Kitabı oku: «An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery)», sayfa 7

CHAPTER VIII. TRIALS OF THE POLICE

Madame d’Hauteserre, roused by the danger of her sons, and not believing that the Revolution was over, but still fearing its summary justice, recovered her senses by the violence of the same distress which made her lose them. Led by an agonizing curiosity she returned to the salon, which presented a picture worthy of the brush of a genre painter. The abbe, still seated at the card-table and mechanically playing with the counters, was covertly observing Corentin and Peyrade, who were standing together at a corner of the fireplace and speaking in a low voice. Several times Corentin’s keen eye met the not less keen glance of the priest; but, like two adversaries who knew themselves equally strong, and who return to their guard after crossing their weapons, each averted his eyes the instant they met. The worthy old d’Hauteserre, poised on his long thin legs like a heron, was standing beside the stout form of the mayor, in an attitude expressive of utter stupefaction. The mayor, though dressed as a bourgeois, always looked like a servant. Each gazed with a bewildered eye at the gendarmes, in whose clutches Gothard was still sobbing, his hands purple and swollen from the tightness of the cord that bound them. Catherine maintained her attitude of artless simplicity, which was quite impenetrable. The corporal, who, according to Corentin, had committed a great blunder in arresting these smaller fry, did not know whether to stay where he was or to depart. He stood pensively in the middle of the salon, his hand on the hilt of his sabre, his eye on the two Parisians. The Durieus, also stupefied, and the other servants of the chateau made an admirable group of expressive uneasiness. If it had not been for Gothard’s convulsive snifflings those present could have heard the flies fly.

When Madame d’Hauteserre, pale and terrified, opened the door and entered the room, almost carried by Mademoiselle Goujet, whose red eyes had evidently been weeping, all faces turned to her at once. The two agents hoped as much as the household feared to see Laurence enter. This spontaneous movement of both masters and servants seemed produced by the sort of mechanism which makes a number of wooden figures perform the same gesture or wink the same eye.

Madame d’Hauteserre advanced by three rapid strides towards Corentin and said, in a broken voice but violently: “For pity’s sake, monsieur, tell me what my sons are accused of. Do you really think they have been here?”

The abbe, who seemed to be saying to himself when he saw the old lady, “She will certainly commit some folly,” lowered his eyes.

“My duty and the mission I am engaged in forbid me to tell you,” answered Corentin, with a gracious but rather mocking air.

This refusal, which the detestable politeness of the vulgar fop seemed to make all the more emphatic, petrified the poor mother, who fell into a chair beside the Abbe Goujet, clasped her hands and began to pray.

“Where did you arrest that blubber?” asked Corentin, addressing the corporal and pointing to Laurence’s little henchman.

“On the road that leads to the farm along the park walls; the little scamp had nearly reached the Closeaux woods,” replied the corporal.

“And that girl?”

“She? oh, it was Oliver who caught her.”

“Where was she going?”

“Towards Gondreville.”

“They were going in opposite directions?” said Corentin.

“Yes,” replied the gendarme.

“Is that boy the groom, and the girl the maid of the citizeness Cinq-Cygne?” said Corentin to the mayor.

“Yes,” replied Goulard.

After Corentin had exchanged a few words with Peyrade in a whisper, the latter left the room, taking the corporal of gendarmes with him.

Just then the corporal of Arcis made his appearance. He went up to Corentin and spoke to him in a low voice: “I know these premises well,” he said; “I have searched everywhere; unless those young fellows are buried, they are not here. We have sounded all the floors and walls with the butt end of our muskets.”

Peyrade, who presently returned, signed to Corentin to come out, and then took him to the breach in the moat and showed him the sunken way.

“We have guessed the trick,” said Peyrade.

“And I’ll tell you how it was done,” added Corentin. “That little scamp and the girl decoyed those idiots of gendarmes and thus made time for the game to escape.”

“We can’t know the truth till daylight,” said Peyrade. “The road is damp; I have ordered two gendarmes to barricade it top and bottom. We’ll examine it after daylight, and find out by the footsteps who went that way.”

“I see a hoof-mark,” said Corentin; “let us go to the stables.”

“How many horses do you keep?” said Peyrade, returning to the salon with Corentin, and addressing Monsieur d’Hauteserre and Goulard.

“Come, monsieur le maire, you know, answer,” cried Corentin, seeing that that functionary hesitated.

“Why, there’s the countess’s mare, Gothard’s horse, and Monsieur d’Hauteserre’s.”

“There is only one in the stable,” said Peyrade.

“Mademoiselle is out riding,” said Durieu.

“Does she often ride about at this time of night?” said the libertine Peyrade, addressing Monsieur d’Hauteserre.

“Often,” said the good man, simply. “Monsieur le maire can tell you that.”

“Everybody knows she has her freaks,” remarked Catherine; “she looked at the sky before she went to bed, and I think the glitter of your bayonets in the moonlight puzzled her. She told me she wanted to know if there was going to be another revolution.”

“When did she go?” asked Peyrade.

“When she saw your guns.”

“Which road did she take?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s another horse missing,” said Corentin.

“The gendarmes – took it – away from me,” said Gothard.

“Where were you going?” said one of them.

“I was – following – my mistress to the farm,” sobbed the boy.

The gendarme looked towards Corentin as if expecting an order. But Gothard’s speech was evidently so true and yet so false, so perfectly innocent and so artful that the two Parisians again looked at each other as if to echo Peyrade’s former words: “They are not ninnies.”

Monsieur d’Hauteserre seemed incapable of a word; the mayor was bewildered; the mother, imbecile from maternal fears, was putting questions to the police agents that were idiotically innocent; the servants had been roused from their sleep. Judging by these trifling signs, and these diverse characters, Corentin came to the conclusion that his only real adversary was Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. Shrewd and dexterous as the police may be, they are always under certain disadvantages. Not only are they forced to discover all that is known to a conspirator, but they must also suppose and test a great number of things before they hit upon the right one. The conspirator is always thinking of his own safety, whereas the police is only on duty at certain hours. Were it not for treachery and betrayals, nothing would be easier than to conspire successfully. The conspirator has more mind concentrated upon himself than the police can bring to bear with all its vast facilities of action. Finding themselves stopped short morally, as they might be physically by a door which they expected to find open being shut in their faces, Corentin and Peyrade saw they were tricked and misled, without knowing by whom.

“I assert,” said the corporal of Arcis, in their ear, “that if the four young men slept here last night it must have been in the beds of their father and mother, and Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, or those of the servants; or they must have spent the night in the park. There is not a trace of their presence.”

“Who could have warned them?” said Corentin, to Peyrade. “No one but the First Consul, Fouche, the ministers, the prefect of police, and Malin knew anything about it.”

“We must set spies in the neighborhood,” whispered Peyrade.

“And watch the spies,” said the abbe, who smiled as he overheard the word and guessed all.

“Good God!” thought Corentin, replying to the abbe’s smile with one of his own; “there is but one intelligent being here, – he’s the one to come to an understanding with; I’ll try him.”

“Gentlemen – ” said the mayor, anxious to give some proof of devotion to the First Consul and addressing the two agents.

“Say ‘citizens’; the Republic still exists,” interrupted Corentin, looking at the priest with a quizzical air.

“Citizens,” resumed the mayor, “just as I entered this salon and before I had opened my mouth Catherine rushed in and took her mistress’s hat, gloves, and whip.”

A low murmur of horror came from the breasts of all the household except Gothard. All eyes but those of the agent and the gendarmes were turned threateningly on Goulard, the informer, seeming to dart flames at him.

“Very good, citizen mayor,” said Peyrade. “We see it all plainly. Some one” (this with a glance of evident distrust at Corentin) “warned the citizeness Cinq-Cygne in time.”

“Corporal, handcuff that boy,” said Corentin, to the gendarme, “and take him away by himself. And shut up that girl, too,” pointing to Catherine. “As for you, Peyrade, search for papers,” adding in his ear, “Ransack everything, spare nothing. – Monsieur l’abbe,” he said, confidentially, “I have an important communication to make to you”; and he took him into the garden.

“Listen to me attentively, monsieur,” he went on; “you seem to have the mind of a bishop, and (no one can hear us) you will understand me. I have no longer any hope except through you of saving these families, who, with the greatest folly, are letting themselves roll down a precipice where no one can save them. The Messieurs Simeuse and d’Hauteserre have been betrayed by one of those infamous spies whom governments introduce into all conspiracies to learn their objects, means, and members. Don’t confound me, I beg of you, with the wretch who is with me. He belongs to the police; but I am honorably attached to the Consular cabinet, I am therefore behind the scenes. The ruin of the Simeuse brothers is not desired. Though Malin would like to see them shot, the First Consul, if they are here and have come without evil intentions, wishes them to be warned out of danger, for he likes good soldiers. The agent who accompanies me has all the powers, I, apparently, am nothing. But I see plainly what is hatching. The agent is pledged to Malin, who has doubtless promised him his influence, an office, and perhaps money if he finds the Simeuse brothers and delivers them up. The First Consul, who is a really great man, never favors selfish schemes – I don’t want to know if those young men are here,” he added, quickly, observing the abbe’s gesture, “but I wish to tell you that there is only one way to save them. You know the law of the 6th Floreal, year X., which amnestied all the emigres who were still in foreign countries on condition that they returned home before the 1st Vendemiaire of the year XI., that is to say, in September of last year. But the Messieurs Simeuse having, like the Messieurs d’Hauteserre, served in the army of Conde, they come into the category of exceptions to this law. Their presence in France is therefore criminal, and suffices, under the circumstances in which we are, to make them suspected of collusion in a horrible plot. The First Consul saw the error of this exception which has made enemies for his government, and he wishes the Messieurs Simeuse to know that no steps will be taken against them, if they will send him a petition saying that they have re-entered France intending to submit to the laws, and agreeing to take oath to the Constitution. You can understand that the document ought to be in my hands before they are arrested, and be dated some days earlier. I would then be the bearer of it – I do not ask you where those young men are,” he said again, seeing another gesture of denial from the priest. “We are, unfortunately, sure of finding them; the forest is guarded, the entrances to Paris and the frontiers are all watched. Pray listen to me; if these gentlemen are between the forest and Paris they must be taken; if they are in Paris they will be found; if they retreat to the frontier they will still be arrested. The First Consul likes the ci-devants, and cannot endure the republicans – simple enough; if he wants a throne he must needs strangle Liberty. Keep the matter a secret between us. This is what I will do; I will stay here till to-morrow and be blind; but beware of the agent; that cursed Provencal is the devil’s own valet; he has the ear of Fouche just as I have that of the First Consul.”

“If the Messieurs Simeuse are here,” said the abbe, “I would give ten pints of my blood and my right arm to save them; but if Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne is in the secret she has not – and this I swear on my eternal salvation – betrayed it in any way, neither has she done me the honor to consult me. I am now very glad of her discretion, if discretion there be. We played cards last night as usual, at boston, in almost complete silence, until half-past ten o’clock, and we neither saw nor heard anything. Not a child can pass through this solitary valley without the whole community knowing it, and for the last two weeks no one has come from other places. Now the d’Hauteserre and the Simeuse brothers would make a party of four. Old d’Hauteserre and his wife have submitted to the present government, and they have made all imaginable efforts to persuade their sons to return to France; they wrote to them again yesterday. I can only say, upon my soul and conscience, that your visit has alone shaken my firm belief that these young men are living in Germany. Between ourselves, there is no one here, except the young countess, who does not do justice to the eminent qualities of the First Consul.”

“Fox!” thought Corentin. “Well, if those young men are shot,” he said, aloud; “it is because their friends have willed it – I wash my hands of the affair.”

He had led the abbe to a part of the garden which lay in the moonlight, and as he said the last words he looked at him suddenly. The priest was greatly distressed, but his manner was that of a man surprised and wholly ignorant.

“Understand this, monsieur l’abbe,” resumed Corentin; “the right of these young men to the estate of Gondreville will render them doubly criminal in the eyes of the middle class. I’d like to see them put faith in God and not in his saints – ”

“Is there really a plot?” asked the abbe, simply.

“Base, odious, cowardly, and so contrary to the generous spirit of the nation,” replied Corentin, “that it will meet with universal opprobrium.”

“Well! Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne is incapable of baseness,” cried the abbe.

“Monsieur l’abbe,” replied Corentin, “let me tell you this; there is for us (meaning you and me) proof positive of her guilt; but there is not enough for the law. You see she took flight when we came; I sent the mayor to warn her.”

“Yes, but for one who is so anxious to save them, you followed rather closely on his heels,” said the abbe.

At those words the two men looked at each other, and all was said. Each belonged to those profound anatomists of thought to whom a mere inflexion of the voice, a look, a word suffices to reveal a soul, just as the Indians track their enemies by signs invisible to European eyes.

“I expected to draw something out of him, and I have only betrayed myself,” thought Corentin.

“Ha! the sly rogue!” thought the priest.

Midnight rang from the old church clock just as Corentin and the abbe re-entered the salon. The opening and shutting of doors and closets could be heard from the bedrooms above. The gendarmes pulled open the beds; Peyrade, with the quick perception of a spy, handled and sounded everything. Such desecration excited both fear and indignation among the faithful servants of the house, who still stood motionless about the salon. Monsieur d’Hauteserre exchanged looks of commiseration with his wife and Mademoiselle Goujet. A species of horrible curiosity kept every one on the qui vive. Peyrade at length came down, holding in his hand a sandal-wood box which had probably been brought from China by Admiral de Simeuse. This pretty casket was flat and about the size of a quarto volume.

Peyrade made a sign to Corentin and took him into the embrasure of a window.

“I’ve an idea!” he said, “that Michu, who was ready to pay Marion eight hundred thousand francs in gold for Gondreville, and who evidently meant to shoot Malin yesterday, is the man who is helping the Simeuse brothers. His motive in threatening Marion and aiming at Malin must be the same. I thought when I saw him that he was capable of ideas; evidently he has but one; he discovered what was going on and he must have come here to warn them.”

“Probably Malin talked about the conspiracy to his friend the notary, and Michu from his ambush overheard what was said,” remarked Corentin, continuing the inductions of his colleague. “No doubt he has only postponed his shot to prevent an evil he thinks worse than the loss of Gondreville.”

“He knew what we were the moment he laid eyes on us,” said Peyrade. “I thought then that he was amazingly intelligent for a peasant.”

“That proves that he is always on his guard,” replied Corentin. “But, mind you, my old man, don’t let us make a mistake. Treachery stinks in the nostrils, and primitive folks do scent it from afar.”

“But that’s our strength,” said the Provencal.

“Call the corporal of Arcis,” cried Corentin to one of the gendarmes. “I shall send him at once to Michu’s house,” he added to Peyrade.

“Our ear, Violette, is there,” said Peyrade.

“We started without getting news from him. Two of us are not enough; we ought to have had Sabatier with us – Corporal,” he said, when the gendarme appeared, taking him aside with Peyrade, “don’t let them fool you as they did the Troyes corporal just now. We think Michu is in this business. Go to his house, put your eye on everything, and bring word of the result.”

“One of my men heard horses in the forest just as they arrested the little groom; I’ve four fine fellows now on the track of whoever is hiding there,” replied the gendarme.

He left the room, and the gallop of his horse which echoed on the paved courtyard died rapidly away.

“One thing is certain,” said Corentin to himself, “either they have gone to Paris or they are retreating to Germany.”

He sat down, pulled a note-book from the pocket of his spencer, wrote two orders in pencil, sealed them, and made a sign to one of the gendarmes to come to him.

“Be off at full gallop to Troyes, wake up the prefect, and tell him to start the telegraph as soon as there’s light enough.”

The gendarme departed. The meaning of this movement and Corentin’s intentions were so evident that the hearts of the household sank within them; but this new anxiety was additional to another that was now martyrizing them; their eyes were fixed on the sandal-wood box! All the while the two agents were talking together they were each taking note of those eager looks. A sort of cold anger stirred the unfeeling hearts of these men who relished the power of inspiring terror. The police man has the instincts and emotions of a hunter: but where the one employs his powers of mind and body in killing a hare, a partridge, or a deer, the other is thinking of saving the State, or a king, and of winning a large reward. So the hunt for men is superior to the other class of hunting by all the distance that there is between animals and human beings. Moreover, a spy is forced to lift the part he plays to the level and the importance of the interests to which he is bound. Without looking further into this calling, it is easy to see that the man who follows it puts as much passionate ardor into his chase as another man does into the pursuit of game. Therefore the further these men advanced in their investigations the more eager they became; but the expression of their faces and their eyes continued calm and cold, just as their ideas, their suspicions, and their plans remained impenetrable. To any one who watched the effects of the moral scent, if we may so call it, of these bloodhounds on the track of hidden facts, and who noted and understood the movements of canine agility which led them to strike the truth in their rapid examination of probabilities, there was in it all something actually horrifying. How and why should men of genius fall so low when it was in their power to be so high? What imperfection, what vice, what passion debases them? Does a man become a police-agent as he becomes a thinker, writer, statesmen, painter, general, on the condition of knowing nothing but how to spy, as the others speak, write, govern, paint, and fight? The inhabitants of the chateau had but one wish, – that the thunderbolts of heaven might fall upon these miscreants; they were athirst for vengeance; and had it not been for the presence, up to this time, of the gendarmes there would undoubtedly have been an outbreak.

“No one, I suppose, has the key of this box?” said the cynical Peyrade, questioning the family as much by the movement of his huge red nose as by his words.

The Provencal noticed, not without fear, that the guards were no longer present; he and Corentin were alone with the family. The younger man drew a small dagger from his pocket, and began to force the lock of the box. Just then the desperate galloping of a horse was heard upon the road and then upon the pavement by the lawn; but most horrible of all was the fall and sighing of the animal, which seemed to drop all at once at the door of the middle tower. A convulsion like that which a thunderbolt might produce shook the spectators when Laurence, the trailing of whose riding-habit announced her coming, entered the room. The servants hastily formed into two lines to let her pass.

In spite of her rapid ride, the girl had felt the full anguish the discovery of the conspiracy must needs cause her. All her hopes were overthrown! she had galloped through ruins as her thoughts turned to the necessity of submission to the Consular government. Were it not for the danger which threatened the four gentlemen, and which served as a tonic to conquer her weariness and her despair, she would have dropped asleep on the way. The mare was almost killed in her haste to reach the chateau, and stand between her cousins and death. As all present looked at the heroic girl, pale, her features drawn, her veil aside, her whip in her hand, standing on the threshold of the door, whence her burning glance grasped the whole scene and comprehended it, each knew from the almost imperceptible motion which crossed the soured and bittered face of Corentin, that the real adversaries had met. A terrible duel was about to begin.

Noticing the box, now in the hands of Corentin, the countess raised her whip and sprang rapidly towards him. Striking his hands with so violent a blow that the casket fell to the ground, she seized it, flung it into the middle of the fire, and stood with her back to the chimney in a threatening attitude before either of the agents recovered from their surprise. The scorn which flamed from her eyes, her pale brow, her disdainful lips, were even more insulting than the haughty action which treated Corentin as though he were a venomous reptile. Old d’Hauteserre felt himself once more a cavalier; all his blood rushed to his face, and he grieved that he had no sword. The servants trembled for an instant with joy. The vengeance they had called down upon these men had come. But their joy was driven back within their souls by a terrible fear; the gendarmes were still heard coming and going in the garrets.

The spy– noun of strength, under which all shades of the police are confounded, for the public has never chosen to specify in language the varieties of those who compose this dispensary of social remedies so essential to all governments – the spy has this curious and magnificent quality: he never becomes angry; he possesses the Christian humility of a priest; his eyes are stolid with an indifference which he holds as a barrier against the world of fools who do not understand him; his forehead is adamant under insult; he pursues his ends like a reptile whose carapace is fractured only by a cannonball; but (like that reptile) he is all the more furious when the blow does reach him, because he believed his armor invulnerable. The lash of the whip upon his fingers was to Corentin, pain apart, the cannonball that cracked the shell. Coming from that magnificent and noble girl, this action, emblematic of her disgust, humiliated him, not only in the eyes of the people about him, but in his own.

Peyrade sprang to the hearth, caught Laurence’s foot, raised it, and compelled her, out of modesty, to throw herself on the sofa, where she had lately lain asleep. The scene, like other contrasts in human things, was burlesque in the midst of terror. Peyrade scorched his hand as he dashed it into the fire to seize the box; but he got it, threw it on the floor and sat down upon it. These little actions were done with great rapidity and without a word being uttered. Corentin, recovering from the pain of the blow, caught Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne by both hands, and held her.

“Do not compel me to use force against you,” he said, with withering politeness.

Peyrade’s action had extinguished the fire by the natural process of suppressing the air.

“Gendarmes! here!” he cried, still occupying his ridiculous position.

“Will you promise to behave yourself?” said Corentin, insolently, addressing Laurence, and picking up his dagger, but not committing the great fault of threatening her with it.

“The secrets of that box do not concern the government,” she answered, with a tinge of melancholy in her tone and manner. “When you have read the letters it contains you will, in spite of your infamy, feel ashamed of having read them – that is, if you can still feel shame at anything,” she added, after a pause.

The abbe looked at her as if to say, “For God’s sake, be calm!”

Peyrade rose. The bottom of the box, which had been nearly burned through, left a mark upon the floor; the lid was scorched and the sides gave way. The grotesque Scaevola, who had offered to the god of the Police and Terror the seat of his apricot breeches, opened the two sides of the box as if it had been a book, and slid three letters and two locks of hair upon the card-table. He was about to smile at Corentin when he perceived that the locks were of two shades of gray. Corentin released Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne’s hands and went up to the table to read the letter from which the hair had fallen.

Laurence rose, moved to the table beside the spies, and said: – “Read it aloud; that shall be your punishment.”

As the two men continued to read to themselves, she herself read out the following words: —

Dear Laurence, – My husband and I have heard of your noble conduct on the day of our arrest. We know that you love our dear twins as much, almost, as we love them ourselves. Therefore it is with you that we leave a token which will be both precious and sad to them. The executioner has come to cut our hair, for we are to die in a few moments; he has promised to put into your hands the only remembrance we are able to leave to our beloved orphans. Keep these last remains of us and give them to our sons in happier days. We have kissed these locks of hair and have laid our blessing upon them. Our last thought will be of our sons, of you, and of God. Love them, Laurence.

Berthe de Cinq-Cygne. Jean de Simeuse.

Tears came to the eyes of all the household as they listened to the letter.

Laurence looked at the agents with a petrifying glance and said, in a firm voice: —

“You have less pity than the executioner.”

Corentin quietly folded the hair in the letter, laid the letter aside on the table, and put a box of counters on the top of it as if to prevent its blowing away. His coolness in the midst of the general emotion was horrible.

Peyrade unfolded the other letters.

“Oh, as for those,” said Laurence, “they are very much alike. You hear the will; you can now hear of its fulfilment. In future I shall have no secrets from any one.”

1794, Andernach. Before the battle.

My dear Laurence, – I love you for life, and I wish you to know it. But you ought also to know, in case I die, that my brother, Paul-Marie, loves you as much as I love you. My only consolation in dying would be the thought that you might some day make my brother your husband without being forced to see me die of jealousy – which must surely happen if, both of us being alive, you preferred him to me. After all, that preference seems natural, for he is, perhaps, more worthy of your love than I —

Marie-Paul.

“Here is the other letter,” she said, with the color in her cheeks.

Andernach. Before the battle.

My kind Laurence, – My heart is sad; but Marie-Paul has a gayer nature, and will please you more than I am able to do. Some day you will have to choose between us – well, though I love you passionately —

“You are corresponding with emigres,” said Peyrade, interrupting Laurence, and holding the letters between himself and the light to see if they contained between the lines any treasonable writing with invisible ink.

“Yes,” replied Laurence, folding the precious letters, the paper of which was already yellow with time. “But by virtue of what right do you presume to violate my dwelling and my personal liberty?”

“Ah, that’s the point!” cried Peyrade. “By what right, indeed! – it is time to let you know it, beautiful aristocrat,” he added, taking a warrant from his pocket, which came from the minister of justice and was countersigned by the minister of the interior. “See, the authorities have their eye upon you.”

“We might also ask you,” said Corentin, in her ear, “by what right you harbor in this house the assassins of the First Consul. You have applied your whip to my hands in a manner that authorizes me to take my revenge upon your cousins, whom I came here to save.”

At the mere movement of her lips and the glance which Laurence cast upon Corentin, the abbe guessed what that great artist was saying, and he made her a sign to be distrustful, which no one intercepted but Goulard. Peyrade struck the cover of the box to see if there were a double top.