The Firefly of France
CHAPTER XI
IN THE RUE ST.-DOMINIQUE
Arriving in Paris at the highly inconvenient hour of 8 A.M., our_rapide_ deposited its breakfastless and grumpy passengers on theplatform of the Gare de Lyon, washed its hands of us with the finalformality of collecting our tickets, and turned us forth into a gray,foggy morning to seek the food and shelter adapted to our pursesand tastes. Every one, of course, emerged from seclusion only at theultimate moment; and, far from holding any lengthy conversation withMiss Falconer, I was lucky to stumble upon her in the vestibule, helpher descend, find a taxi for her at the exit, and see her smile back atme where I stood hatless as she drove away.
While I waited for my own cab I found myself beside Mr. John VanBlarcom, who eyed me with mingled hostility and pity, as if I werea cross between a lunatic and a thief. I returned his stare coolly;indeed, I found it braced me. Left to myself, I had experienced acreeping doubt as to the girl's activities and my own intelligence; butas soon as this fellow glared at me, all my confidence returned.
"Well, Mr. Bayne," he remarked sardonically, breaking the silence, "Isuppose you're worrying for fear I'll give you another piece of goodadvice. Don't you fret! From now on you can hang yourself any way youwant to. I'd as soon talk to a man in a padded cell and a strait-jacket.Only don't blame me when the gendarmes come for you next week."
"Oh, go to the devil!" I retorted curtly. It was a relief; I hadbeen wanting to say it ever since we had first met. His jaw shot outmenacingly, and for an instant he squared off from me with the look ofthe professional boxer; but, rather to my disappointment, he thoughtbetter of it and turned a contemptuous back.
Upon leaving Genoa I had reserved a room at the Ritz by telegraph. Idrove there now, and refreshed myself with a bath and breakfast, castingabout me meanwhile for some mode of occupying the hours till noon. Therewere various tasks, I knew, that should have claimed me; a visit to thepolice to secure a _carte de sejour_, the presentation of my credentialsas an ambulance-driver, a polite notification to friends that I hadarrived. These things should have been my duty and pleasure, but somehowthey were uninviting. Nothing appealed to me, I realized with suddenenlightenment, except a certain appointment that I had already made.
I went out, to find that the fog was lifting and spring was in the air.Since my dinner the previous night I had felt an odd exhilaration, apleasure quickened by the staccato sparkle of the French tongue againstmy ears, the pale-blue uniforms, and gay French faces glimpsed as thetrain had stopped at various lighted stations. Saluting Napoleon'sstatue, I strolled up the rue de la Paix, took a table on a cafepavement, and, ordering a glass of something fizzy for the form of it,sat content and happy, watching the whole gigantic pageant of Paris inwar-time defile before my eyes.
The Cook's tourists and their like, bane of the past, had disappeared;but all nationalities that the world holds seemed to be about. At thenext table two Russian officers, with high cheek-bones and wide-seteyes, were drinking, chatting together in their purring, unintelligibletongue. Beyond them a party of Englishmen in khaki, cool-mannered, clearof gaze, were talking in low tones of the spring offensive. The uniformsof France swarmed round me in all their variety, and close at hand ageneral, gorgeous in red and blue and gold, sat with his hand restingaffectionately on the knee of a lad in the horizon blue of a simplepoilu, who was so like him that I guessed them at a glance for fatherand son.
A cab drew up before me, and a Belgian officer with crutches was helpedout by the cafe starter, who himself limped slightly and wore two medalson his breast. First one troop and then another defiled across the Placel'Opera: a company of infantry with bayonets mounted, a picturesqueregiment of Moroccans, turbaned, of magnificently impassive bearing,sitting their horses like images of bronze. Men of the Flying Corps,in dark blue with wings on their sleeves, strolled past me; and once,roused by exclamations and pointing fingers, I looked up to see amonoplane, light and graceful as a darting bird, skimming above ourheads.
Even the faces had a different look, the voices a different ring. It wasanother country from that of the days of peace. Superb and dauntless,tried by the most searing of fires and not found wanting, France wasstanding girt with her shining armor, barring the invader from hercities, her villages, her homes.
Deep in my heart--too deep to be talked of often--there had lain alwaysa tenderness for this heroic France. "A man's other country," some wiseperson had christened it; and so it was for me, since by a chance I hadbeen born here, and since here my father and then my mother had died. Iwas glad I had run the gauntlet and had reached Paris to do my part ina mighty work. An ambulance drove heavily past me, and with a thrill Iwondered how soon I should bend over such a steering wheel, within soundof the great guns.
Leaving the cafe at last, I beckoned a taxi and settled myself on itscushions for a drive. Each new vista that greeted me was enchanting. Thepavements, the river, the buildings, the stately bridges,--all held thesame soft, silvery tint of pale French gray. In the Place de la Concordethe fountains played as always, but--heart-warming change--the Strasburgstatue, symbol of the lost Lorraine and Alsace, no longer drooped underwreaths of mourning, but sat crowned and garlanded with triumphantflowers.
Like diminishing flies, the same eternal swarm of cabs and motors filledthe long vista of the Champs-Elysees between the green branches of thechestnut trees. At the end loomed the Arc de Triomphe, beneath which thehordes of the kaiser, in their first madness of conquest, had swornto march. Farther on, in the Bois, along the shady paths and about thelakes, the French still walked in safety, because on the frontier theirsoldiers had cried to the Teutons the famous watchword, "You do notpass!" Noon was approaching, and at the Porte Maillot I consulted MissFalconer's card.
"Number 630, rue St.-Dominique," I bade the driver, the address fallingcomfortably on my ears. I knew the neighborhood. Deep in the FaubourgSt.-Germain, it was a stronghold of the old noblesse, suggesting eminentrespectability, ancient and honorable customs, and family connections ofa highly desirable kind. It would be a point in Miss Falconer's favorif I found her conventionally established--a decided point. Along mostlines I was in the dark concerning her, but to one dictum I daredto hold: no girl of twenty-two or thereabouts, more than ordinarilyattractive, ought to be traveling unchaperoned about this wicked world.
I felt very cheerful, very contented, as my taxi bore me into old Paris.The ancient streets, had a decided lure and charm. Now we passed aquaint church, now a dim and winding alley, now a house with mansardwindows or a portal of carved stone. On all sides were buildings that inthe old days had been the _hotels_ of famous gentry, this one shelteringa Montmorency, that one a Clisson or Soubise. It was just the settingfor a romance by Dumas. And, with a chuckle, I felt myself in suddensympathy with that writer's heroes, none of whom had, it seemed to me,been enmeshed in a mystery more baffling or involved than mine.
"They've got nothing on my affair," I decided, "with their masks andpoisoned drinks and swords. For a fellow who leads a cut-and-driedexistence generally, I've been having quite a lively time. And now, tocap the climax, I'm going to call on a girl about whom I know just onething--her name. By Jove, it's exactly like a story! I've got the data.If I had any gray matter I could probably work out the facts.
"Take the St. Ives business. It's plain enough that some one wishedthose papers on me, intending to unwish them in short order once we gotacross. The logical suspect, judging by appearances, was Miss Falconer.The little German went out through her room; she was the one personI saw both at the hotel and on the _Re d'Italia_; and she acted in asuspicious manner that first night aboard the ship. But she says shedidn't do it, and probably she didn't; it seemed infernally odd, allalong, for her to be a spy.
"Still, if she is innocent, who can be responsible? And if that affairdidn't bring her over here, what the dickens did? Something mysterious,something dangerous, something that the French police wouldn'tappreciate, but that her conscience sanctions--that is all she deigns tosay. And why on ea
rth did she ask me to destroy that extra? I thoughtit was because she was Franz von Blenheim's agent and the paper hadan account of him that might have served as a clue to her. She says,though, that she never heard of him. And I may be all kinds of a fool,but it sounded straight.
"Then, there's Van Blarcom, hang him! He seemed to take a fancy tome. He warned me about the girl, but he kept a still tongue to CaptainCecchi and the rest. He lied deliberately, for no earthly reason, toshield me in that interrogation; yet when those papers materialized inmy trunk, though he must have thought just what I thought as to MissFalconer's share in it, he didn't breathe a word. He claimed that he hadmet her. She said she had never seen him. And then--rather strong for acoincidence--we all three met again on the express. What is he doingon this side? Shadowing her? Nonsense? And yet he seemed almighty keenabout her--Oh, hang it! I'm no Sherlock Holmes!"
The taxi pausing at this juncture, I willingly abandoned my attempt atsleuthing and got out in the highest spirits compatible with a strictlycorrect mien. I dismissed my driver. If asked to remain to _dejeuner_, Ishould certainly do so. Then, with feelings of natural interest, I gazedat the house before which I stood.
In the outward seeming, at least, it was all that the most fastidiouscould have required; a gem of Renaissance architecture in its turrets,its quaint, scrolled windows, and the carving of its stone facade.Age and romance breathed from every inch of it. For not less than fourhundred years it had watched the changing life of Paris; and even toa lay person like myself a glance proclaimed it one of those ancestral_hotels_, the pride of noble French families, about which many romanticstories cling.
At another time it would have charmed me hugely, but to-day, as I stoodgazing, somehow, my spirits fell. Was it the almost sepulchral silenceof the place, the careful drawing of every shutter, the fact that thegrilled gateway leading to the court of honor was locked? I did notknow; I don't know yet; but I had an odd, eerie feeling. It seemed likea place of waiting, of watching, and of gloom.
This was unreasonable; it was even down-right ridiculous. I began tothink that late events were throwing me off my base. "It's a house likeany other, and a jolly fine old one!" I assured myself, approaching thegrilled entrance and producing one of my cards.
An entirely modern electric button was installed there, beneath a nowmerely ornamental knocker in grotesque gargoyle form. I pressed it,peering through the iron latticework at the stately court. The answerwas prompt. Down the steps of the hotel came a white-headed majordomo,gorgeously arrayed, and so pictorial that he might have been a familyretainer stepping from the pages of an old tale.
There was something queer about him, I thought, as he crossed thecourtyard; just as there was about the house, I appended doggedly, withgrowing belief. His air was tremulous, his step slow, his gaze far-offand anxious.
"For Miss Falconer, who waits for me," I announced in French, offeringhim my card through the grille.
He bowed to me with the deference of a Latin, the grand manner of anambassador; but he made no motion to let me in.
"Mademoiselle," he replied, "sends all her excuses, all her regrets tomonsieur, but she leaves Paris within the hour and, therefore may notreceive."
I had feared it for a good sixty seconds. None the less, it was a blowto me. My suspicions, never more than half laid, promptly raised theirheads again.
"Have the kindness," I requested, with a calm air of command that I hadknown to prove hypnotic, "to convey my card to mademoiselle, and to saythat I beg of her, before her departure, one little instant of speech."
But the old fellow's faded blue eyes were gazing past me, hopelesslysad, supremely mournful. What the deuce ailed him? I wondered angrily.The thing was almost weird. Of a sudden, with irritation, yet withdread, too, I felt myself on the threshold of a house of tragedy. Theman might, from the look of him, have been watching some loved youngmaster's bier.
"Mademoiselle regrets greatly," he intoned, "but she may not receive.Mademoiselle sends this letter to monsieur that he may understand." Hepassed me, through the locked grille, a slender missive; then he salutedme once more and, still staring before him with that fixed, uncannylook, withdrew.