Complete weird tales of.., p.870
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 870
“But what of it?”
“Suppose Wildresse denies his treachery and makes a counter-accusation against Philippa?”
“What? How can he?”
“Suppose he declares that she betrayed him? Suppose already he has arranged documents to prove it? Suppose he had long ago taken such a precaution against any chance of her denouncing him? He is an old rat, grown grey in the business. He must have been perfectly aware that Philippa is honest — that it even went against her to do the dirty work that her own Government required of her. He must have known that if she ever discovered his double treachery, she would at least desert him, perhaps denounce him. No, no, Warner; that crafty old sewer rat left nothing to chance.
“If that girl now has an opportunity and the desire to denounce him, you can be absolutely certain that long ago he has foreseen and prepared himself for just such an event!”
“Do you believe that?”
Halkett smiled:
“I am certain of it.”
“Why?”
“What does a young girl know about treachery? How many papers has Philippa ignorantly and innocently signed which might exculpate Wildresse and send her before a peloton of execution in the first caserne available? That’s the way such rats as he protect themselves!
“No, Warner. It’s a filthy business at best, and I admit, sadly enough, that I know more about it than you ever could know.
“Listen, old chap! It’s no good stirring up the police until Philippa is outside French territory. Then, and then only, may we dare to let loose the police on this nest of rats in Ausone!”
“Very well,” said Warner quietly. “I’ll act as you think best, only I’ll — —” He stopped to regain control of himself. And when he had himself in hand again: “Only — it will be a — a bad mistake if Wildresse — if — if any harm comes to that child.”
“Oh, in that event,” said Halkett quietly, “we need not scruple to kill him where we find him.”
Warner said unsteadily:
“I shall not hesitate a second — —” But Halkett suddenly checked him with a touch on his elbow, and drew him back behind the wall of the Impasse d’Alcyon, from which alley they were on the point of emerging into the town.
Two men were crossing the almost empty market square toward the Café Biribi, moving without haste over the sunny pavement.
“Hoffman and Meier,” whispered Halkett. “There go our promising young rodents straight toward the old rat’s nest! It won’t do for them to catch sight of me.... Wait a moment! There they go — into the Café Biribi! Follow them — they don’t know you. Keep your eye on them.
“I’ll stroll over to the quay and dangle my legs on the river wall. If you need me, come out on the café terrace and beckon.”
“Would it do to hand over that pair to the police? They are German spies, are they not?”
“They are. But at present they are likely to be useful. If Wildresse is in the café or the cabaret, they are sure to reveal the fact to us. Better go in and keep your eye on them. If you want me, I shall be smoking my pipe on the river wall across the street.”
He nodded and strolled over toward the little tree-shaded quay, filling his pipe as he sauntered along. Warner continued on to the café, entered, seated himself against the shabby wall, picked up an illustrated journal, ordered bitters, and composed himself to enjoy the preprandial hour sacred to all Frenchmen.
Without looking he was aware that the two men, Meier and Hoffman, seated at a table near the cashier’s desk, had noted his arrival and were steadily inspecting him.
But he did not look in their direction; he turned the pages of the illustrated paper, leisurely, until the waiter brought his Amer Picon and a chilled carafe. Then he measured out his water with the unstudied deliberation of an habitué, stirred the brown liquid, sipped it, and, turning to another page of his paper, let his eyes rest absently on the two men opposite.
By that time neither of them was even looking at him. They were drinking beer; their heads were close together and they had turned so that they were facing each other on the padded leather wall settee.
It was impossible to hear what they were saying; they spoke rapidly and in tones so low that only the vibration of their voices was audible in the still room.
Guarded but vigorous gesticulations marked the progress of their conference; now and then both became mute while the waiter replenished their glasses with beer and added another little saucer to the growing pile on the marble table.
For an hour Warner dawdled over the café papers and his glass of bitters. The men opposite still faced each other on the leather settee, still conversed with repressed animation, still guzzled beer. Once or twice they had looked up and across the room at him and had taken a swift, comprehensive survey of the few other people in the café, but the movement had been wholly instinctive and mechanical. Evidently they felt entirely secure.
The plump, dark-eyed caissière had caught Warner’s eye once or twice. Evidently she remembered him, and her quick smile became almost an invitation to conversation.
It was what he wanted and he hesitated only because he was not sure how the men opposite might regard his approach toward their vicinity.
But he did it very well; and both men, looking up sharply, seemed presently to realize that it was merely a flirtation, and that the young man lounging before the cashier’s counter, smiling, and being smiled upon, could safely be ignored.
“To be the prettiest girl in Ausone,” Warner was saying, “must be a very great comfort to that girl. Don’t you think so, Mademoiselle?”
“To be the most virtuous, Monsieur, would be far more comforting.”
“Have you then both prizes, Mademoiselle? I was sure of it!”
“Prizes, Monsieur?”
“The golden apple and the prix de la sagesse?”
She laughed and blushed, detaching from her corsage a rosebud.
“Accept, Monsieur, the prize for eloquence and for impudence!” And she extended the rosebud to Warner.
He took it, lifted it to his lips, looking smilingly at her, and listening with all the concentration he could summon to the murmuring conversation at the neighboring table.
Only a word or two he could catch — perhaps merely a guess at— “Patron,” and “nine o’clock,” and “cellar” — at least he imagined he could distinguish these words. And all the time he was up to his ears in a breezy flirtation with a girl very willing, very adept, and perfectly capable of appreciating her own desirability as well as the good points of any casual suitor whom Heaven might strand upon her little, isolated island for an hour or two.
Being French, she was clever and amusing and sufficiently grateful to the gods for this bit of masculine flotsam which had drifted her way.
“There are boats,” she said, “and the evening will be beautiful.” Having made this clear to him, she smiled and let matters shape their course.
“What pleasure is a boat and a beautiful night to me,” he said, “if nobody shares both with me?”
“Alas, Monsieur, have you no pretty little friend who could explain to you the planets on a summer night?”
“Alas, Mademoiselle!”
“What a pity.... Because I have studied astronomy a little. And I recommend it to you as a diversion. They are so high, so unattainable, the stars! It is well for a young man to learn what is attainable, and then to address himself to its pursuit. What do you think, Monsieur?”
“That I should very much like to study astronomy if in all the world there could be discovered anybody amiable enough to teach me.”
“How pathetic! If I only had time — —”
“Have you no time at all?”
“It wouldn’t do, mon ami.”
“Why?”
“Because I should be seen going to a rendezvous with you.”
“Isn’t there any way into the cabaret garden except through the cabaret?” he asked.
She shook her head, laughing at him out of her brown eyes.
He waited a moment to control his voice, but there was a tremor in it when he said:
“Is there no way through the cellar?”
She noticed the tremor and liked it. In the lightest and airiest of flirtations the ardent and unsteady note in a man’s voice appeals to any woman to continue and finish his subjugation.
“As for the cellar,” she said, “it is true that one can get into the cabaret garden that way. But, Monsieur, do you imagine that a dark, damp, ghostly and pitch-black cellar appeals to any woman?”
“Is the cellar so frightful a place, Mademoiselle?”
“Figure it to yourself! — Some twenty stone steps from the pantry yonder” — She nodded her head toward the battered swinging door of leather.— “And then more steps, down, down, down! — Into darkness and dampness where there are only wine casks and kegs and bottles and mushrooms and rats and ghosts — —”
“What of it — if, as you say, the stars are shining on the river — —”
“Merci! A girl must certainly be in love to venture through that cellar! And a man, too!”
“Try me. I’ll go!”
The girl laughed:
“You! Are you, then, in love already?”
“I should like to prove it. Where is that terrible cellar?”
“Behind the door, there.” She waved her hand airily. “Try it. Show me how much you are in love! Perhaps then I’ll believe you.”
“Will the waiters interfere if I go into the cellar?”
“See how you try to avoid the test!”
“Try me!”
“Very well. The washroom is there. If you choose to wash your hands, you are at liberty to do so. And then if you can’t slip down into the cellar while the waiters are looking the other way, all I can say is that you are not in love!”
He looked at her smilingly, scarcely trusting himself to speak for a moment, for the face of Philippa rose unbidden before his eyes and a shaft of fear pierced him.
“You are wrong,” he said steadily enough. “I am in love.... Very honestly, very innocently.... It just occurred to me. I didn’t know how deeply I felt.... I really am in love — as one loves what is fearless, faithful, and devoted.”
“A dog is all that, Monsieur.”
“Occasionally a human being is, also. Sometimes even a woman.”
Her smile became a little troubled.
“Monsieur, are you, then, in love with some woman who possesses these commendable virtues?”
“No. I am in love with her virtues, Mademoiselle.”
“Oh! Then she might even be your sister!”
“Exactly. That is the quality of my affection for her.”
The pretty caissière laughed:
“You were beginning to make me sad,” she said. “I — I am really willing to teach you astronomy, if you truly desire a knowledge of the stars.”
“I do, ardently.”
“But I am sincerely afraid of the cellar,” she murmured. “It is ten o’clock before I am released from duty, and the knowledge that it is ten o’clock at night makes that cellar doubly dark and terrible. I — I don’t want to give you a rendezvous down there; and I certainly don’t propose to traverse the cellar alone. Monsieur, what on earth am I to do?”
“To study the stars on the river, and to reach a rendezvous without being noticed, makes it necessary for you to slip out through the cellar, does it not?”
“Alas!”
“Haven’t you the courage?”
“I don’t — know.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Have I?” She laughed.
“Certainly. I’ll go to the washroom now, and get into the cellar somehow, and make myself acquainted with it.... I suppose I ought to have a candle — —”
She said:
“When I walk home alone at night I have a little electric torch with me. Shall I lend it to you?”
She opened the desk drawer, drew it out concealed under her handkerchief, and he managed to transfer it to his pocket. It clinked against the loaded automatic pistol; nobody noticed the sound.
But for a moment he thought the two men, Meier and Hoffman, had noticed it, because they both got up and came over directly toward him.
However, they merely wished to pay their reckoning with a hundred-franc note, and Warner moved aside while they crowded before the pretty cashier’s desk, offering hasty pleasantries and ponderous gallantries, while she dimpled at them and made change.
Then, after tipping the waiter, they went out into the late afternoon sunshine.
Warner, looking after them, could see that they were crossing the square toward the Boule d’Argent; and he knew that Halkett must have seen them and that he would manage to keep them in view.
Now was his time to investigate the cellar, and he said so to the brown-eyed girl behind the cage, who had been inspecting him rather pensively.
“I ought not to do this,” said the pretty caissière.
“Of course not. Otherwise we should not find each other agreeable.”
She smiled, looking at him a little more seriously and more attentively.
“It is odd, is it not,” she said under her breath, “how two people from the opposite ends of the earth chance to meet and — and find each other — agreeable?”
“It is delightful,” he admitted smilingly.
“I don’t even know your name,” she remarked, playing with her pencil.
“James.”
“Tchames?” — with a pretty attempt to imitate his English.
“Jim is easier.”
“Djeem?”
“Perfect!”
“Djeem,” she repeated, looking musingly at the tall, well-built American. “C’est drôle, ce nom là! Djeem? It is pleasant, too.... My name is Jeanne.” She shrugged her youthful shoulders. “Nothing extraordinary, you see.... Still, I shall try to please you, Monsieur Djeem.”
“I dare not hope to please you — —”
She laughed:
“You do please me. Do you suppose, otherwise, I should dare enter that frightful cellar?”
Under cover of her desk, she deftly detached a key from the bunch at her belt, covered it with her hand, palm down, and let it rest on the counter before him.
“Do you promise to keep away from the wine bins?” she asked lightly.
“I promise solemnly,” he said, and took the key.
“Very well. Then you may go and look at this dreadful cellar at once. And when you behold it, ask yourself how great a goose a girl must be who ventures into it at ten o’clock at night merely because a young man desires to take a lesson in astronomy on the river Récollette.”
CHAPTER XVII
HE HAD LITTLE difficulty in gaining the cellar from the washroom. Both doors opened out of the pantry passage; he had only to watch the moving figures silhouetted through the pantry doorway, and when they were out of sight for the moment, he stepped out, unlocked the cellar door, closed it gently behind him, flashed his electric torch, and started down the broad stone steps.
It was one of the big, old-time cellars not unusual in provincial towns, but built, probably, a century before the café and cabaret had been erected on its solid stone foundations.
Two rows of squatty stone pillars supported the low arches of the roof; casks, kegs, bins, empty bottles, broken bottles, and row after row of unsealed wine bottles lined the alleyways leading in every direction through the darkness.
On either side of the main central corridor stood wine casks of every shape and size, some very ancient, to judge from the carving and quality of the wood, some more or less modern, some of today. Almost all were hoisted on skids with bung and bung starter in place and old-time jugs and measures of pewter or glass at hand; a few lay empty amid the cellar debris, where the salts born of darkness and dampness dimly glimmered on wall and pavement, and a rustling in unseen straw betrayed the lurking place of rats.
Warner, playing his flashlight, walked swiftly forward, traversing the three principal alleys in succession. The third round included the little dark runways twisting in and out among the bins, turning sudden angles into obscurity, or curving back in a blind circle to the point of entrance.
And as he stood resting for a moment, trying to get his bearings and shifting his electric torch over the labyrinth within which he had become involved, a slight but distinct sound broke the silence around him.
It came from the cellar steps: somebody had opened the door above.
Instantly he extinguished his torch; the blackness walled him in, closing on him so swiftly that he seemed to feel a palpable pressure upon his body.
Listening, every nerve on edge, he heard footsteps falling cautiously upon the stone stairway; a white radiance spread and grew brighter at the far end of the vaulted place; and in a moment more the blinding star of an electric torch dazzled his eyes, where he stood looking out between the cracks of the piled-up boxes which made of the alley in which he had halted a rampart and an impasse.
Two men were advancing, shining the way before them, turning their heads from side to side with curiosity, but without apparently any suspicion.
They seemed to know the place and to be entirely familiar with every alley, for, just before they passed the runway where he crouched behind the boxes, they turned aside, played their light over the dusty banks of bottles, chose one, coolly knocked off its neck, and leisurely drained it between them.
Then, exchanging a few comments in voices too low to be understood, they resumed their course, passed the entrance to the alley where Warner lay hidden, and continued on a few paces.
He could see them as black shapes against the flare of light; saw them halt a few paces from where he stood, saw them reach up and take hold of a huge tun which blocked their progress.
Their torch was shining full upon it; he could follow minutely everything they were doing.
One of the men stretched his arms out horizontally and grasped the edges of the immense cask. Then he threw his full weight to the right; the cask swung easily outward, leaving a passageway wide enough for a man. And there, full in the blaze of brilliant light, was a door, scarcely ten feet away from where he was standing.
