CHAPTER VI
A WOMAN INTERVENES
IT was a little after two o'clock in the morning when Mannister stepped out of the café, where the air was stifling, into the cool sweetness of the spring twilight. Behind him was the gay music of the little red-coated orchestra, the dulcet cries of the mesdemoiselles whom he had passed on his way down the stairs, the shouting of a coon dancer, the clatter and tinkle of glasses and crockery. It was the night world of Paris who supped! And before him, the cool dark streets, the sense of cleanliness that one feels who escapes from such a miasma into the open air. Mannister stood for a moment bare-headed upon the pavement, and the commissionnaire hastened to his side.
"Voiture pour monsieur?" he commanded with a bow.
Mannister held up his hand.
"Voiture ordinaire," he corrected, and very nearly paid with his life for the five francs he saved.
The crazy old taximeter lumbered down the hill. Mannister took off his hat, laid it on the seat by his side, and leaning back amongst the cushions, lit a cigarette. The road from the Montmartre to the Continental was one which he had taken many a time. He was somewhat surprised when the cocher left the main thoroughfare and took one of the turns to the right. He leaned forward in his seat a little curiously, and again fortune was with him. From behind the carriage a dark form had sprung up and made a vicious blow with some shortly held swinging weapon at the place where Mannister's head had been. The coachman, who was in the grasp of another assailant, was yelling that he was murdered, and Mannister, whose brain moved swiftly, realized that this was probably one of those attacks by apaches whose doings had been keeping the French Press busy during the last few weeks. He had no weapon, nor did he require any. The man who was scrambling over the back of the carriage with a knife now gleaming in his hand, went down into the roadway with a sickening thud, as Mannister's fist crashed into his face. His companion, who had sprung into the carriage, aimed one blow at Mannister with his knife, and then ducking his head, ran. The third man, who was wrestling with the coachman, finding himself deserted, leaped to the ground and also tore off. Mannister, whose blood was up, leaped out on to the pavement and would have followed his flying assailants, but the cocher, also descending, grabbed him by the arm.
"They will only lead you into their haunts, monsieur!" he exclaimed. "They will murder you there! Get in, get in! We will drive fast."
"I should like to know," Mannister said, "what the devil you mean by making this turn."
"It is the nearest way, monsieur, and the stones are slippery along the Rue Pigalle," the cocher declared. "Jump in, monsieur, quickly. They will return, these assassins."
Mannister reluctantly obeyed, the cocher whipped up his horse into a gallop, and they completed the journey to the Hotel Continental without further misadventure. But Mannister had found something to think about. This was the second time a night attack had been made upon him during his three days' stay in Paris! . . ..
He reported the affair next morning at police head-quarters, and had the satisfaction of receiving a great many polite assurances from a very regretful and very much uniformed personage. Afterwards, as the morning was brilliantly fine, he walked down the Boulevard and sat for a few moments outside the Café de la Paix. He had been there perhaps for five minutes when he felt a touch on his arm. He looked quickly up and saw Polsover standing by his chair.
"I thought," Polsover said, "that I would give you the satisfaction of seeing me. Look! It is your work! D—n you!"
Polsover was in rags. He was the sort of person whom a gendarme would have arrested on sight for speaking to a well-dressed stranger. He was unshaven, and he had lost at least a couple of stones in weight. His cheeks were white, and in his eyes was the gleam of the hunted animal.
"Sit down," Mannister said shortly.
"I am not allowed to," Polsover answered bitterly. "The gendarmes in this neighbourhood are down on me."
Mannister rose languidly to his feet
"Follow me," he said shortly.
At the corner of the Rue Scribe he paused at a large clothing store, and beckoned Polsover to follow him in.
"You will supply this person," he said to the man who came forward to wait upon him, "with a complete outfit of clothes. Here are two hundred francs. The change I shall call for in a couple of hours."
Then he turned to Polsover.
"They will make you respectable here," he said. "When they have done with you come to the American bar of the Hotel Chatham. I shall wait there for you."
Polsover stood like a man in a dream, and Mannister walked out of the shop and crossed the street. An hour afterwards, as he sat before one of the small tables in the bar of the Chatham, Polver entered, metamorphosed, with something restored of his original carriage and bearing as he felt himself again in the garb of civilized men. Nevertheless he was curiously changed, thinner, and aged, grey about the temples, and with the spring gone from his walk.
Mannister watched him approach, noticing all these things with unchanged face.
"Sit down," he said. "You will take something to drink?"
"Scotch whiskey and soda," Polsover answered. "I have been nearly poisoned with cheap drinks for the last few months. Be thankful that you do not know what it is to drink their brandy at the cafés where I have been dining."
Mannister gave an order to the barman and turned to his companion.
"What the devil have you done this for, Mannister?" Polsover asked abruptly. "Are there some further refinements of torture you have it in your mind to use against me, or do you think that I have come down low enough even for you?"
Mannister yawned slightly.
"Don't be melodramatic," he said. "I detest it. I was quite content to let you go to the devil. When I saw you this afternoon at the Café de la Paix, however, the whim seized me to pull you back for a day or so at any rate. You might be useful to me.
Polsover leaned a little across the table.
"You never spoke a truer word," he said. "I might be useful to you. In fact I might save your life."
"Is it in any particular danger?" Mannister asked.
"Well," Polsover answered, helping himself with trembling fingers to a cigarette, "I should say that it was."
Mannister appeared pleasantly interested.
"I was right, then," he declared. "There was something in these two attacks. My friend," he continued, "you are interesting me. You talk about saving my life. I have had to do that twice for myself within the last two days, I might almost say hours."
"Apaches?" Polsover asked.
Mannister nodded.
"Two night attacks," he said. "I put them down, of course, to the usual thing, but since your last remark I have begun to doubt it, especially as they seem to go for my person rather more than for my belongings."
"The attacks were inspired," Polsover answered. "I can tell you that, and I can tell you by whom."
"It seems to me," Mannister remarked, "that it might be worth your while to do so."
Polsover leaned across the table still further, and his voice dropped till it was almost a whisper.
"You came back to England, Mannister," he said, "a deeply wronged man, and I do not know who can blame you that you set yourself deliberately out to revenge yourself upon those who had treated you disgracefully. Four, or is it five of us, you have pretty well broken upon the wheel, and yet the man in whose brain was hatched that scheme against you, goes so far untouched. Why?"
"You mean Colin Stevens?" Mannister asked calmly.
"Yes!"
"His turn may come," Mannister said. "It may come before long."
"You are in Paris," Polsover said, "because you know that he is here. You have come in search of him."
"Possibly," Mannister admitted.
"He guesses it," Polsover continued. "You see he has met you more than half way."
"You mean," Mannister remarked, "that these attacks"
"He is hand in hand," Polsover interrupted, "with several of the greatest criminals in Paris. He can do what he likes with some of these night gangs, who rob whom they please and defy the police,"
"Where is Stevens now?" Mannister asked abruptly.
"He was at Chantilly yesterday," Polsover said slowly. "He will be in Paris to-night"
"Are you one of his creatures?" Mannister asked.
"Not I," Polsover answered. "I went to him for alms, and he tossed me a ten franc piece and told me to go to the devil. I am not his man, or I should not have told you what I have told you."
Mannister nodded.
"I shall see Colin Stevens to-night," he said, "and he may find that the time has come for our accounts to be squared. As for you, you had better go back to England."
"How can I?" Polsover exclaimed bitterly. "My partners paid the six thousand pounds and said that I had gone abroad for a holiday. It was the only way they could save the firm's reputation."
"Exactly," Mannister interrupted. "You can return from your holiday and pay back the six thousand pounds. You may remember that my profit on that little deal with you amounted to something like sixty thousand, so I can spare you the odd six."
He took a cheque-book from his pocket and wrote out a cheque rapidly, passing it across the table to Polsover.
"You don't mean this, Mannister?" Polsover stammered.
"Don't be a fool," Mannister replied. "I am not giving you the money. I am not afflicted by a sudden spasm of generosity. You've sold me information, and I've bought it cheap. I knew all about Atruscans. I knew very well that I was giving you a thousand pounds for something that was nearer worth one hundred thousand. If you think I'm generous, tear the cheque up if you like. If you are not a fool you'll take it back to London and make friends with your partners. There's only one thing, mind. If you try to thank me I'll stop payment of it. I hate humbug. Now," he continued, rising, "I think that I will go to Henri's bar and look for Colin Stevens."
Polsover, too, rose to his feet.
"He goes in fear of you," he said, "and he goes armed."
Mannister smiled as he rose and took up his hat and stick.
"I am afraid," he said, "that our friend is getting a little old-fashioned. When I am prepared to talk, it will not be arms that will save him."
Mannister turned into the Rue Danau, but he did not at once make his way to Henri's bar. He entered, instead, a suite of offices, and held a brief interview with the small grey-haired man who sat at a bare desk in a bare room at the top of the building, and whose plate announced that he was a private agent unrivalled in the detection of criminals, erring wives, and runaway children. Afterwards he took a fiacre to the Café des Ambassadeurs, and asked for the chief maître d'hôtel.
"I want," he explained, "to see your plan of the tables for dinner to-night."
The maître d'hôtel handed a chair to Mannister and brought the plan, together with the menu and a wine card.
"Monsieur would doubtless desire to order some dinner," he suggested blandly.
Mannister pointed to a table for two in the front row.
"I want this table," he said.
The maître d'hôtel was in despair, but it was impossible. That table was already engaged, also the one next to it. An excellent place on the second row, or a corner table in the front row, if Monsieur desired! But Monsieur checked him.
"Look here," Mannister said, slipping a twenty franc piece into his hand, "I want that table for a special reason, to please madame, you understand? Give it me, and serve me my dinner yourself, and there shall be two more of these at the close of the evening,"
The maître d'hôtel was only human. He disappeared into the bureau, and returned, with his face wreathed in smiles.
"It shall be as Monsieur desires," he announced. "The table was engaged for an excellent client, but he does not know its exact location. And for the dinner?"
Mannister took out a heavy gold pencil, and wrote with the care of a man who is proposing for himself a dinner de luxe, a list of dishes which commanded the respect even of the maître d'hôtel himself. Then he added the wine and a few further particulars and departed, walking up the Champs Elysées until he came to a turn to the right. Here he walked for a few yards down the street, rang the bell at a handsome suite of apartments, and was instantly admitted.
"Will you take my card," he asked, "to Madame de Modina?"
"Madame does not receive this afternoon," the servant remarked hesitatingly.
"Will you tell Madame that I am an old friend," Mannister said, "and that I have come from England to see her. It will be an affair of five minutes only, but she will always be grateful to me for coming. I have news for her."
The maid tripped away, and returned after a few minutes' absence.
"Madame will receive Monsieur," she announced, with a smile. "Will you be pleased to come this way."
Mannister laid down his hat and stick, and followed her into a small reception-room. A woman, typically French—or was there, perhaps, some dash of Spanish blood in her veins which accounted for the pale cheeks and blue-black hair—half rose from a couch and looked towards him inquiringly. Mannister bowed, and waited till the servant who had admitted him had left the room.
"Madame de Modina," he said, "my name is Mannister. It is doubtless unknown to you."
The lady, somewhat impressed by Mannister's appearance, murmured her regrets and pointed to a chair.
"I fear," Mannister continued, "that I shall not greatly recommend myself to you when I say that I was once a friend of Monsieur Colin Stevens."
She leaned a little towards him. The change in her expression was unmistakable.
"Once a friend?" she murmured.
Mannister bowed.
"It is because I can say that," he answered, "that I am here."
The woman's face was distorted with a sudden fit of passion. She sat upright upon the couch and stamped upon the floor with her high-heeled shoes. She leaned forward toward Mannister, and there was something almost tragic in her expression.
"How do you dare, sir," she exclaimed, "to come here and to mention to me that man's name!"
"Because," Mannister answered, "I thought that it would interest you to know that to-night he is dining at the Café des Ambassadeurs with Mademoiselle de Fleurier."
She sprang to her feet and dashed to the ground the book which she had been reading.
"It has come to that, then!" she exclaimed fiercely. "He will dine in public with her!"
"It has come to that," Mannister answered.
"And you?" she asked, turning suddenly upon him, "what business is it of yours? I do not understand why you, a stranger, come here to tell me this."
"Madame," Mannister answered, "I come out of no kindness to you. I come because the man Stevens is my enemy, and because I know that it will give him no pleasure to find you dining at the next table to-night when he parades his new conquest."
"What do you mean?" she asked sullenly.
"That if you will give me the honour of being my guest at dinner to-night," Mannister said, "the table which I have engaged at the Café des Ambassadeurs is curiously enough next to the one where Colin Stevens and Mademoiselle de Fleurier will sit."
The woman walked the length of the room and back. One saw now that it was not time but grief which had written lines into her face and stolen the colour from her cheeks. She was a young woman, but she was suffering.
"At what hour, Monsieur," she asked, "will you call for me?"
"At eight o'clock," Mannister answered. "We shall do well to be there first."
Mannister, although his back was toward the entrance, knew very well the exact moment when Colin Stevens and the lady who was his guest entered the restaurant. Two courses had passed untouched by the woman who sat opposite to him, with her eyes fixed upon the doorway. The dash of carmine upon her lips seemed to make even more startling the dead whiteness of her cheeks. Her black eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright. People looked at her and admired. Of her type she was surely wonderful. But when Mademoiselle de Fleurier rustled in, there was a little murmur of half stifled admiration. In her wonderful lace gown and picture hat, a rope of pearls about her neck, her blonde hair faultlessly arranged, the blush of youth upon her cheeks, she was certainly a companion to be proud of. Colin Stevens, dark and tall, with streaks of grey in his hair, and lines about his worn face, nevertheless held himself like a young man, as preceded by the maître d'hôtel they took their seats at the little table, which by his foresight was almost smothered with pink roses. Her back was towards Mannister, whom Stevens had not recognized. It was not until several minutes after their entrance that Stevens, glancing around him for the first time, was aware of his neighbours. Mademoiselle de Fleurier leaned across the table and touched his hand affectionately.
"You are ill, mon ami," she asked, "or is it a ghost that you see?"
A ghost! It was worse than that, Stevens thought, as he raised his glass to his lips and drank. Down the long avenues of his ill-spent life they came pell-mell in headlong procession, the ghosts of wronged women, of mis-spent hours, of friends deceived. It was an epitome of all these which seemed to look at him from the dark, sombre eyes of the woman a few feet away. For a moment his courage faltered.
"The place is hot," he muttered, half rising.
She laughed softly and pulled him down.
"Foolish!" she murmured. "Why, we are out of doors here. Look across at the trees. See how cool and green they are in the lamplight. There is no place so cool as this in Paris. Drink some more wine. You are over-tired perhaps."
She laughed into his eyes, and Stevens sat down in his chair prepared to face he knew not what. All this time Mannister had not looked at him, and yet in the face of his companion he judged something of what was passing.
"Our friend, I fear," he murmured, "will enjoy his dinner none the better for finding us so near,"
She smiled at him curiously.
"One cannot tell," she murmured. "He calls himself an epicure in sensations. Even this one may appeal to him—to make love to the woman he adores, a few yards away from the one he has discarded. We shall see."
She ate little, always watching her companion's plate anxiously. Mannister judged that she was in a hurry to depart, and humoured her. She declined coffee, and sent early for the vestiaire. Mannister himself arranged about her shoulders a wonderful black lace cloak. Her right hand he noticed she kept free. Was there something clutched between the fingers? He would not look. It was not his business. They passed out, Mannister, with a word of apology, leading the way and waiting for her at the turn. He passed Stevens without the flicker of an eyelid. Then he heard the rustling of her skirts cease, and turned round. Almost simultaneously the man's shriek rang through the place. The little scene was in its way dramatic enough. Stevens was still standing upon his feet, his face covered with a napkin which barely stifled his inhuman cries. Before him the woman stood, immovable, her scarlet lips pressed close together, her eyes still blazing with anger. From her outstretched hand the light fumes were still curling. A great brown hole was burnt in the tablecloth just below. Mademoiselle de Fleurier had fallen backwards, and lay fainting, with her head resting upon the next table. Every one in the restaurant was standing up. One who was a doctor came hurrying from the rear. Mannister went up to the woman who had been his companion and touched her arm.
"You had better come away," he said. "They have sent for the police."
She flung his arm away.
"What do I care for the police!" she answered. "I want to see him suffer."
Mannister turned on his heel with a little shiver.
"If I had known that the woman was such a fiend!" he muttered.
Nevertheless, on his way back to the hotel he drew from his pocket-book a sheet of paper, and with firm fingers drew a line through the name of Colin Stevens.