AGAIN THE CHAROLAIS
Hardly had the door closed behind the millionaire when the head of M.
Charolais appeared at one of the windows opening on to the terrace. He
looked round the empty hall, whistled softly, and stepped inside.
Inside of ten seconds his three sons came in through the windows, and
with them came Jean, the millionaire’s chauffeur.
“Take the door into the outer hall, Jean,” said M. Charolais, in a low
voice. “Bernard, take that door into the drawing-room. Pierre and
Louis, help me go through the drawers. The whole family is going to
Paris, and if we’re not quick we shan’t get the cars.”
“That comes of this silly fondness for warning people of a coup,”
growled Jean, as he hurried to the door of the outer hall. “It would
have been so simple to rob the Paris house without sending that
infernal letter. It was sure to knock them all silly.”
“What harm can the letter do, you fool?” said M. Charolais. “It’s
Sunday. We want them knocked silly for to-morrow, to get hold of the
coronet. Oh, to get hold of that coronet! It must be in Paris. I’ve
been ransacking this château for hours.”
Jean opened the door of the outer hall half an inch, and glued his eyes
to it. Bernard had done the same with the door opening into the
drawing-room. M. Charolais, Pierre, and Louis were opening drawers,
ransacking them, and shutting them with infinite quickness and
noiselessly.
“Bureau! Which is the bureau? The place is stuffed with bureaux!”
growled M. Charolais. “I must have those keys.”
“That plain thing with the brass handles in the middle on the
left—that’s a bureau,” said Bernard softly.
“Why didn’t you say so?” growled M. Charolais.
He dashed to it, and tried it. It was locked.
“Locked, of course! Just my luck! Come and get it open, Pierre. Be
smart!”
The son he had described as an engineer came quickly to the bureau,
fitting together as he came the two halves of a small jemmy. He fitted
it into the top of the flap. There was a crunch, and the old lock gave.
He opened the flap, and he and M. Charolais pulled open drawer after
drawer.
“Quick! Here’s that fat old fool!” said Jean, in a hoarse, hissing
whisper.
He moved down the hall, blowing out one of the lamps as he passed it.
In the seventh drawer lay a bunch of keys. M. Charolais snatched it up,
glanced at it, took a bunch of keys from his own pocket, put it in the
drawer, closed it, closed the flap, and rushed to the window. Jean and
his sons were already out on the terrace.
M. Charolais was still a yard from the window when the door into the
outer hall opened and in came M. Gournay-Martin.
He caught a glimpse of a back vanishing through the window, and
bellowed: “Hi! A man! A burglar! Firmin! Firmin!”
He ran blundering down the hall, tangled his feet in the fragments of
the broken chair, and came sprawling a thundering cropper, which
knocked every breath of wind out of his capacious body. He lay flat on
his face for a couple of minutes, his broad back wriggling
convulsively—a pathetic sight!—in the painful effort to get his breath
back. Then he sat up, and with perfect frankness burst into tears. He
sobbed and blubbered, like a small child that has hurt itself, for
three or four minutes. Then, having recovered his magnificent voice, he
bellowed furiously: “Firmin! Firmin! Charmerace! Charmerace!”
Then he rose painfully to his feet, and stood staring at the open
windows.
Presently he roared again: “Firmin! Firmin! Charmerace! Charmerace!”
He kept looking at the window with terrified eyes, as though he
expected somebody to step in and cut his throat from ear to ear.
“Firmin! Firmin! Charmerace! Charmerace!” he bellowed again.
The Duke came quietly into the hall, dressed in a heavy motor-coat, his
motor-cap on his head, and carrying a kit-bag in his hand.
“Did I hear you call?” he said.
“Call?” said the millionaire. “I shouted. The burglars are here
already. I’ve just seen one of them. He was bolting through the middle
window.”
The Duke raised his eyebrows.
“Nerves,” he said gently—“nerves.”
“Nerves be hanged!” said the millionaire. “I tell you I saw him as
plainly as I see you.”
“Well, you can’t see me at all, seeing that you’re lighting an acre and
a half of hall with a single lamp,” said the Duke, still in a tone of
utter incredulity.
“It’s that fool Firmin! He ought to have lighted six. Firmin! Firmin!”
bellowed the millionaire.
They listened for the sonorous clumping of the promoted gamekeeper’s
boots, but they did not hear it. Evidently Firmin was still giving his
master’s instructions about the cars to Jean.
“Well, we may as well shut the windows, anyhow,” said the Duke,
proceeding to do so. “If you think Firmin would be any good, you might
post him in this hall with a gun to-night. There could be no harm in
putting a charge of small shot into the legs of these ruffians. He has
only to get one of them, and the others will go for their lives. Yet I
don’t like leaving you and Germaine in this big house with only Firmin
to look after you.”
“I shouldn’t like it myself, and I’m not going to chance it,” growled
the millionaire. “We’re going to motor to Paris along with you, and
leave Jean to help Firmin fight these burglars. Firmin’s all right—he’s
an old soldier. He fought in ’70. Not that I’ve much belief in soldiers
against this cursed Lupin, after the way he dealt with that corporal
and his men three years ago.”
“I’m glad you’re coming to Paris,” said the Duke. “It’ll be a weight
off my mind. I’d better drive the limousine, and you take the
landaulet.”
“That won’t do,” said the millionaire. “Germaine won’t go in the
limousine. You know she has taken a dislike to it.”
“Nevertheless, I’d better bucket on to Paris, and let you follow slowly
with Germaine. The sooner I get to Paris the better for your
collection. I’ll take Mademoiselle Kritchnoff with me, and, if you
like, Irma, though the lighter I travel the sooner I shall get there.”
“No, I’ll take Irma and Germaine,” said the millionaire. “Germaine
would prefer to have Irma with her, in case you had an accident. She
wouldn’t like to get to Paris and have to find a fresh maid.”
The drawing-room door opened, and in came Germaine, followed by Sonia
and Irma. They wore motor-cloaks and hoods and veils. Sonia and Irma
were carrying hand-bags.
“I think it’s extremely tiresome your dragging us off to Paris like
this in the middle of the night,” said Germaine pettishly.
“Do you?” said the millionaire. “Well, then, you’ll be interested to
hear that I’ve just seen a burglar here in this very room. I frightened
him, and he bolted through the window on to the terrace.”
“He was greenish-pink, slightly tinged with yellow,” said the Duke
softly.
“Greenish-pink? Oh, do stop your jesting, Jacques! Is this a time for
idiocy?” cried Germaine, in a tone of acute exasperation.
“It was the dim light which made your father see him in those colours.
In a bright light, I think he would have been an Alsatian blue,” said
the Duke suavely.
“You’ll have to break yourself of this silly habit of trifling, my dear
Duke, if ever you expect to be a member of the Academie Française,”
said the millionaire with some acrimony. “I tell you I did see a
burglar.”
“Yes, yes. I admitted it frankly. It was his colour I was talking
about,” said the Duke, with an ironical smile.
“Oh, stop your idiotic jokes! We’re all sick to death of them!” said
Germaine, with something of the fine fury which so often distinguished
her father.
“There are times for all things,” said the millionaire solemnly. “And I
must say that, with the fate of my collection and of the coronet
trembling in the balance, this does not seem to me a season for idle
jests.”
“I stand reproved,” said the Duke; and he smiled at Sonia.
“My keys, Sonia—the keys of the Paris house,” said the millionaire.
Sonia took her own keys from her pocket and went to the bureau. She
slipped a key into the lock and tried to turn it. It would not turn;
and she bent down to look at it.
“Why—why, some one’s been tampering with the lock! It’s broken!” she
cried.
“I told you I’d seen a burglar!” cried the millionaire triumphantly.
“He was after the keys.”
Sonia drew back the flap of the bureau and hastily pulled open the
drawer in which the keys had been.
“They’re here!” she cried, taking them out of the drawer and holding
them up.
“Then I was just in time,” said the millionaire. “I startled him in the
very act of stealing the keys.”
“I withdraw! I withdraw!” said the Duke. “You did see a burglar,
evidently. But still I believe he was greenish-pink. They often are.
However, you’d better give me those keys, Mademoiselle Sonia, since I’m
to get to Paris first. I should look rather silly if, when I got there,
I had to break into the house to catch the burglars.”
Sonia handed the keys to the Duke. He contrived to take her little
hand, keys and all, into his own, as he received them, and squeezed it.
The light was too dim for the others to see the flush which flamed in
her face. She went back and stood beside the bureau.
“Now, papa, are you going to motor to Paris in a thin coat and linen
waistcoat? If we’re going, we’d better go. You always do keep us
waiting half an hour whenever we start to go anywhere,” said Germaine
firmly.
The millionaire bustled out of the room. With a gesture of impatience
Germaine dropped into a chair. Irma stood waiting by the drawing-room
door. Sonia sat down by the bureau.
There came a sharp patter of rain against the windows.
“Rain! It only wanted that! It’s going to be perfectly beastly!” cried
Germaine.
“Oh, well, you must make the best of it. At any rate you’re well
wrapped up, and the night is warm enough, though it is raining,” said
the Duke. “Still, I could have wished that Lupin confined his
operations to fine weather.” He paused, and added cheerfully, “But,
after all, it will lay the dust.”
They sat for three or four minutes in a dull silence, listening to the
pattering of the rain against the panes. The Duke took his
cigarette-case from his pocket and lighted a cigarette.
Suddenly he lost his bored air; his face lighted up; and he said
joyfully: “Of course, why didn’t I think of it? Why should we start
from a pit of gloom like this? Let us have the proper illumination
which our enterprise deserves.”
With that he set about lighting all the lamps in the hall. There were
lamps on stands, lamps on brackets, lamps on tables, and lamps which
hung from the roof—old-fashioned lamps with new reservoirs, new lamps
of what is called chaste design, brass lamps, silver lamps, and lamps
in porcelain. The Duke lighted them one after another, patiently,
missing none, with a cold perseverance. The operation was punctuated by
exclamations from Germaine. They were all to the effect that she could
not understand how he could be such a fool. The Duke paid no attention
whatever to her. His face illumined with boyish glee, he lighted lamp
after lamp.
Sonia watched him with a smiling admiration of the childlike enthusiasm
with which he performed the task. Even the stolid face of the ox-eyed
Irma relaxed into grins, which she smoothed quickly out with a
respectful hand.
The Duke had just lighted the twenty-second lamp when in bustled the
millionaire.
“What’s this? What’s this?” he cried, stopping short, blinking.
“Just some more of Jacques’ foolery!” cried Germaine in tones of the
last exasperation.
“But, my dear Duke!—my dear Duke! The oil!—the oil!” cried the
millionaire, in a tone of bitter distress. “Do you think it’s my object
in life to swell the Rockefeller millions? We never have more than six
lamps burning unless we are holding a reception.”
“I think it looks so cheerful,” said the Duke, looking round on his
handiwork with a beaming smile of satisfaction. “But where are the
cars? Jean seems a deuce of a time bringing them round. Does he expect
us to go to the garage through this rain? We’d better hurry him up.
Come on; you’ve got a good carrying voice.”
He caught the millionaire by the arm, hurried him through the outer
hall, opened the big door of the château, and said: “Now shout!”
The millionaire looked at him, shrugged his shoulders, and said: “You
don’t beat about the bush when you want anything.”
“Why should I?” said the Duke simply. “Shout, my good chap—shout!”
The millionaire raised his voice in a terrific bellow of “Jean! Jean!
Firmin! Firmin!”
There was no answer.