At the Villa Rose | Page 4

up the steps.
Harry Wethermill returned to the rooms. Mr. Ricardo did not follow
him. He was too busy with the little problem which had been presented
to him that night. What could that girl, he asked himself, have in
common with the raddled woman she addressed so respectfully? Indeed,
there had been a note of more than respect in her voice. There had been
something of affection. Again Mr. Ricardo found himself wondering in
what street in Bohemia Celia dwelt--and as he walked up to the hotel
there came yet other questions to amuse him.
"Why," he asked, "could neither Celia nor madame come to the Villa
des Fleurs tomorrow night? What are the plans they have made? And
what was it in those plans which had brought the sudden gravity and
reluctance into Celia's face?"
Ricardo had reason to remember those questions during the next few
days, though he only idled with them now.

CHAPTER II
A CRY FOR HELP
It was on a Monday evening that Ricardo saw Harry Wethermill and
the girl Celia together. On the Tuesday he saw Wethermill in the rooms
alone and had some talk with him.
Wethermill was not playing that night, and about ten o'clock the two
men left the Villa des Fleurs together.
"Which way do you go?" asked Wethermill.
"Up the hill to the Hotel Majestic," said Ricardo.
"We go together, then. I, too, am staying there," said the young man,
and they climbed the steep streets together. Ricardo was dying to put
some questions about Wethermill's young friend of the night before,
but discretion kept him reluctantly silent. They chatted for a few
moments in the hall upon indifferent topics and so separated for the
night. Mr. Ricardo, however, was to learn something more of Celia the
next morning; for while he was fixing his tie before the mirror
Wethermill burst into his dressing-room. Mr. Ricardo forgot his
curiosity in the surge of his indignation. Such an invasion was an
unprecedented outrage upon the gentle tenor of his life. The business of
the morning toilette was sacred. To interrupt it carried a subtle
suggestion of anarchy. Where was his valet? Where was Charles, who
should have guarded the door like the custodian of a chapel?
"I cannot speak to you for at least another half-hour," said Mr. Ricardo,
sternly.
But Harry Wethermill was out of breath and shaking with agitation.
"I can't wait," he cried, with a passionate appeal. "I have got to see you.
You must help me, Mr. Ricardo--you must, indeed!"
Ricardo spun round upon his heel. At first he had thought that the help

wanted was the help usually wanted at Aix-les-Bains. A glance at
Wethermills face, however, and the ringing note of anguish in his voice,
told him that the thought was wrong. Mr. Ricardo slipped out of his
affectations as out of a loose coat. "What has happened?" he asked
quietly.
"Something terrible." With shaking fingers Wethermill held out a
newspaper. "Read it," he said.
It was a special edition of a local newspaper, Le Journal de Savoie, and
it bore the date of that morning.
"They are crying it in the streets," said Wethermill. "Read!"
A short paragraph was printed in large black letters on the first page,
and leaped to the eyes.
"Late last night," it ran, "an appalling murder was committed at the
Villa Rose, on the road to Lac Bourget. Mme. Camille Dauvray, an
elderly, rich woman who was well known at Aix, and had occupied the
villa every summer for the last few years, was discovered on the floor
of her salon, fully dressed and brutally strangled, while upstairs, her
maid, Helene Vauquier, was found in bed, chloroformed, with her
hands tied securely behind her back. At the time of going to press she
had not recovered consciousness, but the doctor, Emile Peytin, is in
attendance upon her, and it is hoped that she will be able shortly to
throw some light on this dastardly affair. The police are properly
reticent as to the details of the crime, but the following statement may
be accepted without hesitation:
"The murder was discovered at twelve o'clock at night by the
sergent-de-ville Perrichet, to whose intelligence more than a word of
praise is due, and it is obvious from the absence of all marks upon the
door and windows that the murderer was admitted from within the villa.
Meanwhile Mme. Dauvray's motor-car has disappeared, and with it a
young Englishwoman who came to Aix with her as her companion. The
motive of the crime leaps to the eyes. Mme. Dauvray was famous in
Aix for her jewels, which she wore with too little prudence. The

condition of the house shows that a careful search was made for them,
and they have disappeared. It is