Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo

To this the stranger agreed, and they left the tea-shop and walked together to the well-known ladies’ club, where, while the mysterious messenger sipped tea, Dorise sat down and wrote a long and affectionate letter to her lover, urging him to exercise the greatest caution and to get back to London as soon as he could.

When she had finished it, she placed it in an envelope.

“I would not address it,” remarked the other girl. “It will be safer blank, for I shall give it into his hand.”

And ten minute later the mysterious girl departed, leaving Dorise to reflect over the curious encounter.

So Hugh was in Malines. She went to the telephone, rang up Walter Brock, and told him the reassuring news.

“In Malines?” he cried over the wire. “I wonder if I dare go there to see him? What a dead-alive hole!”

Not until then did Dorise recollect that the girl had not given her Hugh’s address. She had, perhaps, purposely withheld it.

This fact she told Hugh’s friend, who replied over the wire:

“Well, it is highly satisfactory news, in any case. We can only wait, Miss Ranscomb. But this must relieve your mind, I feel sure.”

“Yes, it does,” admitted Dorise, and a few moments later she rang off.

That evening Il Passero’s chic messenger crossed from Dover to Ostend, and next morning she called at Madame Maupoil’s, in Malines, where she delivered Dorise’s note into Hugh’s own hand. She was an expert and hardened traveller.

Hugh eagerly devoured its contents, for it was the first communication he had had from her since that fateful night at Monte Carlo. Then, having thanked the girl again, and again, the latter said:

“If you wish to write back to Miss Ranscomb do so. I will address the envelope, and as I am going to Cologne to-night I will post it on my arrival.”

Hugh thanked her cordially, and while she sat chatting with Madame Maupoil, sipping her cafe au lait, he sat down and wrote a long letter to the girl he loved so deeply—a letter which reached its destination four days later.

One morning about ten days afterwards, when the sun shone brightly upon the fresh green of the Surrey hills, Mrs. Bond was sitting before a fire in the pretty morning room at Shapley Manor, a room filled with antique furniture and old blue china, reading an illustrated paper. At the long, leaded window stood a tall, fair-faced girl in a smart navy-suit. She was decidedly pretty, with large, soft grey eyes, dimpled cheeks, and a small, well-formed mouth. She gazed abstractedly out of the window over the beautiful panorama to where Hindhead rose abruptly in the blue distance. The view from the moss-grown terrace at Shapley, high upon the Hog’s back, was surely one of the finest within a couple of hundred miles of London.

Since Mrs. Bond’s arrival there she had had many callers among the nouveau riche, those persons who, having made money at the expense of our gallant British soldiers, have now ousted half the county families from their solid and responsible homes. Mrs. Bond, being wealthy, had displayed her riches ostentatiously. She had subscribed lavishly to charities both in Guildford and in Farnham, and hence, among her callers there had been at least three magistrates and their flat-footed wives, as well as a plethoric alderman, and half a dozen insignificant persons possessing minor titles.

The display of wealth had always been one of Molly Maxwell’s games. It always paid. She knew that to succeed one must spend, and now, with her recently acquired “fortune,” she spent to a very considerable tune.

“I do wish you’d go in the car to Guildford and exchange those library books, Louise,” exclaimed the handsome woman, suddenly looking up from her paper. “We’ve got those horrid Brailsfords coming to lunch. I was bound to ask them back.”

“Can’t you come, too?” asked the girl.

“No. I expect Mr. Benton this morning.”

“I didn’t know he was back from Paris. I’m so glad he’s coming,” replied the girl. “He’ll stay all the afternoon, of course?”

“I hope so. Go at once and get back as soon as you can, dear. Choose me some nice new books, won’t you?”

Louise Lambert, Benton’s adopted daughter, turned from the leaded window. In the strong morning light she looked extremely charming, but upon her countenance there was a deep, thoughtful expression, as though she were entirely preoccupied.

“I’ve been thinking of Hugh Henfrey,” the woman remarked suddenly. “I wonder why he never writes to you?” she added, watching the girl’s face.

Louise’s cheeks reddened slightly, as she replied with affected carelessness:

“If he doesn’t care to write, I shall trouble no longer.”

“He’s still abroad, is he not? The last I heard of him was that he was at Monte Carlo with that Ranscomb girl.”

Mention of Dorise Ranscomb caused the girl’s cheeks to colour more deeply.

“Yes,” she said, “I heard that also.”

“You don’t seem to care very much, Louise,” remarked the woman. “And yet, he’s such an awfully nice young fellow.”

“You’ve said that dozens of times before,” was Louise’s abrupt reply.

“And I mean it. You could do a lot worse than to marry him, remember, though he is a bit hard-up nowadays. But things with him will right themselves before long.”

“Why do you suggest that?” asked the girl resentfully.

“Well—because, my dear, I know that you are very fond of him,” the woman laughed. “Now, you can’t deny it—can you?”

The girl, who had travelled so widely ever since she had left school, drew a deep breath and, turning her head, gazed blankly out of the window again.

What Mrs. Bond had said was her secret. She was very fond of Hugh. They had not met very often, but he had attracted her—a fact of which both Benton and his female accomplice were well aware.

“You don’t reply,” laughed the woman for whom the Paris Surete was searching everywhere; “but your face betrays the truth, my dear. Don’t worry,” she added in a tone of sympathy. “No doubt he’ll write as soon as he is back in England. Personally, I don’t believe he really cares a rap for the Ranscomb girl. It’s only a matter of money—and Dorise has plenty.”

“I don’t wish to hear anything about Mr. Henfrey’s love affairs!” cried the girl petulantly. “I tell you that they do not interest me.”

“Because you are piqued that he does not write, child. Ah, dear, I know!” she laughed, as the girl left the room.

A quarter of an hour later Louise was seated in the car, while Mead drove her along the broad highway over the Hog’s Back into Guildford. The morning was delightful, the trees wore their spring green, and all along in the fields, as they went over the high ridge, the larks were singing gaily the music of a glad morning of the English spring, and the view spread wide on either side.

Life in Surrey was, she found, much preferable to that on the Continent. True, in the Rue Racine they had entertained a great deal, and she had, during the war, met many very pleasant young English and American officers; but the sudden journey to Switzerland, then on into Italy, and across to New York, had been a whirl of excitement. Mrs. Maxwell had changed her name several times, because she said that she did not want her divorced husband, a ne’er-do-well, to know of her whereabouts. He was for ever molesting her, she had told Louise, and for that reason she had passed in different names.

The girl was in complete ignorance of the truth. She never dreamed that the source of the woman’s wealth was highly suspicious, or that the constant travelling was in order to evade the police.

As she was driven along, she sat back reflecting. Truth to tell, she was much in love with Hugh. Benton had first introduced him one night at the Spa in Scarborough, and after that they had met several times on the Esplanade, then again in London, and once in Paris. Yet while she, on her part, became filled with admiration, he was, apparently, quite unconscious of it.

At last she had heard of Hugh’s infatuation for Dorise Ranscomb, the daughter of the great engineer who had recently died, and indeed she had met her once and been introduced to her.

Of the conditions of old Mr. Henfrey’s will she was, of course, in ignorance. The girl had no idea of the great plot which had been formed by her foster father and his clever female friend.

The world is a strange one beneath the surface of things. Those who passed the imposing gates of the beautiful old English manor-house never dreamed that it sheltered one of the most notorious female criminals in Europe. And the worshipful magistrates and their wives who visited her would have received a rude shock had they but known. But many modern adventuresses have been able to bamboozle the mighty. Madame Humbert of Paris, in whose imagination were “The Humbert Millions,” used to entertain Ministers of State, aristocrats, financiers, and others of lower degree, and show them the sealed-up safe in which she declared reposed millions’ worth of negotiable securities which might not see the light of day until a certain date. The avaricious, even shrewd, bankers advanced loans upon things they had never seen, and the Humberts were the most sought-after family in Paris until the bubble burst and they fled and were afterwards arrested in Spain.

Molly Maxwell was a marvel of ingenuity, of criminal foresight, and of amazing elusiveness. Louise, young and unsuspicious, looked upon her as a mother. Benton she called “Uncle,” and was always grateful to him for all he did for her. She understood that they were cousins, and that Benton advised Mrs. Maxwell in her disastrous matrimonial affairs.

Yet the life she had led ever since leaving school had been a truly adventurous one. She had been in half the watering places of Europe, and in most of its capitals, leading, with the woman who now called herself Mrs. Bond, a most extravagant life at hotels of the first order.

The car at last ran into the station yard at Guildford, and at the bookstall Louise exchanged her books with the courteous manager.

She was passing through the booking-office back to the car, when a voice behind her called: