The Yellow Sign & Other Stories

by Robert W. Chambers

  The withdrawal of the Red Admiral from the society of St. Gildas excited first the derision and finally the suspicion of the Purple Emperor. What deviltry could he be hatching? Was he experimenting with chemicals again, or was he engaged in some deeper plot, the object of which was to discredit the Purple Emperor? Roux, the postman, who carried the mail on foot once a day from Bannalec, a distance of fifteen miles each way, had brought several suspicious let- ters, bearing English stamps, to the Red Admiral, and the next day the Admiral had been observed at his window grinning up into the sky and rubbing his hands together. A night or two after this apparition the postman left two packages at the Groix Inn for a moment while he ran across the way to drink a glass of cider with me. The Purple Emperor, who was roaming about the café, snooping into everything that did not concern him, came upon the packages and examined the postmarks and addresses. One of the packages was square and heavy, and felt like a book. The other was also square, but very light, a felt like a pasteboard box. They were both addressed to the Red Admiral, and they bore English stamps.

  When Roux, the postman, came back, the Purple Emperor tried to pump him, but the poor little postman knew nothing about the contents of the packages, and after he had taken them around the corner to the cottage of the Red Admiral the Purple Emperor ordered a glass of cider, and deliberately fuddled himself until Lys came in and tearfully supported him to his room. here he became so abusive and brutal that Lys called to me, and I went and settled the trouble without wasting any words. This also the Purple Emperor remembered, and waited his chance to get even with me.

  That had happened a week ago, and until to-day he had not deigned to speak to me. Lys had posed for me all week, and to-day being Saturday, and I lazy, we had decided to take a little relaxation, she to visit and gossip with her little black-eyed friend Yvette in the neighboring hamlet of St. Julien, and I to try the appetites of the Breton trout with the contents of my American fly book.

  I had thrashed the stream very conscientiously for three hours, but not a trout had risen to my cast, and I was piqued. I had begun to believe that there were no trout in the St. Gildas stream, and would probably have given up had I not seen the sea trout snap the little fly which the Purple Emperor had named so scientifically/ That set me thinking. Probably the Purple Emperor was right, for he certainly was an expert in everything that crawled and wriggled in Brittany. So I matched, from my American fly book, the fly that the sea trout had snapped up, and withdrawing the cast of three, knotted a new leader to the silk and slipped a fly on the loop. It was a queer fly. It was one of those unnameable experiments which fascinate anglers in sporting stores and which generally prove utterly useless. Moreover, it was a tailed fly, but of course I easily remedied that with a stroke of my pen- knife. Then I was all ready, and I stepped out into the hurrying rapids and cast straight as an arrow to the spot where the sea trout had risen. Lightly as a plume the fly settled on the bosom of the pool; then came a startling splash, a gleam of silver, and the line tightened from the vibrating rod-tip to the shrieking reel. Almost instantly I checked the fish, and as he floundered for a moment, making the water boil along his glittering sides, I sprang to the bank again, for I saw that the fish was a heavy one and I should probably be in for a long run down the stream.The five-ounce rod swept in a splendid circle, quivering under the strain. “Oh, for a gaff-hook!” I cried aloud, for I was now firmly convinced that I had a salmon to deal with, and no sea trout at all.

  Then as I stood, bringing every ounce to bear on the sulking fish, a lithe, slender girl came hurriedly along the opposite bank call- ing out to me by name.

  “Why, Lys!” I said, glancing up for a second, “I thought you were at St. Julien with Yvette.” “Yvette has gone to Bannelec. I went home and found an awful fight going on at the Groix Inn, and I was so frightened that I came to tell you.”

  The fish dashed off at that moment, carrying all the line my reel held, and I was compelled to follow him at a jump. Lys, active and graceful as a young deer, in spite of her Pont-Aven sabots, followed along the opposite bank until the fish settled in a deep pool, shook the line savagely once or twice, and then relapsed into the sulks.

  “Fight at the Goix Inn?” I called across the water. “What fight?” “Not exactly fight,” quavered Lys, “but the Red Admiral has come out of his house at last, and he and my uncle are drinking together and disputing about butterflies. I never saw my uncle so angry, and the Red Admiral is sneering and grinning. Oh, it is almost wicked to see such a face!”

  “But, Lys,” I said, scarcely able to repress a smile, “your uncle and the Red Admiral are always quarrelling and drinking.” “I know--oh, dear me!--but this is different, Monsieur Darrel. The Red Admiral has grown old and fierce since he shut himself up three weeks ago, and--oh, dear! I never saw such a look in my uncle’s eyes before. He seemed insane with fury. His eyes--I can’t speak of it--and then Terrec came in.”

  “Oh,” I said more gravely, “that was unfortunate. What did the Red Admiral say to his son?”

  Lys sat down on a rock among the ferns, and gave me a mutinous glance from her blue eyes. Yves Terrec, loafer, poacher, and son of Louis Jean Terrec, otherwise the Red Admiral, had been kicked out by his father, and had also been forbidden the village by the Purple Emperor, in his majestic capacity of mayor. Twice the young ruffian had returned: once to rifle the bedroom of the Purple Emperor--an unsuccessful enterprise--and another time to rob his own father. He succeeded in the latter attempt, but was never caught, although he was frequently seen roving about the forests and moors with his gun. He openly menaced the Purple Emperor; vowed that he would marry Lys in spite of all the gendarmes in Quimperlé; and these same gendarmes he led many a long chase through brier-filled swamps and over miles of yellow gorse.

  What he did to the Purple Emperor--what he intended to do-disquieted me but little; but I worried over his threat concerning Lys. During the last three months this had bothered me a great deal; for when Lys came to St. Gildas from the convent the first thing she captured was my heart. For a long time I had refused to believe that any tie of blood linked this dainty creature with the Purple Emperor. Although she dressed in the velvet-laced bodice and blue petticoat of Finistére, and wore the bewitching white coiffe of St. Gildas, it seemed like a pretty masquerade. To me she was as sweet and as gently bred as many a maiden of the noble Faubourg who danced with her cousins at a Louis XV fête champêtre. So when Lys said that Yves Terrec had returned openly to St. Gildas, I felt that I had better be there also.

  “What did Terrec say, Lys?” I asked, watching the line vibrating above the placid pool.

  The wild rose colour crept into her cheeks. “Oh,” she answered, with a little toss of her chin, “you know what he always says.” “That he will carry you away?”

  “Yes.”

  “In spite of the Purple Emperor, the Red Admiral, and the gendarmes?” “Yes.”

  “And what do you say, Lys?”

  “I? Oh, nothing.”

  “Then let me say it for you.”

  Lys looked at her delicate pointed sabots, the sabots from PontAven, made to order. They fitted her little foot. They were her only luxury.

  “Will you let me answer for you, Lys?” I asked.

  “You, Monsieur Darrel?”

  “Yes. Will you let me give him his answer?”

  “Mon Dieu, why should you concern yourself, Monsieur Darrel?” The fish lay very quiet, but the rod in my hand trembled. “Because I love you, Lys.”

  The wild rose colour in her cheeks deepened; she gave a gentle gasp, then hid her curly head in her hands. “I love you, Lys.”

  “Do you know what you say?” she stammered.

  “Yes, I love you.”

  She raised her sweet face and looked at me across the pool.

  “I love you,” she said, while the tears stood like stars in her eyes. “Shall I come over the brook to you?”

  II

  That night Yves Terrec left the villag
e 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, rov- ing, 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.”