A Maker of History | Page 7

he answered; "but in any case, Miss Poynton, I
do hope that you will send over for some friend or relation to keep you
company. Paris is scarcely a fit place for you to be alone and in
trouble."
"Thank you," she said. "I will remember what you have said."
The young man watched her depart with a curious mixture of relief and

regret.
"The young fool's been the usual round, I suppose, and he's either too
much ashamed of himself or too besotted to turn up. I wish she wasn't
quite so devilish good-looking," he remarked to himself. "If she goes
about alone she'll get badly scared before she's finished."
Phyllis Poynton drove straight back to her hotel and went to her room.
A sympathetic chambermaid followed her in.
"Mademoiselle has news yet of her brother?" she inquired.
Mademoiselle shook her head. Indeed her face was sufficient answer.
"None at all, Marie."
The chambermaid closed the door.
"It would help Mademoiselle, perhaps, if she knew where the young
gentleman spent the evening before he disappeared?" she inquired
mysteriously.
"Of course! That is just what I want to find out."
Marie smiled.
"There is a young man here in the barber's shop, Mademoiselle," she
announced. "He remembers Monsieur Poynton quite well. He went in
there to be shaved, and he asked some questions. I think if
Mademoiselle were to see him!"
The girl jumped up at once.
"Do you know his name?" she asked.
"Monsieur Alphonse, they call him. He is on duty now."
Phyllis Poynton descended at once to the ground floor of the hotel, and
pushed open the glass door which led into the coiffeur's shop. Monsieur

Alphonse was waiting upon a customer, and she was given a chair. In a
few minutes he descended the spiral iron staircase and desired to know
Mademoiselle's pleasure.
"You speak English?" she asked.
"But certainly, Mademoiselle."
She gave a little sigh of relief.
"I wonder," she said, "if you remember waiting upon my brother last
Thursday week. He was tall and fair, and something like me. He had
just arrived in Paris."
Monsieur Alphonse smiled. He rarely forgot a face, and the young
Englishman's tip had been munificent.
"Perfectly, Mademoiselle," he answered. "They sent for me because
Monsieur spoke no French."
"My chambermaid, Marie, told me that you might perhaps know how
he proposed to spend the evening," she continued. "He was quite a
stranger in Paris, and he may have asked for some information."
Monsieur Alphonse smiled, and extended his hands.
"It is quite true," he answered. "He asked me where to go, and I say to
the Folies Bergères. Then he said he had heard a good deal of the
supper cafés, and he asked me which was the most amusing. I tell him
the Café Montmartre. He wrote it down."
"Do you think that he meant to go there?" she asked.
"But certainly. He promised to come and tell me the next day how he
amused himself."
"The Café Montmartre. Where is it?" she asked.
"In the Place de Montmartre. But Mademoiselle pardons--she will

understand that it is a place for men."
"Are women not admitted?" she asked.
Alphonse smiled.
"But--yes. Only Mademoiselle understands that if a lady should go
there she would need to be very well escorted."
She rose and slipped a coin into his hand.
"I am very much obliged to you," she said. "By the bye, have any other
people made inquiries of you concerning my brother?"
"No one at all, Mademoiselle!" the man answered.
She almost slammed the door behind when she went out.
"And they say that the French police are the cleverest in the world," she
exclaimed indignantly.
Monsieur Alphonse watched her through the glass pane.
"Ciel! But she is pretty!" he murmured to himself.
* * * * *
She turned into the writing-room, and taking off her gloves she wrote a
letter. Her pretty fingers were innocent of rings, and her handwriting
was a little shaky. Nevertheless, it is certain that not a man passed
through the room who did not find an excuse to steal a second glance at
her. This is what she wrote:--
"MY DEAR ANDREW,--I am in great distress here, and very unhappy.
I should have written to you before, but I know that you have your own
trouble to bear just now, and I hated to bother you. I arrived here
punctually on the date arranged upon between Guy and myself, and
found that he had arrived the night before, and had engaged a room for
me. He was out when I came. I changed my clothes and sat down to

wait for him. He did not return. I made inquiries and found that he had
left the hotel at eight o'clock the previous evening. To cut the