In the end he acted without premeditation, without common sense and without reason. He stole down to the door of the bar and hammered on it with the butt of his revolver. When he had finished, the silence appeared to be more intense than ever. All the time, though, it seemed to him that he was subconsciously aware of a world of listeners. Then a door slammed inside. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs, heard them coming along the narrow passage between the bar and the hotel. A second light flashed up inside the room. A man approached the other side of the door which at first he showed no signs of opening.
“Who’s out there at this time of night making that hell of a noise? What do you want?”
“A drink,” Roger answered, and he was astonished to realise how steady his voice sounded. “I need a drink. Sorry if you’d gone to bed, but now you’re up, you’d better give me one.”
The door was jerked open. His friend, the barman, stood there fully dressed but with tousled hair and blinking red eyes. He looked at his visitor in the blankest astonishment.
“What the hell are you doing round here again?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what it is,” Roger replied. “Something in the air, I suppose, but directly I get within fifty yards of your bar I’m thirsty.”
The man held open the door. Roger noticed that his right hand had disappeared so he stole a march on him. He flashed out his own automatic.
“I’m not here for trouble, Sam,” he said. “I don’t like the way your hand is stealing around to your hip pocket. Up with them! I’d like to have a look at that diamond ring.”
The man grinned and threw them both up.
“Come in and have your drink,” he whispered. “If you make a noise, I promise you this—you’ll sleep so hard that you won’t wake in the morning. You shall have your drink, all right. That is to say if no one butts in. If they do, you’re a goner. What you come nosing around for all the time, God Almighty knows, but there’s trouble here for any one that wants it.”
He crossed the floor towards the bar and pulled down a bottle of brandy. Roger settled himself in a chair within a yard of the door. In the mirror at the back of the counter he could see the barman watching. He brought the brandy and he brought the Perrier. He opened the latter and set it down on the table.
“Young fellow,” he said, scowling, “you’d better come through with it. What the hell do you want?”
“I told you before,” Roger replied, “I live on the hillside here and I get restless sometimes. This is a bar, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s a bar, but it’s one o’clock in the morning and we don’t expect to serve customers at that hour.”
“Sam,” Roger said suddenly, “why don’t you go back to America?”
Sam started.
“Why should I?” he demanded. “Living here is pretty good.”
“The game’s up,” Roger bluffed. “I’ve got the drop on all of you.”
“You! Why, you haven’t turned stiff, have you?” he asked.
“Keep your hands in front of you, Sam,” Roger warned him. “I’m not a stiff. There aren’t many to be met with in this part of the world. I want to warn you though—”
Here they came—flop, flop, flop—shuffle, shuffle, shuffle! They were coming along the passage. They must be now within a few yards of the door. Sam suddenly took his undesired patron by the shoulders.
“Get out of this,” he ordered. “I tell you, shooting ain’t in my line and there’ll be a hell of a lot of it, if you stay there another minute. Get out of this and stay away.”
There was something uncommonly sinister in those advancing footsteps, which perhaps helped Roger to make up his mind. Sam’s clutch upon his shoulders too was the clutch of a powerful man. He stepped back on to the road and the door was slammed behind him. The light had not come yet and he had almost to feel his way as he staggered out, but more by good luck than anything else he kept in the middle of the road. He turned and ran, every moment expecting to hear the door behind him opened and to hear the hissing of bullets around him. Nothing happened. He drew nearer and nearer to the bend. Not a sound behind him! Presently the shape of his own car loomed up out of the darkness. He sprang inside, closed the door and switched on his lights. It was at that moment when he touched the contact button and at the same time released the brakes that the shock came. He very nearly let go the wheel which would probably have meant a glimpse into eternity. He recovered, though, as men do in those moments when there is no time for thought and action becomes automatic. He swung into the middle of the road, pushed his gear into third and with the car well under control turned to the figure by his side. A figure of calamity indeed, with torn clothes and blood-stained face.
“Pips!” Roger gasped. “My God, is it Pips?”
“Pips it is,” the other faltered, “but I can’t believe that I’m alive!”
CHAPTER XIV
Jeannine and Roger were seated in the arbour in the southwest corner of his garden, rose-wreathed now with the passing of the wisteria. Thornton, sprawling on a rock at the back of the villa was attempting a sketch.
“I want to know,” Roger said, in his usual downright fashion, “exactly what is troubling you, Jeannine.”
She laughed softly.
“Do I look so miserable?”
“Not at this moment, but I believe there is something the matter, all the same,” he insisted. “My aunt says it is because you are growing into a woman too quickly. When I think of you a year and a half ago, doing a skirt dance before the Curé in my salon—the skirt, by the by, was almost negligible—helping yourself to apples from my dish, laughing and squealing like a happy little monkey, I ask myself sometimes whether fate has been kind to you. You’ve sobered down too darn quickly. Perhaps there is something at the back of your mind we don’t know about.”
She laid her fingers upon his arm for a moment.
“It is just foolishness,” she confessed. “No one should be happier than I, because I have found such wonderful friends. Perhaps I am disturbed sometimes because I feel that they are being too good to me, because I feel that I am not exactly in my right place.”
“What do you mean—not in your right place?” he asked gruffly.
“You must know,” she laughed. “Remember what I looked like up in the orange tree. Sometimes I have been able to adapt myself, sometimes I have not thought about it at all, sometimes I have not felt quite comfortable.”
He leaned a little closer to her.
“If you aren’t talking like a silly kid!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you realise that you’ve turned the heads of a whole colony of men?”
“I will not be made fun of,” she pouted. “Now I will tell you something else. This is really why I feel unhappy and disturbed sometimes. There seems to be all the time something going on around us which I cannot understand. It is not only these strange things which have been happening to more important people, but it is I myself who am getting afraid of people, nervous when they talk to me. I feel as though there were something in the atmosphere which means harm. I even fancy that sometimes I—insignificant little Jeannine—am being watched! Not kindly—maliciously.”
“Has that man Pierre Viotti been worrying you again?” Roger demanded.
She smiled, but in a forced fashion. At