Betty turned to Jim Frobisher.
"To-morrow, now that I am once allowed to use my motor-car, I shall take you for a drive and show you something of our neighbourhood. This afternoon—you will understand, I know—I belong to Ann."
She took Ann Upcott by the arm and the two girls went out into the garden. Jim was left alone in the hall—as at that moment he wanted to be. It was very still here now and very silent. The piping of birds, the drone of bees outside the open doors were rather an accompaniment than an interruption of the silence. Jim placed himself where Hanaud had stood at that moment when he had laughed so strangely—half-way between the foot of the stairs where Monsieur Bex and he himself had been standing and the open porch. But Jim could detect nothing whatever to provoke any laughter, any excitement. "That I should have lived all these years and never noticed it before," he had exclaimed. Notice what? There was nothing to notice. A table, a chair or two, a barometer hanging upon the wall on one side and a mirror hanging upon the wall on the other—No, there was nothing. Of course, Jim reflected, there was a strain of the mountebank in Hanaud. The whole of that little scene might have been invented by him maliciously, just to annoy and worry and cause discomfort to Monsieur Bex and himself. Hanaud was very capable of a trick like that! A strain of the mountebank indeed! He had a great deal of the mountebank. More than half of him was probably mountebank. Possibly quite two-thirds!
"Oh, damn the fellow! What in the world did he notice?" cried Jim. "What did he notice from the top of the Tower? What did he notice in this hall? Why must he be always noticing something?" and he jammed his hat on in a rage and stalked out of the house.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: At Jean Cladel's
At nine o'clock that night Jim Frobisher walked past the cashier's desk and into the hall of the Grande Taverne. High above his head the cinematograph machine whirred and clicked and a blade of silver light cut the darkness. At the opposite end of the hall the square screen was flooded with radiance and the pictures melted upon it one into the other.
For a little while Jim could see nothing but that screen. Then the hall swam gradually within his vision. He saw the heads of people like great bullets and a wider central corridor where waitresses with white aprons moved. Jim walked up the corridor and turned off to the left between the tables. When he reached the wall he went forward again towards the top of the hall. On his left the hall fell back, and in the recess were two large cubicles in which billiard tables were placed. Against the wall of the first of these a young man was leaning with his eyes fixed upon the screen. Jim fancied that he recognised Maurice Thevenet, and nodded to him as he passed. A little further on a big man with a soft felt hat was seated alone, with a Bock in front of him—Hanaud. Jim slipped into a seat at his side.
"You?" Hanaud exclaimed in surprise.
"Why not? You told me this is where you would be at this hour," replied Jim, and some note of discouragement in his voice attracted Hanaud's attention.