"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" he demanded.
"Comment ça va, mon vieux!" retorted Plouff, advancing.
"Mon lieutenant—bon garçon. Oh-h, mon vieux, il faut que je vous dis que nous avons une grande affaire. Où est la belle Antigone?"
"Chez elle," muttered the other. "Entrez. Bon soir, Monsieur Lieutenant."
Mr. Spokesly walked through into a lofty hallway. A door on the left led into the darkness of the garden, another on the right opened upon a large chamber, dimly lighted and bounded by a lattice-work terrace, and in front ascended one of those imposing staircases which the Latin inserts into the most insignificant edifices. The room on the right was simply a rough-and-ready café, with a small bar in the corner set up in an unfurnished residence. Upstairs was a select gambling hall for officers only. And practically French officers only. There was only one reason why English officers, for example, did not visit this place. They did not know of its existence. It was a club. Madame Antigone was the caretaker who also managed the canteen on the ground floor, and encouraged, by her formidable discretion, the maintenance of a small corner of France in an alien land. Not the France of popular fancy with cocottes and cancan dancing and much foolish abandon, but the France of the Cercle and the Casino, sober-minded devotees of roulette and connoisseurs of sound liquor.
Some of the latter was immediately forthcoming. Even Mr. Spokesly, whose conception of a drink was that of most English and Americans—a decoction of no ascertainable flavour and with the kick of a vicious horse—even he appreciated to a small degree the body and generous vintage of the wine brought to their table by a soldier in hospital dress. He looked round as he drank. There were men of all ranks of the land and sea forces, clean-shaven and boyish, ferociously moustached and obscured by short, truculent beards. They played dominoes or cards, smoked and sipped, or conversed with the grave gestures which are the heritage of a thousand emotional years. They were not demonstrative. Indeed, the French Navy is so undemonstrative one might imagine it recruited entirely from the Englishmen of modern fiction. There is no doubt that the nature of their profession has left its mark upon them. For them is no vision of conquest or gigantic death-grapple with a modern foe, but rather the careful guarding of a remote and insalubrious colonial empire. It has made them attentive to fussy details, faithful to fantastic conceptions of honour, partial to pensioned ease and married life if one escapes the fevers of Cochin China and Algeria. Among them Plouff was accepted as a weird variant of undeniable home stock, a creature who led a double life as Englishman and Frenchman, un monstre, a grotesque emblem of the great Entente. They stood about him as he sat, his head far back on his shoulders, his large red mouth open beneath the great moustache, telling them the story of his lieutenant's incredible gallantry. They listened in silence, glancing deferentially towards Mr. Spokesly from time to time, as though he were acquiring a singular and heroic virtue in their estimation for his audacity in fumbling with a woman's destiny. But Mr. Spokesly himself felt neither heroic nor audacious. He was uneasy. He interrupted the eloquence of his bosun as soon as he had finished his drink. He had a picture in his mind of Evanthia waiting somewhere, waiting for him with her amber eyes smouldering and ready to break out into a torrent of reproaches for his sluggish obedience. She had achieved that ascendancy over him. He was conscious of a species of mingled terror and delight in her personality. He rose.
"What's the matter?" demanded Plouff, astonished.
Mr. Spokesly regarded him with considerable impatience.
"How can I stop here?" he inquired. "You ought to have more sense," and he walked away towards the garden.
Plouff looked round at his circle of listeners, as though calling them to witness the strenuous nature of service with the English, and followed. He found Mr. Spokesly pausing irresolutely by the foot of the stairs, confronting a large woman with strongly marked brows and a severe expression who was descending the stairs with the air of a proprietress.