CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lydon thought that Grewgus looked somewhat crestfallen when they met the following morning in the offices in Craven Street.

He opened the conversation in a rather apologetic tone. “Well, Mr. Lydon, the primary object for which we went to Paris was the establishment of the fact that Zillah Mayhew was the same person as Elise Makris. But that fact we established on the first day we arrived there. I stayed on in order to find something more than that. I am sorry to tell you I have found nothing, except one little thing that makes the affair more mysterious.”

“You say they contrived to give you the slip. How was that done when you were keeping such a close watch on them?” asked the young man in a tone that plainly showed his disappointment.

Grewgus hastened to explain. “I am afraid I must plead guilty to a little want of foresight. After watching very carefully for three days, we became pretty sure that neither the woman nor her friend Edwards were what you would call early birds. They did not stir out before a fairly late hour in the morning.”

Having, as they thought, established this fact, the two men did not begin their watch till a certain hour themselves. Had they not been so confident, it would have been easy to take it in turns to watch one of them, since, if one of them went out, it was for the purpose of ultimately meeting the other. As a fact, to carry out the thing thoroughly, a third, perhaps a fourth, man was wanted.

“That of course would have entailed a great deal more expense than I felt myself justified in putting you to,” said Grewgus in exculpating himself. “The last time I saw Zillah Mayhew, she was dining as usual with her elderly cavalier. Edwards, according to custom, was spending his evenings at one of the music-halls. My colleague Simmons never observed him with anybody, and he never met Miss Mayhew at night. And it is pretty certain that he never came into contact with Calliard. Whatever business was to be carried on with the Frenchman seemed to be left entirely in her hands. No doubt she talked things over with Edwards in their daily meetings.”

“You have not even proved conclusively that her object was what we all thought it to be, blackmail?” interjected Lydon.

“If you don’t mind, I will just leave that question unanswered for a moment or two while I relate how they gave us the slip. On that particular morning, no Zillah Mayhew issued forth from the hotel. I waited about for a very long time till Simmons joined me. His news was startling. Edwards, who, as I told you, had put up in another part of the town, did not turn out either. After a decent interval, Simmons, who knows somebody in pretty nearly every hotel in Paris, went in and made inquiries.

“He learned that Edwards had left some two hours before, carrying his luggage, a very light portmanteau, with him. He had told them he was returning to England. Of course I smelt a rat at once, and instructed Simmons to go into the _Terminus_ and inquire if Mrs. and Miss Glenthorne were still there. The answer was in the negative. They had also made an early departure, and had driven to the Gare du Nord; presumably they were returning to England too.”

“It seems pretty clear they found out they were being watched, and judged it prudent to leave,” was Lydon’s natural comment.

“It looks very like it,” admitted Grewgus. “Now comes the surprising part of the story. I should have come away at once, but that I had a fancy to interview Calliard to ascertain if our suspicions were correct--our suspicions, I mean, as to the object of her acquaintance with a man so much her senior.”

Grewgus then proceeded to narrate how, on the following evening, he had run the jeweller to earth, while dining at one of his favourite restaurants. He was alone at a rather big table, and the detective seated himself at it, after a polite apology to the Frenchman for disturbing him, which was accepted with the habitual courtesy of his country. Presently they got into general conversation, and when he judged the time was ripe, Grewgus produced his card and handed it to him.

When Monsieur Calliard, who, by the way, spoke English very passably, ascertained from the card the occupation of the man who had seated himself at the table, he turned pale and showed considerable signs of embarrassment. Grewgus easily guessed the reasons for his disturbance. This opulent jeweller was no doubt a good bit of a philanderer, and easily attracted by women. His first thought was that his wife suspected him and had put a private inquiry agent on his track.

Of course, this notion had to be quickly dispelled. Grewgus explained that he was not at all concerned with the way in which Monsieur Calliard chose to spend his leisure hours, but he was greatly interested in the lady with whom he had dined so frequently.

At this reassuring statement, Monsieur Calliard recovered his composure and insisted upon helping his companion to a glass of the very excellent champagne he was drinking with his dinner. It was easy to diagnose him as a free liver, a man of considerable _bonhomie_, and by no means inclined to take a puritan view of life. He answered the questions put to him in the frankest manner. How had he made the acquaintance of the lady, and had he always known her by the name of Glenthorne, as she went sometimes by others?

The genial jeweller raised his eyebrows at the second of the two questions. He was evidently going to learn something.

“Listen, and I will tell you all about it. I suppose it goes without saying you know who I am?” began Monsieur Calliard.

“Certainly,” replied Grewgus, with an amiable smile, “you are a partner in the well-known firm of Dubost Frères of Marseilles.”

“Of course it would be easy for you to find out. I suppose I am known to a large circle of waiters in the hotels and restaurants of Paris. I met this young lady first at Trouville last year, where we formed a slight acquaintance. I met her later on in Rome, the acquaintance progressed a little further, and I have only known her under the name of Glenthorne. At both these places she was in the company of her mother, a rather good-looking Jewess.”

“She was not formally introduced to you by anybody, I suppose?”

Monsieur Calliard shrugged his shoulders with the wealth of gesture typical of his countrymen. “Ah, no. At Trouville I stayed in the same hotel, at Rome I met her casually in the street, and she and her mother dined two or three times with me. She struck me as a very chic and charming young person who had every wish to make herself friendly. But I could not quite place her, and her mother was perhaps just a little in the way at Rome, so that I could not get to know very much about her. She was exceedingly quiet and ladylike, well educated, and the mother seemed a most respectable person.”

“At Rome, I take it, you began to get a bit more fascinated, Monsieur Calliard?” suggested the detective.

Again that shrug of the shoulders. “At Marseilles, where one is so well known and, to a certain extent, looked up to, Monsieur Grewgus, one has to lead a very staid life. I will confess frankly I am not quite as good a boy as I should be. I travel about a great deal in the course of my business, and when I find myself in a place where I have no intimate friends, I admit to a little flutter now and then. I am too old to be a gay Lothario, but I am naturally fond of women’s society,” he added with a roguish smile, “especially the society of pretty and attractive women.”

He paused to pour out a second glass of champagne for the interested Grewgus. Certainly there was no sullen reserve about the genial and opulent-looking jeweller. He alluded in the frankest fashion to his little weaknesses, even his peccadilloes.

“This happened last year,” he resumed. “Charming and chic as she is, she had almost faded from my mind. Behold, walking down the Boulevard des Italiens, I come upon her alone. I was very pleased to see her, for I was getting a bit bored with my own society, and she appeared pleased to see me. She told me she and her mother were staying at the _Hôtel Terminus_. Ah, that excellent mother, she had spoiled the Rome visit. I did not require any more of the good mother. I plucked up my courage, and asked her point-blank if she could see her way to dine with me without a chaperone. I should not have been surprised if she had declined, but she accepted, explaining that things were very much altered in her own English country since the war, and that for herself she had always paid little heed to convention.”

With another expressive gesture, Monsieur Calliard lifted his hands. “Since then she has dined with me every evening up till last night.”

“Do you know she has left Paris this morning?” queried Grewgus.

“She informed me of her intention as we sat at dinner. I was a little amazed because, having a slack time to-day, we had half made an appointment to go to Versailles. She excused herself on the plea that her mother had to return to London on urgent business. I suggested she should follow Madame Glenthorne later on, but she smiled when I did so. ‘I am pretty unconventional, Monsieur Calliard,’ she said, ‘but not quite bold enough for that.’ I think, my friend, that is all I have to tell you, and now, perhaps, as you seem to know a good deal about this young lady, you will tell me something that interests me.”

“With the greatest pleasure, Monsieur Calliard. I will presently tell you all I do know. But first I should like to put another question. What sort of an account did the young lady give of herself to you?”

The jeweller considered: “I cannot remember that she was very communicative. I gathered that her mother had private means, that they travelled about a good deal, and were very familiar with the Continent. She also told me her father was dead, and that they had hardly any relatives.”

“Did she tell you where she lived when in England?”

“They did not stay very much in England, according to her account. When they did they stopped with an uncle--ah--what is the name of the place, where your King has a fine Castle?”

“Windsor,” suggested Grewgus.

“That is it, Windsor. I did notice one thing about her, that she was very reserved about her own affairs.”

“She had every reason to be,” said the detective grimly. “Well, Monsieur Calliard, you have been very obliging. It is now my turn to give you some information. I have every reason to believe that this agreeable-mannered young woman is one of the decoys of a firm of blackmailers; that she gets hold of men with the ultimate object of fleecing them.”

The Frenchman looked intensely astonished. “The decoy of a blackmailing gang,” he remarked. “A handsome, brilliant young woman like that! She ought to have made a good marriage. I cannot help feeling for her more pity than disgust. And that respectable-looking old Jewess, the mother. Is she a criminal also?”

Grewgus looked at him sharply. “You had no suspicion, then, of this, I take it? Now, Monsieur Calliard, whatever you say to me on this subject will pass out of my mind; I promise you I will not make use of it. Can you assure me that she has not attempted to blackmail you?”

It occurred to Grewgus that she had made the attempt, and that her sudden flight was due to the fact that she had been foiled, that the Frenchman had taken a bold attitude and defied her. The next words undeceived him.

“Upon my word of honour, Monsieur Grewgus, no.”

Grewgus was fairly convinced that the jeweller was speaking the truth, that he was not actuated by a feeling of shame which led him to deny he had been the victim of an artful adventuress.

“Upon my word of honour, no,” he repeated emphatically. “The opinion I formed of her was that she was an unconventional girl, leading a roving sort of existence with a careless and not very interesting mother, that she was pleased to come across anybody who would take her about and give her a good time. In spite of her gaiety and enjoyment of life, I judged her to be of a rather cold temperament. She never seemed to crave for admiration, although, like all women, she liked a compliment when you paid it to her.”

“But surely you made her handsome presents from time to time,” persisted Grewgus. Monsieur Calliard was a genial old fellow enough, but not likely to attract a handsome young woman by his personal gifts.

But the Frenchman shook his head very decidedly. “Monsieur Grewgus, I come of thrifty forbears. I like my little flutter now and again, as I have admitted to you, but I never care to pay too dear for my weaknesses. What did I give Miss Glenthorne during this visit? Bah! it is not worth thinking of. A few flowers sent to the hotel, some boxes of chocolates, once I think half a dozen pairs of gloves. It was not that which made her dine with me whenever I asked her. It is a bit of a riddle, I confess. Do you think there is any possibility of your being mistaken, of your having received wrong information about her? I am a man of the world, and I could detect no sign of the greedy adventuress.”

Grewgus replied that his evidence was too strong to admit of such a supposition. But still what Calliard had told him imparted a fresh air of mystery to the affair.

“If blackmail was not her game, she must have had some other object in view,” said the detective to Lydon when he had finished the story. “I cannot think those meetings in Rome and Paris were the result of accident. I should say that by some means she or her friends had obtained information of Calliard’s movements, and she had followed him for the purpose of insinuating herself into his good graces. She, no doubt, read him at a glance, a weak, susceptible man, a bit thrifty perhaps, and garrulous to a fault.”

“You did not, of course, mention anything of Stormont or Whitehouse to the Frenchman?” asked Lydon, who had been thinking very deeply as he listened to the story.

“I gave him no indication that there was anybody else concerned in my investigations,” was Grewgus’ reply.

“Is it possible that we have suspected Stormont wrongly, after all?” said the young man presently, who was profoundly astonished that there had been no blackmail. “Is it possible that he sent her and the man Edwards on some peculiar and special business errand, and that he, and perhaps Whitehouse, knew nothing of the double life she is leading, this combination of business woman and adventuress?”

But the experienced detective shook his head. “They have both been closely watched, Mr. Lydon, except in those few particular hours when they made off. If they were engaged on legitimate business in Paris, with whom were they doing it? They would have called on people; people would have called on them. She was never with anybody but Calliard and Edwards. Edwards had not got even a second string to his bow; he was never seen with anybody but her.”

“What is your reading of it, then?”

“I incline to the idea they found out they were watched, and gave up the game in the middle, before the woman could formulate her plans for fleecing Calliard.”

“Have you any other theory?”

“Only that a further mystery is developing, which we may or may not discover. By the way, there is something I forgot to tell you. They left, as you have learned, a day before me. I wired at once to one of my men in London in code to find out if Zillah Mayhew had returned to Ashstead Mansions.”

“And the reply?”

“She had, and also the mother. They left Paris as Mrs. and Miss Glenthorne. They have returned to London as Mrs. and Miss Mayhew.”

It was all very puzzling, very baffling. Lydon owned frankly he could not see his way through the maze.

After a pause, the detective spoke. “Now the question is, Mr. Lydon, do you feel disposed to spend any more money?”

“What is your advice?” asked the young man.

“To go on,” answered the detective in a decided voice. “I am convinced that we are only at the beginning of the mystery.”

“So be it, then. What are the next steps?”

“Simmons only awaits a message from me to take them. In the course of conversation, Calliard told me he was only staying three days longer in Paris. He is going on to Brussels, where he does a big business. Now you have decided, I shall instruct him to follow Calliard. If there is a further mystery, as I strongly suspect, it is round him that it will centre. Here in London I shall keep observation upon Miss Mayhew, and if I can possibly come across him, upon Edwards.”

With that the interview ended. At the end of another week, Jasper Stormont and his wife came back to the _Cecil_, bringing Gloria with them. Lydon had a shrewd suspicion that the banker, who, according to his daughter’s account, was a man of simple tastes and habits, was not a little oppressed by the opulence and splendour of Effington.