“They had none.
They had nothing—two hundred francs and some rings.
Not even shoe-laces that they could have hung themselves with!”
Relieved that there had been no Cartes d’Identite Dick continued.
“The Italian Countess is still an American citizen.
She is the grand-daughter—” he told a string of lies slowly and portentously, “of John D.
Rockefeller Mellon.
You have heard of him?”
“Yes, oh heavens, yes.
You mistake me for a nobody?”
“In addition she is the niece of Lord Henry Ford and so connected with the Renault and Citroen companies—” He thought he had better stop here. However the sincerity of his voice had begun to affect the officer, so he continued:
“To arrest her is just as if you arrested a great royalty of England.
It might mean—War!”
“But how about the Englishwoman?”
“I’m coming to that.
She is affianced to the brother of the Prince of Wales—the Duke of Buckingham.”
“She will be an exquisite bride for him.”
“Now we are prepared to give—” Dick calculated quickly, “one thousand francs to each of the girls—and an additional thousand to the father of the ‘serious’ one.
Also two thousand in addition, for you to distribute as you think best—” he shrugged his shoulders, “—among the men who made the arrest, the lodging-house keeper and so forth.
I shall hand you the five thousand and expect you to do the negotiating immediately.
Then they can be released on bail on some charge like disturbing the peace, and whatever fine there is will be paid before the magistrate tomorrow—by messenger.”
Before the officer spoke Dick saw by his expression that it would be all right.
The man said hesitantly,
“I have made no entry because they have no Cartes d’Identite.
I must see—give me the money.”
An hour later Dick and M. Gausse dropped the women by the Majestic Hotel, where Lady Caroline’s chauffeur slept in her landaulet.
“Remember,” said Dick, “you owe Monsieur Gausse a hundred dollars a piece.”
“All right,” Mary agreed,
“I’ll give him a check to-morrow—and something more.”
“Not I!” Startled, they all turned to Lady Caroline, who, now entirely recovered, was swollen with righteousness.
“The whole thing was an outrage.
By no means did I authorize you to give a hundred dollars to those people.”
Little Gausse stood beside the car, his eyes blazing suddenly.
“You won’t pay me?”
“Of course she will,” said Dick.
Suddenly the abuse that Gausse had once endured as a bus boy in London flamed up and he walked through the moonlight up to Lady Caroline.
He whipped a string of condemnatory words about her, and as she turned away with a frozen laugh, he took a step after her and swiftly planted his little foot in the most celebrated of targets.
Lady Caroline, taken by surprise, flung up her hands like a person shot as her sailor-clad form sprawled forward on the sidewalk.
Dick’s voice cut across her raging: “Mary, you quiet her down! or you’ll both be in leg-irons in ten minutes!”
On the way back to the hotel old Gausse said not a word, until they passed the Juan-les-Pins Casino, still sobbing and coughing with jazz; then he sighed forth:
“I have never seen women like this sort of women.
I have known many of the great courtesans of the world, and for them I have much respect often, but women like these women I have never seen before.”
XI
Dick and Nicole were accustomed to go together to the barber, and have haircuts and shampoos in adjoining rooms.
From Dick’s side Nicole could hear the snip of shears, the count of changes, the Voilas and Pardons.
The day after his return they went down to be shorn and washed in the perfumed breeze of the fans.
In front of the Carleton Hotel, its windows as stubbornly blank to the summer as so many cellar doors, a car passed them and Tommy Barban was in it.
Nicole’s momentary glimpse of his expression, taciturn and thoughtful and, in the second of seeing her, wide-eyed and alert, disturbed her.
She wanted to be going where he was going.
The hour with the hair-dresser seemed one of the wasteful intervals that composed her life, another little prison.