Chapter 7

CAPTAIN DUBOIS

Clang! Clang!

It sounded as though some titanic blacksmith were pounding on a mighty anvil to a devil's chorus of laughter. And I was bound to the steel, and each blow awakened hideous echoes which went resounding through my brain forever.

Clang! Clang!

The blows were rhythmical, and there was a perceptible interval between each one and the next; they were drawn out and intolerably slow, and seemed to have lasted through uncountable eons.

I strove to free myself. I knew that it was a dream from which I must awaken, for the fate of the whole world depended on my awakening from the bonds of sleep.

It would be so easy to sink down into a deeper slumber, where even the clanging of the anvil beneath those hammer strokes would not longer be heard; but against this was the imperative need to save--not the world now, but----

The name was as sweet as honey upon my lips. It was something worth living for. It was--Jacqueline!

The remembrance freed me. Dimly consciousness began to return. I knew the hammering was my own heart, forcing the blood heavily through the arteries of the brain.

That name--Annette--Jeannette--Jacqueline!

I had gone back to my rooms and saw a body upon the floor. Jacqueline had killed somebody, and I must save her!

All through the mist-wrapped borderland of life I heard her voice crying to me, her need of me dragging me back to consciousness. I struggled up out of the pit, and I saw light.

Suddenly I realized that my eyes were wide open and that I was staring at the moon over the housetops. With consciousness came pain. My head throbbed almost unbearably, and I was stiff with cold. I raised myself weakly, and then I became aware that somebody was bending over me.

It was a roughly dressed, rough-looking denizen of the low quarter into which I had strayed. His arms were beneath my neck, raising my head, and he was looking into my face with an expression of great concern upon his own good-natured one.

"I thought you were dead!" I could make out amid the stream of his dialect, but the remainder of his speech was beyond my understanding.

"Help me!" I muttered, reaching for his hand.

He understood the gesture, for he assisted me to my feet, and, after I had leaned weakly against the wall of a house for a minute or two, I found that I could stand unassisted.

I looked round in bewilderment.

"Where am I?" I asked, still bound by that first memory of New York.

"In Sous-le-Cap, _m'sieur_," answered the man.

I felt in my pocket for my watch and drew it out. It was strange that the men had not robbed me, but I suppose they had become terrified at their work and had run off. However, I did not think of that at the time.

I think my action was an automatic one, the natural refuge for a perplexed man. But the sight of the time brought back my memory, and the events of the day rushed back into my mind with a force that seemed to send an accession of new strength through my limbs.

It was a few minutes past eight. And the boat sailed at nine. I must have lain stunned in Sous-le-Cap Street for an hour and a half, at least, and only the supreme necessity of awakening, realized through unconsciousness, had saved me from dying under the snows.

I found that I could walk, and having explained to the man that I wished to go to the château, was taken by him to the top of a winding road near at hand, from which I could see my destination at no great distance from me.

Dismissing my friendly guide, and sending him back rejoicing with liberal largesse, I hurried as quickly as I could make my way along the ramparts, past the frowning, ancient cannon skirting the park, until I burst into the château at half past the hour.

I must have presented a dreadful spectacle, for my hair and collar were matted with blood, and I saw the guests stare and shrink from me. The clerk came toward me and stopped me at the entrance to the elevator.

"Where as Miss Hewlett?" I gasped.

"Didn't you meet her? She left here nearly an hour ago."

I caught him by the arm, and I think he imagined that I was going to seize him by the throat also, for he backed away from me, and I saw a look of fear come into his eyes. The elevator attendant came running between us.

"Your friend----" he began.

"My _friend_?" I cried.

"He came for her and said that you had met with an accident," the clerk continued. "She went with him at once. He took her away in a sleigh. I was sure that you had missed her when you came in."

But already I was half-way across the hall and running for the door. I raced wildly across the court and toward the terrace.

The meaning of the scheme was clear. Jacqueline was on Captain Duhamel's boat, which sailed at nine. And only twenty minutes remained to me. If I had not had the good luck to meet Dubois!

I must have noticed a clock somewhere during the minute that I was in the château, and though I had not been conscious of it, the after-image loomed before my eyes. As I ran now I could see a huge phantom clock, the dial marked with enormous Roman letters, and the hands moving with dreadful swiftness toward the hour of nine.

I had underestimated Leroux's shrewdness. He must have telegraphed instructions from New York before my train was out of the county, secured the boat, laid his plans during his journey northward, and had me struck down while Jacqueline was stolen from my care. And he had spared no details, even to enlisting the aid of Père Antoine.

If he had known that my destination was the same as his, he might have waited. But it was not the character of the man to wait, any more than it was to participate personally in his schemes. He worked through others, sitting back and pulling the strings, and he struck, each blow on time.

I ought to have known that. I should have read him better. I had always dawdled. I trusted to the future, instead of acting. What chance had I against a mind like his?

I was a novice at chess, pitting myself against a master at the game.

I must have been running aimlessly up and down the terrace, blindly searching for a road down to the lower town, for a man seized me by the sleeve, and I looked into the face of the hotel clerk again. He seemed to realize that more was the matter even than my appearance indicated, for he asked no questions, but apparently divined my movements.

"This way!" he said, and hurried me to a sort of subway entrance, and down a flight of steps. Before me I saw the turnstile which led to a cable railway. He paid my fare and thrust me into a car. A boy came to close the latticed door.

"Wait!" I gasped. "Who was it that called?"

"The man with the mustache who asked for you--about whom you inquired."

I turned away. I had thought it was Leroux. Of course it had not been he.

The car glided down the cliff, and stopped a few seconds later, I emerged through another turnstile and found myself in the lower town again at the foot of the precipice, above which rose the château with its imposing façade, the ramparts, and the towering citadel.

The hands of the phantom clock pointed to ten minutes of nine. But I knew the gulf lay before me at the end of the short, narrow street that led down to it, up which I had passed two hours before upon that journey which so nearly ended in the snow-drifts of Souse-le-Cap.

I reached the wharf and raced along the planks. I was in time, although the engines were throbbing in the _Sainte-Vierge_. But it was not she, but the dark _Claire_ I sought at that moment, and I dashed toward her.

A man barred my approach. He caught me in his strong arms and held me fast. I dash my fists against his face, but he would not let me go.

"Are you mad, _monsieur_?" he burst out as I continued to struggle. And then I recognized my captor as Captain Dubois.

"Jacqueline is on the _Claire_!" I cried, trying to make him understand. "They took her there. They----"

"It is all right," answered Dubois, holding me with one hand, while with the other he wiped a blood drop from his lip where I had struck him. "It is all right. I have her."

I stared wildly at him. "She is on the _Claire_!" I cried again.

"No, _mon ami_. She is aboard the _Sainte-Vierge_," replied Dubois, chuckling, "and if you wish to accompany _mademoiselle_ you must come with me at once, for we are getting up steam."

I could not believe him. I thought that Leroux had tampered with the honest man. It was not until he had taken me, half forcibly, aboard, and opened the cabin door, that I saw her. She was seated upon her berth, and she rose and came toward me with a glad little cry.

"Jacqueline!" I cried, and clasped her in my arms for joy, and quite forgot.

A dancing shadow fell upon the wall behind the oil-lamp. The honest captain was rubbing his hands in the doorway and chuckling with delight.

"It is all right, it is all right; excuse me, _monsieur_," he said, and closed the door on us. But I called him, and he returned, not very reluctantly.

"What has happened, captain?" I asked. "You are not going to leave me in suspense?"

"But what has happened to you, _monsieur_?" he asked, with great concern, as he saw the blood on my coat-collar, "You have met with an accident?"

Jacqueline cried out and ran for water, and made me sit down, and began bathing my head. I contrived to whisper something of what had occurred during the moments when Jacqueline flitted to and fro. Dubois swore roundly.

"It is my fault, _monsieur_," he said. "I should have known. I should have accompanied you home. It would be a tough customer who would venture to meddle with Alfred Dubois! But I was anxious to get to the telegraph office to inform M. Danton of your coming. And I suspected something, too, for I knew that Leroux had something more in his mind than simply to convey some of his men to St. Boniface at such expense.

"So as soon as I had finished telegraphing I hurried home and bade adieu to Marie and the little Madeline and the two nephews, and then I came back to the boat--and that part I shall tell you later, for _mademoiselle_ knows nothing of the plot against her, and has been greatly distressed for you. So it shall be understood that you fell down and hurt your head on the ice--eh?"

I agreed to this. "But what did she think?" I asked, as Jacqueline went back for some more water.

"That you had sent her to the _Sainte-Vierge_," he answered, "and that you were to follow her here--as you did. Even now the nephews are searching the lower town for you."

"But if I had not come before nine?"

"I should have waited all night, _monsieur_, even though I had lost my post for it," he said explosively, and I reached out and gripped his hand.

"You may not have seen the baggage here," continued the captain slyly.

I glanced round me. Upon the floor stood the two suit-cases, which should have been in our rooms in the château, and Jacqueline was busily tearing up some filmy material in hers for bandages.

I looked at Dubois in astonishment.

"Ah, _monsieur_, I sent for those," he said, "and paid your bill also. When I fight Simon Leroux I do not do things by halves. You see, _monsieur_, wise though he is, there are other minds equal to his own, and since he killed my brother, I----"

Here he nearly broke down, and I looked discreetly away.

"One question of curiosity, _monsieur_, if it is permissible," he said a little later. "Why does Leroux wish so much to stop your marriage with _mademoiselle_ that he is ready to stoop to assassination and kidnapping?"

My heart felt very warm toward the good man. I knew how that loose end in the romance that he had built up troubled him. And, though I hardly knew myself, I must give him some satisfactory solution of his problem.

"Because he is himself in love with her," I said.

The captain clenched his fists. "God forbid!" he muttered. "They say his wife died of a broken heart. Ah, _monsieur_, swear to me that this shall never come about, that mademoiselle become his wife. Swear it to me, _mon ami_!"

I swore it, and we shook hands again. I was sorry for my deception then, and afterward I had occasion to remember it.

Five minutes later we had cast off, and the _Sainte-Vierge_ steamed slowly through the drift ice that packed the gulf. There were no lights upon the _Claire_, and I surmised that the conspirators were keeping quietly hidden in expectation of Jacqueline's arrival, though how Dubois had outwitted them I could not at the time surmise.

However, there was little doubt that once the trick was discovered the _Claire_ would follow on our heels.

Standing on deck, I watched the lights of Levis and Quebec draw together as we steamed eastward. I cast a last look at the château and the ramparts. I felt it would be many days before I set eyes on them again.

Then I sought my cabin and fell asleep, dreaming of Jacqueline.