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"I am going to meet him," she said quietly. "I forbid it." "You're too late, dear friend. I wrote him a letter before dinner and sent it to the Cercle Africain by special messenger. I also wrote to Anastasius. I asked them both to see me to-morrow morning. That's why I've been so gay this evening." At the sight of my blank face she laughed, and with one of her movements rose from her chair.
He shrieked and shrank and hid his face in Lola's dress. When he was forced to speak he declared that the dead man was not Captain Vauvenarde. Captain Vauvenarde was at the Cercle Africain. He, himself, was seeking him. He would take the gendarmes there, and they could arrest the Captain for the murder of Sultan of which his papers contained indubitable proofs.
She is engaged to her cousin the captain, who is a regular Africain, a fire-eater you may call him, but a good fellow in the full sense of that word one of those open natures made for devotion, like a Newfoundland dog, or a poodle. He is both formidable and patient. Such is my friend! We were playmates as children, and he would not brook the slightest insult to me in his presence.
The question of beauty in her case is so completely put out of mind by a certain charm of manner, that one forgets to analyse it. She has certainly fine eyes, for they hold you spell-bound by the soul shining through them. George Morand, her fiancé, adores her, and, headstrong Africain though he is, even he feels an influence within her which subjugates his fiery spirit.
I flatter myself on being able to do it with perfect French expressiveness. I caught, to my satisfaction, an angry gleam in his eye. "Do you mean to say, Monsieur, that I play for more than recreation?" "How dare I say anything, Monsieur. But Madame is prejudiced against the Cercle Africain. For a bachelor there is little to be said against it but for a married man you seize the point?" said I.
For some time I listened patiently, and from his disconnected remarks I gathered that he had gone to the Cercle Africain in view of his gigantic combinations, but that the demon of gambling taking possession of him had almost driven them from his mind.
"Write my name on it, too." I obeyed. The raven sent the porter with the card into the room on the right, and resumed the perusal of his soiled newspaper. I looked at Anastasius. The little man was quivering with excitement. The porter returned after a few minutes with a couple of pink oval cards which he handed to each of us. I glanced at mine. On it was inscribed: Cercle Africain d'Alger.
Physical pain is insistent, and I have suffered damnable torture. The pettiness of the legal inquiry has been also a maddening irritation. Nothing has been too minute for the attention of the French judiciary. It seemed as though the whole of the evil gang of the Cercle Africain were called as witnesses.
"'Where is he now? I ask. 'Why, in Algiers. He is the most famous gambler in the town. He is every night at the Cercle Africain, and some people believe that it belongs to him. My friend the secretary asks me why I am so anxious to discover Captain Vauvenarde. I do not betray my secret. When I do not wish to talk I close my lips, and they are sealed like the tomb. I am the model of discretion.
I had disliked him at the Cercle Africain; now I detested him heartily. The idea of Lola entering the vitiated atmosphere of his life was inexpressibly repugnant to me. Contrary to her habit, Lola sat bolt upright on the stamped-velvet suite, the palms of her hands pressing the seat on either side of her.
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