The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [212]
D’Artagnan laughed.
“A hundred louis, eh? I see Milady considers me valuable property. A hundred louis! I can see how that sum would tempt a pair of rascals like you.” D’Artagnan paused significantly. “Well, I understand how you came to accept such a dirty job and I shall spare your life—but on one condition.”
“What, Monsieur?” the man asked anxiously. D’Artagnan’s swordpoint, tickling his Adam’s apple, convinced him that all was not over.
“You must go fetch me the letter your comrade has in his pocket.”
“But that means certain death, Monsieur, death as certain as your sword at my throat! How can I go fetch that letter under fire from the bastion?”
“Take your choice, man. Either you fetch it or you die by my hands.”
“Ah, Monsieur, be generous, be merciful. In the name of that young lady you love . . . in the name of the lady you may believe to be dead but who is alive—” He edged away from D’Artagnan’s blade, propped himself on one knee in a gesture of supplication, leaning forward, head bowed, weak for loss of blood.
“How do you know there is a young woman I love? How do you know I believed her dead?”
“The letter, Monsieur! The letter my pal has in his pocket.”
“I must have that letter!” D’Artagnan insisted. “Come now, no more nonsense. However reluctant I am to soil my sword in the blood of a swine like yourself, I swear by my word as a gentleman—”
With which D’Artagnan made so fierce a gesture that the wounded man arose.
“Mercy, Monsieur, stop, stop!” Terror revived his courage. “I will go, I swear I will, so but you spare me!”
D’Artagnan took the man’s harquebus from him and drove him forward, prodding his back with the point of his sword. Slowly the fellow crept on, step by step, leaving a trail of blood behind him, inching his way toward his accomplice at a crawl, lest he be observed from the bastion. D’Artagnan, taking pity on him, said contemptuously:
“By God, man, I will show you the difference between a man of courage and a coward like yourself. Stay where you are; I shall fetch that letter.”
And with nimble step, his eye alert for every movement of the enemy, his progress using every accident of the terrain to advantage, the Gascon eventually reached his objective. Here he was faced with two ways of attaining his end. He could either search the corpse on the spot or carry it back, using it as a shield to protect himself and search it in the trench. Deciding in favor of the latter course, he had barely lifted the corpse to his shoulders when the enemy opened fire. A slight shock, the dull thud of three bullets penetrating into human flesh, a final gasp and a shudder of agony proved to D’Artagnan that his would-be assassin had just saved his life. D’Artagnan reached the trench safely and laid the corpse beside the wounded man. Then he went through his pockets. A leather wallet, a purse in which there was evidently a part of the sum he had received, a dice box and a pair of dice—such were the bandit’s heirlooms. D’Artagnan left box and dice where they had fallen, tossed the purse to the bandit’s confederate and wrenched open the wallet. Among various papers of no importance he came upon the following:
I regret to hear that you have lost all trace of the woman. She is now safe in a convent which you should never have allowed her to reach.
Try at least to get the man.
If you fail, remember that my hand stretches very far and that you shall pay dearly for the hundred louis I advanced.
There was no signature but the letter was obviously from Milady. Retaining it as evidence and sheltered in his trench, D’Artagnan questioned the wounded man.
“My friend and I, Monsieur,” the ruffian admitted, “we undertook a job to carry off a young woman who was meant to leave Paris by the Porte de La Vilette. But we stopped off to drink at a tavern so we missed the carriage by ten minutes and two drinks—”
“What were you told to do with this woman?” D’Artagnan asked, trembling with anguish.
“We were to take her to a mansion in the Place Royale, Monsieur—”
“Yes, yes, to Milady’s!” D’Artagnan