two or three bottles of wine."
"His father is not telling the truth."
"But the snow tells the truth, madame," said the deputy, irritably. "And
the line of his footprints wavers from side to side."
"My husband came in at half-past-eight, monsieur, before the snow had begun
to fall."
The deputy struck the table with his fist:
"But, really, madame, you're going right against the evidence!... That
sheet of snow cannot speak false!... I may accept your denial of matters
that cannot be verified. But these footprints in the snow ... in the
snow...."
He controlled himself.
The motor-car drew up outside the windows. Forming a sudden resolve, he
said to Natalie:
"You will be good enough to hold yourself at the disposal of the
authorities, madame, and to remain here, in the manor-house...."
And he made a sign to the sergeant to remove Jerome Vignal in the car.
The game was lost for the two lovers. Barely united, they had to separate
and to fight, far away from each other, against the most grievous
accusations.
Jerome took a step towards Natalie. They exchanged a long, sorrowful look.
Then he bowed to her and walked to the door, in the wake of the sergeant of
gendarmes.
"Halt!" cried a voice. "Sergeant, right about ... turn!... Jerome Vignal,
stay where you are!"
The ruffled deputy raised his head, as did the other people present. The
voice came from the ceiling. The bulls-eye window had opened and Renine,
leaning through it, was waving his arms:
"I wish to be heard!... I have several remarks to make ... especially in
respect of the zigzag footprints!... It all lies in that!... Mathias had
not been drinking!..."
He had turned round and put his two legs through the opening, saying to
Hortense, who tried to prevent him:
"Don't move.... No one will disturb you."
And, releasing his hold, he dropped into the room.
The deputy appeared dumfounded:
"But, really, monsieur, who are you? Where do you come from?"
Renine brushed the dust from his clothes and replied:
"Excuse me, Mr. Deputy. I ought to have come the same way as everybody
else. But I was in a hurry. Besides, if I had come in by the door instead
of falling from the ceiling, my words would not have made the same
impression."
The infuriated deputy advanced to meet him:
"Who are you?"
"Prince Renine. I was with the sergeant this morning when he was pursuing
his investigations, wasn't I, sergeant? Since then I have been hunting
about for information. That's why, wishing to be present at the hearing,
I found a corner in a little private room...."
"You were there? You had the audacity?..."
"One must needs be audacious, when the truth's at stake. If I had not
been there, I should not have discovered just the one little clue which I
missed. I should not have known that Mathias de Gorne was not the least bit
drunk. Now that's the key to the riddle. When we know that, we know the
solution."
The deputy found himself in a rather ridiculous position. Since he
had failed to take the necessary precautions to ensure the secrecy of
his enquiry, it was difficult for him to take any steps against this
interloper. He growled:
"Let's have done with this. What are you asking?"
"A few minutes of your kind attention."
"And with what object?"
"To establish the innocence of M. Vignal and Madame de Gorne."
He was wearing that calm air, that sort of indifferent look which was
peculiar to him in moments of actions when the crisis of the drama depended
solely upon himself. Hortense felt a thrill pass through her and at once
became full of confidence:
"They're saved," she thought, with sudden emotion. "I asked him to protect
that young creature; and he is saving her from prison and despair."
Jerome and Natalie must have experienced the same impression of sudden
hope, for they had drawn nearer to each other, as though this stranger,
descended from the clouds, had already given them the right to clasp hands.
The deputy shrugged his shoulders:
"The prosecution will have every means, when the time comes, of
establishing their innocence for itself. You will be called."
"It would be better to establish it here and now. Any delay might lead to
grievous consequences."
"I happen to be in a hurry."
"Two or three minutes will do."
"Two or three minutes to explain a case like this!"
"No longer, I assure you."
"Are you as certain of it as all that?"
"I am now. I have been thinking hard since this morning."
The deputy realized that this was one of those gentry who stick to you
like a leech and that there was nothing for it but to submit. In a rather
bantering tone, he asked:
"Does your thinking enable you to tell us the exact spot where M. Mathias
de Gorne is at this moment?"
Renine took out his watch and answered:
"In Paris, Mr. Deputy."
"In Paris? Alive then?"
"Alive and, what is more, in the pink of health."
"I am delighted to hear it. But then what's the meaning of the footprints
around the well and the presence of that revolver and those three shots?"
"Simply camouflage."
"Oh, really? Camouflage contrived by whom?"
"By Mathias de Gorne himself."
"That's curious! And with what object?"
"With the object of passing himself off for dead and of arranging
subsequent matters in such a way that M. Vignal was bound to be accused of
the death, the murder."
"An ingenious theory," the deputy agreed, still in a satirical tone. "What
do you think of it, M. Vignal?"
"It is a theory which flashed through my own mind. Mr. Deputy," replied
Jerome. "It is quite likely that, after our struggle and after I had gone,
Mathias de Gorne conceived a new plan by which, this time, his hatred would
be fully gratified. He both loved and detested his wife. He held me in the
greatest loathing. This must be his revenge."
"His revenge would cost him dear, considering that, according to your
statement, Mathias de Gorne was to receive a second sum of sixty thousand
francs from you."
"He would receive that sum in another quarter, Mr. Deputy. My examination
of the financial position of the de Gorne family revealed to me the fact
that the father and son had taken out a life-insurance policy in each
other's favour. With the son dead, or passing for dead, the father would
receive the insurance-money and indemnify his son."
"You mean to say," asked the deputy, with a smile, "that in all this
camouflage, as you call it, M. de Gorne the elder would act as his son's
accomplice?"
Renine took up the challenge:
"Just so, Mr. Deputy. The father and son are accomplices.
"Then we shall find the son at the father's?"
"You would have found him there last night."
"What became of him?"
"He took the train at Pompignat."
"That's a mere supposition."
"No, a certainty."
"A moral certainty, perhaps, but you'll admit there's not the slightest
proof."
The deputy did not wait for a reply. He considered that he had displayed an
excessive goodwill and that patience has its limits and he put an end to
the interview:
"Not the slightest proof," he repeated, taking up his hat. "And, above
all, ... above all, there's nothing in what you've said that can contradict
in the very least the evidence of that relentless witness, the snow. To go
to his father, Mathias de Gorne must have left this house. Which way did he
go?"
"Hang it all, M. Vignal told you: by the road which leads from here to his
father's!"
"There are no tracks in the snow."
"Yes, there are."
"But they show him coming here and not going away from here."
"It's the same thing."
"What?"
"Of course it is. There's more than one way of walking. One doesn't always
go ahead by following one's nose."
"In what other way can one go ahead?"
"By walking backwards, Mr. Deputy."
These few words, spoken very simply, but in a clear tone which gave full
value to every syllable, produced a profound silence. Those present at
once grasped their extreme significance and, by adapting it to the actual
happenings, perceived in a flash the impenetrable truth, which suddenly
appeared to be the most natural thing in the world.
Renine continued his argument. Stepping backwards in the direction of the
window, he said:
"If I want to get to that window, I can of course walk straight up to it;
but I can just as easily turn my back to it and walk that way. In either
case I reach my goal."
And he at once proceeded in a vigorous tone:
"Here's the gist of it all. At half-past eight, before the snow fell, M. de
Gorne comes home from his father's house. M. Vignal arrives twenty minutes
later. There is a long discussion and a struggle, taking up three hours in
all. It is then, after M. Vignal has carried off Madame de Gorne and made
his escape, that Mathias de Gorne, foaming at the mouth, wild with rage,
but suddenly seeing his chance of taking the most terrible revenge, hits
upon the ingenious idea of using against his enemy the very snowfall upon
whose evidence you are now relying. He therefore plans his own murder, or
rather the appearance of his murder and of his fall to the bottom of the
well and makes off backwards, step by step, thus recording his arrival
instead of his departure on the white page."
The deputy sneered no longer. This eccentric intruder suddenly appeared to
him in the light of a person worthy of attention, whom it would not do to
make fun of. He asked:
"And how could he have left his father's house?"
"In a trap, quite simply."
"Who drove it?"
"The father. This morning the sergeant and I saw the trap and spoke to the
father, who was going to market as usual. The son was hidden under the
tilt. He took the train at Pompignat and is in Paris by now."
Renine's explanation, as promised, had taken hardly five minutes. He had
based it solely on logic and the probabilities of the case. And yet not a
jot was left of the distressing mystery in which they were floundering. The
darkness was dispelled. The whole truth appeared.
Madame de Gorne wept for joy and Jerome Vignal thanked the good genius who
was changing the course of events with a stroke of his magic wand.
"Shall we examine those footprints together, Mr. Deputy?" asked Renine. "Do
you mind? The mistake which the sergeant and I made this morning was to
investigate only the footprints left by the alleged murderer and to neglect
Mathias de Gorne's. Why indeed should they have attracted our attention?
Yet it was precisely there that the crux of the whole affair was to be
found."
They stepped into the orchard and went to the well. It did not need a
long examination to observe that many of the footprints were awkward,
hesitating, too deeply sunk at the heel and toe and differing from one
another in the angle at which the feet were turned.
"This clumsiness was unavoidable," said Renine. "Mathias de Gorne would
have needed a regular apprenticeship before his backward progress could
have equalled his ordinary gait; and both his father and he must have been
aware of this, at least as regards the zigzags which you see here since old
de Gorne went out of his way to tell the sergeant that his son had had too
much drink." And he added "Indeed it was the detection of this falsehood
that suddenly enlightened me. When Madame de Gorne stated that her husband
was not drunk, I thought of the footprints and guessed the truth."
The deputy frankly accepted his part in the matter and began to laugh:
"There's nothing left for it but to send detectives after the bogus
corpse."
"On what grounds, Mr. Deputy?" asked Renine. "Mathias de Gorne has
committed no offence against the law. There's nothing criminal in trampling
the soil around a well, in shifting the position of a revolver that doesn't
belong to you, in firing three shots or in walking backwards to one's
father's house. What can we ask of him? The sixty thousand francs? I
presume that this is not M. Vignal's intention and that he does not mean to
bring a charge against him?"
"Certainly not," said Jerome.
"Well, what then? The insurance-policy in favour of the survivor? But there
would be no misdemeanour unless the father claimed payment. And I should be
greatly surprised if he did.... Hullo, here the old chap is! You'll soon
know all about it."
Old de Gorne was coming along, gesticulating as he walked. His easy-going
features were screwed up to express sorrow and anger.
"Where's my son?" he cried. "It seems the brute's killed him!... My poor
Mathias dead! Oh, that scoundrel of a Vignal!"
And he shook his fist at Jerome.
The deputy said, bluntly:
"A word with you, M. de Gorne. Do you intend to claim your rights under a
certain insurance-policy?"
"Well, what do _you_ think?" said the old man, off his guard.
"The fact is ... your son's not dead. People are even saying that you were
a partner in his little schemes and that you stuffed him under the tilt of
your trap and drove him to the station."
The old fellow spat on the ground, stretched out his hand as though he
were going to take a solemn oath, stood for an instant without moving and
then, suddenly, changing his mind and his tactics with ingenuous cynicism,
he relaxed his features, assumed a conciliatory attitude and burst out
laughing:
"That blackguard Mathias! So he tried to pass himself off as dead? What a
rascal! And he reckoned on me to collect the insurance-money and send it
to him? As if I should be capable of such a low, dirty trick!... You don't
know me, my boy!"
And, without waiting for more, shaking with merriment like a jolly old
fellow amused by a funny story, he took his departure, not forgetting,
however, to set his great hob-nail boots on each of the compromising
footprints which his son had left behind him.
* * * * *
Later, when Renine went back to the manor to let Hortense out, he found
that she had disappeared.
He called and asked for her at her cousin Ermelin's. Hortense sent down
word asking him to excuse her: she was feeling a little tired and was lying
down.
"Capital!" thought Renine. "Capital! She avoids me, therefore she loves me.
The end is not far off."
VIII
AT THE SIGN OF MERCURY
_To Madame Daniel,
La Ronciere,
near Bassicourt._
"PARIS 30 NOVEMBER
"My Dearest Friend,--
"There has been no letter from you for a fortnight; so I don't expect now
to receive one for that troublesome date of the 5th of December, which we
fixed as the last day of our partnership. I rather wish it would come,
because you will then be released from a contract which no longer seems to
give you pleasure. To me the seven battles which we fought and won together
were a time of endless delight and enthusiasm. I was living beside you. I
was conscious of all the good which that more active and stirring existence
was doing you. My happiness was so great that I dared not speak of it to
you or let you see anything of my secret feelings except my desire to
please you and my passionate devotion. To-day you have had enough of your
brother in arms. Your will shall be law.
"But, though I bow to your decree, may I remind you what it was that I
always believed our final adventure would be? May I repeat your words, not
one of which I have forgotten?
"'I demand,' you said, 'that you shall restore to me a small, antique
clasp, made of a cornelian set in a filigree mount. It came to me from my
mother; and every one knew that it used to bring her happiness and me too.
Since the day when it vanished from my jewel-case, I have had nothing but
unhappiness. Restore it to me, my good genius.'
"And, when I asked you when the clasp had disappeared, you answered, with a
laugh:
"'Seven years ago ... or eight ... or nine: I don't know exactly.... I
don't know when ... I don't know how ... I know nothing about it....'
"You were challenging me, were you not, and you set me that condition
because it was one which I could not fulfil? Nevertheless, I promised and I
should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place
life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your
confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a
value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the
mainspring of our best actions.
"Dear friend, if you had helped me, I should have achieved yet one more
victory. Alone and hard pushed by the proximity of the date, I have failed,
not however without placing things on such a footing that the undertaking
if you care to follow it up, has the greatest chance of success.
"And you will follow it up, won't you? We have entered into a mutual
agreement which we are bound to honour. It behooves us, within a fixed
time, to inscribe in the book of our common life eight good stories, to
which we shall have brought energy, logic, perseverance, some subtlety and
occasionally a little heroism. This is the eighth of them. It is for you to
act so that it may be written in its proper place on the 5th of December,
before the clock strikes eight in the evening.
"And, on that day, you will act as I shall now tell you.
"First of all--and above all, my dear, do not complain that my instructions
are fanciful: each of them is an indispensable condition of success--first
of all, cut in your cousin's garden three slender lengths of rush. Plait
them together and bind up the two ends so as to make a rude switch, like a
child's whip-lash.
"When you get to Paris, buy a long necklace of jet beads, cut into facets,
and shorten it so that it consists of seventy-five beads, of almost equal
size.
"Under your winter cloak, wear a blue woollen gown. On your head, a toque
with red leaves on it. Round your neck, a feather boa. No gloves. No rings.
"In the afternoon, take a cab along the left bank of the river to the
church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. At four o'clock exactly, there will be,
near the holy-water basin, just inside the church, an old woman dressed
in black, saying her prayers on a silver rosary. She will offer you holy
water. Give her your necklace. She will count the beads and hand it back
to you. After this, you will walk behind her, you will cross an arm of the
Seine and she will lead you, down a lonely street in the Ile Saint-Louis,
to a house which you will enter by yourself.
"On the ground-floor of this house, you will find a youngish man with a
very pasty complexion. Take off your cloak and then say to him:
"'I have come to fetch my clasp.'
"Do not be astonished by his agitation or dismay. Keep calm in his
presence. If he questions you, if he wants to know your reason for applying
to him or what impels you to make that request, give him no explanation.
Your replies must be confined to these brief formulas:
"'I have come to fetch what belongs to me. I don't know you, I don't know
your name; but I am obliged to come to you like this. I must have my clasp
returned to me. I must.'
"I honestly believe that, if you have the firmness not to swerve from
that attitude, whatever farce the man may play, you will be completely
successful. But the contest must be a short one and the issue will depend
solely on your confidence in yourself and your certainty of success. It
will be a sort of match in which you must defeat your opponent in the first
round. If you remain impassive, you will win. If you show hesitation or
uneasiness, you can do nothing against him. He will escape you and regain
the upper hand after a first moment of distress; and the game will be lost
in a few minutes. There is no midway house between victory or ... defeat.
"In the latter event, you would be obliged--I beg you to pardon me for
saying so--again to accept my collaboration. I offer it you in advance, my
dear, and without any conditions, while stating quite plainly that all that
I have been able to do for you and all that I may yet do gives me no other
right than that of thanking you and devoting myself more than ever to the
woman who represents my joy, my whole life."
* * * * *
Hortense, after reading the letter, folded it up and put it away at the
back of a drawer, saying, in a resolute voice:
"I sha'n't go."
To begin with, although she had formerly attached some slight importance
to this trinket, which she had regarded as a mascot, she felt very little
interest in it now that the period of her trials was apparently at an end.
She could not forget that figure eight, which was the serial number of the
next adventure. To launch herself upon it meant taking up the interrupted
chain, going back to Renine and giving him a pledge which, with his powers
of suggestion, he would know how to turn to account.
Two days before the 5th of December, she was still in the same frame of
mind. So she was on the morning of the 4th; but suddenly, without even
having to contend against preliminary subterfuges, she ran out into the
garden, cut three lengths of rush, plaited them as she used to do in her
childhood and at twelve o'clock had herself driven to the station. She was
uplifted by an eager curiosity. She was unable to resist all the amusing
and novel sensations which the adventure, proposed by Renine, promised her.
It was really too tempting. The jet necklace, the toque with the autumn
leaves, the old woman with the silver rosary: how could she resist their
mysterious appeal and how could she refuse this opportunity of showing
Renine what she was capable of doing?
"And then, after all," she said to herself, laughing, "he's summoning me to
Paris. Now eight o'clock is dangerous to me at a spot three hundred miles
from Paris, in that old deserted Chateau de Halingre, but nowhere else. The
only clock that can strike the threatening hour is down there, under lock
and key, a prisoner!"
She reached Paris that evening. On the morning of the 5th she went out and
bought a jet necklace, which she reduced to seventy-five beads, put on
a blue gown and a toque with red leaves and, at four o'clock precisely,
entered the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.
Her heart was throbbing violently. This time she was alone; and how acutely
she now felt the strength of that support which, from unreflecting fear
rather than any reasonable motive, she had thrust aside! She looked around
her, almost hoping to see him. But there was no one there ... no one except
an old lady in black, standing beside the holy water basin.
Hortense went up to her. The old lady, who held a silver rosary in her
hands, offered her holy water and then began to count the beads of the
necklace which Hortense gave her.
She whispered:
"Seventy-five. That's right. Come."
Without another word, she toddled along under the light of the
street-lamps, crossed the Pont des Tournelles to the Ile Saint-Louis and
went down an empty street leading to a cross-roads, where she stopped in
front of an old house with wrought-iron balconies:
"Go in," she said.
And the old lady went away.
* * * * *
Hortense now saw a prosperous-looking shop which occupied almost the
whole of the ground-floor and whose windows, blazing with electric light,
displayed a huddled array of old furniture and antiquities. She stood there
for a few seconds, gazing at it absently. A sign-board bore the words "The
Mercury," together with the name of the owner of the shop, "Pancaldi."
Higher up, on a projecting cornice which ran on a level with the first
floor, a small niche sheltered a terra-cotta Mercury poised on one foot,
with wings to his sandals and the caduceus in his hand, who, as Hortense
noted, was leaning a little too far forward in the ardour of his flight
and ought logically to have lost his balance and taken a header into the
street.
"Now!" she said, under her breath.
She turned the handle of the door and walked in.
Despite the ringing of the bells actuated by the opening door, no one came
to meet her. The shop seemed to be empty. However, at the extreme end there
was a room at the back of the shop and after that another, both crammed
with furniture and knick-knacks, many of which looked very valuable.
Hortense followed a narrow gangway which twisted and turned between two
walls built up of cupboards, cabinets and console-tables, went up two steps
and found herself in the last room of all.
A man was sitting at a writing-desk and looking through some account-books.
Without turning his head, he said:
"I am at your service, madam.... Please look round you...."
This room contained nothing but articles of a special character which
gave it the appearance of some alchemist's laboratory in the middle ages:
stuffed owls, skeletons, skulls, copper alembics, astrolabes and all
around, hanging on the walls, amulets of every description, mainly hands
of ivory or coral with two fingers pointing to ward off ill-luck.