Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Part 37

"Tell the driver to go back to the Rue de la Paix, my dear Peyrade. I will go upstairs with you to your rooms and see for myself. A verbal report will no doubt be enough for Monsieur le Prefet."

Carlos took a snuff-box from his side-pocket--a black snuff-box lined with silver-gilt--and offered it to Peyrade with an impulse of delightful good-fellowship. Peyrade said to himself:

"And these are their agents! Good Heavens! what would Monsieur Lenoir say if he could come back to life, or Monsieur de Sartines?"

"That is part of the truth, no doubt, but it is not all," said the sham lawyer, sniffing up his pinch of snuff. "You have had a finger in the Baron de Nucingen's love affairs, and you wish, no doubt, to entangle him in some slip-knot. You missed fire with the pistol, and you are aiming at him with a field-piece. Madame du Val-n.o.ble is a friend of Madame de Champy's----"

"Devil take it. I must take care not to founder," said Peyrade to himself. "He is a better man than I thought him. He is playing me; he talks of letting me go, and he goes on making me blab."

"Well?" asked Carlos with a magisterial air.

"Monsieur, it is true that I have been so foolish as to seek a woman in Monsieur de Nucingen's behoof, because he was half mad with love. That is the cause of my being out of favor, for it would seem that quite unconsciously I touched some important interests."

The officer of the law remained immovable.

"But after fifty-two years' experience," Peyrade went on, "I know the police well enough to have held my hand after the blowing up I had from Monsieur le Prefet, who, no doubt, was right----"

"Then you would give up this fancy if Monsieur le Prefet required it of you? That, I think, would be the best proof you could give of the sincerity of what you say."

"He is going it! he is going it!" thought Peyrade. "Ah! by all that's holy, the police to-day is a match for that of Monsieur Lenoir."

"Give it up?" said he aloud. "I will wait till I have Monsieur le Prefet's orders.--But here we are at the hotel, if you wish to come up."

"Where do you find the money?" said Carlos point-blank, with a sagacious glance.

"Monsieur, I have a friend----"

"Get along," said Carlos; "go and tell that story to an examining magistrate!"

This audacious stroke on Carlos' part was the outcome of one of those calculations, so simple that none but a man of his temper would have thought it out.

At a very early hour he had sent Lucien to Madame de Serizy's. Lucien had begged the Count's private secretary--as from the Count--to go and obtain from the Prefet of Police full particulars concerning the agent employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The secretary came back provided with a note concerning Peyrade, a copy of the summary noted on the back of his record:--

"In the police force since 1778, having come to Paris from Avignon two years previously.

"Without money or character; possessed of certain State secrets.

"Lives in the Rue des Moineaux under the name of Canquoelle, the name of a little estate where his family resides in the department of Vaucluse; very respectable people.

"Was lately inquired for by a grand-nephew named Theodore de la Peyrade. (See the report of an agent, No. 37 of the Doc.u.ments.)"

"He must be the man to whom Contenson is playing the mulatto servant!"

cried Carlos, when Lucien returned with other information besides this note.

Within three hours this man, with the energy of a Commander-in-Chief, had found, by Paccard's help, an innocent accomplice capable of playing the part of a gendarme in disguise, and had got himself up as a peace-officer. Three times in the coach he had thought of killing Peyrade, but he had made it a rule never to commit a murder with his own hand; he promised himself that he would get rid of Peyrade all in good time by pointing him out as a millionaire to some released convicts about the town.

Peyrade and his Mentor, as they went in, heard Contenson's voice arguing with Madame du Val-n.o.ble's maid. Peyrade signed to Carlos to remain in the outer room, with a look meant to convey: "Thus you can a.s.sure yourself of my sincerity."

"Madame agrees to everything," said Adele. "Madame is at this moment calling on a friend, Madame de Champy, who has some rooms in the Rue Taitbout on her hands for a year, full of furniture, which she will let her have, no doubt. Madame can receive Mr. Johnson more suitably there, for the furniture is still very decent, and monsieur might buy it for madame by coming to an agreement with Madame de Champy."

"Very good, my girl. If this is not a job of fleecing, it is a bit of the wool," said the mulatto to the astonished woman. "However, we will go shares----"

"That is your darkey all over!" cried Mademoiselle Adele. "If your nabob is a nabob, he can very well afford to give madame the furniture. The lease ends in April 1830; your nabob may renew it if he likes."

"I am quite willing," said Peyrade, speaking French with a strong English accent, as he came in and tapped the woman on the shoulder.

He cast a knowing look back at Carlos, who replied by an a.s.senting nod, understanding that the nabob was to keep up his part.

But the scene suddenly changed its aspect at the entrance of a person over whom neither Carlos nor Peyrade had the least power. Corentin suddenly came in. He had found the door open, and looked in as he went by to see how his old friend played his part as nabob.

"The Prefet is still bullying me!" said Peyrade in a whisper to Corentin. "He has found me out as a nabob."

"We will spill the Prefet," Corentin muttered in reply.

Then after a cool bow he stood darkly scrutinizing the magistrate.

"Stay here till I return," said Carlos; "I will go to the Prefecture. If you do not see me again, you may go your own way."

Having said this in an undertone to Peyrade, so as not to humiliate him in the presence of the waiting-maid, Carlos went away, not caring to remain under the eye of the newcomer, in whom he detected one of those fair-haired, blue-eyed men, coldly terrifying.

"That is the peace-officer sent after me by the Prefet," said Peyrade.

"That?" said Corentin. "You have walked into a trap. That man has three packs of cards in his shoes; you can see that by the place of his foot in the shoe; besides, a peace-officer need wear no disguise."

Corentin hurried downstairs to verify his suspicions: Carlos was getting into the fly.

"Hallo! Monsieur l'Abbe!" cried Corentin.

Carlos looked around, saw Corentin, and got in quickly. Still, Corentin had time to say:

"That was all I wanted to know.--Quai Malaquais," he shouted to the driver with diabolical mockery in his tone and expression.

"I am done!" said Jacques Collin to himself. "They have got me. I must get ahead of them by sheer pace, and, above all, find out what they want of us."

Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six times, and the man's eyes were unforgettable. Corentin had suspected him at once from the cut of his shoulders, then by his puffy face, and the trick of three inches of added height gained by a heel inside the shoe.

"Ah! old fellow, they have drawn you," said Corentin, finding no one in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.

"Who?" cried Peyrade, with metallic hardness; "I will spend my last days in putting him on a gridiron and turning him on it."

"It is the Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Corentin of Spain, as I suppose.

This explains everything. The Spaniard is a demon of the first water, who has tried to make a fortune for that little young man by coining money out of a pretty baggage's bolster.--It is your lookout if you think you can measure your skill with a man who seems to me the very devil to deal with."

"Oh!" exclaimed Contenson, "he fingered the three hundred thousand francs the day when Esther was arrested; he was in the cab. I remember those eyes, that brow, and those marks of the smallpox."

"Oh! what a fortune my Lydie might have had!" cried Peyrade.

"You may still play the nabob," said Corentin. "To keep an eye on Esther you must keep up her intimacy with Val-n.o.ble. She was really Lucien's mistress."