Part 49 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXVIII
HOW GENERAL RATONEAU MET HIS MATCH
Within and without Les Chouettes the men all listened till those sounds died away. Then Simon turned to the little group of gendarmes and said: ”Come along, fellows, make a rush for that window. If there are any Chouan gentlemen here, we must not let them escape.”
Then the oldest of the gendarmes, a man well accustomed to hunting this sort of game, hung back and looked at him queerly.
”There are none--I'll answer for that,” he said. ”Certainly not Monsieur Ange de la Mariniere, or he would have been out long ago--and none of us ever felt sure that he was mixed up in Chouannerie--”
”What are you talking about?” cried Simon. ”Hold your tongue, and do your duty. The General ordered us to break into the house and search it.
Why, you know yourself that it is the headquarters of this plot.”
”If so, if I hear rightly, the master of it has paid for his Chouannerie with his life,” said the man gravely, still holding back, and watching Simon with a dogged steadiness. ”Our mates have caught the other gentlemen--they could not fail--and as for me, Monsieur Simon, I don't feel inclined to take any more orders from that General of yours. To me, he seems like a madman. There's private malice behind all this. It is not the sort of justice that suits me--to kill a gentleman and shoot his servants and burn his house down. I tell you, fellows, I don't like it--there are limits to what the police ought to do, and we shall find ourselves in the wrong box, if we go further without the Prefect's warrant.”
”Obey your orders, or you'll pay for it!” shouted Simon. ”Come on, men!”
and he ran towards the house.
”Be off, or we fire!” cried a voice from the window above.
”All right, Maitre Joubard, don't fire; we know you are a loyal man,”
said the spokesman of the gendarmes. ”I am going straight back to Sonnay, to see what Monsieur le Prefet says to all this. Do you agree?”
he turned to his comrades, who had drawn up behind him, and who answered, even the man who had been tied to the tree, by a quick murmur of a.s.sent. ”Come, Monsieur Simon, I advise you to cast in your lot with us; you have had too much to do with that madman. Everybody hates him.
They sent him down here because they could not stand him in the army.”
As Simon turned his back and walked sulkily away, the gendarme added: ”Come down, some of you, and look for your master. He may be still alive.”
The men in the room above looked at each other. They could not and did not believe that Monsieur Joseph was dead. To his old servants, it was one of those shocks too heavy for the brain to bear; the thought stunned them. Large tears were rolling down old Joubard's cheeks, but his brain and Martin's were active enough.
”What do you think?” he said to his son. ”Are they safe at La Mariniere?”
”I'll wager my wooden leg they are,” Martin said cheerfully. ”They had a good start, and that lumbering brute with his big horse would not know the shortest path. And once with Monsieur Urbain--”
”Ah, poor man! Well, let us go down and look for him, the little uncle.
Ah, Martin, all the pretty girls in the world will take long to comfort Monsieur Angelot--and as to Mademoiselle Henriette!”
”The gendarme said he might be still alive,” said Martin. ”See, they are gone round to him.”
”He is dead,” said Joubard. ”Come, Gigot, you and I must carry him in.
As to you, Tobie, just keep watch on this side with your gun--that poisonous snake of a Simon is prowling about there. Don't shoot, of course, but keep him off; don't let him get into the house.”
Martin lingered a moment behind his father. ”Tobie,” he said, ”that Simon has been Monsieur Angelot's enemy all through. I thought I had finished him with my stick, two or three hours ago, but--”
”I know--I have my master's orders,” said Tobie. He smiled, and lifted his gun to his shoulder.