The Perfume of the Lady in Black Page 5

  Having thus more or less untangled matters from afar, Rouletabille suggested that I should take advantage of the luxurious arrangements that the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits places at the disposal of its patrons who like to travel in comfort. He set an example by performing as elaborate a toilet as he would have in a hotel room.

  A quarter of an hour later, he was snoring, but I did not have much faith in the genuineness of that snore. At any rate, I did not sleep. When we got to Avignon, Rouletabille rose hastily, slipped on his coat and trousers and rushed on to the station platform to gulp down a cup of hot chocolate. I had no appetite. Such was our anxiety that, from Avignon to Marseilles, we barely spoke.

  At the sight of the last-named place, where he had led such a curious life, Rouletabille – no doubt with the intention of diverting our minds from the anguish which grew upon us as the moment neared when we would know – narrated sundry incidents relating to his life there, but he did not seem to take much pleasure in what he said. I scarcely paid any attention to his stories. Thus we arrived at Toulon.

  What a journey! It could have been so enjoyable. Normally, I always gazed upon that marvellous countryside with renewed enthusiasm: the sparkling coastline that one glimpses on waking, so like a corner of paradise compared to the Paris one has left behind: rainy, muddy, dark and dirty! With what joy I generally board the night train, certain that the next morning I will be met at the other end of the line by that glorious friend, the sun!

  After leaving Toulon, our impatience grew moment by moment. We were not at all surprised to see M. Darzac waiting for us at the station at Cannes. He had evidently received the wire Rouletabille had sent him from Dijon announcing the time of our arrival at Menton.

  Having arrived the day before at Menton at 10.00 a.m. with Madame Darzac and M. Stangerson, he must have started again the same morning in order to meet us at Cannes. We were sure from the tone of his message that he had some confidential information to impart. He looked solemn and anxious, and when we first caught sight of him, we were frightened.

  ‘Has some misfortune occurred?’ inquired Rouletabille.

  ‘No, not yet,’ he replied.

  ‘Thank God!’ Rouletabille exclaimed, with a sigh. ‘We have arrived in time.’

  To this M. Darzac replied simply:

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ Then he led us silently to our compartment, where he closed the door and drew the curtains, thus making us safe from prying eyes. Once we were quite sure that no one could see or hear us and once the train had started, he spoke. He was so upset that his voice shook.

  ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘he isn’t dead!’

  ‘We thought as much,’ interrupted Rouletabille. ‘But are you quite certain?’

  ‘I have seen him as plainly as I can see you.’

  ‘Did Madame Darzac see him?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. But we must do everything in our power to make her think that it was a mere optical illusion. I certainly do not want the poor woman to lose her reason again! Oh, my friends, what is this fate that pursues us? Why has that man come back to haunt us? What more does he want?’

  I glanced at Rouletabille. He looked even more cast down than M. Darzac. The blow he had feared had struck home. He sat hunched in a corner. There was a moment’s silence, and M. Darzac went on:

  ‘Listen! That man must be got rid of. He must! We will go to him and ask him what he wants. He can have as much money as he chooses to ask for, otherwise, I will kill him! That seems the only thing to do. Don’t you agree?’

  We did not answer. He was much to be pitied. Finally, Rouletabille, overcoming his own emotion, begged M. Darzac to give us a detailed account of everything that had happened since they left Paris.

  He told us what we had already supposed, that the incident had occurred at Bourg. I should explain that M. Darzac had engaged two compartments in the sleeping-car. These two compartments were joined by a dressing-room. Madame Darzac’s travelling-bag and toilet-case had been placed in one compartment and all the other hand luggage had been put in the other. It was in that compartment that M. and Madame Darzac and Professor Stangerson journeyed from Paris to Dijon. They had alighted there and dined at the station restaurant. They had plenty of time, since they arrived at 6.27, and Professor Stangerson was not due to leave until 7.08, and the Darzacs at 7.00 sharp.

  The Professor had bade farewell to his daughter and son-in-law on the station platform after dinner. M. and Madame Darzac had entered their compartment (the one in which the greater part of the hand luggage was placed), and chatted with the Professor through the window until the train started. As they steamed out of the station, they could see the Professor on the platform waving them a friendly goodbye. On the way from Dijon to Bourg neither M. nor Madame Darzac went into the adjoining compartment which, as I have already stated, contained Madame Darzac’s travelling bag and dressing case.

  The door of that compartment, which opened on to the corridor, had been closed in Paris as soon as Madame Darzac’s luggage had been put in its place. But the door had not been fastened, either on the outside by the railway employee or on the inside by the Darzacs. They had, however, drawn the curtains, so that no one walking along the corridor could look into the compartment. In the other compartment (that in which they were sitting) the curtains had been left open.

  These facts were obtained by Rouletabille by means of close cross-questioning which I need not set down here, but the result of which I state, so that the exact conditions of the journey of the Darzacs as far as Bourg, and of Professor Stangerson as far as Dijon, may be understood.

  When the travellers got to Bourg they learned that, owing to an accident further up the line at Couloz, their train would be kept waiting for over an hour and a half at Bourg. M. and Madame Darzac got out and walked up and down the platform, and while conversing with his wife, M. Darzac remembered several letters he had not had time to write before leaving Paris. They went into the buffet, and M. Darzac asked for writing materials.

  Mathilde had sat down beside him for a few moments, then got up and went out, saying she was going to take a little stroll around the town near the station.

  ‘All right,’ her husband had replied. ‘As soon as I’ve finished, I’ll join you.’

  ‘I had finished my letters,’ M. Darzac said, ‘and was just going out to find Mathilde, when she rushed into the buffet like a madwoman. As soon as she caught sight of me, she screamed and fell into my arms. “Oh, Heaven help me!” she cried. “Heaven help me!” She could not utter another word and was trembling like a leaf. I tried to reassure her. I said she had nothing to fear, since I was with her, and then, gently and patiently, I questioned her as to the cause of her terror. I led her to a bench (for she was scarcely able to stand), and tried to persuade her to drink something, but her teeth were chattering, and she assured me that she could not swallow even a drop of water. At last, when she was able to speak, though breaking off every other minute and glancing around with a look of terror on her face, she told me that she had gone for a walk (as she had said she would do) in front of the station, but that she had dared not go far, thinking that I would not be long finishing my letters.

  Then she had come back into the station and on to the platform. She was coming towards the buffet when, through the windows of the train, she saw the Wagon-Lits employees engaged in preparing the beds in the carriage next to ours. She suddenly remembered that the bag in which she had placed her jewels was not locked, and she wanted at once to close it, not because she doubted the honesty of the company’s employees, but out of that natural spirit of precaution one has when travelling.

  She boarded the train, walked down the corridor and reached the door of the compartment which she had reserved for her own use, and in which we had not set foot since we left Paris. She opened the door, and immediately gave a loud scream. Nobody heard her, however, for the clatter of a passing locomotive drowned every sound in the station.

  What had happened
? A terrible, fearful, monstrous thing. In the compartment, the small door leading into the dressing-room was half open, so that anyone entering the compartment got an oblique view of it. A mirror was fixed to the small door. Now, in that mirror, Mathilde had seen Larsan’s face! She fell back, calling for help, and leaped so precipitately from the carriage that she fell upon her knees on the platform. Picking herself up, she eventually reached the buffet in the state of terror which I have already described.

  When she had told me these things, my first thought was not to believe her. Firstly, because I did not wish to, as it was all too horrible, secondly, because it was my duty to pretend it was not true, since I did not wish to see Mathilde lose her sanity again. Larsan was dead. Dead as a doornail.

  As a matter of fact, I really believed what I said to her, and had no doubt that she had been the victim of her own imaginings and of some curious reflection in a mirror. Of course, I wanted to ascertain the truth, and proposed that we should return to the compartment together, intending to show her that she was mistaken. She refused absolutely to go, declaring desperately that neither she nor I should ever again set foot in that compartment; moreover, she said she would travel no further that night. She spoke haltingly, breathlessly, and my heart bled for her. The more I said that such an apparition was impossible, the more she insisted upon its reality.

  I went on to say that she had not had a good look at Larsan at the time of the attack at Glandier, which was quite true, and that, in any case, she did not know that face well enough to be certain that she had not been alarmed by a mere resemblance. She replied that she remembered Larsan’s face perfectly well, that it had appeared to her upon two occasions under circumstances that had stamped it upon her memory for ever: the first time in the gallery and the second when they had come to arrest me in her room. Besides, now that she knew who Larsan was, it was not only the detective’s features she had recognised, but also the characteristic traits of the man who had pursued her for all these years. She was willing to swear by all she held most sacred that she had just seen Ballmeyer, that Ballmeyer was alive, that it was his living image that had been reflected in the mirror, with its clean-shaven Larsan face and high, bulging forehead.

  She clung to me as though she feared some terrible separation. She dragged me along the platform. And then, suddenly, she left me, and, placing her hands before her eyes, fled into the stationmaster’s office. He was as frightened as I was at seeing the overwrought state the unfortunate creature was in. I said to myself: “She’s going mad again!” I explained that my wife had been frightened by something while she was alone in her compartment, and I begged him to watch over her while I went to the compartment to ascertain the cause.’

  ‘Then,’ Robert Darzac went on, ‘I stepped out of the stationmaster’s office, but I had no sooner set foot upon the platform than I rushed back in again, slamming the door behind me as I entered. I must have been a curious sight, for the stationmaster stared at me in bewilderment. I, too, had just seen Larsan!

  No, no, my wife had not been dreaming! Larsan was there, on the station, behind that door.’

  Having said all this, Robert Darzac was silent for a while, as if the memory of that vision unfitted him for further speech. He passed his hand over his brow, sighed, and continued:

  ‘Over the door of the stationmaster’s office was a gas-jet, and under it stood Larsan. He was evidently watching us, waiting for us. And, curiously enough, he made no attempt to hide, quite the contrary. One would have thought he was standing there on purpose in order to be seen. The impulse that had prompted me to close the door upon that apparition was purely instinctive. When I opened the door again, fully decided to go straight up to him, he had disappeared! The stationmaster thought he was dealing with a couple of lunatics. Mathilde watched me in silence, with staring eyes like a sleepwalker.

  When she realised where she was, she asked me if it was far from Bourg to Lyon, and when the next train for that city started. She asked me to give orders concerning our luggage, and begged me to arrange for us to join her father as soon as possible. That seemed to me the only way to calm her, and, far from raising any objections to this change of plans, I immediately set about putting them into action.

  Indeed, now that I had seen Larsan (yes, yes, seen him with my own eyes), I felt that our long journey had become impossible, and I must confess to you, my friend,’ added M. Darzac, turning to Rouletabille, ‘that I began to think that we were threatened by a real danger, one of those mysterious and fantastic dangers from which you alone could save us. Mathilde was most grateful for my prompt agreement that we should join her father at once, and she thanked me effusively when she learned that, in a few minutes (for the entire drama had lasted only a quarter of an hour), we would be able to catch the 9.29 train to Lyon, which was due to arrive there at about ten o’clock. On studying the timetable, we discovered that we should thus be able to join M. Stangerson at Lyon. Mathilde was as grateful to me as if I had been personally responsible for this fortunate coincidence.

  By the time the nine o’clock train steamed into the station, she was a little calmer, but as we were hurrying across the platform to take our places in the railway carriage, and we passed under the lamp where we had seen Larsan standing, I felt her shudder. I looked carefully around, but I could see nothing suspicious. I asked her if she had seen anything more, but she did not answer. Her agitation, however, increased, and she insisted that we should not get into a compartment alone, but should take our places in one which was already two-thirds full.

  Under the pretext of having to look after the luggage, I left her for a while, surrounded by the other travellers, and hurried to the telegraph office, whence I sent you that telegram. I did not tell her I had sent it, because I continued to pretend that her eyes had played her a trick, and I would not for anything in the world admit the possibility of Larsan’s resurrection. On opening my wife’s bag, I saw that her jewels had not been touched. The few words we spoke concerned the secret we must keep from M. Stangerson, who would be horrified if he suspected the truth. I will not describe to you the Professor’s astonishment on meeting us at Lyon station. Mathilde explained to her father that a serious accident had held up trains on the Couloz line and required a detour, and so we had decided to join him and go with him to visit Arthur Rance and his young wife, as, indeed, we had been invited to do by that faithful friend of the family.’

  I might as well state here that Mr Arthur William Rance, who, as I explained in The Mystery of the Yellow Room, had for long years nursed an unrequited passion for Mlle Stangerson, had ended by accepting the inevitable, and had married a young American woman who was in every respect different from Professor Stangerson’s daughter.

  After the drama at Glandier, and while Mlle Stangerson was still in a private nursing home in the suburbs of Paris, where she was slowly regaining her strength, the news came that Mr Arthur William Rance was about to wed the niece of an old geologist, a member of the Philadelphia Academy of Science. Those who had known of his unfortunate love for Mathilde, and had seen what excesses it had led him to (it had transformed a hitherto sober man into a drunkard), declared that Rance was marrying out of spite, and predicted that no good would come of such a match. It was said that the match, which was a good one for Rance (for Miss Edith Prescott was rich), had all come about rather strangely. But that is gossip which I will tell you about when I have more time. You will then learn under what circumstances the Rances had settled at Rochers Rouges, in the old fortified castle on the Hercules Peninsula which they had purchased the preceding autumn.

  But to return to M. Darzac’s story:

  ‘When we had explained things in this manner to M. Stangerson,’ said our friend, ‘it was clear that he did not understand a word of what we had told him, and he seemed sad rather than pleased to see us again. Mathilde tried in vain to appear cheerful. Her father could tell that something quite extraordinary had happened since he had last seen us, and that we were try
ing to conceal it from him. She pretended not to notice, and turned the conversation back to the wedding ceremony that morning. As she happened to mention you, my friend,’ said Darzac to Rouletabille, ‘I took the occasion to point out to Professor Stangerson that as you had no particular plans for your holiday, and we would all be together at Menton, you would greatly appreciate an invitation which would allow you to join us. I pointed out that there was no shortage of rooms at Rochers Rouges, and that Mr Arthur Rance and his young wife would be delighted to do anything to please the Professor.

  As I spoke, Mathilde glanced at me approvingly, and the squeeze she gave my hand proved to me her delight at my proposal. That is how I came to send you Professor Stangerson’s message from Valence, which you no doubt received.

  As you may well imagine, we did not sleep that night. While her father slept in the compartment next to ours, Mathilde opened her bag and took out my revolver. She had loaded it and, putting it in my overcoat pocket, she said: “If we are attacked, defend yourself.” We spent a dreadful night! We lay in silence, closing our eyes and pretending to sleep in the glare of the electric light, for we had not dared to turn out the lights in the compartment. Though the doors of our compartment were bolted, we still feared he might appear before us. When we heard a step in the corridor, our hearts jumped. We thought we recognised his step. She had covered the mirror for fear of seeing his face in it! Had he followed us? Had we been able to throw him off our track? Had we escaped him? Had he boarded the train going on to Couloz? Was that one remaining hope left to us? I did not think so. And she? As she sat silent and huddled in her corner as if unconscious, I could sense that she was in despair, more wretched even than I, because of the unhappiness she seemed to spread about her. I should have liked to comfort her, to say something which would quieten her mind, but no doubt I did not find the right words, for I had scarcely spoken when she held up her hand with a supplicating gesture, and I understood that it would be kinder to say nothing. So, like her, I closed my eyes.’