The horse was suddenly brought up short opposite the white gate. Was this where the Wachners lived? Chester stooped down. The place looked very different now from what it had looked in the daylight.
The windows of the small, low house were closely shuttered, but where the shutters met in one of the rooms glinted a straight line of light.
"We are in time. Thank G.o.d we are in time," said the Count, with a queer break in his voice. "If we were not in time, there would be no light. The house of the wicked ones would be in darkness."
And then, in French, he added, turning to the gendarmes:
"You had better all three stay in the garden, while my friend and I go up to the house. If we are gone more than five minutes, then you follow us up to the house and get in somehow!"
In varying accents were returned the composed answers, "_Oui, M"sieur._"
There came a check, for the little gate was locked. Each man helped another over very quietly, and then the three gendarmes dispersed with swift, noiseless steps, each seeking a point of vantage commanding the house.
Chester and Paul de Virieu walked quickly up the path.
Suddenly a shaft of bright light pierced the moonlit darkness. The shutters of the dining-room of the Chalet des Muguets had been unbarred, and the window was thrown wide open.
"_Qui va la?_" the old military watchword, as the Frenchman remembered with a sense of terrible irony, was flung out into the night in the harsh, determined voice of Madame Wachner.
They saw her stout figure, filling up most of the window, outlined against the lighted room. She was leaning out, peering into the garden with angry, fear-filled eyes.
Both men stopped simultaneously, but neither answered her.
"Who goes there?" she repeated; and then, "I fear, Messieurs, that you have made a mistake. You have taken this villa for someone else"s house!"
But there was alarm as well as anger in her voice.
"It is I, Paul de Virieu, Madame Wachner."
The Count spoke quite courteously, his agreeable voice thickened, made hoa.r.s.e by the strain to which he had just subjected it.
"I have brought Mr. Chester with me, for we have come to fetch Mrs.
Bailey. In Paris Mr. Chester found news making her return home to England to-morrow a matter of imperative necessity."
He waited a moment, then added, raising his voice as he spoke: "We have proof that she is spending the evening with you," and he walked on quickly to where he supposed the front door to be.
"If they deny she is there," he whispered to his companion, "we will shout for the gendarmes and break in. But I doubt if they will dare to deny she is there unless--unless--"
He had hoped to hear Sylvia"s voice, but Madame Wachner had shut the window, and a deathly silence reigned in the villa.
The two men stood in front of the closed door for what seemed to them a very long time. It was exactly two minutes; and when at last the door opened, slowly, and revealed the tall, lanky figure of L"Ami Fritz, they both heard the soft, shuffling tread of the gendarmes closing in round the house.
"I pray you to come in," said Monsieur Wachner in English, and then, addressing Bill Chester,
"I am pleased to see you, sir, the more so that your friend, Mrs. Bailey, is indisposed. A moment ago, to our deep concern, she found herself quite faint--no doubt from the heat. I will conduct you, gentlemen, into the drawing-room; my wife and Mrs. Bailey will join us there in a minute,"
and only then did he move back sufficiently to allow the two men to cross the threshold.
Paul de Virieu opened his lips--but no sound came from them. The sudden sense of relief from what had been agonised suspense gripped him by the throat.
He brushed past Wachner, and made straight for the door behind which he felt sure of finding the woman whom some instinct told him he had saved from a terrible fate....
He turned the handle of the dining-room door, and then stopped short, for he was amazed at the sight which met his eyes.
Sylvia was sitting at a round table; behind her was the buffet, still laden with the remains of a simple meal. Her face was hidden in her hands, and she was trembling--shaking as though she had the ague.
But what amazed Paul de Virieu was the sight of Sylvia"s hostess. Madame Wachner was crawling about on her hands and knees on the floor, and she remained in the same odd position when the dining-room door opened.
At last she looked up, and seeing who stood there, staring down at her, she raised herself with some difficulty, looking to the Frenchman"s sharpened consciousness, like some monstrous greedy beast, suddenly baulked of its prey.
"Such a misfortune!" she exclaimed in English. "Such a very great misfortune! The necklace of our friend "as broken, and "er beautiful pearls are rolling all over the floor! We "ave been trying, Fritz and myself, to pick them up for "er. Is not that so, Sylvia? Mrs. Bailey is so distressed! It "as made "er feel very faint, what English people call "queer". But I tell "er we shall find them all--it is only a matter of a little time. I asked "er to take some cognac my "usband keeps for such bad moments, but no, she would not! Is not that so, Sylvia?"
She stared down anxiously at the bowed head of her guest.
Sylvia looked up. As if hypnotised by the other woman"s voice, she rose to her feet--a wan, pitiful little smile came over her white face.
"Yes," she said dully, "the string of my pearls broke. I was taken faint.
I felt horribly queer--perhaps it was the heat."
Paul de Virieu took a sudden step forward into the room. He had just become aware of something which had made him also feel what English people call "queer."
That something had no business in the dining-room, for it belonged to the kitchen--in fact it was a large wooden mallet of the kind used by French cooks to beat meat tender. Just now the club end of the mallet was sticking out of the drawer of the walnut-wood buffet.
The drawer had evidently been pulled out askew, and had stuck--as is the way with drawers forming part of ill-made furniture.
Chester came to the door of the dining-room. M. Wachner had detained him for a moment in the hall, talking volubly, explaining how pleasant had been their little supper party till Mrs. Bailey had suddenly felt faint.
Chester looked anxiously at Sylvia. She was oddly pale, all the colour drained from her face, but she seemed on quite good terms with Madame Wachner! As for that stout, good-natured looking woman, she also was unlike her placid smiling self, for her face looked red and puffy. But still she nodded pleasantly to Chester.
It seemed to the lawyer inconceivable that this commonplace couple could have seriously meant to rob their guest. But there was that letter--that strange, sinister letter which purported to be from Sylvia! Who had written that letter, and with what object in view?
Chester began to feel as if he was living through a very disagreeable, bewildering nightmare. But no scintilla of the horrible truth reached his cautious, well-balanced brain. The worst he suspected, and that only because of the inexplicable letter, was that these people meant to extract money from their guest and frighten her into leaving Lacville the same night.
"Sylvia," he said rather shortly, "I suppose we ought to be going now. We have a carriage waiting at the gate, so we shall be able to drive you back to the Villa du Lac. But, of course, we must first pick up all your pearls. That won"t take long!"
But Sylvia made no answer. She did not even look round at him. She was still staring straight before her, as if she saw something, which the others could not see, written on the distempered wall.
L"Ami Fritz entered the room quietly. He looked even stranger than usual, for while in one hand he held Mrs. Bailey"s pretty black tulle hat and her little bag, in the other was clutched the handle of a broom.
"I did not think you would want to go back into my wife"s bed-room," he said, deprecatingly; and Mrs. Bailey, at last turning her head round, actually smiled gratefully at him.
She was reminding herself that there had been a moment when he had been willing to let her escape. Only once--only when he had grinned at her so strangely and deplored her refusal of the drugged coffee, had she felt the sick, agonising fear of him that she had felt of Madame Wachner.
Laying the hat and bag on the table, L"Ami Fritz began sweeping the floor with long skilful movements.
"This is the best way to find the pearls," he muttered; and three of the four people present stood and looked on at what he was doing. As for the one most concerned, Sylvia had again begun to stare dully before her, as if what was going on did not interest her one whit.
At last Monsieur Wachner took a long spoon off the table; with its help he put all that he had swept up--pearls, dust, and fluff--into the little fancy bag.
"There," he said, with a sigh of relief, "I think they are all there."