“What are you doing so far away from home?” the latter asked them.
The careless question seemed to produce some embarrassment.
“In the afternoons and evenings sometimes we visit here,” the woman explained. “Business at the Vistaero is always in the morning. When the sun goes behind the hill, the visitors shiver.”
“But are there any visitors here?” Roger asked, looking around him in surprise. “And what is all that building at the back?”
“There are people who call here for tea and an apéritif,” the woman explained. “They have built an hotel there. It is connected with the café.”
“An hotel up here?” Roger repeated. “What an idea. Jeannine, would you like some tea?”
“Must it be tea?” she asked. “I should like an orangeade and I should like your strange friends to sing to me—a Neapolitan song if possible.”
They descended from the car. Roger pushed open the door to summon a waiter. To his surprise, the place was fitted up in the most modern and tasteful fashion. A white-jacketed barman stood on the other side of a polished counter. A man whom Roger recognised with astonishment was seated upon a stool, talking to him. The latter swung around at Roger’s exclamation.
“Hello, Thornton!”
“Hello, Sloane! What are you doing up here?”
“Just what I was going to ask you,” was the smiling reply. “I’m driving a friend back to Monte Carlo and the look of this place rather intrigued me. Can I have two orangeades outside, please,” he went on to the barman.
“Certainly, sir,” the man replied civilly, but without enthusiasm.
“Seems very smart here for an out-of-the-way place,” Roger remarked, looking around. “Tremendous lot of men at work, too, round at the back.”
Thornton nodded carelessly.
“The hotel’s rather a hobby of a rich Niçois, I’m told. Shouldn’t think it will ever pay. By the by, when could I have a few words with you to-night?”
“Not at all, unless it’s really urgent. I’m dining with the tennis people at Cannes and I shall stay on until pretty late. What about luncheon to-morrow?”
Thornton nodded.
“That’ll do,” he agreed. “Meet you in the hotel bar just before one.”
“That’s a date.”
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” Roger asked the barman, as the latter served his order.
The man, sturdily built, middle-aged and with the curiously inscrutable expression of his class, smiled faintly.
“Very likely, Mr. Sloane,” he assented. “I know you quite well. I was at the Racquet Club in New York for five, and at the Manhattan Club for ten years. Since then, I’ve been at Le Touquet and the Ritz.”
“Of course! You’re Sam,” Roger exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing in an out-of-the-way place like this?”
“I received a good offer,” the man confided. “The place will grow some day, sure. Wonderful air up here.”
Roger pointed to the two musicians.
“Serve Monsieur and Madame with what they desire,” he directed. “And, by the by, ask the gentleman inside if he would like a lift down.”
“The gentleman came in his own car. He pushed it through the gate at the back.”
“I see,” Roger murmured thoughtfully.
Wine was brought to the two musicians, toasts were exchanged and a song. In the midst of it a large automobile turned off the main road and came to a standstill in front of the café—a powerful Voisin, but hideously painted in a violent shade of lilac. A fat little man descended from it, a man who wore tight, glossy clothes, over-elaborate linen and a beflowered tie. He wore gloves, he was smoking a cigar and he carried a cane. His thick lips pursed themselves into a whistle as he recognised Jeannine. He took off his hat with a sweeping bow.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Jeannine,” he said.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Viotti,” she answered coldly.
The newcomer looked across at Roger and seemed about to attempt some sort of greeting. Roger’s eyes met his, however, stonily. The two musicians made obeisance. The ex-Mayor of La Bastide passed on into the bar.
“C’est le patron,” the woman musician confided.
Jeannine set down her glass.
“Let us go,” she whispered.
As they dropped down the hill, Roger looked at his companion curiously.
“You are still afraid of Monsieur Viotti,” he observed.
“I shall be afraid of him until my dying day,” she confessed.
He held out his hand and for once she yielded hers quickly, almost impulsively.
“Promise me,” she begged, “that if ever you have anything to do with him, you will remember that he is bad and you will be careful.”
He had the intention of answering differently but he was suddenly aware of the almost passionate appeal in her eyes. It was the child again who was afraid.
“I promise,” he said simply.
CHAPTER VII
Roger lunched with Thornton the next day and a very angry man he discovered his host to be.
“I am strongly inclined,” the latter declared, “to go back to London this afternoon. No sort of vacation here is likely to do me any good.”
“Just what do you mean?” Roger asked.
“Mine,” Thornton explained, “is one of those professions that get into your blood. If there are things stirring around you, up goes your nose to the breeze and you smell ‘em out. You can’t help it. We are being made fools of down here, Sloane.”
“In what way?”
“Well, that Crowley confession, for one thing. It’s a faked business from beginning to end. The man was a perfectly harmless person who loved his life of adventure. He had kept his log for the last six months and the one place he had never been near was the United States of America. He had heaps of letters in his locker—all from people of a most respectable class in England.”
“But surely you don’t suspect the Monaco police of forging his confession and planting four hundred thousand francs in his locker just to save their own faces? Isn’t that just a little thick?”
“I don’t suspect anything of the sort,” Thornton rejoined. “Of course not. What I do complain about is that the Monaco police were only too pleased to get hold of the confession and they didn’t take the trouble to verify it. It suited them to have it accepted as a genuine affair and so they accepted it as such.”
“What is your idea, then?”
“I believe that this man, Crowley, poor devil, was murdered by the same people who murdered Luke Cheyne and that the confession was a faked document written by the murderer.”
“What are you going to do about that?” Roger asked.
Thornton waited for a few moments while the principal dish of their luncheon was served. The restaurant was crowded,