"I can," Walter said. "It was Vandecque. Go on."
"That is the name. Vandecque bade us lift her up and convey her to the prison. To St. Martin des Champs, because it was the nearest. And we did so, Heaven pardon us! Yet, ere we set forth, that man, that noble--that rat--he did one thing that even such ruffians as we were shuddered at.
"What did he do?" Walter asked, dreading to know what awful outrage might have been offered to his insensible wife as she lay before her ruffian captor. "What? Tell me all."
"He tore from his lace cravat, where it hung down over his breast, a piece of it; tore it roughly, raggedly and--and--he placed it in her right hand, clenching the fingers on it. Then he whispered in his lieutenant's ears, 'the evidence against her, mon ami. Yes. Yes. The damning evidence, Vandecque.' Yes--Vandecque. That was the name."
Again the man was startled--at the look upon the face of the other. As well as at the words he heard him mutter; the words:--"It shall be thy evidence, too, blackest of devils. The passport to thy master."
Aloud he said:--
"Do you know more? Is--is--oh! my wife--my wife!--is--has she set out?"
"La Châine went to Marseilles a month ago."
"How fast do they--does la Châine, as you term it--travel?"
"But slowly. Especially the chain-gang of women. They must needs go slowly."