The Lost Ambassador written by E. Phillips Oppenheim
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E. Phillips Oppenheim >> The Lost Ambassador
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"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 butterfly
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 fashionably 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 hoard 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,
passionate 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 reassuringly. "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 assured 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.
"I find her delightful," I assented, "only she seems scarcely old
enough to be about in such places as these."
"The man," Louis said slowly, "is a Brazilian. His name is Delora."
"Does he live in Paris?" I asked.
"By no means," Louis answered. "He is a very rich coffee-planter, and
has immense estates somewhere in his own country. He comes over here
every year to sell his produce on the London market. I believe that he
is on his way there now."
"And the girl?" I asked.
"She is his niece," Louis answered. "She has been brought up in France
at a convent somewhere in the south, I believe. I think I heard that
this time she was to return to Brazil with her uncle."
"I wonder," I asked, "if she is going to London with him?"
"Probably," Louis answered, "and if monsieur continues to patronize
me," he continued, "he will certainly see more of them, for Monsieur
Delora is a client who is always faithful to me."
Notwithstanding its somewhat subdued air, there was all the time going
on around us a cheerful murmur of conversation, the popping of corks,
the laughter of women, the hurrying to and fro of waiters,--all the
pleasant disturbance of an ordinary restaurant at the most festive
hour of the night. But there came, just at this moment, a curious
interruption, an interruption curious not only on its own account, but
on account of the effect which it produced. From somewhere in the
centre of the room there commenced ringing, softly at first, and
afterwards with a greater volume, a gong, something like the siren of
a motor-car, but much softer and more musical. Instantly a dead silence
seemed to fall upon the place. Conversation was broken off, laughter
was checked, even the waiters stood still in their places. The eyes of
every one seemed turned towards the door. One or two of the men rose,
and in the faces of these was manifest a sudden expression in which
was present more or less of absolute terror. Bartot for a moment
shrank back in his chair as though he had been struck, only to recover
himself the next second; and the lady with the turquoises bent over
and whispered in his ear. One person only left his place,--a young man
who had been sitting at a table at the other end of the room with one
of the gayest parties. At the very first note of alarm he had sprung
to his feet. A few seconds later, with swift, silent movements and
face as pale as a ghost, he had vanished into the little service room
from which the waiters issued and returned. With his disappearance the
curious spell which seemed to have fallen upon these other people
passed away. The waiters resumed their tasks. The room was once more
hilariously gay. Upon the threshold a newcomer was standing, a tall
man in correct morning dress, with a short gray beard and a tiny red
ribbon in his button-hole. He stood there smiling slightly--an
unobtrusive entrance, such as might have befitted any habitue of the
place. Yet all the time his eyes were travelling restlessly up and
down the room. As he stood there, one could fancy there was not a face
into which he did not look during those few minutes.
CHAPTER IV
DANGEROUS PLAY
I leaned towards Louis, but he anticipated my question. His hand had
caught my wrist and was pinning it down to the table.
"Wait!" he muttered--"wait! You perceive that we are drinking wine of
the vintage of '98. I will tell you of my trip to the vineyards. Do
not look at that man as though his appearance was anything
remarkable. You are not an habitue here, and he will take notice of
you."
As one who speaks upon the subject most interesting to him, Louis,
with the gestures and swift, nervous diction of his race, talked to me
of the vineyards and the cellars of the famous champagne house whose
wine we were drinking. I did my best to listen intelligently, but
every moment I found my eyes straying towards this new arrival, now
deep in apparently pleasant conversation with Monsieur Carvin.
The newcomer had the air of one who has looked in to smile around at
his acquaintances and pass on. He accepted a cigarette from Carvin,
but he did not sit down, and I saw him smile a polite refusal as a
small table was pointed out to him. He strolled a little into the
place and he bowed pleasantly to several with whom he seemed to be
acquainted, amongst whom was the man Bartot. He waved his hand to
others further down the room. His circle of acquaintances, indeed,
seemed unlimited. Then, with a long hand-shake and some parting jest,
he took leave of Monsieur Carvin and disappeared. Somehow or other one
seemed to feel the breath of relief which went shivering through the
room as he departed. Louis answered then my unspoken question.
"That," he said, "is a very great man. His name is Monsieur Myers."
"The head of the police!" I exclaimed.
Louis nodded.
"The most famous," he said, "whom France has ever possessed, Monsieur
Myers is absolutely marvellous," he declared. "The man has
genius,--genius as well as executive ability. It is a terrible war
that goes on between him and the _haute ecole_ of crime in this
country."
"Tell me, Louis," I asked, "is Monsieur Myers' visit here to-night
professional?"
"Monsieur has observation," Louis answered. "Why not?"
"You mean," I asked, "that there are criminals--people under
suspicion--"
"I mean," Louis interrupted, "that in this room, at the present
moment, are some of the most famous criminals in the world."
A question half framed died away upon my lips. Louis, however, divined
it.
"You were about to ask," he said, "how I obtained my entry
here. Monsieur, one had better not ask. It is one thing to be a
thief. It is quite another to see something of the wonderful life
which those live who are at war with society."
I looked around the room once more. Again I realized the difference
between this gathering of well-dressed men and women and any similar
gathering which I had seen in Paris. The faces of all somehow lacked
that tiredness of expression which seems to be the heritage of those
who drink the cup of pleasure without spice, simply because the hand
of Fate presses it to their lips. These people had found something
else. Were they not, after all, a little to be envied? They must know
what it was to feel the throb of life, to test the true flavor of its
luxuries when there was no certainty of the morrow. I felt the
fascination, felt it almost in my blood, as I looked around.
"You could not specify, I suppose?" I said to Louis.
"How could monsieur ask it?" he replied, a little reproachfully. "You
will be one of the only people who do not belong who have been
admitted here, and you will notice," he continued, "that I have asked
for no pledge--I rely simply upon the honor of monsieur."
I nodded.
"There is crime and crime, Louis," said I. "I have never been able to
believe myself that it is the same thing to rob the widow and the
millionaire. I know that I must not ask you any questions," I
continued, "but the girl with Delora,--the man whom you call
Delora,--she, at least, is innocent of any knowledge of these things?"
Louis smiled.
"Monsieur is susceptible," he remarked. "I cannot answer that
question. Mademoiselle is a stranger. She is but a child."
"And Monsieur Delora himself?" I asked. "He comes here when he
chooses? He is not merely a sightseer?"
"No," Louis repeated, "he is not merely a sightseer!"
"A privileged person," I remarked.
"He is a wonderful man," Louis answered calmly. "He has travelled all
over the world. He knows a little of every capital, of every side of
life,--perhaps," he added, "of the underneath side."
"His niece is very beautiful," I remarked, looking at her
thoughtfully. "It seems almost a shame, does it not, to bring her
into such a place as this?"
Louis smiled.
"If she were going to stay in Paris--yes!" he said. "If she is really
going to Brazil, it matters little what she does. A Parisian, of
course, would never bring his womankind here."
"She is very beautiful," I remarked. "Yes, I agree with you, Louis. It
is no place for girls of her age."
Louis smiled.
"Monsieur may make her acquaintance some day," he remarked. "Monsieur
Delora is on his way to England."
"She is a safer person to admire," I remarked, "than the lady
opposite?"
"Much," Louis answered emphatically. "Monsieur has already," he
whispered, "been a little indiscreet. The lady of the turquoises has
spoken once or twice to Bartot and looked this way. I feel sure that
it was of you she spoke. See how she continually looks over the top of
her fan at this table. Monsieur would do well to take no notice."
I laughed. I was thirty years old, and the love of adventure was
always in my blood. For the first time for many days the weariness
seemed to have passed away. My heart was beating. I was ready for any
enterprise.
"Do not be afraid, Louis," I said. "I shall come to no harm. If
mademoiselle looks at me, it is not gallant to look away."
Louis' face was puckered up with anxiety. He saw, too, what I had
seen. Bartot had walked to the other end of the room to speak to some
friends. The girl had taken a gold and jewelled pencil from the mass
of costly trifles which lay with her purse upon the table, and was
writing on a piece of paper which the waiter had brought. I could see
her delicately manicured fingers, the blue veins at the back of her
hands, as she wrote, slowly and apparently without hesitation. Both
Louis and myself watched the writing of that note as though Fate
itself were guiding the pencil.
"It is for you," Louis whispered in my ear. "Take no notice. It would
be madness even to look at her."
"Louis!" I exclaimed protestingly.
"I mean what I say, monsieur," Louis declared, leaning toward me, and
speaking in a low, earnest whisper. "The cafe below, the streets
throughout this region, are peopled by his creatures. In an hour he
could lead an army which would defy the whole of the gendarmes in
Paris. This quarter of the city is his absolutely to do with what he
wills. Do you believe that you would have a chance if he thought that
she had looked twice at you,--she--Susette--the only woman who has
ever led him? I tell you that he is mad with love and jealousy for
her. The whole world knows of it."
"My dear Louis," I said, "you know me only in London, where I come and
sit in your restaurant and eat and drink there. To you I am simply
like all those others who come to you day by day,--idlers and pleasure
seekers. Let me assure you, Louis, that there are other things in my
life. Just now I should welcome anything in the world which meant
adventure, which could teach me to forget."
"But monsieur need not seek the suicide," Louis said. "There are
hundreds of adventures to be had without that."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"If mademoiselle should send me the note," I said, "surely it would
not be gallant of me to refuse to accept it."
"There are other ways of seeking adventures," Louis said, "than by
ending one's days in the Seine."
The girl by this time had finished her note and rolled it up. She
looked behind her to the other end of the room, where only Bartot's
broad back was visible. Then she raised her eyes to mine,--turquoise
blue as the color of her gown,--and very faintly but very deliberately
she smiled. I was not in the least in love with her. The affair to me
was simply interesting because it promised a moment's distraction.
But, nevertheless, as she smiled I felt my heart beat faster, and I
reached a little eagerly forward as though for the note. She called a
waiter to her side. I watched her whisper to him; I watched his
expression--anxious and perturbed at first, doubtful, even, after her
reassuring words. He looked down the room to where Bartot was
standing. It seemed to me, even then, that he ventured to protest, but
mademoiselle frowned and spoke to him sharply. He caught up a wine
list and came to our table. Once more, before he spoke, he looked
behind to where Bartot's back was still turned.
"For monsieur," he whispered, setting the wine list upon the table,
and under it the note.
I nodded, and he hastened away. At that moment Bartot turned and came
down the room. As he approached he looked at me once more, as though,
for some reason or other, he was more than ordinarily interested in my
presence. It may have been my fancy, but I thought, also, that he
looked at the wine card stretched out before me.
"Be careful!" Louis whispered. "Be careful! And, for God's sake,
destroy that note!"
I laughed, and as Bartot was compelled to turn his back to me to
regain his seat, this time at the table with his companion, I raised
my glass, looking her full in the face, and drank. Then I slipped the
note from underneath the wine card into my pocket. She made the
slightest of signs, but I understood. I was not to read it until I was
alone.
"Go outside," Louis whispered to me. "Read your letter and get rid of
it."
I obeyed him. A watchful waiter pulled the table away, and I walked
out into the anteroom. Here, with a freshly lit cigarette in my mouth,
I unclenched my fingers, and looked at the few words written very
faintly, in long, delicate characters, across the torn sheet of paper:
Monsieur is in bad company. It would be well for him to lunch
to-morrow at the Cafe de Paris, and to ask for Leon.
That was all. I tore it into small pieces and returned to my seat,
altogether puzzled. It seemed to me that Louis watched me with an
incomprehensible anxiety as I resumed my place by his side.
"If monsieur is ready," he suggested, "perhaps we had better go."
I rose to my feet reluctantly.
"As you will, Louis," I said.
But the time for our departure had not yet come!
CHAPTER V
SATISFACTION
During the whole of the time people had been coming and going from the
restaurant, not, perhaps, in a continual stream, but still at fairly
regular intervals. It seemed to me, who had watched them all with
interest, that scarcely a person had entered who was not worthy of
observation. I saw faces, it is true, which I had seen before at the
fashionable haunts of Paris, upon the polo ground, at Longchamps, or
in the Bois, yet somehow it seemed to me that they came to this place
as different beings. There was a tense look in their faces, a look
almost of apprehension, as they entered and passed out,--as of people
who have found their way a little further into life than their
associates. Louis was right. There was something different about the
place, something at which I could only dimly guess, which at that time
I did not understand. Only I realized that I watched always with a
little thrill of interest whenever the hurrying forward of Monsieur
Carvin indicated the arrival of a new visitor.
We had already risen to go, and the _vestiaire_ was on his way
towards us, bearing my hat and coat, when Monsieur Carvin, who had
hurried out a moment before, reappeared, ushering in a new
arrival. The events that followed have always seemed a little confused
to me. My first thought was that this was indeed a nightmare into
which I had wandered. The slight unreality which had hung like a cloud
over the whole of the evening, the strangeness of my being there with
such a companion, the curious atmosphere of the place, which so far
had completely puzzled me,--these things may all have served to
heighten the illusion. Yet it seemed to me then that, dreaming or
waking, this thing with which I was confronted was the last
impossibility. I suppose that I must have stared at him like some
wild creature, for the conversation around us suddenly stopped.
Standing upon the threshold, looking around him with the happy air of
an habitue, I saw this man to whom I owed my presence in Paris, this
man concerning whom I had sworn that if ever I should meet him face to
face my hand should be upon his throat. I remember nothing of my
progress, but I know that I stood before him before he was conscious
even of my presence. I addressed him by name. I believe that even my
voice was not upraised.
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