"There was something else I wished to say," he declared, glancing at Draconmeyer.
The latter moved at once towards the door but Violet stopped him.
"Not now," she begged. "If there is really anything else, Henry, you can send up a note, or I dare say we shall meet at the Club to-night. Now, please, both of you go away. I must change my clothes for motoring. In half an hour, Mr. Draconmeyer."
"The car will be ready," he answered.
Hunterleys hesitated. He looked for a moment at Violet. She returned his glance of appeal with a hard, fixed stare. Then she turned away.
"Susanne," she called to her maid, who was in the inner room, "I am dressing at once. I will show you what to put out."
She disappeared, closing the connecting door behind her. The two men walked out to the lift in silence. Draconmeyer rang the bell.
"You are not leaving Monte Carlo at present, then, Sir Henry?" he remarked.
"Not at present," Hunterleys replied calmly.
They parted without further speech. Hunterleys returned to his room, where Richard was still waiting.
"Say, have you got a valet here with you?" the young man enquired.
Hunterleys shook his head.
"Never possessed such a luxury in my life," he declared.
"Chap came in here directly you were gone--mumbled something about doing something for you. I didn"t altogether like the look of him, so I sat on the table and watched. He hung around for a moment, and then, when he saw that I was sticking it out, he went off."
"Was he wearing the hotel livery?" Hunterleys asked quickly.
"Plain black clothes," Richard replied. "He looked the valet, right enough."
Hunterleys rang the bell. It was answered by a servant in grey livery.
"Are you the valet on this floor?" Hunterleys enquired.
"Yes, sir!"
"There was a man in here just now, said he was my valet or something of the sort, hung around for a minute or two and then went away. Who was he?"
The servant shook his head. He was apparently a German, and stupid.
"There are no valets on this floor except myself," he declared.
"Then who could this person have been?" Hunterleys demanded.
"A tailor, perhaps," the man suggested, "but he would not come unless you had ordered him. I have been on duty all the time. I have seen no one about."
"Very well," Hunterleys said, "I"ll report the matter in the office."
"Some hotel thief, I suppose," Lane remarked, as soon as the door was closed. "He didn"t look like it exactly, though."
Hunterleys frowned.
"Not much here to satisfy any one"s curiosity," he observed. "Just as well you were in the room, though."
"Surrounded by mysteries, aren"t you, old chap?" Richard yawned, lighting a cigarette.
"I don"t know exactly about that," Hunterleys replied, "but I"ll tell you one thing, Lane. There are things going on in Monte Carlo at the present moment which would bring out the black headlines on the halfpenny papers if they had an inkling of them. There are people here who are trying to draw up a new map of Europe, a new map of the world."
Richard shook his head.
"I can"t get interested in anything, Hunterleys," he declared. "You could tell me the most amazing things in the world and they"d pa.s.s in at one ear and out at the other. Kind of a blithering idiot, eh? You know what I did last night after dinner. If you"ll believe me, when I got to the villa, I found the place patrolled as though they were afraid of dynamiters. I skulked round to the back, got on the beach, and climbed a little way up towards the rock garden. I hid there and waited to see if she"d come out on the terrace. She never came, but I caught a glimpse of her pa.s.sing from one room to another, and I tell you I"m such a poor sort of an idiot that I felt repaid for waiting there all that time. I shall go there again to-night. The boys wanted me to dine--Eddy Lanchester and Montressor and that lot--a jolly party, too. I sha"n"t do it. I shall have a mouthful alone somewhere and spend the rest of the evening on those rocks. Something"s got to come of this, Hunterleys."
"Let"s go into the lounge for a few moments," Hunterleys suggested. "I may as well hear all about it."
They made their way downstairs, and sat there talking, or rather Hunterleys listened while Richard talked. Then Draconmeyer strolled across the hall and waited by the lift. Presently he returned with Violet by his side, followed by her maid, carrying rugs. As they approached, Hunterleys rose slowly to his feet. Violet was looking up into her companion"s face, talking and laughing. She either did not see Hunterleys, or affected not to. He stood, for a moment, irresolute.
Then, as she pa.s.sed, she glanced at him quite blankly and waved her hand to Richard. The two disappeared. Hunterleys resumed his seat. He had, somehow or other, the depressing feeling of a man who has lost a great opportunity.
"Lady Hunterleys looks well this morning," Lane remarked, absolutely unconscious of anything unusual.
Hunterleys watched the car drive off before he answered.
"She looks very well," he a.s.sented gloomily.
CHAPTER XX
WILY MR. DRACONMEYER
They had skirted the wonderful bay and climbed the mountainous hill to the frontier before Violet spoke. All the time Draconmeyer leaned back by her side, perfectly content. A man of varied subtleties, he understood and fully appreciated the intrinsic value of silence. Whilst the Customs officer, however, was making out the deposit note for the car, she turned to him.
"Will you tell me something, Mr. Draconmeyer?"
"Of course!"
"It is about my husband," she went on. "Henry isn"t your friend--you dislike one another, I know. You men seem to have a sort of freemasonry which compels you to tell falsehoods about one another, but in this case I am going to remind you that I have the greater claim, and I am going to ask you for the sober truth. Henry has once or twice, during the last few days, hinted to me that his presence in Monte Carlo just now has some sort of political significance. He is very vague about it all, but he evidently wants me to believe that he is staying here against his own inclinations. Now I want to ask you a plain question. Is it likely that he could have any business whatever to transact for the Government in Monte Carlo? What I mean is, could there possibly be anything to keep him in this place which for political reasons he couldn"t tell me about?"
"I can answer your question finally so far as regards any Government business," Mr. Draconmeyer a.s.sured her. "Your husband"s Party is in Opposition. As a keen politician, he would not be likely to interest himself in the work of his rival."
"You are quite sure," she persisted, "you are quite sure that he could not have a mission of any sort?--that there isn"t any meeting of diplomatists here in which he might be interested?"
Mr. Draconmeyer smiled with the air of one listening to a child"s prattle.
"If I were not sure that you are in earnest--!" he began. "However, I will just answer your question. Nothing of the sort is possible.
Besides, people don"t come to Monte Carlo for serious affairs, you know."