The Firefly of France | Page 6

saw whither I was bound.
The queer incident left my mind as I secluded myself, got my connection, and heard across the wire the indignant accents of Dick Forrest, my former college chum. Upon leaving his yacht that morning, I had promised him a certain power of attorney--Dick is a lawyer and is called a good one, though I can never quite credit it--and he now demanded in unjudicial heat why it had not been sent round.
"Good heavens, man," I cut in remorsefully, "I forgot it! The thing is in my room now. Where are you? That's all right. You'll have it by messenger within ten minutes." Hastily rehooking the receiver, I bolted from my booth.
In the restaurant door against a background of paneled walls the /maitre d'hotel/ still stood, as if watching for my return. I sprang into an elevator just about to start its ascent, and saw his mouth fall open and his feet bring him several quick steps forward.
"The man is crazy," I told myself with conviction as I shot up four stories in as many seconds and was deposited in my hall.
There was no one at the desk where the floor clerk usually kept vigil, gossiping affably with such employees as passed. The place seemed deserted; no doubt all the guests were downstairs. Treading lightly on the thick carpet, I went down the hall to Room four hundred and three, and found the door ajar and a light visible inside.
My bed, I supposed, was being turned down. I swung the door open, and halted in my tracks. With his back to me, bent over a wide-open trunk that I had left locked, was a man.
Stepping inside, I closed the door quietly, meanwhile scrutinizing my unconscious visitor from head to foot. He wore no hotel insignia--was neither porter, waiter, nor valet.
"Well, how about it? Anything there suit you?" I inquired affably, with my back against the door.
Exclaiming gutturally, he whisked about and faced me where I stood quite prepared for a rough-and-tumble. Instead of a typical housebreaker of fiction, I saw a pale, rabbit-like, decent-appearing little soul. He was neatly dressed; he seemed unarmed save for a great ring of assorted keys; and his manner was as propitiatory and mild- eyed as that of any mouse. There must be some mistake. He was some sober mechanic, not a robber. But on the other hand, he looked ready to faint with fright.
"/Mein Gott/!" he murmured in a sort of fishlike gasp.
This illuminating remark was my first clue.
"Ah! /Mein Herr/ is German?" I inquired, not stirring from my place.
The demand wrought an instant change in him--he drew himself up, perhaps to five feet five.
"Vat you got against the Germans?" he asked me, almost with menace. It was the voice of a fanatic intoning "Die Wacht am Rhein"--of a zealot speaking for the whole embattled /Vaterland/.
The situation was becoming farcical.
"Nothing in the world, I assure you," I replied. "They are a simple, kindly people. They are musical. They have given the world Schiller, Goethe, the famous /Kultur/, and a new conception of the possibilities of war. But I think they should have kept out of Belgium, and I feel the same way about my room--and don't you try to pull a pistol or I may feel more strongly still."
"I ain't got no pistol, /nein/," declared my visitor, sulkily. His resentment had already left him; he had shrunk back to five feet three.
"Well, I have, but I'll worry along without it," I remarked, with a glance at the nearest bag. As targets, I don't regard my fellow- creatures with great enthusiasm and, moreover, I could easily have made two of this mousy champion of a warlike race. Illogically, I was feeling that to bully him was sheer brutality. Besides this, my dinner was not being improved by the delay.
"Look here," I said amiably, "I can't see that you've taken anything. Speak up lively now; I'll give you just one chance. If you care to tell me how you got through a locked door and what you were after, I'll let you go. I'm off to the firing line, and it may bring me luck!"
Hope glimmered in his eyes. In broken English, with a childlike ingenuousness of demeanor, he informed me that he was a first-class locksmith--first-glass he called it--who had been sent by the management to open a reluctant trunk. He had entered my room, I was led to infer, by a mistake.
"I go now, /ja/?" he concluded, as postscript to the likely tale.
"The devil you do! Do you take me for an utter fool?" I asked, excusably nettled, and stepping to the telephone, I took the receiver from its hook.
"Give me the manager's office, please," I requested, watching my visitor. "Is this the manager? This is Mr. Bayne speaking, Room four