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- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
The Man in Grey is a brooding tale of mystery, romance, and betrayal set in 18th-century France. At its heart is the enigmatic figure of the "Man in Grey," a stern and relentless agent of the King, feared for his uncompromising pursuit of justice. When he crosses paths with a beautiful young aristocrat entangled in a web of secrets, passion and danger intertwine in ways neither could expect. With duels, dark intrigue, and an atmosphere of foreboding, Baroness Orczy crafts a story that balances romance with suspense, revealing that even the most unyielding heart may be vulnerable to love. A thrilling blend of gothic tension and historical drama, The Man in Grey remains one of Orczy's most haunting works.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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The Man in Grey
Table of Contents
The Man in Grey
Proem
Chapter 1: Silver-Leg
Chapter 2: The Spaniard
Chapter 3: The Mystery Of Marie Vaillant
Chapter 4: The Emeralds Of Mademoiselle Philippa
Chapter 5: The Bourbon Prince
Chapter 6: The Mystery of a Woman’s Heart
Chapter 7: The League of Knaves
Chapter 8: The Arrow Poison
Chapter 9: The Last Adventure
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Proem
IT has been a difficult task to piece together the fragmentary documents which alone throw a light—dim and flickering at the best—upon that mysterious personality known to the historians of the Napoleonic era as the Man in Grey. So very little is known about him. Age, appearance, domestic circumstances, everything pertaining to him has remained a matter of conjecture—even his name! In the reports sent by the all-powerful Minister to the Emperor he is invariably spoken of as “The Man in Grey.” Once only does Fouché refer to him as “Fernand.”
Strange and mysterious creature! Nevertheless, he played an important part—the most important, perhaps—in bringing to justice some of those reckless criminals who, under the cloak of Royalist convictions and religious and political aims, spent their time in pillage, murder and arson.
Strange and mysterious creatures, too, these men so aptly named Chouans—that is, “chats-huants”; screech-owls—since they were a terror by night and disappeared within their burrows by day. A world of romance lies buried within the ruins of the châteaux which gave them shelter—Tournebut, Bouvesse, Donnai, Plélan. A world of mystery encompasses the names of their leaders and, above all, those of the women—ladies of high degree and humble peasants alike—often heroic, more often misguided, who supplied the intrigue, the persistence, the fanatical hatred which kept the fire of rebellion smouldering and spluttering even while it could not burst into actual flame. D’Aché Cadoudal, Frotté, Armand le Chevallier, Marquise de Combray, Mme. Aquet de Férolles—the romance attaching to these names pales beside that which clings to the weird anonymity of their henchmen—“Dare-Death,” “Hare-Lip,” “Fear-Nought,” “Silver-Leg,” and so on. Theirs were the hands that struck whilst their leaders planned—they were the screech-owls who for more than twenty years terrorised the western provinces of France and, in the name of God and their King, committed every crime that could besmirch the Cause which they professed to uphold.
Whether they really aimed at the restoration of the Bourbon kings and at bolstering up the fortunes of an effete and dispossessed monarchy with money wrung from peaceable citizens, or whether they were a mere pack of lawless brigands made up of deserters from the army and fugitives from conscription, of felons and bankrupt aristocrats, will for ever remain a bone of contention between the apologists of the old régime and those of the new.
With partisanship in those strangely obscure though comparatively recent episodes of history we have nothing to do. Facts alone—undeniable and undenied—must be left to speak for themselves. It was but meet that these men—amongst whom were to be found the bearers of some of the noblest names in France—should be tracked down and brought to justice by one whose personality has continued to be as complete an enigma as their own.
Chapter 1: Silver-Leg
I
“FORWARD now! And at foot-pace, mind, to the edge of the wood—or—”
The ominous click of a pistol completed the peremptory command.
Old Gontran, the driver, shook his wide shoulders beneath his heavy caped coat and gathered the reins once more in his quivering hands; the door of the coach was closed with a bang; the postilion scrambled into the saddle; only the passenger who had so peremptorily been ordered down from the box-seat beside the driver had not yet climbed back into his place. Well! old Gontran was not in a mood to fash about the passengers. His horses, worried by the noise, the shouting, the click of firearms and the rough handling meted out to them by strange hands in the darkness, were very restive. They would have liked to start off at once at a brisk pace so as to leave these disturbers of their peace as far behind them as possible, but Gontran was holding them in with a firm hand and they had to walk—walk!—along this level bit of road, with the noisy enemy still present in their rear.
The rickety old coach gave a lurch and started on its way; the clanking of loose chains, the grinding of the wheels in the muddy roads, the snorting and travail of the horses as they finally settled again into their collars, drowned the coachman’s muttered imprecations.
“A fine state of things, forsooth!” he growled to himself more dejectedly than savagely. “What the Emperor’s police are up to no one knows. That such things can happen is past belief. Not yet six o’clock in the afternoon, and Alençon less than five kilométres in front of us.”
But the passenger who, on the box-seat beside him, had so patiently and silently listened to old Gontran’s florid loquacity during the early part of the journey, was no longer there to hear these well-justified lamentations. No doubt he had taken refuge with his fellow-sufferers down below.
There came no sound from the interior of the coach. In the darkness, the passengers—huddled up against one another, dumb with fright and wearied with excitement—had not yet found vent for their outraged feelings in whispered words or smothered oaths. The coach lumbered on at foot-pace. In the affray the head-light had been broken; the two lanterns that remained lit up fitfully the tall pine trees on either side of the road and gave momentary glimpses of a mysterious, fairy-like world beyond, through the curtain of dead branches and the veil of tiny bare twigs.
Through the fast gathering gloom the circle of light toyed with the haze of damp and steam which rose from the cruppers, of the horses, and issued from their snorting nostrils. From far away came the cry of a screech-owl and the call of some night beasts on the prowl.
Instinctively, as the road widened out towards the edge of the wood, Gontran gave a click with his tongue and the horses broke into a leisurely trot. Immediately from behind, not forty paces to the rear, there came the sharp detonation of a pistol shot. The horses, still quivering from past terrors, were ready to plunge once more, the wheelers stumbled, the leaders reared, and the team would again have been thrown into confusion but for the presence of mind of the driver and the coolness of the postilion.
“Oh! those accursed brigands!” muttered Gontran through his set teeth as soon as order was restored. “That’s just to remind us that they are on the watch. Keep the leaders well in hand, Hector,” he shouted to the postilion: “don’t let them trot till we are well out of the wood.”
Though he had sworn copiously and plentifully at first, when one of those outlaws held a pistol to his head whilst the others ransacked the coach of its contents and terrorised the passengers, he seemed inclined to take the matter philosophically now. After all, he himself had lost nothing; he was too wise a man was old Gontran to carry his wages in his breeches pocket these days, when those accursed Chouans robbed, pillaged and plundered rich and poor alike. No! Gontran flattered himself that the rogues had got nothing out of him: he had lost nothing—not even prestige, for it had been a case of twenty to one at the least, and the brigands had been armed to the teeth. Who could blame him that in such circumstances the sixty-two hundred francs, all in small silver and paper money—which the collector of taxes of the Falaise district was sending up to his chief at Alençon—had passed from the boot of the coach into the hands of that clever band of rascals?
Who could blame him? I say. Surely, not the Imperial Government up in Paris who did not know how to protect its citizens from the depredations of such villains, and had not even succeeded in making the high road between Caen and Alençon safe for peaceable travellers.
Inside the coach the passengers were at last giving tongue to their indignation. Highway robbery at six o’clock in the afternoon, and the evening not a very dark one at that! It were monstrous, outrageous, almost incredible, did not the empty pockets and ransacked valises testify to the scandalous fact. M. Fouché, Duc d’Otrante, was drawing a princely salary as Minister of Police, and yet allowed a mail-coach to he held up and pillaged—almost by daylight and within five kilométres, of the county town!
The last half-hour of the eventful journey flew by like magic: there was so much to say that it became impossible to keep count of time. Alençon was reached before everyone had had a chance of saying just what he or she thought of the whole affair, or of consigning M. le Duc: d’Otrante and all his myrmidons to that particular chamber in Hades which was most suitable for their crimes. Outside the “Adam et Ève,” where Gontran finally drew rein, there was a gigantic clatter and din as the passengers tumbled out of the coach, and by the dim light of the nearest street lantern tried to disentangle their own belongings from the pile of ransacked valises which the ostlers had unceremoniously tumbled out in a heap upon the cobble stones. Everyone was talking—no one in especial seemed inclined to listen—anecdotes of former outrages committed by the Chouans were bandied to and fro.
Gontran, leaning against the entrance of the inn, a large mug of steaming wine in his hand, watched with philosophic eye his former passengers, struggling with their luggage. One or two of them were going to spend the night at the “Adam et Ève”: they had already filed past him into the narrow passage beyond, where they were now deep in an altercation with Gilles Blaise, the proprietor, on the subject of the price and the situation of their rooms; others had homes or friends in the city, and with their broken valises and bundles in their hands could be seen making their way up the narrow main street, still gesticulating excitedly.
“It’s a shocking business, friend Gontran,” quoth Gilles Blaise as soon as he had settled with the last of his customers. His gruff voice held a distinct note of sarcasm, for he was a powerful fellow and feared neither footpads nor midnight robbers, nor any other species of those satané Chouans. “I wonder you did not make a better fight for it. You had three or four male passengers aboard—”
“What could I do?” retorted Gontran irritably. “I had my horses to attend to, and did it, let me tell you, with the muzzle of a pistol pressing against my temple.”
“You didn’t see anything of those miscreants?”
“Nothing. That is—”
“What?”
“Just when I was free once more to gather the reins in my hands and the order ‘Forward’ was given by those impudent rascals, he who had spoken the order stood for a moment below one of my lanterns.”
“And you saw him?”
“As plainly as I see you—except his face, for that was hidden by the wide brim of his hat and by a shaggy beard. But there is one thing I should know him by, if the police ever succeeded in laying hands on the rogue.”
“What is that?”
“He had only one leg, the other was a wooden one.”
Gilles Blaise gave a loud guffaw. He had never heard of a highwayman with a wooden leg before. “The rascal cannot run far if the police ever do get after him,” was his final comment on the situation.
Thereupon Gontran suddenly bethought himself of the passenger who had sat on the box-seat beside him until those abominable footpads had ordered the poor man to get out of their way.
“Have you seen anything of him, Hector?” he queried of the postilion.
“Well, now you mention him,” replied the young man slowly, “I don’t remember that I have.”
“He was not among the lot that came out of the coach.”
“He certainly was not.”
“I thought when he did not get back to his seat beside me, he had lost his nerve and gone inside.”
“So did I.”
“Well, then?” concluded Gontran.
But the puzzle thus propounded was beyond Hector’s powers of solution. He scratched the back of his head by way of trying to extract thence a key to the enigma.
“We must have left him behind,” he suggested.
“He would have shouted after us if we had,” commented Gontran. “Unless—” he added with graphic significance.
Hector shook himself like a dog who has come out of the water. The terror of those footpads and of those pistols clicking in the dark, unpleasantly close to his head, was still upon him.
“You don’t think—” he murmured through chattering teeth.
Gontran shrugged his shoulders.
“It won’t be the first time,” he said sententiously, “that those miscreants have added murder to their other crimes.”
“Lost one of your passengers, Gontran?” queried Gilles Blaise blandly.
“If those rogues have murdered him—” quoth Gontran with an oath.
“Then you’d have to make a special declaration before the chief commissary of police, and that within an hour. Who was your passenger, Gontran?”
“I don’t know. A quiet, well-mannered fellow. Good company he was, too, during the first part of the way.”
“What was his name?”
“I can’t tell. I picked him up at Argentan. The box-seat was empty. No one wanted it, for it was raining then. He paid me his fare and scrambled up beside me. That’s all I know about him.”
“What was he like? Young or old?”
“I didn’t see him very well. It was already getting dark,” rejoined Gontran impatiently. “I couldn’t look him under the nose, could I?”
“But sacrebleu! Monsieur le Commissaire de Police will want to know something more than that. Did you at least see how he was dressed?”
“Yes,” replied Gontran, “as far as I can recollect he was dressed in grey.”
“Well, then, friend Gontran,” concluded Gilles Blaise with a jovial laugh, “you can go at once to Monsieur le Commissaire de Police, and you can tell him that an industrious Chouan, who has a wooden leg and a shaggy beard but whose face you did not see, has to the best of your belief murdered an unknown passenger whose name, age and appearance you know nothing about, but who, as far as you can recollect, was dressed in grey— And we’ll see,” he added with a touch of grim humour, “what Monsieur le Commissaire will make out of this valuable information.”
II
The men were cowering together in a burrow constructed of dead branches and caked mud, with a covering of heath and dried twigs. Their heads were close to one another and the dim light of a dark lanthorn placed upon the floor threw weird, sharp shadows across their eager faces, making them appear grotesque and almost ghoulish—the only bright spots in the surrounding gloom.
One man on hands and knees was crouching by the narrow entrance, his keen eyes trying to pierce the density of the forest beyond.
The booty was all there, spread out upon the damp earth—small coins and bundles of notes all smeared with grease and mud; there were some trinkets, too, but of obviously little value: a pair of showy gold earrings, one or two signets, a heavy watch in a chased silver case. But these had been contemptuously swept aside—it was the money that mattered. The man with the wooden leg had counted it all out and was now putting coins and notes back into a large leather wallet.
“Six thousand two hundred and forty-seven francs,” he said quietly, as he drew the thongs of the wallet closely together and tied them securely into a knot. “One of the best hauls we’ve ever had. ’Tis Madame who will be pleased.”
“Our share will have to be paid out of that first,” commented one of his companions.
“Yes, yes!” quoth the other lightly. “Madame will see to it. She always does. How many of you are there?” he added carelessly.
“Seven of us all told. They were a pack of cowards in that coach.”
“Well!” concluded the man with the wooden leg, “we must leave Madame to settle accounts. I’d best place the money in safety now.”
He struggled up into a standing position—which was no easy matter for him with his stump and in the restricted space—and was about to hoist the heavy wallet on to his powerful shoulders, when one of his mates seized him by the wrist.
“Hold on, Silver-Leg!” he said roughly, “we’ll pay ourselves for our trouble first. Eh, friends?” he added, turning to the others.
But before any of them could reply there came a peremptory command from the man whom they had called “Silver-Leg.”
“Silence!” he whispered hoarsely. “There’s someone moving out there among the trees.”
At once the others obeyed, every other thought lulled to rest by the sense of sudden danger. For a minute or so every sound was hushed in the narrow confines of the lair save the stertorous breathing which came from panting throats. Then the look-out man at the entrance whispered under his breath:
“I heard nothing.”
“Something moved, I tell you,” rejoined Silver-Leg curtly. “It may only have been a beast on the prowl.”
But the brief incident had given him the opportunity which he required; he had shaken off his companion’s hold upon his wrist and had slung the wallet over his shoulder. Now he stumped out of the burrow.
“Friend Hare-Lip,” he said before he went, in the same commanding tone wherewith he had imposed silence awhile ago on his turbulent mates, “tell Monseigneur that it will be ‘Corinne’ this time, and you, Mole-Skin, ask Madame to send Red-Poll over on Friday night for the key.”
The others growled in assent and followed him out of their hiding-place. One of the men had extinguished the lanthorn, and another was hastily collecting the trinkets which had so contemptuously been swept aside.
“Hold on, Silver-Leg!” shouted the man who had been called Hare-Lip; “short reckonings make long friends. I’ll have a couple of hundred francs now,” he continued roughly. “It may be days and weeks ere I see Madame again, and by that time God knows where the money will be.”
But Silver-Leg stumped on in the gloom, paying no heed to the peremptory calls of his mates. It was marvellous how fast he contrived to hobble along, winding his way in and out in the darkness, among the trees, on the slippery carpet of pine needles and carrying that heavy wallet—six thousand two hundred francs, most of it in small coin—upon his back. The others, however, were swift and determined, too. Within the next minute or two they had overtaken him, and he could no longer evade them; they held him tightly, surrounding him on every side and clamouring for their share of the spoils.
“We’ll settle here and now, friend Silver-Leg,” said Hare-Lip, who appeared to be the acknowledged spokesman of the malcontents. “Two hundred francs for me out of that wallet, if you please, ere you move another step, and two hundred for each one of us here, or—”
The man with the wooden leg had come to a halt, but somehow it seemed that he had not done so because the others held and compelled him, but because he himself had a desire to stand still. Now when Hare-Lip paused, a world of menace in every line of his gaunt, quivering body, Silver-Leg laughed with gentle irony, as a man would laugh at the impotent vapourings of a child.
“Or what, my good Hare-Lip?” he queried slowly.
Then as the other instinctively lowered his gaze and mumbled something between his teeth, Silver-Leg shrugged his shoulders and said with kind indulgence, still as if he were speaking to a child:
“Madame will settle, my friend. Do not worry. It is bad to worry. You remember Fear-Nought: he took to worrying—just as you are doing now—wanted to be paid out of his turn, or more than his share, I forget which. But you remember him?”
“I do,” muttered Hare-Lip with a savage oath. “Fear-Nought was tracked down by the police and dragged to Vincennes, or Force, or Bicêtre—we never knew.”
“To the guillotine, my good Hare-Lip,” rejoined Silver-Leg blandly, “along with some other very brave Chouans like yourselves, who also had given their leaders some considerable trouble.”
“Betrayed by you,” growled Hare-Lip menacingly.
“Punished—that’s all,” concluded Silver-Leg as he once more turned to go.
“Treachery is a game at which more than one can play.”
“The stakes are high. And only one man can win,” remarked Silver-Leg dryly.
“And one man must lose,” shouted Hare-Lip, now beside himself with rage, “and that one shall be you this time, my fine Silver-Leg. À moi, my mates!” he called to his companions.
And in a moment the men fell on Silver-Leg with the vigour born of terror and greed, and for the first moment or two of their desperate tussle it seemed as if the man with the wooden leg must succumb to the fury of his assailants. Darkness encompassed them all round, and the deep silence which dwells in the heart of the woods. And in the darkness and the silence these men fought—and fought desperately—for the possession of a few hundred francs just filched at the muzzle of a pistol from a few peaceable travellers.
Pistols of course could not be used; the police patrols might not be far away, and so they fought on in silence, grim and determined, one man against half a dozen, and that one halt, and weighted with the spoils. But he had the strength of a giant, and with his back against a stately fir tree he used the heavy wallet as a flail, keeping his assailants at arm’s length with the menace of death-dealing blows.
Then, suddenly, from far away, even through the dull thuds of this weird and grim struggle, there came the sound of men approaching—the click of sabres, the tramp and snorting of horses, the sense of men moving rapidly even if cautiously through the gloom. Silver-Leg was the first to hear it.
“Hush!” he cried suddenly, and as loudly as he dared, “the police!”
Again, with that blind instinct born of terror and ever-present danger, the others obeyed. The common peril had as swiftly extinguished the quarrel as greed of gain had fanned it into flame.
The cavalcade was manifestly drawing nearer.
“Disperse!” commanded Silver-Leg under his breath. “Clear out of the wood, but avoid the tracks which lead out of it, lest it is surrounded. Remember ‘Corinne’ for Monseigneur, and that Red-Poll can have the key for Madame on Friday.”
Once again he had made use of his opportunity. Before the others had recovered from their sudden fright, he had quietly stumped away, and in less than five seconds was lost in the gloom among the trees. For a moment or two longer an ear, attuned by terror or the constant sense of danger, might have perceived the dull, uneven thud of his wooden leg against the soft carpet of pine needles, but even this soon died away in the distance, and over the kingdom of darkness which held sway within the forest there fell once more the pall of deathlike silence. The posse of police in search of human quarry had come and gone, the stealthy footsteps of tracked criminals had ceased to resound from tree to tree; all that could be heard was the occasional call of a night-bird, or the furtive movement of tiny creatures of the wild.
Silence hung over the forest for close upon an hour. Then from behind a noble fir a dark figure detached itself and more stealthily, more furtively than any tiny beast it stole along the track which leads to the main road. The figure, wrapped in a dark mantle, glided determinedly along despite the difficulties of the narrow track, complicated now by absolute darkness. Hours went by ere it reached the main road, on the very spot where some few hours ago the mail-coach had been held up and robbed by a pack of impudent thieves. Here the figure halted for awhile, and just then the heavy rain clouds, which had hung over the sky the whole evening, slowly parted and revealed the pale waning moon. A soft light gradually suffused the sky and vanquished the impenetrable darkness.
Not a living soul was in sight save that solitary figure by the roadside—a man, to all appearances, wearing a broad-brimmed hat casting a deep shadow over his face; the waning moon threw a cold light upon the grey mantle which he wore. On ahead the exquisite tower of the church of Notre Dame appeared vague and fairylike against the deep sapphire of the horizon far away. Then the solitary figure started to walk briskly in the direction of the city.
III
M. le Procureur Impérial, sitting in his comfortable armchair in the well-furnished apartment which he occupied in the Rue St. Blaise at Alençon, was surveying his visitor with a quizzical and questioning gaze.
On the desk before him lay the letter which that same visitor had presented to him the previous evening—a letter penned by no less a hand than that of M. le Duc d’Otrante himself, Minister of Police, and recommending the bearer of this august autograph to the good will of M. de Saint-Tropèze, Procureur Impérial at the tribunal of Alençon. Nay, more! M. le Ministre in that same autograph letter gave orders, in no grudging terms, that the bearer was to be trusted implicitly, and that every facility was to be given him in the execution of his duty: said duty consisting in the tracking down and helping to bring to justice of as many as possible of those saucy Chouans who, not content with terrorising the countryside, were up in arms against the government of His Imperial Majesty.
A direct encroachment this on the rights and duties of M. le Procureur Impérial; no wonder he surveyed the quiet, insignificant-looking individual before him, with a not altogether benevolent air.
M. le préfet sitting on the opposite side of the high mantelpiece was discreetly silent until his chief chose to speak.
After a brief while the Procureur Impérial addressed his visitor.
“Monsieur le Duc d’Otrante,” he said in that dry, supercilious tone which he was wont to affect when addressing his subordinates, “speaks very highly of you, Monsieur—Monsieur—By the way, the Minister, I perceive, does not mention your name. What is your name, Monsieur?”
“Fernand, Monsieur le Procureur,” replied the man.
“Fernand? Fernand what?”
“Nothing, Monsieur le Procureur. Only Fernand.”
The little Man in Grey spoke very quietly in a dull, colourless tone which harmonised with the neutral tone of his whole appearance. For a moment it seemed as if a peremptory or sarcastic retort hovered on M. le Procureurs lips. The man’s quietude appeared like an impertinence. M. de Saint-Tropèze belonged to the old Noblesse. He had emigrated at the time of the Revolution and spent a certain number of years in England, during which time a faithful and obscure steward administered his property and saved it from confiscation.
The blandishments of the newly-crowned Emperor had lured M. de Saint-Tropèze back to France. Common sense and ambition had seemingly got the better of his antiquated ideals, whilst Napoleon was only too ready to surround himself with as many scions of the ancient nobility as were willing to swear allegiance to him. He welcomed Henri de Saint-Tropèze and showered dignities upon him with a lavish hand; but the latter never forgot that the Government he now served was an upstart one, and he never departed from that air of condescension and high breeding which kept him aloof from his more plebeian subordinates and which gave him an authority and an influence in the province which they themselves could never hope to attain.
M. le préfet had coughed discreetly. The warning was well-timed. He knew every word of the Minister’s letter by heart, and one phrase in it might, he feared, have escaped M. le Procureur’s notice. It ordered that the bearer of the Ministerial credentials was to be taken entirely on trust—no questions were to be asked of him save those to which he desired to make reply. To disregard even the vaguest hint given by the all-powerful Minister of Police was, to say the least, hazardous. Fortunately M. de Saint-Tropèze understood the warning. He pressed his thin lips tightly together and did not pursue the subject of his visitor’s name any farther.
“You propose setting to work immediately, Monsieur—er—Fernand?” he asked with frigid hauteur.
“With your permission, Monsieur le Procureur,” replied the Man in Grey.
“In the matter of the highway robbery the other night, for instance?”
“In that and other matters, Monsieur le Procureur.”
“You were on the coach which was attacked by those damnable Chouans, I believe?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Procureur. I picked up the coach at Argentan and sat next to the driver until the vehicle was ordered to halt.”
“Then what happened?”
“A man scrambled up on the box-seat beside me, and holding a pistol to my head commanded me to descend.”
“And you descended?”
“Yes,” replied the man quietly. He paused a moment and then added by way of an explanation: “I hurt my knee coming down; the pain caused me to lose some measure of consciousness. When I returned to my senses, I found myself on the roadside—all alone—there was no sign either of the coach or of the footpads.”
“An unfortunate beginning,” said M. de Saint-Tropèze with a distinct note of sarcasm in his voice, “for a secret agent of His Majesty’s Police sent down to track some of the most astute rascals known in the history of crime.”
“I hope to do better in the future, Monsieur le Procureur,” rejoined the Man in Grey simply.
M. de Saint-Tropèze made no further remark, and for a moment or two there was silence in the room. The massive Louis XIV clock ticked monotonously; M. de Saint-Tropèze seemed to be dissociating his well-bred person from the sordid and tortuous affairs of the Police. The Man in Grey appeared to be waiting until he was spoken to again, and M. le préfet had a vague feeling that the silence was becoming oppressive, as if some unspoken enmity lurked between the plebeian and obscure police agent and the highly connected and influential Procurator of His Majesty the Emperor. He threw himself blandly into the breach.
“Of course, of course,” he said genially. “You, Monsieur—er—Fernand, are lucky to have escaped with your life. Those rascals stick at nothing nowadays. The driver of the coach fully believed that you had been murdered. I suppose you saw nothing of the rogue?”
But this was evidently not one of the questions which the Man in Grey had any desire to answer, and M. Vimars did not insist. He turned obsequiously to M. le Procureur.
“The driver,” he said, “spoke of one having a wooden leg. But the worthy Gontran was very vague in all his statements. I imagine that he and all the male passengers must have behaved like cowards or the rascals would never have got so clean away.”
“The night was very dark, Monsieur le Préfet,” observed the Man in Grey dryly, “and the Chouans were well armed.”
“Quite so,” here broke in M. le Procureur impatiently, “and no object can be served now in recriminations. See to it, my good Vimars,” he continued in a tone that was still slightly sarcastic but entirely peremptory, “that the Minister’s orders are obeyed to the last letter. Place yourself and all your personnel and the whole of the local police at Monsieur—er—Fernand’s disposal, and do not let me hear any more complaints of inefficiency or want of good will on your part until those scoundrels have been laid by the heel.”
IV
M. de Saint-Tropèze paused after his peroration. With an almost imperceptible nod of his handsome head he indicated both to his visitor and to his subordinate that the audience was at an end. But M. le préfet, though he knew himself to be dismissed, appeared reluctant to go. There was something which M. le Procureur had forgotten, and the worthy préfet was trying to gather up courage to jog his memory. He had a mightily wholesome respect for his chief, had M. Vimars, for the Procureur was not only a man of vast erudition and of the bluest blood, but one who was held in high consideration by His Majesty’s government in Paris, ay, and, so ’twas said, by His Majesty himself.
So M. Vimars hummed and hawed and gave one or two discreet little coughs, whilst M. le Procureur with obvious impatience was drumming his well-manicured nails against the arm of his chair. At last he said testily:
“You have something you wish to say to me, my good Monsieur Vimars?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Procureur,” hazarded the préfet in reply, “that is—there is the matter of the burglary—and—and the murder last night—that is—”
M. le Procureur frowned: “Those are local matters,” he said loftily, “which concern the commissary of police, my good Vimars, and are beneath the notice of Monsieur le Ministre’s secret agent.”
The préfet, conscious of a reprimand, blushed to the very roots of his scanty hair. He rose with some haste and the obvious desire to conceal his discomfiture in a precipitate retreat, when the Man in Grey interposed in his quiet, even monotone:
“Nothing is beneath the notice of a secret agent, Monsieur le Procureur,” he said; “and everything which is within the province of the commissary of police concerns the representative of the Minister.”
M. Vimars literally gasped at this presumption. How anyone dared thus to run counter to M. le Procureur’s orders simply passed his comprehension. He looked with positive horror on the meagre, insignificant personage who even now was meeting M. le Procureur’s haughty, supercilious glance without any sign of contrition or of shame.
M. de Saint-Tropèze had raised his aristocratic eyebrows, and tried to wither the audacious malapert with his scornful glance, but the little Man in Grey appeared quite unconscious of the enormity of his offence; he stood by—as was his wont—quietly and silently, his eyes fixed inquiringly on the préfet, who was indeed hoping that the floor would open conveniently and swallow him up ere he was called upon to decide whether he should obey the orders of his official chief, or pay heed to the commands of the accredited agent of M. the Minister of Police.
But M. le Procureur decided the question himself and in the only way possible. The Minister’s letter with its peremptory commands lay there before him—the secret agent of His Majesty’s Police was to be aided and obeyed implicitly in all matters relating to his work; there was nothing to be done save to comply with those orders as graciously as he could, and without further loss of dignity.
“You have heard the wishes of Monsieur le Ministre’s agent, my good Vimars,” he said coldly; “so I pray you speak to him of the matter which exercises your mind, for of a truth I am not well acquainted with all the details!”
Whereupon he fell to contemplating the exquisite polish on his almond-shaped nails. Though the overbearing little upstart in the grey coat could command the obsequiousness of such men as that fool Vimars, he must be shown at the outset that his insolence would find no weak spot in the armour of M. de Saint-Tropèze’s lofty self-respect.
“Oh! it is very obvious,” quoth the préfet, whose only desire was to conciliate both parties, “that the matter is not one which affects the graver question of those satané Chouans. At the same time both the affairs of last night are certainly mysterious and present some unusual features which have greatly puzzled our exceedingly able commissary of police. It seems that in the early hours of this morning the library of Monseigneur the Constitutional Bishop of Alençon was broken into by thieves. Fortunately nothing of any value was stolen, and this part of the affair appeared simple enough, until an hour or two later a couple of peasants, who were walking from Lonrai towards the city, came across the body of a man lying face upwards by the roadside. The man was quite dead—had been dead some time apparently. The two louts hurried at once to the commissariat of police and made their depositions. Monsieur Lefèvre, our chief commissary, proceeded to the scene of the crime; he has now the affair in hand.”
The préfet had perforce to pause in his narrative for lack of breath. He had been talking volubly and uninterruptedly, and indeed he had no cause to complain of lack of attention on the part of his hearer. M. le Ministre’s secret agent sat absolutely still, his deep-set eyes fixed intently upon the narrator. Alone M. le Procureur Impérial maintained his attitude of calm disdain. He still appeared deeply absorbed in the contemplation of his finger-nails.
“At first,” resumed the préfet after his dramatic pause, “these two crimes, the greater and the less, seemed in no way connected, and personally I am not sure even now that they are. A certain air of similarity and mystery, however, clings to them both, for in both cases the crimes appear at the outset so very purposeless. In the case of the burglary in Monseigneur’s palace the thieves were obviously scared before they could lay hands on any valuables, but even so there were some small pieces of silver lying about which they might have snatched up, even if they were in a vast hurry to get away; whilst in the case of the murder, though the victim’s silver watch was stolen and his pockets ransacked, the man was obviously poor and not worth knocking down.”
“And is the identity of the victim known to the police?” here asked the Man in Grey in his dull, colourless voice.
“Indeed it is,” replied the préfet; “the man was well known throughout the neighbourhood. He was valet to Madame la Marquise de Phélan.”
M. le Procureur looked up suddenly from his engrossing occupation.
“Ah!” he said, “I did not know that. Lefèvre did not tell me that he had established the identity of the victim.”
He sighed and once more gazed meditatively upon his finger-nails.
“Poor Maxence! I have often seen him at Plélan. There never was a more inoffensive creature. What motive could the brute have for such a villainous murder?”
The préfet shrugged his shoulders.
“Some private quarrel, I imagine,” he said.
“A love affair?” queried the Man in Grey.
“Oh no, Monsieur. Maxence was the wrong side of fifty.”
“A smart man?”
“Anything but smart—a curious, shock-headed, slouchy-looking person with hair as red as a fox’s.”
Just for the space of one second the colourless eyes of the Man in Grey lit up with a quick and intense light; it seemed for the moment as if an exclamation difficult to suppress would escape his thin, bloodless lips, and his whole insignificant figure appeared to be quivering with a sudden, uncontrollable eagerness. But this departure from his usual quietude was so momentary that M. le préfet failed to notice it, whilst M. le Procureur remained as usual uninterested and detached.
“Poor Maxence!” resumed M. Vimars after awhile. “He had, as far as is known, not a single enemy in the world. He was devoted to Madame la Marquise and enjoyed her complete confidence; he was not possessed of any savings, nor was he of a quarrelsome disposition. He can’t have had more than a few francs about his person when he was so foully waylaid and murdered. Indeed, it is because the crime is ostensibly so wanton that the police at once dismissed the idea that those abominable Chouans had anything to do with it!”
“Is the road where the body was found very lonely of nights?” asked the Man in Grey.
“It is a lonely road,” replied the préfet, “and never considered very safe, as it is a favourite haunt of the Chouans—but it is the direct road between Alençon and Mayenne, through Lonrai and Plélan.”
“Is it known what business took the confidential valet of Madame la Marquise de Plélan on that lonely road in the middle of the night?”
“It has not been definitely established,” here broke in M. le Procureur curtly, “that the murder was committed in the middle of the night.”
“I thought—”
“The body was found in the early morning,” continued M. de Saint-Tropèze with an air of cold condescension; “the man had been dead some hours—the leech has not pronounced how many. Maxence had no doubt many friends or relations in Alençon: it is presumed that he spent the afternoon in the city and was on his way back to Plélan in the evening when he was waylaid and murdered.”
“That presumption is wrong,” said the Man in Grey quietly.
“Wrong?” retorted M. le Procureur frigidly.
“What do you mean?”
“I was walking home from Plélan towards Alençon in the small hours of the morning. There was no dead body lying in the road then.”
“The body lay by the roadside, half in the ditch,” said M. le Procureur dryly, “you may have missed seeing it.”
“Possibly,” rejoined the Man in Grey equally dryly, “but unlikely.”
“Were you looking out for it then?” riposted the Procureur. But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than he realised his mistake. The Man in Grey made no reply; he literally appeared to withdraw himself into an invisible shell, to efface himself yet further within a colourless atmosphere, out of which it was obviously unwise to try to drag him.
M. le Procureur pressed his thin lips together, impatient with himself at an unnecessary loss of dignity. As usual M. le préfet was ready to throw himself into the breach.
“I am sure,” he said with his usual volubility, “that we are wasting Monsieur le Procureur’s valuable time now. I can assure you, Monsieur—er—Fernand, that our chief commissary of police can give you all the details of the crime—if, indeed, they interest you. Shall we go now?—that is,” he added, with that same feeling of hesitation which overcame him every time he encountered the secret agent’s calm, inquiring look, “that is—er—unless there’s anything else you wish to ask of Monsieur le Procureur.”
“I wish to know with regard to the murder, what was the cause of death,” said the Man in Grey quietly.
“A pistol shot, sir,” replied M. de Saint-Tropèze coldly, “right between the shoulder blades, delivered at short range apparently, seeing that the man’s coat was charred and blackened with powder. The leech avers that he must have fallen instantly.”
“Shot between the shoulders, and yet found lying on his back,” murmured the Man in Grey. “And was nothing at all found upon the body that would give a clue to the motive of the crime?”
“Nothing, my dear sir,” broke in the préfet glibly, “nothing at all. In his breeches’ pocket there was a greasy and crumpled sheet of letter-paper, which on examination was found to be covered with a row of numerals all at random—like a child’s exercise-book.”
“Could I see the paper?”
“It is at the commissariat of police,” explained the Procureur curtly.
“Where I can easily find it, of course,” concluded the Man in Grey with calm decision. “In the meanwhile perhaps Monsieur le préfet will be kind enough to tell me something more about the burglary at the Archbishop’s Palace.”
“There’s very little to tell, my good Monsieur Fernand,” said M. Vimars, who, far more conscious than was the stranger of the Procureur’s growing impatience, would have given a month’s salary for the privilege of making himself scarce.
“With what booty did the burglars make off?”
“With nothing of any value; and what they did get they dropped in their flight. The police found a small silver candlestick, and a brass paper weight in the street close to the gate of Monseigneur’s Palace, also one or two books which no doubt the burglars had seized in the hope that they were valuable editions.”
“Nothing, then, has actually been stolen?”
