Again the telephone made odd noises, but again no satisfactory result followed; so he went on, `As it is, she walked out of this house of her own accord, and left her own villa a quarter of an hour later with Jules. He is, for all practical purposes, a respectable citizen, and as far as we know she went with him perfectly willingly; so if you butted in, from the legal point of view you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.'
`I'm her fiance, aren't I?' John demanded truculently.
`Yes. And I give you full marks now for your foresight in thinking up that bright idea. In France, as marriage is so mixed up with cash and property, people take a much more serious view of a fiance’s rights than they do in England. But even that would not condone your breaking into what amounts to a private dwelling, without obvious cause. It will help, though, in getting a search warrant if we can bring evidence to the effect that she was definitely taken on to the yacht.'
Once more noises came from the telephone, and this time it proved to be the number that C. B. had called. With a nod to the others, he said, `Our luck is in. It is Malouet himself.' Then he spoke for several moments in his own particular brand of French. It was good French from the point of view of fluency, but it did not sound good, as he spoke very quietly, and without using any of the ejaculations or inflections of the voice which are such a feature of that language.
When he hung up, he said, `As you may have noticed, I had to be a bit obscure; but the old boy tumbled to my meaning. He confirms my own view of the matter. In the remote chance of our happening on somebody prepared to vouch for it that they saw Christina either taken aboard by force, or carried aboard unconscious, the authorities will not hold it against us if we force our way on to the yacht and insist on being taken to her. But if such evidence as we can get is to the effect that she went aboard of her own free will, the only way in which we can insure against a nasty come back is for John, as her fiance, to swear an affidavit, stating that he believes her to have been lured aboard for an illegal purpose; then we will be granted a search warrant.'
`So that is all we have been wasting a precious ten minutes to be told,' said John sarcastically. `Why didn't you get on to your office in Whitehall and ask them to send us a . couple of hundred forms to fill up?'
`Johnny!' his mother exclaimed. `You will apologise at once!'
`Sorry, C. B.,' he murmured a trifle sullenly. `But for goodness' sake, let's get going and do something.'
C. B. gave him a good natured pat on the shoulder. `That's all right, John. Now you can run and get the car out.'
`I'll just slip upstairs,' said Molly.
John gave her a quick look. `Going to collect the armaments, Mumsie? Good! I'll come with you.'
`What's that?' exclaimed C. B., as they ran across the hall. Then he called after them, `If you are thinking of taking any of those museum pieces of yours, Molly, scrap the idea. Otherwise you can count me out.'
Both of them ignored him, and as John ran up the stairs close on his mother's heels he muttered, `Funny he should say that, isn't it? Just the line I took with you last night; but now things are different.'
With a sigh C. B. decided he had better check up on them. His long legs moving effortlessly, he took the stairs .three at a time, and entered Molly's work room just as they went down on their knees in front of a cupboard.
She pulled it open, revealing on the bottom shelf an array of highly dangerous objects. Among them were pistols, bowie knives, grenades, a garotter's cord, several stilettos and coshes, a knuckle duster and a stick of gelignite. Looking down between their shoulders, he asked
`Has that Mills bomb still got its detonator in?'
`Of course!' Molly replied with an air of pride. `Otherwise it would not be a perfect specimen.'
`You crazy woman ! Some day a maid will have the bright idea of cleaning it, and when she pulls the pin out it will go off.'
`Oh no. I'm much too fond of my little collection to let anyone clean it except myself,' she replied lightly.
John was quickly cramming 9 mm. bullets into the spare magazine of the larger of the two automatics. C. B. stooped and with a swift, unexpected grab picked up the weapon. `Nothing doing, partner,' he said firmly, pushing it into his own pocket. `If you insist on risking a spell in a French prison, that is your look out; but I dig my toes in at your taking a running jump to land on the guillotine.'
Turning an angry face up to him, John protested, `You said yourself that if anyone saw her shanghaied we could bust the yacht open without waiting for the police. It's only common sense to take a weapon of some kind.'
Stooping again, C. B, selected a light cosh. It was a beautiful thing, about twelve inches long, its head egg shaped and filled with lead, its stock a thin nine inch steel spring, the whole being covered with dull black leather. `Here, take this then. But don't lam anyone on the head with it; a blow on the shoulder would be quite enough to land most people in hospital for a week.'
`Thanks,' John murmured a little ungraciously; and he began to stuff it first in one pocket, then in another, in an endeavour to find a suitable place for it.
`Ram it down the front of your trousers,' C. B, advised. `Provided you don't push it too far, the top end will keep it from slipping, and it won't prevent you from sitting down in comfort. It is easy to draw from there, and if anyone frisks you for a weapon, in that position there is quite a good chance of it being overlooked.'
As John tucked away the cosh, C. B. turned to Molly. Relieving her of the smaller automatic, which she had been just about to slip in her bag, he said in a tone of mild reproof, `Now, ducks, I really can't allow you to go around shooting people.' But slipping out the magazine he handed it back to her and added, `Lord forbid that I should rob you of all your fun. You can point it at anyone you like now, and it's a small beer to a magnum of champagne that it will prove every bit as effective.'
`Oh, really, Bill!' she pleaded. `Can't I have just one bullet in the chamber, in case I get a chance to fire it? I do so want to see how much light the flash gives.'
`No. I'd rather you took a pot shot at me in the garden to morrow night, if you must have a human target to aim at.'
`You are rude! You infer that I couldn't hit a haystack.'
`Come on!' cried John angrily, from the doorway. `By nattering like this you two are chucking away our only chance of saving Christina.'
C. B. glanced at his watch. `It is just twenty two minutes since we discovered her disappearance. Not bad, considering I had to make a telephone call to Nice. But we would have saved four minutes if you had gone to get the car out when I asked you to, instead of abetting your mother in her whimsies about weapons. Get cracking now.'
John dashed downstairs. The others followed him and collected their coats from the hall. As they walked down the garden path, C. B. said to Molly, `I'm taking you only as a spare driver, if we have to leave the car. I'll have my hands quite full enough preventing that boy of yours from sticking out his neck. You are under orders again. Is that clear?'
`Yes, sir,' said Molly, out of ancient habit and quite meekly.
Once they were in the car John lost not a second, and the moment they were under way he jammed his foot down on the accelerator. As they rounded the second comer they met one of the big auto buses returning from the St. Raphael direction to Cannes and had to swerve violently to avoid it. Molly was thrown sideways on the back seat; C. B. stiffened his long legs and cried
`Go easy, young feller, or you'll break all our necks!' Then he went on in his normal voice. `Don't get the idea that I am sitting down on the job, but the fact is that five minutes either way is unlikely to make much difference now. Try to consider our prospects dispassionately. Jules has the best part of an hour's start of us. If he meant to take her to the yacht and the crew were only waiting till he got her on board to put to sea, they will have sailed long before we get there. We couldn't have caught them, even if we had set off the moment we discovered her disappearance. On the other hand, he could not have been certain that he would succeed in getting hold of her, or if he did at what hour he would be able to pull it off; so the odds are that he would not dare have ordered his crew to stand by from half past eight till dawn, and will have to collect them.'
`That shouldn't take him long.'
`It all depends how many of them there are and whereabouts they live when they are on shore. But that is not my main point: it is his mental attitude of which I am thinking. Once he has got her on board I see no reason at all why he should burst a blood vessel in getting the yacht out of harbour.'
`He would hardly be such a fool as to gamble on our not learning of Christina's disappearance until to morrow morning. She may even have told him that we were expecting her to dine with us.'
