are you? What do you want here?'
'We want you, sir,' said the foremost, under whose half-open cloak André-Louis perceived the green-and-silver of the guards of Monsieur d'Artois. He was tall and authoritative, in air and voice a gentleman. The other two wore the blue coats with yellow facings and fleur-de-lys buttons of the Auvergne Regiment.
'You are to come with us if you please,' said green-and-silver.
So! It was not proposed to butcher him on the spot. They were to lead him forth. Down to the river, perhaps. Blow his brains out and thrust his body into the stream. Thus the Deputy Le Chapelier would simply disappear.
'Come with you?' André-Louis echoed the words like a man who has not understood them.
'At once, if you please. You are wanted at the Electoral Palace.'
Deeper showed the surprise on André-Louis's face. 'At the Electoral Palace? Odd! However, I come, of course.' He turned aside to take up hat and cloak. 'Faith, you are only just in time. I was about to depart, tired of waiting for Monsieur Le Chapelier.' In the act of flinging the cloak about his shoulders, he added: 'I suppose that it was he who sent you?'
The question stirred them sharply. The three of them were craning their necks to scrutinize him.
'Who the devil are you?' demanded one of the Auvergnats.
'If it comes to that, who the devil are you?'
'I've told you, sir,' said green-and-silver, 'that we are ...'
He was interrupted by an oath from one of his companions. 'This is not our man.'
The colour deepened in green-and-silver's face. He advanced a step. 'Where is Le Chapelier?'
'Where is he?' André-Louis looked blank. 'Where is he?' he repeated. 'Then he hasn't sent you?'
'I tell you we are seeking him.'
'But if you come from the Electoral Palace, then? It is very odd.' André-Louis assumed an air of mistrust. 'Le Chapelier left me two hours ago to go there. He was to have returned in an hour. If you want him, you had better wait here for him. I can wait no longer.'
'Two hours ago!' the Auvergnat was saying. 'Then it was the man who ...'
Green-and-silver cut sharply across the question which must betray the watch they had kept. 'How long have you been here?'
'Three hours at least.'
'Ah!' Green-and-silver was concluding that the man in the riding-coat whom they had supposed a visitor must have been the Deputy himself. It was bewildering. 'Who are you?' he asked aggressively. 'What was your business with the Deputy?'
'Faith! I don't know what concern that may be of yours. But there's no secret. I had no business with him. He's an old friend met here by chance, that's all. As to who I am, I am named André-Louis Moreau.'
'What? You are Kercadiou's bastard?'
The next moment green-and-silver received André-Louis's hand full and hard upon his cheek. There was a twisted smile on André-Louis's white face.
'Tomorrow,' said he coldly, 'there will be one liar the less in the world. Tonight if honour spurs you fiercely.'
The officer, white in his turn, his lip in his teeth, bowed formally. The other two stood at gaze, startled. The entire scene and their respective rôles in it had abruptly changed.
'Tomorrow will serve,' said the officer, and added: 'My name is Tourzel, Clement de Tourzel.'
'Your friends will know where to find me. I am lodged at the Three Crowns with my godfather—my godfather, gentlemen, be good enough to remember—Monsieur de Kercadiou.'
His glance for a moment challenged the two Auvergnats. Then, finding the challenge unanswered, he flung one wing of the cloak over his left shoulder and stalked past them, out of the room, down the stairs, and so out of the house.
The officers made no attempt to detain him. The Auvergnats stared gloomily at green-and-silver.
'Here's a nice blunder,' said one of them.
'You fool, Tourzel!' cried the other. 'You're a dead man.'
'Peste!' swore Tourzel. 'The words slipped out of me before I knew what I was saying.'
'And it must be a lie, anyway,' said the first. 'Does anyone suppose that Kercadiou would allow his bastard to marry his niece?'
Tourzel shrugged and attempted a laugh of bravado. 'We'll leave tomorrow till it dawn. Meanwhile we have this rat of a patriot to settle tonight. It will be better, after all, to await him in the street.'
Meanwhile André-Louis was walking briskly back to the Three Crowns.
'You are late, André,' his godfather greeted him. Then, as André-Louis loosened his cloak, and the Lord of Gavrillac perceived his black satin breeches and buckled shoes, 'Parbleu! You're neat,' he said.
'In all my undertakings,' answered André-Louis.
CHAPTER VI
THE APOLOGY
In the course of the following morning, as André-Louis sat expecting Monsieur de Tourzel's friends, he was visited by an equerry with a command to wait instantly upon Monsieur at Schönbornlust. The carriage which had brought the equerry waited at the door of the inn. The matter had almost the air of an arrest.
André-Louis, who had no taste for wearing another man's clothes longer than he must, and who was spurred in addition on this occasion by less personal considerations, had sought a tailor early that morning, and was once more characteristically arrayed in a long fawn riding-coat with wide lapels. He professed himself ready, and took leave of the Lord of Gavrillac, who, suffering from a chill, was constrained to keep the house.
At Schönbornlust he was received in the antechamber, almost empty at this early hour, by the swarthy, hollow-cheeked Monsieur d'Entragues, whose narrow close-set eyes looked him over coldly. André-Louis's, of course, was not a proper dress in which to come to court, and was of a kind tolerated there only because the impecunious state of many of the émigrés had perforce relaxed the etiquette in these matters.
Monsieur d'Entragues surprised him with questions on the subject of his relations with Le Chapelier. André-Louis made no mystery. Le Chapelier and he had been friends and at various times associates, from the days of the assembly of the States of Brittany at Rennes, five or six years ago. He had met him by chance in the street two evenings ago, and last night he had called at Le Chapelier's lodging to pay him a friendly visit.
'And then?' quoth Monsieur d'Entragues, peremptory.
'And then? Oh, when I had been with him an hour or so, he informed me that he was expected at the Electoral Palace, and begged me to await his return, saying that he would not be more than an hour away. I waited two hours, and then, when a Monsieur de Tourzel and two other gentlemen called to see him, I departed.'
Monsieur d'Entragues's dark eyes had shifted from André-Louis's. 'It is all very odd.'
'Very odd, indeed, to leave me waiting there like that.'
'Especially as he can have had no intention of returning.'
'But what do you tell me?'
'This man Le Chapelier left his lodging at nine o'clock.'
'Yes. That would be the time.'
'At a quarter-past nine he was at the Red Hat Inn, where he kept his travelling chaise. At half-past nine the guard at the bridge passed him over. He was on his way to France. Clearly he must have been acting upon intentions formed before he left you, as you tell me, to await his return.'
'It must have been so if your information is correct. It is very odd, as you say.'
'You