At the Villa Rose (16 page)

Hanaud started.

"You know that? How did you know it?"

"It was in this evening's paper. I bought one on the way here. They
were found under the floor of the bedroom."

And even as he spoke a newsboy's voice rang out in the street below
them. Lemerre was alarmed by the look upon his friend's face.

"Does it matter, Hanaud?" he asked, with some solicitude.

"It matters—" and Hanaud rose up abruptly.

The boy's voice sounded louder in the street below. The words became
distinct to all upon that balcony.

"The Aix murder! Discovery of the jewels!"

"We must go," Hanaud whispered hoarsely. "Here are life and death in
the balance, as I believe, and there"—he pointed down to the little
group gathering about the newsboy under the trees—"there is the
command which way to tip the scales."

"It was not I who sent it," said Ricardo eagerly.

He had no precise idea what Hanaud meant by his words; but he realised
that the sooner he exculpated himself from the charge the better.

"Of course it was not you. I know that very well," said Hanaud. He
called for the bill. "When is that paper published?"

"At seven," said Lemerre.

"They have been crying it in the streets of Geneva, then, for more than
half an hour."

He sat drumming impatiently upon the table until the bill should be
brought.

"By Heaven, that's clever!" he muttered savagely. "There's a man who
gets ahead of me at every turn. See, Lemerre, I take every care, every
precaution, that no message shall be sent. I let it be known, I take
careful pains to let it be known, that no message can be sent without
detection following, and here's the message sent by the one channel I
never thought to guard against and stop. Look!"

The murder at the Villa Rose and the mystery which hid its perpetration
had aroused interest. This new development had quickened it. From the
balcony Hanaud could see the groups thickening about the boy and the
white sheets of the newspapers in the hands of passers-by.

"Every one in Geneva or near Geneva will know of this message by now."

"Who could have told?" asked Ricardo blankly, and Hanaud laughed in his
face, but laughed without any merriment.

"At last!" he cried, as the waiter brought the bill, and just as he had
paid it the light of a match flared up under the trees.

"The signal!" said Lemerre.

"Not too quickly," whispered Hanaud.

With as much unconcern as each could counterfeit, the three men
descended the stairs and crossed the road. Under the trees a fourth man
joined them—he who had lighted his pipe.

"The coachman, Hippolyte," he whispered, "bought an evening paper at
the front door of the house from a boy who came down the street
shouting the news. The coachman ran back into the house."

"When was this?" asked Lemerre.

The man pointed to a lad who leaned against the balustrade above the
lake, hot and panting for breath.

"He came on his bicycle. He has just arrived."

"Follow me," said Lemerre.

Six yards from where they stood a couple of steps led down from the
embankment on to a wooden landing-stage, where boats were moored.
Lemerre, followed by the others, walked briskly down on to the
landing-stage. An electric launch was waiting. It had an awning and was
of the usual type which one hires at Geneva. There were two sergeants
in plain clothes on board, and a third man, whom Ricardo recognised.

"That is the man who found out in whose shop the cord was bought," he
said to Hanaud.

"Yes, it is Durette. He has been here since yesterday."

Lemerre and the three who followed him stepped into it, and it backed
away from the stage and, turning, sped swiftly outwards from Geneva.
The gay lights of the shops and the restaurants were left behind, the
cool darkness enveloped them; a light breeze blew over the lake, a
trail of white and tumbled water lengthened out behind and overhead, in
a sky of deepest blue, the bright stars shone like gold.

"If only we are in time!" said Hanaud, catching his breath.

"Yes," answered Lemerre; and in both their voices there was a strange
note of gravity.

Lemerre gave a signal after a while, and the boat turned to the shore
and reduced its speed. They had passed the big villas. On the bank the
gardens of houses—narrow, long gardens of a street of small
houses—reached down to the lake, and to almost each garden there was a
rickety landing-stage of wood projecting into the lake. Again Lemerre
gave a signal, and the boat's speed was so much reduced that not a
sound of its coming could be heard. It moved over the water like a
shadow, with not so much as a curl of white at its bows.

Lemerre touched Hanaud on the shoulder and pointed to a house in a row
of houses. All the windows except two upon the second floor and one
upon the ground floor were in absolute darkness, and over those upper
two the wooden shutters were closed. But in the shutters there were
diamond-shaped holes, and from these holes two yellow beams of light,
like glowing eyes upon the watch, streamed out and melted in the air.

"You are sure that the front of the house is guarded?" asked Hanaud
anxiously.

"Yes," replied Lemerre.

Ricardo shivered with excitement. The launch slid noiselessly into the
bank and lay hidden under its shadow. Hanaud turned to his associates
with his finger to his lips. Something gleamed darkly in his hand. It
was the barrel of his revolver. Cautiously the men disembarked and
crept up the bank. First came Lemerre, then Hanaud; Ricardo followed
him, and the fourth man, who had struck the match under the trees,
brought up the rear. The other three officers remained in the boat.

Stooping under the shadow of the side wall of the garden, the invaders
stole towards the house. When a bush rustled or a tree whispered in the
light wind, Ricardo's heart jumped to his throat. Once Lemerre stopped,
as though his ears heard a sound which warned him of danger. Then
cautiously he crept on again. The garden was a ragged place of unmown
lawn and straggling bushes. Behind each one Mr. Ricardo seemed to feel
an enemy. Never had he been in so strait a predicament. He, the
cultured host of Grosvenor Square, was creeping along under a wall with
Continental policemen; he was going to raid a sinister house by the
Lake of Geneva. It was thrilling. Fear and excitement gripped him in
turn and let him go, but always he was sustained by the pride of the
man doing an out-of-the-way thing. "If only my friends could see me
now!" The ancient vanity was loud in his bosom. Poor fellows, they were
upon yachts in the Solent or on grouse-moors in Scotland, or on
golf-links at North Berwick. He alone of them all was tracking
malefactors to their doom by Leman's Lake.

From these agreeable reflections Ricardo was shaken. Lemerre stopped.
The raiders had reached the angle made by the side wall of the garden
and the house. A whisper was exchanged, and the party turned and moved
along the house wall towards the lighted window on the ground floor. As
Lemerre reached it he stooped. Then slowly his forehead and his eyes
rose above the sill and glanced this way and that into the room. Mr.
Ricardo could see his eyes gleaming as the light from the window caught
them. His face rose completely over the sill. He stared into the room
without care or apprehension, and then dropped again out of the reach
of the light. He turned to Hanaud.

"The room is empty," he whispered. Hanaud turned to Ricardo.

"Pass under the sill, or the light from the window will throw your
shadow upon the lawn."

The party came to the back door of the house. Lemerre tried the handle
of the door, and to his surprise it yielded. They crept into the
passage. The last man closed the door noiselessly, locked it, and
removed the key. A panel of light shone upon the wall a few paces
ahead. The door of the lighted room was open. As Ricardo stepped
silently past it, he looked in. It was a parlour meanly furnished.
Hanaud touched him on the arm and pointed to the table.

Ricardo had seen the objects at which Hanaud pointed often enough
without uneasiness; but now, in this silent house of crime, they had
the most sinister and appalling aspect. There was a tiny phial half
full of a dark-brown liquid, beside it a little leather case lay open,
and across the case, ready for use or waiting to be filled, was a
bright morphia needle. Ricardo felt the cold creep along his spine, and
shivered.

"Come," whispered Hanaud.

They reached the foot of a flight of stairs, and cautiously mounted it.
They came out in a passage which ran along the side of the house from
the back to the front. It was unlighted, but they were now on the level
of the street, and a fan-shaped glass window over the front door
admitted a pale light. There was a street lamp near to the door,
Ricardo remembered. For by the light of it Marthe Gobin had seen Celia
Harland run so nimbly into this house.

For a moment the men in the passage held their breath. Some one strode
heavily by on the pavement outside—to Mr. Ricardo's ear a most
companionable sound. Then a clock upon a church struck the half-hour
musically, distantly. It was half-past eight. And a second afterwards a
tiny bright light shone. Hanaud was directing the light of a pocket
electric torch to the next flight of stairs.

Here the steps were carpeted, and once more the men crept up. One after
another they came out upon the next landing. It ran, like those below
it, along the side of the house from the back to the front, and the
doors were all upon their left hand. From beneath the door nearest to
them a yellow line of light streamed out.

They stood in the darkness listening. But not a sound came from behind
the door. Was this room empty, too? In each one's mind was the fear
that the birds had flown. Lemerre carefully took the handle of the door
and turned it. Very slowly and cautiously he opened the door. A strong
light beat out through the widening gap upon his face. And then, though
his feet did not move, his shoulders and his face drew back. The action
was significant enough. This room, at all events, was not empty. But of
what Lemerre saw in the room his face gave no hint. He opened the door
wider, and now Hanaud saw. Ricardo, trembling with excitement, watched
him. But again there was no expression of surprise, consternation, or
delight. He stood stolidly and watched. Then he turned to Ricardo,
placed a finger on his lips, and made room. Ricardo crept on tiptoe to
his side. And now he too could look in. He saw a brightly lit bedroom
with a made bed. On his left were the shuttered windows overlooking the
lake. On his right in the partition wall a door stood open. Through the
door he could see a dark, windowless closet, with a small bed from
which the bedclothes hung and trailed upon the floor, as though some
one had been but now roughly dragged from it. On a table, close by the
door, lay a big green hat with a brown ostrich feather, and a white
cloak. But the amazing spectacle which kept him riveted was just in
front of him. An old hag of a woman was sitting in a chair with her
back towards them. She was mending with a big needle the holes in an
old sack, and while she bent over her work she crooned to herself some
French song. Every now and then she raised her eyes, for in front of
her, under her charge, Mlle. Celie, the girl of whom Hanaud was in
search, lay helpless upon a sofa. The train of her delicate green frock
swept the floor. She was dressed as Helene Vauquier had described. Her
gloved hands were tightly bound behind her back, her feet were crossed
so that she could not have stood, and her ankles were cruelly strapped
together. Over her face and eyes a piece of coarse sacking was
stretched like a mask, and the ends were roughly sewn together at the
back of her head. She lay so still that, but for the labouring of her
bosom and a tremor which now and again shook her limbs, the watchers
would have thought her dead. She made no struggle of resistance; she
lay quiet and still. Once she writhed, but it was with the uneasiness
of one in pain, and the moment she stirred the old woman's hand went
out to a bright aluminium flask which stood on a little table at her
side.

"Keep quiet, little one!" she ordered in a careless, chiding voice, and
she rapped with the flask peremptorily upon the table. Immediately, as
though the tapping had some strange message of terror for the girl's
ear, she stiffened her whole body and lay rigid.

"I am not ready for you yet, little fool," said the old woman, and she
bent again to her work.

Ricardo's brain whirled. Here was the girl whom they had come to
arrest, who had sprung from the salon with so much activity of youth
across the stretch of grass, who had run so quickly and lightly across
the pavement into this very house, so that she should not be seen. And
now she was lying in her fine and delicate attire a captive, at the
mercy of the very people who were her accomplices.

Suddenly a scream rang out in the garden—a shrill, loud scream, close
beneath the windows. The old woman sprang to her feet. The girl on the
sofa raised her head. The old woman took a step towards the window, and
then she swiftly turned towards the door. She saw the men upon the
threshold. She uttered a bellow of rage. There is no other word to
describe the sound. It was not a human cry; it was the bellow of an
angry animal. She reached out her hand towards the flask, but before
she could grasp it Hanaud seized her. She burst into a torrent of foul
oaths. Hanaud flung her across to Lemerre's officer, who dragged her
from the room.

"Quick!" said Hanaud, pointing to the girl, who was now struggling
helplessly upon the sofa. "Mlle. Celie!"

Ricardo cut the stitches of the sacking. Hanaud unstrapped her hands
and feet. They helped her to sit up. She shook her hands in the air as
though they tortured her, and then, in a piteous, whimpering voice,
like a child's, she babbled incoherently and whispered prayers.
Suddenly the prayers ceased. She sat stiff, with eyes fixed and
staring. She was watching Lemerre, and she was watching him fascinated
with terror. He was holding in his hand the large, bright aluminium
flask. He poured a little of the contents very carefully on to a piece
of the sack; and then with an exclamation of anger he turned towards
Hanaud. But Hanaud was supporting Celia; and so, as Lemerre turned
abruptly towards him with the flask in his hand, he turned abruptly
towards Celia too. She wrenched herself from Hanaud's arms, she shrank
violently away. Her white face flushed scarlet and grew white again.
She screamed loudly, terribly; and after the scream she uttered a
strange, weak sigh, and so fell sideways in a swoon. Hanaud caught her
as she fell. A light broke over his face.