The Evil Chateau

Putaruru Press, Volume XI, Issue 511, 2 March 1933, Page 3

The Evil Chateau

SERIAL STORY

By

SYDNEY HORLER.

(All Rights Reserved)

CHAPTER 1. THE POISONED PARADISE. Life ..... Lounging in the seat, Stephen Heritage. surveyed the glittering pageant with hot scornful eyes. The supreme mockery of itl Just behind him was the Madrid Hotel, one of the most gilded caravanserai on the whole of the glittering Riviera. By turning his head he could see the wealth of the pleasure-seeking universe pouring in through the elaborate swing doors. Theatrical managers, who by putting on some worthless trash to catch the mediocre-minded mob, had found themselves temporarily in funds; American millionaires, Bengal merchants, cheap clothing magnates from the North of England, cross-breeds whoso activities would not bear too strict an examination—all these rubbing shoulders with swell mobsmen and the most daring and therefore famous courtesans known to this civilised age. Money, money, money! The greater part of it vulgar, but still money, all these people represented it; they all possessed it; the women even carried it on their bodies.

One of the notorious Marnay sisters, who was staying at the Madrid, he had read in La Saison de Cannes the day before, could be seen wearing a diamond ring worth £95,000 which she had purchased at one of the jewellers establishments along the Croisette out of her baccarat winnings at the Casino. And he had left exactly 100 francs

Of course it was his own fault. Yes, entirely his own fault. Another time he might have vigorously disputed this statement, but now, with end so close in sight, he accepted it. He ought not to have come to the cursed place. 100 francs. Not quite seventeen shillings. Just enough for one decent meal, but useless for anything else.

The air seemed tainted but he remained where he was. The seat he remembered sardonically, was a public one—one of the few amenities the Municipality of Cannes surely one of the slackest in the world, provided without charge. Staying there it cost him nothing. He had time to spare; he need not go back to the hotel for at least another hour and he was tired. God —how tired he was . . . It was the sunset hour of Cannes, and although Heritage remained indifferent to it nature was performing her nightly miracle. Over the Esterels the day was dying in unimaginable glory. -Purples and blues merged themselves into a background of scarlet splendour, with a flaming heart of deepest gold. The sky elsewhere had become a deep amethyst, matching the Mediterranean lapping lazily at the rocks beneath the dust-strewn paperlittered croisette. Even this ,in spite of being called by the subsidised local press one of the finest promenades in tlie world, looked almost beautiful in the fading light. Away to the right, past the luxury shops in which all the famous Paris dressmakers displayed their enticing wares, was that great yellow coloured mass around which the entire life of this pleasure town centred. From where he sat Heritage could see the great bow window of the Baccarat room—that luxurious chamber of Chance in which Hope had leaped to life so many times for him during the past week, only finally to die. Already lights were appearing behind the wonderful curtain which shielded the proceedings from the common gaze.

The whole town now commenced to glow. Along the croisette, in the shops and hotels, while behind among the hills it seemed as though a fairy lamplighter had turned on with one touch of his long pole, a whole realm of magic. A rare and wondrous beauty commenced to shine like a pageant out of some enchanting story book. One had stepped back, it seemed, to the age of Romance. That was how It had appeared a week before to the man of 28, humped in the corner of the public seat. He recalled the fact with a bitterness which exceeded any other memory. Cannes had been a rose garden to him a bare seven days before; now it was a poisoned Paradise. Apart from his own misfortune, he had seen sufficient to hate the place. He knew it was a town accursed. Intrigue, license, crime—they all flourish behind the shuttered windows of the great Villas and the drawn curtains of the splendid hotels. Hidden by the beauty lurked evil.

He should have left. Cannes was not for him. It did not want his type or class.

But now the money to take him away had gone. He would have to stay, he would be forced to become either a crook —a phase of existence of which he had no previous experience—or . . . looking at the great blackness before him, he supposed it would not take long . . . The average person would hold him in contempt, no doubt, for even allowing that thought to enter his mind; but when a fellow was utterly sick, utterly fed up, utterly without hope . . . and he could do what he liked with himself, he supposed?

His head had drooped, but now some intuitive warning, some prompting of the sub-conscious, caused him to look up.

A yard away from him a girl was walking along the Croisette in the direction of the town. Her face was ball' turned, and the light from a standard falling upon it. he recognised her instantly.

It seemed as though she was likely to smile but he turned deliberately away. He did not want her pity—and pity it would be. If she spoke, it would be to console him upon his losses. Besides he was broke. What association could a penniless failure have with a girl who gambled nightly —and generally with success—at the Cannes Baccarat Club.

She passed on. Although he knew himself to be a fool, Heritage turned in the seat. What a vital, radiant creature she was. How well she walked—simply, as a woman should walk, with natural grace not with a professiona! provocation of a cocotte or a cauturie’s model.

Simply dressed too. Just a plain grey tailor-made with a fur stole to match. Nothing elaborate, nothing ostentatious; nothing to call attention. It was the same in the evening; this girl who bad sat opposite to him many times at the five louis table in the Baccarat Room had invariably been the simplest dressed of.all the women — the simplest, and yet, to him, the most beautify 1. Not that he had allowed himself ro dwell on that. Women did not enter into his life. Women—certainly those at the Casino —were merely' the pampered pets of cosmopolitan, wealthy idlers. Even if he had presumed, they would have scorned him. Why, one ring from their finger would have kept him for a year.

The attitude of the girl who had just passed had been puzzling. In spite of her environment and occupation —after all quite decent women gambled—she seemed entirely removed from the typical, hectic minded, extravagantly dressed, over jewelled habitues of the room. He had often thought of her as a rose, flowering in an orchid house. She must have money, of course; Perhaps she was so rich that she could afford to be indifferent to whatever wealth might buy. That thought had vaguely troubled him, but he had been at a complete loss to guage the reason. Yet, in spite of everything the girl had seemed willing to be friendly. Ho was convinced that had he spoken she would not have snubbed him. This expression was not induced through any conceit. Heaven knew he had little reason to think well of himself. It was mainly due to this fact that he had made no advances, although a strain of old-fashioned reserve had also been an influence. The unconventional became the conventional at the tables, and in that atmosphere of bohemianism all ranks were grouped in a common class. Persons who would not have exchanged even a glance outside, became almost familiar when they surrendered themselves to the spell of the cards.

He felt it could not have been merely Chance that had caused the girl to sit at the same table night after night. Fate must have had a hand in it. The girl, even if he wished to know her, was as far above him as the stars. Even when life had been at its best he could never have entered her world. Yet, now that he knew, he would never step into the Cannes Baccarat room again, he fould himself thinking of the girl who had just passed as the one fragrant memory of those nerve tossed, excitement crazed nights. Had he been ungracious? Perhaps he had. But it were better so. He was no use to himself, let alone to a girl of charm and obvious wealth. Suddenly he felt cold. The icy, treacherous mistral from the Maritime Alps was blowing shrewdly now that the sun was gone. He was without an overcoat. It would be a fitting, final irony if pneumonia, the plague of the Riviera season should finish him before he could finish himself.

He toyed with the suggestion of suicide as even a thoroughly desperate man will dally with the most awful of deeds as he turned up the Rue Saint Honore on the way back to his hotel. After all no one would worry. He did not possess a single living relative and the few friends he had left behind him in London would soon forget. A man of deeply impressionable nature, he had not found it easy to make many friends. In years past he had tried, but the disappointments had been so many that finally he had given up the attempt in disgust. There was only Bill Hatcham who really counted. When he read the few lines about the body of an Englishman named Heritage being washed up on the Mediterranean rocks, old Bill would grieve, no doubt, but that couldn’t be helped. And at least Matcham would understand.

Yet the thought of dying seemed absurd in such a setting. Long bonnetted, luxurious cars v glided by noiselessly. The shops he passed were filled with artistic delights, over the fashioning of which the world’s greatest craftsman had competed; but there was no escaping the evidences of wealth so prodigally displayed. Into the noisy street opposite the railway station Heritage walked, and although the din was harrowing to anyone with sensitive nerves, the contrast this workaday thoroughfare, with

its humble cafes, and long line of taxi drivers waiting for a job, made to the Rue Saint Honore, brought some solace. The sight of these men reminded him that now the worst had come, he could perhaps earn a living as a chauffeur.

Not here. Not in this place, which had become accursed for him. He must leave Cannes at once. So long as he remained he felt he would stay the wastrel he had become. Such was the pernicious atmosphere.

As he crossed the bridge over the railway a train screeched in from the Italian frontier. it was a P.LM. Express bound for Calais All through the night it would roar its way through the monotonously flat stretches of France, and the next day, its passengers wouia see the white horses in the Channel. To watch the chalk cliffs of Dover growing nearer and nearer, to see a matter of fact English policeman again, to smell the unmistakable smell which belongs only to the green fields of the English countryside . . . As he leaned over the rail looking at the train which could have carried him back to these things, Heiitage felt his heart thump in his breast.

He threw back his shoulders as he turned away. Die like a craven when thirty hours away from England. The thought of his native land, of his own kind, had restored his sense of manhood.

But how to get home? There were bis own kind, at least his own race in the Chester, a hotel whose clientele was British to the core, but as he walked up the gravel path, he knew lie could not mention the very serious plight he was in to any of them. Some might offer to help. Others, he was convinced, would put on the freezing expression suitable to such a questionable person who confessed he had lost so much money at the Casino that ho hadn’t sufficient to meet the week’s hotel bill.

Yet the bill, which would amount 10 perhaps 900 francs, had to be met. Otherwise—? He wondered how Riviera hotel proprietors behaved to guests who were unable to pay. He must get some information on the point. At Monte Carlo, he believed, the Casino authorities had once been in the habit of paying the return railway fare <f the fleeced. Did the same benevolent practice prevail at Cannes? He wished now that he had sounded that pouch-eyed bartender at the Sporting Club on the subject. The man professed to know so much. The Monte Carlo people stipulated, he understood, that the recipient of their largesse should go and never return. Such a one was placed for all time on their black list. Well that was all right. Ilis only wish was to get away, and once he stepped into the train he would take care he would never be such a fool again. One Hundred Pounds! What couldn’t he have done with it if he had only had sensei

The smiling, pleasant-faced hallporter seeing Heritage mounting the steps, opened the door for him to pass through. It was the one feature of Cannes which Heritage felt he would always recall with pleasure—this unfailing courtesy of the staff at the Hotel Chester From the concierge down to the valet de Chambae, the service rendered to him during his few days’ stay had been faultless. And everything had been done with a happy smile.

M. Caron, the hotel manager, greeted Heritage with his usual welcoming smile. Here was a hotel-keeper who was also a~ gentleman. The goodwill and bonhomie he displayed, Stephen had felt from the beginning sprang from his heart and not from his ledgers.

“You have found the enjoyment this afternoon M’sieur Heritage?” he asked His English was faultless in accent, and his rather quaint phraseology made his speech delightful.

Heritage forced himself to smile. M. Caron believed in Cannes, as he believed in his excellently-run hotel. He knew that evils existed, and he did not shut his eyes to them, but he maintained that the sun and the beauty of nature should keep people sufficiently interested. “And there are always those who will play with fire.”

“I have been watching the Peep Show,” he replied.

The eyebrows of the manager ascended.

“The Peep Show?” he repeated. The expression evidently was not familiar to him.

“Watching the people go into the Madrid was as good as being at a theatre.”

“Ah I the Madrid I" This admirable Swiss, whose adopted home was Cannes, humped his shoulders and gesticulated with his hands “The rich take their folly to the Madrid,” he commented. “But money does not always mean happiness, M’sieur, and certainly not at the Madrid. It cost her about twenty-five of your English pounds a week, and when she complained that her morning tea was cold they pretended not to hear. One can be happy with little money—oh, so little—if one only has the temperament. Excuse me!” The philosopher hastened away to answer a longdistance telephone call. As he turned to walk through the lounge on his way to his room, which was on the garden level, Heritage wondered if M. Carton’s views would change if he knew that the entire wealth of the guest, to whom he had just been delivering this advice consisted of one 100 franc note and a few pieces of small change? (To be Continued )