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Phinuit, learning that there was no telephone, had accepted an offer of the Montalais motor car to tow the other under cover and so enable Jules to make repairs, and Eve de Montalais had carried madame la comtesse off to her own apartment to change her shoes and stockings, the gentlemen trooped to the drawing-room fire, at the instance of Madame de Sévénié, and grew quite cheerful under the combined influence of warmth and wine and biscuits; Duchemin standing by with a half-rejected doubt to preoccupy him, vaguely disturbed by the oddness of this rencontre considered in relation to that injudicious stop for dinner at Nant in the face of the impending storm, and with Mr.
Not that he made the mistake of despising those two social malcontents, Phinuit and Jules, that rogue adventurer Monk, that grasping courtesan Liane Delorme. Individually and collectively Lanyard accounted that quartet uncommonly clever, resourceful, audacious, unscrupulous, and potentially ruthless, utterly callous to compunctions when their interests were jeopardised.
Swain and had no time to observe by the tell-tale whether or not the course he had prescribed was being followed. Liane's exquisite and tender arm supported the suffering head of Captain Monk as he absorbed the nourishment served by Phinuit. The eyebrows made an affectingly faint try at a gesture of gratitude. The eyes closed, once more Monk's head reposed upon the pillow.
"And the excellent Phinuit?" "That one as well." "How long ago?" "A week to-morrow they did sail from Cherbourg. It is a week since anyone has heard me laugh." Lanyard compassionately fished a bottle out of the cooler and refilled her glass. "Accept, mademoiselle, every assurance of my profound sympathy."
I had to take a job as secretary to a man I couldn't respect, and now... Well, if I can get a bit of my own back by defrauding the government or classing myself with the unorganised leeches on Society, nothing I know is going to stop my doing it!" Phinuit knocked the ashes out of a cold pipe at which he had been sucking for some time, rose, and stretched.
Then the fusillade continuing without intermission save when the man outside stopped long enough to extract an empty clip and replace it with one loaded Lanyard edged along the partition to the door, calculated the stand of the lunatic in the saloon from the angle at which the bullets were coming through, and emptied the pistol he had taken from Phinuit at the panels as fast as he could pull trigger.
"And then," said Phinuit, "when we know you steered a direct course from London for the Château de Montalais, and made yourself persona grata there Oh, persona very much grata, if I'm any judge! you can hardly ask us to believe you didn't mean to do it, it all just happened so." "Monsieur sees too clearly...."
"You have the true gift for sarcasm: a pity to waste it on an audience two-thirds incapable of appreciation." "Oh, you're wrong!" Phinuit declared earnestly. "I'm appreciative, I think the dear man's immense."
"But is it possible," Lanyard protested, "you still do not understand me? Is it possible you still believe I am a thief at heart and interested in those jewels only to turn them to my own profit?" He stared unbelievingly at the frosty eyes of Monk beneath their fatuously stubborn brows, at the hard, unyielding eyes of Phinuit. "You said it," this last replied with brevity.
Lanyard, scrutinising the deck with the flashlamp, stooped, picked up something, and offered it on an outspread palm upon which he trained the clear electric beam. "Cigarette stub?" Monk said, and sniffed. "That's a famous find!" "A cigarette manufactured by the French Régie." "And well stepped on, too," Phinuit observed. "Well, what about it?"
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