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Page 101
Beyond him a young woman became stricken with grief and was led out by
her solicitous husband, who seemed to feel that a tomb was no place for
her at that time.
The exit of this couple aroused Bean. He cast a quick glance upon the
havoc he had wrought and fled, wiping his eyes.
Halfway down the steps he encountered the alleged Adams of Hartford, who
had stopped to open his Badaeker at the right page before entering the
tomb.
"A magnificent bit of architecture," said the Hartford man
instructively.
"Pretty loud for a tomb," replied Bean judicially. He was not going to
let this Watkins, or whatever his name was, know what a fool he had made
of himself in there. Then he remembered something.
"Say," he ventured, "how'd you happen to think up that thing you were
always getting off to me back there on the boat--about as a man thinketh
_is_ he?"
"Tut-tut-tut! Really? But that is from the Holy Scriptures, which should
always be read in connection with Science and Health."
"I must get it--something _in_ that. Funny thing," he added genially,
"getting good stuff like that out of Hartford, Connecticut."
He left Watkins or Adams staring after him in some bewilderment, a
forgotten finger between the leaves of the Badaeker.
He began once more to lay a course through those puzzling streets. He
was going to that hotel. He was going to be an upstart and talk to his
own wife.
The tomb had cleared his brain.
"I'm no king," he thought; "never was a king; more likely a guinea-pig.
But I'm some one now, all right! I'll show 'em; not afraid of the whole
lot put together; face 'em all."
He came out upon the river at last and presently found himself back in
that circle of the hotel. He stared a while at the bronze effigy
surmounting that vainglorious column. Then he drew a long breath and
went into the hotel.
A capable Swiss youth responded to his demand to be shown to his room,
seeming to consider it not strange that Americans in Paris should now
and then return to their rooms.
At the doorway of a drawing-room that looked out upon the column the
Swiss suggested coffee--perhaps?
"And fruit and fumed ... boiled eggs and toast and all that meat and
stuff," supplemented Bean firmly.
He tried one of two doors that opened from the drawing-room and exposed
a bedroom. His, evidently. There was the little old steamer trunk. He
discovered a bathroom adjoining and was presently suffering the
celestial agonies of a cold bath with no waster to coerce him.
He dressed with indignant muttering, and with occasional glances out at
that supreme upstart's memorial. He chose his suit of the most legible
checks. He had been a little fearful about it in New York. It was rather
advanced, even for one of that Wall Street gang that had netted himself
four hundred thousand dollars. Now he donned it intrepidly.
And, with no emotion whatever but a certain grim sureness of himself, he
at last adjusted the entirely red cravat. He gloated upon this
flagrantly. He hastily culled seven cravats of neutral tint and hurled
them contemptuously into a waste-basket. Done with that kind!
He heard a waiter in the drawing-room serving his breakfast. He drew on
a dark-lined waistcoat of white piqu�--like the one worn by the oldest
director the day Ram-tah had winked--then the perfectly fitting coat of
unmistakable checks, and went out to sit at the table. He was resolving
at the moment that he would do everything he had ever been afraid to do.
"'S only way show you're not afraid," he muttered. He was wearing a
cravat he had always feared to wear, and now he would devour meat things
for breakfast, whatever the flapper thought about it.
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