The Yellow Poppy. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ in the matter—and would be difficult and dangerous even were he in France—and since our need for money is so pressing at this moment, I would propose——”

      “What?” asked the Comte.

      “To ask, as his kinsman, for his authorisation to use the treasure, if we can come at it, for the needs of Finistère—that is to say, for the King’s service.”

      “O sir, do you think we could!” cried Roland eagerly, starting forward.

      “O, Monsieur le Marquis, send us to Mirabel!” cried Artamène.

      “You are going too fast, gentlemen. We must first get the Duc’s leave to pillage his property, even though it be confiscated.”

      “Do you think you will have difficulty in getting it?” asked the Comte de Brencourt, narrowing his eyes.

      “No, I do not think so. As you have yourself pointed out, Comte, how is M. de Trélan going to profit, in any case, by this suddenly revealed hoard?”

      “Well, when the King comes into his own again, it would be of no small service to the Duc, a fund in his own château! I expect his financial resources, great as they once were, are much embarrassed. He could hardly have been accused of husbanding them!”

      “You seem to know a great deal about the private affairs of M. de Trélan, Comte!” observed M. de Kersaint drily, turning and looking at him. “I might observe that no honest man has gained by the Revolution, and that those with much to lose have lost proportionately. However, if my kinsman takes the view that you suggest—which I do not think he will—he must be induced to look upon our present proposed use of the money as a loan to His Majesty. After all, it was never of any advantage to him as long as he was unaware of its existence or of its whereabouts, and of these, apparently, he never would have known but for the extraordinary coincidence of which the Abbé has just told us.”

      “But,” suggested M. de Brencourt, “before approaching him on the subject—through you—might it not be as well to get a sight of this precious document, so that we may form some idea as to whether the amount will repay the risking a man’s neck to find, and whether it will prove easy to come at?”

      The priest and M. de Kersaint looked at one another. “Yes. I think we might do that without indiscretion,” said the latter, after a moment’s hesitation. “Do not you, Abbé?”

      M. Chassin made no reply in words, but drew out from his coat the parchment received from the dying woman and gave it into the hands of his leader. The Marquis de Kersaint spread out the ancient memorandum on the table, moved the candles in their bottles nearer, and the three men studied in silence the rough diagram and its legend. Nor were Roland and Artamène, in the background, innocent of craning their necks to see likewise.

      “Ten bags—two thousand five hundred pistoles in each,” murmured the Comte reflectively. “How much is that, I wonder, in modern money? And there are jewels too, apparently.”

      The Marquis de Kersaint’s lips were compressed, his face an enigma. “It certainly appears to be worth taking risks for,” he said at last. “Money is what we most need in the world now for Finistère. We can get the men; the last few months have shown me that clearly, but of what use are unarmed men?”

      “Less than none,” observed his second in command. “This document, therefore, seems singularly like a gift from heaven.”

      “I shall certainly communicate with M. de Trélan without delay,” said the Marquis. “May I keep this parchment, Abbé?”

      “I had hoped that you would charge yourself with its despatch, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied the priest, and M. de Kersaint without more ado folded it up and put it in his breast.

      “It seems to me, de Kersaint,” said the Comte de Brencourt reflectively, playing with the cards which still strewed the table, “that, considering all things, the exceptional circumstances, our pressing needs, the possibility that you may never succeed in communicating with the Duc—wherever he may be—that we could hardly be blamed if we took the law into our own hands, and did not wait for his authorisation. After all, the risk would be ours.”

      “That solution had already occurred to me, I admit,” said the Marquis, with the ghost of a smile, while mute applause from MM. de Céligny and de la Vergne greeted the Comte’s suggestion. “But the affair is in a sense the Abbé’s, and entrusted to him.”

      “I am quite content to abide by your decision, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied the priest sedately.

      “But, de Kersaint,” objected the Comte, evidently struck by a sudden idea, “have you not some reversionary interest in the treasure yourself, if you are kin to M. de Trélan? Should we not ultimately be robbing you, perhaps?”

      “No, I am not sufficiently nearly related to the Duc for that,” returned the Marquis quickly. “I am connected with him by marriage only—a distant kinsman.”

      “Perhaps you will allow me to congratulate you on that, then,” said M. de Brencourt in a sombre tone. “For myself, I should not care to think that I had near ties of blood with a man who, in safety himself, left his wife to perish as he did!”

      An electric shock seemed at these words to communicate itself to the other two men. M. de Kersaint’s right hand, which rested on the table in the ring of candlelight, was seen instantly to clench itself. The next instant the Abbé, by a sudden clumsy movement, sent the candle nearest to him to the floor where, with a crash of the bottle, it was immediately extinguished.

      “Pardon me, Monsieur le Comte!” he interposed quickly, bending forward. “—Dear me, how awkward I am!—Pardon me, but you do the Duc de Trélan a great injustice, surely! How could he, an émigré to whom France was closed, possibly rescue a woman immured in a Paris prison? The thing is preposterous. Besides, he probably knew nothing about her being there till all was over. I have heard that Mirabel was not sacked till August the thirtieth, and the prison massacres, you will remember, began on the second of September.”

      “You seem very much the champion of M. de Trélan, Abbé!” remarked the Comte, looking at him hard. “You have wasted a candle over him.”

      “One should try, surely, to be just to those who cannot answer for themselves,” retorted the priest. “Moreover, I am certain M. de Kersaint would bear me out in what I say.”

      “He does not seem to be in any great haste to do so,” observed the other, half to himself, and his eyes suddenly moved to the clenched hand.

      “I am too much amazed at your attack on my kinsman,” retorted the Marquis, in a voice unlike his own. “It is incredible that such a thing should be said in France of M. de Trélan—that he could have saved his wife and did not!”

      The Comte shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know that it is what others say, for I imagine that few people trouble their heads about de Trélan now-a-days. But it is what I think—though as a matter of fact you are putting more into my words than I actually uttered. Perhaps I am prejudiced. I knew that lady many years ago,” he went on, with lowered eyes, fidgeting with the cards again, “the most gracious of God’s creatures, and to remember that she went, abandoned by everybody, through that door, saw, as her last glimpse of life, those obscene faces, that gutter running with blood, that mound of——”

      The priest jumped up and seized him by the arm. “For God’s sake, stop, Monsieur СКАЧАТЬ