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The Mischief Maker, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 1 - Chapter 14. The Morning After |
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_ BOOK ONE CHAPTER XIV. THE MORNING AFTER Kendricks and Julien drove down from the hill in a small open victoria. The sun had risen, but here and there were traces of a fading twilight. A faint mauve glow hung over the sleeping streets. The sunlight as yet was faint and the morning breeze chilly. As they passed down the long hill, tired-looking waiters were closing up the night cafes. Bedraggled revelers crept along the pavements with weary footsteps. With every yard of their progression, the meeting between the two extremes of life seemed to become more apparent. The children of the night--the weary, unwholesome products of dissipation, rubbed shoulders with the children of the morning--girls, hatless, in simple clothes, walking with brisk footsteps to their work; market women, brown-cheeked and hearty, setting out their wares upon the stalls; the youth of Paris, blithe and strenuous, walking light-footed to the region of warehouses and factories. Julien and Kendricks looked out upon the little scene with interest. Both had been sleepy when they had left the cafe, but there was something stimulating in the sight of this thin but constant stream of people. Kendricks sat up and began to talk. "Julien," he declared, "this Paris never alters. It's a queer little world and a rotten one. We are here just at the ebbing of the tide. Don't you feel the hatefulness of it--the thin-blooded scream for pleasure which needs the lash of these painted women, these gaudy cafes, this yellow wine all the time? My God! and they call it pleasure! Look at these people going to their work, Julien. There's where the red blood flows. They're the people with the taste of life between their teeth. Can't you see them at their pleasures--see them sitting in a beer-garden with a girl and a band, their week's money in their pocket, and the knowledge that they've earned it? Perhaps sometimes they look up the hill and wonder at the craze for it all. Did you see the stream coming up to-night--automobiles, victorias, carriages of every sort; pale-faced men who had lunched too well, dined too well, flogging their tired systems in the craze for more excitement, more pleasure; eating at an unwholesome hour, smoking sickly cigarettes, kissing rouged lips, listening to the false music of that hard laughter? Look at those girls arm in arm, off to their little milliner's shop. Hear them laugh! You don't hear anything like that, Julien, on the top of the hill." "Of course," Julien remarked, stifling a yawn, "if you've come to Paris to be moral--" "Not I!" Kendricks broke in roughly. "Bless you, I'm one of the worst. A wild night in Paris calls me even now from any part of the world. But Lord, what fools we are! And, Julien, we get worse. It's the old people who keep these places going." "The older we get," Julien replied, "the harder we have to struggle for our joys." Kendricks wheeled suddenly in his place. "Tell me how long you have known Herr Freudenberg?" he insisted. "How many times have you been seen with him? Is it the truth that you met him to-night for the first time?" Julien laughed. "My dear David!" he protested,-- "To tell you the truth, Julien," Kendricks interrupted, "there's some hidden trouble, some mysterious influence at work which seems to be upsetting the relations just now between France and England. To be frank with you, I know that Carraby, at a Cabinet meeting yesterday, suggested that you were at the bottom of it." Julien's eyes suddenly flashed fire. "D--n that fellow!" he muttered. "Does anybody believe it?" Kendricks shrugged his shoulders. "Scarcely. And yet, Julien, it pays to be careful. You can't afford to be seen in public places with the enemies of your country." "Is Carl Freudenberg an enemy of my country?" Kendricks leaned back in his seat and laughed scornfully. "Julien," he exclaimed, "there are times when you are very simple! Do you indeed mean that you would try to deceive even me? You would pretend that I, David Kendricks, of the _Post_, don't know that Herr Freudenberg and the Prince von Falkenberg, ruler of Germany, are one and the same person? Maker of toys, he calls himself! Maker of fools' palaces, if you like, builder of prison houses, if you will. No man was ever born with less of a conscience, more solely and wholly ambitious both for his country and for himself, than the man with whom you talked to-night. You knew him?" "Naturally," Julien answered. "We met at Berlin." "The man is a great genius," Kendricks continued. "No one will deny him that. They speak of his weaknesses. They talk of his drinking bouts, of his plunges into French dissipation. The man hasn't a single dissipated thought in his mind. He moves through this world--this little Paris world--with one idea only. He gets behind the scenes. He comes here secretly, drops hints here and there as a private person, lets himself be considered a Parisian of Parisians. All the time he listens and he drops his cunning words of poison and he works. What are his ambitions? Do you know, Julien?" "Do you?" Julien asked. "It seems to me that I have some idea," Kendricks answered. "This is your hotel, isn't it?" Julien nodded. "Are you going to stay here?" Kendricks shook his head. "I stay at a little hotel in the Rue Taitbout. I stay there because it is full of the weirdest set of foreigners you ever knew. This morning we breakfast together?" "Come and see me when you will," Julien invited, "or I will come to you; not to breakfast, though--I am engaged." "To Herr Freudenberg?" Kendricks asked quickly. "To the lady whom your little friend, the manicurist, sent me to visit," Julien replied. "Perhaps now you will tell me that she is an ambassadress in disguise?" "I'll tell you nothing about her this morning," Kendricks said. "I'll tell you nothing which you ought not to find out for yourself." "Do you think I may breakfast with her safely?" Julien inquired. "Heaven knows--I don't!" Kendricks replied. "No man is safe with such a woman as Madame Christophor. But let it go. We dine together to-night. I'll tell you some news then. I'm going to unroll a plan of campaign. There's work for you, if you like it;--nothing formulated as yet, but it's coming--perhaps hope--who knows?" The sun rose higher in the heavens, the mauve light faded from the sky. Morning had arrived in earnest and Paris settled herself down to the commencement of another day. Julien, for the first time since he had left England, was asleep five minutes after his head had touched the pillow. Herr Freudenberg, on the contrary, made no attempt at all to retire. In the sitting-room of his apartments in the Boulevard Maupassant he sat in his dressing-gown, carefully studying some letters which had arrived by the night mail. Opposite to him was a secretary; by his side Estermen, who appeared to be there for the purpose of making a report. "Not a document," Estermen was saying, "not a line of writing of any sort in his trunk, his bureau, or anywhere about his room." Herr Freudenberg nodded thoughtfully. "But these Englishmen are the devil to deal with!" he said. "The luncheon is ordered to-day in the private room at the Armenonville?" "Everything has been attended to," Estermen replied. Herr Freudenberg was thoughtful for several moments. Then with a wave of his hand he dismissed Estermen. "You, too, can go, Fritz," he said to his secretary. "You have had a long night's work." "You yourself, Excellency, should sleep for a while," his secretary advised. Herr Freudenberg shook his head. "Sleep," he declared, "is a waste of time. I need no sleep. As you go, you can tell my servant to prepare a warm bath. I will rest then for an hour and walk in the Champs Elysees." The secretary withdrew and Herr Freudenberg was alone. He picked up a crumpled rose that lay upon the table and twirled it for a moment or two in his fingers. The action seemed to be wholly unconscious. His eyes were set in a fixed stare, his thoughts were busy weaving out his plans for the day. It was not until he was summoned to his bath that he rose and glanced at the withered flower. Then he smiled. "Poor little Marguerite!" he murmured. "What a pity!" He touched the rose with his lips, abandoned his first intention, which seemed to have been to throw it into the fireplace, and put it back carefully upon the table, side by side with an odd white glove. "Queer little record of the froth of life," he said softly to himself. "One soiled evening glove, a faded rose, a woman's tears,--they pass. What can one do--we poor others who have to drive the wheels of life?" He sighed, shrugged his high shoulders, and passed out. _ |
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