The Lost Ambassador Part 2

"Wait," he answered. "You shall see."

The cab pulled up in front of a very ordinary-looking cafe in a side street leading from one of the boulevards. Louis dismissed the man and looked for a moment or two up and down the pavement. His caution appeared to be quite needless, for the thoroughfare was none too well lit, and it was almost empty. Then he entered the cafe, motioning me to follow him.

"Don't look around too much," he whispered. "There are many people here who do not care to be spied upon."

My first glance into the place was disappointing. I was beginning to lose faith in Louis. After all, it seemed to me that the end of our adventure would be ordinary enough, that I should find myself in one of those places which the touting guides of the Boulevard speak of in bated breath, which one needs to be very young indeed to find interesting even for a moment. The ground floor of the cafe through which we pa.s.sed was like a thousand others in different parts of Paris. The floor was sanded, the people were of the lower orders,--rough-looking men drinking beer or sipping cordials; women from whom one instinctively looked away, and whose shrill laughter was devoid of a single note of music. It was all very flat, very uninteresting. But Louis led the way through a swing door to a staircase, and then, pus.h.i.+ng his way through some curtains, along a short pa.s.sage to another door, against which he softly knocked with his knuckles. It was opened at once, and a _commissionnaire_ stood gazing stolidly out at us, a _commissionnaire_ in the usual sort of uniform, but one of the most powerful-looking men whom I had ever seen in my life.

"There are no tables, monsieur, in the restaurant," he said at once. "There is no place at all."

Louis looked at him steadily for a moment. It seemed to me that, although I was unable to discern anything of the sort, some sign must have pa.s.sed between them. At any rate, without any protest or speech of any sort from Louis the _commissionnaire_ saluted and stood back.

"But your friend, monsieur?" he asked.

"It will be arranged," Louis answered, in a low tone. "We shall speak to Monsieur Carvin."

We were in a dark sort of _entresol_, and at that moment a further door was opened, and one caught the gleam of lights and the babel of voices. A man came out of the room and walked rapidly toward us. He was of middle height, and dressed in ordinary morning clothes, wearing a black tie with a diamond pin. His lips were thick. He had a slight tawny moustache, and a cast in one eye. He held out both his hands to Louis.

"Dear Louis," he exclaimed, "it is good to see you!"

Louis drew him to one side, and they talked for a few moments in a rapid undertone. More than once the manager of the restaurant, for such I imagined him to be, glanced towards me, and I was fairly certain that I formed the subject of their conversation. When it was finished Louis beckoned, and we all three turned towards the door together, Louis in the centre.

"This," he said to me, "is Monsieur Carvin, the manager of the Cafe des Deux Epingles. He has been explaining to me how difficult it is to find even a corner in his restaurant, but there will be a small table for us."

Monsieur Carvin bowed.

"For any friend of Louis," he said, "one would do much. But indeed, monsieur, people seem to find my little restaurant interesting, and it is, alas, so very small."

We entered the room almost as he spoke. It was larger than I had expected to find it, and the style of its decorations and general appearance were absolutely different from the cafe below. The coloring was a little sombre for a French restaurant, and the illuminations a little less vivid. The walls, however, were panelled with what seemed to be a sort of dark mahogany, and on the ceiling was painted a great allegorical picture, the nature of which I could not at first surmise. The guests, of whom the room was almost full, were all well-dressed and apparently of the smart world. The tourist element was lacking. There were a few men there in morning clothes, but these were dressed with the rigid exactness of the Frenchman, who often, from choice, affects this style of toilet. From the first I felt that the place possessed an atmosphere. I could not describe it, but, quite apart from Louis' few words concerning it, I knew that it had a clientele of its own, and that within its four walls were gathered together people who were in some way different from the b.u.t.terfly crowd who haunt the night cafes in Paris. Monsieur Carvin himself led us to a small table against the wall, and not far inside the room. The _vestiaire_ relieved us of our coats and hats. A suave _maitre d'hotel_ bent over us with suggestions for supper, and an attendant _sommelier_ waited by his side. Monsieur Carvin waved them away.

"The gentlemen have probably supped," he remarked. "A bottle of the Pommery, Gout Anglais, and some biscuits. Is that right, Louis?"

We both hastened to express our approval. Monsieur Carvin was called by some one at the other end of the room and hurried away. Louis turned to me. There was a curious expression in his eyes.

"You are disappointed?" he asked. "You see nothing here different? It is all the same to you."

"Not in the least," I answered. "For one thing, it seems strange to find a restaurant de luxe up here, when below there is only a cafe of the worst. Are they of the same management?"

"Up here," he said, "come the masters, and down there the servants. Look around at these people, monsieur. Look around carefully. Tell me whether you do not see something different here from the other places."

I followed Louis' advice. I looked around at the people with an interest which grew rather than abated, and for which I could not at first account. Soon, however, I began to realize that although this was, at first appearance, merely a crowd of fas.h.i.+onably dressed men and women, yet they differed from the ordinary restaurant crowd in that there was something a little out of the common in the faces of nearly every one of them. The loiterers through life seemed absent.

These people were relaxing freely enough,--laughing, talking, and making love,--but behind it all there seemed a note of seriousness, an intentness in their faces which seemed to speak of a career, of things to be done in the future, or something accomplished in the past. The woman who sat at the opposite table to me--tall, with yellow hair, and face as pale as alabaster--was a striking personality anywhere. Her blue eyes were deep-set, and she seemed to have made no effort to conceal the dark rings underneath, which only increased their luminosity. A magnificent string of turquoises hung from her bare neck, a curious star shone in her hair. Her dress was of the newest mode. Her voice, languid but elegant, had in it that hidden quality which makes it one of a woman's most attractive gifts. By her side was a great black-moustached giant, a pale-faced man, with little puffs of flesh underneath his eyes, whose dress was a little too perfect and his jewelry a little too obvious.

"Tell me," I asked, "who is that man?"

Louis leaned towards me, and his voice sunk to the merest whisper.

"That, monsieur," said he, "is one of the most important persons in the room. He is the man whom they call the uncrowned king. He was a saddler once by profession. Look at him now."

"How has he made his money?" I asked.

Louis smiled--a queer little contraction of his thin lips.

"It is not wise," he said, "to ask that question of any whom you meet here. Henri Bartot was one of the wildest youths in Paris. It was he who started the first band of thieves, from which developed the present h.o.a.rd of _apaches_."

"And now?" I asked.

"He is their unrecognized, unspoken-of leader," Louis whispered. "The man who offends him to-night would be lucky to find himself alive to-morrow."

I looked across the room curiously. There was not a single redeeming feature in the man's face except, perhaps, the suggestion of brute, pa.s.sionate force which still lingered about his thick, straight lips and heavy jaw. The woman by his side seemed incomprehensible. I saw now that she had eyes of turquoise blue and a complexion almost waxenlike. She lifted her arms, and I saw that they, too, were covered with bracelets of light-blue stones. Louis, following my eyes, touched me on the arm.

"Don't look at her," he said warningly. "She belongs to him--Bartot. It is not safe to flirt with her even at this distance."

I laughed softly and sipped my wine.

"Louis," I said, "it is time you got back to London. You are living here in too imaginative an atmosphere."

"I speak the truth, monsieur," he answered grimly. "She, too,--she is not safe. She finds pleasure in making fools of men. The suffering which comes to them appeals to her vanity. There was a young Englishman once, he sent a note to her--not here, but at the Cafe de Paris--at luncheon time one morning. He was to have left Paris the next day. He did not leave. He has never been heard of since!"

There was no doubt that Louis himself, at any rate, believed what he was saying. I looked away from the young lady a little reluctantly. As though she understood Louis' warning, her lips parted for a moment in a faint, contemptuous smile. She leaned over and touched the man Bartot on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear. When I next looked in their direction I found his eyes fixed upon mine in a steady, malignant stare.

"Monsieur will remember," Louis whispered in my ear softly, "that I am responsible for his coming here."

"Of course," I answered rea.s.suringly. "I have not the slightest wish to run up against any of these people. I will not look at them any more. She knew what she was doing, though, Louis, when she hung blue stones about her with eyes like that, eh?"

"She is beautiful," Louis admitted. "There are very many who admire her. But after all, what is the use? One has little pleasure of the things which one may not touch."

We were silent for several minutes. Suddenly my fingers gripped Louis'

arm. Had I been blind all this time that they had escaped my notice?

Then I saw that they were sitting at an extra table which had been hastily arranged, and I knew that they could have only just arrived.

"Tell me, Louis," I demanded eagerly, "who are those two at the small round table on the left,--the two who seem to have just come in,--a man and a girl?"

Louis turned his head, and I saw his lips come together--saw the quick change in his face from indifference to seriousness. For some reason or other my interest in these two seemed to be a matter of some import to him.

"Why does monsieur ask?" he said.

"The idlest curiosity," I a.s.sured him. "I know nothing about them except that they are distinctive, and one cannot fail, of course, to admire the young lady."

"You have seen them often?" Louis asked, in a low tone.

"I told you, Louis," I answered, "that my mission in Paris is of the nature of a search. For ten days I have haunted all the places where one goes,--the Race Course, the Bois, the Armenonville and Pre Catelan, the Rue de la Paix, the theatres. I have seen them nearly every day. To-night they were at the Opera."

"You know nothing of them beyond that?" Louis persisted.

"Nothing whatever," I declared. "I am not a boulevarder, Louis," I continued slowly, "and in England, you know, it is not the custom to stare at women as these Frenchmen seem to do with impunity. But I must confess that I have watched that girl."

"You find her attractive," murmured Louis.