"Your crazy comrades stuffed me into the fountain among the goldfish. I thought I'd drown," said Barres, laughing.
"I know, but your atelier gained a great victory that night, and you came over to Müller's with your Kazoo band playing the Fireman's March, and you carried away our palms and bay-trees in their green tubs, and you threw them over the Pont-au-Change into the Seine!----"
They were laughing like a pair of schoolboys now, quite convulsed and holding to each other.
"Do you remember," gasped Barres, "that girl who danced the Carmagnole on the Quay?"
"And the British giant from Julien's, who threw everybody out of the Café Montparnasse and invited the Quarter in to a free banquet?"
"What ever became of that pretty girl, Doucette de Valmy?"
"Oh, it was she who cheered on your atelier to the assault on Müllers!----"
"What crazy creatures we all were," said Renoux, staunching the last crimson drops oozing from his nose. Then, more soberly: "We French have a grimmer affair over there than the joyous rows of the Latin Quarter. I'm sorry now that we didn't throw every waiter in Müller's after the bay-trees. There would have been so many fewer spies to betray France."
The taxi stopped at the 44th Street entrance to the Astor. They descended, Renoux leading, walked through the corridor to Peacock Alley, turned to the right through the bar, then to the left into the lobby, and thence to the elevator.
In Renoux's rooms they turned on the electric light, locked the door, closed the transom, then spread their plunder out on a table.
To Renoux's disgust his own loot consisted of sealed envelopes full of clippings from German newspapers published in Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York.
"That animal, Lehr," he said with a wry face, "has certainly played us a filthy turn. These clippings amount to nothing----" His eyes fell on the packet of papers which Barres was now opening, and he leaned over his shoulder to look.
"Thank God!" he said, "here they are! Where on earth did you find these papers, Barres? They're the documents we were after! They ought to have been in Lehr's pockets!"
"He must have passed them to the fellow who bumped into me near the wash-room," said Barres, enchanted at his luck. "What a fortunate chance that you sent me around there!"