Part 46 (1/2)

”No, sir. Her ladys.h.i.+p went out to dinner nearly an hour ago.”

”Thank you,” said Tony. ”She arrived this afternoon, I think?”

”Yes, sir. What name shall I give when she returns?”

”No name,” said Tony. And he ordered his coachman to drive back to the road.

When he had reached it he directed the man again.

”Towards Beaulieu,” he said; and in a little while, on his left hand, below the level of the road, he saw the lights of the _Reserve_. He stopped at the gate, dismissed his carriage, and walked down the winding drive to the door. He walked into the restaurant. It was empty. A waiter came forward to him.

”I wish you to take me at once to Mr. Callon,” he said. He spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. But the waiter nevertheless hesitated.

Tony wore the clothes in which he had travelled to Roquebrune. He was covered with dust, his face was haggard and stern. He had nothing in common with the dainty little room of lights and flowers and s.h.i.+ning silver, and the smartly dressed couple who were dining there. The waiter guessed that his irruption would be altogether inconvenient.

”Mr. Callon!” he stammered. ”He has gone out.”

Tony heard the rattle of a metal cover upon a dish. He looked in the direction whence the sound came--he looked to the right-hand side of the restaurant. A door stood open there, and in the pa.s.sage beyond the door he saw a waiter pa.s.s carrying the dish. Moreover, the man who had spoken to him made yet another mistake. He noticed the direction of Tony's glance, and he made a quick movement as though to bar that pa.s.sage.

”He is here,” said Tony; and he thrust the waiter aside. He crossed the restaurant quickly and entered the pa.s.sage. The pa.s.sage ran parallel to the restaurant; and, at the end towards the terrace, there was another door upon the opposite side. The waiter with the dish had his hand upon the door-handle, but he turned at the sound of Stretton's step. He, too, noticed the disorder of Tony's dress. At the same moment the man in the restaurant shouted in a warning voice--

”Jules!”

Jules stood in front of the door.

”Monsieur, this room is private,” said he.

”Yet I will take the liberty to intrude,” said Tony, quietly.

From behind the door there came the sound of a man's voice which Tony did not know. He had, indeed, never heard it before. Then a woman's laugh rang out; and the sound of it angered Tony beyond endurance. He recognised it beyond the possibility of mistake. It was his wife who was laughing so gaily there behind the closed door. He thought of the years he had spent in the determination to regain his wife's esteem, to free himself from her contempt. For the moment he could have laughed bitterly at his persistence as at some egregious folly. It seemed all waste--waste of time, waste of endeavour, waste of suffering. She was laughing! And with Lionel Callon for her companion!

The cold, black nights of the North Sea and its gales; the arid sands of the Sahara; all his long service for her ending in that crowning act of desertion--the story was clear in his mind from beginning to end, detailed and complete. And she was laughing in there with Lionel Callon! Her laughter was to him as some biting epigram which epitomised the way in which she had spent the years of his absence.

His anger got the better of his self-control.

”Stand away,” he cried, in a low, savage voice, to the waiter. And since the man did not instantly move, he seized him by the shoulders and dragged him from the door.

”Monsieur!” the man cried aloud, in a frightened voice, and the dish which he was carrying fell with a clatter on to the floor. Inside the room the laughter suddenly ceased. Tony listened for a second. He could not hear even a whisper. There was complete silence. He smiled rather grimly to himself; he was thinking that this was not, at all events, the silence of contempt.

Could he have seen through the door into the room he would have been yet more convinced. All the gaiety vanished in an instant from Millie's face. She was sitting opposite the door; she sat and stared at it in terror. The blood ebbed from the cheeks, leaving them as white as paper.

”Monsieur!” she repeated, in so low a whisper that even Callon, on the other side of the small table, hardly heard the word. Her lips were dry, and she moistened them. ”Monsieur!” she whispered again, and the whisper was a question. She had no definite suspicion who ”Monsieur”

was; she did not define him as her husband. She only understood that somehow she was trapped. The sudden clatter of the dish upon the floor, the loudness of the waiter's cry, which was not a mere protest, but also a cry of fear, terrified her; they implied violence. She was trapped. She sat paralysed upon her chair, staring across the table over Callon's shoulder at the door. Callon meanwhile said not a word.

He had been sitting with his back to the door, and he twisted round in his chair. To both of them it seemed ages before the handle was turned. Yet so short was the interval of time that they could hardly have reached the terrace through the open window had they sprung up at the first sound of disturbance.

Thus they were sitting, silent and motionless, when the door was pushed open, and Tony stood in the doorway. At the sight of him Millie uttered one loud scream, and clapped her hands over her face. Callon, on the other hand, started up on to his feet. As he did so he upset his wine-gla.s.s over the table-cloth; it fell and splintered on the polished floor. He turned towards the intruder who so roughly forced his way into the room. The eyes of that intruder took no account of him; they were fixed upon Millie Stretton, as she sat cowering at the table with her hands before her face.

”What do you want?” cried Callon. ”You have no right here!”

”I have every right here,” said Tony. ”That is my wife!”

It was still his wife at whom he looked, not at all towards Callon.