Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 52
“You ought to understand everything better now, my dear M. Darzac — both the strange coldness with which you were treated occasionally and also the fits of remorseful tenderness which, in the doubt which filled her brain, would impel Mme. Darzac to surround you with every evidence of attention and affection. And, furthermore, allow me to tell you that I myself have sometimes found you so gloomy and distrait that I have fancied that you must have discovered that whenever Mme. Darzac looked at you, she could not, in spite of herself, chase from her mind the image of Larsan. It came upon her when she spoke to you and when she was silent — when you were beside her and when you were at a distance. And, consequently — let us understand each other completely — it was not the belief that Professor Stangerson’s daughter would have known it’ which removed my suspicions, since, in spite of herself, she entertained the fear all the while that you and Larsan were one. No! no! my suspicions were removed by another cause!”
“They might have been removed,” exclaimed M. Darzac, at once ironically and despairingly— “they might have been removed, it would seem, by the simple course of reasoning that if I had been Larsan, wedded to Mlle. Stangerson, having her for my wife, I would have had every cause for making her believe in Larsan’s death! And I would have never resuscitated myself! Was it not upon the day that Larsan returned to earth that I lost Mathilde?”
“Pardon, monsieur, pardon!” replied Rouletabille, whose face had grown as white as a sheet. “You are abandoning now, if I may say so, the directions of pure reason. The facts which you mentioned show us just the contrary of that which you believe we should see. For my part, it seems to me that when one has a wife who believes, or who comes very near to believing, that one is Larsan, one has every interest in showing her that Larsan exists outside of oneself!”
As Rouletabille uttered these words, the Lady in Black, supporting herself by groping with her hands against the wall as she walked, came stumblingly to the side of Rouletabille, and devoured with her eyes the face of M. Darzac which had grown frightfully harsh and strained. As to the rest of us, we were so struck by the novelty and the irrefutability of Rouletabille’s reasoning, that we experienced no other emotion than an ardent desire to know what was to follow, and we took care not to interrupt, asking ourselves to what such a formidable hypothesis might not lead. The young man, imperturbably, went on:
“And, if you had an interest in showing her that Larsan existed elsewhere than in your body, there arose an exigency in which that interest was transformed into an immediate necessity. Imagine — I say imagine, M. Darzac, that you had really brought Larsan to life once — once only — in spite of yourself — in your own rooms — before the eyes of Professor Stangerson’s daughter — and you will be, I repeat, under the necessity of bringing him to life again and yet again — outside of yourself, in order to prove to your wife that the Larsan whom she has seen returned to life is not you! Ah, calm yourself, my dear M. Darzac, I entreat you. Have I not told you that my suspicion has been banished — completely banished? But it is as well that we should divert ourselves for a few moments in reasoning the matter out a little, after these long hours of anguish when it seemed as though there would never be any place for reasoning again. See, then, where I am obliged to come in considering this hypothesis as realized (these are the procedures of mathematics which you know better than I — yon who are a scholar!) — in considering, as I said, as realized the hypothesis that you are the counterfeit Darzac, the one which hides Larsan. According to my reasoning, then, you are Larsan! And I asked myself what could have happened in the railway station at Bourg to make you appear in the form of Larsan before the eyes of your wife. The fact of such an appearance is undeniable. It exists. And its occurrence at that moment cannot be explained by any desire on your part to have Larsan seen!”
He paused for a moment, but Robert Darzac did not utter a word.
“As you were saying, M. Darzac,” Rouletabille went on, “it was because of this apparition of Larsan that your cup of happiness was dashed empty to the ground. Therefore, if this resurrection should not have been voluntary there is only one other way in which it could have happened — through accident. And now just let us consider how this latter supposition clears up the entire situation. Oh, I have spent a lot of thought upon the incident at Bourg! — you see, I am still reasoning out the problem! You (the you who is Larsan, be it understood) are at Bourg in the buffet. You believe that your wife is waiting for you somewhere in the station as she told you she would do. After having finished your letters, you wish to go to your compartment in the car in order to attend to some detail of your toilet — or, shall we say to cast a critical eye over your disguise to see if in any point it might be lacking? You think to yourself: ‘A few more hours of this comedy and we shall have passed the frontier, she will be all my own — entirely alone with me, and I will throw aside this mask’ — for the mask wearies you a little, we may imagine — so much so, indeed, that, once arrived in your compartment, you grant yourself the grace of a few moments of repose. You cast away your assumed character and your disguise. You relieve yourself of the false beard and the spectacles — and at that very moment the door of the section opens. Your wife, thrown into a spasm of terror at the sight of Larsan’s smooth, beardless face in the glass, does not wait to make any further investigation and rushes out into the night, her screams drowned by the noise of another train. You comprehend the danger at once. You realize that everything is lost unless you can immediately arrange matters so that your wife shall see Darzac somewhere else. You quickly resume the mask; you hurry out of the compartment and reach the buffet by a shorter route than that taken by your wife, who rushes there to look for you. She finds you standing up. You have not even had time enough to seat yourself before she enters. Is everything safe now? Alas, no! Your troubles are only beginning. For the fearful thought that you may be at one and the same time both Darzac and Larsan will not leave her mind. Upon the platform of the station, while passing beneath the gas jet, she casts a frightened glance at you, lets go your hand and runs wildly into the office of the station master. You read her thought as though she had spoken it. The abominable idea must be banished without a moment’s delay. You quit the office, leaving the lady in the care of the superintendent, and immediately return, closing the door quickly, seeking to give the impression that you, too, have seen Larsan. In order to ease her mind, and, also, for the purpose of deceiving us all, in case she dared reveal her suspicions to any one, you are the first to warn me that something unforeseen has happened — to send me a dispatch. See how clear and plain as the day your every act becomes! You cannot refuse to take her to rejoin her father. She would go without you. And, since nothing is yet really lost, you have the hope that everything may be regained. In the course of the journey, your wife continues to have alternating periods of faith in you and of fear of you. She gives you her revolver, in a sort of half delirium, which might sum itself up in some such phrase as this: ‘If he is Darzac, let him protect me; if he is Larsan, let him kill me! But in pity, let me know which he is.’ At Rochers Rouges, you realized once more how utterly she had withdrawn herself from you and in order to reassure her as to your identity, you showed her Larsan again. See how in accordance with reason such a proceeding would be, my dear M. Darzac! Every fact would fit perfectly into every other under the supposition which I am placing before you. There is not a single point up to your appearance as Larsan at Mentone, during your journey as Darzac to Cannes, at the time when you came to meet us, which cannot be explained in the easiest way imaginable. You had taken the train at Mentone-Garavan before the eyes of your friends, but you alighted from the train at the next station, which is Mentone, and there, after a short stay for the purpose of altering your looks, you appeared in the image of Larsan to the same friends who were promenading in the gardens at Mentone. The following train brought you to Cannes, where you met Sainclair and myself. Only, as you had on this occasion the vexation of hearing from the lips of
Arthur Rance when he met us at the station at Nice, the news that Mme. Darzac had not, on this occasion, caught sight of Larsan, you were under the necessity that same evening of showing her Larsan under the very windows of the Square Tower, standing erect in the prow of Tullio’s boat. So, you see, my dear M. Darzac, how even those things which appear most complicated would have become entirely simple and logically explicable, if, by chance, my suspicions should have been confirmed.”
At these words, I myself, who had seen and touched “the map of Australia,” was unable to repress a shudder as I looked pityingly at Robert Darzac, just as one might look at some poor man who is on the point of becoming the victim of some hideous judicial error. And all the others, seated around me, shuddered as well, whether for him or on account of him, for the arguments of Rouletabille were becoming so terribly possible that each of us was asking himself how, after having so completely established the possibility of guilt, the young reporter could prove Darzac’s innocence. As to Robert Darzac, after having at first evinced the deepest agitation, he had grown quite tranquil and calm, as he listened attentively to every word that escaped the young man’s lips. And it seemed to me that his eyes held the same expression of astonishment, amazed and frightened, and yet full of breathless interest, which I had seen in the eyes of accused men at the bar of the Assizes when they had heard the Procurer General deliver one of his wonderful disquisitions which almost convinced the prisoners themselves that they were guilty of a crime which sometimes they had never committed.
“But since you no longer have these suspicions, monsieur!” he exclaimed, his intonation singularly calm, in spite of the fact that his voice was raised, “I should be glad to know, after all this exercise of your talent of reasoning, what could have driven them away?”
“In order to have them driven away, monsieur, one thing was essential — an absolute certitude! And I found it — a simple but conclusive proof which showed me in a manner complete and undeniable which of the two manifestations of Darzac was in reality Larsan. That proof, monsieur, was, happily, furnished me by yourself at the very moment when you closed the circle — the circle in which there had been found the ‘body too many’! — the time when, after having sworn that which was the truth — that you had drawn the bolt of your apartment as soon as you had entered your sleeping room, you had lied to us in concealing from us that you had entered that room at six o’clock instead of at five o’clock as Pere Bernier said and as we ourselves could have proved. You were then the only person except myself who knew that the Darzac who had entered at five o’clock and of whom we had spoken to you, as yourself was in reality another man. But you said nothing. And you need not pretend that you did not attach any importance to that hour of five o’clock, since it explained everything to you — since it told you that another Darzac than yourself — the true Robert Darzac — had come into the Square Tower at that time. And, after your false expressions of astonishment, how quiet you kept! Your very silence lied to us! And what interest could the true Darzac have in concealing that another Darzac, who might be Larsan, had come in before you had, and was hiding in the Square Tower? Larsan alone was the only one who was interested in hiding from us that there was another manifestation of Darzac than the one he himself bore! Of the two MANIFESTATIONS OF DARZAC, THE FALSE MUST HAVE NECESSARILY BEEN THAT ONE WHICH LIED! Thus my suspicions were driven away by certainty. You are Larsan! And the man who was hidden behind the panel was Darzac!”
“You lie!” shouted the man (I could not even yet believe him to be Larsan), hurling himself upon Rouletabille. But none of us stirred a finger and Rouletabille, who had lost nothing of his calm demeanor, extended his arm toward the panel and said:
“He is behind the panel now!”
It was an indescribable scene — a moment never to be forgotten! At the gesture of Rouletabille, the door of the panel swung open, pushed by an invisible hand, just as it had been on that terrible night which had witnessed the mystery of “the body too many.”
And the form of a man appeared. Clamors of surprise, of joy and of terror filled the Square Tower. The Lady in Black uttered a heart rending cry: “Robert! Robert! Robert!”
And it was a cry of joy! Two Darzacs before us so exactly similar that every one of us save the Lady in Black might have been deceived. But her heart told her the truth, even admitting that her reason, notwithstanding the triumphant conclusion of Rouletabille, might have hesitated. Her arms outstretched, her eyes alight with love and joy, she rushed toward the second manifestation of Darzac — the one which had descended from the panel. Mathilde’s face was radiant with new life; her sorrowful eyes which I had so often beheld fixed with sombre gloom upon that other, were shining upon this one with a joy as glorious as it was tranquil and assured. It was he! It was he whom she had believed lost — whom she had sought in vain in the visage of the other and had not found there and, therefore, had accused herself, during the weary hours of day and night, of folly which was akin to madness.
As to the man who, up to the last moment I had not believed to be guilty — as to that wretch who, unveiled and tracked to earth, found himself suddenly face to face with the living proof of his crimes, he attempted yet again, one of the daring coups which had so often saved him. Surrounded on every side, he yet endeavored to flee. Then we understood the audacious drama which in the last few moments, he had played for our benefit. When he could no longer have any doubt as to the issue of the discussion which he was holding with Rouletabille, he had had the incredible self control to permit nothing of his emotions to appear, and had also been able to prolong the situation, permitting Rouletabille to pursue at leisure the thread of the argument at the end of which he knew that he would find his doom, but during the progress of which he might discover perchance some means of escape. And he had effected his manœuvres so well that at the moment when we beheld the other Darzac advancing toward us, we could not hinder the imposter from disappearing at one bound within the room which had served as the bedchamber of Mme. Darzac and closing the door violently behind him with a rapidity which was nothing less than marvellous. We only knew that he had vanished when it was too late to stop his flight.
Rouletabille, during the scene which had passed had thought only of guarding the door opening into the corridor and he had not noticed that every movement of the false Darzac, as soon as he realized that he was being convicted of his imposture, had been in the direction of Mme. Darzac’s room. The reporter had attached no importance to these movements, knowing as he did that this room did not offer any way by which Larsan might escape. But, however, when the scoundrel was behind the door which afforded his last refuge, our confusion increased beyond all proportions. One might have thought that we had become suddenly bereft of our senses. We knocked on the door. We cried out. We thought of all his strokes of genius — of his marvellous escapes in the past!
“He will escape us! He will get away from us again!”
Arthur Rance was the most enraged of us all. Mme. Edith, who was clinging to my arm, drove her finger nails into my hand in a paroxysm of nervous fear. None of us paid any heed to the Lady in Black and Robert Darzac who, in the midst of this tempest, seemed to have forgotten everything, even the clamor and confusion around them. Neither one had spoken a word but they were looking into each other’s eyes as though they had discovered another world — the world which is love. But they had not discovered it; they had merely found it again, thanks to Rouletabille.
The latter had opened the door of the corridor and summoned the three domestics to our assistance. They entered with their rifles. But it was axes that were needed. The door was solid and barricaded with heavy bolts. Pere Jacques went out and fetched a beam which served us as a battering ram. Each of us exerted all his strength and, finally, we saw the door beginning to give way. Our anxiety was at its height. In vain, we told ourselves that we were about to enter a room in which there were only walls and barred windows. We expected anything — or, rather, we expected nothing,
for in the mind of each and every one of us was the recollection of the disappearances, the flights, the actual “dissolution of matter” which Larsan had brought about in times past and which at this moment haunted us and drove us nearly mad.
When the door had commenced to yield, Rouletabille directed the servants to take up their guns, with the order, however, that the weapons were to be used only in case it should be impossible to capture Larsan living. Then the young reporter set his shoulder to the door with one last powerful effort and as the boards, wrenched from their hinges, fell to the ground, he was the first to enter the room.
We followed him. And behind him, upon the threshold, we all halted, stupefied by the sight which met our eyes. Larsan was there — plainly to be seen by everyone. And this time there was no difficulty in recognizing him. He had removed his false beard; he had put aside his “Darzac mask”; he had resumed once more the pale, clean-shaven face of that Frederic Larsan whom we had known at the Château of Glandier. And his presence seemed to fill the entire room. He was lying back comfortably in an easy chair in the center of the room and was looking at us with his great, calm eyes. His arm was stretched along the arm of the chair. His head was resting on the cushion at the back. One would have said that he was giving us an audience and was waiting for us to make known our business. It seemed to me that I could even discern an ironical smile on his lips.
Rouletabille advanced toward him.
“Larsan,” he said in a voice which was not quite steady, “Larsan, do you give yourself up?”
But Larsan did not reply.
Then Rouletabille touched the man’s face and his hand and we saw that Larsan was dead.
Rouletabille pointed to a ring on the middle finger. The collet was open and showed a hollow cup which was empty. It must have contained a deadly poison.
Arthur Rance put his head against the man’s chest and assured us that all was over. And Rouletabille entreated us to leave him alone in the Square Tower and to try and forget the terrible events which had passed there.