The Firefly of France

by Marion Polk Angellotti

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE CASTLE AT PREZELAY

  In the midst of my triumph, which was as intense as if I myself, insteadof pure luck, had engineered our journey, I became aware of a tiny qualmas I sat gazing across the stream. Perhaps the gathering night affectedme, or the air, which was growing chilly, or the remnants of thevillage, which were cheerless, to say the least. But that castle,perched so darkly on its crag, with a strip of blood-red sky framing it,was at the heart of my feeling. If it had been a nice, worldly-looking,well-kept chateau, with poplared walks and a formal garden, I shouldhave welcomed it with open arms; but it wasn't, decidedly! It was thethreatening age-blackened sort of place that inevitably suggests Fulc ofAnjou, strongholds on the Loire, marauding barons, and the good old dayswith their concomitants of rapine and robbery and death.

  It was picturesque, but it was intensely gloomy; the proper spot for acatastrophe rather than a happy denouement. I was not impressionable,of course; but now that I thought of it, our jaunt had been going witha smoothness almost ominous. Could one expect such clock-like regularityto run forever without a break?

  Take the utter disappearance of the gray car, for instance. That hadseemed to me reassuring; but was it? Those four men had cared enoughabout Miss Falconer's movements to involve themselves in a murder. Why,then, should they have given up the chase in so mysterious a way?

  And the girl herself! When I looked at her I felt horribly worried. Shewas shivering through her furs; yet it was not with the cold, I feltquite sure. With her hands clasped, she sat staring at that confoundedcastle with a look of actual hunger. She cared too much about thisthing; she couldn't stand a great deal more.

  Well, she wouldn't have to, I concluded, my brief misgivings fading. Wewere out of the woods; another hour would see the business closed. Asfor the men in the car, they were victims of their guilty consciences,were no doubt in full flight or hiding somewhere in terror of the law.

  At any rate, there was no point in my sitting here like a graven image;so I roused myself and wrapped the rugs closer about the girl.

  "I'm to drive to the chateau?" I inquired with recovered cheerfulness. Ihad to repeat the words before they broke her trance.

  "Yes," she answered. Suddenly, impulsively, she turned toward me,her face almost feverish, her eyes astonishingly large and bright. "Ihaven't told you much," she acknowledged tremulously; "but you won'tthink that I don't trust you. It is only that I couldn't talk of it andkeep my courage; and I must keep it a little longer--until we know thetruth."

  "That's quite all right, Miss Falconer." I was switching on the lamps.Then I extinguished them; their clear acetylene glare seemed almostweirdly out of place. "We can muddle along without any lights. Notmuch traffic here," I muttered. I had a feeling, anyhow, thatunostentatiousness of approach might not be bad.

  There was intense silence about us; not even a breeze was stirring. Athin crescent moon was out, silvering the river and the trees. The roadwas atrocious; on one dark stretch the car, rocking into a rut, joltedus viciously and brought my teeth together on the tip of my tongue.

  "Sorry," I gasped, between humiliation and pain.

  With the silence and the dimness, we were like ghosts, the car like aphantom. An old stone bridge seemed to beckon us, and we crossed to theother side. There, at Miss Falconer's gesture, I drew the automobileoff the road at the edge of the town, halted it beneath some trees, andhelped her to alight. We started up the hill together without a word.

  Two ghosts! More and more, as we climbed through the wreck anddesolation, that was what we seemed. The road was choked with stonesbetween which the grass was sprouting; there was nothing left of thelittle church save a single pointed shaft. We climbed rapidly, the girlalways gazing up at the castle with that same feverish eagerness. Shehad forgotten, I think, that I was there.

  At last we were coming to the hilltop and the chateau. Ratherbreathless, I studied its looming walls, its turrets, its three roundtowers. It looked dark and inexplicably menacing, but I had recovered myform and could defy it. When we halted at a great iron-studded oak gateand Miss Falconer pulled the bell-rope, I was astonished. It had notoccurred to me that the castle would be more inhabited than the town.

  Nor was it, apparently; for no one answered its summons, though I couldhear the bell jingling faintly somewhere within. Miss Falconer rang asecond time, then a third; her face shone white in the moonlight; shewas growing anxious.

  "Did you think," I ventured finally, "that there was some one here?"

  "Yes; Marie-Jeanne," she answered, listening intently. Then she rousedherself. "I mean the _gardienne_. She never left, not even when theGermans came. They made her cook for them; she said she had been born inthe keeper's lodge, and her grandfather before her, and that she wouldrather die at Prezelay than go to any other place. But of course shemay have walked down the river for the evening. Her son's wife is atSantierre, two miles off. She may be there."

  "That's it," I agreed hastily, the more hastily because I doubted."She's sitting over a fire, toasting her toes, and gossiping and havinga cup of tea, or whatever people like that use for an equivalent inthese parts." I suppressed the unwelcome thought that a woman livinghere alone ran a first-rate chance of getting her throat cut bystrolling vagrants. "Shall we have to wait until she comes back?" Iasked. "Then let's sit down. I choose this stone!"

  On my last word, however, something surprising happened. Miss Falconer,in her impatience, put a hand on the bolt of the gate, shook it, andraised it, and, lo and behold! the oak frame swung open. Before I quiterealized the situation, we were inside, in a square courtyard, withthe _gardienne's_ lodge at the right of us, impenetrably barred andshuttered, and before us the portal of the castle, surmounted withquaint stone carvings of men in armor riding prancing steeds. The court,as revealed by the moonlight, was intact, but neglected. Weeds weresprouting between the square blocks of stone that paved it, and in thecenter a wide circular space, charred and blackened, showed where theGerman sentries had built their fires. It was not cheerful, nor was ithomey. I scarcely blamed Marie-Jeanne for flitting. The faint sound ofthe cannonading had begun again in the distance, but otherwise the placewas as silent as a tomb.

  "It seems strange!" Miss Falconer murmured, looking about in puzzledfashion. "Why in the world should she have left the gate open in thiscareless way? Of course there is nothing here for thieves; the Germanssaw to that; but still, as keeper--Oh, well, it doesn't matter. It savesus from waiting till she comes home."

  As I followed her toward the castle entrance, she opened the bag shecarried, and produced a candle, which I hastened to take and light. Inearly said, "The latest thing in the housebreaking line, madame, iselectric torches, not tapers;" but I decided not to. After all, perhapswe were housebreakers. How could I tell?

  Hot candle wax splashed my fingers and scorched them, but I scarcelynoticed. My sense of high-gear adventure had reached its zenith now.There was something thrilling, something stimulating in this stealthynight entrance into a deserted castle. It was an experience, at allevents; there was no _concierge_ to stump before one through dimpassages and up winding staircases; no flood of dates and names andanecdotes poured inexorably into one's bored ears to insure a _douceur_when the tour of the chateau should be done.

  The door--faithless Marie-Jeanne!--opened as readily as the outer gate.We were entering. I glimpsed in a dim vista a superb Gothic hall ofmagnificent architecture and most imposing proportions, arched andcarved and stretching off with apparent endlessness into the gloom.Holding up my light, I scanned the place with growing interest. It hadnot been demolished, but neither had it been spared. The furniturewas gone, save for a few scattered chairs and a table; the walls weredefaced with cartoons and scrawled inscriptions; the floor wasstained, and littered with empty bottles and broken plates. From thechimney-place--a medieval-art jewel topped with carved and coloredenamels--pieces had been hacked away by some deliberately destructivehand. I glanced at Miss Falconer, whose eyes had been f
ollowing mine.

  "They tore down the tapestries," she said beneath her breath. "Theyslashed the old portraits with their swords and broke the windowsand took away the statues and candlesticks and plate. They cut up thefurniture and had it used for fire-wood; and the German captain and hisofficers had a feast here and drank to the fall of Paris and orderedtheir soldiers to burn the village to the ground. Oh, I don't likethe place any more; too much has happened. And--and I don't likeMarie-Jeanne's not being here, Mr. Bayne. I feel as if there weresomething wrong about it. I believe I am a little--just a littleafraid!"

  "Come, now, you don't expect me to believe that, do you?" I counteredpromptly. "Because I won't. Why, it's your pluck that has kept me upall day. Just the same, on general principles, I'll take a look roundif you'll allow me. Here's a chair, and if you will rest a minute, I'llguarantee to find out."

  The chair I mentioned was standing near the chimney, and as I spoke Iwalked over to it and started to spin it round. It resisted me heavily;I bent over it, lifting my candle. Then I uttered an exclamation, stoodpetrified, and stared.

  In the chair, concealed from us until now by the high carved backof wood, was something which at first looked like a huddled mass ofgarments, but which on closer scrutiny resolved itself into a woman ina striped dress, an apron, and a pair of heavy shoes. There was a cuton her cheek, a bruise on her forehead. Locks of graying hair straggledfrom beneath her disarranged white cap, and she glared at me from alean, sallow face with a pair of terrified eyes.

  She must be dead, I thought. No living woman could sit so still andstare so wildly. The scene in the inn garage rushed back upon me, andI must say that my blood turned cold. But she was alive, I saw now; shewas certainly breathing. And an instant later I realized why she stayedso immobile; she was bound hand and foot to the chair she sat in, anda colored handkerchief, her own doubtless, had been twisted across hermouth to form a gag.

  "I think," I head myself saying, "that we have been maligningMarie-Jeanne."

  A choked, frightened cry from Miss Falconer made me wheel about sharply,to find her staring not a me, but at the further wall. Prepared now foranything under heaven, I followed her gaze. Above us, circling the wholehall, there ran a gallery from which at a distance of some fifteen feetfrom where we stood a wide stone staircase descended; and half-way downthis, as motionless as statues, as indistinct as shadows, I saw four menin the uniform of officers of France.

  For an uncanny moment I wondered whether they were specters. For astupid one, I thought they might be people whom the girl had come hereto meet. Still, if they were, she wouldn't be looking at them in thisparalyzed fashion. I could not see them plainly,--but they must be themen from Bleau.

  "Well, Mr. Bayne," the foremost was asking, "did you think we haddeserted you? Not a bit of it! We came on ahead and rang up the oldwoman there and commandeered her keys. We've been killing time here fora good half hour, waiting for you. You must have had tire trouble. Andyou don't seem very pleased to see us now that you've come--eh, what?"

  At Bleau the previous night, I was recalling dazedly, there had beenonly three men wearing the horizon blue. Who was this fourth figure, whoknew my name and spoke such colloquial English? I raised my candle ashigh as possible and scanned him. Then I stood transfixed.

  "Van Blarcom!" I gasped. "And in a uniform, by all that's holy!"

  He grinned.

  "No. You haven't got that quite right," he told me. "What's the usekeeping up the game now that we're here, all friends together? My nameisn't Van Blarcom. It's Franz von Blenheim, Mr. Bayne."