Mr. Clark, a sunburnt, good-natured looking man, apparently gave it up.
"A lucky devil helps to skin others, an unlucky one can only be skinned," and the major, with the cackle Christine so much disliked, walked into the house.
"Of a charm certainly!" repeated Pointer to himself with a faint grin as he emerged from behind the flowering shrub and walked down to the police, where his snapshot of the major was developed and enlarged, in time for a copy to be dispatched to the Yard in the evening, together with a pressing request for further particulars as to the officer in question.
Carter was next met in Pointer's quiet room at a Meublé near the station. The detective officer had no directions to give the Canadian, but asked a good many questions about Robert's letters, and to the answers he paid the closest attention. That done, he took his departure by the afternoon express. He got out at Marseilles, where he waited for Watts to join him. That detective had been instructed by telegram to leave Mr. Beale to the sole care of his mate and join the Chief Inspector at the noisy, dirty port as soon as possible. Watts was only too glad to descend from the crowded train and make his way to the hotel, where Pointer gave him an account of the past day's work.
"I don't want amateur help!" Pointer examined some bouillabaisse with quite undeserved suspicion. "Carter, even supposing he were free from suspicion—which he isn't—may be a useful chap, or may be an absolute bungler. I haven't time to train budding talent in this case."
"And the young lady?"
"Is staying at Cannes. She's very keen to help, and I don't say that she may not be useful, too; but give me the real thing, Watts. Had I been able to get a good woman-detective into the villa in her place, a good many doubts as to the character of Mrs. Erskine's 'bodyguard' might be over. However, I couldn't."
Two nights later a loud ringing and banging on the door of the villa disturbed the occupants just after they had separated for the night. It was quite late, for they had all been to a theatre and supper party. A postman stood at the door. Could he see Madame Erskine about a cable which had come, marked "Urgent," and which he was not sure was meant for her, as beyond the name there was no address.
Mrs. Erskine, whose bedroom lights had only been twinkling a short time, put her head over the windowsill and said that she would come down at once. The man was told to enter, and the front door closed.
A figure crouching behind some bushes sprang lightly erect, waited a moment or two, listening intently at a shuttered window—the window into the lower hall—then, lifting a ladder lying buried in the earth, stood it deftly against Mrs. Erskine's window ledge, and was up with the swiftness of a cat. He took off his rubber shoes and left them on the sill. Then he swung himself into the room and looked at the safe. The door stood wide open, the key was in it. In a second the black figure slipped to the bedroom door. Mrs. Erskine had left it locked. He strode back to the safe, took out its key and weighed it carefully, though swiftly, on a little balance. Followed several quick measurements taken with a sort of dialed spanner, after which four impressions had to be made in boxes containing the special Foch compound. Balance, spanner, and boxes were returned to a little black bag the man wore strapped to his waist. This done with the utmost but unflurried haste, the key was replaced in the safe, and the figure vanished the way it had come. The ladder was laid on the grass for a moment, till the ground under the window had been smoothed with a rake-head, also produced from the bag. In another minute ladder and man seemed to melt, rather than to pass, through the gate.
The telegram was not for Mrs. Erskine after all, as a glance at its obviously business contents told her. It took some time to make this clear to the postman, who was an "extra," and spoke with an atrocious Basque accent—acquired during the retreat from Mons, when Watts' company had got inextricably entangled with some of the blue Berets. Finally the postman grasped the truth, apologized, and "returned to the post office to make further inquiries." These seemed to lead him to a small hotel in a back street, after a change of toilet in the nearest dark doorway, which included turning his coat inside out, ripping off some narrow red braid from each trouser leg, and substituting one cap for another. That done, Watts went to bed, to speculate with some curiosity on exactly what had taken place in the villa during the colloquy in the central hall. He knew better than to ask his superior, and finally consoled himself with the thought that he would doubtless hear of it some day under "From information which has just come to hand."
CHAPTER X
EIGHT o'clock next morning found the Chief Inspector wrapped in slumber. The Boots interrupted them to tell him that there was an insistent telephone call for Mr. Deane—a lady speaking from Cannes. Grateful for the fact that science did not yet enable Miss West to see him as well as hear him, Mr. Deane descended the stairs sleepily after the briefest of toilets.
"Gladys speaking. I was at Monte Carlo last night with some Americans, and in the Rooms I saw a lady I had last seen in London at the hotel which we so often talk about. She had room number twelve there. You remember her, too, don't you?"
"Perfectly. What was she doing when you caught sight of her?"
A little gurgle came through. "Talking to Jack."
"Indeed!" Pointer's voice sounded as amused as hers, but his eyes were hard and keen. "Oh, indeed! Had she got rid of her cold?"
"You'll have to ask him. I was miles away from them, stuck in a block of people around one of the tables. But it seems that Jack was only telling her the way out."
"You saw him later on?"
"No. He too had vanished by the time I got clear. You see, he didn't expect me there. I had tried to 'phone him, but he was out all day. But I got through to him the first thing this morning."
Pointer's free hand gave an impatient tap to the table.
"Bless all amateurs!" he would have liked to reply, but he changed it instead to "I see. But first about yourself. You didn't notice where Miss—umph—"
"Twelve went to?"
"No, I only saw her for the one second, but I thought you'd be interested."
"Quite right. How was she dressed?"
"Beautifully, I guess. I can't get used to people leaving all their clothes behind them, but she had as much on as the wife of one of your ambassadors who was there, too, and Miss Les—Twelve had the finer jewels."
"Did Mr. Crane have anything interesting to tell you about her?"
"Oh, no, he was merely watching a table when she asked him the way out. She was standing beside him you see, and as she really was a lady, and alone, and had got separated from her husband, why, of course, he showed her the way out himself. In the vestibule sure enough was the husband, and they went off together. John had had enough of the rooms—and isn't the air hot inside—so he roamed along the terasse—you know what a wonderful night it was, and then after supper at the Paris motored back to Nice. But say now, Mr. Deane, don't you want to come and have a nice long talk with me, or have me come and see you? I'm so dull here."
There was nothing she could do yet, Pointer assured her, by which he meant that there was nothing he wanted her to do, and remained adamant in spite of all her appeals. His next 'phone was to Watts to come immediately to the hotel. Then he rang up Carter, who having a 'phone beside his bed answered at once, but apparently he could add nothing to Miss West's account. Until Christine had 'phoned him half an hour before he had had no idea as to who the lady was who had spoken to him last night at the Monte Carlo Rooms. Her husband was a smart, youngish-looking man with something military about his get-up. Where the couple went to Carter did not try to see.
Toule, the French detective "attached" to Carter, when questioned next on the 'phone, only knew that "Mr. Crane" had taken a car from the hotel and