BENVENUTO stopped the car in the Cannebière.
“We’re late,” he said. “It’s getting on for one o’clock. You go along to the Bristol and meet Adelaide, and I’ll join you there in a few minutes. I’ve got to send a wire.”
Paul hurried down the road, and reaching the Bristol looked for Adelaide among the crowded tables. He did not see her, and walked past a second time anxiously scanning every face. But she was not there, and he sat down at a table to wait. He ordered a Vermouth, and while he sipped it kept a watchful eye on the crowds passing along the pavement. Everyone seemed to have come out after the rain, and mixed with the townspeople were African and Moorish troops, spahis in flowing robes, and peasants from the country wearing shawls and white linen caps, the children dragging at their mothers’ hands while they stared at the shops and traffic. At any other time Paul would have enjoyed it, sitting there with his drink and watching the people. But at that moment no face interested him that was not Adelaide’s, and his eye slipped from dark skins to light ones, from the flat, coarse profile of an African to that of a trim bearded French bourgeois, without registering what he saw.
He looked at his watch. A quarter-past one; it was absurd to get oneself into a state—a thousand things might have detained her. But he was on the point of getting up from his table to see if he could find her at the coiffeur’s when Benvenuto walked in, looking thoughtful and rather gloomy.
“Sorry I’ve been so long,” he said. “Garçon! Donnez moi un Pernod.” And he relapsed into silence, staring in front of him.
“I can’t think what’s happened to Adelaide—she’s not turned up yet,” said Paul.
“Hasn’t she?” Benvenuto answered abstractedly. “She’ll be along in a minute or two.”
“I think I’ll just go up to the hairdresser’s and see if she’s still there—it’s a long time since she was due.”
“Right.” Then, just as Paul was leaving, he called after him. “Oh—it’s no good doing that—all the shops shut from twelve till two. Much better sit down and wait for her.”
Paul returned to his seat moodily. If all the shops shut at twelve, where on earth . . . really, Benvenuto might take a little interest. He looked as if he were trying to solve the secrets of the universe, thought Paul irritably. They sat in silence for a few moments and then an elderly waiter came up and addressed Benvenuto.
“Pardon—c’est M’sieur Brown, n’est ce pas?”
“Ah, bonjour, Georges. Ça va bien?”
“Toujours bien, m’sieur—et vous?” He had produced a little note from his pocket, and Paul nearly snatched it from his hand. Controlling himself with difficulty, he watched Benvenuto open it carelessly, and then sit up with a start.
“Good God!” He handed a tip to the waiter and turned quickly to Paul. “Read that,” he said.
It was scribbled in pencil on the back of an envelope, and read:
DEAR BEN: I’ve gone to lunch with Hernandez. It seemed the best thing to do—explain later. Meet you at the Bristol about three. Have a good lunch but don’t come to the Verdun. Love—A. P. S. England expects—etc.
Paul was glaring at the little note with mingled emotions, when Benvenuto spoke.
“In spite of her injunction I think we will stroll round to the Verdun,” he said. “I don’t like the sound of it much. I can only imagine the chap has got his suspicions of us and has taxed her with something—and she’s engaged in throwing dust in his eyes across the lunch table. All very damn fine, but I wish she hadn’t gone.” He turned round to call for the bill, and a moment later they were hurrying down the Cannebière. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and Paul looked quickly at him to see his eyes wide open, staring with the peculiar intentness that he was beginning to recognize as a danger signal.
Benvenuto seized his arm and hurried him still faster down the road.
“Ten to one it’s all right,” he said, “but I’ve just realized what may happen. Suppose he asks her to go for a trip in the plane after lunch—the signs of our visit are sufficiently obvious to put the wind up him, and he may try to make a getaway.”
They broke into a run, Paul’s heart thumping as though it would burst. At this very moment she might be miles away up in the air. . . .
At the corner of the Rue Paradis the Verdun came into view, and they looked to see if the Hispaño was outside. It was not, and in two minutes Benvenuto was questioning the head waiter.
Yes, the m’sieur and the young lady had left in a big car about a quarter of an hour before. In which direction he did not know. If M’sieur liked he would call the waiter who had served them.
Benvenuto said he would like to speak to him, and Paul fumed at the delay while the man was fetched from the kitchen. At last he appeared and Benvenuto, thrusting a note into his hand, questioned him in French.
But yes, he remembered perfectly. The Spanish m’sieur had wanted his bill rather hurriedly after he had been called out to speak with a man who was asking for him. Yes, the man who had called was possibly a mechanician, and had driven away with the m’sieur and madame in the big auto.
They hurried out into the street and hailed a taxi. Benvenuto told the man the direction and bribed him to go as fast as he knew how.
“It would take even longer to get the car—I ran it into a garage before I met you,” he said as he climbed in.
The drive through the crowded streets was maddening, and cross streams of traffic seemed to hold them up at every moment. Paul, sitting on the extreme edge of the seat and peering through the glass window in front of him, treading in imagination on the accelerator and taking off the brakes, would have been both annoyed and incredulous had anyone suggested he was not hastening their progress. He banged on the window in exasperation when the driver wasted precious moments in a rich stream of Marseillaise invective directed at another taxi which had cut in front of them. At last they got away into the less crowded streets and were soon leaving the town behind them. Paul suddenly realized they were taking a different road from the one they had followed in the morning, and was about to expostulate when Benvenuto pulled him back.
“Let him alone,” he growled. “There are two roads and this is probably shorter.”
Paul sat back feeling thoroughly impotent, only to spring up in his seat a moment later.
“Look!” he said, clutching Benvenuto’s arm.
Far above them was a small plane, rising rapidly and heading in the direction of the sea. They stared at it, then met each other’s eyes. Paul was very white.
“It’s De Najera. Hold on, Paul. She may not be in it. We’ll know in a second. If she is—we’ll get him.”
They swung into the gates, nearly colliding with a taxi coming out, and saw in front of them the empty Hispaño-Suiza drawn up just outside the manager’s office. At that moment the manager emerged and walked down the steps, pulling on his gloves in a leisurely way, to receive a violent shock as Benvenuto leapt out of the taxi, Paul at his heels, and addressed him.
“Was that De Najera’s plane that went up a few minutes ago?” he demanded.
Recovering from his surprise, the man drew himself up.
“By what right, m’sieur, do you question me regarding my clients?” he began, when Benvenuto interrupted him savagely.
“Your precious client is an absinthe smuggler, carrying on his business under your nose. Had he a lady with him when he went up?—answer me.”
A startled look crossed the man’s face.
“The Señor arrived with a lady and has taken her up for a pleasure trip—he told me himself. It is monstrous what you say, m’sieur, impossible. . . . I shall complain to the police.”
“You’ll soon have ample opportunity, m’sieur—they will be here in a few moments. Come on, Paul”—and leaving him aghast on the steps, they tumbled into the taxi, Benvenuto giving hurried directions to the driver, and started back down the road. Benvenuto’s face was grim as he turned to Paul.
“We’re going straight to the gendarmerie—and within half an hour they’ll have notified the police all over Europe. Don’t look like that, man—he can’t possibly escape. We’ll reach her by to-morrow. Why, good Lord! it may be a pleasure trip as he said—he may suspect nothing, and they’ll be back in half an hour to find gendarmes waiting with a warrant for his arrest. Here—have a cigarette.”
Paul took one and stared at it in his hand. He seemed to have become numb all over. Perfectly calm he felt—as if some part of him had died. Afterwards he could remember nothing of that drive—the next thing he knew was that he was sitting opposite an official who was taking down notes from Benvenuto’s instructions. The process was achingly slow, and Paul, coming back to an intense consciousness of what had happened, sat there in torment as the description went on. “Brown hair—brown eyes—about five feet four . . .” the pen travelled over the paper.
“Not a hair out of place—every nail gleaming,” she had said laughing, and he repressed an idiotic desire to say the words aloud.
Presently Benvenuto rose, and the official followed them to the door assuring them that everything possible would be done. Benvenuto thrust a hand through Paul’s arm as they walked up the street.
“We’ll stay here till they get news,” he said. “There’s nothing else on earth we can do, so let’s go and get rooms at a hotel where we can be on the telephone.”
At last Paul found his voice.
“Isn’t there a British consul we could go to?” he said. “They might put a military aëroplane to work.”
“Good idea—we’ll go round and see them at once. I don’t know where they hang out. Come over to the Bristol and we’ll look it up in the phone book.”
“I’ll meet you both at the Bristol for apéritifs,” she had said. Paul clenched his hands and followed Benvenuto across the road.
They pushed through the chairs and tables towards the café at the back, when suddenly a voice said, “You are late.”
It was Adelaide, drinking a cup of tea.