The Hippodrome

E-text prepared by Al Haines
George H. Doran Company New York Copyright, 1913, By George H. Doran Company
Car vois-tu chaque jour je t'aime davantage, Aujourd'hui plus qu'hier, et bien moins que demain. ( Rosemonde Rostand )
Aujourd'hui le primtetemps, Ninon, demain l'hiver. Quoi! tu nas pas l'étoile, est tu vas sur la mer! DE MUSSET.
Count Emile Poleski was obliged to be at the Barcelona Station at five o'clock in the afternoon one hot Friday in May. His business, having to do with that which was known to himself and his associates as the Cause, necessitated careful attention, and required the performance of certain manoeuvres in such a way that they should be unobserved by the various detectives to whom he was an object of interest.
He looked round, scowling, till he found the man he wanted, and who was to all outward appearances the driver of one of the row of fiacres that waited outside the station. Cigarettes were exchanged, and a tiny slip of paper passed imperceptibly from hand to hand, then he turned ostensibly to watch the incoming train from Port-Bou. As he was on the platform it would be better to look as if he had come to meet someone, and as he had nothing particular to do just then it would make a distraction to watch the various types of humanity arriving at this continental Buenos Ayres, the city of romance, anarchy, commerce and varied vices.
Emile Poleski called it l'entresol de l'enfer , and certainly he was not there by his own choice. It was the centre of intrigue, and to intrigue his life, intellect, and the little money he had left from his Polish estates, were devoted. To him life meant The Cause, and that exigeant mistress left little room for other and more natural affections.
In his career women did not count, at least they did not count as women. If they had money to spend, or brains and energies that could be utilised, that was a different matter. He had a trick of studying people as one studies natural history through a microscope.