Not a sound broke the stillness as Counsel ended—only a muffled rumble, like that of a death-drum, from the wheels of a passing wagon in the street outside. And then the blue-clad janissaries closed in; the Magistrates, without leaving the Bench, put their heads together, and the vote was cast.
“Hugo Staveley Kennett, we have no alternative but to commit you to take your trial on the capital charge.”
A sudden crash and thump broke in upon the verdict. Cleghorn had fainted in the dock.
CHAPTER XV.
THE FACE ON THE WALL
The morning of the inquiry found M. le Baron in Paris, in his old rooms at the Montesquieu. He was in very good spirits, smiling and buoyant, and not at all conscience-smitten over his desertion of his servant in his hour of need. “It will be a not unwholesome lesson for the little fanfaron,” he thought, “teaching him in the future to keep a guard on his tongue and temper.” He foresaw, be it observed, that certain issue, and felt no anxiety about it. But his face fell somewhat to an added reflection: “I wonder if they have committed him for trial by now. Poor girl!” and he shrugged his shoulders with a tiny sigh.
Having crossed by the night boat from Southampton, one might have looked for a certain staleness in the Baron’s aspect. On the contrary, he was as chirpy as a sparrow, having slept well throughout a pretty bad crossing, and since had a refreshing tub and brush-up. He sat down—though very late, with an excellent appetite—to his petit pain and rich coffee and brioche, and, having consumed them, took snuff at short intervals for half an hour, and then prepared to go out.
M. le Baron’s movements seemed carelessly casual, but he had, in fact, a definite objective, and he made for it at his leisure. It lay on the left bank of the river, in or near the district calling itself loosely the Latin or Students’ Quarter. He crossed the river by the Pont des Arts, and went straight down the Rue de Seine as far as the Rue de Tournon, where he turned off in the direction of St. Sulpice. The great bell up in the high tower was crashing and booming for a funeral, and its enormous reverberations swayed like Atlantic rollers across the fields of air. In all the world St. Sulpice bell is the death-bell, so solemn, so deep, and so overwhelming it sounds. M. le Baron paused to listen a moment. “Is it an omen?” thought he, “and am I going to hear bad news?”
Somewhere at the back of the church, in a little street called the Rue Bourbon-le-Château, he came to the shop of a small dealer in prayer-books and holy pictures and pious images. It was a poor shop in a faded district, and suggestive of scant returns and lean commons for its inmates. A door, as gaunt and attenuated in appearance, stood open to one side of the shop, and by this the visitor entered, with the manner of one who knew the place. A flight of bare wooden stairs rose before him, and up these he went, to the first, to the second floor, where he paused, a little breathless, to knock on a door. “Que diable!” cried a hoarse voice from within. “Who’s that?”
For answer the Baron turned the handle and presented himself. It was a ragged, comfortless room he entered, frowzy, chill, without a carpet and with dirty whitewashed walls. A table stood in the dingy window, and at it was seated the solitary figure of a man—emaciated, melancholy eyed—Ribault his name, a designer on the staff of the Petit Courrier des Dames. Some of his work lay before him now: he looked up from it with a startled exclamation, and rose to his feet. Those were clad in list slippers: for the rest he wore a rusty frock-coat, and at his neck a weeping black bow.
“M. le Baron!” he exclaimed, in wonder and welcome. “Who would have thought to see you again!”