DANGEROUS PLAY
I leaned towards Louis, but he anticipated my question. His hand had
caught my wrist and was pinning it down to the table.
"Wait!" he muttered--"wait! You perceive that we are drinking wine of
the vintage of '98. I will tell you of my trip to the vineyards. Do
not look at that man as though his appearance was anything
remarkable. You are not an habitue here, and he will take notice of
you."
As one who speaks upon the subject most interesting to him, Louis,
with the gestures and swift, nervous diction of his race, talked to me
of the vineyards and the cellars of the famous champagne house whose
wine we were drinking. I did my best to listen intelligently, but
every moment I found my eyes straying towards this new arrival, now
deep in apparently pleasant conversation with Monsieur Carvin.
The newcomer had the air of one who has looked in to smile around at
his acquaintances and pass on. He accepted a cigarette from Carvin,
but he did not sit down, and I saw him smile a polite refusal as a
small table was pointed out to him. He strolled a little into the
place and he bowed pleasantly to several with whom he seemed to be
acquainted, amongst whom was the man Bartot. He waved his hand to
others further down the room. His circle of acquaintances, indeed,
seemed unlimited. Then, with a long hand-shake and some parting jest,
he took leave of Monsieur Carvin and disappeared. Somehow or other one
seemed to feel the breath of relief which went shivering through the
room as he departed. Louis answered then my unspoken question.
"That," he said, "is a very great man. His name is Monsieur Myers."
"The head of the police!" I exclaimed.
Louis nodded.
"The most famous," he said, "whom France has ever possessed, Monsieur
Myers is absolutely marvellous," he declared. "The man has
genius,--genius as well as executive ability. It is a terrible war
that goes on between him and the _haute ecole_ of crime in this
country."
"Tell me, Louis," I asked, "is Monsieur Myers' visit here to-night
professional?"
"Monsieur has observation," Louis answered. "Why not?"
"You mean," I asked, "that there are criminals--people under
suspicion--"
"I mean," Louis interrupted, "that in this room, at the present
moment, are some of the most famous criminals in the world."
A question half framed died away upon my lips. Louis, however, divined
it.
"You were about to ask," he said, "how I obtained my entry
here. Monsieur, one had better not ask. It is one thing to be a
thief. It is quite another to see something of the wonderful life
which those live who are at war with society."
I looked around the room once more. Again I realized the difference
between this gathering of well-dressed men and women and any similar
gathering which I had seen in Paris. The faces of all somehow lacked
that tiredness of expression which seems to be the heritage of those
who drink the cup of pleasure without spice, simply because the hand
of Fate presses it to their lips. These people had found something
else. Were they not, after all, a little to be envied? They must know
what it was to feel the throb of life, to test the true flavor of its
luxuries when there was no certainty of the morrow. I felt the
fascination, felt it almost in my blood, as I looked around.
"You could not specify, I suppose?" I said to Louis.
"How could monsieur ask it?" he replied, a little reproachfully. "You
will be one of the only people who do not belong who have been
admitted here, and you will notice," he continued, "that I have asked
for no pledge--I rely simply upon the honor of monsieur."
I nodded.
"There is crime and crime, Louis," said I. "I have never been able to
believe myself that it is the same thing to rob the widow and the
millionaire. I know that I must not ask you any questions," I
continued, "but the girl with Delora,--the man whom you call
Delora,--she, at least, is innocent of any knowledge of these things?"
Louis smiled.
"Monsieur is susceptible," he remarked. "I cannot answer that
question. Mademoiselle is a stranger. She is but a child."
"And Monsieur Delora himself?" I asked. "He comes here when he
chooses? He is not merely a sightseer?"
"No," Louis repeated, "he is not merely a sightseer!"
"A privileged person," I remarked.
"He is a wonderful man," Louis answered calmly. "He has travelled all
over the world. He knows a little of every capital, of every side of
life,--perhaps," he added, "of the underneath side."
"His niece is very beautiful," I remarked, looking at her
thoughtfully. "It seems almost a shame, does it not, to bring her
into such a place as this?"
Louis smiled.
"If she were going to stay in Paris--yes!" he said. "If she is really
going to Brazil, it matters little what she does. A Parisian, of
course, would never bring his womankind here."
"She is very beautiful," I remarked. "Yes, I agree with you, Louis. It
is no place for girls of her age."
Louis smiled.
"Monsieur may make her acquaintance some day," he remarked. "Monsieur
Delora is on his way to England."
"She is a safer person to admire," I remarked, "than the lady
opposite?"
"Much," Louis answered emphatically. "Monsieur has already," he
whispered, "been a little indiscreet. The lady of the turquoises has
spoken once or twice to Bartot and looked this way. I feel sure that
it was of you she spoke. See how she continually looks over the top of
her fan at this table. Monsieur would do well to take no notice."
I laughed. I was thirty years old, and the love of adventure was
always in my blood. For the first time for many days the weariness
seemed to have passed away. My heart was beating. I was ready for any
enterprise.
"Do not be afraid, Louis," I said. "I shall come to no harm. If
mademoiselle looks at me, it is not gallant to look away."
Louis' face was puckered up with anxiety. He saw, too, what I had
seen. Bartot had walked to the other end of the room to speak to some
friends. The girl had taken a gold and jewelled pencil from the mass
of costly trifles which lay with her purse upon the table, and was
writing on a piece of paper which the waiter had brought. I could see
her delicately manicured fingers, the blue veins at the back of her
hands, as she wrote, slowly and apparently without hesitation. Both
Louis and myself watched the writing of that note as though Fate
itself were guiding the pencil.
"It is for you," Louis whispered in my ear. "Take no notice. It would
be madness even to look at her."
"Louis!" I exclaimed protestingly.
"I mean what I say, monsieur," Louis declared, leaning toward me, and
speaking in a low, earnest whisper. "The cafe below, the streets
throughout this region, are peopled by his creatures. In an hour he
could lead an army which would defy the whole of the gendarmes in
Paris. This quarter of the city is his absolutely to do with what he
wills. Do you believe that you would have a chance if he thought that
she had looked twice at you,--she--Susette--the only woman who has
ever led him? I tell you that he is mad with love and jealousy for
her. The whole world knows of it."
"My dear Louis," I said, "you know me only in London, where I come and
sit in your restaurant and eat and drink there. To you I am simply
like all those others who come to you day by day,--idlers and pleasure
seekers. Let me assure you, Louis, that there are other things in my
life. Just now I should welcome anything in the world which meant
adventure, which could teach me to forget."
"But monsieur need not seek the suicide," Louis said. "There are
hundreds of adventures to be had without that."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"If mademoiselle should send me the note," I said, "surely it would
not be gallant of me to refuse to accept it."
"There are other ways of seeking adventures," Louis said, "than by
ending one's days in the Seine."
The girl by this time had finished her note and rolled it up. She
looked behind her to the other end of the room, where only Bartot's
broad back was visible. Then she raised her eyes to mine,--turquoise
blue as the color of her gown,--and very faintly but very deliberately
she smiled. I was not in the least in love with her. The affair to me
was simply interesting because it promised a moment's distraction.
But, nevertheless, as she smiled I felt my heart beat faster, and I
reached a little eagerly forward as though for the note. She called a
waiter to her side. I watched her whisper to him; I watched his
expression--anxious and perturbed at first, doubtful, even, after her
reassuring words. He looked down the room to where Bartot was
standing. It seemed to me, even then, that he ventured to protest, but
mademoiselle frowned and spoke to him sharply. He caught up a wine
list and came to our table. Once more, before he spoke, he looked
behind to where Bartot's back was still turned.
"For monsieur," he whispered, setting the wine list upon the table,
and under it the note.
I nodded, and he hastened away. At that moment Bartot turned and came
down the room. As he approached he looked at me once more, as though,
for some reason or other, he was more than ordinarily interested in my
presence. It may have been my fancy, but I thought, also, that he
looked at the wine card stretched out before me.
"Be careful!" Louis whispered. "Be careful! And, for God's sake,
destroy that note!"
I laughed, and as Bartot was compelled to turn his back to me to
regain his seat, this time at the table with his companion, I raised
my glass, looking her full in the face, and drank. Then I slipped the
note from underneath the wine card into my pocket. She made the
slightest of signs, but I understood. I was not to read it until I was
alone.
"Go outside," Louis whispered to me. "Read your letter and get rid of
it."
I obeyed him. A watchful waiter pulled the table away, and I walked
out into the anteroom. Here, with a freshly lit cigarette in my mouth,
I unclenched my fingers, and looked at the few words written very
faintly, in long, delicate characters, across the torn sheet of paper:
Monsieur is in bad company. It would be well for him to lunch
to-morrow at the Cafe de Paris, and to ask for Leon.
That was all. I tore it into small pieces and returned to my seat,
altogether puzzled. It seemed to me that Louis watched me with an
incomprehensible anxiety as I resumed my place by his side.
"If monsieur is ready," he suggested, "perhaps we had better go."
I rose to my feet reluctantly.
"As you will, Louis," I said.
But the time for our departure had not yet come!