He would listen to no protests. "If you will do me the honour of coming at nine o"clock to the Cafe de Bordeaux, at the corner of the Place du Gouvernement, I shall be there. _Auf wiedersehen_, Monsieur, and a thousand thanks. I beg you as a favour not to accompany me. I couldn"t bear it."
And, drawing a great white handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and disappeared like a flash through the door which I held open for him.
I went down to dinner in a chastened mood. The little man had not shown me before the pathetic side of the freak"s life. By asking him to dinner as if he were normal I had earned his eternal grat.i.tude. And yet, with a smile, which I trust the Recording Angel when he makes up my final balance-sheet of good and evil will not ascribe to an unfeeling heart, I could not help formulating the hope that his grat.i.tude would not be shown by presents of China fowls sitting on eggs, Tyrolese chalets and bottles with ladders and little men inside them. I did not feel within me the wide charity of Lola Brandt; and I could not repress a smile, as I ate my solitary meal, at the perils of the adventure to which I was invited. I had no doubt that it bore the same relation to danger as Monsieur Saupiquet"s sevenpence-halfpenny bore to a serious debt.
Colonel Bunnion, a genial little red-faced man, with bulgy eyes and a moustache too big for his body, who sat, also solitary, at the next table to mine, suddenly began to utter words which I discovered were addressed to me.
"Most amazing thing happened to me as I was coming down to dinner. Just got out of the corridor to the foot of the stairs, when down rushed something about three foot nothing in a devil of a top-hat and b.u.t.ted me full in the pit of the stomach, and bounded off like a football. When I picked it up I found it was a man--give you my word--it was a man. About so high. Gave me quite a turn."
"That," said I, with a smile, "was my friend Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos."
"A friend of yours?"
"He had just been calling on me."
"Then I wish you"d entreat him not to go downstairs like a six-inch sh.e.l.l. I"ll have a bruise to-morrow where the crown of his hat caught me as big as a soup-plate."
I offered the cheerily indignant warrior apologies for my friend"s parabolic method of descent, and suggested Elliman"s Embrocation.
"The most extraordinary part of it," he interrupted, "was that when I picked him up he was weeping like anything. What was he crying about?"
"He is a sensitive creature," said I, "and he doesn"t come upon the pit of the stomach of a Colonel of British Cavalry every day in the week."
He sniffed uncertainly at the remark for a second or two and then broke into a laugh and asked me to play bridge after dinner. On the two preceding evenings he and I had attempted to cheer, in this manner, the desolation of a couple of the elderly maiden ladies. But I may say, parenthetically, that as he played bridge as if he were leading a cavalry charge according to a text-book on tactics, and as I play card games in a soft, mental twilight, and as the two ladies were very keen bridge players indeed, I had great doubts as to the success of our attempts.
"I"m sorry," said I, "but I"m going down into the town to-night."
"Theatre? If so, I"ll go with you."
The gallant gentleman was always at a loose end. Unless he could persuade another human being to do something with him--no matter what--he would joyfully have played cat"s cradle with me by the hour--he sat in awful boredom meditating on his liver.
"I"m not going to the theatre," I said, "and I wish I could ask you to accompany me on my adventure."
The Colonel raised his eyebrows. I laughed.
"I"m not going to tw.a.n.g guitars under balconies."
The Colonel reddened and swore he had never thought of such a thing. He was a perjured villain; but I did not tell him so.
"In what my adventure will consist I can"t say," I remarked.
"If you"re going to fool about Algiers at night you"d better carry a revolver."
I told him I did not possess such deadly weapons. He offered to lend me one. The two Misses Bostock from South Shields, who sat at the table within earshot and had been following our conversation, manifested signs of excited interest.
"I shall be quite protected," said I, "by the dynamic qualities of your acquaintance, Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos, with whom I have promised to spend the evening."
"You had better have the revolver," said the Colonel. And so bent was he on the point, that after dinner he came to me in the lounge and laid a loaded six-shooter beside my coffee-cup. The younger Miss Bostock grew pale. It looked an ugly, c.u.mbrous, devastating weapon.
"But, my dear Colonel," I protested, "it"s against the law to carry fire-arms."
"Law--what law?"
"Why the law of France," said I.
This staggered him. The fact of there being decent laws in foreign parts has staggered many an honest Briton. He counselled a d.a.m.nation of the law, and finally, in order to humour him, I allowed him to thrust the uncomfortable thing into my hip-pocket.
"Colonel," said I, when I took leave of him an hour later, "I have armed myself out of pure altruism. I shan"t be able to sit down in peace and comfort for the rest of the evening. Should I accidentally do so, my blood will be on your head."
CHAPTER XII
The tram that pa.s.ses the hotel gates took me into the town and dropped me at the Place du Gouvernement. With its strange fusion of East and West, its great white-domed mosque flanked by the tall minaret contrasting with its formal French colonnaded facades, its groupings of majestic white-robed forms and commonplace figures in caps and hard felt hats; the mystery of its palm trees, and the crudity of its flaring electric lights, it gave an impression of unreality, of a modern contractor"s idea of Fairyland, where anything grotesque might a.s.sume an air of normality. The moon shone full in the heavens, and as I crossed the Place I saw the equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans silhouetted against the mosque. The port, to the east, was quiet at this hour, and the shipping lay dreamily in the moonlight. Far away one could see the dim outlines of the Kabyle Mountains, and the vague melting of sea and sky into a near horizon. The undefinable smell of the East was in the air.
The Cafe de Bordeaux, which forms an angle of the Place, blazed in front of me. A few hardy souls, a Zouave or two, an Arab, a bored Englishman and his wife, and some French inhabitants were sitting outside in the chilliness. I entered. The cafe was filled with a nondescript crowd, and the rattle of dominoes rose above the hum of talk. In a corner near the door I discovered the top of a silk hat projecting above a widely opened newspaper grasped by two pudgy hands, and I recognised the Professor.
"Monsieur," said he, when I had taken a seat at his table, "if the unknown terrors which you are going to confront dismay you, I beg that you will not consider yourself bound to me."
"My dear Professor," I replied, "a brave man tastes of death but once."
He was much delighted at the sentiment, which he took to be original.
"I shall quote it," said he, "whenever my honour or my courage is called into question. It is not often that a man has the temerity to do so. Can I have the honour of offering you a whisky and soda?"
"Have we time?" I asked.
"We have time," he said, solemnly consulting his watch. "Things will ripen."
"Then," said I, "I shall have much pleasure in drinking to their maturity."
While we were drinking our whisky and soda he talked volubly of many things--his travels, his cats, his own incredible importance in the cosmos. And as he sat there vapouring about the pathetically insignificant he looked more like Napoleon III than ever. His eyes had the same mournful depths, his features the same stamp of fatality. Each man has his gigantic combinations--perhaps equally important in the eyes of the High G.o.ds. I was filled with an immense pity for Napoleon III.
Of the object of the adventure he said nothing. As secrecy seemed to be a vital element in his fifteen-cent scheme, I showed no embarra.s.sing curiosity. Indeed, I felt but little, though I was certain that the adventure was connected with the world-cracking revelations of Monsieur Saupiquet, and was undertaken in the interest of his beloved lady, Lola Brandt. But it was like playing at pirates with a child, and my pity for Napoleon gave place to my pity for my valiant but childish little friend.
At last he looked again at his watch.
"The hour his struck. Let us proceed."
Instinctively I summoned the waiter, and drew a coin from my pocket; and when the grown-up person and the small boy hobn.o.b together the former pays. But Anastasius, with a swift look of protest, antic.i.p.ated my intention. I was his guest for the evening. I yielded apologetically, the score was paid, and we went forth into the moonlight.
He led me across the Place du Gouvernement and struck straight up the hill past the Cathedral, and, turning, plunged into a network of narrow streets, where the poor of all races lived together in amity and evil odours. Shops chiefly occupied the ground floors; some were the ordinary humble shops of Europeans; others were caves lit by a smoky lamp, where Arabs lounged and smoked around the tailors or cobblers squatting at their work; others were Jewish, with Hebrew inscriptions. There were dark Arab cafes, noisy Italian wine-shops, butchers" stalls; children of all ages played and screamed about the precipitous cobble-paved streets; and the shrill cries of Jewish women, sitting at their doors, rose in rebuke of husband or offspring. Not many lights appeared through the shuttered windows of the dark, high houses. Overhead, between two facades, one saw a strip of paleness which one knew was the moonlit sky.
Conversation with my companion being difficult--the top of his silk hat just reached my elbow--I strode along in silence, Anastasius trotting by my side. Many jeers and jests were flung at us as we pa.s.sed, whereat he scowled terribly; but no one molested us. I am inclined to think that Anastasius attributed this to fear of his fierce demeanour. If so, he was happy, as were the simple souls who flouted; and this reflection kept my mind serene.
Presently we turned into a wide and less poverty-stricken street, which I felt sure we could have reached by a less tortuous and malodorous path. A few yards down we came to a dark _porte cochere_. The dwarf halted, crossed, so as to read the number by the gas lamp, and joining me, said:
"It is here. Have you your visiting-cards ready?"
I nodded. We proceeded down the dark entry till we came to a slovenly, ill-kept gla.s.s box lit by a small gas jet, whence emerged a slovenly, ill-kept man. This was the concierge. Anastasius addressed a remark to him which I did not catch.