"There is a pro here who knows me, confound him! I had to tell him we were leaving for Crete in the morning—he mustn't see me here again."
The playwright shifted his slippered feet to the floor and sat up. "We go back to Paris?" he inquired, beaming.
"How can that be? Of course not! We must discover another retreat."
"Fugitives!" moaned Beauregard. "Nomads! Do you not think, Panage, that I might go back to Paris—I could remain cautiously in the house? The truth is, my wife is of a very high-minded character, and it distresses her to have to address tender letters to a monsieur 'Bachelet': she feels that it is not correct."
I was in no mood to be tolerant of his subterfuges. He wept.
I determined to effect our departure the same evening while he was still intimidated—and if only I had been able to accelerate his movements, my change of intentions would have spared us much. His dilatoriness exposed us to a thunderbolt. We had pealed the bell in his bedroom for the lamp, and when the door was opened at last, I turned to utter a sharp complaint of the delay. To my surprise, I saw that a stranger was walking in. There was a fraction of a second in which I stared indignantly, waiting for an apology for his blunder. Then it was as if my heart slipped slowly to my stomach, and I felt catastrophe in the air, even before I heard his rustic, official tones. He arrested us as Thibaudin and Hazard!
Behind me I heard Beauregard's dressing-case drop with a thud.
Our eyes met, and we stood petrified, realising the impossibility of concealing our names. In my terror of the public scandal that was imminent, my clothes stuck to my skin. Curs, as well as criminals, we looked. I rather fancied that our provincial captor was relieved to see what knock-kneed miscreants he had to deal with.
"You bungling idiot!" I gasped. "I am monsieur Panage, of the Théâtre Suprême; this gentleman is monsieur Beauregard, of the Académie Francaise. You shall suffer for this outrage!"
He shifted his feet slightly. It was the least bit in the world, but that motiveless movement betrayed misgiving; I deduced from it that, in his eagerness to distinguish himself, he had taken more responsibility upon his bucolic shoulders than sat quite comfortably on them. I flung my card to him. "Look!"