Castles in the Air — Chapter II - A Fool's Paradise Pt 2

2. That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des Pyramides.

From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small income on the top floor of the house, that his household consisted of a housekeeper who cooked and did the work of the apartment for him, and an odd-job man who came every morning to clean boots, knives, draw water and carry up fuel from below.

I also learned that there was a good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in Mr. Farewell’s bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he tried to keep a virtual prisoner under his eye.

The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers frayed out round the ankles, I—Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings—was lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des Pyramides.

I was watching the movements of a man, similarly attired to myself, as he crossed and recrossed the courtyard to draw water from the well or to fetch wood from one of the sheds, and then disappeared up the main staircase.

A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man was indeed in the employ of Mr. Farewell.

I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten o’clock I saw that my man had obviously finished his work for the morning and had finally come down the stairs ready to go home.

I

followed him.

I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where he spent an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing dominoes and drinking eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my heels outside.

Suffice it to say that I did follow him to his house just behind the fish-market, and that half an hour later, tired out but triumphant, having knocked at his door, I was admitted into the squalid room which he occupied.

He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.

“My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me,” I said with my usual affability.

“I was telling him just awhile ago that I needed a man to look after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and he told me that in you I would find just the man I wanted.

” “Hm!

” grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought.

“I work for Farewell in the mornings.

Why should he recommend me to you?

Am I not giving satisfaction?

” “Perfect satisfaction,” I rejoined urbanely; “that is just the point.

Mr. Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I offered to pay you twenty sous for your morning’s work instead of the ten which you are getting from him.

” I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.

“I’d best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work,” he said;

and his tone was no longer sullen now.

“Quite unnecessary,” I rejoined.

“I arranged everything with Mr. Farewell before I came to you.

He has already found someone else to do his work, and I shall want you to be at my office by seven o’clock to-morrow morning.

And,” I added, for I am always cautious and judicious, and I now placed a piece of silver in his hand, “here are the first twenty sous on account.

” He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious.

He not only accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs, and assured me all the time that he would do his best to give me entire satisfaction.

I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the office the next morning at seven o’clock precisely.

Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left free to enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was determined to play the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound of the wedding bells.

3. I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides.

Yes, I!

Even I, who had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the destinies of Europe.

But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal I would have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a guerdon.

The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my sensibilities, endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination.

The dreary monotony of fetching water and fuel from below and polishing the boots of that arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a less stout spirit quail.

I had, of course, seen through the scoundrel’s game at once.

He had rendered Estelle quite helpless by keeping all her papers of identification and by withholding from her all the letters which, no doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from time to time.

Thus she was entirely in his power.

But, thank heaven!

only momentarily, for I, Hector Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the watch.

Now and then the monotony of my existence and the hardship of my task were relieved by a brief glimpse of Estelle or a smile of understanding from her lips; now and then she would contrive to murmur as she brushed past me while I was polishing the scoundrel’s study floor, “Any luck yet?

” And this quiet understanding between us gave me courage to go on with my task.

After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell kept his valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study.

After that I always kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket.

On the fifth day I was very nearly caught trying to take an impression of the lock of the bureau drawer.

On the seventh I succeeded, and took the impression over to a locksmith I knew of, and gave him an order to have a key made to fit it immediately.

On the ninth day I had the key.

Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days which would have daunted one less bold and less determined.

I don’t think that Farewell ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never once did he leave me alone in his study whilst I was at work there polishing the oak floor.

And in the meanwhile I could see how he was pursuing my beautiful Estelle with his unwelcome attentions.

At times I feared that he meant to abduct her; his was a powerful personality and she seemed like a little bird fighting against the fascination of a serpent.

Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to dwell upon her lovely face.

I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or twice, whilst I knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as if my life depended on it, whilst he—the unscrupulous scoundrel—sat calmly at his desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next moment I must attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down senseless whilst I ransacked his drawers.

My horror of anything approaching violence saved me from so foolish a step.

Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius pierced through the darkness of my misery.

For some days now Madame Dupont, Farewell’s housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me.

Every morning now, when I came to work, there was a cup of hot coffee waiting for me, and, when I left, a small parcel of something appetizing for me to take away.

“Hallo!

” I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I caught sight of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an unmistakable expression of admiration.

“Does salvation lie where I least expected it?

” For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but the next morning I had my arm round her waist—a metre and a quarter, Sir, where it was tied in the middle—and had imprinted a kiss upon her glossy cheek.

What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to describe.

Once Estelle came into the kitchen when I was staggering under a load of a hundred kilos sitting on my knee.

The reproachful glance which she cast at me filled my soul with unspeakable sorrow.

But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in the end.

A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening.

Estelle had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the kitchen, where Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me.

I had brought a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly addled and incapable.

I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her eyes swimming in happy tears.

I had not a moment to lose.

The very next minute I was in the study and with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and turning over the letters and papers which I found therein.

Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.

I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: “The papers of Mlle.

Estelle Bachelier.

” A brief examination of the packet sufficed.

It consisted of a number of letters written in English, which language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same signature, “John Pike and Sons, solicitors,” and the address was at the top, “168 Cornhill, London.

” It also contained my Estelle’s birth certificate, her mother’s marriage certificate, and her police registration card.

I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful risks which I was running at this moment.

I turned like an animal at bay to see Estelle’s beautiful face peeping at me through the half-open door.

“Hist!

” she whispered.

“Have you got the papers?

” I waved the packet triumphantly.

She, excited and adorable, stepped briskly into the room.

“Let me see,” she murmured excitedly.

But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily: “Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and endured.

” “Compensation?

” “In the shape of a kiss.

” Oh!

I won’t say that she threw herself in my arms then and there.

No, no!

She demurred.

All young girls, it seems, demur under the circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers from me and, with a woman’s natural curiosity, had turned the English letters over and over, even though she could not read a word of them.

Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment when I was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so tantalizingly denied me, we heard the opening and closing of the front door.

Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the study save the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but the door leading into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was standing, hanging up his hat and cloak on the rack.

4. We stood hand in hand—Estelle and I—fronting the door through which Mr. Farewell would presently appear.

“To-night we fly together,” I declared.

“Where to?

” she whispered.

“Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?

” “Yes!

” “Then I will take you there to-night.

To-morrow we will be married before the Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England.

” “Yes, yes!

” she murmured.

“When he comes in I’ll engage him in conversation,” I continued hurriedly.

“You make a dash for the door and run downstairs as fast as you can.

I’ll follow as quickly as may be and meet you under the porte-cochere.

” She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of our presence, stepped quietly into the room.

“Estelle,” he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly caught sight of us both, “what are you doing here with that lout?

” I was trembling with excitement—not fear, of course, though Farewell was a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was.

I stepped boldly forward, covering the adored one with my body.

“The lout,” I said with calm dignity, “has frustrated the machinations of a knave.

To-morrow I go to England in order to place Mademoiselle Estelle Bachelier under the protection of her legal guardians, Messieurs Pike and Sons, solicitors, of London.

” He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe entrenchment behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad dog.

He had me by the throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to the floor, with him on the top of me, squeezing the breath out of me till I verily thought that my last hour had come.

Estelle had run out of the room like a startled hare.

This, of course, was in accordance with my instructions to her, but I could not help wishing then that she had been less obedient and somewhat more helpful.

As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that savage scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted with passion, whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips: “You meddlesome fool!

You oaf!

You toad!

This for your interference!

” he added as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.

I felt my senses reeling.

My head was swimming, my eyes no longer could see distinctly.

It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my chest would finally squeeze the last breath out of my body.

I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother’s knee, for verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my fading senses, came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor was shaken as with an earthquake.

The next moment the pressure on my chest seemed to relax.

I could hear Farewell’s voice uttering language such as it would be impossible for me to put on record; and through it all hoarse and convulsive cries of: “You shan’t hurt him—you limb of Satan, you!

” Gradually strength returned to me.

I could see as well as hear, and what I saw filled me with wonder and with pride.

Wonder at Ma’ame Dupont’s pluck!

Pride in that her love for me had given such power to her mighty arms!

Aroused from her slumbers by the sound of the scuffle, she had run to the study, only to find me in deadly peril of my life.

Without a second’s hesitation she had rushed on Farewell, seized him by the collar, pulled him away from me, and then thrown the whole weight of her hundred kilos upon him, rendering him helpless.

Ah, woman!

lovely, selfless woman!

My heart a prey to remorse, in that I could not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I nevertheless finally struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment and down the stairs, never drawing breath till I felt Estelle’s hand resting confidingly upon my arm.

5. I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under the care of the kind concierge who was Theodore’s aunt.

Then I, too, went home, determined to get a good night’s rest.

The morning would be a busy one for me.

There would be the special licence to get, the cure of St. Jacques to interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for, and the places to book on the stagecoach for Boulogne _en route_ for England—and fortune.

I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just.

I was up betimes and started on my round of business at eight o’clock the next morning.

I was a little troubled about money, because when I had paid for the licence and given to the cure the required fee for the religious service and ceremony, I had only five francs left out of the hundred which the adored one had given me.

However, I booked the seats on the stage-coach and determined to trust to luck.

Once Estelle was my wife, all money care would be at an end, since no power on earth could stand between me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal for which I had so ably striven.

The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o’clock, and it was just upon ten when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up the dingy staircase which led to the adored one’s apartments.

I knocked at the door.

It was opened by a young man, who with a smile courteously bade me enter.

I felt a little bewildered—and slightly annoyed.

My Estelle should not receive visits from young men at this hour.

I pushed past the intruder in the passage and walked boldly into the room beyond.

Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling, a dimple in each cheek.

I approached her with outstretched arms, but she paid no heed to me, and turned to the young man, who had followed me into the room.

“Adrien,” she said, “this is kind M. Ratichon, who at risk of his life obtained for us all my papers of identification and also the valuable name and address of the English lawyers.

” “Monsieur,” added the young man as he extended his hand to me, “Estelle and I will remain eternally your debtors.

” I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and turned to Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath expressed in every line of my face.

“Estelle,” I said, “what is the meaning of this?

” “Oh,” she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, “you must not call me Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face.

We are indeed grateful to you, my good M. Ratichon,” she continued more seriously, “and though I only promised you another hundred francs when your work for me was completed, my husband and I have decided to give you a thousand francs in view of the risks which you ran on our behalf.

” “Your husband!

” I stammered.

“I was married to M. Adrien Cazalès a month ago,” she said, “but we had perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr. Farewell once vowed to me that unless I became his wife he would destroy all my papers of identification, and then—even if I ever succeeded in discovering who were the English lawyers who had charge of my father’s money—I could never prove it to them that I and no one else was entitled to it.

But for you, dear M. Ratichon,” added the cruel and shameless one, “I should indeed never have succeeded.

” In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I retained mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm: “But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle?

Why have kept your marriage a secret from me?

Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for you?

” “And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me,” queried the false one archly, “if I had told you everything?

” I groaned.

Perhaps she was right.

I don’t know.

I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme.

Cazalès again.

But I met Ma’ame Dupont by accident soon after.

She has left Mr. Farewell’s service.

She still weighs one hundred kilos.

I often call on her of an evening.

Ah, well!

CHAPTER III. — ON THE BRINK