The Sign of the Seven Sins
went across to dine at the Duval, at the corner of the Rue du Havre,
preferring that cheap restaurant to the table d’hôte of the hotel,
where I might possibly meet the three persons upon whom I was keeping
observation.
An hour later, just as I was crossing the road to re-enter the hotel,
I saw a man standing alone on the steps in hesitation. He wore a dark
beard, and had on a long drab overcoat such as men generally affect on
race-courses, but notwithstanding the disguise I recognized that it
was Ernest. The beard made him look much older, and by the addition
of a few lines to his face he had entirely altered his appearance.
For some moments he puffed pensively at his cigar, then, glancing at
his watch, descended the steps and strolled slowly away, past the
Café Terminus--which was once the object of a desperate attack by
Anarchists--and continued along the Boulevard des Capucines, where he
stopped before that popular rendezvous of Parisians, the Grand Café,
and selecting one of the tables, the last one towards the Madelaine,
placed against the wall of the Café, he ordered a coffee and liqueur.
The night was bright, and the grand boulevards with their blazing
globes of electricity were full of life and movement.
From where I was sitting, at a small brasserie on the opposite side
of the boulevard, I watched him narrowly. He glanced up and down, as
though in constant expectation of meeting some one, and looked at his
watch impatiently. He tossed off his liqueur at a single gulp, but his
coffee remained untasted, for it was evident that he was in a state of
the greatest agitation. He had feared arrest for the murder of Reginald
Thorne, and had taken refuge secretly on the Vispera. Were not his own
words sufficient to convince me of his guilt?
As I looked I saw him, while in the act of pretending to sip his
coffee, bend down close to the marble table, and after making certain
that he was not observed, he scrutinized it carefully. Twice he bent
to look at it closely. Surely, I thought, there must be something of
interest there. Then he glanced at his watch again, paid, and strolled
off down the boulevard.
Whether to follow or whether to investigate that table I was for the
moment undecided. But I resolved upon the latter course; therefore,
crossing the road, I made straight for the seat he had occupied, and
having ordered a sirop proceeded to examine the table. Very quickly I
discovered what had interested him. Scrawled in pencil upon the marble
were some letters quite unintelligible, but evidently a cipher message.
It ran--
“J. TABAC. 22.”
Another inscription had been written there, but it had been lately
erased by some previous customer, who had apparently dipped his fingers
in the drippings of beer or coffee and smeared it across. The writing
was not very easy to discern in the half light, for the table was so
placed as to be in deep shadow. Was it possible that the person who had
erased the first message had written the second? Could it be that this
person was the man whom I had been watching?
I had seen him bend over the table mysteriously, first glancing round
to make sure that no one was watching. Why had he thus betrayed fear
if that message was not one of importance? Goron, the great chief of
the Paris sureté, had told me, when I had met him at dinner once in
New York, how the criminals of Paris were fond of making the tops of
the café tables the means of secret communications, and how many a
crime had been discovered by the police with the aid of the keys they
possessed to certain secret codes.
I looked again at the initial, the word “tobacco,” and the number
twenty-two scrawled on the marble before me, and was puzzled to know
what meaning they could convey. Had Ernest really written them? The
letters were printed, in order, no doubt, to prevent any recognition of
the handwriting. I remembered that he had sat with his hand upon the
table as though toying idly with the matches, and further I noticed
that the liquid with which the erasure had been made was not yet
entirely dry. I touched it with my gloved finger and placed it to my
nose. There was an odor of coffee.
Now if Ernest had really inscribed that cipher message he had
substituted his for the original one written there. With what purpose?
To whom was this unintelligible word addressed? Having regard to the
fact that the tables of cafés are usually washed down by the waiters
every morning, it seemed certain that the person to whom he intended
to convey the message would come there that night. Indeed, he had
constantly looked at his watch, as though in expectation of the arrival
of some one.
I therefore paid the waiter and left, returning some few minutes later
to my previous place in front of the brasserie opposite, determined
to wait and watch. The waiter brought me some illustrated papers, and
while pretending to be absorbed in them I kept my eye upon the table I
had just vacated. A shabby, wizen-faced little man in a silk hat with
flat brim passed and re-passed where I was sitting, and I thought eyed
me rather suspiciously. But perhaps it was only my fancy, for when one
is engaged in the work of bringing home to a criminal his crime, one
is apt to look with undue suspicion on all and sundry. I think I must
have been there nearly half-an-hour when a ragged, unkempt man, who had
slunk past where I was seated and picked up several cigar-ends with a
stick bearing a sharpened wire point, crossed over to the Grand Café
and recommenced his search beneath the tables there. He had secured
several pieces of smokers’ refuse when, in a moment, he darted to the
table in the shadow, and as he stooped, feigning to pick up a piece of
unconsumed cigar, I saw that he glanced eagerly to see what message was
written there.
Just at that moment the wizen-faced man who had evinced such an
extraordinary interest in myself was standing idly upon the curb close
by. He was undoubtedly watching him.
The quick eyes of the old collector of cigar-ends apparently understood
the message in an instant, for with bent back he continued his active
search, yet betrayed no further interest in that table in the shadow.
If he had really gone there in order to ascertain the nature of the
message, he concealed his real purpose admirably. Probably he was used
to being watched by police agents. I saw him hobble along from café to
café, his shrewd, deep-set eyes peering from beneath his gray, shaggy
brows in search of the tiny pieces discarded by smokers.
With him also disappeared the shabby little man whose interest I
had unwittingly aroused, and I remained there still, irresolute and
wondering.
I had paid, and was just about to rise and go, when of a sudden a
well-appointed victoria pulled up in front of the Grand Café, and
from it stepped a small, well-dressed woman wearing a smart hat and
an elaborate cape of the latest mode. Without hesitation she walked
to the table in question and seated herself. In the darkness I could
not distinguish her face, but I saw that even before the waiter could
attend to her she had examined the table and read the message thereon
written.
Was it, I wondered, intended for her?
The waiter brought what she ordered, a “bock,” that favorite beverage
with both Parisians and Parisiennes, and as I watched her narrowly I
saw something which convinced me that the cipher was intended for her
eye. She dipped her finger in the beer and drew it across the writing.
Was she young or old, I wondered? She was settling her cape and
chiffons preparatory to rising and re-entering her carriage, therefore
I rose and crossed the road. As I stepped upon the asphalte on the
opposite side, she crossed to where her smart turn-out stood, brushing
past me as she did so.
The light as it fell across her face revealed a countenance with which
I was, alas! too familiar.
She was the woman who had usurped my place in Ernest’s heart--the
woman whom I had seen in his company at Monte Carlo--the woman who had
laughed at me in triumph across the roulette table, because she knew
that she held him beneath the spell of her extraordinary beauty.
CHAPTER XVIII
GIVES THE KEY OF THE CIPHER
I walked along the boulevard towards the Opera as one in a dream.
To that woman with the tow-colored hair, the blue eyes, and pink
cheeks--the woman who had replaced me in his affections--he had written
that strange message in cipher--a message of warning, it might be.
I hated her. I really believe that if ever the spirit of murder has
entered my heart it was at that moment. I could have sprung upon her
and killed her as she stepped into her carriage.
She had said no word to her coachman. He apparently knew where to
drive. That cipher was, perhaps, an appointment which he had gone
forward to keep, while she was now following. The thought convulsed me
with anger. This man, Ernest Cameron, the man who had once held me in
his arms and declared that he loved me, was, upon his own admission, an
assassin.
Along the Rue Auber I wandered back to the hotel plunged in my
own distracting thoughts. I had somehow ceased to think of the old
millionaire and the chattering woman whom he had concealed on board the
Vispera. All my thoughts were of the man who had until then held me as
his helpless slave.
It may have been jealousy, or it may possibly have been the revulsion
of feeling that had seized me on becoming aware of the terrible truth
of his guilt, that caused me to vow to leave no stone unturned to
secure his arrest and condemnation. She, that small, slim woman with
the fair hair, had stolen him from me, but I determined that she should
not be allowed to enjoy his society longer. I had discovered the truth,
and the blow that I intended to deal would be fatal to the happiness of
both of them.
I laughed within myself. I was not impatient. No. I would wait and
watch until I had secured ample proof. Then I had but to apply to the
police, and the arrest would be made. He, Ernest Cameron, had murdered
and robbed the poor boy who had admired me and with whom I had so
foolishly flirted. Was it the attention I had allowed him to pay me
that was primarily the cause of his assassination? Did the moral
responsibility rest upon myself?
That night, even though tired out, I slept but little. Times without
number I tried in vain to solve the secret of that cipher message--or
warning, was it?--written upon the table before the Grand Café. But
neither the initial nor the word “tobacco” conveyed to me any meaning
whatsoever. One fact seemed strange, namely, the reason that the ragged
collector of cigar-ends should have searched for it, and, further, that
the word written there should have been “tobacco.” Again, who was the
shabby, wizen-faced individual who had also watched that table with
such eagerness and expectancy? As I reflected I became impressed by the
idea that the table itself was one of those known to be a notice-board
of criminals, and therefore at night observation was kept upon it.
The great Goron, that past-master in the detection of crime, had, I
remembered, told me that in all the quarters of Paris, from the chic
Avenue des Champs Elysées to the lower parts of Montmartre, there were
certain tables at certain cafés used by thieves, burglars, and other
such gentry for the exchange of messages, the dissemination of news,
and the issue of warnings. Indeed, the correspondence on the café
tables was found to be more rapid and far more secret, and to attract
less attention than the insertion of paragraphs in the advertisement
columns of the newspapers. Each gang of malefactors had, he told me,
its own particular table in its own particular café, where any number