The Chink in the Armour quotes

Several quiet Frenchmen, who had offices in the neighbourhood, were “en pension” at the Hôtel de l’Horloge, and as the two friends came in many were the steady, speculative glances cast in their direction.

To the average Frenchman every woman is interesting; for every Frenchman is in love with love, and in each fair stranger he sees the possible heroine of a romance in which he may play the agreeable part of hero.

So it was that Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky both had their silent admirers among those who lunched and dined in the narrow green and white dining-room of the Hôtel de l’Horloge.

The gay, shrill sounds floated in to her, and, in spite of her bad night and ugly dreams, she felt extraordinarily well and happy.

Cities are like people. In some cities one feels at home at once; others remain, however well acquainted we become with them, always strangers.

Sylvia Bailey, born, bred, married, widowed in an English provincial town, had always felt strange in London. But with Paris—dear, delightful, sunny Paris—she had become on the closest, the most affectionately intimate terms from the first day.

No kind fairy whispered the truth to Sylvia—namely that this account is only half, nay, a quarter, or an eighth, of the truth.

Lacville is the spendthrift, the gambler⁠—the austere would call her the chartered libertine⁠—of the group of pretty country towns which encircle Paris

; for Lacville is in the proud possession of a Gambling Concession which has gradually turned what was once the quietest of inland watering-places into a miniature Monte Carlo.

But Lacville is not a place where I should care for my own sister to come and stay.” He went on, speaking much quicker—“Indeed, I will say more! I will tell you that

Lacville may seem a paradise to you, but that it is a paradise full of snakes.

”

“

Every town where reigns the Goddess of play attracts reptiles, Madame, as the sun attracts lizards! It is not the game that does so, or even the love of play in the Goddess’s victims; no, it is the love of gold!

”

“

I felt, Madame, as if I saw a lily growing in a field of high, rank, evil-smelling⁠—nay, perhaps I should say, poisonous⁠—weeds.

”

Sylvia went upstairs to her room. She was touched, moved, excited. It was quite a new experience with her to come so really near to any man’s heart and conscience.

Life is a secret and a tangled skein, full of loose, almost invisible threads.

This curiously intimate, and yet impersonal conversation with one who was not only a stranger, but also a foreigner, made her realise how little we men and women really know of one another.

The country immediately round Lacville is not pretty; the little open carriage was rather creaky, and the horse was old and tired, and yet Sylvia Bailey enjoyed her drive very much.

Madame Wachner, common-looking, plain, almost grotesque in appearance though she was, possessed that rare human attribute, vitality.

Sometimes she spoke in French, sometimes in English, changing from the one to the other with perfect ease; and honestly pleased at having escaped a long, dull, hot afternoon in the Casino, the older woman set herself to please and amuse Sylvia. She thoroughly succeeded.

To take but one example of how ill his honesty of purpose served him in the matter, Sylvia had never really forgiven him the “fuss” he had made about her string of pearls.

But with the Comte de Virieu she never quite knew what to be at, and mystery is the food of romance.

At the Villa du Lac the two were almost inseparable, and yet so intelligently and quietly did the Count arrange their frequent meetings—their long walks and talks in the large deserted garden, their pleasant morning saunters through the little town—that no one, or so Sylvia …

“Ah, but it is just that fact that makes me believe that he cares.

Flirtation is an English art, not a French art, my dear Sylvia.

A Frenchman either loves—and when he loves he adores on his knees—or else he has no use, no use at all, for what English people mean by flirtation—the make-believe of love! I should feel much more at ease if the Count had insulted you—”

“Madame Bailey’s rouge is natural; it does not come off!” the old lady exclaimed, and a smile crept over her parchment-coloured face. “Not but what a great deal of nonsense is talked about the usage of rouge, my dear children!

There is no harm in supplementing the niggardly gifts of nature.

You, for instance, Marie-Anne, would look all the better for a little rouge!” She spoke in a high, quavering voice.

A moment later, Sylvia, with a sense of relief, found herself in sole possession of the Châlet des Muguets.

Even the quietest, the most commonplace house has, as it were, an individuality that sets it apart from other houses.

And even those who would deny that proposition must admit that every inhabited dwelling has its own special nationality.

“Certainly, Madame. The Count shall have this note the moment he returns from the Casino. He will not be long now.”

But the promises of Southerners are pie-crust.

Doubtless M. Polperro meant the Count to have the note that night, but he put it aside and forgot all about it.

I know too well to what I should be exposing her—to what possible misery, nay, to what probable degradation!

After all, a man is free to go to the devil alone⁠—but he has no right to drag a woman there with him!

”

Sylvia Bailey looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt very angry.

Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life had anyone ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house.

She rose, for the second time during the course of her short meal, to her feet—

She suddenly saw what that something was.

Sylvia Bailey’s nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and clear.

There had leapt on her the knowledge that this man and woman meant to kill her—to kill her for the sake of the pearls which were still bounding about the floor, and for the comparatively small sum of money which she carried slung in the …

Sylvia looked at him, an agonised appeal in her eyes. He was smiling hideously, a nervous grin zigzagging across his large, thin-lipped mouth.

“You should have taken the coffee,” he muttered in English. “It would have saved us all so much trouble!”

He put out his left hand, and the long, strong fingers closed, tentacle-wise, on her slender shoulder.

Chester looked across at his companion. At last he was really impressed.

Blackmailing is a word which has a very ugly sound in an English lawyer’s ears.

“If that is really true,” he said suddenly, “I almost feel as if I ought to go back to Lacville tonight. I suppose there are heaps of trains?”