“Did they tumble to it at all?”
“They did not. I wasn’t any too popular before but this time they practically turned me out. They don’t want foreigners upsetting their people and they certainly don’t want to foster the idea that there are dangerous criminals at work in the Principality.”
“That’s the Casino influence!”
“I told them I should appeal to—well, to a certain person who shall be nameless, and I was met with a shrug of the shoulders, a whiff of cigarette smoke and a polite gesture towards the door.”
Roger rose to greet a passing acquaintance and the conversation was interrupted for several moments. When he sat down again, he remembered the question he had been intending to ask Thornton.
“What were you doing up at that strange café yesterday?” he enquired.
“Nothing of any consequence,” was the brief reply. “I must confess that this affair is bothering me. The supposed suicide’s letter is to be published in the Monegasque and Nice evening papers. The Luke Cheyne murder is considered solved. Meanwhile, the next affair is brewing and we can do nothing to stop it.”
“Have you any suspicions at all?” Roger asked.
“No sane ones. If only the Monegasque people would throw overboard this Crowley business, even for a few days, and start the Luke Cheyne official enquiries again from the very beginning, we might have a chance. Now all we know is that there is a dangerous gang at work in whose existence the police profess, at any rate, to absolutely disbelieve. They, on the other hand, can get at us at any time they want, if they think we are dangerous. By the by, has Prince Savonarilda or Terence Brown or any of you got any influence up at the Palace?”
“None whatever.”
“There’s nothing to be done then except to deal with these wooden-headed officials,” Thornton remarked, with a touch of irritability.
“They are not wooden-headed,” Roger protested. “They are playing their own game. It is not ours, but that can’t be helped. They have got out of this Luke Cheyne murder and they want to stay out. Well, I don’t blame them. Catching criminals is not their business. Keeping Monaco free from them is. You don’t happen to have seen Bradley this morning?”
“Not a sign of him,” Thornton answered. “I was up at the Royalty and he wasn’t there.”
“He promised to come down to the tennis but he never turned up. I meant to ask him to stay to lunch and hear what you had to say.”
The page boy from outside approached the table and handed a note to Sloane. On the back of the envelope was printed the name of Bradley’s yacht. Roger tore it open. Its contents were insignificant but somehow or other the substance of it was intriguing.
My dear Sloane,
If this reaches you in time, will you lunch with me? If it does not, will you come as soon as you can afterwards. Bring Erskine along if you care to, and keep your eyes open on the quay.
Sincerely,
BRADLEY.
“That looks as though something fresh were being started,” Thornton reflected, “In his own handwriting, I see. Not too steady, either. I should say that note was written by a man who was in a funk. I thought Bradley was a man without any nerves.”
“No millionaire likes even the suggestion of danger,” Roger observed, a little cynically. “It seems to him perfectly reasonable that a man in moderate circumstances should be wiped out. Not a tragedy at all, really. But a millionaire—a man who is able to wield the greatest power in the world—to be launched into eternity by the same bullet that would destroy a mendicant doesn’t seem right somehow. Oh, I quite sympathise with Bradley.”
“Go along and see what he wants, then, as soon as you can pick up Erskine,” Thornton begged. “I will stay in for a couple of hours. If the man were not an idiot, he would have asked me to come instead of young Erskine.”
“I’ll risk taking you, if you like,” Roger suggested.
“No, thanks,” was the terse reply. “I don’t fancy Bradley has much of an opinion of me, anyway, and I won’t run the risk of offending him. All the same, if there’s anything doing that looks like linking up, get back as quick as you can.”
Roger refused to indulge in his favorite penchant for riding in a voiture à cheval, neither did he send for his own car or allow Erskine to do so. He ensconced himself in the corner of a taxicab from which he scanned every corner of the quay as he made his way along it. He noticed no suspicious persons of any sort. The few men who were about appeared to have business and to be attending to it. At the gangway of the White Lady, as Bradley’s yacht was called, were four sailors, one of whom took the cards of the two young men before they were permitted to pass along. Bradley, instead of being seated on deck as usual, was lounging rather disconsolately in the smoking saloon.
“Glad you’ve come, Sloane, and you Erskine,” he greeted them. “See many loiterers on the quay?”
“Not a soul,” Roger replied. “The few people who were there seemed to have jobs.”
Bradley handed across a letter. It was typed on notepaper of good quality and apparently upon an excellent machine.
To the Right Honorable Lord Bradley,
S.Y. “White Lady.”
Milord,
We can find a use for those six hundred thousand francs you were flashing about in the Sporting Club the other night. You had better make a parcel of them and leave them in mille notes at the Café Regent at Beausoleil this evening, addressed to Monsieur Monet.
Now, read the rest of this communication carefully. If you attempt to communicate with the police, or if you fail to send the notes, or if you endeavour to have the recipient watched, you will be a dead man before midnight. You can take our word for it that these threats can easily be carried out. Adopt your own counsel to others and be a philosopher. Say to yourself that the life of the great Lord Bradley is worth more to the British public than six hundred thousand francs.
“Pretty cool,” Roger remarked, as he passed it back.
“Almost insolent,” Erskine agreed, “but intensely interesting.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Roger asked.
“I’m going to pay,” was the terse reply. “I’ve thought it over carefully and I’ve decided to part with the money.”
Bradley, for a famous man and a man who had spoken vociferously in the Sporting Club during the last four nights on the subject of crime, appeared somewhat sheepish. Roger’s expression was imperturbable but Erskine was plainly surprised.
“It’s all very well,” Bradley defended himself irritably, “but after all, what’s the use of running any risks for a sum I could give away for a tip to a maître d’hôtel if I wanted to? If I felt certain that this was a dangerous gang at work, if I felt certain even that they were the same gang that murdered poor Luke Cheyne, it might be worth while risking something for the sake of routing them out.”
“My belief is that it is the same gang,” Roger declared gravely.
“How can it be?” Bradley expostulated. “The man who murdered Luke Cheyne was an eccentric fellow named Crowley who has drowned himself in the harbour and left a confession behind him.”
“Thornton and I have both come to the conclusion,” Roger pronounced, “that the confession was a fake and the suicide a murder, probably by the same gang.”
“You’re not serious!” Bradley gasped.
“Come and talk to Thornton and you’ll