The thought of Persis came to him now with the charm of all three—honey, truancy to duty, and danger. He lifted the telephone from the rack to ask her permission to call. He put it down again, his heart beating as if he had touched a snake. He went out into the air.
It was a typical, sharp, wet winter night in Paris, the chill going with a peculiar directness straight to the marrow of the bones and freezing the body from within outward. Forbes had buffeted blizzards and the still, grim, icy airs of Dakota when the mercury seemed to crowd into the bulb of the thermometer to keep warm. But he wondered if he had ever been so cold in his life as he was now, when the thermometer had not reached even the zero of the French centigrade.
Paris was not Paris. The sidewalks were not peopled with tables, and the restaurants were deserted within. There were few people abroad, for the audiences were at this hour in the theaters and the home-keepers were at home. Nobody loitered in the streets but a few miserables, and they were wretchedly cold.
Forbes was so desperately lonely that he resolved to call upon Persis, even if he had to talk to her husband. He walked to the Meurice, but dared not turn in; he went on by. Later he was back again. Three times his courage—or his cowardice—failed him. The last time he stopped short as if he heard a sudden "Halt!"
Willie Enslee was just stepping into a car with two other men, violently American and manifestly bent on finding in Paris what Paris manufactures for American visitors.
Willie paused and cast his eyes along the street idly while he waited for the other two to precede him. Forbes stepped behind a shelter till Willie vanished.
Forbes, the brave, the upright, found himself dodging to escape Willie's fishy eyes, found himself chuckling over Willie's blindness. Then he cursed himself for a reptile. He turned away from the hotel and started back to his apartment, groaning to himself, "The woman doesn't live that can make a sneak of me."
CHAPTER LX
WHEN he had gone a few hundred paces he whirled about and hurried back to the hotel; asked for Monsieur et Madame Enslee; sent up his card; wished he had it back; received a summons to come up; cursed the slowness of the Parisian ascenseur; wished it would fall and kill him; moved toward Persis' door as to his execution; and was ushered in by Nichette, who was cloaked and bonneted for an evening out. She left him a moment, then came back and rattled off a string of French, from which he gleaned that he was voulez-vous'd to seat himself and attend a little moment. Then Nichette left him and hastened to the corner of the street, where a little waiting piou-piou shivered in his uniform.