Within twenty-four hours Carlos had organized a force which detected Contenson red-handed in the act of espionage.
Contenson, disguised as a market-porter, had twice already brought home the provisions purchased in the morning by Asie, and had twice got into the little mansion in the Rue Saint–Georges.
Corentin, on his part, was making a stir; but he was stopped short by recognizing the certain identity of Carlos Herrera; for he learned at once that this Abbe, the secret envoy of Ferdinand VII., had come to Paris towards the end of 1823.
Still, Corentin thought it worth while to study the reasons which had led the Spaniard to take an interest in Lucien de Rubempre.
It was soon clear to him, beyond doubt, that Esther had for five years been Lucien’s mistress; so the substitution of the Englishwoman had been effected for the advantage of that young dandy.
Now Lucien had no means; he was rejected as a suitor for Mademoiselle de Grandlieu; and he had just bought up the lands of Rubempre at the cost of a million francs.
Corentin very skilfully made the head of the General Police take the first steps; and the Prefet de Police a propos to Peyrade, informed his chief that the appellants in that affair had been in fact the Comte de Serizy and Lucien de Rubempre.
“We have it!” cried Peyrade and Corentin.
The two friends had laid plans in a moment.
“This hussy,” said Corentin, “has had intimacies; she must have some women friends.
Among them we shall certainly find one or another who is down on her luck; one of us must play the part of a rich foreigner and take her up. We will throw them together.
They always want something of each other in the game of lovers, and we shall then be in the citadel.”
Peyrade naturally proposed to assume his disguise as an Englishman.
The wild life he should lead during the time that he would take to disentangle the plot of which he had been the victim, smiled on his fancy; while Corentin, grown old in his functions, and weakly too, did not care for it.
Disguised as a mulatto, Contenson at once evaded Carlos’ force.
Just three days before Peyrade’s meeting with Madame du Val–Noble in the Champs–Elysees, this last of the agents employed by MM. de Sartine and Lenoir had arrived, provided with a passport, at the Hotel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, having come from the Colonies via le Havre, in a traveling chaise, as mud-splashed as though it had really come from le Havre, instead of no further than by the road from Saint–Denis to Paris.
Carlos Herrera, on his part, had his passport vise at the Spanish Embassy, and arranged everything at the Quai Malaquais to start for Madrid.
And this is why.
Within a few days Esther was to become the owner of the house in the Rue Saint–Georges and of shares yielding thirty thousand francs a year; Europe and Asie were quite cunning enough to persuade her to sell these shares and privately transmit the money to Lucien.
Thus Lucien, proclaiming himself rich through his sister’s liberality, would pay the remainder of the price of the Rubempre estates.
Of this transaction no one could complain.
Esther alone could betray herself; but she would die rather than blink an eyelash.
Clotilde had appeared with a little pink kerchief round her crane’s neck, so she had won her game at the Hotel de Grandlieu.
The shares in the Omnibus Company were already worth thrice their initial value.
Carlos, by disappearing for a few days, would put malice off the scent.
Human prudence had foreseen everything; no error was possible.
The false Spaniard was to start on the morrow of the day when Peyrade met Madame du Val–Noble.
But that very night, at two in the morning, Asie came in a cab to the Quai Malaquais, and found the stoker of the machine smoking in his room, and reconsidering all the points of the situation here stated in a few words, like an author going over a page in his book to discover any faults to be corrected.
Such a man would not allow himself a second time such an oversight as that of the porter in the Rue Taitbout.
“Paccard,” whispered Asie in her master’s ear, “recognized Contenson yesterday, at half-past two, in the Champs–Elysees, disguised as a mulatto servant to an Englishman, who for the last three days has been seen walking in the Champs–Elysees, watching Esther.
Paccard knew the hound by his eyes, as I did when he dressed up as a market-porter.
Paccard drove the girl home, taking a round so as not to lose sight of the wretch.
Contenson is at the Hotel Mirabeau; but he exchanged so many signs of intelligence with the Englishman, that Paccard says the other cannot possibly be an Englishman.”
“We have a gadfly behind us,” said Carlos. “I will not leave till the day after to-morrow.
That Contenson is certainly the man who sent the porter after us from the Rue Taitbout; we must ascertain whether this sham Englishman is our foe.”
At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson’s black servant was solemnly waiting on his master, who always breakfasted too heartily, with a purpose.
Peyrade wished to pass for a tippling Englishman; he never went out till he was half-seas over.
He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and padded to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the thickest fustian; his waistcoat was buttoned up to his cheeks; a red scratch wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe David could not have recognized him.
From his squarecut coat of black cloth with full skirts he might have been taken for an English millionaire.
Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob’s confidential servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.
Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the hotel waiters unceremoniously showed in a man in whom Peyrade and Contenson both at once discerned a gendarme in mufti.
“Monsieur Peyrade,” said the gendarme to the nabob, speaking in his ear, “my instructions are to take you to the Prefecture.”
Peyrade, without saying a word, rose and took down his hat.
“You will find a hackney coach at the door,” said the man as they went downstairs. “The Prefet thought of arresting you, but he decided on sending for you to ask some explanation of your conduct through the peace-officer whom you will find in the coach.”
“Shall I ride with you?” asked the gendarme of the peace-officer when Peyrade had got in.
“No,” replied the other; “tell the coachman quietly to drive to the Prefecture.”
Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach.
Carlos had a stiletto under his hand.
The coach-driver was a man he could trust, quite capable of allowing Carlos to get out without seeing him, or being surprised, on arriving at his journey’s end, to find a dead body in his cab.
No inquiries are ever made about a spy.