They walked a few more steps in silence, and then, just as they were at the door, he said;
"It was understood about the signals and the lantern."
"Of course it was—and the wine," she answered; and with this on her lips, she disappeared into the pavilion with him. I heard him lock the door—and then, precisely as it was on the first night I had seen them, there was a dead silence in the woods, and every living thing seemed to have fled.
"Bigg," said I to myself, crawling at last from my hiding-place, "if ever you ran against a stone wall, this is the day. You can make as much of it as you could of a mummy. The best place for you is bed—and after that Paris."
I made up my mind to this, and, buttoning my coat round me, I ran back sharply to the château. It was all too new, too surprising for me to make head or tail of it, and I do believe that I ran all the way to the great house, with the word "signals" ringing in my ears. When at length I did stop, I was gasping for breath on the lawn before the drawing-room windows; and I saw, as I stood, that Mme. Pauline's guests were still round the roulette board. But she herself was not there,—I knew she could not be,—and as for the others, the only one who interested me was Sir Nicolas himself. It did not take me very long to learn how it had gone with him. One glance at his face told me the story. He had been losing heavily again.
For five minutes, perhaps, I watched the party, and being certain at last that nothing more was to be gained by cooling my heels on the lawn, I went up to my bit of a bedroom and lay down, dressed as I was, to think. I knew well enough that I should have little sleep that night; but it was not until I began to work right through the story that I learned what a task I had set myself. For, you see, I could not get a starting-point. If the woman had asked us down there to skin us, how came it that Marmontel always kept the bank? He was not her confederate, that I was ready to swear. And how did this supposition fit in with the little box in the park and a brother who took the girl in his arms just like a soldier cuddling a housemaid? It didn't fit anyhow, I said. Look at it as you would, there was no light through it. Of one thing only was I sure—Mme. Pauline was no sister to the Comte de Faugère. Yet how did that concern our fortunes?
CHAPTER XVII
THE REHEARSAL
These were the things that were in my mind the whole night through, and what sleep I got did not come to me until the sun was streaming through the windows and the birds in the park were singing fit to split your ears. I had made up my mind then that the business was beyond me, and that I could only watch and wait and make use of what I had seen when the opportunity came. As for telling my master, the idea was farther from my mind than ever. When I went to his room at eight o'clock, I did my best to look like a man who is thinking of nothing but his breakfast, and who will think of nothing after that but his dinner.
"Good-morning, sir," said I. "Are you ready for me now?"
"The devil a bit!" said he, sitting up in bed and looking very pale; "’tis like a boiled owl I feel."
"You made a night of it, then?" said I.
"Indeed and we did, and I lost fifteen hundred."
"You did, sir?"
"’Tis truth I speak. Fifteen hundred last night and three hundred the night before!"
"That's a heavy bill for two days in the country, sir."
"Faith, too heavy for me. And if ye'd bring me a brandy-and-soda, I'd be the better for it. I've to ride with madame this morning."
I brought him the spirit, and when he had drunk it he seemed more himself.
"Hildebrand," said he, getting up suddenly off the bed, "’tis a beautiful air to breathe, but too strong for me. I think we'd do better in Paris."
"I'm sure of it, sir," said I, glad to hear him talk like that.
"But better or worse, I'll be staying a while yet," said he, after a minute; "there's business that keeps me, and, bedad! 'tis pleasant business too."
I knew what he meant, and there was no need to talk to me in this way. The business that kept him at the château was madame's pretty face. He followed it everywhere, riding with her in the morning, taking tea with her in the arbor by the lake in the afternoon, turning over her music at night, looking into her eyes whenever they met as if he could have eaten her. And all the time she was the wife of another man—and more than that, was as deep down in roguery as any scoundrel out of Newgate. I write that she was deep down in roguery, but that is to get ahead in my story. You want to know, naturally, how I found that out, and I will tell you in a few words. It was the second day after I had seen the strange thing in the woods—a day when I was beginning to say that whatever was the mystery of the château de l'Épée, I should never unravel it. I had spent the morning brushing up my master's clothes; but in the afternoon I carried a message down to the village, and as I was returning through the park I chanced to pass at the back of the little arbor by the lake. Sir Nicolas was sitting there with Mme. Pauline, but instead of making love to her as usual, he was watching her spin a little ball in a basin. This seemed to me such a funny thing that I stopped a minute to watch; and observing that no one was about, I crept quite up to the place presently, and got a better view of what she was doing. I found then that what I had taken to be a basin was nothing but a bit of a roulette board, and that madame was showing him how well she could keep bank.
"Look," she said, and her eyes were as bright as diamonds when she spoke, "I will spin any number you like. Choose one yourself, and try me."
He named the number twelve, and she set the ball rolling. When it stopped, I knew by his exclamation that she had succeeded.
"Faith, it's like a miracle!" cried he. "Was it here that you practised it?"
"Indeed no! I learned it when I used to be tailleur for my husband. They played almost every day then, and I spun the ball so often that I found out at last how to make it go into any hole I pleased. What a fortune I could win if I were dishonest!"
With this she drew quite close to him, and I saw him wind his arm tight round her. Presently she said, and said it very sweet, too;
"Marmontel has won a great deal off you, hasn't he?"
"The matter of four thousand," replied he, very gloomily.
"You would win it back, and more, if I were to spin the ball to-night, and you were my partner," she went on, still very nicely.
"You're mocking me!" said he in French, but his face flushed with the word; "the thing's not possible."
"Not possible!" said she, looking up at him in her saucy way—"not possible, when two of the croupiers at Monaco made a fortune out of it last year. Oh, Sir Nicolas Steele, how simple you are!"
"But it's a new idea to me," said he, and he was excited too. "Will you show it to me once more?"
"What number will you have?" asked she.
"Twenty-seven for luck!" cried he.
I saw her take the little ball in her hand and spin the basin. When at last it stopped, Sir Nicolas gave a great cry and jumped up off his seat.
"There's a fortune in that," said he.
"Without doubt, for those that know how to use it," was her answer.
"You mean——" said he.
But what she meant I never heard, for they had both risen from their seats, and I thought it about time to make off. She was locking the little basin in one of the cupboards of the arbor when I left them, and he was bending over her, earnest in talk. I fancied, however, as I went along, that I could have told him as much as she could, and, truth to tell, the few words I had heard had knocked the bottom clean out of all my speculations.
"Bigg," said I to myself, "if