"Forgive my short lapse, gentlemen," he said, and his voice sounded as though it had been strained through a mental sieve. "This is what you want to know, and I shall try to be as brief as I can. I took the boy Wilhelm Monanger in here. I had a very good woman as matron at the time. She is now dead, unfortunately. She was like a mother to the lad. From the start he suffered with a sharp physical inferiority complex, due to his misshapen lip. Oh, yes, he inherited his father's facial deformity. Odd, because more than ninety medical men out of a hundred will agree very readily that a hare lip is not hereditary. But who knows why Wilhelm was so marked? Perhaps some anxiety neurosis of his mother during pregnancy is responsible. But there I go, wandering from my narrative. Forgive me, please. And just one moment—I will take another drink. I think I could do with it. Are you sure you won't join me?"

  To make him feel more at ease they drank with him, and some colour warmed his cheeks. He sat down and went on with his interrupted tale.

  "At eleven Wilhelm was sent away to school in Berne. He had some notion that my matron was a relative. He called her Aunt Margarete. It is possible she is the only person he ever loved. She died when he was sixteen. He came back from school, and was heart-broken. Only then did I realize what she had meant in his strange life. Of course I reported on him from time to time to his father in strict confidence, but Charles Gentian could not come and see him. He was a man with many financial interests. They helped him to grow away from his past, as it were. It became more remote. The boy became no more than a symbol, perhaps not that. I don't know. But I was shocked when Wilhelm told me he did not want to go to the university and enter one of the professions. He didn't want to leave here. I didn't argue. I said it could be arranged on account of his dead aunt. I'm afraid here I am guilty of slipping into a profound error. I let myself take the line of least resistance, always a fatal decision in a moral issue. He worked about the grounds and became like one of the staff, and with the passing years it seemed that something I had bothered my head about had solved itself. This happy state of things lasted until Madame Lemette came. Somewhere, with her sharp nose, she had picked up a fragment, and had tried to draw a conclusion and failed. But her inquiries had brought her to my establishment. I told her nothing, and that only confirmed her feeling that I was purposely concealing something. I can see that now. But I was in a very difficult position, and could not ask advice. I could only keep silent."

  Dr. Fenli paused and reached for his glass. He finished the drink.

  "It wasn't long after this that Wilhelm started to take days off to go to Zürich. I thought nothing of it at the time. Some months went by. Finally he came to me and said he was leaving. He said he was going into partnership with a man named Howard Packer. He was going to make a lot of money like his father. You can guess what a shock that was, coming so unexpectedly. I tried to bluff. I asked him what he meant. He said I should go and ask Charles Gentian. I tried to reason with him. It was a waste of time. Then I realized the black mood that was on him, I remembered that his grandmother had ended her life tragically. Perhaps there was a taint in the blood. I warned his father afterwards. He took it quite casually, I thought. That was the measure of his remoteness from reality. He said he had a man he could trust who would make inquiries for him."

  "What was this man's name?" put in Duval.

  "Pedro Gonzalez, a Spanish exile."

  Neither Slade nor the Sûreté man revealed that the name meant anything to them. They had no wish to cause another break in this strange story.

  "I don't know what luck he had. I haven't heard from Gentian in quite a while, and, to tell the truth, I was content just to let things lie. But a short while ago Wilhelm returned one night. He acted strangely. He told me he wanted to see his mother. So he knew the whole story. I refused, and he produced a gun. What could I do, gentlemen? I let him see her through the glass window. When he looked at me I thought he would put a bullet through my brain there and then. He asked me for the key of my car. He said he had to get somewhere in a hurry. Again I complied, and he drove off. I haven't seen him since. I hope I never see him again," Dr. Fenli said in conclusion.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  A WOMAN'S DEFIANCE

  AFTER a night spent in a Berne hotel, Slade and Duval were seen into their plane at the airport by Inspector Liechti, who tactfully asked no questions about the visit to the sanatorium. A police car was standing by for them when they grounded, and at the Quai des Orfèvres a subordinate was awaiting Duval with news.

  The police dragnet had caught someone. A woman had tried to get into the closed apartment at the Hôtel de Bourbon. She had entered the hotel, made her way to the corridor window that gave on to the balcony, and approached the suite registered in the name of Peter Penny from the outside.

  She had put up a furious struggle when captured by Duval's alert plain-clothes man, and refused to give a name.

  "She is not young," Duval's assistant explained. "But she hasn't lost her strength. Benoit says she fought like a couple of madmen. He wears the marks of her nails to prove his words."

  Twenty minutes later the two detectives were sitting in a bare room watching a green-painted door. The door opened, and a grey-uniformed wardress escorted in Madame Pauline Roffert. She came to a halt, drawing herself upright, as she saw the men waiting to question her. Just for a moment fear flickered in her eyes, and was gone with the swiftness of summer lightning.

  Duval lifted himself off his chair. His mouth was pursed. He looked at the wardress and waved a hand, dismissing her.

  The woman hesitated, glancing at her charge.

  "Go," said Duval abruptly, and the woman hesitated no longer. As the door closed after her the French detective pointed to a chair across the room. "Be seated, Madame Roffert," he said.

  The old woman remained standing, staring at him. She did not glance at the Yard man. Her face was composed save for a slight twitching of her under lip.

  "Very well, as you wish," said Duval, waving his hands. "But I have questions to ask you. You have given us trouble, madame. You ran away after you heard mention of a man with a hare lip. I thought at the time it was the idea of Charles Gentian that scared you into that mad scramble across the river. Now I don't think so."

  The old eyes blinked once. That was all.

  "Now I know whom you thought I meant, Madame Roffert." Duval's voice hardened. "Does the name Wilhelm Monanger mean anything to you?"

  The question was fired at her suddenly.

  She was taken off her guard. Her mouth fell slack. A look of incredible helplessness crossed her seamed face, and all expression was sponged from her eyes in that startled moment. "M'sieur," she muttered, then bit her lip. She glanced around the room as though seeking some place to escape.

  "I think you'd better sit down, madame," Duval advised.

  She was beaten. The dragging steps she took in the direction of the chair to which Duval waved her betrayed her defeat. Whatever had motivated her, she knew now that further subterfuge and evasion would not help her.

  She sat down on the chair, sighing as her legs crooked to take her weight. When she turned her eyes to Duval they were still blank. She was an old woman who no longer trusted herself to think.

  What she had tried to avoid had caught up with her. She showed in her attitude that she was resigned to what she now looked upon as the inevitable.

  Duval gave her long enough to reassemble her scattered wits, then he came straight to the point, standing before her like some strange figure of retribution. His manner was frigid, his voice rang faintly with menace. This woman might be old, but she had shown a will to elude him and baffle his efforts. She had been unwilling to co-operate. Duval was not the kind to plead for co-operation. He preferred to make sure he got it on his own terms.

  Slade, sitting back and watching the French detective, was keenly interested in his methods. He understood the Frenchman's competence. The moves he made in this strange game of mental chess were not necessarily those Slade himself would have employed in comparable circumstances, but they were the moves of a man whose mind was made up and who had one objective only, to bring the session to a speedy conclusion so long as he attained the result he sought.

  "You know Wilhelm Monanger?"

  The very tone in which the question was asked gave affirmation the complexion of guilt.

  She nodded.

  "Answer, please, madame."

  "Yes, I know him..'

  "Well?"

  "Yes."

  "Very well?"

  "Yes."

  "When did you first make his acquaintance?"

  "More than twenty years ago."

  If that shook Duval, the Frenchman did not show it. He barely paused before his next question was shot at her.

  "He is a relative of yours?"

  "Not a relative, no."

  "Then what?"

  She took a deep breath and sighed wearily. Her eyes were downcast, and she sat on the hard chair with her brown wrinkled hands folded in the lap of her black dress.

  "He was an adopted child."

  "I know that."

  "He was adopted by the brother of my sister's husband. He was no relative of mine."

  "So I understand, madame. Go on."

  "Monanger died, and his wife married again. There was the little boy with the hare lip. It was not an unsightly hare lip—not then. And when he smiled, sometimes it made him look—look so appealing." Her voice cracked, trembled, and steadied after she had raised a small lace-trimmed square of handkerchief to her mouth. "He had a way of smiling when he was a child that made the hare lip disappear into the smile, if you know what I mean."

  Duval remained looking at her, giving her no clue as to whether he knew what she meant or not. Her glance, after turning to him, dropped again. Slade might not have been in the room.

  "When Monanger died, didn't his wife take the boy?" Duval asked.

  "No, m'sieur. Her grief wasn't deep. She soon married again, this time a man who wanted no foster-child. The boy would have gone to a foundling's home had not my sister and her husband taken him in. My sister married a watch-maker, a good man. They kept the boy until he was taken from them by his father. They had no adoption papers. They could not keep him."

  "This sister is the one you visited in Amiens ?"

  "No." She shook her head. "That is my other sister. My sister who married the watch-maker is dead. She died shortly after I married Georges Roffert. She was my eldest sister, m'sieur."

  Duval moved back and picked up the chair on which he had been seated when she was shown into the room by the wardress. He placed it in front of her, and sat down, holding his chin in one hand and surveying the pathetic figure she made.

  "And Madame Lemette got the story of Charles Gentian's boy from you, I take it."

  That roused her. She held out trembling hands locked together.

  "M'sieur, I meant no harm. And madame promised me the job of being housekeeper at her villa. I am a widow. Georges Roffert died of blood poisoning. I have not found things easy."

  "Only the lucky ones find things easy, madame," Duval told her. "You and I are not lucky. We have to work for our living, you as housekeeper, me questioning you because there has been murder. But there is a difference, madame, between being not lucky and being unlucky. You will be unlucky, I promise, if you do not answer my questions."

  Her mouth trembled.

  "You make it difficult for me."

  "I want to find Wilhelm Monanger."

  "So do I, m'sieur. That is why I was at the hotel when I was arrested."

  Duval lifted his chin out of his palm and stabbed a forefinger at her.

  "So! You knew he was to be found there."

  "No, I thought I might find him there."

  "And you didn't find him?"

  "No."

  "All the same, you went there. Why? What do you know that you should choose to visit that hotel, and that room, madame? I want answers, and without waste of time. It is very urgent that I find Wilhelm Monanger, and that you tell me only the truth. No lies, mind."

  Whether Duval was being too hard on her, or whether she had had time in which to regain her lost composure, Slade could not be sure, but he saw in her a change of manner. Her chin jutted a little more. The hands in her lap became fast clenched, so that the knuckles gleamed through the brown skin.

  Madame Pauline Roffert was finding a new defiance as this interview continued.

  "I have nothing more to say," she said.

  Duval did not get angry. He did not shout or wave his arms.

  He said simply, "Why?"

  "I am tired," she said.

  The French detective shrugged.

  "We are all tired, madame. M'sieur Slade and myself have just returned from Switzerland. We have visited a Dr. Fenli. He told us a great deal, madame. There are not many gaps for you to fill in. But at the Villa des Bégonias you saw your mistress with the American, Ward Packer, and the Spaniard, Gonzalez. They had conferences. They were planning something, weren't they, Madame Roffert, and you found out what it was. There is a curious streak in your make-up. You want to know things. Well, what did you find out ? And what made you so scared of the man with the hare lip?"

  This time she raised her eyes.

  "I still have nothing to say, m'sieur. I have told you all I know."

  "That isn't true, madame."

  "Then it must serve," she said defiantly.

  "Of what are you afraid?" Duval asked.

  She sat silent. He rose, his mouth compressed, so that his lips bulged and his moustache bristled against his nose.

  There was a rap on the door. Duval crossed the room and opened it. In the opening stood a young man with thin hair and a couple of strips of plaster decorating one cheek.

  "Come in, Benoit," said Duval.

  The plain-clothes man entered, looked at the woman, and tapped the plaster on his face.

  "She wants her claws clipping," he said.

  "All in good time, Benoit," said Duval. "You've got something?"

  Benoit nodded.

  "I found a pawn ticket on her. I went to the shop. She had pawned a watch. Oh, I think it was her own all right, but she was short of funds. The pawnbroker gave me the address. She had been staying there as Madame Warzee. In her room I found these in the fireplace."

  Benoit took some screwed-up sheets of notepaper from a pocket and passed them to Duval, who smoothed them out and ran his eye over them. He looked across at the woman.

  "I find these very illuminating, madame," he said. "They suggest you were trying to pen a blackmail note, and not having any success. I see. So it was the law you were scared of, not the man with the hare lip. He, presumably, was your intended victim."

  Suddenly she laughed, but there was no merriment in the sound, which was a grotesque travesty of mirth. The next moment her face was in her trembling hands and she was weeping copiously.

  Benoit looked on with a cynical smile, his fingers straying involuntarily to the strips of plaster adhering to his lacerated cheek.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE PLOT

  HER capitulation was complete.

  "M'sieur," she said piteously to Duval, "I am too old to go to prison. I shall die there."

  "If you have not broken the law," said Duval, and somehow the words did not sound portentous, "then you have nothing to fear. But blackmail carries a long sentence."

  "It wasn't blackmail, really. I'm poor. Madame Lemette is dead. You told me so yourself. What can I do? I must live, m'sieur."

  "Then you had best help me, Madame Roffert."

  "You will release me if I tell you what I know about them?"

  Duval did not even look interested at this sign of her cracking resolve.

  "I shall release you as soon as possible, madame," he assured her. "When that is"—he shrugged—"that's entirely up to you. Entirely," he emphasized.

  The story came haltingly at first, then she found interest in her own narrative and her voice grew stronger and there was less hesitation in her manner. Slade and Benoit sat together, watching her. Duval stood, midway between her and the door.

  The American had brought Gonzalez to Madame Lemette's home. There was a pact between the three. Madame Lemette was after a really big story. Ward Packer wanted to make a great deal of money. Gonzalez was ready to help him so long as he had all the aguardiente his thwarted body seemed to require. At times Gonzalez was near to being a dipsomaniac, and Madame Lemette had threatened to throw him out of the villa, but always the American had pacified her, reminding her how useful Gonzalez could be.

  It appeared that Gonzalez had contacts among assorted refugees and émigrés in various countries of Europe. Through his various contacts he could procure, for a price, bearer bonds that had been hidden from the early days of the last war.

  "What sort of bearer bonds?" Duval inquired.

  "British, m'sieur," she said.

  Duval raised a brow and looked at Slade.

  "It looks as though you are going to cut across a mystic circle, mon ami," he smiled. "Does this make sense to you?"

  "Very much," Slade told him. The Englishman was looking at the woman. She did not appear to realize quite how important was this news she had given them. "You see, at the beginning of the war, there were a great many British bearer bonds in various hands on the Continent, Duval. To-day those bearer bonds are not exportable to Britain, although they are worth considerable sums. In fact, the Fraud Squad at Scotland Yard has been on the track of smugglers who have been bringing these bonds back to Britain, where, of course, they can be sold at a very considerable profit. It is quite a traffic, but illegal."

  "Is there a reason for the ban?" asked Duval.

  "There was in 1940," Slade told him. "That's when the British Treasury stopped the importing of those bonds from Europe. You see, they were changing hands too rapidly, often without their rightful owner's consent," Slade added dryly. "The overall position became impossible. So you have the present set-up. Those bearer bonds are still changing hands on the Continent, at only a fraction of their genuine value in London. But they cannot be lawfully brought to London."

 

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