The House of Peril (Ainslee's, 1911)/Chapter 7

It was half-past eight, and for the moment the Casino was very empty, for the afternoon players had left, and the evening série, as Paul De Poupel called them, had not yet arrived.

“And now,” said Madame Wachner suddenly, “is it not time for us to go and 'ave our little supper?”

She had been watching her husband and Mabel Blackett playing at baccarat; both of them had won, not very much, but enough to make Mabel at least feel pleasantly excited.

Mrs. Blackett turned round, smiling. It was nice of the Wachners to ask her back to supper at the Châlet des Muguets. It would have been lonely this evening at the Pension Noir. Mabel felt curiously deserted—the thought that Paul De Poupel would leave Enghien had never occurred to her.

“I'm quite ready.” And then addressing herself more particularly to Madame Wachner, who she knew disliked walking: “Shall we take a carriage?” she asked diffidently.

Mabel meant the carriage to be her share of the evening's junketing.

“No, no,” said Monsieur Wachner shortly. “There is no need to take a carriage to-night; it is so fine, and besides, it is not very far.”

And so the three walked away together from the établissement—Mabel with her light, springing step keeping pace with “L'Ami Fritz,” while his wife lagged a step behind. But as usual the man remained silent, while the two women talked. To-night, however, Madame Wachner did not show her usual tact; her mind seemed running on the Comte De Poupel.

“I am glad he 'as gone away,” she said. “He is so supercilious—so different to that excellent Mr. Oldchester. Perhaps you will find them both in America, together, when you go back!”

Mabel made no answer; she thought it probable that she would never see the Comte De Poupel again, and the conviction hurt her shrewdly. It was painful to be reminded of him now, in this way, and by a woman who she knew disliked him as much as he disliked her.

To-night, in the gathering darkness, the way to the Châlet des Muguets seemed longer than usual—far longer than it had seemed the last time she had gone there, but on that occasion Paul De Poupel had been her companion,

At last the three walkers came within sight of the little, white gate. How strangely lonely the house looked standing back in the neglected, untidy garden!

“I wonder,” Mabel Blackett looked up at her silent companion—“L'Ami Fritz” had not opened his lips a single time during the walk from the Casino—“I wonder that you and Madame Wachner are not afraid to leave the house alone for so many hours of each day. Your servant leaves after lunch, doesn't she?”

“There is nothing to steal,” he answered shortly. “We always carry all our money about with us—all sensible people do so at Enghien and at Monte Carlo.”

Madame Wachner was now on Mabel's other side.

“Yes,” she said rather rather breathlessly; “that is so, and I hope that you, dear friend, followed the advice we gave you about that matter.”

“Of course I did,” said Mabel, smiling. “I always carry my money about with me, strapped round my waist in that pretty, little leather bag which you gave me. At first it wasn't very comfortable, but I have got quite used to it now.”

“That is right!” said the other heartily. “That is quite right! There are rogues in every pension, perhaps even in the Pension Noir, if we knew everything!” went on Madame Wachner, laughing her hearty, jovial laugh. “By the way, Ami Fritz, have you written that letter to the Pension Noir?” She turned to Mabel. “We are anxious to get a room in your pension for a friend.”

Mabel felt, she could hardly say why, that the question had extremely annoyed Monsieur Wachner.

“Of course, I have written the letter,” he snapped out. “Do I ever forget anything?”

“I fear there is no room vacant,” Mabel said. “And yet—well, I suppose they have not had time to let the Comte De Poupel's room. They only knew he was going this morning. You need not trouble to write a letter, I will give the message.”

“Ah, but the person in question may arrive to-night,” said Madame Wachner. “No, we are arranging to send the letter by a cabman who will call for it.”

Monsieur Wachner pushed open the white gate, and all three began walking up through the garden. The mantle of night now draped every straggling bush, every wilted flower, and the little wilderness was filled with delicious pungent night scents.

Mabel smiled in the darkness; there seemed something so primitive, so simple in keeping the key of one's front door outside, under the mat. And yet the foolish, prejudiced people spoke of Enghien as a dangerous spot, as being a plague pit!

But before they had time to look for the key, the door was opened by the day servant,

“What are you doing here?” asked Madame Wachner angrily. There was a note of dismay, as well as of anger, in her voice.

The woman began to excuse herself volubly,

“I thought I might be of some use, madame, I thought I might help you with all the last details.”

“There was no necessity—none at all for doing anything of the kind,” said Madame Wachner, speaking very quickly. “You had been paid! You had had your present! However, as you are here, you may as well lay a third place in the dining room; for, as you see, we have brought madame back to have a little supper. She will only stay a very few moments; she has to be home at her pension by ten o'clock.”

Mabel, as is often the case with those who have been much thrown with French people, could understand French much better than she could speak it, and what Madame Wachner had just said surprised and puzzled her. It was quite untrue that she had to be back at the Pension Noir by ten o'clock—for the matter of that, she could stay out as long and as late as she liked, the more so that her host would certainly escort her back.

Then again, although the arrangement that she should come to supper to-night had been made the day before, Madame Wachner had evidently forgotten to tell her servant, for only two places were laid in the dining room, into which they all three walked through on entering the house. On the dining table stood a lighted lamp, and propped up against it was a letter addressed to Madame Noir in a peculiar, large handwriting. “L'Ami Fritz” muttered something, and, taking it up hurriedly, put it into his breast pocket.

“I brought that letter out of monsieur's bedroom,” observed the servant. “I feared monsieur had forgotten it. Would monsieur like me to take it to the Pension Noir on my way home?”

“No,” said Monsieur Wachner shortly. “There is no need for you to do that.”

His wife called out to him imperiously, from the dark passage: “Fritz! Fritz! Come here a moment. I want you.”

He hurried out of the room, and Mabel Blackett and the servant were left alone together for a few moments.

The woman went to the buffet, and took up a plate; she came and placed it noisily on the table, and under cover of the sound: “Do not stay here, madame,” she whispered. “Come away with me. Say you want me to accompany you to the Pension Noir.”

Mabel stared at her distrustfully. The servant had a disagreeable face; a cunning, avaricious look was in her eyes, or so the young American fancied. No doubt she remembered the couple of francs given her, or rather extorted by her, the week before.

“I will not say more,” the woman went on, speaking very quickly, and under her breath. “But I am an honest woman, and these people frighten me. Still I am not one to want embarrassments with the police.”

And Mabel suddenly remembered that those were exactly the same words which had been used by Anna Olsen's landlady in connection with Anna's disappearance. How frightened French people seemed to be of the police!

The servant again moved away; she took up the plate she had just placed on the table, and to Mabel's mingled disgust and amusement began rubbing it vigorously with her elbow.

Monsieur Wachner came into the room.

“That will do, that will do, Annette,” he said patronizingly. “Come here, my good woman. I desire to give you a pretty little gift from myself. So here is twenty francs. And now good night.”

“Merci, m'sieur.” 

Without again looking at Mabel, the woman went out of the room. A moment later the front door slammed behind her.

“My wife discovered that it is Annette's fête day to-morrow. No doubt that was why she stayed on to-night.”

Madame Wachner came in.

“Oh, those French people!” she exclaimed. “How greedy they are for money! But—well, the woman has earned her present very fairly.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“May I go and take off my hat?” asked Mabel.

She left the room before Madame Wachner could answer her, and walked down the short, dark passage.

The door of the moonlit kitchen was ajar, and, to her surprise, Mabel Blackett saw that a trunk, corded and even labeled, stood in the middle of the floor.

Close to the trunk was a large piece of sacking. Was it possible that the Wachners, too, were leaving Enghien? If so, how very odd not to have told her!

As she opened the door of the bedroom, Madame Wachner came up behind her.

“Wait a moment,” she said breathlessly. “I had better get a light. You see we have been rather upset to-day, for L'Ami Fritz has to go away for two or three days, and that is a great affair—we are seldom separated.”

“The moon is so bright I can see quite well.”

Mabel was taking off her hat; she put it, together with a little fancy bag in which she kept the silver she played with at the gambling tables, on Madame Wachner's bed. She felt vaguely uncomfortable, for even as Madame Wachner had spoken she had become aware that the bedroom was almost entirely cleared of everything belonging to its occupant.

As they came back into the dining room, Monsieur Wachner, who was already sitting down at table, looked up.

“Words—words—words!” he exclaimed harshly. “Instead of talking so much, why do you not both sit down and eat your suppers? I am hungry.”

Mabel had never heard him speak in such a tone before, but his wife answered quite good-humoredly:

“You forget, Fritz, that the cabman is coming. Till he has come and gone, we shall not have peace.”

And sure enough, within a moment of saying those words, there came a sound of steps on the path in the garden. Monsieur Wachner got up, and went out of the room. He opened the front door, and Mabel overheard a few words of the colloquy:

“Yes, you are to take it now at once. Just leave it at the Pension Noir. You will come for us—you will come; that is, for me”—monsieur raised his voice—“to-morrow morning at half-past six. I wish to catch the seven-ten train to Paris.”

Mabel heard the man's answering “Bien, m'sieur.”

But “L'Ami Fritz” did not come back at once. He went out into the garden and down the gate. When he came back again, he put a large key on the table.

“There!” he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. “Now there will be nothing to disturb us any more.”

They all three sat down at the round dining table. To Mabel's surprise, it was a very simple meal. There was only one small dish of cold meat. Always before when Mabel Blackett had been to supper there had been two or three tempting dishes, and some dainty friandises as well, the whole procured from the excellent confectioner who drives such a roaring trade at Enghien. To-night, in addition to a few slices of cold tongue, there was only a little fruit.

“L'Ami Fritz” helped first his wife and himself largely, then Mabel more frugally. It was a very slight matter, the more so that he was notoriously forgetful, being ever, according to his wife, absorbed in his calculations and “systems.” But, all the same, this odd lack of good manners on her host's part added to Mabel's feeling of strangeness and discomfort.

Indeed, the Wachners were both very unlike their usual selves this evening. Madame Wachner had suddenly become very serious, her face was set in rather grim, grave lines; twice as Mabel was eating the little piece of galantine which had been placed on her plate, she looked up and caught her hostess' eyes fixed on her with a curious, alien scrutiny.

When they had almost finished the meat which was on their plates, Madame Wachner said suddenly:

“Ami Fritz, you have forgotten to mix the salad! You will find what is necessary in the drawer behind you.”

Monsieur Wachner got up, and, silently pulling the drawer of the buffet open, he took out of it a wooden spoon and fork; then he came back to the table, and began silently mixing the salad.

The last two times Mabel had been at the Châlet des Muguets, her host, in deference to her American taste, had put a large admixture of vinegar in the salad dressing, but this time she saw that he soused the lettuce leaves with oil.

At last: “Will you have some salad, Mrs. Blackett?” he said brusquely.

“No,” she said. “Not to-night, thank you.”

And she looked across at Madame Wachner, expecting to see in the older woman's face a humorous appreciation of the fact that “L'Ami Fritz” had forgotten her well-known horror of oil, for Mabel's dislike of a French salad ingredient had long been a little joke among the three, nay, among the four, for Anna Olsen had been there the last time Mabel had had supper with the Wachners—and it had been such a merry meal!

To-night no meaning smile met hers; instead, she saw that odd, grave, considering look on the older woman's face.

Suddenly Madame Wachner held out her plate across the table, and her husband heaped it up with the oily mixture. Then he took up one of the two remaining pieces of meat that were on the dish, and placed it on his wife's plate. He offered nothing more to Mabel. It was such a little thing, and yet, taken in connection with their silence and odd manner, this omission struck her with a kind of fear, with fear and with pain. She felt so hurt that the tears came into her eyes.

Both husband and wife were now eating voraciously. There was a long moment's pause; then:

“Do you not feel well?” asked Madame Wachner harshly. “Or are grieving for the Comte De Poupel?”

Her voice had become guttural, full of coarse and cruel malice.

Mabel Blackett pushed her chair back, and rose to her feet.

“I should like to go home,” she said quietly. “It is getting late. I can make my way back quite well without Monsieur Wachner's escort.”

She saw her host shrug his shoulders. He made a face at his wife; it expressed annoyance, nay more, extreme disapproval.

Madame Wachner also got up. She laid her hand on Mabel's shoulder.

“Come, Come,” she said, this time quite kindly, “you must not be cross with me, dear friend! I was only laughing. I was only what you call in America 'teasing.' The truth is, I am very vexed and upset that our supper is not better. I told that fool Frenchwoman to get in something nice. She disobeyed me. But now L'Ami Fritz is going to make us some good coffee. After we have had it, you shall go away if you wish.”

Mabel Blackett sat down again. After all, as Paul De Poupel had truly said, not once but many times, the Wachners were not very refined people. And then she, Mabel, was tired and low-spirited to-night; perhaps she had imagined the change in their manner which had so surprised, nay, almost frightened her. Now Madame Wachner was quite her old self; indeed, she was heaping all the cherries which were in the dessert dish on her guest's plate, in spite of Mabel's smiling protest.

“L'Ami Fritz” got up, and left the room. He was going into the kitchen to make the coffee.

“Mr. Oldchester was telling me of your valuable pearls,” said Madame Wachner pleasantly. “I was surprised! What a lot of money to hang round one's neck! But it is worth it, if one has so lovely a neck as has the little Mab-bel. May I look at them, or do you never take them off?”

Mabel unclasped the string of pearls, and laid it on the table.

“Yes, they are nice,” she said. “I always wear them, even at night. Many people have a knot made between each pearl, for that of course makes the danger of losing them much less should the string break. But mine are not knotted, for a lady once told me that it made the pearls hang much less prettily; she said it would be quite safe if I had them restrung every six months.”

Madame Wachner reverentially took up the pearls in her large hand; she seemed to be weighing them.

“How heavy they are,” she observed.

“Yes,” said Mabel, “you can always tell a real pearl by its weight.”

“And to think,” went on her hostess musingly, “that each of these tiny balls is worth—how much is it worth?—at least five or six 'undred francs, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Mabel again, “they have greatly increased in value during the last few years. You see, pearls are the only really fashionable gems just now.”

“I suppose they are worth more together than separately?” said Madame Wachner, still in that thoughtful, considering tone.

“Oh, I don't know that,” said Mabel, smiling. “Of course these are beautifully matched. I got them by a piece of good luck, without having to pay—well, what I suppose one would call the middleman's profit. I just paid what I should have done at an auction.”

“And you paid? Two—three thousand dollars?” asked Madame Wachner, fixing her small, dark, bright eyes on the fair American's face.

“Oh, rather more than that.” Mabel grew a little red. “But, as I said just now, they are always increasing in value. Even Mr. Oldchester, who did not approve of my getting these pearls, admits that.”

Through the open door she thought she heard Monsieur Wachner coming back down the passage. So she suddenly took the pearls out of the other woman's hand, and clasped the string about her neck again.

“L'Ami Fritz” came into the room. He was holding rather awkwardly a little tray, on which were two cups—one a small cup, the other a large cup, both filled to the brim with black coffee. He put the small cup before his guest, the large cup before his wife.

“I hope you do not mind having a small cup,” he said solemnly. “I remember that you do not care to take a great deal of coffee.”

Mabel looked up.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “I ought to have told you before! I won't have any coffee to-night. Coffee is very bad for me. The last time I took some I lay awake all night.”

“Oh, but you must take some.” Madame Wachner spoke good-humoredly, but with great determination. “The small amount you have in that little cup will not hurt you; and, besides, it is a special coffee; L'Ami Fritz's own mixture.”

She laughed heartily. And again Mabel noticed that Monsieur Wachner looked at his wife with a fixed, rather angry look, as much as to say: “Why are you always laughing? Why cannot you be serious sometimes?”

“But honestly, to-night, I would rather not.” Mabel had suddenly seen a vision of herself lying wide awake during long hours—hours which, as she knew by experience, generally bring to the sleepless worrying thoughts. “No, no, I will not have any coffee to-night,” she repeated.

“Yes, yes, dear friend, you really must.” Madame Wachner spoke very persuasively. “I should be really sorry if you did not take your coffee—indeed, it would make me think you were angry with us because of the very bad supper we have given you. L'Ami Fritz would not have taken the trouble to make coffee for his old wife; he has made it for you, only for you; he will be hurt if you do not take it.” The coffee did look very tempting. Mabel had always disliked coffee in America, but somehow French coffee was quite different; it had an entirely different taste to that which the ladies of Dallington pressed on their guests after dinner at their solemn dinner parties.

She lifted the pretty little cup to her lips. The coffee had a rather curious taste; it was slightly bitter—decidedly not so nice as that to which she was accustomed to drink each day after déjeuner at the Pension Noir. Surely it would be very foolish to risk a bad night for a small cup of indifferent coffee!

She put the cup down, and pushed it away.

“Please don't ask me to take it!” she said, “It really is very bad for me.”

Madame Wachner shrugged her shoulders with an angry gesture.

“Fritz,” she said imperiously, “will you please come with me for a moment into the next room? I have something to ask you.”

Silently he obeyed his wife, and a moment later Mabel, left alone, could hear them talking eagerly to one another in that strange, unknown tongue in which they sometimes—not often—addressed one another.

Mabel got up from her chair. She felt a sudden eager desire to slip away. For a moment she even thought of leaving the house without saying good night, even without waiting for her hat and scarf. And then, with a strange sinking of the heart, she remembered that the little white gate was locked.

But in no case would she have had time to do what she had thought of doing, for her host and hostess were now back in the room.

Madame Wachner sat down again at the dining table.

“One moment,” she said rather breathlessly. ”Just wait till I have finished my coffee, Mab-bel, and then L'Ami Fritz will escort you home.”

Monsieur Wachner was paying no attention either to his guest or to his wife. He took up the chair on which he had been sitting, and placed it out of the way near the door. Then he lifted the lamp off the table, and put it on the buffet; as he did so, Mabel, looking up, saw the shadow of his tall figure thrown grotesquely, hugely, against the opposite wall of the room.

“Take the cloth off the table,” he said quickly in French.

And his wife, gulping down the last drops of her coffee, got up and obeyed him.

Mabel suddenly realized that they were getting ready for something—that they wanted the room cleared.

As with quick, deft fingers Madame Wachner folded up the cloth, she said curtly:

“As you are not taking any coffee, Mab-bel, perhaps it is time for you now to get up and go away.”

Mabel looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt very angry. Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life had any one ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house. She rose to her feet.

And then in a moment there occurred that which transformed her anger into agonized fear and amazement. The back of her neck was grazed by something sharp and cold. She gave a smothered cry. Her string of pearls had parted in two, and the pearls were now falling, one by one with dull thuds, and rolling all over the floor.

Instinctively she bent down, but as she did so she heard the man behind her make a quick movement. She straightened herself, and looked sharply round. “L'Ami Fritz,” still holding the small pair of nail scissors in his hand with which he had snapped asunder her necklace, was in the act of taking out something that looked like a very short croquet mallet from the drawer of the buffet.

Mabel Blackett's nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and clear.

There leaped on her the knowledge that this man and woman meant to kill her—to kill her for the sake of the pearls which were still bounding along the floor, and for the small sum of money which she carried slung in the leather bag below her waist.

“L'Ami Fritz” stood staring at her; he had put his hand—the hand holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer—behind his back. He was very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.

For a horrible moment there floated across Mabel's subconscious mind the thought of Anna Olsen, and of what she now knew to have been Anna Olsen's fate.

But she put that thought away from her determinedly. The instinct of self-preservation possessed her wholly. Already, in far less time than it would have taken to formulate the words, she had made up her mind to speak, and she knew exactly what she meant to say.

“It does not matter about my pearls,” she said quietly. Her voice shook a little, but she spoke in her usual tone. “If you are going into Paris to-morrow morning, perhaps you would take them to be restrung.”

The man looked questioningly across at his wife.

“Yes, that sounds a good plan,” he said in his guttural voice.

“No,” exclaimed Madame Wachner decidedly, “that will not do at all! We must not run that risk! The pearls must be found now, at once.” She made a gesture as if she also meant to bend down and seek for them. “Stoop!” she said imperiously. “Stoop, Mab-bel! Help me to find your pearls.”

But Mabel Blackett made no attempt to obey the order. Instead she gradually edged toward the closed window. At last she stood with her back to it, with Madame Wachner rather to her right, Wachner to her left.

“No,” she said, “I will not stoop and pick up my pearls now, Madame Wachner. It will be easier to look in the daylight. Monsieur Wachner will find them to-morrow morning.”

There came a tone of pleading, and for the first time of pitiful fear, in her voice,

“It is not his business to find your pearls,” exclaimed Madame Wachner harshly.

She stepped forward, and gripped Mabel by the arm, pulling her violently forward. As she did so she made a sign to her husband, and he pushed a chair quickly between Mrs. Blackett and the window, thus forcing her to lose her point of vantage.

But Mabel was young and lithe; she kept her feet.

But though she kept her feet, she knew with a cold, reasoning knowledge that she was very near to death; that it was only a question of minutes—unless—unless she could make the man and woman before her understand that they would make far more money by allowing her to live than by killing her now, to-night, for the value of the pearls that lay scattered on the floor, and the small—the pitiably small—sum in her leather waist bag.

“If you will let me go,” she said desperately, “I swear I will give you everything I have in the world!”

But the woman's grip on her shoulder became heavier, more cruel; she was trying to force Mabel down onto her knees.

“What do you take us for?” she said furiously. “We want nothing from you—nothing at all!”

She looked across at her husband, and there burst from her lips a torrent of words uttered in the language unknown to those who knew the Wachners.

Mabel listened with painful attention. She was trying to catch the drift of what was being said. Alas! She knew only too well; and there fell on her ear, twice repeated, the name Olsen.

Slowly Wachner moved a step forward, Mabel looked at him, an agonized appeal in her eyes. He was smiling, a nervous grin zigzagging across his large, thin-lipped mouth.

“You should have taken the coffee,” he muttered. “It would have saved us all much trouble!”

He put out his left hand, and the long, strong fingers closed, tentaclewise, on her slender shoulder. His right hand he kept still hidden behind his back.