The burning eyes of the Renault made the grim Boulevard Pierre Abel
almost hospitable. That was a conscientious man, Conrad Masters. How
glad I was of him at that moment! What had he said about Iris? something
about his having known her for years, something about “that year at
Deauville ... terrible for her.” That would mean, then, that Masters had
been there during the Boy Fenwick tragedy. Iris, poor Iris! Such
punishments ... for what crimes? What crimes deserved such punishments?
Iris, poor Iris! But she wouldn’t mind dying, not she. That was the
trouble, Masters had said. But no doubt she knew best....
The Paradis prison was a pit of blackness in the night. The dim lights
behind the iron-barred windows were out, and it was impossible not to
wonder if they slept up there in their iron cages, the wicked, the
foolish, the betrayed. Perhaps the nightingale in its cage did not care.
Perhaps those up there did not care, and slept like angels. But the
wrongly accused would not sleep, that was certain. Does innocence
wrongly-accused profit any one except a very wise man or a very good
man, except a man who cares nothing for the opinion of this world or one
who cares only for the love of the next? I said to the taxi-driver:
“Hell can know no torment like the agony of an innocent in a cage,” and
when he had carefully examined his tip he agreed with me.
Gently as I could, I rang the bell, praying that the old woman would
not be angry with me.
“_Aha!_” she chuckled. “_Aha! Monsieur-toujours-de-l’audace! Mais
entrez, monsieur, entrez!_ The doctor is just this moment arrived. Truly
he is a good man, this Dr. Mastaire--but our French doctors, you should
see! They come for a moment, they go, and she lives or she dies, what do
they care as long as they are paid? But this English doctor, he does not
know how to make money easily. Madame his wife was this moment
telephoning that he should go home quickly, for they are awaiting him
for _le bridge_. _Ah, cet bridge, bridge, bridge!_”
“But you see how anxious I am! Have you heard anything since I last saw
you?”
“To have heard nothing, young man, is to have heard good news. But sit
down, the doctor himself will tell you in one moment--” That demoniac
bell! It clanged through the place. Perhaps of all the nations in the
world the French alone are capable of fixing the loudest possible bell
to a nursing-home. The fat old woman grinned vindictively at me. We had
been enemies, now we were allies against the intruder. “Bah!” she said,
and opened the door. From where I stood I could not see who was without,
but I could hear a voice: low, hesitating, in very correct French, in
Foreign Office French....
“Napier!” ...
We stared at each other in the most profound surprise and confusion.
Napier, favourite of the gods, shy, sensitive, fine ... just here, just
now, facing me in the obscure silence of the Paris night!
“This is funny,” Napier made to smile. “What?”
Napier Harpenden and I had known each other well, as “well” goes, for
years, but never before had we been alone together. But once, some years
ago, I had seen him in a curious moment. Late one night I was walking
down a villainous alley near the East India Docks when through a lighted
window I was astonished to see Napier’s white, thin, fine face and those
dark fevered eyes. He was talking earnestly to an old man and a very
pretty young girl who was crying, and I felt ashamed to have seen him,
for that is how Napier affected one, you were hurt at the idea of
hurting him. I had wondered often what he could have been doing there,
what secret good work he was at. He was a strange, secret, saintly
youth, a favourite of the gods who never once relied on the favouritism
of gods or men....
He still stood outside, a serious slack shape in a tweed overcoat. He
masked, behind that faint, deprecating smile of his, more than the mere
confusion of surprise. He would very much rather it had not been me he
had met just there. Napier and I were friends only because all our
friends were mutual. We hadn’t ever found, tried to find, any common
ground for friendship. Sincerely, I was very sorry to be there. Napier
had that effect on one.
“Venice is waiting in the taxi,” he said. Whenever Napier and I met he
would instantly speak of Venice. This was to show me that he knew
Venice and I were great friends and that, if he and I weren’t great
friends, that must somehow be his fault. How could you help liking a man
like that? The courtesy of that favourite of the gods went so much
deeper than any one else’s: let it one day go a little deeper, and you
felt that it might have gone a little too deep, down, down to
self-destruction.
I said I had arrived in Paris only that afternoon, and had heard, by
chance, that Mrs. Storm was ill. My presence there seemed, you can see,
to require a more definite explanation than any he might think fit to
give me. One felt, with Napier, uncomfortably familiar to be asking
after Iris in this obscure place at this late hour. He and Iris had been
“kids.” Then I thought, comically, of the two scrawled names on the
grubby slip of paper. Well, I seemed to have rights too. More rights
than Napier, really. Conrad Masters had no instructions to be nice to
Napier. Poor Napier....
“But,” he said, slowly, slowly, “surely she’s better by now? I only just
called on the off-chance ... really wanted air after the train journey
more than anything else. Surely ... what?”
I stared at him. What to say? You see, the sudden, white way he was
staring at me made me feel terribly canny of anything I might say.
Besides, one treated Napier _differently_.
“Better?” I repeated. “Well....”
“But, look here,” he said, protested.... It was dark, there between the
dim lodge and the night. Why on earth didn’t the man come in? “Venice
and I are going south to-morrow, and I just thought I’d inquire--but,
look here, I never dreamt that she....”
I at last grasped the fact that he had known she was ill. He was the
only one among us who had known she was ill. One kid had known that the
other kid was ill ... and had waited until, on his way south, he could
conveniently come round and inquire. Well!
“You had better come in, hadn’t you?” I said. I simply couldn’t say
slap-out that Iris was ill nearly to death. You couldn’t say things like
that to those dark, troubled eyes. You protected Napier from your own
impulses, always. A favourite not of the gods alone....
But he still stood there in the darkness, staring at me very strangely
and scowling in that funny, attractive way he had. Whenever I think of
Napier I can see that Napier scowl and I can hear that involuntary
“what?” he would tack on to questions.
“Look here, something’s the matter.” His voice trembled absurdly....
“Something serious. What?”
“She’s very ill,” I think I said.
“Very!” he snapped. “What? You mean ... really ill? What?”
“I think so,” I said. “Yes.”
I looked into the room, avoiding those eyes. The lay sister, a pair of
horn spectacles on her nose, and without a sign of interest in us, was
mending the heel of a black woollen stocking, one end of which lay
coiled in a black tin box. I couldn’t somehow look at Napier just then.
That, you see, was the first hint I had of the thing, and though it was
no more than a hint, it tore at one. The look in Napier’s eyes, I mean.
The man’s heart was in his eyes....
“Look here,” he said sharply, “I don’t understand this. What? I mean,
I’d no idea it was....”
“I don’t know anything,” I said, “except just that she’s ill.” We stared
at each other.
“As ill,” I said, “as can be.”
“Oh,” he said. His eyes on me, not seeing me, he pushed past me through
the doorway. And when I saw his face again, I was appalled. It was lost,
abandoned, terribly unaware of everything but fear, it was enchanted by
fear. He simply didn’t _care_ but about one thing....
“Haven’t seen her,” he said, and scowled at me. Not that he had, at that
moment, the faintest idea who I was.
“Here, a cigarette,” I said.
He stared at it in his fingers. He crushed it....
“Haven’t seen her for nearly a year,” he said in a rush, and stopped
abruptly, seemed to realise me, scowled. “I say, what is it? Pneumonia
or something? What?”
I fumbled. I wasn’t, I said, certain. Had only seen the doctor for a
moment. Something inside, I thought, had gone wrong....
I was immensely lost in all this. He had known she was ill--but not
seriously ill, nor of what! I grabbed at one certain point of behaviour
for myself. One had to. I was, anyhow, going to make no mischief. Like
Guy, I would give no “gratuitous information” of any sort. For better or
for worse, I wouldn’t. News of septic poisoning was obviously not for
Napier, not for any one--except for the two names on the grubby slip of
paper. This septic poisoning seemed to mean only one of two things, a
child or not a child. That was most utterly Iris’s business. Iris the
desirous--for a child. “To be playmates with.” And I wondered, just
then, if it had been another Hector-not-so-proud. “Like to have a winner
once....” I kept on hearing that slightly husky voice saying little
things.
“What I mean to say is,” Napier said, with sudden astounding calm, “that
this is perfectly idiotic. What? You see, I hadn’t the faintest
idea....”
But when, deceived by the calm of his voice, I looked at him, I found it
better to look away again at the frowsty old lay-sister sewing away at
her stocking. It was mean to look at him, he was too naked. I realised
how masked we always are, how this is a world of masked men, how we are
masked all day long, even on the most trivial occasions. Then I felt his
hands suddenly tight around my arm. And tighter. Now what?
“I’m awfully sorry,” I said idiotically.
“Look here--I say, for God’s sake! You see, I don’t understand. What?
She wrote to me weeks ago that she was going to be just slightly ill,
and now....”
The fingers dropped from my arm. “Hell!” he muttered. “Oh, hell! What?”
He hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was saying. I wished to God he
had, I didn’t want to listen to him, I hated listening to him, it was
like spying on the man. Spying on Tristram wandering in the forest
raving with love for Yseult. But what could I do? How leave him like
this? How let him return to Venice like this? Good Lord, and Venice
waiting in the taxi! If she saw him like this.... Good Lord, was the man
mad to have brought Venice with him! Here, to see Iris! The misty
impulses of a man of honour ... do nothing behind his wife’s back.
After, you know, having done everything. But ... Good Lord, if Venice
grew tired of waiting in the taxi and came and found Napier like this,
like a demented knight in a story! Venice of the lion’s cub head, the
mischievous, loyal eyes, dear Venice! adoring and adorable Venice!
Napier’s wife....
And, at that moment, I saw Venice again at the Loyalty, that night ten
months ago, happily waiting for Napier, whose wife she would be in three
days. “Darling, darling, _darling_!” That night of Gerald’s death! And
then for the first time I remembered the cry of “Iris!” in the night,
and the two red rear-lights swerving into South Audley Street, and I
understood how it was that Iris in her letter had called me her
“destroyer” ... her “destroyer” with love, for no lover could have
passed her way that night had I told her about Gerald. And Napier had
passed her way, Napier whom she had seen that night for the first time
in many years, Napier her ancient friend. “There were two roads leading
from a certain tree....” And the two roads had come together in the
darkness of that night, in the darkness of cruelly blind chance, and now
they had come together again in the darkness of this night, while Venice
waited outside....
I couldn’t, you can see, not do anything just then. I couldn’t let this
love-lost man be found by Venice in her husband’s shoes. Napier and
Venice, the happy lovers.... I was on Venice’s side. For Venice! Always,
I was for Venice. One likes so few people, but one likes those few very,
very much. This love-lost man must be woken up, must _behave_. Of course
he must behave! Venice, for Venice! How dared he have done this to
Venice? Marrying her on the third day from that night....
I asked him where he was staying, and when he said “the Meurice,” I told
him that if he would go now I could ring him up when I had seen the
doctor. “It’s no good waiting here,” I said. “I know the doctor.”
He stared at me with the immense, the devastating, dignity of the
utterly careless. I bitterly wanted to wake him up, to make him see the
thing he had done, the beastly thing. For Venice! “It’s no good,” I said
cruelly, “keeping Venice waiting for ever....”
He scowled at me, or at something just behind my shoulder. “I’m going to
see Iris,” he said.
It was quite definite, he was going to see Iris. It would probably, I
supposed, do Iris all the good in the world to see Napier on this
critical night. Napier and Iris. It might make her care whether she
lived or died ... but why shouldn’t she die? Venice would condemn her to
die. Iris was the foe. Why shouldn’t she die? You can’t do things like
that, and not die. Stealing like a little thief into the garden of
Venice, and stealing away like a little thief ... to bear Napier’s
child, unknown to Napier....
“Hell!” he muttered. I stared at him, at those burning, broken eyes.
“Hell!” he said. “Oh, God, what hell! What? If you only knew....”
“I don’t want to know,” I snapped. Well, did one want to know? But he
didn’t hear, didn’t care, didn’t see. Being with him, you can see, was
exactly like eavesdropping. Why, if Venice came in and saw this
love-lost man ... her Napier, her darling, like this, with burning
broken eyes. But there are some things that can’t happen! You couldn’t
take Napier from Venice. And how quickly, how poignantly, Venice, if she
saw him like this, would know the difference between his easy, smiling
love for her and this ... damnable madness.
But in the dark taxi she wouldn’t see his face, and I was just about to
try again to get him away when he said fiercely: “It’s not as though I
don’t know anything about it. Or do you think Iris is a liar? What?”
“Napier, you really must pull yourself together--”
“No, but any one would think I was a most fearful cad. What?”
And he scowled, in that Napier way of his that made one want to forgive
him everything. “I mean, not coming before, seeing she’s so ill ...
waiting all this time, and coming just now. Why, she wrote to me four
weeks ago, saying she was going to be just slightly ill and have a rest
for a week or two, so of course--Oh, look here, here’s the letter,
you’ll see for yourself--”
“But I don’t want to see for myself. Steady, man! I quite understand. Of
course you couldn’t know....”
“No, but look here, you’ll see....”
Feverishly he began fumbling in his inside-pockets, pulling out papers,
a pocket-book, passports....
Venice could be very still. I imagined her in the doorway, looking at
Napier in this state. She would be very still, and in her stillness she
would be destroyed. Venice was jealous, so jealous and possessive. “Got
to be with Napier,” she had pleaded to me once. “You don’t know what
he’s thinking about half the time, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing
the other half.”
Some of the papers dropped to the floor, and I picked them up and thrust
them into his gaping pocket. The old nun smiled at me over her
spectacles, and then looked at Napier and tapped her forehead. But you
could see she liked the looks of Napier. “_Quelle belle silhouette!_”
she grinned. I don’t believe that Napier to this day knows there was any
one but our two selves in that lodge.
He waved a white thing covered with scrawled pencil-marks, and beside it
I somehow saw that letter from a draughty house on a hill of strangled
olives. But between the two came the vision of Venice destroyed.
“I don’t want to read it, Napier. I quite understand. What on earth
does it matter whether you knew or not, so long as you know now?”
“Thinks a lot of you,” he said darkly. “Told me, last time I saw
her....”
He passed a hand over his mouth. I said: “But....”
“Beastly,” he said, looking at me with enormous, dark surprise. “That’s
what I feel. Beastly. As though my skin was a dirty shirt. Ever get
that? I mean, here she’s dying, and I ... God, how one gets to know
oneself! What? But I’d like you to see. I mean, since it’s you. She
thinks a lot of you, I know she does. Thinks you’re nice. Funny how she
says that, ‘nice.’ What? But what’s she want to lie for? Iris never
lies. Never. That’s what beats me. I mean, why, to me? What? Go on,
you’ll see....”
Crumpled the letter was, but he had, in a sort of way, smoothed it out.
I stared at it. I had to, for he was watching me with those ruined,
pleading eyes. The greyhound unleashed....
“She’s dying.” I heard his voice from miles away. “You can’t tell me!
She’s dying....”
“She won’t die,” I said firmly, glad to look up from the letter. And,
you know, I was quite certain at that moment that she wouldn’t die. The
beloved of the favourite of the gods wouldn’t die. The favourites of the
gods are not let off so easily. Oh, she wouldn’t die! It would be too
easy to die. “The Marches are never let off anything....”
I stared at the crumpled-looking thing in my hand. I didn’t read it. The
poor devil was only showing me the thing because, at that lost moment,
he was starving for understanding, for any one’s understanding, after
these ten months of silence, of Venice-Napier-Iris silence....
I couldn’t, merely from the wretched fact of staring at the thing
blankly, avoid the first few lines of that schoolgirl scrawl. “Napier, I
have to go to a nursing-home for a few weeks’ rest. Napier, dear Napier!
I’ve tried not to write, you know I have, just as we promised, but as we
are never to meet again I’d like you to pray----”
That is all I read, and there I stood, staring at that crumpled letter
like an idiot. “As we are never to meet again....”
Figures moved, I could see them, hear them, their cries, laughter,
silences. Their silences. Napier, Venice, Iris. They had come together,
blindly, desperately. By chance--but it is written in vinegar that there
is no such thing as chance. And I, why, I had been appointed, a silly
finger of fate, to make “chance” more sure! They had come together,
those three, propelled to each other from darkness for darkness’s sake.
The weak to the weak, the strong in chains. Always that is the way of
things, and for no reason at all except life’s most damnable unfairness,
which is for ever saying: the weak shall be made weaker, the strong
shall be destroyed. Venice was strong, strong as gold, in loyalty and
love. Incorruptible, golden Venice! Salute to Venice! So, said the
Prince of Darkness, she must be destroyed, and to destroy her in the
most efficient and painful way Napier must see Iris, unseen since
girlhood, a grown-up Napier must see a grown-up Iris, a youth curiously
sensible to the pitiful must suddenly see an Iris wrapped in tragedy and
scandal, a helpless, hopeless, unhappy woman--the favourite of the gods
and the poor shameless, shameful lady! And it was arranged, the
destruction of Venice, to begin with a sudden, surprised cry of “Iris!”
in the night, and then, behold! two cars would sweep through the silent
streets into the heart of the dark forest of London, even to Napier’s
small toy house in Brompton Square. Oh, how clearly one could see them,
hear them, those friends of long ago. Clear to see they were, fumbling
with their lives in the darkness of all life, most emphatically not
talking of love, most emphatically being old friends. Clear to see,
those two, Napier and Iris, the ancient friends. Maybe, to make chance
more sure and flesh more weak, which is a jesting habit of the fallen
archangel’s, they had been in love long ago and had been unhappy and had
parted. The queer death of Boy Fenwick would have come between a boy and
girl love, and across the wide gulf that separates a young man of
consequence from a lady of pleasure they would not have seen each other
for a long time. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.” And
one might hear Napier that night, not this love-lost thing, but the
favourite of the gods, happy on the wings of an ancient friendship,
pulling at Iris’s arm to persuade her out of her car: “Iris, come in for
a moment. Oh, come along, Iris! I know how fond you are of a nice glass
of cold water, and I have some of the most superior cold water in
London. What? And we’ll never have another chance to talk again....” And
Iris, Iris of the lament for a child! Iris had lit a flame and was like
to be burnt to death in the cold fires of that flame. Iris had lit a
flame, and the flames that Iris lit seemed quenchable only by death. Boy
and Iris. Hector and Iris. Napier and Iris. But Napier could not die,
favoured of the gods. Iris could not die, “for the Marches are never let
off anything,” and so it would be the younger brother of
Hector-not-so-proud who must die, who must have died, thoughtfully
trying to tempt his mother into the carelessness of death.
The lay-sister had gone into the other room, which must have been a sort
of kitchen, and Napier had taken her chair. He sat there, shadowed with
whiteness, scowling into the black tin box.
“I see,” I said. “Of course....” I made him take the letter back, and
suddenly he looked up at me intently. He’d find out something, he would.
“She is dying, isn’t she? You’re certain yourself, aren’t you? What?”
“The doctor should be in in a moment, and you can ask him. No, I don’t
think she’s dying. My sister had the same sort of thing, and she’s
dancing at the moment--”
“Same sort of--what thing, then? What?”
A _gaffe_, a _faux pas_, a bloomer! He scowled up at me, blackly
intent....
“Ptomaine poisoning,” I said.
“Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God! What? Poison....”
He stared at the letter which I had put into his hand. He turned it
about, and seemed to think profoundly. “You see,” he muttered, “it’s all
wrong, this. All wrong. What?”
I wasn’t cast for a moralist. What I said, very uncomfortably, was:
“Well....”
“All this messing about,” Napier scowled at the letter. Then he looked
at me, darkly, helplessly.
“Get let in for things,” he said.
“Difficult,” I said. “I know....”
“God, isn’t it! Difficult.... What? I mean, when you want to be ...
well, when you want to live clean. We promised, oh God, yes! not to
write, never to meet.... Must live clean, you see. What? There isn’t,
when you come to think of it, any other way _to_ live....”
“Guy says that....”
“Guy? Yes, but ... need guts like Guy’s, don’t you? What? Look here,” he
suddenly waved the letter at me, “will you go out and keep Venice
company for a moment? I mean, see what she’s doing? And I’ll see the
doctor fellow and make him let me see Iris for a moment. Promise wiped
out by approach of death.... What? I mean, lonely for her here.... Told
me, last time I saw her that she was lonely. Hurts, loneliness. What?
And then I find her in this hole....”
He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there,
that pencilled scrawl. Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left
lying about for years, then bursting. What fools men were, keeping
letters ... travelling about with them, sticking them into their
coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter ... just a few lines of it.
Whether Iris lived or died ... suppose Venice saw just a few lines of
that letter. For Venice....
“Napier,” I said.
He stared at me, extraordinarily handsome at that moment, and I remember
thinking just then of what is always said, that women are not very
attracted by good-looking men. But what is always said must be wrong.
“I say,” he said, “got a cigarette? What?”
“Napier,” I said, “give me that letter....”
“Or,” I said, “have two matches to your cigarette....”
A tiny smile fluttered round the thin quivering lips. “There’s no end to
it,” he whispered, “is there? Once you begin. The nasty precautions....”
He struck a match, and the flame lit the ruin in his dark, fevered eyes.
“You can’t,” he said, “have anything cleaner than love. You can’t. This
love, anyway. Clean ... clean as the Virgin Mary. And then ... you’re
dogged by dirt. You think fine things, fine sacrifices ... and you’re
dirty as all Sodom and Gomorrah. All this nastiness round a thing, all
this messing about....”
It was as the letter burnt in his hand and fluttered, just like a hurt
crow, to the floor, while he watched it with intent seriousness, that I
heard a step by the door in the other room. To see Conrad Masters alone,
I hurried towards it. There he was, tired, worried-looking, his sharp
features sticking like a great bird’s out of that rough brown coat.
“Bad,” he muttered. “Can’t do more. She’s conscious, too. And doesn’t
give a damn. Not a damn. I told her you were here, and she said ‘Nice’
to that, but didn’t seem to think you were worth living for. Need a
miracle now.... ‘Nice!’”
“But, good God,” I said, “we’ve got a miracle here! He’s a bit mad, but
miracle is his second name....”
“And what’s his first?” Masters snapped.
“Harpenden....”
“First name, Christian name,” said Masters wearily. “Napier, by any
chance?”
“You’re right,” said Masters. A decidedly undecided man? Why, he
radiated resolution: and a lean sort of mirth. “Never know your luck,”
he said. “Not in this world....” I just managed to catch him by the coat
as he plunged towards the other room, in which one could make out the
tail of Napier’s coat. “Masters,” I whispered, “I went and told him it
was ptomaine poisoning....”
“Good,” said Masters. Those gentle worried eyes with the faintly amused
look. “That’s all right,” he smiled. “Young ass.”
There sat Napier, a lost man....
“Come along,” Masters jabbed at him. “Come along, man! Waive
introduction. Life and death....”
Napier jumped up. Masters looked almost fresh and boyish beside him. A
captain of men, that was Conrad Masters.
“I say,” Napier said....
“Look here,” said Masters, “I’m taking you in to cheer her up. Might
make all the difference. Just might....”
Napier tried to smile. Oh, he tried.
“But, doctor,” he said. “Is she ... going?”
“She wants to go, that’s the trouble. Any one would think,” snapped that
captain of men, “that I was committing a felony in trying to keep her
alive. By the way she looks at me. You’ve got to cheer her up, Mr.
eh....”
“Captain Harpenden,” I said.
“You’ve got to make her care whether she lives or dies. That’s your
business, Captain Harpenden. I’ll give you five minutes to do it in....”
Napier looked from him to me. He scowled immensely.
“I’ll go out to Venice,” I said, but I don’t suppose that Napier,
passing me, heard a word. Conrad Masters stayed a second. Gone was the
captain of men. He looked terribly worried....
“I say, want to play bridge?”
“Bridge!” I said. “Bridge? Bridge!”
He looked terribly worried....
“Well, my wife wants--Oh, wait till I’m back! I’ll drop you anyway.” And
he was off, his brown coat flouncing peevishly. Through the open door I
could see Napier, his coat open, everything about him open, standing in
what looked like a wide courtyard....
“_Mais quelle belle silhouette!_” chattered the old nun. “_Le vrai type
brun anglais. Mais c’est naturel qu’il soit fou avec ces yeux là_....”
Napier and Conrad Masters walked across the courtyard towards a tall
red-looking building. Its door was pointed like a church door, and
windows here and there were alight. Through one of them a nun was
looking at me. On the sill outside the largest window of all, which was
not alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.
V
After that chill, stuffy lodge the night was like a kiss. The dark
shapes of Masters’s Renault and Napier’s taxi faced each other, their
dimmed lamps lighting only the darkness. The chauffeur of the Renault
looked to be asleep at the wheel. I hoped Venice was asleep, too. The
driver of the taxi was nowhere to be seen, and stealthily I was
approaching the dark shape of the taxi, mentally communicating to Venice
that it would be only decent of her to be asleep, when the taxi-driver
emerged from the malodorous shape of the _lavabo_. “_Elle dorme, je
crois_,” the fool shouted at the top of his voice, and I bolted into the
capacious Renault.
“Sorry to wake you,” came the mutter of Conrad Masters from the open
door. “Where are you staying?”
Through the front window I saw the door of the taxi close. Napier would
tell Venice he had seen me, and she would be surprised I had not spoken
with her. “You were asleep,” Napier would say, but she would still be
surprised....
“Look here,” Masters said persuasively, one foot on the footboard, “why
not come to my place for a while? Come along, it won’t kill you. A
night-hawk like you. My wife has a party of some sort. Dancing, bridge,
Parisian-Americans....”
Dancing, bridge, Parisian-Americans! The end of a perfect day....
“It’s another form of septic poisoning,” I pleaded. “Take me to the
Westminster, Masters, and let me sleep. And you’d better get a room
there as well and spend the night in peace....”
The taxi in front of us bumped and rattled away. Masters muttered
wearily: “Well, I will probably have to take a hand if you don’t. Most
of ’em dance, but I left three bridge maniacs stranded to come on here.
They stay up to all hours, the blighters....”
Smoothly the Renault picked its way among the pits and chasms of the
fearful boulevards of outer Paris. “Their last chance of ever being
mended,” Masters muttered, “went when the Germans lost the war....”
“All right,” I said sulkily, “I’ll come. Bridge, dancing,
Parisian-Americans.... What a monstrous life you lead, Masters. But what
about that miracle?”
“Can’t tell,” he muttered. “Can’t tell. Seemed bucked up a bit, of
course. Took notice, recognised him, and that’s something. But you can’t
tell....”
“She’ll live,” I said.
“I’m glad you’re so certain,” snapped the captain of men. “I’m so little
certain that I put that young man on his honour to look round again
to-morrow afternoon.”
“On his honour!” I said. “On his honour?”
“What’s the matter with his honour? Looks all right to me....”
“But he’s going South in the morning!”
“He mustn’t go!” snapped Masters. “That’ll be your job. We must give her
one more chance ... one more _piqure_. It’s essential that he shouldn’t
go to-morrow. You must prevent him.”
“I’ll try,” I said “But....”
“But surely he won’t _want_ to go!”
“Oh, _he_ won’t want to go....”
Masters stared at me thoughtfully. “Um,” he said. “Um.”
“Of course,” I said, “you never know....”
“Well,” said Masters, “now she’s seen him once she’ll expect to see him
again. It’s only natural.”
“Of course,” I said. “Naturally....”
Smoothly ran the Renault with the scarlet wheels. The black lion found
in us no little Citroën, cowered before us, slunk back into the jungle
of nameless boulevards. Montparnasse showed lights to hold us, faces in
cafés, singing groups of young men, little flashing women with lots of
hair like dyed haloes. Artists. Swiftly we fled through the darkness,
the stillness, the deep shadows of the phantom fortress of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, away we went from the _ancien régime_, the _haute
noblesse_, across the river to the _nouveau régime_, the _noblesse_,
down the stately slope of the Avenue Hoche into the sweet valley of the
Parc Monceau, where lived the dashing Mrs. Conrad Masters, with bridge,
dancing, Parisian-Americans....
“You can’t,” that man muttered, “expect her to be reasonable....”
“No,” I said, “I suppose not....”
“Nice!” snapped Masters “Good God, ‘nice’!”