Once he paused to reset a hare-trap with a turnip, picked up in a neighboring field; once he limed a young sapling and fixed a bit of a mirror in the branches, but not a bird alighted, although the blackthorns were full of fluttering wings. And all the while we had been twisting and doubling and edging nearer and nearer to the Sainte-Ysole woods, until we were already within their cool shadow, and I heard the tinkle of a stream among leafy depths.
Now we had no fear; we were hidden from the eyes of the dry, staring plain, and the Lizard laughed to himself as he fastened a gra.s.shopper to his hook and flung it into the broad, dark water of the pool at his feet.
Slowly he fished up stream, but, although he seemed to be intent on his sport, there was something in the bend of his head that suggested he might be listening for other sounds than the complex melodies of mossy waterfalls.
His poacher"s eyes began to glisten and shimmer in the forest dusk like the eyes of wild things that hunt at night. As he noiselessly turned, his nostrils spread with a tremor, as a good dog"s nose quivers at the point.
Presently he beckoned me, stepped into the moss, and crawled without a sound straight through the holly thicket.
"Watch here," he whispered. "Count a hundred when I disappear, then creep on your stomach to the edge of that bank. In the bed of the stream, close under you, you will see and hear your friend Tric-Trac."
Before I had counted fifty I heard the Lizard cry out, "Bonjour, Tric-Trac!" but I counted on, obeying the Lizard"s orders as I should wish mine to be obeyed. I heard a startled exclamation in reply to the Lizard"s greeting, then a purely Parisian string of profanity, which terminated as I counted one hundred and crept forward to the mossy edge of the bank, under the yellow beech leaves.
Below me stood the Lizard, intently watching a figure crouched on hands and knees before a small, iron-bound box.
The person addressed as Tric-Trac promptly tried to hide the box by sitting down on it. He was a young man, with wide ears and unhealthy spots on his face. His hair, which was oily and thick, he wore neatly plastered into two pointed love-locks. This not only adorned and distinguished him, but it lent a casual and detached air to his ears, which stood at right angles to the plane of his face. I knew that engaging countenance. It was the same old Tric-Trac.
"Zut, alors!" repeated Tric-Trac, venomously, as the poacher smiled again; "can"t you give the company notice when you come in?"
"Did you expect me to ring the tocsin?" asked the Lizard.
"Flute!" snarled Tric-Trac. "Like a mud-rat, you creep with no sound--c"est pas polite, nom d"un nom!"
He began nervously brushing the pine-needles from his skin-tight trousers, with dirty hands.
"What"s that box?" asked the Lizard, abruptly.
"Box? Where?" A vacant expression came into Tric-Trac"s face, and he looked all around him except at the box upon which he was sitting.
"Box?" he repeated, with that hopeless effrontery which never deserts criminals of his cla.s.s, even under the guillotine. "I don"t see any box."
"You"re sitting on it," observed the Lizard.
"_That_ box? Oh! You mean _that_ box? Oh!" He peeped at it between his meagre legs, then turned a nimble eye on the poacher.
"What"s in it?" demanded the poacher, sullenly.
"Don"t know," replied Tric-Trac, with brisk interest. "I found it."
"_Found_ it!" repeated the Lizard, scornfully.
"Certainly, my friend; how do you suppose I came by it?"
"You stole it!"
They faced each other for a moment.
"Supposition that you are correct; what of it?" said the young ruffian, calmly.
The Lizard was silent.
"Did you bring me anything to chew on?" inquired Tric-Trac, sniffing at the poacher"s sack.
"Bread, cheese, three pheasants, cider--more than I eat in a week,"
said the Lizard, quietly. "It will cost forty sous."
He opened his sack and slowly displayed the provisions.
I looked hard at the iron-bound box.
_On one end was painted the Geneva cross._ Dr. Delmont and Professor Tavernier had disappeared carrying red-cross funds. Was that their box?
"I said it costs forty sous--two silver francs," repeated the Lizard, doggedly.
"Forty sous? That"s robbery!" sniffed the young ruffian, now using that half-whining, half-sneering form of discourse peculiar alike to the vicious chevalier of Paris and his confrere of the provincial centres. Accent and slang alone distinguish between them; the argot, however, is practically the same.
Tric-Trac fished a few coins from his pocket, counted carefully, and handed them, one by one, to the poacher.
The poacher coolly tossed the food on the ground, and, as Tric-Trac rose to pick it up, seized the box.
"Drop that!" said Tric-Trac, quickly.
"What"s in it?"
"Nothing! Drop it, I tell you."
"Where"s the key?"
"There"s no key--it"s a machine."
"What"s in it?"
"Now I"ve been trying to find out for two weeks," sneered Tric-Trac, "and I don"t know yet. Drop it!"
"I"m going to open it all the same," said the Lizard, coolly, lifting the lid.
A sudden silence followed; then the Lizard swore vigorously. There was another box within the light, iron-edged casket, a keyless cube of shining steel, with a k.n.o.b on the top, and a needle which revolved around a dial on which were engraved the hours and minutes. And emblazoned above the dial was the coat of arms of the Countess de Va.s.sart.
When Tric-Trac had satisfied himself concerning the situation, he returned to devour his food.
"Flute! Zut! Mince!" he observed; "you and your bad manners, they sicken me--tiens!"
The Lizard, flat on his stomach, lay with the ma.s.sive steel box under his chin, patiently turning the needle from figure to figure.
"Wonderful! wonderful!" sneered Tric-Trac. "Continue, my friend, to put out your eyes with your fingers!"
The Lizard continued to turn the needle backward and forward around the face of the dial. Once, when he twirled it impatiently, a tiny chime rang out from within the box, but the steel lid did not open.
"It"s the Angelus," said Tric-Trac, with a grimace. "Let us pray, my friend, for a cold-chisel--when my friend Buckhurst returns."