Marie Belloc Lowndes - The Chink in the Armour

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THE CHINK IN THE ARMOUR

BY MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

AUTHOR OF "THE END OF HER HONEYMOON," "THE LODGER," Etc.

1912

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP

"_But there is one chink in the chain armour of civilized communities.
Society is conducted on the assumption that murder will not be
committed._"--

The Spectator.

THE CHINK IN THE ARMOUR

CHAPTER I

A small, shiny, pink card lay on the round table in Sylvia Bailey's
sitting-room at the Hotel de l'Horloge in Paris.

She had become quite accustomed to finding one or more cards--cards from
dressmakers, cards from corset-makers, cards from hairdressers--lying on
her sitting-room table, but there had never been a card quite like this
card.

Although it was pink, it looked more like a visiting-card than a
tradesman's advertisement, and she took it up with some curiosity. It was
inscribed "Madame Cagliostra," and underneath the name were written the
words "_Diseuse de la Bonne Aventure_," and then, in a corner, in very
small black letters, the address, "5, Rue Jolie, Montmartre."

A fortune-teller's card? What an extraordinary thing!

Like many pretty, prosperous, idle women, Sylvia was rather
superstitious. Not long before this, her first visit to Paris, a London
acquaintance had taken her to see a noted palmist named "Pharaoh," in
Bond Street. She had paid her guinea willingly enough, but the result had
vaguely disappointed her, and she had had the feeling, all the time she
was with him, that the man was not really reading her hand.

True, "Pharaoh" had told her she was going abroad, and at that time she
had no intention of doing so. The palmist had also told her--and this was
really rather curious--that she would meet, when abroad, a foreign woman
who would have a considerable influence on her life. Well, in this very
Hotel de l'Horloge Mrs. Bailey had come across a Polish lady, named Anna
Wolsky, who was, like Sylvia herself, a young widow, and the two had
taken a great fancy to one another.

It was most unlikely that Madame Wolsky would have the slightest
influence on her, Sylvia Bailey's, life, but at any rate it was very
curious coincidence. "Pharaoh" had proved to be right as to these two
things--she had come abroad, and she had formed a friendship with a
foreign woman.

Mrs. Bailey was still standing by the table, and still holding the pink
card in her hand, when her new friend came into the room.

"Well?" said Anna Wolsky, speaking English with a strong foreign accent,
but still speaking it remarkably well, "Have you yet decided, my dear,
what we shall do this afternoon? There are a dozen things open to us,
and I am absolutely at your service to do any one of them!"

Sylvia Bailey laughingly shook her head.

"I feel lazy," she said. "I've been at the Bon Marche ever since nine
o'clock, and I feel more like having a rest than going out again, though
it does seem a shame to stay in a day like this!"

The windows were wide open, the June sun was streaming in, and on the
light breeze was borne the murmur of the traffic in the Avenue de
l'Opera, within a few yards of the quiet street where the Hotel de
l'Horloge is situated.

The other woman--Anna Wolsky was some years older than Sylvia
Bailey--smiled indulgently.

"_Tiens!_" she cried suddenly, "what have you got there?" and she took
the pink card out of Sylvia's hand.

"Madame Cagliostra?" she repeated, musingly. "Now where did I hear that
name? Yes, of course it was from our chambermaid! Cagliostra is a friend
of hers, and, according to her, a marvellous person--one from whom the
devil keeps no secrets! She charges only five francs for a consultation,
and it appears that all sorts of well-known people go to her, even those
whom the Parisians call the _Gratin_, that is, the Upper Crust, from the
Champs Elysees and the Faubourg St. Germain!"

"I don't think much of fortune-tellers," said Sylvia, thoughtfully.
"I went to one last time I was in London and he really didn't tell me
anything of the slightest interest."

Her conscience pricked her a little as she said this, for "Pharaoh" had
certainly predicted a journey which she had then no intention of taking,
and a meeting with a foreign woman. Yet here she was in Paris, and here
was the foreign woman standing close to her!

Nay more, Anna Wolsky had become--it was really rather odd that it should
be so--the first intimate friend of her own sex Sylvia had made since she
was a grown-up woman.

"I do believe in fortune-tellers," said Madame Wolsky deliberately, "and
that being so I shall spend my afternoon in going up to Montmartre, to
the Rue Jolie, to hear what this Cagliostra has to say. It will be what
you in England call 'a lark'! And I do not see why I should not give
myself so cheap a lark as a five-franc lark!"

"Oh, if you really mean to go, I think I will go too!" cried Sylvia,
gaily.

She was beginning to feel less tired, and the thought of a long lonely
afternoon spent indoors and by herself lacked attraction.

Linking her arm through her friend's, she went downstairs and into the
barely furnished dining-room, which was so very unlike an English hotel
dining-room. In this dining-room the wallpaper simulated a vine-covered
trellis, from out of which peeped blue-plumaged birds, and on each little
table, covered by an unbleached table-cloth, stood an oil and vinegar
cruet and a half-bottle of wine.

The Hotel de l'Horloge was a typical French hotel, and foreigners very
seldom stayed there. Sylvia had been told of the place by the old French
lady who had been her governess, and who had taught her to speak French
exceptionally well.

Several quiet Frenchmen, who had offices in the neighbourhood, were "_en
pension_" at the Hotel de l'Horloge, and as the two friends came in many
were the steady, speculative glances cast in their direction.

To the average Frenchman every woman is interesting; for every Frenchman
is in love with love, and in each fair stranger he sees the possible
heroine of a romance in which he may play the agreeable part of hero.
So it was that Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky both had their silent
admirers among those who lunched and dined in the narrow green and
white dining-room of the Hotel de l'Horloge.

Only a Frenchman would have given a second look at the Polish lady while
Sylvia was by, but a Frenchman, being both a philosopher and a logician
by nature, is very apt to content himself with the second-best when he
knows the best is not for him.

The two friends were in entire contrast to one another. Madame Wolsky was
tall, dark, almost swarthy; there was a look of rather haughty pride and
reserve on her strong-featured face. She dressed extremely plainly, the
only ornament ever worn by her being a small gold horseshoe, in the
centre of which was treasured--so, not long ago, she had confided to
Sylvia, who had been at once horrified and thrilled--a piece of the rope
with which a man had hanged himself at Monte Carlo two years before! For
Madame Wolsky--and she made no secret of the fact to her new friend--was
a gambler.

Anna Wolsky was never really happy, she did not feel more than half
alive, when away from the green cloth. She had only left Monte Carlo
when the heat began to make the place unbearable to one of her northern
temperament, and she was soon moving on to one of the French
watering-places, where gambling of sorts can be indulged in all
the summer through.

Different in looks, in temperament, and in tastes were the two young
widows, and this, perhaps, was why they got on so excellently well
together.

Sylvia Bailey was the foreign ideal of a beautiful Englishwoman. Her hair
was fair, and curled naturally. Her eyes were of that blue which looks
violet in the sunlight; and she had a delicate, rose leaf complexion.

Married when only nineteen to a man much older than herself, she was now
at twenty-five a widow, and one without any intimate duties or close ties
to fill her existence. Though she had mourned George Bailey sincerely,
she had soon recovered all her normal interest and pleasure in life.

Mrs. Bailey was fond of dress and able to indulge her taste; but, even
so, good feeling and the standard of propriety of the English country
town of Market Dalling where she had spent most of her life, perhaps
also a subtle instinct that nothing else would ever suit her so well,
made her remain rigidly faithful to white and black, pale grey, and
lavender. She also wore only one ornament, but it was a very becoming
and an exceedingly costly ornament, for it consisted of a string of large
and finely-matched pearls.

As the two friends went upstairs after luncheon Madame Wolsky said
earnestly, "If I were you, Sylvia, I would certainly leave your pearls in
the office this afternoon. Where is the use of wearing them on such an
expedition as that to a fortune-teller?"

"But why shouldn't I wear them?" asked Sylvia, rather surprised.

"Well, in your place I should certainly leave anything as valuable as
your pearls in safe keeping. After all, we know nothing of this Madame
Cagliostra, and Montmartre is what Parisians call an eccentric quarter."

Sylvia Bailey disliked very much taking off her pearls. Though she could
not have put the fact into words, this string of pearls was to her a
symbol of her freedom, almost of her womanhood.

As a child and young girl she had been under the close guardianship
of a stern father, and it was to please him that she had married the
rich, middle-aged man at Market Dalling whose adoration she had endured
rather than reciprocated. George Bailey also had been a determined
man--determined that his young wife should live his way, not hers.
During their brief married life he had heaped on her showy, rather than
beautiful, jewels; nothing of great value, nothing she could wear when in
mourning.

And then, four months after her husband's death, Sylvia's own aunt had
died and left her a thousand pounds. It was this legacy--which her
trustee, a young solicitor named William Chester, who was also a friend
and an admirer of hers, as well as her trustee, had been proposing to
invest in what he called "a remarkably good thing"--Mrs. Bailey had
insisted on squandering on a string of pearls!

Sylvia had become aware, in the subtle way in which Women become aware
of such things, that pearls were the fashion--in fact, in one sense,
"the only wear." She had noticed that most of the great ladies of the
neighbourhood of Market Dalling, those whom she saw on those occasions
when town and county meet, each wore a string of pearls. She had also
come to know that pearls seem to be the only gems which can be worn with
absolute propriety by a widow, and so, suddenly, she had made up her mind
to invest--she called it an "investment," while Chester called it an
"absurd extravagance"--in a string of pearls.

Bill Chester had done his very best to persuade her to give up her silly
notion, but she had held good; she had shown herself, at any rate on this
one occasion, and in spite of her kindly, yielding nature, obstinate.

This was why her beautiful pearls had become to Sylvia Bailey a symbol of
her freedom. The thousand pounds, invested as Bill Chester had meant to
invest it, would have brought her in L55 a year, so he had told her in a
grave, disapproving tone.

In return she had told him, the colour rushing into her pretty face, that
after all she had the right to do what she chose with her legacy, the
more so that this thousand pounds was in a peculiar sense her own money,
as the woman who had left it her was her mother's sister, having nothing
to do either with her father or with the late George Bailey!

And so she had had her way--nay, more; Chester, at the very last, had
gone to great trouble in order that she might not be cheated over her
purchase. Best of all, Bill--Sylvia always called the serious-minded
young lawyer "Bill"--had lived to admit that Mrs. Bailey had made a good
investment after all, for her pearls had increased in value in the two
years she had had them.

Be that as it may, the young widow often reminded herself that nothing
she had ever bought, and nothing that had ever been given her, had caused
her such lasting pleasure as her beloved string of pearls!

But on this pleasant June afternoon, in deference to her determined
friend's advice, she took off her pearls before starting out for
Montmartre, leaving the case in the charge of M. Girard, the genial
proprietor of the Hotel de l'Horloge.

CHAPTER II

With easy, leisurely steps, constantly stopping to look into the windows
of the quaint shops they passed on the way, Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky
walked up the steep, the almost mountainous byways and narrow streets
which lead to the top of Montmartre.

The whole population seemed to have poured itself out in the open air on
this sunny day; even the shopkeepers had brought chairs out of their
shops and sat on the pavement, gaily laughing and gossiping together in
the eager way Parisians have. As the two foreign ladies, both young, both
in their very different fashion good-looking, walked past the sitting
groups of neighbours--men, women, and children would stop talking and
stare intently at them, as is also a Parisian way.

At first Sylvia had disliked the manner in which she was stared at in
Paris, and she had been much embarrassed as well as a little amused by
the very frank remarks called forth in omnibuses as well as in the street
by the brilliancy of her complexion and the bright beauty of her fair
hair. But now she was almost used to this odd form of homage, which came
quite as often from women as from men.

"The Rue Jolie?" answered a cheerful-looking man in answer to a question.
"Why, it's ever so much further up!" and he vaguely pointed skywards.

And it was much further up, close to the very top of the great hill! In
fact, it took the two ladies a long time to find it, for the Rue Jolie
was the funniest, tiniest little street, perched high up on what might
almost have been a mountain side.

As for No. 5, Rue Jolie, it was a queer miniature house more like a Swiss
chalet than anything else, and surrounded by a gay, untidy little garden
full of flowers, the kind of half-wild, shy, and yet hardy flowers that
come up, year after year, without being tended or watered.

"Surely a fortune-teller can't live here?" exclaimed Sylvia Bailey,
remembering the stately, awe-inspiring rooms in which "Pharaoh" received
his clients in Bond Street.

"Oh, yes, this is evidently the place!"

Anna Wolsky smiled good-humouredly; she had become extremely fond of the
young Englishwoman; she delighted in Sylvia's radiant prettiness, her
kindly good-temper, and her eager pleasure in everything.

A large iron gate gave access to the courtyard which was so much larger
than the house built round it. But the gate was locked, and a pull at the
rusty bell-wire produced no result.

They waited a while. "She must have gone out," said Sylvia, rather
disappointed.

But Madame Wolsky, without speaking, again pulled at the rusty wire, and
then one of the chalet windows was suddenly flung open from above, and a
woman--a dark, middle-aged Frenchwoman--leant out.

"_Qui est la?_" and then before either of them could answer, the woman
had drawn back: a moment later they heard her heavy progress down the
creaky stairs of her dwelling.

At last she came out into the courtyard, unlocked the iron gate, and
curtly motioned to the two ladies to follow her.

"We have come to see Madame Cagliostra," said Sylvia timidly. She took
this stout, untidily-dressed woman for the fortune-teller's servant.

"Madame Cagliostra, at your service!" The woman turned round, her face
breaking into a broad smile. She evidently liked the sound of her
peculiar name.

They followed her up a dark staircase into a curious little sitting-room.
It was scrupulously clean, but about it hung the faint odour which the
French eloquently describe as "shut in," and even on this beautiful hot
day the windows were tightly closed.

On the red walls hung various drawings of hands, of hearts, and of heads,
and over the plain mantelpiece was a really fine pastel portrait of a
man, in eighteenth century dress and powdered hair.

"My ancestor, Count Cagliostro, ladies!" exclaimed the fat little woman
proudly. "As you will soon see, if you have, as I venture to suppose,
come to consult me, I have inherited the great gifts which made Count
Cagliostro famous." She waited a moment. "What is it you desire of me?
Do you wish for the Grand Jeu? Or do you prefer the Crystal?"

Madame Cagliostra gave a shrewd, measuring glance at the two young women
standing before her. She was wondering how much they were good for.

"No doubt you have been told," she said suddenly, "that my fee is five
francs. But if you require the Grand Jeu it will be ten francs. Come,
ladies, make up your minds; I will give you both the Grand Jeu for
fifteen francs!"

Sylvia Bailey's lip quivered; she felt a wild wish to burst out
laughing. It was all so absurd; this funny queer house; this odd, stuffy,
empty-looking room; and this vulgar, common-looking woman asserting that
she was descended from the famous Count Cagliostro! And then, to crown
everything, the naive, rather pathetic, attempt to get an extra five
francs out of them.

But Sylvia was a very kindly, happy-natured creature, and she would not
have hurt the feelings of even a Madame Cagliostra for the world.

She looked at her friend questioningly. Would it not be better just to
give the woman five francs and go away? They surely could not expect to
hear anything of any value from such a person. She was evidently a fraud!

But Anna Wolsky was staring at Madame Cagliostra with a serious look.

"Very well," she exclaimed, in her rather indifferent French. "Very well!
We will both take the Grand Jeu at fifteen francs the two."

She turned and smiled at Sylvia. "It will be," she said, quaintly, and in
English, "my 'treat,' dear friend." And then, as Sylvia shook her head
decidedly--there were often these little contests of generosity between
the two women--she added rather sharply,

"Yes, yes! It shall be so. I insist! I see you do not believe in our
hostess's gift. There are, however, one or two questions I must ask, and
to which I fancy she can give me an answer. I am anxious, too, to hear
what she will say about _you_."

Sylvia smiled, and gave way.

Like most prosperous people who have not made the money they are able to
spend, Mrs. Bailey did not attach any undue importance to wealth. But she
knew that her friend was not as well off as herself, and therefore she
was always trying to pay a little more of her share than was fair. Thanks
to Madame Wolsky's stronger will, she very seldom succeeded in doing so.

"We might at least ask her to open the window," she said rather
plaintively. It really was dreadfully stuffy!

Madame Cagliostra had gone to a sideboard from which she was taking two
packs of exceedingly dirty, queer-looking cards. They were the famous
Taro cards, but Sylvia did not know that.

When the fortune-teller was asked to open the window, she shook her head
decidedly.

"No, no!" she said. "It would dissipate the influences. I cannot do that!
On the contrary, the curtains should be drawn close, and if the ladies
will permit of it I will light my lamp."

Even as she spoke she was jerking the thick curtains closely together;
she even pinned them across so that no ray of the bright sunlight outside
could penetrate into the room.

For a few moments they were in complete darkness, and Sylvia felt a
queer, eerie sensation of fear, but this soon passed away as the
lamp--the "_Suspension_," as Madame Cagliostra proudly called it--was
lit.

When her lamp was well alight, the soothsayer drew three chairs up to the
round table, and motioned the two strangers to sit down.

"You will take my friend first," said Anna Wolsky, imperiously; and then,
to Sylvia, she said, in English, "Would you rather I went away, dear? I
could wait on the staircase till you were ready for me to come back. It
is not very pleasant to have one's fortune told when one is as young and
as pretty as you are, before other people."

"Of course I don't mind your being here!" cried Sylvia Bailey,
laughing--then, looking doubtfully at Madame Cagliostra, though it was
obvious the Frenchwoman did not understand English, "The truth is that I
should feel rather frightened if you were to leave me here all by myself.
So please stay."

Madame Cagliostra began dealing out the cards on the table. First slowly,
then quickly, she laid them out in a queer pattern; and as she did so she
muttered and murmured to herself. Then a frown came over her face; she
began to look disturbed, anxious, almost angry.

Sylvia, in spite of herself, grew interested and excited. She was sorry
she had not taken off her wedding-ring. In England the wise woman always
takes off her wedding-ring on going to see a fortune-teller. She was
also rather glad that she had left her pearls in the safe custody of
M. Girard. This little house in the Rue Jolie was a strange, lonely
place.

Suddenly Madame Cagliostra began to speak in a quick, clear, monotonous
voice.

Keeping her eyes fixed on the cards, which now and again she touched with
a fat finger, and without looking at Sylvia, she said:

"Madame has led a very placid, quiet life. Her existence has been a boat
that has always lain in harbour--" She suddenly looked up: "I spent my
childhood at Dieppe, and that often suggests images to me," she observed
complacently, and then she went on in quite another tone of voice:--

"To return to Madame and her fate! The boat has always been in harbour,
but now it is about to put out to sea. It will meet there another craft.
This other craft is, to Madame, a foreign craft, and I grieve to say it,
rather battered. But its timbers are sound, and that is well, for it
looks to me as if the sails of Madame's boat would mingle, at any rate
for a time with this battered craft."

"I don't understand what she means," said Sylvia, in a whisper. "Do ask
her to explain, Anna!"

"My friend asks you to drop metaphor," said the older woman, drily.

The soothsayer fixed her bright, beady little eyes on Sylvia's flushed
face.

"Well," she said deliberately, "I see you falling in love, and I also see
that falling in love is quite a new experience. It burns, it scorches
you, does love, Madame. And for awhile you do not know what it means, for
love has never yet touched you with his red-hot finger."

"How absurd!" thought Sylvia to herself. "She actually takes me for a
young girl! What ridiculous mistakes fortune-tellers do make, to be
sure!"

"--But you cannot escape love," went on Madame Cagliostra, eagerly. "Your
fate is a fair man, which is strange considering that you also are a fair
woman; and I see that there is already a dark man in your life."

Sylvia blushed. Bill Chester, just now the only man in her life, was a
very dark man.

"But this fair man knows all the arts of love." Madame Cagliostra sighed,
her voice softened, it became strangely low and sweet. "He will love you
tenderly as well as passionately. And as for you, Madame--but no, for me
to tell you what you will feel _and what you will do_ would not be
delicate on my part!"

Sylvia grew redder and redder. She tried to laugh, but failed. She felt
angry, and not a little disgusted.

"You are a foreigner," went on Madame Cagliostra. Her voice had grown
hard and expressionless again.

Sylvia smiled a little satiric smile.

"But though you are a foreigner," cried the fortune-teller with sudden
energy, "it is quite possible that you will never go back to your own
country! Stop--or, perhaps, I shall say too much! Still if you ever do go
back, it will be as a stranger. That I say with certainty. And I add that
I hope with all my heart that you will live to go back to your own
country, Madame!"

Sylvia felt a vague, uneasy feeling of oppression, almost of fear, steal
over her. It seemed to her that Madame Cagliostra was looking at her with
puzzled, pitying eyes.

The soothsayer again put a fat and not too clean finger down on the
upturned face of a card.

"There is something here I do not understand; something which I miss when
I look at you as I am now looking at you. It is something you always
wear--"

She gazed searchingly at Sylvia, and her eyes travelled over Mrs.
Bailey's neck and bosom.

"I see them and yet they are not there! They appear like little balls of
light. Surely it is a necklace?"

Sylvia looked extremely surprised. Now, at last, Madame Cagliostra was
justifying her claim to a supernatural gift!

"These balls of light are also your Fate!" exclaimed the woman
impetuously. "If you had them here--I care not what they be--I should
entreat you to give them to me to throw away."

Madame Wolsky began to laugh. "I don't think you would do that," she
observed drily.

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