The Girl Philippa
movement had been wholly instinctive and mechanical. Evidently they
felt entirely secure.
The plump, dark-eyed _caissiere_ 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 _caissiere_ 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 _caissiere_.
"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 drole, ce nom la! 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 Recollette."
*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 cafe 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