The Girl Philippa

Warner and the girl Philippa reëntered the Cabaret de Biribi together the uproar had become almost deafening. Confetti was thrown at them immediately, and they advanced all a-flutter with brilliant tatters.

The orchestra was playing, almost everybody was dancing, groups at tables along the edge of the floor sang, clinked glasses, and threw confetti without discrimination. The whole place – tables, floor, chandeliers, and people – streamed with multi-colored paper ribbons. Waiters swept it in heaps from the dancing floor.

Philippa entered the cashier's enclosure and dismissed the woman in charge. Seated once more on her high chair she opened her reticule and produced a small mirror. Then she leaned far over her counter toward Warner.

"Is it permitted me to powder my nose?" she whispered with childlike seriousness; but she laughed when he did, and, still laughing, made him a gay little gesture of adieu with her powder puff.

He stood looking at her for a moment, where she sat on her high chair behind the cage, intently occupied with her mirror, oblivious to the tumult around her. Then, the smile still lingering on his features, he turned to look for his new acquaintance, Halkett.

Old man Wildresse sidled up to the cashier's desk, opened the wicket, and went inside. Philippa, still using her tiny mirror, was examining a freckle very seriously.

"Eh, bien?" he growled. "Rien?"

"Nothing!"

"Drop that glass and talk!" he said harshly.

She turned and looked at him.

"I tell you it was silly to suspect such a man!" she said impatiently. "In my heart I feel humiliated that you should have set me to spy on him – "

"What's that!"

"No, I've had enough! I don't like the rôle; I never liked it! Are there no police in France – "

"Little idiot!" he said. "Will you hold your tongue?"

"It is a disgusting métier– "

"Damnation! Hold your tongue!" he repeated. "We've got to do what the Government tells us to do, haven't we?"

"Not I! Never again – "

"Yes, you will! Do you hear? Yes, you will, or I'll twist your neck! Now, I'm going to keep my eye on that other gentleman. Granted that the man you pumped is all right, I'm not so sure about the other, who seems to be an Englishman. I'm going over to stand near him. By and by I'll address him. And if I wink at you, leave your caisse with Mélanie, come over, and sit at their table again – "

"No!"

"Yes, you will!"

"No!"

"Yes, you will. And you'll also contrive it so the Englishman asks you to dance. Do you hear what I say? And you'll find out where he comes from, and when he arrived in Ausone, and where he is going, and whatever else you can worm out of him!" He glared at her. "Disobey if you dare," he added.

She was silent.

After a moment he continued in a softer voice:

"Do you want to see me in prison and my son in New Caledonia? Very well, then; do what the Government tells you to do."

"I – I've done enough – filthy work – " she stammered. "Why must I? I have never done anything wrong – "

"Did you hear what I said? Do you want to see Jacques in Noumea?"

"No," she said sullenly.

"Then do what I tell you, or, by God, they'll ship him there and me too!"

And he clasped his hands behind his back, peered sideways at her, shrugged, and went shuffling out of the enclosure.

Groups at various tables were singing and shouting; the floor seethed with sweating dancers. On the edge of this vortex the girl Philippa, from her high chair, looked darkly across the tumult toward the table where Halkett sat.

Something seemed to be happening there; she could see Wildresse gesticulating vigorously; she saw Warner making his way toward his friend, who was seated alone at a table, a lighted cigarette balanced between his fingers and one arm thrown carelessly around the back of the chair on which he sat.

He was looking coolly but steadily at three men who occupied the table next to him; Wildresse now stood between the two tables, and his emphatic gesticulations were apparently directed toward these three men; but in the uproar, and although he also appeared to be shouting, what he was saying remained inaudible.

Warner went over and seated himself beside Halkett; and now he could distinguish the harsh voice of the Patron raised in irritation:

"No politics! I'll not suffer political disputes in my cabaret!" he bawled. "Quarrels arise from such controversies. I'll have no quarrels in my place. Now, Messieurs, un peu de complaisance!"

One of the men he was exhorting leaned wide in his seat and looked insolently across at Halkett.

"It was the Englishman's fault," he retorted threateningly. "I and my friends here had been speaking of the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Serajevo. We were conversing peaceably and privately among ourselves, when that Englishman laughed at us – "

"You are mistaken," said Halkett quietly.

"Did you not laugh?" cried the second of the men at the next table.

"Yes, but not at what you were saying. I'm sorry if you thought so – "

The man half rose in his chair, exclaiming:

"Why shouldn't I think it natural for an Englishman to laugh at the murder of an Austrian arch-duke – "

"Stop that discussion!" cried Wildresse, angrily jerking his heavy head from Halkett to the three men at the other table. "Let it rest where it is, I tell you! The English gentleman says he did not laugh at what you were saying. Nom de Dieu! Nobody well brought up laughs at murder!" And to Halkett and Warner: "Be amiable enough, gentlemen, to carry this misunderstanding no further. I've had sufficient trouble with the police in my time."

Warner laid one hand lightly on Halkett's arm.

"All right," he said to Wildresse; "no trouble shall originate with us." And, to Halkett, in a lowered voice: "Have you an idea that those men over there are trying to force a quarrel?"

"Of course."

"Have you ever seen them before?"

"Not one of them."

Warner's lips scarcely moved as he said:

"Is it the matter of the envelope?"