“It is a rum idea,” he said, “but——”
“But?” she repeated, keeping her eyes on his.
He nodded to her.
“It’s a bargain!” he said.
She looked at him as she put out her hand and took his, and slowly shook her head.
“My!” she said. “You want that fellow’s land pretty badly, I know!” and Cartwright began to laugh again.
Señor Brigot lived in some style for a man who was on the verge of ruin. He had a small house at Maisons Lafitte and a flat on the Boulevard Webber. He was a heavy, tired-looking man, with a dark moustache, obviously dyed, and a short beard, bearing evidence of the same attention. M. Brigot, like Mr. Cartwright, had many interests; but his chief interests were his own tastes and predilections. It was Señor Brigot’s boast that, although he had lived for twenty years in Paris, he had never seen Paris between the hours of six in the morning and one in the afternoon. His breakfast hour was two o’clock. By six o’clock in the evening he was becoming interested in life; and at the hour when most people retire to rest, he was in the prime of his day.
It happened on a certain evening that M. Brigot, who usually met dinner in an amicable frame of mind, sat down at his favourite table at the Abbaye with a big frown, and answered the polite maître d’hôtel’s cheery “Good evening” with a snarl.
Amongst his many enterprises and few possessions, and this Mr. Cartwright did not know, was the proprietorship and management of a small, ramshackle wooden theatre in the town of Tangier. He was likewise interested in several cabarets throughout Spain. But what pained him most at the moment was not distressing reports from any of these, but a six-page letter received that afternoon from his son, in which the hope of the house of Brigot had explained his reasons for discharging immediately a very necessary servant. Therefore Señor Brigot swore under his breath and cursed his first-born.