ABOUT the end of May he bought the cottage near Villefranche. It had pinkish walls that dripped roses and a long generous garden dropping to the beach. There he had a little boat pulled up on the shingle and lay for long hours in its shadow, watching the dreamy glimmer of the sea, and listening to the musical plash of the waves. The velvet monotony of sea and sky tranquilized his spirit.
He used to rise at four every morning, and work in his garden through the cool hours; then go for a swim in the bay, floating lazily on the milk-warm water, blinking at the brightness of the sun. In the evenings he would fish from his boat, pulling softly home in the starlight. He became soaked with sunshine, as brown as any of his peasant neighbours, and just as carelessly happy. He learned to look on life with quiet eyes.
It was pleasant to think that he could go on like this for twenty years. He needed so little; his garden supplied him with fruit and vegetables, the sea with fish. By selling some of his produce and keeping chickens and rabbits, he could make the place self-supporting. He had infinite time to dream and paint. If he painted patiently and sincerely during twenty years surely he could achieve something.
This was the future he sketched out for himself. One thing was lacking; he missed Margot. If only she were there, it seemed to him his happiness would be complete.
But she was back at work with Folette. She had taken her old room again, the little mansard room, overlooking the Boulevard Montparnasse. She wrote to him quite often, and always that she was very happy.
Often as he lingered in his garden, he would look up and imagine her standing in the doorway of the cottage in a frame of roses. She seemed to complete the picture so perfectly. What a pity she was not there. Well, one can’t have everything. True, he might ask her to marry him. But the idea of marriage dismayed him; it seemed so irrevocable. Romance ended there, he told himself. He was only twenty-three and a lifetime is long to spend with one woman. An early marriage is a mistake, so every one said. He missed her companionship awfully, but there! ... no doubt in time he would get used to the loss of her!
It was curious how far away Monte Carlo seemed. Unfamiliar mountains heaved up behind him; another topaz hoop separated him from the gloomy rock and the glittering point. Sometimes he would sail his little boat far out, and from the shadow of his sail, watch the poisoned paradise. It seemed to him like a dream picture, rising in terraced beauty from the azure of the sea. The Casino glittered like a heap of jewels, and the mountains brooded in violet abstraction. All was loveliness,—creamy beach and cradled harbour, palms and olive groves, snowy villas gleaming in green gardens, and shining slopes of pine. He gazed at it with rapture,—then shuddered at the thought of all that lay behind.
For Monte Carlo may be all things to all men, the most adorable spot in the world or the most hateful. And to him, filled with the moral strength that is born of peace, the place was increasingly detestable. Its beauty was the fatal beauty of a glorious courtesan, its people parasites living on the folly and depravity of mankind. From prince to page-boy they were dependent on that great temple of chance into which poured streams of gold from all the world. Its white range of palaces were to him the symbol of all that was weak and wanton in human nature.
As he sat in the shadow of his sail he recalled them all so plainly, the spendthrift and the starveling, the derelict and the degenerate, swirling round in the eternal circle of that greater wheel which symbolizes the whole, unable to extricate themselves, being drawn nearer and nearer to that vortex which is ruin.
He detested it all now and saw it with other eyes. He had escaped its lures. Never again would he set foot in its polluted halls.
Then one day a shadow fell across his path and looking up he saw Bob Bender.
Bob, rusty and creaky as ever, looked singularly out of place in his radiant garden.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, rubbing his hands together with a rasping sound, “for interruptin’ your horticulturous provocations.”
“Not at all. Glad to see you.”
“Thank you, sir. You’ve got a tidy sorto’ place ’ere. Now if I was you I’d bank up that celery a little more, an’ them artichokes want cuttin’ back. Awful things artichokes is to grow on you, if you gives ’em a chance.”
“What do you know about gardening?”
“Most all there is to know, I expect, considerin’ that I was once in that way myself. Indeed I ’opes some day, if ever I can scrape up enough money, to buy a little place I know out ’Ampstead way. But there, I didn’t come ’ere to talk of gardens; I came over on quite another matter. Krantz sent me.”
“Krantz!”
“Yes. You see that Doctor Bergius ’as got something up ’is sleeve. We can’t quite make ’im out. ’E’s a great one, ’e is. There ain’t a greater international crook on the Continent to-day. ’E was ragin’ mad because Krantz got the system away from ’im, and now ’e swears ’e’ll get even, and do the Casino one in the eye.”
“That reminds me,” said Hugh. “What happened that night after we got away?”
“Oh, they thought you’d got at a knife with your free ’and and cut the ropes. I joined the chase and ’eaded ’em in the wrong direction. You see my bein’ with Vulning was an idea of Krantz’s. He suspected that Vulning ’ad the papers and got me to approach ’im. I pretended I’d fallen out with Krantz; and after a bit Vulning told me ’e ’ad the papers. It was me suggested ’e get you to translate ’em. Krantz was to come to your rescue. But we didn’t bargain on the other gang. However, it came off all right.”
“What do you want of me now?”
“Well, you see, I’m no longer in the confidence of that crowd. The doctor distrusted me from the first. There was the business of the window for one thing. Why didn’t I ’appen to fasten it properly? Anyhow they won’t ’ave anything to do with me now; and I can’t get to the bottom of the game they are playin’. But I do know they are ’avin’ an important meetin’ to-morrow at Vulning’s villa. It’s at two o’clock. There will only be Vulning and the doctor and Castelli. Now we were thinkin’ if we could get Vulning out of the way, and you could take his place....”
“What!”
“It’s really very simple, sir. You see you’re so extraordinary like ’im any way. Just a touch of make-up and you’d be perfect. We’ll give you a key to the villa and you can change into some of ’is clothes and receive the other two in the library. You can close the curtains and darken the room. Then you’ll deceive them, ’ear their plans and let us know.”
“But I’m risking my life.... If these fellows suspect, they’ll shoot me like a dog.”
“It’s true there’s a lot of risk; but Krantz says ’e’ll pay you ten thousand francs if you get the information ’e wants.”
“I’d rather not. I swore I’d never set foot in the Principality again.”
“Krantz says that, if ever ’e asked a favour of you, you promised you’d do it.”
“That’s true.... Well, tell Krantz ... I’ll do it.”