Since then she had wielded a curious power. Her size, her tongue, her knowledge of crime and criminals and her contempt of them all—these made her formidable. But also it was whispered that queer things went on at her plantation under the flamboyant trees: a famous rendezvous where no prying agent ever found a shred of evidence—against her or any one else. Successful escapes had been decided there, they said. And disputes of convict factions that troubled no other court, and even politics of the underworld at home, referred to certain great ones among us. Our inner conclave of transportés—so dread and secret that to be identified a member brings solitary confinement in the black cells—had assembled there to seek her counsel. Had demurred to it and been routed with her broom whisking about their ears, if rumor spoke true. For she was a lady of weighty ways.
Me, I was glad to slip aside unchallenged. I had no desire to linger between that dame and the purpose, whatever it might be, that dwelt in the fixity of her frown. As a spectator I blotted myself in the shadows, to attend the next act of this hidden and somber drama.
"Monsieur," she began, with an affectation wholly foreign to her rough voice, "I have the felicity to inform you that our beloved Zelie is home from Fonwhary again."
"I knew it," murmured Bibi-Ri.
"She resides at present under this poor roof."
He cast a nervous glance toward the stairway. "I knew that," he said.
"Ah? You know so much? After staying away so long?... We began to doubt it."
She came to plant herself before him, and the effect of her politeness was like a bludgeon.
"In that case be kind enough to sit, Monsieur Bibi-Ri. Dear little Monsieur Bibi-Ri: we have missed you! Be seated. You bring your pockets full of news, it seems."
But it seemed on the other hand, not so. I saw my companion brace himself. Evidently this was his stage-play: the ordeal he had now to meet.