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A moment, with his head bent, he stood looking into her face, but without touching her. "Sit down over there," he said, and pointed toward a chair against the wall. She went meekly like a prisoner. He spoke to the child in the purple apron, who was still sitting behind the desk. He put some money on the cash-desk in front of her. It was gold.
One chap I knew used to give the girl at the cash-desk of the 'Mecca' he went to bottles of scent. Bottles of it regular! 'Here you are, Tottie, he used to say, 'here's another little donation from yours truly. Kissed her once. Slap in front of everybody. Saw him do it. But, bless you, they'd think nothing of that in the Smart Set. Ever read 'God's Good Man'? There's a book! My stars!
In time I reached the Commissary the government department store and enrolled it from cash-desk to cold-storage; Empire hotel, from steward to scullions, filed by me whispering autobiography; the police station on its knoll fell like the rest.
Today, business having been uncommonly good, he felt pleased with the world. He had left his cash-desk and was assailing a bowl of soup at one of the side-tables. Except for a belated luncher at the end of the room the place was empty. It was one of the hours when there was a lull in the proceedings at the Parisian Cafe. Paul was leaning, wrapped in the gloom, against the wall.
This old man was the Maitre Jacques of China. Along the walls ran long shelves, on which the published numbers lay in piles. A partition in wood, with a grating lined with green curtains, cut off the end of the room, forming a private office. A till with a slit to admit or disgorge crown pieces indicated the cash-desk. "M. d'Espard?" said Popinot, addressing the man, who wore a gray blouse.
There was no one eating at the little tables, no one sitting behind the high cash-desk in the anteroom. Not a stir of human life in all the place. "Hello," said Kerr among the tables looking around him, "we've caught them asleep." He rapped on the wall with his cane. Flora peered at him between the curtains, all her fascinated apprehension of what was to follow plain upon her face.
'Let me show you, he said superiorly. 'You see the cash-desk to the left. There's a lady just leaving the cash-desk. And just behind her there's an oldish man. You can't see all of his face because of her hat. He's holding his bill in his hand you can see the corner of it and he's got some sort of a parcel under his arm. See? 'Yes, Mr. Lecoq. 'Well, doesn't he remind you of somebody?
Madame, of the cash-desk, sat in the dining-room, for company's sake, fixing up accounts as though the last day of reckoning had come...as it had. Her hair, with its little curls, was still in perfect order. She had two dabs of color on her cheeks, as usual, but underneath a waxen pallor. She was working out accounts with a young officer, who smoked innumerable cigarettes to steady his nerves.
The anti aircraft guns got to work and there was the shrill chorus of shrapnel shells winging over the roofs. "Bang!... Crash!" That was nearer again. Some of the officers strolled out of the dining room. "They're making a mess outside. Perhaps we'd better get away before it gets too hot." Madame from the cash-desk turned to her accounts again.
He was late in arriving, which was good in that it delayed the inevitable question as to the fate of the picture, but bad in every other respect. M. Bredin, squatting behind the cash-desk, grunted fiercely at him; and, worse, Jeanne, who, owing to his absence, had had to be busier than suited her disposition, was distant and haughty. A murky gloom settled upon Paul.
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