“He has found out something.”
“Oh, la! la!” exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper—giving voice to that exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve for a really serious mishap. “I should have thought he knew better.”
“And I cannot tell you what it is.”
“And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man.”
“It came to Martin's knowledge,” explained Wanda, looking at him across the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. “Look a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie,” Deulin had once said to Cartoner, “but not a woman.”
“It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that—” Wanda paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried way—“that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London. We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My father won't—”
Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table. His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his execution.
“Years ago,” he said, after a pause, “I once took it upon myself to advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it—and never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right, and I was wrong.”
He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both hands.
“Voila!” he said. “I can do nothing, fair princess.”