“At the Schweizerhof,” replied Flemming.
“I always take the hotel nearest the station.
Few Americans go there, I fancy. It is wonderfully
and fearfully Swiss. I was strolling in here to
look through the register for some American autographs
when I ran against you.”
“You had better bring your traps over here.”
“It would not be worth while. I am booked
for Paris to-morrow night. Ned—come
with me!”
“I can’t, Flemming; I have agreed to go
to Chamouni with the Denhams.”
“Don’t!”
“That is like advising a famishing man not to
eat his last morsel of food. I have a presentiment
it will all end there. I never had a presentiment
before.”
“I had a presentiment once,” said Flemming
impressively. “I had a presentiment that
a certain number—it was number twenty-seven—would
draw the prize in a certain lottery. I went to
the office, and number twenty-seven was one of the
two numbers unsold! I bought it as quick as lightning,
I dreamed of number twenty-seven three successive nights,
and the next day it drew a blank.”
“That has the ring of the old Flemming!”
cried Lynde, with an unforced laugh. “I
am glad that I have not succeeded in turning all your
joyous gold into lead. I’m not always such
dull company as I have been to-night, with my moods
and my presentiments. I owe them partly, perhaps,
to not seeing Miss Denham to-day, the aunt having a
headache.”
“You were not in a rollicking humor when I picked
you up.”
“I had been cruising about town all the morning
alone, making assaults on the Musee Fol, the Botanic
Garden, and the Jewish Synagogue. In the afternoon
I had wrecked myself on Rousseau’s Island, where
I sat on a bench staring at Pradier’s poor statue
of Jean Jacques until I fancied that the ugly bronze
cannibal was making mouths at me. When the aunt
has a headache, I suffer. Flemming, you
must see Miss Denham, if only for a moment.”
“Of course I should like to see her, Ned.”
“You do not leave until evening,” Lynde
said, reflecting. “I think I can manage
a little dinner for to-morrow. Now let us take
a breath of fresh air. I know the queerest old
nook, in the Rue de Chantpoulet, where the Bavarian
beer is excellent and all the company smoke the most
enormous porcelain pipes. Haven’t I hit
one of your weaknesses?”
“You have hit a brace!”
THE DENHAMS
When Edward Lynde returned to the hotel that night,
after parting with Flemming at the head of a crooked,
gable-hung street leading to the Schweizerhof, the
young man regretted that he had said anything on the
subject of the Denhams, or rather, that he had spoken
of the painful likeness which had haunted him so persistently.
The friends had spent the gayest of evenings together
at a small green-topped table in one corner of the
smoky cafe. Over their beer and cheese they had
