“In Perigueux there is nowhere to go to with baggage but the railway station.”
A decrepit vehicle with a gaudy linen canopy hove in sight. Mr. Ducksmith hailed it as the last victims of the Flood must have hailed the Ark. He sprang into it and drove to the station.
There, in the salle d’attente, he found Aristide mounting guard over his wife’s luggage. He hurled his immense bulk at his betrayer.
“You blackguard! Where is my wife?”
“Monsieur,” said Aristide, puffing a cigarette, sublimely impudent and debonair, “I decline to answer any questions. Your wife is no longer your wife. You offered me a thousand pounds to take her away. I am taking her away. I did not deign to disturb you for such a trifle as a thousand pounds, but, since you are here——”
He smiled engagingly and held out his curved palm. Mr. Ducksmith foamed at the corners of the small mouth that disappeared into the bloodhound jowls.
“My wife!” he shouted. “If you don’t want me to throw you down and trample on you.”
A band of loungers, railway officials, peasants, and other travellers awaiting their trains, gathered round. As the altercation was conducted in English, which they did not understand, they could only hope for the commencement of physical hostilities.
“My dear sir,” said Aristide, “I do not understand you. For twenty years you hold an innocent and virtuous woman under an infamous suspicion. She meets a sympathetic soul, and you come across her pouring into his ear the love and despair of a lifetime. You have more suspicion. You tell me you will give me a thousand pounds to go away with her. I take you at your word. And now you want to stamp on me. Ma foi! it is not reasonable.”
Mr. Ducksmith seized him by the lapels of his coat. A gasp of expectation went round the crowd. But Aristide recognized an agonized appeal in the eyes now bloodshot.