It was true that Dermott's sudden departure for Europe had troubled
Frank. But it would have disturbed him more had he known the truth, for
McDermott was not only bent upon seeing Katrine, but was stirring
another trouble for Frank, a trouble which McDermott felt had already
slept too long.
The week before the Irishman sailed (it was the very day upon which he
decided, with a laugh to himself, to give up the railroad fight and
allow the new company to build the road on the Ravenel land) he wrote
his French cousin, the Countess de Nemours, thus:
BEAUTIFUL LADY WITHOUT MERCY,--I am writing in a perturbed state of
mind, for I think I shall get for you a great fortune. You do not
answer my letters, though I have written at the lowest estimate ten
thousand times. I want the date of your first marriage securely
stated in written evidence; also the dates of the birth and death
of the child. I want every scrap of paper which you have,
concerning that sad affair of thirty years ago, ready for me when I
arrive in Paris two weeks from to-day.
There is a little girl over there studying music in whom I want you
to interest yourself. Her name is Katrine Dulany. She is with
Josef.
Yours of the Shamrock,
DERMOTT MCDERMOTT.
The Countess de Nemours' house in Paris stood in the centre of the
street of the Two Repentant Magdalens. An iron door in a griffoned arch
opened into a sunny court-yard, where peacocks strutted by an old
fountain, and a black poodle, who was both a thief and a miser, snarled
at the passers-by.
On the right of the entrance, in a kind of sentry-box, Quantrelle the
Red acted as _concierge_. He was a man above the peasant class,
ridiculously long and spare, with an unbroken record for thirty years of
drunkenness and quarrelling. His narrow head was covered with irregular
tufts of scarlet hair, and in his forehead were heavy furrows which
curved down over the nose and waved upward and back to the temple. His
eyebrows were red tufts standing fiercely out over his little red-brown
eyes, and his nose, long, lean, and absurdly pointed, seemed peering at
his great teeth, yellowed by much smoking of cigarettes. He added to his
charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to
speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to
his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder
that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his
_overpaid_ retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his
own, had Quantrelle. Frequently his pleasing fancy led him to admit
visitors when he knew Madame de Nemours to be absent, and, after
conducting them by some circuitous route to unexpected rooms, he would
leave them waiting until discovered by any chance domestic who happened
by. And when they were ushered forth to the street he would follow them
with a torrent of shrill apology, retiring, in a paroxysm of silent
laughter, behind the shutters of his little box. Why Madame de Nemours
endured his vagaries was indeed strange, for she was one who demanded of
every other domestic something of an over-obsequiousness in service. It
was a well-known fact, however, that he held an assured position in the
household, and that the Countess only smiled at his grimaces and
drinking, rewarding him with frequent gifts and holidays in the
country.
On the morning of Dermott's coming, Quantrelle the Red sat in his little
house peering out, monkeylike, expectantly, at the passers-by, and
craning his long neck to keep a constant eye on the corner around which
the Irishman was to arrive. As the brougham drew up to the curb the Red
One sprang to his feet, threw the iron doors wide apart, and stood
bowing double as McDermott entered.
"Ah, my Quantrelle!" he cried, gayly, at sight of the thin
grotesqueness. "Still in your old place; still taking care of madame!"
"Till the end," was the answer, with a serious note in the voice.
"You have not changed much in the three years since I saw you last,"
Dermott said, inspecting him closely.
"Nor you, monsieur," Quantrelle answered. "In fact, you have changed
little since twelve years ago, when I hid you and young Monsieur de
Chevanne on top of my box here, after some escapade, to keep you both
from the police." He scrutinized McDermott closely as he spoke. "And
it's not the money (which I know well you will give me anyhow) which
makes me say you are more beautiful than ever, monsieur. The same
elegant pallor; the same pursuit in the eye! Had I had your looks"; he
made a clucking sound in his cheek with his tongue; "and your clothes!
Always the blacks and grays and very elegant! They are not my colors,"
he drew himself to his straightest to exhibit his maroon coat and
trousers and wide green cravat with an assumed satisfaction; "but each
has his own style," he finished.