The Silver Dragon (18 page)

“The plan was set in motion
after
you borrowed the parka,” he said slowly. “At least, Cabot appears to think so.”

Jane lay back among her pillows.

“How awful for Dixon having to go through all this,” she said. “He was in love with her.”

“All the same,” John said, “I don’t think he had many illusions left, even before he met you.”

She thought back to that first meeting, remembering how Dixon had looked, standing there in the half-light of the Mediterranean evening, gazing in at her through the open window, his eyes full of suspicion and contempt.

“
He thought I was an accomplice of his wife,” she reflected slowly. “He thought I had come to the villa believing him to be away so that I could contact the others as they had arranged. There was to be a signal and the diamonds were to be handed over to someone in the launch. That went wrong, of course, but Anton Leroux must have recognized me as the person he had seen here with Adele. That was why he gave me the second chance of going to The Silver Dragon the following evening.”

“Cabot seems to have all the loose ends pretty well tied up,” John remarked dryly, crossing the room to stare out of the window as a car came to a standstill in the courtyard below.

“I can’t stay in bed, John, wondering about everything,” Jane protested. “Wondering about what’s going on! I’m perfectly well. Please ask Professor Attenhofer if I may get up.”

He hesitated, coming back to the bed to look down at her with a rueful smile.

“I suppose I could issue the command,” he said. “If you really feel that staying in bed is more of a penance than anything else, I think you ought to get up.”

She gave him her quick smile.

“Thank you, John,” she said. “You always understand.”

He grinned, looking back at her when he had reached the door.

“That’s the sort of person I am, I guess,” he said. “Kind and understanding, but not romantic!”

When she had dressed she hurried down to the hall to find Dixon standing there.

“You’re going?” she asked, trying to keep her voice quite steady. The Mercedes was parked at the foot of the clinic steps. “Is this goodbye, Dixon?”

His keenly searching eyes took in the pallor of her face.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “If you will agree, I’m taking you back to England.”

She gasped at the unexpectedness of the suggestion. “But why should you?” she heard herself saying. “Why should you bother with me at all?”

He hesitated for a moment and then he said quite clearly, “Because I think that when we get to England we will find the diamonds.”

So that was it! It was the jewels he wanted. It had nothing to do with her. But why England?

“You don’t believe they were lost when
...
when your wife was killed?” she asked.

He turned to the door.

“I don’t know yet whether she was killed,” he said, “although it doesn’t seem that any of them could have escaped. If they did, I have a theory that they would follow the diamonds to their ultimate destination.”

“Why do you think they are in England?” she asked vaguely.

“Because your suitcase is there,” he said.

CHAPTER
TEN

They set out for London e
arly the following morning, while John made his arrangements to pick up his car at the villa.

Dixon gave him a letter to deliver to the prefect of police at Nice and John put it into his pocket with a wry smile.

“Doctor turned sleuth!” he remarked dryly. “In my college days I used to wonder about this sort of thing. I even thought about taking up forensic medicine as a first step to adventure.”

“And would you, if you had the chance again?” Dixon asked.

“I think not. It’s too hazardous. Anyway, one very rarely meets with a second chance in life.”

“I hope you’re wrong about that,” Dixon said. “I’d like to think there was such a thing.” He held out his hand. “Anyway,
au revoir
for just now. If my mother is still at the villa will you tell her that I’ll join her in Paris some time toward the end of the month?”

“I’ll do that for you,” John said as he turned away. A taxi was waiting to take him to the station, but he had not yet said goodbye to Jane.

“It’s strange calling you Jane after three weeks of ‘Adele,’ but I think I like it better,” he told her, smiling into her eyes when she finally came down to the hall. “Jane suits you.”

“There goes another compliment I shall never be sure about!” she tried to say lightly, because it was
proving quite difficult to part with John after all the kindness he had shown her. “I envy you all that lovely sunshine in the south,” she added quickly, looking out at the thin rain that was falling.

“Give England my love,” he said awkwardly.

“You’ll be going back,” she reminded him.

He caught her hand.

“You’ll stay there?” he asked. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t meet me when I get back. I haven’t got much holiday left.” He gazed at the silent figure waiting for her on the veranda steps. “Jane, are you sure you want to go with Cabot? After all,” he pointed out, “there’s no real need for you to go.”

Jane looked at him steadily.

“He thinks the diamonds may be in my luggage,” she said.

John whistled incredulously.

“How did he come to that conclusion?”

“He believes Adele meant to come back to the hotel after my ‘accident’ and pick it up.”

“Good grief!” He drew in a deep breath. “Quite a setup, isn’t it? Serio
u
sly though, Jane, I couldn’t be more glad about all this for your sake. You’re free now. There doesn’t seem to be a trace of the amnesia left, although you must have a complete checkup so that we can be absolutely sure. Go to your own doctor when you get back, and if you feel that you need my help, don’t hesitate to ask. You have my London address.” He paused. “I’m quite sure we’ll meet again,” he added.

Dixon was waiting somewhat impatiently, glancing at his watch as the professor hurried out to say goodbye.

“I feel you are going to be all right now,” he assured Jane, peering at her benignly over his half-glasses. “I have sent a long explanatory message ahead of
you
so that your parents will not receive too great a shock. It would not have been a good idea to have let you walk in on them suddenly, from the dead, so to speak. It would have been a pleasant shock, of course, but even pleasant shocks are best broken by degrees!”

Jane nodded. Her heart was too full to answer him, because she doubted very much if his news would be a “pleasant shock” when it reached her home.

Dixon wrung the professor’s hand. They had taken to each other immediately and parted in the manner of good friends.

It was not until they were seated in the plane that Jane asked, “Dixon, did Anton Leroux know that you owned The Silver Dragon?”

He looked down at the network of avenues and open squares that was Geneva.

“No,” he said. “That, incidentally, was the one mistake the gang made. It isn’t generally known that the dragon belongs to me, and it was unfortunate from their point of view that Adele was slightly romantically inclined. She was quite often given to the sort of impulse that must have linked my silver table lighter with The Silver Dragon restaurant in her mind. It was Adele who chose the rendezvous in Nice, but Anton Leroux already knew Lee Tong. Several years ago Lee was a very down-and-out Chinese doing his best to go straight after a brush with the police, which effectively scared the daylight out of him.”

“And you helped him,” she guessed.

“I needed a cook at the time, and many Chinese are good cooks,” he smiled. “But Lee was more than a cook. After a year, when I was convinced that he really meant to go straight, I set him up in The Silver Dragon. A known fence can’t shake off his old contacts with one effort, of course, and there was always the odd bribe thrust under Lee’s nose, but he never let me down. It was Lee who discovered about the launch using the bay to dump contraband and he also picked up the signal they used. It was easy enough for Fu to overhear a
conversation while he served Lee’s customers with their fashionable Chinese food.”

“So that was why you were able to decode the Morse code message for me?” Jane mused.

“Exactly!” he agreed.

There was not very much more to be said on the subject. She knew now that he had nothing to hide and she had never really distrusted him. If he had suspected her, she could excuse him that, too. The loss of the jewels had been a severe blow to him, and she could understand how much he wanted to see them restored to their owners. Until that was done he would not consider himself at all. He would be willing to give up months of his precious time to the search and that was why he was with her now.

Unhappily she wondered if Edwina had opened her suitcase and found the diamonds. Edwina would make quite an issue of such a discovery, she thought bitterly.

But then, perhaps the diamonds weren’t there, after all. Dixon could, at this very moment, be on a wild goose chase.

It was raining when they reached London, and they were delayed at customs. Taxi after taxi drew away with its load of travelers, and they had to wait for some considerable time before they were able to pick one up.

“Hampstead?” Dixon said, looking across at her for confirmation. “Twenty-seven Sopworth Grove, isn’t it?”

“You have a wonderful memory,” Jane smiled, trying not to feel nervous at the thought of her approaching meeting with Edwina. “Is that why you’re such a successful author?”

“Partly,” he agreed. “I suppose I have what’s generally referred to as a photographic mind.”

“One’s mind is a strange thing,” Jane mused. “Mine managed to close a door most successfully on something I didn’t want to remember.”

“Is it difficult for you, Jane,” he asked without looking at her, “coming back like this?”

“Partly.” She didn’t think that he would want to hear about her complexes or the hurt that had taken her so impulsively to Switzerland on the rebound from a grievous disappointment. “I’m not sure whether my father will be here or not,” she rushed on to warn him. “He left for New York the day before I flew to Geneva.”

“He wouldn’t come back when he heard the news of your death?” he asked somewhat incredulously.

“I don’t know.” Nervously she clasped her hands together. “Edwina was going out to America to join him. She ... may have decided to wait until she got to New York before she broke the news to him.”

“Who is Edwina?” he asked.

“My stepmother.”

He sat back in his seat, watching the houses thickening as they came nearer to the capital.

“Would it have been easier for you if I had let you come alone?” he asked at last.

“No.” She was quite definite about that. “I’m glad you came.”

“Because you feel that you may be going to another empty house?” he asked.

She started at the question.

“Like Les Rochers Blanches,” he prompted.

“It
...
won’t be the same.”

She was remembering how he had come to the villa, finding her there, and the first antagonism between them,
born
of distrust. But there was no suspicion now, no doubt. They were sure of each other. He would have trusted her to return the diamonds to him if she had wanted to return to England alone and had found them in her suitcase.

When they reached their destination the rain had slackened and she rubbed the condensation from the window nearest her to look out. It was all so familiar. Once it had all been so dear. But that had been before Edwina had come into her life to sow the bitter seeds of dissension between her and her father.

What a patient man her father had been. Like Dixon!

Suddenly she realized why she had struggled so hard with a half-formed memory when she had first met Olivia Cabot. Olivia and Edwina were identical. Vain, selfish, possessive. Their jealousy would not permit any shared affection. The men in their lives were swallowed whole.

Jane had experienced it all before. The fantastic scenes Olivia had conjured up at Les Rochers Blanches had taken place dozens of times in the gray detached Georgian house in Sopworth Grove.

The taxi drew up to the house and Dixon got out. While he was paying the driver she glanced at the closely curtained windows behind the screen of plane trees. She had played under these trees as a child, watching them change with the passing seasons. She had seen the little soft buds bursting in the spring and swept up the russet leaves in autumn to make a bonfire. Her father had always lighted it at the back of the house, where the smoke would blow away across the heath and would not annoy their neighbors. But once, she remembered, the wind had changed after they had got a great pile of leaves well and truly alight, and old Mrs. Isherwood from next door had come storming out to demand that they move it because her cats were choking to death.

Smiling at the memory, she turned to find Dixon at her elbow.

“I was
born
here,” she said, not really supposing that it would interest him. “My father bought this house when he was first married.”

They walked up the path. None of the heavier curtains were drawn. It looked as if Edwina was still there.

When Dixon pressed the bell Jane’s heart seemed as if it would stop in the waiting time. Then quick decisive steps approached on the other side of the glass door. Edwina opened it.

Jane knew that Dixon was surprised. Edwina
was not like anyone’s idea of a stepmother. She was tall and dark and superbly elegant and, like Olivia, she had put back the clock at least ten years.

She had done it with impunity, because she looked no more than thirty-five as she stood there in her slim-skirted tweed suit, so obviously ready to go out that she hardly needed to say, “I can give you exactly twenty minutes, Jane. I’m on my way to New York.”

It was as if they had called unexpectedly for afternoon tea and could not hope to be received with enthusiasm in the circumstances.

Jane saw Dixon’s jaw stiffen as he followed her into the hall where Edwina’s suitcases stood already packed.

“I’d like you to meet Mr. Cabot,” she heard herself saying. “Dixon, my stepmother.”

Edwina had never made any bones about her use of the word. She did not want to be considered old enough to be Jane’s mother.

“I must say this is all most disturbing,” she remarked, leading the way into a drawing room already shrouded in dust sheets. “I got your message,” she acknowledged, giving Dixon a quick appraising look, “only yesterday. It’s all most confusing, Jane. However did such a mistake occur?”

“It’s too long a story,” Jane said a little harshly, offering Dixon a cigarette from her father’s silver box, which she had fished from under a checked cotton dust sheet. “There was a climbing accident and I was involved in a case of mistaken identity. But everything is straightened out now.”

It was far from straightened out, but she knew that
.
Edwina would be too impatient to listen to the details of what was, after all, only Dixon’s affair.

“I didn’t tell your father,” Edwina admitted, lighting her own cigarette. “Which is just as well, I should say, now that things have turned out in this surprising way. I was going to break the news of your death personally when I got to New York.” She shivered. “What a relief not to have to do that!” she said.