Chapter III: Part 3

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--?"

"That they rather led the conversation to the subject of my jewels."

"Such was my thought, indeed."

"Perhaps you were right. If so, they learned all they needed to know."

"Except possibly the precise location of your strong box."

"They may have learned even that."

"How, madame?"

"I don't know; but if they were what you suspect they were, they were clever people, far more clever than poor provincials like us." She took a moment for thought. "But I am puzzled by their harping on the subject of--I think they called him the Lone Wolf. Now why should they do that?"

Duchemin was constrained to take refuge in another shrug. "Who knows?" he iterated. "If they were as clever as we assume, doubtless they were clever enough to have a motive even for that."

"He really existed, this Lone Wolf? He was more than a creature of fable?"

"Assuredly, madame. For years he was the nightmare and the scourge of people of wealth in every capital of Europe."

"Why did they call him the Lone Wolf, do you know?"

"I believe some imaginative Parisian journalist fixed that sobriquet on him, in recognition of the theory upon which, apparently, he operated."

"And that was--?"

"That a criminal, at least a thief, to be successful must be absolutely anonymous and friendless; in which case nobody can betray him. As madame probably understands, criminals above a certain level of intelligence are seldom caught by the police except through the treachery of accomplices. The Lone Wolf seems to have exercised a fair amount of ingenuity and prudence in making his coups; and inasmuch as he had no confederates, not a living soul in his confidence, there was no one who could sell him to the authorities."

"Still, in the end--?"

"Oh, no, madame. He was never caught. He simply ceased to thieve."

"I wonder why..."

"I believe because he fell in love and considered good faith with the object of his affections incompatible with a career of crime."

"So he gave up crime. How romantic! And the woman: did she appreciate the sacrifice?"

"While she lived, yes, madame. Or so they say. Unfortunately, she died."

"And then--?"

"So far as is known the converted enemy to Society did not backslide; the Lone Wolf never prowled again."

"An extraordinary story."

"But is not every story that has to do with the workings of the human soul? What one of us has not buried in him a story quite as strange? Even you--"

"Monsieur deceives himself. I am simply--what you see."

"But what I see is not simple, but complex and intriguing beyond expression. A woman of your sort walling herself up in a wilderness, renouncing the world, renouncing life itself in its very heyday--!"

"But hardly that, monsieur."

"Then I am stupid..."

"I will explain." The sleekly coiffured brown head bent low over hands that played absently with their jewels. "To a woman of my sort, monsieur, life is not life without love. I lived once for a little time, then love was taken out of my life. When my sorrow had spent itself, I knew that I must find love again if I were to go on living. What was I to do? I knew that love is not found through seeking. So I waited..."

"Such philosophy is rare, madame."

"Philosophy? No: I will not call it that. It was knowledge--the heart wise in its own wisdom, surpassing mine, telling me that if I would but be patient love would one day seek me out again, wherever I might wait, and give me once more--life."

She rose and went to the window, paused there, turning back to Duchemin a face composed but fairer for a deepened flush.

"But this is not writing to my bankers, monsieur," she said in a changed but steady voice. "I must do that at once if I am to get the letter in to-day's post."

"If madame will accept the advice of one not without some experience..."

"What else does monsieur imagine I am doing?"

"Then you will write privately and burn your blotting paper; after which you will post the letter with your own hands, letting nobody see the address."

"And when shall I say I will make the journey?"

"As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais."

"That will be in three days..."

"Or less."

"As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais."

"That will be in three days..."

"Or less." "But you will not be strong enough to leave us within another week."

"What has that to do--?"

"This: that I refuse positively to go away while you are our guest, monsieur. Somebody must watch over you and see that you come to no harm."

"But madame--!"

"No: I am quite resolved. Monsieur has too rare a genius for getting in the way of danger. I shall not leave the château before you do. So I shall set this day week for the date of my journey."

IX

BLIND MAN'S BUFF

In short, Monsieur Duchemin considered convalescence at the Chateau de Montalais one of the most agreeable of human estates, and counted the cost of admission thereunto by no means dear; and with all his grousing (in respect of which he was conscientious, holding it at once a duty and a perquisite of his disability) he was at heart in no haste whatever to be discharged as whole and hale. The plain truth is, the man malingered shamelessly and even took a certain pride in the low cunning which enabled him to pose on as the impatient patient when he was so very well content to take his ease, be waited on and catered to, and listen for the footsteps of Eve de Montalais and the accents of her delightful voice.

These last he heard not often enough by half. Still, he seldom lacked company in the long hours when Eve was busy with the petty duties of her days, and left him lorn. Madame de Sévénié had taken a flattering fancy to him, and frequently came to gossip beside his bed or chair. He found her tremendously entertaining, endowed as she was with an excellent and well-stored memory, a gift of caustic characterization and a pretty taste in the scandal of her bygone day and generation, as well as with a mind still active and better informed on the affairs of to-day than that of many a Parisienne of the haute monde and half her age.

During the first bedridden week, Georges d'Aubrac visited Duchemin at least once each day to compare wounds and opinions concerning the inefficiency of the local gendarmerie. For that body accomplished nothing toward laying by the heels the authors of the attacks on d'Aubrac and Duchemin, but (for all Duchemin can say to the contrary) is still following "clues" with the fruitless diligence of so many American police detectives on the trail of a bank messenger accused of stealing bonds.

A decent, likable chap, this d'Aubrac, as reticent as any Englishman concerning his part in the Great War. Duchemin had to talk round the subject for days before d'Aubrac confessed that his record in the French air service had won him the title of Ace; and this only when Duchemin found out that d'Aubrac was at present, in his civilian capacity, managing director of an establishment manufacturing airplanes.

At the end of that week he left to go back to his business; and Louise de Montalais replaced him at Duchemin's side, where she would sit by the hour reading aloud to him in a voice as colourless as her unformed personality. Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the _nth_ time sailed with d'Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues of that most precious prig of all Romance, Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne.

But the third week found Duchemin mending all too rapidly; the time came too soon when the word "to-morrow" held for him all the dread significance, he assured himself, that it holds for a condemned man on the eve of execution.

To-morrow the detectives commissioned by Madame de Montalais's bankers would arrive. To-morrow Eve would set out on her journey to Paris. To-morrow André Duchemin must walk forth from the Château de Montalais and turn his back on all that was most dear to him in life.

On that last day he saw even less of Eve than usual. She was naturally busy with preparations for her trip, a trifle excited, too; it would be only the third time she had left the château for as long as overnight since returning to it after her husband's death. When Duchemin did see her, she seemed at once exhilarated and subdued, and he thought to detect in her attitude toward him a trace of apprehensiveness.

She knew, of course; Duchemin at thirty-eight was too well versed in lore of women to dream he had succeeded in keeping his secret from the fine intuition of one of thirty. But--he told himself a bit bitterly--she ought to know him well enough by this time to know more, that she need not fear he would ever speak his heart to her. The social gulf that set their lives apart was all too wide to be spanned but by a miracle of love requited; and he had too much humility and naivété of soul to presume that such a thing could ever come to pass. And even if it should, there remained the insuperable barrier of her fortune, in the face of which the pretensions of a penniless adventurer could only seem silly....

He was permitted to be about the house in the afternoon and to dine with Eve and Louise in the draughty, shadow-haunted dining hall. Madame de Sévénié was indisposed and kept to her room; she suffered from time to time from an affection of the heart, nothing remarkable in one of her advanced age and so no excuse for unusual misgivings. But the presence of the young girl in some measure, and the emotions of the others in greater, lent the conversation a constraint against which Duchemin's attempts at levity could not prevail. The talk languished and revived fitfully only when some indifferent, impersonal topic offered itself. The weather, for example, enjoyed unwonted vogue. It happened to be drizzling; Eve was afraid of a rainy morrow. She confessed to a minor superstition, she did not really like to start a journey in the rain...

She smoked only one cigarette with Duchemin in the drawing-room after dinner, then excused herself to wait on Madame de Sévénié and finish her packing. It was time, too, for Duchemin to remember he was still an invalid and subject to a régime prescribed by his surgeon: he must go early to his bed.

"I am sorry, mon ami," the woman said, hesitating after she had left her chair before the fire; whose play of broken light was, perhaps, responsible for some of the softness of her eyes as she faced Duchemin and gave him her hand--"sorry our last evening together must be so brief. I am in the mood to sit and talk with you for hours to-night..."

"If you could only manage even one, madame!" She shook her head gently, with a wistful smile. "There will never be another night..."

"I know, I know; and the knowledge makes me very sad. I have enjoyed knowing you, monsieur, even under such distressing circumstances..."

"My wound? You tempt me to seek another!"

"Don't be absurd." He was still holding her hand, and she made no move to free it, but seeming forgetful of it altogether, lingered on. "I shall miss you, monsieur. The château will seem lonely when I return, I shall feel its loneliness more than I have ever felt it."

"And the world, madame," said Duchemin--"the world into which I must go--it, too, will seem a lonely place,--a desert, haunted..."

"You will soon forget ... Château de Montalais."

"Forget! when all I shall have will be my memories--!"

"Yes," she said, "we shall both have memories..." And suddenly the rich, deep voice quoted in English: "'Memories like almighty wine.'"

She offered to disengage her hand, but Duchemin tightened gently the pressure of his fingers, bowing over it and, as he looked up for her answer, murmuring: "With permission?" She gave the slightest inclination of her head. His lips touched her hand for a moment; then he released it. She went swiftly to the door, faltered, turned.

"We shall see each other in the morning--to say au revoir. With us, monsieur, it must never be adieu."

She was gone; but she had left Duchemin with a singing heart that would not let him sleep when he had gone to bed, stared blankly at the last chapter of Bragelonne for an hour, and put out his candle.

Till long after midnight he tossed restlessly, bedevilled alternately by melancholy and exhilaration, or lay staring blindly into the darkness, striving to focus his thoughts upon the abstract, a hopeless effort; trying to think where to go to-morrow, whither to turn his feet when the gates of Paradise had closed behind him, and knowing it did not matter, he did not care, that hereafter one place and another would be the same to him, so that they were not the place of her abode.

The château was as still as any castle of enchantment; only an old clock in the drawing room, two floors below, tolled the slow hours; and through the open windows came the mournful murmur of the river, a voice of utter desolation in the night.

He heard the clock strike two, and shortly after, in a fit of exasperation, thinking to discipline his mind with reading, lighted the candle on the bedside stand, found his book, and fumbled vainly in the little silver casket beside the candlestick for a cigarette.

Now a sincere smoker can do without smoking for hours on end, as long as the deprivation is voluntary. But let him be without the wherewithal to smoke if he have the mind to, and he must procure it instantly though the heavens fall. It was so then with Duchemin. And what greater folly could there be than to want a cigarette and do without one when there were plenty in the drawing-room, to be had for the taking?

He rose, girdled about him his dressing-gown, took up the candlestick, opened his door. The hallway was as empty and silent as he had expected to find it. He had no fear of disturbing the household, for his slippers were of felt and silent and the stairs were of stone and creakless.

Shielding the candle flame with his hand, and somewhat dazzled by the light thus cast into his face, he passed the floor on which the three ladies of the château had each her separate suite of rooms, and gained the drawing-room as noiselessly as any ghost.

The fire had died down till only embers glowed, faint under films of ash, like an old anger growing cold with age.

The cigarettes were not where he had expected to find them, near one end of a certain table. Duchemin put down the candlestick and moved toward the other end, discovering the box he sought as soon as his back was turned to the light. In the same breath this last went out.

He stood for a moment transfixed in astonishment. There were no windows open, no draughts that he could feel, nothing to account for the flame expiring as it had, suddenly, without one flicker of warning. An insane thing to happen to one, at such an hour, in such a place...

Involuntarily memory harked back to the night of his first dinner in the château, when the shadows had danced so weirdly, and the strange notion had come to him that they were like famished spectres, greedy of the lights, yearning to spring and snatch and feed upon them, as wolves might snatch at chops.

A mad fancy...

When he turned hack to relight the candle, it was gone.

At least he must have been mistaken as to the exact spot where he had placed it. Perplexed, he pawed over all that end of the table. But no candlestick was there.

He straightened up sharply, and stood quite still, listening. No sound...

His vision spent itself fruitlessly against the blackness, which the closed window draperies rendered absolute but for those dull, sardonic eyes of dying embers.

In spite of himself he knew a moment when flesh crawled and the hair seemed to stir upon the scalp; for Duchemin knew he was not alone; there was something else in the room with him, something nameless, stealthy, silent, sinister; having knowledge of him, where he stood and what he was, while he knew nothing of it, only that it was there, keeping surveillance over him, itself unseen in its cloak of darkness.

Then with a resolute effort of will he mastered his imagination, reminding himself that spirits gifted in the matter of moving material objects such as candlesticks, frequent only the booths of seance mediums.

Without a sound he stepped back one pace, then two to one side, away from the table. They were long strides; when he paused he was well away from the spot where he had stood when the light was extinguished and where, consequently, a hostile move might be expected to develop. Otherwise his plight was little bettered; he did not quite know where he was in relation to the doors and the pieces which furnished the room. That old-time habit of memorising the arrangement of furniture in a room immediately on entering it had failed through disuse in course of years. He was acquainted with the plot of this drawing-room in a general way but by no means with such accuracy as was needed to serve him now.

So he waited, straining to cheat that opaque pall of night of one little hint as to his whereabouts who had removed the light. Resurrecting another old trick, he measured time by pulse-beats, and stood unstirring and all but breathless for three full minutes. But perceptions stimulated to extra sensibility by apprehension of danger detected nothing. And his hearing was so keen, he told himself, no breath could have been drawn in that time without his having knowledge of it. Still, he knew he was not alone. Somewhere in that encompassing murk an alien and inimical intelligence skulked.

Baffled by powers of patience and immobility that mocked his own, he moved again, edging toward the entrance-hall, a progress so gradual he could have sworn it must be imperceptible. Yet he had a feeling, a suspicion, perhaps merely a fear, that he did not stir a finger without the other's knowledge.

A hand extended about a foot encountered the back of an upholstered chair, which he identified by touch. Assuming the chair to be occupying its usual position, he need only continue in a line parallel with the line of its back to find the entrance-hall in about six paces.

Within three he stopped dead, as if paralysed by sudden instinctive perception of that other presence close by.

Whether he had drawn near to it, inch by inch, or whether it, seeing him about to make good his escape, had crept up on him, he could not say. He only knew that it was there, within arm's-length, waiting, tense, prepared, and somehow deadly in its animosity.

Digging the nails deep into the palms of his hands, until the pain relieved his nervous tension, he waited once more, one minute, two, three.

But nothing ...

Then very slowly he lifted an arm, and swept it before him right and left. At one point of the arc, a trifle to his left, his finger-tips brushed something. He thought he detected a stir in the darkness, a stifled sound, stepped forward quickly, clawing the air, and caught between his fingers a wisp of some material, like silk, sheer and glacé, a portion of some garment.

Simultaneously he heard a smothered cry, of anger or alarm, and the night seemed to split and be rent into fragments by a thousand shooting needles of coloured flame.

Smitten brutally on the point of the jaw, his head jerked back, he reeled and fell against a chair, which went to the floor with a muffled crash.

X

BUT AS A MUSTARD SEED...

Duchemin woke up in his bed, glare of sunlight in his eyes.

From the latter circumstance he reckoned, rather groggily, it must be about the middle of the forenoon; for not till about that time did the sun work round to the windows.

Still heavy with lees of slumber, his wits occupied themselves sluggishly with questions concerning the enervation that oppressed him, the reason for his oversleeping, why he had not been called. Then, reminded that noon was the hour set for Eve's departure, fear lest she get away without his bon voyage brought him sharply up in a sitting position.

He groaned aloud and with both hands clutched temples that promised to split with pain that crashed between them, stroke upon stroke, like blows of a mighty hammer.

A neatly fastened bandage held in place, above one ear, a wad of cotton once saturated with arnica, now dry. Duchemin removed these and with gingerly fingers explored, discovering a noble swelling on the side of his head, where the cotton had been placed.

Also, his jaw was stiff, and developed a protesting ache whenever he opened his mouth.

Then Duchemin remembered ... That is to say, he recalled clearly all that had led up to that vicious blow from out of the darkness which had found his jaw with such surprising accuracy; and he was visited by one or two rather indefinite memories of subsequent events.

He remembered labouring up the stairs, half walking, half supported by the strong arms of the footman, Jean, who was in shirt, trousers and slippers only, while in front of them moved the shape of Madame de Montalais en négligée, carrying a lighted candle and constantly looking back.

Then he had an impression of being lifted into his bed by Jean, and of having his head and shoulders raised by the same arms some time later, so that he might drink a draught of some concoction with a pleasant aromatic taste and odour, in a glass held to his lips by Eve de Montalais.

And then (Duchemin had a faint smile of appreciation for a mental parallel to the technique of the cinema) a singularly vivid and disturbing memory of her face of loveliness, exquisitely tender and compassionate, bended so near to his, faded away into a dense blank of sleep ...

Somewhat to his surprise he found the watch on his wrist ticking away as callously as though its owner had not experienced a prolonged lapse of consciousness. It told him that Eve would leave the château within another hour.

He got up hastily, grunting a bit--though his headache was no longer so acute; or else he was growing accustomed to it--and ringing for the valet-de-chambre ordered his petit déjeuner. Before this was served he spent several thrilling minutes under an icy shower and emerged feeling more on terms with himself and the world.

The valet-de-chambre brought with his tray the announcement that Madame de Montalais presented her compliments and would be glad to see monsieur at his convenience in the grand salon. So Duchemin made short work of his dressing, his café-au-lait and half a roll, and hurried down to the drawing-room.

Seated in an easy chair, in the tempered light of an awninged window which stood open on the terrasse, nothing in her pose--she was waiting quietly, hands folded in her lap--and nothing in her countenance, in the un-lined brow, the grave, serene eyes, lent any colour to his apprehensions. And yet in his heart he had known that he would find her thus, and alone, no matter what had happened....

Her profound reverie disturbed by his approach, she rose quickly, advancing to meet Duchemin with both hands offered in sympathy.

"My dear friend! You are suffering--?"

He met this with a smiling denial. "Not now; at first, yes; but since my bath and coffee, I'm as right as a trivet. And you, madame?"

"A little weary, monsieur, otherwise quite well."

She resumed her chair, signing to Duchemin to take one nearby. He drew it closer before sitting down.

"But madame is not dressed for her journey!"

"No, monsieur. I have postponed it--" a slight pause prefaced one more word--"indefinitely."

At this confirmation of the fears which had been haunting him, Duchemin nodded slightly.

"But the men sent here by your bankers--?"

"They have not yet arrived; we may expect them at any moment now."

"I see," said Duchemin thoughtfully; and then--"May I suggest that we continue our conversation in English. One never knows who may overhear..."

Her eyebrows lifted a little, but she adopted the suggestion without other demur.

"The servants?"

He nodded: "Or anybody."

"Then you have guessed--?"

"Broadly speaking, everything, I fancy. Not in any detail, naturally. But one puts two and two together ... I may as well tell you to begin with: I was wakeful last night, and finding no cigarettes in my room, came down here to get some. I left my candle on the table--there. As soon as my back was turned, somebody took it away and put it out. A few minutes later, while I was trying to steal out of the room, I ran into a fist..."

"Yes," she said thoughtfully; and with some hesitation added: "I, too, found it not easy to sleep. But I heard nothing till that chair crashed. Then I got up to investigate ... and found you lying there, senseless. In falling your head must have struck the leg of the table."

"You came down here--alone?"

"I listened first, heard no sound, saw no light; but I had to know what the noise meant..."

"Still, you came downstairs alone!"

"But naturally, monsieur."

"I don't believe," said Duchemin sincerely, "the world holds a woman your peer for courage."

"Or curiosity?" she laughed. "At all events, I found you, but could do nothing to rouse you. So I called Jean, and he helped me get you upstairs again."

"Where does Jean sleep?"

"In the servants' quarters, on the third floor, in the rear of the house."

"It must have taken you some time..."

"Several minutes, I fancy. Jean sleeps soundly."

"When you came back with him--or at any time--did you see or hear--?"

"Nothing out of the normal--nobody. Indeed, I at first believed you had somehow managed to overexert yourself and had fainted--or had tripped on something and, falling, hurt your head."

"Later, then, you found reason to revise that theory?"

"Not till early this morning."

"Please tell me..."

"Well, you see ... It all seemed so strange, I couldn't sleep when I went back to bed, I lay awake, puzzled, uneasy. It was broad daylight before I noticed that the screen which stands in front of my safe was out of place. The safe is built into the solid wall, you know. I got up then, and found the safe door an inch or so ajar. Whoever opened it last night, closed it hastily and neglected to shoot the bolts."

"And your jewels, of course--?"

She pronounced with unbroken composure: "They have left me nothing, monsieur."

Duchemin groaned and hung his head. "I knew it!" he declared. "No credit to me, however. Naturally, whoever stole my candle and knocked me out didn't break into the house for the fun of it ... I imagine that, what with finding me insensible, waking Jean up, and getting me back in my room, you must have been away from yours fully half an hour."

"Quite that long."

"It couldn't have been better arranged for the thieves," he declared. "If only I had stayed in my room--!"

"If you had, it might possibly have been worse--mightn't it? The burglar--or burglars--knew precisely the location of the safe. They were coming to my room, and if they had found me awake ... I think it quite possible, my friend, that your appetite for cigarettes may have saved my life."

"There's consolation in that," he confessed--"if it's any to you, who have lost so much."

"But perhaps I shall get my jewellery back."

"What makes you think that?"

"There's always the chance, isn't there? And I believe I have a clue, as they call it, an indefinite one but something to work from, perhaps."

"What is that?"

"It seems to me it must have been what the police at home call 'an inside job'; because whoever it was apparently knew the combination of the safe."

"You mean it wasn't broken open. That signifies nothing. I've never seen yours, but I know something about safes, and I'll undertake to open it without the combination within ten minutes."

"You, Monsieur Duchemin?"

He nodded gloomily. "It's no great trick, once one knows it; with an ordinary safe, that is, such as you're apt to find in a private home. Have you looked for finger-prints?"

"Not yet."

"Have you any idea how the thieves broke in?"

"Through this very window, I imagine. You see, I was up early and, in my agitation, dressed hurriedly and came downstairs hours before I usually do. The servants were already up, but hadn't opened the living rooms for the day. I myself found this window unlatched. The fastening is insecure, you see; it has been out of order for some time."

Duchemin was on his feet, examining the latch. "True," he said; "but might not the wind--?"

"There was no wind to speak of last night, monsieur, and what there was didn't blow from that quarter." She added as Duchemin stepped out through the window: "Where are you going?"

"To look for footprints on the tiling. It was misting when I went to bed, and with the mud--"

"But there was a heavy shower just before daybreak. If the thieves had left any tracks on the terrasse, the rain must have washed them clean away. I have already looked."

With a baffled gesture, Duchemin turned back to her side.

"You have communicated with the police, of course."

She interrupted with an accent almost of impatience: "I have told nobody but you, monsieur, not even my mother and Louise."

"But why?"

"I wanted to consult you first, and..." She broke off sharply to ask: "Yes, Jean: what is it?"

The footman had entered to bring her cards over which Eve de Montalais arched her brows.

"Show the gentlemen in, please."

The servant retired.

"The men from Paris, madame?"

"Yes. You will excuse me--?"

Duchemin bowed. "But one word: You can hardly do better than put the case in the hands of these gentlemen. They are apt to be of a good order of intelligence when selected to serve bankers, you know."

"I understand," she replied in her cool, sweet voice.

She went to meet the men in the middle of the room. Duchemin turned back to the window, where, standing in the recess, with the light behind him, he could watch and reflect without his interest or emotions, becoming too apparent. And he was grateful for that moment of respite in which to compose and prepare himself. Within an hour, he knew, within a day or so at most, he must be under arrest, charged with the theft of the Montalais jewels, damned by his yesterday as much as by every turn of circumstantial evidence....

The men whom Jean ushered in proved to be, outwardly, what Duchemin had expected: of a class only too well-known to him, plain men of the people, unassuming, well-trained and informed, sceptical; not improbably shrewd hands in the game of thief-taking.

Saluting Madame de Montalais with calculated ceremony, one acting as spokesman offered to present their credentials. Duchemin had a start of surprise to dissemble when he saw the woman wave these aside.

"It is not necessary, messieurs," she said. "I regret very much to have inconvenienced you, although of course it will make no difference in your bill; but I have brought you here to no purpose. The necessity for my contemplated journey no longer exists."

There were expressions of surprise to which she put an end with the words, accompanied by a charming smile: "Frankly, messieurs, I am afraid you will have to make allowances for the traditional inconsistency of my sex: I have simply changed my mind."

There was nothing more to be said. Openly more than a little mystified, the men withdrew.

The smile with which she dismissed them lingered, delightful and enigmatic, as Eve recognised the stupefaction with which Duchemin moved to remonstrate with her.

"Madame!" he cried in a low voice of wonder and protest--"why did you do that? Why let them go without telling them--?"

"I must have had a reason, don't you think, Monsieur Duchemin?"

"I don't understand you, madame. You treat the loss of jewels as if it must be a secret private to ourselves, to you and to me!"

"Possibly that is my wish, monsieur." He gave a gesture of bewilderment. "Perhaps," she continued, meeting his blank stare with eyes in which amusement gave place to a look almost apologetic yet utterly kind--"perhaps I have more faith in you..."

Duchemin bowed his head over hands so tightly knitted that the knuckles were white with strain.

"You would not have faith," he said in a low voice, "if you knew--"

She interrupted in a gentle voice: "Are you sure?"

"--What I must tell you!"

"My friend," she said: "tell me nothing that would distress you."

He did not immediately reply; the struggle going on within him was only too plainly betrayed by engorged veins upon his forehead and exceeding pallor of countenance.

"If you had told those detectives," he said at length, without looking up, "you must have known very soon. They must have found me out without too much delay. And who in the world would ever believe anybody else guilty when they learned that André Duchemin, your guest for three weeks, was only an alias for Michael Lanyard, otherwise the Lone Wolf?"

"But you are wrong, monsieur," she replied, without the long pause of surprise he had anticipated. "I should not have believed you guilty."

Dumb with wonder, he showed her a haggard face. And she had for him, in the agony and the abasement of his soul, still quivering from the rack of emotion that alone could have extorted his confession--she had for him the half-smile, tender and compassionate, that it is given to most men to see but once in a lifetime on the lips and in the eyes of the woman beloved. "Then you knew--!"

"I suspected."

"How long--?"

"Since the night those strange people were here and tried to make you unhappy with their stupid talk of the Lone Wolf. I suspected, then; and when I came to know you better, I felt quite sure..."

"And now you _know_--yet hesitate to turn me over to the police!"

"No such thought has ever entered my head. You see--I'm afraid you don't quite understand me--I have faith in you."

"But why?"

She shook her head. "You mustn't ask me that."

At the end of a long moment he said in a broken voice: "Very well: I won't ... Not yet awhile ... But this great gift of faith in me--I can't accept that without trying to repay it."

"If you accept, my friend, you repay."

"No," said Michael Lanyard--"that's not enough. Your jewels must come back to you, if I go to the ends of the earth to find them. And"--man's undying vanity would out--"if there's anyone living who can find them for you, it is I."

XI

AU REVOIR