The Chink in the Armour Part 34

Making a determined effort over what she could but suppose to be her nerves, she walked through into the Wachners' bed-room.

It was very bare and singularly poorly furnished, at least to English eyes, but it was pleasantly cool after the drawing-room.

She walked across to the window, and, drawing aside the muslin curtains, looked out.

Beyond the patch of shade thrown by the house the sun beat down on a ragged, unkempt lawn, but across the lawn she noticed, much more particularly than she had done on the two former occasions when she had been in the house, that there lay a thick grove of chestnut trees just beyond the grounds of the Chalet des Muguets.

A hedge separated the lawn from the wood, but like everything else in the little property it had been neglected, and there were large gaps in it.

She turned away from the window--

Yes, there, at last, was what she had come into this room to seek!

Close to the broad, low bed was a writing-table, or, rather, a deal table, covered with a turkey red cloth, on which lay a large sheet of ink-stained, white blotting-paper.

Flanking the blotting-paper was a pile of Monsieur Wachner's little red books--the books in which he so carefully noted the turns of the game at the Casino, and which served him as the basis of his elaborate gambling "systems."

Sylvia went up to the writing-table, and, bending over it, began looking for some notepaper. But there was nothing of the sort to be seen; neither paper nor envelopes lay on the table.

This was the more absurd, as there were several pens, and an inkpot filled to the brim.

She told herself that the only thing to do was to tear a blank leaf out of one of L'Ami Fritz's note-books, and on it write her message of invitation. If she left the little sheet of paper propped up on the dining-table, the Wachners would be sure to see it.

She took up the newest-looking of the red note-books, and as she opened it she suddenly felt, and for the third time, that there was a living presence close to her--and this time that it was that of Anna Wolsky!

It was an extraordinary sensation--vivid, uncanny, terrifying--the more so that Sylvia Bailey not only believed herself to be alone in the house, but supposed Anna to be far from Lacville....

Fortunately, this unnerving and terrifying impression of an unseen and yet real presence did not endure; and, as she focussed her eyes on the open book she held in her hand, it became fainter and fainter, while she realised, with a keen sense of relief, what it was that had brought the presence of her absent friend so very near to her.

There, actually lying open before her, between two leaves of the little note-book, was a letter signed by Anna Wolsky! It was a short note, in French, apparently an answer to one Madame Wachner had sent reminding her of her engagement. It was odd that the Wachners had said nothing of this note, for it made Anna's conduct seem stranger than ever.

Opposite the page on which lay the little letter, Monsieur Wachner had amused himself by trying to imitate Anna's angular handwriting.

Sylvia tore out one of the blank pages, and then she put the note-book and its enclosure back on the table. She felt vaguely touched by the fact that the Wachners had kept her friend's last letter; they alone, so she reminded herself, had been really sorry and concerned at Anna's sudden departure from the place. They also, like Sylvia herself, had been pained that Madame Wolsky had not cared to say good-bye to them.

She scribbled a few lines on the sc.r.a.p of paper, and then, quickly making her way to the dining-room, she placed her unconventional invitation on the round table, and went out into the hall.

As she opened the front door of the Chalet des Muguets Sylvia was met by a blast of hot air. She looked out dubiously. She was thoroughly unnerved--as she expressed it to herself, "upset." Feeling as she now felt, walking back through the heat would be intolerable.

For the first time Lacville became utterly distasteful to Sylvia Bailey.

She asked herself, with a kind of surprise, of self-rebuke, why she was there--away from her own country and her own people? With a choking sensation in her throat she told herself that it would be very comfortable to see once more the tall, broad figure of Bill Chester, and to hear his good, gruff English voice again.

She stepped out of the house, and put up her white parasol.

It was still dreadfully hot, but to the left, across the lawn, lay the cool depths of the chestnut wood. Why not go over there and rest in the shade?

Hurrying across the scorched gra.s.s to the place where there was an opening in the rough hedge, she found herself, a moment later, plunged in the grateful green twilight created by high trees.

It was delightfully quiet and still in the wood, and Sylvia wondered vaguely why the Wachners never took their tea out there. But foreigners are very law-abiding, or so she supposed, and the wood, if a piece of no-man's land, was for sale. Up a path she could see the back of a large board.

It was clear that this pretty bit of woodland would have been turned into villa plots long ago had it been nearer to a road. But it was still a stretch of primeval forest. Here and there, amid the tufts of gra.s.s, lay the husks of last autumn's chestnuts.

Sylvia slowly followed the little zigzag way which cut across the wood, and then, desiring to sit down for awhile, she struck off to the right, towards a spot where she saw that the brambles and the undergrowth had been cleared away.

Even here, where in summer the sun never penetrated, the tufts of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s were dried up by the heat. She glanced down; no, there was no fear that the hard, dry ground would stain her pretty cotton frock.

And then, as she sat there, Sylvia gradually became aware that close to her, where the undergrowth began again, the earth had recently been disturbed. Over an irregular patch of about a yard square the sods had been dug up, and then planted again.

The thought pa.s.sed through her mind that children must have been playing there, and that they had made a rude attempt to destroy their handiwork, or rather to prevent its being noticed, by placing the branch of a tree across the little plot of ground where the earth had been disturbed. It was this broken branch, of which the leaves had shrivelled up, that had first drawn her attention to the fact that someone must have been there, and recently.

Her thoughts wandered off to Bill Chester. He was now actually journeying towards her as fast as boat and train could bring him; in a couple of hours he would be in Paris, and then, perhaps, he would come out to Lacville in time for dinner.

Sylvia had not been able to get a room for him in the Villa du Lac, but she had engaged one in the Pension Malfait--where she had been able to secure the apartment which had been occupied by Anna Wolsky, whose things had only just been moved out of it.

She could not help being sorry that Bill would see Lacville for the first time on a Sunday. She feared that, to his English eyes, the place, especially on that day, would present a peculiarly--well, disreputable appearance!

Sylvia felt jealous for the good fame of Lacville. Out in the open air her spirits had recovered their balance; she told herself that she had been very happy here--singularly, extraordinarily happy....

Of course it was a pity when people lost more money than they could afford at the Casino; but even in England people betted--the poor, so she had been told, risked all their spare pence on horse racing, and the others, those who could afford it, went to Monte Carlo, or stayed at home and played bridge!

After all, where was the difference? But, of course, Bill Chester, with his tiresome, old-fas.h.i.+oned views of life, would think there was a great difference; he would certainly disapprove of the way she was now spending her money....

Something told her, and the thought was not wholly unpleasing to her, that Bill Chester and the Comte de Virieu would not get on well together.

She wondered if Count Paul had ever been jealous--if he were capable of jealousy? It would be rather interesting to see if anything or anyone could make him so!

And then her mind travelled on, far, far away, to a picture with which she had been familiar from her girlhood, for it hung in the drawing-room of one of her father's friends at Market Dalling. It was called "The Gambler's Wife." She had always thought it a very pretty and pathetic picture; but she no longer thought it so; in fact, it now appeared to her to be a ridiculous travesty of life. Gamblers were just like other people, neither better nor worse--and often infinitely more lovable than were some other people....

At last Sylvia got up, and slowly made her way out of the wood. She did not go back through the Wachners' garden; instead, she struck off to the left, on to a field path, which finally brought her to the main road.

As she was pa.s.sing the Pension Malfait the landlady came out to the gate.

"Madame!" she cried out loudly, "I have had news of Madame Wolsky at last! Early this afternoon I had a telegram from her asking me to send her luggage to the cloak-room of the Gare du Nord."

Sylvia felt very glad--glad, and yet once more, perhaps unreasonably, hurt. Then Anna had been in Paris all the time? How odd, how really unkind of her not to have written and relieved the anxiety which she must have known her English friend would be feeling about her!

"I have had Madame Wolsky's room beautifully prepared for the English gentleman," went on Madame Malfait amiably. She was pleased that Mrs.

Bailey was giving her a new guest, and it also amused her to observe what prudes Englishwomen could be.

Fancy putting a man who had come all the way from England to see one, in a pension situated at the other end of the town to where one was living oneself!

CHAPTER XIX

William Chester, solicitor, and respected citizen of Market Dalling, felt rather taken aback and bewildered as he joined the great stream of people who were pouring out of the large suburban station of Lacville.

He had only arrived in Paris two hours before, and after a hasty dinner at the Gare du Nord he had made inquiries as to his best way of reaching Lacville. And then he was told, to his surprise, that from the very station in which he found himself trains started every few minutes to the spot for which he was bound.