Mysteries of the Riviera E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

This connected series of stories chronicle the adventures of a young American graduate of Harvard college, M. Edmund Martin and the retired British soldier, Colonel Green on the Cote d’Azur in the period just to World War 1. The two meet at a casino, and manage to avoid many of the classic traps which await the idle wealthy of the time. Seemingly inadvertently, they foil crooks, rescue maidens, recover stolen jewels, help young lovers, assist spies against Germany, and foil the plans of German agents attempting to consolidate their power. British author E. Phillips Oppenheim achieved worldwide fame with his thrilling novels and short stories concerning international espionage and intrigue. Many of his more than 100 novels are still read today.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. THE AFFAIR OF THE SAN MONA SPRING

II. THE INJURED HUSBAND

III. THE CURIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF MR. JAMES WESTTHROP

IV. THE SIREN VOICE, PART 1

V. THE SIREN VOICE, PART 2

VI. THE TORTOISESHELL PRINCESS

VII. THE DELIVERANCE OF MRS. KINSEY

VIII. THE YELLOW DISK

IX. THE INVERTED MESSAGE

X. THE LAST QUEST

I. THE AFFAIR OF THE SAN MONA SPRING

AT about nine o’clock on a brilliant February morning, the motor-omnibus which had been down to meet the train de luxe from England came into sight, ascending the winding roadway to the Paradise Hotel. About a dozen of us were loitering in front to watch the new arrivals. It had become quite a source of amusement with some of the habitués of the place to watch the confident arrival of newcomers, and to see them pass through the various grades of doubt to despair when they inquired what accommodation could be offered them in this highly popular caravanserai.

On this occasion, the omnibus contained a single passenger only, a passenger, however, of singular and noteworthy appearance. I am forced to admit that when he stepped out of the omnibus and looked around him, we were none of us favourably impressed with the appearance of Mr. Martin–Mr. Edmund H. Martin, as he preferred to call himself. He was large, and abominably dressed in a suit of impossible checks. He wore bright yellow boots with bulgy toes. His tie seemed to have gathered together every colour of the rainbow into its motley mesh. As he stood there gazing around him, I heard a little titter from Mrs. Moggeridge and her daughters, and I caught the supercilious look exchanged between two of our young men who were lounging against the pillars.

The newcomer, it must be confessed, did not conform in any way to recognized standards, yet even in those first few moments I found something about his appearance which attracted me. Notwithstanding his great size–he was six feet three and very broad–his face was innocent of any beard or moustache. He seemed, indeed, to possess the fresh-complexioned visage of a boy. He stood there, an incipient smile struggling for the least encouragement to take formal possession of his good-humoured face, looking around him for someone to whom he could address the remark which it eventually fell to my lot to receive.

‘Say, this is a bully place!’ he exclaimed, appealing first to me and then to us all generally.

Mrs. Moggeridge and her daughters–very lady-like young persons–turned around and strolled away. The two young men were gazing over the tops of the trees. An old lady who was knitting seemed to find some cause for personal offence in this simple expression of contentment. Unfortunately, an elderly gentleman of kindly deposition who was sitting on a garden seat, and who might have made some response, was stone deaf. It remained for me, therefore, either to welcome this young man or to contribute to the somewhat chilling silence.

‘You see it quite at its best,’ I remarked. ‘With the wind in its favourable quarter, the climate here is almost perfection.’

‘Guess I’ll see about my room,’ the young man went on, unwillingly giving over what I believe he called a ‘grip’ to an insistent porter.

‘Are your rooms engaged?’ I asked.

‘Not yet,’ the newcomer replied. ‘I’ll soon fix that all right.’

He disappeared with an air of easy confidence. There was a little exchange of smiles. The hotel was not only always impossibly full, but the whole business of getting rooms was immensely complicated from the fact that no one was ever willing to leave. We watched the disappearance of this young man into the office, and I distinctly saw signs of ill-natured but pleasurable anticipation in the faces of several people standing around.

‘What an extraordinary person!’ Mrs. Moggeridge exclaimed.

‘American, of course,’ the elder daughter observed. ‘He may be very rich,’ the younger one added reflectively.

‘We don’t want that sort of person here,’ the dear old lady by my side snapped.

‘Did you ever see such a get-up!’ one of the young men yawned. ‘Bet you they’ll send him down to the Îles d’Or.’

Mr. Edmund H. Martin, however, was apparently possessed of some gifts of persuasion. When he finally emerged from the office, it was to superintend the collection of his baggage. He caught my eye and beamed upon me.

‘See you later,’ he promised amiably. ‘I’m going to see if I can get some breakfast.’

The little air of disappointment was almost apparent. The old lady picked up her knitting and went off into the office to complain of anyone having been given a room when a friend of her cousin’s, strongly recommended by herself, had been sent to another hotel only the day before. I nodded back to Mr. Edmund Martin as pleasantly as possible.

‘See you down at the golf links,’ I remarked.

‘Sure!’ he replied heartily. ‘So long, all,’ he added, as he moved steadily off in the direction of the restaurant.

I played my usual round of golf with an opponent of long standing. On looking up after successfully holing my putt on the last green, I found the horizon temporarily blotted out. Mr. Edmund H. Martin, looking larger than ever, was applauding my performance.

‘Say, that was a dandy putt,’ he declared, removing a large cigar from his mouth. ‘You come right along in with me and I’ll mix you a cocktail.’

Every natural instinct I possessed prompted me to refuse this–to me–somewhat extraordinary invitation. It was not my habit to take anything to drink in the morning except sometimes a little Dubonnet and soda, and I was already conscious of the somewhat supercilious interest aroused in my companion by the familiarity of this extraordinary young man. The refusal, however, seemed to wither away upon my lips.

‘Thank you very much,’ I replied. ‘I shall have to offer my opponent a little refreshment in exchange for his five francs.’

‘Why, that’s all right,’ the young man declared heartily, leading the way towards the pavilion. ‘I’ll mix for the whole crowd. I’ll give you something that will put a little sting into your carcass.’

I am convinced that this young man was possessed of certain mesmeric powers. My opponent, who was in a very bad temper, and who was also a retired colonel, but a soldier, as he was sometimes pleased to explain, followed meekly in my wake. We watched the little bar being turned upside down and we watched the preparation of a concoction which I, for my part, was perfectly certain must inevitably prove highly injurious.

In the end, however, we not only drank the wineglassful of yellow-white liquid which was tendered to us, but I am bound to say that we enjoyed it. My opponent crossed his legs and began to explain his defeat. I myself was conscious of a pleasant sense of good-fellowship. I inquired our new friend’s name and introduced him to several of the habitués.

‘What about a round with me this afternoon, Colonel?’ he suggested insinuatingly.

‘I shall be delighted,’ I assented promptly, abandoning without hesitation my principle of an hour’s sleep after luncheon.

Our new friend mixed cocktails for several of the people to whom I introduced him, and we left him there, looking hungrily around for a new victim.

‘Something about that drink,’ my companion remarked lazily, as we strolled up to the hotel, ‘which seems to have done me good, Green. You really did play a fine game this morning.’

‘I was very lucky to beat you,’ I declared modestly. ‘You were driving much straighter than I was ... I never thought that these American drinks were so pleasant. Let us sit down and watch the tennis for a few minutes. Most becoming costume these young ladies wear nowadays.’

We sat there for some time, basking in the sunshine and chatting amiably. I enjoyed my lunch none the less for finding our new friend only a few tables off and receiving a very hearty greeting from him. I found him, according to arrangement, waiting upon the tee at two o’clock.

‘What,’ I asked him, ‘is your handicap?’ He grinned.

‘Never mind about mine. What’s yours?’

‘I am twelve,’ I replied diffidently; ‘but I occasionally play a nine game.’

‘I am about the same myself,’ he announced. ‘We’ll start level, anyway.’

He insisted upon my taking the honour, and I drove what I considered to be an excellent ball, within forty yards of the green. My opponent, discarding the driver which the caddy offered him, took a light iron from his bag and hit a ball farther than I have ever seen it propelled by human means before. He carried the green and very nearly disappeared into the hedge beyond. As soon as I had recovered, I announced my intention of returning to the pavilion.

‘I am not going to play with a Braid in disguise,’ I told him. ‘If you can do that sort of thing, you ought to have told me.’

He took me by the arm almost affectionately. Against my will, but without any desire for resistance, I was led along the course.

‘Say, Colonel,’ he confided, ‘I’m a holy terror from the tee. You wait till you see me drive! But it’s those rotten little shots I can’t manage. And as to putting–well, you wait! I can’t seem to keep the ball on the green, even.’

I played a very nice approach within a couple of yards of the pin. My opponent overran the green about sixty yards, cheerfully missed his third, and was nearly back again in the hedge with his fourth. I won the hole and recovered my good humour.

‘It would be worth your while,’ I remarked, as I watched him drive nearly three hundred yards, ‘to give a little time to your short game.’

‘I always mean to practise,’ he agreed. ‘No chance in New York, though.’

We had a very interesting match, which I succeeded in winning. I was then initiated into the mysteries of a Scotch highball, after which I felt it advisable to go and have a nap before dinner. When I descended to the lounge, a little earlier than usual, I discovered Mr. Edmund H. Martin, attired, to my relief, in conventional if somewhat eccentric dinner garb, seated in an easy chair with a cigarette in his mouth, and a small memorandum book, which he was studying in a puzzled fashion, held up in front of him. The moment I appeared he held up two fingers to a waiter, who disappeared as though by magic.

‘That’s all right, Colonel,’ he exclaimed, as I watched the man’s hasty exit. ‘He’s got a couple of the right sort on ice for us. Just sit down for a moment, will you? What is this game all the nice old ladies here want me to play with them?’

I took the memorandum book from his hand. Down the engagement columns, at intervals for the next fortnight, were such entries as–‘Mrs. H.,’ ‘Mrs. A.,’ ‘Miss Fuzzy-Wuzzy,’ ‘Miss Giglamps,’ and various other fancy pseudonyms, some of which I readily recognized.

‘Had to put down something where I didn’t catch the names,’ he pointed out. ‘What is the game, anyway?’

‘Auction bridge, of course,’ I told him. ‘They are all crazy on it here. Can’t you play?’

‘Not that I know of,’ he replied evasively. ‘I never tried.’

‘Then what on earth did you accept all these invitations for?’

I had clearly cornered Mr. Edmund H. Martin. He scratched his chin reflectively.

‘What was I to do?’ he grumbled. ‘I like to be friendly with everyone, and I hate to say “No” when a lady comes up and asks me to join in a simple little game of cards.’

‘That’s all very well,’ I objected, ‘but you can’t play the game. You’ll spoil the rubber.’

‘Not I,’ he assured me cheerfully. ‘Between you and me, there’s nothing with cards I can’t do. Just you watch here.’

He took a pack of cards from his pocket and for several moments I watched him, almost stupefied. Cards came up from his neck, down his trousers legs, they fell in little showers upon the table, apparently from mid-air. He even produced an ace of spades from my shirt-front.

‘You see, I’m no mug,’ he declared modestly. ‘As for this particular game, why, I’ll just look into the rules. You haven’t got a book about it, have you?’

I sipped the most insinuating contents of one of the glasses which the waiter had just brought us, and afterwards I fetched him my Badsworth and left him studying it. That night I saw him, one of four solemn performers, seated, smileless and eager, at a card-table in a corner of the lounge. He joined me at about ten o’clock. He looked a little older and was glancing about feverishly for a waiter.

‘Get through all right?’ I inquired.

‘I guess so,’ he answered. ‘I fell a bit behind now and then, but as soon as I tumbled to it that we weren’t playing for money, I dealt my partner a hundred aces once or twice, and that made things all right because she kept on having to play the hands. They are talking about it all over the hotel. It seems that no one has had a hundred aces six times in one evening before.’

‘Look here,’ I begged him earnestly, ‘you mustn’t be up to any of those tricks here. The people wouldn’t understand it. Bridge is a very solemn function, and they wouldn’t take it as a joke, anyhow.’

‘Joke? It wasn’t a joke at all,’ he assured me. ‘I did it on purpose. If you’d seen my partner’s face as she kept on picking ‘em up–dear old thing about seventy, she was, with a blue ribbon in her hair–you’d have forgiven me fast enough. She clean forgot a kind of lapse I’d had, playing the hand before. Why, I tell you I made quite a hit. They’ve asked me to play with them every Tuesday till the hotel closes.’

‘But you’re only going to stay a fortnight,’ I reminded him.

‘That’s their trouble,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, I’ve taken a fancy to the game.’

I induced him without difficulty to partake of a little refreshment with me, and left him, half an hour later, in a deserted corner of the lounge, with a large whisky-and-soda by his side and a freshly lit cigar in his mouth, dealing out four hands, and, after referring to Badsworth, carefully playing the cards.

‘There’s something in this game,’ he declared cheerfully, as he bade me good night. ‘I’ll have the hang of it all right by to-morrow.’

For the next few days, although spasmodically I saw a great deal of my new friend, I was compelled to deny myself any close association with him owing to the presence of my sister, Lady Chalmont, who had come over from Cannes to stay with me. On the fourth day after her arrival, however, I took her to a little out-of-door restaurant at Carcaran. We were in the middle of a very excellent lunch when a familiar voice from the other side of a clump of rhododendron bushes attracted our attention. My sister listened for a moment.

‘It is your delightfully original friend, Mr. Edmund H. Martin, as he calls himself!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do let us get him to come and join us.’

We both rose and moved towards the narrow path which led through a tangle of rhododendron shrubs to the next table. Then my sister, who was leading, stopped short and turned to me with a frown. A little peal of distinctly feminine laughter reached us from the other side of the shrubs.

‘Perhaps you had better first ascertain who Mr. Martin’s companions are,’ she remarked dryly.

She returned to her seat, whilst I threaded the winding path and came out upon a little luncheon party in the small green enclosure. There were several pails from which protruded the necks of gold-foiled bottles. There was a profusion of food and fruit upon the table, and there was Mr. Edmund H. Martin, red in the face and very jovial in appearance, the central figure of one of the most disreputable companies I have ever set eyes upon. The ladies who sat on either side of him were, to use a mild adjective, cosmopolitan. Of the two men, one looked like a cross between a country bookmaker and a prize-fighter, and the other was a Frenchman whom I knew slightly, a man who notoriously lived by his wits in any place upon the Riviera where he found himself able to induce an hotel proprietor to give him credit.

My new friend, who was wearing a very light grey suit and another amazing tie, was in the act of indulging in a hearty laugh. Suddenly he saw me. The laugh faded away. He sat with his mouth wide open for a moment. Then he waved his hand with a feeble attempt at boisterous cordiality.

‘Why, Colonel,’ he exclaimed, ‘I thought that you’d taken your sister back to Cannes to-day!’

‘My sister has decided to remain with me a little longer,’ I told him, ‘so I brought her over here to lunch. I thought I heard your voice and it occurred to my sister that if you were alone–’

‘I’d like to introduce my friend,’ Martin interrupted. ‘This is Colonel Green–Major Grinley,’ he began, indicating the Englishman of pugilistic appearance; ‘Monsieur le Comte de Faux,’ he went on, motioning towards the Frenchman; ‘Mademoiselle–well, these French names fairly bother me,’ he wound up confidentially, ‘but these two young ladies are friends of the Comte.’

He looked at me wistfully, as though anxious to see how I should accept the situation. I contented myself with a general bow. It was perfectly easy to see that my arrival was disconcerting to the little party.

‘Did you say that Lady Chalmont was with you?’

‘She is on the other side of the rhododendron bush,’ I told him.

The young man sprang to his feet.

‘Say, isn’t that bully!’ he exclaimed, looking almost miserable. ‘You’ll excuse me, Comte and young ladies? I must just pay my respects to Lady Chalmont.’

‘You’ll come back?’ they all cried in unison.

‘Right away,’ he assured them heartily. ‘Now then, Colonel.’

I led him along the narrow path in silence. My sister really behaved quite charmingly. She had commenced, in fact, to share my unaccountable partiality for the young man, and although she shook her head reproachfully, her tone was still good-humoured.

‘Mr. Martin,’ she demanded, ‘tell us exactly what you are doing here?’

‘Just a few friends,’ he exclaimed–‘a little luncheon party got together on the spur of the moment.’

‘I heard ladies’ voices,’ my sister insisted. ‘Are your guests from the hotel?’

‘Not exactly,’ Martin admitted. ‘The young ladies are friends of the Comte. We fixed this up down at the Casino last night. A very charming man, the Comte de Faux.’

‘Where did you get hold of Major Grinley?’ I asked dryly.

‘An officer in your British Army, sir,’ Martin reminded us. ‘He is out here just now on a most important affair of business. He is representing, in fact, a syndicate of British financiers.’

I groaned. My sister leaned a little forward.

‘Mr. Martin,’ she asked kindly, ‘how much have they had out of you already?’

The young man looked a little hurt.

‘Lady Chalmont, I don’t know why you should allude to my friends–’

‘How much?’ my sister persisted.

‘I was fortunate enough to run across the Comte,’ Martin replied stiffly, ‘last night when he was in urgent need of five hundred francs, and I have obliged Major Grinley by cashing a cheque for him–a friend’s cheque.’

‘For a large amount?’ I inquired.

‘A matter of forty pounds–a mere trifle.’

‘It might have been worse,’ I remarked laconically.

Our young friend stood before us with his hands in his pockets, looking very much like a guilty schoolboy who has been found out in some peccadillo.

‘You don’t seem to like my guests, Colonel,’ he observed dejectedly.

I shook my head.

‘I know both of them by reputation. Would you be annoyed if I told you exactly what I thought of them? In any case, I will risk it so far as to tell you that I think they are both crooks.’

‘A French nobleman and a major in your British Army!’ he protested.

‘Excellent material in adversity,’ I assured him.

Martin was looking rather like a spoilt child. My sister laughed outright at him.

‘It’s no use looking cross, Mr. Martin,’ she declared. ‘You know very well that my brother is only speaking for your good, and you must admit that you are just a little inclined to make friends easily, aren’t you?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I inquired, ‘where did you meet them?’

‘We met in the buffet of the Gare de Lyon and travelled down to Hyères together,’ Martin explained. ‘Most agreeable journey it was, too.’

‘Did you play cards?’ my sister asked innocently.

‘A little poker game,’ he admitted. ‘I won a trifle.’

Knowing something of this young man’s methods with cards, I turned away to hide a smile. He left us a few minutes afterwards, and we heard the enthusiastic reception accorded him by his little party of guests on his return. I paid the bill in silence and we strolled up to where the car was waiting for us.

‘I am afraid that your interesting young American friend has got into rather bad hands,’ my sister sighed.

‘I am sure of it,’ I agreed.

‘We’ll talk to him to-morrow,’ she continued. ‘He really is a most extraordinary young person, but I can’t help feeling a certain amount of interest in him. He seems very simple to be wandering about the world alone.’

‘He has lived in New York for some years,’ I remarked dubiously.

‘Oh, I am not saying that he is unintelligent,’ she declared, ‘but he is far too ingenuous and trusting.... Tell the man to drive very slowly, Henry, and take the road back through the peach orchards.’

We invited Martin to lunch with us the next day, and at about half-past twelve he duly arrived, the greater part of his person obscured by a bunch of violets as big as a bucket, which he gallantly offered to my sister. No allusion whatever was made to our meeting of the day before, but about half-way through the meal he leaned over the table a little confidentially.

‘Say. Colonel,’ he inquired, ‘how do I get hold of money down here?’

‘It depends upon the amount,’ I replied dryly.

‘Oh, not very much–say three thousand pounds.’

‘You take the bus into the town and ask for the English bank,’ I told him. ‘You get them to wire to your bankers in London, and by this time to-morrow you would probably be able to draw it.’

‘Capital!’ he declared. ‘We couldn’t do much better than that at home.’

‘But, Mr. Martin,’ my sister asked seriously, ‘what do you want three thousand pounds for?’

He beamed upon us both.

‘To tell you the truth,’ he confided,’ I have had a very interesting speculation suggested to me.’

‘By the Comte de Faux or Major Grinley?’ my sister inquired.

‘Say, how did you guess that?’ Martin exclaimed. ‘You’re dead right, anyway. Like to hear about it?’

My sister sighed.

‘Immensely!’

‘And you. Colonel?’

‘Of course!’

He glanced around to be sure that our table was out of the reach of eavesdroppers. His voice became more rounded, even portentous.

‘Say,’ he began, ‘there’s one thing I don’t want you two people to misunderstand. My friends the Comte and Major Grinley are on the square all right, but they’ve been badly treated. They showed me the whole correspondence, and they’ve been white all the way through. If what they are suggesting at the present moment seems to you a bit like sharp practice on the men who’ve sent them out here, you must remember that, after all, it’s every man for himself in this world.’

‘It is,’ I agreed, ‘and every man has to look out for himself.’

‘Now the Comte and Major Grinley,’ Martin continued,’ have been sent out here on behalf of an English syndicate of capitalists to inquire into a wonderful mineral-water spring not many miles away from this spot, and to make terms for securing the same, providing everything was O.K. The purchase price was not to exceed thirty thousand pounds for the spring itself and the woods surrounding it–an estate of some two thousand acres. The Comte and Major Grinley, if they succeeded in bringing the thing off, were to have so much in shares and so much cash; I have seen that in writing. And there’s another thing to be remembered. It was the Comte who discovered the spring, as it is only a few miles away from the boundary of his own property.’

‘So the Comte has property here?’ I interrupted.

‘I should say so,’ Martin declared. ‘Now they’ve bottled some of the water and sent it to London and had a favourable report. They’ve interviewed the proprietor–he is little more than a French peasant–and they’ve managed to work the price down to twenty-five thousand pounds. It’s a magnificent property and, believe me, there’s a huge fortune in the mineral spring. The Comte and Major Grinley have given no end of time to this matter and spent a great deal of money. Now they’ve made their report and the men at the head of the syndicate are hesitating. They are grumbling about giving the Comte and Major Grinley any interest in the five thousand pounds they arc saving, and they talk of sending another man out to make a special report. The long and short of it is, there’s no money in London. They can’t raise the stuff. And here are my two friends committed to the purchase of that estate for twenty-five thousand pounds, and the deposit’s got to be paid over this week.’

‘A very awkward situation,’ I admitted.

Martin nodded. He seemed encouraged by our sympathetic attitude.

‘Well,’ he proceeded, with an air of growing importance, ‘they came to me and they asked my advice as an American man of business, and I guess I let them have it quick. What I said was, if the value is really there, get an offer elsewhere. If the syndicate don’t act up to their promises, throw ‘em overboard. That’s their own look-out. At first I couldn’t get either the Comte or Major Grinley to see it. The worst of these aristocrats and army folk is that they’ve an exaggerated sense of honour, you know. No use at all in business.’

I choked a little and hastily drank some wine. My sister did not even smile. She was hanging upon Martin’s words.

‘However, I talked ‘em over,’ he concluded, pulling his waistcoat down with an air of satisfaction, ‘and here’s the long and short of it. I’m going to buy that spring and estate, and if you two feel in any way interested–why, I’ll take you both up there to have a look at it this afternoon.’

‘As to the value–’ I began.

‘Wait till you’ve looked over the place,’ Martin begged me. ‘It’s not more than half an hour’s ride from here. What do you say?’

‘I should be delighted to go,’ my sister assented.

An hour or so later we arrived at a lonely spot on the top of a range of hills between Toulon and Hyères. We all descended, and our young friend led the way across a stony field, planted with a few unwholesome-looking vines, and past a whitewashed hovel in a wood.

‘Is this the place?’ I asked dubiously.

‘This is the place,’ Martin replied. ‘The spring is just a little farther in.’

Some efforts had evidently been made to preserve the spring itself from trespassers. There was a barbed-wire fence around it, and a small gate secured by a padlock. A man who had presumably seen us approach issued from the hovel and with many bows produced a key. Martin drew out a phrase-book from his pocket.

‘Ont les messieurs, Comte de Faux et Major Grinley visités ici aujourd-hui?’ he demanded, speaking a little louder than usual, with the idea, apparently, of making his words more easily apprehended.

‘Mais non, monsieur,’ the man replied.

‘C’est bien!’ Martin declared, replacing the phrase-book in his pocket. ‘Ouvrez la porte, s’il vous plaît.’

We were conducted into a glade and shown the spot where the water came bubbling up from an undoubted spring. Our guide produced a tin mug. We tasted the water and on the whole approved. It was, without doubt, excellent. Then we wandered a little farther through the wood and out on the other side. The land, so far as one could see, was stony and poorly cultivated, but the view was magnificent. At our feet lay the harbour of Toulon, and beyond, the blue Mediterranean. The peasant and my sister talked fluently, and Martin made unhappy attempts to follow their conversation with the aid of the phrase-book. Finally, we left the place and took our seats once more in the automobile.

‘Pretty spot.’ Martin remarked tentatively.

‘Very,’ I agreed.

‘And the water seems good?’

‘I am not much of a judge of water,’ I replied guardedly, ‘but I should say that it was good water.’

We drove down towards San Salvadour almost in silence.

‘I am going to buy that place,’ Martin announced presently.

It would appear that the time had arrived for plain speech. It had become perfectly clear to me, during my very brief acquaintance with this young man, that sooner or later he was foredoomed to become the prey of one or more of those many adventurers whom one meets in all places of the world.

My sister Mary and I had talked this matter over and we had both come to the same conclusion. His simple, trustful nature and complete guilelessness, while it made him, in a sense, an attractive companion, were a very evil equipment for a young man so completely alone in the world. Major Grinley and the Comte de Faux were both acquaintances of mine, but I felt it my duty to speak out.

‘Martin,’ I said, dropping at that moment and for ever afterwards any more formal habit of speech, ‘I feel it my duty to warn you against doing anything of the sort. The very fact that these two men are concerned in the transaction makes me suspicious. They are, to speak frankly, nothing more or less than adventurers. They have selected you as a probable victim. Take my advice and have nothing whatever to do with them.’

The smile faded from our young friend’s face. A look of deep dejection took its place.

‘Say, you’re not serious. Colonel?’

‘My brother is not only serious,’ Mary intervened, ‘but I am bound to say that I entirely agree with him. You must take our advice, Mr. Martin, and have nothing more to do with the matter.’

‘You must see for yourself,’ I added,’ that twenty-five thousand pounds for two thousand acres of wood and stony fields seems a little excessive.’

‘It’s the spring, Colonel,’ Martin explained eagerly. ‘It’s astonishing the craze there is for water nowadays, even over on our side. People will pay anything for it–the right sort, that is. I tell you, sir, there are millions of dollars in that spring.’

‘That may be so,’ I replied dryly,’ but I do not think that in any transactions with the Comte de Faux and Major Grinley, the millions, or any part of them, will come into your pocket.’

Our young friend relapsed into deep and gloomy silence. We drove back through San Salvadour and Costabelle into Hyères, and at his request dropped him at the bank. My sister returned to the hotel and I myself looked in at the Casino for an hour, as was sometimes my custom during the afternoon.

The first persons I saw when I entered the concert room were the Comte de Faux and Major Grinley, sitting at one of the small tables outside of the American bar and talking earnestly together. Both men recognized me when I entered, and I saw a meaning glance pass between them. Immediately afterwards they rose and approached me.

‘Colonel Green, isn’t it?’ Major Grinley exclaimed, holding out his hand. ‘We have not met for some time.’

‘Monsieur the Colonel!’ the Frenchman echoed, with a low bow.

I shook hands with them cordially enough–there was no particular object in betraying my suspicions. As soon as they perceived my attitude, they were most effusive and insisted upon my taking a whisky-and-soda with them.

‘We were wondering,’ Major Grinley said, ‘what had become of our very interesting young American friend, Mr. Martin.’

‘I left him in the town,’ I replied. ‘We lunched with him to-day and have just been out to see the spring.’

They were both decidedly anxious.

‘Yes?’ Major Grinley muttered interrogatively.

‘A marvellous spring!’ the Frenchman declared. ‘Such water! Such purity! Such a flavour!’

‘If we succeed in this little transaction of ours,’ Major Grinley told me confidentially, ‘it should mean at least a hundred thousand pounds in your young friend’s pocket. Within two years it will be perfectly easy to float a company for ten times what Mr. Martin is giving for it.’

‘I am not a financier,’ I confessed, ‘and I know nothing of the value of property out here, but twenty-five thousand pounds seems to me rather a large sum.’

Major Grinley set himself to efface that impression. He told me of the profits of Perrier water, he spoke of the fabulous fortunes which had been made by the most inoffensive-looking streams. Every now and then the Frenchman came to his aid in a sort of staccato chorus.

‘Well, after all,’ I concluded, ‘it is Mr. Martin’s own business. He seems very young to be travelling about the world alone and to have the control of his own money, but I suppose his guardians consider him competent.’

‘He is a young man of great wealth, eh?’ the Frenchman inquired. ‘There is no doubt about his position?’

‘I know nothing whatever about the matter,’ I replied, a little stiffly. ‘For anything I know, in fact, he may be an adventurer.’