He smothered his cries in suffocating sobs, but they reached the ear of Cadet, who, foreboding some terrible catastrophe, rushed into the room where the secret door stood open. The light glared up the stair. He ran down and saw the Intendant on his knees, holding in his arms the half raised form of a woman which he kissed and called by name like a man distraught with grief and despair.
Cadet's coarse and immovable nature stood him in good stead at this moment. He saw at a glance what had happened. The girl they had come to bear away was dead! How? He knew not; but the Intendant must not be suffered to make an alarm. There was danger of discovery on all sides now, and the necessity of concealment was a thousand times greater than ever. There was no time to question, but instant help was needed. In amaze at the spectacle before him, Cadet instantly flew to the assistance of the Intendant.
He approached Bigot without speaking a word, although his great eyes expressed a look of sympathy never seen there before. He disengaged the dead form of Caroline tenderly from the embrace of Bigot, and laid it gently upon the floor, and lifting Bigot up in his stout arms, whispered hoarsely in his ear, "Keep still, Bigot! keep still! not one word! make no alarm! This is a dreadful business, but we must go to another room to consider calmly, calmly, mind, what it means and what is to be done."
"Oh, Cadet! Cadet!" moaned the Intendant, still resting on his shoulder, "she is dead! dead! when I just wanted her to live! I have been hard with women, but if there was one I loved it was she who lies dead before me! Who, who has done this bloody deed to me?"
"Who has done it to her, you mean! You are not killed yet, old friend, but will live to revenge this horrid business!" answered Cadet with rough sympathy.
"I would give my life to restore hers!" replied Bigot despairingly.
"Oh, Cadet, you never knew what was in my heart about this girl, and how I had resolved to make her reparation for the evil I had done her!"
"Well, I can guess what was in your heart, Bigot. Come, old friend, you are getting more calm, you can walk now. Let us go upstairs to consider what is to be done about it. Damn the women! They are man's torment whether alive or dead!"
Bigot was too much absorbed in his own tumultuous feelings to notice Cadet's remark. He allowed himself to be led without resistance to another room, out of sight of the murdered girl, in whose presence Cadet knew calm council was impossible.
Cadet seated Bigot on a couch and, sitting beside him, bade him be a man and not a fool. He tried to rouse Bigot by irritating him, thinking, in his coarse way, that that was better than to be maudlin over him, as he considered it, with vain expressions of sympathy.
"I would not give way so," said he, "for all the women in and out of Paradise! and you are a man, Bigot! Remember you have brought me here, and you have to take me safely back again, out of this den of murder."
"Yes, Cadet," replied Bigot, rousing himself up at the sharp tone of his friend. "I must think of your safety; I care little for my own at this moment. Think for me."
"Well, then, I will think for you, and I think this, Bigot, that if the Governor finds out this assassination, done in your house, and that you and I have been here at this hour of night with the murdered girl, by God! he will say we have alone done it, and the world will believe it! So rouse up, I for one do not want to be taxed with the murder of a woman, and still less to be hung innocently for the death of one. I would not risk my little finger for all the women alive, let alone my neck for a dead one!"
The suggestion was like a sharp probe in his flesh. It touched Bigot to the quick. He started up on his feet. "You are right, Cadet, it only wants that accusation to make me go mad! But my head is not my own yet! I can think of nothing but her lying there, dead in her loveliness and in her love! Tell me what to do, and I will do it."
"Ay, now you talk reasonably. Now you are coming to yourself, Bigot. We came to remove her alive from here, did we not? We must now remove her dead. She cannot remain where she is at the risk of certain discovery to-morrow."
"No, the secret chamber would not hide such a secret as that," replied Bigot, recovering his self-possession. "But how to remove her? We cannot carry her forth without discovery." Bigot's practical intellect was waking up to the danger of leaving the murdered girl in the Chateau.
Cadet rose and paced the room with rapid strides, rubbing his forehead, and twitching his mustache violently. "I will tell you what we have got to do, Bigot! Par Dieu! we must bury her where she is, down there in the vaulted chamber."
"What, bury her?" Bigot looked at him with intense surprise.
"Yes, we must bury her in that very chamber, Bigot. We must cover up somebody's damnable work to avert suspicion from ourselves! A pretty task for you and me, Bigot! Par Dieu! I could laugh like a horse, if I were not afraid of being overheard."
"But who is to dig a grave for her? surely not you or I," replied Bigot with a look of dismay.
"Yes, gentlemen as we are, you and I must do it, Bigot. Zounds! I learned to dig and delve when I was a stripling at Charlebourg, and in the trenches at Louisbourg, and I have not yet forgotten the knack of it! But where to get spades, Bigot; you are master here and ought to know."
"I, how should I know? It is terrible, Cadet, to bury her as if we had murdered her! Is there no other way?"
"None. We are in a cahot and must get our cariole out of it as best we can! I see plainly we two shall be taxed with this murder, Bigot, if we let it be discovered! Besides, utter ruin awaits you from La Pompadour if she finds out you ever had this girl at Beaumanoir in keeping. Come! time for parley is past; where shall we find spades? We must to work, Bigot!"
A sudden thought lighted up the eyes of the Intendant, who saw the force of Cadet's suggestion, strange and repulsive as it was. "I think I know," said he; "the gardeners keep their tools in the old tower, and we can get there by the secret passage and return."