“Mademoiselle Gaby—”
“Hein? Speak up, m’sieur le professeur. Is it that you wish to ask if we shall find each other again?”
“I should indeed be honored if while you are in London—”
“Merde alors!” She winked at him, and he hoped that he had misunderstood her French. “Do we need such fine phrases? I think we understand ourselves, no? There is a small bistro—a pub, you call it?—near my lodgings. If you wish to meet me there tomorrow evening . . .” She gave him instructions. Speechless, he noted them down.
“You will not be sorry, m’sieur. I think well you will enjoy your little tour of France after your dull English diet.”
She held his arm while he hailed a cab. He did not speak except to the cabman. She extended her ungloved hand and he automatically took it. Her fingers dabbled deftly in his palm while her pink tongue peered out for a moment between her lips. Then she was gone.
“And I thought her an angel,” he groaned.
His hand fumbled again in his empty pocket.
The shiny new extra large trunk dominated the bedroom.
Gabrielle Bompart stripped to the skin as soon as the porter had left (more pleased with her wink than with her tip) and perched on the trunk. The metal trim felt refreshingly cold against her flesh.
Michel Eyraud looked up lazily from the bed where he was sprawled. “I never get tired of looking at you, Gaby.”
“When you are content just to look,” Gaby grinned, “I cut your throat.”
“It’s hot,” said Eyraud.
“I know, and you are an old man. You are old enough to be my father. You are a very wicked lecherous old man, but for old men it is often hot.”
Eyraud sprang off the bed, strode over to the trunk, and seized her by her naked shoulders. She laughed in his face. “I was teasing you. It is too hot. Even for me. Go lie down and tell me about your day. You got everything?”
Eyraud waved an indolent hand at the table. A coil of rope, a block and tackle, screws, screwdriver . . .
Gaby smiled approvingly. “And I have the trunk, such a nice big one, and this.” She reached for her handbag, drew out a red-and-white girdle. “It goes well with my dressing gown. And it is strong.” She stretched it and tugged at it, grunting enthusiastically.
Eyraud looked from the girdle to the rope to the pulley to the top of the door leading to the sitting-room, then back to the trunk. He nodded.
Gaby stood by the full-length mirror contemplating herself. “That silly bailiff, that Gouffe. Why does he dare to think that Gaby should be interested in him? This Gaby, such as you behold her . . .” She smiled at the mirror and nodded approval.
“I met a man,” she said. “An Englishman. Oh, so very stiff and proper. He looks like Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s Le Tour du Monde. He wants me.”
“Fogg had money,” said Eyraud. “Lots of it.”
“So does my professor . . . Michi?”
“Yes?”
Gabrielle pirouetted before the mirror. “Am I an actress?”
“All women are actresses.”
“Michi, do not try to be clever. It is not becoming to you. Am I an actress?”
Eyraud lit a French cigarette and tossed the blue pack to Gaby. “You’re a performer, and entertainer. You have better legs than any actress in Paris. And if you made old Gouffe think you love him for his fat self. . . Yes, I guess you’re an actress.”
“Then I know what I want.” Gaby’s eyelids were half closed. “Michi, I want a rehearsal.”
Eyraud looked at the trunk and the block and tackle and the red-and-white girdle. He laughed, heartily and happily.
He found her waiting for him in the pub. The blonde hair picked up the light and gave it back, to form a mocking halo around the pert devil’s face.
His fingers reassured him that the scalpel was back where it belonged. He had been so foolish to call “a fever” what was simply his natural rightful temperature. It was his mission in life to rid the world of devils. That was the simple truth. And not all devils had cockney accents and lived in Whitechapel.
“Be welcome, m’sieur le professeur.” She curtseyed with impish grace. “You have thirst?”
“No,” he grunted.
“Ah, you mean you do not have thirst in the throat. It lies lower, hein?” She giggled, and he wondered how long she had been waiting in the pub. She laid her hand on his arm. The animal heat seared through his sleeve. “I go upstairs. You understand, it is more chic when you do not see me make myself ready. You ascend in a dozen of minutes. It is on the first floor, at the left to the rear.”
He left the pub and waited on the street. The night was cool and the fog was beginning to settle down. On just such a night in last August. . . What was her name? He had read it later in The Times. Martha Tabor? Tabby? Tabbypussydevil.
He had nicked his finger on the scalpel. As he sucked the blood he heard a clock strike. He had been waiting almost a half hour; where had the time gone? The devil would be impatient.
The sitting-room was dark, but subdued lamplight gleamed from the bedroom. The bed was turned down. Beside it stood a huge trunk.
The devil was wearing a white dressing-gown and a red-and-white girdle that emphasized its improbably slender waist. It came towards him and stroked his face with hot fingers and touched its tongue like a branding iron to his chin and ears and at last his lips. His hands closed around its waist.
“Ouf!” gasped the devil, “You may crush me, I assure you, M’sieur. I love that. But please to spare my pretty new girdle. Perhaps if I debarrass myself of it . . .”
