"_Parbleu!_" he cried, with a wide gesture. "I have known the English all my life. I speak their language as I speak French or my native Provencal. I have taught in schools in England. I know the country and the people like my pocket. They have never heard of Perpignan."
His companions acquiesced sadly. Aristide, aglow with a sudden impudent inspiration, leant across the marble table.
"Monsieur le Maire and Monsieur le President du Syndicat d"Initiative, I am sick to death of playing the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes and the tambourine in the Tournee Gulland. I was born to higher things. Entrust to me"--he converged the finger-tips of both hands to his bosom--"to me, Aristide Pujol, the organisation of Perpignan-Ville de Plaisir, and you will not regret it."
The Mayor and the President laughed.
But my astonishing friend prevailed--not indeed to the extent of being appointed a Petronius, _arbiter elegantiarum_, of the town of Perpignan; but to the extent of being employed, I fear in a subordinate capacity, by the Mayor and the Syndicat in the work of propagandism. The Tournee Gulland found another drum and went its tuneful but weary way; and Aristide remained gloriously behind and rubbed his hands with glee. At last he had found permanence in a life where heretofore had been naught but transience. At last he had found a sphere worthy of his genius. He began to nourish insensate ambitions. He would be the Great Benefactor of Perpignan. All Roussillon should bless his name. Already he saw his statue on the Quai Sadi-Carnot.
His rise in the social scale of the town was meteoric, chiefly owing to the goodwill of Madame Coquereau, the widowed mother of the Mayor. She was a hard-featured old lady, with a face that might have been made of corrugated iron painted yellow and with the eyes of an old hawk. She dressed always in black, was very devout and rich and narrow and iron-willed. Aristide was presented to her one Sunday afternoon at the Cafe on the Place Arago--where on Sunday afternoons all the fashion of Perpignan a.s.sembles--and--need I say it?--she fell at once a helpless victim to his fascination. Accompanying her grandmother was Mademoiselle Stephanie Coquereau, the Mayor"s niece (a wealthy orphan, as Aristide soon learned), nineteen, pretty, demure, perfectly brought up, who said "_Oui, Monsieur_" and "_Non, Monsieur_" with that quintessence of modest grace which only a provincial French Convent can cultivate.
Aristide"s heart left his body and rolled at the feet of Mademoiselle Stephanie. It was a way with Aristide"s heart. It was always doing that.
He was of Provence and not of Peckham Rye or Hoboken, and he could not help it.
Aristide called on Madame Coquereau, who entertained him with sweet Frontignan wine, dry sponge cakes and conversation. After a while he was invited to dinner. In a short s.p.a.ce of time he became the intimate friend of the house, and played piquet with Madame Coquereau, and grew familiar with the family secrets. First he learned that Mademoiselle Stephanie would go to a husband with two hundred and fifty thousand francs. Aristide"s heart panted at the feet of Mademoiselle Stephanie.
Further he gathered that, though Monsieur Coquereau was a personage of great dignity and importance in civic affairs, he was as but a little child in his own house. Madame Coquereau held the money-bags. Her son had but little personal fortune. He had reached the age of forty-five without being able to marry. Marriage unauthorized by Madame Coquereau meant immediate poverty and the testamentary a.s.signment of Madame Coquereau"s fortune to various religious establishments. None of the objects of Monsieur Coquereau"s matrimonial desire had pleased Madame Coquereau, and none of Madame Coquereau"s blushing candidates had caused a pulse in Monsieur Coquereau"s being to beat the faster. The Mayor held his mother in professed adoration and holy terror. She held him in abject subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame"s sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur"s impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stephanie, she kept on saying "_Oui, Monsieur_" and "_Non, Monsieur_," in a crescendo of maddening demureness.
So pa.s.sed the halcyon hours. During the day time Aristide in a corner of the Mayor"s office, drew up flamboyant circulars in English which would have put a pushing Land and Estate Agent in the New Jerusalem to the blush, and in the evening played piquet with Madame Coquereau, while Mademoiselle Stephanie, model of modest piety, worked pure but nameless birds and flowers on her embroidery frame. Monsieur le Maire, of course, played his game of manilla at the cafe, after dinner, and generally came home just before Aristide took his leave. If it had not been for the presence of Mademoiselle Stephanie, it would not have been gay for Aristide. But love gilded the moments.
On the first evening of the Carnival, which lasts nearly a fortnight in Perpignan, Aristide, in spite of a sweeter "_Oui, Monsieur_" than ever from Mademoiselle Stephanie, made an excuse to slip away rather earlier than usual, and, front door having closed behind him, crossed the strip of gravel with a quick step and flung out of the iron gates. Now the house had an isolated position in the new quarter of the town. It was perky and modern and defaced by all sorts of oriel windows and tourelles and pinnacles which gave it a top-heavy appearance, and it was surrounded by a low brick wall. Aristide, on emerging through the iron gates, heard the sound of scurrying footsteps on the side of the wall nearest to the town, and reached the corner, just in time to see a masquer, attired in a Pierrot costume and wearing what seemed to be a pig"s head, disappear round the further angle. Paying no heed to this phenomenon, Aristide lit a cigarette and walked, in antic.i.p.ation of enjoyment, to the great Avenue des Plantanes where the revelry of the Carnival was being held. Aristide was young, he loved flirtation, and flirtation flourished in the Avenue des Plantanes.
The next morning the Mayor entered his office with a very grave face.
"Do you know what has happened? My house was broken into last night. The safe in my study was forced open, and three thousand francs and some valuable jewelry were stolen. _Quel malheur!_" he cried, throwing himself into a chair, and wiping his forehead. "It is not I who can afford to lose three thousand francs at once. If they had robbed _maman_ it would have been a different matter."
Aristide expressed his sympathy.
"Whom do you suspect?" he asked.
"A robber, _parbleu!_" said the Mayor. "The police are even now making their investigations."
The door opened and a plain clothes detective entered the office.
"Monsieur le Maire," said he, with an air of triumph, "I know a burglar."
Both men leapt to their feet.
"Ah!" said Aristide.
"_A la bonne heure!_" cried the Mayor.
"Arrest him at once," said Aristide.
"Alas, Monsieur," said the detective, "that I cannot do. I have called on him this morning and his wife tells me that he left for the North yesterday afternoon. But it is Jose Puegas that did it. I know his ways."
"_Tiens!_" said the Mayor, reflectively. "I know him also, an evil fellow."
"But why are you not looking for him?" exclaimed Aristide.
"Arrangements have been made," replied the detective coldly.
Aristide suddenly bethought him of the furtive masquer of the night before.
"I can put you on his track," said he, and related what he knew.
The Mayor looked dubious. "It wasn"t he," he remarked.
"Jose Puegas, Monsieur, would not commit a burglary in a pig"s head,"
said the policeman, with the cutting contempt of the expert.
"It was a vow, I suppose," said Aristide, stung to irony. "I"ve always heard he was a religious man."
The detective did not condescend to reply.
"Monsieur le Maire," said he, "I should like to examine the premises, and beg that you will have the kindness to accompany me."
"With the permission of Monsieur le Maire," said Aristide. "I too will come."
"Certainly," said the Mayor. "The more intelligences concentrated on the affair the better."
"I am not of that opinion," said the detective.
"It is the opinion of Monsieur le Maire," said Aristide rebukingly, "and that is enough."
When they reached the house--distances are short in Perpignan--they found policemen busily engaged with tape measures around the premises.
Old Madame Coquereau in a clean white linen dressing jacket, bare-headed, defying the keen air, stood grim and eager in the midst of them.
"Good morning, Monsieur Pujol, what do you think of this?"
"A veritable catastrophe," said Aristide.
She shrugged her iron shoulders. "I tell him it serves him right," she said, cuttingly. "A sensible person keeps his money under his mattress and not in a tin machine by a window which anyone can get at. I wonder we"ve not been murdered in our beds before."
"_Ah, Maman!_" expostulated the Mayor of Perpignan.
But she turned her back on him and worried the policemen. They, having probed, and measured, and consulted with the detective, came to an exact conclusion. The thief had climbed over the back wall--there were his footsteps. He had entered by the kitchen door--there were the marks of infraction. He had broken open the safe--there was the helpless condition of the lock. No one in Perpignan, but Jose Puegas, with his bad, socialistic, Barcelona blood, could have done it. These brilliant results were arrived at after much clamour and argument and imposing _proces verbal_. Aristide felt strangely depressed. He had narrated his story of the pig-headed masquer to unresponsive ears. Here was a melodramatic scene in which he not only was not playing a leading part, but did not even carry a banner. To be less than a super in life"s pageant was abhorrent to the nature of Aristide Pujol.
Moodily he wandered away from the little crowd. He hated the police and their airs of G.o.ds for whom exists no mystery. He did not believe in the kitchen-door theory. Why should not the thief have simply entered by the window of the study, which like the kitchen, was on the ground floor? He went round the house and examined the window by himself. No; there were no traces of burglary. The fastenings of the outside shutters and the high window were intact. The police were right.
Suddenly his quick eye lit on something in the gravel path and his heart gave a great leap. It was a little round pink disc of confetti.
Aristide picked it up and began to dance and shake his fist at the invisible police.
"Aha!" he cried, "now we shall see who is right and who is wrong!"
He began to search and soon found another bit of confetti. A little further along he discovered a third and a fourth. By using his walking stick he discovered that they formed a trail to a point in the wall. He examined the wall. There, if his eyes did not deceive him, were evidences of mortar dislodged by nefarious toes. And there, _mirabile visu!_ at the very bottom of the wall lay a little woollen pompon or ta.s.sel, just the kind of pompon that gives a finish to a pierrot"s shoes. Evidently the scoundrel had sc.r.a.ped it off against the bricks while clambering over.