He turned the handle of the dining-room door, and then stopped short, for he was amazed at the sight which met his eyes.
Sylvia was sitting at a round table; behind her was the buffet, still laden with the remains of a simple meal. Her face was hidden in her hands, and she was trembling—shaking as though she had the ague.
But what amazed Paul de Virieu was the sight of Sylvia’s hostess. Madame Wachner was crawling about on her hands and knees on the floor, and she remained in the same odd position when the dining-room door opened.
At last she looked up, and seeing who stood there, staring down at her, she raised herself with some difficulty, looking to the Frenchman’s sharpened consciousness, like some monstrous greedy beast, suddenly baulked of its prey.
“Such a misfortune!” she exclaimed in English. “Such a very great misfortune! The necklace of our friend ’as broken, and ’er beautiful pearls are rolling all over the floor! We ’ave been trying, Fritz and myself, to pick them up for ’er. Is not that so, Sylvia? Mrs. Bailey is so distressed! It ’as made ’er feel very faint, what English people call ‘queer.’ But I tell ’er we shall find them all—it is only a matter of a little time. I asked ’er to take some cognac my ’usband keeps for such bad moments, but no, she would not! Is not that so, Sylvia?”
She stared down anxiously at the bowed head of her guest.
Sylvia looked up. As if hypnotised by the other woman’s voice, she rose to her feet—a wan, pitiful little smile came over her white face.
“Yes,” she said dully, “the string of my pearls broke. I was taken faint. I felt horribly queer—perhaps it was the heat.”
Paul de Virieu took a sudden step forward into the room. He had just become aware of something which had made him also feel what English people call “queer.”
That something had no business in the dining-room, for it belonged to the kitchen—in fact it was a large wooden mallet of the kind used by French cooks to beat meat tender. Just now the club end of the mallet was sticking out of the drawer of the walnut-wood buffet.
The drawer had evidently been pulled out askew, and had stuck—as is the way with drawers forming part of ill-made furniture.
Chester came to the door of the dining-room. M. Wachner had detained him for a moment in the hall, talking volubly, explaining how pleasant had been their little supper party till Mrs. Bailey had suddenly felt faint.
Chester looked anxiously at Sylvia. She was oddly pale, all the colour drained from her face, but she seemed on quite good terms with Madame Wachner! As for that stout, good-natured looking woman, she also was unlike her placid smiling self, for her face looked red and puffy. But still she nodded pleasantly to Chester.
It seemed to the lawyer inconceivable that this commonplace couple could have seriously meant to rob their guest. But there was that letter—that strange, sinister letter which purported to be from Sylvia! Who had written that letter, and with what object in view?
Chester began to feel as if he was living through a very disagreeable, bewildering nightmare. But no scintilla of the horrible truth reached his cautious, well-balanced brain. The worst he suspected, and that only because of the inexplicable letter, was that these people meant to extract money from their guest and frighten her into leaving Lacville the same night.
“Sylvia,” he said rather shortly, “I suppose we ought to be going now. We have a carriage waiting at the gate, so we shall be able to drive you back to the Villa du Lac. But, of course, we must first pick up all your pearls. That won’t take long!”
But Sylvia made no answer. She did not even look round at him. She was still staring straight before her, as if she saw something, which the others could not see, written on the distempered wall.
L’Ami Fritz entered the room quietly. He looked even stranger than usual, for while in one hand he held Mrs. Bailey’s pretty black tulle hat and her little bag, in the other was clutched the handle of a broom.
“I did not think you would want to go back into my wife’s bedroom,” he said, deprecatingly; and Mrs. Bailey, at last turning her head round, actually smiled gratefully at him.
She was reminding herself that there had been a moment when he had been willing to let her escape. Only once—only when he had grinned at her so strangely and deplored her refusal of the drugged coffee, had she felt the sick, agonising fear of him that she had felt of Madame Wachner.
Laying the hat and bag on the table, L’Ami Fritz began sweeping the floor with long skilful movements.
“This is the best way to find the pearls,” he muttered; and three of the four people present stood and looked on at what he was doing. As for the one most concerned, Sylvia had again begun to stare dully before her, as if what was going on did not interest her one whit.
At last Monsieur Wachner took a long spoon off the table; with its help he put all that he had swept up—pearls, dust, and fluff—into the little fancy bag.
“There,” he said, with a sigh of relief, “I think they are all there.”
But even as he spoke he knew well enough that some of the pearls—perhaps five or six—had found their way up his wife’s capacious sleeve.
And then, quite suddenly, Madame Wachner uttered a hoarse exclamation of terror. One of the gendarmes had climbed up on to the windowsill, and was now half into the room. She waddled quickly across to the door, only to find another gendarme in the hall.
Sylvia’s eyes glistened, and a sensation which had hitherto been quite unknown to her took possession of her, soul and body. She longed for revenge—revenge, not for herself so much as for her
