Moving on quietly in a kind of dream, Ranulph was roused again by Dormy’s voice: “On Sunday I saw three magpies, and there was a wedding that day. Tuesday I saw two--that’s for joy--and fifty Jersey prisoners of the French comes back on Jersey that day. This morning one I saw. One magpie is for trouble, and trouble’s here. One doesn’t have eyes for naught--no, bidemme!”
“Bachouar,” he exclaimed roughly, “you make elephants out of fleas! You’ve got no more news than a conch-shell has music. A minute and you’ll have a back-hander that’ll put you to sleep, Maitre Dormy.”
If he had been asked his news politely Dormy would have been still more cunningly reticent. To abuse him in his own argot was to make him loose his bag of mice in a flash.
“Bachouar yourself, Maitre Ranulph! You’ll find out soon. No news--no trouble--eh! Par made, Mattingley’s gone to the Vier Prison--he! The baker’s come back, and the Connetable’s after Olivier Delagarde. No trouble, pardingue, if no trouble, Dormy Jamais’s a batd’lagoule and no need for father of you to hide in a place that only Dormy knows--my good!”
So at last the blow had fallen; after all these years of silence, sacrifice, and misery. The futility of all that he had done and suffered for his father’s sake came home to Ranulph. Yet his brain was instantly alive. He questioned Dormy rapidly and adroitly, and got the story from him in patches.
The baker Carcaud, who, with Olivier Delagarde, betrayed the country into the hands of Rullecour years ago, had, with a French confederate of Mattingley’s, been captured in attempting to steal Jean Touzel’s boat, the Hardi Biaou. At the capture the confederate had been shot. Before dying he implicated Mattingley in several robberies, and a notorious case of piracy of three months before, committed within gunshot of the men-of-war lying in the tide-way. Carcaud, seriously wounded, to save his life turned King’s evidence, and disclosed to the Royal Court in private his own guilt and Olivier Delagarde’s treason.
Hidden behind the great chair of the Bailly himself, Dormy Jamais had heard the whole business. This had brought him hot-foot to St. Aubin’s Bay, whence he had hurried Olivier Delagarde to a hiding-place in the hills above the bay of St. Brelade. The fool had travelled more swiftly than Jersey justice, whose feet are heavy. Elie Mattingley was now in the Vier Prison. There was the whole story.