Part 44 (2/2)

”Tell me!” he gasped, still all astream, wits and clothes alike. And it was the Senechal who told him.

”Peter Mauger was killed last night, at the same place as Tom Hamon, and in the same way. So these hot-blooded thickheads are convinced at last that it wasn't your work.”

”Peter Mauger!” he said, gazing vaguely at them all. ”But who--”

”We haven't found out yet. But even the thickest of the thickheads can't put it down to you”--and the thickheads present grinned in friendly fas.h.i.+on, and they ran up the sail with a will, and turned her nose, and went racing back to the Creux quicker than they had come.

And Gard sat still with his hand in Nance's two, feeling very weak and shaky, and looked vaguely back at L'Etat as it faded and dwindled into a dim black triangle of rock.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

HOW HE CAME HOME FROM L'ETAT

This is what had happened.

Since Tom Hamon's death, his friend Peter and his widow Julie had, as we know, found themselves drawn together by a common detestation of Stephen Gard and a common desire for his extinction.

For Peter considered he had been supplanted in Nance's regards, though Nance had never regarded him as anything but a nuisance and a boor. And Julie considered herself scorned and slighted, though Gard had never considered her save as Tom Hamon's wife.

It was they who had stirred up the Sark men against Gard, and they missed no opportunity of keeping their ill brew on the boil.

Their offensive alliance brought them much together. Peter was often at La Closerie. He was like wax in the hands of the fiery Frenchwoman, and she moulded him to her will. The neighbours might have begun to talk, but that it was obvious to all that the only bond between them at present was their ill-will towards Gard, and in that feeling many shared and found nothing strange in Tom's wife and Tom's chief friend joining hands to make some one pay for his death.

In time, if it had gone on, the neighbours would doubtless have had plenty to say on the subject, for old wives' tongues rattled fast of a winter's evening, when they all gathered in this house or that, and sat on the sides of the green bed with their feet in the dry fern inside, and the oil cra.s.set hanging down in the midst, and plied their needles and their tongues and wits all at once, and wrought scandalously good guernseys and stockings in spite of it all.

But these were summer evenings yet, and the _veilles_ had not begun, and reputations were out at gra.s.s till the time came round for their inspection and judgment.

And so, when Peter Mauger never reached home the night before this day of which we are telling, his old housekeeper, whatever she thought about it at the time, only said afterwards that she supposed he had stopped somewhere and would turn up all right in the morning, though she admitted that he was not in the habit of staying out of a night. Anyway, she was an old woman and all alone, and she was not going out to look for him at that time of night.

The morning surprised her by his continued absence. Never in his life, so far as she knew, had he behaved like this before. Vituperation of him gave place to anxiety about him.

She questioned the neighbours. All they knew was that he had been seen going down to Little Sark soon after sunset.

”That black Frenchwoman of Tom Hamon's twists him round her finger,”

said one.

”You tie him up, Mrs. Guille,” chuckled another, ”or sure as beans she'll steal him from you and leave you in the cold.”

And then, who should they see coming striding along the road but Madame Julie herself, and evidently in a hurry;--in a state of red-hot excitement, too, as she drew near. And they waited, hands on hips, to hear what she was up to now.

”Where's Peter?” she demanded, a long way in advance. ”Tell him I want him. That man Gard is still on L'Etat, though those fools who went across for him couldn't find him. Cre nom! What are you all staring at, then?”

”Where's our Peter?” demanded Mrs. Guille shrilly, with the strident note of fear in her voice, as she becked and bobbed towards the Frenchwoman like an aged cormorant.

”Peter? I'm asking you. I want him. Where is he?”

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