Fair Margaret - Page 128/206

Returning to his plan of watching Logotheti, Lushington argued rightly

that the trip in the motor car would be repeated the very next time

that Margaret had a rehearsal, and that the car would therefore leave

the house in the Boulevard Péreire at about the same time, every two or

three days, but never on two days consecutively. When there was no

rehearsal, Margaret would not come into town. When that was the case it

would be easy to watch the house in Versailles. Lushington was not

quite sure what he expected to see, but he would watch it all the same.

Perhaps, on those days, Logotheti would appear undisguised and call.

But what Lushington was most anxious to find out was whether Margaret

had been to the house again. He wished he had waited near the Opéra to

see where she went when she came out, or in the Boulevard Péreire,

instead of coming back to his lodgings in a bad temper after his

interview with the stage doorkeeper.

He looked out of the window and saw that it was raining. That made it

sure that Margaret would not go back to Versailles in the motor car,

but in the meantime she might very possibly be at Logotheti's, at

luncheon.

He glanced at his watch, and a few minutes later he was on his bicycle

again, an outlandish figure in his long-tailed, coffee-coloured

overcoat and soft student's hat. He hitched up the tails as well as he

could and sat on them, to keep them out of the mud, and he pulled the

hat well down to keep the rain off his big spectacles and his nose. His

own mother would certainly not have recognised him.

He spent a melancholy hour, riding up and down in the wet between the

Place Péreire and the Place Wagram, till he wished with all his heart

that he might never again set eyes on the statue of Alphonse de

Neuville. Half the time, too, he was obliged to look back every moment

in order to watch Logotheti's door, lest he should miss what he was

waiting so patiently to see. The rain was cold, too, and persistent as

it can be in Paris, even in spring. His gloves were pulpy and

jellified, his spring-side kid boots felt as if he were taking a foot

bath of cold glue, and some insidious drops of cold water were

trickling down his back. The broad street was almost deserted, and when

he met any one he wished it were altogether so. Yet he wondered why a

man as rich as Logotheti should have built his house there.