Then Robert Kater looked at them with glittering eyes, and his shaking hand shut upon them, crushing the bank notes in a tight grip. “We’ll halve it, share and share alike,” he whispered, staring at the ghost without counting it. “As for this,” his finger touched the decoration on his breast––“it is given to a––You won’t take half? Then I’ll throw them away.”
“I’ll take them all until you’re sane enough to know what you’re doing. Give them to me.” He took them back and crept quietly, ghostlike, about the room until he found a receptacle in which he knew they would be safe; then, removing one hundred francs from the amount, he brought 393 it back and thrust it in his friend’s pocket. “There––that’s enough for you to throw away on us to-night. Why are you taking off your decoration? Leave it where it is. It’s yours.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Robert Kater brushed his hand across his eyes and stepped down from the throne. Then lifting his head and shoulders as if he threw off a burden, he leaped from the dais, and with one long howl, began an Indian war dance. He was the center and life of the hilarious crowd from that moment. The selection of materials had been made. A curtain of royal purple hung behind the throne, and this they threw around him as a toga, then crowned him as Mark Antony. They found for him also a tunic of soft wool, and with a strip of gold braid they converted a pair of sheepskin bedroom slippers into sandals, bound on his feet over his short socks.
“I say! Mark Antony never wore things like these,” he shouted. “Give me a mask. I’ll not wear these things without a mask.” He snatched at the head of the owl, who ducked under his arm and escaped. “Go then. This is better. Mark, the illustrious, was an ass.” He made a dive for the head of his braying friend and barely missed him.
“Come. We waste time. Cleopatra awaits him at ‘la Fourchette d’or’; all our Cleopatras await us there.”
“Surely?”
“Surely. Madame la Charne is there and the sisters Lucie and Bertha,––all are there,––and with them one very beautiful blonde whom you have never seen.”
“She is for you––you cold Scotchman! That stone within you, which you call heart, to-night it will melt.”
“You have everything planned then?”