Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 776
Two gendarmes and a very thin man with a wiry moustache and a frock coat were in the office of the concierge when they went to ask her to tell Walter, if he returned, that they would be away only forty minutes. They did not even look at Cassie but the thin man bowed a little to Mr Penkethman, muttered gently: “Good day, Mr Commissioner,” and slightly waved his top hat. The concierge, more majestic than in the morning and wearing now a tight dress of shiny satin, patted Cassie on the shoulder and said:
“Belle dame, ce sera fait,” meaning that she would carefully give her message to Walter.
“They can’t,” Cassie said to Mr Penkethman when they were confronting the grey wall in the street, “mean to arrest me. That woman would not have been so loving....”
“They can,” Mr Penkethman said, “do anything.... I don’t mean to say that they will.” He added whilst they waited for a taxi to draw up to them: “That was the Commissary of Police of this district. He lives in this building. The men with guns may have been there as the merest accident. Waiting on him for instructions, say, in their ordinary turn of duty....”
The thin man came to the taxi door, his top hat still in his hand. He must be either tuberculous or an indefatigable athlete to have such a lined face with little patches of red over the cheekbones. He said that he was only too delighted to have two of his men to wait upon M. the Commissioner. The streets were still liable to disturbance. The Palace of the Louvre to which he understood they were going was undergoing certain transmogrifications. The gendarmes, who were very intelligent fellows, would make it certain that they saw what pictures or objets d’art they wanted to see. The King’s Government would be desolated if distinguished visitors were incommoded in the most hospitable city in the world.
He waved his top hat to the driver. The taxi went off, the two gendarmes on their motor-bicycles following it, their front wheels almost touching the taxi’s hind tires.... Cassie said that they seemed very attentive and kind.
... No Walter when they got back to the studio! The concierge said that he had not been back or gone out again. She would certainly have seen him. Cassie said not to talk about it. She said she was a strong-minded woman but there were too many emotions about. You don’t see Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe and the rue de Rivoli without having emotions... seeing them for the first time. With two men with guns in attendance. The gendarmes had enormous revolvers strapped above their muscular hips....
The Inspector had better re-inspect her pictures. He could look over her colours too and perhaps make suggestions, if he knew as much about pictures as all that.
They looked over her pictures, her brushes, her tubes of colour and the gallows-like easel that belonged to the studio.
It grew dusky in that dim place, though in the upper sky behind the apartment building they could see the breasts of swallows tinged by the sunset. She was quietly transferring her colours from the box in which they had travelled to the shelves of a white-wood miniature chest of drawers. Suddenly she exclaimed:
“Damn it all — what are you doing with us? What the Hell are they doing with us? What is it about? You can’t tell me there’s nothing mysterious about all this. And you’re behind the scenes. What is it? What do you suspect? You must have suspicions.”
He said:
“You’re working up to hysteria. I don’t wonder. There certainly are curiousnesses. But I’m in no more of the know than you. M. de la Penthièvre would have been quite within his rights in detaining Walter. Or anyone. He doesn’t seem to have done so.”
She asked heatedly: “What about all these police?” What did it mean, their being sleuthed on the way to the Louvre and back? Why should the Commissaire be speaking to the concierge?
He said, as if with deep sorrow that she might take it like that, then on the other hand she had to remember that he, ex-Chief Inspector Penkethman, now Commissioner of the League of Nations for certain inquiries, was a distinguished stranger. And the first duty of a Commissaire of Police was to see that distinguished strangers suffered no indignities or hindrances that he could prevent. To let a Commissioner of Geneva be, say, assaulted or murdered in the streets of Paris might cause the gravest inconveniences to a new Government, only just seated in the saddle. At the very least it would mean permanent destitution to the Commissaire who had had the opportunity of protecting the diplomat and had not taken it. Let her look at the facts in all their aspects.
She said she damn well had. He would probably say that it was natural that, if he lived in that house, a Commissaire should talk to his concierge. Or even that he should order gendarmes to meet him in the concierge’s sitting-room. And certainly he was right to protect foreign policemen of distinction... But what she wanted to know was why M. de la Penthièvre had planted them just there, right under the nose of the Commissaire.... And why, if he had the Commissaire to telephone to he should have come this morning to ask the concierge if they had safely arrived and to send in to her, Cassie, a box of chocolates?
Mr Penkethman stood for a long time pondering with his head hanging on his vast chest.
“You’ll observe,” he said slowly and painfully, “that your last two questions cancel each other out. If he knew that the Commissaire lived here why, precisely if he were sleuthing you, didn’t he ask the Commissaire for news of you? You’d say, wouldn’t you, that that would be the first thing that he would do? It would look then as if he did not know that the Commissaire lived here. In that case there was nothing suspicious in his having planted you in this studio.” As a matter of fact there would not be, he continued, anything necessarily suspicious if he had planted them there under the back windows of that official. Nothing would be more natural for a high functionary of the Kingdom than to ask for such information from the police. What apartments were vacant and what sort of people would be likely to inhabit them was exactly the sort of information that the French police most avidly sought for. So that, since the young people had needed a studio in either the Fifth or Sixth Arrondissements, of a certain dimension and costing not more than from three to four hundred francs a month, nothing could be more innocent than the high functionary, having the services of the police at his disposition, radioing to the Commissaires of those departments. Then the Commissaire of the Arrondissement they were in would quite as innocently radio back to the high functionary that there was exactly the studio he wanted in his own back yard....
Mr Penkethman shook his heavy head.
“The curiousness for me,” he said, “does not lie in his having asked the Commissaire to act as a real-estate agent. All the Commissaires in Paris except two or three have been replaced, so that the Government may be sure of having safe fellows in the commissariats. And probably M. de la Penthièvre actually nominated this fellow so that he might be sure of his active and zealous assistance. But it remains amazing that he should have called here at such an early hour this morning.” She had, he went on, to consider that he was the Great Chamberlain of the Kingdom returning after a short official visit to another country, at one in the morning, to find a situation of almost inextricable confusion. He probably sat up all night just so as to get control of the strings again. The confusion must have been appalling. The king had certainly been wounded. Of that there could be no doubt. But he alone could really keep control of the machinery of government; his brother, the Duke of Chartres, was an impossible person; his next heir an infant of six months. His ministers with the exception of M. de la Penthièvre himself were all admirably honest persons but none of them was of the stature to face the present position of the nation without having behind him the backing of an active and popular monarch. It was doubtful if even M. de la Penthièvre could have done that....
And they were to believe that this indispensable personality, just returned to his ministry from abroad, had come trotting half Paris over to present chocolates to a little tart whom he had met by accident on a steamer? It was incredible. He had ten thousand equerries, grooms of the chamber, orderlies, colonels whom he could have sent — whom any minister would have sent. It would be almost as flattering and more spectacular for the lady to receive her chocolates from the gloved hands of a bronzed veteran with thirty medal-ribbons on his cheek and the scarlet ribbon of the cordon of the Legion of Honour than if he had given her them with his almost too white, plump hands. Indeed, even if he had the leisure that was what any minister expert in the arts of love would have done to the lady he desired to seduce. As much as to say: Ha, if I have such glittering heroes for my lackeys what a devil of a fellow I myself must be....
Then they must take it that he did not desire to seduce her. But what else, in the name of all the gods of Greece, could he want? If she and Walter had been glittering American magnates it would have been appropriate and at least comprehensible — though there again a glittering staff colonel would have done equally well. But Cassie three times over had told them that she was the illegitimate daughter of a man unknown in the state of Washington. She had no doubt wanted to get it well into Walter’s head so that he might look before he leaped.... Mr Penkethman stopped suddenly and asked with a ray of hope on his melancholy face:
“You aren’t perhaps a daughter of the Prince of Wales?
... Or even of the late Duke of Orleans?... He was rather rufous...”
Cassie shook her dark maroon locks and answered:
“No such hope. Father was floor headman in a department store and my mother his legitimate spouse. But she has often said she wished I had been a bastard so that she might never have seen his face. He was the head elder of the first Church of the Anti-pedal Baptists of Seattle.... He was also a grandson of Brigham Young... The founder of the Mormon Church. So he had determination, courage, piety and lechery in his very blood....”
“And you?” the large man asked.
She laughed negligently that mother always said she was a chip of the old block or, alternatively, a limb of Satan, neither of them very flattering appellations, but kindly meant. Then she exclaimed suddenly with amusement:
“But supposing it was Walter... who was a royal by-blow! He has had time to tell me that his mother was a real beauty in Paris thirty years ago.... His father was a trunk-seller there at the time.... Mightn’t a royal Prince?... Walter’s said strongly to resemble this king here... Though I couldn’t myself see the resemblance....”
“The theory,” Mr Penkethman said slowly and sadly, “would be worth entertaining... Very well worth entertaining but for two things.” The French royal princes were all exiled from France. They had been for over fifty years till today. So that to make the theory possible Walter would have had to be begotten in Jersey, or Twickenham, or Brussels, or St Petersburg. The one place that was out of the question would be Paris.... And then, as a rule, bastards are not a very highly prized commodity. M. de la Penthièvre would have been more likely to have kept him out of the country than to have facilitated his movements with a laisser-passer in his passport.
“All the same,” Cassie persisted, “isn’t it possible that they might have found out something of the sort and have deported him as a possible pretender to the throne? He certainly has something royal in his air. And the Duke of Orleans or someone may have been in Paris incognito. Or they might have gone to Jersey or Twickenham on a holiday....”
“I’ll bet my hat,” Mr Penkethman exclaimed with unusual vehemence for him, “I’ll bet a thousand pounds to a penny that he has not been deported from this country as a possible pretender. Anything else you like, but not that.” His voice took on suddenly an almost pleading tone:
“Let’s not lose our heads,” he said. “Let’s remain within the bounds of reason. Let’s go out and dine. We can keep in touch with here by the telephone. There are a hundred reasons why a young man might be late in Paris.” They ought to remember that Walter was undoubtedly on a secret mission. The rue d’Annam might have been blown to pieces by Communist shells. “N. White” might have gone to Meaux. The Communist headquarters had retreated to there three days ago. Walter would want to put his detective story in the hands of Mr Assurbanipalov himself, if that was the name.... No, he would not have rung her up. Phones were listened in on. He would not have wanted to call attention to her... To his love nest! That might well mean that they would both be deported, later.... Or worse!... He went on after a pause: “Hundreds of possible reasons... But let us go and dine. A few yards from here. My large frame needs maintenance. Otherwise I lose my keenness of apprehension.... Hang it all, a young man loose in Paris after ten years’ absence... He may have been seized upon by an imperious ex-mistress after a long day spent in searching for N. White. He may have been dragged to the Ritz bar for cocktails by former boon companions. He might be waiting at the Bourse to make a bit on his dollars....”
“I’d scratch her eyes out,” Cassie said.
CHAPTER 3
The car which contained Walter Leroy and M. de la Penthièvre glided slowly down the whole expanse of the rue d’Annam. In that street there appeared to be next to no traces of the counter-revolution. On the blank wall at the corner of the rue Vaugirard a rough fresco of a sickle and a hammer and the words Vive la 11 Commune had been roughly obliterated with whitewash and yellow paint in spattered patches. Other inscriptions in scarlet at the corner of the rue de Rennes had been equally roughly obliterated with white and yellow which represented the white banner with the gilt fleurs de lys. Jovial workmen with picks and sledges were erasing a barricade from across the rue de Fleurus. The barricades had been made of a substructure of restaurant chairs, paving stones, park railings: then with a road-making machine the Communists had poured liquid cement over the mass. That had hardened into a regular wall. The Commune had held all that quarter of Paris for over a fortnight whilst the Prince President had been mobilising his forces.... The Commune had first driven out the regularly constituted government under the Presidency of the Prince. The Prince had appointed a rallying place at Montereau, to the South, setting up his government at Dijon but having his military headquarters at Montereau in a vast camp.
According to M. de la Penthièvre the Prince could have taken Paris much more expeditiously had he wished to use artillery or, of course, bombing planes. But his Majesty had been obviously reluctant to shell his beloved capital. The Commune had had no such delicacy. Lives and limbs or historic buildings had meant nothing to them. Without heart, without pity, without emotions, they represented the passionless science of the machine age. It was typical of the two theories.... The Prince’s infantry advancing, en tirailleurs, along the streets after the Prince’s field guns with shrapnel had cleared the barricades or the gallant cuirassiers had charged across them.... A slow penetration, it had been, with very little loss of life and almost no damage to property — a few bullet scars along the house-fronts, some shutters blown from in front of windows. Naturally the Commune had bombarded Paris whilst they retreated. But they were short of shells. The munition-making Powers would supply them with none. And their gallant aviators almost to a man had deserted to the Prince at Montereau. Once in the air nothing could stop them. The royal avions had easily forced down the one or two that the Commune had retained — with Commissars holding guns at the temples of the aviators — so the damage had been almost entirely in the Northern arrondissements.
Walter said that he had heard that the damage had been greatest around the rue d’Annam.... He hazarded that. M. de la Penthièvre said, yes, very likely. He had not yet had time to master all these details. He understood that the tombs in Père la Chaise had been almost all flattened to the ground. Apparently the artillery spotters of the Commune had mistaken the cemetery for some other open space — the Tuileries Gardens, very likely. Paris had been covered naturally in a smoke-cloud. The rue dAnnam was quite close, M. de la Penthièvre imagined, to Père la Chaise. He supposed that Walter had a friend in that street.
Walter risked saying that he had... A very close relation as to whose fate he was very anxious. He was on his way there now. He proposed actually to get out of the car at the Bon Marché and take the Metro to Père la Chaise station.
With his air of tranquil mastery Penthièvre said not to do that. He would take Walter to his office in the palace of the Louvre. Things were still in confusion there. But Walter was to consider that he, Walter, had all the police of Paris at his disposal. Paris was still in some confusion. They could not let a valued foreigner — though Americans were hardly foreigners in Paris — all the same they could not let him wander the streets on his own.
Walter expressed his sense of the other’s kindness. Nevertheless he could not think of giving so much trouble. And he reminded M. de la Penthièvre of the invaluable laisser passer that the dignitary had given him before they left the ship.
“That,” the shining and bearded man pointed out, “was invaluable against any mistakes of the police.” But Paris
was not so absolutely tranquil yet, though in a day or two it would be. There were other dangers than those from the very innocuous police. Walter must let himself be conducted to the office in the Louvre. Things were there of course in confusion too. It was not easy — converting a museum into a royal residence, when all the objects in the museum were of such almost unassayable value. All the same Walter should be at once turned over to an official who, in five minutes, would assure Walter of the state in which he found his relative.... That is to say that it would be a matter of three minutes to telephone to the nearest poste of police and have every information. Then, if necessary, Walter could go up to the XXII arrondissement in a royal car with a proper escort. It would be, M. de la Penthièvre assured him gravely, not the slightest trouble to himself.... “And believe me,” he finished, “it will be very much better that way.” He added: “Look!”
