“This is too serious a time,” he said, “to let women, or vanity, interfere in our plans. You know that the deaths are on the increase. Anything in the nature of an inquiry at this time would mean ruin, and--perhaps worse. Be careful of that woman. I sometimes think that she is fooling you.--But I think,” he added to himself, when the gate was closed behind Roden, “that I can fool her.”
“A tous maux, il y a deux remèdes--le temps et le silence.”
“They call me Uncle Ben--comprenny?” one man explained very slowly to another for the sixth time across a small iron table set out upon the pavement.
They were seated in front of the humble Café de l'Europe, which lies concealed in an alley that runs between the Keize Straat and the lighthouse of Scheveningen. It was quite dark and a lonely reveler at the next table seemed to be asleep. The economical proprietor of the Café de l'Europe had conceived the idea of constructing a long-shaped lantern, not unlike the arm of a railway signal, which should at once bear the insignia of his house and afford light to his out-door custom. But the idea, like many of the higher flights of the human imagination, had only left the public in the dark.
“Yes,” continued the unchallenged speaker, in a voice which may be heard issuing from the door of any tavern in England on almost any evening of the week--the typical voice of the tavern-talker--“yes, they've always called me Uncle Ben. Seems as if they're sort o' fond of me. Me has seen many hundreds of 'em come and go. But nothing like this. Lord save us!”
His hand fell heavily on the iron table, and he looked round him in semi-intoxicated stupefaction. He was in a confidential humour, and when a man is in this humour, drunk or sober, he is in a parlous state. It was certainly rather unfortunate that Uncle Ben should have in this expansive moment no more sympathetic companion than an ancient, intoxicated Frenchman, who spoke no word of English.
“What I want to know, Frenchy,” continued the Englishman, in a thick, aggrieved voice, “is how long you've been at this trade, and how much you know about it--you and the other Frenchy. But there's none of us speaks the other's lingo. It is a regular Tower of Babble we are!” And Uncle Ben added to his mental confusion a further alcoholic fog. “That's why I showed yer the way out of the works over the iron fence by the empty casks, and brought yer by the beach to this 'ere house of entertainment, and stood yer a bottle of brandy between two of us--which is handsome, not bein' my own money, seeing as how the others deputed me to do it--me knowing a bit of French, comprenny?” Benjamin, like most of his countrymen, considering that if one speaks English in a loud, clear voice, and adds “comprenny” rather severely, as indicating the intention of standing no nonsense, the previous remarks will translate themselves miraculously in the hearer's mind. “You comprenny--eh? Yes. Oui.” “Oui,” replied the Frenchman, holding out his glass; and Uncle Ben's was that pride which goes with a gift of tongues.