“Yet you were pleasant to me to-day.”
“I hope so.”
“You do not all the time despise me?”
“No. I am sorry about it all.”
“Do you know where I was going when I met you?”
He shook his head.
“You were not very confidential about your movements,” he reminded her. “You spoke of Monte Carlo or Paris.”
“I was coming to see if I could find you,” she told him. “No,” she went on, “you need not frown. It was only for one reason. I wanted to beg you, to implore you, to give up your present enterprise. You see, I have guessed what it is.”
He looked at her in astonishment. Slowly his expression began to harden. She knew the symptoms. She laid her fingers upon his hand.
“Do not be angry with me,” she begged. “I am not the woman I was twenty-four hours ago. I want you to abandon this foolish enterprise. It is beneath your dignity. You will not succeed. It will probably cost you your life.”
“Yes? Is that all you have to say?”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“How did you hear about my enterprise, as you call it?”
“As I have heard of others,” she answered wearily. “I expect you have heard me called a spy, a dangerous woman, but what you did not know until you read that letter, and I do not suppose you appreciate the truth of it even now, is that although I have a legal right to the name I bear I am also the wife of one of the world’s greatest criminals. I obtained my divorce before I was married to the Baron but the divorce is worthless. I was married in a Roman Catholic cathedral. That is enough of the past. Did Mr. Lascelles tell you my real husband’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Charles, won’t you take a great weight off my mind?” she pleaded, and in the softly gathering twilight she was beautiful once more. “Pass on your way to England, forget the purpose for which you started out, let them carry it on without you. Will you do this?”
“I cannot.”
“It is because you love this girl?”
“Partly.”
“No words that I could say will change you?”
“Nothing that you or anyone else could say.” She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “Good-bye, Charles.”
He heard her give an order to the chauffeur and before he realized it she was gone. He watched the car disappear in a cloud of dust, then he scrambled down the bank into the meadow and walked back to the village by the side of a dashing little stream which had tumbled down from the mountains. Three-quarters of the way there he heard the roar of a locomotive. He looked across the road. With its huge engine belching out black smoke the second part of the last train crawled past him into the station.
CHAPTER XXIV
The grim hand of tragedy was suddenly lifted. Charles’s depression disappeared. He was unexpectedly aware of a glow of happiness. It certainly was not the appearance of the trim, broad-shouldered Mr. Blute who had wrought the change. It was the sight of the girl by his side in the neat travelling coat, smart little hat and graceful carriage, whose unrestrained cry of joy and upraised arms had brought the thrill into his pulses and lifted the weight from his heart. Charles was not in the least a demonstrative person but it seemed the most natural thing in the world to stoop down and kiss the eagerly lifted lips, to smile into those beautiful dancing eyes and draw her hand underneath his arm.
“It’s awfully nice to see you people again!” he exclaimed. “How goes it, Blute?” he added, dropping his voice.
“So far according to plan,” was the impassive reply.
Charles’s relief shone out of his face.
“Excellent,” he chuckled.
“It seems ages since yesterday,” Patricia sighed. “But oh, how wonderful all this is!”
They were crossing the road slowly towards the Schweizerhof, unnoticed units of the crowd. She was laughing now at the discomforts of the journey.
“Nine people in the compartment,” she confided. “No water to wash in, wine and biscuits for lunch. Everyone eating horrible messes, windows that opened with difficulty—English, French, a few Austrians and dozens of Americans all jumbled up together. Everyone talking at the same time. But Mr. Blute as silent as the Sphinx. Charles, will there be any danger?”
“Not a hope, I should think,” was the cheerful reply.
“Who cares?” she laughed. “We shall be in Switzerland to-morrow—the land of plenty. Charles, do you love Switzerland?”
“To look at—not to live in. I shall probably love it passionately to-morrow for a short time.”
“Mr. Benjamin used to say that he got nearly the best food in the world at Geneva. What do you think, Mr. Blute?”
Blute was watching the crowd amongst whom they were slowly making progress. His eyes seemed to be studying every person there. He walked like a man self-absorbed yet always watching.
“Switzerland is a great country,” he conceded, “but a little difficult to get into, except during the tourist season. There are times when it is equally difficult to get out of.”
They reached the hotel. The same state of confusion prevailed. An angry crowd was besieging the telephone booth—journalists, a French professor who was frankly pushing people out of his way in his anxiety to reach the closed door, a screaming woman and two students with knapsacks on their backs who were loudly lamenting their interrupted holiday. Blute turned away in disgust.
“I shall try the manager’s room,” he whispered to Charles. “Come this way for a moment.”
He led them down the passage. A perspiring little waiter greeted Blute with a grin. The latter caught him by the arm and made a few rapid enquiries. He turned to Charles.
“This fellow says there is not the slightest chance of any dinner. The manager himself is dining off the last tureen of soup in his room here. There is plenty to drink, though. I have ordered you two a vermouth and cassis. Will you both pass out through the door in front into the garden? The waiter will find you there.”
Blute, who appeared to be perfectly at home in the place, knocked at the manager’s door and disappeared. Charles and his companion passed on into the grounds, which were rather reminiscent of a tea garden in a London suburb on a Bank Holiday. People were lying about on the lawn and every seat and bench was occupied. One man with a map in his hand was already lecturing about the war; another, an exiled Pole, was making a furious attack upon England and France who, he said, had guaranteed his country and then
