Capoulade looked at his stolid, merry face, and envied the man his courage. ‘You are not — not afraid?’ he suggested.
‘Afraid?’ roared the other. ‘Fichtre! I am taking a brace of pistols to bed with me. I promise you I shall solve this mystery.’
Capoulade sidled closer to him. Here, indeed, was the very comrade he needed. He put on a sober, mysterious air.
‘I perceive that you are sceptical,’ said he, a note of reproof in his voice. ‘It is a dangerous attitude in which to approach the supernatural. Your patience, monsieur,’ he cried, waving aside the other’s threatened interruption. ‘You are referring to matters of which my knowledge may be more extensive than your own. I am an investigator of the supernatural.’
‘A what?’ exclaimed Coupri, making of his companion a closer scrutiny than hitherto. There was about Capoulade, with his unpowdered black hair tied in a stiff queue, and his keen, sallow, almost wolfish face, an air that lent colour to his amazing statement.
‘I am an investigator of the supernatural,’ he repeated. ‘I have made it the subject of some profound researches, which have taught me, at least, that it is an ill thing to approach such a task as yours in the spirit of mockery by which I deplore to see you actuated.’
Some of the high colour left Coupri’s healthy cheeks.
‘But, name of a name, monsieur!’ he gasped, ‘am I to understand that you believe — that your studies have made you a believer in such things?’
‘A staunch believer,’ said the rogue impressively, ‘convinced against my will, converted by mortal terror from such unbelief as is inspiring you to make a jest of the matter. Your pistols are very well, my friend, if there is chicanery at work — and, indeed, I do not say that there is not. But such weapons will prove of little avail if it should be a question of — of the impalpable.’
In Coupri’s eyes the matter of the ghosts of La Blanchette began to assume formidable proportions. He sat glum and silent for a moment; then he laughed, to convince himself that it was a laughing matter.
‘Bah!’ he scorned. ‘All may be as you say, but at La Blanchette I am convinced that there is nothing but trickery, and I shall deal with it with powder and lead. They will prove great exorcizers.’
But despite this outward fanfaronade his mind was grown uneasy, and of this Capoulade was quick to detect the signs on the fellow’s honest countenance.
‘Monsieur,’ said he, speaking very seriously, ‘if I were not afraid of presuming upon our slight but interesting acquaintance’ — here he bowed to his companion— ‘I would suggest that you take me with you to La Blanchette. You might find the fruits of my studies of service.’
He had timed his proposal excellently, and it was pounced upon with flattering eagerness by his fellow-traveller. ‘Together,’ ended the honest Coupri, ‘we cannot fail to solve this mystery, I with my natural weapons if the ghosts be flesh, you with your supernatural ones if they be spirits.’
Thus was the matter arranged between them, and Capoulade concluded from the adroitness with which he had worked to the end he desired, that M. de Sartines might congratulate himself upon his new agent.
They arrived at La Blanchette on the morrow, and Coupri made no secret of the business that had brought him, presenting Capoulade to the elder Flaumel as a fellow-servant who had been chosen to accompany him.
Flaumel frankly laughed at them.
‘Come now,’ said he, with scornful amusement, ‘to what old wives’ tale has the sieur been listening? There are no ghosts at La Blanchette. Jacques and I have dwelt here these ten years, and never sound nor sight of them has disturbed our slumbers. A night, a couple of nights at the most, will convince you, mon cher.’
‘Madame de la Blanchette has ordered us not to stir from the château until I can present her with some explanation of these disturbances. I hope the ghosts will take an early opportunity of manifesting themselves, or my stay may be protracted. The sieur wishes to make holiday here with madame. He considers that it is time he occupied this château of his. But madame refuses to accompany him until the mystery has been cleared up.’
Flaumel shrugged his narrow shoulders.
‘My explanation — the only explanation,’ said he, ‘is that madame had the /migraine/ when she was here.’
‘But what of the nurse and the children?’ cried Coupri.
‘Pish!’ he sneered. ‘The nurse was no doubt frightening them with some ghost stories, and succeeded in frightening herself as well. The sleeping apartments are gloomy enough for the rest.’
And with fresh expressions of his scorn, the old steward passed on to other matters and asked for news of the sieur. Capoulade had been scrutinizing him closely, but had seen in his demeanour nothing to excite suspicion. Besides, why should the fellow have set himself wantonly to frighten women and children — assuming that he had a hand in the apparitions?
He was a slender man, whose countenance had been mellowed by age into a set of benignity, oddly contrasting with the villainous countenance of his son Jacques. Capoulade looked at the younger Flaumel’s low forehead, flat nose, and eyebrows between which there was no division, and mentally pronounced him a knave to be watched.
He spent the remainder of the day roaming the grounds, where all was green with the fresh, pale green of spring, and Coupri went with him, but talked little. They supped with the two Flaumels — there was no woman at La Blanchette — and when they had supped, it was the elder Flaumel who lighted them to their rooms.
Coupri had insisted that he should lie in the chamber occupied by madame during her recent visit, and he further insisted Capoulade should have a room in its immediate neighbourhood. To this Flaumel made no difficulty, and Coupri was conducted to the bedroom known as the sieur’s chamber. It was a lofty apartment, panelled in oak to a man’s height, and half-filled by the great canopied bed. Facing the bed, above the wainscot, stood a life-sized portrait of the present Sieur de la Blanchette’s great-grandfather — a rakish gentleman of the time of the fourteenth Louis. Seen in the yellow, flickering light of their tapers, the apartment wore a sombre, gloomy air — in itself almost enough to complete the rout of Coupri’s courage. Nevertheless, it was with a brave display of being at his ease that he drew the pistols from his bosom and laid them on a chair at his bedside.
‘If any ghost disturbs me, my good Flaumel, I will see how it takes a charge of lead.’
Wishing him good-night, and still laughing over that last pleasantry, Flaumel withdrew, and escorted Capoulade to his room across the corridor. That done, he stepped back and rapped on Coupri’s door. The intendant opened it at once.
‘Monsieur Coupri,’ said the steward, between seriousness and mockery, ‘I must confess that, after all, I am not quite easy concerning you. You are sleeping so far from our apartments, my son’s and mine. I am satisfied that you will not be troubled, and yet, perhaps it is best to be prepared for anything. If you will step down the corridor with me I will show you where Jacques and I are lodged, so that you may call us should you require anything.’
Troubled by this half-descent from his lofty scepticism on the part of Flaumel, Coupri went willingly with the steward, to be shown the whereabouts of the latter’s quarters. That done, he returned to his chamber, closed and securely locked the door; then taking a copy of Monsieur Le Sage’s droll story of ‘Le Diable Boiteux’ from his pocket, he flung himself, fully dressed as he was, upon his bed, his pistols within easy reach, and disposed himself for his vigil.
For best part of an hour he read undisturbed, and reassured by the peace of the room, his late qualms might have been dissipated but that whenever he looked about him, peering into the shadows that lay thick about the chamber, the gloom of the place chilled his courage anew.
Suddenly the stillness was broken. Reclining on his elbows he lay and listened, and he felt his flesh creeping as he did so. There was a sound as of someone faintly scratching on the wainscot opposite; and for all that his eyes were on the spot, he s
aw nothing.
‘A mouse,’ he sneered aloud, as if seeking to encourage himself with the sound of his own voice. ‘What a poltroon I become!’
The next instant he had fallen back with a stifled scream. A rush of cold air had swept past him, extinguishing his candle in its passage. Again he strove to master himself, and for all that his pulses thundered fearfully, he put forth his hand and groped for his pistols. Clutching one of them, he sat up and waited, his teeth chattering in his head. He wished in a subconscious sort of way that Capoulade was nearer than across the corridor, and that there were no locked doors between them. Then he ceased to wish anything, ceased to think anything, as a grim horror took him and held him spellbound. Fronting the bed at a man’s height from the floor, a white, luminous patch was spreading, like a phosphorescent cloud, and out of it boomed a horrid groaning sound followed by a shriek of hellish laughter.
The sweat stood in icy beads on Coupri’s brow. He bethought him of prayers learned in childhood, and he pattered them in a frenzy. Then from out of the luminous cloud a form began to shape itself, a figure immensely tall, swathed in a winding sheet, and — horror of horrors — surmounted by a hideously grinning skull with eyeballs of glowing fire. And the shrieks of it filled the chamber and froze the very marrow in Coupri’s bones.
Then in a flash his late scepticism recurred to him, and with it his resolve to test the ghost with lead. Mechanically almost he raised his pistol, and blazed with both barrels at the apparition. A burst of laughter answered him; next a glowing skeleton hand slipped from the cerecloth and held out two bullets which it let fall on to the parquet floor. Coupri heard the double thud of their fall, then, with a scream, he swooned.
When he recovered there were lights in his room, and Capoulade and the two Flaumels were at his bedside. Their questions as to what had happened he could but answer with entreaties that they should let him depart at once from that hideous chamber, and so in the end it was arranged that he should spend the remainder of the night in Capoulade’s room and Capoulade’s company.
But it was not until next morning, not until the comforting light of day had dispelled the horror of the night, that Coupri could be induced to tell his companion what had chanced. Capoulade listened attentively and very gravely, but when the end of the story came his glance brightened a little. After they had broken their fast, he took Coupri for a ramble through the grounds, and then it was that he communicated an idea that had occurred to him.
‘Does it not seem somewhat strange that a spirit being a thing impalpable, a thing of no substance to be affected by bullets, should yet have the wherewithal to grasp those same bullets and fling them back?’
‘Ask me not,’ groaned the intendant. ‘Who am I that I should explain these marvels? Never again will I doubt; never again will I mock.’
‘My good Coupri, you go too fast. To doubt unreasonably is assuredly an ill thing, but in this case I will make bold to say that nothing has happened yet to warrant any change from your late scepticism.’
‘Nothing?’ gasped Coupri. ‘Do you say nothing has happened?’
‘I will add, Coupri, that, with your permission, it is I who will sleep in the sieur’s bedchamber tonight — I hope to some purpose.’
Coupri, like the good soul that he was, sought to dissuade the young man; but Capoulade would not be dissuaded; he insisted that in the Sieur de la Blanchette’s interests, it was Coupri’s duty to further him in this last attempt to solve the mystery of this plague of ghosts; and Coupri let him have his way.
He had yet to contend with the opposition of the two Flaumels, when they met at supper. After last night’s happening, following as it did upon the two former scares, they seemed, themselves, to have abandoned their scornful attitude, and they entreated Capoulade not to expose himself. But he was firm in his determination.
‘I cannot believe Coupri’s preposterous story,’ was his astonishing declaration. ‘The poor fellow has been the victim of a morbid imagination. The proof lies in the fact that we could find no bullets when we searched the chamber, although he swears he saw them cast there.’
Flaumel shrugged his shoulders, and Capoulade drawing a brace of pistols from his pocket proceeded to load them under the eyes of the company. He placed them on the table, and the talk proceeded desultorily until Flaumel rose to make fast the doors.
From the hall they heard him calling, agitation quivering in his voice, and Coupri and Capoulade started up and ran out to him. He was standing on the steps outside the door, and when they came up he told them of a white, shrouded figure that had passed round the corner of the house. They started in pursuit, but though they made the tour of the château they saw no indication of Flaumel’s vision.
‘Mon Dieu!’ groaned the old man, as they were re-entering the hall. ‘Am I too become a visionary, or is the place really accursed?’
Capoulade’s answer was one of contemptuous incredulity.
‘Monsieur Flaumel, for shame! I had thought better of you. You are becoming the victim of these old wives and their fancies. I am for bed.’
He re-entered the dining-room, passing the younger Flaumel, who was coming forth in quest of his father, and taking up his pistols, Capoulade accompanied the others to the floor above. At parting with Coupri, he exacted a promise that should he hear a shot he would at once repair to him.
‘But,’ he added, ‘do not keep awake to listen for it; for the odds are greatly against your hearing it. I shall laugh at you in the morning.’
With that they parted, and Capoulade entered his bedroom and closed the door. He set the pistols he had carried on a chair, as Coupri had done the night before, and his candle beside them. Then he lay on the bed and waited.
Two hours went by, and Capoulade was beginning to fear disappointment, when, suddenly, there came, as on the previous night, the scratching on the wainscot to attract his attention. But instead of looking in the direction of the sound, he furtively peered behind him. He saw what he had expected. One of the panels of the wainscot at the head of the bed slid silently aside, leaving an open gap. Then came the rush of cold air which had so frightened Coupri, and Capoulade was in darkness.
He lay quite still and watched the luminous cloud appear, and as he watched his thoughts were very busy, but no thrill of fear unnerved him. The gibbering, howling skeleton grew clearer. Capoulade smiled grimly in the dark, and left the pistols on the chair untouched. From his breast-pocket he drew a fresh one, levelled it with a steady hand, and fired one barrel at the apparition.
A frightful scream rang through the chamber — no shriek of laughter this — and the ghost tumbled forward and down a height of some six feet, striking the floor with a thud.
In an instant Capoulade had his candle alight again, and he was leaning over the prostrate form, which had ceased to glow now that the candle’s yellow light was upon it. He stooped and pulled aside the sheet, then rolled the figure over on its back and plucked away the cardboard death’s head.
Beneath that mask the ashen face of the younger Flaumel was revealed, and in one of his clenched hands Capoulade found two bullets. Above the wainscot, where the Sieur de la Blanchette’s portrait usually stood, a black gap now yawned.
In that moment the door opened, and Coupri, looking very white, stood on the threshold.
‘/Voila!/’ said Capoulade, pointing to the figure. ‘I’ve laid the ghost. But he’ll recover to answer M. de Sartines’ questions yet.’ Then, suddenly, his hand went up, levelling his pistol once more and covering the elder Flaumel, who entered. ‘Throw down that pistol, or you’re a dead man,’ he commanded savagely, and the old man obeyed him.
When father and son were fast under lock and key, Capoulade added one or two words of explanation to make things clear to Coupri’s slow mind.
‘Last night, after you had laid your pistols down, Flaumel called you from the room on pretext of showing you where they lodged. Whilst he was doing this, his son was drawing the bullets from the charges of your
pistols. They did the same by me tonight, when the old man led us round the château to hunt a spectre. But I had a third pistol in reserve to exorcize the ghost with.’
‘But,’ stammered Coupri, still bewildered, ‘to what end should they have sought to frighten all who came to the château?’
‘Who shall say? There are men whose minds never rise above childishness.’
But Coupri shook his great head. ‘No, no,’ said he, ‘that is no explanation. It must be that, for some purpose, they wanted to have the château to themselves, as during the past five years.’
Capoulade looked at him, then he smote his thigh with his hand, and swore a great oath. ‘You have said it,’ he cried, for he had suddenly remembered his second task — the discovery of the coiners who were pouring spurious silver into Maine. He now recalled Sartines’ words, that the elucidation of one mystery would probably afford the explanation of the other.
They made search in the château, and at last, in a secret chamber, to which they found access through the passage opened by the Sieur de la Blanchette’s picture, discovered crucible and moulds and other implements of that nefarious craft, beside a quantity of base coin in bags. All this, together with their two prisoners, they conveyed to Paris.
M. de Sartines complimented Capoulade upon his address and definitely enrolled him in his army of secret agents. And if Capoulade kept back one of those bags of Flaumel’s coins, to the end that he might obtain good value for bad money, it must be remembered that the transition from dishonesty to honesty is not accomplished all at once.
THE POACHERS
They were a hangdog-looking pair as they rode into Liphook on that sunny morning of May. One was short and weedy, with bony shanks and a hungry countenance, the other was a little taller and a deal bulkier, but bloated of face and generally flabby. They were dressed in a soiled and tawdry imitation of their betters, and each looked every inch the gallows-bird that he was.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 524
