suppressed a cry, and as they turned, pale with dread, before them stood
their Mother Superior. With a sweeping gesture, she vaguely gave a
blessing as if to endow them with courage, then turned to the janitress.
"My dear Sister Françoise, calm yourself! Be brave! God will not forsake
us! I intend to comply with the desire of the stranger. I will go
alone--with God alone!" Lady Beltham made a mighty effort to disguise
the emotion she felt. Slowly she went down the steps and entered the
sanctuary, where she halted in a state of terror.
The choir was lit up. The tapers were flaring on the high altar, and in
the middle of the chapel, wrapped in a large black cloak, his face
hidden by a black mask, stood a man, mysterious and alarming.
"Lady Beltham!"
At the sound of this voice, Lady Beltham fancied she recognised her
lover.
"What do you want? What are you doing? It is madness!"
"Nothing is madness in Fantômas!"
Lady Beltham pressed her hands to her heart, unable to speak.
The voice resumed: "Fantômas bids you leave here, Lady Beltham. In two
hours you will go from this convent; a closed motor will be waiting for
you at the back of the garden, at the little gate. The vehicle will take
you to a seaport, where you will board a vessel which the driver will
indicate; when the voyage is over you will be in England: there you will
receive fresh orders to make for Canada."
Lady Beltham wrung her hands in despair.
"Why do you wish to force me to leave my dear companions?"
"Were you not ready to leave everything, Lady Beltham, to make a new
life for yourself with--him you love?"
"Alas!"
"Remember last Tuesday night at the Neuilly mansion!"
"Ah! You should have carried me off then, not left me time to think it
over. Now I am no longer willing."
"You will go! Yes or no. Will you obey?"
"I will--for, after all, I love you!"
The two tragic beings were silent for a moment, listening; outside the
church the uproar grew in violence, brief orders were being shouted, a
blowing of whistles. Suddenly, uttering a hoarse cry, the ruffian
exclaimed:
"The police! The police are on the track of Fantômas! Juve's police.
Well, this time Fantômas will be too much for them. Lady Beltham--till
we meet again."
Beating a rapid retreat behind a pillar of the chapel he vanished. Lady
Beltham found herself alone in the chapel. Five minutes later the heavy
steps of the police sounded in the passages. They went through the
house, searching for clues, then disappeared in the darkness of the
night.
Lady Beltham addressed the nuns:
"A great peril threatens our sisters of the Boulevard Jourdan. They must
be warned at all costs and at once. And it is necessary that I, and I
only, should go to warn them. Have no fear. No harm will happen to me. I
know what I am doing."
Under the appalled eyes of the sisterhood the Mother Superior slowly
passed from the assembled community with a sweeping gesture of farewell.
The moment she was alone, she ran to the far end of the garden and
passed through the little gate in the wall behind the chapel. She was
gone!
While these strange occurrences were in progress at the peaceful convent
of Nogent, and the flight of Lady Beltham at the bidding of Fantômas was
effected under the eyes of the sisters, no little stir was manifest in
the environs of La Chapelle, in the dreaded region where the hooligans,
forming the celebrated gang of Cyphers, have their haunts.
A certain misrule reigned in the confederation, due to the fact that
Loupart had not been seen for some time. None of its members believed
for an instant the newspaper story that Loupart had turned out to be
Fantômas--the elusive, the superhuman, the improbable, the weird
Fantômas. This was beyond them. Good enough to stuff the numskull of the
law with such a tale, but there was no use for it among the gang of
Cyphers.
That same evening there was considerable excitement at the station in
the Rue Stephenson. Detectives, inspectors, real or sham hooligans, were
assembled there.
"Who is that gentleman?" asked M. Rouquelet, the Commissary of the
district, pointing to a young man seated in a corner of the room, taking
notes on a pad.
Juve, to whom the query was addressed, turned his head.
"Why, it's Fandor, Jerome Fandor, my friend."
Juve was seated at the magistrate's table, comparing papers, documents,
and material evidence; he had, standing round him men in uniform or
mufti. One might have thought it the office of a general staff during a
battle. The door opened to a man dressed like a market gardener.
"Well, Léon?" asked Juve.
"M. Inspector, it is done. We have nabbed the 'Cooper.'"
A sergeant of the 19th Arrondissement appeared and saluted.
"M. Inspector, my men are bringing in 'The Flirt.' Her throat is cut."
"Is her murderer taken?"
"Not yet--there are several of them--but we know them. The wounded woman
was able to tell us their names. They 'bled' her because they suspected
her of giving us information."
M. Rouquelet telephoned to Lâriboisière for an ambulance, and the
officers went to see the victim, who was lying on a stretcher in the
hall. At that moment, the sound of a struggle hurried Juve to the
entrance of the station. Some officers were hauling in a youth with a
pallid complexion and wicked eyes. Fandor recognised the captive.
"It's that little collegian who bit my finger the night of the
Marseilles Express!"
Léon, who had drawn near, likewise identified the youth.
"I know him, that's Mimile. His account is settled, he is jugged!"
The hall of the station filled once more: an old woman, dragged in
forcibly, was groaning and bawling at the top of her voice:
"Pack of swine! Isn't it shameful to treat a poor woman so!"
"M. Superintendent," explained one of the men, "we caught this woman,
Mother Toulouche--in the act of stowing away in her bodice a bundle of
bank notes just passed to her by a man. Here they are."
The constable handed the packet to the magistrate, and Fandor, who was
watching, could not repress an exclamation.
"Oh!--Notes in halves! Suppose they belong to M. Martialle! Allow me, M.
Rouquelet, to look at the numbers."
"In with Mother Toulouche!" cried the Superintendent, then rubbing his
hands he turned to Juve and cried:
"A fine haul, M. Inspector. What do you think?"
But Juve did not hear him; he had drawn Fandor into a corner of the
office and was explaining:
"I have done no more at present than have Lady Beltham shadowed, but I
do not mean to arrest her. You see, if I asked Fuselier for a warrant
against Lady Beltham, a person legally dead and buried more than two
months ago, that excellent functionary would swallow his clerk, stool
and all, in sheer amazement."
At that moment a cyclist constable, dripping with sweat and quite out of
breath, came in and hastening straight to Juve, cried:
"I come from Nogent!"
"Well?"
"Well, M. Inspector, they saw a masked man come out of the convent,
wrapped in a big cloak. They gave chase--he fired a revolver twice and
killed two officers."
"Good God! It was certainly----"
"We thought, too--that perhaps--after all--it was--it was Fantômas!"
"Juve!" called the Commissary. "You are wanted on the telephone. Neuilly
is asking for you."
The detective picked up the receiver.
"Hello! hello! Is that you, Michel? Yes. What is it? In a motor? Oh, you
have taken the driver. But he--curse it! Who the devil is this man who
always escapes us? What? He is in Lady Beltham's house! You have
surrounded the house? Good, keep your eyes open! Do nothing till I
come."
Juve hung up the receiver and turned to Fandor.
"Fantômas is at Lady Beltham's; shut up in the house. I am going there."
"I'll go with you."
As the two men left the station, they were met by Inspector Grolle.
"We have taken 'The Beard' at Daddy Korn's," he cried.
"Confound that!" shouted Juve, as he jumped into a taxi with Fandor.
"Neuilly! Boulevard Inkermann, and top speed!"
XXXIV
FANTÔMAS' REVENGE
"Phew! Here I am!"
Checking his headlong course at the top of the terrace steps, Fantômas
rapidly entered the house, then double-locked himself in. The ruffian at
once inspected the fastenings of the windows and doors on the ground
floor.
The monster cocked his ear. Three calls of the horn sounded dolefully in
the silence of the night. Fantômas counted them anxiously and then
exclaimed:
"There! That's my signal! My driver is taken."
A slight shudder shook the sturdy frame of the man. He went up to the
first floor and peered through the shutters. He caught the sound of
footsteps. In the light of a street lamp he suddenly descried the
outline of his driver. The latter, among half a score of policemen, was
walking, head bent, with his hands fettered.
"Poor fellow!" he murmured. "Another who has to pay! Ah! they have left
my 'sixty horse' for my use presently. But there is no time to lose,
I'll bet that Juve, flanked by his everlasting journalist, will not be
long in coming here. Very well! Juve, it is not as master that you will
enter this house, but as a doomed man!"
Fantômas now became absorbed in a strange task which claimed all his
attention. On the floor of the dark closet where all the electric gear
of the house terminated, the bandit laid a sort of oblong fusee that he
drew from his capacious cloak.
He fitted to the end of this fusee two electric wires previously freed
of their insulator; then having verified the tie of the pulls of the
distribution board, he hid the cartridge under a little lid of wood.
Then he left the closet, taking care to double-lock the door.
"These detectives," he growled, "are about to witness the finest
firework display imaginable and, I dare say, take part in it, too.
Dynamite can transform a respectable middle-class house into a sparkling
bouquet of loose stone!"
Such was, indeed, the fearful reception Fantômas held in reserve for his
opponents. He had made everything ready to blow up the house and escape
unhurt himself.
If Juve and Fandor had paid more attention to the piping of the wires,
they would have seen that some of them ran outside the house and
disappeared below ground, reappearing at the far end of the property in
an old deserted woodshed.
Fantômas was about to leave the house. He was already stepping onto the
terrace when, suppressing an oath, he wheeled about suddenly.
As Juve and Fandor were about to enter the grounds, Detective Michel
rose up out of the dusk.
"That you, sir?"
"Well," replied Juve, "is the bird in the nest?"
"Yes, sir, and the cage is well guarded, I assure you. Fifteen of my men
kept a strict guard round the house."
"Good. Here is the plan of action. You, Sergeant, will enter the house
with Inspector Michel, at my back. The men will continue to watch the
exit."
Juve broke off sharply. He saw the door of the house open a little way
and Fantômas appear, then vanish again inside the house.
"At last!" cried Juve, who sprang forward, followed by Fandor.
"Slowly, gentlemen! We have now victory in sight, we mustn't imperil it
by rashness. You remain on the ground floor. Each one in a room, and
don't stir without good reason. I am going up."
"I am going with you," exclaimed Fandor.
The two went cautiously up the stairs to the first floor.
"Fantômas!" challenged Juve, halting on the landing, "you are caught;
surrender!"
But the detective's voice only roused distant echoes; the big house was
silent.
"Now, this is what we must do," he cautioned Fandor. "Above us is a
loft--we will search it first; if it is empty, we will close it again.
Then we will come down again, taking each room in turn and locking it
after us. At the slightest sound fling yourself on the ground and let
Fantômas fire first; the flash of the shot will tell us where it comes
from."
The two man-hunters searched the loft without success. At the first
floor Juve repressed a slight tremor, for the handle of the door leading
into Lady Beltham's room creaked ominously. He opened it, springing
aside quickly, expecting to be fired at. The room was empty, no trace of
Fantômas. The two passed into another room, then as soon as their
visitation was completed locked up the apartment.
Suddenly, as they reached the foot of the stairs, Juve gave a violent
start. From the door of the drawing-room a shadow, black from head to
foot, came bounding out. Quick as lightning the form crossed the
ante-room, then plunged by a low entrance into the cellarage.
Two shots rang out!
Fantômas drew behind him a big bar and prided himself on the barrier he
thus put between his pursuers and himself. But despite his consummate
confidence, he was beginning to feel a certain uneasiness, an undeniable
anxiety. His black mask clung to his temples, dripping with sweat.
He crossed the basement to the little air-hole overlooking the garden.
"That is a way of escape," he thought, "unless----"
But, baffled, he ceased his inspection.
"Curse it! There are three policemen before that exit."
He scraped a match and reviewed the place in which he found
himself--which for that matter he knew better than any one.
Facing him stood the dilapidated stove and at his feet shimmered the
cistern.
All at once Fantômas clenched his fists. Under the increasing blows of
the detective and his men the door of the basement yielded. Above the
crash of the boards and iron-work Juve's voice rang out:
"Fantômas! Surrender!"
Fantômas groped in the darkness. His hand came on a bottle. A crackle of
shattered glass was heard, Fantômas had taken the bottle by the neck and
broken it against the wall.
* * * * *
Juve, revolver in hand, followed by Fandor, moved cautiously down the
stairs to the cellar: both men were brave, yet they felt their hearts
beating as though they would burst.
Juve reached the last step. He pressed the knob of his electric torch; a
rush of light lit up the little room. It was empty!
Juve went the round of the cellar, carefully inspecting the walls and
sounding them with the butt of his revolver. He went round the cistern.
Its surface was black and still. A broken bottle, floating head
downward, remained half immersed, absolutely motionless.
Fandor laid his hand on the detective's arm.
"Did you hear; some one breathed!"
Beyond doubt some one had breathed!
"Idiots that we are! He is in there," cried Juve, pointing to the pipe
of the great stove.
The detective caught sight in a corner of a number of bundles of straw.
"That is what we want, Fandor! We are going to make a bonfire."
When the opening of the furnace was fitted, Juve set a light to it and
the flames rose, crackling, while up the pipe of the heater rose a
pungent smoke, thick and black.
"And now to the openings of the stove! Sergeant! Michel! This way!"
Through the apertures in the ground-floor rooms the great stove was
beginning to smoke.
* * * * *
A broken bottle with the bottom gone was floating head downward on the
black water of the tank. Scarcely had Juve and Fandor gone than the
water was stirred, and slowly the mysterious bottle rose again to the
top. Behind it rose the head of Fantômas, still wrapped in the black
hood which now clung to his face like a mask moulded on the features.
Dripping, he issued from the tank and breathed hard for some moments.
Despite his ingenious contrivance for feeding his lungs he was not far
from suffocating.
"All the same," he growled, "if I hadn't remembered the plan of the
Tonkingese who lie stretched at the bottom of a river for hours at a
time, breathing through hollow reeds, I think that time we should have
exchanged shots to some purpose!"
Fantômas was wringing out his garments in haste when loud cries sounded
above his head, and two or three shots rang out. At the same time a
sudden stirring took place in and around the house. He turned it to
account by going at once to the air-hole. Now there was no one on guard,
so Fantômas put his head through, then his shoulders.
* * * * *
"That's all right; the brute is dead!"
Juve was examining curiously the creature which lay helpless on the
floor. Two trembling sergeants stood at the door of the room.
"We were expecting Fantômas to appear and a snake unrolls itself and
springs in our faces!" cried Fandor.
Half emerging from the mouth of the heater the monstrous body of a boa
constrictor lay on the floor. The men Juve had brought into the house
were resolute, ripe for anything, but never did they imagine that
Fantômas could assume such an unexpected shape. And terrified,
overwhelmed with dread, they recoiled in a frenzy of fear and fled,
calling on their mates outside, who at once ran to their assistance.
"Sir!" A terrified voice called from outside.
Juve rushed to the window. A dripping creature, clad in black from head
to foot, crossed the garden, running toward the servants' quarters. It
was Fantômas. Juve swore a great oath: "There he is! Getting away!"
The detective left his cry unfinished.
* * * * *
As he issued by the air-holes, Fantômas leaped forward. He was free!
"Juve scored the first game, the second is mine," he cried.
He reached the woodshed. With a practised hand he turned the electric
tap which ignited a spark in the dark closet behind the pantry.
"I win!" shouted Fantômas, as a terrible explosion made itself heard.
The earth shook, a huge column of black smoke rose skywards, explosion
followed explosion. The roar of falling walls was mingled with fearful
cries and dying groans.
Lady Beltham's villa had been blown up, burying under its ruins the
hapless men who in their pursuit of Fantômas had ventured too near.
Assuredly this arch-criminal had got away once more. But were Juve and
Fandor among the dead?
THE END
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| FOOTNOTES: |
| |
| [A] See "Fantômas." |
| |
| [B] See "Fantômas." |
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| |
| Transcriber's note: |
| |
| Italics are represented in this text version by underscores. |
| |
| The following printer's errors have been corrected. |
| |
| Page 48 'turnd' to 'turned' |
| 'Loupart turned and tramped' |
| |
| Page 83 'reasurred' to 'reassured' |
| 'Juve quickly reassured him' |
| |
| Page 96 'than' to 'then' |
| 'then in a voice' |
| |
| Page 158 'Mechancially' to 'mechanically' |
| 'mechanically she went forward' |
| |
| Page 176 'grenery' to greenery' |
| 'under the arch of greenery' |
| |
| Page 221 'unkown' to 'unknown' |
| 'identity should remain unknown' |
| |
| Page 252 'vistors' to 'visitors' |
| 'The porter led his visitors' |
| |
| Page 266 'acccomplice' to 'accomplice' |
| 'was indeed the accomplice of' |
| |
| Page 270 'later' to 'latter' |
| 'the latter rose and began' |
| |
| Page 295 'drpping' to 'dripping' |
| 'dripping with sweat' |
| |
| |
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