Hugh Henfrey, startled by the sudden shot, shouted for assistance, and then threw himself upon his knees beside the prostrate woman.
From a bullet wound over the right ear blood was slowly oozing and trickling over her white cheek.
“Help! Help!” he shouted loudly. “Mademoiselle has been shot from outside!Help!”
In a few seconds the elderly manservant burst into the room in a state of intense excitement.
“Quick!” cried Hugh. “Telephone for a doctor at once. I fear your mistress is dying!”
Henfrey had placed his hand upon Mademoiselle’s heart, but could detect no movement. While the servant dashed to the telephone, he listened for her breathing, but could hear nothing. From the wall he tore down a small circular mirror and held it against her mouth. There was no clouding.
There was every apparent sign that the small blue wound had proved fatal.
“Inform the police also!” Hugh shouted to the elderly Italian who was at the telephone in the adjoining room. “The murderer must be found!”
By this time four female servants had entered the room where their mistress was lying huddled and motionless. All of them were indeshabille. Then all became excitement and confusion. Hugh left them to unloosen her clothing and hastened out upon the veranda whereon the assassin must have stood when firing the shot.
Outside in the brilliant Riviera moonlight the scent of a wealth of flowers greeted his nostrils. It was almost bright as day. From the veranda spread a wide, fairy-like view of the many lights of Monte Carlo and La Condamine, with the sea beyond shimmering in the moonlight.
The veranda, he saw, led by several steps down into the beautiful garden, while beyond, a distance of a hundred yards, was the main gate leading to the roadway. The assassin, after taking careful aim and firing, had, no doubt, slipped along, and out of the gate.
But why had Mademoiselle been shot just at the moment when she was about to reveal the secret of his lamented father’s death?
He descended to the garden, where he examined the bushes which cast their dark shadows. But all was silence. The assassin had escaped!
Then he hurried out into the road, but again all was silence. The only hope of discovering the identity of the criminal was by means of the police vigilance. Truth to tell, however, the police of Monte Carlo are never over anxious to arrest a criminal, because Monte Carlo attracts the higher criminal class of both sexes from all over Europe. If the police of the Principality were constantly making arrests it would be bad advertisement for the Rooms. Hence, though the Monte Carlo police are extremely vigilant and an expert body of officers, they prefer to watch and to give information to the bureaux of police of other countries, so that arrests invariably take place beyond the frontiers of the Principality of Monaco.
It was not long before Doctor Leneveu, a short, stout, bald-headed little man, well known to habitues of the Rooms, among whom he had a large practice, entered the house of Mademoiselle and was greeted by Hugh. The latter briefly explained the tragic circumstances, whereupon the little doctor at once became fussy and excited.
Having ordered everyone out of the room except Henfrey, he bent and made an examination of the prostrate woman.
“Ah! m’sieur,” he said, “the unfortunate lady has certainly been shot at close quarters. The wound is, I tell you at once, extremely dangerous,” he added, after a searching investigation. “But she is still alive,” he declared. “Yes—she is still breathing.”
“Still alive!” gasped Henfrey. “That’s excellent! I—I feared that she was dead!”
“No. She still breathes,” the doctor replied. “But, tell me exactly what has occurred. First, however, we will get them to remove her upstairs. I will telephone to my colleague Duponteil, and we will endeavour to extract the bullet.”
“But will she recover, doctor?” asked Hugh eagerly in French. “What do you think?”
The little man became serious and shook his head gravely.
“Ah! m’sieur, that I cannot say,” was his reply. “She is in a very grave state—very! And the brain may be affected.”
Hugh held his breath.Surely Yvonne Ferad was not to die with the secret upon her lips!
At the doctor’s orders the servants were about to remove their mistress to her room when two well-dressed men of official aspect entered. They were officers of the Bureau of Police.
“Stop!” cried the elder, who was the one in authority, a tall, lantern-jawed man with a dark brown beard and yellow teeth. “Do not touch that lady! What has happened here?”
Hugh came forward, and in his best French explained the circumstances of the tragedy—how Mademoiselle had been shot in his presence by an unknown hand.
“The assassin, whoever he was, stood out yonder—upon the veranda—but I never saw him,” he added. “It was all over in a second—and he has escaped!”
“And pray who are you?” demanded the police officer bluntly. “Please explain.”
Hugh was rather nonplussed. The question required explanation, no doubt. It would, he saw, appear very curious that he should visit Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo at that late hour.
“I—well, I called upon Mademoiselle because I wished to obtain some important information from her.”
“What information? Rather late for a call, surely?”
The young Englishman hesitated. Then, with true British grit, he assumed an attitude of boldness, and asked:
“Am I compelled to answer that question?”
“I am Charles Ogier, chief inspector of the Surete of Monaco, and I press for a reply,” answered the other firmly.
“And I, Hugh Henfrey, a British subject, at present decline to satisfy you,” was the young man’s bold response.
“Is the lady still alive?” inquired the inspector of Doctor Leneveu.
“Yes. I have ordered her to be taken up to her room—of course, when m’sieur the inspector gives permission.”
Ogier looked at the deathly countenance with the closed eyes, and noted that the wound in the skull had been bound up with a cotton handkerchief belonging to one of the maids. Mademoiselle’s dark well-dressed hair had become unbound and was straying across her face, while her handsome gown had been torn in the attempt to unloosen her corsets.
“Yes,” said the police officer; “they had better take her upstairs. We will remain here and make inquiries. This is a very queer affair—to say the least,” he added, glancing suspiciously at Henfrey.
While the servants carried their unconscious mistress tenderly upstairs, the fussy little doctor went to the telephone to call Doctor Duponteil, the principal surgeon of Monaco. He had hesitated whether to take the victim to the hospital, but had decided that the operation could be done just as effectively upstairs. So, after speaking to Duponteil, he also spoke to the sister at the hospital, asking her to send up two nurses immediately to the Villa Amette.
In the meantime Inspector Ogier was closely questioning the young Englishman.
Like everyone in Monte Carlo he knew the mysterious Mademoiselle by sight. More than once the suspicions of the police had been aroused against her. Indeed, in the archives of the Prefecture there reposed a bulky dossier containing reports of her doings and those of her friends. Yet there had never been anything which would warrant the authorities to forbid her from remaining in the Principality.
This tragedy, therefore, greatly interested Ogier and his colleague. Both of them had spent many years in the service of the Paris Surete under the great Goron before being appointed to the responsible positions in the detective service of Monaco.
“Then you knew the lady?” Ogier asked of the young man who was naturally much upset over the startling affair, and the more so because the secret of his father’s mysterious death had been filched from him by the hand of some unknown assassin.
“No, I did not know her personally,” Henfrey replied somewhat lamely. “I came to call upon her, and she received me.”
“Why did you call at this hour? Could you not have called in the daytime?”
“Mademoiselle was in the Rooms until late,” he said.
“Ah! Then you followed her home—eh?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
The police officer pursed his lips and raised his eyes significantly at his colleague.
“And what was actually happening when the shot was fired? Describe it to me, please,” he demanded.
“I was standing just here”—and he crossed the room and stood upon the spot where he had been—“Mademoiselle was over there beside the window. I had my back to the window. She was about to tell me something—to answer a question I had put to her—when someone from outside shot her through the open glass door.”
“And you did not see her assailant?”
“I saw nothing. The shot startled me, and, seeing her staggering, I rushed to her. In the meantime the assailant—whoever he was—disappeared!”
The brown-bearded man smiled dubiously. As he stood beneath the electric light Hugh saw doubt written largely upon his countenance. He instantly realized that Ogier disbelieved his story.
After all it was a very lame one. He would not fully admit the reason of his visit.
“But tell me, m’sieur,” exclaimed the police officer. “It seems extraordinary that any person should creep along this veranda.” And he walked out and looked about in the moonlight. “If the culprit wished to shoot Mademoiselle in secret, then he would surely not have done so in your presence. He might easily have shot her as she was on her way home. The road is lonely up here.”
“I agree, monsieur,” replied the Englishman. “The whole affair is, to me, a complete mystery. I saw nobody. But it was plain to me that when I called Mademoiselle was seated out upon the veranda. Look at her chair—and the cushions! It was very hot and close in the Rooms to-night, and probably she was enjoying the moonlight before retiring to bed.”
“Quite possibly,” he agreed. “But that does not alter the fact that the assassin ran considerable risk in coming along the veranda in the full moonlight and firing through the open door. Are you quite certain that Mademoiselle’s assailant was outside—and not inside?” he asked, with a queer expression upon his aquiline face.
Hugh saw that he was hinting at his suspicion that he himself had shot her!
“Quite certain,” he assured him. “Why do you ask?”
“I have my own reasons,” replied the police officer with a hard laugh. “Now, tell me what do you know about Mademoiselle Ferad?”
“Practically nothing.”
“Then why did you call upon her?”
“I have told you. I desired some information, and she was about to give it to me when the weapon was fired by an unknown hand.”
“Unknown—eh?”
“Yes. Unknown to me. It might be known to Mademoiselle.”
“And what was this information you so urgently desired?”
“Some important information. I travelled from London to Monte Carlo in order to obtain it.”
“Ah! Then you had a motive in coming here—some strong motive, I take it?”
“Yes. A very strong motive. I wanted her to clear up certain mysterious happenings in England.”
Ogier was instantly alert.
“What happenings?” he asked, for he recollected the big dossier and the suspicions extending over four or five years concerning the real identity and mode of life of the handsome, sphinx-like woman Yvonne Ferad.
Hugh Henfrey was silent for a few moments. Then he said:
“Happenings in London that—well, that I do not wish to recall.”
Ogier again looked him straight in the face.
“I suggest, M’sieur Henfrey”—for Hugh had given him his name—“I suggest that you have been attracted by Mademoiselle as so many other men have been. She seems to exercise a fatal influence upon some people.”
“I know,” Hugh said. “I have heard lots of things about her. Her success at the tables is constant and uncanny. Even the Administration are interested in her winnings, and are often filled with wonder.”
“True, m’sieur. She keeps herself apart. She is a mysterious person—the most remarkable in all the Principality. We, at the Bureau, have heard all sorts of curious stories concerning her—once it was rumoured that she was the daughter of a reigning European sovereign. Then we take all the reports with the proverbial grain of salt. That Mademoiselle is a woman of outstanding intellect and courage, as well as of great beauty, cannot be denied. Therefore I tell you that I am intensely interested in this attempt upon her life.”
“And so am I,” Hugh said. “I have a strong reason to be.”
“Cannot you tell me that reason?” inquired the officer of the Surete, still looking at him very shrewdly. “Why fence with me?”
Henfrey hesitated. Then he replied:
“It is a purely personal matter.”
“And yet, you have said that you were not acquainted with Mademoiselle!” remarked Ogier suspiciously.
“That is quite true. The first time I have spoken to her was this evening, a few minutes before the attempt was made upon her life.”
“Then your theory is that while you stood in conversation with her somebody crept along the veranda and shot her—eh?”
“Yes.”
Ogier smiled sarcastically, and turning to his colleague, ordered him to search the room. The inspector evidently suspected the young Englishman of having shot Mademoiselle, and the search was in order to try and discover the weapon.
Meanwhile the brown-bearded officer called the Italian manservant, who gave his name as Giulio Cataldi, and who stated that he had been in Mademoiselle Ferad’s service a little over five years.
“Have you ever seen this Englishman before?” Ogier asked, indicating Hugh.
“Never, until to-night, m’sieur,” was the reply. “He called about twenty minutes after Mademoiselle’s return from the Rooms.”
“Has Mademoiselle quarrelled with anybody of late?”
“Not to my knowledge, m’sieur. She is of a very quiet and even disposition.”
“Is there anyone you know who might possess a motive to shoot her?” asked Ogier. “The crime has not been committed with a motive of robbery, but either out of jealousy or revenge.”
“I know of nobody,” declared the highly respectable Italian, whose moustache was tinged with grey. He shrugged his shoulders and showed his palms as he spoke.
“Mademoiselle arrived here two months ago, I believe?” queried the police official.
“Yes, m’sieur. She spent the autumn in Paris, and during the summer she was at Deauville. She also went to London for a brief time, I believe.”
“Did she ever live in London?” asked Hugh eagerly, interrupting Ogier’s interrogation.
“Yes—once. She had a furnished house on the Cromwell Road for about six months.”
“How long ago?” asked Henfrey.
“Please allow me to make my inquiries, monsieur!” exclaimed the detective angrily.
“But the question I ask is of greatest importance to me in my own inquiries,” Hugh persisted.
“I am here to discover the identity of Mademoiselle’s assailant,” Ogier asserted. “And I will not brook your interference.”
“Mademoiselle has been shot, and it is for you to discover who fired at her,” snapped the young Englishman. “I consider that I have just as much right to put a question to this man as you have, that is”—he added with sarcasm—“that is, of course, if you don’t suspect him of shooting his mistress.”
“Well, I certainly do not suspect that,” the Frenchman said. “But, to tell you candidly, your story of the affair strikes me as a very improbable one.”
“Ah!” laughed Hugh, “I thought so! You suspect me—eh? Very well. Where is the weapon?”
“Perhaps you have hidden it,” suggested the other meaningly. “We shall, no doubt, find it somewhere.”
“I hope you will, and that will lead to the arrest of the guilty person,” Hugh laughed. Then he was about to put further questions to the man Cataldi when Doctor Leneveu entered the room.
“How is she?” demanded Hugh breathlessly.
The countenance of the fussy little doctor fell.
“Monsieur,” he said in a low earnest voice, “I much fear that Mademoiselle will not recover. My colleague Duponteil concurs with that view. We have done our best, but neither of us entertain any hope that she will live!” Then turning to Ogier, the doctor exclaimed: “This is an amazing affair—especially in face of what is whispered concerning the unfortunate lady. What do you make of it?”
The officer of the Surete knit his brows, and with frankness replied:
“At present I am entirely mystified—entirely mystified!”
Walter Brock was awakened at four o’clock that morning by Hugh touching him upon the shoulder.
He started up in bed and staring at his friend’s pale, haggard face exclaimed:
“Good Heavens!—why, what’s the matter?”
“Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo has been shot!” the other replied in a hard voice.
“Shot!” gasped Brock, startled. “What do you mean?”
Briefly Hugh who had only just entered the hotel, explained the curious circumstances—how, just at the moment she had been about to reveal the secret of his father’s death she was shot.
“Most extraordinary!” declared his friend. “Surely, we have not been followed here by someone who is determined to prevent you from knowing the truth!”
“It seems much like it, Walter,” replied the younger man very seriously. “There must be some strong motive or no person would dare to shoot her right before my eyes.”
“Agreed. Somebody who is concerned in your father’s death has adopted this desperate measure in order to prevent Mademoiselle from telling you the truth.”
“That’s exactly my opinion, my dear Walter. If it was a crime for gain, or through motives of either jealousy or revenge, Mademoiselle would certainly have been attacked on her way home. The road is quite deserted towards the crest of the hill.”
“What do the police say?”
“They do not appear to trouble to track Mademoiselle’s assailant. They say they will wait until daylight before searching for footprints on the gravel outside.”
“Ah! They are not very fond of making arrests within the Principality. It’s such a bad advertisement for the Rooms. The Administration like to show a clean sheet as regards serious crime. Our friends here leave it to the French or Italian police to deal with the criminals so that the Principality shall prove itself the most honest State in Europe,” Brock said.
“The police, I believe, suspect me of shooting her,” said Hugh bluntly.
“That’s very awkward. Why?”
“Well—they don’t know the true reason I went to see her, or they would never believe me to be guilty of a crime so much against my own interests.”
Brock, who was still sitting up in bed in his pale blue silk pyjamas, reflected a few moments.
“Well, Hugh,” he said at last, “after all it is only natural that they should believe that you had a hand in the matter. Even though she told you the truth, it is quite within reason that you should have suddenly become incensed against her for the part she must have played in your father’s mysterious death, and in a frenzy of anger you shot her.”
Hugh drew a long breath, and his eyebrows narrowed.
“By Jove! I had never regarded it in that light before!” he gasped. “But what about the weapon?”
“You might easily have hidden it before the arrival of the police. You admit that you went out on the veranda. Therefore if they do chance to find the weapon in the garden then their suspicions will, no doubt, be considerably increased. It’s a pity, old man, that you didn’t make a clean breast of the motive of your visit.”
“I now see my horrible mistake,” Henfrey admitted. “I thought myself wise to preserve silence, to know nothing, and now I see quite plainly that I have only brought suspicion unduly upon myself. The police, however, know Yvonne Ferad to be a somewhat mysterious person.”
“Which renders the situation only worse,” Brock said. Then, after a pause, he added: “Now that you have declined to tell the police why you visited the Villa Amette and have, in a way, defied them, it will be best to maintain that attitude. Tell them nothing, no matter what happens.”
“I intend to pursue that course. But the worst of it is, Walter, that the doctors hold out no hope of Mademoiselle’s recovery. I saw Duponteil half an hour ago, and he told me that he could give me no encouraging information. The bullet has been extracted, but she is hovering between life and death. I suppose it will be in the papers to-morrow, and Dorise and her mother will know of my nocturnal visit to the house of a notorious woman.”
“Don’t let that worry you, my dear chap. Here, they keep the news of all tragedies out of the papers, because shooting affairs may be thought by the public to be due to losses at the Rooms. Recollect that of all the suicides here—the dozens upon dozens of poor ruined gamesters who are yearly laid to rest in the Suicides’ Cemetery—not a single report has appeared in any newspaper. So I think you may remain assured that Lady Ranscomb and her daughter will not learn anything.”
“I sincerely hope they won’t, otherwise it will go very hard with me,” Hugh said in a low, intense voice. “Ah! What a night it has been for me!”
“And if Mademoiselle dies the assailant, whoever he was, will be guilty of wilful murder; while you, on your part, will never know the truth concerning your father’s death,” remarked the elder man, running his fingers through his hair.
“Yes. That is the position of this moment. But further, I am suspected of the crime!”
Brock dressed while his friend sat upon the edge of the bed, pale-faced and agitated. Suppose that the assailant had flung his pistol into the bushes, and the police eventually discovered it? Then, no doubt, he would be put across the frontier to be arrested by the police of the Department of the Alpes Maritimes.
Truly, the situation was most serious.
Together the two men strolled out into the early morning air and sat upon a seat on the terrace of the Casino watching the sun as it rose over the tideless sea.
For nearly an hour they sat discussing the affair; then they ascended the white, dusty road to the beautiful Villa Amette, the home of the mysterious Mademoiselle.
Old Giulio Cataldi opened the door.
“Alas! m’sieur, Mademoiselle is just the same,” he replied in response to Hugh’s eager inquiry. “The police have gone, but Doctor Leneveu is still upstairs.”
“Have the police searched the garden?” inquired Hugh eagerly.
“Yes, m’sieur. They made a thorough examination, but have discovered no marks of footprints except those of yourself, myself, and a tradesman’s lad who brought up a parcel late last night.”
“Then they found no weapon?” asked the young Englishman.
“No, m’sieur. There is no clue whatever to the assailant.”
“Curious that there should be no footmarks,” remarked Brock. “Yet they found yours, Hugh.”
“Yes. The man must surely have left some trace outside!”
“One would certainly have thought so,” Brock said. “I wonder if we may go into the room where the tragedy happened?” he asked of the servant.
“Certainly, m’sieur,” was the courteous reply, and he conducted them both into the apartment wherein Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo had been shot down.
“Did you accompany Mademoiselle when she went to London, Giulio?” asked young Henfrey of the old Italian, after he had described to Brock exactly what had occurred.
“Yes, m’sieur,” he replied. “I was at Cromwell Road for a short time. But I do not care for London, so Mademoiselle sent me back here to look after the Villa because old Jean, the concierge, had been taken to the hospital.”
“When in London you knew some of Mademoiselle’s friends, I suppose?”
“A few—only a few,” was the Italian’s reply.
“Did you ever know a certain Mr. Benton?”
The old fellow shook his head blankly.
“Not to my knowledge, m’sieur,” he replied. “Mademoiselle had really very few friends in London. There was a Mrs. Matthews and her husband, Americans whom she met here in Monte Carlo, and Sir George Cave-Knight, who died a few weeks ago.”
“Do you remember an elderly gentleman named Henfrey calling?” asked Hugh.
Old Cataldi reflected for a moment, and then answered:
“The name sounds familiar to me, m’sieur, but in what connexion I cannot recollect. That is your name, is it not?” he asked, remembering the card he had taken to his mistress.
“Yes,” Hugh replied. “I have reason to believe that my late father was acquainted with your mistress, and that he called upon her in London.”
“I believe that a gentleman named Henfrey did call, because when I glanced at the card you gave me last night the name struck me as familiar,” the servant said. “But whether he actually called, or whether someone at table mentioned his name I really cannot recollect.”
“Ah! That’s a pity,” exclaimed Hugh with a sigh. “As a matter of fact it was in order to make certain inquiries regarding my late father that I called upon Mademoiselle last night.”
Giulio Cataldi turned in pretence of rearranging a chair, but in reality to avert his face from the young man’s gaze—a fact which Hugh did not fail to notice.
Had he really told the truth when he declared that he could not recollect his father calling?
“How long were you in London with Mademoiselle?” asked Henfrey.
“About six weeks—not longer.”
Was it because of some untoward occurrence that the old Italian did not like London, Hugh wondered.
“And you are quite sure that you do not recollect my father calling upon your mistress?”
“As I have said, m’sieur, I do not remember. Yet I recall the name, as it is a rather unusual one.”
“And you have never heard of Mr. Benton?”
Cataldi shook his head.
“Well,” Hugh went on, “tell me whether you entertain any suspicions of anyone who might be tempted to kill your mistress. Mademoiselle has enemies, has she not?”
“Who knows?” exclaimed the man with the grey moustache and small, black furtive eyes.
“Everyone has enemies of one sort or another,” Walter remarked. “And no doubt Mademoiselle has. It is for us to discover the enemy who shot her.”
“Ah! yes, it is, m’sieur,” exclaimed the servant. “The poor Signorina! I do hope that the police will discover who tried to kill her.”
“For aught we know the attempt upon the lady’s life may prove successful after all,” said Hugh despairingly. “The doctors hold out no hope of her recovery.”
“None. A third doctor has been in consultation—Doctor Bazin, from Beaulieu. He only left a quarter of an hour ago. He told me that the poor Signorina cannot possibly live! Ah! messieurs, how terrible all this is—povera Signorina! She was always so kind and considerate to us all.” And the old man’s voice trembled with emotion.
Walter Brock gazed around the luxurious room and at the long open window through which streamed the bright morning sun, with the perfume of the flowers outside. What was the mystery concerning Mademoiselle Yvonne? What foundation had the gossips for those constant whisperings which had rendered the handsome woman so notorious?
True, the story of the death of Hugh’s father was an unusually strange one, curious in every particular—and stranger still that the secret was held by this beautiful, but mysterious, woman who lived in such luxury, and who gambled so recklessly and with invariable good fortune.
As they walked back to the town Hugh’s heart sank within him.
“She will die,” he muttered bitterly to himself. “She’ll die, and I shall never learn the truth of the poor guv’nor’s sad end, or the reason why I am being forced to marry Louise Lambert.”
“It’s an iniquitous will, Hugh!” declared his friend. “And it’s infernally hard on you that just at the very moment when you could have learnt the truth that shot was fired.”
“Do you think the woman had any hand in my father’s death?” Hugh asked. “Do you think that she had repented, and was about to try and atone for what she had done by confessing the whole affair?”
“Yes. That is just the view I take,” answered Brock. “Of course, we have no idea what part she played in the business. But my idea is that she alone knows the reason why this marriage with Louise is being forced upon you.”
“In that case, then, it seems more than likely that I’ve been followed here to Monte Carlo, and my movements watched. But why has she been shot? Why did not her enemies shoot me? They could have done so twenty times during the past few days. Perhaps the shot which hit her was really intended for me?”
“I don’t think so. There is a monetary motive behind your marriage with Louise. If you died, your enemy would gain nothing. That seems clear.”
“But who can be my secret enemy?” asked the young man in dismay.
“Mademoiselle alone knows that, and it was undoubtedly her intention to warn you.”
“Yes. But if she dies I shall remain in ignorance,” he declared in a hard voice. “The whole affair is so tangled that I can see nothing clearly—only that my refusal to marry Louise will mean ruin to me—and I shall lose Dorise in the bargain!”
Walter Brock, older and more experienced, was equally mystified. The pessimistic attitude of the three doctors who had attended the injured woman was, indeed, far from reassuring. The injury to the head caused by the assailant’s bullet was, they declared, most dangerous. Indeed, the three medical men marvelled that she still lived.
The two men walked through the palm-lined garden, bright with flowers, back to their hotel, wondering whether news of the tragedy had yet got abroad. But they heard nothing of it, and it seemed true, as Walter Brock had declared, that the police make haste to suppress any tragic happenings in the Principality.
Though they were unconscious of it, a middle-aged, well-dressed Frenchman had, during their absence from the hotel, been making diligent inquiries regarding them of the night concierge and some of the staff.
The concierge had recognized the visitor as Armand Buisson, of the police bureau at Nice. It seemed as though the French police were unduly inquisitive concerning the well-conducted young Englishman and his companion.
Now, as a matter of fact, half an hour after Hugh had left the Villa Amette, Ogier had telegraphed to Buisson in Nice, and the latter had come along the Corniche road in a fast car to make his own inquiries and observations upon the pair of Englishmen. Ogier strongly suspected Henfrey of firing the shot, but was, nevertheless, determined to remain inactive and leave the matter to the Prefecture of the Department of Alpes Maritimes. Hence the reason that the well-dressed Frenchman lounged in the hall of the hotel pretending to read the “Phare du Littoral.”
Just before noon Hugh went to the telephone in the hotel and inquired of Cataldi the progress of his mistress.
“She is just the same, m’sieur,” came the voice in broken English. “Santa Madonna!How terrible it all is! Doctor Leneveu has left, and Doctor Duponteil is now here.”
“Have the police been again?”
“No, m’sieur. Nobody has been,” was the reply.
So Hugh rang off and crossed the hall, little dreaming that the well-dressed Frenchman had been highly interested in his questions.
Half an hour later he went along to the Metropole, where he had an engagement to lunch with Dorise and her mother.
When they met, however, Lady Ranscomb exclaimed:
“Why, Hugh, you look very pale. What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing,” he laughed forcedly. “I’m not very bright to-day. I think it was the sirocco of yesterday that has upset me a little, that’s all.”
Then, while they were seated at table, Dorise suddenly exclaimed:
“Oh! do you know, mother, that young French lady over yonder, Madame Jacomet, has just told me something. There’s a whisper that the mysterious woman, Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo, was shot during the night by a discarded lover!”
“Shot!” exclaimed Lady Ranscomb. “Dear me! How very dreadful. What really happened?”
“I don’t know. Madame Jacomet was told by her husband, who heard it in Ciro’s this morning.”
“How terrible!” remarked Hugh, striving to remain calm.
“Yes. But women of her class invariably come to a bad end,” remarked the widow. “How pleased I am, Dorise, that you never spoke to her. She’s a most dreadful person, they say.”
“Well, she evidently knows how to win money at the tables, mother,” said the girl, lifting her clear blue eyes to those of her lover.
“Yes. But I wonder what the scandal is all about?” said the widow of the great engineer.
“Oh! don’t trouble to inquire Lady Ranscomb,” Hugh hastened to remark. “One hears scandal on every hand in Monte Carlo.”
“Yes. I suppose so,” replied the elder woman, and then the subject was dropped.
So the ugly affair was being rumoured. It caused Hugh a good deal of apprehension, for he feared that his name would be associated with that of the mysterious Mademoiselle. Evidently one or other of the servants at the Villa Amette had been indiscreet.
At that moment, in his private room at the bureau of police down in Monaco, Superintendent Ogier was carefully perusing a dossier of official papers which had been brought to him by the archivist.
Between his thin lips was a long, thin, Swiss cigar—his favorite smoke—and with his gold-rimmed pince-nez poised upon his aquiline nose he was reading a document which would certainly have been of considerable interest to Hugh Henfrey and his friend Walter Brock could they have seen it.
Upon the pale yellow paper were many lines of typewriting in French—a carbon copy evidently.
It was headed: “Republique Francaise. Department of Herault. Prefecture of Police. Bureau of the Director of Police. Reference Number 20197.B.,” and was dated nearly a year before.
It commenced:
“Copy of an ‘information’ in the archives of the Prefecture of the Department of Herault concerning the woman Marie Mignot, or Leullier, now passing under the name of Yvonne Ferad and living at the Villa Amette at Monte Carlo.
“The woman in question was born in 1884 at Number 45 Rue des Etuves, in Montpellier, and was the daughter of one Doctor Rigaud, a noted toxicologist of the Faculty of Medicine, and curator of the University Library. At the age of seventeen, after her father’s death, she became a school teacher at a small school in the Rue Morceau, and at nineteen married Charles Leullier, a good-looking young scoundrel who posed as being well off, but who was afterwards proved to be an expert international thief, a member of a gang of dangerous thieves who committed robberies in the European express trains.
“This fact was unknown to the girl, therefore at first all went smoothly, until the wife discovered the truth and left him. She then joined the chorus of a revue at the Jardin de Paris, where she met a well-to-do Englishman named Bryant. The pair went to England, where she married him, and they resided in the county of Northampton. Six months later Bryant died, leaving her a large sum of money. In the meantime Leullier had been arrested by the Italian police for a daring robbery with violence in a train traveling between Milan and Turin and been sentenced to ten years on the penal island of Gorgona. His wife, hearing of this from an Englishman named Houghton, who, though she was unaware of it, was following the same profession as her husband, returned to France. She rented an apartment in Paris, and afterwards played at Monte Carlo, where she won a considerable sum, with the proceeds of which she purchased the Villa Amette, which she now occupies each season.”
“Extracts of reports concerning Marie Leullier, alias Yvonne Ferad, are herewith appended:
“Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard, London—to the Prefecture of Police, Paris.
“Mademoiselle Yvonne Ferad rented a furnished house at Hove, near Brighton, in June, 1918. Afterwards moved to Worthing and to Exeter, and later took a house in the Cromwell Road, London, in 1919. She was accompanied by an Italian manservant named Cataldi. Her conduct was suspicious, though she was undoubtedly possessed of considerable means. She was often seen at the best restaurants with various male acquaintances, more especially with a man named Kenworthy. Her association with this person, and with another man named Percy Stendall, was curious, as both men were habitual criminals and had served several terms of penal servitude each. Certain suspicions were aroused, and observation was kept, but nothing tangible was discovered. It is agreed, however, that some mystery surrounds this woman in question. She left London quite suddenly, but left no debts behind.”
“Information from the Borough Police Office, Worthing, to the Prefecture of Police, Department of Herault.
“Mademoiselle Yvonne Ferad has been identified by the photograph sent as having lived in Worthing in December, 1918. She rented a small furnished house facing the sea, and was accompanied by an Italian manservant and a French maid. Her movements were distinctly mysterious. A serious fracas occurred at the house on the evening of December 18th, 1918. A middle-aged gentleman, whose name is unknown, called there about seven o’clock and a violent quarrel ensued between the lady and her visitor, the latter being very seriously assaulted by the Italian. The constable on duty was called in, but the visitor refused to prosecute, and after having his injuries attended to by a doctor left for London. Three days later Mademoiselle disappeared from Worthing. It is believed by the Chief Constable that the woman is of the criminal class.”
Then Charles Ogier, inspector of the detective police of Monaco, smiled, laid down his cigar, and took up another and even more interesting document.