emergency coachman en route from Montpellier-le-Vieux to La
Roque-Sainte-Marguerite, had him now fairly by the heels, as it were
his very shadow, something as tenacious, as inescapable. Or he had been
given every excuse for believing that such was the case.
Impossible--and the more so the longer he pondered it--to credit to
mere coincidence the innuendoes uttered at the château by Mr. Monk and
his party.
No: there had been malice in that, Duchemin was satisfied, if not some
darker purpose which perplexed the most patient scrutiny.
Now malice without incentive is unthinkable. But Duchemin searched his
memory in vain for anything he could have said or done to make anybody
desire to discredit him in the sight of the ladies of the Château de
Montalais. Still the attempt so to do had been unmistakable: the Lone
Wolf had been lugged into the conversation literally by his legendary
ears.
Surely, one would think, that nocturnal prowler of pre-War Paris had
been so long dead and buried even the most ghoulish gossip should
respect his poor remains and not disinter them merely to demonstrate
that the Past can never wholly die!
Had he, then, some enemy of old hidden under one of those sleek
surfaces?
An excellent visual memory reviewed successively the physical
characteristics of Messieurs Monk, Phinuit and de Lorgnes, and their
chauffeur Jules; with the upshot that Duchemin could have sworn that he
had never before known any of these.
And Madame la Comtesse? In respect of that one memory again drew a
blank, but remained unsatisfied. When one thought of her some remote,
faint chord of reminiscence thrilled and hummed, but never
recognisably. Not that there was anything remarkable in this: if one
cared to look for them, the world was thronged with women such as she,
handsome, spirited, well-groomed animals endued with some little
distinction of manner, native or acquired, with every appeal to the
senses and more or less, generally spurious, to the intelligence. They
made the theatre possible in France, leavened the social life of the
half-world, fluttered conspicuously and often disastrously through
circles of more sedate society, had their portraits in every Salon,
their photographs in every issue of the fashionable journals. Some made
history, others fiction: either would be insufferably dull lacking
their influence. But they were as much alike as so many peas, out of
their several shells, and the man who saw one inevitably remembered
all.
Setting aside then the theory of positive personal animus, what other
reason could there be for the effort to fasten upon Duchemin suspicion
of identity with the late Lone Wolf?
A sinister consideration, if any, and one, Duchemin suspected, not
unconnected with the much-talked-about jewels of Madame de Montalais...
But it was absurd to believe that persons fostering a design of such
nature would so deliberately and obviously advertise their purpose!
Cheerfully admitting that he was an imbecile to think of such a thing,
Duchemin set his mental alarm for six the following morning, rose at
that hour, and by eight had tramped the five miles between Nant and the
nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde; where he despatched a code
telegram to London, requesting any information it might have or be able
to obtain concerning Mr. Whitaker Monk of New York and the several
members of his party; the said information to be forwarded in code to
await the arrival of Andre Duchemin at the Hôtel du Commerce, Millau.
And then, partly to kill time, partly to get himself in trim for
to-morrow's trip, which he meant to make strictly in character as the
pedestrian tourist, he walked round three sides of a square in
returning to Nant--by way, that is, of Sauclières and the upper valley
of the Dourbie.
In the rich sunshine that fell from a cloudless sky--even the twin
peaks that stood sentinel over Nant had shamelessly put off their
yashmaks for the day--the rain-fresh world was sweet to see; and
Duchemin found himself consuming leagues with heels strangely light; or
he thought their lightness strange until he discovered the buoyance of
his heart, which wasn't strange at all. He knew too well the cause of
that; and had given over fretting about the inevitable. The sum of his
philosophy was now: _What must be, must_ .It would have been difficult
to be unhappy in the knowledge that one retained still the capacity to
love generously, honourably, expecting nothing, exacting nothing,
regretting nothing, not even in anticipation of the ultimate,
inevitable heartache.
Toward mid-afternoon a solitary mischance threw a passing shadow upon
his content. As he trudged along the river road, on the last lap of his
journey--Nant almost in sight--he heard a curious, intermittent rumble
on a steep hillside whose foot was skirted by the road, and sought its
cause barely in time to leap for life out of the path of a great
boulder that, dislodged from its bed, possibly by last night's deluge,
was hurtling downhill with such momentum that it must have crushed
Duchemin to a pulp had he been less alert.
Striking the road with an impact that left a deep, saucer-shaped dent,
with one final bound the huge stone, amid vast splashings, found its
last resting place in the river.
Duchemin moved out of the way of the miniature avalanche that followed,
and for some minutes stood reviewing with a truculent eye the face of
the hillside. But nothing moved thereon, it was quite bare of good
cover, little more than a slant of naked earth and shale, dotted
manywhere with boulders, cousins to that which sought his life--none,
however, so large. If human agency had moved it, the stone had come
from the high skyline of the hill; and by the time one could climb to
this last, Duchemin was sure, there would be nobody there to find.
The remainder of the afternoon was wasted utterly on the terrasse of
the Café de l'Univers, with the château ever in view, wishing it were
convenable to make one's duty call without more delay. But it wasn't;
not to wait a decent interval would be self-betraying, since Duchemin
had no longer any immediate intention of moving on from Nant; finally,
he rather hoped to get news at Millau that would strengthen a prayer to
Eve de Montalais to be sensible and remove her jewels to a place of
safe-keeping before it was too late.
Millau, however, disappointed. At the end of a twenty-mile walk on a
day of suffocating heat, Duchemin plodded wearily into the Hôtel du
Commerce, engaged a room for the night, and was given a telegram from
London which rewarded decoding to some such effect as this:
"MONK AMERICAN INDEPENDENT MEANS GOOD REPUTE NO INFORMATION AS TO
OTHERS HAVE ASKED SURÉTÉ CONCERNING LORGNES WOULD GIVE SOMETHING TO
KNOW WHAT MISCHIEF YOU ARE MEDDLING WITH THIS TRIP AND WHY THE DEUCE
YOU MUST."
Few things are better calculated to curdle the milk of human kindness
than to find that one's fellow-man has meanly contrived to keep his
reputation fair when one is satisfied it should be otherwise. Duchemin
used bitter language in strict confidence with himself, disliked his
dinner and, after conscientiously loathing the sights of Millau for an
hour or two, sought his bed in the devil's own humour.
Though he waited till eleven of the following forenoon, there was no
supplementary telegram: London evidently meant him to understand that
the Surété in Paris had communicated nothing to the discredit of
Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes and his consort.
Enquiry of the administration of the Hôtel de Commerce elicited the
information that the Monk party had stopped there on the night of the
storm, doubled back in the morning to visit Montpellier-le-Vieux,
returning for midday déjeuner, and had then proceeded for Paris, just
like any other well-behaved company of tourists.
There was nothing more to be done but go back to Nant and--what made it
even more disgusting--nothing to be done there except ... wait...
Thoroughly disgruntled, more than half persuaded he had staked a claim
for a mare's-nest, he took the road in the heat of a day even more
oppressive than its yesterday. In the valley of the Dourbie the air was
stagnant, lifeless. After eight miles of it Duchemin was guilty of two
mistakes of desperation.
In the first instance he paused in La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite and,
tormented by thirst, refreshed himself at the auberge where the
barouche and guide had been hired to convey the party from Montalais on
to Montpellier. The landlord remembered Duchemin and made believe he
didn't, serving the wayfarer with a surly grace the only drink he would
admit he had to sell, an atrociously acid cider fit to render the last
stage of thirst worse than the first.
Duchemin, however, thought it safer than the water of the place, when
he had spied out the associations of the well.
He drank sitting on a bench outside the door of the auberge. He could
hear the voice of the landlord inside, grumbling and growling, to what
purport he couldn't determine. But it wasn't difficult to guess; and
before Duchemin was finished he had testimony to the rightness of his
surmise, finding himself the cynosure of more than a few pair of eyes
set in the ill-favoured faces of natives of La Roque.
One gathered that the dead guide had enjoyed a fair amount of local
popularity.
While Duchemin drank and smoked and pored over a pocket-map of the
department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed
scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the
dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a
dreary animal, apparently a horse designed by a Gothic architect,
mounted, and rode off in the direction of Nant.
Then Duchemin committed his second error of judgment, which consisted
in thinking to find better and cooler air on the heights of the Causse
Larzac, across the river, together with a shorter way to
Nant--indicated on the pocket-map as a by-road running in a tolerably
direct line across the plateau--than that which followed the windings
of the stream.
Accordingly he crossed the Dourbie, toiled up a zig-zag path cut in the
face of the frowning cliff, reached the top in a bath of sweat, and sat
down to cool and breathe himself.
The view was splendid, almost worth the climb. Duchemin could see for
miles up and down the valley, a panorama wildly picturesque and limned
like a rainbow. Across the way La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite stood out
prominently and with such definition in that clear air that Duchemin
identified the figure of the landlord, standing in the door of the
auberge with arms raised and elbows thrust out on a level with his
eyes: the pose of a man using field-glasses.
Duchemin wondered if he ought to feel complimented. Then he looked up
the valley and saw, far off, a tiny cloud of dust kicked up by the
heels of the horse ridden by the boy from the auberge, making good time
on the highway to Nant. And again Duchemin wondered...
Having rested, he picked himself up, found his road, a mere trail of
wagon tracks, and mindful of the cooling drinks to be had in the Café
de l'Univers, put his best foot foremost.
After a time something, call it instinct, impelled him to look back the
way he had come. Half a mile distant he saw the figure of a peasant
following the same road. Duchemin stopped and waited for the other to
come up, thinking to get a better look at him, perhaps some definite
information about the road and in particular as to his chances of
finding drinkable water. But when he stopped the man stopped, sat him
down upon a rock, filled a pipe, and conspicuously rested.
Duchemin gave an impatient gesture and moved on. After another mile he
glanced overshoulder again. The same peasant occupied the same relative
distance from him.
But if the fellow were following him with a purpose, he could readily
lose himself in that wild land before Duchemin could run him down; and
if, on the contrary, he proved to be only a peaceable wayfarer, he was
bound to be a dull companion on the road, and an unsavory one to boot.
So Duchemin did nothing to discourage his voluntary shadow; but looking
back from time to time, never failed to see that squat,
round-shouldered figure in the middle distance of the landscape,
following him with the doggedness of Fate. Toward evening, however, of
a sudden--between two glances--the fellow disappeared as completely and
mysteriously as if he had fallen or dived into an aven.
Thus definite mental irritation was added to the physical discomforts
he suffered. For if anything it was hotter on the high causse than it
had been in the valley. An intermittent breeze imitated to vicious
perfection draughts from a furnace. And if this were a short cut to
Nant, Duchemin's judgment was gravely at fault.
Otherwise the journey was not unlike an exaggerated version of his walk
from Meyrueis to Montpellier-le-Vieux, except that the road was clearly
marked and he found less climbing to do. He saw neither hamlets nor
farmsteads, and found no water. By the middle of the afternoon his
thirst had become sheer torture.
In dusk of evening he stumbled down into the valley again and struck
the river road about midway between the Château de Montalais and Nant.
At this junction several dwellings clustered, in that fading light dark
masses on either side of the road. Duchemin noticed a few shadowy
shapes loitering about, but was too far gone in fatigue and thirst to
pay them any heed. He had no thought but to stop at the first house and
beg a cup of water. As he lifted a hand to knuckle the door he was
attacked.
With no more warning than a cry, the signal for the onslaught, and the
sudden scuffling noise of several pair of feet, he wheeled, found
himself already closely pressed by a number of men, and struck out at
random. His stick landed on somebody's head with a resounding thump
followed by a yell of pain. Then three men were grappling with him, two
more seeking to aid them, and another lay in the roadway clutching a
fractured skull and spitting oaths and groans.
His stick was seized and wrenched away, he was over-whelmed by numbers.
The knot of struggling figures toppled and went to the dust, Duchemin
underneath, so weighed down that he could not for the moment move a
hand toward his pistol.
Half-stifled by the reek of unwashed flesh, he heard broken phrases
growled in voices hoarse with effort and excitement:
"The knife!" ... "Hold him!" ... "Stand clear and let me--!" ... "The
knife!"
Struggling madly, he worked a leg free and kicked with all his might.
One of his assailants howled aloud and fell back to nurse a broken
shin. Two others scrambled out of the way, leaving one to pin him down
with knees upon his chest, another to wield the knife.
Staring eyes caught a warning gleam on descending steel. Duchemin
squirmed frantically to one side, and felt cold metal kiss the skin
over his ribs as the blade penetrated his clothing, close under the
armpit.
Before the man with the knife could strike again, Duchemin, roused to a
mightier effort, threw off the ruffian on his chest, got on his knees
and, raining blows right and left as the others closed in again,
somehow managed to scramble to his feet.
Fist-work told. For an instant he stood quite free, the centre of a
circle of uncertain assassins whose cowardice gave him time to whip out
his pistol. But before he could level it a man was on his back, his
wrist was seized and the weapon twisted from his grasp.
A cry of triumph was echoed by exclamations of alarm as, disarmed,
Duchemin was again left free, the thugs standing back to let the pistol
do its work. In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a
nearby corner and smote the group: the twin, glaring eyes of a motor
car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in
the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies.
Duchemin's cry for help was uttered only an instant before his pistol
exploded in alien hands. The headlights showed him distinctly the face
of the man who fired, the same face of fat features black with soot
that he had seen by moonlight at Montpellier-le-Vieux.
But the bullet went wild, and the automobile did not stop, but drove
directly at the group and so swiftly that the flash of the shot was
still vivid in Duchemin's vision when the car swept between him and
those others, scattering them like chickens.
Simultaneously the brakes were set, the dark bulk began to slide with
locked wheels to a stop, and a voice cried: "Quickly, monsieur,
quickly!"--the voice of Eve de Montalais.
In two bounds Duchemin overtook the car and before it had come to a
standstill leaped upon the running-board and grasped the side. He had
one glimpse of the set white face of Eve, en profile, as she bent
forward, manipulating the gear-shift. Then the pistol spat again, its
bullet struck him a blow of sickening agony in the side.
Aware that he was dangerously wounded, he put all that he had left of
strength and will into one final effort, throwing his body across the
door. As he fell sprawling into the tonneau consciousness departed like
a light withdrawn.
VIII
IN RE AMOR ET AL.
In the course of two weeks or so Duchemin was able to navigate a
wheeled chair, bask on the little balcony outside his bedchamber
windows in the Château de Montalais, and even--strictly against
orders--take experimental strolls.
The wound in his side still hurt like the very deuce at every
ill-considered movement; but Duchemin was ever the least patient of men
unless the will that coerced him was his own; constraint to another's,
however reasonable, irked him to exasperation; so that these falterings
in forbidden ways were really (as he assured Eve de Montalais when, one
day, she caught him creeping round his room, one hand pressed against
the wall for support, the other to his side) in the nature of a sop to
his self-respect.
"You've only got to tell me not to do a thing often enough," he
commented as she led him back to his chair, "to fill me with unholy
desire to do it if I die in the attempt."
"Isn't that a rather common human failing?" she asked, wheeling the
invalid chair through one of the french windows to the balcony.
"That's what makes it all seem so unfair."
Smiling, the woman turned the back of the chair to the brightest glare
of sunshine, draped a light rug over the invalid's knees, and seated
herself in a wicker chair, facing him.
"Makes all what seem so unfair?"
"The indignity of being born human." He accepted a cigarette and waxed
didactic: "The one thing that the ego can find to reconcile it with
existence is belief in its own uniquity."
"I don't think," she interrupted with a severe face belied by amused
eyes, "that sounds quite nice."
"Uniquity? Because it sounds like iniquity? They are not unrelated.
What makes iniquity seem attractive is as a rule its departure from the
commonplace."
"But you were saying--?"
"Merely it's our personal belief that our emotions and sensations and
ways of thought are peculiar to ourselves, individually, that sometimes
makes the game seem worth the scandal."
"Yes: one presumes we all do think that..."
"But no sooner does one get firmly established in that particular phase
of self-complacence than along comes Life, grinning like a gamin, and
kicks over our pretty house of cards--shows us up to ourselves by
revealing our pet, exclusive idiosyncrasies as simple infirmities all
mortal flesh is heir to."
"Monsieur is cynic..."
"Madame means obvious. Well: if I patter platitudes it is to conceal a
sense of gratification." Eve arched her eyebrows. "I mean, you have
shown me that I share at least one quality with you: instinctive
resentment of the voice of reason."
She pronounced a plaintive "Mon Dieu!" and appealing to Heaven for
compassion declared: "He means again to wrestle spiritually with me
about the proper disposition of my jewels."
"No, madame: pardon. I am contemplating a long series of exhaustive
arguments designed to prove it your duty to leave your jewels where
they are, in all their noble insecurity. This in the firm belief that
to plead with you long enough to adopt this course will result in your
going and doing otherwise out of sheer..."
"Perversity, monsieur?"
"Humanity, madame!"
Eve de Montalais laughed the charming, low-keyed laugh of a happily
diverted woman.
"But spare yourself, monsieur. I surrender at discretion: I will do as
you wish."
"Truly? Rather than listen to my discourse, you actually agree to
remove your jewels to a safe place?"
"Even so, monsieur. As soon as you are able to get about, and the
Château de Montalais lacks a guest, I will leave Louise to take care of
madame ma mère for a few days while I journey to Paris--"
"Alone?"
"But naturally."
"Taking your jewels with you?"
"Why else do I go?"
"But, madame, you must not--"
"And why?"
"You, a woman! travel alone to Paris with a treasure in jewels? Ah, no!
I should say not!"
"Monsieur is emphatic," Eve suggested demurely.
"Monsieur means to be. Rather than let you run such a risk I would
steal the jewels myself, convey them to Paris, put them in safe
keeping, and send you the receipt."
"What a lot of trouble monsieur would save me, if he would only be so
kind as to do as he threatens."
"And how amusing if he were arrested en route," Duchemin supplemented
with a wry smile.
"I am quite confident of your ability to elude the police, monsieur."
"Do I hear you compliment me?"
"If you take it so..."
"But suppose you were not confident of my good will?"
"Impossible."
"Madame is too flattering; one is sure she is too wise to put so great
a temptation in the way of any man."
"Monsieur is the reverse of flattering; he implies that one does not
know where one can repose trust."
"I must warn madame there are those in this world who would call her
faith misplaced."
"Doubtless. But what of that? Am I to distrust you because others might
who do not know you so well?"
"But--madame--you can hardly claim to know me well.
"Listen, my friend." Eve de Montalais flicked away her cigarette and
sat forward, elbows on knees, hands laced, her level gaze holding his.
"It is true, our acquaintance is barely three weeks old; but you do
injustice to my insight if you assume I have learned nothing about you
in all that time. You have not been secretive with me. The mask you
hold between yourself and the world, lest it pry into what does not
concern it, has been lowered when you have talked with me; and I have
had eyes to see what was revealed--"
"Ah, madame!"
"--the nature of a man of honour, monsieur, simple of heart and
generous, as faithful as he is brave."
Eve had spoken impulsively, with warmth of feeling unrealised until too
late. Now slow colour mantled her cheeks. But her eyes remained
steadfast, candid, unashamed. It was Duchemin who dropped his gaze,
abashed.
And though nothing had any sense in his understanding other than the
words which he had just heard from the lips of the woman who held his
love--as he had known now these many days--some freak of dual
consciousness made him see, for the first time, in that moment, how
oddly bleached and wasted seemed the powerful, nervous, brown hands
that rested on his knees. And he thought: It will be long before I am
strong again.
With a troubled smile he said: "I would give much to be worthy of what
you think of me, madame. And I would be a poor thing indeed if I failed
to try to live up to your faith."
"You will not fail," she replied. "What you are, you were before my
faith was, and will be afterwards, when..."
She did not finish, but of a sudden recollected herself, lounged back
in her chair, and laughed quietly, with humorous appeal to his
sympathy.
"So, that is settled: I am not to be permitted to take my jewels to
Paris alone. What then, monsieur?"
"I would suggest you write your bankers," said Duchemin seriously, "and
tell them that you contemplate bringing to Paris some valuables to
entrust to their care. Say that you prefer not to travel without
protection, and request them to send you two trusted men--detectives,
they may call them--to guard you on the way. They will do so without
hesitation, and you may then feel entirely at ease."
"Not otherwise, you think?"
"Not otherwise, I feel sure."
"But why? You have been so persistent about this matter, monsieur. Ever
since that night when those curious people stopped here in the rain....
Can it be that you suspect them of evil designs upon my trinkets?"
Duchemin shrugged. "Who knows, madame, what they were? You call them
'curious'; for my part I find the adjective apt."
"I fancy I know what you thought about them..."
"And that is--?"