“I don’t mind. However I’ll pick up Gausse at the hotel—”
Nicole stayed awake after he had departed wondering what offense they could have committed; then she slept. A little after three when Dick came in she sat up stark awake saying, “What?” as if to a character in her dream.
“It was an extraordinary story—” Dick said. He sat on the foot of her bed, telling her how he had roused old Gausse from an Alsatian coma, told him to clean out his cash drawer, and driven with him to the police station.
“I don’t like to do something for that Anglaise,” Gausse grumbled.
Mary North and Lady Caroline, dressed in the costume of French sailors, lounged on a bench outside the two dingy cells. The latter had the outraged air of a Briton who momentarily expected the Mediterranean fleet to steam up to her assistance. Mary Minghetti was in a condition of panic and collapse—she literally flung herself at Dick’s stomach as though that were the point of greatest association, imploring him to do something. Meanwhile the chief of police explained the matter to Gausse who listened to each word with reluctance, divided between being properly appreciative of the officer’s narrative gift and showing that, as the perfect servant, the story had no shocking effect on him. “It was merely a lark,” said Lady Caroline with scorn. “We were pretending to be sailors on leave, and we picked up two silly girls. They got the wind up and made a rotten scene in a lodging house.”
Dick nodded gravely, looking at the stone floor, like a priest in the confessional—he was torn between a tendency to ironic laughter and another tendency to order fifty stripes of the cat and a fortnight of bread and water. The lack, in Lady Caroline’s face, of any sense of evil, except the evil wrought by cowardly Provencal girls and stupid police, confounded him; yet he had long concluded that certain classes of English people lived upon a concentrated essence of the anti-social that, in comparison, reduced the gorgings of New York to something like a child contracting indigestion from ice cream.
“I’ve got to get out before Hosain hears about this,” Mary pleaded. “Dick, you can always arrange things—you always could. Tell ’em we’ll go right home, tell ’em we’ll pay anything.”
“I shall not,” said Lady Caroline disdainfully. “Not a shilling. But I shall jolly well find out what the Consulate in Cannes has to say about this.”
“No, no!” insisted Mary. “We’ve got to get out to-night.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Dick, and added, “but money will certainly have to change hands.” Looking at them as though they were the innocents that he knew they were not, he shook his head: “Of all the crazy stunts!”
Lady Caroline smiled complacently.
“You’re an insanity doctor, aren’t you? You ought to be able to help us—and Gausse has GOT to!”
At this point Dick went aside with Gausse and talked over the old man’s findings. The affair was more serious than had been indicated—one of the girls whom they had picked up was of a respectable family. The family were furious, or pretended to be; a settlement would have to be made with them. The other one, a girl of the port, could be more easily dealt with. There were French statutes that would make conviction punishable by imprisonment or, at the very least, public expulsion from the country. In addition to the difficulties, there was a growing difference in tolerance between such townspeople as benefited by the foreign colony and the ones who were annoyed by the consequent rise of prices. Gausse, having summarized the situation, turned it over to Dick. Dick called the chief of police into conference.
“Now you know that the French government wants to encourage American touring—so much so that in Paris this summer there’s an order that Americans can’t be arrested except for the most serious offenses.”
“This is serious enough, my God.”
“But look now—you have their Cartes d’Identite?”
“They had none. They had nothing—two hundred francs and some rings. Not even shoe-laces that they could have hung themselves with!”
Relieved that there had been no Cartes d’Identite Dick continued.
“The Italian Countess is still an American citizen. She is the grand-daughter—” he told a string of lies slowly and portentously, “of John D. Rockefeller Mellon. You have heard of him?”
“Yes, oh heavens, yes. You mistake me for a nobody?”
“In addition she is the niece of Lord Henry Ford and so connected with the Renault and Citroen companies—” He thought he had better stop here. However the sincerity of his voice had begun to affect the officer, so he continued: “To arrest her is just as if you arrested a great royalty of England. It might mean—War!”
“But how about the Englishwoman?”
“I’m coming to that. She is affianced to the brother of the Prince of Wales—the Duke of Buckingham.”
“She will be an exquisite bride for him.”
“Now we are prepared to give—” Dick calculated quickly, “one thousand francs to each of the girls—and an additional thousand to the father of the ‘serious’ one. Also two thousand in addition, for you to distribute as you think best—” he shrugged his shoulders, “—among the men who made the arrest, the lodging-house keeper and so forth. I shall hand you the five thousand and expect you to do the negotiating immediately. Then they can be released on bail on some charge like disturbing the peace, and whatever fine there is will be paid before the magistrate tomorrow—by messenger.”
Before the officer spoke Dick saw by his expression that it would be all right. The man said hesitantly, “I have made no entry because they have no Cartes d’Identite. I must see—give me the money.”
An hour later Dick and M. Gausse dropped the women by the Majestic Hotel, where Lady Caroline’s chauffeur slept in her landaulet.
“Remember,” said Dick, “you owe Monsieur Gausse a hundred dollars a piece.”
“All right,” Mary agreed, “I’ll give him a check to-morrow—and something more.”
“Not I!” Startled, they all turned to Lady Caroline, who, now entirely recovered, was swollen with righteousness. “The whole thing was an outrage. By no means did I authorize you to give a hundred dollars to those
