Peter Ruff and the Double Four Part 81

Bernadine, I know, has dealt in great affairs; but he was a diplomat by instinct, experienced and calculating. One does not keep incriminating papers."

She leaned a little forward. The car had swung round a corner now and was making its way up an avenue as dark as pitch.

"The wisest of us, Monsieur le Marquis," she whispered, "reckon sometimes without that one element of sudden death. What should you say, I wonder, to a list of agents in France pledged to circulate in certain places literature of an infamous sort? What should you say, monsieur, to a copy of a secret report of your late maneuvers, franked with the name of one of your own staff officers? What should you say," she went on, "to a list of Socialist deputies with amounts against their name, amounts paid in hard cash? Are these of no importance to you?"

"Madame," Sogrange answered, simply, "for such information, if it were genuine, it would be hard to mention a price which we should not be prepared to pay."

The car came to a sudden standstill. The first impression of the two men was that the Baroness had exaggerated the loneliness and desolation of the place. There was nothing mysterious or forbidding about the plain, brownstone house before which they had stopped. The windows were streaming with light; the hall door, already thrown open, disclosed a very comfortable hall, brilliantly illuminated. A man-servant a.s.sisted his mistress to alight, another ushered them in. In the background were other servants. The Baroness glanced at the clock.

"About dinner, Carl?" she asked.

"It waits for madame," the man answered.

She nodded.

"Take care of these gentlemen till I descend," she ordered. "You will not mind?" she added, turning pleadingly to Sogrange. "To-day I have eaten nothing. I am faint with hunger. Afterwards, it will be a matter but of half an hour. You can be in London again by ten o'clock."

"As you will, madame," Sogrange replied. "We are greatly indebted to you for your hospitality. But for costume, you understand that we are as we are?"

"It is perfectly understood," she a.s.sured him. "For myself, I rejoin you in ten minutes. A loose gown, that is all."

Sogrange and Peter were shown into a modern bathroom by a servant who was so anxious to wait upon them that they had difficulty in sending him away. As soon as he was gone and the door closed behind him, Peter put his foot against it and turned the key.

"You were going to write something to me in the car?"

Sogrange nodded.

"There was a moment," he admitted, "when I had a suspicion. It has pa.s.sed. This woman is no Roman. She sells the secrets of Bernadine as she would sell herself. Nevertheless, it is well always to be prepared.

There were probably others beside Bernadine who had the entree here."

"The only suspicious circ.u.mstance which I have noticed," Peter remarked, "is the number of men-servants. I have seen five already."

"It is only fair to remember," Sogrange reminded him, "that the Baroness herself told us that there were no other save men-servants here and that they were all spies. Without a master, I cannot see that they are dangerous. One needs, however, to watch all the time."

"If you see anything suspicious," Peter said, "tap the table with your forefinger. Personally, I will admit that I have had my doubts of the Baroness, but on the whole I have come to the conclusion that they were groundless. She is not the sort of woman to take up a vendetta, especially an unprofitable one."

"She is an exceedingly dangerous person for an impressionable man like myself," Sogrange remarked, arranging his tie.

The butler fetched them in a very few moments and showed them into a pleasantly-furnished library, where he mixed c.o.c.ktails for them from a collection of bottles upon the sideboard. He was quite friendly and inclined to be loquacious, although he spoke with a slight foreign accent. The house belonged to an English gentleman from whom the honored Count had taken it, furnished. They were two miles from a station and a mile from the village. It was a lonely part, but there were always people coming or going. With one's work one scarcely noticed it. He was gratified that the gentlemen found his c.o.c.ktails so excellent. Perhaps he might be permitted the high honor of mixing them another? It was a day, this, of deep sadness and gloom. One needed to drink something, indeed, to forget the terrible thing which had happened. The Count had been a good master, a little impatient sometimes, but kind-hearted. The news had been a shock to them all.

Then, before they had expected her, the Baroness reappeared. She wore a wonderful gray gown which seemed to be made in a single piece, a gown which fitted her tightly, and yet gave her the curious appearance of a woman walking without the burden of clothes. Sogrange, Parisian to the finger-tips, watched her with admiring approval. She laid her fingers upon his arm, although it was towards Peter that her eyes traveled.

"Will you take me in, Marquis?" she begged. "It is the only formality we will allow ourselves."

They entered a long, low dining-room, paneled with oak, and with the family portraits of the owner of the house still left upon the wall.

Dinner was served upon a round table and was laid for four. There was a profusion of silver, very beautiful gla.s.s, and a wonderful cl.u.s.ter of orchids. The Marquis, as he handed his hostess to her chair, glanced towards the vacant place.

"It is for my companion, an Austrian lady," she explained. "To-night, however, I think that she will not come. She was a distant connection of Bernadine's and she is much upset. We leave her place and see. You will sit on my other side, Baron."

The fingers which touched Peter's arm brushed his hand, and were withdrawn as though with reluctance. She sank into her chair with a little sigh.

"It is charming of you two, this," she declared, softly. "You help me through this night of solitude and sadness. What I should do if I were alone, I cannot tell. You must drink with me a toast, if you will. Will you make it to our better acquaintance?"

No soup had been offered and champagne was served with the hors d'oeuvre. Peter raised his gla.s.s and looked into the eyes of the woman who was leaning so closely towards him that her soft breath fell upon his cheek. She whispered something in his ear. For a moment, perhaps, he was carried away, but for a moment only. Then Sogrange's voice and the beat of his forefinger upon the table stiffened him into sudden alertness. They heard a motor car draw up outside.

"Who can it be?" the Baroness exclaimed, setting her gla.s.s down abruptly.

"It is, perhaps, our fourth guest who arrives," Sogrange remarked.

They all three listened, Peter and Sogrange with their gla.s.ses still suspended in the air.

"Our fourth guest?" the Baroness repeated. "Madame von Estenier is upstairs, lying down. I cannot tell who this may be."

Her lips were parted. The lines of her forehead had suddenly appeared.

Her eyes were turned toward the door, hard and bright. Then the gla.s.s which she had nervously picked up again and was holding between her fingers, fell on to the tablecloth with a little crash, and the yellow wine ran bubbling on to her plate. Her scream echoed to the roof and rang through the room. It was Bernadine who stood there in the doorway, Bernadine in a long traveling ulster and the air of one newly arrived from a journey. They all three looked at him, but there was not one who spoke. The Baroness, after her one wild cry, was dumb.

"I am indeed fortunate," Bernadine said. "You have as yet, I see, scarcely commenced. You probably expected me. I am charmed to find so agreeable a party awaiting my arrival."

He divested himself of his ulster and threw it across the arm of the butler, who stood behind him.

"Come," he continued; "for a man who has just been killed in a railway accident, I find myself with an appet.i.te. A gla.s.s of wine, Carl. I do not know what that toast was, the drinking of which my coming interrupted, but let us all drink it together. Aimee, my love to you, dear. Let me congratulate you upon the fort.i.tude and courage with which you ignored those lying reports of my death. I had fears that I might find you alone in a darkened room, with tear-stained eyes and sal volatile by your side. This is infinitely better. Gentlemen, you are welcome."

Sogrange lifted his gla.s.s and bowed courteously. Peter followed suit.

"Really," Sogrange murmured, "the Press nowadays becomes more unreliable every day. It is apparent, my dear Von Hern, that this account of your death was, to say the least of it, exaggerated."

Peter said nothing. His eyes were fixed upon the Baroness. She sat in her chair quite motionless, but her face had become like the face of some graven image. She looked at Bernadine, but her eyes said nothing.

Every glint of expression seemed to have left her features. Since that one wild shriek she had remained voiceless. Encompa.s.sed by danger though he knew they now must be, Peter found himself possessed by one thought only. Was this a trap into which they had fallen, or was the woman, too, deceived?

"You bring later news from Paris than I myself," Sogrange proceeded, helping himself to one of the dishes which a footman was pa.s.sing round.

"How did you reach the coast? The evening papers stated distinctly that since the accident no attempt had been made to run trains."

"By motor car from Chantilly," Bernadine replied. "I had the misfortune to lose my servant, who was wearing my coat, and who, I gather from the newspaper reports, was mistaken for me. I myself was unhurt. I hired a motor car and drove to Boulogne--not the best of journeys, let me tell you, for we broke down three times. There was no steamer there, but I hired a fishing boat, which brought me across the Channel in something under eight hours. From the coast I motored direct here. I was so anxious," he added, raising his eyes, "to see how my dear friend--my dear Aimee--was bearing the terrible news."

She fluttered for a moment like a bird in a trap. Peter drew a little sigh of relief. His self-respect was reinstated. He had decided that she was innocent. Upon them, at least, would not fall the ignominy of having been led into the simplest of traps by this white-faced Delilah. The butler had brought her another gla.s.s, which she raised to her lips. She drained its contents, but the ghastliness of her appearance remained unchanged. Peter, watching her, knew the signs. She was sick with terror.

"The conditions throughout France are indeed awful," Sogrange remarked.

"They say, too, that this railway strike is only the beginning of worse things."

Bernadine smiled.

"Your country, dear Marquis," he said, "is on its last legs. No one knows better than I that it is, at the present moment, honeycombed with sedition and anarchical impulses. The people are rotten. For years the whole tone of France has been decadent. Its fall must even now be close at hand."

"You take a gloomy view of my country's future," Sogrange declared.

"Why should one refuse to face facts?" Bernadine replied. "One does not often talk so frankly, but we three are met together this evening under somewhat peculiar circ.u.mstances. The days of the glory of France are past. England has laid out her neck for the yoke of the conqueror. Both are doomed to fall. Both are ripe for the great humiliation. You two gentlemen whom I have the honor to receive as my guests," he concluded, filling his gla.s.s and bowing towards them, "in your present unfortunate predicament represent precisely the position of your two countries."

"Ave Caesar!" Peter muttered grimly, raising his gla.s.s to his lips.