“A room for Monsieur? But certainly! Delighted!” The clerk slaps his hand on the desk-bell. "Garcon! Take Monsieur's bags up to Room 30-D!”
Monsieur! And garcon!
Sure enough, 30-D, at least, is furnished with gas-light. Sure enough, they rode up in a hydraulic elevator, started and stopped (and, for all the visitor knows to the contrary, Praz not even having a grain-elevator, propelled) by a cable running through the center from floor to roof.
And, in an alcove in the hallway, only a few doors from 30-D, there is even running water, should one’s pitcher run dry!
The French know how to live.
Lobats, meanwhile, had started at the bottom. Not, to be sure, at the very bottom. He did not bother with the two-penny drabs, poor wretched things, who plied their trade under the land arches of the Italian Bridge or in the doorways of the alleys round the Rag
Market. He had engravings made of a series of sketches by Eszterhazy, and he was now out directing their distribution — not in broadside quantities or by broadside methods; he did not want them on lamp-posts; it was not intended to take such fairly desperate methods ... yet. He was having them distributed where he thought they might do the most good.
In a dirty coffee-house by the Old Fish Wharf, for instance.
“Hallo, Rosa.”
“Oh, God, I’m not even awake yet” — it was two in the afternoon — “he wants to take me to jail. I haven't done nothing!"
“Oh, we know that, Rosa. Look here. Ever see this mug? No? Sure? Well, if you do ... or think you do ... well, you know how to pass the word along. Somebody might do herself a very good turn. Particularly if she needed one done. ‘Bye, Rosa.”
In a shebeen behind the Freight Yards, for instance.
“Hallo, Genau.”
A greasy, shriveled little man in a torn jacket of the same description seems about to dive beneath the counter. But he only dives deep enough to come up with a piece of paper. Also greasy and shriveled.
“Oh, I don’t want to see your tax-receipt, Genau. Look here.
Ever see this mug? No? Sure? Well, if you do .... Somebody might be able to make a very good deal for himself, if you know what I mean.”
Genau seems to know what he means.
In front of a cheap bakery in the South Ward.
“Hey, you, Tobacco. Come here.”
Tobacco comes there, eyes bulging with honesty. “I’m clean, Your Worship. Search me, ‘few like. Haven’t picked a tap since —” “— since last night. Never mind. Take a look here. Eh?” Tobacco takes a look. Shakes his head. “Not a regular.”
“We’d like to see him just the same. Twig? Secret fund. Twig?” Tobacco twigs. “I’ll be sure and letcha know. We don’t like irregulars, anyway. Mucking things up and making things difficult for the trained hands. Sure. I’ll letcha know.”
“Hallo, Lou—”
“Hallo, Frou —”
“Hallo, Gretchen—”
“Hallo, Marishka —” Marishka blinks her painted eyes. Gives a nod. A very tired nod. Genteely smothers a yawn. “Sure. He’s a bit dotty, ain’t he? But not dangerous. ”
Lobtas: “You have seen him, then? When?”
Marishka sips, licks beaten cream off her painted lip. “Last night,” she says, indifferently. “All night. Nothing special.” She means, first, that her last night’s guest had no very odd habits and, second, that he had paid only a standard fee.
“Where? Know where he might be?”
Marishka no longer even bothers to shrug. “He came in from the street,” she says. “And he went back out into the street.” She returns to her cup of coffee. It is all so very dull, life and its demands. They come in from the street. And they go back out into the street.
Over and over. However. Others can do that work. There is one thing more, which Doctor Eszterhazy had advised not be neglected. And Lobats, who has a little list (written, this time — he has many little lists, and quite a few long ones, in his head). One by one he checks them off, shop after shop, and fitting-room after fitting-room. Then, scratching his head, he goes farther afield.
Frow Widow Higgins, Theatrical Costumiere, was not from England, as the rich accents of her native South Ward indicated. But the late Higgins had been born there. The late Higgins, however, was very late indeed, and his widow made little mention of him. She looked up from her sewing- machine, through which she was running a tunic of 16th-century design ... one which much needed the restorative attentions of the machine and which, in fact, might indeed have been in semi-continual use since that century. She looked up from her sewing-machine and, for a moment, rested her foot at the treadle.
“Heah,” she said.
“When?”
“Oh .... Maybe last month....”
Lobats wants her to tell him all about it. And, politely, for Frow Widow Higgins is of an entirely respectable and, God knows, hard-working, character, he asks that she understand that he means all about it. Frow Widow Higgins runs her fingers over her tired eyes. Then she sums it up.
“He paid in cash,” she says.
Many are the brightly dressed ladies who pass in and out of the saloon bar of the Hotel de France. Rich in lace, with very rich color in their cheeks, and with very large hats that many egrets have died to adorn. They are agreeable to letting the gentleman from Praz buy them a richly colored drink. They listen with arch interest to his story. After all, every gentleman has a story. They make remarks indicating interest. “And you can’t settle the estate without him?” they repeat. "OA-what-a-sAame/” Well, any excuse will serve when a dandyish gent from the provinces wants to come up and have his bit of fun. There are few nicer pigeons to pluck than these dandyish gents from the provinces, after all. But the gentleman from Praz can’t seem to take a hint. And so, one after another, hints as to dinner ... the theater ... supper ... champagne ... the opera ... not only not being forthcoming, all such hints even on the ladies’ parts meeting with no more response than, “Yes, but surely some-one must know my brother: he has lived in Bella for years!"... well, sooner or later, the richly dressed ladies sigh and excuse themselves and move on.
Even if only to another table.
It is late.
Mile. Toscanelli.
Mile. Toscanelli is from Corsica. And if that is not French enough to suit any of the customers of the saloon bar of the Hotel de France, well, oh-lb-la! Mile. Toscanelli has no intention of wasting the evening over a peppermint shnops. She looks at the tin-type of the brother of the gentleman from Praz. “This has been retouched,” says Mile. Toscanelli.
“It is my brother Georg. We cannot settle the estate, you see, without him.”
Mile. Toscanelli has a question, one which seems to indicate that emotions other than the purely sentimental sometimes animate the bosoms of the daughters of the warm South.
“HOw much is it worth to you to find him?”
A faint change seems to come over the gentleman from Praz, in his obsolete finery, and with his funny-fancy manners. He meets the hard, bright, black light eyes of Mile. Toscanelli.
“Fifty ducats,” he says. "But no tricks!"
Mile. Toscanelli says, “En avance."
She counts the five notes of ten ducats each, snaps the tiny beaded and be-bijou’d reticule, starts to rise. “One moment, 1 wish to send a note,” says the gentleman from Praz. “He is — where?”