Valentin was expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whose friendship he had secured during some of his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States. No one of them at least was in his eyes the guest of the evening. When he bowed to the Ambassador’s family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret looked away.īut for whatever old causes such people might be interested in each other, their distinguished host was not specially interested in them. He had left his country after some crash of debts, and now expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by swinging about in uniform, sabre and spurs. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways-especially Margaret Graham. He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure, clean-shaven, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, and, as seemed natural in an officer of that famous regiment of victorious failures and successful suicides, he had an air at once dashing and melancholy. This was Commandant O’Brien, of the French Foreign Legion. He saw-perhaps with more interest than any of these-a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways without receiving any very hearty acknowledgment, and who now advanced alone to pay his respects to his host. He saw Father Brown, of Cobhole, in Essex, whom he had recently met in England. Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed brown beard, and a forehead barred with those parallel wrinkles which are the penalty of superciliousness, since they come through constantly elevating the eyebrows. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and with her her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with silver hair and a face sensitive and superior. He saw all the other pillars of the little party he saw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador-a choleric old man with a russet face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. The garden door of it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. He went straight through his house to his study, which opened on the grounds behind. When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and the red rosette-an elegant figure, his dark beard already streaked with grey. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers and the only thing wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice. Since he had been supreme over French-and largely over European-policial methods, his great influence had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of prisons. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things and though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision. But there was no exit from the garden into the world outside all round it ran a tall, smooth, unscalable wall with special spikes at the top no bad garden, perhaps, for a man to reflect in whom some hundred criminals had sworn to kill.Īs Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was detained for ten minutes. The garden was large and elaborate, and there were many exits from the house into the garden. It was an old house, with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine but the oddity-and perhaps the police value-of its architecture was this: that there was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door, which was guarded by Ivan and the armoury. Valentin’s house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. These were, however, reassured by his confidential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, and a face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a table in the entrance hall-a hall hung with weapons. Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner, and some of his guests began to arrive before him.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |