Даргер и Довесок
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Another jump, of another alley.
He was getting closer now. Up a terra-cotta-tiled rooftop he ran. At the ridge-line, he saw with horror his prey extend herself in a low flying leap across a gap of at least fifteen feet. She hit the far roof with a tuck, rolled, and sprang to her feet.
Darger knew his limitations. He could not leap that gap.
In a panic, he tried to stop, tripped, fell, and found himself sliding feet-first on his back down the tiled roof. The edge sped toward him. It was a fall of he-knew-not-how-many floors to the ground. Perhaps six.
Frantically, Darger flung out his arms to either side, grabbing at the tiles, trying to slow his descent by friction. The tiles bumped painfully beneath him as he skidded downward. Then the heels of his bare feet slammed into the gutter at the edge of the eaves. The guttering groaned, lurched outward — and held.
Darger lay motionless, breathing heavily, afraid to move.
He heard a thump, and then the soft sound of feet traversing the rooftop. A woman’s head popped into view, upside down in his vision. She smiled.
He knew who she was, then. There were, after all, only so many cat-women in Paris. “M-madame d’Etra —”
“Shhh.” She put a finger against his lips. “No names.”
Nimbly, she slipped around and crouched over him. He saw now that she was clad only in a pelt of fine black fur. Her nipples were pale and naked. “So afraid!” she marveled. Then, brushing a hand lightly over him. “Yet still aroused.”
Darger felt the guttering sway slightly under him and, thinking how easily this woman could send him flying downward, he shivered. It was best he did not offend her. “Can you wonder, madame? The sight of you…”
“How gallant!” Her fingers deftly unbuttoned his trousers, and undid his belt. “You do know how to pay a lady a compliment.”
“What are you doing?” Darger cried in alarm.
She tugged the belt free, tossed it lightly over the side of the building. “Surely your friend has explained to you that cats are amoral?” Then, when Darger nodded, she ran her fingers up under his blouse, claws extended, drawing blood. “So you will understand that I mean nothing personal by this.”
Surplus was waiting when Darger climbed back in the window. “Dear God, look at you,” he cried. “Your clothes are dirty and disordered, your hair is in disarray — and what has happened to your belt?”
“Some mudlark of the streets has it, I should imagine.” Darger sank down into a chair. “At any rate, there’s no point looking for it.”
“What in heaven’s name has happened to you?”
“I fear I’ve fallen in love,” Darger said sadly, and could be compelled to say no more.
So began an affair that seriously tried the friendship of the two partners in crime. For Madame d’Etranger thenceforth appeared in their rooms, veiled yet unmistakable, every afternoon. Invariably, Darger would plant upon her hand the chastest of kisses, and then discretely lead her to the secrecy of his bedroom, where their activities could only be guessed at. Invariably, Surplus would scowl, snatch up his walking stick, and retire to the hallway, there to pace back and forth until the lady finally departed. Only rarely did they speak of their discord.
One such discussion was occasioned by Surplus’s discovery that Madame d’Etranger had employed the services of several of Paris’s finest book scouts.
“For what purpose?” Darger asked negligently. Mignonette had left not half an hour previously, and he was uncharacteristically relaxed.
“That I have not been able to determine. These book scouts are a notoriously close-mouthed lot.”
“The acquisition of rare texts is an honorable hobby for many haut-bourgeois.”
“Then it is one she has acquired on short notice. She was unknown in the Parisian book world a week ago. Today she is one of its best patrons. Think, Darger — think! Abrupt changes of behavior are always dangerous signs. Why will you not take this seriously?”
“Mignonette is, as they say here, une chatte s'erieuse, and I un homme galant.” Darger shrugged. “It is inevitable that I should be besotted with her. Why cannot you, in your turn, simply accept this fact?”
Surplus chewed on a knuckle of one paw. “Very well — I will tell you what I fear. There is only one work of literature she could possibly be looking for, and that is the chapbook proving that the Eiffel Tower does not lie beneath the Seine.”
“But, my dear fellow, how could she possibly know of its existence?”
“That I cannot say.”
“Then your fears are groundless.” Darger smiled complacently. Then he stroked his chin and frowned. “Nevertheless, I will have a word with her.”
The very next day he did so.
The morning had been spent, as usual, in another round of the interminable negotiations with Monsieur’s business agents, three men of such negligible personality that Surplus privately referred to them as Ci, Ca, and l’Autre. They were drab and lifeless creatures who existed, it sometimes seemed, purely for the purpose of preventing an agreement of any sort from coming to fruition. “They are waiting to be bribed,” Darger explained when Surplus took him aside to complain of their recalcitrance.
“Then they will wait forever. Before we can begin distributing banknotes, we must first receive our earnest money. The pump must be primed. Surely even such dullards as Ci, Ca, and l’Autre can understand that much.”
“Greed has rendered them impotent. Just as a heart can be made to beat so fast that it will seize up, so too here. Still, with patience I believe they can be made to see reason.”
“Your patience, I suspect, is born of long afternoons and rumpled bed sheets.”
Darger merely looked tolerant.
Yet it was not patience that broke the logjam, but its opposite. For that very morning, Monsieur burst into the conference room, carried in a chair by his apes and accompanied by his Dedicated Doctor. “It has been weeks,” he said without preamble. “Why are the papers not ready?”
Ci, Ca, and l’Autre threw up their hands in dismay.
“The terms they require are absurd, to say the…”
“No sensible businessman would…”
“They have yet to provide any solid proof of their…”