can refuse nothing to my host – to anybody else my name is the only thing I should refuse. I am called Captain Dieppe."
"Of the French service? Though you speak Italian excellently."
"Ah, that accent of mine! No, not of the French service – in fact, not of any service. I have been in many services, but I can show you no commission as captain."
For the first time the Count smiled.
"It is, perhaps, a sobriquet?" he asked, but with no offensive air or insinuation.
"The spontaneous tribute of my comrades all over the world," answered Dieppe, proudly – "is it for me to refuse it?"
"By no means," agreed his host, smiling still; "I don't doubt that you have amply earned it."
Dieppe's bow confirmed the supposition while it acknowledged the compliment.
Civilities such as these, when aided by dinner and a few glasses of red wine, soon passed into confidences – on the Captain's side at least. Accustomed to keep other people's secrets, he burdened himself with few of his own.
"I have always had something of a passion for politics," he confessed, after giving his host an account of some stirring events in South America in which he had borne a part.
"You surprise me," was the Count's comment.
"Perhaps I should say," Dieppe explained, "for handling those forces which lie behind politics. That has been my profession." The Count looked up.
"Oh, I 'm no sentimentalist," Dieppe went on. "I ask for my pay – I receive it – and sometimes I contrive to keep it."
"You interest me," said his host, in whose manner Dieppe recognised an attractive simplicity.
"But in my last enterprise – well, there are accidents in every trade." His shrug was very good-natured.
"The enterprise failed?" asked the Count, sympathetically.
"Certainly, or I should not be enjoying your hospitality. Moreover I failed too, for I had to skip out of the country in such haste that I left behind me fifty thousand francs, and the police have laid hands on it. It was my – what shall I call it? My little pourboire." He sighed lightly, and then smiled again. "So I am a homeless wanderer, content if I can escape the traps of police agents."
"You anticipate being annoyed in that way?"
"They are on my track, depend upon it." He touched the outside of his breast pocket. "I carry – but no matter. The pursuit only adds a spice to my walks, and so long as I don't need to sell my revolver for bread – ." He checked himself abruptly, a frown of shame or vexation on his face. "I beg your pardon," he went on, "I beg your pardon. But you won't take me for a beggar?"
"I regret what you have said only because you said it before I had begged a favour of you – a favour I had resolved to venture on asking. But come, though I don't think you a beggar, you shall be sure that I am one." He rose and laid his hand on Dieppe's shoulder. "Stay with me for to-night at least – and for as much longer as you will. Nobody will trouble you. I live in solitude, and your society will lighten it. Let me ring and give orders for your entertainment?"
Dieppe looked up at him; the next moment he caught his hand, crying, "With all my heart, dear host! Your only difficulty shall be to get rid of me."
The Count rang, and directed his servant to prepare the Cardinal's Room. Dieppe noticed that the order was received with a glance of surprise, but the master of the house repeated it, and, as the servant withdrew, added, "It is called after an old member of our family, but I can answer for its comfort myself, for I have occupied it until – "
"I 'm turning you out?" exclaimed Dieppe.
"I left it yesterday." The Count frowned as he sipped his wine. "I left it owing to – er – circumstances," he murmured, with some appearance of embarrassment in his manner.
"His Eminence is restless?" asked the Captain, laughing.
"I beg pardon?"
"I mean – a ghost?"
"No, a cat," was the Count's quiet but somewhat surprising answer.
"I don't mind cats, I am very fond of them," Dieppe declared with the readiness of good breeding, but he glanced at his host with a curiosity that would not be stifled. The Count lived in solitude. Half his house – and that the other half – was brilliantly lighted, and he left his bedroom because of a cat. Here were circumstances that might set the least inquisitive of men thinking. It crossed Dieppe's mind that his host was (he used a mild word) eccentric, but the Count's manner gave little warrant for the supposition; and Dieppe could not believe that so courteous a gentleman would amuse himself by making fun of a guest. He listened eagerly when the Count, after a long silence, went on to say:
"The reason I put forward must, no doubt, sound ludicrous, but the fact is that the animal, in itself a harmless beast, became the occasion, or was made the means, of forcing on me encounters with a person whom I particularly wish to avoid. You, however, will not be annoyed in that way."
There he stopped, and turned the conversation to general topics. Never had Dieppe's politeness been subjected to such a strain.
No relief was granted to him. The Count talked freely and well on a variety of questions till eleven o'clock, and then proposed to show his guest to his bedroom. Dieppe accepted the offer in despair, but he would have sat up all night had there seemed any chance of the Count's becoming more explicit.
The Cardinal's Room was a large apartment situated on the upper floor (there were but two), about the middle of the house; its windows looked across the river, which rippled pleasantly in the quiet of the night when Dieppe flung up the sash and put his head out. He turned first to the left. Save his own room, all was dark: the Count, no doubt, slept at the back. Then, craning his neck, he tried to survey the right wing. The illumination was quenched; light showed in one window only, a window on the same level with his and distant from it perhaps forty feet. With a deep sigh the Captain drew his head back and shut out the chilly air.
Ah, there was an inner door on the right hand side of the room; that the Captain had not noticed before. Walking up to it, he perceived that it was bolted at top and bottom; but the key was in the lock. He stood and looked at this door; it seemed that it must lead, either directly or by way of another apartment between, to the room whose lights he had just seen. He pulled his moustache thoughtfully; and he remembered that there was a person whom the Count particularly wished to avoid and, owing (in some way) to a cat, could not rely on being able to avoid if he slept in the Cardinal's Room.
"Well, then – " began Dieppe with a thoughtful frown. "Oh, I can't stand it much longer!" he ended, with a smile and a shrug.
And then there came – the Captain was really not surprised, he had been almost expecting it – a mew, a peevish, plaintive mew. "I won't open that door," said the Captain. The complaint was repeated. "Poor beast!" murmured the Captain. "Shut up in that – in that – deuce take it, in that what?" His hand shot up to the top bolt and pressed it softly back. "No, no," said he. Another mew defeated his struggling conscience. Pushing back the lower bolt in its turn, he softly unlocked the door and opened it cautiously. There in the passage – for a narrow passage some twelve or fifteen feet long was revealed – near his door, visible in the light from his room, was a large, sleek, yellow cat from whose mouth was proceeding energetic lamentation. But on sight of Dieppe the creature ceased its cries, and in apparent alarm ran half-way along the passage and sat down beside a
