Our heroine, Ann, knows too much about some scheme or other (I didn't feel like re-reading the whole book), and the perpetrators, Jeanne Leclerc, her maid Francine, and some guy named Espinosa, decide they're going to do something about that.
Ann slipped past him. She turned into a wing of the house which was quite deserted and silent. At the end of it a shut door confronted her. She opened it softly. It was all dark within. But enough light entered from the corridor to show her the high bookcases ranged against the walls, the position of the furniture, and some dark, heavy curtains at the end. She was the first, then, to come to the tryst. She closed the door behind her and moved slowly and cautiously forwards with her hands outstretched, until she felt the curtains yield. She passed in between them into the recess of a great bow-window opening on to the park; and a sound, a strange, creaking sound, brought her heart into her mouth.
Someone was already in the room, then. Somebody had been quietly watching as she came in from the lighted corridor. The sound grew louder. Ann peered between the curtains, holding them apart with shaking hands, and through that chink from behind her a vague twilight flowed into the room. In the far corner, near to the door, high up on a tall bookcase, something was clinging--something was climbing down. Whoever it was, had been hiding behind the ornamental top of the heavy mahogany bookcase; was now using the shelves like the rungs of a ladder.
Ann was seized with a panic. A sob broke from her throat. She ran for the door. But she was too late, A black figure dropped from the bookcase to the ground and, as Ann reached out her hands to the door, a scarf was whipped about her mouth, stifling her cry. She was jerked back into the room, but her fingers had touched the light switch by the door, and as she stumbled and fell, the room was lighted up. Her assailant fell upon her, driving the breath out of her lungs, and knotted the scarf tightly at the back of her head. Ann tried to lift herself, and recognized with a gasp of amazement that the assailant who pinned her down by the weight of her body and the thrust of her knees was Francine Rollard.
Her panic gave place to anger and a burning humiliation. She fought with all the strength of her supple body. But the scarf about her mouth stifled and weakened her, and with a growing dismay she understood that she was no match for the hardy peasant girl. She was the taller of the two, but her height did not avail her; she was like a child matched with a wild-cat. Francine's hands were made of steel. She snatched Ann's arms behind her back and bound her wrists, as she lay face downwards, her bosom labouring, her heart racing so that she felt that it must burst. Then, as Ann gave up the contest, she turned and tied her by the ankles.
Francine was upon her feet again in a flash. She ran to the door, opened it a little way and beckoned. Then she dragged her prisoner up on to a couch, and Jeanne Leclerc and Espinosa slipped into the room.
"It's done?" said Espinosa.
Francine laughed. "Ah, but she fought, the pretty baby! You should have given her the coffee. Then she would have walked with us. Now she must be carried. She's wicked, I can tell you."
Jeanne Leclerc twisted a lace scarf about the girl's face to hide the gag over her mouth, and, while Francine held her up, set her white cloak about her shoulders and fastened it in front. Espinosa then turned out the light and drew back the curtains.
The room was at the back of the house. In the front of the window the park stretched away. But it was the park of a French chateau, where the cattle feed up to the windows, and only a strip about the front terrace is devoted to pleasure-gardens and fine lawns. Espinosa looked out upon meadow-land thickly studded with trees, and cows dimly moving in the dusk of the summer night like ghosts. He opened the window, and the throb of the music from the ball-room came faintly to their ears.
"We must be quick," said Espinosa. He lifted the helpless girl in his arms and passed out into the park. They left the window open behind them, and between them they carried their prisoner across the grass, keeping where it was possible in the gloom of the trees, and aiming for a point in the drive where a motor-car waited half-way between the house and the gates. A blur of light from the terrace and ornamental grounds in front of it became visible away upon their left, but here all was dark. Once or twice they stopped and set Ann upon her feet, and held her so, while they rested.
"A few more yards," Espinosa whispered, and, stifling an oath, he stopped again. They were on the edge of the drive now, and just ahead of him he saw the glimmer of a white dress and close to it the glow of a cigarette. Swiftly he put Ann down again and propped her against a tree. Jeanne Leclerc stood in front of her and, as the truants from the ball-room approached, she began to talk to Ann, nodding her head like one engrossed in a lively story. Espinosa's heart stood still as he heard the man say:
"Why, there are some others here! That is curious. Shall we see?"
But even as he moved across the drive, the girl in the white dress caught him by the arm.
"That would not be very tactful," she said with a laugh. "Let us do as we would be done by," and the couple sauntered past.
Espinosa waited until they had disappeared. "Quick! Let us go!" he whispered in a shaking voice.
A few yards farther on they found Espinosa's closed car hidden in a little alley which led from the main drive. They placed Ann in the car. Jeanne Leclerc got in beside her, and Espinosa took the wheel. As they took the road to the Val Terzon a distant clock struck eleven. Within the car Jeanne Leclerc removed the gag from Ann Upcott's mouth, drew the sack over her and fastened it underneath her feet. At the branch road young Espinosa was waiting with his motor-cycle and side-car.
At this point, we meet head villainess Bettye Harlowe (I'm not sure quite what became of Jeanne). Now, during this whole next section, Inspector Hanaud and a lovestruck character named Jim Frobisher are secretly watching as our heroine is menaced by the baddies. Hanaud later says that it was to, in effect, let the baddies go far enough to give him the evidence he needed to bring them in; I suspect he just wanted to watch the girl-on-girl bondage action (man after my own heart).
The lustres of the big glass chandelier were so many flashing jewels; the mirrors of the girandoles multiplied their candle-lamps; the small gay room was ablaze; and in the glare Betty stood and laughed. Her white shoulders rose from a slim evening frock of black velvet; from her carefully dressed copper hair to her black satin shoes she was as trim as if she had just been unpacked from a band-box; and she was laughing whole-heartedly at a closed sack on the divan, a sack which jerked and flapped grotesquely like a fish on a beach. Someone was imprisoned within that sack. Jim Frobisher could not doubt who that someone was, and it seemed to him that no sound more soulless and cruel had ever been heard in the world than Betty's merriment. She threw her head back: Jim could see her slender white throat working, her shoulders flashing and shaking. She clapped her hands with a horrible glee. Something died within Frobisher's breast as he heard it. Was it in his heart, he wondered? It was, however, to be the last time that Betty Harlowe laughed.
"You can get her out, Francine," she said, and whilst Francine with a pair of scissors cut the end of the sack loose, she sat down with her back to it at the writing-table and unlocked a drawer. The sack was cut away and thrown upon the floor, and now on the divan Ann Upcott lay in her gleaming dancing-dress, her hands bound behind her back, and her ankles tied cruelly together. Her hair was dishevelled, her face flushed, and she had the look of one quite dazed. She drew in deep breaths of air, with her bosom labouring. But she was unaware for the moment of her predicament or surroundings, and her eyes rested upon Francine and travelled from her to Betty's back without a gleam of recognition. She wrenched a little at her wrists, but even that movement was instinctive; and then she closed her eyes and lay still, so still that but for her breathing the watchers at the door would hardly have believed that she still lived.
Betty, meanwhile, lifted from the open drawer, first a small bottle half filled with a pale yellow liquid, and next a small case of morocco leather. From the case she took a hypodermic syringe and its needle, and screwed the two parts together.
"Is she ready?" Betty asked as she removed the stopper from the bottle.
"Quite, Mademoiselle," answered Francine. She began with a giggle, but she looked at the prisoner as she spoke and she ended with a startled gasp. For Ann was looking straight at her with the strangest, disconcerting stare. It was impossible to say whether she knew Francine or knowing her would not admit her knowledge. But her gaze never faltered, it was actually terrifying by its fixity, and in a sharp, hysterical voice Francine suddenly cried out:
"Turn your eyes away from me, will you?" and she added with a shiver: "It's horrible, Mademoiselle! It's like a dead person watching you as you move about the room."
Betty turned curiously towards the divan and Ann's eyes wandered off to her. It seemed as though it needed just that interchange of glances to awaken her. For as Betty resumed her work of filling the hypodermic syringe from the bottle, a look of perplexity crept into Ann Upcott's face. She tried to sit up, and finding that she could not, tore at the cords which bound her wrists. Her feet kicked upon the divan. A moan of pain broke from her lips, and with that consciousness returned to her.
"Betty!" she whispered, and Betty turned with the needle ready in her hand. She did not speak, but her face spoke for her. Her upper lip was drawn back a little from her teeth, and there was a look in her great eyes which appalled Jim Frobisher outside the door. Once before he had seen just that look--when Betty was lying on Mrs. Harlowe's bed for Hanaud's experiment and he had lingered in the treasure-room with Ann Upcott. It had been inscrutable to him then, but it was as plain as print now. It meant murder. And so Ann Upcott understood it. Helpless as she was, she shrank back upon the divan; in a panic she spoke with faltering lips and her eyes fixed upon Betty with a dreadful fascination.
"Betty! You had me taken and brought here! You sent me to Madame Le Vay's --on purpose. Oh! The letter, then! The anonymous letter!"--and a new light broke in upon Ann's mind, a new terror shook her. "You wrote it! Betty, you! You--the Scourge!"
She sank back and again struggled vainly with her bonds. Betty rose from her chair and crossed the room towards her, the needle shining bright in her hand. Her hapless prisoner saw it.
"What's that?" she cried, and she screamed aloud. The extremity of her horror lent to her an unnatural strength. Somehow she dragged herself up and got her feet to the ground. Somehow she stood upright, swaying as she stood.
"You are going to--- " she began, and broke off. "Oh, no! You couldn't! You couldn't!"
Betty put out a hand and laid it on Ann's shoulder and held her so for a moment, savouring her vengeance.
"Whose face was it bending so close down over yours in the darkness?" she asked in a soft and dreadful voice. "Whose face, Ann? Guess!" She shook her swaying prisoner with a gentleness as dreadful as her quiet voice. "You talk too much. Your tongue's dangerous, Ann. You are too curious, Ann! What were you doing in the treasure-room yesterday evening with your watch in your hand? Eh? Can't you answer, you pretty fool?" Then Betty's voice changed. It remained low and quiet, but hatred crept into it, a deep, whole-hearted hatred.
"You have been interfering with me too, haven't you, Ann? Oh, we both understand very well!" And Hanaud's hand tightened upon Frobisher's shoulder. Here was the real key and explanation of Betty's hatred. Ann Upcott knew too much, was getting to know more, might at any moment light upon the whole truth. Yes! Ann Upcott's disappearance would look like a panic-stricken flight, would have the effect of a confession--no doubt! But above all these considerations, paramount in Betty Harlowe's mind was the resolve at once to punish and rid herself of a rival.
"All this week, you have been thrusting yourself in my way!" she said. "And here's your reward for it, Ann. Yes. I had you bound hand and foot and brought here. The water-lily!" She looked her victim over as she stood in her delicate bright frock, her white silk stockings and satin slippers, swaying in terror. "Fifteen minutes, Ann! That fool of a detective was right! Fifteen minutes! That's all the time the arrow-poison takes!"
Ann's eyes opened wide. The blood rushed into her white face and ebbed, leaving it whiter than it was before.
"Arrow-poison!" she cried. "Betty! It was you, then! Oh!" She would have fallen forward, but Betty Harlowe pushed her shoulder gently and she fell back upon the divan. That Betty had been guilty of that last infamy--the murder of her benefactress--not until this moment had Ann Upcott for one moment suspected. It was clear to her, too, that there was not the slightest hope for her. She burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
Betty Harlowe sat down on the divan beside her and watched her closely and curiously with a devilish enjoyment. The sound of the girl's sobbing was music in her ears. She would not let it flag.
"You shall lie here in the dark all night, Ann, and alone," she said in a low voice, bending over her. "Tomorrow Espinosa will put you under one of the stone flags in the kitchen. But tonight you shall lie just as you are. Come!"
She bent over Ann Upcott, gathering the flesh of her arm with one hand and advancing the needle with the other; and a piercing scream burst from Francine Rollard.
"Look!" she cried, and she pointed to the door. It was open and Hanaud stood upon the threshold. Betty looked up at the cry and the blood receded from her face. She sat like an image of wax, staring at the open doorway, and a moment afterwards with a gesture swift as lightning she drove the needle into the flesh of her own arm and emptied it.
Frobisher with a cry of horror started forward to prevent her, but Hanaud roughly thrust him back.
"I warned you, Monsieur, not to interfere," he said with a savage note in his voice, which Jim had not heard before; and Betty Harlowe dropped the needle on to the couch, whence it rolled to the floor.
She sprang up now to her full height, her heels together, her arms outstretched from her sides. "Fifteen minutes, Monsieur Hanaud," she cried with bravado. "I am safe from you."
Hanaud laughed and wagged his forefinger contemptuously in her face. "Coloured water, Mademoiselle, doesn't kill."
Betty swayed upon her feet and steadied herself. "Bluff, Monsieur Hanaud!" she said.
"We shall see."
The confidence of his tone convinced her. She flashed across the room to her writing-table. Swift as she was, Hanaud met her there.
"Ah, no!" he cried. "That's quite a different thing!" He seized her wrists. "Moreau!" he called, with a nod towards Francine. "And you, Monsieur Frobisher, will you release that young lady, if you please!"
Moreau dragged Francine Rollard from the room and locked her safely away. Jim seized upon the big scissors and cut the cords about Ann's wrists and ankles, and unwound them. He was aware that Hanaud had flung the chair from the writing-table into an open space, that Betty was struggling and then was still, that Hanaud had forced her into the chair and snatched up one of the cords which Frobisher had dropped upon the floor. When he had finished his work, he saw that Betty was sitting with her hands in handcuffs and her ankles tied to one of the legs of the chair; and Hanaud was staunching with his handkerchief a wound in his hand which bled. Betty had bitten him like a wild animal caught in a trap.
"Yes, you warned me. Mademoiselle, the first morning I met you," Hanaud said with a savage irony, "that you didn't wear a wrist-watch, because you hated things on your wrists. My apologies! I had forgotten!"
He went back to the writing-table and thrust his hand into the drawer. He drew out a small cardboard box and removed the lid. "Five!" he said. "Yes! Five!"
He carried the box across the room to Frobisher, who was standing against the wall with a face like death. "Look!"
There were five white tablets in the box. "We know where the sixth is. Or, rather, we know where it was. For I had it analysed today. Cyanide of potassium, my friend! Crunch one of them between your teeth and--fifteen minutes? Not a bit of it! A fraction of a second! That's all!"
Frobisher leaned forward and whispered in Hanaud's ear; "Leave them within her reach!" His first instinctive thought had been to hinder Betty from destroying herself. Now he prayed that she might, and with so desperate a longing that a deep pity softened Hanaud's eyes.
"I must not, Monsieur," he said gently. He turned to Moreau. "There is a cab waiting at the corner of the Maison Grenelle," and Moreau went in search of it. Hanaud went over to Ann Upcott, who was sitting upon the divan, her head bowed, her body shivering. Every now and then she handled and eased one of her tortured wrists.
"Mademoiselle," he said, standing in front of her. "I owe you an explanation and an apology. I never from the beginning--no, not for one moment--believed that you were guilty of the murder of Madame Harlowe. I was sure that you had never touched the necklace of pink pearls--oh, at once I was sure, long before I found it. I believed every word of the story you told us in the garden. But none of this dared I show you. For only by pretending that I was convinced of your guilt, could I protect you during this last week in the Maison Grenelle."
"Thank you, Monsieur," she replied with a wan effort at a smile.
"But, for tonight, I owe you an apology," he continued. "I make it with shame. That you were to be brought back here to the tender mercies of Mademoiselle Betty, I hadn't a doubt. And I was here to make sure you should be spared them. But I have never in my life had a more difficult case to deal with, so clear a conviction in my own mind, so little proof to put before a court. I had to have the evidence which I was certain to find in this room tonight. But I ask you to believe me that if I had imagined for a moment the cruelty with which you were to be handled, I should have sacrificed this evidence. I beg you to forgive me."
Ann Upcott held out her hand. "Monsieur Hanaud," she replied simply, "but for you I should not be now alive. I should be lying here in the dark and alone, as it was promised to me, waiting for Espinosa--and his spade." Her voice broke and she shuddered violently so that the divan shook on which she sat.
"You must forget these miseries," he said gently. "You have youth, as I told you once before. A little time and--- -"
The return of Nicolas Moreau interrupted him; and with Moreau came a couple of gendarmes and Girardot the Commissaire.
"You have Francine Rollard?" Hanaud asked.
"You can hear her," Moreau returned dryly. In the corridor a commotion arose, the scuffling of feet and a woman's voice screaming abuse. It died away.
"Mademoiselle here will not give you so much trouble," said Hanaud.
And there we have it: a couple of first-rate examples of how much fun one of those
That's it for these two stories-- anyone know if any of Mason's other works are as much fun?