“Indeed I will not,” she objected. “My orders are to wear this costume for the day without a coat. You observe, however, that I have a little cape on my arm. If I am cold coming back, I will sit nearer to you, and I must be home by eight. We have no show this afternoon but at ten o’clock we exhibit evening frocks at the Hôtel de Paris.”
“What a life of slavery,” he murmured, as they turned upward towards the Corniche.
“It must seem so in comparison with yours.”
“You have grown nimbler of tongue lately, little one,” Roger told her.
“It is not that I have much practice,” she sighed. “Madame Vinay speaks but seldom and then generally to grumble. Your aunt, who is always kind, is too witty for me and she speaks so much in English, which is different. And you—you are always with the grave Monsieur Thornton or the frivolous Lord Erskine or playing your games of golf or tennis.”
“On the contrary, I am a working man,” Roger assured her. “Only just now—”
“Oh, la, la,” she interrupted, laughing gaily. “You are a working man—yes. How much since you returned to Monte Carlo?”
“Not much,” he confessed. “Half a story, one article and two verses.”
“People are saying,” she went on, throwing her hat on to a vacant seat and leaning forward to look down at the gradually unfolding panorama, “that strange things are happening in Monte Carlo.”
“They wouldn’t be far out, either,” he observed.
“They say that strange people are moving about undiscovered. Certainly there have been tragedies. Has it always been like this?”
“Not quite.”
“A man murdered in the Sporting Club,” she meditated. “Another in the harbour—or was it a suicide? A great English milord shot upon his yacht. There must be wicked people about, Monsieur Roger.”
“There certainly are,” he agreed.
“But amongst them all,” she went on, in a graver tone, “there does not live a man so wicked as one whom you and I both know.”
“Viotti—the ex-Mayor of La Bastide!” he exclaimed.
She acquiesced silently. Roger glanced towards her with a smile upon his lips.
“My dear,” he protested, “Viotti is little better than a peasant. They say that he has come into a great fortune, or has a millionaire brother or something, but what can that do for him? The man is a jest.”
She did not smile. She was, on the contrary, looking very serious indeed.
“Monsieur Roger,” she said, “that is a man so wicked that he would be capable of anything and if you think that he has not brains, you are wrong.”
“What do you know about him?” Roger asked.
She did not answer for a moment. He repeated the question.
“I do not wish for trouble,” she said, “and you, Monsieur Roger, you are the kindest person I ever knew, but you have the temper of a Lucifer! I am glad that you have,” she added, a little recklessly, “for the most wonderful memory I ever carry with me is the memory of one moment when there was a flame in your eyes and I was saved.”
“Oh, that,” Roger scoffed, “that was nothing. I was angry, of course. I hate brutality—but those days have gone.”
“There is a portion of them which remains,” she said calmly. “We live our lives in different places but the brute still lives in Monsieur Viotti and sometimes the fear remains with me.”
“He has not dared to molest you?”
She laid her fingers softly upon her companion’s arm.
“What he does is within the conventions,” she declared. “There is nothing that any one can do about it. He speaks to and visits Madame Vinay. He has offered her presents. He wishes, he says, to see me with her to make friends, to speak of the past. That is useless. I could have no friendship for Monsieur Viotti.”
“Presumptuous brute!” Roger muttered.
“Again I tell you something,” Jeannine went on. “I wish for no friends amongst the young ladies at the magasin, but one there is who is all the time offering me invitations and civilities of every sort. She and the young man she calls her ‘boy’ took me for a motor drive on Sunday. We stayed for an apéritif at that new hotel between us and Eze, near where the croupier was found at the bottom of the gorge. Monsieur Viotti was there at the bar alone. It appeared that he knew my friends and he invited us to luncheon in a salon there. My friends were angry with me that I refused but I went and sat outside and would accept nothing. You would not understand, but I have a great fear of that man, Monsieur Roger, and when you speak of these people who move about underground in Monte Carlo, to whom murder is nothing, then I think of him! I believe that he is one of them.”
Roger shook his head.
“Swear, Jeannine,” he begged, “that if he ever addresses or annoys you in any way, you will come to me.”
“Whom else have I to go to?”
“Then put him out of your thoughts,” Roger insisted. “The man is nothing but a peasant dressed up like a popinjay. He has not the brains to be anything more vicious than a village bully.”
Nevertheless, Roger looked with more curiosity than ever before at Pierre Viotti, ex-Mayor of La Bastide, when on entering the bar of the afternoon cabaret at the Casino they saw him seated on a high stool, talking earnestly to two young men who, from the extravagance of their costume, their patent shoes and purple socks, were apparently gigolos. Roger and Jeannine sank into easy-chairs which gave them a view of the show. Roger ordered a cocktail for himself, an orange juice for Jeannine and tried to look at Monsieur Viotti with new and more critically apprizing eyes. He was dressed, as he always seemed to be, in a suit which was apparently brand-new and which was cut, as all his clothes were, a little closely to his rotund, but athletic body. His cravat was florid, his shirt and collar were of French design, but passable, his hair was smoothly brushed and the man himself curled and perfumed. His cheeks retained some of the sunburn of the fields. They were pudgy, brick red in hue and his eyes—restless, glittering eyes they were—were nevertheless of good colour and full of fire. He was stout but agile. His chin was a little pointed. There was a roll of fat at the back of his neck which should have been a warning to him, otherwise he seemed like a man of vigour. He talked with many gestures but he appeared to talk with effect. Roger glanced at the two young men who were leaning towards him and it seemed to him that there was an expression in their faces as of men who listened because they had to—men who were compelled to stay just where they were and to answer as they were supposed to answer. Roger admitted the fact with reluctance, but there was no doubt about it that those few minutes’ contemplation of the man considerably changed his ideas. It was absurd to imagine that he should be one of the disorganising forces of the Principality but, on the other hand, there was something about him, beyond the pompous self-sufficiency of the suddenly enriched peasant. With all his newly acquired wealth, he was not letting himself run to seed. He was still living a life of a sort.
“Shall we dance?” Roger asked Jeannine, as the orchestra started up with a particularly promising tune.
She glanced at him with an air of surprise. Nevertheless, she rose promptly to her feet. It was just then that Monsieur Viotti, having dismissed his two companions, swung a little farther around on his stool and saw them. He was holding the rail of the bar with one hand and his glass in the other, his dark restless eyes were for an instant set in a swift and vicious stare. More than ever Roger was inclined to lean towards Jeannine’s judgment. There was evil in this man and underneath some, at any rate,