'I will tell Mr Gedge when I see him,' said the now quite cordial woman. 'I can give him my revolver,' she added, with a pleasant touch of wifely consideration.
'Exactly,' said Packy. 'Well, I am very glad to have had this little talk,' he said, rising. 'I hope you will feel that if anything happens I am always here for you to call upon.'
'Thank you.'
'Not at all,' said Packy. 'It is nothing but my duty.'
He smiled a courteous, reassuring smile and walked out. He had scarcely gone when there was a slight fluttering noise from behind a large Spanish leather screen in the corner of the room, and there came into view the fragile form of Miss Putnam.
'Well, of all the hooey!' said Miss Putnam.
3
To most of those who knew her, Mrs Gedge's social secretary had always been a sort of agreeable wraith. Your senses told you that she was there, but the fact made no real impression on you. You caught the gleam of flashing spectacles, saw a mild, deferential smile floating in mid-air, and said to yourself: 'Ah, Miss Putnam.' Then you went about your business without giving her a second thought.
The woman who now took the chair opposite Mrs Gedge was quite a different Miss Putnam. Her eye was keen, her manner masterful. But the greatest change was in her behaviour. It was un-Putnamic to a degree. The normal Miss Putnam would never have sat down without being invited. She would never have laughed sardonically in her employer's presence. Above all, she would never have done anything to give the impression that she was testing her employer's reflexes. And that was what she was doing now. For, having seated herself, she leaned forward and tapped Mrs Gedge sharply on the knee.
'You didn't swallow all that apple-sauce, I hope, Mrs G.?' she asked solicitously.
The other's silent and wholly unexpected entry had caused Mrs Gedge to jump. She spoke with a sense of grievance.
'I didn't know you were there.'
'I was,' said Miss Putnam briskly. 'I wanted to hear what sort of a story that bird would spill. I've been on to him all the time. Believe it or not,' said Miss Putnam, 'when you engaged me to keep an eye on your jewels, you handed me one swell job. The way it looks to me, I'm going to be as busy as a cross-eyed man with the jim-jams trying to turn in a fire-alarm on the dial phone.' She shook her head reproachfully. 'When it comes to house-guests, Mrs G., you certainly are a great picker. First this bird, and then that Duke of yours!'
Mrs Gedge started.
'The Duc de Pont-Andemer? You don't mean... ?'
'Only Oily Carlisle, one of the best bunco-artists in the business, that's all. I recognized him the moment I saw him. How did you come to get mixed up with him?'
'I met him on the boat.'
Miss Putnam clicked her tongue. She did not seem angry, only pained.
'Didn't your mother ever teach you the facts of Life, Mrs G.? Because one of them is never to be too friendly to people you meet on boats. As for this fellow that says he's a Vicomte and then says he's a detective...'
'But are you sure he's not?'
'Then you did swallow his story?' said Miss Putnam with quiet censure. 'I thought you'd have had more sense.'
'But how do you know he is not?'
'Because I'm a dick myself, and I can recognize one a mile off.'
'But he is a friend of the Vicomte de Blissac.'
'He says he is.'
'He knew the Vicomte's first name.'
'And how long do you think it would take him to find out that? He could buy an Almanac de Gotha in any bookstore, couldn't he? And being a tough, strong young fellow he'd be quite physically able to open it and read up what it said about the Vicomte.'
'Why, of course. I never thought of that.'
'And remember how he couldn't keep up the smooth talk and had to start pulling that stuff about ice and heist-guys? I tell you he's a crook, all right. I know 'em. And he's getting set for quick action, too. All that about wanting you to change rooms with Mr Gedge. There isn't a real safe-blower I ever heard of that likes to work in a room where there's a woman. Women scream, and they can't get rough with them like they can a man.'
Mrs Gedge looked thoughtful.
'It seemed to me a good suggestion,' she said. 'I think I will change my room.'
'Sure, change your room. I'd have suggested it myself. What we want is to give these birds a chance to think they're sitting pretty, so's they can go ahead and we can get them in the act.'
'Do you think they are working together?'
Miss Putnam shook her head.
'No. And I'll tell you why. They don't act like it. What I mean, you don't see them going off for country rambles arm in arm. They behave sort of distant. No, how I figure it out is like this. The one that was in here just now is playing a lone hand...'
Mrs Gedge uttered an exclamation.
'The Senator!'
'No, he's all right,' said Miss Putnam. She seemed to speak with a certain regret, as if she would have liked him to be a criminal, too, so as to make the thing symmetrical. 'I've seen Senator Opal in Washington. This is him right enough. And I don't take any stock in what that fellow said about the Senator's valet being a crook. That was just eyewash.'
'What I meant,' said Mrs Gedge, 'was that I have a letter which Senator Opal would give anything to get back. Do you think this man can be somebody he has employed to steal it?'
'It straightens out the whole thing,' said Miss Putnam with gratification. 'You've hit it. That accounts for everybody nicely. This fellow is working in with the Senator, and Oily is after the ice. But Oily is a bunco-steerer. He doesn't blow safes. That means there's somebody on the outside he's teamed up with, and I think I know who it is. Did you ever hear of a fellow named Slattery? Soup Slattery?'
There was a pause. Mrs Gedge seemed to be searching in her memory.
'No,' she said at length. 'No,' she said slowly. 'Soup Slattery? What a very odd name. Why Soup?'
'Soup's what they blow safes with. Dynamite.'
'Oh, really?'
'And when I was down to the town the other day I could have sworn I saw this Slattery. His isn't a face you can forget. He was going into the Casino, or somebody that was his double. And now this has happened, Oily getting in here and all, I'm dead sure it was him. Oily's got himself into the house, and he's planning to let Soup in when he's good and ready. That's the way it's always done.'
'Is it?'
'It's what's known as the inside stand.'
'The inside stand?' murmured Mrs Gedge. 'Really?'
She spoke quietly, but Miss Putnam could see that she was much shaken. She was not surprised. A broadminded woman, she realized that the presence of criminals in the home, which gave her merely a sporting thrill, might affect otherwise the chatelaine of that home. The lay mind, she was aware, reacts differently from that of the professional. And women are a nervous sex.
She had been tapping Mrs Gedge's knee. She now patted it.
'There's no occasion to worry, Mrs G. I'm here. When you hire an employee of the James B. Flaherty Agency, you're getting something.'
'But what can you do?'
'Listen,' said Miss Putnam. 'You light a cigarette and smoke it and go on smoking it till there's hardly nothing left, only half an inch of stub, and I'll guarantee to shoot it out of your mouth at twenty paces. That's what I can do.'
Mrs Gedge seemed to recover herself.
'I am sure I can rely on you completely.'
'The slogan of the James B. Flaherty office is "Service",' said Miss Putnam devoutly.
Mrs Gedge rose.
'Then I will leave everything to you.'
'You couldn't do better.'
'I must go and find Wellington and tell him about the change of rooms. I think,' said Mrs Gedge, 'I will go to bed at once. I am a little tired after my journey.'
'You aren't worrying, are you?'
'Oh, no,' said Mrs Gedge.
Her strained eyes belied the words. Miss Putnam, watching her till the door closed, shook her head regretfully. Sh
e had had experience of nervous employers before. She wished now that she had kept her information to herself.
Then she brightened. Her spectacled face lifted itself, not unlike that of a war-horse sniffing the approaching battle. It looked to Miss Putnam as if stirring happenings were on the horizon. And stirring happenings, as she had often observed to intimates at the James B. Flaherty office on Forty-Fourth Street and Seventh Avenue, were her dish.
CHAPTER 14
1
DURING the momentous interview between Packy and Mrs Gedge, Mr Gedge had been hovering within easy distance of the library door; and the self-enrolled employee of the London, Paris and New York Insurance Company had no sooner emerged than he pounced upon him, fluttering with agitated curiosity
Packy's report had brought new life to him. According to Packy, everything had gone like a breeze. Mrs Gedge, he stated with confidence, had swallowed his story, hook, line, and sinker. It made Mr Gedge feel as if he had been reprieved on the steps of the scaffold.
The information, conveyed to him some few minutes later by Mrs Gedge, that she proposed to occupy his bedroom and that he was to shift his belongings to the Venetian Suite, did nothing to diminish his elation. He could not understand why she wished to make this odd exchange, but then she did so many things of which he was unable to divine the motive. He put it down to a woman's idle whim, and went out into the grounds almost trippingly. He still had his worries, of course, but for the time being the greatest of them had been solved. As he rounded the corner of the house he was actually singing.
He would probably in any case not have sung long, for a man with so much to exercise his mind would have been sure quite soon to discover material for silent meditation; but he sang even more cursorily than might have been expected. For, as he sauntered along and drew near to the back premises of the Château, his eyes, roving idly to and fro, suddenly fell upon a sight which brought him back on his heels as if a fist had smitten him.
It was a sight which would have unmanned anyone in his unfortunate position. The fact, therefore, that he uttered a strangled squeak and tottered back against a tree, giving his head a rather painful bump, should not be taken as evidence of any lack of virile fortitude in his character.
For what Mr Gedge had seen was a gendarme. A gendarme who had just slipped back into the bushes outside the kitchen door with the sinister furtiveness of a hunting leopard.
2
Now, we, having had the advantage of that bird's-eye view to which allusion was made earlier, know all about this gendarme. We are aware that he was not a remorseless bloodhound on the trail, but merely a likeable young man of the name of Octave who was waiting for pie. We, therefore, are able to behold him calmly. Our eyes, like stars, do not start from their spheres, nor do our knotty and combined locks part and each particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
Mr Gedge's did. He was a mere jelly of palpitating ganglions. With the force of a sledge-hammer the frightful realization had come upon him that, despite all his pains and all his caution, the police had tracked him down.
To pass those bushes with their hideous contents was a task beyond his power. He wheeled and retraced his steps. And it was as he once more rounded the corner of the house that he encountered Packy, the one man with whom he was in a position to discuss this awful affair.
'Say!' he gasped.
Packy, like most people who saw the little man approaching, had been intending to throw him a word and hurry on; but the sight of the other's face arrested him. Mr Gedge's goggle-eyed horror perplexed him. It was only a few minutes since he had left him in what was virtually a state of mental peace, and he could not imagine what had caused so notable a relapse.
'Listen!' said Mr Gedge tensely. 'The cops are watching the house!'
Packy's bewilderment increased. All he could think of as a reply was, 'Surely not?'
'What do you mean, surely not?' said Mr Gedge warmly. There are moments when one is forced to speak with asperity even to one's accomplices. 'I saw him. With my own eyes.'
'You did?'
'Yessir.'
'Where?'
'He was hiding in the bushes outside the kitchen door.'
'Just one cop?'
'One's plenty.'
Packy could make nothing of this.
'Very odd,' he said.
Mr Gedge was not in a frame of mind to be finicky about the mot juste, but this adjective seemed to him so extraordinarily inadequate that he snorted wrathfully.
'Odd!'
'Wait here,' said Packy. 'I'll go and have a look at this fellow.'
'Don't let him see you.'
'All right.'
Packy made his way to a point of vantage from which he was able to observe the kitchen door. He had not been watching long when a pleasantly touching scene of love among the lower orders rewarded his vigilance. The cook came out of the house, carrying a smoking pie. As if drawn by the scent, a gendarme emerged from the bushes. The pie changed hands. The gendarme kissed the cook. The cook kissed the gendarme. The gendarme then moved off, heading south. He carried the pie, and he was crooning in an undertone what sounded like a sentimental ballad.
Packy understood all, and it was with a certain purposefulness in his manner that he returned to Mr Gedge. He had had another of those bright ideas which were becoming so frequent with him nowadays that he had almost ceased to be surprised at them.
'Well?' said Mr Gedge.
'He's there, all right,' said Packy. 'I see what this means. The fellow has been sent up here to make enquiries. Amazing how quick these French police work.'
Mr Gedge could not share this apparent enthusiasm for the smooth working of the French police machine. He danced a few silent steps.
Packy, who was evidently still trying to get to the bottom of this affair, now put a question.
'On the night of the crime...'
'I wish you wouldn't call it the night of the crime.'
'On the night of the unfortunate affair,' amended Packy, 'did you tell anyone you were going to the Festival?'
'No. But the butler let me in and put me to bed when I got back.'
And he would have noticed that you were wearing an Oriental costume, complete with turban?'
'I don't see how he could have missed it.'
'Then that's how they have got on the trail. The butler must have laid information.'
'The hound!' said Mr Gedge emotionally. And he promised not to say a word about it.'
'You should have tipped him.'
'How could I tip him? Who do you think I am – John D. Rockefeller?'
'Well, it's too late to worry about that now. If the police are on your trail, there is obviously only one thing to do. You must make your getaway. You must edge off and lie low somewhere. And I'll tell you where you can do it. On my boat.'
'Your what?'
'I came to St Rocque on a yawl. It's lying in the harbour now. You would be quite safe there, and it's comfortable. Lots of canned food aboard. You could hide for weeks without being found. And when it was all right for you to come back, you could tell Mrs Gedge some tale about loss of memory or something. Aphasia, I believe they call it. Prominent business men disappear from their homes in New York and are found months later in Dubuque, Iowa, wandering round with a glassy look in their eyes, saying, "Where am I?" You could be thinking all that up on the boat. You'll have plenty of time to do a little thinking.'
Of all the suggestions that could possibly have been made to him, none could have exercised a more immediate appeal to Mr Gedge. The thought of being well away from the Château enchanted him. If Packy had been a financier offering to give him unlimited credit, he could not have eyed him with a more whole-hearted affection.
'Let's go!' he said, with simple enthusiasm.
'Wait a minute,' said Packy. 'How are we going to get you there?'
'Can you run a motor-boat?'
'Yes.'
'Well, there's one down at the boathou
se on the lake.'
'Very possibly. But where's the sense of going joy-riding about the lake?'
'There's a channel leads to the harbour.'
'Oh, is there? That's great. Then you had better go and pack a few toothbrushes and pyjamas and any other little necessaries you may fancy, and we'll be starting.'
It was with quiet contentment that Packy watched Mr Gedge disappear into the house. At last, it seemed to him, he had got this rather complex little affair straightened out. All that remained to be done, after placing his host aboard the Flying Cloud, was to pay a call at the Hotel des Etrangers, find Mr Slattery, and inform him that he need have no further qualms. When he busted the Venetian Suite that night, he would be busting a room not only completely free from beazels but lacking even a masculine occupant.
He felt that he had done Mr Slattery proud. And turning his back to the breeze to light what in his opinion was a well-earned cigarette he perceived Blair Eggleston approaching.
3
It was quite obvious, as he came up, that the powerful young novelist was not in sunny mood. But this did not deter Packy from engaging him in conversation. He had sunniness enough for two.
'Hullo, Egg,' he said. 'How are you making out?'
The sombreness of the other's frown deepened.
'I wish you would not call me "Egg".'
'I'm sorry. But how are you making out?'
His companion did not reply for a moment. He winced a little, and his eye grew darker.
The fact was, Blair Eggleston had been deriving from the task which had been thrust upon him even less enjoyment than he had expected to derive. And that this should have been so affords one more proof of the truism that authors seldom resemble the books they write.
On paper, Blair Eggleston was bold, cold, and ruthless. Like so many of our younger novelists, his whole tone was that of a disillusioned, sardonic philanderer who had drunk the wine-cup of illicit love to its dregs but was always ready to fill up again and have another. There were passages in some of his books, notably Worm V the Root and Offal, which simply made you shiver, so stark was their cynicism, so brutal the force with which they tore away the veils and revealed Woman as she is.