Chapter II

A few days after the entrance of Senora Dolores Salcedo in the house of Ste. Rosalie, and just at the close of the day, two men were slowly walking along the Boulevard de l'Hopital, one of the most deserted places in Paris.

The younger of these two individuals seemed to be about twenty-five or thirty years old. His face was frank and resolute, his complexion sunburnt, his figure tall and robust, his step decided, and his dress simple and of military severity.

His companion, a little shorter, but unusually square and thick-set, seemed to be about fifty-five years old, and presented that type of the sailor familiar to the eyes of Parisians. An oilcloth hat, low in shape, with a wide brim, placed on the back of his head, revealed a brow ornamented with five or six corkscrew curls, known as heart-catchers, while the rest of his hair was cut very close. This manner of wearing the hair, called the sailor style, was, if traditions are true, quite popular in 1825 among crews of the line sailing from the port of Brest.

A white shirt with a blue collar, embroidered in red, falling over his broad shoulders, permitted a view of the bull like neck of our sailor, whose skin was tanned until it resembled parchment, the colour of brick. A round vest of blue cloth, with buttons marked with an anchor, and wide trousers bound to his hips by a red woollen girdle, completed our man's apparel. Side-whiskers of brown, shaded with fawn colour, encased his square face, which expressed both good humour and decision of character. A superficial observer might have supposed the left cheek of the sailor to be considerably inflamed, but a more attentive examination would have disclosed the fact that an enormous quid of tobacco produced this one-sided tumefaction. Let us add, lastly, that the sailor carried on his back a bag, whose contents seemed quite bulky.

The two men had just reached a place in front of a high wall surrounding a garden. The top of the trees could scarcely be distinguished, for the night had fallen.

The young man said to his companion, as he stopped and turned his ear eastward:

"Sans-Plume, listen."

"Please God, what is it, captain?" said the man with the tobacco quid, in reply to this singular surname.

"I am not mistaken, it is certainly here."

"Yes, captain, it is in this made land between these two large trees. Here is the place where the wall is a little damaged. I noticed it yesterday evening at dusk, when we picked up the stone and the letter."

"That is so. Come quick, my old seaman," said the captain to his sailor, indicating with his eye one of the large trees of the boulevard, several of whose branches hung over the garden wall. "Up, Sans-Plume, while we are waiting the hour let us see if we can rig the thing."

"Captain, there is still a bit of twilight, and I see below a man who is coming this way."

"Then let us wait. Hide first your bag behind the trunk of this tree,--you have forgotten nothing?"

"No, captain, all my rigging is in there."

"Come, then, let us go. This man is coming; we must not look as if we were lying to before these walls."

"That's it, captain, we'll stand upon another tack so as to put him out of his way."

And the two sailors began, as Sans-Plume had said in his picturesque language, to stand the other tack in the path parallel to the public walk, after the sailor had prudently picked up the bag he had hidden between the trees of the boulevard and the wall.

"Sans-Plume," said the young man, as they walked along, "are you sure you recognise the spot where the hackney-coach awaits us?"

"Yes, captain--But, I say, captain."

"What?"

"That man looks as if he were following us."

"Bah!"

"And spying on us."

"Come along, Sans-Plume, you are foolish!"

"Captain, let us set the prow larboard and you go and see."

"So be it," replied the captain.

And, followed by his sailor, he left the walk on the right of the boulevard, crossed the pavement, and took the walk on the left.

"Well, captain," said Sans-Plume, in a low voice, "you see this lascar navigates in our waters."

"That is true, we are followed."

"It is not the first time it has happened to me," said Sans-Plume, with a shade of conceit, hiding one-half of his mouth with the back of his hand in order to eject the excess of tobacco juice produced by the mastication of his enormous quid. "One day, in Senegal, Gorée, I was followed a whole league, bowsprit on stern, captain, till I came to a plantation of sugar-cane, and--"

"The devil! that man is surely following us," said the captain, interrupting the indiscreet confidences of the sailor. "That annoys me!"

"Captain, do you wish me to drop my bag and flank this lascar with tobacco, in order to teach him to ply to our windward in spite of us?"

"Fine thing! but do you keep still and follow me."

The captain and his sailor, again crossing the pavement, regained the walk on the right.

"See, captain," said Sans-Plume, "he turns tack with us."

"Let him go, and let us watch his steps."

The man who followed the two sailors, a large, jolly-looking fellow in a blue blouse and cap, went beyond them a few steps, then stopped and looked up at the stars, for the night had fully come.

The captain, after saying a few words in a low tone to the sailor who had hidden himself behind the trunk of one of the large trees of the boulevard, advanced alone to meet his disagreeable observer, and said to him:

"Comrade, it is a fine evening."

"Very fine."

"You are waiting for some one here?"

"Yes."

"I, also."

"Ah!"

"Comrade, have you been waiting long?"

"For three hours at least."

"Comrade," replied the captain, after a moment's silence, "would you like to make double the sum they give you for following me and spying me?"

"I do not know what you mean. I do not follow you, sir. I am not spying you."

"Yes."

"No."

"Let us end this. I will give you what you want if you will go on your way,--stop, I have the gold in my pocket."

And the captain tingled the gold in his vest pocket, and said:

"I have twenty-five or thirty louis--"

"_Hein!_" said the man, with a singularly insinuating manner, "twenty-five or thirty louis?"

At this moment a distant clock sounded half-past seven o'clock. Almost at the same instant a guttural cry, resembling a call or a signal, was heard in the direction that the man in the blouse had first taken to join the two sailors. The spy made a movement as if he understood the significance of this cry, and for a moment seemed undecided.

"Half-past seven o'clock," said the captain to himself. "That beggar there is not alone."

Having made this reflection, he coughed.

Scarcely had the captain coughed, when the spy felt himself seized vigorously at the ankles by some one who had thrown himself suddenly between his legs. He fell backwards, but in falling he had time to cry with a loud voice:

"Here, John, run to the--"

He was not able to finish. Sans-Plume, after having thrown him down, had unceremoniously taken a seat on the breast of the spy, and, holding him by the throat, prevented his speaking.

"The devil! do not strangle him," said the captain, who, kneeling down, was binding securely with his silk handkerchief the two legs of the indiscreet busybody.

"The bag, captain," said Sans-Plume, keeping his grip on the throat of the spy, "the bag! it is large enough to wrap his head and arms; we will bind him tight around the loins and he will not budge any more than a roll of old canvas."

No sooner said than done. In a few seconds the spy, cowled like a monk in the bag to the middle of his body, with his legs bound, found himself unable to move. Sans-Plume had the courtesy to push his victim into one of the wide verdant slopes which separated the trees, and nothing more was heard from that quarter but an interrupted series of smothered bellowings.

"The alarm will be given at the convent! Half-past seven has just struck," said the captain to his sailor. "We must risk all now or all is lost!"

"In twice three movements the thing is ready, captain," replied Sans-Plume, running with his companion toward the large trees which hung over the wall near which they had at first stood.