Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Read online

  And he smiled. Soon he was again entirely master of himself, and made us a hundred droll speeches, thanking us for having come to cheer him in his solitude. He insisted on inviting us to dinner, and we three ate our evening meal in a Latin Quarter restaurant — Foyot’s. It was a happy evening. Rouletabille telephoned for Robert Darzac, who joined us at dessert. At this time M. Darzac was not ill, and the amazing Brignolles had not yet made his appearance in Paris. We played like children. That summer night was so beautiful in the solitude of the Luxembourg!

  Before bidding adieu to Mlle. Stangerson, Rouletabille begged her pardon for the strange humor which he evinced at times, and accused himself of being at bottom a very disagreeable person. Mathilde kissed him and Robert Darzac put his arm affectionately around the lad’s shoulders. And Rouletabille was so moved that he never uttered a word while I walked with him to his door; but at the moment of our parting, he pressed my hand more tenderly than he had ever done before. Poor little fellow! Ah, if I had known! How I reproach myself in the light of the present for having judged him with too little patience!

  Thus, sad at heart, assailed by premonitions which I tried in vain to drive away, I returned from the railway station at Lyons, pondering over the numerous fantasies, the strange caprices of Rouletabille during the last two years. But nothing that entered my mind could have warned me of what had happened, or still less have explained it to me. Where was Rouletabille? I went to his rooms in the Boulevard St. Michel, telling myself that if I did not find him there, I could, at least, leave Mme. Darzac’s letter. What was my astonishment when I entered the building to see my own servant carrying my bag. I asked him to tell me what he was doing and why, and he replied that he did not know — that I must ask M. Rouletabille.

  The boy had been, as it turned out, while I had been seeking him everywhere (except, naturally, in my own house), in my apartments in the Rue de Rivoli. He had ordered my servant to take him to my rooms, and had made the man fill a valise with everything necessary for a trip of three or four days. Then he had directed the man to bring the bag in about an hour to the hotel in the “Boul’ Mich.”

  I made one bound up the stairs to my friend’s bed chamber, where I found him packing in a tiny hand satchel an assortment of toilet articles, a change of linen and a night shirt. Until this task was ended, I could obtain no satisfaction from Rouletabille, for in regard to the little affairs of everyday life, he was extremely particular, and, despite the modesty of his means, succeeded in living very well, having a horror of everything which could be called bohemian. He finally deigned to announce to me that “we were going to take our Easter vacation,” and that, since I had nothing to do, and the Epoch had granted him a three days’ holiday, we couldn’t do better than to go and take a short rest at the seaside. I made no reply, so angry was I at this high-handed method, and all the more because I had not the least desire to contemplate the beauties of the ocean upon one of the abominable days of early spring, which for two or three weeks every year makes us regret the winter. But my silence did not disturb Rouletabille in the least, and taking my valise in one hand, his satchel in the other, he hustled me down the stairs and pushed me into a hack which awaited us before the door of the hotel. Half an hour later, we found ourselves in a first-class carriage of the Northern Railway, which was carrying us toward Trepot by way of Amiens. As we entered the station, he said:

  “Why don’t you give me the letter that you have for me?”

  I gazed at him in amazement. He had guessed that Mme. Darzac would be greatly grieved at not seeing him before her departure, and would write to him. He had been positively malicious. I answered:

  “Because you don’t deserve it.”

  And I gave him a good scolding, to which he interposed no defense. He did not even try to excuse himself, and that made me angrier than ever. Finally, I handed him the letter. He took it, looked at it and inhaled its fragrance. As I sat looking at him curiously, he frowned, trying, as I could see, to repress some strong feeling. But he could no longer hide it from me when he turned toward the window, his forehead against the glass, and became absorbed in a deep study of the landscape. His face betrayed the fact that he was suffering profoundly.

  “Well?” I said. “Aren’t you going to read the letter?”

  “No,” he replied. “Not here. When we are yonder.”

  We arrived at Trepot in the blackest night that I remember, after six hours of an interminable trip and in wretched weather. The wind from the sea chilled us to the bone and swept over the deserted quay with weird sounds of lamentation. We met only a watchman, wrapped in his cloak and hood, who paced the banks of the canal. Not a cab, of course. A few gas jets, trembling in their glass globes, reflected their light in the mud puddles formed by the falling rain. We heard in the distance the clicking noise of the little wooden shoes of some Trepot woman who was out late. That we did not fall into a huge watering trough was due to the fact that we were warned by the hoofs of a stray horse, which passed that way to drink. I walked behind Rouletabille, who made his way with difficulty in this damp obscurity. However, he appeared to know the place, for we finally arrived at the door of a queer little inn, which remained open during the early spring for the fishermen. Rouletabille demanded supper and a fire, for we were half starved and half frozen.

  “Ah, now, my friend,” I said, when we were settled after a fashion. “Will you condescend to explain to me what we have come to look for in this place, aside from rheumatism and pneumonia?”

  But Rouletabille, at this moment, coughed and turned toward the fire to warm his hands again.

  “Oh, yes,” he answered. “I am going to tell you. We have come to look for the perfume of the Lady in Black.”

  This phrase gave me so much to think about that I scarcely slept at all that night. Besides, the wind howled continuously, sending its wails over the water, then swallowing itself up in the little streets of the town as if it were entering corridors. I heard someone moving about in the room next to mine, which was occupied by my friend; I arose and tried his door. In spite of the cold and the wind, he had opened the window, and I could see him distinctly waving kisses toward the shadows. He was embracing the night.

  I closed the door again and went quietly back to bed. Early in the morning I was awakened by a changed Rouletabille. His face was distorted with grief as he handed me a telegram which had come to him at the Bourg, having been forwarded from Paris, in accordance with the orders that he had left.

  Here is the dispatch:

  “Come immediately without losing a minute. We have given up our trip to the Orient, and will join M. Stangerson at Mentone, at the home of the Rances at Rochers Rouges. Let this message remain a secret between us. It is not necessary to frighten anyone. You may pretend that you are on your vacation, or make any other excuse that you like, but come. Telegraph me general delivery, Mentone. Quickly, quickly, I am waiting for you. Yours in despair — Darzac.”

  CHAPTER III

  THE PERFUME

  “WELL!” I CRIED, leaping out of bed. “It doesn’t surprise me!”

  “You never believed that he was dead?” demanded Rouletabille, in a tone filled with an emotion that I could not explain to myself, for it seemed greater even than was warranted by the situation, admitting that the terms of M. Darzac’s telegram were to be taken literally.

  “I never felt quite sure of it,” I answered. “It was too useful for him to pass for dead to permit him to hesitate at the sacrifice of a few papers, however important those were which were found upon the victim of the Dordogne disaster. But what is the matter with you, my boy? You look as though you were going to faint. Are you ill?”

  Rouletabille had let himself sink into a chair. It was in a voice which trembled like that of an old man that he confided to me that, even while the marriage ceremony of our friends was going on, he had become possessed with a strong conviction that Larsan was not dead. But after the ceremony was at an end, he had felt more secure. It seemed to
him that Larsan would never have permitted Mathilde Stangerson to speak the vows that gave her to Robert Darzac if he were really alive. Larsan would only have had to show his face to stop the marriage; and, however dangerous to himself such an act might have been, he would not, the young reporter believed, have hesitated to deliver himself up to the danger, knowing as he did the strong religious convictions of Professor Stangerson’s daughter, and knowing, too, that she would never have consented to enter into an alliance with another man while her first husband was alive, even had she been freed from the latter by human laws. In vain had everyone who loved her attempted to persuade her that her first marriage was void, according to French statute. She persisted in declaring that the words pronounced by the priest had made her the wife of the miserable wretch who had victimized her, and that she must remain his wife so long as they both should live.

  Wiping the perspiration from his forehead, Rouletabille remarked:

  “Sainclair, can you ever forget Larsan’s eyes? Do you remember, ‘The Presbytery has not lost its charm or the garden its brightness?’”

  I pressed the boy’s hand; it was burning hot. I tried to calm him, but he paid no attention to anything I said.

  “And it was after the wedding — just a few hours after the wedding, that he chose to appear!” he cried. “There isn’t anything else to think, is there, Sainclair? You took M. Darzac’s wire just as I did? It could mean nothing else except that that man has come back?”

  “I should think not — but M. Darzac may be mistaken.”

  “Oh, M. Darzac is not a child to be frightened at bogies. But we must hope — we must hope, mustn’t we, Sainclair, that he is mistaken? Oh, it isn’t possible that such a fearful thing can be true. Oh, Sainclair, it would be too terrible!”

  I had never seen Rouletabille so deeply agitated, even at the time of the most terrible events at the Glandier. He arose from his chair and walked up and down the room, casting aside any object which came in his way and repeating over and over: “No, no! It’s too terrible — too terrible!”

  I told him that it was not sensible to put himself in such a state merely upon the receipt of a telegram which might mean nothing at all, or might be the result of some delusion. And there, too, I added, that it was not at this time, when we needed all our strength and fortitude, that we ought to give way to imaginary fears which were particularly inexcusable in a lad of his practical temperament.

  “Inexcusable! I am glad you think so, Sainclair.”

  “But, my dear boy, you frighten me. What is there you know that you have not told me?”

  “I am going to tell you. The situation is horrible. Why didn’t that villain die?”

  “And, after all, how do you know that he is not dead?”

  “Look here, Sainclair — Don’t talk — Be quiet, please — You see, if he is alive, I wish to God that I were dead!”

  “You are crazy. It is if he is alive that you have all the more reason to live to defend that poor woman.”

  “Ah, that is true! That is true! Thanks, old fellow! You have said the only thing that makes me want to live. To defend her! I will not think of myself any longer — never again.”

  And Rouletabille smiled — a smile which almost frightened me. I threw my arm around him and begged him to tell me why he was so terrified, why he spoke of his own death and why he smiled so strangely.

  Rouletabille laid his hand on my shoulder, and I went on:

  “Tell your friend what it is, Rouletabille. Speak out. Relieve your mind. Tell me the secret that is killing you. I would tell you anything.”

  Rouletabille looked down and steadily into my eyes. Then he said:

  “You shall know all, Sainclair. You shall know as much as I do, and when you do, you will be as unhappy as I am, for you are kind and you are fond of me.”

  Then he straightened back his shoulders as though he had already cast off a burden and pointed in the direction of the railway.

  “We shall leave here in an hour,” he said. “There is no direct train from Eu to Paris in the winter: we shall not reach Paris until 7 o’clock. But that will give us plenty of time to pack our trunks and take the train that leaves the Lyons station at nine o’clock for Marseilles and Mentone.”

  He did not ask my opinion on the course which he had laid out. He was taking me to Mentone, just as he had brought me to Trepot. He was well aware that in the present crisis I could refuse him nothing. Besides, he was in such a state of mental strain that even if he had wished it, I should scarcely have left him. And it was not hard for me to accompany him, for we were just beginning our long vacations, and my affairs were so arranged that I felt entirely at liberty.

  “Then we are going to Eu?” I inquired.

  “Yes: we will take the train from there. It will scarcely take half an hour to drive over.”

  “We shall have spent only a little time in this part of the country,” I remarked.

  “Enough, I hope — enough for me to find what I am looking for.”

  I thought of the perfume of the Lady in Black, but I kept silence. Had he not said that he was going to tell me everything? He led me out to the jetty. The wind was still blowing a gale, and we were almost taken off our feet. Rouletabille stood for an instant as if lost in thought, closing his eyes as if in a dream.

  “It was here,” he said, “that I last saw her.”

  He looked down at the stone bench beside which we were standing.

  “We were sitting there. She held me to her heart. I was a very little fellow, even for nine years old. She told me to stay there — on this bench — and then she went away, and I never saw her again. It was night — a soft summer evening — the evening of the distribution of prizes. She had not assisted at the distribution, but I knew that she would come that night — that night full of stars and so clear that I hoped every moment that I would be able to distinguish her face. But she covered it with her veil and breathed a heavy sigh. And then she went away. And I have never seen her since.”

  “And you, my friend?”

  “I?”

  “Yes, what happened to you? Did you sit on the bench for very long?”

  “I would have — but the coachman came to look for me and I went in.”

  “Where?”

  “Into the school.”

  “Is there a boarding school at Trepot?”

  “No, but there is one at Eu — I went to the school at Eu.”

  He motioned me to follow him.

  “We will go there,” he said. “I can’t talk here. There is too much of a storm.”

  In another half hour we were at Eu. At the foot of the Rue des Marroniers our carriage rolled over the pavements of the big, cold, empty place, as the coachman announced his arrival by cracking his whip, filling the dead town with the noise of the snapping leather.

  Soon we heard the sound of a bell — that of the school, Rouletabille told me — and then everything was quiet again. We alighted and the horse and carriage stood motionless upon the street. The driver had gone into a saloon. We entered the cool shades of a high Gothic church which faced upon the square. Rouletabille cast a glance at the castle — a red brick structure, crowned with an immense Louis XIII roof — a mournful façade which seemed to weep over the glory of departed princes. The young reporter gazed sorrowfully at the square battlements of the City Hall, which extended toward us the hostile lance of its soiled and weather-beaten flag; at the Cafe de Paris; at the silent houses; at the shops and the library. Was it there that the boy had bought those first new books for which the Lady in Black had paid?

  “Nothing has changed.”

  An old dog, colorless and shaggy, upon the library steps, stretched himself lazily on his frozen paws.

  “Cham! Cham!” called Rouletabille. “Oh, I remember him well. It is Cham — it is my old Cham.”

  And he called him again, “Cham! Cham!”

  The dog got upon his feet, turned toward us, listening to the voice that called him. He took a fe
w steps, wagged his tail, and stretched himself out in the sun again.”

  “He doesn’t remember me,” said Rouletabille sadly.

  He drew me into a little street which had a steep down grade, and was paved with sharp pebbles. As we went down the hill he took my hand and I could feel the fever in his. We stopped again in front of a tiny temple of the Jesuit style, which raised in front of us its porch, ornamented with semicircles of stone, the “reversed consoles” which are the characteristic features of an architecture which contributed nothing to the glory of the Seventeenth Century. After having pushed open a little low door, Rouletabille bade me enter, and we found ourselves inside a beautiful mortuary chapel, upon the stone floor of which were kneeling, beside their empty tombs, magnificent marble statues of Catherine of Cleves and Guise le Balafre.

  “The college chapel,” whispered Rouletabille.

  There was no person in the chapel. We crossed the room hastily. On the left wall, Rouletabille tapped very gently a kind of drum, which gave out a queer, muffled sound.

  “We are in luck!” he said. “Everything is going well. We are inside the college and the concierge has not seen me. He would surely have remembered me.

  “What harm would that have done?”

  Just at that moment a man with bare head and a bunch of keys at his side passed through the room and Rouletabille drew me into the shadow.

  “It is Pere Simon. All, how old he has grown! He is almost bald. Listen: this is the hour when he goes to superintend the study hour of the younger boys. Everyone is in the class room at this time. Oh, we are very lucky! There is only Mere Simon in the lodge — that is, if she is not dead. At any rate, she can’t see us from here. But wait — here is Pere Simon back again!”

  Why was Rouletabille so anxious to hide himself? Decidedly, I knew very little of the lad whom I believed that I knew so well. Every hour that I had spent with him of late had brought me some new surprise. While we were waiting for Pere Simon to leave us a clear field once more, Rouletabille and I managed to slip out of the chapel without being seen, and hid ourselves in the corner of a tiny garden, laid out in the middle of a stone court, behind the shrubbery of which we could, leaning over, contemplate at our leisure the grounds and buildings of the school. Rouletabille hung on to my arm as though he were afraid of falling. “Good Heavens!” he murmured, in a voice broken with emotion. “How things are changed! They have torn down the old study where I found the knife and the leather hangings where the money was hidden have, doubtless, been destroyed. But the chapel walls are just the same. Look, Sainclair: lean over the hedge. That door that opens in the rear of the chapel is the door of the infant class room. But never, never did I leave that class room so gladly, even in my happiest play hours, as when Pere Simon came to fetch me to the parlor where the Lady in Black was waiting for me. Ah — suppose that they have destroyed the parlor!”