--Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?
He went toward Pierce but he was engaged with a woman, and Dick saw with his heels that he would have to present his check to Casasus at the next desk, who was free.
"How are you, Diver?" Casasus was genial. He stood up, his mustache spreading with his smile. "We were talking about Featherstone the other day and I thought of you--he's out in California now."
Dick widened his eyes and bent forward a little.
"In California?"
"That's what I heard."
Dick held the check poised; to focus the attention of Casasus upon it he looked toward Pierce's desk, holding the latter for a moment in a friendly eye-play conditioned by an old joke of three years before when Pierce had been involved with a Lithuanian countess. Pierce played up with a grin until Casasus had authorized the check and had no further recourse to detain Dick, whom he liked, than to stand up holding his pince-nez and repeat, "Yes, he's in California."
Meanwhile Dick had seen that Perrin, at the head of the line of desks, was in conversation with the heavyweight champion of the world; from a sidesweep of Perrin's eye Dick saw that he was considering calling him over and introducing him, but that he finally decided against it.
Cutting across the social mood of Casasus with the intensity he had accumulated at the glass desk--which is to say he looked hard at the check, studying it, and then fixed his eyes on grave problems beyond the first marble pillar to the right of the banker's head and made a business of shifting the cane, hat, and letters he carried--he said good-by and went out. He had long ago purchased the doorman; his taxi sprang to the curb.
"I want to go to the Films Par Excellence Studio--it's on a little street in Passy. Go to the Muette. I'll direct you from there."
He was rendered so uncertain by the events of the last forty-eight hours that he was not even sure of what he wanted to do; he paid off the taxi at the Muette and walked in the direction of the studio, crossing to the opposite side of the street before he came to the building. Dignified in his fine clothes, with their fine accessories, he was yet swayed and driven as an animal. Dignity could come only with an overthrowing of his past, of the effort of the last six years. He went briskly around the block with the fatuousness of one of Tarkington's22 adolescents hurrying at the blind places lest he miss Rosemary's coming out of the studio. It was a melancholy neighborhood. Next door to the place he saw a sign: "1000 chemises." The shirts filled the window, piled, cravated, stuffed, or draped with shoddy grace on the showcase floor: "1000 chemises"--count them! On either side he read: "Papeterie," "Patisserie," "Solde," "Reclame"--and Constance Talmadge in "Dejeuner de Soleil," and farther away there were more sombre announcements: "Vetements Ecclesiastiques," "Declaration de Deces" and "Pompes Funebres." Life and death.
He knew that what he was now doing marked a turning point in his life--it was out of line with everything that had preceded it--even out of line with what effect he might hope to produce upon Rosemary. Rosemary saw him always as a model of correctness--his presence walking around this block was an intrusion. But Dick's necessity of behaving as he did was a projection of some submerged reality: he was compelled to walk there, or stand there, his shirt-sleeve fitting his wrist and his coat sleeve encasing his shirt-sleeve like a sleeve valve, his collar molded plastically to his neck, his red hair cut exactly, his hand holding his small briefcase like a dandy--just as another man once found it necessary to stand in front of a church in Ferrara,23 in sackcloth and ashes. Dick was paying some tribute to things unforgotten, unshriven, unexpurgated.
XXI
AFTER three-quarters of an hour of standing around, he became suddenly involved in a human contact. It was just the sort of thing that was likely to happen to him when he was in the mood of not wanting to see any one. So rigidly did he sometimes guard his exposed self-consciousness that frequently he defeated his own purposes; as an actor who underplays a part sets up a craning forward, a stimulated emotional attention in an audience, and seems to create in others an ability to bridge the gap he has left open. Similarly we are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity--we reserve this for those who, by other means, make us exercise the abstract function of pity.
So Dick might, himself, have analyzed the incident that ensued. As he paced the rue des Saints Anges he was spoken to by a thin-faced American, perhaps thirty, with an air of being scarred and a slight but sinister smile. As Dick gave him the light he requested, he placed him as one of a type of which he had been conscious since early youth--a type that loafed about tobacco stores with one elbow on the counter and watched, through heaven knew what small chink of the mind, the people who came in and out. Intimate to garages, where he had vague business conducted in undertones, to barber shops, to the lobbies of theatres--in such places, at any rate, Dick placed him. Sometimes the face bobbed up in one of Tad's24 more savage cartoons--in boyhood Dick had often thrown an uneasy glance at the dim borderland of crime on which he stood.
"How do you like Paris, Buddy?"
Not waiting for an answer the man tried to fit in his footsteps with Dick's: "Where you from?" he asked encouragingly.
"From Buffalo."
"I'm from San Antone--but I been over here since the war."
"You in the army?"
"I'll say I was. Eighty-fourth Division--ever heard of that outfit?"
The man walked a little ahead of him and fixed him with eyes that were practically menacing.
"Staying in Paris awhile, Buddy? Or just passing through?"
"Passing through."
"What hotel you staying at?"
Dick had begun laughing to himself--the party had the intention of rifling his room that night. His thoughts were read apparently without self-consciousness.
"With a build like yours you oughtn't to be afraid of me, Buddy. There's a lot of bums around just laying for American tourists, but you needn't be afraid of me."
Becoming bored, Dick stopped walking: "I just wonder why you've got so much time to waste."
"I'm in business here in Paris."
"In what line?"
"Selling papers."
The contrast between the formidable manner and the mild profession was absurd--but the man amended it with:
"Don't worry; I made plenty money last year--ten or twenty francs for a Sunny Times that cost six."
He produced a newspaper clipping from a rusty wallet and passed it over to one who had become a fellow stroller--the cartoon showed a stream of Americans pouring from the gangplank of a liner freighted with gold.
"Two hundred thousand--spending ten million a summer."
"What you doing out here in Passy?"
His companion looked around cautiously. "Movies," he said darkly. "They got an American studio over there. And they need guys can speak English. I'm waiting for a break."
Dick shook him off quickly and firmly.
It had become apparent that Rosemary either had escaped on one of his early circuits of the block or else had left before he came into the neighborhood; he went into the bistro on the corner, bought a lead disk and, squeezed in an alcove between the kitchen and the foul toilet, he called the Roi George. He recognized Cheyne-Stokes tendencies25 in his respiration--but like everything the symptom served only to turn him in toward his emotion. He gave the number of the hotel; then stood holding the phone and staring into the cafe; after a long while a strange little voice said hello.
"This is Dick--I had to call you."
A pause from her--then bravely, and in key with his emotion: "I'm glad you did."
"I came to meet you at your studio--I'm out in Passy across the way from it. I thought maybe we'd ride around through the Bois."
"Oh, I only stayed there a minute! I'm so sorry." A silence.
"Rosemary."
"Yes, Dick."
"Look, I'm in an extraordinary condition about you. When a child can disturb a middle-aged gent--things get difficult."
"You're not middle-aged, Dic
k--you're the youngest person in the world."
"Rosemary?" Silence while he stared at a shelf that held the humbler poisons of France--bottles of Otard, Rhum St. James, Marie Brizard, Punch Orangeade, Fernet Branca, Cherry Rocher, and Armagnac.
"Are you alone?"
--Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?
"Who do you think I'd be with?"
"That's the state I'm in. I'd like to be with you now."
Silence, then a sigh and an answer. "I wish you were with me now."
There was the hotel room where she lay behind a telephone number, and little gusts of music wailed around her--
"And two--for tea.
And me for you,
And you for me
Alow-own."
There was the remembered dust of powder over her tan--when he kissed her face it was damp around the corners of her hair; there was the flash of a white face under his own, the arc of a shoulder.
"It's impossible," he said to himself. In a minute he was out in the street marching along toward the Muette, or away from it, his small briefcase still in his hand, his gold-headed stick held at a sword-like angle.
Rosemary returned to her desk and finished a letter to her mother.
"--I only saw him for a little while but I thought he was wonderful looking. I fell in love with him (Of course I Do Love Dick Best but you know what I mean). He really is going to direct the picture and is leaving immediately for Hollywood, and I think we ought to leave, too. Collis Clay has been here. I like him all right but have not seen much of him because of the Divers, who really are divine, about the Nicest People I ever Knew. I am feeling not very well to-day and am taking the Medicine, though see No need for it. I'm not even Going to Try to tell you All that's Happened until I see You!!! So when you get this letter wire, wire, wire! Are you coming north or shall I come south with the Divers?"
At six Dick called Nicole.
"Have you any special plans?" he asked. "Would you like to do something quiet--dinner at the hotel and then a play?"
"Would you? I'll do whatever you want. I phoned Rosemary a while ago and she's having dinner in her room. I think this upset all of us, don't you?"
"It didn't upset me," he objected. "Darling, unless you're physically tired let's do something. Otherwise we'll get south and spend a week wondering why we didn't see Boucher. It's better than brooding----"
This was a blunder and Nicole took him up sharply.
"Brooding about what?"
"About Maria Wallis."
She agreed to go to a play. It was a tradition between them that they should never be too tired for anything, and they found it made the days better on the whole and put the evenings more in order. When, inevitably, their spirits flagged they shifted the blame to the weariness and fatigue of others. Before they went out, as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris, they knocked softly at Rosemary's door. There was no answer; judging that she was asleep they walked into a warm strident Paris night, snatching a vermouth and bitters in the shadow by Fouquet's bar.
XXII
NICOLE awoke late, murmuring something back into her dream before she parted her long lashes tangled with sleep. Dick's bed was empty--only after a minute did she realize that she had awakened by a knock at their salon door.
"Entrez!" she called, but there was no answer, and after a moment she slipped on a dressing-gown and went to open it. A sergent de ville confronted her courteously and stepped inside the door.
"Mr. Afghan North--he is here?"
"What? No--he's gone to America."
"When did he leave, Madame?"
"Yesterday morning."
He shook his head and waved his forefinger at her in a quicker rhythm.
"He was in Paris last night. He is registered here but his room is not occupied. They told me I had better ask at this room."
"Sounds very peculiar to me--we saw him off yesterday morning on the boat train."
"Be that as it may, he has been seen here this morning. Even his carte d'identite has been seen. And there you are."
"We know nothing about it," she proclaimed in amazement.
He considered. He was an ill-smelling, handsome man.
"You were not with him at all last night?"
"But no."
"We have arrested a Negro. We are convinced we have at last arrested the correct Negro."
"I assure you that I haven't an idea what you're talking about. If it's the Mr. Abraham North, the one we know, well, if he was in Paris last night we weren't aware of it."
The man nodded, sucked his upper lip, convinced but disappointed.
"What happened?" Nicole demanded.
He showed his palms, puffing out his closed mouth. He had begun to find her attractive and his eyes flickered at her.
"What do you wish, Madame? A summer affair. Mr. Afghan North was robbed and he made a complaint. We have arrested the miscreant. Mr. Afghan should come to identify him and make the proper charges."
Nicole pulled her dressing-gown closer around her and dismissed him briskly. Mystified she took a bath and dressed. By this time it was after ten and she called Rosemary but got no answer--then she phoned the hotel office and found that Abe had indeed registered, at six-thirty this morning. His room, however, was still unoccupied. Hoping for a word from Dick she waited in the parlor of the suite; just as she had given up and decided to go out, the office called and announced:
"Meestaire Crawshow, un negre."
"On what business?" she demanded.
"He says he knows you and the doctaire. He says there is a Meestaire Freeman into prison that is a friend of all the world. He says there is injustice and he wishes to see Meestaire North before he himself is arrested."
"We know nothing about it." Nicole disclaimed the whole business with a vehement clap of the receiver. Abe's bizarre reappearance made it plain to her how fatigued she was with his dissipation. Dismissing him from her mind she went out, ran into Rosemary at the dressmaker's, and shopped with her for artificial flowers and all-colored strings of colored beads on the rue de Rivoli. She helped Rosemary choose a diamond for her mother, and some scarfs and novel cigarette cases to take home to business associates in California. For her son she bought Greek and Roman soldiers, a whole army of them, costing over a thousand francs. Once again they spent their money in different ways, and again Rosemary admired Nicole's method of spending. Nicole was sure that the money she spent was hers--Rosemary still thought her money was miraculously lent to her and she must consequently be very careful of it.
It was fun spending money in the sunlight of the foreign city, with healthy bodies under them that sent streams of color up to their faces; with arms and hands, legs and ankles that they stretched out confidently, reaching or stepping with the confidence of women lovely to men.
When they got back to the hotel and found Dick, all bright and new in the morning, both of them had a moment of complete childish joy.
He had just received a garbled telephone call from Abe who so it appeared, had spent the forenoon in hiding.
"It was one of the most extraordinary telephone conversations I've ever held."
Dick had talked not only to Abe but to a dozen others. On the phone these supernumeraries had been typically introduced as: "--man wants to talk to you is in the Teput Dome,26 well he says he was in it--what is it?
"Hey, somebody, shut-up--anyhow, he was in some shandel-scandal and he kaa possibly go home. My own personal is that--my personal is he's had a--" Gulps sounded and thereafter what the party had, rested with the unknown.
The phone yielded up a supplementary offer:
"I thought it would appeal to you anyhow as a psychologist." The vague personality who corresponded to this statement was eventually hung on to the phone; in the sequence he failed to appeal to Dick, as a psychologist, or indeed as anything else. Abe's conversation flowed on as follows:
"Hello."
"Well?"
"Well, hello."
"
Who are you?"
"Well." There were interpolated snorts of laughter.
"Well, I'll put somebody else on the line."
Sometimes Dick could hear Abe's voice, accompanied by scufflings, droppings of the receiver, faraway fragments such as, "No, I don't, Mr. North...." Then a pert decided voice had said: "If you are a friend of Mr. North you will come down and take him away."
Abe cut in, solemn and ponderous, beating it all down with an overtone of earth-bound determination.
"Dick, I've launched a race riot in Montmartre. I'm going over and get Freeman out of jail. If a Negro from Copenhagen that makes shoe polish--hello, can you hear me--well, look, if anybody comes there--" Once again the receiver was a chorus of innumerable melodies.
"Why you back in Paris?" Dick demanded.
"I got as far as Evreux, and I decided to take a plane back so I could compare it with St. Sulpice. I mean I don't intend to bring St. Sulpice back to Paris. I don't even mean Baroque! I meant St. Germain. For God's sake, wait a minute and I'll put the chasseur on the wire."
"For God's sake, don't."
"Listen--did Mary get off all right?"
"Yes."
"Dick, I want you to talk with a man I met here this morning, the son of a naval officer that's been to every doctor in Europe. Let me tell you about him----"
Dick had rung off at this point--perhaps that was a piece of ingratitude for he needed grist for the grinding activity of his mind.
"Abe used to be so nice," Nicole told Rosemary. "So nice. Long ago--when Dick and I were first married. If you had known him then. He'd come to stay with us for weeks and weeks and we scarcely knew he was in the house. Sometimes he'd play--sometimes he'd be in the library with a muted piano, making love to it by the hour--Dick, do you remember that maid? She thought he was a ghost and sometimes Abe used to meet her in the hall and moo at her, and it cost us a whole tea service once--but we didn't care."