Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 48

  At that moment the door of the Square Tower opened and Walter, Old Bob’s faithful servant, appeared. His face was pale, and he seemed nervous.

  “Oh, Miss Edith!” he cried out. “He is covered with blood! He doesn’t want anything to be said about it, but he must be saved—”

  Edith had already rushed into the Square Tower. As to us we dared not utter a word. Soon the young woman returned.

  “Oh!” she sobbed. “It is frightful. His whole breast is torn open!”

  I started to offer her the support of my arm, for, strangely enough M. Arthur Rance had withdrawn to some distance and was walking upon the boulevard, whistling and with his hands behind his back. I tried to comfort and to soothe Mme. Edith, but neither M. nor Mme. Darzac uttered a word.

  Rouletabille reached the castle about an hour after these events. I watched for his return from the highest part of the western boulevard and as soon as I saw his form appearing in the distance I hurried to meet him. He cut short my demands for an explanation and asked me immediately if I had made a good catch, but I was not at all deceived by the expression of his countenance, and wishing to reply to him in his own style of banter, I replied:

  “Oh, yes: a very good catch. I fished up Old Bob.”

  He started violently. I shrugged my shoulders, for I believed that he was counterfeiting surprise, and I went on:

  “Oh, go on! You knew very well what kind of fish I should find when you sent your message!”

  He fixed an astonished glance on me.

  “You certainly must be unaware of the purport of your words, my dear Sainclair, or else you would have spared me the trouble of protesting against such an accusation.”

  “What accusation?” I cried.

  “That of having left Old Bob in the Grotto of Romeo and Juliet, knowing that he might be dying there.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” I cried. “Old Bob is far from dying. He has a sprained foot and a broken collar bone, and his story of his misfortune is perfectly plain and straightforward. He declares that he was trying to steal Prince Galitch’s skull.”

  “What a funny idea!” exclaimed Rouletabille, bursting out laughing. He leaned toward me and looked full into my eyes.

  “Do you believe that story? And — and that is all? No other injuries?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “There is another injury, but the doctors declare that it is not at all serious. He has a wound in the breast.”

  “A wound in the breast!” repeated Rouletabille, touching my hand, nervously. “And how was this wound made?”

  “We do not know. None of us have seen it. Old Bob is strangely modest. He would not even permit his coat to be taken off in our presence; and the coat hid the wound so well that we should never have suspected it was there if Walter had not come to tell us, frightened at the sight of the blood.”

  As soon as we came to the château, we encountered Mme. Edith, who appeared to have been watching for us.

  “My uncle won’t have me near him,” she said, regarding Rouletabille with an air of anxiety different from anything I had ever noticed in her before. “It’s incomprehensible!”

  “Ah, Madame,” replied the reporter, making a low bow to his hostess. “I assure you that nothing in the world is incomprehensible, when one is willing to take a little trouble to understand it.” And he offered her his congratulations upon having had her uncle restored to her at the moment when she was ready to despair of ever seeing him again.

  Mme. Edith seemed about to inquire into the purport of the enigmatical words at the beginning of my friend’s remarks when we were joined by Prince Galitch. He had come to ask for news of his old friend, Bob, of whose misfortune he had learned. Mme. Edith reassured him as to her uncle’s condition and entreated the Prince to pardon her relative for his too excessive devotion to the “oldest skulls in the history of humanity.” The Prince smiled graciously and with the utmost kindliness when he was told that Old Bob had been attempting to steal his skull.

  “You will find your skull,” Mrs. Rance told him, “in the bottom of the cave in the grotto where it rolled down with him. Your collection will be unimpaired, Prince.”

  The Prince asked for the details. He seemed very curious about the affair. And Mme. Edith told how her uncle had acknowledged to her that he had quitted the Fort of Hercules by way of the air shaft which communicated with the sea. As soon as she said this, I recalled the experience of Rouletabille with the flask of water and also the close iron bars, and the falsehoods which Old Bob had uttered assumed gigantic proportions in my mind, and I was sure that the rest of the party must hold the same opinion as myself. Mme. Edith told us that Tullio had been waiting with his boat at the opening of the gallery abutting on the shaft, to row the old savant to the bank in front of the Grotto of Romeo and Juliet.

  “Why so many twists and turnings when it was so simple to go out by the gate?” I could not restrain myself from exclaiming.

  Mme. Edith looked at me reproachfully and I regretted having even seemed to have taken part against her in any way.

  “And this is stranger yet!” said the Prince. “Day before yesterday, the ‘hangman of the sea’ came to bid me adieu, saying that he was going to leave the country, and I am sure that he took the train for Venice, his native city, at five o’clock in the afternoon. How then could he have conveyed your uncle in his boat late that night? In the first place, he was not in this part of the world; in the second, he had sold his boat. He told me so, adding that he would never return to this country.”

  There was a dead silence and Prince Galitch continued:

  “All this is of little importance — provided that your uncle, Madame, recovers speedily from his injuries and, again,” he added with another smile, more charming than those which had preceded it— “if you will aid me in regaining a poor piece of flint which has disappeared from the grotto and of which I will give you the description. It is a sharp piece of flint, twenty-five centimeters long and shaped at one end to the form of a dagger — in brief, the oldest dagger of the human race. I value it greatly and, perhaps you may be able to learn, Madame, through your uncle, Bob, what has become of it.”

  Mme. Edith at once gave her promise to the Prince, with a certain air of haughtiness which pleased me greatly, that she would do everything possible to obtain for him news of so precious an object. The Prince bowed low and left us. When we had finished returning his parting salutes, we saw M. Arthur Rance before us. He must have heard the conversation for he seemed very thoughtful. He had his ivory-headed cane in his hand, and was whistling, according to his habit. And he looked at Mme. Edith with an expression so strange that she appeared somewhat exasperated.

  “I know exactly what you are thinking, sir!” she said. “It does not astonish me in the least. And you may keep on thinking so, if it amuses you, for aught I care.”

  And she stepped nearer Rouletabille, smiling nervously.

  “At all events,” she exclaimed. “You can never explain to me how, when he was outside the Square Tower, he could have hidden behind that panel.”

  “Madame,” said Rouletabille, slowly and impressively, looking at the young woman as though he were trying to hypnotize her, “have patience and have courage. If God is with me, before night I shall explain to you all that you wish to know.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  HOW DEATH STALKED ABROAD AT NOONDAY

  A LITTLE LATER, I found myself in the lower parlor of “la Louve,” tete-a-tete with Mme. Edith. I attempted to reassure her, seeing how restless and nervous she was; but she buried her pale face in her hands and her trembling lips allowed the confession of her fears to escape them.

  “I am frightened!” she murmured. I asked her what frightened her and she looked at me wildly and said, “And aren’t you afraid, too?” I kept silence, for I was afraid, myself. She said again. “You know something of what is going on — here or there or all around us! Ah, I am all alone! all alone! And I am so frightened.” She turned toward the door.

/>   “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I am going to look for someone. I won’t stay here alone.”

  “For whom are you going to look?”

  “For Prince Galitch.”

  “Your ‘Feodor Feodorowitch!’” I cried. “What do you want with him? Am I not here?”

  Her nervousness, unfortunately, seemed to increase in proportion to my efforts to drive it away and I began to realize that a fearful doubt as to the personality of her uncle, Old Bob, had entered her mind.

  “Let us go out into the air!” she said, impatiently. “I can’t breathe in this place.” We left “la Louve” and entered the garden. It was approaching the hour of noontide and the court was a dream of perfumed beauty. As we had not donned our smoked spectacles, we were obliged to put our hands before our eyes in order to shield them from the glaring rays of the sun and the too glowing hues of the flowers. The giant geraniums struck on our eyeballs like bleeding wounds. When we had grown a little more used to the dazzling sight, we advanced over the shining sands, Edith clinging to my hand like a little child. Her hand burned hotter than the sun and seemed like a veritable flame. We looked down at our feet in order to prevent our eyes from falling on the blinding expanse of the waters and also, it may be, in order not to glance toward the buildings in which so many strange things had taken place — perhaps, were taking place even now.

  “I am afraid!” murmured Edith once more. And I, too, was afraid — overwhelmed after the mysteries of the night by the vast, desolate silence of the noon.

  The broad glare of daylight in which one knows that something strange and terrible is going on is more awful than the deepest and darkest night. Everything skips and yet everything wakes. Everything is dead and everything is living. Everything is wrapped in silence and still there are sounds everywhere. Listen to your own ear. It sounds as loud as a conch shell filled with the most mysterious sounds of the sea. Close your lids and look into your own eyes; you will find there a throng of crowding visions more mysterious than the phantoms of the night.

  I looked at Mme. Edith. Beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead and her face was pale as death. I was trembling and chilled, for, alas! I could do nothing to help her and destiny was weaving its inexorable web all around us and that nothing which we could say or do would hinder in the slightest degree its slow, undeviating march. Edith led the way toward the postern gate which opens upon the Court of the Bold. The vault of this postern formed a black arch in the light and at the extremity of this tunnel, we perceived, facing us, Rouletabille and M. Darzac, who were standing at the edge of the inner court, like two white statues. Rouletabille was holding in his hand Arthur Rance’s ivory-headed cane. Why this latter fact should have disturbed me, I do not know, but so it was. Motioning with the cane, he showed Robert Darzac something on the summit of the vault which we could not see and then he pointed us out in the same way. We could not hear what he said. The two talked together for a few moments with their lips scarcely moving, like two accomplices in some dark secret. Mme. Edith paused, but Rouletabille beckoned to her, repeating the signal with his cane.

  “Oh, what does he want with me now?’” she cried like a frightened child. “Oh, M. Sainclair, I am so miserable. I am going to tell my uncle everything and we shall see what will happen then.”

  We went on until we reached the vault and the others watched us without making a movement to meet us. They stood like two statues, and I said aloud in a voice which sounded strangely in my own ears:

  “What are you two doing here?”

  We had come up close to them by this time, upon the threshold of the Court of the Bold, and they bade us turn around with our backs toward the court so that we could see what they were looking at. There was on top of the arch, an escutcheon, the shield of the Mortola, barred with the mark of the cadet branch. This escutcheon had been carved in a stone now loose, which seemed in imminent danger of falling and crushing the heads of the passers by. Rouletabille had without doubt noticed this danger, and he asked Mme. Edith if she had any objections to its being pulled down until it could be replaced more solidly.

  “I am sure that it will fall before long and it might do serious damage,” he said, touching it with the end of his cane, and then passing the stick to Mme. Edith.

  “You are taller than I,” he went on. “See if you can reach it.”

  But both she and I tried in vain to touch the stone; it was too high for us and I was about to inquire what was the meaning of this singular exercise when all at once, behind my back, I heard the cry of a dying man in his last agony.

  We turned with one impulse, uttering an exclamation of horror. Ah, that cry of mortal agony which rang out on the air of the noonday just as it had through the night! Would we never be free from murder? When would that fearful sound which I had heard for the first time that night at the Glandier, never be done with announcing to us that a new victim had been struck down among us? that one of our own number had fallen beneath some fatal blow, as suddenly as though by some frightful pestilence? Surely, the mark of the epidemic itself is less invisible and terrible than that of the hand which kills.

  We all stood there, shivering, our eyes wide with horror, questioning the deeps of the sky still vibrating from that cry of death. Who was dead? Who was dying? What expiring breath had emitted that terrible sound? One might have thought that it was the clearness of the day itself which cried out in suffering.

  Rouletabille was the most terrified of us all. I have seen him, under the most untoward circumstances, maintain a composure which seemed greater than any human creature could hold; I have seen him, at a like horrible cry of death, rush into the danger of the darkness and cast himself like a heroic rescuer into the sea of shadows. Why should he tremble so to-day in the full splendor of the noon? He remained fixed to the spot, as weak as a baby, he, who a little while ago, declared that he would prove himself the master of the hour. He had not foreseen this moment then? this moment in which a human life had been snatched away under the noonday sun!

  Mattoni, who was passing through the garden, and who had also heard the cry, rushed up. At a gesture from Rouletabille he stood rooted to the spot an immovable sentinel; and now the young man had gained sufficient power to advance toward the cry — or, at least, toward the center of the cry, for it seemed still to echo everywhere around us and to circle about in the all embracing space. And we hurried behind him, our breath coming fast, our arms stretched out, as one holds them when one is groping in the dark and fears to stumble against something which one does not see.

  We approached the place from which the shriek had come and when we had passed the shade of the eucalyptus we found the cause. The cry had come, indeed, from a soul passing into the unknown. It was Bernier — Bernier in whose throat sounded the death rattle, who was trying in vain to rise and who was at the last gasp of his life. It was Bernier from whose breast flowed a stream of blood — Bernier over whom we leaned, and who, with one last, fearful struggle, summoned strength enough to utter the two words: “Frederic Larsan!”

  Then his head fell back and he was dead. Frederic Larsan! Frederic Larsan! He who was everywhere and nowhere! He always and forever. Here, yet again, was his mark. A dead body — and no one anywhere near who could have committed the murder, by any possibility of human reason. For the only means of egress from the spot on which the crime had occurred was by this postern where we four had been standing. And we had turned, with one impulse and one movement, at the very instant that the cry rang out — so quickly that we had almost seen the stroke of death given. And when we looked, there had not even been a shadow before our eyes — nothing but the light!

  We rushed, moved by the same sentiment, it seemed to me, into the Square Tower, the door of which still stood open; we entered in a body the bedroom of Old Bob, passing through the empty sitting room. The injured man was lying quietly on his bed within, and near him a woman was watching — Mere Bernier. Both were as calm and still as the day it
self. But when the wife of the dead concierge saw our faces she uttered a cry of affright, as though smitten by the knowledge of some calamity. She had heard nothing. She knew nothing. But she rushed into the air like a streak at lightning and went straight, as though impelled by some hidden force, directly to the place where the body was lying.

  And now it was her groans that sounded on the air, under the terrible sun of the Midi, over the bleeding corpse. We tore the shirt from the dead man’s breast and found a gaping wound just above the heart. Rouletabille looked up with the same expression which I had seen at the Glandier when he came to examine the wound of the “inexplicable body.”

  “One would say that it was the same stroke of the knife!” he said. “It is the same measurement. But where is the knife?”

  We looked for the weapon everywhere without finding it. The man who had struck the blow had carried the knife away. Where was the man? Who was he? What we did not know, Bernier had known before he died and it was, perhaps, because of that knowledge that his life had been forfeited. “Frederic Larsan!” We repeated the last words of the dying man in fear and trembling.

  Suddenly on the threshold of the postern, we saw the Prince Galitch, a newspaper in his hand. He was reading as he came toward us. His air was jovial and his face wore a smile. But Mme. Edith rushed up to him, snatched the paper from his hands, pointed to the corpse and cried out:

  “A man has been murdered! Send for the police!”

  The Prince stared at the body and then at us without uttering a word and then turned hastily away, saying that he would send for the authorities immediately. Mere Bernier kept up her wild lamentations. Rouletabille seated himself on the edge of the shaft. He seemed to have lost all his strength. He spoke to Mme. Edith in a low tone:

  “Let the police come then, Madame, but remember, it is you who have insisted upon it!”

  Mrs. Rance gave him a withering glance from her black eyes. And I knew what her thoughts were as well as though she had spoken them out. She felt that she hated Rouletabille, who had for a single moment been able to make her suspect Old Bob. While Bernier had been assassinated, had not Old Bob been quietly in his chamber, watched over by Mere Bernier herself?