No doubt she desired me to act against her enemy—the young fellow who had extracted fifty pounds from her by threat.
“You must say nothing to a soul but meet me in secret in Paris. Stay at the Hôtel Continental where I shall stay on the night of the twenty-fourth. That is next Wednesday. At ten o’clock I shall be on the terrace of the Café Vachette in the Boulevard St. Michel. Remember the day and hour, and meet me there. Then I will tell you what service I require of you. I shall leave here to-morrow, and I suppose you will leave also.” And she opened her jewel-case to reassure herself that her pearls and other ornaments were safe.
So she forgave me, shook my hand, and I went out of the room with the cold perspiration still upon me.
I made no report of my failure to Rayne, but on the following Wednesday night, after taking a room at the Continental, in Paris, an hotel which I knew well, I crossed the Seine at about half-past nine, and at ten o’clock sauntered up the boulevard to the popular, and rather Bohemian, Café Vachette, where at a little table in the corner, set well back from the pavement, I found her seated alone. She was wearing the same dark cloth coat in which I had seen her when she met the mysterious stranger at night at Eastbourne.
“Well? So you’ve kept the appointment, Mr. Cottingham!” she laughed cheerily as I sank into a chair beside her. “You’ll order a drink and pay for mine, eh?” she laughed.
Then when I had swallowed my liqueur, she suggested that we should stroll down the boulevard and talk.
This we did. The proposition which she made without much preliminary held me aghast.
“Though I like you very much, Mr. Cottingham,” she said as we conversed in low voices, “I cannot conceal from myself that you are a thief. Well, now to be perfectly frank, I want a thief’s help—and I know that, as we are friends, you will assist me. You know my inordinate love of jewels. Indeed, I wouldn’t have married Owen if he had not given me my pearls. And you know the other ornaments I have—which I might very well never have seen again, eh?”
“I know,” I said.
“Well, now, at the Continental there is at the present moment staying a Madame Rodanet, the widow of the millionaire chocolate manufacturer. She possesses among her jewels the famous Dent du Chat—the Cat’s Tooth Ruby. It is called so because it is a perfect stone and curiously pointed, the only one of its kind in the world. I want it, and you must get it for me—as the price of my silence regarding the affair at Eastbourne.”