THE THIEF OF THE SECRET DESPATCH
WHAT had André discovered?
When he had reached the stables he could not find Yvonne, but at
“The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,” whither he hurried, he was not
disappointed. And Yvonne had news to give him as thrilling as
unexpected. The English spy she had learned was coming to the inn that
very afternoon to meet a strange woman, and the meeting was to be
kept a solemn secret. Yvonne had felt sure Monseigneur ought to know,
and had ventured as far as the Palace in search of him. André’s heart
leaped at the chance that fate, which had buffeted him so sorely, had
now by a miracle put in his way. The spy could be no other than George
Onslow, with whom he had crossed swords in the wood the night before
Fontenoy; and the woman? Would she be the flower girl of “The Gallows
and the Three Crows,” the crystal-gazer, the mysterious “princess,”
whose dancing had first stirred his blood in London, the woman who had
said she loved him? Or would it be some other unfortunate, caught like
himself in the terrible toils of a mystery which bid fair to be the
ruin of them all?
What did it matter? André was sure of one thing. Could he but hear what
passed at that meeting he would be many steps nearer to the solution of
the blood-stained riddle of “No. 101.”
Perhaps he could yet save Madame de Pompadour, yet win Denise, yet take
vengeance on his foes. The hand of destiny was in this. With “No. 101”
his life had as it were begun; at each stage he had been now thwarted,
now strangely aided, by the acts of the unknown traitor; with “No. 101”
it was clearly fated to end. Despair, insatiable curiosity, the blind
impetus of forces he could not control, alike steeled him to make the
attempt.
Yvonne was easily persuaded; indeed, she had already schemed for it,
and with her help he lay concealed in the room of meeting and awaited
with a beating pulse the arrival of the traitors. The spy proved to
be George Onslow, as he had guessed, and André studied his able,
sleuth-hound face, the dark eyes of slumbering passion, and the sensual
lips, with the eery yet joyous shiver of one who feels that here is
an opponent with whom reckoning must be made before life is over.
The woman, however, was unknown to him. She was certainly not the
crystal-gazer. Nothing more unlike the black hair and dark eyebrows,
the creamy skin, of that mysterious enchantress could be imagined.
For this was a lady who to-day we should say had stepped straight
from a pastel by Latour, or, as André thought, from the Salon de Vénus
at Versailles, a girl with the figure of Diana and that indefinable
carriage and air which only centuries of high birth and the company of
such can bestow. Denise’s grey eyes and exquisite pose of head were not
more characteristic of the quality that the _noblesse_ of the _ancien
régime_ rightly claimed as their monopoly, than were the blue eyes and
innocent insolence of the stranger. And yet André felt that in the most
mysterious and irritating way she reminded him of some one. But of
whom? Of whom? And then he almost laughed out loud. Of Yvonne!
They both talked in English as English was talked in London, without
a trace of a foreign accent. Now if one thing was certain Yvonne did
not know a word of English, for he had tried her by many pitfalls in
the past and she had simply showed boorish but natural ignorance. Nor
could it be the crystal-gazer, for he remembered her English was not
the English of the salons. Once only did they drop into French, and
then André was more puzzled than ever. Onslow spoke it extraordinarily
well, yet his accent betrayed him at once; the girl, however, revealed
to a noble’s sensitive ear the idiom and tone so much more difficult to
acquire than mere accent of the Faubourg St. Germain. Had the Comtesse
heard that sentence she would have said it might have been spoken by
the Duchesse de Pontchartrain. Strange, but true.
Much of the conversation was quite unintelligible. There was a
reconciliation to begin with, and André marvelled at the subtle way
in which the woman soothed the man’s anger, and then with enchanting
nuances of provocation, of look, of gesture, quietly reduced him to
helpless and adoring submission. And George Onslow was not the only
man in the room who at the end of that half-hour felt as clay in her
hands. They talked, too, of incidents, of persons, of things which to
André were a closed book. But the main substance was perfectly clear
and deliriously enthralling to the concealed hearer. That very night
the secret despatch in Madame de Pompadour’s handwriting, which the
Court had tried to win by murder, was to be stolen from the escritoire
in which it still reposed, and in which the King’s sudden illness and
the ignorance of its existence by all save Madame herself and André had
permitted it to stay. Onslow apparently had wormed out the fact of its
existence; the woman now informed him of its hiding-place, and together
they planned for its theft, that it might be used by the English
Government to blast and ruin the King, with whom that Government was
still at war. It would also ruin the Jacobites, which was not less
important in English eyes. That it would ruin Madame de Pompadour
neither Onslow nor the woman seemed to consider nor care about. Why
should they? What were Madame and the hatred of a court to the English
or they to her?
But André also learned many other things that were as interesting.
It was George Onslow who had informed the anti-Pompadour party of the
errand which had led to the attack on André himself. And André gathered
that it was with the help of some one at Versailles whose name was not
mentioned, for he was always spoken of as “Lui,” that the theft was to
be executed. A double-edged business, in fact, this plot. The stolen
despatch would do the work of the English Government, but it would also
do the work of the Court. When its contents were made public Madame
would be ruined automatically. Hence the connivance of “Lui” and his
friends in the scheme.
The completeness of their information, the cold-blooded way in which
they arranged to a nicety the smallest detail, appalled André. They
both knew exactly where Madame was lodged, how to get there, and how to
escape, of every fact concerned with the King’s illness and of Madame’s
certain flight, on which the success of the plot hung. Who exactly was
to be the thief he could not make out; that apparently had already been
arranged, but George Onslow was to be at the palace, and he was then to
make his way to this inn, whence he and his accomplice were to vanish
their own way into the friendly slums of Paris, that would shelter
every crime committed against itself and France.
“And the Chevalier?” Onslow had asked.
The woman replied in a low voice: “Have as little to do with the
Chevalier as possible. He is not to be trusted in this business. He is
no friend of mine and no friend of yours. But,” she paused, “he is far
too much a friend of De Nérac.”
At the mention of his own name André almost betrayed his presence,
because the warning drew from Onslow a deep “Ah!” and a look of undying
hatred, jealousy, and fear. But what had thrilled him quite as much as
the look and speech itself was the suppressed emotion in the speaker’s
voice. He had only heard a woman speak like that once in his life, when
he and Denise had parted at the foot of the Pompadour’s stairs an hour
or two ago and he had refused to let her save him.
“Take care of De Nérac,” the woman added slowly, “he ruined you once,
and if he can he will ruin you again. De Nérac is the only man who has
beaten me. Nor am I the only woman who has found that out to her cost.”
Onslow thrust out his hand. “What does that say?” he demanded with a
curious mixture of bravado, curiosity, and fear.
She studied the lines carefully. “Before long you and he will meet,”
she answered, “and only one will survive: which,” she paused, “rests
with God.”
André found his sword coming slowly out of its sheath. Pah! Let the
traitor wait. The woman was right. Onslow must first do his night’s
work, and then--and then--ah!
Onslow, too, had said nothing, but his face was eloquent of his
resolve. She let him kiss her fingers, even let them linger in his,
and her look promised much more of reward when the task had been
successfully accomplished. The spy left the room with the air André
might have done, the air of a man who was daring all things, hoping
all things, for a woman’s sake. Bitter as André felt towards this
cold-blooded traitress, he wished so fair a woman had not looked at
that sensual sleuth-hound like that.
Once alone the girl stood thoughtfully gazing into space, and presently
with a shiver wiped her fingers. André, lost in his thoughts, missed
the refined scorn with which she flung the handkerchief she had used on
to the burning logs, as if it was soiled. Then she sat down in front
of the fire, rested her chin on her hands, and mused. A faint but
long-drawn sigh floated up to the blackened rafters. André started.
Where was he? Lying, surely, in the damp grass on the rim of that
grisly wood at Fontenoy, staring up at a window in a charcoal-burner’s
cabin, which had been stealthily opened. For just such a sigh had
greeted him on that night, a sigh from a weary woman’s heart.
And with an exultant throb in his blood he felt that at last he was in
the presence of “No. 101.” The riddle was solved at last.
The woman stretched her arms as if in pain,--the gesture was strangely
familiar,--rose with decision, and glided from the room.
André waited a few minutes before he cautiously made his escape.
All his doubts were gone. His suspicions of the Chevalier had been
dispelled by the traitorous pair; if Yvonne was an accomplice it
mattered not; he saw what must be done. One more great stroke and the
game which he had been fighting for so long would be his. Yes. He would
save Madame de Pompadour, take vengeance on his foes, and win Denise.
Not least, the man who had saved an army of France at Fontenoy would
reveal the secret and destroy the traitor who had baffled all and
betrayed the destinies of his race.
And it was with the scheme planned out to a nicety that he burst into
Madame de Pompadour’s salon.
The Watteau-like shepherdesses of the clock on the mantelpiece in the
salon of Madame de Pompadour chimed out eleven tinkling strokes into
the darkness--how few of us who have stood to-day in that dismantled
room have succeeded in hearing even the echoes of what those bare walls
could tell of the true history of France, the history that can never
be unearthed by the École des Chartes. Just as the chimes died away
André climbed noiselessly up the secret stair, and crouched with drawn
sword and pistol cocked behind the curtain, a corner of which he pulled
back far enough to give a clear glimpse into the room. It was the third
time since Madame had fled that he had, thief-like, lurked in that
hiding-place, and, as before, all was ghastly still. Two or three of
Madame’s servants had followed her flight; the rest, he was aware, had
proclaimed their allegiance to the Court. The powerful favourite who
had dismissed a minister was ruined, and none now more noisily swore
to their hatred of her than the men and women who had thronged her
toilette or taken her pay.
In the dim light André could make out the half-packed trunks, the
litter of disorder, so eloquent of their owner’s disgrace. How were
the mighty fallen. Here indeed was a truer text for priest and
preacher than the sins of the woman who had not been the first to
grace these silent apartments, an accomplice in the passions of a
King of France. The air to-night was thick with ghostly memories of
other women, not less fair and frail, to whose inheritance of soiled
supremacy the Marquise de Pompadour had succeeded. And there, gleaming
in a faint ray, shone the escritoire which contained the despatch.
To complete her mastery of the master of France, Madame had written
it with her own hand--had, by doing so, her enemies hoped, signed
her own death-warrant. The King’s secret. Little did André know, as
he waited, that the true story of Louis’s incredible and persistent
determination to pursue his own tortuous policy, to revel in thwarting
and intriguing against his own ministers--at once a disease, a passion,
and a pastime in that enigma of kings--was in all its labyrinthine
details reserved to be the discovery of a noble a century hence, and
to be read in a Republican France, a France that had done with kings,
that made Versailles a public picture gallery, a France that had
seen the victorious legions of Germany offer an imperial crown to
the descendant of the parvenu Prussian ally of Louis in the Fontenoy
campaign in yonder Galerie des Glaces of the Roi Soleil.
André shivered. He was thinking only of “No. 101.” Could that girl of
his own race, if ever woman was, really be the traitor? And if she was,
by what temptation of the devil had she embarked on her awful career?
To-night she would be a prisoner; she was doomed to die, but would
they ever know her secret--the real secret of “No. 101”? Punish her
they could, but the secret, the real secret, was beyond their power.
André clenched his hands. She would baffle them after all. It was the
secret that fascinated him, and that was surely destined to perish with
her in a felon’s grave. “No. 101” would be like the man in the iron
mask--unknown and unknowable--a perpetual puzzle to the generations to
come. Torturing thought.
A mouse squeaked across the floor, the boards creaked. André recalled
with a curious thrill the grisly warning that all who had ever seen
the face of “No. 101” had perished. He recalled the death of Captain
Statham, of others. Was he, after all, to share the same fate? In this
deathly quiet he felt his blood go cold, his courage ooze and ebb. A
longing to crawl away began to master him.
Brave man though he was, he would have obeyed it, when a rustle on the
public stairs brought him with a swift spring to his feet. For that
was the rustle of a woman’s skirt. The door was opening. The rustle
again, and a gleam of light from a lamp. A woman, by God! the thief was
a woman. _The_ woman!
Yes. The girl at the inn surely, for this was a tall young woman who
walked straight forward to the escritoire, a thief who knew no fear,
calmly determined to do her business without flinching. André wavered
as he had in the charcoal-burner’s cabin. Should he arrest her there
and then or wait? Yes, no? Yes, wait. She must be caught red-handed in
the act that he might win his love.
Suddenly the lingering echo of a trumpet floated up into the darkness
from the Cour des Princes. André started. Again that silvery note. The
trumpets--the silver trumpets--of the Chevau-légers de la Garde! Was he
dreaming? Was he at Fontenoy? No, no. The King’s escort, ha! the King
had returned. The great _coup_ had succeeded. The game was his just
as he had planned. Fortune, superbly beneficent, had given him all.
And then he clutched at the curtain, sick, faint, gasping. For at the
second trumpet note the woman had turned to listen, the light fell on
her face--Denise! The thief was Denise!