The Maids of Paradise

She sat motionless, her face like cold marble, as I carefully gathered the threads of the plot and gently twitched that one which galvanized the mask of Mornac.

“Mornac!” she stammered, aghast.

I showed her why Buckhurst desired to come to Paradise; I showed her why Mornac had initiated her into the mysteries of my dossier, taking that infernal precaution, although he had every reason to believe he had me practically in prison, with the keys in his own pocket.

“Had it not been for my comrade, Speed,” I said, “I should be in one of Mornac’s fortress cells. He overshot the mark when he left us together and stepped into his cabinet to spread my dossier before you. He counted on an innocent man going through hell itself to prove his innocence; he counted on me, and left Speed out of his calculations. He had your testimony, he had my dossier, he had the order for my arrest in his pocket… And then I stepped out of sight! I, the honest fool, with my knowledge of his infamy, of Buckhurst’s complicity and purposes – I was gone.

“And now mark the irony of the whole thing: he had, criminally, destroyed the only bureau that could ever have caught me. But he did his best during the few weeks that were left him before the battle of Sedan. After that it was too late; it was too late when the first Uhlan appeared before the gates of Paris. And now Mornac, shorn of authority, is shut up in a city surrounded by a wall of German steel, through which not one single living creature has penetrated for two months.”

I looked at her steadily. “Eliminate Mornac as a trapped rat; cancel him as a dead rat since the ship of Empire went down at Sedan. I do not know what has taken place in Paris – save what all now know that the Empire is ended, the Republic proclaimed, and the Imperial police a memory. Then let us strike out Mornac and turn to Buckhurst. Madame, I am here to serve you.”

The dazed horror in her face which had marked my revelations of Buckhurst’s villanies gave place to a mantling flush of pure anger. Shame crimsoned her neck, too; shame for her credulous innocence, her belief in this rogue who had betrayed her, only to receive pardon for the purpose of baser and more murderous betrayal.

I said nothing for a long time, content to leave her to her own thoughts. The bitter draught she was draining could not harm her, could not but act as the most wholesome of tonics.

Hers was not a weak character to sink, embittered, under the weight of knowledge – knowledge of evil, that all must learn to carry lightly through life; I had once thought her weak, but I had revised that opinion and substituted the words “pure in thought, inherently loyal, essentially unsuspicious.”

“Tell me about Buckhurst,” I said, quietly. “I can help you, I think.”

The quick tears of humiliation glimmered for a second in her angry eyes; then pride fell from her, like a stately mantle which a princess puts aside, tired and content to rest.

This was a phase I had never before seen – a lovely, natural young girl, perplexed, troubled, deeply wounded, ready to be guided, ready for reproof, perhaps even for that sympathy without which reproof is almost valueless.

She told me that Buckhurst came to her house here in Paradise early in September; that while in Paris, pondering on what I had said, she had determined to withdraw herself absolutely from all organized socialistic associations during the war; that she believed she could do the greatest good by living a natural and cheerful life, by maintaining the position that birth and fortune had given her, and by using that position and fortune for the benefit of those less fortunate.

This she had told Buckhurst, and the rascal appeared to agree with her so thoroughly that, when Dr. Delmont and Professor Tavernier arrived, they also applauded the choice she made of Buckhurst as distributer of money, food, and clothing to the provincial hospitals, now crowded to suffocation with the wreck of battle.

Then a strange thing occurred. Dr. Delmont and Professor Tavernier disappeared without any explanation. They had started for St. Nazaire with a sum of money – twenty thousand francs, locked in the private strong-box of the Countess – to be distributed among the soldiers of Chanzy; and they had never returned.

In the light of what she had learned from me, she feared that Buckhurst had won them over; perhaps not – she could not bear to suspect evil of such men.

But she now believed that Buckhurst had used every penny he had handled for his own purposes; that not one hospital had received what she had sent.

“I am no longer wealthy,” she said, anxiously, looking up at me. “I did find time in Paris to have matters straightened; I sold La Trappe and paid everything. It left me with this house in Paradise, and with means to maintain it and still have a few thousand francs to give every year. Now it is nearly gone – I don’t know where. I am dreadfully unhappy; I have such a horror of treachery that I cannot even understand it, but this ignoble man, Buckhurst, is assuredly a heartless rascal.”

“But,” I said, patiently, “you have not yet told me where he is.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “A week ago a dreadful creature came here to see Buckhurst; they went across the moor toward the semaphore and stood for a long while looking at the cruiser which is anchored off Groix. Then Buckhurst came back and prepared for a journey. He said he was going to Tours to confer with the Red Cross. I don’t know where he went. He took all the money for the general Red Cross fund.”

“When did he say he would return?”

“He said in two weeks. He has another week yet.”

“Is he usually prompt?”

“Always so – to the minute.”

“That is good news,” I said, gayly. “But tell me one thing: do you trust Mademoiselle Elven?”

“Yes, indeed! – indeed!” she cried, horrified.

“Very well,” said I, smiling. “Only for the sake of caution – extra, and even perhaps useless caution – say nothing of this matter to her, nor to any living soul save me.”

“I promise,” she said, faintly.

“One thing more: this conspiracy against the state no longer concerns me – officially. Both Speed and I did all we could to warn the Emperor and the Empress; we sent letters through the police in London, we used the English secret-service to get our letters into the Emperor’s hand, we tried every known method of denouncing Mornac. It was useless; every letter must have gone through Mornac’s hands before it reached the throne. We did all we dared do; we were in disguise and in hiding under assumed names; we could not do more.

“Now that Mornac is not even a pawn in the game – as, indeed, I begin to believe he never really was, but has been from the first a dupe of Buckhurst – it is the duty of every honest man to watch Buckhurst and warn the authorities that he possibly has designs on the crown jewels of France, which that cruiser yonder is all ready to bear away to Saïgon.

“How he proposes to attempt such a robbery I can’t imagine. I don’t want to denounce him to General Chanzy or Aurelles de Palladine, because the conspiracy is too widely spread and too dangerous to be defeated by the capture of one man, even though he be the head of it.

“What I want is to entrap the entire band; and that can only be done by watching Buckhurst, not arresting him.

“Therefore, madame, I have written and despatched a telegram to General Aurelles de Palladine, offering my services and the services of Mr. Speed to the Republic without compensation. In the event of acceptance, I shall send to London for two men who will do what is to be done, leaving me free to amuse the public with my lions. Meanwhile, as long as we stay in Paradise we both are your devoted servants, and we beg the privilege of serving you.”

During all this time the young Countess had never moved her eyes from my face – perhaps I was flattered – perhaps for that reason I talked on and on, pouring out wisdom from a somewhat attenuated supply.

And I now rose to take my leave, bowing my very best bow; but she sat still, looking up quietly at me.

“You ask the privilege of serving me,” she said. “You could serve me best by giving me your friendship.”

“You have my devotion, madame,” I said.

“I did not ask it. I asked your friendship – in all frankness and equality.”

“Do you desire the friendship of a circus performer?” I asked, smiling.

“I desire it, not only for what you are, but for what you have been – have always been, let them say what they will!”

I was silent.

“Have you never given women your friendship?” she asked.

“Not in fifteen years – nor asked theirs.”

“Will you not ask mine?”

I tried to speak steadily, but my voice was uncertain; I sat down, crushed under a flood of memories, hopes accursed, ambitions damned and consigned to oblivion.

“You are very kind,” I said. “You are the Countess de Vassart. A man is what he makes himself. I have made myself – with both eyes open; and I am now an acrobat and a tamer of beasts. I understand your goodness, your impulse to help those less fortunate than yourself. I also understand that I have placed myself where I am, and that, having done so deliberately, I cannot meet as friends and equals those who might have been my equals if not friends. Besides that, I am a native of a paradox – a Republic which, though caste-bound, knows no caste abroad. I might, therefore, have been your friend if you had chosen to waive the traditions of your continent and accept the traditions of mine. But now, madame, I must beg permission to make my adieux.”

She sprang up and caught both my hands in her ungloved hands. “Won’t you take my friendship – and give me yours – my friend?”

“Yes,” I said, slowly. The blood beat in my temples, almost blinding me; my heart hammered in my throat till I shivered.

As in a dream I bent forward; she abandoned her hands to me; and I touched a woman’s hands with my lips for the first time in fifteen years.

“In all devotion and loyalty – and gratitude,” I said.

“And in friendship – say it!”

“In friendship.”

“Now you may go – if you desire to. When will you come again?”

“When may I?”

“When you will.”

XIV

THE PATH OF THE LIZARD

About 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?”

“At least the war could not keep me from the sardine grounds.”

“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.