IV
The first part of the cross-country ride was accomplished in silence. M. Leblanc was in a desperate hurry to get on; he pushed his horse along with the eagerness of intense anxiety. For awhile the police agent kept up with him in silence, then suddenly he called a peremptory "Halt!"
"Your horse will give out, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet," he said. "Allow him to walk for awhile. There are two or three questions I must put to you, before we arrive at Les Colombiers."
M. Leblanc obeyed and set his horse to a walk. Of a truth he was more worn-out than his steed.
"Firstly, tell me what kind of fireplace you have in your bedroom," said the other abruptly, and with such strange irrelevance that the sous-préfet stared at him.
"Why," he replied submissively, "there is a fine old chimney, as there is in every room in the house."
"You have had a fire in it lately?"
"Oh, every day. The weather has been very cold."
"And what sort of bed do you sleep in?"
"An old-fashioned fourpost bedstead," replied M. Leblanc, more and more puzzled at these extraordinary questions, "which I believe has been in the house for two or three hundred years. It is the only piece of the original furniture left; everything else was sold by Monsieur de Mamers' agent before the State confiscated the house. I don't know why the bedstead was allowed to remain; probably because it is so uncommonly heavy and is also screwed to the floor."
"Thank you. That is interesting," rejoined the police agent drily. "And now, tell me, what is the nearest house to yours that is of similar historical interest?"
"An old sixteenth-century house, you mean?"
"Yes."
"There is none at Bourg-le-Roi. If you remember, the town itself is comparatively modern, and every traveller will tell you that Les Colombiers is the only interesting piece of mediæval architecture in the neighbourhood. Of course, there are the ruins at Saut-de-Biche."
"The ruins at Saut-de-Biche?"
"Yes. In the woods, about half a kilomètre from Les Colombiers. They are supposed to be the remains of the old farmhouse belonging to the Manor; but only two or three walls are left standing. A devastating fire razed the place to the ground some ten years ago; since then the roof has fallen in, and the town council of Bourg-le-Roi has been using some of the stone for building the new town hall. The whole thing is just a mass of debris and charred wood."
While the two men were talking the time had gone by swiftly enough. Alençon was soon left far behind; ahead, close by, lay the coppice which sheltered Les Colombiers. Some twenty minutes later the two men drew rein in the fine old courtyard of the ancient Manor. At a call from M. Leblanc one of his men rushed out of the house to hold the horses and to aid his master to dismount. The Man in Grey was already on his feet.
"What news?" he asked of the man.
The latter shrugged his shoulders. There was no change at Les Colombiers. The two labourers were still on sentry guard outside the bedroom door, whilst the indoor servant, with the head gardener, had remained down below by the side of the moat, staring up at the shuttered windows, and revelling in all the horrors which the aspect of the dark waters and of the windows above, behind which no doubt the mad woman was crouching, helped to conjure up before their sluggish minds.
Madame Leblanc was still lying on a couch in the hall, prostrate with grief. No one had caught sight of Marie Vaillant within her stronghold, and there was no sign either of M. Ernest or of the butler Lavernay.
Without protest or opposition on the part of the master of the house, the Man in Grey had taken command of the small army of scared domestics.
"Monsieur le Sous-Préfet," he said, "before I can help you in this matter, I must make a hurried inspection of your domain. I shall require three of your men to come with me. They must come armed with a stout joist, with pickaxes and a few heavy tools. You yourself and your women servants must remain on guard outside the bedroom door. Should Marie Vaillant attempt a sortie, seize her and, above all, see she does not do herself an injury. Your head gardener and indoor man must remain by the moat. I presume they can swim."
"Swim?" queried M. Leblanc vaguely.
"Why, yes! There is still the possibility of the girl trying to drown herself and her secret in the moat."
M. Leblanc promised most earnestly that he would obey the police agent's commands to the letter, and the Man in Grey, followed by the three labourers who carried their picks, a bag of tools and a stout joist, started on his way. Swiftly crossing the bridge over the moat, he strode rapidly across the park and plunged into the coppice. Then only did he ask the men to precede him.
"Take me straight to the ruins at Saut-de-Biche," he said.
The men obeyed, not pausing to reflect what could be the object of this little man in the grey coat in going to look at a pile of broken stone walls, while M. le Sous-Préfet was half demented with anxiety and a mad woman might either set fire to the whole house or do herself some terrible injury. They walked on in silence closely followed by the accredited representative of His Impérial Majesty's Minister of Police.
Within ten minutes the ruined farmhouse came in sight. It stood in the midst of a wide clearing; the woods which stretched all round it were so dense that even in mid-winter they screened it from the road. There was but little of the original structure left; a piece of wall like a tall arm stretching upwards to the skies, another forming an angle, some loose pieces of stone lying about in the midst of a medley of broken and charred wood, cracked tiles and twisted pieces of metal. The whole place had an aspect of unspeakable desolation. All round the ruined walls a forest of brambles, dead gorse and broom had sprung up, rendering access to the house very difficult. For a moment or two the Man in Grey paused, surveying the surroundings with a keen, experienced eye. At a slight distance from him on the right, the gorse and bramble had apparently been hacked away in order to make a passage practicable to human feet. Without hesitation Fernand, ordering the three men to follow him, struck into this narrow track which, as he surmised, led straight to the ruins. He skirted the upstanding wall, until an opening in the midst of the big masses of stone enabled him to reach what was once the interior of the house. Here progress became very difficult; the debris from the fallen roof littered the ground and there was grave danger of a hidden chasm below, where the cellars may have been.
The Man in Grey peered round him anxiously. Presently an exclamation of satisfaction rose to his lips. He called to the men. A few feet away from where he was standing the whole debris seemed to have been lately considerably augmented. Right in the midst of a pile of burned wood, tiles and metal, a large stone was embedded. It had evidently been very recently detached from the high upstanding wall, and had fallen down amidst a shower of the decayed mortar, wet earth, and torn lichen and moss, which littered the place.
In obedience to the commands of the Man in Grey, the labourers took up their picks, and set to work to clear the debris around the fallen stone, the police agent standing close by, watching them. They had not done more than bury their tools once in the litter of earth and mortar, when their picks encountered something soft.
"Drop your tools," commanded the Man in Grey. "Your hands will suffice to unearth what lies below."
It was the body of a man crushed almost past recognition by the weight of the fallen masonry. The labourers extricated it from the fragments of wood and metal and dragged it into the open.
"By his clothes," said one of the men, in answer to a peremptory query from the Man in Grey, "I guess he must be the butler, Francois Lavernay."
The secret agent made no comment. Not a line of his pale, colourless face betrayed the emotion he felt—the emotion of the sleuth-hound which knows that it is on the track of its quarry. He ordered the body to be decorously put on one side and took off his own loose mantle to throw over it. Then he bade the men resume their work. They picked up their tools again and tried to clear the rubbish all round the fallen stone.
"We must move that stone from its place," the man in the grey coat had said, and the labourers, impelled by that air of assurance and authority which emanated from the insignificant little figure, set to with a will. Having cleared the debris, they put their shoulders to the stone, helped by the secret agent whose strength appeared out of all proportion to his slender frame. By and by the stone became dislodged and, with another effort, rolled over on its flat side. After that it was easy to move it some three or four feet farther on.
"That will do!" commanded the Man in Grey.
Underneath the stone there now appeared a square flat slab of granite embedded into the soil with cement and concrete. One piece of this slab had seemingly been cut or chiselled away and then removed, displaying a cavity about a foot and a half square. In the centre of the slab was an iron ring to which a rope was attached, the other end being lost within the cavity.
The labourers were staring at their find open-mouthed; but the secret agent was already busy hauling up the rope. The end of it was formed into a loop not large enough to pass over a man's shoulders.
"Just as I thought," he muttered between his teeth.
Then he lay down on his stomach and with his head just over the small cavity he shouted a loud "Hallo!" From down below there came no answer save a dull, resounding echo. Again and again the Man in Grey shouted his loud "Hallo!" into the depths, but, eliciting no reply, at last he struggled to his feet.
"Now then, my men," he said, "I am going to leave you here to work away at this slab. It has got to be removed within an hour."
The men examined the cement which held the heavy stone in its place.
"It will take time," one of them said. "This cement is terribly hard; we shall have to chip every bit of it away."
"You must do your best," said the Man in Grey earnestly. "A human life may depend on your toil. You will have no cause to grumble at the reward when your work is done. For reasons which I cannot explain, I may not bring any strangers to help you. So work away as hard as you can. I will return in about an hour with Monsieur le Sous-Préfet."
He waited to see the men swing their picks, then turned on his heel and started to walk back the way he came.
It was nearly two hours before the slab of granite was finally removed from its place. M. le Sous-Préfet was standing by with the Man in Grey when the stone was hoisted up and turned over. It disclosed a large cavity with, at one end of it, a flight of stone steps leading downwards.
"Now then, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet," said the police agent quietly, "will you follow me?"
M. Leblanc's face was ghastly in its pallor. The sudden hope held out to him by the Man in Grey had completely unnerved him. "Are you sure——" he murmured.
"That we shall find Monsieur Ernest down there?" broke in the other, as he pointed to the hollow. "Well, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet, I wish I were equally sure of a fortune!"
He had a lighted lantern in his hand and began to descend the stone stairs, closely followed by the sous-préfet. The labourers above were resting after their heavy toil. They could not understand all they had seen, and their slow wits would probably never grasp the full significance of their strange adventure. While in the depths below the Man in Grey, holding M. le Sous-Préfet by the arm and swinging the lantern in front, was exploring the mediæval lurking-holes of the Huguenots, the three labourers were calmly munching their bread and cheese.