CHAPTER XIII
AT THE THREE KINGS
"What's the best hotel in the place?" I inquired somewhat dubiously. Theman in the blouse, who had performed the three functions of opening mycompartment-door, carrying my bag to the gate, and relieving me of myticket, achieved a thoroughly Gallic shrug.
"Monsieur," said he, "what shall I tell you? The best hotel, the worsthotel--these are one. There is only the Hotel des Trois Rois in the townof Bleau. Let monsieur proceed by the street of the Three Kings and hewill reach it. Formerly there was an omnibus, but now the horses aretaken. And if they remained, who could drive them with all the men atthe war?"
Carrying my bag and feeling none too amiable, I set off along theindicated route. In Paris, rushing from the rue St.-Dominique to Cook'soffice, from that office to the hotel, from the hotel to the _gare_, Ihad been a sort of whirling dervish with no time for sober thought.My trip of four hours on a slow, stuffy, crowded train had, however,afforded me ample leisure; and I had spent the time in grimly envisagingthe possibilities that, I decided, were most likely to befall.
First and foremost disagreeable; that the men in the gray automobilewere helping Miss Falconer in some nefarious business. In this case, itwould be up to me to fight the gentlemen single-handed, rescue the girl,and escort her back to Paris, all without scandal. Easier said thandone!
Second possibility: that Miss falconer, pausing at Bleau only en route,might already have departed, and that I would be left with my journeyfor my pains.
Third: that the gray car had no connection with her; that she had someentirely blameless errand. I hoped so, I was sure. If this proved true,I was bound to stand branded as a meddling, officious idiot, one who, indefiance of the most elementary social rules, persisted in trailing heragainst her will. Vastly pleasant, indeed!
Fuming, I shifted my bag from one hand to the other and walked faster.Night was falling, but it was not yet really dark, and I formed aclear enough notion of the village as I traversed it. It was one of thehundreds of its kind which make an artists' paradise of France. Entirelyunmodernized, it was the more picturesque for that. If I trippedsometimes on the roughly paved street I could console myself with theknowledge that these cobbles, like the odd, jutting houses rising onboth sides of them, were at least three hundred years old. Green woods,clear against a background of rosy sunset, ran up to the very borders ofthe town. I passed a little, gray old church. I crossed a quaint bridgebuilt over a winding stream lined with dwellings and broken by mossywashing-stones. It was all very peaceful, very simple, and very rustic.Without second sight I could not possibly have visioned the grim littledrama for which it was to serve as setting.
A blue sign with gilded letters beckoned me, and I paused to read it.The Touring Club of France recommended to the passing stranger the Hotelof the Three Kings. Here I was, then. From the street a dark, arched,stone passage of distinctly _moyen-age_ flavor led me into a courtyardpaved with great square cobbles, round the four sides of which werebuilt the walls of the inn. Winding, somewhat crazy-looking, stonestaircases ran up to the galleries from which the bedroom doorsinformally opened; vines, as yet leafless, wreathed the gray walls andframed the shuttered windows; before me I glimpsed a kitchen with amagnificent oaken ceiling and a medieval fireplace in which a fireroared redly; and at my right yawned what had doubtless been a stableonce upon a time, but with the advent of the motor, had become aprimitive garage.
I took the liberty of peering inside. Eureka! There, resting comfortablyfrom its day's labors, stood a dark-blue automobile. If this was not themotor that had brought Miss Falconer from the rue St.-Dominique, it wasits twin.
"You'll notice it's alone, though," I told myself. "Where's the graycar?"
My mood was grumpy in the extreme. The inn was charming, but I knew fromsad experience that no place combines all attractions, and that a spotso picturesque as this would probably lack running water and electriclight.
"_Bonsoir, Monsieur!_"
A buxom, smiling, bare-armed woman had emerged from the kitchen door.She was plainly the hostess. I set down my bag and removed my hat.
"Madame," I responded, "I wish you a good evening. I desire a room forthe night in the Hotel of the Three Kings."
"To accommodate monsieur," she assured me warmly, "will be a pleasure.Monsieur is an artist without doubt?"
I wanted to say "_Et tu, Brute!_" but I didn't. When one came to thinkof it, I had no very good reason to advance for having appeared atBleau. It wasn't the sort of place into which one would drop fromthe skies by pure chance, either. I was lucky to find a ready-madeexplanation.
"But assuredly," said I.
She disappeared into the kitchen, returned immediately with a candle,and led me up the stone staircase on the left of the courtyard, talkingvolubly all the while.
"We have had many artists here," she declared; "many friends ofmonsieur, doubtless. Since monsieur is of that fine profession, hisroom will be but four francs daily; his dinner, three francs; his littlebreakfast, a franc alone."
"Madame," I responded, "it is plain that the high cost of living, whichterrorizes my country, does not exist at Bleau."
Equally plain, I thought pessimistically, was the explanation. Mysaddest forebodings were realized; if the name of the hotel meantanything and three kings ever tarried here, that conjunction ofsovereigns had put up with housing of a distinctly primitive sort. Myroom was clean, I acknowledged thankfully, but that was all I could sayfor it. I eyed the bowl and pitcher gloomily, the hard-looking bed, thetiny square of carpeting in the center of the stone floor.
"Your house, Madame," I suggested craftily, with a view toreconnoissance, "is, of course, full?"
She heaved a sigh.
"It is war-time, Monsieur," she lamented. "None travel now. Yet whyshould I mourn, since I make enough to keep me till the war is endedand my man comes home? There are those who eat here daily at the noonhour--the cure, the mayor, the mayor's secretary, sometimes the notaryof the town, as well. And to-night I have two guests, monsieur and theyoung lady--the nurse who goes to the hospital at Carrefonds with thegreat new remedy for burns and scars. _Au revoir, Monsieur_. In onelittle moment I will send the hot water, and in half an hour monsieurshall dine."
I closed the door behind her and flung down my bag, fuming. So MissFalconer was a nurse, carrying a panacea to the wounded, doubtless aspecimen of the sensational new remedy just recognized by the medicalauthorities, of which the one newspaper I had glanced through in Parishad been full. The masquerade was too preposterous to gain an instant'scredence. It gave me, as the French say, furiously to think; it resolvedall doubts.
I felt inexplicably angry, then preternaturally cool and competent. Forthe first time since the Modane episode I was my clear-sighted self.I had been trying futilely to blindfold my eyes, to explain theinexplicable, to be unaware of the obvious. Now with a sort of grimrelief I looked the facts in the face.
My hot water appearing, I made a sketchy toilet, and then descended tothe courtyard where I lounged and smoked. My state of mind was peculiar.As I struck a match I noticed with a queer pride that my hand wassteady. With a cold, almost sardonic clarity, I thought of MissFalconer. First a prosperous tourist, next a dweller in an aristocraticFrench mansion, then a nurse. She equaled, I told myself, certainheroines of our Sunday supplements, queens of the smugglers, movingspirits of the diamond ring.
Upstairs in the right-hand gallery a door opened. A light footstepsounded on the winding stairs. The critical moment was upon me; she wascoming. I threw away my cigarette and advanced.
She was playing her part, I saw, with due regard for detail. Now thather furs were off she stood forth in the white costume, the flowinghead-dress, the red cross--all the panoply of the _infirmiere_. Shecame half-way down the stairs before perceiving me; then, with a lowexclamation, grasping the balustrade, she stood still.
I didn't even pretend surprise. What was the use of it?
"Good-evening, Miss Falconer," was all I said.
It seemed a long time before she answered. Rigid, uncompromising, shefaced me; and I read storm signals in the deep flush of her cheeks, thegray flash of her eyes, the stiffness of her white-draped head.
"Oh, Lord!" I groaned to myself in cold compassion, "she means to bluffit! Can't she see that the game's played out?"
"This is very strange, Mr. Bayne," she was saying idly. "I understoodthat you were to drive an ambulance at the Front."
How young, how lovely, how glowing she looked as she stood there in hersnowy dress. I found myself wondering impersonally what had led her tothese devious paths.
"So I am," I responded with accentuated coolness. "My time is valuable;it was a sacrifice to come to Bleau; but I had no choice. What's wrong,Miss Falconer? You don't object to my presence surely? If you go onfreezing me like this, I shall think there's something about my turningup here that worries you--upon my soul I shall!"
She should by rights have been trembling, but her eyes blazed at medisdainfully. I felt almost like a caitiff, whatever that may be.
"It doesn't worry me," she denied, with the same crisp iciness, "but itdoes surprise me. Will you tell me, please, what you are doing here?"
Should I return, "And you?" in a voice of obvious meaning? Should I takea leaf from the book of my hostess and say: "I'm a bit of an artist.I've sketched all over Europe, and I've come to have a go at the oldmill that so many fellows try?" Such a claim would just match theassumption of her costume. But no.
"The fact is," I said serenely, "I came straight from the rueSt. Dominique to keep the appointment you forgot."
The announcement, it was plain, exasperated her, for slightly, butundeniably, she stamped one arched, slender, attractively shod foot.
"Mr. Bayne," she demanded, "are you a secret-service agent?"
"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, startled. "No!"
"Then I'm sorry. That would have been a better reason for following methan--than the only one there is," she swept on stormily. "You knew Ididn't wish to see any one at present. I said so in the note I left. Yetyou spied on me and you tracked me deliberately, when I had trustedyou with my address. It's outrageous of you. You ought to be ashamed ofdoing it, Mr. Bayne."
A stunned realization burst on me of the line that she was taking, theposition into which, willy-nilly, she was crowding me. I had trailed herhere, she assumed, to thrust my company on her; and, upon the surface,I had to own that my behavior really had that air. If I had followed herwith equal brazenness along Fifth Avenue, I should have had a chance toexplain my conduct to the first police officer who noticed it, laterto an indignant magistrate. But, heavens and earth! She knew why I hadcome. And knowing, how did she dare defy me? I retained just sufficientpresence of mind to stare back impassively and to mumble with feeblesarcasm:
"I'm very sorry you think so."
She came down a step.
"Are you?" she asked imperiously. "Then--will you prove it? Will you goback to Paris by to-night's train?"
I had recovered myself.
"There isn't any train to-night," I protested, civil, but adamant."And--I'm sorry, but if there was I wouldn't take it--not until I'veaccomplished what I came to do!"
The girl seemed to concentrate all the world's disdain in the look thatmeasured me, running from my head to my unoffending feet, from my feetback to my head.
"Most men would go, Mr. Bayne," she flung at me, her red lips scornful."But then, most men wouldn't have come, of course. And all you willaccomplish is to make me dine up here in this--this wretched, stuffyroom." Before I could lift a hand in protest, she had turned, mountedthe stairs again, and vanished. The door--shall I own it?--slammed.
The Firefly of France Page 13