`Sure. Longer if you like. After all, now she is my fiancée I don't have to stay outside her door, do I?'
`Any nonsense of that kind, and I'll pack you off back to England,' his mother said severely.
He gave a mock sigh and shot an injured look at the Colonel. `You see, sir, how old fashioned she is in her ideas about the latitude that should be allowed to engaged couples. I do wish you would try your hand at educating her up a bit for me.'
Both of them picked up the innuendo. C. B. let his gaze fall to his big feet. Molly flushed and said quickly, `I really came down to say that if you want to change tonight, it is time we went up.'
The Colonel levered himself out of his chair. `It is just as you like, my dear. As I always have a tub before dinner,
I find it no more trouble, and considerably more enlivening to the mind, to get into le smoking, as they call it out here.'
`I know you do,' she smiled, `so while you are with us I have put dinner back to eight thirty. But you and John will have to share the guests' bathroom, and it is nearly half past seven now.'
Finishing up their drinks, they followed her out. An hour later they reassembled.
John was first down, and having switched on the lights he mixed another round of cocktails. When his mother joined him he noted with secret amusement that she was considerably more made up than usual, and was wearing a very pretty frock that he had not seen before. C. B. came in a moment later, gave her one appraising glance, and said
`Molly, my dear, you're looking positively stunning. If it wasn't for John, here, I'd stake my oath that you couldn't be a day over thirty.'
She gave a happy laugh. `Well, they say a woman is as old as she looks and a man is as old as he feels, so perhaps we had better leave it at that. But you're not looking so bad yourself. I don't wonder you like to change in the evenings. Dark, well cut clothes instead of those baggy things you wear in the day time take at least ten years off you.'
`You sweet children,' purred John, as he handed them
their cocktails. `How I wish I were your age; then I should have so many new experiences to look forward to.'
`You insolent pup!' C. B. made a pretence of cuffing him; and they continued laughing together until the gong went.
`Christina has been an awfully long time dressing,'
Molly remarked, `but we will give her a few minutes' grace.'
They shared out the remaining contents of the shaker, but still Christina had not appeared; so Molly said to John, `I think you had better slip up and find out how much longer your fiancée is going to spend titivating herself for your benefit.'
'Right oh!' he nodded, and, leaving the room, ran upstairs. A minute later he came pounding down again, shouting as he came, `She isn't there! Her room's empty! She's gone!'
8
Kidnapped?
As John burst into the room, C. B. gave him a rueful smile. `Seems we've been caught on the hop. Any sign of a struggle?'
`I don't think so: I didn't notice any.'
`We should have heard it if there had been,' said Molly.
`I doubt if we would have taken any notice, while we were up there dressing, unless she had let out a shout; and we might not even have heard that during the past ten minutes while we've been joking together down here.'
`She must have been gone longer than that. Her evening frock is still on the bed. Come up and see.' Turning, John hurried from the room.
`After you, my dear.' C. B. politely stood aside for Molly. He had not so far raised his voice, and his movements, although actually as quick as those of the others, appeared quite leisurely.
Upstairs they halted together in the doorway of the big room at the back of the house that Christina had been given. At first glance there was nothing to suggest that she had been forcibly removed; neither was there any paper prominently displayed, which might have been a note left by her, giving a reason for her having left of her own accord.
`I suppose she has gone?' C. B. murmured. `Better look in the bathroom, though. I've known young women faint in hot baths before now.'
Swinging round, Molly ran to a door on the opposite side of the passage and thrust it open. The bathroom was empty. Hastily she tried the W.C. next door, but that was empty too. Her face showed her distress as she cried
`This is entirely my fault! It has been dark for well over an hour. It was criminal of me to forget the way her personality changes at nightfall, and that she might take it into her head to go off somewhere. I should never have left her on her own. I could so easily have arranged for her to have changed in my room with me.'
`I'm just as much to blame, Mumsie,' John said miserably. `I promised her this afternoon that I'd take care of her; and now I've let her down the very first time that I ought to have been on the look out for Jules.'
`If anyone is to blame, it is the old professional,' C. B. put in quietly:
`Nonsense!' Molly protested. 'You had only just come on the scene.'
`For God's sake don't let's stand here arguing.' John's voice was sharp with anxiety. `We must get after her. Come on ! Hurry! '
`Half a mo', young feller. So far there is nothing to point to the de Grasses having snatched her, and it doesn't always pay to jump to conclusions. Your mother may be right. Knowing we are on the side of the angels she may have taken a sudden dislike to us after sundown, and gone back to her own villa. Just step over and see, will you?'
`Right oh!' John ran down the stairs and the others followed more slowly.
When they reached the hall, C. B. said:
`Got a telephone directory, Molly? There is a number I want to look up. John may find her at the villa, but I doubt it. My own bet is that the de Grasses have got her. Young Count Jules told John this morning that they had undertaken to get her to England before the 6th and to day is the 3rd; so they haven't much of a time margin.'
Molly found him the directory and he began to flick through it, but went on talking: `That is why I felt pretty certain they would try something to night, and suggested keeping watch. It was stupid of me, though, not to anticipate that they might get to work immediately darkness made the girl vulnerable to suggestion.'
`No, Bill; you are being unfair to yourself. No one would
expect kidnappers to stage a raid while all of us were moving about the house. They would wait till we were asleep.'
`You are wrong there, Molly my love. The changing hour is a very favourite one with cat burglars. They shin up a drainpipe, cling on there, and take an occasional peep through the window of the room which they intend to burgle. Then, when its occupant goes along to the bathroom, or has finished dressing and goes downstairs, they nip in and do their stuff. If they have to make a certain amount of noise, it doesn't matter, because if the servants hear it they think it is being made by their employers, or one of the guests who is still upstairs changing.'
`Do you think, then, that they got Christina out by way of the window?'
`No. The dressing table had not been pushed back out of place, and the blind was still down. It isn't easy to pull a blind down from outside; and, anyway, why should they bother?'
`Perhaps they got her out by the window in the passage. Surely we should have heard them if they had carried her downstairs?'
`Not necessarily, provided they were fairly careful about it. As I've said, with a servant getting dinner, and people bathing and banging cupboards all over the place, no one takes any notice of noises at that hour. Besides, it is possible that she went because she wanted to, and walked quietly out on her own.'
C. B. broke off for a second. 'Ah, here we are Malouet, Alphonse. Do you remember him?'
`By name, yes. Wasn't he the Inspector of Police who put up such a good show in Nice during the Resistance?'
`That's him. The old boy retired a couple of years ago. Apparently he is now living out at Cimiez. The address looks like that of a flat in one of the big hotels there that they have converted into apartments since the war. Although he is no longer on the active list, he will be able to pull more guns for me than some bird I don't know, if we have to call in the police.'