Of course the German was rotting, reflected Franky. If he wasn't, the combined insolence and brutality of such a menace, uttered at the table of one of the Britons in whose gore von Herrnung and his comrades yearned to dip their preposterous two-inch thumb-nails, took the bun, by the Great Brass Hat! He was perfectly cool, as his muscular white hands—for the dinner had arrived at the dessert stage—manipulated the silver knife that peeled a blood-red nectarine. What a splendid ring, a black-and-white pearl, large as a starling's egg, and set in platinum, the fellow sported on the little finger of that clawed left hand. What was he asking, in the suave voice with the guttural Teutonic accent?
"You were in the Bois, I believe, Lord Norwater, early in the midday. Did you see any avions of the Service Aëronautique? Did the invention they were testing come up to expectations? .... Did the English aërial stabiliser answer well? ..."
Franky knew, as he encountered the compelling stare of the hard blue eyes, that he objected to their owner. He returned, in a tone more huffy and less dignified than he would have liked it to be:
"Can't say.... I was merely walking in the Bois with a lady. Wasn't on the ground as—an investigator of the professional sort."
"So!" Von Herrnung's face was set in a smile of easy amiability. The shot might have missed the bull for anything that was betrayed there. "And the name of the inventor? It has escaped my memory. Possibly you could tell me, eh?"
"Certainly," said Franky, planting one with pleasure. "He happens to be a cousin of mine. Would you like me to write down his address?"
"Gewiss—thanks so very much. But I will not trouble you!"
Nobody had heard the verbal encounter. Lady Wathe was holding the table with another anecdote punctuated with staccato peals of laughter, tinkling like the brazen bells of a beaten tambourine. Mademoiselle Nou-Nou, a Paris celebrity, belonging to the most ancient if not the most venerable of professions, had promenaded under the chestnuts at Longchamps that morning, attired, as to the upper portion of her body, in a sheath of spotted black gauze veiling, unlined—save with her own charms. And a witty Paris journalist had said that "the costume was designed to represent Eve, not before nor after, but behind the fall"; and Paillette, who was there, working up her "Modes" letter for Le Style, had answered——
Everybody at table was leaning forward and listening, as the Goblin quoted the riposte of Paillette.
Von Herrnung, showing his big white teeth in a smile, chose another nectarine from the piled-up dish before him, seeming to admire the contrast between his own muscular white fingers and the glowing fruit they held. But Franky saw that he was angry as he neatly peeled the fruit, split the odorous yellow flesh, tore the stone out crimson and dripping like a little human heart, and swallowed both halves of the fruit in rapid succession, dabbing his mouth with the fine serviette held up before him in both hands. Then, with an air of arrogant self-confidence peculiar to him, he said loudly, addressing the whole company: