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Roy Glashan's Library
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Ainslee's, June 1911, with "The House of Peril"
After its appearance in Ainslee's Marie Belloc Lowndes wrote a revised and expanded version of "The House of Peril," publishing it under the title "The Chink in the Armour" in 1912. An e-book edition of this version of this novel is available at RGL.
The story was filmed in 1922 and released under the original magazine title—"The House of Peril." This title was retained for a new edition of the novel published by The Readers Library, London, in 1935. —Roy Glashan, 12 April 2024.
"The House of Peril," The Readers Library, London, 1935
MRS. BLACKETT was resting in her sunny, barely furnished bedroom; that is, she was sitting back in a basket chair close to the open window, but though her dark-blue eyes were closed she was not asleep. She had just enjoyed a reasonable share of the copious, well-cooked meal which she had learned to think of as déjeuner, for this young American woman was spending a very happy summer in France—at Enghien.
It was a very hot August afternoon, but Mabel Blackett was in perfect physical condition, and in her cool, white silk-muslin gown and large black tulle hat, she felt only comfortably warm. It was an ideal day for a drive in the Forest of Montmerency—through the shady glades which used to be the principal attraction of Enghien, and Mrs. Blackett was waiting for the arrival of the friend whom she had asked to drive with her.
That friend was a Danish lady, a certain Madame Olsen. The two, both young, both widowed, both possessed of ample means, had met in the Paris hotel where Mabel Blackett had been spending a lonely week, and the two had soon become friends. It was owing to Anna Olsen that Mabel Blackett had stayed on in France instead of going on to Switzerland.
For the first time the pretty young American woman was seeing life, and she found such seeing very pleasant. How fortunate it was that one of the two mistresses of the old-fashioned "Young Ladies' School" at which she had been educated was a Frenchwoman! Thanks to that fact she spoke the language fairly well, and she had been able to make quite a number of friends in delightful Enghien.
Mrs. Blackett had been born, bred, married, and widowed in a small New England country town called Dallington. And not in her wildest dreams, during the placid days when she had been the principal heiress of that quiet—she now called it to herself, that sleepy—little place had she conceived of so amusing, so exhilarating an existence as that which she was now leading! This was perhaps owing in a measure to the fact that there is, if one may so express it, a spice of naughtiness in life as led at Enghien. At home, neither as girl nor during her brief married life as the wife of a man much older than herself, had Mabel Blackett ever been allowed to be naughty.
A highly esteemed guidebook to Paris says of Enghien:
Situated on the border of the beautiful Forest of Montmorency, this pretty little town is still famed for its healing springs, and during the summer months of the year is much frequented by Parisians.
But this, as every one who knows Enghien is very well aware, is only half, nay a quarter or an eighth, of the truth. Enghien is the spendthrift, the gambler—the austere would call her the chartered libertine—of the group of pretty country towns which encircle Paris; for Enghien is in the proud possession of a gambling concession which has gradually turned what was once the quietest of inland watering places into a miniature Monte Carlo.
The vast majority of American visitors to Paris remain quite unaware that there is, within half an hour of the French capital, such a spot as gay Enghien; the minority, those tourists who do make their way to the alluring little place, generally live to regret that they have done so.
But in this, as in so very many other things, Mabel Blackett was the fortunate exception which proves the rule. Enghien had developed in her a most unexpected taste—that of play. She thoroughly enjoyed risking her money—enjoyed both the humble joys provided by that gambling plaything, petits chevaux, and perhaps even more the more dangerous delights of baccarat. But for long generations her forbears had been business people and amassing-money people, and Mrs. Blackett, after the first few days, had never been tempted to play for more than she knew she could afford to lose.
It was a sad pity that in this matter the friend for whom she was now waiting—that is, Anna Olsen—was not as wise and sensible as herself. Mabel Blackett had an affectionate, happy nature, and as she waited for Madame Olsen her thoughts dwelt on her, not unkindly, only a little critically, as our thoughts are apt to dwell on those of our friends of whose conduct we do not particularly approve, especially if it be conduct that we ourselves would never be tempted to emulate.
Anna Olsen lived for play, and play alone. Dark, excitable, ardent, in spite of her Scandinavian blood, she was an absolute contrast to the fair American. That perhaps was one reason why they had become such friends, but sometimes Madame Olsen quite frightened Mabel Blackett by the reckless way in which she risked large sums of money at the gambling tables.
It was because of a considerable loss she had made very early in her stay at Enghien that Madame Olsen had decided to stay on at a cheap pension kept by some people called Malfait, after her American friend had moved to the Pension Noir, a better situated and altogether superior boarding house.
Mrs. Blackett, who was very fastidious in all her habits and ways, had fancied that the Pension Malfait was not quite as well kept—not quite as clean, to speak frankly—as it might be. And then Madame Wachner, one of the pleasant acquaintances Mabel Blackett and Anna Olsen had made at Enghien, had hinted that the kitchen of the Pension Malfait was not quite so scrupulously clean as it might be. That clinched the matter. The day she had received that kindly hint, Mabel had moved herself and her dainty belongings to the Pension Noir. She would have borne much for her friend, Anna Olsen, but not living on in a dirty boarding house.
There came a knock at the door, and the commissionaire, by whom Mabel had sent the note inviting Madame Olsen to drive with her, walked in. He handed her back her own letter to her friend, and together with it a sheet of common note paper, across which were scrawled in pencil the words: "Madame Olsen est partie."
"Partie?" The word puzzled her; surely it should have been "sortie."
"Then the lady was out?" she said to the man,
"The lady has left the Pension Malfait," he said briefly. "She has gone away."
"There must be some mistake!" she exclaimed in French. "Madame Olsen would never have left Enghien without telling me."
The man went on: "But I have brought back a carriage as madame directed me to do."
She paid him, and then went downstairs hurriedly. As the carriage was there, she might as well drive to Anna Olsen's pension, and find out the meaning of the curt message, and why her own letter to Anna had been opened.
As she drove along the pretty, well-kept roads lined by gay beflowered villas, Mrs. Blackett began wondering uneasily as to the meaning of the message she had just received. It was out of the question that Anna Olsen should have left without telling her the place where they had both settled to spend the end of the summer. The two women had become really attached the one to the other, and Mabel hoped that in time her Danish friend would come back to America with her for part of the winter.
Madame Olsen had been remarkably lucky during these last few days—in fact, she had made quite a large sum of money at the tables. Emboldened by this good fortune, she had actually insisted, to the astonishment both of Mabel and also of the little group of acquaintances the two women had made in their respective pensions, on taking a bank at baccarat. Anna's luck had not forsaken her even then, and she had risen from the table, her dark face aglow with joy, and richer by some twenty thousand francs than when she had sat down.
That was two nights ago, and Madame Olsen had wisely determined to "cut" play for a few days. Mabel was aware that yesterday evening her friend was to have had supper with that very lady, Madame Wachner, who had been the indirect cause of Mabel Blackett's hurried departure from the Pension Malfait.
Monsieur and Madame Wachner were a kindly, middle-aged couple with whom the two young widows had quickly struck up a kind of intimacy, and whom they now met almost daily. Both husband and wife spoke English well, and had apparently traveled a great deal in English-speaking countries. They were not French, as Mabel Blackett had at first supposed them to be, and, when she had once asked Madame Wachner if she was German, the older woman had shaken her head and answered: "We are citizens of the world. Cosmopolites!" Anna Olsen believed them to be Servians.
The Wachners did not live in a pension; instead they had taken for the summer a pretty little house, called the Châlet des Muguets, situated on the outskirts of the town. As Anna Olsen had supped with them last night, the Wachners would of course know what had happened—nay, more, it was probable that Madame Wachner had a message from Anna explaining her abrupt departure, if indeed it was true that she had really left Enghien.
While these thoughts were passing disconnectedly through her mind, Mabel Blackett was relieved to see Madame Wachner walking slowly along the road toward her.
"Madame Wachner! Madame Wachner!" she cried, and the driver of the little victoria in which she was sitting drew up. "Have you heard that Anna Olsen has disappeared? I am going to the Pension Malfait to find out about it. Do come, too. Did she say anything about going away when she had supper with you yesterday?"
With voluble thanks, Madame Wachner climbed up into the carriage, and sat down with a sigh of satisfaction. She was a stout, still vigorous-looking woman, with a shrewd, determined face lit by dark, bright eyes which allowed, very little to escape them. She looked just now hot, red, and a little breathless. She waited a few moments before answering Mrs. Blackett's question; then:
"Madame Olsen did not come to supper yesterday," she observed placidly. "We expected her, and stayed in on purpose, but she never came." Again she waited; then turned and smiled at Mabel Blackett. "Yes, it is quite true that she 'as gone away." When excited, Madame Wachner sometimes dropped her h's; apart from that, she spoke English remarkably well. "She 'as taken what you call 'French leave.'"
"But Anna cannot have left Enghien without letting me know?" Mrs. Blackett was staring straight at her companion; there was incredulity, and also discomfiture, painted on her fair, pretty face. "I'm sure she wouldn't have done such a thing! Why should she?"
The older woman shrugged her shoulders. Then, seeing that the young American looked really distressed:
"I expect she will come back soon," she said consolingly. "You know that she 'as left her luggage at the Pension Malfait? That does not look as if she 'ad gone for evare——"
"Left her luggage?" repeated Mabel. "Why, then, of course she is coming back. How could the Pension Malfait people think that she has gone—I mean for good? You know"—she lowered her voice, for she did not wish the driver to hear what she was about to say—"you know, Madame Wachner, that Anna won a very large sum of money two days ago."
Mrs. Blackett was aware that people before now have been robbed and roughly handled, even in idyllic Enghien, when leaving the Casino after an exceptional stroke of luck at the tables.
"Yes, but she 'as had plenty of time to lose it all again."
Madame Wachner spoke dryly. She was still very red, and as she spoke she fanned herself vigorously with a paper she held in her left hand.
"Oh, but indeed she did not do anything of the sort. Anna has not been inside the Casino since she took that bank at baccarat." Mabel Blackett spoke very eagerly.
"Ah, well, that neither you nor I can say. She may have been there—and once there, well, the money flies. But let us suppose you are right—in that case surely our friend would have done very wisely to leave Enghien with her gains in her pocket?"
Madame Wachner was leaning back in the victoria, a ruminating smile on her broad, good-tempered face; she was thoroughly enjoying the drive, for it was very, very hot, and she disliked walking.
Something of a philosopher was Madame Wachner, always accepting with eager, outstretched hands that which the gods provided her.
And now pretty Mabel Blackett, though unobservant, as happy, prosperous youth invariably is, received the impression that her companion did not wish to discuss Madame Olsen's sudden departure; in fact, that the older woman, feeling that the matter was no concern of hers, was unwilling to talk about it.
Although Madame Wachner spent a good deal of time at the Casino and often played at petits chevaux, she was not a gambler in the sense that Anna Olsen was. On the other hand, Monsieur Wachner, like the Danish widow, only lived for play. L'Ami Fritz, as his wife generally called him, was a tall, thin, silent man, passionately interested in what may be defined as the scientific side of gambling—that is, in the mysterious laws which govern chance. He always played according to some elaborate "system," and, if Anna Olsen was to be believed, he lost considerable sums at the tables each week. But if that were so, then his wife never allowed the fact to disturb her. Madame Wachner was always kindly and genial, interested in her friends' affairs rather than absorbed in her own. So it was that, having become accustomed to receive interest and sympathy in full measure from the woman now sitting by her side, Mabel was surprised that Madame Wachner did not seem more concerned at Anna Olsen's departure, for she herself felt very deeply concerned, as well as surprised and hurt.
As they came within sight of the Pension Malfait, Mrs. Blackett's companion suddenly placed her large, powerful, bare hand on the American's small, gloved one.
"Look here, Mab-bel," she said familiarly. "Do not worry about Madame Olsen. Believe me, she is not worth it. And then, you know, you still have good friends left in Enghien—I do not only speak of me and of my husband, but also of another one!" And she laughed a little maliciously.
But Mabel gave no answering smile. For the moment she was absorbed in the thought of Anna Olsen, and in the mystery of Anna Olsen's sudden departure.
As they drove up to the door of the boarding house, Madame Wachner remarked:
"I do not think, dear friend, that I will enter the Pension Malfait. They have already seen me this morning—indeed, I was there also last night, for I wished to know why Madame Olsen had not kept her appointment with us. They must be quite tired of seeing me."
Mrs. Blackett felt a little disappointed. She would have liked the support of Madame Wachner's cheerful presence when making her inquiries, for she was vaguely aware that the proprietress of Anna's pension had keen much annoyed when she, Mabel, had left for the other, superior and alas, cleaner, boarding house.
Madame Malfait, an active, sharp-eyed little Frenchwoman, was sitting in her usual place; that is, in a glass cage in her hall. When she saw Mrs. Blackett coming toward her, a look of impatience and dislike came over her face.
"Bon jour, madame," she said curtly. "I suppose you have come to ask me about Madame Olsen? I can give you no news—no news at all—beyond the fact that she did not come home last evening, and that this morning we found a letter in her room saying she had gone away. She need not have troubled to write—a word of explanation would have been better, and would have prevented my servants sitting up all night—We quite feared something had happened to her."
The woman held out a sheet of note paper, on which were written the words:
Madame Malfait: Being unexpectedly obliged to leave Enghien, I inclose herewith two hundred francs. You will pay what is owing to you out of it, and distribute the rest among the servants. Mabel Blackett stared down at the open letter. Anna Olsen had not even signed her name. The few lines were very clear, written in a large, decided handwriting—considerably larger, or so Mabel Blackett fancied, than Anna's ordinary hand. But then the American had not had the opportunity of seeing much of her Danish friend's calligraphy.
She was not given much time in which to study the letter, for Madame Malfait took it out of her hand before she had quite finished reading it over for the second time.
But Mabel Blackett was quite unused to being snubbed; pretty young women provided with plenty of money seldom are; and so she did not turn away and leave the house, as Madame Malfait had hoped she would do.
"What a strange thing!" she observed musingly. "How extraordinary it is, Madame Malfait, that my friend should have gone away like this, leaving her luggage behind her! What can possibly have made her want to leave Enghien in such a hurry?"
The Frenchwoman looked at her with a curious stare.
"If you ask me to tell you the truth, madame," she said rather insolently, "I have no doubt that Madame Olsen went to the Casino yesterday and lost her money; became, in fact, décavée!" Then, rather ashamed of her rudeness, she added: "But she is a very honest lady, that I will say, for you see she left enough money to pay everything, as well as to provide my servants with handsome gratuities. That is more than the last person who left me in a hurry troubled to do."
"But it is so strange that she left her luggage," repeated Mabel in a perplexed, dissatisfied tone.
"Pardon me, madame, that is not strange at all. She probably went to Paris without knowing exactly where she meant to stay, and she did not want to take her luggage round with her when looking for a hotel. Any moment I may receive a telegram from her telling me where to send it."
As Mabel at last began walking toward the front door, the landlady hurried after her.
"Madame will not say too much about Madame Olsen's departure, will she?" she said a little anxiously. "I do not want any embarrassments with the police. Everything is quite en règle. After all, Madame Olsen had a right to go away without telling madame of her plans, had she not?"
"Certainly she had the right to do so," said Mabel coldly. "But still, I should be much obliged if you would kindly send me word when you receive the telegram you are expecting her to send you about the luggage."
After she took her place in the carriage by Madame Wachner, Mrs. Blackett remained silent for a few moments. Then:
"It's very strange," she repeated; "I should never have expected Anna Olsen to do such a thing."
"Well—now that is just what I should have expected her to do." exclaimed Madame Wachner briskly. "And then there was that absurd fortune teller, you know——"
"Yes—so there was! But Anna was far too sensible a woman to be guided by a fortune teller."
"Hum! I wonder!"
The carriage was still stationary, and the driver turned round for orders.
Mabel roused herself. "Can I drive you back to the Châlet des Muguets?" she asked. "Somehow I don't feel inclined to take a turn in the Forest now."
"Well, if you do not mind"—Madame Wachner hesitated—"I should prefer to be driven to the station; in fact, I was on my way there when you met me, for L'Ami Fritz had to go to Paris"—she laughed—"to fetch money, as usual! His 'system' did not work well yesterday."
"How horrid!" said Mrs. Blackett naïvely. "It must be very disappointing for Mr. Wachner when his 'systems' go wrong."
"Yes—very," answered the wife dryly. "But, bah! He at once sets himself to inventing another. I lose a great deal more at my petits chevaux playing with francs than Fritz does each season at baccarat playing with gold. You see, a 'system' has this good about it—one generally comes out even at the end of each month."
"Does one indeed?"
But Mabel was not attending to what the other was saying. She was still absorbed in the thought of her friend, and of the mystery of that friend's sudden departure from Enghien.
MADAME WACHNER, when trying to console Mrs. Blackett for the strange disappearance of her friend, Anna Olsen, had made a cryptic allusion to another friend whose presence at Enghien would console Mabel for Anna Olsen's absence.
This other friend was named the Comte De Poupel, and he was the only one of her fellow guests in the Pension Noir with whom Mabel had become on terms of kindly, almost intimate, acquaintanceship. Instinctively her mind had already turned to him in her distress, but she did not tell Madame Wachner that she intended to consult the Comte De Poupel, for, oddly enough, the Wachners and the count were by no means good friends. Indeed, from the first it had been unfortunate that Mabel's foreign friends, while all liking her, did not like one another. Thus the count only tolerated Anna Olsen, and he had tried to confine himself to a bowing acquaintance with the Wachners.
Madame Wachner returned his indifference with interest. She seemed to dislike, almost to distrust, the count.
"Take care," she would say to the charming American widow. "'E is after your dollars. He thinks you would like to be a countess. But, bah! This Poupel is no count—no count at all!"
But Mrs. Blackett had taken the trouble to ascertain that Paul De Poupel was a real count. The owners of the Pension Noir, and for the matter of that all his fellow guests, knew everything there was to know about him, even to the fact that his brother-in-law, a French duke famed in the racing world, and of whom even Mrs. Blackett had heard when living her quiet life at home, made him an allowance.
Paul De Poupel, in fact, was a typical Frenchman of a class whom the ordinary American traveler in France has scarcely ever a chance of even seeing. He belonged to the old pre-Revolution aristocracy, and had the easy charm of manner, the kindly courtesy, which in that particular, overcivilized caste took the place of more austere virtues. Very early in their acquaintance he had confided to Mabel that the passion of play had ruined his life. He was a gambler, hopelessly in the toils of the Goddess of Chance, and she had spoiled what might have been a brilliant as well as a happy career in diplomacy. He spoke English perfectly, for he had been to Oxford, and had also received part of his school education in England.
The Comte De Poupel spent most of the hours of his waking day at the Casino; but he found time even so to see a good deal of Mrs. Blackett, not only there, but elsewhere, for Enghien has many attractions more innocent than play to offer her victims.
Quite at first, remembering what she had always heard about Frenchmen and their ways, Mrs. Blackett had been a little frightened—perhaps not altogether unpleasantly frightened—by the count's proximity. She had feared that he would make violent love to her—who knows? That he would perhaps try to kiss her—in a word, behave in a way which would force her to become angry.
But nothing of the kind had ever happened. On the contrary, the Comte De Poupel always treated Mrs. Blackett with scrupulous respect, while making no secret of his surprise that he had met her at Enghien. With strange lack of logic—or so she thought—he seriously disapproved of her gambling, even for small stakes. And very early he had warned her against making casual friendships in the Casino, where they all spent so many hours of each day.
Mrs. Blackett, as time went on, became aware that in this the count had done her a service. The people at the Casino were very ready to strike up acquaintance. One lady whom she had so met had borrowed twenty francs the third time they had spoken together. Mabel had not really minded, but she had been a little hurt, for after that day the woman had pretended not to know her.
In the early days of Mabel Blackett's stay at Enghien, the Comte De Poupel very seldom dined at the Pension Noir. He came back to dress each evening—he was the only man in the pension, and Mabel was the only lady, who dressed for dinner—but as soon as he was dressed he would hurry down to the Casino again, dining there. Of late, however, he had fallen into the habit of dining at the pension. He did so on the night Mabel had heard of her friend's departure from Enghien.
Mabel had also got into the habit of doing what everybody else did at Enghien; that is, she generally spent each evening at the Casino in company with friends—in her case, with Anna Olsen and the Wachners.
But to-night she made up her mind to stay at home, and so she brought down her needlework—she was a very feminine woman, and seemed exquisitely feminine in the pleasant veranda which was always deserted in the evening.
The hour she had spent with Madame Wachner that afternoon had left on her mind a slight feeling of disappointment and distaste. The older woman had seemed to care so very little about poor Anna, and Anna's odd disappearance. If Madame Olsen had indeed been foolish enough to go down to the Casino and lose all her money, well, that was surely a reason for them all to feel very much concerned about her. Mabel Blackett had a generous, open nature; she would have been very glad to advance money to her friend, but Anna was not poor.
"Are you not going to the Casino to-night?" The count came forward and sat down by her. "You permit?" he asked, and waited till she looked up and said "Yes" before lighting his cigarette.
His English was excellent, but he naturally used French idioms, especially if he was at all moved. He looked at Mrs. Blackett consideringly. She looked charming to-night, in her black tulle gown.
"I'm staying in this evening," she said, and then: "I'm rather miserable, for Anna Olsen has left Enghien."
"Left Enghien?" he repeated in almost as incredulous a tone as that in which Mabel had said the words some hours before when the news had been first brought her. "That's very droll, Mrs. Blackett. I should have thought your friend was not likely to leave Enghien for many weeks to come." He was asking himself why, if her friend had left Enghien, Mrs. Blackett had chosen to stay on. "And where has Madame Olsen gone?" he said at last.
"That's what is so odd about it," said Mabel plaintively. In spite of herself her voice trembled a little; she suddenly felt forlorn, unhappy. "She did not give us the slightest warning of what she was thinking of doing—in fact, only yesterday we were talking of our future plans, and I was trying to persuade her to come back to America with me on a long visit."
"But what makes you think that she has really left?" he asked.
And then Mabel told him. She described the coming of the messenger, her journey to the Pension Malfait. She repeated as far as was possible the exact words of Madame Olsen's curiously worded, abrupt letter to Madame Malfait.
"They all think," she said at last, "that Anna went to the Casino and lost all her money, and that, not liking to tell me about it, she made up her mind to go away."
"They all think?" repeated the Comte De Poupel. "Who do you mean by all, Mrs. Blackett?"
"I mean Madame Malfait and Madame Wachner," she said.
The Comte De Poupel was staring out into the darkness.
"I do not think that Madame Olsen has been at the Casino at all the last few days," he said thoughtfully. "I have been there the whole time, and I have certainly not seen her."
And then, quite irrelevantly as it seemed to him at the moment, Mrs. Blackett asked him a question.
"Are you superstitious?" she asked. "Do you believe, as so many of the people who play here do, in fortune tellers?"
"Like every one else, I have been to such people," he answered indifferently, "but if you ask my true opinion, well, no, I am quite skeptical. There may be something in what these dealers in hope sometimes say, but very often there is nothing—nothing at all. In fact, the witch generally tells her client what she supposes her client wishes to hear."
"Madame Wachner believes that Madame Olsen left Enghien because of something which a fortune teller told her—indeed, told both of us, before we left Paris."
"Tiens! Tiens!" he exclaimed. "Madame Wachner has never seen fit to confide this theory to me. Pray tell me all about it. Did you and Madame Olsen consult a fashionable necromancer, or did you content yourselves going to a cheap witch?"
"To quite a cheap witch!"
Mabel laughed happily. She rather wondered now that she had never told Count Paul about her visit to the Paris fortune teller. But she had been taught to regard everything savouring of "superstition" as not only silly and weak-minded, but also as discreditable. She had gone to the Paris diseuse des bonnes aventures to please Anna Olsen, to whom the woman's business card had been handed by the chambermaid at their hotel. Anna Olsen had been eager to consult her, the more so that she charged so small a fee.
"Only five francs!" went on Mabel gayly. "And she gave us plenty for our money, I assure you. In fact, I can't remember half the things she said. She saw us each alone, and then together."
"And to you was prophesied?"
Again Mabel blushed.
"Oh, she told me all sorts of delightful things! But of course as you say, they don't really know, they only guess at what they think one wants to hear. One of the things this woman told me was that it was quite possible that I should never go back to America—I mean at all. Wasn't that absurd?"
"Quite absurd," he said quietly, "for even if you remarried—say a Frenchman—you would still want to go home to your own country sometimes."
"Of course I should."
Once more she reddened violently, and bent low over her work. But this time the Comte De Poupel felt no pleasure in watching the flood of carmine staining, not only the smooth, rounded cheeks, but the white forehead and neck of his American friend.
Mabel went on speaking, a little quickly:
"She said the same thing to Anna—wasn't that odd? I mean she said that Anna would almost certainly never go back to her own country. But what annoyed Anna most was that she did not seem to be able to see into her future at all. She told her all sorts of things that had already happened to her, but nothing as to what was going to happen. Then she asked to see us together."
Mabel stopped speaking for a moment.
"Well?" said the count interrogatively. "What happened then?"
"She made us stand side by side, and then she stared at us in quite an odd, uncanny way, and said: 'Ah! I see now that I was right; your two fates are closely intertwined, and I wish to give you both a warning. Do not leave Paris, especially do not leave it together. I see you both running into great danger. If you do go away together—and fear that you will do so—then I advise you, together and separately, to come back to Paris as soon as possible.'"
"All rather vague," remarked the count, "and from the little I knew of her I should fancy Madame Olsen the last woman in the world to be influenced by that kind of thing."
"At the time Anna seemed rather impressed," said Mabel, "but, as she said, going to Enghien was scarcely leaving Paris. Still, it made her nervous when she was first playing at the tables, and, when she lost so much money the first week we were here, she said to me: 'That palmist was right—we ought not to have come here.' But afterward, when she began to be so lucky, she forgot all about it. At least, she never spoke of it again."
EXACTLY a week had gone by, and no news, no explanation of her abrupt departure from Enghien had been received from Anna Olsen. Madame Malfait was still waiting for instructions as to what was to be done with the luggage and the various personal possessions the Danish lady had left scattered about her room.
To Mabel Blackett it seemed as if her friend had been obliterated, blotted out of existence, and she felt an ever-recurring surprise and discomfiture that it was so.
Outwardly the Danish lady's mysterious disappearance had been a ripple, and only a ripple, on the pleasant, lazy, agreeable life they were all leading. In fact, no one seemed to remember Anna Olsen excepting Mabel Blackett herself, and that kindly couple, Madame Wachner and her silent husband. As the days slipped by, the Wachners had grown more and more anxious, and each time Mabel saw them, and she met them daily, either the husband or the wife would ask her eagerly and sympathetically: "Has Madame Olsen returned?" or "Have you had news of Anna Olsen?" And they expressed increasing concern and surprise when her answer had always to be in the negative.
And now, as on the previous Saturday, Mrs. Blackett had come up to her room after déjeuner. She was sitting, as she had sat just a week ago, in her basket chair close to the window, and her mind went back to the day when she had sat there expecting her friend.
Somehow it seemed far more than a week ago since Anna had left Enghien. But then a good deal had happened in the last seven days. Mabel had made several pleasant new acquaintances, and—above all, she had become far more really intimate with the Comte De Poupel than had been the case before Anna Olsen's departure. They had become almost inseparable, and yet so cleverly did the Comte De Poupel arrange their frequent meetings, their long talks in the large, deserted garden of the pension, their pleasant saunters through the little town, and their long saunters in the Forest, that no one, or so Mrs. Blackett believed, was even aware of any special intimacy between them.
The count was now spending the day in Paris, and Mabel was dull and rather listless. She had never before felt that aching longing for another human being's presence which, disguised under many names in our civilized life, was in her case, and by herself to herself, called "friendship." She had been little more than a pretty child when her marriage to a man twenty years older than herself had taken place, and she had been widowed eight months later.
The Comte De Poupel seldom referred to his relations, and Mabel had felt pleased, almost flattered, when he had confided to her the insignificant fact that he had gone into Paris to-day to see his sister, the duchess, by appointment. Since she had got to know him so much better, she sometimes wondered, a little sorely, why he never suggested introducing her to any of "his people." Mabel could not understand the Comte De Poupel, and her feelings about him disturbed, almost angered, her.
But just now, on this hot Saturday afternoon, Mabel Blackett's thoughts were being forced into a new channel, and one that led to the temporary exclusion of all that concerned her present life. She had learned that morning that a friend of hers, a man whom she had known all her life, who had not so very long ago wanted to marry her, and who was also, oddly enough, her trustee—was coming to Enghien in order to see her on his way to Switzerland.
Just now Mrs. Blackett could well have dispensed with Bill Oldchester's presence. When she had left Dallington six months ago she had felt very kindly disposed to Bill. In fact, she had almost brought herself to think that she would, in time, become Mrs. Oldchester. She knew that he loved her with a solid, enduring love which never faltered. But lately, during the last few weeks, she had told herself that life offered her far more than the New England country lawyer could give her.
There is in every woman a passion for romance. In Mabel Blackett this passion had been balked, not satisfied, by her first marriage. Oldchester's devotion had touched her, the more so that it was expressed in actions rather than words, for he was the type of man—seldom unfortunately a romantic type—who would have scorned to take advantage of his fiduciary position. Moreover, the fact that he was her trustee brought them into occasional conflict. Too often he was the candid friend instead of the devoted lover, and now Mabel told herself ruefully that Bill would certainly disapprove of the kind of life—idle, purposeless, frivolous—she was now leading.
Already Mabel and Oldchester had had one rather sharp "tiff." He had vehemently disapproved of the way she had "invested" a few thousand dollars which had been left her by a distant relation within a few months of her widowhood. Mabel had insisted—after all, a woman has a right to do what she likes with her own money—on buying with this legacy a string of pearls.
Bill Oldchester had been really horrid about it, and Mabel even now had not quite forgiven him the "fuss" he had made. She had told him angrily that in the dull, stupid town set in which he lived the women were dowdy. All the New York ladies in whose doings the inhabitants of Dallington took so keen an interest, wore strings of real pearls, and, as she now reminded herself, nothing she had ever bought, nothing which had ever been given her, had given her such lasting pleasure as had her string of pearls. Indeed, they had become part of herself; she wore them night and day, and even Bill Oldchester had had to admit that as they increased in value every six months they had not been so bad an investment, after all.
"Mis sis Ala—quette, Missis Bla—quette!"
Mrs. Blackett jumped up eagerly from her chair, and ran to the window.
The Comte De Poupel stood below, in the garden which was one of the charms of the Pension Noir. In spite of the great heat the Frenchman looked, as he generally did look, cool, unruffled, self-possessed. There was a gay little smile on his face, and as their eyes met he took a cigarette from between his lips.
One of the things which fascinated Mabel was the count's fine breeding. He was so courteous, so delicately considerate in his manner. But she was so far the only one of his fellow visitors in the Pension Noir with whom he condescended to any real acquaintance. Mabel was puzzled by this aloofness. American gentlemen—she realized that her friend was a gentleman—are so hail fellow well met with everybody—but the Comte De Poupel was very distant to those of his own fellow countrymen and countrywomen who, like himself, came to Enghien to gamble.
Though he seemed as if he hadn't a care in the world, save the pleasant care to enjoy the present, life was looking very grey just then to Paul De Poupel.
To a Parisian, Paris in August is a depressing place, and his sister, who had journeyed all the way from Brittany to see him, had received him with that touch of painful affection which the kindly and the prosperous so often bestow on those whom they feel to be at once beloved and prodigal. They had lunched together in their eldest brother's house, the old family house in the Faubourg St. Germain, and both had been reminded of far-off, happy, childish days when life had stretched out so pleasantly before them.
As a matter of fact, the count ought to have felt exceptionally happy to-day. One of his great-aunts had died intestate, leaving a fair estate to be divided among her great-nephews and nieces. The sum meant little to the others, but it was a very agreeable windfall to Paul De Poupel. And then, just as he had said good-by to his sister, she had kissed him with extra warmth, slipping an envelope, as she did so, into his hand. It contained her share of the unexpected legacy. The prodigal had taken the gift, not only because he knew a refusal would have pained his kind sister, but also because he was ruefully aware that the time would come when he would be very glad of the money.
But he had returned to Enghien, hating his life—hating even the place where he was now leading so useless and ignoble an existence.
Just now the only bright spot in the count's life was pretty, simple, unsophisticated Mrs. Blackett. But even in this matter his conscience was not wholly at ease. He told himself, and that frequently, that this American, with her absurd, touching lack of worldly knowledge, had no business to be living at Enghien, wasting her money at the petits chevaux and baccarat tables. Apart from that he, Paul De Poupel, had no business to be flirting with her; for, though Mrs. Blackett was unaware of the fact, Paul De Poupel was carrying on a very interesting flirtation with the lady he called in his own mind his petite amie Américaine. And very much he enjoyed the experience.
Yet now, to-day, he had almost made up his mind to leave Enghien for a while and to spend the money his sister had given him in taking a healthy, respectable holiday in Switzerland. As a younger man, he had been a distinguished "Alpinist"—many Frenchmen of his class are intrepid mountaineers. Were he to go away, he suspected that Mrs. Blackett, especially now that her friend, Madame Olsen, had left the place with such odd abruptness, would almost certainly leave, too.
But when he looked up at the jasmine-framed window at which his petite amie Américaine stood smiling at him, Paul De Poupel made up his mind, manlike, that the immediate thing to do was to enjoy the present, and forget both the past and the future.
Mabel Blackett, wearing a pinkish mauve cotton gown and her large black tulle hat, looked enchantingly pretty. True, the count's critical French eyes objected to the alliance of the cotton frock and the beautiful string of pearls, but he was fast approaching the state of mind when a man of fastidious taste forgives even a lack of taste in the woman to whom he is acting as philosopher and friend.
"Come into the garden," he quoted softly, and Mrs. Blackett, leaning over the bar of her window, thought he added the word "Maud," but of course that could not be, for her name, as the count well knew, was Mabel.
"I am so comfortable up here—I don't believe it will be half as cool in the garden!"
She looked down at him coquettishly, pretending—only pretending—to hesitate as to what she would do in answer to his invitation.
But Mabel Blackett was but an amateur at the great game—the game at which only two can play, and yet which is capable of such infinite, such bewilderingly protean variations. And so her next move—one which Paul De Poupel, smiling behind his mustache, naturally foresaw—was to turn away from the window, and run down the steep staircase of the pension with the more haste that it had suddenly occurred to her that the count, taking her at her word, might have suddenly gone off to the Casino, there as usual to lose his money; for whatever he might be in love, he was singularly unlucky at cards.
Mrs. Blackett liked to think that she was gradually weaning her new friend from what she sorrowfully knew to be in his case, whatever it was in hers, and in that of the many people about them, the vice of gambling.
When, a little breathless, she joined him in the garden, she found that he had already dragged two rocking-chairs into a shady corner, out of sight of the house and of its inquisitive windows. The Pension Noir was very prosperous, and accordingly the garden was cared for and well kept; just now it was brilliant with the serpentine bedding-out to which the old-fashioned French gardener is addicted, and cool with the plashing of fountains.
As the pretty American came up to him, the count did not shake hands as one of her own countrymen would have done; instead he bowed low, and then conducted her ceremoniously to her chair.
"Well, petite madame," he said, with the tired smile, the humorous twinkle in his eye which always made Mabel Blackett feel that he was, after all, not quite as serious as she would have liked him to be when with her. "Well, and how have you been all to-day? Dull?" And as she nodded, smiling, he added casually: "Any news of the vanished one?"
Mrs. Blackett shook her head. Somehow she did not care to joke about Anna Olsen's departure. The Danish woman's odd, and to her inexplicable, conduct had real hurt her.
The count leaned forward, and, speaking this time with the banter gone out of his voice, he said:
"Listen. I am now going to speak to you as frankly as if you were my—my sister. You should not waste a moment of your time in regretting Madame Olsen. She was no friend for you. She was an unhappy woman held tightly in the paws of the tiger—Play. That is the truth, ma belle petite madame. She could be no use to you, you could be no use to her. It is a pity you ever met her, and I am glad she went away without doing any further mischief. It was bad enough to have brought you to Enghien, and taught you to gamble. Had she stayed on, she would have tried in time to make you go on with her to Monte Carlo!"
He shook his head expressively.
Mrs. Blackett opened her lips; she hesitated, then said a little nervously:
"Tell me—you did not ask Madame Olsen to go away, did you, Count Paul?"
He looked at her, genuinely surprised.
"I ask Madame Olsen to go away?" he repeated. "Such a thought never even crossed my mind. It would have been very impertinent of me to do such a thing! Tell me what made you suppose it? You must think me a terrible hypocrite, petite madame! Have not shared your surprise at her leaving so suddenly—so mysteriously?"
Mabel grew very red. As a matter of fact, it had been Madame Wachner who had suggested to her the idea. "I should not be surprised," she had said, "if that Count De Poupel persuaded your friend to go away. He wants the field clear for himself!" And then she had seemed to regret her imprudent words, and she had begged Mabel not to give the count any hint of her suspicion. Mrs. Blackett, till a moment ago, had faithfully kept her promise; even now she did not mean to break it.
She grew still redder, for she retained, to the count's satisfaction, the youthful habit of blushing.
"Of course I don't think you a hypocrite," she said awkwardly; "but you never did like poor Anna—and you are always telling me that Enghien isn't a place where a nice woman ought to stay long. I thought you might have said something of the same kind to Madame Olsen."
"And do you really think"—Count Paul spoke with a touch of sharp irony in his gentle, low voice—"that your friend would have taken my advice? Do you think that Madame Olsen would look either to the right or the left when the Goddess of Chance beckoned?" And he waved his hand in the direction where they both knew the great gambling établissement lay, crouching, like some huge, prehistoric monster, on the bank of the lake which is the innocent attraction Enghien offers in the dog days to the jaded Parisian.
"But the Goddess of Chance did not beckon to her to leave Enghien!" she exclaimed. "Why, she meant to stay on here till the middle of September."
"You asked me a very indiscreet question just now." The count leaned forward, and looked straight into Mrs. Blackett's eyes.
"Did I?" she said seriously.
"Yes. You asked me if I had persuaded Madame Olsen to leave Enghien. Well, now I ask you, in my turn, whether it has ever occurred to you that the Wachners know more of Madame Olsen's departure than they admit? I gathered that impression the only time I talked to your Madame Wachner about the matter. I felt sure that she knew more than she would say. Of course, it was only an impression."
Mabel hesitated.
"At first Madame Wachner seemed annoyed that I made a fuss about it," she said thoughtfully. "But lately she has seemed as surprised and sorry as I am myself. Oh, no, count; I am sure you are wrong. Why, you forget that Madame Wachner walked up to the Pension Malfait that same evening—I mean the evening of the day Anna left Enghien. In fact, it was Madame Wachner who first found out that Anna had not come home. She went up to her bedroom to look for her."
"Then it was Madame Wachner who found the letter?" observed the count interrogatively.
"Oh, no, it wasn't! The letter was found the next morning by the chambermaid. It was in a blotting book on Anna's table, but no one had thought of looking there. You see, they were all expecting her to come back that night. Madame Malfait still thinks that she went to the Casino in the afternoon, and, after having lost her money, came back to the pension, wrote the note, and then went out and left for Paris with out saying anything about it to any one."
"Well, I suppose something of the sort did happen," said the Comte De Poupel thoughtfully. He had never liked the Danish woman, and he had not thought her a suitable companion for his unsophisticated American friend.
"And now," he said, getting up from his chair, "I think I will take a turn at the Casino."
It had been tacitly agreed between Mabel and himself very early in their acquaintance that he and she would not go down to the établissement together, and Mrs. Blackett's face fell. It seemed too bad that the count could not spend even one afternoon, and in her company, without indulging in what he admitted to be his fatal vice. But though her lip quivered, she was too proud, in some ways too reserved a woman, to make any appeal to him to stay here, with her, in this shady, quiet garden.
"It doesn't seem quite so hot as it did," she said, getting up. "I think I will go and have tea with the Wachners. They never go to the Casino on Saturday afternoons."
A cloud came over the count's face.
"I can't think what you see to like in that vulgar old couple," he exclaimed irritably. "To me there is something"—he hesitated, seeking for an English word which should exactly express the French word touché—"sinistaire—that is the word I am looking for—there is to me something sinistaire about the Wachners."
"Sinister?" repeated Mabel, surprised. "Why, they seem to me to be the most good-natured, commonplace people in the world; and then they're so fond of one another!"
"I grant you that," he said. "I quite agree that that ugly old woman is very fond of her 'Ami Fritz,' but I do not know if he returns the compliment!"
Mabel looked pained; nay, more, shocked.
"I suppose French husbands only like their wives when they are young and pretty," she said slowly.
"Another of the many injustices you are always heaping on my poor country," the count protested lightly. "But I confess I deserved it this time! Joking apart, I think 'L'Ami Fritz' is very fond of his"—he hesitated, then ended his sentence with "old Dutch!"
Mabel could not help laughing.
"It is too bad of you," she exclaimed, "to talk like that! The Wachners are very nice people, and I won't allow you to say anything against them."
"By the way, do you know to what nationality the Wachners belong?" asked the count casually. "I have always considered that 'L'Ami Fritz' looks like nothing so much as the popular notion of the Wandering Jew. But, mind you, I do not believe for a moment that he is an Israelite. Were he so, he would know how to take better care of his money."
"But Monsieur Wachner does not lose much money," said Mabel eagerly. "His wife told me not long ago that he came out almost 'even' each month. People who play on a 'system' always do."
"Do they indeed?" The count made an ironical, little bow. "Let me inform you, ma belle madame, that it was on a 'system'—and a very good 'system,' too—that I myself became what you Americans would call 'dead broke,'" He sighed suddenly, deeply. "But I will not say anything more against the Wachners this afternoon, for your visit to them will give me your company for part of the way to the Casino, and your company always does me good!"
The Comte De Poupel was fond of saying things like that to Mabel Blackett, and when he said them she always wondered what he exactly meant by saying them. She had come to treasure his light compliments, to long for the pleasant, caressing words he sometimes uttered when they were alone together.
This time he was even better than his words, for he went on and on with Mabel; in fact, till they were actually within sight of the little, isolated villa where the Wachners lived.
There, womanlike, she made an effort to persuade him to go in with her.
"Do come," she said urgently. "Madame Wachner would be so pleased! She was saying the other day that you had never been to their house."
But Count Paul smilingly shook his head.
"And I have no intention of ever going there," he said deliberately. "You see I do not like them. I suppose—I hope"—he looked again straight into Mabel Blackett's ingenuous, blue eyes—"that the Wachners have never tried to borrow money of you?"
"Never!" she cried, blushing violently. "Never, Count Paul! Your dislike of my poor friends makes you unjust—it really does."
"It does! It does! I beg their pardon and yours, I was foolish, far worse, indiscreet, to ask you this question. I regret I did so. Accept my apology."
She looked at him to see if he was sincere. His face was very grave; and she looked at him with perplexed, unhappy eyes.
"Oh, don't say that!" she said. "Why should you mind saying anything to me?"
But the Comte De Poupel was both vexed and angry with himself.
"It is always folly to interfere in any one else's affairs," he muttered. "But I have this excuse—I happen to know that last week, or rather ten days ago, the Wachners were in considerable difficulty about money. Then suddenly they seemed to have found plenty; in fact, to be as we say here à flot. I confess that I foolishly imagined, nay I almost hoped, that they owed this temporary prosperity to you. But, of course, I had no business to think about it at all—still less any business to speak to you about the matter. Forgive me, I will not so err again."
And then, with one of his sudden, stiff bows, the Comte De Poupel turned on his heel, leaving Mabel Blackett to make her way alone to the little wooden gate on which were painted the words: "Châlet des Muguets."
MABEL BLACKETT pushed the gate open, and began walking up the path which lay through the neglected, untidy garden.
To-day a deep, hot calm brooded over the silent house and garden; the chocolate-coloured shutters of the living rooms were closed, and Mabel Blackett told herself that it would be delightful to pass from the steamy heat outside into the dimly lighted, sparsely furnished "salon," there to have a cup of tea and a pleasant chat with her friends before accompanying them in the cool of the late afternoon down to the Casino.
Mrs. Blackett always enjoyed talking to Madame Wachner. The elder woman amused her by clever if sometimes rather coarse talk, and above all she flattered her. Mabel Blackett always left the Châlet des Muguets thoroughly pleased both with herself and with the world about her. There was very little concerning the pretty American widow's simple, uneventful life with which Madame Wachner was not by now acquainted. She knew, for instance, that Mabel had no close relations, only many friends, and, that, oddly enough, Mrs. Blackett knew nobody—that she had not even an acquaintance—living in Paris.
As she walked round to the side of the house where was the front door, Mabel Blackett found herself wondering, with a touch of uneasiness, why the Comte De Poupel and the Wachners disliked one another so much, It was the more strange as he and "L'Ami Fritz" had one great taste in common—that of gambling.
But long before she had thought of an answer to this perplexing question, the day servant opened the door with the words: "Monsieur and madame are in Paris." The woman added, with a rather insolent air: "They have gone to fetch some money." And her manner said plainly enough: "Yes, my master and mistress—silly fools—have lost their money at the Casino, and now they are gone to get fresh supplies!"
Mabel had had her long, dusty walk for nothing.
In her precise, carefully worded French, Mrs. Blackett explained that she would like to come in and have a little rest. "I am sure that Madame Wachner would wish me to do so," she added, and after a rather ungracious pause the woman admitted her into the house, showing her into the darkened dining room, and not into the drawing-room.
"Do you think it will be long before Madame Wachner comes back?" asked Mabel.
The servant hesitated. "I do not know. They never tell me anything."
She bustled out of the room for a few moments, and then came back holding a cotton parasol in her hand.
"I do not know if madame wishes to stay on here by herself? As for me, I must go now, for my work is done. Perhaps when madame leaves the house she will put the key under the mat."
"Yes, if I leave the house before Monsieur and Madame Wachner return home, I will certainly do so. But I expect they will be here before long."
The women hesitated, and then: "Should the master and mistress come back before madame has left, will madame kindly explain that she insisted on coming into the house? I am absolutely forbidden to admit visitors unless monsieur or madame is there to entertain them."
The woman spoke quickly, her eyes fixed expectantly on the lady sitting before her. Mrs. Blackett took her purse out of her pocket, and held out a two-franc piece.
"Certainly," she said coldly, "I will explain to Madame Wachner that I wished very much to come in and rest."
The servant's manner altered, it became familiar, servile.
"Has madame heard any news of her friend?" she inquired. "I mean Madame Olsen?"
"No." Mrs. Blackett spoke very shortly. "I have heard nothing of her yet; but, of course, I shall do so soon."
"The lady stopped here on her way to the station. She seemed in high spirits."
"Oh, no," said Mabel Blackett quickly. "Madame Olsen did not come here the day she left Enghien."
"Indeed, yes, madame. I had to come back that evening, for had forgotten to bring in some sugar. The lady was here, and she was still here when I left the house."
"You are making a mistake," said Mrs. Blackett shortly. "Madame Olsen left Enghien on the Saturday afternoon. Monsieur and Madame Wachner expected her to supper, but she never came."
The woman looked at her fixedly.
"No doubt madame knows best," she said indifferently, "One day is like another to me. I beg madame's pardon."
She laid the house door-key on the table; then, with a muttered good day, she noisily closed the door behind her.
A moment later Mrs. Blackett found herself in sole possession of the Châlet des Muguets.
Even the quietest, the most commonplace house has, as it were, an individuality that sets it apart from other houses. And even those who would deny that proposition must admit that every inhabited dwelling has its own special nationality. The Châlet des Muguets Was typically French and typically suburban, but where it differed from thousands of houses of the same type dotted round in the countryside within easy reach of Paris was that it was let each year to a different set of tenants.
Even to Mabel Blackett's unobservant eyes, it lacked all the elements which go to make a home. The furniture was not only cheap, it was common and tawdry. On the floor of the dining room, in place of the shining parquet floor, which is also universally seen in French rooms, lay an ugly piece of linoleum of which the pattern printed on the surface simulated a red-and-blue marble pavement. Yet each of the living rooms, in curious contrast to the garden, was singularly clean, and almost oppressively neat.
Mrs. Blackett got up from the hard, cane chair on which she had been siting. She had suddenly experienced an odd feeling, that of not being alone, and she looked down half expecting to see some small animal crouching under the table, or hiding by the walnut buffet behind her. But no, nothing but the round table, and the six chairs stiffly placed against the wall, met her eyes.
She told herself that it would be more comfortable to wait in the drawing-room than in this bare, ugly dining room, and so she walked through into the tiny "salon."
This room also was singularly bare; there was not a flower, not even a book or a paper, to relieve the monotony. The only ornaments were a gilt clock on the mantelpiece, flanked with two sham Empire candelabra. In spite of, or perhaps because the shutters were so closely shut to, the room seemed very hot and airless.
Not for the first time since she had made their acquaintance, Mrs. Blackett wondered why the Wachners preferred to live in this cheerless way, with a servant who came only for a few hours each day, rather than in a hotel or boarding house. And then she reminded herself that, after all, the silent, gaunt man and his talkative, voluble wife seemed to be on exceptionally good terms the one with the other. Perhaps they really preferred being alone together than in a more peopled atmosphere.
Mabel began moving aimlessly about the room. She felt unaccountably nervous and depressed. She longed to be away from this empty, still house, and yet it seemed absurd to leave just when the Wachners might be back any moment.
After a few more minutes, however, the quietude, and the having absolutely nothing to do with which to while the time away, got on her nerves. It was, after all, quite possible that the Wachners would wait in Paris till the heat of the day was over. If so, they would not be back till seven o'clock. Then there came to her a happy thought. Why should she not leave a note for Madame Wachner inviting her and her husband to dinner at the Pension Noir? That disagreeable day servant had not even laid the cloth for her employers' evening meal.
Mabel looked round paper and envelopes, but there was no writing table in the little, square drawing-room. How absurd and annoying! But stay—somewhere in the house there must be writing materials—probably in Madame Wachner's bedroom. The American had already been in her friend's bedroom two or three times, so she knew the way there quite well. The husband and wife occupied two rooms on the ground floor at the back of the villa. In order to save trouble, they did not use the upper story at all.
Treading softly, and yet hearing her footsteps echoing with unpleasant loudness through the empty house, Mabel Blackett walked past the bright, little kitchen, and so made her way to the end of the narrow passage.
As she opened the door of Madame Wachner's bedroom, Mabel Blackett stopped and caught her breath. Once again she had experienced the odd, eerie sensation that she was not alone, but this time it was far more real than it had been in the dining room. So strong, so definite was her impression that there was some one there, close behind her, that she turned sharply round—but all she saw was the empty passage stretching its short length down to the entrance hall.
She walked through into the bedroom. It was very poorly furnished, at least to her American eyes, but it was pleasantly cool after the drawing-room.
She walked across to the window, and drew aside the muslin curtains. Beyond the patch of shade thrown by the house the sun beat down on a ragged, unkempt lawn, but across the lawn Mabel Blackett noticed for the first time that there lay a little wood, a grove of chestnut trees, and further, that there was a gap in the hedge which separated the wood from the unkempt grounds of the Châlet des Muguets.
She turned away from the window. Yes, there at last was what she had come there to find. Close to Madame Wachner's broad, low bed was a writing table, or rather a deal table, covered with a turkey red cloth, on which lay a large sheet of ink-stained, white blotting paper. Flanking the blotting paper was a pile of small account books, and glancing at these Mabel smiled, for Monsieur Wachner never went into the gambling rooms without taking with him one of these shabby, little notebooks in which to note down the figures on which he based his elaborate "systems."
She went close up to the writing table and began looking for some note paper, but there was nothing of the sort to be seen, neither paper nor envelopes. This was the more absurd as there were pens, and an inkstand filled to the brim. Then she bethought herself that the simplest thing to do would be to tear a blank leaf out of one of Monsieur Wachner's notebooks; on it she would write down her message, leaving it on the dining table, where they would be sure to see it. She knew that the Wachners always accepted her invitations, as they had done those of Anna Olsen, with alacrity.
She took up the newest looking of the little notebooks. As she opened it, she suddenly, and for the third time, felt a living presence close to her—but this time it seemed to be that of Anna Olsen. It was an extraordinary sensation—vivid, uncanny, terrifying—for Mabel Blackett not only believed herself to be alone in the villa, but she thought it almost certain that her friend was far away, probably by this time ship-bound for her own country, Denmark.
Fortunately the unnerving impression did not endure, and, as her eyes became focused on the book she held in her hand, it became fainter and fainter. Then Mabel realized, with a sense of relief, what it was that had brought the presence of her absent friend so very near to her; there, actually lying open before her, between two leaves of the notebook, was a letter in Anna Olsen's handwriting! It was very short, couched in stiff though grammatical French, and was dated ten days ago. In it the writer accepted Madame Wachner's invitation to supper for the day she had left Enghien. On the page opposite to where the letter rested Monsieur Wachner had evidently amused himself in copying, or rather in imitating, Madame Olsen's peculiar, upright handwriting. Words picked out of the letter here and there had been scrawled down, again and again.
After having torn out one of the blank pages, Mabel laid the notebook and its inclosure back on the table. She felt vaguely touched by the fact that the Wachners had kept her friend's last letter; they alone, so she reminded herself, had been really sorry and concerned at Madame Olsen's sudden departure from the place. They also, like Mabel, had been pained that their friend had not cared to say good-by to them.
She scribbled a few lines on the scrap of paper, and then, quickly making her way to the dining room, she placed her unconventional note on the table, and went into the hall. She felt thoroughly nervous—as she expressed it to herself, "upset." For the first time Enghien became utterly distasteful. She asked herself, with a kind of surprise, of self-rebuke, why she was there—away from her own country and her own people? Even the Comte De Poupel seemed an alien, a stranger. She suddenly felt as if it would be very comfortable to see once more the tall, broad figure of Bill Oldchester.
As she opened the front door of the Châlet-des Muguets, she was met by a blast of hot air. Feeling as she now felt, walking back through the heat would be intolerable. She looked out dubiously; to the left, across the lawn, lay the chestnut wood.
Mabel Blackett put up her white parasol, and hurried across the scorched grass to the place where there was an opening in the rough hedge. A moment later she was through it, and into the grateful shade cast by high trees.
It was delightfully cool and still. She wondered vaguely why the Wachners had never taken her in there—but foreigners are very law-abiding, or so Mabel Blackett believed. The wood, if a piece of no-man's land, was for sale; there was a large board up with a small plan on it. Mabel realized that it would have been turned into villa land long ago had it been nearer a road. Now it was still a tiny stretch of primeval forest; there was a good deal of undergrowth, and here and there, lying amid the tufts of grass, were the husks of last autumn's chestnuts. Mrs. Blackett followed the little zigzag path which cut across the wood, and then, desiring to sit down for a while, she struck to the right, where there was a little clearing.
Mabel sat down on the hard ground. Even here, where the sun could never penetrate, the tufts of coarse grass were dried up by the heat; there was no fear that they would stain her pretty cotton frock.
All at once she became aware that to her right, where the undergrowth began again, the earth had recently been disturbed. Over an irregular patch of about a yard square the sods had been dug up, and then planted again. The thought passed through her mind that children had been playing there, and that they had made a rude attempt to destroy their handiwork, or rather to prevent its being noticed, by placing the branch of a tree across the little piece of ground where the earth had been disturbed. It was this branch, of which the leaves were now shriveled up, that had first drawn her attention to it.
Her thoughts wandered to Bill Oldchester; he was now actually journeying toward her as fast as boat and train could bring him; in a couple of hours he would be in Paris, and then he would come out to Enghien in time for dinner. Mabel had not been able to get a room for him in her own pension, but she had engaged one in the boarding house of Madame Malfait—the room, as a matter of fact, which had been occupied by Anna Olsen.
She could not help being sorry that Bill would see Enghien for the first time on a Sunday. To his eyes the place, on that day of all days, would present a peculiarly—well—disreputable appearance. Mabel Blackett felt jealous for the good fame of Enghien. She told herself that she had been very happy here, singularly, extraordinarily happy.
Something told her, and the thought was not unpleasing to her, that Bill Oldchester and the Comte De Poupel would not get on well together. She wondered if the Comte De Poupel had ever been jealous—if he was capable of jealousy. It would be rather amusing to see if anything could make him so.
And then her mind traveled far, to a picture with which she had been familiar for a long time, for it hung in the drawing-room of one of her friends at Dallington. It was called "The Gambler's Wife." She had always thought it a very pretty and pathetic picture, but she no longer thought it so; in fact, it now appeared to her to be a ridiculous travesty of life. Gamblers were just like other people, neither better nor worse—and often infinitely more lovable than were some other people.
Mabel Blackett got up, and slowly made her way out of the wood. She did not go again through the Wachners' garden; instead, she struck off to the left, onto a field path, which finally brought her to the main road.
As she was passing the Pension Malfait the landlady came out to the door.
"Madame!" she cried out loudly. "I have news of Madame Olsen at last! Early this afternoon I had a telegram from her asking me to send her luggage to the cloakroom of the Gare du Nord."
Mabel felt very glad—glad, and yet once more perhaps unreasonably hurt. Then Anna Olsen had been in Paris all the time? How odd, how really unkind of her not to have written and relieved her American friend's anxiety!
"I have had Madame Olsen's room prepared for your friend," went on Madame Malfait amiably.
She was pleased that Mrs. Blackett was giving her a new guest, and it amused her to consider what prudes American women were. Fancy putting a man who had come all the way from America to see one, in a pension situated at the other end of the town to where one was living oneself!
WILLIAM OLDCHESTER, lawyer, and respected citizen of Dallington, Massachusetts, after having fulfilled the very slight formalities which are required of any stranger desirous of forming part of the "Club" of Enghien, walked through into the large and beautifully decorated Salles de Jeu of the Casino.
Late though it was, considerably after eleven o'clock, the gambling rooms were full of a seething crowd of chattering men and women, and he felt slightly confused, as well as cross and tired.
Eagerly concerned with their own affairs as were most of the people there, some of them yet found time to look at one another and smile, as the young American elbowed his way through them.
The scene in which Mabel Blackett's trustee and erstwhile lover found himself bewildered and amazed him—also he was suffering from a distinct sense of injury.
The boat train had been late in arriving at Paris, so he had dined there, and had not reached Enghien till after ten o'clock. Mrs. Blackett had told him that she would take a room for him in the boarding house where she was staying, and Oldchester, tired after a long, hot journey, had looked forward to a pleasant, little talk with her, followed by a good night's rest. But at the Pension Noir he had been met with the news that Mrs. Blackett had gone out for the evening. This information was tendered with profuse apologies by a lively, little Frenchman who seemed the only person left in the large house, and who was evidently the proprietor of the boarding house.
Oldchester had listened impatiently while the man explained that Madame Blackett, having waited for m'sieur till half-past nine, had concluded that he meant to spend the night in Paris, and so had gone to the Casino which, as m'sieur doubtless knew, was the great attraction of delightful and salubrious Enghien.
The American asked to be shown to the room which Mrs. Blackett had engaged for him; but again there came a torrent of apologies in Monsieur Noir's voluble and flowery French. There was, alas, no room for m'sieur in the pension; in fact, the boarding house was so extraordinarily prosperous that there never was a room there unless one engaged it three or four weeks beforehand! But m'sieur must not feel cast down, for Madame Blackett had procured a room for m'sieur in another pension, inferior no doubt to the Pension Noir, but still quite comfortable. Madame had been terribly disappointed, and she had hoped m'sieur would come to dinner—indeed, an extra place had been laid at her dining table. Madame Blackett had been entertaining a few friends that evening, and it was with them that she had gone on to the Casino.
Oldchester, more and more surprised, asked the man when he thought Mrs. Blackett would be back. To the American lawyer it seemed so odd that there should be a Casino in the quiet place near Paris where his widowed friend was living.
Monsieur Noir spread out his hands with an eloquent gesture, and shook his head.
"Perhaps in one hour—perhaps in two hours," he said vaguely.
Oldchester abruptly asked the way to the Casino where Mrs. Blackett was spending the evening. At home, in Dallington, she had always been fond of going to bed early; yet now, according to this Frenchman, she was perhaps going to remain out till one o'clock—till one o'clock on a Sunday morning!
Monsieur Noir obligingly offered to show the stranger the way to Enghien's chief attraction, and a few minutes later found them on the edge of the pretty lake, which to-night, it being a hot evening, was dotted with tiny pleasure craft. Overhanging the lake, and rearing its large mass of building against the still, starry sky, the Casino, where reigns triumphantly the Goddess of Chance, and that, in spite of the efforts which the tradespeople of Paris are ever making to dislodge her from there.
As Oldchester walked slowly through the rooms where the humbler gambling games were in full swing, he told himself that the landlord of the Pension Noir had, of course, made a mistake. It was wildly improbable that Mabel was spending the evening in such a place as was this Casino, and forming part of the mixed crowd of gamblers who surged round the tables risking with anxious, calculating eyes their pieces of silver. Still, with characteristic legal thoroughness, he thought it worth while to go through all the rooms before giving up the search; and the unaccustomed atmosphere and surroundings in which he found himself amused and interested, if they rather shocked him.
At last he found himself in the baccarat room—that is, in the inner sanctuary where the devotees of the fickle goddess risk gold instead of silver, but where the laws of chance, as every gambler knows, are far more honestly observed than at "little horses" or "roulette."
In the baccarat room a good many of the men were in evening dress, and the women with them, if to Oldchester's eyes by no means desirable or reputable-looking companions, yet were in most cases handsome and showy looking—too handsome, too showy for the American lawyer's taste—indeed, he felt a thrill of disgust at the thought that Mabel Blackett could even be thought to be in such company.
Baccarat was going on at two long tables, and the crowd was naturally thicker there than anywhere else in the room. Feeling a certain growing interest in the sight of what he realized was really high play, Oldchester approached the farther of the two tables.
Slowly his eyes focused the various groups and single figures which formed a crowd two deep round the green cloth, and then, with a sudden shock of surprise, he saw Mabel Blackett sitting nearly opposite to where he himself was standing.
There are certain scenes, certain human groupings of individuals, which remain fixed forever against the screen of memory. Bill Oldchester was destined never to forget the particular group on which his tired eyes now rested with growing amazement and attention.
Mrs. Blackett was sitting at the baccarat table, next to the man who was acting as banker. She was evidently absorbed in the fortunes of the game, and she followed the slow falling of the fateful cards with rather feverish intentness.
Her small, gloved hands rested on the table, one of them loosely holding a tiny ivory rake; and on a bank note spread open on the green cloth before her were two neat piles of gold, the one composed of twenty-franc pieces, the other of ten-franc pieces.
Oldchester, with a strange feeling of fear and anger clutching at his heart, told himself that he had never seen Mabel look as she looked to-night. She was more than pretty; she was beautiful, and above all alive—vividly alive. There was a bright colour on her cheek, and a soft light shining in her eyes. The row of pearls which had occasioned the only serious difference he and she had ever had, rose and fell softly on the bosom of her black lace dress.
Oldchester also gradually became aware that Mrs. Blackett formed a centre of attraction to those standing round the gambling table. Both the men and the women stared at her, some enviously, but more with kindly admiration, for beauty is sure of its tribute in any French audience, and Mabel Blackett to-night looked enchantingly lovely.
Now and again she turned and spoke in an eager, intimate fashion to a man sitting next her on her left, and for a moment Oldchester concentrated his attention on this man. Mabel Blackett's companion was obviously a foreigner; he was small and fair, and what could be seen of his evening clothes fitted scrupulously well. The American, looking at him with alien, jealous eyes, decided within himself that this Frenchman with whom Mabel seemed to be on such friendly terms was a foppish-looking fellow, not at all the sort of man she ought to have "picked up" on her travels.
Suddenly she raised her head, throwing it back with a graceful gesture, and Oldchester's eyes traveled on to the person who was standing just behind her, and to whom she had begun speaking with smiling animation. This was a woman—short, stout, and swarthy, dressed in a bright purple gown, and wearing a pale-grey bonnet which was singularly unbecoming to her red, massive face.
Mabel seemed also to include in her conversation a man who was standing next to the stout woman. He was tall and lanky, absurdly and unsuitably dressed, to the American onlooker, in a grey alpaca suit and a shabby Panama hat. In his hand this man held a little book in which he noted down every turn in the game, and it was clear to Oldchester that, though he listened to Mrs. Blackett with civility, he was quite uninterested in what she was saying.
Very different was the attitude of the woman; she seemed deeply interested in Mabel's remarks, and she leaned forward familiarly on the back of the chair on which Mrs. Blackett was sitting, smiling broadly in a way that showed her large, strong teeth.
Oldchester thought them both queer, common-looking people, and he noticed that the Frenchman sitting next Mabel, the dandyish-looking fellow to whom she had been talking before, took no part at all in her present conversation. Once, indeed, he looked up and frowned, as if the talk going on just behind him disturbed him. When at last Mrs. Blackett turned again to the table, this man said something to her which at once made her take up two napoleons and a ten-franc piece from the pile of gold in front of her and place the coins within the ruled-off space reserved for the stakes.
Oldchester, staring at the little scene, felt as if he were in a nightmare—gazing at something which was not real, and which would vanish if looked at long enough.
To those who regard gambling as justifiable, provided the gambler's means allow of it, even to those who habitually see women indulging in games of chance, there will, of course, be something absurd in the point of view of Bill Oldchester. But to him the sight of the woman for whom he had always felt a very sincere respect, as well as a far more enduring and jealous affection than he quite realized, sitting there at a public gaming table, was a staggering, nay, a disgusting sight.
He reminded himself angrily that Mabel had a good income—so good an income that she very seldom spent it all in the course of any one year. Why, therefore, should she wish to increase it? Above all, how could she bear to find herself in this queer, horrid crowd? Why allow herself to be contaminated by breathing the same air as some of the women who were there round her? She and the common, middle-aged woman standing behind her, who, by the way, was not playing, but only looking on, were the only "respectable" women in the room!
And then it was all so deliberate. Oldchester had once seen a man whom he greatly respected drunk, and the sight had ever remained with him. But, after all, a man may get drunk by accident, nay, it may almost be said that a man always gets drunk by accident. But in this matter Mabel Blackett knew very well what she was about.
With a thrill of genuine distress the lawyer told himself that she had evidently become a confirmed gambler; for it was with an assured, familiar gesture that she placed her money on the cloth—and then with what intelligent knowledge she followed the operations of the banker!
He watched her when her money was swept away, and noted the calm manner with which she immediately took five louis from her pile, and pushed them with her little rake well onto the green cloth.
But long before the dealer of the cards had uttered the fateful words: "Le jeu est fait! Rien ne va plus!" Mrs. Blackett uttered an exclamation under her breath, and hurriedly rose from the table. She had seen Oldchester—seen his eves fixed upon her with a perplexed, angry look in them, and the look had made her wince.
As she made her way through the crowd—some one had quickly slipped into her vacant chair—Oldchester saw that she had won; that is, five louis had been added to her original stake; at once the money was swept up by the fair-haired Frenchman in evening dress with whom Mrs. Blackett had evidently been playing.
"Bill! You here? I had quite given you up! I thought you had missed the train—at any rate, never thought you would come out to Enghien as late as this!"
The bright colour which was one of Mabel Blackett's chief physical attributes had faded from her cheeks; she looked pale, and her heart was beating uncomfortably. She would have given almost anything in the world for Bill Oldchester not to have come down and caught her like this—"caught" was the expression poor Mabel used to herself.
"I am so sorry," she went on breathlessly, "so very sorry! What a wretch you must have thought me! But I have got you such a nice room in a pension where I was myself for a little while. It's unlucky I couldn't get you anything with the Noirs—they're such nice people, and it's such a quiet, pleasant house."
Oldchester said nothing; he was still looking at her, trying to readjust his old ideas of her to her present environment. Then there came to them both a welcome diversion.
"Mab-bell, will you not introduce me to your friend?"
Madame Wachner had elbowed her way through the crowd to where Oldchester and Mabel were standing. Her husband lagged a little way behind, his eyes still following the play; even as his wife spoke, he made a note in the little book he held in his hand.
Mabel turned, relieved.
"Oh, Bill," she exclaimed, "this Madame Wachner, who has been very kind to me since came to Enghien."
They turned, and slowly walked down the room. Mabel instinctively fell behind, keeping step with Monsieur Wachner, while Oldchester and Madame Wachner walked in front.
The latter had already taken the measure of the quiet, stolid-looking American. She had seen him long before Mabel had done so, and had watched him with some attention, guessing almost at once that he must be the man Mrs. Blackett had expected would come to dinner.
"I suppose that this is your first visit to Enghien?" she said. "Very few of your countrymen come here, sir, but it is interesting, and it is curious—more curious than Monte Carlo. It is not a place for our pretty friend"—she lowered her voice a little, but he heard her very clearly—"but, ah, she loves play now! Her friend, Madame Olsen, the Danish lady, was also a great lover of baccarat. But now the Danish lady 'as gone away. When Madame Blackett comes here, like this, at night, my husband and I—we are what you American people call old-fashioned folk—we come, too, not to play, oh, no—but you understand, just to look after her. She is so innocent, so young!"
Oldchester looked kindly at the speaker. It was very decent of her—nice and motherly—to take such an interest in poor Mabel and her delinquencies. Yes, that was the way to take the matter which had so shocked him. Mabel Blackett, after all, was a very young woman, and ridiculously innocent. He, Oldchester, knew that a great many nice people went to Monte Carlo; yes, and spent there sometimes a great deal more than they could afford, gambling at the tables. It was absurd to be angry with Mabel for doing what very many other people did in another place. He felt sincerely grateful to this fat, common-looking woman.
"It's very good of you to do that," he said awkwardly. "I mean it's good of you to accompany Mrs. Blackett here." He looked round him with distaste. "It certainly is no place for her to come to alone."
He was going to add something when Mabel came forward; the colour had come back into her cheeks.
"Where's Count Paul?" she asked anxiously. "Sure he did not stay on at the table after we left?"
Madame Wachner shook her head slightly. She looked at Oldchester. It was a meaning look, and somehow it inspired him with prejudice against the person of whom Mabel had just spoken.
"Ah, here he is!" There was relief, nay, gladness ringing in Mrs. Blackett's voice.
The Comte De Poupel had hurried after them, and now he placed ten louis in Mabel's hand.
"Your winnings," he said briefly. Then: "That means, does it not, madame, that you have made thirty-two louis this evening? I congratulate you."
Oldchester's prejudice grew unreasonably. Damn the fellow! Why should he congratulate Mrs. Blackett on having won what was, after all, other people's money? He acknowledged Mabel's introduction of her French friend very stiffly, and he was relieved when the count turned on his heel—relieved, and yet puzzled to see how troubled Mabel seemed to be; she actually tried to keep the Comte De Poupel by her side.
"Aren't you coming with us?" she said, in a tone of deep disappointment.
But he, bowing, answered: "No, madame. It is impossible."
BILL OLDCHESTER stayed at Enghien three days—the three most uncomfortable days he had ever spent. For one thing, he found that he could not sleep. If he had not been the sensible man he prided himself on being, he would have been almost tempted to think that the bedroom he occupied at the pleasant Pension Malfait was haunted. Even on that first night, when he had been so tired after the long journey from England, he had lain awake, hour after hour, finding it impossible to sleep. And when at last he had fallen into a heavy, troubled slumber, he had been disturbed by unpleasant dreams—dreams in which Mabel Blackett played a part, though when he woke up he could not remember what it was she had done.
Although by the time he woke up it was broad daylight, with the sun streaming into the room through the chinks left by the thick curtains, he had waked with the strong feeling that there was some one in the room with him, and that odd impression that he was never alone when in that room never left him—indeed, it had grown stronger and stronger.
After two practically sleepless nights he asked to have the room changed, but the proprietor of the boarding house informed him civilly that there was not another room vacant.
"You only have that apartment," he observed, "because of a lady, Madame Olsen, who left us, rather unexpectedly, a fortnight ago. We let at the beginning of each season for the whole season, and every room I have is occupied."
Oldchester had said nothing of all this to Mabel Blackett. For one thing, they were not on really good terms, for the morning after his arrival he and she had had a very sharp misunderstanding—to call it by no plainer name. On his expressing, as he thought very kindly, his surprise at finding her at such a place, Mabel, with heightened colour, had at once put herself on the defensive, reminding him that she had a perfect right to go where she liked, and to do what she liked with her own money. Nay, more, she had even denied that there was the slightest harm in the kind of existence she was now leading, or in the play she indulged in at the Casino.
"Why, on the whole, I have actually won!" she had cried triumphantly.
And Oldchester, displeased, had looked at her in silence. It was not that he minded so much her losing her money—no doubt she could afford that; it was that she should enjoy winning.
Then her friendship with the Comte De Poupel—if indeed the fellow was a count at all—that also disturbed and astonished the American lawyer. Onlookers proverbially see most of the game, and Oldchester, much against his will, thought he saw that Mrs. Blackett was very fond of the Frenchman. It gradually became clear to him, for instance, that, though she did not mind gambling herself, she very much objected to the Comte De Poupel doing so. She did everything in her power to prevent his going to the Casino. So much Oldchester, with his perceptive faculties sharpened by a kind of sore jealousy, understood.
To the lawyer, Enghien seemed to have changed Mabel Blackett's whole nature; he was disagreeably aware that she was the centre of attraction at Pension Noir; that is, that everybody was watching her—in fact, he soon became aware that he himself was being watched by some of the people there with covert amusement, and the fact made him uneasy and angry.
But Mabel was quite unaware of all this; she seemed only interested in two things in the world—in baccarat and in the Comte De Poupel. She also discussed at great length with Oldchester the problem of Madame Olsen's disappearance, and this annoyed him, for he could not make out why Mabel should care one way or the other about a person whom she had known only a few weeks.
From what Madame Wachner told him—and Oldchester was perforce thrown a good deal in the company of Madame Wachner—this Danish lady had not been a very suitable acquaintance for Mabel; indeed, it was through this Anna Olsen that Mrs. Blackett had come to Enghien. Her disappearance had been a very good thing. But for that perhaps poor Mabel would have gone on to Monte Carlo for the winter, and would have become a confirmed gambler—so at least Madame Wachner seemed to think.
On what was to be the last day of Oldchester's unsatisfactory visit to Enghien, the people in Mabel's pension all went for a picnic in the Forest of Montmorency, and after they had had luncheon Oldchester had been the unwilling witness of a curious, little scene.
Leaving the others still sitting on the grass together, he had got up and strolled away in search of Mabel and the Comte De Poupel. For a while he had searched for them in vain; then, unexpectedly, he had seen them—seen them some few moments before they became aware of his presence.
They were standing opposite one another in a little glade; the count was talking rapidly and very earnestly in French, while Mabel listened to him with downcast eyes. Suddenly she looked up and put out her hand, very deliberately. The count took the little hand in his, and held it for what seemed to the onlooker a long time—in reality perhaps for thirty seconds—then, after raising it to his lips, he let it go.
Oldchester had turned on his heel, walking rapidly away, careless as to whether they were aware or not of his eavesdropping. How odious it was to see Mabel flirting! He had never known her do such a thing at home, in America. Both as a girl and since her widowhood, she had been reserved and staid beyond her years.
But Bill Oldchester was destined to yet another surprise. The morning of the day he was leaving Enghien, the Comte De Poupel came up to him.
"I also am leaving this place to-day," he said, "and I also am going to Switzerland. Perhaps, Mr. Oldchester, we might travel part of the way together."
For the first time the American looked cordially at the Frenchman, although his brow clouded somewhat when the count added very earnestly—more earnestly than the occasion warranted:
"I do wish we could persuade Mrs. Blackett to come with us. Enghien is not a nice place for her to be in alone by herself."
But Mabel refused to leave Enghien, and Oldchester and she had a painful discussion, during which she begged him passionately to mind his own business, and to leave her to do what she thought best for her own comfort and happiness.
"Can't you see that I am miserable?" she had flashed out. "The little amusement—well, yes, the gambling—you grudge me is the only thing that takes me out of myself!"
He had been present when she had made an appointment with the Wachners to meet them at the Casino that very evening, and then to go home with them to supper, and he had felt vaguely glad that they, at any rate, were there to look after her.
She had accompanied both travelers to the station, talking a great deal and laughing gayly, more animated than Oldchester had ever seen her. And at the very last, on the platform, she had suddenly become far more like her old self.
"I don't suppose I shall really stay here very long, after all." Such had been her last whispered words to Bill Oldchester.
To the Comte De Poupel she had simply given her hand, silently.
IT was half-past eight, and for the moment the Casino was very empty, for the afternoon players had left, and the evening série, as Paul De Poupel called them, had not yet arrived.
"And now," said Madame Wachner suddenly, "is it not time for us to go and 'ave our little supper?"
She had been watching her husband and Mabel Blackett playing at baccarat; both of them had won, not very much, but enough to make Mabel at least feel pleasantly excited.
Mrs. Blackett turned round, smiling. It was nice of the Wachners to ask her back to supper at the Châlet des Muguets. It would have been lonely this evening at the Pension Noir. Mabel felt curiously deserted—the thought that Paul De Poupel would leave Enghien had never occurred to her.
"I'm quite ready." And then addressing herself more particularly to Madame Wachner, who she knew disliked walking: "Shall we take a carriage?" she asked diffidently.
Mabel meant the carriage to be her share of the evening's junketing.
"No, no," said Monsieur Wachner shortly. "There is no need to take a carriage to-night; it is so fine, and besides, it is not very far."
And so the three walked away together from the établissement—Mabel with her light, springing step keeping pace with "L'Ami Fritz," while his wife lagged a step behind. But as usual the man remained silent, while the two women talked. To-night, however, Madame Wachner did not show her usual tact; her mind seemed running on the Comte De Poupel.
"I am glad he 'as gone away," she said. "He is so supercilious—so different to that excellent Mr. Oldchester. Perhaps you will find them both in America, together, when you go back!"
Mabel made no answer; she thought it probable that she would never see the Comte De Poupel again, and the conviction hurt her shrewdly. It was painful to be reminded of him now, in this way, and by a woman who she knew disliked him as much as he disliked her.
To-night, in the gathering darkness, the way to the Châlet des Muguets seemed longer than usual—far longer than it had seemed the last time she had gone there, but on that occasion Paul De Poupel had been her companion.
At last the three walkers came within sight of the little, white gate. How strangely lonely the house looked standing back in the neglected, untidy garden!
"I wonder," Mabel Blackett looked up at her silent companion—"L'Ami Fritz" had not opened his lips a single time during the walk from the Casino—"I wonder that you and Madame Wachner are not afraid to leave the house alone for so many hours of each day. Your servant leaves after lunch, doesn't she?"
"There is nothing to steal," he answered shortly. "We always carry all our money about with us—all sensible people do so at Enghien and at Monte Carlo."
Madame Wachner was now on Mabel's other side.
"Yes," she said rather breathlessly; "that is so, and I hope that you, dear friend, followed the advice we gave you about that matter."
"Of course I did," said Mabel, smiling. "I always carry my money about with me, strapped round my waist in that pretty, little leather bag which you gave me. At first it wasn't very comfortable, but I have got quite used to it now."
"That is right!" said the other heartily. "That is quite right! There are rogues in every pension, perhaps even in the Pension Noir, if we knew everything!" went on Madame Wachner, laughing her hearty, jovial laugh. "By the way, Ami Fritz, have you written that letter to the Pension Noir?" She turned to Mabel. "We are anxious to get a room in your pension for a friend."
Mabel felt, she could hardly say why, that the question had extremely annoyed Monsieur Wachner.
"Of course, I have written the letter," he snapped out. "Do I ever forget anything?"
"I fear there is no room vacant," Mabel said. "And yet—well, I suppose they have not had time to let the Comte De Poupel's room. They only knew he was going this morning. You need not trouble to write a letter, I will give the message."
"Ah, but the person in question may arrive to-night," said Madame Wachner. "No, we are arranging to send the letter by a cabman who will call for it."
Monsieur Wachner pushed open the white gate, and all three began walking up through the garden. The mantle of night now draped every straggling bush, every wilted flower, and the little wilderness was filled with delicious pungent night scents.
Mabel smiled in the darkness; there seemed something so primitive, so simple in keeping the key of one's front door outside, under the mat. And yet the foolish, prejudiced people spoke of Enghien as a dangerous spot, as being a plague pit!
But before they had time to look for the key, the door was opened by the day servant.
"What are you doing here?" asked Madame Wachner angrily. There was a note of dismay, as well as of anger, in her voice.
The woman began to excuse herself volubly,
"I thought I might be of some use, madame, I thought I might help you with all the last details."
"There was no necessity—none at all for doing anything of the kind," said Madame Wachner, speaking very quickly. "You had been paid! You had had your present! However, as you are here, you may as well lay a third place in the dining room; for, as you see, we have brought madame back to have a little supper. She will only stay a very few moments; she has to be home at her pension by ten o'clock."
Mabel, as is often the case with those who have been much thrown with French people, could understand French much better than she could speak it, and what Madame Wachner had just said surprised and puzzled her. It was quite untrue that she had to be back at the Pension Noir by ten o'clock—for the matter of that, she could stay out as long and as late as she liked, the more so that her host would certainly escort her back.
Then again, although the arrangement that she should come to supper to-night had been made the day before, Madame Wachner had evidently forgotten to tell her servant, for only two places were laid in the dining room, into which they all three walked through on entering the house. On the dining table stood a lighted lamp, and propped up against it was a letter addressed to Madame Noir in a peculiar, large handwriting. "L'Ami Fritz" muttered something, and, taking it up hurriedly, put it into his breast pocket.
"I brought that letter out of monsieur's bedroom," observed the servant. "I feared monsieur had forgotten it. Would monsieur like me to take it to the Pension Noir on my way home?"
"No," said Monsieur Wachner shortly. "There is no need for you to do that."
His wife called out to him imperiously, from the dark passage: "Fritz! Fritz! Come here a moment. I want you."
He hurried out of the room, and Mabel Blackett and the servant were left alone together for a few moments.
The woman went to the buffet, and took up a plate; she came and placed it noisily on the table, and under cover of the sound: "Do not stay here, madame," she whispered. "Come away with me. Say you want me to accompany you to the Pension Noir."
Mabel stared at her distrustfully. The servant had a disagreeable face; a cunning, avaricious look was in her eyes, or so the young American fancied. No doubt she remembered the couple of francs given her, or rather extorted by her, the week before.
"I will not say more," the woman went on, speaking very quickly, and under her breath. "But I am an honest woman, and these people frighten me. Still I am not one to want embarrassments with the police."
And Mabel suddenly remembered that those were exactly the same words which had been used by Anna Olsen's landlady in connection with Anna's disappearance. How frightened French people seemed to be of the police!
The servant again moved away; she took up the plate she had just placed on the table, and to Mabel's mingled disgust and amusement began rubbing it vigorously with her elbow.
Monsieur Wachner came into the room.
"That will do, that will do, Annette," he said patronizingly. "Come here, my good woman. I desire to give you a pretty little gift from myself. So here is twenty francs. And now good night."
"Merci, m'sieur."
Without again looking at Mabel, the woman went out of the room. A moment later the front door slammed behind her.
"My wife discovered that it is Annette's fête day to-morrow. No doubt that was why she stayed on to-night."
Madame Wachner came in.
"Oh, those French people!" she exclaimed. "How greedy they are for money! But—well, the woman has earned her present very fairly." She shrugged her shoulders.
"May I go and take off my hat?" asked Mabel.
She left the room before Madame Wachner could answer her, and walked down the short, dark passage.
The door of the moonlit kitchen was ajar, and, to her surprise, Mabel Blackett saw that a trunk, corded and even labeled, stood in the middle of the floor.
Close to the trunk was a large piece of sacking. Was it possible that the Wachners, too, were leaving Enghien? If so, how very odd not to have told her!
As she opened the door of the bedroom, Madame Wachner came up behind her.
"Wait a moment," she said breathlessly. "I had better get a light. You see we have been rather upset to-day, for L'Ami Fritz has to go away for two or three days, and that is a great affair—we are seldom separated."
"The moon is so bright I can see quite well."
Mabel was taking off her hat; she put it, together with a little fancy bag in which she kept the silver she played with at the gambling tables, on Madame Wachner's bed. She felt vaguely uncomfortable, for even as Madame Wachner had spoken she had become aware that the bedroom was almost entirely cleared of everything belonging to its occupant.
As they came back into the dining room, Monsieur Wachner, who was already sitting down at table, looked up.
"Words—words—words!" he exclaimed harshly. "Instead of talking so much, why do you not both sit down and eat your suppers? I am hungry."
Mabel had never heard him speak in such a tone before, but his wife answered quite good-humouredly:
"You forget, Fritz, that the cabman is coming. Till he has come and gone, we shall not have peace."
And sure enough, within a moment of saying those words, there came a sound of steps on the path in the garden. Monsieur Wachner got up, and went out of the room. He opened the front door, and Mabel overheard a few words of the colloquy:
"Yes, you are to take it now at once. Just leave it at the Pension Noir. You will come for us—you will come; that is, for me"—monsieur raised his voice—"to-morrow morning at half-past six. I wish to catch the seven-ten train to Paris."
Mabel heard the man's answering "Bien, m'sieur."
But "L'Ami Fritz" did not come back at once. He went out into the garden and down the gate. When he came back again, he put a large key on the table.
"There!" he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. "Now there will be nothing to disturb us any more."
They all three sat down at the round dining table. To Mabel's surprise, it was a very simple meal. There was only one small dish of cold meat. Always before when Mabel Blackett had been to supper there had been two or three tempting dishes, and some dainty friandises as well, the whole procured from the excellent confectioner who drives such a roaring trade at Enghien. To-night, in addition to a few slices of cold tongue, there was only a little fruit.
"L'Ami Fritz" helped first his wife and himself largely, then Mabel more frugally. It was a very slight matter, the more so that he was notoriously forgetful, being ever, according to his wife, absorbed in his calculations and "systems." But, all the same, this odd lack of good manners on her host's part added to Mabel's feeling of strangeness and discomfort.
Indeed, the Wachners were both very unlike their usual selves this evening. Madame Wachner had suddenly become very serious, her face was set in rather grim, grave lines; twice as Mabel was eating the little piece of galantine which had been placed on her plate, she looked up and caught her hostess' eyes fixed on her with a curious, alien scrutiny.
When they had almost finished the meat which was on their plates, Madame Wachner said suddenly:
"Ami Fritz, you have forgotten to mix the salad! You will find what is necessary in the drawer behind you."
Monsieur Wachner got up, and, silently pulling the drawer of the buffet open, he took out of it a wooden spoon and fork; then he came back to the table, and began silently mixing the salad.
The last two times Mabel had been at the Châlet des Muguets, her host, in deference to her American taste, had put a large admixture of vinegar in the salad dressing, but this time she saw that he soused the lettuce leaves with oil.
At last: "Will you have some salad, Mrs. Blackett?" he said brusquely.
"No," she said. "Not to-night, thank you."
And she looked across at Madame Wachner, expecting to see in the older woman's face a humorous appreciation of the fact that "L'Ami Fritz" had forgotten her well-known horror of oil, for Mabel's dislike of a French salad ingredient had long been a little joke among the three, nay, among the four, for Anna Olsen had been there the last time Mabel had had supper with the Wachners—and it had been such a merry meal!
To-night no meaning smile met hers; instead, she saw that odd, grave, considering look on the older woman's face.
Suddenly Madame Wachner held out her plate across the table, and her husband heaped it up with the oily mixture. Then he took up one of the two remaining pieces of meat that were on the dish, and placed it on his wife's plate. He offered nothing more to Mabel. It was such a little thing, and yet, taken in connection with their silence and odd manner, this omission struck her with a kind of fear, with fear and with pain. She felt so hurt that the tears came into her eyes.
Both husband and wife were now eating voraciously. There was a long moment's pause; then:
"Do you not feel well?" asked Madame Wachner harshly. "Or are grieving for the Comte De Poupel?"
Her voice had become guttural, full of coarse and cruel malice.
Mabel Blackett pushed her chair back, and rose to her feet.
"I should like to go home," she said quietly. "It is getting late. I can make my way back quite well without Monsieur Wachner's escort."
She saw her host shrug his shoulders. He made a face at his wife; it expressed annoyance, nay more, extreme disapproval.
Madame Wachner also got up. She laid her hand on Mabel's shoulder.
"Come, Come," she said, this time quite kindly, "you must not be cross with me, dear friend! I was only laughing. I was only what you call in America 'teasing.' The truth is, I am very vexed and upset that our supper is not better. I told that fool Frenchwoman to get in something nice. She disobeyed me. But now L'Ami Fritz is going to make us some good coffee. After we have had it, you shall go away if you wish."
Mabel Blackett sat down again. After all, as Paul De Poupel had truly said, not once but many times, the Wachners were not very refined people. And then she, Mabel, was tired and low-spirited to-night; perhaps she had imagined the change in their manner which had so surprised, nay, almost frightened her. Now Madame Wachner was quite her old self; indeed, she was heaping all the cherries which were in the dessert dish on her guest's plate, in spite of Mabel's smiling protest.
"L'Ami Fritz" got up, and left the room. He was going into the kitchen to make the coffee.
"Mr. Oldchester was telling me of your valuable pearls," said Madame Wachner pleasantly. "I was surprised! What a lot of money to hang round one's neck! But it is worth it, if one has so lovely a neck as has the little Mab-bel. May I look at them, or do you never take them off?"
Mabel unclasped the string of pearls, and laid it on the table.
"Yes, they are nice," she said. "I always wear them, even at night. Many people have a knot made between each pearl, for that of course makes the danger of losing them much less should the string break. But mine are not knotted, for a lady once told me that it made the pearls hang much less prettily; she said it would be quite safe if I had them restrung every six months."
Madame Wachner reverentially took up the pearls in her large hand; she seemed to be weighing them.
"How heavy they are," she observed.
"Yes," said Mabel, "you can always tell a real pearl by its weight."
"And to think," went on her hostess musingly, "that each of these tiny balls is worth—how much is it worth?—at least five or six 'undred francs, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Mabel again, "they have greatly increased in value during the last few years. You see, pearls are the only really fashionable gems just now."
"I suppose they are worth more together than separately?" said Madame Wachner, still in that thoughtful, considering tone.
"Oh, I don't know that," said Mabel, smiling. "Of course these are beautifully matched. I got them by a piece of good luck, without having to pay—well, what I suppose one would call the middleman's profit. I just paid what I should have done at an auction."
"And you paid? Two—three thousand dollars?" asked Madame Wachner, fixing her small, dark, bright eyes on the fair American's face.
"Oh, rather more than that." Mabel grew a little red. "But, as I said just now, they are always increasing in value. Even Mr. Oldchester, who did not approve of my getting these pearls, admits that."
Through the open door she thought she heard Monsieur Wachner coming back down the passage. So she suddenly took the pearls out of the other woman's hand, and clasped the string about her neck again.
"L'Ami Fritz" came into the room. He was holding rather awkwardly a little tray, on which were two cups—one a small cup, the other a large cup, both filled to the brim with black coffee. He put the small cup before his guest, the large cup before his wife.
"I hope you do not mind having a small cup," he said solemnly. "I remember that you do not care to take a great deal of coffee."
Mabel looked up.
"Oh, dear," she said, "I ought to have told you before! I won't have any coffee to-night. Coffee is very bad for me. The last time I took some I lay awake all night."
"Oh, but you must take some." Madame Wachner spoke good-humouredly, but with great determination. "The small amount you have in that little cup will not hurt you; and, besides, it is a special coffee; L'Ami Fritz's own mixture."
She laughed heartily. And again Mabel noticed that Monsieur Wachner looked at his wife with a fixed, rather angry look, as much as to say: "Why are you always laughing? Why cannot you be serious sometimes?"
"But honestly, to-night, I would rather not." Mabel had suddenly seen a vision of herself lying wide awake during long hours—hours which, as she knew by experience, generally bring to the sleepless worrying thoughts. "No, no, I will not have any coffee to-night," she repeated.
"Yes, yes, dear friend, you really must." Madame Wachner spoke very persuasively. "I should be really sorry if you did not take your coffee—indeed, it would make me think you were angry with us because of the very bad supper we have given you. L'Ami Fritz would not have taken the trouble to make coffee for his old wife; he has made it for you, only for you; he will be hurt if you do not take it."
The coffee did look very tempting. Mabel had always disliked coffee in America, but somehow French coffee was quite different; it had an entirely different taste to that which the ladies of Dallington pressed on their guests after dinner at their solemn dinner parties.
She lifted the pretty little cup to her lips. The coffee had a rather curious taste; it was slightly bitter—decidedly not so nice as that to which she was accustomed to drink each day after déjeuner at the Pension Noir. Surely it would be very foolish to risk a bad night for a small cup of indifferent coffee!
She put the cup down, and pushed it away.
"Please don't ask me to take it!" she said, "It really is very bad for me."
Madame Wachner shrugged her shoulders with an angry gesture.
"Fritz," she said imperiously, "will you please come with me for a moment into the next room? I have something to ask you."
Silently he obeyed his wife, and a moment later Mabel, left alone, could hear them talking eagerly to one another in that strange, unknown tongue in which they sometimes—not often—addressed one another.
Mabel got up from her chair. She felt a sudden eager desire to slip away. For a moment she even thought of leaving the house without saying good night, even without waiting for her hat and scarf. And then, with a strange sinking of the heart, she remembered that the little white gate was locked.
But in no case would she have had time to do what she had thought of doing, for her host and hostess were now back in the room.
Madame Wachner sat down again at the dining table.
"One moment," she said rather breathlessly. "Just wait till I have finished my coffee, Mab-bel, and then L'Ami Fritz will escort you home."
Monsieur Wachner was paying no attention either to his guest or to his wife. He took up the chair on which he had been sitting, and placed it out of the way near the door. Then he lifted the lamp off the table, and put it on the buffet; as he did so, Mabel, looking up, saw the shadow of his tall figure thrown grotesquely, hugely, against the opposite wall of the room.
"Take the cloth off the table," he said quickly in French.
And his wife, gulping down the last drops of her coffee, got up and obeyed him.
Mabel suddenly realized that they were getting ready for something—that they wanted the room cleared.
As with quick, deft fingers Madame Wachner folded up the cloth, she said curtly:
"As you are not taking any coffee, Mab-bel, perhaps it is time for you now to get up and go away."
Mabel looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt very angry. Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life had any one ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house. She rose to her feet.
And then in a moment there occurred that which transformed her anger into agonized fear and amazement. The back of her neck was grazed by something sharp and cold. She gave a smothered cry. Her string of pearls had parted in two, and the pearls were now falling, one by one with dull thuds, and rolling all over the floor.
Instinctively she bent down, but as she did so she heard the man behind her make a quick movement. She straightened herself, and looked sharply round. "L'Ami Fritz," still holding the small pair of nail scissors in his hand with which he had snapped asunder her necklace, was in the act of taking out something that looked like a very short croquet mallet from the drawer of the buffet.
Mabel Blackett's nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and clear.
There leaped on her the knowledge that this man and woman meant to kill her—to kill her for the sake of the pearls which were still bounding along the floor, and for the small sum of money which she carried slung in the leather bag below her waist.
"L'Ami Fritz" stood staring at her; he had put his hand—the hand holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer—behind his back. He was very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.
For a horrible moment there floated across Mabel's subconscious mind the thought of Anna Olsen, and of what she now knew to have been Anna Olsen's fate.
But she put that thought away from her determinedly. The instinct of self-preservation possessed her wholly. Already, in far less time than it would have taken to formulate the words, she had made up her mind to speak, and she knew exactly what she meant to say.
"It does not matter about my pearls," she said quietly. Her voice shook a little, but she spoke in her usual tone. "If you are going into Paris to-morrow morning, perhaps you would take them to be restrung."
The man looked questioningly across at his wife.
"Yes, that sounds a good plan," he said in his guttural voice.
"No," exclaimed Madame Wachner decidedly, "that will not do at all! We must not run that risk! The pearls must be found now, at once." She made a gesture as if she also meant to bend down and seek for them. "Stoop!" she said imperiously. "Stoop, Mab-bel! Help me to find your pearls."
But Mabel Blackett made no attempt to obey the order. Instead she gradually edged toward the closed window. At last she stood with her back to it, with Madame Wachner rather to her right, Wachner to her left.
"No," she said, "I will not stoop and pick up my pearls now, Madame Wachner. It will be easier to look in the daylight. Monsieur Wachner will find them to-morrow morning."
There came a tone of pleading, and for the first time of pitiful fear, in her voice.
"It is not his business to find your pearls," exclaimed Madame Wachner harshly.
She stepped forward, and gripped Mabel by the arm, pulling her violently forward. As she did so she made a sign to her husband, and he pushed a chair quickly between Mrs. Blackett and the window, thus forcing her to lose her point of vantage.
But Mabel was young and lithe; she kept her feet.
But though she kept her feet, she knew with a cold, reasoning knowledge that she was very near to death; that it was only a question of minutes—unless—unless she could make the man and woman before her understand that they would make far more money by allowing her to live than by killing her now, to-night, for the value of the pearls that lay scattered on the floor, and the small—the pitiably small—sum in her leather waist bag.
"If you will let me go," she said desperately, "I swear I will give you everything I have in the world!"
But the woman's grip on her shoulder became heavier, more cruel; she was trying to force Mabel down onto her knees.
"What do you take us for?" she said furiously. "We want nothing from you—nothing at all!"
She looked across at her husband, and there burst from her lips a torrent of words uttered in the language unknown to those who knew the Wachners.
Mabel listened with painful attention. She was trying to catch the drift of what was being said. Alas! She knew only too well; and there fell on her ear, twice repeated, the name Olsen.
Slowly Wachner moved a step forward, Mabel looked at him, an agonized appeal in her eyes. He was smiling, a nervous grin zigzagging across his large, thin-lipped mouth.
"You should have taken the coffee," he muttered. "It would have saved us all much trouble!"
He put out his left hand, and the long, strong fingers closed, tentaclewise, on her slender shoulder. His right hand he kept still hidden behind his back.
THE great open-air restaurant in the Champs Elysées was full of foreigners. Paul De Poupel and Bill Oldchester were sitting opposite to one another on the broad terrace dotted with small tables embowered in flowering shrubs. They were both smoking, the American a cigar, the Frenchman a cigarette. It was now half-past eight. Instead of taking the first express for Switzerland, they had decided to have dinner in Paris, and to take a later train.
"I do not feel happy at our having left Mrs. Blackett alone at Enghien, Mr. Oldchester."
Paul De Poupel took the cigarette out of his mouth, and put it down on the table.
Oldchester looked up. His nerves were on edge. What did the Frenchman mean by saying that?
"I don't see what else we could do," he said shortly.
He had no wish to discuss Mabel and her affairs with this foreigner, however oddly intimate Mrs. Blackett had allowed herself to get with the Comte De Poupel.
"Enghien is a very queer place," observed the Comte De Poupel meditatively.
Oldchester thought the remark too obvious to answer. Of course Enghien was a queer place; to put it plainly, little better than a gambling hell. But it was rather strange to hear the Comte De Poupel saying so—a real case if ever there was one, of Satan rebuking sin. But at last:
"Of course it is," he said irritably. "I can't think what made Mrs. Blackett go there in the first instance."
"She was brought there by the Danish lady she met in a hotel in Paris, and who disappeared so strangely," answered Paul De Poupel quickly. "It is not the place for a young lady to be by herself."
Bill Oldchester tilted back the chair on which he was sitting. Once more he asked himself what on earth the fellow was driving at? Was all this talk simply a preliminary to the count's saying that he was not going to Switzerland, after all; that he was going back to Enghien in order to take care of Mabel? What an absurd idea!
Quite suddenly the young American felt shaken by a very primitive, and to him hitherto a very unfamiliar feeling, that of jealousy. Damn it—he wouldn't have that! Of course in love with Mabel Blackett. All that sort of nonsense had been over long ago, but he, Bill Oldchester, was her trustee and lifelong friend; he must see to it that she didn't make a fool of herself either by gambling away her money—the good money the late George Blackett had toiled so many years to make—or—or—worse by far, by making some wretched foreign marriage.
He stared at his companion suspiciously. Was it likely that a real count would lead the sort of life this man De Poupel was leading, in a place like Enghien?
"If you really feel like that, I think I'd better give up my trip to Switzerland, and go back to Enghien to-morrow morning."
He stared hard at the Comte De Poupel, and noted with sarcastic amusement the other's appearance—so foppish, so effeminate to American eyes. Particularly did he regard with scorn the count's yellow silk which matched his lemon-colored tie and silk pocket handkerchief. Fancy starting for a long night journey in such a "get-up"! Well! Perhaps women liked that sort of thing, but he would never have thought Mabel was that sort of woman.
A change came over Paul De Poupel's face. There was unmistakable relief, nay, more, even joy in the voice with which the Frenchman answered:
"That is excellent! That is quite right! That is first rate! Yes, yes, Mr. Oldchester, you go back there. It is not right that Mrs. Blackett should be by herself. It may seem absurd to you, but, believe me, Enghien is not a safe spot in which to leave an unprotected woman. She has not one single friend, not a person to whom she could turn to for advice—excepting, of course, the excellent Noirs, who keep the pension, and they naturally desire to keep their good guest."
"There's that funny old couple—that man called Fritz something or other, and his wife," observed Oldchester.
Paul De Poupel shook his head,
"Those people are not nice people," he said decidedly. "They appear to be very fond of are Mrs. Blackett, but they are only fond of themselves. They are adventurers, 'out for the stuff,' as you Americans say. The man is the worst type of gambler, the type that believes he is going to get rich, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, by a 'system.' Such a man will do anything for money. I believe they knew far more of the disappearance of Madame Olsen than any one else did. I have suspected"—he dropped his voice, and leaned over the table—"nay, I have felt sure from the very first, that the Wachners are blackmailers. I am convinced that they discovered something to that poor lady's discredit and—after making her pay—drove her away. Just before she left Enghien they were trying to raise money at the Casino money changer's on some worthless shares. But after Madame Olsen's disappearance they had plenty of gold and notes."
Oldchester looked again at his companion. At last he was really impressed. Blackmailing is a word which has a very ugly sound in an American lawyer's ears.
"If that is really true," he said suddenly, "I almost feel as if I ought to go back to Enghien to-night. I suppose there are heaps of trains."
"You might at all events wait till to-morrow morning," said Paul De Poupel dryly.
He also had suddenly experienced a touch of that jealous feeling which had surprised Oldchester but a few moments before. But he was a Frenchman, and he was familiar with the sensation—nay, he welcomed it. "To think," he said to himself, "that I am still capable of jealousy! Eh! Eh! I am not so old as I thought I was!"
Mabel Blackett seemed to have come very near to him in the last few moments. He saw her blue eyes brimming with tears, her pretty mouth trembling; her hand lay once more in his hand.
Had he grasped that kind, firm little hand, an entirely new life had been within his reach. A sensation of immeasurable lo over Paul De Poupel.
But no—he had been right, quite right. He liked her too well to risk making her as unhappy as he might make her, as he would be tempted to make her, if she became his wife.
Paul De Poupel took off his hat. He remained silent for what seemed to his American companion quite a long time.
"By the way, what is Mrs. Blackett doing to-night?" he said at last.
"To-night?" said Oldchester. "Let me see—why, to-night she is spending the evening with those very people of whom you were speaking just now. I heard her arrange it with them this morning." He added stiffly: "I doubt if your impression is a right one. They seem to me a respectable couple."
Paul De Poupel shrugged his shoulders. He felt suddenly uneasy, afraid he hardly knew of what. There was no risk that Mabel Blackett would fall a victim to blackmailers—she had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to fear—but still he hated to think that she was, even now, alone with this sinister man and woman of whom he had formed such a bad impression.
He took his watch out of his pocket.
"There's a train for Enghien at a quarter to ten," he said slowly. "That would be an excellent train for you—for us to take."
"Then are you thinking of going back to Enghien, too?" There was a sarcastic inflection in the American's voice.
"Yes."
The Comte De Poupel looked at Oldchester significantly, and his look said: "Take care, my friend. We do not allow a man to sneer at another man in this country unless he is willing to stand certain unpleasant consequences."
During the short train journey they hardly spoke to one another. Each thought that the other was doing a strange thing—and a thing which the thinker could have done much better if left to himself.
At Enghien station they jumped into a victoria.
"I suppose we had better drive straight to the Pension Noir," Oldchester said hesitatingly.
"Yes. And I will go on somewhere else as soon as I know you have seen Mrs. Blackett. She should be back from the Wachners by now. By the way, Mr. Oldchester, you had better ask to have my room to-night; we know that it is disengaged. Please do not tell her that I came back with you. Where would be the use? Perhaps I will go back to Paris to-night."
The Comte De Poupel spoke in a constrained, preoccupied voice.
"But aren't you coming in? Won't you stay at Enghien at least till to-morrow?"
Oldchester's voice unwittingly became far more cordial; if he did not wish to see Mabel, why had he insisted on coming to-night?
The veranda of the Pension Noir was still brightly lit up, for late hours are the rule in Enghien. As they drew up before the door, the Comte De Poupel suddenly grasped the other's hand.
"Good luck!" he exclaimed. "Good luck, fortunate man!"
Oldchester was rather touched as well as surprised. But what queer, emotional fellows Frenchmen are, to be sure! This Paul De Poupel had evidently been a little bit in love with Mabel, but he was evidently quite willing to think of her married to another fellow. But—but Oldchester was no longer so sure that he wanted to marry Mabel. She was different somehow—another Mabel to the one he had always known.
"I'll just come out, and tell you that it's all right," he said a little awkwardly. "But I wish you'd come in, if only for a minute. Mrs. Blackett would be so pleased to see you."
"No, no," muttered the other. "Believe me, she would not!"
Oldchester turned, and walked through into the veranda. It was empty save for the landlord, a voluble southerner, who, as a rule, saw but little of his guests, for he was not ashamed of acting as chef in his own kitchen, leaving the rest of the management of the prosperous pension to his wife. As it happened, however, Madame Noir had had to go away for two or three days.
"I want to know," said Oldchester abruptly, "if you can let me have a room for to-night? The room of the Comte De Poupel is, I believe, disengaged?"
"I will see, monsieur—I will inquire!"
Monsieur Noir did not know what to make of this big American who had come in out of the night, bringing no luggage with him but one little bag. Then he suddenly remembered; why, of course this was the friend of the pretty, charming, wealthy Madame Blackett, the gentleman who had been staying during the past few days at the Pension Malfait.
Then, this Mr. Oldchester's departure from Enghien had been a fausse sortie? A ruse to get rid of the Comte De Poupel, who was also in love with the American widow? Ah! Ah! Monsieur Noir felt much amused. But the American's tale of love was not to run smoothly, after all, for now another complication had arisen.
"Yes, yes," he said, "it is all right! I had forgotten! As you say, monsieur, the Comte De Poupel's room is now empty, but——" He hesitated, and with a sly look added: "Indeed, we have another room empty to-night—a far finer room, the room of Madame Blackett."
"The room of Mrs. Blackett?" echoed Oldchester. "Has Mrs. Blackett changed her room?"
"Oh, no, monsieur. She left Enghien this very evening. I have but just now received a letter from her."
The little man could hardly keep serious. Oh! Those Americans who are said to be so cold! They also when in love behave like other people!
"Ah, what a charming lady, monsieur! Madame Noir and I shall miss her greatly. We hoped to see her for all the summer. Perhaps she will come back, now monsieur has returned."
"Left Enghien!" repeated Oldchester incredulously. "But that's impossible! It isn't more than three or four hours since we said good by to her here. She had no intention of leaving Enghien then. Do you say you've had a letter from her? Will you please show it to me?"
"Certainly, monsieur."
Monsieur Noir, followed by the American, trotted off into his office. Slowly, methodically, he began to turn over the papers on the writing table. He felt quite lost without his wife, and just a little uncomfortable. There had evidently been a lovers' quarrel between these two peculiar American people. What a pity that the gentleman, who had very properly returned to beg the lady's pardon, found his little bird flown!
In such poetic terms did Monsieur Noir in his own mind refer to Mabel Blackett. Her presence in his house had delighted his southern, sentimental mind; he felt her to be so decorative, as well as so lucrative, a guest to his beloved pension. Mrs. Blackett had never questioned any of the extras he had put on her weekly bill. And she had never become haggard and cross as other ladies did who lost money at the Casino, Though he was very sorry she had left the Pension Noir, he was gratified by the fact that she had lived up to his ideal of her, for, though Madame Blackett had paid her weekly bill only two days before, she had actually sent him a hundred francs to pay for the two days' board; the balance to be distributed among the servants.
There could surely be no harm in giving this odd-looking American the lady's letter? Still, Monsieur Noir was sorry that he had not Madame Noir at his elbow to make the decision for him.
"Here it is," he said at last, taking a piece of paper out of a drawer. "I must have put it there for Madame Noir to read it on her return. It is a very gratifying letter—monsieur will see that for himself."
Oldchester took the folded-up piece of note paper out of the little Frenchman's hand with a strange feeling of misgiving. Then, glancing at the letter: "You have made mistake," he said quickly. "This isn't Mrs. Blackett's handwriting."
"Oh, yes, monsieur, it is certainly Mrs. Blackett's letter. You see there is the lady's signature written as plainly as possible."
Oldchester looked to where the man's fat finger pointed. Yes, in the strange, the alien handwriting were written two words, "Mabbel" and "Blacket," but the handwriting, stiff, angular, large, resembled his cousin's sloping calligraphy as little as did the spelling of the two words that of her name. A thrill of fear, of terrifying suspicion flooded Bill Oldchester's shrewd, commonplace mind. Slowly he read the strange letter through. The missive ran, in French:
Madame Noir:
I am leaving Enghien this evening in order to join my friend, Madame Olsen. I request you, therefore, to send on my luggage to the cloakroom at the Gare du Nord. I inclose a hundred-franc note to pay you what I owe. Please distribute the rest of the money among the servants. I beg to inform you that I have been exceedingly comfortable at the Pension Noir, and will recommend it to my friends.
Yours very cordially,
Mabbel Blacket.
Turning on his heel, without even saying "Bon soir" to the astonished, and by now repentant Monsieur Noir, Oldchester rushed out on the veranda.
"Come into the house! Now, at once!" he said roughly. "Something extraordinary has happened!"
The Comte De Poupel jumped out of the carriage, and a moment later the two men stood together in the brightly lighted veranda, unseeing, uncaring of the fact that Monsieur Noir was staring at them with affrighted eyes.
"This letter purports to be from Mabel Blackett," said Oldchester hoarsely, "but of course it is nothing of the sort! She never wrote a line of it. It's entirely unlike her handwriting—and then look at the absurd signature! What does it mean, Poupel? Can you give me any clue to what it means?"
The Comte De Poupel looked up. Even Oldchester, frightened and angry as he now was, could not help noticing how the other man's face had changed in a few moments. From being of a usual healthy pallor, it had turned so white as to look almost green under the bright electric light.
"Yes, I think I know what it means," said Poupel in a whisper "Do not let us make a scene here. I know where she is. If what I believe is true, every moment is of value."
He plucked the American by the sleeve, and hurried him out into the grateful darkness.
"Get into the carriage," he said imperiously. "I will see to everything."
Oldchester heard him direct the driver to the police station.
"We may need two or three gendarmes," he muttered. "It's worth the three minutes' delay!"
The carriage drew up before a shabby little house across which was written in huge black letters the word "Gendarmerie." The count rushed into the guardroom, hurriedly explained his errand to the superintendent, and came out, but a moment later, with three men.
"We must make room for them somehow," he said briefly, and room was made.
Oldchester noticed with surprise that each man was armed not only with a stave, but with a revolver. The French police show no kindness even to potential criminals.
They swept on, through the dimly lighted, shady avenues, till they came to the outskirts of the town. Paul De Poupel sat with clenched hands, staring in front of him, and the gendarmes murmured together in quick, excited tones.
At last, as they turned into a dark road, De Poupel suddenly began to talk at the very top of his voice:
"Speak, Mr. Oldchester, speak as loud as you can! Shout! Say anything that you like! They may as well hear that we are coming!"
But Oldchester could not do what the other man so urgently required of him; to save his life he could not have opened his mouth and shouted as the other was doing.
"We are going to pay an evening call—what you in America call an evening call! We are going to fetch our friend—our friend, Mrs. Blackett; she is so charming, so delightful! We are going to fetch her because she has been spending the evening with her friends, the Wachners. The old woman-devil—you remember her surely? The woman who asked you concerning your plans? It is she I fear——"
"Je crois que c'est ici, monsieur?"
The horse was suddenly brought up short opposite a small white gate. Oldchester saw, standing back in a large moonlit garden, a small square house. The windows were closely shuttered, but where the shutters met in one of the lower rooms glinted a straight line of light.
"We are in time," said the count, with a queer break in his voice. "If we were not in time there would be no light. The house of the wicked ones would be in darkness." And then in French he added: "You had better all three stay in the garden, while Mr. Oldchester and I go up to the house. If we are gone more than five minutes then one of you follow us."
In varying accents came the composed answers: "Oui, m'sieur."
There came a check. The little gate was locked. Each man helped another over very quietly, and then the three gendarmes dispersed with swift, noiseless steps, each seeking a point of vantage commanding the house. Oldchester and Paul De Poupel, talking in loud, confident tones, walked quickly up the path.
Suddenly a shaft of bright light pierced the moonlit darkness. The shutters of the dining room of the Châlet des Muguets had been unbarred, and the window flung open.
"Qui va là?"
The old military watchword, as the Frenchman remembered with a sense of its terrible irony, was flung out into the night in the harsh, determined voice of Madame Wachner. They saw her stout figure filling up most of the window outlined against the lighted room. She was leaning out, peering into the garden with angry, fearful eyes.
Both men stopped speaking simultaneously. Neither en her.
"Who goes there?" she repeated, And then: "I fear, messieurs, that you have made a mistake. You have taken this villa for some one else's house." But there was alarm as well as anger in her voice.
"It is I, Paul De Poupel, Madame Wachner." The count spoke quite courteously, his agreeable voice thickened, made hoarse by the strain to which he had just subjected it. "I have brought Mr. Oldchester. We have come to fetch Madame Blackett, for in Paris we found news making her return home to America at once a matter of imperative necessity."
He waited a moment, then added, raising his voice as he spoke: "We know that she is spending the evening with you." And he walked on quickly to where he supposed the front door to be.
"If they deny she is there," he whispered to his companion, "we will shout for the gendarmes and break in. But I doubt if they will dare to deny she is there unless—unless——"
The two men stood in front of the closed door for what seemed to them a very long time. It was exactly three minutes, and when at last it opened slowly, revealing the tall, lanky figure of "L'Ami Fritz," they both heard the soft, shuffling tread of the gendarmes closing in round the house.
"I pray you to come in," said Monsieur Wachner in English, and addressing Bill Oldchester. "I am pleased to see you—the more so that your friend, Madame Blackett, is indisposed. A moment ago, to our deep concern, she found herself quite faint—no doubt from the heat. I will conduct you, gentlemen, into the drawing-room; my wife and Madame Blackett will join us there in a minute."
Only then did he move back sufficiently to allow the two men to cross the threshold.
Paul De Poupel opened his lips, but no sound came from them. The sudden sense of relief from what had been agonized suspense gripped him by the throat. He brushed past Wachner, and made straight for the door behind which he felt sure he would find the woman whom some instinct already told him he had saved from a terrible fate.
He turned the handle of the dining-room door, and then he stopped short, for he was amazed at the sight which met his eyes. Mabel Blackett was sitting at a round table still laden with the remains of a simple meal. Her face was hidden in her hands, and she was trembling—shaking as though she had the ague.
On the floor Madame Wachner was crawling about on her hands and knees, but as the dining-room door opened she looked up, and with some difficulty raised herself from her stooping position.
"Such a misfortune!" she exclaimed. "Such a very great misfortune! The necklace of our friend 'as broken, and her beautiful pearls are rolling all over the floor! We 'ave been trying, Fritz and myself, to pick them up for her. Is not that so, Mab-bel? She is so distressed! It 'as made her feel very faint. But I tell her we shall find them all—it is only a matter of a little time. I asked her to take some cognac my husband keeps for such bad moments, but no, she would not. Is not that so, Mab-bel?"
She stared down gloomily at the bowed head of her guest.
Mrs. Blackett looked up. As if hypnotized by the other woman's voice, she rose to her feet—a wan, pitiful little smile came over her white face.
"Yes," she said dully, "the string broke. I was taken faint—I felt horribly queer—perhaps it was the heat."
Paul De Poupel took a sudden step forward into the room. He had just become aware of something which had made him also feel "queer." That something had no business in the dining room, for it belonged to the kitchen; in fact, it was a large wooden mallet of the kind used by French cooks to beat meat tender. Just now the club end of the mallet was sticking out of the drawer of the walnut buffet. The drawer had evidently been pulled out askew, and had stuck—as is the way with drawers forming part of ill-made furniture.
Oldchester, over the count's shoulder, was looking anxiously at Mabel. True, she did not seem quite well, but she was all right, and on quite friendly terms with the Wachners.
What had the Comte De Poupel meant by calling the commonplace, stout woman now speaking so kindly to and of Mabel, a devil? Above all, what had he meant by his hints of deadly danger, by his agonized fear of being too late?
Bill Oldchester began to wonder what they ought to do about the gendarmes. Whether it would be possible to get them out of the place without the Wachners knowing they had been there. He felt very uncomfortable, and it seemed to him that Mabel Blackett avoided looking at him.
Had not her last words to him been a plea for his noninterference in her affairs? At the time she had uttered them the words had hurt him, made him feel very angry. But, after all, she was a grown-up woman, she had a right to conduct her life as she liked; she had even a right—and this was a galling thought—to be very much annoyed that he had come back in this way, even following her to her friends' house.
"Well, Mabel," he said rather shortly, "I suppose we ought to be going now. We have a carriage waiting at the gate, so we shall be able to drive you home. But of course we must first pick up all your pearls—it won't take long."
But Mrs. Blackett made no answer. She did not even look round. She was still standing looking straight before her, as if she saw something the others could not see written on the distempered wall.
"L'Ami Fritz" entered the room quietly. He looked even odder than usual, for while in one hand he held Mrs. Blackett's pretty black tulle hat and her fancy bag, in the other was clutched the handle of a broom.
"I did not think you would want to go back into my wife's bedroom," he said deprecatingly; and Mrs. Blackett, at last turning her head round, actually smiled gratefully at him.
She was reminding herself that he had tried to save her. Only once—only when he had grinned at her so strangely, and deplored her refusal of the drugged coffee—had she felt really afraid of him.
Laying the hat and bag on the table, he began sweeping the floor with long, skillful movements.
"This is the best way to find the pearls," he muttered, and three of the four people present stood and looked on at what he was doing.
As for the one most concerned, Mabel Blackett had again begun to stare dully before her, as if what was going on did not interest her one whit.
At last "L'Ami Fritz" took a long spoon off the table; with its help he put what he had swept up—pearls, dust, and fluff—into the little fancy bag.
"There!" he said, with a sigh of relief. "I think they are all there."
But even as he spoke, he knew well enough that some of the pearls—perhaps five or six—had found their way up his wife's capacious sleeve.
And then quite suddenly, Madame Wachner uttered a hoarse exclamation of terror. One of the gendarmes had climbed up upon the window sill, and was now looking into the room. She waddled quickly across the room—only to meet another gendarme face to face in the hall.
Mabel's face gleamed; a sensation which had hitherto been quite unknown to her took possession of her, soul and she longed for revenge—revenge not so much for herself as for her murdered friend.
She clutched Paul De Poupel by the arm.
"They killed Anna Olsen," she whispered. "She is lying in the wood—where they meant to put me if you had not come just, only just in time!"
Paul De Poupel beckoned to the oldest police official present.
"You will remember the disappearance from Enghien of a Danish lady. I have reason to believe these people murdered her. Once I have placed Madame Blackett under medical care, I will return here. Meanwhile you of course know what to do."
"But m'sieur—ought I not to detain this American lady?"
"Certainly not. I make myself responsible for her. She is in no state to bear an interrogation. Lock up these people in separate rooms. I will send you, reinforcements, and to-morrow morning dig up the little wood behind the house."
"Are you coming, Mabel?" called out Oldchester impatiently.
"Yes, yes. We are coming!"
Paul de Poupel hurried her out through the hall into the grateful darkness. Behind them rose angry voices—the shrill and gruff tones of "L'Ami Fritz" and his wife raised in indignant expostulation.
Once out in the dark, scented garden with the two men, one on either side of her, Mabel Blackett walked slowly to the gate. Between them they got her over it, and into the victoria. Paul De Poupel pulled out the little back seat, but Oldchester, taking quick possession of it, motioned him to sit by Mabel.
"To Paris, Hôtel du Louvre," the count called out to the driver. "You can take as long as you like over the journey." Then he bent forward to Oldchester. "The air will do her good," he murmured.
By his side, huddled up in a corner of the carriage, Mabel Blackett lay back inertly; her eyes were wide open; she was staring hungrily at the sky, at the stars. She had never thought to see the sky and the stars again.
They were moving very slowly. The driver was accustomed to people who suddenly decided to drive all the way back into Paris from Enghien after an evening's successful, or tor the matter of that unsuccessful, play.
Hie had been very much relieved to see his two gentlemen come back from the Châlet, leaving the gendarmes behind. He had no wish to get mixed up in a fracas; no wish, that is, to have any embarrassments with the police.
They drove on through dimly lit, leafy thoroughfares till they came into the outskirts of the great city, and still Mrs. Blackett remained obstinately silent.
At last Oldchester began to feel vaguely alarmed. Why was Mabel so strange, so unlike herself? As she had stood waiting for her pearls to be gathered and restored to her, she had certainly behaved oddly, and yet—and yet the Wachners had been very kind. He hoped they were not angry with him for the presence of the police. Doubtless the men had remained behind to explain and apologize.
And then suddenly Bill Oldchester remembered the letter—the extraordinary letter which had purported to be written by Mabel Blackett. Who had written that letter, and for what reason?
Paul De Poupel leaned forward.
"Speak to her," he said in an urgent whisper. "Take her hand, and try to rouse her. I feel very preoccupied about her condition."
Oldchester in the darkness felt himself flushing. With a diffident gesture, he took Mabel Blackett's hand in his, and then he uttered an exclamation of surprise and concern. Her hand was quite cold—cold and nerveless to the touch, as if all that constitutes life had gone out of it.
"My dear girl!" he exclaimed. "What is the matter? I hope those people didn't frighten you in any way? Do you suspect them of having wanted to steal your pearls?"
But Mabel remained silent, absolutely silent. She did not want to speak, she only wanted to live. It was so strange to feel oneself alive—alive and whole at a time when one had thought to be dead, having been done to death after an awful, disfiguring struggle, for Mabel had determined to struggle to the end with her murderers.
"My God!" muttered Paul De Poupel. "Do you not understand? They meant to kill her!"
"To kill her?" repeated Oldchester incredulously.
Then there came over him a rush and glow of angry excitement. Good God! If that was the case, they ought to have driven back at once to the local police station.
"Mabel!" he exclaimed. "Rouse yourself, and tell us what happened! If what the count says is true, something must be done at once."
Mabel moved slightly; Paul de Poupel could feel her shuddering.
"Oh, Bill, let me try to forget," she moaned. And then, lifting her voice: "They killed Anna Olsen—poor Anna Olsen!" Her voice broke, and she began to sob convulsively. "I would not think of her," she sobbed. "I forced myself not to think of her—but now I shall never, never think of any one else any more."
Paul De Poupel put his arm round her shoulder; and drew her tenderly to him.
"Everything has been done that could be done to-night," he said authoritatively. "And I will see, never fear, that these infamous people are not allowed to escape. Poor Madame Olsen shall be avenged."
A passion of pity, of protective tenderness, filled his heart, and suddenly lifted him into another region than that in which he had become content to dwell.
"But surely the police ought to take Mrs. Blackett's statement to-night," objected Oldchester.
"Mrs. Blackett will never be called upon to make any statement to the police," the count quietly, "There will be ample evidence, quite apart from anything she could tell them; and I would not subject her to the ordeal of appearing as witness in such a case." He felt that Mrs. Blackett was listening gratefully. "I have an announcement to make to you, Mr. Oldchester, which will, I feel sure, bring me your congratulation. Mrs. Blackett is about to do me the honour of becoming my wife." He waited a moment, and then added very gravely: "I am giving her an undertaking, a solemn promise by all I hold dear, to give up play."
Oldchester felt a shock of surprise. The count's words made him forget for a moment—as perhaps Paul De Poupel had meant them to do—the events of this remarkable evening. How mistaken, how blind he had been! The worthy American lawyer's feelings towards the count had undergone a great change. But for Paul De Poupel where would Mabel be now?
He leaned and grasped the other man's left hand.
"I do congratulate you," he said heartily. "You deserve your good luck."
And then to Mabel he added quietly: "Under God you owe him your life."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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