The House of Peril (Ainslee's, 1911)/Chapter 2

Madame Wachner, when trying to console Mrs. Blackett for the strange disappearance of her friend, Anna Olsen, had made a cryptic allusion to another friend whose presence at Enghien would console Mabel for Anna Olsen's absence.

This other friend was named the Comte De Poupel, and he was the only one of her fellow guests in the Pension Noir with whom Mabel had become on terms of kindly, almost intimate, acquaintanceship. Instinctively her mind had already turned to him in her distress, but she did not tell Madame Wachner that she intended to consult the Comte De Poupel, for, oddly enough, the Wachners and the count were by no means good friends. Indeed, from the first it had been unfortunate that Mabel's foreign friends, while all liking her, did not like one another. Thus the count only tolerated Anna Olsen, and he had tried to confine himself to a bowing acquaintance with the Wachners.

Madame Wachner returned his indifference with interest. She seemed to dislike, almost to distrust, the count.

“Take care,” she would say to the charming American widow. “'E is after your dollars. He thinks you would like to be a countess. But, bah! This Poupel is no count—no count at all!”

But Mrs. Blackett had taken the trouble to ascertain that Paul De Poupel was a real count. The owners of the Pension Noir, and for the matter of that all his fellow guests, knew everything there was to know about him, even to the fact that his brother-in-law, a French duke famed in the racing world, and of whom even Mrs, Blackett had heard when living her quiet life at home, made him an allowance.

Paul De Poupel, in fact, was a typical Frenchman of a class whom the ordinary American traveler in France has scarcely ever a chance of even seeing. He belonged to the old pre-Revolution aristocracy, and had the easy charm of manner, the kindly courtesy, which in that particular, overcivilized caste took the place of more austere virtues. Very early in their acquaintance he had confided to Mabel that the passion of play had ruined his life. He was a gambler, hopelessly in the toils of the Goddess of Chance, and she had spoiled what might have been a brilliant as well as a happy career in diplomacy. He spoke English perfectly, for he had been to Oxford, and had also received part of his school education in England.

The Comte De Poupel spent most of the hours of his waking day at the Casino; but he found time even so to see a good deal of Mrs, Blackett, not only there, but elsewhere, for Enghien has many attractions more innocent than play to offer her victims.

Quite at first, remembering what she had always heard about Frenchmen and their ways, Mrs. Blackett had been a little frightened—perhaps not altogether unpleasantly frightened—by the count's proximity. She had feared that he would make violent love to her—who knows? That he would perhaps try to kiss her—in a word, behave in a way which would force her to become angry.

But nothing of the kind had ever happened. On the contrary, the Comte De Poupel always treated Mrs. Blackett with scrupulous respect, while making no secret of his surprise that he had met her at Enghien. With strange lack of logic—or so she thought—he seriously disapproved of her gambling, even for small stakes. And very early he had warned her against making casual friendships in the Casino, where they all spent so many hours of each day.

Mrs. Blackett, as time went on, became aware that in this the count had done her a service. The people at the Casino were very ready to strike up acquaintance. One lady whom she had so met had borrowed twenty francs the third time they had spoken together. Mabel had not really minded, but she had been a little hurt, for after that day the woman had pretended not to know her.

In the early days of Mabel Blackett's stay at Enghien, the Comte De Poupel very seldom dined at the Pension Noir. He came back to dress each evening—he was the only man in the pension, and Mabel was the only lady, who dressed for dinner—but as soon as he was dressed he would hurry down to the Casino again, dining there. Of late, however, he had fallen into the habit of dining at the pension. He did so on the night Mabel had heard of her friend's departure from Enghien.

Mabel had also got into the habit of doing what everybody else did at Enghien; that is, she generally spent each evening at the Casino in company with friends—in her case, with Anna Olsen and the Wachners.

But to-night she made up her mind to stay at home, and so she brought down her needlework—she was a very feminine woman, and seemed exquisitely feminine in the pleasant veranda which was always deserted in the evening.

The hour she had spent with Madame Wachner that afternoon had left on her mind a slight feeling of disappointment and distaste. The older woman had seemed to care so very little about poor Anna, and Anna's odd disappearance. If Madame Olsen had indeed been foolish enough to go down to the Casino and lose all her money, well, that was surely a reason for them all to feel very much concerned about her. Mabel Blackett had a generous, open nature; she would have been very glad to advance money to her friend, but Anna was not poor.

“Are you not going to the Casino to-night?” The count came forward and sat down by her. “You permit?” he asked, and waited till she looked up and said “Yes” before lighting his cigarette.

His English was excellent, but he naturally used French idioms, especially if he was at all moved. He looked at Mrs. Blackett consideringly. She looked charming to-night, in her black tulle gown.

“I'm staying in this evening,” she said, and then: “I'm rather miserable, for Anna Olsen has left Enghien.”

“Left Enghien?” he repeated in almost as incredulous a tone as that in which Mabel had said the words some hours before when the news had been first brought her. “That's very droll, Mrs. Blackett. 1 should have thought your friend was not likely to leave Enghien for many weeks to come.” He was asking himself why, if her friend had left Enghien, Mrs. Blackett had chosen to stay on. “And where has Madame Olsen gone?” he said at last.

“That's what is so odd about it,” said Mabel plaintively. In spite of herself her voice trembled a little; she suddenly felt forlorn, unhappy. “She did not give us the slightest warning of what she was thinking of doing—in fact, only yesterday we were talking of our future plans, and I was trying to persuade her to come back to America with me on a long visit.”

“But what makes you think that she has really left?” he asked.

And then Mabel told him. She described the coming of the messenger, her journey to the Pension Malfait. She repeated as far as was possible the exact words of Madame Olsen's curiously worded, abrupt letter to Madame Malfait.

“They all think,” she said at last, “that Anna went to the Casino and lost all her money, and that, not liking to tell me about it, she made up her mind to go away.”

“They all think?” repeated the Comte De Poupel. “Who do you mean by all, Mrs. Blackett?”

“I mean Madame Malfait and Madame Wachner,” she said.

The Comte De Poupel was staring out into the darkness.

“I do not think that Madame Olsen has been at the Casino at all the last few days,” he said thoughtfully. “I have been there the whole time, and I have certainly not seen her.”

And then, quite irrelevantly as it seemed to him at the moment, Mrs. Blackett asked him a question.

“Are you superstitious?” she asked. “Do you believe, as so many of the people who play here do, in fortune tellers?”

“Like every one else, I have been to such people,” he answered indifferently, “but if you ask my true opinion, well, no, I am quite skeptical. There may be something in what these dealers in hope sometimes say, but very often there is nothing—nothing at all. In fact, the witch generally tells her client what she supposes her client wishes to hear.”

“Madame Wachner believes that Madame Olsen left Enghien because of something which a fortune teller told her—indeed, told both of us, before we left Paris.”

''“Tiens! Tiens!”'' he exclaimed. “Madame Wachner has never seen fit to confide this theory to me. Pray tell me all about it. Did vou and Madame Olsen consult a fashionable necromancer, or did you content yourselves going to a cheap witch?”

“To quite a cheap witch!”

Mabel laughed happily. She rather wondered now that she had never told Count Paul about her visit to the Paris fortune teller. But she had been taught to regard everything savoring of “superstition” as not only silly and weak-minded, but also as discreditable. She had gone to the Paris diseuse des bonnes aventures to please Anna Olsen, to whom the woman's business card had been handed by the chambermaid at their hotel. Anna Olsen had been eager to consult her, the more so that she charged so small a fee.

“Only five francs!” went on Mabel gayly. “And she gave us plenty for our money, I assure you. In fact, I can't remember half the things she said. She saw us each alone, and then together.”

“And to you was prophesied?”

Again Mabel blushed.

“Oh, she told me all sorts of delightful things! But of course as you say, they don't really know, they only guess at what they think one wants to hear. One of the things this woman told me was that it was quite possible that I should never go back to America—I mean at all. Wasn't that absurd?”

“Quite absurd,” he said quietly, “for even if you remarried—say a Frenchman—you would still want to go home to your own country sometimes.”

“Of course I should.”

Once more she reddened violently, and bent low over her work. But this time the Comte De Poupel felt no pleasure in watching the flood of carmine staining, not only the smooth, rounded cheeks, but the white forehead and neck of his American friend.

Mabel went on speaking, a little quickly:

“She said the same thing to Anna—wasn't that odd? I mean she said that Anna would almost certainly never go back to her own country. But what annoyed Anna most was that she did not seem to be able to see into her future at all. She told her all sorts of things that had already happened to her, but nothing as to what was going to happen. Then she asked to see us together.”

Mabel stopped speaking for a moment.

“Well?” said the count interrogatively. “What happened then?”

“She made us stand side by side, and then she stared at us in quite an odd, uncanny way, and said: 'Ah! I see now that I was right; your two fates are closely intertwined, and I wish to give you both a warning. Do not leave Paris, especially do not leave it together. I see you both running into great danger. If you do go away together—and fear that you will do so—then I advise you, together and separately, to come back to Paris as soon as possible.'”

“All rather vague,” remarked the count, “and from the little I knew of her I should fancy Madame Olsen the last woman in the world to be influenced by that kind of thing.”

“At the time Anna seemed rather impressed,” said Mabel, “but, as she said, going to Enghien was scarcely leaving Paris. Still, it made her nervous when she was first playing at the tables, and, when she lost so much money the first week we were here, she said to me: 'That palmist was right—we ought not to have come here.' But afterward, when she began to be so lucky, she forgot all about it. At least, she never spoke of it again.”