The Puppet Crown [71]
Johann's face cleared and a cunning light brightened his eyes. "If that is all you are after, I'll tell you. I'm a spy no longer; they have no more use for me, despite their promises. I'll play them off for quits."
"If that's all," repeated Maurice, "what did you think I wanted to ask you?"
Johann bit his lip. "I'm wanted badly by the chancellor, curse you, if you must know. I thought he might be behind you."
"Don't worry about that," said Maurice, to whom this declaration seemed plausible. "We'll talk as we go along."
And Johann loosened his tongue and poured into Maurice's ear a tale which, being half a truth, had all the semblance of straightforwardness. What he played for was time; to gain time and to lull his captor's suspicions. Maurice was not familiar with the lower town; Johann was. A few yards ahead there was an alley he knew, and once in it he could laugh at all pursuit. It might be added that if Maurice knew but little of the lower town, he knew still less about Johann.
Suddenly, in the midst of his narrative, Johann put his leg stiffly between his enemy's and gave a mighty jerk with his arm, with the result that Maurice, wholly unprepared, went sprawling to the pavement. He was on his feet in an instant, but Johann was free and flying up the alley. Maurice gave chase, but uselessly. Johann had disappeared. The alley was a cul de sac, but was lined with doors; and these Maurice hammered to ease his conscience. No one answered. Deeply disgusted with his lack of caution, Maurice regained the street, where he brushed the dust from his knees.
"I'll take it out of his hide the next time we meet. He wasn't worth the trouble, anyway."
A sybil might have whispered in his ear that a very large fish had escaped his net, but Maurice continued, conscious of nothing save chagrin and a bruised knee. He resumed the piecing together of events, or rather he attempted to; very few pieces could be brought together. If Beauvais had the certificates, what was his object in lying to Madame? What benefit would accrue to him? After all, it was a labyrinth of paths which always brought him up to the beginning. He drooped his shoulders dejectedly. There was nothing left for him to do but return to the Red Chateau and inform them of the fruitlessness of his errand. He would start on the morrow. Tonight he wanted once more to hear the band, to wander about the park, to row around the rear of the archbishop's garden.
"A fine thing to be born in purple--sometimes," he mused. "I never knew till now the inconveniences of the common mold."
He tramped on, building chateaux en Espagne. That they tumbled down did not matter; he could rebuild in the space of a second, and each castle an improvement on its predecessor.
His attention was suddenly drawn away from this idle but pleasant pursuit. In a side street he saw twenty or thirty students surging back and forth, laughing and shouting and jostling. In the center of this swaying mass canes rose and fell. It was a fight, and as he loved a fight, Maurice pressed his hat firmly on his head and veered into the side street. He looked around guiltily, and was thankful that no feminine eyes were near to offer him their reproaches. He jostled among the outer circle, but could see nothing. He stooped. Something white flashed this way and that, accompanied by the sound of low growls. A dog fight was his first impression, and he was on the point of leaving, for, while he secretly enjoyed the sight of two physically perfect men waging battle, he had not the heart to see two brutes pitted against each other, goaded on by brutes of a lower caste. But even as he turned the crowd opened and closed, and the brief picture was enough for him.
Her dog! And the students were beating it because they knew it to be defenseless. Her dog! toothless and old, who could not hold when his jaws closed on an arm or leg, but who, with that indomitable courage of his race, fought on and on, hopelessly and stubbornly.
He was covered with