"The mask!" he muttered in a low voice as footsteps sounded without. And, obedient to the hint, Tavannes disguised himself. A second later the officer who had introduced him opened the door and entered.
"Peridol," M. de Biron said--he had risen to his feet--"I have received a message which needs confirmation; and to obtain this I must leave the Arsenal. I am going to the house--you will remember this--of Marshal Tavannes, who will be responsible for my person; in the mean time this gentleman will remain under strict guard in the south chamber upstairs. You will treat him as a hostage, with all respect, and will allow him to preserve his _incognito_. But if I do not return by noon to-morrow, you will deliver him to the men below, who will know how to deal with him."
Count Hannibal made no attempt to interrupt him, nor did he betray the discomfiture which he undoubtedly felt. But as the Grand Master paused--
"M. de Biron," he said, in a voice harsh and low, "you will answer to me for this!" And his eyes glittered through the slits in the mask.
"Possibly, but not to-day or to-morrow!" Biron replied, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously. "Peridol! see the gentleman bestowed as I have ordered, and then return to me. Monsieur," with a bow, half courteous, half ironical, "let me commend to you the advantages of silence and your mask." And he waved his hand in the direction of the door.
A moment Count Hannibal hesitated. He was in the heart of a hostile fortress where the resistance of a single man armed to the teeth must have been futile; and he was unarmed, save for a poniard. Nevertheless, for a moment the impulse to spring on Biron, and with the dagger at his throat to make his life the price of a safe passage, was strong. Then--for with the warp of a harsh and passionate character were interwrought an odd shrewdness and some things little suspected--he resigned himself. Bowing gravely, he turned with dignity, and in silence followed the officer from the room.
Peridol had two men in waiting at the door. From one of these the lieutenant took a lanthorn, and, with an air at once sullen and deferential, led the way up the stone staircase to the floor over that in which M. de Biron had his lodging. Tavannes followed; the two guards came last, carrying a second lanthorn. At the head of the staircase, whence a bare passage ran, north and south, the procession turned right- handed, and, passing two doors, halted before the third and last, which faced them at the end of the passage. The lieutenant unlocked it with a key which he took from a hook beside the doorpost. Then, holding up his light, he invited his charge to enter.
The room was not small, but it was low in the roof, and prison-like, it had bare walls and smoke-marks on the ceiling. The window, set in a deep recess, the floor of which rose a foot above that of the room, was unglazed; and through the gloomy orifice the night wind blew in, laden even on that August evening with the dank mist of the river flats. A table, two stools, and a truckle bed without straw or covering made up the furniture; but Peridol, after glancing round, ordered one of the men to fetch a truss of straw and the other to bring up a pitcher of wine. While they were gone Tavannes and he stood silently waiting, until, observing that the captive's eyes sought the window, the lieutenant laughed.
"No bars?" he said. "No, Monsieur, and no need of them. You will not go by that road, bars or no bars."
"What is below?" Count Hannibal asked carelessly. "The river?"
"Yes, Monsieur," with a grin; "but not water. Mud, and six feet of it, soft as Christmas porridge, but not so sweet. I've known two puppies thrown in under this window that did not weigh more than a fat pullet apiece. One was gone before you could count fifty, and the other did not live thrice as long--nor would have lasted that time, but that it fell on the first and clung to it."
Tavannes dismissed the matter with a shrug, and, drawing his cloak about him, set a stool against the wall and sat down. The men who brought in the wine and the bundle of straw were inquisitive, and would have loitered, scanning him stealthily; but Peridol hurried them away. The lieutenant himself stayed only to cast a glance round the room, and to mutter that he would return when his lord returned; then, with a "Good night" which said more for his manners than his good will, he followed them out. A moment later the grating of the key in the lock and the sound of the bolts as they sped home told Tavannes that he was a prisoner.
CHAPTER XIV. TOO SHORT A SPOON.
Count Hannibal remained seated, his chin sunk on his breast, until his ear assured him that the three men had descended the stairs to the floor below. Then he rose, and, taking the lanthorn from the table, on which Peridol had placed it, he went softly to the door, which, like the window, stood in a recess--in this case the prolongation of the passage. A brief scrutiny satisfied him that escape that way was impossible, and he turned, after a cursory glance at the floor and ceiling, to the dark, windy aperture which yawned at the end of the apartment. Placing the lanthorn on the table, and covering it with his cloak, he mounted the window recess, and, stepping to the unguarded edge, looked out.
He knew, rather than saw, that Peridol had told the truth. The smell of the aguish flats which fringed that part of Paris rose strong in his nostrils. He guessed that the sluggish arm of the Seine which divided the Arsenal from the Ile des Louviers crawled below; but the night was dark, and it was impossible to discern land from water. He fancied that he could trace the outline of the island--an uninhabited place, given up to wood piles; but the lights of the college quarter beyond it, which rose feebly twinkling to the crown of St. Genevieve, confused his sight and rendered the nearer gloom more opaque. From that direction and from the Cite to his right came sounds which told of a city still heaving in its blood-stained sleep, and even in its dreams planning further excesses. Now a distant shot, and now a faint murmur on one of the bridges, or a far-off cry, raucous, sudden, curdled the blood. But even of what was passing under cover of the darkness, he could learn little; and after standing awhile with a hand on either side of the window he found the night air chill. He stepped back, and, descending to the floor, uncovered the lanthorn and set it on the table. His thoughts travelled back to the preparations he had made the night before with a view to securing Mademoiselle's person, and he considered, with a grim smile, how little he had foreseen that within twenty-four hours he would himself be a prisoner. Presently, finding his mask oppressive, he removed it, and, laying it on the table before him, sat scowling at the light.
Biron had jockeyed him cleverly. Well, the worse for Armand de Gontaut de Biron if after this adventure the luck went against him! But in the mean time? In the mean time his fate was sealed if harm befell Biron. And what the King's real mind in Biron's case was, and what the Queen- Mother's, he could not say; just as it was impossible to predict how far, when they had the Grand Master at their mercy, they would resist the temptation to add him to the victims. If Biron placed himself at once in Marshal Tavannes' hands, all might be well. But if he ventured within the long arm of the Guises, or went directly to the Louvre, the fact that with the Grand Master's fate Count Hannibal's was bound up, would not weigh a straw. In such crises the great sacrificed the less great, the less great the small, without a scruple. And the Guises did not love Count Hannibal; he was not loved by many. Even the strength of his brother the Marshal stood rather in the favour of the King's heir, for whom he had won the battle of Jarnac, than intrinsically; and, durable in ordinary times, might snap in the clash of forces and interests which the desperate madness of this day had let loose on Paris.
It was not the peril in which he stood, however--though, with the cold clear eye of the man who had often faced peril, he appreciated it to a nicety--that Count Hannibal found least bearable, but his enforced inactivity. He had thought to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm, and out of the danger of others to compact his own success. Instead he lay here, not only powerless to guide his destiny, which hung on the discretion of another, but unable to stretch forth a finger to further his plans.
As he sat looking darkly at the lanthorn, his mind followed Biron and his riders through the midnight streets along St. Antoine and La Verrerie, through the gloomy narrows of the Rue la Ferronerie, and so past the house in the Rue St. Honore where Mademoiselle sat awaiting the morrow--sat