Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/71

 woman's more nearly than a man's; he was hatchet-faced and dark, with evasive eyes of a saturnine, sneering cast; impeccable as to dress, an elegant; ostentatiously rakish.

Apparently returning O'Rourke's disdain with interest, he sat slouched in an armchair, airily twirling an end of his black mustache, occasionally eying the intruder with no friendly glance.

As for the others, they were ordinary types of Parisians: Valliant, a heavy, swaggering growth of the boulevards, red-faced and loud-voiced; Mouchon, pasty of complexion, nervous, slinking, and apologetic in manner; D'Ervy, a vice-marked nonenity of Lemercier's grade, pimply, heavy-eyed, ungracious, and vacuous.

Meanwhile, le petit Lemercier was talking—rambling on in an aimless, inconsequential fashion, chiefly in praise of his own wonderful sagacities and abilities in planning an enterprise which he as yet had not named. Suddenly, however, he broke off, flushed his throat with a glass of champagne; and the conversation took on a complexion which commanded O'Rourke's undivided interest. "Messieurs," said Lemercier, puffing with importance, "we are assembled on the eve of a movement which will astonish and compel the admiration not only of all Europe, but of the civilized world as well."

He paused, and turned to the Irishman.

"O'Rourke, mon ami," he continued, with abrupt familiarity, "these, my comrades, are already intimate with my project. For months we have been planning and perfecting it; latterly we have waited only for you, mon brave, a soldier tried and proven, to work with us for glory and for—empire!"

"The divvle ye say!" interjected the disgusted O'Rourke to himself.