Chapter XIX

Some hours after the morning had broken grey and desolate, but with still a promise in the heavens that the storms of the night were past, Bevill Bracton arose from the great lounge in the hall on which he had laid himself down and on which he had been enabled to snatch some broken rest. For it was six o'clock ere he had deemed it prudent to attempt this, and he had not even then done so until he had satisfied himself that, whosoever the man might be whose hand had passed across his face and whose beard had swept over his disengaged hand, he was not present in the house now.

While, however, discovering this to be the case, he had made discovery of something else. He had found signs that this man had not been the only visitor to the Weiss Haus beside himself, but that there had been another. Also, he had arrived at the conclusion that each of the men had come here on some secret purpose unknown to the other, and that they had met in the dark and had fought with each other. What that purpose was might not be hard to discover, he thought, yet, even so, he could not resolve why, if both of these intruders were his enemies, they should have come into deadly contact with each other. But that this had been the case there was no room left for doubt.

After chasing down the great staircase the form of the man whose hand had crept over his face, he had, notwithstanding the fact of his having locked the door at the end of the lone passage, missed his quarry. In the darkness of the night that quarry had evaded him; in the coming of the dawn he knew that it had done so effectively. He made sure, in the grim light of the dayspring, that the house was absolutely empty of all human existence except his own, doing so by going into every apartment, large and small, that it contained.

Observing carefully the direction from which the man came, looking to see if his fingers had left any marks on the wall along which he had felt his way in the dark, regarding the sides of the passage that ran round the balcony over the hall, Bevill discovered some signs of that man's advance towards him. He saw that, before this midnight wanderer through the house had drawn close to him, he had come from the farther or northern part of it. He perceived, also, at twenty paces from the spot where he himself had stood listening to the approach of his footfall, a shred, a wisp, of black ribbon lying on the floor. Stooping to look at this, while doubting for the moment if it might not have been some ribbon that had fallen from Sylvia's black robe ere she quitted the Weiss Haus some ten days before, he understood that such was not the case. The piece of ribbon had at its end a little tag, showing that it came from some "point" or aglet of a man's dress, worn either at his wrist or knee. He noticed, too, that it was clean cut as though with a knife or other sharp weapon; while, picking it up, he discovered that it was damp and that the dampness left a red stain on the finger and thumb between which he held it.

Then Bevill understood.

"It is from the man's sleeve-point," he said to himself. "Another man's rapier has cut it asunder ere transfixing his arm. There has, indeed, been an encounter in this house."

Going still farther down the passage, he came to an open room, a little apartment that was more an alcove than a room in actual fact. Here there was no longer a possibility of doubt left as to what had taken place. A table of quaint Eastern make was half overturned and leant against a wall, two chairs were entirely so, a man's hat lay on the floor, and the carpet was splashed with blood. Also the window was open to the balcony, and against the balcony there stood a ladder reaching to it from the path below.

"So, so!" Bevill said to himself, interpreting these signs easily enough. "The one was here, the other came and found him, and--they fought. Yet, it may be, each thought the other someone else and thought me that someone. Whom else should they seek? 'Tis very well. I have been shrewdly watched. Yet who were _they?_ Is that far to discover? There can be but two in this land who thrust against my life and security--the one whose grudge is undying, the other who deems me his rival."

He took up now the hat lying on the floor, and, in the dim light of the rain-soaked dawn, turned it over and regarded the lining to see if that might tell him aught. Unhappily, however, it told him nothing. The day had not yet come for hat-makers to stamp their names inside their wares, and there was no private mark to testify to whom this hat belonged.

"'Tis but a poor, common thing," Bevill mused, regarding the coarse felt, the tawdry galloon and rough lining. "Doubtless 'tis Sparmann's. Francbois apparels himself bravely; he would not wear such headgear as this."

Still continuing his reflections, Bevill arrived at all, or almost all, that had happened. He concluded that in the darkness, and also in the noise of the storm, each of these men had decided that _he_ was the other man. Doubtless, therefore, Francbois considered he had thrust his rival from out his path; perhaps, indeed, thought he had killed him, while Sparmann, being wounded, probably deemed that his old enemy had again defeated him, and so would decide to try no more conclusions with such an invincible foe.

"Wherefore," said Bevill, "I shall be safer here to-night than last; neither victor nor vanquished will come again to molest me. Yet how has Sparmann escaped from out the house?" while, glancing next at the balcony and the head of the ladder resting against it, he added, "How the other both came and went when his work was done is easy enough to see."

Determined, nevertheless, to discover the method of Sparmann's evasion, he returned to the spot where he who was undoubtedly Sparmann had passed him, and whence he had sprung down the staircase. Arrived at this point, he saw that a sign, a clue, was ready to his eyes.

In the now almost broad daylight, though a daylight still somewhat retarded by the rain-charged clouds rolling away, he perceived that on the white marble foot of the stairway there was a blood-stain and still another to the left of it.

"To the left!" thought Bevill; "and the door I locked fast is to the right! 'Twas to that I returned. No great wonder that I lost him."

And now all became as clear as noontide.

"Doubtless when he came in he would leave the door open behind him," Bevill pondered, even as he proceeded to the left of the staircase, "thinking I was already in the house. Learning that he had not one but two enemies to contend with, he may have feared to return the way he came, not knowing but that a fourth might be awaiting him at the entrance. Has he found an exit to the left, or has he dropped dead before he did so? Here's to discover."

After which Bevill proceeded down the corridor on the left, which was a similar one to that on the right, though leading towards a _plaisance_ which he and Sylvia had one day visited when the sun was on the other side of the house. But the door opening on to this was fast locked and bolted; whoever the man was who had escaped from him he had not done so that way.

Nevertheless, the mansion was empty of any other living creature than himself, as now he made sure of by visiting every room and cupboard that was open in the house. He could swear there was no human being but himself within it, and, thus resolved, lay down upon the lounge and slept--uneasily, as has been said.

He had slept all the same, and so awoke refreshed, while noticing that the ancient clock in the hall pointed to noon. To noon! And he remembered he had not gone near La Rose since he discovered that the place was deserted of its recent visitors. Chiding, reproaching himself for this neglect--above all, for seeking rest ere going to see his most precious possession, the one by which he hoped soon to put a long distance between himself and Liége when once Sylvia and the Comtesse were ready to set out with him, he now left the house by the door on the right and went toward the stable. As he put the key in the door while calling to the mare, his ears were greeted by her usual whinnying, and, going up to her, he at once discovered that all was well. No matter who or what those men were who had been able to track him to the Weiss Haus, and to themselves obtain admission to it within a few hours of the time when he had left the "Gouden Leeuw," they either had not known his steed was with him, or, had they done so and desired to harm her, had found no opportunity for harm. In that respect all was very well.

Filling La Rose's bucket for her now, and seeing that both rack and manger were still well provided with fodder, he determined to return to the house and there remain close until the evening came, at which time Sylvia had promised that she would make her way to him accompanied by Madame de Valorme. For then he was to learn what provision they had been able to make for leaving Liége, and the time when they would be prepared to depart.

Between the stables and the house itself--or, rather, between the stables and this back entrance to the house--there was a little copse of trees and shrubs which had doubtless been planted some long time ago with the intention of shutting off the view of the former from the latter, and more especially from the windows of the back rooms on the floor above, which, as Bevill had observed in his search through the house, were furnished as small sleeping apartments. Through the copse there ran a path straight to the door, one that was probably used by the stablemen and ostlers in their going to and fro, and, also, it would seem, as some little retreat in which the domestics might sit in their hours of leisure. This Bevill judged, since there was a bench built round the largest tree of all, and, also, there were some rude wooden chairs which seemed to suggest that, once, they might have occupied a more honourable position on the lawn or in the arbours of the front, but had afterwards been relegated to the back.

Walking slowly along this path when he had left La Rose, and doing so because not only did the shrubbery and trees partly shelter him from the fierce June sun, but likewise from any prying eyes that might be on the watch, Bevill stopped with a start as he drew near the bench.

For, seated on it, his bare head bent forward on his breast while his limbs presented an appearance which combined at one and the same time an extraordinary suggestion of extreme lassitude and extreme rigidity, was the figure of a man. The man's garments, even in the full noontide heat, looked as though they were soaked with wet; a man on whose breast there hung down a long, iron-grey beard.

"Who is that?" whispered Bevill, as he halted for an instant at this sight, and the next went swiftly forward. "It is Sparmann! Is he asleep--or dead?"

His closer approach determined for ever any doubts he might have entertained. One touch of his finger on the man's wrist--a wrist that was pierced through and through, and, in the sunshine that peeped through and danced on the quivering leaves, was as red as if painted--told him that he was already cold.

"Dead!" he whispered solemnly, fearfully, since, used as he had been to the sight of and acquaintance with death in his campaigns, that had at least been open death and not death dealt out in the darkness of midnight. "Dead! Yet, I thank thee, Heaven, not at my hands. But how has it come to him? How? That wound, bad as it is, would not slay, or, at least, not so soon."

Looking farther, however, at the dead man, he learnt whence his death had come. Beneath the rusty beard he saw that Sparmann's poor, common linen frills--doubtless he had been very poor of late--were all torn asunder as though in the agony of some mortal spasm, and in his chest he saw a great gaping wound that was enough to tell all.

"So," Bevill whispered as he stood there gazing on his dead foe and observing (as we so oft observe the most trivial matters in our most solemn moments) how a butterfly settled on the dead man's hand for an instant, as well as how the nether lip was caught between his teeth in some final paroxysm of pain, and how wet and soaked his poor, shabby garments were. "So this is the end of you--poor, broken soldier! Alas! whate'er your failings you were a brave man once; none knew it better than I who have crossed swords with you. Ah, well! you risked your life last night to slay me--as I must think--and lost it, though not by my hand, God be praised! Farewell. Death wipes out all bitterness."

As the young man stood before the poor, dead thing, while feeling naught but compassion for his end, there did spring to his mind the recollection that, with Sparmann gone, one of two bitter foes was swept from out his path. Yet, had he but known what a few hours were to bring forth, had he but been able to peer but a little way into the future, he would have recognised that Sparmann dead might work him even more ill than Sparmann alive and seeking to slay him in the deserted Weiss Haus in the darkness of the night.

Now, however, his thoughts turned to present things, and he was wondering, even as he still gazed on the dead man, what it was best for him to do.

If the body remained where it now was it might be probable that none would pass along this path in the copse until he and both the ladies were out of Liége and far off from it. But what if the opposite should happen? What if 'twere known that he who was being tracked by Sparmann had harboured here that night? What if---- Then, suddenly, he broke off in these cogitations, disturbed by a slow, heavy footfall that approached behind him.

Looking round to see who the advancing intruder might be, he observed old Karl coming towards him--old Karl, who, as he drew close to where the living and the dead men were, asked, "Who is he? Does he sleep, mynheer?"

"For ever," Bevill said, answering the second question first, while to the former one he made reply, "His name was Sparmann. He was a Hollander once----"

"Once, mynheer, once?" the old man's bleared, grey eyes glittering as they looked curiously into Bevill's. "Can a man be born of one land yet die the subject of its bitter foe?"

"This man did so. He sold himself to France. He was a spy of France."

"_Himmel!_ Therefore the enemy of us, of the land that gave him birth. And yet, mynheer should be French--is French--and has slain him."

"Nay. He was slain by--another--Frenchman, as I believe."

"Here? In the garden?"

"In the house. He was my foe. He would have slain me, yet the other slew him. He, too, was foe to me, yet thinking that this one was I, took his life."

After which Bevill gave as much explanation as he considered safe to the more or less bewildered old man.

"Who was the other?" Karl asked, after he had grasped as much as Bevill cared to tell him.

"No friend of mine, I tell you; nor, which concerns you most, of the Jouffrouw."

"Ha! a traitor to his country, no friend to my young mistress. So be it. He is better dead than alive. What shall we do with him? He must not be found till you and the Jouffrouw are safely gone."

"I know not. I am no ghost believer, nor am I afeard of the dead; yet if I stay here another night or so I care not to have this man keeping his silent watch outside the house."

"Leave all to me. I have a tool-house near my cottage; to-night I will remove him there. When you and she and her friend are gone he shall have Christian burial."

"It will bring no harm to you?"

"Nay, nay. I have been a soldier. I can still wield a sword. Also, when the magistrates know of his treachery they will ask few questions. They will think 'twas I who found him in the darkened house and slew him for a robber. All will be well. But--you must go soon, very soon. That tale will only be good if told near to the hour of his death."