IV.
Of the four persons more or less interested in the affair, three were secretly active that night, in and out of the hotel. Only Kitty Sartorius, chief mourner for the bracelet, slept placidly in her bed. It was towards three o’clock in the morning that a sort of preliminary crisis was reached.
From the multiplicity of doors which ventilate its rooms, one would imagine that the average foreign hotel must have been designed immediately after its architect had been to see a Palais Royal farce, in which every room opens into every other room in every act. The Hôtel de la Grande Place was not peculiar in this respect; it abounded in doors. All the chambers on the second storey, over the public rooms, fronting the Place, communicated one with the next, but naturally most of the communicating doors were locked. Cecil Thorold and the Comte d’Avrec had each a bedroom and a sitting-room on that floor. The Count’s sitting-room adjoined Cecil’s; and the door between was locked, and the key in the possession of the landlord.
Nevertheless, at three a.m. this particular door opened noiselessly from Cecil’s side, and Cecil entered the domain of the Count. The moon shone, and Cecil could plainly see not only the silhouette of the Belfry across the Place, but also the principal objects within the room. He noticed the table in the middle, the large easy-chair turned towards the hearth, the old-fashioned sofa; but not a single article did he perceive which might have been the personal property of the Count. He cautiously passed across the room through the moonlight to the door of the Count’s bedroom, which apparently, to his immense surprise, was not only shut, but locked, and the key in the lock on the sitting-room side. Silently unlocking it, he entered the bedroom and disappeared....
In less than five minutes he crept back into the Count’s sitting-room, closed the door and locked it.
“Odd!” he murmured reflectively; but he seemed quite happy.
There was a sudden movement in the region of the hearth, and a form rose from the armchair. Cecil rushed to the switch and turned on the electric light. Eve Fincastle stood before him. They faced each other.
“What are you doing here at this time, Miss Fincastle?” he asked, sternly. “You can talk freely; the Count will not waken.”
“I may ask you the same question,” Eve replied, with cold bitterness.
“Excuse me. You may not. You are a woman. This is the Count’s room——”
“You are in error,” she interrupted him. “It is not the Count’s room. It is mine. Last night I told the Count I had some important writing to do, and I asked him as a favour to relinquish this room to me for twenty-four hours. He very kindly consented. He removed his belongings, handed me the key of that door, and the transfer was made in the hotel books. And now,” she added, “may I inquire, Mr. Thorold, what you are doing in my room?”
“I—I thought it was the Count’s,” Cecil faltered, decidedly at a loss for a moment. “In offering my humblest apologies, permit me to say that I admire you, Miss Fincastle.”
“I wish I could return the compliment,” Eve exclaimed, and she repeated with almost plaintive sincerity: “I do wish I could.”
Cecil raised his arms and let them fall to his side.
“You meant to catch me,” he said. “You suspected something, then? The ‘important writing’ was an invention.” And he added, with a faint smile: “You really ought not to have fallen asleep. Suppose I had not wakened you?”
“Please don’t laugh, Mr. Thorold. Yes, I did suspect. There was something in the demeanour of your servant Lecky that gave me the idea... I did mean to catch you. Why you, a millionaire, should be a burglar, I cannot understand. I never understood that incident at the Devonshire Mansion; it was beyond me. I am by no means sure that you didn’t have a great deal to do with the Rainshore affair at Ostend. But that you should have stooped to slander is the worst. I confess you are a mystery. I confess that I can make no guess at the nature of your present scheme. And what I shall do, now that I have caught you, I don’t know. I can’t decide; I must think. If, however, anything is missing to-morrow morning, I shall be bound in any case to denounce you. You grasp that?”
“I grasp it perfectly, my dear journalist,” Cecil replied. “And something will not improbably be missing. But take the advice of a burglar and a mystery, and go to bed, it is half-past three.”
And Eve went. And Cecil bowed her out and then retired to his own rooms. And the Count’s apartment was left to the moonlight.