CHAPTER XXIION SECRET SERVICE
Theclock in André’s room struck eleven. André pulled the curtains back and surveyed the night. Serene, flawlessly serene, as an October night at Versailles can be. Satisfied that his pistols were properly primed, that the precious despatch was still in his pocket, he blew out the lights and then by a rope ladder swung himself out of the window. His experience at “The Gallows and the Three Crows” had warned him that for his foes to discover the King’s commission was for Madame de Pompadour and himself ruin, death, and dishonour. And he was determined the Court should not so much as know he had left the palace. So at midday he had given out that he was ill, had even sent for a physician, and then had quietly slept till the hour had come. And now that he had successfully given them the slip the Captain of the Queen’s Guards laughed as a truant schoolboy might have done. A few lights still twinkled into the October air, some from behind shutters, others through the open glass. André paused to survey the majestic front of the palace as itfaces the broad terrace that commands the gardens, that terrace where to-day the bare-legged French children scamper and the chattering tourists stroll—those gardens where, could he have known it, was to be played out the tragi-comedy ofThe Diamond Necklaceand the downfall of the descendants of Le Roi Soleil. And he was asking himself, would he ever see Versailles again?
Up there to the right was the window of Denise’s room. If only he could have said two words of farewell before he rode out to battle with the unknown! Hush! the shutters were being fretfully thrown back. Yes, that figure in white was Denise looking out, as so many in their sorrow or passion have looked out, to the passionless stars for an answer, and in vain. His blood throbbed feverishly, until Denise, ignorant that in the darkness below her a heart as cruelly torn as her own was beating wistfully, wearily closed the shutters, and went back to a sleepless bed.
André stole away across the gardens to seek the road yonder where a trusted servant from Paris would be waiting with his best horse.
“She is not a peasant,” he muttered, showing whither his thoughts were travelling. “Well, well!”
“If I am not at the palace by nine o’clock, Jean,” he said as he mounted, “come for my orders to the inn called ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.’” And Jean nodded knowingly.
Orders! André smiled grimly. Dead men can giveno orders, not even for their own burial, nor can they take all their secrets with them; more was the pity.
When the servant had disappeared André bound the mare’s hoofs with felt, and she whinnied affectionately, as if she understood. She had only twice been so treated, once the night before Fontenoy and now, for she was the English blood mare which had crushed into pulp the face of that miserable dead woman in the charcoal-burner’s wood and had saved her master’s life from “No. 101” and George Onslow. André stroked her neck and whispered into her ear. To-night she might have to save his honour as well as his life.
Once in the main road André drew rein in the shadow of a tree on the outskirts of the forest and listened attentively. To the right ran the track for farm carts that led directly to the inn, but he decided not to take that. If by any chance he had been followed or an ambush was laid his foes would certainly choose that track, his natural route. He therefore rode past it, again halted to listen, and then plunged fearlessly under the trees, picking his way along a wood-cutter’s disused path.
Already, through the tangle of boughs, he could make out the blurred shape of the inn ahead, when a faint hiss brought his sword from the scabbard. No, that was a low whistle there on the right. That bush, too, just in front was stirring suspiciously; by St. Denys! the crown of a man’s hat? A howl of surprise and pain rent the air. André had driven in his spurs;the maddened mare had leaped on to the bush and the hat with the man’s head under it was cut through with one pitiless stroke of the sword. In went the spurs again; for he saw now there were three others running up from the main track which he had refused to follow. The flash of a pistol: the bullet went through his cloak, but the man who fired it took André’s sword point in his throat and dropped, gurgling. The remaining two stood their ground, and struck at him with their swords. One of them, with a cry “Seigneur Jésu!” lurched forward, run through the breast. But the other had stabbed the mare from behind. She plunged and fell heavily. André felt a sharp pain in his left arm; he, too, was stabbed! He had a vision of himself being tossed through the air, his head struck a tree trunk, and——
When he recovered consciousness he was lying on the ground and all was still. In an agony of bewildered fear he tore his coat open and felt for the despatch. Impossible! Yes, it was still there. A red mist danced in his eyes, his left arm throbbed with pain, but he lay half sobbing with a delirious joy. The despatch was still there! Death and dishonour had not the mastery of him yet.
“You are hurt, Monseigneur?”
Yvonne, in her tattered gown and dishevelled hair, with a lantern in her hand, was kneeling beside him. André staggered to his feet; he scarcely knew whether he was hurt or not. He gazed round, trying to recollect,as the flickering light showed him four men’s bodies lying this way and that near him. Dead, all of them. And his horse—no, that was alive; she whinnied as he tottered up to her.
“Take it to the stable,” he muttered, “take the mare, Yvonne. It is not the first time she has saved my life.”
Yvonne in silence led the bleeding beast away. The girl who loved a cow could also understand why a soldier could love his horse.
André now seized the lantern and examined the dead men. Ha! two of them he did not know, but two were the spies of “The Gallows and the Three Crows,” the servants of the Duke de Pontchartrain and the Comte de Mont Rouge. He sat down on a fallen tree trunk, faint and sick. But the shock braced his dazed mind and he tugged out his watch. Ten minutes to twelve. Ten minutes! He could still be in time. His arm indeed was dripping with blood, but it was a mere flesh-wound, which he promptly bound up with his handkerchief, and by this time Yvonne had returned.
“Tell me what happened,” he commanded.
“I was sitting in the kitchen,” she said quietly, “when I heard a cry—a terrible cry. I seized a bludgeon and a lantern and rushed out.Mon Dieu!Monseigneur, it was horrible; you were fighting and falling. I struck as hard as I could, and then all was still. Monseigneur, I can see now, killed three of them, but the fourth I think I killed. See—there!”
Yvonne, with a finger to her lips, holding her petticoats off the floor, stole in, and behind her a strangerYvonne, with a finger to her lips, holding her petticoats off the floor, stole in, and behind her a stranger.
Yvonne, with a finger to her lips, holding her petticoats off the floor, stole in, and behind her a stranger.
Yvonne, with a finger to her lips, holding her petticoats off the floor, stole in, and behind her a stranger.
Her bludgeon was lying beside one of the dead men, whose head it had battered in. Yvonne began to cry at the sight.
“Will they hang me, Monseigneur?” she asked.
“Hang you! Good heavens! You have saved my life, my honour. They will not hang you unless they hang me, and they will not do that. Come, Yvonne, we must show thesecanaillewhere the superintendent of the police can see them to-morrow.”
They carried the four bodies to one of the outhouses, and not till then did André enter the inn parlour to wait for the agent of the Jacobites; but no agent arrived, and, after drinking some wine which Yvonne found for him and telling her to summon him if required, André dismissed her, drew a chair up to the fire, and began to ponder on the night’s work; but his mind refused to think. A curious numbness as if produced by a drug steadily overpowered him, and after wrestling with himself in vain he fell into a deep sleep.
He had been lying in the chair perhaps a quarter of an hour when the door softly opened. Yvonne with a finger to her lips, holding her petticoats off the floor, stole in, and behind her a stranger, shading the light he carried with his hand, stepped stealthily on tiptoe.
In silence they both inspected the sleeping André. Then Yvonne very cautiously inserted her hand inside the sleeper’s coat and probed as it were gently. The pair inspected the despatch closely, smiling when they observed the handwriting on the cover. Then withthe same practised sureness of touch, they rebuttoned the coat, and withdrew as noiselessly as they had entered; but as they reached the threshold a little tongue of flame from one of the logs on the fire suddenly revealed the face of Yvonne’s companion to be that of the Chevalier de St. Amant.
Outside the door, the girl hung her lantern quietly on the wall in the passage.
“Why hasn’t François come?” she asked, in an anxious whisper.
“François will never come,” the Chevalier replied, very curtly.
“Do you”—she pushed back her matted hair with a gesture of horror—“do you——”
“Yes, I do. The English have been on François’s track for some time. He was last seen, I learn, loitering about the Carrefour de St. Antoine. Poor fool, why did he go there, of all places? He has disappeared and——”
“George Onslow?” she interrupted with a flash of anger.
“I fear so. Onslow is mad with despair and wrath. He had discovered François’s trade and his Jacobite employers; and the English Government pays handsomely for Jacobite secrets. Onslow, too, was convinced he would get no more papers as he had got them before, and so——”
“Yes, yes.” Then she added, “And he desired revenge on a woman.”
The Chevalier nodded quietly. “If he had secured from François that paper which De Nérac is carrying, revenge was in his hands. But the madman has struck too soon; it is just as well for all of us.” He looked up and down the dimly lit passage. “Some day,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone that was cruelly tragic, “François’s fate will be mine.”
The girl flung out a hand of passionate protest. Her voice choked.
“I feel it for certain,” the Chevalier continued, “it is fate, the fate of our—” He checked himself sharply. “Oh, I shall not resent my turn when it comes; I have no desire to live now.”
“No.” She, too, stretched arms of impotent appeal against the grip of a pitiless destiny. “No, there is nothing to live for, now.”
The Chevalier looked into her eyes with the earnest scrutiny of deep affection. “So your question, too, has been answered?” he whispered.
“Only as I expected. Could it be otherwise?”
“All for De Nérac,” he commented aloud to himself; “all for De Nérac—love, success, glory, honour, and, as if that were not enough, he and that wanton will frustrate the revenge and punishment——”
“Yes, he will do that. It is the destiny of France.”
The thought imposed silence on both. André’s measured breathing could be heard dying away in peaceful innocence in the dim passage.
“But this attack?” Yvonne demanded suddenly.
“The ministers and the Court, of course,” was the quick reply. “Some one has warned them ofhis”—he nodded towards the parlour—“his errand. The some one can only be Onslow, the miserable traitor, and it explains François’s disappearance, too. The despatch can wait. But Onslow’s game must be watched or——”
“And checkmated,” she interrupted decisively. “Ah! I see it now—I see it all now.”
They fell to talking earnestly.
Three hours later André had returned to his room in the palace as he had left it—by his rope ladder. He had an interesting story to add to the morning chocolate of Madame de Pompadour, and he was able to give back intact a despatch which he had been unable to deliver.
And the next event was at ten o’clock, when the Duke of Pontchartrain was chatting with the morning crowd in the Œil de Bœuf. Sharp exclamations, followed by a dead silence, greeted the entry of the Captain of the Queen’s Guards, whose left arm, all could see, was bandaged and carried in a sling.
“Monsieur le Duc,” André said in a voice that rang through the room, “His Majesty commands your presence at eleven o’clock in the Council Chamber.” He paused to allow the royal message to be appreciated by the attentive company; then he added: “And, Monsieur le Duc, I beg to say for myself that if your Gracewishes to know where your servant and that of the Comte de Mont Rouge are, who attempted to murder me last night when carrying out the commission of the King of France, your Grace will find them both dead, along with two others, in the inn called ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.’”
A haughty bow, and he had left the astonished Duke and the appalled audience to their bewildered reflections.