd, own that miserable
little villa and its ridiculous rights of frontage."

Caroline nodded brightly.

"I bought it two months ago," she admitted. "I knew the villa was not
worth much, but it seemed to me that the frontage was worth quite a
great deal of money. Every one has been doing so well in property here,
I thought this was my chance."

"What price do you want for the sea frontage?" Lord Dratten asked
brusquely.

"My dear man," she remonstrated, "are these London ways of doing
business? Can't you ask me a little more civilly?"

"I find it rather hard to be civil with you," he confessed.

Caroline's thoughts travelled suddenly backwards and she laughed in her
chair. Lord Dratten met her eyes and clenched his fists. He knew very
well what she was laughing at.

"Of course I shall go to law about this," he said, "but in the meantime
perhaps you would quote your own price."

She sipped the tomato juice which the waiter had just brought. She was
looking down the coast with reminiscent eyes.

"Forgive me, Lord Dratten," she said. "I was just thinking how wonderful
the restaurant at Beaulieu must be looking to-day. What was it you asked
me?"

"I asked you to name your price for the sea-frontage rights to the
Everett Estates," he said grimly.

She shook her head, finished her tomato juice and rose.

"My dear man," she said, "they are not for sale."




X

THE COMMODORE'S LAST CIGAR


Mr. Jonathan Crowhurst looked regretfully at his watch and rose to his
feet a fine figure of a man, though inclined to be thin in the flank and
shoulders. He had dined exceedingly well. His collar was a little
crumpled, his tie disarranged, and there was cigar ash over his
trousers.

"Awfully good of you, Commodore," he declared, holding out his hand
towards his host, "to make my visit so pleasant. I am to take it that
yours is a firm offer?"

"You have it in writing," Jasen reminded him. "I will give you seven and
a half millions for the house, grounds and the whole of the land. As
regards the furniture, I won't take a stick of it. That must all be
removed within six months of the transaction being concluded."

"Don't know that I blame you," Crowhurst said, smiling. "It's a mouldy
lot."

"I cannot imagine why Lord Wyndham, when he is as near as Marseilles,
does not come down here and collect his own treasures," the Commodore
observed. "We might have had a talk and settled the matter up, then and
there."

"His lordship is peculiar," the agent replied. "The Chteau being
occupied, he would certainly stay nowhere else in the vicinity. Besides,
when he is once on a P. & O. he likes to stay there. I shall see him
to-morrow morning about eight, hand over the things I have come to
fetch, and we shall have plenty of time to talk your offer over then. I
shall be back at night and I promise that I shall endeavour to bring you
a definite reply."

Commodore Jasen knocked the ash from his cigar, rose to his feet, and
touched the bell.

"I should like to know one way or another," he said. "I have promised to
go over the Mougins Chteau, if nothing comes of my offer to you. Sure
you won't have another glass of the brandy?"

"Not now, thanks. I will do my business down in the cellars first. Then,
if I may, I will look in and say good-bye to you."

"Are you motoring to Marseilles?" the Commodore asked.

Jonathan Crowhurst shook his head.

"No, I am motoring as far as Cagnes," he said. "I shall get on the
eleven-five train there. I have arranged to leave the car outside and
the garage man is going to fetch it."

Commodore Jasen turned to the butler who had opened the door.

"Broadman," he explained, "Mr. Crowhurst is going down to the cellars.
Turn on the lights and if he needs any assistance see that he has it."

"Very good, sir," the man replied.

"I sha'n't want anything, thanks," Crowhurst said, as he followed the
man out. "I will look in and say good night to you when I have packed up
my little lot."

He swaggered out, and there was a slight smile upon Commodore Jasen's
face, as he turned round in his chair and filled his glass with choice
old Burgundy. He sniffed the wine appreciatively and sipped it. He knew
very well that, unless miracles happened, he had said his last good
night to Mr. Jonathan Crowhurst.

       *       *       *       *       *

Like many of the almost perfect enterprises in which Commodore Jasen and
his friends had, from time to time in their adventurous career, been
engaged, the present one was not an affair to be hurried through. Time
was of no particular consideration, but absolute thoroughness was a
necessity. It was three quarters of an hour before the door of the
dining room opened and the house agent made apparent reappearance. The
cigar ash was still upon his tweed trousers, his cravat was still
ill-arranged, and his face flushed with the generous wine he had been
drinking. He was wearing a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, however,
which slightly altered his appearance. The Commodore's eyes flashed over
him critically.

"Not bad," he commented. "You'll do. Especially in this light. Don't
forget the swagger. Any trouble?"

"None at all," was the prompt reply. "You were right. It was the rest of
the emeralds he was after. I've got them and the Rajah's diamonds."

"You put him out easily?"

"Not the flicker of an eyelid, not a sound," was the confident reply.
"He is on his way down the tunnel now to the boat."

Commodore Jasen glanced at his watch.

"You had better be getting off," he observed. "Don't forget--call in at
the Majestic for a whisky. Crowhurst always drinks it with water. Tell
the barman that you are catching the train to Marseilles--Jim his name
is--nod to any one who looks as though he may know you. Take any message
you can collect for his lordship."

"That's all right, Commodore. Don't you worry about me. I spent a
fortnight watching that fellow Crowhurst. I know his runs, I know his
slang, I know his mannerisms. It will be two months before you hear from
me--if that oil tank ever does get to the Persian Gulf."

"We will possess our souls in patience," the Commodore observed. "Our
last words have already been spoken. You had better be getting into the
car. Drive slowly through Juan and don't forget to wave your hand to any
one who looks as though they knew you."

"Like to have a look at the emeralds?"

"I will see them in Columbo," the Commodore replied.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Chef de la Sret of Marseilles, having welcomed warmly his dear
friend Pierre Lavalon, the celebrated detective from Paris, permitted
himself to indulge in an outburst of irritation.

"It is unfair, my friend," he declared. "Marseilles is no worse than
other great cities, except that we happen to be a seaport and therefore
we have perhaps more criminals coming and going. But if there's a
tragedy, an accident, a disappearance, you all come to Marseilles! You
swoop down upon me. Half the crimes that are committed in France are
supposed to be committed in my neighbourhood. It sounds well to say 'the
missing man was last seen in Marseilles,' or 'a body fished up in the
harbour of Marseilles is awaiting identification.'"

Monsieur Lavalon smiled sympathetically as he rolled and lit a
cigarette.

"My friend," he admitted, "you have some reason. Yet, when you consider
this matter, you must agree that there are grounds for my visit here.
This unfortunate Jonathan Crowhurst, the English house and land agent of
Cagnes--Well, let us take the evidence. He dined with a Commodore Jasen
at the Chteau d'Antibes, where he had business for his master, Lord
Wyndham, the owner of the place. He departs, bearing valuables, driving
his own car. Very well. He is seen driving through Juan, he speaks to
acquaintances in the Majestic Bar at Cagnes, he is seen to board the
train for Marseilles, and his car is left outside the station, according
to a previous arrangement, and garaged by a friend. He arrives at the
Htel Splendide in Marseilles, where he is known. He engages a room and
leaves orders that he is to be called an hour before the _Narkunda_ from
London docks sails. He follows the very bad habit which so many
travellers have of dining at a restaurant in Marseilles, instead of in
the hotel, and there I think he makes a great mistake. He has a large
quantity of valuable jewellery with him to deliver to Lord Wyndham on
the _Narkunda_ the following morning, yet he chooses to go out to spend
the evening in Marseilles, and apparently takes the jewellery with him.
He is seen to enter a taxicab at eight o'clock, and he asks to be driven
to the Cintra Bar. He pays the man off there and disappears. I cannot
believe, my friend, that your very astute detectives have not been able
to collect some further information of the man who entered the Cintra
Bar, at ten minutes past eight last Friday week, and has not been heard
of since."

"Nevertheless, it is so," the Chef de la Sret announced. "My best men
are on the case. We are inundated with false information but nothing
leads us to the truth. If I were to presume to offer my advice, Monsieur
Lavalon, to a man of your genius and distinction, it would sound
strangely, but I shall offer it none the less."

"I shall listen with respect," Monsieur Lavalon promised.

"You can do no good here," the Chef de la Sret said bluntly. "My local
men have hold of every possible clue. If Crowhurst let himself be
decoyed into any of the worst of our night haunts here, then the jewels
are probably lost and Crowhurst no longer lives, but a thing like that
is not so easy. If I were you, Monsieur Lavalon, seeing the impasse we
have arrived at here, I would start at the other end."

"The other end?" Lavalon repeated.

The Chef de la Sret twirled his moustache fiercely.

"I would start at the place and the hour," he declared, "when Jonathan
Crowhurst left his offices in the Rue du Cannot at Cagnes, with his
dressing case and despatch box, in his two-seater Chrysler, and drove
out to the Chteau d'Antibes to dine with Lord Wyndham's tenant, and
execute his mission."

"And what good would that do?" Lavalon demanded.

The Chef de la Sret shrugged his shoulders.

"One might have as much chance of discovering the truth," he said, "as
by playing about in the noisome places of Marseilles."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I am very honoured," Commodore Jasen said, as he stepped off his motor
launch, one afternoon about a fortnight after the disappearance of
Jonathan Crowhurst, and found Caroline waiting at his private dock. "You
are in garden-party attire, I see, or I would invite you to cruise for
an hour with me."

She shook her head.

"I should love it," she assured him, "but my clothes are too thin.
Besides, your engines are too noisy for conversation and I want to talk
to you."

"I am flattered," he murmured.

"I am not sure that you will be," she confided.

They climbed the broad but winding path that led to the Chteau. On the
lawn before the terrace Caroline pointed to two very comfortable wicker
chairs.

"We will sit here," she proposed. "I don't like the interior of your
house very much or your servants. Your butler--Jake Arnott, all remind
me of the things I want to forget. By-the-by, where is Jake Arnott?"

"He has gone to England to visit some relatives," the Commodore replied.

"You have seen the papers this morning?" she asked.

"I have glanced at them," he admitted. "I see that one young lady
admits to having spent the evening with our missing friend."

Caroline nodded gravely.

"That may be true," she remarked. "I hope it is."

"Why should it not be?"

Caroline made no reply.

"I came here to tell you something," she continued. "I am going to
marry."

"You are going to marry me?"

"Is there any girl in the world," she asked scornfully, "who would marry
the man who deliberately murdered her brother?"

The Commodore tapped a cigarette upon the arm of his wicker chair.

"The vocabulary of you women needs amending," he complained. "That word
'murder,' for instance. How absurd! Ned knew very well that if he came
into my territory, the only question was which got the other first. I
got him and that was the end of it. He knew the rules of the game and he
chose to take his risk. I did not want to quarrel with him. I would
rather we had all worked together. I hope you don't altogether forget,
Caroline, that night at the Ambassadeurs when I asked you to be my wife?
You have never given me an answer."

"You have it now, then," she pronounced. "The answer is NO."

Commodore Jasen smoked on in silence for several moments. He might have
received the blow of his life, but he gave no sign of it.

"It is your intention, I gather," he observed, "to cross the line."

"I have never really left my side of it," she told him. "I am going to
marry amongst my own people."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

"When I left New York," he said, "I was worth a million dollars. I have
made that into a million pounds sterling. Taking every one of my
adventures, probing it, analysing it, regarding it from every point of
view, it has been artistically perfect. Not one of them contains a flaw.
I shared a bottle of wine with two of Headquarters' most famous
detectives when I embarked for Monaco. They knew me as Commodore Jasen
and nobody else has ever known me for any one else. Even little Brant
here, though he has been tortured with suspicions, has never been able
to connect me in the slightest degree with any one of my exploits. I am
safe now, as I shall be safe for the rest of my life. I am wealthy and I
have made an offer to purchase this Chteau. You know all my weaknesses
as well as my better qualities. You know very well that women have never
attracted me in the least. You are the only woman I have ever asked to
marry me. I ask you now once again. You can live where you like and how
you like, and the book of the past is closed. I am content with my rle
as Commodore Jasen. It may seem to the world that I grow a little
younger, for I have tried to look like fifty-eight when I am really only
forty-eight. That will be the only change in me."

She shook her head.

"You are a very remarkable man," she admitted, "but to me you mean
nothing. There was a period--a few years of my life--when I thought such
adventures as you and Ned used to talk of were marvellous. That time has
passed. I loathe the very thought of it."

"You are going to marry the Marquis de St. Vran?" he asked.

"I am," she assented. "And I warn you that many things will happen if
you attempt to interfere."

"A threat?" he murmured.

"Only a threat in case of a threat," she rejoined.

He remained silent for so long that she rose at last to her feet. He
followed suit.

"You walked over here?" he asked.

"I walked," she told him. "It is a very short distance across the
rocks."

"You will permit me to order a car or to send you back by the boat?" he
suggested.

She shook her head.

"Armand is fishing on the rocks," she explained. "Perfectly ridiculous,
but it amuses him. You have nothing to say to me?"

"It will keep," he answered.

Even then she hesitated, and before she spoke her last words, she looked
cautiously around as though she feared listeners.

"This afternoon," she told him, "Lavalon, the French detective, arrived
here from Marseilles. Brant and the local Commissaire met him. They are
all together in the hotel now."

"A whimsical fellow, Lavalon," he murmured, as he held open the gate.

The Marquis abandoned his fishing enterprise with alacrity on Caroline's
arrival. He was inclined to be peevish.

"There has been a small man," he complained--"American--not a pleasant
man. He interfered with my fishing to ask questions about Commodore
Jasen. He even mentioned your name. I showed him over which rocks to
escape. He annoyed me."

"What sort of questions did he ask?"

"Whether you had known Commodore Jasen in New York. Where you had met
him."

"And what did you tell him?"

"I tell him to mind his own affairs. I show him the way over the rocks.
I should have helped him, but he hurried."

Caroline laughed.

"A newspaper man, I expect," she observed. "They are rather wearisome
people."

Nevertheless, she wondered.

       *       *       *       *       *

Caroline and Armand de St. Vran dined alone that night, in Paradise--or
what was so near to it that it really did not matter. Their table at the
Eden Roc overhung the deep diving pool, in the waters of which the
searchlight, arranged by amateur fishermen, disclosed white-bellied
fish, loup and mostelle, darting eagerly towards the unusual
illumination. In the distance was the black, whalelike shape of the
island. The near hills were dotted with the lights of the villas, ugly
enough by day, the possible habitation of fairies by night. Palm Beach
had its little frieze of golden pin pricks and its mystic summons. Only
twenty minutes across the bay, and such a welcome at the long, squat
Casino for the visitor with the thin cheque book or the fat
_portemonnaie_. And behind, brooding over the world of vanities and
night-lived passions, the curses and joys of the gaming rooms, the
slumbers of the just in those hillside villas, and the fierce unrest of
the gamblers in the crowded gaming rooms, the marvellous Esterels, blue
and grey against a violet background, the zigzag outline cutting into
the eternal sweetness beyond....

"This is a foretaste of heaven," the Marquis murmured.

"Except that I hope the music will be different," Caroline sighed. "I
think I shall prefer the harp and cymbal to the saxophone."

"And I," her companion declared, "would welcome any form of angel at the
next table rather than the little--how is it, you call him?--bounder who
was asking impertinent questions of me this afternoon."

"Is he here?" Caroline enquired quickly.

"Next--to your left. Alone naturally. He disports a too small black tie
and a shirt which leaps from his waistcoat. He does not please me at
all, that little man. He has the face of a hungry ferret."

Caroline turned her head. Her premonition had been correct. It was
Brant, the American detective.

"You know who he is?"

She nodded.

"I will tell you presently."

Then a uniformed page boy paused at the table. He addressed Caroline.

"One desires Mademoiselle on the telephone," he announced.

"Down here?"

"The connection is made, Mademoiselle."

The Marquis rose gallantly to his feet. Caroline crossed the floor,
followed by many greetings from friends and acquaintances, and many
admiring glances. She took up the receiver. The attendant closed the
door.

"This is Caroline Loyd speaking," she said.

The answer came at once. Commodore Jasen's voice, but barely
recognisable.

"Jasen speaking. Are you alone?"

"Yes."

"You have heard the news?"

"No."

"Body of Jonathan Crowhurst--the missing man, you know--has been found."

"At Marseilles?"

"Washed up at Golfe Juan. Miracles, it seems, happen in the
Mediterranean. That fellow Brant thinks he has it over me now. The place
is surrounded. Brant is on the terrace at the present moment, waiting
for the bell to be answered."

"What can I do?" Caroline asked.

"Bring a car by the Antibes shore road to the Garoupe by-way. You can
reach the dock from there. I can come down the underground passage and
will meet you. If your friend, the Marquis, is there, bring him along. I
shall need help."

"You are really leaving?"

"If I can get to the boat."

"Listen," she insisted. "You tell me that Brant is there on the
terrace."

"He has just rung the bell himself. He has been about here all the
evening."

"That seems queer," Caroline remarked calmly.

"Why?"

"Because he is at the present moment dining at the next table to mine. I
left him there, when I came to answer the telephone. He seems to have
been dividing his attention for the last hour between his dinner, my
companion and myself."

There was a blank silence. Then Jasen's voice--not by any means a
pleasant sound to listen to.

"What am I to say to such an unforeseen piece of bad luck? Perhaps it is
better to say nothing. As I cannot induce you then to come to me, I must
come to you."

"But what do you want?" she demanded. "All that can usefully be said is
said."

"Then, believe me, there is a postscript," the Commodore mocked,--"a
very important postscript. _ bientt!_"

There was once more blankness. The Commodore had rung off. Caroline
crossed the floor of the restaurant with unseeing eyes. Fear had come to
her. Not only for herself. The Marquis leaned across the table towards
her.

"Nothing disconcerting, I hope?" he asked anxiously. "You have lost your
colour, dear Caroline."

Her eyes met his, those rather deep-set grey-blue eyes which looked out
upon life now so steadily, and which seemed always to carry for her the
one entrancing message.

"Yes," she admitted, "my message was very disconcerting."

"May I share your disquietude, or relieve it?" he begged.

"You shall share it, at any rate," she promised. "I told you that there
was one person whom I dreaded telling of my intention to marry you."

"Something you did say like that," he acknowledged. "But you told me
other things which were all I wanted to know, and indeed, dearest," he
went on, his voice sinking almost to a whisper, "if you had not been
able to tell me those other things, I should still have been content,
because whatever was in your life before is as nothing."

Every one flirted openly at Eden Roc and there was nothing at all
unusual in the touch of their fingers. Only a good many people envied
her, for Armand de St. Vran in these days was a gallant figure of a
man.

"There is a seal upon my lips," she confided, "as to certain things, but
that seal means nothing dishonourable. I can tell you, however, the name
of the man I fear, because I am convinced that, unless we are sensible
and leave this country, you will soon know. It is Commodore Jasen."

He looked at her in amazement.

"Why, that nice benevolent-looking gentleman over at the Chteau!" he
exclaimed. "I thought he was your friend. I was looking forward to his
congratulations."

"Commodore Jasen," she said, "is no man's friend. The personal things
between us are slight. He once asked me to marry him. I perhaps lingered
for a long time before I gave him my reply. When I gave it to him it was
'no.' Since then I have learned what manner of man he is. What I half
admired once as courage I have learned to be ferocity. What I took for
firmness I know now to be cruelty. You speak of him as benevolent.
Armand, he is a devil. Just now he did his best to trick me--you too--up
to the Chteau. I found out that he was not telling the truth. He only
laughed and he is on his way here now."

"It may be as well," Armand de St. Vran remarked. "He shall be given to
understand, if he has annoyed or threatened you, that you have a
protector."

"He is outside that sort of thing," she sighed. "Armand, if you and I
value very highly our lives, we should be wise indeed if we left the
table now--if you brought your car out of the garage, and if we rode on
till morning--never mind where--north, east, south or west--anywhere out
of reach of that man!"

"My dear, you are hysterical!" he declared. "One man is only one man. I
am not a stripling."

"Oh, you are brave enough, I know that," she admitted. "But you don't
understand fighting as Jasen understands it. A snap of the fingers, the
flash of a torch and a bullet. He does not wait for the other man. He is
not a fighter. He is a killer."

"That sounds very unpleasant," the Marquis said gravely. "In that case,
one must make sure that it is he who is killed."

"How can you do that?" she asked feverishly. "You are not like these
devils of men. You have no ugly pocket with a loaded weapon ready to
your fingers."

He smiled.

"I have not," he acknowledged. "But this is scarcely the scene for
exploits such as you describe. I do not think that our mild-looking
little friend will prance in here, dealing out murder and sudden death.
You are too pale, dear Caroline. All through dinner time I have been
dying to dance with you in that amazing rose-coloured frock. I think
that our time has come. It is a waltz."

They danced under the tented roof, in a darkness relieved only by a few
shaded lamps and the long pathway of moonlight upon the water--not so
clearly defined now, for in the background dark clouds were rolling up
and a storm was brewing. And sometimes Caroline forgot and was curiously
happy, and sometimes there was a little stab at her heart, and fear came
into her eyes as she watched the stairway. Yet when the man whom she
feared arrived, he arrived unnoticed. She heard his voice talking to a
group of friends and, but for her partner's protecting arm, would have
fallen.

"Shall we sit down now?" she begged.

He smiled at her indulgently, but acquiesced, leading her back towards
the table. His smile now might seem to have been justified, for nothing
in the atmosphere of any part of the room even dimly suggested the
imminence of tragedy. The Commodore had been detained by a group of gay
diners a few yards away. Never had his smile been more benevolent, his
laughter more infectious. The fingers of one lady were pressed
audaciously to his lips, whilst he whispered what appeared to be a very
amusing story in the ears of another. He waved his hand to Caroline as
she passed, but made no immediate move. The Marquis smiled as he drew
out her chair.

"You see for yourself, my dear," he began--

Then he broke off in his speech. The Commodore had a habit of moving
noiselessly, of turning up in unexpected places. A moment ago his soft
laugh, his lowered voice were clearly audible as they had passed within
a few feet of him. They looked up and there he was, leaning almost
between them at the end of their table, a speechless--a strangely dumb
person. As a last desperate resource, Caroline turned her head towards
where the little man had been seated. The table was deserted, the napkin
thrown down. Brant had finished his meal and departed.

"Won't you sit down, sir?" the Marquis invited courteously.

"I fear to intrude," was the quiet reply. "Besides, in affairs such as
the one I am about to deal with, I am more at my ease standing up."

The Marquis raised his eyebrows. Certainly this man talked strangely.
There were no signs either of the geniality and good humour which had
been flowing from his lips during his progress through the room. His
face was hard and set. The long upper lip seemed to have escaped the
concealment of the moustache and to be drawn tightly down.

"We should like to ask you to have a glass of wine with us," de St.
Vran ventured politely.

"To drink wine out of the same bottle," Commodore Jasen observed, "is
supposed to indicate a certain amount of good-feeling and
good-fellowship. Between you and me nothing of that sort can possibly
exist. In fact, within the next few minutes--or seconds perhaps--I
propose to kill you."

The Marquis set down the glass which he had been in the act of raising
to his lips. After all, then, Caroline was right. This man was either
mad or a desperate criminal. The position was equally unpleasant in
either case.

"This seems to me to be rather a poor joke," he said coldly. "Can't you
see that you are alarming Miss Loyd?"

"Miss Loyd is alarmed," the Commodore confided, "because she knows that
I always keep my word. You are wondering, perhaps, how I am going to do
it. You see my right hand?"

The Marquis nodded. He saw the fingers moving, but he showed no signs of
trepidation. Nevertheless, he seemed to be taking into account his
chances. His eyes measured the distance between the Commodore and
himself. Jasen smiled.

"No hope," he observed. "Perhaps if I had sat down--you have long arms,
I see--but very wisely I preferred to remain where I am. You see that my
right hand is holding something in my jacket pocket? It is holding the
butt of a small weapon with which I have never missed in my life. I
prefer to shoot in this way. I have your heart covered to within an
inch. A move on your part would be unfortunate."

"Don't move," Caroline whispered frantically. "He tells the truth. He
never misses."

"But why does he want to kill me?" the Marquis demanded. "If I am to
fight a duel for you, I am agreeable, but murder! Surely murder does not
enter into any possible scheme of things."

"An ugly word," Jasen objected. "Killing is the logical resource of any
man, when something stands in his way which can only be removed by
extinction. Killing is the weapon which has freed countries from slavery
all over the world."

"Do sit down and let me order another bottle of wine, if you are going
to be didactic," the Marquis said coolly. "We can do our killing later."

Commodore Jasen turned his hard, set eyes upon the speaker.

"Your attitude pleases me," he said. "It is a pity we did not meet
earlier in life. You would have been a welcome addition to my little
band of helpers."

"Can you say anything to bring this man to his senses?" de St. Vran
asked across the table.

Caroline shook her head. During the last few minutes shadows had formed
under her eyes. She was ghastly pale. Her fingers trembled. She was
almost beginning to long for even the worst to happen. Anything was
better than this cold duel of words between the man who, she knew, meant
murder, and his victim. Suddenly she felt a rush of courage. The
Marquis's complete nonchalance, the kindly light in his enquiring eyes,
his questioning smile inspired her. The thing couldn't happen. That
silly little bulge in the Commodore's pocket might mean anything, but
not that.

"For the first time in his life," she said, "Commodore Jasen is talking
like a fool. He loves adventure, and he has been utterly spoilt in life
because he has been always successful, and he has generally had his own
way. This time he cannot have his own way. If he does what he threatens,
he knows perfectly well what will happen to him. He is boxed in here
like a rat in a corner."

"Common sense, my dear," the Commodore admitted. "That's why I tried to
get you to come down on to the dock to me. Things would have been much
easier then. This may possibly turn out to be more dramatic. The end is
the same, anyhow. You are both going to die."

"But what about yourself afterwards?" Caroline asked, looking
appealingly at him, struggling frantically to keep the new light of hope
from her eyes, to command and restrain this new set of emotions. "What
about you? You won't be able to escape."

The Commodore sighed.

"I might," he reflected. "On the other hand, you are probably right. I
may have to--disappear. You would not believe, however," he went on,
"how calmly I can face the worst, when I think that you two will precede
my passage into eternity by a few seconds."

"Listen," she begged frantically.

"I have always been willing to listen to you," Commodore Jasen said
reproachfully, "but you are trying me high. Some one might come up and
join in our conversation."

"I will keep them away," she whispered. "There is something I must say:
something to which you must listen. It might--make a difference."

Then she spoke appalling words.

"Supposing I gave up Armand?"

The Commodore affected to consider the situation. The bulge in his
jacket pocket, however, did not diminish. He was enjoying these last few
minutes on earth. He must be careful, though, he told himself, not to
delay too long.

"I am afraid," he began regretfully--

Events during the next few seconds seemed to happen without sequence or
continuity. The little man whose behaviour, in the shadows of the room,
Caroline had been watching with mingled hope and amazement, until she
dared look no longer, suddenly lifted a pile of plates over his head and
sent them crashing to the floor, barely a yard behind their table.
Commodore Jasen's nerves were fairly impervious to this sort of thing,
but his left hand for a single second lost its tensity. He pulled the
trigger of his revolver, all right, but his arm was already jerked
upwards from behind by one of the tall figures who had been waiting for
Brant's signal. Two bullets travelled harmlessly out into the darkness,
just as Caroline practically threw herself upon him, and her companion's
fist crashed into his face. Commodore Jasen, fighting like a wild-cat,
went crashing into the next table--one of his arms, which he had managed
to free, striking flail-like and terrible blows at every one within
reach. Once he very nearly reached the Marquis, who stood waiting for
him. Then there was a sudden rush from the other end of the room, a
medley of confused, angry and questioning cries.

"What the mischief are they doing to the old Commodore?" Major Darnell,
the leader of the young set, called out. "Come on, lads."

In less than a minute the whole place was in worse confusion than ever.
The women ran screaming to a distant corner. Brant was a prisoner in the
arms of half-a-dozen assailants. Three or four men were on their knees,
bending over a tangled heap of struggling humanity in the middle of the
place. Brant at last made himself heard.

"Listen, you fools!" he cried. "Your Commodore Jasen is a murderer, an
international criminal--the murderer of Jonathan Crowhurst not ten days
ago. We are detectives. Don't let him go."

There was a slackening in the struggle, but a good deal of disbelief.

"Don't talk rot," Darnell shouted. "Old Jasen! He's one of the best
sorts going. Where are you, sir?"

He might well ask. One or two of them thought they saw a man crouching
low, running with flying footsteps down into the bar, but no one was
sure. By degrees every one had stumbled to their feet. One of the
gendarmes had a broken leg. Brant himself was bleeding freely from a cut
on the cheek. The young men, most of them Englishmen, who had led the
assault, were beginning to look somewhat foolish. Brant dashed towards
the stairway.

"Come on, any of you who can stand up," he cried.

They went streaming down into the bar lounge. At the far end, the
doorkeeper lay groaning on the ground.

"He's mad," he faltered. "It was the Commodore, running like a madman.
He shot me through the shoulder when I tried to stop him."

"Where is he now?" some one cried out.

"Gone down to the beach," the man gasped, and rolled over.

From the small harbourage given over to fishing craft, there came the
beating of a powerful engine. Commodore Jasen's famous motor boat shot
out from the shadows. Caroline, clinging desperately to her lover's arm,
leaned over the side of the balustrade jutting out from the restaurant.
She pointed to the bay.

"He's got away from them all," she cried. "The man is a devil."

The motor boat, with roaring engines, rushed into full sight. People,
recovering a little from their alarm, leaned from every point of vantage
to watch it. Already motor cars were on the way to the Chteau, but it
appeared that Commodore Jasen had no idea of returning home. He shot
past the point of the Mosque without wavering. Just then the moon
temporarily escaped from the banks of dark clouds which had risen during
the last half hour and threw a faint illumination upon the scene. They
could see the man at the wheel leaning forwards, the bow well out of the
water, a huge wake of churned-up sea in the rear. Jasen was momentarily
invisible, apparently stooping down. Presently they saw him rise and
throw himself backwards into one of the most comfortable easy-chairs.
The boat was heading straight for a bank of black clouds.

"He's going right into the storm," some one muttered.

The sheet lightning showed both men in their places, the mechanic
bending lower still, to avoid the sting of the flying spray. Commodore
Jasen, however, had the air of one who was at peace with the world. He
was lying back amongst the cushions, a cigar in his mouth, embarked on
that brief voyage towards eternity, looking very much the same as when
he had escorted a party of ladies to picnic upon the islands.


THE END




[End of Crooks in the Sunshine, by E. Phillips Oppenheim]
