The Silver Dragon (12 page)

There was no connecting door between the two rooms, but the balcony outside her window also served his. After a while, she heard him pacing out there, smoking in the darkness.

Impulsively she wanted to go to him, to tell him all she could, but what would she really be able to explain? She could not tell him why the little Frenchman had come to the bay or what he had been looking for. She had not made any attempt to find that out—or a very poor one. She had been too distressed, too much taken by surprise, and she had no memory of what had gone before to help her.

Always it came back to that. The fact of her amnesia burned into her mind, destroying her power of reasoning until she felt herself incapable of any explanation that he could possibly accept

She was not, however, wholly devoid of determination.
Tomorrow,
she thought,
I
’
ll go to The Silver Dragon.

The Silver Dragon! That was what the Frenchman had said, wasn’t it? And there was a silver dragon down there in Dixon’s study, the quaint little table lighter, which had been based on the curving horn he had brought back from his African safari.

Dixon used the lighter all the time, but surely it couldn’t have any connection with the rendezvous that had been planned for her down there in the bay? There must be another silver dragon, and she suspected she would find it in Nice.

“If you come across any sort of clue—any at all,” John had said, “follow it up if you can.”

It was something she had to do, no matter what the consequences might be.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

It was easy enough to
make an excuse for going to Nice.

“If you want to do any shopping or feel you would like to go to Nice or Monte Carlo for any other reason,” Dixon suggested at breakfast the following morning, “Domenico will take you. He is quite reliable,” he added with a dry smile. “You can trust him implicitly. He runs a small private taxi service in Villefranche and has been driving on the Co
rn
iche roads all his life.” Wondering if he were giving her enough rope with which to hang herself, Adele felt tempted to confide everything in him, but at that moment Maria came into the room with a fresh jug of coffee and he rose to go out.

“I’d like to go to Nice,” she said, “but not till this afternoon.” A telltale color flew into her cheeks. “I
...
have to meet someone.”

Evasion must never have been her strong point, for she could not meet his eyes when he turned at the door to look at her.

“Just as you wish,” he agreed after what had seemed like an eternity. “Do you want me to collect you?”

“No.” She was openly flustered now. “Not if I might keep the taxi. I thought I’d like to see something of Nice,” she added lamely.

“Domenico will wait for you in that case,” he said. He won
’
t be at all put out. I’m quite sure he has plenty of friends in Nice, too.”

He had closed the door before she could answer him and she stared down at her empty coffee cup with the coldness of despair in her heart.

How could she ever reach him when everything she ever tried to do went wrong?

Olivia rarely made her appearance in the morning much before eleven o’clock, but this morning she came down early.

“I’ve decided to go along to Monte for lunch,” she announced, selecting a ripe peach from the bowl on the table, but declining Adele’s offer of a cup of coffee. “I have a very old friend living there whom I haven’t seen for months.” Her firm teeth bit into the soft flesh of the peach as she regarded her daughter-in-law through half-closed lids. “Do you want to come?” she asked surprisingly.

“Oh!” Adele had hardly expected anything like this. There must be some reason for Olivia’s invitation, she decided, some ulterior motive for wanting to take her to Monte Carlo to meet her “very old friend.” Could it be that the friend was also a friend of Dixon? “I’m so sorry,” she added hastily. “I have an appointment in Nice. Otherwise I would have been delighted to come.”

It would mean, of course, that Olivia was ready to bury the hatchet for Dixon’s sake. She smiled at the older woman in a tentative effort to meet her halfway, but Olivia did not respond.

“That will mean a car going in both directions,” she frowned. “Is Dixon taking you to Nice?”

“No.”

“Oh? Then he can drive me along to Monte.” Olivia looked satisfied. “I’ll tell Maria that we won’t be in for lunch.”

“I shall be in,” Adele said quickly. “I’m not going to Nice till later in the afternoon.”

“You can hardly expect Dixon to rush back from
Monte to take you,” Olivia pointed out aggressively. “He works very hard and I think he ought to have some relaxation.”

Adele stood up.

“Dixon has arranged for a taxi to take me to Nice,” she explained. “Someone called Domenico, who runs a taxi service at Villefranche, will pick me up and take me.”

“I know Domenico,” Olivia agreed. “We’ll probably take another of his cars.”

“I was going to suggest to Dixon that he should take John
’
s car,” Adele said. “I’m sure John wouldn’t, mind.”

“But Dixon would.” Olivia gave her a very dry smile. “He doesn’t like
...
borrowing. I’ve told him often enough that he should buy a car of his own,” she added. “He can quite easily afford it, but he points out that he is only here for about three months of the year.” She sighed. “No, I suppose
Jelida
is his real love! I sometimes think that yacht means more to him even than I do.” She dropped the peach stone into her rejected coffee cup with a small regretful sigh, which sounded so completely false that Adele walked away before she was tempted to retaliate.

If she had really made an enemy of Olivia, no good would come of adding fresh fuel to a smoldering fire.

Dixon came to tell her that he was taking his mother to Monte Carlo.

“I don’t visit very often,” he said, “but this may excuse me for some time to come!”

He did not suggest that she should accompany him, as his mother had done, but perhaps Olivia had already told him that she had refused.

“Will you be late getting back?” she asked.

He looked at her steadily for a moment
.

“No,” he said.
In the brief pause before he turned to the door, it, seemed that he was about to add something, and then he appeared to think better of the impulse and went away.

Half an hour later a green Renault drove up to the front door and Olivia called to her from the hall. “We’re off, Adele. Such a pity you couldn’t come!” Adele hurried into the hall. Dressed for her luncheon date, Olivia looked superb. She wore a beautifully cut suit of a light honey-beige color with a small feathered hat to match, and her sables were magnificent.

“A present from Dixon,” she smiled when she saw Adele admiring them. “He has always been so very, very generous to me.”

Dixon was waiting at the car. He had changed into a conventional light gray lounge suit, and Adele’s heart beat far too rapidly at the sight of him. He had the distinction of most tall men, and the slightly arrogant look about him no longer angered her. She saw it now as the reflection of his complete confidence in his own decisions. He would stand or fall by them without complaint, she realized.

He did not ask her when she was likely to return from Nice.

“We should be back about five,” he said, helping Olivia into the car. “If anything should go wrong with your arrangements, I’ve left word with Domenico where to get in touch with me at Monte Carlo.”

It was an entirely generous thought, yet it disturbed her for the first part of the lazy sun-filled afternoon. Her light lunch over, she strolled down to the bay and swam for half an hour in the crystal clear water, glorying in the feel of it against her skin and the warmth of the sun on her face. When she looked around her it seemed incredible that anything so sinister as her meeting with the Frenchman could ever have happened here at all. The sky and the sea and the deep green pines fringing the double headlands all looked completely innocent of guile and the villa gazed down at her blandly, smiling away her fears.

Yet underneath it all she could feel the same sense of hopelessness that her amnesia had brought in its train and the blankness that so often brought her to the edge of despair.

I
’
ve got to find out the truth,
she told herself doggedly.
I've got to discover what it’s all about. Even one tiny clue to the past will be better than nothing.

John Ordley had advised her to follow up any clue. Within reason, of course, he had meant, and somehow she would have given a great deal for the reassurance of his presence at that moment.

The taxi came for her at four o’clock, another green Renault, driven by a handsome young Italian with dark flashing eyes and a mass of black curling hair that pushed his peaked cap permanently onto the back of his head. He sang almost all the way to Nice with a happy abandonment that raised Adele’s spirits a little and made her smile.

“Domenico,” she asked when they were nearly there, “do you know a place called The Silver Dragon? I think it might be a restaurant or a cafe.”

For the first time she asked herself if she had been wise to make the journey. The Silver Dragon could be a dive in the lowest quarter of the town, a haunt of criminals and cutthroats for all she knew.

“The Silver Dragon?” Domenico’s white teeth flashed in a generous smile.
“
Oui
!
know him! He is a little restaurant near the boulevard Dubouchage.”

He seemed quite content that she should go there and she settled back in her seat to wait. They threaded their way through the center of the town, which was still thronged with shoppers, and then quite suddenly they turned off the busy main boulevard into a comparatively quiet side street. When she looked at her watch it was only five o’clock.

“Will you pull up here, Domenico, please?” she asked through the open section of the glass screen separating them. “I’m rather early. I’ll walk along the boulevard and come back.”

Promptly he swung to the curb, leaping out to open the door for her.

“You want to buy pretty things?” he suggested, nodding and smiling his appreciation of the impulse. “I leave the car over there.” He pointed to a handy taxi stand in the middle of the street. “Then I come back for you—two, three, four hours from now?”

“Oh, no, nothing like as long as that, Domenico!” she protested, although when she thought about it, she did not know how long she was likely to be. “Shall we say seven o’clock?”

“
Oui
!
Oui
!
”

That would give her a full hour from the time of meeting. If nothing had happened by seven o’clock, she would not wait any longer.

Domenico touched his cap, smiling broadly as he watched her hurry off in the direction of the brilliantly lit boulevard.

An hour later she was back on the sidewalk where he had left her. Her sole purchase had been a cream silk head square printed with deep yellow swaths of mimosa, which she had not been able to resist, and she clutched the paper bag to her as she crossed the road, as if it were some sort of amulet against danger.

The Silver Dragon was a very small restaurant wedged between the back entrance of a hotel and what appeared to be a warehouse, but it was smartly faced with black glass and looked clean. It was, of course, Chinese.

Several people hurried in and out as she walked slowly toward it and the fact reassured her a little because they all looked eminently respectable.

She pushed the. door open, hesitating in the yellow glow of a dozen lanterns. Ahead of her a sea of small tables stretched to the back of the room where the huge figure of a dragon was embroidered in silver thread on a black backcloth.

A very old Chinese man advanced toward her on silent feet.

“You look for friend?” he asked.

He was round-faced and courteous, with
a
benevolent smile that revealed a flash of gold teeth, and he looked at her expectantly. There was nothing at all sinister about him, Adele decided, or about The Silver Dragon. Nothing that could be seen on the surface.

“No. I
...
thought I would like something to eat,” she answered cautiously.

“Plenty to eat,” he smiled, leading her between the rows of tables to a secluded corner where she sat down facing the door, her back to the embroidered dragon. “Plenty Chinese food, plenty English food!” He stood with his small fat hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his mandarin’s coat. “You very hungry?”

Adele shook her head, trying to concentrate on the lengthy menu that he had placed before her.

“Do you think I might just have some tea and perhaps a cake?” she asked.

“A cream cake?” he inquired, completely unperturbed by the simplicity of her order.

“If you please?” she smiled at him. “And China tea.”

When her tea arrived she sat for half an hour watching people coming in and going out, but there was no sign of her acquaintance
o
f the evening before.

By half-past six the restaurant was almost deserted. The young Chinese waiters began to set the tables for the evening meal. Soon she would have to go.

She began to feel nervous. It was a quarter to seven and there was still no sign of her contact. Then the restaurant door swung open and Dixon came in.

He stood for a moment, gazing around, tall, suave,
distinguished-looking, with the little old Chinese bowing at his elbow, and then he walked straight across the room to where she sat.

“Are you surprised?” he asked. “I wondered if I would find you here.”

“Dixon!”

She gazed up at him as if she had encountered a ghost, and he smiled back at her ironically.

“It would appear to be a very small world,” he commented, glancing down at the table. “Have you eaten or have you just come in?”

“I’ve been here for ... quite a long while,” she was forced to confess.

He turned to the man.

“I’ll have the usual, Lee,” he said, “and chicken with almonds, I think, for Mrs. Cabot.”

The old man bowed until his head almost touched the table.

“I do not know it is Madame Cabot!” he exclaimed. “I very sorry. Very sorry indeed! I go prepare fine dinner to say how sorry I am. You wait and see, M’sieur Cabot. I prepare very best dinner in Nice for you’ bride!”

Dixon took the chair opposite Adele, smiling dryly.

“Lee is apparently impressed,” he said, laying the menu aside. “How did you find your way here?”

“I asked Domenico.”

His raised brows suggested that she had not really answered his question.

“I see,” he said. “It’s considered to be one of the showplaces of Nice, but not for afternoon tea.”

She knew that she ought to tell him all about the launch and the furtive little Frenchman, but somehow she couldn’t. She had put herself in a most invidious position by coming here at all, and he already distrusted her. How could she hope to convince him that she
had come innocently, with no knowledge of what was expected of her? He simply would not believe her.

And besides, her contact had not turned up. There was no way of proving to Dixon that what she said was the truth.

Confused by his sudden unexpected appearance, she could no longer think clearly, and once she had evaded that first question he did not ask her any more. Instead, he signaled to one of the young waiters hovering in the background.

“An aperitif, Fu,” he said. “Something to please
madame
.”

Adele ordered a cinzano and Fu said, “The usual,
m’sieur
?
”
and went off with a bow to order their drinks.