"What sayest thou, Imbecile?"
"Fact," said Peridot, with drunken gravity. "I asked a man who speaks English what the lady was screaming as I tucked her into the auto, and he told me——"
"Larraidou," broke in Ingersoll, pallid with sudden anger, "you had better go home."
Then Peridot too flared into wrath. "What have I done wrong?" he cried. "Cré nom! they're as like as two peas in a pod! Come, now, Monsieur—is there any harm in saying that?"
Ingersoll turned to Tollemache. "Lorry," he said, "oblige me by taking our talkative friend to his house. He will be glad of it in the morning."
So, protesting loudly that some people made a lot of fuss about nothing, Peridot vanished with a shattered halo. But the mischief had been done. Next day all Pont Aven would be discussing Mrs. Carmac's strange delusion. In the view of the one man who knew the whole truth, it was the beginning of the end.
CHAPTER VI
A LULL
Peridot lived on the Toulifot, a steep and rocky road that once upon a time was Pont Aven's main avenue to the interior of France. On the way he was consumed with maudlin sorrow that his beloved patron, Monsieur Ingersoll, should have forbidden him to take further part in the feast.
"Tell me, then, what was my fault," he protested to Tollemache. "Name of a pipe! can't a fellow take a thimbleful of cognac to keep the cold out?"
"Thimbleful!" laughed Tollemache. "The sort of thimble you used would make a hat for any ordinary head."