Chapter XXIX
It was in the evening of the next day that Lydia received a wire fromJack Glover. It was addressed from London and announced his arrival.
"Doesn't it make you feel nice, Lydia," said Jean, when she saw thetelegram, "to have a man in London looking after your interests--a sortof guardian angel--and another guardian angel prowling round yourdemesne at Cap Martin?"
"You mean Jaggs? Have you seen him?"
"No, I have not seen him," said the girl softly. "I should rather liketo see him. Do you know where he is staying at Monte Carlo?"
Lydia shook her head.
"I hope I shall see him before I go," said Jean. "He must be a veryinteresting old gentleman."
It was Mr. Briggerland who first caught a glimpse of Lydia's watchman.Mr. Briggerland had spent the greater part of the day sleeping. He wasunusually wakeful at one o'clock in the morning, and sat on the verandain a fur-lined overcoat, his gun lay across his knees. He had seen manymysterious shapes flitting across the lawn, only to discover oninvestigation that they were no more than the shadows which the movingtree-tops cast.
At two o'clock he saw a shape emerge from the tree belt and movestealthily in the shadow of the bushes toward the house. He did not firebecause there was a chance that it might have been one of the detectiveswho had promised to keep an eye upon the Villa Casa in view of themurderous threats which Jean had received.
Noiselessly he rose and stepped in his rubber shoes to the darker end ofthe stoep. It was old Jaggs. There was no mistaking him. A bent man wholimped cautiously across the lawn and was making for the back of thehouse. Mr. Briggerland cocked his gun and took aim....
Both girls heard the shot, and Lydia, springing out of bed, ran on tothe balcony.
"It's all right, Mrs. Meredith," said Briggerland's voice. "It was aburglar, I think."
"You haven't hurt him?" she cried, remembering old Jaggs's nocturnalhabits.
"If I have, he's got away," said Briggerland. "He must have seen me anddropped."
Jean flew downstairs in her dressing-gown and joined her father on thelawn.
"Did you get him?" she asked in a low voice.
"I could have sworn I shot him," said her father in the same tone, "butthe old devil must have dropped."
He heard the quick catch of her breath and turned apprehensively.
"Now, don't make a fuss about it, Jean, I couldn't help it."
"You couldn't help it!" she almost snarled. "You had him under your gunand you let him go. Do you think he'll ever come again, you fool?"
"Now look here, I'm not going to----" began Mr. Briggerland, but shesnatched the gun from his hand, looked swiftly at the lock and ranacross the lawn toward the trees.
Somebody was hiding. She sensed that and all her nerves were alert.Presently she saw a crouching figure and lifted the gun, but before shecould fire it was wrested from her hand.
She opened her lips to cry out for help, but a hand closed over hermouth, and swung her round so that her back was toward her assailant,and then in a flash his arm came round her neck, the flex of the elbowagainst her throat.
"Say one of them prayers of yours," said a voice in her ear, and the armtightened.
She struggled furiously, but the man held her as though she were achild.
"You're going to die," whispered the voice. "How do you like thesensation?"
The arm tightened on her neck. She was suffocating, dying she thought,and her heart was filled with a wild, mad longing for life and a terrorundreamt of. She could faintly hear her father's voice calling her andthen consciousness departed.
When Jean came to herself she was in Lydia Meredith's arms. She openedher eyes and saw the pathetic face of her father looming from thebackground. Her hand went up to her throat.
"Hallo, people--how did I get here?" she asked as she struggled into asitting position.
"I came in search of you and found you lying on the ground," quaveredMr. Briggerland.
"Did you see the man?" she asked.
"No. What happened to you, darling?"
"Nothing," she said with that composure which she could command. "I musthave fainted. It was rather ridiculous of me, wasn't it?" she smiled.
She got unsteadily to her feet and again she felt her throat. Lydianoticed the action.
"Did he hurt you?" she asked anxiously. "It couldn't have been Jaggs."
"Oh no," smiled Jean, "it couldn't have been Jaggs. I think I'll go tobed."
She did not expect to sleep. For the first time in her extraordinarylife fear had come to her, and she had shivered on the very edge of theabyss. She felt the shudder she could not repress and shook herselfimpatiently. Then she extinguished the light and went to the window andlooked out. Somewhere there in the darkness she knew her enemy washidden, and again that sense of apprehension swept over her.
"I'm losing my nerve," she murmured.
It was extraordinary to Lydia Meredith that the girl showed no sign ofher night's adventure when she came in to breakfast on the followingmorning. She looked bright. Her eyes were clear and her delicate ironyas pointed as though she had slept the clock round.
Lydia did not swim that day, and Mr. Stepney had his journey out to CapMartin in vain. Nor was she inclined to go back with him to Monte Carloto the Casino in the afternoon, and Mr. Stepney began to realise that hewas wasting valuable time.
Jean found her scribbling in the garden and Lydia made no secret of thetask she was undertaking.
"Making your will? What a grisly idea?" she said as she put down the cupof tea she had carried out to the girl.
"Isn't it," said Lydia with a grimace. "It is the most worryingbusiness, too, Jean. There is nobody I want to leave money to except youand Mr. Glover."
"For heaven's sake don't leave me any or Jack will think I am conspiringto bring about your untimely end," said Jean. "Why make a will at all?"
There was no need for her to ask that, but she was curious to discoverwhat reply the girl would make, and to her surprise Lydia fenced withthe question.
"It is done in all the best circles," she said good-humouredly. "And,Jean, I'm not interested in a single public institution! I don't know bytitle the name of any home for dogs, and I shouldn't be at all anxiousto leave my money to one even if I did."
"Then you'd better leave it to Jack Glover," said the girl, "or to theLifeboat Institution."
Lydia threw down her pencil in disgust.
"Fancy making one's will on a beautiful day like this, and givinginstructions as to where one should be buried. Brrr! Jean," she askedsuddenly, "was it Mr. Jaggs you saw in the wood?"
Jean shook her head.
"I saw nobody," she said. "I went in to look for the burglar; theexcitement must have been too much for me, and I fainted."
But Lydia was not satisfied.
"I can't understand Mr. Jaggs myself," she said, but Jean interruptedher with a cry.
Lydia looked up and saw her eyes shining and her lips parting in asmile.
"Of course," she said softly. "He used to sleep at your flat, didn'the?"
"Yes, why?" asked the girl in surprise.
"What a fool I am, what a perfect fool!" said Jean, startled out of heraccustomed self-possession.
"I don't quite know where your folly comes in, but perhaps you will tellme," but Jean was laughing softly.
"Go on and make your will," she said mockingly. "And when you'vefinished we'll go into the rooms and chase the lucky numbers. Poor dearMrs. Cole-Mortimer is feeling a little neglected, too, we ought to dosomething for her."
The day and night passed without any untoward event. In the evening Jeanhad an interview with her French chauffeur, and afterwards disappearedinto her room. Lydia tapping at her door to bid her good night receivedno answer.
Day was breaking when old Jaggs came out from the trees in his furtiveway and glancing up and down the road made his halting way toward MonteCarlo. The only objects in sight was a donkey laden with market produceled by a bare-legged
boy who was going in the same direction as he.
A little more than a mile along the road he turned sharply to the rightand began climbing a steep and narrow bridle path which joined themountain road, half-way up to La Turbie. The boy with the donkey turnedoff to the main road and continued the steep climb toward the GrandeCorniche. There were many houses built on the edge of the road andpractically on the edge of precipices, for the windows facing the seaoften looked sheer down for two hundred feet. At first these dwellingsappeared in clusters, then as the road climbed higher, they occurred atrare intervals.
The boy leading the donkey kept his eye upon the valley below, and fromtime to time caught a glimpse of the old man who had now left the bridlepath, and was picking his way up the rough hill-side. He was making fora dilapidated house which stood at one of the hairpin bends of the road,and the donkey-boy, shading his eyes from the glare of the rising sun,saw him disappear into what must have been the cellar of the house,since the door through which he went was a good twenty feet beneath thelevel of the road. The donkey-boy continued his climb, tugging at hisburdened beast, and presently he came up to the house. Smoke was risingfrom one of the chimneys, and he halted at the door, tied the rope heheld to a rickety gate post, and knocked gently.
A bright-faced peasant woman came to the open door and shook her head atthe sight of the wares with which the donkey was laden.
"We want none of your truck, my boy," she said. "I have my own garden.You are not a Monogasque."
"No, signora," replied the boy, flashing his teeth with a smile. "I amfrom San Remo, but I have come to live in Monte Carlo to sell vegetablesfor my uncle, and he told me I should find a lodging here."
She looked at him dubiously.
"I have one room which you could have, boy," she said, "though I do notlike Italians. You must pay me a franc a night, and your donkey can gointo the shed of my brother-in-law up the hill."
She led the way down a flight of ancient stairs and showed him a tinyroom overlooking the valley.
"I have one other man who lives here," she said. "An old one, who sleepsall day and goes out all night. But he is a very respectable man," sheadded in defence of her client.
"Where does he sleep?" asked the boy.
"There!" The woman pointed to a room on the opposite side of the narrowlanding. "He has just come in, I can hear him." She listened.
"Will madame get me change for this?" The boy produced a fifty-francnote, and the woman's eyebrows rose.
"Such wealth!" she said good-naturedly. "I did not think that a littleboy like you could have such money."
She bustled upstairs to her own room, leaving the boy alone. He waiteduntil her heavy footsteps sounded overhead, and then gently he tried thedoor of the other lodger. Mr. Jaggs had not yet bolted the door, and thespy pushed it open and looked. What he saw satisfied him, for he pulledthe door tight again, and as the footfall of old Jaggs came nearer thedoor, the donkey-boy flew upstairs with extraordinary rapidity.
"I will come later, madame," he said, when he had received the change."I must take my donkey into Monte Carlo."
She watched the boy and his beast go down the road, and went back to thetask of preparing her lodger's breakfast.
To Monte Carlo the cabbage seller did not go. Instead, he turned backthe way he had come, and a hundred yards from the gate of Villa Casa,Mordon, the chauffeur, appeared, and took the rope from his hand.
"Did you find what you wanted, mademoiselle?" he asked.
Jean nodded. She got into the house through the servants' entrance andup to her room without observation. She pulled off the black wig andapplied herself to removing the stains from her face. It had been a goodmorning's work.
"You must keep Mrs. Meredith fully occupied to-day." She waylaid herfather on the stairs to give him these instructions.
For her it was a busy morning. First she went to the Hotel de Paris, andon the pretext of writing a letter in the lounge, secured two or threesheets of the hotel paper and an envelope. Next she hired a typewriterand carried it with her back to the house. She was working for an hourbefore she had the letter finished. The signature took her some time.She had to ransack Lydia's writing case before she found a letter fromJack Glover--Lydia's signature was easy in comparison.
This, and a cheque drawn from the back of Lydia Meredith's cheque-book,completed her equipment.
That afternoon Mordon, the chauffeur, motored into Nice, and by nineo'clock that night an aeroplane deposited him in Paris. He was in Londonthe following morning, a bearer of an urgent letter to Mr. Rennett, thelawyer, which, however, he did not present in person.
Mordon knew a French girl in London, and she it was who carried theletter to Charles Rennett--a letter that made him scratch his head manytimes before he took a sheet of paper, and addressing the manager ofLydia's bank, wrote:
"This cheque is in order. Please honour."