Chapter Seventeen. Found in the Débris.

We were on the alert in a moment.

Though we searched in the darkness for a distance of a hundred yards or more, we failed to come upon either the man or the woman of whom we had caught a brief glimpse as they struggled desperately.

Nor did we again hear the sound of voices. That I had heard Vera’s voice, I felt convinced. We wondered if there was a lodge, and how far it was away. Perhaps the servants had taken shelter there.

“The whole place seems to be deserted,” Faulkner said when, after a futile search, we again found ourselves near the burning château, where the fire had by this time subsided considerably. “And yet there must have been people in the house—at any rate, servants.”

We walked right round the château. What a huge old place it had been! No wonder the fire had taken a long time to reach us, if it had broken out, as it presumably had done, in a wing remote from the room where we had been. Judging by the architecture of the outer walls I concluded that the château must have been built towards the end of the fourteenth century, and afterwards added to.

There was a sharp nip in the air, and we felt chilly enough. Already the streaks of dawn were striving to pierce the belt of leaden clouds, against which the black pinewoods could be seen distinctly outlined.

Faulkner turned to me.

“Have you any money?” he asked.

“Plenty,” I answered. “Why?”

“When it is daylight we must make for the nearest village and get a conveyance to the railway-station. We must be miles from everywhere, or fire-escapes would have come along before now. I suppose the Baronne is dead.”

“She can have escaped only by a miracle,” I said. “We shall probably know soon.”

“And that cur—Paulton. What can have become of him?”

“I can’t help thinking it was Paulton we saw struggling. But who can the woman have been? I hope it wasn’t Vera. I am certain I heard her voice. What do you think?”

“It may have been Mademoiselle de Coudron,” Faulkner said. “She seems to have disappeared. What a brave girl! She must have climbed along the roofs to save us, with the fire just behind her. I wonder who the woman was who called for help first of all—I mean before we knew that fire had broken out.”

“The whole thing is most mysterious, but the biggest mystery is the disappearance of everybody. We heard at least three voices in the darkness!”

Happening to glance down the long carriage drive which, after winding for a hundred yards across the broad, level lawns, disappeared into the wood, I noticed two men on horseback approaching at a walk. They had just emerged from the wood, and, so far as I could see in the half-light, were officials of some kind.

They broke into a jog-trot as they caught sight of us, and took a short cut across the grass. As they came near us we saw that they were two gendarmes.

“What are you doing here?” one of them asked sharply in French.

I didn’t like his tone, and I saw Faulkner’s lip twitch with annoyance. Instead of answering, we looked the two men up and down.

“What are you doing here—tell me at once,” the speaker repeated, in a bullying tone.

I suppose we did look disreputable, standing there without collars, with unlaced boots, and with our coat collars turned up. Also a day’s growth of beard is hardly conducive to a smart appearance, and in most civilised countries but America a man is judged by his appearance and by the clothes he wears.

“Who set fire to the château?” demanded the gendarme, quickly losing his temper as we refused to speak.

“Oh, we did, of course,” I exclaimed in French, meaning to be cynical. “We burnt it down on purpose.”

The man raised his black eyebrows, and glanced at his companion.

“You hear that?” he said meaningly.

The man who had remained silent produced a notebook and scribbled in it.

Faulkner turned to me.

“A few more of your ‘witticisms’ Ashton,” he said, “and we shall get penal servitude. Don’t you know you are talking to State officials, and have you ever known a State official to be other than matter-of-fact? For Heaven’s sake, don’t make more statements that may be used in evidence against us.”

“My friend was joking,” Faulkner said in his perfect French to the man who had addressed us; but the official seemed not to understand what the word plaisanterie meant.

At this juncture the men exchanged one or two remarks in a rapid undertone. Then, while one of them remained, apparently to keep guard over us, the other cantered away across the turf, struck the road close to the wood, and disappeared.

In the absence of his companion, who apparently was his superior in authority, the gendarme thawed to some extent. We gathered that the Château d’Uzerche was about eighty miles by road from Monte Carlo, and twelve or so miles from Digne, in the Bedeone Valley, also that no village lay within a radius of two miles of it. Small wonder, therefore, that no fire-escape had come.

“Where is la Baronne de Coudron?” the man asked suddenly.

We explained that we feared she had been either burnt or suffocated. At this he looked grave.

“And her companion, the Englishman Monsieur Paulton, where is he?”

Again we explained. He had escaped from the fire, but, since his escape, we had not seen him.

“Why do you want to know?” Faulkner asked, in his politest tones.

“Because,” the man answered, taken off his guard, “we have a warrant for the arrest of both Madame la Baronne and the Englishman.”

“Arrest! For what?” Faulkner asked.

“On several charges. The most recent is a charge of obtaining money by fraud—a large sum. There is also a charge of blackmail.”

“Against both?”

“Against both.”

I was silent. Here was a new phase of the affair. By degrees we gathered from him that Paulton was known to be interested in various undertakings of, to say the least, a dubious nature, also that he promoted wild-cat companies in England, on the Continent, and in America. Information that especially interested us was that all who had escaped from the fire had made their way to the lodge at the entrance to the drive.

It was at this juncture that the other gendarme reappeared. He was still on horseback, and, as he came towards us slowly, our attention became centred upon the man who walked beside him, with one hand on his stirrup. In the distance it looked very like Paulton.

He seemed quite composed. His mouth was bound up, partly concealing his face.

When a few yards from us the gendarme reined up. As he did so, Paulton raised his arm, pointed at me, and said in French—

“That’s the man you came to arrest. That is Dago Paulton.”

“And his companion?” the gendarme asked.

“Is his valet.”

“And your name, monsieur?”

“Ferrari—Paoli Ferrari. My father was Italian, my mother English. I have been in Mr Paulton’s service as butler for the last three years. Previous to that I was butler to Count Pinto”—the Portuguese diplomat who had won the cup for shooting.

“Thank you, monsieur, I am exceedingly indebted to you,” the gendarme said blandly. Then, producing an official-looking document, he said to me—

“We have to take you into custody, you and Madame la Baronne.”

For some moments, indignation prevented my speaking. Was it possible these outrageous statements of Paulton’s would be taken without question? Such a thing seemed monstrous and grotesque, but knowing, as I did, how intensely stupid some police officials are, no matter to what country they may belong, I thought it likely that I should presently be marched off and placed under lock and key.

Faulkner, to my annoyance, seemed amused.

“They will march you twelve miles to Digne,” he said, “and when you get there and prove your identity they will apologise in the most humble fashion for the mistake that has been made. Meanwhile, you will have had your twelve-mile walk, and Paulton have been allowed to escape. Had we looked less disreputable than we do, our statements might have been believed in preference to his.”

In my indignation I at first became sarcastic, and thinking that liberty at that moment would be far better than being held up upon a false charge, I made a sudden bolt for it, cutting swiftly across a meadow and leaping a stream. I am a good runner, but, of course, the mounted gendarmes were quickly upon me, and cut me off, so I soon found myself in their hands.

Faulkner elected to come with me, but we were not marched to Digne. Instead, we were allowed to walk leisurely alongside the horses as far as the village, a distance of two miles or so, and there were shown into a comfortable room in the tiny police bureau, and given breakfast. The garde-champêtre spoke English fluently. He had lived in England several years. Consequently in a short time we succeeded in convincing him of the blunder the gendarme had made, and in proving who we were.

By this time the village was beginning to awaken, and crowds were on their way to the château. We soon found a tradesman willing to let out a horse and trap in return for a louis paid in advance. In this we also started back for the château, anxious to get news of Vera, and of Violet.

On our way by the road, we found the lodge of the château, it had not been in sight more than a minute, when a large red car passed out through the gateway into the high road we were on, turned, and sped away from us along the long white ribbon of road at terrific speed. It must, we calculated as it dwindled into a distant speck, have been travelling at a speed of quite sixty miles an hour. Faulkner looked at me significantly. Our surmise had been correct, the servants had sought shelter at the lodge and had now left.

By the time we reached the smouldering ruins, a score of people, all of them peasants, stood staring at it. The good French farmers had each some platitude to make: “It must have been an enormous fire;” “It must have burned very quickly;” “Some one must have set it alight,” and so on. They were all people of the bovine type, as we found when we tried to obtain information from them.

The Baronne and her niece lived there. That was about all that they could tell us. Apparently they knew nothing of Paulton—had never seen or heard of him.

How many servants had there been in the Château they knew not. But a man and several women had just left the lodge in a motor-car.

“We can do no good by staying here,” Faulkner said at last. “We had better make for Digne. What puzzles me is, where can the servants be? There must have been servants, and they could have told us something. They are not at the lodge. Perhaps Paulton had taken them with him in the car we had seen. The only soul at the lodge is an old woman who is stone deaf, and she is crying so that she cannot speak at all.”

We stood gazing thoughtfully at the still smouldering fire, when Faulkner said suddenly—

“What is that big, square thing down among the twisted girders?” and he pointed to it.

We could not make out what it was. Then, all at once I realised.

“Why,” I said, “it’s a safe—one of those big American safes. I expect its contents are uninjured.”

But where was Vera? Ah! I felt beside myself in anxiety—a breathless, burning longing, to know how fared the one woman in all the world who held me in her hands for life, or for death.

She loved me, truly and well—of that I was convinced. And yet she existed in that mysterious hateful bondage—a bondage which, alas! she dared not attempt to break.

What could be the truth? Why were her lips closed?—Ay, why indeed? I dreaded to think.