CHAPTER XXAT HOME WITH A CIPHER
Midnighthad struck, the same night, more than an hour ago; the black and squalid Carrefour of St. Antoine was deserted; the houses that fringed it lay in darkness, yet in the main salon of one of them, though they could not be discerned by a passer-by, the lights still blazed, for the shutters were closed and bolted, the thick double curtains were drawn tight. On the table in the centre of the room were ample traces that two persons had recently supped, and supped sumptuously. But there was only one now in the room, a woman copying from a roll of manuscript, and absorbed in her task. Save for the monotonous tick of the clock, and a curious muffled murmur which trickled through a door that faced the main entry, the silence in the strangely brilliant glare of the numerous candelabra was oppressively eery. Presently the woman threw down her pen and walked with a quick but graceful step in front of one of the many long mirrors that lined the walls. She inspected herself with a charmingly insolent cynicism. The glass, with truthful admiration,flashed back the reflection of a supple and exquisitely moulded figure, fair hair, bright blue eyes, and a skin on face, neck, and shoulders amazingly delicate in its blended tints of snow and rose. A young woman this, in the heyday of health and beauty, noble of birth, too, if the refinement of her features, and the ease and dignity of her carriage, did not strangely lie; and at every movement the costly jewels in her hair and on her breast, in her artfully simple dress, and on her fingers, only heightened the challenge to the homage claimed by her youth and beauty. Very soon, however, she ceased to find pleasure in looking at herself. A soft pathos swept over the artificial audacity of her eyes and lips. She sat down, her elbows on her knees, then stretched her arms wearily and sighed that most pathetic of all sighs, a sigh from a young woman’s heart.
Suddenly she sprang up, and, after listening attentively, seized a hand lamp and left the room. When she returned, it was with a man, who flung off his cloak and stood blinking now at her, now at the brilliant lights.
“So it is you they have sent?” she said contemptuously; “you!”
“I volunteered,” George Onslow answered, “because I wanted to come.” His gaze lingered hungrily on her. “And, by God! I am glad. You,” he laughed wearily, “you pretend you are not?”
“What does it matter to me whom your accursedgovernment sends? Any man is better than a woman, such women, at least, as they employed last time.”
His eyes roamed from her jewels to the supper table.
“You have had company to-night, Enchantress?” he asked in a flash of jealousy.
“Yes,” she answered over her shoulder, “two can make very good company—sometimes. But here is what you wanted. Take it and go.”
He scanned the roll of manuscript eagerly, his eyes sparkling.
“You have not signed,” he remarked, half jestingly.
The woman opened a penknife and pushed back the lace which fringed her splendid arm at the shoulder.
“Don’t!” cried Onslow, in genuine pain. “I can’t bear——”
“Pooh!” With the few drops of blood produced by the knife she made a symbol with her pen on the roll. “From as near my heart as any man will ever get anything,” she said, replacing the lace again. “And now my pay, please.”
Onslow handed her a small bag of gold, which she locked in a drawer. “You will drink,” she continued, pouring out two glasses of wine. “Your health, skulking spy, and damnation to Louis XV. and all his crew of my fascinating sex!”
“To your trade and mine,ma mignonne, to yourself and—to the damnation of Louis XV.!” He drained his glass, refilled it, and drained it again. “You are awitch,” he cried, tapping the roll. “How do you do it?”
“Come this way and I will show you.”
She opened the side door, revealing a small room lit by a single candle. On the bed lay a man bound hand and foot, and gagged. One boot was off, showing whence the despatch had been taken. “A confidential messenger of the King whose damnation you have just drunk,” she explained, with careless calm, “and like all secret agents the prey of his passions. He went from my supper table—or rather I carried him—like that. There will be a pother in Versailles to-morrow or next day. It is not only at the palace, you see, that a beautiful woman can ruin a kingdom.”
She slammed the door behind her and admired herself in the mirror, while George Onslow’s glowing eyes gloated on the superb picture that the mirror and she made under the blazing candles.
“You are a wonderful woman,” he said softly.
“I am not a woman, I am only a number.”
“As I think I told you when I saw you last in London.”
She wheeled suddenly. “And because you were such a fool as to show you had discovered it,” she retorted, “I could send you to-night, or any night, to be broken on the executioner’s wheel. Exactly.”
“It baffles me why you do it,” he muttered, ignoring the remark.
“Well, I will tell you. For three hundred and sixtydays in the year I am a cipher, a sexless vagrant, unknown and a mystery; but for five days maybe I wear my jewels and am a woman rejoicing in my health and my beauty. These are my woman’s hours, glorious hours. That is one reason; the other is—revenge!”
“Ah!” He rubbed his hands appreciatively.
“And you?” she asked, with a faint smile of the most tempting provocation.
“For love,” he spoke with a hint of pain. “To the world you are a mysterious number, but to me you are the most beautiful, most splendid woman on earth, without whose love I cannot live. Had you not by chance crossed my path I would have dropped this dirty felon’s game, but I go on and shall go on, taking my chance of the wheel, the halter, or the footpad’s death in the gutter, till you are mine, wholly mine.”
Her lip curled. “The wine is getting into your head,” she said, in her passionless tones. “In your trade and mine that is dangerous. Remember the fate of all who, knowing what you know, have seen my face; remember your friend, Captain Statham, who recognised the Princess in the hut near Fontenoy. Love? Love? You are a strong, vile animal of a man tempted by mere beauty of body. But I am not an animal, nor a woman as women are in Paris, London, Vienna. Love? a man’s animal love? Think you if that was what I could feel or wanted I would be to-day a thief of state secrets, a cipher, a skulker from justice? No, I would be the mistress of the King of France andwould rule a great kingdom. And you have the insolence to offer me the caresses of a felon, a spy, a traitor. You are mad.”
“It is you who made me and keep me mad, thank God!”
She sat down, beckoning him to sit beside her. “Now listen,” she said calmly. “The game is up. There will be no more papers for a long time. Why? Because my foes are on my track. The toils are being drawn around me. My sources of information are being discovered and stopped. And—” she paused—“and a man worth ten of you, unless I am very careful, will——”
“The Vicomte de Nérac?” he gasped out. “Curse him!”
“Yes, the Vicomte de Nérac, who balked you at Fontenoy.”
“You let him balk us—you did.”
“And if I did for my own ends, what then?”
“You love him? Answer! Answer or——”
“What is it to you? He is worth a woman’s love. But, my good friend, he does not love me. Give me your hand!” she suddenly commanded, soothing him at the same time by a caressing look. “Ah! I thought so. There is death, a violent death, in that palm of yours, death coming soon. And yet, my friend, you can avert it. But unless you take my advice and forget me from this night, unless you cease to be a spy and a traitor, before long you will have to reckon withthe Vicomte de Nérac—it is written there—and then—” She let his hand drop with icy indifference, “c’est fini pour vous!”
“A fig for your old wives’ fables! I have sworn you shall be mine and you shall.”
“Stand back!” She sprang up.
“No!” For one minute he faced her and then, with a hunter’s cry on his prey, he had pinioned her wrist, and in that besotted grip she was powerless, though she struggled fiercely.
“No,ma mignonne, I, too, am strong. You shall learn you are only a weak woman after all.” He had whipped the dagger from its concealment by her heart, his arm was about her, his eyes the eyes of a victorious maniac.
“Kiss me at your will,” she murmured faintly. “See,mon ami, I resist no longer. Yes, you, too, are a man. I was only tempting you. I am not a number, but a woman. You have my secret, and I am yours!” No man could have resisted the intoxicating self-surrender in her eyes and voice, least of all George Onslow in the grip of unholy passion long thwarted.
Suddenly her released fingers closed like a vise on his throat. In vain he struggled, for he was choking. Her great natural strength was duplicated by rage and an insulted womanhood. She forced him on to the ground, livid, gasping for breath, and put a knee on his chest. “Mercy!” he faltered, “Mercy!”
With her left hand she tore the lace from her breast,and gagged him inch by inch. With her right hand still on his throat she produced a rope from her pocket and tied with practised skill his hands and feet. Then she rose and calmly rearranged her disordered dress and hair and quickly searched him for pistols and dagger.
“Carrion! scum!” she whispered, bending over him, “you deserve to die like the English dog you are. Miserable, insolent libertine!” and she struck him on the cheek. “No, I will not kill you, for you have my work to do and you shall do it. But a weak woman has taught you a lesson and your hour is not yet come. Another shall soil his hands or his sword with your rascallion blood. Go!”
She dragged him down the passages, loosened the rope on his ankles till he could just hobble, flung his coat about him, and with her dagger at his throat pushed him to the open door, where she propped him against the wall in the damp darkness of the court, and the silent serenity of the stars.
“It will take you,” she said pleasantly, “twenty minutes to bite through that cord, and by that time I shall have disappeared for ever from your sight. But remember my advice, or as sure as you stand here, before long my secret will die with you.” She drew the lace gag from his mouth and stuffed it inside his collar. “Cry out now if you please,” she continued contemptuously, “and my secret will die with you in two days on the executioner’s wheel. Oh, keep the lace; it camefrom a woman’s heart, and on the scaffold will be a pleasant souvenir of a night of love with a cipher. Adieu!”
The outer door was locked. The woman who was a cipher had disappeared; whence and whither, who could say?
As George Onslow stood with rage, jealousy, baffled passion, humiliation, surging within him, he was startled by the sudden appearance of a stranger.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the boyish voice of the Chevalier de St. Amant. “’Tis a friend.” He muttered a reassuring password. “So that woman has treated you as she treated me?” In a trice he had set the helpless spy free.
Onslow’s answer was an incoherent growl of gratitude, surprise, and relief.
“Well,” said the Chevalier, “we are in the same boat. You will hear from me shortly, I promise you. And then you and I can have our revenge on her and the Vicomte de Nérac. Revenge, my friend, revenge will be sweet. Meanwhile have courage, and be careful till our turn comes!”
And then he, too, glided away to be lost in the night that divined and protected all the treachery and treason, all the dreams of love and hate, of passion and ambition, the tears and laughter and prayers that throbbed then, and will always throb, in the heart of Paris.