The Launching of Roger Brook

heart was high. Four-hundred pounds would be a nice little fortune on which to start life in London. For five pounds a week a young man could live in considerable comfort at a modest yet respectable hostelry and have half that sum over to spend on getting about. At that rate Georgina's present would keep him for over a year and a half, but long before that he expected to have some profitable employment, so he could well afford to cut a good figure and take more expensive lodging in the meantime if, having acquired well-to-do friends, it seemed advisable to do so.

On reaching the Rue Francois 1er they walked some way along it, then De Roubec halted and pointed with his cane to a corner shop with a low bow window.

'That is Maitre Blasieur's,' he said. '‘T'would be best, I think, if I go in while you wait outside for me, otherwise he may suspect that I am acting only as an intermediary, and that the goods are really yours, which might lead to his asking embarrassing questions.'

'You foresee everything,' Roger smiled and wriggling the long heavy box out of his pocket he handed it to De Roubec, as he added: 'I am indeed grateful to you. I will wait here and pray meanwhile that you may have good fortune on my behalf.'

'Be sure I will do my best for you,' laughed the Chevalier, 'and I will be as speedy as I can. But do not be too impatient, as for a gold­smith to weigh and assess so many articles is certain to take not less than twenty minutes.'

He was about to turn away when he paused and added:

' 'Tis understood that I am authorised by you to accept three hundred and eighty louis, or at the worst a close offer to that, is it not?'

Roger nodded and the Chevalier disappeared into the shop.

For a time Roger amused himself by watching the smart equipages with which this fashionable street was as crowded as it had been on the previous afternoon. A clock above the mercer's at which he had bought a change of linen and his smart lace jabot had shown it to be just on a quarter to eleven when De Roubec had left him, and every few minutes he glanced impatiently at its dial.

The hands of the clock seemed to crawl but at last they reached the eleven and the bells in the steeples of the town rang out the hour. Roger was standing no more than a couple of yards from the doorway of Maitre Blasieur's shop and his glance now rarely left it although he told himself that after the gold had been weighed De Roubec would require at least a further ten minutes to drive a good bargain.

He was wondering now if the Chevalier would manage to get for him four hundred louis or only three hundred and eighty. Perhaps he might even be driven to accept three-seventy? On the other hand he seemed a shrewd fellow and might persuade the goldsmith into parting with four-hundred and ten. In any case, Roger felt, he must give him a handsome present for all the trouble he had taken, and as the hands of the clock over the mercer's crawled on from eleven to ten past he turned over in his mind various gifts that he might make his friend.

He thought of lace ruffles, a more elegant cane, and a new sword-belt but decided that none of these were good enough, and finally settled on a pair of silver-mounted pistols, similar to those he had lost himself in the Albatross, and would have liked to possess again.

A clock chimed the quarter and still De Roubec had not emerged from the goldsmith's. Roger began to fret now at his friend being so long, and endeavoured to peer into the shop, but the door was of stout wood and behind the window hung a plain black velvet curtain which cut off all view of the interior.

Striving to muster such further patience as he could he began to walk agitatedly up and down. That De Roubec could not yet have come out was certain as the place had one entrance only and no second door round the corner of the street.

For a further ten minutes Roger waited with ever-mounting impatience, then he could smother his half- formed fears no longer, and turning the handle of the shop door pushed it a little open. The shop was empty except for a man in a grey wig who stood behind the counter examining some gems.

Thrusting the door wide, Roger almost fell inside, exclaiming breathlessly: 'The Chevalier de Roubec! Where is he? Where has be gone?'

The man in the wig stared at him stupidly for a moment then he said: 'What do you mean, Monsieur? The Chevalier De Roubec. I know no one of that name.'

'But you must!' insisted Roger wildly. 'He came into your shop half an hour, nay, nearly three-quarters of an hour ago, with some gold ornaments that he wished to sell.'

'Ah, Monsieur means a tall gentleman, no doubt. A gentleman in a red velvet coat having a scar on his cheek that dragged down the corner of his left eye a little?'

'Yes, yes! That is he!' Roger panted. 'Where has he gone to?'

The shopman spread out his hands. 'I have no idea, Monsieur. He offered no gold ornaments for sale, but bought a cheap scarf pin for three crowns. Then he asked if he might use the privy out in the yard at the back, and said that when he had done he would leave by the alley on to which the yard abuts. But why is Monsieur so excited? Has he been robbed?'

'No,' stammered Roger with sudden visions of a police inquiry which he felt would do him little good and might even land him in further trouble. 'No, but I wanted to speak with him most urgently, and he said—he said if I'd wait outside he would attend to my business as soon as he had done with you. How long has he been gone?'

'Half an hour, at least, Monsieur; more by now. He spent but a few moments choosing his pin, then left at once.'

'Perchance he was suddenly taken ill and is still out there,' Roger suggested, snatching at a wild hope.

'If Monsieur wishes we will go and see,' replied the man in the wig, moving out from behind the counter. 'But I can hardly think that it is likely to be so.'

Together they visited the back of the premises. The earth closet was empty and the gate in the yard which gave on to a narrow alley slightly open. With a heart as heavy as lead Roger realised that it would be futile to attempt a chase. The purchase of the scarf pin alone was enough to convince him that he had been deliberately tricked, and by now the Chevalier might be a mile or more away.

Thanking the jeweller in a subdued voice he accompanied him back to the shop and walked out into the street. The sun was still shining and the gay equipages of the local French nobility still edging past each other in the congested thoroughfare, but he no longer had any eyes for their elegantly clad occupants.

His little fortune was gone, just as surely as if it had dropped overboard when he had been flung from the Albatross into the sea. He was alone and friendless in France. His winnings of the previous night had been eaten up by the money he had been forced to disburse in the brothel, and more with them. With added bitterness he recalled that De Roubec had not paid him back the louis he had lent him to finance his play at Monsieur Tricot's. In one way and another his cash capital had dwindled to only a little over four pounds, and he still had his bill at the inn to settle. Near panic seized him at the sudden, awful thought that he was now stranded in this strange foreign city, and had not even enough, money left to pay for a passage back to England.

CHAPTER IX

THE MAN IN BLUE

SLOWLY and sadly Roger made his way back to Les Trois Fleur-de-Lys. If there had been the faintest hope of catching the Chevalier there, anger and the acute anxiety he was feeling as to his future would have lent wings to his feet, but he knew there was none. De Roubec had now a clear three-quarters of an hour's start and, even if he had returned to the inn to pick up a few belongings, assuming that the irate Roger was certain to make for it as soon as he discovered the fraud that had been put upon him, would have left it again by this time.

As it was it seemed unlikely that the Chevalier had gone back to the inn even for a few moments, or would ever show his face there again. Knowing the man now for the plausible rogue that he was Roger began to see him in an entirely new light. His shoddy finery consorted ill with the tale that he really possessed a handsome wardrobe which had been impounded by a distrustful landlord. His story that he was a scion of a great and wealthy family who had had his pocket picked and was waiting for a lavish remittance was, no doubt, all moonshine. No real gentleman, Roger realised all too late, would be a regular habitue of a low waterside brothel such as the 'Widow Scarron's.' His anxiety that morning, too, to know if anyone else in Le Havre was aware that Roger was in possession of a hoard of valuable trinkets showed that he had premeditated and deliberately planned the