“That?” She looked at her hand, lying in his, as though she had never seen it before.
“Eve,” he whispered.
About two-thirds of the loot of the Hôtel St. James was ultimately recovered; not at Sidi Okba, but in the cellars of the Hôtel St. James itself. From first to last that robbery was a masterpiece of audacity. Its originator, the soi-disant M. Sylvain, head of the Algiers detective force, is still at large.
CHAPTER VI.
“LO! ’TWAS A GALA NIGHT!”
Paris. And not merely Paris, but Paris en fête, Paris decorated, Paris idle, Paris determined to enjoy itself, and succeeding brilliantly. Venetian masts of red and gold lined the gay pavements of the grand boulevard and the Avenue de l’Opéra; and suspended from these in every direction, transverse and lateral, hung garlands of flowers whose petals were of coloured paper, and whose hearts were electric globes that in the evening would burst into flame. The effect of the city’s toilette reached the extreme of opulence, for no expense had been spared. Paris was welcoming monarchs, and had spent two million francs in obedience to the maxim that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
The Grand Hotel, with its eight hundred rooms full of English and Americans, at the upper end of the Avenue de l’Opéra, looked down at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, with its four hundred rooms full of English and Americans, at the lower end of the Avenue de l’Opéra. These two establishments had the best views in the whole city; and perhaps the finest view of all was that obtainable from a certain second floor window of the Grand Hotel, precisely at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Rue Auber. From this window one could see the boulevards in both directions, the Opéra, the Place de l’Opéra, the Avenue de l’Opéra, the Rue du Quatre Septembre, and the multitudinous life of the vivid thoroughfares—the glittering cafés, the dazzling shops, the painted kiosks, the lumbering omnibuses, the gliding trams, the hooting automobiles, the swift and careless cabs, the private carriages, the suicidal bicycles, the newsmen, the toy sellers, the touts, the beggars, and all the holiday crowd, sombre men and radiant women, chattering, laughing, bustling, staring, drinking, under the innumerable tricolours and garlands of paper flowers.
That particular view was a millionaire’s view, and it happened to be the temporary property of Cecil Thorold, who was enjoying it and the afternoon sun at the open window, with three companions. Eve Fincastle looked at it with the analytic eye of the journalist, while Kitty Sartorius, as was quite proper for an actress, deemed it a sort of frame for herself, as she leaned over the balcony like a Juliet on the stage. The third guest in Cecil’s sitting-room was Lionel Belmont, the Napoleonic Anglo-American theatrical manager, in whose crown Kitty herself was the chief star. Mr. Belmont, a big, burly, good-humoured, shrewd man of something over forty, said he had come to Paris on business. But for two days the business had been solely to look after Kitty Sartorius and minister to her caprices. At the present moment his share of the view consisted mainly of Kitty; in the same way Cecil’s share of the view consisted mainly of Eve Fincastle; but this at least was right and decorous, for the betrothal of the millionaire and the journalist had been definitely announced. Otherwise Eve would have been back at work in Fleet Street a week ago.
“The gala performance is to-night, isn’t it?” said Eve, gazing at the vast and superbly ornamented Opera House.