Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 38

  The little woman had related her adventure in a manner so charming and with such grace, borrowed as it was from the fairy tales of childhood, that I was enraptured and began to comprehend how certain women who have nothing natural about them can supplant in the heart of men those whose gifts are only those of nature.

  The Prince did not seem in the least embarrassed by the little history. He said without a smile:

  “Those are my three fairy godmothers. They have never left me since the hour of my birth. I can neither work nor live without them, I can only leave them when they permit it and they watch over my verse making with a fierce jealousy.”

  The Prince had scarcely ceased giving us this fantastic explanation of the presence of the three old women in the “Gardens of Babylon” when Walter, Old Bob’s man servant, brought a dispatch to Rouletabille. The latter asked permission to open it and read aloud:

  “Return as soon as possible. We are waiting for you very anxiously. A magnificent assignment at St. Petersburg.”

  This dispatch was signed by the Editor in chief of the Epoch.

  “Well, what do you say to that, M. Rouletabille?” demanded the Prince. “Will you admit now that I was pretty well informed?”

  The Lady in Black could not repress a sigh.

  “I shall not go to St. Petersburg!” declared Rouletabille.

  “They will regret your decision at the Court,” said the Prince. “I am certain of that, and, allow me to say, young man, that you are missing a wonderful opportunity.”

  The term “young man” seemed extremely displeasing to Rouletabille, who opened his lips as though to answer the Prince, but closed them again, to my great surprise, without uttering a word. Galitch went on:

  “You would have found an adventure worthy of your skill. One may hope for everything when one has been strong enough to unmask a Larsan!”

  The word fell into the midst of us like a bombshell and, as if by a common impulse, we took refuge behind our smoked glasses. The silence which followed was horrible. We sat as motionless as statues. Larsan! Why should this name which we ourselves had so often pronounced within the last forty-eight hours and which represented a danger with which we were commencing to almost feel familiar — why, I say, should that name, spoken at that precise moment, have produced an effect upon us, which, speaking for myself, was like nothing ever felt before? It seemed to me as though I had been struck by a thunderbolt. An indefinable terror glided through my body. I longed to flee but it seemed to me that if I were to stand up my limbs would not be able to support me. The unbroken silence on every hand contributed to increase this indescribable state of hypnosis. Why did no one speak? Where had Old Bob’s gayety vanished? He had scarcely uttered a word during the meal. And why did all the others sit so silent and so motionless behind their dark glasses? All at once, I turned my head and looked behind me. Then I understood, more by instinct than anything else, that I was the object of a common psychical attraction. Someone was looking at me. Two eyes were fixed upon me — weighing upon me. I could not see the eyes and I did not know from where the glance fixed upon me came, but it was there. I knew it — and it was his glance. But there was no one behind me, nor at the right, nor the left, nor in front, except the people who were seated at the table, motionless, behind their dark glasses. And then — then I knew that Larsan’s eyes were glaring at me from behind a pair of those glasses — ah! the dark glasses — the dark glasses behind which were hidden Larsan’s eyes.

  And then, all at once, the sensation passed. The eyes, doubtless, were turned away from me. I drew a long breath. Another sigh echoed my own. Was it from the breast of Rouletabille — was it the Lady in Black, who perhaps, had at the same time as myself endured the weight of those piercing eyes?

  Old Bob spoke:

  “Prince, I do not believe that your last spinal bone goes any further back than the middle of the quaternary period.”

  And all the black spectacles turned in his direction.

  Rouletabille arose and made a sign to me. I hastened to the council room where he was waiting for me. As soon as I appeared, he closed the door and whispered:

  “Well, did you feel it, too?”

  I felt smothered. I could scarcely articulate.

  “He was there — at that table — unless we are going mad.”

  There was a pause and then I resumed, more calmly:

  “You know, Rouletabille, that it is quite possible that we are going mad. This phantasm of Larsan will land us all in a madhouse yet! We have been shut up here only two days and see the state we are in!”

  Rouletabille interrupted me.

  “No, no; I felt him. He is there. I could have touched him! But where — but when? Since I came into that room, I have known that it was not necessary for me to go further. I will not fall into his trap. I will not go and look for him outside the castle even though I have seen him outside with my own eyes — even though you saw him with yours.”

  All in a moment he seemed to grow perfectly calm, passed his hand across his eyebrows, lighted his pipe and said, as he had so often said before, in happier hours when his reasoning powers, which were yet ignorant of the ties which united him to the Lady in Black, were not disturbed by the tumult of his heart:

  “Let us reason it out!”

  And he returned on the instant to that argument which had already served us and which he repeated again and again to himself (in order that, he said, he should not be lured away by the outer appearance of things): “Do not look for Larsan in that place where he reveals himself; seek for him everywhere else where he hides himself.”

  This he followed up with the supplementary argument:

  “He never shows himself where he seems to be except to prevent us from seeing him where he really is.”

  And he resumed:

  “Ah! the outer appearance of things! Look here, Sainclair! There are moments when, for the sake of reasoning clearly, I want to get rid of my eyes! Let us get rid of our eyes, Sainclair, for five minutes — just five minutes, and, perhaps, we shall see more clearly.”

  He seated himself, placed his pipe on the table, buried his face in his hands and said:

  “Now, I have no eyes. Tell me, Sainclair — who is within these walls?”

  “What do I see within these walls?” I echoed stupidly.

  “No, no! You have no eyes at all; you see nothing. Enumerate them without seeing. Count them ALL.”

  “There is, first of all, you and I,” I said, understanding, at last, what he wished to reach.

  “Very well.”

  “Neither you nor I,” I continued, “is Larsan.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I echoed.

  “Yes, why. Tell me. You must give a reason why you believe so. I acknowledge that I am not Larsan; I am sure of that, for I am Rouletabille; but, face to face with Rouletabille, tell me why you cannot be Larsan?”

  “Because you saw him—”

  “Idiot!” exclaimed Rouletabille closing his eyes in with his clasped hands more firmly than before. “I have no eyes. I can’t see anything! If Jerry, the croupier at Monte Carlo, had not seen the Comte de Maupas sit down at his table, he would have sworn that the man who picked up the cards was Ballmeyer! If Noblet at the garrison had not found himself face to face one evening at the Troyons, with a man whom he recognized as the Vicomte Drouet d’Eslon, he would have sworn that the man whom he came to arrest and whom he did not arrest because he had seen him, was Ballmeyer. If Inspector Giraud, who knew the Comte de Motteville as well as you know me, had not seen him one afternoon at the race course at Longchamps, chatting with two of his friends — had not seen, I say, the Comte de Motteville, he would have arrested Ballmeyer. Ah, you see, Sainclair!” ejaculated the lad in a voice shaken with sobs, “my father was born before I was! One will have to be very strong and very shrewd to capture my father!”

  The words were uttered so despairingly that the little force of reasoning I possessed vanished completely. I thr
ew out my hands before me, a gesture which Rouletabille did not see, for he saw nothing.

  “No — no! It isn’t necessary to see any of them!” he repeated. “Neither you, nor M. Stangerson, nor M. Darzac, nor Arthur Rance, nor Old Bob, nor Prince Galitch. But we must know some good reason why each of these cannot be Larsan. Only when that is accomplished shall I be able to breathe freely behind these stone walls!”

  There was no freedom in my breathing. We could hear, under the arch of the postern, the regular steps of Mattoni as he kept guard.

  “Well, how about the servants?” I asked, with an effort. “Mattoni and the others?”

  “I am absolutely certain that none of them was absent from the Fort of Hercules when Larsan appeared to Mme. Darzac and to M. Darzac at the railway station at Bourg.”

  “Own up, Rouletabille!” I cried. “That you don’t trouble yourself about them because none of their eyes were behind the black spectacles.”

  Rouletabille tapped the ground impatiently with his foot and said:

  “Be quiet, please, Sainclair. You make me more nervous than my mother.”

  This phrase, uttered in vexation, struck me strangely. I would have questioned Rouletabille in regard to the state of mind of the Lady in Black, but he resumed, meditatively:

  “First, Sainclair is not Larsan, because Sainclair was at Trepot with me while Larsan was at Bourg.

  “Second: Professor Stangerson is not Larsan because he was on his way from Dijon to Lyons while Larsan was at Bourg. As a fact, reaching Lyons one minute before him, M. and Mme. Darzac saw him alight from the train.”

  “But all the others, if it is necessary to prove that they were not at Bourg at that moment, might be Larsan, for all of them might have been at Bourg.

  “First M. Darzac was there. Arthur Rance was away from home during the two days which preceded the arrival of the Professor and of M. Darzac. He arrived at Mentone just in time to receive them (Mme. Edith herself informed me in reply to a few careless questions of mine that her husband had been absent those two days on business). Old Bob made his journey to Paris. Prince Galitch was not seen at the grottoes nor outside the Gardens of Babylon.

  “First, let us take M. Darzac.”

  “Rouletabille!” I cried. “That is a sacrilege.”

  “I know it.”

  “And it is a piece of the grossest stupidity.”

  “I know that, too. But why?”

  “Because,” I exclaimed, almost beside myself, “Larsan is a genius, we are aware; he might be able to deceive a detective, a journalist, a reporter, and even a Rouletabille — he might even deceive a friend, under some circumstances, I admit. But he could never deceive a daughter so far that she would take him for her father. That ought to reassure you as to M. Stangerson. Nor would he deceive a woman to the point of taking him for her betrothed. And, my friend, Mathilde Stangerson knew M. Darzac and threw herself into his arms at the railway station.”

  “And she knew Larsan, too!” added Rouletabille coldly. “Well, my dear fellow, your reasons are powerful but as I do not know at present what form the genius of my father has assumed as a disguise, I prefer rather to bestow, for the sake of supposition, a personality on M. Robert Darzac which I have never expected to fasten upon him, in order to base my argument against the possibility a little more solidly: If Robert Darzac were Larsan, Larsan would not have appeared on several occasions to Mathilde Stangerson, for it is the apparition of Larsan that has created a gulf between Mathilde Stangerson and Robert Darzac.”

  “Pshaw!” I cried. “Of what use are such vain reasonings when one has only to open his eyes — open them, Rouletabille!”

  He opened them.

  “Upon whom?” he asked with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Upon Prince Galitch?”

  “Why not? Do you like him, this prince from the Black Lands who sings Lithuanian folk songs?”

  “No,” replied Rouletabille. “But he entertains Mme. Edith.”

  And he smiled. I pressed his hand. He acted as though he had not felt the touch, but I knew that he did.

  “Prince Galitch is a Nihilist and I am not troubled over him in the least degree,” he said, tranquilly.

  “Are you sure of it? Who told you?”

  “Bernier’s wife, who knows one of the three old women whom Mrs. Edith told about at luncheon. I have made an investigation. She is the mother of one of the three men hanged at Kazan for the attempted assassination of the Emperor. I have seen the photograph of the poor wretches. The other two old women are the other two mothers. There’s nothing interesting about that!”

  I could not refrain from a gesture of admiration.

  “Ah, you haven’t lost any time.”

  “Neither has he!” he muttered.

  I folded my arms.

  “And Old Bob?” I asked.

  “No, dear boy, no!” scoffed Rouletabille, almost angrily. “Not he, either. You have noticed that he wears a wig, I suppose. Well, I assure you that when my father wears a wig, it will fit him.”

  He spoke so mechanically that I rose to leave him, thinking he had no more to say to me. He stopped me:

  “Wait a minute. We have said nothing of Arthur Rance.”

  “Oh, he has not changed at all since we were at Glandier,” I exclaimed. “That is out of the question.”

  “Always the eyes! Take care of your eyes, Sainclair!”

  And he put his hand on my shoulder for a moment as I turned away. Through my clothing I felt that his flesh was burning. He left the room and I remained for a moment where I stood, lost in thought. In thought of what? Of the fact that I had been wrong in saying that Arthur Rance had not changed at all. For one thing, now, he wore a slight moustache, something very rarely seen in an American of his type; next, his hair had grown longer with a lock falling over the forehead. And again, I had not seen him in two years — and everyone changes in two years — and again, Arthur Rance, who had used to drink heavily, now tasted only water. But then, there was Edith — what about Edith? Ah! was I going insane, I, too? Why do I say, ‘I, too,’ like — like the Lady in Black; like — like Rouletabille. Did I believe that Rouletabille’s brain was becoming slightly turned? Ah, the Lady in Black had us all under her spell. Because the Lady in Black lived in the perpetual fear of her memories, here were we all trembling with the same horror as she. Fear is as contagious as the cholera.

  (3) How! Spent My Afternoon up to Five O’clock.

  I profited by the fact that I was not on guard to go to my room for a little rest; but I slept badly and dreamed that Old Bob, M. Rance and Mme. Edith had formed themselves into a band of brigands who had sworn death to Rouletabille and myself. And when I awakened under this pleasant impression and saw the old towers and the old château with their menacing walls rising before me, I came near thinking that my nightmare was real and I said to myself half aloud: “It’s a fine place in which we have taken refuge!” I put my head out of the window. Mrs. Edith was walking in the Court of the Bold, chatting carelessly with Rouletabille and twisting the stem of a beautiful rose between her pretty fingers. I went down immediately. But when I reached the court, I found no one there. I followed Rouletabille whom I saw on his way to make his inspection of the Square Tower.

  I found him quite calm and entirely master of himself — and also, entirely the master of his eyes, which were not closed now but open wide and keenly on the watch for anything that might turn up. Ah, it was worth while to see the manner in which he looked at everything around him! Nothing escaped him. And the Square Tower, the abode of the Lady in Black, was the object of his constant surveillance.

  And at this point, it seems to me opportune, a few hours before the moment at which that most mysterious attack occurred, to present to the reader the interior plan of the inhabited story of the Square Tower — the story which was on a level with the Court of Charles the Bold.

  When one entered the Square Tower by the only door (K) one found himself in a large corridor which had previou
sly formed a part of the guard room. The guard room had formerly taken up all the space at O, O’, O” and O’” and was shut in by walls of stone which still existed with their doors opening upon the other rooms of the Old Castle. It was Mrs. Arthur Rance who in this guard room had had wooden partitions raised to make quite a large room which she wished to use for a bathroom. This room, also, was now surrounded by the two passages at right angles to each other. The door of the room which served as the lodge of the Berniers was situated at S. It was necessary to pass in front of this door to reach R, where was the only door affording admission to the apartment of the Darzacs. One or other of the Berniers was always in the lodge. And no one save themselves had a right to enter it. From this lodge one could easily see from a little window at Y, the door V which opened off the suite of Old Bob. When M. and Mme. Darzac were not in their apartment, the only key which opened the door R was in the keeping of the Berniers; and it was a special kind of key made purposely for the room within the last twenty-four hours in a place which no one but Rouletabille knew. The young reporter had let no one into the secret.

  Rouletabille would have wished that the watch which he had had placed upon the rooms of the Darzacs might have been kept also upon those of Old Bob, but the latter had opposed such an idea with an earnestness so comical that it was necessary to abandon it. Old Bob swore that he would not be treated like a prisoner and he said that on no account would he give up the privilege of going and coming to his own rooms when he saw fit without asking the keys from the lodge-keepers. His door must remain unlocked so that he might go as many times as he liked to his rooms, whether it might be to his bed chamber or to his sitting room in the Tower of Charles the Bold, without disturbing or worrying himself or any one else. On account of his insistence, it was necessary to leave the door at K open. He demanded it and Mme. Edith upheld her uncle in so intense a manner and spoke so pertly to Rouletabille that he knew she was seeking to convey the idea that she believed that Rouletabille was treating Old Bob with discourtesy at the instigation of Professor Stangerson’s daughter. So he had not insisted on what he believed to be best. Mme. Edith had said with her lips pressed together in a narrow little line: “But, M. Rouletabille, my uncle doesn’t think that anyone is coming to carry him away!” And Rouletabille had realized that there was nothing for him to do save to laugh with the Old Bob over this absurd idea that one could be trying to steal as they would a pretty woman, the man who had the oldest skull in the world. And so he had laughed — had laughed even louder than Old Bob, but had imposed the condition that the door at K should be locked with a key after 10 o’clock at night and that the key should be left in the keeping of the Berniers, who would come and open it whenever anyone desired. Even this was against the inclination of Old Bob, who sometimes worked very late in the Tower of Charles the Bold. But, nevertheless, he declared, he would submit to it for he did not wish to have the appearance of opposing the worthy M. Rouletabille, who had told him that he was afraid of robbers. For, be it said in exculpation of Old Bob, that, if he lent himself so ungraciously to the defensive plans of our young friend it was because it had not been judged expedient to inform him in regard to the resurrection of Larsan. He had, of course, heard of the extraordinary series of fatalities which had formerly occurred in the history of poor Mlle. Stangerson; but he was a thousand miles from doubting that all her troubles had ceased long before she had become Mme. Darzac. And then, too, Old Bob was an egoist, like nearly all savants. Happy because he possessed the oldest skull in the history of the human race, he could not conceive that the whole world did not revolve around his treasure.