Part 18 (1/2)
”Escort me? _Me?_ What have I got to do with it, I'd like to know?” I cried, springing to my feet. ”I wish to explain--to make clear to you--_clear_. I want you to understand that I stumbled here by the merest chance; that I never spoke to this man in my life until to-night, that I accepted his hospitality purely because I did not wish to offend him, although I had shot late and was in a hurry to get home.”
He smiled quietly.
”Please do not worry,” he returned, ”we know all about you. You are the American. Your house is the old one by the marsh in Pont du Sable. I called on you this afternoon, but you were absent. I am really indebted to you if you do but know it. By following your tracks, monsieur, we stumbled on the nest we have so long been looking for. Permit me to hand you my card. My name is Guinard--Sous Chief of the Paris Police.”
I breathed easier--things were clearing up.
”And may I ask, monsieur, how you knew I had gone in the direction of La Poche?” I inquired. That was still a mystery.
”You have a little maid,” he replied; ”and little maids can sometimes be made to talk.”
He paused and then said slowly, weighing each word.
”Yes, that no doubt surprises you, but we follow every clue. You were both sportsmen; that, as you know, monsieur, is always a bond, and we had not long to wait, although it was too dark for us to be quite sure when you both pa.s.sed me. It was the bolting of the door that clinched the matter for me. But for the absence of two of my men on another scent we should have disturbed you earlier. I must compliment you, monsieur, on your knowledge of chartreuse as well as your taste for good cigars; permit me to offer you another.” Here he slipped his hand into his pocket and handed me a duplicate of the one I had been smoking.
”Twelve boxes, Maceio, were there not? Not expensive, eh, when purchased with these?” and he spread out the identical bank-notes with which his prisoner had paid for them in the Government store on the boulevard.
”As for you, monsieur, it is only necessary that one of my men take your statement at your house; after that you are free.
”Come, Maceio,” and he shook the prisoner by the shoulder, ”you take the midnight train with me back to Paris--you too, madame.”
And so I say again, and this time you must agree with me, that strange happenings, often with a note of terror in them, occur now and then in my lost village by the sea.
[Ill.u.s.tration: cigar]
[Ill.u.s.tration: soldiers]
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HORRORS OF WAR
At the very beginning of the straggling fis.h.i.+ng-village of Pont du Sable and close by the tawny marsh stands the little stone house of the mayor.
The house, like Monsieur le Maire himself, is short and st.u.r.dy. Its modest facade is half hidden under a coverlet of yellow roses that have spread at random over the tiled roof as high as the chimney. In front, edging the road, is a tidy strip of garden with more roses, a wood-pile, and an ancient well whose stone roof shelters a worn windla.s.s that groans in protest whenever its chain and bucket are disturbed.
I heard the windla.s.s complaining this sunny morning as I pa.s.sed on my way through the village and caught sight of the ruddy mayor in his blue blouse lowering the bucket. The chain snapped taut, the bucket gulped its fill, and Monsieur le Maire caught sight of me.
”_Ah bigre!_” he exclaimed as he left the bucket where it hung and came forward with both hands outstretched in welcome, a smile wrinkling his genial face, clean-shaven to the edges of his short, cropped gray side-whiskers, reaching well beneath his chin. ”Come in, come in,” he insisted, laying a persuasive hand on my shoulder, as he unlatched his gate.
It is almost impossible for a friend to pa.s.s the mayor's without being stopped by just such a welcome. The twinkle in his eyes and the hearty genuineness of his greeting are irresistible. The next moment you have crossed his threshold and entered a square, low-ceiled room that for over forty years has served Monsieur le Maire as living room, kitchen, and executive chamber.
He had left me for a moment, as he always does when he welcomes a friend. I could hear from the pantry cupboard beyond the s.h.i.+very tinkle of gla.s.ses as they settled on a tray. He had again insisted, as he always does, upon my occupying the armchair in the small parlour adjoining, with its wax flowers and its steel engraving of Napoleon at Waterloo; but I had protested as I always do, for I prefer the kitchen.
I like its cavernous fireplace with its crane and spit, and the low ceiling upheld by great beams of rough-hewn oak, and the tall clock in the corner, and the hanging copper saucepans, kettles and ladles, kept as bright as polished gold. Here, too, is a generous Norman armoire with carved oaken doors swung on bar-hinges of s.h.i.+ning steel, and a centre-table provided with a small bottle of violet ink, a scratchy pen and an iron seal worked by a lever--a seal that has grown dull from long service in the stamping of certain doc.u.ments relative to plain justice, marriage, the official recognition of the recently departed and the newly born. Above the fireplace hangs a faded photograph of a prize bull, for you must know that Monsieur le Maire has been for half a generation a dealer in Norman cattle.
Presently he returned with the tray, placing it upon the table within reach of our chairs while I stood admiring the bull.