Chapter THREE

In the open space taxis honked and porters jostled each other with the peculiarly vicious abandon characteristic of Paris. A few private cars were drawn up, and each of these they examined searchingly, sure that one among them must be Mme. Bender’s. However, in turn they were claimed, and drove away.

“You say you sent a telegram?” inquired the Englishman.

“Certainly, as soon as the boat docked. Of course it may have gone astray.”

“Possibly. That does, of course, occasionally happen.”

She glanced at him with indecision. Twenty minutes had now passed, and there was no sign that anyone was coming to meet her. She could not deny feeling disappointed.

“Oh, well, there’s no good hanging about. I’ll just get into a taxi and go along by myself.”

He had not noticed in the train how young she looked, and how slender, almost fragile. Standing now against the dingy building with the cold draught whipping her squirrel coat about her silk-clad knees, she seemed to him altogether unfit to be venturing across a strange city unescorted.

He found himself suggesting solicitously:

“Perhaps you’ll let me drop you at the apartment? I’d very much like to.”

She shook her head quickly.

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t dream of it! You’ve been too awfully good as it is.”

She was conscious of a warm appreciation, more pronounced than if the offer had come from one of the cheerful, less restrained youths of her acquaintance. She had begun by considering him stiff and severe. Now she was not so sure.

“Here’s a taxi. I don’t in the least mind going alone, really. It’s not as if I didn’t speak French.”

Her manner brooking no argument, he somewhat reluctantly handed her into the waiting cab and gave directions to the driver. Then, not quite satisfied, he hung on to the sill, looking in at her.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Oh, absolutely! I’m not a baby, you know. I’ve been looking after myself for years,”--and she laughed, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s this question of your cousin, Mme. Bender. I daresay you’ll find everything as it should be, but if it isn’t--if for any reason you don’t want to stay there”--here he floundered a little not sure as to what he wanted to say--“well, perhaps you might let me know.”

“I will, if you like,” she agreed readily, though a little astonished.

“I’ll give you my telephone number--both my numbers, in fact. The first is the office, the second my home.”

He scribbled on a card and handed it to her through the window.

“You won’t forget, will you? I shall be rather anxious to hear how you’re getting on.”

For an instant his two hands rested on the ledge. She noted that they were unexpectedly large and sinewy for his medium build, and that there were dark brown hairs on the backs. A detached part of her brain reflected that they were utterly unlike the pale smooth hands of Miles Waring, her late affianced--hands which for some inexplicable reason had always roused in her a faint repugnance.

She thanked him with a grateful smile, and the taxi lunged away, leaving him upon the kerb, gazing after it with doubt in his eyes.

Beastly annoying of these people to let a young girl arrive like this with no one to meet her. Nothing in it, of course, but all the same he ought to have told her plainly the things Hermione Cushing had said to him a few weeks ago. As it was, he had let her go to her destination totally unprepared. Well, it was too late now.…

Meanwhile, at breakneck speed the taxi hurtled along crowded thoroughfares. Lights twinkled through the violet dusk, cars flashed past, the air was heavy with the distinctive scent of French petrol, so oddly thrilling because of its associations. Intoxicated by the well-remembered odour, by the hurrying people and the gay shop windows, Catherine sat upon the edge of her seat, keyed up with anticipation of all that Paris was going to mean.

Presently she glanced at the card in her hand. “Mr. Geoffrey Blair Macadam,” she read, with the address in the corner, 59, rue d’Assas. She recalled the rue d’Assas. It was across the river, by the Luxembourg Gardens, a delightful place to live. How thoughtful he had been! She wondered if she was likely to see him again.

With a lightning swerve the taxi rounded a corner, and behold, the Champs Élysées, broad and darkly glistening like a ballroom floor. Far ahead, in the evening gloom, rose the shadowy Arc of the Étoile, grandly beautiful, the climax to a perfectly planned vista. Beyond it spread the Bois de Boulogne, full of mystery, with its young bare trees, and over the Seine to the left lay the heights of St. Cloud forest. The thought of the myriad slim poplars, pale green even to the mossy stems, pierced her heart with a joy that hurt.

Ah, here was the Avenue Kléber! Two minutes more and she would reach Mme. Bender’s magnificent apartment, where four years ago she had spent a few pleasant days. At the thought sudden stage-fright chilled her exultation. She was quite forgetting the possible state of her hostess, and a qualm of self-reproach assailed her. Still, in spite of last year, she felt almost a stranger to her cousin’s widow, that intangible creature, so extremely difficult to know. One pitied rather than loved her, but that was inevitable. Ardently Catherine hoped that these rumours about her mental condition were exaggerated. Until she had actually seen her she would feel a bit nervous.

She recalled her first, childish impression of Mme. Bender, long years ago. Always there had been something unreal, a clinging, orchidaceous quality, suggesting that she was constitutionally incapable of existing alone. In the positive personality of her American husband she had taken root, but recently, torn from that support and sustenance, her entire character had wilted and sagged, a fact pathetically apparent a year ago. What would she be like now? With age creeping pitilessly upon her, it was hopeless to expect her to build for herself an independent life.

They turned into the Avenue Henri Martin, a spacious street with a double row of chestnuts down the central parkway. The handsome building on the left contained the Benders’ two-floored apartment. There, just round the corner in the side-street, was a private door, through which one might go without passing the concierge’s loge; but naturally now she would use the main entrance.

Queer for that telegram, properly addressed, to go astray. Would her arrival take them by surprise?

The driver descended, unstrapped her trunk, and dumped it unceremoniously within the flagged court. Catherine got out, paid the fare, and started to enter the archway.

Then an incident occurred which in itself meant nothing at all, and which would have been speedily erased from her memory if subsequent happenings had not served to emphasize it. As she crossed the pavement she collided forcibly with a lounger who, idling along, head upturned towards the windows above, had not observed her approach. She recoiled with the impact, straightening her disarranged hat, as a muttered apology met her ears.

“_Pardon, mademoiselle!_”

“_Pas de quoi, monsieur_,” she replied mechanically, still tingling with the blow, which had all but knocked the breath from her body.

He drew back to let her pass, and to her slight discomfiture favoured her with a long, penetrating stare. How like a Frenchman, she reflected indignantly. She lowered her eyes, but her brief glance had shown her a slight, meagrely-built person, execrably dressed in black, with a wide-brimmed hat upon his head. Above an old-fashioned winged collar with a cravat rose a small, pasty-white face, the skin recalling the unwholesome pallor of a fish-belly, while pale, red-rimmed eyes, one of them marked with a black triangular blemish, gazed forth with an unwinking fixity.

He was still standing there behind her on the pavement when she reached the high glass doors of the concierge’s loge, the official occupant of which came forth to greet her, grudgingly, after the manner of her class. A dried, spare little woman with a nut-cracker countenance and a black crocheted shawl about her shoulders, she bent on the new-comer a vulture-eyed look of mingled curiosity and suspicion.

“_Bonsoir, mademoiselle!_” she accosted Catherine with metallic precision. “_On desire----?_”

“Madame Bender,” announced Catherine briefly.

A quick change came over the hard old features. Eyebrows and shoulders hoisted themselves with one movement, and the sharp eyes narrowed for a closer inspection of the young girl’s face.

“Ah!” breathed the concierge with an upward, insinuating inflection. “Madame Bender! I was not informed that madame was expecting a visitor. However, that is no affair of mine.” She made a curt gesture with her gnarled hand, at the same time jerking her head towards the octagonal court beyond the covered way. “_Montez, mademoiselle. L’ascenseur est à droit._”

Catherine thought her manner definitely unpleasant. In some annoyance she motioned to her luggage asking to have it sent up as soon as possible, then turned towards the shallow steps at the right side of the court. She had not gone two paces, however, before the hard voice called out with what sounded like malicious enjoyment:

“Mademoiselle has chosen an unfortunate moment for her visit. If she expects madame to receive her in person, she must prepare for a disappointment.”

Catherine looked around.

“What do you mean?” she demanded quickly. “Is anything wrong?”

There was a second meaning shrug.

“I cannot tell you. I know nothing, I! All I can say is that the doctor was summoned for madame last night at nine o’clock, and that he has only this instant gone out of these doors. Almost twenty-four hours he remained there, but everyone has been in too fine a state of excitement to tell me what has happened. Mademoiselle will soon know the truth, though. She has only to inquire.”

She turned her back and thrusting her scrawny neck in through the glass doors, screamed “_Gaston!_” in a strident voice.

Her heart pounding, Catherine ran across the court, past the group of trimly clipped box trees, to the big double-doors. A final glance over her shoulder showed her a fat, sluggish old man lumbering out to join the woman under the archway. There the pair stood, planted beside the little pile of luggage and stared after her with a concentration which had something ominous about it. Why should they look at her like that? She was filled at once with antagonism and dread.

A second later she had shut herself into the bronze cage of the lift and was juggling with the automatic buttons. Up rose the _ascenseur_ and halted at the _entresol_. She sprang out and with rapid steps crossed the thickly carpeted floor to the imposing mahogany door on the left.

She rang and rang again, but there was no response. Within was complete silence, as though the big flat were untenanted. Really it was incredible that no one should answer the bell! Impatiently, she pressed her finger once more to the bronze button and kept it there.

All at once, without warning, the door opened to reveal the thick, squat figure of a man in conventional butler’s attire.

It was Eduardo.

Out of the broad, swarthy face his smallish black eyes stared at her without a trace of recognition. The wide mouth tightened with an expression unfriendly, faintly contemptuous. Was this the suave manservant she knew, this uncompromising person who barred the entrance with his body, making no attempt to admit her? She felt curiously dashed, as though cold water had been thrown in her face.

“Eduardo!” she cried, to jog his memory. “Surely you recall me? I am Miss West, madame’s cousin. Madame is expecting me, you know.”

Only then did he stand aside, an unwilling smile breaking over his features.

“Oh--Miss West,” he mumbled indistinctly. “Sorry, miss, I didn’t recognize you.”

Then with something approaching his former manner he removed himself from her path and by an after-thought took from her the umbrella and small dressing-bag she was carrying.

Catherine was less annoyed by the nature of her reception than alarmed at what it might indicate. The thought struck her that something had occurred to upset the whole _morale_ of the household.

“Didn’t madame get my telegram? She was going to send you to meet me. However, that’s of no consequence,” she added quickly. “The point is, what has happened? Is madame ill?”

In spite of his command of many languages, Eduardo was a man of few words. He muttered something unintelligible in which she could only make out “accident” and “very bad,” then after an awkward hesitation he showed her towards the wide doors of the salon.

“Perhaps you’d better go in there, miss,” he said, with a jerk of his head. “I’ll fetch Jeanne to talk to you----” and without further explanation he vanished, his tread making no sound on the padded carpet.

Catherine was bewildered. Why, he had addressed her with the inarticulate but casual manner he might have used towards one of his own station! Certainly Harry Bender, easy-going though he had been in many ways, would never have tolerated this rude familiarity. Yet she knew that this man had for years been almost indispensable, something approaching a major-domo. Had the accident to which he referred overthrown his customary balance? She hoped it was only that.

She pushed open the salon doors and entered; then, too perturbed to sit down, gazed round her at the rich furnishings. The immense double-room, built on two levels, was divided through the middle by graceful gates of wrought iron and gilded bronze, placed at the head of broad shallow steps. Both portions were filled with exquisite examples of the Louis Quinze period, genuine pieces, fit for a museum, the upholstery of delicate _petit point_. On the left wall hung a large tapestry, and here and there stood vitrines containing collections of miniatures and snuff-boxes. The whole effect was much as she recalled it, yet there was a subtle difference which she was now too preoccupied to define. Probably it was due to the general air of neglect and complete absence of flowers, which, together with a stuffy atmosphere, gave the impression that no one had used the apartment for a very long period.

Minutes went by. She wandered restlessly about, longing for the maid to come and put an end to her suspense. Whatever had occurred, she had perfect confidence in Jeanne, whom she remembered as capable and full of good sense. Sometimes she fancied her a bit too ingratiating, but that was merely a manner.

Why didn’t Jeanne come? The prolonged wait intensified her fears. Again and again her eyes strayed towards the doors, but there was neither sight nor sound of anyone approaching.

She walked to the end of the room, where two long windows gave upon a narrow balcony. The curtains of old-gold brocade had not been drawn, and through the opening she could see the trees and glimmering lights of the avenue. Between the windows was a wide fireplace, over which hung an eighteenth-century mirror with a painting in the Watteau style let in at the top. Facing her, flanked by twin lustres with pear-shaped drops, stood a columned _pendule_ of white marble with ormolu mounts. Mechanically she compared the time with that of her wrist-watch, then saw that the clock was not going. At the same instant she discovered a thin coating of dust on the delicate surface. Odd! She touched the crystal pendants of the lustres, ran a light finger over the strip of brocade beneath. Dust again.…

Suddenly she felt her eyes gravitate upward towards a reflection in the glass. Through the iron tracery of the gates a strange face appeared, sallow and lined, a woman’s face, out of which, with a fixed and hostile expression, two opaque eyes stared straight into her own. She gave a little gasp. Who was this person? For a second she gazed back, unpleasantly fascinated. Those black bars between gave her a curious sensation.

It wasn’t--it couldn’t be----

She wheeled about with a nervous laugh of relief and made an eager movement towards the steps, pushing the gates wide.

“Jeanne!” she exclaimed, “I didn’t recognize you! Oh, thank goodness you’re here at last!”

She extended an impulsive hand, and the woman took it, after a brief hesitation, and with little answering pressure.

“It is you, mademoiselle. Pardon me for keeping you so long.”

Catherine saw that she was indeed altered, her strong features haggard and drawn with fatigue, discoloured semi-circles like bruises under her eyes, the brow deeply furrowed. A year ago she had thought the maid almost handsome with her good white teeth always showing in a cheerful smile, but now, sapped and strangely preoccupied, she appeared actually ugly.

“Jeanne, I am frightened! What has happened to madame?”

The vertical cleft deepened where bristling hairs met over the snub nose.

“How did you know anything had happened to madame?” the woman parried in accents resentful, almost suspicious.

“Why, I heard it from the concierge. She told me the doctor had been here since last night.”

A stubborn look settled over the close-lipped face. An appreciable pause elapsed before the reply came, cautious, deliberate.

“Madame is very ill,” she said shortly.

A doubt swept into the girl’s mind.

“Oh, Jeanne--you don’t mean she’s--dead?” she whispered, her voice shaking.

“No, no! Certainly not!”

This time she spoke with quick impatience, as though for some reason she were vexed by the suggestion.

“Well, then, tell me what is wrong. I insist on being told.”

The idea came to her that there was some mystery in all this. Why couldn’t the woman come straight out and tell her?

“Very well, mademoiselle, since you must know, but I warn you it will give you a shock.” She came a step closer, glanced over her shoulder, and lowered her voice: “The fact is, last evening madame attempted to commit suicide. There--now you have the truth!”