The Chink in the Armour Part 49

The man looked questioningly across at his wife.

"Yes, that sounds a good plan," he said, in his guttural voice.

"No," exclaimed Madame Wachner, decidedly, "that will not do at all! We must not run that risk. The pearls must be found, now, at once! Stoop!"

she said imperiously. "Stoop, Sylvia! Help me to find your pearls!"

She made a gesture as if she also meant to bend down....

But Sylvia Bailey made no attempt to obey the sinister order. Slowly, warily she edged herself towards the closed window. At last she stood with her back to it--at bay.

"No," she said quietly, "I will not stoop to pick up my pearls now, Madame Wachner. It will be easier to find them in the daylight. I am sure that Monsieur Wachner could pick them all up for me to-morrow morning. Is not that so, Ami Fritz?" and there was a tone of pleading, for the first time of pitiful fear, in her soft voice.

She looked at him piteously, her large blue eyes wide open, dilated--

"It is not my husband's business to pick up your pearls!" exclaimed Madame Wachner harshly.

She stepped forward and gripped Sylvia by the arm, pulling her violently forward. As she did so she made a sign to her husband, and he pushed a chair quickly between Mrs. Bailey and the window.

Sylvia had lost her point of vantage, but she was young and lithe; she kept her feet.

Nevertheless, she knew with a cold, reasoned knowledge that she was very near to death--that it was only a question of minutes,--unless--unless she could make the man and woman before her understand that they would gain far more money by allowing her to live than by killing her now, to-night, for the value of the pearls that lay scattered on the floor, and the small, the pitiably small sum on her person.

"If you will let me go," she said, desperately, "I swear I will give you everything I have in the world!"

Madame Wachner suddenly laid her hand on Sylvia's arm, and tried to force her down on to her knees.

"What do you take us for?" she cried, furiously. "We want nothing from you--nothing at all!"

She looked across at her husband, and there burst from her lips a torrent of words, uttered in the uncouth tongue which the Wachners used for secrecy.

Sylvia tried desperately to understand, but she could make nothing of the strange, rapid-spoken syllables--until there fell on her ear, twice repeated, the name _Wolsky_....

Madame Wachner stepped suddenly back, and as she did so L'Ami Fritz moved a step forward.

Sylvia looked at him, an agonised appeal in her eyes. He was smiling hideously, a nervous grin zig-zagging across his large, thin-lipped mouth.

"You should have taken the coffee," he muttered in English. "It would have saved us all so much trouble!"

He put out his left hand, and the long, strong fingers closed, tentacle-wise, on her slender shoulder.

His right hand he kept still hidden behind his back--

CHAPTER XXV

The great open-air restaurant in the Champs elysees was full of foreigners, and Paul de Virieu and Bill Chester were sitting opposite to one another on the broad terrace dotted with little tables embowered in flowering shrubs.

They were both smoking,--the Englishman a cigar, the Frenchman a cigarette. It was now half-past seven, and instead of taking the first express to Switzerland they had decided to have dinner comfortably in Paris and to go on by a later train.

Neither man felt that he had very much to say to the other, and Chester started a little in his seat when Paul de Virieu suddenly took his cigarette out of his mouth, put it down on the table, and leant forward.

He looked at the man sitting opposite to him straight in the eyes.

"I do not feel at all happy at our having left Mrs. Bailey alone at Lacville," he said, deliberately.

Chester stared back at him, telling himself angrily as he did so that he did not in the least know what the Frenchman was driving at!

What did Paul de Virieu mean by saying this stupid, obvious thing, and why should he drag in the question of his being happy or unhappy?

"You know that I did my best to persuade her to leave the place," said Chester shortly. Then, very deliberately he added, "I am afraid, Count, that you've got quite a wrong notion in your mind concerning myself and Mrs. Bailey. It is true I am her trustee, but I have no power of making her do what I think sensible, or even what I think right. She is absolutely her own mistress."

He stopped abruptly, for he had no wish to discuss Sylvia and Sylvia's affairs with this foreigner, however oddly intimate Mrs. Bailey had allowed herself to get with the Comte de Virieu.

"Lacville is such a very queer place," observed the Count, meditatively.

"It is perhaps even queerer than you know or guess it to be, Mr.

Chester."

The English lawyer thought the remark too obvious to answer. Of course Lacville was a queer place--to put it plainly, little better than a gambling h.e.l.l. He knew that well enough! But it was rather strange to hear the Comte de Virieu saying so--a real case, if ever there was one, of Satan rebuking sin.

So at last he answered, irritably, "Of course it is! I can't think what made Mrs. Bailey go there in the first instance." His mind was full of Sylvia. He seemed to go on speaking of her against his will.

"Her going to Lacville was a mere accident," explained Paul de Virieu, quickly. "She was brought there by the Polish lady, Madame Wolsky, of whom you must have heard her speak, whom she met in an hotel in Paris, and who disappeared so mysteriously. It is not a place for a young lady to be at by herself."

Bill Chester tilted back the chair on which he was sitting. Once more he asked himself what on earth the fellow was driving at? Were these remarks a preliminary to the Count's saying that he was not going to Switzerland after all--that he was going back to Lacville in order to take care of Sylvia.

Quite suddenly the young Englishman felt shaken by a very primitive and, till these last few days, a very unfamiliar feeling--that of jealousy.

d.a.m.n it--he wouldn't have that. Of course he was no longer in love with Sylvia Bailey, but he was her trustee and lifelong friend. It was his duty to prevent her making a fool of herself, either by gambling away her money--the good money the late George Bailey had toiled so hard to acquire--or, what would be ever so much worse, by making some wretched marriage to a foreign adventurer.

He stared suspiciously at his companion. Was it likely that a real count--the French equivalent to an English earl--would lead the sort of life this man, Paul de Virieu, was leading, and in a place like Lacville?

"If you really feel like that, I think I'd better give up my trip to Switzerland, and go back to Lacville to-morrow morning."

He stared hard at the Count, and noted with sarcastic amus.e.m.e.nt the other's appearance--so foppish, so effeminate to English eyes; particularly did he gaze with scorn at the Count's yellow silk socks, which matched his lemon-coloured tie and silk pocket handkerchief. Fancy starting for a long night journey in such a "get-up." Well! Perhaps women liked that sort of thing, but he would never have thought Sylvia Bailey to be that sort of woman.

A change came over Paul de Virieu's face. There was unmistakable relief--nay, more--even joy in the voice with which the Frenchman answered,

"That is excellent! That is quite right! That is first-rate! Yes, yes, Mr. Chester, you go back to Lacville and bring her away. It is not right that Mrs. Bailey should be by herself there. It may seem absurd to you, but, believe me, Lacville is not a safe spot in which to leave an unprotected woman. She has not one single friend, not a person to whom she could turn to for advice,--excepting, of course, the excellent Polperro himself, and he naturally desires to keep his profitable client."

"There's that funny old couple--I mean the man called Fritz Something-or-other and his wife. Surely they're all right?" observed Chester.

Paul de Virieu shook his head decidedly.

"The Wachners are not nice people," he said slowly. "They appear to be very fond of Mrs. Bailey, I know, but they are only fond of themselves.

They are adventurers; 'out for the stuff,' as Americans say. Old Fritz is the worst type of gambler--the type that believes he is going to get rich, rich beyond dreams of avarice, by a 'system.' Such a man will do anything for money. I believe they knew far more of the disappearance of Madame Wolsky than anyone else did."

The Count lowered his voice, and leant over the table.