Here and there the electric sky-signs on the tall buildings, advertising Savan Cadum or Byrrh, glowed dully through the murk, and the lights of the cafes illuminated little spaces of the boulevards through which they passed, throwing up the figures that sat sipping their aperitifs at the marble-topped tables and dappling the young green of the stunted trees that lined the pavements.
None of them spoke as the taxi swerved and rushed, seeking every opportunity to nose its way through the traffic. Only Rex leant forward once, soon after they left the aerodrome, and murmured: ‘I told him the Ritz. We’ll be able to hunt up this bird’s address when we get there.’
They ran past the Opera, down the Boulevard de la Madeleine, and turned left into the Place Vandome. The cab pulled up with a jerk. A liveried porter hurried forward to fling open the door, and they scrambled out.
‘Pay him off, with a good tip,’ Rex ordered the hotel servant. ‘I’ll see-yer-later, inside.’ Then he led the way into the hotel.
One of the under-managers at the bureau recognised him and came hurrying forward with a welcoming smile.
‘Monsieur Van Ryn, what a pleasure! You require accommodation for your party? How many rooms do you desire? I hope that you will stay with us some time.’
‘Two single rooms and one double, with bathrooms, and we’d best have a sitting-room on the same floor,’ replied Rex curtly. ‘How long we’ll be staying I can’t say. I’ve got urgent business to attend to this trip. Do you happen to know a banker named Castelnauelderly man, grey-haired, with a hatchet face, who’s had a slice taken out of his left ear?’
‘Mais oui, monsieur. He lunches here frequently.’
‘Good. D’you know where he lives?’
‘For the moment, no, but I will ascertain. You permit?’ The manager moved briskly away and disappeared into the office. A few moments later he returned with a Paris telephone directory open in his hand.
This will be it, monsieur, I think, Monsieur Laurent Castelnau, 72, Maison Rambouillet, Parc Monceau. That is a block of flats. Do you wish to telephone his apartment?’
‘Sure,’ Rex nodded. ‘Call him right away, please.’ Then as the Frenchman hurried off, he nodded quietly to the Duke: ‘Best leave this to me. I’ve got a hunch how to fix him.’
‘Go ahead,’ the Duke acquiesced. He had been keeping well in the background, and now he smiled a little unhappily as he went on in a low voice:
‘How I love Paris. The smell and the sight and the sound of it. I have not been back here for fifteen years. The Government have never forgiven me for the part that I played in the Royalist rising which took place in the 90’s. I was young then. How long ago it all seems now. But never since have I dared to venture back to France, except a few times secretly on the most urgent business. I believe the authorities would still put me into some miserable fortress if they discovered me on French soil.’
‘Oh, Greyeyes, dear! You ought never to have come.’ Marie Lou turned to him impulsively. ‘With all these awful things happening I had forgotten. Somehow I always think of you really as an Englishman, not as a French exile who lives in England as the next best thing. It would be terrible if you were arrested and tried as a political offender after all these years.’
He shrugged and smiled again. ‘Don’t worry, Princess. The authorities have almost forgotten my existence, I expect, and the only risk I run is in knowing so many people who constantly travel through France. If someone recognised me and spoke my name too loud it is just possible that it might strike a chord in some police spy’s memory, but beyond that there is very little danger.’
They sat down at a little table in the lounge while Rex was telephoning. When he rejoined them he nodded cheerfully.
‘We’re in luck, and Lord knows we need it. I spoke to Castelnau himself, used the name of my old man’s firm The Chesapeake Banking and Trust Corporationand spun a yarn that he had sent me over on a special mission to Europe connected with the franc. Told him the whole thing was far too hush-hush for me to make a date to see him at his office tomorrow morning where his clerks might recognise me as the representative of an American banking house, and that I must see him tonight privately. He hedged a bit until I put it to him that I had power to deal in real big figures, and he fell for that like a sucker. He couldn’t see me yet though, because he’s busy putting on his party frock for some official banquet, but he figures he’ll be back at the apartment round about ten o’clock, so I said I’d be along to state my business then.’
‘To fill in the time we might go upstairs and have bath,’ remarked Richard, feeling his bristly chin. ‘Then we’d better go out and dine somewhere, though God knows, I’ve never felt less like food in my life.’
‘All right,’ De Richleau agreed, ‘only let us go somewhere quiet for dinner. If we go to one of the smart places it will add to the chance of my running into somebody that I know.’
‘What about Le Vert Galant?’ Richard suggested. ‘It’s on the right bank down at La Cite, old-fashioned, quiet, but excellent food, and you’re unlikely to see the sort of people that we know there in the evening.’
‘Is that still running?’ De Richleau smiled. ‘Then let us go there by all means. It’s just the place.’ And they moved over towards the lift.
Upstairs they bathed and tidied themselves, but almost automatically, for their uneasy sleep that morning seemed to have done little to recruit their lowered energy. As though still in a bad dream, Marie Lou undressed, and dressed again, while Richard moved about the room, for once apparently unconscious of her presence, silently and mechanically eliminating the traces of the journey. Then he submitted to the ministrations of the hotel barber with one curt order, that the man was to shave him and not to talk.
Rex finished first and wandered into their room, where he sat uncomfortably perched upon a corner of the bed, but he stared at his large feet the whole time that he sat there and did not make any effort whatever at conversation.
De Richleau joined them shortly afterwards, and Marie Lou, rousing for a moment from her abject misery, noted with a little start how spick and span he had become again, after the attentions of the barber and his bath. He had produced one of his long Hoyos, and appeared to be smoking it with quiet enjoyment. Richard and Rex, despite the removal of their incipient beards, still looked woebegone and haggard, as though they had not slept for days, and were almost contemplating suicide, but the Duke still maintained his air of the great gentleman for whose pleasure and satisfaction this whole existence is ordered.
Actually his appearance was no more than a mask with which long habit had accustomed him to disguise his emotions, and at heart he was racked by an anxiety equal to that of any of the others. He was suppressing his impatience to get hold of Castelnau only by a supreme effort; his feet itched to be on the move, and his fingers to be on the throat of the adversary; but as he came into the room he smiled round at them, kissed Marie Lou’s hand with his usual gallantry, and presented a huge bunch of white violets to her.
‘A few flowers, Princess, for your room.’
Marie Lou took them without a word; the tears brimming in her eyes spoke her thanks that he should have thought of such a thing at such a time, and his perfect naturalness served to steady them all a little as they went down afterwards in the lift. Rex changed some money at the caisse, and they went out into the night again.
‘Queerisn’t it,’ remarked Richard as he looked out of the taxi window at the fogbound streets. ‘I’ve always said what fun it is to make a surprise visit for a couple of nights to Parisin May. It’s like stealing in on summer in advancetea in the open at Armenonvillea drive to Fontainbleu, with the forest at its very bestand all that. I never thought I might come to Paris one May like this.’