CHAPTER XXIV
It was nearly nine o'clock, and for the moment the Casino was very empty, for the afternoon players had left, and the evening serie, as M. Polperro contemptuously called them—the casual crowd of night visitors to Lacville—had not yet arrived from Paris.
"And now," said Madame Wachner, suddenly, "is it not time for us to go and 'ave our little supper?"
The "citizeness of the world" had been watching her husband and Sylvia playing at Baccarat; both of them had won, and Sylvia had welcomed, eagerly, the excitement of the tables.
Count Paul's muttered farewell echoed in her ears, and the ornately decorated gambling room seemed full of his presence.
She made a great effort to put any intimate thought of him away. The next day, so she told herself, she would go back to England, to Market Dalling. There she must forget that such a place as Lacville existed; there she must banish Paul de Virieu from her heart and memory. Yes, there was nothing now to keep her here, in this curious place, where she had eaten, in more than one sense, of the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge.
With a deep, involuntary sigh, she rose from the table.
She looked at the green cloth, at the people standing round it, with an odd feeling that neither the table nor the people round her were quite real. Her heart and thoughts were far away, with the two men both of whom loved her in their very different ways.
Then she turned with an unmirthful smile to her companions. It would not be fair to let her private griefs sadden the kindly Wachners. It was really good of them to have asked her to come back to supper at the Châlet des Muguets. She would have found it terribly lonely this evening at the Villa du Lac. …
"I am quite ready," she said, addressing herself more particularly to Madame Wachner; and the three walked out of the Club rooms.
"Shall we take a carriage?" Sylvia asked diffidently; she knew her stout friend disliked walking.
"No, no," said Monsieur Wachner shortly. "There is no need to take a carriage to-night; it is so fine, and, besides, it is not very far."
He so seldom interfered or negatived any suggestion that Sylvia felt a little surprised, the more so that it was really a long walk from the Casino to the lonely Châlet des Muguets. But as Madame Wachner had nodded assent to her husband's words, their English guest said no more.
They started out into the moonlit night, Sylvia with her light, springing step keeping pace with L'Ami Fritz, while his wife lagged a step behind. But, as was usual with him, M. Wachner remained silent, while his companions talked.
To-night, however, Madame Wachner did not show her usual tact; she began discussing the two travellers who were now well started, no doubt, on their way to Switzerland, and she expressed contemptuous surprise that the Comte de Virieu had left Lacville.
"I am glad 'e 'as gone away," she said cheerfully, "for the Count is what English people call so supercilious—so different to that excellent Mr. Chester! I wonder Mr. Chester was willing for the Count's company. But you 'ave not lost 'im, my pretty Sylvia! 'E will soon be back!"
As she spoke she laughed coarsely, and Sylvia made no answer. She thought it probable that she would never see the Comte de Virieu again, and the conviction hurt intolerably. It was painful to be reminded of him now, in this way, and by a woman who she knew disliked and despised him.
She suddenly felt sorry that she had accepted the Wachner's invitation.
To-night the way to the Châlet des Muguets seemed longer than usual—far longer than it had seemed the last time Sylvia had walked there, when Count Paul had been her companion. It seemed as if an immense time had gone by since then. …
Sylvia was glad when at last the three of them came within sight of the familiar white gate. How strangely lonely the little house looked, standing back in the twilit darkness of a summer night.
"I wonder"—Sylvia Bailey looked up at her silent companion, L'Ami Fritz had not opened his lips once during the walk from the Casino, "I wonder that you and Madame Wachner are not afraid to leave the châlet alone for so many hours of each day! Your servant always goes away after lunch, doesn't she?"
"There is nothing to steal," he answered shortly. "We always carry all our money about with us—all sensible people do so at Lacville and at Monte Carlo."
Madame Wachner was now on Sylvia's other side.
"Yes," she interposed, rather breathlessly, "that is so; and I 'ope that you, dear friend, followed the advice we gave you about the matter? I mean, I 'ope you do not leave your money in the hotel?"
"Of course I don't," said Sylvia, smiling. "Ever since you gave me those pretty little leather pouches I always carry all my money about with me, strapped round my waist. At first it wasn't very comfortable, but I have got quite used to it now."
"That is right," said Madame Wachner, heartily, "that is quite right! There are rogues everywhere, perhaps even in the Villa du Lac, if we knew everything!" and Sylvia's hostess laughed in the darkness her hearty, jovial laugh.
Suddenly she bent forward and addressed her husband. "By the way, Ami Fritz, have you written that letter to the Villa du Lac?" She nodded, explaining to Sylvia, "We are anxious to get a room in your beautiful pension for a rich friend of ours."
Sylvia had the instant feeling—she could not have told why—that his wife's question had greatly annoyed Monsieur Wachner.
"Of course I have written the letter!" he snapped out. "Do I ever forget anything?"
"But I'm afraid there is no room vacant in the Villa du Lac," said Sylvia. "And yet—well, I suppose they have not yet had time to let the Comte de Virieu's room. They only knew he was going this morning. But you need not have troubled to write a letter, Monsieur Wachner. I could have given the message when I got back to-night. In any case let me take your letter."
"Ah! but the person in question may arrive before you get back," said Madame Wachner. "No, no, we have arranged to send the letter by a cabman who will call for it."
Monsieur Wachner pushed opened the white gate, and all three began walking up through the garden. The mantle of night now draped every straggling bush, every wilted flower, and the little wilderness was filled with delicious, pungent night scents.
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 to-night 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 bed-room," 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 to-day, 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 to-morrow, and gave her a trifle. But she was evidently not satisfied, and no doubt that was why she stayed on to-night," 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, too, were leaving Lacville? If so, how very odd of them not to have told her!
As she opened the door of the bed-room Madame Wachner waddled up behind her.
"Wait a moment!" she cried. "Or perhaps, dear friend, you do not want a light? You see, we have been rather upset to-day, for L'Ami Fritz has to go away for two or three days, and that is a great affair! We are so very seldom separated. 'Darby and Joan,' is not that what English people would call us?"
"The moon is so bright I can see quite well," Sylvia was taking off her hat; she put it, together with a little fancy bag in which she kept the loose gold she played with at the gambling tables, on Madame Wachner's bed. She felt vaguely uncomfortable, for even as Madame Wachner had spoken she had become aware that the bed-room was almost entirely cleared of everything belonging to its occupants. However, the Wachners, like Anna Wolsky, had the right to go away without telling anyone of their intention.
As they came back into the dining-room together, Mrs. Bailey's host, who was already sitting down at table, looked up.
"Words! Words! Words!" he exclaimed harshly. "Instead of talking so much why do you not both come here and eat your suppers? I am very hungry."
Sylvia had never heard the odd, silent man speak in such a tone before, but his wife answered quite good-humouredly,
"You forget, Fritz, that the cabman is coming. Till he has come and gone we shall not have peace."
And sure enough, within a moment of her saying those words there came a sound of shuffling footsteps on the garden path.
Monsieur Wachner got up and went out of the room. He opened the front door, and Sylvia overheard a few words of the colloquy between her host and his messenger.
"Yes, you are to take it now, at once. Just leave it at the Villa du Lac. You will come for us—you will come, that is, for me"—Monsieur Wachner raised his voice—"to-morrow morning at half-past six. I desire to catch the 7.10 train to Paris."
There was a jingle of silver, and then Sylvia caught the man's answering, "Merci, c'est entendu, M'sieur."
But L'Ami Fritz did not come back at once to the dining-room. He went out into the garden and accompanied the man down to the gate.
When he came back again he put a large key on the dining-table.
"There!" he said, with a grunt of satisfaction. "Now there will be nothing to disturb us any more."
They all three sat down at the round dining-table. To Sylvia's surprise a very simple meal was set out before them. There was only one small dish of galantine. When Sylvia Bailey had been to supper with the Wachners before, there had always been two or three tempting cold dishes, and some dainty friandises as well, the whole evidently procured from the excellent confectioner who drives such a roaring trade at Lacville. To-night, in addition to the few slices of galantine, there was only a little fruit.
Then a very odd thing happened.
L'Ami Fritz helped first his wife and himself largely, then Sylvia more frugally. It was perhaps a slight matter, the more so that Monsieur Wachner was notoriously forgetful, being ever, according to his wife, absorbed in his calculations and "systems." But all the same, this extraordinary lack of good manners on her host's part added to Sylvia's feeling of strangeness and discomfort.
Indeed, the Wachners were both very unlike their usual selves this evening. Madame Wachner had suddenly become very serious, her stout red face was set in rather grim, grave lines; and twice, as Sylvia was eating the little piece of galantine which had been placed on her plate by L'Ami Fritz, she looked up and caught her hostess's eyes fixed on her with a curious, alien scrutiny.
When they had almost finished the meat, Madame Wachner suddenly exclaimed in French.
"Fritz! You have forgotten to mix the salad! Whatever made you forget such an important thing? You will find what is necessary in the drawer behind you."
Monsieur Wachner made no answer. He got up and pulled the drawer of the buffet open. Taking out of it a wooden spoon and fork, he came back to the table and began silently mixing the salad.
The two last times Sylvia had been at the Châlet des Muguets, her host, in deference to her English taste, had put a large admixture of vinegar in the salad dressing, but this time she saw that he soused the lettuce-leaves with oil.
At last, "Will you have some salad, Mrs. Bailey?" he said brusquely, and in English. He spoke English far better than did his wife.
"No," she said. "Not to-night, thank you!"
And Sylvia, smiling, looked across at Madame Wachner, expecting to see in the older woman's face a humorous appreciation of the fact that L'Ami Fritz had forgotten her well-known horror of oil.
Mrs. Bailey's dislike of the favourite French salad-dressing ingredient had long been a joke among the three, nay, among the four, for Anna Wolsky had been there the last time Sylvia had had supper with the Wachners. It had been such a merry meal!
To-night no meaning smile met hers; instead she only saw that odd, grave, considering look on her hostess's face.
Suddenly Madame Wachner held out her plate across the table, and L'Ami Fritz heaped it up with the oily salad.
Sylvia Bailey's plate was empty, but Monsieur Wachner did not seem to notice that his guest lacked anything. And at last, to her extreme astonishment, she suddenly saw him take up one of the two pieces of meat remaining on the dish, and, leaning across, drop it on his wife's plate. Then he helped himself to the last remaining morsel.
It was such a trifling thing really, and due of course to her host's singular absent-mindedness; yet, even so, taken in connection with both the Wachners' silence and odd manner, this lack of the commonest courtesy struck Sylvia with a kind of fear—with fear and with pain. She felt so hurt that the tears came into her eyes.
There was a long moment's pause—then,
"Do you not feel well," asked Madame Wachner harshly, "or are you grieving for the Comte de Virieu?"
Her voice had become guttural, full of coarse and cruel malice, and even as she spoke she went on eating voraciously.
Sylvia Bailey pushed her chair back, and rose to her feet.
"I should like to go home now," she said quietly, "for it is getting late,"—her voice shook a little. She was desperately afraid of disgracing herself by a childish outburst of tears. "I can make my way back quite well without Monsieur Wachner's escort."
She saw her host shrug his shoulders. He made a grimace at his wife; it expressed annoyance, nay, more, extreme disapproval.
Madame Wachner also got up. She wiped her mouth with her napkin, and then laid her hand on Sylvia's shoulder.
"Come, come," she exclaimed, and this time she spoke quite kindly, "you must not be cross with me, dear friend! I was only laughing, I was only what you call in England 'teasing.' The truth is I am very vexed and upset that our supper is not better. I told that fool Frenchwoman to get in something really nice, and she disobeyed me! I was 'ungry, too, for I 'ad no déjeuner to-day, and that makes one 'ollow, does it not? But now L'Ami Fritz is going to make us some good coffee! After we 'ave 'ad it you shall go away if so is your wish, but my 'usband will certainly accompany you"
"Most certainly I will do so; you will not move—no, not a single step—without me," said Monsieur Wachner solemnly.
And then Madame Wachner burst out into a sudden peal of laughter—laughter which was infectious.
Sylvia smiled too, and sat down again. After all, as Paul de Virieu had truly said, not once, but many times, the Wachners were not refined people—but they were kind and very good-natured. And then she, Sylvia, was tired and low-spirited to-night—no doubt she had imagined the change in their manner, which had so surprised and hurt her.
Madame Wachner was quite her old self again; just now she was engaged in heaping all the cherries which were in the dessert dish on her guest's plate, in spite of Sylvia's eager protest.
L'Ami Fritz got up and left the room. He was going into the kitchen to make the coffee.
"Mr. Chester was telling me of your valuable pearls," said Madame Wachner pleasantly. "I was surprised! What a lot of money to 'ang round one's neck! But it is worth it if one 'as so lovely a neck as 'as the beautiful Sylvia! May I look at your pearls, dear friend? Or do you never take them off?"
Sylvia unclasped the string of pearls and laid it on the table.
"Yes, they are rather nice," she said modestly. "I always wear them, even at night. Many people have a knot made between each pearl, for that, of course, makes the danger of losing them much less should the string break. But mine are not knotted, for a lady once told me that it made the pearls hang much less prettily; she said it would be quite safe if I had them restrung every six months. So that is what I do. I had them restrung just before coming to France."
Madame Wachner reverentially took up the pearls in her large hand; she seemed to be weighing them.
"How heavy they are," she said at length, and now she spoke French.
"Yes," said Sylvia, "you can always tell a real pearl by its weight."
"And to think," went on her hostess musingly, "that each of these tiny balls is worth—how much is it worth?—at least five or six hundred francs, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Sylvia again, "I'm glad to say they have increased in value during the last few years. You see, pearls are the only really fashionable gems just now."
"And they cannot be identified like other fine jewels," observed Madame Wachner, "but I suppose they are worth more together than separately?" she was still speaking in that thoughtful, considering tone.
"Oh, I don't know that," said Sylvia, smiling. "Each separate pearl is worth a good deal, but still I daresay you are right, for these are beautifully matched. I got them, by a piece of great luck, without having to pay—well, what I suppose one would call the middle-man's profit! I just paid what I should have done at a good London sale."
"And you paid?—seven—eight 'undred pounds?" asked Madame Wachner, this time in English, and fixing her small, dark eyes on the fair Englishwoman's face.
"Oh, rather more than that." Sylvia grew a little red. "But as I said just now, they are always increasing in value. Even Mr. Chester, who did not approve of my getting these pearls, admits that I made a good bargain."
Through the open door she thought she heard Monsieur Wachner coming back down the passage. So she suddenly took the pearls out of the other woman's hand and clasped the string about her neck again.
L'Ami Fritz came into the room. He was holding rather awkwardly a little tray on which were two cups—one a small cup, the other a large cup, both filled to the brim with black coffee. He put the small cup before his guest, the large cup before his wife.
"I hope you do not mind having a small cup," he said solemnly. "I remember that you do not care to take a great deal of coffee, so I have given you the small cup."
Sylvia looked up.
"Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "I ought to have told you before you made it, Monsieur Wachner—but I won't have any coffee to-night. The last time I took some I lay awake all night."
"Oh, but you must take coffee!" Madame Wachner spoke good-humouredly, but with great determination. "The small amount you have in that little cup will not hurt you; and besides it is a special coffee, L'Ami Fritz's own mixture"—she laughed heartily.
And again? Sylvia noticed that Monsieur Wachner looked at his wife with a fixed, rather angry look, as much as to say, "Why are you always laughing? Why cannot you be serious sometimes?"
"But to-night, honestly, I would really rather not have any coffee!"
Sylvia had suddenly seen a vision of herself lying wide awake during long dark hours—hours which, as she knew by experience, generally bring to the sleepless, worrying thoughts.
"No, no, I will not have any coffee to-night," she repeated.
"Yes, yes, dear friend, you really must," Madame Wachner spoke very persuasively. "I should be truly sorry if you did not take this coffee. Indeed, it would make me think you were angry with us because of the very bad supper we had given you! L'Ami Fritz would not have taken the trouble to make coffee for his old wife. He has made it for you, only for you; he will be hurt if you do not take it!"
The coffee did look very tempting and fragrant.
Sylvia had always disliked coffee in England, but somehow French coffee was quite different; it had quite another taste from that of the mixture which the ladies of Market Dalling pressed on their guests at their dinner-parties.
She lifted the pretty little cup to her lips—but the coffee, this coffee of L'Ami Fritz, his special mixture, as his wife had termed it, had a rather curious taste, it was slightly bitter—decidedly not so nice as that which she was accustomed to drink each day after déjeuner at the Villa du Lac. Surely it would be very foolish to risk a bad night for a small cup of indifferent coffee?
She put the cup down, and pushed it away.
"Please do not ask me to take it," she said firmly. "It really is very bad for me!"
Madame Wachner shrugged her shoulders with an angry gesture.
"So be it," she said, and then imperiously, "Fritz, will you please come with me for a moment into the next room? I have something to ask you."
He got up and silently obeyed his wife. Before leaving the room he slipped the key of the garden gate into his trousers pocket.
A moment later Sylvia, left alone, could hear them talking eagerly to one another in that strange, unknown tongue in which they sometimes—not often—addressed one another.
She got up from her chair, seized with a sudden, eager desire to slip away before they came back. For a moment she even thought of leaving the house without waiting for her hat and little fancy bag; and then, with a strange sinking of the heart she remembered that the white gate was locked, and that L'Ami Fritz had now the key of it in his pocket.
But in no case would Sylvia have had time to do what she had thought of doing, for a moment later her host and hostess were back in the room.
Madame Wachner sat down again at the dining-table,
"One moment!" she exclaimed, rather breathlessly. "Just wait till I 'ave finished my coffee, Sylvia dear, and then L'Ami Fritz will escort you 'ome."
Rather unwillingly, Sylvia again sat down.
Monsieur Wachner was paying no attention either to his guest or to his wife. He took up the chair on which he had been sitting, and placed it out of the way near the door. Then he lifted the lighted lamp off the table and put it on the buffet.
As he did so, Sylvia, looking up, saw the shadow of his tall, lank figure thrown grotesquely, hugely, against the opposite wall of the room.
"Now take the cloth off the table," he said curtly. And his wife, gulping down the last drops of her coffee, got up and obeyed him.
Sylvia suddenly realised that they were getting ready for something—that they wanted the room cleared.
As with quick, deft fingers she folded up the cloth, Madame Wachner exclaimed, "As you are not taking any coffee, Sylvia, perhaps it is time for you now to get up and go away."
Sylvia Bailey looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt very angry. Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life had anyone ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house.
She rose, for the second time during the course of her short meal, to her feet
And then, in a flash, there occurred that which transformed her anger into agonised fear—fear and terror.
The back of her neck had been grazed by something sharp and cold, and as she gave a smothered cry she saw that her string of pearls had parted in two. The pearls were now falling quickly one by one, and rolling all over the floor.
Instinctively she bent down, but as she did so she heard the man behind her make a quick movement.
She straightened herself and looked sharply round.
L'Ami Fritz was still holding in his hand the small pair of nail scissors with which he had snipped asunder her necklace; with the other he was in the act of taking out something from the drawer of the buffet.
She suddenly saw what that something was.
Sylvia Bailey's nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and clear. There had leapt on her the knowledge that this man and woman meant to kill her—to kill her for the sake of the pearls which were still bounding about the floor, and for the comparatively small sum of money which she carried slung in the leather bag below her waist.
L'Ami Fritz now stood staring at her. He had put his right hand—the hand holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer—behind his back. He was very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.
For a horrible moment there floated across Sylvia's sub-conscious mind the thought of Anna Wolsky, and of what she now knew to have been Anna Wolsky's fate.
But she put that thought, that awful knowledge, determinedly away from her. The instinct of self-preservation possessed her wholly.
Already, in far less time than it would have taken to formulate the words, she had made up her mind to speak, and she knew exactly what she meant to say.
"It does not matter about my pearls," Sylvia said, quietly. Her voice shook a little, but otherwise she spoke in her usual tone. "If you are going into Paris to-morrow morning, perhaps you would take them to be restrung?"
The man looked questioningly across at his wife.
"Yes, that sounds a good plan," he said, in his guttural voice.
"No," exclaimed Madame Wachner, decidedly, "that will not do at all! We must not run that risk. The pearls must be found, now, at once! Stoop!" she said imperiously. "Stoop, Sylvia! Help me to find your pearls!"
She made a gesture as if she also meant to bend down. …
But Sylvia Bailey made no attempt to obey the sinister order. Slowly, warily she edged herself towards the closed window. At last she stood with her back to it—at bay.
"No," she said quietly, "I will not stoop to pick up my pearls now, Madame Wachner. It will be easier to find them in the daylight. I am sure that Monsieur Wachner could pick them all up for me to-morrow morning. Is not that so, Ami Fritz?" and there was a tone of pleading, for the first time of pitiful fear, in her soft voice.
She looked at him piteously, her large blue eyes wide open, dilated
"It is not my husband's business to pick up your pearls!" exclaimed Madame Wachner harshly.
She stepped forward and gripped Sylvia by the arm, pulling her violently forward. As she did so she made a sign to her husband, and he pushed a chair quickly between Mrs. Bailey and the window.
Sylvia had lost her point of vantage, but she was young and lithe; she kept her feet.
Nevertheless, she knew with a cold, reasoned knowledge that she was very near to death—that it was only a question of minutes,—unless—unless she could make the man and woman before her understand that they would gain far more money by allowing her to live than by killing her now, to-night, for the value of the pearls that lay scattered on the floor, and the small, the pitiably small sum on her person.
"If you will let me go," she said, desperately, "I swear I will give you everything I have in the world!"
Madame Wachner suddenly laid her hand on Sylvia's arm, and tried to force her down on to her knees.
"What do you take us for?" she cried, furiously. "We want nothing from you—nothing at all!"
She looked across at her husband, and there burst from her lips a torrent of words, uttered in the uncouth tongue which the Wachners used for secrecy.
Sylvia tried desperately to understand, but she could make nothing of the strange, rapid-spoken syllables—until there fell on her ear, twice repeated, the name Wolsky. …
Madame Wachner stepped suddenly back, and as she did so L'Ami Fritz moved a step forward.
Sylvia looked at him, an agonised appeal in her eyes. He was smiling hideously, a nervous grin zig-zagging across his large, thin-lipped mouth.
"You should have taken the coffee," he muttered in English. "It would have saved us all so much trouble!"
He put out his left hand, and the long, strong fingers closed, tentacle-wise, on her slender shoulder.
His right hand he kept still hidden behind his back