The Missioner Part 49

"What are you doing here, old man?" he asked. "Why did you not meet me?

Eh?"

"I will tell you, tell you everything, Jean," Johnson answered. "Sit down here and drink with us. Everything shall be made quite clear to you. I came for your sake--to get money, Jean. Sit down, my boy."

Jean le Roi sat down.

"I sit with you," he said, "and I will drink with you, because I have no money to pay for myself. But we are not friends yet, old man! I will hear first what you have done. And who is this?"

His eyes flashed as he looked upon Hurd. Johnson interposed quickly.

"A friend, a good friend," he exclaimed. "He will be of service to us, great service. Only a few minutes ago he told me something astounding, something for you also to hear, dear Jean. It is wonderful news."

Jean le Roi interrupted.

"What I want to hear from you," he said, in a soft, vicious whisper, "is why, when they let me out of that cursed place, you were not there with money and clothes for me, as I ordered. But for the poor faithful Annette, whom I did not desire to see, I might have starved on the day of my release. Stop!----" he held up his hand as Johnson was on the point of pouring out a copious explanation, "order me brandy first. Tell them to bring me the bottle. Do not speak till I have drunk."

They called a waiter and gave the order. They waited in an uneasy silence until it arrived. Jean le Roi drank at first sparingly, but his eyes rested lovingly upon the bottle.

"Now speak," he commanded.

Johnson told his story with appropriate gestures.

"After it was all over," he began rapidly, "and one saw that a rescue was impossible, I followed madame! It was a moment of fury, I thought.

She will repent, she will pay for lawyers for his defence. So I hung about her hotel, only to find that she had left, stolen away. As you know, she did not appear at the trial! It was a bargain with the police that they should not call her if she betrayed you! She escaped me, Jean, and as you know, I had no money. All, every penny had been spent on your clothes and your horse and carriage, to make you a gentleman."

Jean le Roi extended his hands. "Money well spent indeed! Let the old man continue!"

"She escaped me, Jean, and it was many months before I found a clue on an old label--just the words 'Thorpe, England.' So I wrote there, and the letter did not come back as the others. I waited a little time and I wrote again, this time to receive an answer! It was a stern, angry letter from a man who called himself her father, and signed himself Stephen Hurd. He was what is called here an estate agent, and he had not very much money. He would not send one pound. He said that the marriage was illegal, and if one came to England he threatened the law!

I wrote again--humbly, piteously. I spoke of your hardships. I told how all the time you raved of your dear wife, how you repented your madness--how it was for love of her only that you had committed such a crime! There came no answer. I forwarded the letters which you had written to her--I begged, oh! how I begged for just a little money for the small luxuries, the good wine, the tobacco, the newspapers. They sent nothing!"

Jean le Roi drew in his breath with a gasp.

"Oh!" he muttered. "So they sent nothing!"

"Not one sou, Jean--not one sou! And all the while the time of your release was drawing near. What could I do! Well, I raised the money. How I will not tell you, my boy, but I went on a fruit boat from Havre to Southampton, and from there down to Thorpe. I saw the old man Stephen Hurd. It was on a Sunday night that I arrived, and I found him alone.

He was as hard, Jean, as his letters. When I pressed him he ordered me out of the house. I would not go. I said that I would see my daughter-in-law. I would remain until I saw her, I said, even if I slept under a hedge. Again he ordered me out of the house. I was firm; I refused. Then he struck me, there was a quarrel, and he fell. I thought at first that he was unconscious, but when I examined him--he was dead."

Johnson finished his speech in a stealthy whisper, leaning half way across the table. Jean le Roi poured himself out more brandy, but he was unmoved.

"The old trick, I suppose," he remarked carelessly, making a swift movement with his hand.

"No! no!" Johnson declared earnestly. "I used no weapon! It was an accident, a pure accident. Remember that this is his son. He would not be here if it was not quite certain that it was accident--and accident alone."

Jean le Roi lifted his head and gazed curiously at Stephen Hurd.

"So you," he murmured, "are my brother-in-law?"

Johnson leaned once more across the table.

"It is where you, where we all have been deceived," he said impressively. "Listen. She was never the daughter of Stephen Hurd at all. It was a schoolgirl's freak to take that name, when she was eluding her chaperon and amusing herself in Paris. Stephen Hurd was her servant."

"And she?" Jean le Roi asked softly.

Johnson spread out his yellow-stained fingers. His voice trembled, his eyes shone. It was like speaking of something holy.

"She is a great lady," he said. "She goes to Court, she has houses, and horses and carriages, troops of servants, a yacht, motor-cars. She is rich--fabulously rich, Jean. She has--listen--forty thousand pounds, livres mind, a year."

"More than that," Hurd muttered.

"More than that," Johnson repeated.

Jean le Roi was no longer unmoved. He drew a long breath and his teeth seemed to come together with a click.

"There is no mistake?" he asked softly. "An income of forty thousand pounds?"

"There is no mistake," Stephen Hurd a.s.sured him. "I will answer for that."

Jean le Roi's face was white and vicious. Yet for a time he said nothing and his two companions watched him anxiously. There was something uncanny about his silence.

"It is a great deal of money," he said at last. "Often in prison I was hungry, I had no cigarettes. I was forced to drink water. A great deal of money! And she is my wife! Half of what she has belongs to me! That is the law, eh?"

"I don't know about that," Stephen Hurd said, "but she has certainly treated you very badly."

Jean le Roi struck the table with his fist, not violently, and yet somehow with a force which made itself felt.

"It is over--that!" he said. "I am a man who knows when he has been ill-treated; who knows, too, what it is that a wife owes to her husband.

Tell me where it is that she lives, old man. Write it down."

Johnson drew from his pocket a stump of pencil and the back of an envelope. He wrote slowly and with care. Jean le Roi extended the palm of his hand to Stephen Hurd.

"He will warn madame, perhaps," he suggested. "Why does he sit here with us, this young man? Is it that he, too, wants money?"

"No! no! my son," Johnson intervened hastily. "Madame treated him badly. He would not be sorry to see her humiliated."

Jean le Roi smiled.

"It shall be done," he promised. "But from one of you I must have money.

I cannot present myself before my wife so altered. No one would believe my story."

"How much do you want?" Hurd asked uneasily.

"Twenty pounds English," Jean le Roi answered. "I cannot resume my appearance as a gentleman on less."

Hurd took out some notes.

"I will lend you that," he said slowly.

Jean le Roi's long fingers took firm hold of the notes. He b.u.t.toned them up in his pocket, slapped the place where they were, and poured out more brandy.