THE “EVER-EVASIVE” ESCAPES AGAIN
The Grand Duchess Alexandra gave vent to an exclamation expressive both
of surprise and triumph, as she greeted the visitor who stood before
her. The latter, dropping his eyes and assuming a humble, almost abject
mien, the bearing of a repentant sinner, murmured:
“I am happy, madam, to return your greeting.”
The grand duchess seemed sceptical; with panting breath, for she was
greatly agitated, she questioned:
“Tell me, sir! tell me, Tom Bob, what fresh crisis, what pressing
necessity obliges you to come to me like this?”
Tom Bob, for he it was, hesitated a moment before replying. Slowly he
lifted his glance and fixed it on the grand duchess’s face. The lovely
creature and the wily detective looked long into each other’s eyes.
The grand duchess?... Tom Bob? In truth, there was no need for
play-acting between these two, they were by themselves, alone, without
witnesses. They could avow to one another who they really were—she,
Lady Beltham, the mysterious, the redoubtable mistress of the most
abominable brigand in all the earth; he, that same brigand, Fantômas!
And now the tragic lovers, after a hundred changes of fortune,
intentional or accidental, that had hindered their meeting, found
themselves face to face and under untoward circumstances that forced
them to exchange terrible, bitter speeches; for these two felt for
one another at once an atrocious hate and an ineradicable love! Yes,
in very deed, those two beings who were perpetually at daggers drawn,
who had ever between them the most appalling episodes, the most
fearful deeds and memories, were straitly bound one to the other by an
unbreakable chain of love, whose links were riveted by the strongest of
all implements, the crimes they had committed together.
It was in the drawing room of the mansion where dwelt the great lady
who for all the world was the Grand Duchess Alexandra, but in reality
was no other than Lady Beltham, that the painful interview took place.
“What have you come here for? what do you want?” demanded the lady; but
Fantômas, in a hollow voice he endeavoured to make cold and peremptory,
but which only the more betrayed his anguish, only replied by another
question.
“Sonia Danidoff,” he asked, “what has happened to Sonia Danidoff?”
The brigand—he too was breathless with emotion—felt he _must_ know the
truth, his heart as a lover laid an obligation on him, an obligation
that wounded his self-love, anxiously to question the mistress he had
forsaken as to the fate which she, in her jealous rage, had reserved
for the other who had now become the favourite. Lady Beltham fought
hard against her agitation and the pain that tore her breast; she
articulated in a voice that whistled between the clenched teeth:
“Sonia Danidoff! I wanted to kill her!”
Instinctively Fantômas doubled his fists and cast a look of menace at
the speaker; he would have hurled himself upon his defiant mistress,
but the latter with an air of sardonic insolence stood before him, a
superb figure of defiance, and never flinched. Yes, she defied her
lover; Fantômas dared not go near her; yet curiosity, the craving to
know what had become of Sonia, compelled him to hide his anger.
“What have you done with her? Where is she? Speak!”
Breathing all her hate in a dolorous cry, Lady Beltham wrung her
beautiful hands, and groaning aloud, cried:
“Go, Tom Bob, go and ask the officers of justice, go and learn from the
police the fate I have reserved for your mistress, and the opinion she
now has of you!”
“Of me!”
“Yes, sir, of you!”
It was the brigand’s turn now to tremble with apprehension, but such
was the empire he possessed over himself, he was able to hide his
agitation under a mask of smiling irony.
“Lady Beltham,” he asked quietly, “so you have told the princess who I
am, have you?”
Very certainly, Lady Beltham had not gone so far as this, for despite
her jealousy, she still cherished for the outlaw one of those monstrous
passions that are like consuming fires devouring women’s hearts, fires
that are only extinguished by death! Nevertheless the jealous woman
suffered her lover to believe that during a scene of angry altercation
she had revealed to her rival the ignominy, the baseness, the crimes of
the man whom the too trustful Sonia Danidoff had thought well to choose
as the object of her heart’s desire.
Fantômas bit his lips and his eyes fell, while Lady Beltham demanded in
a questioning, defiant tone:
“And why should I not have told the princess who you were?”
Receiving no answer, she proceeded, smiling in her turn with a show of
scornful dignity:
“You are afraid, it seems, that knowing you in your true aspect, she
might cease to feel for you the fatal infatuation that consumes her?
Poor princess! poor pitiful passion!... what matter the faults, the
vices of the man a woman loves, when she truly loves him? Fantômas,”
the sobs were rising to her lips as she went on, “I ask you, have
your villainies, have your crimes silenced in me the fond feelings I
entertain for you? Have I, for all the hideous life of blood and terror
I live because of you, have I ceased to love you?”
Fantômas broke in:
“You profess to love me, madam, to love me still, and yet you harass me
with your threats....”
Lady Beltham interrupted in her turn:
“Hate, Fantômas, is it not another form of love?”
But the outlaw shook his head sadly.
“Madam,” he declared, “I have lost all confidence; trusting to
appearances, you have doubted my loyalty—I have proof of it, I know
it; perhaps your distrustful attitude has gone for much in that I have
shown towards you....”
“What do you mean?” demanded Lady Beltham, “have you not, many times
over, tried to kill me? Remember, Fantômas, the evening of the Pré
Catalan!”
“You were there, madam, and I knew it; but recollect how, by
an accident contrived by me, your car could not be started, a
circumstance which saved you from the accident in the lake.”
“Say rather,” protested Lady Beltham, shuddering, “that hitch, that
breakdown, seemingly providential, enabled you to start back alone and
unhindered with the Princess Sonia Danidoff.”
Fantômas shrugged as he avowed with a cynical grin:
“Little I cared for her love, it was her jewels I was after; you see I
have nothing to hide from you!”
“Scoundrel! ruffian!” screamed Lady Beltham, “so that is the
alternative you offer me—to find my satisfaction in your thievish
instincts to appease the horrid jealousy that stabs my heart. No, it
must end, Fantômas, a life like this is become impossible, you must
make your choice; choose betwixt us two, the princess and me. I do not
mince my words: I bid you think of the consequences!”
A flash of rage flamed in Fantômas’ eye, but to-day the pirate, the
outlaw had clearly no chance left to show himself, as usual, the
master, the tyrant, the despot, who commands, and all men obey! He must
condescend to parley, and in a choked voice he muttered:
“Let us leave that for the moment, Lady Beltham, let us leave it; more
serious events are brewing, are imminent!”
The great lady laughed sardonically.
“Why, yes!” she sneered, “I don’t doubt that, if you are here, it is
evidently ...”
Fantômas cut her short.
“Lady Beltham,” he assured her, “our plans have been frustrated, the
scheme I had built up is crumbling to pieces; since yesterday Juve has
been free and triumphant....”
“Juve!” cried Lady Beltham, thunderstruck, “is it possible?”
Fantômas nodded in confirmation.
“Juve!” reiterated his agonized mistress, “why, then it is the same
existence of anguish and fear and never ending alarms will begin again,
but worse than ever.”
“Yes, Juve is at large,” insisted Fantômas. Then he added; “But as you
were saying just now, Lady Beltham, I think it must all end—yes, and
soon?”
“What do you propose then?”
Lady Beltham stopped suddenly. The bell of the house telephone that
communicated with the porter’s lodge had just rung. Mechanically the
great lady unhooked the receiver and listened. She was going to say no!
to the question asked by the servant speaking from the other end of the
wire, but Fantômas, without the smallest scruple, had appropriated the
second receiver.
“Ask him up, madam,” he gave his orders, “you cannot do otherwise, you
must!”
Lady Beltham obeyed and gave the required answer to the servant:
“Ask Monsieur Ascott kindly to come upstairs; show him into my rooms.”
* * * * *
In the midst of that Parisian oasis formed by the Parc des Princes,
Lady Beltham had for some months been in occupation, under the name of
the Grand Duchess Alexandra, of a magnificent mansion standing in the
middle of a vast park. The front of the house was approached by great
gates of wrought iron, dividing the boulevard from a fine gravelled
drive that swept round a lawn before the main entrance. Behind the
building was a short cut leading from the offices and opening into
a deserted by-street; this could only be reached after crossing an
orchard planted with fruit trees, a spot of quite a countrified and
unpretending aspect. The path connecting the house with the exit into
the by-street was completely overshadowed by a double row of clipped
yews, a relic of a garden of an earlier date, and throughout its length
were ranged a number of beehives, giving this part of the garden a
homely and utilitarian appearance, a charm that was at once restful and
picturesque.
While Lady Beltham was awaiting the visitor whom, at Fantômas’
unexpected order, she had decided to receive, and was endeavouring
to restore to her features, distorted by the agitations she had
gone through, some appearance of calm and composure, the monstrous
malefactor, who had for months duped all Paris, passing himself off as
the American detective, Tom Bob, slipped away softly into the adjoining
room, under pretext of an intention to listen to the conversation the
wealthy young Englishman wished to have with the lady he doubtless
still took to be the Grand Duchess Alexandra.
But anyone who could have seen Fantômas when alone in the room would
surely have suspected the man of some more sinister motive. The brigand
did not stay near the half open door, shielded though it was by a heavy
curtain. With preoccupied air and a brow wrinkled in anxious thought,
he stepped up to the window, and long and carefully scrutinized what
lay outside, if by any chance he might espy under the shadow of the
trees some suspicious figure, some symptom of unknown danger.
Ascott was shown in by a footman to the grand duchess’s apartments.
The Englishman appeared, his features drawn with anxiety, his limbs
twitching in uncontrollable excitement. With a hurried bow, he sank
into a chair.
“Excuse me, madam,” he stammered; then going straight to the point, he
asked:
“Tom Bob is here, is he not? Oh! I beseech you, tell me; I _must_ see
him.”
So agitated was the young man he never noticed the look of terror his
words brought to his hostess’s face. Hearing it said that Tom Bob was
with her, she all but fainted, but recovering her self-possession:
“Who told you that?” she demanded: “What do you want with him?”
Then, without waiting for an answer, she questioned further:
“But tell me, what has happened to you?”
Ascott faltered in broken words that betrayed his confusion of mind:
“A calamity, madam, an appalling calamity has befallen me and still
crushes me.”
He drew from his pocket a crumpled telegram, the tears welling to his
eyes:
“Read, madam,” he cried, and could not articulate another word.
Lady Beltham glanced through the message; it announced that, in a
motor-car accident, Ascott’s father, the well-known peer and member of
the Upper House, and his son, the young man’s eldest brother, had been
killed! The tragedy had occurred in Scotland, in the Highlands, without
a soul in sight!
Ascott was sobbing bitterly. “When I heard of this terrible blow,
madam,” he declared, “I had a presentiment, nay, all but a certainty,
that the death of my loved ones was not due to mere accident. For, I
must tell you this, I am the victim of a hideous plot, a prey to the
most poignant anxieties. Madam,” he went on with an effort, “I was
married quite lately, as you know.... I married an ‘unfortunate,’ an
abandoned creature.... I am the victim of Fantômas’ villainies, who
showed himself to me under the repulsive guise of the old usurer known
by the name of Père Moche. The monster of superhuman guile has me in
his toils, which he draws tighter and tighter every day! The wife he
made me marry has run away, she has robbed me, ruined me; but that is
nothing, would be nothing at all, did I not guess that my father’s
death and my brother’s must be yet another outcome of a plot contrived
by Fantômas!”
Lady Beltham was in a better position than anybody to realize that the
rich Englishman must be right; assuredly, the further she went, the
more she would hear set down to her baleful lover’s account the most
appalling revelations.
Ascott, harking back to his first idea, again demanded an answer to his
question, adjuring her to tell him where Tom Bob was.
“I _must_ see him,” he urged, “I must see him and speak to him. Tom
Bob is the only person on earth, madam, who by his perspicacity, his
adroitness, his admirable detective skill, can extricate me from my
difficulties, and put me in a position to avenge my relatives’ deaths.
Tom Bob, madam, is the man who must fight Fantômas!”
Lady Beltham was like to die of distress and perplexity. No doubt,
she had but to open a door to bring the young Englishman face to face
with the bogus detective. But was it her duty to act so? Ought she not
rather to enlighten Ascott, to tell him that Fantômas and Tom Bob were
one and the same, just as Père Moche and Fantômas again were one single
and identical person! This course was what her conscience bade her
take. But would duty triumph over love?
Mechanically, moving like an automaton, without knowing yet what
decision she would adopt, for, if she felt pity for Ascott, she burned
with an ardent love for Fantômas, the great lady advanced slowly into
the room where the brigand was. But next instant, horrified, she
sprang back, though not without having first double locked the door of
communication.
What she had seen must have been something to cause both terror and
despair, for Lady Beltham turned deadly pale, her splendid arms beat
the air, she staggered and fell flat on the floor in a dead swoon. The
look she had directed into the adjoining room and which had, in fact,
determined her fainting fit, had passed unnoticed by the unfortunate
young Englishman, too much preoccupied and agitated to observe the
details of what was happening before his eyes. But now, seeing Lady
Beltham’s condition, he hurried to her side and endeavoured to restore
her to consciousness. His efforts proved vain, and shocked and alarmed,
he rang the bell in the anteroom and called loudly for help.
Servants appeared in answer to his summons; Lady Beltham was laid on a
couch and restoratives applied. In ten minutes, by slow degrees, the
unhappy woman began to regain her senses.
But suddenly the tense silence was broken by the sound of shots. Lady
Beltham shuddered and grew paler than ever.
“Great heavens!” she asked, “what is happening?”
Ascott could not tell her; the servants gathered about their mistress
stood rooted to the spot in dumb bewilderment.
* * * * *
Fantômas, when he left Lady Beltham waiting to receive Ascott, had his
plan already cut and dried. The desperate villain realized that the
game was up, beyond redemption. Unmasked so far as Moche was concerned,
he was no less so in his incarnation as Tom Bob—but only in the minds
of Juve, of Fandor, and of Lady Beltham.
For one brief instant the criminal had debated with himself what course
was best to adopt. The moment was surely near at hand when he must
either take to flight and disappear, or play his last desperate card,
defy the world and maintain that he was indeed Tom Bob and no one else.
But would that suffice?
Still, Fantômas would have risked everything on this last chance, had
he not had an opponent as cunning as himself, and now free to act. He
knew, in fact, that from one minute to the next he might find himself
face to face with Juve—not Juve, the ordinary adversary he had been
before, but Juve proved innocent of the crimes he was accused of, Juve
his character rehabilitated in all men’s eyes, Juve with power and
authority fortified by the priceless, invaluable collaboration of the
whole police force of France. After coldly weighing his chances of
victory against those of defeat, Fantômas decided for flight.
Still the hardy scoundrel did not go at once. Examining the room where
he was, he noted a safe embedded in the wall. An evil smile crossed his
pallid lips; cynically he muttered:
“So the Grand Duchess Alexandra has constituted herself treasurer of
the fund for the good souls who were for subscribing Fantômas’ million!
Fantômas,” he went on with a vile grin, “would be a simpleton indeed
not to pay to himself what is meant for him.”
Evidently the ruffian knew the secret of the strongbox. Was it not he,
in fact, who had advised Lady Beltham to purchase it? Fantômas opened
the safe, drew out its contents in handfuls, stuffed his pockets full
of gold and notes.
For a moment he was disturbed in this twice infamous robbery by the
creak of an opening door; he looked round, startled and confused, but
he could see nothing, the door had been reclosed. And Fantômas, never
knowing that his last act of brigandage had so profoundly shocked his
mistress that she had fallen fainting to the floor in the next room,
went on with his thievery.
With infinite precautions, five minutes afterward, the thief was
creeping surreptitiously down the back stairs; gaining the deserted
offices, he found an open window, and leapt into the garden behind the
house. He had his good reasons for not leaving by the front gates.
Cowardly, like a traitor, like a wild beast pursued by the hunters,
like a criminal hiding after a dastardly deed, he glided into the
deep shade of the pleached alley, muffling his footsteps, revolver in
hand, ready to resist the first attack, confident of escaping the most
ingeniously laid trap.
Then he halted for a second. The hot sun of this summer afternoon
pierced the heavy overhanging foliage and threw on the ground a hundred
black, dancing shadows that patterned the mossy carpet and dazzled the
eyes. But the robber’s keen ear had caught a suspicious sound and he
stopped to listen. Was someone spying on him? Instinctively he told
himself:
“Juve, since yesterday a free man, and by a miracle escaped from the
hands of my confederates, is perhaps at my heels?”
Then came a cry of rage! Suddenly, emerging from the bushes, a man had
sprung at his throat. The man was Juve!
Fantômas fired, without a tremble of the outstretched arm, at point
blank range. But the ball never reached its aim; piercing the thick
roof of greenery above, it lost itself in the sky. For at the same
instant he had caught sight of Juve and taken aim at his heart,
Fantômas was attacked in the rear. A formidable blow across the loins
upset his balance and the villain measured his length on the ground.
Boiling with rage, he pressed the trigger and shot off at random the
four remaining charges—quite without effect. The bullets struck no one;
ploughing up the soil, they raised a thick cloud of dust, and that was
all.
Juve had leapt upon his assailant instantly; kneeling on the man’s
chest, he held him down, both hands gripping his throat. Looking up,
Fantômas could see his face, and Fandor’s beside it. He was done for!
his two implacable enemies had him in their power.
Hours ago officer and journalist had planned his arrest. Instead of
hurrying off to find M. Havard, as the latter hoped, Juve and Fandor
had sworn to themselves to set off at once, hot foot, on the track of
the atrocious villain. They had been well advised in going straight
to Lady Beltham’s, for no sooner did they reach the neighbourhood of
the house in the Parc des Princes than they saw Fantômas slip in.
Thereupon, making sure the outlaw would inevitably try to escape by way
of the hidden pathway behind the building, they ensconced themselves in
the deepest shadow of the trees and waited.
Their foresight was rewarded; they had the brigand hard and fast. In
one second, with amazing dexterity, Juve had his prisoner handcuffed.
With his hands thus linked together in front of him, Fantômas was
harmless, helpless, impotent. With a vigorous push Juve forced him to
his knees, then to his feet. Gripping their captive by the arms, Juve
on one side, Fandor on the other, the two, without a word—they might
surely have found too much to say, and thought it best to hold their
tongue—dragged off their redoubtable prisoner towards the door at the
far end of the park.
Fantômas was deep in thought:
“Once they get me as far as there, once they drag me over the threshold
of that door, once I leave this garden, it is all up, I am done for!”
With amazing coolness the extraordinary man analysed the situation, and
in two seconds drew his conclusion. He had a hundred yards still to go
along the tree-shaded pathway; before that hundred yards was traversed,
he must find a means of escape—or else ...
Any display of physical force was impossible! any exertion of strength
would have been in vain; Juve and Fandor held him fast, each with
a grip of steel, their strength doubled by the furious anger that
tightened their muscles and the triumph that swelled their hearts to
have captured the scoundrel. Nor could Fantômas dream of eluding their
vigilance or asking any favour of his captors; the pitiless ruffian
could hope for no pity!
The last fifty yards only remained, and Fantômas had devised nothing
yet.
But suddenly a gleam of ferocity flashed in his eye. With a sudden
spring, he threw himself to one side of the pathway, shouldering back
Fandor who was on his left, dragging Juve on his right after him. Next
moment, with a lightning dart neither officer nor journalist could
anticipate, the brigand had fallen on two hives and kicked them over.
True, Juve and Fandor, instantly hauled him back to the middle of the
path, but yells of agony now burst from their lips. The bees, disturbed
in their peaceful labours, exasperated at the earthquake that had
befallen them, rose in angry swarms and swooped down on the three men!
Burning for revenge, the insects in their hurrying thousands fell upon
their enemies!
With the hand left free—for they would not loose hold of Fantômas—Juve
and Fandor strove instinctively to parry the attack, to sweep away
the clustering swarms. But this made things worse; the number of
the aggressors was only multiplied. Now about their faces whirled a
buzzing, eddying cloud of infuriated creatures!
Fantômas, on the contrary, who had had a second or two’s time to
think what course was best to adopt after upsetting the hives,
forced himself to stand absolutely still, refraining from making the
slightest movement, barely stirring lips and eyelids. And the bees,
in their blindness, never attacking the villain who was their real
enemy, directed all their efforts to the two who, from the weird
gesticulations they indulged in, seemed the most redoubtable foes.
Stung in a thousand places, Juve and Fandor shrieked in agony and,
overmastered by the pain, let go their prisoner.
The latter, following the same tactics, dropped to the ground, burying
his face in the grass by the side of the pathway. There Fantômas lay as
still as death, while Juve and Fandor fell victims to the angry bees,
all the more because they waved their arms wildly about and tried to
defend themselves.
Beaten at last, the two martyrs abandoned all efforts to resist and
rolled on the ground in transports of insufferable pain!
* * * * *
Two hours after, Juve and Fandor were discovered lying under the trees
in the garden of the grand duchess’s house; they were unconscious, half
dead, their faces so disfigured by the bees’ merciless stings as to be
unrecognizable.
As for Tom Bob-Fantômas, _he_ had disappeared. Once again that monster
of iniquity was at large....
Would he add yet more atrocities to the long list of his crimes???
THE END
Transcriber’s Note
Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained: ante-room/anteroom,
bed-chamber/bedchamber, cloak room/cloak-room, common
sense/common-sense, dressing gown/dressing-gown, ever
elusive/ever-elusive, ever evasive/ever-evasive, ever
increasing/ever-increasing, fancy man/fancy-man, fellow
worker/fellow-worker, frock coat/frock-coat, Good day/Good-day, half
a dozen/half-a-dozen, half past/half-past, half stifled/half-stifled,
half way/half-way, hiding place/hiding-place, ill shod/ill-shod,
india-rubber/indiarubber, man servant/man-servant/manservant,
money-lender/moneylender, never ending/never-ending, pocket
book/pocket-book/pocketbook, police officers/police-officers, police
post/police-post, re-crossing/recrossing, rendez-vous/rendezvous,
shirt sleeves/shirt-sleeves, silk hat/silk-hat, strong
box/strong-box/strongbox, tête à tête/tête-à-tête, tip-toe/tiptoe,
water-side/waterside, well trained/well-trained, what ever/whatever,
wine bottles/wine-bottles, winter garden/winter-garden.