The Helmet of Navarre Part 41

"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."

"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did not--"

I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas--Paul de Lorraine killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it down. To fling wild accusations against a great man's man were no wisdom. By accident I had given the officer the impression that we were friends of Mayenne. I should do ill to imperil the delusion. "M. le Comte--" I began again, and again stopped. I meant to say that monsieur had never left the inn last night; he could have had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me that I had better not know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a very grand gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.

"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.

At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a witness was the last thing I desired.

"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a very fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these n.o.bles. The Comte de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he engaged me as lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on him. I know not what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to carry a message for him to the Hotel St. Quentin. I came into Paris but night before last, and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he employed me to run his errands, and last night brought me here with him.

But I had never seen him till this time yesterday. I know nothing about him save that he seemed a very free-handed, easy master."

To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the captain only laughed at my patent fright.

"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your arrest.

I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order says nothing about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."

I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the insult, and merely answered:

"I a.s.sure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday I would have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my experiences were teaching me something.

"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said impatiently. "Tell me where that precious master of yours is now. And be quicker about it than this old mule."

Maitre Menard, then, had told them nothing--staunch old loyalist. He knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and they had throttled him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should not lose by it.

"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not where.

But I know he will be back here to supper."

"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken your memory."

At the word the soldier who had attended to Maitre Menard came over to me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For had I said that my master was in the Hotel St Quentin, still those fellows would have found it no easy job to take him. Vigo might not be ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maitre Menard had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.

Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the threshold. Through the noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of triumph.

"Oh, M. etienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had been for nothing.

Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my amazed eyes beheld not my master, but--Lucas!

"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me, knaves!" For the second soldier had seized his other arm.

"I regret to inconvenience monsieur," the captain answered, "but he is wanted at the Bastille."

"Wanted? I?" Lucas cried, fear flas.h.i.+ng into his eyes.

He felt an instant's terror, I deem, lest Mayenne had betrayed him.

Quick as he was, he did not see that he had been taken for another man.

"You, monsieur. You are wanted for the murder of your man, Pontou."

He grew white, looking instinctively at me, remembering where I had been at three o'clock this morning.

"It is a lie! He left my service a month back and I have never seen him since."

"Tell that to the judges," the captain said, as he had said to me. "I am not trying you. The handcuffs, men."

One of them produced a pair. Lucas struggled frantically in his captors'

grasp. He dragged them from one end of the room to the other, calling down all the curses of Heaven upon them; but they snapped the handcuffs on for all that.

"If this is Mayenne's work--" he panted.

The officer caught nothing but the name Mayenne.

"The boy said you were a friend to his Grace, monsieur, but orders are orders. I have the warrant for your arrest from M. de Belin."

"At whose instigation?"

"How should I know'? I am a soldier of the guard. I have naught to do with it but to arrest you."

"Let me see the warrant."

"I am not obliged to. But I will, though. It may quiet your bl.u.s.ter."

He took out the warrant and held it at a safe distance before Lucas's eyes. A great light broke in on that personage.

"Mille tonnerres! I am not the Comte de Mar!"

"Oh, you say that now, do you? Pity you had not thought of it sooner."

"But I am not the Comte de Mar! I am Paul de Lorraine, nephew to my Lord Mayenne."

"Why don't you say straight out that you're the Duc de Guise?"

"I am not the Due de Guise," Lucas returned with dignity. He must have been cursing himself that he had not given his name sooner. "But I am his brother."

"You take me for a fool."

"Aye, who shall hang for his folly!"

"You must think me a fool," the captain repeated. "The Duke of Guise's eldest brother is but seventeen--"

"I did not say I was legitimate."

"Oh, you did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could reel off the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I am not so simple as you think. You will come along with me to the Bastille."

"Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas stormed.

"I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak up, you old turnspit," he shouted to Maitre Menard. "Am I he?"

Poor Maitre Menard had dropped down on his iron box, too limp and sick to know what was going on. He only stared helplessly.