“That is what I can’t understand.”
But Martial soon found other causes for surprise. On examining the rope that remained—the one which had been used in making the descent of the cliff—he discovered that it was not of a single piece. Two pieces had been knotted together. The longest piece had evidently been too short. How did this happen? Could the duke have made a mistake in the height of the cliff? or had the abbe measured the rope incorrectly? But Martial had also measured it with his eye, while it was wound round him, and it had then seemed to him that the rope was much longer, fully a third longer, than it now appeared.
“There must have been some accident,” he remarked to his father and the marquis; “what I can’t say.”
“Well, what does it matter?” replied M. de Courtornieu, “you have the compromising letter, haven’t you?”
But Martial’s mind was one of these that never rest, until they have solved the problem before them. Accordingly, he insisted on going to inspect the rocks at the foot of the precipice. Here they discovered several stains, formed of coagulated blood. “One of the fugitives must have fallen,” said Martial, quickly, “and been dangerously wounded!”
“Upon my word!” exclaimed the Duke de Sairmeuse, “if it is the Baron d’Escorval, who has broken his neck, I shall be delighted!”
Martial turned crimson, and looked searchingly at his father. “I suppose, sir, that you do not mean one word of what you are saying,” he observed, coldly. “We pledged ourselves upon the honour of our name, to save the baron. If he has been killed it will be a great misfortune for us, a very great misfortune.”
When his son addressed him in this haughty freezing tone of his, the duke never knew how to reply. He was indignant, but his son’s was the stronger nature.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed M. de Courtornieu; “if the rascal had merely been wounded we should have known it.”
Such also was Chupin’s opinion. He had been sent for by the duke, and had just made his appearance. But the old scoundrel, usually so loquacious and officious, now replied in the briefest fashion; and, strange to say, he did not offer his services. His habitual assurance and impudence, and his customary cunning smile, had quite forsaken him; and in lieu thereof his brow was overcast, and his manners strangely perturbed. So marked was the change that even the Duke de Sairmeuse observed it. “What misfortune have you had Master Chupin?” he asked.