The Waxworks Murder

I looked soberly on the Boulevard de Clichy that night. And yet it had got into my blood with a reckless beat. The feel of the silver key in the pocket of my white waistcoat, and the mask tucked under the waistcoat also, brought into it a cold tingle of adventure.

At the last moment Bencolin's plans had been altered. He had got from the first commissioner the blue-print (they must be on file for every place of the sort) showing the room arrangement in the Club of Masks. It had only one entrance. Its rooms, without outside windows except for a few blind ones, were ranged round a quadrangle forming an open court. In the centre of the quadrangle, like a separate house, rose an immense structure whose domed roof was of glass. This was the great promenade hall, connected with the main body by two passages - one at the front, going to the lounge, and one at the rear, connecting with the manager's office.

It will be observed that all the private rooms on the first floor open, by a single door and window, on the narrow court where the great hall rises. Also, that these rooms are reached by four doors, one at each corner of the great hall - so that the possessors of these rooms may go to them without returning to the lounge. However, those having rooms on the two floors above must reach them by a staircase in the lounge, which is indicated in the plan by a black square beside the bar. Now a look at the plan of the floor above this will show that room 18, where Galant was to meet Gina Prevost, is directly above the one numbered 2 in the drawing; and Robiquet's room 19, above the one numbered 3.

Originally it had been Bencolin's idea to plant a dictograph in room 18. But the plan alone, to say nothing of what information we had been able to receive, would make this attempt too dangerous. Wires would have to be run from the window up over the roof. Considering that the club attendants would be doubly on guard, that there were no outside windows, and that any suspicious movement in the court could not fail to be observed, this design had to be abandoned. Bencolin fumed. He had not suspected such enormous obstacles, and it was too late now to undermine the club personnel.

In the end it had been determined that I should go, and that I should in some fashion contrive to be hidden in room 18 when the two arrived. It was a ticklish job, for the whole place was unknown territory. If I were caught, it would be like being caught inside a well. I could not in any fashion communicate with the outside. Nor could I be armed. Due to the temperamental qualities of jealous wives of husbands who might, being masked, find entrance, we understood that guests were given a polite scrutiny by a number of suave bruisers in evening clothes at the door.

Had I reflected, I should have known myself for a damned fool. But the prospect was too alluring. Besides, it was too early for that thick, half-pleasant hammering to begin in the chest at the approach of danger. The clocks had hardly struck ten when I sauntered along the Boulevard de Clichy towards the Moulin Rouge, Mile Prevost's act, we had ascertained, went on at eleven o'clock, and lasted until at least eleven-fifteen; considering encores, it would likely mean five minutes more. Afterwards she would have to change her clothes before departing for the club. Therefore, if I went to the Moulin Rouge, I should be able to hear at least a few minutes of her turn and leave in plenty of time to anticipate them in number 18. On her tapped telephone wires we had heard that she would appear on the usual bill; a slip in time was impossible.

So I went up the red-carpeted stairs of the Moulin Rouge under brilliant lights; I bought my ticket, surrendered coat and top hat to the vestiaire, and wandered towards the blare of jazz. The place is no longer a theatre, though the red-curtained stage glitters with miniature revues. It is chiefly waxed dance-floor and gaudy decorations, with spotlights from the gallery tearing blue and white holes in a mist of tobacco smoke. Now it shrieked and pounded to the contortions of a Negro jazz-band, dominated by cymbals, bass-drum, and hideous brassy wails like the howling of cats. It is, I believe, designated as hot. Just why, I have never been able to understand, unless it is to be deduced from the sweating ecstasy of the players. But then an appreciation of the Negro's artistry, including his spirituals, has been denied me entirely; so I can only report that the rafters trembled, the floor shook to pounding feet, dust tickled the spotlights, every bottle rattled in the bar, a whirl of cries pulsed up from the jigging dancers; and I sat down in a loge beside the dance-floor and ordered a bottle of champagne.

The hands of my watch crawled. It grew hotter, more crowded and smoky. Cries became squeals; an Argentine band set the dancers jerking with the stamp of the tango; more ladies of the evening slid off their stools at the bar and drifted past the loges with a tentative roving eye. With every tick of the watch, I was drawing closer to the time for leaving. ... Then, when the lights dimmed and the chatter died to a hum, they announced Estelle. Just before the place became dark, I noticed a man sitting in one of the boxes far across the dance-floor. It was Captain Chaumont. He sat motionless, his elbows on the rail, staring at the stage....

In a darkness thick with heat and the smell of powder, a white spotlight found Estelle standing against scarlet curtains. She wore white, with a head-dress of pearls. I was too far away to catch the expression of her face, but I envisaged the blue-eyed girl with the haunted face, pink lips, and husky voice, whose voluptuous figure had that afternoon subtly transformed the house on the Boulevard des Invalides. And even now you could feel the moist brilliance of her eyes moving over the audience. The contact between them was vital, sultry, intense, making the throat dry. It had something of the crackle of electricity; it spread out across the hall in warm streams, leaving, in the electrical silence, only a dim, vast creaking, an enormous murmur as of strained breaths, which was the hall's reply. The violins had wandered into a dreaming melody, deepening and throbbing....

The girl could sing! That caress of her voice could touch your every nerve; it woke old sorrows; it made you remember pain and pity and compassion. She sang with the abandon of Mistinguett, the smouldering carelessness of Meller, dropping words as contemptuously as ashes flicked off a cigarette. But in billing her as an American singer they were stark mad. Hers were the love-songs of old Paris, whose rhythms suggest brooding as much as love. They suggest bruises and the gutter; cellars, ecstasy, and the cold rain. Grief cries out in the cunning violins and the sudden break of the husky voice. Grief jabs the heart like a dull knife, just failing to pierce. As the last soaring notes shivered and dropped, and Gina Prevost's body relaxed in a shudder, I almost knocked over my chair in rising. I wanted to get out under cover of the applause which came in furious gusts across the hall; and I found that my hands were trembling. I thrust some banknotes at a waiter, pushing my way out in the dark. Still I could hear the roar beating those rafters, the waves of handclapping which spurted up, died, and spurted again. In a daze I retrieved hat and coat.

I wondered how Chaumont had taken it. I wondered, too, how much of her own terror cried out in her songs; whether her knees shook now, as she faced the acclaim limply. There were depths to this woman which you would not have suspected from this morning; you could go mad over the bitter lure of her eyes, or the sulkiness of her full, fleshy mouth. 'O mystical rose of the mire - !' A blast of cold air struck me as I went down to the street, and I saw dimly the car-starter raising a white-gloved hand for a taxi. Across the memory of her struck Bencolin's words: 'Take a taxi there, as Galant did, and time yourself when you go to the club.' Galant's alibi. ...

Mechanically I raised my eyes to look across the street. I saw a dingy jeweller's shop, in whose window was the illuminated face of a clock whose hands pointed to five minutes past eleven. I got into the cab, said 'To the Porte Saint-Martin, quickly,' and compared my own watch with the clock as the taxi driver slammed. Five minutes past.

'Quickly,' one syllable spoken to a Parisian taxi-driver, is a potent word. In the very stoop of the man's shoulders, in the terrific jerk with which we shot backwards and then wheeled to plunge bumping down the rue Fontaine, I knew what to expect. I was lifted and hurled from one side to the other as the shop-fronts whirled past. But the real adventure drummed in my pulses now. The taxi windows rattled wildly, die springs joked and banged, and I struck up a French drinking-song in which the driver shortly joined. When at last we spun round into the Boulevard Poissioniere, I looked at my watch again. Nine minutes, even at this pace, and a good twelve before we reached the Porte Saint-Martin. Oh, yes, Galant's alibi checked. It checked, if anything, too well.

My throat grew a little dry as I walked down the Boulevard de Sebastopol, and my legs had a curious lightness. Beyond the flare of lights at the corner, the boulevard was murky. There were a few loungers at the dim-lit entrance to a cinema, and they all seemed to be watching me. Here was the door, in deep shadow. I did not suppose there would be anybody lurking there, but I braced myself lest I should bump into someone. It was not until I fished in my pocket for the silver key that I realized my fingers were a trifle unsteady. I inserted the key, which opened the door easily and without a sound.

The damp stuffiness of the passage blew over me. It was absolutely dark, but the whole place seemed to smell of murder. Green-lit ghosts would not be standing there halfway down, one with a knife in its hand and its head turned sideways, and yet it was not pleasant to fancy them. Not a sound, either. I wondered if old Augustin were pottering about his museum. Now, then. Were guests in the habit of turning on the passage lights, those concealed ones worked from the switch beside the door, as they entered? Probably, because you could see nothing whatever when the door had clicked shut behind. They could be extinguished, in all likelihood, from another switch inside the club itself. I pressed the button.

The moonlight glow from among the rafters showed the stone-flagged floor. In one place, just opposite the museum door, it had been significantly scrubbed, and the clean splotch stood out even more suggestively than the bloodstain. Damn it! there ought to be noise ! My own footfalls echoed as I walked towards the rear, fastening on my mask. The mask set the seal on it all. Instinctively I glanced at the museum door, which was closed. My imagination moved out through the green grottos of the place, to that garish entrance with the 'A' set in electric lights in the roof. It would be almost deserted. But Mile Augustin would be still seated in the little glass booth there, dressed sombrely in black, with the roll of blue tickets at her elbow and the money-till under her hands - those strong, white, capable hands. Very probably a crowd of the morbid had thronged the museum that day, and she was tired. What was she thinking behind her inscrutable eyes? What ? ...

Somebody was trying the knob of the museum door. I had been staring at it as I walked down the passage; but now, for the first time, I saw in dim light that the knob was being turned softy, backwards and forwards. v

Nothing is quite so fraught with terror at night as the thin creak of a knob in silence. For a second I wondered whether to wait. No; it was ridiculous to suppose that this might be the murderer. Some club member, merely. ... Well, then, why didn't the person open the door? Why stand there softly working the handle, as though indecisive? But I could not wait. There must be no suspicion. Settling my mask firmly, I went on towards that other door at the right of the passage.

When I put my key into the other lock, sudden images shot through my head. Images of evil and danger, of being shut into a doorless box with Galant's red nose and the soft cat's purr of his voice. Too late now! I was pushing open the door.

At the same moment I opened it, the corridor light was extinguished behind me; it must work automatically. I was in the foyer of the club, I tried to look unconcerned beneath my mask, and to remember exactly the downstairs plan. ... It was a spacious hall, some twenty feet high, with blue-veined marble pillars set in a floor of blue-and-gold mosaic tiles. The light, emanating in pale wreaths from the tops of the pillars, left the lower part of the hall in twilight. At the left side I saw a cloakroom, and far at the right an arched doorway ornamented with Cupids in a heavy Edwardian style. That (I remembered from the plan) led to the lounge. From behind it drifted a rustle as of many people on deep rugs, a hint of laughter, and the subdued murmur of an orchestra. The air was thick, powder-scented. And the very atmosphere of this luxury hidden behind blank walls, in a dingy street, dulled one's reason while it conjured up exotic images in the brain like bright, poisonous orchids. To the nerves it lent stimulation - abandon, a tingle of danger as at a mad dance, and a contraction of the heart as you visualized....

I started. Figures, gigantic in the dim light, were bearing down on me, making scarcely a sound on the glittering mosaic floor. Guards! I had to pass scrutiny now, from these people who appeared from nowhere. 'Your key, monsieur?' said a voice. They wore correct evening clothes, and white masks. But uniformly there was a bulge under the left armpit where the holster was buckled. (They were squat 44's. Bencolin had told me, and they were all equipped with silencers.) I felt their eyes on me : lurking men, with a suggestion of a crouch even when they stood up straight, and their eyes had a sliding motion behind the holes in the mask. The idea of silencers on the pistols lent them an even more ugly quality. Removing coat and hat into the hands of the cloakroom attendant - who contrived, imperceptibly, to be sure I bore no weapon - I held out my key. One murmured, 'Nineteen,' a book was consulted, and I had a heart-pounding instant while all the eyes were fixed on me. Then the ring of white masks dissolved. The men melted into shadows. But I heard the low leather creak of a holster as I sauntered towards the lounge, and I still felt eyes.

I was inside, with the hands of my watch pointing to eleven-eighteen.

The lounge was another long hall, rather narrow, and even more dimly lighted. It was hung in black velvet. Its only illumination came in scarlet glowing from the mouth and eyes of bronze figures shaped like satyrs, and holding nymphs in their arms. They were life-size these figures; they reminded me of the satyr in the waxworks, and the scarlet light from their eyes and mouths trembled with changing weirdness on the black hangings. About ten feet down, on my left, I saw great glass doors - these, I knew, led to the covered passage communicating with the big hall in the court. I caught the scent of hothouse flowers; the passage was banked with them. As in the room of Odette's coffin....

The murmur of the orchestra, through these doors, grew louder. I could hear a buzz from inside, and somebody laughed breathlessly. Arm in arm, a man and a woman -both wearing black masks - drifted from the lounge through the passage. They looked hypnotized in the red-and-black swinging shadows, and the woman's lips were fixed in a faint smile. She looked old; he looked young and nervous. Another couple sat in a corner with cocktail glasses. Now suddenly the orchestra changed its tempo; it pounded with die fleshly beat of a tango, and the invisible crowd seemed to breathe with something of its murmur and hysteria. Then, in the gloom, I saw another figure.

It stood motionless, with arms folded, at the foot of the black-marble staircase far down at the end of the hall. Towering above it, one of the bronze satyrs flicked scarlet light on the newel-post: it lit the bulge of heavy shoulders and a face in a red mask. But the nose of the mask had been cut away to show a ridged and discoloured nose, and the man was smiling. ...

'Your number, monsieur?' breathed a voice in my ear.

I swallowed hard. It seemed to me that Galant, standing down there by the staircase, had singled me out for suspicion. Still he did not move, but he appeared to grow larger. Turning, I saw at my elbow a woman in a white mask — it appeared to be the badge of attendants - and a low-cut black gown. She wore a heady perfume; and, as the tango beat and fell with muted strings, I found myself looking into a pair of long-lashed hazel eyes. 'Nineteen,’I said.

My voice seemed startlingly loud, and I wondered whether Galant might have heard it, even at the distance. But then, I remembered, during Bencolin's interview with him I had not uttered a single word. If, on the other hand, he knew the real Robiquet. .. . The woman was moving to one side, where she pulled open the curtain of a small alcove. Inside was an illuminated board, with a small numbered buttons. She pushed one, and dropped the curtain again.

'The door of monsieur's room is opened,' she told me. (Was it alarm, suspicion, scrutiny in her look ?)

'Thank you,' I said carelessly.

'Will monsieur have something to drink?' As I stepped forward, she had slid in front of me with smiling obsequiousness. ‘I will bring it to monsieur in the main hall.'

'Why - yes. A champagne cocktail, please.'

'Thank you, monsieur.'

She moved away towards the bar. Danger? It looked uncomfortably like an attempt to draw me. But I should have had to look into the main hall for a few minutes, at least. I took a cigarette out of my case, lighting it with elaborate care, and watched her from the corner of my eye. She was approaching Galant now on her way to the bar. She paused an instant, turned her head, and spoke a few words....

Hard bands had tightened across my chest. Deliberately steadying my hand, I put the cigarette-case back in my pocket and sauntered towards the glass doors The red-breathing satyrs had all acquired a sardonic leer. The music of the tango had taken on a fierce drum-beat. And then, grouped behind Galant, lurking in shadow, I saw other figures.

Apaches.

Galant's bodyguard, without a doubt. Not the old apache, who was half a music-hall song, but the new post-war breed from Saint-Denis. Born in starvation. Never, unlike the American gangster, protected by the police or any underworld lord; sharpened always to a murderous hardness because he has never known easy money. He is undersized and cold, his eyes are vacant, and he is as deadly as a tarantula. You will see him at the sporting centres, at Paris gates, at the markets, playing dominoes in bars. His clothes are loud and shabby; he speaks seldom; he wears, instead of a collar, a neckcloth loosely tucked, and that - beware of it - is where he carries his knife. ... Three of him were sitting now in an alcove near Galant. They were scrubbed, but they had a look of decay. I could see the glowing ends of their cigarettes in gloom. Their sallowness was hidden behind white masks, but not the pale, imbecilic, snakish beadiness of their eyes. No eye is so terrifying as the brainless one.

I had to go through with it. I had to saunter idly down the flower-lined passage. Straight ahead it ran for some distance, without lights. Down at the end I could hear the subdued noise under the orchestra; it had an echo, as though the main hall were vast, and I could see goblin masks swimming in a dusk, black and green and scarlet masks, of people who were trying for an hour to forget their homes. ... I glanced at my watch. Good God ! Twenty-five minutes past eleven. I couldn't go in there for my drink. Gina Prevost might arrive at any moment. But there was Galant standing at the foot of the staircase. Did he suspect? If so, I was caught. There was no way out. I put my hand against the flowers at one side of the passage, half-way down its darkness, visualizing the white masks. In the boom of drums echoed a warning.

Somebody touched my shoulder from behind. . . .

Gina Prevost is Stubborn

I must have shaken to that touch. To this day I do not know how I kept from betraying myself, and if the voice had not spoken I might have done so.

'Monsieur's champagne cocktail,' said a voice reproachfully.

Relief choked me. I could see die girl dimly, holding a tray. But what now? I couldn't tell her to take it in there; time was becoming too precious. On the other hand, to go upstairs now alone would look insane, particularly with Galant standing at the very foot of the steps on guard against police spies. And then the girl spoke again.

'Monsieur,' she murmured, 'I have received instructions to tell you. Number nineteen. I fear there has been a slight accident....'

'Accident?'

'Yes, monsieur,' humbly. 'Monsieur's room has not been used for many months. Only a day or more ago, a cleaning-woman - oh, so careless! - smashed a window there. I am so terribly, terribly sorry! Will it inconvenience monsieur? It has not been repaired.. . .'

Again I found myself steadied! This, then, was why she had taken so much trouble. This was why she had spoken to Galant. Was there any other reason? Wait! Odette Duchene, found dead with glass cuts about the face, fallen from a window. Murdered inside the club; murdered, it might be, in that very room.

'That is bad,' I said gruffly. 'H'm! And I know the rules about other rooms. Well, never mind. Give me the drink. I'll go up and look at it now.'

What ho! Things were looking up. I drank the cocktail at a gulp, brushed past her severely, and strode up to the lounge. My pulses were pounding with excitement, but I toned my hurry to a walk. What ho again, Galant, and to hell with you! I walked straight up to him, compressing my mouth with dignity like a hotel guest who finds cockroaches in his room, then, at the last moment, I seemed to change my mind and ascended the stairs in an outraged way. He was still impassive, and his apaches continued to smoke in the alcove....

Steady now! I was upstairs safely, but I had to find my way along the dim and thick-carpeted halls. Number 19 would be round at the far side. I hoped there were no attendants up here, to notice my indecision; I hoped, above all that the doors were numbered. Wait! Another snag. We had supposed that none of the room doors were locked. It now seemed that you had to push one of those buttons downstairs in order to release the catch. On the other hand, if they pressed the button as soon as you got there to avoid embarrassment later, Galant's door might now be unlocked. The door and window of the ground-floor private rooms were both in the same wall; but up here, according to the plan, each room had two windows looking out on the court, with the door in the wall opposite. Here it was. Eighteen. For a moment I could hardly bring myself to try the knob. But the door was open. I slid into Galant's room and closed it behind me.

It was dark. But I could see a glimmer of light through one window, whose leaves were open. Heavy draperies there trembled in a cold wind. The noise of the orchestra floated up faintly. Where the devil was the light-switch? No, hold on! - it wouldn't do to risk a light up here. There might be watchers in the court who knew Galant was still downstairs. But I had to find a place to hide. Clever lad! Walk straight into a devilish dangerous situation like this, volunteer to get evidence without even knowing whether there might be a place of concealment. I strained my eyes in the gloom; but the lashes would catch uncomfortably in the eyeholes of the mask, and my vision was hampered. Lifting it up on my forehead, I hurried over to the open window and peered out. The glass was opaque and dark red. (Dark red glass-slivers found in Odette Duchene's face, and a smashed window in the room next to this.) I breathed deeply, the cold air grateful on my hot face, and looked out. Once free of that strangling heat downstairs, you could at least think sanely. ... All around, in a vast oblong, dark walls rose against the starlight, their windows glimmering. It was a good twenty-foot drop from this window to the stone court below. Eight or nine feet away from the walls rose the domed glass roof of the main hall. It rose somewhat higher than the window where I stood, so I was unable to see the court except immediately below; but at my right now, I knew, must be the passage from the lounge, and, far down to the left, the passage leading to what were fantastically called the manager's quarters. From my position, the glass roof was too high for me to see down into the main hall; I saw only dim light through grimy panes, and heard the orchestra playing.

Then the moon came out. Its bluish pallor slid across the roof-tops, silvering them, and then probed into the narrow court below. The air chilled my breast through a soggy shirt-front, for I saw there a motionless figure in a white mask, staring up at this window. The mask looked blue and hideous. I heard faintly the throb of traffic from the boulevards. . ..

They were watching. I jerked back from the window, and looked round rather wildly. Moonlight lay in a broad bar across the carpet; it touched heavy chairs of carven oak, and a Chinese screen, woven in silver filigree, shook glimmering patterns mockingly. Still I could make out no distinct outline; but with white-mask standing down there in the court, gloating on the windows, there could be no light. I took a step forward, to blunder into a chair. It would be madness to get behind that screen — the first place anybody would look. Then the orchestra stopped playing. Absolute stillness fell like pinioning arms, but for a wind creaking on the windows; it added a last sinister closing of doors to this prison. Was the whole damned thing a trap ?

A lock clicked, and across the floor shot a narrow line of light. O God! here they come!

There was only one thing to do. The Chinese screen was not more than two feet from the window; I dodged behind it, with a cold feeling of suffocation and dizziness. Silence. I stood there listening to the bump of my heart....

'My dear Gina,' said the voice of Galant, 'I was just beginning to wonder what had happened to you. A moment till I get the lights on.'

Footsteps on the thick rug. The scrape of a lamp chain. A barred circle of brightness sprang up on the ceiling. It hardly smudged the darkness; my screen was still entirely in shadow. Then - he still did not know? The tone of his voice was lazy, soothing, undisturbed. Wait! More footfalls, coming in my direction. His elbow knocked against the screen... .

'We'll just close this window,' he remarked. Then, lovingly: 'Here, Mariette! Here, girl! Curl up here!'

So he had the cat along with him. I heard a sort of snuffling; then the casement leaves of the window closed with a scrape and bang, and I heard the heavy catch twisted into place. Then I saw a small vertical brightness extend from the top to the bottom of my screen, at the joining of two panels. By putting my eye to it I had a view of a small segment of the room.

Gina Prevost sat with her back to me on a cushioned lounge, leaning back as though unutterably tired. The lamplight lay on her brown-gold hair, and on the black fur of an evening wrap. Two tulip glasses stood on the lamp table, and beyond them a tripod holding a champagne-cooler with the gilt foil of a bottle gleaming over it. (I could not imagine by what miracle I had failed to knock the whole thing over when I crossed the room in the dark.) Then Galant moved into my line of vision. His mask was off. On the big face was again that expression of complacency like thin oil. He touched his nose, as seemed to be a habit with him; his yellow-green eyes were full of solicitude, but his mouth seemed pleased. For a moment he stood studying her.

'You look unwell, my dear,' he murmured.

'Is it surprising?' Her voice was cold, rather monotonous; she seemed to be holding herself in. She lifted her hand with a cigarette, and a deep gust of smoke was blown across the light.

'There's a friend of yours here to-night, my dear.' 'Oh?'

'I think you'll be interested,' deprecatingly. 'Young Robiquet.'

She did not comment. He studied her again, his eyelids flickering slightly, as though he examined a safe door which would not open to the usual combination. He went on:

'We told him that one of his windows had been broken - by a cleaning-woman. The bloodstains, of course, have been cleaned up.'

A pause. Then she crushed out her cigarette, slowly, on an ash-tray.

'Etienne' - a note of command - 'Etienne, pour me a glass of champagne. And then sit down here beside me.'

He opened the bottle and poured out two glasses. All the time he was watching her, with an ugly look, as though wondering what it meant. As he sat down beside her, she turned. I saw the full lovely face, the moist pink Hps, and the sudden steady blankness of her look at him....

'Etienne, I am going to the police.'

'Ah! – About what?'

'About Odette Duchene's death. ... It came to me this afternoon. I have never had a genuine emotion in my life. No, don't interrupt! Did I ever say I loved you? I look at you now' - she surveyed him in a rather puzzled way, and it was like a lash - 'and all I can see is an unpleasant-looking man with a red nose.' All of a sudden she laughed. 'That I ever felt anything! All I ever knew was how to sing, I poured so much of emotion into that, do you hear, I was so strung up always, I conceived of everything in terms of grand passion - I was a neurotic, grabbing fool - and so. ... ' She made a gesture, spilling the champagne. 'What are you driving at?'

'And last night! Last night I saw my fearless gentleman. I went to the club to meet Claudine, and I walked into the passage when the murderer stabbed her. ... And then, Etienne?'

'Well?' His voice was rising, dangerous and hoarse.

'I was sick with fright. What else? I ran out of that club, up the boulevard - and met you coming out of your car. You were safety, support, and I threw myself at you when I could hardly stand. ... And what does my Titan of strength do when he hears?' She leaned forward, smiling fixedly. 'He puts me into his car and tells me to wait for him. Is he going back to the club to see what has happened? Is he going to shield me? - No, Etienne. He runs straight to a convenient night club, where he can sit down openly and establish an alibi for himself in case anybody questions him! And he stays there while I am lying insensible in the back of his car.'

I had disliked Galant before that. But I had not felt the surge of murderous rage which overcame me when I heard this. I had no longer any fear of discovery. To smash that nose into a deeper red pulp against his face ... there would be sheer pleasure. Evil which possesses courage you can respect, like Richard Humpback's; but this! His hard face was swelling as he turned it to her.

'What else have you to say?' he asked, with an effort.

'Don't,' she said.

Her breast was heaving, and a glassiness had crept into her eyes when she saw his big hand move up along the back of the lounge.

'Don't do it, fitienne. Let me tell you something. Just before I left the theatre to-night I sent a pneumatique to a man named Bencolin. .. .'

The enormous hand clenched, and sinews of muscle stood out on the wrist. I could not see his face, except for the working of the jaw muscles, but I felt an explosion swell and darken here....

'It contained certain information, Etienne. Just how much I won't tell you. But if anything happens to me, you'll go to the guillotine.'

A silence. Then she said huskily:

'Why, when I look back at what I thought - there was in. life. . .. And to-day I saw Odette in her coffin and remembered - and how I ragged her about being so homelike, and thought she was a damned little fool who ought to get a good waking up, and hated her for getting pleasure out of little things . . . and then the expression of her face!'

Very thoughtfully Galant nodded. His hand had relaxed.

'And so, my dear, you will tell the police. What will you tell them?'

'The truth. It was an accident.'

'I see. Mademoiselle Odette died by an accident. And your other friend, Claudine, was that an accident also?'

'You know it wasn't. You know it was deliberate murder.'

'Come, we are getting along! At least you admit that.'

Something in his voice roused her from her drugged torpor. Again her face turned; I saw the taut nostrils. She knew that he was holding threats gently, as a man shakes a whip before lashing out with it.

'Now, darling,' he went on, 'suppose you tell me. How did this "accident" occur?'

'As though - as though you didn't know! Oh, damn you! what have you got —!'

'I was not in the room at the time, as I think you will admit. This is all I can safely say: You and your good friend Mademoiselle Martel loathed the excellent Odette.

.. . Please, please, my dear, don't use your devastating stage contempt on me; the look is too dramatic. Neither of you could understand why she should want a husband and babies, and a dull cottage at Neuilly or a duller army post in the colonies. So you arranged a little reception for her here.'

'There wasn't anything in it! I tell you I'm willing to go to the police....'

He drained his glass of champagne, and then leaned over to pat her hand. She moved it away, but she was trembling.

'The moving spirit, I am willing to admit,' he said, with a magnanimous gesture, 'was Mademoiselle Martel. You were unable to get your friend Odette here on any pretext except one, which was for Mademoiselle Martel to tell her, and repeat it so frequently that she grew hysterical, a certain lie - namely, my dear, that Captain Chaumont came frequently to this club. Does she doubt it ? A shrug. She may look for herself. ... What a good joke it would be! What a taste of the real life she should get! Bring her here, ply her with wine, introduce her to some gallant later in the evening. . .. She wouldn't come here at night? The afternoon would do as well, for much champagne could be administered before night. .. .'

Gina Prevost had pressed her hands over her eyes.

'Now, I was unacquainted with the precise nature of your plan, my dear,' Galant resumed. 'As to the last I am only guessing. But your behaviour tells me much. However,' he shrugged, 'I approved the idea. I allowed you to bring her, without a key, past the guards. But what went on in that room - by the way, you used M. Robiquet's room, because you knew he was in London and could not possibly be there - what went on in that room I do not know.'

'I told you, didn't I ?'

'Please relax, my dear Gina: you are exciting yourself. Did you?'

'I don't know what your game is. I'm afraid of you. ...

It was an accident; you know it. At least, it was Claudine's fault. Odette got hysterical when we - we put her off about seeing Robert Chaumont —' 'And then?'

'And Claudine had been drinking, and all of a sudden she flared out. She told Odette not to worry: we'd get her a man as good as Chaumont. It was awful! I only intended a joke. I just wanted to see how she'd take it. But Claudine always hated her, and Claudine turned into a fury. I saw that the thing was getting past us, and I was scared. And Claudine said : "I'll shake some sense into you, you little snivelling hypocrite," and —'

She swallowed hard, looking at him wildly. 'Claudine dashed towards her. Odette jumped up across the bed to run from her, and she tripped, and - O Christ! - when I saw that glass break, and Odette's face. . . . ! We heard her hit the court down there....'

There was a terrible, gasping silence. I turned away from the screen, feeling rather sick.

'I didn't mean — ! I didn't mean — !' the girl whispered. 'But you knew. You came up and promised to take her away. You said she was dead, and that you would handle it, or we'd both go to the guillotine. Didn't you?'

'So,' Galant said meditatively, 'she died by an accident, did she? She died from falling out of the window, of a fractured skull? ... My dear, have you seen the newspapers?'

'What do you mean?'

He rose and stood looking down at her. 'Sooner or later the fall might have killed her. But as to what else went on up here! Why, you can see in the newspapers that the real cause of death was a stab through the heart, eh?'

The soft swing of his hand continued, curling back for the crack of the whip. His lips were pursed and smugness again spread round his eyes.

'The knife with which she was stabbed,’ he said, 'was not found. And no wonder. It belongs to you, I believe. If the police look, they can find it hidden in your dressing-room at the Moulin Rouge. ... Now I hope, my dear, you did not give too much information to Monsieur Bencolin?'

Knives!

Crouched there in the gloom, I dropped my eyes again, and my brain was muddled with the crazy words which I heard. Then Galant laughed. His laughter had suddenly become high and giggling and obscene, jarring the nerves. 'Don't believe me, my dear,' he urged. 'Read the papers’ A silence. I did not dare put my eye to the crack again, lest I should betray myself by fumbling and tipping it over.

She said in a low, incredulous voice: 'You - did - that'

'Now please listen to me. I feared that exactly this might happen, from the moment your good Odette fell. I feared you might lose your nerve, or get an attack of conscience, and go to the police and explain your "accident", Mademoiselle Martel, I thought (and wisely), was less unstable. You might ruin us all. However, if you were bound to silence....'

'You stabbed Odette yourself.'

'Well, well, I may have hastened her death. She wouldn't have lived more than a few hours, anyway.' He was enjoying himself, and I heard a clink as he poured out more champagne. 'Did you fancy I would rush her to the hospital, and betray everything? No, no ! The police are too eager to hang something on me as it is. Better to finish her in the courtyard. Which - between ourselves - I did. You recall, you did not see her after she fell?'

I looked out again. She sat rigid, her face away from me. Galant was frowning musingly at his glass as he swirled round its contents. Behind his complacence you could feel the cold rage. I knew instinctively that he would never forgive her for one thing, above all - for striking at his vanity. He raised veiled eyes, clear cat-yellow now.

'The knife I used is - distinctive. And the crookedness of the blade left a distinctive mark. Somehow it found its way into your dressing-room. You wouldn't find it easily. But the police could. .. . You damned little fool’ he said, trying to hold back a rush of rage, 'they'll blame you for both murders! - that is, if I give them the tip. You put your neck right under the guillotine last night when Claudine Martel was killed! Don't you realize that? And yet you have the nerve, the impudence, the damned conceit to — '

For a moment I thought he would fling the glass at her. Then with an effort he composed his swollen face, seeming a bit alarmed at his own fury.

'Ah, well, my dear . .. won't do, will it, to get upset? No. Listen, please. I took her down, after dark, and dropped her into the river from my own car. There is no shred of proof to connect me with it. But you!'

'And Claudine- - ?'

'Gina, I don't know who killed Claudine. But you are going to tell me.'

This time he did not sit down on the lounge beside her. He drew up a chair opposite, where the lamplight painted his nose in grotesque shades. He slapped his knees, and out from the shadow bounded the white cat to climb up. For a time he was silent, stroking its fur, smiling obscurely at the champagne-glass.

'Now, my dear, if your emotions are quieted, let me continue. I will tell you precisely what I want of you. In planting this evidence against you I was only covering myself in case I came under any suspicion. I must never come under any suspicion, Gina dear; they must never be able to prove one single thing against me. ... Now, at the end of a long and useful career, I am going to leave Paris.'

'Leave - Paris ?'

He chuckled. 'In short, my dear, to retire. Why not? I am a fairly wealthy man, and I was never greedy of money. For a while I did not want to depart before I had settled matters with a certain man, your friend Bencolin,' he touched his nose, 'who gave me this. It has been my ambition to keep it as - a spur. And then my success with the ladies (oh, yes, my dear; with yourself also) has been due, curiously enough, in no small degree to this disfigurement. Why is it? A blotch on a handsome face invariably attracts them.' He shrugged. 'But as for my good friend Bencolin . .. well, my dear, that prudence which you seem not to like (ah, but it's saved my hide, darling, when others are at Devil's Island), that prudence' - he had a loathsome, chuckling way of accentuating the word - 'tells me to keep away from conflict with him.'

Galant took a delight in building up intricate sentences now. Each time he said 'prudence' he would smile and glance sideways at her.

'So I am going. To England, I think. I have always fancied the life of a country gentleman. I shall write fine books by a river, in a garden full of laurels. And my nose shall be reshaped by a surgeon, and I shall become handsome again, and, alas! no woman will look at me.'

'In God's name, what are you trying to say ?'

'As you may know,' he continued, comfortably, 'I own a large - a very large - interest in this establishment. Yes. Now, I have a partner, whose identity you would probably not suspect. Of course you have seen that I have no connexion with this "manager's office? Prudence again! It is run by my partner. . . . Well, my dear, I have sold out.'

'How docs it concern me? Please — !'

'Patience.' He waved his hand gently. Then his voice changed. It became alive with a kind of weak hatred. 'I want you to know this because it concerns your whole silly, rotten tribe! Do you know what I mean? I have owned this place for a number of years. I know every member; his and her innermost affairs; every scandal, every crookedness. .. . Ah, well. And did I use this information for what you call blackmail ? Only a little. I had a bigger purpose. To publish it, Gina. To publish it, with a purely altruistic purpose. To show' - his voice rose horribly - 'to show what a lot of thieving, crawling maggots masquerade as human beings, and - -'

The man was mad. Staring at his face through the crack, I could not doubt it. Brooding? Solicitude? Snubs? An idealist unhinged, a sensitive man and brilliant man beating at a cage in his own brain? His yellow eyes seemed to be fixed exactly on my own, burning with a light behind the eyeballs, and for a moment I fancied he had seen me. The cat let out a squeal as he pinched its neck, and streaked down from his lap. That seemed to rouse him. He recovered himself, and was looking at the girl now. She had shrunk back on the lounge....

'I entertained you,’ he said slowly, 'for a year. I could get you back now, if I wanted you. Because I had travelled and because I had read, and because I knew fine phrases, you were caught. You learned a glory your poor brainless head wouldn't have dreamed of; you learned it in a cheap secondhand way. I put Catullus in a primer for you. I dragged down Petrarch to your understanding; and De Musset, and Coleridge, and the others. Do you hear ? I taught you what songs to sing, and how to sing them; I set the "Donec gratus eram tibi" to music, and put it into better French than Ronsard's, for you to act out. Great emotions, pale loves, fidelity; and now we both know what a damned sham it is, don't we? And you know what I think of - people.'

He drew a deep breath.

'Down in my safe,' he said, resuming his sardonic manner, 'there are a number of manuscripts. Sealed in envelopes, ready to be sent out to every newspaper in Paris. They are the stories of the - the People, the true stories. And they are to go out soon, after I depart.' He grinned. 'They ought to pay me for it. It will be the news of the decade, if they dare to use it. And they'll use enough.. . .'

'You're mad,' she said flatly. 'My God! I don't know what to say to you. I knew what you were. But I didn't think you were stark — '

'I regret, of course,⁵ he told her, 'that it will blow this club sky-high and nobody will dare come near it. But I am no longer interested in it financially, and I fear that it will have to be my partner's look-out. ... Now, my dear, let us be practical. There could be much news about you in that packet. On the other hand, your name need not figure at all - Gina the spotless! - if ...'

She whirled towards him. She had recovered her cool manner.

'I thought, Etienne,' she said, 'that sooner or later it would be something like this.'

' ... if you tell me who killed Claudine Martel.⁵

'A nice recital, Etienne.^’ The husky voice became tantalizing. 'Do you really think I would tell you? And, Etienne, my dear, why do you want to know? If you are going to become a respectable country gentleman —‘

'Because I think I know.'

'Well?5

'Remember that delicious word prudence. I was always cautious, my dear. Sometime in the future I may need money. And the parents of the person who I think committed the murder, they are not only proud, but immensely rich. Now tell me.. ..'

She was taking a cigarette from her handbag, coolly, and I could imagine her raised eyebrows. His big hand shot out. 'Confirm my belief, dear Gina, that the murderer is Captain Robert Chaumont.'

My knees grew weak, and I saw Galant's face as in a distorted mirror. Chaumont! Chaumont! The name could not conceivably have surprised her as much as it surprised me. But I heard her give a little gasp. During the long silence, the orchestra downstairs began to play again. I heard it muffled by the windows, faintly.

'Etienne,’ she said, laughing in a choked way, 'now I am convinced you are mad. What on earth - why — ?’

'Surely you must be aware, Gina,' he pointed out, 'knowing what you do, that this is a crime of vengeance? Vengeance for Odette Duchene. Vengeance on the young lady who caused her to fall to her death. Who would be the most likely person to inflict that vengeance? Come, now! Am I right?'

Already it had grown very hot in here. I strained against the crack in the screen, my brain lit by flashes and glimpses out of the past, where Chaumont's queer behaviour stood out. I was afraid Gina Prevost would whisper something, and I should not catch it; for the orchestra had swelled into another tango which pounded dimly against the windows. Galant stood before her, looking down.. ..

Then, almost at my feet, I became aware of a snarl. Something with fur shot brushing past my legs and whirled. Its cry rose again, inhumanly, and I saw yellow eyes.

The cat....

All motion was frozen in my body. I could not take my eye from that crack; I had first become stiff, and then limp as jelly. Galant straightened up. He stared straight across at the screen. Mariette, the cat, ran back and forth, still snarling.

'There's - somebody - behind - that screen,' Galant said. His voice was unnaturally loud.

Another pause. The room seemed to have acquired sinister creakings. Gina Prevost did not move, but her hand was lifted towards her mouth with the cigarette, and it trembled. 'There's - somebody - behind - that screen'; it still echoed, dull and hollow. On Galant's face the lamplight lay in a spangled pattern; his eyes grew large in a dead cold stare, and the lips were drawn back slowly from his teeth.

His hand suddenly flew to the inside of his coat.

'It's a damned police spy!'

'Don't move’ I said. I did not recognize my own voice. I had spoken instinctively, and the words snapped. 'Don't move, or I'll drop you. You're in the light.'

Ghastly seconds hammered in my ears. Bluff him! Bluff him, or I was through. He stared at the shadows around me, which might have concealed a pistol. His big body strained as against bonds. Now his eyes were growing crimson round the irises, with a rush of blood which filled the big veins in his forehead. Slowly his upper lip raised, to show two big front teeth. Indecision held him strangled and furious. .. .

'Up above your head!' I shouted. "High above it! Don't call out. Hurry!'

His lips writhed to spit out a word of defiance, but prudence intervened. For a second one hand trembled under the table. Then both of them were slowly raised.

'Turn around!'

He said, 'You can't get out of here, you know.'

I had come to that stage where the whole affair seemed pure, crazy exhilaration. My career might have only a few more instants to go; but in the meantime I felt like laughing, and pulses danced up and down my chest. So I stepped out from behind the screen. The grey room with its gilt panels and blue-upholstered furniture emerged in sharp colours; even the shadows had a hard outline, and I remember noting that the panels were painted to depict the loves of Aphrodite. Galant stood with his back to me and his hands raised. On the lounge Gina Prevost sat bending forward; she darted a glance at me, and in the same moment I remembered that my mask was still up on my forehead. I saw that her eyes held encouragement and triumph. She made a gesture in the air. She laughed, and the long ashes of her cigarette spilled, for she saw that I had no weapon....

I joined in her laughter. The only thing to do was to take Galant from behind and risk a rough-and-tumble before he could call out or get his hand on a weapon. I caught up a heavy chair. Galant spoke suddenly in English:

'Don't worry, Gina. They'll be here in a second. I pressed a button under that table. ... Good boys!'

The door into the hall was flung open. I stopped, with a shock at my heart. A yellow glare of light in the hallway showed white-masks, with Galant's upraised arms silhouetted against them. I saw heads above neckcloths - heads which seemed to rise from their necks, like snakes, and glassy eyes in the lamplight. There were five of those heads.

'All right, boys.' Galant said, in a low, delighted voice. 'Watch him; he's got a gun. Quietly, now! No noise. ... '

He had sprung round to face me, and his nose was like a horrible red caterpillar wriggling up his face. His shoulders were humped, his arms swung loosely, and he grinned. The blood-drum beat in my ears. The heads began to move forward, blotting the light and throwing long-necked shadows across its path. Their feet made a swishing noise on the rug. Gina Prevost was still laughing, her fists clenched. With the heavy chair in my hands, I backed towards the window. ...

Still that swishing, as though the white-masks moved on their bellies. Galant's grin grew wider. The figures loomed up still larger. Through Gina Prevost's giggling shrill laughter rose her words: 'He'll beat you yet, Etienne! He'll beat - -'

'He's got no gun. Get him!'

Against the yellow light, beady-eyed figures leapt in a surge. I swung the heavy chair and drove it against the window. The crash of glass; woodwork cracked and the lock was ripped out. Dragging back the chair, I whirled and flung it at the headmost figure. There was a gleam on the light, and a thud as a knife banged into the casement above my head. I saw it quiver there as I gripped the sill, shielded my face with my arm against broken glass, and toppled out into emptiness.

Gold air, a rushing grey blur. Then, blotting them out, bone-cracking hammers driven against my ankles. I staggered against brickwork and fell on my knees, overcome with a ghastly nausea. Get up ! Get up ! But for the moment only pain, legs that would not hold, and blindness. ...

I was trapped. They could cover the house; I couldn't get out. Sooner or later, like the inexorable closing in of that circle of masks, they would have me in a corner. All right, damn them! Give them a race! Little fun. Groggy; must have hit my head.

I started to run, limping, along the court. The main hall! There were doors here somewhere to the main hall. If I ran in there, amongst guests, they couldn't get me just yet. Run! Where's the door? Something in my eyes; must be blood. .. . White-mask ahead!

He vvas coming to me, bent low. His shoes made a spatter on the bricks as he ran. Pain was flooded out in cold fury. I drew my breath through lungs that felt stabbed; but I was no longer conscious of anything except that I hated all white-masks, I hated all apache sneers and knives that dug into your back. In the dimness I saw that he wore a checkered suit. His pale bony jaw was drawn up, and his hand flickered to his neckcloth as he leaped....

The knife whirled out, his thumb on the blade. My left fist went straight and low into his wind, and my right came up ten inches, full with the weight of arm and shoulder, to the point of his jaw. His breath spurted and died in a gurgle. I heard him go down on the bricks with a sodden flatness like bones breaking. Then I was running again. There were feet behind me Sticky wetness had thickened in my eyes. Here was a lighted door. He must have been guarding it. I reached for the knob, for now there seemed to be nothing but a warm, glutinous wetness on my forehead, my eyes and nose. I tried to dash it away, but it only thickened, and my head was ringing with explosions. The absurd thought came to me that I mustn't be sick right in the middle of these luxurious surroundings. Thud-thud, thud-thud - coming closer filling the whole court with a roar. I wrenched open a knob, fell ahead and slammed a door behind me. Going to go under in a second....

A corridor. There was music somewhere; I was safe - I must be near the main hall. The enormous pounding of my heart split the very ear-drums. I couldn't go any farther, because I couldn't see at all. Shaking, I crumpled against the wall. The whole floor swung backwards and forwards under my feet, and my legs were like rubber. I groped for my hip pocket, found a handkerchief, and fiercely swabbed my eyes. ...

The minute a light flickered in, I straightened up. More blood was pouring down - my God! how was there so much blood in the human body? - and my very shirt-front was a mess. But there had come to me in one flash where I was. I saw behind me a covered passage, without flowers; I heard behind me a murmur and the music of an orchestra. Ahead were the lights of a big room. Somebody (I could see that dimly) stood in my path, and the light made a small bright circle round the muzzle of a pistol. I had run straight into the manager's office, straight into a trap, at the rear. .. . Thud-thud, thud-thud, muffled now, but still closing in. .. .

Desperately I brushed the handkerchief across my eyes, swabbed my forehead, and tried to straighten up. Rush the pistol ahead ? Yes; might as well go down taking a crack at somebody.

Into my dim sight swam a figure I could not understand. The figure with the weapon was a woman. A woman in a flame-coloured dress. She stood in the middle of a room hung with rugs. Her dark eyes were steady and wide open. I heard a dim tumult behind me; I heard somebody hammering at a door, which I must instinctively have locked behind me. This woman! - it flashed over me now - Galant's partner, the new owner of the club. ... The surge of hope, the sudden realization of a way out, steadied my buzzing wits. My sight seemed to clear, and a new breath rushed cold into my lungs. I took a step forward.

'Don't move!' said the woman. I recognized that voice. .. .

'I do not think,' I said, steadily - 'I do not think that you will betray me, Mademoiselle Augustin.'

Our Sybarite Scrub-lady

Even then I could not help marvelling at the change in her. Seeing Marie Augustin at a distance, I should not have recognized her at all. The girl in dowdy black, with the shiny face and dull hair; and then this vivid woman! I was conscious only of the flame-coloured gown, and of her white, glossy shoulders above it. I found myself speaking to the gown, speaking swiftly. The gown; the ticket-booth at the waxworks, as though I faced her there and desperately sought admittance without money.. . .

'There's no time to argue!' I said. 'They'll be here in a moment. You're going to hide me. I -I - -'

Just behind me was a door with a glass panel, through which I could see the dark passage to the great hall; and now I thought I could see white-masks pushing their way through this hall as well as hammering on the court door to the passage. . .. To my astonishment, Marie Augustin came sweeping forwards. She drew a dark velvet curtain over the glass panel, and shot the bolt in the door.

She had not asked why. I had a good reason, though. I mumbled:

'There's information. ... I can give you information about Galant. He's going to sell you and wreck the club . .. and...'

Now I had discovered the cut in my forehead. My head must have smashed partly against the brick wall when I dropped. Pressing my handkerchief over it, I discovered that Marie Augustin was standing beside me staring up into my face. It was impossible to see her distinctly. It seemed impossible to talk. She still covered my heart with that bright ring from the gun-muzzle. There was a sharp rattling knock on the glass; a hand twisted the knob. Marie Augustin spoke.

'This way’ she said.

Somebody was leading me by the hand. When I have tried to recall that scene later, I have only hazy flashes, like the recollection of a drunken man. Soft carpets and bright light. Fierce hammering on glass behind me, and voice upraised. Then a black, gleaming door opened somewhere, and darkness. I seemed to be pushed down on something soft.

When next I opened my eyes, I knew I had lost consciousness for some time. (It was, as a matter of fact, less than ten minutes.) My face felt gratefully cold, wet, and free from stickiness; but light was painful to the eyeballs and an edifice of stone had been erected on my forehead. My hand, moving up, found bandages.

I was half reclining on a chaise-longue. At its foot Marie Augustin sat quietly, fingering the weapon, looking at me. In some fantastic way pursuit seemed (momentarily, at least) baffled. I lay quietly, trying to accustom my eyes to the light; so I studied her. The same long face. The same black-brown eyes and hair. But now she was almost beautiful. I remembered that fancy I had had last night in the waxworks: how, removed from ticket-booths and horsehair sofas, this girl would take on a hard grace and poise. Her hair was parted, drawn back behind the ears, and glossy under the lights; her shoulders were old ivory; I found I was looking at changing, luminous eyes which had lost their hard snapping....

'Why did you do it?' I said.

She started. Again that sense of secret communion. She tightened her lips, and replied in a monotonous voice :

^;It ought to be stitched up. I've used sticking-plaster and bandages.'

'Why did you do it ?'

Her finger tightened round the trigger of the pistol. 'For the moment, I grant you, I told them you were not here. That - that was my office, and they believed me. Let me remind you, though, that they are still looking for you and I have you under my thumb. A word from me . . . ' The eyes grew hard again. 'I told you I liked you. But if I discover you are here for the purpose of hurting this place, or trying to wreck it...'

She paused. She seemed to be gifted with an endless patience.

'Now, then, monsieur. If you can account for your presence in any legitimate way, I shall be pleased to believe you. If not, I can always press the bell for my attendants. Meantime . . .'

I tried to sit up, discovered that my head throbbed painfully, and relaxed again. I looked round at a large room, a woman's room, decorated in black and gold Japanese lacquer, over which bronze lamps threw a subdued light. Black velvet curtains were drawn at the windows, and the air was heavy with wistaria incense. Following the direction of my glance, she said:

'We are in my own private room, adjoining the office. They cannot get in - unless I summon them. Now, then, monsieur!'

'Your old style of speech, Mademoiselle Augustin,' I said, gently, 'does not fit your new role. And in your new role you are beautiful.'

She spoke harshly: 'Please do not think that flattery - - '

'Let me assure you I think nothing of the kind. If I wanted to win your regard, I should insult you; you would like me better. Wouldn't you? On the contrary, I have the whip hand over you'

I regarded her casually, trying to seem disinterested. She saw me fumbling in my pocket after cigarettes, and with a curt nod indicated a lacquer box on a tabouret at my elbow.

'Explain what you mean, monsieur.'

'I can save you from bankruptcy. That would please you more than anything in the world, wouldn't it?'

Colour burnt under her brilliant eyes. 'Be careful!' she snapped.