The chief steward and captain met Roger and Thornton as they hurried on deck. Both were as incoherent as even brave men can be at times.
“His Lordship, sir,” the captain stammered.
“He’s been shot!” the steward gasped. “Shot by some one from a motor boat without any lights.”
“Send for a doctor,” Roger ordered. “Tell them to telephone from the deck. Any doctor—the nearest.”
“My boy has gone already, sir,” the captain replied. “He climbed on to the Maria alongside to save a few seconds. It won’t be any use, though. You can look if you want to.”
They pushed their way through the awed little group of men, and Roger, summoning all his fortitude, went down on his knees. A single glance, however, was sufficient. The fatal red spot told its own story. The bullet from the night had found its way to Bradley’s heart.
CHAPTER IX
Paul Viotti tapped with his fingers upon the table and the little company of men who were seated around it abandoned their whispered conversation and leaned forward.
“Pierre arrives,” Viotti announced. “I heard the three honks of his horn as he turned the corner. Soon we shall have news.”
The room in which they were seated was a room of silence. There was no clanging of bells from an overhead railway, no shriek of sirens from the river, none of that breathless undernote of sound which broods over a great city. Even the mistral, which was blowing outside, was unheard, for there were no windows to catch the flying leaves, or chimneys to imprison and distort the whistle of the mountain wind. Yet the room itself had a queer sort of charm. The walls, left the natural white of rough plaster, were covered with sketches, crudely executed but with the brain of a master behind their bold conception. One, of an old galleon, occupied the whole of the end wall of the room, the sails of flaming red and the sea an indigo blue. A companion picture occupied the opposite wall but this one was broken by an arch enclosing an iron door. Two electric fans were turning noiselessly, rugs were spread upon the floor and luxurious easy-chairs with deep crimson cushions gave the place an air of almost fantastic luxury. Paul Viotti sat at the head of the table with Marcus Constantine on his left. Tom Meredith, Matthew Drane and Edward Staines were all in evidence. It seemed odd that in a country where restrictions were removed and the liquor and wine were of the best there were neither bottles nor decanters to be seen, nor was any one drinking.
There was a faint sound like a single beat upon a silver gong, a blue light flashed out in the wall opposite the place where Paul Viotti was seated. He pressed something with his foot under the heavy carpet. It was at once extinguished. Marcus Constantine rose to his feet, lounged across the room and withdrew the bolts of the door. A moment afterwards it swung back on its well-oiled hinges and Monsieur Pierre Viotti, ex-Mayor of La Bastide, swaggered in. Greetings were exchanged, the door was once more secured and Pierre Viotti seated himself with the others.
“The news,” he announced, “is good.”
His brother rubbed his hands together.
“It is always encouraging to hear that,” he said, with a slow smile. “We make no mistakes. Our enterprises are all shielded, but one likes to know that miracles have not happened.”
“These are the days,” Pierre Viotti declared, “of brains and common sense and not of miracles.”
“Continue then, my worthy brother,” Paul enjoined him.
“Twenty kilometres from land the speed boat from Monaco Harbour in the blackness of night almost collided with a fishing boat from Nice. It was a triumph of navigation that, for there were no lights. The two men from the motor boat boarded the fishing smack. In ten minutes they were wearing the clothes and boots of the pêcheurs Niçois. The motor boat, less its engines, was scuttled. A loss, but what would you have? The depth charge went off inside and before it had sunk a couple of feet nothing was left but fragments. Our two friends, whom you know of, are by this time in Corsica. The fishing there too is good.”
“And our young friend, the jeweller’s son?” his brother asked.
“He is back in Marseilles,” the other announced. “He has a post as gigolo at the Café of the Seven Sisters, but he pines for other work.”
“He did his job well,” Edward Staines observed. “For a young man of his type he possesses nerve.”
“What about the notes?” Tom Meredith demanded.
Matthew Drane drew a handful from his pocket and passed one across the table. Every one examined it. There were no signs of a white dot.
“The notes have been washed in simple acid,” Paul Viotti confided. “There remains not the slightest trace of the English lord’s folly. To-night they go into the treasury.”
“Talking of the treasury,” Marcus Constantine drawled, “would this, I wonder, be an appropriate moment—”
“But when do you ever talk about anything,” Paul Viotti interrupted angrily, “except money? It is always the same, and Matthew is nearly as bad. Money! Bah! Is there nothing else in the world? We speak of that presently. But listen now to what other news there is my brother brings us. Are you sap-headed, you others, or had you forgotten that this is the day our good friend Louis Lavalle of Nice is to find shelter here with his little lady friend? There may be work to do before we can place him in safety. There may be even a little trouble. The division is always a delicate matter. Let us hear what my brother has to say.”
“It is the best news which I have kept till the last,” Pierre Viotti declared. “Everything has gone like the striking of a clock. Barely an hour ago Louis Lavalle sat in his place like an emperor. Five, ten, fifteen mille—what did it matter? They were all paid. The box must be replenished. Behold Louis on his way to the head cashier. Behold him return and linger to speak for a minute with pretty Marie Louise, the ladies’ vestiaire. Louis Lavalle and Marie Louise are drinking a glass of champagne together at the present moment in Number Fourteen.”
There was that gleam in Paul Viotti’s eyes from which alone one knew that he was either a very wicked or a very greedy man.
“How much?” he asked softly.
“One million, four hundred thousand francs,” the rentier from La Bastide said unctuously. “It is money that, yes? For ten days I have rehearsed that simple walk along the Casino and down the passage. It was an affair of clockwork. There is no one there who could say how or when Louise slipped from behind her counter. There is no one there who can say which way Louis Lavalle turned when he left the Casino. Yet there they sit, drinking champagne at the expense of my hotel, and they are where no one in all Nice will dream of looking for them.”
Marcus Constantine was playing with his underlip and looking speculatively at Paul Viotti.
“How much of that one million, four hundred thousand francs, dear Chief,” he asked, “would it seem to you fair that Louis Lavalle, the elderly cashier, should leave behind him?”
“It seems to me,” Matthew Drane murmured, “that with too large a sum, an elderly man and a young girl might easily get into trouble.”
Little furrows of mirth broke up the smoothness of Paul Viotti’s face. It would not be too much to say that he grinned.
“We must take care of Louis