In reply to his knocking there came the click-clack of footsteps on bare boards, then the door was opened by a woman. As the only particulars of the blackmailer Roger had received were, that she was the sister of a mulatto who had been brought up as a slave in the household of Josephine's father, he had subconsciously expected to find her middle-aged and running to fat, as is the case with nearly all ageing females having negro blood. But the light, although dim, was sufficient for him to see that the woman who had answered the door was tall, shapely and much younger than he expected; so with a shade of doubt in his voice, he asked:
"Are you the Citoyenne Remy?"
"Yes," she replied in a cheerful voice that implied a smile. "You're lucky to find me alone. But come in and we'll have a glass of wine. Then you can tell me who gave you my address."
It was clearly the invitation of a harlot to a stranger, whom she assumed had been sent to her by one of her regulars. With a grim little smile, at the thought that she had no idea of the surprise in store for her, Roger followed her inside and took quick stock of the main room of the dwelling, which had been hidden from the street door by a hanging curtain of coarse material.
Two-thirds of the place had been gutted to form a lofty studio, and it now had two storeys only at its far end. There, a steep, narrow stairway, flush with the partition wall, ran up to a four-foot square landing giving access to a single door, which was presumably that of a bedroom overlooking the river. But, apparently, Madame Remy did not usually conduct her business up there; as, at one side of the studio before a small fire of sea-coal stood a broad couch covered with rugs and cushions. Near it was a table on which two candles, stuck in the necks of empty bottles, were burning. Otherwise, apart from a wicker chair, a battered oak chest, and a cracked mirror above the fireplace, the big apartment was bare of furniture.
Swaying her hips seductively, the woman walked in front of Roger towards the couch. As she did so she must have caught a glimpse of him in the mirror, for she said in a honeyed Creole voice:
"Down in these parts it isn't often that one sees a fine gentleman like you. But I promise you won't repent your visit. A West Indian girl can show most Frenchmen a few things they don't know; and perhaps you are the very one I have been waiting for to set me up in a better place."
As she finished speaking she turned about and dropped him a curtsy. It was when rising from it with a smile that she got her surprise; but not the one that Roger had intended. He got one too. He found himself face to face with Lucette.
Their meeting in Paris was so totally unexpected that neither had recognized the voice of the other, and it was not until they had come into the light of the candles that they had had the chance to discern one another's features. But now it was plain from the expressions on the faces of them both that neither had the least doubt about the other's identity.
"You!" Lucette breathed the word with hatred and alarm. Next second her right hand darted downward through a placket hole in her skirt. In the same movement she stooped. As she came upright her hand emerged grasping an eight-inch long stiletto that she had drawn from die top of her stocking. Her dark eyes flashing she whirled it on high and came at Roger like a tigress.
Without moving from where he stood he thrust up the thick malacca handle of his sword-cane, and parried the slash she made at his neck. Then he hit her hard beneath the chin. With a moan she went down backwards on the couch. Throwing aside his cane, he sprang upon her, seized her wrist and gave it a violent wrench. She uttered a cry of pain. Her fingers relaxed their grip upon the knife, and it fell with a tinkle on to the bare boards. Releasing her he picked it up and stuck it in the top of his jack-boot. Then he dusted his hands together, and said:
"I owed you that. Since you remember me, you may also remember having knocked me down m the cabin of the Circe when I had hardly enough strength in my legs to stand up without assistance."
"Remember you!" she panted, struggling into a sitting position. "Is it likely that I could ever forget you, after the ill you've done me. You are my jinx! Before we met I lived a fine carefree life. Since, everything has gone wrong. It was you who killed de Senlac. It was you who caused the break-up of the fraternity over which I reigned as Queen. I decided to settle down and keep a good, respectable house in St. Pierre. You came there and had me flung into prison."
"You would have had a hanging, had I not had to take flight the day after I had you arrested," Roger put in quickly.
Her face became clouded with a puzzled frown. "What mean you by 'take flight'? You were the Governor there, and they told me you had been recalled to England."
"So I told my staff, but it was not the fact" Roger's brain had been working overtime for the last few minutes. He thought it unlikely that Lucette could do him any serious harm, but that it would nevertheless be prudent to give her some story to account for his presence in Paris. Some adaptation of his stock box-and-cox autobiography was obviously the most plausible line; so, with a not very pleasant little laugh, he went on:
"From the fluency with which I speak French you must have realized that I am half a Frenchman, and although I was brought up in England I am wholly French at heart. I have long served the Republic secretly, and had hoped to strike a great blow for it by enabling Victor Hugues to retake Martinique. But he sent me warning that our plot was on the verge of discovery. I got away while I could, and from England employed a smuggler to run me across to France. What happened to you after I left?"
"With you no longer there, they could bring no evidence of piracy against me," she replied morosely, "but your denunciation caused Colonel Penruddock to treat me most scurvily. He had me charged with keeping a disorderly house and I was sentenced to three months' imprisonment. When I came out I found myself ruined. The pretty mulatto wenches for whom I had paid high prices had vanished; the house slaves had looted my property and run away. Only the house itself was left, and that stripped from cellar to rafters."
"So, for a change, you have learnt what it feels like to be despoiled."
Her eyes gleamed hatred at him. "That I owe to you! And the wretched state to which I am now reduced. By the sale of the house I raised just enough money to get me to France. I had a project here which I have always kept for an emergency; believing that were I ever in need I could count on it to secure me a regular pension. But so far it has not matured. Meanwhile, I have been forced to become a wharf-hands' whore, and either starve or submit to the brutalities of any drunken swine who has a fancy to put me through my paces."
Roger nodded. "Touching this project of yours. It is upon that I have come to see you."
"What!" she cried, springing to her feet. "I thought your visit a chance one: that you had been sent here by one of the maguereaux who find men for me and take a commission on my earnings. Do you mean that you are come to play the jinx again, and rob me of my last chance to enjoy an old age in some comfort. That I must have! I must; for I am no longer young!"
She had been sitting with her back to the candles, but had turned as she sprang up, and her face, now fully lit by them, confirmed her words. From the fact that Josephine was her foster sister, Roger knew that both of them must be well over thirty. The former had kept her looks remarkably well; so had Lucette up till six months ago, but since then her imprisonment and the life she was now leading had caused a swift deterioration to set in. The muscles of her cheeks had gone slack, her complexion had become slightly raddled, there were great hollows under her fine eyes, and the outer corner of the left one was still a little discoloured from a bruise where one of her transitory lovers must have blackened it for her.