The Mysterious Three Part 23

I turned. Faulkner's eyes, wide open, were rivetted on the scene. For the first time in his life, as I believe, he had given way to his emotion. "Ah!" he added in an undertone, "how this makes one think!"

"Think?" I said. "Of what?" My only thought was of my loved one.

He turned his head and looked at me.

"Oh," he answered cynically, "of what we shall have for lunch to-morrow.

Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, and in the light cast down upon us by the blood-red canopy flickering in the sky above I could see his eyes shining strangely, "Have you no sense at all of grandeur? Can't you realise and appreciate the overpowering magnificence of all this? Have you no sentiment, romance or poetry at all in your conception? Don't you feel the hand of Providence? Doesn't this bring home to you the majesty of eternity better than any religion that has been tried or thought of? Really, Ashton, really..."

I was amazed at his sudden outburst of pent-up feeling--I had imagined him cold, undemonstrative, unemotional, a being without nerves and devoid of temperament. So his self-control and apparent calmness had been nothing but a mask. I think I liked him all the better for it.

We heard voices--women's shrill, terrified voices. We were unable to locate them. Suddenly I started. Surely that was Vera's voice! Yes, I recognised it.

Attentively we both listened. Then, as the flames shot up again, lighting up the meadows away to the woods, we both distinctly saw in silhouette a man and a woman struggling in the distance.

The man had her by the wrists. He was overpowering her. At that same moment the red glare sank, and both were hidden in the darkness.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

FOUND IN THE DEBRIS.

We were on the alert in a moment.

Though we searched in the darkness for a distance of a hundred yards or more, we failed to come upon either the man or the woman of whom we had caught a brief glimpse as they struggled desperately.

Nor did we again hear the sound of voices. That I had heard Vera's voice, I felt convinced. We wondered if there was a lodge, and how far it was away. Perhaps the servants had taken shelter there.

"The whole place seems to be deserted," Faulkner said when, after a futile search, we again found ourselves near the burning chateau, where the fire had by this time subsided considerably. "And yet there must have been people in the house--at any rate, servants."

We walked right round the chateau. What a huge old place it had been!

No wonder the fire had taken a long time to reach us, if it had broken out, as it presumably had done, in a wing remote from the room where we had been. Judging by the architecture of the outer walls I concluded that the chateau must have been built towards the end of the fourteenth century, and afterwards added to.

There was a sharp nip in the air, and we felt chilly enough. Already the streaks of dawn were striving to pierce the belt of leaden clouds, against which the black pinewoods could be seen distinctly outlined.

Faulkner turned to me.

"Have you any money?" he asked.

"Plenty," I answered. "Why?"

"When it is daylight we must make for the nearest village and get a conveyance to the railway-station. We must be miles from everywhere, or fire-escapes would have come along before now. I suppose the Baronne is dead."

"She can have escaped only by a miracle," I said. "We shall probably know soon."

"And that cur--Paulton. What can have become of him?"

"I can't help thinking it was Paulton we saw struggling. But who can the woman have been? I hope it wasn't Vera. I am certain I heard her voice. What do you think?"

"It may have been Mademoiselle de Coudron," Faulkner said. "She seems to have disappeared. What a brave girl! She must have climbed along the roofs to save us, with the fire just behind her. I wonder who the woman was who called for help first of all--I mean before we knew that fire had broken out."

"The whole thing is most mysterious, but the biggest mystery is the disappearance of everybody. We heard at least three voices in the darkness!"

Happening to glance down the long carriage drive which, after winding for a hundred yards across the broad, level lawns, disappeared into the wood, I noticed two men on horseback approaching at a walk. They had just emerged from the wood, and, so far as I could see in the half-light, were officials of some kind.

They broke into a jog-trot as they caught sight of us, and took a short cut across the gra.s.s. As they came near us we saw that they were two gendarmes.

"What are you doing here?" one of them asked sharply in French.

I didn't like his tone, and I saw Faulkner's lip twitch with annoyance.

Instead of answering, we looked the two men up and down.

"What are you doing here--tell me at once," the speaker repeated, in a bullying tone.

I suppose we did look disreputable, standing there without collars, with unlaced boots, and with our coat collars turned up. Also a day's growth of beard is hardly conducive to a smart appearance, and in most civilised countries but America a man is judged by his appearance and by the clothes he wears.

"Who set fire to the chateau?" demanded the gendarme, quickly losing his temper as we refused to speak.

"Oh, we did, of course," I exclaimed in French, meaning to be cynical.

"We burnt it down on purpose."

The man raised his black eyebrows, and glanced at his companion.

"You hear that?" he said meaningly.

The man who had remained silent produced a notebook and scribbled in it.

Faulkner turned to me.

"A few more of your `witticisms' Ashton," he said, "and we shall get penal servitude. Don't you know you are talking to State officials, and have you ever known a State official to be other than matter-of-fact?

For Heaven's sake, don't make more statements that may be used in evidence against us."

"My friend was joking," Faulkner said in his perfect French to the man who had addressed us; but the official seemed not to understand what the word _plaisanterie_ meant.

At this juncture the men exchanged one or two remarks in a rapid undertone. Then, while one of them remained, apparently to keep guard over us, the other cantered away across the turf, struck the road close to the wood, and disappeared.

In the absence of his companion, who apparently was his superior in authority, the gendarme thawed to some extent. We gathered that the Chateau d'Uzerche was about eighty miles by road from Monte Carlo, and twelve or so miles from Digne, in the Bedeone Valley, also that no village lay within a radius of two miles of it. Small wonder, therefore, that no fire-escape had come.

"Where is la Baronne de Coudron?" the man asked suddenly.

We explained that we feared she had been either burnt or suffocated. At this he looked grave.

"And her companion, the Englishman Monsieur Paulton, where is he?"

Again we explained. He had escaped from the fire, but, since his escape, we had not seen him.

"Why do you want to know?" Faulkner asked, in his politest tones.

"Because," the man answered, taken off his guard, "we have a warrant for the arrest of both Madame la Baronne and the Englishman."

"Arrest! For what?" Faulkner asked.