“But surely that is obvious, Madame? Need I do more than mention — with the most abject respect — the name of your grandniece, the virginal and charming young Seraphine?”
A solid lump of ice and rage occupied Madame Dufour’s roomy insides, where lay her deepest rooted, most timeworn fear — fear for her beloved Seraphine. Even though she had known what Henri’s answer would be, the shock of his avowal was no less acute. She thought, how wise I have been! My plan, each least arrangement shall proceed. Pity for the youth of this creature, compassion for the memory of his grandfather — they would be follies embraced by fools. There is no answer but death.
Seraphine, her grandniece, who had been orphaned at the age of three, had promptly been enveloped by Madame Dufour and translated into the solitary representative of humanity whom Madame had ever loved. It had been for Seraphine’s future that Madame had invested her capital in the Chateau Plage and divorced herself, with infinite safeguards, from any connection with her past in the Province of Quebec.
She had bestowed on Seraphine a rigorous but the most loving of upbringings, an English governess, an exemplary finishing school outside of Washington, and in recent years the religious and intellectual influence of the sisters of Barry College in nearby Miami Shores. And now the ultimate accolade of an approaching marriage, both of prominence and true love...
If.
If this cowardly link with that distant Quebec past, who was facing her with the poisonous attention of an assured gila monster, would fall into her trap.
Madame Dufour permitted a hint of the deadly to freight her voice. “There is nothing, there is no person — living, Henri — who shall prevent the marriage ceremony of Seraphine and Jeffrey Sand next week.”
“The truth would be able to do so, Madame.” Henri again indulged his enigmatic smile. “The exalted Sand family are conditioned by the flexibility of modern society to accepting as a daughter-in-law the grandniece of an hotel keeper. But would they accept the grand-niece of a woman notorious throughout the Province of Quebec for having owned and operated a—”
“Silence!”
“Ah!” Henri twisted the knife. “So Madame agrees. There is no defense against it.”
Madame allowed a crumbling change to creep over her solid body and her face. “You have me. There is no argument, dear boy. The mere suggestion would spell ruin. Not for me, you understand, because that would not matter, but for the one who is dearer to me than either life or punishment or wealth. No, Henri, there is nothing left but to arrange the terms that will put a lock upon your tongue.”
Henri could not repress an expression of surprise, for this was complete capitulation. He did not like it; it worried him. There had been no doubt in his mind but that Madame Dufour would go down, but he had been prepared for her to go down fighting.
Personally, he knew nothing about this woman other than what his grandfather had divulged during the semi-delirious mutterings of his dying hours, while Henri had sat at his bedside. The old man had been under the delusion that he was talking to his son, Henri’s father, who had died in Henri’s fifth year.
The dying man’s babblings had been drunk in by Henri as a draught of liquid gold. And some hours after the old man had passed on, Henri had managed to locate, in its hiding place among his grandfather’s effects, the small oval of porcelain with its damning painting in miniature and ribald doggerel which confirmed the secret that had been fixed in the old man’s no longer functioning heart.
But Henri had also gathered from the mutterings that Madame Dufour was a character of indomitable will who could, when put upon, turn into a tigress. There had even been the babbled incident about one of Madame’s girls who had attempted extortion upon several of her married clients. The old man had then been the establishment’s bouncer and later, after the silly girl had been properly and permanently attended to, a minor partner of Madame Dufour’s.
This did not coincide in Henri’s opinion with Madame’s present lack of resistance and her instant yielding. En garde!
“The terms need not be overwhelming,” Henri said. “And assuredly not for a woman of Madame’s property and wealth.” He added with impudent modesty, “Myself, I am of simple tastes.”
With an artistically contrived sigh of relief, the falsity of which was difficult to detect, Madame arose, took Henri’s empty glass and her own and went with them to the cellarette.
Henri, with a great show of manners, had also risen. He strolled to a window, turning his back to Madame Dufour and the cellarette. Thus he achieved his first tactical mistake. He parted lime draperies, looked out at the black and storm-harassed evening, and down upon the flagged terrace dimly visible only a dozen feet or so beneath him.
“Your card of registration is here on the desk, Henri.”
He went over to the desk and wrote his signature on the card, noting that the room to which he was assigned was Number 101.
“We are both on this floor, Madame?”
“Yes. A matter of a few doors along the corridor. It is agreeable?”
“But why not?” He saw that his glass, refilled with cognac, stood near the card. He raised the glass and said with heavy cynicism, “To the approaching and now assured nuptials of your grandniece, Madame.”
“Of a surety, dear boy. It is agreed.”
Both drank.
Several moments and several remarks of inconsequential fencing later, the eyelids of Henri with their long lovely lashes closed.
Several moments — several hours? — later, the eyelids opened. Madame Dufour, a portrait of resignation, sat facing him. But — of course! — the room had changed. This was a bedroom. Hers? Of her suite? But no. He observed the inner, solid hall door that stood open into the room. On a white panel in black numerals was the number 101. The outer door, shuttered for ventilation (the Chateau Plage abjured the nonsense of air conditioning, since it remained open only during the lucrative winter season) was closed. So, Henri decided, he had in some fashion been moved to Room 101, his assigned accommodation on the registration card.
The second glass of cognac — a child could deduce the fact — must have been drugged. And the purpose, to Henri’s devious brain, was simple: his pockets and wallet had been searched, just as his overcoat and suitcase had been. It was amusing in the extreme.
Surreptitiously his fingers touched the inner side of his left thigh and were reassured. Beneath the trouser cloth the small oval miniature was still taped to his flesh.
But no, it was not amusing in the extreme. Indeed, it was not amusing at all. The collapse of all defenses on Madame Dufour’s part, that had struck him at the time as being out of character, must definitely have been an act — a role she was continuing to play even now.
“Dear boy, you awaken,” she said. “You feel refreshed?”
Henri looked at his watch. The hour approached midnight. His smile was as cunning as hers. “I — fell asleep?”
“But naturally! A day of exhausting journeying — the nervous pressure of the affairs that brought you here — you were as they say, out on your feet. I, too, am of a physique, Henri. I led you stumbling the few steps along the corridor and have deposited you here in your room."
Henri allowed this rank fatuity to pass unchallenged. Madame Dufour’s first move in her counterattack, the search, had resulted in failure. That was all that immediately mattered. But her second move, for his eyes were opened now to the truth that there would be a second, even a series of moves... The sensation of a growing, unknown danger increased.
“The pressure of affairs, as Madame chooses to call it, is felt mutually. Shall we to our muttons? There is a bistro, a small hotel in reality, situated on the banks of the Richelieu River a half hour’s drive from Montreal. It is a good property and the price is cheap.”