The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (7 page)

For all his somewhat extraordinary nature and accomplishments, Hiram Holliday was a shy man, and his fourteen years on the copy-desk of his paper, reading and correcting stories written by others and writing the head-fines there, had not made him less so. But by virtue of his work and his newspaper associations, he was a very practical man.

He understood the attitude of the Bureau Chief in Paris. Indeed, he was a little at loss himself as to what his line of action was to be. What he had done in London had grown out of himself, the product of the terrible tension under which the city had lived for days. Paris, he already knew, was different, and he felt useless, and even more so after he had inquired politely and in the manner of the shy neophyte as to the nature of the story that was adding grey hairs to the heads of the seasoned veterans in the Paris Bureau.

For, it was one of those nasty, difficult, less than half tangible political intrigues, hints of which only reach the newspaper offices and bureaux guardedly and in roundabout ways. Its existence could not be admitted at any of the embassies, or the French Foreign Office, or the Prefecture. No one knew anything, and everyone had heard, or suspected something. The intrigue centred around a purported deal between the Germans and the White Russians whose headquarters were in Paris, to involve the Ukraine. It threatened the safety of France, the friendship and protection of Soviet Russia, the destiny of Poland, and the peace and security of Central Europe, such as it was.

It had come to the surface in
the murder of a Soviet under-
secretary Mikoff, shot down in his home in Paris by an unknown assassin, and through the mysterious disappearance of General Grigor Vinovarieff, former Czarist officer and erstwhile leader of the White Russians in Paris, but repudiated by them when he became suspect of selling out to the Nazis. When the French secret service began to take an interest in him with a view to deportation, he vanished without a trace. But in the meantime it became apparent that he was still giving orders, and that they were being carried out. There had been an attempt on the life of the Soviet Ambassador, there was inspired unrest on the Ukrainian border, traces of German money in Russian hands were found....

Hiram shook his head and sighed. These were insidious and dangerous world politics that took a lifetime to understand. His colleagues, he knew, might nibble away a little of the crust of the conspiracy, but the heart of the plot would remain the secrets of the nations involved, buried in their archives and dossiers or locked in the cold meat of the corpses of the men who knew too much or had been too careless with what they knew. As a veteran of the copy-desk he knew that from half to two-thirds of the real news in any sensational story is never published.

He felt lonely, superfluous and unhappy. The exhilaration that had been with him since the London adventure had left him.

'Thanks,' said Hiram Holliday. 'I won't be bothering you. I'm at the Hotel Voltaire if you want me for anything.' He donned his hat and coat and went out, a curiously undistinguished figure.

'Whatever possessed Beau to send us a cluck like that?' said Bureau Chief Clegg when the office door had closed.' He must be getting senile,' and promptly forgot about him. Nor did he think about him again until three days later he was rather forcibly called to his atte
ntion when it developed that an
American by the name of Hiram Holliday had vanished into thin air in Paris, and in his stead had left in his wildly disarrayed and battered hotel room the silent and rigid person of a well-dressed, unidentified Russian gentleman. The Russian gentleman was rigid and silent because he was dead of a broken neck. He sat on the floor with his back against the bedstead. In his right hand he clutched a nickel-plated pistol of which one chamber was discharged, the bullet being found in the wall. But of what became of Hiram Holliday no one found out; not certain foreign gentlemen of nobility who shook in their shoes for every second that he was missing, not certain members of the Soviet Government who would have given many roubles to have known, just as a group of worried and enraged members of the German secret foreign service would have paid thousands of gold marks for his person, not the French police, who, after all, had a duty to perform, even though after they had identified the person of the rigid Russian gentleman they were very, very glad that he was dead.

In London, Hiram Holliday had never been free from the strong impressions of tradition. The dust of the ancient English, and before them the Romans, and even before them the Britons called to him up through the very streets that he walked. In Paris he was conscious only of modernity. And this was, he felt; because Paris was never really at any time ancient. The people who had lived there had never been anything but modern.

He felt more cheerful walking the thronged, noisy streets and boulevards, the Madeleine, the Capucines, the Italiens, and the crooked side-streets with the fascinating names that led from them, or near them, Maturin, Auber, Caumartin, rue de la Paix, streets whose names had such a familiar ring that when he turned into one of them it was almost with a sense of homecoming.

Mainly, he was impressed with the complete femininity of the city and immediately it set up a curious nostalgic yearning in him. He was a man and lonely in a city of women,

46 a city where every woman dressed exquisitely from the poorest shopgirl upwards, a city where when one walked on a great boulevard like the Champs-filysees or the Capucines there was always the strong scent of perfume in the air, a scent that was ever changing as woman after woman drifted by, each with her own.

He noted with pleasure how beautifully the little children were dressed, like dolls in the windows of toy-stores around Christmas-time. He went to none of the places indicated by the guide-books, but sat in the lemon-yellow sunlight in the
park at the end of the Champs-El
ysees between the Rond Point and the Place de la Concorde, and saw the children ride the little wagons drawn by goats, and on ponies and on a tiny carousel, and watched the women go by, the women with which Paris adorned herself. He felt that Paris wore her women like gay flowers in her hair or lovely jewellery.

He observed how Paris turned the autumn to her own account. Like all good things of age she took to herself a patina. Her trees turned into no patchwork of autumn colours. They bronzed quietly until all Paris was the shade of the late afternoon sun, the shade of the old buildings and the brown river. Even the still bright flowers in the patterned beds of the Tuileries were paler and seemed eager to join the autumn blend of bronze.

Sitting there, his mind turned to thoughts of the Princess Adelheit von Furstenhof and the little Duke Peter, her nephew. Heidi, she had called herself during that fantastic adventure in London. There would never be an adventure like it again, he thought, at least not for him. He wondered whether she was still in Paris and whether he would ever see her again. He realized that if she were she would be with friends, perhaps in hiding, and that there was little hope of seeing her. And what if he should ? Grim forces had swept them together in London and in the heat of the struggle she had leaned on him for a little. Well, the crisis was over now and perhaps it was best that he did not see her again. What was it she had said: 'Good-bye, Hiram Holliday. Thank you. I do not think our ways will ever cross again, but at least I have known a great and gallant man. There are not many left.'

Hiram shook his head. It was not good to be greedy. That adventure had ended with the accolade of Heidi's kiss. He put her out of his mind.

That night he dined by himself in a little restaurant near the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and then, because that was the kind of man he was, he call
ed a cab and drove over to Mont
martre and the streets of bals and the cabarets, the broad, garish, fragrant, noisy Boulevard Rochechouart where the big electric signs glittered, and the restaurants and amusement places sat shoulder to shoulder with tiny bistros, and oyster and mussel bars. There, he walked for a while and then, with no more than a glance at the showcases of nude photographs outside the cabarets, he bought himself a ticket in the front row of the Cirque Antoine, 'Le Cirque de Paris,' and went in.

The cabarets failed to attract him, not because he was insensible to the flesh, but because he felt there was no romance in the blatant tawdriness of these places. It was all cut-and-dried like a slab of roast beef ordered in a bad restaurant, sex turned on like a cheap song purchased with five cents inserted into an automatic phonograph. But all circuses were romantic and the men and women who peopled them romantic characters and of another world, a world so much their own that it had always fascinated him. In that dream sphere of adventure and daring in which he lived during the hours away from his work, the circus had always figured.

The Cirque Antoine enchanted him. He sat with his knees pressing up against the side of the ring which was the centre of the building, and the completely circular rows of seats rose steeply like the sides of a funnel, almost to the roof, a roof supported all the way around by tall, red pillars, and from the top of which hung the exciting paraphernalia of the acrobats and aerialists. On the wall between the last row of seats and the roof were painted frescoes of circus acts.

The bill was good, Paolo, a magnificent young juggler, and Coco, an amazing parrot, and the Six Cossacks who per-

formed magnificently on horseback - Hiram wondered why they were called * Six' when there were really seven, though the seventh, a great, bearded giant of a man, did no riding, but signalled the changes with cracks of a great whip. He quite lost his heart to the gay, lovely dark-haired little circus queen, Lisette Pollarde, and her white horse, Capitan. She introduced each act with a gay little speech, and later performed beautifully on the back of her trained horse. He shuddered to see that the aerialists worked under the circular roof-top without any net. He watched the work of the clowns, and while he could not understand them when they spoke, he studied their pantomime, and deplored again to himself the passing of the silent clown who told his story of comedy and pathos with pantomime, the universal language. He noted also that the auditorium was no more than half full.

But most of all, Hiram was charmed with what took place during the intermission. He followed others of the audience through the huge curtain that screened the door through which the performers made their entrance, and there, behold, was the bar, and, not far, the stables from which came the pungent odour of horses and elephants, and most of the performers were there, the clowns and the acrobats and the jugglers, and Lisette, all holding court for their admirers and worshippers. Some of the clowns were sipping drinks at the bar with civilians, and others were leaning over talking to little children, and there was the warm, friendly hum of conversation and the smell of cigarette smoke and animals and grease paint and perfume, and Hiram Holliday suddenly felt happier than he had at any time since he had come to Paris.

He went over and stroked the nose of the white horse Capitan because he was hoping desperately to be able to talk to Lisette, the girl looked so fresh and charming. She had chestnut hair and fine dark eyes framed in a broad face with high cheekbones, and she had a large, frank, red splash of a mouth and fine white teeth. It was Lisette who broke the ice. She said suddenly: 'Capitan, shake hands. Give the hand to the American gentleman. So. Quick!'

The horse raised his right foreleg and placed the hoof in Hiram's
hand and arched his neck so disa
rmingly, that Hiram suddenly leaned over and kissed its velvet nose, and the girl laughed in confusion almost as though he had kissed her and said: 'Oh
...
but you Americans are always so impulsive.*

'Gee,' said Hiram, 'you speak English. You
...
you are simply
charming
.
Would
...
would you have a drink with me, Lisette?'

'I have been to England, often,' the girl said, and then bowed her head and added
:'
Thank you. I will have a lemonade please, and Capitan would like very much a piece of sugar.'

They went over and sat at the bar, and made friends and talked about the show, and Hiram noted and mentioned that the Cossacks did not seem to be in evidence. The girl tossed

her dark head and said: 'Oh Those Russians. They keep

by themselves. They are not like us. I love people.'

'Look,' said Hiram Holliday.... 'Maybe this is all out of order. I mean I'm an American and don't know what .your customs are. But would you come out with me a little after the show ? You see, I am a stranger and lonely. And I do love your business very much....'

The girl was silent for a moment and then studied him. She saw a man, no longer a youth, with unruly sandy hair and a round, innocent face. He had seemed to be a little stout, and yet she had noticed how well he moved when he had approached the horse. His steel-rimmed spectacles gave
him
almost an owlish air, but there was something in the large, bright blue eyes behind the glasses that made her wonder. The eyes did not belong with the face, the body or the manner. They were the eyes of men who did things. And there was an expression in them that made her want to smile warmly. This funny, innocent American who was so obviously charmed with her. She laughed engagingly and said: 'After the performance I am always very hungry. I have the enormous appetite. You may have permission to take me to supper. I shall meet you right here.'