Part 10

He had inquired about Eugène de Contiac and had been told that the poor young man was in the depths of physical and mental agony, and unable to leave his bed.

Monsieur de Latour, having fixed upon his plan of procedure, thought that he would sleep soundly, but found himself mistaken.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VIII

MARS AND CUPID

No matter how fixed one’s determination may be not to fight, nor how promptly one means to inform the police, in a case like Monsieur de Latour’s there are few men who can sleep upon such a matter. Monsieur de Latour was not one of them, and he lay awake and pitched and tossed until five o’clock.

For the first time a suspicion began to steal upon him that he was, perhaps, better off at Brionville, with his middle-class friends, than at the Chateau of Montplaisir, with all of the smart people he had got about him, and with a semi-royal duke among the chateau’s visitors. Then came the thought of Mademoiselle Cheri, quiet, middle-aged, middle-class, like himself, and the remembrance seemed strangely attractive. It was chased away by the vision of the Comtesse de Beauregard and her kittenish old age, of the wild set of untamed octogenarians by which she was surrounded, and the prospect of leading a life like that of the last week in Paris; and Monsieur de Latour fell into a kind of panic.

“If I do get killed by that preposterous old scapegrace with his outlandish leg,” thought Monsieur de Latour, “it will be the fault of Madame de Beauregard. That woman will have been my murderess. However, another week like the last in Paris I believe would kill me just as quickly as a bullet from General Granier’s leg. Nevertheless, he won’t get me to stand up and be shot at--he may be sure of that.”

Monsieur de Latour, having dressed himself noiselessly in the first flush of the summer morning, crept downstairs with the quietness of a burglar bent on murder and arson, and let himself out of a small side door.

He struck out at a smart gait for the town, and making straight for the police station, entered and demanded to see the commissary. He was informed that the commissary was at home asleep, but the policeman on duty very civilly offered to do what he could for Monsieur de Latour. The policeman was a pleasant-faced fellow of about twenty-five years of age, entirely too young, so Monsieur de Latour determined, to be trusted with such a serious affair as the present. He at once plunged into the matter.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I wish to have a person, probably known to you, General Granier, arrested for making threats against my life.” And then he poured out his story.

But either his mind had not yet recovered from the strain of his week in Paris, or the policeman was stupid, for after Monsieur de Latour had talked straight ahead for twenty minutes, rising and gesticulating, the policeman appeared to be thoroughly confused.

“Do I understand, monsieur,” the policeman asked very politely, “that you demand the arrest of General Granier without any proof of the charges you make against him? That, you must know, is quite impossible.”

Monsieur de Latour sat down and mopped his forehead.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that General Granier is to be allowed to murder me in cold blood?”

“Not at all, monsieur, but I don’t quite understand the state of affairs. You have sent a challenge, so you tell me, to General Granier.”

“I never told you any such thing,” bawled Monsieur de Latour, jumping up from his seat and walking up and down excitedly. “It is General Granier who insists upon fighting me--that is to say, murdering me in cold blood, as I told you. Now, I don’t like the idea, and I don’t know any other man who does, and I demand the assistance of the law.”

The policeman shook his head with a puzzled air, real or affected.

“If monsieur will return at nine o’clock, the commissary will be here,” he said, “and will determine what to do.”

“But I am to be shot at seven!” cried Monsieur de Latour. “That nephew of mine--my uncle, that is--” Here Monsieur de Latour struck his forehead in agony and bewilderment. “Good Heavens! what a world this is! When I call upon you to save the life of a French citizen who is to be shot at seven you tell me to wait till nine, when the commissary will come. If you were not a policeman I should call you a great fool.”

“Be careful,” replied the policeman angrily, “or you will find yourself under arrest, monsieur, for abusing the police.”

“Will I?” shouted Monsieur de Latour joyfully. “Well, then, I wish to tell you that I think you are the worst lot of rapscallions, thieves, rogues, and liars on the face of the earth. Now, arrest me if you like.”

The policeman eyed Monsieur de Latour critically.

“I think,” he said, “you are a little off your head.”

“Then,” promptly responded Monsieur de Latour, “arrest me as a dangerous lunatic.”

“I don’t think you are dangerous at all,” replied the policeman, with the most exasperating calmness.

“I am,” pleaded Monsieur de Latour, going up close to the policeman. “I am exceedingly dangerous. Now, for all you know, at this meeting with General Granier I may be determined to kill him.”

“What, with a rapier? You don’t look to me as if you would know a rapier when you saw it.”

“No, no, no! We are to fight with guns fired with our legs.”

“Come, now,” said the policeman soothingly, “you sit here quietly and I will telephone to the Chateau of Montplaisir, where you say you belong, and get your uncle to come and fetch you.”

With that the policeman rang up the telephone.

“Don’t, don’t, for Heaven’s sake!” cried Monsieur de Latour. “He would drag me off to the meeting-place and hold me up to be shot at.”

But it was too late. The hour being early, the policeman had got the chateau immediately, and to Monsieur de Latour’s horror he heard the policeman’s end of the conversation, something like this:

“Yes, he’s here, talks very wild, but seems to be harmless.... You will be here immediately?... Thanks, monsieur.... Shall I order a rolling-chair? Certainly; there is a place just across the street.... Keep him here if I can?... Oh, yes, he seems to be afraid to leave the station!... That is all?... Good morning, monsieur.”

Monsieur de Latour knew well enough what all this meant. He sat down and sighed, and got up again and groaned.

“Your uncle will be here in a few minutes,” said the policeman encouragingly, “and says he has telephoned for a wheeled chair to be here.”

Monsieur de Latour, in a state of indescribable anguish, determined to make a last effort.

“See,” he said to the policeman, “I am a most desperate character. I am the gentleman you probably read of in the newspapers last week in Paris. I am the person who took the nineteen ballet-girls out to the races, and we drank among us one hundred and twenty-seven bottles of champagne--that is, I paid for one hundred and twenty-seven bottles--and smashed a twenty-thousand-franc automobile, and lost twelve thousand francs by betting on flies, and did a great many other things that I don’t remember now. And I am determined to kill General Granier!” Here Monsieur de Latour assumed an air of fierceness entirely foreign to him, and shouted: “I intend to have General Granier’s blood! Do you understand that? I mean to kill him!”

“Of course! of course!” replied the policeman soothingly. “You couldn’t do better. Now, sit down quietly, and you can kill him a great deal more comfortably when your uncle comes.”

“But I wish to kill him now,” shouted Monsieur de Latour, thinking his ruse had succeeded. “I am to meet him at seven o’clock in the wood on the edge of the field near the old windmill.”

With that Monsieur de Latour made a feint of going out of the door, and cannoned against another policeman coming in to relieve the one at the desk. A whispered conversation took place between the two, and then Monsieur de Latour’s enemy, as he had begun to regard this smart-looking young policeman, came out, and taking him by the arm, said to him:

“Now, there is a wheeled chair at the door. Suppose you get in it, and I will wheel you about the town a little.”

Monsieur de Latour hesitated for a moment and then joyfully consented. General Granier could not possibly attack him under the wing of a policeman. So, linking his arm in that of the policeman, they went out of the door, where they found a wheeled chair and an attendant. The policeman whispered a few words to the attendant, who went away laughing, and then, Monsieur de Latour seating himself within the wheeled chair, the policeman, with a grin almost as big as himself, began to shove it along the street.

“I think,” said Monsieur de Latour, over his shoulder, “it will be just as well for us to take a little tour around the town until about eight o’clock. By that time General Granier and his second will be tired of waiting, and then it will be quite safe for me to go back to the Chateau of Montplaisir. You can arrange to have both of us arrested, and I should prefer, myself, to be incarcerated. It is now only half-past six o’clock, so we can take quite a pleasant jaunt. I am certainly very much obliged to you for pushing me, and hope you don’t find me too heavy?”

“Not in the least,” replied the policeman, to whom every proposition of Monsieur de Latour seemed agreeable.

“And whatever you do,” added Monsieur de Latour impressively, “don’t take me anywhere near that wood. You see, my nephew----”

“I thought you said he was your uncle?”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t make any difference--he will be there, and he wants me to fight! He dragged me into this thing, and I don’t want to be at that place at that hour.”

They were then on the outskirts of the town, and Monsieur de Latour, who was not very familiar with the locality, pleased himself with the notion that they were going farther and farther away from the dreaded spot near the windmill. The policeman, who was not very expert with wheeled chairs, bumped Monsieur de Latour up and down considerably, and once nearly jolted him out.

“Look here, my friend,” said Monsieur de Latour, turning around and eyeing the fellow, who seemed to be enjoying the situation immensely, “I had just as soon be shot by General Granier as to be thrown out of this chair and have my neck broken.”

“You see, monsieur,” replied the policeman suavely, “I am not used to playing nursemaid for elderly gentlemen, but I am doing the best I can.”

Presently they came to a pleasant country road which Monsieur de Latour remembered to have seen in his drives about the place, but what was his horror suddenly to find looming up before him in the vivid light of the early morning a huge windmill.

“Take me away from here!” he cried to the policeman.

But the policeman, suddenly putting on a spurt, started the chair off at a dead run, jolting Monsieur de Latour most unmercifully and making it quite impossible for him to get out. His screams to stop were unheeded, and in about five minutes’ time he found himself in the appointed place in the wood just on the edge of the field. And, horror of horrors! there was General Granier, with a very fierce-looking gentleman in attendance, another gentleman with a sinister box which revealed his profession as a surgeon, and Louis de Latour. As soon as Louis caught sight of the wheeled chair, which the policeman was trundling along the road at a furious rate of speed, he rushed forward and, clasping Monsieur de Latour in his arms, cried:

“I knew, my dear nephew, you would not disgrace the name you bear, and, like a true De Latour, you would be on the spot to defend your honour.”

Monsieur de Latour, panting and exhausted, was still more agitated by the thought that he had escaped a broken neck at the policeman’s hands, only to become a target for General Granier’s leg. He held on firmly, however, to the sides of the chair, feeling himself safer there than standing on his feet.

“I told General Granier,” continued Louis, “that I felt sure some accident had occurred which would merely delay your arrival. I went to your room before six o’clock and was puzzled by your disappearance, but soon I was called up over the telephone and discovered where you were. I thought it useless to come to the police station after you, knowing that nothing would detain you from this place at this hour.”

Every man has in him some species of courage, and Monsieur de Latour had enough moral courage to own up to a lack of physical courage.

“My dear Louis,” he said, recovering himself, “we may as well understand each other. I never had the slightest idea of standing up to be shot at by General Granier. If he chooses to murder an innocent man sitting here in a wheeled chair, he may do it--I am at his mercy--but as for taking part in a duel, nothing was further from my intention, and I said so all the time!”

Louis gazed at him meditatively.

“I think the presence of this policeman has something to do with what you say,” he remarked, “but I believe we can easily stop his mouth.”

Louis came up to the policeman and looked meaningly into his face, at which the policeman, upon whose countenance a stupendous grin was fixed, said:

“I sha’n’t make any trouble, monsieur; but I think it only fair to tell you that this is the most bloodthirsty old gentleman I ever came across in my life. He swore that he would have General Granier’s blood and meant to kill him at all costs. I never saw a man in all my days so bent on murder as this one is.”

“You are an infernal----”

Monsieur de Latour was going to say liar, but it suddenly occurred to him that the policeman had some justification for what he said.

“Very well,” he continued, tucking his feet under him, “it makes no difference what I said--perhaps I had a motive in it. But I don’t mean to fight--I have said that from the beginning, and I am not a man to say one thing one day and another the next.”

At that the fierce-looking person whom Louis addressed as Major Le Gallian, advanced and said freezingly to Louis:

“Monsieur, now that you have your principal on the ground, is it not as well to begin work?”

“No,” promptly replied Monsieur de Latour. “You may not have heard what I said, so I will repeat it for your benefit. I never agreed to fight General Granier; I have no grudge against him, and if he has one against me I am willing to apologise. That is final.”

Major Le Gallian stood at attention and looked at Louis, as much as to say, “The next move is yours.”

General Granier, some distance off, was making mysterious gyrations, with his right leg lifted at an angle that would have destroyed the equilibrium of most men, but which he maintained with perfect ease. The sight of him at that very moment was most terrifying to Monsieur de Latour. Louis, with an air of great perturbation, turned again to Monsieur de Latour and began to speak, but the latter, waving his hand, cut him short.

“Not a word, not a word, my dear boy--my mind is made up and has been all the time.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked Louis sternly, “that you do not intend to live up to the courageous traditions of the house of De Latour?”

“That is precisely what I don’t mean to do,” promptly answered Monsieur de Latour. “And to be perfectly frank with you, I would rather be a live soap-boiler than a dead head of the house of De Latour.”

“Then I shall be obliged to disown you as my nephew.”

“I wish you would. It has bothered me almost to death ever since the unlucky mistake was made by that pretty little rogue in petticoats, Julie de Brésac--that is if it was a mistake at all.”

To have a principal on the ground who positively refuses to fight would be an embarrassing situation for most men; but Louis, with the air of a man who supposes that no one has heard what has passed, turned to Major Le Gallian.

“I think,” he said, “that we may as well begin measuring off the ground.”

This took them off a little distance, and if Monsieur de Latour had been experienced in such matters he would have noticed that their heads were uncommonly close together for gentlemen engaged in such grim work, and that both of them carefully avoided letting their faces be seen.

Monsieur de Latour dived down in his pockets, and, producing four twenty-franc pieces, held them up to the policeman and nodded anxiously. The policeman’s grin grew broader, if possible, and he nodded back, and then, with a whirl that almost pitched Monsieur de Latour head foremost out of the wheeled chair, the policeman started him off down the road at a gait that would have put a professional sprinter to his trumps.

Both Louis de Latour and Major Le Gallian were keeping their backs to their principals, so that the policeman got a good start of them before they found that the bird had flown. But General Granier had seen the whole proceeding and, shouting, “Stop him! stop him!” started off in chase. However, his right leg, which was an excellent weapon, was by no means sufficient as a motor, and very much impeded his progress. And by some strange fortuity neither Louis de Latour nor Major Le Gallian could be made to heed the general’s shouts and efforts to catch the rapidly retreating wheeled chair. When at last General Granier succeeded in attracting their attention, and pointed down the road, the wheeled chair had just turned the corner of a thicket some distance off, and both Louis and Major Le Gallian, looking in an entirely opposite direction, declared they saw no sign of Monsieur de Latour, and could not imagine in what quarter he had vanished. This infuriated General Granier, who, shaking his fist in the faces of Major Le Gallian and Louis de Latour, shrieked:

“You have tricked me and played with me. Was ever a gentleman so treated before? I demand satisfaction of both of you.”

Louis and Major Le Gallian were profuse in apologies, and Louis undertook to explain and apologise for Monsieur de Latour’s conduct.

“You see, my dear general,” he said, “after all, my nephew is but a soap-boiler, and how absurd it is to expect a soap-boiler to have a sense of _noblesse oblige_. I apologise for him, and if you insist on fighting, I will cheerfully take my nephew’s place.”

“I do insist on fighting,” screamed General Granier, snapping his false teeth viciously.

But here Major Le Gallian interfered.

“I can’t permit this,” he protested. “The proceedings this morning have been so irregular that it is impossible they can be taken seriously, and they cannot be carried further.”

“At all events,” said Louis, with a bow to General Granier, “the gallantry shown by you, monsieur, is worthy of your name and military rank. I shall have great pleasure in testifying to it, particularly in the presence of my nephew, whose conduct I deplore, and in that of the Comtesse de Beauregard, who, as you know, is a great admirer of spirit in a man. I am inclined to think that my nephew has lost whatever chance he had of winning Madame de Beauregard’s hand.”

A sudden change came over General Granier’s wizened old face.

“Do you think so?” asked he, stroking his mustache.

“I certainly do,” responded Louis. “And I may say to you that there are other gentlemen whom I might name that come much nearer Madame de Beauregard’s ideas of a man than my nephew, worthy as he is, and admirable in his own province of soap-boiling. I hope, monsieur, that matters may be arranged so that our former pleasant relations may be resumed, and that I may have the pleasure of seeing you at the Chateau of Montplaisir, especially during Madame de Beauregard’s stay there.”

General Granier, smiling like a May morning, replied:

“I am perfectly willing, monsieur, to be reconciled to Monsieur de Latour, and any arrangement which Major Le Gallian makes will be agreeable to me. I need scarcely say that I am without malice in the affair.”

Louis and Major Le Gallian retired a few yards off, and Louis whispered in Major Le Gallian’s ear:

“We can have a great deal of amusement still out of the old gentleman, so you had better arrange to bring him up to the chateau to dinner to-night, and come yourself.”

Major Le Gallian, whose countenance had been hitherto unmoved, winked and grinned in reply, and then, turning to General Granier, announced gravely that everything had been settled to his entire satisfaction, and that he had accepted an invitation for both his principal and himself to dine at the chateau that night.

Meanwhile, the doctor, sitting with his back against a tree, had fallen asleep. Major Le Gallian, going up to him, shook him vigorously and shouted in his ear:

“Get up. The whole thing has been arranged, and not a shot has been fired.”

“Eh?” cried the doctor, jumping up, “so nothing happened, after all? Well, I am very much disappointed--that’s all I can say--for I really hoped to have had some interesting professional experiences.”

And then, taking up his gruesome-looking case, he disconsolately followed Major Le Gallian and General Granier down the road to where their carriage awaited them. The cabman, who had also fallen asleep on his box, seemed equally disappointed when he found his patrons had escaped without death or even injury.

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[Illustration]

IX

THE ROGUISH LITTLE BLIND BOY LAUGHS LAST

About a half-hour later a cab and a wheeled chair both appeared before the entrance of the Chateau of Montplaisir. Louis de Latour jumped out of the cab while Monsieur de Latour scrambled out of the wheeled chair. The four gold pieces slipped into the policeman’s hand increased still further his colossal grin, but it was nothing to the air of pleasure and relief which Monsieur de Latour wore. He took Louis by the arm, and the two marched into the room known as Monsieur de Latour’s study.

“I have thought it all over,” said Monsieur de Latour, sitting down in a chair and putting his hands on his knees, “and I know what to do.”

“What do you mean?” asked Louis.

“Why, the whole business, marrying and the rest of it. I am not going to marry Madame de Beauregard. That woman is too much for me.”

“So everybody knows,” remarked Louis.

“In fact, I would rather stand up and be shot at by General Granier’s leg than marry Madame de Beauregard, with the life she would lead me. And as for a pretty young girl like Julie, that unfortunate peculiarity she has of always leaving out one word in everything she writes and getting one word twisted in everything she tells is very annoying. So I have abandoned all idea of marrying her. Perhaps she might take you.”