The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
I don't know that," said Sylvia, smiling. "Each separate pearl is worth a good deal, but still I daresay you are right, for these are beautifully matched. I got them, by a piece of great luck, without having to pay—well, what I suppose one would call the middle-man's profit! I just paid what I should have done at a good London sale."
"And you paid?—seven—eight 'undred pounds?" asked Madame Wachner, this time in English, and fixing her small, dark eyes on the fair Englishwoman's face.
"Oh, rather more than that." Sylvia grew a little red. "But as I said just now, they are always increasing in value. Even Mr. Chester, who did not approve of my getting these pearls, admits that I made a good bargain."
Through the open door she thought she heard Monsieur Wachner coming back down the passage. So she suddenly took the pearls out of the other woman's hand and clasped the string about her neck again.
L'Ami Fritz came into the room. He was holding rather awkwardly a little tray on which were two cups—one a small cup, the other a large cup, both filled to the brim with black coffee. He put the small cup before his guest, the large cup before his wife.
"I hope you do not mind having a small cup," he said solemnly. "I remember that you do not care to take a great deal of coffee, so I have given you the small cup."
Sylvia looked up.
"Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "I ought to have told you before you made it, Monsieur Wachner—but I won't have any coffee to-night. The last time I took some I lay awake all night."
"Oh, but you must take coffee!" Madame Wachner spoke good-humouredly, but with great determination. "The small amount you have in that little cup will not hurt you; and besides it is a special coffee, L'Ami Fritz's own mixture"—she laughed heartily.
And again? Sylvia noticed that Monsieur Wachner looked at his wife with a fixed, rather angry look, as much as to say, "Why are you always laughing? Why cannot you be serious sometimes?"
"But to-night, honestly, I would really rather not have any coffee!"
Sylvia had suddenly seen a vision of herself lying wide awake during long dark hours—hours which, as she knew by experience, generally bring to the sleepless, worrying thoughts.
"No, no, I will not have any coffee to-night," she repeated.
"Yes, yes, dear friend, you really must," Madame Wachner spoke very persuasively. "I should be truly sorry if you did not take this coffee. Indeed, it would make me think you were angry with us because of the very bad supper we had given you! L'Ami Fritz would not have taken the trouble to make coffee for his old wife. He has made it for you, only for you; he will be hurt if you do not take it!"
The coffee did look very tempting and fragrant.
Sylvia had always disliked coffee in England, but somehow French coffee was quite different; it had quite another taste from that of the mixture which the ladies of Market Dalling pressed on their guests at their dinner-parties.
She lifted the pretty little cup to her lips—but the coffee, this coffee of L'Ami Fritz, his special mixture, as his wife had termed it, had a rather curious taste, it was slightly bitter—decidedly not so nice as that which she was accustomed to drink each day after déjeuner at the Villa du Lac. Surely it would be very foolish to risk a bad night for a small cup of indifferent coffee?
She put the cup down, and pushed it away.
"Please do not ask me to take it," she said firmly. "It really is very bad for me!"
Madame Wachner shrugged her shoulders with an angry gesture.
"So be it," she said, and then imperiously, "Fritz, will you please come with me for a moment into the next room? I have something to ask you."
He got up and silently obeyed his wife. Before leaving the room he slipped the key of the garden gate into his trousers pocket.
A moment later Sylvia, left alone, could hear them talking eagerly to one another in that strange, unknown tongue in which they sometimes—not often—addressed one another.
She got up from her chair, seized with a sudden, eager desire to slip away before they came back. For a moment she even thought of leaving the house without waiting for her hat and little fancy bag; and then, with a strange sinking of the heart she remembered that the white gate was locked, and that L'Ami Fritz had now the key of it in his pocket.
But in no case would Sylvia have had time to do what she had thought of doing, for a moment later her host and hostess were back in the room.
Madame Wachner sat down again at the dining-table,
"One moment!" she exclaimed, rather breathlessly. "Just wait till I 'ave finished my coffee, Sylvia dear, and then L'Ami Fritz will escort you 'ome."
Rather unwillingly, Sylvia again sat down.
Monsieur Wachner was paying no attention either to his guest or to his wife. He took up the chair on which he had been sitting, and placed it out of the way near the door. Then he lifted the lighted lamp off the table and put it on the buffet.
As he did so, Sylvia, looking up, saw the shadow of his tall, lank figure thrown grotesquely, hugely, against the opposite wall of the room.
"Now take the cloth off the table," he said curtly. And his wife, gulping down the last drops of her coffee, got up and obeyed him.
Sylvia suddenly realised that they were getting ready for something—that they wanted the room cleared.
As with quick, deft fingers she folded up the cloth, Madame Wachner exclaimed, "As you are not taking any coffee, Sylvia, perhaps it is time for you now to get up and go away."
Sylvia Bailey looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt very angry. Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life had anyone ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house.
She rose, for the second time during the course of her short meal, to her feet—
And then, in a flash, there occurred that which transformed her anger into agonised fear—fear and terror.
The back of her neck had been grazed by something sharp and cold, and as she gave a smothered cry she saw that her string of pearls had parted in two. The pearls were now falling quickly one by one, and rolling all over the floor.
Instinctively she bent down, but as she did so she heard the man behind her make a quick movement.
She straightened herself and looked sharply round.
L'Ami Fritz was still holding in his hand the small pair of nail scissors with which he had snipped asunder her necklace; with the other he was in the act of taking out something from the drawer of the buffet.
She suddenly saw what that something was.
Sylvia Bailey's nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and clear. There had leapt on her the knowledge that this man and woman meant to kill her—to kill her for the sake of the pearls which were still bounding about the floor, and for the comparatively small sum of money which she carried slung in the leather bag below her waist.
L'Ami Fritz now stood staring at her. He had put his right hand—the hand holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer—behind his back. He was very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.
For a horrible moment there floated across Sylvia's sub-conscious mind the thought of Anna Wolsky, and of what she now knew to have been Anna Wolsky's fate.
But she put that thought, that awful knowledge, determinedly away from her. The instinct of self-preservation possessed her wholly.
Already, in far less time than it would have taken to formulate the words, she had made up her mind to speak, and she knew exactly what she meant to say.
"It does not matter about my pearls," Sylvia said, quietly. Her voice shook a little, but otherwise she spoke in her usual tone. "If you are going into Paris to-morrow morning, perhaps you would take them to be restrung?"
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