Read Ebook: The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice From The New Decameron Volume III. by Sackville West V Victoria

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Ebook has 128 lines and 14148 words, and 3 pages

He let fall one or two phrases that seemed to open a rift down into the mirk of his experience, so that I thought I looked for a moment into the very night that he described:

This mention of human time brought me back with a shock from the fantastic world to which he had transported me.

"Hallo!" I said, starting as one awakened, and making in my confusion a ridiculous remark, "it must be getting very late."

Only the ceiling light burnt in the little restaurant, which but for ourselves was deserted. The stranger leant over towards me, and a shiver passed over me at the nearness of this man whom I did not know, and to whose extraordinary experience I had, so to speak, by my own doing, been made a party. I wanted to put an end to it now, I wanted to say, "Yes, I have been very much interested. Thank you very much for telling me," and then to get up and go away. But at my first movement he detained me.

"Listen a little longer. I'm not mad, you know, and you needn't be afraid that I shall ever bother you afterwards. You don't know what good this has done me. I've been alone with this thing for a fortnight, nearly, thinking about it. The storm.... It lasted for two days; that made four days since I had been on the buoy. I think another day of storm would have killed me, There wasn't much life left in me by the time the sea began to go down. Two days of storm...."

His voice trailed away. I think he felt, as I did, that the moment was over when he had really held all my attention and all my imagination. It was no good trying to revive it. I was tired, as though I had lived through some brief but violent mental stress.

"Two days of storm," he muttered vaguely.

"And how did you get away?" I asked; it was a perfunctory question.

"How did I get away.--Oh.--Yes, of course. A ship, on the seventh day. Yes, there were three days of calm after the storm; comparative calm, but for the swell. So I had the week he had intended for me to have, to the full. The ship's carpenter came alongside in a dinghy, and filed through one of the bars. I never told them how I came to be there. I said it was for a bet, and that I was to have been fetched by my friends the next day. When I got on board I collapsed. I'd just come out of hospital the day you first saw me here." He rose wearily. "Well, I mustn't keep you. Thank you more than I can say, for having listened."

We walked towards the door of the restaurant together; outside, the London street was empty under a melancholy drizzle of rain.

"You had better give me your name and your address," I said, pricked on to it by a curiously conventional conscience.

"No, no," he said, backing away from me. "You've been kind, you mustn't ever be implicated."

"Why, what are you going to do?" I cried.

He turned, his old wideawake crammed down over his hair, and his face half buried in the upturned collar of his coat, but I saw the sudden gleam of his eyes by the light of a street lamp.

As he read the last words M. Lesueur's brow darkened. A mare's nest indeed! An hour gone and nothing gained! Then his eye caught a footnote to the last page of the translation he had just perused.

"About the middle of this story" "I found a few words in brackets that seem to have no connection with the tale. They are in French--foreigner's French and faulty--but they appear to mean: 'We are imprisoned in the garret under the leads of the long wing of the ch?teau. Our food will last only another day.'" This laconic footnote was initialled "H. F. ."

The Commissary's eye brightened. Here at last was something, and something good. Rapidly he made his plans. He would start in twenty minutes with six men; he would advise Toussaint by telephone to meet him at the ch?teau with six more. The case would prove, perhaps, vastly important. He saw decorations and Paris employment; he read in imagination columns of praise in the great papers of the capital. Quitting unwillingly the realm of ambitious fancy, he took up the telephone, but before he could speak there came a sharp knock at the door, and a gendarme stood awaiting permission to address his superior.

"What is it?" demanded M. Lesueur.

"A tramp, sir," replied the gendarme.

"God in heaven, man! What do I care for a tramp? Is this a workhouse? Send him away and go after him!"

"He has found two Englishmen in a dungeon," observed the gendarme with wooden persistence.

"Let him join them!" snapped M. Lesueur, angrily. Then the next moment, "What do you say? Englishmen? Where? What dungeon?"

"He asks leave to make his deposition, sir. He is not an ordinary tramp."

For a moment the commissary hesitated. The memory of those words interpolated in the third of the mysterious stories checked his impatience. Never neglect possible information.

"Bring him in," he said shortly, and replaced the telephone receiver that, all this while and to the intense irritation of the exchange, he had held vaguely in his hand.

There was ushered in a lean, scarecrow figure at whose heels limped a black, untidy dog. The tramp bowed and began at once to speak in the slow correct French of a well-educated foreigner. He told of a dusty road along which he had toiled; of a coppice and its tempting shade; of the drowsiness of afternoon; of dream voices that were not, after all, of dream; of a mound with a mysterious grating; of a subterranean cavern and its two unusual and impatient prisoners. M. Lesueur listened in silence. The story done, he took up the telephone once again. While waiting for his connection, he addressed the senior gendarme of those present in the room.

And he outlined with curt efficiency the instructions laid down for his subordinate.

"In an hour," he concluded, "we meet at the Ch?teau de la Hourmerie. One hour, mind you! One hour from now." Smartly and with finality he hung up the receiver.

The Commissary was already struggling into his dust coat when there came yet a second interruption. The sound of many agitated feet in the outer office prepared the occupants of M. Lesueur's private room for threatened but not for actual invasion of their retired sanctuary. Wherefore they regarded with speechless amazement the tempestuous entry of two elegantly gowned women, one clutching the other firmly by the arm, while in close and uncomfortable attendance followed two men, one tall, white-whiskered, and conspicuous in a buff alpaca suit, the other short, stout, and shining with the sweat-drops of embarrassment.

The female invaders lost no time in stating their business, but as they both spoke at once and shrilly, the unfortunate Commissary learnt little of the matter at issue between them. Not until the united efforts of all the men present had silenced feminine vociferation was it possible to understand what in the world the pother was about. The old gentleman, to whom in courtesy priority of speech was accorded, made the following statement:

"About an hour and a half ago I entered the Casino in company with the young lady whom now you observe in the grip of--er--the other lady. My companion, whose name is Am?lie, was anxious at once to join the crowd at the tables.

"We contrived to edge ourselves to a convenient front seat, and for some while played quietly and with varying success. I then observed that new-comers were seeking to force a way to the front row of players, and, in order to give others their turn, stepped behind my companion, leaving vacant the spot I had previously occupied. It was filled forthwith by the second of the two ladies now before you, who thanked me with a charming smile for my courtesy, and was on the point of turning her interest wholly to the game when her eyes fell on Am?lie. Instantly she flushed with excitement, paled again and flushed once more, and I was the next moment aware of a rapid movement of her arm as she snatched from the neck of Am?lie an ornament that hung there from a thin gold chain.

"You can imagine the excited confusion that ensued, the outcome of which is my attendance here to account, so far as I may, for the disturbance in which I have been involved."

M. Lesueur acknowledged die straightforward simplicity of the old gentleman's story with a slight bow.

"Your name, sir?" he asked.

"Widiershaw. I am an Englishman."

"Did you know any of these persons before this afternoon?"

"Yes and no. Yes--because the lady who assaulted Am?lie in the Casino turns out to be the widow of a relative of mine, and her name, although not her person, is quite familiar to me. No--because my acquaintance with Mdlle Am?lie predated by an hour only our visit to the Casino. This gentleman I have never seen before."

With a sigh of impatience M. Lesueur turned again to his chair and sat down. He gave an order to the gendarme at his elbow:

"Telephone Toussaint that I am delayed, that I will be at La Hourmerie half an hour later than I said. Perhaps forty minutes. The cars can wait."

He spoke in a low voice, but not so low that the quick ear of Am?lie did not catch the words "La Hourmerie." She compressed her lips, cast a look of spiteful triumph at her antagonist , and awaited developments in vengeful silence.

"D-A-N-E--trait d'union--V-E-R-E-K-E-R," said the captor lady, with precision and a very passable accent.

"Am?lie Vildrac."

"Hector Turpin."

A clerk made the necessary entries. Mrs. Dane-Vereker was asked to give her version of the afternoon's events.

"They are few and easy to relate," she said. "This woman was my maid. Two days ago she stole, among other things, a valuable and valued cameo belonging to me, and disappeared. This afternoon, and by the merest hazard, I found myself next to her at the tables. With an effrontery natural to women of her type she was wearing the very ornament she had stolen. Naturally I charged her with the theft, and attempted to seize my property. That is all I have to say."

"And you, Mdlle Vildrac?"

Am?lie shrugged insolent shoulders.

"Voila!" Mdlle Am?lie spread out emphatic hands. "Am I a thief? Is it theft to take gifts from another woman? And finally, M. le Commissaire, seeing that you are bound for La Hourmerie, I ask you to observe that this precious elopement took place from that very spot, and that in the Ch?teau de la Hourmerie were staying those other unfortunates, now abandoned to their fate by the selfish passion of Madame for her cicerone turned paramour!"

It may be imagined that Am?lie's scandalous declaration let loose Babel once again in the office of the unhappy Commissary. Mrs. Dane-Vereker, Turpin, Am?lie, and Mr. Withershaw vociferated simultaneously and with prolonged fervour. The patience of M. Lesueur came finally to an end.

"Silence!" he roared, banging the desk in frenzy. And then to the attendant gendarmes, who, by now, numbered some twelve highly edified stalwarts, he shouted an order for the instant incarceration of these pestilent folk. Their fate should be decided on the morrow.

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