The Maids of Paradise Part 25

The train was gliding along the asphalt platform; I hobbled beside the locked compartment, where she stood at the window.

"Will you unlock that door?" said the Countess to the guard. "I wish to leave the train!"

The cars were rolling a little faster than I could move along.

The Countess leaned from the open window; through the driving rain her face in the lamp-light was pitifully white. I made a last effort and caught up with her car.

"A safe journey, madame," I stammered, catching at the hand she held out and brushing the shabby-gloved fingers with my lips.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SISTERS OF CHARITY WERE GIVING FIRST AID"]

"I shall never forgive this wanton self-sacrifice," she said, unsteadily. Then the car rolled silently past me, swifter, swifter, and her white face faded from my sight. Yet still I stood there, bareheaded, in the rain, while the twin red lamps on the rear car grew smaller and smaller, until they, too, were shut out in the closing curtains of the fog.

As I turned away into the lighted station a hospital train from the north glided into the yard and stopped. Soldiers immediately started carrying out the wounded and placing them in rows on mattresses ranged along the walls of the pa.s.senger depot; sisters of charity, hovering over the mutilated creatures, were already giving first aid to the injured; policemen kept the crowd from trampling the dead and dying; gendarmes began to clear the platforms, calling out sharply, "No more trains to-night! Move on! This platform is for government officials only!"

Through the scrambling mob a file of wounded tottered, escorted by police; women were forced back and pushed out into the street, only to be again menaced by galloping military ambulances arriving, accompanied by hussars. The confusion grew into a tumult; men struggled and elbowed for a pa.s.sage to the platforms, women sobbed and cried; through the uproar the treble wail of terrified children broke out.

Jostled, shoved, pulled this way and that, I felt that I was destined to go down under the people's feet, and I don't know what would have become of me had not a violent push sent me against the door of the telegraph office. The door gave way, and I fell on my knees, staggered to my feet, and crept out once more to the platform.

The station-master pa.s.sed, a haggard gentleman in rumpled uniform and gilt cap; and as he left the office by the outer door the heavy explosion of a rampart cannon shook the station.

"Can you get me to Paris?" I asked.

"Quick, then," he muttered; "this way--lean on me, monsieur! I am trying to send another train out--but Heaven alone knows! Quick, this way!"

The glare of a locomotive's headlight dazzled me; I made towards it, clinging to the arm of the station-master; the ground under my feet rocked with the shock of the siege-guns. Suddenly a sh.e.l.l fell and burst in the yard outside; there was a cry, a rush of trainmen, a gendarme shouting; then the piercing alarm notes of locomotives, squealing like terrified leviathans.

The train drawn up along the platform gave a jerk and immediately moved out towards the open country, compartment doors swinging wide, trainmen and guards running alongside, followed by a mob of frenzied pa.s.sengers, who leaped into empty compartments, flinging satchels and rugs to the four winds. Crash! A sh.e.l.l fell through the sloping roof of the platform and blew up. Through the white cloud and brilliant glare I saw a porter, wheeling boxes and trunks, fall, buried under an avalanche of baggage, and a sister of charity throw up her arms as though to shield her face from the fragments.

A car, doors swinging wide, glided past me; I caught the rail and fell forward into a compartment. The cushions of the seats were afire, and a policeman was hammering out the sparks with naked fists.

I was too weak to aid him. Presently he hurled the last burning cushion from the open door and leaped out into the train-yard, where red and green lamps glowed and the brilliant flare of bursting sh.e.l.ls lighted the fog. By this time the train was moving swiftly; the car windows shook with the thunder from the ramparts under which we were pa.s.sing; then came inky darkness--a tunnel--then a rush of mist and wind from the open door as we swept out into the country.

Pa.s.sengers clinging to the platforms now made their way into the compartment where I lay almost senseless, and soon the little place was crowded, and somebody slammed the door.

Then the flying locomotive, far ahead, shrieked, and the train leaped, rushing forward into the unknown. Blackness, stupefying blackness, outside; inside, unseen, the huddled pa.s.sengers, breathing heavily with sudden stifled sobs, or the choked, indrawn breath of terror; but not a word, not a quaver of human voices; peril strangled speech as our black train flew onward through the night.

VIII

A MAN TO LET

The train which bore me out of the arc of the Prussian fire at Strasbourg pa.s.sed in between the fortifications of Paris the next morning about eleven o'clock. Ten minutes later I was in a closed cab on my way to the headquarters of the Imperial Military Police, temporarily housed in the Luxembourg Palace.

The day was magnificent; sunshine flooded the boulevards, and a few chestnut-trees in the squares had already begun to blossom for the second time in the season; there seemed to be no prophecy of autumn in sky or sunlight.

The city, as I saw it from the open window of my cab, appeared to be in a perfectly normal condition. There were, perhaps, a few more national-guard soldiers on the streets, a few more brightly colored posters, notices, and placards on the dead walls, but the life of the city itself had not changed at all; the usual crowds filled the boulevards, the usual street cries sounded, the same middle-aged gentlemen sat in front of the cafes reading the same daily papers, the same waiters served them the same drinks; rows of cabs were drawn up where cabs are always to be found, and the same policemen dawdled in gossip with the same flower-girls. I caught the scent of early winter violets in the fresh Parisian breeze.

Was this the city that Buckhurst looked upon as already doomed?

On the marble bridge gardeners were closing up the morning flower-market; blue-bloused men with jointed hose sprinkled the asphalt in front of the Palais de Justice; students strolled under the trees from the School of Medicine to the Sorbonne; the Luxembourg fountain tossed its sparkling sheets of spray among the lotus.

All this I saw, yet a sinister foreboding oppressed me, and I could not shake it off even in this bright city where September was promising only a new lease of summer and the white spikes of chestnut blossoms hummed with eager bees.

Physically I felt well enough; the cramped sleep in the dark compartment, far from exhausting me, had not only rested me, but had also brought me an appet.i.te which I meant to satisfy as soon as might be. As for my back, it was simply uncomfortable, but all effects of the shock had disappeared--unless this heavy mental depression was due to it.

My cab was now entering the Palace of the Luxembourg by the great arch facing the Rue de Tournon; the line sentinels halted us; I left the cab, crossed the parade in front of the guard-house, turned to the right, and climbed the stairs straight to my own quarters, which were in the west wing of the palace, and consisted of a bedroom, a working cabinet, and a dressing-room.

But I did not enter my door or even glance at it; I continued straight on, down the corridor to a door, on the ground-gla.s.s panes of which was printed in red lettering:

HEADQUARTERS IMPERIAL MILITARY POLICE SAFE DEPOSIT

The sentinel interrogated me for form's sake, although he knew me; I entered, pa.s.sed rapidly along the face of the steel cage behind which some officers sat on high stools, writing, and presented myself at the guichet marked, "Foreign Division."

There was no military clerk in attendance there, and, to my surprise, the guichet was closed.

However, a very elegant officer strolled up to the guichet as I laid my bag of diamonds on the gla.s.s shelf, languidly unlocked the steel window-gate, and picked up the bag of jewels.

The officer was Mornac, the Emperor's alter ego, or ame d.a.m.nee, who had taken over the entire department the very day I left Paris for the frontier. Officially, I could not recognize him until I presented myself to Colonel Jarras with my report; so I saluted his uniform, standing at attention in my filthy clothes, awaiting the usual question and receipt.

"Name and number?" inquired Mornac, indolently.

I gave both.

"You desire to declare?"

I enumerated the diamonds, and designated them as those lately stolen from the crucifix of Louis XI.

Mornac handed me a printed certificate of deposit, opened a compartment in the safe, and tossed in the bag without sealing it.

And, as I stood waiting, he lighted a scented cigarette, glanced over at me, puffed once or twice, and finally dismissed me with a discourteous nod.

I went, because he was Mornac; I thought that I was ent.i.tled to a bureau receipt, but could scarcely demand one from the chief of the entire department who had taken over the bureau solely in order to reform it, root and branch. Doubtless his curt dismissal of me without the customary receipt and his failure to seal the bag were two of his reforms.

I limped off past the glittering steel cage, thankful that the jewels were safe, turned into the corridor, and hastened back to my own rooms.

To tear off my rags, bathe, shave, and dress in a light suit of civilian clothes took me longer than usual, for I was a trifle lame.

Bath and clean clothes ought to have cheered me; but the contrary was the case, and I sat down to a breakfast brought by a palace servant, and ate it gloomily, thinking of Buckhurst, and the Countess, and of Morsbronn, and of the muddy dead lying under the rifle smoke below my turret window.

I thought, too, of that astonishing conspiracy which had formed under the very shadow of the imperial throne, and through which already the crucifix and diamonds of Louis XI. had been so nearly lost to France.

Who besides Buckhurst was involved? How far had Colonel Jarras gone in the investigation during my absence? How close to the imperial throne had the conspiracy burrowed?

Pondering, I slowly retraced my steps through the bedroom and dressing-room, and out into the tiled hallway, where, at the end of the dim corridor, the door of Colonel Jarras's bureau stood partly open.

Jarras was sitting at his desk as I entered, and he gave me a leaden-eyed stare as I closed the door behind me and stood at attention.