The waiter shook his head.
"He has already told me that you are in, sir. Come, you had better see him, sir. Perhaps he"s the ha"porth of tar."
"Oh, very well," said Rames. "But I tell you, William, that I am in the mood to a.s.sert my rights as a man."
"Mustn"t do that, sir, until the day after to-morrow. You are only a candidate till then."
William retired. Rames fell back upon his sofa. He meant to lie there p.r.o.ne upon his back, even if his visitor held all the votes of Ludsey in the hollow of his hand. Then the door opened and was shut again. A little, puckish old man stood in the room, danced lightly on his feet, skipped in the air, twirled before Captain Rames"s astonished eyes and finally struck an inviting att.i.tude, both arms extended and one foot advanced, like the pictures of the quack doctors in the newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts.
"Oh, he"s out of a lunatic asylum," Captain Rames almost groaned aloud. "He won"t even have a vote."
The little man skimmed forward with agility, fixing a bright and twinkling pair of eyes upon the prostrate candidate.
"How old do you think I am?" he asked, and he whirled his arms.
"You are the youngest thing I have ever seen," replied Rames with conviction. "I didn"t know that people were even born as young as you are."
"I am seventy-three," exclaimed the little man with a chuckle. He squared up at an imaginary antagonist and delivered a deadly blow in the air.
"Do you mind not doing that!" said Rames mildly. "My nerves are not what they should be, and if you do it again I shall probably cry. I suppose that you are M. Poizat----"
"I am, sir," said the little man. He changed his tactics. He no longer whirled his arms in the air. He advanced to the sofa and suddenly put up his foot on the edge.
"Feel my calf!" he said abruptly.
Captain Rames meekly obeyed.
"You ought to have a medal," he said languidly. "You really ought. At seventy-three, too! For myself I am like b.u.t.ter, and rather inferior b.u.t.ter, on a very hot day."
M. Poizat nodded his head.
"I know. That"s why I am here!" He looked about the room and with the importance of a conspirator he drew out of his pocket a medicine bottle filled with a brown liquid. "Why am I so young?" he asked. "Why is my leg of iron? Listen to my voice. Why is it so clear?--It"s all "Lungatine,"" and with immense pride he reverently placed the bottle on the mantel-shelf. He turned again to Captain Rames.
"I heard you to-night. I suffered with you. What a voice! How harsh!
How terrible! And yet what good words if only one could have heard them! I said to myself: "That poor man. I can cure him. He does not know of Lungatine. He makes us all uncomfortable because he does not know of Lungatine." So I ran home and brought a bottle."
"It"s very good of you, I am sure," said Rames, "But look!" He pointed to a table. Throat sprays, tonics, lozenges, enc.u.mbered it. "The paraphernalia of a candidate," he said.
M. Poizat smiled contemptuously. He drew from his breast pocket a sheaf of letters.
"See how many in Ludsey owe their health to me!" he cried, and he gave the letters to Rames, who read them over with an "oh" and an "ah" of intense admiration when any particularly startling cure was gratefully recorded.
"You are a chemist here I suppose--naturalized, of course?" asked Captain Rames.
"I have a restaurant," M. Poizat corrected him. "Lungatine is merely one of my discoveries."
He sat down complacently. Captain Rames started up in dismay upon his elbow.
"I have a great deal to do to-morrow," he said piteously. The plea was of no avail. Captain Rames was in the grip of that most terrible of all const.i.tuents, the amateur inventor. M. Poizat drew his chair to the side of the sofa and went through the tale of his inventions. It was the usual inevitable list--an automatic lift which would work with absolute safety in any mine, a torpedo which would destroy any navy, a steel process which would resist any torpedo, and a railway-coupling.
"I"ll bring you the models," he cried.
"No, no," cried Rames, springing from his sofa in dismay. Then he laid his hand on the inventor"s shoulder and smiled wisely:
"Royal commissions for you," he said. "They"re the fellows for models.
I"ll see about some. Royal commissions for you. Thank you for your Lungatine. Good-night, my friend, good-night."
Gently, but firmly, he raised the inventor from his chair, while he shook hands with him, and conducted him toward the door.
"You have your hat? Yes."
"A tablespoonful six times a day in a winegla.s.s of water."
"Yes. The instructions, I see, are on the bottle."
Captain Rames opened the door with his pleasantest smile.
"To-morrow at your great meeting," said M. Poizat, "I shall be there.
I shall hear what you say. Your voice will ring like a trumpet. And perhaps at the end of your speech, you will say that it is all due to Lungatine."
A frosty silence followed upon the words. Captain Rames said indifferently:
"You have been in England a long time. You are naturalized, of course?"
M. Poizat did not reply to the question.
"Perhaps you will say that it is all due to Lungatine," he repeated softly. "Perhaps you will say that. Who knows?"
Captain Rames looked up at the ceiling.
"Ah, who knows?" he said enigmatically.
M. Poizat shook hands for a second time and went down the stairs.
Captain Rames closed the door, took the cork from the bottle, wetted the tips of his finger, and tasted the brown liquid. It was a simple solution of paregoric.
"I don"t believe the fellow"s naturalized," cried Rames, and he raised the bottle in the air above the coal-scuttle. But he did not let it drop.
"Perhaps he is though," he thought. He poured away a portion of the liquid amongst the coal, replaced the cork, and set the bottle prominently upon the mantel-shelf so that if M. Poizat took it into his head to call again he would see it there. Then he betook himself to bed; and M. Poizat figured in his dreams, a grotesque, little, capering creature, a figure of fun, as indeed he was, to the eyes of wakefulness. There are people upon whose faces nature writes plainly hints of tragic destinies, and M. Poizat had certainly no relationship with these. But then nature is apt to be freakish.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE POLL
The walls of the great Corn Exchange were draped with banners and hung with gigantic mottoes. Cynthia sat in the front row of chairs upon the platform with Isaac Benoliel upon one side of her, and beyond him Diana Royle. It was the first public meeting at which she had ever been present, and now that the shy uneasiness at the prominence of her position which had troubled her when she took her seat was pa.s.sing away, she gazed about her, eagerness in her eyes and a throb of excitement at her heart. In front of her a rostrum had been built out from the edge of the platform so that the speakers might stand upon the exact spot whence the voice carried with the greatest sonority.
The rostrum was railed and hung with red cloth; the chairman"s table, with the inevitable water-bottle, occupied it; and the small, square s.p.a.ce was the only empty s.p.a.ce in all that cavern of a hall. A few rows of chairs for members of the a.s.sociation were ranged at the front upon the floor; behind the chairs the people stood packed and ma.s.sed to the doors, most of them men. The one gallery was crowded to its furthest nook; behind Cynthia the platform was thronged. Wherever her eyes turned she saw faces, faces, faces, all set in one direction, all white under the glare of light, all inclined toward the empty rostrum.