For lo! athwart a score of rococo mirrored walls the dazzling lights answered each other in optical strophe and antistrophe. Incredible perspectives of painted ceiling with moulded garlands of gold, were upheld by bowed, silent caryatides, about whose bare gilded breasts hovered voluptuously the dim blue smoke of scented cigarettes that rose incense-like from the worshippers of pleasure below. From the thronged marble tables rose the heady, deadly fumes of wine and drugs--a mad clinking of glasses--a fierce rattling of hypodermic syringes--a Babel of tongues--wild hectic laughter--an undercurrent of whispers of dark intrigue and nameless insinuation--and there was a stall where French novels were openly for sale.… “La Bohème!” he said instinctively to himself. But here reality had surely out-Murgered Puccini or Balfe. From one plush-covered seat, where half-a-dozen picturesque figures sat, men and women jowl by cheek, he caught the wildest of foreign oaths. “_Certes!_” “_Pardi!_” “_Je m’en f … de ce b … là!_” “_N … d’un n…!_” And many another untranslatable audacity that could only be conveyed by the vitriolic pen of a Zola or a Willy. From a table on his right came sinister mutterings. “But how _can_ he quit the country, Bill? D’you think there aren’t any ’tecs at Dover Harbour?” “My G----! Harry, I wish I’d never touched the stuff!” Dope, no doubt, reflected Gaveston sadly. Farther over, near a respectable-looking door labelled GRILL ROOM, sat a group of hideous old satyrs playing, apparently, dominoes. But the deep ravages of time and disease had seared their absinthe-rotted faces too terribly for Gaveston to be deceived by their pretence of childish pastime, and he tiptoed discreetly over to see whether he might not catch some of their conversation, muffled though it obviously was. Yes, he could hear the raucous whispering of their broken English. “Oh, dere’s a market all right. And so I took seex of ’em at t’ree t’ousan’ francs--F.O.B., of course.” “F.O.B., of course,” nodded his accomplice with a smile, and Gaveston looked down at the couple, fascinated by their strange redolence of sin. What vileness, he wondered, were the old traffickers discussing in their thievish cabalistic slang?[9] [9] Mr. Budd’s sense of picturesque detail occasionally led him astray, though never more than is pardonable in a young novelist. As a close neighbour of the great industrial North of England, he would have been deeply interested to know that the gentlemen he here portrays in a somewhat sinister light are in reality the London representatives of two of the most prominent textile houses of Lille, a city which has been wittily (though not by Mr. Budd) described as the “Manchester of France.” (LIT. EXEC.) But his reflections were broken with an unexpectedness worthy of the scene. Suddenly he felt a hand touch his shoulder. Who could it be? He turned. CHAPTER V GUERRILLA