Midnight rang from the old church clock just as Corentin and the abbe re-entered the salon. The opening and shutting of doors and closets could be heard from the bedrooms above. The gendarmes pulled open the beds; Peyrade, with the quick perception of a spy, handled and sounded everything. Such desecration excited both fear and indignation among the faithful servants of the house, who still stood motionless about the salon. Monsieur d'Hauteserre exchanged looks of commiseration with his wife and Mademoiselle Goujet. A species of horrible curiosity kept every one on the qui vive. Peyrade at length came down, holding in his hand a sandal-wood box which had probably been brought from China by Admiral de Simeuse. This pretty casket was flat and about the size of a quarto volume.
Peyrade made a sign to Corentin and took him into the embrasure of a window.
"I've an idea!" he said, "that Michu, who was ready to pay Marion eight hundred thousand francs in gold for Gondreville, and who evidently meant to shoot Malin yesterday, is the man who is helping the Simeuse brothers. His motive in threatening Marion and aiming at Malin must be the same. I thought when I saw him that he was capable of ideas; evidently he has but one; he discovered what was going on and he must have come here to warn them.""Probably Malin talked about the conspiracy to his friend the notary, and Michu from his ambush overheard what was said," remarked Corentin, continuing the inductions of his colleague. "No doubt he has only postponed his shot to prevent an evil he thinks worse than the loss of Gondreville.""He knew what we were the moment he laid eyes on us," said Peyrade. "Ithought then that he was amazingly intelligent for a peasant.""That proves that he is always on his guard," replied Corentin. "But, mind you, my old man, don't let us make a mistake. Treachery stinks in the nostrils, and primitive folks do scent it from afar.""But that's our strength," said the Provencal.
"Call the corporal of Arcis," cried Corentin to one of the gendarmes.
"I shall send him at once to Michu's house," he added to Peyrade.
"Our ear, Violette, is there," said Peyrade.
"We started without getting news from him. Two of us are not enough;we ought to have had Sabatier with us--Corporal," he said, when the gendarme appeared, taking him aside with Peyrade, "don't let them fool you as they did the Troyes corporal just now. We think Michu is in this business. Go to his house, put your eye on everything, and bring word of the result.""One of my men heard horses in the forest just as they arrested the little groom; I've four fine fellows now on the track of whoever is hiding there," replied the gendarme.
He left the room, and the gallop of his horse which echoed on the paved courtyard died rapidly away.
"One thing is certain," said Corentin to himself, "either they have gone to Paris or they are retreating to Germany."He sat down, pulled a note-book from the pocket of his spencer, wrote two orders in pencil, sealed them, and made a sign to one of the gendarmes to come to him.
"Be off at full gallop to Troyes, wake up the prefect, and tell him to start the telegraph as soon as there's light enough."The gendarme departed. The meaning of this movement and Corentin's intentions were so evident that the hearts of the household sank within them; but this new anxiety was additional to another that was now martyrizing them; their eyes were fixed on the sandal-wood box!
All the while the two agents were talking together they were each taking note of those eager looks. A sort of cold anger stirred the unfeeling hearts of these men who relished the power of inspiring terror. The police man has the instincts and emotions of a hunter: but where the one employs his powers of mind and body in killing a hare, a partridge, or a deer, the other is thinking of saving the State, or a king, and of winning a large reward. So the hunt for men is superior to the other class of hunting by all the distance that there is between animals and human beings. Moreover, a spy is forced to lift the part he plays to the level and the importance of the interests to which he is bound. Without looking further into this calling, it is easy to see that the man who follows it puts as much passionate ardor into his chase as another man does into the pursuit of game. Therefore the further these men advanced in their investigations the more eager they became; but the expression of their faces and their eyes continued calm and cold, just as their ideas, their suspicions, and their plans remained impenetrable. To any one who watched the effects of the moral scent, if we may so call it, of these bloodhounds on the track of hidden facts, and who noted and understood the movements of canine agility which led them to strike the truth in their rapid examination of probabilities, there was in it all something actually horrifying. How and why should men of genius fall so low when it was in their power to be so high? What imperfection, what vice, what passion debases them? Does a man become a police-agent as he becomes a thinker, writer, statesmen, painter, general, on the condition of knowing nothing but how to spy, as the others speak, write, govern, paint, and fight? The inhabitants of the chateau had but one wish,--that the thunderbolts of heaven might fall upon these miscreants; they were athirst for vengeance; and had it not been for the presence, up to this time, of the gendarmes there would undoubtedly have been an outbreak.
"No one, I suppose, has the key of this box?" said the cynical Peyrade, questioning the family as much by the movement of his huge red nose as by his words.
