The next night was already very quiet, although it still wanted some
time ere ten should strike from St. Lambert's and all the other clocks
of the city.
Van Ryk had spoken truly when he said that by this time most of the
Liégois were in their homes, though some who had not yet retired to
them were on the various bridges over the streams running through the
city from the Meuse. For the night had grown almost insufferably hot,
and the interiors of many of the houses, which were built of timber
and stood in narrow, stuffy streets, were not inviting. Also, some few
were strolling about or seated on the quays.
Outside the Prince's palace--which was that of the
Prince-Bishop--there were, however, scarcely any persons about, and
those only beggars, who sometimes at night crept into the outer
cloisters to sleep.
In the darkest shadow cast by these cloisters Bevill Bracton sat on La
Rose's back while endeavouring to keep her as quiet as was possible,
though no efforts could prevent her from pawing the earth, or shaking
her bridoon, or snorting impatiently.
His dress, in which at one time he had thought of making some
alteration, he had, however, left as it was, since it was neither too
handsome nor too conspicuous for a secretary of legation on his
travels with a French lady of rank who, if necessity should call for
such a declaration, would state that they were family connections.
He had arrived at this spot and taken up the position he now occupied
some quarter of an hour ago, and during that time, while casting
searching glances to right and left of him to see if there were as yet
any signs of the approach of Madame de Valorme's carriage, his mind
had been much occupied with all that had transpired since Mynheer Van
Ryk had escorted the two ladies to the Weiss Haus.
Yet strange as had been one, or, at least, two, occurrences during the
past twenty-four hours, another matter, the recollection of one other
incident, dominated his mind more than aught else--the recollection
that the last words Sylvia uttered had been almost an avowal of her
regard--he dared not yet tell himself that it was an avowal of her
love--for him.
"Her voice, her tone, her anxiety to depart from Liége," he had said
to himself a hundred times since he parted from the girl, "scarce
leaves me room to doubt her sentiments for me, while throwing open the
door of a vast, a supreme hope. Ah, if it is so! If, when once we are
free of this place, I may dare to speak, and, in speaking, win the
reply I fain would receive, what happiness will be mine! With Sylvia
for my love, my promised wife; with her safe in England, what may I
not undertake in the future? Once more a soldier, as I hope to be, may
I not follow where duty summons me, knowing that, if it pleases
Providence to spare my life, it will be to find Sylvia awaiting me and
ready to fulfil her promise to be my wife when I return."
As he had thought thus during the past hours so he thought again
while, statue-like, he sat his steed in the deepest shadows of the
palace cloisters and waited to hear the tread of the Comtesse's horses
approaching, or to see the carriage emerging from one of the narrow
streets that led into the great open space around the palace.
Still, however, he had those other things to occupy his mind--strange
things that, had it not been for the overmastering thoughts of the
woman he had learnt to love--the woman who, he dared to hope, had
either come or was coming to love him--would have never left his mind.
Things, occurrences, that now cast a strangely different light on all
that had happened during the storm of the first night in the Weiss
Haus, and that had raised oft-recurring doubts as to whether he had
accurately understood all that had taken place in the darkness of that
night.
When Sylvia and the Comtesse de Valorme had departed with Mynheer Van
Ryk, Bevill--partly attracted by the beauty of the evening and partly
because it was still early, and perhaps, also, because he knew full
well that, after Sylvia's last words to him, there would be little
likelihood of his sleeping at present--determined to remain outside
the mansion for some time before attempting to obtain any rest.
Naturally--as, maybe, needs no telling--his steps were unconsciously
directed back to the arbour in which their late conversation had taken
place, and, as he approached the spot, the calm tranquillity of the
night, the entire absence of the lightest breeze, forced itself upon
his attention. Even, however, as this took place he recalled how Van
Ryk had said that the wind was rising and rustling the bushes and long
grasses; and, while doing so, Bevill wondered why the merchant should
have given utterance to such a remark; for, as he thought upon the
matter, he knew that no breath of wind had disturbed the air, that not
the slightest breeze had blown that would have stirred a leaf.
His faculties aroused by all the necessities for caution which had
formed part of his existence since he left England on the undertaking
he was now about--faculties that had long since been trained and
sharpened in his earlier campaigns--he stood gazing at the bushes and
tall, wavy, Eastern grasses which surrounded the arbour, as though in
them he might, dark as it was now, discover some natural cause that
would have furnished Van Ryck with the supposition that the wind was
rising.
Seeing nothing, however, that could suggest any such cause, he walked
round those bushes and grasses to the back of the arbour and
endeavoured to discover if the reason was to be found there.
At first he could perceive nothing in the darkness, while feeling
gently about him with his hands and feet, as those feel to whom the
aid of light is denied while they search for aught they may expect to
discover.
But, at last, it seemed to Bevill that the grass behind the arbour was
strangely flattened down longwise, and, pausing at this discovery, his
sharpened instincts were soon at work wondering what this might mean.
"A large dog sleeping here might almost have made for itself a bed,"
he reflected, "yet there is no dog about the place, nor, even though
there were, would it have lain so straight and long. What, therefore,
may have done this? What? Perhaps a man."
After which he stooped again, and, placing his hand on the
pressed-down grass, discovered that it was warm.
"Something has indeed lain here but recently," Bevill said to himself.
"Some eavesdropper who has heard our plans, who knows them all by now,
who has it in his power to foil us. Can it have been Francbois?"
Supposing this might well be the case, Bevill determined to search the
grounds and afterwards the house as thoroughly as might be, while
understanding that, no matter how much he might endeavour to make that
search complete, it could by no possibility be so. The gardens were
too vast, the house too extensive. As he approached one spot any
person whom he sought might easily move to another; chance alone, the
luckiest of all chances, could bring him into contact with any lurker
who should be about.
Nevertheless, he decided to attempt the search, and, feeling for his
pistols, which in no circumstances was he ever separated from, he
began to make as thorough an inspection of the place as was possible.
Yet, when all was concluded, and when he had been all about the
grounds, and had peered into the other arbours and _bosquets_ and
behind bushes, and had then once more wandered over the vast, lonely
house, he had found nothing. After which, since still he felt sure
there had been some listener crouching behind that arbour while the
plans of himself and the others were being determined, he brought out
a chair on to the lower verandah and, wrapping himself lightly in his
cloak, since now the night was growing cool, determined to keep watch
as long as possible.
The early summer dawn came, however, and Bevill was still awake, but
had seen nothing, whereupon he at last decided that it must have been
some animal that had been sleeping behind where they all sat.
[Illustration: "The gardener carried something else in his hand."]
An hour or so after this and when he had obtained some refreshing
sleep on the great lounge in the hall, old Karl appeared, bringing the
usual food which he had received instructions from Sylvia to provide
each day so long as Bevill should remain at the Weiss Haus. The
gardener carried, however, something else than this in his hand,
namely, a three-cornered hat, which he at once said he had found in
the path that led from a little wicket gate he alone used, and which
opened from the road leading from his cottage to the grounds behind
the stables.
"Another hat!" Bevill exclaimed, taking it from the old man's hands
and turning it over in his own. "Another! Whose this time?"
To whomsoever it might have belonged, it did not, however, appear to
the young man that it was any more likely to have belonged to
Francbois than had done the earlier discovered one. If anything, it
was an even poorer specimen of headgear than that had been, and was a
hat that, though originally not of a common order, gave signs that it
might in its existence have passed from one owner to another; from,
indeed, a well-to-do man down to one who would be willing to accept it
in its final state of usefulness.
"It is very strange," he said, half aloud and half to himself. "Were
there three of them here last night, or were there only two, and was
Francbois not one of them? Had I two enemies besides him, and still
have two with him since Sparmann is gone? It is vastly strange." After
which he turned to Karl, and said:
"You have just found this thing. Therefore it was not there last night
nor yesterday morning?"
"Ah," the old man replied, "I cannot tell. Yesterday I used not the
path at all, having gone first to the Jouffrouw at Mynheer Van Ryk's
in the morning; and, last night, I was busy with _him_," nodding his
head towards where the corpse by the stables had been, "after dark."
"What have you done with him?"
"He is gone," Karl said vaguely. "Gone. No matter where. He will not
come back to--to--the Weiss Haus or Liége."
By which remark Bevill was led to suppose that the old man had cast
Sparmann's body into the river.
"Therefore," the latter said, "we have no knowledge of whether that
hat was left behind by one who was here during the storm of the night
before, or last night. Yet," turning the thing over in his hands,
"surely it must have been the first night. See, it has recently been
soaked by rain, the lining is still damp, and last night there was no
rain whatever."
"It may be," Karl replied, apparently much astonished at this clear
reasoning. "It may be. Therefore, you had three visitors on that
night."
"I cannot say. I have but proof of two. The wearers of the two hats at
least were here. Yet they may well have been the only visitors; in
solemn truth there may not have been three. Though strange it is
that, if there were but two, both should have parted with their hats.
One must have lost his in the encounter in which he received his
death-wound, the other in fleeing away."
For, now, Bevill had grave doubts as to whether Francbois had been at
the Weiss Haus at all on the night before the one now past. Still, if
it were not Francbois who had mortally wounded Sparmann--while almost
of a certainty supposing Sparmann to be another person, namely,
himself--who was it? Who was the other enemy he possessed? He knew
neither of personal enemy nor spy tracking him, nor of French soldier
or official likely to do so.
All the same, there was, there must be, a third enemy, even though
Francbois had not been of the number that night, since it was almost
certain that neither of those hats would have been worn by him--even
as a disguise. There must be two others beside him while Sparmann was
alive!
"And still there is more mystery," Bevill mused as the old man stood
gazing up at him, "more that is inexplicable. Sparmann did not find
his way out through either of the doors, nor, since I followed him as
he fled down the stairs, did he do so by the ladder against the
balcony. How, then, did that come to pass? Did he hide somewhere in
the house until I had opened the door leading to the stables, or was
there some window near the ground through which a man wounded to the
death might yet escape?"
But no answer came to these reflections. Whatever had taken place in
the Weiss Haus, other than all which he already knew, had left no
trace behind.
* * * * * * *
Ten had struck, and, next, the quarter, from all the city clocks ere
Bevill had concluded these reflections, and still the carriage which
he was to accompany to the gate (since, as has been told, it was
finally decided that all should leave the city together, or attempt to
leave it) had not appeared.
As, however, the half-hour rang out, Bevill perceived it drawing near.
On the box he recognised Joseph, he being, doubtless owing to the
necessity for a coachman, the only servant whom the Comtesse de
Valorme had thought fit to bring with her.
Slowly the carriage drew near until, now, it was almost abreast of
where Bevill sat his horse, when, allowing La Rose to advance, he rode
up to the side of it and, bowing low to its occupants, asked if all
was well with them.
"All is very well," the Comtesse and Sylvia said together, while the
latter added, "as we pray it is with you. Ah!" she went on, "how we do
pray that the next half-hour will see you safely out of this place."
"And I," Bevill said, "that we shall all be safely out of it
together."
Any further remarks they would have made were, however, checked by
what they deemed to be an ordinary occurrence in a city in the
condition that Liége now stood.
From the direction in which the travelling carriage had come there
appeared--their corselets gleaming under the oil lamps slung across
the end of the old street--half a dozen men of a dragoon regiment,
having at their head an officer. As they advanced at a trot, Bevill
observed that no sooner had they approached close to the party than the
officer gave an order for them to proceed slowly, so that now the
_cortège_ presented the appearance of a carriage accompanied first by a
gentleman as escort, and next by a guard--small as it was--of cavalry.
Still, however, as the great vehicle proceeded through narrow, tortuous
streets, while emerging occasionally into little open spaces having
sometimes fountains in the middle of them and, here and there, an old
and timeworn statue, he saw that, wherever he and the carriage went,
the dragoons followed. Also, if any interruption occurred, or any halt
was made by Joseph in the confined streets, they halted too, so that, at
last, he felt sure that their close following of him and those with him
was no mere coincidence. This was, he soon decided, no night patrol
returning from its round to its own quarters, but resembled more a guard
which had taken possession of the travellers after having come across
them.
He saw, too, that the ladies knew what was behind and were already
alarmed.
Turning sound suddenly over his cantle, therefore, while raising his
hat at the same time, Bevill said to the officer:
"Monsieur proceeds in the same direction as ourselves. It is to be
hoped that we in no way interrupt his progress or that of his troops."
"In no way, monsieur," the officer answered equally politely, while
returning Bevill's salute. "But," speaking very clearly and
distinctly, "we are warned that an English spy will endeavour to leave
Liége to-night in company with two ladies who travel by coach, and,
until monsieur has satisfied those who are at the gate, he will pardon
us if we inflict our company on him and his friends."
"An English spy!" Bevill exclaimed.
"Unhappily, it is so. One whose name is as well known as the French
name with which he thinks fit to honour our country by assuming."