A soft knock at the door awakened her from the lapse which had ended in this momentary display of despair. Gilda went to the door expecting that the maid had returned for some trivial purpose. Hastily placing the keys in one of those hidden places which women secrete among their clothing, she opened the door, saying, “Yes. What is it?” The maid was not there.
At this hour, which was early, very early, for the Hôtel Royal at Nice, there stood a lugubrious figure. Tall, crumpled, yet retaining a somewhat dignified demeanour, Doctor Malsano stood there at his worst. In a stifled, sepulchral voice he demanded: “Have you got them—the keys?”
The frightened girl, with a devilment which belongs to all who may hold a whip-hand for a moment, lost her temporary sense of dismay and answered boldly: “What do you want?”
He hissed the words at her. “Have you got the keys? The keys, I tell you. Have you got them?”
That moment of bravery left Gilda almost as quickly as she had become possessed of it. The swivel eye, and the rest of that remarkable countenance and personality, in spite of his dishevelled and distorted appearance, regained the mastery.
Gilda collapsed and weakly replied: “The keys! Yes, I have the keys!”
The doctor entered and Gilda handed them to him. Those keys of Aldborough Park, obtained by subterfuge from Raife—! With a snarl the doctor snatched them and left the room. When Gilda Tempest slept a calm sleep, without which beauty will not last, Raife Remington tossed and turned on his bed of unrest. The excitement of the renewed meeting with Gilda had, to an extent, subsided, and in the feverish hours that followed, his mind coursed through all the dramatic events of the last few months. His sense of reason strove hard to rescue him from a mad passion—a passion that every worldly instinct told him would lead to ruin—worse than ruin—death. Yes! death. An inglorious, profitless death.
Doctor Danilo Malsano sat in his room at the Hôtel Royal. A small phial was on the table that faced him. He picked it up and swallowed the contents. His convulsed face presently resumed a more normal, a more peaceful expression. It was a soothing drug that he had taken—one to which he was well accustomed. The soft rays of the red-shaded electric lamp suffused the room, the oval mirror on the dressing-table reflected a saturnine, yet smiling countenance.
The doctor spoke in a whisper to himself, each short sentence was succeeded by a chortle, a subdued chuckle. “The arm of coincidence is long! The cursed Anglo-Saxon is proud—very proud, but he is a very simple fool. One of them is dead. It may be this young fool’s turn next. Gilda loves him, too. That is a pity. Yet it must be.”
These soft-spoken reflections, with the drug, seemed to pacify the perturbed mind of this extraordinary man, and he appeared to doze for a while. Presently he sprang to his feet and his frame displayed surprising activity. Taking Raife’s keys in one hand, he opened a valise, from which it was evident that he had travelled much. Yet the labels of hotels, cities, and townships had been so cleverly manipulated, that they were hard to decipher. Opening the valise, he produced some wax, on which, with the dexterity of a practised hand, he took the impressions of the keys of Aldborough Park.