Again Walter Clarges said nothing for some moments; he was calculating how long, if mounted on relay after relay of swift horses, it would take him to catch up with that chain--to reach Marseilles as soon as it--to rescue her. For he knew he could do it--he who was now an English peer could save her who was an English peer's--who was his--wife. He had but to yield on one point, to proclaim himself an adherent of the King who sat on England's throne, and the ambassador would obtain an order from the French Government to the prison authorities to at once hand over his wife to him. And politics were nothing now! They vanished for ever from his thoughts! Then he again addressed the creature before him. "You should have been well paid for your foul work," he said. "So paid that never again ought you to have known want. How is it I find you a beggar?"
"Ah!" the man cried. "It was our ruin. We were blown upon somehow to the ministry of police a day or two later for some little errors--Heaven only knows how there were any who could do so, but thus it was. We were imprisoned, ruined. I but escaped the galleys by a chance. Yet, I, too, was ill-treated. I was cast into prison for two months. God help me! I am ruined. There was some private enemy."
"Doubtless, your previous employer."
"I have thought so."
"And that other vagabond. That villain, Vandecque! What of him? He is missing." The man cast his bloodshot eyes round the room as though fearing that, even here, he might be overheard, or that the one whom they called a duke might be somewhere near and able to wreak further condign vengeance on him; then he whispered huskily:
"Ay--he is missing. Some of us--I have met them in the wineshops--think he is dead. He knew too much. He--all of us--have paid for our knowledge of that night's work. Yes, dead! we think."
"'Tis very possible. Desparre would leave no witness--none to call him to account. Yet," muttered Walter to himself, "that account has soon to be made. I am alive, at least. But first--first--for her. For Laure!"
[CHAPTER XXV]
FACE TO FACE
It was during the day preceding the night on which those unhappy, forlorn women were conducted down to the north gates of the pest-ridden city that Walter Clarges himself entered Marseilles.