“M. Saint-Péray!” he cried. “So, after all, you have come into retreat in our capital!”
Louis-Marie regarded the speaker ghastlily. The young man’s face, in the shaking lamp-shine, seemed to twitch like the face of an epileptic. It was white and haggard, and indeed scarcely recognisable for the face which had kindled to the mountains of Le Prieuré a month earlier. He made no answer.
“A la bonne heure!” cried the other, very careful all the time not to let his capture escape him. “I had wanted much to come across you, and never so much as at this moment. Conceive my ridiculous position, monsieur! Realise me, here on this spot, debarred the heavenly mansions for lack of the necessary trifle of gate-money!”
“You are—Dr Bonito?” began Saint-Péray, clearing his throat to the effort.
“And flattered in your memory of me, monsieur,” interrupted the doctor, with a little bow which seemed to creak at the joints. “As you will recollect, I read nativities, I foretell events, however a capricious destiny may alter her tactics to procure them. For instance, you will remember, I prophesied the consequences of a certain achievement, which prediction was none the less verified because, as it happened paradoxically, the consequences anticipated the achievement. What then? It is the end which justifies the seer. The lady, you will scarcely deny, is a widow at this moment.”
Saint-Péray put his hand to his pocket.
“You want money,” he said hoarsely. The other stopped him with dignity.
“A loan is the word, monsieur—a little oil for the lamp; a little grease for the wheel; une épingle par jour; a sprat to catch a whale. You observe where you passed me just now?” (He pointed to the bureau.) “My star culminates there, monsieur, in a week. So surely as the heavens cannot lie, the numbers revealed at the next drawing will spell my apotheosis. In the meanwhile one, even a seer, must buy one’s promotion. The gods are very human. I have only approached this climax at the cost of all my little savings. If you will condescend to drink a glass of vermouth with me, I will explain. There is a café hard by, and the night is cold.”
Louis-Marie seemed drained of will or resolution—a flaccid, half-dead creature. He followed whither he was told, and drank his vermouth and élixir de China—one glass, then another and another. A spark woke at last in his ash-blue eyes. Bonito, watching it, kindled reassured.
“The Fates, after all, have been kind to you, monsieur,” he said, gently touching the other’s arm with a long thin finger, as a spider experiments with a fly before he rolls it up. “There lives a spotless widow in Le Prieuré, and wealthy beyond words. You could not yourself have managed it better, if you had been a villain.”