Chapter 15

WON--AND LOST

We must have stood confronting each other for fully a minute. Then Leroux dropped his hands and smiled sourly at me.

"You seem--temporarily--to have the advantage of me, M. Hewlett," he said. "I respect your pertinacity, and now at last I am content in having discovered the motive of your enterprise. I thought you were hired by Carson. If you had been frank with me we might have come to an understanding long ago.

"So, since you have managed to come thus far, and since I am a man of business, the best thing we can do is to talk over our difficulties and try to adjust them. You will recall that on the occasion of our meeting in New York I asked you what your price was. But of course you were not then prepared to answer me, since you had your price already. Well, have you come here to get more?"

There was an indescribable insolence in his tone. In spite of the fact that I had him at my mercy, the man's force and courage almost made him my master then.

"You may leave us, Mme. d'Epernay," he said to Jacqueline. "No doubt your absence will spare your feelings, for we are going to be frank in our speech."

"I thank you for your consideration, M. Leroux," replied Jacqueline, and walked quietly out of the room. It occurred to me that Leroux could hardly be more frank than he had been, but I sat down and waited. The ball was clicking round the wheel again, and very faintly, through the roar of the cataracts, I heard the sound of the fiddle below.

Leroux sat down heavily.

"I will put down my cards," he said. "I have you here in my power. I have four men with me. This dotard"--he glanced contemptuously at old Duchaine--"has no bearing on the situation. You can, of course, kill me; but that would not help you. You are in possession of some money belonging to Mme. d'Epernay, and also of certain information that I shall be glad to receive. There is no law in this valley except my will. Give me the information I want, keep your money, and go."

I waited.

"In the first place, are you, or are you not, in Carson's pay? I shall believe your answer because, if you are, I shall offer you a better price to join me, and therefore it will not pay you to lie. But you will not be able to deceive me by pretending to be."

"I am not," I answered.

"Then why did he send you here?"

"I left his employ three days before I met Mme. d'Epernay. If you were in New York you must have seen that I was not there."

"Good. Second, where is Louis d'Epernay?"

"I have never seen the man," I replied.

Leroux glanced incredulously at me.

"Then your meeting with _madame_ was purely an accident?" he inquired. "Your only desire, then, was to get the money you knew she was carrying with her? But how did you know that she was carrying that money?"

I shrugged my shoulders. How was it possible for us to reach an understanding?

"I don't know why you are lying to me," he said. "It is not to your advantage. You must have known that she was in New York; Louis must have told Carson, and he must have told you. And Louis must have told you the secret of the entrance, unless----"

"Listen to me!" I cried furiously. "I will not be badgered with any more questions. I have told you the truth. I met Mme. d'Epernay by accident, and I escorted her toward the _château_, and followed her after you kidnapped her, to protect her from you."

He grunted and glanced at me with an inscrutable expression upon his hard features.

"You are in love with her?" he asked.

"Put it that way if you choose," I answered.

He scowled at me ferociously, and then he began studying my face. I returned stare for stare. Finally he banged his big fist down upon the table.

"Well, it doesn't matter," he said, "because, whatever your purpose, you cannot do any harm. And you understand that she is a married woman. So you will, no doubt, agree to take your money and depart?"

"I shall go if she tells me to go," I answered; but even while I spoke my heart sank, for I had little hope.

"That is easily settled," answered Leroux. "I will bring her back and you shall hear the decision from her own lips."

He left the room, and I sat there alone beside the dotard, listening to the click of the ball and the chink of the coins, and the roar of the twin cataracts above.

In truth, I had no further excuse for staying. I knew what Jacqueline's reply must be.

But there had been a sinister smoothness in Leroux's latest mood. I did not trust the man, for all his bluntness. I suspected something, and I did not intend to relax my guard.

A gentle touch upon the elbow made me leap round in my chair. Old Charles Duchaine had ceased to play and was watching me out of his mild eyes. His fingers stroked my coat-sleeve timidly, as though he were afraid of me.

"Don't go away!" he said with a shrewd leer. "Don't go away!"

"Eh?" I exclaimed, startled at this answer to my own self-questioning.

"Simon is a bad man," whispered the greybeard, putting his nodding head close down to mine. "He won't let you go away. He never lets anyone go when they have come here. He didn't know my little daughter was going, but I was too clever for him, because he wasn't here. They think I am a silly old man, but I know more than they think. Simon thinks he has got me in his power, but he hasn't."

"How is that?" I inquired, startled at the man's sincerity. I fancied that he must have been pretending to be half imbecile for reasons of his own.

"I have a system," leered the dotard. "I can win thousands and millions with it. I have been perfecting it for years. I have sent my little daughter to New York to play. Then I shall put Simon out of the house and we shall all be happy in Quebec together."

I turned from him in disgust, and, after ineffectually tapping my arm for a few moments, he went back to his wheel. But, though I was disappointed to discover that my surmise as to his playing a part was incorrect, his words set me thinking. An imbecile old person is often a fair reader of character. Was Simon plotting something?

He came back with Jacqueline before I could decide.

"If you bid him, _madame_, M. Hewlett is willing to take his departure," said Leroux to her. "Is it your wish that he remain or go?"

"Oh, I want you to go, _monsieur_," said Jacqueline, clasping her hands pleadingly. Her eyes were full of tears, which trickled down her cheeks, and she turned her head away. "There is no reason why you should remain, _monsieur_," she said.

"Are you saying this of your free will, Jacqueline?" I cried.

She nodded, and I saw Simon's evil face crease with suppressed mirth.

I rose up. "Adieu, then, _madame_," I said. "But first permit me to restore the money that I have been keeping for you." And I took out my pocketbook.

Simon stared at me incredulously.

"I do not understand you in the least, now, M. Hewlett," he exclaimed. "You are to keep the money. I do not go back upon my bargains."

"It is not, however, your money," I retorted, though I knew that it soon would be. "I shall return it to Mme. d'Epernay, who entrusted me with it. Beyond that I care nothing as to its ultimate destination, though perhaps I can guess. Naturally I do not carry eight thousand dollars about with me----"

"Ten thousand!" shouted Simon.

"Mme. d'Epernay gave me eight thousand," I said. "I do not know anything about ten thousand. Probably Mr. Daly has the rest. But, as I was saying, I shall give you a check----"

Leroux burst into loud laughter and slapped me heartily upon the shoulder.

"Paul Hewlett," he said, with genuine admiration, "you are as good as a play. My friend, it would have paid you to have accepted my own offer. However, you declined it and I shall not renew it. Well, let us take your check, and it shall be accepted in full settlement." He winked at me and thrust his tongue into his cheek.

I was too sick at heart to pay attention to his buffoonery. I sat down at the table and, taking up a pen which lay there, wrote a check for eight thousand dollars, making it out to Jacqueline d'Epernay. This I handed to her.

"_Adieu, madame_," I said.

"_Adieu, monsieur_," she answered almost inaudibly, her head bent low.

I went out of the room, still gripping my pistol, and I took care to let Simon see it as we descended the stairs side by side. The noisy laughter in the ballroom had ceased, but I heard Raoul and Jean Petitjean quarrelling, and their thick voices told me that they were in no condition to aid their master.

Then there were only Leroux and Philippe Lacroix to deal with. I could have saved the situation.

What a fool I had been! What an irresolute fool! I never learned.

As we reached the bottom of the stairs Philippe Lacroix came out of the ballroom carrying a candle. I saw his melancholy, pale face twist with surprise as he perceived me.

"Philippe, this is M. Paul Hewlett," said Leroux. "To-morrow you will convey him to the cabin of Père Antoine, where he will be able to make his own plans. You will go by way of _le Vieil Ange_."

Lacroix started violently, muttered something, and passed up the stairs, often turning to stare, as I surmised from the brief occasions of his footsteps.

"Now, M. Hewlett, I shall show you your sleeping-quarters for to-night," Leroux continued to me, and conducted me out into the fenced yard. A number of Eskimo-dogs were lying there, and one of them came bounding up to me and began to sniff at my clothes, betraying every sign of recognition.

This I knew to be the beast that I had taken to the home. How it had managed to make its escape I could not imagine; but it had evidently come northward with hardly a pause; and not only that, but had accompanied us on our journey from St. Boniface at a distance, like the half-wild creature that it was.

Two sleighs were standing before the huts. Leroux led me past them and knocked at the door of the largest cabin.

"Pierre Caribou!" he shouted.

He was facing the door and did not see what I saw at the little window on the other side. I saw the face of the old Indian, distorted with a grimace of fury as he eyed Leroux.

Next moment he stood cringing before him, his features a mask. Looking in, I saw a huge stove which nearly filled the interior, and seated beside it the middle-aged squaw.

"This gentleman will sleep here to-night," said Leroux curtly. "In the morning at sunrise harness a sleigh for him and M. Lacroix. Adieu, M. Hewlett," he continued, turning to me. "And be sure your check will never be presented."

There was something so sinister in his manner that again I felt that thrill of fear which he seemed able to inspire in me.

He was less human than any man I had known. He impressed me always as the incarnation of resolute evil. That was his strength--he was both bad and resolute. If bad men were in general brave, evil would rule the world as he ruled his. He swung upon his heel and left me.

I went in with Pierre Caribou, and the squaw glided out of the cabin. There were two couches of the kind they used to call ottomans inside, which had evidently once formed part of the _château_ furnishings for their faded splendour accorded little with the decrepit interior of the hut.

I looked at my watch. I had thought it must be midnight, and it was only eight. Within three hours I had won Jacqueline and lost her forever. With Leroux in my power, I had yielded and gone away.

And on the morrow I should arrive at Père Antoine's hut just when he expected me.

Surely the mockery of fate could go no further!

I sank down on one of the divans and buried my face in my hands, while Pierre Caribou busied himself preparing food over the stove.