Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/198

 moving throng upon the sidewalk, but also by the other patrons of the café. The stout m'sieur heeded them not. Rather, he gesticulated violently with his cane, and called again.

To his infinite satisfaction, his hail carried to the ears for which it was pitched. Out of the mob a man came shouldering his way and looking about him with uncertainty. A tall man he was, noticeable for a length of limb which seemed great yet was strictly proportioned to the remainder of his huge bulk, moving with the unstudied grace that appertains unto great strength and bodily vigor.

He caught sight of the stout m'sieur and a broad, glad grin overspread his countenance—a face clean-shaven and burned darkly by tropic suns, with a nose and a slightly lengthened upper lip that betokened Celtic parentage; a face in all attractive, broadly modeled, mobile, and made luminous by eyes of gray, steadfast yet alert.

"Chambret, be all that's lucky!" he cried joyously. "Faith, 'twas no more than the minute gone that I was wishing I might see ye!"

He came up to Chambret's table, and the two shook hands, gravely, after the English fashion, eying each the other to see what changes the years might have wrought in his personal appearance.

"I, too," said Chambret, "was wishing that I might see you. My friend, I give you my word that I have waited here, watching for one O'Rourke for a solid week.

"Is it so, indeed?" O'Rourke sat down, favoring the Frenchman with a sharply inquiring glance. "And for why did ye not come to me lodgings? Such as they are," he deprecated, with a transient thought of how little he should care to have another intrude upon the bare, mean room he called his home.