insistent. You, like myself, are a man of the world and can understand.
You will do me a great favour if you will not mention to any one having
met either myself or my little housekeeper" (there was not a tremor in
his voice), "who, as you see, is a peasant; in fact, she was born here.
We are not bothered with either friends or acquaintances here, nor do we
care for prowlers; you must excuse me for at first taking you for one.
You, of course, know the reputation of La Poche."
"You could not have chosen a better place to be lost in," I answered,
smiling as discreetly as one should over the confession of another's
love affair. "Moreover, in life I have found it the best policy to keep
one's mouth shut. You have my word, monsieur--it is as if we had never
met--as if La Poche did not exist."
"Thank you," said he calmly, taking the tiny liqueur glasses from her
hands; "what will you have--cognac or green chartreuse?"
"Chartreuse," I answered quietly. My eye had caught the labels which I
knew to be genuine from the Grenoble printer.
"Ah! you knew it--_Dieu!_ but it is good, that old chartreuse!"
exclaimed my hostess with a rippling laugh as she filled my glass, "we
are lucky to find it."
Then something happened which even now sends a cold chill down my spine.
Hardly had I raised my glass to my lips when there came a sharp,
determined rap at the bolted door, and my host sprang to his feet. For
a moment no one spoke--I turned instinctively to look at my lady of the
Pre Catelan. She was breathing with dilated eyes, her lips drawn and
quivering, every muscle of her lithe body trembling. He was standing
erect, his head thrown back, his whole body tense. One hand gripped the
back of his chair, the other was outstretched authoritatively toward us
as if to command our silence.
Again the rapping, this time violent, insistent.
"Who is there?" he demanded, after what seemed to me an interminable
moment of suspense.
With this he slipped swiftly through a door leading into a narrow
corridor, closed another door at the end of the passage, broke the key
in the lock and returned on tiptoe as noiselessly as he left the room.
Then picking up the lamp he placed it under the table, thus deadening
its glow.
Now a voice rang out, "Open in the name of the Law."
No one moved.
He again gripped the back of the chair, his face deathly white, his jaw
set, his eyes with a sullen gleam in them.
I turned to look at her. Her hands were outstretched on the table, her
dilated eyes staring straight at the bolt as if her whole life depended
on its strength.
Again came the command to open, this time in a voice that allowed no
question as to the determination of the outsider:
"Open in the name of the Law."
No one moved or answered.
A crashing thud, from a heavy beam, snapped the bolt from its screws,
another blow tore loose the door. Through the opening and over the
debris sprang a short, broad-shouldered man in a gray suit, while three
other heavily built men entered, barring the exit.
The woman screamed and fell forward on the table, her head buried in her
clenched hands. The Baron faced the one in gray.
"What do you want?" he stammered in the voice of a ghost.
"You, Pedro Maceioe," said the man in the gray suit, in a low, even tone,
"for the last trick you will pull off in some years; open up things, do
you hear? All of it, and quick."
The Brazilian did not reply; he stood behind his chair, eyeing sullenly
the man in gray, who now held a revolver at a level with his heart.
Then the man in gray called to one of his men, his eye still on the
banker. "Break in the door at the end of the passage."
With the quickness of a cat, the Brazilian grabbed the chair and with a
swinging blow tried to fell his assailant and dash past him. The man in
gray dodged and pocketed his weapon. The next instant he had his
prisoner by the throat and had slammed him against the wall; then came
the sharp click of a pair of handcuffs. The banker tripped and fell to
the floor.
It had all happened so quickly that I was dazed as I looked on. What it
was all about I did not know. It seemed impossible that my host, a man
whose bank was well known in Paris, was really a criminal. Were the
intruders from the police? Or was it a clever ruse of four determined
burglars?
I began now to gather my wits and think of myself, although so far not
one of the intruders had taken the slightest notice of my presence.
One of the men was occupied in breaking open the door at the end of the
corridor, while another stood guard over the now sobbing, hysterical
woman. The fourth had remained at the open doorway.
As for the prisoner, who had now regained his feet, he had sunk into the
chair he had used in defence and sat there staring at the floor,
breathing in short gasps.
The man who had been ordered by his chief to break open the door at the
end of the corridor, now returned and laid upon the dinner table two
engraved metal plates, and a handful of new one-hundred-franc notes;
some I noticed from where I sat were blank on one side. With the plates
came the acrid stench of a broken bottle of acid.
"My God! Counterfeiting!" I exclaimed half aloud.
The Baron rose from his seat and stretched out his linked hands.
"She is innocent," he pleaded huskily, lifting his eyes to the woman. I
could not repress a feeling of profound pity for him.
The man in gray made no reply; instead he turned to me.
"I shall escort you, too, monsieur," he remarked coolly.
"Escort me? _Me?_ What have I got to do with it, I'd like to know?" I
cried, springing to my feet. "I wish to explain--to make clear to
you--_clear_. I want you to understand that I stumbled here by the
merest chance; that I never spoke to this man in my life until to-night,
that I accepted his hospitality purely because I did not wish to offend
him, although I had shot late and was in a hurry to get home."
He smiled quietly.
"Please do not worry," he returned, "we know all about you. You are the
American. Your house is the old one by the marsh in Pont du Sable. I
called on you this afternoon, but you were absent. I am really indebted
to you if you do but know it. By following your tracks, monsieur, we
stumbled on the nest we have so long been looking for. Permit me to hand
you my card. My name is Guinard--Sous Chief of the Paris Police."
I breathed easier--things were clearing up.
"And may I ask, monsieur, how you knew I had gone in the direction of La
Poche?" I inquired. That was still a mystery.
"You have a little maid," he replied; "and little maids can sometimes be
made to talk."
He paused and then said slowly, weighing each word.
"Yes, that no doubt surprises you, but we follow every clue. You were
both sportsmen; that, as you know, monsieur, is always a bond, and we
had not long to wait, although it was too dark for us to be quite sure
when you both passed me. It was the bolting of the door that clinched
the matter for me. But for the absence of two of my men on another scent
we should have disturbed you earlier. I must compliment you, monsieur,
on your knowledge of chartreuse as well as your taste for good cigars;
permit me to offer you another." Here he slipped his hand into his
pocket and handed me a duplicate of the one I had been smoking.
"Twelve boxes, Maceioe, were there not? Not expensive, eh, when purchased
with these?" and he spread out the identical bank-notes with which his
prisoner had paid for them in the Government store on the boulevard.
"As for you, monsieur, it is only necessary that one of my men take your
statement at your house; after that you are free.
"Come, Maceioe," and he shook the prisoner by the shoulder, "you take the
midnight train with me back to Paris--you too, madame."
* * * * *
And so I say again, and this time you must agree with me, that strange
happenings, often with a note of terror in them, occur now and then in
my lost village by the sea.
[Illustration: cigar]
* * * * *
[Illustration: soldiers]
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HORRORS OF WAR
At the very beginning of the straggling fishing-village of Pont du Sable
and close by the tawny marsh stands the little stone house of the mayor.
The house, like Monsieur le Maire himself, is short and sturdy. Its
modest facade is half hidden under a coverlet of yellow roses that have
spread at random over the tiled roof as high as the chimney. In front,
edging the road, is a tidy strip of garden with more roses, a wood-pile,
and an ancient well whose stone roof shelters a worn windlass that
groans in protest whenever its chain and bucket are disturbed.
I heard the windlass complaining this sunny morning as I passed on my
way through the village and caught sight of the ruddy mayor in his blue
blouse lowering the bucket. The chain snapped taut, the bucket gulped
its fill, and Monsieur le Maire caught sight of me.
"_Ah bigre!_" he exclaimed as he left the bucket where it hung and came
forward with both hands outstretched in welcome, a smile wrinkling his
genial face, clean-shaven to the edges of his short, cropped gray
side-whiskers, reaching well beneath his chin. "Come in, come in," he
insisted, laying a persuasive hand on my shoulder, as he unlatched his
gate.
It is almost impossible for a friend to pass the mayor's without being
stopped by just such a welcome. The twinkle in his eyes and the hearty
genuineness of his greeting are irresistible. The next moment you have
crossed his threshold and entered a square, low-ceiled room that for
over forty years has served Monsieur le Maire as living room, kitchen,
and executive chamber.
He had left me for a moment, as he always does when he welcomes a
friend. I could hear from the pantry cupboard beyond the shivery tinkle
of glasses as they settled on a tray. He had again insisted, as he
always does, upon my occupying the armchair in the small parlour
adjoining, with its wax flowers and its steel engraving of Napoleon at
Waterloo; but I had protested as I always do, for I prefer the kitchen.
I like its cavernous fireplace with its crane and spit, and the low
ceiling upheld by great beams of rough-hewn oak, and the tall clock in
the corner, and the hanging copper saucepans, kettles and ladles, kept
as bright as polished gold. Here, too, is a generous Norman armoire with
carved oaken doors swung on bar-hinges of shining steel, and a
centre-table provided with a small bottle of violet ink, a scratchy pen
and an iron seal worked by a lever--a seal that has grown dull from long
service in the stamping of certain documents relative to plain justice,
marriage, the official recognition of the recently departed and the
newly born. Above the fireplace hangs a faded photograph of a prize
bull, for you must know that Monsieur le Maire has been for half a
generation a dealer in Norman cattle.
Presently he returned with the tray, placing it upon the table within
reach of our chairs while I stood admiring the bull.
He stopped as he half drew the cork from a fat brown jug, and looked at
me curiously, his voice sinking almost to a whisper.
"You never were a dealer in beef?" he ventured timidly.
I shook my head sadly.
"_Helas! Helas!_ Never mind," said he. "One cannot be everything.
There's my brother-in-law, Pequin; he does not know a yearling from a
three-year-old. It is he who keeps the little store at Saint Philippe."
The cork squeaked out. He filled the thimble glasses with rare old
applejack so skilfully that another drop would have flushed over their
worn gilt rims. What a gracious old gentleman he is! If it be a question
of clipping a rose from his tidy garden and presenting it to a lady, he
does it with such a gentle courtliness that the rose smells the sweeter
for it--almost a lost art nowadays.
"I saw the cure this morning," he remarked, as we settled ourselves for
a chat. "He could not stop, but he waved me an _au revoir_, for he was
in a hurry to catch his train. He had been all night in his
duck-blind--I doubt if he had much luck, for the wind is from the south.
There is a fellow for you who loves to shoot," chuckled the mayor.
"Some news for him of game?" I inquired.
The small eyes of the mayor twinkled knowingly. "_Entre nous_," he
confided, "he has gone to Bonvilette to spray the sick roses of a friend
with sulphate of iron--he borrowed my squirt-gun yesterday."
"And how far is it to Bonvilette?"
"_Eh ben!_ One must go by the little train to Nivelle," explained
Monsieur le Maire, "and from Nivelle to Bonvilette there lies a good
twenty kilometres for a horse. Let us say he will be back in three
days."
"And the mass meanwhile?" I ventured.
"_Mon Dieu!_ What will you have? The roses of his old friend are sick.
It is the duty of a cure to tend the sick. Besides----"
Here Monsieur le Maire leaned forward within reach of my ear, and I
caught in whispers something relative to a chateau and one of the best
cellars of Bordeaux in France.
"Naturally," I replied, with a wink, and again my eyes reverted to the
prize bull. It is not wise to raise one's voice in so small a village as
Pont du Sable, even indoors.
"A pretty beast!" affirmed the mayor, noticing my continued interest in
live stock. "And let me tell you that I took him to England in
'eighty-two. _Ah, mais oui! Helas! Helas!_ What a trip!" he sighed.
"Monsieur Toupinet--he that has the big farm at Saint Philippe--and I
sailed together the third of October, in 1882, with forty steers. Our
ship was called _The Souvenir_, and I want to tell you, my friend, it
wasn't gay, that voyage. _Ah, mais non!_ Toupinet was sea-sick--I was
sea-sick--the steers were sea-sick--all except that _sacre_ brute up
there, and he roared all the way from Calais to London. _Eh ben!_ And
would you believe it?" At the approaching statement Monsieur le Maire's
countenance assumed a look of righteous indignation. He raised his fist
and brought it down savagely on the table as he declared: "Would you
believe it? We were _thirty-four hours_ without eating and _twenty-nine
hours, mon Dieu!_ without drinking!"
I looked up in pained astonishment.
"And that wasn't all," continued the mayor. "A hurricane struck us three
hours out, and we rolled all night in a dog's sea. The steers were up to
their bellies in water. Aye, but she did blow, and _The Souvenir_ had
all she could do to keep afloat. The captain was lashed to the bridge
all night and most of the next day. Neither Toupinet nor myself ever
expected to see land again, and there we were like calves in a pen on
the floor of the cabin full of tobacco-smoke and English, and not a word
of English could we speak except 'yes' and 'good morning.'" Here
Monsieur le Maire stopped and choked. Finally he dried his eyes on the
sleeve of his blouse, for he was wheezing with laughter, took a sip from
his glass, and resumed:
"Well, the saints did not desert us. _Ah, mais non!_ For about four
o'clock in the afternoon the captain sighted Su-Tum-Tum."
"Sighted what?" I exclaimed.
"_Eh ben!_ Su-Tum-Tum," he replied.
"Where had you drifted? To the Corean coast?"
"_Mais non_," he retorted, annoyed at my dullness to comprehend. "We
were saved--_comprenez-vous?_--for there, to starboard, lay Su-Tum-Tum
as plain as a sheep's nose."
"England? Impossible!" I returned.
"_Mais parfaitement!_" he declared, with a hopeless gesture.
"_Su-Tum-Tum_," he reiterated slowly for my benefit.
"Never heard of it," I replied.
The next instant he was out of his chair, and fumbling in a drawer of
the table extracted a warped atlas, reseated himself, and began to turn
the pages.
"_Eh, voila!_" he cried as his forefinger stopped under a word along the
English coast. "That's Su-Tum-Tum plain enough, isn't it?"
"Ah! Southampton!" I exclaimed. "Of course--plain as day."
"Ah!" ejaculated the mayor, leaning back in his chair with a broad smile
of satisfaction. "You see, I was right, Su-Tum-Tum. _Eh ben!_ Do you
know," he said gently as I left him, "when you first came to Pont du
Sable there were times then, my poor friend, when I could not understand
a word you said in French."
Then, as if a sudden thought had struck him, he called me back as he
closed the gate.
"Are those gipsies still camped outside your wall?" he inquired,
suddenly assuming the dignity of his office. "_Bon Dieu!_ They are a bad
lot, those vagabonds! If I don't tell them to be off you won't have a
duck or a chicken left."
"Let them stay," I pleaded, "they do no harm. Besides, I like to see the
light of their camp-fire at night scurrying over my wall."
"How many are there?" inquired his excellency.
"Seven or eight, not counting the dogs chained under the wagons," I
confessed reluctantly, fearing the hand of the law, for I have a
fondness for gipsies. "But you need not worry about them. They won't
steal from me. Their wagons are clean inside and out."
"_Ah, mais!_" sighed the mayor. "It's just like you. You spoil your
cat, you spoil your dog, and now you're spoiling these rascals by giving
them a snug berth. Have they their papers of identity?"
"Yes," I called back, "the chief showed them to me when he asked
permission to camp."
"Of course," laughed the mayor. "You'll never catch them without
them--signed by officials we never can trace."
He waved me a cheery _au revoir_ and returned to the well of the
groaning windlass while I continued on my way through the village.
Outside the squat stone houses, nets were drying in the sun. Save for
the occasional rattle of a passing cart, the village was silent, for
these fisher-folk go barefooted. Presently I reached the public square,
where nothing ever happens, and, turning an iron handle, entered Pont du
Sable's only store. A box of a place, smelling of dried herring,
kerosene, and cheese; and stocked with the plain necessities--almost
everything, from lard, tea, and big nails to soap, tarpaulins, and
applejack. The night's catch of mackerel had been good, and the small
room with its zinc bar was noisy with fisher-folk--wiry fishermen with
legs and chests as hard as iron; slim brown fisher girls as hardy as the
men, capricious, independent and saucy; a race of blonds for the most
part, with the temperament of brunettes. Old women grown gray and
leathery from fighting the sea, and old men too feeble to go--one of
these hung himself last winter because of this.
It was here, too, I found Marianne, dripping wet, in her tarpaulins.
"What luck?" I asked her as I helped myself to a package of cigarettes
from a pigeonhole and laid the payment thereof on the counter.
"_Eh ben!_" she laughed. "We can't complain. If the good God would send
us such fishing every night we should eat well enough."
She strode through the group to the counter to thrust out an empty
bottle.
"Eight sous of the best," she demanded briskly of the mild-eyed grocer.
"My man's as wet as a rat--he needs some fire in him and he'll feel as
fit as a marquis."
A good catch is a tonic to Pont du Sable. Instantly a spirit of good
humour and camaraderie spreads through the village--even old scores are
forgotten. A good haul of mackerel means a let-up in the daily struggle
for existence, which in winter becomes terrible. The sea knows not
charity. It massacres when it can and adds you to the line of dead
things along its edge where you are only remembered by the ebb and flow
of the tide. On blue calm mornings, being part of the jetsam, you may
glisten in the sun beside a water-logged spar; at night you become a
nonentity, of no more consequence along the wavering line of drift than
a rotten gull. But if, like Marianne, you have fought skilfully, you may
again enter Pont du Sable with a quicker eye, a harder body, and a
deeper knowledge of the southwest gale.
* * * * *
Within the last week Pont du Sable has undergone a transformation. The
dead village is alive with soldiers, for it is the time of the
manoeuvres. Houses, barns and cow-sheds are filled by night with the
red-trousered infantry of the French _Republique_. By day, the window
panes shiver under the distant flash and roar of artillery. The air
vibrates with the rip and rattle of musketry--savage volleys, filling
the heavens with shrill, vicious waves of whistling bullets that kill at
a miraculous distance. It is well that all this murderous fire occurs
beyond the desert of dunes skirting the open sea, for they say the
result upon the iron targets on the marsh is something frightful. The
general in command is in a good humour over the record.
Despatch-bearers gallop at all hours of the day and night through Pont
du Sable's single street. The band plays daily in the public square.
Sunburned soldiers lug sacks of provisions and bundles of straw out to
five hundred more men bivouacked on the dunes. Whole regiments return to
the little fishing-village at twilight singing gay songs, followed by
the fisher girls.
Ah! Mesdames--voila du bon fromage!
Celui qui l'a fait il est de son village!
Voila du bon fromage au lait!
Il est du pays de celui qui l'a fait.
Three young officers are stopping at Monsieur le Cure's, who has
returned from the sick roses of his friend; and Tanrade has a colonel
and two lieutenants beneath his roof. As for myself and the house
abandoned by the marsh, we are very much occupied with a blustering old
general, his aide-de-camp, and two common soldiers; but I tremble lest
the general should discover the latter two, for you see, they knocked at
my door for a lodging before the general arrived, and I could not refuse
them. Both of them put together would hardly make a full-sized warrior,
and both play the slide-trombone in the band. Naturally their artistic
temperament revolted at the idea of sleeping in the only available place
left in the village--a cow-shed with cows. They explained this to me
with so many polite gestures, mingled with an occasional salute at their
assured gratefulness should I acquiesce, that I turned them over for
safe keeping to Suzette, who has given them her room and sleeps in the
garret. Suzette is overjoyed. Dream of dreams! For Suzette to have one
real live soldier in the house--but to have two! Both of these
red-eared, red-trousered dispensers of harmony are perfect in
deportment, and as quiet as mice. They slip out of my back gate at
daylight, bound for the seat of war and slip in again at sundown like
obedient children, talk in kitchen whispers to Suzette over hot cakes
and cider, and go punctually to bed at nine--the very hour when the
roaring old general and his aide-de-camp are toasting their gold spurs
before my fire.
* * * * *
The general is tall and broad-shouldered, and as agile as a boy. There
is a certain hard, compact firmness about him as if he had been cast in
bronze. His alert eyes are either flashing in authority or beaming in
gentleness. The same play between dominant roughness and tenderness is
true, too, of his voice and manner.
"Madame," he said, last night, after dinner, as he bent and graciously
kissed Alice de Breville's hand, "forgive an old savage who pays you
homage and the assurance of his profound respect." The next moment my
courtyard without rocked with his reprimand to a bungling lieutenant.
To-night the general is in an uproar of good humour after a storm, for
did not some vagabonds steal the danger-posts intended to warn the
public of the location of the firing-line, so that new ones had to be
sent for? When the news of the theft reached him his rage was something
to behold. I could almost hear the little slide-trombonists shake as far
back as Suzette's kitchen. Fortunately, the cyclone was of short
duration--to-night he is pleased over the good work of his men during
the days of mock warfare and at the riddled, twisted targets, all of
which is child's play to this veteran who has weathered so many real
battles.
To-night he has dined well, and his big hand is stroking the Essence of
Selfishness who purrs against his medalled chest under a caress as
gentle as a woman's. He sings his favourite airs from "Faust" and "Aida"
with gusto, and roars over the gallant stories of his aide-de-camp, who,
being from the south of _La belle France_, is never at a loss for a
tale--tales that make the general's medals twinkle merrily in the
firelight. It is my first joyful experience as host to the military,
but I cannot help being nervous over Suzette and the trombonists.
"Bah! Those _sacre_ musicians!" exclaimed the general to-night as he
puffed at his cigarette. "If there's a laggard in my camp, you may be
sure it is one of those little devils with a horn or a whistle. _Mon
Dieu!_ Once during the manoeuvres outside of Perigord I found three of
them who refused to sleep on the ground--stole off and begged a lodging
in a chateau, _parbleu!_"
"Ah--indeed?" I stammered meekly.
"Yes, they did," he bellowed, "but I cured them." I saw the muscles in
his neck flush crimson, and tried to change the subject, but in vain.
"If they do that in time of peace, they'll do the same in war," he
thundered.