SECRET ARMIES
32
She had never been in so luxurious a place beforerooms done in gray or brown marble with furniture to
dining
match. Two steps lead from the gray to the brown room and
Mile. Blondet, not noticing them in her excitement, slipped and
would have fallen had not the old wine steward who looks like
Charles Dickens, caught and steadied her.
The two men with whom she was lunching were at a table at
the far corner of the deserted room. The one who had invited
her, Francois Metenier, a well-known French engineer and in
dustrialist, powerfully built, with sharp eyes, dark hair, and a
suave self-assured manner, rose at her approach, smiling at her
embarrassment. The other man, considerably younger, was M.
Locuty, a stocky, bushy haired man with square jaws and heavy
tortoise-shell eyeglasses. He was an engineer at the huge Michelin Tire Works at Clermont-Ferrand where Metenier was an im
structed.
The industrialist introduced the girl merely as
without mentioning her name.
With the exception of two couples having a late breakfast in
the gray marble room, which they could see from their table, the
official.
portant
"my
friend"
three were alone.
"Shall
we have a
bottle of
dered lunch by phone but
on the
"Oh,
I
Bordeaux?"
thought
I
asked Metenier.
"I
or
would await your presence
wine."
anything you
order,"
said
Locuty with an
effort at casual-
ness.
you order the wine," said the stenographer.
"Garfon, a bottle of St. Julien, Chateau Leoville-Poyferre
"Yes,
1870."
The ghost of Charles Dickens, who had been hovering nearby,
bowed and smiled with appreciation of the guest s knowledge of a
rare fine wine and personally rushed off to the cellars for the
Bordeaux.
When
the early lunch was over and the brandy
had been
set