A CONSPIRACY.
When Francine found herself in the power of these scoundrels she fainted
away, and these men carried her over their shoulders as if she had been
a bag of flour, perfectly indifferent to her beauty.
Robeccal suddenly bade them halt. They had reached the vile place known
as the Cour de Bretagne, a part of Paris known for its poverty and vice.
"I think it is about time!" grumbled one of Robeccal's men in reply.
"Oh! I suppose you thought you were to be paid for nothing, did you?"
Without heeding the growling of these fellows, Robeccal stepped up to a
door and knocked. It was opened by a person who stood back in the
shadow, and a hurried conversation took place. Satisfied apparently with
what he heard, Robeccal bade his men follow him. They went to
Belleville, which at that time was an excessively pretty place, as
almost all the houses of any pretension had gardens and grounds.
Robeccal had been extremely adroit in diverting suspicion and the
observation of the people they encountered. He now knocked at a door in
a wall half hidden by overhanging ivy.
"Who is there?" called a woman's voice.
"Robec and the kid," was the reply.
The door opened noiselessly on well-oiled hinges.
"Come in, all of you." It was Roulante who spoke.
Francine was at once carried to a little cottage at the foot of a long
garden, where, still unconscious, she was laid on a couch.
Then Robeccal paid his assistants the sum agreed upon. They were not
altogether satisfied, but he managed to get rid of them.
La Roulante was unchanged since the day when she and her lover discussed
the assassination of Iron Jaws.
"I have done well, have I not?" asked Robeccal, with a friendly tap on
the massive shoulders of this monstrosity.
"Her beauty is not marred, I hope?" she asked, anxiously.
"I am not such a fool as that! But I am afraid that the handkerchief was
too tight. She is confoundedly pretty, that is a fact!"
"What is that to you?" asked the giantess, angrily. "Now give me that
bottle."
"What are you going to do?"
"None of your business! Hand it here."
The woman poured out something that looked like wine, and dropped a
spoonful between the girl's lips. She had so much difficulty in doing
so, that Robeccal took a knife from his pocket, and inserted it between
Francine's close shut teeth. As soon as the liquid disappeared down the
girl's throat she started.
"You are not poisoning her?" asked Robeccal.
"Am I a fool? Hark! I hear a carriage. Take this girl up-stairs."
Robeccal snatched Francine from the sofa, and ran lightly up the stairs.
The room above was elegantly furnished, and had long windows looking out
upon the garden, which seemed to stretch out indefinitely. In reality it
ended at no very great distance in a wall sixteen feet in height.
As Robeccal laid the girl on the bed, he looked at her again with some
anxiety. She was absolutely motionless.
There came a knock at the door. Robeccal started.
"That must be he!" said La Roulante.
It was in fact Talizac, who had arrived. Fernando was with him, but the
Vicomte had knocked with the handle of his cane. It was not the signal
agreed upon, and the door was not opened. Suddenly Frederic uttered an
oath.
"Oh! it is he!" said Robeccal. "That is better than a visiting card!"
But La Roulante insisted on a little argument through the door before
she would consent to move the heavy bolts.
"Damned sorceress!" cried Talizac, "you deserve that I should cut your
face with my cane, for keeping me waiting so long."
La Roulante made no reply to this gentle address, and Talizac, with
blood-stained face and torn clothing, entered the house, followed by
Fernando, who was as dignified and correct in costume as he always was.
When Talizac reached the salon, he dropped into a chair. "Water! for the
love of Heaven, give me some water!" he murmured. He felt almost ill,
and would have been glad of a few hours of rest. "Is she here?" he
asked.
"Yes, she is here," answered La Roulante.
Talizac rose. "I must repair the disorder of my toilette," he said.
"Robeccal, come with me."
On Talizac's return, he asked La Roulante where the Marquise was.
"Oh! she is asleep," was the reply.
"Show me where she is, and move a little faster!"
"It strikes me, sir, that you are not over polite," muttered Robeccal.
"Let him have his own way," sneered the giantess; "he is in a hurry to
see his darling, and has no time to be civil!" She made a grotesque
reverence as she spoke. She preceded the Vicomte to show him the way.
"Do you know," she cried, stopping on the stairs, "that the girl is as
pretty as a pink."
"That is none of your affairs," answered Talizac, roughly, "I pay you to
serve me, not to talk!"
"You are a little hard on us, I think," said La Roulante, with a sneer,
"but I suppose when people are rich they can say and do as they please!"
"Is that the room?" Talizac asked, as he reached the top of the stairs,
"if so, open the door at once, or I will force it!"
"No, you won't injure my house like that! But you want to see her, do
you? Very well, I will show her to you, then."
She quickly slid back a narrow panel in the door, which permitted him to
look into the room.
"Look in, gentlemen and ladies," said La Roulante, in the sing-song tone
of a showman at the circus, "look in, it won't cost you anything!" And
then the creature laughed.
Talizac did not heed her, but leaning toward the open panel looked at
Francine, who lay with her arms folded on her breast like a child. Her
hair was loosened, and nothing could have been lovelier than this face
with its delicate features, reminding one of Raphael's pictures. Talizac
looked, and forgot that this child was the victim of a miserable
conspiracy. He was so impressed by her beauty and her innocence that he
was ready to kneel before her. But La Roulante touched his arm with a
cynical laugh.
"Open the door, I say!"
La Roulante closed the panel with a snap, and slowly drew a key from her
pocket and stood with it in her fingers, and then said quietly and
firmly:
"If I unlock that door, it will cost you twenty thousand francs!"
Talizac started back. "What do you mean?" he exclaimed.
"Just what I say, twenty thousand francs!"
"But this is abominable. Have I not paid the sum agreed upon?"
"A trifle, yes; but that won't do!"
"It is robbery, bare-faced robbery--"
"None of that, sir, you are not so honest yourself, that you can afford
to taunt others!"
He looked at her in astonishment, and then rushed at the door as if to
force it open. She called for Robeccal, who hurried to obey her summons.
Talizac called Fernando, and Robeccal turned back. Drawing an enormous
knife, he said, fiercely:
"Don't you interfere! My wife will settle her own matters with this
gentleman!"
Fernando's attitude during the fight between Frederic and Montferrand
has already informed us as to the courage of this man. Perhaps he was
wise in not risking his life to defend Talizac, whom he estimated at his
proper value. He was interested in the Fongereues family only as an
emissary of that Society which at that time labored to strangle
Liberalism at its birth.
"Very good!" answered Fernando, shrugging his shoulders indifferently,
but as he did not propose to be mixed up in any disagreeable affair in
this house, he determined to take himself off.
The giantess was not alarmed by Talizac's mad attempt. She calmly lifted
him by the collar and landed him on the stairs, half way down.
"Robbers! Murderers!" shouted the Vicomte.
"Confound you! hold your tongue!" said Robeccal, flourishing the knife
which had such an effect on Fernando.
"Why do you not keep your word?" angrily asked the Vicomte; "you
promised--"
"People like us do not keep our promises," answered La Roulante,
cynically. "You paid us for carrying off the girl, you paid us for
giving her a shelter; we have done both. But if you wish to enter that
room it will cost you twenty thousand francs!"
"But that is an enormous sum!" moaned Talizac.
"Not to a man like you, who has a grandee for a father, and a mother
rolling in wealth. She has diamonds, plenty of them!"
"Wretches that you are!"
"Thank you! I don't care for any more of these hard names, if it is all
the same to you! And now let me tell you, if you don't hand over this
money that the police will be at your heels."
At the word police, Fernando went to the Vicomte. "Come," he said, "we
had better not remain in this cut-throat place. You must give the matter
up, that is all there is to be said."
"No, I tell you, no!" Feeling in his pocket, Talizac drew out a handful
of gold and flung it at the woman.
"Take this," he cried, "and unlock that door!"
La Roulante counted the money. "No," she replied, "this is but
thirty-two louis."
"Come," persisted Fernando, dragging Talizac away.
"Call again!" shouted the woman. "You need not be in a hurry, but call
again!"
And the door closed.
"My idea is a good one," said La Roulante to Robeccal. "He will come
back, and will bring the twenty thousand francs!"