“St Mary’s,” she told him, “In the summer people call it beautiful around here. To me it is the most melancholy spot I ever saw. There is so much rain, and one hears the drip, drip in the trees all the day long. Alone I could not bear it. To-morrow or the next day I shall pack up my belongings and come to London. I am, unfortunately,” she added, with a little sigh, “very, very poor, but it is my hope that you may find the papers, of which I have spoken to you, valuable.”
Sogrange smiled faintly. Peter and he could scarcely forbear to exchange a single glance. The woman’s candor was almost brutal. She read their thoughts.
“We ascend the hill,” she continued. “We draw now very near to the end of our journey. There is still one thing I would say to you. Do not think too badly of me for what I am about to do. To Bernadine, while he lived, I was faithful. Many a time I could have told you of his plans and demanded a great sum of money, and you would have given it me willingly, but my lips were sealed because, in a way, I loved him. While he lived I gave him what I owed. To-day he is dead, and, whatever I do, it cannot concern him any more. To-day I am a free woman and I take the side I choose.”
“Dear madame,” he replied, “what you have proposed to us is, after all, quite natural and very gracious. If one has a fear at all about the matter, it is as to the importance of these documents you speak of. Bernadine, I know, has dealt in great affairs; but he was a diplomat by instinct, experienced and calculating. One does not keep incriminating papers.”
She leaned a little forward. The car had swung round a corner now and was making its way up an avenue as dark as pitch.
“The wisest of us, Monsieur le Marquis,” she whispered, “reckon sometimes without that one element of sudden death. What should you say, I wonder, to a list of agents in France pledged to circulate in certain places literature of an infamous sort? What should you say, monsieur, to a copy of a secret report of your late maneuvers, franked with the name of one of your own staff officers? What should you say,” she went on, “to a list of Socialist deputies with amounts against their name, amounts paid in hard cash? Are these of no importance to you?”
“Madame,” Sogrange answered, simply, “for such information, if it were genuine, it would be hard to mention a price which we should not be prepared to pay.”
The car came to a sudden standstill. The first impression of the two men was that the Baroness had exaggerated the loneliness and desolation of the place. There was nothing mysterious or forbidding about the plain, brownstone house before which they had stopped. The windows were streaming with light; the hall door, already thrown open, disclosed a very comfortable hall, brilliantly illuminated. A man-servant assisted his mistress to alight, another ushered them in. In the background were other servants. The Baroness glanced at the clock.
“About dinner, Carl?” she asked.
“It waits for madame,” the man answered.