"This will not do. Not here on the first floor. It is too near the street. He must go higher. Higher yet. Otherwise he may be found--and saved!"
Whereupon, having regained his breath, he lifted Desparre on to his shoulders again and slowly mounted to the first floor of the house. Then he rested there, and afterwards went on to the second. Here, as was ever the case in the houses of the well-to-do in the city, the sleeping apartments began; the principal bedroom of the master of the house being in this instance on the front, or street side, while that reserved for guests was on the back, and looked over a small plot of ground, or garden. The moon, now peeping up, showed that both rooms were in a state of great confusion--rooms to which, by this time, the man had crept laboriously with his heavy, horrid burden on his back. The bed, he could see, as still the rays stole in more fully to the front apartment, was in disorder, the upper sheet and coverlet being flung back as though some one had leapt hastily from them; the doors of wardrobes and cupboards stood open; so, too, did the lid of a huge strong-box bound and clasped with iron bands. Easy enough was it for Vandecque to see that, from this room a hurried flight had been made, and with only sufficient time allowed before the departure for the more precious and smaller objects of value to be hastily gathered up. For, upon the floor there lay--as he felt as well as saw, since his feet struck against them--the larger articles of importance, the silverware, the coffee pots and tea-pots, the salvers, and other things. It had been a hurried flight!
"If," said Vandecque to himself, even as his eye glanced round on all these things which he would once have deemed a rich booty had they fallen into his hands, but which now he scorned, since, if he could but gain his freedom by his conduct here and return to Paris a liberated man, he would want for nothing, having at last grown rich through the gambling house; "if I leave him in this house and he recovers consciousness--strength--he may be able to attract attention; to call for assistance from the window. He shall have no chance of that. Come, murderer, come," and again he lifted the insensible man upon his shoulders and bore him into the back, or spare, room.
This was not in a disordered condition. There would be no guests in Marseilles at this time; no visitors from a healthy place to such an unhealthy, stricken one as this. The bed was made and arranged, and on to it Vandecque flung the body of his victim. His victim! Yes, yet how long was it since he himself had been the victim? And, even as he thought of how he had suffered at this man's hand, any compunctions he might have had during the last hour--and, hardened as he was, he had had them!--vanished for ever.
"Arrested by your orders," he muttered, glancing down upon Desparre as he lay senseless on the bed; glaring down, indeed, though only able to see the dim outline of his enemy's form, since, as yet, the moonbeams had scarcely penetrated to this room. "By your orders, though not knowing, never dreaming that it was so; not dreaming that my betrayal came from you. Then the prison of La Tournelle--oh, God! for the third time in my life--the condemnation to the galleys, this time in perpetuity. I--I who had grown well-to-do, who had no need to be a criminal again, who might have finished my life in ease. And Laure--Laure--poor Laure!--whom I had hoped to see a Duchess, and great--happy--or, at least, not unhappy! Cut-throat!" he almost shrieked at the senseless man; "when I learnt, as we gaol birds do learn from one another, all that you had done, I swore to escape from these galleys somehow, to make my way back to Paris, to slay you. Yet, it is better thus; far better. Lie there and die."
Then he went forth from the room, finding the key in the door and turning it upon Desparre.
But, as he descended the stairs and returned to the street, taking no precaution to deaden his footfall in the empty corridors, since he knew well enough that there were none to hear them, he muttered to himself, "Clarges spoke of her to him as 'his wife.' Also he said 'Your daughter.' Mon Dieu! was she that? Was she that? And if so, how should the Englishman know it, how have found out what I spent years in fruitlessly trying to discover?"
Musing thus, he caught up the sword which still stood in the porch, flung it down a drain, and went slowly through the deserted streets towards the Quai de Riveneuve where the galleys were, and to which the convicts returned nightly to sleep--if they had not succumbed during the day to the pestilence.