CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE DESCRIBES AN UNWELCOME VISIT

Pennington’s sudden fear held me in blank surprise.

Ere I could reply to him he had slipped through the door which led into my bedroom, closing it after him, just as Delanne’s stout figure and broad, good-humoured face appeared in the doorway.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “Meester Biddulph!” and he bowed politely over my hand.

Then, turning to Sylvia, who stood pale and rigid, he put forth his hand, and also bowed low over hers, saying in English: “My respects—and heartiest congratulations to madame.”

His quick eyes wandered around the room, then he added—

“Meester Pennington is here; where is he? I am here to speak with him.”

“Pennington was here,” I replied, “but he has gone.”

“Then he only went out this moment! I must see him. He is in the hotel!” my visitor exclaimed quickly.

“I suppose he is,” I replied rather faintly; “we had better ask the waiter. He is not stopping here. He merely came to-night to dine with us.”

“Of course,” said Delanne. “He arrived by the 2.37 train from Bruxelles, went to the Hôtel Dominici, near the Place Vendôme, sent you a petit-bleu, and arrived here at 6.30. I am here because I wish to see him most particularly. I was in Orleans when the news of my friend’s arrival in Paris was telephoned to me—I have only just arrived.”

I opened the door leading to my bedroom, and called my father-in-law, but there was no response. In an instant Delanne dashed past me, and in a few seconds had searched the suite.

“Ah, of course!” he cried, noticing that the door of my wife’s room led back to the main corridor; “my friend has avoided me. He has passed out by this way. Still, he must be in the hotel.”

He hurried back to the salon, and, opening the shutters, took off his hat.

Was it some signal to the watchers outside? Ere I could reach his side, however, he had replaced his hat, and was re-entering the room.

“Phew! this place is stifling hot, my dear friend,” he said. “I wonder you do not have the windows open for a little!”

Sylvia had stood by in silence. I saw by her face that the Frenchman’s sudden appearance had caused her the greatest alarm and dismay. If Delanne was her father’s friend, why did the latter flee in such fear? Why had he implored me to save him? From what?

The Frenchman seemed highly disappointed, for finding the waiter in the corridor he asked him in French which way the Englishman had fled.

The waiter, however, declared that he had seen nobody in the corridor, a reply which sorely puzzled Delanne.

“Where is he?” he demanded of Sylvia.

“I have no idea,” was her faltering reply. “He simply went into the next room a few moments ago.”

“And slipped out in an endeavour to make his exit, eh?” asked the man, with a short, harsh laugh. “I quite expected as much. That is why I intended to have a straight business talk with him.”

“He is in no mood to talk business just now,” said my wife, and then—and only then—did I recollect that this man was the associate of the assassin Reckitt.

This fact alone aroused my antagonism towards him. Surely I was glad that Pennington had got away if, as it seemed, he did not wish to meet his unwelcome visitor.

“He shall talk business!” cried the Frenchman, “and very serious business!”

Then turning, he hurried along the corridor in the direction of the main staircase and disappeared.

“What does all this mean?” I asked Sylvia, who still stood there pale and panting.

“I—I don’t know, Owen,” she gasped. Then, rushing across to the window, she looked out.

“That man has gone!” she cried. “I—I knew he was watching, but had no idea of the reason.”

“He was evidently watching for your father,” I said.

“He was watching us—you and I—not him.”

We heard two men pass the door quickly. One of them exclaimed in French—

“See! The window at the end! It would be easy to get from there to the roof of the next house.”

“Yes!” cried his companion. “He has evidently gone that way. We must follow.”

“Hark!” I said. “Listen to what they are saying! Delanne is following your father!”

“He is his worst enemy,” she said simply. “Do you not remember that he was watching him in Manchester?”

The fact that he was an associate of Reckitt puzzled me. I felt highly resentful that the fellow should have thus intruded upon my privacy and broken up my very pleasant evening. He had intruded himself upon me once before, causing me both annoyance and chagrin. I looked forth into the corridor, and there saw the figures of two men in the act of getting through the window at the end, while a waiter and a femme-de-chambre stood looking on in surprise.

“Who is that man?” I asked of Sylvia, as I turned back into our salon.

“His real name is Guertin,” she replied.

“He told me that he knew you.”

“Perhaps,” she laughed, just a trifle uneasily, I thought. “I only know that he is my father’s enemy. He is evidently here to hunt him down, and to denounce him.”

“As what?”

But she only shrugged her shoulders. Next instant I saw that I had acted wrongly in asking Sylvia to expose her own father, whatever his faults might have been.

Again somebody rushed past the door and then back again to the head of the staircase. The whole of the quiet aristocratic hotel seemed to have suddenly awakened from its lethargy. Indeed, a hue and cry seemed to have been started after the man who had until a few moments before been my guest.

What could this mean? Had it not been for the fact that Guertin—or Delanne, as he called himself—was a friend of the assassin Reckitt, I would have believed him to have been an agent of the sûreté.

We heard shouting outside the window at the end of the corridor. It seemed as though a fierce chase had begun after the fugitive Englishman, for yet another man, a thin, respectably-dressed mechanic, had run along and slipped out of the window with ease as though acquired by long practice.

I, too, ran to the window and looked out. But all I could see in the night was a bewildering waste of roofs and chimneys extending along the Rue de Rivoli towards the Louvre. I could only distinguish one of the pursuers outlined against the sky. Then I returned to where Sylvia was standing pale and breathless.

Her face was haggard and drawn, and I knew of the great tension her nerves must be undergoing. Her father was certainly no coward. Fearing that he could not escape by either the front or back door of the hotel his mind had been quickly made up, and he had made his exit by that window, taking his chance to hide and avoid detection on those many roofs in the vicinity.

The position was, to me, extremely puzzling. I could not well press Sylvia to tell me the truth concerning her father, for I had noticed that she always had shielded him, as was natural for a daughter, after all.

Was he an associate of Reckitt and Forbes, as I had once suspected? Yet if he were, why should Delanne be his enemy, for he certainly was Reckitt’s intimate friend.

Sylvia was filled with suppressed excitement. She also ran along the corridor and peered out of the window at the end. Then, apparently satisfied that her father had avoided meeting Delanne, she returned and stood again silent, her eyes staring straight before her as though dreading each second to hear shouts of triumph at the fugitive’s detection.

I saw the manager and remonstrated with him. I was angry that my privacy should thus be disturbed by outsiders.

“Monsieur told the clerk that he was a friend,” he replied politely. “Therefore he gave permission for him to be shown upstairs. I had no idea of such a contretemps, or such a regrettable scene as this!”

I saw he was full of regret, for the whole hotel seemed startled, and guests were asking each other what had occurred to create all that hubbub.

For an hour we waited, but Delanne did not return. He and the others had gone away over the roofs, on what seemed to be an entirely fruitless errand.

“Were they the police?” I heard a lady ask anxiously of a waiter.

“No, madame, we think not. They are strangers—and entirely unknown.”

Sylvia also heard the man’s reply, and exclaimed—

“I hope my father has successfully escaped his enemies. It was, however, a very narrow shave. If they had seen him, they would have shot him dead, and afterwards declared it to have been an accident!”

“Surely not!” I cried. “That would have been murder.”

“Of course. But they are desperate, and they would have wriggled out of it somehow. That was why I feared for him. But, thank Heaven, he is evidently safe.”

And she turned from the window that looked forth into the Rue de Rivoli, and then made an excuse to go to her room.

I saw that she was greatly perturbed. Her heart beat quickly, and her face, once pale as death, was now flushed crimson.

“How your father got away so rapidly was simply marvellous!” I declared. “Why, scarcely ten seconds elapsed from the time he closed that door to Delanne’s appearance on the threshold.”

“Yes. But he instantly realized his peril, and did not hesitate.”

“I am sorry, dearest, that this exciting incident should have so upset our evening,” I said, kissing her upon the brow, for she now declared herself much fatigued. “When you have gone to your room, I shall go downstairs and learn what I can about the curious affair. Your father’s enemies evidently knew of his arrival from Brussels, for Delanne admitted that word of it was telephoned to Orleans, and he came to Paris at once.”

“Yes, he admitted that,” she said hurriedly. “But do not let us speak of it. My father has got away in safety. For me that is all-sufficient. Good-night, Owen, dear.” And she kissed me fondly.

“Good-night, darling,” I said, returning her sweet caress; and then, when she had passed from the room, I seized my hat and descended the big flight of red-carpeted stairs, bent on obtaining some solution of the mystery of that most exciting and curious episode.