The Indiscretion of the Duchess Part 23

"If you like, I prayed her not. Did it need much cleverness to see what was meant by keeping it?"

His mouth twitched. I saw the tempest rising again in him. But for a little longer he held it down.

"Do you take me for a fool?" he asked.

"Am I a boy--do I know nothing of women? And do I know nothing of men?"

And he ended in a miserable laugh, and then fell again to tugging his mustache with his shaking hand.

"You know," said I, "what's bad in both; and no doubt that's a good deal."

In that very room the d.u.c.h.ess had called Gustave de Berensac a preacher.

Her husband had much the same reproach for me.

"Sermons are fine from your mouth," he muttered.

And then his self-control gave way. With a sweep of his arm he drove the necklace from him, so that the box whizzed across the table, balanced a moment on the edge, and fell cras.h.i.+ng on the ground, while the duke cried:

"G.o.d's curse on it and you! You've taken her from me!"

There was danger--there was something like madness--in his aspect as he rose, and, facing me where I sat, went on in tones still low, but charged with a rage that twisted his features and lined his white cheeks:

"Are you a liar or a fool? Have you taken the game for yourself, or are you fool enough not to see that she has despised me--and that miserable necklace--for you--because you've caught her fancy? My G.o.d! and I've given my life to it for two years past! And you step in. Why didn't you keep to my wife? You were welcome to her--though I'd have shot you all the same for my name's sake. You must have Marie too, must you?"

He was mad, if ever man was mad, at that moment. But his words were strong with the force and clear with the insight of his pa.s.sion; and the rush of them carried my mind along, and swept it with them to their own conclusion. Nay, I will not say that--for I doubted still; but I doubted as a man who would deny, not as one who laughs away, a thought. I sat silent, looking, not at him, but at the Cardinal's Necklace on the floor.

Then, suddenly, while I was still busy with the thought and dazzled at the revelation, while I sat bemused, before I could move, his fingers were on my throat, and his face within a foot of mine, glaring and working as he sent his strength into his arms to throttle me. For his wife--and his name--he would fight a duel: for the sake of Marie Delha.s.se he would do murder on an invited stranger in his house. I struggled to my feet, his grip on my throat; and I stretched out my hands and caught him under the shoulders in the armpits, and flung him back against the table, and thence he reeled on to a large cabinet that was by the wall, and Stood leaning against it.

"I knew you were a villain," I said, "but I thought you were a gentleman."

(I did not stop to consider the theory implied in that.)

He leaned against the cabinet, red with his exertion and panting; but he did not come at me again. He dashed his hand across his forehead and then he said in hoa.r.s.e breathless tones:

"You shan't leave here alive!"

Then, with a start of recollection, he thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a key. He put it in the lock of a drawer of the cabinet, fumbling after the aperture and missing it more than once. Then he opened the drawer, took out a pair of dueling pistols, and laid them on the table.

"They're loaded," he said. "Examine them for yourself."

I did not move; but I took my little friend out of my pocket.

"If I'm attacked," said I, "I shall defend myself; but I'm not going to fight a duel here, without witnesses, at the dead of night, in your house."

"Call it what you like then," said he; and he s.n.a.t.c.hed up a pistol from the table.

He was beyond remonstrance, influence, or control. I believe that in a moment he would have fired; and I must have fired also, or gone to my death as a sheep to the slaughter. But as he spoke there came a sound, just audible, which made him pause, with his right hand that held the pistol raised halfway to the level of his shoulder.

Faint as the sound was, slight as the interruption it would seem to offer to the full career of a madman's fury, it was yet enough to check him, to call him back to consciousness of something else in the world than his balked pa.s.sion and the man whom he deemed to have thwarted it.

"What's that?" he whispered.

It was the lowest, softest knock at the door--a knock that even in asking attention almost shrank from being heard. It was repeated, louder, yet hardly audibly. The duke, striding on the tip of his toes, transferred the pistols from the table back to the drawer, and stood with his hand inside the open drawer: I slid my weapon into my pocket; and then he trod softly across the floor to the door.

"One moment!" I whispered.

And I stooped and picked up the Cardinal's Necklace and put it back where it had lain before, pus.h.i.+ng its box under the table by a hasty movement of my foot--for the duke, after a nod of intelligence, was already opening the door. I drew back in the shadow behind it and waited.

"What do you want?" asked the duke.

And then a girl stepped hastily into the room and closed the door quickly and noiselessly behind her. I saw her face: she was my old friend Suzanne.

When her eyes fell on me, she started in surprise, as well she might; but the caution and fear, which had made her knock almost noiseless, her tread silent, and her face all astrain with alert alarm, held her back from any cry.

"Never mind him," said the duke. "That's nothing to do with you. What do you want?"

"Hus.h.!.+ Speak low. I thought you would still be up, as you told me to refill the lamp and have it burning. There's--there's something going on."

She spoke in a quick, urgent whisper, and in her agitation remembered no deference in her words of address. "Going on? Where? Do you mean here?"

"No, no! I heard nothing here. In the d.u.c.h.ess's dressing-room: it is just under the room where I sleep. I awoke about half an hour ago, and I heard sounds from there. There was a sound as of m.u.f.fled hammering, and then a noise, like the rasping of a file; and I thought I heard people moving about, but very cautiously."

The duke and I were both listening attentively.

"I was frightened, and lay still a little; but then I got up--for the sounds went on--and put on some clothes, and came down--"

"Why didn't you rouse the men? It must be thieves."

"I did go to the men's room; but their door was locked, and I could not make them hear. I did not dare to knock loud; but I saw a light in the room, under the door; and if they'd been awake they would have heard."

"Perhaps they weren't there," I suggested.

Suzanne turned a sudden look on me. Then she said:

"The safe holding the jewels is fixed in the wall of the d.u.c.h.ess' dressing room. And--and Lafleur knows it."

The duke had heard the story with a frowning face; but now a smile appeared on his lips, and he said:

"Ah, yes! The jewels are there!"

"The--the Cardinal's Necklace," whispered Suzanne.

"True," said the duke; and his eyes met mine, and we both smiled. A few minutes ago it had not seemed likely that I should share a joke--even a rather grim joke--with him.

"Mr. Aycon," said he, "are you inclined to help me to look into this matter? It may be only the girl's fancy--"

"No, no; I heard plainly," Suzanne protested eagerly.

"But one can never trust these rascally men-servants."

"I am quite ready," said I.