The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds 109
bad
taste, and that if he wanted me to work by day and be on sentry go at
night, he might at least provide me with an alarm bell and a pistol. He
might even raise my salary, too. He merely sneered and invited me to
feel his biceps.
A
few weeks later he found fault with me again on another account. I
woke up and heard him come in in the small hours of the morning—with a
lady. Instead of retiring quietly like respectable people, he and his
companion carried on a lively conversation in the drawing-room, and
presently I heard the popping of champagne corks. Then I heard
footsteps outside my door, followed by a loud insistent knock. I got
out of bed and opened to him. There he stood, holding out a brimming
glass of wine.
"Drink that to my health," said he. "It's my birthday. And get into your dressing-gown and join us in the drawing-room."
Orders
is orders. When I had splashed the sleep out of my eyes and put on a
dressing-gown, I went into the drawing-room and found that my boss's
friend was Margot, of the Casino de Paris. She was a tactful girl in
the ordinary way, and if she had not dined and wined a little too
lavishly she would instinctively have sized up the situation and not
let it be known that we had already met. Certainly she would not have
followed her impulse. She would not have drawn me up tenderly to her
and kissed me with a fervour which roused the anger of my boss.
But
I will draw a veil over the scene that followed. There resulted one of
those piquant little affairs, now that Margot knew where I lived, in
which woman is all the
