Part 3 (1/2)
”Oh, nothing,” the man in black answered carelessly. ”Mademoiselle is beautiful, and monsieur is a happy man if she smiles on him. But she is high-born; and proud, I am told.” He leaned forward as he spoke, and warmed his long, lean hands at the fire. But his beady eyes never left the other's face.
M. de Vidoche writhed under their gaze. ”Curse you!” he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. ”What do you mean?”
”Her family are proud also, I am told; and powerful. Friends of the Cardinal too, I hear.” The man in black's smile was like nothing save the crocodile's.
M. de Vidoche rose from his seat, but sat down again.
”He would avenge the honour of the family to the death,” continued the astrologer gently. ”To the death, I should say. Don't you think so, M. de Vidoche?”
The perspiration stood in thick drops on the young man's forehead, and he glared at his tormentor. But the latter met the look placidly, and seemed ignorant of the effect he was producing. ”It is a pity, therefore, monsieur is not free to marry,” he said, shaking his head regretfully--”a great pity. One does not know what may happen. Yet, on the other hand, if he had not married he would be a poor man now.”
M. de Vidoche sprang to his feet with an oath. But he sat down again.
”When he married he was a poor man, I think,” the astrologer continued, for the first time averting his gaze from the other's face, and looking into the fire with a queer smile. ”And in debt. Madame--the present Madame de Vidoche, I mean--paid his debts, and brought him an estate, I believe.”
”Of which she has never ceased to remind him twice a day since!” the young man cried in a terrible voice. And then in a moment he lost all self-control, all disguise, all the timid cunning which had marked him hitherto. He sprang to his feet. The veins in his temples swelled, his face grew red. So true is it that small things try us more than great ones, and small grievances rub deeper raws than great wrongs. ”My G.o.d!” he said between his teeth, ”if you knew what I have suffered from that woman! Pale-faced, puling fool, I have loathed her these five years, and I have been tied to her and her whining ways and her nun's face! Twice a day? No, ten times a day, twenty times a day, she has reminded me of my debts, my poverty, and my straits before I married her! And of her family! And her three marshals! And her----”
He stopped for very lack of breath. ”Madame was of good family?” the man in black said abruptly. He had grown suddenly attentive. His shadow on the wall behind him was still and straight-backed.
”Oh, yes,” the husband answered bitterly.
”In Perigord?'
”Oh, yes.”
”Three marshals of France?” M. Notredame murmured thoughtfully; but there was a strange light in his eyes, and he kept his face carefully averted from his companion. ”That is not common! That is certainly something to boast of!”
”Mon Dieu! She did boast of it, though no one else allowed the claim. And of her blood of Roland!” M. de Vidoche cried, with scorn. His voice still shook, and his hands trembled with rage. He strode up and down.
”What was her name before she married?” the astrologer asked, stooping over the fire.
The young man stopped, arrested in his pa.s.sion--stopped, and looked at him suspiciously. ”Her name?” he muttered. ”What has that to do with it?”
”If you want me to--draw her horoscope,” the astrologer replied, with a cunning smile, ”I must have something to go upon.”
”Diane de Martinbault,” the young man answered sullenly; and then, in a fresh burst of rage, he muttered, ”Diane! Diable!”
”She inherited her estates from her father?”
”Yes.”
”Who had a son? A child who died young?” the astrologer continued coolly.
M. de Vidoche looked at him. ”That is true,” he said sulkily. ”But I do not see what it has to do with you.”
For answer, the man in black began to laugh, at first silently, then aloud--a sly devil's laugh, that sounded more like the glee of fiends sporting over a lost soul than any human mirth, so full was it of derision and mockery and insult. He made no attempt to check or disguise it, but rather seemed to flout it in the other's face; for when the young n.o.ble asked him, with fierce impatience, what it was, and what he meant, he did not explain. He only cried, ”In a moment! In a moment, n.o.ble sir, I swear you shall have what you want. But--ha! ha!” And then he fell to laughing again, more loudly and shrilly than before.
M. de Vidoche turned white and red with rage. His first thought was that a trap had been laid for him, and that he had fallen into it; that to what he had said there had been witnesses; and that now the astrologer had thrown off the mask. With a horrible expression of shame and fear on his countenance he stood at bay, peering into the dark corners, of which there were many in that room, and plumbing the shadows. When no one appeared and nothing happened, his fears pa.s.sed, but not his rage. With his hand on his sword, he turned hotly on his confederate. ”You dog!” he said between his teeth, and his eyes gleamed dangerously in the light of the lamp, ”know that for a farthing I would slit your throat! And I will, too, if you do not this instant stop that witch's grin of yours! Are you going to do what I ask, or are you not?”
”Chut! chut!” the astrologer answered, waving his hand in deprecation. ”I said so, and I am always as good as my word.”
”Ay, but now--now!” the young man retorted furiously. ”You have played with me long enough. Do you think that I am going to spend the night in this charnel-house of yours?”
M. Notredame began to fear that he had carried his cruel amus.e.m.e.nt too far. He had enjoyed himself vastly, and made an unexpected discovery: one which opened an endless vista of mischief and plunder to his astute gaze. But it was not his policy to drive his customer to distraction, and he changed his tone. ”Peace, peace,” he said, spreading out his hands humbly. ”You shall have it now; now, this instant. There is only one little preliminary.”
”Name it!” the other said imperiously.
”The price. A horoscope, with the House of Death in the ascendant--the Upper Portal, as we call it--is a hundred crowns, M. de Vidoche. There is the risk, you see.”
”You shall have it. Give me the--the stuff!”
The young man's voice trembled, but it was with anger and impatience, not with fear. The astrologer recognised the change in him, and fell into his place. He went, without further demur, to a little shelf in the darkest corner of the laboratory, whence he reached down a crucible. He was in the act of peering into this, with his back to his visitor, when M. de Vidoche uttered a startled cry, and, springing towards him, seized his arm. ”You fiend!” the young man hissed--he was pale to the lips, and shook as with an ague--”there is someone there! There is someone listening!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”FOR A SECOND THE MAN IN BLACK STOOD BREATHLESS” (p. 92).]
For a second the man in black stood breathless, his hand arrested, the shadow of his companion's terror darkening his face. M. de Vidoche pointed with a trembling finger to the staircase which led to the farther part of the house, and on this the two bent their sombre, guilty eyes. The lamp burned unsteadily, giving out an odour of smoke. The room was full of shadows, uncouth distorted shapes, that rose and fell with the light, and had something terrifying in their sudden appearances and vanis.h.i.+ngs. But in all the place there was nothing so appalling or so ugly as the two vicious, panic-stricken faces that glared into the darkness.
The man in black was the first to break the silence. ”What did you hear?” he muttered at length, after a long, long period of waiting and watching.
”Someone moved there,” Vidoche answered, under his breath. His voice still trembled; his face was livid with terror.
”Nonsense!” the other answered. He knew the place, and was fast recovering his courage. ”What was the sound like, man?”
”A dull, heavy sound. Someone moved.”
M. Notredame laughed, but not pleasantly. ”It was the toad,” he said. ”There is no other living thing here. The door on the staircase is locked. It is thick, too. A dozen men might be behind it, yet they would not hear a word that pa.s.sed in this room. But come; you shall see.”
He led the way to the farther end of the room, and, moving some of the larger things, showed M. de Vidoche that there was no one there. Still, the young man was only half-convinced. Even when the toad was found lurking in a skull which had rolled to the floor, he continued to glance about him doubtfully. ”I do not think it was that,” he said. ”Are you sure that the door is locked?”
”Try it,” the astrologer answered curtly.
M. de Vidoche did, and nodded. ”Yes,” he said. ”All the same, I will get out of this, Give me the stuff, will you?”
The man in black raised the lamp in one hand, and with the other selected from the crucible two tiny yellow packets. He stood a moment, weighing them in his hand and looking lovingly at them, and seemed unwilling to part with them. ”They are power,” he said, in a voice that was little above a whisper. The alarm had tried even his nerves, and he was not quite himself. ”The greatest power of all--death. They are the key of the Upper Portal--the true Pulvis Olympicus. Take one to-day, one to-morrow, in liquid, and you will feel neither hunger, nor cold, nor want, nor desire any more for ever. The late King of England took one; but there, it is yours, my friend.”
”Is it painful?” the young man whispered, shuddering, and with eyes averted.
The tempter grinned horribly. ”What is that to you?” he said. ”It will not bring her mouth to the back of her neck. That is enough for you to know.”
”It will not be detected?”
”Not by the bunglers they call doctors,” the astrologer answered scornfully. ”Blind bats! You may trust me for that. Of what did the King of England die? A tertian ague. So will madame. But if you think----”
He stopped on a sudden, his hand in the air, and the two stood gazing at one another with alarm printed on their faces. The loud clanging note of a bell, harshly struck in the house, came dolefully to their ears ”What is it?” M. de Vidoche muttered uneasily.