Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  But when towards sunset we rode, a sorely jaded company, into the yard of the Hotel de Berri, at La Chatre, my heart suddenly leapt within me, for there, talking to the ostler, stood Stanislas de Noailles himself. Here within fifteen miles of Trécillac I had run my quarry at last to earth.

  He started upon catching sight of me and turning a white, weary face upon me, he smiled bitterly, I thought.

  “You here, Lescure?” said he. Then his smile broadened and he laughed outright.

  “Why yes, I might have guessed you would come after me.”

  “Your guess proves right; not so the grounds on which you base it,” I answered stiffly. “I am come on the King’s business.”

  At that his face grew a shade paler — the consciousness of the work he had been at in Paris knocked at his heart, no doubt, and he must realise how thus, in the eleventh hour, his visit to Mademoiselle de Trécillac was to be frustrated. I could almost pity him for the bitterness of the disappointment that must be his.

  “May I have a word with you in private, Monsieur?” I asked.

  “But certainly,” said he, and we went within. In a room of the upper floor of the hotel I produced the letter of cachet that was my warrant. The first shock over, no bearing could have been more admirable than was his.

  “Who plays stakes, and who loses, pays,” said he airily. “It seems I have lost, Lescure. But, voyons, I have friends in Paris; my uncle St. Simon—”

  “Will know nothing of your arrest,” I broke in. “You shall disappear utterly and completely.”

  He looked up sharply at that; then with a sigh and a laugh —

  “You will sup with me, Lescure?” said he.

  I answered that I would, adding that henceforth, until the Bastille entombed him, waking or sleeping, journeying or resting, he should find me ever at his side. His self-possession angered me with the anger of envy.

  When we had supped he called for cards. Nothing could have sorted better with my wishes; it was the cue for which I had waited. I seized on it to ask him what he had left me that I might stake; to revile him for having already wrought my ruin; to protest that, thanks to the condition to which he had reduced me, I should be compelled to quit the King’s service, and withdraw into the country.

  Encouraged — as I intended that he should be — by that tirade of mine, he made the next move by suggesting a bribe.

  “What if I were to make restitution?” he enquired with a kindly tone of concern that robbed the question of all its coarseness. “What then, Lescure? Would you do aught for me?”

  “Do? Do what?” I asked in feigned perplexity.

  “To regain the position which you have lost, would you” — he sank his voice almost to a whisper— “would you allow me to go free? I could be out of France in three days.”

  “Nom de Dieu!” I cried, springing up. “Is this an offer to make a gentleman?”

  A shade of disappointment crossed his face.

  “I feared that you would answer thus,” said he. “And yet, believe me, you are foolish. It would but mean exchanging a disgrace that is inevitable and will soon be public, for a disgrace that none need learn of. Men do such things. Think, Lescure, there is your Beaugency property, and the matter of ten thousand livres that I won from you.”

  “Do not tempt me.” I cried.

  “As you will,” said he, tapping his snuff box. “My heart bleeds for your father. The disgrace of it will kill him.”

  “Better a disgrace that is but financial than a tarnished honour.”

  “It will break your mother’s heart,” he sighed.

  “Silence!” I thundered.

  “And have you no thought for Mademoiselle de Trécillac?”

  “Mon Dieu!” I cried out like one in despair, and paused, only to add as though in pursuance of my thoughts— “But no, no, it is impossible. Besides, my men have seen you.”

  “But they do not know me,” he cried eagerly, leaning forward. “You were wise enough not to utter my name. They may think me some chance acquaintance. To-morrow you can rouse them and pursue your quest for M. de Noailles, whom you will not find.”

  “And return to the King and M. de Sartines with a lie. Monsieur, I will hear no more.”

  Nor did I, but for that night I thought that we had done well enough. Both into my hands and into the hands of the King was Noailles unconsciously playing.

  On the morrow, as we broke our fast, I broached the subject anew myself.

  “I have given thought to your last night’s words, Noailles,” I muttered. “Indeed, they kept me awake for hours. Temptation is a tough foe to fight.”

  There was astonishment in those fine eyes of his.

  “Your reflection, I hope, leads you to see the wisdom of what I suggest.”

  “In a measure it does,” said I. He caught his breath, and stared at me, a light of joy leaping suddenly to his eyes.

  “You agree, Lescure?”

  “Let me understand what you offer,” I returned, affecting the harshness of one driven to a repugnant step.

  “Ten thousand livres and your property at Beaugency.”

  I leant across the table and spoke quickly.

  “Add the locket with the portrait of Mdlle. de Trécillac, and you may walk out of this inn,” said I.

  At that he scowled, and I blushed to think what a base traitor I must appear to him.

  “Well?” I demanded roughly.

  “You ask too much.”

  “You refuse?” I demanded.

  “I refuse.”

  “Bethink you, Noailles—”

  “It is useless to talk, M. de Lescure. I cannot restore the locket!”

  “Then you will come to Paris.”

  “I cannot restore the locket,” he repeated coldly.

  At that I got up in a rage that was not simulated, and strode to the door.

  “Very well, M. de Noailles,” I threatened. “We shall see if we cannot find it for ourselves.” Then opening the door I raised my voice. “Baptiste, André!” I called.

  “What will you do?” he exclaimed, springing up.

  “Arrest you,” I replied with a disdainful smile, “and have you searched. We shall see now. M. de Noailles—”

  “Stay,” he commanded sharply. He gazed at me with a look so pregnant with disgust that I could have struck him. “This is the second time in connection with that locket that you would cheat me,” he commented bitterly. “But there, M. de Lescure, I do not wish to anger you with recriminations. I wish rather to withhold a step that must be irrevocable and which will yield you nothing. The locket is in safe keeping.”

  “So shall you be unless you produce it,” I retorted. “My men are coming up.”

  “Send them back, Lescure, and I will at least attempt to restore your locket. I cannot promise, but I will do my best, and if I fail, you can still arrest me.”

  My pulses throbbed. The horror of the Bastille appalled him at last. He was about to melt.

  I looked at him for a second, then I did as he desired, and sent off my men on a trumpery errand.

  He walked to the window and looked out, then turned to me again.

  “If I get back this locket for you,” he asked, “what guarantee do you give me that I shall be allowed to go free?”

  “I swear it on my honour,” I answered.

  He smiled sadly.

  “I must be content with that, for all that your behaviour recently hardly justifies an excess of faith.”

  “Monsieur!”

  “Pish! I am your prisoner. Give me pen, ink and paper, and within four hours it may be that you shall have your portrait. But with your permission, Lescure, I will so couch this note that it shall do duty against you if you break your word.”

  “Write as you please, monsieur,” said I impatiently.

  He paused a moment, pen in hand, then holding it out to me —

  “Better still, Lescure, you shall write the note yourself at my dictation.”

  I took the pen
(What did it signify who wrote the note?) and at his bidding I set down the following:

  M. de Noailles is my prisoner here, at the Hotel de Berri, at La Chatre, and upon the warrant of a lettre de cachet, I am to deliver him to the Governor of the Bastille. But in consideration of his restoring to me the locket which four nights ago he won from me at play in Paris, I do hereby undertake and solemnly pledge my honour to allow him to go free.

  “Sign it,” said he, and I obeyed him.

  He left me for a moment to despatch a messenger, whose return thereafter I awaited with impatience, yet well pleased with the outcome of the adventure, which was such as was desired by both M. de Sratines and myself.

  Early in the afternoon, as I sat with Noailles, a waiter entered with the announcement that I was being asked for below. I desired him to conduct the visitor to the room in which we sat, and a moment later, to my amazement, Mademoiselle de Trécillac herself was ushered in.

  “Madeline!” I cried, and would have rushed forward had not something in the glance of her eyes, in the poise of her head, restrained and chilled me. Looking past me at my companion —

  “I have received this letter, M. de Noailles,” she said, “and I ask your pardon for having doubted your word. I see that you told me the truth. Though repugnant, I cannot in consideration of what has befallen, refuse to comply with what I understand to be your wishes.”

  “Madeline!” he cried in his turn, but in accents of joy as he advanced to kiss the hand she yielded him with a sad smile. The turning to me —

  “M. de Lescure,” she said very coldly, “I am come to purchase M. de Noailles’ liberty from you at your own price. Here is the locket against the return of which you have pledged yourself to set him free.”

  She placed the little gem-framed picture on the table, whilst I stood like one who has drunk overmuch and whose wits work slowly. Then little by little I came to understand what earlier I should have guessed — that when I had come upon Noailles the day before in the inn yard, the gentleman was already on his return journey from Trécillac to Paris.

  I drew myself up with what assumption of dignity I could command.

  “M. de Noailles,” said I, “you are free to depart. But see that you tarry not in France.”

  Without touching the locket, I bowed to them, and sore beyond all conception, I left them together and went below to order my men to saddle. And as I rode back to Paris, my only consolation was that, from M. de Sartines’ pont of view, my mission had succeeded admirably. As much consolation did it prove to me as a fine landscape may prove to a blind man.

  THE LOTTERY TICKET

  Ainslee’s, March 1901

  Andreas Schumacher had been a failure in life. Moreover, he had grown fat.

  To look at the dumpy little old man as he climbed on to his high stool at Messrs. Hartmann, Stoffel & Co.’s office, it would have been difficult to have pictured the bright, slender, well-groomed youth who had come to London thirty years before, to study the English system of commerce.

  It had been his father’s desire that he should remain three years in England to perfect his knowledge of the language and of business, and then return to the partnership which Schumacher the elder would offer him in the then prosperous Hamburg house of Schumacher & Steinholz.

  But a great bank failure supervened and dragged that eminent firm through the bankruptcy tribunals. Old Schumacher died of heart disease accelerated by the disaster, and Andreas was left a penniless orphan to fight his battle of life unaided, uncheered, and unloved.

  He remained in London, and Messrs. Hartmann, Stoffel, & Co., moved to their inmost soul by his misfortune, befriended him to the magnanimous extent of twenty-three shillings and sixpence a week. They offered him this extravagant salary partly in consideration of the many favors they owed the late firm of Schumacher & Steinholz, and partly because they thought it unlikely they would find anybody else willing to do the work they apportioned him for less. He took it in the same spirit, realizing that elsewhere he might not get as much.

  He had fought shabbiness a hard battle — eventually succumbing — and had studied temperate habits of living with an assiduity beyond praise.

  For thirty years he had lived the miserable, soul-crushing life that fate had forced upon him, without a smile, without a groan, and almost (one might opine from his appearance) without a wash. Parsimonious living is not conducive to an excessive degree of cleanliness.

  But gradually his lot had improved. By dint of hard work and a sacrifice of everything that constitutes the verb “to live” he had proved himself worthy of an increased salary. By the time he had been for twenty years a dingy fixture of Messrs. Hartmann, Stoffel & Co.’s dingy office, his stipend had reached the full tide of three hundred a year. For ten years after that there had been no further advances, nor could he hope for any, nor — for that matter — did he wish for any. To wish for things one must have ambition, to have ambition one must have a soul, and poor Schumacher’s soul had been drowned in ink long ago.

  He had grown fat. Not the pale, puffy, fat of good fare and sensuous indulgence, but the moist, crimson fat of stupidity, selfishness, and too much sleep — the slothful obesity that begins in the mind, or in the lack of it.

  His character, like most men’s, was to be read in his clothes — baggy, faded, irregularly adorned with grease spots, whilst with your finger you might have written your name in the dust on his hat.

  How far removed he stood from this world’s vanities was attested by his supreme indifference to the shape or fashion of his buttons, shoe laces, and neckties.

  Such was Andreas Schumacher at the age of fifty-four, an unclean thing to look at, with a round red face, a large mouth shaded by short, stubbly mustache, small eyes that peered suspiciously through a pair of steel rimmed spectacles, and no nose to speak of. His hair alone gave you a suspicion of the artist. Its general untidiness and lordly contempt of the comb was such as is affected by priests of the muses.

  He had never married. He had never thought of it. When he was too young he had not the means; now that he was old he had not the figure to inspire passion — even had he had the inclination.

  But of late he had found lodgings uncomfortable. He had moved into a small, dismal house in Bloomsbury and engaged a housekeeper — a decayed lady who had the conventional qualifications of having seen better days and a husband who drank himself to death.

  He spent a hundred pounds a year on himself, his housekeeper and his establishment. The other two hundred he banked. Not that he had any definite object in this; he had acquired the habit, and although he might suffer discomfort, two-thirds of his income he set aside.

  For two years he lived in this fashion, peacefully, sordidly, and sleepily. Then a snake entered his slothful paradise. He discovered that Mrs. Leighton, his housekeeper, gambled.

  Now, men of Schumacher’s stamp are usually virtuous. Their lethargy of soul is too intense to be pierced by temptation; moreover, vice costs money, and if there was one thing that would appeal to Schumacher as sinful, it was that which cost money. Imagine, therefore, how appalling to him would appear the crime of gambling. What to him could be more immoral than the purchase of a lottery ticket? Was it not wicked, useless waste of six shillings?

  As he thought of all the things that could be bought for six shillings his bosom swelled with righteous indignation. It was worse than spending money on tobacco!

  He spoke severely to Mrs. Leighton, and with a dirty forefinger he emphasized his demonstration of her crime.

  She was a slender, fragile woman of fifty, easily daunted, and she listened meekly, with folded hands, then sighed and looked penitent.

  “I suppose it’s very wrong of me, Mr. Shoemaker, and since you put it that way, I promise to have no more to do with it. But, dear me, Mr. Shoemaker, I’ve bought a lottery ticket twice a year for the last six years. I’ve always had a hope of winning something, and then, ye see, I might—”

  “Herrgott,” Schumacher int
errupted — usually his English was fluent enough though guttural, but in rare moments of excitement he would take refuge in unseemly expressions of his mother tongue— “you have bought two tickets a year; twelve shillings a year, which,” he pursued, setting the matter at once upon a sound mathematical basis, “makes seventy-two shillings in all. Donnerwetter! Think, woman, think how much that is! What you want with any verfluchte lottery? What have you won? Nothing.” And spreading his flabby hands before her, he screwed his face into an awful expression of condemnation and disgust.

  Mrs. Leighton repeated her assurances that she would have no more to do with such things, and to show how earnest were his words, she put the ticket on the table and bade him take it and do what he liked with it.

  But he recoiled from that certificate of crime — which bore the name of the “Fortuna Gesellschaft,” and in large, black figures, the number 5400 — and with many Teutonic adjectives of vituperation, he solemnly vowed that he would not touch it.

  So, with another sigh, she returned it to her shabby purse, and with renewed protestations that she would gamble no more, the incident was ended, and Andreas went to sleep in his chair.

  A week went by, and the incident was all but forgotten, when, chancing one morning to open the Hamburger Tageblatt — which paper was regularly received at the offices of Messrs. Hartmann, Stoffel & Co. — his eyes alighted upon the number 5400 conspicuously printed in the center of the page. There was something familiar about it that arrested his attention. It represented his age multiplied by a hundred, and he had a hazy recollection of having thought the same of some number seen not long ago. Then he read the equally conspicuous heading, “Fortuna Gesellschaft,” and he remembered. With trembling hands, he held the paper whilst he perused the announcement that the holder of ticket No. 5400 was the winner of 50,000 marks — roughly, twenty-five thousand pounds sterling.