The man got up at once and came in, holding out his hand. "You must be Ben. I'm Paul Corbier."
Once upon a time January could have pictured Olympe marrying no one less impressive than the Devil himself. Looking at his brother-in-law's face he understood at least some of his sister's mellower mood. "I need to speak to Olympe, now, quickly. I think our sister's in trouble... Dominique. I need somebody to find Lieutenant Shaw of the police-or any of the police- and send them out to the Gentilly Road,
out to the Trepagier plantation at Les Saules, quickly. There's an ambush been laid, murder going to be done."
"They'll want to know how you know this," said Corbier.
January shook his head. "It's not something I can prove. Lieutenant Shaw will know, it's part of the Crozat murder case. Tell him I think Madeleine Trepagier is going to be ambushed there and we may need help. I'm going out there now."
Harness jingled and tires squelched in the mud, and turning, January saw over his shoulder the chaise that had carried them out to the Allard plantation for the duel. Dark-slicked with water, the horse shook its head against the rain. By the oil lamp in the bracket above the door, and the lesser gleam of the carriage lamps, Mayerling's scarred face was a pale blur in the dark of the leather hood.
"Dominique's with Madame Trepagier. Get Olympe to go, or send one of the children, but hurry!"
January sprang down the high brick step, across the banquette, vaulting the gutter and scrambling into the chaise, crowding its two occupants. His last glimpse of the light showed Paul Corbier turning to give some urgent instruction to the oldest boy as he shut the louvered door.
Mayerling lashed the reins. The wheels jarred and lurched in ruts and mud and jolted as they passed over the gutters, sprays of water leaping around them with the black glitter of liquid coal.
"Hannibal tells me your sister Dominique is with her."
"I had to take her somewhere. Minou knows enough not to speak of it later."
"Trepagier will have hired his men in the Swamp," said Hannibal, clinging to the two long guns and swaying with the violence of their speed. "For a dollar Nahum Shagrue's boys would sack the orphanage if they thought they could get away with it. The mutable, rank-scented many... Keelboat pirates... killers."
"I've met Monsieur Shagrue." January remembered those pig-cunning eyes, and the stink of sewage dripping off his coat.
"The green Turk was with Charles-Louis Trepagier at the Theatre on Mardi Gras night," said Mayerling in time. "I remember his words concerning Madeleine." The thin nostrils flared with silent anger. "I'm sorry now I didn't settle the matter there and then, in the courtyard. Capon. I suppose by then he had decided that he would rather kill than wed her."
"McGinty would have told him a proposal wasn't any use," said January. "He'd already tried it, as soon as Arnaud was dead-which means he knew there was a chance of the streetcar line going through even then. That must have been when he sent for Claud, and when he started romancing Sally, to keep an eye on Madame Trepagier's movements. Of course as a broker who'd handled Arnaud's affairs he'd have met her. It must have been Sally who told him Madame Trepagier was going to the quadroon ball to talk to Angelique."
"Told him she was going," said Hannibal, "but not what she would wear."
"And Claud hadn't seen Madeleine since her wedding to his brother, thirteen years ago. He couldn't have, if he'd embezzled money and stolen a slave. So when he saw a woman of her height and her build, wearing her jewels..."
"It refreshes me to know," said Mayerling, never taking his eyes from the road, "that upon occasion,
some people do get what they deserve. By the way," he added, "thank you for telling her to get out of there. I had no idea of her intention until I saw her, looking in at the ballroom door."
"She was with you until ten, wasn't she?" January kept his voice steady with an effort, for Mayerling drove like the Wild Hunt, and once beyond the lamps of the Faubourg Marigny the road beneath the overhanging oaks was pitch-dark. An occasional glimmer of soft gaslight through colored curtains flickered through the trees like a fashionable ghost to show where houses stood, but even those grew more sparse as the road got worse.
"Yes," said the sword master. "I glimpsed her outside the ballroom and slipped away from that silliness in Froissart's office as quickly as I could. I suppose I should have simply put her in a fiacre at once and sent her home, but instead we went through the passageway to the Theatre and found our way up to one of the private boxes. We have, you understand, little chance to be together. Foolish, I admit, and dangerous. I beg you make allowances for a man in love."
January glanced sharply sidelong at him, suddenly conscious of the thinness of those shoulder bones pressed so tightly into his arm. Mayerling met his gaze with frosty challenge, then returned his attention to the road as the chaise crashed through a minor lake across their way, water spraying around them in muddy wings.
"It is a long time," said the Prussian quietly, "since I have thought of myself as anything else. I suppose in France you ceased after a time to think of every white man as someone to beware of. To look down when one spoke to you?"
"In France I didn't have to lie every day about what I", am.
"Every day I tell the truth about what I am," replied Mayerling calmly. "I merely leave out the one fact-the one facet of my entirety-which would, in everyone's eyes, obliterate all the rest. Two facets, now. I used to lie awake nights, worrying about what would happen if I fell in love."
The thin face split into a sudden grin, like an impish boy's, save for the saber scars. "I never thought it would be a woman I fell in love with, you see. Not until I met her. And then it was like coming out of a dark room into sunlight."
He shrugged. "But, I have the advantage of being physically mannish enough to-as the octoroons say- pass, something I have done since the age of seventeen. Pass for a gentleman, I believe Monsieur Bouille put it... There!"
Through the metallic glint of carriage lamps on rain the slow-moving brougham appeared, a dark loom in the road ahead. Mayerling slashed with the reins again, and the horse leaped forward heavily, the chaise rocking like a drunken thing in the flooded ruts. Beyond the narrow zone of the lamps' illumination, nothing could be seen, the evergreen roof of live oak shutting out the black sky above, the Spanish moss dripping in wet curtains of cobweb around about. The coachman, rigid with disapproval of Madame Madeleine's choice of companions, half-turned on his box, trying to maneuver the carriage out of the narrow way to let the swifter vehicle pass. Mayerling pulled his horse to a walk, leaned from the chaise to cry, "Albert! It's me, Mayerling!"
"Monsieur Mayerling, sir!" The coachman saluted with his whip. "What you doin' out on a night like this? And that horse of yours look in a regular lather."
The door of the carriage opened abruptly, Madeleine's face framed suddenly in its darkness, and she had to stop herself visibly from speaking her lover's Christian name in front of her servant. "What is it?" Her voice sounded perfectly composed, but her face was haggard with exhaustion and strain.
January shook himself forcibly free of the sensation of foolishness that overwhelmed him at the sight of the carriage, unmolested, unambushed, untouched. There was danger-if not tonight, then tomorrow, or the next time she went out.
Augustus bowed, sweeping off his hat in the rain. "A complete false alarm, I hope. I'll explain when we reach the house, but Monsieur Janvier has a theory-and I think he's right-about the Crozat woman's murder. And if he's right, the attack on you this evening was no accident, and you may need escort back to Les Saules."