gone up to the Carlton, it would have been a different matter.”
“You will excuse my mentioning it, sir,” the barman begged, as he took his leave.
“Sure,” Cheyne agreed, rising to his feet. “Are you coming, Roger?”
The two men strolled along the passage. The archbishop with the chain around his neck at the farther end bowed his adieux and accepted with becoming gratitude Cheyne’s not inconsiderable tip. They passed through the swing door and turned to the left. Roger paused before the lift and stifled a yawn.
“Would you like me to come on with you to the end of the long passage?” he asked.
His companion scoffed.
“What sort of a pussy do you think I am?” he demanded. “So long as we’re indoors, we’re perfectly safe. Good night, Roger. See you for a cocktail to-morrow morning?”
“I’m not sure,” was the doubtful reply. “I may go up and have a look at my villa. See you before long, anyway, though.”
The two men parted. Luke Cheyne went on to the end of the passage, stepped into the waiting lift and made a brief descent. He tipped the boy and glanced towards the empty chair where the fireman generally sat.
“Where’s Tom to-night?” he asked.
“Off duty, I expect, sir. It’s past four o’clock and there’s scarcely any one left in the club.”
Cheyne nodded and walked on. A few yards and he was around the corner. He could see now to the end of the passage and he noticed that the lift was not there in waiting. Somehow or other, the journey down the carpeted way seemed longer than usual to-night. It came to an end, however, in due course. The lift was still absent and Cheyne pushed the bell. Nothing happened. As a rule, one heard almost immediately the banging of the gate upstairs and the rattle of the lift on its way down. This time there was no response. Cheyne glanced at his watch and yawned. Perhaps the boy had gone to sleep. In any case, it was only a couple of flights up the winding stair. He turned to the left and began to climb. He had swung around the first curve and his foot was on the next when suddenly the lights behind him and in front went out and he found himself in complete darkness. Almost simultaneously there was a terrible pain in his left side, a sharp sound no louder than that of a child’s popgun, another spasm of pain. His knees crumpled up beneath him….
The electrician found him about a quarter of an hour later, lying like a man who had fallen backwards and broken his neck. There were two small holes in his shirtfront exactly over the heart and his pockets were empty.
CHAPTER V
It was Roger Sloane who gave the luncheon party at the Hôtel de Paris on the morning of Luke Cheyne’s funeral. Lord Bradley, however, did most of the talking. The guests consisted of Mr. Terence Brown, a Major Thornton introduced by the former as liaison officer between a certain branch of the Foreign Office and Scotland Yard, who had come down to Marseilles in charge of some Indian princes and was having a few weeks’ holiday in Monte Carlo before returning, Prince Savonarilda, Erskine and Bradley. The latter would have liked to have made a more formal affair of the gathering but was overruled.
“After all, you know,” Roger pointed out, as he tasted the vodka which was being served with the caviar, “there’s no harm in talking over anything we want to at luncheon. The police here might get raw with us if we held anything in the shape of a meeting.”
“The lad is right, without a doubt,” Terence Brown observed, making secret signs to the waiter to indicate an unsatisfied appetite for caviar. “The authorities here are touchy. Very touchy sometimes.”
“That’s all very well,” Lord Bradley commented guardedly, “but we’re the people who keep the place going and we’ve got to have a word or two to say sometimes. For instance,” he went on, “we none of us want to find fault with the laws of the Principality or the policy of the Casino, but we have to look after ourselves. The policy of the Casino dictates that every crime which happens should be covered up, so far as possible, and given as little prominence in the news as may be. The police and the Press are hand in glove with the administration.”
“That’s all very well, so far as regards suicides,” Terence Brown pointed out; “but when it comes to the case of the murder of a friend like Luke Cheyne, something has got to be done about it. It’s an ugly thought that a man can be murdered and robbed of half a million francs in this very hotel and that the murderer can get away with it. What do you think, Major Thornton? You’re the man who has had experience in such matters.”
Thornton was lean and grey, slow of speech, with steely blue eyes and a strangely shaped mouth, owing to his long upper lip. His voice was soft and pleasant. He had the air of an absent-minded man—which he certainly was not.
“Well, there isn’t much to be said just now, is there?” he remarked. “I can tell you this, if it is of any interest. We know for a fact in London, and they know it in Paris too, that a larger number of criminals than usual—mostly internationals—are working along the coast between Biarritz and San Remo. The French police are on to them in Nice and Marseilles. This little spot we’re in at present always seems to me a trifle unguarded. I don’t like their police methods and I tell you so frankly.”
“Tell us what you find fault with chiefly, Major Thornton?” Terence Brown enquired.
Thornton sipped his wine and found it of a pleasant flavour.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he confided. “The murder, as most of us know, took place on the stairs by the last lift, but the body was discovered by the police, when they arrived, in Mr. Cheyne’s bedroom, with a revolver lying upon the carpet, from which the shots might have been fired but certainly were not! This, I suppose, was done to suggest suicide. It was a clumsy effort and, of course, makes the discovery of the criminal more difficult.”
“What about the half million francs?” Erskine asked.
“There wasn’t a mille note left,” Thornton replied. “Although, when enquiries were made, it transpired that Mr. Cheyne had a large balance at the bank here and a larger one still in Paris, not a word of this appeared in the Press.”
“Going a trifle too far, you know,” Lord Bradley muttered.
“Furthermore,” Thornton continued, “the lad who was chloroformed whilst asleep in the chair by the side of the lift was summarily dismissed by the hotel authorities for inattention to duties and has disappeared. I make no comment upon that fact, but he has disappeared.”
“Disgraceful!” Erskine exclaimed.
Terence Brown leaned across the table. He was a handsome, elderly man who had once been a great beau, American by birth but a thorough cosmopolitan. He was probably amongst the most popular visitors to the Principality.
“As I daresay you all know,” he said, “I am a great supporter of the administration here. I know intimately most of the officials of the place and I admit frankly that I love Monte Carlo. Ugly things happen here sometimes. Suicides, for example. When they do happen, I am all for the policy of the authorities. I believe in keeping them quiet. I believe in hushing them up. In my experience, the class of person who commits suicide here would be just as likely to do it anywhere else, if he had losses on the Stock Exchange or horse racing.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, Terence,” Lord Bradley admitted.
“It’s a very reasonable point of view, anyhow,” Erskine observed.
“But,” Terence Brown continued, shaking his forefinger, “when it comes to a murder like this—of a man we all knew, too—it’s a horse of a different colour. I disagree with the official attitude altogether and I don’t mind telling you gentlemen that I have called upon some influential friends of mine