Monsieur Jonquelle (14 page)

“Well, Monsieur, who should know better than I that it is of no use to fight the Germans? Did I not try it, Monsieur, in 1870 … I and my six brothers at Weissenburg? My brothers, they were shot to death, and I, Monsieur, was taken to a village far up … where there are forests in the sky. And there, Monsieur, a thing happened that taught me to hate the Germans.… But to hate them, Monsieur, as an animal hates the fire. To hate them with a knowledge that one cannot harm them.

“I always remember it, Monsieur, day and night. The death of my brothers, … that was war. But I was a boy then, Monsieur, and proud. I was a Frenchman, Monsieur. It was the shame they put on me that I will remember always. I used to say, with tears, Monsieur: ‘Jules … Jules Martain, you are made a shame to France. You ought to die. You ought to have the will to die.' But I could not do it. One may starve to death, Monsieur, yes, if he is lost in the mountains, or if he sees no bread. But with the loaf before him—he cannot.… I know, Monsieur,
one may believe he can. One may think he has the will to die. But it is not in nature, Monsieur. He will endure the shame and eat the bread of shame.”

And he began to ramble on, adding one comment upon another, as though the end of the story had escaped him.

The secret agent sat with his eyes half closed. The American was watching the peasant with attention. The Captain of Artillery brought him up:

“Come, Monsieur,” he said, “what is this extraordinary story?”

The peasant went on then.

“The prison was on the public square. There was a window with bars.… Yes, Monsieur, they could have put the food in at the door, but no; the Junker Lieutenant must have his sport. Soon everybody came to listen and to laugh, Monsieur; to hold one's sides with laughter.… A French prisoner whistling Blücher's March for a loaf of bread.… No, Monsieur, I did not know what the tune was in the beginning. I whistled only the notes the Junker Lieutenant whistled.… Bah!”

And forgetting where he was, the peasant spat violently on the floor. Then he looked curiously from one of the three men to the others.

“Ah, yes,” he continued, “a man grows old and
strange. And so, Monsieur, I keep a German bullfinch in a cage, and I teach him to whistle Blücher's March for a crust of bread.…

“Try him, Monsieur, it is the truth I speak.”

The Captain of Artillery broke off a piece of bread and extended it toward the cage.

Immediately the bird began. It paused, hesitated and repeated the notes, as the Captain had observed it to do in the street. But now he noticed with astonishment that the notes omitted were precisely the ones which Monsieur Cordon Rouge had himself omitted a few moments before, and that the bird paused and repeated precisely as the secret agent had done. The performances were identical to a note.

The American too was astounded. But the Captain of Artillery for all his southern blood had himself in hand.

“One thing more, Monsieur,” he said to the peasant, “why is it, if you please, that I have observed the bullfinch to be whistling sometimes in one part of your cottage and sometimes in another?”

“Ah, Monsieur,” replied the old man immediately, “it is the sun. He is a happier prisoner than I was, this German bird. He will sing, Monsieur, when the sun enters his cage.”

Then as though he suddenly remembered the
parcel in his blouse, he took it out and handed it to the secret agent.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I have brought your shoe.”

The man met the unexpected with composure.

“
Mercie
” he said, “I am not accustomed to a sabot,” and he put on the shoe.

Then he stood up.

“Monsieur le Captain,” he said, “shall we shoot this peasant for a spy?”

The officer looked him in the face.

“I think not,” he said.

“Reflect, Monsieur,” continued the agent, “he is found with a German bird that whistles a German tune in a French village.”

“I think,” replied the Captain with deliberation, “that it is not this peasant that is signaling to the German lines.”

“It is another, perhaps?” inquired the agent.

“Perhaps,” replied the Captain.

“The German bird, Monsieur?”

“I am convinced, Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” said the officer with sarcasm, “that the German bird has nothing to do with the German fire.”

“Then, Monsieur,” cried the secret agent, “be prepared for the surprise of your career.”

He took the cage and carried it to the window facing the German lines. He moved the shutter back so that the sun fell on the cage. Immediately,
as the peasant had affirmed, the bullfinch began to whistle. Then presently a strange thing happened, the German fire ceased, there was a period of silence, and as the bird finished, it began with redoubled fury.

“Captain Marie,” cried the agent, his voice ringing, “where do the German shells fall now?”

The officer sprang to the eastern windows overlooking the French guns, a moment he searched the country with his field glasses. Then he swore a great oath.

“
Nom de chien
!” he cried; “they fall a hundred meters beyond us, in the edge of the wood.”

The agent brought the bullfinch back to the table and set it down.

“Monsieur,” he said, “there is a great man in France who tells us that chance in the ultimate instance is God. I have reflected upon that and I approach his opinion. But for the barb of a wire that cut my shoe this morning, I should not have stopped at this peasant's cottage, and so I should not have observed this bird, I should not have learned this peasant's extraordinary story, and I should not have been present here at a curious adjustment of God's providence.”

“Extraordinary story!” cried the Captain. “It is a tissue of lies. The man is a Prussian spy.”

The Captain's face was purple with excitement.
The American sat unmoving like one in the presence of things unreal.

“No, Monsieur,” replied the agent, his voice calm, the evidence of wine gone out, “and that is one of the strange things about this business, the peasant's story is true. He was held a prisoner in a mountain village of Baden as he says.… We have some report of it. That is to say, Monsieur, we have certain pieces alone and disconnected, but we could not have put them together except for the inscrutable moving of this chance which is God.

“And now, Monsieur, will you court-martial the German bullfinch?”

“Monsieur,” replied the officer, “I do not pretend to understand you, but I do understand that by some means the German lines are signaled by this bird which I find in this peasant's possession. I shall not bother to unravel the mystery. I shall wring the bird's neck and put the peasant before a firing squad.”

“A moment, Monsieur,” continued the agent with authority. “A little while ago I promised that you should have a dead man for your bit of turf. But I did not promise that you should select him. I think, Monsieur, that I distinctly said that I would select him—that I would provide you with a dead man … and so I shall, Monsieur.”

But the Captain of Artillery had the insistence of his discipline.

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge, or whatever your name may be,” he said, “I am willing to accept you as one in the secret service of France, if you like, but I am not willing to accept you for the military authority in this village.”

And he got up. But he was interrupted. The American, who had been altogether silent, arose. His face was like plaster but he maintained his irreproachable manners. He bowed from the hips, clicking his heels together.

“Permit me to select the dead man!” he said.

And he whipped an automatic pistol out of his pocket. But before he could make his sinister choice, the fingers of the secret agent seized his hand and doubled it back with a snap against the wrist. The weapon exploded, and the American slipped down in a heap on the floor.

“
Mon Dieu
!” cried the Captain of Artillery, “you have killed an American gentleman!”

“No, Monsieur,” replied the secret agent, “I have merely killed a gentleman who was not able to whistle all of Blücher's March.”

“
Diable
!” cried the officer, putting out his hands in a hopeless gesture, “how does this Blücher's March signal the German lines?”

“Monsieur,” said the secret agent, “it does not signal them at all. Your host signaled them by
the simple device of opening and closing the shutter to his window.… I observed this, Monsieur, when I passed through the village this morning. Closed, the window shutter meant your batteries were advanced; opened, it meant they were retired. The Germans had only to watch that shutter with a mariner's glass.”

“Monsieur,” said the Captain of Artillery, in a sort of wonder, “who is this dead man and who are you?”

“I can answer that,” said the old peasant, taking up his bullfinch from the table as though no event of importance had occurred, “the dead man is the Junker Lieutenant who shamed me, and the other is Monsieur Jonquelle, the Prefect of Police of Paris.”

Monsieur Jonquelle, the Prefect of Police of Paris, was a moment late.

An angry voice reached him at the turn of the path. It was a tense, low, menacing voice. The words were not clear, but the intent in the voice was unmistakable. For a mere fraction of time he remained motionless as in some indecision; then he went forward swiftly.

It was evening. The soft colors of a sort of twilight day were on the Mediterranean. The many-colored city of Nice was lying below the mountain of olive-trees and the tropical gardens of the villas of Cimiez. The whole scene was from a country of the fairy; the romantic frontier of some kingdom of wonder legend.

There were two persons on the long terrace of the villa when Monsieur Jonquelle approached. The villa was small and exquisite—a sort of jewel-box hidden in a garden of tropical luxuriance, inclosed by a high wall surmounted by a tile border. The villa was rose color. The tiles of the terrace and the border of the high wall were also rose
color. It was a dainty and sensuous bit of the world, as though raised by some enchantment out of the baked earth of Arabia.

Monsieur Jonquelle interrupted a tragic moment.

A woman sat in a chair midway of this terrace. It was one of those beautiful invalid-chairs made for the out-of-doors by that Italian genius which seeks always to add beauty to the decorative aspect of a garden. The chair was white. The gown of the woman in it was blue; it looked black in the soft evening light and against the rose-colored villa and the white chair.

The woman did not move. Her small, shapely head, as from fatigue, rested against the high back of the chair. It was crowned with a great weight of hair, as yellow and as heavy as gold, built up into a wonderful coiffure that resembled in its vague outlines the helmet of Minerva. Her hands and her elbows lay on the arms of the chair. Beside her, a step beyond, the man who had arrived a moment before Monsieur Jonquelle stood in an attitude of menace. The visible personality of the man was puzzling. That he was an American one could instantly see. But one could not so easily determine his status or his habits of life. He had some of the physical characteristics, some of the tricks of dress of one engaged in an artistic vocation; some of the swift, accurate, precise gestures
of one skilled in the plastic arts. But there was a vigor and determination about the man that one is not accustomed to find in a mere artist—an element of ruthless decision, and of swift acts as of one accustomed to peril in his trade.

The attitude of the man and the voice that had reached Monsieur Jonquelle at the turn of the path were unmistakable in their menace. But the woman did not move. Neither the sudden appearance of the man, nor his words, nor his menacing gesture had in any respect disturbed her equanimity.

The scene changed as at the snap of invisible fingers. And Monsieur Jonquelle came up on to the terrace. The man fell into the posture of one at ease before an interrupting visitor, and the woman looked up languidly as though undisturbed; as though no human drama, however tragic, could disturb her; as though she were forever beyond the stimulus of any human emotion.

It was clear that the man had no knowledge of Monsieur Jonquelle, but to the woman he was evidently a familiar figure. His appearance must have been an immense surprise to her, as the appearance of the man beyond her had been, but there was no evidence of it in her voice.

She did not rise. But she spoke softly.

“You do me a conspicuous honor,” she said.
“You will have been very much concerned about me to search me out here.”

Then she presented the man beyond her.

“Martin Dillard,” she said, “an American— Monsieur Jonquelle.”

The Frenchman and also the woman, one thought, observed the American closely to note any recognition of either the name or the appearance of the new arrival. But there was none. He did not know either Monsieur Jonquelle or his trade.

She touched a bell concealed somewhere in the arm of the chair. A maid appeared. An added direction brought two chairs. The American sat down where he was, but Monsieur Jonquelle carried his chair a little beyond the woman to the edge of the terrace. He put down his hat, his stick, and his gloves.

“I am fortunate to find you,” he said; “I hoped to arrive a moment earlier.”

The woman smiled.

“In that event,” she said, “you might have failed to find my friend, Martin Dillard, the American. You will be interested, I am sure, to meet him and to know why he is angry.”

She turned slightly toward the American. Her face in the soft light seemed smiling, but it was, in fact, inscrutable.

“Monsieur Jonquelle,” she explained, “is an
old acquaintance—a very old acquaintance. I have no secrets from him. He will know, I am sure, precisely the reason for my flight here and your cause of anger against me.”