Sir Charles Collingham and his escort, M. Floçon, entered a cab
together and were driven first to the Faubourg St. Honoré. The General
tried hard to maintain his nonchalance, but he was yet a little
crestfallen at the turn things had taken, and M. Floçon, who, on the
other hand, was elated and triumphant, saw it. But no words passed
between them until they arrived at the portals of the British Embassy,
and the General handed out his card to the magnificent porter who
received them.
“Kindly let Colonel Papillon have that without delay.” The General had
written a few words: “I have got into fresh trouble. Come on to me at
the Police Prefecture if you can spare the time.”
“The Colonel is now in the Chancery: will not monsieur wait?” asked the
porter, with superb civility.
But the detective would not suffer this, and interposed, answering
abruptly for Sir Charles:
“No. It is impossible. We are going to the Quai l’Horloge. It is an
urgent matter.”
The porter knew what the Quai l’Horloge meant, and he guessed
intuitively who was speaking. Every Frenchman can recognize a police
officer, and has, as a rule, no great opinion of him.
“Very well!” now said the porter, curtly, as he banged the wicket-gate
on the retreating cab, and he did not hurry himself in giving the card
to Colonel Papillon.
“Does this mean that I am a prisoner?” asked Sir Charles, his gorge
rising, as it did easily.
“It means, monsieur, that you are in the hands of justice until your
recent conduct has been fully explained,” said the detective, with the
air of a despot.
“But I protest—”
“I wish to hear no further observations, monsieur. You may reserve them
till you can give them to the right person.”
The General’s temper was sorely ruffled. He did not like it at all; yet
what could he do? Prudence gained the day, and after a struggle he
decided to submit, lest worse might befall him.
There was, in truth, worse to be encountered. It was very irksome to be
in the power of this now domineering little man on his own ground, and
eager to show his power. It was with a very bad grace that Sir Charles
obeyed the curt orders he received, to leave the cab, to enter at a
side door of the Prefecture, to follow this pompous conductor along the
long vaulted passages of this rambling building, up many flights of
stone stairs, to halt obediently at his command when at length they
reached a closed door on an upper story.
“It is here!” said M. Floçon, as he turned the handle unceremoniously
without knocking. “Enter.”
A man was seated at a small desk in the centre of a big bare room, who
rose at once at the sight of M. Floçon, and bowed deferentially without
speaking.
“Baume,” said the Chief, shortly, “I wish to leave this gentleman with
you. Make him at home,”—the words were spoken in manifest irony,—“and
when I call you, bring him at once to my cabinet. You, monsieur, you
will oblige me by staying here.”
Sir Charles nodded carelessly, took the first chair that offered, and
sat down by the fire.
He was to all intents and purposes in custody, and he examined his
gaoler at first wrathfully, then curiously, struck with his rather
strange figure and appearance. Baume, as the Chief had called him, was
a short, thick-set man with a great shock head sunk in low between a
pair of enormous shoulders, betokening great physical strength; he
stood on very thin but greatly twisted bow legs, and the quaintness of
his figure was emphasized by the short black blouse or smock-frock he
wore over his other clothes like a French artisan.
He was a man of few words, and those not the most polite in tone, for
when the General began with a banal remark about the weather, M. Baume
replied, shortly:
“I wish to have no talk;” and when Sir Charles pulled out his
cigarette-case, as he did almost automatically from time to time when
in any situation of annoyance or perplexity, Baume raised his hand
warningly and grunted:
“Not allowed.”
“Then I’ll be hanged if I don’t smoke in spite of every man jack of
you!” cried the General, hotly, rising from his seat and speaking
unconsciously in English.
“What’s that?” asked Baume, gruffly. He was one of the detective staff,
and was only doing his duty according to his lights, and he said so
with such an injured air that the General was pacified, laughed, and
relapsed into silence without lighting his cigarette.
The time ran on, from minutes into nearly an hour, a very trying wait
for Sir Charles. There is always something irritating in doing
antechamber work, in kicking one’s heels in the waiting-room of any
functionary or official, high or low, and the General found it hard to
possess himself in patience, when he thought he was being thus
ignominiously treated by a man like M. Floçon. All the time, too, he
was worrying himself about the Countess, wondering first how she had
fared; next, where she was just then; last of all, and longest, whether
it was possible for her to be mixed up in anything compromising or
criminal.
Suddenly an electric bell struck in the room. There was a table
telephone at Baume’s elbow; he took up the handle, put the tube to his
mouth and ear, got his message answered, and then, rising, said
abruptly to Sir Charles:
“Come.”
When the General was at last ushered into the presence of the Chief of
the Detective Police, he found to his satisfaction that Colonel
Papillon was also there, and at M. Floçon’s side sat the instructing
judge, M. Beaumont le Hardi, who, after waiting politely until the two
Englishmen had exchanged greetings, was the first to speak, and in
apology.
“You will, I trust, pardon us, M. le Général, for having detained you
here and so long. But there were, as we thought, good and sufficient
reasons. If those have now lost some of their cogency, we still stand
by our action as having been justifiable in the execution of our duty.
We are now willing to let you go free, because—because—”
“We have caught the person, the lady you helped to escape,” blurted out
the detective, unable to resist making the point.
“The Countess? Is she here, in custody? Never!”
“Undoubtedly she is in custody, and in very close custody too,” went on
M. Floçon, gleefully. “_Au secret_, if you know what that means—in a
cell separate and apart, where no one is permitted to see or speak to
her.”
“Surely not that? Jack—Papillon—this must not be. I beg of you,
implore, insist, that you will get his lordship to interpose.”
“But, sir, how can I? You must not ask impossibilities. The Contessa
Castagneto is really an Italian subject now.”
“She is English by birth, and whether or no, she is a woman, a
high-bred lady; and it is abominable, unheard-of, to subject her to
such monstrous treatment,” said the General.
“But these gentlemen declare that they are fully warranted, that she
has put herself in the wrong—greatly, culpably in the wrong.”
“I don’t believe it!” cried the General, indignantly. “Not from these
chaps, a pack of idiots, always on the wrong tack! I don’t believe a
word, not if they swear.”
“But they have documentary evidence—papers of the most damaging kind
against her.”
“Where? How?”
“He—M. le Juge—has been showing me a note-book;” and the General’s
eyes, following Jack Papillon’s, were directed to a small _carnet_, or
memorandum-book, which the Judge, interpreting the glance, was tapping
significantly with his finger.
Then the Judge said blandly, “It is easy to perceive that you protest,
M. le Général, against that lady’s arrest. Is it so? Well, we are not
called upon to justify it to you, not in the very least. But we are
dealing with a brave man, a gentleman, an officer of high rank and
consideration, and you shall know things that we are not bound to tell,
to you or to any one.”
“First,” he continued, holding up the note-book, “do you know what this
is? Have you ever seen it before?”
“I am dimly conscious of the fact, and yet I cannot say when or where.”
“It is the property of one of your fellow travellers—an Italian called
Ripaldi.”
“Ripaldi?” said the General, remembering with some uneasiness that he
had seen the name at the bottom of the Countess’s telegram. “Ah! now I
understand.”
“You had heard of it, then? In what connection?” asked the Judge, a
little carelessly, but it was a suddenly planned pitfall.
“I now understand,” replied the General, perfectly on his guard, “why
the note-book was familiar to me. I had seen it in that man’s hands in
the waiting-room. He was writing in it.”
“Indeed? A favourite occupation evidently. He was fond of confiding in
that note-book, and committed to it much that he never expected would
see the light—his movements, intentions, ideas, even his inmost
thoughts. The book—which he no doubt lost inadvertently is very
incriminating to himself and his friends.”
“What do you imply?” hastily inquired Sir Charles.
“Simply that it is on that which is written here that we base one part,
perhaps the strongest, of our case against the Countess. It is
strangely but convincingly corroborative of our suspicions against
her.”
“May I look at it for myself?” went on the General in a tone of
contemptuous disbelief.
“It is in Italian. Perhaps you can read that language? If not, I have
translated the most important passages,” said the Judge, offering some
other papers.
“Thank you; if you will permit me, I should prefer to look at the
original;” and the General, without more ado, stretched out his hand
and took the note-book.
What he read there, as he quickly scanned its pages, shall be told in
the next chapter. It will be seen that there were things written that
looked very damaging to his dear friend, Sabine Castagneto.