“In my day,” said the old waiter, tottering round the room, “in my day, I repeat, the Armies of France were not defeated. They conquered, they swept all before them. I do not understand what ill fate has befallen the Armies of France.” He threw a contemptuous look at three French soldiers sitting together at a table in the corner with their rifles and equipment upon a long bench beside them. They were eating hungrily, but their heads turned at every sound coming from the road which passed the inn; it was one of the main roads to Paris. “It must be the men,” said the waiter. “In my day, we had men in the Armies of France.”
“And a man to lead them,” said one of the soldiers, angrily jerking round in his chair and then turning back to his meal again.
“And, as you say, a man to lead them.”
There were two men sitting at a table in the window, eating their meal and looking down at the traffic below, which was all going one way, towards Paris. Guns and their limbers, wagons full of wounded lying on straw, infantry steadily plodding with no spring in their step, cavalry with their once gay uniforms masked with dust. Dust over everything and hanging in a heavy cloud in the air; it came in at the open first-floor window at which the men were sitting and fell upon the tables, the food, their hair, their clothes, and their skin, until everything they touched was soiled and gritty. The men were civilians and gentlemen by their dress; their valises lay on the floor beside them. The elder, a man in his late thirties, was the stouter of the two; the younger was very tall and thin with lank dark hair, hatchet-nosed and impulsive in movement. On the back of his chair there sat a small Capuchin monkey dressed in a little red jacket and a round cap. The monkey was eating a peach, and the juice ran down his chin and dripped upon his jacket.
“That animal of yours,” said the older traveler, speaking in English, “is making himself a horrid sloven with that peach.”
The younger glanced over his shoulder. “My fault. I forgot to give him a napkin.” He changed to French, perfectly fluent but with an accent unfamiliar to the old waiter. “Be so good as to bring me another napkin. My friend here is in difficulties with his peach.”
The waiter awoke with a start from his plainly dismal thoughts and hurried forward with a napkin upon a salver. The monkey saw him coming, dropped the remains of his peach upon the floor, and snatched off his little cap with a polite bow. The waiter shuddered but stood his ground; the younger traveler took the napkin with a word of thanks and proceeded to tie it round the monkey’s neck.
“Tell me,” said the elder traveler in fair French with a strong English accent, “the battle, it has taken place? It is already over?”
“It is already over,” said the waiter, shaking his head, and with that his hands began to shake also and his arms and his whole body, so that he laid hold upon the back of a chair to steady himself.
“And where did they fight?”
“Monsieur, at a place called Sedan.”
“And France—”
“Has been defeated, monsieur. Never was there such a defeat. They say our armies are surrounded and these whom you see passing by are merely the stragglers.”
“Take heart,” said the English traveler. “News is never so bad as the first rumors make it.”
One of the soldiers rose from table and came to the window to look out over their shoulders. “The gentlemen,” he said in a tired, angry voice, “are interested in the battle?”
The younger man, having finished the monkey’s toilette, gave him another peach and turned round. “Of course we are,” he said in his odd drawling French, “seeing that we have come out from Paris in order to view it.”
“To view it? To view a battle? Does the gentleman know what he is saying?”
“Of course I know,” said the traveler calmly. “In my country, if a gentleman desires to observe the course of a battle he is freely at liberty to do so. Why not?”
The soldier called upon his Maker and went back to his table, but the waiter asked politely what country had the felicity to number Monsieur among its citizens.
“America,” said the monkey’s owner. “Waiter, bring another bottle. No, not another bottle of claret—brandy this time. Have you a passable brandy? You will drink with us, your morale appears to me to need restoring.”
The waiter went to get it and the Englishman spoke in a low tone. “I should not give him too much, Charles. I think he has been restoring his morale considerably already.”
“What he wants,” said the American, “is to get drunk and sleep it off. The defeat will not seem so serious when he wakes up. That is what I did when I heard that Grant had taken Richmond. It does help, Cousin James, it does help.”
“I dare say that you are in the right,” said his English cousin with a sympathetic sigh, though indeed his own reaction to the news of the fall of Richmond had been of thankfulness that the wretched war was now over and there would once more be American cotton to supply his empty, silent mills.
The waiter came back with fresh glasses and a dusty bottle of brandy. There was a heavy rumble of passing guns and the glasses shook on the table.
“The patron’s grandfather laid this down in the year when the Emperor—my Emperor—broke the Austrians at Wagram. We may as well drink it, gentlemen, or the brutal Prussians will.” He spat a curse upon the Prussians and withdrew the cork.
“The patron,” said the Englishman idly, “he is not here?”
“He has gone to Paris for safety. Madame insisted. One understands. They have five daughters.” He began to pour out the brandy, but his hand shook so much that the spirit ran out upon the table.
“Give it to me,” said the American. “ ‘Waste not, want not,’ is a good saying.” He filled three glasses and gave the old waiter one. “Down with it. That’ll warm your courage for you. Cousin James, your health. Sir, this is very fine brandy indeed.”
“It is in truth,” said the Englishman. “Cousin Charles, your very good health.”
The old waiter bowed to them both and sipped his brandy. It appeared to do him good; a little color crept into his face and his hands steadied.
“Are you, then, alone in this place?” asked the man called James.
“Oh no,” said the waiter. “There is my grandson in the kitchen. He cooks. There are also women who wash and clean and make beds, but today they have all run off to their homes. My grandson had the impertinence to tell me he also proposed to desert me, but I persuaded him to remain. With the spit. At present he is more afraid of me whom he knows than of the Germans whom he does not know—yet. He is green with terror, his hair stands on end and his knees shake, but he cooked the dinner. It was passable, yes?”
“Excellent,” said the Englishman. “My compliments to him on that ragôut.”
The waiter bowed.
“It needed a little more pepper,” said the American.
“My fault, monsieur. His hand shook so much that I took the pot from him.”
The monkey chattered angrily and his master looked round.
“He is thirsty,” he said. “Waiter, a little wine and water for my friend.”
“In a basin?” said the waiter, tottering away to the sideboard.
“Basin? No, why? In a glass, like a Christian. Do you think he has no manners?”
The waiter muttered something inaudible and brought back wine mixed with water in a thick glass.
“Thank the gentleman, Ulysses,” said the American.
The monkey stood up on the back of the chair, took off his little cap with one paw, placed the other over his heart, and bowed deeply.
“Ulysses?” said the waiter. “That is, then, the little creature’s name, Ulysses?”
“That is so. I named him after a certain general whom I had reason to dislike.”
The Englishman laughed shortly and poured out three more glasses while the American handed the monkey his wine. “Careful, Ulysses. Do not spill it.”
The monkey sat down again on his haunches, received the glass slowly in two careful paws, and began to sip it, rounding his great dark eyes at the waiter.
“He is indeed like a Christian! He enjoys his wine!”
“Surely he does, why not? Here’s your glass, waiter, drink up and become young once more.”
“I thank Monsieur. May I, then, propose a toast this time? France! France!” He drained the glass at one draught and the travelers raised their eyebrows.
“France,” murmured the Englishman diffidently.
“The fair land of France!” cried the American in ringing tones. “May all her enemies perish!”
The monkey, imitative in this as in all else, raised his glass also and returned it to his mouth. One of the soldiers in the corner said: “Dieu-de-dieu-de-dieu,” under his breath and looked hastily away.
“Not so much traffic going by now,” said James, the Englishman, and it was true. The rumbling and the tramping had ceased and the dust began to fall again upon the road from which it had risen.
“The Army has gone past,” said the waiter somberly. “That miserable line of stragglers, of which you have just seen the last, is the remnant of the Armies of France. Oh, when I was young, we did not run from our enemies like this! We fought, we died in heaps, but we conquered!” He seized the brandy bottle and refilled his own glass, entirely forgetting the others. “Invincible, unconquerable, always victorious—”
This was a little too much even for the sympathetic Englishman. “There was,” he said quietly, “a certain battle at a place called Waterloo—”
“I was there,” cried the waiter, “I myself, seventeen years of age. I tell you, monsieur, that we should have won there also if it had not been for these damned Prussians.”
The soldier nearest to them laughed harshly. “Messieurs, permit me to tell you that that is equally true of the battle of Sedan!” He picked up the bottle of vin ordinaire from his own table, set it to his mouth and drained the contents, dropped his head upon the table, and began to snore.
The American held the brandy bottle to the light and said that there was not much left, they might as well finish it. From the road outside there came the thud of galloping hooves and the musical jingle of accoutrements as a disorganized bunch of cavalry swept past and disappeared from sight.
“Cuirassiers,” said the waiter, peering over the travelers’ shoulders.
“Sir, that will be the rear guard,” said the American, refilling the glasses. “Very shortly now, sir, we may expect the vanguard of the victorious enemy.” His hand was perfectly steady, but his speech was beginning to thicken. “One last toast, Cousin James, and you, what’s your name, waiter. One last toast. Death to the enemies of France!”
They drank it, solemnly, almost tearfully, and suddenly without warning the waiter began to sing in a high cracked voice.
“Allons, enfants de la Patrie!
Le jour de gloire est arrivé—”
“A little inappropriate for the occasion,” murmured the Englishman, but his cousin cut him short.
“What is that shouting I hear? Quiet, fellow! Listen—”
They leaned from the windows to see a half-grown lad come tearing down the street shouting that they come, they come, the Prussians, the Prussians——
The French soldiers in the corner scrambled to their feet, shaking their comrade awake. They did not wait to pick up their kit or even their rifles, but rushed out of the room, oversetting a table and some chairs as they went. They could be heard stumbling and plunging down the stairs, and the Englishman looked down into the street but did not see them come out.
“They have gone by the back way, Cousin,” said the American with an angry laugh. “Cut off across the fields.”
“Cowards, cowards,” wailed the old waiter. “They have even abandoned their rifles.”
“Wise men, in my opinion,” said James with a slight hiccough. “Excuse me, Cousin. They may even live if they run fast enough.” He got to his feet and staggered a little. “I believe I have drunk enough, Charles, what say you?”
“You have the right of it, James, but our waiter is still upon his feet, such as they are.” Charles got up a little unsteadily and the monkey climbed down to stand beside him, reaching up for his hand like a child. “You fellow, what are you doing with those rifles?”
“Loading them, monsieur, loading them. What else would one do with a rifle when there are Prussians on the sacred soil of France?”
“Sir,” said Charles, swaying slightly, “you are in the right and, sir, I honor you for it. Sir, I fought at Gettysburg and as a soldier I salute you.”
“I hold a commission in Her Majesty’s Yeomanry,” said James, “but I am by no means positive that that entitles me to call myself a soldier.”
“Surely, James, surely. At least you can load and handle a rifle.” Charles thrust one into his cousin’s hands. “Take that and load it. Here, put this cartridge bag about you. There is here equipment for the three of us; that should be sufficient.”
James Latimer broke into one of his short barking laughs. “Sufficient for what? To drive the Prussians from France?” He examined the rifle carefully, took a cartridge from his bag, and loaded. “The weapon is unfamiliar in detail, but to one accustomed to machines it presents no insoluble problems.”
“We may not be victorious, gentlemen,” said the old waiter, “but some defeats are more glorious than victory. On, then, to glory! Vive l’Empereur!”
“Come then, gentlemen,” said the American. “Forward to defeat if not to victory!”
“Forward, the Army of Latimer,” said James. “It is very peculiar and quite unexpected, but, Cousin Charles, I am enjoying this. I suppose it is all a dream?” he added doubtfully.
“If it be,” said Charles Latimer, “why, then, James, we shall soon awake.”
They went down the stairs into the deserted silent streets. The houses were all closed and shuttered, no voices came to them, and they saw nothing but a frightened face or two peering from behind curtains. They tramped on, their footsteps muffled in the thick dust and their shadows lengthening before them on the long straight road away from Paris, three tall men, though one was bowed with age, and beside one of them the tiny figure of the monkey holding his hand like a child, running and skipping to keep up.
Presently there emerged suddenly from a side road a troop of Prussian cavalry riding two by two with their officer at their head. They turned towards the three men and came on at a steady trot, nearer and nearer, fifty yards away, forty yards, thirty——
“Cousin Charles,” said James Latimer, “I think that these are the enemy, what say you?”
“Waiter,” said Charles Latimer, “who are these who come?”
The waiter, whose head had been hanging, looked up, stiffened like a dog, and swung his rifle off his shoulder.
“The enemies of France!” he yelled, and fired straight at them. He missed the officer in front but brought down a trooper in the third rank. The officer bellowed an order and himself fired first; there was a series of loud explosions from the short Prussian carbines and the waiter pitched forward on his face and lay still. Charles Latimer stood upright for a moment and then his knees bent under him and he went down in a heap with the monkey whimpering and chattering on his body.
James Latimer was quite unharmed and had not even removed the rifle from his shoulder; one would say he had forgotten that he had it. He looked down at the two dead men and took off his hat. The officer rode up with one of his sergeants and dismounted.
“What is this nonsense?” he said in French. “What folly is this?”
“I think,” said James slowly, “that the Army of Latimer has been defeated.”
“What? You are a civilian. You must know that for a civilian to carry arms in wartime is punishable with death. French Army rifles, too! Sergeant, disarm this man. I will have no francs-tireurs.”
James gave up the rifle without protest; the officer stooped over the body of Charles, and the monkey flew at him and bit him in the wrist.
“You would, would you?” said the sergeant, and shot the monkey through the head.
“The bites of monkeys,” said James calmly, “are said to be poisonous.”
There was the sound of footsteps thudding in the dust as a stout black-clad figure came running along the road from the village with his long soutane flapping about his legs. The officer, winding a handkerchief round his bleeding wrist, waited until the priest came up to them.
“I came,” gasped the priest, “to beg you to have mercy on this poor village—”
“You have come at the right moment,” said the officer. “These men were francs-tireurs, you see their rifles. They fired on us and killed one of my troopers. Two of these men are already dead and the third is about to die. Tell your villagers what happens to those who lift a finger against the Prussian Army. Tell them that if just one more shot is fired I will burn the whole place to the ground. Understand?”
“I will tell them. I have already told them and I will tell them again. But these two gentlemen are not of our village, they are strangers—”
“And the third?”
“A poor old man of over seventy—”
“Old enough to know better. Since you are here, perhaps this gentleman requires your spiritual services before he dies. You may have two minutes.” The officer drew out his watch.
“My son,” said the priest, addressing James Latimer, “come aside for a moment.”
They walked a few paces away and spoke in low tones.
“Father,” said James, “I am not of your Communion, I am an Englishman and a Protestant. Nevertheless, I have something to say. Listen.”
He had spoken only a few words when the officer looked up from his watch and gave an order to the sergeant. There was a small barn beside the road; the sergeant led James towards it and set his back to the wall while six of the troopers dismounted, lined up in the road facing him.
“I don’t think this is a very interesting part of France,” said Sally Latimer.
“It’s historical,” said Jeremy. “If that helps,” he added doubtfully.
“Not in the least. What is the difference between a green field where a battle has been fought and a green field where no battle has been fought?”
“Is this a riddle?”
“No. Historical buildings, yes. You can look round an ancient hall and tell yourself that these very walls heard the voice of Cromwell or Nelson or Queen Victoria—”
“Or Mickey Mouse—”
“Shut up. But what’s in a field? Green grass, some hedges, and a tree or two.”
“Green flies,” said Jeremy Latimer, “some toadstools, and a cow or two.”
“Are we composing poetry? On our left hand, some forty miles away, thank goodness, is Verdun. On our right, only some ten miles away, is Sedan. But in between—”
“Yes,” interrupted Jeremy, “you didn’t like Verdun, did you?”
“Fort Vaux,” said Sally, and shivered. “Please don’t remind me of it. Miserable, despairing place full of dead men’s bones.”
“I dare say these fields are if we only knew it, but we don’t, so it’s all right.”
Sally looked about her at the rolling fields. “All different shades of green, some with cows and some without. Where is this main road you’re looking for?”
“I think it’s just ahead, must be around here someplace.”
The Rolls-Bentley tourer slowed down and stopped at the road junction while its two occupants peered at the signpost. “Right, Sedan and Mézières. Left, Vouziers, Rheims, and Paris. You needn’t worry about the map now.” The big car nosed carefully on to the main road and turned left.
“What’s this place we’re coming to?” asked Jeremy.
“Chemery, and the next after that is St. Denis-sur-Aisne.”
“All these villages,” said Jeremy, slowing the car for the village street, “look the same to me. All single-string places with flat-fronted houses exactly alike unless some guy has gone mad and given his front door a coat of paint, and that doesn’t often happen. Most of them haven’t even put a dab of cement into the bullet scars. I know the Second World War’s only been over eight years and what is eight years in the life of a nation, but one would think they might have done a little something if only to celebrate their parents’ weddings. I don’t know how any of them know where they live. I mean, imagine driving home from the local market town in the local bus after dark, how do you know where you get out?”
“Oh, come,” said Sally, “one must be just. You might say the same thing about Streatham or Lower Norwood.”
“I do,” said Jeremy simply. “Well, that was Chemery; let’s step on it to the next place. Where shall we dine? At Rheims?”
The big car purred on down the long straight road which had the usual double line of poplars turning out the silvery underside of their leaves in the evening breeze. St. Denis-sur-Aisne came into view in the distance, roofs and a church spire among trees. On the left of the road there was a small barn standing alone; the farm to which it presumably belonged was two hundred yards farther on. Just before they reached the barn the car’s engine stopped suddenly and they coasted to a standstill at the side of the road.
“Odd,” said Jeremy, frowning. “What’s bitten you, Rollo?”
“We can’t be out of petrol,” said Sally; “we filled up at Montmédy. Besides, look at the indicator.”
“Oh, it’s not that. More like an ignition failure. Just a minute.”
Latimer was, like most young men of his age, a reasonably good motor mechanic. He applied all the usual tests to locate the trouble, but entirely without result. Half an hour passed.
“I don’t know what the trouble is,” he said. “Petrol is going where it should go and no place else, the plugs are all sparking, and everything else seems to be in order. Seems to be. Any suggestions?”
“None, unless it’s bewitched.”
“Do you suggest I send for a garagiste or for the priest? I suppose there is a garage in this town?”
“There’s a cinema, anyway,” said Sally, indicating a gaudy poster on the wall of the barn beside them. “Look, they’re doing Gone with the Wind.”
Jeremy groaned. “Nineteen thirty-nine was it? Or 1938? If the garagiste is as out of date as the film—”
A stout elderly Frenchman came across the field, making for the barn, and Jeremy addressed him.
“Good day, monsieur. Would you be so good as to tell me whether there is a garagiste in the village? My car has developed some mysterious trouble which I cannot myself locate.”
The farmer came to lean over the hedge and say that there was, indeed, a garagiste of the most superior attainments in the village, everyone employed him. “Myself, I would not dare to advise you. I am a motorist myself, but only of a two c.v. Citroen. Not such an auto as that. Monsieur, I have never seen such an auto. One would have said that it was impossible for such a one to breakdown.”
“So would I,” said Latimer ruefully, “but I should have been wrong, as you see.”
“Monsieur, I have a telephone at my farm there. Would it serve you if I were to ring up André at the garage and tell him to come out to you?”
“Monsieur,” said Jeremy, “there is nothing I should like better, if you would be so good. Er—I must repay you the price of the call.”
“But, naturally,” said the farmer, and took the money. “I am, in any case, going home at once.”
“Monsieur,” said Sally with a dazzling smile, “your politeness exceeds all that I have ever read of your chivalrous nation. My husband was in despair, quite overcome.”
The farmer took off his hat. “Madame has but to smile like that and she will find all France at her command. Au revoir, madame, monsieur. I go to the telephone.”
He paused only to put some sacks he had been carrying into the barn and lock the door, and then went away with long heavy strides towards his farm.
“Charming,” said Sally, “charming.”
“Look, angel. Could you, do you think, without too much strain, go a bit easy on that girlish charm of yours? I don’t want to cramp your style any, but we’re here for a nice quiet tour, not a war. I don’t want to have to put up wire entanglements round Rollo.”
“The French aren’t really like that, are they? I thought that was all just travelers’ tales. It’s not? Oh dear. Well, we can always hop in the car and drive away, can’t we? I wonder how long this man will be in coming.” Sally shivered suddenly.
“Not cold, are you? Put your coat on. You didn’t take a chill last night, did you? We’ll go straight to the hotel in this place and get a little drink.”
“No, no, it’s all right, darling. I’m not a bit cold. It’s just that I don’t like this place much, somehow. It’s all right, but I’d rather be somewhere else.”
“Cheer up,” said Jeremy, “this isn’t Verdun. I guess you’re tired, that’s all; we have certainly covered some ground since Monday.” He fussed round her until presently a large ancient Panhard arrived bringing the garage proprietor from St. Denis.
He exhausted himself in praise of the Rolls-Bentley. He had seen photographs of such cars, but never, until today, had his hands upon one, and so on. Eventually he opened the bonnet and carried out much the same series of tests as Latimer had done, with exactly the same lack of result.
“But there is nothing the matter,” he said, “except that she will not go.”
“Brother,” said Jeremy in his native tongue, “you’re telling me.”
“Monsieur is English?”
“American.”
“Good. Very good. Excellent. Now, about the auto. I can do no more here. I suggest that I tow Monsieur to my garage. I cannot do anything tonight—it is late, and besides, I have promised to take a little lady to the cinema.” He jerked his head towards the poster. “It is good, they tell me. A long film, though, it is necessary to be in time, and I shall have the hair torn from me if I am late.” He glanced at Sally. “Monsieur understands.”
“Perfectly. But is there a passable hotel here to which I can take Madame? We meant to sleep at Rheims.”
“The Hôtel du Commerce, monsieur, is excellent. It is famous. The cuisine—people come from miles around to eat at the Hôtel du Commerce. It is clean, comfortable, and well furnished. Only last year there were two bathrooms put in and the sanitation completely modernized.”
“Incredible,” said Jeremy, and meant it. “Well, that settles it, we will go to the Hôtel du Commerce. But listen, I want to be away early in the morning, by nine o’clock if possible. We are for Paris.”
“I myself,” said the garagiste, “will be up at six and already working upon your auto.”
They were towed the couple of miles to St. Denis and stopped at the Hôtel du Commerce to unload their luggage. There is inevitably a certain loss of dignity in being towed, and the more magnificent the towed car, the greater the loss of dignity. By the time they reached the hotel Sally was struggling with an attack of giggles.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
“Nothing—only this makes me feel as though my knickers were coming down—”
“They aren’t, are they?”
“No, no. Not really. It just feels like what I’d feel like if they did.”
“It’s Rollo who’s losing his pants,” said Jeremy grimly.
A little later, while people were assembling outside the cinema to await its opening, two men strolled down the street looking interestedly about them. They aroused a certain amount of interest in those who saw them, for their dress was markedly old-fashioned and both wore side whiskers of a curling luxuriance unknown to the present day. The older and stouter of the two had his hair and mustache neatly trimmed, but the younger, taller and thinner, wore his long enough to descend upon his collar and both ends of his remarkable mustache could be seen from behind.
“Look! Who are they?”
“Here come the most peculiar strangers! Where have they come from?”
“It is some fancy-dress.”
“I have it. They are dressed in that manner to advertise this film.”
“Without doubt that is it. These Americans, what will they not think of?”
“Maman! Maman! What is the matter with those men’s faces? Maman. What is it that they wear all that fur for? Are they Russians? Maman!”
“No, no, chéri. They are only, as one might say, play-actors.”
“Oh. Maman, where have they come from? Where have they come from? Maman, where have—”
“Quiet, quiet, my child! They are to do with the cinema, that is all. Look now, the doors are opening.”
The crowd pressed towards the doors and lost interest in the strangers, who strolled on together.
“We seem to be attracting a deal of attention,” said the elder.
“So I observe,” said the other. “Formerly I should have been gratified, but now I am not so sure.” He twirled the ends of his long mustache. “My facial adornments have been admired in their time, but—”
“But I am not sure that the emotion aroused now is admiration, Cousin. A tendency to titter, perhaps?”
“Our clothes, too, are not such as are worn in these days. No, sir, we do not look like other men.”
“I told you,” said the elder anxiously, “that we made a mistake in coming out by daylight.”
“And I tell you again, Cousin James, that your ideas are hopelessly old-fashioned. You, sir, have been reading ghost stories.”
James nearly blushed. “Most men have their foibles,” he said apologetically.
“I think we had better retire and discuss this matter in private.”
“You are in the right, Charles. We cannot go abroad like this, it will never do. We want to see the world, not to provide it with a rare show in our own persons.”
They walked on slowly.
“Cousin James, what do you imagine that all those people were crowding to see?”
“Some acting, I presume?”
“We might go and see for ourselves, perhaps?”
“Not tonight,” said James firmly. “We have more urgent fish to fry tonight. A tailor and a barber, by Jove.”
They turned a corner into a side street and were lost to sight.
Gone with the Wind came to its appointed end and the audience went home to their beds. The streets were empty and the full moon shone down upon closed shops and darkened houses; only the Hôtel du Commerce showed lights in its windows, for the late train from Paris was not yet in and there might be travelers seeking accommodation. Only Jules Boulestier, the policeman, was still active, if that term can justly be applied to one half asleep on a bench under the dusty plane trees in the place. It was his tiresome lot to be on duty three nights a week until the eleven forty-five from Paris had come in, but that did not mean that a stout elderly man within easy fetch of his pension need exhaust himself unnecessarily. He turned upon the hard bench, rested his arm along the back, and sighed deeply. He had visited one or two cafés earlier in the evening and his head ached. Perhaps it would be as well to let the effects of his visits wear off before he went home to his wife. A good woman, Marthe, but what a tongue! Like a two-edged razor. As though a little brandy ever—
A soft padding sound came to his ears and he opened his eyes unwillingly. If that was the postmaster’s geese which had got themselves loose again Boulestier would simply not see them. A policeman is not a goose-herd. He saw something moving along the road and lifted his head sharply.
The moonlight dripped through the leaves of the plane trees and made a shifting, deceptive pattern upon the road and the houses before him. Two dim figures were passing him only ten paces away; they were indistinct, but he could see them well enough. Two men, one tall and thin, the other rather stouter, and they were completely naked, even barefoot. Their white bodies shone faintly in the moonlight.
“It is the brandy,” murmured Boulestier. “Marthe was right. She told me I would see things and I do. Naked men do not—”
At that moment one of the dim figures appeared to tread upon something sharp. It stumbled, and there came to his ears a sound like an imprecation. Its companion took it by the arm and it went on, limping.
Boulestier rose from his seat. Illusions do not stub their toes. He crept after them, keeping in the shadow, and argued within himself.
“It does not matter,” said his worse self. “There is nobody about, and so long as they make themselves scarce before the passengers come from the train there is no harm done. Sit down again, poor tired Jules, and let the gentlemen enjoy themselves in their own way.”
“Shame on you, Jules Boulestier, servant of France,” said his better self. “Have you, then, worn the uniform of the police for thirty-four years and seven months to neglect your duty now? This village is in your charge; will you permit it to be infested with nudity?”
“Careful,” said his worse self. “Perhaps they are escaped lunatics. Lunatics do tend to undress themselves, for they have no modesty. Besides, as everyone knows, they have the strength of ten. Do you, then, wish your wife to become your widow?”
“Duty, Boulestier, duty,” urged the nobler voice. “If you are indeed slain in the performance of your duty, what a funeral you will have!”
The dim white forms had reached the shops and were apparently window shopping; they drifted from shop to shop wherever the blinds were not drawn. They reached the great establishment of Aristide Vigneron et Cie., a shop where one could buy anything from clothing to mousetraps. Aristide Vigneron was the Selfridge of St. Denis; he had no less than five windows in a row and the entrance was an arcade leading back from the pavement. The white figures turned into this arcade and naturally passed out of Boulestier’s sight. He straightened his trembling knees and followed them.
When he reached the arcade and peered cautiously within, there was no one there. He steadied himself with a hand against the glass and went in. The double doors were shut, as they should be at this time of night; he tried them and they were securely locked. He turned his torch upon them and noticed that a spider had laid its web across from one bronze handle to the other.
Boulestier went back to his seat under the trees and held his head in his hands.
“What I want,” he said aloud, “is a drink. A large cognac.”
“At least,” said his better self consolingly, “at least, Jules, you did not funk it.”
The Paris train came in, deposited half a dozen passengers, and went on its way. The passengers came through the village towards their various beds; they were all known to Boulestier and he saluted them, especially the village priest.
“A fine evening, Monsieur le Curé.”
“Aha, Boulestier! Still at the post of duty?”
“Naturally, monsieur.”
“Good man, good man. Good night.”
“Good night, monsieur.”
Boulestier stretched his arms and yawned happily; now he could go home to bed. He had managed to persuade himself that the episode of the naked men had been merely a vivid dream, though it was odd that the memory of it did not begin at once to fade after the manner of dreams. He walked down the road towards the establishment of Aristide Vigneron; dream or no dream, he could not pass it close, upon the pavement. He made a detour into the road, under the trees, and just before he reached it two men came out from the arcaded entrance. Boulestier stopped dead; the two men walked away from him.
“It is all right, Jules,” he muttered to himself. “These are not the same two. For one thing, they are fully dressed. Calm yourself, Jules.”
They were not only fully dressed but they carried raincoats over their arms and each had a suitcase. They went on and Jules hurried after them. The taller of the two evidently heard him coming, for he glanced round and touched his companion upon the arm. They mended their pace and turned at the next corner. Boulestier, who was nearly running by this time, also turned the corner some ten seconds after them.
There was no one in sight.
The corner building, to which the policeman was unashamedly clinging, was the St. Denis-sur-Aisne branch of the Bank of France. The principal entrance was in the main street behind him; down this side street there were four heavily barred windows ten feet from the ground and the small side door which led to the manager’s private residence. It was flush with the wall and presented not an inch of cover. Even where the building came to an end the wall of the manager’s garden, ten feet high with broken glass on the top, ran on for another twenty yards to connect with the blank wall of a warehouse.
On the opposite side of the road there were the closed doors and windows of the village school and the high wall of its playground, all bathed in the cloudless moonlight of a glorious September night.
“I am ill,” said Boulestier despairingly. “I have a fever. I am probably dying.”
He turned back into the main road on his way home. A little way past the side turning was André’s garage with the Rolls-Bentley inside awaiting attention. When Boulestier reached the garage he glanced in and saw a light in André’s little office at the back. The two men were friends, although the garagiste was thirty years younger than the policeman. Their duties often kept them up when the rest of the citizens were abed and asleep, and Boulestier had contracted the habit of dropping into the garage on cold nights if André were about. There was an electric fire in the little office and usually a bottle of wine in the cupboard. Boulestier tapped upon the garage doors and André came out to admit him.
“You do not look well,” said André. “Your face is white and you are trembling. Has anything happened—are you ill? Come in and rest yourself.”
“I am indeed ill,” said Boulestier. “I have a fever. I have migraine. My eyes deceive me.” He staggered into the office, sat down heavily, and took his head in both hands. “I suffer from delusions.” He groaned.
“Let me get the doctor,” said André, really alarmed. “Let me summon your wife. Let me—”
“No, no, for heaven’s sake not my wife!”
“Mon Dieu, what have you been doing?”
“Nothing, nothing. At least, nothing that I ought not. It is what I have just seen.”
André laid a hand upon his shoulder, bent over him, and suddenly broke into a laugh.
“You have been drinking, that is all! No wonder your eyes deceive you. Then you come along here and see my little light. ‘There is André,’ you say, ‘my good friend André with a bottle in his cupboard.’ So you come in and tell me a sad story. My friend, there is no need; if you want a little something on your way home you shall have it, why not?” He opened his cupboard and took out two glasses and a bottle of Beaujolais. “There you are, drink that and cheer up. Santé!”
The policeman emptied the glass at a draught and sighed. “That is better, but indeed I was not making up a story. Listen.”
He told his tale with such convincing detail that even André was shaken. “Queer,” he said, “very queer, but there must be some rational explanation. Probably you were right, you dreamed the first part, and as for the two men who came from the shop door later, no doubt they were guests of Vigneron’s and he let them out himself.”
“I should like to think so, but why did I not hear voices when they said adieu? Why did I not hear the door shut behind them?”
“They were being very quiet, not to disturb the neighbors.”
“It is not like Vigneron, that. Still, it could be. But where did they go when they rounded the corner? If they had been there I must have seen them.”
André had his own opinion why Boulestier had not seen them, but he did not put it into words.
“I myself had an odd experience today,” he said. “That great and beautiful auto here—you passed it as you came in. Such a car! Yet it broke down by the Englishmen’s Barn on the Sedan road this evening and I could find nothing wrong. So I must get up before six and work upon it, for it is wanted again by nine.” He got up and went to the office door. “Come and look at it, it will do your eyes good. A Rolls-Bentley, no less.” He switched on the workshop lights to show the great car gleaming upon the oily concrete floor. “Four—no, five million francs that car is worth; the owner must be a millionaire. They are staying at the Commerce.”
He wandered across to the car and Boulestier strolled after him. “You see,” said André, “what problems I have to solve. There is nothing the matter so far as I can see, and yet when I switch on nothing happens. See?” He pressed the starter and the engine immediately sprang to life and purred as only a six-cylinder Rolls-Bentley can purr.
André uttered a surprised noise and sat in the car, listening to the engine with his head cocked like a terrier.
“But it goes well,” said Boulestier. “Or so it appears to me.”
“I shall take her out for a little run. Are you coming? It will do your migraine good, the fresh night air. It is a lovely night and it is not every day that one has a drive in such a car as this.”
“For me to push behind, at my age?”
“There will be no need, I think. I will open the garage doors. Will you go out and signal to me if anything comes?”
The great car slid quietly out into the road. Boulestier got in and they moved off into the dappled moonlight.
* * * *
Jeremy and Sally Latimer were sitting in the lounge of the Hôtel du Commerce, Jeremy upon a high stool at the bar with a glass of cognac at his elbow and Sally in a deep armchair nearby listening with fascinated attention while the proprietor—an impassioned and inspired chef—explained how one grills. Electric grills—impossible! Gas grills—barbaric! One grills, naturally, upon charcoal; clear, glowing charbon-de-bois the color of a sunset by Titian—
The outer door of the hotel opened; two travelers came into the entrance hall and glanced into the lounge. The proprietor excused himself and went to meet them. They were carrying new and expensive-looking suitcases.
“Good evening,” said the elder with a strong English accent. “Could you accommodate us for the night? One room with two beds in it would do.”
The proprietor said that he would be charmed. They could have a room each or one with two beds if preferred, as they wished.
“I think,” said the younger traveler, “that we will have the one room. We are used to sleeping together.”
“But, certainly,” said the proprietor, taking their suitcases from them. “Would you care to see your room at once, or would you wish for a little drink first, having come off a journey.”
“A little drink would go down very well,” said the elder. “It is a very long time since we had a drink.”
“Many, many years,” said the younger. “Eh, James?”
The proprietor wondered whether this was a joke or whether the two had just been released from jail. They did not look in the least like jailbirds, it must be a joke. He laughed appreciatively.
“No doubt it seems so, messieurs. Be pleased to come this way.” He put down their suitcases and took them into the lounge, where, at the sight of Sally, they both bowed much more deeply than is now customary and said that they hoped they did not intrude. Sally bent her head and Jeremy said, “Not at all, welcome,” in a bluff, hearty voice.
The proprietor discussed wines with them and went to fetch their order. They were sitting at a small table near the door and looking about them with bright interested eyes, not speaking much and then in low tones. The proprietor came back with glasses on a tray and asked for their opinion of the port. They sipped it and nodded.
“A very sound wine, in my opinion,” said the younger. “What say you, James?”
“A little sweet for my taste,” said James, “but it is good, as you say, Charles.”
“Monsieur is English?” said the proprietor, addressing James, who nodded. “And you, monsieur,” turning to Charles, “are from the South of France, are you not?”
“Oh no, you are very far out. I have never been in the South of France; I learned my French in New Orleans.”
“In New Orleans,” said Jeremy, lifting his glass to them and speaking in English. “Well, now, just fancy that. I come from old Virginia.”
“Sir,” said Charles, raising his glass, “I am right glad to greet a brother American. But your lovely lady is not one of us.”
“Why, no, she’s English, but she’s made up for that by having the good taste to marry an American. My wife’s people come from Lancashire.”
“There are some very good old families in Lancashire,” said James. “Ma’am, let us join forces and refuse to be patronized by these damned Colonists.”
Jeremy stared for a moment and then burst into a roar of laughter.
“Will you listen to that, Sally? Well, well, what’s a hundred and seventy years to an Englishman?”
“Tell me,” said Sally, leaning forward and addressing Charles, “how did you know I was not American? I don’t think I have spoken since you came in.”
Charles bit his lip for a moment and then said: “Why, that is just it, ma’am. No American woman would have sat so quiet for so long as you.”
“She’s not always so quiet,” laughed Jeremy. “She’s just showing off in company.”
“ ‘My gracious silence,’ ” quoted James, and Charles looked at him.
“Where does that come from?”
“Shakespeare. Coriolanus.”
“Now you’re showing off. My cousin,” added Charles, “is always trying to convince me that Americans are comparatively uneducated. Compared with him, he means.”
“Let me make my peace,” said James, “by asking you, sir, to do us the honor of drinking with us. Your charming wife may not wish to take alcoholic liquor, but perhaps there is a sirop of some sort which she likes, or a cup of coffee?”
Sally laughed. “My wife,” said Jeremy, “though not much of a drinker, likes a small glass of something now and then.”
“Ma’am, in that case, please—”
“A Cointreau, thank you very much,” said Sally.
“And you, sir; I do not know what sort of a cellar is kept here in these days, but I do remember many years ago drinking a very fine brandy here. Also, this port is passable.”
Jeremy said he would like brandy, please.
“And you, Charles?”
“What I should really prefer,” said Charles wistfully, “is a nice long mint julep in a tall glass.”
“I’m afraid you won’t find that here,” said Jeremy, “though they will do you one in Paris if you go to the right place.”
“I shall ask you, sir, to favor me with the address of that blessed spot.”
“Harry’s New York Bar in the Rue Daunou for a start,” said Jeremy. “We’ll get together and I’ll make out a little tour of Paris for you. But I gather that you gentlemen have been here before?”
“Many years ago,” said James. He signaled to the proprietor and gave him the order.
“Between the wars, I suppose,” continued Jeremy, “since you gentlemen are certainly not old enough to have fought in World War One and it isn’t all that long since 1945.” The two men looked at him with expressions so completely blank that he naturally assumed that they had not heard what he said. “It would be between the wars,” he repeated.
Charles looked at James, who gave a sudden barking laugh. “I would have said that it was precisely in the midst of one,” he said.
The proprietor came back with a tray of glasses and handed them round and said something to James in a low tone. He looked as though the remark had startled him and turned to Charles.
“Have you any money with you, Cousin?”
“Er—not enough. In our suitcases we have plenty.”
James rose to his feet, merely sipped his brandy with a polite bow to the young Latimers, and set it down again. “I must ask you to excuse us for a few moments. Landlord, if we might go up to our room with our luggage? We had an unfortunate experience with pickpockets once,” he explained, “so now we only carry a few francs with us. The rest travels in our valises.” He went out, followed by Charles, and the proprietor could be seen leading the way upstairs.
They were led along a twisting passage and shown into a large room which looked out upon a courtyard. The proprietor switched on the electric light by the door as he entered and carried the luggage in. “There are lights over both beds,” he said, “and the water is hot in the taps.” He set the suitcases upon two chairs and went out of the room.
The room had two beds in it, one double and one single; there were thick curtains with bobble fringes at the window, an elaborate cornice round the ceiling, and a dark green wallpaper with a large pattern on it. The furniture was of heavy mahogany and there was a large mirror in a carved gilt frame on one wall.
“Very nice,” said Charles, staring about him. “Quite modern furniture and the latest style of decoration, surprising. But what is that thing on the wall?”
He approached the fixed handbasin and tentatively turned on a tap, but James recalled him sharply.
“We were idiots,” he said. “We ought to have remembered that we should want some money. Did you hear what the fellow was asking for those few drinks? Over six hundred francs!”
Charles was pushing the rubber plug into the waste and pulling it out again with a soft pop. “Marvelous,” he said. “Extraordinary. Works just like your new bath, James. Yes, money. Did you not notice the prices in that shop? A thousand francs and more for the most inferior shirt which no gentleman would be seen dead in.” He laughed.
“It is not a matter for jesting,” said James. “Something very peculiar has happened to the French currency, but we cannot go into that now. I completely forgot about money.”
Charles abandoned his new toy. “If we want money, Cousin James, we must go where money is. The local bank. We know where that is; it is on the corner round which that foolish policeman pursued us.” He crossed the room to stand beside his cousin. “It is simple, it will not take us five minutes.” They looked at their reflections in the mirror. “I do not like the cut of this coat, Cousin James, nor of yours; they sit too close to the nape of the neck. Never mind, it is how they are worn in these days. Our cousin Jeremy’s fits even closer, I notice. Well, shall we go?”
The room door did not open nor the heavy curtains move by the windows, but the mirror showed only the great double bed and a corner of the mahogany wardrobe.
Ten minutes later they strolled cheerfully down the stairs again and re-entered the lounge. James tossed a thousand-franc note to the proprietor, who was relieved to see it. It was true that these travelers were well dressed and had expensive and heavy suitcases, but one never knows in these days, and any sort of trouble is a thing to be avoided.
“Have you gentlemen come from Paris?” asked Jeremy.
“No. Not from Paris, we are on our way there. And you?”
“Well, we hope to reach Paris tomorrow, but my car picked up a gremlin just outside this place this evening, and if the local garagiste can’t put his finger on the trouble I don’t know when we’ll get going.”
“A—a gremlin?”
“Sorry. You are not conversant with your British Air Force slang? When some not readily diagnosed trouble occurs in the bus, they say it’s a gremlin, which I gather they visualize as a small imp or demon interfering with the mechanism.” James coughed and the corners of Charles’s long mouth curled up irrepressibly. “Of course there’s no such thing as gremlins and they know there’s no such thing, it’s just their picturesque way of thinking. They are a fine bunch of lads, your British Air Force, yes, sir.”
The front door of the hotel opened and the garagiste André looked into the lounge. Jeremy sprang to his feet and André said that, as he had seen lights in the hotel, he thought it just worth while looking in to see if Monsieur was still about. There was good news. The Rolls-Bentley was now in perfect order.
“Good,” said Jeremy. “Good. Splendid. Come and have a drink. Well, that is good news. What was the trouble?”
“Simple, monsieur, when one think of it. A little corrosion on the wiring terminals on the battery,” said André, who had had time to compose an explanation.
“But the current was getting through to the plugs—”
“Intermittently, no doubt, monsieur, but not when under load,” said André. “Thank you, just a little glass of red wine. Thank you, your health.” He bowed to Sally and tossed off his wine. “I will bring her round at nine, if that suits Monsieur? She is all right now, she is outside. I thought Monsieur would wish me to make sure, so I tried her out. What an auto! What a dream! I shall always remember having had the privilege of driving her. I will wish Monsieur and Madame a good night,” said André, backing to the door. “I could not sleep before I had dealt with the trouble. Good night, the company.” He went out and the front door banged behind him.
“Well, that is good news,” said Jeremy. “We’ll be away to Paris in the morning after all, Sally.”
“So your gremlin is discovered and defeated?” said Charles, smiling.
“It would seem so, sir. I hope so. The expression amuses you, I don’t wonder. By the way, were you thinking of traveling to Paris tomorrow morning? I was about to say that there are two vacant seats in the back of the car. If you two gentlemen would care for a lift to Paris I should be glad to have you. . . . Not at all, not at all,” as Charles tried to thank him. “If we Americans don’t back each other up, who will? By the way, the name is Latimer, Jeremy Latimer and his wife Sally.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Charles. “Thank you indeed. Your suggestion is more than courteous, Mr.—is it Mr.?—Latimer; it is amazing kind of you and we are delighted to accept. Eh, James?”
“Charmed and delighted,” said James. “A thousand thanks, Mr. Latimer. By the way, by a very odd coincidence our name is also Latimer. I am James and this is my cousin, Major Charles Latimer.”
“Of the American Army, no doubt.”
Charles nodded. “Of the South, naturally.”
“Well, well, we must talk about that in the morning. It wouldn’t surprise me if we turned out to be related, Major Latimer.”
“I should not,” said Charles, “be at all surprised.”
Sally got up. “If we’re going off to Paris at squeak of dawn tomorrow I’m off to bed. How much longer are you going to sit up, darling? It’s nearly one.”
“Not any longer, honey. I’m coming up with you.”
They were all on their feet exchanging good nights when the hotel’s front door burst open and an agitated woman thrust her head in. The proprietor rushed forward.
“Oh, excuse me, I’m sure”, she said. “My husband, is he here?”
“Boulestier? No. I have not seen him at all this evening.”
“Oh, where can he be? There is a telephone call from Paris. Excuse me, the company.” The head vanished and the door banged again.
“The wife of the policeman,” said the proprietor. “She is of those who agitate themselves unnecessarily.”
“She looks a bit like a wet hen,” said Jeremy. “I hope she finds him. Well, good night, everybody.”
“Good night!”
“Good night!”
“Good night—”
The bank manager, Monsieur Cayeux, was giving a card party to three of his friends: Monsieur Petier, the mayor of St. Denis, Monsieur Vigneron of the departmental store, and Monsieur Grober, the postmaster. Cayeux lived in a flat over the bank, and the room in which they were sitting was over the strong-room. They were playing bridge of a not too tiresomely scientific kind—“after all, bridge is only a game”—and the stakes were of a modesty befitting a bank manager and a postmaster who wished to remain in office.
“Pass,” said the postmaster, who hated having to open the bidding.
“Two clubs,” said the mayor.
“Two clubs, eh?” said Vigneron. “Well, well, we must see what we can do when attacked by two clubs. Well, well. I say two hearts. Now then, Cayeux?”
“Pass,” said Cayeux. “I will leave it to Grober.”
“I cannot bear to disappoint the company,” said the postmaster. “Two spades.”
“So that is where they all are,” said the mayor. “And nobody likes diamonds, do they? Well, now I think—”
“Hush!” said Cayeux suddenly. “Listen!”
“I hear nothing,” said Grober after a moment’s silence.
“Nor I,” said Vigneron. “What did you think you heard, Cayeux?”
“Some noise from downst——Listen!”
“I thought I heard something then,” said Petier, the mayor. “What is directly under this room, Cayeux?”
“My strong-room.”
“It is nothing,” said Vigneron. “It is the wind. What do you bid, Mayor?”
“There is no wind,” said Cayeux. “The night is as still—— Hark!”
“Don’t keep saying ‘Hark!’ like that,” said the postmaster. “You make me nervous.”
“Excuse me for one moment, gentlemen,” said Cayeux. “I am sure it is nothing, but I am going down just to set my mind at rest.”
“It is a window swinging,” said Vigneron, picking up the cards he had laid down. “Petier, you were about to say—”
But the mayor put down his cards and rose to his feet. “I will come with you, Cayeux,” he said, “though I am sure it is only the cat.”
“The wine is on the side table,” said Cayeux, and left the room, followed by Petier.
“I do not think we need disturb ourselves,” said Grober. “Let me pour you a glass of wine, Vigneron, since our friend suggested it.”
“An excellent idea,” said Vigneron. “I must admit I am more interested in wine than in cats.”
Cayeux and Petier went down the narrow staircase which led from the manager’s flat to his private entrance. At the foot of the stair there was a tiny lobby; the outer door faced them and on the right was another door leading into the bank.
Cayeux unlocked it and switched on the light inside the room.
He heard a grunt from the mayor and was in the act of turning when he found himself seized from behind and a large hand closed over his mouth. He did his best to bite it, but artificial teeth are not effective as weapons of offense and he was nearly choked by them. He had barely pushed them back into position when he was capably gagged with what tasted like a woolen stocking; he was then pushed down on the only chair the room contained and tied to it. When his head cleared enough to let him look round he saw Petier, the mayor, similarly gagged and bound, lying on the floor trying to kick a second villain, who was lashing his ankles together. There were two men and they wore masks over the lower part of their faces. One of them addressed Cayeux.
“So good of you, Monsieur the Bank Manager, to come downstairs. It saves us the trouble of picking your locks.”
“He has the keys, then?” said the other.
“He had; I have them now.” He held up the keys of the strong-room door and the bank safe. “Of course he had them, bank managers wear their keys even in bed. By the way, lock that door we came in at, which Monsieur so politely opened for us. He left the key in the lock outside.”
The second man took the key from outside the door, which he shut and locked.
The room they were in was merely an anteroom to the strong-room and contained only a small table, one chair, and a carpet on the floor. The strong-room itself was entered through a heavy iron door opening outwards and had two walls covered with the small locked cupboards which are the safe-deposits. In the farthest corner was the bank safe, very large and solid, and in the middle of the room another table for the convenience of those who wished to look over their valuables. The procedure when a bank customer wished to open his safe-deposit was for one of the clerks to admit him to the strong-room, lock him in, and then sit on the chair in the anteroom until the customer was ready to come out again.
The robbers left Cayeux tied to his chair and went to the strong-room door with his keys. There was an electric-light switch outside the door which they switched on without apparent effect, but when the door was opened the inner room was seen to be lighted. The first man entered, leaving Cayeux’s key in the lock; the second man followed him in. The heavy door swung to but did not quite lock.
Cayeux in his chair was only a couple of yards from the door. His feet were on the floor although tied to the front legs of the chair; he managed to lean forward until the chair came off the floor and then waddled painfully, an inch at a time, bearing as it were his house on his back like a snail, until he reached the strong-room door. He threw himself against it, and the heavy door closed with a satisfying click.
“Aaagh!” said Cayeux through his gag, and tottered wildly in the attempt to keep his balance. At the cost of banging his head painfully upon the door, he succeeded. The mayor, grunting with effort, rolled across the floor towards him but could not help him.
Cayeux rested, gasping, since a gag impedes breathing, and then rose to his feet again. He appeared to be rubbing his face on the door, and Petier thought he had gone mad and was trying to bite it, then he saw that Cayeux was attempting to scrape off his gag upon the projecting key.
Suddenly, from within the strong-room there came the sounds of conflict. Cries of anger, thuds as of blows, and a sound of splintering wood. Grober and Vigneron, peacefully discussing politics in the room overhead, heard it and rushed downstairs, only to be stopped by the locked door of the anteroom. They were not men of violence and had never broken open a locked door in all their blameless lives. They hammered upon the panels and shouted: “Open! Open!” The mayor, still overheating himself with fruitless effort upon the floor, turned purple with anger; Cayeux, still mortifying his features against the key, ground his teeth. At long last the gag came off his mouth and immediately his cries filled the quiet night.
“Help! Help! Robbers! Assassins! Get the police! Help! Grober, Vigneron, call the police! One robs the bank! Help!”
Effective help was at hand. André and Boulestier, driving back to the garage from the Hôtel du Commerce—where the policeman had modestly waited outside—were passing the bank at the moment when the cries broke forth. The Rolls-Bentley stopped and they leapt out, Boulestier drawing his large revolver and André snatching up a heavy spanner. They reached the manager’s private door at the moment when Vigneron opened it with a full-throated yell of “Police!”
“Here,” said Boulestier from six inches away, and Vigneron fell back. “One calls ‘Police,’ ” continued Boulestier, majestically advancing, “and here I am. Show me your robbers.”
“In—in there. But the door remains locked.”
“Help! Police!” urged Cayeux’s voice from within.
“Coming! Break me down this door,” said Boulestier to André.
“I’ll just get a—” said André, running towards his garage so fast that the word “hammer” floated back to them like an echo. Almost before the sound of his footsteps had ceased they were heard again, returning, and André arrived.
“What,” said Vigneron, retiring backwards up the stair, “is that thing?”
“Two-handed flogging hammer,” said André. “Stand clear, the company.”
They scattered as he lined up the lock on the door and shifted into the right position. The hammer had a ten-pound head on a four-foot shaft; André swung it back round his shoulder and brought it down directly upon the keyhole. The door flew open.
They all rushed into the room and delivered the mayor and the bank manager from bondage.
“Where are the robbers?” asked Boulestier.
“In the strong-room, locked in,” said Cayeux indistinctly, for he was dabbing his mouth, which was bleeding.
“They are quiet enough now,” said the mayor. “They were fighting in there a few minutes ago.”
“Fighting?” said André incredulously. “In there?”
“Over their ill-gotten gains, no doubt,” said Vigneron.
“Well, that’s a damn silly place to fight,” said André.
“Stand back,” said Boulestier, who had been, as it were, winding himself up to start. “André, with me. Monsieur Cayeux, open me the door, if you please.”
Cayeux turned the key and pulled the heavy door towards him; as soon as it was sufficiently wide open Boulestier, revolver in hand, marched in with André at his heels while the others stood on tiptoe, craning their necks to see what was within.
One man was lying on the floor beneath one of the safe-deposits, which was standing open; the other was sprawled on his face before the safe, also wide open. The small table was upset and a light chair, kept there for the convenience of customers, was smashed in pieces. Bundles of notes from the safe were lying about the floor.
“Are—are they dead?” quavered Vigneron.
“Not in the least dead,” said Boulestier. One of the men was beginning to stir and Boulestier handcuffed his wrists behind his back. “Some of that cord, if you please,” he said, and the second man was similarly secured with that which had impeded Cayeux in the execution of his duty. “One does not expect to require more than one pair of handcuffs in the course of the evening. Now let us move them into the anteroom.”
They were dragged out with trailing heels and dumped in the anteroom while Cayeux made what he called “a hasty checkup.” The bundles of notes which were upon the floor were all of large denominations, the equivalent of five- and ten-pound notes, and these appeared to be complete, but the bank manager said that some hundred thousand francs in small notes was missing—about a hundred pounds sterling.
“It is simple,” said the mayor. “The money is in their pockets.”
But it was not. There was money in their pockets, naturally, about five pounds in one case and seven or eight in the other, but nothing resembling one hundred pounds anywhere upon their persons. One of them was reasonably conscious by this time and the justly enraged Cayeux rushed at him and kicked him in the ribs.
“Villain! Scoundrel! What have you done with my money?”
“Never touched your money.”
“Rat! Weasel! You lie.”
“This one,” said Boulestier, with the air of one who must be just if it kills him, “was, in effect, the one by the safe-deposit, it was the other jailbird who was near the safe.”
“He must speak,” said Cayeux desperately. “Beat him. He shall speak.”
The other jailbird looked as though he were still unconscious, but when André picked him up and shook him as a housewife shakes a mat—André was six feet tall and immensely strong—the man revived suspiciously quickly.
“Money,” said André. “Where is it? Speak, or I will shake you till your eyes drop out.”
“I haven’t got it. I haven’t got it. I never had it—”
André shook him.
“Mercy—mercy! I tell you, I opened the safe with the key and went to tell Michel here that I had done so, and the fool turned round and hit me.”
“You hit me first,” said Michel. “You came up behind with out a word and struck me upon the ear. Look, gentlemen—”
It was quite evident that the ear had, indeed, been recently hit.
“I turned round,” pursued Michel, “and there was Gaston here staggering upon his feet with a face like the devil in person. I thought he had gone mad—”
“It is you who went mad. You struck me upon the mouth—”
That, also, was obviously true.
“While I was disabled by your first coward’s blow—”
“Coward? Call me a—”
“I call you a—!”
“You picked up the chair and smashed it upon my head and shoulders—”
“You threw the table at me—”
“Liar! Cheat!”
“Double-crossing blackguard—”
“Stop that!” thundered Boulestier. “Order in court! Not that this is actually a court, but I will have order!”
“But where is the money?” demanded Cayeux.
“Now I come to think of it,” said Gaston in suddenly quiet tones, “I remember distinctly knocking out Michel and seeing him crash to the floor, and after that the table came at me and hit me on the head.”
“The table hit you?” said the mayor. “The table? Are you seriously asserting that the table, of its own volition, raised itself from the floor, propelled itself through the air, and struck itself upon your head?”
“Yes,” said Gaston stubbornly. “That is what happened, although,” he added modestly, “I hardly expect to be believed.”
“In the course of thirty-four years and seven months in the police force,” said Boulestier, “that is quite the silliest story I have ever heard.”
“But the money,” wailed Cayeux.
“There is also the safe-deposit,” said Grober, the postmaster. “Is there anything missing from that? Whose is it?”
“That,” said Cayeux sternly, “is confidential.” He went across to the safe-deposit; the door was hanging open and the contents, typewritten sheets folded up and envelopes with rubber bands round them, were lying together upon the floor where Michel had let them fall. “In any case, I shall have to refer to my records”—he picked up a packet of envelopes to look at the addresses on them—“before I can be quite certain . . .” His voice died away. The interested watchers on the threshold saw that he had flushed scarlet and was biting his lip. After a quick examination he gathered up, with desperate haste, the papers lying on the floor and stuffed them back into the compartment. He was about to slam the door and lock it when Boulestier stopped him.
“Halt. You must not touch that.”
“Touch what?”
“The key. It must be fingerprinted and produced in evidence in court. Probably the little door will have to be taken off its hinges and produced also.” Boulestier advanced into the strong-room. “You must leave it as it is until the experts have been here. Come away! What are you—”
Cayeux whirled round and backed against the safe-deposit; his face was now quite pale, but his eyes were shining and he was plainly determined not to give way.
“Cayeux,” said the mayor, “come away. You are overwrought, it is understandable, you are unstrung. It is the reaction, nobody blames you. Come upstairs and lie down; what you need is a little cognac and some aspirin. Come, Cayeux, come, the papers will be quite safe there.”
“No, no, you do not understand—”
“Let me suggest,” said André. “I have here a small pair of pliers. If I push the door shut with them and very carefully turn the key with them, it will not damage the fingerprints and the contents will be safe, hein?”
It was done. Cayeux simmered down and allowed himself to be led out of the strong-room, still asking an unresponsive Providence to tell him where the money was. Boulestier was in the act of arranging with André to help him conduct the prisoners to the cells, when there came a tapping at the outer door, and there was Madame Boulestier.
“Jules—at last! I have been raking the village for you. There is Paris on the telephone; they have heard that two dangerous bank robbers are coming to break in here and you must watch for them—there are descriptions—you must come and speak to them at once, they are holding the line—come!”
“Return, woman,” said Jules, speaking as from a great height, “return and tell Paris I have arrested the criminals and am now conveying them to custody. Don’t stand there gaping, go! André, with me. Come on, the prisoners.”
Grober, the postmaster, and Vigneron, the shopkeeper, walked back along the moonlit street together.
“But what I want to know,” said Vigneron, “is what the devil did Cayeux find in that cupboard?”
“I knew there was something,” said Cayeux, suddenly sitting up in bed in the dark. “Why did I hear a noise in the strong-room before those men went in?”
The bank robbers were men whom the Paris police had long desired to catch; they were both in that tiresome category of persons whom the police know, but cannot prove, to be guilty. They were not ill-dressed thugs from the slums; they were well-spoken, looked like unimportant businessmen, and lived in neat villas at Passy. When, therefore, they had been captured red-handed by Constable Jules Boulestier at St. Denis-sur-Aisne, the Sûreté in Paris promptly sent one of their best men there to look over the evidence and make sure that there was no slip this time.
He interviewed Boulestier and congratulated him on his capture, told him he would be a sergeant in a month’s time with effect from the date of the burglary, and heard his story. It did not include any reference to the queer apparition of the two naked men because Boulestier had convinced himself that that was a dream. He had been sitting on the bench when he first thought he saw them and he was still sitting there when he woke up. One does not report dreams to one’s superior officers in any case, and particularly not when it involves having been asleep on duty.
The Sûreté man was delighted with Boulestier’s story and went on to interview Cayeux, who showed him the scene of the crime and also the contents of the safe-deposit. At this point the look of delight faded slowly from the detective’s face and an expression of profound thought took its place.
“The key of this safe-deposit,” he began.
“Was in the lock,” said Cayeux. “Constable Boulestier took it away for fingerprinting. Those men must have brought it with them.”
“Without doubt,” said the detective. “But you have a duplicate, since you have just opened it for me.”
“Certainly,” agreed the bank manager. “A necessary precaution in case a customer should lose his key.”
“Certainly,” said the detective. “Undoubtedly.” He relapsed into such profound thought that Cayeux became nervous.
“All banks do that,” he said timidly. “It is the rule.”
“Yes, I know,” said the detective absently. He thought for a moment longer and seemed to make up his mind, for he patted Cayeux upon the shoulder and said that that would be all for the moment. “You will have to give evidence at the trial, of course, but as regards all this stuff”—he tapped the door of the safe-deposit with his finger—“silence, my friend, silence!”
“My dear sir,” protested Cayeux, “do you suppose I have worked in a bank for thirty years without learning to hold my tongue?”
“Of course not, but sometimes the temptation is greater than at other times, is it not?”
The two men looked each other in the eyes and appeared to understand each other. Cayeux smiled faintly and stood back to let the Sûreté man precede him from the strong-room.
The detective went to Vonziers to interview the examining magistrate who would conduct the preliminary enquiry.
“This case of these two rascals who broke into the bank at St. Denis,” he said. “We shall have to be very, very careful. It turns out to be a political matter.”
“Political!” said the magistrate, and his stiff white eyebrows went up.
“Yes.” The detective hesitated. “The matter is so delicate that I hardly like to mention names even to you.”
“I would rather you did not; then, if anyone asks me, I can truthfully say that you did not tell me.”
The detective nodded. “There is a certain Minister, a brilliantly clever man. Yet there hangs about his name a sort of miasma of dubiety.”
“In the present state of politics,” said the magistrate acidly, “that remark would not serve to identify any one man.”
“Some people call him the Caterpillar,” said the detective cautiously.
“Oh, him! Really!”
“The safe-deposit contained more than a dozen letters written to him and a duplicate typescript of an agreement and a list of names.”
“Idiot,” said the magistrate. “Why did he not burn them?”
“I presume he thought they might come in usefully at some time. The safe-deposit was not, of course, in his own name. However, the point is this. Those two beauties now in custody did not break into the bank for money. They came, provided with the safe-deposit key, to get those papers.”
“I begin to see,” said the magistrate. “His political opponents sent them, of course. If we were not, on account of our office, politically impartial, I should say that it was a smart bit of work. Eh?”
The detective smiled slowly. “The members of that card party were the bank manager, the mayor, the postmaster, and the principal storekeeper.”
“The leading citizens, in fact.”
“And they are all members of the political party opposed to the Caterpillar.”
The magistrate sat up.
“And the bank manager,” finished the detective, “has, naturally, duplicate keys to the safe-deposits. But the important point is,” he went on, forestalling the magistrate, who was about to speak, “that no word of all this should leak out. It would be a political scandal of the first order and we have too many political scandals already. This one would shake France to the foundations.”
“But can nothing be done to this—this traitor?”
“I rang up Paris before I left St. Denis, but the fellow must have second sight. He left France by air this morning and I do not suppose that he will ever come back. So long as he never returns I do not care where he goes. Our object is secured, is it not?”
“I would rather he were dead,” said the magistrate thoughtfully, “but one cannot have everything in this life. Well, now, about these robbers of yours?”
“My department suggests that they be charged with breaking and entering the bank and feloniously assaulting the bank manager and the mayor. Not a word about stealing or attempting to steal or opening a safe-deposit or being in unlawful possession of a safe-deposit key without the owner’s authority.”
“I see. But if they were—to be blunt—all in it together, why assault the bank manager? To say nothing of the mayor?”
“They did not appear to me to have been very painfully assaulted,” said the detective dryly.
“Oh, ah. I see. No black eyes, no gory noses, eh? Well, now, there is a little item here about a hundred thousand francs in small notes, what do we do about that?”
“Speaking as one good citizen to another, I should say it was cheap at the price.”
The magistrate laughed aloud. “You think the manager borrowed it for a temporary emergency?”
“And will presently find it had been put away in the wrong place,” nodded the detective. “He had to report it, of course, or his chief cashier would have noticed it.”
“I think that all fits in very well indeed,” said the examining magistrate.
It was not until two days later that the sub-manager in charge of the Gentlemen’s Outfitting Department of Messrs. Aristide Vigneron et Cie. reported missing two complete suits of lightweight cloth of a superior quality. There were dozens of suits hanging close-packed upon racks under glass and it was impossible to tell exactly how long they had been missing since they came in three months earlier. Enquiries were made but nothing came of it, and the fact that a small but adequate selection of vests, pants, socks, and ties was also missing was not discovered for months. The Luggage, Garden, Implements, and Ironmongery Departments reported two good suitcases gone, but this was put down to shoplifting and so were two hats. These were rather wider in the brim than was popular at the moment and had been in stock some time; Vigneron did not distress himself much about them.
He had all his floor managers into his office and scolded them roundly for carelessness and inattention to duty, fined the unfortunate losers of the suits and the suitcases, and threatened terrible reprisals if such a thing ever happened again.
Sergeant Boulestier heard the sad story but, as he did not receive an official complaint, he naturally said nothing. One does not serve in the police force for thirty-four years and seven months without learning tact.
Jeremy Latimer and his wife left St. Denis-sur-Aisne for Paris soon after ten in the morning after the raid on the bank. Sally sat in the front seat beside her husband; in the incredibly comfortable rear seats of the Rolls-Bentley were Charles and James Latimer, their good suitcases at their feet and their rather too wide-brimmed hats firmly on their heads. Jeremy drove slowly until they were clear of the little town and then, upon a particularly good stretch of the Route Nationale, put his foot down. The speedometer needle rose past sixty to seventy, then eighty, and finally settled, quivering like a butterfly, upon the eighty-five mark and steadied there.
“Charles!” muttered James, gripping the armrests till his knuckles turned white. “Charles! What is happening?”
“We are traveling, Cousin James, that is all.” Charles also was clinging to the armrest, but his eyes were shining and his voice was exultant. “By Gad, sir, this is marvellous! It is like flying!”
“It is excessively dangerous,” said James severely. “It— there is something coming—we shall all be killed!”
Charles burst out laughing. “Oh no, we shall not, you forget. Whatever may happen to anyone else in this world, we shall be none the worse.”
James relaxed at once and turned to his cousin. “By Jove, Charles, you are in the right. I had forgotten. How strange, how exquisite, to be able to indulge the maddest whim with no fear of the consequences.” He laughed suddenly, that odd barking laugh of his. “By Gad, Charles, I feel as though I had never lived before.”
Sally heard them laughing and turned round. “We’re not going too fast for you, are we?”
“No, no,” said James. “You cannot go too fast for us. If men ever fly through the air, it will feel like this.”
Sally naturally thought that she had misheard what he said. “Haven’t you ever flown, then?”
“Oh no,” said James simply. “Dear me, no. Things are not like that with us at all.”
Charles kicked him heavily on the ankle and James blushed and subsided into his corner.
“How fast,” asked Charles, “will this—this vehicle go?”
“I have got a hundred and twenty out of her,” said Jeremy, speaking over his shoulder, “on a real good stretch of the Great North Road between Doncaster and Newark, but there aren’t many places where a man can really let his car out over this side. You wait, Sally, till we get to the States where a highway is a highway and not cluttered up with little towns every few hundred yards.”
Far in the distance towards Paris there appeared a speck in the sky, growing rapidly larger. James was the first to notice it; he jogged Charles’s elbow.
“Look,” he murmured. “What is that marvel?”
“Someone has really invented a machine that will fly—ah! I have it. That was what our young lady cousin meant just now when she asked if we had ever flown.”
“She’s your cousin,” corrected James, “but she’s my great granddaughter. Yes, no doubt, but how vast a machine it is. How does it stay up without any balloons attached to it?”
“There are no balloons,” said Charles. He leaned forward to speak to Jeremy. “Can you tell me what that machine is, if you please?”
Jeremy glanced up. “Paris to Amsterdam, KLM air liner, I expect, or Sabena. That’ll be the one we went up on last year, honey.” He looked at the dashboard clock. “That’s right. She’ll be in Amsterdam at eleven o’clock.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Charles rather faintly. “Most interesting, most.”
They came into Rheims and stopped for coffee in the square outside the great west front of the cathedral. The elder Latimers sprang out of the car as soon as it stopped and hurried round to Sally’s door. James opened it and held it while Charles, bowing, offered his arm to help Sally to alight. She laid two fingers upon it and stepped out with a laughing word of thanks while Jeremy frankly stared, for it was plain that the two older men were quite naturally performing an ordinary act of courtesy. They followed her, side by side, with their hats in their hands, while she led the way to a table, then one drew out a chair for her while the other pulled back the table and carefully replaced it when she had seated herself. They bowed again and said: “With your permission?” before they sat down themselves. Jeremy, who was not wearing a hat, lounged after them, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully as though he were afraid of its coming loose.
When they had given their order, Jeremy handed round cigarettes, rather gingerly handled by his passengers, pulled up his trousers at the knees, and leaned forward.
“I was most interested last night, Mr. Latimer,” he began, addressing Charles, “to hear you say that your name was Latimer like mine and that you came from Virginia. I believe you said you came from Virginia?”
“I cannot be perfectly assured whether I said so last night or not, but I certainly do,” said Charles. “Yes, sir, I am a Virginian born and bred.”
“In that case, it would seem as though we ought to be some sort of relations,” went on Jeremy. “My father is Henry Latimer, a lawyer in Richmond, Virginia. That is, his office is in the town but he has a little place just outside where my sister Louella and I were born. My mother’s name was Jefferson.”
“An honored name,” said Charles reverently. “Yes, sir, an honored and distinguished name.”
There was a short and rather awkward pause.
“And you, sir?” said Jeremy.
“I come from Shandon,” said Charles dreamily. “Yes, sir, Shandon in Virginia is my home town. We had a place about five miles out; I and my brothers were constantly in the habit of riding into town to collect the mail and order such things as were needed on the estate. Also”—he laughed apologetically—“to show off ourselves and our horses before the windows of the parsonage. Parson Beckett’s daughter was the loveliest girl I ever saw anywhere until, ma’am, I had the great privilege of meeting you. All the young men of the district were aspirants for the hand of beautiful Rose Beckett.”
“And were you successful, Mr. Latimer?” asked Sally.
“I? No. I am a bachelor, ma’am. She married my brother Henry and they were very happy until the war came. I came to Europe and I have not been back since.”
“I know Shandon well,” said Jeremy. “I’ve stayed there with friends, but I never heard that there were any Latimers there now. My great-grandfather lived at Shandon until the Civil War, then the house was wrecked and the estate ruined and he moved to Richmond. Sir, we must be cousins. What is your first name?”
“Charles.”
“I have no cousins of that name so far as I know. There was one Charles Latimer who was, I believe, my great-grandfather’s brother. One of them; I think there were five sons and they all fought in the Civil War. This Charles was a bit of a lad by all accounts—”
“Excuse me—a what?” The corners of Charles’s mouth persisted in curling up and his dark eyes were full of laughter.
“Bit of a lad—rather wild. Loved horses and had an eye for the ladies and all that.”
James laughed aloud. “He seems to have made something of a mark upon his generation if his reputation has lasted until now. What became of this interesting scamp?”
“He came over to England after the war—”
“And came to my family,” said Sally. “I am a Latimer, too, by birth as well as marriage; Jeremy and I are distant cousins. There’s a portrait of this Charles Latimer in the old house at home. Lots of whiskers and a gray uniform.”
“Nearly all whiskers,” said Jeremy, “lovely curly ones. Sir, his eyes and nose are lost in the shrubbery.”
Charles ran a thoughtful hand round his clean-shaven jaw and pulled at his mustache.
“He and my great-grandfather came over to France and got lost,” said Sally. “Never heard of again.”
“Indeed!” said James in a surprised voice. “But did no one institute any enquiry into their fate?”
“Oh yes, rather, especially as Great-grandfather had hidden a whole lot of money away somewhere and it’s never been found.”
“But surely,” said James, “he left a message, a hint of where it was?”
Sally shook her head. “You see, the Franco-Prussian War was on at that time and I suppose France was in an awful mess after Sedan and with Paris being besieged and all that.”
“Then you assume,” said Charles, “that they were killed in a battle, do you?”
“Not necessarily in battle,” said Jeremy cheerfully. “I am open to admit, gentlemen, that I am not so well informed about conditions in France at that date as perhaps I ought to be, but I gather that Paris under the third Napoleon was quite a place. Paris, as we all know, has always had a reputation for being a pretty lively spot, but at that time it was quite something and then some. Our wandering forebears may have put a foot wrong someplace and just naturally finished up in the Seine.”
“I see,” said James. “It is unfortunate that the money has never been found. Your family, ma’am, still live in the same house which your ancestors built?”
“Oh yes. The money is supposed to be somewhere on the spot, and I think we have always hoped that it would turn up. Goodness knows we could do with it,” sighed Sally. “I don’t know how much longer my family will be able to go on living there.”
James opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, and shut it again.
“If only,” said Jeremy, “your family would let me—”
“Darling,” said Sally imploringly, “don’t let’s start that all over again,” and there was a short silence.
“Reverting to the subject of Shandon,” said Jeremy, “I don’t think that you will find it much altered. There is one of the biggest gasoline stations in Virginia down by the bridge as you come in from the north, and there’s a big new television-parts factory on Creek Street, otherwise I don’t think it’s changed much in the last dozen years.”
“Sir, there are bound to be alterations with the passage of time,” said Charles. “But I allow I would like to walk down Main Street once more in the shade of the cottonwood trees and drink a glass of wine at Mason’s Saloon on the corner of Potomac Avenue and hear the Episcopal church clock play ‘Bells of Shandon’ before it strikes the hour.”
“You know the place better than I do, Mr. Latimer—”
“Excuse me—I should be gratified if you would call me ‘Cousin.’ ”
“Cousin Charles, I thank you. I was about to say that I cannot remember Mason’s Saloon, but the clock still plays ‘Bells of Shandon’ at every hour.”
“Something was said just now about the passage of time,” said Sally, looking at her watch. “If we are to get to Paris by lunch time.”
When they were once more under way Jeremy said something to Sally and she leaned forward to turn knobs on the dashboard. For a moment nothing happened, then there stole upon the ear, softly at first and gradually increasing in volume, the sound of a violin playing a Dvorák melody. It brought the elder Latimers almost off their seats.
“Lovely,” said James when it was done. “Lovely, but where does it come from?”
“This,” said a cultured voice, “is the Home Service of the B.B.C. From now until twelve o’clock you will hear a program of gramophone records selected and played for you by the celebrated groove-hunter Jack Jackson.”
“There you are,” said Jeremy.
“Yes, but—”
Sally glanced over her shoulder and saw complete stupefaction upon the two faces behind her.
“It’s built in the car,” she explained, and gestured towards the loudspeaker grille in the dashboard. As though in response to a signal, a fresh and cheerful voice said that they would start the day’s play with a record which the married men within earshot had better pretend they didn’t like, Frankie Laine singing “I’m a Born Bachelor.” There followed the whisper of a record being started and the song began.
James nodded, smiled with a manifest effort, and leaned back in his place with folded arms. Charles leaned across to him and said: “Control your features, Cousin; you look as though you had seen Pepper’s Ghost.”
“But this,” said James through clenched teeth, “is spectral.”
“Fustian,” said Charles stoutly. “There is a rational explanation for all things. Even for us, Cousin, even for us.”
When they reached Paris, Jeremy leaned back in his seat and asked where his passengers wished to go. “Sally and I have rooms booked for us at the Ambassador in the Boulevard Haussmann; are you by any chance staying there too?”
“Why, no,” said James, “though I remember the Boulevard Haussmann very well. The hotel I generally use is not far away; it is the D’Amboise in the Rue de Choiseul, which runs from the Boulevard des Italiens to the Rue du Quatre Septembre. A narrow street, but the hotel is quiet and secluded; it has no street frontage at all but is built round a courtyard within a narrow entry. If you will be so good as to deposit us at your hotel door, we can take a fiacre for the remaining short distance.”
“No need,” said Jeremy, “no need at all. I know about where your hotel is situated; it must be quite near the Opéra Comique. We’ll just run you along there and then we can come back to the Ambassador. That’s the Porte St. Martin just ahead; we turn right there and then we shan’t be long.”
They turned to the right and entered upon the Grands Boulevards laid out by Baron Haussmann to the orders of Napoleon III. “These were very new when we last saw them,” said James to Charles.
“Quiet, they will hear you! Look, what is that? It is out of sight. Look up the next turn to the right, a great white building upon a hill—there.”
“It is a mosque,” said James decidedly.
“Turkish baths,” suggested Charles.
Sally heard him and turned round, laughing. “I think you are right,” she said. “Paris is so proud of it, but I don’t like it at all.”
“What’s that?” asked Jeremy.
“The Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, darling. Mr. Charles Latimer says it reminds him of Turkish baths.”
“It does not look to me like an edifice built for the purpose of Christian worship,” said James severely.
“You ought to go up there if you have never been,” said Sally. “The view is lovely.”
“How does one attain to it?”
“By Metro, and walk the last bit.”
“Metro,” murmured Charles. “A means of travel, evidently. Cousin James, we will investigate this Metro.”
“Here’s the Boulevard des Italiens,” said Jeremy, preparing to take the left fork. “Our hotel’s just along there, on the right. Oh brother! Must you do that?” as a taxi shot past his bonnet.
“The traffic in these streets is quite alarming,” said James.
“It terrifies me,” admitted Sally. “When I want to cross I just stand on the edge of the pavement and pray.”
“Well, now, Cousin Charles, which is your turning?”
“Further along. About the third or fourth turning,” said Charles, leaning forward to peer out. “This—no, that, sir, is the Rue de Grammont. The next—yes.”
The Rue de Choiseul had the air of having come down in the world. It was very narrow, between tall houses sadly in need of painting, especially upon the upper floors. Small shops and offices lined the pavements on either hand.
“The entry to the hotel is on the right,” said James. “There it is.”
The car stopped at an archway admitting to a dark and grimy passage piercing the houses to a small square within. The entrance was flanked by dustbins, two on one side and one on the other; the flagstones which floored the passage were uneven and broken and their interstices levelled with mud. At the far end a leaking down-pipe laid a trail of greenish-black liquid across their path and grimy scraps of newspaper flapped wearily in the draught.
“It doesn’t look much like a hotel now,” said Jeremy.
“It used to be maintained more cleanly than this,” agreed James, “but I expect it is passable enough within.” He and Charles got out of the car with their suitcases. “We are seasoned travelers; we have lain in stranger places than this, eh Charles? Ma’am,” taking off his hat with a sweep, “in taking a temporary farewell of you, may I express a fervent hope that the parting will be of but short duration and that we—”
“I don’t like the look of this place at all,” said Sally sharply. “Are you quite sure that this is the right place?”
“It has the name posted within the arch as formerly,” said Charles, pointing to a board upon which was dimly visible the words “Place d’Amboise.” “Ma’am, the privilege of meeting so young and lovely a cousin is one which I shall always treasure and hope to renew upon an early—”
“Jeremy!” said Sally. “Do something, darling!”
“I’m going in to see,” said Jeremy, shooting out of the driver’s seat as though propelled by springs. “If there is a hotel here now, will somebody please tell me why there is no notice of it anywhere around?” He went into the passage.
“Ma’am,” said James, “will you excuse us if we take our leave? Come, Charles, we are detaining our cousins from their journey’s end.”
“Ma’am,” said Charles, “may we wait upon you at your hotel at a later date?”
“Say,” called Jeremy from the far end of the passage, “there’s no hotel here. It’s all scruffy offices, mostly shut up.” His voice sounded hollowly through the tunnel; the elder Latimers hurried after him.
“You are in the right, Cousin Jeremy,” said Charles. “There is no hotel here now.”
“But this is where it was,” said James. “The main entrance was there, I recollect it perfectly.” He pointed to double doors which still had a delicate fanlight tracery above them, but the doors were crossed by iron bars padlocked together. There was an inscription painted on them: Magasin de R. Poitevin et Cie., Ameublements.
“Well, it’s a furniture store now, cousins an’ gentlemen,” said Jeremy. “What in hell is the matter with those cats?”
Three cats had arrived mysteriously from no ascertainable source, two black and one tabby, and were revolving round James and Charles Latimer, tails erect, whiskers quivering, and broad smiles upon their faces.
“I have no idea,” said James with some embarrassment. “Go away!”
“These other doors,” said Charles, “have brass plates upon them. ‘M. Eduard DuPont, Agent. MM. Vallon et Coutel, Importers.’ Damn you, sir,” to the tabby, “get away!”
The tabby dodged his foot, ran up his back, and stood upon his shoulder, only to leap off the next moment with a yell of terror, and all three cats fled.
“Come on,” said Jeremy, “let’s get out of here. This place gives me the willies. What did you do to drive off those cats?”
“Nothing, Cousin,” said Charles blandly, “nothing whatever, believe me,” but his wide mouth curled up at the corners and it was plain that he was suppressing a laugh. Jeremy looked at him doubtfully and turned to lead the way out, with Charles and James following after. James turned, smiling widely, to Charles, who murmured so that Jeremy could not hear.
“You could not expect the faithful Ulysses to put up with that, could you?”
“So long as no one else sees him,” answered James.
“Maybe your hotel has moved someplace else,” said Jeremy. “I’ll ask somebody.” There was a small bistro next to the archway, in the street, and he went in there while his cousins stood by the car and waited, looking round them. Five minutes later he returned, looking puzzled.
“There’s an old girl in there who says she can just remember the hotel being open when she was a child and then it was shut up. It hasn’t been a hotel, she says, for more than fifty years.”
There was a pause which would soon have become awkward if James had not been quick to break it.
“Nonsense,” he said, “nonsense. The old crone is in her dotage. We stayed there just before the war.”
“We were still there when war broke out,” said Charles.
“Well, that settles it,” said Jeremy. “She’s bats and I was the mug. O.K., O.K., I often am. Well, now, where do we go from here?”
“I suggest we go back to your hotel, Cousin Jeremy. Your charming lady looks tired. We can alight there and take a fiacre to find accommodation; the driver will have some suggestions to make, no doubt.”
They drove back to the Ambassador, where the Rolls-Bentley received the notice it deserved. The elder Latimers put their suitcases down on the edge of the pavement and completed their graceful farewells. “When we have found accommodation we will apprise you by messenger,” said James.
“That’s right,” said Jeremy heartily. “Ring us up. You’ll get a taxi all right, won’t you? See you some more. Come on, Sally—”
He was interrupted by a gleeful cry from Charles. “There is a fiacre! Cocher! Cocher!”
The one-horse open Victoria is still occasionally seen upon the streets of Paris, and one of them was passing at the moment. The driver drew in to the curb in response to the Latimer yells and spacious gestures and the cousins climbed happily aboard.
“Come on, Sally,” said Jeremy, taking his wife by the arm. “Cousin James was right, you do look tired.”
“I feel tired, and you look it, too, darling.”
“I am, a bit. Don’t ask me why, since we’ve only driven a hundred and fifty miles, for I wouldn’t know.”
“I do, though,” said Sally, noticing the great clock. “It’s past two and we want our lunch, that’s all.”
Coffee and cigarettes in the Ambassador lounge after lunch. Sally stretched luxuriously and smiled at Jeremy.
“I’m feeling better, aren’t you?”
“I sure am. It’s a very, very queer thing how an empty stomach will put ideas into your head.”
“Perhaps that’s why the early saints fasted.”
“Now, what is all this about early saints? I was getting all sorts of funny ideas about our new cousins, but now I come to think it over there’s nothing to it.”
“They are a queer pair,” said Sally.
“They are a pair of jokers, that’s what. They are putting on an act and, boy, can they act! They must have read it all up someplace. It’s a good act, too, I’ll say it’ll go over big.”
“But why? I mean, why do they do it?”
“Well, why not? Guess we all do some little thing to amuse folks, don’t we? Look at all the guys who go round telling funny stories all day long, and do they work hard for their laughs, some of ’em! Our cousins have thought up a new hokum, and is it good or is it? I bet they’re over here on a vacation and they’re just letting themselves go. I just love to see them walking around after you, hat in hand, as though you were royalty. It’s a new one on me, wish I’d thought of it myself.”
“They have lovely manners,” said Sally. “Do you think they really are our cousins?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I’ll tell you this. They wrote their names in the register at the Hôtel du Commerce at St. Denis before they knew who we were, and the name they wrote was Latimer. I saw it in the morning when the proprietor reminded me I hadn’t registered overnight.”
“So they wrote theirs first. It does look as though their name really is Latimer, but it doesn’t prove that they are cousins of ours.”
“Of course not,” said Jeremy, “but I just hope they are. I like those guys.”
“So do I. I think they’re sweet. Oh, darling, I’ve just remembered something about the original Charles Latimer, the one who came over after the Civil War. He had a pet monkey he used to take about with him everywhere and he called it Ulysses after General Grant.”
“Sounds like he was a joker too, like this pair, ‘how say you, Cousin Sally?’ ”
The elder Latimers found a hotel, the De Bussy, in the Rue Caumartin, and settled in very comfortably. They had two rooms, with a connecting door between, upon the third floor; they had no view from their windows since these looked out upon a light-well, but this did not trouble them since they did not mean to spend much time within doors. The porter withdrew and left the cousins alone.
“What shall we do first?” asked Charles.
“Unpack, of course. Then, by Jove I want a shave! So do you. There are small washing cabinets behind these curtains, most convenient. I wonder how one lights these lamps. At the Hôtel du Commerce, if you remember, one turned a small knob or protuberance through half a circle—these do not turn. Charles, how do these things work?”
Charles had wandered across to the window and was looking up at the roof three stories above. “There is a handsome balustrade surrounding this court; I have a great mind to go up there and walk along it.”
“Charles, Charles! You will spoil it all. I cannot sufficiently emphasize the importance of our behaving in all respects like mortal men.” James came to the connecting door and leaned a shoulder against the doorpost. “You will have us ejected for unseemly behavior.”
Charles’s eyes danced with laughter. “Dear James, does such a thing never happen to mortal men?”
“Not to me,” said James. “That is—except—but that was all a misunderstanding—”
“I seem to remember a night when we were asked to leave Le Sphinx because you stood on a table to sing ‘ ’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay’!”
“That is all long ago,” said James. “Besides, that was human enough. I was drunk. What I intended to convey, Cousin, was that anything which savors of the supernatural must be avoided at all costs.”
“How dull!”
“Charles!”
“Oh, very well, Cousin. No tricks except in an emergency, eh?”
“Now come and examine the lighting arrangements,” said James.
They shaved and changed; a card framed upon the wall near the door attracted Charles’s attention.
“This room,” he read aloud, “one thousand three hundred francs per night. You know, James, that hundred thousand francs will not support us in comfort for very long. We had best walk out and ascertain the whereabouts of a bank.”
“We have enough for our present needs,” said James mildly.
“Does your conscience reproach you, Cousin, at the thought of robbing a bank? We have done it once already.”
“I know, Cousin, I know. I saw no alternative at that juncture, but I admit I find the memory galling.”
“So do not I,” said Charles energetically. “This is the country we died for, damn! They owe us something. Damn, sir, they did not even give us Christian burial!”
“Calm yourself, Charles, you are wasting energy. Yes, I dare say you are in the right, though to speak strictly by the letter, it is Prussia who owes us for our deaths, is it not? No matter. Perhaps we could go to Auteuil or Longchamps and back a winner.”
“Or sit in at a game of cards. Let us find a nest of cardsharpers looking for a pigeon to pluck, then we need have no compunction in fleecing the wolves, eh, James?”
“Let us go out,” said James, pulling down his waistcoat. “Did you notice how the porter worked that lift in which we ascended? He did not pull upon a rope.”
“He pressed a button labeled 3 and the thing stopped of itself on this floor,” said Charles. “Simple.”
But when they reached the lift-shaft the lift was no longer there.
“I have it,” said James. “The thing only works upwards and we are expected to walk down. It is easy, walking down.”
“Surely,” said Charles, “surely.”
When they reached ground level, sure enough the lift was there; they glanced at it and nodded to each other. The porter saw it and came forward. Did the gentlemen not care to use the lift? It was only to press the button at the gate and the lift would come up, there was no need to summon him.
“Thank you, thank you,” said James. “We walked down because we like walking.”
“Exercise,” said Charles, “is good for the figure.” He smiled sweetly at the man and they walked out of the hotel.
“We shall have to be careful, Charles, or we shall make ourselves conspicuous.”
“Why not,” said Charles innocently, “in Paris? Are Englishmen no longer considered mad?”
They strolled down the Rue Caumartin and came out upon the Boulevard des Capucines.
“I remember this well,” said James happily. “The shops are very much improved, but I remember the street perfectly. To our right there is the Madeleine, to our left the Place de l’Opéra. Let us cross the boulevard, my dear Charles, as soon as there is opportunity; I have a fancy to walk once again in the gardens of the Tui—”
The Rue Caumartin is a one-way street entered from the Boulevard des Capucines. A taxi entering it at that moment did not, therefore, keep to its own side of the road; it cut the corner and whirled past within an inch of James’s nose, startling him so much that he instantly vanished, to appear again, pale and shaken, in the doorway of a travel agency on the corner. Charles, overcome with laughter, joined him there in time to hear him being addressed by an elderly Englishwoman who was just coming out of the door.
“My good man!”
James swept off his hat and bowed deeply. “Ma’am, I hope so, indeed.”
“Where—where did you come from?”
“Ma’am, from the road, where I have by a hair’s breadth escaped destruction. If I had the misfortune to alarm you, ma’am”—another low bow—“I shall never forgive my deplorable lack of consideration.”
“Mountebank!” said the lady, and swept past them.
James, with a puzzled line between his brows, slowly replaced his hat. “One would think, Charles, that I had insulted the lady. Nothing was further from my thoughts. I am sorry if I startled her; I could only apologize.”
“You great booby,” said Charles affectionately, “do you not know what you did? If you dematerialize like that and then pop up just in front of pious maiden ladies you will startle them.”
“Oh, did I do that? I was not aware of it. How do you know she was pious?”
“She reminded me of your sister Emma, and heaven knows she is pious enough.”
“True, true,” said James with a reminiscent smile. “But a little piety is becoming to women. Well, shall we cross now?”
They reached the Tuileries Gardens without further mishap, decided to keep the Louvre for another day, and turned instead towards the Place de la Concorde. This historic spot delighted them, and no wonder, for the afternoon was fine, the fountains were playing and so was a band somewhere in the distance, all the passing motors hooted and a river steamer answered, and messenger boys whistled about their business. Paris was awaking from her summer siesta.
“We were right, Cousin,” said James, “to seize upon the first opportunity to revisit this gay scene once more,” but Charles was not attending to him.
“Here is the Métro of which Cousin Sally spoke. It is an underground railway like yours in London, except that there seems to be a great deal more of it. Look at the map, Cousin James. What curious names have some of these stations! Many of them would appear to be the names of famous men. Could Franklin D. Roosevelt possibly be an American, do you think?”
“No doubt the Metropolitan Railway in London is greatly extended by now,” said James, but he looked interestedly at the map.
“Let us take a ride on this railway.”
“Certainly, if you wish it, Charles.”
Close against the head of the steps there was set up a stall where a woman was selling French National Lottery tickets. Even as they watched, several people came to her, bought tickets, and immediately went down the steps. James came to the obvious conclusion. “They are buying railway tickets,” he said. “I will obtain some. Where shall we go?”
“Anywhere,” said Charles cheerfully, “except Père Lachaise.”
James laughed and addressed the ticket seller.
“Two tickets, if you please. How much is it to—”
“A hundred francs each, monsieur. Two hundred francs.”
“But—are they all the same price?”
“Certainly, monsieur. All the same price.”
He gave her the money, and as she plainly expected him to take up his own tickets he did so, tearing them off the counterfoils, and returned to Charles with them in his hand.
“This is an expensive mode of travel, Cousin. These colored scraps of paper cost me a hundred francs each.”
“Indeed? It must be very luxurious.”
They went down the stairs together and were stopped at the barrier by the ticket collector, a stout elderly woman with a face like a wizened apple. James offered her the tickets.
“But, monsieur! These are not travel tickets. These are lottery tickets, voyez-vous!” She laughed kindly and pointed out the inscription upon the tickets, Loterie Nationale Française.
“Oh, excuse me,” said James, covered with confusion. “How excessively stupid—I did not observe—” He crumpled the lottery tickets in his hand. “Where do I buy the proper ones?”
“Oh, monsieur! Do not throw them away! The draw is tonight and you may win a prize.”
“Indeed. I think the chance is very remote,” said James, but he flattened out the tickets and put them carefully into his pocketbook. “How shall I—where are the results posted?”
“They will be in all the Paris papers, or any bartender will tell Monsieur which are the lucky numbers. Over there, look, the ticket office and the tickets are thirty francs wherever you wish to go.”
“Only the one price?”
“Only the one price. It is easy to see that the gentlemen are strangers to Paris.”
“Well, not quite,” said the truthful James, “but it is indeed very many years since we were here.”
“Since you were very little boys, eh? Naturally, you do not remember about such things as railway tickets. Look, for this ticket which you shall buy you can travel all day round Paris if you wish, only if you come up to the surface do you give it up. Understood?”
“You know, Cousin,” said Charles as they walked away down the passage leading to the platforms, “that good old soul probably thinks she is old enough to be our mother. Whereas— Is this where we await the trains? It looks like a platform. There is a noise coming— James!”
They recoiled together as, with a rising roar, the train rushed into the station and clattered to a stop. Doors clashed open; people leapt out and made for the exit, taking no notice whatever of the Latimers. Before they could decide what they ought to do the grinding doors slid together again and the train ran noisily away out of sight.
The Latimers gained courage when other intending passengers came on their platform at the Concorde Métro station and after one or two false starts managed to enter a train. There followed an interval of delicious terror comparable only with a small boy’s first ride on a switchback.
“There is one thing I would dearly like to know,” said James when the excitement had begun to abate, “and that is how anyone knows at which station they have arrived.”
“I wonder that myself,” said Charles. “It is a strange thing, Cousin, that they should all be named Dubonnet. Even before one actually reaches the station there it is, illuminated on the wall, Dubonnet. Of the cap? What is this ‘of the cap’ everywhere?”
James noticed an advertisement which gave rather more details, and pointed it out. “It is a medicine, that is all,” he said. “An advertisement of a medicine. If we look more carefully we shall find the names of the stations also.”
Charles lost interest in Dubonnet. “Let us change at the next stop,” he said. “I think that a station marked ‘Correspondance’ is one where several lines meet.”
It was only a short step from this to becoming thoroughly lost, and after a time the noise and the atmosphere began to make themselves felt.
“Let us return to the upper air upon the next occasion of stopping,” said James. “This continual roar of sound is becoming irksome, how say you, Charles?”
“I am with you, James. There is also a peculiar smell,” said Charles thoughtfully. “Let us return, as you say, to the upper air once again.”
At the next stop they leapt out; the station was Sablons, which meant nothing to them until they emerged into the sunshine.
“I know where we are,” said James, his eyes resting gratefully upon green grass and ordered plantations of tall trees. “This is the Bois de Boulogne; we used to ride here in the mornings to take the air and scrutinize the ladies. Let us go in; it is quiet and pleasant here.”
“I recall it well, Cousin. There was one dazzling brunette who took your eye, I remember, she used to ride a bay—”
“I was in mourning for my poor wife,” said James hastily. “There are some greenhouses here, shall we turn towards them? I greatly admire greenhouses and I do not recall ever having visited these.”
“As you wish,” said Charles absently. “She wore a brown velvet habit, did she not, and in her hat a brown feather which came down to her shoulder.”
“I should be interested indeed to see if they have any new cacti. My collection of cacti—”
“I cannot charge my memory with her name,” said Charles, snapping his fingers impatiently.
“I was mourning my wife,” said James firmly.
Beyond the hothouses there are the monkeys. Everyone has seen monkeys in cages; restless, inconsequent, preternaturally wise, and catastrophically silly. James, who had had two sons of his own, strolled along watching the children who rushed madly about, occasionally stopping abruptly to look into the cages. Charles pushed his broad-brimmed hat to the back of his head and drifted along, the picture of lazy amusement.
A small boy emerged from a side alley, came towards the cousins until he was quite close, and then looked up at them and stopped suddenly to stare.
“Eh bien, mon petit,” said Charles, who was the subject of this attention. “What is it, then?”
The child pointed with a stubby finger. “Did you get him out of one of the cages?”
“Good lack!” said James, following the direction of the finger. “God bless my soul!”
Charles put his hand up to his own shoulder and encountered a small hairy paw.
“Gentlemen, hush! Oh, my stars!”
“How did that happen?”
“It seems that Ulysses also has met with some relations,” said Charles. “I ought to have thought of that before we came here.”
“I did not know there were any monkeys here,” said James in a pained voice, “until I saw them.”
“I saw something about zoology upon a notice board,” admitted Charles, “but I never thought of this. No, sir, the idea never occurred to me that with monkeys, as with us, the presence of a member of the same family would permit materialization.” They walked on together with the small boy running beside them to stare open-mouthed at Ulysses in his little red jacket and round cap. Presently the monkey noticed the small boy’s interest, took off his little cap, and bowed profoundly. The child fled.
“This principle of family,” argued James, “surely cannot be applied in the case of monkeys, who have no sense of family and are, indeed, entirely promiscuous?”
“Maybe that is why just any monkeys would do. Why are we distressing ourselves? I always liked to have Ulysses around and I still do, so what?”
“If anything alarms him, what will he do?”
“The same as you do, Cousin, I reckon. Vanish.”
“I can foresee a whole series of embarrassing situations,” said James gloomily.
There came the sound of a shrill voice in one of the adjacent alleys explaining to someone called Maman that the speaker was not telling stories, indeed no. There was a man with a monkey sitting on his shoulder; he got it out of one of the cages. Maman saw an attendant at a little distance and rushed to meet him.
“Let us deal with them if and when they arise,” said Charles. “Come down off my shoulder, Ulysses. Why should I carry you on such a hot day? Take my hand and walk properly. Consider, Cousin James. Suppose a man thinks he sees a monkey in some place where no monkey should be, in a box at the Opéra, for example. Then suppose the monkey to vanish in an instant of time, completely. Is that man going to proclaim what he thought he saw? Would you, Cousin James?”
“No, hang me if I would!”
“Well, there you are.”
“Monsieur!” cried Maman. “Monsieur le Gardien! There is one of your monkeys loose.”
“What?” said the attendant. “Are you sure? Where?”
“Over there,” said the child. “With those two men there.”
He pointed as Charles and James came into view with Ulysses walking demurely beside them.
“I will myself regulate this matter,” said the attendant. He dashed into a small shed nearby and came out again with a contrivance like a butterfly net, only larger and with a coarse string-mesh bag.
“Are you going to catch it? Are you going to catch it with that? Maman, he is going to catch—”
The attendant advanced with purposeful strides.
“Achille, my son!” shrieked Maman. “Come away, do not approach, the animal is savage! My only joy—”
“Let go, Maman! Let me go—I want to see the man catch the monkey—”
“Achille, thou art naughty—”
“I shall bite!”
“Messieurs,” said the attendant, addressing the Latimers, “it is strictly forbidden to bring animals into the Zoological Gardens.”
Ulysses removed his hat, placed the other tiny paw over his heart, and bowed deeply. Charles Latimer turned a kindly but puzzled look upon the attendant.
“Why, certainly,” said the Virginian. “I should say, sir, that that is a very wise rule, yes, sir. Very right.”
“Perfectly justifiable,” said James loftily, and made to move on.
“But,” said the attendant, and pointed at Ulysses.
“He is pointing at something, Cousin,” said James.
“So I notice, Cousin,” answered Charles. “What can it be?”
“It is a monkey,” howled the attendant. “A Capuchin monkey with a red jacket and cap.”
A series of bloodcurdling yells rent the air as Maman picked up Achille bodily and bore him, kicking and biting, out of sight.
“A monkey?” said Charles. “In a red jacket? Are you sure the jacket is red?”
“Poor man, poor man,” said James in a low but perfectly audible tone.
“Tell me,” said Charles with his charming smile, “is it your duty to attend to monkeys continuously, every day? All day?”
“Of course it is,” replied the attendant. “Do you suppose I do not know a Cebus capucinus when I see it?”
The Latimers looked at each other. “It is the sun,” said James.
“Come, friend,” said Charles pityingly. “Come and sit in the shade. Tell me where I can find a glass of water for you.”
“All your monkeys are safely in their cages,” added James reassuringly.
Ulysses, tired of standing still, jumped up and down, and the attendant lost his temper. He produced, with a swish, the monkey net from behind his back and whirled it over Ulysses, pinning him to the ground. There was a terrified “Eek!” a momentary vision of writhing arms and legs, and the net dropped flat and empty upon the sandy path.
The attendant shook his head, turned upon his heel, and walked slowly and dispiritedly away.
* * * *
Upon the following day James and Charles Latimer went to the Ambassador Hotel to call upon Jeremy and Sally, but they were out. “They are lunching with friends,” said the porter. “They told me that they would return during the afternoon. If the gentlemen would care to wait—”
He indicated, with a wave of his hand, the spacious lounge of the Ambassador Hotel across the end of the entrance hall; the cousins nodded and strolled on together.
“There is a bar, James,” said Charles Latimer, looking away to his right. “Shall we take a glass of wine while we wait?”
James nodded. “You might obtain your mint julep here, Charles. It looks to me the sort of place where they would have everything.”
They went up the two steps and entered the bar, almost empty at the hour of early afternoon. Away to the right two men were sitting at a table together talking in low tones; near the door an elderly man was sitting upon a stool with his elbows on the bar, talking to the bartender in English. The Latimers sat down nearby and Charles asked for a mint julep; the bartender nodded and began to prepare it.
The elderly man turned stiffly upon his stool and surveyed them. White hair surmounted a face which looked as though it had been dyed with permanganate of potash and afterwards varnished; a stiff yellowish mustache ended in waxed points. He looked from one Latimer to the other and eventually addressed Charles in an odd jerky voice, as though there were a comma between each of his words.
“You, sir, are an American, if I mistake not.”
“Why, yes, sir, that is so. I am an American.”
“Then it is no use my asking your advice about wines. I believe you drink only cocktails in your country. You, sir,” to James, “are you an American too?”
“No, sir. No, I am an Englishman.”
“Then perhaps you will be able to settle an argument between George and myself,” indicating the bartender.
“George says that it is wrong to drink port after brandy. I say it is right. Every gentleman drinks port after lunch. I have had lunch and I propose to drink port. Eh? Am I not right?”
George came back with Charles Latimer’s drink in a tall glass with the fresh mint leaves clinging to the rim. “The Colonel,” he said in a low tone, “has had quite enough already and it would be much better if he did not have any more.”
“What are you saying?” asked the Colonel. “What are you saying? Are you talking about me?”
“George was saying that you are a distinguished Army officer,” said James. “May I ask, sir, if you have seen much service?”
The old Colonel pushed up his mustache. “A few minor brawls, sir, in the service of the British Raj. Nothing spectacular, nothing spectacular. Chasing dacoits through the jungle, sir. George, port!”
“In a moment, sir,” said George, busy with glasses.
“That must have been quite exciting,” said James.
“Exciting! Huh! I suppose you might call it exciting never to know, from one minute to the next, when you’d get your backside peppered with hobnails from a yard of gas pipe tied to a tree.”
James looked so completely blank that even the Colonel noticed it.
“You are not an Army man, I take it? No? Well, we can’t all do what we should like. But I asked your opinion about port. Can one drink it after brandy or can one not? I say one can, provided it is after lunch. Or dinner, of course.”
“With respect, sir,” said James, “I should say not. Either brandy or port, but not, I should think, both.”
The Colonel merely looked at him contemptuously and crooked his finger for George, who came as slowly as was feasible.
“A glass of the same port I had last night.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And hurry up with it! Damn, sir,” to James, “the way young men dawdle about in these days makes me sick! Wish I had some of ’em in my troop in the old days, I’d make ’em jump to it!”
George brought the glass of port and put it down in front of the Colonel, who set it aside for a moment while he fumbled for his wallet to pay for the wine.
“When I was in India as a very young man, sir, we were taught how to maintain discipline. Of course things were very different then.”
“I do not doubt it, sir.”
George asked James Latimer what he would take; James said he would have a glass of red wine, please.
“Côte-du-Rhône?” said George, “a 1937?”
James nodded trustfully and turned back to the Colonel, who was sorting out grimy currency notes and talking all the time.
“No motor transport in those days, of course. If there had been it wouldn’t have stood up to the roads. Damn these filthy notes; I say the French make them sticky on purpose in the hope you’ll pay them two at once. No electric light, only stinking oil lamps. No telephones, of course. Sir, I remember when the electric light was first installed at one place where I was stationed. They strung up insulated cables on poles; I could have told ’em what would happen. It did. All the monkeys came out of the jungle and swung along the wires, dozens of ’em, sir, dozens of ’em.” His gnarled, uncertain fingers stiffened and he stared incredulously at his glass. “I said monkeys, sir, I said monkeys. God bless my soul, sir, there’s one of the little b-beasts on the bar now.”
George, who had turned away to pour James’s wine, spun round sharply just in time to see a small Capuchin monkey, dressed in a little red jacket and a tiny round cap, taking a careful sip from the Colonel’s glass. He set it down, rose, and bowed politely to the Colonel, raising his cap. Then he seized the glass in both hands and lifted it to his mouth. As he did so he seemed to the horrified George to shimmer and thin out like smoke until there was nothing left but a wineglass hanging in the air and tilting till all the wine in it had disappeared. Then there was a crash as the empty glass fell upon the bar counter and broke into a dozen pieces. The Colonel’s eyes bulged. He got down, very stiff and dignified, from his stool and the currency notes fell disregarded from his hands.
“A monkey in a red jacket. A monkey—”
He turned as smartly as though he were on parade and marched out of the bar, down the steps, and across the lounge towards the lifts, not looking to right or left. There came the sound of clashing gates and the whine of an ascending lift; the Colonel had retired to his own room.
By this time George was at the bar counter, leaning heavily upon it.
“Excuse me, please. Did either of you two gentlemen see anything?”
James merely looked blank and Charles said: “What sort of thing do you mean?”
“The Colonel, sir, said that he saw a monkey sitting on the bar. Did either of you gentlemen see it?”
They shook their heads and Charles said that they were temperate men. “I gather, from a remark you passed earlier, that the Colonel was due to start seeing things ’most any time now.”
“But I saw it too,” said George, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
“Come, come, my man,” said James. “Come, come.”
“I did, sir. It picked up the glass, drank the wine, and let the glass fall on the counter. There are the broken pieces to prove it.”
“Then where has it gone?” asked Charles, looking about him and down upon the floor.
“It did not go anywhere, sir. It”—George gestured with his hands—“it, as it were, thinned out and vanished.”
Charles merely gaped at him and James said, “Most irregular, most,” in a melancholy voice.
George snatched up his dustpan and brush and swept the broken glass off the counter. On second thoughts he rescued from the debris the base of the glass, which had survived with an inch of stem, and set it upon a shelf at the back of the bar. He gathered up the Colonel’s money, still lying on the counter where he had left it, and began to stack the notes into a neat bundle.
The glass doors of the bar swung open and a cheerful voice behind them said, “Well, well, Sally, look who’s here. Cousin James and Cousin Charles, I’m delighted that you should have come around to look us up. What are you having? George, this one is on me.”
“Cousin Jeremy—ma’am—we took the chance of finding you at home. I hope you have recovered, ma’am, from the fatigue of the journey.”
“I have indeed, thank you. Completely. And I have to thank one or both of you, haven’t I, for the perfectly lovely flowers which came up to my room this morning? It was sweet of you and I adore carnations.”
“Sweets to the sweet,” said James with a bow.
“Ma’am, we saw them and immediately thought of you,” said Charles. “It was inevitable. Pray sit here.”
“What will Madame take?” asked George.
“Orange juice, please, George— Why, whatever is the matter? Darling, George does look queer.”
“Thank you, madame. I do feel a little queer. I have just seen a monkey.”
Sally drew back and clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Why,” said Jeremy, “do you take an exception to monkeys, George? Don’t you like ’em? Nice little beasts; a friend of mine back home has one as a pet. Why, did someone bring one into the bar?”
“No one brought it,” said George in a tragic voice, “no one took it away. It came—”
“Are you telling me,” said Jeremy, looking about him, “that it’s running loose about here someplace? Look, why doesn’t somebody do something about it, then? Try to catch it, or something?”
“Look,” said George. He whirled round, picked the broken stem off the shelf, and smacked it down upon the counter. “You see this remains of a broken glass? Well—”
He unfolded his tale.
“But, George, what you are telling us is just impossible,” said Jeremy.
“I know, sir, but—”
“George,” said Sally, “may I change my mind? I won’t have orange juice after all, I’d rather have a cognac.”
“Certainly, madame.” He picked up a liqueur glass and went to get the brandy.
“You feeling all right, honey? You look a bit white.”
“I’m all right, thank you. Please don’t fuss, I expect it’s the heat. Oh, Cousin Charles, thank you.”
Charles had brought a chair. “You will find this more restful than that high stool. Pray take my arm; there, that is better. Do not let this odd little story distress you, ma’am,” he went on in a lower tone. “Believe me, there is some quite rational explanation.”
She smiled and nodded and Jeremy came with the cognac.
“Will you just drink this, Sally dear, and take it easy for a bit. Then we’ll go up to our rooms and you can lie down for an hour. It’s the heat,” he explained to James. “We’ve spent a couple of hours, in the middle of a day like this, going round some racing stables at Auteuil belonging to some friends of ours. It was quite a trail, and every stall and loosebox we came to we had to be introduced to each quadruped personally. Cousin James, sir, it put me in mind of my old grandfather—my mother’s father—reading family prayers in the old house near Charlottesville. Abinadab begat Jehoiakim and Jehoiakim begat somebody else, and so it went on. So did these horses. Yes, sir. Feeling better, honey?”
Jeremy Latimer went away with an arm round Sally, and the company looked after them.
“A very nice lady,” said George. He realized that his monkey story was not going down well with anybody and made a determined effort to behave normally.
“I hope,” said Charles Latimer rather anxiously, “that all is well with our charming cousin.”
“Young wives,” said James sententiously, “are apt to become subject to these trifling distempers.”
George picked up the Colonel’s pile of notes and began to sort them in order of value. A gaily colored counterfoil fluttered out from among them. “The Colonel,” said the bartender, “has bought a lottery ticket.” He put the money into an envelope, scribbled the Colonel’s name upon it, and locked it away in a drawer. “I wonder whether he has won anything.” He ran his finger down a closely printed paragraph in a newspaper. “No. The poor gentleman has had no luck.”
“We have some of those tickets, Cousin,” said Charles, “if you have not mislaid them.”
“I laid them in my pocketbook. Here they are. Are these any good?”
James pushed them across the counter and George looked them up. “That one also is no good. Now the other. Just a moment! The number, again? Ah!” A cry of triumph which drew the attention of the two men at the far end. “This is marvelous! The first prize! Monsieur is wonderfully lucky! Congratulations, monsieur!”
“The f-first prize?” stammered James. “Indeed! How very unexpected. And how providential, eh, Charles? How much is it?”
“One million francs, monsieur! Look for yourself.”
“I am all abroad,” said James. “One milli—Did you say one million?”
“Francs, Cousin, francs,” said Charles. “I opine it sounds more than it really is, but,” with an excited laugh, “even so I guess it is quite a sizable sum, yes, sir. Tell me, George, what is that in English pounds? I am so excited that I cannot calculate.”
“A little over a thousand pounds sterling, sir.”
James made a mental note that French francs were just under one thousand to the pound.
“That will help out with your currency allowance, sir?”
“What? Oh yes, yes, no doubt,” said James vaguely. “Let us have a round of drinks on this. Cousin Charles, what is your fancy? Tapster, you will drink with me? These gentlemen over there—Sirs, I have had a stroke of luck, I beg that you will celebrate it with me. Pray order whatever you may desire. This is a great day.”
The two men rose, smiling, from their table and came up to the bar. They were not, when seen at close hand, particularly prepossessing; although they appeared to be only in their thirties, their faces were lined and their mouths hard and thin-lipped. However, they were well dressed and their manners were easy and friendly.
“Congratulations,” said one, and shook James warmly by the hand. “Good luck, sir, jolly good luck.”
“I do congratulate you, sir,” said the other, and also shook hands. “One sees the names of prizewinners in the press, but this is the very first time I have met one in the flesh. It’s encouraging to be assured that prizewinners really do exist and are not just another name for some of the organizers or their friends.”
“Gentlemen,” said George reproachfully, “these lotteries are run by the French Government and their bona-fides are beyond question.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said the second man. “Things which no one ever questions are apt to be a bit—you know.”
“Do you mean,” said James anxiously, “that you think I may not receive my winnings?”
“Ah no, sir, I am sure that that will be all right. Now you hold the winning ticket you are safe, provided you don’t lose the ticket.”
James put it away carefully in his pocketbook while his new friends ordered cherry brandies. Charles looked the two men over and what he saw appeared to amuse him, for the corners of his mouth curled up.
“You gentlemen are residents in this hotel?” he asked.
“No. No, we are staying for a few days in a small hotel near the Madeleine. We came in here this afternoon to meet a friend, but he doesn’t seem to be coming.”
“Provoking,” said Charles. “To wait for someone who does not come, it is a waste of time.”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “It is all a waste of time, our stay in Paris. We ought to be in Germany but for our own silly fault.” He laughed. “Really, for men who travel quite a lot, we ought to be kicked. We allowed our German visas to expire—never looked at the damn things—and got turned back on the frontier. Never felt such a fool in my life.”
“By Jove,” said James, “most disconcerting, upon my word. Do you mean to tell me that the rogues actually refused to let you pass?”
The man laughed aloud. “That’s good, that is. ‘The rogues refused to let us pass.’ De Garth, did you hear that?”
“I did,” said De Garth, much amused.
“But what course of action did you pursue?” asked James.
“Well, what would you have done?”
“Summoned the British Consul, of course,” said James sturdily.
“Sir,” said De Garth, “I wish you were traveling with us. No journey could be dull in your company. May we introduce ourselves? My name’s De Garth, as you may have noticed, and my friend’s is Fosse.”
James bowed. “Our name is Latimer. I am James Latimer and this is my cousin Major Latimer.”
“Of the British Army?”
“No, sir,” said Charles. “I have the honor to be an American. I come from Virginia.”
“And is this your first visit to Paris, Major Latimer?”
“By no means, but it is many years since I and my cousin were here.”
“We—er—had an opportunity of spending a short vacation here,” said James, “and we were happy to avail ourselves of it. Excuse me, I see your glasses are empty. George!” Fosse protested, but James bore him down. “It is not every day that one has such a stroke of luck.”
“I must say,” said Fosse, “that you have made good use of your time, winning a prize like that. What do you do with yourselves all day long?”
James said that they had only arrived the previous day and so far they had simply walked about enjoying the sights. “We propose a visit to the Musée du Louvre to improve our minds with a study of some of the greatest artistic triumphs of antiquity, and we hope to pay a visit to the Opéra upon the occasion of the performance of some classical work.”
“Mr. Latimer,” said De Garth with something like reverence, “how do you do it?”
James stared and Charles came to the rescue.
“Sir, I will not deny that we propose also to amuse ourselves with a little frivolity. Tell me, sir, is there not a place of entertainment called the Bal Tabarin?”
“You’ll do,” said the enraptured Fosse, “you’ll do. There’s also a quiet little show called the Folies Bergère you might cast your eyes over sometime.”
“Sir, I am obliged to you,” said Charles. “How do men of your type in Paris usually pass your time?”
“Well,” said De Garth, “we’re here on business as a rule, though we’re rather at a loose end this time. We generally like to get one or two pals together and have a game of cards in the evening. Do either of you gentlemen care for a hand of cards?”
Charles shook his head and said that he was never a cardplayer, but James said that he had been considered a fair performer at basset in his time. “But that is considered old-fashioned now, I know, and whist is all the rage. I have had many a pleasant evening playing whist.”
“We generally play a simple and even childish game called poker,” said Fosse.
“If it is really as simple as you say perhaps I could manage to learn it,” said James.
“If we could get a few of the boys together,” said Fosse, addressing De Garth, “we might manage to give Mr. Latimer an hour or two of quiet amusement.”
“Or there’s rummy, if we can’t get hold of anyone,” said De Garth. “That is also quite simple to a man of Mr. Latimer’s attainments.”
“Let’s make a date,” said Fosse. “Tomorrow night at our hotel? We’ve got a little sitting-room where we can be private.”
James accepted. “I take it very kindly of you, gentlemen, to admit a total stranger to your private gathering. I shall be delighted to come and I trust you will not find me too stupid to learn a new game.”
“And your cousin, Major Latimer—”
“Gentlemen, I thank you,” said Charles, “but no, if you will excuse me. I have already an engagement for tomorrow night. Besides, if I may admit what practically amounts to a social solecism, cards bore me. My cousin here is your man.”
They exchanged addresses before De Garth and Fosse took their leave, saying they would wait no longer for their expected friend. “Either there’s been a mistake or he’s been run over by a taxi,” said Fosse cheerfully. “We are all mortal, especially in Paris.”
They went away, not speaking together until they were well away from the Ambassador’s splendid portals, when De Garth turned to Fosse.
“What the devil are they? Just plain goofy?”
Fosse nodded. “If you ask me, they’ve escaped from somewhere, but why worry? The stodgy one has got a million francs, hasn’t he?”
“He looks harmless enough; I’m not so sure about the other.”
“Well, he’s not coming, so that’s all right. We’ll have Roux in; he’ll deal with him if he makes trouble. A million francs!”
“He’s a birthday present, if only he knew it,” said De Garth.
James paid for the rounds of drinks when Charles refused another.
“Gentlemen,” said George, “if it is not taking a liberty—”
“What is it?”
“It might be as well to be a little careful in playing cards with those two. Not that I have heard any complaints about them, but they make a practice of sitting in this bar and picking acquaintance with any who appear to have money. I do not wish to interfere with the gentlemen’s amusements.”
James smiled and Charles laughed aloud. “That is kind of you, George,” he said, “and we surely do appreciate it. But we are not, maybe, so young as we look. We will take precautions.”
“I thought you said you were not going, sir?”
“I said so, George, I certainly said so. Yes, sir. But we shall see when the time comes. Cousin James, the afternoon is pleasant, let us take the air.”
“Certainly,” said James. “Whatever you say, Cousin. Good day to you, George. No doubt we shall meet again.”
“I hope so, sir,” said George. He leaned on the bar and watched them cross the lounge on the way out, two tall men wearing their hats with an air which appealed to him.
“Those two,” he murmured, “are assuredly something a little different. Ce sont des railleurs. I like them. But that monkey—”
On the following evening James and Charles left the De Bussy Hotel together, but when James reached the hotel where De Garth and Fosse awaited him, he was alone. Fosse was waiting in the hall to greet him.
“Splendid, so glad to see you. Do come up. This is rather a dingy place, but conveniently central. Let’s take the lift. We have a grubby little sitting-room upstairs, but at least we can be private.”
“I am sure, Mr. Fosse, that it will all be quite delightful. One cannot expect, when traveling, the elegant refinements of home, but a decent privacy is in itself a matter for congratulation.”
Fosse opened his mouth and shut it again and the lift stopped. He led the way along a dark and narrow corridor and flung open a door at the end.
“Here we are, De Garth, all present an’ correct. Mr. Latimer, may I introduce a friend of ours, Monsieur le Comte d’Autun, who also enjoys a pleasant game of cards. D’Autun, Mr. James Latimer.”
The man called D’Autun said that he was enchanted, James said that he was honored, and both bowed. D’Autun was a small man with black hair going thin on the top, spiky black eyebrows and mustache, and black hair on the backs of his hands. He was not very like James’s idea of a French count with a territorial title, but no doubt even French counts come all shapes. James smiled to himself and waited politely for Monsieur le Comte to sit down before he seated himself. Wine was poured out for the company and there was a little discussion as to what they should play. They were not enough to play poker; one needs six players at least and more if possible. James smiled, agreed with everything that was said, and amused himself by shuffling the pack which lay before him. He shuffled with great dexterity, the cards appearing to flow from one hand to the other.
“What d’you suggest, Mr. Latimer?”
“You are my hosts,” said James. “I would prefer that you should decide. Indeed, I have no preference except, perhaps, for a keen game of écarté.”
It was quite plain that none of the party had ever heard of écarté and they proceeded, by means of a few exhibition hands, to teach him to play rummy.
“Thank you,” said James at length, “I think I have now grasped the rudiments of this very interesting pastime. If I should make mistakes, pray do me the favor of pointing them out.”
The evening proceeded as such evenings do. James, who had a flair for card-playing, did not make mistakes; the first few games were reasonably even and then he began to win. He won consistently until there was quite a pile of thousand-franc notes at his elbow.
“Really, gentlemen,” said James, “your luck tonight has gone out to chase moonbeams. Monsieur le Comte, you will take me for a Jeremy Diddler, a bubbler, upon my honor.”
Monsieur le Comte merely stared, but Fosse broke into a loud laugh. “Fortune favors the bold,” he said. “Let’s double the stakes, shall we? De Garth, O.K.? D’Autun, you agree? That is, if our guest agrees?”
“Certainly, certainly,” said James. “I think it is your deal, De Garth.”
“And D’Autun shuffles,” agreed Fosse. “Let me refill the glasses.”
He rose to do so and in so doing turned his back towards a small table upon which James’s hat was lying and which was for the moment within James’s view alone. The hat rose suddenly a couple of inches from the table and at once alighted again. James smiled amiably and settled down lower in his chair as Fosse handed him his refilled glass and De Garth began to deal.
“You know,” said James, “it was prodigiously civil of you to ask me here tonight. I cannot think when I have enjoyed an evening more. Such good—”
“The evening’s not over yet, Latimer, the night is yet young, to quote the poet.”
“I am glad of it; there is time for me to give you your revenge. Such good wine, too, quite delectable. I must ask you for the address of your wine merchant, my dear Fosse. I am not much of a tippler as a rule—”
“But rules are made to be broken sometimes, aren’t they?” said Fosse with his horse laugh.
“I am of your opinion. Crack a bottle and break a rule, eh?” James picked up the hand which had been dealt him. “Now let us see what the random jade, my Lady Luck, has for me this time.”
Whether Luck was annoyed at being called rude names or whether there was another reason for it, James began to lose from that moment and lost steadily. The pile of notes at his elbow lessened and vanished and he had recourse to a bulging wallet which made Monsieur le Comte open his eves very wide.
“It is as well,” said James with his sudden barking laugh, “that I cashed that lottery ticket this morning. Otherwise, gentlemen, I should have had to cry you mercy.” He glanced at his watch. “As it is, and if you are agreeable, shall we double the stakes again?”
“Que diable!” said the Count, speaking for almost the first time. “You are a hell of a good loser.”
“You relieve my anxiety, sir,” said James. “It is true that I am losing my money, but I thought you must have gambled away your tongue.”
The Count’s stiff eyebrows drew together, but De Garth intervened.
“Monsieur D’Autun was always one of the quiet ones.”
“No babbler,” said James. “Sir, I applaud him for it. If one has nothing to say, why say it?”
The Count’s thick neck reddened, but Fosse passed him the shuffled pack. “Your deal, D’Autun.”
“I thought perhaps doubling the stakes might have done for me what it did for you,” said James half an hour later, “but it seems not. Out of common humanity towards the landlord of my hotel, I must cry a halt soon.”
“Of course,” said Fosse instantly, “whenever you wish.” Since they had won nearly seven hundred pounds of James’s money even those three sharks did not wish to press him too far. “If our German visas don’t come through in a day or two, perhaps you’ll come and have your revenge.”
“If I win another lottery prize,” laughed James.
De Garth collected together the money on the table, put it in a small attache case, and snapped the lock shut. He opened a door on the farther side of the room and went into what was evidently a bedroom.
James was very plainly noticing nothing.
“I have in mind a visit to Auteuil tomorrow in an endeavour to recoup my losses,” he was saying cheerfully. “My cousin, whom you met, is knowledgeable about horseflesh; I shall lean upon his guidance.”
“I wish you all the luck in the world,” said Fosse warmly. “You thoroughly deserve it.”
There came the sound of a closing drawer and De Garth returned, leaving the bedroom door ajar.
“Not at all,” said James, “not at all. ‘Today to thee, tomorrow to me,’ as the Spanish say. Well, gentlemen, all good things come to an end at last.” They heard a muffled thump from the next room, but James took no notice. “It only remains for me to express how greatly obliged I am to you for a—”
“One moment,” said Fosse, and went with long strides into the next room. They could all hear him pulling open one drawer and then another.
“De Garth!” he called. “Which drawer did you put that money in?”
“Left-hand top, as usual,” answered De Garth, and followed Fosse into the bedroom.
“Charming people,” said James, addressing the Count. “Such ease of manner, such an aura of integrity and honor. Without doubt they are men of the best families.” He picked up his hat.
“Without doubt,” said the Count, edging away.
“I should like to add what a privilege I feel it, to have been enabled to meet, informally like this, a representative of one of the great French territorial families in your distinguished person.”
There could be heard from the next room the sound of an argument in progress; the actual words were inaudible, but the tone of the voices sounded angry. Cupboard doors opened and shut. The Count was so interested in this that he failed to answer James’s mellifluous politeness.
“These gentlemen,” pursued James, “are, no doubt, old friends of yours. Boyhood friends, perhaps? Or even relatives? It is easy to see that you are all, as we say, horses of the same color.”
The baited Count looked despairingly towards the bedroom door, but instead of rescue there came from it only Fosse’s voice raised in fury.
“Here it is and it’s empty! For the last time, Slick, where have you put it?”
“ ‘Slick,’ ” repeated James. “Delightful, to hear the sobriquets of childhood persisting throughout the—”
“I haven’t got it, I tell you,” said De Garth desperately. “I put it in that case and put the case in that drawer. You moved it yourself when you came in.”
“Then it’s that twister Roux,” said Fosse. He and De Garth came out with a rush, seized upon the alleged Count, and hastily searched him for a packet of notes which would certainly not be easily concealed. Roux protested angrily and James intervened.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” He flapped his hat at them as though they were intrusive hens. “What has occasioned this regrettable—”
“All that money! It’s gone!”
“I haven’t touched it,” whined Roux. “I never went near the bedroom, I didn’t.”
“It is, indeed, quite impossible that Monsieur le Comte could be concerned in this peculiar affair,” said James.
This was so plainly true that De Garth and Fosse let him go and turned to face each other.
“Then it must be you,” they said simultaneously, in exact duet, and immediately war broke out. They aimed wild blows at each other which, one would have said, had both missed their mark since the men had obviously no idea how to use their fists. Yet there were a couple of crisp thuds and they staggered apart, De Garth with a hand up to a damaged eye and Fosse holding his jaw. They rushed together again, Fosse slapped De Garth hard across the face, and De Garth kicked him savagely on the shin.
“Come, Monsieur le Comte,” said James, taking Roux by the elbow. “This scene is repugnant to men of refinement, let us go.”
He whirled Roux towards the door. It proved to be locked, but the key was in it. James opened it and took the key out, pulled Roux out of the room, and locked the door after them. Just outside the door there was a flight of service stairs.
James took the key out of the lock and tossed it down the stairwell.
“I think we will not wait for the lift,” said James. He put his arm through Roux’s and ran him down the stairs.
“But,” said Roux, jibbing, “where are we going? I want to go back. I—I have forgotten something.”
“We are going to a café for a little glass of something to take the taste of that out of our mouths. Or a cup of coffee, if you prefer it. I cannot believe that you really wish to return to that sharpers’ den.”
At this moment Roux became aware that there was a third set of footsteps just behind him on the stairs. He turned and looked straight into the laughing face of another tall man close upon his heels.
“Besides, we want to talk to you,” said the newcomer.
“Who are you?” gasped Roux. “Police?”
“No, no,” said James. “Dear me, no. This gentleman is my cousin. We had an idea that there might be a little trouble there this evening, so he came to call for me and escort me home. That is all.”
They emerged upon the street, very close together, with Roux in the middle. He noticed that Charles Latimer had a cardboard shoebox under his arm.
“There is a café almost opposite,” said Charles, “upon that corner. It looks reasonably clean, how say you, Cousin?”
“I dare say that it will serve,” said James indifferently.
They entered it and found a table in a corner where they could speak without being overheard, and gave their order. Before the waiter came back with the drinks Charles opened the shoebox and took a handful of notes from an incredibly fat roll with a rubber band round it. Roux looked at it and his eyes bulged, then he rose precipitately from his seat and made to go.
“Sit down,” said James sharply. “What ails you, man?”
Roux nodded towards the roll of notes. “It is magic,” he said. “It is sorcery. That is the roll of notes which disappeared from the bedroom back there.”
Charles laughed. “Nonsense, sir, nonsense. One roll of notes is just like another. What’s bitten you?”
“The band. The rubber band, it’s theirs. They always use it for their winnings.”
The notes were held together by a broad rubber band of mingled colors of red and white.
“You are moonstruck,” said Charles contemptuously. “What, will you tell me that bands such as this are made only for Messieurs Fosse and de Garth? Sir, I bought half a dozen like this in Brentano’s this morning.”
“Oh,” said Roux in a flat voice. “Indeed. Yes, I suppose you could.” He sat down again and sipped his fine; he seemed to find it comforting.
“These little coincidences,” said Charles easily, “I allow, can be disconcerting. Yes, sir. Waiter! A length of string if you please. I want to tie up this cardboard box.”
“Now tell me,” said James, leaning back in his chair and turning a daunting stare upon Roux, “you were brought into that party tonight to help to fleece me, were you not?”
Roux nodded.
“And your name is Roux, is it?”
“Gaston Roux.”
“And you are no more the Comte d’Autun than I am the Pope of Rome?”
“That is so, monsieur.”
“But why D’Autun?” asked Charles, idly twirling his glass by the stem.
“I come from Autun, monsieur, it was my birthplace. So, when Autun is mentioned it is easy to remember that it is I who am being addressed.”
“I see. A variety of aliases would tend to confuse you?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“And if a gentleman sitting in at a card party does not appear to know his own name, it gives a bad impression.”
“Precisely, monsieur.”
James uttered his barking laugh and Roux started nervously.
“Tell me further,” said James, “what were they going to pay you for your services?”
“Three thousand francs, monsieur.”
“That does not seem to me to be very much, especially as I suppose you would be expected to furnish your aid if I were to prove recalcitrant?”
“Eh?”
“To resist.”
Roux swallowed awkwardly and then said that a man was less likely to give trouble if there were three to one against him.
“That may well be. In any case, you do not seem very likely to draw your pay for tonight’s work.”
“No, monsieur.”
“Particularly as we left them trying to murder each other. Charles, what think you?”
“Four thousand francs?” suggested Charles. James nodded and Charles tossed them across the table to Roux.
“Are these for me? Gentlemen,” said Roux with apparently genuine emotion, “you are more than kind, you are generous. A thousand thanks.”
“Four francs per thank, eh, James?”
“That is not quite the whole story,” said James. “There is a little matter, Roux, in which we think you can help us.”
“Anything I can do, gentlemen—”
“I take you to be a sharp fellow who knows his way about.” Roux smiled. “We need a couple of passports, our hotel is dunning us for them.”
“English passports?”
“Certainly—”
“One English and one American,” said Charles firmly.
“Charles, as though it signified—”
“It does signify, Cousin. I am a Virginian and I will not sail under false colors.”
“Oh, very well,” said James. “I only thought that American passports might be more difficult to get; there cannot be so many Americans as English in Paris.”
“The place is stiff with ’em,” said Roux, staring. “There’s nothing in it. English, American, whatever you wish.”
“Then it can be done?”
“Certainly, monsieur. They will cost you five thousand francs each. I have a friend who is willing and able to oblige gentlemen who are in difficulties about passports.”
“I thought you might have,” said Charles.
“But will they be really good ones? We are not to be fobbed off with an inferior article.”
“Monsieur, those which my friend produces would pass with Sir Eden himself.”
“Look, Cousin,” said Charles. “There is a small crowd interested in the hotel of our friends opposite.”
James turned in his chair to look out of the window and Roux also leaned forward to see. There were, indeed, some twenty or thirty people gathered about the entrance; at the top of the half dozen steps which led up to the front door there stood a thin, worried-looking man gazing anxiously up and down the street.
“That man is, in fact, the proprietor,” said Roux.
“Do you suppose that our friends, in their rage and despair, have set the hotel on fire?” said Charles.
“Let us wait,” said James comfortably, “and see whether the fire brigade comes or the police.”
Roux moved uneasily and Charles noticed it.
“Sir, I observe that the word ‘police’ appears to discompose you. May I opine, sir, that the relations between you and the police are something less than affable?”
Roux muttered something about a small misunderstanding, and the crowd parted to allow two agents de police in their neat blue uniforms to mount the steps to the front door. From the manager’s gestures it was clear that there was some sort of trouble upstairs.
“Not fire,” said James.
“Let us go, gentlemen,” said Roux, rising to his feet. “I admit I do not care for the vicinity of the police, me.”
“I think you are right,” said Charles. “Not that the police make my head ache, but if those two are brought forth with ignominy and happened to sight us, they might accuse us of causing their woes.”
“Let us summon a fiacre,” said James, moving towards the door.
“Not that door,” said Roux. “The other, in the side street. And not a fiacre, to the devil with them! A good swift taxi.” He dodged out of the side door and the cousins followed him; a taxi providentially arrived and Roux, regardless of manners, leapt into it. The cousins exchanged glances and leisurely entered it after him.
“Where shall I tell the fellow to go?” asked Charles.
“Place de la Bastille, for a start,” said Roux. “When we are there I will direct him.”
He did so and they finally alighted in a road behind the Gare de Vincennes. Charles paid off the taxi and Roux led the way round two or three corners into a long, narrow, and ill-lit street.
“It was not worth while,” said Roux carelessly, “letting that fellow know exactly where we were going.”
“Reasonable precautions,” said James, “are always to be commended.”
“You make me feel like a conspirator,” said Charles, bending down to speak in Roux’s ear. “Are you conspiring anything?”
“Only to get your passports,” said Roux, edging away. “This is the house. One moment.”
He knocked at the door of a small shop where cheap stationery and magazines were for sale together with a very secondhand typewriter labeled “Bargain. 4500 frs.” The shop was shut for the night, but shuffling footsteps approached it from inside, bolts were drawn, and an elderly man opened the door and peered out.
“Mosset, it’s me, Roux. I have brought you two customers.”
Mosset opened the door and asked them to come in; Roux went on ahead through the shop, but the cousins, stooping their heads under the low lintel, stood still until the door was fastened again.
“Please to go forward, gentlemen.”
They went forward in the dim light and entered a lighted room at the back where Roux was already seated and glancing at a newspaper. Mosset, seen in the light, was a small man with a pleasant face and a neat gray beard. He looked up at the Latimers and appeared to like what he saw.
“What can I—” he began, but Roux, without looking up from the paper, interrupted him.
“Two passports, Mosset. One English, one American, and they’d better be good ones.”
“If you please,” finished Charles.
“I think I can manage that, gentlemen. Have you already got passport photographs?”
“Why, no,” said James, looking startled. “Are they—We did not—”
Charles nudged him to be quiet. “We reckoned we should do better to put the whole concern in your hands, Monsieur Mosset. Can you produce the whole thing, sir?”
“Certainly, gentlemen. We had better start with the photographs, if you will kindly come upstairs. You”—to Roux—“will stay here, will you not?”
Roux nodded and lit a cigarette while Mosset led the way up a steep and narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs. James and Charles Latimer put their hats down at the table behind Roux’s chair before following; the moment they were out of sight Roux spun round and looked at the table. But Charles had taken his cardboard box with him.
Roux threw down the paper and relapsed into thought. That roll of notes was undoubtedly the same as that which Fosse and De Garth had lost, whatever the man called Charles might say to the contrary. It had been obtained by a trick, and men who could work tricks like that were worth cultivating. They had been generous to him; not that Roux was in the least grateful, but it did show a certain softness of disposition which might be turned to advantage. Most of Roux’s acquaintances had dispositions which would cut grooves in a nether millstone; these two were different. Some sort of partnership, perhaps.
On the other hand, Roux had at least one good reason for wanting to leave Paris, a little matter of a dead Mexican who had gone into the Seine. Unfortunately the Seine had not retained him and he had come to lie, cold and dripping in an atmosphere of formalin, upon a slab in the morgue. Even that would not have mattered so much if the wretched corpse had not had a knife wound in the back. Roux did not know whether the police connected him with this affair, but one is never sure with the police. It would be better to leave Paris altogether for, say, Marseilles, provided one had a little nest egg to take with one. These Latimers’ million francs, for example.
Roux sighed, threw away his cigarette butt, and lit another. If it were only the one who had been at the card party Roux would have felt more confident; it was the other, the tall one who appeared so inexplicably upon the hotel stairs, who made him nervous. For one thing, he was always laughing, and at what? It was not reassuring, that.
In the meantime, Charles and James were having their photographs taken and giving such particulars of themselves as passport offices rudely require. They filled up small forms under Mosset’s direction. Their addresses: James gave his as Oakwood Hall, Didsbury, near Manchester, England, and Charles his as Oakwood, Shandon, Virginia, U.S.A. Dates of birth.
“August 11,” said James, “let me see, now, I’m thirty-six, that makes it—”
“1917,” said Mosset, and James wrote it down.
“You are six years my junior, Charles, are you not?”
“June 11,” said Charles, counting rapidly in his head, “—er—1923. Yes, sir, I have the advantage of you by that amount.”
“Occupations?” prompted Mosset.
“Mill owner,” said James.
“Retired Army officer,” said Charles.
“Just put ‘retired,’ ” said Mosset. “Married?”
“Widower,” said James.
“No,” said Charles. “Why do they wish to know all these private matters?”
“The passport offices have not confided in me to that extent, gentlemen.”
Charles smiled up at him as he bent over the table and James said that that would be all, with the signature, would it not?
“That is all, monsieur. That little form you have just filled in is itself stuck into the passport; that at least is perfectly genuine. Now for the photographs.”
James was installed in a high-backed armchair and bright lights were turned upon him. Mosset brought out a large old-fashioned camera with a double-rack extension and retired behind it under a focusing cloth.
“How long do I have to keep still?” asked James.
“Only a moment, monsieur. One twenty-fifth of a second, to be exact, but I am not ready yet. I will tell you when the time comes.”
James, who had already assumed the stern but noble expression he had worn for his portrait by Reinagle, R. A., in 1867, relaxed comfortably.
“Tell me, Monsieur Mosset,” said Charles, “how did you come to take up this trade? For I cannot see you and doubt that you are an honest man; how come you to be the associate of such as that rogue downstairs?”
Mosset did not answer until he had the focus to his satisfaction, when he emerged from under the focusing cloth and said that Monsieur’s penetrating courtesy touched him deeply. “But it is a mistake, monsieur, to assume that rogues live in a world apart and altogether set aside from honest men. They buy their stamps from honest postmasters and are shaved by honest barbers.” He dived into his darkroom and came back with a dark slide in his hand.
“You, sir, are a philosopher,” said Charles, sitting on the edge of a table and swinging his legs.
“No, monsieur, but I call myself honest because I work hard for my money and neither overcharge nor cheat. It is true that what I do is illegal, but a man must live. It is permissible, I hope, to distinguish between what is dishonest and what is merely illegal.”
“Certainly,” said Charles, “certainly.”
“Besides, it is not for long. Near Dijon, monsieur, there is a vineyard and a little house; it is mine, it was my father’s before me. It is not enough for a man to live on in the days of his strength, but to retire to, ah! The good God made it for that. I keep a bag packed, messieurs, and at the first sign of trouble with the police or with my neighbors, I pick up my bag and go. I have my own papers there and my own identity with which I was born; even my name is not Mosset there, I assumed it when I came to Paris. As for him whom Monsieur has so rightly described as ‘that rogue downstairs,’ he does but bring clients to me and get paid for doing so.” He slid the dark slide into the camera. “One’s firewood burns no less brightly for being brought in a filthy cart. Now, monsieur,” to James, “if you are ready?”
He took two exposures and said that that would serve; the cousins changed places for Charles to face the camera while James nursed the cardboard box. Mosset, who seemed to like talking, said that it was seldom that he had clients of the stamp of those whom he now saw before him. Normally, persons who found themselves in difficulties with the passport authorities were either unhappy or—or—
“Scoundrelly,” suggested Charles, and Mosset smiled.
“It always upsets me a little to make my livelihood out of the miseries of others,” he said, fitting a fresh dark slide into the camera.
“You are wrong, sir,” said Charles, “you should rejoice that you are able to help them. Do doctors hang their heads in shame because their customers are drawn only from the sick and suffering? No, sir, they rejoice, and so should you.”
The corners of his long mouth curled up and his eyes filled with laughter; Mosset, who was watching his face, pressed the bulb of the shutter release.
“I will take another to make sure,” he said, “but I think that one will be good. Steady a moment. Thank you.”
James asked how soon the passports would be ready and Mosset said in an hour’s time. There was the embossed stamp on the photograph to be done, and the rubber stamp of the port of entry. “Did you come by Calais, gentlemen? Or perhaps by air to Le Bourget? And the date?”
“Make it Calais, please,” said James, “and date it a week ago. You will make flawless specimens, will you not? It would be most humiliating if the—”
“Monsieur need not be anxious and I will take extra care for the pleasure I have had in your company. One word of warning, if I do not presume—”
“Go on,” said Charles.
“That man downstairs, how much do you know about him?”
“Trickster,” said Charles. “Cardsharper. Probably a thief.”
“He is worse than that,” said Mosset. “He is dangerous. He is too quick with the knife, so they say.”
“We shall get rid of him at once,” said James. “Our only use for him was to bring us here.”
“We are much in your debt,” said Charles. “In an hour’s time, then?”
They went downstairs and found Roux still sitting and reading the paper. James said, “Come,” in a peremptory voice and Roux followed them meekly enough, for the cardboard box was still under Charles’s arm. They went out into the street and Mosset bolted the door after them.
“We have an hour to wait,” said James, looking discontentedly about him. “I suppose there is not even a reasonably passable café in these parts where gentlemen can sit for an hour and not be molested? Which is the way to the Place de la Bastille?”
“That is it,” said Roux, pointing, “at the bottom of the street. There is a café there which I can recommend; it is simple indeed, but clean and well conducted. Let me show you.”
He hurried along beside them; he had indeed almost to trot to keep up, for they made no attempt to suit their pace to a man eight inches shorter than they were. When they emerged upon the place, Roux said that that was the café in question, that one upon the opposite corner. He would be happy to take them in there; a word from him to the proprietor would ensure their receiving the most distinguished attention.
“Sure, sure,” said Charles, beaming down upon him. “Nonetheless, we calculate we might go further and fare better, despite the proverb. Yes, sir, that is what we think. Cousin James, hail that taxi! Sir, though our acquaintance with you was unfortunate in the beginning, it has proved mutually profitable in the end, has it not? Sir, we part friends, I trust.” The taxi whirled to a stop and James stepped in. “Adieu, sir,” added Charles, pressing a note into Roux’s hand, “remember us in your prayers. The Rotonde at Montparnasse, driver, please.” The door slammed behind him and they drove away.
“Ditched,” said Roux with an oath, “ditched. Well, that settles it.” He unfolded the note in his palm; it was to the value of one hundred francs, about two shillings.