Max Pemberton - Murder Mysteries Boxed-Set - 40+ Books in One Edition

I was annoyed at this, you may be sure, and having nothing particular to do, I took a stroll through the woods toward the little pavilion where I had seen and heard so many queer things. But here, for the second time that evening, all was changed. The door of the little house was wide open. Inside it was dark as death. More than that, I had not taken twenty steps on my way home through the thicket when I came across something which I had heard of before, but the recollection of which had gone clean out of my head. It was a red lantern swinging at the branch of a tree.

"Halloa!" said I, and I suppose that I spoke aloud, "so here's the lantern you asked after, my friend—and red too. Well, if I know any thing of that color, it means danger."

Now, I'm not a timid man, but when you speak to yourself, believing there's no one within a mile of you, it does give you a start to get an answer. And the words were scarce off my lips when some one in the wood at my right hand called out to me, and in good English too;

"Yes, that means danger, Bigg."

"Who the devil are you?" said I, turning round sudden, but seeing nobody.

"I'm from across the Channel—but not on your job, Bigg, so don't trouble yourself. It's the Comte de Faugère I'd be glad to shake hands with."

Saying this, a little man dressed in a bowler hat and a short black coat sprang out of the thicket and faced me. I guessed how things stood in a minute—detective was written all over his face.

"Well," said I, "so you want the count?"

"I do," said be, "and pretty badly; but it's not this time, I fancy. He's a hundred miles from here by this."

"And his wife——"

"Be d——d to her!" said he. "She's the cleverest woman I ever met, and she's done me again, I reckon. You give your guv'ner the tip. If he makes any money up yonder let him tie up his breeches pocket tight. If he don't, she'll steal every penny of it "

"Do you say that?" cried I.

"I do so," said he. "If I was him, and I had any winnings hanging about, I'd bank 'em at Brest, and take thundering good care they didn't go by her messenger. But you don't want to be told twice."

I said that I did not, and after a few words of thanks to him—for he'd put me all in a fever—I ran back to the house, determined that Nicky should know the whole story before another hour had passed. In this attempt luck favored me for the first time. I found my master walking on the lawn with young Lord Beyton. They were smoking together, and seemed to be in earnest talk.

"Well, Hildebrand," said Sir Nicolas, when he saw me, "what keeps you up at this time of night?"

"A letter you gave me to-day, sir," said I. "Could I speak to you about it for a minute?"

He took the hint, and, leaving Beyton, he walked across the lawn with me. Before we took the second turn, I had told him the story.

"Good God!" said he, turning very pale. "Are ye sure of it?"

"As sure as you're talking to me."

"And the man's her husband?"

"Something like that," said I.

"The little witch!" cried he, though it was plain that the news hit him hard.

"But I've the matter of two thousand in notes, and promises for as much more in my pockets now," he went on after the pause. "Ye must know that I had the luck to-night when she came to the table."

"If that's the case, sir," said I, "the sooner the money's in the bank at Brest, the better for us."

"Ye speak truth," exclaimed he; "but who's to take it?"

"I'll start at dawn," said I; "meanwhile there's no need for me to go to sleep. I'm used to a night out of bed now and then."

"And what should I do?"

"Go on as usual, but take the first train to Paris in the morning. I don't fancy the police as footmen myself—nor you neither, I imagine?"

He said that he did not, and when he had given me the money—and the promise of two hundred and fifty if I got through safe with it—he went back to the others as I had suggested. But I returned to my room, and locking myself in, I waited for the dawn like a sick man. Many anxious nights I have passed in my life, but that was the worst of them all. Every whistle of the wind on the staircase, every creak of board or bed set my nerves agog. It seemed to me that I should never get out of the house with the money—perhaps not with my life. A hundred times I must have gone to my window to watch the park; a hundred times I thought I heard footsteps on the staircase, and opened my door to listen. Yet the first gray of daylight found me still where I was. Not a soul appeared to be in the grounds of the château. The old house loomed up out of the cold mists like a great deserted temple. Look where you would, you could see nothing but the trees and the green of the grass. The only sound was the shrill twittering of the birds in the bushes.

Ten minutes after the dawn had come, I left my room and set out upon the journey. I had tied the money round my waist, and had loaded my revolver before I started; but once in the park, these precautions, and my fear all night, looked pretty foolish. It was plain that I was the only man then about Mme. Pauline's place. Even the cattle were still lying upon the wet grass; the horses still sleeping in the meadows. As it was in the gardens, so I found it in the woods. The night keepers had gone to their beds; the dairymen were not yet out of doors. A beautiful stillness was everywhere, a freshness of the morning which was like champagne to a man. I had not walked a mile before my spirits came back to me, and I began to laugh out aloud at the little chap in the bowler hat who had put the thing into ray head the night before.

"Good Lord," said I, "that you should fluster a man so, when I dare say she had no more thought of doing such a thing than of marrying Nicky! But that's always the way with policemen—they aren't content with what their eyes can see, but want to look at it through a microscope. Rob him? Not she, so long as he'll play for her."

I was pretty well through the wood at this time, and when the sun began to shine it found me on the high-road leading to the railway station. I had walked perhaps a mile down this when I saw a man on ahead of me, going my way, but slower than I was; and at the second look I recognized him. He was the little detective I had laughed at.

"Halloa, there!" I shouted, mighty glad to get company in my walk, "what are you doing abroad at this time of the morning?"

He waited for me to come up to him, and then he cried;

"Why, it's Bigg—and in a hurry, too!"

"You've put your thumb on it," said I. "And you didn't catch the count, I make sure, or you wouldn't be here."

"Catch him!" exclaimed he; "no, not quite. You don't take birds like him in the nest. He's too many sentinels."

"Is the charge a heavy one?" I asked as we walked along together.

"Obtaining a diamond in London," said he; "but there's a dozen others. He's a bad one right through, is the Comte de Faugère."

I said that he must be, and then we both quickened up a bit.

"I'll be coming over here after Nicky Steele, by and by, I fancy," he remarked pleasantly, when we had covered a mile or more.

"Ah," said I, "it will want a sharp man for that job!"

"I won't deny it," cried he; "the way that chap keeps outside the law is a crusher. Here's a health to him!"

He had pulled a silver flask out of his pocket as he spoke, and raised it to his lips. Then he passed it over to me.

"Brandy, mate," said he; "you can't do better in the raw of the morning."

I took a good nip, for the day was bitter cold, and gave him back his flask. But I had not walked on ten yards when I found myself reeling like a drunken man—and then I fell heavily, with him bending over me.

One night, some ten days after I fell down insensible on the road to Brest, Sir Nicolas and I were talking in my bedroom in the village of Folgoet of Mme. Pauline and her château. I was still weak and bruised and unable to leave my bed, and he had come up to say good-night to me.