The Lost Ambassador Part 57

"They are looking for you everywhere," I said. "The sound of that revolver would fill your room."

"Do you think I don't know it?" he answered. "Do you think you would not have had a bullet through your forehead before now if I was not sure of it?"

"Put your revolver down and talk sense!" I said. "I am interested in no one except your niece."

"It's a lie!" he answered. "It's through you I'm in this hole!"

"Well, here's a chance for you," I said. "They are all of them down at the Court entrance. Probably some of them are on their way up now.

Turn to the left and take the other lift. Leave the hotel by the Embankment entrance."

"And walk into a trap!" he snarled.

"Upon my honor I know of none," I answered. "It is exactly as I have said."

I knew from his face that he had forgotten the other lift. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat and disappeared. I returned to the sitting-room, and, although I had made no promise, the consciousness of my escape kept me silent as to having seen him. Felicia was sitting on the sofa, talking to her uncle. My lady of the turquoises, with a triumphant smile upon her lips, was occupying the easy-chair.

Felicia rose at once and drew me to the window.

"Capitaine Rotherby," she said, "I fear that you will never forgive me nor believe me,--perhaps it does not matter so very much,--but you see I have seen no one but my Uncle Maurice since I was at school. He used to visit me there. He was always kind. My Uncle Ferdinand there came as a stranger. I knew nothing of him except that he was taken ill. How he met with his illness no one told me. Then my Uncle Maurice came to me one night and said that his brother had come to Europe on a wonderful secret mission, and that now he was too ill to go on with it, it must be carried through for the honor of the family. He meant to call himself Ferdinand Delora, and to come to England and do his best, and I was to come with him and hold my peace, and help him where it was possible. I begin to understand now that, somehow or other, this poor Ferdinand was ill-treated, and that my Uncle Maurice took his place, meaning to steal the money he received. But I did not know that. Indeed, I did not know it!" she said, sobbing.

I pa.s.sed my arm around her waist.

"Felicia, dear," I said, "who would doubt it? Let them fight this matter out between them. It is nothing to do with us. You are here, and you remain!"

She came a little closer into my arms with a sigh of content. My lady of the turquoises laughed outright.

"You are _infidele_, monsieur!" she exclaimed. "But there, the poor child is young, and she needs some one to look after her. Listen!

What is that?"

We all heard it,--the sound of a shot in the corridor. I kept Felicia back for the moment, but the others were already outside. The waiter and the valet had rushed out of the service room. A chambermaid, with her ap.r.o.n over her head, ran screaming along the corridor. There in the middle Delora lay, flat on his back, with his hands thrown out and a smoking revolver by his side!...

I did then what might seem to be a callous thing. I left them all crowding around the body of the dead man. I let even Felicia be led back to her room by her companion. I took the lift downstairs, and I made my way into the cafe.

"Where is Louis?" I asked the first waiter I saw.

"He is away for a minute or two, sir," the man answered.

Almost as he spoke Louis entered from the further end of the restaurant. He did not see me, and I noticed that his fingers were arranging his tie, and that as he pa.s.sed a mirror he glanced at his s.h.i.+rt-front. When I came face to face with him he was breathing fast as though he had been running.

"Louis," I said, "five flights of stairs are trying at our time of life!"

He looked at me blankly, and as one who does not comprehend.

"Five flights of stairs, monsieur!" he repeated.

I nodded.

"I myself came down by the lift," I said. "Louis, Delora is lying in the corridor outside his rooms with a bullet through his forehead. I am wondering whether he shot himself, or whether--"

"Or whether what?" Louis asked softly.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"After all," I said, "I suppose the truth will come out. Have you any idea, I wonder, where those two hundred thousand pounds are?"

"I, monsieur!"--Louis held out his hands. "Delora has had several hours to dispose of them. If he had taken my advice he would have been flying to the south coast in his motor by now. As to the money, well, it may be anywhere"

"It may, Louis!" I admitted.

"Delora was a bungler," Louis said slowly. "The game was in his hands. Even the reappearance of his brother was not serious. He was carrying out a perfectly legitimate transaction in which no one could interfere."

"Excepting," I remarked, "that he proposed to retain the proceeds of this sale of his."

"That would have been hard to prove if he had chosen to a.s.sert the contrary," Louis remarked. "Vanhallon would have had little enough to say if the money had pa.s.sed into his hands."

"And the Chinese amba.s.sador?" I remarked.

"His doc.u.ments would have been good enough," Louis replied. "He has the s.h.i.+ps. He has value for his money. There was no need for Delora to have despaired. His behavior during this last hour has been the behavior of a child. Monsieur will pardon me!"

Louis glided away, and I saw him smilingly escorting a party of late guests to their places. I stood where I was and watched him. To me, the man was something amazing! I firmly believed, even at that moment, that he had, safely hidden, part, if not the whole, of the proceeds of this gigantic scheme of fraud. I believed, too, that his had been the hand which had killed Delora. And there he was, within a few minutes of the time when the tragedy had happened, waiting upon his guests, consulted about the vintages of wines, suggesting dishes!

Upstairs Delora lay, with a little blue mark upon his temple! It was the survival of the fittest, this, in crime as well as in the other things of life!

I retraced my steps upstairs. The Chinese amba.s.sador, Vanhallon, and Lamartine were deep in conversation in the dead man's sitting-room. I was admitted to their confidence after a few minutes' hesitation. A draft for one hundred and sixty thousand pounds had been found upon the dead man, but notes to the value of forty thousand pounds were missing! They looked at me a little curiously as I entered, and Lamartine explained the situation to me.

"We were wondering about the young lady," he said.

"Then you need wonder no longer!" I said dryly. "I give my word for it that she is ignorant altogether of this scheme. She believed that her uncle was honestly attempting to carry out the plans for which his brother came to Europe, and as for searching for the money amongst her belongings, you might as well fly!"

"Where, then," Vanhallon demanded, "has it gone to? He has had so little time."

I opened my lips and closed them. After all, I had gained my end, and I had realized a little the folly of meddling with things which did not concern me. So I held my peace. I went and sat down by the side of my lady of the turquoises.

"Tell me," I said, "how did you find him?--and where? Has he been ill, or what is it that is the matter?"

I moved my head towards where Delora was sitting. The placid, child-like expression still remained with him. The tragedy which had happened only a few yards away had left him unmoved.

"I heard all about him from Henri," she said. "The scheme originally was his. Then they tried to hurry things through without us--without my man Henri, of whom they had made use. Henri came to London, and he died here! That much I know. How much more there is to be told, who can say? But I said to myself, 'I will be revenged!' I knew the hospital to which he had been taken--a private hospital from which few ever come out! But I went there, and I swore that I was his daughter.

I frightened them all, for I knew that he had been drugged and poisoned till his brain had nearly given way. They thought him harmless, and they let him come with me. I brought him to England. I brought him here."

"And now?" I asked.

"Now I must go back," she answered, "but at least Henri is avenged!"

She leaned towards me.

"Tell whoever takes care of him," she whispered in my ear, "that he cannot live long. The doctors have a.s.sured me. It is a matter of weeks."

I walked with her to the door.