ROBERT BARR Ultimate Collection: 20 Novels & 65+ Detective Stories. Robert Barr

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СКАЧАТЬ don't look up to much,' he said. 'What are you?'

      'I am a teacher of the French language in London.'

      'Umph!' growled Simard, evidently in no wise prepossessed by my appearance. 'I thought you weren't much of a fighter. The gendarmes will make short work of this fellow,' he growled to the chairman.

      'Brother Ducharme is vouched for by the whole English circle,' replied the president firmly.

      'Oh, the English! I think very little of them. Still, it doesn't matter,' and with a shrug of the shoulders he shuffled to his seat again, leaving me standing there in a very embarrassed state of mind; my brain in a whirl. That the man was present with his own face was bewildering enough, but that he should be here under his own name was simply astounding. I scarcely heard what the president said. It seemed to the effect that Simard would take me to his own room, where we might talk over our plans. And now Simard rose again from his chair, and said to the president that if nothing more were wanted of him, we should go. Accordingly we left the place of meeting together. I watched my comrade narrowly. There was now a trembling eagerness in his action, and without a word he hurried me to the nearest café, where we sat down before a little iron table on the pavement.

      'Garçon!' he shouted harshly, 'bring me four absinthes. What will you drink, Ducharme?',

      'A café-cognac, if you please.'

      'Bah!' cried Simard; 'better have absinthe.'

      Then he cursed the waiter for his slowness. When the absinthe came he grasped the half-full glass and swallowed the liquid raw, a thing I had never seen done before. Into the next measure of the wormwood he poured the water impetuously from the carafe, another thing I had never seen done before, and dropped two lumps of sugar into it. Over the third glass he placed a flat perforated plated spoon, piled the sugar on this bridge, and now quite expertly allowed the water to drip through, the proper way of concocting this seductive mixture. Finishing his second glass he placed the perforated spoon over the fourth, and began now more calmly sipping the third while the water dripped slowly into the last glass.

      Here before my eyes was enacted a more wonderful change than the gradual transformation of transparent absinthe into an opaque opalescent liquid. Simard, under the influence of the drink, was slowly becoming the Simard I had known ten years before. Remarkable! Absinthe having in earlier years made a beast of the man was now forming a man out of the beast. His staring eyes took on an expression of human comradeship. The whole mystery became perfectly clear to me without a question asked or an answer uttered. This man was no spy, but a genuine anarchist. However it happened, he had become a victim of absinthe, one of many with whom I was acquainted, although I never met any so far sunk as he. He was into his fourth glass, and had ordered two more when he began to speak.

      'Here's to us,' he cried, with something like a civilised smile on his gaunt face. 'You're not offended at what I said in the meeting, I hope?'

      'Oh, no,' I answered.

      'That's right. You see, I once belonged to the Secret Service, and if my chief was there today, we would soon find ourselves in a cool dungeon. We couldn't trip up Eugène Valmont.'

      At these words, spoken with sincerity, I sat up in my chair, and I am sure such an expression of enjoyment came into my face that if I had not instantly suppressed it, I might have betrayed myself.

      'Who was Eugène Valmont?' I asked, in a tone of assumed indifference.

      Mixing his fifth glass he nodded sagely.

      'You wouldn't ask that question if you'd been in Paris a dozen years ago. He was the Government's chief detective, and he knew more of anarchists, yes, and of Apaches, too, than either you or I do. He had more brains in his little finger than that whole lot babbling there tonight. But the Government being a fool, as all governments are, dismissed him, and because I was his assistant, they dismissed me as well. They got rid of all his staff. Valmont disappeared. If I could have found him, I wouldn't be sitting here with you tonight; but he was right to disappear. The Government did all they could against us who had been his friends, and I for one came through starvation, and was near throwing myself in the Seine, which sometimes I wish I had done. Here, garçon, another absinthe. But by-and-by I came to like the gutter, and here I am. I'd rather have the gutter and absinthe than the Luxembourg without it. I've had my revenge on the Government many times since, for I knew their ways, and often have I circumvented the police. That's why they respect me among the anarchists. Do you know how I joined? I knew all their passwords, and walked right into one of their meetings, alone and in rags.

      '"Here am I," I said; "Adolph Simard, late second assistant to Eugène Valmont, chief detective to the French Government."

      'There were twenty weapons covering me at once, but I laughed.

      '"I'm starving," I cried, "and I want something to eat, and more especially something to drink. In return for that I'll show you every rat-hole you've got. Lift the president's chair, and there's a trap-door that leads to the Rue Blanc. I'm one of you, and I'll tell you the tricks of the police."

      'Such was my initiation, and from that moment the police began to pick their spies out of the Seine, and now they leave us alone. Even Valmont himself could do nothing against the anarchists since I have joined them.'

      Oh, the incredible self-conceit of human nature! Here was this ruffian proclaiming the limitations of Valmont, who half an hour before had shaken his hand within the innermost circle of his order! Yet my heart warmed towards the wretch who had remembered me and my exploits.

      It now became my anxious and difficult task to lure Simard away from this café and its absinthe. Glass after glass of the poison had brought him up almost to his former intellectual level, but now it was shoving him rapidly down the hill again. I must know where his room was situated, yet if I waited much longer the man would be in a state of drunken imbecility which would not only render it impossible for him to guide me to his room, but likely cause both of us to be arrested by the police. I tried persuasion, and he laughed at me; I tried threats, whereat he scowled and cursed me as a renegade from England. At last the liquor overpowered him, and his head sunk on the metal table and the dark blue cap fell to the floor.

      I was in despair, but now received a lesson which taught me that if a man leaves a city, even for a short time, he falls out of touch with its ways. I called the waiter, and said to him,—

      'Do you know my friend here?'

      'I do not know his name,' replied the garçon, 'but I have seen him many times at this café. He is usually in this state when he has money.'

      'Do you know where he lives? He promised to take me with him, and I am a stranger in Paris.'

      'Have no discontent, monsieur. Rest tranquil; I will intervene.'

      With this he stepped across the pavement in front of the café, into the street, and gave utterance to a low, peculiar whistle. The café was now nearly deserted, for the hour was very late, or, rather, very early. When the waiter returned I whispered to him in some anxiety,—

      'Not the police, surely?'

      'But no!' he cried in scorn; 'certainly not the police.'

      He went on unconcernedly taking in the empty chairs and tables. A few minutes later there swaggered up to the café two of the most disreputable, low-browed scoundrels I had ever seen, each wearing a dark-blue cap, with a glazed peak over the eyes; caps exactly similar to the one which lay in front of Simard. The band of Apaches which now permeates all Paris has risen since my time, and Simard СКАЧАТЬ