The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
"And you took the risk of some peasant or visitor seeing you--took the risk of bringing the police to the spot and turning what might have easily been a case of accidental death into an obvious case of wilful murder. I think you called yourself a strategist," she asked politely.
"I did my best," he growled.
"Well, don't do it again, father," she said. "Your foolhardiness appals me, and heaven knows, I never expected that I should be in a position to call you foolhardy."
And with this she left him to bask in the hero-worship which the approaching Mrs. Cole-Mortimer would lavish upon him.
The "accident" kept them at home that night, and Lydia was not sorry. A settee is not a very comfortable sleeping place, and she was ready for a real bed that night. Mr. Stepney found her yawning surreptitiously, and went home early in disgust.
The night was warmer than the morning had been. The _Fhn_ wind was blowing and she found her room with its radiator a little oppressive. She opened the long French windows, and stepped out on to the balcony. The last quarter of the moon was high in the sky, and though the light was faint, it gave shadows to trees and an eerie illumination to the lawn.
She leant her arms on the rail and looked across the sea to the lights of Monte Carlo glistening in the purple night. Her eyes wandered idly to the grounds and she started. She could have sworn she had seen a figure moving in the shadow of the tree, nor was she mistaken.
Presently it left the tree belt, and stepped cautiously across the lawn, halting now and again to look around. She thought at first that it was Marcus Stepney who had returned, but something about the walk of the man seemed familiar. Presently he stopped directly under the balcony and looked up and she uttered an exclamation, as the faint light revealed the iron-grey hair and the grisly eyebrows of the intruder.
"All right, miss," he said in a hoarse whisper, "it's only old Jaggs."
"What are you doing?" she answered in the same tone.
"Just lookin' round," he said, "just lookin' round," and limped again into the darkness.
Chapter XXIII
So old Jaggs was in Monte Carlo! Whatever was he doing, and how was he getting on with these people who spoke nothing but French, she wondered! She had something to think about before she went to sleep.
She opened her eyes singularly awake as the dawn was coming up over the grey sea. She looked at her watch; it was a quarter to six. Why she had wakened so thoroughly she could not tell, but remembered with a little shiver another occasion she had wakened, this time before the dawn, to face death in a most terrifying shape.
She got up out of bed, put on a heavy coat and opened the wire doors that led to the balcony. The morning was colder than she imagined, and she was glad to retreat to the neighbourhood of the warm radiator.
The fresh clean hours of the dawn, when the mind is clear, and there is neither sound nor movement to distract the thoughts, are favourable to sane thinking.
Lydia reviewed the past few weeks in her life, and realised, for the first time, the miracle which had happened. It was like a legend of old--the slave had been lifted from the king's anteroom--the struggling artist was now a rich woman. She twiddled the gold ring on her hand absent-mindedly--and she was married ... and a widow! She had an uncomfortable feeling that, in spite of her riches, she had not yet found her niche. She was an odd quantity, as yet. The Cole-Mortimers and the Briggerlands did not belong to her ideal world, and she could find no place where she fitted.
She tried, in this state of mind so favourable to the consideration of such a problem, to analyse Jack Glover's antagonism toward Jean Briggerland and her father.
It seemed unnatural that a healthy young man should maintain so bitter a feud with a girl whose beauty was almost of a transcendant quality and all because she had rejected him.
Jack Glover was a public school boy, a man with a keen sense of honour. She could not imagine him being guilty of a mean action. And such men did not pursue vendettas without good reason. If they were rejected by a woman, they accepted their _cong_ with a good grace, and it was almost unthinkable that Jack should have no other reason for his hatred. Yet she could not bring herself even to consider the possibility that the reason was the one he had advanced. She came again to the dead end of conjecture. She could believe in Jack's judgment up to a point--beyond that she could not go.
She had her bath, dressed, and was in the garden when the eastern horizon was golden with the light of the rising sun. Nobody was about, the most energetic of the servants had not yet risen, and she strolled through the avenue to the main road. As she stood there looking up and down a man came out from the trees that fringed the road and began walking rapidly in the direction of Monte Carlo.
"Mr. Jaggs!" she called.
He took no notice, but seemed to increase his limping pace, and after a moment's hesitation, she went flying down the road after him. He turned at the sound of her footsteps and in his furtive way drew into the shadow of a bush. He looked more than usually grimy; on his hands were an odd pair of gloves and a soft slouch hat that had seen better days, covered his head.
"Good-morning, miss," he wheezed.
"Why were you running away, Mr. Jaggs?" she asked, a little out of breath.
"Not runnin' away, miss," he said, glancing at her sharply from under his heavy white eyebrows. "Just havin' a look round!"
"Do you spend all your nights looking round?" she smiled at him.
"Yes, miss."
At that moment a cyclist gendarme came into view. He slowed down as he approached the two and dismounted.
"Good morning, madame," he said politely, and then looking at the man, "is this man in your employ? I have seen him coming out of your house every morning?"
"Oh, yes," said Lydia hastily, "he's my----"
She was at a loss to describe him, but old Jaggs saved her the trouble.
"I'm madame's courier," he said, and to Lydia's amazement he spoke in perfect French, "I am also the watchman of the house."
"Yes, yes," said Lydia, after she had recovered from her surprise. "M'sieur is the watchman, also."
"_Bien_, madame," said the gendarme. "Forgive my asking, but we have so many strangers here."
They watched the gendarme out of sight. Then old Jaggs chuckled.
"Pretty good French, miss, wasn't it?" he said, and without another word, turned and limped in the trail of the police.
She looked after him in bewilderment. So he spent every night in the grounds, or somewhere about the house? The knowledge gave her a queer sense of comfort and safety.
When she went back to the villa she found the servants were up. Jean did not put in an appearance until breakfast, and Lydia had an opportunity of talking to the French housekeeper whom Mrs. Cole-Mortimer had engaged when she took the villa. From her she learnt a bit of news, which she passed on to Jean almost as soon as she put in an appearance.
"The gardener's little boy is going to get well, Jean."
Jean nodded.
"I know," she said. "I telephoned to the hospital yesterday."
It was so unlike her conception of the girl, that Lydia stared.
"The mother is in isolation," Lydia went on, "and Madame Souviet says that the poor woman has no money and no friends. I thought of going down to the hospital to-day to see if I could do anything for her."
"You'd better not, my dear," warned Mrs. Cole-Mortimer nervously. "Let us