After a leisurely breakfast and more love-making under the plane trees
in the little garden behind the inn, the pair had to reckon with fact.
They must get some money at once: they had only enough loose silver in
their two purses to pay the modest charges at the _cabaret_ and buy a
litre or two of _petrol_ to get them to Paris. Yet they dallied on in
the way of young love and drove up to the bank just before it closed.
When Adelle in her nonchalant manner asked the young man at the window
to give her five thousand francs in notes, she received a great
shock--the worst shock of her life. The young cashier, who had paid out
to her through the little brass _guichet_ many tens of thousands of
pretty white notes and gold-pieces, informed her that he could not give
her any money. It developed, under a storm of exclamation and protest,
that only that noon the bankers had received a cablegram from their
correspondent in America curtly directing them not to cash further
drafts drawn by Miss Clark against the Washington Trust Company. The
magic lamp had gone out most inopportunely! In vain Adelle expostulated,
declared there was a mistake, even introduced to the cashier "my
husband," who looked uncomfortable, but tried to assume authority and
demanded reasons for the bank's treatment of his wife. All the reason
lay in that brief cablegram. The couple at last turned dejectedly into
the street and again got into Adelle's runabout, which obviously was in
need of more _petrol_.
"It's Pussy," Adelle pronounced with divination.
"If it is, she's got in her fine work fast."
The two might reflect sadly that if they had been prudent, they would
not have spent all that morning in love-making, having a lifetime for
that, but would have taken prompt measures to secure funds as soon as
the bank opened. Of course, it had never occurred to either of them that
trouble would fall in just this way.
And now what was to be done? Adelle felt that they should drive at once
to the Villa Ponitowski, secure her clothes and jewelry, and make Pussy,
who she had no doubt was there, bank them until the embargo on her
drafts was raised. But neither had what Archie called "the nerve" to do
this. So they went for refuge to the only place they knew, Miss Baxter's
studio.
There they found Miss Comstock. She had come to Paris, of course, by the
first train the day before, arriving at the studio shortly after they
had left in search of food. She had vibrated between the studio and the
Neuilly villa ever since, sure that when Adelle was short of funds she
would go home to roost. And Pussy had taken immediate measures to cut
off funds by cabling to the trust company the exact facts of Adelle's
disappearance in company with the Californian. She received them
amiably.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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