Marie Belloc Lowndes
Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947) was the only daughter of a French barrister and an English feminist. She was born in London, but brought up in La Celle-Saint-Cloud in France, and in later years, she retained a slight French accent. Her fiction reflected her cosmopolitan background, and her daughter Susan, introducing a collection of her diaries and letters, said that she was ‘a brilliant interpreter of the French mind and character. She was fascinated by the differences of outlook of Britain and France and considered the French to be far more realistic, and noted with amusement that there is no French equivalent to the term “wishful thinking”’.
Today, she is best remembered for The Lodger (1913), which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, although she wryly noted that on its original publication ‘I did not receive a single favourable review’. The novel was later recommended to Ernest Hemingway by Gertrude Stein (herself a keen fan of detective fiction), together with The Chink in the Armour (1912), set in France, and boasting a plot inspired by a murder in Monte Carlo in 1907. Hemingway found them ‘both splendid after-work books, the people credible and the action and the terror never false’. She also created Hercules Popeau before Agatha Christie achieved fame with the Hercule Poirot mysteries; Lowndes was not impressed by the resemblances between the characters. Poirot became one of fiction’s greatest detectives, while Popeau soon slipped out of sight, but this story offers a reminder of him, and of a writer with a flair for invention.
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Prologue
‘This is dear, delightful Paris! Paris, which I love; Paris, where I have always been so happy with Bob. It’s foolish of me to feel depressed. I’ve nothing to be depressed about—’
Such were the voiceless thoughts which filled the mind of Lady Waverton as she walked down one of the platforms of the vast grey Gare du Nord on a hot, airless, July night. She formed one of a party of three; the other two being her husband, Lord Waverton, and a beautiful Russian émigrée, Countess Filenska, with whom they had become friends. It was the lovely Russian who had persuaded the Wavertons to take a little jaunt to Paris ‘on the cheap,’ that is without maids and valet. The Countess had drawn a delightful picture of an old hostelry on the left bank of the Seine called the Hotel Paragon, where they would find pleasant quiet rooms.
Perhaps the journey had tired the charming, over-refined woman her friends called Gracie Waverton. Yet this morning she had looked as well and happy as she ever did look, for she was not strong, and for some time past she had felt that she and her husband, whom in her gentle, reserved way, she loved deeply, were drifting apart. Like all very rich men, Lord Waverton had a dozen ways of killing time in which his wife could play no part. Still, according to modern ideas, they were a happy couple.
It did not take long for the autobus to glide across Paris at this time of the night, and when they turned into the quiet cul de sac, across the end of which rose the superb eighteenth-century mansion which had been the town palace of one of Marie Antoinette’s platonic adorers, Monsieur le Duc de Paragon, Lady Waverton lost her vague feeling of despondency. There was something so cheery, as well as truly welcoming, about Monsieur and Madame Bonchamp, mine host and his wife; and she was enchanted with the high ceilinged, panelled rooms, which had been reserved for their party, and which overlooked a spacious leafy garden.
As Lady Waverton and her Russian friend kissed each other good-night, the Englishwoman exclaimed, ‘You didn’t say a word too much, Olga. This is a delightful place!’
I
‘Robert? This is too exquisite! You are the most generous man in the world!’
Olga Filenska was gazing, with greedy eyes, at an open blue velvet-lined jewel-case containing a superb emerald pendant.
‘I’m glad you like it, darling—’
Lord Waverton seized the white hand, and made its owner put what it held on a table near which they both stood. Then he clasped her in his arms, and their lips met and clung together.
The secret lovers were standing in the centre of the large, barely-furnished salon, which belonged to the private suite of rooms which had been reserved for the party; and they felt secure from sudden surprise by a high screen which masked the door giving into the corridor.
At last, releasing her, he moodily exclaimed, ‘Why did you make me bring my wife to Paris? It spoils everything, and makes me feel, too, such a cad!’
‘Remember my reputation, Robert. It is all I have left of my vanished treasures.’
He caught her to him again, and once more kissed her long and thirstily.
‘My God, how I love you!’ he said in a strangled whisper. ‘There’s nothing, nothing, nothing I wouldn’t do, to have you for ever as my own!’
‘Is that really true?’ she asked with a searching look.
‘Haven’t I offered to give up everything, and make a bolt? It’s you who refuse to do the straight thing.’
‘Your wife,’ she murmured, in a low bitter tone, ‘would never divorce you. She thinks divorce wicked.’
‘If I’m willing to give up my country, and everything I care for—for love of you, why shouldn’t you do as much for me?’
To that she made no answer, only sighed, and looked at him appealingly.
What would each of them have felt had it suddenly been revealed that their every word had been overheard, and each passionate gesture of love witnessed, by an invisible listener and watcher? Yet such was the strange, and the almost incredible, fact. Hercules Popeau, but lately retired on a pension from the Criminal Investigation Branch of the Préfecture de Police, had long made the Hotel Paragon his home, and his comfortable study lay to the right of the stately octagon salon which terminated Lord and Lady Waverton’s suite of rooms.
Popeau had lived in the splendid seventeenth-century house for quite a long time, before he had discovered—with annoyance rather than satisfaction—that just behind the arm-chair in which he usually sat, and cleverly concealed in the wainscoting, was a slanting sliding panel which enabled him both to hear and see everything that went on in the next room. This sinister ‘Judas,’ as it was well called, dated from the days of Louis the Fifteenth, when a diseased inquisitiveness was the outstanding peculiarity of both the great and the humble; even the King would spend his leisure in reading copies of the love letters intercepted in the post, of those of his faithful subjects who were known to him.
Hercules Popeau had been closely connected with the British army during the Great War, and he remembered that Lord Waverton, then little more than a boy, had performed an act of signal valour at Beaumont Hamel. That fact had so far interested him in the three tourists, as to have caused him to watch the party while they had sat at dinner in their private sitting-room the evening following their arrival in Paris. The famous secret agent was very human and he had taken a liking to fragile-looking Lady Waverton, and a dislike to her lovely Russian friend. The scene he was now witnessing confirmed his first judgment of the Countess Filenska.
‘I wish Gracie were not here!’ exclaimed Lord Waverton.
‘She is—how do you call it?—too much thinking of herself to think of us,’ was the confident answer of Lady Waverton’s false friend.
There came a look of discomfort and shame over the man’s face. ‘You women are such damn good actresses! Then you think Gracie is really ill this morning?’
‘“Ill” is a big word. Still, she is willing to see a doctor. It is fortunate that I know a very good Paris physician. He will be here very soon; but she wants us to start for Versailles now, before he comes.’
‘All right! I’ll go and get ready.’
When she believed herself to be absolutely alone, Countess Filenska walked across to the long mirror between the two windows and stood there, looking at herself in the bright light with a close dispassionate scrutiny.
Hercules Popeau, as he gazed at her through his hidden ‘Judas,’ told himself that though in his time he had been brought in contact with many beautiful women, rarely had he seen so exquisite a creature as was Olga Filenska. While very dark, she had no touch of swarthiness, and her oval face had the luminosity of a white camellia petal. She had had the courage to remain unshingled, and the Frenchman, faithful to far away memories of youth, visioned the glorious mantle her tightly coiled hair must form when unbound. Her figure, at once slender and rounded, was completely revealed, as is the fashion to-day, by a plain black dress.
Was she really Russian? Hercules Popeau shook his head. That southern type of beauty is unmistakable. He had known a Georgian princess who might have been the twin sister of the woman he saw before him now.
The hidden watcher’s lifelong business had been to guess the innermost thoughts of men and women. But he felt he had no clue as to what was making this dark lady smile, as she was doing now in so inscrutable a way, at herself.
At last she turned round and left the room, and at once her unseen admirer, and, yes, judge, closed the tiny slit in the panelled wall.
What a curious, romantic, and yes, sinister page, he had just turned in the great Book of Life! A page of a not uncommon story; that of a beautiful, unscrupulous woman, playing the part of serpent in a modern Garden of Eden.
It was clear that Lord Waverton was infatuated with this lovely creature, but there had been no touch of genuine passion in her seductive voice, or even in her apparently eager response to his ardour.
Hercules Popeau had a copy of the latest Who’s Who? on his writing table, and he opened the section containing the letter W.
The entry he sought for began: ‘Waverton, Robert Hichfield, of Hichfield, York. Second Baron.’
And then there came back to him the knowledge that this man’s father had been one of the greatest of Victorian millionaires. No wonder he had been able to present the woman he loved in secret with that magnificent jewel!
There came the sounds of a motor drawing up under the huge porte-cochère of the Hotel Paragon; and, rising, the Frenchman went quickly over to the open window on his right.
Yes, there was a big car, the best money could hire, with his lordship standing by the bonnet. Waverton looked the ideal ‘Milord’ of French fancy, for he was a tall, broad man, with fair hair having in it a touch of red.
Just now he was obviously impatient and ill at ease. But he had not long to wait, for in a very few moments Countess Filenska stepped out of the great house into the courtyard. Even in her plain motor bonnet she looked entrancingly lovely.
Popeau took a step backwards from his window, as there floated upwards the voices of the two people whose secret he now shared.
‘Did you see Gracie?’ asked Lord Waverton abruptly.
‘Yes, and she was so sweet and kind! She begs us not to hurry back; and she is quite looking forward to the visit of my old friend, Dr Scorpion.’
Scorpion? A curious name—not a happy name—for a medical man. Hercules Popeau remembered that he had once known a doctor of that name.
‘Are you ready, Olga?’
‘Quite ready, mon ami,’ and she smiled up into his face.
A moment later they were side by side, and Lord Waverton took the wheel.
As the motor rolled out on to the boulevard, the Frenchman went back to his desk, and, taking up the speaking-tube, he whistled down it.
‘Madame Bonchamp? I have something important to say to you.’ He heard the quick answer: ‘At your service always, Monsieur.’
‘Listen to me!’
‘I am listening.’
‘A doctor is coming to see Lady Waverton this morning. Before he sees Miladi, show him yourself into my bedroom.’
There came a surprised, ‘Do you feel ill, Monsieur?’
‘I am not very well; and I have reason to think this doctor is an old friend of mine. But I do not wish him to know that he is not being shown straight into the bedroom of his English lady patient. Have I made myself clear?’
He heard her eager word of assent. Madame Bonchamp was as sharp as a needle, and she had once had reason to be profoundly grateful to Hercules Popeau. He knew he could trust her absolutely; sometimes he called her, by way of a joke, ‘Madame Discretion.’
II
Hercules Popeau always did everything in what he called to himself an artistic—an Englishman would have said a thorough—way. Before getting into bed, he entirely undressed, and then drew together the curtains of his bedroom window. Thus anyone coming into the room from the corridor would feel as if in complete darkness, while to one whose eyes were already accustomed to the dim light, everything would be perfectly clear.
The time went by slowly, and he had already been in bed half an hour, when at last the door of the room opened, and he heard Madame Bonchamp exclaim: ‘Entrez, Monsieur le Docteur!’ And then his heart gave a leap, for the slight elderly individual who had just been shown into the darkened room, was undoubtedly the man he had known twenty years ago.
Quickly the ex-secret agent told himself that as the doctor had been about thirty years of age when he had got into the very serious trouble which had brought him into touch with the then Chief of the French Criminal Investigation Department, he must now be fifty.
With a sardonic look on his powerful face Hercules Popeau watched his visitor grope his way forward into the darkened room.
‘Miladi,’ he said at last, in an ill-assured tone, ‘I will ask your permission to draw the curtains a little? Otherwise, I cannot see you.’ He put his hat on a chair as he spoke, and then he went towards the nearest window, and pulled apart the curtains.
Letting in a stream of light, he turned towards the bed. When he saw that it was a man, and not a woman who was sitting up there, he gave a slight gasp of astonishment.
‘It is a long time since we have met, is it not, my good Doctor Scorpion?’
For a moment Popeau thought that the man who stood stock still, staring at him as if petrified, was about to fall down in a faint. And a feeling of regret, almost of shame, came over him—for he was a kindly man—at having played the other such a trick.
But the visitor made a great effort to regain his composure, and at last with a certain show of valour, he exclaimed: ‘I have been shown into the wrong room. I came here to see an English lady, who is ill.’
‘That is so,’ said Popeau quietly. ‘But I, too, feel ill, and hearing that you had been called to this hotel, I thought I would like to see you first, and ask your advice. I confess I rather hoped you were the Dr Scorpion I had once known.’
To the unfortunate man who stood in the middle of the large room there was a terrible edge of irony in the voice that uttered those quiet words.
‘Of course, I know, that is in the old days, you were more accustomed to diagnose the condition of an ailing woman than that of a man,’ went on the ex-police chief pitilessly.
And then he changed his tone. ‘Come, come!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have no right to go back to the past. Draw a chair close up to my bed, and tell me how you have got on all these years?’
With obvious reluctance the doctor complied with this almost command. ‘I have now been in very respectable practice for some time,’ he said in a low voice.
He waited a moment, then he added bitterly: ‘Can you wonder that seeing you gave me a moment of great discomfort and pain, reminding me, as this meeting must do, of certain errors of my youth of which I have repented.’
‘I am glad to hear you have repented,’ said Popeau heartily.
In a clearer, calmer tone, Scorpion went on: ‘I made a good marriage; I have a sweet wife, and two excellent children.’
‘Good! Good!’
Hercules Popeau’s manner altered. He felt convinced that this man’s account of himself was substantially true. And yet? And yet a doubt remained.
‘Are you always called in to the clients of this hotel?’ he asked suddenly.
The other hesitated, and the ex-police chief again felt a touch of misgiving.
‘No, I am not the regular medical attendant of the Hotel Paragon,’ answered Scorpion at last. ‘But I’ve been here before, and oddly enough,’ he concluded jauntily, ‘to see another foreign lady.’
‘Then who sent for you now, to-day?’
Again the doctor did not answer at once; but when he did speak it was to say, with a forced smile: ‘A lady whom I attended for a quinsy, the last time she was in this hotel. It is to see a friend of hers that I am here.’
The doctor’s statement fitted in with what he, Hercules Popeau, knew to be true. Yet something—a kind of sixth sense which sometimes came to his aid—made Popeau tell his visitor a lie of which he was ashamed.
‘Although I know seeing me again must have revived sore memories, I am glad to have seen you, Scorpion, and to have heard that the past is dead. Now tell me if I can safely go off to-night to Niort, where I am to spend the rest of this hot summer?’
The doctor at once assumed a professional manner. He peered into his new patient’s throat, he felt his new patient’s pulse, and at last he said gravely: ‘Yes, you can leave Paris to-night, though it might be more prudent to stay till to-morrow morning.’
‘Now that you have reassured me, I shall go to-night.’
Then Dr Scorpion asked, almost in spite of himself, a question: ‘Are you still connected with the police, Monsieur Popeau?’
‘No, I took my pension at the end of the war, and I am now a rolling stone, for I have not the good fortune, like you, to be married to a woman I love. Also, alas! I am not a father.’ He waited a moment. ‘And now for what the British call a good hand-shake.’
He held out his hand, and then felt a sensation of violent recoil, for it was as if the hand he held was a dead hand. Though to-day was a very hot day, that hand was icy cold—an infallible sign of shock.
The ex-member of the dreaded Sûreté felt a touch of sharp remorse. He had nothing in him of the feline human being who likes to play with a man or a woman as a cat plays with a mouse.
As soon as he had dressed himself Hercules Popeau spoke down his speaking-tube. ‘Has the doctor left?’ he asked casually.
‘Yes, some minutes ago.’
He went down to the office, and drew a bow at a venture: ‘You knew Dr Scorpion before, eh?’
Madame Bonchamp said in a singular tone: ‘The Countess Filenska and that little doctor have been great friends for a long time. Beauty sometimes likes Ugly, and Ugly always likes Beauty.’
Popeau had meant to go upstairs again, but after that casual word or two, instead of going upstairs, he walked out of the hotel.
Sauntering along, he crossed a bridge, and came at last to the big building, the very name of which fills every Parisian’s heart with awe.
Now there is a small, almost hidden, door in the Préfecture of Police which is only used by the various heads of departments. It was through this door that Popeau went up to his former quarters, being warmly greeted on the way by various ex-colleagues with whom he had been popular.
Soon he was in the familiar room where are kept the secret dossiers, or records which play so important a part in the lives of certain people, and very soon there was laid before him an envelope with the name of Victor Alger Scorpion inscribed on it. Glancing over the big sheet of copy paper he saw at once the entry concerning the serious affair in which Scorpion had been concerned some twenty years before. And then came General Remarks:
Victor Alger Scorpion has made a great effort to become respectable. He is living a quiet, moral life with his wife and two children, and to the latter he is passionately devoted. But it is more than suspected that now and again he will take a serious risk in order to make a big sum of money to add to his meagre savings. Such risks are always associated with—
Then followed three capital letters with whose meaning Hercules Popeau was acquainted, though he had never been directly in touch with that side of the police force which concerns itself specially with morals.
He read on:
Just after the end of the war, Scorpion was concerned with the mysterious death of a young Spanish lady. But though he was under grave suspicion, it was impossible actually to prove anything against him; also the fact that he had done even more than his duty as a surgeon in the war, benefited him in the circumstances. He was, however, warned that he would be kept under observation. Since then there has been nothing to report.
III
Lord and Lady Waverton and their friend had arrived on a Saturday night, and Dr Scorpion’s first visit to the hotel had been paid on the Monday morning. As the days went on, Lady Waverton, while still keeping to her room, became convalescent, though the doctor recommended that her ladyship should go on being careful till she was to leave Paris, on the following Saturday.
Hercules Popeau, who had constituted himself a voluntary prisoner, cursed himself for a suspicious fool. Cynically he told himself that though marital infidelity is extremely common, murder is comparatively rare.
On the Friday morning Madame Bonchamp herself brought up his petit déjeuner. She looked anxious and worried. ‘Miladi is worse,’ she said abruptly. ‘I have already telephoned for the doctor. The Countess Filenska is greatly distressed! I must hurry, now, as I have to serve an English breakfast for two in the next room at once.’
A few minutes later Popeau, peeping through the slanting ‘Judas,’ sat watching Lord Waverton and his beautiful companion. After having exchanged a long passionate embrace, they sat down, but the excellent omelette provided by Madame Bonchamp remained untasted for a while.
‘I don’t see why you should be going to England to-day!’ exclaimed Lord Waverton.
She said firmly: ‘It is imperative that I should see the picture dealer who will start for Russia to-morrow.’
‘Well then, if you must go’—he had the grace to look ashamed—‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t go, too, darling? Gracie hates to have me about when she’s ill, and I can’t help thinking that the sensible thing to do would be to get a trained nurse over from England. I’ve only got to telephone to my mother to have a nurse here by to-morrow morning.’
The Countess looked violently disturbed. ‘I know Gracie would not like that!’ she exclaimed.
She was pouring some black coffee into her cup, and Popeau saw that the lovely hand shook. ‘You cannot do better than leave Gracie in my French doctor’s hands,’ she went on. ‘I was seriously ill here last year, and he was wonderful!’
There came a knock at the door, and the man to whom his ex-patient had just given such a good character, came into the sitting-room.
Dr Scorpion was pale, but composed: ‘I am indeed sorry,’ he began, ‘to hear that my patient is worse—’
The Countess cut him short, almost rudely. ‘Let us go to her,’ she cried, and together they left the room. But in a few moments she came back, alone.
‘Gracie is much better,’ she observed. ‘She will probably be able to go home Friday.’
She put her hand caressingly through Lord Waverton’s arm. ‘I will go over to England to-day at four o’clock, and I will be back here by to-morrow night. What do you say to that for devotion?’
Her lover’s face cleared. ‘Does that mean—’
‘—that I’m a foolish woman? That I do not like being away from you even for quite a little while? Yes, it does mean that!’
She submitted—the unseen watcher thought with a touch of impatience—to his ardent caresses.
Suddenly the door behind the screen opened. The two sprang apart, and, as the doctor edged his way in again, Lord Waverton left the room.
‘What have you come back to tell me?’ said the Countess sharply.
Scorpion looked at her fixedly. ‘Is it true that Madame la Comtesse is going away to England to-day?’
‘I am returning to Paris at once,’ she said evasively.
‘I have thought matters over, and I refuse to go on with the treatment before payment, or part payment, is made,’ he said firmly.
‘Come! Don’t be unreasonable!’ she exclaimed.
He answered at once, in a fierce, surly tone: ‘I refuse to risk my head unless it is made worth my while. I did not think it possible that you meant to leave me to face a terrible danger alone.’
‘I tell you that I am coming back to-morrow night! Also it is absolutely true that I have no money—as yet.’
‘Surely the Milord would give you some money? Cannot you invent something which requires at once an advance of say—’ he hesitated, then slowly uttered the words, ‘fifty thousand francs.’
Popeau expected to hear a cry of protest, but the beautiful woman who now stood close to the ugly, clever-looking little doctor, opened her handbag and said coldly: ‘I have something here which is worth a great deal more than fifty thousand francs,’ and she handed him the jewel-case which contained the emerald pendant.
Scorpion opened the case. ‘Is the stone real?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Fool!’ she said angrily, ‘walk into the first jeweller’s shop you pass by, offer it for sale, and see.’
He was looking at the gorgeous stone with glistening, avid eyes. Slowly he shut the jewel-case and put it in his pocket. ‘I know where I can dispose of it, should it become necessary that I should do so.’
‘Then you will keep your promise?’
There was a long pause. Then the doctor produced a loose-leaved prescription block.
‘I will fulfil my promise,’ he said firmly, ‘if you will write on this sheet of paper what I dictate.’
He handed her a fountain pen:
‘My dear friend and doctor: I beg you to accept the jewel I am sending you, a square-cut emerald, which is my own property to dispose of, in consideration of the great care and kindness you showed me when I was so extremely ill last year.—Your ever grateful, Olga Filenska.’
She hesitated for what seemed both to the invisible watcher, and to her accomplice, a long time. But at last she wrote out the words he again dictated, and he put the piece of paper in the pocket where already reposed the small jewel-case.
‘C’est entendu,’ he exclaimed, and turned towards the door.
A moment later Hercules Popeau took off his telephone receiver. ‘Invent a pretext to keep the doctor till I come down!’ he exclaimed.
Then, taking out of a drawer a large sheet of notepaper headed Préfecture de Police, Paris, he wrote on it:
Madame la Comtesse,
You are in grave danger. The man you are employing to rid you of your rival is affiliated to the French Police. He has revealed your plot. An affidavit sworn by him will reach Scotland Yard in the course of to-morrow. A copy of the sworn statement of Dr Scorpion will also be laid before Lord Waverton, who will be summoned to appear as a witness at the extradition proceedings. An admirer of your beauty thinks it kind to warn you that you will be well advised to break your journey to-day, and proceed to some other destination than England. The value of the jewel which I enclose is eight hundred pounds sterling. Lord Waverton paid for it close on two thousand pounds.
He put this letter in a drawer, and then went down to the hall of the hotel.
Dr Scorpion was chatting to Madame Bonchamp, and looked startled and disturbed when he saw Hercules Popeau coming towards him.
‘I found Niort dull, so I came back to Paris,’ said the latter genially. ‘How is your patient, my good Scorpion?’
‘Going on fairly,’ said the other hesitatingly. ‘Though not well enough to leave the hotel this week, as she had hoped to do. Well! Now I must be off—’
‘I have a further word to say to you, Scorpion.’
Popeau’s voice had become cold and very grave. ‘Come upstairs to my rooms.’
Scorpion stumbled up the staircase of the grand old house, too frightened, now, to know what he was doing, or where he was going.
When they reached the corridor, the other man took hold of his shoulder, and pushed him through into his study. Then he locked the door, and turning, faced his abject visitor.
‘The first thing I ask you to do is to put on the table the emerald which has just been given you as the price of blood.’
‘The emerald?’
Scorpion was shaking, now, as if he had the ague. ‘What do you mean?’ he faltered, ‘I know nothing of any emerald.’
‘Come—come! Don’t be a fool.’
A look of rage came over the livid face. ‘Does that woman dare to call me a thief?’ he exclaimed. ‘See what she herself wrote when she gave me this jewel!’
With a shaking hand he drew a folded sheet of paper from his pocket.
‘I want that, too, of course.’
Scorpion sank down on to a chair. He asked himself seriously if Hercules Popeau was in league with the Devil?
The ex-police chief came and stood over him. ‘Listen carefully to what I am going to say. It is important.’
The wretched man looked up, his eyes full of terror, while Popeau went on, tonelessly.
‘Once more I am going to allow you to escape the fate which is your due. Last time it was for the sake of your mother. This time it will be for the sake of two women—your good wife, and the unfortunate lady whom you, or perhaps I ought to say, your temptress and accomplice, had doomed to a hideous death by poison.’
Scorpion stared at Hercules Popeau. His face had gone the colour of chalk.
‘Get up!’
The unhappy man stood up on his trembling legs.
‘Just now you dictated a letter to your accomplice, and I now dictate to you the following confession.’
He placed a piece of notepaper on his writing-table, and forced the other man to go and sit down in his own arm-chair. Then, slowly, he dictated the following!
‘I, Victor Scorpion, confess to having entered into a conspiracy with a woman I know under the name of the Countess Filenska, to bring about the death of Lady Waverton on—’
Popeau stopped his dictation and looked fixedly at Scorpion.
‘What day was she to die?’ he asked.
Scorpion stared woefully at his tormentor. He did not, he felt he could not, answer.
‘Must I repeat my question?’
In a whimpering voice he said: ‘I did not mean that she should die.’
‘What was the exact proposal made to you?’
Twice the man moistened his lips, then at last he answered: ‘Five hundred pounds sterling within a fortnight of—of the accident, and ten thousand pounds sterling within six months of the Countess’s marriage to Lord Waverton.’
‘To your mind I suppose the emerald represented the five hundred pounds?’
‘She was going away,’ murmured Scorpion. ‘I might not have got anything, the more so that I did not mean the poor Miladi to die.’
‘On what day did the Countess expect her victim to die?’
Popeau had to bend down to hear the two words. ‘Next Friday.’
‘I see. Write down the following:
‘I was to receive five hundred pounds sterling on the day of her death, and within six months of the Countess’s marriage to Lord Waverton ten thousand pounds sterling, whatever the rate of exchange might be at the time. (Signed) Victor Alger Scorpion.’
‘Do allow me to put down that I did not intend to carry out this infamous plan?’ asked the unhappy wretch pleadingly.
Popeau hesitated a moment. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I will not allow you to do that. But this I will promise. Within a few hours from now, you yourself shall do what you wish with that piece of paper.’
‘And the emerald?’ said Scorpion in a faltering voice.
‘The emerald,’ said Popeau thoughtfully, ‘will be returned to its owner. I regret that necessity almost as much as you do. But it is to your interest, Scorpion, as to that of others concerned, that the Countess Filenska should have enough to live on till she has found another lover.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ muttered Scorpion sadly.
‘Of course I am right! And now,’ went on Popeau, ‘you can make yourself at home in these two rooms for a while, and you can have the use of my bathroom also, should you care to take a bath.’
He smiled genially. ‘You may telephone home to your wife, saying you will not be home till late.’
‘Can I trust you?’ asked his prisoner. ‘Remember that I am a father. It was for the sake of my dear children that I placed myself in this dangerous position!’
‘I have never yet betrayed any human being,’ said Hercules Popeau seriously. ‘I am not likely to begin by you, who are such an old—’ he hesitated, and then he said ‘acquaintance.’
Epilogue
The beautiful cosmopolitan woman, who had made so many warm friends in English society, had just settled herself comfortably in a first-class compartment of the Paris-Calais express. She was quite alone, for in July there are few travellers to England. So she was rather taken aback when a big man, dressed in a pale grey alpaca suit, suddenly thrust his body and head through the aperture leading into the corridor.
‘Have I the honour of speaking to Countess Filenska?’ he asked.
She hesitated a moment. Then she saw that he held in his hand a bulky envelope, and involuntarily she smiled. From dear foolish Waverton, of course! A billet doux, accompanied no doubt by some delightful gift. So, ‘I am the Countess Filenska,’ she answered.
‘I have been told to give you this little parcel, Madame la Comtesse. I am glad I had the good fortune to arrive before your train started.’
The Frenchman had a cultivated voice, and a good manner. No doubt he was a jeweller. She was pleased, being the kind of woman she was, that there need be no question of a gratuity.
‘I thank you, monsieur,’ she said graciously.
He lifted his hat, and went off. She thought, but she may have been mistaken, that she heard a chuckle in the corridor.
The train started; slowly the traveller broke the seal of the big envelope. Yes! As she had half expected, there was a jewel-case wrapped up in a piece of notepaper. Eagerly she opened the case, and then came mingled disappointment and surprise, for it only contained the emerald which she had given that morning to Scorpion.
With a feeling of sudden apprehension she quickly unfolded the piece of notepaper and then, slowly, with eyes dilated with terror, she read the terrible words written there. The warning sent her, maybe, from some old ex-lover, from the Préfecture de Police.
Could she leap now, out of the train? No, it was now gathering speed, and she could not afford to risk an accident.
Feverishly she counted over her money. Yes, she had enough, amply enough to break her journey at Calais, and go on to—?
After a moment’s deep thought she uttered aloud the word ‘Berlin.’
Late that same afternoon Madame Bonchamp opened the door of Hercules Popeau’s study. ‘Milord Waverton,’ she murmured nervously, and the Englishman walked into the room.
He looked uncomfortable, even a little suspicious. He had not been able to understand exactly what was wanted of him, only that a Frenchman, whose name he did not know, desired his presence—at once.
He felt anxious. Was his wife worse, and was the man who had asked to see him so urgently a specialist called in by the Countess’s French doctor?
‘I have a painful, as well as a serious, communication to make to your lordship,’ began Hercules Popeau in slow, deliberate tones. He spoke with a strong French accent, but otherwise his English was perfect.
‘I belong to the French branch of what in England is called the Criminal Investigation Department, and a most sinister fact has just been brought to our notice.’
He looked fixedly—it was a long, searching glance—into the other man’s bewildered face. And then he felt a thrill of genuine relief. His instinct had been right! Lord Waverton, so much was clear, was quite unconscious of the horrible plot which had had for object that of ridding him of his wife.
‘The fact brought to our notice,’ went on Popeau quietly, ‘does not concern your lordship; it concerns Lady Waverton.’
‘My wife? Impossible!’
Lord Waverton drew himself up to his full height. He looked angry, as well as incredulous.
‘Lady Waverton,’ went on the other, ‘possesses a terrible enemy.’
‘I assure you,’ said Lord Waverton coldly, ‘that the French police have made some absurd mistake. My wife is the best of women, kindness itself to all those with whom she comes in contact. I may have enemies; she has none.’
‘Lady Waverton has an enemy,’ said Popeau positively. ‘And what is more, that enemy intended to compass her death, and indeed nearly succeeded in doing so.’
The Englishman stared at the Frenchman. He felt as if he was confronting a lunatic.
‘This enemy of Lady Waverton’s laid her plans—for it is a woman—very cleverly,’ said Popeau gravely. ‘She discovered in this city of Paris a man who will do anything for money. That man is a doctor, and for what appeared to him a sufficient consideration, he undertook to poison her ladyship.’
He waited a moment, then added in an almost casual tone, ‘Lady Waverton’s death was to have occurred next Friday.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Lord Waverton, in a horror-stricken voice, ‘do you mean that the little French doctor who has been attending my wife is—’
‘—a would-be murderer? Yes,’ said Hercules Popeau stolidly. ‘Dr Scorpion had undertaken to bring about what would have appeared to everybody here, in the Hotel Paragon, a natural death.’
Lord Waverton covered his face with his hands. Yet even now no suspicion of the woman who had been behind Scorpion had reached his brain. He was trying to remember the name of a French maid his wife had had for a short time soon after their marriage, and who had been dismissed without a character.
‘Most fortunately for you, Lord Waverton, this infamous fellow-countryman of mine had already had trouble with the police. So he grew suddenly afraid, and made a full confession of the hideous plot. He brought with him a written proof, as well as a valuable emerald, which was part of the price his infamous temptress was willing to pay the man she intended should be the actual murderer.’
The speaker turned away, for he desired to spare the unhappy man, whose sudden quick, deep breathing, showed the awful effect those last words had had on him.
‘The rest of the blood money—ten thousand pounds sterling—was to be paid when Scorpion’s temptress became the second wife of a wealthy English peer.’
Lord Waverton gave a strangled cry.
‘I should now like to show you the proof of the story I have told you. I take it you do not desire to see the emerald?’
The other shook his head violently.
‘That is as well,’ said Popeau calmly, ‘for it is once more in the possession of the woman who calls herself the Countess Filenska.’
He took out of his pocket the two documents, the deed of gift written out by the Countess, and the confession signed by Scorpion himself.
‘I will ask you to read these through,’ he said, ‘and then I must beg you to put a firm restraint upon yourself. I have kept the man here so that he may confirm the fact that the whole of this statement is in his handwriting.’
Popeau waited till Lord Waverton had read Scorpion’s confession. Then he opened the door of his bedroom.
‘Come here for a moment,’ he called out in a quick, business-like tone. ‘I have done with that paper I asked you to sign, and I am ready to give you it back the moment you have informed this gentleman that you wrote it.’
Scorpion sidled into the room.
‘Now then,’ said Popeau sharply, ‘say in English, “I, Scorpion, swear that all I wrote down here is true, and that this is my signature.”’
The man repeated the words in a faltering voice.
Popeau handed him back the confession.
‘Take this piece of paper,’ he observed, ‘down into the courtyard; there set a light to it, and watch it burn; then go home and thank the good God, and your good wife, that you have not begun the long road which leads to the Devil’s Island.’
After Scorpion had left the room, Hercules Popeau turned to the Englishman. ‘I trust,’ he said, ‘that your lordship will not think it impertinent if I ask you to listen to me for yet another two or three minutes?’
Lord Waverton bent his head. His face had gone grey under its tan.
‘I am old enough to be your father, and this I would say to you, and I trust that you will take it in good part. There was a time when a man in your position was guarded by high invisible barriers from many terrible dangers. Those barriers, Milord, are no longer there, and—’
There came a knock at the door. A telegram was handed to Lord Waverton. He tore open the envelope.
An unexpected chance has come my way of getting back to Russia, and of recovering some of my lost property. Good-bye, dear friends. Thank you both for your goodness to an unhappy woman. Dear love to Gracie.
As Lord Waverton handed the two slips of paper to his new friend, Hercules Popeau looked much relieved.
‘All you have to do,’ he exclaimed, ‘is to show Miladi this telegram, and then to give her—how do you say it in English?—a good kiss on her sweet face!’