V
It was close upon five o'clock of a raw, damp morning when the little party drew rein once more at the wayside inn on the Chartres road. The men appeared tired out and were grateful for the hot coffee which a sleepy ostler hastily prepared for them; but the Man in Grey seemed indefatigable. Wrapped to the chin in a long, dark mantle, he had ridden the whole way by the side of the commissary, plying him with questions the while. Bit by bit he had extracted from him the full history of the futile expedition, the description of the house, its situation and structure, and of the members of the Chéron family. Now, whilst sipping his coffee, he made Lefèvre give him final and minute directions how to reach the farm-house.
Ten minutes later he started on his way—alone and on foot.
"Follow me in about five minutes," were his last commands to the commissary. "Then lie low under the trees. When you hear a pistol shot from inside the house rush in and seize every man, woman, or child whom you find; if you meet with any resistance order your men to use their muskets. Leave the Corporal with a strong guard outside the house, both back and front, and bid him shoot on sight anyone who attempts to escape."
After he had walked on through the darkness for a couple of mètres or so, he threw off his mantle and hat and kicked off his shoes. The commissary of police, had he been near him now, would of a truth have been staggered at his appearance. He wore a pair of ragged breeches and a stained and tattered blouse; his hair was unkempt, and his feet and legs were bare to the knees.
"Now for a little bit of luck," he murmured as he started to run. His bare feet squelched through the wet earth and spattered him with mud from head to foot, and as he ran the perspiration streamed down his face and mingled with the grime. Indeed, it seemed as if he took a special delight in tiring himself out, in getting breathless and hot, and by his active exercise making himself look even dirtier and more disreputable than he had been before.
When he reached the river side and the row of willow trees, he halted; the house, he knew, must be quite close now on the right, and as he peered into the darkness he perceived a tiny streak of light glimmering feebly through the gloom some way off. Throwing himself flat upon his stomach, he bent his ear to the ground; it was attuned to the slightest sound, like that of the Indian trackers, and he heard at a distance of four hundred mètres behind him the measured tramp of Lefèvre's men. Then he rose to his feet and, stealthily as a cat, crept up to the house.
The slender streak of light guided him and, as he drew nearer, he heard a confused murmur of voices raised in merriment. The occupants of the house were apparently astir; the light came through a half-open shutter on the ground floor as did the sound of the voices, through which presently there rang a loud and prolonged peal of laughter. The secret agent drew a deep sigh of satisfaction; the birds—thank goodness—had not yet flown. Noiselessly he approached the front door, the battered and broken appearance of which bore testimony to Lefèvre's zeal.
A bright patch of light striking through an open door on the right illumined a portion of the narrow hall beyond, leaving the rest in complete darkness. The Man in Grey stepped furtively over the threshold. Immediately he was challenged: "Who goes there?" and he felt rather than saw a gun levelled at his head.
"A friend," he murmured timidly.
At the instant the challenge had resounded through the house the light in the inner room on the right was suddenly extinguished; deathly silence had succeeded the debauch.
"What's your business?" queried a muffled voice peremptorily.
Before the Man in Grey could reply there was a commotion in the inner room as of chairs hastily thrust aside, and presently another voice—one both gruff and commanding—called out: "What is it, Pierre?"
A dark lantern was flashed about, its light fell full on the miserable apparition of the Man in Grey.
"What do you want?" queried the commanding voice out of the partial gloom. "Speak, or I fire!"
"A friend!" reiterated the Man in Grey timidly.
"Your name?"
"Nicaise, sir, from Mauger's farm on the Mayenne road. I was asleep under a haystack, when a stranger comes to me and shakes me roughly by the shoulder. 'Run,' he says to me, 'to Chéron's up by the Chartres road. Run as fast as your legs will take you. Walk in boldly; the door is open. You will find company inside the farm. Tell them the police are coming back in force. Someone will give you a silver franc for your pains if you get there in time.' So I took to my heels and ran."
While he spoke another man and a woman had entered. Their vague forms were faintly discernible through the darkness; the light from the lantern still struck full on the Man in Grey, who looked the picture of woebegone imbecility.
From the group in the doorway there came a murmur: "The police!"
"A stranger, you say?" queried the man with the commanding voice. "What was he like?"
"I could not say," replied the secret agent humbly. "It was very dark. But he said I should get a silver franc for my pains, and I am a poor man. I thought at first it was a hoax, but when I crossed the meadow just now I saw a lot of men in hiding under the willow trees."
"Malediction!" muttered the man, as he turned, undecided, towards his companions. "Oh, that I had that one-eyed traitor in my power!" he added with a savage oath.
"Did you speak to the men of the police?" asked a woman's voice out of the darkness.
"No, madame," replied the secret agent. "They did not see me. I was crawling on my hands and knees. But they are all round the house, and I heard one man calling to the sergeant and giving him orders to watch the doors and windows lest anyone tried to escape."
The group in the doorway was silent; the man who had been on guard appeared to have joined them, and they all went back into the room and held a hurried consultation.
"There is nothing for it," said one man, "but to resume our former roles as members of the Chéron family, and to do it as naturally as before."
"They suspect us now," said another, "or they would not be here again so soon."
"Even so; but if we play our parts well they can only take us back to the commissariat and question us; they must release us in the end; they have no proof."
In the meanwhile someone had relighted the lamp. There appeared to be a good deal of scurrying and scrambling inside the room; the Man in Grey tiptoed up to the doorway to see what was going on. Evidently, disguises which had hastily been put aside had been resumed; the group stood before him now just as Lefèvre had originally described them: the old man, the woman, the two young girls; the latter were striding about the room and holding their skirts up clumsily with both hands, as men are wont to do when they don women's clothes; the old man, on whom grey locks and well-stencilled wrinkles were the only signs of age, was hastily putting these to rights before a mirror on the wall.
But it was the woman's doings which compelled the attention of the Man in Grey. She was standing on a chair with her back to him, intent on manipulating something up the huge open chimney.
"It will be quite safe there," she said.
She appeared to be closing some heavy iron door which fell in its place with a snap. Then she turned to her companions and slowly descended from the chair. "When the present storm has blown over," she said, "we'll come and fetch it. Chéron will never guess; at any rate, we are sure the police cannot discover this most excellent hiding-place."
She was a short, square-built woman, with a dark, almost swarthy skin, keen jet-black eyes which appeared peculiarly hard and glittering owing to the absence of lashes, a firm, thin-lipped mouth, square chin, and low forehead crowned by a shock of thick, black hair cut short like a boy's. The secret agent kept his eyes fixed upon her while she spoke to her friends. He noted the head so full of character, and the strength and determination expressed in every line of the face; he marvelled why the features—especially those glittering jet-black eyes—appeared familiar, as something he had known and heard of before. And, suddenly, it all came to him in a flash; he remembered the informer's description of the leader named "the Spaniard": a dark, swarthy skin, jet-black hair, keen dark eyes with no lashes to soften their glitter, the beard, the man's attire, the foreign accent. Soh! these marauding Chouans slipped in and out of their disguises and changed even their sex outwardly as easily as men change their coats; whilst the very identity of their leader was more often unknown to them than known.
As the secret agent's practised glance took in during these few seconds the whole personality of the woman before him, he knew that his surmises—based on intuition and on reasoning—were correct. It was the Spaniard who stood before him now, but the Spaniard was a woman. And as he gazed on her, half in pity because of her sex, and half in admiration for her intrepidity, she turned, and their glances met. She looked at him across the narrow room, and each knew that the other had guessed.
The woman never flinched; she held the agent's glance and did not utter either word or cry whilst with a slow, deliberate movement, she drew a pistol from beneath her kerchief. But he, as quick and resourceful, had instantly stepped back into the hall. He seized the door, and, with a loud bang, closed it to between himself and the Chouans. Then, with lightning rapidity, he pushed the heavy bolt home.
The report of a pistol rang out. It came from inside the room. The Man in Grey was leaning his full weight against the door, wondering whether Lefèvre and his men would come to his assistance before the trapped Chouans had time to burst the panels.
He heard Lefèvre's call outside and the heavy tramp of the men. A few seconds of agonising suspense, whilst he literally felt the massive door heaving behind him under the furious onslaught of the imprisoned Chouans, and the commissary with the men of the police burst into the hall. The door fell in with a terrific crash.
The Chouans, caught like foxes run to earth, offered a desperate resistance. But the odds were too great; after a grim struggle across the threshold, which lasted close on ten minutes and left several men of the police bleeding or dead upon the floor, the gang was captured, securely bound and locked in one of the cellars underneath the house, where they were left in charge of half a dozen men until such time as they could be conveyed to Alençon and thence to Bicêtre to await their trial.