Pleasantly aware that they were a long distance apart and that there was no chance of the other getting at him, he proceeded to give his views at considerable length. It was like ticking a man off over the telephone, and Mr Gedge had always been a very lion over the telephone.
He spoke, accordingly, forcefully and well. And the debate was at its height when Packy, disturbed by these voices, put on his dressing-gown and came down to see what it was all about.
He could make nothing of the affair. An argument of some kind appeared to be in progress between his host and Senator Opal, but as they were talking simultaneously at the extreme limit of their lungs it was not easy to follow thrust and counter-thrust. He turned to the Duc de Pont-Andemer as an intelligent bystander.
'What seems to be the trouble?' he asked.
He was surprised to note that his companion, on whom a moment before he had been looking as the one safe and sane unit in what had all the appearance of being a rally of lunatics, was staring at him in a manner that struck his critical sense as definitely goofy. Packy knew that he was not beautiful – he never was till he had shaved – but he could not understand what there was about him to cause this normally unruffled aristocrat to goggle at him with this odd expression of horror.
Mr Carlisle could have explained, but he did not do so. Instead, he turned sharply and hurried without a word on the long trail which went winding to the Hotel des Etrangers. It seemed to him imperative that he should have immediate speech with Soup Slattery.
4
What had startled Mr Carlisle in Packy's appearance was the fact that it was unblemished. That cry in the night had convinced him that Mr Slattery, carrying on according to plan, had invaded the other's boudoir and put it across him in his own inimitable manner. And here the fellowwas, as good as new. Not so much as a black eye.
It stunned Mr Carlisle. At their parting on the previous day, Mr Slattery had been all fire and generous wrath. He had hinted unmistakably at a punitive expedition on lines of the most gratifying severity. And apparently he had done nothing.
It was with the utmost consternation that Gordon Carlisle charged into the hotel. He finally succeeded in running his quarry to earth in the main dining-room, where Mr Slattery, peckish after his night in the open, was restoring himself with a bite of breakfast.
The Continental breakfast, as a rule, consists of a pot of what the French smilingly call coffee, three smallish dabs of butter, a roll shaped like a roll, and another roll shaped like a horseshoe. Mr Slattery had introduced some variations of his own invention. He had just finished an omelette fines herbes, a double order of ham and eggs, and a small sirloin steak, and as Mr Carlisle burst into the room he looked up at him questioningly with his mouth full of toast and marmalade.
Ah,' he said, swallowing the consignment.
He turned to a hovering waiter.
'Encore de coffee,' he added.
Mr Carlisle regarded the human python feverishly. Questions rained from him. But when the other finally spoke, which was only when the coffee had arrived and he had drained his fifth cup, it was not to reply to any of these but merely to put into words a dream, a sort of opalescent vision, which had come to him in the silent watches of the night.
'All I ask,' said Mr Slattery with feeling, 'is that some day – I don't care when it is – just some day – I meet that white-haired bird down a dark alley with no cops in sight.'
A shudder of reminiscent horror passed through him.
'Putting a fellow out on a window-sill!' he continued with growing vehemence. 'I ask you, is that nice? Cheese! And me scared of heights ever since a girl I knew betted me I wouldn't lean over the edge of the Woolworth Building and spit into Broadway. If I get over this by the time I'm a hundred, it'll be soon.'
'But how...?'
'I'll tell you how. Me, snooping around that Chatty-o seeing wasn't there something I could pick up and there's this door with someone snoring behind it, and I twist the handle and it ain't locked. Swell, I think to myself, and I give it a pull and what do you know? The dam' thing squeals like putting on the brakes in a second-hand flivver, and the next thing, there's this white-haired bird pulling a gun on me and telling me to close the door gently and walk to the window. Well, cheese! If I don't do like he says, I see it's a case of writing my own tombstone. You can't do nothing when a guy's sticking the heat on you. That gun looks like it's due to go off if there's any funny business. So I walk to the window. And the next thing I know, I'm sitting outside of it, and the guy's closing the shutters. And after a while out breaks the snoring again, and I see he's in for the night and I'm out for the night. And after about three thousand years it begins to get daylight, and a coupla centuries after that you come up, and after you're gone I see that pipe and slide down it. And I want to tell you,' said Mr Slattery, 'that I wouldn't have my worst enemy slide down no pipes. If even one of those johndarms was planning to slide down a pipe, I'd take him by the arm and say, "Come away, brother. You wouldn't like it."'
A more sympathetic heart than that of Mr Carlisle would have been moved by this recital. Gordon Carlisle did not even click his tongue.
'But what about the bird who's pretending to be the Vicomte de Blissac?'
Soup Slattery spread marmalade on toast and snapped at it like a rising fish.
'Oh, him? He's all right.'
'All right?'
'Old buddy of mine,' explained Mr Slattery. 'We had a little talk, and he put me wise. You had him pegged wrong. He's not after that ice. All he wants, he tells me, is some letter or other that this Gedge dame's got. One of those copperizing letters.'
To say that Mr Carlisle was aghast would not be to overstate the facts. He had always known that Soup Slattery, stout man of action though he was, had the irreducible minimum of intelligence, but surely even Soup could not have swallowed so obviously flimsy a tale. He stared with horrified incredulity.
'And you believed him?'
'Sure I believed him.'
'Well, I'm darned!'
'Certainly I believed him. He's a friend of mine.'
Mr Carlisle gulped. So did Mr Slattery. But whereas the latter gulped because that is the quickest way of getting a sixth cup of coffee into the system, what caused Mr Carlisle to gulp was the extreme of dismay. He realized whither all this was tending.
'Then do you mean,' he quavered, 'that you aren't going to beat this bird up?'
It is not the simplest of tasks to laugh derisively with your mouth full of coffee, but Mr Slattery succeeded in doing so.
'Who, me? Why, say! Him and me are like that.'
He placed two banana-esque fingers together to indicate the closeness of the trust and friendship which linked Packy and himself.
'You don't have to worry about that guy. He told me all about it. This letter is one some fellow named Senator Opal wrote and it'll get him in Dutch, far as I gather, if it comes out. And the Gedge dame has got hold of it. That's all this guy is after. He ain't attracted by the ice. Don't hold no fascination for him at all. He told me so himself
Mr Carlisle drew his breath in sharply. He found the tale suddenly plausible. Himself an expert in falsehood, he had almost a sixth sense when it came to detecting what he would have described as the phony. Yes, the story had the ring of truth, and for an instant he forgot his troubles. His eyes gleamed. If Senator Opal had written a letter so indiscreet that he had to employ bravoes to recover it for him, it must be a letter worth acquiring.
For one reason and another, Gordon Carlisle, though a many-sided man, had never yet made any experiments in the direction of blackmail. It was not that he had any moral objection to it, for there were very few things to which he had any moral objection. It was simply that he had never just happened to get around to it.
But now... with this wonderful opportunity opening before his eyes...
The mood of elation did not last long. Chilling it, there came the dismal reflection that he could never hope to convince Gertie of this. She would see P
acky going about all hale and hearty, and she would demand an explanation and would certainly refuse to accept the only one he could give.
He bade Mr Slattery a hasty farewell. The safe-blower had observed a melon on a side-table and was now trying to order a slice, and as the waiter's English was weak and he himself did not know the French for melon, the process promised to be a lengthy one. Long before they had got the matter straightened out, Mr Carlisle had left them. He had seen all he wished of his friend breakfasting.
What, he asked himself as he walked towards the Château, would Gertie say when she found that he had not fulfilled those gallant boasts and promises of yesterday?
He was given an early opportunity of ascertaining what she would say. She met him half-way down the drive and said it.
'Hey!' she cried, and there was no mistaking the censure in her voice. 'What's all this? You told me you were going to beat that ringer guy up last night, and I see him just now strutting his stuff without so much as a mark on him. How come?'
Mr Carlisle moistened his lips, and summoned to his aid all his professional skill. Now, if ever, was there need for that magic eloquence of his.
'You'll be surprised when I tell you,' he said, and was dismayed to find how lame and halting his words seemed. At this crisis in his life, eloquence had deserted him. 'The fact is, we've been all wrong about that bird.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Why, he isn't after the ice at all. What he's come for is a compromising letter....'
'What!'
'Just that. He told me so himself.'
'When?'
'Last night, when I went to his room and...'
'When you went to his room! You never went near him. I see it all now I might have known that you were just bluffing yesterday You got cold feet.'
'I give you my word...'
'And me thinking maybe you weren't such a false alarm after all! Well, good-bye, Mr Carlisle.'
'Where are you going?'
'None of your business. If you really want to know, I'm going back to Mr Eggleston.'
A spasm of anguished alarm shot through Gordon Carlisle. This was the first intimation he had received that his already difficult wooing might be further complicated by a rival.
'Who's he?'
'Senator Opal's valet. I like him very much. So if you will excuse me, Mr Carlisle, I will be going back to him.'
She passed on her way, even her back hair expressing her loathing and contempt.
Mr Carlisle remained where he was. A jealous fury had him in its grip. This Eggleston!... As far as his seething mind was capable of formulating any coherent plan, he resolved that he would seize the earliest opportunity of taking a look at this Eggleston.
And if on inspection this Eggleston proved to be of a not too formidable physique, he would know what to do about it.
CHAPTER 12
THE day of Mrs Gedge's return to the Château of which she was the temporary lessee and proprietor was as fine as every other day had been for weeks. St Rocque was certainly having a great summer; and if certain of those residing in and about it were not appreciating it to the full the fault was theirs, not that of the weather.
The sun shone bravely down. And it cannot but assist the readers of this chronicle if, in pursuance of his tested policy of pausing from time to time to offer a bird's-eye view of affairs to his patrons, the historian gives here a brief list of the more interesting objects on which it shone.
We may omit the Vicomte de Blissac, that modern hermit, still languishing in his cell. We need not mention Mr Soup Slattery, confined to his room with a slight cold in the head. But the movements of the rest of our little group deserve each their brief notice.
In a clearing of the shrubbery down by the lake, Gum-Shoe Gertie (alias Medway) was listening with considerable pleasure to the compliments of Blair Eggleston – compliments which never fell below a certain high level because the speaker was uncomfortably aware that his employer, Senator Ambrose Opal, was hiding in a bush close by, drinking in every word. It had always been the Senator's belief that subordinates worked better under careful personal supervision.
Gordon Carlisle had gone for a country walk. This was not because he was fond of exercise, but because he hoped that the wearying of the body might a little ease the torment of the spirit. Jealousy was gnawing grievously at Mr Carlisle's soul.
Jane Opal was in her room, writing letters. Packy had argued against this course, but it seemed that there had arrived in Jane's life that moment, which comes to all women, when her correspondence could wait no longer.
Packy, accordingly, had wandered off to the terrace, and was employing this period of solitude in an effort to work out some plan by means of which Mrs Gedge, when she arrived, could be induced to vacate the Venetian Suite and hand it over to Mr Gedge. On this, he perceived, turned the whole success of his venture.
Miss Putnam was in the library, doing a crossword puzzle.
The cook was in the kitchen, baking a pie for her betrothed, a likeable young man of the name of Octave, one of that agile corps of gendarmerie who had chased Soup Slattery on the night of the Festival. He was waiting for it in the bushes outside the kitchen door.
Mr Gedge was down at the dock. He had gone there to meet Mrs Gedge.
And Mrs Gedge, standing on the deck of the steam packet Antelope, was chatting with a fellow-passenger whose acquaintance she had made on the voyage.
The steam packet Antelope slid cautiously towards its moorings. The process, as always, involved a great deal of tooting and shouting and ringing of bells, and Mr Gedge, making himself as i95 inconspicuous as possible in the little group on the dock, found it intolerably slow. Every minute spent out in the open like this was anguish to Mr Gedge. Already he had seen two gendarmes, and there were probably dozens more lurking round the corner. At any moment he expected to hear cries of 'Scélérat!' and 'Assassin!' and to find the whole strength of the force piling themselves on his neck.
He mused bitterly on this mess into which Fate had thrust him. Simply because he had taken a few drinks, just as any red-blooded man would have done on an occasion like that of the Festival of the Saint, here he was with murder on his soul, cowering from the police. Why should this have had to happen to him of all people? There had been scores of revellers at the Festival every whit as pickled as he, but they had not gone about destroying Vicomtes. That hideous feat had been reserved for him, J. W. Gedge, and it seemed to him unfair discrimination.
The rattle of the descending gang-plank came to him like music. Returning wanderers stepped down it, to be greeted by their loved ones. Presently Mrs Gedge appeared. She was talking over her shoulder to a girl, and so remarkable was this girl's loveliness that Mr Gedge momentarily forgot his troubles and unconsciously straightened his tie. House-broken husband though he was, he had still an eye for beauty.
The crossing had evidently been a smooth one. Mrs Gedge, who tended on occasions like this to look green and give at the knees, seemed to be in excellent shape. She walked composedly, kissed Mr Gedge composedly, and introduced him to her companion.
'Lady Beatrice Bracken. My husband.'
Now that the girl had come closer, Mr Gedge was able to see that, though beautiful, she was not altogether the sort of girl he would have cared to be left alone with for long. There was that about her which would have rendered any male uneasy. In her lustrous eyes he observed a look which he had sometimes detected in those of his wife – the look that spells trouble. If she had come to St Rocque to meet some member of his own sex, he did not envy that member.
'Lady Beatrice has been so kind to me, Wellington. She lent me her smelling-salts, and they made all the difference.'
Mr Gedge murmured appreciatively with one eye on a gendarme who had strolled up and was twisting his moustache in what seemed to him a sinister way. The unpleasantness of the spectacle diverted his attention and caused him to miss his companion's next few remarks. When he forced himself to listen once mo
re, the girl was talking about hotels.
'I wonder,' she was saying, 'if you could tell me which are the principal hotels in this place?'
Mrs Gedge said that the Hotel des Etrangers was where everyone went.
'They will make you very comfortable. We stayed there for a few days while the Château was being got ready. We have rented the Château Blissac for the summer. It is a large house up the hill, belonging to the Vicomtesse de Blissac. Perhaps you have met her?'
'No. I know her son. Slightly.'
'Really? He is visiting us now. Won't you come and lunch tomorrow? I'm sure he would be delighted to meet you again. Whatever is the matter, Wellington?'
Mrs Gedge regarded her husband with that rather school-teacherine air of censure which his behaviour so frequently evoked in her. His sudden gasp had startled her a good deal.
'I'm all right,' mumbled Mr Gedge. 'Touch of cramp.'
He stood awaiting the doom. Next moment, this girl would be accepting the invitation. Next day, she would come to the Château. And immediately on her arrival she would meet Packy and fail to recognize in him the Vicomte de Blissac whom she knew slightly but presumably well enough to cause her to accept no substitutes. Oh, felt Mr Gedge, as the poet had done before him, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.
Then her voice came to his ears, uttering a life-restoring refusal.
'It's awfully kind of you, but I expect to be catching the night boat back to England.'
'You are returning to-night?' It was Mrs Gedge's turn to be taken aback. 'So soon?'
'Yes. I simply came over to...There is a friend of mine staying in St Rocque ... When I asked you about hotels, I was just wondering where I would be likely to find...We shall probably go back on the night boat together. I see my porter has got me a cab. Good-bye. It has been so nice meeting you.'