CHAPTER XVII
THE REHEARSAL
These were the things that were in my mind the whole night through, and what sleep I got did not come to me until the sun was streaming through the windows and the birds in the park were singing fit to split your ears. I had made up my mind then that the business was beyond me, and that I could only watch and wait and make use of what I had seen when the opportunity came. As for telling my master, the idea was farther from my mind than ever. When I went to his room at eight o'clock, I did my best to look like a man who is thinking of nothing but his breakfast, and who will think of nothing after that but his dinner.
"Good-morning, sir," said I. "Are you ready for me now?"
"The devil a bit!" said he, sitting up in bed and looking very pale; "’tis like a boiled owl I feel."
"You made a night of it, then?" said I.
"Indeed and we did, and I lost fifteen hundred."
"You did, sir?"
"’Tis truth I speak. Fifteen hundred last night and three hundred the night before!"
"That's a heavy bill for two days in the country, sir."
"Faith, too heavy for me. And if ye'd bring me a brandy-and-soda, I'd be the better for it. I've to ride with madame this morning."
I brought him the spirit, and when he had drunk it he seemed more himself.
"Hildebrand," said he, getting up suddenly off the bed, "’tis a beautiful air to breathe, but too strong for me. I think we'd do better in Paris."
"I'm sure of it, sir," said I, glad to hear him talk like that.
"But better or worse, I'll be staying a while yet," said he, after a minute; "there's business that keeps me, and, bedad! 'tis pleasant business too."
I knew what he meant, and there was no need to talk to me in this way. The business that kept him at the château was madame's pretty face. He followed it everywhere, riding with her in the morning, taking tea with her in the arbor by the lake in the afternoon, turning over her music at night, looking into her eyes whenever they met as if he could have eaten her. And all the time she was the wife of another man—and more than that, was as deep down in roguery as any scoundrel out of Newgate. I write that she was deep down in roguery, but that is to get ahead in my story. You want to know, naturally, how I found that out, and I will tell you in a few words. It was the second day after I had seen the strange thing in the woods—a day when I was beginning to say that whatever was the mystery of the château de l'Épée, I should never unravel it. I had spent the morning brushing up my master's clothes; but in the afternoon I carried a message down to the village, and as I was returning through the park I chanced to pass at the back of the little arbor by the lake. Sir Nicolas was sitting there with Mme. Pauline, but instead of making love to her as usual, he was watching her spin a little ball in a basin. This seemed to me such a funny thing that I stopped a minute to watch; and observing that no one was about, I crept quite up to the place presently, and got a better view of what she was doing. I found then that what I had taken to be a basin was nothing but a bit of a roulette board, and that madame was showing him how well she could keep bank.
"Look," she said, and her eyes were as bright as diamonds when she spoke, "I will spin any number you like. Choose one yourself, and try me."
He named the number twelve, and she set the ball rolling. When it stopped, I knew by his exclamation that she had succeeded.
"Faith, it's like a miracle!" cried he. "Was it here that you practised it?"
"Indeed no! I learned it when I used to be tailleur for my husband. They played almost every day then, and I spun the ball so often that I found out at last how to make it go into any hole I pleased. What a fortune I could win if I were dishonest!"
With this she drew quite close to him, and I saw him wind his arm tight round her. Presently she said, and said it very sweet, too;
"Marmontel has won a great deal off you, hasn't he?"
"The matter of four thousand," replied he, very gloomily.
"You would win it back, and more, if I were to spin the ball to-night, and you were my partner," she went on, still very nicely.
"You're mocking me!" said he in French, but his face flushed with the word; "the thing's not possible."
"Not possible!" said she, looking up at him in her saucy way—"not possible, when two of the croupiers at Monaco made a fortune out of it last year. Oh, Sir Nicolas Steele, how simple you are!"
"But it's a new idea to me," said he, and he was excited too. "Will you show it to me once more?"
"What number will you have?" asked she.
"Twenty-seven for luck!" cried he.
I saw her take the little ball in her hand and spin the basin. When at last it stopped, Sir Nicolas gave a great cry and jumped up off his seat.
"There's a fortune in that," said he.
"Without doubt, for those that know how to use it," was her answer.
"You mean" said he.
But what she meant I never heard, for they had both risen from their seats, and I thought it about time to make off. She was locking the little basin in one of the cupboards of the arbor when I left them, and he was bending over her, earnest in talk. I fancied, however, as I went along, that I could have told him as much as she could, and, truth to tell, the few words I had heard had knocked the bottom clean out of all my speculations.
"Bigg," said I to myself, "if ever you're starving, don't go to think that you'll make a fortune out of keyholes. Why, what's it come to? You've been asking all along who's her confederate, and here she's choosing Nicky himself for the part. If it don't beat cock-fighting, I'm a Dutchman."
Take it as I would, I must say that it did alter in a moment all my theories about the château and its pretty mistress. So long as I had looked to find my master a victim of the woman, so long did I suspect every man and every move in and out of the great house. But once it came home to me that she had invited us there to help her, then the whole game was clear to me. The comte, I was sure, dare not show in the house because some of madame's guests knew him to their cost. Nicky was chosen for the part as a man who wouldn't stand at much, and who would cover madame's tricks. As for her being able to throw what number she liked—well, it's all history that a croupier did it at Monte Carlo last winter. "But," said I, "only the very devil of a woman would have gone so deep"—and that was gospel truth.
It was about five o'clock when I got back to my room, and I did not see Sir Nicolas again until the gong went for dressing. He was silent, as usual, but he did not hide it from me that his nerves were all on the twitch; while the slap-dash way he put on his clothes was a tale in itself. When at last he did go down, he shouted to me that he should want me no more that night, and that possibly we should be going back to Paris next morning—at which I laughed to myself, as well I might.
"You'll go back to Paris with full pockets, Nicky," said I to myself; "but you won't be so pleased when you learn more about the chap yonder, and the kissing he does in the wood. Love's a very pleasant business, but it don't do to take partners."
I was still laughing over the notion when I put his clothes away and went down to my own supper. There was plenty of time before me,—for I meant to see the play in the drawing-room that night,—and it was not until ten o'clock was chimed from the spire of the château that I lighted my pipe and went out into the grounds. But I was doomed to a big disappointment. For the first time since I had been at the house, the shutters of the room were closed. Not a ray of light passed them. You couldn't hear a sound, standing on the lawn as I did. All the folks might have packed up their bags and gone back to the city. The place might have been as deserted as the grave.
I was annoyed at this, you may be sure, and having nothing particular to do, I took a stroll through the woods toward the little pavilion where I had seen and heard so many queer things. But here, for the second time that evening, all was changed. The door of the little house was wide open. Inside it was dark as death. More than that, I had not taken twenty steps on my way home through the thicket when I came across something which I had heard of before, but the recollection of which had gone clean out of my head. It was a red lantern swinging at the branch of a tree.
"Halloa!" said I, and I suppose that I spoke aloud, "so here's the lantern you asked after, my friend—and red too. Well, if I know any thing of that color, it means danger."
Now, I'm not a timid man, but when you speak to yourself, believing there's no one within a mile of you, it does give you a start to get an answer. And the words were scarce off my lips when some one in the wood at my right hand called out to me, and in good English too;
"Yes, that means danger, Bigg."
"Who the devil are you?" said I, turning round sudden, but seeing nobody.
"I'm from across the Channel—but not on your job, Bigg, so don't trouble yourself. It's the Comte de Faugère I'd be glad to shake hands with."
Saying this, a little man dressed in a bowler hat and a short black coat sprang out of the thicket and faced me. I guessed how things stood in a minute—detective was written all over his face.
"Well," said I, "so you want the count?"
"I do," said be, "and pretty badly; but it's not this time, I fancy. He's a hundred miles from here by this."
"And his wife"
"Be dd to her!" said he. "She's the cleverest woman I ever met, and she's done me again, I reckon. You give your guv'ner the tip. If he makes any money up yonder let him tie up his breeches pocket tight. If he don't, she'll steal every penny of it "
"Do you say that?" cried I.
"I do so," said he. "If I was him, and I had any winnings hanging about, I'd bank 'em at Brest, and take thundering good care they didn't go by her messenger. But you don't want to be told twice."
I said that I did not, and after a few words of thanks to him—for he'd put me all in a fever—I ran back to the house, determined that Nicky should know the whole story before another hour had passed. In this attempt luck favored me for the first time. I found my master walking on the lawn with young Lord Beyton. They were smoking together, and seemed to be in earnest talk.
"Well, Hildebrand," said Sir Nicolas, when he saw me, "what keeps you up at this time of night?"
"A letter you gave me to-day, sir," said I. "Could I speak to you about it for a minute?"
He took the hint, and, leaving Beyton, he walked across the lawn with me. Before we took the second turn, I had told him the story.
"Good God!" said he, turning very pale. "Are ye sure of it?"
"As sure as you're talking to me."
"And the man's her husband?"
"Something like that," said I.
"The little witch!" cried he, though it was plain that the news hit him hard.
"But I've the matter of two thousand in notes, and promises for as much more in my pockets now," he went on after the pause. "Ye must know that I had the luck to-night when she came to the table."
"If that's the case, sir," said I, "the sooner the money's in the bank at Brest, the better for us."
"Ye speak truth," exclaimed he; "but who's to take it?"
"I'll start at dawn," said I; "meanwhile there's no need for me to go to sleep. I'm used to a night out of bed now and then."
"And what should I do?"
"Go on as usual, but take the first train to Paris in the morning. I don't fancy the police as footmen myself—nor you neither, I imagine?"
He said that he did not, and when he had given me the money—and the promise of two hundred and fifty if I got through safe with it—he went back to the others as I had suggested. But I returned to my room, and locking myself in, I waited for the dawn like a sick man. Many anxious nights I have passed in my life, but that was the worst of them all. Every whistle of the wind on the staircase, every creak of board or bed set my nerves agog. It seemed to me that I should never get out of the house with the money—perhaps not with my life. A hundred times I must have gone to my window to watch the park; a hundred times I thought I heard footsteps on the staircase, and opened my door to listen. Yet the first gray of daylight found me still where I was. Not a soul appeared to be in the grounds of the château. The old house loomed up out of the cold mists like a great deserted temple. Look where you would, you could see nothing but the trees and the green of the grass. The only sound was the shrill twittering of the birds in the bushes.
Ten minutes after the dawn had come, I left my room and set out upon the journey. I had tied the money round my waist, and had loaded my revolver before I started; but once in the park, these precautions, and my fear all night, looked pretty foolish. It was plain that I was the only man then about Mme. Pauline's place. Even the cattle were still lying upon the wet grass; the horses still sleeping in the meadows. As it was in the gardens, so I found it in the woods. The night keepers had gone to their beds; the dairymen were not yet out of doors. A beautiful stillness was everywhere, a freshness of the morning which was like champagne to a man. I had not walked a mile before my spirits came back to me, and I began to laugh out aloud at the little chap in the bowler hat who had put the thing into ray head the night before.
"Good Lord," said I, "that you should fluster a man so, when I dare say she had no more thought of doing such a thing than of marrying Nicky! But that's always the way with policemen—they aren't content with what their eyes can see, but want to look at it through a microscope. Rob him? Not she, so long as he'll play for her."
I was pretty well through the wood at this time, and when the sun began to shine it found me on the high-road leading to the railway station. I had walked perhaps a mile down this when I saw a man on ahead of me, going my way, but slower than I was; and at the second look I recognized him. He was the little detective I had laughed at.
"Halloa, there!" I shouted, mighty glad to get company in my walk, "what are you doing abroad at this time of the morning?"
He waited for me to come up to him, and then he cried;
"Why, it's Bigg—and in a hurry, too!"
"You've put your thumb on it," said I. "And you didn't catch the count, I make sure, or you wouldn't be here."
"Catch him!" exclaimed he; "no, not quite. You don't take birds like him in the nest. He's too many sentinels."
"Is the charge a heavy one?" I asked as we walked along together.
"Obtaining a diamond in London," said he; "but there's a dozen others. He's a bad one right through, is the Comte de Faugère."
I said that he must be, and then we both quickened up a bit.
"I'll be coming over here after Nicky Steele, by and by, I fancy," he remarked pleasantly, when we had covered a mile or more.
"Ah," said I, "it will want a sharp man for that job!"
"I won't deny it," cried he; "the way that chap keeps outside the law is a crusher. Here's a health to him!"
He had pulled a silver flask out of his pocket as he spoke, and raised it to his lips. Then he passed it over to me.
"Brandy, mate," said he; "you can't do better in the raw of the morning."
I took a good nip, for the day was bitter cold, and gave him back his flask. But I had not walked on ten yards when I found myself reeling like a drunken man—and then I fell heavily, with him bending over me.
One night, some ten days after I fell down insensible on the road to Brest, Sir Nicolas and I were talking in my bedroom in the village of Folgoet of Mme. Pauline and her château. I was still weak and bruised and unable to leave my bed, and he had come up to say good-night to me.
"All!" said he, "we'd be four thousand the richer to-day if you had never discovered that the Comte de Faugère had a liking for the woods."
"Say, rather, sir, if one of his gang had not played it off on me that he was a detective."
"Ye're right there. To give it out that he was an English officer, too! 'Twas a daring business altogether—for the French police were watching the house the very night when the woman stayed for a last deal. The count must have gone the day before. She left in the middle of the night, after I'd won the money for her. 'Tis the Lord only knows how she got away."
"I can tell you, sir, for I saw her in the woods one day disguised as a man. That's how she cheated them."
"I don't doubt it," said he; "they had sentinels everywhere, and used flags by day and lanterns by night for the danger signals. Sure, she was a wonderful woman—to rent a house like that and to play the part."
"Any way," said I, "her man nearly did for me."
"Indeed and he did. There was not much life in you when the priest found you, and carried you to the village."
"And not much money, either."
"They'd not left you sixpence for a cab-fare," cried he.