Max Pemberton - Murder Mysteries Boxed-Set - 40+ Books in One Edition

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.