“If you come home late, Dexter, after François has gone to bed, you’ll be sure that the gate is locked, won’t you? Grandmamma never used to be nervous, but she charged me specially about the gate.”
I assured him that I would even verify François’s care of it. But it was not like the princess to be fidgety.
After getting my bags from the hotel, I returned to the house. Until a late hour I sat smoking and reading in the studio, alone with the portrait of the dead Prince Michael. The fate of that whole group — stark tragedy. And the way they face life now, those who survive, is very fine.
The next day I spent most of my time with a group of old friends in the Latin Quarter. My favorite section of Paris has always been the romantic Left Bank.
It was midnight when I returned to the Vorontsov house. I found the studio lighted, and on the table a telegram for me. It was from Boris, at Nice:
GRANDMAMMA DIED AT SEVEN THIS EVENING OF APOPLEXY SHE WILL BE BURIED HERE BESIDE MY FATHER I AM WRITING YOU THERE IS SOMETHING VERY STRANGE.
I was profoundly shocked — shocked and grieved to the heart. Dead — that amazing old lady! “Something very strange.” Whatever did the boy mean?
If I had not known that there were many Russians in Nice, I would have taken the first train for the south. But I decided to telegraph first, then wait for his promised letter.
The next day the Paris newspapers reported the death of the princess, at Nice, reported the presence of her grandson in Nice, gave an account of the Vorontsov family’s long and romantic history.
When Boris’s letter came, I knew for certain that I had a mystery to unravel — though what it was all about, what the princess wanted me to do for her, I had not the remotest conjecture.
Here is the poor boy’s perplexing letter:
MY DEAR DEXTER:
You know how I feel — I cannot write about that.
Grandmamma was so happy when I told her you were in the house. “Perhaps he will help you,” she cried; “it’s a task not unworthy of him.” But she would not explain — not another word.
She was stricken at teatime. Only two hours she lived — unconscious after the first few moments. There was something she tried to say to me — she could not control her speech very well, but this much was clear:
“Tell Dexter — Dexter Drake — the key — in Michael — Left Bank — 27 B”
Then she sank into coma.
What does it mean, Dexter? Was she trying to say 27 bis — the number of some Paris house on the Left Bank? But she spoke in English — you know how she always obliged me to keep up my English — and 27 B is what it would be in that language, isn’t it? But what street on the Left Bank? What street? And what does she want you to do there?
She had a little bad spell, early in February. Our doctor in Paris told me — oh, she never mentioned it! — that a bullet grazed her side when she was hiding in the Russian forest.
How like her it was to think of you, Dexter, when she had to leave something half told! In the old happy days when you worked with the Paris police, she was always so thrilled by your cases. I remember the Rigaud case, and your showing her how you worked out the conspirators’ secret writing. How delighted she was! She loved puzzles.
I don’t know just where I stand. Even the house is not ours; it has been held on a twenty years’ lease. With all her playfulness, it was not easy to cross-question my grandmother.
Will you come down to Nice? The funeral will be Friday morning.
Your bewildered,
“The key — in Michael.” I glanced up at that portrait over the chimneypiece. Yes, what else could she mean? I would take the picture down, after the servants had gone to bed. A key — to what? Yet, why “Left Bank” and “27 B,” with no street name? But perhaps the mind of the dying woman was already wandering. Or there might really be some mystery about her way of living.
The future looked dark for my young friend. Without years of professional training, what career would be open to him in France? In America? We had not jobs enough, then, for our own ex-soldiers.
You know I had just come up from Constantinople, where penniless Russian nobles were starving in droves — literally, I mean.
It was after midnight when I locked the door between the studio and the main building, drew the heavy curtains close over the windows, and set to work. From a chair I climbed onto the broad mantelpiece, got the portrait of Prince Michael off its hook, and then to the floor, where I laid it face down on a rug. Inch by inch I went around the picture back, between the canvas and the stretcher. I was feeling for a thin key — feeling with the tip of my pocket nail file and listening for the click of metal against metal.
I had gone halfway round when the file met an obstruction — something soft, though, not hard.
Carefully, with the file and my thumbnail, I got it out — a tightly folded piece of thin gray paper. Was that what she had meant?
It had been at the bottom, near the right-hand corner. She could have got it in there without taking the picture down!
My heart must have been going ninety-five to the minute, as I unfolded the sheet of gray paper. Here is what I read:
LEFT BANK, 27 B.
5-35-26-5-18-36-20-18-31-5-9-31-23-24-14-18-3-31-27-28-24-9-11-
28-12-11-27-20-26-3-18-29-35-24-9-8-26-28-5-23-35-26-5-5-35-12-
31-8-31-9-29-20-9-24-26-5-9-26-5-35-9-11-28-23-28-23-12
In 1739.
There is something about a cipher which sets the imagination spinning — anybody’s imagination.
Though I went back to the picture on the rug and continued my search, I found nothing more. The cipher was the “key.”
So I rehung the portrait of Prince Michael.
Now, I have made it my business to know a good deal about ciphers, and there were peculiarities about this one which told me at a glance that it would be difficult to read.
But my first question was this: Had the dying princess mentioned my name just because I had always been associated in her mind with mysteries and enigmas of all sorts? This message in my hand might be written in a family code, which her grandson knew how to read. It seemed more delicate, more discreet, to show it to him before trying to read it myself. Many old families have hereditary secrets, which even the youngest of them would prefer not to share with any outsider. I might stumble on almost any romance — yes, any state secret — by fumbling with this “key” in Prince Michael Vorontsov.
There floated before my mind’s eye a vivid picture of the princess, at the moment of our last parting several years before, at the garden door of this very room: A vigorous little old lady, not more than five feet two inches tall, in a richly embroidered black velvet robe with creamy lace round the neck. Very black eyes — eyes incredibly young — smiling out of that splendid old face with its network of tiny wrinkles.
In parting she had kissed me on both cheeks and told me to be wise — “sois sage!” as the French mother says to her child.
It is always some little memory which tugs at our heart when a friend is newly dead.
Before going to bed that night I hid the mysterious sheet of gray paper in a belt which I wear next my skin when traveling. And I locked the door of my bedroom. There was more than a chance that I might be the guardian of something extremely important, which I had better not meddle with until I had consulted with Boris.