The Mysterious Three

“I doubt it under the circumstances. I believe the rumours to be true.”

An electric bell rang arrogantly, in warning that the curtain was about to rise, and some moments later the atrium was half deserted.

I told Faulkner what I had heard. He seemed in no way surprised.

“I thought it inadvisable to tell you this before,” he said after a pause, “but now that you have got wind of it I may as well tell you the rumours – or rather the chief one. The rest don’t matter. The Baronne de Coudron was known to be extremely rich, yet a few years ago she was quite poor. She bought the Château d’Uzerche recently. How and where she suddenly got the money is a mystery that has puzzled everybody, and rumours have been afloat that she obtained it by means which could lead her to penal servitude. But of course nobody knows anything definite – so nobody dares do more than insinuate.”

“The gendarmes seemed to know something definite,” I said.

“Yes, and much use they made of it! Paulton is most likely safely back in England by now.”

“They can arrest him there of course.”

“They can – but will they? Do you think officials capable of being hoodwinked as these gendarmes were, will have acumen enough to catch a clever man like Paulton? We must admit that he is clever.”

The more I saw of Faulkner, the more I grew to like him. Singularly undemonstrative in ordinary conversation, he recalled to my mind a blacksmith’s forge that is covered and banked up with cold, wet coal, but that burns so fiercely within. What had first attracted me to the lad had been his amazing coolness in the face of death, a coolness that amounted to indifference. I could picture him under fire, calmly rolling a cigarette and telling others what to do. Yet he was not a soldier. Like myself he was merely an idler. Leaving out the Houghton Park incident, I have myself only once been under fire. It was not on a battlefield, though not far from one – the field of Tewkesbury. It was during a big rabbit shoot, when two of the guns fired straight at me simultaneously, and the rabbit they killed rolled over on to my feet, dead.

My conduct was not heroic on that occasion I am afraid. With one bound I sprang behind a big elm, and, from that position of safety, hurled vituperation at my unintentional assailants, ordering them to desist. It took me some moments to convince myself I had not been hit, but the shock to my system was, I confess, considerable.

From the theatre we strolled through the big doors into the Salles de jeux. I tossed a hundred-franc note on the rouge and left it there. Red came up six times, and I gathered up my winnings.

The ball clicked again the seventh time, and black came up!

An old man with fingers like claws, and horribly long and dirty nails, introduced himself, engaged me in conversation, and ended by trying to induce me to partake in his infallible system for winning at roulette!

What a lot of rubbish has been written about the Rooms at Monte! The first time I went there – when I was quite a youth – I expected to find a sort of Aladdin’s palace, myriad glittering lights everywhere, gorgeously-dressed women sparkling with diadems and precious stones.

Instead, I sauntered into a series of large, lofty, heavily-gilded rooms with an atmosphere one could cut with a knife, in which were several long tables with people sitting round them, quite common-looking people, and anything but smart; the majority of the women were bloused and skirted tourists. One might have mistaken the scene for a number of board-meetings in progress simultaneously, but for the fact that in the centre of each table sat men in funereal black who, at intervals, droned monotonously through their noses —

“Messieurs, faites vos jeux.”

And then a little later —

“Rien n’va plus!”

Then the click of the ball, and the jingle of money lost and won.

It was one of the greatest disillusionments I have ever experienced. There was nothing in the least exciting, nothing sensational. There was a rustle of notes, and the whole scene was sordid, debasing. I can remember only one other disillusionment that has given me so great a shock. I experienced that the first time I visited Niagara Falls. I had seen pictures in plenty of the Falls, and had based thereon my idea of what the Falls would look like when I got there.

I arrived at noon, eager to gaze upon “Nature’s Marvellous Phenomenon,” as the booklet of the Railway Company described it. The first thing I saw was a truly gigantic hoarding-board advertising somebody’s lung-tonic, alongside it one recommending some one else’s Blood Capsules, and then, whichever way I looked, the landscape, which should have been gorgeous, was disfigured by similar announcements. Even the water was spoilt, for some of the falls being harnessed to dye-works, ran in shades of dirty greens and reds and yellows, and when I wanted to go under the main Falls I found I must buy a ticket at a box-office and go down in a lift. Never, I remember thinking, have the words, “Where only man is vile,” been more applicable than at Niagara.

But this is an aside. Elated at my success at roulette, a game which generally bores me, for I generally lose, I suggested to Faulkner that we should go together to some haunt of amusement more exhilarating than the Casino.

“What about the ball down in La Condamine to-night?” he asked, looking at me oddly.

“Ball?” I said. “What ball? I didn’t know there was one.”

“Oh, yes there is. It isn’t an aristocratic ball, you know. Far from it. I’ve lived out here a good deal, and got to know my way about. It is rather an expensive form of amusement, but as you have made two hundred and fifty-six pounds in ten minutes, you may as well spend a pound or two that way as any other. I think you will afterwards admit it has been an ‘experience’.”

I did admit it – and a great deal besides. It was the most “unconventional” ball I had ever attended, or have attended since. We picked up a number of acquaintances, eight or ten in all, and went boisterously down to La Condamine. The gay supper was most enjoyable. Most of the women’s dresses were suitable for warm climates, being conspicuous by their scantiness, rather than by their beauty. Some wore the black loup over their eyes. At supper I sat beside a girl whose identity was thus concealed. She had a wonderful figure, and her thick dark hair hung in two long plaits down below her waist. About her movements there was something that seemed familiar to me, and in vain I tried to recollect when I had met her before, and where. At last my curiosity outran my discretion.

“Take off your mask,” I said to her in French. “I’ll give you two louis.”

“Give them to me,” she said, also in French, the only language she had talked, “and I will take it off.”

I did so.

“Don’t be too surprised,” she exclaimed in broken English with a ripple of laughter. She pulled up the mask, then twisted it off, and I found myself seated beside Lady Thorold’s maid, Judith, whom I had last seen at the hotel on the night the Baronne de Coudron had arrived.

I confess that I was considerably annoyed.

I am not, I am thankful to think, one of those men who like to behave absurdly with domestic servants, especially with other people’s servants.

I had never liked this girl, she had always struck me as being hypocritical and designing, and though now she looked extremely pretty, judged by a certain standard, I could not dispel from my thoughts the picture of the demure maid with downcast eyes, whom a casual observer probably would not have looked at twice.

Her manner was the reverse of demure, nor were her eyes downcast. They struck me as being the most brazen eyes I had seen for a long time as they gazed unflinchingly up into my own. Much as I knew, I disliked her, I could not, at that moment, help noticing those strangely dark eyes of hers, now so full of laughter and wickedness; also the singular evenness of the small white teeth; the natural redness of the full lips; the clear, olive complexion, and the thick mantle of long, blue-black hair. Yet I did not admire her in the least. Oh, no. If her appearance struck me as remarkable and not wholly unpleasing, it was only for a brief instant.

“Have you left Lady Thorold’s service?” I asked, loud enough for others to hear. I thought that, at any rate, would be a nasty snub. Instead, she laughed immoderately. So, to my surprise, did her friends who had overheard my question.

“Ah, monsieur, but you are too drôle!” she exclaimed, as she stopped laughing. “I was not in Lady Thorold’s service, or in la Baronne de Coudron’s or in anybody else’s. I have never been in service. I – in service? I? Pah!”

She made a gesture of contempt.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I was Lady Thorold’s friend, her very intimate friend, and la Baronne de Coudron’s too, and – and other people’s. I am no servant, I assure you! m’sieur.”

I stared at her.

“You little impostor!” I said after a pause.

She laughed, and took my arm confidingly.

“I have always liked you, I have really,” she said in a coaxing undertone. “You are not like other men. You are not always trying to make love to everybody. Ma foi! How I detest some of your countrymen, they make themselves too ridiculous when they come to France.”

“You seem to know a lot about them,” I answered, for want of something better to say.

“Bien! I can assure you!” she replied, to my surprise, quite bitterly. Then she said quickly, in her broken English as though anxious to change the subject —

“You want Mademoiselle Vera – eh?”

“What do you mean?” I gasped, amazed.

“What I say. You want her. Well, she is quite near here.”

“Near here!”

“Mais oui. Pay me enough, and I will take you to her – now.”