Faulkner, pa.s.sing the open door, had caught sight of us and strolled in.
Violet de Coudron was with him. She looked dreadfully tired, I thought, though this did not greatly detract from her very exceptional beauty.
Briefly, I told Faulkner all that had happened.
"It is fortunate we are not conventional," he said lightly, when I had outlined my plan. "What food for scandal some people would find in all this. I think, after all, that our visit here to-night has not been wholly unprofitable--eh? You may be surprised to hear that this new friend of mine"--and he indicated Violet de Coudron, seated beside him--"has arranged to leave the Baronne for good and all. She tells me she leads an awful life here, and that when Vera is gone--"
"But you have known Vera only a few weeks," I interrupted, addressing Violet.
"Yes," she answered sadly, with her pretty accent, "and those are the only weeks of comparative happiness I have had. I couldn"t stay here with these people without her. I couldn"t. I really couldn"t. Oh, if you only knew all I have been through--all I have been forced to endure since the Baronne adopted me!" And she hid her face in her hands.
"Adopted you!" I exclaimed. "You said you were the Baronne"s niece."
"I said so--yes. I always said so, because she made me, and I pa.s.sed always as her niece. But I am not. I can scarcely remember my parents.
All I can recollect is that they were very poor--but oh, so kind to me!
I remember their kissing me pa.s.sionately one day, with tears streaming down their cheeks--it was evening, and nearly dark--and telling me that they had to go away from me, that probably we should never meet again in this world."
"How old were you then?" I asked, much interested.
"I could not have been more than six, possibly seven. It was in Rouen.
They took me to a big, fashionable street I did not remember having ever been in before, kissed me again and again once more, stood me by the _porte-cochere_, and rang the bell. Then they went hurriedly away. By the time the bell was answered, they had disappeared. I was questioned by a tall man-servant--after that, I don"t exactly recollect what happened, except that the Baronne adopted me. She lived in the big house."
"And it was in Rouen, you say?"
"Yes, in Rouen."
"Do you think you would recognise it if you saw the outside of it again?" I asked quickly.
She paused.
"I think I should," she said thoughtfully, "though we did not stay there long--not more than a few months. Why do you ask?"
"Only," I answered, "because I have an idea. But now let us leave this place. It is nearly four o"clock."
Yes, we were a truly unconventional quartette.
The hotel people were surprised, on the following morning, to find one of our two rooms occupied by two fair visitors, while in the other Faulkner and I slept, tucked up together. But in gay, reckless Monte n.o.body is surprised at anything.
That an attempt would at once be made to discover Violet"s whereabouts and get her back, we knew. For that reason we had arranged to leave for Paris by the mid-day _rapide_.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
CONCERNS A MYSTERIOUS LIGHT.
London--the dear, dirty old city of delight--looked gloomy enough as we pa.s.sed out of Charing Cross yard, and made our way around the corner to the _Grand Hotel_. It was a damp, raw evening, and after the crisp atmosphere and bright sunshine of the Riviera, seemed to us more than ordinarily depressing.
By wire we had engaged rooms at the _Grand_ for Vera and Violet, overlooking Trafalgar Square, and we now began to wonder what our next step ought to be. I wanted, if possible, to get into communication with Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, for I was anxious not to delay my marriage any longer, and Vera, though she had promised to become my wife as soon as possible, refused to do so until she had seen her parents.
But where were her parents?
She had no idea, neither had I. We had telegraphed to the address in Brighton where they had been staying, but an intimation had come from the Post Office that the message had not been delivered, the addressee having left.
As for Faulkner, he was distrait. Something seemed to be on his mind, and I thought I knew what it was. He was engaged to be married to Gladys Deroxe, of whom Vera had, during the past day or two, let drop certain things.
Gladys Deroxe, she had confided to me among other things, was one of the most jealous women she had ever met. Her jealousy amounted almost to an obsession. When I heard this I breathed a fervent hope that Faulkner might never marry her, for I have seen something of jealous wives among my friends. What was weighing upon Faulkner"s mind, of course, was that he had brought Violet to London with him, and that, as Miss Deroxe lived in Mayfair, she might at any moment get to hear of this, and then?
Another thought occurred to me now, for the first time. Had my unemotional, phlegmatic friend fallen in love with Violet de Coudron, the foundling?
She was pretty and fascinating enough for any one to fall in love with.
Personally, I thought Faulkner would do well to marry her in preference to Gladys, who I gathered to be something of a schemer, with an eye to the main chance. Vera had come to know Miss Deroxe quite by accident.
At first she had liked her, but soon she had begun to discover her true character. Violet on the contrary, she liked immensely. Yet girls form strange prejudices.
Thus a week of anxiety pa.s.sed. The two girls remained at the _Grand_, while I stayed at my rooms, and Faulkner slept at his club. Though he did not tell me, I knew he had not informed Gladys of his return to town. Therefore he must have felt somewhat perturbed, though, as was his wont, he completely hid his feelings, when one morning as I was walking with him up Hamilton Place a taxi swept up behind us, stopped beside the kerb, and a rather florid-looking girl, leaning out of the cab window, called in a loud, querulous voice--
"Frank! _Frank_!"
Before he presented me to her I had guessed her ident.i.ty, and I saw at a glance that she was none too well pleased at his being in London without her knowing it.
"I was calling upon my uncle Henry," she said presently, "and chanced to look out of the window, when I saw you go by. I was amazed. I thought you were on the Riviera still. So I hurried out, hailed a taxi, and pursued you. Why didn"t you tell me you were back?"
He invented on the spot some excellent reason--I forget what it was--and it seemed to satisfy her. And then, feeling that my presence was not needed, I made an excuse, raised my hat, and left them.
"I am only glad," I remembered saying mentally and ungrammatically, "it is Faulkner, and not I, who is to marry that girl."
Next day, I took my well-beloved in the car down to Virginia Water, where we lunched, and returned in the afternoon. That evening I, as usual, scanned the personal columns of the _Morning Post_. I have a habit of doing this, as some of the announcements one sees there are not devoid of humour.
That day the personal columns were singularly dull. The advertis.e.m.e.nts of money-lenders masquerading as private gentlemen, and as ladies anxious to be philanthropic, occupied a good deal of the s.p.a.ce. There was the widow of twenty-three who implored "some kind-hearted gentleman"
(sic) "to lend her twenty pounds to save her from the bailiffs;" a "lady of high social standing, closely related to an Earl," who touted for the chaperonage of debutantes, willing to pay for the privilege of being surrept.i.tiously smuggled into Society; a crack-brained inventor advertising for some one to finance a new torpedo for destroying German bands, or something of the kind, and so on. There was nothing at all exciting. Why, I can"t say, but quite a commonplace line at the foot of the second column interested me. It ran--
"_Meet me_ 2."
That was all--no name, no address, no date. Why I had noticed it at all, I could not imagine. I concluded it must be the extreme brevity of the advertis.e.m.e.nt that had caught my fancy.
Next morning, it being dry and fine, I called at the _Grand Hotel_, and took Vera for a run in the car to Hatfield, returning by St. Albans. We lunched at Pagani"s--one gets so tired of the sameness of the ordinary restaurants--and after that I left Vera at the hotel, and sent my car to the garage.
Somehow I felt in a restless mood, and the atmosphere of well-bred respectability pervading the club oppressed me, as it so often does. I am afraid that the older I grow the more Bohemian I become, and the less willing to bend to convention. It seems to me farcical, for instance, that in this twentieth century of ours, a rule made fifty years ago to the effect that "pipes shall not be smoked in this club," should still be enforced. Plenty of the younger members of the clubs where this rule obtains have endeavoured to rebel, but in vain. The Committee have solemnly pointed out to such free-thinking and independent spirits that their fathers and grandfathers got on quite well without smoking pipes in the club, and that if their fathers and their grandfathers did without pipes, they ought to be able to do without pipes too--in the club. Oh, yes, they were at liberty, if they liked, to smoke cigarettes at five a penny all over the house, but never tobacco in a pipe, even if they paid half-a-crown an ounce for it.
The conversation of the only two occupants of the smoking-room--try as I would, I could not help listening to it--wearied me so intensely that I got up at last and went out. I strolled aimlessly up the street to Piccadilly, then turned to the left. Many thoughts filled my mind as I rambled along, and when, presently, I found myself at Hyde Park Corner, I decided I would stroll down into Belgravia and see if a new caretaker had been installed at the house in Belgrave Street in place of poor old Taylor.
To my surprise the house was boarded up. Nearly every window was boarded, even the top-floor windows. It looked like a house in which people have died of some plague.
I found the policeman on the beat, and questioned him. Inclined at first to be sullen and uncommunicative, he became cordial and confidential soon after my fingers had slipped a coin into his hand.
"So you haven"t heard anything about number a hundred and two," he said some moments later. "About here it"s causin" a bit o" talk."
"Indeed? In what way?"
He paused, as though reflecting whether he ought to tell me.
"Well, sir, it"s like this," he said at last. "The "ouse is, as you"ve seen, boarded up, and there"s n.o.body living there but--"