Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

The young man got up from his chair.

He had no poker face. The atmosphere about him was so desperately embarrassed that the fair-haired girl spoke.

“Leaving, Mr Winton?” she asked.

“Er – yes,” said Mr Winton. He seemed grateful for that little help thrown into his disquiet. He seized at it; he smiled back at her. “No luck yet. Time to get a drink and offer up prayers for the next session.”

(Look here, thought Jerry Winton, why stand here explaining? It’s not serious. You’ll get out of it, even if it does mean a nasty bit of trouble. They all know you’re broke. Stop standing here laughing like a gawk, and get away from the table. He looked into the eyes of the fair-haired girl, and wished he hadn’t been such an ass.)

“Get a drink,” he repeated.

He strode away from the table with (imagined) laughter following him. The sleek young man had lifted a moon-face and merely looked at him in a way that roused Jerry Winton’s wrath.

Curse La Bandelette and baccarat and everything else.

“There,” reflected the croupier, “is a young man who will have trouble with his hotel. Banco? Six mille. Banco? ”

In the bar, which adjoined the casino-rooms, Jerry Winton crawled up on one of the high stools, called for an Armagnac, and pushed his last hundred-franc note across the counter. His head was full of a row of figures written in the spidery style of France. His hotel-bill for a week would come to – what? Four, five, six thousand francs? It would be presented to-morrow, and all he had was his return ticket to London by plane.

In the big mirror behind the bar a new image emerged from the crowd. It was that of the fat, sleek, oily-faced young man who had cleaned up such a packet at the table, and who was even now fingering his wallet lovingly before he put it away. He climbed up on a stool beside Jerry. He called for mineral water: how shrewd and finicky-crafty these expert gamblers were! He relighted the stump of a cigar in one corner of his mouth.

Then he spoke.

“Broke?” he inquired off-handedly.

Jerry Winton glared at his reflection in the mirror.

“I don’t see,” Jerry said, with a slow and murderous choosing of words, “that that’s anybody’s business except mine.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the stranger, in the same unpleasantly off-handed tone. He took several puffs at his cigar; he drank a little mineral water. He added: “I expect it’s pretty serious, though? Eh?”

“If the matter,” said Jerry, turning round, “is of so much interest to you: no, it’s not serious. I have plenty of money back home. The trouble is that this is Friday night, and I can’t get in touch with the bank until Monday.” Though this was quite true, he saw the other’s fishy expression grow broader. “It’s a damned nuisance, because they don’t know me at the hotel. But a nuisance is all it is. If you think I’m liable to go out in the garden and shoot myself, stop thinking it.”

The other smiled sadly and fishily, and shook his head.

“You don’t say? I can’t believe that, now can I?”

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“You should care,” said his companion, unruffled. As Jerry slid down from the stool, he reached out and tapped Jerry on the arm. “Don’t be in such a rush. You say you’re a boy Croesus. All right: you’re a boy Croesus. I won’t argue with you. But tell me: how’s your nerve?”

“My what?”

“Your nerve. Your courage,” explained his companion, with something like a sneer. Jerry Winton looked back at the bland, self-assured face poised above the mineral water. His companion’s feet were entangled with the legs of the bar-stool; his short upper lip was lifted with acute self-confidence; and a blank eye jeered down.

“I thought I’d ask,” he pursued. “My name is Davos, Ferdie Davos. Everybody knows me.” He swept his hand towards the crowd. “How’d you like to make ten thousand francs?”

“I’d like it a whole lot. But I don’t know whether I’d like to make it out of any business of yours.”

Davos was unruffled. “It’s no good trying to be on your dignity with me. It don’t impress me and it won’t help you. I still ask: how would you like to make ten thousand francs? That would more than cover what you owe or are likely to owe, wouldn’t it? I thought so. Do you or don’t you want to make ten thousand francs?

“Yes, I do,” Jerry snarled back.

“All right. See a doctor.”

“ What? ”

“See a doctor,” Davos repeated coolly. “A nerve tonic is what you want: pills. No, I’m not wise-cracking. “He looked at the clock, whose hands stood at five minutes to eleven. “Go to this address – listen carefully while I tell you – and there’ll be ten thousand in it for you. Go to this address in about an hour. No sooner, no later. Do your job properly, and there may be even more than ten thousand in it for you. Number two, Square St Jean, Avenue des Phares, in about an hour. We’ll see how your nerve is then.”

La Bandelette, “the fillet,” that strip of silver beach along the channel, is full of flat-roofed and queerly painted houses which give it the look of a town in a Walt Disney film. But the town itself is of secondary consideration. The English colony, which is of a frantic fashionableness, lies among great trees behind. Close to the Casino de la Forêt are three great hotels, gay with awning and piling sham Gothic turrets into the sky. The air is aromatic; open carriages clop and jingle along broad avenues; and the art of extracting money from guests has become so perfected that we find our hands going to our pockets even in sleep.

This sleep is taken by day. By night, when La Bandelette is sealed up except for the Casino, the beam of the great island lighthouse sweeps the streets. It dazzles and then dies, once every twenty seconds. And, as Jerry Winton strode under the trees towards the Avenue of the Lighthouses, its beam was beginning to be blurred by rain.

Square St Jean, Avenue des Phares. Where? And why?

If Davos had approached him in any other way, Jerry admitted to himself, he would have paid no attention to it. But he was annoyed and curious. Besides, unless there were a trick in it, he could use ten thousand francs. There was probably a trick in it. But who cared?

It was the rain that made him hesitate. He heard it patter in the trees, and deepen to a heavy rustling, as he saw the signboard pointing to the Avenue des Phares. He was without hat or coat. But by this time he meant to see the thing through.

Ahead of him was a street of fashionable villas, lighted by mere sparks of gas. An infernally dark street. Something queer, and more than queer, about this. Total strangers didn’t ask you how strong your nerves were, and then offer you ten thousand francs on top of it, for any purpose that would pass the customs. Which was all the more reason why…

Then he saw Davos.

Davos did not see him. Davos was ahead of him, walking fast and with little short steps along the dim street. The white beam of the lighthouse shone out overhead, turning the rain to silver; and Jerry could see the gleam of his polished black hair and the light tan topcoat he was now wearing. Pulling up the collar of his dinner-jacket, Jerry followed.

A few yards farther on Davos slackened his pace. He peered round and up. On his left was the entrance to a courtyard, evidently the Square St Jean. But to call it a “square” was noble overstatement; it was only a cul-de-sac some twenty feet wide by forty feet deep.

Two of its three sides were merely tall, blank brick walls. The third side, on the right, was formed of a tall flat house all of whose windows were closely shuttered. But there was at least a sign of life about the house. Over its door burned a dim white globe, showing that there was a doctor’s brass name-plate beside the door. A sedate house with blue-painted shutters in the bare cul-de-sac – and Davos was making for it.