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Updated: May 19, 2025
It was in New Zealand that Madame Wachner had learnt to speak English: "My 'usband, 'e was in business there," she said vaguely. "And you?" she asked at last, fixing her piercing eyes on the pretty Englishwoman, and allowing them to travel down till they rested on the milky row of perfectly-matched pearls.
Madame Wachner was certainly a kindly, warm-hearted sort of woman. They walked out together into the narrow garden, and soon Madame Wachner began to amuse her companion by lively, shrewd talk, and they spent a pleasant half hour pacing up and down. The Wachners seemed to have travelled a great deal about the world and especially in several of the British Colonies.
Both men stopped simultaneously, but neither answered her. "Who goes there?" she repeated; and then, "I fear, Messieurs, that you have made a mistake. You have taken this villa for someone else's house!" But there was alarm as well as anger in her voice. "It is I, Paul de Virieu, Madame Wachner."
If I had only begun at the right, the propitious moment as I should have done if you had not worried me and asked me to go away I should probably have made a great deal of money," he looked at her disconsolately, deprecatingly. Chester also looked at Madame Wachner. He admired the wife's self-restraint. Her red face got a little redder. That was all.
You know, Madame Wachner" she lowered her voice, for she did not wish the driver to hear what she was about to say "you know that Anna won a very large sum of money two nights ago." Sylvia Bailey was aware that people had been robbed and roughly handled, even in idyllic Lacville, when leaving the Casino after an especial stroke of luck at the tables. "I do hope nothing has happened to her!"
One thing, however, rather dashed her pleasure in the entertainment. Madame Wachner, forgetting for once her usual tact, suddenly made a violent attack on the Comte de Virieu. They were all talking of the habitués of the Casino: "The only one I do not like," she exclaimed, in French, "is that Count if indeed Count he be? He is so arrogant, so proud, so rude!
"It is the English gentleman, Mrs. Bailey's friend," said Madame Wachner quickly; and at once the Frenchman's voice softened. "Ah! we had quite given up M'sieur," he said amiably. "Come in, come in! Yes, the bag has arrived; but people often send their luggage before they come themselves. Just as they sometimes leave their luggage after they themselves have departed!"
There, actually lying open before her, between two leaves of the little note-book, was a letter signed by Anna Wolsky! It was a short note, in French, apparently an answer to one Madame Wachner had sent reminding her of her engagement. It was odd that the Wachners had said nothing of this note, for it made Anna's conduct seem stranger than ever.
Madame Wachner stepped suddenly back, and as she did so L'Ami Fritz moved a step forward. Sylvia looked at him, an agonised appeal in her eyes. He was smiling hideously, a nervous grin zig-zagging across his large, thin-lipped mouth. "You should have taken the coffee," he muttered in English. "It would have saved us all so much trouble!"
Early in their acquaintance the Count had warned her against making casual friendships in the Gambling Rooms, and he even did not like her knowing this amused Sylvia the harmless Wachners. When he saw her talking to Madame Wachner in the Club, Count Paul would look across the baccarat table and there would come a little frown over his eyes a frown she alone could see.
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