Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (428 page)

CHAPTER XVII
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THE DUNGEON OF PORTILLAC
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The desperadoes were as much astonished as was De Catinat when they found that they had recaptured in this extraordinary manner the messenger whom they had given up for lost. A volley of oaths and exclamations broke from them, as, on tearing off the huge red coat of the coachman, they disclosed the sombre dress of the young American.

“A thousand thunders!” cried one. “And this is the man whom that devil’s brat Latour would make out to be dead!”

“And how came he here?”

“And where is Etienne Arnaud?”

“He has stabbed Etienne. See the great cut in the coat!”

“Ay; and see the colour of his hand! He has stabbed him, and taken his coat and hat.”

“What! while we were all within stone’s cast!”

“Ay; there is no other way out of it.”

“By my soul!” cried old Despard, “I had never much love for old Etienne, but I have emptied a cup of wine with him before now, and I shall see that he has justice. Let us cast these reins round the fellow’s neck and hang him upon this tree.”

Several pairs of hands were already unbuckling the harness of the dead horse, when De Vivonne pushed his way into the little group, and with a few curt words checked their intended violence.

“It is as much as your lives are worth to touch him,” said he.

“But he has slain Etienne Arnaud.”

“That score may be settled afterwards. To-night he is the king’s messenger. Is the other all safe?”

“Yes, he is here.”

“Tie this man, and put him in beside him. Unbuckle the traces of the dead horse. So! Now, De Carnac, put your own into the harness. You can mount the box and drive, for we have not very far to go.”

The changes were rapidly made; Amos Green was thrust in beside De Catinat, and the carriage was soon toiling up the steep incline which it had come down so precipitately. The American had said not a word since his capture, and had remained absolutely stolid, with his hands crossed over his chest whilst his fate was under discussion. Now that he was alone once more with his comrade, however, he frowned and muttered like a man who feels that fortune has used him badly.

“Those infernal horses!” he grumbled. “Why, an American horse would have taken to the water like a duck. Many a time have I swum my old stallion Sagamore across the Hudson. Once over the river, we should have had a clear lead to Paris.”

“My dear friend,” cried De Catinat, laying his manacled hands upon those of his comrade, “can you forgive me for speaking as I did upon the way from Versailles?”

“Tut, man! I never gave it a thought.”

“You were right a thousand times, and I was, as you said, a fool — a blind, obstinate fool. How nobly you have stood by me! But how came you there? Never in my life have I been so astonished as when I saw your face.”

Amos Green chuckled to himself. “I thought that maybe it would be a surprise to you if you knew who was driving you,” said he. “When I was thrown from my horse I lay quiet, partly because I wanted to get a grip of my breath, and partly because it seemed to me to be more healthy to lie than to stand with all those swords clinking in my ears. Then they all got round you, and I rolled into the ditch, crept along it, got on the cross-road in the shadow of the trees, and was beside the carriage before ever they knew that I was gone. I saw in a flash that there was only one way by which I could be of use to you. The coachman was leaning round with his head turned to see what was going on behind him. I out with my knife, sprang up on the front wheel, and stopped his tongue forever.”

“What! without a sound!”

“I have not lived among the Indians for nothing.”

“And then?”

“I pulled him down into the ditch, and I got into his coat and his hat.

I did not scalp him.”

“Scalp him? Great heavens! Such things are only done among savages.”

“Ah! I thought that maybe it was not the custom of the country. I am glad now that I did not do it. I had hardly got the reins before they were all back and bundled you into the coach. I was not afraid of their seeing me, but I was scared lest I should not know which road to take, and so set them on the trail. But they made it easy to me by sending some of their riders in front, so I did well until I saw that by-track and made a run for it. We’d have got away, too, if that rogue hadn’t shot the horse, and if the beasts had faced the water.”

The guardsman again pressed his comrade’s hands. “You have been as true to me as hilt to blade,” said he. “It was a bold thought and a bold deed.”

“And what now?” asked the American.

“I do not know who these men are, and I do not know whither they are taking us.”

“To their villages, likely, to burn us.”

De Catinat laughed in spite of his anxiety. “You will have it that we are back in America again,” said he. “They don’t do things in that way in France.”

“They seem free enough with hanging in France. I tell you, I felt like a smoked-out ‘coon when that trace was round my neck.”

“I fancy that they are taking us to some place where they can shut us up until this business blows over.”

“Well, they’ll need to be smart about it.”

“Why?”

“Else maybe they won’t find us when they want us.”

“What do you mean?”

For answer, the American, with a twist and a wriggle, drew his two hands apart, and held them in front of his comrade’s face.

“Bless you, it is the first thing they teach the papooses in an Indian wigwam. I’ve got out of a Huron’s thongs of raw hide before now, and it ain’t very likely that a stiff stirrup leather will hold me. Put your hands out.” With a few dexterous twists he loosened De Catinat’s bonds, until he also was able to slip his hands free. “Now for your feet, if you’ll put them up. They’ll find that we are easier to catch than to hold.”

But at that moment the carriage began to slow down, and the clank of the hoofs of the riders in front of them died suddenly away. Peeping through the windows, the prisoners saw a huge dark building stretching in front of them, so high and so broad that the night shrouded it in upon every side. A great archway hung above them, and the lamps shone on the rude wooden gate, studded with ponderous clamps and nails. In the upper part of the door was a small square iron grating, and through this they could catch a glimpse of the gleam of a lantern and of a bearded face which looked out at them. De Vivonne, standing in his stirrups, craned his neck up towards the grating, so that the two men most interested could hear little of the conversation which followed. They saw only that the horseman held a gold ring up in the air, and that the face above, which had begun by shaking and frowning, was now nodding and smiling. An instant later the head disappeared, the door swung open upon screaming hinges, and the carriage drove on into the courtyard beyond, leaving the escort, with the exception of De Vivonne, outside. As the horses pulled up, a knot of rough fellows clustered round, and the two prisoners were dragged roughly out. In the light of the torches which flared around them they could see that they were hemmed in by high turreted walls upon every side. A bulky man with a bearded face, the same whom they had seen at the grating, was standing in the centre of the group of armed men issuing his orders.

“To the upper dungeon, Simon!” he cried. “And see that they have two bundles of straw and a loaf of bread until we learn our master’s will.”

“I know not who your master may be,” said De Catinat, “but I would ask you by what warrant he dares to stop two messengers of the king while travelling in his service?”

“By St. Denis, if my master play the king a trick, it will be but tie and tie,” the stout man answered, with a grin. “But no more talk! Away with them, Simon, and you answer to me for their safe-keeping.”

It was in vain that De Catinat raved and threatened, invoking the most terrible menaces upon all who were concerned in detaining him. Two stout knaves thrusting him from behind and one dragging in front forced him through a narrow gate and along a stone-flagged passage, a small man in black buckram with a bunch of keys in one hand and a swinging lantern in the other leading the way. Their ankles had been so tied that they could but take steps of a foot in length. Shuffling along, they made their way down three successive corridors and through three doors, each of which was locked and barred behind them. Then they ascended a winding stone stair, hollowed out in the centre by the feet of generations of prisoners and of jailers, and finally they were thrust into a small square dungeon, and two trusses of straw were thrown in after them. An instant later a heavy key turned in the lock, and they were left to their own meditations.

Very grim and dark those meditations were in the case of De Catinat. A stroke of good luck had made him at court, and now this other of ill fortune had destroyed him. It would be in vain that he should plead his own powerlessness. He knew his royal master well. He was a man who was munificent when his orders were obeyed, and inexorable when they miscarried. No excuse availed with him. An unlucky man was as abhorrent to him as a negligent one. In this great crisis the king had trusted him with an all-important message, and that message had not been delivered. What could save him now from disgrace and from ruin? He cared nothing for the dim dungeon in which he found himself, nor for the uncertain fate which hung over his head, but his heart turned to lead when he thought of his blasted career, and of the triumph of those whose jealousy had been aroused by his rapid promotion. There were his people in Paris, too — his sweet Adele, his old uncle, who had been as good as a father to him. What protector would they have in their troubles now that he had lost the power that might have shielded them? How long would it be before they were exposed once more to the brutalities of Dalbert and his dragoons? He clenched his teeth at the thought, and threw himself down with a groan upon the litter of straw dimly visible in the faint light which streamed through the single window.

But his energetic comrade had yielded to no feeling of despondency. The instant that the clang of the prison door had assured him that he was safe from interruption he had slipped off the bonds which held him and had felt all round the walls and flooring to see what manner of place this might be. His search had ended in the discovery of a small fireplace at one corner, and of two great clumsy billets of wood, which seemed to have been left there to serve as pillows for the prisoners. Having satisfied himself that the chimney was so small that it was utterly impossible to pass even his head up it, he drew the two blocks of wood over to the window, and was able, by placing one above the other and standing on tiptoe on the highest, to reach the bars which guarded it. Drawing himself up, and fixing one toe in an inequality of the wall, he managed to look out on to the courtyard which they had just quitted. The carriage and De Vivonne were passing out through the gate as he looked, and he heard a moment later the slam of the heavy door and the clatter of hoofs from the troop of horsemen outside. The seneschal and his retainers had disappeared; the torches, too, were gone, and, save for the measured tread of a pair of sentinels in the yard twenty feet beneath him, all was silent throughout the great castle.

And a very great castle it was. Even as he hung there with straining hands his eyes were running in admiration and amazement over the huge wall in front of him, with its fringe of turrets and pinnacles and battlements all lying so still and cold in the moonlight. Strange thoughts will slip into a man’s head at the most unlikely moments. He remembered suddenly a bright summer day over the water when first he had come down from Albany, and how his father had met him on the wharf by the Hudson, and had taken him through the water-gate to see Peter Stuyvesant’s house, as a sign of how great this city was which had passed from the Dutch to the English. Why, Peter Stuyvesant’s house and Peter Stuyvesant’s Bowery villa put together would not make one wing of this huge pile, which was itself a mere dog-kennel beside the mighty palace at Versailles. He would that his father were here now; and then, on second thoughts, he would not, for it came back to him that he was a prisoner in a far land, and that his sight-seeing was being done through the bars of a dungeon window.

The window was large enough to pass his body through if it were not for those bars. He shook them and hung his weight upon them, but they were as thick as his thumb and firmly welded. Then, getting some strong hold for his other foot, he supported himself by one hand while he picked with his knife at the setting of the iron. It was cement, as smooth as glass and as hard as marble. His knife turned when he tried to loosen it. But there was still the stone. It was sandstone, not so very hard. If he could cut grooves in it, he might be able to draw out bars, cement, and all. He sprang down to the floor again, and was thinking how he should best set to work, when a groan drew his attention to his companion.