Chapter 2

Of course, Monsieur Darrel, I have never had the faintest
idea that you were the murderer!"

The four gendarmes and I walked across the road to the Groix Inn and
entered the café. It was crowded with Bretons, smoking, drinking,
and jabbering in half a dozen dialects, all equally unsatisfactory to
a civilized ear; and I pushed through the crowd to where little Max
Fortin, the chemist of Quimperlé, stood smoking a vile cigar.

"This is a bad business," he said, shaking hands and offering me the
mate to his cigar, which I politely declined.

"Now, Monsieur Fortin," I said, "it appears that the Purple Emperor
found my handkerchief near the murdered man's door this morning, and
so he concludes"--here I glared at the Purple Emperor--"that I am the
assassin. I will now ask him a question," and turning on him suddenly,
I shouted, "What were you doing at the Red Admiral's door?"

The Purple Emperor started and turned pale, and I pointed at him
triumphantly.

"See what a sudden question will do. Look how embarrassed he is,
and yet I do not charge him with murder; and I tell you, gentlemen,
that man there knows as well as I do who was the murderer of the Red
Admiral!"

"I don't!" bawled the Purple Emperor.

"You do," I said. "It was Yves Terrec."

"I don't believe it," he said obstinately, dropping his voice.

"Of course not, being pig-headed."

"I am not pig-headed," he roared again, "but I am mayor of St. Gildas,
and I do not believe that Yves Terrec killed his father."

"You saw him try to kill him last night?"

The mayor grunted.

"And you saw what I did."

He grunted again.

"And," I went on, "you heard Yves Terrec threaten to kill his father.
You heard him curse the Red Admiral and swear to kill him. Now the
father is murdered and his body is gone."

"And your handkerchief?" sneered the Purple Emperor.

"I dropped it, of course."

"And the seaweed gatherer who saw you last night lurking about the Red
Admiral's cottage," grinned the Purple Emperor.

I was startled at the man's malice.

"That will do," I said. "It is perfectly true that I was walking on the
Bannalec road last night, and that I stopped to close the Red Admiral's
door, which was ajar, although his light was not burning. After that
I went up the road to the Dinez Woods, and then walked over by St.
Julien, whence I saw the seaweed gatherer on the cliffs. He was near
enough for me to hear what he sang. What of that?"

"What did you do then?"

"Then I stopped at the shrine and said a prayer, and then I went to
bed and slept until Brigadier Durand's gendarmes awoke me with their
clatter."

"Now, Monsieur Darrel," said the Purple Emperor, lifting a fat finger
and shooting a wicked glance at me, "Now, Monsieur Darrel, which did
you wear last night on your midnight stroll--sabots or shoes?"

I thought a moment. "Shoes--no, sabots. I just slipped on my chaussons
and went out in my sabots."

"Which was it, shoes or sabots?" snarled the Purple Emperor.

"Sabots, you fool."

"Are these your sabots?" he asked, lifting up a wooden shoe with my
initials cut on the instep.

"Yes," I replied.

"Then how did this blood come on the other one?" he shouted, and
held up a sabot, the mate to the first, on which a drop of blood had
spattered.

"I haven't the least idea," I said calmly; but my heart was beating
very fast and I was furiously angry.

"You blockhead!" I said, controlling my rage, "I'll make you pay for
this when they catch Yves Terrec and convict him. Brigadier Durand, do
your duty if you think I am under suspicion. Arrest me, but grant me
one favour. Put me in the Red Admiral's cottage, and I'll see whether
I can't find some clew that you have overlooked. Of course, I won't
disturb anything until the Commissaire arrives. Bah! You all make me
very ill."

"He's hardened," observed the Purple Emperor, wagging his head.

"What motive had I to kill the Red Admiral?" I asked them all
scornfully. And they all cried:

"None! Yves Terrec is the man!"

Passing out of the door I swung around and shook my finger at the
Purple Emperor.

"Oh, I'll make you dance for this, my friend," I said; and I followed
Brigadier Durand across the street to the cottage of the murdered man.

III.

They took me at my word and placed a gendarme with a bared sabre at the
gateway by the hedge.

"Give me your parole," said poor Durand, "and I will let you go
where you wish." But I refused, and began prowling about the cottage
looking for clews. I found lots of things that some people would have
considered most important, such as ashes from the Red Admiral's pipe,
footprints in a dusty vegetable bin, bottles smelling of Pouldu cider,
and dust--oh, lots of dust!--but I was not an expert, only a stupid,
everyday amateur; so I defaced the footprints with my thick shooting
boots, and I declined to examine the pipe ashes through a microscope,
although the Red Admiral's microscope stood on the table close at hand.

At last I found what I had been looking for, some long wisps of straw,
curiously depressed and flattened in the middle, and I was certain
I had found the evidence that would settle Yves Terrec for the rest
of his life. It was plain as the nose on your face. The straws were
sabot straws, flattened where the foot had pressed them, and sticking
straight out where they projected beyond the sabot. Now nobody in
St. Gildas used straw in sabots except a fisherman who lived near St.
Julien, and the straw in his sabots was ordinary yellow wheat straw!
This straw, or rather these straws, were from the stalks of the red
wheat which only grows inland, and which, everybody in St. Gildas
knew, Yves Terrec wore in his sabots. I was perfectly satisfied; and
when, three hours later, a hoarse shouting from the Bannalec Road
brought me to the window, I was not surprised to see Yves Terrec,
bloody, dishevelled, hatless, with his strong arms bound behind him,
walking with bent head between two mounted gendarmes. The crowd around
him swelled every minute, crying: "Parricide! parricide! Death to the
murderer!" As he passed my window I saw great clots of mud on his dusty
sabots, from the heels of which projected wisps of red wheat straw.
Then I walked back into the Red Admiral's study, determined to find
what the microscope would show on the wheat straws. I examined each
one very carefully, and then, my eyes aching, I rested my chin on my
hand and leaned back in the chair. I had not been as fortunate as some
detectives, for there was no evidence that the straws had ever been
used in a sabot at all. Furthermore, directly across the hallway stood
a carved Breton chest, and now I noticed for the first time that, from
beneath the closed lid, dozens of similar red wheat straws projected,
bent exactly as mine were bent by the weight of the lid.

I yawned in disgust. It was apparent that I was not cut out for a
detective, and I bitterly pondered over the difference between clews in
real life and clews in a detective story. After a while I rose, walked
over to the chest and opened the lid. The interior was wadded with
the red wheat straws, and on this wadding lay two curious glass jars,
two or three small vials, several empty bottles labelled chloroform, a
collecting jar of cyanide of potassium, and a book. In a farther corner
of the chest were some letters bearing English stamps, and also the
torn coverings of two parcels, all from England, and all directed to
the Red Admiral under his proper name of "Sieur Louis Jean Terrec, St.
Gildas, par Moëlan, Finistère."

All these traps I carried over to the desk, shut the lid of the chest,
and sat down to read the letters. They were written in commercial
French, evidently by an Englishman.

Freely translated, the contents of the first letter were as follows:

"LONDON, _June 12, 1894_.

"DEAR MONSIEUR (_sic_): Your kind favour of the 19th inst.
received and contents noted. The latest work on the
Lepidoptera of England is Blowzer's How to catch British
Butterflies, with notes and tables, and an introduction by
Sir Thomas Sniffer. The price of this work (in one volume,
calf) is £5 or 125 francs of French money. A post-office
order will receive our prompt attention. We beg to remain,

"Yours, etc.,
"FRADLEY & TOOMER,
"470 Regent Square, London, S. W."

The next letter was even less interesting. It merely stated that the
money had been received and the book would be forwarded. The third
engaged my attention, and I shall quote it, the translation being a
free one:

"DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 1st of July was duly received,
and we at once referred it to Mr. Fradley himself. Mr. Fradley
being much interested in your question, sent your letter to
Professor Schweineri, of the Berlin Entomological Society,
whose note Blowzer refers to on page 630, in his How to catch
British Butterflies. We have just received an answer from
Professor Schweineri, which we translate into French--(see
inclosed slip). Professor Schweineri begs to present to you
two jars of cythyl, prepared under his own supervision. We
forward the same to you. Trusting that you will find
everything satisfactory, we remain,

"Yours sincerely,
"FRADLEY & TOOMER."

The inclosed slip read as follows:

"Messrs. FRADLEY & TOOMER,

"GENTLEMEN: Cythaline, a complex hydrocarbon, was first used
by Professor Schnoot, of Antwerp, a year ago. I discovered
an analogous formula about the same time and named it cythyl.
I have used it with great success everywhere. It is as
certain as a magnet. I beg to present you three small jars,
and would be pleased to have you forward two of them to your
correspondent in St. Gildas with my compliments. Blowzer's
quotation of me, on page 630 of his glorious work, How to
catch British Butterflies, is correct.

"Yours, etc.,
"HEINRICH SCHWEINERI,
P.H.D., D.D., D.S., M.S."

When I had finished this letter I folded it up and put it into my
pocket with the others. Then I opened Blowzer's valuable work, How to
catch British Butterflies, and turned to page 630.

Now, although the Red Admiral could only have acquired the book very
recently, and although all the other pages were perfectly clean, this
particular page was thumbed black, and heavy pencil marks inclosed a
paragraph at the bottom of the page. This is the paragraph:

"Professor Schweineri says: 'Of the two old methods used by
collectors for the capture of the swift-winged, high-flying
Apatura Iris, or Purple Emperor, the first, which was using a
long-handled net, proved successful once in a thousand times;
and the second, the placing of bait upon the ground, such as
decayed meat, dead cats, rats, etc., was not only disagreeable,
even for an enthusiastic collector, but also very uncertain.
Once in five hundred times would the splendid butterfly leave
the tops of his favourite oak trees to circle about the fetid
bait offered. I have found cythyl a perfectly sure bait to
draw this beautiful butterfly to the ground, where it can be
easily captured. An ounce of cythyl placed in a yellow saucer
under an oak tree, will draw to it every Apatura Iris within
a radius of twenty miles. So, if any collector who possesses
a little cythyl, even though it be in a sealed bottle in his
pocket--if such a collector does not find a single Apatura
Iris fluttering close about him within an hour, let him be
satisfied that the Apatura Iris does not inhabit his country.'"

When I had finished reading this note I sat for a long while thinking
hard. Then I examined the two jars. They were labelled "_Cythyl_." One
was full, the other _nearly full_. "The rest must be on the corpse
of the Red Admiral," I thought, "no matter if it is in a corked
bottle----"

I took all the things back to the chest, laid them carefully on the
straw, and closed the lid. The gendarme sentinel at the gate saluted me
respectfully as I crossed over to the Groix Inn. The Inn was surrounded
by an excited crowd, and the hallway was choked with gendarmes and
peasants. On every side they greeted me cordially, announcing that the
real murderer was caught; but I pushed by them without a word and ran
upstairs to find Lys. She opened her door when I knocked and threw both
arms about my neck. I took her to my breast and kissed her. After a
moment I asked her if she would obey me no matter what I commanded, and
she said she would, with a proud humility that touched me.

"Then go at once to Yvette in St. Julien," I said. "Ask her to harness
the dog-cart and drive you to the convent in Quimperlé. Wait for me
there. Will you do this without questioning me, my darling?"

She raised her face to mine. "Kiss me," she said innocently; the next
moment she had vanished.

I walked deliberately into the Purple Emperor's room and peered into
the gauze-covered box which had held the chrysalis of Apatura Iris. It
was as I expected. The chrysalis was empty and transparent, and a great
crack ran down the middle of its back, but, on the netting inside the
box, a magnificent butterfly slowly waved its burnished purple wings;
for the chrysalis had given up its silent tenant, the butterfly symbol
of immortality. Then a great fear fell upon me. I know now that it was
the fear of the Black Priest, but neither then nor for years after did
I know that the Black Priest had ever lived on earth. As I bent over
the box I heard a confused murmur outside the house which ended in
a furious shout of "Parricide!" and I heard the gendarmes ride away
behind a wagon which rattled sharply on the flinty highway. I went
to the window. In the wagon sat Yves Terrec, bound and wild-eyed, two
gendarmes at either side of him, and all around the wagon rode mounted
gendarmes whose bared sabres scarcely kept the crowd away.

"Parricide!" they howled. "Let him die!"

I stepped back and opened the gauze-covered box. Very gently but firmly
I took the splendid butterfly by its closed fore wings and lifted it
unharmed between my thumb and forefinger. Then, holding it concealed
behind my back, I went down into the café.

Of all the crowd that had filled it, shouting for the death of Yves
Terrec, only three persons remained seated in front of the huge empty
fireplace. They were the Brigadier Durand, Max Fortin, the chemist
of Quimperlé, and the Purple Emperor. The latter looked abashed when
I entered, but I paid no attention to him and walked straight to the
chemist.

"Monsieur Fortin," I said, "do you know much about hydrocarbons?"

"They are my specialty," he said astonished.

"Have you ever heard of such a thing as cythyl?"

"Schweineri's cythyl? Oh, yes! We use it in perfumery."

"Good!" I said. "Has it an odour?"

"No--and, yes. One is always aware of its presence, but really nobody
can affirm it has an odour. It is curious," he continued, looking at
me, "it is very curious you should have asked me that, for all day I
have been imagining I detected the presence of cythyl."

"Do you imagine so now?" I asked.

"Yes, more than ever."

I sprang to the front door and tossed out the butterfly. The splendid
creature beat the air for a moment, flitted uncertainly hither
and thither, and then, to my astonishment, sailed majestically
back into the café and alighted on the hearthstone. For a moment
I was nonplussed, but when my eyes rested on the Purple Emperor I
comprehended in a flash.

"Lift that hearthstone!" I cried to the Brigadier Durand; "pry it up
with your scabbard!"

The Purple Emperor suddenly fell forward in his chair, his face ghastly
white, his jaw loose with terror.

"What is cythyl?" I shouted, seizing him by the arm; but he plunged
heavily from his chair, face downward on the floor, and at the same
moment a cry from the chemist made me turn. There stood the Brigadier
Durand, one hand supporting the hearthstone, one hand raised in horror.
There stood Max Fortin, the chemist, rigid with excitement, and below,
in the hollow bed where the hearthstone had rested, lay a crushed mass
of bleeding human flesh, from the midst of which stared a cheap glass
eye. I seized the Purple Emperor and dragged him to his feet.

"Look!" I cried; "look at your old friend, the Red Admiral!" but he
only smiled in a vacant way, and rolled his head muttering; "Bait for
butterflies! Cythyl! Oh, no, no, no! You can't do it, Admiral, d'ye
see. I alone own the Purple Emperor! I alone am the Purple Emperor!"

And the same carriage that bore me to Quimperlé to claim my bride,
carried him to Quimper, gagged and bound, a foaming, howling lunatic.

* * * * *

This, then, is the story of the Purple Emperor. I might tell you a
pleasanter story if I chose; but concerning the fish that I had hold
of, whether it was a salmon, a grilse, or a sea trout, I may not say,
because I have promised Lys, and she has promised me, that no power on
earth shall wring from our lips the mortifying confession that the fish
escaped.

POMPE FUNÈBRE.

A wind-swept sky,
The waste of moorland stretching to the west;
The sea, low moaning in a strange unrest--
A seagull's cry.

Washed by the tide,
The rocks lie sullen in the waning light;
The foam breaks in long strips of hungry white,
Dissatisfied.

BATEMAN.

POMPE FUNÈBRE.

In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble.

When I first saw the sexton he was standing motionless behind a stone.
Presently he moved on again, pausing at times, and turning right and
left with that nervous, jerky motion that always chills me.

His path lay across the blighted moss and withered leaves scattered
in moist layers along the bank of the little brown stream, and I,
wondering what his errand might be, followed, passing silently over the
rotting forest mould. Once or twice he heard me, for I saw him stop
short, a blot of black and orange in the sombre woods; but he always
started on again, hurrying at times as though the dead might grow
impatient.

For the sexton that I followed through the November forest was one
of those small creatures that God has sent to bury little things that
die alone in the world. Undertaker, sexton, mute, and gravedigger in
one, this thing, robed in black and orange, buries all things that die
unheeded by the world. And so they call it--this little beetle in black
and orange--the "sexton."

How he hurried! I looked up into the gray sky where ashen branches,
interlaced, swayed in unfelt winds, and I heard the dry leaves rattle
in the tree tops, and the thud of acorns on the mould. A sombre bird
peered at me from a heap of brush, then ran pattering over the leaves.

The sexton had reached a bit of broken ground, and was scuffling over
sticks and gulleys toward a brown tuft of withered grass above. I dared
not help him; besides, I could not bring myself to touch him, he was so
horribly absorbed in his errand.

I halted for a moment. The eagerness of this live creature to find his
dead and handle it; the odour of death and decay in this little forest
world, where I had waited for spring when Lys moved among the flowering
gorse, singing like a throstle in the wind--all this troubled me, and
I lagged behind.

The sexton scrambled over the dead grass, raising his seared eyes at
every wave of wind. The wind brought sadness with it, the scent of
lifeless trees, the vague rustle of gorse buds, yellow and dry as paper
flowers.

Along the stream, rotting water plants, scorched and frost-blighted,
lay massed above the mud. I saw their pallid stems swaying like worms
in the listless current.

The sexton had reached a mouldering stump, and now he seemed undecided.
I sat down on a fallen tree, moist and bleached, that crumbled under
my touch, leaving a stale odour in the air. Overhead a crow rose
heavily and flapped out into the moorland; the wind rattled the stark
blackthorns; a single drop of rain touched my cheek. I looked into the
stream for some sign of life; there was nothing, except a shapeless
creature that might have been a blindworm, lying belly upward on the
mud bottom. I touched it with a stick. It was stiff and dead.

The wind among the sham paperlike gorse buds filled the woods with a
silken rustle. I put out my hand and touched a yellow blossom; it felt
like an immortelle on a funeral pillow.

The sexton had moved on again; something, perhaps a musty spider's web,
had stuck to one leg, and he dragged it as he laboured on through the
wood. Some little field mouse torn by weasel or kestrel, some crushed
mole, some tiny dead pile of fur or feather, lay not far off, stricken
by God or man or brother creature. And the sexton knew it--how, God
knows! But he knew it, and hurried on to his tryst with the dead.

His path now lay along the edge of a tidal inlet from the Groix River.
I looked down at the gray water through the leafless branches, and I
saw a small snake, head raised, swim from a submerged clot of weeds
into the shadow of a rock. There was a curlew, too, somewhere in the
black swamp, whose dreary, persistent call cursed the silence.

I wondered when the sexton would fly; for he could fly if he chose; it
is only when the dead are near, very near, that he creeps. The soiled
mess of cobweb still stuck to him, and his progress was impeded by
it. Once I saw a small brown and white spider, striped like a zebra,
running swiftly in his tracks, but the sexton turned and raised his
two clubbed forelegs in a horrid imploring attitude that still had
something of menace under it. The spider backed away and sidled under
a stone.

When anything that is dying--sick and close to death--falls upon the
face of the earth, something moves in the blue above, floating like
a moat; then another, then others. These specks that grow out of the
fathomless azure vault are jewelled flies. They come to wait for Death.

The sexton also arranges rendezvous with Death, but never waits; Death
must arrive the first.

When the heavy clover is ablaze with painted wings, when bees hum and
blunder among the white-thorn, or pass by like swift singing bullets,
the sexton snaps open his black and orange wings and hums across the
clover with the bees. Death in a scented garden, the tokens of the
plague on a fair young breast, the gray flag of fear in the face of
one who reels into the arms of Destruction, the sexton scrambling in
the lap of spring, folding his sleek wings, unfolding them to ape the
buzz of bees, passing over sweet clover tops to the putrid flesh that
summons him--these things must be and will be to the end.

The sexton was running now--running fast, trailing the cobweb over
twigs and mud. The edge of the wood was near, for I could see the
winter wheat, like green scenery in a theatre, stretching for miles
across the cliffs, crude as painted grass. And as I crept through
the brittle forest fringe, I saw a figure lying face downward in the
wheat--a girl's slender form, limp, motionless.

The sexton darted under her breast.

Then I threw myself down beside her, crying, "Lys! Lys!" And as I
cried, the icy rain burst out across the moors, and the trees dashed
their stark limbs together till the whole spectral forest tossed and
danced, and the wind roared among the cliffs.

And through the Dance of Death Lys trembled in my arms, and sobbed and
clung to me, murmuring that the Purple Emperor was dead; but the wind
tore the words from her white lips, and flung them out across the sea,
where the winter lightning lashed the stark heights of Groix.

Then the fear of death was stilled in my soul, and I raised her from
the ground, holding her close.

And I saw the sexton, just beyond us, hurry across the ground and seek
shelter under a little dead skylark, stiff-winged, muddy, lying alone
in the rain.

* * * * *

In the storm, above us, a bird hovered singing through the rain. It
passed us twice, still singing, and as it passed again we saw the
shadow it cast upon the world was whiter than snow.

THE MESSENGER.

Little gray messenger,
Robed like painted Death,
Your robe is dust.
Whom do you seek
Among lilies and closed buds
At dusk?

Among lilies and closed buds
At dusk,
Whom do you seek,
Little gray messenger,
Robed in the awful panoply
Of painted Death?

R. W. C.

THE MESSENGER.

All-wise,
Hast thou seen all there is to see with thy two eyes?
Dost thou know all there is to know, and so,
Omniscient,
Darest thou still to say thy brother lies?

R. W. C.

"The bullet entered here," said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle
finger over a smooth hole exactly in the centre of the forehead.

I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece.

The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first
with his middle finger, then with his thumb.

"Let me see the skull again," said I.

Max Fortin picked it up from the sod.

"It's like all the others," he observed. I nodded, without offering to
take it from him. After a moment he thoughtfully replaced it upon the
grass at my feet.

"It's like all the others," he repeated, wiping his glasses on his
handkerchief. "I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so
I brought this over from the gravel pit. The men from Bannalec are
digging yet. They ought to stop."

"How many skulls are there altogether?" I inquired.

"They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the
list. They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan's
wheat field. The men are at work yet. Le Bihan is going to stop them."

"Let's go over," said I; and I picked up my gun and started across the
cliffs, Fortin on one side, Môme on the other.

"Who has the list?" I asked, lighting my pipe. "You say there is a
list?"

"The list was found rolled up in a brass cylinder," said the little
chemist. He added: "You should not smoke here. You know that if a
single spark drifted into the wheat----"

"Ah, but I have a cover to my pipe," said I, smiling.

Fortin watched me as I closed the pepper-box arrangement over the
glowing bowl of the pipe. Then he continued:

"The list was made out on thick yellow paper; the brass tube has
preserved it. It is as fresh to-day as it was in 1760. You shall see
it."

"Is that the date?"

"The list is dated 'April, 1760.' The Brigadier Durand has it. It is
not written in French."

"Not written in French!" I exclaimed.

"No," replied Fortin solemnly, "it is written in Breton."

"But," I protested, "the Breton language was never written or printed
in 1760."

"Except by priests," said the chemist.

"I have heard of but one priest who ever wrote the Breton language," I
began.

Fortin stole a glance at my face.

"You mean--the Black Priest?" he asked.

I nodded.

Fortin opened his mouth to speak again, hesitated, and finally shut his
teeth obstinately over the wheat stem that he was chewing.

"And the Black Priest?" I suggested encouragingly. But I knew it was
useless; for it is easier to move the stars from their courses than
to make an obstinate Breton talk. We walked on for a minute or two in
silence.

"Where is the Brigadier Durand?" I asked, motioning Môme to come out of
the wheat, which he was trampling as though it were heather. As I spoke
we came in sight of the farther edge of the wheat field and the dark,
wet mass of cliffs beyond.

"Durand is down there--you can see him; he stands just behind the Mayor
of St. Gildas."

"I see," said I; and we struck straight down, following a sun-baked
cattle path across the heather.

When we reached the edge of the wheat field, Le Bihan, the Mayor of St.
Gildas, called to me, and I tucked my gun under my arm and skirted the
wheat to where he stood.

"Thirty-eight skulls," he said in his thin, high-pitched voice; "there
is but one more, and I am opposed to further search. I suppose Fortin
told you?"

I shook hands with him, and returned the salute of the Brigadier Durand.

"I am opposed to further search," repeated Le Bihan, nervously picking
at the mass of silver buttons which covered the front of his velvet and
broadcloth jacket like a breastplate of scale armour.

Durand pursed up his lips, twisted his tremendous mustache, and hooked
his thumbs in his sabre belt.