Affairs of State Part 16

Pelletan glanced around to a.s.sure 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 wa.s.s 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 Amerique."

"Was she so bad as all that?" asked Rushford, sympathetically.

For answer, Pelletan went to the statue of Saint Genevieve, 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 pa.s.sed 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 wa.s.s, monsieur," admitted Pelletan, with a sigh. "I wa.s.s just from t'e province--my head wa.s.s full of treams. Unt she wa.s.s petter-looking, t'en, monsieur; she wa.s.s almost slim. She wa.s.s a widow--unt besides she had a leetle patisserie 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 wa.s.s 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, hoa.r.s.ely, and his forehead glistened again at the thought. "He t'reatened as much when he arrife here unt I tol' him t'e house wa.s.s 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 bal.u.s.trade, 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.

CHAPTER X

An Introduction and a Promenade

Warm and fair dawned the morning; and having, at its leisure, duly arisen, bathed and breakfasted, the unemployed population of Weet-sur-Mer, male and female, sallied forth to throng the beach and Digue, to inhale the fresh air, to shake off so far as possible the effects of the evening's dissipations, and to exchange such toadstool growths of gossip as had sprung up over night.

To join this parade there presently came Lord Vernon, reclining languidly in his invalid chair, and m.u.f.fled in many rugs; but his eyes were eagerly alert and he gazed with evident antic.i.p.ation down the long promenade of the Digue. He was attended by Blake, Collins, and Sir John, all of them determined, no doubt, to prevent a second contretemps. But Sir John presently descried a learned fellow-Aesculapian and stopped for a chat with him; while Blake soon afterward succ.u.mbed to the glance and smile of a red-cheeked English beauty. Collins, however, stuck grimly to his post, being above--or below--such human weaknesses.

"There they are!" cried Vernon, suddenly, with brightening eyes.

"Who?" asked Collins, following his gaze. "Oh, the Rush ford girls. I suppose it will be polite to show our grat.i.tude. I think we owe them a vote of thinks, don't you?"

"I certainly do," agreed Vernon, straightening himself in his chair with a vigour which had nothing of the invalid about it. "Will you introduce me?"

"If I can snare them without being too intrusive," a.s.sented Collins, who, since the success of his stratagem of the afternoon before, had been in an unusually complaisant mood.

But fate willed that they should be snared without any effort on his part whatever, for just then a porter came by with a truck piled high with luggage, and it and the invalid chair combined to form an impa.s.se from which there was no escaping. Not that either of the young ladies displayed any very evident anxiety to escape.

"Good-morning," said Collins, in his best manner. "My lord," he continued, turning to his companion, "these are the Misses Rushford, to whom we owe so much. I hope I may introduce Lord Vernon to you," he added.

Both of them were laughing as they took, in turn, the hand which Vernon rather eagerly held out.

"I'm awfully glad to meet you," he said, looking from one to the other and trying to decide which was the prettier. "I feel that we _do_ owe you a great deal. When Collins came back yesterday afternoon and told me what he'd had the impudence to ask you, I was--I was--"