Pelletan's Skeleton
As he left the dining-room that evening, Rushford crooked an imperious
finger at Monsieur Pelletan.
"I want a word with you," he said in his ear.
"In private, monsieur?" asked the little Frenchman, with some
trepidation.
"Yes, I think it would better be in private--that is, if you can
accomplish it in this bedlam."
"Oh, I haf a place, monsieur, where no one will intrude," and Pelletan
led the way through the hotel office to a little door back of the desk.
"T'is iss my--vat you call eet in English?--my sty, my kennel--"
"Your den."
"Iss t'ere a difference?" asked Pelletan, fumbling with the lock.
"A sty is for pigs and a kennel for dogs," Rushford explained. "A den
is for wild beasts. These niceties of the English language are not for
you, Pelletan."
"Still," persisted Pelletan, "a man iss no more a wild beast t'an he iss
a dog or a pig."
"Not nearly so much so, very often," agreed Rushford, heartily. "You
have me there, Pelletan. Sty would undoubtedly be the right word in many
cases."
"Fery well, t'en," said Pelletan, proudly, opening the door, "pehold my
sty!" and he stood aside that his companion might enter.
It was a little square box of a room jammed with such a litter of
bric-à-brac as is to be picked up only on the boulevards--trifles in
Bohemian glass, a lizard stuffed with straw, carved fragments of jade
and ivory, a Sèvres vase bearing the portrait of Du Barry, an Indian
chibook, a pink-cheeked Dresden shepherdess, a sabre of the time of
Napoleon, a leering Hindoo idol, a hideous dragon in Japanese bronze
grimacing furiously at a Barye lion--all of them huddled together
without order or arrangement, as they would have been in an auction room
or an antique shop. In one corner stood a low table of Italian mosaic,
bearing a somewhat battered statuette of Saint Geneviève plying her
distaff, and the walls were fairly covered with photographs--
photographs, for the most part, of women more anxious to display their
charms of person to an admiring world than to observe the rigour of
convention.
Rushford dropped into one of the two chairs, got out a cigar, lighted
it, and sat for some moments looking around at this wilderness of
gimcracks.
"Pelletan, you're a humbug," he said at last. "You came to me yesterday
and said your last franc was gone."
"Unt so it wass, monsieur."
"But this collection ought to be worth something."
"Monsieur means t'at it might pe sold?"
"Undoubtedly."
"But monsieur does not know--does not understand. Tis--all t'is--iss my
life; eet iss here t'at I liff--not out t'ere," with a gesture of
disgust toward the door. "I could no more liff wit'out t'is t'an wit'out
my head!"
Rushford, looking at him curiously, saw that he was in deadly earnest.
"Really," he said, "you surprise me, Pelletan. I had never suspected in
you such depth of soul."
"Besides, monsieur," added Pelletan, leaning forward, "t'ese t'ings are
not all what t'ey seem--t'is dragon, par exemple, ees not off bronze,
but off t'e plaster of Paris--yet I lofe eet none t'e less--more,
perhaps, because off t'at fery fact."
"And these--ah--females," said Rushford, and waved his hand at the
serried photographs, "I suppose even they are necessary to your
existence."
"I lofe to look at t'em, monsieur," confessed Pelletan.
"Personal acquaintances, perhaps."
"Not all of t'em, monsieur; but t'ey haf about t'em t'e flavour off
Paris--off t'at tear Paris off which I tream each night; t'ey recall t'e
tays off my yout'!"
"Oh, are you a Parisian? I should never have suspected it. Your
accent--"
"I am off Elsass, monsieur. It wass, perhaps, for t'at reason t'at Paris
so won my heart."
"If I were as fond of the place as all that," observed Rushford,
laughing, "I'd have stayed there."
"It proke my heart to leafe," murmured Pelletan. "T'at is why I lofe all
t'is," and he motioned to the walls, and kissed his hand to a
voluptuous siren with red hair. "T'at is Ernes tine. Tonight she will
take her part at t'e Alcazar; at t'e toor a friend will meet her unt
t'ey will go toget'er down t'e Champs-Elysées to t'e grand boulevard,
where t'ey sit in front of Pousset's and trink t'eir wine unt eau
sucree. T'ey will watch t'e crowds, t'ey will greet t'eir friends, t'ey
will exchange t'e tay's news. T'en t'ey will go to tinner--six or eight
of t'em toget'er--een a leetle room at Maxime's, where t'ey can make so
much noise as pleases t'em--only I will not pe t'ere--in all t'at great
city, nowhere will I pe! Unt I am missed, monsieur, no more t'an iss a
grain of sand from t'e peach out yonder!"
His voice trembled and broke, and he ran his hands through his hair in a
very agony of despair.
"There, there," said Rushford, soothingly, repressing an inclination to
laugh at the grotesque figure before him. "Don't take it so much to
heart. I dare say they drink your health oftener than you imagine."
"Do you really t'ink so, monsieur?" asked Pelletan, brightening.
"And, depend upon it, you'll get back to them some day," continued the
American. "Only stay here a year or two until you've made your fortune,
as you're certain to do now."
"Yess, monsieur," agreed Pelletan, huskily. "T'anks to you!"
"In the meantime," added Rushford, smiling, "keep the ladies, if you
like to look at them. Your little foibles are no affair of mine. What I
wanted to speak to you about was a matter of business. There's a
blatant, detestable French spy in the house who has got to get out. He
even had the impudence to ogle my girls at dinner this evening. Shall I
kick him out, or will you attend to the matter?"
Pelletan had grown paler at every word until he was fairly livid.
"Iss eet Monsieur Tellier to whom monsieur refers?" he stammered.
"I don't know his name, but he looks like a freak from the wax-works.
He's got to go--he's nearly as bad as Zeit-Zeit."
Pelletan mopped his shining forehead and groaned dismally.
"What is it, man?" demanded the American. "Don't tell me that this
rascal has a hold on you!"
Pelletan groaned again, more dismally than before.
"I was told this afternoon," added Rushford, grimly, "that he was
probably staying here at my expense."
"Eet iss not so!" cried Pelletan, his eyes flashing. "I pay for
heem--efery tay I charge myself mit' twenty franc for hees account."
"But what on earth for?" demanded Rushford. "What have you done--robbed
a bank or committed murder?"
Pelletan glanced around to assure himself that the door was tightly
closed, then drew his chair nearer to his patron.
"I haf a wife," he said, slowly, in a sepulchral tone.
"Well, what of it? Is that a crime in France? I could almost believe
it!"
"I could not liff mit' her no longer," continued Pelletan. "She wass a
teufel! I leafe her!"
"Oh, that's it--so you ran away?"
"Yess, monsieur, I ran avay--avay from Paris--avay from France--I
t'ought efen of going to Amérique."
"Was she so bad as all that?" asked Rushford, sympathetically.
For answer, Pelletan went to the statue of Saint Geneviève, lifted it,
and took from beneath it a photograph.
"T'is iss she, monsieur," he said, and handed the photograph to
Rushford.
The latter took one look at it and passed it back.
"Not guilty!" he said. "You have my profound sympathy, Pelletan. How did
you happen to get caught? You must have been exceedingly young!"
"I wass, monsieur," admitted Pelletan, with a sigh. "I wass just from
t'e province--my head wass full of treams. Unt she wass petter-looking,
t'en, monsieur; she wass almost slim. She wass a widow--unt besides she
had a leetle pâtisserie which her man had left her."
"I see--avarice was your undoing. And you caught a tartar!"
"A teufel!" repeated Pelletan. "A fiend! Oh, what an end to t'e tream! I
worked--oh, how hard I worked--sweating at t'e ovens, efery hour of t'e
twenty-four--for t'e ovens must not pe allowed to cool. She sat at t'e
money-drawer unt grows fat; I wass soon so weak t'at she tid not
hesitate to--to--"
The little man's face was bathed in sweat at the memory of that
degradation, which his tongue refused to describe.
"I endured eet to t'e last moment," he added, thickly. "T'en I fled!"
"You seem to have alighted on your feet," remarked Rushford.
"We had made a success of t'e pusiness," Pelletan explained, "unt I
brought mit me my share of t'e profits, which seemed only fair, since I,
py my labour, had earned t'em. Unt t'en I took a lease of t'is place,
unt did well until t'is year. T'at iss my whole history, monsieur. T'at
iss why I dare not return to Paris, efen for a small visit in winter
when pusiness here iss pad. Eef she so much as caught one leetle glimpse
of me, she would murder me!" and he mopped his face again.
"Still," said the American, "I don't see where Tellier comes in."
Pelletan carefully replaced the photograph under the statuette and then
reseated himself opposite his companion.
"Tellier knows her," he explained, simply.
"Met her professionally, perhaps," suggested Rushford. "Well, what of
it?"
"Eef I offend heem, he gifes her my attress!" continued Pelletan,
hoarsely, and his forehead glistened again at the thought. "He
t'reatened as much when he arrife here unt I tol' him t'e house wass
full."
"Hm!" commented Rushford. "I see. All right; I'll stand by you. I dare
say I can stomach Tellier for a day or two."
Pelletan breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"Tat iss kind," he stammered; "I--I--"
"There, there," and the American waved him to silence. "And you needn't
charge yourself with his keep. But I hope you haven't any more skeletons
in the closet, my friend."
"Skeletons, monsieur?"
"Such as Madame Pelletan."
"Oh," said the Frenchman, naively, "Madame Pelletan iss quite t'e
opposite off a skeleton, monsieur!"
* * * * *
Rushford paused at the hotel door and looked out along the Digue. It was
thronged with people hurrying toward the Casino, eager for the night's
excitement. But the American turned in the opposite direction, and
sauntered slowly along, breathing in the cool breeze from the ocean. At
last he paused, and, leaning against the balustrade, stood gazing out
across the moonlit water, smiling to himself at thought of Pelletan's
vicissitudes.
He was roused by the sound of voices on the beach below him. He looked
down mechanically, but for a moment saw no one. Then, deep in the shadow
of the wall, he descried two figures walking slowly side by side. One
was a man and the other a woman. They were talking in a French so rapid
and idiomatic that Rushford could distinguish no word of it, except
that the man addressed his companion as Julie.
There was something strangely familiar about the figure of the man, and
as Rushford stared down at him, his vision seemed suddenly too clear and
he perceived that it was the French detective.
"Tellier prosecutes his loves," he murmured, smiling grimly to himself,
and turned back toward the hotel. There he stopped, struck by a sudden
thought. "Julie," he repeated. "Julie--where have I heard that name
recently? Oh, I remember--Julie is our maid at the hotel. I wonder--"
He went back abruptly to the parapet and looked over, but Tellier and
his companion had disappeared.