John knew about his mother’s work in the war—at least he thought he did. All she had ever told him was that her fluent French had secured her an interesting job as a secretary, and that later she had acted as P.A. to one of the senior officers of a department of the War Office situated in Baker Street. Since the war he had run across several people who had been connected with the same office, and from odd scraps of information they had dropped he had formed a pretty shrewd idea of the activities in which they had been engaged. Those who knew his mother spoke most highly of her, and the association had led him to believe that she too had actively participated in all sorts of cloak and dagger business designed to bring alarm and despondency to the enemy.
The belief was strengthened by the fact that she still kept a private armoury, consisting of two pistols and a number of other lethal weapons. She had often assured him that her ‘museum’, as she called it, had been acquired only because such things had always fascinated her and, in addition, helped her to describe accurately the use to which they could be put when writing of scenes of violence in her books. In this she was speaking the entire truth. Much as she would have liked to try some of them out, she had never used any of them. Neither had she ever been in the least danger, except during air-raids, as her work had lain inside the office, helping to direct the activities of others. Nevertheless, it had given her an exceedingly wide knowledge of the French Resistance, secret agents, collaborators and the crooks who were mixed up with them.
After a moment he said, ‘I suppose you ran up against the Marquis when you were doing your stuff as Molly Polloffski, the beautiful spy?’
‘No, Johnny. I’ve told you hundreds of times that there was nothing the least glamorous about my job; and I’ve never met de Grasse. But I know plenty about him.’
‘There was a chap of that name up at Cambridge when I was there. I knew him slightly, but he went down at the end of my first year.’
She nodded. ‘That would have been the son, Count Jules de Grasse. His father is as slippery as they make ’em. In the war he was far-sighted enough to back both sides; and his having sent his boy to school in England in 1940 went a long way towards saving him from a heavy sentence of imprisonment when the French began to catch up with collaborators after the liberation. He had been in it up to the neck with the Germans, but was able to produce that card as evidence that he had always thought and hoped that the Allies would win; then plead that he had done no more to help the Germans than thousands of other patriotic Frenchmen had been compelled to do as the only alternative to having their businesses taken from them. Of course, we knew that wasn’t true, but he is immensely rich and money talks in France with a louder tongue than in most countries. His story about his son proved a good enough peg on which to hang a pardon, so he was able to bribe his way out, and he got off scot-free.’
‘What was his business?’
‘He is ostensibly a respectable shipping magnate; but that covers a multitude of sins. We had plenty of proof on our files that he used his ships for running every sort of contraband. Before the war he used to specialise in dope and white slaving; but more recently, I understand, he has concentrated on smuggling Jews out to Palestine, and arms to anyone in the Near East who wants to make trouble for us.’
‘How do you know that, Mother?’
Molly coloured slightly. ‘Oh, sometimes friends who worked with me in the old firm come out here, and we talk of this and that.’
He laughed. ‘Boys and girls who are still in it, eh? I’ve always suspected that they kept you on unofficially to tip them off about anything you might tumble to in their line that was going on down here.’
‘Johnny, you do get the silliest ideas. The department I worked for was wound up soon after the war ended.’
‘Maybe; but there are others: for example, your old friend Conky Bill’s outfit. I know he pretends to be only a sort of policeman whose job it is to hunt out Communists; but like this shipping racket I bet it covers his poking that big nose of his into a multitude of other dubious goings on.’
‘And if you don’t keep your nose out of other people’s business you may one day get it chopped off,’ retorted Molly aptly.
‘Touché!’ he grinned. ‘Let’s get back to the wicked Marquis, then. What else do you know about him?’
‘His headquarters used to be at St Tropez. The choice was appropriate, as before the war it had the most evil reputation of any town west of Suez. Every vice racket flourished there. At night, down by the port, it was dangerous for decent people; and your father would not allow me to leave him to do even ten minutes’ shopping on my own there in the middle of the day.’
‘Really! On the few occasions I’ve been there I’ve never noticed anything peculiar about it.’
‘You wouldn’t, now. The Germans, and later the French, have cleaned it up a lot since then. But I am told that de Grasse still spends quite a lot of his time there.’
‘He is living there at present. He told Christina so. He and his wife have a permanent private suite at the Capricorn. You know, that big modern hotel that overlooks the bay from the high ground to the right of the road, just before you enter the town. On learning that Christina had never been to St Tropez, he said that his wife loved entertaining young people, and offered to send a car to fetch her if she could lunch with them there today.’
Molly set down her glass with a bang. ‘I hope to goodness she refused?’
‘No: she accepted. It is only in the daytime that she seems to shy off any suggestion that she should go out; but of course she may have changed her mind this morning.’
‘I’m afraid not. I had to go into St Raphael earlier to do some shopping, and I got back only just before you came down. I remember now noticing that she was not on her terrace when I drove past it, and she always is at that hour. If you were very late getting in she may still have been sleeping, but … Oh, Johnny, run round next door and make certain.’
Seven or eight minutes elapsed before John returned, panting slightly. He spread out his hands. ‘No dice, dearest. She was called for around twelve by a chap a few years older than myself. From the rather sketchy description which was all I could get out of her old Catalan woman, it might have been Jules de Grasse. Evidently she had changed her mind about going, though, and did not mean to, as she wasn’t dressed ready to go out. It seems that they had quite an argument before she went upstairs and changed her clothes. It was close on half-past when they left; so you must have passed them on your way back.’
Standing up, Molly helped herself to a cigarette. When John had lit it for her she drew hard on it for a moment, before she said, ‘I do hope she will be all right. I don’t like this new development a little bit. I wish to goodness there was something we could do to ensure her getting safely out of the clutches of those people.’
John shrugged. ‘We certainly can’t arm ourselves from your museum, give chase, and do a “stand and deliver” on the de Grasses to get her back—if that is the sort of move your agile mind is beginning to toy with. They are not the Germans and there’s no longer a war on; so snap out of it, Mother. She went off in broad daylight of her own free will, and judging by the form last night she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.’
‘You did make a pass at her, then?’
‘Well, not exactly. She made it quite clear that she expected me to say Goodnight to her in the orthodox manner. And, although she said afterwards that it was the first time she had been kissed by a man, she took to it like a duck to water. If it hadn’t been that she didn’t seem to know the opening moves of the game I certainly wouldn’t have believed her, and I still have my doubts about it. But it wasn’t of that sort of thing that I was thinking. I meant in her general behaviour; and particularly at the Casino, she undoubtedly had all her wits about her.’
Lunch was announced at that moment. They dealt with the hors d’oeuvres in thoughtful silence; then when Angele had put the sweetbreads on the table and gone out again, Molly said, ‘You know, I believe she is a schizophrenic’
‘What, dual personality?’
‘Yes. It is the only way one can account for the quite extraordinary changes which we have both seen in her. By day she is still an affectionate, overgrown child who is scared stiff that something awful is going to happen to her, and obsessed with the thought that she must remain in hiding; while by night she becomes a rather hard-boiled, sophisticated young woman, who is perfectly prepared to take the risk of being recognised for the sake of having a good time. It goes even further than that, because I am sure that during the daytime she is both innocent in mind and instinctively modest; whereas, from what you tell me, by night she is only too eager to have a necking party with the first man she sets eyes on.’
‘Hi! Have a heart!’ John protested, swiftly swallowing a piece of fried courgette. ‘That is not very complimentary to your only begotten.’
‘Do you seriously suggest that she would have preserved a virginal aloofness had she been out with any other personable young man than yourself?’
‘Thank you, Mother. The word “personable” salves my wounded pride. No, to be honest, I don’t. And I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this theory of yours that she could be schizophrenic. All the same, that does not get us any further in solving the mystery of who is after her blood, and why.’
‘At least we now have good reason to suppose that the Canon is not to be trusted. No clergyman who had a proper respect for his cloth would show himself in the gambling-rooms of a Casino—anyhow after midnight—and his being a friend of de Grasse makes him suspect in the highest degree. I wouldn’t mind betting the serial rights of my next book that the story he told Christina about an accident to her father was a pack of lies, and designed solely to lure her away from her villa. Then, this invitation of de Grasse’s: he and his wife are not the sort of people to spend their time showing young girls the beauties of the Riviera. It is all Lombard Street to a china orange that the Canon put him up to asking her to St Tropez for some nefarious purpose of his own.’
John nodded; his voice was serious now. ‘I’m afraid you’re right, dearest. But there is nothing we can do about it for the moment. We can only wait to see if she gets back all right and, if not, call in the police.’
That afternoon there was to be a Battle of Flowers at St Maxime. As they had planned to go to it, they set off there immediately after lunch. The little town was only about fifteen miles away; so by half-past two John had parked the car and they were installed in the seats for which Molly had already secured tickets. Their chairs were in the front row facing the sea, with only a temporary barrier of chestnut-pale fence railing them off from the promenade down which the procession would come; and while they waited for it they could scarcely prevent their gaze from frequently coming to rest on the white houses of St Tropez, which lay in the shelter of the headland just across the bay. Both of them were wondering how Christina was faring there, and although John endeavoured to engage his mother’s attention, he did not succeed in doing so until the sounds of the town band in the distance heralded the beginning of the fête.
The battle was not on the grand scale of those held at Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo; but there were nearly thirty carriages, and a lovely sight they made. The wheels, body and shafts of them all were entirely hidden by massed flowers, each seeking to outdo the others in colour, variety or originality. In most cases stocks, violets and carnations of many hues provided the ground work; while towers, trumpets, sheaves and fountains, on which were wired hundreds of roses, hyacinths, arum lilies and gladioli, surmounted the backs of the carriages. In each rode two or more young women, specially selected for their good looks. Some were displaying their charms in décolleté evening frocks, or in ballet skirts below which they wore black, large-mesh, fish-net stockings, while others were wearing light summer dresses and big floppy hats; but in every case their toilettes had been chosen to carry out the main colour motive of their floral chariots.
In every carriage the girls had big baskets of surplus flowers, with which to pelt the onlookers, and everyone in the crowd had a supply of similar ammunition bought from the gaily-dressed flower vendors. At a slow walk the colourful procession passed along between the barriers, while to and from both sides hundreds of little bunches of mimosa, stock, short-stemmed narcissi and carnation heads sailed up into the bright sunlight, thrown by the laughing girls and applauding people. To give the audience ample opportunity to enjoy the spectacle to the full, at intervals of about a quarter of an hour the procession passed and re-passed three times; so it was half-past four before the battle was finally concluded.
After it was over, remembering his mother’s fondness for hot chocolate, John proposed that they should adjourn to a pâtissière. While they were there she again became distrait. Then, after a time, she suggested that they should go on to St Tropez in case Christina was still with the de Grasses at the Capricorn; as if she were they could pretend to have run into her by chance and by offering her a lift ensure her returning safely with them.
John considered the idea for a moment, then pointed out that as she had been asked over only to lunch the probability was that she would have left a couple of hours ago, so be home by now; while if the de Grasses had persuaded her to remain with them for the afternoon it would pretty certainly have been on the excuse of taking her for a drive, or to see the town; so the odds were all against her still being at the hotel, and it seemed going a bit far to add twenty miles to their return journey for such a slender chance of finding her.
Molly thought his reasoning sound, so she did not press her suggestion. In consequence, having collected the car, instead of heading west, they headed east for home, arriving there just before six. Leaving John to put the car away, Molly went straight up to Christina’s villa, hoping to find her there, and learn as soon as possible what had transpired at the lunch. But Christina was still absent.
More perturbed than ever for the girl’s safety, Molly mounted the steep path to her own house, to be met in the hall by Angele, who told her that at about half-past three the English mademoiselle who lived next door had telephoned, but had left no message. When John came in they discussed the situation again, but there seemed nothing they could do, as to have appealed to the police on the bare facts that a girl had gone out to lunch with friends and failed to return home by six o’clock would have been laughable.
They had fallen into an unhappy silence when, a quarter of an hour later, the telephone rang. John answered the call, and it was Christina. A little breathlessly she said, ‘I tried to get you earlier this afternoon. I lunched with the de Grasses and am still with them. We’ve just got back to the hotel, and I’m telephoning from the call-box in the ladies’ cloakroom; but we shall be going up to their private suite again in a minute. They have made me promise to stay and dine with them on their yacht. But I don’t want to. Can you … can you possibly think of some excuse to come over here and … and get me away from them? Please, oh please!’
‘OK,’ replied John promptly. ‘Was it Count Jules who collected you this morning?’
‘Yes; and it was he who took me round the town this afternoon.’
‘Right! We’ll be with you in three-quarters of an hour. All you have to do is to sit tight until we turn up, and in no circumstances fall for any pretext they may trot out with the idea of getting you to leave the hotel. Keep your chin up, and don’t worry that pretty head of yours. We’ll have you home in time for dinner.’
He had spoken with calm assurance, in order to quiet her evident fears; but as he replaced the receiver he felt far from confident about the outcome of the next few hours; and, while he repeated to his mother what she had said, it became even more clear to him that to get her away from the de Grasses was going to prove an extremely tricky business.
‘If they once get her on their yacht it will be long odds against our ever seeing her again,’ said Molly, now giving free rein to her anxiety.
He nodded glumly. ‘It looks as if the Marquis is at his old white slaving game again. Unless we can pull a fast one on him that poor kid may end up in Port Said or Buenos Aires.’
‘Perhaps. She might, if they simply want to get rid of her. But I’m sure the Canon is behind this, and it may be that he wants to force her into doing something for some purpose of his own.’
‘Anyhow, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him.’
John had spoken with sudden fierceness, and his mother shot him an appraising look as she asked, ‘You do rather like her, then?’
He shrugged, gave a quick grin, and reverted to his usual gaily inconsequent manner. ‘Don’t be silly, Mother. It is solely that my sense of chivalry has been aroused. I feel like the knight who was riding through a forest and came upon a beauteous damosel tied to a tree. She cried out to him, “Frugal me, frugal me!” So he frugalled her.’
‘Stop talking nonsense,’ Molly admonished him, turning away. ‘We’ve got to hurry. While you get the car out, I must just run upstairs. I won’t be a moment.’
‘You had better not,’ he called after her, as he ran towards the door, ‘otherwise I shall start without you.’
Five minutes later she rejoined him in the road, carrying a crocodile-skin bag that she generally used only when travelling. As she got into the car he gave it a suspicious glance, and said, ‘You haven’t brought the armaments, have you?’
She had never lied to him, and, after a second, she admitted, ‘I’ve brought my small automatic—but it’s only a very little one.’
Instead of letting in the clutch, he sat back and folded his arms. ‘Now look, dearest. Things may be done that way in your thrillers, but they are not in real life. It’s too damn dangerous. For one thing the de Grasses would make mincemeat of us, and for another, if we survived the first five minutes they are clever enough to ensure that it is we who would find ourselves in prison afterwards. Before I drive you a yard, you have got to give me your solemn promise that you won’t start anything.’
‘All right, I promise,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But it is a bit hard. This might have been a real chance to find out what it feels like to hold somebody up with a pistol.’
‘Try it sometime when I am elsewhere on my lawful occasions,’ he advised. ‘Then I’ll at least remain free myself to come and bail you out.’
As he spoke the car shot forward. He was feeling guilty now at having scotched his mother’s suggestion that they should drive on to St Tropez from St Maxime, as the sun was already going down beyond the hills ahead of them, and had he not opposed her they would by this time have been with Christina. In consequence, while exercising a fair degree of caution going round the sharp bends of the Corniche, he drove much faster than was his custom.
It was a good twenty-five miles from the villa to St Tropez; but, after St Raphael, for about half that distance the road was nearly flat and moderately straight, as it followed the shallow curve of the great bay in the centre of which lay St Maxime; so until they reached Beauvallon he was able to make good going. There, the road made a hairpin bend round the deep narrow gulf, then wound its way along the peninsula that had St Tropez as its seaward end. When they pulled up in front of the great modern building of concrete and glass, that looked more like a block of flats than an hotel, it was just after seven and twilight was falling.
While on their way they had made their plan of campaign, and on entering the hotel, instead of enquiring for the Marquis at the desk, they walked straight to the lift and asked the liftman to take them up to de Grasse’s suite. The lift shot up to the top floor, and as they stepped from it the man pointed out to them a door at the end of the corridor. Their footfalls making no sound on the heavy pile carpet, they advanced towards it; then John rang the bell.
After a moment the door was opened by Count Jules. He was a shortish but athletic-looking young man in his middle twenties, with slim hips, broad shoulders and a plump round face. His eyes were very dark and his lips a trifle thick, but the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, giving him an expression of humorous good nature.
For a few seconds he stared blankly at his visitors, then recognition dawned in his eyes, and he exclaimed in English that had no more than a faint trace of accent: ‘Why! Surely it is John Fountain?’
‘Of course,’ John smiled. ‘I thought you were expecting us.’
Count Jules looked his astonishment. ‘Forgive me, but I did not know, even, that you were in this part of the world.’
John made a gesture of annoyance. ‘I’m so sorry. They must have made a muddle downstairs. I asked for you at the desk, and after telephoning the chap said we were to come up. But there was a woman beside us asking for somebody else, and in making the calls he must have got his lines crossed.’
A slight narrowing of the Frenchman’s eyes suggested either suspicion or that he was not used to such inefficient service and meant to give the unfortunate receptionist a sharp reprimand; but before he had time to make any comment John hurried on: ‘I happened to meet your father last night in the Casino at Cannes. That’s how I learned you were here. My mother and I have been visiting friends in St Tropez this afternoon. On the spur of the moment I thought I would look you up, before we drive back to our little villa for dinner.’
‘But how nice! I am delighted, delighted.’ There was no trace now in the Count’s voice of anything but genuine pleasure.
‘I don’t think you’ve ever met my mother,’ John said.
‘Enchanté, madame.’ Count Jules took Molly’s hand as though it were a fragile piece of porcelain, and went through the motion of kissing the back of it, although he did not actually touch it with his lips. Then he murmured, ‘Forgive me for keeping you standing like this in the hall. Please to come in. We are so happy to see you.’
The small hallway of the suite had four doors leading from it. That on the immediate right stood partly open. Issuing from it John had heard the murmur of voices, and he guessed that Christina was with someone there. He had spoken to Jules rather loudly in the hope that she might hear what he said, and so not sabotage his story by giving any indication that they had really come to collect her. As their host pushed the door back and bowed Molly through it, John saw over her shoulder that Christina was looking in their direction with anxious expectation. But Molly forestalled any gaffe she might have made by exclaiming: ‘Why, Christina! John told me you were lunching with these friends of his, but I never expected to find you still here.’
Jules’s glance switched swiftly from the girl to the newcomers, and he said in a surprised voice, ‘You know one another, then?’
‘Oh yes,’ Molly replied lightly. ‘We are next-door neighbours and quite old friends.’
When they entered the room a woman, who at first sight looked quite young, had been curled up in one corner of a big settee. As she uncurled herself and sat up Jules turned and addressed her in rapid French: ‘Belle mère, may I present Mrs Fountain and her son John, who was up with me during my last year at Cambridge.’ Then he added in English, ‘My stepmother, the Marquise de Grasse.’
The sitting-room of this luxury suite was unusually spacious for an hotel, and from floor to ceiling one of its sides was composed entirely of sliding glass windows. But as the light was already fading and the Marquise was sitting with her back to them, it was difficult to tell her age. She was slim, extremely soignée, and, in the latest fashion, she had had several curls of her elaborately-dressed dark hair dyed gold. Her eyes were round and blue, her mouth a little sulky-looking. She was wearing a silk blouse, grey slacks with knife-like creases, and over her shoulders a chinchilla fur. Extending a limp hand she said: ‘I am ver pleas to meet you. But my English, et ess not much good. You forgive? Perhaps you spik French?’
Molly’s French being excellent, and that of both John and Christina adequate, most of the conversation which followed was carried on in that language. But the Marquise took little part in it; except to inform Molly a little later, while John and Jules were talking over old times, that although her husband owned houses in several parts of France, she much preferred to live for most of the year in hotels, as it was far less trouble.
They were already drinking cocktails, and while Jules made a fresh mix for the new arrivals, Christina said, ‘Madame la Marquise and Count Jules have been most kind. They insisted on my spending the afternoon here. He took me up to the old fort, then all round the harbour; and now they want me to stay and dine with them on their yacht.’
‘I wish I were as young as you are and could still keep such hours,’ Molly replied with a smile. ‘If I had been up till near dawn this morning I should be dropping asleep by now.’
Christina took the ball quickly. ‘That’s just the trouble. I’m not used to late nights, and I really don’t feel up to it.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Jules. ‘After a few glasses of champagne you will forget there is such a place as bed.’
‘Unfortunately champagne does not agree with me. And as I told you some time ago, I already have quite a headache. Please don’t think me rude, but I’d really rather go home.’
‘If you are feeling like that it’s lucky we turned up,’ John put in casually. ‘We can give you a lift back, and save Jules from being late for his dinner.’
‘No, no!’ Jules protested. ‘A couple of aspirins will soon put your headache right, and we are not dining till nine; so if you wish you can lie down for an hour before we start. How about lying down for a while now? Belle mère will make you comfortable in our spare room.’
‘No thank you. I’d rather not.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, our friends will not be going yet. See how you feel a little later on.’ Turning to John, he added, ‘There are fireworks at Le Lavendou tonight and we are taking the yacht round the cape to witness them. It would be a pity for her to miss that. I wish that I could ask you and your mother to accompany us, but unfortunately the dining space on the yacht is limited, and my father has already made up his party.’
Dismissing the matter, he then went on to talk about mutual friends they had known at Cambridge.
Outside darkness was falling rapidly, and during the quarter of an hour that followed Molly noticed a perceptible change in Christina. She had become much more lively as she described with enthusiasm the things she had seen with Count Jules that afternoon. When he switched on the lights and drew the curtains, she was laughing gaily about her big win at the tables the previous night, and saying that she could hardly wait to get back to them to try her luck again.
Scenting danger in her change of mood, Molly said to her, ‘John was going to suggest taking you in to Cannes again tomorrow night. But you won’t feel much like it if you don’t get a good sleep tonight; so from that point of view your decision to come home with us is a wise one. It is a great pity that you are feeling so rotten this evening and have to disappoint Count Jules, but I’m sure he will forgive you and ask you to go out on the yacht again some other time. And, talking of time, I really think it’s time that we were going.’
‘Oh, not yet!’ cried Jules. ‘You have been here hardly twenty minutes, and Christina is looking better already. I feel sure she will keep her promise and come with us after all.’
‘How late should we be?’ Christina asked.
‘We need not be late at all. We shall sit down to dinner as the yacht leaves harbour. The fireworks start at ten. They last only half an hour. The yacht will be back in her berth again by half-past eleven. Normally we should then dance for a while; but if you wish I could run you straight home, and you would be in bed not long after midnight.’
‘In that case …’ Christina hesitated, then said with, for her, unusual brazenness, ‘Give me another cocktail, and while I am drinking it I will make up my mind.’
‘But certainly!’ As Jules jumped to his feet, to John’s surprise his mother called out, ‘And me, too, if you please.’ Then, with sudden apprehension, he saw her pick up and open her crocodile-skin bag. But, to his considerable relief, she only took out her compact and powdered her nose.
When Jules had replenished their glasses, Molly drew John’s attention to a rather novel arrangement of bookcases at the far end of the room, and suggested that they might be a good idea for incorporation in some of his designs. He had not previously mentioned the fact to the de Grasses that he had taken up interior decorating as a profession, but did so now, while they were all looking at the bookcases.
The Marquise showed a sudden interest, and asked his opinion of the room, which she had had redecorated to her own specification. It displayed considerable taste, so he was able truthfully to compliment her upon it, before making a few tactful suggestions on quite minor points.
For a few minutes they discussed them. Then John happened to glance at Christina. Her face had gone deadly white. With quick concern he asked: ‘I say; you’re looking awfully pale. Are you feeling all right?’
She shook her head. ‘No … I … I feel awfully strange.’
The Marquise uncoiled her long legs in the beautifully tailored grey slacks, and said, ‘Poor little one. Would you like to go to the bathroom? Come with me. I will take you there.’
‘No,’ murmured Christina. ‘I don’t want to be sick. I … just feel muzzy.’ She pointed to her glass, which was nearly empty, and added, ‘That … that last cocktail must have been too much for me.’
‘Drinking a spot too much when one is overtired often has that effect,’ John remarked. ‘But this settles it. She must come home with us; and the sooner the better.’
‘No!’ A sharp note had crept into Jules’s voice. ‘She shall stay here until she recovers. Belle mére, oblige me, please, by taking her to your room and looking after her.’
‘I’m afraid that is not a very good idea,’ John countered smoothly. ‘She’ll only fall asleep, and wake up in a few hours’ time feeling like hell. Then you would have the unenviable task of driving her home.’
John’s contention was amply supported by the fact that, although Christina was trying to keep her head up, it now kept falling forward on to her chest. But Jules replied coldly: ‘I should not in the least mind putting myself out a little for a young guest of mine who has been taken ill.’
‘Perhaps; but has it occurred to you that someone will have to stay with her, and that if your stepmother does so it would mean depriving her of the party and your father’s other guests of their hostess?’
‘That can be overcome. My stepmother’s maid is most competent.’
‘But,’ Molly put in, ‘it would be bad for the girl when she wakes, to be taken for a twenty-five-mile drive.’
Jules’s black eyes had gone as hard as pebbles as he turned them on her. ‘She can stay here for the night. What is to prevent her?’
‘I am,’ replied Molly firmly. ‘As an older woman I know better than you how to deal with a case like this. She will feel miserable and ashamed if, after having allowed herself to drink too much, she wakes up among comparative strangers and in a strange bed. I intend to take her back to her own villa.’
Jules could barely conceal his anger any longer. ‘Madame!’ he snapped, ‘I will not be dictated to in this manner. She is in no condition to be driven anywhere. A doctor should see her, and I mean to send for one. I insist that she stays here.’
‘Sorry, old chap!’ John’s voice was still quite good-humoured and level. ‘But my mother has known her for some time and is more or less responsible for her. So what she says goes.’
As he spoke he advanced towards Christina, took her firmly by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. Then he added quietly, ‘Give me a hand to get her to the lift, will you?’
Quite suddenly Jules’s determination to keep her there seemed to collapse. With a tight little smile he stepped forward, took Christina’s other arm, and helped John support her to the door. The Marquise asked Molly to telephone them next morning to let them know if Christina was all right, then the two older women exchanged polite adieus, and Molly followed the others out into the corridor.
There, at Jules’s suggestion, she went down ahead of them in the lift, to bring the car round to a side door of the hotel, so that they should not have to take the half-conscious girl right across the big lounge. By making a great effort, Christina could manage to walk a few steps at a time, as long as she was supported on both sides. Ten minutes later, with few people having seen them, they had her safely in the back seat of the car. Just as it was about to drive off, Jules leaned forward and said smoothly through the window to John: ‘My father will be so sorry to have missed you; but you must come over and see us again.’
‘Thanks,’ John replied, with the appearance of equal cordiality, ‘I should love to.’
Molly had overheard the exchange, and as the car ran down the drive she murmured, ‘I thought at one moment he was going to prove really troublesome. I wonder what caused him suddenly to change his mind.’
‘I’ve no idea.’ John shrugged. ‘Anyhow, we pulled it off. But what a bit of luck that she asked for that last cocktail. God alone knows how we should have got her away if it hadn’t been for that.’
‘Yes. That, and what I put in it.’
‘Mother!’ He turned to stare at her for a second. ‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘I gave her a Micky Finn, darling.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘Well, to be accurate, only about a quarter of one, because I didn’t want to knock her right out.’ Molly’s voice was just a trifle smug. ‘I’m really rather pleased with myself. I’ve had some of those little tablets in my museum for years. I souvenired them during the war, and I’ve always wanted to try them on someone, but a suitable opportunity has never arisen before. The way it worked was most gratifying.’
‘How on earth did you manage to put it in her drink without anyone seeing you?’
Molly tittered with pleasure at the thought of her skilful coup. ‘I didn’t. I put it in my own, and used the cherry-stick to help dissolve it quickly. Then, when I had made you all look away from the table to the bookcases, I exchanged her glass for mine.’
‘Well played, Mother!’ John spoke with genuine admiration. ‘But you’ve let the cat out of the bag, you know. This night’s work dispels my last lingering doubts about your having been Molly Polloffski, the beautiful spy.’
‘No, Johnny. Really, I assure you I never did anything but work in an office.’
‘Tell that one to the Marines!’ he replied, closing the conversation.
As Christina had been given only a small dose of the powerful drug, she recovered fairly quickly from its worst effects, and when they got back to Molly’s villa she was able to walk up the path to it unassisted. As soon as they reached the sitting-room Molly sat her down in an armchair, then went upstairs and fetched her a bromoseltzer.
She was now fully conscious again, but in a curious mood, half tearful and half defiant. Several times she apologised for having made a fool of herself, and for having given them so much trouble. But she did not seem to realise that they had saved her from some very grave danger. Every now and then she harped back to the de Grasses’ party and said how sorry she was to have missed it. In fact it soon became clear that she now resented their having prevented her remaining at the Capricorn until she recovered, so that there might still have been a chance of her being able to go on the yacht.
At length Molly said, ‘I’m afraid, my dear, that this business has been getting on your nerves, and that you are no longer in a quite normal state. If you were, you would recall that it was at your own request, made earlier this evening, that we got you out of the clutches of the de Grasses.’ Pausing for a moment she fished something out of her bag and concealed it in her hand; then she went on, ‘Our only wish is to get to the root of your trouble, and see you out of it. Here is something which may help us to do that, and help you, too.’
As she finished speaking she threw the thing she was holding towards Christina’s lap, and cried, ‘Catch!’
Christina cupped her hands and caught the spinning object. It was a small gold crucifix. The second it fell into her palms she gave a scream of pain. Then, as though seared by white-hot metal, she thrust it from her.
‘I feared as much!’ Molly said grimly. ‘And now we know the worst! Every night when darkness falls, you become possessed by the Devil.’