"I ask your pardon if I was abrupt," he said. "As you surmise, I passed a bad night. A boom? Well, you know my views on the subject of booming. The ordinary puff preliminary is played out. One needs something novel, Panage, something scholarly. 'Scholarly' is the word. For Omphale, a play of pre-Hellenic times, one needs the boom scholarly, classical, and grandiose."
"You voice my own sentiments," said I. "One needs nothing less than a production of 'unrivalled accuracy'—costumes 'copied from designs discovered in Crete and dating back to the dim days of the Minotaur.' That would look tasteful in print, would it not? Alors, what do you say to our going to Crete and discovering them?"
"Crete?" stammered Beauregard. Have I mentioned that he was fat and indolent and had never travelled further than Trouville?
"What think you of exploring the Minotaur's lair?" I questioned. "Of penetrating to the apartments of Phædra? Of examining with your own eyes the labyrinth of Ariadne?"
"I?" he ejaculated.
"You and I together, my old one! Our adventures would make pretty reading, hein? Would not all Paris be chattering about your Omphale? What a fever of impatience for the first night! Think of the effect such paragraphs would have on the advance booking."
The corpulent Beauregard lay back on the pillows, pale and mute. I had spoken too earnestly for him to suspect that I was pulling his leg, and I could see that he was very seriously perturbed. His mind was torn in halves between his longing for the advertisement and his horror of the exertion and expense. After a moment he sat up, perspiring, and wrung my hand.
"Panage," he cried, "you are a man of genius! Your idea is most brilliant; I have never heard its equal. With all my heart I congratulate you. I, alas! cannot accompany you on account of my wife's ill-health, but you are free. Go, mon ami! Your inspiration will crowd your theatre."
His wife's health was offensively robust. I shook with laughter so unrestrained that the cigarette fell out of my mouth.
"Let me be a trifle more explicit," I said. "It is not essential to my scheme that either you or I should actually go to Crete. It is only essential that we should be reported to have gone there. I propose that we should blazon our departure in all the journals—we might give them interviews in the midst of our packing—and that we should then retire for two or three months to some secluded spot near at hand where there will be nobody to recognise us. I shall confide only in Verdeille, my secretary; I can rely on him, and he will keep the Press well supplied with anecdotes of our vicissitudes during our absence. Mon Dieu! We will make Paris bubble and boil with anticipation."