"It can't be Oakley," said I, "for he's not going to make public property of his daughter's misfortune; that I do know. And it can't be Margaret King, for there's no extradition when a woman cries. And it isn't the Dublin Club, because you can't lay hands on a man in Paris for holding too many aces in Dublin. No, we're safe enough here so far as I can see; and yet—and yet——"
The fact was that I could make nothing of it. I must have walked about Paris that night for an hour and a half, turning it over and over in my head, and yet getting no forrader. When I stopped at last, I was before the Grand Café; for what should I see there but Sir Nicolas Steele himself, sitting down before a dinner-table, with no others for company than Jack Ames and Mimi Marcel. There was no doubt at all about it. There he was as large as life; and what's more, he seemed as happy as a schoolboy just come out of school. And at that I shook my head and went straight home.
"Bigg," said I, "this beats you, and no mistake. Just you leave it alone and go on with your work."
Well, I tried to do as I said I would, and at midnight Sir Nicolas came home, talkative as usual, but with all his wits about him. He hadn't quite the spirits of the night before, though you couldn't call him depressed; and he went to his bedroom at once.
"Hildebrand," said he, "it's better quarters than a fifth in the Hôtel de Lille we'll be occupying this day next month."
"Indeed, and I hope so, sir," said I.
"Oh, but I don't hope so at all," he went on; "I make sure. We'll be in the Trouville then, and no need to think about the bill. Bedad! it's bills that make half the trouble in life."
"There never was a truer word than that, sir," said I.
"Isn't it me that knows it—me that has enough blue paper to furnish the whole of this same hotel? But I've done with that—done with it for good, thank God!"
I said nothing in answer to this, for I saw that he only wanted to be left alone to go on talking, and, sure enough, he began again before a minute had passed.
"It's her brother that is setting himself against me," said he; "a bit of a man I could crumple up in my hand. That's why she doesn't want to be seen here in Paris in her own name. She's staying at the Scribe, and calls herself Mme. Grévin—she that is able to buy up the Rue de Rivoli and half the boulevards as well. Oh, but there'll be fun to come, man—fun to come."
"You had a pleasant evening, sir?" I asked at this point.
"Pleasant enough," replied he, "so far as it went. There was me and Mr. Ames dined at the Grand Café."
"Not at the Café de Paris, then, sir?" said I.
"No, not at the Café de Paris," said he; "it was her brother that kept her. He came unexpected from Trouville. But we'll have better luck, Hildebrand, on Friday, mark me. Oh, it was a great day entirely that sent me from Derbyshire to Paris."
With this he rolled into bed, and I put his light out. So far as I could make out, he had been to the Café de Paris, and had there heard that the lady was prevented from meeting him by her brother's arrival from Trouville. This sounded fair enough, yet what I wanted to know was how he came to dine with Mr. Ames and that laughing little bundle of goods, Mimi Marcel. But he never said a word about that, and next morning he was as silent as ever; nor did he open his lips to me until the following Friday, when at seven o'clock he left for the Hôtel Chatam, where the second appointment was made. What was my astonishment to see him back in an hour, and with him no other than Rudolphe Marcel, the brother of the little witch Mimi.
The two dined together in our own coffee-room, and then went over to play billiards with Jack Ames until twelve o'clock. It was two o'clock when Sir Nicolas went to bed, and he was so silent and snappish that I knew he'd been losing money. And what was worse, he never opened his lips to tell me why he had returned so unexpected from the Hôtel Chatam. That he had failed to meet the Baroness de Moncy I felt sure—yet how it had come about, or if he had received any letter, I never learned.
Now, it seemed to me, when I went to bed that night, that we had drifted into a very queer place. He had been spending money like water since the morning he received the present. 1 knew that there was precious little of his thousand pounds remaining. Of course, I'd had my bit—a matter of five hundred—out of what we took in Derbyshire; but money is money, and what I'd got was locked away safe enough. How he was going to get on in Paris without a guinea in his pocket, I didn't see; and this affair, upon which he reckoned, seemed as much in the clouds as ever. I had begun, in fact, to believe that he was running after a shadow altogether, and to that belief I should have stood if the next morning had not brought a turn as sudden as it was unlooked for; and one that made me fear not only for his purse, but for his life. It came about this way:
Sir Nicolas got out of bed at twelve o'clock, still rather short, and in what I call a "brandy-and-soda" temper. He dressed himself carelessly, and crossed over the road to the gardens of the Café" Rouge to get his déjeûner. Five minutes after he had gone there came a letter for him; a little bit of a note in a feminine hand, such as he had received often since the intrigue with the woman at Trouville began. I knew well that he'd make a fuss if he didn't get this billet doux at once, so I ran across the road to the café, just as I was, without hat or any thing. I found him sitting at a marble table, reading the morning's Figaro; but what should happen but that, just as I was beginning to talk to him, up stepped another man, a squat little party with a bushy black beard, and stood glaring at him over the table.
"Sare Nicolas Steele," says he, speaking funny-like and with a lot of French words in between that I couldn't make head or tail of—"do I spik to Sare Nicolas Steele?"
"You do," said my master, looking up at him over the paper.'
"Then I take leave to smack your face," says he; and, as I'm a man, he bent over and struck Sir Nicolas on the right cheek with his glove.
Now, if there's one thing more than another that you don't find an Irishman take quietly to, it's a blow on the face, be it ever so light. And Sir Nicolas wasn't different from other men. No sooner had the Frenchman touched him than he sprang up from his chair and rushed at him like a bull.
"Is it for smacking faces ye are?" says he, white with passion. "Then I'll take leave to join in with you!" and with that he sent the table and chairs flying, and I believe that he'd have killed him if some of us hadn't got in between the pair of them and held them apart.
As it was, he tore the Frenchman's coat from his collar to his hip, and the man's shirt looked like an old envelope. But he kept as quiet as ever; and when the landlord had come up, and there was a big crowd around the pair of them, he says quite calmly:
"Monsieur, my name is Eugene Grevin, and I am to be found at the Hôtel Scribe."
"Sir," says my master—and I never saw him look more dignified, "my friend shall call upon you at once."
Suddenly as the thing had been sprung upon me, the end of it was not less sudden. The Frenchman who called himself Grevin bowed to Sir Nicolas, Sir Nicolas bowed to him; and away they both went, the one to fiacre waiting for him, my master to his hotel. But I never saw him more excited, and the way he ordered me about was a thing to hear.
"Hildebrand," said he—and he couldn't rest in one place a minute, "I'll tear the throat of him. It's to him that we owe all this trouble and delay—him and no other."
"Then you know the party, sir?"
"Know him, the paltry scoundrel! and what would I be if I did not know him? He's the brother of the Baroness de Moncy. And it's to-morrow morning that I'll shoot him like a dog. Run now to Mr. Ames and tell him that he must come to me at once. I've need of him, and there's no time to lose."
Well, I left him drinking absinthe, and ran away to Mr. Ames' place just as fast as my legs could carry me. My head seemed so full of thinking that I was worse than one dazed, and all the houses danced before my eyes as I raced