They could hear a powerful voice indistinctly booming at the top of the stairs. "Two callers on one afternoon!" G.J. reflected. And yet she had told him she went out for the first time only the day before yesterday! He scarcely liked it, but his reason rescued him from the puerility of a grievance against her on this account. "And why not? She is bound to be a marked success."
Marthe returned to the drawing-room and shut the door.
"Madame—" she began, slightly agitated.
"Speak, then!" Christine urged, catching her agitation.
"It is the police!"
G.J. had a shock. He knew many of the policemen who lurked in the dark doorways of Piccadilly at night, had little friendly talks with them, held them for excellent fellows. But a policeman [95] invading the flat of a courtesan, and himself in the flat, seemed a different being from the honest stalwarts who threw the beams of lanterns on the key-holes of jewellers' shops.
Christine steeled herself to meet the crisis with self-reliance. She pointedly did not appeal to the male.
"Well, what is it that he wants?"
"He talks of the chimney. It appears this morning there was a chimney on fire. But since we burn only anthracite and gas—He knows madame's name."
There was a pause. Christine asked sharply and mysteriously: