The Breath of the Gods Part 53

With a little sob, in which a golden feather had been caught, she leaned to his arms.

He took up the little brown sealskin cap, flung it back to her head, and, in his most boyish, impudent, and ecstatic tone, said in her ear, "You know the penalty for wearing another fellow's hat?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

In his favorite small smoking-room at the French Legation, crammed with motley j.a.panese and Gallic bric-a-brac, Count Ronsard fumbled nervously with his nether-lip.

"You sent for me, your Excellency?" said the secretary Mouquin, at the door.

"Allons! Entrez! It is the devil!--what our English cousins call 'the beastly bore.' But for his mother, the Princess Olga, I would wash my hands entirely!"

He went through the gesture, revolving one fat pudding of a fist about the other, and closing with an outward fling of both, and a shrug that made his body quake. "No news at all, Mouquin?"

"Nothing decisive, your Excellency. A mere hint, a hushed rumor, that Le Beau was last traced to the neighborhood of Prince Hagane's official residence."

"Sacrebleu! You should have probed."

"I asked a few questions guardedly. Your Excellency, one hesitates to put a match to a powder-train."

"Quite true, Mouquin. And when did the hushed rumor have it that he was seen,--what hour?"

"Before noon,--not long, in fact, after his mysterious escape from the nurses."

Ronsard's head dropped forward an inch. A sickly glow drove the usual gray pallor from his face.

"Doubtless," ventured the secretary, "Monsieur Le Beau will find his way sooner or later--to you!"

"Certainement! Certainement!" cried the other, finding relief in sarcasm. "He will come weeping to the arms of Mother France. Bah! I would that Mother France could greet him with the toes of these boots!"

He thrust forward pointed patent-leather tips, and stared at them, as if calculating the punishment they might inflict.

Mouquin, not being asked to find a seat, still stood by the door. The very air of the room held in solution, with its blue smoke, the dampness of foreboding. The first secretary's voice sounded thin.

"The doctors think this mad exposure means his certain death, your Excellency."

"Death! H'm! He'll take good care to stay alive till we're all involved.

It's too late for him to die."

The other raised his brows but made no answer.

"Have an absinthe, Mouquin?"

Without noticing that Mouquin shook his head Ronsard leaned over heavily and poured a little of the liquid into a gla.s.s, filling it up with water. Without drinking, he stared as if he saw a vision in its milky depths.

"Just a chance--the air is thick with plots--Pierre might be feigning--the Princess Hagane--who knows?--perhaps connives, betrays--Pshaw!" Count Ronsard dreamed under his breath.

"No further orders, your Excellency?" asked the younger man, patiently, his hand on the door.

"No--yes! Bring me the first news of that wandering lunatic--and avoid the police!"

The words fell before a fury of feet that bowled down the outer corridor. The door burst open, nearly flinging Mouquin to the floor.

Pierre Le Beau reeled in, crimson, panting, wild-eyed, hatless, and waved at the startled minister a large paper sealed with a red seal, round and clear as a j.a.panese sun. Ronsard in the millionth part of an instant recalled himself. He sat erect, but his eye gleamed beady and keen as a rat's. He was holding back with impartial judgment a riotous flush of hope. But Mouquin, as if hypnotized, locked the door and backed up against it. Pierre's eyes caught the cloudy green of the absinthe, still standing in the minister's gla.s.s. He tottered toward it, tried to speak, but merely pointed in jerks with his free hand. Ronsard silently held out the gla.s.s and motioned to an empty chair. Pierre drained the drug standing, then fell rather than sat. A sweat sprang suddenly to his skin. The fair hair plastered itself in little brown sickles on his white forehead.

"What is it, Pierre?"

Ronsard's eyes had not left the doc.u.ment half crumpled in Pierre's fist.

His voice had a bracing echo. A returning wave of unhealthy strength warned Pierre to action.

"Yes!" he cried, swaying across the table, holding out the paper and shaking it up and down. "I've done it! What you wanted! Sold my honor to h.e.l.l for it! Quick! Quick! America! The war!"

Pierre's head, not yet balanced by the stealthy drug, reeled, and the large envelope dropped on the table. Ronsard recognized the great Cabinet seal. With a wolfish twitching at the corners of the mouth, which his utmost effort could not control, he slowly pushed his hand across the polished mahogany. Then two currents of thought met, and he paused. The fretfulness, the lax instability of flesh, were gone. He sat stiff, a compact ma.s.s, in his broad chair. One could see that behind the ample jowl stretched a great square bone.

"First, what is it, Pierre?" he repeated coldly.

Pierre rocked in his seat. "A state paper--of utmost import--signed by Grubb and Todd and all the j.a.panese!--It means alliance!--I saw them all as I crouched in the garden. Read it, quick! The wax is hardly set."

Ronsard's mouth watered, but his brain grew firm. "Wonderful! Past belief!" he said. "But tell me how did Monsieur--obtain possession?" He was measuring the depth of Pierre's insanity, gazing desperately for signs of returning judgment. "Is it safe for _me_?" he continued quietly.

"Good G.o.d, man!" cried Pierre. "Here I win you, with my life, perhaps, the very key to this war--to history for all time--and you prate about safety! Is war safe? Is anything safe?"

Ronsard's voice came low and stinging. "Tell me! Where--and how--did you get it?"

Pierre was too over-wrought to lie, even had he dared. He swaggered. He stretched forth a hand and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper defiantly. "I took it--yes, from the body of Prince Hagane! Glorious, wasn't it? Mon Dieu!

Think of it! In his official residence!"

"It means the Cross of the Legion of Honor," said Mouquin, weakly, against the door.

"Hagane!" Ronsard had exclaimed in spite of himself. He knew it meant the utmost of something, but which--glory or dishonor? Either was incredible. "Yes, yes, Pierre," he said soothingly, as to a child; "Hagane's body--I understand. But why--didn't--Hagane stop you?"

"Why? It is droll--he could not! He was tied, tangled. His feet were tangled--yes, tightly entangled! He was too busy with that to follow."

Pierre's laugh turned Ronsard sick.

"What or _who_ entangled him, Pierre?"

"You keep her name out of this, d.a.m.n you!"

Ronsard's pendent underlip went gray to the root. "Then she will die, too." He breathed it to himself.

Whether Pierre heard or not, his tense att.i.tude relaxed. He cowered back in his chair. Mouquin, thinking he had fainted, ran forward.

"No! No more absinthe! No medicine! Coffee! For G.o.d's sake, coffee! That may keep me up."

A new thought flashed to Ronsard. "Mouquin! Ring, and yourself receive the coffee--just outside the door."