Charles Norris Williamson - British Murder Mysteries – 10 Novels in One Volume

" L'Amour s'en va ," he chuckled, pointing to the half-obliterated figure. " N'est pas? " and he turned to me for confirmation. "I don't know yet," I answered.

"Mademoiselle is very fortunate—but very young," said the dear old gentleman, looking like a late eighteenth-century portrait as he smiled under his high hat. "And what thinks monsieur?"

"That it is better not to give him a chance to fly away, by keeping the door shut against him in the beginning," replied Mr. Dane, as coldly as if he kept his heart on ice.

Sunset was fading, like Love on the mosaic, when we came to the amphitheatre; but the sky was still stained red, and each great arch of stone framed a separate ruby. It was a strange effect, almost sinister in its splendour, and all the air was rose-coloured.

"Is it a good omen or an evil one for our future?" I asked.

"Means storms, I think," the chauffeur answered in the laconic way he affects sometimes, but there was an odd smile in his eyes, almost like defiance—of me, or of Fate. I didn't know which but I should have liked to know.

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The wind sang me to sleep that night in Nîmes—sang in my dreams, and sang me awake when morning turned a white searchlight on my eyelids.

I was glad to see sunshine, for this was the day of our flight into the north, and if the sky frowned on the enterprise Lady Turnour might frown too, in spite of Bertie and his château.

It was cold, and I trembled lest the word "snow" should be dropped by the bridegroom into the ear of the bride; but nothing was said of the weather or of any change in the programme, while I and paint and powder and copper tresses were doing what Nature had refused to do for her ladyship.

"Cold morning, madame!" remarked the porter, who came to bring more wood for the sitting-room fire before breakfast. He was a polite and pleasant man, but I could have boxed his ears. "Madame departs to-day in her automobile? Is it to go south or north? Because in the north—"

With great presence of mind I dropped a pile of maps and guide-books.

"What a clumsy creature you are!" exclaimed her ladyship, playing into my hands. "I couldn't understand the last part of what he said."

Luckily by this time the man was gone; and my memory of his words was extraordinarily vague. But a dozen things contrived to keep me in suspense. Every one who came near Lady Turnour had something to say about the weather. Then, for the first time, it occurred to the Aigle to play a trick upon us. Just as the luggage was piled in, after numerous little delays, she cast a shoe; in other words, burst a tyre, apparently without any reason except a mischievous desire to be aggravating. Another half hour wasted! And fat, silvery clouds were poking up their great white heads over the horizon in the north, where, perhaps, they were shaking out powder.

The next thing that happened was a snap and a tinkle in our inner workings, rather like the sound you might expect if a giantess dropped a hairpin. "Chain broken!" grumbled the chauffeur, as he stopped the car on the level of a long, straight road, and jumped nimbly down. "We oughtn't to have boasted yesterday."

"Who's superstitious now?" I taunted him, as he searched the tool-box in the same way a child ransacks a Christmas stocking.

"Oh, about motor-cars! That's a different thing," said he calmly. "Cold, isn't it? My fingers are so stiff they feel as if they were all thumbs."

"Et tu, Brute," I wailed. "For goodness ' sake, don't let her hear you. She's capable even now of turning back. The invitation to the château hasn't come—and we're not safely in the gorges yet."

"Nor shan't be soon, if this sort of thing keeps on," remarked the chauffeur. "We shall have to lunch at Alais."

"You say that as if it was the devil's kitchen."

"There's probably first rate cooking in the devil's kitchen; I'm not so sure about the inns at Alais."

"But it's arranged to picnic on the road to-day for the first time, you know. They put up such good things at Nîmes, and I was to make coffee in the tea-basket."

"That's why I wanted to get on. Picnic country doesn't begin till after Alais. Who could lunch on a dull roadside like this? Only a starving tramp wouldn't get indigestion."

It was true, and I began to detest the unknown Alais. Perhaps, after all, we might sweep through the place, I thought, without the idea of lunch occurring to the passengers. But Mr. Dane's heart-to-heart talk with the Aigle resulted in quite a lengthy argument; and no sooner did a town group itself in the distance than Sir Samuel knocked on the glass behind us.

"What place is this?" he asked.

"Alais," was the answer the chauffeur made with his lips, while his eyebrows said "I told you so!" to me.

"I think we'd better lunch here," Sir Samuel went on. And the arrival of a princely blue motor car at the nearest inn was such a shock to the nerves of the landlady and her staff that the interval before lunch was as long and solemn as the Dead March in Saul. To show what he could do in an emergency, the chef slaughtered and cooked every animal within reach for miles around.

They appeared in a procession, according to their kind, when necessary disguised in rich and succulent sauces which did credit to the creator's imagination; and there were reserve forces of cakes, preserves, and puddings, all of which coldly furnished forth the servants' meal when they had served our betters.

It was nearly three o'clock when we were ready to leave Alais, and the chauffeur had on his bronze-statue expression as he took his seat beside me after starting the car.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Nothing," said he, "except that I don't know where we're likely to lay our heads to-night."

"Where do you want to lay them?" I inquired flippantly. "Any gorge will do for mine."

"It won't for Lady Turnour's. But it may have to, and in that case she will probably snap yours off."

"Cousin Catherine has often told me it was of no use to me, except to show my hair. But aren't there hotels in the gorge of the Tarn?"

"There are in summer, but they're not open yet, and the inns—well, if Fate casts us into one, Lady Turnour will have a fit. My idea was: a splendid run through some of the wildest and most wonderful scenery of France—little known to tourists, too—and then to get out of the Tarn region before dark. We may do it yet, but if we have any more trouble—"

He didn't finish the sentence, because, as if he had been calling for it, the trouble came. I thought that an invisible enemy had fired a revolver at us from behind a tree, but it was only a second tyre, bursting out loud, instead of in a ladylike whisper, like the other.

Down got Mr. Dane, with the air of a condemned criminal who wants every one to believe that he is delighted to be hanged. Down got I also, to relieve the car of my weight during the weird process of "jacking up," though the chauffeur assured me that I didn't matter any more than a fly on the wheel. Our birds of paradise remained in their cage, however, Lady Turnour glaring whenever she caught a glimpse of the chauffeur's head, as if he had bitten that hole in the tyre. But before us loomed mountains—disagreeable-looking mountains—more like embonpoints growing out of the earth's surface than ornamental elevations. On the tops there was something white, and I preferred having Lady Turnour glare at the chauffeur, no matter how unjustly, than that her attention should be caught by that far, silver glitter.

Suddenly my brother paused in his work, unbent his back, stood up, and regarded his thumb with as much intentness as if he were an Indian fakir pledged to look at nothing else for a stated number of years. He pinched the nail, shook his hand, and then, abandoning it as an object of interest, was about to inflate the mended tyre when I came forward.