The Prisoner in the Opal

being stifled in a prison. And then I remembered the gabare. It came three times a week to Suvlac and left in the night with the tide for Bordeaux. I had seen its mast above the little dock that very day. I might be in time to catch it before it sailed if I hurried. The captain would give me a passage if I paid enough for it. I didn’t trouble about my clothes, I didn’t think of anything except putting as wide a distance as possible between me and this house. I snatched up the domino and the mask⁠—that I did not dare to leave behind⁠—and turning out my light I stole from the room. My quickest way to the harbour was by the terrace door in Diana’s room. It was latched but not locked. I ran down the steps across the lawn, stumbled at the flowerbed, ran on and came to a dead stop at the bottom of the avenue. The gabare had gone. I flung the mask up into a tree. I had a horror of it. I felt that it made me an accomplice in the crime, and I was conscious of the most intense relief when at last I was free of it. I turned to the right and ran up the avenue in the black shelter of the trees. I had a thought of taking refuge with Marianne and Jules Amadée, but I still clung desperately to a hope that if only I could talk with Diana first of all, we could arrange some story which would keep her out of the scandal of the crime altogether. I reasoned that once back again in my room with the door locked and my bed drawn across it, I should be safe till morning. And morning could not be far away.

“But as I flitted across the terrace I saw something move behind the window of the library⁠—you,” and Joyce Whipple turned to Mr. Ricardo. “I sprang into Diana’s room, locked the glass door and turned on the light for a moment. It was just as I had left it. Diana had not moved. And then someone knocked. My fingers were on the switch. I turned the light out. This was my moment. If the pursuers were out upon the terrace, I had time to reach my room and barricade it. I sped up the little staircase, went into my room, and whilst my fingers fumbled in the darkness for the switch a cloak was thrown over my head and a hand was pressed over my mouth. I did go out in a faint then. For when I came to myself I was being carried from a motorcar into Monsieur de Mirandol’s house. There were three men, Monsieur de Mirandol himself, Robin Webster, and a man who still wore a mask upon his face. They had been into Diana’s room. They had found her in a stupor from which they could not wake her. It was I then who had taken Diana’s place. There was no one else.

“I was carried down to a cellar, and whilst the man in the mask stood over me, the two others brought a mattress and a water-jug and things like that.

“ ‘We’ll decide about her tomorrow,’ said the man with the mask, and I shivered. For I had recognised his voice. It was the voice of the man who had cried: ‘Lock the door!’ I remember that Robin Webster went out of the cellar last, and before he went he stooped down over me and whispered: ‘Don’t lose heart! I’ll save you.’

“But of course he couldn’t. I hadn’t a hope that he could. He must agree to what the others decided.

“There was a grating in the cellar under the ceiling which let in air and a trickle of grey light. Some time after it was day Monsieur de Mirandol brought me some food and I implored him to let me go. I don’t know what I promised, but he never replied to me at all. Then the evening afterwards, Tidon and de Mirandol came together. They handcuffed me and put a gag in my mouth and tied my legs. I was carried upstairs by Tidon. His car was at the door, with an all-weather body closed, and no chauffeur. He laid me on the floor and covered me with a rug, and after a minute or two the car moved off.”

Hanaud nodded his head.

“Tidon was the one man who could drive into Bordeaux through my cordon without his car being searched,” he said. “But even so he took his precautions, the good man. As he neared Bordeaux he made a circuit of the town, and in some by-lane mademoiselle here was transferred to a horse-drawn conveyance driven by a kind friend of the widow Chicholle.”

XXIX

Hanaud Dots the T’s

Thus Joyce Whipple told her story. Before she had got very far with it she slipped her hand under Bryce Carter’s arm with a pretty gesture, assuring herself by the touch of him that the bad days of which she was telling were really at an end. And before she had come to her flight from the house of Mirandol, his arm was about her waist and she held close to his side. Thus, too, they remained when the story was told, not even the charm of a bottle of very sweet pink champagne which Hanaud recklessly ordered sufficing to unlink them.

“Each one the glass full to the brim!” he cried. “So! We pledge Miss Joyce. And do we tap the heels? No! We do not!”

He raised his glass against the light, watched with evident anticipation the bubbles breaking on the surface of the wine, and bowing to her with kindliness and admiration so warm upon his face that not one of them but was stirred, he cried:

“To the brave young lady from the Bowery!”

Joyce laughed and blushed and thanked him