Roi Megrue - Under Cover

A pretty woman with good features and laughing eyes was certainly looking out of a taxi and smiling right at him. And when he realized this, Monty’s depression was lifted and he sprang forward to meet her. “It’s Alice,” he cried.

Denby, following more leisurely, was introduced to her.

“I came last night,” she explained. “Michael’s horse won and there was no more interest in Deauville or Trouville and as I must buy some things I came on here as soon as I could. I thought I saw you in Cartier’s,” she explained, “and tried to make you see me when you came out, but only Mr. Denby looked my way so I dared not make any signs of welcome.”

She seemed exceedingly happy to be in Paris again, and Denby, looking at her with interest, knew he was in the company of one of the most notable and best liked of the smart hostesses among the sporting set on Long Island. The Harringtons were enormously rich and lived at a great estate near Westbury, not far from the Meadow Brook Club. The Directory of Directors showed the name of Michael Harrington in a number of influential companies, but of recent years his interest in business had slackened and he was more interested in the development of his estate and the training of his thoroughbreds than in Wall Street activities.

For her part she took him, although the name was totally unfamiliar, as a friend of Monty’s, and was prepared to like him. Whereas an Englishwoman of her class might have been insistent to discover whether any of his immediate ancestors had been engaged in retail trade before she accepted him as an equal, Alice Harrington was willing to take people on their face value and retain them on their merits.

She saw a tall, well-bred man with strong features and that air of savoir faire which is not easy of assumption. She felt instantly that he was the sort of man Michael would like. He talked about racing as though he knew, and that alone would please her husband.

“I’ve spent so much money,” she said presently, “that I shall dismiss this taxi-man and walk. One can walk in Paris with two men, whereas one may be a little pestered alone.”

“Fine,” Monty cried. “We’ll go and lunch somewhere. What place strikes your fancy?”

“Alas,” she said, “I’m booked already. I have an elderly relation in the Boulevard Haussmann who stays here all summer this year on account of alterations in the house which she superintends personally, and I’ve promised.”

“I hope she hasn’t sacrificed you at a dinner table, too,” Denby said, “because if you are free to-night you’d confer a blessing on a fellow countryman if you’d come with Monty and me to the Ambassadeurs. Polin is funnier than ever.”

“I’d love to,” she cried. “You have probably delivered me from my aunt’s dismal dinner. I hadn’t an engagement but now I can swear to one truthfully. Men are usually so vain that if you say you’re dreadfully sorry but you’ve another engagement they really believe it. The dear things think no other cause would make a woman refuse. But my aunt would interrogate me till I faltered and contradicted myself.”

They left her later at one of those great mansions in the Boulevard Haussmann. The house was enlaced with scaffolding and workmen swarmed over its roof.

“It’s old Miss Woodwarde’s house,” Monty explained. “She’s worth millions and will probably leave it to Alice, who doesn’t need any, because she’s the only one of all her relatives who speaks the truth and doesn’t fawn and flatter.”

“It takes greater strength of mind than poor relations usually have, to tell rich relatives the truth,” Steven reminded him.

Monty had evidently recovered his good spirits. “I knew you’d like her,” he said later, “and I knew she’d take to you. We’ll have a corking dinner and a jolly good time.”

“There’s one thing I want to ask of you,” Denby said gravely. “Don’t give any particulars about me. If she’s the sort I think her she won’t ask, but you’ve got a bad habit of wanting people to hear how I fished you out of the river. I want to slip into New York without any advertisement of the fact. I’m not the son of a plutocrat as you are. I’m the hard-up son of a man who was once rich but is now dead and forgotten.”

“Do hard-up men hand a million francs across for a string of pearls to put in their tobacco-pouches?” Monty demanded shrewdly.

“You may regard that as an investment if you like,” Denby answered. “It may be all my capital is tied up in it.”

“You’re gambling for a big stake then,” Monty said seriously. “Is it worth it, old man?”

For a moment he had an idea of offering him a position in some of the great corporations in which his father was interested, but refrained. Steven Denby was not the kind of man to brook anything that smacked of patronage and he feared his offer might do that although otherwise meant.

“It means a whole lot more to me than you can think,” Denby returned. “I have made up my mind to do it and I think I can get away with it in just the way I have mapped out.” Then, with a smile: “Monty, I’ve a proper respect for your imaginative genius, but I’d bet you the necklace to the tobacco-pouch that you don’t understand how much I want to get that string of pearls through the customs.”

“The pouch is yours,” Monty conceded generously. “How should I guess? How do I know who’s a smuggler or who isn’t? Alice says she always gets something through and for all I know may have a ruby taken from the eye of a Hindoo god in her back hair!”

He looked at his friend eagerly, a new thought striking him. He often surprised himself in romantic ideas, ideas for which Nora was responsible.

“Perhaps you are taking it for someone, someone you’re fond of,” he suggested.

“Why not?” Denby returned. “If I were really fond of any woman I’d risk more than that to please her.”

Monty noticed that he banished the subject by speaking of Alice Harrington’s penchant for smuggling.

“I hope Mrs. Harrington won’t run any risks,” he said. “In her case it is absolutely senseless and unnecessary.”

“Oh, they’d never get after her,” Monty declared. “She’s too big. They get after the little fellows but they’d leave Mrs. Michael Harrington alone.”

“Don’t you believe it,” his friend answered. “They’re doing things differently now. They’re getting a different class of men in the Collector’s office.”

“I suppose you’d like the old style better,” Monty observed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the other. “It’s more risky now and so one has to be cleverer. I’ve often heard it said the hounds have all the fun and the fox none.

“I’m not so sure of that, Monty; I think a fox that can fool thirty couple of hounds and get back to his earth ought to be a gladsome animal.”

“I’ll find out when we’re in West Street, New York,” Monty said grimly. “I’ll take particular notice of how this fox acts and where the hounds are. If you harp on this any more I shall lose my appetite. What about Voisin’s?”

“Eat lightly,” Denby counseled him. “I’m going to treat you to a remarkable meal to-night; I know the chef at the Ambassadeurs, and the wine-steward feeds out of my hand.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t buy necklaces like that if you have those Ambassadeurs waiters corralled. They soaked me six francs for a single peach once,” Monty said reminiscently. But he wondered, all the same, how it was Steven should be able to fling money away as he chose.

His friend looked at him shrewdly. “You’re thinking I ought to patronize the excellent Duval,” he observed. “Well, sometimes I do. I think I’ve patronized most places in Paris once.”