the adventures by david

Author:david [david]
Language: eng
Format: epub

XV

Through The Panel

For a half-dozen paces the boards sounded hollow beneath his feet, then the flooring became dead again, and Mailly guessed that he had passed from Passy’s residence to Pontchartrain’s. He came up against a wall which compelled him again to the right. Then he encountered an open door, through which he entered cautiously into a carpeted chamber. He went straight forward, halting every little while to listen for faint sounds of human presence. All was still.

A hand caught his arm.

“Is it you, Passy?”

The voice was low and brutal, but Mailly believed that he detected in it the drawl of good society. Startled though he was, he retained sang froid, not only replying to the question with the punctuality of an echo, but mechanically reducing his tone to a whisper, that the mistake might proceed.

“Yes.”

“What in the name of all the Furies has delayed you? I suppose I have been kicking my heels here for half-an-hour, since you left me. I was going home. Is all well?”

“All is well.”

“Is it Passy?”

“Who else should it be?”

“You answer back in a cursedly funny way. Where is your light?”

“It went out.”

“Oh, it went out! . . . Well, has your gentleman returned?”

“Peste! this establishes my faith, and I am really in the piece,” thought Mailly, wrinkling his brow in the darkness. “But who is this well-spoken individual who sells his soul to a Passy. ’Tis no common cut-throat. Is it some needy, well-born adventurer come hither to improve his fortune, or can it be an affair of private vengeance, in which the Passys are but the instruments? Whoever it is, it is certainly a man of quality, so if I am to keep up the deceit I had better start to ‘monsieur’ him.”

“You do not seem very sure,” interrupted the strange gentleman, in a tone of ominous dryness.

“He has returned, monsieur.”

“You are positive?”

“Yes.”

“Then your wife plies him?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“And he will remain? There is no doubt about it?”

“He will very assuredly remain,” replied Mailly in his toneless whisper.

“Then do we stop at the bottom of this pestilential pool all night? I think I have been waiting here throughout eternity. If it were a campaign, I should have you hanged. Pontchartrain has probably left by this. You take things devilishly easy, my friend!”

“I could not come before, monsieur, but we shall now proceed,” returned Mailly at a hazard.

“Then plague take it, do so! Go and fetch madame. I shall get back behind the curtain. Be off with you!”

“Parbleu! so she serves as decoy, and that is her function,” meditated the counterfeit Passy. “First she is to be brought here, then the Minister, to meet her, while all the time the assassin continues concealed behind his hangings. ’Tis crystal-clear at last. I have but to effect my retreat, and seek Pontchartrain, and we shall have bagged this brigand without a blow struck, just as his jackal already has been bagged. It is my night of destiny. It is at this precise moment that I cast the ill-luck of a life-time, to come into my rightful own.

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