Miranda of the Balcony Part 16

"No!"

The emphatic interruption fairly startled M. Fournier. Miranda had risen from her seat and stood over him. He would not have believed that so gentle a face could have taken on so vigorous an expression.

He stammered a protest. Miranda repeated her denial: "No, no, no!" she cried. "Let us be frank!"

She turned aside from him, and leaning her elbows upon the crumbling parapet of the wall, looked across the valley and down the cliff's side where one road was cut in steep zigzags, and winding down to the plain as to the water's edge, helped to complete the illusion that the sea should fitly be breaking at the base.

M. Fournier's hopes dwindled in the face of this uncompromising denial. He had come to enlist her help; he had counted upon her affections, and had boldly counted, because Warriner had so surely attracted his own. M. Fournier would have been at a loss to explain his friendship for Warriner, to account for the causes or the qualities which evoked it, but he felt its strength, and he now knew that Mrs. Warriner had no lot or share in it.

He was therefore the more surprised when she turned back to him with eyes which were shining and moist, and said very gently: "But of course I will help." Her conduct was not at all inconsistent, however much it might appear so to M. Fournier. She was acting upon the same motive which had induced her, the moment she was aware of Ralph Warriner's existence, to return to Ronda, the one spot where Warriner would be sure to look for her if he needed her, and which had subsequently persuaded her to submit to the blackmail of Major Wilbraham. "Of course I will help. What can I do?"

M. Fournier's eyes narrowed, his manner became wary and cunning. "I hoped that you might perhaps. .h.i.t upon some plan," he suggested.

"I?" Miranda thought for a moment, then she said: "We must appeal to the English Minister at Tangier."

M. Fournier sprang out of his chair. "No, that is the very last thing we must do. For what should we say? That Mr. Ralph Warriner, who was thought to be dead, has just been kidnapped in Morocco?"

"No, but that Mr. Bentham has," she returned quickly.

M. Fournier shrugged his shoulders. "Why am I here?" he exclaimed, stamping his foot. "I ask you, why am I here? _Saperlipopette!_ Would I have come to you if any so simple remedy had been possible? Suppose we go politely to the English Minister and ask him to find Mr. Jeremy Bentham! The Minister goes to the Sultan of Morocco, and after many months, perhaps Mr. Bentham is found, perhaps he is not. Suppose that he is found and brought down to Tangier,--what next, I beg you? There will be talk about Mr. Bentham, there will be gentlemen everywhere, behind bushes, under tables, everywhere, so that the great British public may know the colours of the ties he wears, and at last be happy. His name will be in the papers, and more, Mrs. Warriner, his portrait too. His portrait; have you thought of that?"

"But he might escape the photographers."

"Suppose he do, by a miracle. Do you think there will be no inquiry as to what is Mr. Bentham's business in Morocco? Do you think the English Minister will not ask the inconvenient question? Do you think that you can hide his business, once an inquiry is set on foot, in that country? He might pa.s.s as a tourist, you think perhaps, _hein?_ And any one man has only got to give a few dollars to some officer in the custom-house, and he will know that Mr. Bentham is smuggling guns into Morocco, and selling them to the Berbers of Bemin Sooar. What then? He would be taken for trial to Gibraltar, where only two years ago he was Captain Warriner."

Miranda had already heard enough from Wilbraham to confirm M.

Fournier's statement about the custom-house.

"No," continued Fournier, "the risk is too great. And I call it risk!"

He hunched his shoulders and spread out his hand. "It is a red-hot cert, as he would say. His ident.i.ty would be established, and he had better, after all, be a captive in Morocco than a convict in England.

There is some chance of an escape in Morocco."

"There is also in Morocco some chance of a--" Miranda's lips refused to speak the word. M. Fournier supplied it.

"Murder? I do not fear that. Had they intended murder, they would have killed that night, then and there, in the Sok of Tangier. There would have been no letter dropped three days inland."

Miranda eagerly welcomed the argument. "Yes, yes," she exclaimed, and the colour came back to her lips. "He is held for ransom then, surely?"

M. Fournier shook his head. "Hardly. Had they captured him for ransom, they would have got from him the names of his friends. They would have used measures," said he, with some emphasis upon the word, at which Miranda shivered; "sure measures to get the names, and Warriner would have given mine. They would have come to me for the ransom, and I should have given it--if it was everything I had--and Warriner would be safe by now."

Fournier was aware that Miranda looked curiously and even with a sort of compunction towards him, though he did not understand the reason of her look. To him it was the most natural, simple thing in the world that he should care for Warriner.

"No, it is not ransom," and he threw a cautious glance this way and that, and then, even in that secret spot, continued in a whisper: "Warriner has enemies, enemies of his own race. I do not wonder at it," he explained impartially. "He treats me, yes, even me, who am his one friend, as though--well, his own phrase is the best. He wipes the floor with me. He has promised to do it many times, and many times he has done it too. No doubt he has enemies, and they have arranged his capture."

"Why?"

"Suppose they sell him for a slave, a long way off and a long way inland. It would not be pleasant at all, and most of all unpleasant to him, for he is particular. Of course you know that, Mrs. Warriner. He likes his linen very clean and fine. He would not enjoy being a slave, yet he could not appeal to his Government, even if he got the chance."

"Oh, don't, please!" cried Miranda. That intimate detail about Ralph's habits brought home to her most convincingly his present plight. "But what enemies?" she asked in a moment or two. "Is it a guess of yours, or do you know of any?"

M. Fournier hitched his chair nearer. His voice became yet more confidential.

"Three months ago an Englishman came to my shop."

"Three months ago?" interrupted Miranda. "He leaned over your counter and he said, 'How did you work that little affair on Rosevear, and how's my dear friend, Ralph Warriner?'"

"Ah, you know him!" cried Fournier, springing up in excitement.

"Yes, and he has nothing to do with Ralph's capture," replied Miranda.

"He only went that one time to Tangier." M. Fournier resumed his seat, and she briefly explained to the Belgian the reason and the consequence of Wilbraham's visit. Fournier's face fell as he listened.

He had hoped that the necessary clue had been discovered, and when Miranda finished he sat silent in a glum despair. After a little his face lightened.

"Only once you say he came to Tangier, this man you speak of--only once?" he asked eagerly, stretching out his hand.

"Only the once."

"He was not there earlier in the year? He was not there in May? Think carefully. Be very sure!"

Mrs. Warriner reflected for a second. "I am sure he was not," she replied. "He travelled by train from Monte Carlo to Ma.r.s.eilles in May.

From Ma.r.s.eilles he came directly by boat to England."

"Good," said M. Fournier. He sat forward in his chair and rubbed the palms of his hands together. "Now listen! There was another Englishman who came in May. He came to my shop, though the shutter was on the window and the shop closed."

"Who was he?" asked Mrs. Warriner.

"I cannot guess."

"Tell me what he was like."

"Ah! there's the trouble. Neither of us saw him. Warriner heard his voice, that is all. And a voice? There is no clue more deceptive. The one thing Warriner is sure of is that he had never heard the voice before."

"But what was it that he heard?"

"I tell you. Warriner came down to Tangier that very morning from the country. He travelled as always in the dress of a Moor, for he speaks their tongues, no Moor better, and our little business, you understand, needs secrecy. I closed my shop, shuttered the window, locked the door. Warriner told me he had arranged with the sheikhs of the Berber tribes to deliver so many Winchesters, so much ammunition, within a certain period. The period was short; Warriner's boat, the _Ten Brothers_, was waiting at Tarifa. I leave him to change his dress and shave his beard, while I go down to the harbour and hire a felucca to put him over to Tarifa. But Warriner forgot to lock the door behind me. In a minute or two he hear a hand sc.r.a.pe softly, oh so softly, up the door towards the latch. For a second he stood, with the razor in his hand like this," and the Belgian, in the absorption of his narrative began to act the scene, "looking at the latch, waiting for it to rise, and listening. Then he remembered that he had not locked the door. He crept on tip-toe towards it; just as he reached it he heard a loud English voice shout to him violently, 'Look out!' That phrase is a menace, eh?" he stopped to ask.

"It might be. It would more naturally be a warning," said Mrs.

Warriner.

"In either case it means an enemy. As he shouted Warriner's hand was already on the key. Warriner turn the lock, and immediately the Englishman batter and knock at the door, but he could not get in, and after a little he went away. Ah! how often we have wondered who that man was, and why he shouted out his threat and tried to force the door. To know that you have one enemy at your heels, but you cannot pick him out because you have not seen his face! That frightens me, Madame Warriner. I am a coward, and it is no wonder that it frightens me." The perspiration broke out on Fournier's forehead as he made his frank confession. "But it frightens Warriner too, who is no coward.

Often and often have I seen him lift up a finger, so," he suited the action to the word, "when a new voice speak within his hearing, and listen, listen, listen, to make sure whether that was the voice which shouted through the door or no. But a voice! You cannot be certain you recognise it, unless you can recognise also the face of the man to whom it belongs. A singer's voice, yes! Perhaps you might know that again though you heard it for the first time blindfold. But a voice that merely speaks or shouts, no!"

M. Fournier picked up his hat and rose from his chair. Miranda rose too, and they stood face to face with one another under the awning.

"So I ask you this. Will you help to recover your husband?" he asked, with a simplicity of appeal which went home to Miranda all the more, because it did not presume to claim her help. "Either a search must be made privately through Morocco until he is found and bought, and such a search seems hopeless; or the unknown man who shouted through the door must be discovered. That is the simplest way. For this I do believe"--and he expressed his belief with a great solemnity and conviction which sank very memorably into Miranda's mind--"I believe that if we lay our hands upon that man we shall lay our hands also upon the means to rescue Warriner from his servitude."

"But how can I help? I do not know the man who shouted through the door." The words were flung at Fournier in a pa.s.sion of impotence.

"You say you need no money. I cannot scour Morocco. How can a woman help?"

M. Fournier hesitated. He took off his gla.s.ses. He found it easier to speak the matter of his thoughts when he saw her face dimly, and could not take note of its expressions.