"Assuredly," said Cazeby. "Do as if you were at home. I shall be but a moment with the supper."
When he returned from the kitchen, bearing a smoking dish of bacon and eggs, butter, rye bread, and Swiss cheese, Bibi-la-Raie was standing in rapt contemplation before an etching of the "Last Judgment."
"What a genius, this animal of a Michel Ange!" he said.
"Rather deft at times," replied Cazeby, arranging the dishes on the larger table.
"Je te crois!" said Bibi, enthusiastically. "Without him—what? Evidently, it was not Léon Treize who built Saint Pierre!"
The eggs had been peculiarly obstinate, as it happened, and a growing irritability had taken possession of Anthony. As they ate in silence, the full force of his tragic position returned to him. Even the unwontedness of his chance encounter with Bibi-la-Raie had not wholly dispelled the cloud that had been gradually settling around him since he emerged from the Automobile Club, and, as they finished the little repast, he turned suddenly upon his guest, in a burst of irritation.
"Who are you?" he said. "And what does all this mean? Was I mistaken, when you first spoke to me, in thinking you a mere voyou? Surely not! You meant to rob me. You speak the argot of the fortifications. Yet here I find you discoursing on Michel Angelo as though you were the conservateur of the Uffizzi! What am I to think?"
Bibi-la-Raie lit another cigarette, blew forth the smoke in a thin, gray wisp, and thrust his thumbs into the arm-holes of his velveteen waistcoat.
"And you," he said, slowly, abandoning the familiar address he had been using, "who are you? No, you were not mistaken in thinking I meant to rob you. Such is my profession. But does a gentleman reply, in ordinary, to the summons of a thief by paying that thief a drink? Does he invite him to his apartment and cook a supper for him? What am I to think?"
There was a brief pause, and then he faced his host squarely.