THE FLOWER GIRL OF “THE GALLOWS AND THE THREE CROWS”
ANDRÉ had understated the truth to Madame de Pompadour when he said
that he had learned much from Yvonne. Bit by bit her simple confessions
had convinced him that “The Cock with the Spurs of Gold” played an
important part in the inscrutable mystery of successful treachery
summed up in the blood-stained cipher of “No. 101.” Yvonne indeed
sorely puzzled him. She was only a hired wench at this hostelry kept
by a man and his wife against whom nothing discreditable could be
ferreted out. And he had utterly failed to break down the barriers of
her simplicity. She related things she had seen or heard which to André
with his knowledge of the facts were damningly conclusive, but that
she was aware of this was contradicted at every turn by her speech,
her gestures, her amazing innocence. In vain had he laid pitfall after
pitfall to catch her tripping. Not one syllable, one flutter of an
eyelid, one blush, one faltering tone, had rewarded his cunningest or
his most artless efforts. The girl had passed ordeal after ordeal just
as a peasant wench should who was only a peasant wench. Yet every
failure only deepened the feeling that Yvonne was not merely Yvonne of
the Spotless Ankles; proof he had none; proof indeed pointed to the
very reverse. André had nothing but a vague, indefinable, apparently
irrational, suspicion, and it maddened him. In the critical struggle
on which he had now embarked he was convinced he was being beaten,
tricked by a woman; she held, if he were right, the keys which would
unlock the mystery and she was simply playing with him, no doubt for
her own ends; she was probably betraying him daily to her accursed
allies. Worse still, because it was ridiculous as he felt it, there
was an inexplicable charm in this girl which threatened to master him.
Despite Denise and Madame de Pompadour and the Comtesse des Forges and
half a dozen other refined and attractive women at the Court to inspire
love and gratify passion, he, André de Nérac, a Cordon Bleu, a Croix
de St. Louis, a noble of the Maison du Roi, was in danger of falling
a victim to an unkempt peasant with a smudged face. Yvonne told him
things eminently useful, Yvonne baffled him, but these were not the
only reasons why daily he went to see her. And he had discovered this
humiliating fact by trying to answer a torturing question. If he could
prove Yvonne to be a traitor or the ally of traitors, was he ready
to hand her over to the awful mercies of the King’s justice? And if
not, why not? Supposing he could show that she was the woman who had
foiled him in the charcoal-burner’s cabin at Fontenoy, what then? And
his heart revolted in its answer against his reason: “No, I cannot; I
cannot leave Denise to the vengeance of Madame de Pompadour, because I
love her; I cannot give Yvonne to the rack, the executioner’s whip and
wheel, because”--and then he always stopped, because he had not the
courage even in the most intimate sanctuary of his conscience to finish
the answer.
But discover the mystery he must more than ever now. His own fate
and Madame de Pompadour’s hung on success. The war was drawing to an
end; the negotiations for peace were beginning. If the King’s secrets
were betrayed as in the past Madame would be disgraced. André had
deliberately broken with his friends and his order. Their implacable
lust for vengeance on the mistress would require his punishment too.
The issue was as clear as daylight. Either he must crush them or they
would crush him. And succeed he must, because success alone meant
safety, honour, and the love of Denise.
And so, after leaving Madame de Pompadour, André went as usual straight
to Yvonne, whom he found in the stalls feeding the spotted cow. “The
Englishman,” she informed him, “has been here, Monseigneur. He spoke
with a gentleman from the Court. I only know that to-morrow night they
will meet at a tavern in Paris; they called it ‘The Gallows and the
Three Crows.’”
André took the lantern from her and let the light fall on her stained
face.
“And this tavern, where is it?” he demanded.
Yvonne met his gaze with the calmness of innocent ignorance.
“Monseigneur, I do not know. I have never been in Paris.”
“You will swear you heard it as you say?”
“Surely. They said the name twice.”
“And the gentleman from the Court?”
“His cloak was over his face, but I think--I am certain--it was
Monsieur the Chevalier.”
André had heard enough. His blood was tingling with passion and
excitement. “You have done me a great service, Yvonne,” he cried.
Yvonne very modestly disengaged the arm which for the first time he had
slipped about her supple waist. “Monseigneur must not kiss me,” she
whispered, humbly. “I cannot betray my lover even to you, sir.”
André started as if he had been detected in a crime. “You have a lover,
Yvonne?” he exclaimed.
The girl threw back her shock of matted hair and laughed. “Many
lovers,” she said, looking down at her clumsy sabots, “but only one
dares to kiss me. Would it be wrong?” she inquired thoughtfully, “for
me to let Monseigneur kiss me, too?”
“No,” said André, still in the grip of passion.
[Illustration: Yvonne very modestly disengaged the arm which for the
first time he had slipped about her supple waist.]
“Then Monseigneur will do as he pleases,” she answered quietly. “I am
his servant and,” she laughed, “a peasant girl would remember the kiss
of a grand gentleman who has surely kissed many great ladies.”
There was no satire in her voice, and the roguish gleam in her eyes was
simply bright with an innocent vanity, yet the words fell like ice-cold
water on molten steel.
“Damn her!” was André’s savage comment as he galloped back to the
palace. Was she playing with him or was it sheer _naïveté_ of
soul?--for as usual Yvonne had in her mysterious way lured him on and
then administered a humiliating rebuke.
* * * * *
The tavern with the grim name of “The Gallows and the Three Crows”
lay in the mouth of a slum on the south side of the river, and when
André, cloaked and disguised to the best of his power, entered its
dark parlour he recognised that the police were not wrong in telling
him it was partly a gaming hell, partly the haunt of the select of the
scum, male and female, of Paris, the rendezvous for the low amours of
bullies, sharpers, and broken gentry, and the women who were their
victims or their tools. He felt that the half-dozen occupants of the
room eyed his swaggering entry with the keenest interest, but it was
not his first introduction to such resorts, and a soldier of half a
dozen campaigns and a swordsman of his quality knew no fear. Nor was
the wine so bad, and the flower girl who impudently took a seat at
once at his table, though he could scarcely see her face in the gloom,
promised some pleasant fun, when she had ceased to turn her back on
him and to chaff a man at the next table.
Nothing in particular, however, happened until a figure heavily cloaked
rose from the further corner, and as he passed the flower girl tapped
her familiarly on the shoulder. She looked up, started unmistakably,
and André noticed the man had tried to slip a piece of paper into her
basket of flowers. Unnoticed by both, the paper fell on the dirty
sanded floor among the refuse, and in a trice André had his foot on it.
He felt his heart beating like a sledge hammer. He had caught a glimpse
of the man’s face--the same face that had puzzled him behind the trees
near “The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.” Ah! the memories rushed in on
him. Yes; he remembered now, of course, he had seen that face in the
glare of the flaming charcoal-burner’s cabin and in London at a supper
party. It was the face of George Onslow, an Englishman. Yvonne had not
been mistaken. Onslow was the English spy in Paris. Onslow at Fontenoy
had come to receive the plans from “No. 101.” Ha! should he follow him?
Yes? No? Before he could decide he recognised two other men drinking
carelessly but stealthily watching the room. These were servants,
trusted servants, of the Duke de Pontchartrain and the Comte de Mont
Rouge. What the devil were they doing here? By accident, or to meet
some wench of the town, or as spies on whom or what?
George Onslow had meanwhile disappeared. The flower girl, too, humming
a catch, was slipping away. André stooped to pick up the piece of
paper, but by the time he had reached the door, pest on her nimble
heels, she, too, had vanished! And André was only conscious that the
two servants were following him out. Ah, that was their game, was it?
Calling for another bottle of wine, he went back to the table, and
immediately the pair returned to their seat. That was conclusive. They
were there to watch him, but why? Clearly because the Court desired
to know of all his movements. The consequences of his refusal to the
Comtesse des Forges were in fact beginning. André smiled grimly,
stretched out his legs and examined the precious slip of paper. At once
his heart pounded the more fiercely. The scrap had no writing on it at
all; all that he could see was a curious symbol, two crossed daggers
and the figures “101” in red ink--no, blood! There was no mistaking
it--blood. The mysterious traitor’s sign, pass, or counterword. He set
his teeth. Why, oh, why had he allowed that girl to escape him?
An hour passed. Nothing happened, and André goaded by a feverish
curiosity which he could not satisfy, and feeling only that he had been
baffled again, planned how to leave. Pausing, to be sure that the two
servants were ready as before to follow him, he flung himself round
the corner into the darkness and up the first alley and down the next,
reckless of stabs in the back, until he was able to crouch in the first
convenient doorway. He had thrown his spies off, that was something,
and just as he was wondering what to do next a cloaked figure brushed
past him. The Chevalier de St. Amant, as he lived! He grabbed at the
cloak in vicious rage. The Chevalier at least should not escape him.
“Don’t be so rude, Vicomte,” laughed a woman’s voice. “I won’t vanish
up the chimney.”
André, in sheer astonishment, staggered against the door, glaring
all the time into the darkness. “You will be wise to follow me,” she
continued, “and in silence.”
In two minutes the pair were standing in a small and empty back room
of the tavern André had just left. The woman threw back her hood,
revealing the trim figure and saucy face of the impudent flower girl,
who was no other than his long-lost acquaintance, the crystal-gazer.
“You will present,” she said mockingly, “my humble duties to Madame la
Marquise de Pompadour----”
André had recovered his bewilderment. “What is the meaning of that?” he
demanded, brusquely, thrusting the slip of paper into her hands.
“I don’t know,” she retorted coolly, and then tore the slip into a
dozen pieces, “and I do not care to know.”
André was so startled by the studied insolence of the act that for a
few minutes he could neither speak nor move. When he did, it was to put
his back to the door very significantly.
“One question, Madame,” he demanded. “You are aware that George Onslow
is in Paris, that he spoke to you, gave you that paper?”
“Certainly. Mr. Onslow mistook me for some one else. I have just
convinced him of his mistake.” She was positively smiling.
“You expect me to believe that?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “No,” she answered, “the truth told by
women is never believed, least of all at Versailles by men.”
André ran his eye over her. As in the past, so now something in her
voice and figure reminded him of some one else, but of whom he could
not recall. “Madame,” he said earnestly, “I urge you to tell the truth.
You were never in such danger as you are now.”
“Perhaps not. But I am not in such peril as you are, Monsieur le
Vicomte.”
Instinctively he turned sharply round. The woman laughed and the laugh
maddened him, for they were alone and the door had been locked by
himself.
“My friend,” she said quietly, “you are being spied on. To-morrow the
ministers, the Comtesse des Forges, and the Comte de Mont Rouge will
know how the Vicomte de Nérac, who gave out he was going to visit
Madame his aged mother, has spent the evening in the company of Mr.
George Onslow and disreputable women. I feel sure the Marquise de Beau
Séjour will hear it, too, with additions.”
“Well,” said André, stonily.
“Monsieur le Vicomte also is known to frequent the society of one
Yvonne. Innocent peasant girls, when put on the rack, are sometimes
obliged to tell lies, poor things, but lies useful to those who rack
them. The Marquise de Beau----”
“Hold your tongue.”
“No, I will not. Monsieur le Vicomte is also the lover of Madame de
Pompadour. You deny it? Then why go in the darkness with the King’s
private key to her apartment? The noble whose arm you slit will enjoy
taking that delightful scandal about the Captain of the Queen’s
Guards to the King, and the King--_mon Dieu!_ the King--” she laughed
bloodthirstily, nor was it necessary to finish the sentence.
André wiped the sweat off his brow. The woman came close to him.
“Supposing,” she said in a low voice, “supposing you had been arrested
to-night with that slip of paper in your pocket, would all your
services, all your oaths, your nobility, have saved you? Think, my
friend, think. I did a bold thing, perhaps, in destroying it, but it
was in your interest, Vicomte, not mine.”
André was silent, appalled at her knowledge. The tables had been turned
on him with a vengeance, and this astonishing woman was right, which
was hardest of all.
“You would know,” she proceeded, divining marvellously his confused
thoughts, “how I have all this information. I have my crystal,” she
laughed, “but I also hate the King and the woman who rules him. You
and she are not the only persons at Versailles to whom it is a matter
of life and death to discover the secret of ‘No. 101.’ Monsieur, I am
the paid agent of the foes of that wanton, the King’s mistress, and of
yourself.”
Unconsciously André’s fingers clutched the hilt of his sword.
“Why do I tell you all this?” she asked in a low voice. “Does that
confession amuse or startle you? Am I the first woman who would
sacrifice herself for the Vicomte de Nérac or the first to confess
her love? No. And to prove I speak the truth I will reveal to you
the secret of ‘No. 101’ that I alone have discovered, but on one
condition”--she paused to put her hands on both his shoulders--“that
you will promise from this moment to abandon Mademoiselle Denise, who
is not worthy of you, and to love me alone.”
Dead silence. André stood hypnotised, half by fear, half by the
witchery of her womanhood.
“I have beauty, wealth, power,” she whispered caressingly. “Yes, I am
as fair a woman as Mademoiselle Denise; I can make you a greater man
than Madame de Pompadour can; I can reveal to you the secret that is
worth the ransom of the King’s crown; and I love you. Say yes, André,
for your own sake; you will never regret it.”
André looked into her blue eyes, so resplendent against the cream
tint of her skin, and at her magnificent black hair. Passion and
ambition began to sap his will. Then slowly he dragged himself from his
intoxicating dream and disengaged her hands.
“No,” he said gently but firmly, “I do not love you. I cannot--I
cannot, because,” his voice rang out, “I love Denise.”
She was trembling, he thought, with rage, but there was no rage in her
eyes, only a mysterious pity and pathos as of a woman who had staked
all on one throw and lost, yet was not wholly sorry.
“Ah! well,” she said, controlling herself. “I know now that you will
never discover the secret of ‘No. 101’--never!”
“I shall,” he answered, with unfaltering confidence, “I shall succeed
because I must.”
She shrugged her shoulders with scorn. “Open that window,” she
commanded, in the most matter-of-fact tone, “before you leave you had
better be sure the King’s police are not waiting for you.”
With the key of the door in his pocket André quietly threw the shutters
open and peered out.
“Well? No one?” said a voice at his elbow. “I fear, Vicomte, I cannot
wait while you make up your mind what you will do with me. You will
hear interesting news at Versailles to-morrow. Thank you. Good-night!”
A sharp push, the vision of two small boots, and a flutter of short
skirts, and she had lightly vaulted into the street. When André
recovered his balance the darkness of the network of slums had
swallowed her. Tricked and baffled again by a woman, and with these
questions above all crying out for an answer: why had he mistaken her
for the Chevalier? Was she really in love with him? And was she an
agent of the plotters against Madame de Pompadour?