Jeannine laughed softly.
“Oh, I do not misunderstand you, Lord Dalmorres,” she assured him. “I think you are wonderful.”
“What became of the wealthy Niçois?” Roger enquired.
Dalmorres appeared to have forgotten. A few minutes later, however, when Jeannine’s attention was engaged by some new arrivals, he leaned forward in his chair.
“Do you know the fellow, Roger?” he asked.
Roger nodded.
“In a way. I had a row with him once.”
Dalmorres leaned still farther forward. He kept one eye on Jeannine.
“Look out for that little fat devil,” he half whispered. “Has he got an hotel anywhere?”
“Between the two Corniches,” Roger answered.
Dalmorres glanced once more towards Jeannine. She was having to speak in English to one of Prétat’s patrons and the task was obviously absorbing her whole attention.
“Well, don’t you go to it, that’s all,” Dalmorres advised. “There’s something waiting for you there you wouldn’t like. I couldn’t make out what it was, but as soon as he got a dim idea that I was listening, drunk or not drunk, he shut up. He has an idea that you have been trying to play the amateur detective, that you have gone up there to discover his secrets, as he called them. There was one waiting there he was ready to share with you, he said, with the most malevolent grin I ever saw in my life. Take my tip, Roger; stay away from that hotel.”
CHAPTER XIX
Dalmorres was perhaps a trifle indiscreet in some of his observations in the Sporting Club a few nights later. Every one was inclined to be nervy and irritated. The robbery of the royal jewels of Monaco had turned out to be a more serious affair than was at first believed. It transpired that the whole of the jewels were gone, not a portion of them; that they were valued at fifty millions and that the police were without a single clue as to the bandits. That they were a desperate gang was obvious from their methods. Two of the guards had been shot and the sentry had been stabbed to death in his own box. It was his death cry which had first given the alarm. Servants had streamed out from every direction. There was nothing but an empty safe to be seen. No motor car had been anywhere near the Palace gates. The only clue to the manner by which the thieves had made their escape was furnished by the captain of the guard, who, by throwing himself down and listening with his ear to the ground, believed that he could hear from somewhere in the black distance the rapid beating of a petrol engine driven at great speed.
“These fellows, whoever they are,” Dalmorres declared, “have nerve and they have imagination. They work with one another too well to have been brought together haphazard. Neither do I believe that they are French. There’s too much method and thoroughness about them.”
“Where do you think they come from, then?” Mr. Terence Brown asked.
Dalmorres chuckled.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to shoulder the burden, my friend,” he said. “I should put them down for Americans beyond a doubt—Americans probably driven over here by the competition in the bootlegging business. That safe, for example—”
“What do you know about the safe?”
“I was up at the Palace to-day,” Dalmorres confided, “and I was invited to have a look at it. I found half a dozen of the French police simply speechless with admiration. I’m perfectly certain that if the man who had done the job had turned up at that moment, they would have saluted!”
“Police headquarters of New York ought to be able to help them,” some one from the edge of the circle suggested. “They generally know where their great artists are.”
“The only pleasing aspect of the affair,” Dalmorres remarked, “is that this time they seem to have left the visitors alone and closed in upon home products. It gives me hope that I may, after all, elude their activities.”
“What they want,” Savonarilda pointed out, “is a man with the actual money. You wander about the place to-night with a handful of those fifty thousand franc jetons and your name will soon be on the list. These fellows don’t give you much grace, either. You’re warned in the morning and bumped off in the evening.”
“In my own case,” Dalmorres said, “I should certainly prefer a little more time to settle my affairs. I have no doubt that if one approached the secretary of this organisation discreetly and pleasantly, a satisfactory arrangement could be made.”
“This is the second affair,” Roger Sloane reflected, “where a motor boat has been used for the get-away. Poor Bradley was shot from one to start with. The police drew a cordon around every port from Monaco to Fréjus. Not a sign has ever been seen or a thing heard of the missing boat. Now this one seems to have disappeared in the same way.”
“Which all goes to prove,” Savonarilda drawled, “that these are local fellows and not Americans at all.”
“I am inclined to favour the idea of a conjunction,” Dalmorres observed. “The nerve and dash of the professional criminal and the low cunning and local knowledge of some of the indigènes. They may have come even from so far as Marseilles.”
“They are going to empty this place pretty quickly,” Terence Brown grunted. “The Handleys are all going. I saw old Handley down at the P.L.M. office this morning.”
“They would,” Dalmorres murmured.
“They are not the only ones,” Terence Brown went on. “If I were a rich man, I think I should follow suit. The local police may be, and I daresay they are, quite capable of taking care of Monte Carlo on ordinary occasions, but at the height of the season, when several thousand of the richest people in the world are here, as well as the ordinary tourists and residents, it would need a miniature Scotland Yard to deal with what we are going through. Take to-day, for instance. In addition to all the residents and visitors here, there is an American touring ship in, and at least a couple of hundred of the passengers wandering about on land.”
“American tourists,” Savonarilda remarked, “are not exactly like a flock of sheep waiting to be sheared.”
“Perhaps not,” Terence Brown agreed, “but just put yourself in their place for a moment. They land here, the drinks are good, the air is full of sunshine in the daytime and music and perfumes by night. They think they are in an earthly Paradise. What thought of evil do you think enters into their minds? None at all. They just become unsuspicious naturally.”
Dalmorres tapped lightly upon the table.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “we talk without sufficient discretion of these subjects. You see who arrives, Roger?”
Sloane nodded. Bumptious, rotund, carefully dressed in the costume the hour and the place demanded, Pierre Viotti had just swaggered up to the bar. He ordered a bottle of wine, as was his usual custom, and looked around as though seeking for some one to share it. His eyes wandered wistfully past the table where the five men were seated.
“A type,” Dalmorres murmured. “If I lived here or were staying here for long—especially if I were you, Roger—it would interest me to know more about that man.”
“You wouldn’t gain much,” Roger scoffed. “He was a peasant farmer until last year and an ignorant brute of the type.”
“Sometimes,” Dalmorres reflected, “these fellows