Lydia pushed a five-hundred franc note through the grating to the nun, to settle her material needs.
"And, oh, madame," wailed the gardener's wife, "my poor little boy has lost the gift of the Reverend Mother of San Surplice! His own cross which has been blessed by his holiness the Pope! It is because I left his cross in his little shirt that he is getting better, but now it is lost and I am sure these thieving doctors have taken it."
"A cross?" said Lydia. "What sort of a cross?"
"It was a silver cross, madame; the value in money was nothing—it was priceless. Little Xavier——"
"Xavier?" repeated Lydia, remembering the "X" on the trinket that had been found in her bed. "Wait a moment, madame." She opened her bag and took out the tiny silver symbol, and at the sight of it the woman burst into a volley of joyful thanks.
"It is the same, the same, madame! It has a small 'X' which the Reverend Mother scratched with her own blessed scissors!"
Lydia pushed the cross through the net and the nun handed it to the woman.
"It is the same, it is the same!" she cried. "Oh, thank you, madame! Now my heart is glad… ."
Lydia came out of the hospital and walked through the gardens by the doctor's side. But she was not listening to what he was saying—her mind was fully occupied with the mystery of the silver cross.
It was little Xavier's … it had been tucked inside his bed when he lay, as his mother thought, dying … and it had been found in her bed! Then little Xavier had been in her bed! Her foot was on the step of the car when it came to her—the meaning of that drenched couch and the empty bottle of peroxide. Xavier had been put there, and somebody who knew that the bed was infected had so soaked it with water that she could not sleep in it. But who? Old Jaggs!
She got into the car slowly, and went back to Cap Martin along the Grande Corniche.
Who had put the child there? He could not have walked from the cottage; that was impossible.
She was half-way home when she noticed a parcel lying on the floor of the car, and she let down the front window and spoke to the chauffeur. It was not Mordon, but a man whom she had hired with the car.
"It came from the hospital, madame," he said. "The porter asked me if I came from Villa Casa. It was something sent to the hospital to be disinfected. There was a charge of seven francs for the service, madame, and this I paid."
She nodded.
She picked up the parcel—it was addressed to "Mademoiselle Jean Briggerland" and bore the label of the hospital.
Lydia sat back in the car with her eyes closed, tired of turning over this problem, yet determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Jean was out when she got back and she carried the parcel to her own room. She was trying to keep out of her mind the very possibility that such a hideous crime could have been conceived as that which all the evidence indicated had been attempted. Very resolutely she refused to believe that such a thing could have happened. There must be some explanation for the presence of the cross in her bed. Possibly it had been found after the wet sheets had been taken to the servants' part of the house.
She rang the bell, and the maid who had given her the trinket came.
"Tell me," said Lydia, "where was this cross found?"
"In your bed, mademoiselle."
"But where? Was it before the clothing was removed from this room or after?"
"It was before, madame," said the maid. "When the sheets were turned back we found it lying exactly in the middle of the bed."
Lydia's heart sank.
"Thank you, that will do," she said. "I have found the owner of the cross and have restored it."
Should she tell Jean? Her first impulse was to take the girl into her confidence, and reveal the state of her mind. Her second thought was to seek out old Jaggs, but where could he be found? He evidently lived somewhere in Monte Carlo, but his name was hardly likely to be in the visitors' list. She was still undecided when Marcus Stepney called to take her to lunch at the Café de Paris.
The whole thing was so amazingly improbable. It belonged to a world of unreality, but then, she told herself, she also was living in an unreal world, and had been so for weeks.
Chapter 25
Mr. Stepney had become more bearable. A week ago she would have shrunk from taking luncheon with him, but now such a prospect had no terrors. His views of things and people were more generous than she had expected. She had anticipated his attitude would be a little cynical, but to her surprise he oozed loving-kindness. Had she known Mr. Marcus Stepney as well as Jean knew him, she would have realised that he adapted his mental attitude to his audience. He was a man whose stock-in-trade was a knowledge of human nature, and the ability to please. He would no more have attempted to shock or frighten her, than a first-class salesman would shock or annoy a possible customer.