The Maids of Paradise Part 50

"What are these for?" muttered the Lizard, sullenly.

"For your beaux yeux, imbecile!" cried Tric-Trac, gayly. "Come back when you want more. My comrade, Citizen Buckhurst, will be glad to see you next Monday. Adieu, my friend. Don't chatter to the Flics!"

He picked up his box and the packet of provisions, dropped his revolver into the side-pocket of his jacket, c.o.c.ked his greasy cap, blew a kiss to the Lizard, and started off straight into the forest.

After a dozen steps he hesitated, turned, and looked back at the poacher for a moment in silence. Then he made a friendly grimace.

"You are not a fool," he said, "so you won't follow me. Come again Monday. It will really be worth while, dear friend." Then, as on an impulse, he came all the way back, caught the Lizard by the sleeve, raised his meagre body on tip-toe, and whispered.

The Lizard turned perfectly white; Tric-Trac trotted away into the woods, hugging his box and smirking.

The Lizard and I walked back together. By the time we reached Paradise bridge I understood him better, and he understood me. And when we arrived at the circus tent, and when Speed came up, handing me a telegram from Chanzy refusing my services, the Lizard turned to me like an obedient hound to take my orders--now that I was not to re-enter the Military Police.

I ordered him to disobey the orders from Lorient and from the mayor of Paradise; to take to the woods as though to avoid the conscription; to join Buckhurst's franc-company of ruffians, and to keep me fully informed.

"And, Lizard," I said, "you may be caught and hanged for it by the police, or stabbed by Tric-Trac."

"Bien," he said, coolly.

"But it is a brave thing you do; a soldierly thing!"

He was silent.

"It is for France," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"And we'll catch this Tric-Trac red-handed," I suggested.

"Ah--yes!" His eyes glowed as though lighted up from behind. "And another who is high in the police, and a friend of this Tric-Trac!"

"Was it that man's name he whispered to you when you turned so white?" I said, suddenly.

The Lizard turned his glowing eyes on me.

"Was the man's name--Mornac?" I asked, at a hopeless venture.

The Lizard s.h.i.+vered; I needed no reply, not even his hoa.r.s.e, "Are you the devil, that you know all things?"

I looked at him wonderingly. What wrong could Mornac have done a ragged outcast here on the Breton coast? And where was Mornac? Had he left Paris in time to avoid the Prussian trap? Was he here in this country, rubbing elbows with Buckhurst?

"Did Tric-Trac tell you that Mornac was at the head of that band?" I demanded.

"Why do you ask me?" stammered the Lizard; "you know everything--even when it is scarcely whispered!"

The superst.i.tious astonishment of the man, his utter collapse and his evident fear of me, did not suit me. Treachery comes through that kind of fear; I meant to rule him in another and safer manner. I meant to be absolutely honest with him.

It was difficult to persuade him that I had only guessed the name whispered; that, naturally, I should think of Mornac as a high officer of police, and particularly so since I knew him to be a villain, and had also divined his relations with Buckhurst.

I drew from the poacher that Tric-Trac had named Mornac as head of the communistic plot in Brittany; that Mornac was coming to Paradise very soon, and that then something gay might be looked for.

And that night I took Speed into my confidence and finally Kelly Eyre, our balloonist.

And we talked the matter over until long after midnight.

XV

FOREWARNED

The lions had now begun to give me a great deal of trouble. Timour Melek, the old villain, sat on his chair, snarling and striking at me, but still going through his paces; Empress Khatoun was a perfect devil of viciousness, and refused to jump her hoops; even poor little Acha, my pet, fed by me soon after her foster-mother, a big Newfoundland, had weaned her, turned sullen in the pyramid scene. I roped her and trimmed her claws; it was high time.

Oh, they knew, and I knew, that matters had gone wrong with me; that I had, for a time, at least, lost the intangible something which I once possessed--that occult right to dominate.

It worried me; it angered me. Anger in authority, which is a weakness, is quickly discovered by beasts.

Speed's absurd superst.i.tion continued to recur to me at inopportune moments; in my brain his voice was ceaselessly sounding--"A man in love, a man in love, a man in love"--until a flash of temper sent my lions scurrying and snarling into a pack, where they huddled and growled, staring at me with yellow, mutinous eyes.

Yet, strangely, the greater the risk, and the plainer to me that my lions were slipping out of my control, the more my apathy increased, until even Byram began to warn me.

Still I never felt the slightest physical fear; on the contrary, as my irritation increased my disdain grew. It seemed a monstrous bit of insolence on the part of these overgrown cats to meditate an attack on me. Even though I began to feel that it was only a question of time when the moment must arrive, even though I gradually became certain that the first false move on my part would precipitate an attack, the knowledge left me almost indifferent.

That morning, as I left the training-cage--where, among others, Kelly Eyre stood looking on--I suddenly remembered Sylvia Elven and her message to Eyre, which I had never delivered.

We strolled towards the stables together; he was a pleasant, clean-cut, fresh-faced young fellow, a man I had never known very well, but one whom I was inclined to respect and trust.

"My son," said I, politely, "do you think you have arrived at an age sufficiently mature to warrant my delivering to you a message from a pretty girl?"

"There's no harm in attempting it, my venerable friend," he replied, laughing.

"This is the message," I said: "_On Sunday the book-stores are closed in Paris._"

"Who gave you that message, Scarlett?" he stammered.

I looked at him curiously, brutally; a red, hot blush had covered his face from neck to hair.

"In case you asked, I was to inform you," said I, "that a Bretonne at Point Paradise sent the message."

"A Bretonne!" he repeated, as though scared.

"A Bretonne!"

"But I don't know any!"

I shrugged my shoulders discreetly.