“The sort of fellow who got my goat,” Tom Meredith muttered. “I’m glad I’ve seen the last of him. Drank vermouth and cassis and wanted a lump of sugar in it!”
“Took a big risk too,” Matthew Drane pointed out. “If they had asked to see his card, they’d have known he wasn’t Erskine, and if Erskine had been lying at the bottom of that gorge with a broken neck as he ought to have been, the young man would have found himself in Queer Street.”
“It would have been even awkward for us,” Edward Staines observed. “He would certainly have squealed.”
“His removal,” Paul Viotti pronounced, “shows that we are one bang-up organisation.”
Savonarilda strolled back to his place.
“I can’t think why you keep a thing like that about,” he protested, pointing backwards to the body of the young man.
“Neither can I,” Matthew Drane agreed, with a shudder. “Every now and then I catch a glimpse of that foot. Don’t see why we need make the place look like a butcher’s shop.”
“Everything has to be done according to plan,” Paul Viotti explained coldly. “We never fail; you must admit that. Until we were ready to dispose of it, the body had to be in a safe place. In a quarter of an hour, it will be fetched. In an hour there will be nothing but a few ashes somewhere near the small summerhouse which we call the shrine. There will be another young man less ogling the cocottes and earning their fifty francs with the old ladies at the Nice cabaret shows, but it is doubtful whether any one will even remark upon his absence. If they do, it will be too late. People disappear often from the Riviera when they have spent their money or the right finger beckons. Some are found. Those who disappear under our auspices are never found.”
Matthew Drane lit a cigar and leaned back in his place.
“Our young friend, Savonarilda,” he remarked, “has criticised, but he has made no suggestion. I think he has something to say to us. For my part, I think the chief’s right. We have a perfect machine, running smoothly and without a flaw. It may be costing us a good deal, but on the other hand we have no Police Headquarters to take care of. In short, up till now, we have had things pretty well our own way, except that this young fellow Erskine didn’t cough up and we were a trifle too greedy in that Nice business. Tony has something at the back of his mind, I’m sure.”
Savonarilda discarded his extinct cigarette and lit another.
“The crown jewels of Monaco,” he reflected, “do not compare, of course, with other collections which Fate has brought upon the market, but there are a few good modern pieces amongst them. They are ours for the picking up.”
“Such imagination!” Paul Viotti murmured, with flashing eyes. “A very Prince of Adventure!”
Savonarilda looked at him a little insolently.
“I wish you would remember sometimes, Viotti,” he said, “that I do not care for my title to be banalized. My ancestors were princes when yours were scraping the soil of Corsica for a few potatoes!”
There was a curious light in Paul Viotti’s eyes and his lips twitched. He remained, however, silent.
“A few nights ago,” Savonarilda continued, “I dined at the Palace. The week of our arrival here, after I had paid my formal call, I lunched there. I have a complete plan of the strong room leading out of the Royal Suite where the jewels are kept, and of the two staircases leading away from it.”
“They have a new American Dunster safe,” Matthew Drane announced. “I heard the Princess say so.”
“Tom Meredith here,” Savonarilda went on, “can do anything in this world with a Dunster safe, except eat it. He can discover the combination by looking at it and the drawers fly out when he touches them. I kept guard over him at work once in the Seventh National Bank when we needed the money to buy that steamerload of whisky. I have never seen Her Royal Highness’ safe, but I will back the Seventh National Bank safe against anything that ever crossed the Atlantic, and Tom opened that as though the locks were made of butter. Isn’t that so, Tom?”
“I guess it didn’t worry me any,” was the modest reply.
Pierre Viotti beamed upon his confederates.
“The Prince has a great imagination,” he murmured.
“I have more than that. I have some very useful facts,” Savonarilda observed drily. “I know the number of men on guard, at what hours they are changed and where they are posted. They would be as much use against us as the golliwogs in a toyshop!”
“And the get-away?” Viotti queried.
“By sea,” was the prompt reply. “One of your brother’s invaluable contributions, Viotti, was the flying motor boat. If the engines are in good shape and the new sloop is ready for use—”
“She was put in the water yesterday,” Pierre Viotti announced.
“Very good,” Savonarilda continued. “She must crawl around here until we are ready for her. It will not be a quick division affair, of course. All the jewels will have to go either to Amsterdam or London, and they will lose a good deal in the cutting. Even after that, I have worked it out that there ought to be twenty millions to divide.”
“My friends,” Viotti said joyously, “I think that our next adventure is accepted.”
There was a sound like the tinkling of a musical box. Paul Viotti placed his hand under the table and produced from a ledge a small, quaintly shaped telephone. He listened, spoke down it, and added a word or two which obviously had some code significance. Then he made his way to the north wall, touched the representation of a porthole in the swaying galleon and the door swung open. Three or four men in their road-menders’ garb, who were always to be seen about the outside of the place or working in the garden, entered, carrying a long, lightly built wooden box fashioned like an elongated steamer trunk. They lifted the body into it, replaced the lid and disappeared with scarcely a word. As they ascended the stairs, Viotti held open the door leading up into the bar and listened. The old man and woman were there, singing one of their Neapolitan songs.
“The requiem of the unknown victim,” Savonarilda sneered.
CHAPTER XVII
The Monte Carlo world is temperamental but its spirit is resilient. After a fortnight of intermingled cold, rain and mistral, the sun suddenly shone. A flawless blue sky stretched across the heavens, a south wind stole lazily across the devastated flower fields and loitered amongst the gardens. Everybody turned suddenly cheerful. After all, Erskine had not been murdered. He had been the victim of a motor accident and was slowly recovering. The unknown person who had stolen his papers probably deserved his fate. There had been no fresh calamity. The administration breathed a sigh of relief. Something might yet be made of what was left of the season.
Roger and Jeannine who, it being Sunday, had a day’s holiday, were seated with Thornton under a striped umbrella at one of the tables of the Royalty bar. There was a buzz of pleasant conversation around them, no tragedies to discuss or think about. Terence Brown went by, swinging his cane and whistling a tune from the opera of last night. Maggie Saunders was drinking cocktails with two new admirers. Prince Savonarilda, who hated cocktails and seldom entered any other bar than the Sporting Club, except under compulsion, was drinking Italian vermouth with the great Diva who had sung at the opera the night before. Every one seemed to be very content and happy.
“I asked you to meet me here,” Thornton, who was the host of the party, said, “because I was not quite sure where you would like to lunch. Mademoiselle Jeannine has, perhaps, some preference?”
“None at all,” she declared