her into his arms and found a very good way of ending a great deal of foolishness.
“He’ll make you a good husband, my dear,” Lady Julia declared later on that evening, in the salon of her villa. “His father was a good husband. I wish you could get him out of this place. I don’t like it. The Princess wanted me to go to Biarritz with her this afternoon and but for you two I think I should have gone.”
“Why don’t you?” Roger asked. “Jeannine and I could get married. I feel I must stick it out.”
“Nonsense!” his aunt protested. “When Jeannine gets married, she is married from my house. She is my ward—not yours. I am going to stick it out too. But, for heaven’s sake, stop this epidemic of robbing and killing. Why doesn’t your Scotland Yard man do something?”
“The poor fellow is doing his best,” Roger replied, “but just think how he’s handicapped. He hasn’t any authority. If the Monegasque police had listened to him about the Crowley murder, I believe we should have had the gang cornered by now.”
“Stay and dine,” Lady Julia invited him. “I don’t suppose there’s much to eat, but Dalmorres is coming. He’ll let you know what he thinks of you all down here.”
“Thank you—not to-night,” Roger refused firmly. “Jeannine and I stopped and engaged a corner table at the Sporting Club. First time I’ve ever dined alone with her.”
“Do you mind?” Jeannine asked Lady Julia a little shyly.
“Heavens, no, my dear! Take care of him, that’s all. By the by, you called to see Reggie, I suppose. How is he?”
“Better. But they won’t let us see him yet. Until we can ask him a few questions, we’re all at sea about the other night.”
“I should stay at sea if I were you,” Lady Julia advised. “I’ve sent all my jewels to the bank and I think I shall go to Corsica to-morrow or the next day.”
“On Dalmorres’ yacht?” Roger enquired with a grin.
“Scandalmonger!” his aunt exclaimed, shaking her stick at him. “If you can tear yourself away from your dîner à deux by eleven o’clock, I’ll drink your healths up in the bar. The place has become like a news agency. You get the latest information every ten minutes. What’s that, Grover?” Lady Julia went on, turning towards the butler. “Lord Dalmorres? Show him into the library. Give him a double cocktail. Curse you young people—making me late for my dinner!”
Lady Julia stumped off.
CHAPTER XV
Jeannine and Roger mounted from the dining room of the Sporting Club to the bar, arm in arm, and a riot of congratulations followed upon their entrance. Roger, however, after the first few minutes, left his companion with the Terence Browns and Maggie Saunders, and obeyed Thornton’s beckoning signal. The two men seated themselves in a retired corner of the inner bar.
“Should you think I was a rotter if I chucked my hand in, Sloane?” the latter asked.
“What’s wrong now?”
“I can’t make any headway here,” Thornton confessed. “No one wants the truth about anything. All that they want is silence. They will allow nothing to stand in the way of their routine. For instance, the pseudo Lord Erskine is already buried.”
“Without being identified?”
“Without being identified. I must say, though, that they have a wonderful system in what I should call a post-mortem identification.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, before he was buried, he was weighed, measured, photographed, every item of property in his pockets was tabulated and his clothes carefully preserved. You could find out, for instance, how many teeth he had and the exact position of a small mole on his chest. On the other hand, no description of him is being circulated, no word is being sent to the police at Nice, none of the hotel proprietors in this place or anywhere else are being notified. He is just dropped into the black pool…. It’s a system, all right, Sloane. I see their idea. It helps to keep this the playground of the world, but it doesn’t help the public or us to fight a band of criminals. You see, I can’t do myself justice, I can’t work on sound methods and I think, if you don’t mind, I’d rather slip out.”
“Promise me one thing,” Roger begged. “Don’t go until Pips Erskine can talk. I have an idea that he knows something. He ought to be able to put us on the right track, anyhow. It may not be more than a few days. Certainly not more than a week.”
“I’ll wait until then,” Thornton promised. “I warn you, though, that I’m going to take to golf. I came here for a holiday and I’ve been plunged into the most humiliating epoch of ineffective work the mind of man could conceive.”
“That’s all right,” Roger agreed. “I’d play you myself but I expect I shall be busy for the next few days.”
“Forgive me for being so late with my congratulations,” Thornton said. “The young lady is charming.”
“Glad you find her so,” Roger declared enthusiastically. “She seems to have hit it up pretty strong with all the crowd around here. They’d soon spoil her if she’d let them.”
“Considering what I have heard of her history,” Thornton observed, “she is certainly quite a remarkable personality. Your friend Erskine summed her up, I think, when he said that she had the knack of leaving you at the end of half an hour’s conversation exactly where you were when you began it.”
“She’s a great kid!” Roger declared happily.
“By the by,” Thornton enquired after a moment’s pause, “is it true that Lord Dalmorres is here?”
“Arrived this afternoon,” Roger assented. “Dining alone with my aunt to-night, the old rascal.”
“If he’s a great friend of yours,” Thornton advised, “I should give him a word of warning. Not that I think he’ll need it.”
“He’ll hear all about our troubles from Lady Julia. In any case, he’s not the man to take risks. He sleeps on his yacht and goes about generally with a whole retinue. If he got one of those letters, you’d see his smoke on the horizon in a couple of hours.”
“All the same,” Thornton meditated, “a word of warning wouldn’t come amiss. What are his habits? Does he gamble?”
“Occasionally,” Roger admitted. “But generally in the afternoon. I did see him win ten million once at baccarat about two o’clock in the morning. He came in after a big dinner party, without a cent in his pocket, and the chef put down a hundred thousand francs for him every time he nodded.”
“Interesting,” Thornton murmured. “A great ladies’ man too, isn’t he?”
“Has been,” Roger smiled. “I think he prefers to talk over his past triumphs nowadays. I expect that’s what he’s doing with my aunt this evening, as they haven’t turned up here.”
“A man whom it would be interesting to meet,” Thornton observed, polishing his monocle with his handkerchief. “I’ve heard a great deal of Lord Dalmorres in my time. He has had a wonderful career.”
“If he comes in,” Roger promised, “I’ll introduce you.”
The Right Honourable the Earl of Dalmorres was one of the few aristocrats who had also reached the highest honours in the legal world. He had held every office of distinction to which his profession entitled him, he had been famous for years as the most brilliant orator in the House of Lords, he had filled the position of Lord Chancellor with dignity and success, and at sixty-four years of age, on succeeding