The Maids of Paradise
Page 16About nine o'clock the next morning an incident occurred which might
have terminated my career in one way, and did, ultimately, end it in
another.
I had been exercising my lions and putting them through their paces,
and had noticed no unusual insubordination among them, when suddenly,
Timour Melek, a big Algerian lion, flew at me without the slightest
provocation or warning.
Fortunately I had a training-chair in my hand, on which Timour had
just been sitting, and I had time to thrust it into his face. Thrice
with incredible swiftness he struck the iron-chair, right, left, and
right, as a cat strikes, then seized it in his teeth. At the same
moment I brought my loaded whip heavily across his nose.
"Down, Timour Melek! Down! down! down!" I said, steadily,
accompanying each word with a blow of the whip across the nose.
The brute had only hurt himself when he struck the chair, and now,
under the blows raining on his sensitive nose, he doubtless remembered
similar episodes in his early training, and shrank back, nearly
deafening me with his roars. I followed, punishing him, and he fled
towards the low iron grating which separated the training-cage from
the night-quarters.
This I am now inclined to believe was a mistake of judgment on my
part. I should have driven him into a corner and thoroughly cowed him,
using the training-chair if necessary, and trusting to my two
assistants with their irons, who had already closed up on either side
of the cage.
I was not in perfect trim that morning. Not that I felt nervous in the
least, nor had I any lack of self-confidence, but I was not myself. I
had never in my life entered a lion-cage feeling as I did that
morning--an indifference which almost amounted to laziness, an apathy
which came close to melancholy.
The lions knew I was not myself--they had been aware of it as soon as
I set foot in their cage; and I knew it. But my strange apathy only
increased as I went about my business, perfectly aware all the time
that, with lions born in captivity, the unexpected is always to be
expected.
Timour Melek was now close to the low iron door between the
partitions; the other lions had become unusually excited, bounding at
a heavy gallop around the cage, or clinging to the bars like enormous
cats.
Then, as I faced Timour, ready to force him backward through the door
into the night-quarters, something in the blank glare of his eyes
seemed to fascinate me. I had an absurd sensation that he was slipping
away from me--escaping; that I no longer dominated him nor had
authority. It was not panic, nor even fear; it was a faint
paralysis--temporary, fortunately; for at that instant instinct saved
me; I struck the lion a terrific blow across the nose and whirled
around, chair uplifted, just in time to receive the charge of Empress
Khatoun, consort of Timour.
She struck the iron-bound chair, doubling it up like crumpled paper,
hurling me headlong, not to the floor of the cage, but straight
through the sliding-bars which Speed had just flung open with a shout.
As for me, I landed violently on my back in the sawdust, the breath
knocked clean out of me.
When I could catch my breath again I realized that there was no time
to waste. Speed looked at me angrily, but I jerked open the grating,
flung another chair into the cage, leaped in, and, singling out
Empress Khatoun, I sailed into her with passionless thoroughness,
punishing her to a stand-still, while the other lions, Aicha,
Marghouz, Timour, and Genghis Khan snarled and watched me steadily.
As I emerged from the cage Speed asked me whether I was hurt, and I
gasped out that I was not.
"What went wrong?" he persisted.
"Timour and that young lioness--no, I went wrong; the lions knew it
at once; something failed me, I don't know what; upon my soul, Speed,
I don't know what happened."
"You lost your nerve?"
"No, not that. Timour began looking at me in a peculiar way--he
certainly dominated me for an instant--for a tenth of a second; and
then Khatoun flew at me before I could control Timour--"
I hesitated.
"Speed, it was one of those seconds that come to us, when the
faintest shadow of indecision settles matters. Engineers are subject
to it at the throttle, pilots at the helm, captains in battle--"
"Men in love," added Speed.
I looked at him, not comprehending.
"By-the-way," said Speed, "Leo Grammont, the greatest lion-tamer who
ever lived, once told me that a man in love with a woman could not
control lions; that when a man falls in love he loses that intangible,
mysterious quality--call it mesmerism or whatever you like--the occult
force that dominates beasts. And he said that the lions knew it, that
they perceived it sometimes even before the man himself was aware
that he was in love."
I looked him over in astonishment.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked, amused.
"What's the matter with you?" I demanded. "If you mean to intimate
that I have fallen in love you are certainly an astonishing ass!"
"Don't talk that way," he said, good-humoredly. "I didn't dream of
such a thing, or of offending you, Scarlett."
It struck me at the same moment that my irritable and unwarranted
retort was utterly unlike me.
"I beg your pardon," I said. "I don't know exactly what is the
matter with me to-day. First I quarrel with poor old Timour Melek,
then I insult you. I've discovered that I have nerves; I never before
knew it."
"Cold flap-jacks and cider would have destroyed Hercules himself in
time," observed Speed, following with his eyes the movements of a
lithe young girl, who was busy with the hoisting apparatus of the
flying trapeze. The girl was Jacqueline, dressed in a mended gown of
Miss Delany's.
"At times," muttered Speed, partly to himself, "that little witch
frightens me. There is no risk she dares not take; even Horan gets
nervous; and when that bull-necked numbskull is scared there's reason
for it."
We walked out into the main tent, where simultaneous rehearsals were
everywhere in progress; and I picked up the ring-master's whip and
sent it curling after "Briza," a harmless, fat, white mare on which
pretty Mrs. Grigg was sitting expectantly. Round and round the ring
she cantered, now astride two horses, now guiding a "spike,"
practising assiduously her acrobatics. At intervals, far up in the
rigging overhead, I caught glimpses of Miss Crystal swinging on her
trapeze, watching the ring below.
Byram came in to rehearse the opening processional and to rebuke his
dearest foe, the unspeakable "camuel," bestridden by Mrs. Horan as
Fatima, Queen of the Desert. Speed followed, squatted on the head of
the elephant, ankus on thigh, shouting, "Hôut! Mäil! Djebé Noain!
Mäil the hezar! Mäil!" he thundered, triumphantly, saluting Byram with
lifted ankus as the elephant ambled past in a cloud of dust.
"Clear the ring!" cried Byram.
Miss Delany, who was outlining Jacqueline with juggler's knives, began
to pull her stock of cutlery from the soft pine backing; elephant,
camel, horses trampled out; Miss Crystal caught a dangling rope and
slid earthward, and I turned and walked towards the outer door with
Byram.
As I looked back for an instant I saw Jacqueline, in her glittering
diving-skin, calmly step out of her discarded skirt and walk towards
the sunken tank in the middle of the ring, which three workmen were
uncovering.
She was to rehearse her perilous leap for the first time to-day, and I
told Speed frankly that I was too nervous to be present, and so left
him staring across the dusky tent at the slim child in spangles.
I had an appointment to meet Robert the Lizard at noon, and I was
rather curious to find out how much his promises were worth when the
novelty of his new gun had grown stale. So I started towards the
cliffs, nibbling a crust of bread for luncheon, though the incident of
the morning had left me small appetite for food.
The poacher was sunning himself on his doorsill when I came into view
over the black basalt rocks. To my surprise, he touched his cap as I
approached, and rose civilly, replying to my greeting with a brief,
"Salute, m'sieu!"
"You are prompt to the minute," I said, pleasantly.
"You also," he observed. "We are quits, m'sieu--so far."
I told him of the progress that Jacqueline was making; he listened in
silence, and whether or not he was interested I could not determine.
There was a pause; I looked out across the sun-lit ocean, taking time
to arrange the order of the few questions which I had to ask.
"Come to the point, m'sieu," he said, dryly. "We have struck
palms."
Spite of my training, spite of the caution which experience brings to
the most unsuspicious of us, I had a curious confidence in this
tattered rascal's loyalty to a promise. And apparently without reason,
too, for there was something wrong with his eyes--or else with the way
he used them. They were wonderful, vivid blue eyes, well set and well
shaped, but he never looked at anybody directly except in moments of
excitement or fury. At such moments his eyes appeared to be lighted up
from behind.
"Lizard," I said, "you are a poacher."
His placid visage turned stormy.
"None of that, m'sieu," he retorted; "remember the bargain! Concern
yourself with your own affairs!"
"Wait," I said. "I'm not trying to reform you. For my purposes it is
a poacher I want--else I might have gone to another."
"That sounds more reasonable," he admitted, guardedly.
"I want to ask this," I continued: "are you a poacher from
necessity, or from that pure love of the chase which is born in even
worse men than you and I?"
"I poach because I love it. There are no poachers from necessity;
there is always the sea, which furnishes work for all who care to
steer a sloop, or draw a seine, or wield a sea-rake. I am a pilot."
"But the war?"
"So you poach from choice?"
"Yes. It is in me. I am sorry, but what shall I do? It's in me."
"And you can't resist?"
He laughed grimly. "Go and call in the hounds from the stag's
throat!"
Presently I said:
"You have been in jail?"
"Yes," he replied, indifferently.
"For poaching?"
"Eur e'harvik rous," he said in Breton, and I could not make out
whether he meant that he had been in jail for the sake of a woman or
of a "little red doe." The Breton language bristles with double
meanings, symbols, and allegories. The word for doe in Breton is
karvez; or for a doe which never had a fawn, it is heiez; for a
fawn the word is karvik.
I mentioned these facts to him, but he only looked dangerous and
remained silent.
"Lizard," I said, "give me your confidence as I give you mine. I
will tell you now that I was once in the police--"
He started.
"And that I expect to enter that corps again. And I want your aid."
"My aid? For the police?" His laugh was simply horrible. "I? The
Lizard? Continue, m'sieu."
"I will tell you why. Yesterday, on a visit to Point Paradise, I saw
a man lying belly down in the bracken; but I didn't let him know I saw
him. I have served in the police; I think I recognize that man. He is
known in Belleville as Tric-Trac. He came here, I believe, to see a
man called Buckhurst. Can you find this Tric-Trac for me? Do you,
perhaps, know him?"
"Yes," said the Lizard, "I knew him in prison."
"You have seen him here?"
"Yes, but I will not betray him."
"Why?"
"Because he is a poor, hunted devil of a poacher like me!" cried the
Lizard, angrily. "He must live; there's enough land in Finistère for
us both."
"How long has he been here in Paradise?"
"For two months."
"And he told you he lived by poaching?"
"Yes."
"He lies."
The Lizard looked at me intently.
"He has played you; he is a thief, and he has come here to rob. He is
a filou--a town rat. Can he bend a hedge-snare? Can he line a string
of dead-falls? Can he even snare enough game to keep himself from
starving? He a woodsman? He a poacher of the bracken? You are
simple, my friend."
The veins in the poacher's neck began to swell and a dull color
flooded his face.
"Prove that he has played me," he said.
"Prove it yourself."
"How?"
"By watching him. He came here to meet a man named Buckhurst."
"I have seen that man Buckhurst, too. What is he doing here?" asked
the Lizard.
"That is what I want you to find out and help me to find out!" I
said. "Voilà! Now you know what I want of you."
The sombre visage of the poacher twitched.
"I take it," said I, "that you would not make a comrade of a petty
pickpocket."
The poacher uttered an oath and shook his fist at me. "Bon sang!" he
snarled, "I am an honest man if I am a poacher!"
"That's the reason I trusted you," said I, good-humoredly. "Take
your fists down, my friend, and think out a plan which will permit me
to observe this Monsieur Tric-Trac at my leisure, without I myself
being observed."
"That is easy," he said. "I take him food to-day."
"Then I was right," said I, laughing. "He is a Belleville rat, who
cannot feed himself where there are no pockets to pick. Does he know a
languste from a linnet? Not he, my friend!"
The Lizard sat still, head bent, knees drawn up, apparently buried in
thought. There is no injury one can do a Breton of his class like the
injury of deceiving and mocking.
If Tric-Trac, a man of the city, had come here to profit by the
ignorance of a Breton--and perhaps laugh at his stupidity!
But I let the ferment work in the dark blood of the Lizard, leaving
him to his own sombre logic, undisturbed.
Presently the Lizard raised his head and fixed his bright, intelligent
eyes on me.
"M'sieu," he said, in a curiously gentle voice, "we men of Paradise
are called out for the army. I must go, or go to jail. How can I
remain here and help you trap these filous?"
"I have telegraphed to General Chanzy," I said, frankly. "If he
accepts--or if General Aurelles de Palladine is favorable--I shall
make you exempt under authority from Tours. I mean to keep you in my
service, anyway," I added.
"You mean that--that I need not go to Lorient--to this war?"
"I hope so, my friend."
He looked at me, astonished. "If you can do that, m'sieu, you can do
anything."
"In the meanwhile," I said, dryly, "I want another look at
Tric-Trac."
"I could show you Tric-Trac in an hour--but to go to him direct would
excite his suspicion. Besides, there are two gendarmes in Paradise to
conduct the conscripts to Lorient; there are also several
gardes-champêtre. But I can get you there, in the open moorland, too,
under everybody's noses! Shall I?" he said, with an eager ferocity
that startled me.
"You are not to injure him, no matter what he does or says," I said,
sharply. "I want to watch him, not to frighten him away. I want to
see what he and Buckhurst are doing. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Then strike palms!"
We struck vigorously.
"Now I am ready to start," I said, pleasantly.
"And now I am ready to tell you something," he said, with the fierce
light burning behind his blue eyes. "If you were already in the
police I would not help you--no, not even to trap this filou who has
mocked me! If you again enter the police I will desert you!"
He licked his dry lips.
"Do you know what a blood-feud is?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then understand that a man in a high place has wronged me--and that
he is of the police--the Imperial Military police!"
"Who?"
"You will know when I pass my fagot-knife into his throat," he
snarled--"not before."
The Lizard picked up his fishing-rod, slung a canvas bag over his
stained velveteen jacket, gathered together a few coils of hair-wire,
a pot of twig-lime, and other odds and ends, which he tucked into his
broad-flapped coat-pocket. "Allons," he said, briefly, and we
started.
The canvas bag on his back bulged, perhaps with provisions, although
the steel point of a murderous salmon-gaff protruded from the mouth of
the sack and curved over his shoulder.
The village square in Paradise was nearly deserted. The children had
raced away to follow the newly arrived gendarmes as closely as they
dared, and the women were in-doors hanging about their men, whom the
government summoned to Lorient.
There were, however, a few people in the square, and these the Lizard
was very careful to greet. Thus we passed the mayor, waddling across
the bridge, puffing with official importance over the arrival of the
gendarmes. He bowed to me; the Lizard saluted him with, "Times are
hard on the fat!" to which the mayor replied morosely, and bade him go
to the devil.
"Au revoir, donc," retorted the Lizard, unabashed. The mayor bawled
after him a threat of arrest unless he reported next day in the
square.
At that the poacher halted. "Don't you wish you might get me!" he
said, tauntingly, probably presuming on my conditional promise.
"Do you refuse to report?" demanded the mayor, also halting.
"Et ta soeur!" replied the poacher; "is she reporting at the
caserne?"
The mayor replied angrily, and a typical Breton quarrel began, which
ended in the mayor biting his thumb-nail at the Lizard and wishing
him "St. Hubert's luck"--an insult tantamount to a curse.
Now St. Hubert was a mighty hunter, and his luck was proverbially
marvellous. But as everything goes by contrary in Brittany, to wish a
Breton hunter good luck was the very worst thing you could do him. Bad
luck was certain to follow--if not that very day, certainly,
inexorably, some day.
With wrath in his eyes the Lizard exhausted his profanity, stretching
out his arm after the retreating mayor, who waddled away,
gesticulating, without turning his head.
"Come back! Toad! Sourd! V-Snake! Bat of the gorse!" shouted the
Lizard. "Do you think I'm afraid of your spells, fat owl of Faöuet?
Evil-eyed eel! The luck of Ker-Ys to you and yours! Ho fois! Do you
think I am frightened--I, Robert the Lizard? Your wife is a camel and
your daughter a cow!" The mayor was unmarried, but it didn't matter.
And, moreover, as that official was now out of ear-shot, the Lizard
turned anxiously to me.
"Don't tell me you are superstitious enough to care what the mayor
said," I laughed.
"Dame, m'sieu, we shall have no luck to-day. To-morrow it doesn't
matter--but if we go to-day, bad luck must come to us."
"To-day? Nonsense!"
"If not, then another day."
"Rubbish! Come on."
"Take all you like," I said; "rack your brains for an antidote to
neutralize the bad luck, only come on, you great gaby!"
I knew many of the Finistère legends; out of the corner of my eye I
watched this stalwart rascal, cowed by gross superstition, peeping
about for some favorable sign to counteract the luck of St. Hubert.
First he looked up at the crows, and counted them as they passed
overhead cawing ominously--one--two--three--four--five! Five is danger!
But wait, more were coming: one--two--three--four--five--six--seven--! A
loss! Well, that was not as bad as some things. But hark! More crows
coming: one--two--three! Death!
"Jesû!" he faltered, ducking his head instinctively. "I'll look
elsewhere for signs."
The signs were all wrong that morning; first we met an ancient crone
with a great pack of fagots on her bent back, and I was sure he could
have strangled her cheerfully, because there are few worse omens for a
hunter of game or of men. Then he examined the first mushroom he
found, but under the pink-and-pearl cap we saw no insects crawling.
The veil, too, was rent, showing the poisonous, fluted gills; and the
toadstool blackened when he cut it with the blade of his fagot-knife.
He tried once more, however, and searched through the gorse until he
found a heavy lizard, green as an emerald. He teased it till it
snapped at the silver franc in my hand; its teeth should have
vanished, but when he held out his finger the creature bit into it
till the blood spurted.
Still I refused to turn back. What should he do? Then into his mind
crept a Pouldu superstition. It was a charm against evil, including
lightning, black-rot, rheumatism, and "douleurs" of other varieties.
The charm was simple. We needed only to build a little fire of gorse,
and walk through the smoke once or twice. So we built the fire and
walked through the smoke, the Lizard coughing and cursing until I
feared he might overdo it by smothering us both. Then stamping out
the last spark--for he was a woodsman always--we tramped on in better
humor with destiny.
"You think that turned the curse backward, m'sieu?" he asked.
"There is not the faintest doubt of that," I said.
Far away towards Sainte-Ysole we saw the blue woods which were our
goal. However, we had no intention of going there as the bee flies,
partly because Tric-Trac might see us, partly because the Lizard
wished any prowling passer-by to observe that he was occupied with his
illegitimate profession. For my part, I very much preferred a brush
with a garde-champêtre or a summons to explain why no shots were found
in the Lizard's pheasants, rather than have anybody ask us why we were
walking so fast towards Sainte-Ysole woods.
Therefore we promptly selected a hedge for operations, choosing a
high, thick one, which separated two fields of wheat stubble.
Kneeling under the hedge, he broke a hole in it just large enough for
a partridge to worry through. Then he bent his twig, fastened the
hair-wire into a running noose, adjusted it, and stood up. This
manoeuvre he repeated at various hedges or in thickets where he
"lined" his trail with peeled twigs on every bush.
Once he paused to reset a hare-trap with a turnip, picked up in a
neighboring field; once he limed a young sapling and fixed a bit of a
mirror in the branches, but not a bird alighted, although the
blackthorns were full of fluttering wings. And all the while we had
been twisting and doubling and edging nearer and nearer to the
Sainte-Ysole woods, until we were already within their cool shadow,
and I heard the tinkle of a stream among leafy depths.
Now we had no fear; we were hidden from the eyes of the dry, staring
plain, and the Lizard laughed to himself as he fastened a grasshopper
to his hook and flung it into the broad, dark water of the pool at his
feet.
Slowly he fished up stream, but, although he seemed to be intent on
his sport, there was something in the bend of his head that suggested
he might be listening for other sounds than the complex melodies of
mossy waterfalls.
His poacher's eyes began to glisten and shimmer in the forest dusk
like the eyes of wild things that hunt at night. As he noiselessly
turned, his nostrils spread with a tremor, as a good dog's nose
quivers at the point.
Presently he beckoned me, stepped into the moss, and crawled without a
sound straight through the holly thicket.
"Watch here," he whispered. "Count a hundred when I disappear, then
creep on your stomach to the edge of that bank. In the bed of the
stream, close under you, you will see and hear your friend
Tric-Trac."
Before I had counted fifty I heard the Lizard cry out, "Bonjour,
Tric-Trac!" but I counted on, obeying the Lizard's orders as I should
wish mine to be obeyed. I heard a startled exclamation in reply to the
Lizard's greeting, then a purely Parisian string of profanity, which
terminated as I counted one hundred and crept forward to the mossy
edge of the bank, under the yellow beech leaves.
Below me stood the Lizard, intently watching a figure crouched on
hands and knees before a small, iron-bound box.
The person addressed as Tric-Trac promptly tried to hide the box by
sitting down on it. He was a young man, with wide ears and unhealthy
spots on his face. His hair, which was oily and thick, he wore neatly
plastered into two pointed love-locks. This not only adorned and
distinguished him, but it lent a casual and detached air to his ears,
which stood at right angles to the plane of his face. I knew that
engaging countenance. It was the same old Tric-Trac.
"Zut, alors!" repeated Tric-Trac, venomously, as the poacher smiled
again; "can't you give the company notice when you come in?"
"Did you expect me to ring the tocsin?" asked the Lizard.
"Flute!" snarled Tric-Trac. "Like a mud-rat, you creep with no
sound--c'est pas polite, nom d'un nom!"
He began nervously brushing the pine-needles from his skin-tight
trousers, with dirty hands.
"What's that box?" asked the Lizard, abruptly.
"Box? Where?" A vacant expression came into Tric-Trac's face, and he
looked all around him except at the box upon which he was sitting.
"Box?" he repeated, with that hopeless effrontery which never deserts
criminals of his class, even under the guillotine. "I don't see any
box."
"You're sitting on it," observed the Lizard.
"That box? Oh! You mean that box? Oh!" He peeped at it between
his meagre legs, then turned a nimble eye on the poacher.
"What's in it?" demanded the poacher, sullenly.
"Don't know," replied Tric-Trac, with brisk interest. "I found it."
"Found it!" repeated the Lizard, scornfully.
"Certainly, my friend; how do you suppose I came by it?"
"You stole it!"
They faced each other for a moment.
"Supposition that you are correct; what of it?" said the young
ruffian, calmly.
The Lizard was silent.
"Did you bring me anything to chew on?" inquired Tric-Trac, sniffing
at the poacher's sack.
"Bread, cheese, three pheasants, cider--more than I eat in a week,"
said the Lizard, quietly. "It will cost forty sous."
He opened his sack and slowly displayed the provisions.
I looked hard at the iron-bound box.
On one end was painted the Geneva cross. Dr. Delmont and Professor
Tavernier had disappeared carrying red-cross funds. Was that their
box?
"I said it costs forty sous--two silver francs," repeated the Lizard,
doggedly.
"Forty sous? That's robbery!" sniffed the young ruffian, now using
that half-whining, half-sneering form of discourse peculiar alike to
the vicious chevalier of Paris and his confrère of the provincial
centres. Accent and slang alone distinguish between them; the argot,
however, is practically the same.
Tric-Trac fished a few coins from his pocket, counted carefully, and
handed them, one by one, to the poacher.
The poacher coolly tossed the food on the ground, and, as Tric-Trac
rose to pick it up, seized the box.
"Drop that!" said Tric-Trac, quickly.
"What's in it?"
"Nothing! Drop it, I tell you."
"Where's the key?"
"There's no key--it's a machine."
"What's in it?"
"Now I've been trying to find out for two weeks," sneered Tric-Trac,
"and I don't know yet. Drop it!"
"I'm going to open it all the same," said the Lizard, coolly, lifting
the lid.
A sudden silence followed; then the Lizard swore vigorously. There was
another box within the light, iron-edged casket, a keyless cube of
shining steel, with a knob on the top, and a needle which revolved
around a dial on which were engraved the hours and minutes. And
emblazoned above the dial was the coat of arms of the Countess de
Vassart.
When Tric-Trac had satisfied himself concerning the situation, he
returned to devour his food.
"Flute! Zut! Mince!" he observed; "you and your bad manners, they
sicken me--tiens!"
The Lizard, flat on his stomach, lay with the massive steel box under
his chin, patiently turning the needle from figure to figure.
"Wonderful! wonderful!" sneered Tric-Trac. "Continue, my friend, to
put out your eyes with your fingers!"
The Lizard continued to turn the needle backward and forward around
the face of the dial. Once, when he twirled it impatiently, a tiny
chime rang out from within the box, but the steel lid did not open.
"It's the Angelus," said Tric-Trac, with a grimace. "Let us pray, my
friend, for a cold-chisel--when my friend Buckhurst returns."
Still the Lizard lay, unmoved, turning the needle round and round.
Tric-Trac having devoured the cheese, bread, and an entire pheasant,
made a bundle of the remaining food, emptied the cider-jug, wiped his
beardless face with his cap, and announced that he would be pleased to
"Do you want the gendarmes to scent tobacco?" said the Lizard.
"Are the 'Flics' out already?" asked Tric-Trac, astonished.
"They're in Paradise, setting the whole Department by the ears. But
they can't look sideways at me; I'm going to be exempt."
"It strikes me," observed Tric-Trac, "that you take great
precautions for your own skin."
"I do," said the Lizard.
"What about me?"
The poacher looked around at the young ruffian. Those muscles in the
human face which draw back the upper lip are not the muscles used for
laughter. Animals employ them when they snarl. And now the Lizard
laughed that way; his upper lip shrank from the edge of his yellow
teeth, and he regarded Tric-Trac with oblique and burning eyes.
"What about me?" repeated Tric-Trac, in an offended tone. "Am I to
live in fear of the Flics?"
The Lizard laughed again, and Tric-Trac, disgusted, stood up, settled
his cap over his wide ears, humming a song as he loosened his
trousers-belt:
"Si vous t'nez à vot' squelette
Ne fait' pas comme Bibi!
Claquer plutôt dans vot' lit
Que de claquer à la Roquette!"--
"Who are you gaping at?" he added, abruptly. "Bon; c'est ma geule.
Et après? Drop that box!"
"Come," replied the Lizard, coldly, placing the box on the moss,
"you'd better not quarrel with me."
"Oh, that's a threat, is it?" sneered Tric-Trac. He walked over to
the steel box, lifted it, placed it in the iron-edged case, and sat
down on the case.
"I want you to comprehend," he added, "that you have pushed your
nose into an affair that does not concern you. The next time you come
here to sell your snared pheasants, come like a man, nom de Dieu! and
not like a cat of the Glacière!--or I'll find a way to stop your
curiosity."
The dull-red color surged into the poacher's face and heavy neck; for
a moment he stood as though stunned. Then he dragged out his knife.
Tric-Trac sat looking at him insolently, one hand thrust into the
bosom of his greasy coat.
"I've got a toy under my cravate that says 'Papa!' six times--pop!
pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! Papa!" he continued, calmly; "so there's no
use in your turning red and swelling the veins in your neck. Go to the
devil! Do you think I can't live without you? Go to the devil with
your traps and partridges and fish-hooks--and that fagot-knife in your
fist--and if you try to throw it at me you'll make a sad mistake!"
The Lizard's half-raised hand dropped as Tric-Trac, with a movement
like lightning, turned a revolver full on him, talking all the while
in his drawling whine.
"C'est çà! Now you are reasonable. Get out of this forest, my
friend--or stay and join us. Eh! That astonishes you? Why? Idiot, we
want men like you. We want men who have nothing to lose and--millions
to gain! Ah, you are amazed! Yes, millions--I say it. I, Tric-Trac of
the Glacière, who have done my time in Noumea, too! Yes, millions."
The young ruffian laughed and slowly passed his tongue over his thin
lips. The Lizard slowly returned his knife to its sheath, looked all
around, then deliberately sat down on the moss cross-legged. I could
have hugged him.
"A million? Where?" he asked, vacantly.
"Parbleu! Naturally you ask where," chuckled Tric-Trac. "Tiens! A
supposition that it's in this box!"
"The box is too small," said the Lizard, patiently.
Tric-Trac roared. "Listen to him! Listen to the child!" he cried,
delighted. "Too small to hold gold enough for you? Very well--but is
a ship big enough?"
"A big ship is."
Tric-Trac wriggled in convulsions of laughter.
"Oh, listen! He wants a big ship! Well--say a ship as big as that
ugly, black iron-clad sticking up out of the sea yonder, like a
Usine-de-gaz!"
"I think that ship would be big enough," said the poacher,
seriously.
Tric-Trac did not laugh; his little eyes narrowed, and he looked
steadily at the poacher.
"Do you mean what I mean?" he asked, deliberately.
"Well," said the Lizard, "what do you mean?"
"I mean that France is busy stitching on a new flag."
"Black?"
"Red--first."
"Oh-h!" mused the poacher. "When does France hoist that new red
flag?"
"When Paris falls."
The poacher rested his chin on his doubled fist and leaned forward
across his gathered knees. "I see," he drawled.
"Under the commune there can be no more poverty," said Tric-Trac;
"you comprehend that."
"Exactly."
"And no more aristocrats."
"Exactly."
"Well," said Tric-Trac, his head on one side, "how does that
programme strike you?"
"It is impossible, your programme," said the poacher, rising to his
feet impatiently.
"You think so? Wait a few days! Wait, my friend," cried Tric-Trac,
eagerly; "and say!--come back here next Monday! There will be a few
of us here--a few friends. And keep your mouth shut tight. Here! Wait.
Look here, friend, don't let a little pleasantry stand between
comrades. Your fagot-knife against my little flute that sings
pa-pa!--that leaves matters balanced, eh?"
The young ruffian had followed the Lizard and caught him by his
stained velvet coat.
"Voyons," he persisted, "do you think the commune is going to let a
comrade starve for lack of Badinguet's lozenges? Here, take a few of
these!" and the rascal thrust out a dirty palm full of twenty-franc
gold pieces.
"What are these for?" muttered the Lizard, sullenly.
"For your beaux yeux, imbecile!" cried Tric-Trac, gayly. "Come back
when you want more. My comrade, Citizen Buckhurst, will be glad to see
you next Monday. Adieu, my friend. Don't chatter to the Flics!"
He picked up his box and the packet of provisions, dropped his
revolver into the side-pocket of his jacket, cocked his greasy cap,
blew a kiss to the Lizard, and started off straight into the forest.
After a dozen steps he hesitated, turned, and looked back at the
poacher for a moment in silence. Then he made a friendly grimace.
"You are not a fool," he said, "so you won't follow me. Come again
Monday. It will really be worth while, dear friend." Then, as on an
impulse, he came all the way back, caught the Lizard by the sleeve,
raised his meagre body on tip-toe, and whispered.
The Lizard turned perfectly white; Tric-Trac trotted away into the
woods, hugging his box and smirking.
The Lizard and I walked back together. By the time we reached Paradise
bridge I understood him better, and he understood me. And when we
arrived at the circus tent, and when Speed came up, handing me a
telegram from Chanzy refusing my services, the Lizard turned to me
like an obedient hound to take my orders--now that I was not to
re-enter the Military Police.
I ordered him to disobey the orders from Lorient and from the mayor of
Paradise; to take to the woods as though to avoid the conscription; to
join Buckhurst's franc-company of ruffians, and to keep me fully
informed.
"And, Lizard," I said, "you may be caught and hanged for it by the
police, or stabbed by Tric-Trac."
"Bien," he said, coolly.
"But it is a brave thing you do; a soldierly thing!"
He was silent.
"It is for France," I said.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"And we'll catch this Tric-Trac red-handed," I suggested.
"Ah--yes!" His eyes glowed as though lighted up from behind. "And
another who is high in the police, and a friend of this Tric-Trac!"
"Was it that man's name he whispered to you when you turned so
white?" I said, suddenly.
The Lizard turned his glowing eyes on me.
"Was the man's name--Mornac?" I asked, at a hopeless venture.
The Lizard shivered; I needed no reply, not even his hoarse, "Are you
the devil, that you know all things?"
I looked at him wonderingly. What wrong could Mornac have done a
ragged outcast here on the Breton coast? And where was Mornac? Had he
left Paris in time to avoid the Prussian trap? Was he here in this
country, rubbing elbows with Buckhurst?
"Did Tric-Trac tell you that Mornac was at the head of that band?" I
demanded.
"Why do you ask me?" stammered the Lizard; "you know
everything--even when it is scarcely whispered!"
The superstitious astonishment of the man, his utter collapse and his
evident fear of me, did not suit me. Treachery comes through that kind
of fear; I meant to rule him in another and safer manner. I meant to
be absolutely honest with him.
It was difficult to persuade him that I had only guessed the name
whispered; that, naturally, I should think of Mornac as a high officer
of police, and particularly so since I knew him to be a villain, and
had also divined his relations with Buckhurst.
I drew from the poacher that Tric-Trac had named Mornac as head of the
communistic plot in Brittany; that Mornac was coming to Paradise very
soon, and that then something gay might be looked for.
And that night I took Speed into my confidence and finally Kelly Eyre,
our balloonist.
And we talked the matter over until long after midnight.