ON SECRET SERVICE
THE clock in André’s room struck eleven. André pulled the curtains back
and surveyed the night. Serene, flawlessly serene, as an October night
at Versailles can be. Satisfied that his pistols were properly primed,
that the precious despatch was still in his pocket, he blew out the
lights and then by a rope ladder swung himself out of the window. His
experience at “The Gallows and the Three Crows” had warned him that for
his foes to discover the King’s commission was for Madame de Pompadour
and himself ruin, death, and dishonour. And he was determined the Court
should not so much as know he had left the palace. So at midday he had
given out that he was ill, had even sent for a physician, and then had
quietly slept till the hour had come. And now that he had successfully
given them the slip the Captain of the Queen’s Guards laughed as a
truant schoolboy might have done. A few lights still twinkled into the
October air, some from behind shutters, others through the open glass.
André paused to survey the majestic front of the palace as it faces
the broad terrace that commands the gardens, that terrace where to-day
the bare-legged French children scamper and the chattering tourists
stroll--those gardens where, could he have known it, was to be played
out the tragi-comedy of _The Diamond Necklace_ and the downfall of the
descendants of Le Roi Soleil. And he was asking himself, would he ever
see Versailles again?
Up there to the right was the window of Denise’s room. If only he could
have said two words of farewell before he rode out to battle with the
unknown! Hush! the shutters were being fretfully thrown back. Yes, that
figure in white was Denise looking out, as so many in their sorrow or
passion have looked out, to the passionless stars for an answer, and
in vain. His blood throbbed feverishly, until Denise, ignorant that in
the darkness below her a heart as cruelly torn as her own was beating
wistfully, wearily closed the shutters, and went back to a sleepless
bed.
André stole away across the gardens to seek the road yonder where a
trusted servant from Paris would be waiting with his best horse.
“She is not a peasant,” he muttered, showing whither his thoughts were
travelling. “Well, well!”
“If I am not at the palace by nine o’clock, Jean,” he said as he
mounted, “come for my orders to the inn called ‘The Cock with the Spurs
of Gold.’” And Jean nodded knowingly.
Orders! André smiled grimly. Dead men can give no orders, not even for
their own burial, nor can they take all their secrets with them; more
was the pity.
When the servant had disappeared André bound the mare’s hoofs with
felt, and she whinnied affectionately, as if she understood. She had
only twice been so treated, once the night before Fontenoy and now, for
she was the English blood mare which had crushed into pulp the face of
that miserable dead woman in the charcoal-burner’s wood and had saved
her master’s life from “No. 101” and George Onslow. André stroked her
neck and whispered into her ear. To-night she might have to save his
honour as well as his life.
Once in the main road André drew rein in the shadow of a tree on the
outskirts of the forest and listened attentively. To the right ran the
track for farm carts that led directly to the inn, but he decided not
to take that. If by any chance he had been followed or an ambush was
laid his foes would certainly choose that track, his natural route.
He therefore rode past it, again halted to listen, and then plunged
fearlessly under the trees, picking his way along a wood-cutter’s
disused path.
Already, through the tangle of boughs, he could make out the blurred
shape of the inn ahead, when a faint hiss brought his sword from the
scabbard. No, that was a low whistle there on the right. That bush,
too, just in front was stirring suspiciously; by St. Denys! the crown
of a man’s hat? A howl of surprise and pain rent the air. André had
driven in his spurs; the maddened mare had leaped on to the bush and
the hat with the man’s head under it was cut through with one pitiless
stroke of the sword. In went the spurs again; for he saw now there
were three others running up from the main track which he had refused
to follow. The flash of a pistol: the bullet went through his cloak,
but the man who fired it took André’s sword point in his throat and
dropped, gurgling. The remaining two stood their ground, and struck at
him with their swords. One of them, with a cry “Seigneur Jésu!” lurched
forward, run through the breast. But the other had stabbed the mare
from behind. She plunged and fell heavily. André felt a sharp pain in
his left arm; he, too, was stabbed! He had a vision of himself being
tossed through the air, his head struck a tree trunk, and----
When he recovered consciousness he was lying on the ground and all
was still. In an agony of bewildered fear he tore his coat open and
felt for the despatch. Impossible! Yes, it was still there. A red mist
danced in his eyes, his left arm throbbed with pain, but he lay half
sobbing with a delirious joy. The despatch was still there! Death and
dishonour had not the mastery of him yet.
“You are hurt, Monseigneur?”
Yvonne, in her tattered gown and dishevelled hair, with a lantern in
her hand, was kneeling beside him. André staggered to his feet; he
scarcely knew whether he was hurt or not. He gazed round, trying to
recollect, as the flickering light showed him four men’s bodies lying
this way and that near him. Dead, all of them. And his horse--no, that
was alive; she whinnied as he tottered up to her.
“Take it to the stable,” he muttered, “take the mare, Yvonne. It is not
the first time she has saved my life.”
Yvonne in silence led the bleeding beast away. The girl who loved a cow
could also understand why a soldier could love his horse.
André now seized the lantern and examined the dead men. Ha! two of them
he did not know, but two were the spies of “The Gallows and the Three
Crows,” the servants of the Duke de Pontchartrain and the Comte de Mont
Rouge. He sat down on a fallen tree trunk, faint and sick. But the
shock braced his dazed mind and he tugged out his watch. Ten minutes
to twelve. Ten minutes! He could still be in time. His arm indeed was
dripping with blood, but it was a mere flesh-wound, which he promptly
bound up with his handkerchief, and by this time Yvonne had returned.
“Tell me what happened,” he commanded.
“I was sitting in the kitchen,” she said quietly, “when I heard a
cry--a terrible cry. I seized a bludgeon and a lantern and rushed
out. _Mon Dieu!_ Monseigneur, it was horrible; you were fighting
and falling. I struck as hard as I could, and then all was still.
Monseigneur, I can see now, killed three of them, but the fourth I
think I killed. See--there!”
[Illustration: Yvonne, with a finger to her lips, holding her
petticoats off the floor, stole in, and behind her a stranger.]
Her bludgeon was lying beside one of the dead men, whose head it had
battered in. Yvonne began to cry at the sight.
“Will they hang me, Monseigneur?” she asked.
“Hang you! Good heavens! You have saved my life, my honour. They will
not hang you unless they hang me, and they will not do that. Come,
Yvonne, we must show these _canaille_ where the superintendent of the
police can see them to-morrow.”
They carried the four bodies to one of the outhouses, and not till then
did André enter the inn parlour to wait for the agent of the Jacobites;
but no agent arrived, and, after drinking some wine which Yvonne found
for him and telling her to summon him if required, André dismissed her,
drew a chair up to the fire, and began to ponder on the night’s work;
but his mind refused to think. A curious numbness as if produced by a
drug steadily overpowered him, and after wrestling with himself in vain
he fell into a deep sleep.
He had been lying in the chair perhaps a quarter of an hour when the
door softly opened. Yvonne with a finger to her lips, holding her
petticoats off the floor, stole in, and behind her a stranger, shading
the light he carried with his hand, stepped stealthily on tiptoe.
In silence they both inspected the sleeping André. Then Yvonne very
cautiously inserted her hand inside the sleeper’s coat and probed
as it were gently. The pair inspected the despatch closely, smiling
when they observed the handwriting on the cover. Then with the same
practised sureness of touch, they rebuttoned the coat, and withdrew
as noiselessly as they had entered; but as they reached the threshold
a little tongue of flame from one of the logs on the fire suddenly
revealed the face of Yvonne’s companion to be that of the Chevalier de
St. Amant.
Outside the door, the girl hung her lantern quietly on the wall in the
passage.
“Why hasn’t François come?” she asked, in an anxious whisper.
“François will never come,” the Chevalier replied, very curtly.
“Do you”--she pushed back her matted hair with a gesture of horror--“do
you----”
“Yes, I do. The English have been on François’s track for some time. He
was last seen, I learn, loitering about the Carrefour de St. Antoine.
Poor fool, why did he go there, of all places? He has disappeared
and----”
“George Onslow?” she interrupted with a flash of anger.
“I fear so. Onslow is mad with despair and wrath. He had discovered
François’s trade and his Jacobite employers; and the English Government
pays handsomely for Jacobite secrets. Onslow, too, was convinced he
would get no more papers as he had got them before, and so----”
“Yes, yes.” Then she added, “And he desired revenge on a woman.”
The Chevalier nodded quietly. “If he had secured from François that
paper which De Nérac is carrying, revenge was in his hands. But the
madman has struck too soon; it is just as well for all of us.” He
looked up and down the dimly lit passage. “Some day,” he said, in a
matter-of-fact tone that was cruelly tragic, “François’s fate will be
mine.”
The girl flung out a hand of passionate protest. Her voice choked.
“I feel it for certain,” the Chevalier continued, “it is fate, the fate
of our--” He checked himself sharply. “Oh, I shall not resent my turn
when it comes; I have no desire to live now.”
“No.” She, too, stretched arms of impotent appeal against the grip of a
pitiless destiny. “No, there is nothing to live for, now.”
The Chevalier looked into her eyes with the earnest scrutiny of deep
affection. “So your question, too, has been answered?” he whispered.
“Only as I expected. Could it be otherwise?”
“All for De Nérac,” he commented aloud to himself; “all for De
Nérac--love, success, glory, honour, and, as if that were not enough,
he and that wanton will frustrate the revenge and punishment----”
“Yes, he will do that. It is the destiny of France.”
The thought imposed silence on both. André’s measured breathing could
be heard dying away in peaceful innocence in the dim passage.
“But this attack?” Yvonne demanded suddenly.
“The ministers and the Court, of course,” was the quick reply. “Some
one has warned them of _his_”--he nodded towards the parlour--“his
errand. The some one can only be Onslow, the miserable traitor, and
it explains François’s disappearance, too. The despatch can wait. But
Onslow’s game must be watched or----”
“And checkmated,” she interrupted decisively. “Ah! I see it now--I see
it all now.”
They fell to talking earnestly.
* * * * *
Three hours later André had returned to his room in the palace as he
had left it--by his rope ladder. He had an interesting story to add to
the morning chocolate of Madame de Pompadour, and he was able to give
back intact a despatch which he had been unable to deliver.
And the next event was at ten o’clock, when the Duke of Pontchartrain
was chatting with the morning crowd in the Œil de Bœuf. Sharp
exclamations, followed by a dead silence, greeted the entry of the
Captain of the Queen’s Guards, whose left arm, all could see, was
bandaged and carried in a sling.
“Monsieur le Duc,” André said in a voice that rang through the room,
“His Majesty commands your presence at eleven o’clock in the Council
Chamber.” He paused to allow the royal message to be appreciated by
the attentive company; then he added: “And, Monsieur le Duc, I beg to
say for myself that if your Grace wishes to know where your servant
and that of the Comte de Mont Rouge are, who attempted to murder me
last night when carrying out the commission of the King of France,
your Grace will find them both dead, along with two others, in the inn
called ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.’”
A haughty bow, and he had left the astonished Duke and the appalled
audience to their bewildered reflections.