CHAPTER VII
Somewhere off the Boulevard St. Michel there is a cabaret. The big dancing hall has red walls painted with yellow shooting stars, and, overhead, electric lights blaze under red and yellow shades. There is a bar at one end, and several little tables for the patrons' use when they tire of dancing. In the evenings a band, in seedy, red uniforms with brass buttons, fills, with a crash of sound, an atmosphere ladened with patchouli and cigarette smoke, and waiters, in still more seedy dress-suits, attend to the tables. Never at any time is the gathering select, and generally there are quite a few foreigners of all colours present.
One night, the most noticeable among the patrons was an Englishman, well-groomed and tailored, and a big youth of about eighteen in a flowing white burnoose.
They were in no way connected with each other, but chance, in the shape of their female companions, had brought them to adjacent tables.
The girl with the youngster was very pretty in a hard, metallic way, with the white face and vivid red lips of the Parisienne, and brown eyes, bright and polished-looking, that were about as expressionless as pebbles. She was attired in a cheap, black evening dress, cut very low, and about her plump throat was a coral necklace. Her hair was elaborately dressed, and her shoes, although well worn, were tidy.
By day, Marie Hamon earned a meagre living for herself in a florist's shop. At night, she added to her earnings in the recognized way of quite a few of the working girls of Paris. And this particular cabaret was one of her hunting grounds.
As Marie sat there "making eyes" at the youth in the white burnoose, the man at the next table remarked in French, in an audible and disgusted tone:
"Look at that girl there making up to that young nigger. A beastly spectacle, I call it."
Before his companion had time to reply the youth was up, his black eyes flashing, and he grasped the Englishman's shoulder in an angry, indignant fashion.