WHAT THE IMP KNEW
The three filed into the den off the haymow, and Carol solemnly
padlocked the door on the inside. As there were only two chairs, the Imp
perched herself on the old desk, curling her feet up under her. The one
window was wide open, and through it was wafted the scent of lilacs and
the sound of a lawn-mower propelled by Dave somewhere across the Green.
For a moment after they were seated no one spoke.
"Well?" said Carol, impatiently. "Go on, Imp! Begin _some_where."
"I was just wondering where to begin," admitted the Imp. "I was trying
to remember what you actually _do_ know, but I guess, except for the
fact as to who that picture is, you don't know a single thing."
"You once said," Sue reminded her, "that there were three things we
actually knew that we hadn't connected with this affair. We've tried and
tried to think what they were, but somehow we never could seem to strike
them. Perhaps you'd better begin with _them_."
But the Imp ignored this suggestion.
"I suppose it _has_ dawned on you that that picture has some connection
with Louis?" she asked.
"We've thought of it, but it seemed so impossible that we finally gave
up the idea," replied Sue. "What _could_ it possibly have to do with
him?"
"Everything," answered the Imp briefly.
"Go on, then!" commanded Sue. "You've kept us on tenter-hooks long
enough. If you're going to tell us at all, do please begin at the
beginning, and don't stop till you're through."
"The trouble is just this," admitted the Imp. "I don't actually _know_
anything much at all. It's just guesswork, except for one or two things.
You seem to think Monsieur has told me the whole business. Well, he
hasn't,--not a single thing,--except that I was right about knowing who
that portrait was, and he asked me not to say anything about it,
especially to Louis. Everything else I've worked out for myself, and it
_may_ be all wrong; but somehow I don't think it is."
The two listeners looked crestfallen. For some time past they had come
to believe that the Imp was wholly and entirely in Monsieur's
confidence. It was a shock to learn the truth. Carol immediately
intimated as much to the assembled company.
"You're a pack of sillies," exclaimed the Imp scornfully, "to imagine
such a thing, anyway! Why, this thing is of--of immense importance
to--well, I was almost going to say to the whole world. Do you suppose
for one moment that a youngster would be let into such an important
secret?"
"What are you saying? 'To the whole world'?" cried Carol. "Are you going
crazy, or do you think you are taking us in again with some of your
nonsense?"
"I'm _not_ talking nonsense, and I'll prove it. Do you know what I
discovered by reading a little more than you did at the library, and
also from an old book that Miss Hastings lent me, because I told her I
was interested in the subject? Well, I found out that, although most
people think it's a settled fact that that poor little dauphin died in
prison, still there are a lot of legends that he really escaped, that he
was helped to escape by some of the Royalists, and that the little boy
who died there wasn't the dauphin at all!"
The Imp stopped to let this startling news sink into the minds of her
hearers.
"But--but--" stammered Sue, "if he escaped, what became of him?"
"That's something that never was known," answered the Imp. "After the
downfall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons in France,
there were a lot of pretenders who _said_ they were the escaped dauphin
and claimed the throne. But they never could prove it, so no one paid
much attention to them. Only you see there must have been some truth in
it,--his escape, I mean,--or no one would have thought of such a thing."
"But I don't see, anyway, what all that has to do with this affair,"
remarked Carol.
"Don't you?" replied the Imp coldly. "Then you're more stupid than I
gave you credit for being."
Carol quite wilted under this rebuke, but Sue, who had been doing some
rapid thinking, cried:
"Mercy! It can't be possible that--"
"Wait a minute," interrupted the Imp. "I'm going to answer your question
about those three things, and see what you make of it. Do you remember
what they used to call Louis XVI--the people, I mean? I'm sure you know,
because you mentioned it to me that day you were telling me what you'd
found out."
"'Louis the Locksmith,'" answered Carol promptly.
"Right," said the Imp. "Does _that_ make you think of anything?"
Carol shook her head.
"Oh, you're hopeless!" groaned the Imp. "Try the next one. When Louis
was sick one time Monsieur stood over him murmuring something about 'the
Temple look.' Does _that_ convey anything to your mind?"
"It does to mine," interrupted Sue. "Oh, I believe I'm beginning to
understand."
But Carol still looked hopelessly confused.
"Well, here's the last," went on the Imp. "Why should Monsieur and all
the others treat Louis in the queer way they do? Why should Louis have
found Monsieur kissing his hand that time?"
"Oh, please explain _clearly_, Bobs!" moaned Carol. "You mix me up so,
firing questions at me, that I can't think at all. Just say straight out
what it is."
"All right, I will. I'll say it in words of one syllable, suitable to
your infant mind," laughed the Imp. "It may sound like the craziest idea
that ever was imagined, but I believe Louis to be a descendant of that
little dauphin, and I believe Monsieur knows it and the Meadows people,
too."
The conjecture was so stupefying in its scope that the three girls sat
for a moment in dumb, confused wonder.
"I can't believe it," murmured Carol, at length. "Right here on little
Paradise Green, way out of the world, to have such a thing happen?
Impossible!"
"It's no stranger than lots of other things that have happened in
history," asserted the Imp, "when you come to think it over. And it's so
possible, too."
"But here, _here_!" cried Sue. "What in the world would Louis be doing
in America? I could believe it more easily if we lived somewhere in
France."
"I read in one book," replied the Imp to this objection, "that there was
a rumor that after the dauphin escaped he was taken to America. There
was an American Indian, named Eleazar Williams, or something like that,
who claimed to be the dauphin. So you see it's not so impossible, after
all."
"Now I begin to see," remarked Carol, after a long pause, "what you
meant by some of those three things. If Monsieur thinks Louis is a
descendant of the dauphin, I can understand why they all treat him with
such respect. Why, girls," she cried enthusiastically, "just
think,--Louis--_our Louis_--may have royal blood in his veins! I simply
can't believe it!"
"That remark about 'the Temple look' meant, I suppose," murmured Sue,
"that Louis looked so awfully when he was sick that it reminded Monsieur
how the dauphin must have appeared after his bad treatment and illness
in the Temple Tower. That never occurred to me. But I can't yet see any
connection with what you said about 'Louis the Locksmith.'"
"That's easy," answered the Imp. "It was one of the first things I
thought of. Don't you remember how Louis XVI was always tinkering with
things and fixing locks, and how fond he was of mechanical work? The
whole court used to resent it. Well, the Meadows and Monsieur evidently
think that Louis has inherited that trait, and it drives them wild.
Don't you remember what Louis told us Miss Yvonne once said when she
found him fixing the lock on the kitchen-door? 'The ancient blood! It
will ruin everything!' Doesn't that indicate what they think?"
"True enough," Sue had to admit. "But what foolishness all this is,
girls, when you think of Louis's history and the history of his family!
I was asking Father about Louis's folks not long ago, just out of
curiosity. He said that the Durants had lived in and owned that house
across the Green for many, many years, even longer than our descendants
have lived in our house. It was way back in the eighties when Louis's
father left here and went out West. He was a young man then, about
Father's age. In fact, they'd gone to school together. But this Charles
Durant went away out West to better himself, and rented the old house on
this Green. Father says he never saw him again, because Charles Durant
and the wife he'd married out there were suddenly killed in an accident.
The first Father heard about it was when old Mr. Meadows and his
daughter, whom nobody had ever seen before, came to this place with the
tiny baby who was Louis, and settled here for good. They never said much
about themselves, except that they were old friends of the Durant family
and that they had always lived in France. They explained that they had
come over here to take care of and bring up the last Durant baby, since
its parents had been killed. Now will you tell me how anything about a
dauphin could come in there?"
"Maybe they didn't bring the baby from out West," suggested Carol, "but
brought him over from France with them. Maybe he isn't a Durant at all."
"That's possible, too," said the Imp, "but, after all, it doesn't make
any difference where he came from, does it, if Louis is what we think he
is?"
"But who is this 'Monsieur,' and what has _he_ to do with the whole
thing?" suddenly cried Carol.
"That," admitted the Imp, "is what I can't figure out. I'm sure he must
be some relative. They say there are descendants of the Bourbons still
living. It wouldn't be strange if he wanted to hunt up a long-lost
relative, but why he should make such a secret of it is beyond me."
"Bobs," cried Sue, suddenly going off at a tangent, "have you any idea
about those two other pictures in Monsieur's room,--the ones all covered
up? I've stayed awake nights trying to guess who on earth they could be,
and why he keeps them covered."
"Why, of course I don't _know_," laughed the Imp, "but I can make a good
guess. I believe they're portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I
can't imagine why he keeps them covered, unless it's to keep Louis or
any one else from guessing anything about this affair. Of course they're
very well-known portraits, and almost any child would know who they were
at first sight. But it's different with the dauphin. Very few people
know that picture by sight. That's the only reason I can think of."
It seemed such a simple explanation, after they'd heard it, that both
girls felt a little chagrined to think that they'd never had the wit to
work out this easy problem. But so humble were they now, after the Imp's
astounding revelation, that they were willing to admit their inferior
wit twenty times over.
It was Sue who presently voiced the unspoken thought that was in each
mind.
"I wonder how Louis will take all this?" she sighed.
This was a matter that went beyond their conjecture. How, indeed,
_would_ Louis take it?