The Mystery of the Blue Train

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by

Collins 1928

Agatha Christie® Poirot® The Mystery of the Blue Train™

Copyright © 1928 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Title lettering by Ghost Design

Cover photograph © Marcus Appelt/Arcangel Images

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008129484

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007422609

Version: 2017-04-13

TO THE TWO DISTINGUISHED MEMBERS OF THE O.F.D. CARLOTTA AND PETER

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER 1: The Man With the White Hair

CHAPTER 2: M. le Marquis

CHAPTER 3: Heart of Fire

CHAPTER 4: In Curzon Street

CHAPTER 5: A Useful Gentleman

CHAPTER 6: Mirelle

CHAPTER 7: Letters

CHAPTER 8: Lady Tamplin Writes a Letter

CHAPTER 9: An Offer Refused

CHAPTER 10: On the Blue Train

CHAPTER 11: Murder

CHAPTER 12: At the Villa Marguerite

CHAPTER 13: Van Aldin Gets a Telegram

CHAPTER 14: Ada Mason’s Story

CHAPTER 15: The Comte de la Roche

CHAPTER 16: Poirot Discusses the Case

CHAPTER 17: An Aristocratic Gentleman

CHAPTER 18: Derek Lunches

CHAPTER 19: An Unexpected Visitor

CHAPTER 20: Katherine Makes a Friend

CHAPTER 21: At the Tennis

CHAPTER 22: M. Papopolous Breakfasts

CHAPTER 23: A New Theory

CHAPTER 24: Poirot Gives Advice

CHAPTER 25: Defiance

CHAPTER 26: A Warning

CHAPTER 27: Interview With Mirelle

CHAPTER 28: Poirot Plays the Squirrel

CHAPTER 29: A Letter From Home

CHAPTER 30: Miss Viner Gives Judgment

CHAPTER 31: Mr Aarons Lunches

CHAPTER 32: Katherine and Poirot Compare Notes

CHAPTER 33: A New Theory

CHAPTER 34: The Blue Train Again

CHAPTER 35: Explanations

CHAPTER 36: By the Sea

Also by Agatha Christie

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1
The Man with the White Hair

It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde. In spite of the handsome fur coat which garbed his meagre form, there was something essentially weak and paltry about him.

A little man with a face like a rat. A man, one would say, who could never play a conspicuous part, or rise to prominence in any sphere. And yet, in leaping to such a conclusion, an onlooker would have been wrong. For this man, negligible and inconspicuous as he seemed, played a prominent part in the destiny of the world. In an Empire where rats ruled, he was the king of the rats.

Even now, an Embassy awaited his return. But he had business to do first—business of which the Embassy was not officially cognizant. His face gleamed white and sharp in the moonlight. There was the least hint of a curve in the thin nose. His father had been a Polish Jew, a journeyman tailor. It was business such as his father would have loved that took him abroad tonight.

He came to the Seine, crossed it, and entered one of the less reputable quarters of Paris. Here he stopped before a tall, dilapidated house and made his way up to an apartment on the fourth floor. He had barely time to knock before the door was opened by a woman who had evidently been awaiting his arrival. She gave him no greeting, but helped him off with his overcoat and then led the way into the tawdrily furnished sitting-room. The electric light was shaded with dirty pink festoons, and it softened, but could not disguise, the girl’s face with its mask of crude paint. Could not disguise, either, the broad Mongolian cast of her countenance. There was no doubt of Olga Demiroff’s profession, nor of her nationality.

‘All is well, little one?’

‘All is well, Boris Ivanovitch.’

He nodded, murmuring: ‘I do not think I have been followed.’

But there was anxiety in his tone. He went to the window, drawing the curtains aside slightly, and peering carefully out. He started away violently.

‘There are two men—on the opposite pavement. It looks to me—’ He broke off and began gnawing at his nails—a habit he had when anxious.

The Russian girl was shaking her head with a slow, reassuring action.

‘They were here before you came.’

‘All the same, it looks to me as though they were watching this house.’

‘Possibly,’ she admitted indifferently.

‘But then—’

‘What of it? Even if they know—it will not be you they will follow from here.’

A thin, cruel smile came to his lips.

‘No,’ he admitted, ‘that is true.’

He mused for a minute or two, and then observed,

‘This damned American—he can look after himself as well as anybody.’

‘I suppose so.’

He went again to the window.

‘Tough customers,’ he muttered, with a chuckle. ‘Known to the police, I fear. Well, well, I wish Brother Apache good hunting.’

Olga Demiroff shook her head.

‘If the American is the kind of man they say he is, it will take more than a couple of cowardly apaches to get the better of him.’ She paused. ‘I wonder—’

‘Well?’

‘Nothing. Only twice this evening a man has passed along this street—a man with white hair.’

‘What of it?’

‘This. As he passed those two men, he dropped his glove. One of them picked it up and returned it to him. A threadbare device.’

‘You mean—that the white-haired man is—their employer?’

‘Something of the kind.’

The Russian looked alarmed and uneasy.

‘You are sure—the parcel is safe? It has not been tampered with? There has been too much talk…much too much talk.’

He gnawed his nails again.

‘Judge for yourself.’

She bent to the fireplace, deftly removing the coals. Underneath, from amongst the crumpled balls of newspaper, she selected from the very middle an oblong package wrapped round with grimy newspaper, and handed it to the man.

‘Ingenious,’ he said, with a nod of approval.

‘The apartment has been searched twice. The mattress on my bed was ripped open.’

‘It is as I said,’ he muttered. ‘There has been too much talk. This haggling over the price—it was a mistake.’

He had unwrapped the newspaper. Inside was a small brown paper parcel. This in turn he unwrapped, verified the contents, and quickly wrapped it up once more. As he did so, an electric bell rang sharply.

‘The American is punctual,’ said Olga, with a glance at the clock.

She left the room. In a minute she returned ushering in a stranger, a big, broad-shouldered man whose transatlantic origin was evident. His keen glance went from one to the other.

‘M. Krassnine?’ he inquired politely.

‘I am he,’ said Boris. ‘I must apologize for—for the unconventionality of this meeting-place. But secrecy is urgent. I—I cannot afford to be connected with this business in any way.’

‘Is that so?’ said the American politely.

‘I have your word, have I not, that no details of this transaction will be made public? That is one of the conditions of—sale.’

The American nodded.

‘That has already been agreed upon,’ he said indifferently. ‘Now, perhaps, you will produce the goods.’

‘You have the money—in notes?’

‘Yes,’ replied the other.

He did not, however, make any attempt to produce it. After a moment’s hesitation, Krassnine gestured towards the small parcel on the table.

The American took it up and unrolled the wrapping paper. The contents he took over to a small electric lamp and submitted them to a very thorough examination. Satisfied, he drew from his pocket a thick leather wallet and extracted from it a wad of notes. These he handed to the Russian, who counted them carefully.

‘All right?’

‘I thank you, Monsieur. Everything is correct.’

‘Ah!’ said the other. He slipped the brown paper parcel negligently into his pocket. He bowed to Olga. ‘Good evening, Mademoiselle. Good evening, M. Krassnine.’

He went out, shutting the door behind him. The eyes of the two in the room met. The man passed his tongue over his dry lips.

‘I wonder—will he ever get back to his hotel?’ he muttered.

By common accord, they both turned to the window. They were just in time to see the American emerge into the street below. He turned to the left and marched along at a good pace without once turning his head. Two shadows stole from a doorway and followed noiselessly. Pursuers and pursued vanished into the night. Olga Demiroff spoke.

‘He will get back safely,’ she said. ‘You need not fear—or hope—whichever it is.’

‘Why do you think he will be safe?’ asked Krassnine curiously.

‘A man who has made as much money as he has could not possibly be a fool,’ said Olga. ‘And talking of money—’

She looked significantly at Krassnine.

‘Eh?’

‘My share, Boris Ivanovitch.’

With some reluctance, Krassnine handed over two of the notes. She nodded her thanks, with a complete lack of emotion, and tucked them away in her stocking.

‘That is good,’ she remarked, with satisfaction.

He looked at her curiously.

‘You have no regrets, Olga Vassilovna?’

‘Regrets? For what?’

‘For what has been in your keeping. There are women—most women, I believe, who go mad over such things.’

She nodded reflectively.

‘Yes, you speak truth there. Most women have that madness. I—have not. I wonder now—’ She broke off.

‘Well?’ asked the other curiously.

‘The American will be safe with them—yes, I am sure of that. But afterwards—’

‘Eh? What are you thinking of ?’

‘He will give them, of course, to some woman,’ said Olga thoughtfully. ‘I wonder what will happen then…’

She shook herself impatiently and went over to the window. Suddenly she uttered an exclamation and called to her companion.

‘See, he is going down the street now—the man I mean.’

They both gazed down together. A slim, elegant figure was progressing along at a leisurely pace. He wore an opera hat and a cloak. As he passed a street lamp, the light illuminated a thatch of thick white hair.

CHAPTER 2
M. le Marquis

The man with the white hair continued on his course, unhurried, and seemingly indifferent to his surroundings. He took a side turning to the right and another one to the left. Now and then he hummed a little air to himself.

Suddenly he stopped dead and listened intently. He had heard a certain sound. It might have been the bursting of a tyre or it might have been—a shot. A curious smile played round his lips for a minute. Then he resumed his leisurely walk.

On turning a corner he came upon a scene of some activity. A representative of the law was making notes in a pocket-book, and one or two late passers-by had collected on the spot. To one of these the man with the white hair made a polite request for information.

‘Something has been happening, yes?’

‘Mais oui, Monsieur. Two apaches set upon an elderly American gentleman.’

‘They did him no injury?’

‘No, indeed.’ The man laughed. ‘The American, he had a revolver in his pocket, and before they could attack him, he fired shots so closely round them that they took alarm and fled. The police, as usual, arrived too late.’

‘Ah!’ said the inquirer.

He displayed no emotion of any kind.

Placidly and unconcernedly he resumed his nocturnal strolling. Presently he crossed the Seine and came into the richer areas of the city. It was some twenty minutes later that he came to a stop before a certain house in a quiet but aristocratic thoroughfare.

The shop, for shop it was, was a restrained and unpretentious one. D. Papopolous, dealer in antiques, was so known to fame that he needed no advertisement, and indeed most of his business was not done over a counter. M. Papopolous had a very handsome apartment of his own overlooking the Champs Elysées, and it might reasonably be supposed that he would have been found there and not at his place of business at such an hour, but the man with the white hair seemed confident of success as he pressed the obscurely placed bell, having first given a quick glance up and down the deserted street.

His confidence was not misplaced. The door opened and a man stood in the aperture. He wore gold rings in his ears and was of a swarthy cast of countenance.

‘Good evening,’ said the stranger. ‘Your master is within?’

‘The master is here, but he does not see chance visitors at this time of night,’ growled the other.

‘I think he will see me. Tell him that his friend M. le Marquis is here.’

The man opened the door a little wider and allowed the visitor to enter.

The man who gave his name as M. le Marquis had shielded his face with his hand as he spoke. When the man-servant returned with the information that M. Papopolous would be pleased to receive the visitor a further change had taken place in the stranger’s appearance. The man-servant must have been very unobservant or very well trained, for he betrayed no surprise at the small black satin mask which hid the other’s features. Leading the way to a door at the end of the hall, he opened it and announced in a respectful murmur: ‘M. le Marquis.’

The figure which rose to receive this strange guest was an imposing one. There was something venerable and patriarchal about M. Papopolous. He had a high domed forehead and a beautiful white beard. His manner had in it something ecclesiastical and benign.

‘My dear friend,’ said M. Papopolous.

He spoke in French and his tones were rich and unctuous.

‘I must apologise,’ said the visitor, ‘for the lateness of the hour.’

‘Not at all. Not at all,’ said M. Papopolous—‘an interesting time of night. You have had, perhaps, an interesting evening?’

‘Not personally,’ said M. le Marquis.

‘Not personally,’ repeated M. Papopolous, ‘no, no, of course not. And there is news, eh?’

He cast a sharp glance sideways at the other, a glance that was not ecclesiastical or benign in the least.

‘There is no news. The attempt failed. I hardly expected anything else.’

‘Quite so,’ said M. Papopolous: ‘anything crude—’

He waved his hand to express his intense distaste for crudity in any form. There was indeed nothing crude about M. Papopolous nor about the goods he handled. He was well known in most European courts, and kings called him Demetrius in a friendly manner. He had the reputation for the most exquisite discretion. That, together with the nobility of his aspect, had carried him through several very questionable transactions.

‘The direct attack—’ said M. Papopolous. He shook his head. ‘It answers sometimes—but very seldom.’

The other shrugged his shoulders.

‘It saves time,’ he remarked, ‘and to fail costs nothing—or next to nothing. The other plan—will not fail.’

‘Ah,’ said M. Papopolous, looking at him keenly.

The other nodded slowly.

‘I have great confidence in your—er—reputation,’ said the antique dealer.

M. le Marquis smiled gently.

‘I think I may say,’ he murmured, ‘that your confidence will not be misplaced.’

‘You have unique opportunities,’ said the other, with a note of envy in his voice.

‘I make them,’ said M. le Marquis.

He rose and took up the cloak which he had thrown carelessly on the back of a chair.

‘I will keep you informed, M. Papopolous, through the usual channels, but there must be no hitch in your arrangements.’

M. Papopolous was pained.

‘There is never a hitch in my arrangements,’ he complained.

The other smiled, and without any further word of adieu he left the room, closing the door behind him.

M. Papopolous remained in thought for a moment, stroking his venerable white beard, and then moved across to a second door which opened inwards. As he turned the handle, a young woman, who only too clearly had been leaning against it with her ear to the keyhole, stumbled headlong into the room. M. Papopolous displayed neither surprise nor concern. It was evidently all quite natural to him.

‘Well, Zia?’ he asked.

‘I did not hear him go,’ explained Zia.

She was a handsome young woman, built on Junoesque lines, with dark flashing eyes and such a general air of resemblance to M. Papopolous that it was easy to see they were father and daughter.

‘It is annoying,’ she continued vexedly, ‘that one cannot see through a keyhole and hear through it at the same time.’

‘It has often annoyed me,’ said M. Papopolous, with great simplicity.

‘So that is M. le Marquis,’ said Zia slowly. ‘Does he always wear a mask, Father?’

‘Always.’

There was a pause.

‘It is the rubies, I suppose?’ asked Zia.

Her father nodded.

‘What do you think, my little one?’ he inquired, with a hint of amusement in his beady black eyes.

‘Of M. le Marquis?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think,’ said Zia slowly, ‘that it is a very rare thing to find a well-bred Englishman who speaks French as well as that.’

‘Ah!’ said M. Papopolous, ‘so that is what you think.’

As usual, he did not commit himself, but he regarded Zia with benign approval.

‘I thought, too,’ said Zia, ‘that his head was an odd shape.’

‘Massive,’ said her father—‘a trifle massive. But then that effect is always created by a wig.’

They both looked at each other and smiled.

CHAPTER 3
Heart of Fire

Rufus Van Aldin passed through the revolving doors of the Savoy, and walked to the reception desk. The desk clerk smiled a respectful greeting.

‘Pleased to see you back again, Mr Van Aldin,’ he said.

The American millionaire nodded his head in a casual greeting.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir. Major Knighton is upstairs in the suite now.’

Van Aldin nodded again.

‘Any mail?’ he vouchsafed.

‘They have all been sent up, Mr Van Aldin. Oh! wait a minute.’

He dived into a pigeon-hole, and produced a letter.

‘Just come this minute,’ he explained.

Rufus Van Aldin took the letter from him, and as he saw the handwriting, a woman’s flowing hand, his face was suddenly transformed. The harsh contours of it softened, and the hard line of his mouth relaxed. He looked a different man. He walked across to the lift with the letter in his hand and the smile still on his lips.

In the drawing-room of his suite, a young man was sitting at a desk nimbly sorting correspondence with the ease born of long practice. He sprang up as Van Aldin entered.

‘Hallo, Knighton!’

‘Glad to see you back, sir. Had a good time?’

‘So so!’ said the millionaire unemotionally. ‘Paris is rather a one-horse city nowadays. Still—I got what I went over for.’

He smiled to himself rather grimly.

‘You usually do, I believe,’ said the secretary, laughing.

‘That’s so,’ agreed the other.

He spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, as one stating a well-known fact. Throwing off his heavy overcoat, he advanced to the desk.

‘Anything urgent?’

‘I don’t think so, sir. Mostly the usual stuff. I have not quite finished sorting it out.’

Van Aldin nodded briefly. He was a man who seldom expressed either blame or praise. His methods with those he employed were simple; he gave them a fair trial and dismissed promptly those who were inefficient. His selections of people were unconventional. Knighton, for instance, he had met casually at a Swiss resort two months previously. He had approved of the fellow, looked up his war record, and found in it the explanation of the limp with which he walked. Knighton had made no secret of the fact that he was looking for a job, and indeed diffidently asked the millionaire if he knew of any available post. Van Aldin remembered, with a grim smile of amusement, the young man’s complete astonishment when he had been offered the post of secretary to the great man himself.

‘But—but I have no experience of business,’ he had stammered.

‘That doesn’t matter a cuss,’ Van Aldin had replied. ‘I have got three secretaries already to attend to that kind of thing. But I am likely to be in England for the next six months, and I want an Englishman who—well, knows the ropes—and can attend to the social side of things for me.’

So far, Van Aldin had found his judgement confirmed. Knighton had proved quick, intelligent, and resourceful, and he had a distinct charm of manner.

The secretary indicated three or four letters placed by themselves on the top of the desk.

‘It might perhaps be as well, sir, if you glanced at these,’ he suggested. ‘The top one is about the Colton agreement—’

But Rufus Van Aldin held up a protesting hand.

‘I am not going to look at a durned thing tonight,’ he declared. ‘They can all wait till the morning. Except this one,’ he added, looking down at the letter he held in his hand. And again that strange transforming smile stole over his face.

Richard Knighton smiled sympathetically.

‘Mrs Kettering?’ he murmured. ‘She rang up yesterday and today. She seems very anxious to see you at once, sir.’

‘Does she, now!’

The smile faded from the millionaire’s face. He ripped open the envelope which he held in his hand and took out the enclosed sheet. As he read it his face darkened, his mouth set grimly in the line which Wall Street knew so well, and his brows knit themselves ominously. Knighton turned tactfully away, and went on opening letters and sorting them. A muttered oath escaped the millionaire, and his clenched fist hit the table sharply.

‘I’ll not stand for this,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Poor little girl, it’s a good thing she has her old father behind her.’

He walked up and down the room for some minutes, his brows drawn together in a scowl. Knighton still bent assiduously over the desk. Suddenly Van Aldin came to an abrupt halt. He took up his overcoat from the chair where he had thrown it.

‘Are you going out again, sir?’

‘Yes, I’m going round to see my daughter.’

‘If Colton’s people ring up—?’

‘Tell them to go to the devil,’ said Van Aldin.

‘Very well,’ said the secretary unemotionally.

Van Aldin had his overcoat on by now. Cramming his hat upon his head, he went towards the door. He paused with his hand upon the handle.

‘You are a good fellow, Knighton,’ he said. ‘You don’t worry me when I am rattled.’

Knighton smiled a little, but made no reply.

‘Ruth is my only child,’ said Van Aldin, ‘and there is no one on this earth who knows quite what she means to me.’

A faint smile irradiated his face. He slipped his hand into his pocket.

‘Care to see something, Knighton?’

He came back towards the secretary.

From his pocket he drew out a parcel carelessly wrapped in brown paper. He tossed off the wrapping and disclosed a big, shabby, red velvet case. In the centre of it were some twisted initials surmounted by a crown. He snapped the case open, and the secretary drew in his breath sharply. Against the slightly dingy white of the interior, the stones glowed like blood.

‘My God! sir,’ said Knighton. ‘Are they—are they real?’

Van Aldin laughed a quiet little cackle of amusement.

‘I don’t wonder at your asking that. Amongst these rubies are the three largest in the world. Catherine of Russia wore them, Knighton. That centre one there is known as “Heart of Fire”. It’s perfect—not a flaw in it.’

‘But,’ the secretary murmured, ‘they must be worth a fortune.’

‘Four or five hundred thousand dollars,’ said Van Aldin nonchalantly, ‘and that is apart from the historical interest.’

‘And you carry them about—like that, loose in your pocket?’

Van Aldin laughed amusedly.

‘I guess so. You see, they are my little present for Ruthie.’

The secretary smiled discreetly.

‘I can understand now Mrs Kettering’s anxiety over the telephone,’ he murmured.

But Van Aldin shook his head. The hard look returned to his face.

‘You are wrong there,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know about these; they are my little surprise for her.’

He shut the case, and began slowly to wrap it up again.

‘It’s a hard thing, Knighton,’ he said, ‘how little one can do for those one loves. I can buy a good portion of the earth for Ruth, if it would be any use to her, but it isn’t. I can hang these things round her neck and give her a moment or two’s pleasure, maybe, but—’

He shook his head.

‘When a woman is not happy in her home—’

He left the sentence unfinished. The secretary nodded discreetly. He knew, none better, the reputation of the Hon. Derek Kettering. Van Aldin sighed. Slipping the parcel back in his coat pocket, he nodded to Knighton and left the room.

CHAPTER 4
In Curzon Street

The Hon. Mrs Derek Kettering lived in Curzon Street. The butler who opened the door recognized Rufus Van Aldin at once and permitted himself a discreet smile of greeting. He led the way upstairs to the big double drawing-room on the first floor.

A woman who was sitting by the window started up with a cry.

‘Why, Dad, if that isn’t too good for anything! I’ve been telephoning Major Knighton all day to try and get hold of you, but he couldn’t say for sure when you were expected back.’

Ruth Kettering was twenty-eight years of age. Without being beautiful, or in the real sense of the word even pretty, she was striking-looking because of her colouring. Van Aldin had been called Carrots and Ginger in his time, and Ruth’s hair was almost pure auburn. With it went dark eyes and very black lashes—the effect somewhat enhanced by art. She was tall and slender, and moved well. At a careless glance it was the face of a Raphael Madonna. Only if one looked closely did one perceive the same line of jaw and chin as in Van Aldin’s face, bespeaking the same hardness and determination. It suited the man, but suited the woman less well. From her childhood upward Ruth Van Aldin had been accustomed to having her own way, and anyone who had ever stood up against her soon realized that Rufus Van Aldin’s daughter never gave in.

‘Knighton told me you’d phoned him,’ said Van Aldin. ‘I only got back from Paris half an hour ago. What’s all this about Derek?’

Ruth Kettering flushed angrily.

‘It’s unspeakable. It’s beyond all limits,’ she cried. ‘He—he doesn’t seem to listen to anything I say.’

There was bewilderment as well as anger in her voice.

‘He’ll listen to me,’ said the millionaire grimly.

Ruth went on.

‘I’ve hardly seen him for the last month. He goes about everywhere with that woman.’

‘With what woman?’

‘Mirelle. She dances at the Parthenon, you know.’

Van Aldin nodded.

‘I was down at Leconbury last week. I—I spoke to Lord Leconbury. He was awfully sweet to me, sympathized entirely. He said he’d give Derek a good talking to.’

‘Ah!’ said Van Aldin.

‘What do you mean by “Ah!” Dad?’

‘Just what you think I mean, Ruthie. Poor old Leconbury is a washout. Of course he sympathized with you, of course he tried to soothe you down. Having got his son and heir married to the daughter of one of the richest men in the States, he naturally doesn’t want to mess the thing up. But he’s got one foot in the grave already, everyone knows that, and anything he may say will cut darned little ice with Derek.’

‘Can’t you do anything, Dad?’ urged Ruth, after a minute or two.

‘I might,’ said the millionaire. He waited a second reflectively, and then went on. ‘There are several things I might do, but there’s only one that will be any real good. How much pluck have you got, Ruthie?’

She stared at him. He nodded back at her.

‘I mean just what I say. Have you got the grit to admit to all the world that you’ve made a mistake? There’s only one way out of this mess, Ruthie. Cut your losses and start afresh.’

‘You mean—?’

‘Divorce.’

‘Divorce!’

Van Aldin smiled drily.

‘You say that word, Ruth, as though you’d never heard it before. And yet your friends are doing it all round you every day.’

‘Oh! I know that. But—’

She stopped, biting her lip. Her father nodded comprehendingly.

‘I know, Ruth. You’re like me, you can’t bear to let go. But I’ve learnt, and you’ve got to learn, that there are times when it’s the only way. I might find ways of whistling Derek back to you, but it would all come to the same in the end. He’s no good, Ruth; he’s rotten through and through. And mind you, I blame myself for ever letting you marry him. But you were kind of set on having him, and he seemed in earnest about turning over a new leaf—and well, I’d crossed you once, honey…’

He did not look at her as he said the last words. Had he done so, he might have seen the swift colour that came up in her face.

‘You did,’ she said in a hard voice.

‘I was too durned soft-hearted to do it a second time. I can’t tell you how I wish I had, though. You’ve led a poor kind of life for the last few years, Ruth.’

‘It has not been very—agreeable,’ agreed Mrs Kettering.

‘That’s why I say to you that this thing has got to stop!’ He brought his hand down with a bang on the table. ‘You may have a hankering after the fellow still. Cut it out. Face facts. Derek Kettering married you for your money. That’s all there is to it. Get rid of him, Ruth.’

Ruth Kettering looked down at the ground for some moments, then she said, without raising her head:

‘Supposing he doesn’t consent?’

Van Aldin looked at her in astonishment.

‘He won’t have a say in the matter.’

She flushed and bit her lip.

‘No—no—of course not. I only meant—’

She stopped. Her father eyed her keenly.

‘What did you mean?’

‘I meant—’ She paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘He mayn’t take it lying down.’

The millionaire’s chin shot out grimly.

‘You mean he’ll fight the case? Let him! But, as a matter of fact, you’re wrong. He won’t fight. Any solicitor he consults will tell him he hasn’t a leg to stand upon.’

‘You don’t think’—she hesitated—‘I mean—out of sheer spite against me—he might, well, try to make it awkward?’

Her father looked at her in some astonishment.

‘Fight the case, you mean?’

He shook his head.

‘Very unlikely. You see, he would have to have something to go upon.’

Mrs Kettering did not answer. Van Aldin looked at her sharply.

‘Come, Ruth, out with it. There’s something troubling you—what is it?’

‘Nothing, nothing at all.’

But her voice was unconvincing.

‘You are dreading the publicity, eh? Is that it? You leave it to me. I’ll put the whole thing through so smoothly that there will be no fuss at all.’

‘Very well, Dad, if you really think it’s the best thing to be done.’

‘Got a fancy for the fellow still, Ruth? Is that it?’

‘No.’

The word came with no uncertain emphasis. Van Aldin seemed satisfied. He patted his daughter on the shoulder.

‘It will be all right, little girl. Don’t you worry any. Now let’s forget about all this. I have brought you a present from Paris.’

‘For me? Something very nice?’

‘I hope you’ll think so,’ said Van Aldin, smiling.

He took the parcel from his coat pocket and handed it to her. She unwrapped it eagerly, and snapped open the case. A long-drawn ‘Oh!’ came from her lips. Ruth Kettering loved jewels—always had done so.

‘Dad, how—how wonderful!’

‘Rather in a class by themselves, aren’t they?’ said the millionaire with satisfaction. ‘You like them, eh.’

‘Like them? Dad, they’re unique. How did you get hold of them?’

Van Aldin smiled.

‘Ah! that’s my secret. They had to be bought privately, of course. They are rather well known. See that big stone in the middle? You have heard of it, maybe; that’s the historic “Heart of Fire”.’

‘“Heart of Fire”!’ repeated Mrs Kettering.

She had taken the stones from the case and was holding them against her breast. The millionaire watched her. He was thinking of the series of women who had worn the jewels. The heartaches, the despairs, the jealousies. ‘Heart of Fire,’ like all famous stones, had left behind it a trail of tragedy and violence. Held in Ruth Kettering’s assured hand, it seemed to lose its potency of evil. With her cool, equable poise, this woman of the western world seemed a negation to tragedy or heart-burnings. Ruth returned the stones to their case; then, jumping up, she flung her arms round her father’s neck.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dad. They are wonderful! You do give me the most marvellous presents always.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Van Aldin, patting her shoulder. ‘You are all I have, you know, Ruthie.’

‘You will stay to dinner, won’t you, Father?’

‘I don’t think so. You were going out, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, but I can easily put that off. Nothing very exciting.’

‘No,’ said Van Aldin. ‘Keep your engagement. I have got a good deal to attend to. See you tomorrow, my dear. Perhaps if I phone you, we can meet at Galbraiths’?’

Messrs. Galbraith, Galbraith, Cuthbertson & Galbraith were Van Aldin’s London solicitors.

‘Very well, Dad.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose it—this—won’t keep me from going to the Riviera?’

‘When are you off ?’

‘On the fourteenth.’

‘Oh, that will be all right. These things take a long time to mature. By the way, Ruth, I shouldn’t take those rubies abroad if I were you. Leave them at the bank.’

Mrs Kettering nodded.

‘We don’t want to have you robbed and murdered for the sake of “Heart of Fire”,’ said the millionaire jocosely.

‘And yet you carried it about in your pocket loose,’ retorted his daughter, smiling.

‘Yes—’

Something, some hesitation, caught her attention.

‘What is it, Dad?’

‘Nothing.’ He smiled. ‘Thinking of a little adventure of mine in Paris.’

‘An adventure?’

‘Yes, the night I bought these things.’

He made a gesture towards the jewel case.

‘Oh, do tell me.’

‘Nothing to tell, Ruthie. Some apache fellows got a bit fresh and I shot at them and they got off. That’s all.’

She looked at him with some pride.

‘You’re a tough proposition, Dad.’

‘You bet I am, Ruthie.’

He kissed her affectionately and departed. On arriving back at the Savoy, he gave a curt order to Knighton.

‘Get hold of a man called Goby; you’ll find his address in my private book. He’s to be here tomorrow morning at half-past nine.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I also want to see Mr Kettering. Run him to earth for me if you can. Try his Club—at any rate, get hold of him somehow, and arrange for me to see him here tomorrow morning. Better make it latish, about twelve. His sort aren’t early risers.’

The secretary nodded in comprehension of these instructions. Van Aldin gave himself into the hands of his valet. His bath was prepared, and as he lay luxuriating in the hot water, his mind went back over the conversation with his daughter. On the whole he was well satisfied. His keen mind had long since accepted the fact that divorce was the only possible way out. Ruth had agreed to the proposed solution with more readiness than he had hoped for. Yet, in spite of her acquiescence, he was left with a vague sense of uneasiness. Something about her manner, he felt, had not been quite natural. He frowned to himself.

‘Maybe I’m fanciful,’ he muttered, ‘and yet—I bet there’s something she has not told me.’

CHAPTER 5
A Useful Gentleman

Rufus Van Aldin had just finished the sparse breakfast of coffee and dry toast, which was all he ever allowed himself, when Knighton entered the room.

‘Mr Goby is below, sir, waiting to see you.’

The millionaire glanced at the clock. It was just half-past nine.

‘All right,’ he said curtly. ‘He can come up.’

A minute or two later, Mr Goby entered the room. He was a small, elderly man, shabbily dressed, with eyes that looked carefully all round the room, and never at the person he was addressing.

‘Good morning, Goby,’ said the millionaire. ‘Take a chair.’

‘Thank you, Mr Van Aldin.’

Mr Goby sat down with his hands on his knees, and gazed earnestly at the radiator.

‘I have got a job for you.’

‘Yes, Mr Van Aldin?’

‘My daughter is married to the Hon. Derek Kettering, as you may perhaps know.’

Mr Goby transferred his gaze from the radiator to the left-hand drawer of the desk, and permitted a deprecating smile to pass over his face. Mr Goby knew a great many things, but he always hated to admit the fact.

‘By my advice, she is about to file a petition for divorce. That, of course, is a solicitor’s business. But, for private reasons, I want the fullest and most complete information.’

Mr Goby looked at the cornice and murmured:

‘About Mr Kettering?’

‘About Mr Kettering.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Mr Goby rose to his feet.

‘When will you have it ready for me?’

‘Are you in a hurry, sir?’

‘I’m always in a hurry,’ said the millionaire.

Mr Goby smiled understandingly at the fender.

‘Shall we say two o’clock this afternoon, sir?’ he asked.

‘Excellent,’ approved the other. ‘Good morning, Goby.’

‘Good morning, Mr Van Aldin.’

‘That’s a very useful man,’ said the millionaire as Goby went out and his secretary came in. ‘In his own line he’s a specialist.’

‘What is his line?’

‘Information. Give him twenty-four hours and he would lay the private life of the Archbishop of Canterbury bare for you.’

‘A useful sort of chap,’ said Knighton, with a smile.

‘He has been useful to me once or twice,’ said Van Aldin. ‘Now then, Knighton, I’m ready for work.’

The next few hours saw a vast quantity of business rapidly transacted. It was half-past twelve when the telephone bell rang, and Mr Van Aldin was informed that Mr Kettering had called. Knighton looked at Van Aldin, and interpreted his brief nod.

‘Ask Mr Kettering to come up, please.’

The secretary gathered up his papers and departed. He and the visitor passed each other in the doorway, and Derek Kettering stood aside to let the other go out. Then he came in, shutting the door behind him.

‘Good morning, sir. You are very anxious to see me, I hear.’

The lazy voice with its slightly ironic inflection roused memories in Van Aldin. There was charm in it—there had always been charm in it. He looked piercingly at his son-in-law. Derek Kettering was thirty-four, lean of build, with a dark, narrow face, which had even now something indescribably boyish in it.

‘Come in,’ said Van Aldin curtly. ‘Sit down.’

Kettering flung himself lightly into an arm-chair. He looked at his father-in-law with a kind of tolerant amusement.

‘Not seen you for a long time, sir,’ he remarked pleasantly. ‘About two years, I should say. Seen Ruth yet?’

‘I saw her last night,’ said Van Aldin.

‘Looking very fit, isn’t she?’ said the other lightly.

‘I didn’t know you had had much opportunity of judging,’ said Van Aldin drily.

Derek Kettering raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh, we sometimes meet at the same night club, you know,’ he said airily.

‘I am not going to beat about the bush,’ Van Aldin said curtly. ‘I have advised Ruth to file a petition for divorce.’

Derek Kettering seemed unmoved.

‘How drastic!’ he murmured. ‘Do you mind if I smoke, sir?’

He lit a cigarette, and puffed out a cloud of smoke as he added nonchalantly:

‘And what did Ruth say?’

‘Ruth proposes to take my advice,’ said her father.

‘Does she really?’

‘Is that all you have got to say?’ demanded Van Aldin sharply.

Kettering flicked his ash into the grate.

‘I think, you know,’ he said, with a detached air, ‘that she’s making a great mistake.’

‘From your point of view she doubtless is,’ said Van Aldin grimly.

‘Oh, come now,’ said the other; ‘don’t let’s be personal. I really wasn’t thinking of myself at the moment. I was thinking of Ruth. You know my poor old Governor really can’t last much longer; all the doctors say so. Ruth had better give it a couple more years, then I shall be Lord Leconbury, and she can be châtelaine of Leconbury, which is what she married me for.’

‘I won’t have any of your darned impudence,’ roared Van Aldin.

Derek Kettering smiled at him unmoved.

‘I agree with you. It’s an obsolete idea,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing in a title nowadays. Still, Leconbury is a very fine old place, and, after all, we are one of the oldest families in England. It will be very annoying for Ruth if she divorces me to find me marrying again, and some other woman queening it at Leconbury instead of her.’

‘I am serious, young man,’ said Van Aldin.

‘Oh, so am I,’ said Kettering. ‘I am in very low water financially; it will put me in a nasty hole if Ruth divorces me, and, after all, if she has stood it for ten years, why not stand it a little longer? I give you my word of honour that the old man can’t possibly last out another eighteen months, and, as I said before, it’s a pity Ruth shouldn’t get what she married me for.’

‘You suggest that my daughter married you for your title and position?’

Derek Kettering laughed a laugh that was not all amusement.

‘You don’t think it was a question of a love match?’ he asked.

‘I know,’ said Van Aldin slowly, ‘that you spoke very differently in Paris ten years ago.’

‘Did I? Perhaps I did. Ruth was very beautiful, you know—rather like an angel or a saint, or something that had stepped down from a niche in a church. I had fine ideas, I remember, of turning over a new leaf, of settling down and living up to the highest traditions of English home-life with a beautiful wife who loved me.’

He laughed again, rather more discordantly.

‘But you don’t believe that, I suppose?’ he said.

‘I have no doubt at all that you married Ruth for her money,’ said Van Aldin unemotionally.

‘And that she married me for love?’ asked the other ironically.

‘Certainly,’ said Van Aldin.

Derek Kettering stared at him for a minute or two, then he nodded reflectively.

‘I see you believe that,’ he said. ‘So did I at the time. I can assure you, my dear father-in-law, I was very soon undeceived.’

‘I don’t know what you are getting at,’ said Van Aldin, ‘and I don’t care. You have treated Ruth darned badly.’

‘Oh, I have,’ agreed Kettering lightly, ‘but she’s tough, you know. She’s your daughter. Underneath the pink-and-white softness of her she’s as hard as granite. You have always been known as a hard man, so I have been told, but Ruth is harder than you are. You, at any rate, love one person better than yourself. Ruth never has and never will.’

‘That is enough,’ said Van Aldin. ‘I asked you here so that I could tell you fair and square what I meant to do. My girl has got to have some happiness, and remember this, I am behind her.’

Derek Kettering got up and stood by the mantelpiece. He tossed away his cigarette. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet.

‘What exactly do you mean by that, I wonder?’ he said.

‘I mean,’ said Van Aldin, ‘that you had better not try to defend the case.’

‘Oh,’ said Kettering, ‘is that a threat?’

‘You can take it any way you please,’ said Van Aldin.

Kettering drew a chair up to the table. He sat down fronting the millionaire.

‘And supposing,’ he said softly, ‘that, just for argument’s sake, I did defend the case?’

Van Aldin shrugged his shoulders.

‘You have not got a leg to stand upon, you young fool. Ask your solicitors, they will soon tell you. Your conduct has been notorious, the talk of London.’

‘Ruth has been kicking up a row about Mirelle, I suppose. Very foolish of her. I don’t interfere with her friends.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Van Aldin sharply.

Derek Kettering laughed.

‘I see you don’t know everything, sir,’ he said. ‘You are, perhaps naturally, prejudiced.’

He took up his hat and stick and moved towards the door.

‘Giving advice is not much in my line.’ He delivered his final thrust. ‘But, in this case, I should advise most strongly perfect frankness between father and daughter.’

He passed quickly out of the room and shut the door behind him just as the millionaire sprang up.

‘Now, what the hell did he mean by that?’ said Van Aldin as he sank back into his chair again.

All his uneasiness returned in full force. There was something here that he had not yet got to the bottom of. The telephone was by his elbow; he seized it, and asked for the number of his daughter’s house.

‘Hallo! Hallo! Is that Mayfair 81907? Mrs Kettering in? Oh, she’s out, is she? Yes, out to lunch. What time will she be in? You don’t know? Oh, very good; no, there’s no message.’

He slammed the receiver down again angrily. At two o’clock he was pacing the floor of his room waiting expectantly for Goby. The latter was ushered in at ten minutes past two.

‘Well?’ barked the millionaire sharply.

But little Mr Goby was not to be hurried. He sat down at the table, produced a very shabby pocketbook, and proceeded to read from it in a monotonous voice. The millionaire listened attentively, with an increasing satisfaction. Goby came to a full stop, and looked attentively at the wastepaper-basket.

‘Um!’ said Van Aldin. ‘That seems pretty definite. The case will go through like winking. The hotel evidence is all right, I suppose?’

‘Cast iron,’ said Mr Goby, and looked malevolently at a gilt arm-chair.

‘And financially he’s in very low water. He’s trying to raise a loan now, you say? Has already raised practically all he can upon his expectations from his father. Once the news of the divorce gets about, he won’t be able to raise another cent, and not only that, his obligations can be bought up and pressure can be put upon him from that quarter. We have got him, Goby; we have got him in a cleft stick.’

He hit the table a bang with his fist. His face was grim and triumphant.

‘The information,’ said Mr Goby in a thin voice, ‘seems satisfactory.’

‘I have got to go round to Curzon Street now,’ said the millionaire. ‘I am much obliged to you, Goby. You are the goods all right.’

A pale smile of gratification showed itself on the little man’s face.

‘Thank you, Mr Van Aldin,’ he said; ‘I try to do my best.’

Van Aldin did not go direct to Curzon Street. He went first to the City, where he had two interviews which added to his satisfaction. From there he took the tube to Down Street. As he was walking along Curzon Street, a figure came out of No. 160, and turned up the street towards him, so that they passed each other on the pavement. For a moment, the millionaire had fancied it might be Derek Kettering himself; the height and build were not unlike. But as they came face to face, he saw that the man was a stranger to him. At least—no, not a stranger; his face awoke some call of recognition in the millionaire’s mind, and it was associated definitely with something unpleasant. He cudgelled his brains in vain, but the thing eluded him. He went on, shaking his head irritably. He hated to be baffled.

Ruth Kettering was clearly expecting him. She ran to him and kissed him when he entered.

‘Well, Dad, how are things going?’

‘Very well,’ said Van Aldin; ‘but I have got a word or two to say to you, Ruth.’

Almost insensibly he felt the change in her; something shrewd and watchful replaced the impulsiveness of her greeting. She sat down in a big arm-chair.

‘Well, Dad?’ she asked. ‘What is it?’

‘I saw your husband this morning,’ said Van Aldin.

‘You saw Derek?’

‘I did. He said a lot of things, most of which were darned cheek. Just as he was leaving, he said something that I didn’t understand. He advised me to be sure that there was perfect frankness between father and daughter. What did he mean by that, Ruthie?’

Mrs Kettering moved a little in her chair.

‘I—I don’t know, Dad. How should I?’

‘Of course you know,’ said Van Aldin. ‘He said something else, about his having his friends and not interfering with yours. What did he mean by that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ruth Kettering again.

Van Aldin sat down. His mouth set itself in a grim line.

‘See here, Ruth. I am not going into this with my eyes closed. I am not at all sure that that husband of yours doesn’t mean to make trouble. Now, he can’t do it, I am sure of that. I have got the means to silence him, to shut his mouth for good and all, but I have got to know if there’s any need to use those means. What did he mean by your having your own friends?’

Mrs Kettering shrugged her shoulders.

‘I have got lots of friends,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I don’t know what he meant, I am sure.’

‘You do,’ said Van Aldin.

He was speaking now as he might have spoken to a business adversary.

‘I will put it plainer. Who is the man?’

‘What man?’

‘The man. That’s what Derek was driving at. Some special man who is a friend of yours. You needn’t worry, honey, I know there is nothing in it, but we have got to look at everything as it might appear to the Court. They can twist these things about a good deal, you know. I want to know who the man is, and just how friendly you have been with him.’

Ruth didn’t answer. Her hands were kneading themselves together in intense nervous absorption.

‘Come, honey,’ said Van Aldin in a softer voice. ‘Don’t be afraid of your old Dad. I was not too harsh, was I, even that time in Paris?—By gosh!’

He stopped, thunderstruck.

‘That’s who it was,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I thought I knew his face.’

‘What are you talking about, Dad? I don’t understand.’

The millionaire strode across to her and took her firmly by the wrist.

‘See here, Ruth, have you been seeing that fellow again?’

‘What fellow?’

‘The one we had all that fuss about years ago. You know who I mean well enough.’

‘You mean’—she hesitated—‘you mean the Comte de la Roche?’

‘Comte de la Roche!’ snorted Van Aldin. ‘I told you at the time that the man was no better than a swindler. You had entangled yourself with him then very deeply, but I got you out of his clutches.’

‘Yes, you did,’ said Ruth bitterly. ‘And I married Derek Kettering.’

‘You wanted to,’ said the millionaire sharply.

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘And now,’ said Van Aldin slowly, ‘you have been seeing him again—after all I told you. He has been in the house today. I met him outside, and couldn’t place him for the moment.’

Ruth Kettering had recovered her composure.

‘I want to tell you one thing, Dad; you are wrong about Armand—the Comte de la Roche, I mean. Oh, I know there were several regrettable incidents in his youth—he has told me about them; but—well, he has cared for me always. It broke his heart when you parted us in Paris, and now—’

She was interrupted by the snort of indignation her father gave.

‘So you fell for that stuff, did you? You, a daughter of mine! My God!’

He threw up his hands.

‘That women can be such darned fools!’

CHAPTER 6
Mirelle

Derek Kettering emerged from Van Aldin’s suite so precipitantly that he collided with a lady passing across the corridor. He apologized, and she accepted his apologies with a smiling reassurance and passed on, leaving with him a pleasant impression of a soothing personality and rather fine grey eyes.

For all his nonchalance, his interview with his father-in-law had shaken him more than he cared to show. He had a solitary lunch, and after it, frowning to himself a little, he went round to the sumptuous flat that housed the lady known as Mirelle. A trim Frenchwoman received him with smiles.

‘But enter then, Monsieur. Madame reposes herself.’

He was ushered into the long room with its Eastern setting which he knew so well. Mirelle was lying on the divan, supported by an incredible number of cushions, all in varying shades of amber, to harmonize with the yellow ochre of her complexion. The dancer was a beautifully made woman, and if her face, beneath its mask of yellow, was in truth somewhat haggard, it had a bizarre charm of its own, and her orange lips smiled invitingly at Derek Kettering.

He kissed her, and flung himself into a chair.

‘What have you been doing with yourself ? Just got up, I suppose?’

The orange mouth widened into a long smile.

‘No,’ said the dancer. ‘I have been at work.’

She flung out a long, pale hand towards the piano, which was littered with untidy music scores.

‘Ambrose has been here. He has been playing me the new Opera.’

Kettering nodded without paying much attention. He was profoundly uninterested in Claud Ambrose and the latter’s operatic setting of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. So was Mirelle, for that matter, regarding it merely as a unique opportunity for her own presentation as Anitra.

‘It is a marvellous dance,’ she murmured. ‘I shall put all the passion of the desert into it. I shall dance hung over with jewels—ah! and, by the way, mon ami, there is a pearl that I saw yesterday in Bond Street—a black pearl.’

She paused, looking at him invitingly.

‘My dear girl,’ said Kettering, ‘it’s no use talking of black pearls to me. At the present minute, as far as I am concerned, the fat is in the fire.’

She was quick to respond to his tone. She sat up, her big black eyes widening.

‘What is that you say, Dereek? What has happened?’

‘My esteemed father-in-law,’ said Kettering, ‘is preparing to go off the deep end.’

‘Eh?’

‘In other words, he wants Ruth to divorce me.’

‘How stupid!’ said Mirelle. ‘Why should she want to divorce you?’

Derek Kettering grinned.

‘Mainly because of you, chérie!’ he said.

Mirelle shrugged her shoulders.

‘That is foolish,’ she observed in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘Very foolish,’ agreed Derek.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ demanded Mirelle.

‘My dear girl, what can I do? On the one side, the man with unlimited money; on the other side, the man with unlimited debts. There is no question as to who will come out on top.’

‘They are extraordinary, these Americans,’ commented Mirelle. ‘It is not as though your wife were fond of you.’

‘Well,’ said Derek, ‘what are we going to do about it?’

She looked at him inquiringly. He came over and took both her hands in his.

‘Are you going to stick to me?’

‘What do you mean? After—?’

‘Yes,’ said Kettering. ‘After, when the creditors come down like wolves on the fold. I am damned fond of you, Mirelle; are you going to let me down?’

She pulled her hands away from him.

‘You know I adore you, Dereek.’

He caught the note of evasion in her voice.

‘So that’s that, is it? The rats will leave the sinking ship.’

‘Ah, Dereek!’

‘Out with it,’ he said violently. ‘You will fling me over; is that it?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I am very fond of you, mon ami—indeed I am fond of you. You are very charming—un beau garçon, but ce n’est pas pratique.’

‘You are a rich man’s luxury, eh? Is that it?’

‘If you like to put it that way.’

She leaned back on the cushions, her head flung back.

‘All the same, I am fond of you, Dereek.’

He went over to the window and stood there some time looking out, with his back to her. Presently the dancer raised herself on her elbow and stared at him curiously.

‘What are you thinking of, mon ami?’

He grinned at her over his shoulder, a curious grin, that made her vaguely uneasy.

‘As it happened, I was thinking of a woman, my dear.’

‘A woman, eh?’

Mirelle pounced on something that she could understand.

‘You are thinking of some other woman, is that it?’

‘Oh, you needn’t worry; it is purely a fancy portrait. “Portrait of a lady with grey eyes”.’

Mirelle said sharply, ‘When did you meet her?’

Derek Kettering laughed, and his laughter had a mocking, ironical sound.

‘I ran into the lady in the corridor of the Savoy Hotel.’

‘Well! What did she say?’

‘As far as I can remember, I said “I beg your pardon,” and she said, “It doesn’t matter,” or words to that effect.’

‘And then?’ persisted the dancer.

Kettering shrugged his shoulders.

‘And then—nothing. That was the end of the incident.’

‘I don’t understand a word of what you are talking about,’ declared the dancer.

‘Portrait of a lady with grey eyes,’ murmured Derek reflectively. ‘Just as well I am never likely to meet her again.’

‘Why?’

‘She might bring me bad luck. Women do.’

Mirelle slipped quietly from her couch, and came across to him, laying one long, snake-like arm round his neck.

‘You are foolish, Dereek,’ she murmured. ‘You are very foolish. You are beau garçon, and I adore you, but I am not made to be poor—no, decidedly I am not made to be poor. Now listen to me; everything is very simple. You must make it up with your wife.’

‘I am afraid that’s not going to be actually in the sphere of practical politics,’ said Derek drily.

‘How do you say? I do not understand.’

‘Van Aldin, my dear, is not taking any. He is the kind of man who makes up his mind and sticks to it.’

‘I have heard of him,’ nodded the dancer. ‘He is very rich, is he not? Almost the richest man in America. A few days ago, in Paris, he bought the most wonderful ruby in the world—“Heart of Fire” it is called.’

Kettering did not answer. The dancer went on musingly:

‘It is a wonderful stone—a stone that should belong to a woman like me. I love jewels, Dereek; they say something to me. Ah! to wear a ruby like “Heart of Fire”.’

She gave a little sigh, and then became practical once more.

‘You don’t understand these things. Dereek; you are only a man. Van Aldin will give these rubies to his daughter, I suppose. Is she his only child?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then when he dies, she will inherit all his money. She will be a rich woman.’

‘She is a rich woman already,’ said Kettering drily. ‘He settled a couple of millions on her at her marriage.’

‘A couple of million! But that is immense. And if she died suddenly, eh? That would all come to you?’

‘As things stand at present,’ said Kettering slowly, ‘it would. As far as I know she has not made a will.’

‘Mon Dieu!’ said the dancer. ‘If she were to die, what a solution that would be.’

There was a moment’s pause, and then Derek Kettering laughed outright.

‘I like your simple, practical mind, Mirelle, but I am afraid what you desire won’t come to pass. My wife is an extremely healthy person.’

‘Eh bien!’ said Mirelle; ‘there are accidents.’

He looked at her sharply but did not answer.

She went on.

‘But you are right, mon ami, we must not dwell on possibilities. See now, my little Dereek, there must be no more talk of this divorce. Your wife must give up the idea.’

‘And if she won’t?’

The dancer’s eyes narrowed to slits.

‘I think she will, my friend. She is one of those who would not like the publicity. There are one or two pretty stories that she would not like her friends to read in the newspapers.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kettering sharply.

Mirelle laughed, her head thrown back.

‘Parbleu! I mean the gentleman who calls himself the Comte de la Roche. I know all about him. I am Parisienne, you remember. He was her lover before she married you, was he not?’

Kettering took her sharply by the shoulders.

‘That is a damned lie,’ he said, ‘and please remember that, after all, you are speaking of my wife.’

Mirelle was a little sobered.

‘You are extraordinary, you English,’ she complained. ‘All the same, I dare say that you may be right. The Americans are so cold, are they not? But you will permit me to say, mon ami, that she was in love with him before she married you, and her father stepped in and sent the Comte about his business. And the little Mademoiselle, she wept many tears! But she obeyed. Still, you must know as well as I do, Dereek, that it is a very different story now. She sees him nearly every day, and on the 14th she goes to Paris to meet him.’

‘How do you know all this?’ demanded Kettering.

‘Me? I have friends in Paris, my dear Dereek, who know the Comte intimately. It is all arranged. She is going to the Riviera, so she says, but in reality the Comte meets her in Paris and—who knows! Yes, yes, you can take my word for it, it is all arranged.’

Derek Kettering stood motionless.

‘You see,’ purred the dancer, ‘if you are clever, you have her in the hollow of your hand. You can make things very awkward for her.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake be quiet,’ cried Kettering. ‘Shut your cursed mouth!’

Mirelle flung herself down on the divan with a laugh. Kettering caught up his hat and coat and left the flat, banging the door violently. And still the dancer sat on the divan and laughed softly to herself. She was not displeased with her work.

CHAPTER 7
Letters

‘Mrs Samuel Harfield presents her compliments to Miss Katherine Grey and wishes to point out that under the circumstances Miss Grey may not be aware—’

Mrs Harfield, having written so far fluently, came to a dead stop, held up by what has proved an insuperable difficulty to many other people—namely, the difficulty of expressing oneself fluently in the third person.

After a minute or two of hesitation, Mrs Harfield tore up the sheet of notepaper and started afresh.

Dear Miss Grey,—Whilst fully appreciating the adequate way you discharged your duties to my Cousin Emma (whose recent death has indeed been a severe blow to us all), I cannot but feel—

Again Mrs Harfield came to a stop. Once more the letter was consigned to the wastepaper-basket. It was not until four false starts had been made that Mrs Harfield at last produced an epistle that satisfied her. It was duly sealed and stamped and addressed to Miss Katherine Grey, Little Crampton, St Mary Mead, Kent, and it lay beside the lady’s plate on the following morning at breakfast-time in company with a more important-looking communication in a long blue envelope.

Katherine Grey opened Mrs Harfield’s letter first. The finished production ran as follows:

Dear Miss Grey,—My husband and I wish to express our thanks to you for your services to my poor cousin, Emma. Her death has been a great blow to us, though we were, of course, aware that her mind has been failing for some time past. I understand that her latter testamentary dispositions have been of a most peculiar character, and they would not hold good, of course, in any court of law. I have no doubt that, with your usual good sense, you have already realized this fact. If these matters can be arranged privately it is always so much better, my husband says. We shall be pleased to recommend you most highly for a similar post, and hope that you will also accept a small present. Believe me, dear Miss Grey, yours cordially.

Mary Anne Harfield.

Katherine Grey read the letter through, smiled a little, and read it a second time. Her face as she laid the letter down after the second reading was distinctly amused. Then she took up the second letter. After one brief perusal she laid it down and stared very straight in front of her. This time she did not smile. Indeed, it would have been hard for anyone watching her to guess what emotions lay behind that quiet, reflective gaze.

Katherine Grey was thirty-three. She came of good family, but her father had lost all his money, and Katherine had had to work for her living from an early age. She had been just twenty-three when she had come to old Mrs Harfield as companion.

It was generally recognized that old Mrs Harfield was ‘difficult.’ Companions came and went with startling rapidity. They arrived full of hope and they usually left in tears. But from the moment Katherine Grey set foot in Little Crampton, ten years ago, perfect peace had reigned. No one knows how these things come about. Snake-charmers, they say, are born, not made. Katherine Grey was born with the power of managing old ladies, dogs, and small boys, and she did it without any apparent sense of strain.

At twenty-three she had been a quiet girl with beautiful eyes. At thirty-three she was a quiet woman, with those same grey eyes, shining steadily out on the world with a kind of happy serenity that nothing could shake. Moreover, she had been born with, and still possessed, a sense of humour.

As she sat at the breakfast-table, staring in front of her, there was a ring at the bell, accompanied by a very energetic rat-a-tat-tat at the knocker. In another minute the little maid-servant opened the door and announced rather breathlessly:

‘Dr Harrison.’

The big, middle-aged doctor came bustling in with the energy and breeziness that had been foreshadowed by his onslaught on the knocker.

‘Good morning, Miss Grey.’

‘Good morning, Dr Harrison.’

‘I dropped in early,’ began the doctor, ‘in case you should have heard from one of those Harfield cousins. Mrs Samuel, she calls herself—a perfectly poisonous person.’

Without a word, Katherine picked up Mrs Harfield’s letter from the table and gave it to him. With a good deal of amusement she watched his perusal of it, the drawing together of the bushy eyebrows, the snorts and grunts of violent disapproval. He dashed it down again on the table.

‘Perfectly monstrous,’ he fumed. ‘Don’t you let it worry you, my dear. They’re talking through their hat. Mrs Harfield’s intellect was as good as yours or mine, and you won’t get anyone to say the contrary. They wouldn’t have a leg to stand upon, and they know it. All that talk of taking it into court is pure bluff. Hence this attempt to get round you in a hole-and-corner way. And look here, my dear, don’t let them get round you with soft soap either. Don’t get fancying it’s your duty to hand over the cash, or any tomfoolery of conscientious scruples.’

‘I’m afraid it hasn’t occurred to me to have scruples,’ said Katherine. ‘All these people are distant relatives of Mrs Harfield’s husband, and they never came near her or took any notice of her in her lifetime.’

‘You’re a sensible woman,’ said the doctor. ‘I know, none better, that you’ve had a hard life of it for the last ten years. You’re fully entitled to enjoy the old lady’s savings, such as they were.’

Katherine smiled thoughtfully.

‘Such as they were,’ she repeated. ‘You’ve no idea of the amount, doctor?’

‘Well—enough to bring in five hundred a year or so, I suppose.’

Katherine nodded.

‘That’s what I thought,’ she said. ‘Now read this.’

She handed him the letter she had taken from the long blue envelope. The doctor read and uttered an exclamation of utter astonishment.

‘Impossible,’ he muttered. ‘Impossible.’

‘She was one of the original shareholders in Mortaulds. Forty years ago she must have had an income of eight or ten thousand a year. She has never, I am sure, spent more than four hundred a year. She was always terribly careful about money. I always believed that she was obliged to be careful about every penny.’

‘And all the time the income has accumulated at compound interest. My dear, you’re going to be a very rich woman.’

Katherine Grey nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am.’

She spoke in a detached, impersonal tone, as though she were looking at the situation from outside.

‘Well,’ said the doctor, preparing to depart, ‘you have all my congratulations.’ He flicked Mrs Samuel Harfield’s letter with his thumb. ‘Don’t worry about that woman and her odious letter.’

‘It really isn’t an odious letter,’ said Miss Grey tolerantly. ‘Under the circumstances, I think it’s really quite a natural thing to do.’

‘I have the gravest suspicions of you sometimes,’ said the doctor.

‘Why?’

‘The things that you find perfectly natural.’

Katherine Grey laughed.

Doctor Harrison retailed the great news to his wife at lunch-time. She was very excited about it.

‘Fancy old Mrs Harfield—with all that money. I’m glad she left it to Katherine Grey. That girl’s a saint.’

The doctor made a wry face.

‘Saints I always imagined must have been difficult people. Katherine Grey is too human for a saint.’

‘She’s a saint with a sense of humour,’ said the doctor’s wife, twinkling. ‘And, though I don’t suppose you’ve ever noticed the fact, she’s extremely good looking.’

‘Katherine Grey?’ The doctor was honestly surprised. ‘She’s got very nice eyes, I know.’

‘Oh, you men!’ cried his wife. ‘Blind as bats. Katherine’s got all the makings of a beauty in her. All she wants is clothes!’

‘Clothes? What’s wrong with her clothes? She always looks very nice.’

Mrs Harrison gave an exasperated sigh, and the doctor rose preparatory to starting on his rounds.

‘You might look in on her, Polly,’ he suggested.

‘I’m going to,’ said Mrs Harrison, promptly.

She made her call about three o’clock.

‘My dear, I’m so glad,’ she said warmly, as she squeezed Katherine’s hand. ‘And everyone in the village will be glad too.’

‘It’s very nice of you to come and tell me,’ said Katherine. ‘I hoped you would come in because I wanted to ask about Johnnie.’

‘Oh! Johnnie. Well—’

Johnnie was Mrs Harrison’s youngest son. In another minute she was off, retailing a long history in which Johnnie’s adenoids and tonsils bulked largely. Katherine listened sympathetically. Habits die hard. Listening had been her portion for ten years now. ‘My dear, I wonder if I ever told you about the naval ball at Portsmouth? When Lord Charles admired my gown?’ And composedly, kindly, Katherine would reply: ‘I rather think you have, Mrs Harfield, but I’ve forgotten about it. Won’t you tell it me again?’ And then the old lady would start off full swing, with numerous corrections, and stops, and remembered details. And half of Katherine’s mind would be listening, saying the right things mechanically when the old lady paused…

Now, with the same curious feeling of duality to which she was accustomed, she listened to Mrs Harrison.

At the end of half an hour, the latter recalled herself suddenly.

‘I’ve been talking about myself all this time,’ she exclaimed. ‘And I came here to talk about you and your plans.’

‘I don’t know that I’ve got any yet.’

‘My dear—you’re not going to stay on here.’

Katherine smiled at the horror in the other’s tone.

‘No; I think I want to travel. I’ve never seen much of the world, you know.’

‘I should think not. It must have been an awful life for you cooped up here all these years.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Katherine. ‘It gave me a lot of freedom.’

She caught the other’s gasp, and reddened a little.

‘It must sound foolish—saying that. Of course, I hadn’t much freedom in the downright physical sense—’

‘I should think not,’ breathed Mrs Harrison, remembering that Katherine had seldom had that useful thing, a ‘day off’.

‘But in a way, being tied physically gives you lots of scope mentally. You’re always free to think. I’ve had a lovely feeling always of mental freedom.’

Mrs Harrison shook her head.

‘I can’t understand that.’

‘Oh! you would if you’d been in my place. But, all the same, I feel I want a change. I want—well, I want things to happen. Oh! not to me—I don’t mean that. But to be in the midst of things—exciting things—even if I’m only the looker-on. You know, things don’t happen in St Mary Mead.’

‘They don’t indeed,’ said Mrs Harrison, with fervour.

‘I shall go to London first,’ said Katherine. ‘I have to see the solicitors, anyway. After that, I shall go abroad, I think.’

‘Very nice.’

‘But of course, first of all—’

‘Yes?’

‘I must get some clothes.’

‘Exactly what I said to Arthur this morning,’ cried the doctor’s wife. ‘You know, Katherine, you could look possibly positively beautiful if you tried.’

Miss Grey laughed unaffectedly.

‘Oh! I don’t think you could ever make a beauty out of me,’ she said sincerely. ‘But I shall enjoy having some really good clothes. I’m afraid I’m talking about myself an awful lot.’

Mrs Harrison looked at her shrewdly.

‘It must be quite a novel experience for you,’ she said drily.

Katherine went to say goodbye to old Miss Viner before leaving the village. Miss Viner was two years older than Mrs Harfield, and her mind was mainly taken up with her own success in outliving her dead friend.

‘You wouldn’t have thought I’d have outlasted Jane Harfield, would you?’ she demanded triumphantly of Katherine. ‘We were at school together, she and I. And here we are, she taken, and I left. Who would have thought it?’

‘You’ve always eaten brown bread for supper, haven’t you?’ murmured Katherine mechanically.

‘Fancy your remembering that, my dear. Yes; if Jane Harfield had had a slice of brown bread every evening and taken a little stimulant with her meals she might be here today.’

The old lady paused, nodding her head triumphantly; then added in sudden remembrance:

‘And so you’ve come into a lot of money, I hear? Well, well. Take care of it. And you’re going up to London to have a good time? Don’t think you’ll get married, though, my dear, because you won’t. You’re not the kind to attract the men. And, besides, you’re getting on. How old are you now?’

‘Thirty-three,’ Katherine told her.

‘Well,’ remarked Miss Viner doubtfully, ‘that’s not so very bad. You’ve lost your first freshness, of course.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Katherine, much entertained.

‘But you’re a very nice girl,’ said Miss Viner kindly. ‘And I’m sure there’s many a man might do worse than take you for a wife instead of one of these flibbertigibbets running about nowadays showing more of their legs than the Creator ever intended them to. Goodbye, my dear, and I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, but things are seldom what they seem in this life.’

Heartened by these prophecies, Katherine took her departure. Half the village came to see her off at the station, including the little maid of all work, Alice, who brought a stiff wired nosegay and cried openly.

‘There ain’t a many like her,’ sobbed Alice when the train had finally departed. ‘I’m sure when Charlie went back on me with that girl from the dairy, nobody could have been kinder than Miss Grey was, and though particular about the brasses and the dust, she was always one to notice when you’d give a thing an extra rub. Cut myself in little pieces for her, I would, any day. A real lady, that’s what I call her.’

Such was Katherine’s departure from St Mary Mead.

CHAPTER 8
Lady Tamplin Writes a Letter

‘Well,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘well.’

She laid down the continental Daily Mail and stared out across the blue waters of the Mediterranean. A branch of golden mimosa, hanging just above her head, made an effective frame for a very charming picture. A golden-haired, blue-eyed lady in a very becoming négligée. That the golden hair owed something to art, as did the pink-and-white complexion, was undeniable, but the blue of the eyes was Nature’s gift, and at forty-four Lady Tamplin could still rank as a beauty.

Charming as she looked, Lady Tamplin was, for once, not thinking of herself. That is to say, she was not thinking of her appearance. She was intent on graver matters.

Lady Tamplin was a well-known figure on the Riviera, and her parties at the Villa Marguerite were justly celebrated. She was a woman of considerable experience, and had had four husbands. The first had been merely an indiscretion, and so was seldom referred to by the lady. He had had the good sense to die with commendable promptitude, and his widow thereupon espoused a rich manufacturer of buttons. He too had departed for another sphere after three years of married life—it was said after a congenial evening with some boon companions. After him came Viscount Tamplin, who had placed Rosalie securely on those heights where she wished to tread. She retained her title when she married for a fourth time. This fourth venture had been undertaken for pure pleasure. Mr Charles Evans, an extremely good-looking young man of twenty-seven, with delightful manners, a keen love of sport, and an appreciation of this world’s goods, had no money of his own whatsoever.

Lady Tamplin was very pleased and satisfied with life generally, but she had occasional faint preoccupations about money. The button manufacturer had left his widow a considerable fortune, but, as Lady Tamplin was wont to say, ‘what with one thing and another—’ (one thing being the depreciation of stocks owing to the War, and the other the extravagances of the late Lord Tamplin). She was still comfortably off. But to be merely comfortably off was hardly satisfactory to one of Rosalie Tamplin’s temperament.

So, on this particular January morning, she opened her blue eyes extremely wide as she read a certain item of news and uttered that non-committal monosyllable ‘Well.’ The only other occupant of the balcony was her daughter, the Hon. Lenox Tamplin. A daughter such as Lenox was a sad thorn in Lady Tamplin’s side, a girl with no kind of tact, who actually looked older than her age, and whose peculiar sardonic form of humour was, to say the least of it, uncomfortable.

‘Darling,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘just fancy.’

‘What is it?’

Lady Tamplin picked up the Daily Mail, handed it to her daughter, and indicated with an agitated forefinger the paragraph of interest.

Lenox read it without any of the signs of agitation shown by her mother. She handed back the paper.

‘What about it?’ she asked. ‘It is the sort of thing that is always happening. Cheese-paring old women are always dying in villages and leaving fortunes of millions to their humble companions.’

‘Yes, dear, I know,’ said her mother, ‘and I dare say the fortune is not anything like as large as they say it is; newspapers are so inaccurate. But even if you cut it down by half—’

‘Well,’ said Lenox, ‘it has not been left to us.’

‘Not exactly, dear,’ said Lady Tamplin; ‘but this girl, this Katherine Grey, is actually a cousin of mine. One of the Worcestershire Greys, the Edgeworth lot. My very own cousin! Fancy!’

‘Ah-ha,’ said Lenox.

‘And I was wondering—’ said her mother.

‘What there is in it for us,’ finished Lenox, with that sideways smile that her mother always found difficult to understand.

‘Oh, darling,’ said Lady Tamplin, on a faint note of reproach.

It was very faint, because Rosalie Tamplin was used to her daughter’s outspokenness and to what she called Lenox’s uncomfortable way of putting things.

‘I was wondering,’ said Lady Tamplin, again drawing her artistically pencilled brows together, ‘whether—oh, good morning, Chubby darling; are you going to play tennis? How nice!’

Chubby, thus addressed, smiled kindly at her, remarked perfunctorily, ‘How topping you look in that peach-coloured thing,’ and drifted past them and down the steps.

‘The dear thing,’ said Lady Tamplin, looking affectionately after her husband. ‘Let me see, what was I saying? Ah!’ She switched her mind back to business once more. ‘I was wondering—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake get on with it. That is the third time you have said that.’

‘Well, dear,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘I was thinking that it would be very nice if I wrote to dear Katherine and suggested that she should pay us a little visit out here. Naturally, she is quite out of touch with Society. It would be nicer for her to be launched by one of her own people. An advantage for her and an advantage for us.’

‘How much do you think you would get her to cough up?’ asked Lenox.

Her mother looked at her reproachfully and murmured:

‘We should have to come to some financial arrangement, of course. What with one thing and another—the War—your poor father—’

‘And Chubby now,’ said Lenox. ‘He is an expensive luxury if you like.’

‘She was a nice girl as I remember her,’ murmured Lady Tamplin, pursuing her own line of thought—‘quiet, never wanted to shove herself forward, not a beauty, and never a man-hunter.’

‘She will leave Chubby alone, then?’ said Lenox.

Lady Tamplin looked at her in protest. ‘Chubby would never—’ she began.

‘No,’ said Lenox, ‘I don’t believe he would; he knows a jolly sight too well which way his bread is buttered.’

‘Darling,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘you have such a coarse way of putting things.’

‘Sorry,’ said Lenox.

Lady Tamplin gathered up the Daily Mail and her négligée, a vanity bag, and various odd letters.

‘I shall write to dear Katherine at once,’ she said, ‘and remind her of the dear old days at Edgeworth.’

She went into the house, a light of purpose shining in her eyes.

Unlike Mrs Samuel Harfield, correspondence flowed easily from her pen. She covered four sheets without pause or effort, and on re-reading it found no occasion to alter a word.

Katherine received it on the morning of her arrival in London. Whether she read between the lines of it or not is another matter. She put it in her handbag and started out to keep the appointment she had made with Mrs Harfield’s lawyers.

The firm was an old-established one in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and after a few minutes’ delay Katherine was shown into the presence of the senior partner, a kindly, elderly man with shrewd blue eyes and a fatherly manner.

They discussed Mrs Harfield’s will and various legal matters for some twenty minutes, then Katherine handed the lawyer Mrs Samuel’s letter.

‘I had better show you this, I suppose,’ she said, ‘though it is really rather ridiculous.’

He read it with a slight smile.

‘Rather a crude attempt, Miss Grey. I need hardly tell you, I suppose, that these people have no claim of any kind upon the estate, and if they endeavour to contest the will no court will uphold them.’

‘I thought as much.’

‘Human nature is not always very wise. In Mrs Samuel Harfield’s place, I should have been more inclined to make an appeal to your generosity.’

‘That is one of the things I want to speak to you about. I should like a certain sum to go to these people.’

‘There is no obligation.’

‘I know that.’

‘And they will not take it in the spirit it is meant. They will probably regard it as an attempt to pay them off, though they will not refuse it on that account.’

‘I can see that, and it can’t be helped.’

‘I should advise you, Miss Grey, to put that idea out of your mind.’

Katherine shook her head. ‘You are quite right, I know, but I should like it done all the same.’

‘They will grab at the money and abuse you all the more afterwards.’

‘Well,’ said Katherine, ‘let them if they like. We all have our own ways of enjoying ourselves. They were, after all, Mrs Harfield’s only relatives, and though they despised her as a poor relation and paid no attention to her when she was alive, it seems to me unfair that they should be cut off with nothing.’

She carried her point, though the lawyer was still unwilling, and she presently went out into the streets of London with a comfortable assurance that she could spend money freely and make what plans she liked for the future. Her first action was to visit the establishment of a famous dressmaker.

A slim, elderly Frenchwoman, rather like a dreaming duchess, received her, and Katherine spoke with a certain naïveté.

‘I want, if I may, to put myself in your hands. I have been very poor all my life and know nothing about clothes, but now I have come into some money and want to look really well dressed.’

The Frenchwoman was charmed. She had an artist’s temperament, which had been soured earlier in the morning by a visit from an Argentine meat queen, who had insisted on having those models least suited to her flamboyant type of beauty. She scrutinized Katherine with keen, clever eyes. ‘Yes—yes, it will be a pleasure. Mademoiselle has a very good figure; for her the simple lines will be best. She is also très anglaise. Some people it would offend them if I said that, but Mademoiselle no. Une belle Anglaise, there is no style more delightful.’

The demeanour of a dreaming duchess was suddenly put off. She screamed out directions to various mannequins. ‘Clothilde, Virginie, quickly, my little ones, the little tailleur gris clair and the robe de soirée “soupir d’automne”. Marcelle, my child, the little mimosa suit of crêpe de chine.’

It was a charming morning. Marcelle, Clothilde, Virginie, bored and scornful, passed slowly round, squirming and wriggling in the time-honoured fashion of mannequins. The Duchess stood by Katherine and made entries in a small notebook.

‘An excellent choice, Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle has great goût. Yes, indeed. Mademoiselle cannot do better than those little suits if she is going to the Riviera, as I suppose, this winter.’

‘Let me see that evening dress once more,’ said Katherine—‘the pinky mauve one.’

Virginie appeared, circling slowly.

‘That is the prettiest of all,’ said Katherine, as she surveyed the exquisite draperies of mauve and grey and blue. ‘What do you call it?’

‘Soupir d’automne; yes, yes, that is truly the dress of Mademoiselle.’

What was there in these words that came back to Katherine with a faint feeling of sadness after she had left the dressmaking establishment?

‘“Soupir d’automne; that is truly the dress of Mademoiselle.”’ Autumn, yes, it was autumn for her. She who had never known spring or summer, and would never know them now. Something she had lost never could be given to her again. These years of servitude in St Mary Mead—and all the while life passing by.

‘I am an idiot,’ said Katherine. ‘I am an idiot. What do I want? Why, I was more contented a month ago than I am now.’

She drew out from her handbag the letter she had received that morning from Lady Tamplin. Katherine was no fool. She understood the nuances of that letter as well as anybody and the reason of Lady Tamplin’s sudden show of affection towards a long-forgotten cousin was not lost upon her. It was for profit and not for pleasure that Lady Tamplin was so anxious for the company of her dear cousin. Well, why not? There would be profit on both sides.

‘I will go,’ said Katherine.

She was walking down Piccadilly at the moment, and turned into Cook’s to clinch the matter then and there. She had to wait for a few minutes. The man with whom the clerk was engaged was also going to the Riviera. Everyone, she felt, was going. Well, for the first time in her life, she, too, would be doing what ‘everybody’ did.

The man in front of her turned abruptly, and she stepped into his place. She made her demand to the clerk, but at the same time half of her mind was busy with something else. That man’s face—in some vague way it was familiar to her. Where had she seen him before? Suddenly she remembered. It was in the Savoy outside her room that morning. She had collided with him in the passage. Rather an odd coincidence that she should run into him twice in a day. She glanced over her shoulder, rendered uneasy by something, she knew not what. The man was standing in the doorway looking back at her. A cold shiver passed over Katherine; she had a haunting sense of tragedy, of doom impending…

Then she shook the impression from her with her usual good sense and turned her whole attention to what the clerk was saying.

CHAPTER 9
An Offer Refused

It was rarely that Derek Kettering allowed his temper to get the better of him. An easy-going insouciance was his chief characteristic, and it had stood him in good stead in more than one tight corner. Even now, by the time he had left Mirelle’s flat, he had cooled down. He had need of coolness. The corner he was in now was a tighter one than he had ever been in before, and unforeseen factors had arisen with which, for the moment, he did not know how to deal.

He strolled along deep in thought. His brow was furrowed, and there was none of the easy, jaunty manner which sat so well upon him. Various possibilities floated through his mind. It might have been said of Derek Kettering that he was less of a fool than he looked. He saw several roads that he might take—one in particular. If he shrank from it, it was for the moment only. Desperate ills need desperate remedies. He had gauged his father-in-law correctly. A war between Derek Kettering and Rufus Van Aldin could end only one way. Derek damned money and the power of money vehemently to himself. He walked up St James’s Street, across Piccadilly, and strolled along it in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. As he passed the offices of Messrs. Thomas Cook & Sons his footsteps slackened. He walked on, however, still turning the matter over in his mind. Finally, he gave a brief nod of his head, turned sharply—so sharply as to collide with a couple of pedestrians who were following in his footsteps, and went back the way he had come. This time he did not pass Cook’s, but went in. The office was comparatively empty, and he got attended to at once.

‘I want to go to Nice next week. Will you give me particulars?’

‘What date, sir?’

‘The fourteenth. What is the best train?’

‘Well, of course, the best train is what they call “The Blue Train”. You avoid the tiresome Customs business at Calais.’

Derek nodded. He knew all this, none better.

‘The fourteenth,’ murmured the clerk; ‘that is rather soon. The Blue Train is nearly always all booked up.’

‘See if there is a berth left,’ said Derek. ‘If there is not—’ He left the sentence unfinished, with a curious smile on his face.

The clerk disappeared for a few minutes, and presently returned. ‘That is all right, sir; still three berths left. I will book you one of them. What name?’

‘Pavett,’ said Derek. He gave the address of his rooms in Jermyn Street.

The clerk nodded, finished writing it down, wished Derek good morning politely, and turned his attention to the next client.

‘I want to go to Nice—on the fourteenth. Isn’t there a train called the Blue Train?’

Derek looked round sharply.

Coincidence—a strange coincidence. He remembered his own half-whimsical words to Mirelle. ‘Portrait of a lady with grey eyes. I don’t suppose I shall ever see her again.’ But he had seen her again, and, what was more, she proposed to travel to the Riviera on the same day as he did.

Just for a moment a shiver passed over him; in some ways he was superstitious. He had said, half-laughingly, that this woman might bring him bad luck. Suppose—suppose that should prove to be true. From the doorway he looked back at her as she stood talking to the clerk. For once his memory had not played him false. A lady—a lady in every sense of the word. Not very young, not singularly beautiful. But with something—grey eyes that might perhaps see too much. He knew as he went out of the door that in some way he was afraid of this woman. He had a sense of fatality.

He went back to his rooms in Jermyn Street and summoned his man.

‘Take this cheque, Pavett, and go round to Cook’s in Piccadilly. They will have some tickets there booked in your name, pay for them, and bring them back.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Pavett withdrew.

Derek strolled over to a side-table and picked up a handful of letters. They were of a type only too familiar. Bills, small bills and large bills, one and all pressing for payment. The tone of the demands was still polite. Derek knew how soon that polite tone would change if—if certain news became public property.

He flung himself moodily into a large, leather-covered chair. A damned hole—that was what he was in. Yes, a damned hole! And ways of getting out of that damned hole were not too promising.

Pavett appeared with a discreet cough.

‘A gentleman to see you—sir—Major Knighton.’

‘Knighton, eh?’

Derek sat up, frowned, became suddenly alert. He said in a softer tone, almost to himself: ‘Knighton—I wonder what is in the wind now?’

‘Shall I—er—show him in, sir?’

His master nodded. When Knighton entered the room he found a charming and genial host awaiting him.

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