Alias the Lone Wolf Part 9

Having rested, he picked himself up, found his road, a mere trail of wagon tracks, and mindful of the cooling drinks to be had in the Cafe de l'Univers, put his best foot foremost.

After a time something, call it instinct, impelled him to look back the way he had come. Half a mile distant he saw the figure of a peasant following the same road. d.u.c.h.emin stopped and waited for the other to come up, thinking to get a better look at him, perhaps some definite information about the road and in particular as to his chances of finding drinkable water. But when he stopped the man stopped, sat him down upon a rock, filled a pipe, and conspicuously rested.

d.u.c.h.emin gave an impatient gesture and moved on. After another mile he glanced overshoulder again. The same peasant occupied the same relative distance from him.

But if the fellow were following him with a purpose, he could readily lose himself in that wild land before d.u.c.h.emin could run him down; and if, on the contrary, he proved to be only a peaceable wayfarer, he was bound to be a dull companion on the road, and an unsavory one to boot.

So d.u.c.h.emin did nothing to discourage his voluntary shadow; but looking back from time to time, never failed to see that squat, round-shouldered figure in the middle distance of the landscape, following him with the doggedness of Fate. Toward evening, however, of a sudden--between two glances--the fellow disappeared as completely and mysteriously as if he had fallen or dived into an aven.

Thus definite mental irritation was added to the physical discomforts he suffered. For if anything it was hotter on the high causse than it had been in the valley. An intermittent breeze imitated to vicious perfection draughts from a furnace. And if this were a short cut to Nant, d.u.c.h.emin's judgment was gravely at fault.

Otherwise the journey was not unlike an exaggerated version of his walk from Meyrueis to Montpellier-le-Vieux, except that the road was clearly marked and he found less climbing to do. He saw neither hamlets nor farmsteads, and found no water. By the middle of the afternoon his thirst had become sheer torture.

In dusk of evening he stumbled down into the valley again and struck the river road about midway between the Chateau de Montalais and Nant.

At this junction several dwellings cl.u.s.tered, in that fading light dark ma.s.ses on either side of the road. d.u.c.h.emin noticed a few shadowy shapes loitering about, but was too far gone in fatigue and thirst to pay them any heed. He had no thought but to stop at the first house and beg a cup of water. As he lifted a hand to knuckle the door he was attacked.

With no more warning than a cry, the signal for the onslaught, and the sudden scuffling noise of several pair of feet, he wheeled, found himself already closely pressed by a number of men, and struck out at random. His stick landed on somebody's head with a resounding thump followed by a yell of pain. Then three men were grappling with him, two more seeking to aid them, and another lay in the roadway clutching a fractured skull and spitting oaths and groans.

His stick was seized and wrenched away, he was over-whelmed by numbers.

The knot of struggling figures toppled and went to the dust, d.u.c.h.emin underneath, so weighed down that he could not for the moment move a hand toward his pistol.

Half-stifled by the reek of unwashed flesh, he heard broken phrases growled in voices hoa.r.s.e with effort and excitement:

"The knife!" ... "Hold him!" ... "Stand clear and let me--!" ... "The knife!"

Struggling madly, he worked a leg free and kicked with all his might.

One of his a.s.sailants howled aloud and fell back to nurse a broken shin. Two others scrambled out of the way, leaving one to pin him down with knees upon his chest, another to wield the knife.

Staring eyes caught a warning gleam on descending steel. d.u.c.h.emin squirmed frantically to one side, and felt cold metal kiss the skin over his ribs as the blade penetrated his clothing, close under the armpit.

Before the man with the knife could strike again, d.u.c.h.emin, roused to a mightier effort, threw off the ruffian on his chest, got on his knees and, raining blows right and left as the others closed in again, somehow managed to scramble to his feet.

Fist-work told. For an instant he stood quite free, the centre of a circle of uncertain a.s.sa.s.sins whose cowardice gave him time to whip out his pistol. But before he could level it a man was on his back, his wrist was seized and the weapon twisted from his grasp.

A cry of triumph was echoed by exclamations of alarm as, disarmed, d.u.c.h.emin was again left free, the thugs standing back to let the pistol do its work. In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a nearby corner and smote the group: the twin, glaring eyes of a motor car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies.

d.u.c.h.emin's cry for help was uttered only an instant before his pistol exploded in alien hands. The headlights showed him distinctly the face of the man who fired, the same face of fat features black with soot that he had seen by moonlight at Montpellier-le-Vieux.

But the bullet went wild, and the automobile did not stop, but drove directly at the group and so swiftly that the flash of the shot was still vivid in d.u.c.h.emin's vision when the car swept between him and those others, scattering them like chickens.

Simultaneously the brakes were set, the dark bulk began to slide with locked wheels to a stop, and a voice cried: "Quickly, monsieur, quickly!"--the voice of Eve de Montalais.

In two bounds d.u.c.h.emin overtook the car and before it had come to a standstill leaped upon the running-board and grasped the side. He had one glimpse of the set white face of Eve, en profile, as she bent forward, manipulating the gear-shift. Then the pistol spat again, its bullet struck him a blow of sickening agony in the side.

Aware that he was dangerously wounded, he put all that he had left of strength and will into one final effort, throwing his body across the door. As he fell sprawling into the tonneau consciousness departed like a light withdrawn.

VIII

IN RE AMOR ET AL.

In the course of two weeks or so d.u.c.h.emin was able to navigate a wheeled chair, bask on the little balcony outside his bedchamber windows in the Chateau de Montalais, and even--strictly against orders--take experimental strolls.

The wound in his side still hurt like the very deuce at every ill-considered movement; but d.u.c.h.emin was ever the least patient of men unless the will that coerced him was his own; constraint to another's, however reasonable, irked him to exasperation; so that these falterings in forbidden ways were really (as he a.s.sured Eve de Montalais when, one day, she caught him creeping round his room, one hand pressed against the wall for support, the other to his side) in the nature of a sop to his self-respect.

"You've only got to tell me not to do a thing often enough," he commented as she led him back to his chair, "to fill me with unholy desire to do it if I die in the attempt."

"Isn't that a rather common human failing?" she asked, wheeling the invalid chair through one of the french windows to the balcony.

"That's what makes it all seem so unfair."

Smiling, the woman turned the back of the chair to the brightest glare of sunshine, draped a light rug over the invalid's knees, and seated herself in a wicker chair, facing him.

"Makes all what seem so unfair?"

"The indignity of being born human." He accepted a cigarette and waxed didactic: "The one thing that the ego can find to reconcile it with existence is belief in its own uniquity."

"I don't think," she interrupted with a severe face belied by amused eyes, "that sounds quite nice."

"Uniquity? Because it sounds like iniquity? They are not unrelated.

What makes iniquity seem attractive is as a rule its departure from the commonplace."

"But you were saying--?"

"Merely it's our personal belief that our emotions and sensations and ways of thought are peculiar to ourselves, individually, that sometimes makes the game seem worth the scandal."

"Yes: one presumes we all do think that..."

"But no sooner does one get firmly established in that particular phase of self-complacence than along comes Life, grinning like a gamin, and kicks over our pretty house of cards--shows us up to ourselves by revealing our pet, exclusive idiosyncrasies as simple infirmities all mortal flesh is heir to."

"Monsieur is cynic..."

"Madame means obvious. Well: if I patter plat.i.tudes it is to conceal a sense of gratification." Eve arched her eyebrows. "I mean, you have shown me that I share at least one quality with you: instinctive resentment of the voice of reason."

She p.r.o.nounced a plaintive "Mon Dieu!" and appealing to Heaven for compa.s.sion declared: "He means again to wrestle spiritually with me about the proper disposition of my jewels."

"No, madame: pardon. I am contemplating a long series of exhaustive arguments designed to prove it your duty to leave your jewels where they are, in all their n.o.ble insecurity. This in the firm belief that to plead with you long enough to adopt this course will result in your going and doing otherwise out of sheer..."

"Perversity, monsieur?"

"Humanity, madame!"

Eve de Montalais laughed the charming, low-keyed laugh of a happily diverted woman.

"But spare yourself, monsieur. I surrender at discretion: I will do as you wish."