Onslow had the advantage of André in his intimate knowledge of the essential facts of the situation; and he had not been for ten years an agent of the secret service, in daily peril of his life, in hourly need of having to decide at once on a course of action, without learning all that an able and desperate man can learn from pitting his wits against the wits of men and women as unscrupulous and desperate as himself.

“Good-evening, Vicomte,” he now said, bowing politely. “I could not have wished for a more opportune meeting. As a proof, there are my pistols,” he tossed them ostentatiously on to the table.

André drew the curtains behind him, threw off his cloak, and advanced into the centre of the room.

“You killed the Chevalier?” he demanded briefly.

“Certainly. Shall I tell you why? Because he had betrayed me; because, rather, he was the lover of the woman who betrayed me. That woman is the ‘No. 101’ you have sought for so long, who has baffled you before and has baffled you again to-night. She is a liar as well as a wanton.”

André quietly shrugged his shoulders.

“Let us come to business,” Onslow said coolly. “The secret despatch, I regret to say, is not in my possession. It would have been in ten minutes, but it is still in the keeping of the charming spy, who is probably now on her way to the frontier. Madame de Pompadour will hear more of it before long, but that does not concern you. What does,” he held out a paper, “is this letter in the handwriting of the Comte de Mont Rouge.”

Onslow’s tone had the calmness of conviction, and if he spoke the truth André knew he had failed miserably. It was more than probable that “No. 101” had again baffled him. For the despatch was more important to her than to Onslow.

“Well?” André said, to gain time for his mind to work.

“If you have this letter, Vicomte, you can ruin your enemies to-morrow. Let me tell you that Mademoiselle Denise was by loaded dice, the device of another beautiful wanton and her accomplice, the writer of this letter,” he held it out, “yes, Mademoiselle Denise was chosen to steal the despatch in order that she, as well as you, might be destroyed. I see you did not know that. It is worth having, that letter.”

Onslow recognised at once he had struck the right chord. André’s face would have terrified the Comtesse des Forges, and it surprised himself as he caught a glimpse of it in the glass. Men in the white heat of wrath and baffled revenge so seldom see what their faces express.

“You can kill me, of course,” Onslow went on easily. “I am an English spy. But you will not get the letter nor the despatch in that way. Why? Because I haven’t the one, and before you can run me through the letter will be in the fire.”

“Stop!” André commanded, for Onslow was very near the stove and the letter was very precious.

“For five minutes only,” Onslow retorted. “Give me your word of honour that you will let me go free and you shall have the letter—or I destroy it and fight for my life as best I can. Make up your mind, Vicomte.”

The clock ticked very loud and clear while André weighed the issues. The letter was precious; it was there, which the despatch was not; time was more precious still, for there remained “No. 101” to be dealt with. Onslow’s life was of no value to Denise or himself. André studied the secret agent’s calm face for three silent minutes.

“Give me the letter,” he said at last, “you shall go free, on my word of honour.”

“I thank you. But you have decided wisely.” Onslow placed the letter on the table. “And now,” he buttoned up his cloak, “kindly write me a pass, for I must leave your accursed city before dawn.”

“The password at the Barrier of the Hospital of St. Louis is, ‘La santé du Roi,’” André answered. “That will take you through in safety.”

Onslow bowed. “My compliments, Vicomte; your precautions devised at such short notice do you infinite credit. I fancy we shall meet again, but not in the salon of ‘the Princess’ either in Paris or London.”

André had moved towards the writing-table. “I had better write you a pass after all,” he said, very politely, “the police are not so scrupulous as I am about a pledge of honour.”

Onslow fell into the trap. Like many clever men who find a lie succeed beyond their expectations, he wholly misunderstood the motives that had persuaded the other to accept for truth what he feared was untrue. André had turned his back to write, but he had hardly scrawled three words when he wheeled with incredible swiftness.

“No!” he cried, “you don’t stab two men in the back unawares in one night, traitor and spy.”

For that was what Onslow had, dagger in hand, stealthily crept up to do, inspired by the sight of André’s apparently defenceless position at the writing-table and by the desire to wipe out a long score. But a chair hurled with terrible force met him full in the stomach, and when he had recovered he was facing the sword point of the finest swordsman in Paris. He had lost his pistols, and the death his lies had averted so skilfully was at hand.

“I will tell you where you can find the secret despatch,” the spy pleaded, “if you will let me go.”

“I am not going to kill you,” André answered. “A De Nérac’s sword is not to be soiled with the carrion blood of an English hireling and assassin. The public executioner will deal with you, not I.”

He whistled sharply. Three of the guards swung themselves in by the balcony.

“Disarm and bind that scoundrel,” was the brief order, and in three minutes a wounded prisoner had been securely tied hand and foot. Five minutes later George Onslow was on his way to a police cell, and André was standing alone in the beautiful salon, with the secret despatch and Mont Rouge’s damning letter in his possession.

He walked up and down trying to believe that his amazing good fortune was really true. The terrible strain of the last twelve hours had at last begun to tell, and, instead of the triumphant joy that he had imagined would be his should he achieve the impossible and recover the despatch, he was only conscious of complete mental and physical exhaustion, of a strange and utter weariness. The power of his mind seemed broken. His ambition had melted away. He had no doubt saved Madame de Pompadour, the King’s secret would remain a secret, and Denise would emerge scathless from the awful ordeal into which she had been plunged. The love for which he had plotted, schemed, and worked would be his now. Yes, he had gained all of which ambition had inspired him to dream, more than all, for he had only to put into Madame de Pompadour’s hands that guilty letter, and the men and women who had dabbled in treason to sate their jealousy and their lust for vengeance would be condemned to pass from the Salon de Vénus and the Œil de Bœuf to the scaffold.

Success! a Croix de St. Louis, a Cordon Bleu already! To-morrow he might be Minister for War, in the years to come he might share with the bourgeoise mistress of his Sovereign the rule of France. But at what a cost? As Madame de Pompadour had done and must always do, by sleepless intrigue and scheming, by playing on the fears and fancies, the bigotry and animal passions of the King, by checkmating or degrading the noblesse into an odious and reluctant submission. He had won power so far by such ways. It could only be kept at Versailles by the same hateful, sordid scuffling, and he, the man, must daily train himself to keep his place by trading on the weakness of women, from the kitchen wenches to the mistress of the robes, by trafficking in the selfish plans of gamblers as ambitious and unscrupulous as himself. Versailles was there, the King was there; Louis was what he would always be, an impenetrable sensualist and the despot of France. More bitter still, the life of the Court as he and she knew it was what he must ask Denise now to share and to lead. The first offering of their marriage feast would be the disgrace, perhaps the blood, of the men of his own order who had been his friends, by whose side he had fought for France, and of the women to whom—. Bah! it was a revolting thought. Little, indeed, had he foreseen when he rode down the hill from the Castle of Beau Séjour, and swore that at all costs and by all means he would win Denise, what success might and did mean. Well, ah well! he had learned it at last.

Ah! in this bitter hour, if it had not been for Denise, he would have flung despatch and letter into the fire, and left Paris to cast its mystic spell of tears and laughter on other men, and let him go free, deaf to the siren song of the ambitions born of their mother, the enchantress of cities.

Success! Yet had he succeeded after all? Surely not. “No. 101” had escaped. Futile to seek her now. Her papers had been destroyed. She was doubtless provided with a pass. Proof against her there was none. And the mystery with which his search had begun was as great as it had ever been. Yvonne had vanished, the Chevalier de St. Amant was dead, and the woman herself had passed triumphantly into the moonlit autumn night. How strange and puzzling it all was. Yet, had not indeed the Chevalier put him on the track, had she herself not delivered that assassin and spy into his power? In a few days not even Onslow—and who would believe Onslow?—would be able to reveal what he knew. The secret whose fascination lured men to their ruin would remain a secret, and the little he had discovered would be buried in the tombs of the De Néracs. This girl had matched herself against all the brains and resources of a great government and had defeated King, mistress, and ministers, not once, but every time. Worse, far worse, what she had done in the past she could repeat in the future. That eternal struggle for power at Versailles which was to be his and Denise’s life from to-day would be haunted and poisoned, perhaps thwarted and brought to ruin, by the same strange treachery. The blood of the Chevalier would taint the life of Denise and himself and of Madame de Pompadour and the King for ever.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed out four. André stopped his pacing. He must return to Versailles, but as he crossed the room he caught a glimpse of his haggard, sleepless face and burning eyes in the mirror, and he halted and with trembling fingers turned the clock sharply round. He had spied the reflection of a familiar crest on the reverse of the timepiece. “Dieu Le Vengeur!” He had not been wrong. The words were written round the crest. “Dieu Le Vengeur!”

André drew a deep breath, he looked all round the room with a shiver. What did it— A rustle of a woman’s dress. The great curtains were quickly drawn aside. The Princess, as he had seen her first in London with the blood-red flowers on her breast, was watching him, pale and beautiful.

“Why should the clock not be there?” she asked, as if she were continuing a conversation. “Are you so ignorant of Paris, Vicomte, as not to know that the salon in which you stand once belonged to the owners of the clock? It is a fine motto and truer than most. ‘Amour fait tout,’ for example.” She had smilingly selected the motto of the De Néracs. “You don’t agree?”

“I did not come here,” André answered, “to discuss mottoes.”

The appearance of this woman had awakened all his latent anger, his sense of defeat. She should not escape him again.

“No, but to do my business,” she retorted. “I see you have won your despatch and your letter”—they were lying on the table—“and I gladly infer that you have given a scoundrel his deserts. For that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. One libertine and traitor less in the world is a blessing even to women such as I am.”

Her perfect calm, the complete absence of fear, the extraordinary strangeness of their meeting, the crest and motto on the clock, had reduced André to impotent silence. The Princess and crystal-gazer quietly sat down. “One question before you go,” she said in a changed tone—“did Onslow tell the truth when he said that the Chevalier de St. Amant was dead?”

“Yes.”

She stretched her arms,—the gesture was curiously familiar to André,—but she said nothing for some minutes. “It is fate,” was her comment in a tearless voice when she spoke at last. “Fate!” she rose, “fate, dear God!” She was staring with knitted fingers into the cold shadows cast by the four flickering candles. And André was more moved by the sight of her stern, impassive self-restraint than if she had wept. Surely she had loved the dead man, for he was in the company of a sorrow too sacred to be fathomed even by herself.

“Why did you come back,” he asked bitterly, “why did you come back?”

She awoke from her reverie. “Where could I go?” she answered. “To ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold’?” She shivered. “To ‘The Gallows and the Three Crows,’ where your police are now? To the Barriers that are guarded by your men? I had not the password. The man who would have given it to me, had I chose to ask it, I have sent to his account. No, my friend, I prefer to be arrested by a gentleman who will do his duty like a gentleman, and will not chaffer with me as if I were a street-walker.”

André wiped the perspiration from his brow. The woman smiled and approached him.

“Come, Vicomte,” she said. “It is disagreeable, perhaps, for André de Nérac to arrest a beautiful woman, but you have kept your men waiting quite long enough in the Carrefour out there. Onslow has gone to the Bastille? Yes? Then do me the favour of sending me to Vincennes. I cannot share the same prison as that miscreant murderer.” She walked towards the curtains. André guessed she was about to signal to the square.

“Stop,” he cried, in sharp despair, “stop!”

“You have no choice,” she said. “Are you aware that I have been tracked to this house; that it is known to your police, warned by yourself four hours ago, that I have not left it? Do you doubt my word? Then look.” She cautiously drew back a curtain on the panelled wall which covered a small window. André, with the curtain behind him shutting out the light, stared into the moonlit court at the back. When he let the curtain fall his face wore almost the look of the hunted felon.

“Well; you recognised them,” the Princess said calmly. “Four, I think. Yes? They are Madame de Pompadour’s men,” she added. “She does not trust you, poor woman; she, too, sent messages from Versailles, and she will wish to know in the morning the reason why you have not arrested the impudent hussy who derided her at an inn, who is a traitor into the bargain, and who was in your power, alone, undefended, and with the evidence of her guilt staring you in the face.” She quietly touched the despatch and the letter lying on the table. “Unless, my friend, you wish to join George Onslow, the Comte de Mont Rouge, and myself in the cells you had better do your duty.”

André feverishly took up the papers; he looked now towards the great window into the Carrefour, now towards that hateful little outlook into the court where he knew the sleuth-hounds of an ambitious woman dogged their guilty prey.

“It is useless to destroy the papers,” the Princess remarked placidly. “That will only send Mademoiselle de Beau Séjour to join our pleasant party at the Bastille. Madame de Pompadour is a great and beautiful woman, but like all really ambitious men and women she has no mercy, and she naturally does not wish to take our places in the cells. She is fighting for her life and love as you are. Come, Vicomte, be reasonable. In five minutes it will be all over and you will return a hero to Versailles. Remember what awaits you there.”

Every sentence in this calmly terrible speech made André feel more misery than he could have believed a man could endure.

“Why be in any doubt?” she began again.

“Oh, for God’s sake—” he pleaded. “For God’s sake——”

“No, you must hear me out. The proof of my treachery is here; they, these men, will find it on me”; she had drawn a paper from her breast. “Do you know what that is? It is a copy of the secret despatch; it is addressed to the agent who would convey it to England, and it is signed.”

She held it up and in the flickering light André could see the red mystic sign of the crossed daggers and the cipher number. He shivered as she replaced it in her bosom. “The game is up for me,” she said in her impassive voice. “That paper will send me to the scaffold, and unless you arrest me it will send you too.”

“You are mad,” he cried incoherently, and he really believed what he said. “You are mad.”

“Was the woman mad who tricked you at Fontenoy, who has tricked and befooled you at every turn since you came back? I have betrayed your country, your King, your army, yourself, and yet you, a noble hating treason, loving France, hesitate to arrest the traitress whom you have sworn to bring to justice. It is you who are mad, my friend, not I; or shall I say,” she had dropped her eyes and curtsied, “Monseigneur is too good?”

“Yvonne!” the exclamation burst from his lips. He was leaning heavily on a chair and peering dazed into her eyes.

“Yvonne, of course; Yvonne of the Spotless Ankles,” she lifted her dress a few inches. “Yvonne whom at the bidding of another woman you were to make your tool. Did you? I think not, for the Vicomte de Nérac can be more easily tricked by women into doing what they please than the most unscrupulous libertine in France. But you must take your revenge on Yvonne now.”

Yvonne! André’s brain reeled. Yvonne, who had saved his life, was a traitress, the traitress whose crimes merited condign punishment, whom now, by the devilish device of fate, he must arrest and send to a felon’s death to save himself and Denise.

He seized her arm. “Who and what are you?” he cried, beside himself, for the torture of the fascinating riddle racked him beyond endurance.

“That,” she replied with her slow smile, “is my secret and it will perish with me. Do your duty, Vicomte, and return to Versailles. Madame de Pompadour awaits you; the blood of the noblesse, her foes, will atone in her eyes. She has triumphed, and so have you. Go back to your King, take him the proof of his royal intrigues, destroy the noble traitors who would have destroyed you. Love and revenge, the sweetest things the world can give a man, are yours. Are they not enough?” She was coolly taunting him, and out there in the court-yard waited the police ready to arrest a traitress with the proof of her crime on her person. Was ever a man in so cruel and tragic a position?

“Why do you waver?” she asked very quietly. “Is it because of Denise?”

He met her gaze. This was not the crystal-gazer, nor the “Princess,” nor even Yvonne who spoke. It was another woman, from whom all that was hateful, cynical, insolent, had vanished. André’s hands on his chair trembled.

“Yes,” he answered, in a low voice, “were it not for Denise and Denise’s sake alone I would destroy these papers and would take you past the Barriers myself. You saved my life once, more than once, for you could have killed me in the cabin at Fontenoy; you and the Chevalier—God rest his soul—enabled me to save the honour of Denise—Denise.” He paused for emotion. “You have enabled me to save my own honour. Why you did these things I do not know. But I would to-night, and now, take you past the Barrier of St. Louis, and I would then bid Versailles and you adieu for ever. God alone can judge you, not I—but Denise—there is Denise——”

“Then Denise herself must decide.”

She was mad after all; stark mad. He stood helplessly picking at the embroidered upholstery of the chair. Mad, mad; they were all mad.

The woman had glided towards the door on the right. André looked up exultingly. Ha! She was gone—fled. Then he, too, must escape at once. He gathered up the papers, seized his cloak, and darted towards the window, only to start back with a cry.

On the threshold of the doorway stood Denise.

He stood spellbound. Yes, it was Denise.