Part 13 (1/2)

”Unless what, madame?”

She tapped the table with her pretty fingers, and poured me out a second gla.s.s of port wine.

”Unless the mountain will come to Mahomet--but I guess you don't know what that means, Britten, now do you?”

She screwed her lips up to the kissing point with this, and looked at me so tenderly that I began to feel nervous--upon my word I did.

”Do you mean that your husband must come here, madame?”

”Of course I mean it, Britten. You must fetch him--by a trick. Now wouldn't that be splendid--say, wouldn't it be fine? If we could outwit them--if we could make the Emperor look foolis.h.!.+”

I rubbed my chin and thought about it. There isn't much modesty in my profession, but the idea of getting up against a policeman so far from my humble home somehow put the brake on, and I found myself misfiring like one o'clock in spite of her pretty eyes and her red lips, and her ”take me in your arms and kiss me” look. The Croydon lot are bad enough, but as for the beaks at Montey--well, I've heard tales of them and to spare.

”It would be fine, madame, if we could do it,” said I at last; ”but between talking of it here in this hotel and crossing the frontier----”

”Oh,” she cried, interrupting me almost angrily--and she has the devil of a temper--”oh, there's no difficulty, Britten. Just drive to the Hermitage after my husband has dined to-morrow night, and say that if he wants the news of Madame Clara, you can take him where he will get it. Don't you see, Clara is one of my pet names. He'll understand in a moment, and you can drive him to this hotel. Are you afraid to do that, Britten?”

Of course I wasn't afraid, and she knew it. It was nothing to me anyway, and I could always plead that I was her servant and an Englishman, and didn't care a d.a.m.n for this particular Emperor or any other. None the less, if she hadn't smiled upon me as she did at that particular moment--smiled like a daffy-down-dilly in April, and squeezed my hand as soft as June roses, which the same appeared to be done by accident, I might have left it alone, after all. As it was, I had set off at seven o'clock on the following evening, and at a quarter past nine I was asking at the Hermitage for Count Joseph, just as full of the story I had to tell as a history-book of kings.

A black and white _maitre d'hotel_, picked out with gold, replied to this, and after talking to half a dozen waiters and sending for another chap with a s.h.i.+rt-front like a Mercedes bonnet, they directed me to a little hotel down by Monaco; and there the head waiter received me quite affably, and said, ”Certainly, the gentleman was at home.” When I had given my name, but not my business, I was ushered up, perhaps after an interval of ten minutes, to a sitting-room on the first floor, and there I found myself face to face with a fat, red-faced man in evening dress; and if ever there was a martinet down Montey way, this fine gentleman was that same. He was fat, I say, and forty--but to write that he was fair would be impossible, for he hadn't more than about half a dozen hairs on his head, and those had drifted down his neck to get out of the wind. When I came in he appeared to be sipping Cognac out of a long green bottle, and to be reading private papers just as fast as he could get through them, but he looked up presently, and a pair of wickeder eyes I do not want to see.

”Who sent you here?” he asked.

”A lady,” said I.

”Her name?”

”Madame Clara.”

He turned and snuffed the wick of a candle standing on the table by his side. From his manner I did not think him quite sober, but he appeared to pull himself together by-and-by, and then he exclaimed:

”Repeat your message.”

”I am to say that if you wish for news of Madame Clara, I can take you where you will get it.”

Well, I thought that he smiled, though I cannot be quite sure of that.

Presently, however, he stood up without a word, and, going into his bedroom, he brought a heavy fur coat and cap into the sitting-room, and motioned me to help him on with them. When that was done, he opened the door and invited me to precede him down the corridor.

”I will see the lady,” he said--and that was all. We were in the car two minutes afterwards, making for Nice on the ”fourth,” and not a soul to interfere with us or to do more than take a glance at our papers as we pa.s.sed the stations. Never had there been a lighter job; never had a man helped a woman so easily.

I thought about all this, be sure, as we drew near Nice and the end of our game appeared to be at hand. The old women tell us not to count our chickens before they are hatched, and that's a thing I am not in the habit of doing; but the more I reflected upon it, the better pleased did I feel with myself, and the greater was my wonder at the lady's tastes. That such a pretty little woman, such a gay soul, such a good judge of men--for she was a judge, I'll swear--that she should have ever been in love with this sack of lard I was driving to Nice--well, that did astonish me beyond measure; though it should not have done so, knowing women as I do, and seeing how old Father Time does stick his dirty fingers on our idols and make banshees of the best of them.

I say that I was astonished, but such a feeling soon gave place to others; and when I brought up my car with a dash to the door of the hotel, and the gold-laced porter helped the fat old gentleman out, curiosity took the place of wonder. I became as anxious as a parlourmaid at a keyhole to know what Madame would have to say to this twenty-stone husband, and, what particular terms of endearment he would choose for his reply. Certainly if pleasurable antic.i.p.ation is to be denoted by smiles, he found no fault with his present situation, for he grinned like a gorilla when he got down, and, nodding to me quite affably, he asked:

”Upon which floor is Madame Clara staying, did you say?”

”The third floor--number 113.”

”Ah,” says he, adjusting his gla.s.ses and turning round to go in, ”that is an unlucky number, my friend,” and without another word he entered the hotel and left me there.