Read Online The Mysterious Mickey Finn by Elliot Paul - Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they wanted something from Ambrose. Once I thought I heard the word “ Greco ” but I might have been mistaken. Come to think of it, the same pair found him again to-night and they were disappointed, displeased with what Ambrose had or had not done, I think.’
    â€˜Let’s forget Gring. You were magnificent,’ he repeated.
    â€˜I’ve never seen such singleness of purpose as poor Ambrose showed,’ she said, this time without a shudder. ‘Had he been attracted to me, in a messy way, the situation would have been unbearable. But I never have felt so impersonal. It was as if I were the Goddess of Petroleum in technicolor, thrown upon a screen amid gushers and bank vaults. Now, if I could keep my eye on the ball like that I’d make Brailowsky sound like a piano tuner. And you ... Why, Homer, with that kind of concentration, you’d be ... why, you’d be ...’
    â€˜What would I be, if I pulled myself together?’
    She gave up. ‘I don’t like to think of you otherwise than you are,’ she said.
    â€˜The great loafer. That’s what I want to be. I have written a book and painted a portrait, only to prove to myself that I don’t have to loaf if I don’t want to. But that’s what I want to do. I like it. I hate activity and bustle. I don’t want to carry on the torch of civilization.’
    â€˜Of course not. You make me feel small,’ she said. ‘Just a few days ago I thought nothing mattered except thumping away at pianos. Now that doesn’t mean anything at all.’ And she sighed so happily that Evans had a faint twinge of alarm. He heard a faint roar and saw a couple of frightened bats come larruping out of the rue de la Huchette. ‘Hjalmar must be arriving,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the Caveau.’
    It was Hjalmar, all right, and not far behind him was Rosa Stier, who somehow had shaken off the effects of the afternoon’s Pernods and was ready to start all over again. The Phoenix had nothing on Rosa, as a come-back specialist, only the fabulous bird rose from ashes and Rosa preferred something infinitely more moist. The Finn, when he appeared a moment later, had with him the Swedish actress and they all grouped themselves around M. Julliard’s neat zinc bar, where they were joined by Harold Simon and his favourite model, a black girl from Martinique who was nicknamed ‘Cirage’.
    â€˜Is this an American holiday?’ M. Julliard asked, serving drinks adroitly without seeming to exert himself. There was a night’s work ahead of him that might have staggered the kitchen force of the Cercle Interalliée , but he liked to work in good company and especially for Evans and Hjalmar, who had used his modest establishment as a refuge many times before. An habitué of Montparnasse who goes to a narrow street behind the place St Michel is as safely hidden as if he were in the Marquesan islands.
    When Hjalmar and his friends got tired of standing around the bar, they all descended two long flights of dark stone stairs, ducked through low archways and over gravelled corridors until they reached the banquet room, which in its day had been a judgement room used by Robespierre. There they were doubly safe from either discovery or intrusion. Even a man as prominent as Robespierre had been able to carry on there at will, without the people in the streets above, or even the commissaire of police two blocks away, suspecting what was happening in those granite-vaulted chambers. And in the same degree that the placid rows of wine bottles transformed the ancient prison cell next door, the company of revellers, primed with divers stimulants and cheered by their recent success, transformed the grim tribunal into a banquet hall. The first course was not crême de pommes d ’ amour en boite à la Campbell , as had been served to the frock-coated academicians,