Then the tall woman reached up to catch a naked earlobe, and cry, — Oh!. . I've lost my baby's breath… a line which did attract some attention.
Resounding in the regions beyond the staircase, the crash had ' straightened Fuller up on his kitchen stool forthwith. It was a minute before he could get out, for the dog wanted to get out too. It commenced to trot up and down the room, nervously sensing something amiss with that intuition which Fuller knew all too well, and seeing it active now, became the more alarmed. As the dog scratched at the door leading to the hall and the great room, Fuller slipped out another, up the kitchen stairs to the second-floor halls, round to the balcony and out slowly to the front stairs, where he paused at the newel and looked back, abruptly aware of a vacancy. Then his eye caught the cigar, half-smoked and gone out but not before it had burned a long scar on the rosewood chest. He picked it up, licked his thumb and rubbed the burnt place but it did no good: and at that moment, from the corner of his eye he realized what was missing at the end of the balcony, and carrying the half-smoked cigar he got to the stairs and almost fell in his hurry to get down them.
— Les pieds, voyez vous, les pieds de cette armure, il a trébuché vous savez. . M. Crémer harangued his audience, so effectively that it grew moment by moment, as he waved the broad-bowed glasses in the air, and pointed with his other hand to the foot-pieces of the armor, — Et sans les lunettes alors. . Les pieds? les pieds, voyez vous? des Boches, pas vrai? Voyez vous quelle gaucheríe allemande. .
— Good heavens, said the R.A. somewhere in the shadows there under the balcony, — all well and good he tripped over his feet because they were German, don't you know, but how did he get into the damned thing to begin with? eh? eh? he demanded of no one.
Of all the figures gathered there beneath him, Fuller knew only two, meeting now over the headpiece where Basil Valentine knelt on one side to put forth a hand and withdraw it as quick, for the throat was covered with blood running from a corner of the mouth, though that was all of the face that could be seen, the throat, and the heavy chin, and a sagging corner of the small mouth. What had happened was, that in the fall one of the hooks which held the beaver in place had come undone; perhaps it was not fastened properly at the outset, or possibly it had not been fastened at all. And so the beaver of the helmet was knocked askew, and the visor above jammed even more tightly closed, as the figure still kneeling there when Valentine withdrew found out, trying desperately all of a sudden to get the thing open.
Fuller stared at Basil Valentine, down on one knee, the hand he'd pulled back from the unbroken throat resting now on the taces, those plates meant to afford a loose protection round the thighs where they clung now full and rigidly distended. The breastplate and the backplate had not been drawn together, though they were as tight as they could be, their gaps bulging with mounds of while shirting and a split side of the blue vest from which somehow the penknife had escaped, and lay there on the floor at Valentine's foot. And one of the greaves had come half off too, and the broad foot-piece with it, exposing a small foot splayed in a silk sock, where the wrinkled white line of the clock on the black silk ridiculed the thickness of the ankle it covered, and it was there that Basil Valentine thrust two fingertips, waited a moment, shifted them and thrust them harder, behind the tendon there, waited again and withdrew them to figure a cross quickly at his chest as he stood away, taking a step back which Fuller repeated on the landing above; though both of them now were watching the figure still kneeling at the head, and both of them were in retreat, Fuller clutching the half-smoked cigar, up the stairs, down the hall, and Valentine stepping backward, slowly at first, when he started to speak. Waving the charred fragments before him, he took a step over the head and stood above it.
— Wait! Wait! he cried. — Wait!
The sound of this voice again, and the sight of him, worked on them immediately. The pool around him emptied, and no sooner did it flood from the rest of the room than it emptied again, the fraud of what had seethed for so long there as undersea discovered as the stopper of the tank was pulled and they poured out in a continuous stream, while he stood over the broken hulk shouting them on, — Wait! Listen! Wait!
Basil Valentine still clung in the shadows, watching him.
— Like me to stick around for a bit, old man? Anything I can mphht do d'you spose, eh? Before the mmmp who-do-you-call-'ems come, eh? The R.A. stood at his elbow.
M. Crémer, on the other hand, was suddenly in a great hurry, but found time to say, — II faut que je parte, je viens de me rap-peler d'une. . heh heh assignation vous savez, mais le Memlinc, voyez vous, le Memlinc, je veux 1'acheter vous savez. .
— Blasted little. . mphht. Good heavens, eh? Probably willing to go as high as two and six at that. .
— A n'importe quel prix, vous savez. . Crémer cast back, being swept away now.
— Good heavens! the R.A. said, still at Valentine's elbow, — begins to sound like he might go to three shillings. I say, if there's nothing more I can do here but confuse things, don't you know, I mphht get on my way I spose. . You seem to be in pretty close touch with this. . mphht our host laid out here, eh? Ring me up tomorrow, let me know what hospital they stick him in, eh? There's a good fellow. Like to send along some flowers, don't you know. And that mppht van der Goes canvas in there. . mphht like to mpht come to some terms, eh? Yes, well ghood night, eh? Ghood night. . goo night, goo night, goo night. .
A number of people, in tact, suddenly recalled other engagements and hurried off to fill them. Though the tall woman, as she described it to her husband next morning, simply led him off "as meek as Moses"; the bearded young art reviewer paddled away on a crest of enchantment, already repeacing the story to people who had not been here to enjoy it, squeezing the hot little hand folded deep in his own; and the sharkskinned Argentine, his black hair high in a dorsal fin cutting the spray around him, fled murmuring — I was not warned about this sort of thing in New York. . turning his glassy eyes for a last look at the bold spectacle on the floor, thankful, at least, that he was not, like M. Crémer, being hindered from leaving by the figure looming over it.
— Attention? eh? qu'est-ce que tu veux, aìors! va done. . laisse moi passer…
— Yes, yes, yes. . Crémer, yes. Yes, damn you. De 1'argent, vous savez, damn you, il faut toujours en avoir sur soi. .
— Eh bien, tu es fou, eh?
— Now listen, listen. . the tone changed abruptly, — you've got to listen to me. .
As the grip relaxed, Crémer wrenched away, brushing his neatly creased sleeve as he made for the door. There was some confusion at the large closet there, turned for this evening into a cloakroom; but M. Crémer emerged in short order wearing a voluminous camel's hair coat, enough sizes too big for him so that he considered it a perfect fit, and a Hollywood label inside, as he discovered a block or so away.
While here and there, inside the great room, eyes vaguely approaching the door were still caught by the eyes of the youthful portrait hung there, and turned away with such unconscious abruptness that they usually fled back to the broken thing on the floor for confirmation, and as quick there to avoid the half-face found refuge in the gauntleted hand flung out, its delicate lines palm up and open, and looked back to the portrait for denial.
The squat procession passed by, the third-in-line murmuring with the subdued reverence of a tourist speaking of something quite other than the hideous sarcophagus which he pretends to his guide he's come three thousand miles to see, — Tchikovsky you can almost take straight, but what can you do with Bach?. . the second-inline considering lighting, camera-angles, and the over-all general effect of the heavy figure in perfect grace despite its distension hurled down among roses, serving not contradiction but complement for the lighter one mounting over it, grown out of it and rising continuously in the tension of growth. . distinct close-up possibilities there, the thin empty hand in a shape of its own ascending in wild emergency and the eyes the same. . while their leader himself confirmed, — We oughda get ouda here. . bad publicidy. . And they advanced, suddenly remarkable for the fact that they all appeared a good half-head shorter than everyone else, except for the last of them, who, with a forehead, might have stood a half-head taller. They found the cloakroom and, considering their numbers, came out rather badly.