“Yes,” she gasped.  “Anything else?”

“No, madam,” replied the telephone operator at the Guildford Post Office.  “Nothing else.  I will forward the duplicate by post.”

And she switched off.

SIXTH CHAPTER

FACING THE UNKNOWN

That the police were convinced that Hugh Henfrey had shot Mademoiselle was plain.

Wherever he went an agent of detective police followed him.  At the Cafe de Paris as he took his aperitif on the terrasse the man sat at a table near, idly smoking a cigarette and glancing at an illustrated paper on a wooden holder.  In the gardens, in the Rooms, in the Galerie, everywhere the same insignificant little man haunted him.

Soon after luncheon he met Dorise and her mother in the Rooms.  With them were the Comte d’Autun, an elegant young Frenchman, well known at the tables, and Madame Tavera, a very chic person who was one of the most admired visitors of that season.  They were only idling and watching the players at the end table, where a stout, bearded Russian was making some sensational coups en plein.

Presently Hugh succeeded in getting Dorise alone.

“It’s awfully stuffy here,” he said.  “Let’s go outside—­eh?”

Together they descended the red-carpeted steps and out into the palm-lined Place, at that hour thronged by the smartest crowd in Europe.  Indeed, the war seemed to have led to increased extravagance and daring in the dress of those gay Parisiennes, those butterflies of fashion who were everywhere along the Cote d’Azur.

They turned the corner by the Palais des Beaux Arts into the Boulevard Peirara.

“Let’s walk out of the town,” he suggested to the girl.  “I’m tired of the place.”

“So am I, Hugh,” Dorise admitted.  “For the first fortnight the unceasing round of gaiety and the novelty of the Rooms are most fascinating, but, after that, one seems cooped up in an atmosphere of vicious unreality.  One longs for the open air and open country after this enervating, exotic life.”

So when they arrived at the little church of Ste. Devote, the patron saint of Monaco, that little building which everyone knows standing at the entrance to that deep gorge the Vallon des Gaumates, they descended the steep, narrow path which runs beside the mountain torrent and were soon alone in the beautiful little valley where the grey-green olives overhang the rippling stream.  The little valley was delightfully quiet and rural after the garish scenes in Monte Carlo, the cosmopolitan chatter, and the vulgar display of the war-rich.  The old habitue of pre-war days lifts his hands as he watches the post-war life around the Casino and listens to the loud uneducated chatter of the profiteer’s womenfolk.

As the pair went along in the welcome shadows, for the sun fell strong upon the tumbling stream, Hugh was remarking upon it.