ONE OF THE MOUTHS OF HELL
If the situation of the terrace at the top of the large garden, a spot
where no one ever came and walled in by thick screens of trees, had
afforded Aurelie and Ralph some weeks of absolute security, must it not
be supposed that Marescal was going to get a few minutes he needed, and
that Aurelie could hope for no help? Inevitably the scene would follow
its course to the end willed by her enemy and the dénouement would be
in accordance with his implacable will.
He was so sure of it that he did not hurry. He advanced slowly and
stopped. The certainty of victory spoiled the harmony of his regular
features and disturbed their usual immobility. A grin raised the left
corner of his mouth and drew up the left half of his square beard. His
teeth were shining; his eyes were hard and cruel.
He said in a jeering tone: “Well, mademoiselle, I think that things
have turned out rather favorably for me. There is no way of escaping
me, as at Beaucourt station, no means of driving me away, as in Paris.
You will have to submit to the law of the stronger.”
Straight upright, with stiff arms, her fists clenched on the stone
bench, Aurelie gazed at him with an expression of wild anguish. Without
a groan, she waited.
“How delightful it is to see you here, charming creature! When one
loves in the rather excessive fashion in which I love you, it is not
disagreeable to find one’s self confronted by revolt and terror. It
makes one all the more eager to seize one’s prey. Magnificent prey,” he
added in a low voice, “for you really are magnificently beautiful.”
Then he saw the open telegram and jeered again.
“That good fellow Bregeac, isn’t it, announcing his imminent arrival
and your departure? I know, I know. For the last fortnight I’ve been
keeping an eye on my beloved chief and I’m fully acquainted with his
most secret plans. I have men devoted to me in his office. That is how
I discovered your hiding-place and have been able to get here an hour
or two ahead of him. I just had the time to study the ground, the
forest, and the gorge, to catch sight of you in the distance and see
you hurry up to this terrace. And I was able to climb up here and catch
a glimpse of a figure leaving you. Some lover, wasn’t it?”
He made a few steps forward. She shrank away from him, and her back
touched the lattice-work which ran round the bench. He lost his temper
and cried: “That’s nice. I don’t suppose you shrank away like that just
now when this lover was busy caressing you. Who is the happy man? A
fiancé? More likely a lover. I see that I have come just in time to
look after my property and prevent the innocent boarder at Sainte-Marie
from playing the fool! Ah, if ever I had suspected it!”
He curbed his anger and, bending over her, went on: “After all, all the
better; it simplifies matters. The game I was playing was already
excellent since I had all the trumps in my hands. But this is an extra
piece of luck. Aurelie is not of an uncompromising virtue. One can rob
and murder and escape the ditch—and now behold Aurelie quite ready to
jump over all obstacles. Then why not in company? What, Aurelie, it may
just as well be me as any one else, mayn’t it? If he has his advantages
there are reasons in my favor which are not to be despised. What do you
say, Aurelie?”
She kept silent stubbornly.
The anger of her enemy was inflamed by this terrified silence. And he
went on, dwelling on each word: “We have no time for trifles, have we
Aurelie, or to touch on one subject after another? It is necessary to
speak clearly without mincing matters, in order that there may be no
misunderstanding. To come straight to the point then—silence about the
past and the humiliations I have suffered. Those no longer count. What
does count is the present—the present is all important. Now, the
present is the murder on the express, your flight through the woods,
your capture by the police; twenty proofs, every one of which is fatal
to you. And the present is to-day, when I hold you in my grip and all I
have to do is to take you and conduct you to your step-father and shout
in his face, before witnesses: ‘The murderess, whom they are seeking
everywhere, is here! The warrant for her arrest is in my pocket. Send
for the police!’”
He stretched out his arm, ready, as he had said, to grasp the criminal,
and with this threat hanging over her, he ended in yet harsher accents:
“On the one hand, then, this: a public denunciation, the court, and a
terrible punishment; on the other hand the alternative I offer to your
choice: an alliance, an immediate alliance, on conditions I lay down.
It is more than a promise I demand; it is an oath, taken on your knees.
The oath that, once you have returned to Paris, you will come to see
me, alone, at my flat. And more than that an immediate proof that the
alliance is honest, signed by your lips on mine—and not with kiss of
disgust and hatred, but with a voluntary kiss, like the kisses other
women, as prettier and more difficult to win than you, Aurelie, have
given me—a lover’s kiss. Answer, curse you!” he shouted in a sudden
outburst of fury. “Answer that you accept! I’ve had enough of your airs
of a lost soul! Answer, or I’ll jolly well arrest you and it will not
only be the kiss but prison as well!”
His left hand fell heavily on her shoulder, while with his right,
seizing her by the throat, he pressed back her head against the
lattice-work and bent down. But his head stopped short, midway to her
lips. He felt her collapse; she had fainted.
This unexpected swoon took him aback. He had come without any very
definite plan beyond that of speaking to her, and during the hour
before the coming of Bregeac, of obtaining from her a solemn promise
and the recognition of the fact that she was in his power. Now chance
offered him an inert and helpless victim.
He remained some moments bending over her, gazing at her with greedy
eyes. He looked round this sylvan retreat, enclosed and discreet. No
witness; no interference possible.
But another idea brought him to the wall, and from among the trees he
looked down on the deserted valley, the forest with its dark trees,
black and mysterious, in which he had noticed as he paused the mouths
of the grottos. Aurelie thrown into one of them, a prisoner, and held
under the terrible threat of the police, Aurelie a prisoner for two
days, three days, a week if necessary, was not that an unexpected,
triumphant dénouement, the beginning and the end of the adventure?
He whistled sharply. Opposite him on the further bank of the pool two
arms were waved above two bushes on the edge of the forest. The signal
agreed on: two men were there, posted by him to help him carry out his
plans. On this side of the pool, a boat was rocking.
He hesitated no longer. He knew that opportunity is fleeting and that,
if one does not seize it in its passing, it vanishes like a shadow. He
crossed the terrace again and perceived that the girl seemed ready to
come to.
“Let us act,” he said, “if not——”
He threw a handkerchief round her head and knotted it across her mouth
to form a gag. Then he took her up in his arms and carried her away.
She was slight and hardly weighed anything at all. He was a strong man.
His burden seemed light. Nevertheless as he came to the breach in the
wall and perceived the almost vertical descent worn by storms in the
lower part of it, he studied it carefully and decided that it was
necessary to take precautions. Therefore he set Aurelie down at the
edge of the breach.
Was she waiting for him to make this mistake? Was it a sudden
inspiration? In any case his carelessness was at once punished. With an
unexpected movement and with a swiftness and decision which took him
aback, she tore the handkerchief from her mouth, and without caring
what happened, let herself slide from the top to the bottom, like a
loosened stone which rolls with an avalanche of pebbles and sand from
which rises a cloud of dust.
Recovering from his surprise he dashed after her at the risk of
falling, and perceived that she was running at haphazard in a zigzag
course from the cliff to the bank of the pool, like a hunted beast that
does not know which way to fly.
“You’re lost, my dear,” he muttered. “There’s nothing for you to do but
bend the knee.”
He had almost caught her, and she was tottering and staggering with
fear, when he had an impression that something fell from the top of the
terrace and struck the ground near him. He turned, saw a man coming at
full speed, the lower part of his face masked by a handkerchief. It
must be the man he had called Aurelie’s lover. He had time to grip his
revolver, but not time to use it. A kick from this adversary, the kick
of an expert savage fighter, caught him full in the chest and sent him
flying into the sticky swamp on the edge of the pool. He sank, then
rose, spluttering, to his feet, up to his knees in the mud. Furious and
staggering, he aimed at Ralph, who, no more than twenty yards away, was
lifting the girl into the boat.
“Stop! Or I’ll fire!” shouted Marescal.
Ralph did not answer. He caught up a rotting plank, rested it on a
thwart like a protecting shield between Aurelie and himself and the
revolver, then pushed off the boat with a vigorous shove which sent it
dancing over the waves. Marescal fired. He fired six times, raging and
furious. But, slipping about as he was in the ooze, the bullets went
wild. Then, he whistled more shrilly than before. The two men on the
other shore sprang up from their lairs, like jacks-in-the-box.
Ralph found himself in the middle of the pool, about thirty yards, that
is, from the opposite bank.
“Don’t shoot!” yelled Marescal.
Why shoot, indeed? The fugitive had no other course, to escape being
dragged by the current towards the gulf in which the brook disappeared,
than to row straight across and come to shore at the very spot at which
Marescal’s men were waiting for him, revolver in hand.
He must have perceived this, for suddenly he brought the boat sharply
round and rowed back to the shore on which he had to fight only one
adversary with an empty revolver.
“Shoot! Shoot!” shouted Marescal, who perceived what Ralph would be at.
“You must shoot now! He’s coming back! Shoot, damn you!”
One of the men fired.
There was a cry from the boat. Ralph let go the oars and fell back, and
with a cry of despair the girl threw herself upon him. The oars floated
away on the surface of the water. The boat remained still for a few
moments, as it could not make up its mind, then slowly turned, with its
prow pointing towards the current, and began to move backwards, slowly
at first then more quickly.
“G-G-Good Heavens!” stammered Marescal, horrified. “They’re done for!”
What could he do? There was no doubt what the end would be. The boat
was caught by two bubbling torrents which were hurrying along both
sides of the pool to a central point; once it turned completely round,
then, taking a straight course, with the two bodies lying in the bottom
of it, it rushed to the gaping cave and was engulfed!
All this happened in less than three minutes after the two fugitives
had left the bank.
Marescal did not stir, his legs in the water, his features contorted
with horror, he gazed at the accursed spot as if he were gazing at the
mouth of Hell. His hat was floating towards it; mud and water dripped
from his hair and beard.
“Is it p-p-possible—is it p-p-possible?” he stammered. “Aurelie!
Aurelie! Aurelie!”
A shout from his men awoke him from his stupor. They made a long
circuit and reached him ten minutes later. They found him drying
himself.
“Is it true?” he asked.
“What?” said one of the men.
“The boat? The gulf?”
He no longer knew. In this way in nightmares abominable visions pass,
leaving an impression of terrible realities. The three of them made
their way above the mouth of the cavern which opened in a rock crowned
with brambles, its surface covered with water-plants. The water flowed
into it in narrow rapids from which rose the rounded and shining tops
of large boulders. They bent over the edge of the rock and listened.
Nothing. Nothing but the murmur of hurrying waters—nothing but a cold
blast, which rose white with flecks of foam.
“It’s hell!” murmured Marescal. “It’s one of the mouths of hell.”
Then he went on: “She is dead—she is drowned. How stupid! What a
terrible death! If that damned fool had only left her alone—I should
have—I should have——”
They went away through the woods. Marescal jogged along in a kind of
stupor. Several times his companions questioned him. They were shady
loafers whom he had picked up for this expedition and not regular men
in his service; and he had only informed them roughly of his plans. He
did not answer them. He thought of Aurelie, so gracious and so full of
life, whom he loved so passionately. He was harassed by memories of
her, by remorse and terror.
He was indeed uneasy in mind. The coming inquiry might very well
involve him and throw part of the blame for this tragic accident on
him. In that case it meant a scandal and ruin. Bregeac would be
pitiless; he would be indefatigable in his efforts to avenge his
step-daughter.
Presently he could think of nothing but getting out of that part of the
country as quietly as possible. He frightened his two assistants by
telling them that a common danger menaced them and that it was
imperative, if they would escape it, that each should go his own way
and look after himself before the alarm was given and their presence
marked. He gave them twice the money he had promised them, made a
circuit round Luz, and took the road to Pierrefitte-Nestales in the
hope of finding some conveyance which would bring him to the railway
station in time for the seven o’clock train that evening.
It was not till he had walked three kilometers from Luz that a small
two-wheeled cart, covered with a tarpaulin and driven by a countryman
wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a Basque cap, overtook him.
He stopped the cart with an air of authority and said imperiously:
“Five francs if you get me to Pierrefitte-Nestales in time to catch the
train.”
The peasant did not appear to be greatly excited by this generous offer
and did not even whip up the wretched animal which ambled along between
shafts that were much too large for it.
It was a long journey. They crawled along. It almost looked as if the
peasant was holding his beast back, instead of urging it on.
Marescal lost his temper. He seemed, indeed, to have lost all control
whatever over himself and whined: “We shall never get there—never. What
a jade your horse is! Look here: I’ll give you ten francs if we catch
that train. What about it?”
The country appeared to him hideous, peopled with phantoms and teaming
with detectives on the trail of the detective Marescal. He could not
endure the thought of passing the night in this district in which the
body of the girl he had sent to her death was lying.
“Twenty francs!” he said.
And all at once, losing his head wholly, he shouted: “Fifty francs!
I’ll give you fifty francs! It isn’t further than a mile and a quarter.
A mile and a quarter in seven minutes, dammit! It can be done! Get on,
curse you, thrash that nanny-goat of a horse! Fifty francs!”
On the instant the peasant became furiously energetic, and, as if he
had only been waiting for this magnificent offer, set himself to lash
the nanny-goat with such ardor that it set off at a gallop.
“Look out! Mind what you’re doing! You’ll have us in the ditch!” cried
Marescal.
The countryman seemed not to care a hang whether they went into the
ditch or not. Fifty francs! He beat his horse as hard as he could with
a stick fitted with a large copper ferule. The maddened beast galloped
faster and faster. The cart leaped from one side of the road to the
other, Marescal grew more and more terrified.
“But it’s idiotic!” he shouted. “You’re going to upset us! Go slower,
confound you! You’re mad, I tell you—mad! That’s it, you fool! Here we
go!”
They went, indeed. The countryman clumsily pulled the wrong rein; the
cart made a wilder jump and the whole outfit, cart, driver, passenger
and load, plunged into the ditch in such a disastrous fashion that the
countryman and Marescal found themselves on their stomachs with the
cart on the top of them while the horse, entangled in the harness, with
its heels in the air, beat a tattoo on the foot-board. Marescal
presently discovered that none of his bones were broken. But the
countryman was crushing him with his full weight. He tried to push him
off. He could not.
Then he heard a kindly voice murmur in his ear: “Could you oblige me
with a light, Rudolph?”
Marescal felt his body chill from head to foot. Death and only death
could produce that impression of limbs already stiff and cold that
nothing would ever warm again.
He muttered through chattering teeth: “The man of the express!”
“The man of the express, the very man,” echoed the voice at his
ear-hole.
“The man of the terrace!” moaned Marescal.
“Quite right—the man of the express, the man of the terrace—and also
the man of Monte Carlo and the man of Boulevard Haussmann and the
murderer of the two brothers Loubeaux and the accomplice of Aurelie,
and the navigator of the boat and the driver of the cart. That gives
you plenty of warriors to fight, old chap; and I venture to say that
they can all hold their own.”
The horse had finished its drumming on the foot-board and scrambled to
its feet and dragged the cart off them. Ralph sat up, on the small of
the detective’s back, quietly drew off his big cloak, and wrapped it
round the detective, so paralyzing his legs and arms. He caught the
reins, pulled the cart towards him and, keeping a foot painfully on the
detective’s back, stripped the horse of the traces and reins and bound
Marescal with excessive tightness. Then he picked him up and carried
him to the top of the high embankment into a thicket. He went down
again, came back with a couple of straps from the harness, and fastened
the detective by the neck and chest to the trunk of a birch.
“I don’t seem to bring you any luck, poor old Rudolph. This is the
second time I’ve tied you up like a mummy. Ah, don’t let me forget to
use Aurelie’s handkerchief as a gag. The perfect prisoner should
neither be seen nor heard. But you can see everything with your eyes
and also listen with all your ears. Hark! Do you hear the whistle of
the train? There it goes: puff, puff, puff! It has started for the
North and it’s carrying away Aurelie and her step-father. I really must
set your mind at rest. Aurelie’s as much alive as you or I. A little
tired, perhaps, after so many emotions. But a good night’s rest, and
she won’t show a trace of them.”
He went away and tied the horse to a tree and cleared the fragments of
the cart off the road. Then he came back and sat down by the
Commissary.
“A queer business that shipwreck, wasn’t it?” he said amiably. “But
there was no miracle about it, I assure you. And there was no luck
about it either. That you may know better how to act in the future, you
must know that I never rely on miracles or on luck, but solely on
myself. So—but I hope that my little sermon is not boring you? Perhaps
you’d rather go to sleep. No? Well, to continue—I had scarcely left
Aurelie on the terrace when I turned anxious. Was it quite prudent to
leave her like that? Can one ever be sure that some blackguard is not
prowling about—that some pomade-pot of a lady-killer is not sneaking
about the neighborhood? Intuitions like that form part of my system. I
always act on them. So I went back. And what do I see? Rudolph, the
infamous ravisher and faithless policeman, plunging into the valley on
the track of his prey. Thereupon I fall from Heaven, I kick you into a
cold bath, I carry off Aurelie, and there we are! The pool, the forest,
the grottoes, that way lay liberty. Off we go! Then you whistle and two
ugly-looking customers spring up at your call! What to do? An insoluble
problem, if ever there was one. No: A pleasing thought. Suppose I let
myself be swallowed up by the gulf? At that very moment a revolver
spits a bullet at me. I howl; I let go the oars; I pretend to be dead
at the bottom of the boat. I explain my action to Aurelie, and bang we
go headfirst into the abyss!”
Ralph tapped Marescal’s thigh.
“Don’t shudder, old chap, I beg you: we did not run any risk at all.
All the countryside knows that, if you make use of that tunnel which
the stream has cut through the chalk, you land two hundred yards lower
down on a nice little sandy beach from which you mount by a short
staircase cut in the cliff. On Sundays dozens of boys make the journey
and drag their skiff back and make it again. There is no fear of as
much as a scratch. And in that way we were able to observe from a
distance your flabbergastedness and see you go off, with bowed head,
crushed by remorse. Then I took Aurelie back to the convent garden. Her
step-father came to fetch her in a carriage in time to catch the train.
As for me, I went to look for my suit-case, bought the cart and cloak
and cap from a peasant and started off, gently, with no other object in
view than to cover the retreat of Aurelie.”
Ralph rested his head on Marescal’s shoulder.
“I needn’t tell you that this business has tired me a little and that a
short nap seems to be in order. Watch over my dreams, Rudolph darling,
and do not worry. Everything is for the best in the best of worlds.
Every one in it occupies the place he deserves; and blockheads serve as
pillows for intelligent people like me.” He went to sleep.
Twilight came and then the night fell. Now and again Ralph awoke and
said a few words about the shining stars or the clear light of the
moon. Then he went to sleep again.
Towards midnight he grew hungry. He had some food in his suit-case. He
removed Marescal’s gag, and offered him some.
“Eat, darling,” he said affectionately, putting a piece of cheese into
his mouth.
But once again Marescal lost his temper; he spat out the cheese and
growled:
“Imbecile! Idiot! You’re the blockhead! Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Certainly. I’ve rescued Aurelie. Her step-father is taking her back to
Paris; and I’m going to join her there.”
“Her step-father!” cried Marescal. “You don’t know then?”
“What?”
“That’s he’s in love with her, her precious step-father!”
Ralph, of a sudden beside himself, buried his hands in Marescal’s hair,
and tried to shake his strapped-up head.
“Imbecile! Idiot! Why didn’t you tell me so, instead of hanging on my
sermonizing lips? He’s in love with her, is he? The swine! Then
everybody’s in love with that girl! A lot of silly brutes! Have you
never looked at yourself in the glass? You, with your pomaded wig!”
He bent forward and added: “Listen to me, Marescal. I’m going to tear
that little girl from her step-father. But leave her in peace. Don’t
bother about us any more.”
“It’s impossible,” growled the Commissary savagely.
“Why?”
“She has murdered.”
“So that is your plan?”
“To hand her over to justice; and I shall carry it out, for I hate
her.”
He spoke these words in an access of so savage a rancor that Ralph
could not fail to understand that henceforth hate would have the better
of love in Marescal’s heart.
“All the worse for you, Rudolph. I was going to propose a trifle of
promotion to you, something in the way of the post of Commissioner of
Police. But you prefer war. Have your own way. Begin with a night in
the open air. Nothing is better for the health. As for me, I shall ride
to Lourdes on the main line. Twenty kilometers—about three hours’ trot
for my fiery steed. And to-night I shall be in Paris, where I shall
begin by putting Aurelie into a place of safety. Good-by, Rudolph.”
He mounted, fixed his suit-case in front of him as comfortably as he
could, and without a saddle or spurs, whistling a hunting song, kicked
his horse into a trot, and disappeared in the darkness.
That night in Paris an old lady of the name of Victorine, who had been
his nurse, was waiting in a car, outside the house in which Bregeac
lived. Ralph was at the wheel.
He kept watch there all night. In the early morning he saw a
rag-picker, who was hunting with his hook through the orderly boxes
that stood along the curb. Immediately with that sixth sense which
enabled him to recognize people by their carriage and bearing, rather
than by their faces, he recognized, under the rags and dirty cap, in
spite of the fact that he had seen such a very little of him in the
garden of the Villa Faradoni and on the road to Nice, the murderer
Jodot.
“The devil!” murmured Ralph. “That gentleman’s at work already, is he?”
At a few minutes to eight a maid came out of the front door of the
house and hurried across to a chemist’s shop lower down the street.
Ralph hurried after her with a bank-note ready and accosted her. He
learned that Aurelie, who had returned the night before with her
step-father, had been struck down by fever and was delirious.
In the middle of the afternoon Marescal was prowling about the house.