Meanwhile, following a short cut through the snowy woods that ran over the shoulder of the intervening hill, the pair were wending their way towards Lucerne. Godfrey, a fixed and vacant look upon his face, went first; the Pasteur clinging to his arm like a limpet to a rock, puffed along beside him.
"Heaven!" he gasped, "but this attraction of yours must be strong that it makes you walk so fast immediately after dinner."
"It is, it is!" said Godfrey, in a kind of agony. "I feel as though my inside were being drawn out, and I must follow it. Please hold my arm tight or I shall run."
"Ah! the witch. The great witch!" puffed the Pasteur, "and up this hill too, over snow. Well, it will be better on the down grade. Give me your hand, my boy, for your coat is slipping, and if once you got away how should I catch you?"
They accomplished the walk into Lucerne in absolutely record time.
Fortunately, at this after-dinner hour few people were about, but some of those whom they met stared at them, and one called:
"Do you take him to the police-station? Shall I summon the /gens-@@d'arme/?"
"No, no," replied the Pasteur, "he goes to keep an assignation, and is in a hurry."
"Then why does he take you with him? Surely a clergyman will make a bad third at such an affair?" ejaculated an outspoken lady who was standing at her house door.
"Where is the street? I do not know it," asked the Pasteur.
"Nor do I," answered Godfrey, "but we shall come there all right. To the left now."
"Oh! the influence! The strong influence!" muttered Monsieur Boiset.
"Behold! it leads him."
Truly it did lead him. Round corners and across squares they went into an old part of the town with which neither of them was acquainted, till at length Godfrey, diving beneath an archway, pulled up in front of an antique doorway, saying:
"I think this is the place."
"Look at the writing and make sure," said the Pasteur, "for it seems ridiculous----"
At that moment the door opened mysteriously, and Godfrey disappeared into the passage beyond. Scarcely had the Pasteur time to follow him when it shut again, although he could see no /concierge/.
"Doubtless it is one of those that works with a wire," he thought to himself, but he had no time to stop to look, for already Godfrey was climbing the stairs. Up he went, three floors, and up after him scrambled the Pasteur. Suddenly Godfrey stopped at a door and not waiting to ring the bell, knocked with his hand. Immediately it opened and Godfrey, with his companion, passed into a very dark hall round which were several other doors. Here in the gloom the Pasteur lost him. Godfrey had gone through one of the doors, but which he could not see. He stood still, listening, and presently heard a deep peculiar voice speaking English with a very foreign accent, say:
"So you have come to see your godmamma, my dear little clever boy.
Well, I thought you would, and last night I sent you a pretty messenger to give you remembrance."
Then the Pasteur found the handle of the door and entered the room. It was a curious place draped, not without taste of a bizarre kind, in vivid colours, wherein purple dominated, and it gave an idea of mingled magnificence and squalor. Some of the furniture was very good, as were one or two of the pictures, though all of it was of an odd and unusual make. Thus, the sideboard was shaped like a sarcophagus, and supported on solid sphinxes with gilded faces. In a corner of the room also stood an unwrapped mummy in a glass case.
In the midst of all this stood a common deal table, whereon were a black bottle, and the remains of Madame's meal, which seemed to have consisted of large supplies of underdone meat. In front of the fire was a large, well-worn couch, and by it a small stout table such as spiritualists use, on which gleamed a ball of glass or crystal. On this couch was seated Madame clad in a kind of black dressing-gown and a wide gold scarf tied about her ample waist. Her fat, massive face was painted and powdered; on her head she wore a kind of mantilla also gold-coloured, and about her neck a string of old Egyptian amulets.
Anything more unwholesome or uncanny than were her general appearance and surroundings as the bright flames of the fire showed them in this stuffy, shadowed room, it would be impossible to imagine.
"Sit down here by my side, my little son in the speerit, where I have made a place ready for you, and let me hold your hand while you tell me all that you have been doing and if you have been thinking much of me and that beautiful Eleanor whom I sent to see you last night," went on Madame Riennes in her ogreish, purring voice, patting the sofa.
Just then she looked up and caught sight of the Pasteur standing in the shadow. Staring at him with her fierce, prominent eyes, she started violently as though at last she had seen something of which she was afraid.
"Say, my Godfrey," she exclaimed in a rather doubtful voice, "what is this that you have brought with you? Is it a scarecrow from the fields? Or is it a speerit of your own? If so, I should have thought that a young man would have liked better the lovely Eleanor than this old devil."
"Yes, Madame Jezebel," said the Pasteur striding forward, speaking in a loud, high voice and waving a large umbrella, which had come partly unfolded in his hurried walk. "It is a scarecrow--one that scares the crows of hell who seek to pick out the souls of the innocent, like /you/, Madame Jezebel."
Madame uttered a voluminous oath in some strange tongue, and sprang to her feet with an agility surprising in one so stout.
"Say, who are you?" she ejaculated in French, confronting him.
"I am the Pasteur Boiset who accompany my ward to pay this little call, Madame."
"Oh! indeed. That thief of a clergyman, who got his finger into the pie of dead Mademoiselle, eh? Well, there are no more pickings here, Pasteur, but perhaps you come to have your fortune told. Shall I look in the crystal for you and tell you nice things about--what shall we say? About the past of that handsome Madame of yours, for instance?