"I come from Provence," cried the little man, facing about swiftly with a passionate, white face.
Harry Rames had begun to think Colonel Challoner rather a bore with his incomplete reminiscences. That thought passed from him altogether. He had but to look at the two men to know that some queer and unexpected moment of drama had sprung from their chance meeting at this hotel at Ludsey. They stood facing one another, the little Frenchman in the doorway with fear and rage contending in his face, his mouth twisted into a snarl, his lips drawn back from his gums like an animal, his teeth gleaming; the colonel erect above the table with the candle-light shining upward upon a triumphant and menacing face.
"You were in Metz in '71," cried Challoner. "So was I. I was a lad at the time. I was aide to our attaché. That's where I saw you, M. Poizat--in the long corridor of the Arsenal. Yes, you were in Metz in '71."
And behind M. Poizat appeared the waiter announcing that Mr. Benoliel's motor-car was at the door.
CHAPTER XV
[THE MAYOR AND THE MAN]
St. Anne's Hall stands tucked away in a narrow street of Ludsey by the spacious square; and from its ancient windows you look out between the lozenges of stained glass upon the great church of St. Anne with its soaring spire and its wide graveyard. Into this hall the ballot-boxes were brought from the polling-booths on the next evening, and at long tables in the Council Chamber the voting papers were sorted and counted. Harry Rames walked from table to table. He seemed to see nothing but crosses against his opponent's name. He did not dare to put a question to any of the scrutineers standing behind the sorters. The very swiftness with which the votes were counted impressed him with a sense of disaster. For the first time he began to ask himself how he was to shape his life if to-night he were defeated. Thus an hour passed and then the chief constable drew him aside to a bench under the musician's gallery at one end of the room.
"I've been watching the tables, Captain Rames," he said, "and I think you are going to be elected."
"You do?" said Rames eagerly. "Yes, and I shall be very glad if you are."
"Thank you," exclaimed Rames. He could have wrung off the chief constable's hand in the fervor of his gratitude.