...
II.
That night Yves Terrec left the
village of St. Gildas vowing vengeance against his father, who refused
him shelter.
I can see him now, standing in
the road, his bare legs rising like pillars of bronze from his straw-stuffed
sabots, his short velvet jacket torn and soiled by exposure and dissipation,
and his eyes, fierce, roving, bloodshot--while the Red Admiral squeaked
curses on him, and hobbled away into his little stone cottage.
"I will not forget you!" cried
Yves Terrec, and stretched out his hand toward his father with a terrible
gesture. Then he whipped his gun to his cheek and took a short step forward,
but I caught him by the throat before he could fire, and a second later
we were rolling in the dust of the Bannalec road. I had to hit a heavy
blow behind the ear before he would let go, and then, rising and shaking
myself, I dashed his muzzle-loading fowling piece to bits against a wall,
and threw his knife into the river. The Purple Emperor was looking on with
a queer light in his eyes. It was plain that he was sorry Terrec had not
choked me to death.
"He would have killed his father,"
I said, as I passed him, going toward the Groix Inn.
"That's his business," snarled
the Purple Emperor. There was a deadly light in his eyes. For a moment
I thought he was going to attack me; but he was merely viciously drunk,
so I shoved him out of my way and went to bed, tired and disgusted.
The worst of it was I couldn't
sleep, for I feared that the Purple Emperor might begin to abuse Lys. I
lay restlessly tossing among the sheets until I could stay there no longer.
I did not dress entirely; I merely slipped on a pair of chaussons and sabots,
a pair of knickerbockers, a jersey, and a cap. Then, loosely tying a handkerchief
about my throat, I went down the worm-eaten stairs and out into the moonlit
road. There was a candle flaring in the Purple Emperor's window, but I
could not see him.
"He's probably dead drunk," I
thought, and looked up at the window where, three years before, I had first
seen Lys.
"Asleep, thank Heaven!" I muttered,
and wandered out along the road. Passing the small cottage of the Red Admiral,
I saw that it was dark, but the door was open. I stepped inside the hedge
to shut it, thinking, in case Yves Terrec should be roving about, his father
would lose whatever he had left.
Then, after fastening the door
with a stone, I wandered on through the dazzling Breton moonlight. A nightingale
was singing in a willow swamp below, and from the edge of the mere, among
the tall swamp grasses, myriads of frogs chanted a bass chorus.
When I returned, the eastern
sky was beginning to lighten, and across the meadows on the cliffs, outlined
against the paling horizon, I saw a seaweed gatherer going to his work
among the curling breakers on the coast. His long rake was balanced on
his shoulder, and the sea wind carried his song across the meadows to me:
-
St. Gildas!
-
St. Gildas!
-
Pray for us,
-
Shelter us,
-
Us who toil in the sea.
Passing the shrine at the entrance
of the village, I took off my cap and knelt in prayer to Our Lady of Faöuet;
and if I neglected myself in that prayer, surely I believed Our Lady of
Faöuet would be kinder to Lys. It is said that the shrine cast white
shadows. I looked, but saw only the moonlight. Then very peacefully I went
to bed again, and was only awakened by the clank of sabres and the trample
of horses in the road below my window.
"Good gracious!" I thought, "it
must be eleven o'clock, for there are the gendarmes from Quimperlé."
I looked at my watch; it was
only half-past eight, and as the gendarmes made their rounds every Thursday
at eleven, I wondered what had brought them out so early to St. Gildas.
"Of course," I grumbled, rubbing
my eyes, "they are after Terrec," and I jumped into my limited bath.
Before I was completely dressed
I heard a timid knock, and opening my door, razor in hand, stood astonished
and silent. Lys, her blue eyes wide with terror, leaned on the threshold.
"My darling!" I cried, "what
on earth is the matter?" But she only clung to me, panting like a wounded
sea gull. At last, when I drew her into the room and raised her face to
mine, she spoke in a heart-breaking voice:
"Oh, Dick! they are going to
arrest you, but I will die before I believe one word of what they say.
No, don't ask me," and she began to sob desperately.
When I found that something really
serious was the matter, I flung on my coat and cap, and, slipping one arm
about her waist, went down the stairs and out into the road. Four gendarmes
sat on their horses in front of the café door; beyond them, the
entire population of St. Gildas gaped, ten deep.
"Hello, Durand!" I said to the
brigadier, "what the devil is this I hear about arresting me?"
"It's true, mon ami," replied
Durand with sepulchral sympathy. I looked his over from the tip of his
spurred boots to his sulphur-yellow sabre belt, then upward, button by
button, to his disconcerted face.
"What for?" I said scornfully.
"Don't try any cheap sleuth work on me! Speak up, man, what's the trouble?"
The Purple Emperor, who sat in
the doorway staring at me, started to speak, but thought better of it and
got up and went into the house. The gendarmes rolled their eyes mysteriously
and looked wise.
"Come, Durand," I said impatiently,
"what's the charge?"
"Murder," he said in a faint
voice.
"What!" I cried incredulously.
"Nonsense! Do I look like a murderer? Get off your horse, you stupid, and
tell me who's murdered."
Durand got down, looking very
silly, and came up to me, offering his hand with a propitiatory grin.
"It was the Purple Emperor who
denounced you! See, they found your handkerchief at his door--"
"Whose door, for Heaven's sake?"
I cried.
"Why, the Red Admirals? What
has he done?"
"Nothing--he's only been murdered."
I could scarcely believe my sense,
although they took me over to the little stone cottage and pointed out
the blood-spattered room. But the horror of the thing was that the corpse
of the murdered man had disappeared, and there only remained a nauseating
lake of blood on the stone floor, in the centre of which lay a human hand.
There was no doubt as to whom the hand belonged, for everybody who had
ever seen the Red Admiral knew that the shrivelled bit of flesh which lay
in the thickened blood was the hand of the Red Admiral. To me it looked
like the severed claw of some gigantic bird.
"Well," I said, "there's been
murder committed. Why don't you do something?"
"What?" asked Durand.
"I don't know. Send for the Commissaire."
"He's at Quimperlé. I
telegraphed."
"Then send for the doctor, and
find out how long this blood has been coagulating."
"The chemist from Quimperlé
is here; he's a doctor."
"What does he say?"
"He says that he doesn't know."
"And who are you going to arrest?"
I inquired, turning away from the spectacle on the floor.
"I don't know," said the brigadier
solemnly; "you are denounced by the Purple Emperor, because he found your
handkerchief at the door when he went out this morning."
"Just like a pig-headed Breton!"
I exclaimed, thoroughly angry. "Did he not mention Yves Terrec?"
"No."
"Of course not," I said. "He
overlooked the fact that Terrec tried to shoot his father last night, and
that I took away his gun. All that counts for nothing when he finds my
handkerchief at the murdered man's door."
"Come into the café,"
said Durand, much disturbed, "we can talk it over, there. Of course, Monsieur
Darrel, I have never had the faintest idea that you were the murderer!"
The four gendarmes and I walked
across the road to the Groix Inn and entered the café. It was crowded
with Britons, smoking, drinking, and jabbering in half a dozen dialects,
all equally unsatisfactory to a civilized ear; and I pushed through the
crowd to where little Max Fortin, the chemist of Quimperlé, stood
smoking a vile cigar.
"This is a bad business," he
said, shaking hands and offering me the mate to his cigar, which I politely
declined.
"Now, Monsieur Fortin," I said,
"it appears that the Purple Emperor found my handkerchief near the murdered
man's door this morning, and so he concludes"--here I glared at the Purple
Emperor--"that I am an assassin. I will now ask him a question," and turning
on him suddenly, I shouted, "What were you doing at the Red Admiral's door?"
The Purple Emperor started and
turned pale, and I pointed at him triumphantly.
"See what a sudden question will
do. Look how embarrassed he is, and yet I do not charge him with murder;
and I tell you, gentlemen, that man there knows as well as I do who was
the murderer of the Red Admiral!"
"I don't," bawled the Purple
Emperor.
"You do!" I said. "It was Yves
Terrec."
"I don't believe it," he said
obstinately, dropping his voice.
"Of course no, being pig-headed."
"I am not pig-headed," he roared
again, "but I am mayor of St. Gildas, and I do not believe that Yves Terrec
killed his father."
"You saw him try to kill him
last night?"
The mayor grunted.
"And you saw what I did."
He grunted again.
"And," I went on, "you heard
Yves Terrec threaten to kill his father. You heard him curse the Red Admiral
and swear to kill him. Now the father is murdered and his body is gone."
"And your handkerchief?" sneered
the Purpler Emperor.
"I dropped it, of course."
"And the seaweed gatherer who
saw you last night lurking about the Red Admiral's cottage," grinned the
Purple Emperor.
I was startled at the man's malice.
"That will do," I said. "It is
perfectly true that I was walking on the Bannalec road last night, and
that I stopped to close the Red Admiral's door, which was ajar, although
his light was not burning. After that I went up the road to the Dinez Woods,
and then walked over by St. Julien, whence I saw the seaweed gatherer on
the cliffs. He was near enough for me to hear what he sang. What of that?"
"What did you do then?"
"Then I stopped at the shrine
and said a prayer, and then I went to bed and slept until Brigadier Durand's
gendarmes awoke me with their clatter."
"Now, Monsieur Darrel," said
the Purple Emperor, lifting a fat finger and shooting a wicked glance at
me, "Now, Monsieur Darrel, which did you wear last night on your midnight
stroll--sabots or shoes?"
I thought a moment. "Shoes--no,
sabots. I just slipped on my chaussons and went our in my sabots."
"Which was it, shoes or sabots?"
snarled the Purple Emperor.
"Sabots, you fool."
"Are these your sabots?" he asked,
lifting up a wooden shoe with my initials cut on the instep.
"Yes," I replied.
"Then how did this blood come
on the other one?" he shouted, and held up a sabot, the mate to the first,
on which a drop of blood had spattered.
"I haven't the least idea," I
said calmly; but my heart was beating very fast and I was furiously angry.
"You blockhead!" I said, controlling
my rage, "I'll make you pay for this when they catch Yves Terrec and convict
him. Brigadier Durand, do your duty if you think I am under suspicion.
Arrest me, but grant me one favour. Put me in the Red Admiral's cottage,
and I'll see whether I can't find some clew that you have overlooked. Of
course, I won't disturb anything until the Commissaire arrives. Bah! You
all make me very ill.":
"He's hardened," observed the
Purple Emperor, wagging his head.
"What motive had I to kill the
Red Admiral?" I asked them all scornfully. And they all cried:
"None! Yves Terrec is the man!"
Passing out of the door I swing
around and shook my finger at the Purple Emperor.
"Oh, I'll make you dance for
this, my friend," I said; and I followed Brigadier Durand across the street
to the cottage of the murdered man.
End of PART TWO..... GO TO PART
THREE..... 
