About nine o'clock we were summoned by a Breton maid to the pretty
breakfast-room below, and I was ashamed to go with my shabby clothes,
bandaged head, and face the color of clay.
The young countess was not present; Sylvia Elven offered us a
supercilious welcome to a breakfast the counterpart of which I had not
seen in years--one of those American breakfasts which even we, since
the Paris Exposition, are beginning to discard for the simpler French
breakfast of coffee and rolls.
"This is all in your honor," observed Sylvia, turning up her nose at
the array of poached eggs, fragrant sausages, crisp potatoes, piles of
buttered toast, muffins, marmalade, and fruit.
"It was very kind of you to think of it," said Speed.
"It is Madame de Vassart's idea, not mine," she observed, looking
across the table at me. "Will the gentleman with nine lives have
coffee or chocolate?"
The fruit consisted of grapes and those winy Breton cider-apples from
Bannalec. We began with these in decorous silence.
Speed ventured a few comments on the cultivation of fruit, of which he
knew nothing; neither he nor his subject was encouraged.
Presently, however, Sylvia glanced up at him with a malicious smile,
saying: "I notice that you have been in the foreign division of the
Imperial Military Police, monsieur."
"Why do you think so?" asked Speed, calmly.
"When you seated yourself in your chair," said Sylvia, "you made a
gesture with your left hand as though to unhook the sabre--which was
not there."
Speed laughed. "But why the police? I might have been in the cavalry,
mademoiselle; for that matter, I might have been an officer in any arm
of the service. They all carry swords or sabres."
"But only the military police and the gendarmerie wear aiguilettes,"
she replied. "When you bend over your plate your fingers are ever
unconsciously searching for those swinging, gold-tipped cords--to keep
them out of your coffee-cup, monsieur."
The muscles in Speed's lean, bronzed cheeks tightened; he looked at
her keenly.
"Might I not have been in the gendarmerie?" he asked. "How do you
know I was not?"
"Does the gendarmerie wear the sabre-tache?"
"No, mademoiselle, but--"
"Do the military police?"
"No--that is, the foreign division did, when it existed."
"You are sitting, monsieur," she said, placidly, "with your left
foot so far under the table that it quite inadvertently presses my
shoe-tip."
Speed withdrew his leg with a jerk, asking pardon.
"It is a habit perfectly pardonable in a man who is careful that his
spur shall not scratch or tear a patent-leather sabre-tache," she
said.
I had absolutely nothing to say; we both laughed feebly, I believe.
I saw temptation struggling with Speed's caution; I, too, was almost
willing to drop a hint that might change her amusement to speculation,
if not to alarm.
So this was the woman for whose caprice Kelly Eyre had wrecked his
prospects! Clever--oh, certainly clever. But she had made the
inevitable slip that such clever people always make sooner or later.
And in a bantering message to her victim she had completed the chain
against herself--a chain of which I might have been left in absolute
ignorance. Impulse probably did it--reasonless and perhaps malicious
caprice--the instinct of a pretty woman to stir up memory in a
discarded and long-forgotten victim--just to note the effect--just to
see if there still remains one nerve, one pulse-beat to respond.
"Will the pensive gentleman with nine lives have a little more
nourishment to sustain him?" she asked.
Looking up from my empty plate, I declined politely; and we followed
her signal to rise.
"There is a Mr. Kelly Eyre," she said to Speed, "connected with your
circus. Has he gone with the others?"
"Yes, mademoiselle."
"Really?" she mused, amiably. "I knew him as a student in Paris,
when he was very young--and I was younger. I should have liked to have
seen him--once more."
"Did you not see him?" I asked, abruptly.
Her back was toward me; very deliberately she turned her pretty head
and looked at me over her shoulder, studying my face a moment.
"Yes, I saw him. I should have liked to have seen him--once more,"
she said, as though she had first calculated the effect on me of a
different reply.
She led the way into that small room overlooking the garden where I
had been twice received by Madame de Vassart. Here she took leave of
us, abandoning us to our own designs. Mine was to find a large
arm-chair and sit down in it, and give Speed a few instructions.
Speed's was to prowl around Paradise for information, and, if
possible, telegraph to Lorient for troops to catch Buckhurst
red-handed.
He left me turning over the leaves of the "Chanson de Roland," saying
that he would return in a little while with any news he might pick up,
and that he would do his best to catch Buckhurst in the foolish trap
which that gentleman had set for others.
Tiring of the poem, I turned my eyes toward the garden, where, in the
sunshine, heaps of crisped leaves lay drifted along the base of the
wall or scattered between the rows of herbs which were still ripely
green. The apricots had lost their leaves, so had the grapevines and
the fig-trees; but the peach-trees were in foliage; pansies and
perpetual roses bloomed amid sere and seedy thickets of larkspurs,
phlox, and dead delphinium.
On the wall a cat sat, sunning her sleek flanks. Something about the
animal seemed familiar to me, and after a while I made up my mind that
this was Ange Pitou, Jacqueline's pet, abandoned by her mistress and
now a feline derelict. Speed must have been mistaken when he told me
that Jacqueline had taken her cat; or possibly the home-haunting
instinct had brought the creature back, abandoning her mistress to her
fortunes.
If I had been in my own house I should have offered Ange Pitou
hospitality; as it was, I walked out into the sunny garden and made
courteous advances which were ignored. I watched the cat for a few
moments, then sat down on the bench. The inertia which follows
recovery from a shock, however light, left me with the lazy
acquiescence of a convalescent, willing to let the world drift for an
hour or two, contented to relax, apathetic, comfortable.
Seaward the gulls sailed like white feathers floating; the rocky
ramparts of Groix rose clear-cut against a horizon where no haze
curtained the sea; the breakers had receded from the coast on a heavy
ebb-tide, and I saw them in frothy outline, noiselessly churning the
shallows beyond the outer bar.
And then my reverie ended abruptly; a step on the gravel walk brought
me to my feet.... There she stood, lovely in a fresh morning-gown
deeply belted with turquoise-shells, her ruddy hair glistening, coiled
low on a neck of snow.
For the first time she showed embarrassment in her greeting, scarcely
touching my hand, speaking with a new constraint in a voice which grew
colder as she hesitated.
"We were frightened; we are so glad that you were not badly hurt. I
thought you might find it comfortable here--of course I could not know
that you were not seriously injured."
"That is fortunate for me," I said, pleasantly, "for I am afraid you
would not have offered this shelter if you had known how little
injured I really was."
"Yes, I should have offered it--had I reason to believe you would
have accepted. I have felt that perhaps you might think what I have
done was unwarranted."
"I think you did the most graciously unselfish thing a woman could
do," I said, quickly. "You offered your best; and the man who took it
cannot--dare not--express his gratitude."
The emotion in my voice warned me to cease; the faintest color tinted
her cheeks, and she looked at me with beautiful, grave eyes that
slowly grew inscrutable, leaving me standing diffident and silent
before her.
The breeze shifted, bringing with it the hollow sea-thunder. She
turned her head and glanced out across the ocean, hands behind her,
fingers linked.
"I have come here into your garden uninvited," I said.
"Shall we sit here--a moment?" she suggested, without turning.
Presently she seated herself in one corner of the bench; her gaze
wandered over the partly blighted garden, then once more centred on
the seaward skyline.
The color of her hands, her neck, fascinated me. That flesh texture of
snow and roses, firmly and delicately modelled, which sometimes is
seen with red hair, I had seen once before in a picture by a Spanish
master, but never, until now, in real life.
And she was life incarnate in her wholesome beauty--a beauty of which
I had perceived only the sad shadow at La Trappe--a sweet, healthy,
exquisite woman, moulded, fashioned, colored by a greater Master than
the Spanish painter dreaming of perfection centuries ago.
In the sun a fragrance grew--the subtle incense from her gown--perhaps
from her hair.
"Autumn is already gone; we are close to winter," she said, under her
breath. "See, there is nothing left--scarcely a blossom--a rose or
two; but the first frost will scatter the petals. Look at the pinks;
look at the dead leaves. Ah, tristesse, tristesse! The life of summer
is too short; the life of flowers is too short; so are our lives,
Monsieur Scarlett. Do you believe it?"
"Yes--now."
She was very still for a while, her head bent toward the sea. Then,
without turning: "Have you not always believed it?"
"No, madame."
"Then ... why do you believe it ... now?"
"Because, since we have become friends, life seems pitiably short for
such a friendship."
She smiled without moving.
"That is a ... very beautiful ... compliment, monsieur."
"It owes its beauty to its truth, madame."
"And that reply is illogical," she said, turning to look at me with
brilliant eyes and a gay smile which emphasized the sensitive mouth's
faint droop. "Illogical, because truth is not always beautiful. As
example: you were very near to death yesterday. That is the truth, but
it is not beautiful at all."
"Ah, madame, it is you who are illogical," I said, laughing.
"I?" she cried. "Prove it!"
But I would not, spite of her challenge and bright mockery.
In that flash all of our comradeship returned, bringing with it
something new, which I dared not think was intimacy.
Yet constraint fell away like a curtain between us, and though she
dominated, and I was afraid lest I overstep limits which I myself had
set, the charm of her careless confidence, her pretty, undissembled
caprices, her pleasure in a delicately intimate badinage, gave me
something of a self-reliance, a freedom that I had not known in a
woman's presence for many years.
"We brought you here because we thought it was good for you," she
said, reverting maliciously to the theme that had at first embarrassed
her. "We were perfectly certain that you have always been unfit to
take care of yourself. Now we have the proofs."
"Mademoiselle Elven said that you harbored us only because you were
afraid of those bandits who have arrived in Paradise," I observed.
"Afraid!" she said, scornfully. "Oh, you are making fun of me now.
Indeed, when Mr. Buckhurst came last night I had my men conduct him to
the outer gate!"
"Did he come last night?" I asked, troubled.
"Yes." She shrugged her pretty shoulders.
"Alone?"
"That unspeakable creature, Mornac, was with him. I had no idea he
was here; had you?"
I was silent. Did Mornac mean trouble for me? Yet how could he, shorn
now of all authority?
The thought seemed to occur to her, too, and she looked up quickly,
asking if I had anything to fear.
"Only for you," I said.
"For me? Why? I am not afraid of such men. I have servants on whom I
can call to disembarrass me of such people." She hesitated; the memory
of her deception, of what she had suffered at Buckhurst's hands,
brought a glint of anger into her beautiful eyes.
"My innocence shames me," she said. "I merited what I received in
such company. It was you who saved me from myself."
"A noble mind thinks nobly," I said. "Theirs is the shame, not
yours, that you could not understand treachery--that you never can
understand it. As for me, I was an accident, which warned you in time
that all the world was not as good and true as you desired to believe
it."
She sat looking at me curiously. "I wonder," she said, "why it is
that you do not know your own value?"
"My value--to whom?"
"To ... everybody--to the world--to people."
"Am I of any value to you, madame?"
The pulsing moments passed and she did not answer, and I bit my lip
and waited. At last she said, coolly: "A man must appraise himself.
If he chooses, he is valuable. But values are comparative, and depend
on individual taste.... Yes, you are of some value to me,... or I
should not be here with you,... or I should not find it my pleasure to
be here--or I should not trust you, come to you with my petty
troubles, ask your experience to help me, perhaps protect me."
She bent her head with adorable diffidence. "Monsieur Scarlett, I
have never before had a friend who thought first of me and last of
himself."
I leaned on the back of the bench, resting my bandaged forehead on my
hand.
She looked up after a moment, and her face grew serious.
"Are you suffering?" she asked. "Your face is white as my sleeve."
"I feel curiously tired," I said, smiling.
"Then you must have some tea, and I will brew it myself. You shall
not object! No--it is useless, because I am determined. And you shall
lie down in the little tea-room, where I found you that day when you
first came to Trécourt."
"I shall be very happy to do anything--if you are there."
"Even drink tea when you abhor it? Then I certainly ought to reward
you with my presence at the rite.... Are you dizzy? You are terribly
pale.... Would you lean on my arm?"
I was not dizzy, but I did so; and if such deceit is not pardonable,
there is no justice in this world or in the next.
The tea was hot and harmless; I lay thinking while she sat in the
sunny window-corner, nibbling biscuit and marmalade, and watching me
gravely.
"My appetite is dreadful in these days," she said; "age increases
it; I have just had my chocolate, yet here am I, eating like a
school-girl.... I have a strange idea that I am exceedingly young,...
that I am just beginning to live. That tired, thin, shabby girl you
saw at La Trappe was certainly not I.... And long before that, before
I knew you, there was another impersonal, half--awakened creature, who
watched the world surging and receding around her, who grew tired even
of violets and bonbons, tired of the companionship of the indifferent,
hurt by the intimacy of the unfriendly; and I cannot believe that she
was I.... Can you?"
"I can believe it; I once saw you then," I said.
She looked up quickly. "Where?"
"In Paris."
"When?"
"The day that they received the news from Mexico. You sat in your
carriage before the gates of the war office."
"I remember," she said, staring at me. Then a slight shudder passed
over her.
Presently she said: "Did you recognize me afterward at La Trappe?"
"Yes,... you had grown more beautiful."
She colored and bent her head.
"You remembered me all that time?... But why didn't you--didn't
you--" She laughed nervously. "Why didn't we know each other in those
years? Truly, Monsieur Scarlett, I needed a friend then, if ever;... a
friend who thought first of me and last of himself."
I did not answer.
"Fancy," she continued, "your passing me so long ago,... and I
totally unconscious, sitting there in my carriage,... never dreaming
of this friendship which I ... care for so much!... Do you remember at
La Trappe what I told you, there on the staircase?--how sometimes the
impulse used to come to me when I saw a kindly face in the street to
cry out, 'Be friends with me!' Do you remember?... It is strange that
I did not feel that impulse when you passed me that day in Paris--feel
it even though I did not see you--for I sorely needed kindness then,
kindness and wisdom; and both passed by, at my elbow,... and I did not
know." She bent her head, smiling with an effort. "You should have
thrown yourself astride the horse and galloped away with me.... They
did those things once, Monsieur Scarlett--on this very spot, too, in
the days of the Saxon pirates."
The whirring monotone of the spinning-wheel suddenly filled the house;
Sylvia was singing at her wheel:
"Woe to the maids of Paradise!
Yvonne!
Twice have the Saxons landed; twice!
Yvonne!
Yet shall Paradise see them thrice,
Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik!"
"The prophecy of that Breton spinning song is being fulfilled," I
said. "For the third time we Saxons have come to Paradise, you see."
"But this time our Saxons are not very formidable," she said, raising
her beautiful gray eyes; "and the gwerz says, 'Woe to the maids of
Paradise!' Do you intend to bring woe upon us maids of Paradise--do
you come to carry us off, monsieur?"
"If you will go with--me," I said, smiling.
"All of us?"
"Only one, madame."
She started to speak, then her eyes fell. She laughed uncertainly.
"Which one among us, if you please--mizilour skler ha brillant deuz
ar fidelite?"
"Met na varwin Ket Kontant, ma na varwan fidel," I said, slowly, as
the words of the song came back to me. "I shall choose only the
fairest and loveliest, madame. You know it is always that way in the
story." My voice was not perfectly steady, nor was hers when she
smiled and wished me happiness and a long life with the maid of
Paradise I had chosen, even though I took her by force.
Then constraint crept in between us, and I was grimly weighing the
friendship this woman had given me--weighing it in the balance against
a single hope.
Once she looked across at me with questioning eyes in which I thought
I read dawning disappointment. It almost terrified me.... I could not
lose her confidence,... I could not, and go through life without
it.... But I could live a hopeless life to its end with that
confidence.... And I must do so,... and be content.
"I suppose," said I, thinking aloud, "that I had better go to
England."
"When?" she asked, without raising her head.
"In a day or two. I can find employment there, I think."
"Is it necessary that you find employment ... so soon?"
"Yes," I said, with a meaningless laugh, "I fear it is."
"What will you do?"
"Oh, the army--horses--something of that kind. Riding-master,
perhaps--perhaps Scotland Yard. I may not be able to pick and
choose.... If I ever save enough money for the voyage, perhaps you
would let me come, once in a long while, to pay my respects, madame?"
"Yes,... come, if you wish."
She said no more, nor did I. Presently Sylvia appeared with a peasant
woman, and the young countess went away, followed by the housekeeper
with her keys at her girdle.
I rose and walked to the window; then, nerveless and depressed, I went
out into the garden again to smoke a cigar.
The cat had disappeared; I traversed the garden, passed through the
side wicket, and found myself on the cliffs. Almost immediately I was
aware of a young girl, a child, seated on the rocks, her chin propped
on her hands, the sea-wind blowing her curly elf-locks across her
cheeks and eyes. A bundle tied in a handkerchief lay beside her; a cat
dozed in her lap, its sleek fur stirring in the wind.
"Jacqueline!" I said, gently.
She raised her head; the movement awakened the cat, who stood up in
her lap, stretching and yawning vigorously.
"I thought you were to sail from Lorient to-day?"
The cat stopped purring from her knees; the child rose, pushing back
her hair from her eyes with both hands.
"Where is Speed?" she asked, drowsily.
"Did you want to see him, Jacqueline?"
"That is why I returned."
"To see Speed?"
"Parbleu."
"And you are going to let the others sail without you?"
"Yes."
"And give up the circus forever, Jacqueline?"
"Y-es."
"Just because you want to see Speed?"
"Only for that."
She stood rubbing her eyes with her small fists, as though just
awakened.
"Oui," she said, without emotion, "c'est comme ça, m'sieu. Where
the heart is, happiness lies. I left the others at the city gate; I
said, 'Voyons, let us be reasonable, gentlemen. I am happy in your
circus; I am happy with Speed; I can be contented without your circus,
but I cannot be contented without Speed. Voilà!'... and then I went."
"You walked back all the way from Lorient?"
"Bien sûr! I have no carriage--I, Jacqueline." She stretched her slim
figure, raised her arms slowly, and yawned. "Pardon," she murmured,
"I have slept in the gorse--badly."
"Come into the garden," I said; "we can talk while you rest."
She thanked me tranquilly, picked up her bundle, and followed me with
a slight limp. The cat, tail up, came behind.
The young countess was standing at the window as we approached in
solemn single file along the path, and when she caught sight of us she
opened the door and stepped out on the tiny porch.
"Why, this is our little Jacqueline," she said, quickly. "They have
taken your father for the conscription, have they not, my child? And
now you are homeless!"
"I think so, madame."
"Then you will stay with me until he returns, won't you, little
one?"
There was a moment's pause; Jacqueline made a grave gesture. "This is
my cat, madame--Ange Pitou."
The countess stared at the cat, then broke out into the prettiest peal
of laughter. "Of course you must bring your cat! My invitation is
also for Ange Pitou, you understand."
"Then we thank you, and permit ourselves to accept, madame," said
Jacqueline. "We are very glad because we are quite hungry, and we
have thorns from the gorse in our feet--" She broke off with a joyous
little cry: "There is Speed!" And Speed, entering the garden
hurriedly, stopped short in his tracks.
The child ran to him and threw both arms around his neck. "Oh, Speed!
Speed!" she stammered, over and over again. "I was too lonely; I will
do what you wish; I will be instructed in the graces of
education--truly I will. I am glad to come back--and I am so tired,
Speed. I will never go away from you again.... Oh, Speed, I am
contented!... Do you love me?"
"Dearly, little sweetheart," he said, huskily, trying to steady his
voice. "There! Madame the countess is waiting. All will be well now."
He turned, smiling, toward the young countess, and lifted his hat,
then stepped back and fixed me with a blank look of dismay, which said
perfectly plainly that he had unpleasant news to communicate. The
countess, I think, saw that look, too, for she gave me an almost
imperceptible nod and took Jacqueline's hand in hers.
"If there are thorns in your feet we must find them," she said,
sweetly. "Will you come, Jacqueline?"
"Yes, madame," said the child, with an adoring smile at Speed, who
bent and kissed her upturned face as she passed.
They went into the house, the countess holding Jacqueline's
thorn-scratched hand, the cat following, perfectly self-possessed, to
the porch, where she halted and sat down, surveying the landscape with
dignified indifference.
"Well," said I, turning to Speed, "what new deviltry is going on in
Paradise now?"
"Preparations for train-wrecking, I should say," he replied, bluntly.
"They are tinkering with the trestle. Buckhurst's ragamuffins have
just seized the railroad station at Rose-Sainte-Anne, where the main
line crosses, you know, near the ravine at Lammerin. I was sure there
was something extraordinary going to happen, so I went down to the
river, hailed Jeanne Rolland, the passeuse, and had her ferry me over
to Bois-Gilbert. Then I made for the telegraph, gave the operator ten
francs to let me work the keys, and called up the arsenal at Lorient.
But it was no use, Scarlett, the governor of Lorient can't spare a
soldier--not a single gendarme. It seems that Uhlans have been
signalled north of Quimper, and Lorient is frantic, and the garrison
is preparing to stand siege."
"You mean," I said, indignantly, "that they're not going to try to
catch Buckhurst and Mornac?"
"That's what I mean; they're scared as rabbits over these rumors of
Uhlans in the west and north."
"Well," said I, disgusted, "it appears to me that Buckhurst is going
to get off scot-free this time--and Mornac, too! Did you know that
Mornac was here?"
"Know it? I saw him an hour ago, marshalling a new company of
malcontents in the square--a bad lot, Scarlett--deserters from
Chanzy's army, from Bourbaki, from Garibaldi--a hundred or more line
soldiers, dragoons without horses, francs-tireurs, Garibaldians, even
a Turco, from Heaven knows where--bad soldiers who disgrace
France--marauders, cowardly, skulking mobiles--a sweet lot, Scarlett,
to be let loose in Madame de Vassart's vicinity."
"I think so, too," I said, seriously.
"And I earnestly agree with you," muttered Speed. "That's all I
have to report, except that your friend, Robert the Lizard, is out
yonder flat on his belly under a gorse-bush, and he wants to see
you."
"The Lizard!" I exclaimed. "Come on, Speed. Where is he?"
"Yonder, clothed in somebody's line uniform. He's one of them.
Scarlett, do you trust him? He has a rifle."
"Yes, yes," I said, impatiently. "Come on, man! It's all right; the
fellow is watching Buckhurst for me." And I gave Speed a nervous push
toward the moors. We started, Speed ostentatiously placing his
revolver in his side-pocket so that he could shoot through his coat if
necessary. I walked beside him, closely scanning the stretch of open
moor for a sign of life, knowing all the while that it is easier to
catch moon-beams in a net than to find a poacher in the bracken. But
Speed had marked him down as he might mark a squatting quail, and
suddenly we flushed him, rifle clapped to his shoulder.
"None of that, my friend," growled Speed; but the poacher at sight of
me had already lowered the weapon.
I greeted him frankly, offering my hand; he took it, then his hard
fist fell away and he touched his cap.
"I have done what you wanted," he said, sullenly. "I have the
company's rolls--here they are." He dragged from his baggy trousers
pockets a mass of filthy papers, closely covered with smeared writing.
"Here is the money, too," he said, fishing in the other pocket; and,
to my astonishment, he produced a flattened, soiled mass of
bank-notes. "Count it," he added, calmly.
"What money is that?" I asked, taking it reluctantly.
"Didn't you warn me to get that box--the steel box that Tric-Trac sat
down on when he saw me?"
"Is that money from the box?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, m'sieu. I could not bring the box, and there had been enough
blood shed over it already. Besides, when Buckhurst broke it open
there was only a bit of iron for the scrap-heap left."
I touched Speed's arm to call his attention; the poacher shrugged his
shoulders and continued: "Tric-Trac made no ceremony with me; he
told me that he and Buckhurst had settled this Dr. Delmont, and the
other--the professor--Tavernier."
"Murdered them?" muttered Speed.
"Dame!--the coup du Père François is murder, I suppose."
Speed turned to me. "That's the argot for strangling," he said,
grimly.
"Go on," I motioned to the poacher. "How did you get the money?"
"Oh, pour ça--in my turn I turned sonneur," he replied, with a savage
smile.
A sonneur, in thieves' slang, is a creature of the footpad type who,
tripping his victim flat, seizes him by the shoulders and beats his
head against the pavement until he renders him unconscious--if he
doesn't kill him.
"It was pay-day," continued the Lizard. "Buckhurst opened the box
and I heard him--he hammered it open with a cold chisel. I was
standing guard on the forest's edge; I crept back, hearing the
hammering and the little bell ringing the Angelus of Tric-Trac. It was
close to dusk; by the time he got into the box it was dark in the
woods, and it was easy to jump on his back and strike--not very hard,
m'sieu--but, I tell you, Buckhurst lay for two days with eyes like a
sick owl's! He knew one of his own men had done it. He never said a
word, but I know he thinks it was Tric-Trac.... And when he is
ready--bon soir, Tric-Trac!"
He drew his right hand across his corded throat with a horridly
suggestive motion. Speed watched him narrowly.
I asked the poacher why Buckhurst had come to Paradise, and why his
banditti had seized the railroad at Rose-Sainte-Anne.
"Ah," cried the Lizard, with a ferocious leer, "that is the kernel
under the limpet's tent! And I have uncovered it--I, Robert Garenne,
bon sang de Jésu!"
He stretched out his powerful arm toward the sea. "Where is that
cruiser, m'sieu? Gone? Yes, but who sent her off? Buckhurst, with his
new signal-book! Where? In chase of a sea-swallow, or a frigate
(bird). Who knows? Listen, messieurs! We are to wreck the train for
Brest to-night. Do you comprehend?"
"Where?" I asked, quietly.
"Just where the trestle at Lammerin crosses the ravine below the
house of Josephine Tanguy."
Speed looked around at me. "It's the treasure-train from Lorient.
They're probably sending the crown diamonds back to Brest in view of
the Uhlans being seen near Quimper."
"On a false order?"
"I believe so. I believe that Buckhurst sent the cruiser to Brest,
and now he's started the treasure-trains back to Brest in a panic."
"That is the truth," said the Lizard; "Tric-Trac told me. They have
the code-book of Mornac." His eyes began to light up with that
terrible anger as the name of his blood enemy fell from his lips; his
nose twitched; his upper lip wrinkled into a snarl.
I thought quietly for a moment, then asked the poacher whether there
was a guard at the semaphore of Saint-Yssel.
"Yes, the soldier Rolland, who says he understands the telegraph--a
sot from Morlaix." He hesitated and looked across the open moor toward
Paradise. "I must go," he muttered; "I am on guard yonder."
I offered him my hand again; he took it, looking me sincerely in the
eyes.
"Let your private wrongs wait a little longer," I said. "I think we
can catch Buckhurst and Mornac alive. Do you promise?"
"Y-es," he replied.
"Strike, then, like a Breton!"
We struck palms heavily. Then he turned to Speed and motioned him to
retire.
Speed walked slowly toward a half-buried bowlder and sat down out of
ear-shot.
"For your sake," said the poacher, clutching my hand in a tightening
grip--"for your sake I have let Mornac go--let him pass me at
arm's-length, and did not strike. You have dealt openly by me--and
justly. No man can say I betrayed friendship. But I swear to you that
if you miss him this time, I shall not miss--I, Robert the Lizard!"
"You mean to kill Mornac?" I asked.
His eyes blazed.
"Ami," he said, "I once spoke of 'a little red deer,' and you half
understood me, for you are wise in strange ways, as I am."
"I remember," I said.
His strong fingers closed tighter on my hand. "Woman--or doe--it's
all one now; and I am out of prison--the prison he sent me to! Do
you understand that he wronged me--me, the soldier Garenne, in
garrison at Vincennes; he, the officer, the aristocrat?"
He choked, crushing my hand in a spasmodic grip. "Ami, the little red
deer was beautiful--to me. He took her--the doe--a silly maid of
Paradise--and I was in irons, m'sieu, for three years."
He glared at vacancy, tears falling from his staring eyes.
"Your wife?" I asked, quietly.
"Yes, ami."
He dropped my numbed fingers and rubbed his eyes with the back of his
big hand.
"Then Jacqueline is not your little daughter?" I asked, gravely.
"Hers--not mine. That has been the most terrible of all for me--since
she died--died so young, too, m'sieu--and all alone--in Paris. If he
had not done that--if he had been kind to her. And she was only a
child, ami, yet he left her."
All the ferocity in his eyes was gone; he raised a vacant, grief-lined
visage to meet mine, and stood stupidly, heavy hands hanging.
Then, shoulders sloping, he shambled off into the thicket, trailing
his battered rifle.
When he was very far away I motioned to Speed.
"I think," said I, "that we had better try to do something at the
semaphore if we are going to stop that train in time."