The Four Faces
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At a village beyond Louhans we stopped for breakfast, and to cool the engine; but in less than half an hour we were on the road again. As the car swiftly passed over one of the bridges in Lyons a church clock was striking eight. Gradually slackening speed, we turned abruptly to the right, then began a maze of narrow streets. At last, at a quiet-looking hotel out on the road to Vienne, we stopped, and I knew that our journey of three hundred miles or so was at last at an end.
Café-au-lait was served for us in a private room on the first floor, and I was able, for the first time, to scrutinize my companions closely. Six in all, they certainly looked a dare-devil, reckless lot. To guess from their appearance what their trade or calling had originally been seemed impossible. Two of them might certainly have belonged to the farmer class had the expression in their eyes been less cunning, less intelligent. The man who had saved my life, and whom I judged to be their leader, was tall, dark, thick-set, with a heavy beard and moustache, and dark, deep-set eyes. His voice, full and resonant, was not unpleasant. Seldom have I seen a man who looked so absolutely fearless.
It was, I suppose, the confidence they felt that I should not betray them after what had happened that made them speak so freely before me. That very morning, I gathered, they would rid themselves of the car to a big receiver of stolen goods, whose headquarters were in Lyons, the largest receiver of stolen goods in the whole of Europe, so they said. With the money thus obtained they would buy a car to replace the one seized on the previous night; it was interesting to find that these lordly thieves and poachers found a car essential to enable them to carry on their business.
The time for parting soon arrived, and once more I thanked my rescuer and his accomplices for the great service they had rendered me. That a human life should have been sacrificed was terrible to think of, and yet—
The reflection that, but for the sacrifice of Gastrell's life, I should myself have been lying dead, set my mind at ease; and after all, I said mentally, the death of a man like Gastrell must do more good than harm.
The first thing I did after leaving them was to buy some clothes and other necessaries, and a valise to pack them in. After that I set out for a quiet stroll through the quaint old town, which I had never before visited. Reviewing the situation, as I walked slowly along, and debating in my mind whether to return to Paris or go straight back to England by the next boat, various possibilities presented themselves in turn. Virtually I was dead to all my friends in England, or I should be in a day or two, when the letter which would be found in Gastrell's pocket had been printed in the newspapers. That belief, I felt, would help me to carry out the plan I had formed for discovering at first hand the actual movements of the gang, some members of which would, I felt sure, be present at Eldon Hall for the coming-of-age festivities of Lord Cranmere's eldest son.
Yet what about Dulcie? I felt that I must see her, and see her as soon as possible. That thought it was which now entirely obsessed me. To see her meant, of course, that I must at once return to Paris, for almost for certain she would still be there. True, her last words, uttered in the corridor of the "Continental," had convinced me that she now strongly suspected Connie, that she wished to get away from her. But would she succeed in getting away? Already I had proofs of the woman's extraordinary will power, and Dulcie, I knew, had been hypnotized by her more than once. I had doubts of Dulcie's ability to resist the woman's spell. Obviously, then, my duty lay before me. I must at once return to Paris. I must see Dulcie again—if possible, see her in private. I must get her away from that woman and take her back to England, no matter how great the risk I might have to run. And what, I wondered suddenly, was Albeury doing all this time?
Still pondering all this, I sauntered into a restaurant I happened to be passing, ordered a bottle of wine, and asked for a copy of the latest railway time-table.
The rapide for Paris was due, I saw, to leave Lyons Perrache at eight that night. That would suit me well, and I at once decided to go by it. Then, having nothing to do until the time of starting, I once more strolled out into the town.
A newsboy was shouting the news, and I bought a paper from him. Almost the first headline upon which my glance rested stirred a recollection in my mind. Where, before, had I heard that name—"the Duchesse de Montparnasse"? Ah, now I remembered. When Jack Osborne, confined so mysteriously in the house in Grafton Street, in London, had been cross-questioned in the dark, he had been asked various questions concerning the Duchesse de Montparnasse. And now, right before me, was an account of a strange robbery, a robbery committed the day before at the Duchesse's great château on the Meuse!
At once I guessed that this robbery must be yet another of the gang's outrages. My suspicion became conviction when, on reading further, I learned that it had taken place on the occasion of a great reception, when the servants at the château had been busily engaged. The goods stolen, the report ended, were valued at many thousands of pounds.
Finding little else of interest in the paper, I continued my ramble. Glancing at my watch I found it was past six. At that moment it was that, turning aimlessly into a side street, I came suddenly face to face with François, my rescuer.
"We seem fated to meet!" he exclaimed in his patois French, and he laughed.
He looked hard at me for some moments; then, as though his mind were suddenly made up, he said abruptly:
"I wonder, Mr. Berrington—I fancy that by nature you are inquisitive—if you would like to see something you have never seen before. I don't believe you fully realize how implicitly I now trust you. I should like to prove it to you."
"I should like to see it, immensely," I answered, wondering what on earth, in the nature of a novelty, such a man could have to show me.
"Come," he said in the same tone, linking his arm in mine. "I will show it to you now. As I say, I have no fear at all that you will betray me, yet there isn't another living person, excepting my own accomplices, I would take where I am going to take you now."
Down the side street he had just come up I followed him. We turned to the right again, then to the left. A little further on he stopped at a greengrocer's shop, a small, insignificant shop with one window only.
"Wait here," he said as he entered.
A minute later he reappeared and beckoned to me.
"My friend," he said, presenting me to a cadaverous man of middle age, with a thin, prominent, rather hooked nose, high cheek-bones, and curious eyes of a steely grey, which bushy eye-brows partly concealed.
The man looked at me keenly, but he neither smiled nor spoke, nor did he offer to shake hands.
We were now inside the shop. Quickly we passed into an inner room, and thence to a room beyond it. This room was lined apparently with bookshelves. Advancing to a corner of it, after carefully locking the door, the cadaverous man, standing on tiptoe, pressed what appeared to be a book in the topmost shelf. At once a door in the bookshelves opened. In silence we followed him through it, and the door shut noiselessly behind us.
I suppose we had walked ten or twelve yards along the narrow, low-ceilinged, uncarpeted passage, lit only by the candle lantern that our guide had unhooked from a nail in the wall, when he suddenly stopped and bent down. Now I saw that he was lifting the boards, one after another. A few moments later the upper rungs of a ladder became visible. François descended, I followed carefully—I counted fifteen rungs before I reached the ground—and the gaunt man came after me, shifting the boards back into position above his head when he was half-way down the ladder.
The darkness here was denser than it had been in the passage above, but the lantern served its purpose. We were in a much narrower passage now, so low that we had to stoop to make our way along it. The ceiling was roughly hewn, so was the ground we walked upon. Half a dozen steps along the rough ground and we stopped again. Facing us was a low, extremely narrow door, apparently an iron door—it resembled the door of a safe. Fitting a key into it, the gaunt man pushed it open, and one by one we entered.
At once I became aware of a singular change in the atmosphere. In the narrow, cavernous, obviously subterraneous little passage we had just left the air had been humid, chill, and dank, with an unpleasant earthy odour. Here it was dry and stuffy, as if heated artificially. So intense was the blackness that I seemed almost to feel it. There was a dull thump. Turning, I saw that the cadaverous man had shut this door too. Just as I was wondering why he took such precautions something clicked beside me, and the chamber was flooded with light.
For an instant the glare blinded me. Then, as I looked about me, the sight that met my gaze made me catch my breath. Was this an Aladdin's Palace I had suddenly entered? Had my brain become deranged, causing a strange, an amazing hallucination? Or was I asleep and dreaming?
CHAPTER XXV
THE GLITTERING UNDERWORLD
Never shall I forget that astounding spectacle. Even as I think of it now, it rises once more before me.
The room, though low, was very long and very broad; I guessed at once that originally it must have been a cellar, or possibly a series of cellars. Now as the brilliant electric rays from a dozen powerful ceiling lamps shone down through their tinted shades, they lit up a collection of treasure such as few indeed can have gazed upon.
Heaped upon trays on tables all about the room were unset precious stones of every conceivable description, which glittered and scintillated in the most wonderful way imaginable. Upon the floor, in rough, uncovered boxes, heaps of gold bracelets and brooches, gold rings and gold chains, gold ornaments and trinkets, and bits of miscellaneous jewellery were piled high in inextricable confusion, as though they had been tossed there to be thrown on to a waste heap. Upon the ground were bars of gold, the thickness of a brick, ranged carefully in rows. At one end of the room was a small smelting furnace, not now alight, and above it an iron brazier. Upon the walls hung sets of furs, many seal-skin and ermine, while at one side of the room, upon the ground, lay piled up some thousands of silver spoons and forks, also silver drinking cups and candlesticks, many silver salvers, and an endless assortment of silver articles of every kind.
When at last I had recovered from my astonishment, I turned abruptly to François, who stood at my elbow.
"This, I suppose," I said, speaking in a whisper, "is a sort of clearing-house for stolen property."
He nodded.
"The largest in the whole of France"—he added a moment later, "the largest, possibly, anywhere in Europe. Stolen goods come here from all the Continental centres; also from Great Britain, the United States, and even from Australia."
"But surely," I said, "the police know of this place?"
"They know that it exists, but they don't know where it is. You see how implicitly I trust you, what faith I place in the honour of—a gentleman."
"I think not," I corrected. "You know that my tongue is tied—because you saved my life. That is why you trust me."
He smiled grimly.
"But why have you brought me here?" I asked, after a pause.
"For the reason I have named—to show how implicitly I trust you."
It was only then that a thought flashed in upon me.
"You say," I exclaimed sharply, "that jewellery stolen in Great Britain sometimes finds its way here?"
"Most of the English stuff is got rid of in this room."
"And are you—do your—your 'clients' tell you where the 'stuff' comes from?"
"Always," the gaunt man answered. "That is a condition of my taking it off their hands. You will understand that large rewards are sometimes offered for the return of property intact and uninjured."
I paused to collect my thoughts before speaking again, anxious not to make a false step.
"Can you recollect," I said at last, "if jewellery taken from a country house in Berkshire, England—the house is called Holt Manor—just after Christmas, ever found its way here?"
The gaunt man reflected for a moment. Then, without speaking, he walked across the room, unlocked the door of a little safe which was let into the wall, took from the safe a fat, leather-bound ledger, opened it, and ran his finger down a page.
"Yes," he said in his deep voice. "The property was valued at about twelve or fourteen thousand pounds. I have here a list of the articles."
Turning, he peered oddly at me out of his strange eyes.
"May I see the list?" I asked quickly.
"Have you a reason for wanting to see it?"
"Yes. Some of the jewellery taken had been generations in the family. If it is intact still, I may be able to get a fancy price offered for it, or for some of it."
"Bien" he said. "Much of the stuff has been melted down, but not all."
I read carefully down the list, which, arranged neatly and systematically, showed at once what had been melted down, and how it had been disposed of, while a complete list was given of articles kept intact. Among the latter I recognized several bits of jewellery which Dulcie had greatly valued, and quickly I arranged with the gaunt man to buy them from him then and there. After that the three of us sat talking for a considerable time, and before the time arrived for me to leave I knew beyond doubt that the jewellery I had caught sight of when Connie Stapleton's bag had burst open in the train had been the jewellery, or some of it, stolen on board the boat.
"Some day we may meet again," I said as I parted from François and his companion, in the little greengrocer's shop.
"Some day we shall," the cadaverous man answered in a strange voice. He extended his hand, and I shook it. A minute later I was in a taxi, hurrying through the streets of Lyons towards the Perrache station.
As the express sped rapidly towards Paris, endless strange reflections and conjectures crowded my brain. Was I acting wisely in thus returning to the French capital, where I might so easily be recognized, seeing how anxious I was that my friends in England should think me dead? I was—I knew—though I did not admit it even to myself—returning to Paris mainly in the hope that I might catch a glimpse of Dulcie. And yet if I did see her, of what use would it be? Also, what should I do? Let her recognize me, and the plan I had formed to get the scoundrels arrested would most likely be spoiled at once—and more than ever I was now determined to bring them to justice in the end.
I fell into a deep sleep, for I was tired out; I had slept little enough during that night-long journey in the stolen car. When I awoke, the train was steaming into Paris; an official, who had aroused me by rubbing his hand upon my cheek, stood awaiting a pourboire.
"Go to the Hotel Continental," I said in French to the driver of the taxi into which I had just stepped with my newly-bought valise. "Get there as quickly as you can."
That I was doing a mad thing in thus returning to the hotel, where in all probability the members of the gang were still staying, I knew. But a man in love hardly reckons with risks, and as I lay back in the taxi, my brain awhirl, I knew that I was as desperately in love as it is possible for man to be.
Paris—gay Paris—looked gloomy enough in the dull blue haze which hung over and partly enveloped its deserted, dreary streets. Happening to glance up at the windows of a house with green sun-shutters half open, my eyes met those of a faded girl with touzled hair, peering down into the street, and mechanically she ogled me. In disgust I averted my gaze, hating, for the moment, my own sex, which made such women possible. On and on the car rolled. Some revellers in dishevelled evening clothes, their eyes round and staring, their faces ghastly in the morning light, stumbled out beneath an archway above which a lamp burned dully with an orange glow.
Everything and everyone seemed only half awake. The reception clerk at the hotel was sulky and inclined to be argumentative. Yes, he was positive, he said in reply to my inquiry, that nobody of the name of Challoner was staying at the hotel,—no, nor yet of the name of Stapleton. They had slept there the night before? Yes, that was quite possible, but he was not concerned with people who had stayed there, only with the people who were there then. He had no idea, he added, at what time they had left, nor yet where they had gone—and did I need a room, or didn't I? Because if I didn't I had better go away.
His impertinence annoyed me, but I had too much to think about to have time to lose my temper. I told him I needed a room, and I sent up my valise. A bath, a shave and a change of clothes braced me considerably, and by the time I reached the coffee-room I felt thoroughly refreshed.
What adventures had befallen me since I had breakfasted in that room, only forty-eight hours before, I reflected, as the waiter approached with the Figaro. Breakfast was laid for a hundred or more, but barely a dozen people were in the room. All were strangers to me, so I soon became engrossed in the newspaper.
My attention was distracted by the waiter, who, again approaching, turned up two chairs at my table.
"With all those tables empty," I said to him with a wave of the hand, "you can surely put people elsewhere. I don't want strangers here."
He smiled pleasantly, showing extraordinarily white teeth.
"A gentleman and lady wish to sit at monsieur's table," he said, bowing politely, and still smiling.
"Monsieur will not object?"
He seemed so amiable that I felt I couldn't be rude to him.
"But who are the lady and gentleman? And why did they specify this table?" I asked, puzzled.
The waiter gave a little shrug, raising his eyebrows as he did so.
"How can I tell?" he answered. "They come to the door a moment ago, while monsieur is reading his newspaper; they see monsieur; they speak ensemble in whispers for some moments, it would seem about monsieur; and then they call me and tell me to serve their déjeuner at monsieur's table."
Hardly had he stopped speaking, when my gaze rested upon two people who had just entered and were approaching.
One was the police official, Victor Albeury. The other was Dulcie Challoner!
They greeted me with, I thought, rather exaggerated nonchalance as they came up, then seated themselves, one on either side of me, Albeury telling the waiter to "hurry up with the breakfast that he had ordered five minutes ago."
I was puzzled, rather than surprised, at the matter-of-fact way that Albeury and Dulcie conversed with me—few things astonished me now. Had we all been on the best of terms, and met after being separated for half an hour or so, they could hardly have been more composed. For five minutes we discussed commonplace topics, when suddenly I noticed that Albeury was looking at me very hard. Dulcie, too, seemed to have grown curiously uneasy.
"Whereabouts is he?" Albeury said quickly in a low tone, glancing sharply at Dulcie. The door was at the back.
"Gone," she whispered. She seemed greatly agitated.
"Mr. Berrington," Albeury said hurriedly, his eyes set on mine, "I suspect that man. They all left last night. He arrived just before they left. I happened to see Doris Lorrimer engaged in earnest conversation with him."
"Of whom are you speaking?" I asked, not understanding.
"Of the waiter at this table—that polite, unctuous man I saw talking to you. Listen. I have rescued Miss Challoner from Stapleton and her accomplices. We are going to leave Paris for London in less than half an hour; it's not safe for Miss Challoner to stay here longer. And you must travel with us. It is imperative that you should. I can't say more to you now, while that man is hanging about. Tell me quickly, before he returns: what happened to you yesterday? Where were you last night?"
"Oh, Mike!" Dulcie interrupted, "if you only knew the mental agony I have suffered, all that I endured last night—Mike, I dreamed that you were dead, I dreamed that they had killed you!"
I stared at her, startled.
"They tried to," I almost whispered. "But they failed, and now I—"
"Mr. Berrington," Albeury cut in, "you must forgive my brusqueness—your breakfast will be brought to you in a moment; when it is, don't eat it. Make any excuse you like, but don't eat it."
"Good God!" I exclaimed, instantly guessing his thought, "surely you can't suppose—"
"I can, and do suppose. More than that, I am practically certain that—"
He cut his sentence short, for Dulcie had signalled with her eyes. The waiter had re-entered the room.
I breathed more freely when at last the three of us were on our way to the railway station. Strange as it may seem, I had experienced some difficulty in ridding myself of the officious attentions of the smiling, smooth-tongued, extremely plausible waiter.
On board the steamer, in a corner of the saloon where none could eavesdrop, I related to Dulcie how I had been bound, gagged, borne out of the hotel upon the stretcher concealed beneath a sheet, and all that had subsequently occurred that I felt justified in telling her. Of the thieves' clearing-house in Lyons and my rescuer's connection with it, also of the discovery of the whereabouts of her stolen property, I could of course say nothing, my lips being in honour sealed.
A little later, as beneath the stars we slowly paced the deck—the sea was wonderfully smooth for the end of February—Dulcie opened her heart to me, as I had so long hoped she some day would.
"Oh, if only you knew," she suddenly exclaimed in an access of emotion, after I had, for a little while, tried to draw her on to talk about herself, "if only you knew all that I have been through, Mike, you would be sorry for me!"
"Why don't you tell me everything, my darling?" I answered gently, and, almost without my knowing it, I drew her closer to me. "You know—you must know, that I won't repeat to a living soul anything you may say."
"Oh, yes, Mike, of course I know," she said, pressing my hands in hers, as though she sought protection, "but there is—"
"There is what?"
She glanced to right and left, up the dark deck, and down it, then gave a little shudder. But for ourselves, the deck was quite deserted.
"I hardly know," she almost whispered, and I felt her trembling strangely. "Somehow I feel nervous, frightened. I feel as if some danger were approaching—approaching both of us."
Again she looked about her. Then, as I spoke soothingly, she gradually grew calmer.
"I was very, very fond of Connie Stapleton, you know," she said presently, "and I thought that she liked me. That time, at Holt, when you warned me to beware of her, I felt as if I hated you. She influenced me so strangely, Mike,—I cannot explain how. Mike, my darling, I tell you this now because somehow I feel you will forgive me, as at last it's all over. It seems so odd now to think of it, but as I grew to love her my love for you seemed to grow less—I knew from the first that she detested my loving you so, and if I spoke much about you to her it annoyed her. She wanted to destroy my love for you, Mike, but never, all the time I have been with her, did I say a word against you. Do you believe me when I tell you that?"
Later she told me that the woman had quite recently hinted at her doing certain things she hardly dared to think about, and that, the very day before, she had disclosed a horrible plan which she had formulated, in which Dulcie was to play a very important part—a plan to do with a robbery on a very extensive scale.
"Oh, Mike, Mike," she went on, "I must have been mad during these past weeks to have listened to what she hinted at—I was mad, or else she had completely hypnotized me. You remember Mr. Osborne's being taken to that house in Grafton Street, and kept there in confinement, and the telegram I received that was supposed to come from you? Well, I know now who it was who kept him there a prisoner, and came to him in the dark, and questioned him, and tried to get him to reveal information which he alone could give. The man who did all that was—"