Monsieur Bourdon would in all probability have done precisely this, had he not been hindered by one of those unlooked-for and purely providential circumstances which so often help single and simple-minded Truth in her encounters with versatile and shifty Falsehood.
At half-past six o’clock upon the appointed evening, Eleanor Monckton left the Hôtel du Palais, escorted by Major Lennard, on her way to the Frenchman’s lodging. She had waited until the last moment in the hope of Richard Thornton’s arrival, but he had not come; and she had been fain to accept the aid of this good-natured overgrown schoolboy, who still persisted that the immediate punching of Victor Bourdon’s head would be the best and surest means of getting possession of the will.
“Let me punch the feller’s head, Miss Vil—beg pardon, Mrs. Monckton. The idea of your being married to old Monckton! He ain’t any older than me, you know; but I always call him old Monckton. Let me punch this damn Frenchman’s head; that’ll bring the feller to book in next to no time, and then we can do what we like with him.”
But Eleanor impressed upon her stalwart protector that there must be no muscular demonstration, and that the conduct of the interview was to be left entirely to her.
“I don’t in the least hope that he’ll give up the will without a bribe,” Eleanor said; “he is the last man upon earth to do that.”
“I’ll tell you what, then, Mrs. Monckton,” exclaimed the major; “I haven’t any ready money; I never had, since I borrowed sixpences of a sucking bill-discounter at the first school I ever went to; but I’ll give you my acceptance. Let this fellow draw upon me for a thousand at three months, and give up the document for that consideration. Monckton will enable me to meet the bill, no doubt, when he finds I was of service to you in this business.”
Eleanor looked at the major with a gleam of hope in her face. But that transient gleam very quickly faded. She had only a vague idea of the nature and properties of accommodation bills; but she had a very positive notion of Victor Bourdon’s character, and, though this plan sounded feasible enough, she did not think it would succeed.
“You are very good to me, Major Lennard,” she said, “and believe me, I appreciate your kindness; but I do not think that this Frenchman will consent to take anything but ready money. He could get that from Launcelot Darrell, remember, at any time.”
Eleanor’s only hope was the one chance that she might induce Victor Bourdon to accept her promise of a reward from Gilbert Monckton after the production of the will.
The neighbourhood in which the commercial traveller lived, whenever he made Paris his head-quarters, was one of the dingiest localities in the city. Major Lennard and Eleanor, after making numerous inquiries, and twice losing their way, found themselves at last in a long narrow street, one side of which was chiefly dead-wall, broken here and there by a dilapidated gateway or a dingy window. At one corner there was a shop for the sale of unredeemed pledges; a queer old shop, in whose one murky window obsolete scraps of jewellery, old watch-keys, impossible watches with cracked enamel dials and crippled hands that pointed to hours whose last moments had passed away for half a century; mysterious, incomprehensible garments, whose fashion was forgotten, and whose first owners were dead and gone; poor broken-down clocks, in tawdry ormolu cases, that had stood upon lodging-house mantelpieces, indifferently telling the wrong time to generations of lodgers; an old guitar; a stringless violin; poor, frail, cracked cups and saucers, that had been precious once, by reason of the lips that had drunk out of them; a child’s embroidered frock; a battered christening cup; a tattered missal; an odd volume of “The Wandering Jew;” amid a hundred other pitiful relics which poverty barters for a crust of bread, faded in the evening sunlight, and waited for some eccentric purchaser to take a fancy to them. Next door to this sarcophagus of the past, there was an eating-house, neat and almost cheerful, where one could have a soup, three courses, and half a bottle of wine for fivepence. The whole neighbourhood seemed to be, somehow or other, overshadowed by churches, and pervaded by the perpetual tramp of funerals; and, lying low and out of the way of all cheerful traffic, was apt to have a depressing effect upon the spirits of frivolous people.