Chambers Robert William
The Girl Philippa
"If that girl now has an opportunity and the desire to denounce him, you can be absolutely certain that long ago he has foreseen and prepared himself for just such an event!"
"Do you believe that?"
Halkett smiled:
"I am certain of it."
"Why?"
"What does a young girl know about treachery? How many papers has Philippa ignorantly and innocently signed which might exculpate Wildresse and send her before a peloton of execution in the first caserne available? That's the way such rats as he protect themselves!
"No, Warner. It's a filthy business at best, and I admit, sadly enough, that I know more about it than you ever could know.
"Listen, old chap! It's no good stirring up the police until Philippa is outside French territory. Then, and then only, may we dare to let loose the police on this nest of rats in Ausone!"
"Very well," said Warner quietly. "I'll act as you think best, only I'll – " He stopped to regain control of himself. And when he had himself in hand again: "Only – it will be a – a bad mistake if Wildresse – if – if any harm comes to that child."
"Oh, in that event," said Halkett quietly, "we need not scruple to kill him where we find him."
Warner said unsteadily:
"I shall not hesitate a second – " But Halkett suddenly checked him with a touch on his elbow, and drew him back behind the wall of the Impasse d'Alcyon, from which alley they were on the point of emerging into the town.
Two men were crossing the almost empty market square toward the Café Biribi, moving without haste over the sunny pavement.
"Hoffman and Meier," whispered Halkett. "There go our promising young rodents straight toward the old rat's nest! It won't do for them to catch sight of me… Wait a moment! There they go – into the Café Biribi! Follow them – they don't know you. Keep your eye on them.
"I'll stroll over to the quay and dangle my legs on the river wall. If you need me, come out on the café terrace and beckon."
"Would it do to hand over that pair to the police? They are German spies, are they not?"
"They are. But at present they are likely to be useful. If Wildresse is in the café or the cabaret, they are sure to reveal the fact to us. Better go in and keep your eye on them. If you want me, I shall be smoking my pipe on the river wall across the street."
He nodded and strolled over toward the little tree-shaded quay, filling his pipe as he sauntered along. Warner continued on to the café, entered, seated himself against the shabby wall, picked up an illustrated journal, ordered bitters, and composed himself to enjoy the preprandial hour sacred to all Frenchmen.
Without looking he was aware that the two men, Meier and Hoffman, seated at a table near the cashier's desk, had noted his arrival and were steadily inspecting him.
But he did not look in their direction; he turned the pages of the illustrated paper, leisurely, until the waiter brought his Amer Picon and a chilled carafe. Then he measured out his water with the unstudied deliberation of an habitué, stirred the brown liquid, sipped it, and, turning to another page of his paper, let his eyes rest absently on the two men opposite.
By that time neither of them was even looking at him. They were drinking beer; their heads were close together and they had turned so that they were facing each other on the padded leather wall settee.
It was impossible to hear what they were saying; they spoke rapidly and in tones so low that only the vibration of their voices was audible in the still room.
Guarded but vigorous gesticulations marked the progress of their conference; now and then both became mute while the waiter replenished their glasses with beer and added another little saucer to the growing pile on the marble table.
For an hour Warner dawdled over the café papers and his glass of bitters. The men opposite still faced each other on the leather settee, still conversed with repressed animation, still guzzled beer. Once or twice they had looked up and across the room at him and had taken a swift, comprehensive survey of the few other people in the café, but the movement had been wholly instinctive and mechanical. Evidently they felt entirely secure.
The plump, dark-eyed caissière had caught Warner's eye once or twice. Evidently she remembered him, and her quick smile became almost an invitation to conversation.
It was what he wanted and he hesitated only because he was not sure how the men opposite might regard his approach toward their vicinity.
But he did it very well; and both men, looking up sharply, seemed presently to realize that it was merely a flirtation, and that the young man lounging before the cashier's counter, smiling, and being smiled upon, could safely be ignored.
"To be the prettiest girl in Ausone," Warner was saying, "must be a very great comfort to that girl. Don't you think so, Mademoiselle?"
"To be the most virtuous, Monsieur, would be far more comforting."
"Have you then both prizes, Mademoiselle? I was sure of it!"
"Prizes, Monsieur?"
"The golden apple and the prix de la sagesse?"
She laughed and blushed, detaching from her corsage a rosebud.
"Accept, Monsieur, the prize for eloquence and for impudence!" And she extended the rosebud to Warner.
He took it, lifted it to his lips, looking smilingly at her, and listening with all the concentration he could summon to the murmuring conversation at the neighboring table.
Only a word or two he could catch – perhaps merely a guess at – "Patron," and "nine o'clock," and "cellar" – at least he imagined he could distinguish these words. And all the time he was up to his ears in a breezy flirtation with a girl very willing, very adept, and perfectly capable of appreciating her own desirability as well as the good points of any casual suitor whom Heaven might strand upon her little, isolated island for an hour or two.
Being French, she was clever and amusing and sufficiently grateful to the gods for this bit of masculine flotsam which had drifted her way.
"There are boats," she said, "and the evening will be beautiful." Having made this clear to him, she smiled and let matters shape their course.
"What pleasure is a boat and a beautiful night to me," he said, "if nobody shares both with me?"
"Alas, Monsieur, have you no pretty little friend who could explain to you the planets on a summer night?"
"Alas, Mademoiselle!"
"What a pity… Because I have studied astronomy a little. And I recommend it to you as a diversion. They are so high, so unattainable, the stars! It is well for a young man to learn what is attainable, and then to address himself to its pursuit. What do you think, Monsieur?"
"That I should very much like to study astronomy if in all the world there could be discovered anybody amiable enough to teach me."
"How pathetic! If I only had time – "
"Have you no time at all?"
"It wouldn't do, mon ami."
"Why?"
"Because I should be seen going to a rendezvous with you."
"Isn't there any way into the cabaret garden except through the cabaret?" he asked.
She shook her head, laughing at him out of her brown eyes.
He waited a moment to control his voice, but there was a tremor in it when he said:
"Is there no way through the cellar?"
She noticed the tremor and liked it. In the lightest and airiest of flirtations the ardent and unsteady note in a man's voice appeals to any woman to continue and finish his subjugation.
"As for the cellar," she said, "it is true that one can get into the cabaret garden that way. But, Monsieur, do you imagine that a dark, damp, ghostly and pitch-black cellar appeals to any woman?"
"Is the cellar so frightful a place, Mademoiselle?"
"Figure it to yourself! – Some twenty stone steps from the pantry yonder" – She nodded her head toward the battered swinging door of leather. – "And then more steps, down, down, down! – Into darkness and dampness where there are only wine casks and kegs and bottles and mushrooms and rats and ghosts – "
"What of it – if, as you say, the stars are shining on the river – "
"Merci! A girl must certainly be in love to venture through that cellar! And a man, too!"
"Try me. I'll go!"
The girl laughed:
"You! Are you, then, in love already?"
"I should like to prove it. Where is that terrible cellar?"
"Behind the door, there." She waved her hand airily. "Try it. Show me how much you are in love! Perhaps then I'll believe you."
"Will the waiters interfere if I go into the cellar?"
"See how you try to avoid the test!"
"Try me!"
"Very well. The washroom is there. If you choose to wash your hands, you are at liberty to do so. And then if you can't slip down into the cellar while the waiters are looking the other way, all I can say is that you are not in love!"
He looked at her smilingly, scarcely trusting himself to speak for a moment, for the face of Philippa rose unbidden before his eyes and a shaft of fear pierced him.
"You are wrong," he said steadily enough. "I am in love… Very honestly, very innocently… It just occurred to me. I didn't know how deeply I felt… I really am in love – as one loves what is fearless, faithful, and devoted."
"A dog is all that, Monsieur."
"Occasionally a human being is, also. Sometimes even a woman."
Her smile became a little troubled.
"Monsieur, are you, then, in love with some woman who possesses these commendable virtues?"
"No. I am in love with her virtues, Mademoiselle."
"Oh! Then she might even be your sister!"
"Exactly. That is the quality of my affection for her."
The pretty caissière laughed:
"You were beginning to make me sad," she said. "I – I am really willing to teach you astronomy, if you truly desire a knowledge of the stars."
"I do, ardently."
"But I am sincerely afraid of the cellar," she murmured. "It is ten o'clock before I am released from duty, and the knowledge that it is ten o'clock at night makes that cellar doubly dark and terrible. I – I don't want to give you a rendezvous down there; and I certainly don't propose to traverse the cellar alone. Monsieur, what on earth am I to do?"
"To study the stars on the river, and to reach a rendezvous without being noticed, makes it necessary for you to slip out through the cellar, does it not?"
"Alas!"
"Haven't you the courage?"
"I don't – know."
"Yes, you have."
"Have I?" She laughed.
"Certainly. I'll go to the washroom now, and get into the cellar somehow, and make myself acquainted with it… I suppose I ought to have a candle – "
She said:
"When I walk home alone at night I have a little electric torch with me. Shall I lend it to you?"
She opened the desk drawer, drew it out concealed under her handkerchief, and he managed to transfer it to his pocket. It clinked against the loaded automatic pistol; nobody noticed the sound.
But for a moment he thought the two men, Meier and Hoffman, had noticed it, because they both got up and came over directly toward him.
However, they merely wished to pay their reckoning with a hundred-franc note, and Warner moved aside while they crowded before the pretty cashier's desk, offering hasty pleasantries and ponderous gallantries, while she dimpled at them and made change.
Then, after tipping the waiter, they went out into the late afternoon sunshine.
Warner, looking after them, could see that they were crossing the square toward the Boule d'Argent; and he knew that Halkett must have seen them and that he would manage to keep them in view.
Now was his time to investigate the cellar, and he said so to the brown-eyed girl behind the cage, who had been inspecting him rather pensively.
"I ought not to do this," said the pretty caissière.
"Of course not. Otherwise we should not find each other agreeable."
She smiled, looking at him a little more seriously and more attentively.
"It is odd, is it not," she said under her breath, "how two people from the opposite ends of the earth chance to meet and – and find each other – agreeable?"
"It is delightful," he admitted smilingly.
"I don't even know your name," she remarked, playing with her pencil.
"James."
"Tchames?" – with a pretty attempt to imitate his English.
"Jim is easier."
"Djeem?"
"Perfect!"
"Djeem," she repeated, looking musingly at the tall, well-built American. "C'est drôle, ce nom là! Djeem? It is pleasant, too… My name is Jeanne." She shrugged her youthful shoulders. "Nothing extraordinary, you see… Still, I shall try to please you, Monsieur Djeem."
"I dare not hope to please you – "
She laughed:
"You do please me. Do you suppose, otherwise, I should dare enter that frightful cellar?"
Under cover of her desk, she deftly detached a key from the bunch at her belt, covered it with her hand, palm down, and let it rest on the counter before him.
"Do you promise to keep away from the wine bins?" she asked lightly.
"I promise solemnly," he said, and took the key.
"Very well. Then you may go and look at this dreadful cellar at once. And when you behold it, ask yourself how great a goose a girl must be who ventures into it at ten o'clock at night merely because a young man desires to take a lesson in astronomy on the river Récollette."
CHAPTER XVII
He had little difficulty in gaining the cellar from the washroom. Both doors opened out of the pantry passage; he had only to watch the moving figures silhouetted through the pantry doorway, and when they were out of sight for the moment, he stepped out, unlocked the cellar door, closed it gently behind him, flashed his electric torch, and started down the broad stone steps.
It was one of the big, old-time cellars not unusual in provincial towns, but built, probably, a century before the café and cabaret had been erected on its solid stone foundations.
Two rows of squatty stone pillars supported the low arches of the roof; casks, kegs, bins, empty bottles, broken bottles, and row after row of unsealed wine bottles lined the alleyways leading in every direction through the darkness.
On either side of the main central corridor stood wine casks of every shape and size, some very ancient, to judge from the carving and quality of the wood, some more or less modern, some of today. Almost all were hoisted on skids with bung and bung starter in place and old-time jugs and measures of pewter or glass at hand; a few lay empty amid the cellar debris, where the salts born of darkness and dampness dimly glimmered on wall and pavement, and a rustling in unseen straw betrayed the lurking place of rats.
Warner, playing his flashlight, walked swiftly forward, traversing the three principal alleys in succession. The third round included the little dark runways twisting in and out among the bins, turning sudden angles into obscurity, or curving back in a blind circle to the point of entrance.
And as he stood resting for a moment, trying to get his bearings and shifting his electric torch over the labyrinth within which he had become involved, a slight but distinct sound broke the silence around him.
It came from the cellar steps: somebody had opened the door above.
Instantly he extinguished his torch; the blackness walled him in, closing on him so swiftly that he seemed to feel a palpable pressure upon his body.
Listening, every nerve on edge, he heard footsteps falling cautiously upon the stone stairway; a white radiance spread and grew brighter at the far end of the vaulted place; and in a moment more the blinding star of an electric torch dazzled his eyes, where he stood looking out between the cracks of the piled-up boxes which made of the alley in which he had halted a rampart and an impasse.
Two men were advancing, shining the way before them, turning their heads from side to side with curiosity, but without apparently any suspicion.
They seemed to know the place and to be entirely familiar with every alley, for, just before they passed the runway where he crouched behind the boxes, they turned aside, played their light over the dusty banks of bottles, chose one, coolly knocked off its neck, and leisurely drained it between them.
Then, exchanging a few comments in voices too low to be understood, they resumed their course, passed the entrance to the alley where Warner lay hidden, and continued on a few paces.
He could see them as black shapes against the flare of light; saw them halt a few paces from where he stood, saw them reach up and take hold of a huge tun which blocked their progress.
Their torch was shining full upon it; he could follow minutely everything they were doing.
One of the men stretched his arms out horizontally and grasped the edges of the immense cask. Then he threw his full weight to the right; the cask swung easily outward, leaving a passageway wide enough for a man. And there, full in the blaze of brilliant light, was a door, scarcely ten feet away from where he was standing.
The man who had turned the cask went to the door, slid aside a panel, reached in and unbolted it, and had already opened the door when a big bulk loomed up in front of him; a gross, vibrant voice set the hollow echoes growling under the arches of stone and mortar; Wildresse barred their way.
He stood there, the torchlight falling full on his round, partly bald and smoothly shaven head; his wicked little ratty eyes were two points of black, his wicked mouth was twisted with profanity.
"Sacré tas de bougres!" he roared. "I told you to come at nine o'clock, didn't I? What are you doing here, then? You, Asticot, you are supposed to have more sense than Squelette, there! Why do you interrupt me before the hour I set?"
The man addressed as Asticot – a heavy, bench-legged young man with two favoris pasted over his large wide ears – shuffled his shoes most uncomfortably.
Squelette, tall, frightfully thin, with his long, furrowed neck of an unclean bird swathed in a red handkerchief, stood sullen and motionless while the glare of his torch streamed over Wildresse.
"Nom de Dieu!" shouted the latter. "Aim at my belly and keep that light out of my face, you stupid ass!"
Squelette sulkily shifted his torch; Asticot said in the nasal, whining voice of the outer boulevards:
"Voyons, mon vieux, you have been at it for six hours, and the Skeleton here and I thought you might require our services – "
"Is that so!" snarled Wildresse. "Also, they may require your services in La Roquette!"
"They do," remarked Squelette naïvely.
"You don't have to tell me that!" retorted Wildresse. "You'll sneeze for them, too, some day!" He turned savagely on Asticot: "I don't want you now! I'm busy! Do you understand?"
"I understand," replied the Maggot. "All the same, if I may be so bold – what's the use of chattering if there's a job to finish? If there's work to do, do it, and talk afterward. That's my idea."
Wildresse glared at him:
"Really! Very commendable. Such notions of industry ought to be encouraged in the young. But the trouble with you, Asticot, is that you haven't anything inside that sucked-out orange you think is a head.
"Whatever mental work is to be done, I shall do. Do you comprehend me, imbecile? And I don't trouble to consult your convenience, either. Is that clear? Now, take your friend, the Skeleton, and take your torch and yourself out of this cellar. Get out, or I'll bash your face in! – You dirty little bandy-legged, blood-lapping cockroach – "
His big, pock-pitted, hairless face became frightful in its concentrated ferocity; both men made simultaneous and involuntary movements to the rear.
"You'll come at nine o'clock, do you hear!" he roared. "And you'll bring a sack with you and enough weight to keep it sunk! You, Maggot; you, Skeleton, do you understand? Very well, clear out!"
The young ruffians made no response; Asticot turned and made his way through the narrow passage; the Skeleton shuffled on his heels, shining his torch ahead.
Halfway down the central corridor they helped themselves to two more bottles of Bordeaux, pocketing them in silence, and continued on their course.
Listening, Warner could hear them ascending the stone stairs, could hear the door click above as they left the cellar. But his eyes remained fixed on Wildresse, who still stood in the door, darkly outlined against the dull gaslight burning somewhere in the room behind him.
Once or twice he looked at the great cask which the two voyous had not troubled to close into its place behind them. And Wildresse did not bother to go out and swing the cask back into place, but, as soon as he caught the sound of the closing cellar door, stepped back and shut his own door.
He must either have forgotten, or carelessly neglected, to close the open panel in it, for the lighted square remained visible, illuminating the narrow passage after Warner heard him bolt the door on the inside.
His retreating footsteps, also, were audible for some distance before the sound of them died away; and Warner knew then that the door belonged to the cabaret, and that behind its bolted shutters and its police seals Wildresse had been lurking since his return from Saïs.
There was no need to use his torch as he crept out of his ambush and entered the narrow lane behind the big cask.
With infinite precautions, he thrust his arm through the open panel, felt around until he found the two bolts, slid them noiselessly back.
The door swung open, inward. He went in softly.
The place appeared to be a lumber room littered with odds and ends. Beyond was a passage in which a gas jet burned; at the end of it a stairway leading up.
The floor creaked in spite of him, but the stairs were carpeted. They led up to a large butler's pantry; and, through the sliding door, he peered out into the dim interior of the empty cabaret.
Through cracks in the closed shutters rays from the setting sun pierced the gloom, making objects vaguely distinct – tables and chairs piled one upon the other around the dancing floor, the gaudy decorations pendent from the ceiling, the shrouded music stands, the cashier's desk where he had first set eyes on the girl Philippa —
With the memory his heart almost ceased, then leaped with the resurgence of his fear for her; he looked around him until he discovered a leather swinging door, and when he opened it a wide hallway lay before him and a stairway rose beyond.
Over the thick carpet he hastened, then up the stairs, cautiously, listening at every step.
Somewhere above, coming apparently from behind a closed door, he heard the heavy vibration of a voice, and knew whose it was.
Guided by it along the upper passageway, he passed the open doors of several bedrooms, card rooms, private dining-rooms, all empty and the furniture covered with sheets, until he came to a closed door.
Behind it, the heavy voice of Wildresse sounded menacingly; he waited until it rose to a roar, then tried the door under cover of the noise within. It was locked, and he stood close to it, listening, striving to think out the best way.
Behind the locked door Wildresse was shouting now, and Warner heard every word:
"By God!" he roared in English. "You had better not try to lie to me! Do you want your neck twisted?"
There was no reply.
"I ask you again, what did you do with that paper I gave you by mistake?" he repeated.
Suddenly Warner's heart stood still, as Philippa's voice came to him, low but distinct:
"I burned it!"
"You burned it? You lie!"
"I never lie," came the subdued voice. "I burned it."
"You slut! How dared you touch it at all?"
"You handed it to me," she said wearily.
"And you knew it was a mistake, you treacherous cat! My God! Have I nourished you for this, you little snake, that you turn your poisonous teeth on me?"
"Perhaps… But not on my country."
"Your country! You miserable foundling, did you suppose yourself French?"
"France is the only country I have known. I refuse to betray her."
"France!" he shouted. "France! A hell of a country to snivel about! You can't tell me anything about France – the dirty kennel full of mongrels that it is! France? To hell with France!
"What has she done for me? What has she done to me? Chased me out of Paris; forced my only son into her filthy army; hunted us both without mercy – finally hunted my son into the Battalions of Biribi – me into this damned pigpen of Ausone! That's what France has done to me and mine! – Blackmailed me into playing the mouchard for her – forcing me to play spy for her by threatening to hunt me into La Nouvelle!
"By God! I break even, though! I sell her every chance I get; and what I sell to her she has to pay for, too – believe me, she pays for it a hundred times over!"
There came a silence, then Wildresse's voice again, rumbling, threatening:
"Who was that type you went to visit in Saïs at the Golden Peach?"
No answer.
"Do you hear, you little fool?"
"I hear you," she said in a tired voice.
"You won't tell?"
"No."
"Why? Is he your lover?"
"No."
"Oh, you merely got your wages, eh?"
No answer.
"In other words, you're launched, eh? You aspire to turn cocotte, eh?"
"I am employed by him quite honestly – "
"Very touching. Such a nice young man, isn't he? And how much did you tell him about me, eh?"
No reply.
"Did you inform him that I was a very bad character?" he sneered. "Did you tell him what a hard time you had? Did you explain to him that a pious Christian really could not live any longer with such a man as I am? Did you? And that is the way you feel, isn't it? – That you are too good for the business in which I have taken the trouble to educate you?"
"To be compelled to seek information for my Government has made me very unhappy," she said. "But to betray that Government – that is not in me to do. I had rather die… I think, anyway, that I had rather not – live – any longer."
"Is that so? Is that all the spirit you have? What are you, anyway – a worm? Have you no anger in you against the country which has kicked you and me out of Paris into this filthy kennel called Ausone? Have you no resentment toward the Government that has attempted to beggar us both – the Government which bullies us, threatens us, blackmails us, forbids us entry into the capital, keeps us tied up here like dogs to watch and bark at strangers and whine away our lives on starvation wages, when we could make our fortunes in Paris?"
"I don't know what you did."
"What of it? Suppose I broke a few of their damned laws! Is that a reason to kick me from place to place and finally tie me up here?"
"I – don't know."
"Oh, 'don't know'!" he mimicked her. "You ungrateful slut, if you had any gratitude in your treacherous little body, you'd stick to me now! You'd rejoice at my vengeance! You'd laugh to know that I am paying back in her own coin the country which insulted me! That's what you'd do, instead of sniveling around about 'treachery' and 'betraying France.'
"And, by God! – now that war has come, you'll see your beloved France torn into pieces by the Bosches! That's what you'll see – France ripped into tatters!
"Yes, and that sight will repay me for all that has been done to me – that revenge I shall have – soon! – just as soon as they sweep up that stable litter of Belgians over there!
"Then we'll see! Then perhaps I'll get my recognition from the Bosches!
"What do I care for France or for them, either? I'm of no nation; I'm nothing; I'm for myself! The Bosches were the kinder to me, and they get what I don't need, voilà tout!"
There came a long pause, and then Wildresse's heavy tones once more:
"I'll give you your chance. Yes, in spite of your treachery and your ingratitude, I'll give you your chance!
"You have a brain – such as it is. It's a woman's brain, of course, but it can figure out on which side the bread is buttered.
"Listen: I ought to twist your neck. You've tried to put mine into the lunette. You could have sent me up against a dead wall if you had given that paper you burned to the flics. No, you didn't. You enjoyed a crisis of nerves and you burned it. I know you burned it, because I admit that you tell the truth.
"Bon! Now, therefore, I do not instantly twist your neck. No! On the contrary, I reason with you. I do not turn you over to the sergots. I could! Why? Voyons, let us be reasonable! I was not hatched yesterday. No! Do you suppose I have trusted you all these years without having taken any little precautions? Tiens, you are beginning to look at me, eh?
"Well, then, listen: if in future you have any curiosity concerning lunettes and dead walls, let me inform you that you are qualified to embellish either.
"Tiens! You seem startled. It never occurred to you to ask why I have had certain papers written out by you, or why I have had you affix your pretty signature to so many little documents which you could not read because the ink was invisible.
"No. You have never thought about such matters, have you? But, all the same, I have all I require to make you sneeze into the basket, or to play blindman's buff between a dead wall and a squad of execution.
"And now! – Now that you know enough to hold your tongue, will you hold it in future and be honest and loyal to the hand that picked you out of the gutter and that has fed you ever since?"
There was a silence.
"Will you?" he repeated.
"No!"
A bull-like roar burst from Wildresse:
"I'll twist your neck for you, and I'll do it now!" he bellowed. "I'll snap that white neck of yours – "
