The House of Peril (Ainslee's, 1911)/Chapter 4

Mabel Blackett pushed the gate open, and began walking up the path which lay through the neglected, untidy garden.

To-day a deep, hot calm brooded over the silent house and garden; the chocolate-colored shutters of the living rooms were closed, and Mabel Blackett told herself that it would be delightful to pass from the steamy heat outside into the dimly lighted, sparsely furnished “salon,” there to have a cup of tea and a pleasant chat with her friends before accompanying them in the cool of the late afternoon down to the Casino.

Mrs. Blackett always enjoyed talking to Madame Wachner. The elder woman amused her by clever if sometimes rather coarse talk, and above all she flattered her. Mabel Blackett always left the Châlet des Muguets thoroughly pleased both with herself and with the world about her. There was very little concerning the pretty American widow's simple, uneventful life with which Madame Wachner was not by now acquainted. She knew, for instance, that Mabel had no close relations, only many friends, and, that, oddly enough, Mrs. Blackett knew nobody—that she had not even an acquaintance—living in Paris.

As she walked round to the side of the house where was the front door, Mabel Blackett found herself wondering, with a touch of uneasiness, why the Comte De Poupel and the Wachners disliked one another so much, It was the more strange as he and “L'Ami Fritz” had one great taste in common—that of gambling.

But long before she had thought of an answer to this perplexing question, the day servant opened the door with the words: “Monsieur and madame are in Paris.” The woman added, with a rather insolent air: ”They have gone to fetch some money.” And her manner said plainly enough: “Yes, my master and mistress—silly fools—have lost their money at the Casino, and now they are gone to get fresh supplies!”

Mabel had had her long, dusty walk for nothing.

In her precise, carefully worded French, Mrs. Blackett explained that she would like to come in and have a little rest. “I am sure that Madame Wachner would wish me to do so,” she added, and after a rather ungracious pause the woman admitted her into the house, showing her into the darkened dining room, and not into the drawing-room.

“Do you think it will be long before Madame Wachner comes back?” asked Mabel.

The servant hesitated. “I do not know. They never tell me anything.”

She bustled out of the room for a few moments, and then came back holding a cotton parasol in her hand.

“I do not know if madame wishes to stay on here by herself? As for me, I must go now, for my work is done. Perhaps when madame leaves the house she will put the key under the mat.”

“Yes, if I leave the house before Monsieur and Madame Wachner return home, I will certainly do so. But I expect they will be here before long.”

The women hesitated, and then: “Should the master and mistress come back before madame has left, will madame kindly explain that she insisted on coming into the house? I am absolutely forbidden to admit visitors unless monsieur or madame is there to entertain them.”

The woman spoke quickly, her eyes fixed expectantly on the lady sitting before her. Mrs. Blackett took her purse out of her pocket, and held out a two-franc piece.

“Certainly,” she said coldly, “I will explain to Madame Wachner that I wished very much to come in and rest.”

The servant's manner altered, it became familiar, servile.

“Has madame heard any news of her friend?” she inquired. “I mean Madame Olsen?”

“No.” Mrs. Blackett spoke very shortly. “I have heard nothing of her yet; but, of course, I shall do so soon.”

“The lady stopped here on her way to the station. She seemed in high spirits.”

“Oh, no,” said Mabel Blackett quickly. “Madame Olsen did not come here the day she left Enghein.”

“Indeed, yes, madame. I had to come back that evening, for had forgotten to bring in some sugar. The lady was here, and she was still here when I left the house.”

“You are making a mistake,” said Mrs. Blackett shortly. “Madame Olsen left Enghien on the Saturday afternoon. Monsieur and Madame Wachner expected her to supper, but she never came.”

The woman looked at her fixedly.

“No doubt madame knows best,” she said indifferently, “One day is like another to me. I beg madame's pardon.”

She laid the house doorkey on the table; then, with a muttered good day, she noisily closed the door behind her.

A moment later Mrs. Blackett found herself in sole possession of the Châlet des Muguets.

even the quietest, the most commonplace house has, as it were, an individuality that sets it apart from other houses. And even those who would deny that proposition must admit that every inhabited dwelling has its own special nationality. The Châlet des Muguets Was typically French and typically suburban, but where it differed from thousands of houses of the same type dotted round in the countryside within easy reach of Paris was that it was let each year to a different set of tenants.

Even to Mabel Blackett's unobservant eyes, it lacked all the elements which go to make a home. The furniture was not only cheap, it was common and tawdry. On the floor of the dining room, in place of the shining parquet floor, which is also universally seen in French rooms, lay an ugly piece of linoleum of which the pattern printed on the surface simulated a red-and-blue marble pavement. Yet each of the living rooms, in curious contrast to the garden, was singularly clean, and almost oppressively neat.

Mrs. Blackett got up from the hard, cane chair on which she had been siting. She had suddenly experienced an odd feeling, that of not being alone, and she looked down half expecting to see some small animal crouching under the table, or hiding by the walnut buffet behind her. But no, nothing but the round table, and the six chairs stiffly placed against the wall, met her eyes.

She told herself that it would be more comfortable to wait in the drawing-room than in this bare, ugly dining room, and so she walked through into the tiny “salon.”

This room also was singularly bare; there was not a flower, not even a book or a paper, to relieve the monotony. The only ornaments were a gilt clock on the mantelpiece, flanked with two sham Empire candelabra. In spite of, or perhaps because the shutters were so closely shut to, the room seemed very hot and airless.

Not for the first time since she had made their acquaintance, Mrs. Blackett wondered why the Wachners preferred to live in this cheerless way, with a servant who came only for a few hours each day, rather than in a hotel or boarding house. And then she reminded herself that, after all, the silent, gaunt man and his talkative, voluble wife seemed to be on exceptionally good terms the one with the other. Perhaps they really preferred being alone together than in a more peopled atmosphere.

Mabel began moving aimlessly about the room. She felt unaccountably nervous and depressed. She longed to be away from this empty, still house, and yet it seemed absurd to leave just when the Wachners might be back any moment.

After a few more minutes, however, the quietude, and the having absolutely nothing to do with which to while the time away, got on her nerves. It was, after all, quite possible that the Wachners would wait in Paris till the heat of the day was over. If so, they would not be back till seven o'clock. Then there came to her a happy thought. Why should she not leave a note for Madame Wachner inviting her and her husband to dinner at the Pension Noir? That disagreeable day servant had not even laid the cloth for her employers' evening meal.

Mabel looked round paper and envelopes, but there was no writing table in the little, square drawing-room. How absurd and annoying! But stay—somewhere in the house there must be writing materials—probably in Madame Wachner's bedroom. The American had already been in her friend's bedroom two or three times, so she knew the way there quite well. The husband and wife occupied two rooms on the ground floor at the back of the villa. In order to save trouble, they did not use the upper story at all.

Treading softly, and yet hearing her footsteps echoing with unpleasant loudness through the empty house, Mabel Blackett walked past the bright, little kitchen, and so made her way to the end of the narrow passage.

As she opened the door of Madame Wachner's bedroom, Mabel Blackett stopped and caught her breath. Once again she had experienced the odd, eerie sensation that she was not alone, but this time it was far more real than it had been in the dining room. So strong, so definite was her impression that there was some one there, close behind her, that she turned sharply round—but all she saw was the empty passage stretching its short length down to the entrance hall,

She walked through into the bedroom. It was very poorly furnished, at least to her American eyes, but it was pleasantly cool after the drawing-room.

She walked across to the window, and drew aside the muslin curtains. Beyond the patch of shade thrown by the house the sun beat down on a ragged, unkempt lawn, but across the lawn Mabel Blackett noticed for the first time that there lay a little wood, a grove of chestnut trees, and further, that there was a gap in the hedge which separated the wood from the unkempt grounds of the Châlet des Muguets.

She turned away from the window. Yes, there at last was what she had come there to find. Close to Madame Wachner's broad, low bed was a writing table, or rather a deal table, covered with a turkey red cloth, on which lay a large sheet of ink-stained, white blotting paper. Flanking the blotting paper was a pile of small account books, and glancing at these Mabel smiled, for Monsieur Wachner never went into the gambling rooms without taking with him one of these shabby, little notebooks in which to note down the figures on which he based his elaborate “systems.”

She went close up to the writing table and began looking for some note paper, but there was nothing of the sort to be seen, neither paper nor envelopes. This was the more absurd as there were pens, and an inkstand filled to the brim. Then she bethought herself that the simplest thing to do would be to tear a blank leaf out of one of Monsieur Wachner's notebooks; on it she would write down her message, leaving it on the dining table, where they would be sure to see it. She knew that the Wachners always accepted her invitations, as they had done those of Anna Olsen, with alacrity.

She took up the newest looking of the little notebooks. As she opened it, she suddenly, and for the third time, felt a living presence close to her—but this time it seemed to be that of Anna Olsen. It was an extraordinary sensation—vivid, uncanny, terrifying—for Mabel Blackett not only believed herself to be alone in the villa, but she thought it almost certain that her friend was far away, probably by this time ship-bound for her own country, Denmark.

Fortunately the unnerving impression did not endure, and, as her eyes became focused on the book she held in her hand, it became fainter and fainter. Then Mabel realized, with a sense of relief, what it was that had brought the presence of her absent friend so very near to her; there, actually lying open before her, between two leaves of the notebook, was a letter in Anna Olsen's handwriting! It was very short, couched in stiff though grammatical French, and was dated ten days ago. In it the writer accepted Madame Wachner's invitation to supper for the day she had left Enghien. On the page opposite to where the letter rested Monsieur Wachner had evidently amused himself in copying, or rather in imitating, Madame Olsen's peculiar, upright handwriting. Words picked out of the letter here and there had been scrawled down, again and again.

After having torn out one of the blank pages, Mabel laid the notebook and its inclosure back on the table. She felt vaguely touched by the fact that the Wachners had kept her friend's last letter; they alone, so she reminded herself, had been really sorry and concerned at Madame Olsen's sudden departure from the place. They also, like Mabel, had been pained that their friend had not cared to say good-by to them.

She scribbled a few lines on the scrap of paper, and then, quickly making her way to the dining room, she placed her unconventional note on the table, and went into the hall. She felt thoroughly nervous—as she expressed it to herself, “upset.” For the first time Enghien became utterly distasteful. She asked herself, with a kind of surprise, of self-rebuke, why she was there—away from her own country and her own people? Even the Comte De Poupel seemed an alien, a stranger. She suddenly felt as if it would be very comfortable to see once more the tall, broad figure of Bill Oldchester.

As she opened the front door of the Châlet-des Muguets, she was met by a blast of hot air. Feeling as she now felt, walking back through the heat would be intolerable. She looked out dubiously; to the left, across the lawn, lay the chestnut wood.

Mabel Blackett put up her white parasol, and hurried across the scorched grass to the place where there was an opening in the rough hedge. A moment later she was through it, and into the grateful shade cast by high trees.

It was delightfully cool and still. She wondered vaguely why the Wachners had never taken her in there—but foreigners are very law-abiding, or so Mabel Blackett believed. The wood, if a piece of no-man's land, was for sale; there was a large board up with a small plan on it. Mabel realized that it would have been turned into villa land long ago had it been nearer a road. Now it was still a tiny stretch of primeval forest; there was a good deal of undergrowth, and here and there, lying amid the tufts of grass, were the husks of last autumn's chestnuts. Mrs. Blackett followed the little zigzag path which cut across the wood, and then, desiring to sit down for a while, she struck to the right, where there was a little clearing.

Mabel sat down on the hard ground. Even here, where the sun could never penetrate, the tufts of coarse grass were dried up by the heat; there was no fear that they would stain her pretty cotton frock.

All at once she became aware that to her right, where the undergrowth began again, the earth had recently been disturbed. Over an irregular patch of about a yard square the sods had been dug up, and then planted again. The thought passed through her mind that children had been playing there, and that they had made a rude attempt to destroy their handiwork, or rather to prevent its being noticed, by placing the branch of a tree across the little piece of ground where the earth had been disturbed. It was this branch, of which the leaves were now shriveled up, that had first drawn her attention to it.

Her thoughts wandered to Bill Oldchester; he was now actually journeying toward her as fast as boat and train could bring him; in a couple of hours he would be in Paris, and then he would come out to Enghien in time for dinner. Mabel had not been able to get a room for him in her own pension, but she had engaged one in the boarding house of Madame Malfait—the room, as a matter of fact, which had been occupied by Anna Olsen.

She could not help being sorry that Bill would see Enghien for the first time on a Sunday. To his eyes the place, on that day of all days, would present a peculiarly—well—disreputable appearance. Mabel Blackett felt jealous for the good fame of Enghien. She told herself that she had been very happy here, singularly, extraordinarily happy.

Something told her, and the thought was not unpleasing to her, that Bill Oldchester and the Comte De Poupel would not get on well together. She wondered if the Comte De Poupel had ever been jealous—if he was capable of jealousy. It would be rather amusing to see if anything could make him so.

And then her mind traveled far, to a picture with which she had been familiar for a long time, for it hung in the drawing-room of one of her friends at Dallington. It was called “The Gambler's Wife.” She had always thought it a very pretty and pathetic picture, but she no longer thought it so; in fact, it now appeared to her to be a ridiculous travesty of life. Gamblers were just like other people, neither better nor worse—and often infinitely more lovable than were some other people.

Mabel Blackett got up, and slowly made her way out of the wood. She did not go again through the Wachners' garden; instead, she struck off to the left, onto a field path, which finally brought her to the main road.

As she was passing the Pension Malfait the landlady came out to the door.

“Madame!” she cried out loudly. “I have news of Madame Olsen at last! Early this afternoon I had a telegram from her asking me to send her luggage to the cloakroom of the Gare du Nord.”

Mabel felt very glad—glad, and yet once more perhaps unreasonably hurt. Then Anna Olsen had been in Paris all the time? How odd, how really unkind of her not to have written and relieved her American friend's anxiety!

“I have had Madame Olsen's room prepared for your friend,” went on Madame Malfait amiably.

She was pleased that Mrs. Blackett was giving her a new guest, and it amused her to consider what prudes American women were. Fancy putting a man who had come all the way from America to see one, in a pension situated at the other end of the town to where one was living oneself!