Читать книгу A Splendid Hazard - Harold MacGrath - Страница 6

The passing and repassing shadows of craft gave a fitful luster to the river; so crisply white were the spanning highways that the eye grew quickly dim with looking; the brisk channel breeze which moved with rough gaiety through the trees in the gardens of the Tuileries, had, long hours before, blown away the storm. Bright sunshine, expanses of deep cerulean blue, towering banks of pleasant clouds, these made Paris happy to-day, in spots.

The great minister gazed across the river, his hands under the tails of his frock, and the perturbation of his mind expressed by the frequent flapping of those somber woolen wings. To the little man who watched him, there was a faint resemblance to a fiddling cricket.

"Sometimes I am minded to trust the whole thing to luck, and bother no more about him."

"Monsieur, I have obeyed orders for seven years, since we first recognized the unfortunate affair. Nothing he has done in this period is missing from my notebook; and up to the present time he has done—nothing. But just a little more patience. This very moment, when you are inclined to drop it, may be the one. One way or another, it is a matter of no real concern to me. There will always be plenty of work for me to do, in France, or elsewhere. But I am like an old soldier whose wound, twinging with rheumatism, announces the approach of damp weather. I have, then, monsieur, a kind of psychological rheumatism; prescience, bookmen call it. Presently we shall have damp weather."

"You speak with singular conviction."

"In my time I have made very few mistakes. You will recollect that. Twenty years have I served France. I was wrong to say that this affair does not concern me. I'm interested to see the end."

"But will there be an end?" impatiently. "If I were certain of that!

But seven years, and still no sign."

"Monsieur, he is to be feared; this inactivity, to my mind, proves it.

He is waiting; the moment is not ripe. There are many sentimental

fools in this world. One has only to step into the street and shout

'Down with!' or 'Long live!' to bring these fools clattering about."

"That is true enough," flapping the tails of his coat again.

"This fellow was born across the Rhine. He has served in the navy; he is a German, therefore we can not touch him unless he commits some overt act. He waits; there is where the danger, the real danger, lies. He waits; and it is his German blood which gives him this patience. A Frenchman would have exploded long since."

"You have searched his luggage and his rooms, times without number."

"And found nothing; nothing that I might use effectively. But there is this saving grace; he on his side knows nothing."

"I would I were sure of that also. Eh, well; I leave the affair in your hands, and they are capable ones. When the time comes, act, act upon your own initiative. In this matter we shall give no accounting to Germany."

"No, because what I do must be done secretly. It will not matter that Germany also knows and waits. But this is true; if we do not circumvent him, she will make use of whatever he does."

"It has its whimsical side. Here is a man who may some day blow up

France, and yet we can put no hand on him till he throws the bomb."

"But there is always time to stop the flight of the bomb. That shall be my concern; that is, if monsieur is not becoming discouraged and desires me to occupy myself with other things. I repeat: I have rheumatism, I apprehend the damp. He will go to America."

"Ah! It would be a very good plan if he remained there."

The little man did not reply.

"But you say in your reports that you have seen him going about with some of the Orleanists. What is your inference there?"

"I have not yet formed one. It is a bit of a riddle there, for the crow and the eagle do not fly together."

"Well, follow him to America."

"Thanks. The pay is good and the work is congenial." The tone of the little man was softly given to irony.

Gray-haired, rosy-cheeked, a face smooth as a boy's, twinkling eyes behind spectacles, he was one of the most astute, learned, and patient of the French secret police. And he did not care the flip of his strong brown fingers for the methods of Vidocq or Lecoq. His only disguise was that not one of the criminal police of the world knew him or had ever heard of him; and save his chief and three ministers of war—for French cabinets are given to change—his own immediate friends knew him as a butterfly hunter, a searcher for beetles and scarabs, who, indeed, was one of the first authorities in France on the subjects: Anatole Ferraud, who went about, hither and thither, with a little red button in his buttonhole and a tongue facile in a dozen languages.

"Very well, monsieur. I trust that in the near future I may bring you good news."

"He will become nothing or the most desperate man in Europe."

"Admitted."

"He is a scholar, too."

"All the more interesting."

"As a student in Munich he has fought his three duels. He has been a war correspondent under fire. He is a great fencer, a fine shot, a daring rider."

"And penniless. What a country they have over there beyond the Rhine! He would never have troubled his head about it, had they not harried him. To stir up France, to wound her if possible! He will be a man of great courage and resource," said the secret agent, drawing the palms of his hands together.

"In the end, then, Germany will offer him money?"

"That is the possible outlook."

"But, suppose he went to work on his own responsibility?"

"In that case one would be justified in locking him up as a madman. Do you know anything about Alpine butterflies?"

"Very little," confessed the minister.

"There is often great danger in getting at them; but the pleasure is commensurate."

"Are there not rare butterflies in the Amazonian swamps?" cynically.

"Ah, but this man has good blood in him; and if he flies at all he will fly high. Think of this man fifty years ago; what a possibility he would have been! But it is out of fashion to-day. Well, monsieur, I must be off. There is an old manuscript at the Bibliothèque I wish to inspect."

"Concerning this matter?"

"Butterflies," softly; "or, I should say, chrysalides."

The subtle inference passed by the minister. There were many other things to-ing and fro-ing in the busy corridors of his brain. "I shall hear from you frequently?"

"As often as the situation requires. By the way, I have an idea. When I cable you the word butterfly, prepare yourself accordingly. It will mean that the bomb is ready."

"Good luck attend you, my savant," said the minister, with a friendliness which was deep and genuine. He had known Monsieur Ferraud in other days. "And, above all, take care of yourself."

"Trust me, Count." And the secret agent departed, to appear again in these chambers only when his work was done.

"A strange man," mused the minister when he was alone. "A still stranger business for a genuine scholar. Is he really poor? Does he do this work to afford him ease and time for his studies? Or, better still, does he hide a great and singular patriotism under butterfly wings? Patriotism? More and more it becomes self-interest. It is only when a foreign mob starts to tear down your house, that you become a patriot."

Now the subject of these desultory musings went directly to the Bibliothèque Nationale. The study he pursued was of deep interest to him; it concerned a butterfly of vast proportions and kaleidoscopic in color, long ago pinned away and labeled among others of lesser brilliancy. It had cast a fine shadow in its brief flight. But the species was now extinct, at least so the historian of this particular butterfly declared. Hybrid? Such a contingency was always possible.

"Suppose it does exist, as I and a few others very well know it does; what a fine joke it would be to see it fly into Paris! But, no. Idle dream! Still, I shall wait and watch. And now, suppose we pay a visit to Berlin and use blunt facts in place of diplomacy? It will surprise them."

Each German chancellor has become, in turn, the repository of such political secrets as fell under the eyes of his predecessor; and the chancellor who walked up and down before Monsieur Ferraud, possessed several which did not rest heavily upon his soul simply because he was incredulous, or affected that he was.

"The thing is preposterous."

"As your excellency has already declared."

"What has it to do with France?"

"Much or little. It depends upon this side of the Rhine."

"What imagination! But for your credentials, Monsieur Ferraud, I should not listen to you one moment."

"I have seen some documents."

"Forgeries!" contemptuously.

"Not in the least," suavely. "They are in every part genuine. They are his own."

The chancellor paused, frowning. "Well, even then?"

Monsieur Ferraud shrugged.

"This fellow, who was forced to resign from the navy because of his tricks at cards, why I doubt if he could stir up a brawl in a tavern. Really, if there was a word of truth in the affair, we should have acted before this. It is all idle newspaper talk that Germany wishes war; far from it. Still, we lose no point to fortify ourselves against the possibility of it. Some one has been telling you old-wives' tales."

"Ten thousand marks," almost inaudibly.

"What was that you said?" cried the chancellor, whirling round abruptly, for the words startled him.

"Pardon me! I was thinking out loud about a sum of money."

"Ah!" And yet the chancellor realized that the other was telling him as plainly as he dared that the German government had offered such a sum to forward the very intrigue which he was so emphatically denying. "Why not turn the matter over to your own ambassador here?"

The secret agent laughed. "Publicity is what neither your government nor mine desires. Thank you."

"I am sorry not to be of some service to you."

"I can readily believe that, your excellency," not to be outdone in the matter of duplicity. "I thank you for your time."

"I hadn't the least idea that you were in the service; butterflies and diplomacy!" with a hearty laugh.

"It is only temporary."

"Your Alpine Butterflies compares favorably with The Life of the Bee."

"That is a very great compliment!"

And with this the interview, extraordinary in all ways, came to an end. Neither man had fooled the other, neither had made any mistake in his logical deductions; and, in a way, both were satisfied. The chancellor resumed his more definite labors, and the secret agent hurried away to the nearest telegraph office.

"So I am to stand on these two feet?" Monsieur Ferraud ruminated, as he took the seat by the window in the second-class carriage for Munich. "All the finer the sport. Ten thousand marks! He forgot himself for a moment. And I might have gone further and said that ninety thousand marks would be added to those ten thousand if the bribe was accepted and the promise fulfilled."

Ah, it would be beautiful to untangle this snarl all alone. It would be the finest chase that had ever fallen to his lot. No grain of sand, however small, should escape him. There were fools in Berlin as well as in Paris; and he knew what he knew. "Never a move shall he make that I shan't make the same; and in one thing I shall move first. Two million francs! Handsome! It is I who must find this treasure, this fulcrum to the lever which is going to upheave France. There will be no difficulty then in pricking the pretty bubble. In the meantime we shall proceed to Munich and carefully inquire into the affairs of the grand opera singer, Hildegarde von Mitter."

He extracted a wallet from an inner pocket and opened it across his knees. It was full of butterflies.