We were on the alert in a moment.
Though we searched in the darkness for a distance of a hundred yards or
more, we failed to come upon either the man or the woman of whom we had
caught a brief glimpse as they struggled desperately.
Nor did we again hear the sound of voices. That I had heard Vera's
voice, I felt convinced. We wondered if there was a lodge, and how far
it was away. Perhaps the servants had taken shelter there.
"The whole place seems to be deserted," Faulkner said when, after a
futile search, we again found ourselves near the burning chateau, where
the fire had by this time subsided considerably. "And yet there must
have been people in the house--at any rate, servants."
We walked right round the chateau. What a huge old place it had been!
No wonder the fire had taken a long time to reach us, if it had broken
out, as it presumably had done, in a wing remote from the room where we
had been. Judging by the architecture of the outer walls I concluded
that the chateau must have been built towards the end of the fourteenth
century, and afterwards added to.
There was a sharp nip in the air, and we felt chilly enough. Already
the streaks of dawn were striving to pierce the belt of leaden clouds,
against which the black pinewoods could be seen distinctly outlined.
Faulkner turned to me.
"Have you any money?" he asked.
"Plenty," I answered. "Why?"
"When it is daylight we must make for the nearest village and get a
conveyance to the railway-station. We must be miles from everywhere, or
fire-escapes would have come along before now. I suppose the Baronne is
dead."
"She can have escaped only by a miracle," I said. "We shall probably
know soon."
"And that cur--Paulton. What can have become of him?"
"I can't help thinking it was Paulton we saw struggling. But who can
the woman have been? I hope it wasn't Vera. I am certain I heard her
voice. What do you think?"
"It may have been Mademoiselle de Coudron," Faulkner said. "She seems
to have disappeared. What a brave girl! She must have climbed along
the roofs to save us, with the fire just behind her. I wonder who the
woman was who called for help first of all--I mean before we knew that
fire had broken out."
"The whole thing is most mysterious, but the biggest mystery is the
disappearance of everybody. We heard at least three voices in the
darkness!"
Happening to glance down the long carriage drive which, after winding
for a hundred yards across the broad, level lawns, disappeared into the
wood, I noticed two men on horseback approaching at a walk. They had
just emerged from the wood, and, so far as I could see in the
half-light, were officials of some kind.
They broke into a jog-trot as they caught sight of us, and took a short
cut across the grass. As they came near us we saw that they were two
gendarmes.
"What are you doing here?" one of them asked sharply in French.
I didn't like his tone, and I saw Faulkner's lip twitch with annoyance.
Instead of answering, we looked the two men up and down.
"What are you doing here--tell me at once," the speaker repeated, in a
bullying tone.
I suppose we did look disreputable, standing there without collars, with
unlaced boots, and with our coat collars turned up. Also a day's growth
of beard is hardly conducive to a smart appearance, and in most
civilised countries but America a man is judged by his appearance and by
the clothes he wears.
"Who set fire to the chateau?" demanded the gendarme, quickly losing his
temper as we refused to speak.
"Oh, we did, of course," I exclaimed in French, meaning to be cynical.
"We burnt it down on purpose."
The man raised his black eyebrows, and glanced at his companion.
"You hear that?" he said meaningly.
The man who had remained silent produced a notebook and scribbled in it.
Faulkner turned to me.
"A few more of your `witticisms' Ashton," he said, "and we shall get
penal servitude. Don't you know you are talking to State officials, and
have you ever known a State official to be other than matter-of-fact?
For Heaven's sake, don't make more statements that may be used in
evidence against us."
"My friend was joking," Faulkner said in his perfect French to the man
who had addressed us; but the official seemed not to understand what the
word _plaisanterie_ meant.
At this juncture the men exchanged one or two remarks in a rapid
undertone. Then, while one of them remained, apparently to keep guard
over us, the other cantered away across the turf, struck the road close
to the wood, and disappeared.
In the absence of his companion, who apparently was his superior in
authority, the gendarme thawed to some extent. We gathered that the
Chateau d'Uzerche was about eighty miles by road from Monte Carlo, and
twelve or so miles from Digne, in the Bedeone Valley, also that no
village lay within a radius of two miles of it. Small wonder,
therefore, that no fire-escape had come.
"Where is la Baronne de Coudron?" the man asked suddenly.
We explained that we feared she had been either burnt or suffocated. At
this he looked grave.
"And her companion, the Englishman Monsieur Paulton, where is he?"
Again we explained. He had escaped from the fire, but, since his
escape, we had not seen him.
"Why do you want to know?" Faulkner asked, in his politest tones.
"Because," the man answered, taken off his guard, "we have a warrant for
the arrest of both Madame la Baronne and the Englishman."
"Arrest! For what?" Faulkner asked.
"On several charges. The most recent is a charge of obtaining money by
fraud--a large sum. There is also a charge of blackmail."
"Against both?"
"Against both."
I was silent. Here was a new phase of the affair. By degrees we
gathered from him that Paulton was known to be interested in various
undertakings of, to say the least, a dubious nature, also that he
promoted wild-cat companies in England, on the Continent, and in
America. Information that especially interested us was that all who had
escaped from the fire had made their way to the lodge at the entrance to
the drive.
It was at this juncture that the other gendarme reappeared. He was
still on horseback, and, as he came towards us slowly, our attention
became centred upon the man who walked beside him, with one hand on his
stirrup. In the distance it looked very like Paulton.
He seemed quite composed. His mouth was bound up, partly concealing his
face.
When a few yards from us the gendarme reined up. As he did so, Paulton
raised his arm, pointed at me, and said in French--
"That's the man you came to arrest. That is Dago Paulton."
"And his companion?" the gendarme asked.
"Is his valet."
"And your name, monsieur?"
"Ferrari--Paoli Ferrari. My father was Italian, my mother English. I
have been in Mr. Paulton's service as butler for the last three years.
Previous to that I was butler to Count Pinto"--the Portuguese diplomat
who had won the cup for shooting.
"Thank you, monsieur, I am exceedingly indebted to you," the gendarme
said blandly. Then, producing an official-looking document, he said to
me--
"We have to take you into custody, you and Madame la Baronne."
For some moments, indignation prevented my speaking. Was it possible
these outrageous statements of Paulton's would be taken without
question? Such a thing seemed monstrous and grotesque, but knowing, as
I did, how intensely stupid some police officials are, no matter to what
country they may belong, I thought it likely that I should presently be
marched off and placed under lock and key.
Faulkner, to my annoyance, seemed amused.
"They will march you twelve miles to Digne," he said, "and when you get
there and prove your identity they will apologise in the most humble
fashion for the mistake that has been made. Meanwhile, you will have
had your twelve-mile walk, and Paulton have been allowed to escape. Had
we looked less disreputable than we do, our statements might have been
believed in preference to his."
In my indignation I at first became sarcastic, and thinking that liberty
at that moment would be far better than being held up upon a false
charge, I made a sudden bolt for it, cutting swiftly across a meadow and
leaping a stream. I am a good runner, but, of course, the mounted
gendarmes were quickly upon me, and cut me off, so I soon found myself
in their hands.
Faulkner elected to come with me, but we were not marched to Digne.
Instead, we were allowed to walk leisurely alongside the horses as far
as the village, a distance of two miles or so, and there were shown into
a comfortable room in the tiny police bureau, and given breakfast. The
garde-champetre spoke English fluently. He had lived in England several
years. Consequently in a short time we succeeded in convincing him of
the blunder the gendarme had made, and in proving who we were.
By this time the village was beginning to awaken, and crowds were on
their way to the chateau. We soon found a tradesman willing to let out
a horse and trap in return for a louis paid in advance. In this we also
started back for the chateau, anxious to get news of Vera, and of
Violet.
On our way by the road, we found the lodge of the chateau, it had not
been in sight more than a minute, when a large red car passed out
through the gateway into the high road we were on, turned, and sped away
from us along the long white ribbon of road at terrific speed. It must,
we calculated as it dwindled into a distant speck, have been travelling
at a speed of quite sixty miles an hour. Faulkner looked at me
significantly. Our surmise had been correct, the servants had sought
shelter at the lodge and had now left.
By the time we reached the smouldering ruins, a score of people, all of
them peasants, stood staring at it. The good French farmers had each
some platitude to make: "It must have been an enormous fire;" "It must
have burned very quickly;" "Some one must have set it alight," and so
on. They were all people of the bovine type, as we found when we tried
to obtain information from them.
The Baronne and her niece lived there. That was about all that they
could tell us. Apparently they knew nothing of Paulton--had never seen
or heard of him.
How many servants had there been in the Chateau they knew not. But a
man and several women had just left the lodge in a motor-car.
"We can do no good by staying here," Faulkner said at last. "We had
better make for Digne. What puzzles me is, where can the servants be?
There must have been servants, and they could have told us something.
They are not at the lodge. Perhaps Paulton had taken them with him in
the car we had seen. The only soul at the lodge is an old woman who is
stone deaf, and she is crying so that she cannot speak at all."
We stood gazing thoughtfully at the still smouldering fire, when
Faulkner said suddenly--
"What is that big, square thing down among the twisted girders?" and he
pointed to it.
We could not make out what it was. Then, all at once I realised.
"Why," I said, "it's a safe--one of those big American safes. I expect
its contents are uninjured."
But where was Vera? Ah! I felt beside myself in anxiety--a breathless,
burning longing, to know how fared the one woman in all the world who
held me in her hands for life, or for death.
She loved me, truly and well--of that I was convinced. And yet she
existed in that mysterious hateful bondage--a bondage which, alas! she
dared not attempt to break.
What could be the truth? Why were her lips closed?--Ay, why indeed? I
dreaded to think.