CHAPTER XIII—THE CONFEDERATE

THERE had been a caller, there had been parish matters, there had been endless things through endless hours which he had been unable to avoid—except in mind. He had attended to them subconsciously, as it were; his mind had never for an instant left Henri Mentone. And it was beginning to take form now, a plan whereby he might effect the other's escape.

Sitting at his desk, he looked at his watch as he heard Valérie and her mother go upstairs. It was a quarter past three. Later on in the afternoon, in another hour or thereabouts Madame Lafleur would take Henri Mentone for a few steps here and there about the green, or sit with him for a little fresh air on the porch of the presbytère. Raymond smiled ironically. As jailor he had delegated the task to Madame Lafleur—since, as he had told both Valérie and her mother at the noonday meal, he was going out to make pastoral visits that afternoon. Meanwhile—he had just looked into Henri Mentone's room—the man was lying on his bed asleep. If he worked quickly now—while Valérie and her mother were upstairs, and the man was lying on his bed!

He picked up a pen, and drew a piece of paper toward him. Everything hinged on his being able to procure a confederate. He, the curé of St. Marleau, must procure a confederate by some means, and naturally without the confederate knowing that Monsieur le Curé was doing so—and, almost as essential, a confederate who had no love for Monsieur le Curé! It was not a very simple matter! That was the problem with which he had racked his brains for the last three days. Not that the minor details were lacking in difficulties either; he, as the curé, must not appear even remotely in the plan; he, as the curé, dared not even suggest escape to Henri Mentone—but he could overcome all that if only he could secure a confederate. That was the point upon which everything depended.

His pen poised in his hand, he stared across the room. Yes, he saw it now—a gambler's chance. But the time was short now, short enough to make him welcome any chance. He would go to Mother Blondin's. He might find a man there such as he sought, one of those who already had offended the law by frequenting the dissolute old hag's illicit still. He could ask, of course, who these men were without exciting any suspicion, and if luck failed him that afternoon he would do so, and it would be like a shot still left in his locker; but if, in his rôle of curé, he could actually trap one of them drinking there, and incense the man, even fight with him, it would make success almost certain. Yes, yes—he could see it all now—clearly—afterwards, when it grew dark, he would go to the man in a far different rôle from that of a curé, and the man would be at his disposal. Yes, if he could trap one of them there—but before anything else Henri Mentone must be prepared for the attempt.

Raymond began to write slowly, in a tentative sort of way, upon the paper before him. Henri Mentone, remembering nothing of the events of that night, must be left in no doubt as to the genuineness and good faith of the note, or of the vital necessity of acting upon its instructions. At the expiration of a few minutes, Raymond read over what he had written. He scored out a word here and there; and then, on another sheet of paper, in a scrawling, illiterate hand, he wrote out a slangy, ungrammatical version of the original draft. He read it again now:

“The memory game won't go, Henri. They've got you cold, but they don't know there was two of us in it at the old woman's that night, so keep up your nerve, for I ain't for laying down on a pal. I got it fixed for a getaway for you to-night. Keep the back window open, and be ready at any time after dark—see? Leave-the rest to me. If that mealy-mouthed priest gets in the road, so much the worse for him. I'll take care of him so he won't be any trouble to any one except a doctor, and mabbe not much to a doctor—get me? I'd have been back sooner, only I had to beat it for you know where to get the necessary coin. Here's some to keep you going in case we have to separate in a hurry to-night.——Pierre.”

Raymond nodded to himself. Henri Mentone might not relish the suggestion of any violence offered to the “mealy-mouthed priest,” for he had come to look upon Father François Aubert as his only friend, and, except in his fits of fury, to cling dependently upon him; but then there would be no violence offered to Father François Aubert, and the suggestion supplied a final touch of authenticity to the note, since Henri Mentone would realise that escape was impossible unless in some way the curé could be got out of the road.

Raymond destroyed the original draft, and took out his pocketbook. He smiled curiously, as he examined its contents. It was the gold of the Yukon, the gold of Ton-Nugget Camp, that he had changed into banknotes of large denominations. He selected two fifty-dollar bills. It was not enough to carry the man far, or to take care of the man until he was on his feet, nor were fifty-dollar bills the most convenient denomination for a man under the present circumstances; but that was not their purpose—they would act as a guarantee of one “Pierre” and “Pierre's” plan, and to-night he would give the man more without stint, and supplement it with some small bills from his roll of “petty cash.” He folded the money in the note, found a small piece of string in one of the drawers of the desk, stood up, took his hat, tiptoed softly across the room, out into the hall, and from the hall to the front porch.

Here, he stood quietly for a moment, looking about him; and then, satisfied that he was unobserved, that neither Valérie nor her mother had noticed his exit, he walked quickly around to the back of the house—and paused again, this time beneath the open window of Henri Mentone's room. Here, too, but even more sharply now, he looked about him—then stooped ana picked up a small stone. He tied the note around this, and, crouched low by the window, called softly: “Henri! Henri!”

He heard a rustle, the creak of the bed, as though the man, startled and suddenly roused, were jerking himself up into an upright position.

“It is Pierre!” Raymond called again. “Courage, mon vieux! Have no fear! All is arranged for tonight. But do not come to the window—we must be careful. Here—voici!”—he tossed the note in over the sill. “Until dark—tu comprends, Henri? I will be back then. Be ready!”

He heard the man cry out in a low voice, and the creak of the bed again, and the man's step on the floor—and, stooping low, Raymond darted around the corner of the house.

A moment later he was standing again in the hallway of the presbytère.

“Oh, Madame Lafleur!” he called up the stairs. “It is only to tell you that I am going out now.”

“Yes, Monsieur le Curé—yes. Very well, Monsieur le Curé,” she answered.

Raymond closed the front door behind him, and, walking sedately across the green and past the church, gained the road. It was Mother Blondin's now, but he would not go by the station road—further along the village street, where the houses thinned out and were scattered more apart, he could climb up the little hill without being seen, and by walking through the woods would come out on the path whose existence had once already done him such excellent service. And the path, as an approach to Mother Blondin's this afternoon, offered certain very important strategical advantages.

But now for the moment he was in the heart of the village, and from the doorways and garden patches of the little squat, curved-roof, whitewashed houses of rough-squared logs that flanked the road on either side, voices called out to him cheerily as he walked along. He answered them—all of them. He was even conscious, in spite of the worry of his mind, of a curious and not altogether unwelcome wonder. They were simple folk, these people, big-hearted and kindly, free and open-handed with the little they had, and they appeared to have grown fond of him in the few days he had been in St. Marleau, to look up to him, to trust him, to have faith in him, and to accept him as a friend, offering a frank friendship in return.

His hands were clasped behind his back as he walked along, and suddenly his fingers laced tightly over one another. The pleasurable wonder of it was gone. He was playing well this rôle of saint! He was a gambler—Three-Ace Artie of Ton-Nugget Camp; a gambler—too unclean even for the Yukon. But he was no hypocrite! He would have liked to have torn these saintly trappings from his body, wrenched off his soutane and hurled it in the faces of these people, and bade them keep their friendship and their trust—tell them that he asked for nothing that they gave because they believed him other than he was. He was no hypocrite—he was a man fighting desperately for that for which every one had a right to fight, for which instinct bade even an insect fight—his life! He did not despise this proffered friendship, the smile of eye and lip, the ring of genuine sincerity in the voices that called to him—but they were not his, they were not meant for Three-Ace Artie, they were not meant for Raymond Chapelle. Somehow—it was a grotesque thought—he envied himself in the rôle of curé for these things. But they were not his. It was strange even that he, in whose life there had been naught but riot and ruin, should still be able to simulate so well the better things, to carry through, not the rôle of priest, that was a matter of ritual, a matter of keeping his head and his nerve, but the far kindlier and intimate rôle of father to the parish! Yes, it was very strange, and——

“Bon jour, Monsieur le Curé!”

Raymond halted. It was Madame Bouchard, the carpenter's wife. With a sort of long-handled wooden paddle, she was removing huge loaves of bread from the queer-looking outdoor oven which, though built of a mixture of stone and brick, resembled very much, through being rounded over at the top, an exaggerated beehive. A few yards further in from the edge of the road Bouchard himself was at work upon a boat in front of his shop. Above the shop was the living quarters of the family, and here, on a narrow veranda, peering over, a half dozen scantily clad and very small children clung to the railings.

Raymond sniffed the air luxuriously.

“Tiens, Madame Bouchard!” he cried. “Your husband is to be envied! The smell of the bread is enough to make one hungry!”

The carpenter laid down his tools, and looked up, laughing.

“Salut, Monsieur le Curé!” he called.

“If Monsieur le Curé would like one”—Madame Bouchard's cheeks had grown a little rosy—“I—I will send one to the presbytère for him.”

Raymond had eaten of St. Marleau bread before. The taste was sour, and it required little short of a deftly wielded axe to make any impression upon the crust.

“You are too good, too generous, Madame Bouchard,” he said, shaking his forefinger at her chidingly. “And yet”—he smiled broadly—“if there is enough to spare, there is nothing I know of that would delight me more.”

“Of course, she can spare it!” declared the carpenter heartily, coming forward. “Stanislaus will carry you two presently. And, tiens, Monsieur le Curé, you like to row a boat—eh?”

Raymond, on the point of shaking his head, checked himself. A boat! One of these days—soon, if this devil's trap would only open a little—there was his own escape to be managed. He had planned that carefully... a boating accident... the boat recovered... the curé's body swept out somewhere in those twenty-five miles of river breadth that stretched away before him now, and from there—who could doubt it!—to the sea.

“Yes,” he said; “I am very fond of it, but as yet I have not found time.”

“Good!” exclaimed the carpenter. “Well, in two or three days it will be finished, the best boat in St. Marleau—and Monsieur le Curé will be welcome to it as much as he likes. It is a nice row to the islands out there—three miles—to gather the sea-gull eggs—and the islands themselves are very pretty. It is a great place for a picnic, Monsieur le Curé.”

“Excellent!” said Raymond enthusiastically. “That is exactly what I shall do.” He clapped the carpenter playfully upon the shoulder. “So—eh, Monsieur Bouchard,—you will lose no time in finishing the boat!” He turned to Madame Bouchard. “Au revoir, madame—and very many thanks to you. I shall think of you at supper to-night, I promise you!” He waved his hand to the children on the veranda, and once more started along the road.

Madame Bouchard's voice, speaking to her husband, reached him. The words were not intended for his ears, and he did not catch them all. It was something about—“the good, young Father Aubert.”

A wan smile crept to Raymond's lips. For the moment at least, he was in a softened, chastened mood. “The good, young Father Aubert”—well, let it be so! They would never know, these people of St. Marleau. Somehow, he was relieved at that. He did not want them to know. Somehow, he, too, wanted for himself just what they would have—a memory—the memory of a good, young Father Aubert.

At a bend in the road, where the road edged in against the slope of the hill, hiding him from view, Raymond clambered up the short ascent. In a clump of small cedars at the top, he paused and looked back. The great sweep of river, widening into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with no breath of air to stir its surface, shimmered like a mirror under the afternoon sun. A big liner, outward bound, and perhaps ten miles from shore, seemed as though it were painted there. To the right, close in, was the little group of islands, with bare, rounded, rocky peaks, to which the carpenter had referred. About him, from distant fields, came the occasional voice of a man calling to his horses, the faint whir of a reaper, and a sort of pervading, drowsy murmur of insect life. Below him, nestled along the winding road, were the little whitewashed houses, quiet, secure, tranquil, they seemed to lie there; and high above them all, as though to typify the scene, to set its seal upon it, from the steeple of the church there gleamed in the sunlight a golden cross, the symbol of peace—such as he wore upon his breast!

With a quick intake of his breath, a snarl smothered in a low, confused cry, as he glanced involuntarily downward at his crucifix, he gathered up the skirts of his soutane, and, as though to vent his emotion in physical exertion, began to force his way savagely through the bushes and undergrowth.

He had other things to do than waste time in toying with visionary sentiment! There was one detail in that scene of peace he had not seen—that man in the rear room of the presbytère who was going to trial for the murder of Théophile Blondin, because he was decked out in the clothes of one Raymond Chapelle, alias Henri Mentone. It would be well perhaps for Raymond Chapelle to remember that, and to remember nothing else for the remainder of the afternoon!

He went on through the woods, heading as nearly as he could judge in a direction that would bring him out at the rear of the tavern. And now he laughed shortly to himself. Peace! There would be a peace that would linger long in somebody's memory at Mother Blondin's this afternoon, if only luck were with him! He was on a priestly mission—to console, bring comfort to the old hag for the loss of her son—and, quite incidentally, to precipitate a fight with any of the loungers who might be burying their noses in Mother Blondin's home-made whiskey-blanc! He laughed out again. St. Marleau would talk of that, too, and applaud the righteousness of the good, young Father Au^ bert—but he would attain the object he sought. He, the good, young Father Aubert, the man with a rope around his neck, whose hands were against everyman's, had too many friends in St. Marleau—he needed an enemy now! It was the one thing that would make the night's work sure.

He reached the edge of the wood to find himself even nearer the tavern than he had expected—and to find, too, that he would not have to lie long in wait for a visitor to Mother Blondin's. There was one there already. So far then, he could have asked for no better luck. He caught the sound of voices—the old hag's, high-pitched and querulous; a man's, rough and domineering. Looking cautiously through the fringe of trees that still sheltered him, Raymond discovered that he was separated from Mother Blondin's back door by a matter of but a few yards of clearing. The door was open, and a man, heavy-built, in a red-checkered shirt, a wide-brimmed hat of coarse straw, was forcing his way past the shrivelled old woman. As the man turned his head sideways, Raymond caught a glimpse of the other's face. It was not a pleasant face. The eyes were black, narrow and shifty under a low brow; and a three days' growth of black stubble on his jaws added to his exceedingly dirty and unkempt appearance.

Mother Blondin's voice rose furiously.

“You will pay first!” she screamed. “I know you too well, Jacques Bourget! Do you understand? The money! You will pay me first!”

“Or otherwise you will tell the police, eh?” the man guffawed contemptuously. He pushed his way inside the house, and pushed a table that stood in the centre of the room roughly back against the wall. “You shut your mouth!” he jeered at her—and, stooping down, lifted up a trap door in the floor. “Now trot along quick for some glasses, so you can keep count of all we both drink!”

“You are a thief, a robber, a crapule, a—” she burst into a stream of blasphemous invective. Her wrinkled face grew livid with ungovernable rage. She shook a bony fist at him. “I will show you what you will get for this! You think I am alone—eh? You think I am an old woman that you can rob as you like—eh? You think my whisky is for your guzzling throat without pay—eh? Well, I will show you, you——”

The man made a threatening movement toward her, and she retreated back out of Raymond's sight—evidently into an inner room, for her voice, as virago-like as ever, was muffled now.

“Bring me a glass, and waste no time about it!” the man called after her. “And if you do not hold your tongue, something worse will happen to you than the loss of a drop out of your bottle!”

The man turned, and descended to the cellar through the trapdoor.

“Yes,” said Raymond softly to himself. “Yes, I think Monsieur Jacques Bourget is the man I came to find.”

He stepped out from the trees, walked noiselessly across to the house, and, reaching the doorway, remained standing quietly upon the threshold. He could hear the man moving about in the cellar below; from the inner room came Mother Blondin's incessant mutterings, mingled with a savage rattling of crockery. Raymond smiled ominously—and then Raymond's face grew stern with well-simulated clerical disapproval.

The man's head, back turned, showed above the level of the floor. Into the doorway from the inner room came Mother Blondin—and halted there, her withered old jaw sagging downward in dumfounded surprise until it displayed her almost toothless gums. The man gained his feet, turned around—and, with a startled oath, dropped the bottle he was carrying. It crashed to the floor, broke, and the contents began to trickle back over the edge of the trapdoor.

“Sacristi!” shouted the man, his face flaring up into an angry red. He thrust his head forward truculently from his shoulders, and glared at Raymond. “Sacré nom de Dieu, it is the saintly priest!” he sneered.

“My son,” said Raymond gravely, “do not blaspheme! And have respect for the Church!”

“Bah!” snarled the man. “Do you think I care for you—or your church!” He looked suddenly at Mother Blondin. “Hah!”—he jumped across the room toward her. “So that is what you meant by not being alone—eh? I did not understand! You would trick me, would you! You would sell me out for the price of a drink—and—ha, ha—to a priest! Well”—he had her now by the shoulders—“I will take a turn at showing you what I will do! Eh—why did you not warn me he was here?” He caught her head, and banged it brutally against the wall. “Eh—why did——”

Raymond, too, was across the room. It was strange! Most strange! He had intended to seek an occasion to quarrel. The occasion was made for him. He had no longer any desire to quarrel—he was possessed of an overwhelming desire to get his fingers around the throat of this cur who banged that straggling, dishevelled gray hair against the wall. He was not quite sure that it was himself who spoke. No, of course, it was not! It was Monsieur le Curé—the good, young Father Aubert. He was between them now, only Mother Blondin had fallen to the floor.

“My son,” he said placidly, “since you will not respect the Church for one reason, I will teach you to respect it for another.” He pointed to old Mother Blcndin, who, more terrified than hurt perhaps, was getting to her knees, moaning and wringing her hands. “You have heard, though I fear you may have forgotten it, of the Mosaic law. An eye for an eye, my son. I intend to do to you exactly what you have done to this woman.”

The man, drawn back, eyed him first in angry bewilderment, and then with profound contempt.

“You'd better get out of here!” he said roughly.

“Presently—when I have thrown you out”—Raymond was calmly tucking up the skirts of his soutane. “And”—the flat of his hand landed with a stinging blow across the other's cheek—“you see that I do not take even you off your guard.”

The man reeled back—and then, with a bull-like roar of rage, head down, rushed at Raymond.

It was not Monsieur le Curé now—it was Raymond Chapelle, alias Arthur Leroy, alias Three-Ace Artie, cold, contained, quick and lithe as a panther, and with a panther's strength. A crash—a lightning right whipped to the point of Bourget's jaw—and Bourget's head jolted back quivering on his shoulders like a tuning fork. And like a flash, before the other could recover, a left and right smashed full again into Bourget's face.

With a scream, Mother Blondin crawled and scuttled into the doorway of the inner room. The man, bellowing with mad dismay, his hands outstretched, his fingers crooked to tear at Raymond's flesh if they could but reach it, rushed again.

And now Raymond, wary of the other's strength and bulk, gave ground; and now he side-stepped and swung, battering his blows into Bourget's face; and now he ran craftily from the other. Chairs and table crashed to the floor; their heels crunched in the splinters of the broken bottle. The man's face began to bleed profusely from both nose and a cut lip. They were not tactics that Bourget understood. He clawed, he kept his head down, he rushed in blind clumsiness—and always Raymond was just beyond his reach.

Again and again they circled the room, Bourget, big, lumbering, awkward, futilely expending his strength, screaming oaths with gasping breath. And again and again, springing aside as the man charged blindly by, Raymond with a grim fury rained in his blows. It was something like that other night—here in Mother Blon-din's. She was shrieking again now from the doorway:

“Kill him! The misérable! Hah, Jacques Bourget, are you a jack-in-the-box only to bob your head backward every time you are hit! I did not bring the priest here! Sacré nom, you cannot blame me! I had nothing to do with it! Sacré nom—sacré nom—sacré nom—kill him!”

Kill who? Who did she mean—the man or himself? Raymond did not know. She was just a blurred object of rage and tumbled hair dancing in a frenzy up and down there in the doorway. He ran again. Bourget, like a stunned fool, was covering his face with his arms as he dashed forward. Ah, yes, Bourget was trying to crush him back into the corner there, and—no!—the maniacal rush had faltered, the man was swaying on his feet. And then Raymond, crouched to elude the man, sprang instead at the other's throat, his hands closed like a vise, and with the impact of his body both lurched back against the wall by the rear doorway.

“My son,” panted Raymond, “you remember—an eye for an eye”—he smashed the man's head back against the wall—and then, gathering all his strength, flung the other from him out through the open door.

The fight was out of the man. For a moment he lay sprawled on the grass. Then he raised himself up, and got upon his knees. His face was bruised and blood-stained almost beyond recognition. He shook both fists at Raymond.

“By God, I'll get you for this!”—the man's voice was guttural with unbridled passion. “I'll get you, you censer-swinging devil! I'll twist your neck with the chain of your own crucifix! Damn you to the pit! You're not through with me!”

“Go!” said Raymond sternly. “Go—and be glad that I have treated you no worse!”

He shut the door in the man's face; and, turning abruptly, walked across the floor to where Mother Blondin, quiet for the moment, gaped at him from the threshold of the other room.

“He will not trouble you any more, Madame Blondin, I imagine,” he said quietly. “See, it is over!” He smiled at her reassuringly—he needed to know now only where the man lived. “I should be sorry to think he was one of my parishioners. Where does he come from?”

“He is a farmer, and he lives in the house on the point a mile and a quarter up the road”—the answer had come automatically; she was listening, without looking at Raymond, to the threats and oaths that Jacques Bourget, as he evidently moved away for his voice kept growing fainter, still bawled from without. And then hate and sullen viciousness was in her face again. Her hair had tumbled to her shoulders and straggled over her forehead. She jabbed at it with both hands, sweeping it from her eyes, and leered at him fiercely. “You dirty spy!” she croaked hoarsely. “I know you—I know all of you priests! You are all alike! Sneaks! Sneaks! Meddlers and sneaks! But you'll get to hell some day—like the rest of us! Ha, ha—to hell! You can't fool the devil! I know you. That's what you sneaked up here for—to spy on me, to find something against me that the police weren't sharp enough to find, so that you could get rid of me, get me out of St. Marleau! I know! They've been trying that for a long time!”

“To turn you over to the police,” said Raymond gently, “would never save you from yourself. I came to talk to you a little about your son—to see if in any way I could help you, or be of comfort to you.”

She stared at him for an instant, wondering and perplexed; and then the snarl was on her lips again.

“You lie! No priest comes here for that! I am an excommuniée.”

“You are a woman in sorrow,” Raymond said simply.

She did not answer him—only drew back into the other room.

Raymond followed her. It was the room where he had fought that night—with Théophile Blondin. His eyes swept it with a hurried glance. There was the armoire from which Théophile Blondin had snatched the revolver—and there was the spot on the floor where the dead man had fallen. And here was the old hag with the streaming hair, as it had streamed that night, who had run shrieking into the storm that he had murdered her son. And the whole scene began to live itself over again in his mind in minute detail. It seemed to possess an unhealthy fascination that bade him linger, and at the same time to fill him with an impulse to rush away from it. And the impulse was the stronger; and, besides, it would be evening soon, and there was that man in the presbytère, and there was much to do, and he had his confederate now—one Jacques Bourget.

“I shall not stay now”—he smiled, as he turned to Mother Blondin, and held out his hand. “You are upset over what has happened. Another time. But you will remember, will you not, that I would like to help you in any way I can?”

She reached out her hand mechanically to take his that was extended to her, and suddenly, muttering, jerked it back—and Raymond, appearing not to notice, smiled again, and, crossing the room, went out through the front door.

He went slowly across the little patch of yard, and on along the road in the direction of the village, and now his lips thinned in a grim smile. Yes, St. Marleau would hear of this, his chivalrous protection of Mother Blondin—and place another halo on his head! The devil's sense of humour was of a brand all its own!

The more he twisted and squirmed and wriggled to get out of the trap, desperate to the extent that he would hesitate at nothing, the more he became—the good, young Father Aubert! Even that dissolute old hag, whose hatred for the church and all pertaining to it was the most dominant passion in her life, was not far from the point where she would tolerate a priest—if the priest were the good, young Father Aubert!

He reached the point where the road began to descend the hill, and, pausing, looked back. Yes—even Mother Blondin, the excommuniée! She was standing in the doorway, dirty, unkempt, disreputable, and, shading her eyes with her hand, was gazing after him. Yes, even she—whose son had been killed in a fight with him.

And Raymond, fumbling suddenly with his hat, lifted it to Mother Blondin, and went on down the hill.