THE CHEVALIER MAKES HIS LAST APPEARANCE
DENISE! yes, it was Denise!
The sweat dripped off André’s face in the agony of that moment. His
fingers, his brain, his body, had turned numb. Think, he could not.
He was only conscious of one thought, that burned red-hot. Fortune,
superbly maleficent, had kept her most devilish revenge and punishment
to the last. Denise must be ruined by the man who loved her, for Louis,
persuaded to return by Madame de Pompadour at the instigation of the
Vicomte de Nérac, would be in this room in a few minutes. This, and not
the successful theft of the despatch, was the vengeance of “No. 101.”
Fascinated by fear, André, tongue-tied, watched Denise go straight up
to the escritoire, insert a key, open the drawer. And then love swept
his horror away, unloosed the paralysis that held him a prisoner, and
told him what to do. Denise could yet be saved by instant flight. True,
his scheme had failed; the wrath of Madame de Pompadour and the King
whom she had deceived would fall on him; Madame would herself probably
be ruined. What did it matter, so that he rescued Denise from the awful
peril, the wiles which “No. 101” had with such fiendish completeness
laid for her? For that it was “No. 101’s” diabolical plan he had no
doubt now. Yvonne had gulled and betrayed him, as from the first.
But just as he wrenched the curtain aside and sprang into the room with
cry of “Denise!” she had tottered back with a low exclamation of horror.
“Denise!”
The candle fell from her hand. In the darkness he heard her sob.
“Gone,” she muttered feebly. “Gone!”
“Quick, the King is coming! For God’s sake, fly. There is the key--the
secret staircase. I will--can--explain later.”
He hurried her towards the doorway with a terrible yet tender energy of
love.
“André,” she cried, “André, it is gone.”
“Oh, fly; fly, for God’s sake!”
“But it is gone--the secret despatch; it is not there--stolen!” Her
voice dropped to a whisper. She was sobbing on his shoulder with fear
and horror.
[Illustration: The candle fell from her hand. “Gone!” she muttered
feebly, “gone!”]
The words acted like a galvanic shock. Gone--stolen already! This
was more--much more--than he had dreamed of. The full meaning of the
situation was revealed and it stunned him into action. In a second he
had the candle alight, and, mastering the faintness that gripped
him, dashed at the escritoire. It was perfectly empty. The secret
despatch was not in it. Another thief had already secured it--“No.
101”! He put the candle very slowly down on the table and turned to
Denise, who was standing in the middle of the room white to the lips.
André laughed, as men will laugh when tears and passion are futile.
That laugh at his own outwitting by a girl and her English accomplice
rang through the room. The traitors had been before him. The secret
despatch was already in the hands of the King’s enemies, of Madame de
Pompadour’s enemies, of his. He and she were ruined. Nothing could
save them now. In a few hours the English Government could publish
the truth, the Court could proclaim Madame by the evidence of her
own hand an intriguer against the King, and Denise and he would be
found here in the darkness with an empty escritoire by Louis XV. and
Madame de Pompadour, to whom its contents were a matter of life and
death. Hopeless to struggle now. Love had inspired a plan, but fate
was stronger than love. Madame de Pompadour must come, and hear what
had happened, from his lips. He had ruined her, ruined himself, ruined
Denise. Louis alone could lie. Louis by a lie alone would escape. André
had matched himself, in his pride, against “No. 101,” a girl, and this
was the result.
“They told me,” Denise began, “it was here. We threw with dice as to
who should find it. We were determined to punish and destroy Madame de
Pompadour. I took my chance, and----”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted impatiently, for he had already divined
Denise’s motives.
“To save you before,” Denise went on, “I let her escape and sinned
against my conscience, for that woman polluted Versailles, your life
and mine. I owed reparation; this was to be my reparation. You were
ruined, André, dismissed, disgraced. I cared no longer for life--for
anything. You I could not save, but her I could punish, for she had
broken my heart and shattered your career in her selfishness. That is
why I came--willingly, gladly. It was a duty to my cause--to myself.”
André knew nothing of the scheme of Mont Rouge, of the loaded dice
whereby the love of a wicked woman, the Comtesse des Forges, turned to
hatred, and a defeated rival’s vengeance, had foisted on Denise the
task of braving alone the perils and the disgrace and of completing
the plot of the Court; but what he did know showed him that the Court,
too, like himself, had been the victims of the man and the woman he
had spied on at the inn. But, unlike himself, the Court would gain its
vengeance.
“I performed a duty,” Denise was saying, “and instead, André, I have
ruined you. Your enemies have stolen the despatch.”
Voices at the foot of the stairs. No time for explanation now. But,
thank God! Denise did not know the truth nor of Madame de Pompadour’s
and the King’s return. One glance at the agony in her face, the agony
of a woman who loved, and André was again inspired to a noble decision.
“You are mistaken,” he said with perfect calmness. “I was here to
watch, I confess, in the interests of His Majesty; we had hoped to
catch quite another person, but it is you, Denise, whom my foes have
lured into the trap--our trap. I ask you for my sake to leave me to
explain all to Madame. Sweetheart”--he was pleading now as he had never
pleaded to any woman before--“sweetheart, do not inflict on me the pain
of giving you into the hands of Madame. You will not; you cannot do it.”
The glorious lie, aided by the power of his love over her, prevailed.
Denise took his key, and just in time André had drawn the curtain when
Madame de Pompadour flung the door open. Face and figure were all aglow
with the triumphant victory she had won. She had returned to place her
heel on the necks of the defeated, to drink the cup of vengeance to the
dregs.
André very quietly kissed her hands and removed her cloak. The peace
and happiness in his eyes, his self-sacrifice had already brought
him, showed that love had by its own divine alchemy created for him a
new heaven and a new earth. He could face the future with a tranquil
confidence and bliss that surprised himself.
“_Mon cher_,” Madame cried, “I--no, you--have won. The King is mine. I
shall never lose him now.” Her eyes ran over the room--fell on the open
escritoire. “Well, you have the traitor?”
“No, Madame.”
“What? They did not dare?” She laughed. “No matter. The King is mine.”
“The paper has been stolen,” he said quietly, “and the thief has
escaped.”
Madame put her hand on her breast, tottered back a step or two. Her
radiant eyes grew cold. Incredulity and fear made her an old woman.
“Stolen? escaped? Do you mean----?”
“They fooled me. The hour was midnight, as I told you. I have been here
three times waiting; the thief never came, but the paper is gone.”
The meaning of his words trickled into her mind. With a cry of rage she
sprang at the escritoire and turned it upside down. Then she hurled it
into the centre of the room, and wheeled on André. “Ah, _misérable,
coquin, lâche_!” the hot, incoherent words tumbled over each other.
“You have failed. It is me you have fooled, betrayed. Ah, traitor,
you are my foe; gone, Seigneur Jésu, gone! Stolen; then I am ruined;
ruined; after all I have done.” She burst into tears, racked by rage,
terror, despair.
“I am no traitor.”
“Bah! I have done with you.” She paced up and down. “Ah! that accursed
‘No. 101,’ accursed; what can I do? Ruined, ruined!” she sank into a
chair with a low moan.
André watched the candle-light flicker on her hair and breast, on the
shimmering folds of the beautiful dress she had so unerringly selected
to aid in reconquering Louis. But a woman’s beauty, genius, and
passion, and ambition had fought in vain, for “No. 101” was stronger
than all of these.
Suddenly she rose with an exclamation of vindictive and unholy
exultation. She had picked a jewelled pendant from the floor. “Ha!” she
cried, “here is proof of the thief you could not catch. Mademoiselle
Denise has been here; that jewel is hers and it fell by the escritoire
table; it is not ‘No. 101’ who has stolen the despatch, it is the
Marquise de Beau Séjour.”
André had turned deadly pale. He stared in impotent silence. Yes, the
jewel was Denise’s; on the back he knew was a fatal D. And it was a
pendant that he himself, in a thrice happy hour, had given her.
“The King’s honour,” Madame said in her cruelly cold voice, “is at
stake in that despatch. And he will not spare the thief even if she
were of the blood-royal. Nor will I. This is proof enough for me; I
promise you it will also be proof enough for His Majesty. I have here a
_lettre de cachet_ which the King gave me, already signed. But the name
is not filled in. That was to be done to-night with the thief’s name.
And filled in I swear it shall be. For unless the secret despatch is
in my hands by to-morrow morning at ten o’clock the Marquise de Beau
Séjour shall go to the Bastille.”
“Madame!”
“You cannot deceive me. You are shielding her. It is in your face.
She is the thief. I repeat, to-morrow at ten--not one minute longer,
and had it not been for our friendship I would have sent her there
to-night.”
André was still silent, striving to think, be calm. If Denise were
questioned she was ruined. Denise could not tell a lie. Nor could
she save her lover now by a lie. “You can settle it,” Madame went on
in her icy anger, “with Mademoiselle. I care not how or for what she
gives way. Lovers’ confessions can be sweet, they say. But my life, my
honour, my future, my dreams, my all, are at stake. Think you I will
allow a girl, a noble, a woman who has insulted me, conspired against
me, a thief of state secrets, to defeat me--me! Then you do not know
the woman Antoinette de Pompadour.”
And André confessed to himself that till that moment he did not.
“Madame,” he said very quietly, “the Marquise de Beau Séjour has not
got the despatch, nor did she steal it. However, I do not choose to
discuss that now. I shall return to this room at ten o’clock to-morrow.
But if I have the despatch by then I do not promise to give it back to
you.” Madame had turned her back on him; she wheeled in a flash. “That
will depend on some other things. But,” he bowed, “if the Marquise de
Pompadour imagines that she can call gentlemen cowards and scoundrels
with impunity, or that she can so easily ruin the Marquise de Beau
Séjour, she does not know me--me, the man André de Nérac.”
And there he left her stunned into a fearful silence. He was about
to pass, he was aware, a night of despairing, futile search, but it
would not be such a prolonged agony of torture as this woman, amidst
the litter of her humiliation, would endure. One last chance remained.
The girl he called “No. 101” and George Onslow had arranged to meet at
midnight at “The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.” That agreement might
not prove as false as other things he had overheard and been tricked
into believing. If they were there they would not leave the inn alive,
for André, too, had begun to divine the full meaning of this hellish
plot. His enemies at Court had planned with the English traitors that
they might ruin him and Denise likewise. To-morrow he would reckon with
the Duc de Pontchartrain, the Comte de Mont Rouge, and the Comtesse
des Forges, as well as with Madame de Pompadour, but to-night he had
an account to settle with “No. 101,” with George Onslow, with the
Chevalier de St. Amant, with Yvonne.
Only pausing to scribble a couple of orders, which went off to Paris
by mounted couriers, warned that their royal master would brook of
no delay, he gathered a dozen of his guards and spurred his way to
“The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.” And as he galloped he knew that in
a couple of hours the police of Paris would be sweeping every slum,
ransacking every cabaret and tavern, hunting down every suspect, and
bribing for information every _fille de joie_ from the Faubourg St.
Antoine to the Faubourg St. Germain, from the Barrier of the Hôpital
St. Louis to the Barriers of Les Gobelins, and the Palais Bourbon.
And it was Denise that he must save. Love--not the sham idol of
gallantry--but love can do things that neither the fear of death nor of
hell can.
The inn was plunged in darkness. Not a light to be spied anywhere.
André set his guards around it and began to explore systematically.
The outhouses were empty save for Yvonne’s sleek cow contentedly
chewing the cud. Not a soul to be seen. Torch in hand he strode into
the parlour where he had been so successfully befoiled. There were the
chairs, the screen, the tables.
Ha! on the centre table a piece of paper quite large. No writing on it,
but instead a mocking sign, two crossed daggers roughly drawn in red
and the mystic number:
[Illustration]
Blood, human blood! Blood still fresh and scarcely dried. They had been
here, the traitors; they had not left long, for blood does not take
long to dry, and they had determined to flout their dupe with this
ghastly mummery. To Paris! to Paris! They could still be caught before
the October dawn was reddening the roofs of the Conciergerie and the
battlements of the Bastille.
André wheeled with a hoarse command, and then something, what he could
not say, a swift intuition or feeling, arrested him as he left the
room. He hurled the screen aside. Ah! Ah! A cry of horror broke from
him.
A man was lying behind it, face downwards, his blood staining the
mouse-gnawed boards. The man was the Chevalier de St. Amant.