“I think you are going to be something different now,” replied Paul cheerfully. It was not pleasant—the thought that these two rascals, who had promised to kill him as well as Toni, were alive and in Paris, but Paul’s nerves were perfect and he easily recovered his balance.
“But the thought of it—the thought of it!” cried Toni, opening his arms and standing up straight. “The knife entering my breast or that blow on the side of the head such as they gave Count Delorme. I feel them and see them everywhere I look. If I see a man walking on the street he seems to take the shape of Nicolas or Pierre. Every time I turn a corner I expect to see them. And there is Denise—and then I think of you being found some night or some day, dead—will it be in the morning or in the evening—will it be in the summer time or in the autumn?—and Madame and the little one—” Falling into a chair, Toni broke down and cried and sobbed bitterly. Paul put his arm around Toni’s neck. Their two heads were close together just as they had been in the old days on the bridge at Bienville. He said no word to Toni, but the touch of his arm was strength and comfort, and presently Toni stopped crying and grew calm again.
“Never mind, Toni,” said Paul, “I think we can take care of ourselves. We must go armed. It would not do any good if you were to inform on those two rascals. Of course they would deny it—you can’t punish a man for crime he hasn’t committed. We shall have to take our chances—that is all. But if one of us is killed, the other one will be safe, because then your story will be believed.”
That was not much comfort to Toni, who replied:
“If you are killed, what will life be to me? and if I am killed think of Denise, and you.”
They sat a little while longer talking, Paul encouraging Toni and at last raising in him some of the spirit which had made him have Nicolas and Pierre turned out of the railway carriage. Paul said that they were comparatively safe at Beaupré where Nicolas and Pierre would not dare to come, but Toni did not take this view. He thought that men who had committed one murder and had contemplated another for two years would not hesitate to come to Beaupré in order to fulfil their purpose. The effort to keep his agony from being suspected by Denise was, however, perfectly successful. Denise suspected nothing, nor did the sergeant nor anybody, except Paul Verney.
CHAPTER XXII
Baby Paul’s birthday was celebrated a few days after Toni and Denise returned, and there was a little fête, to which they were invited. It was given on the terrace of the Château Bernard where Paul and Lucie’s wedding breakfast had been served. The baby, a beautiful child toddling about, clung to Jacques, which hung around his neck by a little gold chain, with as much tenacity as Toni had clasped that gallant soldier for so many years of his boyhood. Also the little boy clung to Toni and, refusing to go to his nurse, insisted on being carried in Toni’s arms the whole afternoon. This pleased Toni immensely and amused everybody present. Lucie looked charming as ever, and thanked Toni for playing nurse-maid. The child’s beauty, and the delight of the young father and mother in him, almost broke Toni’s heart. In a little while the boy might be fatherless, and that gay and graceful Lucie might be widowed. He was still haunted by that vision of the face of Nicolas, whom he reckoned, if there be such a thing as a gradation in villainy, to be a worse villain than Pierre; that is to say, a more dangerous one. He glanced around him fearfully, expecting to see one or the other of them. At last, while walking about the grounds below the terrace, still carrying the little Paul in his short fluffy white dress, there was something like a horrible passing vision of Nicolas’ red head behind the hedge that divided the gardens from the park.