"I am rather tired, dear. I have had a great deal to do these last few
days."
The Baronne de Vibray was full of instant apologies.
"It is all my fault," she exclaimed. "I am dreadfully sorry to have kept
you up so late," and in a few minutes more the Baronne's car was
speeding towards the rue Boissy-d'Anglais.
* * * * *
M. Rambert hurried back to his study, shut and locked the door behind
him, and almost sprang towards the unknown lady, his fists clenched, his
eyes starting out of his head.
"Charles!" he exclaimed.
"Papa!" the girl replied, and sank upon a sofa.
There was silence. Etienne Rambert seemed utterly dumbfounded.
"I won't, I won't remain disguised as a woman any longer. I've done with
it. I cannot bear it!" the strange creature murmured.
"You must!" said Rambert harshly, imperiously. "I insist!"
The pseudo Mlle. Jeanne slowly took off the heavy wig that concealed her
real features, and tore away the corsage that compressed her bosom,
revealing the strong and muscular frame of a young man.
"No, I will not," replied the strange individual, to whom M. Rambert had
not hesitated to give the name of Charles. "I would rather anything else
happened."
"You have got to expiate," Etienne Rambert said with the same harshness.
"The expiation is too great," the young fellow answered. "The torture is
unendurable."
"Charles," said M. Rambert very gravely, "do you forget that legally,
civilly, you are dead?"
"I would a thousand times rather be really dead!" the unhappy lad
exclaimed.
"Alas!" his father murmured, speaking very fast, "I thought your mind
was more unhinged than it really is. I saved your life, regardless of
all risk, because I thought you were insane, and now I know you are a
criminal! Oh, yes, I know things, I know your life!"
"Father," said Charles Rambert with so stern and determined an
expression that Etienne Rambert felt a moment's fear. "I want to know
first of all how you managed to save my life and make out that I was
dead. Was that just chance, or was it planned deliberately?"
Confronted with this new firmness of his son's, Etienne Rambert dropped
his peremptory tone; his shoulders drooped in distress.
"Can one anticipate things like that?" he said. "When we parted, my
heart bled to think that you, my son, must fall into the hands of
justice, and that your feet must tread the path that led to the scaffold
or, at least, to the galleys; I wondered how I could save you; then
chance, chance, mark you, brought that poor drowned body in my way: I
saw the fortunate coincidence of a faint resemblance, and resolved to
pass it off for you; I got those woman's clothes which you exchanged for
yours, buried the dead man's clothes and put yours on the corpse. Do you
know, Charles, that I have suffered too? Do you know what agony and
torture I, as a man of honour, have endured? Have you not heard the
story of my appearance at the Assizes and of my humiliation in court?"
"You did all that!" Charles Rambert murmured. "Strange chance, indeed!"
Then his tone changed and he sobbed. "Oh, my poor father, what an awful
fatality it all is!" Suddenly he sprang to his feet. "But I committed no
crime, papa! I never killed the Marquise de Langrune! Oh, do believe me!
Why, you have just this minute said that you know I am not mad!"
Etienne Rambert looked at his son with distress.
"Not mad, my poor boy? Yet perhaps you were mad--then?" Then he stopped
abruptly. "Don't let us go over all that again! I forbid it absolutely."
He leaned back on his writing-table, folded his arms and asked sternly:
"Have you come here only to tell me that?"
The curt question seemed to affect the lad strangely. All his former
audacity dropped from him. Nervously he stammered:
"I can't remain a woman any longer!"
"Why not?" snapped Etienne Rambert.
"I can't."
The two men looked at each other in silence, as if trying to read one
another's thoughts. Then Etienne Rambert seemed to see the inner meaning
of the words his son had just said.
"I see!" he answered slowly. "I understand.... The Royal Palace Hotel,
where Mlle. Jeanne held a trusted post, has just been the scene of a
daring robbery. Obviously, if anyone could prove that Charles Rambert
and the new cashier were one and the same person----"
But the young fellow understood the insinuation and burst out:
"I did not commit that robbery!"
"You did!" Etienne Rambert insisted: "you did. I read the newspaper
accounts of the robbery, read them with all the agony that only a father
like me with a son like you could feel. The detectives and the
magistrates were at a loss to find the key to the mystery, but I saw
clearly and at once what the solution of the mystery was. And I knew and
understood because I knew it was--you!"
"I did not commit the robbery," Charles Rambert shouted. "Do you mean to
begin all your horrible insinuations again, as you did at Beaulieu?" he
demanded in almost threatening tones. "What evil spirit obsesses you?
Why will you insist that your unhappy son is a criminal? I had nothing
to do with those robberies at the hotel; I swear I had not, father!"