"I met an old friend of ours unexpectedly this morning, Tom," she murmured. "It's Anthony Cross. Fancy meeting him again and of all places here! I asked him to drop in for a chat after dinner."
"Anthony Cross?" Tom Brownlow repeated rather vacantly. "Oh, yes, of course! Coming in this evening, is he? Good!"
Surely this was overdoing it, Vivian thought. Surely a couple who had spent the whole afternoon together would have talked over a friend's arrival. Why then this public announcement and this apparent difficulty on the husband's part to "place" the friend?
"What brings Cross to Cluny?" Brownlow went on.
"The abbey remains. I suggested his asking you for a room, Monsieur Pichegru. Perhaps he will. If he stays on at all for any length of time. Apparently he has only made up his mind definitely to one night, and took a room at the hotel near the station. If you hadn't happened to be taking us on that historical tour of the town, Mr. Murgatroyd, he might have come and gone without either of us knowing of it. He was so surprised to see me walking towards him." This last to her husband, who nodded carelessly.
"Are you talking of the Sir Anthony Cross?" Smith asked with interest "One of the directors of the South African Diamond Combine?"
The Brownlows said that that was the man.
"He's on his way back to London on some matter connected with the syndicate, so he told me," the wife added.
Vivian saw Smith flash a quick, inquiring glance at his friend, Mr. Lascelles, who returned it blandly. Catching Vivian's gaze on them, both men dropped their eyes with a haste that looked positively guilty, and began to crumble their bread.
"Perhaps we can persuade him to let me put him up, though but for one night," suggested Monsieur Pichegru, and again a message of the eyes passed between Smith and his friend. "Any friend of yours, Brownlow, can always count on a room here. And a rest in this quiet spot might do such a busy man as Sir Anthony good."
"I am sorry to seem discourteous," Mr. Murgatroyd said in his clear voice; "but if Sir Anthony Cross were to become an inmate of Villa Porte Bonheur, I should be constrained to go to one of the hotels. Under ordinary circumstances that would be no matter, but half-way through my book it would entail, I confess, a certain amount of adjusting of impediments..."
"You know Anthony Cross?" Brownlow asked curiously.
"I have never met him," explained the professor; "but some years ago my brother was very anxious to establish a leper colony not far from one of the mines owned by his company. He had just been appointed a director, I remember, and it was owing to his active and passive resistance that all efforts fell through. I feel that the abandoning of a project of bringing help to a class of human beings who certainly needed it sorely was due entirely and solely to him. And feeling that, I very strongly object to meeting him. His standpoint was—"
Mr. Murgatroyd pulled himself up, but his eyes flashed. He looked very different from the placid scholar of the morning.
He shook his head at himself. "The French are right; to be angry and to make bad blood is one and the same thing. Sir Anthony must have brought down on himself enough ill will without my adding to it."
"It does not seem to have harmed him, so far," Mrs. Brownlow put in, with, for once, a touch of sarcasm in her voice.
"So far," Murgatroyd repeated. "Remember the words of the wise Solon: 'Account a prosperous man happy only when he ends his life as he began it.' Sir Anthony is still a comparatively young man, as age goes nowadays."
It seemed to Vivian that the rest of the dinner was unusually quiet.
Smith, his friend and Mr. Murgatroyd all seemed lost in thought. Only the Brownlows, Monsieur Pichegru and she kept up a desultory chat, with clumsy contributions from Tibbitts.
After dinner, Vivian took a walk by herself through the gardens. For the present she had decided to act exactly as though Anthony Cross were not in the town. She finally strolled back to the summer-house to which she had taken Mackay. It was the hour at which they had agreed to meet.
As she shut the door, some one rose in the dusk inside. It was the detective.
"Sure, it's verra kind of ye, Miss Young," he said, with evident pleasure. "Naething to report, I tak' it? I hope to find some clue when I tak' a luik at the hoose tomorrow nicht. The nicht o' the dance. For I shall come to it. I've met a mon who's a director of a great diamond combine for which I did a bit o' warrk a couple of years back. He's doon to tak' a luik at the ruins, and is putting up at the same hotel as I am.
"I've had a crack wi' him. I tellt him what brings me here—in strict confidence, o' course, and I spoke aboot the ball tomorrow. Balls are a bit oot o' ma line. But he thinks, like you, that I must na miss seeing the inside o' a' the rooms when the parties are engaged below. It seems he kens the leddy who lost her jewels—yon Mrs. Brownlow—and through her he'll meet Monsieur Pichegru, and will ask him for twa invitations for Saturday nicht. Ane for himself, though he doesna expect to be here to use it, and ane for a friend. That's me! Certes, I shall use mine."
"You mean Sir Anthony Cross? Mrs. Brownlow spoke at dinner of having met him in the town. If you've worked for Sir Anthony, perhaps he can put you in the way of some really good job." Vivian was thinking of the diamond thefts.
"A doot that," Mackay said with his self-deprecatory smile. "I'm no the class o' detective that Sir Anthony Cross wad employ. What I did for his combine was nobbut looking up some clerk's Edinburgh guarantor. And that class o' warrk is a' I'm guid for, I fear me. Ye see, detecting differs. I've always worked on business questions. Tracing checks, asking aboot characters, and the like. But private warrk—like Mr. Davidson's—it pays the best, o' coorse, but it's the sort I'm no cut oot for, and that's a fact. However, I shall just use ma een tomorrow nicht, and if I find naething after all, I'll awa' to Paris, and try to work at the bogle frae that end. For when a's said and dune, 'tis by the light o' reason alane problems are solved."
"Father solved his with his gun—alone," Vivian said dryly, and Mackay laughed. A laugh that suddenly spoke of youth and a sense of humor, however repressed.
"What are you coming to the dance as?" she asked next. "We ought to be able to recognize each other."
"I thocht o' a ghaist," he said tentatively. "I canna spend ony money on it. And for a ghaist a' I'd need wad be but a sheet and a pillow case—over and abune ma other claes," he added hastily. It was Vivian's turn to laugh. Suddenly an impish idea struck her. She would have dearly like to suggest that Mackay should go as "The Ghost of a Young Man Drowned in Shanghai," but she bit back the speech. After all, though the tale linking his death with Mr. Brownlow might be false enough, the young man had probably really died. And besides that, Vivian was no spreader of idle gossip.
"White's rather a poor color for snooping," she said instead.
"True." He thought a moment. "Forbye giving some servant lass the fright of her life. Hoo aboot a collector then? That micht do. Just ma Sunday blacks—ma frock-coats gey shiny at the seams, and I'll rip it a bit here and a bit there—and ma top-hat has seen better days—and wi' ma small black bag in ma hand, I'd do fine, and widna be seen a mile off. Aye. It'll be as a collector I'll come. A debt-collector, ye ken. And you, Miss Young?"
"I'm 'Lady-into-Fox.' Chiefly a woman, but turning back into the fox that I once was. With a fox's head on my hair. But about what brings you to Cluny—I came here simply bursting with something that happened this afternoon, and yet which seems too monstrous."
She stopped as though she really meant the adjective.
He looked hard at her. His bright, alert, gray eyes were trying to read what she had to tell him before she spoke. His resolute, freckled, rather plain face was alight with interest. Was he to hear something that would help him?
"If only you were hunting for Mrs. Brownlow's jewels instead of, or as well as, Mr. Davidson's money, it might help you tremendously," she said slowly; "though, as I say, I can't believe—no, I can't!" She stopped again.
"I cann't