"_A l'instant, ou j'appelle l' sergent d'ville!_"
"He's talking about sending for the police now!" She added hastily: "Don't let him do that! Offer him a tip!"
The magic word must have been comprehended of the braided functionary. He ceased to fulminate. He waited, his avid eye upon the pair. The lean hatchety face of the aviator had flamed at Patrine's suggestion. He said:
"Don't you think I'd have tipped him in the beginning--if I'd had the wherewithal? But expenses have been frightful!--the waste lot with the shed I've stalled the machine in costs as much as a suite of rooms at a decent middle-class hotel would. Had to fork rent in advance too. Proprietor's a German as well as a jerry-builder, and when I've paid his goo-goo girl for our coffee and rolls to-morrow morning"--the speaker exhibited a disc of shiny metal bearing the classical capped and oak-wreathed head of the Republic, value exactly twopence-halfpenny--"I'll have just one of these blessed tin things left."
"How rotten!" In the gilt metal vanity-bag, Patrine's inseparable adjunct, lurked, in the company of a mirror, powder-puff, and note-book, a tiny white silk purse. In the purse nestled two plump British half sovereigns, the moiety of Patrine's salary for the previous week. "Would you jump down my throat if I asked you to let me finance you?" she pleaded, an eager hand in the depths of the receptacle. "Why not?"
"Because I'm a decent man!" If he had been previously crimson he was now scarlet as a boiled lobster. "Thanks all the same, though! I can't wait here, even to catch Davis.... I must bike back to Drancy, where I've left the Bird--the machine--in the German's shed... Not a soul to keep an eye on her! ... My heart's in my mouth when I think of what might hap--" He bit off the end of the sentence and went on: "But if you'd be so awfully kind as to take charge of this, in case you ... There's a message written on it...." He offered her a soiled, bent card.
"I understand. If I should chance to come across your Davis.... A little man ... looking like a Welshman.... But you haven't told me whether he's dark or fair!"
"Black as a crow," he told her. "Not dressed like me!" His well-cut mouth began to twist upwards at the corners.
"Quite a swell, in a silk-faced frock-coat, white vest and striped accompaniments. A silk hat, too, rather curly brimmed, but still, a topper. I suppose a friend of the lady's rented Davis the kit."
"Of the lady's? ..." She remembered. "Yes, yes! Of course! ... The German's appendage.... Why! ... Look! ... Those two people who have just passed the turn-stile at the other end of the Promenade.... If there's anything in description, here comes Davis with the goo-goo girl!"
"By--gum! You've nailed me the pair of them." As the aviator's long strides bore him down in the direction of the little sallow, black-avised mechanic in the capacious silk-faced frock-coat, and his high-bosomed, florid, flaxen-haired enchantress, and before the moustached guardian of the Promenade could renew his indignant protest, Patrine had dropped the little sovereign-purse in his deep, rapacious hand. And at that instant the music ended with a crashing succession of barbaric chords. The Sao Paulo dance was done.
"_Merci millefois, Madame!_ ..."
Patrine turned from the hireling's thanks to see the high head and powerful square shoulders of von Herrnung forging towards her, towering above the polyglot, variegated crowd. He hailed her with:
"So you met a friend? Is that why I found myself deserted?"
She answered coldly:
"I did not desert you--and I did not meet a friend."
His face, still suffused with a purplish flush, pouched and baggy about the eyes, told of the maelstrom of unhealthy excitement the dance of the jaguars in the jungle had set whirling in his brain. She guessed that he had taken advantage of their separation to descend into the ball-room, and that as one of the spectators in the front rank he had revelled in the final thrill. He persisted:
"_Was_? But what means it? I have lost you.... I think you must have gone down into the ball-room after your friend.... I follow and you are not there. I come back to find you.... Who was that dirty bounder I saw you talking to?"
"He wasn't a dirty bounder!" His rudeness enraged her. "He was a nice, clean, first-class, top-hole, plucky English boy!"
He sneered:
"'_Boy_' ... Men of forty are boys, in the mouths of you English ladies. You borrow the term from women of the street-walking class."
"Then I'll call him a man. The best kind of man going! English--from the top of his nice head to the very tips of his toes."
"How can you tell if he was not a friend of yours? What do you know of him?" He fixed his eyes compellingly on hers.
She answered:
"Nothing but that he flew the Channel yesterday--with Davis--to test his invention--and he has got to be on the wing for home at four."
"So! He has told you all this, and you do not know his name, even? Perhaps it is on that card you hold in your hand?"
She started, and the card fluttered from her twitching fingers to the carpet.
"Allow me...." Von Herrnung stooped as though to retrieve the bit of pasteboard. "Curious! It has gone! ... It is not there!" he said.
"I think you have your foot on it." Her eyeballs ached, she felt weary, and flat, and stale. "Please lift up your foot and let me see if it is there," she urged, and grown suddenly obtuse, he lifted up the wrong foot. She was trying to explain that he had done so when they were rejoined by Courtley and Lady Beauvayse.
"Say, did you see she wore a head-band with a rubber mouth-hold at the back of her neck? And waist-fixings under her frillies so's Herculano could swing her around his head. My land! that man has jaw-power to whip Teddy Roosevelt, and she's got vim enough for a nest of rattlesnakes.... Used up, Pat? ... If you aren't, you look it!" The speaker yawned prettily: "I'm about ready to be taken back to by-by, though it's only two o'clock."
Von Herrnung escorted the wearer of the green bird of paradise as they went through dark alleys and illuminated avenues back to the archway with the blazing crowns and stars. Courtley accepted the offer of a lift back to the hotel. The German declined, saying that he preferred to walk, as the car was closed.
"Pardon! ..." His voice had arrested Morris on the point of starting the Rolls-Royce. His handsome face had appeared in the frame of the car-window. "Excuses! but this belongs to Miss Saxham!" His cuff shone white in the semi-darkness, the great magpie pearl on his little finger gleamed maliciously as he dropped the missing card upon Patrine's lap, and drew back, uncovered and smiling, as the car moved away. Later on, when she was safe in her room, she looked at the card, and read upon it in plain black lettering:
+-----------------------------------------------+ | | | ALAN SHERBRAND, | | | | PILOT-INSTRUCTOR AND BUILDER OF AEROPLANES, | | FANSHAW'S SCHOOL OF FLYING. | | | | THE AERODROME, | | COLLINGWOOD AVENUE, | | HENDON, N. W. | | | +-----------------------------------------------+
Something was scrawled in violet pencil on the upper blank space. Being a girl with notions about squareness, Patrine would not at first read, remembering that it was his private message to Davis, whom Chance had brought within his master's reach. But later still, or earlier, when, after a brief interval of silence, the traffic of Paris began to roll over the asphalt, principle yielded to impulse. She switched on the electric light above her pillow and read:
"_This Sarajevo business spells War. Must get back at once to Hendon. I trust to your Honour not to fail me. You know what this means to_
"_A. S._"
So the young Mercury in gabardine and overalls was a professional, a teacher; a pilot who helped men to qualify for the certificate given by the Royal Aero Club without breaking too many bones. She had seen the big painted sign in the Collingwood Avenue, Hendon, that advertised Fanshaw's Flying School.
"_I trust to your Honour_," he had written to his mechanic. The word would have seemed big, and awful, and imposing, spelt like that, with a capital "H," if the writer had been a gentleman.
Disillusioned, she tore the card into little pieces and sank into a heavy sleep before the broad yellow sunshine of Monday outlined the pink velvet brocade curtains unhygienically drawn before the open windows. And she dreamed, not of the magic wind that had blown upon her that night, nor of the Mercury-like figure in the suit of Carberrys, but of the supple bodies that had bounded and whirled, and of the gleaming panther-fangs that had clashed in mid-air. Then the dominant figure became that of von Herrnung. Again the red mouth under the tight-rolled red moustache alternately flattered, insulted, and cajoled. Again she felt that violation of her virgin flesh, its moist, hot touch upon her naked shoulder. Its kiss bit and stung.