The directeur is courteous and sympathetic. He has introduced us to the cat, and my 'eart 'as turned to water, for it is Alexander. Why has he not been destroyed?
The directeur is speaking. I 'ear him in a dream.
"If you identify 'im as your cat, miss," he has said, "the matter is ended. My 'esitation when you, sir, approached me this morning on the matter was due to the fact that a messenger was sent with instructions that he be destroyed at once."
"Rather rough, wasn't it, that, on the messenger, yes," Captain Bassett has said. He is facetious, you understand, for he is conqueror.
I am silent. I am not facetious. For already I feel-how do you say?-my fowl is cooked.
"Not the messenger, sir," the directeur has said. "You 'ave misunderstood me. It was the cat which was to be destroyed, as per instructions of the anonymous sender."
"Who could have played such a wicked trick?" Miss Marion has asked, indignant.
The directeur has stooped, and from behind a table he has brought a 'at-box.
"In this," he has said, "the above animal was conveyed. But with it was no accompanying letter. The sender was anonymous."
"Per'aps," Captain Bassett has said-and still more in a dream I 'ear him-"per'aps on the 'at-box there is some bally name or other, do you not know-what?"
I clutch at the table. The room is spinning round and round. I have no stomach-only emptiness.
"Why, bless me," the directeur has said, "you're quite right, sir. So there is. Funny of me not to have before observed it. There is a name, and also an address. It is the name of Jean Priaulx, and the address is the Hotel Jules Priaulx, Paris."
My companion stopped abruptly. He passed a handkerchief over his forehead. With a quick movement he reached for his glass of liqueur brandy and drained it at a gulp.
"Monsieur," he said, "you will not wish me to describe the scene? There is no need for me-hein?-to be Zolaesque. You can imagine?"
"She chucked you?" In moments of emotion it is the simplest language that comes to the lips.
He nodded.
"And married Captain Bassett?"
He nodded again.
"And your uncle?" I said. "How did he take it?"
He sighed.
"There was once more," he said, "blooming row, monsieur."
"He washed his hands of you?"
"Not altogether. He was angry, but he gave me one more chance. I am still 'is dear brother's child, and he cannot forget it. An acquaintance of his, a man of letters, a M. Paul Sartines, was in need of a secretary. The post was not well paid, but it was permanent. My uncle insist that I take it. What choice? I took it. It is the post which I still 'old."
He ordered another liqueur brandy and gulped it down.
"The name is familiar to you, monsieur? You 'ave 'eard of M. Sartines?"
"I don't think I have. Who is he?"
"He is a man of letters, a savant. For five years he has been occupied upon a great work. It is with that that I assist him by collecting facts for 'is use. I 'ave spent this afternoon in the British Museum collecting facts. To-morrow I go again. And the next day. And again after that. The book will occupy yet another ten years before it is completed. It is his great work."
"It sounds as if it was," I said. "What's it about?"
He signalled to the waiter.
"Garçon, one other liqueur brandy. The book, monsieur, is a ''Istory of the Cat in Ancient Egypt.' "
Ruth in Exile
The clock struck five-briskly, as if time were money. Ruth Warden got up from her desk and, having put on her hat, emerged into the outer office where M. Gandinot received visitors. M. Gandinot, the ugliest man in Roville-sur-Mer, presided over the local mont-de-piété, and Ruth served him, from ten to five, as a sort of secretary-clerk. Her duties, if monotonous, were simple. They consisted of sitting, detached and invisible, behind a ground-glass screen, and entering details of loans in a fat book. She was kept busy as a rule, for Roville possesses two casinos, each offering the attraction of petits chevaux, and just round the corner is Monte Carlo. Very brisk was the business done by M. Gandinot, the pawnbroker, and very frequent were the pitying shakes of the head and clicks of the tongue of M. Gandinot, the man; for in his unofficial capacity Ruth's employer had a gentle soul, and winced at the evidences of tragedy which presented themselves before his official eyes.
He blinked up at Ruth as she appeared, and Ruth, as she looked at him, was conscious, as usual, of a lightening of the depression which, nowadays, seemed to have settled permanently upon her. The peculiar quality of M. Gandinot's extraordinary countenance was that it induced mirth-not mocking laughter, but a kind of smiling happiness. It possessed that indefinable quality which characterises the Billiken, due, perhaps, to the unquenchable optimism which shone through the irregular features; for M. Gandinot, despite his calling, believed in his fellow-man.
"You are going, mademoiselle?"
As Ruth was wearing her hat and making for the door, and as she always left at this hour, a purist might have considered the question superfluous; but M. Gandinot was a man who seized every opportunity of practising his English.
"You will not wait for the good papa who calls so regularly for you?"
"I think I won't to-day, M. Gandinot. I want to get out into the air. I have rather a headache. Will you tell my father I have gone to the Promenade?"
M. Gandinot sighed as the door closed behind her. Ruth's depression had not escaped his notice. He was sorry for her. And not without cause, for Fate had not dealt too kindly with Ruth.
It would have amazed Mr. Eugene Warden, that genial old gentleman, if, on one of those occasions of manly emotion when he was in the habit of observing that he had been nobody's enemy but his own, somebody had hinted that he had spoiled his daughter's life. Such a thought had never entered his head. He was one of those delightful, irresponsible, erratic persons whose heads thoughts of this kind do not enter, and who are about as deadly to those whose lives are bound up with theirs as a Upas tree.
In the memory of his oldest acquaintance, Ruth's father had never done anything but drift amiably through life. There had been a time when he had done his drifting in London, feeding cheerfully from the hand of a longsuffering brother-in-law. But though blood, as he was wont to remark while negotiating his periodical loans, is thicker than water, a brother-in-law's affection has its limits. A day came when Mr. Warden observed with pain that his relative responded less nimbly to the touch. And a little while later the other delivered his ultimatum. Mr. Warden was to leave England, and stay away from England, to behave as if England no longer existed on the map, and a small but sufficient allowance would be made to him. If he declined to do this, not another penny of the speaker's money would he receive. He could choose.
He chose. He left England, Ruth with him. They settled in Roville, that haven of the exile who lives upon remittances.
Ruth's connection with the mont-de-piété had come about almost automatically. Very soon after their arrival it became evident that, to a man of Mr. Warden's nature, resident a stone's-throw distant from two casinos, the small allowance was not likely to go very far. Even if Ruth had not wished to work, circumstances would have compelled her. As it was, she longed for something to occupy her, and, the
vacancy at the mont-de-piété occurring, she had snatched at it. There was a certain fitness in her working there. Business transactions with that useful institution had always been conducted by her, it being Mr. Warden's theory that Woman can extract in these crises just that extra franc or two which is denied to the mere male. Through constantly going round, running across, stepping over, and popping down to the mont-de-piété she had established almost a legal claim on any post that might be vacant there.
And under M. Gandinot's banner she had served ever since.