That night Yves Terrec left the village of St. Gildas vowing vengeance
against his father, who refused him shelter.
I can see him now, standing in the road, his bare legs rising like
pillars of bronze from his straw-stuffed sabots, his short velvet
jacket torn and soiled by exposure and dissipation, and his eyes,
fierce, roving, bloodshot--while the Red Admiral squeaked curses on
him, and hobbled away into his little stone cottage.
"I will not forget you!" cried Yves Terrec, and stretched out his hand
toward his father with a terrible gesture. Then he whipped his gun to
his cheek and took a short step forward, but I caught him by the throat
before he could fire, and a second later we were rolling in the dust
of the Bannalec road. I had to hit him a heavy blow behind the ear
before he would let go, and then, rising and shaking myself, I dashed
his muzzle-loading fowling piece to bits against a wall, and threw his
knife into the river. The Purple Emperor was looking on with a queer
light in his eyes. It was plain that he was sorry Terrec had not choked
me to death.
"He would have killed his father," I said, as I passed him, going
toward the Groix Inn.
"That's his business," snarled the Purple Emperor. There was a deadly
light in his eyes. For a moment I thought he was going to attack me;
but he was merely viciously drunk, so I shoved him out of my way and
went to bed, tired and disgusted.
The worst of it was I couldn't sleep, for I feared that the Purple
Emperor might begin to abuse Lys. I lay restlessly tossing among the
sheets until I could stay there no longer. I did not dress entirely;
I merely slipped on a pair of chaussons and sabots, a pair of
knickerbockers, a jersey, and a cap. Then, loosely tying a handkerchief
about my throat, I went down the worm-eaten stairs and out into the
moonlit road. There was a candle flaring in the Purple Emperor's
window, but I could not see him.
"He's probably dead drunk," I thought, and looked up at the window
where, three years before, I had first seen Lys.
"Asleep, thank Heaven!" I muttered, and wandered out along the road.
Passing the small cottage of the Red Admiral, I saw that it was dark,
but the door was open. I stepped inside the hedge to shut it, thinking,
in case Yves Terrec should be roving about, his father would lose
whatever he had left.
Then, after fastening the door with a stone, I wandered on through the
dazzling Breton moonlight. A nightingale was singing in a willow swamp
below, and from the edge of the mere, among the tall swamp grasses,
myriads of frogs chanted a bass chorus.
When I returned, the eastern sky was beginning to lighten, and across
the meadows on the cliffs, outlined against the paling horizon, I saw
a seaweed gatherer going to his work among the curling breakers on the
coast. His long rake was balanced on his shoulder, and the sea wind
carried his song across the meadows to me:
St. Gildas!
St. Gildas!
Pray for us,
Shelter us,
Us who toil in the sea.
Passing the shrine at the entrance of the village, I took off my cap
and knelt in prayer to Our Lady of Faöuet; and if I neglected myself
in that prayer, surely I believed Our Lady of Faöuet would be kinder to
Lys. It is said that the shrine casts white shadows. I looked, but saw
only the moonlight. Then very peacefully I went to bed again, and was
only awakened by the clank of sabres and the trample of horses in the
road below my window.
"Good gracious!" I thought, "it must be eleven o'clock, for there are
the gendarmes from Quimperlé."
I looked at my watch; it was only half-past eight, and as the gendarmes
made their rounds every Thursday at eleven, I wondered what had brought
them out so early to St. Gildas.
"Of course," I grumbled, rubbing my eyes, "they are after Terrec," and
I jumped into my limited bath.
Before I was completely dressed I heard a timid knock, and opening my
door, razor in hand, stood astonished and silent. Lys, her blue eyes
wide with terror, leaned on the threshold.
"My darling!" I cried, "what on earth is the matter?" But she
only clung to me, panting like a wounded sea gull. At last, when I
drew her into the room and raised her face to mine, she spoke in a
heart-breaking voice:
"Oh, Dick! they are going to arrest you, but I will die before I
believe one word of what they say. No, don't ask me," and she began to
sob desperately.
When I found that something really serious was the matter, I flung
on my coat and cap, and, slipping one arm about her waist, went down
the stairs and out into the road. Four gendarmes sat on their horses
in front of the café door; beyond them, the entire population of St.
Gildas gaped, ten deep.
"Hello, Durand!" I said to the brigadier, "what the devil is this I
hear about arresting me?"
"It's true, mon ami," replied Durand with sepulchral sympathy. I looked
him over from the tip of his spurred boots to his sulphur-yellow sabre
belt, then upward, button by button, to his disconcerted face.
"What for?" I said scornfully. "Don't try any cheap sleuth work on me!
Speak up, man, what's the trouble?"
The Purple Emperor, who sat in the doorway staring at me, started to
speak, but thought better of it and got up and went into the house. The
gendarmes rolled their eyes mysteriously and looked wise.
"Come, Durand," I said impatiently, "what's the charge?"
"Murder," he said in a faint voice.
"What!" I cried incredulously. "Nonsense! Do I look like a murderer?
Get off your horse, you stupid, and tell me who's murdered."
Durand got down, looking very silly, and came up to me, offering his
hand with a propitiatory grin.
"It was the Purple Emperor who denounced you! See, they found your
handkerchief at his door----"
"Whose door, for Heaven's sake?" I cried.
"Why, the Red Admiral's!"
"The Red Admiral's? What has he done?"
"Nothing--he's only been murdered."
I could scarcely believe my senses, although they took me over to the
little stone cottage and pointed out the blood-spattered room. But
the horror of the thing was that the corpse of the murdered man had
disappeared, and there only remained a nauseating lake of blood on
the stone floor, in the centre of which lay a human hand. There was
no doubt as to whom the hand belonged, for everybody who had ever seen
the Red Admiral knew that the shrivelled bit of flesh which lay in the
thickening blood was the hand of the Red Admiral. To me it looked like
the severed claw of some gigantic bird.
"Well," I said, "there's been murder committed. Why don't you do
something?"
"What?" asked Durand.
"I don't know. Send for the Commissaire."
"He's at Quimperlé. I telegraphed."
"Then send for a doctor, and find out how long this blood has been
coagulating."
"The chemist from Quimperlé is here; he's a doctor."
"What does he say?"
"He says that he doesn't know."
"And who are you going to arrest?" I inquired, turning away from the
spectacle on the floor.
"I don't know," said the brigadier solemnly; "you are denounced by the
Purple Emperor, because he found your handkerchief at the door when he
went out this morning."
"Just like a pig-headed Breton!" I exclaimed, thoroughly angry. "Did he
not mention Yves Terrec?"
"No."
"Of course not," I said. "He overlooked the fact that Terrec tried to
shoot his father last night, and that I took away his gun. All that
counts for nothing when he finds my handkerchief at the murdered man's
door."
"Come into the café," said Durand, much disturbed, "we can talk it
over, there. Of course, Monsieur Darrel, I have never had the faintest
idea that you were the murderer!"
The four gendarmes and I walked across the road to the Groix Inn and
entered the café. It was crowded with Bretons, smoking, drinking,
and jabbering in half a dozen dialects, all equally unsatisfactory to
a civilized ear; and I pushed through the crowd to where little Max
Fortin, the chemist of Quimperlé, stood smoking a vile cigar.
"This is a bad business," he said, shaking hands and offering me the
mate to his cigar, which I politely declined.
"Now, Monsieur Fortin," I said, "it appears that the Purple Emperor
found my handkerchief near the murdered man's door this morning, and
so he concludes"--here I glared at the Purple Emperor--"that I am the
assassin. I will now ask him a question," and turning on him suddenly,
I shouted, "What were you doing at the Red Admiral's door?"
The Purple Emperor started and turned pale, and I pointed at him
triumphantly.
"See what a sudden question will do. Look how embarrassed he is,
and yet I do not charge him with murder; and I tell you, gentlemen,
that man there knows as well as I do who was the murderer of the Red
Admiral!"
"I don't!" bawled the Purple Emperor.
"You do," I said. "It was Yves Terrec."
"I don't believe it," he said obstinately, dropping his voice.
"Of course not, being pig-headed."
"I am not pig-headed," he roared again, "but I am mayor of St. Gildas,
and I do not believe that Yves Terrec killed his father."
"You saw him try to kill him last night?"
The mayor grunted.
"And you saw what I did."
He grunted again.
"And," I went on, "you heard Yves Terrec threaten to kill his father.
You heard him curse the Red Admiral and swear to kill him. Now the
father is murdered and his body is gone."
"And your handkerchief?" sneered the Purple Emperor.
"I dropped it, of course."
"And the seaweed gatherer who saw you last night lurking about the Red
Admiral's cottage," grinned the Purple Emperor.