"A noisy crowd of travellers," he exclaimed, "who arrived here an hour ago?"
"Parbleu!" rejoined the other, "and all wanting beds too. I had no room.
I can only put up one or two travellers. I sent them on to Leva.s.seur"s, further along the road. Only the wounded man I could not turn away. He is up in our best bedroom."
"A wounded man? You have a wounded man here, pet.i.t pere?"
"Oh! it"s not much of a wound," explained the old man with unconscious irrelevance. "He himself calls it a mere scratch. But my old woman took a fancy to him: he is young and well-looking, you understand. . . . She is clever at bandages too, so she has looked after him as if he were her own son."
Mechanically, St. Genis had once more taken up his knife and fork, though of a truth the last of his hunger had vanished. But these Dauphine peasants were suspicious and queer-tempered, and already the young man"s surprise had matured into a plan which he would not be able to carry through without the help of Aristide Briot. Noisy cavaliers--he mused to himself--a wounded man! . . . wounded by the stray shot aimed at him by Crystal de Cambray! Indeed, St. Genis had much ado to keep his excitement in check, and to continue with a pretence at eating while Briot watched him with stolid indifference.
"Pet.i.t pere," said the young man at last with as much unconcern as he could affect. "I have been thinking that you have--unwittingly--given me an excellent piece of news. I do believe that the man in your best bedroom upstairs is a friend of mine whom I was to have met at Lyons to-day and whose absence from our place of tryst had made me very anxious. I was imagining that all sorts of horrors had happened to him, for he is in the secret service of the King and exposed to every kind of danger. His being wounded in some skirmish either with highway robbers or with a band of the Corsican"s pirates would not surprise me in the least, and the fact that he had some half-dozen mounted men with him confirms me in my belief that indeed it is my friend who is lying upstairs, as he often has to have an escort in the exercise of his duties. At any rate, pet.i.t pere," he concluded as he rose from the table, "by your leave, I"ll go up and ascertain."
While he rattled off these pretty proceeds of his own imagination, Maurice de St. Genis kept a sharp watch on Aristide Briot"s face, ready to note the slightest sign of suspicion should it creep into the old man"s shrewd eyes.
Briot, however, did not exhibit any violent interest in his guest"s story, and when the latter had finished speaking he merely said, pointing to the remnants of food upon the table:
"I thought you said that you were hungry."
"So I was, pet.i.t pere," rejoined Maurice impatiently, "so I was: but my hunger is not so great as it was, and before I eat another morsel I must satisfy myself that it is my friend who is safe and well in your old woman"s care."
"Oh! he is well enough," grunted Briot, "and you can see him in the morning."
"That I cannot, for I shall have to leave here soon after dawn. And I could not get a wink of sleep whilst I am in such a state of uncertainty about my friend."
"But you can"t go and wake him now. He is asleep for sure, and my old woman wouldn"t like him to be disturbed, after all the care she has given him."
St. Genis, fretting with impatience, could have cursed aloud or shaken the obstinate old peasant roughly by the shoulders.
"I shouldn"t wake him," he retorted, irritated beyond measure at the man"s futile opposition. "I"ll go up on tiptoe, candle in hand--you shall show me the way to his room--and I"ll just ascertain whether the wounded man is my friend or not, then I"ll come down again quietly and finish my supper.
"Come, pet.i.t pere, I insist," he added more peremptorily, seeing that Briot--with the hesitancy peculiar to his kind--still made no movement to obey, but stood close by scratching his scanty locks and looking puzzled and anxious.
Fortunately for him Maurice understood the temperament of these peasants of the Dauphine, he knew that with their curious hesitancy and inherent suspiciousness it was always the easiest to make up their minds for them.
So now--since he was absolutely determined to come to grips with that abominable thief upstairs, before the night was many minutes older--he ceased to parley with Briot.
A candle stood close to his hand on the table, a bit of kindling wood lay in a heap in one corner, with the help of the one he lighted the other, then candle in hand he walked up to the door.
"Show me the way, pet.i.t pere," he said.
And Aristide Briot, with a shrug of the shoulders which implied that he there and then put away from him any responsibility for what might or might not occur after this, and without further comment, led the way upstairs.
II
On the upper landing at the top of the stairs Briot paused. He pointed to a door at the end of the narrow corridor, and said curtly:
"That"s his room."
"I thank you, pet.i.t pere," whispered St. Genis in response. "Don"t wait for me, I"ll be back directly."
"He is not yet in bed," was Briot"s dry comment.
A thin streak of light showed underneath the door. As St. Genis walked rapidly toward it he wondered if the door would be locked. That certainly was a contingency which had not occurred to him. His design was to surprise a wounded and helpless thief in his sleep and to force him then and there to give up the stolen money, before he had time to call for help.
But the miscreant was evidently on the watch, Briot still lingered on the top of the stairs, there were other people sleeping in the house, and St. Genis suddenly realised that his purpose would not be quite so easy of execution as he had hot-headedly supposed.
But the end in view was great, and St. Genis was not a man easily deterred from a set purpose. There was the royalist cause to aid and Crystal to be won if he were successful.
He knocked resolutely at the door, then tried the latch. The door was locked: but even as the young man hesitated for a moment wondering what he would do next, a firm step resounded on the floor on the other side of the part.i.tion and the next moment the door was opened from within, and a peremptory voice issued the usual challenge:
"Who goes there?"
A tall figure appeared as a ma.s.sive silhouette under the lintel. St.
Genis had the candle in his hand. He dropped it in his astonishment.
"Mr. Clyffurde!" he exclaimed.
At sight of St. Genis the Englishman, whose right arm was in a sling, had made a quick instinctive movement back into the room, but equally quickly Maurice had forestalled him by placing his foot across the threshold.
Then he turned back to Aristide Briot.
"That"s all right, pet.i.t pere," he called out airily, "it is indeed my friend, just as I thought. I"m going to stay and have a little chat with him. Don"t wait up for me. When he is tired of my company I"ll go back to the parlour and make myself happy in front of the fire. Good-night!"
As Clyffurde no longer stood in the doorway, St. Genis walked straight into the room and closed the door behind him, leaving good old Aristide to draw what conclusions he chose from the eccentric behaviour of his nocturnal visitors.
With a rapid and wrathful gaze, St. Genis at once took stock of everything in the room. A sigh of satisfaction rose to his lips. At any rate the rogue could not deny his guilt. There, hanging on a peg, was the caped coat which he had worn, and there on the table were two d.a.m.ning proofs of his villainy--a pair of pistols and a black mask.
The whole situation puzzled him more than he could say. Certainly after the first shock of surprise he had felt his wrath growing hotter and hotter every moment, the other man"s cool a.s.surance helped further to irritate his nerves, and to make him lose that self-control which would have been of priceless value in this unlooked-for situation.
Seeing that Maurice de St. Genis was absolutely speechless with surprise as well as with anger, there crept into Clyffurde"s deep-set grey eyes a strange look of amus.e.m.e.nt, as if the humour of his present position was more obvious than its shame.
"And what," he asked pleasantly, "has procured me the honour at this late hour of a visit from M. le Marquis de St. Genis?"
His words broke the spell. There was no longer any mystery in the situation. The condemnatory pieces of evidence were there, Clyffurde"s connection with de Marmont was well known--the plot had become obvious.
Here was an English adventurer--an alien spy--who had obviously been paid to do this dirty work for the usurper, and--as Maurice now concluded airily--he must be made to give up the money which he had stolen before he be handed over to the military authorities at Lyons and shot as a spy or a thief--Maurice didn"t care which: the whole thing was turning out far simpler and easier than he had dared to hope.
"You know quite well why I am here," he now said, roughly. "Of a truth, for the moment I was taken by surprise, for I had not thought that a man who had been honoured by the friendship of M. le Comte de Cambray and of his family was a thief, as well as a spy."
"And now," said Clyffurde, still smiling and apparently quite unperturbed, "that you have been enlightened on this subject to your own satisfaction, may I ask what you intend to do?"
"Force you to give up what you have stolen, you impudent thief,"
retorted the other savagely.
"And how are you proposing to do that, M. de St. Genis?" asked the Englishman with perfect equanimity.
"Like this," cried Maurice, whose exasperation and fury had increased every moment, as the other man"s a.s.surance waxed more insolent and more cool.
"Like this!" he cried again, as he sprang at his enemy"s throat.