"Unless what, madame?"

She tapped the table with her pretty fingers, and poured me out a second gla.s.s of port wine.

"Unless the mountain will come to Mahomet--but I guess you don't know what that means, Britten, now do you?"

She screwed her lips up to the kissing point with this, and looked at me so tenderly that I began to feel nervous--upon my word I did.

"Do you mean that your husband must come here, madame?"

"Of course I mean it, Britten. You must fetch him--by a trick. Now wouldn't that be splendid--say, wouldn't it be fine? If we could outwit them--if we could make the Emperor look foolish!"

I rubbed my chin and thought about it. There isn't much modesty in my profession, but the idea of getting up against a policeman so far from my humble home somehow put the brake on, and I found myself misfiring like one o'clock in spite of her pretty eyes and her red lips, and her "take me in your arms and kiss me" look. The Croydon lot are bad enough, but as for the beaks at Montey--well, I've heard tales of them and to spare.

"It would be fine, madame, if we could do it," said I at last; "but between talking of it here in this hotel and crossing the frontier----"

"Oh," she cried, interrupting me almost angrily--and she has the devil of a temper--"oh, there's no difficulty, Britten. Just drive to the Hermitage after my husband has dined to-morrow night, and say that if he wants the news of Madame Clara, you can take him where he will get it. Don't you see, Clara is one of my pet names. He'll understand in a moment, and you can drive him to this hotel. Are you afraid to do that, Britten?"

Of course I wasn't afraid, and she knew it. It was nothing to me anyway, and I could always plead that I was her servant and an Englishman, and didn't care a d.a.m.n for this particular Emperor or any other. None the less, if she hadn't smiled upon me as she did at that particular moment--smiled like a daffy-down-dilly in April, and squeezed my hand as soft as June roses, which the same appeared to be done by accident, I might have left it alone, after all. As it was, I had set off at seven o'clock on the following evening, and at a quarter past nine I was asking at the Hermitage for Count Joseph, just as full of the story I had to tell as a history-book of kings.

A black and white _maitre d'hotel_, picked out with gold, replied to this, and after talking to half a dozen waiters and sending for another chap with a shirt-front like a Mercedes bonnet, they directed me to a little hotel down by Monaco; and there the head waiter received me quite affably, and said, "Certainly, the gentleman was at home." When I had given my name, but not my business, I was ushered up, perhaps after an interval of ten minutes, to a sitting-room on the first floor, and there I found myself face to face with a fat, red-faced man in evening dress; and if ever there was a martinet down Montey way, this fine gentleman was that same. He was fat, I say, and forty--but to write that he was fair would be impossible, for he hadn't more than about half a dozen hairs on his head, and those had drifted down his neck to get out of the wind. When I came in he appeared to be sipping Cognac out of a long green bottle, and to be reading private papers just as fast as he could get through them, but he looked up presently, and a pair of wickeder eyes I do not want to see.

"Who sent you here?" he asked.

"A lady," said I.

"Her name?"

"Madame Clara."

He turned and snuffed the wick of a candle standing on the table by his side. From his manner I did not think him quite sober, but he appeared to pull himself together by-and-by, and then he exclaimed:

"Repeat your message."

"I am to say that if you wish for news of Madame Clara, I can take you where you will get it."

Well, I thought that he smiled, though I cannot be quite sure of that.

Presently, however, he stood up without a word, and, going into his bedroom, he brought a heavy fur coat and cap into the sitting-room, and motioned me to help him on with them. When that was done, he opened the door and invited me to precede him down the corridor.

"I will see the lady," he said--and that was all. We were in the car two minutes afterwards, making for Nice on the "fourth," and not a soul to interfere with us or to do more than take a glance at our papers as we pa.s.sed the stations. Never had there been a lighter job; never had a man helped a woman so easily.

I thought about all this, be sure, as we drew near Nice and the end of our game appeared to be at hand. The old women tell us not to count our chickens before they are hatched, and that's a thing I am not in the habit of doing; but the more I reflected upon it, the better pleased did I feel with myself, and the greater was my wonder at the lady's tastes. That such a pretty little woman, such a gay soul, such a good judge of men--for she was a judge, I'll swear--that she should have ever been in love with this sack of lard I was driving to Nice--well, that did astonish me beyond measure; though it should not have done so, knowing women as I do, and seeing how old Father Time does stick his dirty fingers on our idols and make banshees of the best of them.

I say that I was astonished, but such a feeling soon gave place to others; and when I brought up my car with a dash to the door of the hotel, and the gold-laced porter helped the fat old gentleman out, curiosity took the place of wonder. I became as anxious as a parlourmaid at a keyhole to know what Madame would have to say to this twenty-stone husband, and, what particular terms of endearment he would choose for his reply. Certainly if pleasurable antic.i.p.ation is to be denoted by smiles, he found no fault with his present situation, for he grinned like a gorilla when he got down, and, nodding to me quite affably, he asked:

"Upon which floor is Madame Clara staying, did you say?"

"The third floor--number 113."

"Ah," says he, adjusting his gla.s.ses and turning round to go in, "that is an unlucky number, my friend," and without another word he entered the hotel and left me there.

Of course, I didn't expect him to talk to me, was not looking for a tip from Madame's own husband, but I had expected a question or two; and when he had departed the porter and I stopped there gossiping a bit, for it was likely that the car might be wanted again that night--and, to be truthful, I more than half hoped that Madame would send for me.

"What's up?" asks the porter--he pa.s.ses for a foreigner, but I happen to know he was born just off Soho. "What's up, matey?"

"Why," says I, "that's just what I'd like to know myself. Can't you tell the chambermaid at 113 to find out?"

"The maid's off. Is that old cove licensed?"

"All in order at Scotland Yard," says I. "He's took out a license to drive, and his papers are pa.s.sed. That's my missis' husband."

"Oh," he remarked, in a dreamy kind of way, "which one?"

"Why, the gentleman who just went in."

"Poor soul!" says he, in a most aggravating manner, "how fast she do lose 'em. I wonder who pays for the headstones?"

"Do you know her?" asked I, for his words took me aback.

He shook his head at this, and then scratched it as though he were trying to think.

"Larst time," he said presently, "larst time she dropped one or two at Cannes, I'm thinking---- But, Lord love me, what's that?"

He stepped back on the pavement and looked up to the window of the room 113. I had heard the shindy as well as he--a regular scream, as though a woman was mad in her tantrums, and upon that a crash of gla.s.s and silence--while the porter and me, we just stared at one another.

"Votes for women!" says he, presently, and in so droll a way that I had to laugh in spite of myself; but before I could answer him, what do you think? Why, out come the old gentleman, just as calm and smiling as he had been ten minutes ago.

"You will drive me back to Monaco," he began. I asked him by whose orders; but at that he looked like a devil incarnate, and spoke so loud that I was right down frightened of him.

"You will drive me back to Monaco or spend the night in prison!" he shouted. "Now, which do you prefer?"

"Oh," says I, "in you get!" And in he did get, as I'm a Dutchman, and I drove him back to the hotel at Monaco--which was about the hour of one in the morning, and no mistake at all. When he got out at last, no babe in frocks could have looked more innocent, and he just handed me up a couple of louis, like a father blessing his only son.

"You drive very well, my lad. Where did you learn?"

"On a good car, sir. Henri Fourtnier taught me about the time of the second Gordon Bennett. But I don't suppose you remember that."

"Certainly I remember it. The late Count Zborowski was one of my friends. Let me give you a little piece of advice. It is better to drive for a gentleman than a lady."

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

But he waved his hand with a flourish, and crying, "A bonny arntarndure," or something of that kind, he disappeared into his hotel and left me to think what I liked. And a lot I did think as I drove back to Nice, I do a.s.sure you--for a rummier game I had never been engaged in, and that's the truth, upon my word and honour.

It was daylight when I reached the garage, and out of the question, of course, to think of seeing Madame. Speaking for myself, I was too dog-tired to ask if she wanted me or not; and going up to my bedroom, I must have slept till nine o'clock without lifting an eyelid. At that hour the boots waked me in a deuce of a stew, telling me that Madame must see me without a moment's loss of time. I dressed anyhow and went down to her. Poor little woman, what a state she was in! I don't think I ever saw a sorrier picture in all my life.

No fluffy stuff and fine pink satin now, but a shabby old morning gown and her hair anyhow upon her shoulders, and in her eyes the look of a woman who has been hunted and does not know where on G.o.d's earth she is going to find a habitation. I've seen it twice in my life, and I never want to see it again--for what man with a heart would wish to do so?

"Britten," she says, almost like a play-actress on the stage of a theatre, "Britten, do you know what happened last night?"

"Well," says I, "for that matter lots of things happened; but if you're speaking of the gentleman, your husband----"