The Girl Philippa
"Stop that discussion!" cried Wildresse, angrily jerking his heavy head
from Halkett to the three men at the other table. "Let it rest where it
is, I tell you! The English gentleman says he did not laugh at what you
were saying. Nom de Dieu! Nobody well brought up laughs at murder!"
And to Halkett and Warner: "Be amiable enough, gentlemen, to carry this
misunderstanding no further. I've had sufficient trouble with the
police in my time."
Warner laid one hand lightly on Halkett's arm.
"All right," he said to Wildresse; "no trouble shall originate with us."
And, to Halkett, in a lowered voice: "Have you an idea that those men
over there are trying to force a quarrel?"
"Of course."
"Have you ever seen them before?"
"Not one of them."
Warner's lips scarcely moved as he said:
"Is it the matter of the envelope?"
"I think so. And, Warner, I don't intend to drag you into any----"
"Wait. Are you armed?"
Halkett shook his head.
"That's no good," he said. "I can't afford to do anything conspicuous.
If I'm involved with the authorities I'm done for, and I might just as
well be knocked on the head." After a moment he added: "I think perhaps
you'd better say good-by to me now, Warner----"
"Why?"
"Because, if they manage to force a quarrel, I don't mean to have you
involved----"
"Do you really expect me to run away?" asked Warner, laughing.
Halkett looked up at him with a faint smile:
"I'm under very heavy obligations to you already----"
"You are coming to Sais with me."
"Thanks so much, but----"
"Come on, Halkett. I'm not going to leave you here."
"My dear chap, I'll wriggle out somehow. I've done it before. After
all, they may not mean mischief."
Warner turned and looked across at the three men. Two were whispering
together; the third, arms folded, was staring truculently at Halkett out
of his light blue eyes.
Warner turned his head and said quietly to Halkett:
"I take two of them to be South Germans or Austrians. The other might be
Alsatian. Do any of these possible nationalities worry you?"
"Exactly," said Halkett coolly.
"In other words, any trouble you may expect is likely to come from
Germans?"
"That's about it."
Warner lighted a cigarette.
"Shall we try a quiet getaway?" he asked.
"No; I'll look out for myself. Clear out, Warner, there's a good
fellow----"
"Don't ask me to do a thing that you wouldn't do," retorted Warner
sharply. "Come on; I'm going to drive you to Sais."
Halkett flushed.
"I shan't forget how decent you've been," he said. They summoned the
waiter, paid the reckoning, rose, and walked leisurely toward the door.
At the _caissiere's_ desk they turned aside to say good-night to
Philippa.
The girl looked up from her accounts, pencil poised, gazing at Warner.
"_Au revoir_, Philippa," he said, smilingly.
The girl's serious features relaxed; she nodded to him gayly, turned,
still smiling, to include Halkett. And instantly a swift change altered
her face; she half rose from her chair, arm outstretched.
"What is that man doing behind you!" she cried out--too late to avert
what she saw coming. For the man close behind Halkett had dexterously
passed a silk handkerchief across his throat from behind and had jerked
him backward; and, like lightning, two other men appeared on either side
of him, tore his coat wide, and thrust their hands into his breast
pockets.
Warner pivoted on his heel and swung hard on the man with the silk
handkerchief, driving him head-on into the table behind, which fell with
a crash of glassware. Halkett, off his balance, fell on top of the
table, dragging with him one of the men whose hand had become entangled
in his breast pocket.
The people who had been seated at the table were hurled right and left
among the neighboring tables; a howl of anger and protest burst from the
crowd; there came a shout of "_Cochon_!"--a rush to see what had
happened; people mounted on chairs, waiters arrived, running. Out of
the melee Halkett wriggled and rose, coughing, his features still
crimson from partial strangulation. Warner caught his arm in a grip of
iron and whisked him out of the door. The next instant they were
engulfed in the crowds thronging the market square.
Warner, thoroughly aroused and excited, still maintained his grip on
Halkett's arm.
"Did you ever see anything like it?" he said in a low voice. "It came
like a bolt from the sky. That was the _Coup du Pere Francois_. Did
they get anything from you?"
Halkett spoke with difficulty, pressing his throat with his fingers and
trying to smile.
"What they got," he said, "was meant for them to get--time-tables and a
ticket to Paris. I don't intend to travel that way----" A fit of
coughing shook him. "----For a moment I thought they'd actually broken
my neck. What did you do to that fellow with his noose?"
"He fell on the table behind you. Everybody was piled up with the
crockery. You wriggled out like a lizard." He turned cautiously and
looked back over his shoulder. "Do you think we have been followed?"
"I can't see that we are."
They entered the rue d'Auros and turned into the Hotel Boule d'Argent.
Warner sent a chasseur to the stables for his horse and dogcart; Halkett
hastened to collect his luggage.
In a few minutes the horse and cart came rattling out of the mews;
luggage, canvases, and the sack of colors were placed in the boot;
Warner mounted, taking reins and whip; Halkett sprang up beside him, and
the groom freed the horse's head.
Into the almost deserted Boulevard d'Athos they went at a lively clip,
circled the lovely church of Sainte Cassilda at the head of it, and
trotted out into the broad highroad which swings cast to the river
Recollette, and follows that pretty little stream almost due south to
the hills and cliffs and woods and meadows of Sais.
The sun hung low above the fields, reddening the roadside bushes and
painting the tall ranks of poplars with vivid streaks of gold and rose.
Just outside the remains of the old town wall they passed through a
suburban hamlet. That, except for a farm or two more, included the last
houses this side of Sais.
For a little while neither of the young men spoke; Halkett's cough had
ceased, but now and then he fidgeted with his collar as though to ease
it from the bruised throat. Warner drove, looking straight between his
horse's ears, as though intently preoccupied with his navigation.
After a while Halkett said:
"The envelope is safe, I take it:"
"Oh, yes. They never noticed me until I hit one of them."
"I'm so grateful," said Halkett, "that it's quite useless for me to try
to say so----"
"Listen! I'm enjoying it. I'm grateful to _you_, Halkett, for giving
me the opportunity. I needed touching up." He laughed in sheer
exhilaration. "We stodgy professional people ought to be stirred out of
our ruts, A little mix-up like that with a prospect of others is exactly
what I needed."
Halkett smiled rather dryly.
"Oh," he said. "If it strikes you that way, I shall feel much
relieved."
"Relieve yourself of all embarrassment," returned Warner gayly. "If our
acquaintance entails further scraps with those gentlemen, I shall be
merely the more grateful to you."
They both laughed; Warner swung his long whip like a fly rod and caught
the loop cleverly on his whip-stock.
Halkett, still laughing, said:
"You don't look as though you enjoyed a cabaret fight. You look far too
respectable."
"Oh, I am respectable, I suppose. But I'm not very aged yet, and my
student days are still rather near."
The road curved out now along the Recollette where it still flowed a
placid stream between green meadows and through charming bits of
woodland. In the glass of the flood the sunset sky was mirrored;
swallows cut the still, golden surface; slowly spreading circles of
rising fish starred it at intervals.
"So you don't go armed?" remarked Warner thoughtfully.
"No."
The American pointed with the butt of his whip to the dashboard where
the blue-black butts of two automatics appeared from slung holsters.
"Why the artillery?" inquired Halkett.
"I drive my neighbor, Madame de Moidrey, sometimes; and in summer it is
often dark before we return. It's a lovely country; also, the quarrymen
at the cement works are a rough lot. So I let my pretty neighbor take
no chances with me."
"Quite right," nodded Halkett. "When quarrymen get drunk it's no joke.
What quarry is it?"
"The Esser Company. It's a German cement concern, I believe."
"German?"
"I believe so."
"Where is this quarry?"
"In the hills back of the Recollette. They run barges to Ausone. Just
below their canal the Recollette becomes unnavigable, and the shallows
and rapids continue for several miles below Sais. That is the reason, I
suppose, that the country around Sais remains primitive and undeveloped,
lacking as it does railroad and water transportation."
"I wonder," said Halkett thoughtfully, "whether I might see the quarry
and cement works. It must be interesting."
Warner shrugged:
"If that sort of thing interests you, I'll take you over. It's a messy
place full of stone crushers and derricks and broken rock and pits full
of green water. Still, if you want to see it----"
"Thanks, I should like to."
Warner glanced at him; a slight grin touched his lips.
"You seem to be interested in a great many kinds of business," he said,
"--literature, military science, cement works, cabaret life----"
Halkett laughed outright; but the next moment he turned like a flash in
his seat, and Warner also cast a quick glance behind him.
"A car coming!" he said, driving to the right. "What's the matter,
Halkett? You don't think it's after us?"
"I think it is."
"What?"
"I know damned well it is!" said Halkett between his teeth. "Shall I
jump and swim for it? Pull in a moment, Warner----"
"Wait! Do you see that gate in the hedge? Get out and open it. Quick,
Halkett! I know what to do----"
Halkett leaped, dragged open the gate; Warner swung his horse and drove
through and out into a swampy meadow set with wild flowers and bushes
and slender saplings.
The wheels of the cart cut through the spongy sod and sank almost to the
hubs, but Warner used his whip and Halkett, taking the horse by the
head, ran forward beside the swaying cart. Right across their path
flowed a deep, narrow stream, partly invisible between reeds and tufts
of swamp weed; Warner turned the vehicle with difficulty, urged his
nervous horse across a cattle bridge which had been fashioned out of a
few loose planks, and drove up on firmer ground among tall ferns and
willow bushes.
"Pull up those planks!" he shouted back to Halkett, guiding his horse
with difficulty; and Halkett ran back, lifted the mossy, half rotted
planks, and threw them up among the bushes.
A grey touring car which had halted on the highway outside the hedge had
now turned after them through the gate; and already the driver was
having a bad time of it in the swampy meadow.
As Halkett lifted the last plank that spanned the brook, one of three
men in the tonneau of the car stood up and fired a revolver at him; and
another of the men, seated beside him, also fired deliberately, resting
his elbow on the side of the stalled car to steady his aim, and
supporting the revolver with his left hand under the barrel.
Halkett ran back to where the cart stood, partly concealed among the
ferns and bushes; Warner, holding whip and reins in one hand, passed him
an automatic revolver and drew out the other weapon for his own use.
"This is rottenly ungrateful of me," said the Englishman. "I've
certainly involved you now!"
"It's all right; I'm enjoying it! Now, Halkett, their car is badly