“And after?”
“She believes that I shall spend some time with her there.”
“You did not, of course, intend to do so.” He had the air of a schoolmaster dealing with a difficult pupil.
Graham hesitated. “No, I suppose I didn’t,” he said slowly. “To tell you the truth, it has been pleasant to talk of going to Paris. When you’re expecting to be killed …”
“But now that you are not expecting to be killed it is different, eh?”
“Yes, it’s different.” Yet was it so different? He was not quite sure.
Mr. Kuvetli stroked his chin. “On the other hand it would be dangerous to tell her that you have changed your mind,” he reflected. “She might be indiscreet-or angry, perhaps. Say nothing to her. If she discusses Paris, everything is as it was before. You can explain that you have business to do in Genoa after the ship docks and say that you will meet her on the train. That will prevent her looking for you before she goes ashore. It is understood?”
“Yes. It is understood.”
“She is pretty,” Mr. Kuvetli went on thoughtfully. “It is a pity that your business is so urgent. However, perhaps you could return to Paris when you have finished your work.” He smiled: the schoolmaster promising a sweet for good behaviour.
“I suppose I could. Is there anything else?”
Mr. Kuvetli looked up at him slyly. “No. That is all. Except that I must ask you to continue to look as distrait as you have been looking since we left the Piræus. It would be a pity if Monsieur Moeller should suspect anything from your manner.”
“My manner? Oh, yes, I see.” He stood up and was surprised to find that his knees felt quite weak. He said: “I’ve often wondered what a condemned man feels like when they tell him that he has been reprieved. Now I know.”
Mr. Kuvetli smiled patronisingly. “You feel very well, eh?”
Graham shook his head. “No, Mr. Kuvetli, I don’t feel very well. I feel very sick and very tired and I can’t stop thinking that there must be a mistake.”
“A mistake! There is no mistake. You need not worry. All will be well. Go to bed now, my friend, and in the morning you will feel better. A mistake!”
Mr. Kuvetli laughed.
CHAPTER TEN
As Mr. Kuvetli had prophesied, Graham did feel better in the morning. Sitting up in his bunk drinking his coffee, he felt curiously free and competent. The disease from which he had been suffering was cured. He was himself again: well and normal. He had been a fool to worry at all. He ought to have known that everything would be all right. War or no war, men like him weren’t shot in the street. That sort of thing just didn’t happen. Only the adolescent minds of the Moellers and the Banats could entertain such possibilities. He had no misgivings. Even his hand was better. In the night the bandage had slipped, taking with it the bloody dressing which had been sticking to the wound. He was able to replace it with a piece of lint and two short strips of adhesive plaster. The change, he felt, was symbolic. Not even the knowledge that in the day before him he had some highly disagreeable things to do, could depress him.
The first thing he had to consider was, of course, his attitude towards Moeller. As Mr. Kuvetli had pointed out, it was possible that the man would wait until the evening before making any attempt to find out if the line he had put out the previous evening had caught the fish. That meant that he, Graham, would have to sit through two meals with Moeller and Banat without giving himself away. That, certainly, would not be pleasant. He wondered whether it might not be safer to approach Moeller at once. It would, after all, be far more convincing if the victim made the first move. Or would it be less convincing? Should the fish still be struggling on the hook when the line was reeled in? Evidently Mr. Kuvetli thought that it should. Very well. Mr. Kuvetli’s instructions should be followed exactly. The questions of how he was going to behave at lunch and dinner could be left to settle themselves when those times came. As for the actual interview with Moeller, he had ideas about making that convincing. Moeller should not have things all his own way. Rather to his surprise, he found that it was the thought of what he had to do about Josette which worried him most.
He was, he told himself, treating her shabbily. She had been kind to him in her way. Indeed, she could not have been kinder. It was no excuse to say that she had behaved badly over that business of José’s revolver. It had been unfair of him to ask her to steal for him: José was, after all, her partner. It would not even be possible now for him to give her that handbag with a thousand-franc note in it, unless he left it for her on his way through Paris, and it was always possible that she would not go to the Hotel des Belges. It was no good protesting that she was out for what she could get. She had made no secret of the fact and he had tacitly accepted it. He was treating her shabbily, he told himself again. It was an attempt to rationalise his feelings about her and it was strangely unsuccessful. He was perplexed.
He did not see her until just before lunch, and then she was with José.
It was a wretched day. The sky was overcast and there was an icy north-east wind with a hint of snow in it. He had spent most of the morning in a corner of the saloon reading some old copies of L’Illustration he found there. Mr. Kuvetli had seen and looked through him. He had spoken to no one except the Beronellis, who had given him a defensive “buon giorno,” and the Mathis, who had returned his greeting with a frigid bow. He had thought it necessary to explain to the Mathis that his rudeness of the previous evening had been unintentional and due to his feeling ill at the time. The explanation had been accepted by them with some embarrassment and it had occurred to him that they might have preferred a silent feud to an apology. The man had been particularly confused as if he were finding himself in some way ridiculous. They had soon decided that they must go for a walk on deck. Through the porthole Graham had seen them a few minutes later walking with Mr. Kuvetli. The only other person on deck that morning had been Moeller’s Armenian demonstrating pathetically, for there was a heavy swell, that her dislike of the sea was no mere figment of her “husband’s” imagination. Soon after twelve Graham had collected his hat and coat from his cabin and gone out for the stroll which he had decided should precede the drinking of a large whisky and soda.
He was on his way back to the saloon when he encountered Josette and José.
José stopped with an oath and clutched at his curly soft hat which the wind was trying to snatch from his head.
Josette met Graham’s eyes and smiled significantly. “José is angry again. Last night he played cards and lost. It was the little Greek, Mavrodopoulos. The attar of roses was too strong for the California Poppy.”
“He is no Greek,” said José sourly. “He has the accent of a goat as well as the smell. If he is a Greek I will …” He said what he would do.
“But he can play cards, mon cher caïd.”
“He stopped playing too soon,” said José. “You need not worry. I have not finished with him.”
“Perhaps he has finished with you.”
“He must be a very good player,” Graham put in tactfully.
José eyed him distastefully. “And what do you know about it?”
“Nothing,” retorted Graham coldly. “For all I know it may be simply that you are a very bad player.”
“You would like to play perhaps?”
“I don’t think so. Cards bore me.”
José sneered. “Ah, yes! There are better things to do, eh?” He sucked his teeth loudly.
“When he is bad-tempered,” Josette explained, “he cannot be polite. There is nothing to be done with him. He does not care what people think.”
José pursed up his mouth into an expression of saccharine sweetness. “ ‘He does not care what people think,’ ” he repeated in a high, derisive falsetto. Then his face relaxed. “What do I care what they think?” he demanded.