The Mysterious Mr. Miller. Le Queux William
surely it isn’t for me to cast a slur upon any lady’s character. I merely warn you that she has a very queer reputation – that’s all.” And he stretched out his legs and blew a cloud of smoke from his lips.
“Every woman seems to enjoy a reputation more or less queer nowadays,” I declared. “Have you ever come across a woman about whom something detrimental was not whispered by her enemies? I haven’t.”
“Perhaps you’re right there, Godfrey,” was my friend’s reply. “You discovered the truth concerning Ina Hardwick, and that was a hard blow for you, eh? But didn’t I give you a hint long before which you refused to take?”
“And now you give me a hint regarding Lucie Miller. Well, tell me straight out – who and what she is.”
“First tell me why she came to see you.”
“She certainly didn’t come to see me,” I protested. “She came to see the stranger – she’s a friend of the dead man’s.”
He turned, knit his brows, and stared straight into my face.
“A friend of Massari’s! Who told you so?”
“She did.”
Sammy smiled incredulously. He was a man who had passed through life having singularly escaped all the shadows that lie on it for most men; and he had far more than most what may be termed the faculty for happiness.
“H’m. Depend upon it she came here more on your account than to visit the mysterious Italian.”
“But she saw Miss Gilbert and asked for Massari!” I exclaimed. “It was Miss Gilbert who called me and introduced me. I took her up to the dead man’s room, and the sight of him was a terrible shock to her. She’s not exactly his friend; more his enemy, I think.”
“How could she know Massari was here, pray?”
“Ah! I don’t know that. The Italian was probably followed here after his arrival at Charing Cross.”
“Did she explain why the fellow came here?”
“Yes, she told me various things that have utterly stupefied me,” I answered. “She hints that the Italian and the woman Ina Hardwick were in league to take my life.”
“Your life?” he cried. “What absurd romance has she been telling you? Why you didn’t know Massari until yesterday!”
“That’s just it. But nevertheless there’s some truth in what she alleges. Of that I’m quite convinced.”
“Why?”
“For several reasons. One is because she is aware of one curious incident in my life, one of which even you, Sammy, are in ignorance. It is my secret, and I thought none knew it. Yet Massari was aware of it, and she also knows something about it, although, fortunately, not the whole of the details.”
Sammy twisted his small, fair moustache, and was puzzled.
“She actually knows a secret of yours, eh? Then depend upon it she intends to profit by it. Be careful of her, that’s all, Godfrey. She may have known Massari, for she’s mixed up with a very queer lot. But it’s quite evident that she came really to see you. Did she enlist your sympathies in any way; did she ask you to do anything for her – any service, I mean?”
For a few moments I hesitated; then, in order to further convince him, I told him all that had occurred, and repeated her strange story of how the man we knew as Massari had refused to tell the truth and liberate her.
“He probably had sufficient reason,” declared Sammy, in a hard voice, quite unusual to him. “The truth, however, is quite plain. She has spread out her net for you, and you bid fair to fall an easy prey, old fellow.”
“But, my dear chap, I’m pretty wary. Remember I’m thirty-two and am past the adolescence of youth.”
“She’s uncommonly good-looking. You’ve told me so yourself. Admiration is the first stage always,” he sneered.
“But tell me what you know of her,” I urged. “Where did you first come across her?”
“At Enghien, just outside Paris, nearly three years ago. They lived in a rather fine villa, the grounds of which went down to the lake. You know Enghien – a gay little place, with pretty villas and a casino on the lake. Brunet, the dramatic critic of the Temps, introduced her father to me in the American bar at the Grand, and he invited me to go down to his place and dine. I did so, and found several other male guests, men of the smartest sporting set in Paris – mostly Frenchmen. At first I believed Mr Miller was a person of means, but one day a man who said he had known him, told me that he was a ‘crook’. I admit I could not discover what was the source of his income. I only knew that his friends were mostly rich racing men and chevaliers d’industrie, and that he frequently gave very delightful dinners. Though she never dined with her father’s friends, Lucie was often to be seen. She seemed then to be a mere slip of a girl of nineteen or so, extremely pretty, with her dark hair dressed low and tied with a broad bow of black ribbon. The men who frequented the place always addressed her as ‘Bébé,’ and would sometimes take her boxes of chocolate. One evening after dinner somebody suggested a hand at cards, when suddenly I caught Miller doing a trick, and I stood up and openly denounced him. It may have been foolish of me, but I spoke without reflecting. He denied my accusation fiercely, and was supported by his friends. Therefore I took my hat and left the house, now convinced that the fellow was a ‘crook’. After that I made inquiries about him of a man who had been in the Paris sûreté whom I know very well, with the result that I found the Englishman enjoyed half a dozen aliases and was undoubtedly a queer character. His associates were mostly persons known to the police. Even his butler at the villa was a man who had ‘done’ five years for burglary. The theory of my friend, the ex-detective, was that he was allied with a gang of international thieves, those clever gentry of means who operate in the principal cities throughout Europe, and who are so ingenious that they in most cases outwit the police. Though there was not sufficient evidence to justify any direct allegation it was strongly suspected that the source of Mr Miller’s wealth at that moment was the proceeds of a very cleverly planned robbery at the Commercial Bank in Bordeaux. When I told my friend how I had denounced Miller’s trick, he looked grave and said: ‘That was very injudicious. Those people might seek revenge.’ I laughed in derision, but he was so serious, and so strongly urged me to be careful, that I began to repent my boldness in making the charge. Miller and his friends were, so my friend told me, a dangerous lot.”
“But if Lucie has the misfortune to have a father who is a scoundrel, it surely is no reason why she herself should be bad?” I remarked.
“You can’t touch pitch without being soiled, my dear fellow. Think of the life of a young girl among such a crowd as that! Ah! you’ve never seen them – you can have no idea what they’re like.”
“But what direct charge do you allege against her?” I asked. “Speak quite plainly, for I’m neither her friend nor her enemy. She has to-day told me certain things that have held me bewildered, and naturally I’m all curiosity to ascertain something concerning her.”
“Well,” he said, casting himself again into the big chair and smoking vigorously, “it was like this. One day about a month afterwards there came to stay with me at the Continental a wealthy young Chilian, Manuel Carrera by name, whom I had first met when, two years before, we had fought side by side in the streets of Valparaiso during the revolution. He and I were partisans of the Government, of which his father was Minister of the Interior. Now that the Government had been restored he occupied a very important post in the Treasury, and had come to Paris to transact some business with the Banque de France. At first we were together every evening, and very often the greater part of the day, but of a sudden he seemed to prefer to go about Paris alone, for he had, he told me, met some other friends. For a fortnight or so I had very little of his company; but one afternoon he surprised me by saying that he was going down to Enghien to make a call. I offered to accompany him, saying that I could amuse myself at a café while he was calling, and that we might afterwards dine together at the Casino. Truth to tell, I had not been to Enghien since that well-remembered