THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume)
past! And I knew equally well that before I tapped at her door a little later she had examined the contents of the blue bag to make sure that I had extracted nothing. How I pity the long procession of "slaveys" who must have followed each other drearily in that lodging-house under the landlady's jurisdiction. They, poor dears, could have had no chauffeur friends to save them from daily perils, and it isn't likely that their mistress allowed such luxuries as postmen or policemen.
Chapter XI
I decided to have my breakfast very early next morning, and would have thought it a coincidence that Mr. Dane should walk into the couriers' room at the same time if he hadn't coolly told me that he had been lying in wait for me to appear.
"I thought, for several reasons, you would be early," he said. "So, for all the same reasons and several more, I thought I'd be early too. I had to know what the situation was to be."
"The situation?" I repeated blankly.
"Between us. Am I to understand that we've quarrelled?"
"We had," I said. "But even on good grounds, it's difficult to keep on quarrelling with a person who has not only brought up your dinner and sauced it with good advice, but saved you from—from the dickens of a scrape."
"I hope she didn't row you any more afterward?"
"No. She was too much interested, all the time I was undressing her, in speculating about Monsieur Charretier to Sir Samuel. It seems that they struck up an acquaintance over their coffee on the strength of a little episode in the hall.
"Inadvertently I introduced them—threw them at each others' heads. Monsieur Charretier—Alphonse, as he once asked me to call him!—told her he was on his way to Cannes, where he heard that a friend of his, whom it was very necessary for him to see, was visiting a Russian Princess. He had stopped in Avignon, he said, because he was expecting the latest news of the friend, a change of address, perhaps; and—I don't know who proposed it, but anyway he arranged to go with Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour to the Palace of the Popes at ten o'clock. Her ladyship was quite taken with him, and remarked to Sir Samuel that there was nothing so fascinating as a French gentleman of the haut monde. Also she pronounced his broken English 'sweet.' She wondered if he was married, and whether the friend in Cannes was a woman or a man. Little did she know that her maid could have enlightened her! Their joining forces here is, as my American friend Pamela would say, 'the limit.'"
"Don't worry. The Palace of the Popes won't see him to-day," said the chauffeur. "He's gone. Got a telegram. Didn't even wait for letters, but told the manager to forward anything that came for him, Poste Restante, Genoa."
"Oh, then you—"
"Acted for you on my own responsibility. There was nothing else to do, if anything were to be done; and you'd seemed to fall in with my suggestion. It would have been a pity, I thought, if your visit to Avignon were to be spoiled by a thing like that."
"Meaning Monsieur Charretier? I hardly slept last night for dwelling on the pity of it."
"It's all right, then? I haven't put my foot into it?"
"Your foot! You've put your brains into it. You said the other night that I had presence of mind. It was nothing to yours."
"All's forgotten and forgiven, then?"
"It's forgotten that there was anything to forgive."
"And the 'motor maid' business? You didn't think it too clumsy?"
"I thought it most ingenious."
"It wasn't a lie, you know. I haven't a happy talent for lying. I do, or rather did when I had nothing else on hand, send occasional sketches to a paper. But the more I look at my 'motor maid,' the more I feel I should like to keep her—in my sketch-book—if you're willing I should have her?"
"Then I don't get my promised five shillings?" I laughed.
"I'll try and make up the loss to you in some other way."
"I have you to thank that I didn't lose my situation. So the debt is on my side."
"You owe me the scolding you got. I oughtn't to have lured you into the corridor."
"It was on my business. And there was no other way."
"It was my business to have thought of some other way."
"Are you your sister's keeper?"
"I wish I—Look here, mademoiselle ma soeur, I'm all out of repartees. Perhaps I shall be better after breakfast. I shall be able to eat, now that I know you've forgiven me."
"I don't believe you would care if I hadn't," I exclaimed. "You are so stolid, so phlegmatic, you Englishmen!"
"Do you think so? Well, it would have been a little awkward for me to have taken you about on a sightseeing expedition this morning if we were at daggers drawn—no matter how appropriate the situation might have been to Avignon manners of the Middle Ages, when everybody was either torturing everybody else or fighting to the death."
"Are you going to take me about?"
"That's for you to say."
"Isn't it for Lady Turnour to say?"
"Sir Samuel told me last night that I shouldn't be wanted till two o'clock, as he was going to see the town with her ladyship. He wanted to know if we could sandwich in something else this afternoon, as he considered a whole day too much for one place. I suggested Vaucluse for the afternoon, as it's but a short spin from Avignon, and I just happened to mention that her ladyship might find use for you there, to follow her to the fountain with extra wraps in case of mistral. I thought, of all places you'd hate to miss Vaucluse. And we're to come back here for the night."
I feared that Monsieur Charretier's sudden disappearance might upset the Turnours' plans, but Mr. Dane didn't think so. He had impressed it upon Sir Samuel that no motorist who had not thoroughly "done" Avignon and Vaucluse would be tolerated in automobiling circles.
He was right in his surmise, and though her ladyship was vexed at losing a new acquaintance whom it would have been "nice to know in Paris," she resigned herself for the morning to the society of husband and Baedeker. It was kind old Sir Samuel's proposal that I should be left free to do some sight-seeing on my own account while they were gone (I had meant to break my own shackles); and though my lady laughed to scorn the idea that a girl of my class should care for historical associations, she granted me liberty provided I utilized it in buying her certain stay-laces, shoe-strings, and other small horrors for which no woman enjoys shopping.
When she and Sir Samuel were out of the way, as safely disposed of as Monsieur Charretier himself, I felt so extravagantly happy in reaction, after all my worries, that I danced a jig in her ladyship's sacred bedchamber.
Then I prepared to start for my own personally conducted expedition; and this time I took no great pains to do my hair unbecomingly. Naturally, I didn't want to be a jarring note in harmonious Avignon, so I made myself look rather attractive for my jaunt with the chauffeur.
He was sauntering casually about the Place before the hotel, where long ago Marshal Brune was assassinated, and we walked away together as calmly as if we had been followed by a whole drove of well-trained chaperons. When one has joined the ranks of the lower classes, one might as well reap some advantages from the change!
"What we'll do," said Mr. Dane, "is to look first at all the things the Turnours are sure to look at last. By that plan we shall avoid them, and as I know my way about Avignon pretty well, you may set your mind at rest."
I can think of nothing more delightful than a day in Avignon, with an agreeable brother and—a mind at rest. I had both, and made the most of them.
When her ladyship's