Monsieur Jonquelle (24 page)

There was a moment of suspense.

She was about to dance before
Herod
, her body proportioned like a dryad's, supple in the nearly
naked costume of the East, commanding the exclusive attention of the whole of Paris packed in the opera house.

The Marquis de Chantelle, oblivious of Monsieur Jonquelle, was awaiting the presentation of his bouquet of orchids. They should arrive at this moment.

He watched to see what sign Madame Zirtenzoff would give him before she swayed into the divine dance that had entranced
Herod
.

Monsieur Jonquelle, watching the Marquis, took a box of cigarettes out of his pocket and slipped his thumb-nail around the stamp, but he did not open the box. He spoke suddenly to the Marquis de Chantelle; his voice was sharp, clear, and its tones arrested the man's attention.

“Monsieur le Marquis,” he said, “Madame Zirtenzoff will not be pleased with her bouquet of orchids.”

The Marquis turned suddenly on him; his eyes were now contracted with an intense expression.

“You know, Monsieur, that I have sent a bouquet of orchids to Madame Zirtenzoff?”

“Surely, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of Police. “I passed the boy departing with them when I entered. They were very lovely, superb, exquisite, the Mottled Butterfly! How aptly adapted is that flower to Monsieur le Marquis!”

The Marquis continued to regard him.

“And why, Monsieur, do you compare me with this variety of orchid?”

“If you will tell me, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied the Prefect of Police, “why Jean Lequex refused to say where the necklace was that he had stolen, I will answer your question.”

The hauteur in the Marquis' voice was now distinctly audible.

“Monsieur,” he said, “it was you who promised to tell me that.”

“And I shall tell you,” replied Jonquelle. “Jean Lequex refused to say where the necklace was for the very good reason that he did not know where it was.”

Monsieur Jonquelle looked the Marquis steadily in the face.

“The agents of the
Sûreté
neglected to mention to Monsieur an item or two of their discoveries: the writing on the slip of paper had been made with the left hand; and the concierge, as it happened, seeing the Marquis Chantelle go out leaving his door ajar, closed it.

“Ah, Monsieur, we have been engaged in a bit of comedy. Pardon us if we have deceived you.… It was I who conducted the investigation of your affair, disguised as Forneau; and it was the agent Forneau disguised as Jean Lequex who confessed to your robbery and took a mock sentence of imprisonment under an arrangement
with the court.… We did not find, then, the thief who opened the safe to your apartment.”

The Marquis regarded the Prefect of Police with an amazed expression, his lips parted, his eyes wide.

“Then, Monsieur,” he stammered, “you have discovered neither the thief nor the necklace.”

“Ah, yes,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle in the modulated voice of one who bids another adieu. “We have discovered both.”

He took a mass of jewels out of his waistcoat pocket and handed them to the Marquis.

“I found these in the bouquet of orchids which you were sending to Madame Zirtenzoff. May I trouble you to present them to Madame la Marquise when she shall return from America tomorrow?”

The carriage was now hidden by the wall. And without thinking, without stopping to consider how strange my words must appear, I spoke the thing—the thing that had seemed a profound, inexplicable puzzle to me:

“Why do you marry this Norwegian woman?”

Tea had been served on the terrace of the villa during the formal call of the Ambassador and his daughter. And while they remained, and now that the carriage, in which they returned to the city, was a mere sound of wheels on the hard Cimiez road, I was occupied by this disturbing query.

The old Ambassador did not concern me. He was not a factor in the problem. But why my host, at his age, after his experiences of life, with his taste refined and exacting, should at last determine to marry this big, flax-haired, silent creature of the white North, was a problem that finally forced itself into words.

I sat beside one of the little iron tables on the terrace. The Prince Dimitri was walking slowly
along the whole length of the villa on the red tile that made a band of color against the white walls. The villa looked out over the sweep of the Mediterranean. Below, hidden by the vines and olive trees, was Nice. On the left, like a white ribbon, the Corniche road ascended into a gap of the mountain on its way to Mentone. And west of it, like a mirage—like an illusion—was the ruined, abandoned, fairy city of Châteauneuf.

I think he was the handsomest man in Europe. Middle age had merely served to refine the strength of his features. He was not poor. The upheaval of Russia had not wholly stripped him. Long before it came he had laid down a sort of partnership with Ravillon, the great jeweler on the Rue de Rivoli and the Place Messina. It was a trade that the war had not impaired. It left the prince in command of his villa, his house in Paris and an income.

He did not stop in his measured, reflective step at my inquiry. It was only when I added the four final words that he paused and turned about to regard me.

“Do you love her?” I said.

“Love?” He repeated the word slowly, softly, as though it were the potent element in some magic rune.

“Ah, no, my friend,” he said, “I do not love her.”

From every standpoint of material interest this marriage was desirable and excellent. The Norwegian woman was a royal princess and, like the young man in the Scriptures, she had great possessions; but these considerations did not seem sufficient.

“Then why did you arrange this marriage?” I said.

The man came back to where I sat, his hands linked behind him, his face reflective.

“Why does a man in peril,” he said, “protect himself with a bolted door?”

I was profoundly astonished.

“Peril?” I repeated. “You in peril?”

“In the very deadliest peril, Monsieur Jonquelle,” he said.

He went into the salon of the villa and presently returned with the most extraordinary photograph that I have ever seen. It was long and narrow, about four inches in length and perhaps an inch and a half in width. Three views of a woman's face appeared on this photograph; both of the side views and the full view.

The side views were upon the ends of the photograph, and the full face in the center. The photographic work was good—that is to say, it had been taken with an excellent lens by a skilled photographer; but it lacked every evidence of those
artificialities with which smart photographers add illusions to the human face.

The photographs were clear, hard and accurate, with no softening shadows. The board on which they were printed seemed ordinary and common, but the frame around this cheap board was a gold band studded with rubies. It was a wonderful frame, as beautiful as the best workmanship could make it.

But it was not these considerations which impressed me. It was the human face that appeared in these three contrasted positions. It was the picture of a young girl, her hair simply arranged as though she had not yet escaped from the discipline of a convent.

It was a face of exceptional beauty. One never could wish to change a line or a feature of it. Its bony structure was perfect. But there was something more than this mere structural excellence. There was the lure of an indescribable charm in the face—a charm that one could not separate in the expression from a profound innocence of life. One felt that the lure of this human creature must be extraordinary to appear thus impressive in the hard, garish outlines of this photograph.

The picture held my attention. I put it down on the table, only to take it up again. And the man watched me as one might watch in another
the effect of a drug which he had amazingly experienced in himself.

I continued to examine the photograph, and the one profound conviction that possessed me was that here, preserved on the cheap surface of a photograph board, was a woman with every quality of alluring, feminine charm; every quality that the big white, silent Northern woman amazingly lacked. And I wondered whence this strange, harsh photograph had come, and why the man before me had inclosed it in a frame of jewels and kept it as one preserves a treasure.

The prince sat down beyond me at the table. For a time he was silent; then, suddenly, he began to speak.

“One morning,” he said, “in the early springtime, I was idling in Ravillon's shop on the Rue de Rivoli. We had been considering the importation of jewels. Some shipment from Amsterdam had come in and the shop was preparing for its usual summer trade with America. I had come out from the manager's room when I saw a girl pass the door. She looked in as she passed and, after she had gone a few steps beyond, hesitated, turned about and finally came timidly into the shop.”

He paused and got a cigarette from a tray on the table, lighted it and held it a moment in his fingers.

“It was the girl you have just seen in the photograph. She was very plainly dressed. It was the sort of clothing that showed the evidences of gentility, I thought—and poverty. She wore a little piece of fur. It was old, and the seams of her dress had been cleaned and pressed until the fabric looked as though it would give way if an iron were again set on it.

“She asked to see a manufactured ruby of about two karats. The clerk was not impressed to consider her as a possible purchaser. He thought she was one of the class of poor shop girls in Paris who endeavor by this means to satisfy their curiosity about jewels. The women of Paris who buy manufactured jewels do not have the appearance of this girl.”

Here the prince paused and touched the cigarette to his lips.

“But there was something about this woman,” he said, “that profoundly disturbed me. I did not know what it was. I do not now know. But it was something independent of her appearance, although her appearance was remarkable enough. Her hair was the exquisite mahogany of a horse-chestnut, with that incomparable gloss which the shell of the nut bears when it first escapes from the hull. Her complexion was pale, almost as pale as plaster, and her eyes were blue—the blue of a Delft plate.

“I found myself wondering what race the girl was of. She seemed a sort of blend. I thought it was French or Italian and some other blood—some blood not of a tame, conventional race.

“The clerk laid a piece of black velvet on the table, brought some manufactured rubies and placed them before her. The girl sat down at the table and I went over and stood beside her. She selected one of the stones and asked the price, which was more than five hundred francs. She seemed very much disturbed at this. She inquired if the stone could not be purchased for five hundred francs. She put her hand into the bosom of her blouse, took out a little purse and emptied it on the table. It contained five hundred francs in gold pieces.

“For reply the clerk said that the stone could not be purchased for a less sum. But I interrupted him. I said she might have it at the price. It was then, it seemed, that she became aware of my presence for the first time. She got up and began to express her appreciation of my kindness. She seemed embarrassed, like a child who does not know precisely how to go about such a convention; and now that she spoke directly to me the charm of her personality was even more inconceivably impressive.

“Then she made what we considered an extraordinary request. She wished to know if we could
identify this stone. It was not clear why she wished to identify it. We got the impression that she intended to bring it in again later and she would like us to be certain to identify it. The clerk would have got rid of the matter in the easiest way he could, but I compelled him to consider it. It was a good deal of trouble to undertake to establish sufficient data for the identification of this manufactured stone. We had to make a very careful record of its exact measurements, the dimensions of its facets and so forth.

“I explained this to the girl; she listened attentively. She then asked for a duplicate of our record of identification, and I had this given to her. She went out of the shop with the manufactured ruby wrapped up in the duplicate of the record which we had made out for its identification.”

Again the prince stopped, and flicked the ash from his cigarette. He remained for a moment looking out over Nice, at the vast sweep of the Mediterranean wrinkled by the touches of the mistral.

“I should have followed her,” he said; “it was stupid to permit her to escape out of my knowledge, but under the charm of the girl I seemed incapable of any practical measure. I think at the moment she did not seem precisely real. She was like a fairy woman—something one had
longed for—appearing unexpectedly by virtue of an incantation.

“A moment later, when I went to the door of the shop to look, she was nowhere to be seen. She had vanished, but the spell with which I was enveloped did not vanish. It remained. And I came every day to the shop in the Rue de Rivoli under the hope that she would return.

“I had a strong basis for the hope, and I clung to it as a drowning man would cling to a life line. The stone would come back for identification some time, and by that clew I would find her again. I ought to have gone to Amsterdam on the affairs of the house, and I ought to have returned to my estates in Russia, but I would not have missed a day from the shop in the Rue de Rivoli for the redemption of the world.”

He paused. The sun going down behind the black ridge of the mountains gilded the fairy city of Châteauneuf as though it were powdered over with gold dust. The wrinkles on the Mediterranean were breaking into little ridges whitened on their summits. The vague touches of the mistral seemed to approach.

“It is of no use to undertake to explain the thing,” he said. “There is no explanation of it. Something like the odor of a blossom had reached deliciously to every fiber in my body. I was under the dominance of a sorcery that no sort of common
sense could exorcise. I was written to in vain from Amsterdam and from Russia. I remained in the shop in the Rue de Rivoli.