Until this time there had been no one to say me nay when I chose to follow the party. I had ridden on the box without asking any one, and I was going after Sir Nicolas into the garden, when an old white-haired footman tried to shut the gate in my face.
"Be hanged to your impudence!" said I, getting my foot in the way and giving him push for push; but it was a minute before I had the best of him, and while I was still pushing there was a shout of laughter came from the garden.
We found the party drawn up in a circle on the lawn. For some time I didn't know whether I was awake or dreaming, for what should I see but a capital breakfast spread under the trees, and twenty or thirty finely dressed women just holding their sides as though they would die of the spectacle. As for Sir Nicolas, he was standing before them with a look on his face as if he could strike them all dead where they sat. And talking to him was Jack Ames and a little, clean-shaven chap that I recognized as Louis Regnard.
"Permit me," says Jack Ames, bowing very low, while all the others went on with their laughing, "to present to you the Chevalier Eugene Grevin, alias M. Louis Regnard of the Theatre du Vaudeville. The Baroness de Moncy is yonder, resting under the trees. She is known sometimes as Juliette Vauloo, of the Théâtre de l'Opéra Comique."
"Hoaxed by ——!" says Sir Nicolas; and with this he fairly bolted out of the garden.
* * * * *
What did they make out of it? Well, reckoning the three dinners he stood Jack Ames while his head was full of the picture, and the dinner that he gave to Rudolphe and Mimi Marcel, and all the champagne that had been drunk during the week, it wasn't a bad thing; to say nothing of him playing billiards with Ames. The egg they sent him wasn't worth a sovereign. It was lined with lead.
And that reminds me. I heard of the real Baroness de Moncy the other day. She hadn't set foot out of Portugal for three years, and is a white-haired old woman, much troubled with rheumatics.
CHAPTER XI
MICHEL GREY IS MISSING
We remained in Paris for some weeks after the affair of the golden egg before there was any thing happened to us worth writing about. When the luck changed, if you call it luck, it did so sudden, and the strange adventure of which I now propose to speak was upon us all in a minute. I date it from the moment when I heard that Michel Grey, Sir Nicolas' American friend, was missing, and that not a soul in Paris could throw any light upon the circumstances of his disappearance. The man had vanished like a phantom, leaving no word, no message, no letter. The city had taken him from our sight. Whether he were alive or dead, in France or out of France, a willing absconder. or the victim of the assassin, neither friend nor enemy could tell. He had gone like the night, and had left us to face the problem as we might.
That it was a problem for us, and that we could not begin and end with his going, I never had a doubt. He had been seen about with Sir Nicolas for the best part of a month; my master's game with his sister, Dora Grey, was known to all the town about; there wasn't a servant in the hotel that didn't understand where the hate between the two men came from. And, to cap all, the man went away at the height of it, and we were left with the girl, and with all the talk that followed his disappearance.
Until this moment, I had looked upon the whole episode as a handsome turn of fortune. There were many weeks after the strange hoax of the golden egg when my master never put his nose outside the Hôtel de Lille. In all the years I've known him, I can never remember such an upset as that business was to his health and to his energy. He seemed just like one stupefied, with no taste for work and no taste for play. The little money that he possessed dribbled away pound by pound, until I had to find what was wanted even for his daily living. He no longer earned any thing at the billiard table; he scarce read the newspapers. There were days when he never got up from his bed; days when he did not open his lips to man or woman. And I do believe that he was never so low, or in such a queer way, as upon the evening that brought him face to face with Dora Grey, and gave a turn to his life which he was to feel for many years.
She came to the hotel quite sudden—an auburn- haired, blue-eyed little thing, with the fairest skin woman ever had, and a way with her which was wonderful to see. The name down in the visitors' book was "Dora Grey of Boston," and just above it, I saw written, "Michel Grey, artist." But I didn't mark the man until the following morning, though Sir Nicolas, who had gone down into the garden that night, the first time for many weeks, was as full of the pair of them as he could be.
"Hildebrand," says he, "there's an American couple below which is worth the knowing. She's an artist from Boston, and she's come to the schools. It's the Greys, the railway people, they are; and rolling in the money. Did ye hear a fair-haired girl laughing at the top of her voice in the garden? Well, that's the one I mean. Faith, 'tis speaking manners these Americans have, for sure. She'd told me her history before we'd done the soup."
"Is she staying long, sir?" I asked.
"Three months certain, and likely longer. She's come here to be near the painting. It was her brother that sat opposite Jack Ames to-night. A white-faced man; with a liver, I'll wager. I'll know him better this time to-morrow."
It was extraordinary, I must say, to see how a little thing like this drew him out of himself. While he'd gone down to dinner telling me that I should find his body in the Morgue before the month was out, he came to bed all cheerful like a boy, and next morning he took an hour to dress himself. I saw him sitting down with the Americans to déjeúner; and after dinner he was three hours with the brother over at the billiard-room at the Cafe Rouge. Then I knew that the business had begun, and that luck had lifted us out of the groove again.
"They're a queer couple altogether, Hildebrand," says Sir Nicolas, when I took him his coffee next morning. "Bedad! the man puzzles me. He's as mean of the money as a Scotchman out of Montrose. There was three hours we were playing last night, and not a sovereign changed hands."
"You won't pay many bills out of that, sir," says I.
"And don't I know it? Isn't it the girl I'm thinking of? They're the railway people, I'd be tellin' you—the Greys of Boston. That was a lucky day which sent them to the Hôtel de Lille; and for three months, too! You can do much with a woman in three months, Hildebrand."
"That you can, sir, if she's willing."
"Oh, she'll be willing enough by and by. There's no sugar for an American tongue like a title to roll over it. I was the man of the party before I'd known her an hour. She's just the sweetest bit of a brogue you ever heard, and her father's worth five million dollars. Get me my light frock-coat, will you now? I'm to drive her to St. Cloud this very morning."
Well, he went off with her sure enough, the pair of them dressed up until you might have picked them out of a thousand. When he was gone, and the place was put a bit straight, I strolled over to the Café Rouge to get my lunch and read the English papers. Paris was beginning to be full again then, for we were almost through the autumn, and the gardens were cold at nights. But you could find the folks you wanted any time from midday until four, and no sooner was I in the place than I saw Michel Grey, the brother of the little American woman Sir Nicolas had just driven to St. Cloud. He was sit- ting at a table, and there was a bottle of hock before him.
"Halloa, my man!" cried he, as I passed him, and he didn't speak a bit like an American; "I'd like half a dozen words with you, if you don't mind."
"With the greatest pleasure in life, sir," I replied, thinking, at the same time, what a peculiar looking gentleman he was.
"Is it long since you left Dublin?" asks he, quite calm