“The affairs of the heart, my brother,” Paul enquired, as he helped himself liberally to hors d’oeuvres. “They progress, eh?”
Pierre growled.
“They will never progress,” he confided, “until—”
“Until the young man is out of the way, eh?” Paul chuckled. “Well, well, that will be not so long now.”
Pierre Viotti’s eyes twinkled joyously.
“It is understood, that, yes?”
“It is certainly understood. The young man knows too much. What trouble comes to him is of his own seeking.”
Pierre Viotti spilled a tablespoonful of soup in his excitement.
“There is a way of disposing of him,” he ventured, with tentative longing, “which would be safe, very safe indeed, Paul.”
“O-ay, what is that, Pierre?”
“It is the way the young Niçois whom the English milord shot went, the way the English milord would have gone, if he had not escaped, the way Pietro went the night after he got drunk and began to talk. All tied together, he would go in the chute well like that.”
Pierre Viotti frowned at his brother reprovingly.
“Pierre,” he remonstrated, “you shock me. You shock me very much. You should remember that you are working now with great men, real swells; a prince amongst us, men who move in swell society. That is a low idea of yours. We kill, but we kill like gentlemen. After he’s dead, naturally that is the way he will go.”
“You are sure of that?” Pierre asked wistfully.
Paul struck the table so that the wine rocked in their glasses.
“So like a fool you talk,” he exclaimed. “This young man will see the inside of our hiding place, he will know of its secrets. More fatal than anything else, he will see our faces. Is it likely that after that a single one of us would be willing to let him live?”
Pierre nodded with slow satisfaction.
“Good words,” he admitted. “Good sense. I shall see him die. That is what I wish. I shall remind him that the little Jeannine will then be mine. Ho, la! I shall skip for joy. One year and a half I shall have lost but she’s all the better for that.”
Paul Viotti looked curiously at his brother’s rapt and lustful expression.
“You love women, little Pierre,” he remarked tolerantly.
“And you not?”
“They are well in their way,” Paul admitted. “For me, though, one is as good as another. I like them like ripe fruit. You shake the tree and behold—she is in your arms. No trouble. There is a café keeper’s wife here, the daughter of a croupier who lives up here for his health. There are others too. Very good, very willing. It does not disturb me which I take.”
An entrecôte arrived and Pierre attacked it vigorously with squared elbows.
“What is it that you like best in life, then, Paul?” he demanded. “When you were younger, there was trouble enough with the girls.”
“There is too much trouble always about women. I will not have them in any enterprise with which I am concerned. That is why I refused to help you bring away the little Jeannine. She might have been content but she might have given trouble. Women are good but they are not worth trouble.”
“What is it that seems big to you in life, then?” Pierre persisted.
Paul Viotti smiled and his face for a moment was transformed.
“This work,” he confided. “Money and the joy of getting money. Robbing the rich, seeing the bank balance grow. Soon I have enough, Pierre. I shall not go back to New York. There are a few bullets that wait for me there. Somewhere near Milan I shall live. I know where.”
“Have you much money, Paul?” his brother asked reverently.
“I have two million dollars, Pierre, perhaps more. You would sell many flowers and cheat your neighbours for many years in La Bastide to save that much.”
“Two million dollars,” Pierre repeated, moistening his dry lips and looking across the table in awed fashion. “My brother Paul too. It makes one proud.”
“I might have had more,” Paul went on, “but I am generous. I have spent a fortune upon your hotel, Pierre, and most of it my own. Matthew Drane, he has no money. He must live as though he had or he could bring us no news. Staines, he has little. He too has worked well. One cannot ask him for much. I am generous with them all, Pierre. You see, I do not hoard my money. I love getting it, but I love the power of spending it. The time for me has arrived now. I shall buy a farm, I shall help with the politics of the town. I shall marry and have sons. If one wife does not give me them, I shall find another. One of them may rule Italy. One of them may go to New York and become famous, as I have done.”
“For me, I too shall marry,” Pierre murmured ecstatically. “It would serve the little baggage right if I just put her in my house. I shall marry her, however. I am a public man and there must be no scandals. I shall buy more land. The hotel shall be made good. There are some things I shall take away. I will have a billiard table in the secret chamber and join it to the house. Oh, it will be easy, all that.”
“Let us remember,” Paul Viotti said, with a suddenly altered note in his tone, “that this is not the night for dreams. You are sure of the Wolves?”
“Twelve of them,” Pierre replied. “They are here now. Two of them in this very café. They will be at their stations by eleven.”
“Remember, also, that nothing is to be done to the young American until I give the word.”
Pierre sighed.
“That is more difficult, but I obey.”
Paul paid the bill and the brothers rose and left the place. They dawdled in the Place for a few minutes, exchanged civilities with the gendarme and lit cigarettes. Afterwards they entered the lilac-coloured automobile. Pierre took the wheel, Paul relapsed into the cushions.
“To the bank,” the latter directed, “and drive carefully. Remember that this is a great day.”
CHAPTER XXII
At a few minutes before twelve that night Roger brought his car to a standstill in the little embrasure of the Corniche where he had left it the night before. He was well out of sight, even of the turning which passed the hotel, and of the hotel itself, and he paused for a moment to collect his thoughts and smoke a final cigarette. His part in the scheme which Thornton and he had worked out was from now on an insignificant one. There were probably already two gendarmes stationed immediately below the hotel and two at the first bend past it. He himself was to take his place in the stretch of wood exactly opposite the bar, and two more gendarmes were presently to fall in and guard the spot where the road forked. At a quarter-past twelve three carloads of gendarmes with Thornton were to arrive from Monte Carlo. Half a dozen of the men were to remain in the bar and guard the hotel, the rest were to explore the garage and discover the hiding place from which Savonarilda and Sam had issued. It was all very simple, and with the score of men whom Thornton was bringing and the commissaire himself, it scarcely seemed possible that there would be any serious