Yesterday Never Dies. Brian Stableford
you had endangered it, by enticing me there.”
Still hiding behind the curtain, but still peering out clandestinely, he put the opera-glasses to his eyes and focused them on the opposite box. I could not believe that he was using them to study Chapelain, and drew the natural conclusion.
A distinct grimace of disappointment crossed his face
“Let’s not quibble,” he said, by way of a response to my objection. “Do you know who that woman is in Chapelain’s box, perchance?”
“No,” I said, shortly—but I looked at her again, automatically, and saw her turn to greet someone who had just stepped through the door of her own box: two people, in fact, both men who would presumably have preferred to think of themselves as still just about in the prime of life rather than merely old.
With four people temporarily crammed into a three-chair box, the small space seemed crowded, but the occupants did their best to exchange polite formal greetings while maintaining a respectable distance between them. My impression was that Chapelain had not met either of the older men before, but that the lady knew them well.
“That’s odd,” Saint-Germain murmured.
“What’s odd?” I asked, reflexively, still in a state of some confusion as to how to put an end to the importunate visitation.
“Meyerbeer and Scribe obviously know who she is,” he said. “Meyerbeer must have come all the way back from Vienna to see the performance. Maybe’s he’s come to make sure that there are no unauthorized alterations. Last time Robert was produced here—well, not here exactly, but in the old hall, before it burned down—the piece was considerably revised. That was thirteen years ago, before my time, of course, but I heard a couple of the members muttering something about mystery and sacrilege while reading the theater notices, and naturally pricked up my ears. Meyerbeer took umbrage, apparently, although....”
He was cut off abruptly when the door opened again, and this time we both turned, presumably both expecting to see Auguste Dupin appear.
Again, it was not Dupin. It was Lucien Groix, the Prefect of Police. He seemed even less pleased to see Saint-Germain than Saint-German was to see him, and I sensed a flare of mutual hostility, although I thought it possible that both men were merely disappointed that the other was not Dupin. At any rate, the fake Comte’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he blurted out—unwittingly, I’m sure: “Are you following me?”
Groix collected himself with the rapidity that one would expect of a man in his position. “Don’t be absurd, Monsieur Falleroux,” he said with deliberate disdain. “I have people to do that sort of thing for me.”
I could see that the comment stung, and not merely because the Prefect had used the charlatan’s real name. Saint-Germain/Falleroux had no time for a reply, though, for Groix had immediately turned to me.
“Where’s Dupin?” he asked bluntly. His customary urbanity seemed to have gone missing.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “He sent me a note saying that he’d been unavoidably delayed and couldn’t get here before the interval. I’d rather assumed that it was you who had detained him.” That had been my natural assumption, although the Prefect, like Chapelain, had been conspicuous by his absence from Dupin’s life of late.
Groix evidently wanted to ask more questions, but was obviously inhibited by Saint-German’s presence. I could not help noticing the way that the prefect was clutching his walking-stick with his gloved hand, almost as if it were a weapon, although it was a light and slender black-lacquered affair, far less use than ornament. Probably without realizing it, Saint-Germain had raised his own cane slightly, although it was a similarly elegant model, made of Chinese bamboo, as useless for sturdy defense as for reckless aggression.
I reflected that all our standard masculine accoutrements had become useless, in spite of their stubborn survival. Canes no longer function as swords, hats as helmets, or gloves as gauntlets, but we cling to them nevertheless, as symbolic residues of the past, reluctant to let go of them in spite of their redundancy—almost as if they still had potency as talismans, if not as instruments. Saint-German was not clutching his own stick as convulsively as Groix was gripping his, but even he seemed unusually tense, and I judged that their present fit of animosity had been generated on the back of an existing ill-humor in each case.
“Monsieur de Saint-German was just leaving,” I said, hoping that the Comte would take the hint. “He just stopped in to say bonjour, even though we are not really friends.”
Saint-Germain showed not the slightest sign of retreating, however; he obviously wanted to get back at the Prefect for the casual slight.
“I’m surprised that you have time to visit the theater, Monsieur Groix,” he said, snidely, “with the regime and the administration tottering around you. Shouldn’t you be busy making preparations to emigrate? Or do you imagine that your bulging files contain enough blackmail material on Monsieur Raspail and his friends to allow you to survive a Republican revolution?”
I was shocked by his rudeness, but Groix seemed unsurprised. He was probably all too keenly aware of the precariousness of his position, and well used to the diminution of respect that had been suffered by the court and the administration alike. It had always seemed to me that Lucien Groix was more interested in the criminal aspects of the prefecture’s work, in which he often employed Dupin as an unofficial consultant, but as Prefect, he had responsibility for the political police too, and the Republican orators of Paris had every reason to detest as well as to fear him. If Louis-Philippe were toppled—and there were few people in Paris who thought him capable of clinging to the throne for another year—then Groix would surely have to leave Paris, and perhaps France, if he were not to run the risk of ending up in one of the prisons to which his agents had sent so many others.
“Are you sure that your own organization will survive, Monsieur Falleroux?” Groix countered. “You might be a man devoid of faith yourself, but the majority of your members are royalist through and through.”
“The Harmonic Society is above politics,” Saint-Germain stated, airily. “We are seers and sages, and we are irreplaceable. This time next year, I shall still be here, while you are in hiding in London.”
Groix must have been under a great deal of pressure, for I saw him snap then, as I had never seen him snap before. It was his turn to let his mouth get ahead of his mind. “What makes you think that?” he said, his voice almost reduced to a hiss as he fought to control his wrath. “Have you cast my horoscope?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Monsieur Groix,” Saint-German retorted, with a smile of smug self-satisfaction. “I have people to do that sort of thing for me.”
Groix’s eyes glittered, but his face did not turn red. He made no explicit threats, but I had the distinct feeling that if he were still in place this time next year, Saint-Germain might be the one hiding in London, for fear of being sent to the bagne.
The Prefect turned back to me. “Would you be so kind as to ask Monsieur Dupin to come to see me tomorrow morning, without fail, Monsieur Reynolds,” he said. And with that, he stalked out. He did not slam the door, but I believe that it was a testament to his powers of self-restraint that he did not.
Saint-Germain let out his breath and sat down in the right-hand chair. He reached out across the empty chair to hand my opera-glasses back. He no longer seemed anxious about the possibility of being seen, although I could not imagine that it was the Prefect from whom he had been hiding in the first place.
“Something’s going on,” he said, with a hint of malicious delight in his voice. “Where’s Dupin?”
I hesitated over giving him an explicit order to leave, because I was not sure what I could do if he simply refused. The idea of a public quarrel in the quality section of the Opéra-Comique, which would immediately attract the attention of the hoi polloi and journalists in the stalls, was distinctly unattractive.
“The curtain will be going up in two minutes,” I told him, feeling like a coward