The Helmet of Navarre Part 17

"Go!"

Lucas pa.s.sed out, giving me, as he went, a look of hatred that startled me. But I did not pay it much heed.

"Well!" exclaimed Monsieur.

But by this time I had bethought myself what a story it was I had to tell a father of his son. I could not blurt it out in two words. I stood silent, not knowing how to start.

"Felix! Beware how much longer you abuse my patience!"

"Monsieur," I began, "the spy in the house is named Martin."

"Ah!" cried Monsieur. "So it is Louis Martin. How he knew--But go on.

The others--"

"I lay the night in the Rue Coupejarrets, not far from the St. Denis gate," I said, still beating about the bush, "at the sign of the Amour de Dieu. Opposite is a closed house, shuttered with iron from garret to cellar. You can enter from a court behind. It is here that they plot."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME."]

Monsieur's brows drew together, as if he were trying to recall something half remembered, half forgotten.

"But the men," he cried, "the men!"

"They are three. One a low fellow named Pontou."

"Pontou? The name is nothing to me. The others?" He was leaning forward eagerly. I knew of what he was thinking--the quickest way to reach the Rue Coupejarrets.

"There are two others, Monsieur," I said slowly. "Young men--n.o.ble."

I looked at him. But no light whatever had broken in upon him.

"Their names, lad!"

Then, seeing him unsuspecting, the fury in my heart surged up and covered every other feeling. I burst out:

"Gervais de Grammont and the Comte de Mar."

He looked me in the face, and he knew I was telling the truth.

Unexpected as it was, hideous as it was, yet he knew I was telling the truth.

I had seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a brave man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle that gray-eyed cheat.

With a cry Monsieur sprang toward me.

"You lie, you cur!"

"No, Monsieur," I gasped; "it is the truth."

He let me go then, and laid his hand on the collar of the dog, who had sprung to his aid. But Monsieur had got a hurt from which the dumb beast's loyalty could not defend him. He stood with bowed head, a man stricken to the heart's core. Full of wrath as I was, the tears came to my eyes for Monsieur.

He recovered himself.

"It is some d.a.m.nable mistake! You have been tricked!"

My rage blazed up again.

"No! They tricked me once. Not again! Not this time. I knew not who they were till now, when I talked with Marcel. The two things fitted."

"Then it is your guess! You dare to say--"

"No, I know!" I interrupted rudely, too excited to remember respect.

"Shall I tell what these men were like? I had never seen M. le Comte nor M. de Grammont before. One was broad-shouldered and heavy, with a black beard and a black scowl, whom the other called Gervais. The younger was called etienne, tall and slender, with gray eyes and fair hair. And like Monsieur!" I cried, suddenly aware of it. "Mordieu, how he is like, though he is light! In face, in voice, in manner! He speaks like Monsieur. He has Monsieur's laugh. I was blind not to see it. I believe that was why I loved him so much."

"It was he whom you would not betray?"

"Aye. That was before I knew."

Thinking of the trust I had given him, my wrath boiled up again.

Monsieur took me by the shoulder and looked at me as if he would look through me to the naked soul.

"How do I know that you are not lying?"

"Monsieur does know it."

"Yes," he answered after a moment. "Alas! yes, I know it."

He stood looking at me, with the dreariest face I ever saw--the face of a man whose son has sought to murder him. Looking back on it now, I wonder that I ever went to Monsieur with that story. I wonder why I did not bury the shame and disgrace of it in my own heart, at whatever cost keep it from Monsieur. But the thought never entered my head then. I was so full of black rage against Yeux-gris--him most of all, because he had won me so--that I could feel nothing else. I knew that I pitied Monsieur, yet I hardly felt it.

"Tell me everything--how you met them--all. Else I shall not believe a word of your devilish rigmarole," Monsieur cried out.

I told him the whole shameful story, every word, from my lightning vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he listening in hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed hours since he had spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The grayness of his face drew the cry from me:

"The villain! the black-hearted villain!"

"Take care, Felix, he is my son!"

I got hold of my cross and tore it off, breaking the chain.

"See, Monsieur. That is the cross on which he swore the plot was not against you. He swore it, and Gervais de Grammont laughed! I swore, too, never to betray them! Two perjuries!"

I flung the cross on the floor and stamped on it, splintering it.

"Profaner!" cried Monsieur.

"It is no sacrilege!" I retorted. "That is no holy thing since he has touched it. He has made it vile--scoundrel, a.s.sa.s.sin, parricide!"

Monsieur struck the words from my lips.

"It is true," I muttered.