Marie Belloc Lowndes - The Chink in the Armour

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"Oh, those French people!" she exclaimed. "How greedy they are for money!
But--well, Annette has earned her present very fairly--" She shrugged her
shoulders.

"May I go and take off my hat?" asked Sylvia; she left the room before
Madame Wachner could answer her, and hurried down the short, dark
passage.

The door of the moonlit kitchen was ajar, and to her surprise she saw
that a large trunk, corded and even labelled, stood in the middle of the
floor. Close to the trunk was a large piece of sacking--and by it another
coil of thick rope.

Was it possible that the Wachners, too, were leaving Lacville? If so, how
very odd of them not to have told her!

As she opened the door of the bed-room Madame Wachner waddled up behind
her.

"Wait a moment!" she cried. "Or perhaps, dear friend, you do not want 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 so very
seldom separated. 'Darby and Joan,' is not that what English people would
call us?"

"The moon is so bright I can see quite well," Sylvia was taking off her
hat; she put it, together with a little fancy bag in which she kept the
loose gold 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 bed-room was almost entirely cleared
of everything belonging to its occupants. However, the Wachners, like
Anna Wolsky, had the right to go away without telling anyone of their
intention.

As they came back into the dining-room together, Mrs. Bailey's host, 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 come here and eat your suppers? I am very hungry."

Sylvia had never heard the odd, silent man 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 her saying those words there came a
sound of shuffling footsteps on the garden path.

Monsieur Wachner got up and went out of the room. He opened the front
door, and Sylvia overheard a few words of the colloquy between her host
and his messenger.

"Yes, you are to take it now, at once. Just leave it at the Villa du Lac.
You will come for us--you will come, that is, for _me_"--Monsieur Wachner
raised his voice--"to-morrow morning at half-past six. I desire to catch
the 7.10 train to Paris."

There was a jingle of silver, and then Sylvia caught the man's answering,
"_Merci, c'est entendu, M'sieur._"

But L'Ami Fritz did not come back at once to the dining-room. He went out
into the garden and accompanied the man down to the gate.

When he came back again he put a large key on the dining-table.

"There!" he said, with a grunt of satisfaction. "Now there will be
nothing to disturb us any more."

They all three sat down at the round dining-table. To Sylvia's surprise
a very simple meal was set out before them. There was only one small dish
of galantine. When Sylvia Bailey had been to supper with the Wachners
before, there had always been two or three tempting cold dishes, and
some dainty friandises as well, the whole evidently procured from the
excellent confectioner who drives such a roaring trade at Lacville.
To-night, in addition to the few slices of galantine, there was only
a little fruit.

Then a very odd thing happened.

L'Ami Fritz helped first his wife and himself largely, then Sylvia more
frugally. It was perhaps a slight matter, the more so that Monsieur
Wachner was notoriously forgetful, being ever, according to his wife,
absorbed in his calculations and "systems." But all the same, this
extraordinary lack of good manners on her host's part added to Sylvia'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 stout red
face was set in rather grim, grave lines; and twice, as Sylvia was eating
the little piece of galantine which had been placed on her plate by L'Ami
Fritz, she looked up and caught her hostess's eyes fixed on her with a
curious, alien scrutiny.

When they had almost finished the meat, Madame Wachner suddenly exclaimed
in French.

"Fritz! You have forgotten to mix the salad! Whatever made you forget
such an important thing? You will find what is necessary in the drawer
behind you."

Monsieur Wachner made no answer. He got up and pulled the drawer of the
buffet open. Taking out of it a wooden spoon and fork, he came back to
the table and began silently mixing the salad.

The two last times Sylvia had been at the Chalet des Muguets, her
host, in deference to her English 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. Bailey?" he said brusquely, and
in English. He spoke English far better than did his wife.

"No," she said. "Not to-night, thank you!"

And Sylvia, smiling, 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.

Mrs. Bailey's dislike of the favourite French salad-dressing ingredient
had long been a joke among the three, nay, among the four, for Anna
Wolsky had been there the last time Sylvia had had supper with the
Wachners. It had been such a merry meal!

To-night no meaning smile met hers; instead she only saw that odd, grave,
considering look on her hostess's face.

Suddenly Madame Wachner held out her plate across the table, and L'Ami
Fritz heaped it up with the oily salad.

Sylvia Bailey's plate was empty, but Monsieur Wachner did not seem
to notice that his guest lacked anything. And at last, to her extreme
astonishment, she suddenly saw him take up one of the two pieces of meat
remaining on the dish, and, leaning across, drop it on his wife's plate.
Then he helped himself to the last remaining morsel.

It was such a trifling thing really, and due of course to her host's
singular absent-mindedness; yet, even so, taken in connection with both
the Wachners' silence and odd manner, this lack of the commonest courtesy
struck Sylvia with a kind of fear--with fear and with pain. She felt so
hurt that the tears came into her eyes.

There was a long moment's pause--then,

"Do you not feel well," asked Madame Wachner harshly, "or are you
grieving for the Comte de Virieu?"

Her voice had become guttural, full of coarse and cruel malice, and even
as she spoke she went on eating voraciously.

Sylvia Bailey pushed her chair back, and rose to her feet.

"I should like to go home now," she said quietly, "for it is getting
late,"--her voice shook a little. She was desperately afraid of
disgracing herself by a childish outburst of tears. "I can make my
way back quite well without Monsieur Wachner's escort."

She saw her host shrug his shoulders. He made a grimace at his wife; it
expressed annoyance, nay, more, extreme disapproval.

Madame Wachner also got up. She wiped her mouth with her napkin, and then
laid her hand on Sylvia's shoulder.

"Come, come," she exclaimed, and this time she spoke quite kindly, "you
must not be cross with me, dear friend! I was only laughing, I was only
what you call in England '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 really nice, and she disobeyed me! I was 'ungry, too, for I
'ad no dejeuner to-day, and that makes one 'ollow, does it not? But now
L'Ami Fritz is going to make us some good coffee! After we 'ave 'ad it
you shall go away if so is your wish, but my 'usband will certainly
accompany you--"

"Most certainly I will do so; you will not move--no, not a single
step--without me," said Monsieur Wachner solemnly.

And then Madame Wachner burst out into a sudden peal of
laughter--laughter which was infectious.

Sylvia smiled too, and sat down again. After all, as Paul de Virieu had
truly said, not once, but many times, the Wachners were not refined
people--but they were kind and very good-natured. And then she, Sylvia,
was tired and low-spirited to-night--no doubt she had imagined the change
in their manner, which had so surprised and hurt her.

Madame Wachner was quite her old self again; just now she was engaged in
heaping all the cherries which were in the dessert dish on her guest's
plate, in spite of Sylvia's eager protest.

L'Ami Fritz got up and left the room. He was going into the kitchen to
make the coffee.

"Mr. Chester was telling me of your valuable pearls," said Madame Wachner
pleasantly. "I _was_ surprised! What a lot of money to 'ang round one's
neck! But it is worth it if one 'as so lovely a neck as 'as the beautiful
Sylvia! May I look at your pearls, dear friend? Or do you never take them
off?"

Sylvia unclasped the string of pearls and laid it on the table.

"Yes, they are rather nice," she said modestly. "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. So that is what I do. I had them restrung
just before coming to France."

Madame Wachner reverentially took up the pearls in her large hand; she
seemed to be weighing them.

"How heavy they are," she said at length, and now she spoke French.

"Yes," said Sylvia, "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 hundred
francs, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Sylvia again, "I'm glad to say they have increased in value
during the last few years. You see, pearls are the only really
fashionable gems just now."

"And they cannot be identified like other fine jewels," observed Madame
Wachner, "but I suppose they are worth more together than separately?"
she was still speaking in that thoughtful, considering tone.

"Oh, I don't know that," said Sylvia, smiling. "Each separate pearl is
worth a good deal, but still I daresay you are right, for these are
beautifully matched. I got them, by a piece of great luck, without having
to pay--well, what I suppose one would call the middle-man's profit! I
just paid what I should have done at a good London sale."

"And you paid?--seven--eight 'undred pounds?" asked Madame Wachner,
this time in English, and fixing her small, dark eyes on the fair
Englishwoman's face.

"Oh, rather more than that." Sylvia grew a little red. "But as I said
just now, they are always increasing in value. Even Mr. Chester, who did
not approve of my getting these pearls, admits that I made a good
bargain."

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, so I have
given you the small cup."

Sylvia looked up.

"Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "I ought to have told you before you made it,
Monsieur Wachner--but I won't have any coffee to-night. The last time I
took some I lay awake all night."

"Oh, but you must take coffee!" 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? Sylvia 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 to-night, honestly, I would really rather not have any coffee!"

Sylvia had suddenly seen a vision of herself lying wide awake during long
dark 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 truly sorry if you did not take this coffee.
Indeed, it would make me think you were angry with us because of the very
bad supper we had 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 and fragrant.

Sylvia had always disliked coffee in England, but somehow French coffee
was quite different; it had quite another taste from that of the mixture
which the ladies of Market Dalling pressed on their guests at their
dinner-parties.

She lifted the pretty little cup to her lips--but the coffee, this coffee
of L'Ami Fritz, his special mixture, as his wife had termed it, had a
rather curious taste, it was slightly bitter--decidedly not so nice as
that which she was accustomed to drink each day after dejeuner at the
Villa du Lac. 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 do not ask me to take it," she said firmly. "It really is very
bad for me!"

Madame Wachner shrugged her shoulders with an angry gesture.

"So be it," she said, and then imperiously, "Fritz, will you please come
with me for a moment into the next room? I have something to ask you."

He got up and silently obeyed his wife. Before leaving the room he
slipped the key of the garden gate into his trousers pocket.

A moment later Sylvia, left alone, could hear them talking eagerly to one
another in that strange, unknown tongue in which they sometimes--not
often--addressed one another.

She got up from her chair, seized with a sudden, eager desire to slip
away before they came back. For a moment she even thought of leaving the
house without waiting for her hat and little fancy bag; and then, with a
strange sinking of the heart she remembered that the white gate was
locked, and that L'Ami Fritz had now the key of it in his pocket.

But in no case would Sylvia have had time to do what she had thought of
doing, for a moment later her host and hostess were back in the room.

Madame Wachner sat down again at the dining-table,

"One moment!" she exclaimed, rather breathlessly. "Just wait till I 'ave
finished my coffee, Sylvia dear, and then L'Ami Fritz will escort you
'ome."

Rather unwillingly, Sylvia again sat down.

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 lighted lamp off the
table and put it on the buffet.

As he did so, Sylvia, looking up, saw the shadow of his tall, lank figure
thrown grotesquely, hugely, against the opposite wall of the room.

"Now take the cloth off the table," he said curtly. And his wife, gulping
down the last drops of her coffee, got up and obeyed him.

Sylvia suddenly realised that they were getting ready for something--that
they wanted the room cleared.

As with quick, deft fingers she folded up the cloth, Madame Wachner
exclaimed, "As you are not taking any coffee, Sylvia, perhaps it is time
for you now to get up and go away."

Sylvia Bailey looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt
very angry. Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life
had anyone ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house.

She rose, for the second time during the course of her short meal, to her
feet--

And then, in a flash, there occurred that which transformed her anger
into agonised fear--fear and terror.

The back of her neck had been grazed by something sharp and cold, and as
she gave a smothered cry she saw that her string of pearls had parted in
two. The pearls were now falling quickly one by one, 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 was still holding in his hand the small pair of nail scissors
with which he had snipped asunder her necklace; with the other he was in
the act of taking out something from the drawer of the buffet.

She suddenly saw what that something was.

Sylvia Bailey's nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and
clear. There had leapt 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 about the floor, and for the comparatively small sum of money
which she carried slung in the leather bag below her waist.

L'Ami Fritz now stood staring at her. He had put his right 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 Sylvia's sub-conscious mind
the thought of Anna Wolsky, and of what she now knew to have been Anna
Wolsky's fate.

But she put that thought, that awful knowledge, determinedly away from
her. 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," Sylvia said, quietly. Her voice
shook a little, but otherwise 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! Stoop!"
she said imperiously. "Stoop, Sylvia! Help me to find your pearls!"

She made a gesture as if she also meant to bend down....

But Sylvia Bailey made no attempt to obey the sinister order. Slowly,
warily she edged herself towards the closed window. At last she stood
with her back to it--at bay.

"No," she said quietly, "I will not stoop to pick up my pearls now,
Madame Wachner. It will be easier to find them in the daylight. I am sure
that Monsieur Wachner could pick them all up for me to-morrow morning. Is
not that so, Ami Fritz?" and there was a tone of pleading, for the first
time of pitiful fear, in her soft voice.

She looked at him piteously, her large blue eyes wide open, dilated--

"It is not my husband's business to pick up your pearls!" exclaimed
Madame Wachner harshly.

She stepped forward and gripped Sylvia 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. Bailey and the window.

Sylvia had lost her point of vantage, but she was young and lithe; she
kept her feet.

Nevertheless, she knew with a cold, reasoned 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
gain 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 on her person.

"If you will let me go," she said, desperately, "I swear I will give you
everything I have in the world!"

Madame Wachner suddenly laid her hand on Sylvia's arm, and tried to force
her down on to her knees.

"What do you take us for?" she cried, 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 uncouth tongue which the Wachners used for
secrecy.

Sylvia tried desperately to understand, but she could make nothing of
the strange, rapid-spoken syllables--until there fell on her ear, twice
repeated, the name _Wolsky_....

Madame Wachner stepped suddenly back, and as she did so L'Ami Fritz moved
a step forward.

Sylvia looked at him, an agonised appeal in her eyes. He was smiling
hideously, a nervous grin zig-zagging across his large, thin-lipped
mouth.

"You should have taken the coffee," he muttered in English. "It would
have saved us all so much trouble!"

He put out his left hand, and the long, strong fingers closed,
tentacle-wise, on her slender shoulder.

His right hand he kept still hidden behind his back--

CHAPTER XXV

The great open-air restaurant in the Champs Elysees was full of
foreigners, and Paul de Virieu and Bill Chester were sitting opposite to
one another on the broad terrace dotted with little tables embowered in
flowering shrubs.

They were both smoking,--the Englishman a cigar, the Frenchman a
cigarette. It was now half-past seven, and instead of taking the first
express to Switzerland they had decided to have dinner comfortably in
Paris and to go on by a later train.

Neither man felt that he had very much to say to the other, and Chester
started a little in his seat when Paul de Virieu suddenly took his
cigarette out of his mouth, put it down on the table, and leant forward.
He looked at the man sitting opposite to him straight in the eyes.

"I do not feel at all happy at our having left Mrs. Bailey alone at
Lacville," he said, deliberately.

Chester stared back at him, telling himself angrily as he did so that he
did not in the least know what the Frenchman was driving at!

What did Paul de Virieu mean by saying this stupid, obvious thing, and
why should he drag in the question of his being happy or unhappy?

"You know that I did my best to persuade her to leave the place," said
Chester shortly. Then, very deliberately he added, "I am afraid, Count,
that you've got quite a wrong notion in your mind concerning myself and
Mrs. Bailey. It is true I am her trustee, but I have no power of making
her do what I think sensible, or even what I think right. She is
absolutely her own mistress."

He stopped abruptly, for he had no wish to discuss Sylvia and Sylvia's
affairs with this foreigner, however oddly intimate Mrs. Bailey had
allowed herself to get with the Comte de Virieu.

"Lacville is such a very queer place," observed the Count, meditatively.
"It is perhaps even queerer than you know or guess it to be, Mr.
Chester."

The English lawyer thought the remark too obvious to answer. Of course
Lacville was a queer place--to put it plainly, little better than a
gambling hell. He knew that well enough! But it was rather strange to
hear the Comte de Virieu saying so--a real case, if ever there was one,
of Satan rebuking sin.

So at last he answered, irritably, "Of course it is! I can't think what
made Mrs. Bailey go there in the first instance." His mind was full of
Sylvia. He seemed to go on speaking of her against his will.

"Her going to Lacville was a mere accident," explained Paul de Virieu,
quickly. "She was brought there by the Polish lady, Madame Wolsky, of
whom you must have heard her speak, whom she met in an hotel in Paris,
and who disappeared so mysteriously. It is not a place for a young lady
to be at by herself."

Bill Chester tilted back the chair on which he was sitting. Once more he
asked himself what on earth the fellow was driving at? Were these remarks
a preliminary to the Count's saying that he was not going to Switzerland
after all--that he was going back to Lacville in order to take care of
Sylvia.

Quite suddenly the young Englishman felt shaken by a very primitive and,
till these last few days, a very unfamiliar feeling--that of jealousy.

Damn it--he wouldn't have that. Of course he was no longer in love with
Sylvia Bailey, but he was her trustee and lifelong friend. It was his
duty to prevent her making a fool of herself, either by gambling away
her money--the good money the late George Bailey had toiled so hard to
acquire--or, what would be ever so much worse, by making some wretched
marriage to a foreign adventurer.

He stared suspiciously at his companion. Was it likely that a real
count--the French equivalent to an English earl--would lead the sort of
life this man, Paul de Virieu, was leading, and in a place like Lacville?

"If you really feel like that, I think I'd better give up my trip to
Switzerland, and go back to Lacville to-morrow morning."

He stared hard at the Count, and noted with sarcastic amusement the
other's appearance--so foppish, so effeminate to English eyes;
particularly did he gaze with scorn at the Count's yellow silk socks,
which matched his lemon-coloured 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 Sylvia Bailey
to be that sort of woman.

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