The Helmet of Navarre Part 54

"Now are we more comfortable," Peyrot observed, pulling a chair over against the wall and seating him, the pistol on his knee. "Monsieur was saying?"

Monsieur crossed his legs, as if of all seats in the world he liked his present one the best. He had brought none of the airs of the n.o.ble into this business, realizing shrewdly that they would but hamper him, as lace ruffles hamper a duellist. Peyrot, treeless adventurer, living by his sharp sword and sharp wits, reverenced a count no more than a hod-carrier. His occasional mocking deference was more insulting than outright rudeness; but M. etienne bore it unruffled. Possibly he schooled himself so to bear it, but I think rather that he felt so easily secure on the height of his gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence merely tickled him.

"I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have dwelt in this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne, methinks."

"Carca.s.sonne way," the other said indifferently. Then memory bringing a deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you, monsieur? I was left a week-old babe on the monastery step; was reared up in holiness within its sacred walls; chorister at ten, novice at eighteen, full-fledged friar, fasting, praying, and singing misereres, exhorting dying saints and living sinners, at twenty."

"A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."

"Nay, I am none. Else I might have stayed. But one night I took leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for Paris. And never regretted it, neither."

He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the ceiling, and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a lark's:

_Piety and Grace and Gloom, For such like guests I have no room!

Piety and Gloom and Grace, I bang my door shut in your face!

Gloom and Grace and Piety, I set my dog on such as ye!_

Finis.h.i.+ng his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not have twitched a finger without his noting it. M. etienne rose and leaned across the table toward him.

"M. Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris? Monsieur rolls in wealth, of course?"

Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and making a mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own rusty clothing.

"Do I look it?" he answered.

"Oh," said M. etienne, slowly, as one who digests an entirely new idea, "I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a Lombard, he is so cold on the subject of turning an honest penny."

Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's.

"Say on," he permitted lazily.

"I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at dawn from the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire."

"Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M. etienne had been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and demands a fair answer.

Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves success. I will look about a bit this morning among my friends and see if I can get wind of your packet. I will meet you at dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme."

"Dinner-time is far hence. You forget, M. Peyrot, that you are risen earlier than usual. I will go out and sit on the stair for five minutes while you consult your friends."

Peyrot grinned cheerfully.

"M. de Mar doesn't seem able to get it through his head that I know nothing whatever of this affair."

"No, I certainly don't get that through my head."

Peyrot regarded him with an air ill-used yet compa.s.sionate, such as he might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could not be convinced, for instance, of the efficacy of prayer.

"M. de Mar," quoth he, plaintively, in pity half for himself so misunderstood, half for his interlocutor so wilfully blind, "I do solemnly a.s.sure you, once and for all, that I know nothing of this affair of yours. Till you so a.s.serted, I had no knowledge that Monsieur, your honoured father, had been set on, and deeply am I pained to hear it. These be evil days when such things can happen. As for your packet, I learn of it only through your word, having no more to do with this deplorable business than a babe unborn."

I declare I was almost shaken, almost thought we had wronged him. But M.

etienne gauged him otherwise.

"Your words please me," he began.

"The contemplation of virtue," the rascal droned with down-drawn lips, in pulpit tone, "is always uplifting to the spirit."

"You have boasted," M. etienne went on, "that your side was up and mine down. Did you not reflect that soon my side may be up and yours down, you would hardly be at such pains to deny that you ever bared blade against the Duke of St. Quentin."

"I have made my declaration in the presence of two witnesses, far too honourable to falsify, that I know nothing of the attack on the duke,"

Peyrot repeated with apparent satisfaction. "But of course it is possible that by scouring Paris I might get on the scent of your packet.

Twenty pistoles, though. That is not much."

M. etienne stood silent, drumming tattoos on the table, not pleased with the turn of the matter, not seeing how to better it. Had we been sure of our suspicions, we would have charged him, pistol or no pistol, trusting that our quickness would prevent his shooting, or that the powder would miss fire, or that the ball would fly wide, or that we should be hit in no vital part; trusting, in short, that G.o.d was with us and would in some fas.h.i.+on save us. But we could not be sure that the packet was with Peyrot. What we had heard him lock in the chest might have been these very pistols that he had afterward taken out again.

Three men had fled from M. de Mirabeau's alley; we had no means of knowing whether this Peyrot were he who ran as we came up, he whom I had encountered, or he who had engaged M. etienne. And did we know, that would not tell us which of the three had stabbed and plundered Huguet.

Peyrot might have the packet, or he might know who had it, or he might be in honest ignorance of its existence. If he had it, it were a crying shame to pay out honest money for what we might take by force; to buy your own goods from a thief were a sin. But supposing he had it not? If we could seize upon him, disarm him, bind him, threaten him, beat him, rack him, would he--granted he knew--reveal its whereabouts? Writ large in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of cowardice.

He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while the papers went to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the business to begin again from the very beginning, with some other knave mayhap worse than this.

Plainly the game was in Peyrot's hands; we could play only to his lead.

"If you will put the packet into my hands, seal unbroken, this day at eleven, I engage to meet you with twenty pistoles," M. etienne said.

"Twenty pistoles were a fair price for the packet. But monsieur forgets the wear and tear on my conscience incurred for him. I must be reimbursed for that."

"Conscience, quotha!"

"Certainly, monsieur. I am in my way as honest a man as you in yours. I have never been false to the hand that fed me. If, therefore, I divert to you a certain packet which of rights goes elsewhere, my sin must be made worth my while. My conscience will sting me sorely, but with the aid of a gla.s.s and a la.s.s I may contrive to forget the pain.

_Mirth, my love, and Folly dear, Baggages, you're welcome here!_

I fix the injury to my conscience at thirty pistoles, M. le Comte. Fifty in all will bring the packet to your hand."

It had been a pleasure to M. le Comte to fling a tankard in the fellow's face. But the steadfast determination to win the papers for Monsieur, and, possibly, respect for Peyrot's weapon, withheld him.

"Very well, then. In the cabaret of the Bonne Femme, at eleven. You may do as you like about appearing; I shall be there with my fifty pistoles."

"What guaranty have I that you will deal fairly with me?"

"The word of a St. Quentin."

"Sufficient, of course."

The scamp rose with a bow.

"Well, I have not the word of a gentleman to offer you, but I give you the opinion of Jean Peyrot, sometime Father Ambrosius, that he and the packet will be there. This has been a delightful call, monsieur, and I am loath to let you go. But it is time I was free to look for that packet."

M. etienne's eyes went over to the chest.

"I wish you all success in your arduous search."

"It is like to be, in truth, a long and weary search," Peyrot sighed.