IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE
“You appear to me, my dear fellow, to be enjoying yourself just like
the fashionable folk, and you are the most ungrateful chap on earth to
go on talking about ‘the cruelty of Fate’ and ‘the stings of Fortune’
and a heap of other unpleasant things. After all said and done, what
is your present outlook? It is the month of May, surely, it is ten in
the evening, the scene is as pretty as a picture, the night warm and
fragrant, in one word it is the hour when the restaurants in the Bois
are crammed with gay customers, the hour when it is exquisite to sup
beneath the budding foliage, to roam the deserted walks, to saunter in
this magnificent Bois de Boulogne, a park such as no other capital in
the world possesses. Now, what have you been doing? what are you going
to do? Halloa, my friend, I feel something in your pocket, hard and
crumbly at the same time, that gives me all the impression of a crust
of bread. So you’ve been dining in the Bois, my lad! And now what do
you propose to do? Walk round the lake? Evidently you’ve forgotten
your carriage and you’re going on foot; evidently again there’s every
chance that, an hour from now, it won’t be a little, stuffy hotel you
go back to, but the vast _caravansérail_ that is lit by the stars
of heaven. Still, you’re beginning your evening the same as the
fashionables—dinner, promenade! And what’s to stop you dreaming, like
any other innocent, that you are destined to-night to wed the fairest
princess in all the world.”
The person holding this discourse, so full of a philosophic optimism,
was no other than Jérôme Fandor. The journalist was talking to himself,
having indeed nobody near him to whom he could address his moralizings.
As he had observed, it was about ten o’clock; it was a superb night,
and taking everything together, the young man would not have been
greatly to be pitied for finding himself in the Bois de Boulogne and
about to take an agreeable stroll, if, as again he had remarked, the
walk in question had not been bound to end in his passing this night
in true vagabond style in some thicket or other of the park, at the
imminent risk of being taken up by the police, who are invariably very
strict with poor devils guilty of the heinous crime of not being rich
and sleeping out of doors!
As a matter of fact, the journalist’s condition showed no improvement.
Since his interview with Tom Bob, he had had no occasion to renew
acquaintance with the American detective, who, as the object of a
hundred flattering attentions on the part of the Parisian population,
seemed to him, all things considered, a decidedly dangerous personage
to see much of, in view of the close relations maintained between him
and the authorities. Fandor was now making a living by all sorts of
queer odd jobs—risking his life opening carriage doors on the occasion
of grand weddings at fashionable churches, of selling evening papers on
the boulevards, picking up a few sous by casual labour at the Halles,
just enough to keep body and soul together. Nevertheless, he would not
have been over and above disquieted by his precarious situation but for
the fact that public opinion had little by little come round to the
preposterous belief that he, Fandor, was, if not Fantômas, at any rate
one of the chief accomplices of that dangerous criminal, now a prisoner
in the _Santé_. This easy, blockhead theory the whole police force had
adopted, and every journal was proclaiming.
At a time when Fantômas, with unheard-of effrontery, was committing
crime after crime, when the most appalling murders had grown so common
that the public, seriously alarmed, were asking themselves if it was
not best to pay Fantômas the tithes he claimed, at such a time Fandor
told himself that the view which represented him as the guilty party
had every chance of finding favour, just because it possessed the merit
of being simple to the last degree!
“Once let them catch me,” he thought, “and it’ll be short shrift and no
mercy for me!”
Accordingly, every night, while waiting events and looking confidently
for the result of Tom Bob’s inquiries, Fandor would betake himself to
the Bois, and there spend the night, if not in comfort, at any rate,
so at least he hoped, safe from the perquisitions of the Criminal
Investigation officers.
But what precisely was Tom Bob doing? On what lines was he pursuing
his investigations against Fantômas? As to this, Fandor was very much
in the dark. Like the general public, he had read in the newspapers
of the sensational discovery of the bank collector’s body which the
American detective had succeeded in making in Elisabeth Dollon’s flat.
Fandor, like everybody else, more perhaps than most, for he knew
the difficulties that beset police researches, had felt a profound
admiration for the astuteness the American had given proof of on that
occasion.
“No doubt,” Fandor said to himself, “I put him on the scent when I told
him about Moche, but all said and done, I had no information to give
him of a sort to lead him to the discovery of the victim. The line of
reasoning that took him to Elisabeth’s, that brought about the finding
of the ‘wall that bleeds,’ after rousing his suspicions of Paulet, this
reasoning was purely his own and it is marvellous in all respects.”
He had even added in his self-communings:
“If my fine fellow goes on as he has begun, I verily believe Fantômas
will have found his match!”
It was the sole gleam of hope still left to Jérôme Fandor.
* * * * *
“Ho there! my man.”
“M’sieu?”
“What d’ye mean, strolling about like that? You’re a gentleman of
means, eh?”
“No, m’sieu, I’m strolling because ...”
“Right oh! D’ye care to earn six sous an hour? you know how to hold a
shovel?”
“Yes, m’sieu; yes, I’m willing.”
“Come with me then!”
The man who had hailed Fandor, as the journalist was finishing his
circuit of the lake and had now reached the Racing Club enclosure,
was evidently a roadman of the city of Paris. He wore the flat,
silver-laced cap of the roads department, he had the heavy gait of an
employé in that service, and the same good-natured look:
“If I take you on,” he explained, leading Fandor towards the further
end of the lake, near the Rond Royal, “it’s along of a pressing job,
for to-morrow’s fête. I want hands.”
“There’s a fête to-morrow?” Fandor asked.
“And a smart one, I can tell you, my lad! a fête on the lake in honour
of I don’t know what good Dutch folks, who are paying an official
visit to Paris. Seems they’re going to take ’em on the water. It’s the
municipality gives the show. Now I got my notice only just in time; so
I’ve not been able to get my men together, and I’m glad enough to find
outsiders like you to give a hand.”
“What is it you want done?” queried Fandor, delighted at the
opportunity that offered of earning a few sous.
“You’ll soon see,” the other replied with a shrug. “It’s not difficult
and it’s not fatiguing. At this end of the road coming from the
Pré Catalan—you know, the road that joins the one round the lake
yonder—we’re removing the wire fencing that divides the avenue from the
grass lawns that border the lake all round. We’re taking up the curb of
the roadway, too. The turf’s to be dug up and laid down again at the
sides; in fact, we’re making a road, so to say, going straight down to
the water’s edge, so as the grandees may get out of their carriages
at the very same spot where they’re to get into the boats. You see,
don’t you, we couldn’t begin the works yesterday evening, nor yet this
morning, nor even this afternoon, because that would block the regular
road.”
What cared Jérôme Fandor for these details? He followed the head
roadman and soon reached the roadway that was to be carried on right up
to the very edge of the lake. There, by the light of acetylene lamps
fixed on tall standards, a whole crew of labourers was busily engaged.
“Stand to!” shouted the ganger, “I’m bringing you a new chum, find him
some easy work.” A second ganger came running up, and looked Fandor up
and down, then:
“You’re not a roadman? no? You don’t understand gardening, neither? so
much the worse! I am going to use you for digging up the road then.
Come this way.” He led Fandor to the middle of the causeway that goes
round the lake.
“Look here,” he explained, “so’s to lengthen out the roadway, we
take up the turf of the lawn, using a spade—very carefully so’s not
to spoil it. We’re going to sand over and beat flat and so make a
bit of road down to the lake; but as the carriages will arrive from
the Pré Catalan, where tea’s to be served at five o’clock, it’s not
worth while, you see, to leave the road that circles the lake still
practicable. Accordingly, we take the turf lifted from over there and
lay it down all across the lake road. As the sods are lifted carefully
one by one, it’s only a question of laying ’em one beside the other,
a drop of water and the grass’ll look quite green. That’ll give the
impression, not that a new way has been specially opened down to the
lake, but rather that the regular road from the Pré Catalan continues
straight on to the water’s edge, passing through a grass-plot, the
ordinary grass-plot, the one we are now after extending.”
Fandor nodded his comprehension and waiting till the other had
finished, asked:
“Then _my_ job is to pick up the sods and lay ’em down side by side
across the road round the lake? so as to extend the grass lawn?”
“That’s the ticket, my lad! and try to work lively, won’t you?”
Fandor had been at work ten minutes when another man, an engineer most
likely, appeared from behind a clump of trees; he was elegantly, yet
quietly dressed. Hailing one of the gangers:
“You’ve got men enough now?” he asked.
The other looked doubtful: “H’m; it’s a near thing, especially as we’ve
got to be finished by midnight! I’ve had to enlist casual labour—chaps
that were getting ready for a night under the trees. There’s nothing
wrong about that, I suppose?”
“Let me have a look at them!”
A second or two later the ganger who had enlisted Fandor came up to
the journalist, who was working away very hard and conscientiously,
all alone, away from the other roadmen. He stared at him for a minute
without a word.
“You don’t know how to work, my man,” he said at last, “it’s not worth
twopence, what you’re doing!”
“But, sir,” protested Fandor, very much surprised; “I’m doing my best.”
“Well, then, your best’s not good enough; you’re not getting on!” Then,
as if coming to a sudden decision:
“No, you’re no good at all and now the chief has been jawing me for
taking on outsiders. Here, here’s forty sous; clear out!”
There was nothing to be said; moreover, the instant he had fingered his
forty sous, a fortune in his present plight, Fandor lost all interest
in the work on hand, good, bad or indifferent.
“Right you are, sir!” was all he said, “I’m off; many thanks all the
same”—and slipping the two franc piece in his pocket, he walked away,
pursued by the foreman’s scrutinizing and suspicious gaze.
Scarcely had he disappeared before the engineer—it was evidently he
who had ordered his dismissal—again appeared from among the shadows.
He advanced to the shore of the lake, nodding familiarly to the men
working there, and on reaching the water’s edge, gave a shrill, short,
sharp whistle, then stood quite still, waiting. The night was dark,
without moon or stars. In a few seconds after he had blown his whistle,
there showed up on the dark waters of the lake a shadowy, fantastic
shape. It was indistinctly seen at first, but it approached so rapidly
that very soon it became easy to make out what it was—a boat of rubber,
a collapsible boat such as explorers use. A man was on board, rowing
silently and soundlessly. Soon the figure grew plainer and its outline
could be vaguely discerned, the boat was entering the zone illuminated
by the acetylene flares.
Then the mysterious rower rose to his feet. What would Fandor’s
feelings have been, had he been there to see? The man who stood in
this mysterious craft, who was approaching this scene of impromptu
road-making, issuing from the impenetrable shadows of the lake, was
clad from head to foot in a suit of black-close-fitting tights. His
shoulders were draped in a dark cloak, the face was invisible behind a
cowl, a black mask!
A figure of horror, a very incarnation of crime, a form of terror
without a name! It was the form of Fantômas, come in the night to
inspect the work of the roadmen engaged in preparations for to-morrow’s
fête!
* * * * *
The hour was divine, the scene fascinating in its charm and seduction,
at once sumptuous and refined. Nor was the setting less delightful,
this elegant restaurant, this favourite haunt of fashion, where the
invited guests one and all belonged to the wealthy aristocracy of
Paris; supper was drawing to an end, the talk grew more brilliant
than ever, the music was ravishing, the women lovely, the perfumes
intoxicating, the flowers a feast for the eyes! No less than everything
else the mysterious hues of the foliage, a weird tint of blue painted
by the gleam of the electric lights, contributed to lend this corner of
the Bois a look of unreality, a fairylike aspect like some fantastic
scene on the stage, charming, delicious, entrancing!
This evening the place was even more brilliantly lighted than usual.
The papers had made much of the coming festivity; in celebration of a
treaty of Commerce signed the previous week, the English Ambassador
was paying this compliment to his colleague the Ambassador of Russia.
Dinner was served at separate little tables. It was past midnight, the
meal was almost over and conversation was more animated than ever.
Apart from the other guests, at a table set at a distance from
the others, sat dining quite alone a very beautiful woman, of an
irreproachable elegance and one who, better still than Sonia Danidoff,
could claim the rank of Royal Highness. The waiters named her to
each other with baited breath: “Her Highness the Grand Duchess
Alexandra.” It was in fact the haughty great lady, friend of Frederick
Christian IV, King of Hesse-Weimar, the proud lady whom Juve and
Fandor, and they alone, knew to be in reality the enigmatic Lady
Beltham, the mistress of Fantômas!
And truly, if some observer had chosen to watch the pretty woman in
question, he would have shuddered to note with what a look, at once
tragic and distraught, full of hate and violent animosity, she gazed
at her gay and laughing neighbours, the guests of the Ambassadors of
England and of Russia. It would seem indeed that the grand duchess had
some secret motive for wishing to remain unseen by these members of
Parisian society. Not content with choosing a remote table enveloped in
deep shadow, she had likewise extinguished the little electric table
lamp in front of her; the light thrown by the surrounding lamps was
sufficient for her to see by. All through her meal the grand duchess
sat pale and mute, barely answering the _maître d’hôtel_ who hovered
near, eager to supply her wants, her eyes fixed on the other diners,
from whose tables came burst after burst of merry laughter.
Already the grand duchess was thinking of taking her departure when of
a sudden, as if drawn by some surprising vision, she half sprang up,
then with a quick recoil threw herself back into the shadows, as though
terrified and yet more anxious than before to shun observation. Bowing
low in courteous greeting to one and another acquaintance, a man of
slim, well-knit figure and elegant bearing had joined the circle formed
by the official guests. His name passed from lip to lip, and he was
welcomed with a chorus of friendly and admiring exclamations, sometimes
marked by just a touch of raillery:
“Tom Bob! why how late you are. What, have you been hunting till this
hour of the night for your strange enemy, the ever evasive Fantômas?”
But while the sound of that dreaded name still broke the stillness of
the summer evening, while the Grand Duchess Alexandra, Lady Beltham in
reality, still shuddered to hear her lover’s name pronounced, gaiety
quickly resumed its sway among the other guests.
“My dear,” remarked a tall young woman, a trifle eccentric in
appearance and manner, a Russian who, report said, had been involved in
a highly diverting scandal, “My dear, you are sad?” But the Princess
Sonia Danidoff, to whom the words were spoken, shook her head with a
smile:
“No, you are mistaken; I am not sad, but I am thinking.”
“Thinking of what?”
At the little table where the two pretty women were conversing, there
sat, among several _attachés_ of the Embassies, the wealthy young
Englishman, Mr. Ascott, who now followed up the question addressed to
the beautiful princess.
“Princess,” he said, “we cannot long allow you to remain so
self-absorbed, so serious, on so lovely a night as this and at so
delightful a fête.”
A smile of raillery curled Sonia Danidoff’s lips; with a touch of
impatience, a suspicion of mockery, she replied:
“So, sir, if you can prevent my being sad, for it appears I _am_ sad,
I gladly give you my permission to try. But I am very much afraid you
will find it difficult to make me merry.”
“That depends,” returned the Englishman; “tell us, if it may be, the
wish you have in your mind. All here, I make bold to say, are gallant
gentlemen. At the risk of attempting the impossible, we will use every
effort to give it satisfaction. I even notice by the smile on my friend
Tom Bob’s face, and you know a police-officer rarely smiles, he admits
that to please you nothing is impossible. It is a guarantee that, if we
fail in our desire to banish your depression, it will be no fault of
ours.”
The Princess Danidoff was opening her lips to reply when her friend
stopped her.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “I think Sonia will forgive me for my
indiscretion, if I betray the secret of her melancholy; Sonia Danidoff,
kinswoman of the Tsar, enormously rich, pretty enough to make all the
women on this earth jealous, Sonia Danidoff, good sirs, is preoccupied
simply and solely because she is ... bored! Nay, do not protest; it
is not that your society has displeased her! But Sonia, I know, finds
life flat, stale and unprofitable; Sonia dreams of a great passion, of
romantic love, such love as is hardly to be found in our times, such
as she has hardly a chance of inspiring. And so Sonia is profoundly
homesick. Now you are fairly warned!” With a wave of her slim, white
hand: “Never believe that scatterbrain,” the princess protested; “I am
not so ... romantic.”
A burst of laughter had greeted the statements of the young Russian;
now all were listening to a charming, an exquisite Neapolitan boat-song.
But Tom Bob’s attention was not with the music. Quitting his seat—it
was nearly two in the morning and the men were trifling with Egyptian
cigarettes—he had come to lean over the back of the fair princess’s
chair.
“Princess,” he was saying, “why do you refuse to seek a love a little
more original, which means a little more real, than that commonly met
with? _I_ do not think that so absurd a quest.”
In an instant those wondrous eyes of the Princess Sonia Danidoff’s lit
up, shining with a deep, soft radiance. She half turned round to look
at the speaker, that amazing Tom Bob whose doughty deeds filled the
Press, that wily detective, that hero.
“Sir,” she made answer, “you speak strangely. So you believe in love?”
“I do, madam,” replied the American, “and the more profoundly, and it
may be the more sadly, as this very evening I have been a witness of
the birth of two sentiments, one a half indifferent attraction, the
other a genuine passion.”
“What reason for sadness in that, sir?”
“Every reason, for I am much afraid that these two sentiments will end
in sadness and disillusionment.”
For a moment the princess sat silent, puzzled, hesitating. At last she
spoke with an affectation of haughtiness such as every woman knows how
to assume:
“I do not understand you very well, sir. You speak in riddles. I am
a Russian, you an American. I beg you use some other dialect than
Parisian ‘blague’; be more explicit.”
With a quick glance, Tom Bob made sure there was no listener to pay
heed to his talk with the fascinating princess. The Neapolitan singers
had been succeeded by a bevy of quaint step-dancers, whom all the
company was attentively watching.
Reassured on this point, Tom Bob, intoxicated perhaps by the beauty of
the night, perhaps crazed by Sonia Danidoff’s loveliness, charmed no
doubt by the sympathy she had never ceased to lavish on him throughout
this after-dinner talk, resolved to burn his boats:
“You do not understand, madam,” he resumed, “you surprise me! I imagine
you have not failed to notice the marked attentions, to say no more,
paid you by our common friend, M. Ascott? Oh! never deny it, madam!
To-night, as indeed he does habitually, M. Ascott has made the most
determined efforts to win your favour.”
There was almost a touch of mockery in the words, and Sonia Danidoff
was too quick-witted not to catch the other’s drift.
“It would seem,” she said, “these efforts do not strike you, sir,
as having been crowned with success! you think my conquest is not an
accomplished fact yet?”
“I do not think, madam ... _I hope_.”
And with these two little words which meant so much, which were
equivalent to the most formal of declarations, Tom Bob, like a
well-advised suitor, aware that a man must never demand an answer but
always wait till it is offered, made his bow to the princess and walked
away.
“I am going to call your carriage,” he said.
The company was, in fact, rising from table; it was growing very chilly
and the time was come to think of quitting the Bois for the city.
Everywhere the guests were exchanging farewells, then the women of
fashion, escorted by their _cavaliere servente_, made for their elegant
broughams or sumptuous automobiles. All were leaving, and leaving all
at the same time, to return together as far as the barrier of the Porte
Dauphine, when the final adieux would be exchanged.
All together? No, not so. There was one fair lady, at any rate, who
did not intend to make one of the merry crowd. Indeed, the Grand
Duchess Alexandra showed not the slightest desire to quit the table at
which she had sat from the very beginning of the evening, isolated,
sullen almost! She had never ceased her watch of the official guests,
and above all had not failed to mark the flattering attentions and
manifestations of sympathy lavished everywhere on Tom Bob. Now her eyes
were fixed askance on the Princess Sonia Danidoff, the acknowledged
queen of the festivity, as she took the arm the detective offered. The
white teeth of the Grand Duchess Alexandra were nervously biting her
lip. The noble lady was doubtless thinking with acute agitation how she
was the mistress of Fantômas and that this hero of the hour was the
very same man who had sworn to bring her lover to the scaffold!
But it was high time to be gone, and the grand duchess summoned her
_chasseur_.
“Call up my car,” she ordered, “but tell my chauffeur he is carefully
to avoid returning with the rest of the company; he is to drive by the
less frequented roads. I do not care to be compelled to greet all these
folks, who, luckily, have so far neither seen nor recognized me.”
The menial bowed and went his way, but he was back again next minute.
“Your Highness’s chauffeur,” he said, “has to inform your Highness that
an accident has happened to the car; he is busy repairing the damage,
but it will take a good half-hour. Your Highness does not wish me to go
for a hired carriage?”
The Grand Duchess Alexandra, or rather Lady Beltham, seemed to hesitate
a few moments. She cast a dark and venomous look of suddenly awakened
anger in the direction of the last lingering guests mounting their
vehicles, then quickly:
“No, I am in no hurry. Tell the chauffeur to do the repairs, and come
and tell me when all’s ready”—and the footman vanished once more.
* * * * *
“You are infinitely obliging, madam, to offer to drive me back to
Paris. Instead of sitting sad and solitary in a hired conveyance, it is
no small happiness for me to journey a few minutes in your company and
enjoy, with no unbearable third party present, the favour you are so
amiable as to show me.”
In fact, as Sonia Danidoff was on the way to her limousine, hanging on
Tom Bob’s arm, the princess had observed that the latter, having no
conveyance of his own, would be obliged to get back to Paris alone as
best he might, and there and then she had made the offer: “Come, won’t
you get into my car? You can drive with me to the house, then they’ll
set you down at your destination.”
Tom Bob, needless to say, jumped at the offer, delighted to seize the
opportunity of so charming a _tête à tête_. And soon the princess and
he were talking amicably together, while their car sped through the
deserted Bois along the road, lit up for a dozen yards ahead by the
glare of the acetylene lamps on the bonnet. They talked, let it be
said, of indifferent subjects, the American carefully avoiding any
reference, however casual, to the declaration of love he had ventured
to make a moment before, and Sonia feigning not to have understood his
meaning.
“You have a wonderfully fine car, madam,” observed Tom Bob, as the
princess’s chauffeur, making a clever turn and taking advantage of the
exceptional speed of the car, took the head of the procession formed
by the different cars. “We shall be there in a few seconds; I shall be
sorry for that, madam.”
“You ...”
But at the very instant Sonia Danidoff was in act to reply, a cry of
horror and anguished fear escaped her lips, while for his part, Tom Bob
could hardly restrain a startled oath.
What had happened? Impossible for the occupants of the cars to perceive
in the bewilderment of the moment! What blunder had the chauffeur made
to provoke the accident? Suddenly, without any diminution of speed,
without even any application of the brakes to slow up the pace, the
four first cars following the road from the Pré Catalan had plunged
into the lake of the Bois de Boulogne!
Fortunately the lake is not very deep. Still, the danger was serious
that confronted those who found themselves thus involved in so sudden
a shipwreck. The women were muffled in their cloaks, the men hampered
with their great coats; moreover, the cars had been pitched almost one
on top of the other, and cries of terrified bewilderment rose on all
sides.
Inside Sonia’s limousine events followed each other with dramatic
swiftness. Tom Bob, a marvel of presence of mind, a miracle of
coolness, had not lost his head for an instant. The moment the princess
broke off to scream, the moment he felt the ground slip from under
the wheels, he realized what was happening. In a flash he concluded
at first that the princess’s driver, deceived by the darkness, had
misjudged his turn, and cried out instinctively:
“We are over.”
But the limousine itself was struck heavily by the car behind, and the
detective and the princess were thrown forward and bruised against the
sides. Then the whole horror of the situation was revealed. Sonia had
fainted, and the dark, surging waters of the lake were pouring into the
vehicle in icy torrents through the broken windows. The limousine was
sinking!
“Damnation!” roared Tom Bob; then, quick as lightning, gripping the
princess by one arm, he forced open the door in spite of the weight of
water and struck out. He was a powerful swimmer, and in a few seconds
more he and his precious burden had reached the bank of the lake.
There, the wildest confusion reigned. The first four cars had plunged
in one on top of the other; fortunately those following, being a short
distance behind, had been able to brake and pull up in time. At the
cries of the drivers all with one accord had sprung to the ground,
and were now asking names, counting numbers, uttering exclamations of
surprise and fear. The panic was indescribable.
It was indeed a most lucky chance there was no fatality to deplore.
Sonia’s car, the first in the line, was as a matter of fact the only
one that, by reason of its speed, had rolled far enough into the lake
to be half submerged. The drivers of the vehicles behind, seeing the
accident, had sheered off to one side, had more or less jammed down
their brakes and, thanks to their reduced speed, had been able, not
indeed to avoid the disaster altogether, but at any rate to diminish
its ill consequences. The cars had come to a stand on the very verge of
the water.
Help was soon organized, and brave men sprang into the lake to the
rescue. Half an hour after the catastrophe, it could be said for
certain that it would have no very serious sequel, apart of course,
from any effects that might ensue on the violent agitation all had
experienced, and the painful bruises some of these “shipwrecked
mariners” had received. Only the Princess Sonia Danidoff, imprisoned
in a vehicle that had actually sunk, was ever in positive danger of
death; and so, when the first bewilderment was over, it was round the
young Russian lady that the crowd gathered thickest, questioning and
congratulating.
Meanwhile Tom Bob, his brow knit in anxious thought, had drawn some of
the men apart and was demonstrating to them the causes of the accident.
“It is beyond belief!” he declared, “... just look over yonder!... the
thing was a criminal attempt! They have masked the turn in the road
by laying down the bogus grass lawn over a length of ten yards, and
extended the road itself in a straight line right up to the waterside.
The footway is cut through! the wire fencing removed! Why, they have
even chalked over the rammed earth to make it look as white as the
road! For sure, no blame attaches to the chauffeur; in the glare
thrown forward by the lamps he was bound to make a mistake; he could
not possibly see the trap laid for him, and so, quite naturally, he
drove straight on till the final crash came.”
Tom Bob was going to say more when suddenly a cry burst on the silence
of the night, a cry of stupefaction, of tearful distress. The detective
flew to a group standing round the Princess Danidoff, who still lay on
the ground inhaling a restorative.
“What ... what is it? what is happening now?”
The English Ambassador replied to the American detective’s question.
“It is atrocious,” he cried, “the Princess Sonia Danidoff has just
discovered she has been robbed of articles of very considerable value.”
For the moment the American stood stock still, as if paralysed with
amazement.
“What,” he exclaimed, “what is that you say?”
“I say, my good sir,” returned the Ambassador, “that the Princess Sonia
has been stripped of all her jewels, all her jewels—do you hear what
I say?—rings, bracelets, necklaces, hair ornaments. Some hundreds of
thousands of francs gone!”
In his bewilderment Tom Bob could only repeat himself: “But the thing’s
past belief; it’s impossible! When did it happen? and how?”
He darted to the princess’s side, while the Ambassador, turning to a
young _attaché_, finished what he was saying for his benefit.
“For my part,” he declared, “I consider the whole catastrophe had but
one object—this theft! It must have been done while the princess lay
in a faint and Tom Bob had left her to help in saving life. Tom Bob,
police-detective as he is, never saw the wood for the trees!”
The _attaché_ nodded: “You are doubtless right, sir; but who can have
organized this daring, this audacious plot?”
It was in a hushed voice, almost in a whisper, that the Ambassador made
answer:
“Who? Egad! I think there is only one man in all the world ... and you
know his name!”
“Fantômas?”
“Yes, Fantômas.”
Already on every lip the dread name was being repeated, the name of
horror and of blood, the name that alone could make credible the
incredible reality, that could make it seem possible, that could
account for it.
“Fantômas! Fantômas! he and no other must have planned all this!”
And through the night, more grim than ever the three tragic syllables
re-echoed, spreading consternation—Fantômas!