Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Read online

  Why was Mme. Edith attracted toward him? He was ridiculous with his melancholy eyes and his long lashes and his Lithuanian songs! And I — I was ridiculous, too. Had I the heart of a college boy? I think not. I would rather believe that the emotion which was excited in me by the personality of Prince Galitch rose less from my knowledge of the interest which Mme. Edith felt in him than from the thought of that other. Yes, it was surely that. In my mind the thought of the Prince and that of Larsan somehow went together. And the Prince had not returned to the château since the famous luncheon at which he was presented to us — that is to say since the day before yesterday.

  The afternoon following Rouletabille’s departure had brought us nothing new. We received no news from him nor from Old Bob. Mme. Edith had locked herself up in her own apartments, after having questioned the domestics and visiting her uncle’s rooms and the Round Tower. She made no effort to penetrate into the apartments of the Darzacs in the Square Tower. “That is an affair for the police,” she had said. Arthur Rance had walked for an hour on the western boulevard, his manner restless and impatient. No one had spoken a word to me. Neither M. nor Mme. Darzac had stirred out of “la Louve.” All of us had dined in our own rooms. No one had seen Professor Stangerson.

  And now, so far as the eye could see, everyone in the château seemed to be lost in dreams. But a shadow appeared on the bosom of the starry night — the shadow of a canoe which slowly detached itself from the shadow of the fort and glided out upon the silvery water. Whose is this silhouette, which arises proudly in the front of the boat while another shade bends over a silent oar? It is yours, Feodor Feodorowitch! Ah, here is a mystery which might be easier to solve than that of the Square Tower, O Rouletabille! And I who believed that Mme. Edith had too good a brain and too fine a mind to lend herself to a vulgar intrigue!

  What a hypocrite is the night! Everything seems to sleep and all the while slumber is far from all eyes! Who was there that might be sleeping among those in the château of Hercules? Was Mme. Edith sleeping, perhaps? Or M. or Mme. Darzac? And how could M. Stangerson, who seemed to have been slumbering all day, be dreaming away the night also? — he whose couch, ever since the revelation of the Glandier, had not ceased to be haunted by the pale ghost of insomnia? And I — could I sleep?

  I left my bedchamber and went down into the court of the Bold and my feet bore me rapidly over to the boulevard of the Round Tower — so rapidly that I arrived there in time to see the bark of Prince Galitch landing on the strand in front of the “Gardens of Babylon.” He leaped out of the boat and his man, having picked up the oars, followed. I recognized the master and servant. It was Feodor Feodorowitch and his serf, Jean. A few seconds later, they disappeared in the protecting shade of the century plants and the giant eucalypti.

  I turned and walked around the boulevard of the court. And then my heart beating wildly, I directed my steps toward the outer court. The stone slabs of the walks resounded under my tread and I seemed to see a form arise in a listening attitude from beneath the arch of the ruined chapel. I paused in the thick darkness of the shadow cast by the gardener’s tower and drew my revolver from my pocket. The form did not move. Was it really a human creature who stood there listening? I glided behind a hedge of vervain which bordered the path that led directly to “la Louve” through bushes and thickets, heavy with the perfume of the flowers of the spring. I had made no noise, and the shadow, doubtless reassured, made a slight movement. It was the Lady in Black. The moon, under the half ruined arch, showed me that she was as pale as death. And suddenly her figure vanished as if by enchantment. I approached the chapel and as I diminished the space which lay between me and the ruins, I heard a soft murmur of words mingled with such bitter sobs that my own eyes grew moist as I listened. The Lady in Black was weeping there behind that pillar. Was she alone? Had she not chosen in this night of anguish to come to this altar decked with flowers there to pour out her prayers in solitude to the balmy air?

  Suddenly I perceived a shadow beside the Lady in Black and I recognized Robert Darzac. From the corner where I was I could now hear all that they were saying. I knew that my behavior in listening was degraded and shameless, but, curiously enough, it was borne upon me that it was my duty to listen. Now I thought no longer of Edith and her Prince Galitch. I thought only of Larsan. Why? Why was it on account of Larsan that I bent my ears so anxiously to hear all that went on between those two? I learned from their words that Mathilde had descended stealthily from la Louve to be alone in the garden with her agony and that her husband had followed her. The Lady in Black was weeping. And she took Robert Darzac’s hands and said to him:

  “I know, dear — I know all your grief. You need not speak of it to me when I see you so changed — so wretched! I accuse myself of being the cause of your sorrow. But do not tell me that I no longer love you. Oh, I will love you dearly, Robert — just as I have always done. I promise you.”

  And she seemed to sink into a deep fit of thought, while he, almost as though incredulous, still stood as though he were listening to her. In a moment, she looked up again and repeated in a tone of firm conviction: “Yes — I promise you.”

  She pressed his hand and turned away, casting upon him a smile so sweet and yet so sorrowful that I wondered how this woman could speak to a man of future happiness. She brushed past me without seeing me. She passed with her perfume and I no longer smelled the laurel bushes behind which I was hidden.

  M. Darzac remained standing in the same spot, looking after her. Suddenly he said aloud with a violence which startled me:

  “Yes, happiness must come! It must!”

  Assuredly, he was at the end of his patience. And before withdrawing in his turn, he made a gesture of protest — against fate, it seemed to me — a gesture of defiance to destiny — a gesture which snatched the Lady in Black through the space which divided them and caught her to his breast and held her there.

  He had scarcely made this gesture when my thought took form — my thought which had been wandering about Larsan stopped at Darzac. Oh, how well I remember that instant! The fancy was gone in a moment, but as I beheld gesture of defiance and rapture, I dared to say to myself, “If HE should be Larsan!”

  And in looking back to the depths of my memory, I realize now that my thought was even stronger than that. To the gesture of this man, my mind answered with the cry, “This is Larsan!”

  I was white with terror and when I saw Robert Darzac coming in my direction, I could not refrain from a movement which revealed my presence while I was trying to conceal it. He saw me and recognized me, and, grasping me by the arm, he exclaimed:

  “You were there, Sainclair: you were watching. We are all watching, my friend. And you heard what she said. Sainclair, her grief is too great. I can bear no more. We would have been so happy. She began to believe that misfortune had forgotten her when that man reappeared. Then all was finished; she had no longer strength to desire love or to feel it. She is bowed down by destiny. She imagines that she is to be pursued by eternal punishment. It was necessary for the frightful tragedy of last night to prove to me that this woman did love me — once. Yes, for one moment, all her fears were for me — and I, alas, have blood on my hands only because of her. Now she has returned to her old indifference. She cares no longer — her only desire is that the old man shall be kept in ignorance.”

  He sighed so sorrowfully and so sincerely that the abominable idea which it had harbored fled from my mind. I thought only of what he was saying to me — of the sorrow of this man who seemed to have lost completely the woman whom he loved in the moment when the woman had found a son of whose existence the husband continued to be ignorant. In fact, he had in no way been able to understand the attitude of the Lady in Black as regards the facility with which she had detached herself from him — and he found no explanation for this cruel metamorphosis other than the love heightened by remorse of Professor Stangerson’s daughter for her father.

  “What good did it do me to kill
him?” groaned M. Darzac. “Why did I fire the shot? Why did she impose upon me such a criminal, horrible silence if she did not intend to recompense me for it by her love? Did she fear arrest for me? Ah, no! Not even that, Sainclair, not even that! She fears only the agony of her father and the danger that he will succumb entirely under this new disgrace. Her father! Always her father! I do not exist for her. I have loved her for twenty years and when I believe at last that I have won her, the thought of her father takes my place.”

  And I said to myself: “The thought of her father — and of her child.”

  He seated himself on an old moss grown boulder by the chapel and said again, as if speaking to himself: “But I will snatch her away from this place — I cannot see her roaming about on the arm of her father — as if I were not in the world.”

  And, while he said this, I looked up and I fancied that I beheld the shadow of the father and the daughter passing and repassing in the dawn, beneath the somber height of the Tower of the North, and I likened them in my mind to the old Oedipus and his daughter, Antigone, walking under the walls of Colone, dragging with them the weight of a grief beyond human endurance.

  And then suddenly, without my being able to recall myself to reason, perhaps because Darzac made again the gesture which had startled me before, the same frightful fancy assailed me, and I demanded:

  “How did it happen that the sack was empty?”

  He was not in the least confused or taken aback. He replied simply:

  “Rouletabille must tell us that.” Then he pressed my hand and wandered away through the undergrowth of the garden. I looked after him and said to myself:

  “I have gone mad!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  DISCOVERY OF “AUSTRALIA”

  THE MOON WAS shining full on his face. He believed himself to be alone in the night and certainly it was one of the moments in which he would cast aside the mask of the day. First the black glasses had ceased to shade his eyes. And if his figure, during the hours of disguise, was more bent than nature had made it, if his shoulders were rounded by pretense instead of study, this was the moment when the magnificent body of Larsan, away from all observers, must relax itself. Would it relax now? I hid in the ditch behind the barberry hedge. Not one of his movements escaped me.

  Now he was standing erect upon the western boulevard which looked like a pedestal beneath his feet; the rays of the moon enveloped him with a cold and mournful light. Is it you, Darzac? or your spectre? or the ghost of Larsan, come back from the house of the dead?

  I felt that I had gone mad. What a piteous state was ours — all of us madmen! We saw Larsan everywhere, and, perhaps, Darzac himself might more than once have gazed at me, Sainclair, saying to himself: “Suppose that he were Larsan!” More than — once! I speak as though it were years since we had been locked up in the château and it was now just four days. We came here on the eighth of April in the evening.

  It is true that my heart had never beaten so wildly when I had asked myself the same terrible question about the others; perhaps, because it was less terrible when there was question of any of the others. And then, how strange that such a thought should have come to me! Instead of my spirit recoiling in affright before the black abyss of such an incredible hypothesis, it was, on the contrary, attracted, enchained, horribly bewitched by it. It was as though struck with vertigo which it could do nothing to evade. It glued my eyes to that figure standing upon the western boulevard, making me find the attitudes, the gestures, a strong resemblance from the rear — and then, the profile — and even the face. Yes, all — all. He did look like Larsan. Yes, but just as strongly did the face and figure resemble Darzac.

  How was it that this idea had come to me that night for the first time? Now that I thought of it — it should have been our first hypothesis of all. Was it not true that, at the time of “The Mystery of the Yellow Room,” the silhouette of Larsan had been confounded at the moment of the crime with that of Darzac? Was it not true that the man who was believed to be Darzac, who had come to inquire for Mlle. Stangerson’s answer at Post Office Box No. 40, had really been Larsan himself? Was it not true that this emperor of disguises had already undertaken with success to appear to be Darzac? — and to such good purpose that Mlle. Stangerson’s fiancé had been accused of being the perpetrator of the crimes committed by the other?

  It was true — all true — and yet when I ordered my restless heart to be quiet and listen to reason, I knew that my hypothesis was absurd. Absurd? Why? Look at him there, the ghost of Larsan which strides along with long paces like those of the monster! Yes, but the shoulders are those of Darzac.

  I say absurd because anyone who was not Darzac might have passed for him in the shade and the mystery that surrounded the drama of the Glandier. But here we have lived with the man. We have talked with him — touched him.

  We have lived with him? No!

  To begin with, he was rarely there among us. Always locked in his own room or bending over that useless work in the Tower of the Bold. A fine pretext, that of drawing, to prevent anyone’s seeing your face and to make it appear natural to answer questions without turning the head!

  But he was not drawing all the time! Yes, but at other times, always, except tonight, he wore his dark glasses. Ah! that accident in the laboratory had been well contrived. That little lamp which exploded knew — I have always thought so, it seems to me — the service which it was going to do for Larsan when Larsan should have taken the place of Darzac. It permitted him to evade always and everywhere the full light of day — because of the weakness of his eyes. How then! Was it not always Mlle. Stangerson or Rouletabille who had managed to find dark corners where M. Darzac’s eyes could not be exposed to the sun? But, lately, he himself, more than anyone else now that I reflected upon it, had been careful to keep in the shadow — we have seen him seldom and always in the shadow. That little “hall of counsel” was very dark, “la Louve” was dark, and he had chosen the two rooms in the Square Tower which are plunged in semi-darkness.

  But still — still — Rouletabille could not be deceived like that — even for three days. But, as the lad himself said, Larsan was born before Rouletabille and was his father.

  And suddenly there recurred to my mind the first act of Darzac when he came to meet us at Cannes and entered our compartment with us. He drew the curtain. The shadow — always the shadow!

  The figure on the western boulevard is still standing there. I can look him full in the face. No spectacles now! He was not moving. He stood as if he were posing for a photograph. Do not stir! There! that is he! Yes, it is Robert Darzac — only Robert Darzac!

  He began to walk again — I was certain no longer. There is something in his walk which is not Darzac’s — something in which I seem to recognize Larsan — but what?

  Yes, Rouletabille must have seen! And yet — Rouletabille reasons more often than he looks! And has he ever had a chance to look at him like this?

  No! We must not forget that Darzac went to spend three months in the Midi — That is true! Ah, what might not have happened in that time! Three months during which none of us saw him. He went away ill; he returned almost well. There could be nothing astonishing in the fact that a man’s appearance should be changed when he went away with the look of a dead man and returned with the look of one living and strong!

  And the wedding had taken place immediately after that. How little any of us had seen of him before the ceremony! And, besides, a week had not yet elapsed since the marriage. A Larsan could easily wear his mask for so short a time.

  The man — was it Darzac or was it Larsan? — descended from his pedestal and came straight toward me. Had he seen me? I crouched down behind my barberries.

  (Three months of absence during which Larsan might have had a chance to study every gesture, every mannerism of Darzac! And then — how easy to put Darzac out of the way and to take his place and his bride! Not a difficult trick — for a Larsan!) The voice? What more easy than to imitate
the voice of a native of the Midi? One has a little more or a little less of accent than the other, that is all. Occasionally I have fancied that his accent was a little stronger than before the wedding.

  He was almost upon me. He passed by. He had not seen me.

  “It is Larsan! I could swear that it was Larsan!”

  But he paused for a second and gazed sorrowfully upon all nature slumbering around him — him whose suffering was in loneliness and solitude, and a groan escaped his lips, unhappy soul that he was!

  “It is Darzac!”

  And then he was gone — and I remained there behind my hedge overwhelmed with the horror of the thought which I had dared to harbor.

  How long did I remain thus, lying on the ground? One hour? Two? When I arose, I was so stiff that I could scarcely stir and my mind was as worn out as my body — worn out and distracted. In the course of my unthinkable hypotheses, I had even gone so far as to ask myself whether, by chance (by chance!) the Larsan who had been in the potato sack had not succeeded in substituting himself for Darzac who had carried him off in the little English cart with Toby drawing it, meaning to throw him into the gulf of Castillon. I could picture the body of the victim rising up suddenly and ordering M. Darzac to take its place. So far from all reason had my wild supposition driven me, that in order to drive away from my mind this ridiculous idea, I was compelled to recall word by word a private conversation that had occurred between M. Darzac and myself that morning when we went out from the terrible session in the Square Tower at which had been so clearly presented the problem of the “body too many.” In this conversation, I had received an absolute proof of the impossibility of my supposition. I had, while we talked, proposed to M. Darzac a few questions in relation to Prince Galitch, whose image would not cease to pursue me, and my friend had answered by making allusion to another conversation, involving certain scientific facts, which had taken place between us the night previous, and which could not possibly have been heard by any other person than our two selves and which had also concerned Prince Galitch. On this account, there could be no real doubt in my mind that the Darzac whom I had talked with in the garden was none other than the same man I had seen the evening before.