The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
the Promenade des Anglais, and not through the Rue de France, Ewart,” ordered the Count. “Mademoiselle would like to see it, I daresay, even at this hour.”
So ten minutes later we turned out upon that broad, beautiful esplanade which is one of the most noted in all the world, which is always flower-bordered, and where feathery palms flourish even when the rest of Europe is under snow.
“When did you arrive?” I heard the girl ask.
“At eight o’clock last night. I haven’t been to Monte Carlo yet. I went over to Beaulieu, but unfortunately Madame is not yet at the Bristol. I have, however, taken a room for you, and we will drop you there as we pass. Your baggage arrived by rail this afternoon.”
“But where is Madame, I wonder?” inquired the girl in a tone of dismay.“She would surely never disappoint us?”
“Certainly she would not. She told me once that she had stayed at the Métropole at Monty on several occasions. She may be there. I’ll inquire in the morning. For the next couple of days I may be away, as perhaps I’ll have to go on to Genoa on some business; but Ewart and the car will be at your disposal. I’ll place you in his hands again, and he will in a couple of days show you the whole Riviera from the Var to San Remo, with the Tenda, the upper Corniche, and Grasse thrown in. He knows this neighbourhood like a Niçois.”
“That will be awfully jolly,” she responded. “But—”
“Well?”
“Well, I’m sorry you are going away,” declared Pierrette, with regret so undisguised that though she had admitted her engagement to her father’s missing clerk, showed me only too plainly that she had fallen very violently in love with the handsome, good-for-nothing owner of the splendid car upon which they were travelling.
I could see that curious developments were, ere long, within the bounds of probability, and I felt sorry for the pretty, innocent little girl; for her journey there was, I felt assured, connected in some way or other with her father’s mysterious disappearance from the Charing Cross Hotel.
Why had Bindo taken the trouble to await me there at the foot of the Var bridge, when he had given me instructions where to go at Monte Carlo?
As I drove out of Nice and up the hill to Villefranche, I turned over the whole of the queer facts in my mind, but could discern no motive for Pierrette’s secret journey South. Why was she, so young, a nun? Why had she left her convent, if not at the instigation of the merry-eyed, devil-may-care Bindo?
Around Mont Boron and down into Villefranche we went, until around the sudden bend, close to the sea-shore, showed the great white façade of the Bristol at Beaulieu, that fine hotel so largely patronised by kings, princes, and other notabilities.
The gate was open, and I swung the car into the well-kept gravelled drive which led through the beautiful flower-garden up to the principal entrance. The noise we created awoke the night-porter, and after some brief explanation, Pierrette got out, wished us a merry “Bon jour!” and disappeared. Then, with the Count mounted at my side, I backed out into the roadway, and we were soon speeding along that switchback of a road with dozens of dangerous turns and irritating tram-lines that leads past Eze into the tiny Principality of His Royal Highness Prince Rouge et Noir—the paradise of gamblers, thieves, and fools.
“Well, Ewart,” he said, almost before we got past Mr. Gordon Bennett’s villa, “I suppose the girl’s been chattering to you—eh? What has she said?”
“Well, she hasn’t said much,” was my reply, as I bent my head to the mistral that was springing up. “Told me who she is, and that her father and his jewels have disappeared in London.”
“What!” he cried in a voice of amazement. “What’s that about jewels? What jewels?”
“Why, you surely know,” I said, surprised at his demeanour.
“I assure you, Ewart, this is the first I know about any jewels,” he declared. “You say her father and some shiners have disappeared in London. Tell me quickly, under what circumstances. What has she been telling you?”
“Well, first tell me—are you aware of who she really is?”
“No, I don’t, and that’s a fact. I believe she’s the daughter of an old broken-down Catholic marquise—one of the weedy sort—who lives at Troyes, or some such dead-alive hole as that. Her mother tried to make her take the veil, and hasn’t succeeded.”
“She prefers the motor-veil, it appears,” I laughed. “But that isn’t the story she’s told me.”
The red light of a level-crossing gave warning, and I pulled up, and let out a long blast on the electric horn, until the gates swung open.
“Her real name is, I believe, Pierrette Dumont, only daughter of that big jeweller in the Rue de la Paix.”
“What!” cried Bindo, in such a manner that I knew he was not joking.“Old Dumont’s daughter? If that’s so, we are in luck’s way.”
“Yes, Dumont went to London, and took his clerk, a certain Martin, with him, and a bagful of jewels worth the respectable sum of half a million francs. They stayed at the Charing Cross Hotel, but five days later both men and the jewels disappeared.”
Bindo sank back in his seat utterly dumbfounded.
“But, Ewart,” he gasped, “do you really think it is true? Do you believe that she is actually Dumont’s daughter, and that the shiners have really been stolen?”
“The former question is more difficult to answer than the latter. A wire to London will clear up the truth. In all probability the police are keeping the affair out of the papers. The girl went over to London to try and find her father, and met you, she says.”
“She met me, certainly. But the little fool told me nothing about her father’s disappearance or the missing jewels.”
“Because the Paris police had warned her not to, in all probability.”
“Well—” he gasped. “If that story is really true, it is the grandest slice of luck we’ve ever had, Ewart,” he declared.
“How? What do you mean?”
“What I say,” was his brief answer. “I shall go back to London after breakfast. You’ll remain here, look after the girl and Madame Vernet. I don’t envy you the latter. She’s got yellow teeth, and is ugly enough to break a mirror,” he laughed.
“But why go to London?” I queried.
“For reasons best known to myself, Ewart,” he snapped; for he never approved of inquisitiveness when forming any plans.
Then for a long time he was silent, his resourceful brain active, plunged in thought.
“Well!” he exclaimed, “this is about the queerest affair that I’ve ever had on hand. I came out here to-day from London on one big thing, and in an hour or two I’m going back on another!”
Presently, just as we were ascending the hill from La Condamine, and within a few hundred yards of the big Hôtel de Paris garage, which was our destination, he turned to me and said—
“Look here, Ewart! we’ve got a big thing on here—bigger than either of us imagine. I wonder what the fellows will think when they hear of it? Now all you have to do is to be pleasant to the little girl—make her believe that you’re a bit gone on her, if you like.”
“But she’s over head and ears in love with you,” I observed.
“Love be hanged!” he laughed carelessly. “We’re out for money, my dear Ewart—and we’ll have a lot of it out of this, never fear!”
A moment later I swung into the great garage, where hundreds of cars were standing—that garage with the female directress which every motorist knows so well.
And I stopped the engines, and literally fell out, utterly done up and exhausted after