"I think we have him now!" Captain Larolle muttered, twisting his mustachios, and looking round to make his last dispositions. "Paul and Lebrun, see that your man makes no noise. Sergeant, come forward with your carbine, but do not fire without orders. Now, silence, all, and close up, Lieutenant. Forward!"
We advanced about a hundred paces, keeping the cliff on our left, then turned a shoulder, and saw, a few paces in front of us, a black blotch standing out from the grey duskiness of the cliff-side. The prisoner stopped, and raising his bound hands pointed to it.
"There?" the captain whispered, pressing forward. "Is that the place?"
Clon nodded. The captain's voice shook with excitement. "You two remain here with him!" he muttered, in a low tone. "Sergeant, come forward with me. Now, are you ready? Forward!"
He and the sergeant passed quickly, one on either side of Clon and his guards. The path was narrow here, and the captain passed outside. The eyes of all but one were on the black blotch, the hollow in the cliff-side, and no one saw exactly what happened. But somehow, as the captain passed abreast of him, the prisoner thrust back his guards, and springing sideways, flung his unbound arms round Larolle's body, and in an instant swept him, shouting, to the verge of the precipice.
It was done in a moment. By the time the lieutenant's startled wits and eyes were back, the two were already tottering on the edge, looking in the gloom like one dark form. The sergeant, who was the first to find his head, levelled his carbine; but as the wrestlers twirled and twisted, the captain shrieking out oaths and threats, the mute silent as death, it was impossible to see which was which; and the sergeant lowered his gun again, while the men held back nervously. The ledge sloped steeply there; the edge was vague; already the two seemed to be wrestling in mid-air,--and the mute was a man beyond hope or fear.
That moment of hesitation was fatal. Clon's long arms were round the other's arms, crushing them into his ribs; Clon's skull-like face grinned hate into the other's eyes; his long limbs curled round him like the folds of a snake. Suddenly Larolle's strength gave way. "Damn you all! Why don't you--Mercy! mercy!" came in a last scream from his lips; and then, as the lieutenant, taken aback before, sprang forward to his aid, the two toppled over the edge, and in a second hurtled out of sight.
"Mon Dieu!" the lieutenant cried, in horror. The answer was a dull splash in the depths below.
He flung up his arms. "Water!" he said. "Quick, men, get down! We may save him yet! They have fallen into water!"
But there was no path, and night was come, and the men's nerves were shaken. The lanthorns had to be lit, and the way to be retraced; and by the time we reached the dark pool which lay below, the last bubbles were gone from the surface, the last ripples had beaten themselves out against the banks. True, the pool still rocked sullenly, and the yellow light showed a man's hat floating, and near it a glove three parts submerged. But that was all. The mute's dying grip had known no loosening, nor his hate any fear. Later, I heard that when they dragged the two out next day, his fingers were in the other's eye-sockets, his teeth in his throat. If ever man found death sweet, it was he.
As we turned slowly from the black water, some shuddering, some crossing themselves, the lieutenant looked vengefully at me. "Curse you!" he said, in sudden fury. "I believe you are glad!"
"He deserved his fate," I answered coldly. "Why should I pretend to be sorry? It was now or in three months. And for the other poor devil's sake I am glad."
He glared at me a moment, in speechless anger. At last, "I should like to have you tied up!" he said, between his teeth.
"I should have thought that you had had enough of tying up for one day!" I retorted. "But there; it comes of making officers out of the canaille. Dogs love blood. The teamster must still lash something, if he can no longer lash his horses."
We were back, a sombre little procession, at the wooden bridge, when I said this. He stopped suddenly. "Very well," he replied, nodding viciously, "That decides me. Sergeant, light me this way with a lanthorn. The rest of you to the village. Now, Master Spy," he continued, glancing at me with gloomy spite, "your road is my road. I think I know how to cook your goose."
I shrugged my shoulders in disdain, and together, the sergeant leading the way with the light, we crossed the meadow, and passed through the gate where Mademoiselle had kissed my hand, and up the ghostly walk between the rosebushes. I wondered uneasily what the lieutenant would be at, and what he intended; but the lanthorn light which now fell on the ground at our feet, and now showed one of us to the other, high-lit in a frame of blackness, discovered nothing in his grizzled face but settled hostility. He wheeled at the end of the walk to go to the main door; but as he did so, I saw the flutter of a white skirt by the stone seat against the house, and I stepped that way. "Mademoiselle," I said softly, "is it you?"
"Clon?" she muttered, her voice quivering. "What of him?"
"He is past pain," I answered gently. "He is dead, but in his own way. Take comfort, Mademoiselle." And then before I could say more, the lieutenant with his sergeant and light were at my elbow. He saluted Mademoiselle roughly. She looked at him with shuddering abhorrence.
"Are you come to flog me, Sir?" she said icily. "Is it not enough that you have murdered my servant?"
"On the contrary, it was he killed my captain," the lieutenant answered, in another tone than I had expected. "If your servant is dead, so is my comrade."
She looked with startled eyes, not at him, but at me. "What! Captain Larolle?" she muttered.
I nodded.
"How?" she asked.
"Clon flung the captain and himself into the river-pool," I explained, in a low voice. "The pool above the bridge."
She uttered an exclamation of awe, and stood silent. But her lips moved; I think she was praying for Clon, though she was a Huguenot. Meanwhile I had a fright. The lanthorn, swinging in the sergeant's hand, and now throwing its smoky light on the stone seat, now on the rough wall above it, showed me something else. On the seat, doubtless where Mademoiselle's hand had lain, as she sat in the dark, listening and watching, stood a pitcher of food. Beside her, in that place, it was damning evidence. I trembled lest the lieutenant's eye should fall upon it, lest the sergeant should see it; I thought what I could do to hide it; and then in a moment I forgot all about it. The lieutenant was speaking, and his voice was like doom. My throat grew dry as I listened. My tongue stuck to my mouth; I tried to look at Mademoiselle, but I could not.
"It is true, the captain is gone," he said stiffly. "But others are alive, and about one of them, a word with you,--by your leave, Mademoiselle. I have listened to a good deal of talk from this fine gentleman friend of yours. He has spent the last twenty-four hours saying, 'You shall!' and 'You shall not!' He came from you, and took a very high tone because we laid a little whip-lash about that dumb devil of yours. He called us brutes and beasts, and but for him I am not sure that my friend would not be alive. But when he said a few minutes ago that he was glad,--glad of it, damn him!--then I fixed it in my mind that I would be even with him. And I am going to be!"
"What do you mean?" Mademoiselle asked, wearily interrupting him. "If you think you can prejudice me against that gentleman--"
"That is precisely what I do think! And I am going to do it. And a little more than that!"
"You will be only wasting your breath!" she answered proudly.
"Wait! wait, Mademoiselle, until you have heard!" he said. "If ever a black-hearted scoundrel, a dastardly, sneaking spy, trod the earth, it is this fellow! This friend of yours! And I am going to expose him. Your own eyes and your own ears shall persuade you. Why, I would not eat, I would not drink, I would not sit down with him! I would not!