“I cannot say yet—I will call again.”
Charley Melton left the place and went along the street, for he could get no farther that day. He felt degraded, and the words choked him; but Monsieur Launay snatched a copy of Le Petit Journal from over the head of his gentleman, whose fixed eyes followed the young man as he went slowly along the pavement with Joby close at his heels.
“C’est fait?” exclaimed Monsieur Launay. “Justine, mon ange, I shall obey you and save Monsieur Melton—Ma foi! what a name! They will be happy, and then I—Ah, la France—la bel-le,” he sang, “at last I shall return to you a rich man. Oh, but it was quite plain: he had sent a note by the dogue, and the boule-dogue had lost it and his collar. But what it is to be ingenious—to have of the spirit! If I rase and cut hair, I starve myself, but if I make myself of great use to all around, I grow rich. Live the secrets! Justine, you will be mine at last.
“Aha!—it is good,” he continued, “I have another secret to keep... This is the bureau aux secrets. He had not remarked the likeness to my adorable. It is beautiful, and she was jalouse when I say I love my lady of wax. Cette chérie. But, ma foi! I must be busy over my other affairs; there is the coiffure of the Grande Barmouth to prepare. Aha, Milady La Grande, you will call ma chérie bête, chouette, stupide, and trouble her poor sweet soul. Now I shall have my revenge, and be on ze best of terms as you say all ze time. La—la—la—la—la—la. Par-tir pour la guer-re—la guer-re. Ces braves soldats.”
He sang on in a low tone, and began to comb some of Lady Barmouth’s falsities, and while he combed he smiled, and when Monsieur Hector smiled he was making plans.
“Vive les conspirateurs!” he cried; and then prepared for his primitive repast.
Being a bachelor at present, he cooked for himself behind a little screen over a gas-stove; sometimes it was food, sometimes strange cosmetiques and chemical preparations for beautifying his clients. This day it was food preparation, and, manipulated by Monsieur Hector, one kidney became a wonderful dish, swimming in gravy. Tiny bits of meat reappeared brown and appetising: and he was great upon soup, which he made with half a pint of water, some vegetables, and a disc cut off what seemed to be so much glue in a sausage skin.
But he lived well upon a small income, and partook of grand salads, water souchées made of one herring, biftek-aux-pommes, café, eau sucrée, and cigarette.
One gas-burner cooked, boiled, and stewed, and his cleanliness and saving ways enabled him to afford his game at billiards; and to pass for a Parisian of the first water under a political cloud.
“Ah!” he said, as he smoked his one cigarette, “when will he return with a letter for his beloafed? Soon. But stop—what is a letter to a meeting? Ha, ha! I have a plan. Wait till he come once more, and then—ha, ha! how la Justine will laugh! Vive l’amour.