The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ wife shouted out his name imperiously from the dark passage, "Fritz! Fritz! Come here a moment; I want you."

      He hurried out of the room, and Sylvia and the servant were thus left alone together for a few moments in the dining-room.

      The woman went to the buffet and took up a plate; she came and placed it noisily on the table, and, under cover of the sound she made, "Do not stay here, Madame," she whispered, thrusting her wrinkled, sharp-featured face close to the Englishwoman's. "Come away with me! Say you want me to wait a bit and conduct you back to the Villa du Lac."

      Sylvia stared at her distrustfully. This femme de ménage had a disagreeable face; there was a cunning, avaricious look in her eyes, or so Mrs. Bailey fancied; no doubt she remembered the couple of francs which had been given to her, or rather extorted by her, on the occasion of the English lady's last visit to the Châlet des Muguets.

      "I will not say more," the servant went on, speaking very quickly, and under her breath. "But I am an honest woman, and these people frighten me. Still, I am not one to want embarrassments with the police."

      And Sylvia suddenly remembered that those were exactly the words which had been uttered by Anna Wolsky's landlady in connection with Anna's disappearance. How frightened French people seemed to be of the police!

      There came the sound of steps in the passage, and the Frenchwoman moved away quickly from Sylvia's side. She took up the plate she had just placed on the table, and to Sylvia's mingled disgust and amusement began rubbing it vigorously with her elbow.

      Monsieur Wachner entered the room.

      "That will do, that will do, Annette," he said patronisingly. "Come here, my good woman! Your mistress and I desire to give you a further little gift as you have shown so much zeal to-day, so here is twenty francs."

      "Merci, M'sieur."

      Without looking again at Sylvia the woman went out of the room, and a moment later the front door slammed behind her.

      "My wife discovered that it is Annette's fête day to-morrow, and gave her a trifle. But she was evidently not satisfied, and no doubt that was why she stayed on to-night," observed Monsieur Wachner solemnly.

      Madame Wachner now came in. She had taken off her bonnet and changed her elastic-sided boots for easy slippers.

      "Oh, those French people!" she exclaimed. "How greedy they are for money! But—well, Annette has earned her present very fairly—" She shrugged her shoulders.

      "May I go and take off my hat?" asked Sylvia; she left the room before Madame Wachner could answer her, and hurried down the short, dark passage.

      The door of the moonlit kitchen was ajar, and to her surprise she saw that a large trunk, corded and even labelled, stood in the middle of the floor. Close to the trunk was a large piece of sacking—and by it another coil of thick rope.

      Was it possible that the Wachners, too, were leaving Lacville? If so, how very odd of them not to have told her!

      As she opened the door of the bed-room Madame Wachner waddled up behind her.

      "Wait a moment!" she cried. "Or perhaps, dear friend, you do not want a light? You see, we have been rather upset to-day, for L'Ami Fritz has to go away for two or three days, and that is a great affair! We are so very seldom separated. 'Darby and Joan,' is not that what English people would call us?"

      "The moon is so bright I can see quite well," Sylvia was taking off her hat; she put it, together with a little fancy bag in which she kept the loose gold she played with at the gambling tables, on Madame Wachner's bed. She felt vaguely uncomfortable, for even as Madame Wachner had spoken she had become aware that the bed-room was almost entirely cleared of everything belonging to its occupants. However, the Wachners, like Anna Wolsky, had the right to go away without telling anyone of their intention.

      As they came back into the dining-room together, Mrs. Bailey's host, who was already sitting down at table, looked up.

      "Words! Words! Words!" he exclaimed harshly. "Instead of talking so much why do you not both come here and eat your suppers? I am very hungry."

      Sylvia had never heard the odd, silent man speak in such a tone before, but his wife answered quite good-humouredly,

      "You forget, Fritz, that the cabman is coming. Till he has come and gone we shall not have peace."

      And sure enough, within a moment of her saying those words there came a sound of shuffling footsteps on the garden path.

      Monsieur Wachner got up and went out of the room. He opened the front door, and Sylvia overheard a few words of the colloquy between her host and his messenger.

      "Yes, you are to take it now, at once. Just leave it at the Villa du Lac. You will come for us—you will come, that is, for me"—Monsieur Wachner raised his voice—"to-morrow morning at half-past six. I desire to catch the 7.10 train to Paris."

      There was a jingle of silver, and then Sylvia caught the man's answering, "Merci, c'est entendu, M'sieur."

      But L'Ami Fritz did not come back at once to the dining-room. He went out into the garden and accompanied the man down to the gate.

      When he came back again he put a large key on the dining-table.

      "There!" he said, with a grunt of satisfaction. "Now there will be nothing to disturb us any more."

      They all three sat down at the round dining-table. To Sylvia's surprise a very simple meal was set out before them. There was only one small dish of galantine. When Sylvia Bailey had been to supper with the Wachners before, there had always been two or three tempting cold dishes, and some dainty friandises as well, the whole evidently procured from the excellent confectioner who drives such a roaring trade at Lacville. To-night, in addition to the few slices of galantine, there was only a little fruit.

      Then a very odd thing happened.

      L'Ami Fritz helped first his wife and himself largely, then Sylvia more frugally. It was perhaps a slight matter, the more so that Monsieur Wachner was notoriously forgetful, being ever, according to his wife, absorbed in his calculations and "systems." But all the same, this extraordinary lack of good manners on her host's part added to Sylvia's feeling of strangeness and discomfort.

      Indeed, the Wachners were both very unlike their usual selves this evening. Madame Wachner had suddenly become very serious, her stout red face was set in rather grim, grave lines; and twice, as Sylvia was eating the little piece of galantine which had been placed on her plate by L'Ami Fritz, she looked up and caught her hostess's eyes fixed on her with a curious, alien scrutiny.

      When they had almost finished the meat, Madame Wachner suddenly exclaimed in French.

      "Fritz! You have forgotten to mix the salad! Whatever made you forget such an important thing? You will find what is necessary in the drawer behind you."

      Monsieur Wachner made no answer. He got up and pulled the drawer of the buffet open. Taking out of it a wooden spoon and fork, he came back to the table and began silently mixing the salad.

      The two last times Sylvia had been at the Châlet des Muguets, her host, in deference to her English taste, had put a large admixture of vinegar in the salad dressing, but this time she saw that he soused the lettuce-leaves with oil.

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