A Maker of History | Page 7

were to see him!"
The girl jumped up at once.
"Do you know his name?" she asked.
"Monsieur Alphonse, they call him. He is on duty now."
Phyllis Poynton descended at once to the ground floor of the hotel, and pushed open the glass door which led into the coiffeur's shop. Monsieur Alphonse was waiting upon a customer, and she was given a chair. In a few minutes he descended the spiral iron staircase and desired to know Mademoiselle's pleasure.
"You speak English?" she asked.
"But certainly, Mademoiselle."
She gave a little sigh of relief.
"I wonder," she said, "if you remember waiting upon my brother last Thursday week. He was tall and fair, and something like me. He had just arrived in Paris."
Monsieur Alphonse smiled. He rarely forgot a face, and the young Englishman's tip had been munificent.
"Perfectly, Mademoiselle," he answered. "They sent for me because Monsieur spoke no French."
"My chambermaid, Marie, told me that you might perhaps know how he proposed to spend the evening," she continued. "He was quite a stranger in Paris, and he may have asked for some information."
Monsieur Alphonse smiled, and extended his hands.
"It is quite true," he answered. "He asked me where to go, and I say to the Folies Berg��res. Then he said he had heard a good deal of the supper caf��s, and he asked me which was the most amusing. I tell him the Caf�� Montmartre. He wrote it down."
"Do you think that he meant to go there?" she asked.
"But certainly. He promised to come and tell me the next day how he amused himself."
"The Caf�� Montmartre. Where is it?" she asked.
"In the Place de Montmartre. But Mademoiselle pardons--she will understand that it is a place for men."
"Are women not admitted?" she asked.
Alphonse smiled.
"But--yes. Only Mademoiselle understands that if a lady should go there she would need to be very well escorted."
She rose and slipped a coin into his hand.
"I am very much obliged to you," she said. "By the bye, have any other people made inquiries of you concerning my brother?"
"No one at all, Mademoiselle!" the man answered.
She almost slammed the door behind when she went out.
"And they say that the French police are the cleverest in the world," she exclaimed indignantly.
Monsieur Alphonse watched her through the glass pane.
"Ciel! But she is pretty!" he murmured to himself.
* * * * *
She turned into the writing-room, and taking off her gloves she wrote a letter. Her pretty fingers were innocent of rings, and her handwriting was a little shaky. Nevertheless, it is certain that not a man passed through the room who did not find an excuse to steal a second glance at her. This is what she wrote:--
"MY DEAR ANDREW,--I am in great distress here, and very unhappy. I should have written to you before, but I know that you have your own trouble to bear just now, and I hated to bother you. I arrived here punctually on the date arranged upon between Guy and myself, and found that he had arrived the night before, and had engaged a room for me. He was out when I came. I changed my clothes and sat down to wait for him. He did not return. I made inquiries and found that he had left the hotel at eight o'clock the previous evening. To cut the matter short, ten days have now elapsed and he has not yet returned.
"I have been to the Embassy, to the police, and to the Morgue. Nowhere have I found the slightest trace of him. No one seems to take the least interest in his disappearance. The police shrug their shoulders, and look at me as though I ought to understand--he will return very shortly they are quite sure. At the Embassy they have begun to look upon me as a nuisance. The Morgue--Heaven send that I may one day forget the horror of my hasty visits there. I have come to the conclusion, Andrew, that I must search for him myself. How, I do not know; where, I do not know. But I shall not leave Paris until I have found him.
"Andrew, what I want is a friend here. A few months ago I should not have hesitated a moment to ask you to come to me. To-day that is impossible. Your presence here would only be an embarrassment to both of us. Do you know of any one who would come? I have not a single relative whom I can ask to help me. Would you advise me to write to Scotland Yard for a detective, or go to one of these agencies? If not, can you think of any one who would come here and help me, either for your sake as your friend, or, better still, a detective who can speak French and whom one can trust? All our lives