Part 7 (1/2)

The telephone bell rang.

Fandor hesitated a moment. Should he answer it?

According to custom, the journalist ”had left” the evening before: he could plead his leave, which was in order, and say, like Louis XIV, ”After me the deluge!”

This famous saying would have suited the moment, for it was at that instant precisely that an inky cloud burst over Paris and emptied torrents of water over the darkened city.

Perhaps a friend had rung him up--or it was a mistake! So arguing, Fandor unhooked the receiver.

Having listened a moment, he instinctively adopted a more respectful att.i.tude, as if his interlocutor at the other end of the line could see him.

Fandor replied in quick monosyllables, closing the conversation with these words:

”Agreed. Presently, then chief.”

As the journalist hung up the receiver his expression changed: he frowned, and pulling at his moustache with a nervous hand, fretting and fuming.

”Hang it! It only wanted this,” he grumbled.

Fandor had been called up by M. Dupont, of _L'Aube_, the well-known opportunist deputy, who was the manager of _La Capitale_ as well. M.

Dupont was only a nominal manager, and generally contented himself with writing up his editorial without even taking it to the office. He left the real management to his son-in-law, whose function was that of editor-in-chief. Thus Fandor had been extremely astonished when his ”Head,” as he was called in the editorial department, had rung him up.

M. Dupont had summoned him to the Chamber of Deputies, for three o'clock in the afternoon: his chief wished to give him some information for an article on a matter which interested him particularly. Fandor was puzzled, anxious.

What could it be? The chief could not know that he was taking his holiday.

”Bah!” said he, ”Dupont evidently does not know. I will go to our meeting-place and will explain my approaching departure to him, and the devil's in it if he does not pa.s.s on this bit of reporting to one of my colleagues!”

”Madame Angelique,” continued Fandor in a joyous voice, turning to the breathless old housekeeper who had just come back laden with parcels, ”Get me lunch quickly. Then you must strap up my portmanteau. This evening I am going to make off, whatever happens!”

For two hours, interminable hours they seemed, Fandor had waited for M. Dupont in the Hall des Perdus[1] of the Palais-Bourbon. The deputy was at a sitting of the Chamber. If the ushers were to be believed, the discussion was likely to go on interminably. Several times our young journalist had thought he would simply make off without word said, excusing himself on the score of a misunderstanding when eight hundred odd miles lay between him and the directorial thunders. But he was too scrupulous a journalist, too professionally honest to follow the prompting of his desires.

[Footnote 1: Hall of the Wandering Footsteps.]

So, champing his bit, Fandor had stood his ground.

As he was looking at his watch for the hundred and fiftieth time, he quickly rose and hastened towards two men who came out of a corridor: they were M. Dupont and a personage whom Fandor recognised at once.

He bowed respectfully to them, shaking hands with the cordial M.

Dupont, who said to his companion:

”My dear Minister, let me present to you my young collaborator, Jerome Fandor.”

”It is a name not unknown to me,” replied the minister; then, having innumerable calls on his time, he quickly disappeared.

A few minutes after, in one of the little sitting-rooms reserved for Parliamentary Commissions, the manager of _La Capitale_ was conversing with his chief reporter.

”It was not to present me to the minister that you sent for me, my dear Chief--unless you intend to get me an appointment as sub-prefect, in which case.”...