The Prisoner in the Mask Page 44

  I pray daily that God will bless you and have you in His holy keeping.

  With true affection,

  Always your devoted friend,

  François de Vendôme.’

  As de Quesnoy ceased reading Angela exclaimed, ‘The Golden Fleece! Why, to receive that, or the Garter, is the greatest honour in the whole world. Oh, how glad I am for you!’ And with shining eyes she threw her arms round his neck.

  When he had returned her kiss, he murmured, ‘I am quite overwhelmed; and so will be my father. I fear that I am a far from satisfactory son; but this great honour that has been done me will make amends to him for many of my shortcomings. I think, too, that by behaving with such generosity François has proved himself a true Prince. Although, really, he owes his escape nearly as much to you as to myself.’

  ‘Surely I told you,’ she laughed. ‘He sent me a miniature of himself set in brilliants, and a parure of diamonds worth a small fortune, soon after he arrived safely in Spain. But that is ten months ago now, and since your return there have been so many other things to talk of on the few occasions we’ve been together.’

  ‘That was good of him, but no more than you deserved. His letter gives me an idea, though. Why should we not go to Spain and combine my investiture with the Fleece and our stolen honeymoon?’

  ‘How could we? For the investiture you would have to go to court under your own name.’

  ‘Of course and you would go there under yours too. As you played so prominent a part in Francois’s escape, what could be more natural than that you should be invited to attend the ceremony at which I am to receive a reward for my part in it?’

  ‘But we could not possibly outrage convention by sharing a suite at an hotel; so it would be a poor sort of honeymoon.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he laughed. ‘We’d observe the conventions by day while being shown all the sights under the aegis of royalty, and spend our nights in one another’s arms.’

  ‘Darling, you’re joking. We couldn’t have it both ways.’

  ‘We could. Don’t you realise that François is one of the few people we could trust with our secret, and that he would do anything for us. I should write to him in advance. Like most of the rich nobles in Madrid, he must own several petites maisons staffed with discreet servants. He could easily arrange for you to occupy one of them while I stayed officially with him; but spend all the time we were not being entertained, and my nights, with you.’

  While they got out some tinned things for their picnic supper, and sat down to it, they gaily discussed this delightful plan. But after a while their gaiety ebbed from them owing to the intrusion of worrying thoughts about the present. Angela could no longer keep her mind free of the crisis facing the husband whom she despised yet pitied, while de Quesnoy became increasingly conscious of the incredibly harassing situation in which he must leave her, and the knowledge that the plan they had been making was indeed a ‘Castle in Spain’; for he had no idea how long it would be before he even saw her again.

  It was towards the end of their meal that she remarked, ‘Oh, telling you about Gabriel’s having received a challenge from de Vauclose and the letter from François made me forget to give you a message from Channock. He asked me to tell you not to worry, but he thought you ought to know that the draft that was due on Friday to repay the loan he made you has not yet reached his bank.’

  De Quesnoy sat back and stared at her. His brain was working quickly, and after a moment he asked, ‘Can you remember the exact words Laveriac used to Syveton this evening—when he threatened him, I mean?’

  ‘It was to do with the Ligue,’ Angela replied, knitting her brows. ‘Yes, he snapped out something like this: “It is over a week since I asked you for an explanation. There were ample funds at the Ligue’s disposal and this payment should have been made from them. The Committee has a right to know why you refused it. You will produce your accounts for us within forty-eight hours or we shall force you to by legal action”—or words to that effect.’

  ‘So that is it,’ the Count raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘This charming husband of yours does not stop at much, does he? Unless I am greatly mistaken he has let me in for the tidy sum of forty thousand francs.’

  ‘How has he done that?’ Angela asked with a frown.

  ‘You will remember that I bought the fiches from Bidegain for that figure, but I don’t think I told you where the money came from. Naturally I expected the Ligue to finance the deal; so I asked Syveton for the money. He said that the Ligue could not find such an amount in less than a week, and suggested that, as the matter was urgent, I might raise it from Van Ryn. I did, and Syveton promised that the loan should be repaid on Friday, November 1st. Today is Tuesday 5th and the money has not yet come in. Can you guess why?’

  ‘It looks as if Gabriel has been doing something crooked.’

  ‘Yes, and this is what must have happened. When I handed over the fiches to Laveriac and de Villeneuve I mentioned that I had found the money to pay for them because Syveton could not let me have it right away. Evidently if the Ligue’s affairs had been in order he should have been able to do so; and the fact that he hadn’t struck Laveriac as curious. A day or two later the General evidently tackled him about it, but did not receive a satisfactory explanation. Apparently Laveriac then reported it to the Committee, and probably one of them has heard a rumour that Syveton is in low water. Anyhow, they sent the General to Syveton tonight with an ultimatum. And, of course, the reason why he could not pay me, or explain matters to the General, is because, as Treasurer of the Ligue de la Pairie Française, he has been embezzling its funds.’

  ‘You mean that he has been putting them to his own use?’

  ‘Exactly!’ The Count finished his last spoonful of pineapple and stood up. There was a dangerous gleam in his grey, yellow-flecked eyes as he said tersely, ‘And now I am going across to the house to make him pay up or take the consequences.’

  25

  ‘THERE IS MANY A SLIP …’

  As de Quesnoy rose from the table, Angela gave an anxious glance at his grim face, then she too stood up.

  ‘Must you, Armand?’ she asked a shade hesitantly. ‘I know it is a terrible thing to have done; but today Gabriel has had as much as he can bear—the writ for assaulting General André, a challenge to a duel and this visit from Laveriac—which I realise must be worrying him more than all else.’

  ‘My dear, forty thousand francs is a lot of money. It is considerably more than my annual income. Fortunately, I am rich enough to repay Van Ryn out of my own resources, but I see no reason why I should allow this miserable swindler to rob me of it with impunity.’

  ‘Darling, I understand how you feel; but in England we have a thing about not hitting a man when he is down, and Gabriel—’

  ‘In France we are not altogether ignorant of the rules of chivalry,’ he cut her short with unaccustomed sharpness, ‘and it is not I who has laid him low. Were it possible, to please you, I would give him a few days’ grace; but as I hope to leave Paris for good tomorrow, it is not. By confronting him now there is a chance that I might get from him bills for the amount spread over a period, which I could sell in London at a big discount. “Half a loaf,” as they say, “is better than no bread”; but if I lose this opportunity I doubt if I will ever see back a single sou.’

  Reluctantly, Angela accompanied him downstairs and across the garden to the house. Outside the conservatory they halted, and she said: ‘God knows, I hold no brief for Gabriel, but I much prefer not to witness his humilation; so I shall go straight up to my room. As we have said all we can for the time being about the future, I think we had better say good-bye here.’

  He was loath to let her go; but he could not help feeling that, by carrying her loyalty to her husband to such quixotic lengths, she was being unfair to him, and that his resolve to confront Syveton in his present harassed state had driven a further wedge between them; so that if they met again in the pavilion later he had no hope of per
suading her to give him a definite date when she would come to him.

  In consequence, after a moment’s thought, he agreed. They embraced and kissed, but without fervour on either side. She said that all her thoughts and prayers would be with him on his journey, and that should the Clothilde affaire become an open scandal, or Syveton be forced into bankruptcy, she would not delay a single day longer in seeing her lawyers about an annulment. Then they went into the conservatory.

  She tiptoed straight through it and out by the far door. He waited until she had disappeared, then emerged from behind the pot plants and stepped up to the glass side door that gave on to Syveton’s study. The Deputy was seated at his desk poring over a mass of papers.

  As de Quesnoy pushed open the door and entered the room he sprang to his feet; his mouth fell open, his face went white and he cried:

  ‘Merciful God! You!’

  His instant reaction of fear and surprise caused something to click in the Count’s brain. Like a curtain being drawn swiftly aside to reveal a lighted room, he saw now the complete answer to the riddle over which he had puzzled so fruitlessly that morning in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied with sinister quietness. ‘You did not expect to see me again, did you?’

  ‘I … I thought you had been arrested,’ Syveton stammered.

  ‘You mean, you hoped that I had,’ the Count corrected him.

  ‘No, no! But I heard … I was told—’

  ‘You were told nothing. Otherwise you would have known that I escaped. But you expected me to be arrested, because it was you who laid an information with the police that I was living under the name of Vasili Petrovitch at the Pension Smirnoff.’

  ‘I deny it!’ Syveton cried desperately. ‘You must be mad! Why should I betray you?’

  ‘That is easy to answer. You did so in the hope of saving yourself from being sued by me for the forty thousand francs that you have failed to pay into my account at Van Ryn’s bank.’

  ‘There has been a hitch. The investments took longer to sell than I anticipated. You shall have the money next week. I swear to you. I swear—’

  ‘I will spare you that trouble. I require your cheque for the full amount here and now.’

  Syveton’s hands trembled, and he gasped, ‘I cannot give it to you! It would be useless. The bank would not honour it.’

  De Quesnoy laughed, but his laugh was not a pleasant one. ‘No, I don’t suppose they would. You are at the end of your tether, aren’t you? Having run through your own money, you embezzled the funds of the Ligue. That is why you could not produce the forty thousand francs from the Fighting Fund to pay for the fiches.’

  ‘How … how do you know that?’

  ‘Never mind. I take it that you have been fumbling round this evening in a last attempt to raise enough to square the accounts of the Ligue. But you knew that you could not put them right and also repay me; so you decided to get me out of the way. That is the truth of the matter; isn’t it?’ De Quesnoy’s hypnotic stare held Syveton as that of a snake holds a bird, forcing confession from him.

  ‘Yes,’ he faltered, tears starting to his eyes. ‘Yes; I had to have time … time to get straight. So that I could continue to—’

  ‘Continue to enjoy life while I rotted in prison,’ the Count cut in acidly.

  ‘No, no; you wrong me there! With the fall of the Government I would have had the power to get you out.’

  ‘After I had been convicted of conspiracy against the Republic? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I could have arranged a pardon. I would have—’

  ‘It is you who will soon need one; but you’ll not get it. You are finished. Combes has not gone under yet. He’ll see to it that you get a prison sentence for having assaulted André. Monsieur de Vauclose is after your blood, and good luck to him. If you fail to square the accounts of the Ligue they’ll be after you too. It will be the end of you with the Committee, and they’ll throw you out of the party for the dirty swindler that you are.’

  Syveton groaned. ‘It was to save myself with them that I … that I was tempted to sacrifice you.’

  ‘So that if Combes falls France might have at least one crook in her new Ministry, eh?’

  ‘You have a right to be bitter, but not unjust. I sought nothing for myself.’

  ‘Liar!’ cried de Quesnoy. ‘During your whole life you have thought of no one but yourself.’

  ‘That is not true!’ the Deputy shouted back; and, his eyes glittering with fanaticism, he suddenly launched out into a tirade of self-justification.

  ‘Today I am a ruined man; but why? Because I neglected my inheritance to work for the cause. My time, my money, everything, I gave to fight socialism and atheism. I could have remained rich and idle but I flung myself into the struggle, speaking, writing, organising; so that right might triumph over wickedness and corruption. No one in the Party works as hard as I do, and no one understands its ramifications so well. That is why I had to save myself at whatever cost to my conscience and to you. The Party cannot afford to lose me. We are now within an ace of the victory for which I have striven for so long. But to achieve it we must still fight on. For me to allow myself to be dismissed from the councils of the Party because I lacked a miserable few thousand francs would have been the basest treachery to it. I have placed patriotism before honour.’

  ‘So that is how you see yourself.’ De Quesnoy’s words came as cold and cutting as ice. ‘It is then time that the mask of hypocrisy was torn from your mind, and I will tell you how others will see you in a week’s time.

  ‘Not patriotism but ambition has been the lodestar of your life. And it was a personal ambition that had in it no urge to serve the State. What you craved was to exchange the bourgeois circle into which you were born for one in which you could fool yourself that you were the equal of people of good breeding—however shallow or stupid many of those people might be. You were born both gifted and vicious. Your good brain earned you a professorial chair, the ability to lecture fluently and to write convincingly. I doubt if you have any genuine political convictions, but you were quick to realise that if you placed your talents at the service of the Monarchist party they might bring you into touch with men of title. Of your vices we will speak in a moment. When you inherited your fortune there was no question of continuing to live in modest comfort and devoting a great part of it to the Monarchist Fighting Fund. Oh no; you took a big house and used it as a ladder to climb into society. That is where your money went; in that and in ruining a whole succession of young girls. Snobbery and the moral corruption of the innocent have been your governing impulses. So morally debased are you that you could not even keep in check your lust for your son’s wife.’

  ‘I … I deny it,’ Syveton protested feebly.

  ‘To do so is useless. But I am not concerned with Clothilde. It is of Angela that I still have something to say. In purchasing her from her parents, which is virtually what you did, you served both your secret passions at one stroke. She was at the same time a stepping-stone to an exclusive circle that you had not then penetrated and a new victim on which to slake your sexual obsession. When I think of what she suffered at your hands I could kill you with as little compunction as I would kill a rat.’

  Syveton’s eyes lit with new hope, and he muttered thickly, ‘You have always wanted her. Take her then! Take her away with you and provided you make no more trouble for me I’ll do everything I can to help her secure the annulment she desires.’

  ‘I would,’ snapped the Count. ‘But out of quixotic loyalty she will not go. I must therefore be content with that for which I came—my money. Sit down now and write a cheque payable to me for forty thousand francs.’

  ‘I have already told you that it would not be met.’

  ‘No matter; write it all the same. If you refuse I shall do two things. First, send an account to the Committee of how you have swindled me; secondly, send an account to the Public Prosecutor of how I found you in the pavilion w
ith Clothilde in a negligee, and accuse you of immoral relations with her.’

  ‘You … you mean to ruin me anyway.’

  When de Quesnoy had come there, he had had no idea of going to such lengths; but on learning how Syveton had betrayed him to the police he had felt fully justified in taking the gloves off. With Syveton ruined Angela would, he knew, keep her promise and be in England within a week. Untroubled now by the least scruple, he nodded and said:

  ‘Yes. That is my intention.’

  ‘Nom de diable! You shall not,’ the Deputy cried. ‘You forget that you, too, are walking on a razor’s edge.’

  As he spoke he wrenched open a drawer in his desk, snatched a revolver from it, and pointed it at the Count.

  ‘Now!’ he snarled. ‘We will see who is to be ruined first; you or I!’ Then, side-stepping cautiously, he fumbled with his left hand until it found the handle of the china bell-pull by the chimney-piece. Grasping it, he jerked it down once, twice, thrice.

  De Quesnoy was some feet away from him, and he was clearly desperate. His eyes gleamed with an unnatural light which showed the overwrought state of his mind. To have rushed him would have been to court death or, at that close range, nothing less than a serious wound. Furious with himself for not having foreseen the possibility of some such move, the Count could only remain where he was, speculating wildly on how Syveton meant to make use of his advantage.

  He was not left long in doubt. It was not yet half-past ten; so Octave was still on duty. In answer to the imperative summons of the bell, the butler’s quick footsteps sounded in the corridor. A moment later he entered the room. With a startled glance, he took in the situation. Syveton, still keeping his eyes on the Count, spat out the words:

  ‘In spite of his workman’s clothes, you may remember this … this gentleman.’

  Octave stared at the ill-clad figure on the far side of the desk, then exclaimed, ‘Why yes, Monsieur. It is Monsieur le Comte de Quesnoy.’