Part 22 (2/2)
The money from Seraphin's latest _magnum opus_ not being yet exhausted, Seraphin's friends were lunching at the Cafe Des Deux Colombes, with little Pasbeaucoup fluttering between them and the kitchen, and Madame, expressionless under her mountain of hair, stuffed into the wire cage and bulging out of it. The company rose when they espied Cartaret, the cadaverous poet Garnier picking up his plate of roast chicken so as not to lose, in his welcoming, time that might be given to eating.
Cartaret felt at first somewhat ashamed before them. He felt the contrast between his changed fortunes and their fortunes unchanged. At last, however, the truth escaped him, and then he felt more ashamed than ever, so unenvious were the congratulations that they poured upon him.
Devignes' round belly shook with delight. Garnier even stopped eating.
”Now you may have the leisure for serious work, which,” squeaked Varachon through his broken nose, ”your art has so badly needed.”
Seraphin said nothing, but put his hand on Cartaret's shoulder and gripped it hard.
Houdon embraced the fortunate one.
”Did I not always tell you?” he demanded of Seraphin. ”Did I not say he was a disguised millionaire?”
”But he has but now got his money,” Seraphin protested.
”Poof!” said Houdon, dismissing the argument with a trill upon his invisible piano. ”La-la-la!”
”Without doubt to mark the event you will give a dinner?” suggested Garnier.
”Without doubt,” said Houdon.
Cartaret said that he would give a dinner that very evening if Pasbeaucoup would strain the Median laws of the establishment so far as to trust him for a few days, and Pasbeaucoup, receiving the necessary nod from Madame, said that they would be but too happy to trust M. Cartarette for any sum and for any length of time that he might choose to name.
So Cartaret left them for a few hours and went back to his room at the earliest possible moment for finding Vitoria returned from her cla.s.s.
This time he not only knocked: he tried, in his haste, the k.n.o.b of the door, and the door, swinging open, revealed an empty room, stripped of even its furniture.
He nearly fell downstairs to the cave of Refrogne.
”Where are they?” he demanded.
Had monsieur again been missing strawberries? Where were what?
”Where is Mlle. Urola--where are the occupants of the room across from mine?” Cartaret's frenzied tones implied that he would hold the concierge personally responsible for whatever might have happened to his neighbors.
”Likely they are occupying some other room by this time,” growled Refrogne. ”I was unaware that they were such great friends of monsieur.”
”They are. Where are they?”
”In that case, they must have told monsieur of their contemplated departure.”
”Do you mean they've moved to another room in this house?”
”But no.”
”Then where have they gone?”
They had gone away. They had paid their bill honestly, even the rent for the unconsumed portion of the month, and gone away. That was all it was an honest concierge's business to know.
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