Chapter Five. The Perfumed Card.

We passed from room to room, chatting freely with the old Frenchwoman, who garrulously told me everything I wanted to know, and showed not the least reluctance to discuss her master and his affairs.

I had previously warned Doris to be on the look-out for anything of interest, and, pleased with the idea of helping me, she was keenly on the alert. I was soon to have good reason to bless the lucky inspiration which had led me to fetch her to Mentone at a time when most people prefer to give it a wide berth.

After visiting a number of rooms, we came at last to the front entrance, and the aged housekeeper seemed to think we were leaving. But I had not yet caught sight of Cauvin’s private room, and I knew that unless I saw that my journey would be fruitless.

“It is a very nice house,” I said to our guide, “and the gardens are beautiful. But I have much writing to do, and there does not seem to be any room which would serve well as a study.”

She hesitated obviously. “Well,” she said slowly, “there is monsieur’s private room, but it is locked. If monsieur desires it, I will fetch the key.”

“I might as well see it,” I said, as carelessly as I could. “I must have some private den of my own,” I went on.

The old dame shuffled off for the key, and I gave Doris a special hint to keep her eyes wide open. When the old woman returned she led us directly to Cauvin’s private room, a good-sized apartment, furnished something after the pattern of the library of the ordinary English house. I noticed immediately that it had double doors; evidently Cauvin had good reasons for making sure that there should be no eavesdropping when he was at home. Leading from it was a large salon, upholstered in pale blue silk, and the old woman passed into this in order to open the sun-shutters and admit the light.

In the window of the library was a big American roll-top desk, which stood open and was rather dusty. The green blotting-pad remained just as the master of the house had left it, and near it lay a pile of miscellaneous and dusty-looking papers.

I was glancing round when I was startled by a faint, gasping sob, and, looking round, saw with alarm that Doris had dropped into a chair, apparently faint. The old woman had rushed to her assistance.

“It is nothing—only the heat,” murmured Doris faintly. “Please get me a glass of water.”

The old woman hurried away, and, much concerned, I bent over Doris. I had no idea that her illness was anything but real, and I was surprised when she said crisply but quietly, “Now is your chance.”

Then I realised her purpose and began a hurried examination of the desk, keeping my ears open for any sound of the old woman’s return. But I could find nothing. Evidently Cauvin left little to chance. The drawers of the desk were not even locked, and I soon concluded that I had drawn a blank, and that the key to the mystery I was bent on solving must be sought elsewhere. Of course I was not surprised. It was not in the least likely that Cauvin would leave incriminating documents in his winter quarters, but in the work upon which I was engaged it would never do to miss the opportunity that might be afforded by the momentary carelessness which is the ever-besetting peril of even the cleverest of rogues. As events proved, we were to learn once again the truth of the old adage that no man can be wise at all times.

When the old lady returned with water Doris soon “recovered,” and assured the volubly sympathetic dame that she was quite herself again. As we stood for a moment saying farewell, her quick eye caught something which I had overlooked.

“Why,” she said, “here is an invitation to a wedding in England!” And she picked up from a small side table, where it lay in a china bowl, a card printed in silver ink—an invitation, as she said, to a wedding, and printed in English.

“Has Monsieur Cauvin many English friends?” I asked the old Frenchwoman, hoping that something useful might slip out.

“Non, monsieur,” she replied. “I do not think so; I have never seen English letters come, and you are the first Englishman who has ever been here.”

I glanced at the card with an interest I took care to conceal. It had been issued six months before by the brother of the bride, a certain Agnes Wheatley, and invited “Monsieur et Madame Cauvin” to be present at her marriage to Captain James Easterbrook, of the Royal Fusiliers, at St. Mary’s Church, Chester. The address given for the reply was “118, Whitefriars, Chester”—an address which I took early opportunity of scribbling upon my shirt-cuff.

Suddenly Doris, who had taken the card from my hand, raised it to her nostrils and sniffed at it. “Why,” she said, “it is scented. I never saw an English wedding card scented before.” And she sniffed again and handed the card to me. I raised it to my nostrils and decided that the odour was either that of lemon-scented verbena or the old-fashioned stag-leaved geranium. The scent was fast disappearing, and it was evident, from the age of the card, that it must have been very pungent when fresh.

Small things mean much in our profession, and it struck me at once that Doris’s discovery might be decidedly important. Here we had a perfectly innocent-looking invitation to a wedding in England, printed in quite the ordinary English style, and, judging from the type employed, evidently the work of an English printer. Yet the card, found by chance in the house of a foreign suspect, showed a variation from English social customs which Doris, womanlike, had instantly detected. The fact of the card being scented, had I been alone, would certainly not have struck me as being of any peculiar significance; very few men, I am certain, would have given it a second thought. Yet the trivial circumstance was to be the means of leading us finally towards our goal.

“Are you sure they never perfume wedding cards in England?”

I asked Doris.

“Absolutely,” she replied. “I have never heard of such a thing. The card is of excellent quality, and, judging from the fact that the bridegroom is a military man, the parties must be of fairly good social circles, in which any departure from the accepted custom in such things would be regarded as ‘bad form.’”

“Well,” I thought, “it may be important.” At the same time I realised that the card might have lain in contact with a scented handkerchief, and thus absorbed part of the odour. As against this was the fact that the scent was not a common one. I decided in my own mind that the matter might be worth looking into, and, when the old custodian’s back was turned, took the liberty of slipping the card into my pocket.

Soon after, having learnt all I could about Cauvin and his abode, we left the Villa des Fleurs, and, giving the old woman a handsome tip, returned to Mentone. The same evening I left for Marseilles, Doris and her mother remaining behind for a day or two before returning to England.

Somehow I could not dismiss the subject of the perfume from my mind; why, I cannot exactly tell, for I could not see precisely the bearing of the card on the problem I had to solve. Was the perfume verbena or scented geranium, and had the card any special significance?

Next day, in Marseilles, I entered the shop of one of the leading perfumers in the Cannebière, and asked the young lady assistant whether she could identify the perfume for me.

“Certainly, monsieur,” she said without hesitation; “that is geranium.”

“Are you quite sure,” I asked, “that it is not verbena?”

“Monsieur shall decide for himself,” was the ready reply, and the girl at once fetched samples of both perfumes. A single test was enough to show that she was correct. And then, recognising the purpose of the card, though she could not speak English, she practically duplicated Doris’s remark. “Is it not unusual, monsieur, to scent a wedding card?”

That set me thinking furiously. It was quite possible that Doris might have made a mistake about a point of social etiquette. But here was a young Frenchwoman corroborating her in quite a dramatic fashion.

“It is unusual; I suppose they are peculiar people,” I replied as I left.

It is one of the penalties of contra-espionage work that one becomes almost morbidly interested in the seemingly trivial. One of the first lessons to be learnt is that nothing is so small that it can be safely neglected. There were, it was obvious, many ways by which the card might have become accidentally impregnated with the perfume. But my intuitive suspicions grew ever stronger, and at last I found myself convinced that there was “something in it.”

In one particular, at any rate, the card was of first-rate importance. Try as we would, we had failed entirely to connect Cauvin with anyone in England. We were morally certain that he must be receiving messages and money in some subterranean way, but it was certainly not through the post, and up to the present we had failed to find, among his big list of acquaintances and friends, anyone whom we could reasonably suspect of being in touch with the Hidden Hand across the Straits of Dover. But there were many possible channels of communication through neutral countries, and obviously we could not stop them all.

Now, with the aid of the wedding card, it seemed possible, always assuming the card to be genuine, that I might be able to locate one person at least in England who was upon extremely friendly terms with our wealthy suspect. That chance, at any rate, whether the perfume meant anything or not, I was resolved not to miss.

Treachery was rife everywhere. In Russia, in Italy, in Roumania, in Greece, and in other countries, men of apparently impeccable reputation were one after another being unmasked in their true characters of agents of the enemy, and were paying the penalty of their perfidy. In France several first-class scandals of this kind had recently absorbed the attention of the public. That England had hitherto been comparatively free from any of these causes célèbres was due, as I well knew, not to the absence of culprits, but to the lazy British good nature, which, coupled with the apathy of men in high places who had always laughed to scorn the very idea of the German spy in England, refused to look unpleasant facts in the face unless they became unduly obtrusive. And the picked men of the Hun spy bureau could be trusted not to make themselves conspicuous!

The great Hun octopus does not advertise its presence. It puts its faith in the powerful god Mammon, always sure of finding willing victims, and his chief disciple, Blackmail. Some day or other I may be able to tell the story in more detail; it will certainly be of absorbing interest. At present, however, it must give way to the exigencies of the war situation. The Germans would be only too glad to learn just how much we know; the British public would probably explode into a blaze of indignation if they once fully realised the supine attitude of their rulers to the ever-present and ever-growing menace of the German spy in their midst.