The American too was astounded. But the Captain of Artillery for all his southern blood had himself in hand.
“One thing more, Monsieur,” he said to the peasant, “why is it, if you please, that I have observed the bullfinch to be whistling sometimes in one part of your cottage and sometimes in another?”
“Ah, Monsieur,” replied the old man immediately, “it is the sun. He is a happier prisoner than I was, this German bird. He will sing, Monsieur, when the sun enters his cage.”
Then as though he suddenly remembered the parcel in his blouse, he took it out and handed it to the secret agent.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I have brought your shoe.”
The man met the unexpected with composure.
“Mercie” he said, “I am not accustomed to a sabot,” and he put on the shoe.
Then he stood up.
“Monsieur le Captain,” he said, “shall we shoot this peasant for a spy?”
The officer looked him in the face.
“I think not,” he said.
“Reflect, Monsieur,” continued the agent, “he is found with a German bird that whistles a German tune in a French village.”
“I think,” replied the Captain with deliberation, “that it is not this peasant that is signaling to the German lines.”
“It is another, perhaps?” inquired the agent.
“Perhaps,” replied the Captain.
“The German bird, Monsieur?”
“I am convinced, Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” said the officer with sarcasm, “that the German bird has nothing to do with the German fire.”
“Then, Monsieur,” cried the secret agent, “be prepared for the surprise of your career.”
He took the cage and carried it to the window facing the German lines. He moved the shutter back so that the sun fell on the cage. Immediately, as the peasant had affirmed, the bullfinch began to whistle. Then presently a strange thing happened, the German fire ceased, there was a period of silence, and as the bird finished, it began with redoubled fury.
“Captain Marie,” cried the agent, his voice ringing, “where do the German shells fall now?”
The officer sprang to the eastern windows overlooking the French guns, a moment he searched the country with his field glasses. Then he swore a great oath.
“Nom de chien!” he cried; “they fall a hundred meters beyond us, in the edge of the wood.”
The agent brought the bullfinch back to the table and set it down.
“Monsieur,” he said, “there is a great man in France who tells us that chance in the ultimate instance is God. I have reflected upon that and I approach his opinion. But for the barb of a wire that cut my shoe this morning, I should not have stopped at this peasant’s cottage, and so I should not have observed this bird, I should not have learned this peasant’s extraordinary story, and I should not have been present here at a curious adjustment of God’s providence.”
“Extraordinary story!” cried the Captain. “It is a tissue of lies. The man is a Prussian spy.”
The Captain’s face was purple with excitement. The American sat unmoving like one in the presence of things unreal.
“No, Monsieur,” replied the agent, his voice calm, the evidence of wine gone out, “and that is one of the strange things about this business, the peasant’s story is true. He was held a prisoner in a mountain village of Baden as he says.… We have some report of it. That is to say, Monsieur, we have certain pieces alone and disconnected, but we could not have put them together except for the inscrutable moving of this chance which is God.
“And now, Monsieur, will you court-martial the German bullfinch?”
“Monsieur,” replied the officer, “I do not pretend to understand you, but I do understand that by some means the German lines are signaled by this bird which I find in this peasant’s possession. I shall not bother to unravel the mystery. I shall wring the bird’s neck and put the peasant before a firing squad.”
“A moment, Monsieur,” continued the agent with authority. “A little while ago I promised that you should have a dead man for your bit of turf. But I did not promise that you should select him. I think, Monsieur, that I distinctly said that I would select him—that I would provide you with a dead man … and so I shall, Monsieur.”
But the Captain of Artillery had the insistence of his discipline.
“Monsieur Cordon Rouge, or whatever your name may be,” he said, “I am willing to accept you as one in the secret service of France, if you like, but I am not willing to accept you for the military authority in this village.”
And he got up. But he was interrupted. The American, who had been altogether silent, arose. His face was like plaster but he maintained his irreproachable manners. He bowed from the hips, clicking his heels together.
“Permit me to select the dead man!” he said.
And he whipped an automatic pistol out of his pocket. But before he could make his sinister choice, the fingers of the secret agent seized his hand and doubled it back with a snap against the wrist. The weapon exploded, and the American slipped down in a heap on the floor.
“Mon Dieu!” cried the Captain of Artillery, “you have killed an American gentleman!”
“No, Monsieur,” replied the secret agent, “I have merely killed a gentleman who was not able to whistle all of Blücher’s March.”
“Diable!” cried the officer, putting out his hands in a hopeless gesture, “how does this Blücher’s March signal the German lines?”
“Monsieur,” said the secret agent, “it does not signal them at all. Your host signaled them by the simple device of opening and closing the shutter to his window.… I observed this, Monsieur, when I passed through the village this morning. Closed, the window shutter meant your batteries were advanced; opened, it meant they were retired. The Germans had only to watch that shutter with a mariner’s glass.”
“Monsieur,” said the Captain of Artillery, in a sort of wonder, “who is this dead man and who are you?”
“I can answer that,” said the old peasant, taking up his bullfinch from the table as though no event of importance had occurred, “the dead man is the Junker Lieutenant who shamed me, and the other is Monsieur Jonquelle, the Prefect of Police of Paris.”
VII.—The Woman on the Terrace
Monsieur Jonquelle, the Prefect of Police of Paris, was a moment late.
An angry voice reached him at the turn of the path. It was a tense, low, menacing voice. The words were not clear, but the intent in the voice was unmistakable. For a mere fraction of time he remained motionless as in some indecision; then he went forward swiftly.
It was evening. The soft colors of a sort of twilight day were on the Mediterranean. The many-colored city of Nice was lying below the mountain of olive-trees and the tropical gardens of the villas of Cimiez. The whole scene was from a country of the fairy; the romantic frontier of some kingdom of wonder legend.
There were two persons on the long terrace of the villa when Monsieur Jonquelle approached. The villa was small and exquisite—a sort of jewel-box hidden in a garden of tropical luxuriance, inclosed by a high wall surmounted by a tile border. The villa was rose color. The tiles of the terrace and the border of the high wall were also rose color. It was a dainty and sensuous bit of the world, as though raised by some enchantment out of the baked earth of Arabia.
Monsieur Jonquelle interrupted a tragic moment.
A woman sat in a chair midway of this terrace. It was one of those beautiful invalid-chairs made for the out-of-doors by that Italian genius which seeks always to add beauty to the decorative aspect of a garden. The chair was white. The gown of the woman in it was blue; it looked black in the soft evening light and against the rose-colored villa and the white chair.
The woman did not move. Her small, shapely head, as from fatigue, rested against the high back of the chair. It was crowned with a great weight of hair, as yellow and as heavy as gold, built up into a wonderful coiffure that resembled in its vague outl
ines the helmet of Minerva. Her hands and her elbows lay on the arms of the chair. Beside her, a step beyond, the man who had arrived a moment before Monsieur Jonquelle stood in an attitude of menace. The visible personality of the man was puzzling. That he was an American one could instantly see. But one could not so easily determine his status or his habits of life. He had some of the physical characteristics, some of the tricks of dress of one engaged in an artistic vocation; some of the swift, accurate, precise gestures of one skilled in the plastic arts. But there was a vigor and determination about the man that one is not accustomed to find in a mere artist—an element of ruthless decision, and of swift acts as of one accustomed to peril in his trade.
The attitude of the man and the voice that had reached Monsieur Jonquelle at the turn of the path were unmistakable in their menace. But the woman did not move. Neither the sudden appearance of the man, nor his words, nor his menacing gesture had in any respect disturbed her equanimity.
The scene changed as at the snap of invisible fingers. And Monsieur Jonquelle came up on to the terrace. The man fell into the posture of one at ease before an interrupting visitor, and the woman looked up languidly as though undisturbed; as though no human drama, however tragic, could disturb her; as though she were forever beyond the stimulus of any human emotion.
It was clear that the man had no knowledge of Monsieur Jonquelle, but to the woman he was evidently a familiar figure. His appearance must have been an immense surprise to her, as the appearance of the man beyond her had been, but there was no evidence of it in her voice.
She did not rise. But she spoke softly.
“You do me a conspicuous honor,” she said. “You will have been very much concerned about me to search me out here.”
Then she presented the man beyond her.
“Martin Dillard,” she said, “an American— Monsieur Jonquelle.”
The Frenchman and also the woman, one thought, observed the American closely to note any recognition of either the name or the appearance of the new arrival. But there was none. He did not know either Monsieur Jonquelle or his trade.
She touched a bell concealed somewhere in the arm of the chair. A maid appeared. An added direction brought two chairs. The American sat down where he was, but Monsieur Jonquelle carried his chair a little beyond the woman to the edge of the terrace. He put down his hat, his stick, and his gloves.
“I am fortunate to find you,” he said; “I hoped to arrive a moment earlier.”
The woman smiled.
“In that event,” she said, “you might have failed to find my friend, Martin Dillard, the American. You will be interested, I am sure, to meet him and to know why he is angry.”
She turned slightly toward the American. Her face in the soft light seemed smiling, but it was, in fact, inscrutable.
“Monsieur Jonquelle,” she explained, “is an old acquaintance—a very old acquaintance. I have no secrets from him. He will know, I am sure, precisely the reason for my flight here and your cause of anger against me.”
She turned again toward the Frenchman.
“Is it not so, Monsieur?”
The American had a strange, sullen, puzzled expression. But Monsieur Jonquelle laughed.
“Alas!” he said, “it is the disasters of my acquaintances with which I seem always to be concerned, and, unhappily, their affairs are usually known to me.”
He bowed slightly to the American.
“If Monsieur will permit,” he said, “I shall be charmed to verify Madame’s prediction. Monsieur has followed to inquire why the house in the Faubourg St. Germain, in the old quarter of Paris, happened to burn down.”
The American moved, as in anger, abruptly in his chair.
“Yes,” he said, “that is just precisely what I wanted to know.”
Monsieur Jonquelle rose. He took a cigarette case from his pocket. It was of platinum exquisitely traced with a complicated arabesque. He opened it and presented it to the woman in the chair. She declined.
“It is denied me,” she said, “as all things are now denied me.”
The American also refused, and Monsieur Jonquelle returned with his cigarette to his chair on the border of the terrace.
“I, also,” he said, speaking as he went about the lighting of the cigarette, “as what Madame has so courteously called ‘an old acquaintance,’ am interested to know why this house at the corner of the Rue de St. Père on the Faubourg St. Germain has burned to the ground. It will be necessary to make some explanation to the authorities of Paris. They will be curious about it. And as this old acquaintance of Madame it has seemed to me that I ought to obtain and take some measures to present an explanation to the authorities in Paris.”
He continued to speak, in the slow business of igniting the cigarette.
“There is no question of insurance, nor the right of any property owner in the matter. Monsieur Martin Dillard owned this house by purchase some months ago, He carried no insurance on it. It was stored only with his own property and used only by himself with the charming assistance of Madame. There was not even a servant about. The doors entering the house were all fitted with a special lock, a complicated American lock with two keys only, one for Monsieur and the duplicate for Madame. The windows were securely closed with heavy shutters. The house was wholly inaccessible to any but these two persons, and it was the exclusive property of Monsieur. If it had not burned, we should not have been concerned about it. Mysterious romances of the heart do not provoke an inquiry in Paris. It is the only capital of pleasure where the heart is free; but the city authorities are concerned with fires. When the flame emerges from the heart, Paris is disturbed, and when it reduces to ashes an ancient house on the Faubourg St. Germain, some explanation must be given.”
He paused again. He had now gotten the cigarette lighted. And he sat down.
“Madame has correctly expressed it. I am an old acquaintance, and I am more than that; I am an old acquaintance who is very much interested to get Madame’s explanation before the authorities in Paris as early as I can manage it. Her flight after the fire seemed to be unwise. Even I had very considerable difficulty to find her.”
The American spoke abruptly.
“You seem very much interested in ‘Casque d’Or.’”
Jonquelle’s voice was in a sort of drawl.
“‘Casque d’Or,’” he said. “The expression is supremely happy. Madame’s golden head used to be the wonder of Paris when she came up with it like a Minerva through the fluid floor of Paris. Ah! yes, I am very interested—I have been always interested, as an old, a very old, acquaintance. And I am interested again, more, perhaps, than Monsieur can imagine.”
The American spoke again abruptly.
“You seem to know all about ‘Casque d’Or.’”
Again Monsieur Jonquelle drawled his answer.
“Ah! yes,” he said, “from her golden head to the blue pigeon delicately outlined on her hand between the thumb and the forefinger—every detail of Madame has been of interest to me—has been, I may say, of anxiety to me. And now I am concerned about the explanation for this fire.”
The American broke in. His voice was no longer restrained.
“I don’t see what you’ve got to do with it,” he said.
Monsieur Jonquelle did not at once reply. He looked at his cigarette as though it were somehow unsatisfactory; puffed it a moment until the tip glowed; then he tossed it over the edge of the terrace into the bushes.
Almost immediately the bushes parted and two persons came up on to the terrace. They were footmen in a rather conspicuous foreign livery. They paid no attention to either Monsieur Jonquelle or the American. They addressed themselves with apologetic diffidence to the woman in the chair. They explained that a parrot belonging to the Princess Kitzenzof, who occupied the great villa above, had escaped and was concealed somewhere in the thick shrubbery of Madame’s garden. Would they be permitted to search for it? The woman in the chair moved her head slowly in assent. Then sh
e dismissed them with a gesture. They went down off the terrace and toward the rear of the villa in their search, and the woman in the chair addressed the American.
“You must believe,” she said, “that Monsieur Jonquelle is an old acquaintance and that this explanation is not to be denied him. Neither are you to be denied it. You came here for it precisely as he has come for it. You have followed me here, trailing out my flight, as he has followed. The two of you arrived nearly on the moment, and I shall be pleased to include the two of you in my explanation. You were demanding it as Monsieur Jonquelle arrived—with some heat, if I correctly remember.”
The American replied in his abrupt manner.
“I don’t understand this thing,” he said. “But I do want to know how this house happened to burn while I was absent. You are the only person who had a key to it, and you must have burned it or you would not have run away and hid yourself—now, what’s the story?”
The woman had a bit of delicate lace in her fingers. She put it up a moment to her lips. Then she spoke, addressing her two guests. Her voice was slow, serene, and detached, like one who speaks without interest, without emotion, and without any concern for effect. It was like a voice from a mechanical appliance, having intelligence, but no will to feel.
“I have been attached to Monsieur Dillard,” she said. “There was a fortune before us, an immense, incredible fortune. The anticipation of it bound me to him, and so the burning of this house must have been an accident. The lure of a fortune is the only influence that does not loosen as one advances into life, in a world where presently every emotion fails. Therefore Monsieur Dillard had a right to feel that he could trust me, since my interest in this fortune was identical with his own.”
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