A VOLUNTEER WAITER
Tom Bob had been waiting some while in a small room reserved for the
use of callers on the ground floor of the house. The detective seemed
extremely impatient, again and again he looked at his watch.
“Half after nine,” he muttered, “I cannot afford to waste time, yet
I must make sure Ascott will not fail....” The man was frowning in
evident anxiety, as he asked himself what sort of a reception the
wealthy Englishman would accord him. Since the strange affair of the
Pré Catalan, which had culminated so extraordinarily in the capsizing
of the automobiles into the lake, Tom Bob had not seen Ascott again,
save on very rare occasions. For this there were several reasons.
In the first place the detective had been very much taken up—at any
rate he said so—with the events that had occurred since his arrival
in Paris, since he had officially declared his intention to devote
himself to the pursuit and discovery of Fantômas. Moreover, the
intrigue between Tom Bob and the Princess Sonia Danidoff was not,
could not be, unknown to the members of the intimate little group of
fellow-travellers that had come together on board the _Lorraine_ on
her passage across the Atlantic. Better than anyone, indeed, Ascott,
who had been deeply smitten by the Princess, must be aware that in Tom
Bob he had a fortunate rival, who had quickly won his lady’s favours.
In truth, it required all the American’s calm effrontery thus, without
any preliminary testing of his footing, to come calling on the young
Englishman, who might very well be proposing to give him a highly
unpleasant reception.
“True it is,” Tom Bob told himself, “that since he abandoned his
unsuccessful wooing of the Princess Sonia, Ascott has had other amorous
adventures that should surely at this time of day prevent his being
jealous of me.” The affair at the _Silver Goblet_ had, in fact, become
a matter of general gossip, albeit not specially spoken about among
the detective’s own circle of friends, and the American appeared to be
perfectly well posted as to what was happening, as well as what was
likely to come of it eventually.
At last Ascott’s man-servant, John, appeared, and invited the detective
to follow him upstairs to his master’s study, where he found the
Englishman seated at his desk, writing.
“Up already!” exclaimed the visitor cheerfully, “and ready for
anything! Upon my word, my dear fellow, Paris has quite changed your
habits. How are you this morning?”
Ascott turned half round in his chair, extending a careless hand to his
visitor:
“Not so bad, and you, Tom Bob? To what do I owe the pleasure of your
visit? Take a seat, pray!”
“Good!” thought the detective, “he is not over and above angry with
me!” At the same time, remembering that time was flying with alarming
swiftness, he announced:
“I have merely come to shake you by the hand, as I was passing your
way.”
But Ascott, who appeared to guess the object of his visit, began to
hunt through his pocket-book, from which he presently extracted a bank
note. Holding this out to the detective:
“Here is my subscription,” he said: “will you be so obliging as to hand
this thousand francs to the Grand Duchess Alexandra when you have an
opportunity of seeing her.”
Tom Bob expressed his willingness with an almost imperceptible smile.
“Just fancy, my dear sir,” he remarked, “how timorous Parisian society
is; to think that it is now a perfect mania, a fashionable craze, quite
the correct thing in fact, to subscribe to this fund. They want to
see Fantômas waxing fat!... ’pon my word! it is excruciatingly funny.
Henceforth, I take it the light-fingered gentry will have an easy
time of it when they want to make their fortunes. Instead of fagging
themselves to commit crimes, they will only have to make it known
through the newspapers that they are short of cash for the moment, and
the money will come tumbling in straight away! Why, sir,” continued the
detective, “it will be the ruin of the police; I ask you, what are we
to do, my colleagues and I, when there are no more any culprits to hunt
down, any criminals to arrest?”
Tom Bob had uttered his little speech in a tone of laughing irony well
calculated to divert his host, but the latter declined to be amused.
“What do you think about it?” the detective insisted, “what impression
does all this Fantômas business make on you?”
Ascott, rousing himself from a prolonged reverie, shrugged his
shoulders.
“I don’t care a fig about it,” he declared, “I am bored to death....”
The other feigned no little surprise.
“Well, that is just what struck me, my dear sir; you look tired,
altered, you never go into society nowadays; have you had worries
perhaps?”
Ascott nodded and was about to speak when the American broke in, making
his question more definite:
“I’ve heard vaguely of some untoward adventure you were the hero of a
while ago....”
“Rather say the victim,” put in Ascott.
The detective caught him up:
“The victim! come, that’s a big word; what _did_ happen to you?”
The young Englishman seemed unwilling to explain his words.
“Oh! nothing,” he said, “or nothing much!”
Then, after a pause, and as if he had just come to a supreme decision,
he got up, strode two or three times up and down the room, then
standing before the detective with folded arms, he declared:
“Tom Bob, I should by rights be more angry with you than in fact I am,
for you have played me a trick, a damnable trick, involuntarily, I am
sure of that, but the fact remains, you have played me one of those
tricks men find it hard to forgive, you have supplanted me in the
affections of a woman I loved.”
The detective gave a gesture of protestation.
“Pooh! my good sir,” he said, “women and their ways! these things are
never to be taken seriously.”
“That depends; no doubt, you will tell me I had for ages been courting
the princess without winning the smallest favour from her, while it
was enough for you to arrive on the scene to become instantly the
darling of her heart ... well, be it so! I do not press the point, and
you may have noticed this, that I never tried to compete with you. No,
luck or ill luck decreed that at that very moment my affections took
the field elsewhere....”
Tom Bob heaved a sigh of relief.
“I am delighted to hear it, I should have been grieved to give you
pain.”
“Man!” pursued the young man, “you cannot imagine what happened next.”
Throwing off his indifference more and more, Ascott, glad of the
opportunity to tell his troubles to another, confided to the detective
his extraordinary adventure with Nini Guinon and the threats addressed
to him; the consequences of a passing caprice had come to a head.
Tom Bob preserved his calm as he listened to the story.
“And then?” he asked, when Ascott stopped to take breath.
“Then,” declared the latter, “it is my duty to give you a piece of
news, a great piece of news—I am getting married, I am marrying Nini
Guinon!”
“Good luck!” cried the detective, “and when is it to be?”
“This morning, almost directly.”
“Bad luck!” ejaculated Tom Bob—“and I was just wanting to ask you to
breakfast!”
“Yes,” went on Ascott, with an air of dejection, “in two hours’ time
I shall be the lawful husband of an old usurer’s niece, Père Moche’s
niece; oh! it is a fine kettle of fish!”
“Ascott,” put in Tom Bob, trying to console him, “you are marrying
under French law; you know, don’t you? that divorce is allowed.”
Ascott shrugged his shoulders: “That would make things no better!”
“But why?”
The young man assumed a still more despairing look as he looked in the
other’s face and announced:
“My dear Bob, I must tell you all; Nini Guinon is _enceinte_.”
Ascott looked so crestfallen that, for all his phlegm, Tom Bob all but
burst out laughing. However, he dissembled his feelings with wonderful
self-restraint; rising, he stepped up to the young Englishman with an
air of heartfelt sympathy and pressed his hand.
“My dear sir,” he declared, “you are a good and honest man!”
But Ascott had no illusions. “Or an idiot!” he groaned.
A silence followed, which the detective broke to say: “You will please
excuse me, I must be going,” adding with a spice of irony:
“I won’t press you to have breakfast with me; I take it that after the
wedding, a reception ...”
“No!” Ascott interrupted, “don’t make fun of me, Tom Bob; the
ceremony will be strictly private; naturally it does not call for any
festivities; the mother, who has to signify her consent, only comes to
the _Mairie_ and to church, and I have definitely refused to invite to
the breakfast anyone whatsoever besides the witnesses.”
“And you start, no doubt, on your wedding trip afterwards?”
“That is to say,” returned the young man, “I take to my heels, I
go away to hide myself, also I go in order to try and get my wife
away from the deplorable associations connected with her family and
relations.”
As he reached the door Tom Bob turned for a last good-bye to his host:
“As a matter of fact,” he questioned, “do you love her?”
“No!” replied the rich Englishman gloomily.
But, modifying his statement and blushing to the roots of his hair, he
added:
“Still, I am bound to confess, there is something makes her not
indifferent to me.”
Tom Bob raised his hand as if to invoke heaven, and in a thrilling
voice:
“The child, perhaps ...” he suggested.
“Yes, that is it,” Ascott agreed, and hurrying over the good-byes, he
returned to his working-table, while the detective took his departure.
* * * * *
At the far end of the Bois de Vincennes, near the Saint-Mandé boundary
of the park, is to be found, standing among trees, a restaurant of
quite a rural aspect, and bearing the significant name of _The Orange
Blossom_. Within are a number of vast rooms and outside in the gardens
arbours of the like ample proportions. It is here in fact that the
democracy resorts to make merry on the occasion of weddings after the
religious or civil ceremonies, sometimes one, sometimes the other,
occasionally both, have been rapidly despatched.
This morning evidently the landlord of _The Orange Blossom_ was not
expecting any great number of customers, for he had thrown open only
the smallest of his salons. In the middle of the room he was laying the
table for a very limited number of guests:
“Scurvy devils!” he was grumbling to himself, “what’s the good of
folks who ask only the marriage witnesses to the breakfast—skinflints
surely! True they’ve paid in advance without any bargaining much, still
in my humble opinion we’d best keep a sharp eye lifting to see they
don’t pocket the spoons; mostly indeed I keep the silver locked up. A
breakfast for six at six francs a head, that don’t come to a couple of
louis. However, let’s hope we’ll make it up on the drinks and cigars.”
The good man stopped in his work; someone had entered the room and was
coming towards him.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but are you the landlord of _The Orange
Blossom_?”
The innkeeper turned to his questioner and looked him up and
down disdainfully. The newcomer was not of a distinguished
appearance—middle-class evidently, soberly dressed in black, a man of
thirty or thereabouts, wearing a very heavy beard.
“What do you want?” he asked him.
“Sir,” asked the stranger in return, “are you by way of engaging
waiters?”
“Certainly not,” was the uncompromising answer, “and least of all
to-day; why, there’s nothing to do—a meal for six at six francs a
head—I and the maidservant will be amply sufficient to wait.”
“Still I should be very wishful ...”
“Nothing doing!”
“Not even if I paid?”
The innkeeper looked wonderingly at the man, surprised at such
persistency.
“What d’you mean by that?”
“Look here,” the would-be waiter explained, “I’m very anxious to wait
at table, to wait at this table, it’s a business I’m keen on. If you’d
let me have the tips for myself, I’ll pay you twenty francs to make it
up to you.”
The landlord of _The Orange Blossom_ hesitated. The man’s offer was
a good one for him, too good indeed; that was more or less what made
him suspicious, for neither of the two could fail to know that the
tips would never in the long run reach any such amount. To tell the
truth, it was this very fact that inclined the innkeeper to look upon
the unknown’s application in a favourable light. But he was still
suspicious. Perhaps the fine fellow had some cute idea at the back
of his head, or perhaps he wanted to kick up a disturbance. Was he
a rejected lover, the bride’s fancy man, or possibly the brother or
kinsman of a former mistress discarded by the bridegroom? One never
knows, such queer things happen! Once more the innkeeper looked hard at
this fellow who was so monstrously eager to take service with him; he
saw the man was calm and composed enough and had not a bad face of his
own.
“Look here,” the landlord of _The Orange Blossom_ began again, “you’re
not humbugging me? you want to pay a louis to wait at table, and you
don’t mean to play any tricks?”
The unknown laughed frankly in the other’s face:
“Why, not a bit of it, sir, that I swear; I tell you, it amuses me to
wait on these people, it’s as you might say, it’s ... it’s a wager I
made with my pals.”
“The tips won’t be heavy,” the innkeeper was charitable enough to warn
him.
“That’s all one to me.”
“Well, my fine fellow,” thought the landlord of _The Orange Blossom_,
“you strike me as a mighty queer sort, but there don’t seem to be any
harm in you; after all, what risk do I run?”
He accepted, and held out his hand to clinch the bargain. “Agreed,” he
cried, “hand over your louis.”
“Here you are, sir!”
“Now, my lad,” continued the boniface, getting on very familiar terms,
“go and fetch an apron and a jacket, I suppose you have a clean
shirt-front; the meal’s ordered for half past twelve, but I don’t
expect our customers before one o’clock; look’ee, here’s where we put
the plates; about the glasses, you’d better polish ’em up a bit;
as you’ve time to spare, that’ll give you something to do, my boy.
By-the-by, what do they call you?”
After a moment’s hesitation, the new waiter named himself Daniel.
“Well, Daniel, get to work; work’s the cure for boredom, you know.”
No sooner was he left alone in the salon where the breakfast was to be
served than this volunteer who had got himself taken on in so odd a
fashion dropped into a chair and gave a long-drawn sigh!
“Ah!” he ejaculated; “here I am, but it’s an expensive treat; a louis!
no doubt my poor watch, thanks to ‘my uncle’s’ generosity, raised me
the money without over much difficulty—but when shall I ever get my
dear ticker back?” Then: “Good Lord!” he groaned, “how this false beard
does tickle; if only it don’t come ungummed while I’m waiting at table!”
He got up and went over to a mirror to make sure his disguise was
holding firm. He gazed long at his reflection in the glass, his eyes
full of melancholy.
“I did well to adopt this travesty,” he told himself, “I am absolutely
unrecognizable”—and he was right. The new waiter of _The Orange
Blossom_ was, in fact, no other than Jérôme Fandor.
Ever since the dreadful trial he had gone through, since the day of
Elisabeth Dollon’s death, the journalist had been plunged in a state of
terrible prostration. Wild with grief, he had felt his sanity leaving
him; all his high courage, his generous ardour, had departed, and again
and again the thought of suicide had haunted his mind. It had called
for all the energy that formed the basis of his character to stay him
from proceeding to such dread extremities.
Little by little, however, as his will power mastered his dejection,
a deep, fierce anger seized him and grew stronger every day. He had a
mission to fulfill; this he realized, and his purposes grew clear and
definite. Henceforth it was not solely his friend Juve he must rescue
from his unhappy plight, but there was Elisabeth’s fearful death he was
called upon to avenge. And as he considered these two duties, one as
dear to his heart as the other, Fandor recognized that in reality he
was pursuing one and the same object, for indeed the main author of all
these calamities, the responsible agent, the being who by his sorceries
had sown mourning and desolation round about him, was still and always
the mysterious, the ever elusive Fantômas! Oh! to unmask the monster,
to come face to face with him, to discover in which of the group
among whom he worked and manœuvred was really and truly incarnate the
mysterious malefactor, this was what the journalist swore to himself
to achieve! At all costs he must get done with it; to make an end was
necessary, indispensable, and that with the briefest possible delay.
Fandor was filled with a new hope. Though still in hiding from the
police and living the life of a pariah, he was yet able to glean
occasional information from casual conversations and newspapers, and
he noted a certain veering round of public opinion in favour of his
friend. It was impossible, people were saying, that Juve, a prisoner in
the _Santé_, could be guilty of all the murders and robberies ascribed
to the agency of Fantômas. To this was added Fandor’s definite and
undoubted discovery of certain activities of the gang at whose head old
Moche figured. Though kept somewhat at arm’s length by the members of
this gang, the journalist did nevertheless succeed in learning a number
of facts that enabled him to prosecute his investigations on clear and
precise lines. Now he had lately acquired the certainty that Père Moche
counted for much in the profitable enterprises engineered by Fantômas.
But where was Fantômas? Not far off, for certain! Yet, with equal
certainty, more difficult to track down, more elusive than ever. Nor
was it only Fandor who was at fault. The American detective Tom Bob was
in the same predicament. In fact, the latter, despite his fine audacity
and his first triumphs, had not continued his successes. For quite a
long time now people had ceased to talk about him; he seemed to have
lost interest in the war he had declared against Fantômas.
Furthermore Fandor had observed that the American, who on his first
arrival had promised him his protection and support, had suddenly left
off seeing him, indeed made little or no concealment of the fact that
he no longer desired to be in touch with him. Why this change? with
what object in view? Was Tom Bob ashamed to avow himself beaten? or was
he hoping, alone, by himself, to run Fantômas to earth?
Such were the young man’s thoughts when the landlord of _The Orange
Blossom_ suddenly burst into the eating room.
“Daniel,” he cried, “you must make haste, my lad! here’s the wedding
party coming, they’re not late after all; quick, put on your apron and
jacket, breakfast will be served instanter!”
Two landaus had just drawn up at the entrance to the gardens, two
simple, unpretending vehicles, with none of your wide plate-glass
windows, none of your big carriage lamps at the four corners of the
coach.