Part 26 (2/2)

”Take care!” cautioned the Vicomte pointblank, as the Baron re-entered with the box of milder Havanas.

And thus the talk ran on among these men of the world who knew Paris as well as their pockets; and so many Babettes and Francines and other careless little celebrities whose beauty and extravagance had turned peace and tranquillity into ruin and chaos.

At last the jolly breakfast came to an end. We rose, recovered our guns from the billiard-table, and with fresh courage went forth again into the fields to shoot until sunset. During the afternoon we again saw Le Bour, but he kept at a safe distance watching our movements with muttered oaths and a vengeful eye, while we added some twenty-odd partridges to the morning's score.

Toward the end of the afternoon, a week later, at Pont du Sable, Tanrade and the cure sat smoking under my sketching-umbrella on the marsh. The cure is far from a bad painter. His unfinished sketch of the distant strip of sea and dunes lay at my feet as I worked on my own canvas while the sunset lasted.

Tanrade was busy between puffs of his pipe in transposing various pa.s.sages in his latest score. Now and then he would hesitate, finger the carefully thought out bar on his knee, and again his stub of a pencil would fly on through a maze of hieroglyphics that were to the cure and myself wholly unintelligible.

Suddenly the cure looked up, his keen gaze rivetted upon two dots of figures on bicycles speeding rapidly toward us along the path skirting the marsh.

”h.e.l.lo!” exclaimed the cure, and he gave a low whistle. ”The gendarmes!”

There was no mistaking their ident.i.ty; their gold stripes and white duck trousers appeared distinctly against the tawny marsh.

The next moment they dismounted, left their wheels on the path, and came slowly across the desert of wire-gra.s.s toward us.

”_Diable!_” muttered Tanrade, under his breath, and instantly our minds reverted to Le Bour.

The two officials of the law were before us.

”We regret to disturb you, messieurs,” began the taller of the two pleasantly as he extracted a note-book from a leather case next to his revolver. ”But”--and he shrugged his military shoulders--”it is for the little affair at Hirondelette.”

”Which one of us is elected?” asked Tanrade grimly.

”Ah! _Bon Dieu!_” returned the tall one; half apologetically. ”A _proces-verbal_ unfortunately for you, Monsieur Tanrade. Read the charge,” he said to the short one, who had now unfolded a paper, cleared his throat, and began to read in a monotonous tone.

”Monsieur Gaston Emile Le Bour, agriculturist at Hirondelette, charges Monsieur Charles Louis Ernest Tanrade, born in Paris, soldier of the Thirteenth Infantry, musician, composer, with flagrant trespa.s.s in his buckwheat on hectare number seven, armed with the gun of percussion on the thirtieth of September at ten-forty-five in the morning.”

”I was _not_ in his _sacre_ buckwheat!” declared Tanrade, and he described the entire incident of the morning.

”Take monsieur's denial in detail,” commanded the tall one.

His companion produced a small bottle of ink and began to write slowly with a scratchy pen, while we stood in silence.

”Kindly add your signature, monsieur,” said the tall one, when the bottle was again recorked.

Tanrade signed.

The gendarmes gravely saluted and were about to withdraw when Tanrade asked if he was ”the only unfortunate on the list.”

”Ah, _non_!” confessed the tall one. ”There is a similar charge against Monsieur le Vicomte--we have just called upon him. Also against Monsieur le Baron.”

”And what did they say?”

”_Eh bien_, monsieur, a general denial, just as monsieur has made.”

”The affair is ridiculous,” exclaimed Tanrade hotly.