Upon leaving the Champs aux Capuchins, hawk-faced Monsieur Gaubert had
run every foot of the way to the Sucking Calf, and he had arrived there
within some five minutes, out of breath and wearing every appearance of
distress--of a distress rather greater than his haste to find his friend
should warrant.
At the door of the inn he found the carriage still waiting; the
post-boy, however, was in the porch, leaning in talk with one of the
drawers. The troopers sat their horses in stolid patience, keeping
guard, and awaiting, as they had been bidden, the return of Monsieur de
Garnache. Rabecque, very watchful, lounged in the doorway, betraying in
his air none of the anxiety and impatience with which he looked for his
master.
At sight of Monsieur Gaubert, running so breathlessly, he started
forward, wondering and uneasy. Across the street, from the Palais
Seneschal, came at that same moment Monsieur de Tressan with rolling
gait. He reached the door of the inn together with Monsieur Gaubert.
Full of evil forebodings, Rabecque hailed the runner.
“What has happened?” he cried. “Where is Monsieur de Garnache?”
Gaubert came to a staggering halt; he groaned and wrung his hands.
“Killed!” he panted, rocking himself in a passion of distress. “He has
been butchered! Oh! it was horrible!”
Rabecque gripped him by the shoulder, and steadied him with a hand that
hurt. “What do you say?” he gasped, his face white to the lips.
Tressan halted, too, and turned upon Gaubert, a look of incredulity in
his fat countenance. “Who has been killed?” he asked. “Not Monsieur de
Garnache?”
“Helas! yes,” groaned the other. “It was a snare, a guet-apens to which
they led us. Four of them set upon us in the Champs aux Capuchins. As
long as he lived, I stood beside him. But seeing him fallen, I come for
help.”
“My God!” sobbed Rabecque, and loosed his grasp of Monsieur Gaubert’s
shoulder.
“Who did it?” inquired Tressan, and his voice rumbled fiercely.
“I know not who they were. The man who picked the quarrel with Monsieur
de Garnache called himself Sanguinetti. There is a riot down there at
present. There was a crowd to witness the combat, and they have fallen
to fighting among themselves. Would to Heaven they had stirred in time
to save that poor gentleman from being murdered.”
“A riot, did you say?” cried Tressan, the official seeming to awaken in
him.
“Aye,” answered the other indifferently; “they are cutting one another’s
throats.”
“But... But... Are you sure that he is dead, monsieur?” inquired
Rabecque; and his tone was one that implored contradiction.
Gaubert looked and paused, seeming to give the matter a second’s
thought. “I saw him fall,” said he. “It may be that he was no more than
wounded.”
“And you left him there?” roared the servant. “You left him there?”
Gaubert shrugged his shoulders. “What could I do against four? Besides,
the crowd was interfering already, and it seemed best to me to come for
help. These soldiers, now--”
“Aye,” cut in Tressan, and he turned about and called the sergeant.
“This becomes my affair.” And he announced his quality to Monsieur
Gaubert. “I am the Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny.”
“I am fortunate in finding you,” returned Gaubert, and bowed. “I could
place the matter in no better hand.”
But Tressan, without heeding him, was already ordering the sergeant
to ride hard with his troopers for the Champs aux Capuchins. Rabecque,
however, thrust himself suddenly forward.
“Not so, Monsieur le Seneschal,” he interposed in fresh alarm, and
mindful of his charge. “These men are here to guard Mademoiselle de La
Vauvraye. Let them remain. I will go to Monsieur de Garnache.”
The Seneschal stared at him with contemptuously pouting underlip. “You
will go?” said he. “And what can you do alone? Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Monsieur de Garnache’s servant.”
“A lackey? Ah!” And Tressan turned aside and resumed his orders as
if Rabecque did not exist or had never spoken. “To the Champs aux
Capuchins!” said he. “At the gallop, Pommier! I will send others after
you.”
The sergeant rose in his stirrups and growled an order. The troopers
wheeled about; another order, and they were off, their cantering hoofs
thundering down the narrow street.
Rabecque clutched at the Lord Seneschal’s arm.
“Stop them, monsieur!” he almost screamed in his excitement. “Stop them!
There is some snare, some trick in this.”
“Stop them?” quoth the Seneschal. “Are you mad?” He shook off Rabecque’s
detaining hand, and left him, to cross the street again with ponderous
and sluggish haste, no doubt to carry out his purpose of sending more
troopers to the scene of the disturbance.
Rabecque swore angrily and bitterly, and his vexation had two entirely
separate sources. On the one hand his anxiety and affection for his
master urged him to run at once to his assistance, whilst Tressan’s
removal of the troopers rendered it impossible for him to leave
Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye unguarded--though what he should do with
her if Garnache came not back at all, he did not at this stage pause
to consider. On the other hand, an instinctive and growing suspicion of
this Monsieur Gaubert--who was now entering the inn--inspired him with
the opinion that the fat Seneschal had been duped by a wild tale to
send the troopers from the spot where they might presently become very
necessary.
Full of fears, anxiety, and mistrust, it was a very dispirited Rabecque
that now slowly followed Monsieur Gaubert into the inn. But as he set
his foot across the threshold of the common-room, a sight met his eyes
that brought him to a momentary standstill, and turned to certainty all
his rising suspicions. He found it tenanted by a half-dozen fellows of
very rude aspect, all armed and bearing an odd resemblance in air and
accoutrements to the braves he had seen at Condillac the day before.
As to how they came there, he could only surmise that they had entered
through the stable-yard, as otherwise he must have observed their
approach. They were grouped now at the other end of the long, low
chamber, by the door leading to the interior of the inn. A few paces
distant the landlord watched them with uneasy eyes.
But what dismayed Garnache’s servant most of all was to see the man who
called himself Gaubert standing in talk with a slender, handsome youth,
magnificently arrayed, in whom he recognized Marius de Condillac.
Rabecque checked in his advance, and caught in that moment from Marius
the words: “Let her be told that it is Monsieur de Garnache wishes her
to descend.”
At that Rabecque stepped towards them, very purposeful of mien. Gaubert
turned at his approach, and smiled. Marius looked up quickly; then
made a sign to the men. Instantly two of them went out by the door they
guarded, and ere it swung back again Rabecque saw that they were
making for the stairs. The remaining four ranged themselves shoulder
to shoulder across the doorway, plainly with intent to bar the way.
Gaubert, followed immediately by Marius, stepped aside and approached
the landlord with arms akimbo and a truculent smile on his pale hawk
face. What he and Marius said, Rabecque could not make out, but he
distinctly heard the landlord’s answer delivered with a respectful bow
to Marius:
“Bien, Monsieur de Condillac. I would not interfere in your
concerns--not for the world. I will be blind and deaf.”
Marius acknowledged the servile protestation by a sneer, and Rabecque,
stirring at last, went forward boldly towards the doorway and its ugly,
human barrier.
“By your leave, sirs,” said he--and he made to thrust one of them aside.
“You cannot pass this way, sir,” he was answered, respectfully but
firmly.
Rabecque stood still, clenching and unclenching his hands and quivering
with anger. It was in that moment that he most fervently cursed Tressan
and his stupid meddling. Had the troopers still been there, they could
have made short work of these tatter-demalions. As it was, and with
Monsieur de Garnache dead, or at least absent, everything seemed at an
end. He might have contended that, his master being slain, it was no
great matter what he did, for in the end the Condillacs must surely have
their way with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. But he never paused to think
of that just then. His sense of trust was strong; his duty to his master
plain. He stepped back, and drew his sword.
“Let me pass!” he roared. But at the same instant there came the soft
slither of another weapon drawn, and Rabecque was forced to turn to meet
the onslaught of Monsieur Gaubert.
“You dirty traitor,” cried the angry lackey, and that was all they left
him breath to say. Strong arms gripped him from behind. The sword was
wrenched from his hand. He was flung down heavily, and pinned prone in a
corner by one of those bullies who knelt on his spine. And then the door
opened again, and poor Rabecque groaned in impotent anguish to behold
Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye pause white-faced and wide-eyed on, the
threshold at sight of Monsieur de Condillac bowing low before her.
She stood there a moment between the two ruffians who had been sent to
fetch her, and her eyes travelling round that room discovered Rabecque
in his undignified and half; strangled condition.
“Where... Where is Monsieur de Garnache?” she faltered.
“He is where all those who cross the will of Condillac must sooner or
later find themselves,” said Marius airily. “He is... disposed of.”
“Do you mean that he is dead?” she cried.
“I think it very probable by now,” he smiled. “So you see, mademoiselle,
since the guardian the Queen appointed you has... deserted you, you
would do well to return to my mother’s roof. Let me assure you that we
shall very gladly welcome your return. We blame none but Garnache for
your departure, and he has paid for the brutality of his abduction of
you.”
She turned in despair from that mocking gentleman, and attempted to make
appeal to the landlord, as though he could help her who could not help
himself.
“Monsieur l’Hote--” she began, but Marius cut in sharply.
“Take her out that way,” he said, and pointed back down the passage by
the stairs. “To the coach. Make haste.”
She sought to resist them now; but they dragged her back, and there
was a rush of the others following through the doorway, the rear being
brought up by Gaubert.
“Follow presently,” was his parting command to the man who still knelt
upon Rabecque, and with that he vanished too.
Their steps died away in the passage; a door banged in the distance.
There followed a silence, disturbed only by the sound of Rabecque’s
laboured breathing; then came a stir outside the door of the inn; some
one shouted an order. There was a movement of hoofs, a creak and crunch
of wheels, and presently the rumble of a heavy carriage being driven
rapidly away. But too well did Rabecque surmise what had taken place.
The ruffian released him at last, and, leaping to his feet, was gone
before Rabecque could rise. Once up, however, the lackey darted to the
door. In the distance he saw his late assailant running hard; the
coach had disappeared. He turned, and his smouldering eye fell upon the
landlord.
“O pig!” he apostrophized him, snarling at him to vent some of his
pent-up rage. “O cowardly pig.”
“What would you?” expostulated the frightened taverner. “They had cut my
throat if I resisted them.”
Rabecque poured abuse upon him, until for very lack of words he was
forced to cease, then, with a final bark of contempt, he went to recover
his sword, which had been flung into a corner of the room. He was
stooping in the act, when a quick step rang behind him on the threshold,
an angry voice harsh and metallic pronounced his name:
“Rebecque!”
The sword clattered from Rabecque’s hand suddenly gone
nerveless--nerveless with sheer joy, all else forgotten in the
perception that there, safe and sound, stood his beloved master.
“Monsieur!” he cried, and the tears welled up to the rough servant’s
eyes. “Monsieur!” he cried again, and then with the tears streaming
down his cheeks, sallow and wrinkled as parchment, “Oh, thank God!” he
blubbered. “Thank God!”
“For what?” asked Garnache, coming forward, a scowl like a thunder-cloud
upon his brow. “Where is the coach, where the troopers? Where is
mademoiselle? Answer me!”
He caught Rabecque’s wrist in a grip that threatened to snap it. His
face was livid, his eyes aflame.
“They--they--” stammered Rabecque. He had not the courage to tell the
thing that had happened. He feared Garnache would strike him dead.
And then out of his terror he gathered an odd daring. He spoke to
Garnache as never he had dreamt to speak to him, and it may well be that
by his tone and by what he said he saved his life just then.
“You fool,” he cried to him. “I told you to be on your guard. I warned
you to go warily. But you would not heed me. You know better than
Rabecque. You would have your way. You must go a-brawling. And they
duped you, they fooled you to the very top of their bent, monsieur.”
Garnache dropped the servant’s hand and stood back a pace. That
counter-blast of passion and that plain speaking from a quarter so
unexpected served, in part at least, to sober him. He understood the
thing that had happened, the thing that already he suspected must have
happened; but he understood too that he alone was to blame for it--he
and his cursed temper.
“Who--who fooled me?” he stammered.
“Gaubert--the fellow that calls himself Gaubert. He and his friends.
They fooled you away. Then Gaubert returned with a tale that you
had been killed and that there was a disturbance in the Champs aux
Capuchins. Monsieur de Tressan was here, as ill-luck would have it,
and Gaubert implored him to send soldiers thither to quell the riot.
He dispatched the escort. I sought in vain to stay them. He would not
listen to me. The troopers went, and then Monsieur Gaubert entered
the inn, to join Monsieur de Condillac and six of his braves who were
waiting there. They overpowered me, and carried mademoiselle off in the
coach. I did what I could, but--”
“How long have they been gone?” Garnache interrupted him to inquire.
“But few minutes before you came.”
“It would be, then, the coach that passed me near the Porte de Savoie.
We must go after them, Rabecque. I made a short cut across the graveyard
of Saint Francis, or I must have met the escort. Oh, perdition!” he
cried, smiting his clenched right hand into his open left. “To have so
much good work undone by a moment’s unguardedness.” Then abruptly he
turned on his heels. “I am going to Monsieur de Tressan,” said he over
his shoulder, and went out.
As he reached the threshold of the porch, the escort rode up the street,
returned at last. At sight of him the sergeant broke into a cry of
surprise.
“At least you are safe, monsieur,” he said. “We had heard that you were
dead, and I feared it must be so, for all that the rest of the story
that was told us was clearly part of a very foolish jest.”
“Jest? It was no jest, _Vertudieu_!” said Garnache grimly. “You had best
return to the Palais Seneschal. I have no further need of an escort,” he
added bitterly. “I shall require a larger force.”
And he stepped out into the rain, which had begun again a few minutes
earlier, and was now falling in a steady downpour.