He signalled to a waiter and ordered a bottle; then, with a glance at the half-dozen people sitting at the table, changed his order.
“Two bottles and some glasses.
Perhaps these gentlemen and ladies will allow me to offer them a glass too.”
There was a murmur of polite acceptance.
The wine was brought and Charley filled a number of glasses and passed them down the table.
There was a great deal of health drinking and clinking of glasses together.
“Vive l’Entente Cordiale.”
“A nos allies.”
They all got very friendly and merry.
Charley was having a grand time.
But he had come to dance, and when the orchestra began once more to play he pulled Lydia to her feet.
The floor was soon crowded and he noticed that a lot of curious eyes were fixed upon her; he guessed that it had spread through the company who she was; it made her to those bullies and their women, somewhat to Charley’s embarrassment, an object of interest, but she did not seem even to be aware that anyone looked at her.
Presently the patron touched her on the shoulder.
“I have a word to say to you,” he muttered.
Lydia released herself from Charley’s arms and going to one side with the fat landlord listened to what he said.
Charley could see that she was startled.
He was evidently trying to point someone out to her, for Charley saw her craning her neck; but with the thick mass of dancers in the way she could see nothing, and in a moment she followed the patron to the other end of the long cellar.
She seemed to have forgotten Charley.
Somewhat piqued, he went back to his table.
Two couples were sitting there comfortably enjoying his champagne, and they greeted him heartily.
They were all very familiar now and they asked him what he had done with his little friend.
He told them what had happened.
One of the men was a short thick-set fellow with a red face and a magnificent moustache.
His shirt open at the neck showed his hairy chest, and his arms, for he had taken off his coat in that stifling heat and turned up his shirt-sleeves, were profusely tattooed.
He was with a girl who might have been twenty years younger than he.
She had very sleek black hair, parted in the middle, with a bun on her neck, a face dead-white with powder, scarlet lips and eyes heavy with mascara.
The man nudged her with his elbow.
“Now then, why don’t you dance with the Englishman?
You’ve drunk his bubbly, haven’t you?”
“I don’t mind,” she said.
She danced clingingly.
She smelt strongly of scent, but not so strongly as to disguise the fact that she had eaten at dinner a dish highly flavoured with garlic.
She smiled alluringly at Charley.
“He must be rotten with vice, this pretty little Englishman,” she gurgled, with a squirm of a lithe body in her black, but dusty, velvet gown.
“Why do you say that?” he smiled.
“To be with the wife of Berger, what’s that if it isn’t vice?”
“She’s my sister,” said Charley gaily.
She thought this such a good joke that when the band stopped and they went back to the table she repeated it to the assembled company.
They all thought it very funny, and the thick-set man with the hairy chest slapped him on the back.
“Farceur, va!”
Charley was not displeased to be looked upon as a humorist.
It was nice to be a success.
He realized that as the lover of a notorious murderer’s wife he was something of a personage there.
They urged him to come again.
“But come alone next time,” said the girl he had just danced with.
“We’ll find you a girl.
What d’you want to get mixed up with one of the Russians for?
The wine of the country, that’s what you want.”
Charley ordered another bottle of champagne.
He was far from tight, but he was merry.