Part 27

“You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?” queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad, dark patches staining his visitor’s cloak.

“Yes, a duel; you have it,” said the other, and a bitter smile flitted over his lips.

As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The General’s trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.

“That is the gendarmerie,” said he.

He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his inward perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal rims of their caps gleaming like silver in the moonlight.

“My lord,” said the corporal, “have you heard a man run past towards the barrier within the last few minutes?”

“Towards the barrier? No.”

“Have you opened the door to any one?”

“Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--”

“I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--”

“Really!” cried the Marquis wrathfully. “Have you a mind to try joking with me? What right have you--?”

“None at all, none at all, my lord,” cried the corporal, hastily putting in a soft answer. “You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night; but as we want any information we can get--”

“A murderer!” cried the General. “Who can have been--”

“M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe, and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your leave, General,” and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke. It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to alert observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at once if he had caught sight of the General’s face. Everything that passed through the soldier’s mind was faithfully revealed in his frank countenance.

“Is it known who the murderer is?” asked he.

“No,” said the other, now in the saddle. “He left the bureau full of banknotes and gold untouched.”

“It was revenge, then,” said the Marquis.

“On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn’t time to take it, that was all,” and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost out of sight by this time.

For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home, their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General’s anger vanished, he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant’s lying excuse.

While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene; and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low voice, “Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece.”

The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The Marquise’s eyes sparkled with curiosity.

“Well, mamma?” she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.

“I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--”

“I?” cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.

“Are you afraid?”

“No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man’s footsteps.”

“If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene,” said her mother with cold dignity. “If your father were to come back and did not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice your absence.”

“Madame, if you bid me go, I will go,” said Helene, “but I shall lose my father’s good opinion--”