SISTER ANN, SISTER ANN, DO YOU SEE ANYTHING?
At two o’clock the same day Aurelie was dressing feebly. An old servant
of the house of Valentine, who was now the only servant they had, had
brought up her lunch to her room and had told her that Bregeac wished
to speak to her.
She had not fully recovered from her illness. Pale and very feeble, she
put some rouge on her lips and cheeks and forced herself to appear
before the man she detested, carrying her head high.
Bregeac was waiting for her in his study on the first floor, a large
room with closed shutters, lighted by an electric light.
“Sit down,” he said.
“No.”
“Sit down. You’re tired.”
“Tell me at once what you want to say and let me go back to my room,”
she said coldly.
Bregeac walked up and down the room with an harassed and anxious air.
He watched her furtively, with as much hostility as passion, as a man
who finds himself balked by an indomitable will. Also he was full of
pity for her.
He came to her and putting his hand on her shoulder forced her to sit
down and sat down himself.
“You’re right,” he said. “It will not take long. What I have to tell
you can be said in a few words. You can then decide.”
They were near one another, yet further apart than two bitter enemies.
Bregeac was aware of it. The words he was trying to speak would only
widen the abyss between them.
He clenched his fists and said: “So you still do not understand that we
are surrounded by enemies and that the situation cannot last?”
“What enemies?” she muttered.
“You know quite well,” he said. “Marescal, who detests you and is
burning to avenge himself.”
He looked at her; but as she said nothing, he went on in a lower voice
and yet more serious accents. “Listen, Aurelie. For some time we have
been under observation. In the Ministry they search my drawers.
Superiors and inferiors, all the world is in league against me. Why?
Because they are all more or less in the pay of Marescal, and because
they all know he is more powerful than I with the Minister. Now, you
and I are linked to one another if only because he hates us both. And
we are linked to one another by our past, which, whether you like it or
not, is the same. I have brought you up. I am your guardian. My ruin is
yours. And I even ask myself if it is not you they are really about to
attack for reasons of which I am ignorant. Yes; I have got the
impression from certain facts that they will leave me strictly alone,
but that you are directly threatened.”
She looked as if she were about to faint and asked: “What facts?”
He answered: “It’s worse than that. I have received an anonymous
letter, written on the paper of the Ministry—an absurd and incoherent
letter in which I am warned that a prosecution is going to be started
against you.”
She had the strength to say: “A prosecution? You’re mad. And it’s
because an anonymous letter——”
“Yes, I know what you’re going to say,” he said quickly. “Some idle
official who has heard some stupid rumor. But all the same Marescal is
capable of every abomination.”
“If you’re afraid, keep out of the business,” she said coldly.
“I’m afraid for you, Aurelie.”
“I’ve nothing to fear.”
“Yes, you have,” he said quickly. “This man has sworn to destroy you.”
“Then let me go.”
“Are you strong enough?”
“I’ve all the strength I need to escape from this prison in which you
keep me and never to see you again,” she said bitterly.
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of discouragement.
“Don’t say that,” he said. “I could not live without you. I have
suffered too much during your absence. I would rather endure
anything—anything rather than be separated from you. My whole life
depends on your regard, on you.”
She drew herself up, trembling with indignation, and cried: “I forbid
you to speak to me like that. You swore to me that I should never hear
a word of that kind again—abominable words!”
She sank back in her chair, exhausted by the effort. He moved away from
her and threw himself into an arm-chair, his head between his hands,
his shoulders shaken by his sobs, like a vanquished man for whom
existence is an intolerable burden.
After a long silence he began again in a dull voice: “We’re still worse
enemies than we were before you went away. You have come back quite
different. What did you do, Aurelie—not at Sainte-Marie—but during the
first three weeks during which I was hunting for you like a mad-man,
before I thought of the convent? That wretched fellow William—you did
not love him that I know. Nevertheless, you followed him. Why? And what
became of the two of you? What has become of him? I have an intuition
that very serious things happened. I see that you are worried to death.
In your delirium you talked like one who had been flying without
stopping; and you kept seeing blood-corpses.”
She shuddered. “No, no!” she cried. “It is not true. You misunderstood
me.”
“I did not understand you,” he replied, shaking his head. “Look, at
this very moment your eyes are terrified. One would think that your
nightmare was still going on.”
He came nearer to her and said slowly: “You need a long rest, my poor
child, and that is what I want to suggest to you. This morning I asked
for leave and we will go away. I swear to you that I will not say a
single word that might offend you. What is more, I will not say a word
about that secret which you ought to have confided to me, since it
belongs as much to me as to you. I will not even try to read it in the
depths of your eyes in which it hides itself and in which I have so
often tried, by force I confess, to find the key to this insoluble
problem. I will leave your eyes alone, Aurelie. I will never look at
you again. That is my definite promise. But come with me, poor child,
you rack me with pity. You are waiting for I do not know what, and it
is only misfortune which can respond to your appeal. Come with me.”
She kept silence with a stubborn obstinacy. The quarrel between them
was past mending; it was impossible to utter a word which would not
inflict a wound, or be an outrage. The odious passion of Bregeac
separated them more than all that had happened and than the profound
reasons which had always set them in opposition.
“Will you?” he said at last.
She said firmly: “I will not. I cannot stand your presence any longer.
I can no longer live in the same house with you. I shall go away at the
first opportunity.”
“And not alone—any more than the first time,” he sneered. “It’s
William, I suppose.”
“I’ve got rid of William.”
“Some one else then, some one for whom you are waiting, I’m convinced
of it. Your eyes are always looking for him—your ears are always
listening for him. Yes: at this very moment!”
The front door had been opened and shut.
“What did I tell you?” cried Bregeac with an evil laugh. “One would
really think that you were hoping that some one was going to come. No,
Aurelie; no one will come, neither William, nor any one else. It is
Valentine whom I sent to the Ministry to fetch my courrier, for I shall
not go there again.”
They heard the sound of the servant’s footsteps on the stairs to the
first floor and then on the landing. He entered.
“Did you do as I told you, Valentine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There were letters—letters to be signed?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s odd. But my courrier?”
“He had just been transferred to M. Marescal.”
“But what right? Did Marescal dare?—Was Marescal there?” cried Bregeac
in a tone of sudden anxiety.
“No, sir. He came and went away at once.”
“Came away? At half-past two? Then it must be some important affair.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you try to find out what it was?”
“Yes; but they did not know anything at the office.”
“Was he alone?”
“No: he went with Labonce, Tony, and Sauvinoux.”
“With Labonce and Tony?” cried Bregeac. “Well, in that case it’s a
matter of an arrest! Why wasn’t I informed of it? What can be
happening?”
Valentine went away. Bregeac once more began to walk up and down the
room.
He said thoughtfully: “Tony, Marescal’s right-hand man,—Labonce, one of
his favorites—and without informing me.”
He fell silent for a minute or two and paced up and down. Aurelie
watched him anxiously. Then he went to one of the windows, opened one
of the shutters a few inches, and looked out.
“But they’re there at—the end of the street! They’re keeping watch!”
“Who?”
“Both of them, Marescal’s assistants—Tony and Labonce.”
“Well?” she said in a faint voice.
“Those are the two he always employs in important matters. It was with
them he was working this morning.”
“And they’re there?” said Aurelie.
“They’re there. I’ve seen them.”
“And is Marescal coming?”
“Of course he is. You heard what Valentine said,” said Bregeac
impatiently.
“He’s c-c-c-oming—he’s c-c-c-oming,” she stammered.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bregeac, astonished that she should be so
disturbed.
“Nothing,” she said, again in control of herself. “One gets frightened
in spite of one’s self. But there’s no real reason.”
Bregeac reflected. He too was hard put to it to keep his nerves under
control. Then he said: “Of course there’s no reason. One generally gets
excited for perfectly puerile reasons. I’ll go and question them and
I’m sure that everything will be cleared up. Quite sure. For after all
it looks rather as if they were watching the house opposite than us.”
Aurelie raised her head sharply and said quickly: “What house?”
“I told you about the business—the man they arrested this morning, just
before noon. If you’d only seen Marescal when he left his office at
eleven. I met him as he left it. He was wearing an expression of
immense satisfaction and simply ferocious hate. That’s what bothers me.
One can only feel such hate as that in one’s life for some one person.
And it is I whom he hates like that, or rather the two of us. So I
thought it was we who were threatened.”
Aurelie rose to her feet, paler than ever.
“What’s that you say? An arrest in the house opposite?” she cried.
“Yes; a man of the name of Limézy, who pretends to be an explorer—a
Baron de Limézy. I had news of the arrest at one o’clock at the
Ministry. They had just brought him to Headquarters.”
She did not know Ralph’s name, but she was certain that Bregeac was
talking of no one else, and asked in a trembling voice: “What has he
done? Who is he? This Baron de Limézy?”
“According to Marescal he is the murderer of the express. The third
confederate whom they were seeking.”
She was on the point of falling. She wore a distracted air and groped
giddily in the empty air to find something to hold on to.
“What’s the matter, Aurelie? What connection has this business——”
“We are lost,” she groaned.
“What do you mean?”
“You cannot understand.”
“Explain yourself. Do you know this man?” he cried on a rising note.
“Yes, yes. He rescued me. He saved me from Marescal and from William
and from that man Jodot who used to come here. He would have saved us
again to-day.”
He stared at her, confounded, and said: “Was it him you were waiting
for?”
“Yes,” she said. “He promised to be on the spot. I was quite easy in
mind. I have seen him do such things—fool Marescal.”
“Well?” said Bregeac.
“Well,” she replied in the same distracted tone. “It would perhaps be
better to get into hiding—you as well as I. There are stories to your
disadvantage—stories of years ago.”
“You’re mad!” cried Bregeac, aghast. “There’s nothing of the kind! For
my part, I fear nothing!”
In spite of his denials, he went out of the room, dragging Aurelie with
him on to the landing. It was she who at the last moment resisted.
“But no. What use would it be? We shall be saved—he will come—he will
escape. Why not wait for him?”
“One does not escape from Headquarters,” snarled Bregeac.
“You think not? Oh, how horrible all this is!”
She did not know what to do. Terrible ideas whirled through her mind,
weakened by her illness—fear of Marescal and of immediate arrest—and
the police who were going to seize her and twist her wrists.
The terror of her step-father decided her. Carried away by the fury of
the storm, she ran to her room and reappeared at once with a suit-case
in her hand. Bregeac was also ready. They had the air of two criminals
who had nothing else to look at except a desperate flight. They went
down the staircase and crossed the hall.
At that very moment the bell rang.
“Too late,” whispered Bregeac.
“No,” she said, encouraged by a sudden hope. “Perhaps he has come. He
has come and is going to take me away.”
She thought of her friend and of the convent terrace. He had sworn
never to abandon her and that at the very last minute even he would be
able to save her. Obstacles? Were there any obstacles for him? Was he
not master of men and of events?
The bell rang again.
The old servant came out of the dining-room.
“Open,” said Bregeac to him, in a low voice.
They heard whisperings and the shuffling of feet on the other side of
the door. Some one knocked.
“Open the door,” said Bregeac again.
On the doorstep stood Marescal with three men. She leaned against the
bannisters of the staircase and groaned in such a low voice that
Bregeac alone heard it:
“Heavens! It is not him!”
Confronted with his subordinate, Bregeac drew himself to his full
height.
“What do you want, Monsieur? I have forbidden you the house,” he said
sternly.
“I am here on an official matter, Monsieur le Directeur. By order of
the Minister,” he said with a snarl.
“An order which concerns me?”
“Which concerns you and mademoiselle too,” said Marescal.
“And which compels you to secure the help of three men?”
Marescal laughed and said: “Goodness, no. That was a mere accident.
They were taking a walk this way, we fell into conversation, and they
came along with me. There’s nothing to be put out about.”
He entered and caught sight of the two suit-cases.
“Ah, a short journey. What? A minute later and my trouble would have
been wasted.”
“Monsieur Marescal,” said Bregeac firmly, “if you have a mission to
perform—a communication to make to me, make it at once and here.”
“Don’t let’s have a scandal, Bregeac. And don’t let’s have any
nonsense. No one knows anything so far, not even my men. Let’s talk
things over in your study,” said Marescal in threatening accents.
“No one knows anything about what, Monsieur?” said Bregeac.
“About what is happening; and it’s serious enough. If your
step-daughter has not told you about it, perhaps she will admit that an
explanation without witnesses would be preferable. What do you think,
Mademoiselle?” said Marescal in a jeering tone.
Pale as death, still holding on to the bannisters, Aurelie seemed on
the point of fainting.
Bregeac slipped an arm round her and held her up.
“Come on up,” he said, helping her up the stairs.
She let him do so. Marescal told his men to enter.
“Don’t stir out of the hall, any of you, and don’t let any one come in,
or go out,” he said. He turned to Valentine and added: “Go into the
kitchen and stay there.”
Valentine went.
“If there’s any trouble upstairs, I’ll whistle,” he said to his men.
“And Sauvinoux will come to the rescue. Do you understand?”
“We understand,” said Labonce.
“Don’t make any mistake.”
“We shan’t make any mistake, chief. You know that we’re not novices.
And that we’ll stand by you to a man,” said Sauvinoux.
“Even against Bregeac?”
“Rather.”
“Right. Give me the bottle, Tony.”
He took the bottle, or rather the cardboard case which held it, and
went briskly up the stairs, assured that his orders would be obeyed,
and entered the study out of which he had been so ignominiously turned
six months before, with the air of a master. What a victory for him!
And with what an insolence did he make his triumph plain! He walked
round the study, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat,
looking at the photographs which hung upon the wall, photographs of
Aurelie, as a baby, a little girl, and a young girl.
Bregeac snapped: “Try to behave yourself, Marescal.”
At once Marescal put him in his place.
“It’s no use, Bregeac; shut up!” he said. “Your weakness is that you
don’t know the weapons I hold against Mademoiselle, and consequently
against you. Perhaps, when you do know them, you’ll realize that it’s
your duty to do as you’re told.”
Facing one another, drawn to their full height, the two enemies tried
to stare one another down. Their hate for one another, springing from
opposing ambitions, warring instincts, and above all from a rivalry in
love that all these other factors made more bitter, was equal. Beside
them Aurelie waited, sitting upright on her chair.
The curious thing was, and it struck Marescal, that she seemed to have
recovered herself. Still feeble, with drawn face, she no longer wore,
as at the beginning of the attack, her air of a helpless, exhausted
quarry. She maintained that rigid attitude which he had observed her
assume on the bench at Sainte-Marie. Her eyes, open wide, wet with
tears which trickled down her pale cheeks, were fixed on something
invisible to either of them. Of what was she thinking? Sometimes from
the very bottom of the abyss one rises again. Did she think that he,
Marescal, could be moved to pity? Had she a plan of defense which would
allow her to escape the penalty of the law?
He banged his fist down on the table and cried: “We’ll see about that!”
Leaving the girl out of it for the moment, he gave all his attention to
Bregeac. He stepped right up to him, thrusting his face forward, so
that his chief had to recoil a step, and said to him: “It won’t take me
long to deal with you. The facts and only the facts! Some of them are
known to you, Bregeac, as they are known to everybody; but to the
majority of them there is no witness but me, or rather they have been
discovered by me alone. Do not try to deny them; I am giving them to
you exactly as they are, in all their simplicity. Here they are in the
form of an indictment. On the 26th of April last——”
Bregeac quivered, and said quickly: “The twenty-sixth of April was the
day on which we met on the Boulevard Haussmann.”
“Yes; and it was the day on which your step-daughter left you,” said
Marescal, and he added sharply: “It was also the day on which three
persons were murdered on the Marseilles express.”
“What? What connection is there between the two facts?” asked Bregeac
in astonished accents.
“Don’t be impatient,” said Marescal pompously. “You will get each fact
in its place, in its chronological order.” He paused to cough. Then
went on: “On April the twenty-sixth, car number five, in the express,
was occupied by only four persons. In the last compartment were an
English girl of the name of Miss Bakersfield—a crook she was—and Baron
de Limézy, a pretended explorer. In the last compartment were two men,
the brothers Loubeaux, residing at Neuilly-sur-Seine.
“In the car behind, the fourth car, besides several persons who played
no part in the affair and knew nothing about it, were, firstly, a
Commissary of the Secret Service, secondly, a young man and a young
girl, alone in a compartment, in which they had covered the light and
pulled down the curtains, as if they were going to sleep, and
consequently passed unnoticed by everybody, even by the Commissary. I
was that Commissary, on the track of Miss Bakersfield. The young man
was William Ancivel, a stock-jobber and burglar, a frequent guest at
this house, who was flying secretly with his companion.”
“You lie! You lie!” cried Bregeac indignantly. “Aurelie is above
suspicion!”
“I did not say that his companion was Mademoiselle,” Marescal retorted.
Bregeac scowled at him.
Marescal went on coldly: “As far as La Roche nothing happened. For
another half hour nothing happened. Then came the abrupt and violent
drama. The young man and girl emerge from the darkness and pass from
the fourth car to the fifth. They are disguised by long gray blouses,
caps, and masks. In the last compartment of the fifth car Baron de
Limézy is waiting for them. The three of them murder and rob Miss
Bakersfield. Then Baron de Limézy is tied up by his confederates, who
hurry to the end of the car and murder and rob the two brothers. When
they come back down the car they meet the conductor. There is a fight;
and they escape. The conductor finds Baron de Limézy trussed up as one
of their victims and pretending he has been robbed, also. That’s the
first act. The second is their flight up the embankment and through the
woods. But the conductor has given the alarm. I learn what has
happened; I take the necessary measures. The result is that the two
fugitives are surrounded. One of them escapes. The other is arrested
and shut up. I am informed of it. I go to examine him in the dark
corner into which he has shrunk. It is a woman.”
“A woman?” said Bregeac in incredulous accents.
“Let me finish,” said Marescal. “Thanks to the pseudo-Baron, in
trusting whom I made a mistake, this woman gets away and rejoins
William Ancivel. I find traces of them at Monte Carlo. Then I lose
track of them again. I hunt for it in vain till the day on which it
occurs to me to return to Paris and to learn whether your
investigations, Bregeac, have not been more fortunate than mine and
whether you have discovered your step-daughter’s hiding-place. That was
how I was able to reach the convent of Sainte-Marie several hours
before you did and to make my way to a certain terrace on which
Mademoiselle was listening to a tale of love. Only the lover has
changed: instead of William Ancivel it is Baron de Limézy, that is to
say, their confederate.”
Bregeac was listening to these monstrous accusations with a growing
fear. It all seemed to him so inevitably true; it explained so exactly
his own intuitions and agreed so closely with the half confidences
Aurelie had just made to him with regard to her unknown savior. He did
not even try to protest. At intervals he looked at her, always to find
her sitting, motionless and dumb, in her rigid attitude. Marescal’s
words did not appear to penetrate to her understanding, one would have
said that she was listening to noises outside rather than to his words.
Was it that she still hoped for an impossible intervention?
“And then?” said Bregeac impatiently, as Marescal paused.
“Then,” replied the Commissary, “thanks to him, she succeeded once more
in escaping. But to-day I swear to you I can laugh at all that,
since—to-day I have my revenge.”
He paused to gloat over Aurelie, who seemed wholly unaware of his
existence.
“And what a revenge, Bregeac!” he went on. “Do you remember that six
months ago you dismissed me as if I had been a valet—one might almost
say you kicked me out? And now I hold her—this child—in the hollow of
my hand; and all is over.”
He turned his hand as if he were turning a key in a lock, and that so
exact gesture showed so clearly and definitely his terrible resolution
with regard to Aurelie that Bregeac exclaimed: “No, no. It isn’t true,
Marescal! It can’t be true! You are not going to hand this child over
to the police.”
“Down there at Sainte-Marie I offered her peace,” said Marescal in
harsh accents. “She repulsed me. All the worse for her! To-day is too
late!”
Bregeac approached him with his hands stretched out in a gesture of
supplication and began an incoherent prayer. He cut it short.
“It’s useless!” he cried. “All the worse for her! All the worse for
you! She wouldn’t have me—she shall have nobody. And it’s mere justice.
To pay her debt for the crime she has committed is to pay me for the
harm she has done me. She must be punished; and I avenge myself in
punishing her. All the worse for her!”
He emphasized his phrases by stamping his foot or banging on the table.
Then giving way to the natural grossness of his nature he turned on
Aurelie and cried: “Look at her, Bregeac! Is she thinking for a moment
of asking my forgiveness? If you bow your head, does she show any
humiliation? And do you know the reason of this dumbness, of this
sustained and intractable hardness? It’s because she still hopes,
Bregeac. Yes, she hopes; I’m certain of it. She hopes that the man who
has saved her three times from my claws, will save her a fourth.”
Aurelie never stirred. He snatched up the receiver of the telephone and
rang up the Prefecture of Police.
“Hullo! Is that the Prefecture? Put me on to Monsieur Phillipe—it’s M.
Marescal speaking.”
He turned to the young girl and held the second receiver to her ear.
Aurelie did not stir.
Some one answered at the other end of the line:
“Is that you, Marescal?”
“Yes. Listen. There is a person here to whom I wish to afford complete
certainty. Answer my questions exactly.”
“Right.”
“Where were you at noon to-day?”
“At Headquarters as you asked me to be. I received the person whom
Labonce and Tony brought from you.”
“Where did we arrest him?”
“In his lodgings in the Rue de Courcelles in the house exactly opposite
Bregeac’s.”
“Was he charged?”
“Before me.”
“Under what name?”
“Baron de Limézy.”
“And what did they charge him with?”
“With being the leader of the train robbers in the express case.”
“Have you seen him since this morning?”
“Yes. Just now, when they were taking his measurements. They’re taking
them still.”
“Thanks, Phillipe, that’s what I wanted to know. Good-by.”
He hung up the receivers and cried: “Well, my pretty Aurelie, you know
where your savior is! In prison! Jailed!”
“I knew it,” she said.
He burst out laughing.
“She knew it! And she went on expecting him just the same! That’s
really funny. He has the whole of the police and the weight of the law
on the top of him—he’s a rag, a tatter, a straw in the wind, a
soap-bubble, and she’s expecting him! The walls of his prison are going
to fall down! The warders are going to offer him a car! He’s here! He’s
going to come down the chimney or through the ceiling!”
Beside himself, he shook the young girl impassive and heedless of him,
by the shoulder.
“There’s nothing to be done, Aurelie! There’s no more hope! Your
savior’s done for! The Baron’s under lock and key! And in an hour it
will be your turn, pretty one! Cropped hair! Saint Lazare! The court!
I’ve wept often enough for your beautiful eyes, you little crook; and
it is to them——”
The words were cut short on his tongue. Absorbed in Aurelie, he had
forgotten Bregeac; and Bregeac gripped him by the throat from behind
with two frenzied hands. The action had been involuntary. Marescal had
gripped the girl’s shoulder; he came at him in a fury of revolt at such
an outrage. Marescal staggered before his onset and the two men rolled
on the floor. There was a furious fight. Both of them were beside
themselves with rage, a rage aggravated by their fierce rivalry.
Marescal was the more vigorous and stronger, but Bregeac was sustained
by such a savage jealousy that the issue remained long in doubt.
Aurelie gazed on them with horrified eyes; but she did not stir. Both
of them were her enemies, equally detestable.
At last Marescal, who had freed himself from the strangling grip of
Bregeac’s murderous hands, was able to make an effort to get at the
revolver in his hip pocket. But Bregeac, seeing what he would be at, so
twisted his right arm that it was paralyzed. But with his left hand
Marescal got hold of his whistle which was hanging on a chain in his
breast pocket and blew a shrill call on it. Bregeac tried once more
with all his might to get his adversary by the throat. The door was
flung open; a man came bounding into the room, and flung himself on to
the struggling figures. Almost on the instant Marescal found himself
free and Bregeac was looking down the barrel of a revolver about ten
inches from his eyes.
“Bravo Sauvinoux!” cried Marescal. “I shan’t forget that little bit of
help in a hurry, my lad!”
His rage was still so furious that he was cowardly enough to spit in
Bregeac’s face.
“You cad! You blackguard! Did you think you were going to dispose of me
as easily as that?” he shouted. “Your resignation, and at once! The
Minister demands it—I have it in my pocket! You’ve only to sign it!”
He produced a paper from his pocket.
“Your resignation—and Aurelie’s confession. I’ve written it out ready.
Sign it, Aurelie. Come, read it. ‘I confess that I took part in the
crime on the express, on the 26th of last April. That I fired at the
brothers Loubeaux. I confess that—’ In fact it’s a resumé of the whole
story. You needn’t bother to read it. Sign! Don’t waste any more time!”
He dipped a pen into the ink-pot and tried to force it between her
fingers.
Slowly she pushed the hand of the Commissary aside, took the pen and
signed, as Marescal had willed her to sign, without taking the trouble
to read it. The handwriting was steady. Her hand did not tremble.
“Ah,” he said with a deep sigh of relief. “That’s done. I did not think
that I could get it nearly so quickly. It’s a good thing, Aurelie, that
you understood the situation. And now you, Bregeac.”
Bregeac shook his head and refused.
“What!” cried Marescal. “You refuse. Do you fancy that you can keep
your post? Perhaps you think that you will be promoted. What? Promoted
as the step-father of a criminal? That’s good, that is. And you would
continue to give me orders, you, Bregeac? You’re a funny chap. Do you
suppose that this scandal won’t be enough to clear you out, that
to-morrow, when people read in the papers of the arrest of this child,
you won’t be obliged to resign?”
Bregeac’s fingers closed upon the pen held out to him. He read the
letter of resignation and hesitated.
Aurelie said to him: “Sign, Monsieur.”
He signed.
“There we are!” said Marescal, pocketing the two papers—the confession
and the resignation. “My chief is down and out; his post is empty; and
it has been promised to me. And the girl will be in prison which little
by little cures me of the love which was gnawing my heart.”
He said this with a cold cynicism, that bared the bottom of his vile
soul.
Then, with a cruel laugh, he turned on Bregeac and went on: “But we
haven’t finished yet, Bregeac. When I play a game, I play it to the
end.”
Bregeac smiled bitterly: “You’re going still further? What’s the use of
it?” he said.
“I’m going further,” said Marescal, glowering at him. “With regard to
this child’s crimes, we’ve come to the end of them. Everything is
settled. But are we to stop there?” He thrust forward his face and
glared into Bregeac’s eyes. “What do you say about it?” He paused, then
went on: “You know what I mean. If you hadn’t known, and known that it
was true, you wouldn’t have signed, and you wouldn’t have let me take
this tone I have with you. Your resignation is a confession. And if I
am able to take this tone, Bregeac, it is because you are afraid!”
“I’m afraid of nothing!” protested Bregeac. “I am bearing the burden of
this unfortunate child’s crimes—crimes she must have committed in a
moment of madness.”
“And the burden of what you have done yourself, Bregeac.”
“Besides that, there is nothing.”
“Besides that, there is the past,” said Marescal slowly and with gloomy
severity. “We’ll say no more of the crime of to-day. But what about the
crime of bygone days, Bregeac?”
“The crime of bygone days? What crime? What do you mean?”
Marescal banged on the table, his final argument, which perhaps
emphasized an explosion of anger.
“Explanations? It’s I who am asking for explanations. What does that
recent expedition of yours to the bank of the Seine mean? On Sunday
morning? And your watch near the empty villa? And your pursuit of the
man with the sack? Am I to refresh your memory and remind you that that
villa belonged to the men your step-daughter murdered, and that the man
you watched was an individual of the name of Jodot—I’m searching for
him high and low, by the way—the partner of the brothers Loubeaux?
Jodot whom I used to meet in this very house. Goodness, how it all
hangs together! How clear the connection grows between all these
events!”
Bregeac shrugged his shoulders and muttered: “Absurdities! Imbecile
hypotheses!”
“Hypotheses: yes—fancies to which I did not pay very much attention
when I used to come here formerly—till I scented, like the keen sleuth
I am, all the embarrassment, the reticence, the confused apprehension
that colored your actions and your words. But hypotheses which have for
some time and little by little been confirmed—which we are going to
turn into certainties, Bregeac—yes: you and I together, Bregeac—without
your being able to get out of it—of which I’m going to produce the
irrefutable proof—and you a complete confession, without knowing
it—here—immediately.”
He took up the cardboard case which he had brought with him and set it
on the mantelpiece, and opened it. It contained one of those straw
sheaths used to prevent bottles from breaking. There was a bottle in
it. Marescal took it out and set it on the table in front of Bregeac.
“There, comrade Bregeac. You recognize it, don’t you? It’s the bottle
you stole the other day from Jodot, which I took from you and which a
third person stole from me before your eyes. That third person? It was
Baron Limézy and no one else. I found it in his lodgings a little while
ago. What? Do you understand, darling? This is a real treasure, this
bottle is. Look at it, Bregeac. Look at its label and the formula on
it—of some mineral water—Eau de Jouvence. Here it is. Limézy has corked
and sealed it with red sealing-wax. Look at it carefully. Do you see
that little piece of rolled-up paper at the bottom of it. It’s certain
that you wanted to get it from Jodot—a confession, to a dead certainty.
A most compromising specimen of your handwriting. My poor Bregeac!”
It was his hour of triumph. As he knocked off the sealing-wax and
uncorked the bottle he threw out phrases and interjections at
haphazard.
“Marescal famous all the world over!... Arrest of the express
murderers!... Bregeac’s past!... What surprises at the inquiry and at
the assizes!... Sauvinoux, you have handcuffs for the girl?... Call
Labonce and Tony.... Victory! Complete Victory!”
He turned the bottle upside down. The paper fell out of it. He picked
it up, unfolded it, and carried away by this whirl of windy words, like
a runner whom his dash carries beyond his goal, without pausing to
grasp the meaning, he read out:
“Marescal is a blockhead!”