"Nine o"clock, sir," replied the servant, rather taken aback at the thought of having this visitor dependent upon her for entertainment during the next hour and a half.
"Ah--and it is not yet eight. Never mind. I will go into the garden. I am fond of fruit before breakfast."
He took his hat and lounged away towards the kitchen-garden which lay near the moat.
"And now," he said to himself, looking round him in a searching way, "where is this pestilential village?"
The way was not hard to find, and as the church clock struck eight the Vicomte d"Audierne opened the little green gate of the cottage where Signor Bruno was lodging.
The old gentleman must have been watching for him; for he opened the door before the Vicomte reached it.
He turned and led the way into a little room on the right hand of the narrow pa.s.sage. A little room intensely typical: china dogs, knitted antimaca.s.sars of a brilliant tendency, and horse-hair covered furniture.
There was even the usual stuffy odour as if the windows, half-hidden behind muslin curtains and scarlet geraniums, were never opened from one year"s end to another.
Signor Bruno closed the door before speaking. Then he turned upon his companion with something very like fury glittering in his eyes.
"Why did you not come last night?" he asked. "I am left alone to contend against one difficulty on the top of another. Read that!"
He drew from his pocket a thin and somewhat crumpled sheet of paper, upon which there were two columns of printed matter.
"That," he said, "cost us two thousand francs." The Vicomte d"Audierne read the printed matter carefully from beginning to end. He had approached the window because the light was bad, and when he finished he looked up for a few minutes, out of the little cas.e.m.e.nt, upon the quiet village scene.
"The _Beacon_," he said, turning round, "what is that?"
"A leading weekly newspaper."
"Published--?
"To-day," snapped Signor Bruno.
The Vicomte d"Audierne made a little grimace.
"Who wrote this?" he inquired.
"Christian Vellacott, son of _the_ Vellacott, whom you knew in the old days."
"Ah!"
There was something in the Vicomte"s expressive voice that made Signor Bruno look at him sharply with some apprehension.
"Why do you say that?"
The Vicomte countered with another question.
"Who is this Mr. Bodery?"
He gave a little jerk with his head in the direction of the house he had just left.
"I do not know."
"I was told last night that he was a friend of this Christian Vellacott--a protector."
The two Frenchmen looked at each other in silence. Signor Bruno was evidently alarmed--his lips were white and unsteady. There was a smile upon the bird-like face of the younger man, and behind his spectacles his eyes glittered with an excitement in which there was obviously no fear.
"Do you know," he asked in a disagreeably soft manner, "where Christian Vellacott is?"
Across the benevolent old face of Signor Bruno here came a very evil smile.
"You will do better not to ask me that question," he replied, "unless you mean to run for it--as I do."
The Vicomte d"Audierne looked at his companion in a curious way.
"You had," he said, "at one time no rival as a man of action--"
Signor Bruno shrugged his shoulders.
"I am a man of action still."
The Vicomte folded the proof-sheet carefully, handed it back to his companion, and said:
"Then I understand that--there will be no more of these very clever articles?"
Bruno nodded his head.
"I ask no questions," continued the other. "It is better so. I shall stay where I am for a few days, unless it grows too hot--unless I think it expedient to vanish."
"You have courage?"
"No; I have impertinence--that is all. There will be a storm--a newspaper storm. The emba.s.sies will be busy; in the English Parliament some pompous fool will ask a question, and be snubbed for his pains. In the _Chambre_ the newspaper men will rant and challenge each other in the corridors; and it will blow over. In the meantime we have got what we want, and we can hide it till we have need of it. Your Reverence and I have met difficulties together before this one."
But Signor Bruno was not inclined to fall in with these optimistic views.
"I am not so sure," he said, "that we have got what we want. There has been no acknowledgment of receipt of the last parcel--in the usual way--the English _Standard_."
"What was the last parcel?"
"Fifty thousand cartridges."
"But they were sent?"
"Yes; they were despatched in the usual way; but, as I say, they have not been acknowledged. There may have been some difficulty on the other side. Our police are not so easy-going as these coastguard gentlemen."
"Well," said the aristocrat, with that semi-bantering lightness of manner which sometimes aggravated, and always puzzled, his colleagues, "we will not give ourselves trouble over that: the matter is out of our hands. Let us rather think of ourselves. Have you money?"
"Yes--I have sufficient."
"It is now eight o"clock--this newspaper--this precious _Beacon_ is now casting its light into some dark intellects in London. It will take those intellects two hours to a.s.similate the information, and one more hour to proceed to action. You have, therefore, three hours in which to make yourself scarce."
"I have arranged that," replied the old man calmly. "There is a small French potato-ship lying at Exmouth. In two hours I shall be one of her crew."