Each trip now, for months, Monsieur Pettipon had said to his wife as he left his tiny flat in the Rue Dauphine, "This time, Thérèse, I will have a millionaire. He will see with what care I smooth his sheets and pick the banana skins from the floor, and he will say, 'This Pettipon is not such a bad lot. I will give him twenty dollars.' Or he will write to M. Victor Ronssoy about me, and Monsieur Ronssoy will order the captain to order the chief steward to make me a steward of the first class, and then, my dear, I will buy a violin the most wonderful for our little cabbage."
To which the practical Thérèse would reply, "Millionaires do not travel second class."
And Monsieur Pettipon would smile hopefully and say "Who can tell?" although he knew perfectly well that she was right.
And Thérèse would pick a nonexistent hair from the worn collar of his coat and remark, "Oh, if you were only a steward of the first class, my Alphonse!"
"Patience, my dear Thérèse, patience," he would say, secretly glowing as men do when their life ambition is touched on.
"Patience? Patience, indeed!" she would exclaim. "Have you not crossed on the Voltaire a hundred and twenty-seven times? Has a speck of dust ever been found in one of your cabins? You should have been promoted long ago. You are being done a dirtiness, Monsieur Pettipon."
And he would march off to his ship, wagging his big head.
This trip, clearly, there was no millionaire. In C 341 was a young painter and his bride; his tip would be two dollars, and that would be enough, for was he not a fellow artist? In C 342 were two lingerie buyers from New York; they would exact much service, give hints of much reward and, unless Monsieur Pettipon looked sharp, would slip away without tipping him at all. In C 343 were school-teachers, two to a berth; Monsieur Pettipon appraised them at five dollars for the party; C 344 contained two fat ladies—very sick; and C 345 contained two thin ladies—both sick. Say a dollar each. In C 346 was a shaggy-bearded individual—male—of unknown derivation, who spoke an explosive brand of English, which burst out in a series of grunts, and who had economical habits in the use of soap. It was doubtful, reasoned Monsieur Pettipon, if the principle of tipping had ever penetrated the wild regions from which this being unquestionably hailed. Years of experience had taught Monsieur Pettipon to appraise with a quite uncanny accuracy the amount of tips he would get from his clients, as he called them.
Still troubled in his mind over his inability to provide a new violin for the promising Napoleon, Monsieur Pettipon went about his work, and in the course of time reached Stateroom C 346 and tapped with soft knuckles.
"Come," grunted the shaggy occupant.
Monsieur Pettipon, with an apologetic flood of "pardons," entered. He stopped in some alarm. The shaggy one, in violently striped pajamas, was standing in the center of the cabin, plainly very indignant about something. He fixed upon Monsieur Pettipon a pair of accusing eyes. With the air of a conjurer doing a trick he thrust his hand, palm upward, beneath the surprised nose of Monsieur Pettipon.
"Behold!" cried the shaggy one in a voice of thunder.
Monsieur Pettipon peered into the outstretched hand. In the cupped palm was a small dark object. It was alive.
Monsieur Pettipon, speechless with horror, regarded the thing with round unbelieving eyes. He felt as if he had been struck a heavy, stunning blow.
At last with a great effort he asked weakly, "You found him here, monsieur?"
"I found him here," declared the shaggy one, nodding his bushy head toward his berth.
The world of Monsieur Pettipon seemed to come crashing down around his ears.
"Impossible!" panted Monsieur Pettipon. "It could not be."
"It could be," said the shaggy one sternly, "because it was."
He continued to hold the damnatory evidence within a foot of Monsieur Pettipon's staring incredulous eyes.
"But, monsieur," protested the steward, "I tell you the thing could not be. One hundred and twenty-seven times have I crossed on this Voltaire, and such a thing has not been. Never, never, never."
"I did not make him," put in the passenger, with a show of irony.
"No, no! Of course monsieur did not make him. That is true. But perhaps monsieur——"
The gesture of the overwhelmed Pettipon was delicate but pregnant.
The shaggy passenger glared ferociously at the steward.
"Do you mean I brought him with me?" he demanded in a terrible voice.
Monsieur Pettipon shrugged his shoulders.
"Such things happen," he said soothingly. "When one travels——"
The shaggy one interrupted him.
"He is not mine!" he exploded bellicosely. "He never was mine. I found him here, I tell you. Here! Something shall be done about this."
Monsieur Pettipon had begun to tremble; tiny moist drops bedewed his expanse of brow; to lose his job would be tragedy enough; but this—this would be worse than tragedy; it would be disgrace. His artistic reputation was at stake. His career was tottering on a hideous brink. All Paris, all France would know, and would laugh at him.
"Give me the little devil," he said humbly. "I, myself, personally, will see to it that he troubles you no more. He shall perish at once, monsieur; he shall die the death. You will have fresh bedding, fresh carpet, fresh everything. There will be fumigations. I beg that monsieur will think no more of it."
Savagely he took the thing between plump thumb and forefinger and bore it from the stateroom, holding it at arm's length. In the corridor, with the door shut on the shaggy one, Monsieur Pettipon, feverishly agitated, muttered again and again, "He did bring it with him. He did bring it with him."
All that night Monsieur Pettipon lay in his berth, stark awake, and brooded. The material side of the affair was bad enough. The shaggy one would report the matter to the head steward of the second class; Monsieur Pettipon would be ignominiously discharged; the sin, he had to admit, merited the extremest penalty. Jobs are hard to get, particularly when one is fat and past forty. He saw the Pettipons ejected from their flat; he saw his little Napoleon a café waiter instead of a virtuoso. All this was misery enough. But it was the spiritual side that tortured him most poignantly, that made him toss and moan as the waves swished against the liner's sides and an ocean dawn stole foggily through the porthole. He was a failure at the work he loved.
Consider the emotions of an artist who suddenly realizes that his masterpiece is a tawdry smear; consider the shock to a gentleman, proud of his name, who finds a blot black as midnight on the escutcheon he had for many prideful years thought stainless. To the mind of the crushed Pettipon came the thought that even though his job was irretrievably lost he still might be able to save his honor.
As early as it was possible he went to the head steward of the second class, his immediate superior.
There were tears in Monsieur Pettipon's eyes and voice as he said, "Monsieur Deveau, a great misfortune, as you have doubtless been informed, has overtaken me."
The head steward of the second class looked up sharply. He was in a bearish mood, for he had lost eleven francs at cards the night before.
"Well, Monsieur Pettipon?" he asked brusquely.
"Oh, he has heard about it, he has heard about it," thought Monsieur Pettipon; and his voice trembled as he said aloud, "I have done faithful work on the Voltaire for twenty-two years, Monsieur Deveau, and such a thing has never before happened."
"What thing? Of what do you speak? Out with it, man."
"This!" cried Monsieur Pettipon tragically.
He thrust out his great paw of a hand; in it nestled a small dark object, now lifeless.
The head steward gave it a swift examination.
"Ah!"