Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/22

10 Well, we chatted for a while and had a drink or two, and pretty soon another man came in. He was Italian and a sort of executive officer of the Pole. Then supper was served in a gem of a Louis XV dining-room with all the good things to eat you can think of and vintage champagne, but I noticed that nobody drank much. People at the head of any profession don't, I notice; the two things don't go together, perhaps in mine less than in any other, because with us defeat means not only failure but our finish.

The wine did take off the little edge of formality, however, and pretty soon we were having no end of fun, and from the stories going around you might have thought you were at a swell English house-party, or at some French château, or trailing with the smart set in Newport. Léontine drank more than anybody else, and pretty soon she had everybody on the go. Then Jeff started in and told them the story of how I had got pinched at Auteuil and deported to Cayenne. But when he told who had nailed me there was a moment of astonished silence and then a roar of laughter. Chu-Chu leaned behind the girl, who was sitting between us, and whispered to me that it was Prince Kharkoff himself who was paying for the hospitality we were enjoying, though of course he didn't know it!

"He is mad over Léontine," says he, and I answered that the prince was a man of taste. But it set me thinking.

Then somebody asked me about Cayenne, and I told them the tale and afterward about my candy business at Georgetown. The "Walla-baby" story