Signor Bruno closed the door before speaking. Then he turned upon his companion with something very like fury glittering in his eyes.
“Why did you not come last night?” he asked. “I am left alone to contend against one difficulty on the top of another. Read that!”
He drew from his pocket a thin and somewhat crumpled sheet of paper, upon which there were two columns of printed matter.
“That,” he said, “cost us two thousand francs.” The Vicomte d'Audierne read the printed matter carefully from beginning to end. He had approached the window because the light was bad, and when he finished he looked up for a few minutes, out of the little casement, upon the quiet village scene.
“The _Beacon_,” he said, turning round, “what is that?”
The Vicomte d'Audierne made a little grimace.
“Christian Vellacott, son of _the_ Vellacott, whom you knew in the old days.”
There was something in the Vicomte's expressive voice that made Signor Bruno look at him sharply with some apprehension.
The Vicomte countered with another question.
He gave a little jerk with his head in the direction of the house he had just left.
“I was told last night that he was a friend of this Christian Vellacott--a protector.”
The two Frenchmen looked at each other in silence. Signor Bruno was evidently alarmed--his lips were white and unsteady. There was a smile upon the bird-like face of the younger man, and behind his spectacles his eyes glittered with an excitement in which there was obviously no fear.
“Do you know,” he asked in a disagreeably soft manner, “where Christian Vellacott is?”
Across the benevolent old face of Signor Bruno here came a very evil smile.
“You will do better not to ask me that question,” he replied, “unless you mean to run for it--as I do.”
The Vicomte d'Audierne looked at his companion in a curious way.
“You had,” he said, “at one time no rival as a man of action--”
The Vicomte folded the proof-sheet carefully, handed it back to his companion, and said:
“Then I understand that--there will be no more of these very clever articles?”
“I ask no questions,” continued the other. “It is better so. I shall stay where I am for a few days, unless it grows too hot--unless I think it expedient to vanish.”
“No; I have impertinence--that is all. There will be a storm--a newspaper storm. The embassies will be busy; in the English Parliament some pompous fool will ask a question, and be snubbed for his pains. In the _Chambre_ the newspaper men will rant and challenge each other in the corridors; and it will blow over. In the meantime we have got what we want, and we can hide it till we have need of it. Your Reverence and I have met difficulties together before this one.”