The Helmet of Navarre Part 21

"No, but he is." M. le Comte stepped aside to show us Grammont leaning against the wall.

"Ah!" cried Vigo, triumphantly. He and two of the men rushed at Gervais.

"You would not take me so easily but for a cursed knife in my back,"

Grammont muttered thickly. "For the love of Heaven, Vigo, draw it out."

With amazement Vigo perceived the knife.

"Who did it?"

"I."

"You, Felix? In the back?" Vigo looked at me as if to demand again which side I was on.

"He lay on me, throttling me," I explained. "I stabbed any way I could."

"I trow you are a dead man," Vigo told Grammont. "Natheless, here comes the knife."

It came, with a great cry from the victim. He fell back against Vigo's man, clapping his hand to his side.

"I am done for," he gasped faintly.

"That is well," said Vigo, carefully wiping off the knife.

"Yon is the scoundrel," Grammont gasped, pointing to Lucas.

"He will die a worse death than you," said Vigo.

Grammont looked from the one to the other of us, the sullen rage in his face fading to a puzzled helplessness. He said fretfully:

"Which--which is etienne?"

He could no longer see us plain. M. le Comte came forward silently.

Grammont struggled for breath in a way pitiable to see. I put my arm about him and helped the guardsman to hold him straighter. He reached out his hand and caught at M. le Comte's sleeve.

"etienne--etienne--pardon. It was wrong toward you--but I never had the pistoles. He called me thief--the duke. I beseech--your--pardon."

M. le Comte was silent.

"It was all Lucas--Lucas did it," Grammont muttered with stiffening lips. "I am sorry for--it. I am dying--I cannot die--without a chance.

Say you--for--give--"

Still M. le Comte held back, silent. Treachery was no less treachery though Grammont was dying. All the more that they were cousins, bedfellows, was the injury great to forgive. M. le Comte said nothing.

How Grammont found the strength only G.o.d knows, who haply in his goodness gave him a last chance of mercy. Suddenly he straightened his sinking body, started from our hold, and tottered toward his cousin, both hands outstretched in appeal.

M. le Comte's face was set like a flint. The dying man faltered forward.

Then M. etienne, never changing his countenance, slowly, half reluctantly, like a man in a dream, held out his hand.

But the old comrades, estranged by traitory, were never to clasp again.

As he reached M. le Comte, Grammont fell at his feet.

"He was a strong man," said Vigo. He turned Grammont's face up and added the word, "Dead." Vigo adored the Duke of St. Quentin. Otherwise he had no emotions.

But I was not case-hardened. And I--I myself--had slain this man, who had died slowly and in great pain. Vigo's voice sounded to me far off as he said bluntly:

"M. le Comte, I make you my prisoner."

"No, by Heaven!" cried M. etienne, in a vibrating voice that brought me back to reality; "no, Vigo! I am no murderer. Things may look black against me but I am innocent. You have one villain at your feet and one a prisoner, but I am not a third! I am a St. Quentin; I do not plot against my father. I was to aid Grammont to set on Lucas, who would not answer a challenge. I have been tricked. Gervais asked my forgiveness--you heard him. Their dupe, yes--accomplice I was not.

Never have I lifted my hand against my father, nor would I, whatever came. That I swear. Never have I laid eyes on Lucas since I left Monsieur's presence, till now when he came out of that door side by side with Grammont. Whatever the plot, I knew naught of it. I am a St.

Quentin--no parricide!"

The ringing voice ceased and M. le Comte stood silent, with haggard eyes on Vigo. Had he been prisoner at the bar of judgment he could not have waited in greater anxiety. For Vigo, the yeoman and servant, never minced words to any man nor swerved from the stark truth.

I burned to seize Vigo's arm, to spur him on to speech. Of course he believed M. etienne; how dared he make his master wait for the a.s.surance? On his knees he should be, imploring M. le Comte's pardon.

But no thought of humbling himself troubled Vigo. Nor did he p.r.o.nounce judgment, but merely said:

"M. le Comte will go home with me now. To-morrow he can tell his story to my master."

"I will tell it before this hour is out!"

"No. M. le Duc has left Paris. But it matters not, M. etienne. Monsieur suspects nothing against you. Felix kept your name from him. And by the time I had screwed it out of Martin, Monsieur was gone."

"Gone out of Paris?" M. etienne echoed blankly. To his eagerness it was as if M. le Duc were out of France.

"Aye. He meant to go to-night--Monsieur, Lucas, and I. But when Monsieur learned of this plot, he swore he'd go in open day. 'If the League must kill me,' says he, 'they can do it in daylight, with all Paris watching.' That's Monsieur!"

At this I understood how Vigo came to be in the Rue Coupejarrets.

Monsieur, in his distress and anxiety to be gone from that unhappy house, had forgotten the spy. Left to his own devices, the equery, struck with suspicion at Lucas's absence, laid instant hands on Martin the clerk, with whom Lucas, disliked in the household, had had some intimacy. It had not occurred to Vigo that M. le Comte, if guilty, should be spared. At once he had sounded boots and saddles.

"I will return with you, Vigo," M. le Comte said. "Does the meanest lackey in my father's house call me parricide, I must meet the charge.

My father and I have differed but if we are no longer friends we are still n.o.blemen. I could never plot his murder, nor could he for one moment believe it of me."

I, guilty wretch, quailed. To take a flogging were easier than to confess to him the truth. But I conceived I must.

"Monsieur," I said, "I told M. le Duc you were guilty. I went back a second time and told him."

"And he?" cried M. etienne.

"Yes, monsieur, he did believe it."

"Morbleu! that cannot be true," Vigo cried, "for when I saw him he gave no sign."

"It is true. But he would not have M. le Comte touched. He said he could not move in the matter; he could not punish his own kin."

M. le Comte's face blazed as he cried out:

"Vastly magnanimous! I thank him not. I'll none of his mercy. I expected his faith."