"Vandecque's abode I know," he muttered, "though not the address of that double-dyed scoundrel, his master. That I must learn later. Now for the jackal."
He seized his roquelaure and was about to throw it over his shoulder when he paused, remembering that he was unarmed--since the last sword he had worn, that one which had been broken in the affray of the Rue des Saints Apostoliques, was left where it had fallen. Then he went into his sleeping room and came forth bearing a strong serviceable rapier, which he passed through his sash.
"It has done good work for me before now," he mused; "'twill serve yet to spit the foul creature I go to seek."
Whereupon, putting the letter from his unknown female correspondent in his pocket, he went forth and made his way to the spot at which he had met his wife on the morning of their ill-starred marriage; the "Jardin des Roses," out of which the Passage du Commerce opened.
The roses were not yet in bloom, the spring flowers were only now struggling into bud; yet all looked gay and bright, and vastly different from what it had done on that cold wintry morning when Laure had stolen forth trembling to the arbour in which he waited for her, and had gone with him to that ceremony which she then regarded as but a lesser evil than the one she fled from.
"What hopes we cherish, nourish in our hearts," he thought, as he went swiftly over the crushed-shell paths to the opening of the Passage. "Hopes never to be realised. Even as I married her, even as I vowed that never would I ask her for her love, nor demand any consideration for me as her husband, I still dreamed, still prayed that at last--some day--in the distant future--she might come to love me. If only a little. Only a little. And now! And now! And now! Ah, well! It must be borne!"
He reached the house in the Passage as thus he meditated; reached it, and summoned the concierge to come forth from his den. Then, when the man stood before him ready to answer his inquiries, he said:
"I seek him who occupies the second floor of this house. Your tenant, Vandecque."
"Vandecque!" the man exclaimed. "Monsieur Vandecque! You seek him?" and the tones of the man's voice rose shriller and shriller with each word he muttered. "You seek Monsieur Vandecque?"
"'Tis for that I am here. What else? Where is he?" Then, seeing a blank look upon the man's face, he suddenly exclaimed: "Surely he is not dead?"