The Passenger from Calais Part 17

"Yes, yes, the _Commissaire de police_, the judge, the peace officer.

Let us go before the highest authorities; nothing less than arrest, imprisonment, the heaviest penalties, will satisfy me," went on my lord.

"With all my heart," cried the Colonel. "We'll refer it to any one you please. Lead on, _mon brave_, only you must take all or none. I insist upon that. It is my right; let us all go before the Commissary."

"There is no Commissary here in Culoz. You must travel to Aix-les-Bains to find him. Fifteen miles from here."

"Well, why not? I'm quite ready," a.s.sented the Colonel, with an alacrity I did not understand. I began to think he had some game of his own.

"So am I ready," cried his lordship. "I desire most strongly to haul this hectoring bully before the law, and let his flagrant misconduct be dealt with in a most exemplary fashion."

I caught a curious shadow flitting across my comrade Tiler's face at this speech. He evidently did not approve of my lord's att.i.tude. Why?

I met his eye as soon as I could, and, in answer to my inquiring glance, he came over to me and whispered:

"Don't you see? He," jerking his finger toward the Colonel, "wants us to waste as much time as possible, while my lady slips through our fingers and gets farther and farther on her road."

"Where is she?"

"Ah, where? No longer here, anyway."

The train by which we had come from Geneva was not now in the station.

It had gone on, quite un.o.bserved by any of us during the fracas, and it flashed upon me at once that the incident had been planned for this very purpose of occupying our attention while she stole off.

"But, one moment, Ludovic, that train was going to Macon and Paris. My lady was travelling the other way--this way. You came with her yourself. Why should she run back again?"

"Ah! Why does a woman do anything, and particularly this one? Still there was a reason, a good one. She must have caught sight of my lord, and knew that she was caught."

"That's plausible enough, but I don't understand it. She started for Italy; what turned her back when you followed her, and why did she come this way again?"

"She only came because I'd tracked her to Amberieu, and thought to give me the slip," said Tiler.

"May be. But it don't seem to fit. Anyway, we've got to find her once more. It ought not to be difficult. She's not the sort to hide herself easily, with all her belongings, the nurse and the baby and all the rest. But hold on, my lord is speaking."

"Find out, one of you," he said briefly, "when the next train goes to Aix. I mean to push this through to the bitter end. You will be careful, sergeant, to bring your prisoner along with you."

"_Merci bien!_ I do not want you or any one else to teach me my duty,"

replied the gendarme, very stiffly. It was clear that his sympathies were all with the other side.

"A prisoner, am I?" cried the Colonel, gaily. "Not much. But I shall make no difficulties. I am willing enough to go with you. When is it to be?"

"Nine fifty-one; due at Aix at 10.22," Tiler reported, and we proceeded to pa.s.s the time, some twenty minutes, each in his own way.

Lord Blackadder paced the platform with feverish footsteps, his rage and disappointment still burning fiercely within him. The Colonel invited the two gendarmes to the _buvette_, and l'Ech.e.l.le followed him. I was a little doubtful of that slippery gentleman; although I had bought him, as I thought, the night before, I never felt sure of him. He had joined our party, had travelled with us, and seemed on our side in the recent scuffle, here he was putting himself at the beck and call of his own employer. My lord had paid him five hundred francs. Was the money thrown away, and his intention now to go back on his bargain?

Meanwhile Tiler and I thought it our pressing duty to utilize these few moments in seeking news of our lady and her party. Had she been seen? Oh, yes, many people, officials, and hangers-on about the station had seen her. Too much seen indeed, for the stories told were confusing and conflicting. One _facteur_ a.s.sured us he had helped her into the train going Amberieu way, but I thought his description very vague, although Tiler swallowed the statement quite greedily. Another man told me quite a different story; he had seen her, and had not the slightest doubt of it, in the down train, that for Aix-les-Bains, the express via Chambery, Modane, and the Mont Cenis tunnel for Italy.

This was the true version, I felt sure. Italy had been her original destination, and naturally she would continue her journey that way.

Why, then, Tiler asked, had she gone to Amberieu, running back as she had done with him at her heels? To deceive him, of course, I retorted.

Was it not clear that her real point was Italy? Why else had she returned to Culoz by the early train directly she thought she had eluded Tiler? The reasoning was correct, but Ludovic was always a desperately obstinate creature, jealous and conceited, tenacious of his opinions, and holding them far superior to those who were cleverer and more intelligent than himself.

Then we heard the whistle of the approaching train, and we all collected on the platform. L'Ech.e.l.le, as he came from the direction of the _buvette_, was a little in the rear of the Colonel and the gendarmes. I caught a look on his face not easy to interpret. He was grinning all over it and pointing toward the Colonel with his finger, derisively. I was not inclined to trust him very greatly, but he evidently wished us to believe that he thought very little of the Colonel, and that we might count upon his support against him.

CHAPTER XX.

There were seven of us pa.s.sengers, more than enough to fill one compartment, so we did not travel together. My lord very liberally provided first-cla.s.s tickets for the whole of the party, but the Colonel took his own and paid for the gendarmes. He refused to travel in the same carriage with the n.o.ble Earl, saying openly and impudently that he preferred the society of honest old soldiers to such a crew as ours. L'Ech.e.l.le, still sitting on the hedge, as I fancied, got in with the Colonel and his escort.

On reaching Aix-les-Bains, we found the omnibus that did the _service de la ville_, but the Colonel refused to enter it, and declared he would walk; he cared nothing for the degradation of appearing in the public streets as a prisoner marching between a couple of gendarmes.

He gloried in it, he said; his desire was clearly to turn the whole thing into ridicule, and the pa.s.sers-by laughed aloud at this well-dressed gentleman, as he strutted along with his hat c.o.c.ked, one hand on his hip, the other placed familiarly on the sergeant's arm.

He met some friends, too,--one was a person rather like himself, with the same swaggering high-handed air, who accosted him as we were pa.s.sing the corner of the square just by the Hotel d'Aix.

"What ho! Basil my boy!" cried the stranger. "In chokey? Took up by the police? What've you done? Robbed a church?"

"Come on with us and you'll soon know. No, really, come along, I may want you. I'm going before the beak and may want a witness as to character."

"Right oh! There are some more of us here from the old shop--Jack Tyrrell, Bobus Smith--all Mars and Neptune men. They'll speak for a pal at a pinch. Where shall we come?"

"To the town hall, the _mairie_," replied the Colonel, after a brief reference to his escort. "I've got a particular appointment there with Monsieur le Commissaire, and the Right Honourable the Earl of Blackadder."

"Oh! that n.o.ble sportsman? What's wrong with him? What's he been doing to you or you to him?"

"I punched his head, that's all."

"No doubt he deserved it; anyhow, Charlie Forrester will be pleased.

By-by, you'll see me again, and all the chaps I can pick up at the Cercle and the hotels near."

Then our procession pa.s.sed on, the Colonel and gendarmes leading, Tiler and I with l'Ech.e.l.le close behind.

We found my lord awaiting us. He had driven on ahead in a _fiacre_ and was standing alone at the entrance to the police office, which is situated on the ground floor of the Hotel de Ville, a pretty old-fashioned building of gray stone just facing the Etabliss.e.m.e.nt Thermale, the home of the far-famed baths from which _Aix-les-Bains_ takes its name.

"In here?" asked my lord; and with a brief wave of his hand he would have pa.s.sed in first, but the officers of the law put him rather rudely aside and claimed precedence for their prisoner.

But when M. le Commissaire, who was there, seated at a table opposite his _greffier_, rose and bowed stiffly, inquiring our business, my lord pushed forward into the front and began very warmly, in pa.s.sable French:

"I am an aggrieved person seeking justice on a wrong-doer. I--demand justice of you--"

"_Pardon, monsieur, je vous prie._ We must proceed in order, and first allow me to a.s.sure you that justice is always done in France. No one need claim it in the tone you have a.s.sumed."

The Commissary was a solemn person, full of the stiff formality exhibited by members of the French magistracy, the juniors especially.

He was dressed in discreet black, his clean-shaven, imperturbable face showed over a stiff collar, and he wore the conventional white tie of the French official.

"Allow me to ask--" he went on coldly.

"I will explain in a few words," began my lord, replying hurriedly.

"Stay, monsieur, it is not from you that I seek explanation. It is the duty of the officers of the law now present, and prepared, I presume, to make their report. Proceed, sergeant."