THE EVENTS OF THE ELEVENTH OF APRIL
This attack took place under circumstances so mysterious and so
inexplicable, to all appearances, under any reasonable hypothesis, that
the reader will permit me, in order to make him comprehend the issue
more fully, to dwell upon certain details in regard to the manner in
which we spent our time on the eleventh day of April, 1895.
(1) _The Morning._
The day, almost from the rising of the sun, was intolerably hot and
the hours on guard were almost overpowering. The sun was as torrid as
in the heart of Africa and it would have blinded us to keep watch over
the waters which burned like a sheet of steel, brought to a white heat,
if we had not been furnished with eyeglasses of smoked glass, without
which it is difficult to pass the season of departing winter in this
part of the country.
At nine o’clock, I came down from my room and went to the postern
and entered the room which we had styled “the hall of counsel” to
relieve Rouletabille of his guard. I had no time to say a single word
to him before M. Darzac appeared, following almost upon my heels, and
announcing that he had something very important to communicate to us.
We inquired anxiously the cause of his agitation and he replied that he
intended to quit the Fort of Hercules at once, taking his wife with
him. This declaration left Rouletabille and myself dumb with surprise.
I was the first to speak and endeavored to dissuade M. Darzac from even
thinking of such an imprudence. Rouletabille frigidly inquired the
reason for our friend’s sudden resolution and the latter replied by
informing us of a scene which had occurred during the previous evening
at the château and which revealed to us in how difficult a position the
Darzacs were placed by remaining at the Fort of Hercules. The story
may be summed up in a few words: Mme. Edith had had a nervous attack.
We understood the reason at once for there was no doubt in the mind of
either Rouletabille or myself that Mrs. Rance’s jealousy of Mme. Darzac
was increasing every hour and that each act of courtesy performed by
the husband toward the former object of his admiration was positively
insupportable to his wife. The sounds of the fit of hysterics to which
she had treated M. Rance and the words which she had spoken the night
before had penetrated even through the heavy walls of “la Louve,” and
M. Darzac, who was doing sentinel duty in the outer court, had been
unable to help hearing some of the echoes of the young woman’s anger.
Rouletabille implored M. Darzac to endure the situation with fortitude,
unpleasant as were the circumstances. He assured him that he agreed
with his feeling that the stay of himself and Mme. Darzac at the Fort
of Hercules must be made as brief as possible; but he also assured him
that the security of both depended in great measure on their remaining
in their present quarters for the time being. A new struggle had been
begun between them on the one side and Larsan on the other. If they
were to go away Larsan would know on the moment how to overtake them
and in a time and place that they expected him the least. Here, they
were forewarned, they were upon their guard, for they _knew_.
Elsewhere, they would be at the mercy of everything and every person
that surrounded them, for they would not have the ramparts of the
Fort of Hercules to defend them. Certainly, this situation could not
endure very long, but Rouletabille asked M. Darzac to wait eight days
longer--not a single one more. “Eight days,” said Columbus long ago,
“and I will give you a new world.” “Give me eight days and I will
deliver Larsan into your hands,” was not what Rouletabille said, but it
was what we knew that he was thinking.
M. Darzac left us, shaking his head, doubtfully. He was angrier than we
had ever seen him. Rouletabille remarked:
“Mme. Darzac will not leave us and M. Darzac will stay if she does.”
And he started off on his rounds.
A few moments later, I caught sight of Mme. Edith. She was charmingly
dressed, with a simplicity which suited her marvellously. She smiled at
me coquettishly, but her gayety seemed a little forced as she jested
at my “new trade.” I answered her, perhaps a little too quickly, that
she was uncharitable in her jests, because she knew quite well that all
the trouble which we were taking and the careful watch which we were
maintaining might be the means, at any moment, of saving the sweetest
of women from untold misery and danger.
She looked at me mockingly and cried with a sharp little laugh:
“Oh, surely. ‘The Lady in Black!’ She has you all under her spell.”
What a ringing laugh she had! At another time, rest assured, I would
not have allowed anyone to speak so lightly of “the Lady in Black,” but
this morning I had not the strength of mind to assert myself. On the
contrary, I laughed, too.
“Perhaps, there is a little truth in that speech,” I returned.
“My husband is crazy about her! I never would have believed that he
could be so romantic. But, then,” she went on, with a droll little
sigh, “I am romantic, too!”
And she turned upon me that same curious look which had disturbed me
before.
“Ah?” That was all that I could find to answer.
“And, therefore,” she continued, “I take very great pleasure in the
conversation of Prince Galitch, who is more romantic than all the rest
of you put together.”
Whereupon I asked her who was this Prince Galitch of whom I had
heard so much but had not yet seen. She told me that he was coming
to luncheon--that she had invited him on our accounts; and she gave
me a few particulars in regard to him from which I learned that
Prince Galitch was one of the richest landholders in his own part
of Russia--that portion called the “Black Lands,” fertile above all
others, and situated between the forests of the North and the steppes
of the Midi.
Fallen heir, at the age of twenty, to one of the greatest of Muscovite
estates, he had increased his patrimony by economical and intelligent
management of which no one would have believed a man so young to be
capable--especially one who had heretofore had his hounds and his books
as his principal objects in life. He was called a hermit, a miser and
a poet. He had inherited, from his father a high position at court.
He was a chamberlain to His Majesty and, on account of the immense
services rendered by the parent, the Emperor was supposed to regard the
son with a great deal of affection. He was at once as gentle as a woman
and as strong as a Turk--in brief, a thorough Russian gentleman.
I cannot tell why, but I felt a singular antipathy for the Prince
without ever having set eyes on him.
His relations with the Rances were those of friendly neighborliness.
Having purchased two years before the magnificent property whose
hanging gardens, flowery terraces, and beautiful balconies had made it
known at Garavan as “the Garden of Babylon,” he had had the opportunity
to be of assistance to Edith when she had begun to make the outer court
of the Château of Hercules into an exotic garden. He had presented her
with certain plants which had revived, in some corners of the Fort of
Hercules, a tropical vegetation hitherto scarcely known except on the
banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. M. Rance sometimes invited the
Prince to dinner, and always after one of these functions the Prince
would send to his hostess a wonderful palm tree from Nineveh or a
cactus, fabled to have belonged to Semiramis. He declared that they
cost him nothing. He had too many; he was tired of them and he did not
want them among his roses. Edith said that she was interested in the
young Russian because he dedicated such beautiful verses to her. After
he had repeated them in Russian, he would translate them into English
and he had even composed them in English for her and for her alone.
Verses--the verses of a real poet, dedicated to Mme. Edith! This had
so flattered her that she had requested the poet to compose English
verses for her and translate them into Russian. This “literary game”
greatly amused Mme. Edith, but Arthur Rance cared for it not at all.
The young anthropologist did not attempt to conceal that his feelings
toward Prince Galitch were not of the most friendly, and I felt assured
that the traits which the husband disliked most heartily were those
which the wife found most attractive in the Russian, for M. Rance had
no use for “verse writing fellows,” nor did he care for those who were
quite so prudent in their expenditures. He could not understand how a
poet could be something very like a miser. The Prince kept no carriage
nor motor car. He used the street cars and often did his own marketing,
attended by his servant, Ivan, who carried a basket for the provisions.
And--so said Mrs. Edith, who had heard these details from the cook--he
haggled over prices with the fishwife when there was only two sous
between what she asked and what he offered. Strangely enough, this
avariciousness did not seem in the least distasteful to Mme. Edith, who
appeared to consider it a mark of originality. And, she finished by
saying, “No one has ever set foot within his doors. He has never even
invited us to come and see his gardens.”
“Isn’t it beautifully fascinating?” demanded the young woman when she
had completed her description.
“Too beautifully fascinating!” I replied. “You will see!”
I do not know why this answer should have displeased my hostess, but
I could see that it did so. Mme. Edith turned away and left me and I
finished my guard duty which was an hour and a half long.
The first stroke of the luncheon bell sounded: I hurried to my room
to bathe my hands and face and make a hasty toilet and I mounted the
steps of “la Louve” rapidly fearing that I should be late; but I paused
in the vestibule, amazed to hear the sound of music. Who, under the
present circumstances, cared or dared to play a piano in the Fort of
Hercules? And, hark! Someone was singing. It was a voice at once soft
and sonorous singing a strange song which sounded now plaintive, now
threatening! I know the song now by heart; I have often heard it since.
Ah, reader, you, too, know it well, perhaps, if you have ever passed
the frontiers of chill Lithuania, if you have ever entered the vast
empires of the North. It is the song of the virgins who surround the
traveller as he sails and destroy him without pity; it is the song that
Sienkiewicz, one immortal day, made for Michel Vereszezaka. Listen.
“_If you approach the Swiss lakes at the hour of nightfall, the face
turned toward the lake, the stars above your head, the stars beneath
your feet, and two moons shining before your eyes--you shall see this
plant that caresses the bank--the wives and daughters of the Swiss
whom God has changed into flowers. They balance their forms above the
abyss, their heads white like the moths; their leaves are green as the
needle of the maize tipped with gold._
“_Images of innocence during life, they have kept their virginal
robe after death; they live in the shadow and no blemish comes near
them; mortal hands dare not touch them._
“_The Tsar and his guard one day made the attempt when, after having
gathered the beautiful flowers, they wished to wreath their brows and
adorn their swords with them._
“_All those who had gathered the blossoms were smitten with great
ill or struck with sudden death._
“_When time would have effaced these things from the memory of the
people, the memory of the punishment is preserved, and in perpetuating
it, the flowers are still called the doom of the Tsars._
“_Thus saying the lady of the lake departed slowly; the lake opened
for her the most profound of its depths; but the eye seeks in vain for
the fair unknown whose face was born out of the mist and whose voice
the traveller never heard again._”
These were the words, translated into our language, of the song which
was sung by the soft yet resonant voice while the piano played a weird
accompaniment. I opened the door and found myself face to face with a
young man who was standing. I heard the footsteps of Mme. Rance behind
me and the next moment she was introducing me to Prince Galitch.
The Prince was of the type that one reads of in romances, “handsome,
pensive young man”; his clear cut and rather stern profile might have
given a somewhat severe expression to his face if his eyes, as mild and
clear as those of a child, and with an expression of perfect candor,
had not told an altogether different story. They were framed in long
black lashes so black that they almost looked as though they had been
touched with a pencil; and when one had noticed this peculiarity, one
realized why it was that his countenance looked so strange. His skin
was fresh and rosy, almost like that of a young girl. Such was my first
impression of him but I felt the prejudice which I had experienced
before I saw him rise up in my heart again. But it seemed to me, in
spite of this, that he was too young to be of any special importance.
I could find nothing to say to this beautiful youth who chanted foreign
poems. Mme. Edith smiled at my embarrassment, took my arm (which gave
me great satisfaction) and led me away to walk in the perfumed gardens
of the outer court while we waited for the second bell for luncheon
which was to be served to us in the cabin of palm trees on the platform
of the Tower of the Bold.
(2) _The Luncheon and What Followed--A Contagious Terror Spreads
Through Our Midst._
At noon we seated ourselves at the table on the terrace of Charles the
Bold, the view from which was incomparable. The palm leaves covered us
with their grateful shade, for the heat of the earth and the heavens
was so intense that our eyes would not have been able to endure
the glare if we had not taken the precaution to put on the smoked
spectacles of which I have spoken before.
Those of us at the table were M. Stangerson, Mathilde, Old Bob, M.
Darzac, M. Arthur Rance, Edith, Rouletabille, Prince Galitch and
myself. Rouletabille, turning his back to the sea, concerned himself
very little with his companions and had placed himself in such a
position that he could observe everything which transpired along
the entire length of the fort. The servants were at their posts.
Pere Jacques was at the entrance gate, Mattoni at the postern of the
gardener, and the Berniers in the Square Tower before the door of the
apartments occupied by M. and Mme. Darzac.
The first part of the meal was rather silent. I looked at the others.
We were rather a solemn sight to contemplate around a table spread for
good cheer--mute, and turning upon each other our dark smoked glasses
behind which it was as impossible to see our eyes as to read our
thoughts.
Prince Galitch was the first to make a remark. He spoke politely to
Rouletabille mentioning the fame which the young reporter had won.
This appeared to embarrass the lad a little and he made a confused and
rather ungracious reply. The Prince did not seem to feel rebuffed, but
went on to explain that he was particularly interested in the exploits
of my friend for the reason that, as a subject of the Tsar, he knew
that Rouletabille would shortly be sent to Russia. But the reporter
replied that nothing had yet been decided and that he would prefer to
say nothing on the subject until he had received his directions from
his paper; whereupon, the Prince astonished us by drawing a newspaper
from his pocket. It was a journal of his own country from which he
translated to us a few lines announcing the fact that Rouletabille
was soon to be in St. Petersburg. There was occurring in that city,
the Prince went on to read to us, a series of events so strange and
inexplicable in high governmental circles that, upon the advice of the
Chief of the Secret Service at Paris, the Superintendent of Police had
decided to ask the Epoch to lend him the young reporter. Prince Galitch
had presented the affair so vividly that Rouletabille blushed to the
roots of his hair as he replied dryly that he had never in the course
of his short life done detective work and that the Chief of the Secret
Service at Paris and the Superintendent of Police at St. Petersburg
were two idiots. The Prince showed his fine teeth in a hearty laugh
and it seemed to me that his laughter was not pleasant but cruel and
savage. He seemed to be of Rouletabille’s opinion in regard to the
Government officers, and, as if to prove the fact, he added:
[Illustration:
M. and Mme. Darzac. M. Rance. Rouletabille. Old Bob.
Professor Stangerson. Sainclair. Mrs. Rance. Prince Galitch.
It made us nervous and restless to look at each other, seated around
the table, mute, leaning forward, wearing our black spectacles, behind
which it was as impossible to read our eyes as our thoughts.]
“It sounds good to hear anyone talk like that, for now one expects
tasks of journalists which have nothing in the world to do with their
profession.”
Rouletabille made no reply and the subject was abandoned.
Mme. Edith arose from her chair, speaking ecstatically of the beauty
of nature. But, in her opinion, she declared, there was nothing more
beautiful anywhere near than the “Gardens of Babylon.” She added,
mischievously: “They seem so much more beautiful, because one may only
see them from a distance!”
The attack was so direct that it seemed as though the Prince must reply
to it by an invitation. But he said nothing. Mme. Edith looked vexed
and a moment later, said suddenly:
“I’m not going to deceive you any longer, Prince. I have seen your
gardens.”
“Indeed! And how was that?” inquired Galitch, not losing his presence
of mind for an instant.
“Yes, I have been there, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
And she related while the Prince listened with an air of cold
imperturbability the story of her visit to the “Gardens of Babylon.”
She had come upon them, inadvertently, from the rear, in climbing over
a hillock which separated the gardens from the mountains. She had
wandered from enchantment to enchantment, but without being in the
least astonished. When she had walked upon the seashore, she had seen
enough of the “Gardens of Babylon” to prepare her for the marvels,
the secrets of which she had so audaciously stolen. She had finally
reached the edge of a little pond, black as ink, upon the bank of which
she saw a great water lily and a little old woman with a long, peaked
chin. When they saw her the water lily and the little old woman had
fled away, the latter so light on her feet in running that she fairly
skimmed over the ground. Mme. Edith had laughed and had called after
her:
“Madame! Madame!”
But the little old woman had seemed only more terrified and had
disappeared with her lily behind the barberry hedge. Mme. Edith had
continued her stroll but not quite so carelessly. Suddenly she had
heard a rustle in the bushes and the strange cry which is made by wild
birds when, surprised by the hunter, they escape from the prison of
verdure in which they have hidden themselves. It was another little old
woman, still more shriveled and wrinkled than the first, but heavier of
build and who carried her cane like a battle axe. She vanished--that
is to say, Edith lost sight of her in a turn of the path. And a third
little old woman, leaning on two canes appeared a little further on
in the mysterious garden: she escaped behind the trunk of a giant
eucalyptus tree and she went so much the faster than she had done
before, by running on her hands and knees so rapidly that it was
amazing that she did not get all tangled up. Mme. Edith still went
on. And at last she came to the marble steps of the villa with their
climbing roses over head, but the three little old women were standing
guard on the highest step like three rooks on a branch and they opened
their threatening beaks from which escaped threatening sounds. It was
then Mme. Edith’s turn to flee.
The little woman had related her adventure in a manner so charming and
with such grace, borrowed as it was from the fairy tales of childhood,
that I was enraptured and began to comprehend how certain women who
have nothing natural about them can supplant in the heart of men those
whose gifts are only those of nature.
The Prince did not seem in the least embarrassed by the little history.
He said without a smile:
“Those are my three fairy godmothers. They have never left me since the
hour of my birth. I can neither work nor live without them, I can only
leave them when they permit it and they watch over my verse making with
a fierce jealousy.”
The Prince had scarcely ceased giving us this fantastic explanation of
the presence of the three old women in the “Gardens of Babylon” when
Walter, Old Bob’s man servant, brought a dispatch to Rouletabille. The
latter asked permission to open it and read aloud:
“Return as soon as possible. We are waiting for you very anxiously. A
magnificent assignment at St. Petersburg.”
This dispatch was signed by the Editor in chief of the Epoch.
“Well, what do you say to that, M. Rouletabille?” demanded the Prince.
“Will you admit now that I was pretty well informed?”
The Lady in Black could not repress a sigh.
“I shall not go to St. Petersburg!” declared Rouletabille.
“They will regret your decision at the Court,” said the Prince. “I am
certain of that, and, allow me to say, young man, that you are missing
a wonderful opportunity.”
The term “young man” seemed extremely displeasing to Rouletabille, who
opened his lips as though to answer the Prince, but closed them again,
to my great surprise, without uttering a word. Galitch went on:
“You would have found an adventure worthy of your skill. One may hope
for everything when one has been strong enough to unmask a Larsan!”
The word fell into the midst of us like a bombshell and, as if by
a common impulse, we took refuge behind our smoked glasses. The
silence which followed was horrible. We sat as motionless as statues.
_Larsan!_ Why should this name which we ourselves had so often
pronounced within the last forty-eight hours and which represented a
danger with which we were commencing to almost feel familiar--why, I
say, should that name, spoken at that precise moment, have produced an
effect upon us, which, speaking for myself, was like nothing ever felt
before? It seemed to me as though I had been struck by a thunderbolt.
An indefinable terror glided through my body. I longed to flee but it
seemed to me that if I were to stand up my limbs would not be able to
support me. The unbroken silence on every hand contributed to increase
this indescribable state of hypnosis. Why did no one speak? Where had
old Bob’s gayety vanished? He had scarcely uttered a word during the
meal. And why did all the others sit so silent and so motionless behind
their dark glasses? All at once, I turned my head and looked behind me.
Then I understood, more by instinct than anything else, that I was the
object of a common psychical attraction. Someone was looking at me. Two
eyes were fixed upon me--_weighing_ upon me. I could not see the
eyes and I did not know from where the glance fixed upon me came, but
it was there. I knew it--and it was _his_ glance. But there was
no one behind me, nor at the right, nor the left, nor in front, except
the people who were seated at the table, motionless, behind their dark
glasses. And then--then I knew that Larsan’s eyes were glaring at me
from behind a pair of those glasses--ah! the dark glasses--the dark
glasses behind which were hidden Larsan’s eyes.
And then, all at once, the sensation passed. The eyes, doubtless, were
turned away from me. I drew a long breath. Another sigh echoed my own.
Was it from the breast of Rouletabille--was it the Lady in Black, who
perhaps, had at the same time as myself endured the weight of those
piercing eyes?
Old Bob spoke:
“Prince, I do not believe that your last spinal bone goes any further
back than the middle of the quarternary period.”
And all the black spectacles turned in his direction.
Rouletabille arose and made a sign to me. I hastened to the council
room where he was waiting for me. As soon as I appeared, he closed the
door and whispered:
“Well, did you feel it, too?”
I felt smothered. I could scarcely articulate.
“He was there--at that table--unless we are going mad.”
There was a pause and then I resumed, more calmly:
“You know, Rouletabille, that it is quite possible that we are going
mad. This phantasm of Larsan will land us all in a madhouse yet! We
have been shut up here only two days and see the state we are in!”
Rouletabille interrupted me.
“No, no; I felt him. He is there. I could have touched him! But
where--but when? Since I came into that room, I have known that it was
not necessary for me to go further. I will not fall into his trap. I
will not go and look for him outside the castle even though I have seen
him outside with my own eyes--even though you saw him with yours.”
All in a moment he seemed to grow perfectly calm, passed his hand
across his eyebrows, lighted his pipe and said, as he had so often said
before, in happier hours when his reasoning powers, which were yet
ignorant of the ties which united him to the Lady in Black, were not
disturbed by the tumult of his heart:
“Let us reason it out!”
And he returned on the instant to that argument which had already
served us and which he repeated again and again to himself (in order
that, he said, he should not be lured away by the outer appearance
of things): “Do not look for Larsan in that place where he reveals
himself; seek for him everywhere else where he hides himself.”
This he followed up with the supplementary argument:
“He never shows himself where he seems to be except to prevent us from
seeing him where he really is.”
And he resumed:
“Ah! the outer appearance of things! Look here, Sainclair! There are
moments when, for the sake of reasoning clearly, I want to get rid of
my eyes! Let us get rid of our eyes, Sainclair, for five minutes--just
five minutes, and, perhaps, we shall see more clearly.”
He seated himself, placed his pipe on the table, buried his face in his
hands and said:
“Now, I have no eyes. Tell me, Sainclair--_who is within these
walls?_”
“What do I see within these walls?” I echoed stupidly.
“No, no! You have no eyes at all; you see nothing. Enumerate them
without seeing. Count them ALL.”
“There is, first of all, you and I,” I said, understanding, at last,
what he wished to reach.
“Very well.”
“Neither you nor I,” I continued, “is Larsan.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I echoed.
“Yes, why. Tell me. You must give a reason why you believe so.
I acknowledge that I am not Larsan; I am sure of that, for I am
Rouletabille; but, face to face with Rouletabille, tell me why you
cannot be Larsan?”
“Because you saw him----”
“Idiot!” exclaimed Rouletabille closing his eyes in with his clasped
hands more firmly than before. “I have no eyes. I can’t see anything!
If Jerry, the croupier at Monte Carlo, had not seen the Comte de Maupas
sit down at his table, he would have sworn that the man who picked
up the cards was Ballmeyer! If Noblet at the garrison had not found
himself face to face one evening at the Troyons, with a man whom he
recognized as the Vicomte Drouet d’Eslon, he would have sworn that
the man whom he came to arrest and whom he did not arrest because he
had _seen_ him, was Ballmeyer. If Inspector Giraud, who knew the
Comte de Motteville as well as you know me, had not _seen_ him one
afternoon at the race course at Longchamps, chatting with two of his
friends--had not _seen_, I say, the Comte de Motteville, he would
have arrested Ballmeyer. Ah, you see, Sainclair!” ejaculated the lad in
a voice shaken with sobs, “my father was born before I was! One will
have to be very strong and very shrewd to capture my father!”
The words were uttered so despairingly that the little force of
reasoning I possessed vanished completely. I threw out my hands before
me, a gesture which Rouletabille did not see, for he saw nothing.
“No--no! It isn’t necessary to _see_ any of them!” he repeated.
“Neither you, nor M. Stangerson, nor M. Darzac, nor Arthur Rance, nor
Old Bob, nor Prince Galitch. But we must know some good reason why each
of these cannot be Larsan. Only when that is accomplished shall I be
able to breathe freely behind these stone walls!”
There was no freedom in my breathing. We could hear, under the arch of
the postern, the regular steps of Mattoni as he kept guard.
“Well, how about the servants?” I asked, with an effort. “Mattoni and
the others?”
“I am absolutely certain that none of them was absent from the Fort of
Hercules when Larsan appeared to Mme. Darzac and to M. Darzac at the
railway station at Bourg.”
“Own up, Rouletabille!” I cried. “That you don’t trouble yourself about
them because none of their eyes were behind the black spectacles.”
Rouletabille tapped the ground impatiently with his foot and said:
“Be quiet, please, Sainclair. You make me more nervous than my mother.”
This phrase, uttered in vexation, struck me strangely. I would have
questioned Rouletabille in regard to the state of mind of the Lady in
Black, but he resumed, meditatively:
“First, Sainclair is not Larsan, because Sainclair was at Trepot with
me while Larsan was at Bourg.
“Second: Professor Stangerson is not Larsan because he was on his way
from Dijon to Lyons while Larsan was at Bourg. As a fact, reaching
Lyons one minute before him, M. and Mme. Darzac saw him alight from the
train.”
“But all the others, if it is necessary to prove that they were not at
Bourg at that moment, might be Larsan, for all of them might have been
at Bourg.
“First M. Darzac was there. Arthur Rance was away from home during
the two days which preceded the arrival of the Professor and of M.
Darzac. He arrived at Mentone just in time to receive them (Mme. Edith
herself informed me in reply to a few careless questions of mine that
her husband had been absent those two days on business). Old Bob made
his journey to Paris. Prince Galitch was not seen at the grottoes nor
outside the Gardens of Babylon.
“First, let us take M. Darzac.”
“Rouletabille!” I cried. “That is a sacrilege.”
“I know it.”
“And it is a piece of the grossest stupidity.”
“I know that, too. But why?”
“Because,” I exclaimed, almost beside myself, “Larsan is a genius,
we are aware; he might be able to deceive a detective, a journalist,
a reporter, and even a Rouletabille--he might even deceive a friend,
under some circumstances, I admit. But he could never deceive a
daughter so far that she would take him for her father. That ought
to reassure you as to M. Stangerson. Nor would he deceive a woman to
the point of taking him for her betrothed. And, my friend, Mathilde
Stangerson knew M. Darzac and threw herself into his arms at the
railway station.”
“And she knew Larsan, too!” added Rouletabille coldly. “Well, my dear
fellow, your reasons are powerful but as I do not know at present what
form the genius of my father has assumed as a disguise, I prefer rather
to bestow, for the sake of supposition, a personality on M. Robert
Darzac which I have never expected to fasten upon him, in order to base
my argument against the possibility a little more solidly: If Robert
Darzac were Larsan, Larsan would not have appeared on several occasions
to Mathilde Stangerson, for it is the apparition of Larsan that has
created a gulf between Mathilde Stangerson and Robert Darzac.”
“Pshaw!” I cried. “Of what use are such vain reasonings when one has
only to open his eyes--open them, Rouletabille!”
He opened them.
“Upon whom?” he asked with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Upon
Prince Galitch?”
“Why not? Do you like him, this prince from the Black Lands who sings
Lithuanian folk songs?”
“No,” replied Rouletabille. “But he entertains Mme. Edith.”
And he smiled. I pressed his hand. He acted as though he had not felt
the touch, but I knew that he did.
“Prince Galitch is a Nihilist and I am not troubled over him in the
least degree,” he said, tranquilly.
“Are you sure of it? Who told you?”
“Bernier’s wife, who knows one of the three old women whom Mrs. Edith
told about at luncheon. I have made an investigation. She is the mother
of one of the three men hanged at Kazan for the attempted assassination
of the Emperor. I have seen the photograph of the poor wretches.
The other two old women are the other two mothers. There’s nothing
interesting about that!”
I could not refrain from a gesture of admiration.
“Ah, you haven’t lost any time.”
“Neither has _he_!” he muttered.
I folded my arms.
“And Old Bob?” I asked.
“No, dear boy, no!” scoffed Rouletabille, almost angrily. “Not he,
either. You have noticed that he wears a wig, I suppose. Well, I assure
you that when my father wears a wig, it will fit him.”
He spoke so mechanically that I rose to leave him, thinking he had no
more to say to me. He stopped me:
“Wait a minute. We have said nothing of Arthur Rance.”
“Oh, he has not changed at all since we were at Glandier,” I exclaimed.
“That is out of the question.”
“Always the eyes! Take care of your eyes, Sainclair!”
And he put his hand on my shoulder for a moment as I turned away.
Through my clothing I felt that his flesh was burning. He left the room
and I remained for a moment where I stood, lost in thought. In thought
of what? Of the fact that I had been wrong in saying that Arthur Rance
had not changed at all. For one thing, now, he wore a slight moustache,
something very rarely seen in an American of his type; next, his hair
had grown longer with a lock falling over the forehead. And again, I
had not seen him in two years--and everyone changes in two years--and
again, Arthur Rance, who had used to drink heavily, now tasted only
water. But then, there was Edith--what about Edith? Ah! was I going
insane, I, too? Why do I say, ‘I, too,’ like--like the Lady in Black;
like--like Rouletabille. Did I believe that Rouletabille’s brain was
becoming slightly turned? Ah, the Lady in Black had us all under her
spell. Because the Lady in Black lived in the perpetual fear of her
memories, here were we all trembling with the same horror as she. Fear
is as contagious as the cholera.
(3) _How I Spent My Afternoon up to Five O’clock._
I profited by the fact that I was not on guard to go to my room for
a little rest; but I slept badly and dreamed that Old Bob, M. Rance
and Mme. Edith had formed themselves into a band of brigands who had
sworn death to Rouletabille and myself. And when I awakened under this
pleasant impression and saw the old towers and the old château with
their menacing walls rising before me, I came near thinking that my
nightmare was real and I said to myself half aloud: “It’s a fine place
in which we have taken refuge!” I put my head out of the window. Mrs.
Edith was walking in the Court of the Bold, chatting carelessly with
Rouletabille and twisting the stem of a beautiful rose between her
pretty fingers. I went down immediately. But when I reached the court,
I found no one there. I followed Rouletabille whom I saw on his way to
make his inspection of the Square Tower.
I found him quite calm and entirely master of himself--and also,
entirely the master of his eyes, which were not closed now but open
wide and keenly on the watch for anything that might turn up. Ah, it
was worth while to see the manner in which he looked at everything
around him! Nothing escaped him. And the Square Tower, the abode of the
Lady in Black, was the object of his constant surveillance.
And at this point, it seems to me opportune, a few hours before the
moment at which that most mysterious attack occurred, to present to
the reader the interior plan of the inhabited story of the Square
Tower--the story which was on a level with the Court of Charles the
Bold.
When one entered the Square Tower by the only door (K) one found
himself in a large corridor which had previously formed a part of the
guard room. The guard room had formerly taken up all the space at O,
O′, O″ and O‴ and was shut in by walls of stone which still existed
with their doors opening upon the other rooms of the Old Castle. It
was Mrs. Arthur Rance who in this guard room had had wooden partitions
raised to make quite a large room which she wished to use for a
bathroom. This room, also, was now surrounded by the two passages at
right angles to each other. The door of the room which served as the
lodge of the Berniers was situated at S. It was necessary to pass
in front of this door to reach R, where was the only door affording
admission to the apartment of the Darzacs. One or other of the Berniers
was always in the lodge. And no one save themselves had a right to
enter it. From this lodge one could easily see from a little window at
Y, the door V which opened off the suite of Old Bob. When M. and Mme.
Darzac were not in their apartment, the only key which opened the door
R was in the keeping of the Berniers; and it was a special kind of key
made purposely for the room within the last twenty-four hours in a
place which no one but Rouletabille knew. The young reporter had let no
one into the secret.
Rouletabille would have wished that the watch which he had had placed
upon the rooms of the Darzacs might have been kept also upon those of
Old Bob, but the latter had opposed such an idea with an earnestness
so comical that it was necessary to abandon it. Old Bob swore that he
would not be treated like a prisoner and he said that on no account
would he give up the privilege of going and coming to his own rooms
when he saw fit without asking the keys from the lodge-keepers. His
door must remain unlocked so that he might go as many times as he liked
to his rooms, whether it might be to his bed chamber or to his sitting
room in the Tower of Charles the Bold, without disturbing or worrying
himself or any one else. On account of his insistence, it was necessary
to leave the door at K open. He demanded it and Mme. Edith upheld her
uncle in so intense a manner and spoke so pertly to Rouletabille that
he knew she was seeking to convey the idea that she believed that
Rouletabille was treating Old Bob with discourtesy at the instigation
of Professor Stangerson’s daughter. So he had not insisted on what he
believed to be best. Mme. Edith had said with her lips pressed together
in a narrow little line: “But, M. Rouletabille, my uncle doesn’t think
that anyone is coming to carry _him_ away!” And Rouletabille had
realized that there was nothing for him to do save to laugh with the
Old Bob over this absurd idea that one could be trying to steal as
they would a pretty woman, the man who had the oldest skull in the
world. And so he had laughed--had laughed even louder than Old Bob,
but had imposed the condition that the door at K should be locked
with a key after 10 o’clock at night and that the key should be left
in the keeping of the Berniers, who would come and open it whenever
anyone desired. Even this was against the inclination of Old Bob, who
sometimes worked very late in the Tower of Charles the Bold. But,
nevertheless, he declared, he would submit to it for he did not wish
to have the appearance of opposing the worthy M. Rouletabille, who had
told him that he was afraid of robbers. For, be it said in exculpation
of Old Bob, that, if he lent himself so ungraciously to the defensive
plans of our young friend it was because it had not been judged
expedient to inform him in regard to the resurrection of Larsan. He
had, of course, heard of the extraordinary series of fatalities which
had formerly occurred in the history of poor Mlle. Stangerson; but he
was a thousand miles from doubting that all her troubles had ceased
long before she had become Mme. Darzac. And then, too, Old Bob was an
egoist, like nearly all savants. Happy because he possessed the oldest
skull in the history of the human race, he could not conceive that the
whole world did not revolve around his treasure.
* * * * *
Rouletabille, after having politely inquired after the health of Mere
Bernier, who was gathering up potatoes and putting them in a bag at her
side, requested Pere Bernier to open the door of the Darzacs’ room for
us.
This was the first time that I had entered the apartment. The
atmosphere was almost freezing, and the whole place seemed to me
cold and sombre. The room, very large, was furnished with extreme
simplicity, containing an oak bed, and a toilet table which was placed
at one of the two openings in the wall around which there had formerly
been loopholes. So thick was the wall and so large the opening that
this embrasure (J) formed a kind of little room beside the big one and
of this M. Darzac had made his dressing closet. The second window (J′)
was smaller. The two windows were fitted with bars of iron between
which one could scarcely pass one’s arm. The high bedstead had its back
to the outer wall and had been drawn up against the partition of stone
which separated M. Darzac’s apartment from that of his wife. Opposite
in the angle of the tower was a panel. In the centre of the room
was a reading table on which were some scientific books and writing
materials. And there was an easy chair and three straight-backed
chairs. That was all. It would have been absolutely impossible for
anyone to hide in this chamber, unless, of course, behind the panel.
And then, too, Pere and Mere Bernier had received orders to look every
time they visited the room both behind the panel and in the closet
where M. Darzac hung his clothes, and Rouletabille himself, who, during
the absence of the Darzacs often came to cast his eye around this room,
never neglected to search it thoroughly.
[Illustration: The Plan of the Inhabited Floor of the Square Tower.]
He did so now, as I stood there. When we at length passed into the
sleeping room of Mme. Darzac, we were absolutely certain that we had
left nothing behind us of which we did not know. As soon as we entered
the room, Bernier, who had followed us, had taken care, as he always
did, to draw the bolt which closed from the inside the only door by
which the apartment communicated with the corridor.
Mme. Darzac’s room was smaller than that of her husband. But it was
bright and well lighted from the way that the windows were placed. As
soon as we set foot over the threshold, I saw Rouletabille turn pale
and he turned to me and said:
“Sainclair, do you perceive the perfume of the Lady in Black?”
I did not. I perceived nothing at all. The window, barred, like all the
others which looked out on the sea, was wide open and a light breeze
rustled the hangings which had been drawn in front of a set of hooks
for gowns which had been placed in one corner. The other corner was
occupied by the bed. The hooks were placed so high that the gowns and
peignoir which they held were covered by the hangings in front scarcely
more than half way down, so that it would have been entirely out of
the question for any person to conceal himself there without leaving
his legs exposed to view from the knees to the feet. Nor would anyone
have been able to hide in the corner where the portmanteaux and trunks
were placed, although, nevertheless, Rouletabille examined it with the
greatest care. There was no panel in this room. Toilet table, bureau,
an easy chair, two other chairs, and the four walls between which there
was no one but ourselves, as we could have sworn by all that we held
most sacred.
Rouletabille, after having looked under the bed, gave the signal for
departure and motioned us from the room. He lingered for a moment,
but no longer. Bernier locked the door with the tiny key which he
put in his inside pocket and tightly buttoned his coat over it. We
made the tour of the corridors and also that of Old Bob’s apartment
which consisted of a bedroom and sitting room as easy to examine and
as incapable of hiding anyone as those of the Darzacs. No one was in
the suite, which was furnished rather carelessly, the chief article
noticeable being an almost empty book case with the doors standing
open. When we left the room Mere Bernier brought up her chair and
placed it on the threshold where she could see clearly and still go on
with her work, which seemed to be always that of paring potatoes.
We entered the rooms occupied by the Berniers and found them like all
the others. The other stories were inhabited and communicated with the
ground floor by a little inner stairway which began at the angle O′
and ascended to the summit of the tower. A trap door in the ceiling
of the Berniers’ room closed this stairway. Rouletabille asked for a
hammer and nails and nailed up the trap door, thus making the stairway
unusable.
One might say, in short and in fact, that nothing escaped Rouletabille
and that when we had made the rounds of the Square Tower we had left no
one behind us save M. and Mme. Bernier. One would have said, too, that
there could have been no human being in the apartment of the Darzacs
before Bernier, a few minutes later, opened the door to M. Darzac
himself as I am now about to relate.
* * * * *
It was about five minutes before five o’clock when, leaving Bernier in
his corridor in front of the door of the Darzacs’ room, Rouletabille
and myself found ourselves again in the Court of the Bold.
At that moment we climbed to the platform of the ancient tower at
B″. We seated ourselves upon the parapet, our eyes looking down to
the ground, attracted by the echoes of the Rochers Rouges. At that
moment, we noticed upon the edge of the Barma Grande which opened its
mysterious mouth in the flaming face of Baousse-Raousse, the disturbed
and wrathful countenance of Old Bob. His shadow was the only dark thing
about. The red cliffs rose from the waters with such a vivid radiance
that one might have readily believed that they were still glowing
with the same fires which are found in the interior of the earth. By
what a prodigious anachronism it was that this modern scholar with
his coat and hat in the height of fashion should be moving about,
grotesque and ghoulish, in front of this cavern three hundred thousand
years old formed by the ardent lava to serve as the first roof for
the first family in the first days of the world! Why this sinister
gravedigger in this beautiful corner of the earth? We could see him
brandishing his skull as he had done at the table and we could hear
him laugh--laugh--laugh! Ah, his laughter made us ill even to think of
it! It tore our ears and our hearts.
From Old Bob our attention was drawn to M. Darzac, who was coming
through the postern of the gardener and crossing the Court of the
Bold. He did not see us. Ah, he was not laughing! Rouletabille felt
the deepest pity for him for he saw that he was at the end of his
endurance. In the afternoon he had said to my friend, who now repeated
the words to me: “Eight days is too much! I do not believe that I can
bear this torment for eight days!”
“And where would you go?” Rouletabille had asked him.
“To Rome,” he had replied. Evidently Professor Stangerson’s daughter
would accompany him nowhere else and Rouletabille believed that it was
the idea that the Pope could arrange the affair which was driving him
wild with grief that had put the journey to Rome into the mind of poor
M. Darzac. Poor, poor M. Darzac! No, in truth, his face wore no smile.
We followed him with our eyes to the door of the Square Tower. We could
see from his looks that he could endure no more. His head was moodily
bent toward the ground; his hands were in his pockets. He had the air
of a man fatigued and disgusted with the whole world. Yes, with his
hands buried in his pockets, he looked out of humor with everything.
But, patience! he will take his hands out of his pockets and one will
not smile at him always. I confess that I smiled. Well, M. Darzac a
little after this gave me cause to experience the most frightful thrill
of terror which could freeze human bones! And I did not smile then.
M. Darzac went straight to the Square Tower, where, of course, he found
Bernier, who opened the door for him. As Bernier had been keeping
constant guard before the door of the room, as he had kept the key in
his pocket and as we had proven by our investigation that the place was
empty when we had left it, we had established the fact that _when M.
Darzac entered his room, there could be no one else there_. And this
is the truth.
Everything that I have said could have been sworn to “after” by each
one of us. If I tell it to you “before,” it is that I am haunted by the
mystery which lurks in the shadow and makes ready to reveal itself.
At the moment that we saw M. Darzac go to his room, we heard a clock
strike five.
(4) _What Happened from Five O’clock that Night Until the Moment
When the Attack on the Square Tower Began._
Rouletabille and I remained chatting, or, rather, trying to reason
things out, upon the platform of the Tower B for another hour.
Suddenly, my friend struck me a little tap on the shoulder and
exclaimed, “For my part, I think--” and then, without completing the
sentence, he started for the Square Tower. I followed him.
I was a thousand miles from guessing what he thought. He thought of
Mere Bernier’s bag of potatoes which he emptied out on the white floor
of the room to the great amazement of the good woman; then, satisfied
with this act which evidently corresponded to the state of his mind, he
returned with me to the Court of the Bold, while, behind us, we could
hear Pere Bernier laughing as he picked up the potatoes.
As we reached the court we saw the face of Mme. Darzac appearing for a
moment at the window of the room occupied by her father on the first
story of “la Louve.”
The heat had become insupportable. We were threatened with a violent
storm and we believed that it would begin to lighten immediately.
Ah, how much the storm would relieve us, we thought. The sea had a
thick and heavy quietude as though it had been saturated with oil.
The sea was heavy and the air was heavy and our hearts were heavy. No
one or nothing on the earth or in the heavens was lighter than Old
Bob, whose form had appeared again at the edge of the Barma Grande
and who was still moving around agitatedly. One would have said that
he was dancing. No, he was making a speech! To whom? We leaned over
the railing to see. There was apparently some one upon the strand to
whom Old Bob was addressing some long-winded scientific discourse. But
the palm leaves hid his auditor from us. Finally, the listener moved
and advanced, and approached the “black professor,” as Rouletabille
called him. And we saw that Old Bob’s congregation was composed of two
persons. One was Mme. Edith--we could easily recognize her with her
languishing graces, clinging like a vine to her husband’s arm. To her
husband’s arm! But this was not her husband? Who, then, was the young
man upon whom Mme. Edith was playing off so many pretty airs?
Rouletabille turned around, looking for someone of whom to make
inquiries--either Mattoni or Bernier. We saw Bernier upon the
threshold of the door of the Square Tower and Rouletabille beckoned
him. Bernier approached and his eye followed the direction indicated by
Rouletabille’s finger.
“Who is that with Mme. Rance?” asked the young reporter.
“The young man?” responded Bernier without hesitation. “That is Prince
Galitch.”
Rouletabille and I looked at each other. It is true that we had never
seen Prince Galitch walking at a distance, but I would not have
imagined that his manner of walking would be like this, and he had not
seemed to me to be so tall. Rouletabille understood my thoughts, I
knew. He shrugged his shoulders.
“All right,” he said to Bernier. “Thanks.”
And we continued to gaze at Mme. Edith and her Prince.
“I can only say one thing,” said Bernier as he turned to leave us.
“And that is that I don’t care for this prince at all. He is too soft
spoken and too blonde and his eyes are too blue. They say that he is a
Russian. That may be, but there are some who leave the country because
they have to. But he comes and goes in a strange fashion and takes no
leave beforehand. The time before the last that he was invited here
to luncheon Madame and Monsieur waited and waited for him and dared
not begin without him. Well, after an hour or two they received a
wire, begging them to excuse him because he had missed the train. The
dispatch was sent from Moscow.”
And Bernier, chuckling, returned to his vantage post.
Our eyes remained fixed upon the beach. Mme. Edith and her prince
continued their stroll toward the grotto of Romeo and Juliet; Old Bob
suddenly ceased to gesticulate, descended from the Barma Grande and
came toward the château, entered the gate, crossed the outer court,
and we saw, even from the height of the platform of the tower, that he
had ceased to smile. Old Bob’s face had become sadness itself. He was
silent. He passed beneath the arch of the postern. We called him, he
did not seem to hear us. He carried before him in the crook of his arm
his “oldest skull in the world,” and all at once we saw him fly into
the fiercest of passions. He addressed the worst of insults to the
skull. He descended into the Round Tower and we heard the mutterings
of his wrath for moments after he was out of sight. Then heavy blows
resounded. One would have said that he was hurling himself against the
wall.
At this moment six strokes resounded from the old clock of the New
Castle. And at almost the same instant a clap of thunder echoed over
the sea. And the line of the horizon grew black.
Then a groom of the stables, Walter, a brave, stupid fellow who was
incapable of a single idea, but who had shown for years past the
blind devotion of a brute toward his master, Old Bob, passed under
the postern of the gardener, entered into the Court of Charles the
Bold, and came to us. He held in his hand a letter which he gave to
Rouletabille. He handed me another and continued on his way toward the
Square Tower.
Rouletabille, calling after him, inquired what errand was taking him to
the Square Tower. He answered that he was taking the mail for M. and
Mme. Darzac to Pere Bernier. He spoke in English for Walter understood
no other language; but we spoke it well enough to understand him and
make him understand. Walter was charged with distributing the mail
because Pere Jacques had no right to leave his lodge on any account.
Rouletabille took the letters from the man’s hands and said to him that
he would take it in himself.
A few drops of water had begun to fall.
We turned to the door of M. Darzac’s room. Bernier was smoking his pipe
in the corridor, sitting astride a chair.
“Is M. Darzac still there?” asked Rouletabille.
“He hasn’t stirred since he went in,” Bernier replied.
We knocked. We heard the heavy bolt drawn from the inside. (These bolts
can only be used by the person within the room.)
M. Darzac was writing letters when we entered. He had been seated
beside the little reading table facing the door R.
Now mark well all our movements. Rouletabille complained that the
letter which he held in his hand confirmed the telegram which he had
received in the morning and pressed him to return to Paris. His paper
insisted upon his proceeding at once to Russia.
M. Darzac read indifferently the two or three letters which we had
brought him and put them in his pocket. I held out to Rouletabille
the letter which I had received. It was from my friend in Paris who,
after having given me some important details regarding the departure
of Brignolles, informed me that the laboratory assistant had left his
address for mail to be forwarded to Sospel, the Hotel des Alps. This
was extremely interesting and M. Darzac and Rouletabille were greatly
excited over it. We decided to go to Sospel as soon as it could be
arranged and, after talking of the matter for a few minutes, we went
out of the room. The door of Mme. Darzac’s sleeping room was not
closed. Here is what we noticed as we passed out:
I have mentioned that Mme. Darzac was not in her own room. As soon as
we made our exit, Pere Bernier immediately--immediately, I say, for I
saw him--turned the key in the lock and then took it out and put it in
his pocket--in the little inside pocket of his waistcoat. Ah, I can
still see him putting the key into his inside pocket--I swear it!--and
he buttoned his coat over it!
Then the three of us went out of the Square Tower, leaving Pere Bernier
in his corridor like the good watch dog that he never ceased to be
until the last day of his life. One may be a poacher and a good watch
dog into the bargain, you know. Even watch dogs poach sometimes. And I
bear witness here and now, among all the events which followed, Pere
Bernier always did his duty and never told lies. And his wife, Mere
Bernier, was an excellent servant, faithful, intelligent and not too
talkative. Since she has been a widow, I have had her in my service.
She will be glad to read here the tribute which I pay to her and to her
husband. They both deserved it.
* * * * *
It was about half past six o’clock when, in emerging from the
Square Tower, we went to pay a visit to Old Bob in the Round Tower,
Rouletabille, M. Darzac and I. As soon as we entered the low basement
M. Darzac uttered an exclamation of surprise and indignation at seeing
the destruction which had been wrought upon a wash drawing upon which
he had been working ever since the evening before in the endeavor to
distract his mind, and which represented the plan for a great scaling
ladder for the Fort of Hercules of the kind which had existed in the
Fifteenth Century and of which Arthur Rance had shown us the pictures.
This drawing had been gashed with a knife and paint had been smeared
over it. He endeavored in vain to obtain some explanation from Old Bob,
who was kneeling beside a box containing a skeleton and was so wrapped
up in a shoulder blade that he did not even answer us.
* * * * *
I desire here, by way of parenthesis, to ask the pardon of the reader
for the mathematical precision with which for the last few pages, I
have enumerated our every act and movement, but I will assure him, once
and for all, that even the smallest circumstances have in reality a
considerable importance, for everything which we did at this time was
done, though alas, we did not guess it, on the brink of a precipice.
As Old Bob seemed to be in a churlish humor, we left him--that is,
Rouletabille and myself did. M. Darzac remained gazing at his spoiled
drawing, but thinking, doubtless, of altogether different things.
As we went out of the Round Tower, Rouletabille and I raised our eyes
to the sky which was rapidly becoming covered with great, black clouds.
The tempest was near at hand. In the meantime, the air seemed to grow
more and more stifling.
“I am going to lie down in my room,” I said. “I can’t stand any more of
this. Perhaps it may be cooler there with all the windows open.”
Rouletabille followed me into the New Castle. Suddenly, as we reached
the first landing of our winding staircase, he stopped me:
“Ah,” he said in a low voice; “_she_ is there!”
“Who?”
“The Lady in Black. Can’t you smell the perfume?”
And he hid himself behind a door, motioning me to continue without
waiting for him. I obeyed.
What was my amazement in opening the door of my room to find myself
face to face with Mathilde!
She uttered a low cry and disappeared in the shadow, gliding away
like a surprised bird. I rushed to the staircase and leaned over the
balustrade. She swept down the steps like a ghost. She soon gained the
ground floor and I saw below me the face of Rouletabille, who, leaning
over the rail of the first landing, looked at her, too.
He mounted the steps to my side.
“Oh, my God!” he cried. “What did I tell you! Poor, poor soul!”
He seemed to be in the greatest agitation.
“I asked M. Darzac for eight days!” he went on. “But this thing must be
ended in twenty-four hours or I shall no longer have strength to act.”
He entered my room and threw himself into a chair as if exhausted. “I
am smothering!” he moaned. “I can’t breathe!” He tore his collar away
from his throat. “Water!” he entreated. “Water!”
I started to fetch some, but he stopped me.
“No--I want the water from the heavens! I must have it!” and he waved
his hands toward the dark skies from which huge drops were slowly
beginning to fall.
For ten minutes he remained stretched out in the chair, thinking. What
surprised me was that he asked no question or uttered no conjecture as
to what the Lady in Black had been seeking in my room. I would not have
known how to answer, if he had done so. At length, he rose.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To take the guard at the postern.”
* * * * *
He would not even come in to dinner and sent word to have some soup
brought out to him as though he were a soldier. The dinner was served
in la Louve at half past eight. Darzac, who came to the table from Old
Bob’s workroom, said that the latter refused to dine also. Mme. Edith,
fearing that her uncle might be ill, went immediately to the Round
Tower. She would not even allow her husband to accompany her--indeed,
she seemed to be much out of humor with him.
The Lady in Black came in on the arm of her father. She cast on me a
look of sorrowful reproach which disturbed me greatly. Her eyes seemed
never to wander from me.
It was a gloomy meal enough. No one ate much. Arthur Rance looked every
moment in the direction of the Lady in Black. All the windows were
open. The atmosphere was suffocating. A flash of lightning and a heavy
clap of thunder came in rapid succession--and then, the deluge! A sigh
of relief issued from our overcharged breasts. Mme. Edith reappeared
just in time to escape being drenched by the furious rain which beat
down like cannon balls upon the peninsula.
The young woman told us in excited tones and with her hands clasped,
how she had found Old Bob bending over his desk with his head buried
in his hands. He had refused to have anything to say to her. She had
spoken to him affectionately and he had treated her like a bear. Then,
as he had obstinately held his hands to his ears, she had pricked one
of his fingers with a little pin set with rubies which she used to
fasten the lace scarf which she wore in the evening over her shoulders.
Her uncle, she said, had turned upon her like a madman, had snatched
the little pin from her and thrown it upon the desk. And then he had
spoken to her--“brutally, rudely as he had never done before in his
life!” she ejaculated. “Get out of here and leave me alone!” was what
he had said to her. Mme. Edith had been so much pained that she went
out without saying a word, promising herself, however, that she would
not soon set foot again in the Round Tower. But she had turned her head
for a last look at her old uncle and had been almost struck dumb by
what she saw.
The “oldest skull in the history of the human race” was upon the
desk, and Old Bob, a handkerchief stained with blood in his hand, was
spitting in the skull. He had always treated it with the most severe
respect and had insisted that others should do the same. Edith had
hurried away, almost frightened.
Robert Darzac reassured her by telling her that what she had taken for
blood was only paint and that Old Bob’s skull had been spattered by the
paints which had been used in the wash drawing.
I left the table to hurry out to Rouletabille and also to escape
from Mathilde’s glances. What had the Lady in Black been doing in my
bedroom? I was not to wait long to know!
* * * * *
When I started out the thunder was pealing loudly and the rain falling
with redoubled force. It took me only one bound to reach the postern.
No Rouletabille was there! I found him on the terrace B″, watching the
entrance to the Square Tower and receiving the full strength of the
storm at his back.
I entreated him to take shelter under the arch.
“Leave me alone!” he said impatiently. “Leave me alone. This is the
deluge. Ah, how good it is! how good--all this anger of the heavens!
Have you ever had a desire to roar with the thunder? I have--and I am
roaring now. Listen, while I cry out--alas! alas! alas! My voice is
stronger than the thunder!”
And he plunged into the darkness making the shadows resound with his
savage clamors. I believed this time that he had surely gone mad! But
in my heart I knew that the unhappy lad was breathing forth in these
indistinct articulations of frightful anguish the misery that burned
him, and which he was constantly trying to hinder from burning up the
heart and the soul in his body--the misery of being the son of Larsan.
I turned helplessly and as I did so, I felt a hand seize my wrist and a
dark form cried out to me above the tempest:
“Where is he?”
It was Mme. Darzac who was also seeking Rouletabille. A new peal of
thunder burst and we heard the boy in his mad delirium hurling wild
shouts of defiance to the heavens. She heard him. She saw him. We were
drenched with water from the rain and the breaking of the sea on the
terrace. Mme. Darzac’s clothing clung around her like a rag and her
skirt dripped as she walked. I took the wretched woman’s arm and held
her up, for I saw that she was about to fall, and at that moment, in
the midst of that terrible unchaining of the elements, in that mad
tempest, under this terrible downpour on the breast of the raging sea,
I all at once breathed the perfume--the odor so sweet and penetrating
and haunting that its fragrance has remained with me ever since--the
Perfume of the Lady in Black. Ah, I understood now how Rouletabille had
remembered it all these years.
Yes, it was a fragrance full of sadness--something like the perfume of
an isolated flower which has been condemned to be seen by no one but to
blossom for itself all alone. It was a fragrance which set such ideas
as these running through my brain, although I did not analyze them at
the time--a sweet, soft and yet insistent perfume which seemed to steal
away my senses in the midst of this battle of the elements, as soon as
I perceived it. A strange perfume! Surely it was that, for I had seen
the Lady in Black hundreds of times without noticing it, and now that I
had done so, it was everywhere and above all things and I knew that the
memory of it would abide with me while life should last. I understood
how when one had--I will not say smelled but seized (for I do not think
that everyone would have been able to catch the subtle fragrance of the
perfume of the Lady in Black, any more than I myself had done before
this night in which my senses seemed to have become sharpened to the
keenest point)--yes, when one had seized this adorable and captivating
odor, it was for life. And the heart would be perfumed by it, whether
it was the heart of a son, like Rouletabille; or the heart of a lover,
like M. Darzac; or the heart of a villain, like Larsan. No, no--the
knowledge of it could never pass. And now, by some sudden insight, I
seemed to understand Rouletabille and Darzac and Larsan and all the
misfortunes which had attended the daughter of Professor Stangerson.
* * * * *
There in the night and the tempest, the Lady in Black called aloud to
Rouletabille and he fled from us and rushed further into the night,
shrieking aloud, “The perfume of the Lady in Black! The perfume of the
Lady in Black!”
The unhappy woman sobbed. She drew me toward the tower. She struck with
desperate hands at the door which Bernier opened to us and her weeping
would have melted the heart of a stone.
I could only utter the veriest commonplaces, begging her to calm
herself, although I would have given everything I had in the world to
find words which, without betraying anyone, might perhaps have made her
understand my own part in the sorrowful drama which was being played
out between the mother and the child.
Suddenly she seemed to recover herself in some degree and she motioned
me to enter the little parlor at the right which was just outside the
bed chamber of Old Bob. The door stood open but there we were as much
alone as we could have been in her own room, for we knew that Old Bob
worked late in the Tower of Charles the Bold.
I can assure you that in my memories of that horrible night the thought
of the moments which I spent in the company of the Lady in Black
are not the least sorrowful. I was put to a proof which I had not
expected, and it was like a blow full in the face when, without even
taking time to speak of the way in which we had been treated by the
elements, Mme. Darzac looked me full in the eyes and demanded: “How
long is it, M. Sainclair, that you were at Trepot?”
I was struck dumb--overpowered more completely than I had been by the
fury of the storm. And I felt that, at the moment when nature, wearied
out, was beginning to grow more quiet, I was to suffer a more dangerous
assault than that of thunderbolts or lightning flashes. I must, by my
expression, have betrayed the agitation which was aroused in my mind by
this unexpected remark, for I could see by her eyes as she looked at me
that she was aware how deeply I was moved.
At first I made no answer: then I stammered out some disconnected words
of which I remember nothing, save that they were ridiculous. It is
years now since that night, but as I write I am living over the scene
as if I were a spectator instead of the actor which I actually was, and
as if it were even now going on in front of my eyes.
There are people who may be drenched to the skin and yet not look in
the least ridiculous. The Lady in Black was one of them. Although,
like myself, she had experienced the full fury of the storm, she was
majestic and beautiful with her dishevelled locks, her bare neck and
magnificent shoulders which, through the thin silk which clothed them
seemed to have merely a light veil thrown across the flesh. She seemed
to be a sublime statue, carved by Phidias from the immortal clay to
which his chisel has given form and beauty. I am well aware that,
even after all the years which have elapsed, my description sounds
too glowing and I will not linger on the subject. But those who have
known Professor Stangerson’s daughter will understand me, I think, and
I desire, here, with Rouletabille near me, to affirm the sentiments
of respectful admiration which filled my heart at the sight of this
mother, so divinely beautiful, who, in the state of disorder to which
the fearful tempest had brought her, and with her whole heart filled
with agony, was endeavoring to make me break the oath that I had sworn
to the lad who was my friend.
She took both my hands in hers and said in a voice which I shall never
forget:
“You are his friend. Tell him, then, that he is not the only one who
has suffered.” And she added with a sob which shook her whole frame:
“Why will he insist on not telling me the truth!”
I had not a word to say. What could I have answered? This woman had
always seemed so cold and formal to the world in general and (as I had
thought) to me in particular that it was as if I had not existed for
her, and now she was laying bare her heart before me as though I were
an old friend. And I had breathed the perfume of the Lady in Black.
Yes, she treated me as an old friend. She told me everything that I
already knew in a few sentences as piteous and as simple as a mother’s
love itself--and she told me other things which Rouletabille had kept
a secret from me. Evidently the game of hide and seek could not have
lasted long. The relationship between them had been guessed by the
one as surely as by the other. Led by a sure instinct Mme. Darzac
had resolved to take means to learn who was this Rouletabille who
had saved her from death and who was of the age of her own son--and
who resembled the lad whom she had mourned as dead. And since her
arrival at Mentone, a letter had reached her containing the proof that
Rouletabille had lied to her in regard to his early life and had never
set foot in any school at Bordeaux. Immediately, she had sought the
youth and had asked for an explanation, but he had hurried away without
replying. But he had seemed disturbed when she spoke to him of Trepot
and of the school at Eu, and the trip which we had made there before
coming to Mentone.
“How did you know?” I exclaimed, betraying my secret without realizing
that I was doing so.
She showed no sign of triumph at my involuntary confession, and in a
few words went on to reveal to me her stratagem. That evening when I
had taken her by surprise, it was not the first time that she had been
in my room. My luggage bore the labels of the hotels at which we had
stopped on our recent journey.
“Why did he not throw himself into my arms when I opened them to him?”
she moaned. “Ah, my God! If he refuses to be Larsan’s son, will he
never consent to be mine!”
As she told me her story, it seemed to me that Rouletabille had
conducted himself in an atrocious fashion toward this poor woman who
had believed him dead, who had mourned for him in despair, and who,
in the midst of her terrible dread and mortal anguish, experienced a
thrill of the keenest joy in realizing that her son was still alive.
Ah, the poor mother! The evening before, he had mocked at her when she
had cried out to him with all her soul that she had a son and that that
son was he! He had mocked her, even while the tears had streamed
down his cheeks. I could never have believed that Rouletabille could
have been so cruel or so heartless--or, even, so ill-bred!
[Illustration: We could see his figure borne along as on the wind, and
could hear the voice calling, “Mother! Mother!”]
Certainly he behaved in an abominable fashion! He had told her with a
sardonic smile that “he was nobody’s son--not even the son of a thief.”
It was these words that had sent her flying to her room in the Square
Tower and had made her long to die. But she had not found her son only
to give him up so easily and she would--she must have him acknowledge
her!
I was almost beside myself. I kissed her hands and entreated pardon
for Rouletabille. Here was the result of my friend’s schemes to save
her pain. Under the pretext of saving her from Larsan, he had plunged
a knife into her heart. I felt as though I had no wish to know any
more of the story. I knew too much already and I longed to run away. I
hastened out of the room and called Bernier, who opened the door for
me. I went out of the Square Tower, cursing Rouletabille roundly. I
went to the Court of the Bold to look for him, but found it deserted.
At the postern gate Mattoni had come to take the ten o’clock watch.
I saw a light in Rouletabille’s room and I hastened up the rickety
stairway of the New Castle and quickly found myself outside his door. I
opened it without knocking. Rouletabille looked up.
“What do you want, Sainclair?”
I told him all that I had heard and my opinion of him for his actions
which had so deeply wounded Mme. Darzac.
“She didn’t tell you everything, my friend,” he replied, coldly. “She
did not tell you that she forbade me to touch that man.”
“That is true!” I cried. “I heard her.”
“Well, what have you come here to tell me then?” he went on, roughly.
“Do you know what she said to me yesterday? She ordered me to go away.
She would rather die than see me take issue _against my father_.”
And he laughed--laughed. Such laughter, I hope not to hear again.
“Against my father! She thinks, I suppose, that he is stronger than I!”
His face was not a pleasant sight to see as he uttered the words.
But suddenly it seemed to be transformed and to glow with unearthly
beauty.
“She is afraid for me!” he said, softly. “And I--I am afraid for
her--only for her. And I do not know my father. And, God help me! I do
not know my mother!”
At that moment the sound of a shot rang out on the night, followed by
a cry of mortal agony! Ah, it was again the cry that I had heard two
years ago in the “inexplicable gallery.” My hair rose on my scalp and
Rouletabille tottered as though the bullet had struck himself.
And then he bounded toward the open window, filling the fortress with a
despairing burst of anguish:
“Mother! Mother! Mother!”