“What next?  It appears you escaped the redoubted Vigo,” Mayenne went on in his every-day tone; and the vision faded, and I saw him once more as the greatest noble and greatest scoundrel in France, and feared and hated him, and Lucas too, as the betrayer of my dear lord Etienne.

“Trust me for that.”

“Then came you here?”

“Not at once.  I tracked Mar and this Broux to Mar’s old lodgings at the Three Lanterns.  When I had dogged them to the door I came here and worked upon Lorance to write Mar a letter commanding his presence.  For I thought that the night was yet young and to-morrow he might be out of my reach.  Well, it appears he had not the courage to come but he sent the boy.  I was not sorry.  I thought I could settle him more quietly at the inn.  The boy went back once and almost ran into me in the court, but he did not see me.  I entered and asked for lodgings; but the fat old fool of a host put me through the catechism like an inquisitor, and finally declared the inn was full.  I said I would take a garret; but it was no use.  Out I must trudge.  I did, and paid two men to get into a brawl in front of the house, that the inn people might run out to look.  But instead they locked the gate and put up the shutters in the cabaret.”

Mayenne burst out laughing.

“It was not your night, Paul.”

“No,” said Lucas, shortly.

“And what then?  It did not take you till three o’clock to be put out of the inn.”

“No,” Lucas answered; “I spoke to you of the varlet Pontou with whom Grammont had quarrelled.  He had shut him up in a closet of the house in the Rue Coupejarrets.  After the fight in the court we all went our ways, forgetting him.  So I paid the house a visit; I was afraid some one else might find him and he might tell tales.”

“And will he tell tales?”

“No,” said Lucas, “he will tell no tales.”

“How about your spy in the Hotel St. Quentin?”

“Martin, the clerk?  Oh, I warned him off before I left,” Lucas said easily.  “He will lie perdu till we want him again.  And Grammont, you see, is dead too.  There is no direct witness to the thing but the boy Broux.”

“That’s as good as to say there is none,” Mayenne answered; “for I have the boy.”

XVI

Mayenne’s ward.

Lucas sprang up.

“You have him?  Where?”

“Yes, I have him,” Mayenne answered with his tantalizing slowness.

“Alive?”

“I suppose so.  He had his flogging but I told them I was not done with him.  I thought we might have a use for him.  He is in the oratory there.”

“Diable!  Listening?” cried Lucas, as if a quick doubt of Mayenne’s good faith to him struck his mind.

“Certainly not,” Mayenne answered.  “The door is bolted; he might be in the street for all he can hear.  The wall was built for that.”