"Well?" Gonzague asked, anxiously.

Peyrolles looked disappointed. "He has not left by any of the gates. He must be hiding in the gardens."

Gonzague commanded, sharply: "Bid your men seek till they find, and kill when they find."

Peyrolles bowed. "Yes, your excellency," he said, and disappeared down one of the silent alleys. As he departed, the hunchback emerged from the shadow of a tree and approached Gonzague noiselessly. Gonzague started a little as he suddenly became aware of the hunchback's presence.

The hunchback bowed. "Is your highness content with the night's work?"

"So far, yes," Gonzague replied. "We have got the girl and got the papers safe in my palace."

"Ah! And Lagardere?" the hunchback asked.

Gonzague answered: "Peyrolles is looking for him, with six of the best swords in Paris."

aesop spoke, contemptuously: "Peyrolles is a bungler. Leave it to me. I will find Lagardere for you and deal with him as he deserves before an hour has pa.s.sed."

Gonzague caught at his words eagerly. "You promise?"

aesop answered, proudly: "On the word of a hunchback. Before two o'clock I will bring you the news you wish for."

Gonzague gave a cry of triumph. "Then ask and have your own reward." Then he turned and hurriedly left the gardens, his breast swelled with exultation. When he was out of sight, the hunchback whistled softly, and Cocarda.s.se and Pa.s.sepoil came out of the shadow of the trees. The lights were now rapidly dying out, and the gardens lay in darkness checkered by the moonlight.

Lagardere turned to his friends. "She is in Gonzague's palace. We must rescue her at once."

Pa.s.sepoil appealed to him, pathetically: "Can you ever forgive us?"

"Yes," Lagardere answered--"yes, on one condition. There is a snake in this garden. Kill him for me."

Cocarda.s.se gave a grin of appreciation. "Peyrolles it is."

Even as he spoke there was a tramp of feet and a flare of light in a side alley, and Peyrolles came towards them followed by half a dozen men, each of whom carried a torch in his left hand and a naked sword in his right.

Peyrolles came towards the hunchback.

"Well, aesop, we cannot find him anywhere."

"That," the hunchback answered, coldly, "is because you don't know where to look."

Peyrolles turned to his followers. "Seek in all directions," he said, and the men with the swords and torches dispersed in twos down the adjacent alleys.

The hunchback laid his hand on Peyrolles's shoulder. "I know where to find him."

Peyrolles turned in astonishment. "You do?"

"I am here!" the hunchback said, sternly. He drew himself up erect and menacing, and flung back the long hair from his face. Peyrolles gave a gasp of horror as he recognized the man whom he had seen such a short while before in the presence of the king.

"Lagardere!" he cried, and was about to scream for help when Cocarda.s.se grasped him by the throat. There was a short struggle, and then Cocarda.s.se flung the dead body of Peyrolles at the feet of Lagardere.

Lagardere bent over him and spoke his epitaph: "The last of the lackeys.

Now for the master."

XXVI

THE REWARD OF aeSOP

Paris lay quiet enough between the midnight and the dawn. All the noise and brilliance and turbulence, all the gayety and folly and fancy of the royal ball had died away and left the Palais Royal and the capital to peace. Little waves of frivolity had drifted this way and that from the ebbing sea to the haven of this great house and that great house, where certain of those that had made merry in the king's gardens now made merrier still at a supper as of the G.o.ds. The Palace of Gonzague was one of those great houses. The hall where the Three Louis gazed at one another--one so brave, one so comely, one so royal--was indeed a brilliant solitude where the lights of many candles illuminated only the painted canvases throned over emptiness. But from behind the great gilded doors came the sound of many voices, men's voices and women's voices, full of mirth and the clatter of gla.s.ses. His Highness Prince Louis de Gonzague was entertaining at supper a chosen company of friends--flowers from the king's garland carefully culled. There were the brilliant, insolent youths, who formed the party of Gonzague; there were the light, bright, desirable women whom the party of Gonzague especially favored among the many of their kind in Paris. Noce was there, and Oriol and Taranne and Navailles and the others, and the dainty, daring, impudent Cidalise and her sisters of the opera, and Oriol's flame, who made game of him--all very pretty, all very greedy, as greedy of food and wine as they were greedy of gold and kisses, and all very merry. One face was wanting from the habitual familiars of Gonzague. The little, impertinent Marquis de Chavernay was not present. Gonzague had not thought fit to include him in the chosen of that night. Chavernay was getting to be too critical of his kinsman's conduct. Chavernay was not as sympathetic with his kinsman's ambitions and wishes as his kinsman would have had him be.

At the head of the table sat the ill.u.s.trious host, beaming with an air of joyousness that astonished even his friends. It was as though the sun that had shone for so long upon all their lives, and in whose light and heat they had prospered, had suddenly taken upon himself a braver radiance, a fiercer effulgence, in the glow of which they all, men and women alike, seemed to feel their personal fortunes patently flourishing.

No one knew why Louis de Gonzague was so gladsome that night; no one, of course, ventured to ask the reason of his gayety. It was enough for those, his satellites, who prospered by his favor and who battened on his bounty that the prince, who was their leader, chose on this occasion to show a spirit of careless mirth that made the thought of serving him, and of gaining by that service, more than ever attractive.

Outside, in the deserted hall, the Three Louis stared at one another, heedless of the laughter behind the gilded doors, indifferent to the hilarity, regardless of the license characteristic of a supper-party in such a house at such an hour. For long enough the Three Louis kept one another company, while the great wax candles dwindled slowly, and the noise and laughter beyond seemed interminable. Then the door of the antechamber opened, and the hunchback entered the hall and paused for a moment, glancing at each of the Three Louis, with a look of love for one, a look of hate for the other, and a look of homage for the third. At the hunchback's heels came Cocarda.s.se and Pa.s.sepoil, waiting on events. The hunchback stood for a moment listening to the noise and jollity beyond the doors. Then he turned to his followers:

"My enemy makes merry to-night. I think I shall take the edge off his merriment by-and-by. But the trick has its risks, and we hazard our lives. Would you like to leave the game? I can play it alone."

Cocarda.s.se answered with his favorite salute: "I am with you in this if it ends in the gallows."

Pa.s.sepoil commented: "That's my mind."

Lagardere looked at them as one looks at friends who act in accordance with one's expectation of them.

"Thanks, friends," he said. Then he sat at Gonzague's table, dipped pen in ink, and wrote two hurried letters. One he handed to Cocarda.s.se. "This letter to the king, instantly." The other he handed to Pa.s.sepoil. "This to Gonzague's notary, instantly. Come back and wait in the anteroom. When you hear me cry out, 'Lagardere, I am here,' into the room and out with your swords for the last chance and the last fight."

Cocarda.s.se laid his hand on the sham hump of the sham aesop. "Courage, comrade, the devil is dead."

Lagardere laughed at him, something wistfully. "Not yet."

Pa.s.sepoil suggested, timidly: "We live in hopes."

Then Cocarda.s.se and Pa.s.sepoil went out through the antechamber, and Lagardere remained alone with the Three Louis. He rose again and looked at them each in turn, and his mind was hived with memories as he gazed.

Before Louis de Nevers he thought of those old days in Paris when the name of the fair and daring duke was on the lips of all men and of all women, and when he met him for the first time and got his lesson in the famous thrust, and when he met him for the second and last time in the moat at Caylus and gave him the pledge of brotherhood. Looking now on the beautiful, smiling face, Lagardere extended his hand to the painted cloth, as if he almost hoped that the painted hand could emerge from it and clasp his again in fellowship, and so looking he renewed the pledge of brotherhood and silently promised the murdered man a crown of revenge.

He turned to the picture of Louis de Gonzague, and he thought of his speech in the moat of Caylus with the masked shadow, and of the sudden murder of Nevers, and of his own a.s.sault upon the murderer, and how he set his mark upon his wrist. The expression on Lagardere's face was cold and grave and fatal as he studied this picture. If Gonzague could have seen his face just then he would not have made so merry beyond the folded doors.

Lagardere turned to the third Louis, the then solemn, the then pale, Louis of France, and gave him a military salute. "Monseigneur," he murmured, "you are an honest man and a fine gentleman, and I trust you cheerfully for my judge to-night." Turning, he advanced to the doors that shut him off from the noisy folk at supper, and listened for a moment, with his head against the woodwork, to the revelry beyond, an ironical smile on his face. Then, as one who recalls himself abruptly to work that has to be done, he who had been standing straight when he contemplated the images now stooped again into the crippled form of the hunchback and shook his hair about his face. Raising his hand, he tapped thrice on a panel of the doors, then moved slowly down to the centre of the hall. A moment later the doors parted a little, and Gonzague entered the room, closing the doors behind him.

He advanced at once to where the hunchback awaited him. "Your news?" he cried.

The hunchback made a gesture of rea.s.surance. "Sleep in peace. I have settled Lagardere's business."

Gonzague gave a great sigh of satisfaction. "He is dead?" he questioned.

The hunchback spoke, warmly. "As dead as my hate could wish him."

"And his body?" Gonzague questioned.