CHAPTER X
THE EGG IS BROKEN
I say "the luck that had come to us," but it is not to be thought that I lost my head over the business. I was not so young as to take all that a man like Ames said for gospel truth. Indeed, I spent the remainder of that day in the cafés and brasseries round about the Hôtel de Lille, trying to learn what I could about the Baroness de Moncy. The result was not such as I had looked for. A few knew of her by name as a lady of great wealth, who had a country house at St. Germain and another at Trouville. One man at the Café Rouge thought that he had seen her, but could not remember any thing about her looks. The tale was that she had given up society after the death of her husband and had gone to live in seclusion. But there seemed no doubt about the money part of it, and that was what chiefly concerned me. So long as there were guineas to rattle, what did it matter if a painter had laid it on thick, so to speak. We could put up with plenty of that if the price was right.
It was seven o'clock when I got back to the hotel. I saw at once that a letter lay on the table—a dainty little note in a big feminine scrawl; but before I'd time to look at it, in came Sir Nicolas and Jack Ames, and with them that pretty bit of goods from the Bouffes Parisiens, Mimi Marcel by name. They were in all in rare fettle, especially my master, who read his letter and then would have it that they should dine with him. I don't know that I ever saw him in better spirits in my life, and it wasn't until nearly two in the morning that I got him to bed. But he was ready to talk at that time, and talk he did like one o'clock.
"Bedad!" said he, "I don't know that I'll go to bed at all this night, Hildebrand. Was there ever such a lucky devil born as I am? And only yesterday I was thinking of cutting my throat!"
"I'm glad to hear you've good news, sir," said I.
"Good news! and that's all you would call it? Why, man, my fortune's made—made, I tell you! I'm to meet her to-morrow night at the Café de Paris. To-morrow night—think of that! And I was dancing with her at Trouville, and thought no more of her than of a grisette out of a drapery store—though she did say that I should have her picture. Oh, it's a famous turn, for sure! I'll be married within the month."
He went on for a long time like this, throwing his clothes about the place, and behaving as if he wasn't right in the head; nor do I believe he was at such times. There are some men who can't stand Fortune when she runs with them. He was such an one, and there's many a good thing he's spoiled for want of a bit of balance. I found it best not to take any notice of him when he was all cock-a-hoop like this; and I used to get him into bed as quickly as possible and leave him to talk to himself. You could hear him singing half the night through sometimes when he'd had a bit of luck; and on this particular night I don't believe he slept a wink. He was up and dressed long before the time for me to take his hot water, and he left the hotel at nine o'clock to go over to Mr. Ames' rooms. I saw no more of him all day until he came in to dress at seven o'clock; and he was then in one of his silent tempers. He didn't say one word to me about what he'd done, not a word about the meeting at the Café de Paris, nor of what time I might expect him bade But he put his clothes on as though his life depended on it, and went off in a fiacre when the clocks were striking half-past seven.
"All right, my man," said I to myself, when he was gone, "you hold your tongue now, but I shall hear enough and to spare about it when you come back by and by with the liquor in you. Meanwhile, I might do worse than take a stroll and see where you get to."
I had thought of doing this all along, for somehow I never could bring myself quite to believe in what I'd seen or heard. That there was a screw loose somewhere I was certain; and yet, if you had asked me to put my finger on the place, I couldn't have done it, not to have saved my life. Not that there was any thing strange in a Frenchwoman running after Nicky Steele. I hadn't lived with him for all these years not to know that. It's wonderful what a bit of a handle to the name will do for a man in Paris; and that Nicolas Steele was a baronet, all the judges in the land could not deny. Nevertheless, I got no real grip on the truth of Jack Ames' story about the Baroness de Moncy, and that's the plain fact of it.
It was nearly dark when I left the Hôtel de Lille and crossed the river by the Pont du Carrousel. Paris was pretty full, though it was only the end of September; and when I came up by the Palais Royal there was a number of people sitting out to have their dinner in the open. I'd made up my mind that I'd ask for Sir Nicolas at the Café de Paris, but without going in to see him; and this I did. But they told me that he had only just looked in for five minutes and had then left.
"Did he go alone?" I asked the man, who was about as civil as he could be.
"He went with a gentleman," was his reply.
"With a gentleman—you don't say that?"
"Certainly; they met here and left together."
Now, I didn't want to let him see that this astonished me; but, if I must tell the truth, it took the wind clean out of my sails.
"Who can it be that he's met?" I asked myself; "and why's he gone off with him? What becomes, then, of the story about this woman at Trouville, whose picture he's got in his drawer? Is it any plant of the police that he's walking into, like a fox into a trap? Seems to me something like it."
It may sound strange to hear it, but that was the first time such a notion had come into my head. Directly it was there, I could no more get rid of it than cut my hands off. It set my brain going like a clock, and I began to run over all the affairs we'd been in for the last two years, and to ask myself which one would bring us to a quarrel with the police of Paris.
"It can't be Oakley," said I, "for he's not going to make public property of his daughter's misfortune; that I do know. And it can't be Margaret King, for there's no extradition when a woman cries. And it isn't the Dublin Club, because you can't lay hands on a man in Paris for holding too many aces in Dublin. No, we're safe enough here so far as I can see; and yet—and yet"
The fact was that I could make nothing of it. I must have walked about Paris that night for an hour and a half, turning it over and over in my head, and yet getting no forrader. When I stopped at last, I was before the Grand Café; for what should I see there but Sir Nicolas Steele himself, sitting down before a dinner-table, with no others for company than Jack Ames and Mimi Marcel. There was no doubt at all about it. There he was as large as life; and what's more, he seemed as happy as a schoolboy just come out of school. And at that I shook my head and went straight home.
"Bigg," said I, "this beats you, and no mistake. Just you leave it alone and go on with your work."
Well, I tried to do as I said I would, and at midnight Sir Nicolas came home, talkative as usual, but with all his wits about him. He hadn't quite the spirits of the night before, though you couldn't call him depressed; and he went to his bedroom at once.
"Hildebrand," said he, "it's better quarters than a fifth in the Hôtel de Lille we'll be occupying this day next month."
"Indeed, and I hope so, sir," said I.
"Oh, but I don't hope so at all," he went on; "I make sure. We'll be in the Trouville then, and no need to think about the bill. Bedad! it's bills that make half the trouble in life."
"There never was a truer word than that, sir," said I.
"Isn't it me that knows it—me that has enough blue paper to furnish the whole of this same hotel? But I've done with that—done with it for good, thank God!"
I said nothing in answer to this, for I saw that he only wanted to be left alone to go on talking, and, sure enough, he began again before a minute had passed.
"It's her brother that is setting himself against me," said he; "a bit of a man I could crumple up in my hand. That's why she doesn't want to be seen here in Paris in her own name. She's staying at the Scribe, and calls herself Mme. Grévin—she that is able to buy up the Rue de Rivoli and half the boulevards as well. Oh, but there'll be fun to come, man—fun to come."
"You had a pleasant evening, sir?" I asked at this point.
"Pleasant enough," replied he, "so far as it went. There was me and Mr. Ames dined at the Grand Café."
"Not at the Café de Paris, then, sir?" said I.
"No, not at the Café de Paris," said he; "it was her brother that kept her. He came unexpected from Trouville. But we'll have better luck, Hildebrand, on Friday, mark me. Oh, it was a great day entirely that sent me from Derbyshire to Paris."
With this he rolled into bed, and I put his light out. So far as I could make out, he had been to the Café de Paris, and had there heard that the lady was prevented from meeting him by her brother's arrival from Trouville. This sounded fair enough, yet what I wanted to know was how he came to dine with Mr. Ames and that laughing little bundle of goods, Mimi Marcel. But he never said a word about that, and next morning he was as silent as ever; nor did he open his lips to me until the following Friday, when at seven o'clock he left for the Hôtel Chatam, where the second appointment was made. What was my astonishment to see him back in an hour, and with him no other than Rudolphe Marcel, the brother of the little witch Mimi.
The two dined together in our own coffee-room, and then went over to play billiards with Jack Ames until twelve o'clock. It was two o'clock when Sir Nicolas went to bed, and he was so silent and snappish that I knew he'd been losing money. And what was worse, he never opened his lips to tell me why he had returned so unexpected from the Hôtel Chatam. That he had failed to meet the Baroness de Moncy I felt sure—yet how it had come about, or if he had received any letter, I never learned.
Now, it seemed to me, when I went to bed that night, that we had drifted into a very queer place. He had been spending money like water since the morning he received the present. 1 knew that there was precious little of his thousand pounds remaining. Of course, I'd had my bit—a matter of five hundred—out of what we took in Derbyshire; but money is money, and what I'd got was locked away safe enough. How he was going to get on in Paris without a guinea in his pocket, I didn't see; and this affair, upon which he reckoned, seemed as much in the clouds as ever. I had begun, in fact, to believe that he was running after a shadow altogether, and to that belief I should have stood if the next morning had not brought a turn as sudden as it was unlooked for; and one that made me fear not only for his purse, but for his life. It came about this way:
Sir Nicolas got out of bed at twelve o'clock, still rather short, and in what I call a "brandy-and-soda" temper. He dressed himself carelessly, and crossed over the road to the gardens of the Café" Rouge to get his déjeûner. Five minutes after he had gone there came a letter for him; a little bit of a note in a feminine hand, such as he had received often since the intrigue with the woman at Trouville began. I knew well that he'd make a fuss if he didn't get this billet doux at once, so I ran across the road to the café, just as I was, without hat or any thing. I found him sitting at a marble table, reading the morning's Figaro; but what should happen but that, just as I was beginning to talk to him, up stepped another man, a squat little party with a bushy black beard, and stood glaring at him over the table.
"Sare Nicolas Steele," says he, speaking funny-like and with a lot of French words in between that I couldn't make head or tail of—"do I spik to Sare Nicolas Steele?"
"You do," said my master, looking up at him over the paper.'
"Then I take leave to smack your face," says he; and, as I'm a man, he bent over and struck Sir Nicolas on the right cheek with his glove.
Now, if there's one thing more than another that you don't find an Irishman take quietly to, it's a blow on the face, be it ever so light. And Sir Nicolas wasn't different from other men. No sooner had the Frenchman touched him than he sprang up from his chair and rushed at him like a bull.
"Is it for smacking faces ye are?" says he, white with passion. "Then I'll take leave to join in with you!" and with that he sent the table and chairs flying, and I believe that he'd have killed him if some of us hadn't got in between the pair of them and held them apart.
As it was, he tore the Frenchman's coat from his collar to his hip, and the man's shirt looked like an old envelope. But he kept as quiet as ever; and when the landlord had come up, and there was a big crowd around the pair of them, he says quite calmly:
"Monsieur, my name is Eugene Grevin, and I am to be found at the Hôtel Scribe."
"Sir," says my master—and I never saw him look more dignified, "my friend shall call upon you at once."
Suddenly as the thing had been sprung upon me, the end of it was not less sudden. The Frenchman who called himself Grevin bowed to Sir Nicolas, Sir Nicolas bowed to him; and away they both went, the one to fiacre waiting for him, my master to his hotel. But I never saw him more excited, and the way he ordered me about was a thing to hear.
"Hildebrand," said he—and he couldn't rest in one place a minute, "I'll tear the throat of him. It's to him that we owe all this trouble and delay—him and no other."
"Then you know the party, sir?"
"Know him, the paltry scoundrel! and what would I be if I did not know him? He's the brother of the Baroness de Moncy. And it's to-morrow morning that I'll shoot him like a dog. Run now to Mr. Ames and tell him that he must come to me at once. I've need of him, and there's no time to lose."
Well, I left him drinking absinthe, and ran away to Mr. Ames' place just as fast as my legs could carry me. My head seemed so full of thinking that I was worse than one dazed, and all the houses danced before my eyes as I raced down the street.
"Good Lord!" said I, "that it should have come to this—him risking his life with pistols, and all for a woman who sent him her picture in a locket. And what if he's shot—what then, Bigg? You're not likely to tumble into a place like this for many a year; and you'd miss him, that you can't deny. Again, suppose he isn't shot, but kills the man? Where do you stand then? In Queer Street, I fancy, and the sooner you're out of Paris the better."
This is what I thought as I ran along to Mr. Ames'. If we shot our man, there'd be a hullaballoo which must be heard in London; and then who could tell where we might find ourselves? And what would the woman whom all the fuss was about do? She couldn't well stand by a man who had shot her own brother. Please God, we'll only wound him, thought I, and get away to Trouville while he's in the doctor's hands.
I found Mr. Ames dressed in a shabby old coat and standing before a big picture. He heard what I'd got to tell him before lie took his pipe from his mouth, and seemed to take it very serious.
"I'm coming along with you now," said he; and then he asked me a minute after, "Does he know any thing about pistols?"
"The devil a bit, sir," said I; "he can't abide 'em."
"And he's worse than a cow with a sword," said he next.
"Never had one in his hand that I know of, sir," I answered.
"Well," said he, "it's a bad job, and if he's alive this time to-morrow, he's a lucky man. Help me on with my coat, will you, now?"
I did as he asked me and we hurried back to the Hôtel de Lille. Sir Nicolas was pacing up and down the courtyard, and directly he caught sight of Mr. Ames, he began to talk to him.
"Jack," cried he, "ye've heard the news that I'm to go out with him?"
"Truth, I have; and a pretty mess you seem to have made of it."
"Mess, d'ye call it? Didn't he come here and strike me in the face? 'Tis lucky for him that I forgot to twist his neck."
"Then there's no question of apology?"
"Be hanged to your apology! Is it a coward ye think I am—me that would fight any man in France?"
"But what will Carlotta say?"
"What can she say, when it's for her that I'm meeting him? Wasn't it he who prevented her coming last night? Wasn't he the man who stopped her when she was to meet me at the Café de Paris? The devil take your apologies!"
"Then I'm to call on him?"
"Certainly ye are, and to have Rudolphe Marcel with you. There's no other that I know who would do it for me."
"He has the right of weapons," said Mr. Ames here.
"And don't I know it? What's it to me whether he's the right of weapons? Won't I kill him any way?"
Mr. Ames shook his head, and the two went off, walking arm and arm, to the house of Rudolphe Marcel. I saw them next at seven o'clock, when they were all dining at the Café Rouge, but Sir Nicolas never came home until midnight, and then he was more like a beaten child than a man.
"Hildebrand, Hildebrand," said he, "ye'll be burying me to-morrow, for sure. I'm to fight at dawn."
"Is that so, sir?" said I. "Well, sorry I am to hear it. There was never any good done yet in this world by blowing a man's brains out, and there won't be, I make sure. I wouldn't fight, if I were you, sir."
"Wouldn't fight—hark at him!" cried he. "Wouldn't fight—me that is the ninth baronet with forefathers big in history! Is it the chicken of the family I'm to be? What would she say of me if I refused him? No; by Heaven, I'll cut his throat."
"He hasn't chosen pistols, then, sir?" I asked next.
"Indeed, and he has."
I didn't want to hear this, for a duel with pistols looked like to be the death of one of them. But before I could say any thing he was rambling on again.
"If it pleases God that I'm killed," said he, "you will send the letter that I'm writing to the Baroness de Moncy at the Hôtel Chatam. My clothes you may keep, Hildebrand. Ye've been a good man to me, and I'll not forget to say so on paper."
"I do hope it won't be as bad as that, sir," said I.
"’Tis as God wishes," replied he, pious like, "and I don't forget I was born a Catholic, though I'm no credit to my religion."
"May I ask where you're to meet him, sir?" said I, trying to turn him from thinking of it.
"In the garden of a house at Vincennes, at six o'clock," he answered. "We'll be private there, and no police to interrupt. You'll not forget to wake me at five?"
I promised that I would not, and he sat down to his desk in his shirt-sleeves and wrote two letters. One he addressed to the Baroness de Moncy; the other was a character for me, and I couldn't have had a better one, not if I'd been the angel Gabriel. It made me queer to read it though, for all said and done I liked Nicky Steele; and there's few men in this world that ever I did like. But that wasn't the place to say so, and as the night went on, I had just as much as I could do to manage him. He'd been drinking cognac, you see, and there was a time, about four in the morning, when his courage left him, and he broke down like a woman.
"Hildebrand, Hildebrand," he wailed, lying on his bed, with his clothes on, "where will I be this time to-morrow? What's to become of me immortal soul? Is there no one that will bring a priest to me? Am I to die without a friend in the world—not a friend, by Heaven!—me that was born a Catholic?"
He went on like this for a good half hour; but I gave him some more drink, and about half -past four he began to doze. As for myself, I never closed my eyes, but sat there beside him, while the cold white dawn came creeping along the streets, and Paris bestirred herself to begin another day.
"Good Lord!" said I, looking down on his pale face, "to think that this time to-morrow your body may lie under the ground, and I may be loose on the road of life again, and all for the shadow of a woman who may mean nothing at all, and whom, like enough, you may never see again. Well, well! we've seen some queer times together, Sir Nicolas Steele, that we have; good times and bad times, days when we've not known where our dinner was coming from, and days when we could have taken a bath in the guineas. And now, it's come to this, that you're making yourself a pot-shot for a bit of a French chap I wouldn't soil my boots with. Did any one ever match that?"
All this was bothering me, I needn't tell, while I sat and watched him during the half-hour he slept. When I awoke him at last he seemed all the better for his doze, and was quite cool and collected, dressing himself up as smart as if he was going to Longchamps or Auteuil.
"Hildebrand," said he, "what bit of money I have is banked with Hébraie, as you know. It 'll serve to pay up here if any thing happens to me. All the little things are for you."
"Don't you think of that, sir," said I. "Just you keep your nerve, and shoot straight. I don't doubt you can hold a pistol as well as he can, if it comes to that."
"My fathers could, any way," he exclaimed, drinking up the coffee I'd brought him. "Is the cab at the door yet?"
"It's just driving up, sir," said I.
The cab, in which were Mr. Ames and Mr. Marcel, drove up while I talked to him; and they came bustling out and insisted on taking a liqueur together before leaving. I thought they both seemed in mighty good spirits, seeing what they were after; and Sir Nicolas thought so too.
"Well, boys," said he, "it's gay ye are, I must say. Did ye buy the pistols, Jack?"
"No need to do that," says Mr. Ames. "I brought a case of my own. And as for being gay, Nicky, you'll be shouting loud enough in half an hour, you mark my words."
"I have my doubts," says he, quite gloomy like; and then out they all went, while I climbed on the box, and we drove away toward the old Pont Bercy.
There weren't many people about the streets, for most of the working folk had gone already to business; but the air was crisp and sharp, like it is in early autumn, and the river was foaming up in little bits of waves, which did one good to see. By and by, we came out in the Rue des Buttes, and so crossed to the Cours de Vincennes, stopping at last before an ugly old house surrounded by trees, which were already losing their leaves. The next minute the gentlemen were on the pavement, and my master, pale, and a bit weak about the knees, as it seemed to me, went into the garden with them.
Until this time there had been no one to say me nay when I chose to follow the party. I had ridden on the box without asking any one, and I was going after Sir Nicolas into the garden, when an old white-haired footman tried to shut the gate in my face.
"Be hanged to your impudence!" said I, getting my foot in the way and giving him push for push; but it was a minute before I had the best of him, and while I was still pushing there was a shout of laughter came from the garden.
We found the party drawn up in a circle on the lawn. For some time I didn't know whether I was awake or dreaming, for what should I see but a capital breakfast spread under the trees, and twenty or thirty finely dressed women just holding their sides as though they would die of the spectacle. As for Sir Nicolas, he was standing before them with a look on his face as if he could strike them all dead where they sat. And talking to him was Jack Ames and a little, clean-shaven chap that I recognized as Louis Regnard.
"Permit me," says Jack Ames, bowing very low, while all the others went on with their laughing, "to present to you the Chevalier Eugene Grevin, alias M. Louis Regnard of the Theatre du Vaudeville. The Baroness de Moncy is yonder, resting under the trees. She is known sometimes as Juliette Vauloo, of the Théâtre de l'Opéra Comique."
"Hoaxed by !" says Sir Nicolas; and with this he fairly bolted out of the garden.
••••••
What did they make out of it? Well, reckoning the three dinners he stood Jack Ames while his head was full of the picture, and the dinner that he gave to Rudolphe and Mimi Marcel, and all the champagne that had been drunk during the week, it wasn't a bad thing; to say nothing of him playing billiards with Ames. The egg they sent him wasn't worth a sovereign. It was lined with lead.
And that reminds me. I heard of the real Baroness de Moncy the other day. She hadn't set foot out of Portugal for three years, and is a white-haired old woman, much troubled with rheumatics.