The weather was torrid, as September in France can be, the same weather in which, half a lifetime before, and more, the German armies had marched upon Paris; and John Kosciusko, reading yesterday’s Matin in the town of Angers (where he found himself in his progress north to the coast), read a paragraph which he would certainly not have read in any English paper; and, reading it, wondered whether he were alive or dead.
It was plain French, and he could read plain French well enough. There would have seemed, to any one else, nothing very startling in the news. It was a commonplace story of modern speculation, and described in the light French manner how a big Rotor merger had taken place in London that summer and how its monopoly was virtually established by the Government decision to adopt the Combine system in the ports and on board the King’s ships as well as in the Postal System; and how the Dominions had followed suit.
But it was not these first few lines which had knocked John Kosciusko sideways; it was the last three. They ran:
“It is the secret of Punchinello that the soul of this affair, of one so large envergure, is but that John K. Petre, the man of fantastic millions, who is of passage at London, seems it, and of whom one talks currently in the best clubs of the Bond Street and of the Strand....”
John Kosciusko Petre put the paper down on the little marble table in the café where he sat, spread it out with two large bony hands, and fixed upon the ill-conditioned print of the French journal those steel spectacles, that firm and concentrated gaze, which were his marks.
He registered every word. He felt a duty to take some immediate decision, but he could not decide what the decision was to be. He could not decide decisively, as decisions should be decided. For once in his life he was flummoxed. Then—for our millionaires are men of rapid conclusions, that is why they now and then die poor—the corners of his mouth drew down; he had solved the problem. During that long vacuity of his in France he had been impersonated in London. His clurk should have known of this!
He pulled forth a little knife, rather blunt, and slowly cut out the offending paragraph. He unscrewed his big black Waterman pen and wrote on it in the bold American hand “7/10/53.” He blotted it with the vile French blotting paper, frowned to see it blurred, folded it carefully, and put it into a cheap leather wallet which he had carried for over forty years. He was still angry against the clurk. But he was a just man, and reflected under what difficulties of a foreign language and of slow communication that very efficient young man had kept up communications during all these months of travel; and he acquitted him. But he must consult with him, and he went back to the hotel.
There was not a day to be lost. They could not make the night boat at Havre, but they could catch the morning Air Mail from Paris if they motored through the night; and motor through the night that old man of iron did; sleeping with arms crossed as he tore through the warm air. He took the earliest of the three air services, and by the time that he and his companion were at the Splendide it was the younger man who was tired out, not the elder. As he registered the clerk hesitated. John Kosciusko pulled him up sharply and said: “What’s the matter now?” in tones which were of metal and startled the lounge.
“Well, sir ...” said the clerk.
“That’s my name, ain’t it?” said John Kosciusko, showing an envelope. And the clerk succumbed. But his head was going round. How many John K. Petre’s were there in this wicked world?