Some day he would try his hand at painting a sign-board and nail it up over the front door. “Café de la Victoire,” and underneath it her name, “Manon Latour.”
But it was possible that her name might not be Manon Latour.
Brent smiled and, picking up his bundle, walked on towards Beaucourt. He was well content with life, a life that was full of the fascination of contriving, creating, conquering; a simple life in which hands and head worked together. No thought of Louie Blanc crossed his mind. The evening was too peaceful.
XXVII
About four o’clock that afternoon Louis Blanc came down the stairs of the stone house, crossed the street, and walked into the kitchen of the Café de la Victoire. Manon was still working in the garden, and Bibi strolled about the room with the air of a man in possession, his hands in his pockets, his eyes looking at everything with cynical amusement. These two people were preparing to make themselves comfortable; they had their furniture, their pots and pans, plenty of food to eat and wood to burn. The red and blue tiles of the floor had been scrubbed until they had regained some of their pre-war polish. The table by the window had a cretonne cover, blue pansies on a green ground. The crockery on the dresser reflected the pleasant pride of the housewife.
Bibi threw his cap on the table, pulled the arm-chair up to the stove and sat down. The blue coffee-pot was standing on the stove, but the fire had gone out, and it was no business of Bibi’s to light it.
“I will have my coffee when she comes in,” he said to himself; “it is her business to serve her clients.”
The position of the arm-chair did not satisfy him, for there was no warmth in the stove, and the chair did not occupy the strategic point necessary to Bibi’s plan. He moved it back against the opposite wall and close to the door, so that anybody entering by the door would not see the chair or its occupant until they were well inside the room. Bibi splurged in it, legs spread, in an attitude of comfortable arrogance. He was always a man of attitudes, especially when there was a woman in the game.
He had been sitting there for half an hour before he heard Manon’s footsteps on the stones of the raised path. She suspected nothing, but had suddenly remembered that she had left the revolver on the table by the window; also it was time to light the fire. Bibi had shut the kitchen door, nor did Manon remember that she had left it open. Louis Blanc had drawn in his feet, and was sitting upright in the chair, his left arm extended and laid across the door like a spring compressed to close it at the psychological moment.
Manon lifted the latch and walked in. Her eyes were turned towards the table by the window and the pistol that should have been there; the door hid Bibi. She went towards the table. The door closed behind her like the lid of a trap.