"How should I know that, when I hear her name now for the first time? But you're joking with me, Jack."
"Me! truth, I'm not, as you'll soon find out for yourself. Eh, gad, Nicky, I can hardly believe it, though I'm right glad about it, old man, and here's my hand on it!"
What more he said I didn't hear, for it was time to get the cab for them, and they went off together in a few minutes, Sir Nicolas being that full of himself that his hand shook when he emptied his glass. As for me, I didn't know whether I was on my head or my heels, and stood for a long time acting like a fool, I make sure.
"The Baroness de Moncy," said I, "and worth three hundred thousand! Well, if this don't beat any thing. To think that he cut that Derbyshire lot to run into a thing like this. Did any one ever hear of such a thing?"
The affair was a blank mystery, and that was all about it. That a woman should send her picture to a man she had never seen was not the least wonderful part of it. It was the rum way she sent it, with- out note or word. I've seen a good deal of women one way and another, and they do act in a surprising manner sometimes, I must confess. But that one of them, who was a baroness, should send a gold locket with her portrait to Sir Nicolas Steele, fairly beat any tiling I'd ever heard of.
"Who is she?" I kept asking myself, "the Baroness de Moncy? I've heard the name somewhere. She isn't in Paris now, or I should have known of it. He must have met her at Trouville at a masked ball or something. He couldn't have known her, but she knew him—and here's the reminder. Did ever a man have such luck?"
With this in my head I went to his private drawer, where he'd put the locket away, and I had a good look at it. The thing weighed heavy enough to be gold twice over; but it was not until I had fingered it for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour that I found out how to open it. You did it by a press of your hand upon the top of the egg, and then it flew open sharp, like a matchbox. The portrait, which might have been called a miniature, I suppose, lay deep in the heart of it. It was the picture of a girl perhaps of twenty-six years of age, and I must say. that the prettiness of the thing fairly took my breath away. I'm not one to say much about the looks of Frenchwomen as a whole, but this creature was beautiful beyond compare. If I'd have hunted Paris for a month I could not have found her like—not one so elegant or with such hair tumbling about her shoulders as that picture gave her. And when I remembered that Mr. Ames had said she was worth three hundred thousand pounds, I could have cried at the luck that had come to us.
CHAPTER X
THE EGG IS BROKEN
I say "the luck that had come to us," but it is not to be thought that I lost my head over the business. I was not so young as to take all that a man like Ames said for gospel truth. Indeed, I spent the remainder of that day in the cafés and brasseries round about the Hôtel de Lille, trying to learn what I could about the Baroness de Moncy. The result was not such as I had looked for. A few knew of her by name as a lady of great wealth, who had a country house at St. Germain and another at Trouville. One man at the Café Rouge thought that he had seen her, but could not remember any thing about her looks. The tale was that she had given up society after the death of her husband and had gone to live in seclusion. But there seemed no doubt about the money part of it, and that was what chiefly concerned me. So long as there were guineas to rattle, what did it matter if a painter had laid it on thick, so to speak. We could put up with plenty of that if the price was right.
It was seven o'clock when I got back to the hotel. I saw at once that a letter lay on the table—a dainty little note in a big feminine scrawl; but before I'd time to look at it, in came Sir Nicolas and Jack Ames, and with them that pretty bit of goods from the Bouffes Parisiens, Mimi Marcel by name. They were in all in rare fettle, especially my master, who read his letter and then would have it that they should dine with him. I don't know that I ever saw him in better spirits in my life, and it wasn't until nearly two in the morning that I got him to bed. But he was ready to talk at that time, and talk he did like one o'clock.
"Bedad!" said he, "I don't know that I'll go to bed at all this night, Hildebrand. Was there ever such a lucky devil born as I am? And only yesterday I was thinking of cutting my throat!"
"I'm glad to hear you've good news, sir," said I.
"Good news! and that's all you would call it? Why, man, my fortune's made—made, I tell you! I'm to meet her to-morrow night at the Café de Paris. To-morrow night—think of that! And I was dancing with her at Trouville, and thought no more of her than of a grisette out of a drapery store—though she did say that I should have her picture. Oh, it's a famous turn, for sure! I'll be married within the month."
He went on for a long time like this, throwing his clothes about the place, and behaving as if he wasn't right in the head; nor do I believe he was at such times. There are some men who can't stand Fortune when she runs with them. He was such an one, and there's many a good thing he's spoiled for want of a bit of balance. I found it best not to take any notice of him when he was all cock-a-hoop like this; and I used to get him into bed as quickly as possible and leave him to talk to himself. You could hear him singing half the night through sometimes when he'd had a bit of luck; and on this particular night I don't believe he slept a wink. He was up and dressed long before the time for me to take his hot water, and he left the hotel at nine o'clock to go over to Mr. Ames' rooms. I saw no more of him all day until he came in to dress at seven o'clock; and he was then in one of his silent tempers. He didn't say one word to me about what he'd done, not a word about the meeting at the Café de Paris, nor of what time I might expect him bade But he put his clothes on as though his life depended on it, and went off in a fiacre when the clocks were striking half-past seven.
"All right, my man," said I to myself, when he was gone, "you hold your tongue now, but I shall hear enough and to spare about it when you come back by and by with the liquor in you. Meanwhile, I might do worse than take a stroll and see where you get to."
I had thought of doing this all along, for somehow I never could bring myself quite to believe in what I'd seen or heard. That there was a screw loose somewhere I was certain; and yet, if you had asked me to put my finger on the place, I couldn't have done it, not to have saved my life. Not that there was any thing strange in a Frenchwoman running after Nicky Steele. I hadn't lived with him for all these years not to know that. It's wonderful what a bit of a handle to the name will do for a man in Paris; and that Nicolas Steele was a baronet, all the judges in the land could not deny. Nevertheless, I got no real grip on the truth of Jack Ames' story about the Baroness de Moncy, and that's the plain fact of it.
It was nearly dark when I left the Hôtel de Lille and crossed the river by the Pont du Carrousel. Paris was pretty full, though it was only the end of September; and when I came up by the Palais Royal there was a number of people sitting out to have their dinner in the open. I'd made up my mind that I'd ask for Sir Nicolas at the Café de Paris, but without going in to see him; and this I did. But they told me that he had only just looked in for five minutes and had then left.
"Did he go alone?" I asked the man, who was about as civil as he could be.
"He went with a gentleman," was his reply.
"With a gentleman—you don't say that?"
"Certainly; they met here and left together."
Now, I didn't want to let him see that this astonished me; but, if I must tell the truth, it took the wind clean out of my sails.
"Who can it be that he's met?" I asked myself; "and why's he gone off with him? What becomes, then, of the story about this woman at Trouville, whose picture he's got in his drawer? Is it any plant of the police that he's walking into, like a fox into a trap? Seems to me something like it."
It may sound strange to hear it, but that was the first time such a notion had come into my head. Directly it was there, I