The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood Part 64

"It is not to be refused. I am with you, comrade. At the sign of the 'Pinched Nose' we shall find the best of everything," replied Anatole, heartily, and the pair pa.s.sed into the street.

It was barely a dozen yards to the wine-shop, and they walked there arm-in-arm in boisterous good-fellowship, elbowing their way through the crowd in a manner that was not exactly popular.

"Take care, imbecile!" cried one hulking fellow whom Anatole had shouldered off the path.

"Make room, then," replied our friend, rudely.

"Would you dare--" began the other, in a menacing voice, adding some words in a lower tone.

"Excuse. I was in the wrong," said Anatole, suddenly humbled.

"You are right to avoid a quarrel," remarked Hyde, when they were seated at table. He had been quietly amused at his companion's easy surrender.

"I could have eaten him raw. But why should I? He is, perhaps, a father of a family--the support of a widowed mother: if I had destroyed him they might have come to want. No; let him go."

"All the same, he does not seem inclined to go. There he is, still lurking about the front of the shop."

"Truly? Where?" asked Anatole, in evident perturbation. "Bah! we will tire him of that. By the time we have finished a second bottle--"

"Or a third, if you will!" cried Hyde, cheerfully.

They had their breakfast--the most savoury dishes; ham and sour crout, tripe after the mode of Caen, rich ripe Roquefort cheese, and had disposed of three bottles of a rather rough but potent red wine, before Anatole would speak on any but the most common-place topics. The Crimea, the dreadful winter, the punishment administered to their common enemy, occupied him exclusively.

But with the fourth bottle he became more communicative.

"You owe a long candle to your saint for your luck to-day in meeting me," he said, with a slight hiccup.

"Ah! how so?"

"Had not I been there to give you protection you would now be under lock and key in the depot of the Prefecture."

Hyde, in spite of himself, shuddered as he thought of his last detention in that unsavoury prison.

"What, then, have you done, my English friend?" went on Anatole, with drunken solemnity. "Why should the police seek your arrest?"

"But do they? I cannot believe it."

"It is as I tell you. I myself am in the 'cuisine' (the Prefecture).

Since my return from the war my ill.u.s.trious services have been rewarded by an appointment of great trust."

"In other words, you are now a police-agent, and you were set to watch for some one like me."

"Why not you?" asked Anatole, trying, but in vain, to fix him with his watery eyes. "In any case," he went on, "I wish to serve a comrade--at risk to myself, perhaps."

"You shall not suffer for it, never fear, in the long run. Count always upon me."

"They may say that I have betrayed my trust; that I put friendship before duty. That has always been my error; I have too soft a heart."

Anatole now began to cry with emotion at his own chivalrous self-sacrifice, which changed quickly into bravado as he cried, striking the table noisily--

"Who cares? I would save you from the Prefect himself."

At this moment the big man who had been watching at the window returned, accompanied by two others. He walked straight towards the door of the wine-shop.

"_Sacre bleu! le patron_ (chief). You are lost! Quick! take me by the throat."

Hyde jumped to his feet and promptly obeyed the curious command.

"Now struggle; throw me to the ground, bolt through the back door,"

whispered Anatole, hastily.

All which Hyde executed promptly and punctiliously. Anatole suffered him to do as he pleased, and Hyde escaped through the back entrance just as the other policemen rushed in at the front.

"After him! Run! Fifty francs to whoever stops him!"

But Hyde had the heels of them. He ran out and through a little courtyard at the back communicating with the street. There he found a _fiacre_, into which he jumped, shouting to the cabman--

"Drive on straight ahead! A napoleon for yourself."

In this way he distanced his pursuers, and half-an-hour later regained his hotel by a long detour.

Rather agitated and exhausted by the events of the morning, Hyde went upstairs to his own room to rest and review his situation.

"It is quite evident," he said to himself, "that Cyprienne has tried to turn the tables on me. I was too open with her. It was incautious of me to show my hand so soon. Of course the police have been set upon me--the accused and still unjudged perpetrator of the crime in Tinplate Street--by her. But has she acted alone in this?

"I doubt it. I doubt whether she would have come to Paris with that express purpose, or whether the police would have listened to her if she had.

"But who a.s.sisted her? Some one from whom she has no secrets. Were it not that such a woman is likely to have set up the closest relations with other miscreants in these past years, I should say that her agent and accomplice was Ledantec. Ledantec is still alive; I know that, for I saw him myself on the field of the Alma, rifling the dead.

"Ledantec! We have an old score to settle, he and I. What if he should be mixed up in this business that brings me to Paris? It is quite likely. That would explain his presence in the Crimea, which hitherto has seemed so strange. I never could believe that so daring and unscrupulous a villain had degenerated into a camp-follower, hungry for plunder gained in the basest way. It could not have been merely to prey upon the dead that he followed in the wake of our army.

Far more likely that he was a secret agent of the enemy. If so then, so still, most probably. What luck if these damaging clues that I hold should lead me also to him!

"But it is evident that I shall do very little if I continue to go about as Rupert Hyde. The police are on the alert: my movements would soon be interfered with, and, although I have no fear now of being unable to prove my innocence, arrest and detention of any kind might altogether spoil my game.

"I must a.s.sume some disguise, and to protect myself and my case I will do so with the full knowledge of the Emba.s.sy. It will do if I go there within an hour. By this evening at latest the police will certainly be here after Rupert Hyde."

It must be mentioned here that the police of Paris are supposed to be acquainted with the names of all visitors residing in the city. The rule may be occasionally relaxed, as now, but under the despotism of Napoleon III. it was enforced with a rigorous exact.i.tude.

Hyde had been barely half-a-dozen hours in Paris, but already his name was inscribed upon the hotel-register awaiting the inspection of the police, who would undoubtedly call that same day to note all new arrivals.

Before starting for the Emba.s.sy, Hyde sat down and wrote a couple of rather lengthy letters, both for England, which he addressed, and himself posted at the corner of the Rue Royale.

Thence he went on, down the Faubourg St. Honore, not many hundred yards, and soon pa.s.sed under the gateway ornamented with the arms of Great Britain, and stood upon what, by international agreement, was deemed a strip of British soil.

He saw an _attache_, to whom he quickly explained himself.

"You wish to pursue the investigation yourself, I gather? Is it worth while running such a risk? Why not hand over the whole business to the Prefecture? I believe they have already put a watch upon the persons suspected."