CHAPTER XIII.
A Timely Truce.
THINK that at first the Duke of Saint-Maclou could not, as the old saying goes, believe his eyes. He sat looking from me to the red box, and from the red box back to my face. Then he stretched out a slow, wavering hand and drew the box nearer to him till it rested in the circle of his spread-out arm and directly under his poring gaze. He seemed to shrink from opening it; but at last he pressed the spring with a covert timid movement of his finger, and the lid, springing open, revealed the Cardinal’s Necklace.
It seemed to be more brilliant than I had ever seen it, in the light of the lamp that stood on the table by us; and the duke looked at it as a magician might at the amulet which had failed him, or a warrior at the talisman that had proved impotent. And I, moved to a sudden anger with him for tempting the girl with such a bribe, said bitterly and scornfully, with fresh indignation rising in me:
“It was a high bid! Strange that you could not buy her with it!”
He paid no visible heed to my taunt; and his tone was dull, bewildered, and heavy as, holding the box still in his curved arm, he asked slowly:
“Did she give it to you to give to me?”
“She gave it to me to give to your wife.” He looked up with a start. “But your wife would not take it of her. And when I returned from my errand she was gone—where I know not. So I decided to send it back to you.”
He did not follow, or took very little interest in my brief history. He did not even reiterate his belief that I knew Marie’s whereabouts. His mind was fixed on another point.
“How did you know she had it?” he asked.
“I found her with it on the table before her”
“You found her?”
“Yes; I went into her sitting room and found her as I say; and she was sobbing; and I got from her the story of it.”
“She told you that?”
“Yes; and she feared to send it back, lest you should come and overbear her resistance. I supposed you had frightened her. But neither would she keep it”
“You bade her not,” he put in, in a quick low tone.
“If you like, I prayed her not. Did it need much cleverness to see what was meant by keeping it?”
His mouth twitched. I saw the tempest rising again in him. But for a little longer he held it down.
“Do you take me for a fool?” he asked. Am I a boy—do I know nothing of women? And do I know nothing of men?”
And he ended in a miserable laugh, and then fell again to tugging his mustache with his shaking hand.
“You know,” said I, “what’s bad in both; and no doubt that’s a good deal.”
In that very room the duchess had called Gustave de Berensac a preacher. Her husband had much the same reproach for me.
“Sermons are fine from your mouth,” he muttered.
And then his self-control gave way. With a sweep of his arm he drove the necklace from him, so that the box whizzed across the table, balanced a moment on the edge, and fell crashing on the ground, while the duke cried:
“God’s curse on it and you! You’ve taken her from me!”
There was danger—there was something like madness—in his aspect as he rose, and, facing me where I sat, went on in tones still low, but charged with a rage that twisted his features and lined his white cheeks:
“Are you a liar or a fool? Have you taken the game for yourself, or are you fool enough not to see that she has despised me—and that miserable necklace—for you—because you’ve caught her fancy? My God! and I’ve given my life to it for two years past! And you step in. Why didn’t you keep to my wife? You were welcome to her—though I’d have shot you all the same for my name’s sake. You must have Marie too, must you?”
He was mad, if ever man was mad, at that moment. But his words were strong with the force and clear with the insight of his passion; and the rush of them carried my mind along, and swept it with them to their own conclusion. Nay, I will not say that—for I doubted still; but I doubted as a man who would deny, not as one who laughs away, a thought. I sat silent, looking, not at him, but at the Cardinal’s Necklace on the floor.
Then, suddenly, while I was still busy with the thought and dazzled at the revelation, while I sat bemused, before I could move, his fingers were on my throat, and his face within a foot of mine, glaring and working as he sent his strength into his arms to throttle me. For his wife—and his name—he would fight a duel: for the sake of Marie Delhasse he would do murder on an invited stranger in his house. I struggled to my feet, his grip on my throat; and I stretched out my hands and caught him under the shoulders in the armpits, and flung him back against the table, and thence he reeled on to a large cabinet that was by the wall, and Stood leaning against it.
“I knew you were a villain,” I said, “but I thought you were a gentleman.” (I did not stop to consider the theory implied in that.)
He leaned against the cabinet, red with his exertion and panting; but he did not come at me again. He dashed his hand across his forehead and then he said in hoarse breathless tones:
“You shan’t leave here alive!”
Then, with a start of recollection, he thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a key. He put it in the lock of a drawer of the cabinet, fumbling after the aperture and missing it more than once. Then he opened the drawer, took out a pair of dueling pistols, and laid them on the table.
“They’re loaded,” he said. “Examine them for yourself.”
I did not move; but I took my little friend out of my pocket.
“If I’m attacked,” said I, “I shall defend myself; but I’m not going to fight a duel here, without witnesses, at the dead of night, in your house.”
“Call it what you like then,” said he; and he snatched up a pistol from the table.
He was beyond remonstrance, influence, or control. I believe that in a moment he would have fired; and I must have fired also, or gone to my death as a sheep to the slaughter. But as he spoke there came a sound, just audible, which made him pause, with his right hand that held the pistol raised halfway to the level of his shoulder.
Faint as the sound was, slight as the interruption it would seem to offer to the full career of a madman’s fury, it was yet enough to check him, to call him back to consciousness of something else in the world than his balked passion and the man whom he deemed to have thwarted it.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
It was the lowest, softest knock at the door—a knock that even in asking attention almost shrank from being heard. It was repeated, louder, yet hardly audibly. The duke, striding on the tip of his toes, transferred the pistols from the table back to the drawer, and stood with his hand inside the open drawer: I slid my weapon into my pocket; and then he trod softly across the floor to the door.
“One moment!” I whispered.
And I stooped and picked up the Cardinal’s Necklace and put it back where it had lain before, pushing its box under the table by a hasty movement of my foot—for the duke, after a nod of intelligence, was already opening the door. I drew back in the shadow behind it and waited.
“What do you want?” asked the duke.
And then a girl stepped hastily into the room and closed the door quickly and noiselessly behind her. I saw her face: she was my old friend Suzanne. When her eyes fell on me, she started in surprise, as well she might; but the caution and fear, which had made her knock almost noiseless, her tread silent, and her face all astrain with alert alarm, held her back from any cry.
“Never mind him,” said the duke. “That’s nothing to do with you. What do you want?”
“Hush! Speak low. I thought you would still be up, as you told me to refill the lamp and have it burning. There’s—there’s something going on.”
She spoke in a quick, urgent whisper, and in her agitation remembered no deference in her words of address.
“Going on? Where? Do you mean here?”
“No, no! I heard nothing here. In the duchess’s dressing-room: it is just under the room where I sleep. I awoke about half an hour ago, and I heard sounds from there. There was a sound as of muffled hammering, and then a noise, like the rasping of a file; and I thought I heard people moving about, but very cautiously.”
The duke and I were both listening attentively.
“I was frightened, and lay still a little; but then I got up—for the sounds went on—and put on some clothes, and came down”
“Why didn’t you rouse the men? It must be thieves.”
“I did go to the men’s room; but their door was locked, and I could not make them hear. I did not dare to knock loud; but I saw a light in the room, under the door; and if they’d been awake they would have heard.”
“Perhaps they weren’t there,” I suggested.
Suzanne turned a sudden look on me. Then she said:
“The safe holding the jewels is fixed in the wall of the duchess’ dressing room. And—and Lafleur knows it.”
The duke had heard the story with a frowning face; but now a smile appeared on his lips, and he said:
“Ah, yes! The jewels are there!”
“The—the Cardinal’s Necklace,” whispered Suzanne.
"True," said the duke; and his eyes met mine, and we both smiled. A few minutes ago it had not seemed likely that I should share a joke—even a rather grim joke—with him.
"Mr. Aycon," said he, "are you inclined to help me to look into this matter? It may be only the girl's fancy"
"No, no; I heard plainly," Suzanne protested eagerly.
"But one can never trust these rascally men-servants."
"I am quite ready," said I.
"Our business," said he, "will wait."
"It will be the better for waiting."
He hesitated a moment; then he assented gravely:
"You're right—much better."
He took a pistol out of the drawer, and shut and locked the drawer. Then he turned to Suzanne and said:
"You had better go back to bed."
"I daren't, I daren't!"
"Then stay here and keep quiet. Mind, not a sound!"
"Give me a pistol."
He unlocked the drawer again, and gave her what she asked. Then signing to me to follow him, he opened the door, and we stepped together into the dark hall, the duke laying his hand on my arm and whispering:
"They're after the necklace."
We groped slowly, with careful noiselessness, across the hall to the foot of the great staircase. There we paused and listened. There was nothing to be heard. We climbed the first flight of stairs, and the duke turned sharp to the right. We were now in a short corridor which ran north and south; three yards ahead of us was another turn, leading to the west wing of the house. There was a window by us; the duke gently opened it; and over against us, across the base of the triangle formed by the building, was another window, four or five yards away. The window was heavily curtained; no light could be seen through it. But as we stood listening, the sounds began—first the gentle muffled hammering, then the sound of the file. The duke still held my arm, and we stood motionless. The sounds went on for a while. Then they ceased. There was a pause of complete stillness. Then a sharp, though not loud, click! And, upon this, the duke whispered to me:
“They’ve got the safe open. Now they’ll find the small portable safe which holds the necklace.”
And I could make out an amused smile on his pale face. Before I could speak, he turned and began to crawl away. I followed. We descended the stairs again to the hall. At the foot he turned sharply to the left, and came to a standstill in a recess under the staircase.
“We’ll wait here. Is your pistol all right?”
“Yes, all right,” said I.
And, as I spoke, the faintest sound spread from the top of the stairs, and a board creaked under the steps of a man. I was close against the duke, and I felt him quiver with a stifled laugh. Meanwhile the Cardinal’s Necklace pressed hard against my ribs under my tightly buttoned coat.