"Bravo, Félix, you are a paragon! I have not wit enough to know whether
you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well, but I love you."
"Monsieur," I answered, as I think, very neatly, "if I am a well, truth
lies at the bottom."
"Well, Gervais?" demanded Yeux-gris.
Gervais bent his lowering brows on his cousin.
"Do you say, trust him?"
"Aye, I would trust him. For never yet did villain turn honest, nor
honest man false, in one short hour. When he was asked to serve against
the duke he showed his stuff. He was no traitor; he was no coward; he
was no liar. I think he is not those now."
Gervais was still doubtful.
"It is a risk. If he betrays--"
"What is life without risks?" cried Yeux-gris. "I thought you too good a
gambler, Gervais, to falter before a risk."
"Well," Gervais consented, "I leave it to you. Do as you like."
Yeux-gris said at once to me:
"This Lucas, as I told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in open
fight. Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose out of
doors without two or three of the duke's guard about him. Therefore we
have the right to get at him as we can. We have paid a man in the house
to tell of his movements. He is to fare out secretly at night on a
mission for M. le Duc, with one comrade only. M. Gervais and I will
interrupt that little journey."
"Very good, monsieur. And I?"
"You will meet our spy and learn the hour of the expedition. Last night,
when he told us of the plan, it had not been decided."
"Then he will be the other man I saw in the window? I shall know him."
"You have sharp eyes and a sharp brain, youngster. But he will not know
you. Therefore you can say you come from the shuttered house in the Rue
Coupejarrets. You will meet him in the little alley to the north of the
Hôtel St. Quentin. Do you know your way to the hôtel? Well, then, you
are to go down the passageway between the house and M. de Portreuse's
garden--you cannot mistake it, for on two sides of the house is the
street, on the third the garden, and on the fourth the alleyway.
Half-way down the alley is an arch with a small door. In that arch our
man, Louis Martin, will meet you. Do you understand?"