Roger was almost inclined to laugh. Bradley, like many other men of real power and genius, was terribly impatient of any form of control. To think of him as prisoner on his own boat for fear of getting a bullet through his lungs was quaint.
“I can’t telephone,” Bradley went on. “All the company can say is that the line’s been disturbed. The devils have cut it! Here I am a prisoner allowed to leave at a quarter to seven on sufferance and carry my ransom money myself in broad daylight to some disreputable café!”
“I wonder who told them that you had that exact sum in plaques in your hand the other night,” Erskine meditated. “There were barely half a dozen of us in the room.”
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself,” Bradley replied. “There’s some one in this gang connected with either the Sporting Club or the Casino. No doubt about that. We could almost have counted the people in the bar. As you say, I don’t believe there were more than half a dozen, and they’ve got the exact amount. Don’t forget, either, that they knew exactly the minute that Luke Cheyne left the Sporting Club that night and that he’d taken his money with him.”
“Well, what do you want us to do about this?” Roger asked. “Terence Brown, I’m sure, would join in; there’s Savonarilda—a lazy sort of fellow but a deadly shot—and Erskine and myself. We’re ready to take any risk you like. We’ll sit round in the Café Regent till some one claims those notes, if you say so, or we’ll think out something more subtle.”
“You won’t do a damn thing,” Bradley insisted. “You are to keep right away from the Café Regent at seven o’clock. I shall deliver the notes and then consider the whole affair. Whether I shall send the police up there afterwards or not, I don’t know. Just at present, it doesn’t seem to me to be worth the risk.”
“Very well,” Roger agreed, “we won’t interfere. I tell you what you might do, though; come in to the Hôtel de Paris bar on your way down afterwards. You may have been able to pick up an idea.”
“I’ll do that,” Bradley promised. “All the same, I’ll tell you frankly—you needn’t go spreading it about—that I’ve got the wind up. I feel rather inclined to beat it out at midnight. There’s an air about the place this season that I don’t like. If a really ugly crowd got together here, there wouldn’t be anything to stop them. Have a drink, you fellows, before you go.”
The young men refused and presently took their leave. The taxicab was still waiting on the quay but Roger fancied that the chauffeur looked curiously at him as he took his place inside. They drove off, however, quite uneventfully. The only people in sight were a few newcomers fishing in the harbour waters and one gendarme at the corner, perambulating a brief space of the dock. Yet, Roger had a feeling all the time that they were being watched, the most profound conviction that if there had been a note for the chief of the police in his pocket he would have felt the whistle of a bullet through the window. Something of the sort he confided to his companion. Erskine only laughed at him.
“Your condition, my dear Roger,” the latter declared, “proves to me that it’s time you started writing again. Your imagination is brimming over. You need the typewriter to take care of some of it. Maybe you think our plump friend there on the sea wall with the carnation in his buttonhole is watching us with murderous intent.”
“I shouldn’t be in the least surprised,” Roger replied calmly. “If you look at him again, you’ll see who it is. Whatever he’s doing here, I’ll bet it’s no good.”
Erskine recognised the saunterer with a little gasp.
“It’s the Mayor of La Bastide!” he exclaimed.
“It is,” Roger agreed, “and you may take my word for it that the ex-Mayor of La Bastide, whatever he’s up to in life just now, is a very bad man.”
CHAPTER VIII
Outside the famous establishment of Prétat, on his way up from the quay, Roger saw his aunt’s car waiting. He took leave of Erskine, who was on his way to the tennis courts, entered the establishment, and in response to her gestured invitation slipped into a chair by Lady Julia’s side.
“Frocks?” he asked.
“Just the usual mannequin show. I come for half an hour most afternoons. It does me good to watch Jeannine.”
“That child seems to have fascinated you,” he observed.
“She is no child. To me she is ageless. As a matter of fact, as far as she can tell, she is eighteen years old.”
Roger was conscious of a queer, internal disturbance. It seemed incredible to him to reflect that she had actually been on the threshold of womanhood when he had first seen her sprawling in the boughs of an orange tree making fun of him with the true gamine’s love of mockery. It was more bewildering still to recall that same night when he had seen her waiting patiently on the hard seat outside his room.
“I should have thought she would have been too young for this job, anyway,” he muttered.
“Jeannine has an abnormal intelligence,” his aunt pronounced. “At the rate she is educating herself and developing her mental outlook, she will be a very clever woman before she is twenty. Can you tell me—you have written some queer short stories and profess to understand something of life—can you tell me how a girl brought up in a hill village amongst peasants, climbing trees to pick blossoms for the scent factories, learnt to be so magnificently devoid of all self-consciousness?”
Jeannine was passing down the room towards them now, showing off an afternoon gown to some newcomers. There was none of the gesturing or posturing of the ordinary mannequin about her deliberate movements. She looked once or twice, as she passed before them, at the girl on whose account she was wearing the frock; otherwise it was clear that no one else, not even her patroness, existed. Monsieur Prétat, who had paused to pay his respects to Lady Julia, watched his employee for a moment thoughtfully.
“That girl,” he confided, “is either one of the greatest artists at repression or she is the most perfect mannequin in the world.”
“She is much too good to remain a mannequin,” Lady Julia declared. “You will lose her some day.”
Monsieur Prétat frowned.
“I hope your Ladyship won’t encourage her to do anything foolish,” he said. “I pay her already a high salary but I would pay her more than any other mannequin in the world sooner than lose her.”
Lady Julia raised her lorgnettes.
“She’s nothing extraordinary to look at,” she remarked thoughtfully.
Monsieur Prétat shrugged his shoulders.
“None of the women who have turned the heads of the world have been very wonderful to look at,” he reminded Lady Julia, as he obeyed the summons of another patron.
“Prétat knows what he’s talking about,” Roger remarked, rising to his feet.
“Why are you so restless?” his aunt asked.
Roger muttered something about an appointment. He knew very well why he was restless. Lady Julia looked at him keenly. Perhaps she too guessed.
“I will come with you,” she decided. “There is nothing I can afford to buy to-day. The sooner that girl gets a lover or a husband,” she added, “the better.”
Precisely at quarter past seven that evening Bradley descended from a petite voiture and entered the bar of the Hôtel de Paris.