THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS
If John Turner expected Colville to bring Loo Barebone with him to the
Rue Lafayette he was, in part, disappointed. Colville arrived in a hired
carriage, of which the blinds were partially lowered.
The driver had been instructed to drive into the roomy court-yard of the
house of which Turner's office occupied the first floor. Carriages
frequently waited there, by the side of a little fountain which splashed
all day and all night into a circular basin.
Colville descended from the carriage and turned to speak to Loo, who was
left sitting within it. Since the unfortunate night at the Hotel Gemosac,
when they had been on the verge of a quarrel, a certain restraint had
characterised their intercourse. Colville was shy of approaching the
subject upon which they had differed. His easy laugh had not laughed away
the grim fact that he had deceived Loo in such a manner that complicity
was practically forced upon an innocent man.
Loo had not given his decision yet. He had waited a week, during which
time Colville had not dared to ask him whether his mind was made up.
There was a sort of recklessness in Loo's manner which at once puzzled
and alarmed his mentor. At times he was gay, as he always had been, and
in the midst of his gaiety he would turn away with a gloomy face and go
to his own room.
To press the question would be to precipitate a catastrophe. Dormer
Colville decided to go on as if nothing had happened. It is a compromise
with the inconveniences of untruth to which we must all resort at some
crisis or another in life.
"I will not be long," he assured Barebone, with a gay laugh. The prospect
of handling one hundred thousand francs in notes was perhaps
exhilarating; though the actual possession of great wealth would seem to
be of the contrary tendency. There is a profound melancholy peculiar to
the face of the millionaire. "I shall not be long; for he is a man of his
word, and the money will be ready."
John Turner was awaiting his visitor, and gave a large soft hand inertly
into Colville's warm grasp.
"I always wish I saw more of you," said the new-comer.
"Is there not enough of me already?" inquired the banker, pointing to the
vacant chair, upon which fell the full light of the double window. A
smaller window opposite to it afforded a view of the court-yard. And it
was at this smaller window that Colville glanced as he sat down, with a
pause indicative of reluctance.
Turner saw the glance and noted the reluctance. He concluded, perhaps, in
the slow, sure mind that worked behind his little peeping eyes, that Loo
Barebone was in the carriage in the court-yard, and that Colville was
anxious to return to him as soon as possible.
"It is very kind of you to say that, I am sure," pursued Turner, rousing
himself to be pleasant and conversational. "But, although the loss is
mine, my dear Colville, the fault is mostly yours. You always know where
to find me when you want my society. I am anchored in this chair, whereas
one never knows where one has a butterfly like yourself."
"A butterfly that is getting a bit heavy on the wing," answered Colville,
with his wan and sympathetic smile. He sat forward in the chair in an
attitude antipathetic to digression from the subject in hand.
"I do not see any evidence of that. One hears of you here and there
in France. I suppose, for instance, you know more than any man in
Paris at the present moment of the--" he paused and suppressed a yawn,
"the--er--vintage. Anything in it--eh?"
"So far as I could judge, the rains came too late; but I shall be glad to
tell you all about it another time. This morning--"
"Yes; I know. You want your money. I have it all ready for you. But I
must make out some sort of receipt, you know."
Turner felt vaguely in his pocket, and at last found a letter, from which
he tore the blank sheet, while his companion, glancing from time to time
at the window, watched him impatiently.
"Seems to me," said Turner, opening his inkstand, "that the vintage of
1850 will not be drunk by a Republic."
"Ah! indeed."
"What do you think?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, my mind was more occupied in the quality of
the vintage than in its ultimate fate. If you make out a receipt on
behalf of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, I will sign it," answered Colville,
fingering the blotting-paper.
"Received on behalf of, and for, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, the sum of one
hundred thousand francs," muttered the banker, as he wrote.
"She is only a client, you understand, my dear Colville," he went on,
holding out his hand for the blotting-paper, "or I would not part with
the money so easily. It is against my advice that Mrs. St. Pierre
Lawrence realises this sum."
"If a woman sets her heart on a thing, my dear fellow--" began Colville,
carelessly.
"Yes, I know--reason goes to the wall. Sign there, will you?"
Turner handed him pen and receipt, but Colville was looking toward the
window sunk deep in the wall on the inner side of the room. This was not
a double window, and the sound of carriage wheels rose above the gentle,
continuous plash of the little fountain in the court-yard.
Colville rose from his seat, but to reach the window he had to pass
behind Turner's chair. Turner rose at the same moment, and pushed his
chair back against the wall in doing so. This passage toward the window
being completely closed by the bulk of John Turner, Colville hurried
round the writing-table. But Turner was again in front of him, and,
without appearing to notice that his companion was literally at his
heels, he opened a large cupboard sunk in the panelling of the wall. The
door of it folded back over the little window, completely hiding it.
Turning on his heel, with an agility which was quite startling in one so
stout, he found Colville's colourless face two feet from his own. In
fact, Colville almost stumbled against him. For a moment they looked each
other in the eyes in silence. With his right hand, John Turner held the
cupboard-door over the window.
"I have the money here," he said, "in this cupboard." And as he spoke, a
hollow rumble, echoing in the court-yard, marked the exit of a carriage
under the archway into the Rue Lafayette. There had been only one
carriage in attendance in the court-yard--that in which Colville had left
Barebone.
"Here, in this cupboard," repeated Turner to unheeding ears. For Dormer
Colville was already hurrying across the room toward the other window
that looked out into the Rue Lafayette. The house was a lofty one, with a
high entresol, and from the windows of the first floor it was not
possible to see the street immediately below without opening the sashes.
Turner closed the cupboard and locked it, without ceasing to watch
Colville, who was struggling with the stiff fastening of the outer sash.
"Anything the matter?" inquired the banker, placidly. "Lost a dog?"
But Colville had at length wrenched open the window and was leaning out.
The roar of the traffic drowned any answer he may have made. It was
manifest that the loss of three precious minutes had made him too late.
After a glance down into the street, he came back into the centre of the
room and snatched up his hat from Turner's bare writing-table.
He hurried to the door, but turned again, with his back against it, to
face his companion, with the eyes usually so affable and sympathetic,
ablaze for once with rage.
"Damn you!" he cried. "Damn you!"
And the door banged on his heels as he hurried through the outer office.
Turner was left standing, a massive incarnation of bewilderment, in the
middle of the room. He heard the outer door close with considerable
emphasis. Then he sat down again, his eyebrows raised high on his round
forehead, and gazed sadly at the date-card.
* * * * *
Colville had left Leo Barebone seated in the hired carriage in a frame of
mind far from satisfactory. A seafaring life, more than any other,
teaches a man quickness in action. A hundred times a day the sailor needs
to execute, with a rapidity impossible to the landsman, that which
knowledge tells him to be the imminent necessity of the moment. At sea,
life is so far simpler than in towns that there are only two ways: the
right and the wrong. In the devious paths of a pavement-ridden man there
are a hundred byways: there is the long, long lane of many turnings
called Compromise.
Loo Barebone had turned into this lane one night at the Hotel Gemosac, in
the Ruelle St. Jacob, and had wandered there ever since. Captain Clubbe
had taught him the two ways of seamanship effectively enough. But the
education fell short of the necessities of this crisis. Moreover,
Barebone had in his veins blood of a race which had fallen to low estate
through Compromise and Delay.
Let those throw the first stone at him who have seen the right way gaping
before their feet with a hundred pitfalls and barriers, apparently
insurmountable, and have resolutely taken that road. For the devious path
of Compromise has this merit--that the obstacles are round the corner.
Barebone, absorbed in thought, hardly noticed that the driver of his
carriage descended from the box and lounged toward the archway, where the
hum of traffic and the passage of many people would serve to beguile a
long wait. After a minute's delay, a driver returned and climbed to the
seat--but it was not the same driver. He wore the same coat and hat, but
a different face looked out from the sheep-skin collar turned up to the
ears. There was no one in the court-yard to notice this trifling change.
Barebone was not even looking out of the window. He had never glanced at
the cabman's face, whose vehicle had happened to be lingering at the
corner of the Ruelle St. Jacob when Colville and his companion had
emerged from the high doorway of the Hotel Gemosac.
Barebone was so far obeying instructions that he was leaning back in the
carriage, his face half hidden by the collar of his coat. For it was a
cold morning in mid-winter. He hardly looked up when the handle of the
door was turned. Colville had shut this door five minutes earlier,
promising to return immediately. It was undoubtedly his hand that opened
the door. But suddenly Barebone sat up. Both doors were open.
Before he could make another movement, two men stepped quietly into the
carriage, each closing the door by which he had entered quickly and
noiselessly. One seated himself beside Barebone, the other opposite to
him, and each drew down a blind. They seemed to have rehearsed the
actions over and over again, so that there was no hitch or noise or
bungling. The whole was executed as if by clock-work, and the carriage
moved away the instant the doors were closed.
In the twilight, within the carriage, the two men grasped Loo Barebone,
each by one arm, and held him firmly against the back of the carriage.
"Quietly, _mon bon monsieur_; quietly, and you will come to no harm."
Barebone made no resistance, and only laughed.
"You have come too soon," he said, without attempting to free his arms,
which were held, as if by a vice, at the elbow and shoulder. "You have
come too soon, gentlemen! There is no money in the carriage. Not so much
as a sou."
"It is not for money that we have come," replied the man who had first
spoken--and the absolute silence of his companion was obviously the
silence of a subordinate.
"Though, for a larger sum than monsieur is likely to offer, one might
make a mistake, and allow of escape--who knows?"
The remark was made with the cynical honesty of dishonesty which had so
lately been introduced into France by him who was now Dictator of that
facile people.
"Oh! I offer nothing," replied Barebone. "For a good reason. I have
nothing to offer. If you are not thieves, what are you?"
The carriage was rattling along the Rue Lafayette, over the
cobble-stones, and the inmates, though their faces were close together,
had to shout in order to be heard.
"Of the police," was the reply. "Of the high police. I fancy that
monsieur's affair is political?"
"Why should you fancy that?"
"Because my comrade and I are not engaged on other cases. The criminal
receives very different treatment. Permit me to assure you of that.
And no consideration whatever. The common police is so unmannerly.
There!--one may well release the arms--since we understand each other."
"I shall not try to escape--if that is what you mean," replied Barebone,
with a laugh.
"Nothing else--nothing else," his affable captor assured him.
And for the remainder of a long drive through the noisy streets the three
men sat upright in the dim and musty cab in silence.