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I could not stand the gloom a moment longer; I strode into the nearest doorway and across the room to where a gleam of brightness outlined the window. My shaking fingers found the hook of the shutter and flung it wide, letting in a burst of honest sunshine. I leaned out into the free air, and saw below me the Rue Coupejarrets and the sign of the Amour de Dieu.
It was as good as a play to see my lord running errands for me. Perhaps he forgot, after a month in the Rue Coupejarrets, that such things as pages existed; or, more likely, he did not care to take the household into his confidence. He was back soon, with a pair of scarlet hose, and shoes of red morocco, the gayest affairs you ever saw. Also he brought a hand-mirror, for me to look on my beauty.
I had uttered my speech in sheer bravado, and was very doubtful as to how he would answer my impudence. But he was utterly careless, I trow, what I did, for presently the word came down that I might pass out. The sun was setting as I hastened along the streets. I must reach the Rue Coupejarrets before dark, else there was no hope for me.
But there was so strange a twist in Lucas's nature that he must sometimes thwart his own interests, value his caprice above his prosperity. Also, in this case his story was no triumphant one. But at length he did begin it: "I went to Belin to inform him that day before yesterday Étienne de Mar murdered his lackey, Pontou, in Mar's house in the Rue Coupejarrets." "Was that your errand?"
Nor would he consider the troubled times and the danger of his position, and ignore the affair, as many would have deemed best. He would not stop to think what the Sixteen might have to say to it. No; he would call out his guards and slay the plotters in the Rue Coupejarrets like the wolves they were. It was right he should, but I owed my life to Yeux-gris. "His name, man, his name!"
I am come from the two in the Rue Coupejarrets. They bade me ask the hour." He favoured me with another of his shifty glances. "What hour meant they?" I said bluntly, in a louder tone: "The hour when M. Lucas sets out on his secret mission." "Hush!" he cried. "Hush! Don't say names aloud his or the other's." "Well," I said crossly, "you have kept me waiting already more time than I care to lose.
"Oh, monsieur's chivalry is notorious. Precautions are unnecessary. It is your privilege, monsieur, to appoint the happy spot." "The spot is near at hand. Where you slew Pontou is the fitting place for you to die." "It is fitting for you to die in your own house," Lucas amended. Without further parley we turned into the Rue des Innocents, on our way to that of the Coupejarrets.
How much longer before you will tell me what I came to know?" He looked at me sharply for another brief instant before his eyes slunk away from mine. "You should have a password." "They gave me none. They told me to say I came from the shuttered house in the Rue Coupejarrets, and that would be enough." "How came you into this business?" "By a back window."
"They say he can never enter Paris." "They say lies. Let him but leave his heresies behind him and he can enter Paris to-morrow." "Mayenne does not think so." "No; but Mayenne knows little of what goes on. He does not keep an inn in the Rue Coupejarrets." He stated the fact so gravely that I had to laugh.
At first she listened with a little air of languor, as if the whole were of slight consequence and she really did not care at all what M. le Comte had been about these five weeks. But as I got into the affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she forgot her indifference and leaned forward with burning cheeks, hanging on my words with eager questions.
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