"Precisely. Good-morning. You can hardly----I protest, Sir Charles, you can hardly expect King George's representative to interest himself in that quarter. Good-morning."
As regards the mayor and the préfet, he arrived no nearer. The former, a rabid hater of all things British, told him that, although he had no knowledge of what persons might be in the various prisons of Paris, he was quite sure that, if any Englishmen were incarcerated, they deserved to be. The préfet, more politely but with equal firmness, said he also was not aware of what English people might be detained in the prisons, but that, even if he possessed the knowledge, he should not consider it his duty to give any information on the subject.
Then Kate, by this time recovered somewhat from the shock of her husband's death, and, although she knew it not, rapidly mending in health through the knowledge of the freedom that was now hers undoubtedly, determined that she would lose no opportunity of herself discovering where Bertie Elphinston was incarcerated; for that Fordingbridge had spoken the truth in his last moments, half mad though he seemed, she never had the faintest shadow of a doubt.
First she wrote, as was natural, to Archibald Sholto, telling him everything exactly as it occurred from the ending of the ball at the opera house to Fordingbridge's last words. Also she asked him to discover, if possible, for what crime her husband had been condemned to death. Above all, she begged him to find out from what prison he had been led to the Hôtel de Ville on the morning of his execution. "Because," she wrote, "in that prison Bertie Elphinston, your friend, your murdered brother's friend, will be found."
Her letter reached Father Sholto at St. Omer, to which he had removed from Amiens, and for some weeks he did not answer it; while, when he did so, he simply wrote to say that he would endeavour to find out the reason why Bertie should be incarcerated in the prison from which Fordingbridge had been brought forth.
"'Tis a cold answer at best," he muttered to himself one evening, as he paced along the marshy swamps around St. Omer, unobservant of the ripening fruit in the rich orchards all about, and even of the glorious sunset behind him--"a cold answer, yet what else to make? I cannot tell her that it must be the Bastille in which Bertie is confined. Merciful Father in heaven!" he broke off, "what can he have done to be there? Because it was to the Bastille that I, determined never to loose my hold on Douglas's murderer, procured he should be sent. Also I dread to tell her what Fordingbridge's crime was, who the avenger of that crime is. I dread! I dread! It is more than I have strength to dare."
Still pacing the marshes, he turned over and over again in his mind all that he had pondered on for so long, with--now added to all that--the fresh knowledge derived through Kate that Elphinston was in the Bastille.
"In the Bastille! the Bastille! So that is where he disappeared to without leaving a trace, a sign behind him. To the Bastille! It seems incredible. What could he have done? A good officer, a favourite with all. It is indeed incredible."
Still musing, he approached the town, to be aroused from his meditations, in spite of himself, by the clash of arms from the guard being relieved at the gates, and by the blare of some trumpets from the walls. They seemed to chide him, he thought, for being so inactive; they seemed to reproach him for meditating so much and for doing so little.
"Only," he murmured as he almost wrung his hands, "what--what shall I do? He is in the Bastille, and, though I could send that other one to the same fortress, I have no power to obtain this one's release. Who can help me? To whom shall I apply?"