An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (98 page)

‘You will have ten minutes in which to prepare yourself, most beautiful
Mademoiselle Fântóme,’
he said clearly. ‘If you are not ready by then, you will find me a most experienced lady’s maid.’

12

Mistral put her hands to her eyes. For a moment she thought she might faint, but with a sense of desperation she knew that, if she did, she would be lost forever. ‘Ten minutes,’ the Rajah had said, and already a minute of it must have gone.

She felt panic rising within her again. She wanted to scream, to beat with her fists on the door, yet common sense told her that it would do no good. She was conscious of a strange thudding sound and realised that it was her own heart beating as if it would burst from the fragile confines of her body.

She must do something and quickly. She thought of the windows and ran to the one nearest to her, pulling aside the heavily embroidered curtains. She opened the window and looked out and knew immediately why the Rajah had not feared she might escape that way.

Most windows in the South of France opened on to a balcony, but those in this room were the exception. Outside there was a narrow ledge and then a sheer drop into the garden below.

Mistral could just see the road. For a moment she contemplated screaming in case someone might be passing. But even as she parted her lips, she realised how hopeless it would be.

Everything was quiet and still and there appeared to be no one about. But even if there were and she screamed, long before anyone could come to her assistance the Rajah would be able to pull her back in the room and to explain away any enquiries which might be made downstairs.

She was helpless, the prisoner of a virulent, overpowering evil. She felt her heart begin to palpitate, but with a tremendous effort she forced herself to think not of what lay ahead but of some means of escape. Should she jump from the window?

She would have to risk a broken leg, if not worse, in the garden below. Then as she thought of it, she looked further along the outside wall of the Villa. There were three windows to the room in which she stood and the last one was almost at the corner of the house.

Mistral looked and saw something beyond it which gave her a sudden hope. Running, because time was so infinitely precious, she rushed from the first window to the one at the far end of the room near the great circular divan.

Opening it quickly, she looked out. As she had thought, this window was perhaps four feet from the corner of the house, and the narrow ledge of white stone which ran in front of the windows ended at the corner. Covering the other wall, which faced north towards the mountain, was a trellis of green lattice built to support the roses and creepers which were growing all along that side of the Villa.

It was difficult to see every detail in the darkness, but there was enough light to distinguish the strips of wood clearly silhouetted against the white walls and to know that they were about an inch in thickness.

It was not a stalwart means of support, but Mistral thought it might hold her, for she weighed very little. If it did not, well, she must just fall and risk being badly injured. The difficulty would be to reach the corner of the house without slipping off the narrow ledge. Looking up above her, Mistral was relieved to see that an elaborate design had been carved in the stones with which the Villa had been built, and it would afford her some finger-hold.

The Villa was very large, and beyond the wall covered with the lattice there was another wing jutting out again and yet again as it followed some grandiose plan of the Architect’s to give an impression of opulence and splendour. There were many windows at an angle which would give those who chanced to look out of them a good view of Mistral should she attempt to escape in this way, but she knew she must risk it. It was either that or she must wait in the golden room until the Rajah returned, and she told herself that even death was preferable to that alternative.

For one moment she stood still at the open window, the night air on her face, and murmured a prayer. Then she climbed on to the window sill and out on to the ledge beyond. The first steps were easy, for she could hold on to the frame of the open window and edge herself along with her face to the wall and her back to the abyss below her.

But now the moment came when she must leave the window behind and must find support only in the stone work. Somehow she managed it. Moving very slowly, pressed so closely against the wall of the Villa that her breasts touched it, she edged herself forward inch by inch until her left hand could reach out and grasp the trellis.

She was relieved to find it was firm and fixed securely to the wall. She had anticipated that it would be, guessing that the Villa, like all the others in Monte Carlo, was new and that the wood would not have had time to rot nor the nails which held it to rust and loosen. Very, very carefully she put her foot from the stone ledge on to a bar of the trellis. Her wide, voluminous skirts were hampering her, but somehow she managed to control them.

The difficulty was that only the very tips of her toes, like the tips of her fingers, could find a place on which to hold, and her body had to be almost perfectly balanced with every step she took or she would have fallen backwards into the darkness.

The first few feet she climbed downwards were not as difficult as she had anticipated. Then she came to the roses and creepers and they made everything far more difficult. It seemed almost as if they defied her to find a foothold amongst them. They caught at the delicate gauze of her dress, ripping and tearing it as she tried to move, scratched her bare neck and arms, and more than once her foot slipped on a leafy shoot and she thought she must fall.

She had almost reached the ground when she heard a sound above her. It was a voice raised first in astonishment, then in anger. It grew louder and it seemed to her to have the frustrated snarl of a savage animal deprived of its prey.

She knew it was the Rajah who shouted and guessed that he was summoning his servants to go in search of her.

Desperately, knowing that even now she might lose her chance of freedom, Mistral tried no longer for a foothold, but jumped.

She did not fall far, but she struck the ground with a sickening thud, heard a frill of her dress tear with a sound something like a scream as it caught on the thorns of a rose. She wrenched herself free. Then without waiting to wonder if she were hurt she jumped to her feet and started to run. She made for the wall which surrounded the Villa, feeling through the thin soles of her evening slippers first the soft soil of the flower beds then the hardness of the paved path.

As she ran, she heard behind her the sound of many chattering voices and the Rajah shouting a command. She reached the wall and, as she did so, a carriage came dashing up the hill, the horses managing to travel at a good pace even against the steep incline. The carriage drew up at the gate of the Villa and before the horses were even at a standstill, a man flung open the door and jumped out. Mistral, scrambling over the wall, could see him very clearly.

It was the Prince.

With her last remaining breath she managed to scream, to attract his attention.

‘Help, Your Serene Highness!
Help!’

He heard her and turned back in the very act of opening the iron gates.

‘Mistral!’

He called out her name in astonishment and then came running towards her. She ran too and, as they met, she threw herself at him, clutching the lapels of his coat and raising a white, terrified face to his.

‘Take me away! Quickly, quickly! Please take me away!’

The Prince took a quick look at her and swept her up into his arms. He carried her to the carriage, lifted her inside and gave an order to the coachman. Then he jumped in himself and slammed the door. As they drove away, Mistral saw that the door of the Villa was open and that the light was streaming out. Servants were running into the garden, spreading out down the labyrinth of paths, peering among the bushes and flowering shrubs. But it was too late! She had escaped!

She gave a gasp of utter relief and would have put her hands up to her face, but as she moved them, she became aware that the first finger of her left hand was bleeding. She must have caught it on a nail.

The interior of the carriage was lit by a candle lantern and by its light the Prince could see the red blood running down the palm of Mistral’s hand and on to the front of her torn grey dress.

‘You have hurt yourself,’ he exclaimed and drew a handkerchief from his pocket.

‘It – does not – matter,’ Mistral replied, catching her breath and conscious of a strange constriction in her throat. ‘You have saved me – you have taken me – away. They would – have caught me – otherwise.’

‘You should have let me deal with that swine,’ the Prince said angrily.

‘No! No!’ Mistral said quickly in terror lest he might go back. ‘Only take me – away. Nothing matters now – If you had not come – ’

She could not complete the sentence. All too clearly she was aware of what would have happened if the Prince had not arrived at that very moment.

The Prince had wrapped her hand in his handkerchief, but already the blood was seeping through the white lawn.

‘I am afraid you have hurt yourself badly,’ he said. ‘You must not go on bleeding like this. My own Villa is not a hundred yards away. Would you mind if we stopped there and bandaged your hand properly?’

He spoke anxiously, for Mistral’s face was so white and it seemed as if she had already gone through so much that it would be dangerous for her to lose much blood.

‘Perhaps that would be best – if it is no – trouble,’ Mistral said, a little alarmed herself at the way the crimson patch on the handkerchief was growing larger every second.

The Prince rose, opened a small shutter near the roof of the carriage and shouted an order through it. He spoke in Russian and the coachman replied in the same language. Then he sat down again.

‘It won’t take us more than a few seconds,’ he said, ‘and then I will take you back to the Hotel. What happened?’

‘It was the – Rajah,’ Mistral murmured faintly.

‘I knew that,’ the Prince said. ‘I came out to the steps of the
Restaurant des Fleurs
with one of my guests. She wished to leave early and I had ordered my carriage for her. As we came through the door, I heard your aunt say angrily, “Do you think I will allow him to abduct my niece?” I saw a carriage driving away and I saw, too, who stood beside your aunt – one of the Rajah’s
Aides-de-Camp
. The man said something, I don’t know what, for I didn’t wait to hear. I ran down the steps, jumped into the carriage which was just coming up for my guest. I didn’t even offer her an explanation or make my apologies but just drove away to try to find you. I would have been at the Villa sooner, only my fool of a coachman did not know where the Rajah lived. We had to stop and ask someone. Thank God, I arrived in time.’

‘Yes, thank God!’ Mistral answered fervently.

As she spoke, the horses were drawn to a standstill.

‘Here is my Villa,’ the Prince said. ‘Be careful how you move that hand.’

‘Strangely enough it does not hurt me,’ Mistral said.

‘All the same it must be seen to,’ the Prince replied.

Very gently he helped her out of the carriage and led her through a small, well laid out garden and in through a door painted scarlet to match the shutters.

The Prince’s Villa was very different from that of the Rajah. There was nothing pompous or ornate about the small, perfectly proportioned hall which they crossed into a big sitting room.

Here there were comfortable chairs and sofas covered in brown velvet, and the furniture, while being both attractive and valuable, contrived also to appear exclusively masculine.

There were sporting prints on the walls and the tables and mantelpiece were decorated with silver trophies which the Prince had won himself at various sports or which had been gained for him by his yachts and race horses.

But Mistral had little time to take in the details of her surroundings. She only knew that the atmosphere was peaceful and unfrightening and she could relax in the arm chair to which the Prince escorted her. At his command a servant knelt to set light to the fire already laid in the fireplace.

‘You will feel cold,’ the Prince said. ‘One always does when one has lost blood. And before we do anything else, we must wash that hand. If there is dirt in it, it may go septic.’

Mistral managed to smile at the seriousness of his voice.

‘How do you know all these things?’ she asked.

‘Mostly because I have hurt myself so often,’ the Prince replied. ‘I have had at least a dozen accidents while skiing and I would hate to count how many times I have come to grief out hunting. But before we talk I would like you to drink a glass of wine.’

Mistral shook her head.

‘I would much rather not,’ she said. ‘I have no liking for it and at the moment I feel that, if I ate or drank anything, it would choke me.’

‘It shall be as you wish, of course,’ the Prince replied, ‘but it would do you good.

‘I want nothing,’ Mistral said in a low voice. ‘I want only to be assured that I need never see the Rajah again.’

‘You need not be afraid of that,’ the Prince said. ‘I shall tell my father tomorrow exactly what happened and he will speak to the Police. He has a great influence in the Principality, having always lived here, and I assure you that the authorities will not stand for behaviour of that sort.’

‘He was so extraordinary,’ Mistral said. ‘He seemed to think that I had been – trying to deceive him – or that my aunt had. I think he must be mad. He was unpleasant the other night when he spoke to me at the Casino – but tonight it was worse – far worse. He was different in some way I cannot explain…’

‘Don’t think about him,’ the Prince said firmly. ‘Here is Potoc with some warm water and cotton wool and bandages.’

The Russian servant with the strange face whom the Prince had called his keeper came into the room carrying a silver basin which contained warm water scented with the fresh fragrance of lemons.