At the third floor Sally leaned forward and prodded Jules in the lower ribs. All through her stay at Roville, she had found in dealing with the native population that actions spoke louder than words. If she wanted anything in a restaurant or at a shop, she pointed; and, when she wished the lift to stop, she prodded the man in charge. It was a system worth a dozen French conversation books.
Jules brought the machine to a halt: and it was at this point that he should have done the one thing connected with his professional activities which he did really well—the opening, to wit, of the iron cage. There are ways of doing this. Jules' was the right way. He was accustomed to do it with a flourish, and generally remarked “V'la!” in a modest but self-congratulatory voice as though he would have liked to see another man who could have put through a job like that. Jules' opinion was that he might not be much to look at, but that he could open a lift door.
To-night, however, it seemed as if even this not very exacting feat was beyond his powers. Instead of inserting his key in the lock, he stood staring in an attitude of frozen horror. He was a man who took most things in life pretty seriously, and whatever was the little difficulty just now seemed to have broken him all up.
“There appears,” said Sally, turning to her companion, “to be a hitch. Would you mind asking what's the matter? I don't know any French myself except 'oo la la!'”
The young man, thus appealed to, nerved himself to the task. He eyed the melancholy Jules doubtfully, and coughed in a strangled sort of way.
“Oh, esker … esker vous …”
“Don't weaken,” said Sally. “I think you've got him going.”
“Esker vous … Pourquoi vous ne … I mean ne vous … that is to say, quel est le raison …”
He broke off here, because at this point Jules began to explain. He explained very rapidly and at considerable length. The fact that neither of his hearers understood a word of what he was saying appeared not to have impressed itself upon him. Or, if he gave a thought to it, he dismissed the objection as trifling. He wanted to explain, and he explained. Words rushed from him like water from a geyser. Sounds which you felt you would have been able to put a meaning to if he had detached them from the main body and repeated them slowly, went swirling down the stream and were lost for ever.
“Stop him!” said Sally firmly.
The red-haired young man looked as a native of Johnstown might have looked on being requested to stop that city's celebrated flood.
“Stop him?”
“Yes. Blow a whistle or something.”
Out of the depths of the young man's memory there swam to the surface a single word—a word which he must have heard somewhere or read somewhere: a legacy, perhaps, from long-vanished school-days.
“Zut!” he barked, and instantaneously Jules turned himself off at the main. There was a moment of dazed silence, such as might occur in a boiler-factory if the works suddenly shut down.
“Quick! Now you've got him!” cried Sally. “Ask him what he's talking about—if he knows, which I doubt—and tell him to speak slowly. Then we shall get somewhere.”
The young man nodded intelligently. The advice was good.
“Lentement,” he said. “Parlez lentement. Pas si—you know what I mean—pas si dashed vite!”
“Ah-a-ah!” cried Jules, catching the idea on the fly. “Lentement. Ah, oui, lentement.”
There followed a lengthy conversation which, while conveying nothing to Sally, seemed intelligible to the red-haired linguist.
“The silly ass,” he was able to announce some few minutes later, “has made a bloomer. Apparently he was half asleep when we came in, and he shoved us into the lift and slammed the door, forgetting that he had left the keys on the desk.”
“I see,” said Sally. “So we're shut in?”
“I'm afraid so. I wish to goodness,” said the young man, “I knew French well. I'd curse him with some vim and not a little animation, the chump! I wonder what 'blighter' is in French,” he said, meditating.
“It's the merest suggestion,” said Sally, “but oughtn't we to do something?”
“What could we do?”
“Well, for one thing, we might all utter a loud yell. It would scare most of the people in the hotel to death, but there might be a survivor or two who would come and investigate and let us out.”
“What a ripping idea!” said the young man, impressed.
“I'm glad you like it. Now tell him the main out-line, or he'll think we've gone mad.”
The young man searched for words, and eventually found some which expressed his meaning lamely but well enough to cause Jules to nod in a depressed sort of way.
“Fine!” said Sally. “Now, all together at the word 'three.' One—two—Oh, poor darling!” she broke off. “Look at him!”
In the far corner of the lift, the emotional Jules was sobbing silently into the bunch of cotton-waste which served him in the office of a pocket-handkerchief. His broken-hearted gulps echoed hollowly down the shaft.
5
In these days of cheap books of instruction on every subject under the sun, we most of us know how to behave in the majority of life's little crises. We have only ourselves to blame if we are ignorant of what to do before the doctor comes, of how to make a dainty winter coat for baby out of father's last year's under-vest and of the best method of coping with the cold mutton. But nobody yet has come forward with practical advice as to the correct method of behaviour to be adopted when a lift-attendant starts crying. And Sally and her companion, as a consequence, for a few moments merely stared at each other helplessly.
“Poor darling!” said Sally, finding speech. “Ask him what's the matter.”
The young man looked at her doubtfully.
“You know,” he said, “I don't enjoy chatting with this blighter. I mean to say, it's a bit of an effort. I don't know why it is, but talking French always makes me feel as if my nose were coming off. Couldn't we just leave him to have his cry out by himself?”
“The idea!” said Sally. “Have you no heart? Are you one of those fiends in human shape?”
He turned reluctantly to Jules, and paused to overhaul his vocabulary.
“You ought to be thankful for this chance,” said Sally. “It's the only real way of learning French, and you're getting a lesson for nothing. What did he say then?”
“Something about losing something, it seemed to me. I thought I caught the word perdu.”
“But that means a partridge, doesn't it? I'm sure I've seen it on the menus.”
“Would he talk about partridges at a time like this?”
“He might. The French are extraordinary people.”
“Well, I'll have another go at him. But he's a difficult chap to chat with. If you give him the least encouragement, he sort of goes off like a rocket.” He addressed another question to the sufferer, and listened attentively to the voluble reply.
“Oh!” he said with sudden enlightenment. “Your job?” He turned to Sally. “I got it that time,” he said. “The trouble is, he says, that if we yell and rouse the house, we'll get out all right, but he will lose his job, because this is the second time this sort of thing has happened, and they warned him last time that once more would mean the push.”
“Then we mustn't dream of yelling,” said Sally, decidedly. “It means a pretty long wait, you know. As far as I can gather, there's just a chance of somebody else coming in later, in