"I am behaving like a blithering idiot," he told himself. "Miss Vanrenen and her friends are either on the pier listening to the band, or sitting over their coffee in the gla.s.s cage behind there. I'll wire Simmonds in the morning to hurry up."

A man descended the steps of the hotel and walked straight across King's Road. A light gray overcoat, thrown wide on his shoulders, gave a lavish display of frilled shirt, and a gray Homburg hat was set rakishly on one side of his head. In the half light Medenham at once discerned the regular, waxen-skinned features of Count Marigny, and during the next few seconds it really seemed as if the Frenchman were making directly for him. But another man, short, rotund, very erect of figure, and strutting in gait, came from the interior of a "shelter"

that stood a little to the right of Medenham's position on the rails.

"h.e.l.lo, Marigny," said he jauntily.

The Count looked back towards the hotel. His tubby acquaintance chuckled. The effort squeezed an eyegla.s.s out of his right eye.

"Aie pas peur, mon vieux!" cried he in very colloquial French. "My mother sent a note to say that the fair Cynthia has retired to her room to write letters. I have been waiting here ten minutes."

Now, it chanced that Medenham's widespread touring in France had rubbed up his knowledge of the language. It is ever the ear that needs training more than the tongue, and in all likelihood he would not have caught the exact meaning of the words were it not for the hap of recent familiarity with the accents of all sorts and conditions of French-speaking folk.

"Jimmy Devar!" he breathed, and his amazement lost him Marigny's muttered answer.

But he heard Devar's confident outburst as the two walked off together in the direction of the West Pier.

"You are growing positively nervous, my dear Edouard. And why? The affair arranges itself admirably. I shall be always on hand, ready to turn up exactly at the right moment. What the deuce, this is the luck of a lifetime...."

The squeaky, high-pitched voice--a masculine variant of Mrs. Devar's ultra-fashionable intonation--died away midst the chatter and laughter of other promenaders. Medenham's first impulse was to follow and listen, since Devar had yielded to the common delusion of imagining that none except his companion on the sea-front that night understood a foreign language. But he swept the notion aside ere it had well presented itself as a means of solving an astounding puzzle.

"No, dash it all, I'm not a private detective," he muttered angrily.

"Why should I interfere? Confound Simmonds, and d----n that railway van! I have a good mind to hand the car over to Dale in the morning and return to town by the first train."

If he really meant what he said he ought to have gone back to his hotel, played billiards for an hour, and sought his bedroom with an easy conscience. He was debating the point when the conceit intruded itself that Cynthia's pretty head was at that moment bent over a writing-table in a certain well-lighted corner apartment of the second floor, so he compromised with his half-formed intent, whisked round to face the sea again, and lighted another cigarette from the glowing end of its predecessor. Some part of his unaccountable irritation took wings with the cloud of smoke.

"Blessed if I can tell why I should worry," he communed. "Never saw the girl before to-day ... shall never see her again if I put Dale in charge.... Her father must be a special sort of fool, though, to trust her to the care of the Devar woman.... What was it that rotter said?--'The affair arranges itself admirably.' And he would be 'always on hand.' What is arranging itself?... And why should Jimmy Devar be ready, if need be, 'to turn up exactly at the right moment?' I suppose the answer to the first bit of the acrostic is simple enough. Cynthia Vanrenen is to become the Countess Marigny, and the Devar gang stands in on the cash proceeds. Oh, a nice scheme! This Frenchman is posted as to the tour. By the most curious of coincidences he will reappear at Bournemouth, or Bristol, or in the Wye Valley. What more natural than a day's run in company?... Ah, I've got it! Jimmy is to come along when Marigny thinks that Cynthia will take a seat in the 59 Du Vallon for a change--just to try the new French car.... By gad, I shall have a word to say there.... Steady, now, George Augustus! Woa, my boy; keep a tight hand on the reins. Why in thunder should you concern yourself with the wretched business, anyhow?"

It was a marvelously still night. Beneath him, on an asphalted path nearly level with the stone-strewed beach, pa.s.sed a young couple. The man's voice came up to him.

"Jones expects to be taken into partnership after this season, and I am pretty certain to be given the management of the woolen department.

If that comes off, no more long hours in the shop for you, Lucy, but a nice little house up there on the hill, just as quick as we can find it."

"Oh, Charlie dear, I shall never be tired then...."

A black arm was suddenly silhouetted across the shoulders of a white blouse, whose wearer received a rea.s.suring hug.

"Let's reckon up," said the owner of the arm--"July, August, September--three months, sweetheart...."

Medenham had never given a thought to marrying until his father hinted at the notion during dinner the previous evening, and he had laughed at it, being absolutely heart-whole. There was something irresistibly comical then about the Earl's bland theory that Fairholme House needed a sprightly viscountess, yet now, twenty-four hours later, he could extract no shred of humor from the idyl of a draper's a.s.sistant. It seemed to be a perfectly natural thing that these lovers should talk of mating. Of what else should they whisper on this midsummer's night, when the gloaming already bore the promise of dawn, and the glory of the sea and sky spread quiet harmonies through the silent air?

Perhaps he sighed as he turned away, but his own evidence on that point would be inconclusive, since the first object his wondering eyes dwelt on was the graceful figure of Cynthia Vanrenen. There was no possibility of error. An arc lamp blazed overhead, and, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, his recognition of Cynthia was obviously duplicated by Cynthia's recognition of her deputy chauffeur.

In the girl's case some degree of surprise was justified. It is a truism of social life that far more distinctiveness is attached to the seemingly democratic severity of evening dress than to any other cla.s.s of masculine garniture. Medenham now looked exactly what he was--a man born and bred in the purple. No one could possibly mistake this well-groomed soldier for Dale or Simmonds. His clever, resourceful face, his erect carriage, the very suggestion of mess uniform conveyed by his clothing, told of lineage and a career. He might, in sober earnest, have been compelled to earn a living by driving a motor-car, but no freak of fortune could rob him of his birthright as an aristocrat.

Of course, Cynthia was easily first in the effort to recover disturbed wits.

"Like myself, you have been tempted out by this beautiful night, Mr.

Fitzroy," she said.

Then "Mr." was a concession to his attire; somehow she imagined it would savor of presumption if she addressed him as an inferior.

She could not define her mental att.i.tude in words, but her quick intelligence responded to its subtle influence as a mirrored lake records the pa.s.sing of a breeze. Very dainty and self-possessed she looked as she stood there smiling at him. Her motor dust-coat was utilized as a wrap. Beneath it she wore a white muslin dress of a studied simplicity that, to another woman's a.s.sessing gaze, would reveal its expensiveness. She had tied a veil of delicate lace around her hair and under her chin, and Medenham noted, with a species of awe, that her eyes, so vividly blue in daylight, were now dark as the sky at night.

And he was strangely tongue-tied. He found nothing to say until after a pause that verged on awkwardness. Then he floundered badly.

"I am prepared to vouch for any explanation so long as it brings you here, Miss Vanrenen," he said.

Cynthia wanted to laugh. It was sufficiently ridiculous to be compelled, as it were, to treat a paid servant as an equal, but it savored of madness to find him verging on the perilous borderland of a flirtation.

"Do you wish, then, to consult me on any matter?" she asked, with American directness.

"I was standing here and thinking of you," he said. "Perhaps that accounts for your appearance. Since you have visited India you may have heard that the higher Buddhists, when they are anxious that another person shall act according to their desire, remain motionless in front of that person's residence and concentrate ardent thought on their fixed intent.... Sitting in _dhurma_ on a man, they call it. I suppose the same principle applies to a woman."

"It follows that you are a higher Buddhist, and that you willed I should come out. Your theory of sitting on the door-mat, is it?

wobbles a bit in practice, because I really ran downstairs to tell Mrs. Devar something I had forgotten previously. Not finding her, I decided on a stroll. Instead of crossing the road I walked up to the left a couple of blocks. Then I noticed the pier, and meant to have a look at it before returning to the hotel. Anyhow, you wanted me, Mr.

Fitzroy, and here I am. What can I do for you?"

Her tone of light raillery, supplemented by that truly daring adaptation of the method of gaining a cause favored by the esoteric philosophy of the East, went far to restore Medenham's wandering faculties.

"I wanted to ask you a few questions, Miss Vanrenen," he explained.

"Pray do, as they say in Boston."

But he was not quite himself yet. He noticed that the lights were extinguished in the corner of the second floor.

"Is that your room?" he asked, pointing to it.

"Yes."

Her air of blank amazement supplied a further tonic.

"Queer thing!" he said. "I thought so. More of the occult, I suppose.

But I really wished to speak to you about Mrs. Devar."

Cynthia was obviously relieved.

"Dear me!" she cried. "You two have taken a violent dislike to each other. You see, Mr. Fitzroy, we Americans are rather pleased than otherwise if a man acts and speaks like a gentleman even though he has to earn a living by hustling an automobile, but your sure-enough British dames exact a kind of servility from a chauffeur that doesn't seem to fit in with your make-up. Servility is a hard word, but it is the best I can throw on the screen at the moment, and I'm real sorry if I have hurt your feelings by using it."

Medenham smiled. Each instant his calmer judgment showed more and more clearly that he could not offer any valid excuse for interference in the girl's affairs. For all he knew to the contrary, she might be tremulous with delight at the prospect of becoming a French countess; if that were so, the fact that he disapproved of Mrs. Devar's matchmaking tactics would be received very coldly. Cynthia's natural interpretation of his allusion to her chaperon offered a means of escape from a difficult position.

"I am greatly obliged by your hint," he said. "Not that my lack of good manners is of much account, seeing that I am only a stop gap for the courtly Simmonds, but I shall endeavor to profit by it in my next situation."

"Now you are getting at me," cried Cynthia, her eyes sparkling somewhat. "Do you know, Mr. Fitzroy, I am inclined to think you are not a chauffeur at all."

"I a.s.sure you there is not a man living who understands my special type of car better," he protested.

"That isn't what I mean, so don't wriggle. You met Simmonds when he was in trouble, and just offered to take his place for a day or so, thereby doing him a good turn--isn't that the truth?"

"Yes."