“There you are,” laughed Stenhouse. “The man has obsessed you already, and you’ll come back, if you go, like Bauchardy, the man who died in the hospital at Marseilles, cursing Berselius, yet so magnetized by the power of the chap that you would be ready to follow him again if he said ‘Come,’ and you had the legs to stand on. That is how Bauchardy was.”
“The man, undoubtedly, has a great individuality,” said Adams. “Passing him in the street one might take him for a very ordinary person. Meeting him for the first time, he looks all good nature; that smile——”
“Always,” said Stenhouse. “Beware of a man with a perpetual smile on his face.”
“Yes, I know that, but this smile of Berselius’s is not worn as a cloak. It seems quite natural to the man, yet somehow bad, as if it came from a profound and natural cynicism directed against all things—including all things good.”
“You have put it,” said Stenhouse, “in four words.”
“But, in spite of everything,” said Adams, “I believe the man to have great good qualities: some instinct tells me so.”
“My dear sir,” said Stenhouse, “did you ever meet a bad man worth twopence at his trade who had not good qualities? The bad man who is half good—so to speak—is a much more dangerous villain than the barrier bully without heart or soul. When hell makes a super-excellent devil, the devil puts goodness in just as a baker puts soda in his bread to make it rise. Look at Verlaine.”
“Well,” said Adams, “I have promised Berselius, and I will have to go. Besides, there are other considerations.”
He was thinking of Maxine, and a smile lit up his face.
“You seem happy enough about it,” said Stenhouse, rising to go. “Well, ‘he who will to Cupar maun to Cupar.’ When do you start?”
“I don’t know yet, but I shall hear to-night.”
They passed out into the Rue St. Honoré, where they parted.
“Good luck,” said Stenhouse, getting into a fiacre.
“Good-bye,” replied Adams, waving his hand.
Being in that quarter of the town, and having nothing especial to do, he determined to go to Schaunard’s in the Rue de la Paix, and see about his guns.
Schaunard personally superintends his own shop, which is the first gun-shop on the Continent of Europe. Emperors visit him in person and he receives them as an equal, though far superior to them in the science of sport. An old man now, with a long white beard, he remembers the fowling-pieces and rifles which he supplied to the Emperor Maximilian before that unfortunate gentleman started on his fatal expedition in search of a throne. He is a mathematician as well as a maker of guns; his telescopic sights and wind gauges are second to none in the world, and his shop front in the Rue de la Paix exposes no wares—it has just a wire blind, on which are blazoned the arms of Russia, England, and Spain.
But, inside, the place is a joy to a rightly constituted man. Behind glass cases the long processions of guns and rifles, smooth, sleek, nut-brown and deadly, are a sight for the eyes of a sportsman.
The duelling pistol is still a factor in Continental life, and the cases containing them at Schaunard’s are worth lingering over, for the modern duelling pistol is a thing of beauty, very different from the murderous hair-trigger machines of Count Considine—though just as deadly.
To Schaunard, pottering amongst his wares, appeared Adams.
The swing-door closed, shutting out the sound of the Rue de la Paix, and the old gun-merchant came forward through the silence of his shop to meet his visitor.
Adams explained his business. He had come to buy some rifles for a big-game expedition. Captain Berselius had recommended him.
“Ah! Captain Berselius?” said Schaunard, and an interested look came into his face. “True, he is a customer of mine. As a matter of fact, his guns for his new expedition are already boxed and directed for Marseilles. Ah, yes—you require a complete outfit, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Adams. “I am going with him.”
“Going with Captain Berselius as a friend?”
“No, as a doctor.”
“True, he generally takes a doctor with him,” said Schaunard, running his fingers through his beard. “Have you had much experience amidst big game, and can you make out your own list of requirements, or shall I help you with my advice?”
“I should be very glad of your advice. No, I have not had much experience in big-game shooting. I have shot bears, that’s all——”
“Armand!” cried Schaunard, and a pale-faced young man came forward from the back part of the shop.
“Open me this case.”
Armand opened a case, and the deft hand of the old man took down a double-barrelled cordite rifle, light-looking and of exquisite workmanship.
“These are the guns we shoot elephants with nowadays,” said Schaunard, handling the weapon lovingly. “A child could carry it, and there is nothing living it will not kill.” He laughed softly to himself, and then directed Armand to bring forward an elephant gun of the old pattern. In an instant the young man returned, staggering under the weight of the immense rifle, shod with a heel of india-rubber an inch thick.
Adams laughed, took the thing up with one hand, and raised it to his shoulder as though it had been a featherweight.
“Ah!” said he, “here’s a gun worth shooting with.”
Schaunard looked on with admiration at the giant handling the gigantic gun.
“Oh, for you,” said he, “it’s all very well. Ma foi, but you suit one another, you both are of another day.”
“God bless you,” said Adams, “you can pick me up by the bushel in the States. I’m small. Say, how much is this thing?”
“That!” cried Schaunard. “Why, what on earth could you want with such an obsolete weapon as that?”
“Tell me—does this thing hit harder, gun for gun—not weight for weight, mind you—but gun for gun—than that double-barrel you are holding in your hands?”
“Oh, yes,” said Schaunard, “it hits harder, just as a cannon would hit harder, but——”
“I’ll have her,” said Adams. “I’ve taken a fancy to her. See here, Captain Berselius is paying for my guns; they are his, part of the expedition—I want this as my own, and I’ll pay you for her out of my own pocket. How much is she?”
Schaunard, whose fifty years of trading had explained to him the fact that when an American takes a whim into his head it is best for all parties to let him have his own way, ran his fingers through his beard.
“The thing has no price,” said he. “It is a curiosity. But if you must have it—well, I will let you have it for two hundred francs.”
“Done,” said Adams. “Have you any cartridges?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Schaunard. “Heaps. That is to say, I have the old cartridges, and I can have a couple of hundred of them emptied and re-filled and percussioned. Ah, well, monsieur, you must have your own way. Armand, take the gun; have it attended to and packed. And now that monsieur has his play-toy,” finished the old man, with one of his silent little laughs, “let us come to business.”
They did, and nearly an hour was spent whilst the American chose a double hammerless-ejector cordite rifle and a .256 sporting Mannlicher, for Schaunard was a man who, when he took an interest in a customer, could be very interesting.
When