It was Rex who noticed the chalk marks on the floor. He stepped over and saw that Simon, lacking pencil and paper, had used these means to leave them a short message. Slowly he deciphered the scribbled words and read them out:
Please don’t fuss or try to come after me. This is my muddle, so am keeping appointment. Do as Mocata has ordered. Am certain that is only chance of saving Fleur.
Love to all. Simon
‘Aw, Hell!’ exclaimed Rex as he finished. ‘The dear heroic little sap has gone and put paid to my big idea. Mocata has got him and Fleur now on top of having killed Tanith. If you ask me we’re properly sunk.’
De Richleau groaned. ‘It is just like him. We ought to have guessed that he would do this.’
‘You’re right there,’ Richard agreed sadly. ‘I’ve known him longer than any of you, and I did my damnedest to prevent him sacrificing himself for nothing, but it seems to me he’s only done the very thing you said he should.’
‘That’s not quite fair,’ the Duke protested mildly. ‘I only said I thought it right that he should with certain modifications. I had it in my mind that we might follow him at a distance. We should have arrived at the rendezvous before Mocata could have known that we had left this place, and we might have pulled something off. As it was, I thought Rex’s idea so much better that I abandoned mine.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Richard apologised huskily. ‘But Simon’s my oldest friend you know, and this on top of all the rest …’
‘Do you—do you think the poor sweet is right, and that his having given himself up will be of any use?’ whispered Marie Lou.
Richard shrugged despondently. ‘Not the least, dearest. I hate to seem ungracious, and you all know how devoted I am to Simon but in his anxiety to do the right thing he’s handed Mocata our only decent card. We can sit here till Doomsday, but there’s no chance now of making any fresh move which might give us a new opening. We’ve wasted the Lord knows how many precious hours, and we’re in a worse hole than we were before. I’m going to carry out my original intention and get on to the police.’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Rex caught him by the arm. ‘It’ll only mean our wasting further time in spilling long dispositions to a bunch of cops, and you’re all wrong about our not having made anything on the new deal. We’ve had a sleep which we needed mighty badly, and we’ve lulled Mocata into a false sense of security. Just because we’ve remained put here all morning like he said and Simon’s come over with the goods, he’ll think he’s sitting pretty now and maybe let up on his supervision stunt. Let’s cut out bothering with the police and get after him ourselves this minute.’
Marie Lou shivered slightly and then nodded. ‘Rex is right, you know. Mocata has got what he wants now, so it is very unlikely that he is troubling to keep up us under observation any more, but how do you propose to try to find him?’
‘We will go straight to Paris,’ De Richleau announced, with a display of his old form. ‘You remember Tanith told us that by tonight he would be there holding a conversation with a man who had lost the upper portion of his left ear. That is Castelnau, the banker, I am certain, so the thing for us to do is to make for Paris and hunt him out.’
‘How do you figure on getting there?’ asked the practical Rex.
‘By plane, of course. Mocata is obviously travelling that way or he could never get there by tonight. Richard must take us in his four-seater, and if Mocata has to motor all the way to Croydon before he can make a start, we’ll be there before him. Is your plane in commission, Richard?’
‘Yes, the plane’s all right. It’s in the hangar at the bottom of the meadow, and when I took her out three days ago she was running perfectly. I don’t much like the look of this fog, though, although, of course, it’s probably only a ground mist.’
They all glanced out of the window again. The grey murk still hung over the terrace, shutting out the view of the Botticelli garden where, on this early May morning, the polyanthus and forget-me-nots and daffodils, shedding their green cocoons, were bursting into colourful life.
‘Let’s go,’ said Rex, impatiently. ‘De Richleau’s right. ‘You’d best get some clothes on, then we’ll beat it for Paris the second you’re fit.’
The rest followed him out into the hall and upstairs to the rooms above. The house was silent and seemingly deserted. The servants were obviously taking Richard’s orders in their most literal sense and, released for once from their daily tasks, enjoying an unexpected holiday in their own quarters.
Marie Lou looked into the nursery and almost broke down again for a moment as she once more saw the empty cot, but she hurried past it to the nurse’s bedroom and found the woman still sleeping soundly.
In Richard’s dressing-room the men made hasty preparations. Rex was clad in the easy lounge suit which he had put on in De Richleau’s flat but Richard and the Duke were still in pyjamas. When they were dressed Richard fitted the others out as well as he could with top clothes for their journey. The Duke was easy, being only a little taller than himself, and a big double overcoat was found for Rex, into which he managed to scramble despite the breadth of his enormous shoulders. Marie Lou joined them a few moments later, clad in her breeches and leather Hying coat, which she always used whenever she went up with Richard.
Downstairs again, they paused in the library to make another hurried meal. Then the door was locked, and after casting a last unhappy glance at Tanith’s body, which remained unaltered in appearance, Rex led the way out on the terrace.
They walked quickly down the gravel path beside the Botticelli border, the sound of their footsteps muffled by the all-pervading mist, through Marie Lou’s own garden, with its long herbaceous borders, and past the old sundial, round the quadrangles of tessellated pavement which fell in a succession of little terraces to the pond garden, with its water lilies, and so to the meadow beyond.
When they reached the hangar Richard and Rex ran out the plane and got it in order for the flight. De Richleau stood watching their operations with Marie Lou beside him, both of them fretting a little at the necessary delay, since now that the vital decision had been taken every member of the party was impatient to set out.
They settled themselves in the comfortable four-seater. Rex swung the propeller, well accustomed to the ways of aeroplanes, and the engine purred upon a low steady note. He watched it for a second and then, as he scrambled aboard, there came the long conventional cry: ‘All set.’
The plane moved slowly forward into the dank mist. The hedges and trees on either side were shut out by banks of fog, but Richard knew the ground so well that he felt confident of judging his distance and direction. He taxied over the even grass of the long field, and turned to rise. The plane lifted, touched ground again gently twice, and they were off.
As they left the earth a new feeling came over Richard. He was passionately fond of flying, and it always filled him with exhilaration, but this was different. It was as though he had suddenly come out into the daylight after having been walking down a long dark, smoky tunnel for many hours. At long intervals there had been brightly lit recesses in the sides of it where figures stood like tableaux at a waxworks show. The slug-like Thing and Fleur; Rex standing at the window with Tanith in her arms; Simon whispering something to the Duke; Marie Lou’s face as she stood with her hand resting on the rail of Fleur’s empty cot and a dozen others. The rest of that strange journey he seemed to have made consisted of long periods of blankness only punctuated by little cries of fear and scraps of reiterated argument, the purpose of which he could no longer remember. Now his brain was clear again, and he settled himself with new purpose to handle the plane with all his skill.
In those few moments they had risen clear of the ground mist and were soaring upwards into the blue above. As De Richleau looked down he saw a very curious thing. Not only was the fog that had hemmed them in local, but it seemed to be concentrated entirely upon Cardinals Folly. He could just make out the chimneys of the house rising in its centre, as from a grey sea, and from the buildings it spread out in a circular formation for half a mile or so on every side, hiding the gardens from his view and obscuring the meadows between the house and the village, but beyond, all was clear in the brilliant sunshine of the early summer afternoon.
Rex was beside Richard in the cockpit. Automatically he had taken on the job of navigator, and, like Richard, his brain numbed before with misery, had started to function properly again directly he set to busying himself with the maps and scales.
The Duke, sitting in the body of the machine with Marie Lou, felt that there was nothing he could say to comfort her, but he took her hand in his and held it between his own. From his quick gesture she felt again his intense distress that he should ever have been the means of bringing her this terrible unhappiness, so, to distract his thoughts, she put her mouth right up against his ear and told him of the odd dream she had had; about reading the old book. He gave her a curious glance and began to shout back at her.
She could not catch all he said owing to the noise of the engine, but enough to tell that he was intensely interested. He seemed to think that she had been dreaming of the famous Red Book of Appin, a wonderful treatise on Magic owned by the Stewards of Invernahyle, who were now extinct. The book had been lost and not heard of for more than a hundred years, but her description of it, and the legend that it might only be read with understanding by those who wore a circlet of iron above their brow, made him insistent that it must be this which she had seen in her dream. He pressed her to try and remember if she had understood any portion of it.
After some trouble she managed to convey to him that she had read one sentence on a faded vellum page, and that although the lettering was quite different from anything which she had ever seen before, she understood it at the time, but could not recall the meaning now. Then, as talking was so difficult, they fell silent.
At a hundred miles an hour the plane soared above the English counties, but they took little heed of the fields and hedges, woods and hills, which fled so swiftly from beneath them. Somehow they seemed to have stepped out of their old life altogether. Time no longer existed for them, only the will to arrive at their destination in order to be active once again. All their thoughts were concentrated now upon Paris and the man who had lost half his ear. Would he be there? Could they find him if he was? And would they arrive before Mocata?
They passed over the Northern end of the English Channel almost without noticing it; Marie Lou felt a little shock when the plane banked steeply and Richard brought it circling down.
The sun was sinking behind great banks of cloud and, as the plane tilted, she saw that a thick mist lay below them in which glowed dull patches of half-obscured light. Richard and Rex knew them, however, to be fog flares of the Le Bourget landing ground.
A few seconds more and they had seen the last of the sunset. A thin greyness closed about them. One of the flares showed bright, and the plane bounded along the earth until Richard brought it to a standstill.
In a daze they answered the questions of the officers at the airport and passed the Customs, secured a fast-looking taxi and, packed inside it, were heading for the centre of Paris.
As they ran through the streets, with the familiar high-pitched note of the taxi’s horn continually sounding and the subtle smell of the epiceries in their nostrils—the very scent of Paris—they noticed, half-unconsciously that night had fallen once more.
Here and there the electric sky-signs on the tall buildings, glowed dully through the murk, and the lights of the cafés illuminated little spaces of the boulevards through which they passed, throwing up the figures that sat sipping their aperitifs at the marble-topped tables and dappling the young green of the stunted trees that lined the pavements.
None of them spoke as the taxi swerved and rushed, seeking every opportunity to nose its way through the traffic. Only Rex leant forward once, soon after they left the aerodrome, and murmured: ‘I told him the Ritz. We’ll be able to hunt up this bird’s address when we get there.’
They ran past the Opera, down the Boulevard de la Madeleine, and turned left into the Place Vendôme. The cab pulled up with a jerk. A liveried porter hurried forward to fling open the door, and they scrambled out.
‘Pay him off, with a good tip,’ Rex ordered the hotel servant. ‘I’ll see yer later inside.’ Then he led the way into the hotel.
One of the under-managers at the bureau recognised him and came forward with a welcoming smile.
‘Monsieur Van Ryn, what a pleasure! You require accommodation for your party? How many rooms do you desire? I hope that you will stay with us some time.’
‘Two single rooms and one double, with bathrooms, and we’d best have a sitting-room on the same floor,’ replied Rex curtly. ‘How long we’ll be staying I can’t say. I’ve got urgent business to attend to this trip. Do you happen to know a banker named Castelnau—elderly man, grey-haired, with a hatchet face, who’s had a slice taken out of his left ear?’
‘Mais oui, monsieur. He lunches here frequently.’
‘Good. D’you know where he lives?’
‘For the moment, no, but I will ascertain. You permit?’ The manager moved briskly away and disappeared into the office. A few moments later he returned with a Paris telephone directory open in his hand.
‘This will be it, monsieur, I think. Monsieur Laurent Castelnau, 72. Maison Rambouillet, Parc Monceau. That is a block of flats. Do you wish to telephone his apartment?’
‘Sure,’ Rex nodded. ‘Call him right away, please.’ Then, as the Frenchman hurried off he nodded quietly to the Duke: ‘Best leave this to me. I’ve got a hunch how to fix him.’
‘Go ahead.’ the Duke acquiesced. He had been keeping well in the background, and now he smiled a little unhappily as he went on in a low voice:
‘How I love Paris. The smell and the sight and the sound of it. I have not been back here for fifteen years. The Government have never forgiven me for the part that I played in the Royalist rising which took place in the 90s. I was young then. How long ago it all seems now. But never since have I dared to venture back to France, except a few times secretly, on the most urgent business. I believe the authorities would still put me into some miserable fortress if they discovered me on French soil.’
‘Oh, Greyeyes, dear! You ought never to have come.’ Marie Lou turned to him impulsively. ‘With all these awful things happening I had forgotten. Somehow I always think of you really as an Englishman, not as a French exile who lives in England as the next best thing. It would be terrible if you were arrested and tried as a political offender after all these years.’
He shrugged and smiled again. ‘Don’t worry, Princess. The authorities have almost forgotten my existence, I expect, and the only risk I run is in knowing so many people who constantly travel through France. If someone recognised me and spoke my name too loud it is just possible that it might strike a chord in some police spy’s memory, but beyond that there is very little danger.
They sat down at a little table in the lounge while Rex was telephoning. When he rejoined them he nodded cheerfully.
‘We’re in luck, and Lord knows we need it. I spoke to Castelnau himself, used the name of my old man’s firm—The Chesapeake Banking and Trust Corporation and spun a yarn that he had sent me over on a special mission to Europe connected with the franc. Told him the whole thing was far too hush-hush for me to make a date to see him at his office tomorrow morning, where his clerks might recognise me as the representative of an American banking house, and that I must see him tonight privately. He hedged a bit until I put it to him that I had power to deal in real big figures, and he fell for that like a sucker. He couldn’t see me yet though, because he’s busy putting on his party frock for some official banquet, but he figures he’ll be back at the apartment round about ten o’clock, so I said I’d be along to state my business then.
‘To fill in time we might go upstairs and have a bath,’ remarked Richard, feeling his bristly chin. ‘Then we’d better go out and dine somewhere, though God knows I’ve never felt less like food in my life.’
‘All right,’ De Richleau agreed, ‘only let us go somewhere quiet for dinner. If we go to one of the smart places it will add to the chance of my running into sombody that I know.’
‘What about Le Vert Galant?’ Richard suggested. ‘It’s on the right bank down by La Cité, old-fashioned, quiet, but excellent food, and you’re unlikely to see the sort of people that we know there in the evening.’
‘Is that still running?’ De Richleau smiled. ‘Then let us go there by all means. It’s just the place.’ And they moved over towards the lift.
Upstairs they bathed and tidied themselves, but almost automatically, for their uneasy sleep that morning seemed to have done little to recruit their lowered energy. As though still in a bad dream, Marie Lou undressed, and dressed again, while Richard moved about the room, for once apparently unconscious of her presence, silently and mechanically eliminating the traces of the journey. Then he submitted to the ministrations of the hotel barber with one curt order, that the man was to shave him and not to talk.
Rex finished first and wandered into their room, where he sat uncomfortably perched upon a corner of the bed, but he stared at his large feet the whole time that he sat there and did not make any effort whatever at conversation.
De Richleau joined them shortly afterwards, and Marie Lou, rousing for a moment from her abject misery, noted with a little start how spick and span he had become again, after the attentions of the barber and his bath. He had produced one of his long Hoyos, and appeared to be smoking it with quiet enjoyment. Richard and Rex, despite the removal of their incipient beards, still looked woebegone and haggard, as though they had not slept for days, but the Duke still maintained his air of the great gentleman for whose pleasure and satisfaction this whole existence is ordered.
Actually his appearance was no more than a mask with which long habit had accustomed him to disguise his emotions, and at heart he was racked by an anxiety equal to that of any of the others. He was suppressing his impatience to get hold of Castelnau only by a supreme effort; his feet itched to be on the move, and his fingers to be on the throat of the adversary; but as he came into the room he smiled round at them, kissed Marie Lou’s hand with his usual gallantry, and presented a huge bunch of white violets to her.
‘A few flowers, Princess, for your room.’
Marie Lou took them without a word; the tears brimming in her eyes spoke her thanks that he should have thought of such a thing at such a time, and his perfect naturalness served to steady them all a little as they went down afterwards in the lift. Rex changed some money at the caisse, and they went out into the night again.
‘Strange isn’t it,’ remarked Richard as he looked out of the taxi window at the fog-bound streets. ‘I’ve always said what fun it is to make a surprise visit for a couple of nights to Paris, in May. It’s like stealing in on summer in advance tea in the open at Armenonville, a drive to Fontainebleau, with the forest at its very best and all that. ‘I never thought I might come to Paris one May like this.’
‘I’ve a feeling there’s something wrong about it—or us,’ said Rex slowly. ‘Those servants in the hotel back there didn’t seem any more natural than the weather to me. It was as though I was watching them act in some kind of play.’
De Richleau nodded. ‘Yes, I felt the same, and I believe Mocata is responsible. Perhaps he surrounded Cardinals Folly with a strong atmospheric force, and we have brought the vibrations of it with us, or he may be interfering with our auras in some way. I’m only guessing, of course, and can’t possibly explain it.’
At the Vert Galant, De Richleau ordered dinner without reference to any of them. He was a great gourmet, and knew from past experience the dishes that pleased them best, but as a meal it was one of the most dismal failures which it had ever been his misfortune to witness.
He knew and they knew that his apparent preoccupation with food and wine was nothing but a bluff; an attempt to smother their anxiety and occupy their thoughts until the time to go to Castelnau’s apartment should arrive. The cooking was excellent, the service everything that one could desire, and the cellar of Le Vert Galant provided wines to which even De Richleau’s critical taste gave full approval, but their hearts were not in the business.
They toyed with the Lobster Cardinal, sent away the Pauillac Lamb untasted, and drank the wines as a beverage to steady their nerves rather than with the consideration and pleasure which they deserved.
The fat maître d’hôtel supervised the service of each course himself, and it passed his understanding how these three men and the beautiful little lady could show so little appreciation. With hands clasped upon a large stomach, he stood before the Duke and murmured his distress that the dishes they had ordered should not appear to please them, but the Duke waved him away, even summoning up a little smile to assure him that it was no fault of the restaurant and only their unfortunate lack of appetite.
Throughout the meal De Richleau talked unceasingly. He was a born raconteur, and ordinarily, with his charm and wit, could hold any audience enthralled. Tonight, despite his own anxiety, he made a supreme attempt to lift the burden from the shoulders of his friends by exploiting every venue of memory and conversation, but never in his life had his efforts met with such a cold reception. In vain he attempted to divert their thoughts, laughing a little to himself, as he reached the denouement in each of his stories, and hoping against hope that he might raise a smile in those three anxious faces that faced him across the table.
For Marie Lou the meal was just another phase of that horrible nightmare through which she had been passing since the early hours of the morning. Mechanically, she sampled the dishes which were put before her, but each one seemed to taste the same, and after a few mouthfuls she laid down her fork, submitting miserably to the frantic, gnawing thoughts which pervaded her whole being.
Richard said nothing, ate little, and drank heavily. He was in that state when he knew quite well that it was impossible for him to drink too much. Great happiness or great distress has that effect upon certain men, and he was one of them. Every other minute he glanced at the clock on the wall, as it slowly registered the passage of time until they could set forth once more on their attempt to save his daughter.
There was still half an hour to go when the fruit and brandy were placed upon the table, and then at last De Richleau surrendered.
‘I’ve been talking utter nonsense all through dinner,’ he confessed gravely; ‘only to keep my thoughts off this wretched business, you understand. But now the time has come when we can speak of it again with some advantage. What do you intend to do, Rex, when you see this man?’
Marie Lou lifted her eyes from the untasted grapes which lay upon her plate. ‘You’ve been splendid, Greyeyes, dear. I haven’t been listening to you really, but a sentence here and there has been just enough to take my mind off a picture of the worst that may happen, which keeps on haunting me.’
He smiled across at her gratefully. ‘I’m glad of that. It’s the least that I could try to do. But come now, Rex, let’s hear your plan.’
‘I’ve hardly got one,’ Rex confessed, shrugging his great shoulders. ‘We know he’ll see me, and that’s as far as I have figured it out. I presume it’ll boil down to my jumping on him after a pretty short discussion and threatening to gouge out his eyeballs with my hands unless he’s prepared to come clean with everything he knows about Mocata.’
De Richleau shook his head. ‘That is roughly the idea, of course, but there are certain to be servants in the flat, and we must arrange it that you have a free field for your party.’
‘Can’t you take us along with you?’ Richard suggested. ‘Say that we’re privately interested in this deal you’re putting up. If only the three of us can get inside that flat, God help anybody who tries to stop us forcing him to talk.’
‘Sure,’ Rex agreed. ‘I see no sort of objection to that. We can park Marie Lou at the Ritz again, on our way, before we beat this fellow up.’
‘No!’ Marie Lou gave a sudden dogged shake of her head. ‘I am coming with you. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, and I will keep out of the way if there is any trouble. You cannot ask me to go back to the hotel and sit there on my own while you are trying to obtain news of Fleur. I should go mad and fling myself out of the window. I’ve got to come, so please don’t argue about it.’
Richard took her hand and caressed it softly. ‘Of course you shall, my sweet. It would be better, perhaps, for you not to be with us when we see Castelnau, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t wait for us in his hall.’
De Richleau nodded. ‘Yes, in the circumstances it is impossible to leave Marie Lou behind, but about these servants—did you bring that gun that you had last night with you?’
‘Yes, I brought it through the Customs in my hip pocket, and it’s fully loaded.’
‘Right. Then if necessary you can use it to intimidate the servants while Rex and I tackle Castelnau. It is a quarter to. Shall we go?’
Rex sent for the bill and paid it, leaving a liberal tip which soothed the dignity of the injured maître d’hôtel, then they filed out of the restaurant.
‘Maison Rambouillet, Parc Monceau,’ De Richleau told the driver sharply as they climbed into the taxi, and not a word was spoken until the cab drew up before a palatial block of modern flats, facing on to the little green park where the children of the rich in Paris take their morning airing.
‘Monsieur Castelnau?’ the Duke inquired of the concierge.
‘This way, monsieur,’ the man led them through a spacious stone-faced hall to the lift.
It shot up to the fifth floor and, as he opened the gates, the concierge pointed to a door upon the right.
‘Number Seventy-two,’ he said quietly. ‘I think Monsieur Castelnau has just come in.’
The gates clanged behind them, and the lift flashed silently down again to the ground floor. De Richleau gave Rex a swift glance and, stepping towards the door of number seventy-two, pressed the bell.