Chapter IV: The three men in the window

I tore the cloth from my head and sprang up. I was in pitch-darkness. I dashed against the door to no avail. Feeling the walls, I discovered myself to be in a small, empty closet. With all my force I flung myself once more upon the door. It stood firm.

"Dame! but I have got into a pickle," I thought.

They were no ghosts, at all events. Scared as I was, I rejoiced at that. I could cope with men, but who can cope with the devil? These might be villains--doubtless were, skulking in this deserted house,--yet with readiness and pluck I could escape them.

It was as hot as a furnace in my prison, and as still as the grave. The men, who seemed by their footsteps to be several, had gone cautiously down the stairs after caging me. Evidently I had given them a fine fright, clattering through the house as I had, and even now they were looking for my accomplices.

It seemed hours before the faintest sound broke the stillness. If ever you want to squeeze away a man's cheerfulness like water from a rag, shut him up alone in the dark and silence. He will thank you to take him out into the daylight and hang him. In token whereof, my heart welcomed like brothers the men returning.

They came into the room, and I thought they were three in number. I heard the door shut, and then steps approached my closet.

"Have a care now, monsieur; he may be armed," spoke the rough voice of a man without breeding.

"Doubtless he carries a culverin up his sleeve," sneered the deep tones of my captor.

Some one else laughed, and rejoined, in a clear, quick voice:

"Natheless, he may have a knife. I will open the door, and do you look out for him, Gervais."

I had a knife and had it in my hand, ready to charge for freedom. But the door opened slowly, and Gervais looked out for me--to the effect that my knife went one way and I another before I could wink. I reeled against the wall and stayed there, cursing myself for a fool that I had not trusted to fair words instead of to my dagger.

"Well done, my brave Gervais!" cried he of the vivid voice--a tall fair-haired youth, whom I had seen before. So had I seen the stalwart blackbeard, Gervais. The third man was older, a common-looking fellow whose face was new to me. All three were in their shirts on account of the heat; all were plain, even shabby, in their dress. But the two young men wore swords at their sides.

The half-opened shutters, overhanging the court, let plenty of light into the room. It had two straw beds on the floor and a few old chairs and stools, and a table covered with dishes and broken food and wine-bottles. More bottles, riding-boots, whips and spurs, two or three hats and saddle-bags, and various odds and ends of dress littered the floor and the chairs. Everything was of mean quality except the bearing of the two young men. A gentleman is a gentleman even in the Rue Coupejarrets--all the more, maybe, in the Rue Coupejarrets. These two were gently born.

The low man, with scared face, held off from me. He whose name was Gervais confronted me with an angry scowl. Yeux-gris alone--for so I dubbed the third, from his gray eyes, well open under dark brows--Yeux-gris looked no whit alarmed or angered; the only emotion to be read in his face was a gay interest as the blackavised Gervais put me questions.

"How came you here? What are you about?"

"No harm, messieurs," I made haste to protest, ruing my stupidity with that dagger. "I climbed in at a window for sport. I thought the house was deserted."

He clutched my shoulder till I could have screamed for pain.

"The truth, now. If you value your life you will tell the truth."

"Monsieur, it is the truth. I came in idle mischief; that was the whole of it. I had no notion of breaking in upon you or any one. They said the house was haunted."

"Who said that?"

"Maître Jacques, at the Amour de Dieu."

He stared at me in surprise.

"What had you been asking about this house?"

Yeux-gris, lounging against the table, struck in:

"I can tell you that myself. He told Jacques he saw us in the window last night. Did you not?"

"Aye, monsieur. The thunder woke me, and when I looked out I saw you plain as day. But Maître Jacques said it was a vision."

"I flattered myself I saw you first and got that shutter closed very neatly," said Yeux-gris. "Dame! I am not so clever as I thought. So old Jacques called us ghosts, did he?"

"Yes, monsieur. He told me this house belonged to M. de Béthune, who was a Huguenot and killed in the massacre."

Yeux-gris burst into joyous laughter.

"He said my house belonged to the Béthunes! Well played, Jacques! You owe that gallant lie to me, Gervais, and the pains I took to make him think us Navarre's men. He is heart and soul for Henri Quatre. Did he say, perchance, that in this very courtyard Coligny fell?"

"No," said I, seeing that I had been fooled and had had all my terrors for naught, and feeling much chagrined thereat. "How was I to know it was a lie? I know naught about Paris. I came up but yesterday from St. Quentin."

"St. Quentin!" came a cry from the henchman. With a fierce "Be quiet, fool!" Gervais turned to me and demanded my name.

"Félix Broux."

"Who sent you here?"

"Monsieur, no one."

"You lie."

Again he gripped me by the shoulder, gripped till the tears stood in my eyes.

"No one, monsieur; I swear it."

"You will not speak! I'll make you, by Heaven."

He seized my thumb and wrist to bend one back on the other, torture with strength such as his. Yeux-gris sprang off the table.

"Let alone, Gervais! The boy's honest."

"He is a spy."

"He is a fool of a country boy. A spy in hobnailed shoes, forsooth! No spy ever behaved as he has. I said when you first seized him he was no spy. I say it again, now I have heard his story. He saw us by chance, and Maître Jacques's bogy story spurred him on instead of keeping him off. You are a fool, my cousin."

"Pardieu! it is you who are the fool," growled Gervais. "You will bring us to the rope with your cursed easy ways. If he is a spy it means the whole crew are down upon us."

"What of that?"

"Pardieu! is it nothing?"

Yeux-gris returned with a touch of haughtiness:

"It is nothing. A gentleman may live in his own house."

Gervais looked as if he remembered something. He said much less boisterously:

"And do you want Monsieur here?"

Yeux-gris flushed red.

"No," he cried. "But you may be easy. He will not trouble himself to come."

Gervais regarded him silently an instant, as if he thought of several things he did not say. What he did say was: "You are a pair of fools, you and the boy. Whatever he came for, he has spied on us now. He shall not live to carry the tale of us."

"Then you have me to kill as well!"

Gervais turned on him snarling. Yeux-gris laid a hand on his sword-hilt.

"I will not have an innocent lad hurt. I was not bred a ruffian," he cried hotly. They glared at each other. Then Yeux-gris, with a sudden exclamation, "Ah, bah, Gervais!" broke into laughter.

Now, this merriment was a heart-warming thing to hear. For Gervais was taking the situation with a seriousness that was as terrifying as it was stupid. When I looked into his dogged eyes I could not but think the end of me might be near. But Yeux-gris's laugh said the very notion was ridiculous; I was innocent of all harmful intent, and they were gentlemen, not cutthroats.

"Messieurs," I said, "I swear by the blessed saints I am what I told you. I am no spy, and no one sent me here. Who you are, or what you do, I know no more than a babe unborn. I belong to no party and am no man's man. As for why you choose to live in this empty house, it is not my concern and I care no whit about it. Let me go, messieurs, and I will swear to keep silence about what I have seen."

"I am for letting him go," said Yeux-gris.

Gervais looked doubtful, the most encouraging attitude toward me he had yet assumed. He answered:

"If he had not said the name--"

"Stuff!" interrupted Yeux-gris. "It is a coincidence, no more. If he were what you think, it is the very last name he would have said."

This was Greek to me; I had mentioned no names but Maître Jacques's and my own. And he was their friend.

"Messieurs," I said, "if it is my name that does not please you, why, I can say for it that if it is not very high-sounding, at least it is an honest one and has ever been held so down where we live."

"And that is at St. Quentin," said Yeux-gris.

"Yes, monsieur. My father, Anton Broux, is Master of the Forest to the Duke of St. Quentin."

He started, and Gervais cried out:

"Voilà! who is the fool now?"

My nerves, which had grown tranquil since Yeux-gris came to my rescue, quivered anew. The common man started at the very word St. Quentin, and the masters started when I named the duke. Was it he whom they had spoken of as Monsieur? Who and what were they? There was more in this than I had thought at first. It was no longer a mere question of my liberty. I was all eyes and ears for whatever information I could gather.

Yeux-gris spoke to me, for the first time gravely:

"This is not a time when folks take pleasure-trips to Paris. What brought you?"

"I used to be Monsieur's page down at St. Quentin," I answered, deeming the straight truth best. "When we learned that he was in Paris, my father sent me up to him. I reached the city last night, and lay at the Amour de Dieu. This morning I went to the duke's hôtel, but the guard would not let me in. Then, when Monsieur drove out I tried to get speech with him, but he would have none of me."

The bitterness I felt over my rebuff must have been in my voice and face, for Gervais spoke abruptly:

"And do you hate him for that?"

"Nay," said I, churlishly enough. "It is his to do as he chooses. But I hate the Comte de Mar for striking me a foul blow."

"The Comte de Mar!" exclaimed Yeux-gris.

"His son."

"He has no son."

"But he has, monsieur. The Comte de--"

"He is dead," said Yeux-gris.

"Why, we knew naught--" I was beginning, when Gervais broke in:

"You say the fellow's honest, when he tells such tales as this! He saw the Comte de Mar--!"

"I thought it must be he," I protested. "A young man who sat by Monsieur's side, elegant and proud-looking, with an aquiline face--"

"That is Lucas, that is his secretary," declared Yeux-gris, as who should say, "That is his scullion."

Gervais looked at him oddly a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and demanded of me:

"What next?"

"I came away angry."

"And walked all the way here to risk your life in a haunted house? Pardieu! too plain a lie."

"Oh, I would have done the like; we none of us fear ghosts in the daytime," said Yeux-gris.

"You may believe him; I am no such fool. He has been caught in two lies; first the Béthunes, then the Comte de Mar. He is a clumsy spy; they might have found a better one. Not but what that touch about ill-treatment at Monsieur's hand was well thought of. That was Monsieur's suggestion, I warrant, for the boy has talked like a dolt else."

"I am no liar," I cried hotly. "Ask Jacques whether he did not tell me about the Béthunes. It is his lie, not mine. I did not know the Comte de Mar was dead, and this Lucas of yours is handsome enough for a count. I came here, as I told you, in curiosity concerning Maître Jacques's story. I had no idea of seeing you or any living man. It is the truth, monsieur."

"I believe you," Yeux-gris answered. "You have an honest face. You came into my house uninvited. Well, I forgive it, and invite you to stay. You shall be my valet."

"He shall be nobody's valet," Gervais cried.

The gray eyes flashed, but their owner rejoined lightly:

"You have a man; surely I should have one, too. And I understand the services of M. Félix are not engaged."

"Mille tonnerres! you would take this spy--this sneak--"

"As I would take M. de Paris, if I chose," responded Yeux-gris, with a cold hauteur that smacked more of a court than of this shabby room. He added lightly again:

"You think him a spy, I do not. But in any case, he must not blab of us. Therefore he stays here and brushes my clothes. Marry, they need it."

Easily, with grace, he had disposed of the matter. But I said:

"Monsieur, I shall do nothing of the kind."

"What!" he cried, as if the clothes-brush itself had risen in rebellion, "what! you will not."

"No," said I.

"And why not?" he demanded, plainly thinking me demented.

"Because I know you are against the Duke of St. Quentin."

Whatever they had thought me, neither expected that speech.

"I am no spy or sneak," said I. "It is true I came here by chance; it is true Monsieur turned me off this morning. But I was born on his land and I am no traitor. I will not be valet or henchman for either of you, if I die for it."

I was like to die for it. For Gervais whipped out his sword and sprang for me. I thought I saw Yeux-gris's out, too, when Gervais struck me over the head with his sword-hilt. The rest was darkness.