The Terrible Ordeal of Sir John Fardell

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

 

THE TERRIBLE ORDEAL

OF SIR JOHN FARDELL

A Story of Matrimonial Finesse
Along the Riviera

By E. Phillips Oppenheim

Illustrated by Marshall Frantz

MADAME motioned slightly with her green silk parasol. She turned in her chaise longue in order to see a little further down the precipitous avenue.

“Our circle broadens,” she murmured. “It is only by a matter of hours, Hugh, that you secured the honor of being the first comer.”

They were seated upon the terrace, awaiting the summons to luncheon, Madame dressed as though for the promenade at Longchamps, speckless, faultlessly immobile, from the tips of her manicured fingers to the delicate but seemly touch of color upon her cheeks. By her side, Hugh Cardinge, the arrival of yesterday, in cool white flannels, sat smoking a cigaret and gazing abstractedly up into the hills. Claire Fantenay, seated a little apart, was writing a letter upon a block. Armand, leaning against the balustrade, was watching her.

“My Virgins return in strange guise,” Madame continued. “You, my dear Hugh, appear as a tramp. Our friend here resembles a bourgeois shopkeeper moving to his villa for the week-end.”

Armand swung round. He had spent several years at an English public school, and was inclined to cultivate a certain slanginess of phrase.

“Who is the old johnny?” he demanded. “And what's he bringing with him?”

“He appears to be some sort of itinerant artist,” Hugh Cardinge declared.

[Illustration: “Who is the old johnny?” demanded Armand. “And what's he bringing with him?”]

“I do not remember such a person amongst my Virgins,” Madame remarked. “We shall soon know.”

An ancient victoria, drawn by a scraggy, flea-bitten horse, came creaking around the last bend of the avenue. The driver walked by the side of his steed, cracking his whip, eloquent in phrases of mingled threats and encouragement. His seat was occupied by an enormous easel. The body of the vehicle seemed almost filled with luggage of an indiscriminate character, amongst which sat a rather portly, neatly dressed man, in gray tweeds, with a flowing black tie, and gray Homburg hat. As the carriage crept up to the front steps the newcomer waved his hand to the little group. Madame leaned back with half-closed eyes. It was a habit of hers when she feared that she might be tempted to laugh.

“It is Johnny,” she murmured.

“Johnny Fardell, by Jove!” Cardinge echoed, as he rose to his feet.

The occupant of the victoria descended and made a dignified approach—dignified, that is to say, so far as a rather squat figure, a protuberant waistcoat and a consequential air, would permit.

“No longer 'Johnny,' if you please,” he begged. “At any rate, until we have picked up the old threads, if ever we do. I am Sir John Fardell. Who is this? Cardinge! God bless my soul! Cardinge! Well, if there was one of our little company whom I should have expected to have gone to the dogs first and quickest—forgive me. I am lacking in tact, perhaps. Madame, I kiss your fingers. You are marvelous.”

She smiled at him languidly.

“So long as you do not tell me that I have learned the secret of perennial youth,” she said, “you may rave about me as long as you like. This is my niece Claire, and my nephew Armand. They are cousins, not brother and sister. And now, my dear man, sit down fora moment while William brings you a cocktail and tell us precisely what evil genius wafted you into the paths of virtue.”

“My art,” Sir John confided pompously. “I found it impossible to combine the irregular life with the pursuit of my ideals.”

He had become the center of the little group. They looked at him with varying expressions.

“Are you an R. A.?” Cardinge asked.

“Not yet,” was the regretful admission. “I shall be, on the next vacancy.”

[Illustration: Suddenly Sir John saw a remarkable change in the face of his subject—a look of blank terror replaced her expression of supine amiability.]

“But, my dear John,' Madame reminded him, while you were in Paris you had a studio for three years, and you never painted anything. As regards morals you were the Bluebeard of your profession. Time after time I have visited your studio to find the walls bare, and your easel as virgin as your reputation.”

“I laid foundation stones in Paris,” Sir John declared, disposing of the cocktail which had been brought to him, in a single gulp. “Where can I wash my hands before luncheon? I am very hungry and very dirty.”

Armand stepped gracefully forward.

“Let me show you, sir,” he invited.

The two disappeared inside the house. Cardinge and Madame exchanged amused glances. Claire smiled across at them.

“Dear Aunt,” she complained, “I thought that I was to witness the unfolding of many marvelous romances. I thought that all these old companions of yours would come back with the seared but interesting look of those who had led sinful lives—like Mr. Cardinge here—and in due course, with proper sympathy, might be led to tell their life's story. Why, Sir John is the most commonplace thing I have ever seen. Do you mean to tell me that he was really one of your Virgins?”

“Sir John has changed,” Madame observed dryly.

“I myself have seen him,” Cardinge declared, “fight and get away from a couple of gendarmes at the corner of the Place Pigalle one night when he had enough—”

“Hush!” Madame interrupted.

“What made you bring your easel, Johnny?” Madame inquired soon after the service of luncheon had commenced.

“It was my only possible excuse,” Sir John explained. “I have an exceedingly respectable housekeeper and I am surrounded by a highly respectable circle of intimate friends. I could not possibly disappear from their midst without an excuse. Besides, from what I can see of it, this country appears to me to be quite worth a little attention. I may decide to immortalize it.”

“Conceited brute!” Cardinge murmured.

Sir John smiled.

“If I am conceited,” he rejoined, “it is the world and my fellow artists who have made me so. I have been successful—not only that, but I have deserved success. I paint very well, indeed.”

“You shall paint Claire,” Madame suggested.

Sir John shook his head.

“Mademoiselle Claire is beautiful,” he admitted, ”but there is nothing in her face yet. It is not my métier to exploit the ingénue. The young man there—how old are you, sir?” he asked Armand.

“I am twenty years old, Sir John.”

“Well, there is enough in your face to make it worth painting,” Sir John declared. “Only you would probably sue me for libel.”

“What do you mean?” Madame asked coldly.

“I paint the things which I see coming,” her visitor replied. “In Mademoiselle's case these are at present indeterminate. Accordingly as she loves wisely or foolishly, as fate may chance to deal with her, so will she become paintable or the reverse. Our young friend there has already chosen his way in life, or rather, perhaps, it has been chosen for him by latent propensities.... I will take a little more of the salad, please, and permit me to say that your white wine is excellent.”

Madame sighed. She shook her head—a gesture so mechanical that, coupled with the perfection of her toilet, the slight but artistic manipulation of her cosmetics, she was almost reminiscent of the toy-shop.

“There is very little left of our comrade Johnny,” she bemoaned.

“It is the smear of worldly success,” Cardinge declared. ”He has been told that he is clever and he is all the time delving into the place where his brain ought to be, to prove it.”

Sir John continued his lunch undisturbed. His capacity for receiving chaff at least remained. He looked after the young people curiously when presently they left the table.

“Damned good-looking girl, Mademoiselle Claire,” he observed. “The young man's a limb of Satan all right. Face of a seraph and a blackened soul. You know the sort of thing, Cardinge. Ortorde used the type in those hellish caricatures of his. Cousins, indeed! They're not of the same strain, Madame, and you know it. Am I keeping you both? I am sorry. The coffee on the train was undrinkable, and the roll like sawdust.”

THERE was a brief silence—a scorching silence, the significance of which even Sir John felt. He looked across at his hostess.

“Johnny,” she said, “you should remember that I never allowed any questions regarding members of my family.”

Sir John smiled.

“I remind myself,” he confided, “of a visit I once paid to my late headmaster. He showed me the rod with which he used to correct me. Somehow or other I wasn't in the least terrified.”

Madame stretched out her hand to a little casket which stood by her side, selected a cigaret and tapped it upon the table. She looked lazily through the open French windows, out into a panorama of sunshine, of colored flowers and butterflies. The atmosphere of the room was like a little scented oasis. In the distance along the piazza, the butler was arranging coffee and liqueurs upon a table. No one was within earshot.

“Johnny,” she reminded him, “the conditions of fifteen years ago remain. Your privileges remain, also the penalties. If you do not realize this, you had better return to London. You will find that I shall know very well how to deal with that little packet entrusted to me—let me see, seventeen years ago last April.”

Sir John laughed, but not altogether naturally. There was something disconcerting about Madame, with her cold voice, and her statuesque, artificial beauty; something disconcerting, too, in the almost cynical silence of Hugh Cardinge, the one companion of his wilder days whom he had half-feared and half-admired.

“Come, come, Madame!” he expostulated. “Those days are over and done with. You see what I am now—a well-known man, an artist of repute, famous, with a place in the orderly ways of life. Those two or three years of madness in Paris were all very well while they lasted, but they lie back in the past which one must forget. When I received your summons, I came—not because I recognized the obligation of the call, but as a matter of business, and because, of course, I want my confession back. I am not a wealthy man, but I have saved a little money. If you are not disposed to give me back the packet I deposited with you, I have come to buy it.”

Again Madame sought evasion from that too destroying laugh. Her eyes half-closed, only the corners of her lips twitched.

“At least,” she murmured, “the Sir John of to-day has not forgotten to be almost as amusing as the Johnny of seventeen years ago. Come, my guests, the moment for coffee has arrived.”

She rose to her feet and walked toward the window. In the dim light of the room she seemed to move with the slim grace of a girl. The curve of her neck as she looked backwards at Sir John, still sitting sulkily in his place, was exquisitely graceful.

“It is London which has done this,” she concluded. “He has probably lived in Kensington. If he had tramped from Marseilles in rags, perhaps he would have arrived differently.”

LATE that evening, Sir John, after many unsuccessful efforts, managed to secure a few minutes' private conversation with Cardinge. They were in the billiard-room, and had been suddenly deserted by the the younger members of the party, who had gone outside to listen to a nightingale.

“Look here, Cardinge,” Sir John confided. “It's very jolly down here of course, and I hear that the golf's good and I'm glad Madame has kept on her legs, but I don't feel altogether comfortable somehow.”

“In what way?” his companion inquired.

“What's the old dear want with us? I made up my mind it was more or less something in the nature of blackmail. I've been expecting that for years, and I've put a bit on one side to buy my dossier back again. But you heard her at luncheon time. Just scoffed at me when I tried to open up negotiations. She surely can't expect that at my time of life I am going to—well—er—start the old game again.”

“It seems to me that she does expect something of the sort,” Cardinge replied, gravely enough but with a faint twinkle in his eyes. “I got through my little commission only yesterday.”

“God bless my soul!” Sir John exclaimed. “Nothing of the old sort, surely?”

“I'm not so sure about that. It was smart work while it lasted. An absolutely beautiful scene for the films. Believe me, companion of my youth, in these sober days, in the sunlight mind, with a suddenly assumed crêpe mask on my face, I held up a man—drugged and robbed him.”

Sir John shrank back in his seat. He looked at his companion aghast.

“You're joking, Cardinge.”

“I've told you the sober truth,” was the calm reply. “I didn't think I had the nerve left. I did very well out of it, too.”

“But there's been nothing in the paper,” Sir John exclaimed. “I read the local rag through this morning.”

Cardinge smiled.

“Madame's scoops very seldom do get the newspapers,” he said. “You ought know that. You remember the time when the Duc de Soyau invited you down to château to paint—”

Be quiet, you idiot,” the other interrupted. “Can't you realize my—er—my altered position? That part of my life rises up sometimes like a nightmare. Don't remind me of it. I've come here to buy forgetfulness, not discuss re-embarking upon those—er—to make the best of it, questionable enterprises.”

“Madame is a very peculiar character,” Cardinage observed. “As you know very well, it is the excitement she loves, the finesse and the diplomacy necessary to keep keep us out of trouble which appeal to her... By the bye, here is Madame. I expect she wants to talk to you.”

Cardinge strolled out through the open windows on to the terrace. The girl standing there on the end balcony alone, looking down into a tangled chasm of woodland below on the side of the house. She turned round at his coming. In the moonlight he could almost have fancied that there were tears in her eyes.

“I thought Armand was with you,” he said.

“Armand has gone in to unpack some more cigarets,” she replied. “I am afraid, too,” she went on, after a moment's hesitation, “that I was a little angry with him.”

“Why?”

“For various reasons,” she answered evasively.

“You children,” he sighed, “take yourselves too seriously. Fancy quarreling on a night like this!”

“We are always willing to listen to advice from our elders,” she rejoined, with mock humility. “Come and sit on the lower terrace with me. That is if, at your advanced age, you are not afraid of the night air.”

“I'll risk it,” he assented. “What will Armand say if he comes back and finds you gone, though?

“I hope he will be annoyed,” she replied. “It will serve him right. Even when he is possible, he is inclined to take me a great deal too much for granted. Come and show me how in the days of Owen Meredith and Jane Austen people used to flirt in moonlight like this.”

“One can't flirt with children,” he objected.

“It wasn't the custom in your young days, I suppose,” she retorted. “But there are no children now after the nursery.... Would you mind talking seriously just for five minutes?”

“I'm a better listener,” he warned her.

“That's what you're going to be,” she told him. “You see I want your advice. You look as though you knew everything there was to be known in this world, and a little of the world underneath.”

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“You needn't mind,” she went on. “Believe me, there's nothing so attractive as a suggestion of the Mephistophelian—especially to really nice girls like me. Now listen, please. Try and think of this as a problem a girl at the crossways, you know, and that sort of thing! If I go on living in this atmosphere of flowers and sunshine and languor and moonlight with Armand, I shall certainly end by falling in love with him.”

“I shouldn't advise you to,” he said simply.

She abandoned her tone of badinage and became at once perfectly natural. Her manner was almost eager.

“Tell me why you feel like that,” she begged.

“Instinct,” he answered

“That's queer,” she mused. “Do you know what I sometimes feel about Armand?”

“Tell me.”

“I believe,” she said deliberately, “that he was born without a soul.”

THERE was real interest in his eyes as he turned a little more round toward her. The moonlight was strangely kind to him. The bitter lines seemed smoothed out from his face. Sympathy had rejuvenated him.

“It's a silly thing to try and explain,” the girl went on, “because one can't. It's a sort of feeling that seems to come to me at odd times. We've wandered about here in these wonderful gardens and made little excursions up in the hills together. You know how beautiful it all is—the lights and the color, the shadows on the mountains and the valleys, the patches of flowers in unexpected places well, you know, any how.”

“Yes, I know,” he admitted.

“We've even seen these things together,” she went on. “In his way Armand appears to appreciate them. But it's a different way. There is something inside me which seems to be the better for looking at them. With him, it is just like a lizard stretching himself out on a wall to bask in the sunshine. His appreciation seems so terribly external. And he is cruel. He never goes out of his way to avoid treading upon anything alive. He breaks off flowers and blossoms as he passes and throws them away. He can laugh at suffering.”

“How old are you?” he asked a little abruptly.

“Twenty,” she replied. “But intelligent beyond my years!”

“Why do you ask for my advice? You don't need any.”

“Oh, well, I'm not so sure. You know how fond one can be sometimes of wicked things that are pose. There are times when I'm very fond of Armand. He's clever,” she went on, dropping her voice a little and looking uneasily around. ”He watches me. He knows just the right thing to say at the right moment.”

“You asked me a little time ago what I thought of him,” Cardinge reminded her. “As I see that we are going to be interrupted, I will tell you. I think he has the makings of one of the greatest scoundrels ever born.”

“I quite agree,” she murmured under her breath. “I suppose that's what makes him sometimes so hatefully attractive.”

THE whole of the little party from the Villa Sabatin lunched next day at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo. Madame, welcomed like royalty and treated with the utmost respect by every one, sat at the head of the table, and presided over a specially ordered and specially served meal. There was one other guest—Mrs. Hodson Chambers. She was a large woman, a visitor from Minneapolis, with a mauve complexon, several chins, and a hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewelry distributed about her ample person. Madame regarded her several times during the service of luncheon with almost affectionate interest.

“What do you think of Mrs. Hodson Chambers?” she whispered to Sir John, who sat on her right hand.

“I never saw anything so horrible in life,” he replied frankly.

“That,” Madame rejoined, “is a pity, because you are going to paint her.”

“If you were a man,” he confided, “My reply would be that I would see you damned first. As it is, you can take it for said.”

“Nevertheless,” Madame repeated, “you are going to paint her. She will probably wear an even more outrageous gown than she has on to-day. She will certainly wear more jewelry. She will also wear the Van Dresser emeralds. You will insist upon that. You always did love emeralds, didn't you, Johnny?”

He laid down his knife and fork. The healthy color had gone from his cheeks. The man's desire to eat good food had also left him.

“I won't do it,” he declared.

“You will,” she replied. “There is artist's villa—a tiny little place—to be let at Cagnes, with a large studio. It is in the hands of the agents here. You will take it this afternoon. I shall lend you servants. You can charge two thousand guineas for the portrait. I believe she offered Sargent ten.”

“I wouldn't paint her for twenty,” he protested.

Madame smiled inscrutably...

After luncheon they sat in the bar waiting for the tables to open. Madame in her easy-chair, set in a remote corner, still retained a resemblance of royalty.

“Do you know what Sir John has just been telling me, Mrs. Hodson Chambers?” she confided during an interval of the conversation. “He wants to paint you. He has quite a charming idea about it.”

Mrs. Hodson Chambers, like many a multi-millionairess before, had never been told the truth about herself and had never possessed a mirror which was capable of doing it. She looked upon the suggestion as flattering and delightful, but in no way improbable.

“Now, that's a very charming compliment, Sir John,” she declared. “Could it be done down here, right away?”

“I,” Sir John began, “I really am not—”

“That is precisely Sir John's idea,” Madam interrupted. ”He is looking for a subject for his next year's Academy picture. He has seen a charming little villa at Cagnes with a studio he would like to take. I'm afraid he's terribly extortionate, but, as you know, when a man is at the top of his profession—”

“Say, you can cut that out,” Mrs. Hodson Chambers intervened. “I guess I can afford to pay Sir John's fee.”

“These dear men won't discuss such things themselves,” Madame continued smoothly. “He wants two thousand guineas for the picture and a thousand guineas extra, if it is hung in the Academy, and he wants to do you in black.”

“In black!” Mrs. Hodson Chambers gasped. “I haven't a black gown to my name.”

“Wearing every scrap of jewelry you possess,” Madame went on, “including the Van Dresser emeralds.”

Mrs. Hodson Chambers cheered up

“That's some idea,” she admitted. “I suppose my maid and Madame What's-her-name could fix up something. Mauve wouldn't do, would it, Sir John?” she asked, smiling sweetly at him across the table. “Mauve is rather my color.”

“Mauve would be impossible,” Sir John pronounced. “In fact, on second thoughts—”

“Sir John is quite right,” Madame interrupted ruthlessly. “Black it must be. Think of the emeralds.”

“Well, no one can say that I'm obstinate,” Mrs. Hodson Chambers declared. “I always believe in letting any one have their own way in a matter of this sort.”

AN ATTENDANT came and whispered in her ear. She rose to her feet.

“My seat at the baccarat table,” she complained. “They always wait for me. That is settled, Sir John, isn't it? I can come any morning, and you'll let me know where.”

“I suppose so,” he answered with an attempt at cordiality.

Mrs. Hodson Chambers swept out. Madame threw back her head and smiled. Sir John lit a cigar and ordered some more coffee.

“It's a damned foolish business,” he grumbled. “All for the sake of three thousand guineas too. Why, I'd have given you them for my packet and quittance.”

“Three thousand guineas?” Madame repeated.

He nodded.

“Yes, I suppose they'll hang the damn picture when it's finished.”

Madame leaned forward.

“You very foolish man,” she scoffed. “It isn't the three thousand guineas for the picture we're thinking about. It's the hundred thousand pounds those emeralds will fetch.”

Sir John for a moment or two was absolutely speechless. He had, indeed, the appearance of a man about to indulge in a fit. The waiter looked at him in concern. Madame only smiled,

“The gentleman is troubled with indigestion,” she confided. “Leave the brandy, waiter. He will be better directly. Hugh, and you two children, go and gamble. I will look after Sir John.”

“Nothing,” Sir John began, as soon as he had recovered the power of speech, “would ever induce me to consider this hideous proposition.”

“Precisely,” Madame murmured. “You would prefer, without doubt, to come home with me and listen to extracts from that interesting little document I have locked away in my safe with your signature attached. Now light your cigar again and attend to me.”

SIR JOHN entered upon his fifth morning of agony, full of dire forebodings. He was already beginning to fancy things. Mrs. Hodson Chambers' smile, as she had hung the emeralds around her neck and made her way to the chair on the rostrum at the north end of the studio, haunted him.

“You see how I trust you, Sir John,” she said languishingly. “These emeralds are worth at least a hundred thousand pounds of your English money and you are the only man in the villa. Yet, somehow or other, I always feel quite safe with you.”

Sir John felt his forehead and found it wet.

“Do you?” he muttered. “Well, I don't know, I'm sure. If you would feel more comfortable to leave them at home—”

“Cut that out,” the lady enjoined, as she subsided into the chair which had been arranged for her. “Trust your friends, I say, and hate your enemies. You're a friend now, Sir John, aren't you?”

“I hope so,” he answered, commencing to work vigorously.

Mrs. Hodson Chambers sighed. It was an audible sigh and intended to traverse the whole length of the studio.

“It seems to me, Sir John,” she said, “that you've kind of got something on your mind. Ever since I began these sittings you've seemed thoughtful and absent. If there's anything you want to say to me, out with it! I'm not such a very terrible person, am I?”

“Nothing at all,” he assured her. “I'm anxious to make a success of the picture.”

“That's dear of you,” she murmured. “When am I going to be allowed to see it?”

He looked at the canvas ruefully.

“Not yet,” he insisted. “Not for some time. This is just the outline—the idea of the thing, so to speak. I shall finish the picture when you have gone.”

She became thoughtful.

“Say, I feel somehow all set against going away, Sir John,” she confided.

“Why, you've booked your place next Thursday,” he reminded her.

“I know,” she assented. “But what's the use, after all, of being one of the richest women in the world, if you can't change your mind now and then?”

“It's getting very bot here.”

“Hot weather agrees with me. How long are you going to stay, Sir John?”

“I shall be leaving very soon after you,” he assured her. “I shall probably finish the picture at home.”

“In London?” she asked.

“Of course,” he answered.

“London is one of the few places I haven't seen much of,” she reflected. “I rather fancy—”

“I sha'n't return direct to London,” he interrupted hastily. “I thought of a little tour first—round by the Madeira Islands or something of that sort.”

“The Madeira Islands,” she ruminated. “Say, that's strange. The last doctor I went to seemed all worked up about the Madeira Islands—wanted me to take the boat right there.”

Sir John groaned under his breath. Every morning was becoming worse. He resorted to an old expedient.

“For five minutes,” he insisted, “I must have complete silence So! Just like that, please.”

HE PAINTED with mechanical fingers. All the time he was listening for footsteps. He was in a state almost approaching nervous prostration. It was a cruel thing, this, to have the follies of one's youth dragged up against one.

“The five minutes are up,” Mrs. Hodson Chambers called out gaily. “Say, Sir John, I've been studying you some. I'm great on that physiognomy stunt. Why are you an unhappy man?”

“It is a secret which I could never give—certainly not to you.”

“You're lonely,” she murmured.

“Hideously,” he assented,

“Tell me,” she went on, “have you ever been married?”

“Never,” he answered fervently.

A wealth of sympathetic understanding there for him if he had troubled to glance toward his sitter.

“I knew it,” she sighed tenderly. “And your wife, she would be Lady Fardell, wouldn't she?”

“I suppose so,” he admitted.

“To think what some woman is missing.”

“Another five minutes' silence, please,” he begged, painting vigorously.

She made a little grimace, intended to be coy. For the first time Sir John prayed that that thing which he had dreaded might come quickly. And almost immediately his prayer was granted. He himself heard nothing, was conscious of nothing. Suddenly, however, he saw a remarkable change in the face of his subject—a look of blank terror replaced by an expression of supine amiability. She opened her mouth and began to scream. Sir John turned quickly round. The door of the studio had been opened silently. A man was walking toward him—a sufficiently alarming figure—a tall man in the blue linen clothes of mechanic or ouvrier, with a mask on his face, and an ugly-looking pistol in his hand. John dropped his brush and up went his hands.

“I am unarmed,” he called out. “My pocketbook—”

The approaching figure muttered something indistinguishable. Suddenly the left hand shot out from his jacket pocket. Something which seemed like a sponge was thrust under Sir John's nostrils. He reeled back with a little groan. The masked figure turned and faced Mrs. Hodson Chambers. She had no more breath left with which to scream, and was rocking about in her chair—a terrified, nerveless monument of flesh. The man walked swiftly toward her.

“You will not be hurt,” he said, “so long as you keep silent.”

She opened her lips, but the only sound that came was a hoarse, croaking little cry. Then she fainted. The intruder paused for a moment and looked around. Sir John was motionless where he had fallen. There were no sounds outside, save the humming of bees and the twittering of birds. He leaned over and unfastened the jewels from the woman's neck and arms.

THERE was a clock in the studio and Sir John knew exactly how long he had been unconscious when he sat up and looked about him. He staggered to his feet and hastened to the spot where Mrs. Hodson Chambers had slipped from her chair. She was lying on her back, her eyes wide open, groaning to herself.

“Mrs. Hodson Chambers! My dear lady,” he exclaimed, bending over her. She caught at his hand.

“John,” she murmured. “Lift me up.”

The humor of her request altogether missed him. He, in fact, did his best, and actually succeeded in moving her a few inches. She herself did the rest.

“My emeralds!” she moaned. “My jewels!”

“We'll get them back,” he promised. “Wait here a minute. I must give the alarm.”

She threw her arms around his neck. He was absolutely powerless.

“Don't leave me,” she insisted.

“I won't,” he assented, “but don't choke me.”

She released him and tottered to a chair

“Some wine or brandy,” she begged.

“Damned good idea,” he muttered.

He staggered over to a cupboard, brought out a bottle of champagne, knocked the neck off against the wall and filled two tumblers. They drained the contents in silence. Hodson Chambers became lachrymose.

“My emeralds!” she sobbed.

He filled her glass again hastily. She drank and thrust her arm through his.

“At least,” she murmured, “we have one another. And, John, I think I hear the cops. Go out and see, please, and then drive me to the Police Station at Nice. Afterwards, we will have some lunch.”

“Not to-day,” he declined. “I've had enough of this place. I'm going home to-night, if I have to stand in the corridor all the way.”

“Afterwards,” she repeated firmly, “We will have some lunch, and you shall tell what you know about my emeralds.”

“What the devil do you mean?” he gasped.

“Wait until after luncheon,” she told him.

Late that afternoon, a hired motor came thumping up the drive to the Villa Sabatin and stopped below the last bend. Madame looked lazily out from her place amongst the roses, raised her parasol a little, and smiled a welcome at the man who ascended the steps and hurried toward her.

“My dear Johnny!” she exclaimed. ”Why so tragical an aspect? You have played your part quite nicely and the emeralds are on their way to Moscow.”

Sir John had lost much of his healthy color. He had lost also his fussy manner of speech. There was something approaching dignity in his tone as he took up his stand.

“Madame,” he said, “I played hell with you in those days when you and your Virgins were the sensation of Paris, but, young though we were, there was no place for fools with us. You send for me. You insist that I redeem my fifteen-year-old pledge. Very well—I agree. You force me into acquiescence. I place everything in your hands, and you send a babe and a fool to do a man's work.”

Madame seemed suddenly older. One forgot in that moment the illusion of youth. Age looked out of her eyes.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“The situation was framed so that a baby could have worked it,” he went on.

“What happened?”

“You sent a bungling amateur. I expected Cardinge, at least. There came this callow youth of a nephew of yours.”

“How did you know?”

“How did I know? It isn't I only. It's the woman. She pretended to faint. She had no more fainted than I. He leaned over her and stripped her of her jewels, and all the time she knew who he was. He believed in her faint. Ass! He held the sponge to her nostrils only when he left. Then, when we recover and I say to her, 'It is finished. I go to England,' she mocks at me. She insists that I go with her to the police station at Nice.”

“My God!” Madame muttered.

“When we get to Nice,” he went on, “she says, 'We will lunch first.' We lunch. 'And now, Sir John,' she says, 'there is Madame, Madame's nephew, you, and my emeralds.' Then she told me how she recognized Armand.”

“What did you say?”

“I assured her that, if it was true, it was done for a joke. I guaranteed to return the emeralds.”

“Well?”

“She refused.”

Madame glanced at the watch which ticked upon her wrist.

And then?” she asked.

“She told me her conditions.”

“A return of the emeralds, of course. What else?”

Sir John groaned.

“Damn the emeralds!” he exclaimed. “She never mentioned them. I've got to to marry her to-morrow in Paris.”

Madame left the room, returning almost immediately. She held in her hand a little sealed packet, yellow with age.

“Dear Johnny,” she said, “here is that little secret of yours which bound you to me. I give it you back. You have earned your quittance. You are no longer a Virgin of mine.”

He snatched at it eagerly. There were matches and cigarets upon a side table. He lit one of the former, held the corner of the envelop over it, watched the flames spread from end to end, dropped it and set his heel upon the ashes.

“I am sad, Johnny,” Madame confessed. “You are the second of my Virgins whom I have set free. One by one, I suppose, they will all earn their liberty. Stay and let us have a farewell dinner.”

He shook his head and pointed to where a car was drawn up at the bend of the drive.

“Mrs. Hodson Chambers is waiting there,” he confided sadly. “We are leaving together by the night train.”

Madame looked away. She felt that her smile was cruel. Sir John walked dejectedly down the avenue to the automobile.

(The third story of this series will appear in the September issue)