A Maker of History, E. Phillips Oppenheim [early reader books .TXT] 📗

make a personal appeal to you? Miss Phyllis Poynton is a young lady in whom I am deeply interested. She was last seen at the Café Montmartre, from which place she disappeared. I am an Englishman of your own station. Tell me where I can find her, or what has become of her."

"My dear Sir George," the Baron said, "you might have saved yourself a great deal of trouble if you had spoken like this to me at the first. Frankly, then, I have not the least idea. Young English ladies come and go every evening at the Café Montmartre, and such places. One remembers only those who happen to have amused one, and not always those. Forgive me if I speak plainly. A young lady who had visited the Café Montmartre alone—well, you might look for her anywhere, but most assuredly in that case if your anxiety was to induce her to return to her friends, you would be a little too late. Ah! We have arrived. Now, my friend, I must make you free of the place."

Duncombe was fuming with anger, but he had discretion enough to remain silent.

"Do you play Bridge?" the Baron asked, as they entered the card-room.

"Occasionally," Duncombe assented.

"I will go and see if I can find any men," the Baron remarked. "I will leave my young friend De Bergillac to entertain you. The Vicomte de Bergillac—Sir George Duncombe."

Duncombe shook hands with a pale, weary-looking youth, whose whole appearance was distinguished by marked symptoms of lassitude and ill-health. They sat in easy-chairs almost opposite to one another, and Duncombe found the other's scrutiny almost embarrassing.

"You speak French, perhaps—yes?" the young man asked at length.

"Yes! I speak French," Duncombe admitted.

"Then listen to me," the Vicomte said slowly. "I speak as one man of honor to another. Do not play cards in this club!"

"Not play cards? Why not?" Duncombe asked, amazed.

"You can take my advice or leave it," the Vicomte answered calmly. "I have no explanation to offer you. If you chose to repeat my remark you would place me in an exceedingly awkward position. You see, I rely upon you as a man of honor."

"I am only too much obliged to you for the hint," Duncombe declared. "But this club—the Cercle Anglais——"

"The club is all right," the Vicomte admitted calmly. "Unfortunately there is no place in Paris which would be entirely safe for you. You have the misfortune, you see, to be in opposition to some of my friends, who have really unlimited opportunities for making things disagreeable for you. Now I am beginning to talk, and it is very foolish of me. Why don't you leave Paris, Sir George?"

"Why should I?" Duncombe asked, a little sharply. "I break no laws here, I wrong no one. I am here on my own business, and I only ask to be let alone."

The Vicomte regarded him as one might look at a spoilt child whom it was yet advisable to humor.

"Ah," he said, "they will not let you alone. You are so obstinate, like all your country-people, or you would recognize it without my risking so much by speaking. You will have to leave Paris, and very soon. It is so easily to be managed. A dispute at cards here—you would certainly be in the wrong, and an ugly scandal if you were not away in twenty-four hours. It is one method of a thousand."

"You know so much," Duncombe said. "I have no doubt that you know the one thing which I would give years of my life to be satisfied about."

The boy's dark eyes were fixed steadily upon his.

"Sir George," he said, "there is nothing which I can possibly say to you. My warning has been exceeding foolish, but after all if I can persuade you to leave Paris I shall have done no great harm. As for the cards—well, I must plead guilty to weakness there. I have not the slightest objection to taking the life of a man who is making a nuisance of himself, but his honor I think one should not tamper with. May I offer you a cigarette? Well, Louis, what luck?"

The Baron had strolled back into the room, and was sitting on the arm of a chair.

"It will be all right directly," the Baron answered. "We have three, and old D'Arcon has telephoned that he will be here in five minutes."

Duncombe rose to his feet.

"It was really very careless of me," he said, "but I completely forgot that I had an engagement at the hotel at six o'clock. I am afraid that I shall not be able to stop."

The Baron glanced quickly at his young friend. There was nothing whatever to be learnt, though, from his pale, boyish face. His own countenance had darkened for the moment, but he recovered his composure immediately.

"As you will," he answered carelessly. "Perhaps you can drop in later. Come and dine, will you, at half-past eight?"

"I am much obliged to you, Baron," Duncombe said, "but I cannot accept your invitation. I am a lover of plain speaking, so I will not plead a previous engagement. But the one thing I want from you, the thing which I have almost a right to demand, you will not give. I do not feel, therefore, that any more than ordinary intercourse is possible between us."

The Baron bowed gravely.

"My dear Sir George," he said, "I am answered. I wish I could drive out of your mind that extraordinary hallucination relative to my supposed knowledge of your young English friend. It is impossible! Very good! I shall look forward to a time, Sir George, when we may meet on a better footing."

Duncombe left the hotel with the recollection of that curiously ironic smile fresh in his mind.

CHAPTER XII THE SHADOWING OF DUNCOMBE

For three days Duncombe saw nothing of Spencer. Three long days devoid of incident, hopelessly dull, aimless, and uninteresting. On the fourth the only change in the situation was scarcely a reassuring one. He became aware that he was being watched.

There was no particular secrecy about it. Even in the hotel itself some one was always on his heels. The absence of any attempt at concealment convinced him that it was the authorized police who had thus suddenly showed their interest in him. The suspicion was soon to be confirmed. The manager called him on the fourth morning into his private office.

"Monsieur will pardon me, I trust," he said, "if I take the liberty of asking him a question."

"Certainly!" Duncombe answered. "Go ahead!"

"Monsieur is aware that he has been placed under the surveillance of the police?"

"The fact," Duncombe said, "has been borne in upon me during the last few hours. What of it?"

The manager coughed.

"This is a cosmopolitan hotel, Sir George," he said, "and we make no pretence at ultra-exclusiveness, but we do not care to see the police on the premises."

"Neither do I," Duncombe answered. "Can you suggest how we may get rid of them?"

"Monsieur does not quite understand," the manager said smoothly. "Clearly he has done something to bring him under the suspicion of the law. Under these circumstances it would be more agreeable to the management of the hotel if Monsieur would depart."

Duncombe did not wish to depart. The hotel at which Phyllis Poynton's trunks were still awaiting her return was the hotel at which he wished to stay.

"Look here, Monsieur Huber," he said. "I give you my word of honor that I have broken no law, nor engaged in any criminal action whatever since I came to Paris. This game of having me watched is simply a piece of bluff. I have done nothing except make inquiries in different quarters respecting those two young English people who are still missing. In doing this I seem to have run up against what is nothing more nor less than a disgraceful conspiracy. Every hand is against me. Instead of helping me to discover them, the police seem only anxious to cover up the tracks of those young people."

The manager looked down at his desk.

"We hotel-keepers," he said, "are very much in the hands of the police. We cannot judge between them and the people whom they treat as suspected persons. I know very well, Sir George, that you are a person of respectability and character, but if the police choose to think otherwise I must adapt my views to theirs. I am sorry, but we must really ask you to leave."

Sir George turned on his heel.

"Very good!" he said. "I will go and take rooms elsewhere."

He left the hotel, and walked towards the Ritz. At the corner of the Place Vendôme an automobile was pulled up with a jerk within a few feet of him. A tired-looking boy leaned over wearily towards him from the front seat.

"Sir George," he said, "can you give me five minutes?"

"With pleasure!" he answered. "I was going into the Ritz. Come and have something."

"To Maxim's, if you don't mind," the Vicomte said. "It will take us only a moment."

Sir George stepped in. The Vicomte, in whose fingers the wheel seemed scarcely to rest, so light and apparently careless was his touch, touched a lever by his side, released the clutch, and swung the great car round the corner at a speed which made Duncombe grasp the sides. At a pace which seemed to him most ridiculous, they dashed into the Rue de Rivoli, and with another sharp turn pulled up before Maxim's. The Vicomte rose with a yawn as though he had just awoke from a refreshing dream. His servant slipped off his fur coat, and he descended to the pavement faultlessly dressed and quite unruffled. The commissionaire preceded them, hat in hand, to the door. A couple of waiters ushered them to the table which the Vicomte intimated by a gesture.

"I myself," he remarked, drawing off his gloves, "take nothing but absinthe. What may I have the pleasure of ordering for you?"

Duncombe ordered a whisky and soda.

"I think," he said, "there is one thing which I ought to tell you at once. I am being shadowed by the police. The man who has just arrived, and who seems a little breathless, is, I believe, the person whose duty it is to dog my footsteps in the daytime."

"What a pity!" the Vicomte murmured. "I would at least have taken you a mile or so round the boulevards if I had known. But wait! You are sure—that it is the police by whom you are being watched?"

"Quite," Duncombe answered. "The manager of the hotel has spoken to me about it. He has asked me, in fact, to leave."

"To leave the hotel?"

"Yes! I was on my way to the Ritz to secure rooms when I met you."

The Vicomte sipped his absinthe gravely.

"I should not take those rooms," he said. "You will in all probability not occupy them."

"Why not?"

"It has been decided," the Vicomte said, "that you are to be driven out of Paris. In the end you will have to go. I think if I were you I would not wait. The train de luxe to Calais is more comfortable than a wet bench in the Morgue or a French prison."

"Who has decided this?" Duncombe asked. "What Emperor has signed the decree of my banishment?"

"There have been worse served Emperors," the Vicomte remarked, "than the, shall we say person, who bids you go!"

"What is my offence?" Duncombe asked.

"I know nothing," the Vicomte answered slowly, pouring himself out some absinthe.

"Who are my judges, then? What secret authorities have I incensed? I am an honest man, engaged in an honest mission. Why should I not be allowed to execute it?"

The Vicomte half closed his eyes. Duncombe was a little angry. The Vicomte regarded him with reproachful wonder.

"You ask me so many questions," he murmured, "and I tell you that I know nothing. I have asked you to come