By their verdict the jury had implicitly applauded and commiserated Etienne Rambert; but he still sat in the dock, broken and prostrated by terrible distress, sobbing unreservedly and making no effort to restrain his immeasurable grief.
X. Princess Sonia's Bath
Four months had passed since Etienne Rambert had been acquitted at the Cahors Assizes, and the world was beginning to forget the Beaulieu tragedy as it had already almost forgotten the mysterious murder of Lord Beltham. Juve alone did not allow his daily occupation to put the two cases out of his mind. True, he had ceased to make any direct enquiries, and gave no sign that he still had any interest in those crimes; but the detective knew very well that in both of them he had to contend with no ordinary murderer and he was content to remain in the shadow, waiting and watching, in seeming inactivity, for some slip which should betray the person or persons who had perpetrated two of the most puzzling murders that he had ever had to deal with.
It was the end of June, and Paris was beginning to empty. But the spring had been late and cold that year, and although it was within a couple of days of July society had lingered on in the capital; luxuriously appointed carriages still swept along the Champs Elysées when the audiences poured out of theatres and concert rooms, and fashionably attired people still thronged the broad pavements and gathered before the brilliantly lighted cafés on the Rond-Point; even at that late hour the Champs Elysées were as animated as in the busiest hours of the day.
At the Royal Palace Hotel the greatest animation prevailed. The entire staff was hurrying about the vast entrance halls and the palatial rooms on the ground floor; for it was the hour when the guests of the Royal Palace Hotel were returning from their evening's amusements, and the spacious vestibules of the immense hotel were crowded with men in evening dress, young fellows in dinner jackets, and women in low-cut gowns.
A young and fashionable woman got out of a perfectly appointed victoria, and M. Louis, the manager of the staff, came forward and bowed low, as he only did to clients of the very highest distinction. The lady responded with a gracious smile, and the manager called a servant.
"The lift for Mme. la Princesse Sonia Danidoff," and the next moment the beautiful vision, who had created quite a sensation merely in passing through the hall, had disappeared within the lift and was borne up to her apartments.
Princess Sonia was one of the most important clients that the Royal Palace Hotel possessed. She belonged to one of the greatest families in the world, being, by her marriage with Prince Danidoff, cousin to the Emperor of Russia and, so, connected with many royal personages. Still barely thirty years of age, she was not pretty but remarkably lovely, with wonderful blue eyes which formed a strange and most bewitching contrast to the heavy masses of black hair that framed her face. A woman of immense wealth, and typically a woman of the world, the Princess spent six months of the year in Paris, where she was a well-known and much-liked figure in the most exclusive circles; she was clever and cultivated, a first-rate musician, and her reputation was spotless, although it was very seldom that she was accompanied by her husband, whose duties as Grand Chamberlain to the Tsar kept him almost continuously in Russia. When in Paris she occupied a suite of four rooms on the third floor of the Royal Palace Hotel, a suite identical in plan and in luxury with that reserved for sovereigns who came there incognito.