Little by little my brain had regained its lucidity and my heart its
normal beat. Now, outstretched on the bed, with my boots and clothes
on, and my hand upon my pistol, I was waiting, waiting. I noted the
fact: the hand upon my pistol had not a tremor: it was ready to
kill. My Adventure was approaching its dénouement. I would soon have
to fight a battle, where I must needs come off victorious. These
considerations were like a potent cordial to my overstrained nerves.
So cool and collected indeed had I become that I was now prepared to
take everything as a matter of course. I could, that is, restrain my
astonishment, or at least postpone any expression of it. Madeleine,
in that mysterious house, at that time of night! No, there was no
explaining it, with any explanation at all convincing. But, for the
moment, no explanation was necessary, or in point. We would come to
that later--after the combat--which must end in my victory. Meantime,
all conjecture would be superfluous.
The three candles were still burning on their tripod of the three
crossed lances. But they were getting short. I took out my watch and
looked at it. Half past two! The candles would almost certainly fail
to outlast the night. And to shoot accurately you must see, clearly
see, your target! I rose from the bed, walked over to the candlestick
and put out two of the three wicks burning. Then I went back to my bed
again.
But I had my boots on. My spurs had scraped noisily on the tiling of
the floor; and, since the latter had no carpet, my heels had clacked
loudly as I walked. And that was not the worst of it. As my weight
came down upon the edge of the bed, the spring gave a long, piercing,
metallic squeak, which, in case anyone at all were guarding me, had a
fine chance of being heard, in that sepulchral silence reigning, two
or three partitions away. This reflection had had just time to settle
clearly in my mind, when, and almost as an echo to the creaking of the
spring, the lock in the door of my room creaked in turn.
With a bound I was off the bed; and I had to restrain myself in order
not to level my automatic upon the door and let fly the moment it
opened.
I managed to control that impulse. Besides there came a knock, a
discreet, a courteous knock, on the panel. The door swung open slowly,
and in the doorway I saw one of my hosts, I could not decide whether
the father or the son, but at any rate one of the two old men with the
long, broad, glistening, snow-white beards. He was standing there quite
motionless, not presuming to come in. His eyes, in truth, had swept
me with a glance from head to foot; and there I was, with my clothes
and my boots on, in the unmistakable posture of a man who had not been
in bed at all, who had resisted slumber, and kept on watch, nervous,
suspicious, mistrustful, ready for any emergency that might arise. I
caught a rapid flash in those scrutinizing eyes, a lightning-like flare
that vanished on the instant. And again a thought that I had had before
flitted across my straining consciousness: those penetrating eyes--did
they not have, perchance, the power of going deeper than my forehead,
piercing through to the secret thoughts harbored naked in my brain?
And then the old man spoke:
“Monsieur has not been sleeping. Truly, we suspected as much. In view
of that, why should monsieur pass such a dull time alone here in this
chamber? Would monsieur not like to join us in the room below? I think
that would be far better--for monsieur, as well as for us.”