“What! you think I shall poison you?” he said gaily. “The English
intellect is sound, so far as it goes,” he continued, seating himself
at the table; “but it has one grave defect—it is always cautious in the
wrong place.”
He dipped his pen in the ink, placed the first slip of paper before him
with a thump of his hand on the desk, cleared his throat, and began. He
wrote with great noise and rapidity, in so large and bold a hand, and
with such wide spaces between the lines, that he reached the bottom of
the slip in not more than two minutes certainly from the time when he
started at the top. Each slip as he finished it was paged, and tossed
over his shoulder out of his way on the floor. When his first pen was
worn out, THAT went over his shoulder too, and he pounced on a second
from the supply scattered about the table. Slip after slip, by dozens,
by fifties, by hundreds, flew over his shoulders on either side of him
till he had snowed himself up in paper all round his chair. Hour after
hour passed—and there I sat watching, there he sat writing. He never
stopped, except to sip his coffee, and when that was exhausted, to
smack his forehead from time to time. One o’clock struck, two, three,
four—and still the slips flew about all round him; still the untiring
pen scraped its way ceaselessly from top to bottom of the page, still
the white chaos of paper rose higher and higher all round his chair. At
four o’clock I heard a sudden splutter of the pen, indicative of the
flourish with which he signed his name. “Bravo!” he cried, springing to
his feet with the activity of a young man, and looking me straight in
the face with a smile of superb triumph.
“Done, Mr. Hartright!” he announced with a self-renovating thump of his
fist on his broad breast. “Done, to my own profound satisfaction—to
YOUR profound astonishment, when you read what I have written.
The subject is exhausted: the man—Fosco—is not. I proceed to the
arrangement of my slips—to the revision of my slips—to the reading
of my slips—addressed emphatically to your private ear. Four o’clock
has just struck. Good! Arrangement, revision, reading, from four to
five. Short snooze of restoration for myself from five to six. Final
preparations from six to seven. Affair of agent and sealed letter from
seven to eight. At eight, en route. Behold the programme!”
He sat down cross-legged on the floor among his papers, strung them
together with a bodkin and a piece of string—revised them, wrote all
the titles and honours by which he was personally distinguished at the
head of the first page, and then read the manuscript to me with loud
theatrical emphasis and profuse theatrical gesticulation. The reader
will have an opportunity, ere long, of forming his own opinion of the
document. It will be sufficient to mention here that it answered my
purpose.
He next wrote me the address of the person from whom he had hired the
fly, and handed me Sir Percival’s letter. It was dated from Hampshire
on the 25th of July, and it announced the journey of “Lady Glyde” to
London on the 26th. Thus, on the very day (the 25th) when the doctor’s
certificate declared that she had died in St. John’s Wood, she was
alive, by Sir Percival’s own showing, at Blackwater—and, on the day
after, she was to take a journey! When the proof of that journey was
obtained from the flyman, the evidence would be complete.
“A quarter-past five,” said the Count, looking at his watch. “Time for
my restorative snooze. I personally resemble Napoleon the Great, as
you may have remarked, Mr. Hartright—I also resemble that immortal man
in my power of commanding sleep at will. Excuse me one moment. I will
summon Madame Fosco, to keep you from feeling dull.”
Knowing as well as he did, that he was summoning Madame Fosco to
ensure my not leaving the house while he was asleep, I made no reply,
and occupied myself in tying up the papers which he had placed in my
possession.
The lady came in, cool, pale, and venomous as ever. “Amuse Mr.
Hartright, my angel,” said the Count. He placed a chair for her,
kissed her hand for the second time, withdrew to a sofa, and, in three
minutes, was as peacefully and happily asleep as the most virtuous man
in existence.
Madame Fosco took a book from the table, sat down, and looked at me,
with the steady vindictive malice of a woman who never forgot and never
forgave.
“I have been listening to your conversation with my husband,” she
said. “If I had been in HIS place—I would have laid you dead on the
hearthrug.”
With those words she opened her book, and never looked at me or spoke
to me from that time till the time when her husband woke.
He opened his eyes and rose from the sofa, accurately to an hour from
the time when he had gone to sleep.
“I feel infinitely refreshed,” he remarked. “Eleanor, my good wife,
are you all ready upstairs? That is well. My little packing here
can be completed in ten minutes—my travelling-dress assumed in ten
minutes more. What remains before the agent comes?” He looked about
the room, and noticed the cage with his white mice in it. “Ah!” he
cried piteously, “a last laceration of my sympathies still remains.
My innocent pets! my little cherished children! what am I to do with
them? For the present we are settled nowhere; for the present we travel
incessantly—the less baggage we carry the better for ourselves. My
cockatoo, my canaries, and my little mice—who will cherish them when
their good Papa is gone?”
He walked about the room deep in thought. He had not been at all
troubled about writing his confession, but he was visibly perplexed and
distressed about the far more important question of the disposal of
his pets. After long consideration he suddenly sat down again at the
writing-table.
“An idea!” he exclaimed. “I will offer my canaries and my cockatoo to
this vast Metropolis—my agent shall present them in my name to the
Zoological Gardens of London. The Document that describes them shall be
drawn out on the spot.”
He began to write, repeating the words as they flowed from his pen.
“Number one. Cockatoo of transcendent plumage: attraction, of himself,
to all visitors of taste. Number two. Canaries of unrivalled vivacity
and intelligence: worthy of the garden of Eden, worthy also of the
garden in the Regent’s Park. Homage to British Zoology. Offered by
Fosco.”
The pen spluttered again, and the flourish was attached to his
signature.
“Count! you have not included the mice,” said Madame Fosco.
He left the table, took her hand, and placed it on his heart.
“All human resolution, Eleanor,” he said solemnly, “has its limits.
MY limits are inscribed on that Document. I cannot part with my white
mice. Bear with me, my angel, and remove them to their travelling cage
upstairs.”
“Admirable tenderness!” said Madame Fosco, admiring her husband, with a
last viperish look in my direction. She took up the cage carefully, and
left the room.
The Count looked at his watch. In spite of his resolute assumption of
composure, he was getting anxious for the agent’s arrival. The candles
had long since been extinguished, and the sunlight of the new morning
poured into the room. It was not till five minutes past seven that the
gate bell rang, and the agent made his appearance. He was a foreigner
with a dark beard.
“Mr. Hartright—Monsieur Rubelle,” said the Count, introducing us. He
took the agent (a foreign spy, in every line of his face, if ever there
was one yet) into a corner of the room, whispered some directions to
him, and then left us together. “Monsieur Rubelle,” as soon as we
were alone, suggested with great politeness that I should favour him
with his instructions. I wrote two lines to Pesca, authorising him to
deliver my sealed letter “to the bearer,” directed the note, and handed
it to Monsieur Rubelle.
The agent waited with me till his employer returned, equipped in
travelling costume. The Count examined the address of my letter before
he dismissed the agent. “I thought so!” he said, turning on me with a
dark look, and altering again in his manner from that moment.
He completed his packing, and then sat consulting a travelling map,
making entries in his pocket-book, and looking every now and then
impatiently at his watch. Not another word, addressed to myself, passed
his lips. The near approach of the hour for his departure, and the
proof he had seen of the communication established between Pesca and
myself, had plainly recalled his whole attention to the measures that
were necessary for securing his escape.
A little before eight o’clock, Monsieur Rubelle came back with my
unopened letter in his hand. The Count looked carefully at the
superscription and the seal, lit a candle, and burnt the letter. “I
perform my promise,” he said, “but this matter, Mr. Hartright, shall
not end here.”
The agent had kept at the door the cab in which he had returned. He and
the maid-servant now busied themselves in removing the luggage. Madame
Fosco came downstairs, thickly veiled, with the travelling cage of the
white mice in her hand. She neither spoke to me nor looked towards me.
Her husband escorted her to the cab. “Follow me as far as the passage,”
he whispered in my ear; “I may want to speak to you at the last moment.”
I went out to the door, the agent standing below me in the front
garden. The Count came back alone, and drew me a few steps inside the
passage.
“Remember the Third condition!” he whispered. “You shall hear from me,
Mr. Hartright—I may claim from you the satisfaction of a gentleman
sooner than you think for.” He caught my hand before I was aware of
him, and wrung it hard—then turned to the door, stopped, and came back
to me again.
“One word more,” he said confidentially. “When I last saw Miss
Halcombe, she looked thin and ill. I am anxious about that admirable
woman. Take care of her, sir! With my hand on my heart, I solemnly
implore you, take care of Miss Halcombe!”
Those were the last words he said to me before he squeezed his huge
body into the cab and drove off.
The agent and I waited at the door a few moments looking after him.
While we were standing together, a second cab appeared from a turning a
little way down the road. It followed the direction previously taken by
the Count’s cab, and as it passed the house and the open garden gate, a
person inside looked at us out of the window. The stranger at the Opera
again!—the foreigner with a scar on his left cheek.
“You wait here with me, sir, for half an hour more!” said Monsieur
Rubelle.
“I do.”
We returned to the sitting-room. I was in no humour to speak to the
agent, or to allow him to speak to me. I took out the papers which
the Count had placed in my hands, and read the terrible story of the
conspiracy told by the man who had planned and perpetrated it.