STRANGE HAPPENINGS
§1
Now the dingy little apartment in the Rue Villedot was silent and dark.
The elegant little lamp with its rose-coloured shade was turned down in
the withdrawing-room, leaving only a tiny glimmer of light, which failed
to dispel the gloom around. The nocturnal visitors had departed more
than a quarter of an hour ago; nevertheless the beautiful hostess had
not yet gone to bed. In fact, she had hardly moved since she bade final
adieu to her timorous lover. The enforced gaiety of the last few moments
still sat like a mask upon her face. All that she had done was to sink
with a sigh of weariness upon the settee.
And there she remained, with neck craned forward, listening, straining
every nerve to listen, even though the heavy, measured footsteps of the
five men had long since ceased to echo up and down the stone passages
and stairs. Her foot, in its quaint small sandal, beat now and then an
impatient tattoo upon the threadbare carpet. Her eyes at intervals cast
anxious looks upon the old-fashioned clock above the mantelpiece.
It struck half-past two. Whereupon Theresia rose and went out into the
vestibule. Here a tallow candle flickered faintly in its pewter sconce
and emitted an evil-smelling smoke, which rose in spirals to the
blackened ceiling.
Theresia paused, glanced inquiringly down the narrow passage which gave
access to the little kitchen beyond. Between the kitchen and the corner
of the vestibule where she was standing, two doors gave on the passage:
her bedroom, and that of her maid Pepita. Theresia was vividly conscious
of the strange silence which reigned in the whole apartment. The passage
was pitch dark save at its farthest end, where a tiny ray of light found
its way underneath the kitchen door.
The silence was oppressive, almost terrifying. In a hoarse, anxious
voice, Theresia called:
"Pepita!"
But there came no answer. Pepita apparently had gone to bed, was fast
asleep by now. But what had become of Bertrand?
Full of vague misgivings, her nerves tingling with a nameless fear,
Theresia picked up the candle and tip-toed down the passage. Outside
Pepita's door she paused and listened. Her large dark eyes looked weird
in their expression of puzzlement and of awe, the flickering light of
the candle throwing gleams of orange-coloured lights into the depths of
the widely dilated pupils.
"Pepita!" she called; and somehow the sound of her own voice added to
her terror. Strange that she should be frightened like this in her own
familiar apartment, and with a faithful, sturdy maid sleeping the other
side of this thin partition wall!
"Pepita!" Theresia's voice was shaking. She tried to open the door, but
it was locked. Why had Pepita, contrary to her habit, locked herself in?
Had she, too, been a prey to some unexplainable panic? Theresia knocked
against the door, rattled the handle in its socket, called more loudly
and more insistently, "Pepita!" and, receiving no reply, fell,
half-swooning with fear, against the partition wall, whilst the candle
slipped out of her trembling grasp and fell with a clatter to the
ground.
She was now in complete darkness, with senses reeling and brain
paralyzed. How long she remained thus, in a state bordering on collapse,
she did not know; probably not more than a minute or so. Consciousness
returned quickly, and with it the cold sweat of an abject fear; for
through this returning consciousness she had perceived a groan issuing
from behind the locked door. But her knees were still shaking; she felt
unable to move.
"Pepita!" she called again; and to her own ears her voice sounded hoarse
and muffled. Straining her ears and holding her breath, she once more
caught the sound of a smothered groan.
Whereupon, driven into action by the obvious distress of her maid,
Theresia recovered a certain measure of self-control. Pulling herself
vigorously together, she began by groping for the candle which had
dropped out of her hand a while ago. Even as she stooped down for this
she contrived to say in a moderately clear and firm voice:
"Courage, Pepita! I'll find the light and come back." Then she added: "Are
you able to unlock the door?"
To this, however, she received no reply save another muffled groan.
Theresia now was on her hands and knees, groping for the candlestick.
Then a strange thing happened. Her hands, as they wandered vaguely along
the flagged floor, encountered a small object, which proved to be a key.
In an instant she was on her feet again, her fingers running over the
door until they encountered the keyhole. Into this she succeeded, after
further groping, in inserting the key; it fitted, and turned the lock.
She pushed open the door, and remained paralyzed with surprise upon the
threshold.
Pepita was reclining in an arm-chair, her hands tied behind her, a
woollen shawl wound loosely around her mouth. In a distant corner of the
room, a small oil-lamp, turned very low, cast a glimmer of light upon
the scene. For Theresia to ran to the pinioned woman and undo the bonds
that held her was but the work of a few seconds.
"Pepita!" she cried. "What in heaven's name has happened?"
The woman seemed not much the worse for her enforced duress. She
groaned, and even swore under her breath, and indeed appeared more dazed
than hurt Theresia, impatient and excited, had to shake her more than
once vigorously by the shoulder before she was able to gather her
scattered wits together.
"Where is M. Bertrand?" Theresia asked repeatedly, ere she got a reply
from her bewildered maid.
At last Pepita was able to speak.
"In very truth, Madame," she said slowly. "I do not know."
"How do you mean, you do not know?" Theresia queried, with a deepened
frown.
"Just what I say, my pigeon," Pepita retorted with marked acerbity. "You
ask me what has happened, and I say I do not know. You want to know what
has become of M. Bertrand. Then go and look for yourself. When last I
saw him, he was in the kitchen, unfit to move, the poor cabbage!"
"But, Pepita," Theresia insisted, and stamped her foot with impatience,
"you must know how you came to be sitting here, pinioned and muffled.
Who did it? Who has been here? God preserve the woman, will she never
speak!"
Pepita by now had fully recovered her senses. She had struggled to her
feet, and went to take up the lamp, then led the way toward the door,
apparently intent on finding out for herself what had become of M.
Bertrand, and in no way sharing her mistress's unreasoning terror. She
halted on the threshold and turned to Theresia, who quite mechanically
started to follow her.
"M. Bertrand was sitting in the arm-chair in the kitchen," she said
simply. "I was arranging a cushion for his head, to make him more
comfortable, when suddenly a shawl was flung over my head without the
slightest warning. I had seen nothing; I had not heard the merest sound.
And I had not the time to utter a scream before I was muffled up in
the shawl. Then I was lifted off the ground as if I were a sack of
feathers, and I just remember smelling something acrid which made my
head spin round and round. But I remember nothing more after that until
I heard voices in the vestibule when thy guests were going away. Then I
heard thy voice and tried to make thee hear mine. And that is all!"
"When did that happen, Pepita?"
"Soon after the last of thy guests had arrived. I remember I looked at
the clock. It must have been half an hour after midnight."
While the woman spoke, Theresia had remained standing in the middle of
the room, looking in the gloom like an elfin apparition, with her
clinging, diaphanous draperies. A frown of deep puzzlement lay between
her brows and her lips were tightly pressed together as if in wrath; but
she said nothing more, and when Pepita, lamp in hand, went out of the
room, she followed.
§2
When, the kitchen door being opened, that room was found to be empty,
Theresia was no longer surprised. Somehow she had expected this. She
knew that Bertrand would be gone. The windows of the kitchen gave on the
ubiquitous wrought-iron balcony, as did all the other windows of the
apartment. That those windows were unfastened, had only been pushed to
from the outside, appeared to her as a matter of course. It was not
Bertrand who had thrown the shawl over Pepita's head; therefore some one
had come in from the outside and had kidnapped Bertrand--some one who
was peculiarly bold and daring. He had not come in from the balcony and
through the window, because the latter had been fastened as usual by
Pepita much earlier in the evening. No! He had gone that way, taking
Bertrand with him; but he must have entered the place in some other
mysterious manner, like a disembodied sprite bent on mischief or
mystery.
Whilst Pepita fumbled and grumbled, Theresia started on a tour of
inspection. Still deeply puzzled, she was no longer afraid. With Pepita
to speak to and the lamps all turned on, her habitual courage and
self-possession had quickly returned to her. She had no belief in the
supernatural. Her materialistic, entirely rational mind at once rejected
the supposition, hinted at by Pepita, that magical powers had been at
work to take Bertrand Moncrif to a place of safety.
Something was going on in her brain, certain theories, guesses,
conjectures, which she was passionately eager to set at rest. Nor did it
take her long. Candle in hand, she had gone round to explore. No sooner
had she entered her own bedroom than the solution of the mystery lay
revealed before her, in a shutter, forced open from the outside, a
broken pane of glass which had allowed a hand to creep in and
surreptitiously turn the handle of the tall French window to allow of
easy ingress. It had been quickly and cleverly done; the splinters of
glass had made no noise as they fell upon the carpet. But for the
disappearance of Bertrand, the circumstances suggested a nimble
housebreaker rather than a benevolent agency for the rescue of young
rashlings in distress.
The frown of puzzlement deepened on Theresia Cabarrus's brow, and her
mobile mouth with the perfectly arched if somewhat thin lips expressed a
kind of feline anger, whilst the hand that held the pewter candlestick
trembled perceptibly.
Pepita's astonishment expressed itself by sundry exclamations: "Name of
a name!" and "Is it possible?" The explanation of the mystery had
loosened her tongue, and while she set stolidly to work to clear up the
debris of glass in her mistress's bedroom, she allowed free rein to her
indignation against the impudent marauder, who no doubt had only been
foiled in his attempt at wholesale robbery by some lucky circumstance
which would presently come to light.
The worthy old peasant absolutely refused to connect the departure of M.
Bertrand with so obvious an attempt at housebreaking.
"M. Bertrand was determined to go, the poor cabbage!" she said
decisively, "since thou didst make him understand that his staying here
was a danger to thee. He no doubt took an opportunity to slip out of the
front door whilst thou wast engaged in conversation with that pack of
murderers, whom may the good God punish one of these days!"
From which remark we may gather that Pepita had not imbibed
revolutionary ideals with the air of her native Andalusia.
Theresia Cabarrus, wearied beyond endurance by all the events of this
night, as well as by her old servant's incessant gabble, finally sent
her, still muttering and grumbling, to bed.