“Yes. The footman goes home. If I am entertaining a great deal, of course, I have in other servants, but the season is hardly opened yet.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Oh, nonsense!”
He was still worried as he went down to his waiting car, for he had not succeeded in getting Bertha Mason to believe that there was any cause for her to be afraid, and he could see that it was still hard for her to make up her mind that the case was really dangerous.
Michael’s face did not change as he welcomed his master to their suite in the Ritz, but Juan saw that he was pale.
“You’ll have to get out of this habit of worrying about me, dear chap.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come here,” said Juan, and as Michael, after seeing that every shade was down and that there was no keyhole from the hall in a line with them, came to sit beside him, he went on to tell his colleague of all that had happened that evening.
“Where is Hoofty staying?” he asked, as he ended.
For answer Michael brought out a very correct-looking letter:
“I hope that you will drop in and see me before you leave London,” said the writer, who addressed his note to “Mon cher Jaime.” The note was a casual chat. In one part there was a quotation, evidently from a book of light philosophies. “That’s the address,” Michael stated. “I decoded it. ‘19 Warwick Lane.’ That’s down Limehouse way.”
“You see the value of all the training that I insist on my operatives taking,” Juan said. “Very often, there would be no occasion whatever for such elaborate precautions. Hoofty could send me in his address and write a report, just as he often does.
“But there are times and they are the most serious times to a detective, when he has to remember that the cunning of not only one high-class criminal, but of a number of them, perhaps under a clever leader, is pitted against him.
“I don’t know that our mail will be or can be tampered with, but if we can plant our operatives in places, so can criminals, and I am convinced that hotel servants have far too little attention from the police of every country.
“Half of the big crimes are either planned in hotels or have part of their plots laid there. So I can’t be sure that some employee here is not here for the express purpose of watching us. With the magnitude of the job which must be on hand, there may be many members of this gang which we are dealing with.
“I know that a great many people think that perfecting my operatives in disguise, teaching them to guard against surprises, and giving them means of secretly communicating with me and with each other, is all a waste of time.
“I acknowledge that we don’t use these resources often and that a great deal of the work we do is of the simplest description. But when we do get into a mess like this, Michael, the ordinary detective methods are hopelessly outclassed.”
Chapter XVII
Tinkling Fingers
Yurdsky was playing.
Bravortsky leaned on the end of the piano with just a shade too obsequious a manner.
Several women and men were grouped near one of the long windows which opened on the terrace.
Mrs. Mason sat on a sofa with her friend Alma.
Don Jaime de Ventura, more like a painting by Velasquez than ever, stood by the mantle, his slim and graceful figure making every other man in the room look commonplace.
The housemaid, “Amelia Hutchinson,” served tea, under the careful eye of the butler. It spoke volumes for her that he was not frowning slightly; Dawkins was the terror of untrained or careless servants.
Yurdsky was a superb pianist; but it seemed to Juan that the company paid a trifle too much court to him. He was a pale, quiet youth who had no personal vanity, but who was a sublime egotist when it came to his talent. There was no extravagance of praise which he would not accept as his due.
Juan had observed this company with minute attention, although his manner was that of a person who is habitually absentminded. The women and the men were all just a trifle too authentic! In short, everybody looked his or her part too well.
Bravortsky was excessively military, the women were very Russian, and very French, and very English. The men, who had been introduced by various names, were so very much at ease!
But as for Mrs. George Batten, if Juan had not had an unshakable confidence in Mary Smith, not only as a woman, but as a scientist, he would have been convinced that the whole fabric of their surmises was a falsity.
There did not seem a particle of artificiality about her. She was rather quiet in her manner, although undeniably beautiful. Juan wondered that the two women closest to her, Edith Hexter and Bertha Mason, had not insisted on this point more.
He had been introduced to her and had had the opportunity to sit down on the sofa with the two women, but this was not in the game. He intended to seem aloof from all other women, and to give his friendship rather openly to Mrs. Mason.
In his inner consciousness, Juan knew very well that he had a good deal of magnetism, in his own usual person, and that as Don Jaime he really was something of what Hoofty was continually teasing him for being — a heart-breaker.
Outside the window through which Juan could look he now saw that worthy, properly smocked and hatted, working carefully around some rosebeds. Hoofty was clearly visible from the drawing-room and as Yurdsky, after receiving adulation, was sitting down to rest and to drink his tea, Juan distinctly heard Alma Batten say to her friend:
“I see you have a new gardener in the place of old Cordes.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Mason replied. “I got him yesterday. It seems that Cordes knew him and gave him the address when he was dying in the hospital, poor old fellow. To think that I was not here. He’d been with me eight years.”
“I have had to make some changes in my own staff,” the rich, colorful voice went on. “You remember Thompkins? He used to tend the grounds as well as work in the house. He’s gone to America.
“I wonder if your man could help me a little for the next few weeks until I can get another man like Thompkins? I don’t need a man just for the grounds, you know. They are not as extensive as yours.”
“Yes, I’ll tell Brown to see you after dinner this evening, of course,” Mrs. Mason replied.
There had been just a second’s hesitation in her reply, and Juan thought that he guessed what had caused it. Like himself, she had been too amazed by this turn of good fortune to believe that it could be wholly fortuitous. Like her — as he felt sure — he instantly began to ask himself what lay behind this.
Speculation on this was brought abruptly to an end by the butler, who stopped in the middle of the large doorway of the drawing-room, ready to make an important announcement.
Peking[2]
by R. W. Alexander
J. D. turned the torch upward and it caught the flash of letters of gold: together he and Joan read the message and the curse.
I
They stood where the Arches of Sorrow cast their shade, looking out across the sunlit plain toward the hills. The air shimmered in the noonday heat, and the gray piles of stone found shapes other than those with which the patient masons had endowed them.
Here and there a coolie plodded slowly cityward, laden bamboo pole on shoulder; to the west a string of camels went nodding along the unseen road, knee-deep in dust. But for these, and the tombs sprawled in the sunshine, Stewart and the girl were alone. Few came to the Plain of the Dead, and none lingered on it.