"Yes, monsieur. Will you please to close the shutter?"I went to it, and, leaning out, managed, with a little difficulty, to comply. Meanwhile, the King, gazing curiously at the curtains, gradually approached the alcove. He hesitated long, he told me afterwards, before he touched the hangings; but at length, feeling sure that there was something more in the business than appeared, he did so. Drawing one gently aside, as I turned from the window, he peered in; and saw just what he had been led to expect--a huddled form covered with dingy bed-clothes and a grey head lying on a ragged, yellow pillow. The man's face was turned to the wall; but, as the light fell on him, he sighed and, with a shiver, began to move. The King dropped the curtain.
The adventure had not turned out as well as he had hoped; and, with a whimsical look at me, he laid a crown on the table, said a kind word to the boy, and we went out. In a moment we were in the street.
It was my turn now to rally him, and I did so without mercy;asking if he knew of any other beauteous damsel who wanted her shutter closed, and whether this was the usual end of his adventures. He took the jest in good part, laughing fully as loudly at himself as I laughed; and in this way we had gone a hundred paces or so very merrily, when, on a sudden, he stopped.
"What is it, sire?" I asked.
"Hola!" he said, "The boy was clean."
"Clean?"
"Yes; hands, face, clothes. All clean."
"Well, sire?"
"How could he be? His father in bed, no one even to close the shutter. How could he be clean?""But, if he was, sire?"
For answer Henry seized me by the arm, turned me round without a word, and in a moment was hurrying me back to the house. Ithought that he was going thither again, and followed reluctantly; but twenty paces short of the door he crossed the street, and drew me into a doorway. "Can you see the shutter?"he said. "Yes? Then watch it, my friend."
I had no option but to resign myself, and I nodded. A moist and chilly wind, which blew through the street and penetrating our cloaks made us shiver, did not tend to increase my enthusiasm;but the King was proof even against this, as well as against the kennel smells and the tedium of waiting, and presently his persistence was rewarded. The shutter swung slowly open, the noise made by its collision with the wall coming clearly to our ears. A minute later the boy appeared in the doorway, and stood looking up and down.
"Well," the King whispered in my ear, "what do you make of that, my friend?"I muttered that it must be a beggar's trick.
"They would not earn a crown in a month," he answered. There must be something more than that at the bottom of it."Beginning to share his curiosity, I was about to propose that we should sally out and see if the boy would repeat his overture to us, when I caught the sound of footsteps coming along the street.
"Is it Maignan?" the King whispered, looking out cautiously.
"No, sire," I said. "He is in yonder doorway."Before Henry could answer, the appearance of two strangers coming along the roadway confirmed my statement. They paused opposite the boy, and he advanced to them. Too far off to hear precisely what passed, we were near enough to be sure that the dialogue was in the main the same as that in which we had taken part. The men were cloaked, too, as were we, and presently they went in, as we had gone in. All, in fact, happened as it had happened to us, and after the necessary interval we saw and heard the shutter closed.
"Well," the King said, "what do you make of that?""The shutter is the catch-word, sire."
"Ay, but what is going on up there?" he asked. And he rubbed his hands.
I had no explanation to give, however, and shook my head; and we stood awhile, watching silently. At the end of five minutes the two men came out again and walked off the way they had come, but more briskly. Henry moreover, whose observation was all his life most acute, remarked that whatever they had been doing they carried away lighter hearts than they had brought. And I thought the same.
Indeed, I was beginning to take my full share of interest in the adventure; and in place of wondering, as before, at Henry's persistence, found it more natural to admire the keenness which he had displayed in scenting a mystery. I was not surprised, therefore, when he gripped my arm to gain my attention, and, a the window fell slowly open again, drew me quickly into the street, and hurried me across it and through the doorway of the house.
"Up!" he muttered in my ear. "Quickly and quietly, man! If there are to be other visitors, we will play the spy. But softly, softly; here is the boy!"We stood aside against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe; and the child, guiding himself by the handrail, passed us in the dark without suspicion, and pattered on down the staircase. We remained as we were until we heard him cross the threshold, and then we crept up; not to the uppermost landing, where the light, when the door was opened, must betray us, but to that immediately below it. There we took our stand in the angle of the stairs and waited, the King, between amusement at the absurdity of our position and anxiety lest we should betray ourselves, going off now and again into stifled laughter, from which he vainly strove to restrain himself by pinching me.
