heads.
Aristide stared for two seconds; it seemed to him two centuries. Then he turned simply, caught his partner again, and with a "_Allons, Hop!_"
raced back to the middle of the throng. There, in the crush, he unceremoniously lost her, and sped like a maniac to the entrance gates.
His friend the brigadier happened to be on duty. He unmasked himself, dragged the police agent aside, and breathless, half-hysterical, acquainted him with the astounding discovery.
"I was right, _mon vieux!_ There at the end of the Avenue you will find them. The pig-headed prowler I saw, with _my_ pompon missing from his shoe, and his _bonne amie_ wearing the stolen ring. Ah! you police people with your tape-measures and your Jose Puegas! It is I, Aristide Pujol, who have to come to Perpignan to teach you your business!"
"What do you want me to do?" asked the brigadier stolidly.
"Do?" cried Aristide. "Do you think I want you to kiss them and cover them with roses? What do you generally do with thieves in Perpignan?"
"Arrest them," said the brigadier.
"_Eh bien!_" said Aristide. Then he paused--possibly the drama of the situation striking him. "No, wait. Go and find them. Don"t take your eyes off them. I will run and fetch Monsieur le Maire and he will identify his property--_et puis nous aurons la scene a faire_."
The stout brigadier grunted an a.s.sent and rolled monumentally down the Avenue. Aristide, his pulses throbbing, his heart exulting, ran to the Mayor"s house. He was rather a panting triumph than a man. He had beaten the police of Perpignan. He had discovered the thief. He was the hero of the town. Soon would the wedding bells be playing.... He envied the marble of the future statue. He would like to be on the pedestal himself.
He dashed past the maid-servant who opened the door and burst into the prim salon. Madame Coquereau was alone, just preparing to retire for the night. Mademoiselle Stephanie had already gone to bed.
"_Mon Dieu_, what is all this?" she cried.
"Madame," shouted he, "glorious news. I have found the thief!"
He told his tale. Where was Monsieur le Maire?
"He has not yet come back from the cafe."
"I"ll go and find him," said Aristide.
"And waste time? Bah!" said the iron-faced old lady, catching up a black silk shawl. "I will come with you and identify the ring of my sainted sister Philomene. Who should know it better than I?"
"As you like, Madame," said Aristide.
Two minutes found them on their journey. Madame Coquereau, in spite of her sixty-five years trudged along with springing step.
"They don"t make metal like me, nowadays," she said scornfully.
When they arrived at the gate of the Avenue, the police on guard saluted. The mother of Monsieur le Maire was a power in Perpignan.
"Monsieur," said Aristide, in lordly fashion, to a policeman, "will you have the goodness to make a pa.s.sage through the crowd for Madame Coquereau, and then help the Brigadier Pesac to arrest the burglar who broke into the house of Monsieur le Maire?"
The man obeyed, went ahead clearing the path with the unceremoniousness of the law, and Aristide giving his arm to Madame Coquereau followed gloriously. As the impressive progress continued the revellers ceased their revels and followed in the wake of Aristide. At the end of the Avenue Brigadier Pesac was on guard. He approached.
"They are still there," he said.
"Good," said Aristide.
The two police-officers, Aristide and Madame Coquereau turned the corner. At the sight of the police the guilty couple started to their feet. Madame Coquereau pounced like a hawk on the masked lady"s hand.
"I identify it," she cried. "Brigadier, give these people in charge for theft."
The white masked crowd surged around the group, in the midst of which stood Aristide transfigured. It was his supreme moment. He flourished in one hand his red mask and in the other a pompon which he had extracted from his pocket.
"This I found," said he, "beneath the wall of Monsieur le Maire"s garden. Behold the shoe of the accused."
The crowd murmured their applause and admiration. Neither of the prisoners stirred. The pig"s head grinned at the world with its inane, painted leer. A rumbling voice beneath it said:
"We will go quietly."
"_Attention s"il vous plait_," said the policemen, and each holding a prisoner by the arm they made a way through the crowd. Madame Coquereau and Aristide followed close behind.
"What did I tell you?" cried Aristide to the brigadier.
"It"s Puegas, all the same," said the brigadier, over his shoulder.
"I bet you it"s not," said Aristide, and striding swiftly to the back of the male prisoner whipped off the pig"s head, and revealed to the petrified throng the familiar features of the Mayor of Perpignan.
Aristide regarded him for two or three seconds open-mouthed, and then fell back into the arms of the Brigadier Pesac screaming with convulsive laughter. The crowd caught the infection of merriment. Shrieks filled the air. The vast ma.s.s of masqueraders held their sides, swayed helplessly, rolled in heaps, men and women, tearing each other"s garments as they fell.
Aristide, deposited on the ground by the Brigadier Pesac laughed and laughed. When he recovered some consciousness of surroundings, he found the Mayor bending over him and using language that would have made Tophet put its fingers in its ears. He rose. Madame Coquereau shook her thin fists in his face.
"Imbecile! Triple fool!" she cried.
Aristide turned tail and fled. There was nothing else to do.
And that was the end of his career at Perpignan. Vanished were the dreams of civic eminence; melted into thin air the statue on the Quai Sadi-Carnot; faded, too, the vision of the modest Stephanie crowned with orange-blossom; gone forever the two hundred and fifty thousand francs.
Never since Alnaschar kicked over his basket of crockery was there such a hideous welter of shattered hopes.
If the Mayor had been allowed to go disguised to the Police Station, he could have disclosed his ident.i.ty and that of the lady in private to awe-stricken functionaries. He might have forgiven Aristide. But Aristide had exposed him to the derision of the whole of Roussillon and the never ending wrath of Madame Coquereau. Ruefully Aristide asked himself the question: why had the Mayor not taken him into the confidence of his masquerading escapade? Why had he not told him of the pretty widow, whom, unknown to his mother, he was courting? Why had he permitted her to wear the ring which he had given her so as to spite his sainted Aunt Philomene? And why had he gone on wearing the pig"s head after Aristide had told him of his suspicions? Ruefully Aristide found no answers save in the general chuckle-headedness of mankind.
"If it hadn"t been such a good farce I should have wept like a cow,"
said Aristide, after relating this story. "But every time I wanted to cry, I laughed. _Nom de Dieu!_ You should have seen his face! And the face of Madame Coquereau! She opened her mouth wide showing ten yellow teeth and squealed like a rabbit! Oh, it was a good farce! He was very cross with me," he added after a smiling pause, "and when I got back to Paris I tried to pacify him."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I sent him my photograph," said Aristide.
VI
THE ADVENTURE OF FLEURETTE
One day, when Aristide was discoursing on the inexhaustible subject of woman, I pulled him up.
"My good friend," said I, "you seem to have fallen in love with every woman you have ever met. But for how many of them have you really cared?"