"They also eat snails," said her father.
"I have a snail farm," said Aristide. "You never saw such interesting
little animals. They are so intelligent. If you're kind to them they
come and eat out of your hand."
[Illustration: "AH! THE PICTURES," CRIED ARISTIDE, WITH A WIDE SWEEP
OF HIS ARMS]
"You've forgotten the pictures," said Mr. Smith.
"Ah! the pictures," cried Aristide, with a wide sweep of his arms.
"Galleries full of them. Raphael, Michael Angelo, Wiertz, Reynolds----"
He paused, not in order to produce the effect of a dramatic aposiopesis,
but because he could not for the moment remember other names of
painters.
"It is a truly historical chateau," said he.
"I should love to see it," said the girl.
Aristide threw out his arms across the table. "It is yours,
mademoiselle, for your honeymoon," said he.
Dinner came to an end. Miss Christabel left the gentlemen to their wine,
an excellent port whose English qualities were vaunted by the host.
Aristide, full of food and drink and the mellow glories of the castle in
Languedoc, and smoking an enormous cigar, felt at ease with all the
world. He knew he should like the kind Mr. Smith, hospitable though
somewhat insular man. He could stay with him for a week--or a month--why
not a year?
After coffee and liqueurs had been served Mr. Smith rose and switched on
a powerful electric light at the end of the large room, showing a
picture on an easel covered by a curtain. He beckoned to Aristide to
join him and, drawing the curtain, disclosed the picture.
"There!" said he. "Isn't it a stunner?"
It was a picture all grey skies and grey water and grey feathery trees,
and a little man in the foreground wore a red cap.
"It is beautiful, but indeed it is magnificent!" cried Aristide, always
impressionable to things of beauty.
"Genuine Corot, isn't it?"
"Without doubt," said Aristide.
His host poked him in the ribs. "I thought I'd astonish you. You
wouldn't believe Gottschalk could have done it. There it is--as large as
life and twice as natural. If you or anyone else can tell it from a
genuine Corot I'll eat my hat. And all for eight pounds."
Aristide looked at the beefy face and caught a look of cunning in the
little pig's eyes.
"Now are you satisfied?" asked Mr. Smith.
"More than satisfied," said Aristide, though what he was to be satisfied
about passed, for the moment, his comprehension.
"If it was a copy of an existing picture, you know--one might have
understood it--that, of course, would be dangerous--but for a man to go
and get bits out of various Corots and stick them together like this is
miraculous. If it hadn't been for a matter of business principle I'd
have given the fellow eight guineas instead of pounds--hanged if I
wouldn't! He deserves it."
"He does indeed," said Aristide Pujol.
"And now that you've seen it with your own eyes, what do you think you
might ask me for it? I suggested something between two and three
thousand--shall we say three? You're the owner, you know." Again the
process of rib-digging. "Came out of that historic chateau of yours. My
eye! you're a holy terror when you begin to talk. You almost persuaded
me it was real."
"_Tiens!_" said Aristide to himself. "I don't seem to have a chateau
after all."
"Certainly three thousand," said he, with a grave face.
"That young man thinks he knows a lot, but he doesn't," said Mr. Smith.
"Ah!" said Aristide, with singular laconicism.
"Not a blooming thing," continued his host. "But he'll pay three
thousand, which is the principal, isn't it? He's partner in the show,
you know, Ralston, Wiggins, and Wix's Brewery"--Aristide pricked up his
ears--"and when his doddering old father dies he'll be Lord Ranelagh and
come into a million of money."
"Has he seen the picture?" asked Aristide.
"Oh, yes. Regards it as a masterpiece. Didn't Brauneberger tell you of
the Lancret we planted on the American?" Mr. Smith rubbed hearty hands
at the memory of the iniquity. "Same old game. Always easy. I have
nothing to do with the bargaining or the sale. Just an old friend of
the ruined French nobleman with the historic chateau and family
treasures. He comes along and fixes the price. I told our friend
Harry----"
"Good," thought Aristide. "This is the same Honourable Harry, M.P., who
is engaged to the ravishing Miss Christabel."
"I told him," said Mr. Smith, "that it might come to three or four
thousand. He jibbed a bit--so when I wrote to you I said two or three.
But you might try him with three to begin with."
Aristide went back to the table and poured himself out a fresh glass of
his kind host's 1865 brandy and drank it off.
"Exquisite, my dear fellow," said he. "I've none finer in my historic
chateau."
"Don't suppose you have," grinned the host, joining him. He slapped him
on the back. "Well," said he, with a shifty look in his little pig's
eyes, "let us talk business. What do you think would be your fair
commission? You see, all the trouble and invention have been mine. What
do you say to four hundred pounds?"
"Five," said Aristide, promptly.
A sudden gleam came into the little pig's eyes.
"Done!" said Mr. Smith, who had imagined that the other would demand a
thousand and was prepared to pay eight hundred. "Done!" said he again.
They shook hands to seal the bargain and drank another glass of old
brandy. At that moment, a servant, entering, took the host aside.
"Please excuse me a moment," said he, and went with the servant out of
the room.
Aristide, left alone, lighted another of his kind host's fat cigars
and threw himself into a great leathern arm-chair by the fire, and
surrendered himself deliciously to the soothing charm of the moment. Now
and then he laughed, finding a certain comicality in his position. And
what a charming father-in-law, this kind Mr. Smith!
His cheerful reflections were soon disturbed by the sudden irruption of
his host and a grizzled, elderly, foxy-faced gentleman with a white
moustache, wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in the buttonhole
of his overcoat.
"Here, you!" cried the kind Mr. Smith, striding up to Aristide, with a
very red face. "Will you have the kindness to tell me who the devil you
are?"
Aristide rose, and, putting his hands behind the tails of his
frock-coat, stood smiling radiantly on the hearthrug. A wit much less
alert than my irresponsible friend's would have instantly appreciated
the fact that the real Simon Pure had arrived on the scene.
"I, my dear friend," said he, "am the Baron de Je ne Sais Plus."
"You're a confounded impostor," spluttered Mr. Smith.
"And this gentleman here to whom I have not had the pleasure of being
introduced?" asked Aristide, blandly.
"I am M. Poiron, monsieur, the agent of Messrs. Brauneberger and
Compagnie, art dealers, of the Rue Notre Dame des Petits Champs of
Paris," said the new-comer, with an air of defiance.
"Ah, I thought you were the Baron," said Aristide.
"There's no blooming Baron at all about it!" screamed Mr. Smith. "Are
you Poiron, or is he?"
"I would not have a name like Poiron for anything in the world," said
Aristide. "My name is Aristide Pujol, soldier of fortune, at your
service."
"How the blazes did you get here?"
"Your servant asked me if I was a French gentleman from Manchester. I
was. He said that Mr. Smith had sent his carriage for me. I thought it
hospitable of the kind Mr. Smith. I entered the carriage--_et voila!_"
"Then clear out of here this very minute," said Mr. Smith, reaching
forward his hand to the bell-push.
Aristide checked his impulsive action.
"Pardon me, dear host," said he. "It is raining dogs and cats outside. I
am very comfortable in your luxurious home. I am here, and here I
stay."
"I'm shot if you do," said the kind Mr. Smith, his face growing redder
and uglier. "Now, will you go out, or will you be thrown out?"
Aristide, who had no desire whatever to be ejected from this snug nest
into the welter of the wet and friendless world, puffed at his cigar,
and looked at his host with the irresistible drollery of his eyes.
"You forget, _mon cher ami_," said he, "that neither the beautiful Miss
Christabel nor her affianced, the Honourable Harry, M.P., would care to
know that the talented Gottschalk got only eight pounds, not even
guineas, for painting that three-thousand-pound picture."
"So it's blackmail, eh?"
"Precisely," said Aristide, "and I don't blush at it."
"You infernal little blackguard!"
"I seem to be in congenial company," said Aristide. "I don't think our
friend M. Poiron has more scruples than he has right to the ribbon of
the Legion of Honour which he is wearing."
"How much will you take to go out? I have a cheque-book handy."
Mr. Smith moved a few steps from the hearthrug. Aristide sat down in the
arm-chair. An engaging, fantastic impudence was one of the charms of
Aristide Pujol.
"I'll take five hundred pounds," said he, "to stay in."
"Stay in?" Mr. Smith grew apoplectic.
"Yes," said Aristide. "You can't do without me. Your daughter and your
servants know me as M. le Baron--by the way, what is my name? And where
is my historic chateau in Languedoc?"
"Mireilles," said M. Poiron, who was sitting grim and taciturn on one of
the dining-room chairs. "And the place is the same, near Montpellier."
"I like to meet an intelligent man," said Aristide.
"I should like to wring your infernal neck," said the kind Mr. Smith.
"But, by George, if we do let you in you'll have to sign me a receipt
implicating yourself up to the hilt. I'm not going to be put into the
cart by you, you can bet your life."
"Anything you like," said Aristide, "so long as we all swing together."
* * * * *
Now, when Aristide Pujol arrived at this point in his narrative I, his
chronicler, who am nothing if not an eminently respectable, law-abiding
Briton, took him warmly to task for his sheer absence of moral sense.
His eyes, as they sometimes did, assumed a luminous pathos.
[Illustration: "I'LL TAKE FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS," SAID HE, "TO STAY IN"]
"My dear friend," said he, "have you ever faced the world in a foreign
country in December with no character and fifteen pounds five and
three-pence in your pocket? Five hundred pounds was a fortune. It is
one now. And to be gained just by lending oneself to a good farce, which
didn't hurt anybody. You and your British morals! Bah!" said he, with a
fine flourish.
* * * * *
Aristide, after much parleying, was finally admitted into the nefarious
brotherhood. He was to retain his rank as the Baron de Mireilles, and
play the part of the pecuniarily inconvenienced nobleman forced to sell
some of his rare collection. Mr. Smith had heard of the Corot through
their dear old common friend, Jules Dancourt of Rheims, had mentioned it
alluringly to the Honourable Harry, had arranged for the Baron, who was
visiting England, to bring it over and dispatch it to Mr. Smith's house,
and on his return from Manchester to pay a visit to Mr. Smith, so that
he could meet the Honourable Harry in person. In whatever transaction
ensued Mr. Smith, so far as his prospective son-in-law was concerned,
was to be the purely disinterested friend. It was Aristide's wit which
invented a part for the supplanted M. Poiron. He should be the eminent
Parisian expert who, chancing to be in London, had been telephoned for
by the kind Mr. Smith.
"It would not be wise for M. Poiron," said Aristide, chuckling inwardly
with puckish glee, "to stay here for the night--or for two or three
days--or a week--like myself. He must go back to his hotel when the
business is concluded."
"_Mais, pardon!_" cried M. Poiron, who had been formally invited, and
had arrived late solely because he had missed his train at Manchester,
and come on by the next one. "I cannot go out into the wet, and I have
no hotel to go to."
Aristide appealed to his host. "But he is unreasonable, _cher ami_. He
must play his _role_. M. Poiron has been telephoned for. He can't
possibly stay here. Surely five hundred pounds is worth one little night
of discomfort? And there are a legion of hotels in London."
"Five hundred pounds!" exclaimed M. Poiron. "_Qu'est-ce que vous chantez
la?_ I want more than five hundred pounds."
"Then you're jolly well not going to get it," cried Mr. Smith, in a
rage. "And as for you"--he turned on Aristide--"I'll wring your infernal
neck yet."
"Calm yourself, calm yourself!" smiled Aristide, who was enjoying
himself hugely.
At this moment the door opened and Miss Christabel appeared. On seeing
the decorated stranger she started with a little "Oh!" of surprise.
"I beg your pardon."
Mr. Smith's angry face wreathed itself in smiles.
"This, my darling, is M. Poiron, the eminent Paris expert, who has been
good enough to come and give us his opinion on the picture."