The Lightning Conductor Discovers America. Williamson Charles Norris
hard laugh.
"Marcel Moncourt! Why, that man wouldn't give up his ease to manage a gilt-edged boarding-house in the country – no, not to please an emperor!"
"Maybe not," said Storm coolly. "There aren't many emperors just now a Frenchman wants to please."
"You think he'd give the preference to you!"
"Not to me. But to Mr. and Miss Moore. And" – the man glanced at his employer – "Mrs. Shuster." She flushed at the immense, the inconceivable compliment, for Marcel Moncourt, I suppose (don't you?), is as grand a chef as there is in the world, almost a classic figure of his kind, and a gentleman by birth, they say. Even Mrs. Shuster, who doesn't know much outside her own immediate circle of interests, had managed to catch some vague echo of the great Moncourt's fame. As for Larry, he became suddenly alert as a schoolboy who learns that the best "tuck box" ever packed is destined for him.
"Good lord!" he exclaimed. "You don't mean you can get the one and only Marcel to take charge at Kidd's Pines?"
"I know – or used to know – a person who can certainly persuade him to do so, and on very short notice," said the S. M.
"That settles it, then!" cried Larry. "Can you guess what I was doing? 'Ruling passion strong in death' – and that sort of thing! I was betting with myself which of you two would come out ahead in the argument and gain his point over the other. I thought – I must say – the odds were with Mr. Caspian, for gold weighs down the scales. But Marcel is worth his weight in gold. Put him in the balance, and the argument's ended. I didn't mean to take a hand in the game! I felt so confident it would work out all right either way. But with Marcel and Mr. Storm on one side, and Mr. Caspian with a gold-mine on the other, we choose Marcel – don't we, girlie?"
"Who is Marcel?" inquired girlie, thus appealed to.
Larry laughed. "She's just out of a convent," he apologized for his child's abysmal ignorance. "Marcel Moncourt, my dear," he enlightened her, "was the making of a millionaire, who would never have been anybody without him. Once upon a time there was an old man named Stanislaws, not particularly interesting nor intelligent except as a money grubber – oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Caspian, I forgot he was related to you! – but he was lucky, and the best bit of luck he ever had was getting hold of this Marcel as chef and general manager of his establishment. No one had bothered about Mr. Stanislaws before, rich as he was, but with Marcel at the helm, he could have any one he liked as his guest, from a foreign prince or an American President to a Pierpont Morgan. Of course they all tried to get Marcel away; but he was like iron to the magnet – none of us could ever understand why. It looked almost like a mystery! When there were no more Stanislaws on earth, then, and not till then, Marcel considered himself free. He had the world to choose from; and he chose to rest. He is now a gentleman of leisure. Any one starting a hotel who could secure Marcel would be made – made! But I should have said no hope, short of a Fifth Avenue palace, if that. No more hope for us than of getting the Angel Gabriel to stand blowing his trumpet in front of the door."
"There is no hope. I'd stake my life on that," said Caspian emphatically. "When I came into my cousin's money, after the poor old man's murder and all the other tragedies, I offered Marcel a salary of fifteen thousand dollars a year to come to me. By Jove, I'd have built a house to fit him. But he wouldn't listen. Tired of work was his only excuse."
"Tired of making millionaires popular, perhaps," murmured Mr. Storm to a picture of Cousin John Randolph Payton on the wall.
Caspian's heavenly blue eyes snapped with another kind of blue fire. "I should say that no power except that of blackmail could induce Marcel Moncourt to take any interest, active or financial, in our scheme down here. Perhaps that is your secret?"
If I hadn't seen the steerage passenger smile when Mrs. Shuster accused him of being a gentleman and offered him cast-off clothes, I should have expected violence. He smiled much in the same way now, to Pat's relief and Larry's disappointment. "Perhaps it is," he said. "I've always thought it must be exciting to be a blackmailer. Anyhow, it is my secret. If I can get – or, rather, if my friend can get – Marcel to put money and gray matter into Kidd's Pines as a hotel, Mr. Moore – Miss Moore, will you have him – and the Syndicate?"
"We would have him and the devil!" cried Larry.
Ed Caspian looked as if he suspected that having Marcel and Peter Storm might turn out much the same thing. But he was the only "No," and the "Ayes" had it.
Afterward Mrs. Shuster told me that Ed Caspian vowed to find out all about our Ship's Mystery if it took his last penny. So we may "see some fun," as Larry says.
But perhaps you've had enough of our scheme and schemers for the moment, Mercédes mia!
Ever your loving
P. S. I suppose he can't be a blackmailer? He might be anything!
IV
PATRICIA MOORE TO ADRIENNE DE MONCOURT, HER BEST FRIEND IN THE CONVENT SCHOOL AT NEUILLY
Ma Chérie:
J'ai beaucoup de choses à dire– oh no, I forgot – you asked me to write in English, because it would help your spelling. That was a large compliment, mon petit choux, but do look up the most difficult words in the dictionary. It would be more safe. I am trying to think in English, but I find I think faster in French still; and I need to think extremely fast now, as fast as heat lightning. Aussi I dream in French, about American people, which mixes me up; and one laughs when I don't get my sentences right. You must not take me for a model, though I will do all my possible, and improve as the time passes on.
As I promised, I begin a letter to you on the ship, but I cannot finish, for too many things happening and the times – I mean the weather – being so bad. Perhaps it is better I did not, for everything is different now from what we thought. Darling Larry has lost all his money, and we are in the soup. But it is a superb soup, because we have a chef the most famous of the world. I have almost fear to tell you his name! It is the same as yours, only that naturally he has not the "de," though he has the grand air and is richer than we when we were rich. It will look strange to you, this, that we should have an employé so wonderful when we are in ruins. But he is not an employé like others. We are as his servants. And we have him because he helps us make our house a hotel for the high world. He is not alone in helping us, my father and me. There is, besides, a band who helps. Not a band that plays music, you comprehend, but a ring – a circle of people. I have made their acquaintance on the ship, all but one who came on the quai when we arrived, and broke the truth of Larry. I did not cry, though I saw all my happy days we have talked of so much, you and me, fly away in smoke. I thought not of them, but of Larry, which was worse, for I had a cold fear in my heart like the lumps of raspberry ice we sometimes swallowed too large and fast on the fête days. I feared he might have suffered too much and made himself die. I can speak of that now when I know he is saved. But he did not even wish to be dead. He is brave and wonderful and has earned some of the money back at roulette. I hoped he would earn more like that, it was so easy, beginning only with a few dollars and waiting till they mounted up, and he hoped so, too. But he has had to put himself in the hands of the band who advise us, and they do not approve the roulette. It is too often raided by the police; and then you do not win quite always.
Larry is too much the charmer for a good man of affairs, and I do not know what would have become of us two if it had not been for this band. It was they who thought of the hotel. At least, it was one – a man. I cannot tell you all about him now, it would take too long a time. And, besides, what can you tell of a man when you know nothing of him unless that he makes every one march as he chooses either with some word or some look of the eyes, though he is the poorest of all and has taken work as secretary? He is named Storm. For a man he is young, though for you and me it would be an age – thirty or thirty-two, Mrs. Winston thinks. Captain and Mrs. Winston are of the band. He is Captain the Honourable. That is the way the English put their titles with the soldier part in the front. They spell it "Honble" on letters or the lists of passengers, but you do not call them by it at all, which is