CHAPTER IV

THE METHODS OF MONSIEUR DE SARTINES

De Sartines said a word to his coachman and, without even glancing down the street to see if he were followed or not, entered the house, the door of which Rochefort had opened with a key. They passed upstairs to the apartments of the Count. In the sitting-room de Sartines cast off his cloak, flung it on a chair with his hat, and took his seat.

“Now let us talk for a moment,” said he. “And first, a word about yourself. It is unfortunate that you killed that man, considering that he was one of Choiseul’s agents.”

“I killed him in self-defence,” said Rochefort; “or at least, I can say that he attempted my life before I took his.”

“Oh, the killing is nothing,” said de Sartines. “The vermin is well out of the way. What really matters is, that you balked Choiseul in his attempt to spy upon Dubarry’s secrets. Of course, he may never know the truth of the matter; but, if he does—well, you will need a lot of protection, and we will endeavour to find it for you. Now to the Comtesse’s business. It is quite clear that the old Béarn woman is literally out of court. Every other woman in Paris or Versailles is equally impossible, or, at least, seemingly so. I, as Minister of Police, have great power; but I am powerless to help, for to help I would have to declare my hand openly, which, as you well may guess, is impossible to one in my position. Besides, my power has limits. I cannot say to one of these Court women: ‘You _shall_ present Madame Dubarry to-night.’ No; yet all the same, I am powerful enough to ensure that presentation, I believe.”

Rochefort listened with interest. It was rarely that de Sartines unbosomed himself, and when he did it was generally only to show a cuirass of steel painted to imitate flesh; but to-night was different. He knew Rochefort to be absolutely reliable to those who trusted him.

“You talk in enigmas, my dear Sartines,” said the young man. “You say you are powerless, and then you say you are powerful enough to assure the presentation. Please explain yourself.”

“No man can explain himself, with the exception, perhaps, of Monsieur Rousseau, whose ‘Confessions’ you have perhaps read. But a man may explain his methods. Well, my methods are these. Being by nature a rather stupid and lazy man, I seek out the cleverest and most active men I can find to act for me. People fancy that my life is spent in searching for criminals, political offenders, and so forth; on the contrary, it is spent in looking for clever men. I have one gift, without which no man can hold a position like mine. I know men.

“More than that, I hunt for men and buy them just as M. Boehmer hunts for and buys diamonds. The consequence is that I have more genius at my command in the Hôtel de Sartines than his Majesty has at Versailles or Choiseul at the Ministry. I have Escritain, the greatest linguist in France, who knows not only all European languages, but all dialects. I have Fremin, the first cryptographer. I have Jumeau, the first accountant, who could reduce the value of the universe to francs and sous and, more important, discover an error in his work of one centime. I have Beauregard, the bravest man in France; Verpellieux, the best swordsman; Valjean, whose tongue would talk him into the nether regions and whose hand, if it caught hold of some new Eurydice, would bring her out, even though it fetched everything else with her. I have Formineux, a blind man whose sense of smell is phenomenal; and I have Lavenne, the greatest Secret Service agent in the world. Bring me a book you can’t translate, the name of a man you can’t find, a crime you can’t fathom, a suspicion you want verified, you will find the answer at the Hôtel de Sartines. One of these brave men, who are mine, will read the riddle.

“But outside the Hôtel de Sartines I have other men at my service. Yes, you will find a lot of people attached to us. You yourself, my dear Rochefort, have just become one of us. The Hôtel de Sartines has touched you.”

Rochefort laughed. “If it does not touch me any more unpleasantly than now, I shall not mind,” said he. “But you have not yet explained.”

“What?”

“Your plans as to the Dubarry.”

“Oh, that. I was coming to that; let me come to it in my own way. I have shown you the power at my disposal. I have all sorts of brains ready to work for me, all sorts of hands ready to do my bidding; but all those brains and hands would be useless to me had I not an intimate knowledge of their capacities, and had I not the power of selection. More than that, my dear Rochefort; I have, I believe, the dramatist’s gift of valuing and using shades of character. Dealing, as I do, with the most complex and highly civilized society in the world, I would be lost without this gift, which might have made me a good dramatist if Fate had not condemned me to be a policeman. In fact, my work at Versailles and in Paris has mainly to do with the reading backwards through plots, far more complicated than the plots of Molière, to find the authors’ names.

“Now I come to the Dubarry business. This woman must be presented to-morrow night. Choiseul has as good as stolen her carriage and her dressmaker—that will be put right. Choiseul has succeeded in making Madame de Béarn half boil herself to death. But Choiseul, who fancies that he has the whole business in the palm of his hand, has reckoned without the Hôtel de Sartines and the geniuses whom I have collected for years past, just as Monsieur d’Anjou collects seals or Monsieur de Duras Roman coins.

“I am about to employ one of these geniuses to work a miracle for Madame Dubarry. His name is Ferminard. He lives at the Maison Gambrinus—which is a tavern in the Porcheron quarter—and, as you have promised to serve us, you will go there to-morrow at noon, or a little before, with my agent Lavenne, and conduct this Ferminard to the Rue de Valois. Lavenne will not go to the Rue de Valois, for I will have other work for him to do, and besides, it is just as well for him not to go near the Dubarrys’ house, for, clever as he is in the art of disguise, Choiseul will have men watching all day who have the scent of hounds. We must run no risks.”

“Let us understand,” said Rochefort. “I am to meet your agent, Lavenne—where?”

“He will call for you here.”

“Good! Then I am to go with him to the Maison Gambrinus, find Ferminard, and conduct him to Madame Dubarry’s house in the Rue de Valois—all that seems very simple.”

“Perhaps. But you must be on your guard, for this Ferminard is a _bon viveur_. Taverns simply suck him in, and were he to get lost in one, you would find him next drunk and useless.”

“A drunkard?”

“No, a man who drinks. Never look down on these people, Rochefort. Drink may be simply the rags a beggar walks in, or the robes and regalia that a royal mind adorns itself with to enter the kingdom of dreams.”

“And what am I to tell this Ferminard to do?”

“You are to tell him nothing, simply because you are a stranger to him, and he would look on orders from a stranger as an impertinence. Lavenne, however, knows him to the bone, and is a friend of his. Lavenne will give him private instructions, and then hand him over to you.”

“Very well. I will obey your orders, though they completely mystify me.”

“I assure you,” said de Sartines, “that I have no intention of mystifying you; but I cannot explain my idea to you simply because I have to explain it to Lavenne. It is after four in the morning, and I must get back to the Hôtel de Sartines. There is a man still watching at the corner of the street; he must not follow me. Now, do as I tell you. Take my black cloak and broad-brimmed hat, and put them on. We are both about the same size. Go out, walk down the street, go down the Rue de la Tour, and then through the Rue Picpus, returning here by the Rue de la Vallière. The fool will follow you all the time.”

“And you?”

“And I,” said de Sartines, putting on Rochefort’s cloak and hat, “will slip away to the Hôtel de Sartines, whilst you are leading that _sot_ his dance.”

“But he will follow me back here.”

“Of course he will, and he will see you go in and shut the door. Lavenne will bring you back your cloak and hat in a parcel. The point is, that they will never know that the man in the black cloak and hat, who left the Hôtel Dubarry with Monsieur Rochefort, returned to the Hôtel de Sartines.”

“But your carriage?”

“I told the coachman to take the carriage back to the place it came from. They will not follow an empty carriage; were they to do so, they would get nothing for their pains, as it came from a livery stable managed by the wife of Jumeau, that accountant of whom I spoke just now.”

Rochefort looked in astonishment at this man, whose methods were as intricate and minute as the reasoning power that directed them; whose life was a maze to which he alone possessed the clue, and whose path was never in a straight line.

He followed implicitly the instructions he had received, conscious all the time that he was being tracked, and once glimpsing a stealthy form that slipped from house-shadow to house-shadow. When he returned, de Sartines had vanished, and, casting himself on his bed dressed as he was, wearied with the night’s work, he fell asleep.