Suddenly my flaccid arteries began to dilate again under stronger
pulsations of my heart. As had been my experience a few moments
earlier, a diffuse tingling spread through all my fibres, and the
paralyzing grasp upon me was relaxed anew. But on previous occasions
my freedom had been only half restored and for very brief intervals.
Now I was free, free from head to foot--a liberty without any restraint
whatever; and the sensation of possessing it was destined to endure.
I raised my head in astonishment. On my eyes the eyes of the marquis
rested; but no imperious commands were emanating from them now.
A temptation flashed across my mind: to leap from my chair, spring upon
my captors, and, disarmed as I was, make a fight to the death against
them. And a second thought also came to me: the thought of fleeing.
But I contented myself in the end with a shrug of the shoulders. What
could I do, after all? Speedier than my flight, more powerful than any
violence, the unerring glance darting from the old man’s eyes would
have halted me, overwhelmed me--that I well knew. If indeed he was now
loosening the unseen bonds that held me, much as shackles are removed
from a prisoner once the doors of the gaol are closed, I was in reality
no less a captive than before; and any strength I may have had, though
I was now ostensibly free to use it, seemed hardly dangerous to my
three antagonists.
So I sat there motionless in my chair.
When the marquis now addressed me it was in a very gentle tone indeed.
“Monsieur le capitaine,” said he, “I am sure you are at present in a
much more reasonable frame of mind and that you understand perfectly at
last the kind of people with whom you are dealing: just plain decent
people like yourself--only a great deal older, and with lives, for that
reason, necessarily more precious. Yes, that is the whole question,
really: to safeguard, first of all, these marvelous, virtually immortal
lives we three are living, and then, if, and so far as possible, to do
something for you; just as we always do the best we can for the men and
women who serve us in the manner I have explained. A simple situation,
isn’t it? I am inclined to trust your sense of fair play, Monsieur le
capitaine. You will admit that we have treated you considerately thus
far, refraining from unseemly harshness even when you had tried our
patience sorely. Our desire you see, is to regard you not as an enemy
but as an ally, a co-worker, a friend. Fundamentally both you and we
have the same object in view. That enables me, without further delay,
to invite you to take a part in our deliberations. You have heard what
has just been said. Unfortunately no workable plan seems to have come
from it. I wonder whether you, perchance, can think of some egress from
our difficulties?”
I beseech you--you who read these lines that I am writing, struggling
perhaps to decipher the crude scrawling of this pencil now worn to
the wood, bear me witness that my Adventure was a terrible adventure,
fraught with a horror beyond humanity, beyond life. All that night
long--it was my last night, remember--I was not my normal self, but
rather like a dreamer caught in the terrors of some ghastly nightmare;
and if I chanced, while groping in the depths of that abyss, to forget,
for a moment, that I was a man, and was able to think, for a moment, of
betraying the cause of Men, of Mortal Men, for the profit and comfort
of the Men of Prey, the Ever-living Men, do you who read my full
confession, measure my weakness with the measure of your own; and do
not condemn me lightly!
Yes, of just that I was guilty! And any crime was in vain.
When the Marquis Gaspard had twice repeated his question: “Can you,
perchance, think of some egress from our difficulties,” I, yes, I,
André Narcy with lowered head and cheeks aflame, made answer. And I
answered with these literal words:
“Monsieur, open your doors and let me depart in peace; and let Madame
de X...., the girl I love, go also. Give me your word of honor as a
gentleman that this lady will never again be called to this house;
and I, for my part, will give my word of honor as a soldier, never to
breath a word to living person, man or woman, free mason or priest, of
anything that I have seen or heard here, or even of your existence!”
The Marquis Gaspard was on his feet almost before I had finished:
“Monsieur,” said he, with a wave of the hand, “I congratulate you! That
is what I had been hoping to hear! Your proposal affords me unbounded
satisfaction: I would fain see in it the beginning of a perfect
understanding between us, with promise of the further success certain
to spring from such perfect accord.”
He sat down again, felt his pockets for his snuff-box, took it out,
reflected a moment, and then, with another toss of the head, resumed:
“Alas, Monsieur, I am deeply pained at my inability to accept, offhand,
a proposition in itself so generous. Pray do not mistake my meaning: I
have the sincerest regard for your word of honor as a soldier. I hold
for it the same high esteem which you profess for my word of honor
as a gentleman. Both, we may rest assured, are of pure alloy, more
precious than gold, more trusty than steel. I have implicit confidence
in you, Monsieur le capitaine, as you will have the charity to believe!
But--have you considered carefully, Monsieur le capitaine? The Secret
which you would take in trust so courageously is a burden that weighs
more heavily than you realize perhaps. What is needed to betray it?
A word merely, a single imprudent word! Who, other than a man bereft
of speech, could undertake to withhold such a word eternally? Why,
Monsieur le capitaine, how can one deny it? Look at the matter as it
actually stands! I ask you: do you never talk in your sleep? Do you
always sleep out of hearing of others? Can you be certain never to have
a fever, a delirium? That might be enough! That might be enough! You
can see the point, I am sure: good faith, by itself, has no practical
value in such a serious circumstance. It is no discourtesy to you
if we must reject, to our extreme regret, the offer of a promise
which might be dangerous to the honor of the man brave enough to make
it--with the most earnest intentions, as I know.”
The old man here bowed to me with a very formal deference. When he
proceeded, it was with a change of tone:
“But, whatever the course we are finally to adopt, it would help
to know with reasonable accuracy, beforehand, whether we may be
exaggerating the probability of immediate danger. Monsieur le
capitaine, no one is better placed than you to enlighten us on that
detail. Will you not tell us therefore: are we right, or are we wrong,
in assuming that, with this coming dawn, a patrol will begin looking
for you in this neighborhood?”
Without speaking, I nodded in the affirmative.
“Ah,” commented the marquis, with deep concern.
He sat thinking for some moments.
“Your horse,” he finally continued, “they tell me its carcass is lying
out there on the Col de la Mort de Gauthier.”
Again I nodded.
His next words were uttered in a subdued tone almost as though he were
thinking aloud to himself:
“So the real search will begin there! The important thing is to have it
a brief one. Time is a capital consideration. The speediest solution
should be the best....”
He had opened his snuff box, and with one of his fingers was stirring
the tobacco about, absent-mindedly:
“Beyond a doubt.... The danger will be less in proportion as it be
brief.... Those people will hunt and hunt, and keep hunting for a long
time.... A long time, except on one condition....”
He looked at me, and once or twice again he tossed his head in his
characteristic manner:
“Except on one condition--the condition that they find immediately ...
what they are looking for! What would satisfy them? You, of course,
nothing, nobody else--you, alive or dead ... preferably dead!...”
I was certain he was preparing to broach the subject of assassination;
and I had quite prepared myself:
“I am in your power,” I observed coldly.
But the marquis frowned and answered curtly:
“Monsieur le capitaine, I thought I had explained to you that we would
not kill you even were the failure to do so to cost us dearly.”
He shrugged his shoulders; and then, turning to his two companions, he
said:
“I see no alternative: we must organize, stage as it were, some
ingenious situation, fit to deceive those investigators, who, for that
matter, start with no prepossessions, and are a very ordinary lot of
numbskulls into the bargain. It will not be so difficult to arrange
something. All we need is a corpse, at the foot of a precipice; a
safe distance from here, naturally, and not too far from the Mort de
Gauthier....”
Again he relapsed into thought, his eyes fixed on the floor.
But the Vicomte Antoine raised an objection.
“A corpse, yes! But we haven’t one, Monsieur. Where can we get a
corpse? Can you be thinking of breaking a grave, somewhere?”
The marquis came out of his revery, and laughed aloud:
“Antoine, there you are again--the inevitable touch of Gothic! Will
you never get cured of your romanticism? What a thrill! A dark night!
A cemetery! Three men stealing up to a vault with pick-axes.... The
idea is not only romantic: it is asinine. Do you suppose the stupidest
police sergeant, even, would stop at the first skull and cross bones he
came to, and immediately draw up the death certificate of our friend,
the captain, here? And that death certificate, precisely, we are
looking for, are we not! For the world, for every living person in it,
Monsieur le capitaine must be a dead man, and of a death as simple and
as easily explainable as possible. Then only can we feel secure!”
His jocular mood vanished. He looked up at me again with deepest
concern.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I am profoundly sympathetic with you! I
realize how hard it must seem to lose one’s self--one’s name, one’s
professional and social position, one’s very individuality. That, alas,
is the lot in store for you! You will be allowed to live--that I have
promised, and I reiterate the promise now. But you will nevertheless
have, in some cemetery, a grave with a stone and an epitaph upon it,
and under the sod, a coffin with your mortal remains. There is no
escape from that; and I beg you to be as resigned as possible!”
An icy chill ran the length of my spine. For death I had been long
preparing; but I was beginning at last to see that dying was not what
threatened me: it was a question of something else, of something worse,
perhaps.
The Vicomte Antoine persisted in his objection:
“But those mortal remains, where are we....”
The marquis cut the sentence off with an oblique downward movement of
his hand and arm:
“Here!” said he.