Roger gave the order. Dalmorres was watching him curiously.
“I’ve never seen you take three drinks in so short a time, Roger Sloane,” he remarked.
“And you probably never will again,” Roger assured him. “To-night I guess I’m in what they call an expansive mood. I’d like all you boys to drink with me. I feel as though it were the last night on the steamer after a three months’ cruise.”
“Heaven save me from such memories,” Dalmorres groaned. “Every one singing national anthems and slopping tears into their tumblers over ‘Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot.’ What hideous reminiscences you have evoked, Sloane!”
“I promise I’m not singing any national anthems to-night,” the latter declared. “This is just a drink between myself and Savonarilda and you others chiming in. Savonarilda, I raise my glass,” he added, selecting his tumbler from the counter.
There was a flash in the Sicilian’s eyes as he followed suit. He had known nothing of the man cowering behind the grey stone wall when the rain was beating down on the mountainside, but he realised intuitively that something had happened, somehow or other this stubborn young American had come a little nearer the light. He felt it in his blood that this drink was a challenge. His eyes flashed as he raised his glass.
“To your very excellent health, Mr. Roger Sloane,” he murmured.
CHAPTER XXI
“I do not think that I will marry you, Roger,” Jeannine decided, as she helped herself with lazy fingers from a box of chocolates by her side.
“That’s tough,” he remarked, without undue disquietude. “And why not, please?”
“You are not obedient. I demand that you cease these dangerous expeditions up to that terrible place and come to England with Lady Julia and me. You prefer to stay. You prefer the man hunt. Is it not so?”
Roger did not answer for a moment. They were lounging after luncheon on the famous balcony of his aunt’s villa at Cap Martin, from which a queen had once declared was the most beautiful view in the world. Below them flaming beds of flowers, a pergola of wisteria, a bordering hedge of hydrangeas, merged into the soft and silvery green of the olive trees and the deeper green of the pines. These fell sheer to the sea, and when the south wind fluttered up from the bay, with its incense of sea air, fluttered through the pine trees and shook the petals from the clustering roses, the place came very near being the Paradise that the guidebooks proclaimed it.
“The thing has come nearly to an end, Jeannine,” he told her quietly. “To-night will probably finish it.”
“You mean that you have made a discovery?”
“I have certainly discovered one thing,” he acknowledged, “which has surprised me very much indeed, but it is not everything.”
“I do not see why you run those risks,” she protested. “You are not a gendarme. It is not for you the protection of the people. Besides, a married man should not run risks. You are fiancé, which is the same as being married. You are making me nervous so that I cannot sleep. Fancy if anything should come to disturb happiness so marvellous as this!”
He leaned over and kissed the tears from her eyes.
“You need have no fear, dear Jeannine,” he assured her. “I may seem rash but I am not. Listen, you will hear this and you will forget it.”
“I promise,” she murmured.
“The next time I climb the Corniche and arrive at that hotel, it will not be alone. It will be with gendarmes and perhaps with soldiers. There. Now I have told you a secret.”
“All the same,” she persisted, with a sigh, “I wish there would be no next time.”
Dalmorres sauntered out through the opened windows, a very elegant figure in white flannels and Panama hat. He sank into a chair by their side.
“We are to talk before the little one, yes?” he asked.
“Naturally,” Roger replied.
“You have seen Major Thornton this morning?”
“I have been with him for two hours.”
Dalmorres tapped a cigarette upon the table and lit it. For some reason or other the information did not seem to give him unalloyed pleasure.
“You persist in your idea?”
“Absolutely,” Roger declared. “Until last night I had many suspicions which Thornton was perhaps the first to laugh at. To-day I have no suspicions. I deal with facts. Even Thornton is convinced.”
Dalmorres grunted dubiously. He had all the time the air of keeping something back.
“After all, this is your show, Roger,” he pointed out. “Why don’t you make the final arrangements yourself? That fellow Thornton is a secretive sort of devil, but I fancy when he does open his mouth he talks to some purpose. Why should he have all the credit of running to earth a famous band of criminals and relieving Monte Carlo of this infernal cloud of depression? Seems to me you have done all the work, and he’s been trying to put you off all the time.”
“Not quite so bad as that,” Roger protested. “He has made one or two very useful suggestions. Then you must remember that the police are far more likely to work pleasantly with him than with a young fellow like me, who is not in the profession at all and has just blundered into the thing. Thornton’s connection with Scotland Yard entitles him to a certain amount of respect from them. They only know me as one of the crowd here.”
“There’s something in that, of course,” Dalmorres assented. “Tell me, though, as a matter of curiosity—should you have confidence in Thornton in a crisis? Do you think he would stick it through, if you got into any real trouble?”
“Sure,” Roger replied. “On the other hand, I reckon we’ve about finished with the risks. It’s the other fellows who’ve got to take them now. The way we have planned it, we are going to be mostly lookers-on in this show.”
“Glad to hear it,” Dalmorres affirmed doubtfully. “I hope you won’t change your mind. After the way I laid bare my heart to Jeannine, I should have to marry her if you left her a widowette!”
“It would be something,” Jeannine sighed.
“You’ve not a hundred to one chance,” Roger declared with unabated cheerfulness. “If you’re interested to know what’s going to happen, I’ll tell you. My beloved aunt has given in this morning, and even Jeannine doesn’t know yet. The idea of a London marriage is off. Jeannine would have no friends there and she would be miserable in a crowd of strangers. Jeannine and I are going to be married very quietly indeed, either at my own little church of La Bastide or here—before Aunt Julia goes to England.”
Jeannine’s eyes were shining like stars, her lips were parted.
“Roger!” she gasped.
“You have to go through with it some time or other, my dear,” he told her. “As for the honeymoon, that belongs to you. We can either stay at my villa or my aunt will lend us this one. The bathing’s pretty good fun. Afterwards we shall have to go over to the States, but that won’t be bad—my people are dead easy.”
“Roger,” she begged, “do not go to that horrible place to-night. I shall lie awake trembling all the time.”
He held her hand lightly in his.
“My dear,” he promised, “for your sake I shall run no risk. You need have no fears. The authorities are taking over the whole business. After all that happened during the last two months, they are simply panic-stricken. When it began, they looked