Joyce threw up her hands suddenly in a little gesture of despair.
“But, you see,” she cried, “the moment I begin to piece my fears together into a pattern of words, they just shred away into little wisps too elusive to mean anything at all to anybody except myself.”
“No,” Mr. Ricardo objected. It was his proud thought that he was a citizen of the world with a very open mind. There were thousands of strange occurrences, of intuitions, for instance, subsequently justified, which science could not explain and only the stupid could deride. “I would never say that the shell of the world mightn’t crack for any one of us and let some streak of light come through, misleading perhaps, true perhaps—a will-o’-the-wisp, or a sunbeam.”
It seemed to him that to no one might this hint of a revelation be more naturally vouchsafed than to this girl with the delicate, sensitive face and the grey eyes to which her long silken eyelashes, with their upward curve, lent so noticeable a look of mystery.
“After all,” he continued, “who knows enough to deny that there may come messages and warnings?”
“Yes.” Joyce Whipple caught at the word. “Repeated warnings. For if I put the letters away, and after a time take them out and read them again, I have just the same dreadful vision. I see just the same heave and surge of water with the unfinished faces washing to and fro.”
Mr. Ricardo began to rebuild his recollections of Diana Tasborough, fitting one in here, and another in there, until he had a fairly clear picture of the girl. She was tall, with hair of the palest gold, very pretty but a trifle affected in strange company. She had a way of fluttering her eyelids and pursing her mouth as she spoke, as if each word that she dropped was a pearl of rarest price. There was another quality too.
“She was always a little aloof,” he said.
Joyce took him up at once.
“Yes, but sedately aloof. Not as if she was living some mysterious secret life of her own all the time. I know what you mean. But it really only signified that she was just a little bit more her own mistress than were most of her friends. She—what shall I say?—she romped without romping. And don’t you see that precisely that extra hold she had upon herself increases my fears? She is the last person for whose soul and body the powers of evil should be fighting in the shadows.”
A movement amongst the guests diverted Mr. Ricardo’s thoughts. The evening was growing late. One of the bridge tables had already broken up. Mr. Ricardo was a practical man.
“But what in the world can I do about it?” he asked.
“You will be in the neighbourhood of the Château Suvlac in September?”
“Yes.”
“And Diana always has a party for the vintage.”
Mr. Ricardo smiled. Diana’s parties were famous in the Gironde. For ten nights or so the windows of that old rose-pink château of the sixteenth century blazed out upon the darkness until dawn. The broad stone terrace was gay with groups of young people dancing, and the music of their dances and even their laughter were heard far out upon the river, by the sailors in their gabares waiting upon the turn of the tide. The hour at which the guests retired precluded early rising. But somewhere about twelve o’clock the next day they might be seen picking grapes in attractive costumes and looking rather like the chorus of a musical comedy whose action took place in a vineyard of France.
“Yes, she certainly has a party for the vintage,” he said.
“Well then, you see what I want you terribly to do,” said Joyce, turning again towards him and plying him—oh, most unfairly!—with all the glamour of a lovely girl’s confidences and appealing eyes. “If you will, of course. It’s a little prayer, of course. I have no claim. But I know how kind you are.” Did she see the poor man flinch, that she must pile flattery upon prayer and woo him with the most wistful, plaintive voice? “I want you to spend as much time as you can at the Château Suvlac. You will be welcome, of course”—she dismissed the ridiculous idea that he could ever be unwelcome with a flicker of her fingers. “You could watch. You can find out what is happening to Diana—whether there is anybody really dangerous to her amongst her associates and then—”
“And then I shall write to you, of course,” Mr. Ricardo said, as cheerfully as these arduous duties so confidently laid upon him enabled him to do. He was surprised, however, to discover that letters to Joyce Whipple upon the subject were not to be included in his duties.
“No,” she answered with a trifle of hesitation. “Of course I should love to hear from you—naturally I should, and not only about Diana—but I can’t quite tell where I shall be towards the end of September. No, what I want you to do is, once you have found out what’s wrong, to jump in and put a stop to it.”
Mr. Ricardo sat back in his chair with a very worried expression on his face. For all his finical ways and methodical habits he was at heart a romantic. To play the god for five minutes so that a few young people stumbling in the shadows might walk with sure feet in a serene light—he knew no higher pleasure than this. But romance must nevertheless be reasonable, even if it took the shape of so engaging a young lady as Joyce Whipple. What she was proposing was work for heroes, not for middle-aged gentlemen who had retired from Mincing Lane. And as he ran over in his mind the names of more suitable champions, a tremendous fact leaped into his mind.
“But surely,” he stammered in his eagerness. “Diana Tasborough is engaged. Yes, I am sure of it. To a fine young fellow
