Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/207

Rh longer prone on his face, as he had fallen, but lay on his back, with his arms stretched out, crosswise; and by his side knelt a small spare man, who searched, hunted, and rummaged with hasty, yet cool and methodical, touch, every inch of his clothing. Up and down, across and across, into every pocket, along every lining, aye, down to the boots, ran the nimble fingers; and in the still of the evening, which seemed not broken but rather emphasized by the rumble of the tide that had begun to come in over the sands from the Mount, his passionate curses struck my ears. I recollect that I smiled—nay, I believe that I laughed—for the man was my old acquaintance Pierre—and Pierre was still on the track of the Cardinal’s Necklace; and he had not doubted, any more than I had doubted, that the duke carried it upon his person. Yet Pierre found it not, for he was growing angry now; he seemed to worry the still body, pushing it and tossing the arms of it to and fro as a puppy tosses a slipper or a cushion. And all the while the unconscious face of the Duke of Saint-Maclou was turned up to heaven, and a stiff smile seemed to mock the baffled plunderer. And I also wondered where the necklace was.

Then I let myself down on to the noiseless sands and stole across to the spot where the pair were. Pierre’s hands were searching desperately and wildly now; he no longer expected to find, but he could not yet believe that the search was in very truth in vain. Absorbed in his task, he heard me not; and coming up I