The Double Four Part 40

"It is charming of you two, this," she declared softly. "You help me through this night of solitude and sadness. What I should do if I were alone, I cannot tell. You must drink with me a toast, if you will. Will you make it to our better acquaintance?"

No soup had been offered, and champagne was served with the _hors d'[oe]uvres_. Peter raised his gla.s.s, and looked into the eyes of the woman who was leaning so closely towards him that her soft breath fell upon his cheek. She whispered something in his ear. For a moment, perhaps, he was carried away, but for a moment only. Then Sogrange's voice and the beat of his forefinger upon the table stiffened him into sudden alertness. They heard a motor-car draw up outside.

"Who can it be?" the Baroness exclaimed, setting her gla.s.s down abruptly.

"It is, perhaps, the other guest who arrives," Sogrange remarked.

They all three listened, Peter and Sogrange with their gla.s.ses still suspended in the air.

"The other guest?" the Baroness repeated. "Madame von Estenier is upstairs, lying down. I cannot tell who this may be."

Her lips were parted. The lines of her forehead had suddenly appeared.

Her eyes were turned toward the door, hard and bright. Then the gla.s.s which she had nervously picked up again and was holding between her fingers, fell on to the tablecloth with a little crash, and the yellow wine ran bubbling on to her plate. Her scream echoed to the roof and rang through the room. It was Bernadine who stood there in the doorway, Bernadine in a long travelling ulster and the air of one newly arrived from a journey. They all three looked at him, but there was not one who spoke. The Baroness, after her one wild cry, was dumb.

"I am indeed fortunate," Bernadine said. "You have as yet, I see, scarcely commenced. You probably expected me. I am charmed to find so agreeable a party awaiting my arrival."

He divested himself of his ulster and threw it across the arm of the butler who stood behind him.

"Come," he continued, "for a man who has just been killed in a railway accident, I find myself with an appet.i.te. A gla.s.s of wine, Carl. I do not know what that toast was the drinking of which my coming interrupted, but let us all drink it together. Aimee, my love to you, dear. Let me congratulate you upon the fort.i.tude and courage with which you have ignored those lying reports of my death. I had fears that I might find you alone in a darkened room, with tear-stained eyes and sal-volatile by your side. This is infinitely better. Gentlemen, you are welcome."

Sogrange lifted his gla.s.s and bowed courteously. Peter followed suit.

"Really," Sogrange murmured, "the Press nowadays, becomes more unreliable every day. It is apparent, my dear von Hern, that this account of your death was, to say the least of it, exaggerated."

Peter said nothing. His eyes were fixed upon the Baroness. She sat in her chair quite motionless, but her face had become like the face of some graven image. She looked at Bernadine, but her eyes said nothing.

Every glint of expression seemed to have left her features. Since that one wild shriek she had remained voiceless. Encompa.s.sed by danger though he knew that they now must be, Peter found himself possessed by one thought and one thought only. Was this a trap into which they had fallen, or was the woman, too, deceived?

"You bring later news from Paris than I myself," Sogrange proceeded, helping himself to one of the dishes which a footman was pa.s.sing round.

"How did you reach the coast? The evening papers stated distinctly that since the accident no attempt had been made to run trains."

"By motor-car from Chantilly," Bernadine replied. "I had the misfortune to lose my servant, who was wearing my coat, and who, I gather from the newspaper reports, was mistaken for me. I myself was unhurt. I hired a motor-car and drove to Boulogne--not the best of journeys, let me tell you, for we broke down three times. There was no steamer there, but I hired a fis.h.i.+ng boat, which brought me across the Channel in something under eight hours. From the coast I motored direct here. I was so anxious," he added, raising his eyes, "to see how my dear friend--my dear Aimee--was bearing the terrible news."

She fluttered for a moment like a bird in a trap. Peter drew a little sigh of relief. His self-respect was reinstated. He had decided that she was innocent. Upon them, at least, would not fall the ignominy of having been led into the simplest of traps by this white-faced Delilah. The butler had brought her another gla.s.s, which she raised to her lips. She drained its contents, but the ghastliness of her appearance remained unchanged. Peter, watching her, knew the signs. She was sick with terror.

"The conditions throughout France are indeed awful," Sogrange remarked.

"They say, too, that this railway strike is only the beginning of worse things."

Bernadine smiled.

"Your country, my dear Marquis," he said, "is on its last legs. No one knows better than I that it is, at the present moment, honeycombed with sedition and anarchical impulses. The people are rotten. For years the whole tone of France has been decadent. Its fall must even now be close at hand."

"You take a gloomy view of my country's future," Sogrange declared.

"Why should one refuse to face facts?" Bernadine replied. "One does not often talk so frankly, but we three are met together this evening under somewhat peculiar circ.u.mstances. The days of the glory of France are past. England has laid out her neck for the yoke of the conqueror. Both are doomed to fall. Both are ripe for the great humiliation. You two gentlemen whom I have the honour to receive as my guests," he concluded, filling his gla.s.s and bowing towards them, "in your present unfortunate predicament represent precisely the position of your two countries."

"_Ave Caesar!_" Peter muttered grimly, raising his gla.s.s to his lips.

Bernadine accepted the challenge.

"It is not I, alas! who may call myself Caesar," he replied, "although it is certainly you who are about to die."

Sogrange turned to the man who stood behind his chair.

"If I might trouble you for a little dry toast?" he inquired. "A modern, but very uncomfortable, ailment," he added, with a sigh. "One's digestion must march with the years, I suppose."

Bernadine smiled.

"Your toast you shall have, with pleasure, Marquis," he said, "but as for your indigestion, do not let that trouble you any longer. I think that I can promise you immunity from that annoying complaint for the rest of your life."

"You are doing your best," Peter declared, leaning back in his chair, "to take away my appet.i.te."

Bernadine looked searchingly from one to the other of his two guests.

"Yes," he admitted, "you are brave men. I do not know why I should ever have doubted it. Your pose is excellent. I have no wish, however, to see you buoyed up by a baseless optimism. A somewhat remarkable chance has delivered you into my hands. You are my prisoners. You, Peter Baron de Grost, I have hated all my days. You have stood between me and the achievement of some of my most dearly cherished tasks. Always I have said to myself that the day of reckoning must come. It has arrived. As for you, Marquis de Sogrange, if my personal feelings towards you are less violent, you still represent the things absolutely inimical to me and my interests. The departure of you two men was the one thing necessary for the successful completion of certain tasks which I have in hand at the present moment."

Peter pushed away his plate.

"You have succeeded in destroying my appet.i.te, Count," he declared. "Now that you have gone so far in expounding your amiable resolutions towards us, perhaps you will go a little farther and explain exactly how, in this eminently respectable house, situated, I understand, in an eminently respectable neighbourhood, with a police station within a mile, and a dozen or so witnesses as to our present whereabouts, you intend to expedite our removal?"

Bernadine pointed towards the woman who sat facing him.

"Ask the Baroness how these things are arranged."

They turned towards her. She fell back in her chair with a little gasp.

She had fainted. Bernadine shrugged his shoulders. The butler and one of the footmen, who during the whole of the conversation had stolidly proceeded with their duties, in obedience to a gesture from their master, took her up in their arms and carried her from the room.

"The fear has come to her, too," Bernadine murmured softly. "It may come to you, my brave friends, before morning."

"It is possible," Peter answered, his hand stealing round to his hip pocket, "but in the meantime, what is to prevent----"

The hip pocket was empty. Peter's sentence ended abruptly. Bernadine mocked him.

"To prevent your shooting me in cold blood, I suppose," he remarked.

"Nothing except that my servants are too clever. No one save myself is allowed to remain under this roof with arms in their possession. Your pocket was probably picked before you had been in the place five minutes. No, my dear Baron, let me a.s.sure you that escape will not be so easy. You were always just a little inclined to be led away by the fair s.e.x. The best men in the world, you know, have shared that failing, and the Baroness, alone and unprotected, had her attractions, eh?"

Then something happened to Peter which had happened to him barely a dozen times in his life. He lost his temper, and lost it rather badly.

Without an instant's hesitation, he caught up the decanter which stood by his side and flung it in his host's face. Bernadine only partly avoided it by thrusting out his arms. The neck caught his forehead and the blood came streaming over his tie and collar. Peter had followed the decanter with a sudden spring. His fingers were upon Bernadine's throat, and he thrust his head back. Sogrange sprang to the door to lock it, but he was too late. The room seemed full of men-servants. Peter was dragged away, still struggling fiercely.

"Tie them up!" Bernadine gasped, swaying in his chair. "Tie them up, do you hear? Carl, give me brandy."

He swallowed half a winegla.s.sful of the raw spirit. His eyes were red with fury.

"Take them to the gun-room," he ordered, "three of you to each of them, mind. I'll shoot the man who lets either escape."

But Peter and Sogrange were both of them too wise to expend any more of their strength in a useless struggle. They suffered themselves to be conducted without resistance across the white stone hall, down a long pa.s.sage, and into a room at the end, the window and fireplace of which were both blocked up. The floor was of red flags and the walls whitewashed. The only furniture was a couple of kitchen chairs and a long table. The door was of stout oak and fitted with a double lock. The sole outlet, so far as they could see, was a small round hole at the top of the roof. The door was locked behind them. They were alone.

"The odd trick to Bernadine!" Peter exclaimed hoa.r.s.ely, wiping a spot of blood from his forehead. "My dear Marquis, I scarcely know how to apologise. It is not often that I lose my temper so completely."