"Carlotta Deschamps."
"What time did mademoiselle leave?" I inquired.
"Less than a quarter of an hour ago," was the reply.
"Who brought the note to her?"
"A man, monsieur. Mademoiselle accompanied him in a cab."
With a velocity which must have startled the grave and leisurely
servant, I precipitated myself out of the house and back into the
fiacre, which happily had not gone away. I told the cabman to drive to
my hotel at his best speed.
To me Deschamps' letter was in the highest degree suspicious. Rosa, of
course, with the simplicity of a heart incapable of any baseness, had
accepted it in perfect faith. But I remembered the words of Yvette,
uttered in all solemnity: "She is dangerous; you must take care."
Further, I observed that the handwriting of this strange and dramatic
missive was remarkably firm and regular for a dying woman, and that
the composition showed a certain calculated effectiveness. I feared a
lure. Instinctively I knew Deschamps to be one of those women who,
driven by the goad of passionate feeling, will proceed to any length,
content to postpone reflection till afterwards--when the irremediable
has happened.
By chance I was slightly acquainted with the remote and sinister
suburb where lay the Villa des Hortensias. I knew that at night it
possessed a peculiar reputation, and my surmise was that Rosa had been
decoyed thither with some evil intent.
Arrived at my hotel, I unearthed my revolver and put it in my pocket.
Nothing might occur; on the other hand, everything might occur, and it
was only prudent to be prepared. Dwelling on this thought, I also took
the little jewelled dagger which Rosa had given to Sir Cyril Smart at
the historic reception of my Cousin Sullivan's.
In the hall of the hotel I looked at the plan of Paris. Certainly
Pantin seemed to be a very long way off. The route to it from the
centre of the city--that is to say, the Place de l'Opéra--followed the
Rue Lafayette, which is the longest straight thoroughfare in Paris,
and then the Rue d'Allemagne, which is a continuation, in the same
direct line, of the Rue Lafayette. The suburb lay without the
fortifications. The Rue Thiers--every Parisian suburb has its Rue
Thiers--was about half a mile past the barrier, on the right.
I asked the aged woman who fulfils the functions of hall-porter at the
Hôtel de Portugal whether a cab would take me to Pantin.
"Pantin," she repeated, as she might have said "Timbuctoo." And she
called the proprietor. The proprietor also said "Pantin" as he might
have said "Timbuctoo," and advised me to take the steam-tram which
starts from behind the Opéra, to let that carry me as far as it would,
and then, arrived in those distant regions, either to find a cab or to
walk the remainder of the distance.