The Mysterious Three

“I thought you said you are engaged to be married?”

“I did. And I am. But I don’t see why, for that reason, you need call me a fool for being ordinarily polite to another woman, or to any woman, especially if we are to meet Vera.”

“You quite mistake my meaning,” I said. “I say we are a pair of fools – I am more to blame perhaps than you – for being coerced by a chit of a girl into promising to stay here, as though we were a pair of schoolboys put ‘on their honour.’ It is downright silly, to say the least. Yet we must not break our parole– eh?”

I liked Faulkner. His spirit, and his way of saying what he thought amused me. One meets so few men nowadays with pluck enough to say what they really think and mean.

The young girl, whose name was Violet – Violet de Coudron – spread the white cloth, laid the table, and herself brought in our déjeuner. What position did she occupy in the house, we both wondered. Surely there must be servants, and yet… where was Vera?

“You have to stay here until to-morrow,” she said, when we had begun our meal – the cooking was excellent, and the wine was above reproach.

“And, until then, you are under my supervision. Those are my orders.”

“Your orders, received from whom – eh?” I asked.

“Mademoiselle Thorold wishes it.”

“Were we brought here yesterday, or when?” Faulkner asked presently.

“About two o’clock this morning.”

“And what was this grim joke?”

“That I may not tell you, m’sieur,” she replied. “Indeed, I couldn’t tell you – for I don’t know. Miss Thorold knows.”

“Who lives here usually?” I asked. “The Baronne?”

“She is rarely here. But that is enough. I cannot answer more questions. Is there anything else that I can get you?”

Nothing else we needed, except tobacco, and she brought us that. Very good tobacco it was, too.

Wearily the day passed, for though the room we were in was well-furnished, there were few books in it. We could, of course, have gone out of the room, out of the house probably, but our pretty little wardress had placed us on parole.

Whether or not the house was occupied, even whether there were servants in it, we could not tell. And the matter did not interest us much. What we should have liked to know was, why we had been brought there, still more, how Vera Thorold and Gladys Deroxe were faring in our absence. During the past weeks my life seemed to have been made up of a series of mysteries, each more puzzling than the last. I was distracted.

During the afternoon, while sitting together, very dejected, we suddenly caught the faint sound of a female voice singing.

Both of us listened. It was Vera’s voice, a sweet contralto, and she was singing, as though to herself, Verlaine’s “Manoline,” that sweet harmonious song —

“Les donneurs de sérénades,
Et les belles écouteuses,
Échangent des propos fades
Sous les ramures chanteuses.

“C’est Tircis et c’est Aminte
Et c’est l’éternel Clitandre
Et c’est Damis qui pour mainte cruelle
Fait maint vers tendre.”

The girl brought us tea presently, and, late in the evening, a plain dinner. The room was lit by petrol-gas. Each time she stayed with us a little while, and we were glad to have her company. She was, however, exceedingly discreet, refusing to make any statement which might throw light upon the reason of our confinement.

How strange it all was. Vera did not appear. We laughed at our own weakness and our own chivalry.

She showed us the bedroom where we were to sleep. Beautifully and expensively-furnished, it had two comfortable-looking beds, while a log-fire burnt cheerily in the grate – for the evening after the sunshine was singularly chilly in the mountains.

“If Vera does not come by mid-day to-morrow,” Faulkner said, as we prepared to get into bed, “I shall break my parole and set out to discover where she is. Our pretty friend is all very well, but my patience is exhausted. I’m not in need of a rest cure just at present.”

We had both been asleep, I suppose, for a couple of hours, when I suddenly awoke. The room was in total darkness, but somehow I “felt” the presence of some stranger in the room. At that instant it flashed in upon me that we had left the door unlocked. Straining my ears to catch the least sound, I held my breath.

Suddenly a noise came to me, not from the room, but from somewhere in the house. It was a cry – A cry for help! Sitting bolt upright in the bed, I remained motionless, listening intently. I heard it again. It was a woman’s cry – but this time fainter —

“Help! Help!” sounded in a long drawn-out gasp – a gasp of despair.

Something moved in the darkness. Again I “felt,” rather than heard it. My mouth grew dry, and fear, a deadly fear of the unknown, possessed me.

“Who is there?” I called out loudly.

There was no answer, but the sound of my voice gave me courage. I stretched my arm out in the darkness, meaning to reach over to Faulkner’s bed and prod him into wakefulness, when by chance I touched something alive.

Instantly a cold, damp hand gripped my own, holding it like a vice, and a moment later I was flung down on my back on the bed, and held there firmly by a silent, unseen foe.

In vain I struggled to get free, but the speechless, invisible Thing pressing me down in the darkness, kept me pinned to the bed! I was about to cry out, when a third hand closed about my throat, preventing me. It was a soft hand – a woman’s hand. Also, as it gripped me, a faint perfume struck my nostrils, a perfume familiar to me, curious, rich, pungent.

And then, almost as I stopped struggling, the room was suddenly flooded with light.

Chapter Fifteen

Within an Ace

Slowly I realised that Paulton was bending over me, holding me down.

The Baronne de Coudron, upon the opposite side of the bed, had her thin, strong sinewy hands upon my throat. Beside the gas-jet a yard or two away, Faulkner stood with his hand still holding the little chain he had pulled in order to turn on the light.

Nobody spoke.

The Baronne, removing her hands from me, stood upright, big and strong, gazing down upon me still. She wore an elaborate kimono made of some soft pink Eastern material. Paulton was in evening clothes, one shirt-cuff was turned back.

“You should have taken my advice, m’sieur,” the Baronne said in her deep voice, addressing Dago Paulton. She spoke quite calmly.

Instead of answering, and without loosening hold, he half-turned, apparently undecided what to do, until his eyes rested upon Faulkner. Then suddenly, to my surprise, he released me. I got up.

“Faulkner, come here,” he said sharply.

The young man – he was in the blue pyjamas he had found laid out upon the bed when Violet de Coudron had shown us into the bedroom – looked quietly at the speaker for a moment or two, then answered with the utmost sang-froid —

“I’m not your servant, hang you! Don’t speak to me like that.”

“You may not be my servant, but I now control your movements,” Paulton retorted quickly. “Therefore you will please do what I order. I take it that you know that I brought you and Ashton over here.”