Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/11

4 than not by that swell at the bureau. I swear I’ll go and talk to the Pole. I suppose I have a right to talk to a Pole if I like. I shall not do any good, I dare say; but it is something to do no harm on an afternoon in Paris.”

So Mr. Aventayle made out the obscure house to which the card invited him, was immediately admitted, and found himself in the room where Ernest Adair had been finally discomfited by the production of the original manuscript from which he had copied the play sent to Aventayle. While he waited, a pretty girl came into the room, with apparent unconsciousness that anyone was there.

“I cannot find him, papa Wolowski,” she said, innocently, and the next moment was all surprise and apology to the stranger.

Aventayle immediately projected his mind into his theatre, and gazed at Madelon with a thought as to how she would make up, and how well that coquettish costume and neat ancle would look behind the foot-lights. Then he took note of the coquettish costume, and resolved that a young lady who formed part of his company, and who had quite as neat an ancle as Madelon, should appear in that garb, at the earliest opportunity. For Mr. Aventayle seldom lost a chance of catering for the edification of the public.

“I cannot flatter myself with the hope that you came to look for me, Mademoiselle,” said the polite manager.

It would not have been flattery, however. For papa Wolowski, always ready to afford his pet any innocent gratification, had told her to go up and look at the celebrated London actor.

Of course she had come to speak to M. Wolowski, who had been there a moment before, and had sent her on a message.

“M. Wolowski is happy to be served by such charming messengers.”

“Oh, Monsieur!”

The intellectual conversation was speedily interrupted by the advent of M. Wolowski himself; and Madelon departed, forgetting that she had a message to deliver to him—a point which Mr. Aventayle noticed—and then recollected that he was fifty, which thought did not comfort him so much as his next recollection, that he was a celebrity.

“Are you to be complimented as the real papa of that pretty young person, M. Wolowski, or was the term only one of friendship?”

“I hardly know,” said M. Wolowski, quaintly. “But as so distinguished a connoisseur allows that she is pretty, we will give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“I wish I had a sketch of her dress—it is charming.”

“You shall have one before you leave Paris, if you are good enough to think it worth accepting. A young friend of hers has skill with the pencil, and you will make two persons happy by commanding the sitting.”

“He is happy already.”

“Thanks, in Madelon’s name. And so, Mr. Aventayle, you have done me the favour to accept my invitation to call.”

“Well, yes, but really—”

“I am your debtor for that. And I perceive, by your manner, that you hardly know what you have come for, or in what way you would like to avail yourself of my humble services.”

“You really say what I meant to say. But since I saw you, I have heard a great many strange things, and I have been told—”

“If I can save you any trouble, I will. I know I can save you a little by informing you that I am aware of all that has passed between you and your friend, and M., at the bureau, and of a good deal more.”

“Then you know of an appointment that has been made for to-morrow?”

“For M. Ernest Adair to meet other parties, and disclose certain secrets?”

“Yes, you are evidently in M. ’s confidence.”

“I might have heard of the appointment from other sources, but to be frank with you, I have the honour you mention.”

“Well, M. Adair is your friend, and therefore I do not expect that you will tell me anything that he would not wish you to tell.”

“That, my dear Mr. Aventayle, is the most charmingly original view of friendship. I have been unlucky enough to find that it is one’s friends who are always the most ready with objectionable revelations about one, things that one’s enemies would never have been able to pick up without such affectionate assistance.”

“True enough,” grumbled the manager. “But as you are his agent and so on, I speak to you as acting in his interest. I have no finesse about me, and I must go straight to the point, or stop at home.”

“No reticence, eh?” laughed the Pole.

The manager looked at him with a humorous expression.

“Oh, if you were not under the table, you know all about it,” he said. “Yes, I hate reticence, though I don’t know exactly what it is. I dare say that I am showing none, and I want to show none. I wish to say to you, in the first place, that I do not believe your friend, M. Ernest Adair, will reveal any secrets at that meeting to morrow.”

“Nor do I,” replied the Pole, calmly.

“There then,” said Mr. Aventayle, angrily. “Just as I supposed. Then we are all to be made fools of once more, and M. was merely humbugging.”

“No one can accuse you of not making yourself understood, my dear Mr. Aventayle,” said Wolowski, smiling. “But you jump to conclusions with an agility that does honour to your mental muscles.”

“I did not know I had any. However, muscles or cockles, we are to be done again.”

“Let us accuse nobody unjustly. I think that it is more than probable that my friend, M. Adair, may have to be absent from the meeting to-morrow, and of course, if he cannot attend, he can make no revelation.”

“But he ought to be present.”

“I think that if he should attend, and should reveal any of the secrets which will then be in his