The Maids of Paradise Part 21

"Try it," he said, briefly.

I tried. Apart from a certain muscular weakness and a great fatigue, I found it quite possible to stand, even to move a few steps. Then I sat down again, and was glad to do so.

The doctor was looking at my legs rather grimly, and it suddenly flashed on me that I had dropped my blanket and he had noticed my hussar's trousers.

"So," he said, "you are a military prisoner? I understood from the provost marshal that you were a civilian."

As he spoke Buckhurst appeared at the door, and then sauntered in, quietly greeting the surgeon, who looked around at the sound of his footsteps on the stone floor. There was no longer a vestige of doubt in my mind that Buckhurst was a German agent, or at least that the Germans _believed_ him to be in their pay. And doubtless he was in their pay, but to whom he was faithful n.o.body could know with any certainty.

"How is our patient, doctor?" he asked.

"Convalescent," replied the doctor, shortly, as though not exactly relishing the easy familiarity of this pale-eyed gentleman in gray.

"Can he travel to-day?" inquired Buckhurst, without apparent interest.

"Before he travels," said the officer, "it might be well to find out why he wears part of a hussar uniform."

"I've explained that to the provost," observed Buckhurst, examining his well-kept finger-nails. "And I have a pa.s.s for him also--if he is in a fit condition to travel."

The officer gave him a glance full of frank dislike, adjusted his sabre, pulled on his white gloves, and, bowing very slightly to me, marched straight out of the room and down the stairs without taking any notice of Buckhurst. The latter looked after the officer, then his indifferent eyes returned to me. Presently he sat down and produced a small slip of paper, which he very carefully twisted into a c.o.c.ked hat.

"I suppose you doubt my loyalty to France," he said, intent on his bit of paper.

Then, logically continuing my role of the morning, I began to upbraid him for a traitor and swear that I would not owe my salvation to him, and all the while he was calmly transforming his paper from one toy into another between deft, flat fingers.

"You are unjust and a trifle stupid," he said. "I am paid by Prussia for information which I never give. But I have the entre of their lines. I do it for the sake of the Internationale. The Internationale has a few people in its service ... _And it pays them well_."

He looked squarely at me as he said this. I almost trembled with delight: the man undervalued me, he had taken me at my own figure, and now, holding me in absolute contempt, he was going to begin on me.

"Scarlett," he said, "what does the government pay you?"

I began to protest in a torrent of patriotism and sentimentality. He watched me impa.s.sively while I called Heaven to witness and proclaimed my loyalty to France, ending through sheer breathlessness in a maundering, tearful apotheosis where mixed metaphors jostled each other--the government, the Emperor, and the French flag, consecrated in blood--and finally, calling his attention to the fact that twenty centuries had once looked down on this same banner, I collapsed in my chair and gave him his chance.

He took it. With subtle flattery he recognized in me a powerful arm of a corrupt Empire, which Empire he likened to the old man who rode Sindbad the Sailor. He admitted my n.o.ble loyalty to France, pointing out, however, that devotion to the Empire was not devotion to France, but the contrary. Skilfully he pictured the unprepared armies of the Empire, huddled along the frontier, seized and rent to fragments, one by one; adroitly he painted the inevitable ending, the armies that remained cut off and beaten in detail.

And as I listened I freely admitted to myself that I had undervalued him; that he was no crude Belleville orator, no sentimental bathos-peddling reformer, no sansculotte with brains ablaze, squalling for indiscriminate slaughter and pillage; he was a cool student in crime, taking no chances that he was not forced to take, a calm, adroit, methodical observer, who had established a theory and was carefully engaged in proving it.

"Scarlett," he said, in English, "let us come to the point. I am a mercenary American; you are an American mercenary, paid by the French government. You care nothing for that government or for the country; you would drop both to-day if your pay ceased. You and I are outsiders; we are in the world to watch our chances. And our chance is here."

He unfolded the creased bit of paper and spread it out on his knees, smoothing it thoughtfully.

"What do I care for the Internationale?" he asked, blandly. "I am high in its councils; Karl Marx knows less about the Internationale than do I. As for Prussia and France--bah!--it's a dog-fight to me, and I lack even the interest to bet on the German bull-dog.

"You will know me better some day, and when you do you will know that I am a man who has determined to get rich if I have to set half of France against the other half and sack every bank in the Empire.

"And now the time is coming when the richest city in Europe will be put to the sack. You don't believe it? Yet you shall live to see Paris besieged, and you shall live to see Paris surrender, and you shall live to see the Internationale rise up from nowhere, seize the government by the throat, and choke it to death under the red flag of universal--ahem!... license"--the faintest sneer came into his pallid face--"and every city of France shall be a commune, and we shall pa.s.s from city to city, leisurely, under the law--_our_ laws, which we will make--and I pity the man among us who cannot place his millions in the banks of England and America!"

He began to worry the creased bit of paper again, stealthy eyes on the floor.

"The revolt is as certain as death itself," he said. "The Society of the Internationale honeycombs Europe--your police archives show you that--and I tell you that, of the two hundred thousand soldiers of the national guard in Paris to-day, ninety per cent. are ours--_ours_, soul and body. You don't believe it? Wait!

"Yet, for a moment, suppose I am right? Where are the government forces? Who can stop us from working our will? Not the fragments of beaten and exhausted armies! Not the thousands of prisoners which you will see sent into captivity across the Rhine! What has the government to lean on--a government discredited, impotent, beaten! What in the world can prevent a change, an uprising, a revolution? Why, even if there were no such thing as the Internationale and its secret Central Committee--to which I have the honor to belong"--and here his sneer was frightful--"I tell you that before a conquering German army had recrossed the Rhine this land of chattering apes would be tearing one another for very want of a universal scape-goat.

"But that is exactly where we come into the affair. We find the popular scape-goat and point him out--the government, my friend. And all we have to do is to let the mob loose, stand back, and count profits."

He leaned forward in his chair, idly twisting his crumpled bit of paper in one hand.

"I am not fool enough to believe that our reign will last," he said.

"It may last a month, two months, perhaps three. Then we leaders will be at one another's throats--and the game is up! It's always so--mob rule can't last--it never has lasted and never will. But the prudent man will make hay before the brief sunshine is ended; I expect to economize a little, and set aside enough--well, enough to make it pay, you see."

He looked up at me quietly.

"I am perfectly willing to tell you this, even if you used your approaching liberty to alarm the entire country, from the Emperor to the most obscure scullion in the Tuileries. Nothing can stop us now, nothing in the world can prevent our brief reign. Because these things are certain, the armies of France will be beaten--they are already beaten. Paris will hold out; Paris will fall; and with Paris down goes France! And as sure as the sun shall rise on a conquered people, so sure shall rise that red spectre we call the Internationale."

The man astonished me. He put into words a prophecy which had haunted me from the day that war was declared--a prophetic fear which had haunted men higher up in the service of the Empire--thinking men who knew what war meant to a country whose government was as rotten as its army was unprepared, whose political chiefs were as vain, incompetent, ignorant, and weak as were the chiefs of its brave army--an army riddled with politics, weakened by intrigue and neglect--an army used ign.o.bly, perverted, cheated, lied to, betrayed, abandoned.

That, for once, Buckhurst spoke the truth as he foresaw it, I did not question. That he was right in his infernal calculations, I was fearsomely persuaded. And now the game had advanced, and I must display what cards I had, or pretended to have.

"Are you trying to bribe me?" I blurted out, weakly.

"Bribe you," he repeated, in contempt. "No. If the prospect does not please you, I have only to say a word to the provost marshal."

"Wouldn't that injure your prospects with the Countess?" I said, with fat-brained cunning. "You cannot betray me and hope for her friendship."

He glanced up at me, measured my mental capacity, then nodded.

"I can't force you that way," he admitted.

"He's bound to get to Paradise. Why?" I wondered, and said, aloud:

"What do you want of me?"

"I want immunity from the secret police, Mr. Scarlett."

"Where?"

"Wherever I may be."

"In Morbihan?"

"Yes."

"In Paradise?"

"Yes."

I was silent for a moment, then, looking him in the eye, "What do I gain?"