The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont

'Well, monsieur, your arrival has put to flight this tiresome brigade, if, indeed, the word flight is not too airy a term to use towards a company so elephantine, and I assure you a sigh of relief has gone up from the whole household with the exception of my uncle. I said to him at dinner tonight: "If Monsieur Valmont had been induced to take an interest in the case at first, the jewels would have been in my possession long before tonight."'

'Ah, my lady,' I protested, 'I fear you overrate my poor ability. It is quite true that if I had been called in on the night of the robbery, my chances of success would have been infinitely greater than they are now.'

'Monsieur,' she cried, clasping her hands over her knees, and leaning towards me, hypnotising me with those starry eyes, 'Monsieur, I am perfectly confident that before a week is past you will restore the necklace, if such restoration be possible. I have said so from the first. Now, am I right in my conjecture, monsieur, that you come here alone; that you bring with you no train of followers and assistants?'

'That is as you have stated it, my lady.'

'I was sure of it. It is to be a contest of trained mentality in opposition to our two months' experience of brute force.'

Never before had I felt such ambition to succeed, and a determination not to disappoint took full possession of me. Appreciation is a needed stimulant, and here it was offered to me in its most intoxicating form. Ah, Valmont, Valmont, will you never grow old! I am sure that at this moment, if I had been eighty, the same thrill of enthusiasm would have tingled to my fingers' ends. Leave the Manor of Blair in the morning? Not for the Bank of France!

'Has my uncle acquainted you with particulars of the robbery?'

'No, madame, we were talking of other things.'

The lady leaned back in her low chair, partially closed her eyes, and breathed a deep sigh.

'I can well imagine the subject of your conversation,' she said at last. 'The Marquis of Blair was endeavouring to impose usurer's terms upon you, while you, nobly scorning such mercenary considerations, had perhaps resolved to leave us at the earliest opportunity.'

'I assure you, my lady, that if any such conclusion had been arrived at on my part, it vanished the moment I was privileged to set foot in this drawing-room.'

'It is kind of you to say that, monsieur, but you must not allow your conversation with my uncle to prejudice you against him. He is an old man now, and, of course, has his fancies. You would think him mercenary, perhaps, and so he is; but then so, too, am I. Oh, yes, I am, monsieur, frightfully mercenary. To be mercenary, I believe, means to be fond of money. No one is fonder of money than I, except, perhaps, my uncle; but you see, monsieur, we occupy the two extremes. He is fond of money to hoard it; I am fond of money to spend it. I am fond of money for the things it will buy. I should like to scatter largesse as did my fair ancestress in France. I should love a manor house in the country, and a mansion in Mayfair. I could wish to make everyone around me happy if the expenditure of money would do it.'

'That is a form of money-love, Lady Alicia, which will find a multitude of admirers.'

The girl shook her head and laughed merrily.

'I should so dislike to forfeit your esteem, Monsieur Valmont, and therefore I shall not reveal the depth of my cupidity. You will learn that probably from my uncle, and then you will understand my extreme anxiety for the recovery of these jewels.'

'Are they very valuable?'

'Oh, yes; the necklace consists of twenty stones, no one of which weighs less than an ounce. Altogether, I believe, they amount to two thousand four hundred or two thousand five hundred carats, and their intrinsic value is twenty pounds a carat at least. So you see that means nearly fifty thousand pounds, yet even this sum is trivial compared with what it involves. There is something like a million at stake, together with my coveted manor house in the country, and my equally coveted mansion in Mayfair. All this is within my grasp if I can but recover the emeralds.'

The girl blushed prettily as she noticed how intently I regarded her while she evolved this tantalising mystery. I thought there was a trace of embarrassment in her laugh when she cried:—

'Oh, what will you think of me when you understand the situation? Pray, pray do not judge me harshly. I assure you the position I aim at will be used for the good of others as well as for my own pleasure. If my uncle does not make a confidant of you, I must take my courage in both hands, and give you all the particulars, but not tonight. Of course, if one is to unravel such a snarl as that in which we find ourselves, he must be made aware of every particular, must he not?'

'Certainly, my lady.'

'Very well, Monsieur Valmont, I shall supply any deficiencies that occur in my uncle's conversation with you. There is one point on which I should like to warn you. Both my uncle and the police have made up their minds that a certain young man is the culprit. The police found several clues which apparently led in his direction, but they were unable to find enough to justify his arrest. At first I could have sworn he had nothing whatever to do with the matter, but lately I am not so sure. All I ask of you until we secure another opportunity of consulting together is to preserve an open mind. Please do not allow my uncle to prejudice you against him.'

'What is the name of this young man?'

'He is the Honourable John Haddon.'

'The Honourable! Is he a person who could do so dishonourable an action?'

The young lady shook her head.

'I am almost sure he would not, and yet one never can tell. I think at the present moment there are one or two noble lords in prison, but their crimes have not been mere vulgar housebreaking.'

'Am I to infer, Lady Alicia, that you are in possession of certain facts unknown either to your uncle or the police?'

'Yes.'

'Pardon me, but do these facts tend to incriminate the young man?' Again the young lady leaned back in her chair, and gazed past me, a wrinkle of perplexity on her fair brow. Then she said very slowly:—

'You will understand, Monsieur Valmont, how loath I am to speak against one who was formerly a friend. If he had been content to remain a friend, I am sure this incident, which has caused us all such worry and trouble, would never have happened. I do not wish to dwell on what my uncle will tell you was a very unpleasant episode, but the Honourable John Haddon is a poor man, and it is quite out of the question for one brought up as I have been to marry into poverty. He was very headstrong and reckless about the matter, and involved my uncle in a bitter quarrel while discussing it, much to my chagrin and disappointment. It is as necessary for him to marry wealth as it is for me to make a good match, but he could not be brought to see that. Oh, he is not at all a sensible young man, and my former friendship for him has ceased. Yet I should dislike very much to take any action that might harm him, therefore I have spoken to no one but you about the evidence that is in my hands, and this you must treat as entirely confidential, giving no hint to my uncle, who is already bitter enough against Mr. Haddon.'

'Does this evidence convince you that he stole the necklace?'

'No; I do not believe that he actually stole it, but I am persuaded he was an accessory after the fact—is that the legal term? Now, Monsieur Valmont, we will say no more tonight. If I talk any longer about this crisis, I shall not sleep, and I wish, assured of your help, to attack the situation with a very clear mind tomorrow.'

When I retired to my room, I found that I, too, could not sleep, although I needed a clear mind to face the problem of tomorrow. It is difficult for me to describe accurately the effect this interview had upon my mind, but to use a bodily simile, I may say that it seemed as if I had indulged too freely in a subtle champagne which appeared exceedingly excellent at first, but from which the exhilaration had now departed. No man could have been more completely under a spell than I was when Lady Alicia's eyes first told me more than her lips revealed; but although I had challenged her right to the title 'mercenary' when she applied it to herself, I could not but confess that her nonchalant recital regarding the friend who desired to be a lover jarred upon me. I found my sympathy extending itself to that unknown young man, on whom it appeared the shadow of suspicion already rested. I was confident that if he had actually taken the emeralds it was not at all from motives of cupidity. Indeed that was practically shown by the fact that Scotland Yard found itself unable to trace the jewels, which at least they might have done if the necklace had been sold either as a whole or dismembered. Of course, an emerald weighing an ounce is by no means unusual. The Hope emerald, for example, weighs six ounces, and the gem owned by the Duke of Devonshire measures two and a quarter inches through its greatest diameter. Nevertheless, such a constellation as the Blair emeralds was not to be disposed of very easily, and I surmised no attempt had been made either to sell them or to raise money upon them. Now that I had removed myself from the glamour of her presence, I began to suspect that the young lady, after all, although undoubtedly possessing the brilliancy of her jewels, retained also something of their hardness. There had been no expression of sympathy for the discarded friend; it was too evident, recalling what had latterly passed between us, that the young woman's sole desire, and a perfectly natural desire, was to recover her missing treasure. There was something behind all this which I could not comprehend, and I resolved in the morning to question the Marquis of Blair as shrewdly as he cared to allow. Failing him, I should cross-question the niece in a somewhat dryer light than that which had enshrouded me during this interesting evening. I care not who knows it, but I have been befooled more than once by a woman, but I determined that in clear daylight I should resist the hypnotising influence of those glorious eyes. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! how easy it is for me to make good resolutions when I am far from temptation!

It was ten o'clock next morning when I was admitted to the study of the aged bachelor Marquis of Blair. His keen eyes looked through and through me as I seated myself before him.

'Well!' he said shortly.

'My lord,' I began deliberately, 'I know nothing more of the case than was furnished by the accounts I have read in the newspapers. Two months have elapsed since the robbery. Every day that passed made the detection of the criminal more difficult. I do not wish to waste either my time or your money on a forlorn hope. If, therefore, you will be good enough to place me in possession of all the facts known to you, I shall tell you at once whether or not I can take up the case.'

'Do you wish me to give you the name of the criminal?' asked his lordship.

'Is his name known to you?' I asked in return.

'Yes. John Haddon stole the necklace.'

'Did you give that name to the police?'

'Yes.'

'Why didn't they arrest him?'

'Because the evidence against him is so small, and the improbability of his having committed the crime is so great.'

'What is the evidence against him?'

His lordship spoke with the dry deliberation of an aged solicitor.

'The robbery was committed on the night of October the fifth. All day there had been a heavy rain, and the grounds were wet. For reasons into which I do not care to enter, John Haddon was familiar with this house, and with our grounds. He was well known to my servants, and, unfortunately, popular with them, for he is an openhanded spendthrift. The estate of his elder brother, Lord Steffenham, adjoins my own to the west, and Lord Steffenham's house is three miles from where we sit. On the night of the fifth a ball was given in the mansion of Lord Steffenham, to which, of course, my niece and myself were invited, and which invitation we accepted. I had no quarrel with the elder brother. It was known to John Haddon that my niece intended to wear her necklace of emeralds. The robbery occurred at a time when most crimes of that nature are committed in country houses, namely, while we were at dinner, an hour during which the servants are almost invariably in the lower part of the house. In October the days are getting short. The night was exceptionally dark, for, although the rain had ceased, not a star was visible. The thief placed a ladder against the sill of one of the upper windows, opened it, and came in. He must have been perfectly familiar with the house, for there are evidences that he went direct to the boudoir where the jewel case had been carelessly left on my niece's dressing table when she came down to dinner. It had been taken from the strong room about an hour before. The box was locked, but, of course, that made no difference. The thief wrenched the lid off, breaking the lock, stole the necklace, and escaped by the way he came.'

'Did he leave the window open, and the ladder in place?'

'Yes.'

'Doesn't that strike you as very extraordinary?'

'No. I do not assert that he is a professional burglar, who would take all the precautions against the discovery that might have been expected from one of the craft. Indeed, the man's carelessness in going straight across the country to his brother's house, and leaving footsteps in the soft earth, easily traceable almost to the very boundary fence, shows he is incapable of any serious thought.'

'Is John Haddon rich?'

'He hasn't a penny.'

'Did you go to the ball that night?'

'Yes, I had promised to go.'

'Was John Haddon there?'

'Yes; but he appeared late. He should have been present at the opening, and his brother was seriously annoyed by his absence. When he did come he acted in a wild and reckless manner, which gave the guests the impression that he had been drinking. Both my niece and myself were disgusted with his actions.'

'Do you think your niece suspects him?'

'She certainly did not at first, and was indignant when I told her, coming home from the ball, that her jewels were undoubtedly in Steffenham House, even though they were not round her neck, but latterly I think her opinion has changed.'

'To go back a moment. Did any of your servants see him prowling about the place?'

'They all say they didn't, but I myself saw him, just before dusk, coming across the fields towards this house, and next morning we found the same footprints both going and coming. It seems to me the circumstantial evidence is rather strong.'

'It's a pity that no one but yourself saw him. What more evidence are the authorities waiting for?'

'They are waiting until he attempts to dispose of the jewels.'

'You think, then, he has not done so up to date?'

'I think he will never do so.'

'Then why did he steal them?'

'To prevent the marriage of my niece with Jonas Carter, of Sheffield, to whom she is betrothed. They were to be married early in the New Year.'

'My lord, you amaze me. If Mr. Carter and Lady Alicia are engaged, why should the theft of the jewels interfere with the ceremony?'

'Mr. Jonas Carter is a most estimable man, who, however, does not move in our sphere of life. He is connected with the steel or cutlery industry, and is a person of great wealth, rising upwards of a million, with a large estate in Derbyshire, and a house fronting Hyde Park, in London. He is a very strict business man, and both my niece and myself agree that he is also an eligible man. I myself am rather strict in matters of business, and I must admit that Mr. Carter showed a very generous spirit in arranging the preliminaries of the engagement with me. When Alicia's father died he had run through all the money he himself possessed or could borrow from his friends. Although a man of noble birth, I never liked him. He was married to my only sister. The Blair emeralds, as perhaps you know, descend down the female line. They, therefore, came to my niece from her mother. My poor sister had long been disillusioned before death released her from the titled scamp she had married, and she very wisely placed the emeralds in my custody to be held in trust for her daughter. They constitute my niece's only fortune, and would produce, if offered in London today, probably seventy-five or a hundred thousand pounds, although actually they are not worth so much. Mr. Jonas Carter very amiably consented to receive my niece with a dowry of only fifty thousand pounds, and that money I offered to advance, if I was allowed to retain the jewels as security. This was arranged between Mr. Carter and myself.'

'But surely Mr. Carter does not refuse to carry out his engagement because the jewels have been stolen?'

'He does. Why should he not?'

'Then surely you will advance the fifty thousand necessary?'

'I will not. Why should I?'

'Well, it seems to me,' said I, with a slight laugh, 'the young man has very definitely checkmated both of you.'

'He has, until I have laid him by the heels, which I am determined to do if he were the brother of twenty Lord Steffenhams.'

'Please answer one more question. Are you determined to put the young man in prison, or would you be content with the return of the emeralds intact?'

'Of course I should prefer to put him in prison and get the emeralds too, but if there's no choice in the matter, I must content myself with the necklace.'

'Very well, my lord, I will undertake the case.'

This conference had detained us in the study till after eleven, and then, as it was a clear, crisp December morning, I went out through the gardens into the park, that I might walk along the well-kept private road and meditate upon my course of action, or, rather, think over what had been said, because I could not map my route until I had heard the secret which the Lady Alicia promised to impart. As at present instructed, it seemed to me the best way to go direct to the young man, show him as effectively as I could the danger in which he stood, and, if possible, persuade him to deliver up the necklace to me. As I strolled along under the grand old leafless trees, I suddenly heard my name called impulsively two or three times, and turning round saw the Lady Alicia running toward me. Her cheeks were bright with Nature's rouge, and her eyes sparkled more dazzlingly than any emerald that ever tempted man to wickedness.

'Oh, Monsieur Valmont, I have been waiting for you, and you escaped me. Have you seen my uncle?'

'Yes, I have been with him since ten o'clock.'

'Well?'

'Your ladyship, that is exactly the word with which he accosted me.'

'Ah, you see an additional likeness between my uncle and myself this morning, then? Has he told you about Mr. Carter?'

'Yes.'

'So now you understand how important it is that I should regain possession of my property?'

'Yes,' I said with a sigh; 'the house near Hyde Park and the great estate in Derbyshire.'

She clapped her hands with glee, eyes and feet dancing in unison, as she capered along gaily beside me; a sort of skippety-hop, skippety-hop, sideways, keeping pace with my more stately step, as if she were a little girl of six instead of a young woman of twenty.

'Not only that!' she cried, 'but one million pounds to spend! Oh, Monsieur Valmont, you know Paris, and yet you do not seem to comprehend what that plethora of money means!'

'Well, madame, I have seen Paris, and I have seen a good deal of the world, but I am not so certain you will secure the million to spend.'

'What!' she cried, stopping short, that little wrinkle which betokened temper appearing on her brow. 'Do you think we won't get the emeralds then?'

'Oh, I am sure we will get the emeralds. I, Valmont, pledge you my word. But if Mr. Jonas Carter before marriage calls a halt upon the ceremony until your uncle places fifty thousand pounds upon the table, I confess I am very pessimistic about your obtaining control of the million afterwards.'

All her vivacity instantaneously returned.

'Pooh!' she cried, dancing round in front of me, and standing there directly in my path, so that I came to a stand. 'Pooh!' she repeated, snapping her fingers, with an inimitable gesture of that lovely hand. 'Monsieur Valmont, I am disappointed in you. You are not nearly so nice as you were last evening. It is very uncomplimentary in you to intimate that when once I am married to Mr. Jonas I shall not wheedle from him all the money I want. Do not rest your eyes on the ground; look at me and answer!'

I glanced up at her, and could not forbear laughing. The witchery of the wood was in that girl; yes, and a perceptible trace of the Gallic devil flickered in those enchanting eyes of hers. I could not help myself.

'Ah, Madame la Marquise de Bellairs, how jauntily you would scatter despair in that susceptible Court of Louis!'

'Ah, Monsieur Eugène de Valmont,' she cried, mimicking my tones, and imitating my manner with an exactitude that amazed me, 'you are once more my dear de Valmont of last night. I dreamed of you, I assure you I did, and now to find you in the morning, oh, so changed!' She clasped her little hands and inclined her head, while the sweet voice sank into a cadence of melancholy which seemed so genuine that the mocking ripple of a laugh immediately following was almost a shock to me. Where had this creature of the dull English countryside learnt all such frou-frou of gesture and tone?

'Have you ever seen Sarah Bernhardt?' I asked.

Now the average English woman would have inquired the genesis of so inconsequent a question, but Lady Alicia followed the trend of my thought, and answered at once as if my query had been quite expected:—

'Mais non, monsieur. Sarah the Divine! Ah, she comes with my million a year and the house of Hyde Park. No, the only inhabitant of my real world whom I have yet seen is Monsieur Valmont, and he, alas! I find so changeable. But now, adieu frivolity, we must be serious,' and she walked sedately by my side.

'Do you know where you are going, monsieur? You are going to church. Oh, do not look frightened, not to a service. I am decorating the church with holly, and you shall help me and get thorns in your poor fingers.'

The private road, which up to this time had passed through a forest, now reached a secluded glade in which stood a very small, but exquisite, church, evidently centuries older than the mansion we had left. Beyond it were gray stone ruins, which Lady Alicia pointed out to me as remnants of the original mansion that had been built in the reign of the second Henry. The church, it was thought, formed the private chapel to the hall, and it had been kept in repair by the various lords of the manor.

'Now hearken to the power of the poor, and learn how they may flout the proud marquis,' cried Lady Alicia gleefully; 'the poorest man in England may walk along this private road on Sunday to the church, and the proud marquis is powerless to prevent him. Of course, if the poor man prolongs his walk then is he in danger from the law of trespass. On weekdays, however, this is the most secluded spot on the estate, and I regret to say that my lordly uncle does not trouble it even on Sundays. I fear we are a degenerate race, Monsieur Valmont, for doubtless a fighting and deeply religious ancestor of mine built this church, and to think that when the useful masons cemented those stones together, Madame la Marquise de Bellairs or Lady Alicia were alike unthought of, and though three hundred years divide them this ancient chapel makes them seem, as one might say, contemporaries. Oh, Monsieur Valmont, what is the use of worrying about emeralds or anything else? As I look at this beautiful old church, even the house of Hyde Park appears as naught,' and to my amazement, the eyes that Lady Alicia turned upon me were wet.

The front door was unlocked, and we walked into the church in silence. Around the pillars holly and ivy were twined. Great armfuls of the shrubs had been flung here and there along the walls in heaps, and a step-ladder stood in one of the aisles, showing that the decoration of the edifice was not yet complete. A subdued melancholy had settled down on my erstwhile vivacious companion, the inevitable reaction so characteristic of the artistic temperament, augmented doubtless by the solemnity of the place, around whose walls in brass and marble were sculptured memorials of her ancient race.