When they reached the front door L’Ami Fritz stooped down, and began looking under the mat.
Sylvia smiled in the darkness; there seemed something so primitive, so simple, in keeping the key of one’s front door outside under the mat! And yet foolish, prejudiced people spoke of Lacville as a dangerous spot, as the plague pit of Paris.
Suddenly the door was opened by the day-servant. And both the husband and wife uttered an involuntary exclamation of surprise and displeasure.
“What are you doing here?” asked Madame Wachner harshly. There was a note of dismay, as well as of anger, in her voice.
The woman began to excuse herself volubly. “I thought I might be of some use, Madame. I thought I might help you with all the last details.”
“There was no necessity—none at all—for doing anything of the kind,” said her mistress, in a low, quick voice. “You had been paid! You had had your present! However, as you are here, you may as well lay a third place in the dining-room, for, as you see, we have brought Madame Bailey back to have a little supper. She will only stay a very few moments, as she has to be at the Villa du Lac by ten o’clock.”
The woman turned and threw open the door of the dining-room. Then she struck a match, and lighted a lamp which stood on the table.
Sylvia, as is often the case with those who have been much thrown with French people, could understand French much better than she could speak it, and what Madame Wachner had just hissed out in rapid, mumbling tones, surprised and puzzled her.
It was quite untrue that she, Sylvia, had to be back at the Villa du Lac by ten o’clock—for the matter of that, she could stay out as long and as late as she liked.
Then, again, although the arrangement that she should come to supper at the Châlet des Muguets tonight had been made that afternoon, the Wachners had been home, but they had evidently forgotten to tell their servant that they were expecting a visitor, for only two places were laid in the little dining-room into which they all three walked on entering the house.
Propped up against the now lighted lamp was a letter addressed to Monsieur Polperro in a peculiar, large handwriting. L’Ami Fritz, again uttering that queer guttural exclamation, snatched up the envelope, and hurriedly put it into his breast-pocket.
“I brought that letter out of M’sieur’s bedroom,” observed the day-servant, cringingly. “I feared M’sieur had forgotten it! Would M’sieur like me to take it to the Villa du Lac on my way home?”
“No,” said Monsieur Wachner, shortly. “There is no need for you to do that; Madame Bailey will kindly take it for me.”
And again Sylvia felt surprised. Surely he had said—or was it Madame Wachner?—that they had arranged for a man to call for it.
His wife shouted out his name imperiously from the dark passage, “Fritz! Fritz! Come here a moment; I want you.”
He hurried out of the room, and Sylvia and the servant were thus left alone together for a few moments in the dining-room.
The woman went to the buffet and took up a plate; she came and placed it noisily on the table, and, under cover of the sound she made, “Do not stay here, Madame,” she whispered, thrusting her wrinkled, sharp-featured face close to the Englishwoman’s. “Come away with me! Say you want me to wait a bit and conduct you back to the Villa du Lac.”
Sylvia stared at her distrustfully. This femme de ménage had a disagreeable face; there was a cunning, avaricious look in her eyes, or so Mrs. Bailey fancied; no doubt she remembered the couple of francs which had been given to her, or rather extorted by her, on the occasion of the English lady’s last visit to the Châlet des Muguets.
“I will not say more,” the servant went on, speaking very quickly, and under her breath. “But I am an honest woman, and these people frighten me. Still, I am not one to want embarrassments with the police.”
And Sylvia suddenly remembered that those were exactly the words which had been uttered by Anna Wolsky’s landlady in connection with Anna’s disappearance. How frightened French people seemed to be of the police!
There came the sound of steps in the passage, and the Frenchwoman moved away quickly from Sylvia’s side. She took up the plate she had just placed on the table, and to Sylvia’s mingled disgust and amusement began rubbing it vigorously with her elbow.
Monsieur Wachner entered the room.
“That will do, that will do, Annette,” he said patronisingly. “Come here, my good woman! Your mistress and I desire to give you a further little gift as you have shown so much zeal today, so here is twenty francs.”
“Merci, M’sieur.”
Without looking again at Sylvia the woman went out of the room, and a moment later the front door slammed behind her.
“My wife discovered that it is Annette’s fête day tomorrow, and gave her a trifle. But she was evidently not satisfied, and no doubt that was why she stayed on tonight,” observed Monsieur Wachner solemnly.
Madame Wachner now came in. She had taken off her bonnet and changed her elastic-sided boots for easy slippers.
“Oh, those French people!” she exclaimed. “How greedy they are for money! But—well, Annette has earned her present very fairly—” She shrugged her shoulders.
“May I go and take off my hat?” asked Sylvia; she left the room before Madame Wachner could answer her, and hurried down the short, dark passage.
The door of the moonlit kitchen was ajar, and to her surprise she saw that a large trunk, corded and even labelled, stood in the middle of the floor. Close to the trunk was a large piece of sacking—and by it another coil of thick rope.
Was it possible that the Wachners,
