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Updated: May 16, 2025
She said it just as the manager and Meyerbeer passed her. Meyerbeer heard it, and saw the look in the faces of both: in hers, bewildered, warm, penetrating; in Gaston's, eager, glowing, bold, with a distant kind of trouble. Here was a thickening plot for Paul Pry. He hugged himself. But who was Zoug-Zoug? If he could but get at that! He asked the manager, who said he did not know.
Meyerbeer flushed at last. "You're rubbing it in," he said angrily. He did wish to be introduced to a good London club. "The question isn't personal, I guess. It's this: Who's Zoug-Zoug?" Smoke had come trailing out of Belward's nose, his head thrown back, his eyes on the ceiling. It stopped, and came out of his mouth on one long, straight whiff.
Gaston saw something strange in the little incident; but he presently forgot it for many a day, and then remembered it for many a day, when the wheel had spun through a wild arc. When they rose from the table, Meyerbeer went to Bagshot, and said: "Say, who's Zoug-Zoug, anyway?" Bagshot coolly replied: "I'm acting for another paper. What price?" "Fifty dollars," in a low voice, eagerly.
"You said you'd tell me." "No. I said I'd tell you if I knew Zoug-Zoug. I do." "That's all you'll tell me?" "That's all. And see, scavenger, take my advice and let Zoug-Zoug alone. He's a man of influence; and he's possessed of a devil. He'll make you sorry, if you meddle with him!" He rose, and Meyerbeer did the same, saying: "You'd better tell me." "Now, don't bother me.
Meyerbeer, who had not yet discovered his man, though he had a pretty scandal well-nigh brewed. Count Ploare was no more, Gaston Belward was. Zoug-Zoug was in the country at Fontainebleau, working at his picture. He had left on the morning after Gaston discovered Andree. He had written, asking his nephew to come for some final sittings.
"Douarnenez, for Audierne, Brittany," was the legend written in Meyerbeer's note-book. And after that: "Journey twenty hours change at Rennes, Redon, and Quimpere." "Too far. I've enough for now," said Meyerbeer, chuckling, as he walked away. "But I'd give five hundred dollars to know who Zoug-Zoug is. I'll make another try." So he held his sensation back for a while yet.
Meyerbeer, in a far corner, was still on the trail of his sensation. He thought that he might get an article out of it with the help of Count Ploare and Zoug-Zoug. Who was Zoug-Zoug? He exulted in her picturesqueness, and he determined to lie in wait. He thought it a pity that Comte Ploare was not an Englishman or an American; but it couldn't be helped.
Drink your vermouth, take that bundle of cigarettes, and hunt Zoug-Zoug else where. If you find him, let me know. Good-bye." Meyerbeer went out furious. The treatment had been too heroic. "I'll give a sweet savour to your family name," he said with an oath, as he shook his fist at the closed door. Ian Belward sat back and looked at the ceiling reflectively. "H'm!" he said at last.
The journalist had found out Zoug-Zoug at last, and Ian Belward had talked with the manager of the menagerie. Andree shuddered and put the letter in her pocket. Now she understood why she had shrunk from Gaston that first night and those first days in Audierne: that strange sixth sense, divination vague, helpless prescience. And here, suddenly, she shrank again, but with a different thought.
Fancourt sent self-conscious glances down the table towards Gaston; and then a young American, newly come to Paris, said: "Who's Zoug-Zoug, and what's Zoug-Zoug?" "It's milk for babes, youngster," answered Bagshot quickly, and changed the conversation.
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