The Prince's wry smile showed again. "Doing?" he repeated, "why, he was feeling for me."
Dupontel shrugged, but not in disapproval this time. His imagination was burdened with a new sense of his companion's life, complex with difficulties, haunted by portents like specters of good and evil fortune.
"But, at all events, he did not touch you!" he said at last.
"No!" The Prince swung his cane, drawing up his tall, trim figure, and stepping out briskly. "No, he did not touch me. They dog me, these, these tokens of the devil; but I am not caught. It is I that save myself. After all, mon cher, it seems possible that this may be Carigny's bad day not mine!"
Dupontel had not meant to accompany the Prince to his club that day; his purpose had been to leave him at the door and go elsewhere. But it was possible that his meeting with Carigny might be something which it would be well to have seen; and, besides, his affairs were gaining a strange hue; glamour was in them. He felt a little thrill when the massive club porter, approaching them in the hall, spoke Carigny's name.
"Monsieur Carigny telephoned," said the porter. "He particularly desired that Monsieur le Prince should be told, as soon as he arrived, that Monsieur Carigny would call at half-past four."
The Prince nodded. "I shall be upstairs, in the card-room," he answered, and passed on.
In the card-room were several men of the Prince's who had known Carigny in his Paris days, while there was scarcely a man present who had not heard some version of the Carigny story. To certain of them the Prince spoke of the visit he was expecting. He had decided that, since the meeting was not by any means to be avoided or hidden, it would best serve him to announce it to take his part in the drama and squeeze it of what credit he could. It spread through the room and through the club like a scandal. There was a throng in the room, expectant, hungry for the possibility of a scene. In the recess of a tall window, the Prince, superb in his self-possession, a figure in a world of players that was past, with his pale, severe face impassive under his white hair, made the crowd of them seem vulgar and raucous by contrast with him. Dupontel, watching him, had a moment of consternation; the Prince seemed a thing too supremely complete, too perfect as a product of his world, to risk upon the turn of the cards.
A club servant entered, bearing a card on a salver, and the talk stilled as he presented it to the Prince. He, in converse with a veteran who had known Carigny, took the card and held it in his fingers without looking at it while he finished what he was saying. All eyes were on him; it was a neat piece of social bravado. He glanced at the card at last.
"Announce Monsieur Carigny," he said to the servant, and went on talking. Dupontel felt like cheering him. The talk resumed, in a changed key.