"But I tell you," I cried fiercely, "they have stolen the King! They have stolen his Majesty, and I--have held him in my arms. And I know----"
"There, there, be calm," he answered. "Be calm, my lad. They have stolen the Queen"s dog, that is true. But have it your own way if you like, only go. Go from here, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you; for here comes Monseigneur the Bishop to wait on her Majesty, and if he sees you, you will suffer worse things. There, make way, make way!" he continued, turning from me to the staring crowd that had a.s.sembled.
"Way, for Monseigneur the Bishop of Beauvais! Make way!"
As he spoke, the Bishop in his great coach turned heavily out of the Rue St. Honore, and the crowd attending him eddied about the Palace entrance. I was hustled and swept out of the way, and fortunately escaping notice, found myself a few minutes later crouching in a lane that runs beside the church of St. Jacques. I was wolfing a crust of bread, which one of the men with whom I had often talked in the lodge had thrust into my hand. I ate it with tears: in all Paris, that day, was no more miserable outcast. What had become of my little wife I knew not; and I dared not show myself at the Bishop"s to ask. My father-in-law, I feared, was hardened against me, and at the best thought me mad. I had no longer home or friend, and--this at the moment cut most sharply--the gorgeous hopes in which I had indulged a few moments before were as last year"s snow! The King was not lost!
I crouched and shivered. In St. Antoine"s, at the mouth of the lane, a man was beating a drum preparatory to publishing a notice; and presently his voice caught my attention in the middle of my lamentations. I listened, at first idly, then with my mind.
"Oyez! Oyez!" he cried. "Whereas some evil person, having no fear of G.o.d or of the law before his eyes, has impudently, feloniously, and treasonably stolen from the Palais Royal, a spaniel, the property of the Queen-Regent"s most excellent Majesty, this is to say, that any one--rumble--rumble--rumble"--here a pa.s.sing coach drowned some sentences--after which I caught--"five hundred crowns, the same to be paid by Monseigneur the Bishop of Beauvais, President of the Council!"
"And glad to pay it," snarled a voice, quite close to me. I started and looked up. Two men were talking at a grated window above my head. I could not see their faces.
"Yet it is a high price for a dog," the other sneered.
"But low for a queen. Yet it will buy her. And this is Richelieu"s France!"
"Was!" the other said pithily. "Well, you know the proverb, my friend.
"A living dog is better than a dead lion.""
"Ay," his companion rejoined, "but I have a fancy that _that_ dog"s name is spelt neither with an F for Flore--which was the whelp"s name, was it not?--nor a B for Beauvais; nor a C for Conde; but with an M----"
"For Mazarin!" the other answered sharply. "Yes, if he find the dog. But Beauvais is in possession."
"Rocroy, a hit that counted for Conde shook him; you may be sure of that."
"Still he is in possession."
"So is my shoe in possession of my foot," was the keen reply. "And see--I take it off. Beauvais is tottering, I tell you; tottering. It wants but a shove, and he falls."
I heard no more, for they moved from the window into the room; but they left me a different man. It was not so much the hope of reward as the desire for vengeance that urged me; my clerk"s wits returned once more, and in the very desperation of my affairs gave me the courage I sometimes lacked. I recognized that I had not to do with a King, but a dog; but that none the less that way lay revenge. And I rose up and slunk again into the main street and pa.s.sed through the crowd and up the Rue St. Martin and by St. Merri, a dirty, ragged, barefoot rascal from whom people drew their skirts; yes, all that, and the light of the sun on it--all that, and yet vengeance itself in the body--the hand that should yet drag my cruel master"s _fauteuil_ from under him.
Once I halted, weighing the risks and whether I should take my knowledge direct to the Cardinal and let him make what use he pleased of it. But I knew nothing definite, and hardening my heart to do the work myself, I went on, until I found again the alley between the blind walls where I had left the dog-stealer. It was noon. The alley was empty, the neighbouring lane at the back of the Filles Dieu towards St. Martin"s was empty. I looked this way and that and slowly went down to the door at which the man had halted in his despair; but to which, as soon as he knew that the game was not lost, he had been heedful not to return while I watched him.
There, seeing all so quiet, with the green of a tree showing here and there above the dead wall, I began to blench and wonder how I was to take the next step. And for half an hour, I dare say, I sneaked to and fro, now in sight of the door and now with my back to it; afraid to advance, and ashamed to retreat. At length I came once more through the alley, and, seeing how quiet and respectable it lay, with the upper part of a house visible at intervals above the wall, I took heart of grace and tried the door.
It was so firmly closed, that I despaired; and after looking to a.s.sure myself that the attempt had not been observed, I was going to move away, when I espied the edge of a key projecting from under the door. Still all was quiet. A stealthy glance round, and I had out the key. To draw back now was to write myself craven all my life; and with a shaking hand I thrust the wards into the lock, turned them, and in another moment stood on the other side of the door in a neat garden, speckled with sunshine and shade, and where all lay silent.
I remained a full minute, flattened against the door, staring fearfully at the high-fronted mansion that beyond the garden looked down on me with twelve great eyes. But all remained quiet, and observing that the windows were shuttered, I took courage to move, and slid under a tree and breathed again.
Still I looked and listened, fearfully, for the silence seemed to watch me; and the greenness and orderliness of the place frightened me. But nothing happened, and everything I saw went to prove that the house was empty. I grew bolder then, and sneaking from bush to bush, reached the door and with a backward glance between courage and desperation tried it.
It was locked, but I hardly noticed that; for, as my hand left the latch, from some remote part of the house came the long-drawn whine of a dog!
I stood, listening and turning hot and cold in the sunshine; and dared not touch the latch again lest others should hear the noise. Instead, I stole out of the doorway, and crept round the house and round the house again, hunting for a back entrance. I found none; but at last, goaded by the reflection that fortune would never again be so nearly within my grasp, I marked a window on the first floor, and at the side of the house; by which it seemed to me that I might enter. A mulberry-tree stood by it, and it lacked bars; and other trees veiled the spot. To be brief, in two minutes I had my knee on the sill, and, sweating with terror--for I knew that if I were taken I should hang for a thief--I forced in the cas.e.m.e.nt, and dropped on the floor.
There I waited a while, listening. I was in a bare room, the door of which stood ajar. Somewhere in the bowels of the house the dog whined again--and again; otherwise all was still--deadly still. But I had risked too much to stand now; and in the end, emboldened by the silence, I crept out and stole along a pa.s.sage, seeking the way to the lower floor.
The pa.s.sage was dark, and every board on which I stepped shrieked the alarm. But I felt my way to the landing at the head of the stairs, and I was about to descend, when some impulse, I know not what--perhaps a shrinking from the dark parts below, to which I was about to trust myself--moved me to open one of the shutters and peer out.
I did so, cautiously, and but a little--a few inches. I found myself looking, not into the garden through which I had pa.s.sed, but into the one over the way, beyond the alley, and there on a scene so strange and yet so apropos to my thoughts, that I paused, gaping.
On a plat of gra.s.s four men were standing, two and two; between them, with nose upraised and scenting this way and that, moved a beautiful curly-haired spaniel, in colour black and tan. The eyes of all four men were riveted to the dog; which, as I looked, walked sedately first to the one pair, and then, as if dissatisfied, to the other pair; and then again stood midway and sniffed the air. The men were speaking, but I could not catch even their voices, and I was reduced to drawing what inferences I could from their appearance.
Of the two further from me, one was my rascally bed-fellow; the other was a crooked villain, almost in rags, with a leg shorter than its comrade, yet a face bold and even handsome. Of the nearer pair, who had their backs to me, the shorter, dressed in black, wore the ordinary aspect of a clerk, or confidential attendant; but when my eyes travelled to his companion, they paused. He, it was plain to me, was the chief of the party, for he alone stood covered; and though I could not see his face nor more of his figure than that he was tall, portly, and of very handsome presence, it chanced that as I looked he raised his hand to his chin, and I caught on his thumb, which was white as a woman"s, the sparkle of a superb jewel.
That dazzled me, and the presence of the dog puzzled me; and I continued to watch, forgetting myself. Presently the man again raised his hand, and this time it seemed to me that an order was given, for the lame man started into action, and moved briskly across the sward towards the wall which bordered the garden on my side--and consequently towards the house in which I stood. Before he had moved far my companion of the night interposed; apparently he would have done the errand himself. But at a word he stood sulkily and let the other proceed; who when he had all but disappeared--on so little a thing my fortunes turned--below the level of the intervening walls, looked up and caught sight of me at the window.
Apparently he gave the alarm; for in an instant the eyes of all four were on me. I hung a moment in sheer surprise, too much taken aback to retreat; then, as the lame man and his comrade sprang to the door in the wall--with the evident intention of seizing me--I flung the shutter close, and, cursing my curiosity, I fled down the stairs.
I had done better had I gone to the window by which I had entered, for all below was dark; and at the foot of the staircase, I stood, unable, in my panic, to remember the position of the door. A key grating in the lock informed me of this, but too late. On the instant the door opened, a flood of light entered, a cry warned me that I was detected. I turned to reascend, but stumbled before I had mounted six steps, and as I tried to rise, felt a weight fall on my back, and the clutch of long fingers close about my throat. I screamed, as I felt the fingers close in a grip, deadly, cold, and merciless--then in sheer terror I swooned.
When I recovered my senses, I found myself propped in a chair, and for a time sat wondering, with an aching head, where I was. In front of me a great door stood open, admitting a draught of summer air, and a flood of sunshine that fell even to my feet. Through the doorway I looked on gra.s.s and trees, and heard sparrows twitter, and the chirp of crickets; and I found all so peaceful that my mind went no further, and it was only after some minutes that I recognized with a sharp return of terror, that turned me sick, that I was still in the hall of the empty house.
That brought back other things, and with a shudder I carried my hand to my throat and tried to rise. A hand put me back, and a dry voice said in my ear, "Be easy, Monsieur Prosper, be easy. You are quite safe. But I am afraid that in our haste we have put you to some inconvenience."
I looked with a wry face at the speaker, and recognized him for one of those I had seen in the garden. He had the air of a secretary or--as he stood rubbing his smooth chin and looking down at me with a saturnine smile--of a physician. I read in his eyes something cold and not too human, yet it went no further. His manner was suave, and his voice, when he spoke again, as well calculated to rea.s.sure as his words were to surprise me.
"You are better now?" he said. "Yes, then I have to congratulate you on a strange chance. Few men, Monsieur Prosper, few men, believe me, were ever so lucky. You were lately I think in the service of Monseigneur the Bishop of Beauvais, President of her Majesty"s Council?"
I fancied that a faint note of irony lurked in his words--particularly as he recited my late master"s t.i.tles. I kept silence.
"And yesterday were dismissed," he continued easily, disregarding my astonishment. "Well, to-day you shall be reinstated--and rewarded. Your business here, I believe, was to recover her Majesty"s dog, and earn the reward?"
I remembered that the wretch whose fingermarks were still on my throat might be within hearing, and I tried to utter a denial.
He waved it aside politely. "Just so," he said. "But I know your mind, better than you do yourself. Well, the dog is in that closet; and on two conditions it is at your service."
Amazed before, I stared at him now, in a stupor of astonishment.
"You are surprised?" he said. "Yet the case is of the simplest. We stole the dog, and now have our reasons for restoring it; but we cannot do so without incurring suspicion. You, on the other hand, who are known to the Bishop, and did not steal it, may safely restore it. I need not say that we divide the reward; that is one of the two conditions."
"And the other?" I stammered.
"That you refresh your memory as to the past," he answered lightly. "If I have the tale rightly, you saw a man convey a dog to this house, an empty house in the Montmartre Faubourg. You watched, and saw the man leave, and followed him; he took the alarm, fled, and dropped in his flight the dog"s coat. I think I see it there. On that you hurried with the coat to Monseigneur, and gave him the address of the house, and----"
"And the dog!" I exclaimed.
"No. Let Monseigneur come and find the dog for himself," he answered, smiling. "In the closet."
I felt the blood tingle through all my limbs. "But if he comes, and does not find it?" I cried.
The stranger shrugged his shoulders. "He will find it," he said coolly.
And slightly raising his voice, he called "Flore! Flore!" For answer a dog whined behind a door, and scratched the panels, and whined again.
The stranger nodded, and his eyes sparkled as if he were pleased.
"There," he said, "you have it. It is there and will be there. And I think that is all. Only keep two things in mind, my friend. For the first, a person will claim our share of the reward at the proper time: for the second, I would be careful not to tell Monseigneur the President of the Council"--again that faint note of irony--"the true story, lest a worse thing happen!" And the stranger, with a very ugly smile, touched his throat.
"I will not!" I said, shuddering. "But----?"
"But what?"