Plongez dans l’univers captivant de Gaston Leroux avec *Le parfum de la dame en noir*, la suite palpitante du célèbre *Mystère de la chambre jaune*. 🕵️♂️ Ce chef-d’œuvre du roman policier français vous entraîne dans un tourbillon de mystères, de complots et de révélations inattendues.
🔎 **Résumé captivant :**
– Retrouvez Joseph Rouletabille, le jeune reporter-détective, confronté à une nouvelle énigme encore plus troublante.
– Entre ombres du passé et secrets bien gardés, chaque indice rapproche ou éloigne de la vérité.
– Une atmosphère pleine de tension, de rebondissements et de suspense haletant.
✨ **Pourquoi écouter cette œuvre ?**
– Un des classiques incontournables du roman policier français.
– Une intrigue riche en suspense et en psychologie des personnages.
– Un voyage littéraire dans l’imaginaire brillant de Gaston Leroux.
📌 **Parfait pour :**
– Les passionnés de mystères et d’énigmes.
– Les amateurs de littérature française du début du XXe siècle.
– Ceux qui ont adoré *Le mystère de la chambre jaune* et veulent découvrir la suite.
🎧 Installez-vous confortablement et laissez-vous emporter par l’univers envoûtant de Gaston Leroux.
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**Navigate by Chapters or Titles:**
00:00:44 Chapter 1.
00:22:28 Chapter 2.
00:33:40 Chapter 3.
00:53:42 Chapter 4.
01:16:24 Chapter 5.
01:49:58 Chapter 6.
02:18:28 Chapter 7.
02:54:30 Chapter 8.
03:06:59 Chapter 9.
03:38:45 Chapter 10.
04:47:23 Chapter 11.
05:04:00 Chapter 12.
05:20:59 Chapter 13.
05:49:23 Chapter 14.
06:14:44 Chapter 15.
06:25:10 Chapter 16.
06:44:38 Chapter 17.
06:56:25 Chapter 18.
07:14:39 Chapter 19.
07:26:27 Chapter 20.
Welcome to the captivating world of Gaston Leroux, where mystery and intrigue intertwine to create one of his most captivating stories: The Perfume of the Lady in Black. This work is the direct sequel to the famous Mystery of the Yellow Room, and draws us into a new series of secrets, dangers, and revelations. Joseph Rouletabille, our young reporter-detective of incomparable genius, is back to solve a case where shadow and light clash. Between hidden passions, refined plots, and an oppressive atmosphere, each page brings us closer to an unsuspected truth . Prepare to follow this thrilling investigation step by step, where nothing is left to chance and every detail can change the course of destiny. Chapter 1. Who Begins Where Novels End The marriage of Mr. Robert Darzac and Miss Mathilde Stangerson took place in Paris, at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, on April 6, 1895, in the strictest privacy. A little more than two years had passed since the events I reported in a previous work, events so sensational that it is not rash to affirm here that such a short lapse of time could not have made us forget the famous Mystery of the Yellow Room… This was still so present in everyone’s minds that the little church would certainly have been invaded by a crowd eager to contemplate the heroes of a drama that had captivated the world, if the wedding ceremony had not been kept completely secret, which had been quite easy in this parish far from the school district. Only a few friends of Mr. Darzac and Professor Stangerson, whose discretion could be relied upon, had been invited. I was among them; I arrived early at the church, and my first concern, naturally, was to look for Joseph Rouletabille. I had been a little disappointed not to see him, but there was no doubt in my mind that he would come, and while I waited, I approached Master Henri-Robert and Master André Hesse, who, in the peace and quiet of the little chapel of Saint-Charles, were whispering to themselves the most curious incidents of the Versailles trial, which the imminent ceremony brought back to their minds. I listened to them distractedly while examining the things around me. My God! What a sad thing your Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet is! Decrepit, cracked, crevassed, dirty, not with that august filth of the ages, which is the most beautiful adornment of stone, but with that filthy and dusty filth which seems peculiar to these districts of Saint-Victor and Bernardins, at the crossroads of which it is so singularly set, this church, so dark on the outside, is gloomy inside. The sky, which seems further from this holy place than anywhere else, pours down a miserly light which has all the trouble in the world to find the faithful through the age-old filth of the stained-glass windows. Have you read Renan’s Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse? Then push open the door of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet and you will understand how the author of the Life of Jesus, who was shut up next door, in the adjacent minor seminary of Abbé Dupanloup and who only left it to come and pray here, wanted to die. And it was in this funereal darkness, in a setting that seemed to have been invented only for mourning, for all the rites dedicated to the dead, that the marriage of Robert Darzac and Mathilde Stangerson was to be celebrated! I felt great pain and, sadly impressed, drew from it a sad omen. Beside me, Maîtres Henri-Robert and André Hesse were still chatting, and the former admitted to the latter that he had only been finally reassured about the fate of Robert Darzac and Mathilde Stangerson, even after the happy outcome of the Versailles trial, upon learning of the officially recorded death of their ruthless enemy: Frédéric Larsan. It may be recalled that it was a few months after the acquittal of the professor at the Sorbonne that the terrible disaster of La Dordogne, a transatlantic liner that operated from Le Havre to New York, occurred. In foggy weather, at night, on the Newfoundland Banks, the Dordogne had been approached by a three-masted ship whose bow had entered its engine room. And, while the boarding ship was drifting away, the liner had sunk steeply , in ten minutes. Barely thirty passengers whose cabins were on the deck had time to jump into the boats. They were picked up the next day by a fishing boat which immediately returned to Saint-Jean. In the following days, the ocean threw up hundreds of dead bodies, among whom Larsan was found. The documents that were discovered, carefully sewn and hidden in the clothing of a corpse, attested, this time, that Larsan had lived! Mathilde Stangerson was finally freed from this fantastic husband whom, thanks to the facilities of American law, she had secretly given herself, in the imprudent hours of her overconfident youth. This dreadful bandit, whose real name, illustrious in judicial annals, was Ballmeyer, and who had once married her under the name of Jean Roussel, would no longer come to criminally stand between her and the man who, for so many years, silently and heroically loved her. I recalled, in The Mystery of the Yellow Room, all the details of this sensational affair, one of the most curious that can be found in the annals of the Assize Court, and which would have had the most tragic outcome without the almost brilliant intervention of this little eighteen-year-old reporter, Joseph Rouletabille, who was the only one to discover, in the guise of the famous security agent Frédéric Larsan, Ballmeyer himself!… The accidental and, we can say, providential death of the wretch had seemed to put an end to so many dramatic events and it was not – let us admit it – one of the least causes of the rapid recovery of Mathilde Stangerson, whose reason had been strongly shaken by the mysterious horrors of the Glandier. You see, my dear friend, said Master Henri-Robert to Master André Hesse, whose anxious eyes were scanning the church, — you see, in life, one must be decidedly optimistic. Everything works out! Even the misfortunes of Miss Stangerson… But why are you always looking behind you like that? Who are you looking for?… Are you waiting for someone? “Yes,” replied Master André Hesse… “I’m waiting for Frédéric Larsan!” Master Henri-Robert laughed as much as the sanctity of the place allowed him to laugh; but I didn’t laugh, for I was not far from thinking like Master Hesse. Certainly! I was a hundred leagues from foreseeing the terrible adventure that threatened us; But when I look back on that time and disregard all that I have learned since—which, moreover, I will honestly apply myself to in the course of this story, only letting the truth emerge as it was distributed to us—I remember very well the curious emotion that agitated me then at the thought of Larsan. Come now, Sainclair! said Master Henri-Robert, who had noticed my singular attitude, you see that Hesse is joking… “I don’t know!” I replied. And there I was looking attentively around me, as Master André Hesse had done. In truth, Larsan had been thought dead so often when he was called Ballmeyer, that he could well rise again once more in the state of Larsan. Look! Here is Rouletabille,” said Master Henri-Robert. “I bet he is more reassured than you. ” “Oh! oh! he is very pale!” remarked Master André Hesse. The young reporter was coming towards us. He shook our hands rather distractedly. Good morning, Sainclair; good morning, gentlemen… I’m not late? It seemed to me that his voice trembled… He moved away immediately, withdrew into a corner, and I saw him kneel on a prie-dieu like a child. He hid his face, which he was indeed very pale, in his hands, and prayed. I did not know that Rouletabille was pious and his ardent prayer astonished me. When he raised his head, his eyes were full of tears. He did not hide them; he was not at all concerned about what was happening passed around him; he was entirely absorbed in his prayer and perhaps in his sorrow. What sorrow? Shouldn’t he be happy to witness a union desired by all? Wasn’t the happiness of Robert Darzac and Mathilde Stangerson his work? After all, it was perhaps from happiness that the young man was crying. He got up and went to hide in the darkness under a pillar. I took care not to follow him there, for I saw clearly that he wanted to be alone. And then, it was the moment when Mathilde Stangerson made her entrance into the church, arm in arm with her father. Robert Darzac walked behind them. How changed they were, all three of them! Ah! the tragedy of the Glandier had passed so painfully over these three beings! But, extraordinary thing, Mathilde Stangerson only appeared more beautiful ! Certainly, it was no longer this magnificent person, this living marble, this ancient divinity, this cold pagan beauty who aroused, in her footsteps, at the official festivals of the Third Republic, which her father’s prominent position forced her to attend, a discreet murmur of ecstatic admiration; it seemed, on the contrary, that fate, in making her atone so late for an imprudence committed so young, had only precipitated her into a momentary crisis of despair and madness to make her abandon this mask of stone behind which hid the most delicate and tender soul. And it was this soul, still unknown, which shone that day, it seemed to me, with the most suave and charming radiance, on the pure oval of her face, in her eyes full of a happy sadness, on her forehead polished like ivory, where one could read the love of all that was beautiful and all that was good. As for her attire, I will foolishly admit that I no longer remember it and that it would be impossible for me to even say the color of her dress. But what I do remember, for example, is the strange expression her gaze suddenly assumed when she did not discover among us the one she was looking for. She only seemed to become completely calm and self-possessed again when she finally saw Rouletabille behind his pillar. She smiled at him and smiled back at us. She still has those mad eyes! I turned quickly to see who had uttered that abominable phrase. It was a poor fellow whom Robert Darzac, in his kindness, had appointed laboratory assistant at his home at the Sorbonne. His name was Brignolles and he was vaguely the groom’s cousin. We knew of no other relatives of M. Darzac, whose family came from the south. M. Darzac had long since lost his father and mother; he had neither brother nor sister and seemed to have broken off all ties with his country, from which he had brought back only an ardent desire to succeed, an exceptional capacity for work, a solid intelligence and a natural need for affection and devotion which had eagerly found the opportunity to satisfy itself with Professor Stangerson and his daughter. He had also brought back from Provence, his native country, a gentle accent which had at first made his students at the Sorbonne smile, but which they had soon come to love like a pleasant and discreet music which somewhat attenuated the necessary aridity of the lessons of their young master, already famous. One fine morning the previous spring, therefore about a year ago, Robert Darzac had introduced them to Brignolles. He had come straight from Aix where he had been a physics instructor and where he had had to commit some disciplinary offence which had suddenly thrown him onto the streets; but he had remembered in time that he was related to M. Darzac, had taken the train to Paris and had managed to soften Mathilde Stangerson’s fiancé so well that the latter, taking pity on him, had found a way to involve him in his work. At that time, Robert Darzac’s health was far from flourishing. She was suffering the after-effects of the tremendous emotions that had assailed her at Glandier and in the Assize Court; but one might have believed that Mathilde’s recovery, now assured, and the prospect of their next hymen would have the happiest influence on the moral and, by extension, on the physical state of the professor. Now, we all noticed on the contrary that, from the day he joined this Brignolles, whose assistance was to be, he said, of precious relief to him, the weakness of Mr. Darzac only increased. Finally, we also noted that Brignolles was not bringing him luck, because two unfortunate accidents occurred one after the other during experiments which nevertheless seemed to present no danger: the first resulted from the unexpected bursting of a Gessler tube whose debris could have dangerously injured Mr. Darzac and which only injured Brignolles, who still retained some scars on his hands. The second, which could have been extremely serious, occurred following the stupid explosion of a small gasoline lamp, over which Mr. Darzac was just leaning. The flame almost burned his face; Fortunately, this did not happen, but it burned his eyelashes and caused him, for some time, trouble with his eyesight, so that he could hardly bear full sunlight . Since the mysteries of the Glandier, I had been in such a state of mind that I found myself quite disposed to consider the simplest events as unnatural . At the time of this last accident, I was present, having come to fetch M. Darzac from the Sorbonne. I myself drove our friend to a pharmacist and from there to a doctor, and I rather curtly begged Brignolles, who expressed a desire to accompany us, to remain at his post. On the way, M. Darzac asked me why I had jostled poor Brignolles like that; I replied that I was angry with this boy in a general way because his manners did not please me, and in a particular way, that day, because I felt that he should be held responsible for the accident. M. Darzac wanted to know the reason; but I didn’t know what to say and he started laughing. M. Darzac stopped laughing, however, when the doctor told him that he could have lost his sight and that it was a miracle that he got off so lightly. The worry that Brignolles caused me was, no doubt, ridiculous, and the accidents did not recur. All the same, I was so extraordinarily prejudiced against him that, deep down, I could not forgive him that M. Darzac’s health did not improve. At the beginning of winter, he coughed, so much so that I begged him, and we all begged him, to ask for leave and go and rest in the south. The doctors advised him to go to San Remo. He went there and, eight days later, he wrote to us that he felt much better; It seemed to him that since he had arrived in this country, a weight had been lifted from his chest!… I can breathe!… I can breathe!… he told us. When I left Paris, I was suffocating! This letter from M. Darzac gave me a lot to think about and I did not hesitate to share my thoughts with Rouletabille. Now, he was willing to share my astonishment with me that M. Darzac was so ill when he was with Brignolles, and so well when he was away from him… This impression was so strong in me, especially, that I would not have allowed Brignolles to be absent. My goodness, no! If he had left Paris, I would have been capable of following him! But he did not go ; on the contrary. The Stangersons never had him near them again. Under the pretext of asking for news of Mr. Darzac, he was constantly hanging around at Mr. Stangerson’s. He managed to see Miss Stangerson once , but I had painted such a picture of the physics coach to Mr. Darzac’s fiancée that I succeeded in disgusting her forever, for which I was inwardly pleased. Mr. Darzac stayed four months in San Remo and returned to us almost completely recovered. His eyes, however, were still weak and he needed to take the greatest care of them. Rouletabille and I had decided to keep an eye on Brignolles, but we were pleased to learn that the wedding was going to take place almost immediately and that Mr. Darzac would take his wife on a long journey, far from Paris and… far from Brignolles. On his return from San Remo, Mr. Darzac had asked me: Well, how are you doing with this poor Brignolles? Have you come back to him? “Well, no!” I had replied. And he had made fun of me again, sending me some of those Provençal jokes that he was fond of when events allowed him to be cheerful, and which had found a new flavor in his mouth since his stay in the south had restored to his accent all its beautiful initial color. He was happy! But we could not have a true idea of his happiness – for, between his return and his marriage, we had few opportunities to see him – except on the very threshold of this church where he appeared to us as if transformed. He straightened his slightly stooped figure with a very understandable pride. Happiness made him taller and more handsome! It’s a case of saying that the boss is at the wedding! sneered Brignolles. I moved away from this man who disgusted me and advanced right up to the back of poor Mr. Stangerson, who remained with his arms crossed throughout the ceremony, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. They had to tap him on the shoulder, when it was all over, to wake him from his dream. When they passed into the sacristy, Master André Hesse heaved a deep sigh. That’s it! he said. I’m breathing… “Why weren’t you breathing, my friend?” asked Master Henri-Robert. Then Master André Hesse admitted that he had dreaded the arrival of the dead man until the last minute… What can you do! he replied to his mocking colleague, I cannot get used to the idea that Frédéric Larsan would agree to be dead for good!… .. .. .. .. .. We were all now—about ten people at most —in the sacristy. The witnesses were signing the registers and the others were kindly congratulating the newlyweds. This sacristy is even darker than the church and I might have thought that it was due to this darkness that I did not see Joseph Rouletabille at such a moment, if the room had not been so small. Obviously, he was not there. What did that mean? Mathilde had already asked for him twice and M. Robert Darzac asked me to go and get him, which I did; but I went back into the sacristy without him; I had not found him. That is strange, said M. Darzac, and quite inexplicable. Are you sure you have looked everywhere? He will be in some corner, dreaming. “I looked everywhere for him and I called him,” I replied. But M. Darzac did not stick to what I told him. He wanted to go around the church himself. All the same, he was luckier than I, for he learned from a beggar who was standing under the porch with his cup that a young man who could not, in fact, be Rouletabille had left the church a few minutes earlier and gone away in a cab. When he reported this news to his wife, she seemed pained beyond expression. She called me and said: My dear Mr. Sainclair, you know that we are taking the train in two hours from the Gare de Lyon; Look for our little friend and bring him to me, and tell him that his inexplicable behavior worries me greatly… “Count on me,” I said… And I set out to hunt for Rouletabille immediately. But I returned empty-handed to the Gare de Lyon. Neither at his house, nor at the newspaper, nor at the Café du Barreau where the necessities of his work often forced him to be at that time of day, could I lay my hands on him. None of his comrades could tell me where I might have any chance of meeting him. I leave you to imagine how sadly I was received on the station platform. M. Darzac was heartbroken; but, as he had to see to the passengers’ accommodations, for Professor Stangerson, who was going to Menton, at the Rances’, accompanied the newlyweds to Dijon, while they continued their journey via Culoz and Mont-Cenis, he asked me to announce this bad news to his wife. I carried out the sad commission, adding that Rouletabille would undoubtedly come before the train left. At the first words I said to her about this, Mathilde began to cry softly, and she shook her head: No! No!… it’s over!… He won’t come anymore!… And she got into her carriage… It was then that the insufferable Brignolles, seeing the emotion of the new bride, could not help repeating again to Maître André Hesse, who, moreover, silenced him very dishonestly, as he deserved: Just look! Just look!… I tell you she still has those crazy eyes!… Ah! Robert was wrong… he would have done better to wait! I can still see Brignolles saying this, and I remember the feeling of horror that, at that very moment, he inspired in me. There had been no doubt in my mind for a long time that this Brignolles was a wicked man, and above all a jealous one, and that he did not forgive his relative for the service the latter had rendered him by placing him in a completely subordinate position. He had a yellow complexion and long features, drawn from top to bottom. Everything about him seemed bitter, and everything about him was long. He had a long stature, long arms, long legs, and a long head. However, to this rule of length, an exception had to be made for the feet and hands. His extremities were small and almost elegant. Having been so abruptly reprimanded for his wicked remarks by the young lawyer, Brignolles conceived an immediate grudge and left the station after offering his courtesies to the couple. At least, I thought he left the station, for I did not see him again. We still had three minutes before the train left. We still hoped for Rouletabille’s arrival, and we all examined the platform, thinking we would finally see the friendly face of our young friend appear among the hasty crowd of late travelers. How was it that he did not appear, as was his custom and his way, pushing past everyone and everything, not paying attention to the protests and shouts that usually signaled his passage in a crowd where he always appeared to be in a greater hurry than the others? What was he doing?… The doors were already being closed; we could hear their brutal slamming… And then came the brief invitations from the employees… In the car! Gentlemen!… in the car!… a few more gallops… the high-pitched blast of the whistle that commanded departure… then the hoarse clamor of the locomotive, and the train set off… But no Rouletabille!… We were so sad and also so astonished that we remained on the platform looking at Madame Darzac without thinking of expressing our wishes for a good journey. Professor Stangerson’s daughter cast a long glance at the platform and, at the moment when the train began to accelerate , certain now that she would no longer see her little friend before its departure, she handed me an envelope through the window… For him! she said… And she added suddenly, with a face overcome by such sudden terror, and in such a strange tone that I could not help thinking of Brignolles’s nefarious reflections. Goodbye, my friends!… or farewell! Chapter 2. Concerning the changing mood of Joseph Rouletabille Returning alone from the station, I could only be astonished by the singular sadness that had invaded me, without being able to precisely unravel the cause. Since the Versailles trial, in the events of which I had been so intimately involved, I had formed a very close friendship with Professor Stangerson, his daughter, and Robert Darzac. I should have been particularly happy about an event that seemed to satisfy everyone . I thought that the extraordinary absence of the young reporter must have something to do with this sort of prostration. Rouletabille had been treated by the Stangersons and Mr. Darzac as a savior. And, above all, since Mathilde had left the nursing home where the disarray of her mind had required care for several months diligent, ever since the daughter of the illustrious professor had been able to realize the extraordinary role played by this child in a drama in which, without him, she would inevitably have foundered with all those she loved, ever since she had read with all her reason, finally recovered, the stenographed report of the debates in which Rouletabille appeared as a miraculous little hero, there was no quasi-maternal attention with which she had not surrounded my friend. She had been interested in everything that concerned him, she had excited his confidences, she had wanted to know more about Rouletabille than I knew and perhaps more than he himself knew. She had shown a discreet but continuous curiosity regarding an origin that we all ignored and about which the young man had continued to remain silent with a sort of fierce pride. Very sensitive to the tender friendship that the poor woman showed him, Rouletabille nevertheless maintained an extreme reserve and affected, in his relations with her, a moved politeness which always surprised me coming from a boy whom I had known to be so spontaneous, so exuberant, so wholehearted in his sympathies or in his aversions. More than once, I had remarked on this to him, and he had always answered me in an evasive manner while making a great display, however, of his devoted feelings for a person whom he esteemed, he said, more than anything in the world, and for whom he would have been ready to sacrifice everything if fate or fortune had given him the opportunity to sacrifice something for someone. He also had moments of incomprehensible humor. For example, after having made a point, in front of me, of going to spend a long day of rest with the Stangersons who had rented for the summer season – because they no longer wanted to live in the Glandier – a pretty little property on the banks of the Marne, at Chennevières, and after having shown, at the prospect of such a happy leave, a childish joy, he would suddenly refuse, for no apparent reason, to accompany me. And I had to leave alone, leaving him in the little room he had kept at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. I resented all the trouble he was causing this good Miss Stangerson. One Sunday, she, outraged by my friend’s attitude, decided to go and surprise him with me in his retreat in the Latin Quarter.
When we arrived at his house, Rouletabille, who had responded with an energetic: “Come in!” At the knock I had knocked at his door, Rouletabille, who was working at his little table, stood up when he saw us and became so pale… so pale that we thought he was going to faint. My God! cried Mathilde Stangerson, rushing towards him. But, quicker than she, before she had reached the table where he was leaning, he had thrown a morocco napkin over the papers scattered there, which completely hid them. Mathilde had naturally seen the gesture. She stopped, quite surprised. Are we disturbing you? she said in a tone of gentle reproach. “No!” he replied, “I have finished working. I will show it to you later . It is a masterpiece, a play in five acts whose ending I cannot find.” And he smiled. Soon he became completely in control of himself again and told us a hundred jokes, thanking us for coming to disturb his solitude. He absolutely wanted to invite us to dinner, and the three of us went to eat in a restaurant in the Latin Quarter, at Foyot’s. What a lovely evening! Rouletabille had telephoned Robert Darzac, who came to join us for dessert. At that time, M. Darzac was not too ill, and the astonishing Brignolles had not yet made his appearance in the capital. We had fun like children. That summer evening was so beautiful and so mild in the solitary Luxembourg. Before leaving Mlle Stangerson, Rouletabille asked her forgiveness for the strange mood he sometimes displayed and accused himself of having, deep down, a very nasty character. Mathilde kissed him, and Robert Darzac also embraced him. And he was so moved that, during the time I was escorting him to his door, he didn’t say a word to me; but, when we were about to part, he shook my hand as he had never done before. Funny little fellow!… Ah! if I had known!… How I reproach myself now for having, at times, at that time, judged him with a little too much impatience… Thus, sad, sad, assailed by forebodings that I tried in vain to chase away, I returned from the Gare de Lyon, recalling the innumerable fantasies, oddities, and sometimes painful whims of Rouletabille during these last two years, but nothing, however, none of all that could make me foresee what had just happened, and still less explain it to me. Where was Rouletabille? I went to his hotel on Boulevard Saint-Michel, telling myself that if I didn’t find him there again, I could at least leave Madame Darzac’s letter. Imagine my astonishment when I entered the hotel to find my servant there carrying my suitcase! I asked him to explain to me what that meant, and he replied that he didn’t know: that I should ask Monsieur Rouletabille. The latter, in fact, while I was looking for him everywhere, except, of course, at my own house, had gone to my house on Rue de Rivoli, had my servant take him to my room, had a suitcase brought to him, and had carefully filled it with all the linen necessary for an honest man preparing to go on a trip for four or five days. Then, he had ordered my idiot to transport this small baggage, an hour later, to his hotel on Boul’Mich’. I only made a leap to my friend’s room where I found him meticulously piling toiletries, day clothes, and a nightgown into a sleeping bag. Until this task was completed, I could get nothing out of Rouletabille, because, in the little things of everyday life, he was willingly a person with mental health problems and, despite the modesty of his resources, was keen to live very well, having a horror of anything that even remotely touched on bohemianism. He finally deigned to tell me that we were going to take our Easter vacation, and that, since I was free and his newspaper, L’Époque, was granting him three days’ leave, we could do no better than go and rest at the seaside. I didn’t even reply, so furious was I at the way he had just behaved, and also so stupid did I find this proposal to go and contemplate the ocean or the Channel in one of those abominable spring weathers which, every year, for two or three weeks, make us miss winter. But he wasn’t unduly moved by my silence, and, taking my suitcase in one hand, his bag in the other, pushing me up the stairs, he soon had me boarding a cab waiting for us outside the hotel door. Half an hour later, we both found ourselves in a first-class compartment of the Northern line, which ran to Le Tréport, via Amiens. As we entered Creil station, he said to me: Why don’t you give me the letter you were given for me? I looked at him. He had guessed that Madame Darzac would be very upset not to have seen him when he left and that she would write to him. That wasn’t very clever. I replied: Because you don’t deserve it. And I made bitter reproaches to him, which he paid no attention to. He didn’t even try to excuse himself, which made me angrier than anything. Finally, I gave him the letter. He took it, looked at it, and inhaled its sweet scent. As I regarded him with curiosity, he frowned, hiding, beneath that forbidding expression, a sovereign emotion. But in the end, he was only able to hide it from me by leaning his forehead against the window and absorbing himself in a deep study of the landscape. Well, I asked him, don’t you read it? — No, he answered me, not here!… But over there!… We arrived at Le Tréport in the middle of the night, after six hours of an interminable journey and in terrible weather. The sea wind chilled us and swept across the deserted quay. We only encountered a customs officer, enclosed in his greatcoat and hood, pacing up and down on the canal bridge. Not a single car, of course. A few throttle valves, quivering in their glass cages, reflected their dim glare in large puddles of rain where we waded at will, while we bent our foreheads under the gust. In the distance we could hear the sound of the little wooden clogs of a belated Tréportaise woman, clacking on the resonant flagstones. If we did not fall into the great black hole of the outer harbor, it was because we were warned of the danger by the salty freshness rising from the abyss and by the roar of the tide. I grumbled behind Rouletabille, who was having some difficulty directing us in the damp darkness. However, he must have known the place, because we arrived all the same, lurching along, odiously slapped by the sea spray, at the door of the only hotel that remains open, during the bad season, on the beach. Rouletabille immediately asked for supper and a fire, for we were very hungry and very cold. Oh, will you deign to let me know what we have come to seek in this country, apart from the rheumatism that lies in wait for us and the pleurisy that threatens us? For Rouletabille, at that moment, was coughing and could not get warm. Oh! he said, I will tell you. We have come to seek the perfume of the Lady in Black! This sentence gave me so much food for thought that I hardly slept at night. Outside, the sea wind was still howling, hissing its vast wail across the shore, then suddenly rushing into the small streets of the town, as if into corridors. I thought I heard movement in the next room, which was my friend’s: I got up and pushed open his door. Despite the cold, despite the wind, he had opened his window, and I saw him distinctly blowing kisses into the shade. He was embracing the night! I closed the door and discreetly went back to bed. The next morning, I was awakened by a terrified Rouletabille. His face showed extreme anguish and he handed me a telegram that had come to him from Bourg and which, on his orders, had been forwarded from Paris. Here is the dispatch: Come immediately without losing a minute. We have given up our trip to the Orient and are going to join Mr. Stangerson in Menton, at the Rances, at the Rochers Rouges. Let this dispatch remain secret between us. We must not frighten anyone. You can pretend to us that you are on leave, whatever you like, but come! Telegraph me poste restante in Menton. Quick, quick, I am waiting for you. Yours in despair, DARZAC. Chapter 3. The Perfume Well, I cried, jumping out of bed. That doesn’t surprise me!… “You never believed in his death?” Rouletabille asked me with such emotion that I could not explain it, despite the horror that emanated from the situation, even if we were to take the terms of M. Darzac’s telegram literally. Not too much, I said. He needed so much to pass for dead that he was able to sacrifice a few papers during the catastrophe at La Dordogne. But what is the matter with you, my friend? You seem extremely weak . Are you sick?… Rouletabille had let himself fall onto a chair. It was in an almost trembling voice that he confided to me in turn that he had not really believed in his death until after the marriage ceremony was over. It could not enter the young man’s mind that Larsan would have allowed the act of giving Mathilde Stangerson to M. Darzac to take place, if he had still been alive. Larsan had only to show himself to prevent the marriage; and, however dangerous this manifestation would have been for him , he would not have hesitated to give himself up, knowing the religious feelings of Professor Stangerson’s daughter, and knowing well that she would never have consented to bind her fate to another man, living with her first husband, even if she found herself freed from him by human law? In vain would one have invoked before her the nullity of this first marriage in the eyes of French law, the fact remained that a priest had made her the wife of a wretch, forever ! And Rouletabille, wiping the sweat that trickled from his brow, added: Alas! Remember, my friend… in Larsan’s eyes “the presbytery has lost none of its charm, nor the garden of its splendor”! I put my hand on Rouletabille’s hand. He had a fever. I wanted to calm him, but he did not hear me: “And now he would have waited until after the wedding, a few hours after the wedding, to appear,” he cried. “Because, for me, as for you, Sainclair, is it not?” M. Darzac’s dispatch would mean nothing if it did not mean that the other had returned. — Obviously!… But M. Darzac could have been mistaken!… — Oh! M. Darzac is not a child who is afraid… however, one must hope, one must hope, mustn’t one, Sainclair? That he was mistaken!… No, no! It is not possible, it would be too dreadful!… too dreadful… My friend! My friend!… oh! Sainclair, it would be too terrible!… I had never seen, even at the time of the worst events at Glandier, Rouletabille so agitated. He had risen, now… he was walking around the room, moving things around for no reason, then looking at me, repeating: Too terrible!… too terrible! I pointed out to him that it was not reasonable to get into such a state, following a telegram that proved nothing and could be the result of some hallucination… And then, I added that it was not at the moment when we were doubtless going to need all our composure, that we should allow ourselves to give in to such terrors, inexcusable in a boy of his stamp. Inexcusable!… Really, Sainclair… inexcusable!… — But, finally, my dear… you frighten me!… what is going on? — You will find out… The situation is horrible… Why is he not dead? — And what tells you, after all, that he is not. —You see, Sainclair… Hush!… Be quiet… Be quiet, Sainclair!… You see, if he’s alive, I’d just as soon be dead! — No one mentally ill! No one mentally ill! No one mentally ill! It’s especially if he’s alive that you must be alive, to defend her! — Oh! oh! That’s true! What you just said, Sainclair!… It’s exactly true!… Thank you, my friend!… You said the only word that can make me live: Her! Do you believe that!… I was only thinking of myself!… I was only thinking of myself!… And Rouletabille sneered, and, in truth, I was afraid, in my turn, to see him sneer like that and I begged him, holding him in my arms, to please tell me why he was so frightened, why he was talking about his own death, why he was sneering like that… As if to a friend, as if to your best friend, Rouletabille!… Speak, speak! Relieve yourself!… Tell me your secret! Tell me it, since it’s suffocating you!… I’ll open my heart to you… Rouletabille placed his hand on my shoulder… He looked deep into my eyes, deep into my heart, and he said to me: You’re going to know everything, Sainclair, you’re going to know as much as I do, and you’re going to be as frightened as I am, my friend, because you ‘re good, and I know that you love me! At that, as I thought he was going to be moved, he limited himself to asking for the railway timetable. We are leaving at one o’clock, he told me, there is no direct train between the town of Eu and Paris in winter; we will not arrive in Paris until seven o’clock. But we will have plenty of time to pack our suitcases and take the nine o’clock train to Marseille and Menton at the Gare de Lyon. He did not even ask my opinion; he was taking me to Menton as he had taken me to Le Tréport; he knew well that in the present circumstances I had nothing to refuse him. Besides, I saw him in such an abnormal state that, had he not wanted me, I would not have left. And then, we were entering the middle of vacation time and my business at the palace left me completely free. So we’re going to the town of Eu? I asked. “Yes, we’ll take the train there. It takes barely half an hour to drive from Le Tréport to Eu… ” “We won’t have stayed in this country for a long time,” I said. “Enough, I hope… enough for what I came here to seek, alas!…” I thought of the perfume of the Lady in Black, and I was silent. Hadn’t he told me that I was going to know everything? He took me to the jetty. The wind was still violent and we had to take shelter behind the lighthouse. He remained thoughtful for a moment and closed his eyes as he looked out at the sea. “It was here,” he finally said, “that I saw her for the last time.” He looked at the stone bench. We sat there; she held me close to her heart. I was a very small child; I was nine years old… she told me to stay there, on that bench, and then she went away and I never saw her again… It was evening… a sweet summer evening, the evening of the prize-giving… Oh! she hadn’t been to the prize-giving, but I knew she would come in the evening… an evening full of stars and so clear that I hoped for a moment to make out her face. However, she covered herself with her veil and sighed. And then she left. I never saw her again. — And you, my friend? — Me? — Yes; what did you do? Did you stay on that bench for a long time?… — I would have liked to… But the coachman came to get me and I went back… — Where? — Well, but… to the college… — So there is a college in Le Tréport? — No, but there is one in Eu… I went back to the college in Eu… He signaled me to follow him. We’re going, he said… How do you expect me to know here?… There have been too many storms!… Half an hour later we were in Eu. At the bottom of the Rue des Marronniers, our carriage rolled noisily over the hard cobblestones of the large, cold, deserted square, while the coachman announced his arrival by cracking his whip with all his might, filling the small, dead town with the heart-rending music of his leather thong. Soon, we could hear a clock striking above the rooftops— the college clock, Rouletabille told me—and all fell silent. The horse and the carriage had stopped in the square. The coachman had disappeared into a cabaret. We entered the icy shadow of the tall Gothic church that bordered the main square on one side. Rouletabille glanced at the castle, whose pink brick architecture crowned with vast Louis XIII roofs could be seen, a gloomy façade that seemed to weep for its exiled princes; he gazed melancholically at the square building of the town hall, which was advancing towards us with the hostile spear of its dirty flag, the silent houses, the Café de Paris—the café of the gentlemen officers—the barber’s shop, the bookseller’s. Wasn’t it there that he had bought his first new books, paid for by the Lady in Black?… Nothing has changed!… An old, colorless dog, on the bookseller’s threshold, stretched its lazy muzzle over its frozen paws. It’s Cham! said Rouletabille. Oh! I recognize him well!… It’s Cham! It’s my good Cham! And he called him: Cham! Cham!… The dog rose up, turned towards us, listening to the voice that was calling him. He took a few difficult steps, brushed past us, and returned to lie down on his threshold, indifferent. Oh! said Rouletabille, it’s him!… But he doesn’t recognize me anymore… He led me into an alleyway that descended a steep slope, paved with sharp pebbles. He held my hand and I still felt his fever. We soon stopped in front of a small Jesuit-style temple which raised its porch before us, decorated with those stone semicircles , a sort of inverted consoles, which are characteristic of an architecture that contributed nothing to the glory of the seventeenth century. Having pushed open a small, low door, Rouletabille led me under a harmonious vault at the bottom of which are kneeling, on the stone of their empty tombs, the magnificent marble statues of Catherine of Cleves and Guise the Scarred. The college chapel, the young man whispered to me. There was no one in that chapel. We crossed it in haste. On the left, Rouletabille very gently pushed a drum that opened onto a sort of canopy. Come on, he said in a low voice, everything is fine. That way we will have entered the college and the caretaker will not have seen me. Certainly, he would have recognized me! — What harm would there be in that? But just then, a man, bareheaded, a bunch of keys in his hand, passed in front of the canopy and Rouletabille threw himself back into the shadows. It’s Father Simon! Ah! How he’s aged! He has no hair anymore. Look out!… it’s the time when he will sweep the little ones’ study… Everyone is in class at the moment… Oh! we will be very free! There is only Mother Simon left in her lodge, unless she is dead… In any case, she will not see us from here… But let us wait!… Here comes Father Simon back!… Why was Rouletabille so keen to hide? Why? I really knew nothing about this boy whom I thought I knew so well! Every hour spent with him always held a surprise for me. While waiting for Father Simon to give us free rein, Rouletabille and I managed to get out of the awning without being seen and, hidden in the corner of a small courtyard-garden, behind some shrubs, we could now, leaning over a brick railing, contemplate at ease, below us, the vast courtyards and the buildings of the college which we dominated from our hiding place. Rouletabille held my arm as if he were afraid of falling… My God! he said, his voice hoarse… everything has been turned upside down! The old study where I found the knife has been demolished, and the courtyard in which he had hidden the money has been moved further away… But the walls of the chapel have not changed position!… Look, Sainclair, bend down; this door which leads into the basement of the chapel is the door of the little classroom. How many times have I gone through it, my God! When I was a very small child… But never, never did I leave there so happy, even at the hours of the wildest recreation, as when Father Simon came to fetch me to go to the parlor where the Lady in Black was waiting for me!… I hope, my God! that the parlor has not been touched!… And he risked a glance back, put his head forward. No! No!… Look, there it is, the parlor!… Next to the vault… it’s the first door on the right… that’s where she came from… it’s there… We’ll go there later, when Father Simon comes down… And his teeth were chattering… It’s a mentally ill person, he said, I think I’m going to become a mentally ill person… What do you want? It’s stronger than me, isn’t it?… The idea that I’m going to see the parlor again… where she was waiting for me… I lived only in the hope of seeing her, and when she left, despite my always promising to be reasonable, I fell into such gloomy despair that, each time, they feared for my health. They only managed to bring me out of my prostration by assuring me that I would never see her again if I fell ill. Until the next visit, I remained with the memory of her and with her perfume. Having never been able to see her dear face clearly, and having become intoxicated to the point of fainting, when she held me in her arms, with her perfume, I lived less with her image than with her scent. In the days following her visit, I would escape from time to time, during recreation, to the visiting room, and when it was empty, as it was today, I would breathe in, I would breathe religiously the air she had breathed, I would stock up on the atmosphere in which she had spent a moment, and I would go out, my heart embalmed… It was the most delicate, the most subtle and certainly the most natural, the sweetest perfume in the world and I imagined that I would never encounter it again, until that day I told you, Sainclair… you remember… the day of the reception at the Élysée… —That day, my friend, you met Mathilde Stangerson… —That’s true!… he replied in a trembling voice… …Ah! If I had known at that moment that Professor Stangerson’s daughter, during her first marriage in America, had had a child, a son who, if he were still alive, would have been Rouletabille’s age, perhaps, after the trip my friend had made there and where he had certainly been informed, perhaps I would have finally understood his emotion, his pain, the strange trouble he had at pronouncing the name of Mathilde Stangerson in that college where the Lady in Black used to come! There was a silence that I dared to break. And you never knew why the Lady in Black had not returned?
—Oh! said Rouletabille, I am sure that the Lady in Black has returned… But it was I who had left!… —Who came to look for you? —Nobody!… I had run away!… —Why?… To look for her? —No! No!… To run away from her!… To run away from her, I tell you, Sainclair!… But she came back!… I am sure she came back!… —She must have been in despair at not finding you again!… Rouletabille raised his arms to the sky, shook his head. Do I know?… Can anyone know?… Ah! I am so unhappy!… Hush! my friend!… hush!… Father Simon… there… He is leaving… at last!… Quick!… to the parlor!… We were there in three strides. It was an ordinary room, quite large, with poor white curtains at its bare windows. It was furnished with six straw chairs lined up against the walls, a mirror above the fireplace, and a clock. It was quite dark in there. Upon entering this room, Rouletabille uncovered himself with one of those gestures of respect and meditation that one usually only makes when entering a sacred place. He had turned very red, and was advancing with small steps, very embarrassed, rolling his traveling cap between his fingers. He turned towards me and, very low, even lower than he had spoken to me in the chapel… Oh! Sainclair! Here it is, the parlor!… Here, touch my hands, I’m burning… I’m red, aren’t I?… I was always red when I came in here and knew I was going to find him there!… Certainly, I ran… I’m out of breath… I couldn’t wait, could I?… Oh! My heart, my heart that beats like when I was very small… Look, I arrived here… there, there!… at the door, and then I stopped, all ashamed… But I saw her black shadow in the corner; she silently held out her arms to me and I threw myself into them, and immediately, embracing each other, we cried!… It was good! It was my mother, Sainclair!… Oh! It wasn’t she who told me; on the contrary, she told me that my mother was dead and that she was a friend of my mother… Only, as she also told me to call her: Mama! and that she cried when I kissed her, I know very well that it was my mother… Look, she always sat there, in that dark corner, and she came at nightfall, when the light hadn’t yet been switched on, into the parlor… When she arrived, she would place, on the ledge of that window, a white package, tied with pink string. It was a brioche. I love brioches, Sainclair!… And Rouletabille could no longer restrain himself. He leaned his elbows on the fireplace and wept and wept… When he was a little relieved, he raised his head, looked at me and smiled sadly. And then, he sat down, very tired. I took care not to speak to him. I felt so well that it was not with me that he was talking, but with his memories… I saw him take from his chest the letter that I had given him and, with trembling hands, he unsealed it. He read it slowly. Suddenly, his hand fell back, and he let out a groan. He, just now so red, had become so pale… so pale that one would have said that all his blood had withdrawn from his heart. I made a move, but his gesture forbade me to approach him. And then, he closed his eyes. I could have believed that he was asleep. I moved away very gently then, on tiptoe, as one does in a sick room. I went to lean against a window that opened onto a small courtyard inhabited by a large chestnut tree. How long did I stay there, gazing at this chestnut tree? Do I know? Do I even know what we would have replied to someone from the house who had entered the parlor at that moment? I thought obscurely of the strange and mysterious destiny of my friend… Of this woman who was perhaps his mother and who, perhaps, was not! Rouletabille was then so young… He needed a mother so much that he had perhaps, in his imagination, given himself one… Rouletabille! What other name did we know him by? Joseph Joséphin… It was doubtless under that name that he had done his first studies, here… Joseph Joséphin, as the editor-in-chief of L’Époque said: That’s not a name, that! And now, what had he come here to do? To look for the trace of a perfume!… Reliving a memory?… An illusion?… I turned around at the noise he made. He was standing; he seemed very calm; he had that suddenly reassured face of those who have just won a great inner victory. Sainclair, we must go now… Let us go, my friend!… Let us go!… And he left the parlor without even looking behind him. I followed him. In the deserted street where we arrived unnoticed, I stopped him and asked him anxiously: Well, my friend… Have you found the perfume of the Lady in Black?… Certainly! He saw clearly that in my question was my whole heart, full of the ardent desire that this visit to the place of his childhood would restore a little peace to his soul. Yes, he said, very gravely… Yes, Sainclair… I found him… And he showed me the letter from Professor Stangerson’s daughter. I looked at him, stunned, not understanding… since I didn’t know… Then, he took both my hands and, looking into my eyes, he said to me: I am going to confide in you a great secret, Sainclair… the secret of my life and perhaps, one day, the secret of my death… Whatever happens, he will die with you and with me!… Mathilde Stangerson had a child… a son… this son is dead, is dead for everyone, except for you and for me!… I recoiled, stunned, by such a revelation… Rouletabille, the son of Mathilde Stangerson!… And then, suddenly, I had an even more violent shock… But then!… But then!… Rouletabille was the son of Larsan! Oh!… I understood, now, all of Rouletabille’s hesitations… I understood why, this morning, my friend, in his prescience of the truth, was saying: Why isn’t he dead? If he’s alive, I ‘d just as soon be dead! Rouletabille certainly read this sentence in my eyes and he simply made a sign that meant: That’s it, Sainclair, now you’re there! Then he finished his thought aloud: Silence! Arriving in Paris, we separated to meet at the station. There, Rouletabille handed me a new dispatch that came from Valence and was signed by Professor Stangerson. Here is the text: Mr. Darzac tells me that you have a few days off. We would all be very happy if you could come and spend them with us. We are expecting you at Rochers Rouges at Mr. Arthur Rance’s, who will be delighted to introduce you to his wife. My daughter would also be very happy to see you. She joins her entreaties to mine. Best wishes. Finally, as we were boarding the train, the concierge of the Hôtel de Rouletabille rushed onto the platform and brought us a third dispatch. This one came from Menton, and it was signed by Mathilde. It bore only these two words: Help! Chapter 4. On the road. Now I know everything. Rouletabille has just told me about his extraordinary and adventurous childhood, and I also know why he fears nothing so much at this hour as seeing Madame Darzac penetrate the mystery that separates them. I dare not say anything more, advise my friend anything more. Ah! the poor, unfortunate child!… When he had read this dispatch: Help! he raised it to his lips, and then, crushing my hand, he said: If I arrive too late, I will avenge us! Ah! the cold and wild energy of that! From time to time, a too abrupt gesture betrays the passion of his soul, but in general he is calm. How calm he is now, terribly!… What resolution did he take in the silence of the parlor, while he stood motionless with his eyes closed in the corner where the Lady in Black sat?… … While we are driving towards Lyon and Rouletabille is dreaming, stretched out, fully dressed, on his bunk, I will tell you how and why the child escaped from the college at Eu, and what became of him. Rouletabille had fled from the college like a thief! There is no need to look for another expression, since he was indeed accused of theft! Here is the whole story: being nine years old, he was already of an extraordinarily precocious intelligence and inclined to solve the most bizarre, the most difficult problems. With a surprising strength of logic, almost incomparable because of its simplicity and the summary unity of his reasoning, he astonished his mathematics teacher by his philosophical way of working. He had never been able to learn his multiplication table and counted on his fingers. He ordinarily had his classmates do his operations, as one would give a common task to a servant to accomplish… But, beforehand, he had shown them the progression of the problem. Still ignorant of the principles of classical algebra, he had invented for his own use an algebra, made up of bizarre signs reminiscent of cuneiform writing, with the help of which he marked all the stages of his mathematical reasoning, and he had thus managed to write down general formulas that he was the only one to understand. His teacher proudly compared him to Pascal, who had found Euclid’s first propositions in geometry all by himself. He applied this admirable faculty of reasoning to everyday life. And this was both material and moral, that is to say, for example, that an act having been committed, a schoolboy’s prank, a scandal, a denunciation or a report, by a stranger among ten people he knew, he would almost inevitably identify this stranger based on the moral data that had been provided to him or that his personal observations had provided him. This was for the moral aspect; and for the material aspect, nothing seemed simpler to him than finding a hidden or lost object… or stolen… It was here above all that he displayed a marvelous invention, as if nature, in its incredible balance, after having created a father who was the evil genius of theft, had wanted to give birth to a son who would have been the good genius of the robbed. This strange aptitude, after having earned him, in several amusing circumstances, regarding stolen objects, some success of esteem among the staff of the college, was one day to prove fatal to him. He discovered in such an abnormal way a small sum of money which had been stolen from the general supervisor, that no one wanted to believe that this discovery was solely due to his intelligence and his perspicacity. This hypothesis seemed to everyone, quite obviously, impossible; and he soon ended up, thanks to an unfortunate coincidence of time and place, by passing for the thief. They wanted to make him confess his fault; he defended himself with an indignant energy which earned him a severe punishment; the principal held an investigation where Joseph Joséphin was served, with the cowardice customary to children, by his little comrades. Some complained that books and school objects had been stolen from them for some time, and formally accused the one they saw already overwhelmed. The fact that he had no known relatives and that no one knew where he came from was, more than ever, reproached to him in this little world as a crime. When they spoke of him, they said: the thief. He fought and was defeated, because he was not very strong. He was desperate. He would have liked to die. The principal, who was the best of men, unfortunately convinced that he was dealing with a vicious little nature on which it was necessary to make a deep impression, in making him understand the full horror of his act, thought of telling him that, if he did not confess to the theft, he would not keep him any longer , and that he had decided, moreover, to write that very day to the person who was interested in him, to Mrs. Darbel – that was the name she had given – so that she would come and get him. The child did not reply and allowed himself to be taken back to the small room where he had been confined. The next day, they looked for him there in vain. He had run away. He had reflected that the principal to whom he had been entrusted since the earliest years of his childhood – so much so that he hardly remembered in any precise way any other framework for his little life than that of the school – had always been good to him and that he only treated him in this way because he believed in his guilt. There was therefore no reason why the Lady in Black should not also believe that he had stolen. To pass for a thief in the eyes of the Lady in Black, death would be better! And he had escaped, jumping over the garden wall at night. He had run straight to the canal into which, sobbing, after a supreme thought given to the Lady in Black, he had thrown himself. Fortunately, in his despair, the poor child had forgotten that he knew how to swim. If I have related this incident from Rouletabille’s childhood at some length , it is because I am sure that, in his present situation, its full importance will be understood. While he was unaware that he was Larsan’s son, Rouletabille could not already think of this sad episode without being torn by the idea that the Lady in Black might indeed have believed that he was a thief, but since he imagined himself to be certain—an imagination too well-founded, alas! —of the natural and legal bond that united him to Larsan, what pain, what infinite sorrow must have been his! His mother, upon learning of the event, must have thought that the father’s criminal instincts would revive in the son and perhaps— and perhaps—an idea more cruel than death itself, she had rejoiced at his death! For he was taken for dead. All traces of his escape were found as far back as the canal, and his beret was fished out. In reality, how did he live? In the most singular fashion. Coming out of his bath and determined to flee the country, this boy, who was being sought everywhere, in the canal and out of it, devised a very original way of crossing the whole country without being disturbed. However, he had not read The Purloined Letter. His genius served him. He reasoned, as always. He knew, from having often heard them told, these stories of kids, little devils and bad heads, who ran away from their parents to run after adventures, hiding during the day in the fields and in the woods, walking at night, and quickly found elsewhere by the police or forced to return home because they soon lacked everything and they did not dare ask for food along the road they were following, which was too closely watched. Our little Rouletabille, he slept, like everyone else, at night, and walked in broad daylight without hiding from anyone. Only, after drying his clothes—fortunately, it was beginning to enter the good season and he did not have to suffer from the cold—he tore them to pieces. He made rags of them with which he covered himself and, ostentatiously, he begged, dirty and ragged, he held out his hand, telling passers-by that if he did not bring back some money, his parents would beat him. And he was taken for some child of gypsies, some of whose carriages were always found in the vicinity. Soon it was the season of wild strawberries. He picked some and sold them in little baskets of foliage. And he confessed to me that, if he had not been tormented by the dreadful thought that the Lady in Black might believe he was a thief, he would have retained the happiest memory of this period of his life. His cunning and his natural courage served him well throughout this expedition, which lasted for months. Where was he going? To Marseilles! It was his idea. He had seen, in a geography book, views of the south, and he had never looked at these engravings without heaving a sigh, thinking that he would perhaps never know this enchanted country. By dint of living like a gypsy, he made the acquaintance of a small caravan of gypsies who were following the same route as him and who were going to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer – in the Crau – to elect their king. He rendered these people a few services, knew how to please them, and they, who are not in the habit of asking passers-by for their papers, did not want to know more. They thought that, the victim of mistreatment, the child had run away from some acrobats’ hut and they kept him with them. Thus he arrived in the south. Near Arles, he left them and finally arrived in Marseille. There, it was paradise… an eternal summer and… the port! The port was an inexhaustible resource for the little scoundrels of the city. It was a treasure for Rouletabille. He drew from it, as he pleased, according to his needs, which were not great. For example, he became an orange fisherman. It was while he was practicing this lucrative profession that he met, one fine morning, on the quays, a journalist from Paris, M. Gaston Leroux, and this meeting was to have such an influence on Rouletabille’s destiny that I do not think it superfluous to give here the article in which the editor of Le Matin reported this memorable interview: The little orange fisherman As the sun, finally piercing a sky of clouds, struck with its oblique rays the golden robe of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, I went down to the quays. The large slabs were still damp, and beneath our feet, reflected our image. The people of sailors, stevedores, and porters busied themselves around the beams brought from the northern forests, working the pulleys and pulling on the cables. The harsh offshore wind, slipping stealthily between the Saint-Jean tower and the Saint-Nicolas fort, spread its harsh caress over the shivering waters of the old port. Side to side, hip to hip, the small boats stretched out their arms where the lateen sail was furled, and danced in cadence. Beside them, tired of the distant rolling, weary of having pitched for days and nights on unknown seas, the heavy hulls rested heavily, stretching their great immobile masts towards the ragged heavens . My gaze, through the aerial forest of yards and topsails, went as far as the tower which attests that twenty-five centuries ago children of ancient Phocaea cast anchor on this happy coast, and that they came from the liquid roads of Ionia. Then my attention returned to the flagstone of the quays, and I saw the little orange fisherman. He was standing, hunched over in the tatters of a jacket which beat against his heels, bareheaded and barefoot, with blond hair and black eyes; and I believe he was nine years old. A rope slung over his shoulder supported a canvas bag at his side. His left fist was planted at his waist, and with his right hand he leaned on a stick, three times as long as himself, which ended at the very top with a small disc of cork. The child was motionless and contemplative. Then I asked him what he was doing there. He replied that he was an orange fisherman. He seemed very proud to be an orange fisherman and neglected to ask me for money like the little rascals do in the ports. I spoke to him again; but this time he remained silent, for he was attentively studying the water. We were between the slender waist of the Fides, which had come from Castellamare, and the bowsprit of a three-masted schooner from Genoa. Further on, two tartanes that had arrived that morning from the Balearic Islands were rounding their bellies, and I saw that these bellies were full of oranges, for they were shedding them from all sides. The oranges were swimming on the water; the light swell carried them towards us in small waves. My fisherman jumped into a boat, ran to the prow, and, armed with his crowned stick of cork, waited. Then he fished. The cork of his stick brought up an orange, two, three, four. They disappeared into the bag. He fished out a fifth, jumped onto the platform and opened the golden apple. He plunged his little snout into the half-open peel and devoured it. Bon appétit! I said to him. “Sir,” he replied, all smeared with crimson juice, “I only like fruit. ” “That’s good,” I replied; “but when there are no oranges? ” “I work with coal.” And his hand, having plunged into the bag, came out with an enormous lump of coal. The orange juice had run onto the rag of his jacket. This rag had a pocket. The little boy took an indescribable handkerchief from the pocket and carefully wiped his rag. Then he proudly put his handkerchief back in his pocket. What does your father do? I asked. “He’s poor. ” “Yes, but what does he do?” The orange fisherman shrugged. ” He doesn’t do anything, since he’s poor!” My questionnaire about his genealogy didn’t seem to please him. He sped along the quay and I followed him; we thus arrived at the guardhouse, a small square of sea where they keep watch over small pleasure yachts, small, clean boats of waxed mahogany, small ships with impeccable attire. My boy looked at them with a knowing eye and took great pleasure in this inspection. A pretty boat, with all its sails out—it only had one— docked. This sail was immaculate, its triangular sail billowing out, shining in the radiant sun. “That’s some fine linen!” said my good man. Thereupon, he stepped into a puddle, and his jacket, which decidedly preoccupied him above all else, was all splashed. What a disaster! He could have cried. Quickly, he took out his handkerchief and wiped and wiped, then he looked at me with a supplicating eye and said: Sir! I’m not dirty behind? … I gave him my word of honor. Then, confident, he put his handkerchief back in his pocket. A few steps away, on the sidewalk that runs alongside the old yellow or red or blue houses, the houses whose windows spread the laundry of multicolored rags, there were, behind tables, mussel sellers. The small tables displayed mussels, a rusty knife, a bottle of vinegar. As we arrived in front of the vendors and the mussels were fresh and tempting, I said to the orange fisherman: If you didn’t just like fruit, I could offer you a dozen mussels. His dark eyes shone with desire and we both began to eat mussels. The vendor opened them for us and we tasted them. She wanted to serve us vinegar, but my companion stopped her with an imperious gesture. He opened his bag, fumbled with it, and triumphantly took out a lemon. The lemon, having been next to the piece of coal, had turned black. But its owner took his handkerchief back and wiped it off. Then he cut the fruit and offered me half, but I like mussels for themselves and I thanked him. After lunch, we returned to the quay. The orange fisherman asked me for a cigarette which he lit with a match he had in another pocket of his jacket. So, cigarette in hand, puffing skyward like a man, the child stood on a slab above the water, and, his gaze fixed high up on Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, he put himself in the position of the famous kid who is the most beautiful ornament of Brussels. He hadn’t lost an inch of his height, was very proud, and seemed to want to fill the harbor. GASTON LEROUX. The day after tomorrow, Joseph Joséphin found Mr. Gaston Leroux on the harbor , who came towards him with the newspaper in his hand. The kid read the article, and the journalist gave him a nice hundred-sou piece. Rouletabille had no difficulty accepting it. He even found this gift very natural. I’ll take your coin, he said to Gaston Leroux, as collaborator. With these hundred sous, he bought himself a magnificent shoe-shine box with all its accessories, and he went to set up shop opposite Brégaillon. For two years, he seized the feet of all those who came to eat the traditional bouillabaisse there. Between two polishes, he sat on his box and read. With the sense of ownership that he had found at the bottom of his box, ambition had come to him. He had received too good an education and too good a primary schooling not to understand that, if he did not finish himself what others had started so well, he was depriving himself of the best chance he had left to make a name for himself in the world.
Customers ended up taking an interest in this little shoe-shoe remover who always had a few history or mathematics books on his box and a shipowner took such a liking to him that he gave him a job as a bellboy in his offices. Soon Rouletabille was promoted to the rank of penal clerk and was able to save some money. At sixteen, with a little money in his pocket, he took the train to Paris. What was he going to do there? Look for the Lady in Black. Not a day had he stopped thinking about the mysterious visitor to the parlor, and although she had never told him that she lived in the capital, he was convinced that no other city in the world was worthy of possessing a lady who had such a lovely perfume. And then, didn’t the little schoolboys themselves, who had been able to glimpse her elegant silhouette when she slipped into the parlor, say: Look! The Parisian woman has come today! It would have been difficult to pinpoint the idea behind Rouletabille’s head , and perhaps he himself didn’t know it. Was his desire simply to see the Lady in Black, to watch her pass by from afar as a devout person watches a holy image pass by? Would he dare approach her? Wasn’t the dreadful story of the theft, whose importance had only grown in Rouletabille’s imagination, still between them like a barrier he had no right to cross? Perhaps… perhaps, but after all, he wanted to see her, of that alone he was quite sure. As soon as he arrived in the capital, he went to find M. Gaston Leroux and made himself known to him, and then he declared to him that, feeling no particular inclination for any particular profession, which was quite unfortunate for a creature as ardent as his, he had decided to become a journalist and he asked him, straight away, for a position as a reporter. Gaston Leroux tried to dissuade him from such a disastrous project, but in vain. It was then that, weary of the battle, he said to him: My little friend, since you have nothing to do, try to find the left foot of the Rue Oberkampf. And he left him with these strange words which gave poor Rouletabille food for thought that this scamp of a journalist was making fun of him. However, having bought the pages, he read that the newspaper L’Époque was offering a fair reward to anyone who would bring them the human remains missing from the woman cut into pieces in the Rue Oberkampf. The rest we know. In The Mystery of the Yellow Room, I recounted how Rouletabille manifested himself on this occasion and in what way was also revealed to him at the same time, to himself, his singular profession, which was to be his whole life to begin to reason when others had finished. I told how by chance he was led one evening to the Élysée where he smelled the perfume of the Lady in Black. He then realized that he was following Mlle Stangerson. What more could I add? Considerations on the emotions that assailed Rouletabille about this perfume during the events at Glandier and especially since his trip to America! We can guess them. All his hesitations, all his mood swings, who now would not understand them? The information he brought back from Cincinnati about the child of the woman who had been Jean Roussel’s wife must have been sufficiently explicit to give him to think that he could well be that child, not enough, however, for him to be sure! However, his instinct carried him so victoriously towards the professor’s daughter that he sometimes had all the trouble in the world not to throw himself on her neck, to restrain himself from pressing her in his arms and crying out to her: You are my mother! You are my mother! And he ran away, as he had run away from the sacristy, so as not to let slip in a second of tenderness that secret which had been burning within him for years!… And then, in truth, he was afraid!… If she was going to reject him!… push him away!… drive him away with horror!… him, the little thief from the college of Eu! Him… the son of Roussel-Ballmeyer!… him, the heir to Larsan’s crimes!… If he was going to see her no more, no longer live by her side, no longer breathe her, her and her dear perfume, the perfume of the Lady in Black!… Ah! How he had had to fight, because of this dreadful vision, the first impulse that made him ask her every time he saw her: Is it you? Are you the Lady in Black? As for her, she had loved him immediately , but no doubt because of his conduct at Glandier… If it really was her, she must have believed him dead!… And if it wasn’t her, … if by some fatality that routed both her pure instinct and her reasoning… if it wasn’t her… Could he risk, by his imprudence, telling her that he had run away from the college at Eu, for theft?… No! No! Not that!… She had often asked him: Where were you brought up, my young friend? Where did you do your first studies? And he had answered: In Bordeaux! He would have liked to be able to answer: In Peking! However, this torture could not last. If it were her, well, he would know how to say things to her that would melt her heart. Anything was better than not being held in her arms. Thus, he sometimes reasoned with himself. But he had to be sure!… sure beyond reason, sure of finding himself face to face with the Lady in Black as a dog is sure of smelling its master… This poor figure of speech that presented itself quite naturally to his mind must have led him to the idea of following the trail. It led us, in the conditions we know, to Tréport and Eu. However, I would dare to say that this expedition would perhaps not have produced decisive results in the eyes of a third party who, like me, was not influenced by the smell, if Mathilde’s letter, which I had given to Rouletabille on the train, had not suddenly come to bring him the assurance we were going to seek. I have not read this letter. It is a document so sacred in the eyes of my friend that other eyes will never see it, but I know that the gentle reproaches she usually made him for his savagery and lack of confidence had taken on such an accent of pain on this paper that Rouletabille could not have been mistaken, even if Professor Stangerson’s daughter had forgotten to confide to him, in a final sentence in which all her maternal despair sobbed, that the interest she had in him came less from the services rendered than from the memory she had kept of a little boy, the son of one of her friends, whom she had loved very much, and who had committed suicide, like a little man, at the age of nine. Rouletabille was very much like him! Chapter 5. Panic. Dijon… Mâcon… Lyon… Certainly, up there, above my head, he is not asleep… I called him very softly and he did not answer me… But I would bet my life that he is not asleep!… What is he thinking about?… How calm he is! What can possibly give him such calm?… I can still see him, in the parlor, suddenly getting up, saying: Let us go! and that in such a calm, tranquil, resolute voice… Are we going to whom? To what had he resolved to go? To her, obviously, who was in danger and who could only be saved by him; to her, who was his mother and who would not know it! It is a secret that must remain between you and me; the child is dead for everyone, except for you and for me! That was his resolution, this suddenly fixed will to say nothing to her. And he, the poor child, who had only come to seek this certainty to have the right to speak to her! At the very moment that he knew, he forced himself to forget; he condemned himself to silence. Little great heroic soul, who had understood that the Lady in Black who needed his help would not want a salvation bought at the price of the son’s struggle against the father! How far could this struggle go? To what bloody conflict? Everything had to be foreseen and one had to have one’s hands free, didn’t that mean, Rouletabille, to defend the Lady in Black?… Rouletabille is so calm that I cannot hear his breathing. I bend over him… his eyes are open. Do you know what I am thinking about? he said to me… To this dispatch which comes to us from Bourg and which is signed Darzac, and to this other dispatch which comes to us from Valence and which is signed Stangerson. — I thought about it, and it seems to me, in fact, rather strange. In Bourg, Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are no longer with Mr. Stangerson, who left them in Dijon. Besides, the dispatch says it clearly: We are going to join Mr. Stangerson. Now, the Stangerson dispatch proves that Mr. Stangerson, who had continued directly on his way to Marseille, is again with the Darzacs. The Darzacs would therefore have joined Mr. Stangerson on the Marseille line; but then it would be necessary to suppose that the professor would have stopped on the way. On what occasion? He did not foresee any. At the station, he said: I will be in Menton tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Look at the time the dispatch was delivered to Valence and note on the timetable the time at which Mr. Stangerson would normally have passed through Valence unless he had stopped on the way. We consulted the timetable. Mr. Stangerson was due to pass through Valence at 12:44 a.m. and the dispatch bore 12:47 a.m., so it had been dropped off by Mr. Stangerson in Valence during his normal journey. At that time, he must have been joined by Mr. and Mrs. Darzac. Still with the timetable in hand, we managed to understand the mystery of this meeting. Mr. Stangerson had left the Darzacs in Dijon, where they had all arrived at 6:27 p.m. The professor had then taken the train that left Dijon at 7:8 a.m. and arrived in Lyon at 10:40 a.m. and in Valence at 12:47 a.m. Meanwhile, the Darzacs, leaving Dijon at seven o’clock, continued their journey to Modane and, via Saint-Amour, arrived in Bourg at three o’clock in the evening, a train which should normally leave Bourg at eight o’clock. Mr. Darzac’s dispatch had left Bourg and bore the indication of depot at twenty-eight past nine. The Darzacs had therefore remained in Bourg, having left their train. We could also foresee the case where the train had been delayed. In any case, we had to look for the reason for Mr. Darzac’s dispatch between Dijon and Bourg, after Mr. Stangerson’s departure. We could even specify between Louhans and Bourg; the train does in fact stop at Louhans, and if the tragedy had taken place before Louhans (where they had arrived at eight o’clock), it is likely that Mr. Darzac would have telegraphed from that station. Then looking for the Bourg-Lyon connection, we noted that Mr. Darzac had sent his dispatch to Bourg one minute before the departure for Lyon of the 9:29 train. Now, this train arrived in Lyon at 10:33, while Mr. Stangerson’s train arrived in Lyon at 10:34. After the detour via Bourg and their parking in Bourg, Mr. and Mrs. Darzac had been able, had had to join Mr. Stangerson in Lyon, where they were one minute before him! Now, what tragedy had thus thrown them off their route? We could only indulge in the saddest hypotheses, all of which had as their basis, alas! the reappearance of Larsan. What appeared to us with sufficient clarity, it was the will of each of our friends not to frighten anyone. Mr. Darzac, for his part, and Mrs. Darzac, for hers, had to do everything to conceal the gravity of the situation. As for Mr. Stangerson, we could wonder if he had been informed of the new fact. Having thus approximately unraveled things from a distance, Rouletabille invited me to take advantage of the luxurious installation that the international sleeping car company makes available to travelers who love rest as much as travel, and he set me the example by indulging in a nighttime toilet as meticulous as if he could have done it in a hotel room. A quarter of an hour later, he was snoring; but I hardly believed in his snoring. In any case, I did not sleep. In Avignon, Rouletabille jumped out of bed, put on a pair of trousers and a jacket, and ran to the quayside to swallow a hot chocolate. I wasn’t hungry. From Avignon to Marseille, in our anxiety, the journey passed rather silently; then, at the sight of this city where he had initially led such a bizarre existence, Rouletabille, no doubt as a reaction to the anxiety that was growing within us as we approached the hour at which we were going to find out, recalled some old anecdotes that he told me without appearing to take the slightest pleasure in them. I hardly cared about what he was telling me. Thus we arrived in Toulon. What a journey! It could have been so beautiful! Usually, it was with ever-new enthusiasm that I revisited this marvelous country, this Côte d’Azur, glimpsed upon waking like a corner of paradise after the horrible departure from Paris, in the snow, in the rain or in the mud, in the humidity, in the dark, in the filth! With what joy, in the evening, I set foot on the platforms of the prestigious P.-L.-M, sure of finding the glorious friend who would be waiting for me the next morning at the end of these two iron rails: the sun! From Toulon, our impatience became extreme. In Cannes, we were not at all surprised to see Mr. Darzac on the station platform looking for us. He had certainly been touched by the dispatch that Rouletabille had sent him from Dijon, announcing the time of our arrival in Menton. Having arrived himself with Mme Darzac and M. Stangerson the day before at ten o’clock in the morning in Menton, he had to leave Menton that very morning and come to meet us as far as Cannes, because we thought that, according to his dispatch, he had confidential things to tell us. His face was somber and haggard. When we saw him, we were afraid. A misfortune?… asked Rouletabille. “No, not yet!” he replied. “Thank God!” said Rouletabille with a sigh, “we’re just in time…” M. Darzac simply said: “Thank you for coming!” And he shook our hands in silence, leading us into our compartment, into which he shut us, taking care to draw the curtains, which isolated us completely. When we were completely at home and the train had started moving again, he finally spoke. His emotion was such that his voice trembled. “Well,” he said, “he’s not dead!” —We suspected it, interrupted Rouletabille. But are you sure? —I saw it as I see you. —And did Madame Darzac see it too? —Alas! But we must do everything to make her believe in some illusion! I don’t want her to go mad again, the poor thing!… Ah! my friends, what fatality is pursuing us!… What has this man come back to do around us?… What does he want from us now?… I looked at Rouletabille. He was then even more gloomy than Monsieur Darzac. The blow he feared had struck him. He remained slumped in his corner. There was a silence between the three of us, then Monsieur Darzac continued:
Listen! This man must disappear!… He must!… We will reach him, we will ask him what he wants… and all the money he wants, We’ll give it to him… or else I’ll kill him! It’s simple!… I think that’s the simplest thing!… Isn’t that your opinion?… We didn’t answer him… He seemed too much to be pitied. Rouletabille, controlling his emotion with a visible effort, urged Mr. Darzac to try to calm down and to tell us in detail everything that had happened since his departure from Paris. Then he told us that the event had taken place in Bourg itself, as we had thought. It should be known that two compartments of the sleeping car had been rented by Mr. Darzac. These two compartments were connected by a bathroom. In one were placed Mrs. Darzac’s travel bag and toiletries , in the other, the small luggage. It was in this last compartment that Mr. and Mrs. Darzac and Professor Stangerson made the journey from Paris to Dijon. There, all three had gotten off and dined at the buffet. They had time because, having arrived at 6:27 , Mr. Stangerson was not leaving Dijon until 7:8, and the Darzacs at exactly 7:00. The professor had said goodbye to his daughter and son-in-law on the station platform after dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Darzac had gone up to their compartment (the small luggage compartment) and remained at the window, talking with the professor, until the train left. The train was already moving when Professor Stangerson, on the platform, was still waving friendly to Mr. and Mrs. Darzac. From Dijon to Bourg, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Darzac entered the compartment adjacent to the one in which they were sitting, and in which Mrs. Darzac’s travel bag was located. The door of this compartment, opening onto the corridor, had been closed in Paris as soon as Mrs. Darzac’s luggage had been dropped off. But this door had not been locked from the outside by the employee, nor bolted from the inside by the Darzacs. The curtain of this door had been drawn from the inside over the window, by Mrs. Darzac, so that from the corridor nothing could be seen of what was happening in the compartment. The curtain of the door of the other compartment where the passengers were sitting had not been drawn. All this was established by Rouletabille thanks to a very detailed questionnaire, the details of which I will not go into, but the results of which I give to clearly establish the external conditions of the Darzacs’ journey to Bourg and of Mr. Stangerson to Dijon. Arriving at Bourg, the passengers learned that, following an accident on the Culoz line, the train was immobilized for an hour and a half at Bourg station. Mr. and Mrs. Darzac then got out and walked around for a moment. Mr. Darzac, during the conversation he had with his wife, had remembered that he had forgotten to write some urgent letters before their departure. They both went into the buffet. Mr. Darzac had asked for the writing materials he needed. Mathilde sat down beside him, then got up and told her husband that she was going to walk in front of the station, to take a little tour while he finished his correspondence. That’s it, Mr. Darzac had replied. As soon as I’ve finished, I’ll come and join you. And now I’ll let Mr. Darzac speak: I had finished writing, he told us, and I got up to go and join Mathilde when I saw her arrive, frantic, in the buffet. As soon as she saw me, she gave a scream and threw herself into my arms. Oh! my God! she said. Oh! my God! and she could not say anything else. She was trembling horribly. I reassured her, I told her that she had nothing to fear since I was there, and I asked her gently, patiently, what had been the object of such sudden terror. I made her sit down, for she could no longer stand on her legs, and begged her to take something, but she told me that it would be impossible for her to absorb even a drop of water at the moment, and her teeth were chattering. Finally, she was able to speak and she told me, almost stopping at every sentence and looking around her in terror, that she had gone for a walk, as she had told me, in front of the station, but that she had not dared to leave it, thinking that I would soon have finished writing. Then she had gone back into the station and returned to the platform. She was heading towards the buffet when she saw through the lit windows of the train, the employees of the sleeping cars setting up the bunks in a carriage next to ours. She suddenly remembered that her overnight bag, in which she had put some jewelry, had been left open and she wanted to go and close it immediately, not that she doubted the perfect probity of these honest people, but out of a gesture of prudence quite natural when traveling. So she got into the carriage, slipped into the corridor and arrived at the door of the compartment she had reserved for herself, and which we had not entered since our departure from Paris. She opened this door, and immediately she let out a horrible scream. But this scream was not heard, because no one was left in the carriage and a train was passing at that moment, filling the station with the clamor of its locomotive. What had happened? This unheard-of, frightening, monstrous thing. In the compartment, the small door opening onto the bathroom was half drawn inside this compartment, offering itself at an angle to the gaze of the person who entered the compartment. This small door was decorated with a mirror. Now, in the mirror, Mathilde had just seen Larsan’s face! She threw herself back, calling for help, and fleeing so precipitately that, leaping out of the carriage, she fell to her knees on the platform. Getting up, she finally arrived at the buffet, in the state I have described to you. When she told me these things, my first concern was not to believe them, firstly because I did not want to , the event being too horrible, then because I had the duty, under penalty of seeing Mathilde go mad again, to pretend not to believe them! Wasn’t Larsan dead, and really dead?… In truth, I believed it as I told her, and there was no doubt in my mind that in all this there had been nothing but an effect of ice and imagination. I naturally wanted to make sure of it and I offered to go immediately with her to her compartment to prove to her that she had been the victim of a sort of hallucination. She opposed it, shouting that neither she nor I would ever return to that compartment and that, moreover, she refused to travel that night! She said all this in short, broken sentences… She couldn’t catch her breath… She pained me infinitely… The more I told her that such an apparition was impossible, the more she insisted on its reality! I also told her that she had seen very little of Larsan during the Glandier tragedy, which was true, and that she didn’t know that figure well enough to be sure that she hadn’t found herself face to face with the image of someone who resembled him! She replied that she remembered Larsan’s face perfectly, that it had appeared to her in two circumstances such that she would never forget it, even if she lived to be a hundred years old! The first time, during the affair of the inexplicable gallery, and the second at the very minute when, in her room, they came to arrest me! And then, now that she had learned who Larsan was, it was not only the features of the policeman that she recognized; but, behind them, the formidable type of the man who had not ceased to pursue her for so many years!… Ah! she swore on her head and on mine, that she had just seen Ballmeyer!… That Ballmeyer was alive!… alive in the mirror, with his clean-shaven Larsan face, all clean-shaven, all clean-shaven… and his great bare forehead!… She clung to me as if she feared a separation even more terrible than the others!… She had dragged me away on the platform… And then, suddenly, she left me, putting her hand over her eyes and she threw herself into the stationmaster’s office… He was as frightened as I was to see the state of the unfortunate woman. I said to myself: She’s going to go mad again! I explained to the stationmaster that my wife had been frightened, all alone, in her compartment, that I asked him to look after her while I went to the compartment myself to try to explain to me what had frightened her so… So, my friends, so… continued Robert Darzac, I left the stationmaster’s office, but I had no sooner left than I went back in, closing the door behind us hurriedly. I must have had a strange expression, because the stationmaster looked at me with great curiosity. It was because I, too, had just seen Larsan! No! no! My wife had not been daydreaming… Larsan was there, in the station… on the platform, behind that door. So saying, Robert Darzac fell silent for a moment as if the memory of this personal vision took away the strength to continue his story. He passed his hand over his forehead, sighed, and continued: There was, in front of the stationmaster’s door, a gas lamp and, under the gas lamp, there was Larsan. Obviously, he was waiting for us, he was watching us… and, extraordinary thing, he was not hiding! On the contrary, one would have said that he was standing there, only to be seen!… The gesture that had made me close the door in front of this apparition was purely instinctive. When I opened that door again, determined to go straight to the wretch, he had disappeared!… The stationmaster thought he was dealing with two mentally ill people. Mathilde watched me act without uttering a word, her eyes wide open, like a sleepwalker. She returned to the reality of things to inquire how far it was from Bourg to Lyon and what the next train was going there. At the same time, she asked me to give orders for our luggage; and she asked me to grant her that we should go and join her father as soon as possible. I saw only this way to calm her and, far from making any objection to this new project, I immediately entered into her views. Besides, now that I had seen Larsan, with my own eyes, yes, yes, with my own eyes seen, I felt that our long journey had become impossible and, must I confess to you, my friend, added M. Darzac, turning to Rouletabille, I began to think that we were now in real danger, one of those mysterious and fantastic dangers from which you alone could save us, if there was still time. Mathilde was grateful to me for the docility with which I immediately made all arrangements to join her father without further delay , and she thanked me very effusionly when she learned that we would be able to take a few minutes later—for the whole drama had barely lasted a quarter of an hour—the 9:29 train , which arrived in Lyon at about 10:00, and, consulting the railway timetable, we saw that we could thus join Mr. Stangerson in Lyon itself. Mathilde showed me great gratitude again, as if I had really been responsible for this happy coincidence. She had regained a little calm when the 9:00 train arrived at the station; but, at the moment of taking her place, as we quickly crossed the platform and were passing precisely under the gas lamp where Larsan had appeared to me, I felt her faint again on my arm and immediately I looked around us, but I saw no suspicious figure. I asked her if she had seen anything yet, but she did not answer me. Her confusion, however, increased, and she begged me not to isolate us but to enter a compartment already two-thirds full of passengers. Under the pretext of going to look after my luggage, I left her for a moment in the middle of these people, and I went to throw the dispatch you received into the telegraph. I did not speak to her about this dispatch because I continued to claim that her eyes had certainly deceived her, and because, for nothing in the world, I wanted to appear to give credence to such a resurrection. Moreover, I noted, upon opening my wife’s bag, that her jewelry had not been touched. The few words we exchanged concerned the secret we had to keep about all this from Mr. Stangerson, who would have conceived a perhaps mortal grief. I will pass over his astonishment on discovering us on the platform of the Gare de Lyon. Mathilde told him that because of a serious railway accident, blocking the Culoz line, we had decided, since we had to make a detour, to join him, and to go and spend a few days with him at Arthur Rance’s and his young wife’s, as we had been urged to do, moreover, by this faithful friend of the family. … In this regard, it might be time to inform the reader, even if it means interrupting Mr. Darzac’s story for a moment, that Mr. Arthur William Rance, who, as I reported in The Mystery of the Yellow Room, had nourished a hopeless love for Miss Stangerson for so many years, had so thoroughly renounced it that he had finally married a young American woman who in no way resembled the mysterious daughter of the illustrious professor. After the tragedy at Le Glandier, and while Miss Stangerson was still being held in a nursing home near Paris, where she was completing her recovery, it was learned one fine day that Mr. William Arthur Rance was going to marry the niece of an old geologist from the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia. Those who had known his unfortunate passion for Mathilde and who had measured its full importance even in the excesses it led to—it had been able to make, for a moment, of a man, until that day, sober and of settled sense, an alcoholic— they claimed that Rance was marrying out of despair and did not augur well for such an unexpected union. It was said that the affair, which was good for Arthur Rance, because Miss Edith Prescott was rich, had concluded in a rather bizarre way. But these are stories that I will tell you when I have the time. You will then also learn by what series of circumstances the Rances had come to settle at Rochers Rouges, in the ancient fortified castle on the Hercules peninsula, which they had acquired the previous autumn. But now I must give the floor back to Mr. Darzac, who continues to recount his strange journey. When we had given these explanations to Mr. Stangerson, narrated our friend , my wife and I saw clearly that the professor understood nothing of what we were telling him and that instead of being happy to see us again , he was quite saddened. Mathilde tried in vain to appear cheerful. Her father saw clearly that something had happened since we had left him that we were hiding from him. She pretended not to notice and turned the conversation to the morning ceremony. Thus she came to speak of you, my friend (Mr. Darzac was addressing Rouletabille), and then I took the opportunity to make Mr. Stangerson understand that, since you did not know what to do with your leave, at the moment when we were all going to be in Menton, you would be very touched by an invitation that would allow you to spend it among us. There is no shortage of space at Rochers Rouges, and Mr. Arthur Rance and his young wife are only too happy to please you. While I was speaking, Mathilde looked at me approvingly, and my hand, which she pressed with tender effusion, told me how happy my proposal was to her. Thus, upon arriving in Valence, I was able to put on the telegraph the dispatch that Mr. Stangerson, at my instigation, had just written and which you have certainly received. All night, you can imagine that we did not sleep. While her father was resting in the compartment next to us, Mathilde had opened my bag and taken out a revolver. She had cocked it and put it in my pocket. my overcoat and said to me: If we are attacked, you will defend us! Ah! What a night, my friend, what a night we have spent!… We were silent, deceiving each other, pretending to be dozing, our eyelids closed in the light, for we did not dare to cast a shadow around us. The doors of our compartment locked , we still feared seeing him appear. When a step was heard in the corridor, our hearts leaped. We seemed to recognize his step… And she had hidden the glass, for fear of seeing his face appear there again!… Had he followed us?… Had we been able to deceive him?… Had we escaped from him?… Had he got back on the Culoz train?… Could we have hoped for that?… As for me, I did not think so… And she! She!… Ah! I felt her, silent and as if dead, there, in her corner… I felt her terribly desperate, even more unhappy than myself, because of all the misfortune she dragged behind her, like a fatality… I would have liked to console her, to comfort her, but I could not find the words that were undoubtedly needed , because, at the first words I uttered, she made a sorry sign to me and I understood that it would be more charitable to remain silent. Then, like her, I closed my eyes… Thus spoke Mr. Robert Darzac, and this is not an approximate account of his story. Rouletabille and I had judged this narration so important that we agreed, upon our arrival in Menton, to retrace it as faithfully as possible. We both worked on it, and, our text more or less finalized, we submitted it to Mr. Robert Darzac who made a few unimportant changes, as a result of which it ended up as I report it here. The night of Mr. Stangerson and Mr. and Mrs. Darzac’s journey presented no incident worthy of note. At the Menton-Garavan station, they found Mr. Arthur Rance, who was very surprised to see the new couple; but, when he learned that they had decided to spend a few days at his house , alongside Mr. Stangerson, and thus to accept an invitation that Mr. Darzac, under various pretexts, had until then rejected, he expressed perfect satisfaction and declared that his wife would be very happy. He was also delighted to learn of Rouletabille’s imminent arrival. Mr. Arthur Rance had not been without suffering from the extreme reserve with which, even since his marriage to Miss Edith Prescott, Mr. Robert Darzac had always treated him. During his last trip to San Remo, the young professor at the Sorbonne had limited himself, in passing, to a visit to the Château d’Hercule, made in the most ceremonious tone. However, when he returned to France, at the Menton-Garavan station, the first station after the border, he had been greeted very cordially, and kindly complimented on his improved appearance by the Rances who, warned of Darzac’s return by the Stangersons, had hastened to surprise him as he passed. In short, it was not up to Arthur Rance whether his relations with the Darzacs would become excellent. We have seen how the reappearance of Larsan at Bourg station had thrown all the travel plans of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac into disarray and had also transformed their state of mind, making them forget their feelings of restraint and circumspection towards Rance, and throwing them, along with Mr. Stangerson, who was not aware of anything, although he was beginning to suspect something, into the hands of people who were not at all sympathetic to them, but whom they considered honest and loyal and capable of defending them. At the same time, they called Rouletabille for help. It was a real panic. It grew, in a most visible way, in Mr. Robert Darzac when, having arrived at Nice station, we were joined by Mr. Arthur Rance himself. But, before he joined us, a small incident occurred which I cannot pass over in silence. As soon as we arrived in Nice, I jumped onto the platform and rushed to the office of the station to ask if there was a dispatch in my name there. They handed me the blue paper and, without opening it, I ran to find Rouletabille and M. Darzac. Read, I said to the young man. Rouletabille opened the dispatch and read: Brignolles has not left Paris since April 6; certainty. Rouletabille looked at me and chuckled. Oh, that’s it! he said. Was it you who asked for this information? What did you think? “It was in Dijon,” I replied, rather annoyed by Rouletabille’s attitude, ” that the idea came to me that Brignolles could have something to do with the misfortunes predicted by the dispatches you had received. And I asked one of my friends to be kind enough to inform me about the actions of this individual. I was very curious to know if he had not left Paris. “Well,” replied Rouletabille, “now you’ve been informed. You don’t think, however, that the pale features of your Brignolles hid the resurrected Larsan?
” “No!” I cried, in complete bad faith, for I suspected that Rouletabille was making fun of me. The truth was that I had thought of it. ” Aren’t you finished with Brignolles yet?” asked M. Darzac sadly. “He’s a poor man, but he’s a good man. ” “I don’t think so,” I protested. And I withdrew into my corner. Generally speaking, I was not very happy in my personal ideas with Rouletabille, who often found them amusing. But, this time, we were to have, a few days later, proof that, if Brignolles was not hiding a new transformation of Larsan, he was nonetheless a wretch. And, in this regard, Rouletabille and M. Darzac, paying tribute to my clairvoyance, apologized to me. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
If I spoke of this incident, it was also to show how much the idea of a Larsan hidden under some figure in our entourage, whom we knew little about, haunted me. Lady! Ballmeyer had so often proven, in this respect, his talent, I would even say his genius, that I believed I was on the mark in being suspicious of everyone. I was soon to understand—and the unexpected arrival of Mr. Arthur Rance had a lot to do with changing my ideas—that Larsan had, this time, changed tactics. Far from hiding, the bandit was now exhibiting himself, at least to some of us, with unparalleled audacity . What did he have to fear in this country? It was neither M. Darzac nor his wife who were going to denounce him! Nor, consequently, their friends. His ostentation seemed intended to ruin the happiness of the two spouses who believed they were rid of him forever! But, in that case, an objection arose. Why this revenge? Wouldn’t he have been more avenged by showing himself before the wedding? He would have prevented it! Yes, but he had to show himself in Paris! Still, could we stop at the thought that the danger of such a demonstration in Paris could have made Larsan think again? Who would dare to affirm it? But let us listen to Arthur Rance who has just joined the three of us in our compartment. Arthur Rance, naturally, knows nothing of the Bourg story, nothing of Larsan’s reappearance on the train, and he has come to tell us some terrifying news. All the same, if we had retained any hope of having lost Larsan on the Culoz line, we will have to give it up. Arthur Rance, too, has just found himself face to face with Larsan! And he came to warn us, before our arrival there, so that we could discuss the course of action to take. We had just driven you to the station, Rance reported to Darzac. The train having left, your wife, Mr. Stangerson and I had gone down, while walking, to the Menton promenade-pier. Mr. Stangerson was giving his arm to Mrs. Darzac. He was talking to her. I was on the right of Mr. Stangerson who, consequently, was standing in the middle of us. Suddenly, as we were stopping at the exit of the public garden to let a tram pass, I bumped into an individual who said to me: Pardon, sir! and I immediately shuddered, for I had heard that voice; I raised my head: it was Larsan! It was the voice of the Assize Court! He was staring at all three of us with his calm eyes. I don’t know how I could restrain the exclamation ready to burst from my lips! The name of the wretch! How I did not cry out : Larsan!… I quickly dragged away Mr. Stangerson and his daughter, who had seen nothing; I made them go around the bandstand , and led them to a carriage station. On the sidewalk, standing in front of the station, I found Larsan. I don’t know, I really don’t know how Mr. Stangerson and his daughter did not see him!… “Are you sure?” Robert Darzac asked anxiously. “Absolutely sure!” I feigned a slight unease; We got into the carriage and I told the coachman to push his horse. The man was still standing on the pavement staring at us with his icy stare when we set off. “And you are sure that my wife did not see him?” asked Darzac again, more and more agitated. “Oh! Certainly, I tell you… ” “My God!” interrupted Rouletabille, “if you think, Monsieur Darzac, that you can deceive your wife for long about the reality of Larsan’s reappearance, you are deluding yourself. ” “However,” replied Darzac, “from the end of our journey, the idea of a hallucination had made great progress in her mind and on arriving at Garavan, she seemed almost calm to me. ” “On arriving at Garavan?” said Rouletabille, “here, my dear Monsieur Darzac, is the dispatch that your wife sent me.” And the reporter handed him the telegram on which there were only these two words: Help! At which, poor Mr. Darzac seemed even more devastated. She’s going to go mad again! he said, shaking his head miserably. That’s what we all feared, and, strangely enough, when we finally arrived at the Menton-Garavan station, and found Mr. Stangerson and Mrs. Darzac there, who had left despite the formal promise the professor had made to Arthur Rance to stay with his daughter at Rochers Rouges until his return, for reasons he was to tell her later and which he had not yet had time to invent, it was with a phrase that was only the echo of our terror that Mrs. Darzac greeted Joseph Rouletabille. As soon as she saw the young man, she ran to him, and we had the impression that she was forcing herself not to hug him in front of us all. I saw that she clung to him as a shipwrecked man clings to the hand that alone can save him from the abyss. And I heard her murmur: I feel that I am going mad again! As for Rouletabille, I had sometimes seen him so pale, but never with such a cold appearance. Chapter 6. The Fort of Hercules When he descends from the station of Garavan, whatever the season that sees him arrive in this enchanted land, the traveler can believe himself arrived in this garden of the Hesperides, whose golden apples excited the covetousness of the conqueror of the monster of Nemea. I would perhaps not have, however, – on the occasion of the innumerable lemon and orange trees which, in the balmy air, let their clusters of sunshine hang along the paths, over the fences, – I would perhaps not have evoked the old-fashioned memory of the son of Jupiter and Alcmene if everything here did not recall his mythological glory and his fabulous promenade on the sweetest of shores. It is well said that the Phoenicians, by transporting their households to the shadow of the rock which the Grimaldi were to inhabit one day, gave to the little port which it shelters and, all along the coast, to a mountain, to a cape, to a peninsula, which have preserved it, this name of Hercules, which was that of their God; but I imagine that they already found this name there and that if, in truth, the divinities, tired of the blond dust of the roads of Hellas, went to seek elsewhere a marvelous stay, warm and perfumed, to rest from their adventures, they have not found one more beautiful than that. They were the first tourists of the Riviera. The garden of the Hesperides was not elsewhere, and Hercules had prepared the place for his comrades from Olympus by ridding them of that wicked hundred-headed dragon who wanted to keep the Côte d’Azur all for himself. So I am not quite sure that the bones of the Elephas antiquus, discovered a few years ago at the bottom of the Red Rocks, are not the bones of that dragon! When, all descending from the station, we arrived, in silence, at the shore, our eyes were immediately struck by the dazzling silhouette of the fortified castle, standing on the peninsula of Hercules, which the work carried out on the border has, alas! made disappear for about ten years. The oblique rays of the sun which were about to strike the walls of the old Square Tower, made it burst against the sea like a breastplate. It seemed to still guard, an old sentinel, all rejuvenated by light, this bay of Garavan curved like an azure sickle. And then, as we advanced, its brilliance faded. The star, behind us, had inclined towards the crest of the mountains; the promontories, to the west, were already wrapped, with the approach of evening, in their scarves of purple, and the castle was nothing more than a menacing and hostile shadow when we crossed the threshold. On the first steps of a narrow staircase which led to one of the towers, stood a pale and charming figure. It was the wife of Arthur Rance, the beautiful and sparkling Edith. Certainly, the bride of Lammermoor was not whiter, the day when the young stranger with the black eyes saved her from an impetuous bull; but Lucie had blue eyes , but Lucie was blonde, oh Edith!… Ah! when one wants to create a romantic figure in a medieval setting, the figure of an uncertain, distant, plaintive, and melancholic princess, one must not have those eyes, my lady! And your hair is blacker than a raven’s wing. This color is not in the angelic genre. Are you an angel, Edith? Is this languor really natural? Does this sweetness of your features not lie? Pardon me for asking you all these questions, Edith; but when I saw you for the first time, after having been seduced by the delicate harmony of your whole white image, motionless on this stone step, I followed the dark gaze of your eyes which rested on Professor Stangerson’s daughter, and it had a hard glint which made a strange contrast with the friendly timbre of your voice and the nonchalant smile of your mouth. The voice of this young woman is of a sure charm; the grace of her whole person is perfect; her gestures are harmonious. To the introductions which Arthur Rance has naturally taken upon himself, she responds in the simplest, most welcoming, most hospitable way. Rouletabille and I make a polite effort to preserve our freedom; we formulate the possibility of lodging somewhere other than the castle of Hercules. She makes a delicious pout, shrugs her shoulders with a childish gesture, declares that our rooms are ready and talks of something else. Come! Come! You don’t know the castle. You’ll see!… You’ll see!… Oh! I’ll show you the Louve another time… It’s the only sad corner of here! It’s gloomy! Dark and cold! It’s frightening! I love being frightened!… Oh! Monsieur Rouletabille, you will tell me, won’t you, stories that will frighten me!… And she glides, in her white dress, before us. She walks like an actress. It is quite singularly pretty, in this oriental garden, between this old menacing tower and the frail flowered arches of a ruined chapel. The vast courtyard that we cross is so well furnished on all sides with succulents, marijuana and foliage, cacti and aloes, cherry laurels, wild roses and daisies, that one would swear that an eternal spring has taken up residence in this enclosure, formerly the bailey of the castle where all the fighting men gathered. This courtyard, with the help of the winds of the sky and through the negligence of men, had naturally become a garden, a beautiful garden for a mentally ill person in which one can clearly see that the lady of the manor had pruned as little as possible and that she had not tried to bring people back, too abruptly, to reason. Behind all this greenery and all this embalming, one could see the most graceful thing that could be imagined in defunct architecture. Imagine the purest arches of flamboyant Gothic, raised on the first courses of the old Romanesque chapel; the pillars, dressed with climbing plants, ivy geranium and verbena, spring from their perfumed sheath and curve into the azure of the sky their broken arch, which nothing seems to support anymore. There is no longer a roof to this chapel. And it has no more walls… All that remains of it is this piece of stone lace that a miracle of balance holds suspended in the evening air… And, to our left, here is the enormous, massive tower, the 12th century tower that the locals call, Mrs. Edith tells us, the She-Wolf and that nothing, neither time, nor men, nor peace, nor battle, nor cannon, nor storm, has been able to shake. It is still as it appeared to the pillaging Saracens of 1107, who seized the Lérins Islands and who could do nothing against the castle of Hercules; as it appeared to Salagéri and his Genoese corsairs when, having taken the whole fort, even the Square Tower, even the Old Castle, it held firm, isolated, its defenders having blown up the curtains that connected it to the other defenses, until the arrival of the princes of Provence who liberated it. This is where Mrs. Edith has taken up residence. But I stop looking at things to look at people, Arthur Rance, for example, is looking at Mrs. Darzac. As for her and Rouletabille, they seem far, far from us. Mr. Darzac and Mr. Stangerson are exchanging random words. Basically, the same thought inhabits all these people who say nothing to each other or who, when they say something, lie to each other. We arrive at a postern gate. This is what we call, says Edith, still with her childish affectation, the gardener’s tower. From this postern gate, we can see the whole fort, the whole castle, the north side and the south side. Look!… And her arm, trailing a scarf, points out things to us… All these stones have their history. I’ll tell them to you, if you’re good… “How cheerful Edith is!” murmurs Arthur Rance. “I think she’s the only one cheerful here. ” We passed under the postern gate and here we are in a new courtyard. We have the old keep in front of us. Its appearance is truly impressive. It is tall and square; that’s why it is sometimes referred to by this name: the Square Tower. And, as this tower occupies the most important corner of the entire fortification, it is still called the Corner Tower… It is the most extraordinary piece, the most important of this whole agglomeration of defensive works. The walls there are thicker than anywhere else and higher. Halfway up, it’s still the Roman cement that seals them… it’s still the stones piled up by Caesar’s colonists. Over there, that tower, in the opposite corner, Edith continues, is the tower of Charles the Bold, so called because it was the duke who provided the plan when it came to transforming the castle’s defenses to withstand artillery. Oh! I’m very learned… Old Bob has made that tower his study. It’s a shame, because we would have had a magnificent dining room there… But I’ve never been able to refuse old Bob anything!… Old Bob, she adds, is my uncle… He’s the one who’s wanted me to call him that, ever since I was little… He’s not here at the moment… He left five days ago for Paris, and he’s coming back tomorrow. He went to compare anatomical pieces that he found in the Red Rocks with those in the Natural History Museum in Paris… Ah! Here is a dungeon… And she shows us, in the middle of this second courtyard, a well, which she called oubliette, out of pure romanticism and above which a eucalyptus, with smooth flesh and bare arms, leaned like a woman at the fountain. Since we had passed into the second courtyard, we understood better – me, at least, because Rouletabille, more and more indifferent to everything, seemed neither to see nor to hear – the layout of the fort of Hercules. As this layout is of capital importance in the incredible events which will occur almost as soon as we arrive at the Red Rocks, I will, first of all, put before the reader the general plan of the fort as it was drawn later by Rouletabille himself… This castle had been built, in 1140, by the lords of Mortola. To isolate it completely from the mainland, they had not hesitated to make an island of this peninsula by cutting the tiny isthmus which connected it to the shore. On the very shore, they had built a barbican, a rough semicircular fortification, intended to protect the approaches to the drawbridge and the two entrance towers. This barbican had left no trace. And the isthmus, over the centuries, had regained its original shape; the drawbridge had been removed; the moat had been filled. The walls of the castle of Hercules followed the shape of the peninsula, which was that of an irregular hexagon. These walls stood flush with the rock, and in places the rock overhung the waters that were tirelessly hollowing it out, so that a small boat could have taken shelter there in calm weather and when it did not fear that the surf would throw it and break it against this natural ceiling. This arrangement was marvelous for the defense, which, under these conditions, had little to fear from escalation, from any side. The fort was entered through the north gate, guarded by the two towers A and A’, connected by a vault. These towers, which had suffered greatly during the last sieges by the Genoese, had subsequently been somewhat repaired and had just been made ready for habitation by Mrs. Rance, who had dedicated the premises to domestic service. The ground floor of tower A served as a residence for the caretakers. A small door opened in the side of tower A, under the vault, and allowed the watchman to see all the entrances and exits. A heavy oak door clad in iron, the two leaves of which had been folded back for countless years against the interior wall of the two towers, was no longer of any use, so difficult had it been found to operate, and the entrance to the castle was closed only by a small gate that anyone, master or purveyor, opened at will. This entrance was the only one that allowed entry into the castle. As I said, past this entrance, one found oneself in a first courtyard or bailey closed on all sides by the surrounding wall and by the towers or what remained of the towers. These walls were far from having retained their original height. The old curtain walls which joined the towers had been razed and were replaced by a sort of circular boulevard towards which one climbed from the inside of the bailey by fairly gentle ramps. These boulevards were still crowned by a parapet pierced with loopholes for the small pieces. For this transformation had taken place in the 15th century, at the time when every castellan had to begin to take artillery seriously. As for towers B, B’, B”, which had for a long time retained their homogeneity and their original height, and for which at that time it was limited to removing the pointed roof which had been replaced by a platform intended to support artillery, they had later been razed to the height of the parapet of the boulevards and they had been made into a sort of half-moon. This operation had been carried out in the 17th century, during the construction of a modern castle, still called Château Neuf although it was in ruins, and this to clear the view of said castle. This Château Neuf was placed in C C’. On the platform of the old towers, a platform also surrounded by a parapet, palm trees had been planted which, moreover, had grown poorly, burned by the wind and sea water. When one leaned over the circular parapet which went all the way around the property, overlooking the rock with which it formed a body, a rock which, itself, overlooked the sea, one realized that the castle continued to be as closed as in the time when the curtain walls reached two-thirds the height of the old towers. The She-Wolf had been respected, as I said, and even its watchtower, restored, of course, raised its strangely old-fashioned silhouette above the Mediterranean azure. I also mentioned the ruins of the chapel. The old outbuildings W leaning against the parapet between B and B’ had been transformed into stables and kitchens. I have just described here the entire advanced part of the castle of Hercules. One could only enter the second enclosure by the postern H that Mrs. Arthur Rance called the gardener’s tower and which was, in short, only a thick pavilion formerly defended by the tower B” and by another tower, located at C, and which had entirely disappeared at the time of the construction of the New Castle C C’. A ditch and a wall then started from B” to end at I at the Tower of Charles the Bold, advancing, at C, in the form of a spur in the middle of the bailey and completely blocking the entire first courtyard which they closed. The ditch still existed, wide and deep, but the wall had been removed along the entire length of the New Castle and replaced by the wall of the castle itself. A central gate at D, now blocked, opened onto a bridge which had been thrown over the ditch and which formerly allowed direct communications with the bailey. Now, this flying bridge had been demolished or had collapsed, and, as the windows of the castle, very high above the moat, were still fitted with their thick iron bars, it could be claimed in all truth that the second courtyard had remained as impenetrable as when it was entirely defended by its surrounding wall, at the time when the New Castle did not exist. The ground of this second courtyard, of the Court of Charles the Bold, as the old guides of the country still called it, was a little higher than the level of the first. The rock formed there a higher foundation, a natural pedestal of this colossal, prodigious and black column, of this Old Castle, all square, all straight, of a single block, lengthening its formidable shadow on the clear water. One entered the Old Castle F only by a small door K. The elders of the country never called it anything other than the Square Tower, to distinguish it from the Round Tower, called of Charles the Bold. A parapet similar to the one that closed the first courtyard, connected towers B”, F and L, also closing the second. We have said that the Round Tower had once been razed halfway up, reworked and rebuilt by a Mortola, on the plans of Charles the Bold himself, to whom it had rendered some services in the Helvetic battle. This tower had an external diameter of fifteen fathoms and consisted of a low battery whose floor was placed one fathom below the upper level of the plateau. One descended into this low battery by a slope, ending in an octagonal room whose vaults supported four people of all types of bodies cylindrical pillars. On this room opened three enormous embrasures for three people of all types of bodies cannons. It is from this octagonal room that Mrs. Edith would have liked to make a vast dining room, because, if it was admirably cool because of the thickness of the walls, which was formidable, the light from the rock and the dazzling clarity of the sea could penetrate it at will through these loopholes which had been enlarged into a square and now formed windows also adorned with powerful iron bars. This tower L, of which Mrs. Edith’s uncle had taken over to work there and store his new collections, had a marvelous open space where the lady of the manor had transported topsoil, plants and flowers, and where she had thus created the most astonishing hanging garden that could be dreamed of. A hut, entirely dressed in dry palm leaves, formed a happy shelter there. I have marked, on the plan, in a gray tint, all the buildings or parts of buildings which had been, by Mrs. Edith’s care, arranged, arranged and restored for immediate habitation. Of the 17th century castle, called Château Neuf, only two bedrooms and a small living room had been repaired in C’, on the first floor, for passing guests . This is where Rouletabille and I were to sleep; as for Mr. and Mrs. Robert Darzac, they lived in the Square Tower which we will have to speak of in a more particular way. Two rooms, on the ground floor of this Square Tower, remained reserved for old Bob who slept there. Mr. Stangerson lived on the first floor of the Louve, below the Rance household. Mrs. Edith wanted to show us our rooms herself. She led us through rooms with collapsed ceilings, ripped parquet floors, and moldy walls; but, here and there, a few panelings, a trumeau, peeling paint, and tattered wallpaper attested to the former splendor of the Château Neuf, born from the whim of a Mortola of the grand siècle. On the other hand, our little rooms in no way recalled that magnificent past. They had been cleaned with a care that touched me. Clean and hygienic, without carpets, whitewashed, lacquered in light, furnished summarily in the modern style, they pleased us very much. I have said that our two rooms were separated by a small living room. As I was tying the knot in my tie, I called Rouletabille, asking if he was ready. I received no reply. I went to his room and was surprised to find that he had already left. I stood at his window, which, like mine, overlooked the Court of Charles the Bold. This courtyard was empty, inhabited only by its large eucalyptus tree, whose strong scent, at that hour, rose to me. Above the parapet of the boulevard, I could see the immense expanse of silent waters. The sea had become a slightly dark blue at dusk, and the shadows of night were visible on the horizon of the Italian coast, already clinging to the point of Ospedaletti. No sound, no trembling, on earth or in the heavens. I had never before observed such silence and stillness in nature until the minute before the most violent storms and the unleashing of lightning. However, we had nothing of the sort to fear, and the night promised to be decidedly serene… But what is this shadow that has appeared? Where does this spectre that glides over the water come from? Standing at the front of a small boat that a fisherman is moving forward at the slow pace of his two oars, I recognized the silhouette of Larsan! Who would be mistaken, who would try to be mistaken? Ah! he is only too recognizable. And if those before whom he comes this evening were disposed to doubt that it was he, he puts such a menacing coquetry into exhibiting himself in all his former face, that he would not inform them further by shouting to them: It’s me! Oh! yes, it’s him! It’s him! It’s the great Fred. The boat, silent, with its motionless statue, circles the fortified castle. It now passes under the windows of the Square Tower, and then it directs its prow towards the Pointe de Garibaldi towards the quarries of the Red Rocks[1]. And the man is still standing, arms crossed, head turned towards the tower, a diabolical apparition on the threshold of night which, slow and sly, approaches him from behind, envelops him in its light gauze and carries him away. Now, lowering my eyes, I see two shadows in the Cour du Téméraire; they are at the corner of the parapet near the small door of the Square Tower. One of these shadows, the larger one, is holding the other back and begs. The youngest wants to escape; it seems as if she is ready to take her leap towards the sea. And I hear the voice of Madame Darzac saying: Beware! He is setting a trap for you. I forbid you to leave me tonight!… And the voice of Rouletabille: He will have to come to the shore. Let me run to the shore! — What will you do? moans the voice of Mathilde. — Whatever it takes. And, again, the voice of Mathilde, the terrified voice: I forbid you to touch this man! And I hear nothing more. I went down and found Rouletabille, alone, sitting on the edge of the well. I spoke to him, and he did not answer me, as sometimes happens to him. I went into the well, and there, I met Monsieur Darzac who came to me, very agitated. He called out to me from afar: Well! Did you see him? — Yes, I saw him, I said. — And she, do you know if she saw him? — She saw him. She was with Rouletabille when he passed by! What audacity! Robert Darzac was still trembling from having seen him. He told me that as soon as he saw him, he ran like a mentally ill person to the shore, but that he didn’t arrive at Garibaldi Point in time and that the boat had disappeared as if by magic. But already Robert Darzac was leaving me, running to join Mathilde, anxious about the state of mind in which he would find her. However, he returned almost immediately, sad and dejected. The door of his apartment was closed. His wife wanted to be alone for a moment. And Rouletabille? I asked. — I didn’t see him! We remained together on the parapet, watching the night that had taken Larsan. Robert Darzac was infinitely sad. To divert the course of his thoughts, I asked him a few questions about the Rance household, which he finally answered. Thus, little by little, I was to learn how, after the trial at Versailles, Arthur Rance had returned to Philadelphia, and how, one fine evening, he had found himself at a family banquet, next to a romantic young woman who had immediately captivated him with a literary turn of mind that he had rarely encountered among his beautiful compatriots. She had nothing of that alert, casual, independent, and audacious type that was to lead to the fluffy ruffles, so in favor these days. A little disdainful, sweet and melancholy, of an interesting pallor, she would rather have recalled the tender opiates of Walter Scott, who was, moreover, it seems, his favorite author. Ah! Certainly, she was late, she was late in a delicious way. How did this delicate figure manage to make such a strong impression on Arthur Rance, who had so loved the majestic Mathilde? These are the secrets of the heart. In any case, feeling himself falling in love, Arthur Rance had taken advantage of it that evening to get abominably drunk. He must have committed some inelegant blunder, let slip something so improper that Miss Edith suddenly begged him, and in a loud voice, not to speak to her again. The next day, Arthur Rance made Miss Edith officially apologize, and swore that he would drink nothing but water from now on: he had to keep this oath. Arthur Rance had known the uncle for a long time, that good old man from Munder, old Bob, as he had been nicknamed at the University, an extraordinary fellow who was as famous for his adventures as an explorer as for his discoveries as a geologist. He was as gentle as a sheep, but had no equal when it came to hunting the pampas tiger. He had spent half his life as a professor south of the Rio-Black Person, among the Patagonians, searching for Tertiary man or at least his skeleton, not the Anthropopithecus or some other Pithecanthropus, more or less akin to the ape, but rather man, stronger, more powerful than the one who inhabits the planet today, man, in short, contemporary with the prodigious mammals who appeared on the globe before the Quaternary period. He usually returned from these expeditions with a few crates of stones and a respectable baggage of tibias and femurs over which the scholarly world was fighting, but also with a rich collection of rabbit skins, as he said, which attested that the old bespectacled scholar still knew how to use weapons less prehistoric than the flint axe or the troglodyte’s drill. As soon as he returned to Philadelphia, he took possession of his chair again, bent over his books, his notebooks and, a person with mental health problems like a leatherworker, dictated his course, amusing himself by throwing the shavings of his long pencils, which he never used but which he sharpened interminably, into the eyes of his closest students. And when he had reached his goal—which he was aiming for—his good, hoary head would appear above his desk , split, under his gold spectacles, by the broad , silent laugh of his jovial mouth. All these details were given to me later by Arthur Rance himself, who had been old Bob’s pupil, but who had not seen him for many years, when he first met Miss Edith; and if I relate them so fully here, it is because, by a series of very natural circumstances, we are going to find old Bob again at the Red Rocks. Miss Edith, at the famous evening when Arthur Rance was introduced to her and when he behaved in such an incoherent manner, had perhaps only shown herself so melancholy because she had just received unpleasant news from her uncle. He, for four years, had not been able to bring himself to return from the Patagonians. In his last letter, he told her that he was very ill and despaired of seeing her again before he died. One might be tempted to think that a tender-hearted niece, in these circumstances, could have refrained from appearing at a banquet, however family-oriented, but Miss Edith, during her uncle’s travels, had received so much bad news, and her uncle had returned from so far away, still in such good health, that she would certainly not be held responsible for the fact that her sadness had not kept her at home that evening. However, three months later, following a new letter, she decided to leave and go alone to join her uncle, deep in Araucania. During these three months, memorable events had taken place. Miss Edith had been touched by Arthur Rance’s remorse and his persistence in drinking only water. She had learned that this gentleman’s bad habits of intemperance had only been acquired as a result of a despair of love, and this circumstance had pleased her above all. This romantic character of which I spoke just now was to quickly serve the purposes of Arthur Rance; and, at the time of Miss Edith’s departure for Araucania, no one was surprised that the former pupil of old Bob accompanied his niece. If the engagement was not yet official, it was because it was only waiting for the geologist’s blessing to become so. Miss Edith and Arthur Rance found their excellent uncle in San Luis. He was in a charming mood and in flourishing health. Rance, who had not seen him for so long, had the nerve to tell him that he had grown younger, which is the most skillful of compliments. So, when his niece told him that she had become engaged to this charming boy, his uncle’s joy was remarkable. All three returned to Philadelphia where the marriage was celebrated. Miss Edith did not know France. Arthur Rance decided to make their honeymoon there. And that is how they found, as will be recounted later, a scientific opportunity to settle near Menton, not in France, but a hundred meters from the border, in Italy, in front of the Red Rocks. The bell having rung and Arthur Rance having come to meet us, we headed towards the Louve, in the lower room of which, that evening, dinner was served. When we were all gathered there, minus the Old Bob, absent from Fort Hercules, Mrs. Edith asked us if any of us had seen a small boat that had gone around the castle and in which was standing a man. The singular attitude of this man had struck her. As no one answered her, she continued: Oh! I will know who it is, because I know the sailor who was driving the boat. He is a great friend of Old Bob. “Really!” said Rouletabille, “do you know this sailor, madame? ” “He sometimes comes to the castle. He comes to sell fish. The locals gave him a strange name that I could not repeat to you in their impossible dialect, but I had it translated. It means: The executioner of the sea! A very pretty name, isn’t it?” Chapter 7. Of some precautions taken by Joseph Rouletabille to defend the fort of Hercules against an enemy attack Rouletabille did not even have the courtesy to ask for an explanation of this astonishing nickname. He seemed lost in the darkest reflections. Strange dinner! Strange castle! Strange people! Mrs. Edith’s languid graces were not enough to galvanize us. There were two new couples there, four lovers who should have been the gaiety of the hour, and radiated the joy of living. The meal was most sad. The specter of Larsan hovered over the guests, even over those among us who did not know he was so close. It is fair to say, moreover, that Professor Stangerson, ever since he had learned the cruel, painful truth, could not rid himself of this specter. I do not think I am going too far in claiming that the first victim of the Glandier tragedy, and the most unfortunate of all, was Professor Stangerson. He had lost everything: his faith in science, his love of work, and—a ruin more dreadful than all the others—his daughter’s religion. He had believed in her so much! She had been for him the object of such constant pride. He had associated her for so many years, a sublime virgin, with his search for the unknown! He had been so marvelously dazzled by this definitive will she had had to refuse her beauty to anyone who could have distanced her from her father and from science! And, when he was still contemplating such a sacrifice with ecstasy, he learned that, if his daughter refused to marry, it was because she was already married to a Ballmeyer! The day when Mathilde had decided to confess everything to her father and to confess to him a past which, in the eyes of the professor, already warned by the mystery of the Glandier, would illuminate the present with a very tragic brilliance, the day when, falling at his feet and kissing his knees, she had told him the drama of her heart and her youth, Professor Stangerson had clasped his darling child in his trembling arms; he had placed the kiss of forgiveness on her adored head, he had mingled his tears with the sobs of the one who had expiated her fault even in madness, and he had sworn to her that she had never been more precious to him than since he knew what she had suffered. And she had gone away a little consoled. But he, left alone, arose another man… a man alone, all alone… the man alone! Professor Stangerson had lost his daughter and his gods! He had seen her marry Robert Darzac with indifference, who had been, however, her dearest pupil. In vain did Mathilde strive to warm her father with a more ardent tenderness. She felt well that he no longer belonged to her, that his gaze was turning away from her, that his vague eyes fixed in the past an image which was no longer his, but which had been, alas! And that, if they returned to her, to her, Madame Darzac, it was to perceive at her side, not the respected figure of an honest man, but the eternally living, eternally infamous silhouette of the other! Of the one who had been the first husband, of the one who had stolen his daughter!… He no longer worked!… The great secret of the Dissociation of Matter which he had promised to bring to men would return to the nothingness from which, for a moment, he had drawn it, and men would go on, repeating for centuries more, the imbecilic words: Ex nihilo nihil!
The meal was made even more gloomy by the setting in which it was served to us, a dark setting, lit by a Gothic lamp, old wrought iron candelabras, between fortress walls decorated with oriental tapestries and against which leaned old wardrobes dating from the first Saracen invasion, and Dagobert chairs . In turn, I examined the guests, and thus the particular causes of the general sadness appeared to me. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Darzac were next to each other. The mistress of the house had obviously not wanted to separate such new spouses, whose union dated only from the day before yesterday. Of the two, I must say that the most desolate was, without a doubt, our friend Robert. He didn’t say a word. Madame Darzac, for her part, was still joining in the conversation, exchanging a few banal reflections with Arthur Rance. Should I even add, in this connection, that after the scene I had witnessed from the top of my window between Rouletabille and Mathilde, I expected to see the latter more terrified… almost annihilated by this threatening vision of a Larsan rising from the water. But no! On the contrary, I noticed a remarkable difference between the terrified aspect in which she had appeared to us previously at the station, for example, and this one which was almost entirely composed. One would have said that this apparition had rather relieved her and when, in the evening, I shared this reflection with Rouletabille, the young reporter agreed with me and explained this apparent anomaly to me in the simplest way. Mathilde had nothing to fear so much as going mad again, and the cruel certainty she now felt that she had not been the victim of the hallucination of her troubled brain had certainly served to restore some of her calm. She still preferred having to defend herself against the living Larsan than against his ghost! In the first interview she had had with Rouletabille in the Tour Carrée while I was finishing my toilette, she had, moreover, seemed to my young friend completely haunted by the idea that she was going mad again! Rouletabille, telling me about this interview, admitted that he had only been able to restore some of her peace by taking the opposite view of everything Robert Darzac had done, that is to say, by not hiding from her the fact that her eyes had indeed seen clearly and seen Frédéric Larsan! When she learned that Robert Darzac had only concealed this reality from her out of fear that she would be terrified by it, and that he had been the first to telegraph Rouletabille to come to their aid, she had heaved a sigh that was almost like a sob. She had taken Rouletabille’s hands and suddenly covered them with kisses, as a mother , in a fit of adorable gluttony, does the hands of her very small child. Obviously, she was instinctively grateful to the young man, toward whom she felt irresistibly drawn by all the mysterious forces of her maternal being, for the fact that he repelled, with a word, the madness that always prowled around her and that, from time to time, came back to knock at her door. It was at that moment that they had both seen, at the same time, through the window of the tower, Frédéric Larsan, standing in his boat. They had first looked at him in stupor, motionless and silent. Then a cry of rage had escaped from Rouletabille’s anguished throat and he had wanted to rush forward, to run after the man! We saw how Mathilde had held him back, clinging to him even on the parapet… Obviously, it was horrible, this natural resurrection of Larsan, but less horrible than the continual and supernatural resurrection of a Larsan who would exist only in his sick brain!… She no longer saw Larsan everywhere. She saw him where he was! At once nervous and gentle, sometimes patient and at times impatient, Mathilde, while answering Arthur Rance, took from M. Darzac the most charming, the most tender care. She was full of attention, serving him herself, with an admirable and serious smile, making sure that his eyesight was not tired by the sudden approach of a light. Robert thanked her and seemed, I must admit, terribly unhappy. And I was obliged to remember that the unfortunate Larsan had arrived in time to remind Madame Darzac that before being Madame Darzac she was Madame Jean Roussel-Ballmeyer-Larsan before God and even, in the eyes of certain transatlantic laws, before men. If Larsan’s aim had been, by showing himself, to deal a terrible blow to a happiness that was still only in expectation, he had fully succeeded!… And, perhaps, as an accurate historian of the event, we must emphasize this moral fact, greatly to Mathilde’s credit , that it was not only the state of disarray in which her mind found itself following the reappearance of Larsan, which incited her to make Robert Darzac understand, the first evening when they found themselves face to face – finally alone! – in the apartment of the Tour Carrée, that this apartment was large enough to accommodate their two despairs separately; but it was also the feeling of duty, that is to say of what they each owed to each other, which dictated to them the noblest and most august of decisions! I have already said that Mathilde Stangerson had been very religiously raised, not by her father, who was rather indifferent on this subject, but by women and especially by her old aunt in Cincinnati. The studies she had subsequently undertaken, alongside the professor, had in no way shaken her faith and the professor had been careful not to influence his daughter’s mind in any way in this regard. She had retained, even at the most dreadful moment of the creation of nothingness, a theory that came from her father’s brain, as well as that of the dissociation of matter, the faith of Pasteur and Newton. And she commonly said that, if it were proven that everything came from nothing, that is to say from the imponderable ether, and returned to this nothing, to emerge from it eternally, thanks to a system which approached in a singular way the famous hooked atoms of the ancients, it remained to be proven that this nothing, origin of everything, had not been created by God. And, as a good Catholic, this God, obviously, was hers, the only one who had his vicar here below, called pope. I would perhaps have passed over Mathilde’s religious theories in silence if they had not been of certain assistance in the resolutions she had to make with regard to her new husband before men, when it was revealed to her that her husband before God was still of this world. The death of Larsan having seemed certain, she had gone to a new nuptial blessing with the consent of her confessor, as a widow. And now she was no longer a widow, but a bigamist before God! Moreover, such a catastrophe was not irremediable and she herself had to make shine in the saddened eyes of this poor Mr. Darzac the prospect of a better fate which would be arranged as appropriate by the court of Rome, to which, as quickly as possible, the dispute would have to be submitted immediately. In short, in conclusion to all the above, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Darzac, forty-eight hours after their marriage at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, were sharing separate rooms, at the back of the Tour Carrée. The reader will then understand that perhaps nothing more was needed to explain Robert’s irremediable melancholy and Mathilde’s consoling care. Without being precisely aware, that evening, of all these details, I nevertheless suspected the most important one. From Mr. and Mrs. Darzac, my eyes went to the latter’s neighbor, Mr. Arthur-William Rance, and my thoughts were already seizing a new subject of observation, when the head waiter came to announce to us that the concierge Bernier asked to speak immediately to Rouletabille. The latter stood up immediately, excused himself and left. “Well!” I said, “so the Berniers are no longer at the Glandier! We remember, in fact, that these Berniers—the man and the woman— were Mr. Stangerson’s caretakers at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. I recounted, in The Mystery of the Yellow Room, how Rouletabille had them released, when they were accused of complicity in the attack on the Chênaie pavilion. Their gratitude to the young reporter, on that occasion, had been of the greatest, and Rouletabille had been able, from then on, to speak of their devotion. Mr. Stangerson responded to my question by informing me that all his servants had left the Glandier, which he had abandoned forever. As the Rances needed caretakers for the Fort d’Hercules, the professor had been happy to give them these loyal servants, about whom he had never had any complaints, apart from a little poaching affair which had almost turned out so badly for them. Now they were staying in one of the towers of the entrance postern, which they had made their lodge and from which they watched the movement in and out of the Fort d’Hercules. Rouletabille had not seemed in the least surprised when the head waiter had told him that Bernier wanted to have a word with him: so , I thought, he was already aware of their presence at the Rochers Rouges.
In short, I discovered—without being astonished, moreover— that Rouletabille had seriously employed the few minutes during which I thought he was in his room and which I had devoted to my toilet or to useless chatter with M. Darzac. This unexpected departure of Rouletabille cast a chill. Everyone wondered if this absence did not coincide with some important event relating to the return of Larsan. Mrs. Robert Darzac was worried. And, because Mathilde seemed uncomfortably impressed, I saw that Mr. Arthur Rance saw fit to show, also, a discreet emotion. Here, it is worth saying that Mr. Arthur Rance and his wife were not aware of all the misfortunes of Professor Stangerson’s daughter. It had, naturally, been deemed unnecessary to inform them of the secret marriage of Mathilde and Jean Roussel, now Larsan. It was a family secret. But they knew better than anyone—Arthur Rance because he had been involved in the Glandier tragedy, and his wife because her husband had told her about it—how relentlessly the famous security agent had pursued the woman who would one day be Mrs. Darzac. Larsan’s crimes were naturally explained in Arthur Rance’s eyes by a disordered passion, and it should not be surprising that a man who had been so long in love with Mathilde as the American phrenologist had not sought any other explanation for Larsan’s attitude than that of a furious and hopeless love. As for Mrs. Edith, I soon realized perfectly well that the reasons for the tragedy at Glandier did not seem to her as simple as her husband wanted to say. For her to think like this, she would have had to feel for Mathilde an enthusiasm approaching that of Arthur Rance and, quite the contrary, her whole attitude, which I observed at leisure, without her suspecting it, said: But, finally! What is so astonishing about this woman that she has inspired such chivalrous, such criminal feelings in the hearts of men for so many years?… What! So here she is, this woman for whom, as a policeman, one kills; for whom, sober, one gets drunk; and for whom , innocent, one gets condemned? What does she have that I have more than I, who only knew how to get myself flatly married by a husband I would never have had if she had not rejected him? Yes, what does she have? She is not even young anymore! And yet, my husband forgets me to look at her again! That is what I read in the eyes of Mrs. Edith as she watched her husband look at Mathilde. Ah! the dark eyes of the sweet, the languorous Mrs. Edith! I congratulate myself on these necessary introductions that I have just made to the reader. It is good that he knows the feelings that inhabit the heart of each one, at the moment when each one will have a role to play in the strange and unheard-of drama that is being prepared in the shadows, in the shadows that envelop the fort of Hercules. And yet, I have said nothing about old Bob, nor about Prince Galich, but their turn, have no doubt, will come. It is that I have taken it as a rule, in such a considerable affair, to paint things and people only as they appear in the course of events. Thus the reader will pass through all the alternatives, that some of us have known, of anguish and peace, of mystery and clarity, of incomprehension and understanding! So much the better if the definitive light dawns on the reader’s mind before the hour when it appeared to me. Since he will have, no more and no less, the same means as us to see clearly, he will have proven to himself that he has a brain worthy of Rouletabille’s skull. We finished this first meal without having seen our young friend again and we got up from the table without communicating to each other the bottom of our thoughts which were very troubled. Mathilde immediately inquired about Rouletabille when she left the Louve, and I accompanied her to the entrance of the fort. Mr. Darzac and Mrs. Edith followed us. Mr. Stangerson had taken leave of us. Arthur Rance, who had disappeared for a moment, came to join us as we arrived under the vault. The night was clear, all lit by the moon. Meanwhile, lanterns had been lit under the vault which resounded with great dull blows. And we heard the voice of Rouletabille encouraging those around him: Come on! One more effort! he said, and voices, after his own, began to gasp like sailors hauling boats onto the jetty at the entrance to ports. Finally, a great uproar filled our ears. It was as if we were in a bell. It was the two leaves of the enormous iron gate which had just joined for the first time in more than a hundred years. Mrs. Edith was astonished by this last-minute maneuver and asked what had become of the gate which until then had served as a gate. But Arthur Rance seized her arm and she understood that she had only to be silent, which did not prevent her from murmuring: Really, does it not seem as if we are going to undergo a siege? But Rouletabille was already leading our whole group into the bailey, and laughingly announced that if we had by any chance the desire to go for a walk in town, we must give it up that evening, since his orders had been given and no one could leave or enter the castle. Father Jacques, he added, still pretending to be joking, was charged by him with carrying out the order, and everyone knew that it was impossible to seduce this old servant. This is how I learned that Father Jacques, whom I had known at the Glandier, had accompanied Professor Stangerson, to whom he served as valet. The day before, he had slept in a small study in the Louve, adjoining his master’s room, but Rouletabille had changed all that, and it was Father Jacques now who had taken the place of the concierges in Tower A. But where are the Berniers? asked Mrs. Edith, intrigued. —They are already installed in the Square Tower, in the entrance room, on the left; they will serve as concierges to the Square Tower!… replied Rouletabille. —But the Square Tower does not need concierges! cried Mrs. Edith, whose astonishment knew no bounds. —That is what we do not know, madame, replied the reporter without explanation. But he took Mr. Arthur Rance aside and made him understand that he must inform his wife of Larsan’s reappearance. If they intended to hide the truth from Mr. Stangerson any longer, they could hardly succeed without Mrs. Edith’s intelligent help. Finally, it was good that everyone, from now on, at the Fort of Hercules, should be prepared for everything, in other words, should not be surprised by anything! Thereupon, he led us across the bailey and we found ourselves at the gardener’s postern gate. I have said that this postern gate H commanded the entrance to the second courtyard; but the ditch had long since been filled in at this point. Formerly, there had been a drawbridge there. Rouletabille, to our great astonishment, declared that the next day he would have the ditch cleared and the drawbridge re-established! At that very moment, he was busy having the people from the castle close this postern gate with a sort of makeshift door while waiting for something better, made of planks and old chests of drawers that had been taken out of the gardener’s building. Thus, the castle barricaded itself and Rouletabille was alone now laughing out loud; for Mrs. Edith, quickly informed by her husband, said nothing more, contenting herself with being prodigiously amused in private by these visitors who were transforming her old fortified castle into an impregnable place because they feared the approach of a man, of a single man!… It was because Mrs. Edith did not know this man and she had not gone through the Mystery of the Yellow Room! As for the others—and Arthur Rance himself was among them—they found it perfectly natural and absolutely reasonable that Rouletabille should fortify them against the unknown, against the mystery, against the invisible, against that who knew what that prowled in the night, around the fort of Hercules! At this postern, Rouletabille had placed no one, because he reserved this post, that night, for himself. From there, he could watch over both the first and second courtyards. It was a strategic point which commanded the entire castle. The only way to get to the Darzacs from outside was to first pass through Father Jacques at A, through Rouletabille at H, and through the Bernier household, who watched over gate K of the Tour Carrée. The young man had decided that the designated watchmen would not go to bed. As we passed near the well in the Cour du Téméraire, I saw by moonlight that the circular board that closed it had been disturbed. I also saw, on the edge, a bucket tied to a rope. Rouletabille explained to me that he had wanted to know if this old well corresponded with the sea and that he had drawn absolutely fresh water from it, proof that this water had no relation to the salty element. He then took a few steps with Madame Darzac, who immediately took leave of us and entered the Tour Carrée. Monsieur Darzac, at Rouletabille’s request, stayed with us, as did Arthur Rance. A few apologetic phrases addressed to Mrs. Edith made her understand that she was being politely asked to go to bed, which she did with rather nonchalant grace, greeting Rouletabille with an ironic: Good evening, Captain! When we were alone among the men, Rouletabille led us towards the postern gate, into the gardener’s little room; it was a very dark room, with a low ceiling, where we were wonderfully huddled together to see without being seen. There, Arthur Rance, Robert Darzac, Rouletabille and I, in the night, without even having lit a lantern, held our first council of battle. My goodness, I don’t know what other name to give to this gathering of frightened men, sheltered behind the stones of this old warlike castle. We can deliberate peacefully here, began Rouletabille; no one will hear us and we will not be surprised by anyone. If we managed to get through the first gate guarded by Father Jacques without him noticing, we would be immediately warned by the outpost I have established in the very middle of the bailey, hidden in the ruins of the chapel. Yes, I have placed your gardener there, Mattoni, Monsieur Rance. I believe, from what I have been told, that we can be sure of this man? Tell me, I pray you, your opinion?… I listened to Rouletabille with admiration. Mrs. Edith was right. It was true that he was improvising as our captain and now, from the outset, he was taking all the necessary measures to ensure the defense of the place. Certainly! I imagine that he had no desire for it surrender, at any price, and that he was perfectly willing to blow himself up in our company, rather than capitulate. Ah! What a brave little governor he was! And, in truth, one had to be quite brave to undertake to defend the fort of Hercules against Larsan, braver than if it had been a thousand besiegers, as happened to one of the Counts of Mortola who, to clear the place, had only to fire large pieces, culverins and bombards and then charge the enemy already half-defeated by the well-directed fire of an artillery that was one of the most advanced of the time. But there, today, who did we have to fight? Darkness ! Where was the enemy? Everywhere and nowhere! We could neither aim, not knowing where the target was, nor even less take the offensive, not knowing where to strike? All that remained for us was to guard ourselves, to lock ourselves in, to watch and wait! Mr. Arthur Rance having declared to Rouletabille that he was answerable for his gardener Mattoni, our young man, now sure of being covered on this side, took his time to first explain the situation to us in a general way. He lit his pipe, took three or four quick puffs and said: There! Can we hope that Larsan, after having shown himself so insolently to us, under our walls, as if to brave us, as if to defy us, will confine himself to this platonic manifestation? Will he be content with a moral success which will have brought confusion, terror and discouragement to a part of the garrison? And will he disappear? I don’t think so, to tell the truth. Firstly, because it is not in his essentially combative character, which is not satisfied with half-successes, and secondly because nothing forces him to disappear! Consider that he can do anything against us, but that we can do nothing against him, except defend ourselves and strike, if we can, when he chooses! We have, in fact, no help to expect from outside. And he knows it well; that is what makes him so bold and so calm! Who can we call for our aid? “The prosecutor!” Arthur Rance said with some hesitation, for he thought that if this hypothesis had not yet been considered by Rouletabille, it was because there must be some obscure reason for it. Rouletabille considered his host with an air of pity which was not exempt from reproach. And he said, in an icy tone which definitively informed Arthur Rance of the clumsiness of his proposal: ” You should understand, sir, that I did not, at Versailles, save Larsan from French justice, to deliver him, at the Red Rocks , to Italian justice.” Mr. Arthur Rance, who, as I have said, was unaware of the first marriage of Professor Stangerson’s daughter, could not, like us, measure the impossibility of revealing Larsan’s existence without unleashing, especially since the ceremony at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, the worst of scandals and the most terrible of catastrophes; but certain unexplained incidents at the Versailles trial must have struck him sufficiently for him to be able to grasp that we feared above all else to interest the public again in what had been called The Mystery of Mademoiselle Stangerson. He understood that evening, better than ever, that Larsan held us by one of those terrible secrets which decide the honor or death of people, outside of all the magistracies on earth. He therefore bowed before Mr. Robert Darzac, without saying another word; but this salute evidently meant that Mr. Arthur Rance was ready to fight for Mathilde’s cause like a noble knight who cares little for the reasons for the battle, as long as he dies for his beloved. At least, that’s how I interpreted his gesture, convinced that the American, despite his recent marriage, was far from having forgotten his old passion. Mr. Darzac said: This man must disappear, but in silence, or he reduced to mercy, either we make a peace treaty with him, or we kill him!… But the first condition of his disappearance is the secrecy of his reappearance. Above all, I will act as Madame Darzac’s interpreter in begging you to do everything in the world to ensure that Monsieur Stangerson does not know that we are still threatened with blows from this bandit! “Madame Darzac’s wishes are orders,” replied Rouletabille. “Monsieur Stangerson will know nothing!… We then dealt with the situation of the servants and what could be expected of them. Fortunately, Father Jacques and the Berniers were already half in the secret of things and would not be surprised by anything. Mattoni was devoted enough to obey Mrs. Edith without understanding. The others did not count. There was still Walter, old Bob’s servant, but he had accompanied his master to Paris and was only to return with him. Rouletabille got up, exchanged a sign through the window with Bernier, who was standing on the threshold of the Tour Carrée, and came back to sit among us. Larsan shouldn’t be far away, he said. During dinner, I reconnoitered the area around the square. Beyond the north gate, we have a wonderful natural and social defense, which advantageously replaces the old barbican of the castle. There, fifty paces away, on the western side, we have the two frontier posts of the French and Italian customs officers, whose inexorable vigilance can be of great help to us. Father Bernier is on very good terms with these good people, and I went with him to question them. The Italian customs officer speaks only Italian, but the French customs officer speaks both languages, plus the local jargon, and it was this customs officer (whose name, Bernier told me, is Michel) who served as our general intermediary. Through him, we learned that our two customs officers had become interested in the unusual maneuver, around the Hercules Peninsula, of the small boat of Tullio, nicknamed The Executioner of the Sea. Old Tullio is one of our customs officers’ old acquaintances. He is the most skilled smuggler on the coast. This evening, he was dragging in his boat an individual whom the customs officers had never seen. The boat, Tullio, and the unknown man disappeared off the coast of Garibaldi Point. I went there with Father Bernier, and, like Mr. Darzac, who had been there previously, we saw nothing. However, Larsan must have disembarked… I have a feeling. In any case, I am sure that Tullio’s boat landed near Garibaldi Point… “Are you sure?” cried Mr. Darzac. “Why are you sure?” I asked. “Bah!” said Rouletabille, “she left the trace of her prow in the pebbles on the shore, and when she came alongside, she knocked off her side the pine cone stove that I found and that the customs officers recognized, a stove that Tullio uses to light the waters when he fishes for octopus on calm nights. ” “Larsan has certainly gone down!” continued M. Darzac. “He’s at the Red Rocks!” “In any case, if the boat left him at the Red Rocks, he hasn’t come back,” said Rouletabille. “The two customs posts are located on the narrow road that leads from the Red Rocks to France, so that no one can pass there day or night without being seen.” You know, moreover, that the Red Rocks form a dead end and that the path stops in front of these rocks, about three hundred meters from the border. The path passes between the rocks and the sea. The rocks are sheer and form a cliff about sixty meters high. “Certainly!” said Arthur Rance, who had not yet said anything, and who seemed very intrigued, “he could not have climbed the cliff. ” “He will have hidden in the caves,” observed Darzac; “there are deep pockets in the cliff. ” “I thought so!” said Rouletabille. So I returned to the Red Rocks alone, after sending Father Bernier away.” —It was imprudent, I remarked. —It was out of prudence! corrected Rouletabille. I had things to say to Larsan, which I did not want to make known to a third party… In short, I returned to the Red Rocks; in front of the caves, I called Larsan. —You called him! cried Arthur Rance. —Yes! I called him in the early night, I waved my handkerchief, as parliamentarians do with their white flag. But did he not hear me? Did he not see my flag?… He did not answer. —Perhaps he was no longer there, I ventured. —I do not know!…I heard a noise in a cave!… —And you did not go there? asked Arthur Rance quickly. —No! replied Rouletabille simply, but you can imagine, don’t you? that it’s not because I’m afraid of him… “Let’s run!” we all cried, rising as one , “and let’s get this over with once and for all! ” “I think,” said Arthur Rance, “that we’ve never had a better opportunity to reach Larsan. Well! We’ll do what we want with him, deep in the Red Rocks!” Darzac and Arthur Rance were already ready; I was waiting for what Rouletabille was going to say. With a gesture he calmed them and asked them to sit down again… “We must reflect on this,” he said, “that Larsan would not have acted differently than he did, if he had wanted to lure us this evening into the caves of the Red Rocks. He shows himself to us, he lands almost before our eyes at the Pointe de Garibaldi, he would have shouted to us as he passed under our windows: You know, I’m at the Red Rocks! I’m waiting for you!” Come on!… he could not have been more explicit or more eloquent! “You went to the Red Rocks,” replied Arthur Rance, who admitted, moreover, that he was deeply touched by Rouletabille’s argument… and he did not show himself. He is hiding there, meditating some abominable crime for this night… He must be dislodged from there. ” “No doubt,” replied Rouletabille, “my walk to the Red Rocks produced no result, because I went alone… but we all went there and we could find a result on our return… ” “On our return?” asked Darzac, who did not understand. “Yes,” explained Rouletabille, “on our return to the château where we will have left Madame Darzac all alone! And where we might not find her again!… Oh!” he added, in the general silence, “that is only a hypothesis.” At this moment, we are forbidden to reason otherwise than by hypothesis… We all looked at each other, and this hypothesis overwhelmed us. Obviously, without Rouletabille, we might be making a big mistake, we might be heading for disaster… Rouletabille stood up, thoughtful. Basically, he finally said, we had nothing better to do for tonight than to barricade ourselves. Oh! a temporary barricade, because I want the place to be put in a state of absolute defense from tomorrow. I have had the iron gate closed and I am having Father Jacques guard it. I have put Mattoni on sentry duty in the chapel. I have reestablished a barrier here, under the postern, the only vulnerable point of the second enclosure and I will guard this barrier myself. Father Bernier will watch all night at the gate of the Square Tower, and Mother Bernier, who has very good eyesight, and to whom I have also given a marine telescope, will remain until morning on the platform of the tower. Sainclair will settle in the small palm-leaf pavilion, on the terrace of the Round Tower. From the top of this terrace, he will supervise, with me, the entire second courtyard and the boulevards and parapets. Mrs. Arthur Rance and Mr. Robert Darzac will go to the bailey and will have to walk until dawn, the former on the West Boulevard, the latter on the East Boulevard, boulevards which border the first courtyard on the sea side. The service will be hard tonight, because we are not yet organized. Tomorrow we will draw up a list of our small garrison and the reliable servants, of whom we can dispose of it in complete safety. If there are any questionable servants, they will be removed from the place. You will bring here, in this postern, in secret, all the weapons you can dispose of, rifles, revolvers. We will share them according to the needs of the guard service. The order is to shoot anyone who does not answer the “qui vive!” and who does not come to identify himself. There is no password , it is useless. To pass, it will be enough to shout his name and show his face. Besides, only we will have the right to pass. From tomorrow morning, I will have erected, at the interior entrance of the North gate, the gate which until this evening closed its exterior entrance, – an entrance which is now closed by the iron gate; and, during the day, the suppliers will not be able to cross the vault beyond the gate: they will deposit their merchandise in the small lodge of the tower where I have lodged Father Jacques. At seven o’clock every evening, the iron gate will be closed. Tomorrow morning, also, Mr. Arthur Rance will give orders to bring joiners, masons, and carpenters. All these people will be counted and must not, under any circumstances, cross the postern of the second enclosure; all these people will also be counted before seven o’clock in the evening, the time at which the workers must leave, at the latest. During this day, the workers must completely complete their work, which will consist of making me a door for my postern, repairing a slight breach in the wall that joins the Château Neuf to the Tour du Téméraire, and another small breach, which is located near the old Round Corner Tower (B on the plan) that defends the northwest corner of the bailey. After which, I will be at peace, and Mrs. Darzac, whom I forbid to leave the castle until further notice, being thus safe, I will be able to attempt a sortie and go on a serious reconnaissance in search of Larsan’s camp. Come on, Mister Arthur Rance, to arms! Go and get me the weapons you have available this evening… I lent my revolver to Father Bernier, who will be walking in front of the door of Madame Darzac’s apartment… Anyone who had been unaware of the events at Glandier and had heard such language from Rouletabille would not have failed to treat both the person who held him and those who listened to him as mentally ill! But, I repeat, if he had lived through the night of the inexplicable gallery, and the night of the incredible corpse, he would have done as I did: he would have loaded his revolver and waited for daylight without showing off! Chapter 8. Some Historical Pages on Jean Roussel-Larsan-Ballmeyer An hour later, we were all at our posts and pacing along the parapets under the moonlight, carefully examining the earth, the sky, and the waters, and listening anxiously for the slightest sounds of the night, the breathing of the sea, the offshore wind that began to sing around three o’clock in the morning. Mrs. Edith, who had gotten up, then came to join Rouletabille under his postern gate. He called me, gave me charge of the postern gate and Mrs. Edith, and went off to make a round. Mrs. Edith was in the most charming mood in the world. Sleep had done her good, and she seemed to be wildly amused by the pale face she had just found on her husband, to whom she had brought a glass of whiskey. Oh! this is very amusing! she said to me, clapping her little hands. It’s very amusing!… This Larsan, how I would like to know him!… I could not help but shudder at hearing such blasphemy. Decidedly, there are romantic little souls who doubt nothing, and who, in their unconsciousness, insult destiny. Ah! the poor thing, if only she had suspected! I spent two charming hours with Mrs. Edith telling her dreadful stories about Larsan, all historical. And, since the opportunity presents itself, I will allow myself to acquaint the reader historically, if I may use here an expression which perfectly renders my thoughts, this type of Larsan-Ballmeyer, whose existence some, on the occasion of the unprecedented role that I attributed to him in The Mystery of the Yellow Room, were able to doubt. As this role reaches, in The Perfume of the Lady in Black, heights that some might consider inaccessible, I consider it my duty to prepare the reader’s mind to admit in the end that I am only the common reporter of a unique affair in the world, and that I am not inventing anything. Moreover, Rouletabille, in the event that I should have the foolish pretension of adding to such a prodigious and natural story some imaginary ornament, would oppose it and would tell me my fact, stiff as a bullet. Too considerable interests are at stake and the fact of such a publication must entail too formidable consequences for me not to constrain myself to a severe, somewhat dry and methodical narration. I will therefore refer those who might believe in some detective novel—the abominable word has been uttered—to the Versailles trial. Maîtres Henri-Robert and André Hesse, who pleaded for M. Robert Darzac, gave admirable arguments there which were taken down in stenography and of which, certainly, they must have kept some copy. Finally, we must not forget that, well before fate brought Larsan-Ballmeyer and Joseph Rouletabille into conflict, the elegant bandit had given the legal commentators a hard job. We have only to open the Gazette des Tribunaux and browse the reports in the major daily newspapers, on the day Ballmeyer was sentenced by the Assize Court of the Seine to ten years of hard labor, to be informed about the type. Then, we will understand that there is nothing more to invent about a man when we can tell such a story; and so the reader, now knowing his style, that is to say his way of operating and his unparalleled audacity, will refrain from smiling when Joseph Rouletabille, prudently, between Ballmeyer-Larsan and Mme Darzac, throws a drawbridge. M. Albert Bataille, of the Figaro, who published the admirable Causes criminelles et mondaines, has devoted some very interesting pages to Ballmeyer. Ballmeyer had a happy childhood. He did not arrive at swindling, like so many others, after having gone through the hard stages of poverty. Son of a rich commission agent from the rue Molay, he could have dreamed of other destinies; but his vocation was the control of other people’s money. From a very young age, he destined himself for swindling as others destin themselves for the École des Mines. His debut was a stroke of genius. The story is incredible – Ballmeyer stealing a letter addressed to his father’s house, then taking the train to Lyon with the stolen money, and writing to the author of his days: Sir, I am a retired military man with a medal. My son, a postal clerk, has, to pay off a gambling debt, stolen a letter addressed to you from the traveling office. I have gathered the family; in a few days we will be able to complete the sum necessary for repayment. You are a father: have pity on a father! Do not destroy a whole past of honor! Mr. Ballmeyer senior nobly granted a delay. He is still waiting for the first payment, or rather he is no longer waiting for it, the trial having taught him, after ten years, who the real culprit was. Ballmeyer, reports Mr. Albert Bataille, seems to have received from nature all the attributes that constitute the purebred swindler: a prodigious variety of mind, the gift of persuading the naive, attention to staging and detail, a genius for disguise, infinite caution, to the point that he had his linen marked with appropriate initials whenever he deemed it useful to change his name. But what characterizes him above all is, apart from astonishing aptitudes for evasion, a coquettishness of fraud, irony, and defiance of justice; it is the malicious pleasure of denouncing supposed culprits himself to the public prosecutor , knowing how much the magistrate dwells by temperament on false leads. This joy of mystifying judges appears in all the acts of his life. In the regiment, Ballmeyer steals from his company’s cash register: he accuses the captain-treasurer. He commits a theft of forty thousand francs to the detriment of the Furet house, and immediately denounces Mr. Furet to the investigating judge as having stolen from himself. The Furet affair will long remain famous in judicial annals, under this now classic heading: the telephone trick. Science applied to fraud has yet to yield anything better. Ballmeyer steals a bill of sixteen hundred pounds sterling from the mail of Messrs. Furet brothers, commission merchants, rue Poissonnière, who let him set up in their offices. He goes to Rue Poissonnière, to Mr. Furet’s house, and, pretending to be Mr. Edmond Furet, asks Mr. Cohen, the banker, by telephone if he would be willing to discount the draft. Mr. Cohen answers affirmatively and, ten minutes later, Ballmeyer, after cutting the telephone wire to prevent a counter-order or requests for explanations, has the money collected by a friend, a man named Rivard, whom he once knew in the African battalions, where some unfortunate regimental affairs had sent them both. He takes the lion’s share; then he runs to the public prosecutor’s office to denounce Rivard and, as I said, the robbed one, Mr. Edmond Furet himself!… An epic confrontation takes place in the office of Mr. Espierre, the investigating judge in charge of the case. Come now, my dear Furet, Ballmeyer said to the astonished merchant, I am sorry to accuse you, but you owe justice the truth. This is a matter of no consequence: confess! You needed forty thousand francs to settle a small debt at the horse racing fair, and you had them paid to your house. It was you who telephoned. “Me! Me!” stammered Mr. Edmond Furet, devastated. “Confess, you know very well that your voice was recognized.” The unfortunate man who was robbed did indeed sleep at Mazas for eight days and the police provided a terrible report on him; so much so that Mr. Cruppi, then Attorney General, today Minister of Commerce, had to present Mr. Furet with the apologies of justice. As for Rivard, he was sentenced in absentia to twenty years of hard labor! Twenty such things could be said about Ballmeyer. In truth, at that moment, before indulging in drama, he was acting, and what a comedy! One must know the whole story of one of his escapes. Nothing is more prodigiously comic than the adventure of this prisoner writing a long, insipid memoir, only to be able to spread it out on the table of the judge, Mr. Villers, and, by disrupting the printed matter , to take a look at the form of the release orders . Back in Mazas, the rogue wrote a letter signed Villers, in which, according to the surprise formula, Mr. Villers asked the director of the prison to release the prisoner Ballmeyer immediately. But the paper lacked the judge’s stamp. Ballmeyer did not bother himself over such a trifle. He reappeared the next day at the hearing, hiding his letter in his sleeve, protested his innocence, feigned great anger, and, gesticulating with the seal placed on the table, he suddenly made the inkwell fall on the blue trousers of the guard who accompanied him. While poor Pandora, surrounded by the magistrate and the clerk, who sympathized with his misfortune, sadly mopped up his number one, Ballmeyer took advantage of the general inattention to stamp the order of release hard and apologized profusely in turn. The trick was done. The swindler left, carelessly throwing the signed and stamped paper to the guards of the mousetrap. What is Mr. Villers thinking, he said, making me carry his papers! Does he take me for his servant? The guards carefully picked up the printed form, and the brigadier on duty had it delivered to his address in Mazas. It was the order to put immediately released the man named Ballmeyer. That same evening, Ballmeyer was free. It was his second escape. Arrested for the Furet robbery, he had escaped the first time by sticking his leg out and throwing pepper at the guard who was taking him to the depot, and that same evening, wearing a white tie, he attended a premiere of the Comédie-Française. Already, at the time when he had been sentenced by the court martial to five years of public works for having stolen his company’s cash register, he had almost escaped from the Cherche-Midi by being locked by his comrades in a bag of scrap paper. An unexpected counter-appeal thwarted this well-conceived plan. … But there would be no end to it if we had to recount here the astonishing adventures of the first Ballmeyer. In turn Count of Maupas, Viscount Drouet d’Erlon, Count of Motteville, Count of Bonneville[2], elegant, a good player, a fashionista , he travels the beaches and spa towns: Biarritz, Aix-les-Bains, Luchon, losing up to ten thousand francs in a club during his evening, surrounded by pretty women who compete for his smiles; for this skilled swindler is also a seducer. In the regiment, he had made the conquest, fortunately platonic, of his colonel’s daughter!… Do you know the type now? Well, this is the man that Joseph Rouletabille was going to fight! I thought, that evening, that I had sufficiently informed Mrs. Edith about the personality of the famous bandit. She listened to me in a silence that ended up impressing me and then, leaning over her, I realized that she was asleep. This attitude could not have given me much of an idea of this little person. But, as she allowed me to contemplate her at leisure, it resulted in me, on the contrary, feelings that I later tried in vain to banish from my heart. The night passed without surprise. When day came, I greeted it with a great sigh of relief. All the same, Rouletabille did not allow me to go to bed until eight o’clock in the morning when he had settled his day’s duty. He was already among the workmen he had brought and who were busily working on repairing the breach in Tower B. The work was carried out so judiciously and so promptly that the fortified castle of Hercules found itself that same evening as hermetically sealed in nature, with all its enclosures, as it is linearly speaking on paper. Sitting on a piece of rubble that morning, Rouletabille was already beginning to draw on his notebook the plan that I submitted to the reader, and he was telling me, meanwhile, that, tired from my night, I was making ridiculous efforts not to close my eyes: You see, Sainclair! The imbeciles will think that I am strengthening myself to defend myself. Well, that is only a small part of the truth: for I am strengthening myself above all to reason. And, if I plug breaches, it is less so that Larsan cannot enter them than to spare my reason the opportunity to escape! For example, I could not reason in a forest! How can you reason in a forest? Reason flees everywhere, in a forest! But in a well-enclosed castle! My friend, it’s like being in a well-locked safe : if you’re inside, and you’re not mentally ill, your reason must be there! — Yes, yes! I repeated, shaking my head, your reason must be there!… — Well, on that note, he said to me, go to bed, my friend, for you ‘re asleep standing up. Chapter 9. Unexpected Arrival of Old Bob When someone knocked at my door around eleven o’clock in the morning, while Mother Bernier’s voice was transmitting Rouletabille’s order to get up, I rushed to my window. The harbor was of unparalleled splendor and the sea of such transparency that the sunlight passed through it as if through one- way mirrors, so that one could see the rocks, the seaweed and the foam and the entire seabed, as if the aquatic element had ceased to cover them. The harmonious curve of the Menton shore enclosed this pure wave in a flowery frame. The villas of Garavan, all white and all pink, seemed freshly bloomed from that night. The peninsula of Hercules was a bouquet floating on the waters, and the old stones of the castle were fragrant. Never had nature appeared to me more gentle, more welcoming, more loving, nor above all more worthy of being loved. The serene air, the nonchalant shore , the swooning sea, the violet mountains, this whole picture to which my senses as a man of the North were little accustomed evoked ideas of caresses. It was then that I saw a man striking the sea. Oh! he was striking it with all his might! I would have wept, if I had been a poet. The wretch seemed agitated by a terrible rage. I could not understand what had excited his fury against this tranquil wave; but it must evidently have given him some serious reason for discontent, for he did not cease his blows. He had armed himself with an enormous club and, standing in his little boat, which a fearful child was tremblingly pushing with the oar, he administered to the sea, which was splashed for a moment, a shower of chestnuts which provoked the mute indignation of some strangers who had stopped on the shore. But, as always happens in such cases when one is afraid to interfere in what does not concern oneself, they let it go without protest. What could thus excite this savage man? Perhaps the very calm of the sea which, after having been disturbed for a moment by the insult of this mentally ill person, resumed its motionless face. I was then called by Rouletabille’s friendly voice, who announced that we were having lunch at noon. Rouletabille was wearing a plasterer’s outfit, all his clothes testifying that he had been walking among the overly fresh masonry. With one hand he was leaning on a meter stick and his other hand was playing with a plumb line. I asked him if he had seen the man who was beating the waters. He replied that it was Tullio , who worked by hunting fish in the nets, scaring him. It was then that I understood why, in the country, they called Tullio the Executioner of the Sea. Rouletabille also informed me at the same time that having questioned Tullio, this morning, about the man he had taken in his boat the previous evening and whom he had taken around the peninsula of Hercules, Tullio had replied that he did not know this man, that he was an eccentric whom he had taken on board at Menton and who had given him five francs to disembark him at the tip of the Red Rocks.
I dressed quickly and joined Rouletabille who informed me that we were going to have a new guest at lunch: it was old Bob. We waited for him to sit down at the table and then, as he did not arrive , we began to eat without him, in the flowery setting of the round terrace of the Téméraire. An admirable bouillabaisse brought steaming hot from the Grottes restaurant, which has the best-stocked supply of scorpionfish and rockfish on the entire coast, washed down with a little vino del paese and served in the light and gaiety of things, contributed at least as much as all Rouletabille’s precautions to reassure us. In truth, the formidable Larsan frightened us less under the beautiful sun of the bright skies than in the pale light of the moon and stars! Ah! how forgetful and easily impressionable human nature is! I am ashamed to say it: we were very proud—oh! quite proud (at least I speak for myself and for Arthur Rance and also naturally for Mrs. Edith, whose romantic and melancholy nature was superficial) to smile at our nocturnal trances and our armed guard on the boulevards of the citadel… when old Bob made his appearance. And – let’s say it, let’s say it – it is not this apparition which could have brought us back to more morose. I have rarely seen anyone more comical than old Bob walking, in the dazzling sunshine of a midday spring, with a black top hat, his black frock coat, his black waistcoat, his black trousers, his dark glasses, his white hair and his rosy cheeks. Yes, yes, we had a good laugh under the arbor of the tower of Charles the Bold. And old Bob laughed with us. For old Bob is gaiety itself. What was this old scholar doing at the castle of Hercules? Perhaps the time has come to say it. How had he resolved to leave his collections in America, and his works, and his drawings, and his museum in Philadelphia? There you have it. It has not been forgotten that Mr. Arthur Rance was already considered in his homeland as a phrenologist of the future, when his romantic misadventure with Miss Stangerson suddenly distanced him from the study which he took to disgust. After his marriage to Miss Edith, who encouraged him to do so, he felt that he would gladly return to the science of Gall and Lavater. Now, at the very moment they were visiting the Côte d’Azur, the autumn preceding the current events, there was a great deal of noise surrounding the new discoveries that Mr. Abbo had just made at the Rochers Rouges, also called, in the Menton dialect, Baoussé-Roussé. For many years, since 1874, geologists and all those who deal with prehistoric studies had been extremely interested in the human remains found in the caves and grottoes of the Rochers Rouges. Messrs. Julien, Rivière, Girardin, Delesot, had come to work on site and had managed to interest the Institute and the Ministry of Public Instruction in their discoveries . These soon caused a sensation, for they attested, beyond any doubt, that the first men had lived in this place before the Ice Age. No doubt the proof of the existence of man in the Quaternary period had been made for a long time; but, this period measuring, according to some, two hundred thousand years, it was interesting to fix this existence in a specific stage of these two hundred thousand years. Excavations were still being carried out at the Red Rocks and one surprise followed another. However, the most beautiful of the caves, the Barma Grande, as it was called in the country, had remained intact, for it was the private property of Mr. Abbo, who ran the Grottes restaurant, not far from there, by the sea. Mr. Abbo had just decided, himself, to excavate his cave. Now, public rumor (for the event had gone beyond the bounds of the scientific world) spread the rumor that he had just found in the Barma Grande extraordinary human bones, skeletons very well preserved by a ferruginous earth, contemporary with the mammoths of the beginning of the Quaternary period or even of the end of the Tertiary period! Arthur Rance and his wife ran to Menton and, while her husband spent his days stirring up kitchen debris, as they say in scientific terms, dating back two hundred thousand years, excavating the humus of the Barma Grande himself and measuring the skulls of our ancestors, his young wife took tireless pleasure in leaning not far from there, on the medieval battlements of an old fortified castle which raised its massive silhouette on a small peninsula, connected to the Red Rocks by a few stones that had fallen from the cliff. The most romantic legends were attached to this vestige of the old Genoese battles; and it seemed to Edith, melancholically leaning at the top of her terrace, over the most beautiful setting in the world, that she was one of those noble maidens of old, whose cruel adventures she had so loved in the novels of her favorite authors. The castle was for sale at a most reasonable price. Arthur Rance bought it and, in doing so, he filled his wife with joy, who called in the masons and the upholsterers and had soon, in three months, transformed this ancient building into a delightful lovers’ nest for a young woman who remembers The Lady of the Lake and The Bride of Lammermoor. When Arthur Rance found himself faced with the last skeleton discovered in the Barma Grande, as well as the femurs of the Elephas antiquus taken from the same layer of ground, he was transported with enthusiasm, and his first concern was to telegraph to old Bob that perhaps what he had been seeking, at the cost of a thousand perils, for so many years, in the depths of Patagonia, had finally been discovered a few kilometers from Monte Carlo. But his telegram did not reach its destination, because old Bob, who had promised to join the new household in a few months, had already taken the boat for Europe. Obviously, fame had already informed him of the treasures of the Baoussé-Roussé. A few days later, he disembarked at Marseille and arrived in Menton where he settled in the company of Arthur Rance and his niece in the fort of Hercules, which he immediately filled with bursts of his gaiety. Old Bob’s gaiety seems a little theatrical to us, but that is, no doubt, an effect of our sad mood of the day before. Old Bob has the soul of a child; and he is as coquettish as an old woman, that is to say, his coquetry rarely changes its object and, having, once and for all, adopted a severe costume, preferably correct (black frock coat, black waistcoat, black trousers, white hair, rosy cheeks), it is attached solely to perpetuating its impressive harmony. It was in this professorial uniform that old Bob hunted the pampas tiger and that he now searches the caves of the Red Rocks, looking for the last bones of the Elephas antiquus. Mrs. Edith introduced him to us and he gave a polite chuckle, and then he began to laugh again with his whole wide mouth which went from one to the other of his salt-and-pepper whiskers which he had carefully trimmed into triangles. Old Bob was exultant, and we soon learned the reason. He brought back from his visit to the Paris Museum the certainty that the skeleton of the Barma Grande was no older than the one he had brought back from his last expedition to Tierra del Fuego. The entire Institute was of this opinion and took as the basis of its reasoning the fact that the marrow bone of the Elephas that old Bob had brought to Paris, and that the owner of the Barma Grande had lent him after having assured him that he had found it in the same layer of soil as the famous skeleton, — that this marrow bone, we say, belonged to an Elephas antiquus from the middle of the Quaternary period. Ah! you should have heard with what joyful contempt old Bob spoke of this middle of the Quaternary period! At this idea of a marrow bone from the middle of the Quaternary period, he burst out laughing as if he had been told a good joke! Could a scientist in our time, a true scientist, truly worthy of the name of scientist, still be interested in a skeleton from the middle of the Quaternary period! His—his skeleton, or at least the one he had brought back from Tierra del Fuego—dated from the beginning of that period, and was therefore older by a hundred thousand years… you understand: a hundred thousand years! And he was sure of it, because of this shoulder blade that had belonged to the cave bear, a shoulder blade that he, old Bob, had found in the arms of his own skeleton. (He said: my own skeleton, no longer making any difference, in his enthusiasm, between his living skeleton that he dressed every day in his black frock coat, his black waistcoat, his black trousers, his white hair, his rosy cheeks, and the prehistoric skeleton of Tierra del Fuego.) So, my skeleton dates from the cave bear!… But that of the Baoussé-Roussé! Oh! dear! my children! at most from the time of the mammoth… and even then! no, no!… of the rhinoceros with septate nostrils! So!… We have nothing more to discover, ladies and gentlemen, in the period of the rhinoceros with septate nostrils!… I swear to you, on the word of old Bob!… My skeleton comes from the Chellean period, as you say in France… Why are you laughing, you donkeys!… While I’m not even sure that the Elephas antiquus of the Red Rocks dates from the Mousterian period! And why not from the Solutrean period? Or again, or again! From the Magdalenian period!… No! No! This is too much! An Elephas antiquus from the Magdalenian period, it’s not possible! This Elephas will make no one mentally ill! This Antiquus will make me sick! Ah! I’ll die of joy… poor Baoussé-Roussé! Mrs. Edith was cruel enough to interrupt old Bob’s jubilation by announcing that Prince Galich, who had acquired the Romeo and Juliet cave at the Red Rocks, must have made a truly sensational discovery, for she had seen him, the very day after old Bob’s departure for Paris, pass by the Hercules fort, carrying under his arm a small box which he had shown her, saying: “Look, Mrs. Rance, I have a treasure here! Oh! a real treasure!” She had asked what this treasure was , but the other had annoyed her, saying that he wanted to surprise old Bob with it when he returned! Finally, Prince Galich had confessed to her that he had just discovered the oldest skull in human history! Mrs. Edith had no sooner uttered this sentence than all old Bob’s gaiety collapsed; A sovereign fury spread over his ravaged features and he shouted: It’s not true!… The oldest skull in humanity, it belongs to old Bob! It’s old Bob’s skull! And he yelled: Mattoni! Mattoni! Have my trunk brought here!… here!… Just then, Mattoni was crossing the Court of Charles the Bold with old Bob’s luggage on his back. He obeyed the professor and brought the trunk in front of us. Whereupon old Bob, taking his bunch of keys, threw himself on his knees and opened the box. From this box, which contained very neatly folded belongings and linen, he took out a hat box and, from this hat box, he took out a skull which he placed in the middle of the table, among our coffee cups. The oldest skull in humanity, he said, there it is!… It’s old Bob’s skull !… Look at it!… It’s him! Old Bob never goes out without his skull!… And he took it and began to caress it, his eyes shining and his thick lips parted again with laughter. If you will imagine that old Bob knew French imperfectly and pronounced it half in the English, half in the Spanish way—he spoke Spanish perfectly—you see and hear the scene! Rouletabille and I could not stand it any longer and were holding our sides with laughter. All the more so because, in his speeches, old Bob himself would stop laughing to ask us what was the object of our gaiety. His anger had even more success with us, and even Madame Darzac wiped her eyes, because, in truth, old Bob was funny enough to make us cry with his oldest skull in humanity. I was able to see at that hour when we were having coffee that a skull two hundred thousand years old is not at all frightening to look at, especially if, like that one, it has all its teeth. Suddenly old Bob became serious. He raised the skull in his right hand and, with the index finger of his left hand pressed against the ancestor’s forehead: When you look at the skull from above, you notice a very clear pentagonal shape, which is due to the notable development of the parietal bosses and the protrusion of the occipital scale! The great width of the face is due to the exaggerated development of the zygomatic chords!… Whereas , in the heads of the troglodytes of Baoussé-Roussé, what do I see?… I cannot say what old Bob saw, at that moment, in the heads of the troglodytes, because I was no longer listening to him, but I was looking at him. And I no longer felt like laughing at all. Old Bob seemed frightening to me, fierce, artificial like an old mutt, with his tin-pot gaiety and his cheap science. I never took my eyes off him. It seemed to me that his hair moved! Yes, like a wig moves. A thought, the thought of Larsan, which never left me never completely set my brain ablaze; I was perhaps about to speak when an arm slipped under mine, and I was dragged away by Rouletabille. What is the matter with you, Sainclair?… the young man asked me in an affectionate tone . “My friend,” I said, “I will not tell you, for you would still make fun of me… ” He did not answer me at first and dragged me towards the Boulevard de l’Ouest. There, he looked around him, saw that we were alone, and said to me: No, Sainclair, no… I will not make fun of you… For you are right in seeing him everywhere around you. If he was not there just now, he is perhaps there now… Ah! he is stronger than stones!… He is stronger than everything!… I fear him less outside than inside!… And I would be very happy if these stones that I called to my aid to prevent him from entering helped me to hold him back… For, Sainclair, I FEEL HIM HERE! I shook Rouletabille’s hand, because I too, strangely enough, had this impression… I felt Larsan’s eyes on me… I heard him breathing… When had this sensation begun? I could not have said… But it seemed to me that it had come to me with old Bob. I said to Rouletabille, anxiously: Old Bob? He did not answer me. After a few moments, he said: Take your left hand with your right every five minutes and ask yourself: Is it you, Larsan? When you have answered each other, do not be too reassured, because he may have lied to you and he will already be in your skin that you will not know anything yet! Whereupon, Rouletabille left me alone on the Boulevard de l’Ouest. It was there that Father Jacques came to find me. He brought me a telegram. Before reading it, I congratulated him on his good looks. Like all of us, he had, however, spent a sleepless night; but he explained to me that the pleasure of finally seeing his mistress happy made him feel ten years younger. Then he tried to ask me the reasons for the strange vigil that had been imposed on him and the reason for all the events that had been continuing at the castle since Rouletabille’s arrival and the exceptional precautions that had been taken to forbid entry to any stranger. He even added that, if this dreadful Larsan were not dead, he would be inclined to believe that people feared his return. I replied that this was not the time to reason and that, if he was a good man, he should, like all the other servants, observe the order like a soldier, without trying to understand anything or, above all, to discuss it. He bowed to me and walked away, nodding his head. This man was obviously very intrigued and it did not displease me that, since he had the surveillance of the North gate, he was thinking of Larsan. He too had almost been a victim of Larsan; he had not forgotten him. He would be better off on his guard. I was in no hurry to open this dispatch that Father Jacques had brought me and I was wrong, because it seemed extraordinarily interesting to me from the first glance I took at it. My friend from Paris, who, at my request, had already informed me about Brignolles, informed me that the said Brignolles had left Paris the previous evening for midday. He had taken the 10:35 train in the evening. My friend told me that he had reason to believe that Brignolles had bought a ticket for Nice. What was Brignolles doing in Nice? This is a question I asked myself and which, in a foolish fit of self-esteem, which I have since regretted, I did not put to Rouletabille. He had laughed at me so much when I showed him the first dispatch announcing that Brignolles had not left Paris, that I resolved not to tell him the one that confirmed his departure. Since Brignolles was of so little importance to him, I would be careful not to annoy him with Brignolles! And I kept Brignolles all to myself ! So, assuming my most indifferent air, I went to Rouletabille in the Court of Charles the Bold. He was strengthening with iron bars the heavy circular oak plank that closed the opening of the well, and he demonstrated to me that, even if the well communicated with the sea, it would be impossible for someone trying to enter the castle by this route to lift this plank, and that he would have to abandon his project. He was sweating, his arms bare, his collar torn off, a heavy hammer in his hand. I found that he was putting a lot of effort into a relatively simple task, and I could not refrain from telling him so, like a fool who can’t see beyond the end of his nose! Should n’t I have guessed that this boy was exhausting himself voluntarily, and that he was only giving himself up to all this physical fatigue to try to forget the grief that was burning his brave little soul? But no! I was only able to understand this half an hour later, when I surprised him lying on the ruined stones of the chapel, exhaling, in the sleep that had come to overwhelm him on this rather rough bed, a word, a simple word that gave me sufficient information about his state of mind: Mama!… Rouletabille was dreaming of the Lady in Black!… He was perhaps dreaming that he was kissing her as in the old days, when he was very little and arrived all red from running, in the parlor of the college of Eu. I waited then a moment, wondering anxiously if I should leave him there and if he would not by chance let slip his secret in his sleep. But, having with this word relieved his heart, he let out nothing but a sonorous music. Rouletabille was snoring like a top. I believe that it was the first time that Rouletabille had really slept since our arrival from Paris. I took the opportunity to leave the castle without warning anyone, and soon, with my dispatch in my pocket, I took the train to Nice. Then I had the opportunity to read this echo from the front page of the Petit Niçois: Professor Stangerson has arrived in Garavan where he will spend a few weeks with Mr. Arthur Rance, who has purchased the Fort d’Hercule and who, with the help of the gracious Mrs. Arthur Rance, is pleased to offer the most exquisite hospitality to his friends in this picturesque and medieval setting. At the last minute we learn that the daughter of Professor Stangerson, whose marriage to Mr. Robert Darzac has just been celebrated in Paris, has also arrived at the Fort d’Hercule with the young and famous professor from the Sorbonne. These new guests are coming down from the North at the moment when all the foreigners are leaving us. How right they are! There is no more beautiful spring in the world than that of the Côte d’Azur! In Nice, hidden behind a window in the buffet, I watched for the arrival of the Paris train in which Brignolles might be. And, just then, I saw my Brignolles get off! Ah! My heart was beating fast, for finally this journey, of which he had not mentioned to M. Darzac, seemed to me nothing less than natural! And then, I was not seeing things: Brignolles was hiding. Brignolles was lowering his nose. Brignolles was slipping, quick as a thief, among the passengers, towards the exit. But I was behind him. He jumped into a closed carriage, I rushed into an equally closed carriage. At Place Masséna, he left his cab, headed towards the promenade-pier and there, took another carriage; I was still following him. These maneuvers seemed more and more suspicious to me. Finally, Brignolles’s carriage turned onto the road along the corniche and, cautiously, I took the same route as him. The many twists and turns of this road, its sharp curves, allowed me to see without being seen. I had promised my coachman a large tip if he helped me carry out this plan, and he did his best to do so. Thus we arrived at the Beaulieu station. There, I was very surprised to see Brignolles’s carriage stop at the station, and Brignolles get out, pay his coachman and enter the waiting room. He was going to catch a train. What was to be done? If I wanted to get on the same train as him, wouldn’t he see me in This little station, on this deserted platform? Well, I had to give it a go. If he saw me, I would have to feign surprise and not let him go until I was sure what he was doing in these parts. But things went very well and Brignolles didn’t see me. He boarded a local train heading towards the Italian border. In short, every step Brignolles took brought him closer to Fort Hercules. I had climbed into the carriage following his and watched the movement of passengers at all the stations. Brignolles only stopped at Menton. He had certainly wanted to arrive there by a train other than the one from Paris, and at a time when he had little chance of meeting familiar faces at the station. I saw him get off; he had turned up the collar of his overcoat and pulled his felt hat even further down over his eyes. He glanced around the platform and, reassured, hurried toward the exit. Outside, he threw himself into a sordid old stagecoach waiting along the sidewalk. From a corner of the waiting room, I watched my Brignolles. What was he doing there? And where was he going in that dusty old jalopy? I questioned an employee who told me that this carriage was the Sospel stagecoach. Sospel is a picturesque little town lost between the last foothills of the Alps, two and a half hours from Menton by car. No railway passes through it. It is one of the most remote, the most unknown corners of France and the most feared by the civil servants and… the Alpine hunters who are garrisoned there. Only, the road that leads there is one of the most beautiful there is, because to discover Sospel you have to go around I don’t know how many mountains, skirt high precipices, and follow, all the way to Castillon, the narrow and deep valley of the Careï, sometimes wild like a Judean landscape, sometimes green or flowery, fertile, sweet to the eye with the silvery quivering of its innumerable olive trees that descend from the sky to the clear bed of the torrent by a staircase of giants. I had been to Sospel a few years before, with a band of English tourists, in an immense chariot drawn by eight horses, and I had kept from that trip a feeling of vertigo that I found again completely as soon as the name was pronounced. What was Brignolles going to do in Sospel? It was necessary to know. The stagecoach had filled up and was already setting off with a great noise of scrap metal and dancing windows. I made a deal with a private carriage, and I too climbed the Careï valley. Ah! How I already regretted not having warned Rouletabille! Brignolles’s strange attitude would have given him ideas, useful ideas, reasonable ideas, while I didn’t know how to reason, I only knew how to follow this Brignolles like a dog follows its master or a policeman his game, on the trail. And even then, if I had followed that trail well! It was at the moment when I must not lose it for anything in the world that it escaped me, at the moment when I had just made a formidable discovery! I had let the diligence get a little ahead, a precaution I considered necessary, and I myself arrived at Castillon perhaps ten minutes after Brignolles. Castillon is at the very top of the road between Menton and Sospel. My coachman asked my permission to let his horse rest a little and give him something to drink. I got out of the car and what did I see at the entrance to a tunnel under which it was necessary to pass to reach the opposite side of the mountain? Brignolles and Frédéric Larsan! I remained rooted to the ground as if, suddenly, I had taken root ! I didn’t cry out, not move. I was, by Jove, thunderstruck by this revelation! Then I came to my senses and, at the same time as a feeling of horror for Brignolles invaded me, a feeling of admiration for myself invaded me. Ah! I had guessed right! I was the only one who had guessed that this devil’s Brignolles was a Terrible danger for Robert Darzac! If I had been listened to, the Sorbonne professor would have parted with him long ago! Brignolles, Larsan’s creature, Larsan’s accomplice!… What a discovery! When I said that laboratory accidents were not natural! Will anyone believe me now? So, I had indeed seen Brignolles and Larsan talking to each other, discussing at the entrance to the Castillon tunnel! I had seen them… But where had they gone? For I no longer saw them… In the tunnel, obviously. I quickened my pace, leaving my coachman there, and arrived myself under the tunnel, feeling my revolver in my pocket. I was in a state! Ah! What would Rouletabille say when I told him such a thing?… I, I, I had discovered Brignolles and Larsan. … But where are they? I cross the pitch-black tunnel… No Larsan, no Brignolles. I look at the road that goes down towards Sospel… No one on the road… But, on my left, towards old Castillon, I thought I saw two shadows hurrying… They disappear… I run… I arrive in the middle of the ruins… I stop… Who tells me that the two shadows are not watching me behind a wall?… This old Castillon was no longer inhabited and for good reason. It had been completely ruined, destroyed, by the earthquake of 1887. All that remained, here and there, were a few sections of walls slowly finishing crumbling, a few decapitated hovels blackened by the fire, a few isolated pillars that had remained standing, spared by the catastrophe and which leaned melancholically towards the ground, sad at having nothing left to support. What silence around me! With a thousand precautions, I walked through these ruins, considering with terror the depth of the crevices that, nearby, the earthquake of 1887 had opened in the rock. One in particular seemed like a bottomless pit and, as I was leaning over it, holding onto the blackened trunk of an olive tree, I was almost knocked off my feet by a flap of its wings. I felt the wind on my face and I recoiled with a cry. An eagle had just emerged, swift as an arrow, from this abyss. It rose straight up into the sun, and then I saw it come down towards me and describe threatening circles above my head, uttering wild clamors as if to reproach me for having come to disturb it in this kingdom of solitude and death that the fire of the earth had given it. Had I been the victim of an illusion? I no longer saw my two shadows… Was I still the plaything of my imagination, picking up on the road a piece of writing paper that seemed to me to bear a remarkable resemblance to the one Mr. Robert Darzac used at the Sorbonne? On this scrap of paper I deciphered two syllables that I thought had been written by Brignolles. These syllables must have ended a word whose beginning was missing. Because of the tear, it could only be read bonnet. Two hours later, I returned to Fort Hercule and told Rouletabille everything, who merely put the piece of paper in his wallet and asked me to keep the secret of my expedition to myself. Astonished to produce so little effect with a discovery that I considered so important, I looked at Rouletabille. He turned his head away, but not quickly enough to hide his tearful eyes from me. Rouletabille! I cried… But, again, he closed my mouth: Silence! Sainclair! I took his hand; he had a fever. And I thought that this agitation did not only come from concerns about Larsan. I reproached him for hiding from me what was happening between him and the Lady in Black, but he did not answer me, as was his custom, and went away once more with a deep sigh. I had been expected for dinner. It was late. The dinner was gloomy despite the outbursts of gaiety from old Bob. We no longer even tried to hide from each other the atrocious anguish that froze our hearts. It was as if each of us was informed about the blow that threatened us and that the drama was already weighing on our heads. Mr. and Mrs. Darzac were not eating . Mrs. Edith was looking at me in a strange way. At ten o’clock, I went to take up my post, with relief, under the gardener’s postern . While I was in the small council room, the Lady in Black and Rouletabille passed under the vault. A lantern illuminated them. Mrs. Darzac appeared to me in a state of remarkable exaltation. She was pleading with Rouletabille with words that I did not understand. I heard only one word from this sort of altercation spoken by Rouletabille: Thief!… Both had entered the Cour du Téméraire… The Lady in Black stretched out arms towards the young man, which he did not see, for he left her immediately and went to lock himself in his room… She remained alone for a moment in the courtyard, leaned against the trunk of the eucalyptus in an attitude of inexpressible pain, then returned slowly to the Tour Carrée. It was April 10. The attack on the Tour Carrée was to take place on the night of the 11th to the 12th. Chapter 10. The day of the 11th This attack took place in such mysterious circumstances and apparently so beyond human reason that the reader will allow me, in order to better understand the tragically unreasonable nature of the event, to emphasize certain particularities of the use of our time on the 11th. 1° The morning. The whole day was oppressively hot and the hours of guard duty were particularly difficult. The sun was scorching and it would have been painful for us to watch the sea, which was burning like a white-hot steel plate, if we had not been equipped with dark-glass spectacles, which are difficult to do without in this country, the winter season having passed. At nine o’clock, I came down from my room and went under the postern gate, to the room we called the battle council, to relieve Rouletabille of his guard. I didn’t have time to ask him a single question, because Mr. Darzac arrived at that moment, announcing that he had some very important things to tell us. We anxiously asked him what it was about, and he replied that he wanted to leave Fort Hercules with Mrs. Darzac. This declaration at first left the young reporter and me speechless with surprise. I was the first to dissuade Mr. Darzac from committing such an imprudent act. Rouletabille coldly asked Mr. Darzac the reason that had suddenly determined him to leave. He informed us by relating a scene that had taken place the previous evening at the château, and we understood, in fact, how difficult the Darzacs’ situation was becoming at Fort Hercules. The matter was summed up in one sentence: Mrs. Edith had had a nervous attack! We understood at once what was going on, for there was no doubt in Rouletabille’s mind and in me that Mrs. Edith’s jealousy was growing every hour, and that she bore her husband’s attentions to Mrs. Darzac more and more impatiently . The rumors of the last quarrel she had picked with Mr. Rance had last night crossed the thick walls of the Louve, and Mr. Darzac, who was quietly passing through the bailey , performing his watchful duty and making his rounds, had been touched by some echoes of this frightful anger. Rouletabille, on this occasion, as always, spoke to Mr. Darzac in the language of reason. He agreed in principle that his stay and that of Mrs. Darzac at Fort Hercule should be shortened as much as possible; but he also made it clear to him that it was for the safety of both of them that their departure not be too hasty. A new struggle had begun between them and Larsan. If they left, Larsan would always know how to join them, and in a country and at a time when they least expected him. Here, they were warned, they were on their guard, because they knew. Abroad, they would find themselves at the mercy of everything around them, because they would not have the ramparts of Fort Hercules to defend them. Certainly! This situation could not continue, but Rouletabille asked for another eight days, not one more, not one less. Eight days, Columbus told them, and I’ll give you a world, Rouletabille would have gladly said: Eight days, and in eight days I’ll deliver Larsan to you. He didn’t say it, but we felt that he meant it. Mr. Darzac left us with a shrug. He seemed furious. It was the first time we had seen him in this mood. Rouletabille said: Mrs. Darzac will not leave us and Mr. Darzac will stay. And he left in turn. A few moments later, I saw Mrs. Edith arrive. She had a charming outfit, of a simplicity that suited her wonderfully. She was immediately coquettish with me, showing a somewhat forced gaiety and prettily mocking the job I did. I replied somewhat sharply that she lacked charity since she was well aware that all the exceptional trouble we were taking and the painful surveillance we were subjecting ourselves to were perhaps saving, at the moment, the best of women. Then she cried out, bursting into laughter: The Lady in Black!… She has bewitched you all!… My God! What a lovely laugh she had! In other times, certainly! I would not have allowed anyone to speak lightly of the Lady in Black, but that morning I did not have the courage to get angry… On the contrary, I laughed with Mrs. Edith. It’s a bit true, I said… — My husband is still mentally ill!… I would never have believed him to be so romantic!… But I, too, she added rather amusingly, am romantic… And she looked at me with that curious eye which had already troubled me so much… Ah!… That’s all I could find to say. So, I take great pleasure, she continued, in the conversation of Prince Galich, who is certainly more romantic than all of you! I must have made a funny face, because she showed loud amusement. What a strange little woman! Then I asked her who this Prince Galich was, of whom she often spoke to us and whom we never saw. She replied that we would see him at lunch, for she had invited him for our benefit; and she gave me a few details about him. I thus learned that Prince Galich was one of the richest boyars in that part of Russia called the Black Earth, fertile above all others, situated between the forests of the North and the steppes of the South. Heir, at the age of twenty, to one of the largest Muscovite estates, he had managed to enlarge it further by an economical and intelligent management of which one would not have believed capable a young man whose principal occupation until then had been hunting and books. He was said to be sober, miserly, and a poet. He had inherited a high position at court from his father. He was chamberlain to His Majesty, and it was supposed that the Emperor, because of the immense services rendered by the father, had taken a particular liking to the son. With that, he was as delicate as a woman and as strong as a Turk. In short, this Russian gentleman had everything going for him. Without knowing him, he was already antipathetic to me. As for his relations with the Rances, they were excellent neighborliness. Having bought two years ago the magnificent property whose hanging gardens, flowered terraces, and fragrant balconies had led Garavan to nickname it the gardens of Babylon, he had had the opportunity to render some services to Mrs. Edith when she had finished transforming the castle grounds into an exotic garden. He had given her some plants which had revived in some corners of the fort of Hercules a vegetation that had until then been more or less confined to the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Mr. Rance had sometimes invited the prince to dinner, after which the prince had sent, instead of flowers, a Nineveh palm or a cactus known as Semiramis. It cost him nothing. He had too many, he was embarrassed by them, and he preferred to keep the roses. Mrs. Edith had taken a certain interest in the young boyar’s company, because of the verses he recited to her. After reciting them in Russian, he translated them into English and he had even written some in English for her, for her alone. Verses, real verses from a poet, dedicated to Mrs. Edith! She had been so flattered by them that she had asked this Russian who had written her English verses to translate them into Russian for her. These were literary games that amused Mrs. Edith greatly, but which Arthur Rance had little taste for. He did not hide, moreover, that Prince Galich pleased him only half, and, if this was so, it was not because the half that displeased Mr. Rance in Prince Galich was precisely the half that interested his wife so much, that is to say, the poet half; no, it was the miserly half. He didn’t understand why a poet could be stingy. I quite agreed with him. The prince had no equipage. He took the tram and often did his shopping himself, assisted only by his servant Ivan, who carried the basket of provisions. And he would argue, added the young woman, who had this detail from her own cook, – he would argue at the fishmongers’, over a scorpion fish, for two sous. Strangely enough, this extreme stinginess didn’t disgust Mrs. Edith, who found it somewhat original. Finally, no one had ever entered his house. He had never invited the Rances to come and admire his gardens. Is it handsome? I asked Mrs. Edith when she had finished her eulogy. “Too handsome!” she replied. “You’ll see!… I can’t say why this answer was particularly unpleasant to me. I only thought about it after Mrs. Edith left. Edith and until the end of my guard duty, which ended at eleven-thirty . The first bell for lunch had just rung; I ran to wash my hands and do a little toilet, and I quickly climbed the steps of the Louve, thinking that lunch would be served in this tower; but I stopped in the vestibule, quite astonished to hear music . Who, in the current circumstances, dared, in the fort of Hercules, to play the piano? Eh! but, they were singing; yes, a soft voice, gentle and masculine at the same time, in a muted tone, was singing. It was a strange song, a melody sometimes plaintive, sometimes threatening. I know it by heart now; I have heard it so many times since! Ah! you may know it well if you have crossed the borders of cold Lithuania, if you have ever entered the vast empire of the north. It is the song of the half-naked virgins who drag the traveler into the waves and drown him without mercy; it is the song of Lake Willis, which Sienkiewicz made Michel Vereszezaka hear one immortal day. Listen to this: If you approach Switez at night, your forehead turned towards the lake, stars above your heads, stars under your feet, and two similar moons will be offered to your eyes… you see this plant which caresses the shore, they are the wives and daughters of Switez whom God has changed into flowers. They swing their white heads above the abyss like moths; their leaves are green like the needles of the larch silvered by the frost… Image of innocence during life, they have kept their virginal dress after death; they live in the shadows and do not suffer from defilement; mortal hands would not dare to touch them. The Tsar and his horde experienced this one day, when, after picking these beautiful flowers, they wanted to adorn their temples and their steel helmets with them. All those who stretched out their hands over the waves (so terrible is the power of these flowers!) were struck with the high sickness or struck by sudden death .
When time had erased these things from the memory of men, only the memory of the punishment was preserved for the people, and the people, perpetuating it with their stories, today call the flowers of the Switez tsars!… Having said this, the Lady of the Lake slowly moved away; the lake parted to the depths of her entrails; but the gaze sought in vain the beautiful stranger who had covered her head with a wave and of whom one has never heard again… These were the very words, the translated words of the song murmured by the voice at once sweet and masculine, while the piano provided a melancholy accompaniment. I pushed open the door of the room and found myself facing a young man who stood up. Immediately, behind me, I heard Mrs. Edith’s footsteps. She introduced us. I had before me Prince Galich. The prince was what is commonly called in novels: a handsome and pensive young man; his straight and somewhat hard profile would have given his physiognomy a particularly severe aspect, if his eyes, of a clarity and a gentleness and a disturbing candor, had not revealed an almost childlike soul. They were surrounded by long black eyelashes, so black that they would not have been any darker if they had been brushed with kohl; and, when one had noticed this peculiarity of the eyelashes, one had, at once, grasped the reason for all the strangeness of this physiognomy. The skin of the face was almost too fresh, as it is on the faces of skillfully made-up women and of consumptives. Such was my impression; but I was too intimately prejudiced against this Prince Galich to reasonably attach any importance to it. I judged him too young, no doubt because I was no longer young enough. I could find nothing to say to this too handsome young man who sang such exotic poems; Mrs. Edith smiled at my embarrassment, took my arm —which gave me great pleasure—and led us through the fragrant bushes of the bailey, while waiting for the second bell of the luncheon which was to be served under the hut of dried palms, on the platform of the Tower of the Bold. 2° Lunch and what followed. A contagious terror seized us. At midday, we sat down to table on the terrace of the Temeraire, from where the view was incomparable. The palm leaves covered us with a propitious shade; but, outside this shade, the blaze of the earth and the heavens was such that our eyes would not have been able to bear the glare if we had not all taken the precaution of putting on those black glasses of which I spoke at the beginning of this chapter. At this lunch were: Mr. Stangerson, Mathilde, old Bob, Mr. Darzac, Mr. Arthur Rance, Mrs. Edith, Rouletabille, Prince Galitch and me. Rouletabille turned his back to the sea, paying very little attention to the guests, and was placed in such a way that he could supervise everything that was happening throughout the entire extent of the fortified castle. The servants were at their posts; Father Jacques at the entrance gate, Mattoni at the gardener’s postern, and the Berniers in the Square Tower, in front of the door of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac’s apartment. The beginning of the meal was quite silent. I looked at us. We were almost disturbing, watching each other around this table, mute, leaning towards each other through our black panes, behind which it was as impossible to see our eyes as our thoughts. Prince Galich spoke first. He was quite friendly to Rouletabille, and as he attempted a compliment on the reporter’s reputation, the latter jostled him a little. The prince did not seem offended, but he explained that he was particularly interested in the doings and actions of my friend in his capacity as a subject of the Tsar, since he knew that Rouletabille was due to leave soon for Russia. But the reporter replied that nothing had yet been decided and that he was awaiting orders from his newspaper; whereupon the prince was astonished, taking a newspaper from his pocket. It was a paper from his country, from which he translated a few lines for us, announcing the imminent arrival in Saint Petersburg of Rouletabille. There were happening there, according to what the prince told us, such incredible and apparently illogical events in the high sphere of government. that, on the advice of the head of the Paris police, the master of police had decided to ask the newspaper L’Époque to lend him its young reporter. Prince Galich had presented the matter so well that Rouletabille blushed up to his ears and replied sharply that he had never, even in his short life, done any police work and that the head of the Paris police and the master of police of Saint Petersburg were two imbeciles. The prince began to laugh with all his teeth, which he had beautiful, and truly I saw clearly that his laughter was not beautiful, but ferocious and stupid, my goodness, like a child’s laugh in the mouth of a grown-up. He was entirely of Rouletabille’s opinion and, to prove it, he added: Truly, we are happy to hear you speak in this way, because now the journalist is asked for tasks that have nothing to do with a true man of letters. Rouletabille, indifferent, dropped the conversation. Mrs. Edith raised her up, speaking ecstatically of the splendor of nature. But, for her, there was nothing more beautiful on the coast than the gardens of Babylon, and she said so. She added maliciously: They seem all the more beautiful to us because they can only be seen from a distance. The attack was so direct that I thought the Prince was going to respond with an invitation. But it was not so. Mrs. Edith showed a slight annoyance, and she declared suddenly: I do not want to lie to you, Prince. Your gardens, I have seen them. “How so?” asked Galich with singular composure. “Yes, I have visited them, and this is how…” Then she recounted, while the Prince stiffened into an icy attitude, how she had seen the gardens of Babylon. She had entered them, as if by mistake, from behind, by pushing open a barrier which connected these gardens directly with the mountain. She had walked from enchantment to enchantment, but without being astonished. When one passed along the seashore, what one saw of the gardens of Babylon had prepared her for the marvels whose secret she so audaciously violated. She had arrived at a small pond, very small, black as ink, and on the bank of which stood a large water lily and a little old woman, all shriveled up, with a chin like a galosh. On seeing it, the large water lily and the little old woman had fled, the latter so light that she leaned on the former as she would have done with a stick. Mrs. Edith had laughed heartily. She had called: Madam! Madam! But the little old woman had been all the more terrified and had disappeared with her lily behind a prickly pear cactus. Mrs. Edith had continued on her way, but her steps had become more restless. Suddenly, she heard a great rustling of leaves and that peculiar noise wild birds make when, surprised by the hunter, they escape from the green prison in which they have huddled . It was a second little old woman, even more shriveled than the first, but less light, and who was leaning on a real cane with a raven’s beak. She vanished—that is to say, Mrs. Edith lost sight of her at the bend in the path. And a third little old woman leaning on two canes with a raven’s beak appeared again from the mysterious garden; she escaped from the trunk of a giant eucalyptus; and she went all the faster because she had four legs for running, so many legs that it was quite astonishing that she did not get tangled up in them. Mrs. Edith kept on going. And so she reached the marble steps of the villa, adorned with roses; but, guarding her, the three little old ladies were lined up on the top step, like three crows on a branch, and they opened their beaks threateningly from which escaped battle croaks. It was Mrs. Edith’s turn to run away. Mrs. Edith had recounted her adventure in such a delightful way and with such charm borrowed from a dull and childish literature that I I was completely overwhelmed and I understood how certain women who have nothing natural about them can prevail in a man’s heart over others who have nothing but nature for them. The prince did not seem at all embarrassed by this little story. He said, without smiling: They are my three fairies. They have never left me since I was born in the land of Galich. I cannot work or live without them. I only go out when they allow me to and they watch over my poetic labors with fierce jealousy. The prince had not finished giving us this fanciful explanation of the presence of the three old women in the gardens of Babylon, when Walter, old Bob’s valet, brought a dispatch to Rouletabille. The latter asked permission to open it, and read aloud: “Come back as soon as possible; we are waiting for you impatiently. Magnificent report to be done in Petersburg. ” This dispatch was signed by the editor-in-chief of the Époque. Eh! What do you say, Monsieur Rouletabille? asked the Prince. Don’t you think, now, that I was well informed? The Lady in Black could not suppress a sigh. I will not go to Petersburg, declared Rouletabille. “It will be missed at court,” said the Prince, “I am sure of it, and allow me to tell you, young man, that you are missing the opportunity of your fortune. ” The young man singularly displeased Rouletabille, who opened his mouth to reply to the Prince, but closed it again, to my great astonishment, without having answered. And the Prince continued: … You would have found there a field of experiments worthy of you. One can hope for anything when one has been strong enough to unveil a Larsan! … The word fell among us with a crash and we took refuge behind our black panes with one movement. The silence that followed was horrible… We now remained motionless around that silence, like statues… Larsan!… Why did this name, which we had spoken so often for forty-eight hours, this name which represented a danger with which we were beginning to become familiar—why, at that precise moment, did this name produce an effect on us that, for my part, I had never before felt so brutally? It seemed to me that I was struck by a magnetic gesture. An indefinable unease crept into my veins. I wanted to run away, and it seemed to me that if I got up, I would not have the strength to contain myself… The silence that we continued to maintain contributed to increasing this incredible state of hypnosis… Why were no one talking?… What was old Bob’s gaiety doing?… Hadn’t they heard it at the meal?… And the others, the others, why were they remaining silent behind their black windows?… Suddenly, I turned my head and looked behind me. Then, I understood, from this instinctive gesture, that I was the prey of a completely natural phenomenon… Someone was watching me… Two eyes were fixed on me, weighing on me. I didn’t see those eyes and I didn’t know where that look came from… But it was there… I felt it… And it was his look … And yet, there was no one behind me… neither to the right, nor to the left, nor opposite… no one around me except the people who were sitting at that table, motionless behind their dark glasses… Then… then, I was certain that Larsan’s eyes were looking at me from behind one of those glasses!… Ah! the black windows! the black panes behind which Larsan was hiding!… And then, suddenly, I felt nothing… The gaze, no doubt, had stopped looking… I breathed… A double sigh answered mine… Could Rouletabille?… Could the Lady in Black have also supported the same weight, at the same moment, the weight of her eyes?… Old Bob was saying: Prince, I don’t believe that your last marrowbone from the middle of the Quaternary period… And all the black glasses moved… Rouletabille got up and made a sign to me. I hastily joined him in the council chamber. As soon as I introduced myself, he closed the door and said to me: Well, did you feel it?… I was suffocating; I murmured: He is there!… he is there!… Unless we become mentally ill people!… A silence, and I continued, calmer: You know, Rouletabille, that it is very possible that we become mentally ill people… This obsession with Larsan will lead us to the cabin, my friend!… We have not been locked up in this castle for two days, and already see what state… Rouletabille interrupted me. No! No!… I feel it!… It’s there!… I touch it!… But where?… But when?… Since I came in here, I feel that I must not stray from it!… I will not fall into the trap!… I will not go looking for it outside, even though I saw it outside!… Even though you yourself saw it outside!… Then he calmed down completely, frowned, lit his pipe and said as in the good old days, in the good old days when his reason, which was still ignorant of the bond that united him to the Lady in Black, was not troubled by the stirrings of his heart: Let us reason!… And he returned immediately to this argument that he had already served us and that he repeated constantly to himself so as not, he said, to be seduced by the external side of things. Not to look for Larsan where he appears, but to look for him everywhere where he hides . This was followed by this other complementary argument: He only shows himself so clearly where he appears to be so that we cannot see him where he is. And he continued: Ah! the exterior side of things! You see, Sainclair; there are times when, in order to reason, I would like to be able to tear out my eyes. Let us tear out our eyes, Sainclair; five minutes… just five minutes… and perhaps we will see clearly! He sat down, placed his pipe on the table, took his head in his hands and said: Look, I no longer have eyes. Tell me, Sainclair: what is inside the stones? “What do I see inside the stones?” I repeated. “No! No! You no longer have eyes, you no longer see anything! Enumerate without seeing! LIST THEM ALL! ” “First of all, there is you and me,” I said, finally understanding what he was getting at.
— Very well. — Neither you nor I, I continued, are Larsan. — Why? — Why?… Hey! Tell me!… You must tell me why! I admit that I am not Larsan, I am sure of it, since I am Rouletabille; but, with regard to Rouletabille, will you tell me why you are not Larsan?… — Because you would have seen it!… — Wretched man! shouted Rouletabille, digging his fists even harder into his eyes! I have no eyes anymore… I can’t see you!… If Jarry, of the gaming brigade, had not seen the Count de Maupas sitting down at the bank at Trouville, he would have sworn, by the virtue of reasoning alone , that the man who was then taking the cards was Ballmeyer! If Noblet, of the garrison brigade, had not found himself face to face one evening at La Troyon’s with a man whom he recognized as Viscount Drouet d’Eslon, he would have sworn that the man he came to arrest and did not arrest because he had seen him, was Ballmeyer! If Inspector Giraud, who knew the Count de Motteville as you know me, had not seen him one afternoon at the Longchamp races, talking to two of his friends in the weigh-in, had not seen, I say, the Count de Motteville, he would have arrested Ballmeyer[3]! Ah! You see, Sainclair! added the young man in a dull and quivering voice, my father was born before me!… and you have to be very strong to arrest my father!… This was said with such despair that the little strength I had to reason vanished completely. I limited myself to raising my hands to the sky, a gesture that Rouletabille did not see, because he did not want to see anything more!… No! No! We must not see anything more, he repeated… neither you, nor Mr. Stangerson, nor Mr. Darzac, nor Arthur Rance, nor old Bob, nor the Prince Galich… But you must know why none of those can be Larsan! Only then, only then, will I breathe behind the stones… I couldn’t breathe anymore… Under the arch of the postern gate, we could hear the regular footsteps of Mattoni mounting his guard. Well, what about the servants? I said with an effort… and Mattoni?… and the others? “I know, I’m sure they didn’t leave Fort Hercules while Larsan appeared to Madame Darzac and Monsieur Darzac at the Bourg station… ” “Admit it again, Rouletabille,” I said, “that you’re not paying attention to them, because just now they weren’t behind the black glasses!” Rouletabille stamped his foot and cried: “Be quiet! Be quiet, Sainclair!… You’re going to make me more nervous than my mother!” This sentence, spoken in anger, struck me strangely. I wanted to question Rouletabille about the state of mind of the Lady in Black, but he calmly continued: 1° Sainclair is not Larsan since Sainclair was at Tréport with me while Larsan was in Bourg. 2° Professor Stangerson is not Larsan, since he was on the line from Dijon to Lyon while Larsan was in Bourg. Indeed, having arrived in Lyon, a minute before him, Mr. and Mrs. Darzac saw him get off his train. But all the others, if it is sufficient to be able to be in Bourg at that moment to be Larsan, can be Larsan, because all of them could have been in Bourg. First, Mr. Darzac was there; then, Arthur Rance was absent for the two days preceding the arrival of the professor and Mr. Darzac. He had just arrived in Menton to receive them (Mrs. Edith herself, in response to my questions, which I put wisely, admitted to me that her husband had been away on business for the past two days). Old Bob was making his trip to Paris. Finally, Prince Galitch has not been seen at the grottoes or outside the gardens of Babylon… Let us take M. Darzac first. “Rouletabille!” I cried, “it’s sacrilege! I know it well! And it’s stupid!… ” “I know it too… But why? ” “Because,” I said, beside myself, “Larsan may have genius; He might be able to deceive a policeman, a journalist, a reporter, and, I say: a Rouletabille… he might be able to deceive a friend, for a few moments, I admit… But he will never be able to deceive a girl to the point of passing himself off as her father—this is to reassure you about Mr. Stangerson’s case—nor a woman to the point of passing herself off as her fiancé. Hey! my friend, Mathilde Stangerson knew Mr. Darzac before she crossed the fort of Hercules on his arm!… “And she knew Larsan too!” Rouletabille added coldly. Well , my dear fellow, your reasons are powerful, but, as (oh! the irony of that!) I do not know exactly how far my father’s genius extends, I prefer, in order to restore to M. Robert Darzac a personality that I have never thought of taking away from him, to base myself on a slightly more solid argument: If Robert Darzac were Larsan, Larsan would not have appeared several times to Mathilde Stangerson, since it is the reappearance of Larsan that takes Mathilde Stangerson away from Robert Darzac! “Hey!” I cried… “What’s the use of so much vain reasoning when all one has to do is open one’s eyes?… Open them, Rouletabille!” He opened them. “To whom?” he said with unequalled bitterness. “To Prince Galich? ” “Why not? Do you like this prince of the Black Earth who sings Lithuanian songs? ” “No!” replied Rouletabille, “but he pleases Mrs. Edith. And he sneered. I clenched my fists. He noticed, but acted as if he didn’t. Prince Galich is a nihilist who doesn’t concern me much, he said calmly. “Are you sure?… Who told you?” “Bernier’s wife knows one of the three old ladies Mrs. Edith told us about at lunch. I made some inquiries. She’s the mother of one of the three men hanged at Kazan, who had tried to blow up the Emperor. I saw the photograph of the unfortunates. The other two old women are the other two mothers… No interest, Rouletabille said abruptly. I couldn’t restrain a gesture of admiration. Ah! You’re not wasting your time! “Neither is the other one,” he growled. I crossed my arms. “And old Bob?” I said. “No! my dear, no!” Rouletabille hissed, almost angrily; “that one, no!… You saw he’s wearing a wig, didn’t you?… Well , I beg you to believe that when my father puts on a wig, it doesn’t show! He said this to me so spitefully that I was about to leave him. He stopped me. Well, but?… We haven’t said anything about Arthur Rance?… “Oh! that one hasn’t changed…” I said. “Always the eyes! Watch your eyes, Sainclair…” And he shook my hand. I felt his was damp and burning. He moved away. I stood there for a moment, thinking… thinking about what? About this, that I was wrong to claim that Arthur Rance hadn’t changed… For one thing, now he was growing a hint of a mustache, which was quite abnormal for a routine-loving American of his ilk… Then, he wore his hair longer, with a large fringe plastered to his forehead… Then, I hadn’t seen him for two years… You always change in two years… And then Arthur Rance, who used to drink nothing but alcohol, now drinks nothing but water… But then, Mrs. Edith?… What is Mrs. Edith?… Oh, come on! Am I becoming mentally ill, too? Why do I say: me too? Like… like the Lady in Black? Like… like Rouletabille? Don’t I find that Rouletabille is becoming a little mentally ill? Ah! The Lady in Black has bewitched us all! Because the Lady in Black lives in the perpetual shudder of her memory, now we tremble with the same shudder as she does… Fear is something you can get… like cholera. 3. About my afternoon, until five o’clock. I took advantage of the fact that I was not on guard to go and rest in my room; but I slept badly, having dreamed straight away that old Bob, Mr. Rance and Mrs. Edith formed a dreadful association of bandits who had sworn to destroy Rouletabille and me. And when I awoke, under this gloomy impression, and saw again the old towers and the old castle, all those menacing stones, I was not far from giving reason to my nightmare and I said to myself aloud : In what lair have we come to take refuge? I put my nose to the window. Mrs. Edith was passing in the Cour du Teméraire, talking carelessly with Rouletabille and rolling between her pretty tapered fingers a bright rose. I went downstairs at once. But, arrived in the courtyard, I no longer found her. I followed Rouletabille who was entering to make his tour of inspection in the Square Tower. I saw him very calm and very master of his thoughts; very master also of his eyes which he no longer closed. Ah! It was always a spectacle to see him look at the things around him. Nothing escaped him. The Square Tower, home of the Lady in Black, was the object of his constant worry. And, in this regard, I believe it appropriate, a few hours before the moment when the so mysterious attack was going to occur, to give here the interior plan of the inhabited floor of this tower, a floor which was on the same level as the Court of Charles the Bold. When one entered the Square Tower by the single door K, one found oneself in a wide corridor which had formerly been part of the guardroom. The guardroom formerly took up all of space O, O1, O2, O3, and was enclosed by stone walls which still existed with their doors opening onto the other rooms of the Old Castle. It was Mrs. Arthur Rance who, in this guardroom, had had plank walls erected in such a way as to constitute a fairly spacious room which she intended to transform into a bathroom . This room itself was now surrounded by the two right-angled corridors O, O1, and O1, O2. The door of this room which served as The Bernier lodge was located at S. One had to pass in front of this door to get to R, where the only door allowing entry to the Darzac apartment was located. One of the Bernier spouses always had to stay in the lodge. And only they had the right to enter their lodge. From this lodge, one also watched, through a small window cut in Y, door V, which opened onto old Bob’s apartment. When Mr. and Mrs. Darzac were not in their apartment, the only key that opened door R was always at the Berniers’; and it was a special, brand-new key, made the day before in a place that only Rouletabille knew. The young reporter had fitted the lock himself. Rouletabille would have liked the instructions he had imposed for the Darzac apartment to also be followed for old Bob’s apartment , but the latter had objected with a comic outburst that had to be met. Old Bob did not want to be treated like a prisoner and he absolutely insisted on going in and out of his house whenever he felt like it without having to ask the concierge for his key. His door would remain open and thus he could go from his bedroom or his living room to his office in the tower of Charles the Bold as often as he pleased without disturbing anyone and without worrying about anyone. For this, it was still necessary to leave door K open. He demanded it and Mrs. Edith agreed with her uncle in such a tone of irony, an irony that was aimed at Rouletabille’s pretension to treat old Bob like Professor Stangerson’s daughter, that Rouletabille did not insist. Mrs. Edith had said to him with her thin lips: But, Monsieur Rouletabille, my uncle, he is not afraid of being kidnapped! And Rouletabille had understood that he had nothing left to do but laugh with old Bob at this ludicrous idea, that one could kidnap like a pretty woman the man whose principal attraction was to possess the oldest skull in humanity! And he had laughed… He had even laughed louder than old Bob, but on one condition: that door K was locked after ten o’clock in the evening, and that this key always remained in the possession of the Berniers who would come and open it if necessary. This again bothered old Bob who sometimes worked very late in the tower of Charles the Bold. But neither did he want to appear to be thwarting in everything this good Monsieur Rouletabille who was, he said, afraid of thieves! For it must be immediately pointed out in old Bob’s defense that, if he lent himself so little to the defensive instructions of our young friend, it was because no one had thought it useful to inform him of the resurrection of Larsan-Ballmeyer. He had indeed heard of the extraordinary misfortunes which had once befallen this poor Miss Stangerson; but he was a hundred leagues from thinking that she had not broken with these misfortunes since she was called Madame Darzac. And then old Bob was an egoist like almost all scientists. Very happy, because he possessed the oldest skull in humanity, he could not conceive that everyone around him was not so. Rouletabille, after kindly inquiring about the health of Mother Bernier, who was peeling sausage potatoes , with which a large bag at her side was full, asked Father Bernier to open the door to the Darzac apartment for us. It was the first time I had entered Mr. Darzac’s room. Its appearance was icy. It seemed cold and dark to me. The room, very large, was furnished very simply with an oak bed, a dressing table that had been slipped into one of the two openings J made in the wall, around what had once been loopholes . The wall was so thick and the opening so large that this whole embrasure formed a sort of small bedroom within the large one, and Mr. Darzac had made it his dressing room. The second Window I was smaller. These two windows were fitted with thick bars between which one could barely pass one’s arm. The bed, high on its feet, was backed against the exterior wall and pushed against the (stone) partition which separated Mr. Darzac’s room from that of his wife. Opposite, in the corner of the tower, was a closet. In the center of the room, a pedestal table on which had been placed some science books and everything necessary for writing. And then, an armchair and three chairs. That was all. It was absolutely impossible to hide in this room, except, naturally, in the closet. So Father and Mother Bernier had received orders to visit, each time they cleaned the apartment, this closet where Mr. Darzac locked his clothes; And Rouletabille himself, who, in the absence of the Darzacs, came from time to time to cast a glance at the master’s rooms in the Tour Carrée, never failed to search him. He did so again in front of me. When we then passed into Madame Darzac’s room, we were quite sure that we were leaving no one behind us at Monsieur Darzac’s. As soon as we entered the apartment, Bernier, who had followed us, had taken care, as he always did, to pull the bolts that closed the only door connecting the apartment with the corridor. Madame Darzac’s room was smaller than her husband’s. But well lit, because of the special arrangement of the windows, and cheerful. As soon as he set foot in it, I saw Rouletabille turn pale and turn his kind and (then) melancholy face towards me. He said to me: Well, Sainclair, can you smell the perfume of the Lady in Black? Well, no! I felt nothing at all. The window, barred like all the others that looked out onto the open sea, was, moreover , wide open, and a light breeze made the cloth flutter, which had been drawn over a rod above a wardrobe that lined one side of the wall. The other side was occupied by the bed
. This wardrobe was so high up that the dresses and dressing gowns that lined it, and the cloth that covered it, did not fall all the way to the parquet floor, so that it would have been absolutely impossible for someone who had wanted to hide there to conceal their feet and the bottom of their legs. As the rod on which the coat racks slid was extremely light, they could not have hung themselves there either. Rouletabille nevertheless examined this wardrobe carefully. No cupboard in this room. Dressing table, desk, an armchair, two chairs, and the four walls, between which no one but us, in all truth evident from the good Lord. Rouletabille, after looking under the bed, gave the signal to leave and swept us with a gesture from the apartment. He left last. Bernier immediately locked the door with the small key that he put back in the top pocket of his jacket, which he closed with a buttonhole that he buttoned. We toured the corridors and also that of old Bob’s apartment, composed of a living room and a bedroom as easy to visit as the Darzac apartment. No one in the apartment, basic furnishings, a closet, a bookcase, almost empty, with open doors. When we left the apartment, Mother Bernier had just placed her chair on the doorstep, which allowed her to see more clearly at her task, which was still that of peeling the potatoes called sausages. We entered the room occupied by the Berniers and visited it like the rest. The other floors were uninhabited and communicated with the ground floor by a small interior staircase that began in corner O3 and ended at the top of the tower. A trapdoor in the ceiling of the room inhabited by the Berniers closed this staircase. Rouletabille asked for a hammer and nails and nailed the trapdoor shut. This staircase became unusable. It could be said in principle and in fact that nothing escaped Rouletabille and that he, having made his rounds in the Square Tower left no one there other than Father and Mother Bernier when we both left. It can also be said that no human being was in the Darzac apartment before Bernier, a few minutes later, opened it himself to Mr. Darzac, as I will relate. It was about five minutes to five when, leaving Bernier in his corridor, in front of the door of the Darzac apartment, Rouletabille and I found ourselves in the Cour du Téméraire. At that moment, we reached the platform of the old tower B”. We sat on the parapet, our eyes turned towards the ground, attracted by the bloody reverberation of the Red Rocks. Just then, we saw, towards the edge of the Barma Grande, which opened its mysterious mouth in the flaming face of the Baoussé Roussé, the agitated and funereal silhouette of old Bob. He is the only black thing in nature. The red cliff rises from the waters with such a radiant surge that one might think it was still hot and steaming from the central fire that brought it into being. By what prodigious anachronism does this modern undertaker, with his frock coat and top hat, move about, grotesque and macabre, before this three hundred thousand year old cavern, dug out of the burning lava to serve as the first roof for the first family, in the early days of the earth? Why this sinister gravedigger in this blazing setting? We see him brandish his skull and we hear him laugh… laugh… laugh. Ah! His laughter hurts us now, rends our ears and our hearts. From old Bob, our attention goes to Mr. Robert Darzac who has just passed through the gardener’s postern and is crossing the Cour du Téméraire. He does not see us. Ah! He is not laughing! Rouletabille feels sorry for him and understands that he is at the end of his tether. In the afternoon, he said again to my friend, who repeated it to me: Eight days is a long time! I don’t know if I can bear this torture for another eight days. “And where will you go?” Rouletabille asked him. “To Rome!” he replied. Obviously, Professor Stangerson’s daughter will only follow him there now, and Rouletabille believes that it is this idea that the Pope will be able to arrange his affair that has put this trip into the mind of poor Mr. Darzac. Poor, poor Mr. Darzac! No, really, we mustn’t laugh at him. We don’t take our eyes off him until we reach the door of the Tour Carrée. He is certain that he can’t take it anymore! His figure has stooped even more. He has his hands in his pockets. He seems disgusted with everything! with everything! Yes, he looks disgusted with everything, with his hands in his pockets! But, patience, he will take his hands out of his pockets and we will not always smile! And, I can admit it right away, I who smiled… Well, M. Darzac gave me, thanks to the brilliant help of Rouletabille, the most dreadful shudder of terror that can shake the human marrow, in truth! Well! Well, who would have believed it?… M. Darzac went straight to the Tour Carrée, where he naturally found Bernier who opened his apartment. As Bernier had come out in front of the door of the apartment, as he had the key in his pocket and as, in the apartment, it was subsequently established that no bars had been sawn, we establish that when M. Darzac entered his room, there was no one in the apartment. And that is the truth. Obviously all this was clarified later by each of us; but if I am speaking to you about it before, it is because I am already haunted by the inexplicable which is preparing in the shadows and which is ready to explode. At this moment, it is five o’clock. 4° The evening from five o’clock until the minute when the attack on the Square Tower took place . Rouletabille and I stayed for about an hour chatting, in other words, continuing to get worked up, on the platform of this Tower B”. Suddenly, Rouletabille gave me a sharp little blow on the shoulder and said: But, I’m thinking!… and he went into the Square Tower where I followed him. I was a hundred leagues from guessing what he was thinking. He was thinking about Mother Bernier’s bag of potatoes, which he emptied entirely onto the floor of their room, to the great astonishment of the good woman; then, pleased with this gesture, which evidently responded to a preoccupation of his mind, he returned with me to the Cour du Téméraire, while behind us, Father Bernier was still laughing at the scattered potatoes. Mrs. Darzac appeared for a moment at the window of the room occupied by her father, on the first floor of the Louve. The heat had become unbearable. We were threatened by a violent storm and we would have liked it to break immediately… Ah! the storm would be a great relief… The sea has the heavy, thick tranquility of an oily sheet. Ah! the sea is heavy, and the air is heavy, and our chests are heavy. There is nothing light on earth and in the heavens except old Bob, who has reappeared on the banks of the Barma Grande and is still stirring. It looks like he’s dancing. No, he’s making a speech. To whom? We lean over the parapet to see. There’s obviously someone on the shore to whom Old Bob is making prehistoric remarks. But palm leaves hide Old Bob’s audience from us. Finally, the audience stirs and moves forward; it approaches the black professor, as Rouletabille calls him. This audience is made up of two people: Mrs. Edith… it’s definitely her, with her languid graces, her way of leaning on her husband’s arm … On her husband’s arm! But he isn’t her husband!… Who is this man, this young man, on whose arm Mrs. Edith is leaning with such languid grace? Rouletabille turns around, looking around for someone to give us some information: Mattoni or Bernier. Bernier is just standing on the threshold of the door of the Tour Carrée. Rouletabille signals to him. Bernier joins us and his eye follows the direction indicated by Rouletabille’s index finger. Who is with Mrs. Edith? asks the reporter. Do you know?… “That young man?” Bernier replies without hesitation, “it’s Prince Galitch.”
Rouletabille and I look at each other. It’s true that we’ve never seen Prince Galitch walk from afar; but really, I wouldn’t have imagined that gait… And then, he didn’t seem so tall to me… Rouletabille understands me, shrugs his shoulders… That’s good, he says to Bernier… Thank you… And we continue to look at Mrs. Edith and her prince. ” I can only say one thing,” Bernier says before leaving us, “that he’s a prince I don’t like. He’s too gentle. He ‘s too blond, his eyes are too blue. They say he’s Russian. It comes and goes, it leaves the country without warning!” The penultimate time he was invited here to lunch, Madame and Monsieur were waiting for him and didn’t dare start without him. Well, we received a telegram begging his pardon because he had missed the train. The telegram was dated Moscow… And Bernier, chuckling amusingly, returns to the threshold of his tower. Our eyes are still fixed on the shore. Mrs. Edith and the Prince continue their walk toward Romeo and Juliet’s grotto; Old Bob suddenly stops gesticulating, gets off the Barma Grande, comes toward the castle, enters it, crosses the bailey, and we see very clearly (from the top of the platform of Tower B”) that he has stopped laughing. Old Bob has become sadness itself. He is silent. He is now passing under the postern gate. We call him; he doesn’t hear us. He carries his oldest skull in front of him with outstretched arms and suddenly, suddenly, he becomes furious. He addresses the worst insults to the oldest skull in humanity. He descends into the Round Tower and for some time we heard the bursts of his anger even in the depths of the lower battery. Muffled blows resounded there. It was as if he were fighting against the walls. Six o’clock, at that moment, struck on the old clock of the Château Neuf. And, almost at the same time, a roll of thunder was heard on the distant sea. And the line of the horizon became all black. Then, a stable boy, Walter, a brave brute, incapable of an idea, but who had for years shown the devotion of a beast to his master, who was old Bob, passed under the gardener’s postern, entered the Court of Charles the Bold and came to us. He handed me a letter, he also gave one to Rouletabille and continued on his way to the Square Tower. At this, Rouletabille asked him what he was going to do at the Square Tower. He replied that he was going to take Mr. and Mrs. Darzac’s mail to Father Bernier ; all this in English, because Walter only knows that language; but we speak it well enough to understand it. Walter had been in charge of distributing the mail since Father Jacques was no longer allowed to leave his lodge. Rouletabille took the mail from him and told him that he was going to do the errand himself . A few drops of rain were then beginning to fall. We headed for Mr. Darzac’s door. In the corridor, straddling a chair, Father Bernier was smoking his pipe. Is Mr. Darzac still there? asked Rouletabille. “He hasn’t moved,” replied Bernier. We knocked. We heard the bolts being pulled from the inside (these bolts must always be pushed as soon as the person enters. Rouletabille rules). Mr. Darzac was tidying up his correspondence when we entered his house. To write, he sat at the small occasional table, just opposite door R and faced that door. But follow all our movements carefully. Rouletabille grumbled that the letter he was reading confirmed the telegram he received that morning and urged him to return to Paris: his newspaper absolutely wanted to send him to Russia. Mr. Darzac read with indifference the two or three letters we had just given him and put them in his pocket. I hand Rouletabille the letter I have just received; it is from my friend in Paris who, after giving me some unimportant details about Brignolles’ departure, informs me that the said Brignolles has his mail sent to Sospel, to the Hôtel des Alpes. This is extremely interesting and M. Darzac and Rouletabille are delighted with the information. We agree to go to Sospel as soon as possible , and we leave Darzac’s apartment. The door to Mme Darzac’s room was not closed. That is what I observed on leaving. I said, moreover, that Mme Darzac was not at home. As soon as we left, Father Bernier locked the door of the apartment, immediately… immediately… I saw him, saw him, saw him… immediately and he put the key in his pocket, in the small pocket at the top of his jacket. Ah! I can still see him putting the key in his little top pocket of his jacket, I swear!… and he buttoned it. Then we leave the Tour Carrée, all three of us, leaving Father Bernier in his corridor, like the good watchdog he is and never stopped being until his last day. It’s not because you’ve poached a little that you can’t be a good watchdog. On the contrary, these dogs are always poaching. And I say it loud and clear, in everything that follows, Father Bernier always did his duty and never spoke anything but the truth. His wife too, Mother Bernier, was an excellent concierge, intelligent, and not a chatterbox. Today, when she is a widow, I have her at my service. She will be happy to read here the praise I give her and also the tribute paid to her husband. They both deserved it. It was about six thirty when, leaving the Square Tower, Rouletabille, Mr. Darzac, and I went to visit old Bob in his Round Tower . As soon as we entered the lower battery, Mr. Darzac gave a cry when he saw the state in which a wash had been left on which he had been working since the day before to try to distract himself, and which represented the large-scale plan of the fortified castle of Hercules as it existed in the 15th century, according to documents. that Arthur Rance had shown us. This wash was completely ruined and the painting had been all smeared. He tried in vain to ask for an explanation from old Bob, who was kneeling beside a box containing a skeleton, and was so preoccupied with a shoulder blade that he did not even answer him. I open a small parenthesis here to ask the reader’s pardon for the meticulous precision with which, for the past few pages, I have been reproducing our actions; but I must say at once that the most trivial events have considerable importance in reality, because every step we take, at this moment, we take in the middle of a drama, without realizing it, alas! As old Bob was in a dog’s mood, we left him, at least Rouletabille and I. Mr. Darzac remained in front of his ruined wash, and no doubt thinking of something else entirely. Leaving the Round Tower, Rouletabille and I looked up at the sky, which was now covered with all sorts of black clouds and no one. The storm was near. Meanwhile , the rain had already stopped falling, and we were suffocating. I’m going to throw myself on my bed, I declared… I can’t take it anymore… Perhaps it’s cool up there, with all the windows open… Rouletabille followed me into the Château Neuf. Suddenly, as we reached the first landing of the vast, rickety staircase, he stopped me: Oh! oh! he said in a low voice, she’s there… “Who? ” “The Lady in Black!… Can’t you feel that the whole staircase is filled with her scent?” And he hid behind a door, begging me to continue on my way without paying any more attention to him; which I did. Imagine my astonishment, as I pushed open the door to my room, to find myself face to face with Mathilde!… She gave a slight cry and disappeared into the shadows, flying off like a startled bird. I ran to the stairs and leaned over the banister. She glided along the steps like a ghost. She was soon on the ground floor and below me I saw Rouletabille, who, leaning over the banister of the first landing, was also watching. And he came up to me. “Hey!” he said, “what did I tell you!… The poor thing!” He seemed very agitated again. “I asked Mr. Darzac for eight days… Everything must be finished in twenty-four hours or I won’t have the strength for anything!” And he suddenly collapsed onto a chair. “I’m suffocating!” he moaned, “I’m suffocating!” And he tore off his tie. “ Water!” I was going to get him a carafe, but he stopped me: No!… it’s water from the sky that I need! And he shook his fist at the black sky, which still hadn’t burst. For ten minutes, he sat on that chair, thinking. What surprised me was that he didn’t ask me a single question about what the Lady in Black had come to do at my house. I would have been very embarrassed to answer him. Finally, he stood up: Where are you going? “To take the guard at the postern gate.” He wouldn’t even come to dinner and asked that his soup be brought to him there, like a soldier’s. Dinner was served at eight-thirty at the Louve. Robert Darzac, who had just left old Bob, declared that he didn’t want to dine. Mrs. Edith, fearing that he was unwell, went straight to the Round Tower. She didn’t want Mr. Arthur Rance to accompany her. She seemed to be on very bad terms with her husband. The Lady in Black arrived at this point with Professor Stangerson. Mathilde looked at me painfully, with a look of reproach that deeply troubled me. Her eyes never left me . No one ate. Arthur Rance kept looking at the Lady in Black. All the windows were open. We were suffocating. A flash of lightning and a violent clap of thunder followed one another in quick succession and, suddenly , there was a deluge. A sigh of relief relaxed our oppressed chests . Mrs. Edith returned just in time to avoid being drowned by the furious rain that seemed about to engulf the peninsula. She related animatedly that she had found old Bob with his back bent over his desk, his head in his hands. He hadn’t answered her questions. She had shaken him in a friendly way, but he had acted like a bear. Then, as he stubbornly held his hands over his ears, she had pricked him with a small ruby-headed pin, which she usually used to hold back the folds of the light kerchief she threw over her shoulders in the evening. He had growled, grabbed the small ruby-headed pin from her, and flung it furiously onto his desk. And then, at last, he had spoken to her roughly, as he had never done before: You, my niece, leave me alone. Mrs. Edith had been so upset that she had left without another word, promising herself that she would not set foot in the Round Tower again that evening . As she left the Round Tower, Mrs. Edith had turned her head to see her old uncle once more and she had been astounded by what she had been given to see. The oldest skull in human history was on the uncle’s desk upside down, its jaw hanging in the air, all smeared with blood, and old Bob, who had always behaved properly with him, old Bob was spitting into his skull! She had run away, a little frightened. Thereupon, Robert Darzac reassured Mrs. Edith by telling her that what she had taken for blood was paint. Old Bob’s skull was daubed with Robert Darzac’s paint. I was the first to leave the table to run to Rouletabille, and also to escape Mathilde’s gaze. What had the Lady in Black come to do in my room? I was soon to find out. When I went out, lightning was overhead and the rain was getting heavier. I only made one leap to the postern gate. No Rouletabille! I found him on terrace B”, watching the entrance to the Square Tower and receiving the whole storm on his back. I shook him to drag him under the postern gate. Leave it, he said to me… Leave it! It’s the deluge! Ah! how good it is! How good it is! All this anger from the sky! Don’t you want to howl with the thunder, do you? Well, I howl, listen! I howl!… I howl!… Uh! uh! uh!… Louder than the thunder!… Look! We can’t hear it anymore!… And he let out into the resounding night, above the heaving waves, the clamors of a savage. I thought, this time, that he had truly become a mentally ill person. Alas! The unfortunate child exhaled in indistinct cries the atrocious pain that burned him, whose flame he tried in vain to smother in his heroic breast: the pain of Larsan’s son! And suddenly I turned around, for a hand had just seized my wrist and a black form clung to me in the storm: Where is he?… Where is he? It was Madame Darzac, who was also looking for Rouletabille. A new flash of lightning enveloped us. Rouletabille, in a frightful delirium, screamed at the thunder until his throat was torn. She heard it. She saw it. We were covered in water, soaked by the rain from the sky and the foam from the sea. Madame Darzac’s skirt flapped in the night like a black flag and enveloped my legs. I supported the unfortunate woman, for I felt her faint, and then it happened that , in this vast unleashing of the elements, during this storm, under this terrible shower, in the midst of the roaring sea, I suddenly smelled her perfume, the sweet and penetrating and so melancholy perfume of the Lady in Black!… Ah! I understand! I understand how Rouletabille remembered it beyond the years… Yes, yes, it is a scent full of melancholy, a perfume for intimate sadness… Something like the isolated and discreet and entirely personal perfume of an abandoned plant, which would have been condemned to flower for itself , all alone… Finally! It’s a perfume that gave me these ideas and that I tried to analyze like that, later… because Rouletabille always spoke to me about it… But it was a very sweet and very tyrannical perfume that intoxicated me all of a sudden, there, in the middle of this battle of waters and wind and lightning, all at once, when I had grasped it. Extraordinary perfume! Ah! extraordinary, for I had passed twenty times near the Lady in Black without discovering what was extraordinary about this perfume, and it appeared to me at a moment when the most persistent perfumes of the earth – and even all those that make the head ache – are swept away like a breath of roses by the sea wind. I understand that when one had, I do not say felt it, but grasped it (for finally, so much the worse if I boast, but I am convinced that not everyone could at will understand the perfume of the Lady in Black, and for that one certainly had to be very intelligent, and it is probable that, that evening, I was more so than other evenings, although, that evening, I must not have understood anything of what was happening around me). Yes, when one had once grasped this melancholy and captivating, and adorably despairing odor, – well, it was for life! And the heart must have been embalmed by it, if it was a son’s heart like Rouletabille’s; or inflamed, if it was a lover’s heart, like M. Darzac’s; or poisoned, if it was a bandit’s heart, like Larsan’s… No! no, one should never be able to do without it! And, now, I understand Rouletabille and Darzac and Larsan and all the misfortunes of Professor Stangerson’s daughter!… So, in the storm, clinging to my arm, the Lady in Black called Rouletabille and once again Rouletabille escaped us, leaped, ran away through the night crying: The perfume of the Lady in Black! The perfume of the Lady in Black!… The unfortunate woman sobbed. She dragged me toward the tower. She banged desperately on the door, which Bernier opened for us, and she wouldn’t stop crying. I said banal things to her, begging her to calm down, and yet I would have given my fortune to find words that, without betraying anyone, might have made her understand what part I played in the drama that was playing out between the mother and the child. Suddenly she showed me to the right, into the living room that preceded old Bob’s room, no doubt because the door was open. There, we would be as alone as if she had let me into her room, for we knew that old Bob worked late in the Tower of the Bold. My God! In that horrible evening, the memory of that moment I spent facing the Lady in Black is not the least painful. I was put to a test there that I had not expected, and when, out of the blue, without her even taking the time to complain about the way we had just been treated by the elements—for I was dripping on the floor like an old umbrella—she asked me: Has it been a long time, Monsieur Sainclair, since you went to Le Tréport? I was more dazzled, stunned, than by all the thunderbolts of the storm. And I understood that, at the very moment when all nature was calming down outside, I was going to undergo, now that I believed myself safe, a more dangerous assault than that which the flood of the seas has vainly delivered for centuries to the rock of Hercules! I had to put on a bad face and betray all the emotion into which this unexpected phrase plunged me. At first, I did not reply; I stammered, and certainly I was completely ridiculous. These things have been happening for years. But I still watch as if I were my own spectator. There are people who are wet and who are not ridiculous. Thus the Lady in Black may have been soaked and, like me, come out of the hurricane, well, she was admirable with her hair undone, her bare neck, her magnificent shoulders molded by the light silk of a garment, which appeared to my ecstatic eyes like a sublime rag, thrown by some heir of Phidias onto the immortal clay which has just taken the form of beauty! I feel well that my emotion, even after so many years, when I think of these things, makes me write sentences which lack simplicity. I do not I will say no more on this subject. But those who have been close to Professor Stangerson’s daughter will perhaps understand me, and I only want here, with regard to Rouletabille, to affirm the feeling of respectful consternation which swelled my heart before this divinely beautiful mother, who, in the harmonious disorder into which the dreadful storm – physical and moral – in which she was struggling had thrown her, came to beg me to betray my oath. For I had sworn to Rouletabille to be silent, and now, alas! My very silence spoke louder than any of my pleas had ever done. She took my hands and said to me in a tone which I will never forget as long as I live: You are his friend. Tell him then that we have both suffered enough ! And she added with a sob: Why does he continue to lie? I said nothing in reply. What would I have replied? This woman had always been so distant, as they say now, from everyone in general and from me in particular. I had never existed for her… and now, after having made me smell the perfume of the Lady in Black, she was crying in front of me like an old friend… Yes, like an old friend… She told me everything, I learned everything, in a few pitiful sentences, simple as a mother’s love… everything that that sly little Rouletabille was hiding from me. Obviously, this game of hide-and-seek could not last and they had both guessed each other correctly . Driven by a sure instinct, she had wanted to know definitively what this Rouletabille was who had saved her and who was the same age as the other… and who looked like the other. And a letter had come to her in Menton itself bringing her the recent proof that Rouletabille had lied to her and had never set foot in an institution in Bordeaux. She had immediately demanded an explanation from the young man, but he had bitterly evaded it. However, he had become troubled when she spoke to him of Le Tréport and the college at Eu and the trip we had made there before coming to Menton. How did you know? I cried, immediately betraying myself. She did not even triumph over my innocent confession, and she told me her whole stratagem in one sentence. It was not the first time she had come to our rooms when I surprised her that very evening… My luggage still bore the recent label of the Eude luggage deposit. Why did he not throw himself into my arms when I opened them to him? she moaned. Alas! Alas! if he refuses to be Larsan’s son , will he never consent to be mine? Rouletabille had behaved in an atrocious way towards this woman who had believed her child dead, who had mourned him desperately, as I learned later, and who was finally tasting, in the midst of incomparable misfortunes, the mortal joy of seeing her son resurrected… Ah! the poor man!… The previous evening, he had laughed in her face when she had shouted to him, at the end of her tether, that she had had a son and that this son was him! He had laughed in her face while crying!… Arrange that as you will! It was she who told me and I would never have believed Rouletabille to be so cruel, nor so sly, nor so ill-mannered. Certainly! he behaved in an abominable way! He had gone so far as to tell her that he was not sure of being the son of anyone, not even of a thief! It was then that she had returned to the Square Tower and wished to die. But she hadn’t found her son to lose him so soon, and she was still alive! I was beside myself! I kissed her hands. I asked her forgiveness for Rouletabille. So, this was the result of my friend’s policy. Under the pretext of better defending her against Larsan, it was he who killed her! I didn’t want to know any more! I knew too much! I fled! I called Bernier, who opened the door for me! I left the Square Tower, cursing Rouletabille! I thought I would find him in the Cour du Téméraire, but it was deserted. At the postern gate, Mattoni had just taken the ten o’clock watch. There was a light in my friend’s room. I climbed the rickety staircase of the Château Neuf. Finally! Here is his door: I open it, I force it open. Rouletabille is in front of me: What do you want, Sainclair? In a few broken sentences, I tell him everything, and he knows my She hasn’t told you everything, my friend, he replies in an icy voice. She hasn’t told you that she forbids me to touch this man!… “That’s true,” I cried… “I heard her!… ” “Well! What are you coming to tell me, then?” he continues brutally . “Don’t you know what she told me yesterday?… She ordered me to leave! She would rather die than see me struggling with my father!” And he sneers, sneers. With my father!… She probably thinks he’s stronger than me!… He was awful talking like that. But, suddenly, he transformed and shone with a dazzling beauty. She’s afraid for me!… well, I’m afraid for her!… And I don’t know my father… And I don’t know my mother! .. .. .. .. .. At that moment, a gunshot ripped through the night, followed by the cry of death! Ah! there’s the cry again, the inexplicable cry from the gallery! My hair stood on end and Rouletabille reeled as if he himself had just been struck!… And then, he leaped to the open window and a desperate clamor filled the fortress: Mother! Mother! Mother! Chapter 11. The Attack on the Square Tower I had sprung after him, I had taken him in my arms, fearing everything about his madness. There was in his cries: Mother! Mother! Mother! such a fury of despair, a call or rather an announcement for help so far beyond human strength that I could fear that he would forget that he was only a man, that is to say, incapable of flying directly from that window to that tower, of crossing like a bird or like an arrow that black space which separated him from the crime and which he filled with his frightening clamor. Suddenly, he turned around, knocked me down, rushed, hurtled, tumbled, rolled, rushed through corridors, rooms, staircases, courtyards, to that accursed tower which had just thrown into the night the death cry of the inexplicable gallery! And I, I had only just had time to remain at the window, rooted to the spot by the horror of that cry. I was still there when the door of the Square Tower opened and when, in its frame of light, the form of the Lady in Black appeared ! She was quite erect and very much alive, despite the cry of death, but her pale and spectral face reflected an unspeakable terror. She stretched out her arms towards the night and the night threw Rouletabille to her, and the arms of the Lady in Black closed and I heard nothing but sighs and moans, and again those two syllables that the night repeated indefinitely: Mother! Mother! I went down in my turn into the courtyard, my temples beating, my heart in disorder, my back broken. What I had seen on the threshold of the Square Tower did not reassure me in the least. It was in vain that I tried to reason with myself: Eh! What, at the very moment when we thought all was lost, everything, on the contrary, was not found again? Had the son not found the mother? Had the mother not finally found the child? … But why… why this cry of death when she was so alive? Why that cry of anguish before she appeared, standing on the threshold of the tower? Extraordinarily, there was no one in the Cour du Téméraire when I crossed it. Had no one heard the shot? Had no one heard the screams? Where was Mr. Darzac? Where was old Bob? Were they still working in the lower battery of the Round Tower? I could have believed it, for I could see a light at ground level in that tower. And Mattoni? Had Mattoni heard nothing either? Mattoni, who was watching under the gardener’s postern gate? Well! And Bernier! And Mother Bernier! I couldn’t see them . And the door of the Square Tower had remained open! Ah! the sweet murmur: Mama! Mama! Mama! And I heard her, she, who said nothing but that while crying: My little one! My little one! My little one! They hadn’t even taken the precaution of completely closing the door to old Bob’s living room. It was there again that she had dragged, that she had taken her child! … And they were alone there, in that room, embracing each other, repeating to each other : Mama! My little one! … And then they said broken things to each other , sentences without a connection… divine stupidities… So, you’re not dead!… No doubt, are you? Well, that was enough to make them start crying again… Ah! how they must be embracing each other, making up for lost time! How he must have breathed in the perfume of the Lady in Black!… I heard him say again: You know, Mama, it wasn’t me who stole!… And one would have thought, from the sound of his voice, that he was still nine years old when he said these things, poor Rouletabille. No! My little one!… No, you didn’t steal!… My little one! My little one!… Ah! It wasn’t my fault if I heard… but my soul was completely shattered… It was a mother who had found her little one, what!… But where was Bernier? I went into the box on the left, because I wanted to know why they had shouted and who had fired. Mother Bernier was standing at the back of the box, lit by a small nightlight. She was a black bundle on an armchair. She must have been in bed when the shot rang out and she had hastily thrown some clothing over herself. I brought the nightlight close to her face. Her features were contorted with fear. ” Where is Father Bernier?” I asked. “Is he there,” she replied, trembling. “There?… Where, there?” But she didn’t answer me. I took a few steps into the lodge and stumbled. I bent down to see what I was walking on; I was walking on potatoes. I lowered the night light and examined the floor. The floor was covered with potatoes; they had rolled everywhere. Hadn’t Mother Bernier picked them up since Rouletabille had emptied the bag? I got up and went back to Mother Bernier: “Oh, there!” I said, “there was shooting!… What happened? ” “I don’t know,” she replied. And immediately I heard the tower door being closed, and Father Bernier appeared on the threshold of the lodge. “Ah! Is that you, Monsieur Sainclair?” — Bernier!… What happened? — Oh! Nothing serious, Monsieur Sainclair, don’t worry, nothing serious… (And her voice was too strong, too brave to be as assured as she wanted to appear.) A trivial accident… Monsieur Darzac, putting his revolver on his nightstand, made it go off. Madame was frightened, naturally, and she screamed; and, as the window of their apartment was open, she thought that Monsieur Rouletabille and you had heard something, and she went out at once to reassure you. — Monsieur Darzac had gone home then?… — He arrived here almost as soon as you left the tower, Monsieur Sainclair. And the shot went off almost as soon as he entered his room. You can imagine that I was frightened too! Ah! I rushed over!… Monsieur Darzac let me in himself. Fortunately, no one was hurt. —As soon as I left the tower, did Madame Darzac go home ?
—Immediately. She heard Monsieur Darzac arriving at the tower and she followed him into their apartment. They went there together. —And Monsieur Darzac? Did he stay in his room? —Look, there he is!… I turned around; I saw Robert Darzac; despite the dim light in the apartment, I saw that he was terribly pale. He was signaling to me. I approached him and he said to me: Listen, Sainclair! Bernier must have told you about the accident. There’s no point in telling anyone about it if they don’t tell you about it. Perhaps the others didn’t hear that revolver shot. It’s no use frightening people, is there?… Say! I have a favor personal to ask you. — Speak, my friend, I said, I am entirely yours, you know that well. Use me, if I can be of use to you. — Thank you, but it is only a matter of persuading Rouletabille to go to bed; when he has left, my wife will calm down too, and she will go and rest. Everyone needs to rest. Calm, calm, Sainclair! We all need calm and silence… — Well, my friend, count on me! I shook his hand with a natural expansiveness, a strength that attested to my devotion; I was convinced that all these people were hiding something from us, something very serious!… He entered his room, and I did not hesitate to go and find Rouletabille in old Bob’s living room. But, on the threshold of old Bob’s apartment, I bumped into the Lady in Black and her son who were coming out. They were both so silent and had an attitude so incomprehensible to me, who had heard the transports of a moment ago and who expected to find the son in his mother’s arms, that I remained in front of them without saying a word, without making a gesture. The eagerness with which Madame Darzac left Rouletabille in such exceptional circumstances intrigued me to a point I cannot describe, and the submission with which Rouletabille accepted his leave annihilated me. Mathilde leaned over my friend’s forehead, kissed him and said to him: Goodbye, my child in a voice so white, so sad, and at the same time so solemn, that I thought I heard the already distant farewell of a dying woman. Rouletabille, without answering his mother, led me out of the tower. He was trembling like a leaf. It was the Lady in Black herself who closed the door of the Square Tower. I was sure that something unheard of was happening in the tower. The story of the accident did not satisfy me in the least; and there is no doubt that Rouletabille would have thought like me, if his reason and his heart had not still been completely stunned by what had just happened between the Lady in Black and him!… And then, who told me that Rouletabille did not think like me? … We had hardly left the Square Tower when I attacked Rouletabille. First I pushed him into the corner of the parapet which joined the Square Tower to the Round Tower, in the angle formed by the projection, on the courtyard, of the Square Tower. The reporter, who had let himself be led by me docilely, like a child, said in a low voice: Sainclair, I swore to my mother that I would see nothing, that I would hear nothing of what would happen tonight at the Square Tower. It is the first oath I make to my mother, Sainclair; but my share of paradise for her! I must see and hear… We were there not far from a window that was still lit, opening onto old Bob’s living room and overlooking the sea. This window was not closed, and that is what had allowed us, no doubt, to distinctly hear the revolver shot and the cry of death despite the thickness of the tower walls. From where we were now, we could see nothing through that window, but wasn’t it already something to be able to hear?… The storm had passed, but the waves had not yet abated and they were breaking on the rocks of the Hercules peninsula with a violence that made any approach by boat impossible! So I thought at that moment of a boat, because, for a second, I thought I saw appear or disappear—in the shadow—a shadow of a boat. But what! This was evidently an illusion of my mind, which saw hostile shadows everywhere—of my mind, certainly more agitated than the waves. We had been standing there, motionless, for five minutes, when a sigh— ah! that long, that dreadful sigh! A deep moan like an expiration, like a breath of agony, a dull complaint, distant like life that is leaving, close like death that is coming, reached us through this window and passed over our sweating foreheads. And then, nothing more… No, nothing could be heard but the intermittent roar of the sea, and suddenly the light from the window went out. The Square Tower, completely black, returned to night. My friend and I had taken each other’s hands and thus, through this mute communication, we commanded each other to remain still and silent. Someone was dying, there, in the tower! Someone they were hiding from us! Why? And who? Who? Someone who was neither Mrs. Darzac, nor Mr. Darzac, nor Father Bernier, nor Mother Bernier, nor, without a doubt, old Bob: someone who could not be in the tower. Bent over the parapet, our necks stretched out toward the window that had let this agony pass, we listened again. A quarter of an hour passed like this… a century. Rouletabille then showed me the window of his room, which had remained lit. I understood. It was necessary to go and put out this light and go back down. I took a thousand precautions; five minutes later, I was back with Rouletabille. There was now no other light in the Cour du Téméraire than the faint glow at ground level, revealing the late work of old Bob in the lower battery of the Round Tower, and the light from the gardener’s postern where Mattoni was watching. In short, considering the position they occupied, it was quite understandable that neither old Bob nor Mattoni had heard anything of what had happened in the Square Tower, nor even, in the dying storm, of Rouletabille’s cries above their heads. The walls of the postern were thick , and old Bob was buried in a veritable underground passage. I had barely had time to slip in beside Rouletabille, in the corner of the tower and the parapet, an observation post he had not left, when we distinctly heard the door of the Square Tower turning cautiously on its hinges. As I was about to lean beyond the corner, and extend my bust over the courtyard, Rouletabille pushed me back into my corner, allowing only himself to protrude his head above the wall of the Square Tower; but, as he was very bent, I violated the order and looked over my friend’s head, and this is what I saw: First, Father Bernier, clearly recognizable despite the darkness, who, leaving the Tower, was heading silently towards the gardener’s postern. In the middle of the courtyard he stopped, looked towards our windows, his brow raised towards the Château Neuf, and then he turned towards the tower and made a sign that we could interpret as a sign of tranquility. To whom was this sign addressed? Rouletabille leaned again; but he suddenly threw himself back, pushing me away. When we ventured to look again into the courtyard, there was no one there. Finally, we saw Father Bernier return, or rather we heard him at first, for there was a short conversation between him and Mattoni whose muffled echo reached us. And then we heard something climbing under the arch of the gardener’s postern gate, and Father Bernier appeared with, beside him, the black, gently rolling mass of a carriage. We soon distinguished that it was the little English cart, no one by Toby, Arthur Rance’s pony. The Cour du Téméraire was made of beaten earth, and the little carriage made no more noise on this ground than if he had been sliding on a carpet. Finally, Toby was so well-behaved and so quiet that one would have said that he had received instructions from Father Bernier. The latter, having arrived near the well, raised his head again towards our windows and then, still holding Toby by the bridle, arrived without hindrance at the door of the Square Tower; finally, leaving the little carriage at the door, he entered the tower. A few moments passed which seemed to us, as they say, centuries, especially to my friend who had once again begun to tremble all over without my being able to guess the sudden reason. And Father Bernier reappeared. He was crossing the courtyard again, all alone, and was returning to the postern gate. It was then that we had to lean out more, and, certainly, the people who were now on the threshold of the Square Tower could have seen us if they had looked in our direction, but they were hardly thinking about us. The night was then brightening with a beautiful ray of moonlight which made a large, dazzling streak on the sea and extended its blue light into the Cour du Téméraire. The two people who had come out of the tower and approached the carriage seemed so surprised that they recoiled . But we could clearly hear the Lady in Black saying this in a low voice: Come on, courage, Robert, you must! Later, we discussed with Rouletabille to find out whether she had said: you must or some, but we could not come to a conclusion. And Robert Darzac said in a singular voice: That is not what I lack. He was bent over something he was dragging and lifting with infinite difficulty and trying to slide it under the seat of the little English cart. Rouletabille had taken off his cap and was literally chattering his teeth. As far as we could make out, the thing was a sack. To move this sack, Mr. Darzac had made every effort of any kind, and we heard a sigh. Leaning against the wall of the tower, the Lady in Black watched him, without giving him any help. And suddenly, at the moment when Mr. Darzac had succeeded in pushing the sack into the cart, Mathilde uttered, in a dully terrified voice, these words: It’s still moving!… “It’s the end!” replied Mr. Darzac, who was now mopping his brow. Whereupon he put on his overcoat and took Toby by the bridle. He moved away, making a sign to the Lady in Black, but she, still leaning against the wall as if she had been laid there for some torture, did not answer him. Mr. Darzac seemed rather calm to us. He had straightened his waist. He walked with a firm step… one could say: with the step of an honest man conscious of having done his duty. Still with great caution, he disappeared with his carriage under the gardener’s postern gate and the Lady in Black returned to the Square Tower. I then wanted to leave our corner, but Rouletabille held me there energetically. He did well, because Bernier emerged from the postern gate and crossed the courtyard again, heading towards the Square Tower. When he was only two meters from the door, which had closed, Rouletabille slowly came out of the corner of the parapet, slipped between the door and the frightened Bernier, and put his hands on the concierge’s wrist. Come with me, he said to him. The other seemed devastated. I had come out of my hiding place, too. He was looking at us now in the blue beam of the moon, his eyes were worried and his lips murmured: It’s a great misfortune! Chapter 12. The Impossible Body It will be a great misfortune if you don’t tell the truth, replied Rouletabille in a low voice; but there will be no misfortune at all if you hide nothing from us. Come on! And he led him, still holding his wrist, towards the Château Neuf, and I followed them. From that moment on, I found my Rouletabille again. Now that he was so happily rid of a sentimental problem that had interested him so personally, now that he had rediscovered the scent of the Lady in Black, he was reconquering all the incredible strength of his mind for the struggle undertaken against the mystery! And until the day when everything was concluded, until the supreme moment—the most dramatic I have ever experienced in my life, even at Rouletabille’s side—when life and death had spoken and been explained by his mouth, he would not have a single gesture of hesitation in the course to follow; he would not utter a word that did not necessarily contribute to saving us from the dreadful situation created for the besieged by the attack on the Tour Carrée, on the night of April 12-13. Bernier did not resist him. Others would want to resist him, whether he will break and who will cry for mercy. Bernier walks in front of us, his forehead low, like an accused who is going to give account to judges. And, when we arrive in Rouletabille’s room, we make him sit down opposite us; I light the lamp. The young reporter does not say a word; he looks at Bernier, filling his pipe; he is obviously trying to read in that face all the honesty that can be found there. Then his furrowed brow lengthens, his eye lights up, and, having thrown a few clouds of smoke towards the ceiling, he says: Come now, Bernier, how did they kill him? Bernier shook his rough Picardy face. I swore not to say anything. I don’t know, sir! My goodness, I don’t know!… Rouletabille: Well, tell me what you don’t know! For if you don’t tell me what you don’t know, Bernier, I’m not responsible for anything!… — And what, sir, are you not responsible for? — But, for your safety, Bernier!… — For my safety?… I didn’t do anything! — For the safety of all of us, for our lives! replied Rouletabille, getting up and taking a few steps into the room, which gave him time to perform, no doubt, mentally, some necessary algebraic operation… So, he continued, he was in the Square Tower? — Yes, said Bernier’s head. — Where? In old Bob’s room? — No! said Bernier’s head. — Hidden at your place, in your dressing room? — No, said Bernier’s head. — Oh, but where was he? He wasn’t in Mr. and Mrs. Darzac’s apartment? — Yes, said Bernier’s head. — Wretch! Rouletabille squeaked. And he jumped at Bernier’s throat. I ran to the aid of the concierge and snatched him from Rouletabille’s clutches. When he could breathe, he said, ” Oh, come on! Monsieur Rouletabille, why do you want to strangle me? ” “Ask you, Bernier? You still dare to ask? And you admit that he was in Mr. and Mrs. Darzac’s apartment! And who brought him into that apartment, if not you? You, who alone have the key when Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are not there? ” Bernier stood up, very pale. “Are you, Monsieur Rouletabille, the one accusing me of being Larsan’s accomplice? ” “I forbid you to mention that name!” cried the reporter. ” You know perfectly well that Larsan is dead! And has been for a long time!… ” “A long time!” Bernier continued ironically… “It’s true… I was wrong to forget him!” When one devotes oneself to one’s masters, when one fights for one’s masters, one must not even know against whom. I beg your pardon! — Listen to me carefully, Bernier, I know you and I respect you. You are a good man. Therefore, it is not your good faith that I blame: it is your negligence. — My negligence! And Bernier, from pale as he was, turned scarlet. My negligence! I did not move from my dressing room, from my corridor! I always had the key on me and I swear to you that no one entered this apartment, no one else, after you had visited it, at five o’clock, except Mr. Robert and Mrs. Robert Darzac. I am not counting, of course, the visit you made there, at about six o’clock, you and Mr. Sainclair! — Oh, really! resumed Rouletabille, you will not make me believe that this individual — we have forgotten his name, have we, Bernier? we will call him the man—that the man was killed at Mr. and Mrs. Darzac ‘s if he wasn’t there! —No! So I can assure you that he was there! —Yes, but how was he there? That is what I am asking you, Bernier. And you alone can say, since you alone had the key in Mr. Darzac’s absence, and Mr. Darzac did not leave his room when he had the key, and no one could hide in his room while he was there! —Ah! that is the mystery, sir! And that intrigues Mr. Darzac more than anything! But I could only answer him what I answer you: that is the mystery! —When we left Mr. Darzac’s room, Mr. Sainclair and I, with Mr. Darzac, at about six-fifteen, you immediately closed the door? — Yes, sir. — And when did you open it again? — But, last night, only once to let Mr. and Mrs. Darzac into their home. Mr. Darzac had just arrived and Mrs. Darzac had been for some time in Mr. Bob’s living room, from which Mr. Sainclair had just left. They found themselves in the corridor and I opened the door to their apartment for them! There! As soon as they entered, I heard the bolts being pushed back. — So, between six-fifteen and that time, you didn’t open the door? — Not once. — And where were you during all that time? —In front of the door of my lodge, watching the door of the apartment, and that’s where my wife and I dined, at six-thirty, at a small table in the corridor, because, with the tower door open, it was brighter and more cheerful. After dinner, I stayed smoking cigarettes and chatting with my wife, on the threshold of my lodge. We were positioned in such a way that, even if we had wanted to, we could not have taken our eyes off the door of M. Darzac’s apartment. Ah! it’s a mystery! a mystery more incredible than the mystery of the Yellow Room! For, there, no one knew what had happened before. But, there, sir! we know what happened before since you yourself visited the apartment at five o’clock and there was no one inside; We know what happened during it, since I had the key in my pocket, or Mr. Darzac was in his room, and he would have seen the man opening his door and coming to murder him, and then, even though I was in the corridor, in front of that door, and I would have seen the man go by; and we know what happened afterward. Afterward, there was no afterward. Afterward, the man died, which proved that the man was there! Ah! It’s a mystery! — And, from five o’clock until the moment of the tragedy, you affirm that you did not leave the corridor? — My goodness, yes! — You are sure of it, insisted Rouletabille. — Ah! Pardon, sir… there was a moment… a minute when you called me… — That’s good, Bernier. I wanted to know if you remembered that minute… — But it didn’t last more than a minute or two, and M. Darzac was in his room. He didn’t leave it. Ah! It’s a mystery!… — How do you know he didn’t leave it for those two minutes? — Madam! If he had left it, my wife, who was in the dressing room, would have seen it! And then that would explain everything, and he wouldn’t be so intrigued, nor would Madame either! Ah! I had to repeat it to him: that no one else had come in except him at five o’clock and you at six, and that no one had come into the room again before he came back in the night with Mme Darzac… He was like you, he wouldn’t believe me. I swore it to him on the corpse that was there! — Where was the corpse? — In his room. — Was it really a corpse? — Oh! he was still breathing!… I could hear him! — Then it wasn’t a corpse, Father Bernier. — Oh! Monsieur Rouletabille, it was just as well. Just think! He had a revolver shot in his heart! Finally, Father Bernier was going to tell us about the corpse. Had he seen it? What was it like? It seemed as if this appeared secondary in Rouletabille’s eyes. The reporter seemed only concerned with the problem of knowing how the corpse got there! How had this man come to be killed? Only, on this side, Father Bernier knew little. The affair had been as quick as a shot—it seemed to him—and he was behind the door. He told us that he was quietly going into his dressing room and was getting ready to go to bed, when Mother Bernier and he heard such a loud noise coming from the apartment of Darzac that they were stunned. It was furniture being pushed around, blows on the wall. What’s going on? asked the good woman, and immediately, they heard the voice of Madame Darzac calling: Help! We hadn’t heard that cry, we others, in the room at the Château Neuf. Father Bernier, while his wife collapsed in terror, ran to the door of Monsieur Darzac’s room and shook it in vain, shouting for someone to open it. The struggle continued on the other side, on the floor. He heard the panting of two men, and he recognized Larsan’s voice, at a moment when these words were uttered: This time, I’ll have your skin! Then he heard Monsieur Darzac calling his wife for help in a stifled, exhausted voice: Mathilde! Mathilde! Obviously, he must have been losing in a hand-to-hand fight with Larsan when, suddenly, the shot saved him. This revolver shot frightened Father Bernier less than the scream that accompanied it. One might have thought that Madame Darzac, who had uttered the scream, had been mortally wounded. Bernier could not explain this: Madame Darzac’s attitude. Why did she not open the door to the help he brought her? Why did she not pull the bolts? Finally, almost immediately after the revolver shot, the door on which Father Bernier had been knocking incessantly had opened. The room was plunged into darkness, which did not surprise Father Bernier, for the light of the candle he had seen under the door during the struggle had suddenly gone out and he had heard at the same time the candlestick rolling on the floor. It was Madame Darzac who had opened the door to him while Monsieur Darzac’s shadow was leaning over a death rattle, over someone who was dying! Bernier had called his wife to bring a light, but Madame Darzac had cried out: No! No! No light! No light! And above all, let him know nothing! And immediately she had run to the door of the tower, shouting: He’s coming! He’s coming! I hear him! Open the door! Open the door, Father Bernier! I’m going to see him! And Father Bernier had opened the door for her, while she repeated, moaning: Hide! Go away! Let him know nothing! Father Bernier continued: You arrived like a whirlwind, Monsieur Rouletabille. And she dragged you into old Bob’s living room. You saw nothing. I was being held by Monsieur Darzac. The man on the floor had finished his moaning. Mr. Darzac, still leaning over him, said to me: “A bag, Bernier, a bag and a stone, and we’ll throw it in the sea, and we’ll never hear anything more about it! ” “Then,” Bernier continued, “I thought of my bag of potatoes; my wife had put the potatoes back in the bag; I emptied it in turn and brought it over. Ah! We were making as little noise as possible. Meanwhile, Madame was no doubt telling you stories in old Bob’s living room, and we could hear Mr. Sainclair questioning my wife in the dressing room. We gently slipped the body, which Mr. Darzac had neatly tied up, into the bag. But I said to Mr. Darzac: “A word of advice, don’t throw it in the water. It
‘s not deep enough to hide it.” There are days when the sea is so clear that you can see the bottom. “What am I going to do with it?” asked Mr. Darzac in a low voice. I answered him: “Well, I don’t know, sir. Everything I could do for you, and for madame, and for humanity, against a bandit like Frédéric Larsan, I have done. But don’t ask me for more, and may God protect you!” And I left the room and found you in the dressing room, Mr. Sainclair. And then, you joined Mr. Rouletabille, at the request of Mr. Darzac, who had left his room. As for my wife, she almost fainted when she suddenly saw that Mr. Darzac was covered in blood… and me too!… Look, gentlemen, my hands are red! Ah! Let’s hope all this doesn’t bring us bad luck! Anyway, we’ve done our duty! And he was a proud man. bandit!… But, do you want me to tell you?… Well, one can never hide such a story… and one would do better to tell it immediately to the law… I promised to keep quiet and I will keep quiet, as long as I can, but I am very happy all the same to unload such a burden before you, who are friends of madame and monsieur… And who can perhaps make them see reason… Why are they hiding? Isn’t it an honor to kill a Larsan! Forgive me for having mentioned that name again… I know, it’s not proper… Isn’t it an honor to have delivered the earth from it by delivering oneself from it? Ah! Look!… a fortune!… Madame Darzac promised me a fortune if I kept quiet! What would I do with her?… Isn’t it the best fortune to serve her, that poor lady who has had so many misfortunes!… Look!… Nothing at all!… nothing at all!… But let her talk!… What is she afraid of? I asked her when you supposedly went to bed, and we found ourselves all alone in the Square Tower with our corpse. I said to her: Shout out that you killed him! Everyone will cheer!… She answered me: There has already been too much scandal, Bernier; as long as it depends on me, and if it is possible, we will cover up this new affair! My father would die from it! I didn’t answer her, but I really wanted to. I had on my tongue to say to her: If we learn about the affair later, we will believe a lot of unjust things, and your father will die from it even more! But it was her idea! She wants us to be quiet! Well, we’ll be quiet!… Enough! Bernier went to the door and showing us his hands: I must go and wash off all that pig’s blood! Rouletabille stopped him: And what was Mr. Darzac saying during this time? What was his opinion?
– He kept repeating: Everything Mrs. Darzac does will be done right. We must obey her, Bernier. His jacket was torn off and he had a slight wound on his throat, but he didn’t pay attention to it, and, really, there was only one thing that interested him, and that was how the wretch had managed to get into his house! I repeat, he couldn’t believe it and I had to give him more explanations. His first words on the subject had been to say: But finally, when I entered my room just now, there was no one there, and I immediately bolted the door. — Where was this happening? — In my dressing room, in front of my wife, who was as if stunned by it, poor dear woman. — And the corpse? Where was it? — It had remained in M. Darzac’s room. — And what had they decided to do to get rid of it? — I don’t really know, but their decision was certainly made, for Madame Darzac said to me: Bernier, I will ask you for one last favor; you will go and get the English cart from the stable, and you will harness Toby to it . Don’t wake Walter, if possible. If you wake him up, and if he asks you for an explanation, you will tell him and Mattoni, who is on guard under the postern gate: It is for M. Darzac, who must be in Castelar this morning at four o’clock for the tour of the Alps. Madame Darzac also told me: If you meet M. Sainclair, say nothing to him, but bring him to me, and if you meet M. Rouletabille, say nothing, and do nothing! Ah! Monsieur! Madame did not want me to leave until the window of your room was closed and your light was extinguished. And yet, we were not reassured with the corpse that we believed to be dead and which began, once again, to sigh, and what a sigh! The rest, monsieur, you saw it, and you now know as much as I do! May God preserve us! When Bernier had thus recounted the impossible drama, Rouletabille thanked him sincerely for his great devotion to his masters, recommended the greatest discretion, begged him to excuse his brutality, and ordered him to say nothing of the interrogation he had just undergone to Madame Darzac. Bernier, before leaving, wanted to shake hands, but Rouletabille withdrew his. No! Bernier, you are still covered in blood… Bernier left us to join the Lady in Black. Well! I said, when we were alone. Larsan is dead?… “Yes,” he replied, “I fear him. ” “You fear him? Why do you fear him?… ” “Because,” he said in a toneless voice I had not yet heard, “BECAUSE THE DEATH OF LARSAN, WHO LEAVES DEAD WITHOUT HAVING ENTERED NEITHER DEAD NOR ALIVE, TERRIFIES ME MORE THAN HIS LIFE! Chapter 13. Where Rouletabille’s Terror Takes on Disturbing Proportions And it is true that he was literally terrified. And I myself was more frightened than one could say. I had never before seen him in such a state of mental anxiety. He walked across the room with a jerky step, sometimes stopping in front of the mirror, looking at himself strangely, passing a hand over his forehead as if he were asking his own image: Is it you, is it really you, Rouletabille, who thinks that? Who dares to think that? Think what? He seemed rather to be on the point of thinking. He seemed rather not to want to think. He shook his head fiercely and went almost to crouch at the window, leaning out into the night, listening for the slightest noise on the distant shore, waiting perhaps for the rumble of the little cart and the sound of Toby’s hoof. He would have said he was an animal on the lookout. … The surf had fallen silent; the sea had become completely calm… A white streak suddenly appeared on the black waves, in the East. It was dawn. And, almost immediately, the Old Castle emerged from the night, pale, livid, with the same expression as us, the expression of someone who has not slept. Rouletabille, I asked, almost trembling, for I realized my incredible audacity, your interview with your mother was very brief . And how silently you parted! I would like to know, my friend, if she told you the story of the accident with the revolver on the night table? — No!… he answered me without turning away. — She told you nothing about that? — No! — And you asked her no explanation for the shot or the death cry from the inexplicable gallery. For she screamed like that day!… — Sainclair, you are curious!… You are more curious than I, Sainclair; I asked her nothing! —And you swore to see and hear nothing until she had told you anything about that shot and that scream? —Truly, Sainclair, you must believe me… I respect the secrets of the Lady in Black. It was enough for her to tell me, without my having asked her anything, certainly!… it was enough for her to say to me: We can part, my friend, FOR NOTHING SEPARATES US ANYMORE! for me to leave her… —Ah! She told you that? Nothing separates us anymore! —Yes, my friend… and she had blood on her hands… We fell silent. I was now at the window and beside the reporter. Suddenly his hand rested on mine. Then he pointed to the little lantern that was still burning at the entrance to the underground door that led to old Bob’s study, in the Tower of the Bold. Here comes dawn! said Rouletabille. And old Bob is still working! This old Bob is really brave. If we went to see old Bob at work. It will take our minds off things and I won’t think about my circle anymore, which is strangling me, which is tying me up, which is exhausting me. And he let out a sigh: Darzac, he said, talking to himself, will he never come back!… A minute later we crossed the courtyard and went down into the octagonal room of the Téméraire. It was empty! The lamp was still burning on the desk-table. But there was no more old Bob! Rouletabille said: Oh! oh! And he took the lamp and lifted it, examining everything around him. He went around the small display cases that lined the walls of the lower battery. There, nothing had been moved, and everything was relatively in order and scientifically labeled. When we had carefully examined the bones and shells and horns from the earliest ages, shell pendants, rings sawn from the diaphysis of a long bone, earrings, blades with a knocked-off edge from the reindeer layer, Magdalenian-type scrapers and powder scraped from flint from the elephant layer, we returned to the desk-table. There was the oldest skull, and it was true that it still had the red jaw from the wash that Mr. Darzac had left to dry on the part of the desk opposite the window, exposed to the sun. I went to the window, to all the windows, and tested the solidity of the bars that had not been touched. Rouletabille saw me and said: What are you doing? Before imagining that he could have left by the windows, we would have to know if he did not leave by the door. He placed the lamp on the floor and began to examine all the footprints. Go knock, he said, at the door of the Square Tower and ask Bernier if old Bob has come in; question Mattoni under the postern and Father Jacques at the iron gate. Go, Sainclair, go!… Five minutes later, I came back with the information we had planned. We hadn’t seen old Bob anywhere!… He hadn’t been anywhere! Rouletabille still had his nose to the floor. He said to me: He left that lamp lit so that we would think he was still working. And then, worried, he added: There are no traces of any kind of struggle, and on the floor I only note the passage of Mr. Arthur Rance and Robert Darzac, who arrived in this room yesterday evening during the storm, and dragged on their soles a little of the sodden earth from the Cour du Téméraire and also some slightly ferruginous soil from the bailey. There is no trace of old Bob’s footprints anywhere. Old Bob arrived here before the storm and he may have left during it, but in any case, he hasn’t been back since! Rouletabille got up. He picked up the lamp on the desk, which once again illuminates the skull, whose red jaw has never laughed in a more frightening way. Around us, there are only skeletons, but certainly they frighten me less than the absent old Bob. Rouletabille stands for a moment in front of the bloody skull, then takes it in his hands and looks deep into its empty sockets. Then he lifts the skull up with his outstretched hands and considers it for a moment with surprising attention; then he looks at it in profile; then he places it in my hands, and I have to raise it above my head in turn, like the most precious of burdens, and Rouletabille, meanwhile, raises the lamp above his head. Suddenly, an idea crosses my mind. I let the skull roll onto the desk and rush into the courtyard to the well. There I see that the ironwork that closed it is still closed. If someone had escaped down the well or fallen into the well, or thrown themselves in, the ironwork would have been open. I return, more anxious than ever: Rouletabille! Rouletabille! There’s nothing left for old Bob to leave with but the bag! I repeated the sentence, but the reporter wasn’t listening to me, and I was surprised to find him busy with a task whose interest I couldn’t guess. How, at such a tragic moment, when we were only waiting for Mr. Darzac’s return to close the circle in which the one body too many had died, when in the old tower next door, in the Old Castle on the corner, the Lady in Black must be busy erasing with her hands, like Lady Macbeth, the trace of the impossible crime, how could Rouletabille amuse himself by making drawings with a ruler, a set square, a ruler, and a compass? Yes, he had sat down in the geologist’s chair and had drawn Robert Darzac’s drawing board towards him, and he, too, was making a plan, calmly, terribly calmly, like a peaceful and gentle architect’s assistant. He had pricked the paper with one of the points of his compass, and the other was tracing the circle which could represent the space occupied by the Tour du Téméraire, as we could see on Mr. Darzac’s drawing. The young man applied himself to a few more strokes; and then, dipping a brush into a half-full pan of the red paint which Mr. Darzac had used, he carefully spread this paint over the entire space of the circle. In doing so, he was as meticulous as possible, paying great attention to ensuring that the paint was of a thin quality everywhere, and such that one could have congratulated a good student for it. He tilted his head from right to left to judge the effect, and stuck out his tongue a little like a diligent schoolboy. And then, he remained motionless. I spoke to him again, but he was still silent. His eyes were fixed, attached to the drawing. They did not move from it. Suddenly, his mouth tightened and let out an exclamation of unspeakable horror; I no longer recognized his face as that of a mentally ill person. And he turned so abruptly toward me that he overturned the vast armchair. Sainclair! Sainclair! Look at the red paint!… look at the red paint! I bent over the drawing, panting, frightened by this wild exaltation. But what, I saw only a small, neat wash… The red paint! The red paint!… he continued to moan, his eyes wide as if he were witnessing some dreadful spectacle. I could not help asking him: But, what is it?… “What?… what is it?… Can’t you see that it’s dry now! Can’t you see that it’s blood!… No!” I didn’t see that, because I was quite sure it wasn’t blood . It was quite natural red paint. But I took care, at such a moment, not to upset Rouletabille. I was ostentatiously interested in this idea of blood. Whose blood? I asked… do you know?… whose blood?… Larsan’s blood?… “Oh! Oh!” he said, “Larsan’s blood!… Who knows Larsan’s blood?… Who has ever seen its color? To know the color of Larsan’s blood, you’d have to open my veins, Sainclair!… It’s the only way!… I was completely, completely astonished. My father doesn’t let his blood be taken like that!… There he was talking again, with that singular desperate pride, about his father… When my father wears a wig, it doesn’t show! My father doesn’t let his blood be taken like that! Bernier’s hands were full of them, and you saw some on those of the Lady in Black!… — Yes! Yes!… They say that!… They say that!… But you don’t kill my father like that!… He still seemed very agitated and he kept looking at the neat little wash. He said, his throat suddenly swelling with a sob: My God! My God! My God! Have pity on us! That would be too dreadful. And he said again: My poor mother didn’t deserve this! Nor me either! Nor anyone!… It was then that a large tear, sliding down his cheek, fell into the pan: Oh! he said… you mustn’t thin the paint! And, saying this in a trembling voice, he took the pan with infinite care and went to lock it in a small cupboard. Then he took me by the hand and led me away, while I watched him do it, wondering if he had not really, all of a sudden, become a truly mentally ill person. Come on!… Come on!… he said… The moment has come, Sainclair! We can no longer back down from anything… The Lady in Black must tell us everything… everything that happened in the bag… Ah! If Mr. Darzac could come back at once… at once… It would be less painful… Certainly! I can’t wait any longer!… Wait for what?… wait for what?… And once again, why was he so frightened? What thought was making him think of that fixed stare? Why was he nervously chattering his teeth again?… I could not help asking him again: What frightens you so? Isn’t Larsan dead? And he repeated, nervously squeezing my arm: I tell you, I tell you that his death frightens me more than his life! And he knocked at the door of the Square Tower in front of which we were standing. I asked him if he did not wish me to leave him alone in the presence of his mother. But, to my great astonishment, he replied that I must not, at this moment, leave him for anything in the world, as long as the circle was not closed. And he added gloomily: May it never be! The door of the Tower remained closed; he knocked again; then it opened ajar and we saw the defeated face of Bernier reappear. He seemed very angry to see us. What do you want? What do you want now? he said… Speak quietly, Madame is in old Bob’s living room… And the old man still hasn’t come in. “Let us in, Bernier…” Rouletabille commanded. And he pushed open the door. Above all, don’t tell Madame… ” “But no!… But no!…” We were in the vestibule of the Tower. It was almost completely dark. “What is Madame doing in old Bob’s living room?” the reporter asked in a low voice. “She’s waiting… she’s waiting for Mr. Darzac to return… She doesn’t dare come into the room anymore… nor do I… ” “Well, go back to your dressing room, Bernier,” Rouletabille ordered, “and wait until I call you!” Rouletabille pushed open the door to old Bob’s living room. Immediately, we saw the Lady in Black, or rather her shadow, for the room was still very dark, barely touched by the first rays of daylight. The tall, dark figure of Mathilde was standing, leaning against a corner of the window that overlooked the Cour du Téméraire. When we appeared, she didn’t move. But Mathilde said to us immediately, in a voice so horribly altered that I no longer recognized it: Why did you come? I saw you pass in the courtyard. You haven’t left the courtyard. You know everything. What do you want? And she added in a tone of infinite pain: You swore to me that you wouldn’t see anything. Rouletabille went to the Lady in Black and took her hand with infinite respect:
Come, Mama! he said, and these simple words had in his mouth the tone of a very gentle and very pressing prayer… Come! Come!… Come!… And he led her away. She didn’t resist him. As soon as he took her hand, it seemed he could direct her as he pleased. However, when he had led her thus to the door of the fatal room, she recoiled with her whole body. Not there! she moaned… And she leaned against the wall to keep from falling. Rouletabille shook the door. It was closed. He called Bernier, who, on his order, opened it and disappeared, or rather, ran away. The door pushed open, we put our heads forward. What a sight! The room was in incredible disorder. And the bloody dawn that entered through the vast embrasures made this disorder even more sinister. What lighting for a room of accident! What blood on the walls and on the floor and on the furniture!… The blood of the rising sun and of the man that Toby had carried off who knew where… in the sack of potatoes! The tables, the armchairs, the chairs, everything was overturned. The bed sheets , to which the man, in his agony, must have desperately clung, were half pulled to the floor, and the mark of a red hand could be seen on the linen. It was into all this that we entered, supporting the Lady in Black, who seemed ready to faint, while Rouletabille said to her in his soft, supplicating voice: “It must be done, Mama! It must be done!” And he questioned her immediately after having placed her, as it were, on an armchair that I had just put back on its feet. She answered him in monosyllables, with nods of the head, or with a designation of the hand. And I saw clearly that, at As she answered, Rouletabille became more and more troubled, worried, visibly frightened; he tried to regain all the calm that was fleeing him and which he needed more than ever, but he hardly succeeded. He addressed her informally and called her: “Mother! Mother!” all the time to give her courage… But she had none left; she held out her arms to him and he threw himself into them; they embraced until they were suffocating, and that revived her; and, as she suddenly cried, she was a little relieved from the terrible weight of all this horror that weighed on her. I wanted to make a move to withdraw, but they both held me back and I understood that they did not want to remain alone in the red room. She said in a low voice: We are delivered… Rouletabille had slipped to her knees and, immediately, in her voice of prayer: To be sure, Mama… sure… you must tell me everything… everything that happened… everything you saw… Then, she was finally able to speak… She looked towards the door which was closed; her eyes fixed with a new terror on the scattered objects, on the blood that stained the furniture and the floor and she recounted the atrocious scene in such a low voice that I had to approach, lean over her to hear her. From her little broken sentences, it was clear that as soon as we arrived in the room, Mr. Darzac had pushed the bolts and gone straight to the desk, so that he was right in the middle of the room when it happened. The Lady in Black, for her part, was a little to the left, preparing to go into her room. The room was lit only by a candle, placed on the nightstand, on the left, within reach of Mathilde. And this is what happened. In the silence of the room, there was a creak, a sudden creak of furniture that made them both raise their heads and look in the same direction, while the same anguish made their hearts beat. The creak came from the cupboard. And then everything fell silent. They looked at each other without daring to say a word, perhaps without being able to. This creak had not seemed at all natural to them and they had never heard the cupboard cry out. Darzac made a move to go towards the cupboard which was at the back, on the right. He was as if rooted to the spot by a second creak, louder than the first and, this time, it seemed to Mathilde that the cupboard was moving. The Lady in Black wondered if she was not the victim of some hallucination, if she had really seen the cupboard move. But Darzac had also had the same sensation, for he suddenly left the desk and bravely took a step forward… It was at that moment that the door… the cupboard door… opened before them… Yes, it was pushed by an invisible hand… it turned on its hinges… The Lady in Black would have liked to scream; she could not… But she made a gesture of terror and panic that threw the candle to the ground at the very moment when a shadow emerged from the cupboard and at the very moment when Robert Darzac, uttering a cry of rage, rushed upon this shadow… And this shadow… and this shadow had a face! interrupted Rouletabille… Mother!… why didn’t you see the face of the shadow?… You killed the shadow; but who can tell me that the shadow was Larsan, since you didn’t see the face!… Perhaps you didn’t even kill Larsan’s shadow! — Oh! yes! she said dully and simply: he’s dead! (And she said nothing more…) And I wondered, looking at Rouletabille: But who would they have killed, if they hadn’t killed that one! If Mathilde hadn’t seen the shadowy figure, she had certainly heard his voice!… she still shuddered… she still heard it. And Bernier too had heard his voice and recognized his voice… The terrible voice of Larsan… The voice of Ballmeyer who, in the abominable struggle, in the middle of the night, announced death to Robert Darzac: This time, I’ll have your skin! while the other could only moan in a dying voice: Mathilde!… Mathilde!… Ah! how he had called her!… how he had called from the depths of the night where he was groaning, already defeated… And she… she… she could only mingle, screaming with horror, her shadow with these two shadows, cling to them at random in the darkness, calling for help that she could not give and that could not come. And then, suddenly, it was the shot that made her let out the atrocious cry… As if she herself had been struck… Who was dead?… Who was alive?… Who was going to speak?… What voice was she going to hear?… … And now it was Robert who had spoken!… Rouletabille took the Lady in Black in his arms again, lifted her up, and she almost let herself be carried by him to the door of her room. And there, he said to her: Go, Mama, leave me, I must work, work a lot! for you, for Mr. Darzac and for me! “Don’t leave me again!… I don’t want you to leave me again until M. Darzac returns!” she cried, full of terror. Rouletabille promised her, begged her to try to rest, and he was about to close the bedroom door when there was a knock at the door in the corridor. Rouletabille was asking who was there. Darzac’s voice answered. Rouletabille said: ” At last!” And he opened it. We thought we saw a dead man enter. Never was a human face paler, more bloodless, more devoid of life. So many emotions had ravaged it that it no longer expressed any. “Ah! You were there,” he said. “Well, it’s over!” And he let himself fall into the armchair occupied a moment ago by the Lady in Black. He looked up at her: Your will is done, he said… He is where you wanted!… Rouletabille asked at once: At least, you saw his face? – No! he said… I didn’t see it!… Do you think I was going to open the bag?… I would have thought that Rouletabille would show despair at this incident; but, on the contrary, he suddenly came up to M. Darzac, and said to him:
Ah! you didn’t see his face!… Well! that’s very good!… And he shook his hand effusively… But, the important thing, he said, the important thing is not that… Now we must not close the circle. And you will help us, M. Darzac. Wait for me!… And, almost joyful, he threw himself on all fours. Now, Rouletabille appeared to me with a dog’s head. He was jumping everywhere on all fours, under the furniture, under the bed, as I had already seen in the Yellow Room, and from time to time he raised his muzzle to say: Ah! I’ll find something! Something that will save us! I replied, looking at M. Darzac: But aren’t we already saved? — — That will save our brains… continued Rouletabille. — This child is right, said M. Darzac. We absolutely must know how this man got in… Suddenly, Rouletabille stood up; he was holding in his hand a revolver that he had just found under the cupboard. Ah! you’ve found his revolver! said M. Darzac. Fortunately he didn’t have time to use it. So saying, M. Robert Darzac took his own revolver, the saving revolver, from his jacket pocket and handed it to the young man. There’s a good weapon! he said. Rouletabille fired the cylinder of Darzac’s revolver, popping out the base of the cartridge that had killed him; then he compared this weapon to the other one, the one he had found under the cupboard and which had escaped the murderer’s hands. This one was a bulldog and bore a London mark; it looked brand new, was loaded with all its cartridges, and Rouletabille affirmed that it had never been used before. Larsan only uses firearms as a last resort, he said. He hates making noise. Be assured that he simply wanted to frighten you with his revolver, otherwise he would have fired immediately. And Rouletabille gave his revolver back to M. Darzac and put Larsan’s in his pocket. Oh! what’s the point of staying armed now! said M. Darzac, shaking his head, I swear it’s quite useless! “You think so?” asked Rouletabille. “I’m sure of it.” Rouletabille got up, took a few steps into the room, and said: With Larsan, you can never be sure of such a thing. Where is the body? Mr. Darzac replied: Ask Mrs. Darzac. I want to have forgotten it. I no longer know anything about this dreadful affair. When the memory of this atrocious journey with this dying man, tossing and turning in my legs, comes back to me, I will say: it’s a nightmare! And I will chase him away!… Never speak to me about it again. Only Mrs. Darzac knows where the body is. She will tell you, if she pleases. “I have forgotten it too,” said Mrs. Darzac. “I must.” —All the same, insisted Rouletabille, shaking his head, all the same, you said that he was still in agony. And now, are you sure that he is dead? — I am sure of it, replied M. Darzac simply. — Oh! it is over! it is over! Isn’t it all over? implored Mathilde. (She went to the window. ) Look, here is the sun!… This atrocious night is dead! dead forever! It is over! Poor Lady in Black! Her whole state of mind was presently in that word: It is over!… And she forgot all the horror of the drama that had just taken place in that room before this obvious result. No more Larsan! Buried, Larsan! Buried in the sack of potatoes ! And we all stood up, panic-stricken, because the Lady in Black had just burst out laughing, a frenzied laughter that suddenly stopped and was followed by a horrible silence. We dared neither look at each other nor at her; it was she who spoke first: It’s over… she said, it’s over!… it’s over, I won’t laugh anymore!… Then we heard Rouletabille’s voice saying, very low. It will be over when we know how he got in! “What’s the use?” replied the Lady in Black. “It’s a mystery how he took it with him. Only he could tell us, and he’s dead. ” “He won’t be truly dead until we know that!” continued Rouletabille. “Obviously,” said M. Darzac, “as long as we don’t know, we ‘ll want to know; and he’ll be there, standing there, in our minds. We must drive him out! We must drive him out!” —Let’s chase him away, Rouletabille said again. Then he got up and very gently went to take the hand of the Lady in Black. He tried again to lead her into the next room, talking to her about rest. But Mathilde declared that she would not leave. She said: You want to chase Larsan away and I wouldn’t be there!… And we thought she was going to laugh again! So we signaled to Rouletabille not to insist. Rouletabille then opened the door of the apartment and called Bernier and his wife. They entered because we forced them to, and there was a general confrontation between us all, from which it resulted definitively that: 1° Rouletabille had visited the apartment at five o’clock and searched the closet and that there was no one in the apartment; 2° Since five o’clock the door of the apartment had been opened twice by Father Bernier, who alone could open it in the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac. First at five minutes past five to let Mr. Darzac in; then at eleven thirty to let Mr. and Mrs. Darzac in; 3° Bernier had closed the door of the apartment when Mr. Darzac left with us between six fifteen and six thirty; 4° The door of the apartment had been locked by Mr. Darzac as soon as he entered his room, and this both times, in the afternoon and in the evening; 5° Bernier had remained on sentry duty in front of the door of the apartment from five o’clock to eleven thirty with a short interruption of two minutes at six o’clock. When this was established, Rouletabille, who had sat at Mr. Darzac’s desk to take notes, stood up and said: There, it’s very simple. We have only one hope: it is in the brief break in continuity that occurs in Bernier’s guard at around six o’clock. At least, at that moment, there is no one in front of the door. But there is someone behind it. It is you, Mr. Darzac. Can you repeat, after recalling all your memory, can you repeat that, when you entered the room, you immediately closed the door of the apartment and pushed the bolts? Mr.
Darzac, without hesitation, replied solemnly: I repeat it! and he added: And I only reopened these bolts when you came with your friend Sainclair to knock on my door. I repeat it! And, in repeating this, this man was telling the truth, as was later proven. The Berniers were thanked and returned to their lodge. Then Rouletabille, whose voice was trembling, said: That’s good, Monsieur Darzac, YOU HAVE CLOSED THE CIRCLE!… The apartment in the Square Tower is as closed now as the Yellow Room was, which was like a safe; or even as the inexplicable gallery was. — You can tell at once that you’re dealing with Larsan, I said: it ‘s the same procedures. — Yes, observed Madame Darzac, yes, Monsieur Sainclair, it’s the same procedures, and she removed the cravat from around her husband’s neck that hid his wounds. — See, she added, it’s the same thumbs-up. I know it well!… There was a painful silence. Monsieur Darzac, for his part, was thinking only of this strange problem, renewed from the crime of the Glandier, but even more tyrannical. And he repeated what had been said about the Yellow Room. There must be a hole, he said, in this floor, in these ceilings, and in these walls. — There isn’t one, replied Rouletabille. — Then you’d have to throw your forehead against the walls to make one! continued M. Darzac. — Why is that? replied Rouletabille. Were there any in the walls of the Yellow Room? — Oh! It’s not the same thing here! I said, and the room in the Square Tower is even more closed than the Yellow Room, since no one can be brought in before or after. — No, it’s not the same thing, concluded Rouletabille, since it’s the opposite. In the Yellow Room, there was one less body; in the room in the Square Tower, there’s one too many! And he staggered, leaning on my arm to keep from falling. The Lady in Black had rushed over… He had the strength to stop her with a gesture, a word: Oh!… it’s nothing!… a little tired… Chapter 14. The Sack of Potatoes While Mr. Darzac, on Rouletabille’s advice, was working with Bernier to remove the traces of the tragedy, the Lady in Black, who had hastily changed her clothes, hurried to her father’s apartment before she ran the risk of meeting some of the Louve’s guests. Her last word had been to recommend prudence and silence. Rouletabille dismissed us. It was then seven o’clock and life was returning to the castle and around it. We could hear the nasal singing of the fishermen in their boats. I threw myself on my bed, and this time I fell into a deep sleep, overcome by physical fatigue, stronger than anything. When I awoke, I lay for a few moments on my bed, in a sweet annihilation; and then suddenly I sat up, recalling the events of the night. Ah, that! I said aloud, “this body too many” is impossible! Thus, it was this which floated above the dark abyss of my thought, above the abyss of my memory: this impossibility of the body too many! And this feeling which I found upon waking was not special to me, far from it! All those who had to intervene, near or far, in this strange drama of the Square Tower, shared it; and while the horror of the event itself—the horror of this body in agony enclosed in a bag which a man carried out in the night to throw it into who knew what distant and deep and mysterious tomb, where he would finish dying – calmed down, vanished in the minds, faded from vision, on the contrary the impossibility of that – of the body in excess – rose, grew, stood before us, ever higher, and more threatening and more frightening. Some, like Mrs. Edith, for example, who denied by habit of denying what they did not understand – who denied the terms of the problem that destiny posed to us, such as we established them irrevocably in the previous chapter – had, following the events that took place in the fort of Hercules, to surrender to the evidence of the accuracy of these terms. And first, the attack? How did the attack occur? At what moment? By what moral approaches? What mines, countermines, trenches, covered ways, bretèches—in the domain of intellectual fortification—served the assailant and delivered the castle to him? Yes, in these conditions, where is the attack? Ah! What silence! And yet, one must know! Rouletabille said it: one must know! In such a mysterious siege, the attack must have been in everything and in nothing! The assailant is silent and the assault is delivered without clamor; and the enemy approaches the walls walking on his knees. The attack! It is perhaps in everything that is silent, but it is perhaps still in everything that speaks! It is in a word, in a sigh, in a breath! It is in a gesture, for if it can also be in everything that hides, it can also be in everything that is seen… in everything that is seen and that one does not see! Eleven o’clock!… Where is Rouletabille?… His bed is not made… I dress hastily and find my friend in the bunk. He takes me under the arm and leads me into the large room of the Louve. There, I am quite astonished to find, although it is not yet lunchtime , so many people gathered. Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are there. It seems to me that Mr. Arthur Rance has an extraordinarily cold attitude. His handshake is icy. As soon as we arrive, Mrs. Edith, from the dark corner where she is nonchalantly lying, greets us with these words: Ah! Here is Mr. Rouletabille with his friend Sainclair. We will find out what he wants. To which Rouletabille replies by apologizing for having made us all come to the Louve at this hour; but he has, he affirms, such a serious message to make to us that he did not want to delay it for a second. The tone he took to tell us this was so serious that Mrs. Edith affected to shudder and feigned childish fear. But Rouletabille, who was undaunted, said: “Wait, madam, to shudder, until you know what it is. I have some news to tell you that is not at all cheerful!” We all looked at each other. How he said that! I tried to read on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac their expression of the day. How have their faces been since last night? Very well, my goodness, very well!… We are no more closed. But what do you have to tell us, Rouletabille? Speak! He asked those of us who remained standing to sit down and, finally, he began. He addressed Mrs. Edith. And first, Madam, allow me to inform you that I have decided to remove the entire guard which surrounded the Château d’Hercules like a second enclosure, which I judged necessary for the safety of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac, and which you allowed me to establish, although it bothered you, at my leisure with such good grace, and also, we can say, sometimes with such good humor. This direct allusion to the little teasing Mrs. Edith indulged us in when we were on guard makes Mr. Arthur Rance and Mrs. Edith herself smile. But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Darzac nor I smile, for we wonder with a beginning of anxiety what our friend is getting at. Ah! really, you are removing the guard from the château, Mr. Rouletabille! Well, you see me quite delighted, not that it has ever bothered me! says Mrs. Edith with an affectation of gaiety (affectation of fear, affectation of gaiety, I find Mrs. Edith, very affected and, curiously enough, I like her very much like this), on the contrary, she interested me entirely because of my romantic tastes; but, if I am delighted at her disappearance, it is because it proves to me that Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are no longer in any danger. — And that is the truth, madame, replies Rouletabille, since last night. Mrs. Darzac cannot restrain a sudden movement that I am the only one to perceive. So much the better! cries Mrs. Edith. And may Heaven be blessed! But how are my husband and I the last to learn such news? … So interesting things happened last night ? This nocturnal journey of Mr. Darzac, no doubt? … Didn’t Mr. Darzac go to Castelar? While she was talking thus, I saw the embarrassment of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac increasing. Mr. Darzac, after looking at his wife, wanted to say a word, but Rouletabille wouldn’t allow him. Madam, I don’t know where Mr. Darzac went last night, but it is necessary, it is necessary, that you know one thing: this is the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are no longer in any danger. Your husband, madame, informed you of the dreadful dramas at Glandier and the criminal role played in them ——Frédéric Larsan—Yes, sir, I know all that. —You also know, therefore, that we were only keeping such a close watch here, around Mr. and Mrs. Darzac, because we had seen this character reappear. —Perfectly. —Well, Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are no longer in any danger, because this character will not reappear. —What has become of him? —He is dead! —When? —This night. —And how did he die, this night? —He was killed, madame. —And where was he killed? —In the Square Tower! We all rose at this declaration, in understandable agitation: Mr. and Mrs. Rance, astonished at what they had learned, Mr. and Mrs. Darzac and I, terrified that Rouletabille had not hesitated to tell them. In the Square Tower! cried Mrs. Edith… And who killed him? —Mr. Robert Darzac! said Rouletabille, and he asked everyone to sit down again. Surprisingly, we sat down again as if, at such a moment, we had nothing else to do but obey this boy. But almost immediately Mrs. Edith stood up and, taking Mr. Darzac’s hands , she said to him with force, with real exaltation this time (decidedly, I had misjudged Mrs. Edith by finding her affected): Bravo, Mr. Robert! All right! You are a gentleman! And she turned to her husband, exclaiming: Ah! There’s a man! He is worthy of being loved! Then she paid exaggerated compliments (but perhaps it was in her nature, after all, to exaggerate everything like that) to Mrs. Darzac; she promised her an indestructible friendship; she declared that she and her husband were quite ready, in such a difficult circumstance, to assist her and Mr. Darzac, that one could count on their zeal, their devotion and that they were ready to attest to anything one wanted before the judges. Exactly, madame, interrupted Rouletabille, it is not a question of judges and we do not want any. We don’t need it. Larsan was dead to everyone before he was killed last night; well , he continues to be dead, that’s all! We thought it would be completely pointless to start a scandal again, of which Mr. and Mrs. Darzac and Professor Stangerson have already been far too many innocent victims, and we counted on your complicity for that. The tragedy unfolded in such a mysterious way last night that you yourselves, if we hadn’t taken the precaution of letting you know about it, might never have suspected it. But Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are endowed with sentiments too lofty to forget what they owed to their hosts in such an occurrence. The simplest politeness required them to let you know that they had killed someone at your house tonight! Whatever, in fact, our near certainty of being able to conceal this unfortunate story from the Italian justice system, we must always plan for the case where an unforeseen incident might bring it to their attention; and Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are tactful enough not to want you to run the risk of one day learning through public rumor, or through a police raid, of such an important event that happened right under your roof. Mr. Arthur Rance, who had not yet said anything, stood up, quite pale. Frédéric Larsan is dead, he said. Well, so much the better! No one will be more happy about it than I; and, if he has received, at the very hand of Mr. Darzac, the punishment for his crimes, no one will congratulate Mr. Darzac more than I. But I believe above all that this is a glorious act that Mr. Darzac would be wrong to hide! The best thing would be to notify the courts, and without delay. If they learn of this affair from anyone other than us, look at our situation! If we denounce ourselves, we are doing justice; if we hide, we are criminals! Anything can be assumed… To hear Mr. Rance, who spoke with a stammer, so moved was he by this tragic revelation, one would have said that it was he who had killed Frédéric Larsan… He who was already accused of it by the courts… he who was being dragged to prison. Everything must be said! Gentlemen, everything must be said… Mrs. Edith added: I believe my husband is right. But, before making a decision, it would be advisable to know how things happened. And she addressed Mr. and Mrs. Darzac directly. But they were still reeling from the surprise Rouletabille had given them by speaking, Rouletabille who, that very morning, in front of me, had promised them silence and urged us all to do so; so they didn’t say a word. They were as if made of stone in their armchairs. Mr. Arthur Rance kept repeating: Why hide? We must tell everything! Suddenly, the reporter seemed to make a sudden decision; I understood from his eyes, which were shot through with a sudden flash, that something considerable had just happened in his mind. And he leaned over Arthur Rance. The latter had his right hand resting on a cane with a corbin beak. The beak was made of ivory and beautifully worked by a famous craftsman from Dieppe. Rouletabille took this cane from him. Will you allow me? he said. I am very fond of ivory work and my friend Sainclair told me about your cane. I hadn’t noticed it yet. It is, indeed, very beautiful. It is a figure of Lambesse. There is no better craftsman on the Normandy coast. The young man looked at the cane and seemed to think only of the cane. He handled it so well that it slipped from his hands and fell in front of Mrs. Darzac. I rushed over, picked it up, and immediately returned it to Mr. Arthur Rance. Rouletabille thanked me with a look that struck me down. And, before being struck down, I had read in that look that I was an idiot! Mrs. Edith had stood up, very annoyed by Rouletabille’s unbearable arrogance and the silence of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac. My dear, she said to Mrs. Darzac, I see that you are very tired. The emotions of this dreadful night have exhausted you. Come, I beg you, to our rooms, you will rest. “I beg your pardon for detaining you a moment longer, Mrs. Edith,” Rouletabille interrupted, “but what remains to be said is of particular interest to you.” —Well, tell me, sir, and don’t keep us waiting like this. She was right. Did Rouletabille understand it? In any case, he redeemed the slowness of his prolegomena by the speed, the clarity, the striking relief with which he retraced the events of the night. Never was the problem of the extra body in the Square Tower to appear to us with more mysterious horror! Mrs. Edith was truly (I say truly, by Jove) shivering. As for Arthur Rance, he had put the tip of his cane in his mouth and he repeated with all-American phlegm, but with impressive conviction: It’s a story about the devil! It’s a story about the devil! The story of the extra body is a story about the devil!… But, saying this, he looked at the tip of Mme Darzac’s boot which was sticking out a little over the edge of her dress. Only at that moment did the conversation become more or less general; but it was less a conversation than a series or a mixture of interjections, indignations, complaints, sighs and condolences, also of requests for explanations on the possible conditions of arrival of the extra body, explanations which explained nothing and only increased the general confusion. There was also talk of the horrible exit of the extra body in the sack of potatoes and Mrs. Edith, in this connection, reiterated the expression of her admiration for the heroic gentleman that was M. Robert Darzac. Rouletabille, for his part, did not deign to let a word fall in all this mess of words. Clearly, he despised this verbal display of mental disarray, a display he bore with the air of a teacher who grants a few minutes of recreation to students who have been very good. This was one of his airs that I did not like and for which I sometimes reproached him, without success, moreover, for Rouletabille always assumed the airs he wanted. Finally, he no doubt judged that the recreation had lasted long enough, for he abruptly asked Mrs. Edith: Well, Mrs. Edith! Do you still think that we should notify the courts? “I think so more than ever,” she replied. “What we would be powerless to discover, she will certainly discover!” (This deliberate allusion to my friend’s intellectual impotence left him completely indifferent.) And I’ll even admit one thing to you, Monsieur Rouletabille, she added, and that is that I think that justice could have been warned sooner! That would have saved you several long hours of guard duty and sleepless nights which, in short, were of no use, since they did not prevent the one you so feared from entering the place! Rouletabille sat down, controlling a strong emotion which almost made him tremble, and, with a gesture which he evidently wanted to render unconscious, seized once again the cane which Mr. Arthur Rance had just placed against the arm of his chair. I said to myself: What does he want to do with this cane? This time, I won’t touch it again! Ah! I ‘ll be careful!… Playing with the cane, he replied to Mrs. Edith, who had just attacked him in such a sharp, almost cruel way. Mrs. Edith, you are wrong to claim that all the precautions I had taken for the safety of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac were useless. If they allowed me to note the inexplicable presence of one body too many, they also allowed me to note the perhaps less inexplicable absence of one less body. We all looked at each other again, some trying to understand, others already dreading understanding. Eh! Eh! replied Mrs. Edith, in these conditions, you will see that there will no longer be any mystery at all and that everything will be arranged. And she added, in my friend’s strange language, in order to mock it: One body too many on one side, one body less on the other! All is for the best! “Yes,” said Rouletabille, “and that’s what’s so terrible, because this missing body arrives just in time to explain the extra body, madame. Now, madame, know that this missing body is the body of your uncle, Mr. Bob! ” “Old Bob!” she cried. “Old Bob has disappeared!” And we all cried with her: “Old Bob! Old Bob has disappeared! ” “Alas!” said Rouletabille. And he dropped the cane. But the news of old Bob’s disappearance had so shocked the Rances and the Darzacs that we paid no attention to this falling cane. My dear Sainclair, please be kind enough to pick up this cane, said Rouletabille. My goodness, I picked it up, while Rouletabille did not even deign to thank me and Mrs. Edith, suddenly leaping like a lioness on Mr. Robert Darzac who made a very pronounced movement of recoil, let out a wild cry: You have killed my uncle! Her husband and I had difficulty in holding her and calming her. On the one hand, we assured her that it was no reason because her uncle had momentarily disappeared for him to have disappeared in the tragic sack, and on the other hand we reproached Rouletabille for the brutality with which he had just made us see an opinion which, moreover, could still only be, in her restless mind, a very tremulous hypothesis. And, we added, begging Mrs. Edith to listen to us, that this hypothesis could in no way be considered by Mrs. Edith as an insult, since it was only possible by admitting the deception of a Larsan who had taken the place of her respectable uncle. But she ordered her husband to be silent and, looking me up and down, she said to me: Monsieur Sainclair, I hope, even firmly, that my uncle has disappeared only to reappear soon; if it were otherwise, I would accuse you of being an accomplice in the most cowardly of crimes. As for you, monsieur (she had turned towards Rouletabille), the very idea you could have had of confusing a Larsan with an old Bob forbids me forever from shaking your hand, and I hope that you will have the tact to rid me soon of your presence! “Madame!” replied Rouletabille, bowing very low, “I was just about to ask your permission to take leave of your grace. I have a short journey of twenty-four hours to make.” In twenty-four hours I shall be back and ready to assist you in any difficulties that may arise following the disappearance of your respectable uncle.
— If within twenty-four hours my uncle has not returned, I shall lodge a complaint with the Italian courts, sir. — It is a good form of justice, madame; but, before resorting to it, I would advise you to question all the servants in whom you might have some confidence, especially Mattoni. Do you trust Mattoni, madame? — Yes, sir, I trust Mattoni. — Well, madame, question him!… Question him!… Ah! before I leave, allow me to leave you this excellent and historical book… And Rouletabille took a book from his pocket. What is this now? asked Mrs. Edith, superbly disdainful. —That, madam, is a work by Mr. Albert Bataille, a copy of his Causes criminelles et mondaines, in which I advise you to read the adventures, disguises, disguises, and deceptions of an illustrious bandit whose real name is Ballmeyer. Rouletabille was unaware that I had already spent two hours telling Mrs. Rance the extraordinary stories of Ballmeyer. After reading this, he continued, you will be free to ask yourself if the criminal cunning of such an individual would have found insurmountable difficulties in presenting himself before your eyes in the guise of an uncle whom your eyes had not seen for four years (for it had been four years, Madam, since your eyes had seen Mr. Old Bob when you found this respectable uncle in the heart of the pampas of Araucania.) As for the memories of Mr. Arthur Rance, who accompanied you, they were much more distant and much more likely to be deceived than your memories and your niece’s heart!… I implore you on my knees, Madam, let us not be angry! The situation, for all of us, has never been so serious. Let us remain united. You tell me to leave: I am leaving, but I will return; because, if we had to stop at the abominable hypothesis of Larsan having taken the place of Mr. Old Bob, we would still have to look for Mr. Old Bob himself; in which case I would be, Madam, at your disposal and always your very humble and very obedient servant. At this moment, as Mrs. Edith assumed the attitude of an outraged comedy queen , Rouletabille turned to Arthur Rance and said: ” You must accept, Mr. Arthur Rance, for everything that has just happened , my apologies, and I count on the loyal gentleman that you are to make them acceptable to Mrs. Arthur Rance. In short, you reproach me for the haste with which I have explained my hypothesis, but please remember, sir, that Mrs. Edith, only a moment ago , reproached me for my slowness! But Arthur Rance was already no longer listening to him. He had taken his wife’s arm and the two of them were preparing to leave the room when the door opened and the stable boy, Walter, old Bob’s faithful servant, burst into our midst. He was in a surprisingly filthy state, completely covered in mud and his clothes torn off. His sweaty face, to which the strands of his untidy hair were plastered, reflected an anger mixed with terror that made us immediately fear some new misfortune. Finally, he had in his hand a vile rag that he threw on the table. This repulsive cloth, stained with large reddish-brown spots, was none other—we immediately guessed it, recoiling in horror—than the bag that had been used to carry away the extra body. In his hoarse voice, with fierce gestures, Walter was already babbling a thousand things in his incomprehensible English, and we were all asking ourselves, with the exception of Arthur Rance and Mrs. Edith: What is he saying?… What is he saying?… And Arthur Rance interrupted him from time to time, while the other shook his fists at us threateningly and looked at Robert Darzac with the eyes of a mentally ill person. For a moment we even thought he was going to rush off, but a gesture from Mrs. Edith stopped him abruptly. And Arthur Rance translated for us: He says that this morning he noticed blood stains in the English cart and that Toby was very tired from his night journey. This intrigued him so much that he immediately resolved to speak to old Bob about it; but he looked for him in vain. Then, seized by a sinister presentiment, he followed the night journey of the English cart by the track, which was easy for him because of the dampness of the road and the exceptionally wide spacing of the wheels; that is how he reached a crevasse in the old Castillon, into which he climbed, convinced that he would find his master’s body there; but he only brought back this empty bag which may have contained the body of old Bob, and now, having returned in all haste in a peasant’s cart, he is calling for his master, asking if he has been seen, and accusing Robert Darzac of murder if he is not shown to him… We were all dismayed. But, to our great astonishment, Mrs. Edith was the first to regain her composure. She calmed Walter in a few words, promised him that she would show him, presently, her old Bob, in excellent health, and dismissed him. And she said to Rouletabille: You have twenty-four hours, sir, for my uncle to return. “Thank you, madame,” said Rouletabille; “but if he does not return, I am right! ” “But, after all, where can he be?” she cried. “I could not tell you, madame, now that he is no longer in the bag!” Mrs. Edith gave him a withering look and left us, followed by her husband. Robert Darzac immediately showed us his complete astonishment at the story of the bag. He had thrown the bag into the abyss and the bag came back by itself. As for Rouletabille, he said to us: Larsan is not dead, be sure of it! The situation has never been so terrible, and I must go!… I don’t have a minute to lose! Twenty-four hours! In twenty-four hours, I will be here… But swear to me, both of you, that you will not leave this castle… Swear to me, Monsieur Darzac, that you will watch over Madame Darzac, that you will forbid her, even by force, if necessary, from leaving!… Ah! and then… you must no longer live in the Square Tower!… No, he Don’t do it anymore!… On the floor where Mr. Stangerson lives, there are two spare rooms. We must take them. It’s necessary… Sainclair, you will see to this move… As soon as I leave, don’t set foot in the Square Tower again, eh? Neither one nor the other… Goodbye! Ah ! Here! Let me kiss you… all three of you!… He hugged us: Mr. Darzac first, then me; and then, falling onto the bosom of the Lady in Black, he burst into tears. All this attitude of Rouletabille, despite the gravity of the events, seemed incomprehensible to me. Alas! how natural I was to find it later! Chapter 15. The Sighs of the Night Two o’clock in the morning. Everything seems to be asleep in the castle. What silence on earth and in the heavens! While I am at my window, my forehead burning and my heart frozen, the sea breathes its last and immediately the moon stops in a cloudless sky. The shadows no longer circle the star of the night. Then, in the great motionless sleep of this world, I heard the words of the Lithuanian song: But the gaze sought in vain the beautiful stranger who had covered her head with a wave and of whom one has never heard again… These words reach me, clear and distinct, in the motionless and sonorous night. Who pronounces them? His mouth? Her mouth? Or my hallucinatory memory? Ah, what is this prince of the Black Earth doing on the Côte d’Azur with his Lithuanian songs? And why do his image and his songs pursue me like this? Why does she put up with him? He is ridiculous with his tender eyes and his long eyelashes laden with shadow and his Lithuanian songs! And I am ridiculous too! Do I have the heart of a schoolboy? I do n’t think so. I really prefer to stop at this hypothesis that what agitates me in the personality of Prince Galitch is less the interest Mrs. Edith has in him than the thought of the other!… Yes, that’s right; in my mind, the prince and Larsan come to worry me together. He has not been seen at the castle since the famous luncheon where he was presented to us, that is to say, since the day before yesterday. The afternoon which followed Rouletabille’s departure brought us nothing new. We have no news of him, any more than of old Bob. Mrs. Edith remained locked up in her house, after questioning the servants and visiting old Bob’s apartments and the Round Tower. She did not want to enter Darzac’s apartment. It is a matter for the courts, she said. Arthur Rance walked for an hour along the Boulevard de l’Ouest, and he seemed very impatient. No one spoke to me. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Darzac left the Louve. Everyone dined at home. Professor Stangerson was not seen . … And now, everything seems to be asleep in the château… But the shadows begin to turn around the night star again. What is this, if not the shadow of a boat that is detaching itself from the shadow of the fort and gliding now over the silvery waves? What is this silhouette that stands proudly at the bow, while another shadow bends over the silent oar? It is yours, Féodor Féodorowitch! Eh! there is a mystery that will perhaps be easier to penetrate than that of the Tour Carrée, oh Rouletabille! And I believe that the brain of Mrs. Edith would be enough… Hypocritical night!… Everything seems to be asleep and nothing sleeps, nor anyone… Who can boast of being able to sleep in the castle of Hercules? Do you think Mrs. Edith sleeps? And Mr. and Mrs. Darzac, do they sleep? And why should Mr. Stangerson, who seems to sleep wide awake during the day, sleep precisely that night, he whose bed has not ceased to be visited, as they say, by pale insomnia since the revelation of the Glandier? And me, am I asleep? I left my room, I went down to the Cour du Téméraire; my steps carried me quickly to the Boulevard de la Tour Ronde. So much so that I arrived in time to see, under the moonlight, Prince Galich’s boat land on the beach, in front of the gardens of Babylon. jumped onto the pebble, and behind him, the man, having put away the oars, jumped. I recognized the master and the servant: Féodor Féodorowitch and his slave Jean. A few seconds later, they were disappearing into the protective shade of the hundred-year-old palm trees and the giant eucalyptus trees… Immediately, I went around the boulevard of the Cour du Téméraire… And then, my heart pounding, I headed towards the bailey. The flagstones of the postern gate echoed under my solitary step and it seemed to me that I saw a shadow rise, attentive, under the half-destroyed ogive of the chapel porch. I stopped in the thick night of the Tour du Jardinier and felt in my pocket for my revolver. The shadow, over there, did not move. Is it really a human shadow that is listening? I slipped behind a verbena hedge that bordered the path leading directly to the Louve, through bushes and groves and all the fragrant overflow of spring in bloom. I made no noise, and the shadow, no doubt reassured, made a movement. It was the Lady in Black! The moon, under the half-destroyed ogive, showed her to me, all white. And then, this form suddenly disappeared as if by magic. Then, I drew still closer to the chapel, and, as I reduced the distance that separated me from these ruins, I perceived a faint murmur, words interrupted by sighs so wet with tears that my own eyes became moist. The Lady in Black was weeping there, behind some pillar. Was she alone? Had she not chosen, in this night of anguish, this altar invaded by flowers to come there to bring in all peace her fragrant prayer? Suddenly, I saw a shadow beside the Lady in Black, and I recognized Robert Darzac. From where I was, I could now hear everything they were saying to each other. The indiscretion was loud, inelegant, shameful. Strangely enough, I thought it my duty to listen. Now I was no longer thinking at all about Mrs. Edith or Prince Galitch… But I was still thinking about Larsan… Why?… Why was it because of Larsan that I wanted to know what they were saying to each other?… I understood that Mathilde had come down furtively from the Louve to walk her anguish in the garden, and that her husband had joined her… The Lady in Black was weeping. She had taken Robert Darzac’s hands , and she was saying to him: I know… I know all your pain… don’t tell me any more… when I see you so changed, so unhappy… I blame myself for your grief… but don’t tell me that I don’t love you anymore… Oh! I will still love you, Robert… as before… I promise you… And she seemed to reflect, while he, incredulous, still listened to her. She continued, strangely, and yet with energetic conviction: Certainly! I promise you… She pressed his hand again, and she left, giving him a divine, but such a miserable smile, that I wondered how this woman could have spoken to this man of possible happiness. She brushed past me without seeing me. She passed with her perfume and I no longer smelled the cherry laurels behind which I was hidden. M. Darzac had remained in his place. He was still looking at her. He said aloud with a violence that made me think: Yes, one must be happy! One must! Ah! certainly, he was at the end of his patience. And, before moving away in his turn, he made a gesture of protest against the bad luck, of passion against Destiny, a gesture that ravished the Lady in Black, threw her on his chest and made him her master, across space.
He had no sooner made this gesture than my thoughts became clearer, my thoughts that wandered around Larsan stopped on Darzac! Oh! I remember it very well; it was from that second when he made that gesture of abduction in the lunar night that I dared to say to myself what I had already said to myself about so many others… about all the others… If it were Larsan! And, searching carefully, deep in my memory, I find that my thoughts were even more direct. To the man’s gesture, she responded immediately Then she cried out: It’s Larsan! I was so terrified that, seeing Robert Darzac coming towards me, I could not restrain a movement of flight which revealed my presence to him. He saw me, recognized me, grabbed my arm, and said to me: You were there, Sainclair, you were watching!… We are all watching, my friend… And you heard her!… You see, Sainclair, it’s too much pain; I can’t take it anymore. We were going to be happy; she herself could believe that she had been forgotten by Destiny, when the other reappeared! Then, it was over, she no longer had the strength for our love. She bowed down under fate; she must have imagined that it was pursuing her with an eternal punishment. It took the terrible tragedy of last night to prove to myself that this woman really loved me… once upon a time… Yes, for a moment she feared for me, and I, alas!, only killed for her… But now she has returned to her deadly indifference. She no longer thinks—if she still thinks of anything—except of walking an old man in silence… He sighed so sadly and so sincerely that the abominable thought was instantly banished. I thought only of what he was saying to me… of the pain of this man who seemed to have definitively lost the woman he loved, at the moment when she was reunited with a son whose existence he continued to ignore… In fact, he must have understood nothing of the attitude of the Lady in Black, of the ease with which she seemed to have detached herself from him… and he could find no explanation for such a cruel metamorphosis other than the love, exasperated by remorse, of Professor Stangerson’s daughter for her father… M. Darzac continued to moan. What good would it have been for me to strike him? Why did I kill? Why does she impose this horrible silence on me, like a criminal, if she does not want to reward me for her love? Does she fear new judges for me? Alas! not even, Sainclair… no, no, not even. She fears that the dying thought of her father will succumb before the burst of a new scandal. Her father! Always her father! And I don’t exist ! I waited twenty years for her, and when, at last, I think she has come, her father takes her away from me! I said to myself: Her father… her father and her child! He sat down on an old crumbling stone of the chapel and said again, speaking to himself: But I will tear her from these walls… I can no longer see her wandering here on her father’s arm… as if I did not exist !… And, while he was saying these things, I saw again the double and lamentable silhouette of the father and daughter, passing and repassing, at the hour of twilight, in the colossal shadow of the North Tower, lengthened by the evening fires, and I imagined that they could not be more crushed under the blows of the sky, this Oedipus and this Antigone that we are represented from our earliest years dragging, under the walls of Colonus, the weight of a superhuman misfortune. And then suddenly, without my being able to unravel the reason, perhaps because of a gesture from Darzac, the dreadful thought seized me again… and I asked point blank: How is it that the bag was empty? I noticed that he was not disturbed. He simply replied: Rouletabille will perhaps tell us… Then he shook my hand and went pensively into the clumps of the baille. I watched him walk… … I am not a mentally ill person… Chapter 16. Discovery of Australia. The moon struck him full in the face. He thought he was alone in the night and this was certainly one of the moments when he must lay aside the mask of day. First the black panes ceased to protect his uncertain gaze. And if his figure, during the hours of comedy, has grown tired of bending more than natural, if his shoulders have very skillfully rounded themselves, here is the moment when the great body of Larsan, having left the stage, will relax. Let him relax then! I spy on him in the wings… behind the prickly pears, not one of his movements escapes me… Now he is standing on the Boulevard de l’Ouest, which acts as a pedestal for him; the moonbeams envelop him in a cold, funereal glow. Is it you, Darzac? Or your ghost? Or the shadow of Larsan returned from the dead? I am a mentally ill person… In truth, we must have pity on us who are all mentally ill people. We see Larsan everywhere, and perhaps Darzac himself looked at me one day, Sainclair, and said to himself: If only it were Larsan!… One day!… I speak as if we had been locked up in this castle for years , and only four days ago… We arrived here, on April 8, one evening… No doubt, but never has my heart beaten so much when I asked myself the terrible question for others; It may also be that she was less terrible when it came to others… And then, what is happening to me is strange. Instead of my mind recoiling in fear from the abyss of such an incredible hypothesis, on the contrary, it is attracted, drawn away, horribly seduced. It feels dizzy and does nothing to avoid it. It urges me not to take my eyes off the spectre standing on the Boulevard de l’Ouest, to find attitudes, gestures, a resemblance to him, from behind… and then also the profile… and then also the face… There, like that… He looks exactly like Larsan… Yes, but like that, he looks exactly like Darzac… How is it that this idea came to me, this night, for the first time? When I think about it… It should have been our first idea! Was it that, during The Mystery of the Yellow Room, the Larsan silhouette did not appear, at the moment of the crime, completely confused with the Darzac silhouette? Was the Darzac who came to get Miss Stangerson’s answer at post office 40 not Larsan himself? Had this emperor of camouflage not already successfully undertaken to be Darzac, so much so that he had succeeded in having Miss Stangerson’s fiancé accused of his own crimes!… No doubt… no doubt… but, all the same, if I order my restless heart to be silent so that I can listen to my reason, I will know that my hypothesis is insane… Insane?… Why?… Look, there he is, the Larsan spectre, extending the great scissors of his legs, walking like Larsan… yes, but he has Darzac’s shoulders. I say insane because, if one is not Darzac, one can try to be one in the shadows, in mystery, from afar, as during the dramas of Glandier… but here, we touch the man!… we live with him!… We live with him?… No!… First of all, he is rarely there… almost always shut up in his room or bent over this useless work of the Tour du Téméraire… There, by Jove, is a fine pretext, that of drawing so that no one can see your face and to answer people without turning your head… But anyway, he does not always draw… Yes, but outside, always, except for this evening, he has his black glasses… Ah! This accident in the laboratory was most clever… This little lamp that exploded knew—I always thought so—the service it would render to Larsan when Larsan took Darzac’s place… It would allow him to avoid, always… always, the bright light of day… because of the weakness of his eyes… How so!… Even Miss Stangerson and Rouletabille managed to find the dark corners where Mr. Darzac’s eyes had nothing to fear from the light of day… Besides, he has, more than anyone else, on reflection, since we arrived here, this preoccupation with the shadows… we have seen him little, but always in the shadows. This little council chamber is very dark, … the Louve is dark… And he chose, of the two rooms in the Tour Carrée, the one that always remains plunged in semi-darkness. All the same… Come on! Come on!… Come on! You can’t fool Rouletabille like that!… even if it’s only for three days!… However, as Rouletabille says, Larsan was born before Rouletabille, since he is his father… … Ah! I can see Darzac’s first gesture again, when he came to meet me from us to Cannes, and that he got into our compartment… He drew the curtain… From the shadows, always… The spectre, now, on the Boulevard de l’Ouest, has turned towards me… I can see him clearly… from the front… no glasses… he is motionless… he is placed there as if he were going to be photographed… Don’t move!… There, that’s it!… Well, it’s Robert Darzac! It’s Robert Darzac! … He’s starting to walk again… I don’t know anymore… there’s something I’m missing, in Darzac’s walk, for me to recognize Larsan’s walk ; but what?… Yes, Rouletabille would have seen everything. Uh?… Rouletabille reasons more than he looks. And then, did he have much time to look ?… No!… Let’s not forget that Darzac went to spend three months in the South!… It’s true!… Ah! we can reason on that: three months, during which we haven’t seen him… He left sick… He came back in good health… We are not surprised that a man’s face has changed a little when, having left with a deathly expression, it reappears with a living expression. And the marriage ceremony took place immediately… As he showed himself to us sparingly before, and since… And, besides, not even a week has passed since all this… A Larsan can hold out for six days. The man (Darzac? Larsan?) comes down from his pedestal on the Boulevard de l’Ouest and comes straight to me… Did he see me? I shrink behind my prickly pear. … Three months of absence during which Larsan was able to study all the tics, all the Darzac manifestations, and then Darzac is removed and his place is taken, and his wife… she is taken away… the trick is done!… … The voice? What could be easier than imitating a voice from the South? One has a little more or a little less of an accent, that’s all. I thought I noticed that he had a little more of one… Yes, the Darzac of today has a little more of an accent—I think—than the one before the wedding… He’s almost on top of me, he’s passing by my side… He hasn’t seen me… … It’s Larsan! I’m telling you it’s Larsan!… But he stops for a second, looks desperately at all these sleeping things around him, at him whose pain keeps solitary watch, and he moans, like the poor, unhappy man that he is… … It’s Darzac!… And then, he’s gone… And I stayed there, behind a fig tree, in the annihilation of what I had dared to think!… How long did I stay like that, prostrate? An hour? Two hours? When I got up, my back was broken and my mind was very tired. Oh! very tired! I had gone, in the course of my dizzying hypotheses, so far as to ask myself if by chance (by chance!) the Larsan who was in the sack of potatoes called sausages had not substituted himself for the Darzac who was driving him, in the little English car, no one by Toby, to the chasms of the Castillon well!… Perfectly, I saw the dying body suddenly resuscitating and begging M. Darzac to go and take his place. For me to reject this imbecilic supposition far from my absurd cogitation, it had taken nothing less than the reminder of the absolute proof of its impossibility, which had been given to me that very morning by a very intimate conversation between M.
Darzac and me, at the end of our cruel session in the Square Tower , a session during which all the terms of the problem of the excess body had been so well established . At that moment, I had asked him, about Prince Galich, whose dull image never ceased to haunt me, a few questions to which he had immediately replied by alluding to another very scientific conversation that Darzac and I had had the day before, and which could not have been materially heard by anyone other than the two of us, on the subject of this same Prince Galich. He alone knew of that conversation, and there was no doubt, for that very reason, that the Darzac who preoccupied me so much today was none other than the one of the day before. However foolish the idea of this substitution was, I will nevertheless be forgiven for having had it. Rouletabille was a little to blame for it with his way of speaking to me about his father as the God of metamorphosis! And I came back to the only possible hypothesis—possible for a Larsan who would have taken the place of a Darzac—that of the substitution at the time of the marriage, when Mlle Stangerson’s fiancé returned to Paris, after three months’ absence in the South… The heart-rending complaint that Robert Darzac, believing himself to be alone, had let slip, just now at my side, did not succeed in completely dispelling this idea… I saw him entering the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, the parish in which he had wanted the marriage to take place… perhaps, I thought, because there was no more sombre church in Paris… Ah! One is very curiously stupid when one finds oneself, on a moonlit night, behind a prickly pear tree, grappling with the thought of Larsan!… Very, very stupid! I said to myself, as I slowly returned, through the clumps of the baille, to the bed that awaited me in a small solitary room of the Château Neuf… very stupid… for, as Rouletabille had so aptly said… if Larsan had been Darzac at the time, he had only to carry off his beautiful prey and he would not have taken pleasure in reappearing in the state of Larsan to terrify Mathilde, and he would not have brought her to the fortified castle of Hercules, in the midst of her own people, and he would not have taken the precaution, disastrous for his purposes, of showing again, in Tullio’s boat, the threatening figure of Roussel-Ballmeyer! At that moment, Mathilde belonged to him, and it was from that moment on that she had recovered. The reappearance of Larsan definitely stole the Lady in Black from Darzac, so Darzac was not Larsan! My God! What a headache I have… It was the dazzling moon up there that struck my brain painfully… I have a moonstroke …
And then… and then, had he not appeared to Arthur Rance himself, in the gardens of Menton, when Darzac had just been put on the train that was taking him to Cannes, to meet us! If Arthur Rance had spoken the truth, I could have gone to bed in peace… And why would Arthur Rance have lied?… Arthur Rance, another one who is in love with the Lady in Black, who has not ceased to be so… Mrs. Edith is not a fool; she has seen everything, Mrs. Edith!… Come on!… let’s go to bed…
I was still under the Gardener’s postern gate and was about to enter the Cour du Téméraire when I thought I heard something… it sounded like a door being closed… it sounded like wood and iron… a lock… I quickly poked my head out of the postern gate and thought I saw a vague human silhouette near the gate of the Château Neuf, a silhouette which immediately merged with the shadow of the Château Neuf itself; I cocked my revolver and, in three bounds, entered the shadow in my turn… But I saw nothing but the shadow. The gate of the Château Neuf was closed and I thought I remembered that I had left it ajar. I was very moved, very anxious… I didn’t feel alone… who could be around me? Obviously, if the figure existed outside my troubled vision and mind, it could now only be in the New Castle, for the Court of the Bold was deserted. I cautiously pushed open the door and entered the New Castle. I listened attentively and without making the slightest movement for at least five minutes… Nothing!… I must have been mistaken… However, I did not strike any matches and, as quietly as I could, I climbed the stairs and reached my room. There, I locked myself in and only breathed easily… This vision, however, continued to worry me more than I admitted to myself, and, although I had gone to bed, I could not fall asleep. Finally, without my being able to follow the reason, the vision of the silhouette and the thought of Darzac-Larsan mingled strangely in my unbalanced mind… So much so that I had come to say to myself: I will only be at peace when I have assured myself that Mr. Darzac himself is not Larsan! And I will not fail to do so at the next opportunity. Yes, but how? Pull his beard? If I am mistaken, he will take me for a mentally ill person or he will guess my thoughts and they will not console him for all the misfortunes he is lamenting. The only thing missing from his misfortune would be to be suspected of being Larsan! Suddenly, I threw back my covers, sat up on my bed, and cried: Australia! I had just remembered an episode which I spoke of at the beginning of this story. It will be remembered that, at the time of the accident in the laboratory, I had accompanied Mr. Robert Darzac to the pharmacist. Now, at the moment he was being treated, as he had to take off his jacket, the sleeve of his shirt, in a false movement, had risen up to his elbow and had remained there for the entire session, which allowed me to see that Mr. Darzac had, near the bleeding point on his right arm, a large birthmark whose contours seemed curiously to follow the geographical outline of Australia. Mentally, while the pharmacist was operating, I could not help placing, on this arm, in the places they occupy on the map, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide; and there was still under this large mark another very small mark located in the vicinity of the land called Tasmania. And when, by chance, later, I happened to think of this accident, the session with the pharmacist and the birthmark, I had always also thought, by a very understandable connection of ideas , of Australia. And in this sleepless night, here Australia appeared to me again!… Sitting on my bed, I had barely had time to congratulate myself on having thought of such decisive proof of the identity of Robert Darzac and I was beginning to discuss the question of how I could possibly go about providing it to myself, when a singular noise made me prick up my ears… The noise was repeated… it sounded as if steps were creaking under slow and cautious footsteps. Panting, I went to my door and, with my ear to the keyhole, I listened. At first, there was silence, and then the steps creaked again… Someone was on the stairs, I could no longer doubt it… and someone who had an interest in concealing their presence… I thought of the shadow I thought I saw just now when I entered the Cour du Téméraire… what could this shadow be, and what was it doing on the stairs? Was it going up? Was it going down?… Another silence… I took the opportunity to quickly put on my trousers and, armed with my revolver, I managed to open my door without it creaking on its hinges. Holding my breath, I advanced to the banister of the stairs and waited. I have described the state of disrepair in which the Château Neuf was. The moon’s funereal rays arrived obliquely through the high windows that opened on each landing and precisely cut out squares of pale light in the opaque night of this very vast stairwell. The misery of the castle, thus illuminated in places, seemed all the more definitive. The ruin of the banisters, the broken bars, the cracked walls against which, here and there, vast shreds of tapestry still hung, all this which had made little impression on me during the day, now struck me strangely, and my mind was quite ready to imagine this gloomy setting of the past as a place conducive to the appearance of some ghost… Really, I was afraid… The shadow, just now, had slipped so easily through my fingers… for I had really thought I had touched it… All the same, a ghost can walk in an old castle without making the steps creak… But they no longer creaked… Suddenly, as I was leaning over the banisters, I saw the shadow again!… it was brilliantly lit… so that from being a shadow it had become a glow. The moon had lit it up like a torch… And I recognized Robert Darzac! He had arrived at the ground floor and was crossing the vestibule, raising his head towards me as if he felt my gaze weighing on him. Instinctively, I leaned back. And then, I returned to my observation post just in time to see him disappear into a corridor which led to another staircase serving the other part of the building. What did this mean? What was Robert Darzac doing at night in the Château Neuf? Why was he taking such precautions not to be seen? A thousand suspicions crossed my mind, or rather all the bad thoughts from earlier seized me with extraordinary force, and, following in Darzac’s footsteps, I set off to discover Australia. I soon arrived at the corridor at the very moment he was leaving it and began to climb, still very cautiously, the worm-eaten steps of the second staircase. Hidden in the corridor, I saw him stop at the first landing and push open a door. And then I saw nothing more; he had gone back into the shadows and perhaps into the bedroom. I climbed up to this door which was closed and, sure that he was in the bedroom, I knocked three times. And I waited. My heart was beating wildly. All these rooms were uninhabited, abandoned… What was Mr. Robert Darzac doing in one of these rooms?… I waited two minutes which seemed interminable to me, and, as no one answered me, as the door did not open, I knocked again and waited some more… then, the door opened and Robert Darzac said to me in his most natural voice: Is that you, Sainclair? What do you want from me, my friend?… — I want to know, I said—and my hand clutched my revolver deep in my pocket, and my voice was as if strangled, so much was I afraid deep down —I want to know what you are doing here at such an hour…
Calmly, he struck a match, and said: You see!… I was getting ready for bed… And he lit a candle that had been placed on a chair, for there was not even, in this dilapidated room, a poor night table. A bed in a corner, an iron bed that must have been brought there during the day, composed all the furniture. I thought you were to sleep tonight, next to Madame Darzac and the professor, on the first floor of the Louve… — The apartment was too small; I could have bothered Madame Darzac, said the unfortunate man bitterly… I asked Bernier to give me a bed here… And besides, I don’t care where I sleep since I don’t sleep… We remained silent for a moment. I was completely ashamed of myself and of my ludicrous combinations. And, frankly, my remorse was such that I could not restrain the expression. I confessed everything to him: my infamous suspicions, and how I had truly believed, seeing him wander so mysteriously at night in the Château Neuf, that I had to do with Larsan, and how I had decided to go and discover Australia. For, I did not even hide from him that I had placed all my hope in Australia for a moment. He listened to me with the most pained face in the world and, calmly, he rolled up his sleeve and, bringing his bare arm close to the candle, he showed me the birthmark that was to make me come to my senses. I didn’t want to see it, but he insisted that I touch it, and I had to see that it was a very natural stain and on which one could have put little dots with the names of towns: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide… and, at the bottom, there was another little stain which represented Tasmania… You can rub, he said again in his absolutely disillusioned voice… it won’t go away!… I asked him again for forgiveness, with tears in my eyes, but he would not forgive me until he had forced me to pull his beard, which did not stay in my hand… Only then did he allow me to go back to bed, which I did, calling myself an idiot. Chapter 17. Terrible Adventure of Old Bob When I woke up, my first thought was still of Larsan. In truth, I no longer knew what to believe, neither I nor anyone else, neither about his death nor his life. Was he less injured than had been believed? … What am I saying? Was he less dead than had been thought? Had he been able to escape from the bag thrown by Darzac into the chasm of Castillon? After all, the thing was quite possible, or rather the hypothesis was not beyond the human strength of a Larsan, especially since Walter had explained that he had found the bag three meters from the mouth of the crevasse, on a natural plateau whose existence Mr. Darzac certainly did not suspect when he had thought to throw Larsan’s remains into the abyss… My second thought went to Rouletabille. What was he doing during this time? Why had he left? Never had his presence at the fort of Hercules been so necessary! If he were late in coming, this day would not pass without some drama between the Rances and the Darzacs! It was then that there was a knock at my door and Father Bernier brought me a short note from my friend that a little rogue from the town had just placed in the hands of Father Jacques. Rouletabille said to me: I will be back this morning. Get up quickly and be kind enough to go and fish me for my lunch some of those excellent clams that abound on the rocks before the Pointe de Garibaldi. Don’t waste a moment. Kind regards and thanks. Rouletabille! This note left me quite pensive, for I knew from experience that, when Rouletabille appeared to be occupied with trinkets, his activity never really involved more considerable objects. I dressed hastily and, armed with an old knife that Father Bernier had lent me, I set about satisfying my friend’s whim. As I passed through the North Gate, having met no one at that early hour—it might have been seven o’clock—I was joined by Mrs. Edith, to whom I shared Rouletabille’s little note. Mrs. Edith—whom the prolonged absence of old Bob had completely disturbed— found it strange and disturbing, and she followed me to the clam-digging. On the way, she confided to me that her uncle was not an enemy, from time to time, of a little runaway, and that, until that hour, she had retained the hope that everything would be explained by his return; but now the idea began to inflame her brain again of a dreadful mistake that would have made old Bob the victim of the Darzacs’ vengeance !… She uttered, between her pretty teeth, a dull threat against the Lady in Black, added that her patience would last until noon, and then said nothing more. We began to fish for Rouletabille’s clams. Mrs. Edith had bare feet; so did I. But Mrs. Edith’s bare feet occupied me much more than mine. The fact is that Mrs. Edith’s feet, which I discovered in the Sea of Hercules, are the most delicate shellfish in the world, and they made me forget the clams so well that poor Rouletabille would certainly have done without them at his lunch if the young woman had not shown such fine zeal. She splashed in the bitter water and slid her knife under the rocks with a slightly nervous grace that became her more than I can describe. Suddenly, we both straightened up and listened with the same movement. We could hear shouts from the direction of the caves. At the very threshold of Romeo and Juliet’s cave, we distinguished a small group making gestures of appeal. Driven by the same presentiment, we hurried back to the shore. Soon we learned that, attracted by complaints, two fishermen had just discovered, in a hole in the cave of Romeo and Juliet, an unfortunate man who had fallen in and who must have remained there, for long hours, unconscious. … We were not mistaken. It was indeed old Bob who was at the bottom of the hole. When he was pulled to the edge of the cave, in the light of day, he certainly appeared worthy of pity, so soiled, wrinkled, and torn was his beautiful black frock coat. Mrs. Edith could not hold back his tears, especially when they noticed that the old man had a dislocated collarbone and a sprained foot, and he was so pale that one would have thought he was going to die. Fortunately, this was not the case. Ten minutes later, he was, on his orders, lying on his bed in his room in the Square Tower. But can we imagine that this stubborn man refused to undress and take off his frock coat before the doctors arrived? Mrs. Edith, more and more worried, settled down at his bedside; but, when the doctors arrived, old Bob demanded that his niece leave him immediately and leave the Square Tower. And he even had the door closed. This last precaution surprised us greatly. We were gathered in the Cour du Téméraire, Mr. and Mrs. Darzac, Mr. Arthur Rance and I, as well as Father Bernier, who was watching me strangely, waiting for news. When Mrs. Edith came out of the Square Tower after the doctors arrived, she came to us and said: Let’s hope it won’t be serious. Old Bob is strong. What did I tell you! I confessed: he’s an old joker; he wanted to steal Prince Galich’s skull! Scholarly jealousy; we’ll have a good laugh when he’s cured. Then the door of the Square Tower opened and Walter, old Bob’s faithful servant, appeared. He was pale, worried. Oh! Mademoiselle! he said. He’s covered in blood! He doesn’t want anyone to say it, but we must save him!… Mrs. Edith had already disappeared into the Square Tower. As for us, we didn’t dare move forward. Soon she reappeared: Oh! she said to us… It’s awful! His whole chest has been torn off. I went to offer her my arm so that she could lean on it, because, strangely enough, Mr. Arthur Rance had, at that moment, moved away from us and was walking along the boulevard, his hands behind his back, whistling. I tried to comfort Mrs. Edith and I felt sorry for her, but neither Mr. nor Mrs. Darzac felt sorry for her. Rouletabille arrived at the château an hour after the event. I was watching for his return from the top of the Boulevard de l’Ouest and, as soon as I saw him on the seafront, I ran to him. He cut me off at my first request for an explanation and asked me straight away if I had had a good catch, but I was not mistaken by the expression of his inquisitive look. I wanted to appear as clever as he was and I replied: Oh! a very good catch! I fished out old Bob! He jumped. I shrugged my shoulders, for I thought it was a charade, and I said to him: Come on! You knew where you were leading us with your fishing and your dispatch! He stared at me with an astonished air: You certainly don’t know at this moment what the scope of your words can be, my dear Sainclair, otherwise you would have saved me the trouble of protesting against such an accusation! “But what accusation?” I cried. “That of having left old Bob at the bottom of the cave in Romeo and Juliet, knowing that he was dying there. ” “Oh! oh!” I said, “calm down and be reassured: old Bob is not dying. He has a sprained foot, a dislocated shoulder, it’s not serious , and his story is the most honest in the world: he claims that he wanted to steal Prince Galich’s skull! “What a strange idea!” Rouletabille sneered. He leaned toward me and, looking me in the eye, said, “Do you believe that story?… And… that’s all? No other injuries? ” “Yes,” I said. “There’s another injury, but the doctors have just declared it not serious. His chest is torn. ” “The chest is torn!” Rouletabille continued, nervously squeezing my hand. “And how is this chest torn? ” “We don’t know; we didn’t see it. Old Bob is strangely modest . He wouldn’t take off his frock coat in front of us; and his frock coat hid his wound so well that we would never have suspected it if Walter hadn’t come to talk to us about it , terrified as he was by the blood it had shed.” As soon as we arrived at the castle, we ran into Mrs. Edith, who seemed to be looking for us. My uncle doesn’t want me at his bedside, she said, looking at Rouletabille with an air of anxiety I had never seen before: it’s incomprehensible! “Oh! Madam!” replied the reporter, addressing our gracious hostess with his most ceremonious bow, “I assure you that there is nothing in the world incomprehensible, if one is willing to take the trouble to understand!” And he congratulated her on having found such a good uncle at the moment when she thought he was lost. Mrs. Edith, fully informed of my friend’s thoughts, was about to reply when we were joined by Prince Galitch. He had come to seek news of his friend, old Bob, having learned of the accident. Mrs. Edith reassured him about the outcome of his fantastic uncle’s escapade and begged the prince to forgive his relative for his excessive love for humanity’s oldest skulls. The prince smiled with grace and politeness when she told him that old Bob had tried to steal it. You will find your skull, she said, at the bottom of the hole in the cave where it rolled with him… He told me… So rest assured, prince, for your collection… The prince asked for more details. He seemed very curious about the matter. And Mrs. Edith recounted that the uncle had confessed to her that he had left the fort of Hercules by the path of the well that communicates with the sea. As soon as she had added this, as I remembered Rouletabille’s experience with the bucket of water and also the closed ironwork, old Bob’s lies took on gigantic proportions in my mind; and I was sure that it must be the same for all those around us, if they were in good faith. Finally, Mrs. Edith told us that Tullio had waited for him with his boat at the opening of the gallery leading to the well to take him to the shore in front of Romeo and Juliet’s grotto. What detours, I couldn’t help exclaiming, when it was so easy to leave by the door! Mrs. Edith looked at me painfully and I immediately regretted having taken so obviously against her. This is getting more and more bizarre! the prince remarked again. The day before yesterday morning, the Sea Executioner came to take leave of me, for he was leaving the country and I am sure that he took the train for Venice, his native country, at five o’clock in the evening. How do you expect him to have taken Mr. Old Bob out on his boat the following night! First he was no longer there, then he had sold his boat… he told me, having decided never to return to the country… There was a silence and then Galich continued: All this is of little importance… provided that your uncle, madam, recovers quickly from his wounds, and also,” he added with a new smile even more charming than all the previous ones, “if you will help me to find a poor pebble which has disappeared from the cave and of which I give you the description: a sharp pebble twenty-five centimeters long and worn at one of its ends into the shape of a scraper; in short, the oldest scraper in humanity… I am very attached to it,” the prince added, “and perhaps you could find out, madam, from your uncle old Bob, what has become of it. Mrs. Edith immediately promised the prince, with a certain haughtiness that pleased me, that she would do everything in the world to ensure that such a precious scraper did not go astray. The prince bowed and left us. When we turned around, Mr. Arthur Rance was in front of us. He must have heard the whole conversation and seemed to be thinking about it. He had his cane in his mouth, was whistling, as was his custom, and was looking at Mrs. Edith with such strange insistence that she seemed irritated: “I know,” said the young woman… “I know what you are thinking, sir… and I am not at all surprised… believe me!” And she turned, singularly annoyed, towards Rouletabille: ” In any case!” she cried… “You will never be able to explain to me.” How, since he was outside the Square Tower, could he have been in the closet?… “Madame,” Rouletabille said, looking Mrs. Edith straight in the face as if he wanted to hypnotize her… patience and courage!… If God is with me, before this evening, I will have explained to you what you are asking me! Chapter 18. Noon, King of Terrors A little later, I found myself in the lower room of the Louve, alone with Mrs. Edith. I tried to reassure her, seeing her impatient and worried; but she passed her hands over her haggard eyes… And her trembling lips let slip the admission of her fever: “I’m afraid,” she said. I asked her what she was afraid of and she answered me: “You’re not afraid, are you?” So I remained silent. It was true, I was afraid, too. She said again: Don’t you feel that something is happening? — Where? — Where! Where! Around us! She shrugged her shoulders: Ah! I’m all alone! All alone! And I’m afraid! She went to the door: Where are you going? — I’ll look for someone, for I don’t want to be left alone, all alone. — Who are you looking for? — Prince Galich! — Your Féodor Féodorovitch! I cried… What do you need him for? Am I not here? Her anxiety, unfortunately, increased as I did everything possible to make it disappear, and I had no difficulty in understanding that it came above all from the dreadful doubt which had entered her soul about the personality of her uncle old Bob. She said to me: Let’s go out! and she led me out of the She-Wolf. It was approaching midday and the whole place was resplendent in a fragrant blaze. Not having our dark glasses with us, we had to put our hands over our eyes to hide the overly bright color of the flowers; but the giant geraniums continued to bleed into our injured eyes. When we had recovered a little from this dazzling experience, we advanced on the charred ground, we walked holding hands on the burning sand. But our hands were even hotter than everything that touched us, than all the flame that enveloped us. We looked down to our feet so as not to see the infinite mirror of the waters, and also perhaps, perhaps so as not to guess anything of what was happening in the depths of the light. Mrs. Edith kept repeating to me: I’m afraid! And I too was afraid, so well prepared by the mysteries of the night, afraid of this great, crushing and luminous silence of midday! The clarity in which one knows that something is happening that one cannot see is more formidable than darkness. Noon! All is at rest and all is alive; all is silent and all noise. Listen to your ear: it resounds like a sea conch with sounds more mysterious than those that rise from the earth when evening comes. Close your eyelids and look into your eyes: you will find there a host of silvery visions more disturbing than the phantoms of the night. I looked at Mrs. Edith. The sweat on her pale brow ran in icy streams. I began to tremble like her, for I knew, alas! that I could do nothing for her and that what was to be accomplished was being accomplished around us, without our being able to stop or foresee anything. She was now leading me towards the postern gate that opens onto the Court of the Bold. The vault of this postern made a black arc in the light and, at the end of this cool tunnel, we saw, turned towards us, Rouletabille and M. Darzac, standing on the threshold of the Cour du Téméraire, like two white statues. Rouletabille had Arthur Rance’s cane in his hand. I cannot say why this detail worried me. With the tip of his cane, he was showing Robert Darzac something that we could not see, at the top of the vault, and then he pointed to us with the tip of his cane. We could not hear what they were saying. They spoke to each other, barely moving their lips, like two accomplices who have a secret. Mrs. Edith stopped, but Rouletabille signaled him to come forward again, and he repeated the signal with his cane. Oh! she said, what does he want from me now? My goodness, Mr. Sainclair, I’m so scared! I’m going to tell my uncle old Bob everything, and we’ll see what happens. We had entered under the arch, and the others watched us come without taking a step towards us. Their immobility was astonishing, and I said to them in a voice that sounded strange to my ears, under this arch: What are you doing here? Then, as we arrived next to them, on the threshold of the Cour du Téméraire, they made us turn our backs to this courtyard so that we could see what they were looking at. It was, at the top of the arch, a shield, the coat of arms of the La Mortola crossed by the label of the younger branch. This shield had been carved from a stone that was now wobbly and was about to fall onto the heads of passers-by. Rouletabille had no doubt noticed this coat of arms hanging so dangerously over our heads, and he asked Mrs. Edith if she would mind removing it, even if it meant putting it back in place more firmly. I am sure, he said, that if you touched this stone with the tip of your cane, it would fall. And he passed his cane to Mrs. Edith: You are taller than I am, he said, try it yourself. But we were all trying in vain to reach the stone; it was too high up, and I was just wondering what the point of this strange exercise was, when suddenly, behind me, the cry of death rang out! We turned around as one, all three of us uttering an exclamation of horror. Ah! that cry! This cry of death that passed through the midday sun after having crossed our nights, when would it cease? When would the dreadful clamor that I heard resound for the first time in the nights of the Glandier have finished announcing to us that there is around us a new victim? That one of us has just been struck by crime, suddenly and surreptitiously and mysteriously, as if by the plague? Certainly! The march of the epidemic is less invisible than this hand that kills! And there we are, all four of us, shivering, our eyes wide with terror, questioning the depth of the light still vibrating with the cry of death! Who is dead? Or who is going to die? What expiring mouth now lets out this supreme groan? How can we direct ourselves in the light? It is as if it were the clarity of day itself that complains and sighs. The most frightened is Rouletabille. I have seen him in the most unexpected circumstances maintain a composure beyond human strength; I have seen him, at that call of the cry of death, rush into obscure danger and throw himself like a heroic savior into the sea of darkness; why today does he tremble thus in the splendor of the day? There he is, before us, pusillanimous as a child that he is, he who claimed to act as the master of the hour. Had he not foreseen that minute? that minute when someone expires in the midday light ? Mattoni, who was passing at that moment in the bailey, and who also heard, has rushed over. A gesture from Rouletabille pins him to the spot, under the postern, like an immutable sentinel; and the young man now advances towards the lament, or rather walks towards the center of the lament, for the lament surrounds us, makes circles around us , in the blazing space. And we go after him, holding our breath and arms outstretched, as we do when we are groping in the dark, and we are afraid of bumping into something we cannot see. Ah! we approach the spasm, and when we have passed the shadow of the eucalyptus, we find the spasm at the end of the shadow. It shakes a body in agony. This body, we have recognized it. It is Bernier! It is Bernier who is groaning, who is trying to get up, who cannot, who is suffocating, Bernier whose chest is letting out a stream of blood, Bernier over whom we bend, and who, before dying, still has the strength to throw us these two words: Frédéric Larsan! And his head falls back. Frédéric Larsan! Frédéric Larsan! Him everywhere and nowhere! Always him, nowhere! There is his mark again! A corpse and no one, reasonably, around this corpse!… For the only way out of these places where they murdered, is this postern where the four of us were standing. And we turned around, in a single movement, all four of us, at the cry of death, so quickly, so quickly, that we should have seen the gesture of death! And we saw nothing but light!… We enter, moved, it seems to me, by the same feeling, into the Square Tower, the door of which remains open; we enter without hesitation into old Bob’s apartments, into the empty living room; we open the door to the bedroom. Old Bob is lying peacefully on his bed, with his top hat on his head, and near him, a woman is watching: Mother Bernier! Truly! How calm they are! But the wife of the unfortunate man has seen our faces and she utters a cry of terror in the immediate premonition of some catastrophe! She heard nothing! She knows nothing!… But she wants to go out, she wants to see, she wants to know, we don’t know what! We try to hold her back!… It’s in vain. She comes out of the tower, she sees the corpse. And it is she, now, who moans horribly, in the terrible heat of midday, over the bleeding corpse! We tear off the shirt of the man lying there and we discover a wound below the heart. Rouletabille gets up with that air that I knew he had when he came to Glandier to examine the wound of the incredible corpse. You’d say, he said, that it’s the same knife wound! It’s the same measure! But where is the knife? And we look for the knife everywhere without finding it. The man who struck will have taken it. Where is the man? What man? If we know nothing, Bernier, he knew before he died and he may have died from what he knew!… Frédéric Larsan! We repeat, trembling, the two words of the dead man. Suddenly, on the threshold of the postern gate, we see Prince Galitch appear, a newspaper in his hand. Prince Galitch comes to us reading the newspaper. He has a mocking air. But Mrs. Edith runs to him, snatches the newspaper from his hands, shows him the corpse and says to him: There is a man who has just been murdered. Go and get the police. Prince Galitch looks at the corpse, looks at us, does not utter a word, and hurries away; he goes to get the police. Mother Bernier continues to groan. Rouletabille sits on the well. He seems to have lost all his strength. He says in a low voice to Mrs. Edith:
Let the police come, madam!… You asked for it! But Mrs. Edith glares at him with a flash of her black eyes. And I know what she’s thinking. She thinks she hates Rouletabille, who could have made her doubt old Bob for a moment. While Bernier was being murdered, wasn’t old Bob in his room, watched over by Mother Bernier herself? Rouletabille, who has just wearily examined the well’s closure, which remains intact, lies down on the edge of the well, as if on a bed where he would finally like to enjoy some rest, and he says again, more quietly: And what will you tell the police? “Everything!” Mrs. Edith said this word, clenched teeth, angrily. Rouletabille shakes his head desperately, and then he closes his eyes. He seems crushed to me, defeated. Mr. Robert Darzac comes to touch Rouletabille on the shoulder. Mr. Robert Darzac wants to search the Tour Carrée, the Tour du Téméraire, the Château Neuf, all the outbuildings of this courtyard from which no one has been able to escape and where, logically, the assassin must still be. The reporter sadly dissuades him. Are we looking for something, Rouletabille and I? Did we look at Glandier, after the phenomenon of the dissociation of matter, for the man who had disappeared from the inexplicable gallery? No! No! I know now that we must no longer look for Larsan with our eyes! A man has just been killed behind us. We hear him cry out from the blow that struck him. We turn around and see nothing but light! To see, we must close our eyes, as Rouletabille is doing at this moment. But isn’t he just opening them again? A new energy straightens him. He is standing. He raises his clenched fist to the sky. It’s not possible, he cried, or there’s no good reason left! And he throws himself to the ground, and there he is again on all fours, his nose to the ground, sniffing every pebble, turning around the corpse and Mother Bernier, whom they tried in vain to keep away from her husband’s body, turning around the well, around each of us. Ah! It’s a case of saying so: here he is again, like a pig searching for food in the mud, and we stood looking at him curiously, stupidly, sinisterly. At one point, he got up, took a little dust and threw it into the air with a cry of triumph as if he were going to make the unfindable image of Larsan arise from these ashes. What new victory has the young man just won over the mystery? Who is giving him such a confident look just now? Who has given him back the sound of his voice? Yes, he is back in his usual tune when he says to Mr. Robert Darzac: Rest assured, sir, nothing has changed! And, turning towards Mrs. Edith: We have nothing left, madam, but to wait for the police. I hope they won’t be long! The unfortunate woman shudders. This child, once again, frightens her. Ah! yes, let her come! And let her take care of everything! Let her think for us! Too bad! too bad! Whatever happens! says Mrs. Edith, taking my arm. And suddenly, under the postern gate, we see Father Jacques arrive, followed by three gendarmes. It is Brigadier de La Mortola and two of his men who, warned by Prince Galitch, are running to the scene of the crime. The gendarmes! The gendarmes! They say there has been a crime! exclaims Father Jacques, who still knows nothing. “Calm down, Father Jacques!” Rouletabille shouts to him, and when the porter, out of breath, is at the reporter’s side, the latter says to him in a low voice: “Nothing has changed, Father Jacques. But Father Jacques saw Bernier’s corpse. Just another corpse,” he sighs; “it’s Larsan! ” “It’s fate,” replies Rouletabille. Larsan, fate is all one. But what does this nothing has changed about Rouletabille mean, if not that, around us, despite Bernier’s incidental corpse, everything continues with what we fear, with what we shudder at, Mrs. Edith and I, and that we do not know? The gendarmes are busy and are gabbling incomprehensible jargon around the body . The brigadier tells us that someone has called a stone’s throw away at the Garibaldi Inn where the delegato or special commissioner of the Ventimiglia station is having lunch. He will be able to begin the investigation that will be continued by the examining magistrate, who has also been notified. And the delegato arrives. He is delighted, despite not having taken the time to finish lunch. A crime! A real crime! In the castle of Hercules! He is beaming! His eyes are shining. He is already very busy, very important. He orders the brigadier to put one of his men at the door of the castle with instructions not to let anyone out. And then he kneels beside the corpse. A gendarme leads Mother Bernier, who is moaning louder than ever, into the Square Tower. The delegato examines the wound. He says in very good French: That’s a famous knife wound! This man is delighted. If he had the murderer in his hand, he would certainly pay him his compliments. He looks at us. He stares at us. Perhaps he is looking among us for the perpetrator of the crime, to show him all his admiration. He gets up. And how did this happen? he asks, encouraging and already enjoying the pleasure of having a good, truly criminal story. It’s incredible! he added, incredible!… For the five years that I have been Delegato, no one has been murdered! Mr. Examining Magistrate… Here he stops, but we finish the sentence: Mr. Examining Magistrate will be very pleased! He brushes the white dust covering his knees with his hand, he mop his forehead, he repeats: It’s incredible! with a southern accent that doubles his joy. But he recognizes, in a new personage who enters the courtyard, a doctor from Menton who has just arrived to continue his treatment of old Bob. Ah! Doctor! You’ve arrived right! Examine that wound for me and tell me what you think of such a knife wound! Above all, as much as possible, do not move the body until the arrival of Mr. Examining Magistrate. The doctor probes the wound and gives us all the technical details we could desire. There is no doubt. That is the beautiful knife wound that penetrates from the bottom up, in the cardiac region and whose point has certainly torn a ventricle. During this conversation between the delegate and the doctor, Rouletabille never stopped looking at Mrs. Edith, who decidedly took my arm, seeking refuge with me. Her eyes avoided Rouletabille’s eyes, which hypnotized her, which ordered her to be silent. Now, I knew that she was trembling with the desire to speak. At the delegate’s request, we all entered the Square Tower. We settled into old Bob’s living room, where the investigation would begin, and where we each took turns recounting what we had seen and heard. Mother Bernier was questioned first. But nothing came of it. She declared that she knew nothing. She was locked in old Bob’s room, watching over the wounded man, when we entered like mentally ill people. She had been there for over an hour, having left her husband in the dressing room of the Square Tower, busy braiding a rope! Curiously, I am less interested at this moment in what is happening before my eyes and in what is being said than in what I do not see and what I am waiting for… Is Mrs. Edith going to speak?… She stares stubbornly out of the open window. A gendarme has remained beside this corpse, on whose face a handkerchief has been placed. Mrs. Edith, like me, is paying only mediocre attention to what is happening in the living room in front of the delegato. Her gaze continues to circle the corpse. The delegato’s exclamations hurt our ears. As we explain ourselves, the Italian commissioner’s astonishment grows to disturbing proportions and he naturally finds the crime more and more incredible. He is on the point of finding it impossible when it is Mrs. Edith’s turn to be questioned. They question her… She already has her mouth open to answer, when we hear Rouletabille’s calm voice: Look at the end of the eucalyptus’s shadow. “What’s at the end of the eucalyptus’s shadow?” asks the delegato. “The murder weapon!” replies Rouletabille. He jumps out the window, into the courtyard, and picks up, among other bloody pebbles, a shiny, sharp pebble. He brandishes it before our eyes. We recognize it: it’s the oldest scraper in humanity! Chapter 19. Rouletabille Closes the Iron Gates The murder weapon belonged to Prince Galitch, but no one had any doubt that it had been stolen from him by old Bob, and we could not forget that before dying, Bernier had accused Larsan of being his murderer. Never before had the image of old Bob and that of Larsan been so thoroughly mingled in our anxious minds as since Rouletabille had picked up from Bernier’s blood the oldest scraper in humanity. Mrs. Edith had understood at once that old Bob’s fate was henceforth in Rouletabille’s hands . The latter had only a few words to say to the delegato, concerning the singular incidents which had accompanied old Bob’s fall into the grotto of Romeo and Juliet, to enumerate the reasons for fearing that old Bob and Larsan were the same character, to finally repeat the accusation of Larsan’s last victim , so that all the suspicions of justice would fall on the geologist’s wigged head. Now, Mrs. Edith, who had not ceased to believe, deep down in her niece’s soul, that the old Bob present was indeed her uncle, but imagining that she suddenly understood, thanks to the incidental scraper, that the invisible Larsan was accumulating around old Bob all the elements of his loss, with the intention no doubt of making him bear the punishment for his crimes and also the dangerous weight of his personality, – Mrs. Edith trembled for old Bob, for herself; she trembled with terror at the center of this web like an insect in the middle of the web in which it has just become entangled, a mysterious web woven by Larsan, with invisible threads clinging to the old walls of Hercules’ castle. She had the feeling that if she made a movement—a movement of the lips—they were both lost, and that the filthy beast of prey was only waiting for that movement to devour them. Then, she who had decided to speak fell silent, and it was her turn to fear that Rouletabille would speak. She told me later the state of her mind at that moment of the drama, and she admitted to me that she was then terrified of Larsan to a degree that perhaps we ourselves had never felt. This werewolf, of whom she had heard with a terror that had at first made her smile, had subsequently interested her during the episode of The Yellow Room, because of the impossibility with which the courts had been able to explain his exit; then he had fascinated her when she learned of the drama of the Square Tower, because of the impossibility with which it was possible to explain his entry; but there, there, in the midday sun, Larsan had killed, before their eyes, in a space where there was only her, Robert Darzac, Rouletabille, Sainclair, old Bob and Mother Bernier, each of them far enough from the corpse that they could not have struck Bernier. And
Bernier had accused Larsan! Where Larsan? In whose body? to reason as I had taught him myself when I told him about the inexplicable gallery! She was under the arch between Darzac and me, Rouletabille standing in front of us, when the cry of death had resounded at the end of the shadow of the eucalyptus, that is to say less than seven meters away! As for old Bob and Mother Bernier, they had not left each other, the latter keeping an eye on the former! If she kept them out of her argument, there was no one left for her to kill Bernier. Not only did they not know this time how he had left, how he had arrived, but also how he had been there. Ah! she understood, she understood that there were moments when, thinking of Larsan, one could tremble to the marrow. Nothing! Nothing around this corpse except this stone knife that had been stolen by old Bob. It was dreadful, and it was enough to allow us to think everything, to imagine everything… She read the certainty of this conviction in the eyes and in the attitude of Rouletabille and Mr. Robert Darzac. She understood , however, from Rouletabille’s first words, that he had, at present, no other goal than to save old Bob from the suspicions of justice. Rouletabille then found himself between the delegato and the examining magistrate who had just arrived, and he was reasoning, the oldest scraper in humanity in his hand. It seemed definitively established that there could be no other culprits around the dead man than the living ones I listed a few lines above, when Rouletabille proved with a rapidity of logic that delighted the investigating judge and drove the delegato to despair that the real culprit, the only culprit, was the dead man himself. The four living men in the postern gate and the two living men in old Bob’s room having watched each other and not lost sight of each other, while Bernier was being killed a few steps away, it became necessary that this one was Bernier himself. To which the investigating judge, very interested, replied by asking us if any of us suspected the reasons for Bernier’s probable self-harm; to which Rouletabille replied that, to die, one could do without crime and self-harm and that the accident was enough for that. The weapon of the crime, as he ironically called the oldest scraper in the world, attested by its mere presence to the accident. Rouletabille did not see a murderer premeditating his crime with the help of this old stone. Even less would one have understood that Bernier, if he had decided on his self-harm, would not have found any other weapon for his death than the troglodytes’ knife. That if, on the contrary, this stone, which could have attracted his attention by its strange shape, had been picked up by Father Bernier, that if it had been in his hand at the moment of a fall, the tragedy would then be explained, and how simply. Father Bernier had fallen so unfortunately on this frighteningly triangular stone that he had pierced his heart. Whereupon the doctor was called again, the wound rediscovered and compared with the fatal object, from which a scientific conclusion was imposed, that of the injury caused by the object. From there to the accident, after Rouletabille’s argument, there was only one step. The judges took six hours to take it. Six hours during which they questioned us tirelessly and without result.
As for Mrs. Edith and your servant, after some useless hassle and vain inquisitions, while the doctors treated old Bob, we sat down in the living room which preceded his room and from which the magistrates had just left. The door of this living room which opened onto the corridor of the Square Tower had remained open. By this, we heard the moans of Mother Bernier, who was watching over the body of her husband, which had been carried into the lodge. Between this corpse and this wounded man, both as inexplicable as each other, in spite of Rouletabille’s efforts, our situation, Mrs. Edith’s and mine, was, it must be admitted, most painful, and all the terror of what we had seen was doubled in the depths of our being by the dread of what remained to be seen. Mrs. Edith suddenly seized my hand: Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! she said, I have no one left but you. I don’t know where Prince Galich is, and I have no news of my husband. That is what is horrible! He left me a note telling me that he had gone in search of Tullio. Mr. Rance doesn’t even know, at the present time, that Bernier has been murdered. Has he seen the Executioner of the Sea? It is from the Executioner of the Sea, it is from Tullio alone that I now await the truth! And not a telegram!… It is atrocious!… From that moment when she took my hand with such confidence and held it for a moment in hers, I was with Mrs. Edith with all my soul, and I did not hide from her that she could count on my complete devotion. We exchanged these few unforgettable words in low voices, while the swift shadows of the people of justice passed and repassed in the courtyard, sometimes preceded, sometimes followed by Rouletabille and M. Darzac. Rouletabille did not fail to cast a glance in our direction whenever he had the opportunity. The window had remained open. Oh! he’s watching us! said Mrs. Edith. Wonderfully! It is likely that we are inconveniencing him and Mr. Darzac by staying here. But this is a place we will not leave, whatever happens, is it not, Mr. Sainclair? — We must be grateful to Rouletabille, I dared to say, for his intervention and his silence concerning the oldest scraper in humanity. If the judges learned that this stone dagger belongs to your uncle old Bob, who could foresee where it would all end!… If they also knew that Bernier, in dying, accused Larsan, the story of the accident would become more difficult! And I emphasized these last words. Oh! she replied violently. Your friend has as many good reasons to be silent as I do! And I fear only one thing, You see!… Yes, yes, I fear only one thing… – What? What?… She stood up, feverish… I fear that he has saved my uncle from justice only to ruin him better!… – Can you really believe that? I asked without conviction. – Well! I thought I read that just now in the eyes of your friends… If I were sure I hadn’t been mistaken, I would still prefer to have to deal with justice!… She calmed down a little, seemed to reject a stupid hypothesis, and then said to me: Well, one must always be ready for anything, and I will know how to defend him to the death!… Whereupon she showed me a small revolver that she was hiding under her dress. Ah! she cried, why isn’t Prince Galich here? – Again! I exclaimed angrily. – Is it true that you are ready to defend me? she asked me , looking deeply into my eyes with her disturbing gaze. “I’m ready. ” “Against everyone?” I hesitated. She repeated: “Against everyone? ” “Yes. ” “Against your friend? ” “If necessary!” I said, sighing, and ran my hand over my sweating forehead. ” That’s fine! I believe you,” she said. “In that case, I’ll leave you here for a few minutes. You’ll watch this door for me!” And she showed me the door behind which old Bob lay. Then she ran away. Where was she going? She confessed to me later! She was running in search of Prince Galitch! Ah! Woman! Woman!… She had no sooner disappeared under the postern gate than I saw Rouletabille and M. Darzac enter the drawing-room. They had heard everything. Rouletabille advanced towards me and did not hide from me the fact that he knew of my betrayal. That’s a fine person of all types of body, Rouletabille, I said. You know that I’m not in the habit of betraying anyone… Mrs. Edith is really to be pitied and you don’t pity her enough, my friend… – And you, you pity her too much!… I blushed to the tips of my ears. I was ready for an outburst. But Rouletabille cut me off with a sharp gesture: I only ask one thing of you, one thing only, you understand! That is, whatever happens… whatever happens… You no longer speak to M. Darzac and me!… – That will be an easy thing! I replied, foolishly irritated, and I turned my back on him. It seemed to me that he then made a movement to catch the words of his anger. But, at that very moment, the judges, leaving the Château Neuf, called us . The investigation was over. The accident, in their eyes, after the doctor’s statement, was no longer in doubt, and such was the conclusion they gave to this affair. They therefore left the castle. M. Darzac and Rouletabille went out to accompany them. And
as I remained leaning on the window which looked out on the Cour du Téméraire, assailed by a thousand sinister forebodings and awaiting with increasing anguish the return of Mrs. Edith, while a few steps from me, in her dressing room where she had lit two funeral candles, Mother Bernier continued to chant, moaning beside the corpse of her husband, the prayer for the dead, I suddenly heard passing through the evening air, above my head, like a formidable gong strike, something like a bronze clamour; and I understood that it was Rouletabille who was closing the iron gates! A minute had not passed when I saw Mrs. Edith running towards me in a disordered bewilderment, rushing towards me as if towards her only refuge… … Then I saw Mr. Darzac appear… … Then Rouletabille, who had the Lady in Black on his arm… Chapter 20. Bodily demonstration of the possibility of the body of excess! Rouletabille and the Lady in Black entered the Square Tower. Never had Rouletabille’s gait been so solemn. And it could have made us smile if, in truth, in that tragic moment, it had not completely worried us. Never had a magistrate or prosecutor, dragging the purple or ermine, had entered the courtroom, where the accused awaited him, with more menacing and calm majesty. But I also believe that never had a judge been so pale. As for the Lady in Black, it was visible that she was making an incredible effort to conceal the feeling of terror that, despite everything, pierced her troubled gaze, to hide from us the emotion that made her feverishly grasp the arm of her young companion. Robert Darzac, too , had the dark and completely resolute expression of a vigilante. But what, above all, added to our emotion, was the appearance of Father Jacques, Walter and Mattoni in the Cour du Téméraire. They were all three armed with rifles and came to stand silently in front of the entrance door of the Tour Carrée where they received, from the mouth of Rouletabille, with a completely military passivity, the order not to let anyone leave the Old Castle. Mrs. Edith, in the height of terror, asked Mattoni and Walter, who were particularly loyal to her, what such a maneuver could possibly mean, and who she was threatening; but, to my great astonishment, they did not answer her. Then she went and heroically placed herself through the door that gave access to old Bob’s living room, and, with both arms outstretched as if to bar the passage, she cried out in a hoarse voice: What are you going to do? You’re not going to kill him?… “No, madame,” Rouletabille replied dully. “We are going to judge him… And to be more certain that the judges will not be executioners, we are going to swear on the body of Father Bernier, after having laid down our weapons, that we will keep none on us.” And he led us into the death chamber where Mother Bernier continued to moan at the bedside of her husband, who had been killed by the oldest scraper in humanity. There, we all got rid of our revolvers and took the oath Rouletabille demanded. Mrs. Edith, alone, struggled to get rid of the weapon that Rouletabille was well aware she was hiding under her clothes. But, at the insistence of the reporter, who made her understand that this general disarmament could only reassure her, she finally agreed. Rouletabille, then taking the arm of the Lady in Black again, returned, followed by all of us, into the corridor; but, instead of heading towards old Bob’s apartment, as we expected, he went straight to the door that gave access to the room with the extra body. And, taking out the special little key I have already mentioned, he opened this door. We were very surprised, upon entering the former apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac, to see, on Mr. Darzac’s desk, the drawing board, the wash on which he had worked, alongside old Bob, in his study at the Cour du Téméraire, and also the small bucket full of red paint, and, dipping into it, the small brush. Finally, in the middle of the desk, stood, very appropriately, resting on its bloody jaw, the oldest skull in human history. Rouletabille locked the door and said to us, quite moved, while we gazed at him in amazement: Sit down, ladies and gentlemen, I beg you. Chairs were arranged around the table and we sat down , prey to a growing unease, I would even say to extreme distrust. A secret presentiment warned us that all these objects familiar to draughtsmen could hide, beneath their apparent calm banality, the devastating reasons for the most terrible of dramas. And then, the skull seemed to laugh like old Bob. You will notice, said Rouletabille, that there is here, near this table, one chair too many and, consequently, one body less, that of Mr. Arthur Rance, whom we can no longer wait for. — He perhaps possesses, at this moment, the proof of old Bob’s innocence! observed Mrs. Edith, whom all these preparations had troubled more than anyone. I ask Madame Darzac to join me in beg these gentlemen not to do anything until my husband returns!… The Lady in Black did not have to intervene, for while Mrs. Edith was still speaking , we heard a loud noise behind the corridor door; and knocks were struck, while Arthur Rance’s voice begged us to open it immediately. He shouted: I bring the little ruby-headed pin! Rouletabille opened the door: Arthur Rance! he said, so here you are at last!… Mrs. Edith’s husband seemed in despair: What have I heard? What is it?… A new misfortune?… Ah! I really thought I would arrive too late when I saw the iron doors closed and heard the prayer for the dead in the tower. Yes, I thought you had executed old Bob! Meanwhile, Rouletabille had, behind Arthur Rance, locked the door again. Old Bob is alive, and Father Bernier is dead! Sit down , sir, Rouletabille said politely. Arthur Rance, looking in his turn with astonishment at the drawing board, the paint bucket, and the bloody skull, asked: Who killed him? He then deigned to notice that his wife was there and he shook her hand, but looking at the Lady in Black. Before dying, Bernier accused Frédéric Larsan! replied Mr. Darzac. “Do you mean by that,” Mr. Arthur Rance interrupted sharply, “that he accused old Bob? I will not tolerate it any longer! I too have doubted the character of our beloved uncle, but I repeat that I am bringing you back the little ruby-headed pin! What did he mean by his little ruby-headed pin? I remembered that Mrs. Edith had told us that old Bob had taken it from her hands, while she was amusing herself by pricking him with it, the evening of the tragedy of the extra body. But what connection could there be between this pin and old Bob’s adventure? Arthur Rance did not wait for us to ask him, and he told us that this little pin had disappeared at the same time as old Bob, and that he had just found it in the hands of the Executioner of the Sea, binding a bundle of banknotes with which the uncle had paid, that night, for the complicity and silence of Tullio who had taken him in his boat in front of the grotto of Romeo and Juliet and who had left at dawn, very worried not to have seen his passenger return. And Arthur Rance concluded triumphantly: A man who gives another man, in a boat, a ruby-headed pin cannot be, at the same time, locked in a sack of potatoes, at the bottom of the Square Tower! Whereupon, Mrs. Edith: And how did you get the idea of going to San Remo? You knew, then, that Tullio was there? — I had received an anonymous letter informing me of his address, there… — I sent it to you, Rouletabille said calmly… And he added, in an icy tone: Gentlemen, I am pleased with the prompt return of Mr. Arthur Rance. In this way, here are gathered around this table all the guests of the castle of Hercules… for whom my corporeal demonstration of the possibility of the surplus body may be of some interest. I ask for your full attention! But Arthur Rance stopped him again: What do you mean by these words: Here are gathered around this table all the guests for whom the bodily demonstration of the possibility of the surplus body can be of some interest? — I mean, declared Rouletabille, all those among whom we can find Larsan! The Lady in Black, who had not yet said anything, stood up, all trembling: What! she moaned under her breath… Larsan is among us then?… — I am sure of it! said Rouletabille… There was a terrible silence during which we did not dare to look at each other. The reporter resumed in his icy tone: I am sure of it… And it is an idea which should not surprise you, madame, for it has never left you!… As for us, gentlemen, is it not true that the thought came to us quite precisely, the day of the luncheon of the black glasses on the terrace of the Téméraire? If I except Mrs. Edith, which one of us, at that moment, did not feel the presence of Larsan? — That is a question that could just as well be put to Professor Stangerson himself, replied Arthur Rance immediately. For, from the moment we begin to reason in this way, I do not see why the professor, who was at that luncheon, is not at this little gathering… — Mr. Rance!… cried the Lady in Black. — Yes, I beg your pardon, replied Mrs. Stangerson’s husband, a little shamefaced . Edith… But Rouletabille was wrong to generalize and say: all the guests of the castle of Hercules… — Professor Stangerson is so far from us in spirit, pronounced Rouletabille with his beautiful childish solemnity, that I have no need of his body… Although Professor Stangerson, at the castle of Hercules, lived beside us, he was never with us. Larsan, he has not left us! This time, we glanced at each other furtively, and the idea that Larsan could really be among us seemed so crazy to me that, forgetting that I should not speak to Rouletabille again: But, at this luncheon of the dark glasses, I dared to say, there was still a personage that I do not see here… Rouletabille grunted, giving me a nasty look: Prince Galich again! I have already told you, Sainclair, what work the prince is busy with on this frontier… And I swear to you that it is not the misfortunes of Professor Stangerson’s daughter that interest him! Leave Prince Galitch to his humanitarian work… — All that, I observed rather spitefully, all that is not reasoning: — Exactly, Sainclair, your chatter prevents me from reasoning. But I was foolishly launched, and, forgetting that I had promised Mrs. Edith to defend old Bob, I began to attack him again for the pleasure of finding Rouletabille at fault; besides, Mrs. Edith has long held a grudge against me. Old Bob, I pronounced with clarity and assurance, was also at the lunch of the black glasses, and you immediately exclude him from your reasoning because of the little pin with the ruby head. But this little pin which is there to prove to us that old Bob joined Tullio, who was with his boat at the opening of a gallery connecting the sea with the well, if we are to believe old Bob, this little pin does not explain to us how old Bob was able, as he says, to take the path to the well, since we found the well closed on the outside! “You!” said Rouletabille, staring at me with a severity which strangely embarrassed me. “It was you who found it like that! But I found the well open! I had sent you to Mattoni and Father Jacques to find out. When you came back, you found me in the same place, in the Tower of the Bold, but I had had time to run to the well and see that it was open… ” “And to close it!” I cried. “And why did you close it? Who did you want to deceive? ” “You! sir!” He uttered these two words with such crushing contempt that my face flushed. I stood up. All eyes were now turned in my direction, and at the same moment that I remembered the brutality with which Rouletabille had treated me just now in front of M. Darzac, I had the horrible sensation that all the eyes there suspected me, accused me! Yes, I felt myself enveloped in the atrocious general thought that I could be Larsan! Me! Larsan! I looked at them all in turn. Rouletabille himself did not lower his eyes when mine had told him the fierce protest of my whole being and my furious indignation. Anger galloped through my burning veins. Ah, that! I cried… We must end this. If old Bob is removed, if Prince Galich is removed, if Professor Stangerson is removed, there is only us left, locked in this room, and if Larsan is among us, show him, Rouletabille! And I repeated with rage, for this young man, with his eyes that pierced me, drove me mad and out of all good manners: Show him! Name him! You are as slow as you were at the Assize Court!… — Did I not have reasons, at the Assize Court, to be as slow as that? he replied without being moved. — So you want to allow him to escape again?… — No, I swear to you that this time, he will not escape! Why, when he spoke to me, did his tone continue to be so threatening? Did he really, really believe that Larsan was inside me? My eyes then met those of the Lady in Black. She looked at me with terror! Rouletabille, I said, my voice choked, you don’t think… you don’t suspect!… At that moment a gunshot rang out outside, very close to the Square Tower, and we all jumped, remembering the order given by the reporter to the three men to shoot anyone who tried to leave the Square Tower. Mrs. Edith gave a cry and wanted to rush out, but Rouletabille, who hadn’t made a move, calmed her with a sentence. If someone had shot at him, he said, the three men would have fired! And that shot is only a signal, the one telling me to start! And, turning towards me: Mr. Sainclair, you should know that I never suspect anything or anyone without first relying on the right end of reason! It is a solid stick that has never failed me along the way and on which I invite you all here to lean with me!… Larsan is here, among us, and the good end of reason will show you: sit down again, all of you, I beg you, and do not take your eyes off me, because I am going to begin on this paper the corporeal demonstration of the possibility of the excess body! Beforehand, he went to check that, behind him, the bolts of the door were well drawn, then, returning to the table, he took a compass. I wanted to make my demonstration, he said, on the very places where the excess body occurred. It will be all the more irrefutable. And, with his compass, he took, from Mr. Darzac’s drawing , the measurement of the radius of the circle which represented the space occupied by the Tour du Téméraire, which allowed him to immediately retrace this same circle on a piece of immaculate white paper, which he had fixed with copper pins on the drawing board. When this circle was drawn, Rouletabille, putting down his compass, seized the cup of red paint and asked Mr. Darzac if he recognized his painting there. Mr. Darzac, who, visibly, no more than we did, understood nothing of the young man’s actions, replied that in fact it was he who had made this paint for his wash. A good half of the paint had dried out at the bottom of the pan, but, in Mr. Darzac’s opinion, the remaining half should, on paper, give almost the same shade as that with which he had washed the plan of the Hercules peninsula. It has not been touched! Rouletabille continued with great gravity, and this painting has only been lengthened by a tear. Besides, you will see that a tear more or less in this pan would in no way harm my demonstration. So saying, he dipped the brush in the paint and set about washing all the space occupied by the circle he had previously traced. He did it with that meticulous care which had already astonished me, when, in the Tour du Téméraire, to my great astonishment, he thought only of drawing while they were being assassinated!… When he had finished, he looked at the time on his enormous onion and said: You see, ladies and gentlemen, that the layer of paint which covers my circle is neither more nor less thick than that which colors M. Darzac’s circle. It is, more or less, the same shade. — Without doubt, replied M. Darzac, but what does all this mean? — Wait! replied the reporter. It is understood that this plan, this painting, is yours! — Lady! I was rather unhappy to find them in a sorry state when I returned with you to old Bob’s study, as we left the Tour Carrée. Old Bob had soiled my entire drawing by rolling his skull across it! — Here we are!… punctuated Rouletabille. And he took from the desk the oldest skull in human history. He turned it upside down and, showing the red jaw to Mr. Robert Darzac, he asked him again: Is it really your idea that the red on this jaw is none other than the red that was removed from your plan? — Lady! There can be no doubt! The skull was still upside down on my plan when we entered the Tour du Téméraire… — So we continue to be of exactly the same opinion! added the reporter. Then he stood up, keeping the skull in the crook of his arm, and he entered this opening in the wall, lit by a vast window, fitted with bars, which had once been a loophole for cannons and which M. Darzac had made into his bathroom. There, he struck a match and lit a spirit lamp on a small table . On this lamp, he placed a saucepan previously filled with water. The skull had not left the crook of his arm. During all this strange cooking, we did not take our eyes off it. Never had Rouletabille’s attitude seemed so incomprehensible to us, nor so closed, nor so disturbing. The more explanations he gave us and the more he acted, the less we understood him. And we were afraid, because we felt that someone around us, someone among us, was afraid! Afraid, more than any of us! Who was this one? Perhaps the calmest! The calmest is Rouletabille, between his skull and his saucepan. But what! Why do we all suddenly recoil with the same movement? Why do Mr. Darzac, his eyes wide with a new fright, why the Lady in Black, why Mr. Arthur Rance, why do I myself begin to cry out… a name that dies on our lips: Larsan!… Where did we see him? Where did we discover him, this time, we who are watching Rouletabille? Ah! that profile, in the red shadow of the beginning of night, that forehead at the bottom of the doorway that the twilight comes to bloody, as on the morning of the crime the bloody dawn came to redden these walls! Oh! that hard and willful jaw that was rounding just now, sweet, a little bitter, but charming in the light of day, and which, now, stands out against the evening screen, evil and threatening! How Rouletabille resembles Larsan! How, at this moment, he resembles his father! It’s Larsan! Another shock: at his mother’s groan, Rouletabille leaves this funereal setting where he appeared to us with the figure of a bandit and he comes to us and becomes Rouletabille again. We are still trembling. Mrs. Edith, who has never seen Larsan, cannot understand. She asks me: What happened? Rouletabille is there, in front of us, with his hot water in his pan, a towel and his skull. And he cleans his skull. It’s done quickly. The paint has disappeared. He makes us see it. Then, placing himself in front of the desk, he remains in mute contemplation before his own wash. It had taken a good ten minutes, during which he had ordered us, with a sign, to remain silent… ten very impressive minutes… What is he waiting for?… Suddenly, he seizes the skull with his right hand and, with the gesture familiar to bowls players, he rolls it several times, on his wash; then he shows us the skull and invites us to see that it bears no trace of red paint. Rouletabille takes out his watch again. The paint is dry on the plan, he says. It took a quarter of an hour to dry. On the 11th, we saw Mr. Darzac enter the Square Tower at five o’clock, coming from outside. Now, Mr. Darzac, after entering the Square Tower, and after closing the door behind him him the bolts of his room, he told us, did not come out until we came to get him there after six o’clock. As for old Bob, we saw him enter the Round Tower at six o’clock, with his skull unpainted! How is it that this paint, which takes only a quarter of an hour to dry, is still fresh enough that day, – more than an hour after Mr. Darzac left it, – to dye old Bob’s skull, which he, with an angry gesture, rolls over the wash as he enters the Round Tower? There is only one explanation for this, and I defy you to find another: the Mr. Darzac who entered the Square Tower at five o’clock, and whom no one saw come out, is not the same as the one who had just painted in the Round Tower before old Bob’s arrival at six o’clock, whom we found in the room in the Square Tower without having seen him enter, and with whom we came out… In a word: he is not the same as the Mr. Darzac here before us! THE RIGHT END OF REASON INDICATES THAT THERE ARE TWO DARZAC MANIFESTATIONS! And Rouletabille looked at Mr. Darzac. He, like all of us, was under the influence of the young reporter’s luminous demonstration. We were all torn between new terror and boundless admiration. How clear everything Rouletabille said was! Clear and frightening! Here again we found the mark of his prodigious logical and mathematical intelligence. M. Darzac exclaimed: So that’s how he was able to enter the Square Tower with a disguise that gave him, no doubt, all my appearances, and that he was able to hide in the cupboard, so that I didn’t see him, when I came here to do my correspondence after leaving the Tower of the Bold where I left my wash. But how did Father Bernier open the door for him!… “Lady!” replied Rouletabille, who had taken the hand of the Lady in Black between his own, as if he wanted to give her courage… Lady! He really thought he was dealing with you! “So that’s why, when I arrived at my door, I only had to push it. Father Bernier thought I was at home. ” “Very just! Powerfully reasoned!” complied Rouletabille. And Father Bernier, who had opened the door at the first Darzac demonstration, did not have to worry about the second, since, no more than we, he saw it . You certainly arrived at the Tour Carrée at the moment when Father Bernier and I were on the parapet, examining the strange gesticulations of old Bob speaking, on the threshold of the Barma Grande, to Mrs. Edith and Prince Galitch… — But, added Mr. Darzac, how come Mother Bernier, who had entered her box, did not see me and was not surprised to see Mr. Darzac enter a second time when she had not seen him leave? —Imagine, continued the reporter with a sad smile, imagine, Monsieur Darzac, that Mother Bernier, at that moment—at the moment you were passing by… that is to say, when the second Darzac demonstration was passing by —was picking up potatoes from a sack that I had emptied onto her floor… and you can imagine the truth. —Well, I can congratulate myself on still being in this world!… —Congratulate yourself, Monsieur Darzac, congratulate yourself!… —When I think that as soon as I got home I locked the doors as I told you, that I set to work and that I had that bandit at my back! Ah! He could have killed me without resistance!… Rouletabille advanced towards Monsieur Darzac. Why didn’t he do it? he asked him, looking him in the eye.
—You know very well that he was expecting someone! And Mr. Darzac turned his sorrowful face towards the Lady in Black. Rouletabille was now right next to Mr. Darzac. He put both hands on his shoulders: Mr. Darzac, he said, in his voice now clear and full of bravery, I must make a confession to you! When I understood how the extra body had gotten in, and that I had noticed that you were doing nothing to disabuse us of the hour of five o’clock at which we had believed, at which everyone, except me, believed that you had entered the Square Tower, I found myself justified in suspecting that the bandit was not the one who, at five o’clock, had entered the Square Tower in the disguise of Darzac! I thought, on the contrary, that this Darzac could well be the real Darzac and that the fake one was you! Ah! my dear Monsieur Darzac, how I suspected you!… “That’s madness!” cried Monsieur Darzac. If I did not say the exact hour at which I entered the Square Tower, it was because this hour remained vague in my mind and I attached no importance to it! —In such a way, Monsieur Darzac, continued Rouletabille, without paying attention to the interruptions of his interlocutor, the emotion of the Lady in Black and our more than ever terrified attitude, in such a way that the real Darzac, who had come from outside to take back his place which you had stolen from him — in my imagination , Monsieur Darzac, in my imagination, rest assured!… — would have been, by your obscure care and with the all too faithful help of the Lady in Black, put in a perfect state to no longer harm your audacious enterprise!… in such a way, Monsieur Darzac, that I was able to think that, you being Larsan, the man who was put in the bag was Darzac!… Ah! the fine imagination I had there!… And the incredible suspicion!… — Bah! Mathilde’s husband replied dully… We all suspected each other here!… Rouletabille turned his back on Mr. Darzac, put his hands in his pockets and said, addressing Mathilde, who seemed ready to faint before the horror of Rouletabille’s imagination: A little more courage, madame! And, this time, in his high-pitched voice that I knew well, in the voice of a mathematics professor expounding or solving a theorem: You see, Mr. Darzac, there were two Darzac manifestations… To know which was the real one and which was the one that hid Larsan… My duty, Mr. Darzac, the one that the right end of my reason showed me, was to examine without fear or reproach, in turn, these two manifestations… in all impartiality! So, I began with you… Mr. Darzac. Mr. Darzac replied to Rouletabille: That’s enough, since you no longer suspect me! You’re going to tell me right away who Larsan is!… I want it! I demand it!… — We all want it!… and right away! we cried, surrounding them both.
Mathilde had rushed towards her child and was covering him with her body as if he had already been threatened. But this scene had already gone on too long and was exasperating us. Since he knows it! Let him say it!… Let’s get this over with! cried Arthur Rance… And, suddenly, as I remembered that I had heard the same cries of impatience at the Assize Court, a new shot rang out at the door of the Tour Carrée, and we were all so struck by it that our anger instantly subsided and we began to ask, politely, my goodness, Rouletabille to put an end to an intolerable situation as soon as possible . At that moment, in truth, it was a matter of who would beg him more, as if we were counting on it to prove to others, and perhaps to ourselves, that we were not Larsan! Rouletabille, as soon as he heard the second shot, had changed his countenance. His whole face was transformed, his whole being seemed to vibrate with a fierce energy. Leaving behind the mocking tone in which he spoke to M. Darzac and which had particularly offended us all , he gently pushed aside the Lady in Black who persisted in wanting to protect him; he leaned against the door, crossed his arms, and said: In a matter like this, you see, nothing must be neglected. Two Darzac manifestations incoming and two Darzac manifestations outgoing, one of which is in the bag! There is something to be said for it lose! And even now I would like not to say stupid things!… Let Mr. Darzac, here, present, allow me to tell him: I had a hundred excuses for suspecting him!… Then I thought: What a shame he didn’t tell me! I would have saved him a lot of work and I would have shown him Australia! Mr. Darzac had planted himself in front of the reporter and was now repeating, with insistent rage: What excuses?… What excuses?… — You will understand me, my friend, said the reporter with supreme calm . The first thing I said to myself, when I examined the conditions of your Darzac demonstration, was this: Bah! if it were Larsan! Professor Stangerson’s daughter would have noticed it! Obviously, isn’t it?… Obviously!… Now, in examining the attitude of the one who became, on your arm, Mrs. Darzac, I became certain, sir, that she suspected you all the time of being Larsan. Mathilde, who had fallen back onto a chair, found the strength to get up and protest with a large, frightened gesture. As for Mr. Darzac, his face seemed more ravaged by suffering than ever. He sat down, saying in a low voice: ” Can it be that you thought that, Mathilde?”… Mathilde lowered her head and did not reply. Rouletabille, with an implacable cruelty, which, for my part, I could not excuse, continued: When I recall all of Madame Darzac’s gestures since your return from San Remo, I now see in each of them the expression of the terror she had of letting slip the secret of her fear, of her perpetual anguish… Ah! Let me speak, Monsieur Darzac… I must explain myself here, I must so that everyone here can explain themselves!… We are in the process of cleaning up the situation!… Nothing, then, was natural in Miss Stangerson’s ways. The very haste with which she acceded to your desire to hasten the wedding ceremony proved the desire she had to banish the torment from her mind once and for all. Her eyes, which I remember, said then, how clearly: Is it possible that I continue to see Larsan everywhere, even in the one who is at my side, who leads me to the altar, who carries me away with him! It seems that at the station, sir, she gave a completely heartbreaking farewell! She was already crying: Help! Help against herself, against her thoughts!… and perhaps against you?… But she did not dare to reveal her thoughts to anyone, because she certainly feared that someone would say to her… And Rouletabille leaned quietly into M. Darzac’s ear and said to him in a low voice, not so low that I could hear it, low enough so that Mathilde would not suspect the words that came out of her mouth: Are you going mad again? And, drawing back a little: Then, you must now understand everything, my dear M. Darzac!… And this strange coldness with which you were, subsequently , treated; and also, sometimes, the remorse which, in her incessant hesitation, pushed Madame Darzac to surround you, at times, with the most delicate attentions!… Finally, allow me to tell you that I myself have sometimes seen you so gloomy, that I could think that you had discovered that Madame Darzac always had deep down inside her, while looking at you, while speaking to you, while remaining silent, the thought of Larsan!… Consequently, let us understand each other clearly… It is not this idea that Professor Stangerson’s daughter would have noticed it that could have chased away my suspicions, since, in spite of herself, she noticed it all the time! No! No!… My suspicions were dispelled by something else!… — They could have been, cried Mr. Darzac, ironically and desperately… they could have been dispelled by the simple reasoning that, if I had been Larsan, possessing Miss Stangerson, who had become my wife, I had every interest in continuing to make people believe in Larsan’s death! And I would not have resurrected myself!… Was it not from the day Larsan came back into the world that I lost Mathilde?… —Pardon! Sir, pardon! replied Rouletabille this time, who had become whiter than a sheet… You are once again abandoning, if I may say so, the good end of reason!… For this one shows us the very opposite of what you think you perceive!… I perceive this: that when you have a woman who believes or is very close to believing that you are Larsan, it is in your best interest to show her that Larsan exists outside of you! Hearing this, the Lady in Black slipped against the wall, arrived panting at Rouletabille’s side, and devoured with her gaze the face of M. Darzac, which had become terribly hard. As for us, we were all so struck by the novelty and irrefutability of Rouletabille’s beginnings of reasoning that we had nothing but the ardent desire to know the rest of it, and we took care not to interrupt him, wondering how far such a formidable hypothesis could go! The young man, imperturbable, continued… But if it was in your interest to show him that Larsan existed outside of you, there is a case where this interest was transformed into an immediate necessity. Imagine… I say imagine, my dear Monsieur Darzac, that you had really resurrected Larsan, once, just once, in spite of yourself, at home, in the eyes of Professor Stangerson’s daughter, and here you are, I say, in the necessity of resurrecting him again, always, outside of you… to prove to your wife that this resurrected Larsan is not in you! Ah! Calm down, my dear Mr. Darzac!… I beg you… Since I told you that my suspicions have been banished, definitively banished!… It is the least we can do to amuse ourselves by reasoning a little, after such anguish where it seemed that there was no room for any reasoning… See then where I am obliged to come to, by considering as realized the hypothesis (these are mathematical procedures that you know better than I, you who are a scholar), by considering, I say, as realized the hypothesis of the manifestation Darzac, which is you hiding Larsan. Therefore, in my reasoning, you are Larsan! And I wonder what could have happened at Bourg station for you to appear in the state of Larsan in the eyes of your wife. The fact of the resurrection is undeniable. It exists. It cannot be explained at this moment by your desire to be Larsan!… Mr. Darzac no longer interrupted. As you say, Mr. Darzac, Rouletabille continued, it is because of this resurrection that happiness eludes you… Therefore, if this resurrection cannot be voluntary, it has only one way of being… it is to be accidental!… And see how the whole affair is clarified… Oh! I have studied the incident at Bourg a great deal… I continue to reason… do not be alarmed… You are at Bourg, in the buffet… You believe that your wife, as she told you, is waiting for you outside the station… Having finished your connection, you feel the need to go to your compartment, to freshen up a little… to take a look at your disguise as a master of camouflage. You think: a few more hours of this comedy, and, once you’ve crossed the border, in a place where it will be truly mine, definitively mine, I’ll take off the mask… Because this mask, all the same, it tires you… and so much does it tire you, by Jove, that, once you’re in the compartment, you allow yourself a few minutes of rest… So you take it off!… You relieve yourself of this lying beard and your glasses, and, at just the same moment, the compartment door opens… Your wife, terrified, only takes the time to see this beardless face in the mirror, Larsan’s face, and to flee, letting out a terrified cry… Ah! You’ve understood the danger!… You’re lost if, immediately, your wife, elsewhere, does n’t see Darzac, her husband. The mask is quickly put back on, you go down the wrong way through the glass of the coupe and you arrive at the buffet before your wife who runs to look for you there!… She finds you standing… You You didn’t even have time to sit down again… Is everything saved? Alas! No… Your misfortune has only just begun… For the atrocious thought that you, Darzac and Larsan, might be together never leaves her. On the station platform, passing under a gas lamp, she looks at you, lets go of your hand and throws herself like a madwoman into the station master’s office … Ah! You’ve understood again! You must chase away the abominable thought at once… You leave the office and quickly close the door, and you too pretend that you have just seen Larsan! To reassure her, and to deceive us too, in case she dares to reveal her thoughts to us… you are the first to warn me… to send me a telegram!… Eh? How, illuminated by this day, your whole conduct becomes clear! You cannot refuse her the right to go and join her father… She would go without you!… And, as nothing is yet lost, you have the hope of making up for everything… During the journey, your wife continues to have alternations of faith and terror. She gives you her revolver, in a sort of delirium of her imagination, which could be summed up in this sentence: If it is Darzac, let him defend me! and, if it is Larsan, let him kill me!… But let me stop not knowing! At the Rochers Rouges, you feel her so far from you again that, to bring her back, you show her Larsan!… You see, my dear Monsieur Darzac! All this was arranged very well in my thoughts… and there was nothing, even your appearance of Larsan, at Menton, during your journey from Darzac to Cannes, while you were coming to meet us, that could not be explained in the most stupid way in the world. You would have taken the train ahead of your friends at Menton-Garavan, but you would have gotten off at the next station, which is Menton, and there, after a necessary short stay in your urban wardrobe, you would have appeared in a state of Larsan to your same friends who had come for a walk in Menton. The next train would take you to Cannes, where we met. Only, as you had, that day, the unpleasantness of hearing, from the very mouth of Arthur Rance who had also come to meet us in Nice, that Madame Darzac had not seen Larsan this time and that your morning exhibition had been of no use, you obliged yourself, that same evening, to show him Larsan, under the very windows of the Tour Carrée, in front of which Tullio’s boat was passing!… And see, my dear Monsieur Darzac, how things, apparently the most complicated, suddenly became simple and logically explicable if, by chance, my suspicions were to be confirmed! At these words, I myself, who had nevertheless seen and touched Australia, could not help but shudder as I looked almost with pity at Robert Darzac, as one looks at a poor man on the point of becoming the victim of some terrible miscarriage of justice. And all the others around me shuddered equally for him or because of him, for Rouletabille’s arguments were becoming so terribly possible that everyone was wondering how, after having so well established the possibility of guilt, he was going to be able to conclude that he was innocent. As for Robert Darzac, after having mounted the most sombre agitation, he had more or less calmed down, listening to the young man, and it seemed to me that he opened those astonishing, extravagant eyes, with a frantic, but very interested look, that the accused have in the dock when they hear the Attorney General deliver one of those admirable indictments that convince them themselves of a crime that, sometimes, they have not committed! The voice with which he managed to pronounce the following words was no longer a voice of anger, but of curious terror, the voice of a man who says to himself: My God! what danger, without knowing it, have I been able to escape! But since you no longer have these suspicions, sir, he said, having fallen back into a singular calm, I would like to know, after all you have just told me, what could have driven them away? — To drive them away, sir, I needed certainty! Proof simple, but absolute, which showed me in a striking way which of the two Darzac manifestations was Larsan! This proof was fortunately provided to me by you, sir, at the very hour when you closed the circle, the circle in which the extra body had been found ! The day when, having affirmed – which was the truth – that you had pulled the bolts of your apartment as soon as you returned to your room, you lied to us by not revealing to us that you had entered this room around six o’clock and not, as Father Bernier said and as we had been able to verify ourselves, at five o’clock! You were then the only one with me to know that the Darzac of five o’clock, of whom we spoke to you as if of yourself, was not yourself! And you said nothing! And don’t pretend that you attached no importance to that five o’clock hour, since it explained everything to you, since it taught you that another Darzac had come to the Square Tower at that hour, the real one! So, after your false astonishment, how silent you are! Your silence has lied to us! And what interest would the real Darzac have had in hiding that another Darzac, who could have been Larsan, had come before you to hide in the Square Tower? Only Larsan had an interest in hiding from us that there was another Darzac besides himself! OF THE TWO DARZAC MANIFESTATIONS, THE FALSE WAS NECESSARILY THE ONE WHO LIED! Thus my suspicions were banished by certainty! LARSAN WAS YOU! AND THE MAN WHO WAS IN THE CUPBOARD WAS DARZAC! — You’re lying! shouted, leaping at Rouletabille the one I could not believe to be Larsan. But we had intervened and Rouletabille, who had lost none of his calm, stretched out his arm and said: He’s still there!… Indescribable scene! Unforgettable moment! At Rouletabille’s gesture, the cupboard door had been pushed open by an invisible hand, as happened on the terrible evening that saw the mystery of the extra body… And the extra body itself appeared! Clamors of surprise, enthusiasm and terror filled the Square Tower. The Lady in Black gave a heart-rending cry: Robert!… Robert!… Robert! And it was a cry of joy. Two Darzacs were before us, so similar that anyone other than the Lady in Black could have been mistaken… But her heart did not deceive her, admitting that her reason, after Rouletabille’s triumphant argument, could still have hesitated. Arms outstretched, she went towards the second Darzac manifestation which was coming down from the fatal cupboard… Mathilde’s face radiated with a new life; her eyes, her sad eyes whose lost gaze I had so often seen around the other, fixed on this one with a magnificent, but calm and sure joy. It was him! It was the one she thought lost, and whom she had dared to look for on the other’s face, and whom she had not found on the other’s face, that of which she had accused, for days and nights, his poor madness! As for the one whom, until the last minute, I had not been able to believe guilty, as for the fierce man who, unveiled and hunted, suddenly saw the living proof of his crime rising up before him, he attempted again one of those gestures which, so often, had saved him. Surrounded on all sides, he dared to flee. Then we understood the audacious comedy which, for the last few minutes, he had been giving us. Having no longer any doubt about the outcome of the discussion he was having with Rouletabille, he had this incredible power over himself to let nothing show, and also this ultimate skill to prolong the dispute and to allow Rouletabille to develop at leisure an argument at the end of which he knew he would find his downfall, but during which he would discover, perhaps, the means of his escape. Thus he maneuvered so well that, at the moment when we were advancing towards the other Darzac, we could not prevent him from throwing himself with a leap into the room which had served as Madame Darzac’s bedroom and violently slamming the door shut with lightning speed! We realized that he had disappeared when it was too late to foil his ruse. Rouletabille, during the previous scene, had thought only of guarding the corridor door and he had not noticed that each movement made by the false Darzac, as he was gradually convicted of imposture, brought him closer to Madame Darzac’s room . The reporter attached no importance to these movements, knowing that this room offered no escape for Larsan. And yet, when the bandit was behind this door, which closed his last refuge, our confusion increased in significant proportions . It was as if, all of a sudden, we had become frantic. We were banging! We were shouting! We were thinking of all the strokes of genius in his inexplicable escapes! He’s going to escape!… He’s going to escape us again!… Arthur Rance was the most enraged. Mrs. Edith, with her nervous wrist, crushed my arm, so impressed was she by the scene. No one paid attention to the Lady in Black and Robert Darzac who, in the midst of this storm, seemed to have forgotten everything, even the noise being made around them. They didn’t speak a word, but they looked at each other as if they were discovering a new world, one where people love each other. Now, they had just found it again, thanks to Rouletabille. He had opened the door to the corridor and called the three servants to the rescue. They arrived with their rifles. But axes were what was needed. The door was solid and barricaded with thick bolts . Father Jacques went to get a beam that we used as a battering ram. We all set about it, and finally, we saw the door give way. Our anxiety was at its peak. In vain we kept telling ourselves that we were about to enter a room where there were only walls and bars… we expected everything, or rather nothing, for it was above all the thought of Larsan’s disappearance, his flight, his dissociation from matter that haunted us and made us no longer mentally ill. When the door began to give way, Rouletabille ordered the servants to take up their rifles, with the instruction, however, to use them only if it was impossible to capture him alive. Then he gave a last push with his shoulder and, the door having finally fallen, he entered the room first. We followed him. And behind him, on the threshold, we all stopped , so much did what we saw fill us with stupefaction. First, Larsan was there! Oh! he was visible! And he was recognizable! He had torn off his false beard; he had taken off his Darzac mask; he had taken on the clean-shaven, pale face of Frédéric Larsan of the Château du Glandier. And he was the only one to be seen in the room. He was sitting quietly in an armchair in the middle of the room, looking at us with his large, calm, fixed eyes. His arms stretched out over the arms of the armchair. His head rested on the back. It was as if he were granting us an audience and waiting for us to present our demands. I even thought I could make out a slight smile on his ironic lip. Rouletabille came forward again: Larsan, he said… Larsan, do you surrender?… But Larsan did not reply. Then Rouletabille touched his hand and face, and we realized that Larsan was dead. Rouletabille showed us on his finger the setting of a ring that was open and which must have contained a devastating poison. Arthur Rance listened to the heartbeat and declared that it was all over. Whereupon, Rouletabille asked us all to leave the Tour Carrée and forget about the dead man. I’ll take care of everything, he said gravely. It’s one body too many, no one will notice its disappearance! And he gave Walter an order which was translated by Arthur Rance: Walter, you will bring me the bag of the extra body immediately! Then he made a gesture which we all obeyed. And we left him alone in front of his father’s corpse. Immediately, we had to carry Mr. Darzac, who was feeling unwell, into old Bob’s living room. But it was only a passing weakness and, as soon as he opened his eyes again, he smiled at Mathilde who was leaning over him with her beautiful face, which showed the terror of losing a beloved husband at the very moment when she had just, by a combination of circumstances that still remained mysterious, found him. He was able to convince her that he was in no danger and he asked her to leave, as well as Mrs. Edith. When the two women had left us, Mr. Arthur Rance and I gave him care which informed us first of all about his curious state of health. For, finally, how could a man whom each of us had believed dead and who had been locked up, groaning, in a bag, have emerged, thus alive, from the fatal closet? When we had opened his clothes and undone, in order to redo it, the bandage which concealed the wound which he bore to the chest, we knew at least that this wound, by a chance which is not as rare as one might think, after having caused an almost immediate coma, presented no gravity. The bullet which had struck Darzac, in the midst of the fierce struggle which he had had to sustain against Larsan, had flattened itself on the sternum, causing a strong external hemorrhage and painfully shaking the whole organism, but in no way suspending any of the vital functions. We had seen wounded of this order walking among the living a few hours after the latter had believed to be witnessing their last moments. And I myself remembered—which finally reassured me— the adventure of one of my good friends, the journalist L…, who, having just fought a duel with the musician V…, was in despair on the field at having killed his adversary with a bullet in the chest, without the latter even having had time to fire. Suddenly the dead man rose up and lodged a bullet in my friend’s thigh that nearly led to amputation and kept him in bed for many months. As for the musician who had fallen back into his coma, he came out the next day to go for a walk on the boulevard. He too, like Darzac, had been struck in the sternum. [4] As we were finishing dressing Darzac, Father Jacques came to close the living room door behind us, which had remained ajar, and I was wondering why the man had taken this precaution when we heard footsteps in the corridor and a strange noise like that of a body being dragged across a floor… And I thought of Larsan, and the bag of the extra body, and of Rouletabille! Leaving Arthur Rance at M. Darzac’s side, I ran to the window. I had not been mistaken and I saw the sinister procession appear in the courtyard . It was now almost night. A propitious darkness surrounded everything . I could, however, make out Walter, who had been placed on sentry duty under the gardener’s postern gate. He was looking towards the well, ready, obviously, to block the passage of anyone who might then feel the need to enter the Cour du Téméraire… … Heading towards the well, I saw Rouletabille and Father Jacques… two shadows bent over another shadow… a shadow I knew well and which, one night of horror, had contained another body. The bag seemed heavy. They lifted it to the edge of the well. Then I could see again that the well was open… yes, the wooden board that usually closed it had been thrown aside. Rouletabille jumped onto the edge, and then entered the well… He went in without hesitation… he seemed to know this path. Shortly after, he sank in and his head disappeared. Then Father Jacques pushed the bag into the well and leaned over the edge, still supporting the bag that I could no longer see.
Then he straightened up and closed the well, carefully replacing the tray and securing the fittings, and they made a noise that I suddenly remembered, the noise that had so intrigued me the evening when, before the discovery of Australia, I had rushed towards a shadow that had suddenly disappeared and where I had struck my nose against the closed door of the Château Neuf… I want to see… until the last minute, I want to see, I want to know… Too many unexplained things still worry me!… I only have the most important part of the truth, but I don’t have the whole truth or rather I am missing something that would explain the truth… I left the Tour Carrée, I returned to my room at the Château Neuf, I stood at my window and my gaze sank deep into the shadows that covered the sea. Thick night, jealous darkness. Nothing. So I strained to hear, but I didn’t even hear the sound of the oars on the water… Suddenly… far away… very far away… in any case, it seemed to me that this was happening very far out at sea, way up there on the horizon… Or rather opposite the horizon, I mean in the narrow red band that decorated the night, the only memory we had left of the sun… … Into this narrow red band something entered, dark and small ; but, as I could only see this thing, it seemed enormous, formidable to me . It was the shadow of a boat that glided with an almost automatic movement over the water, then it stopped, and I saw Rouletabille’s shadow rise up, standing there. I distinguished him, I recognized him as if he had been ten meters away from me… His slightest gestures stood out with fantastic precision on the red band… Oh! it didn’t take long! He bent down and stood up again immediately, lifting a burden that merged with him… And then the burden slid into the darkness and the small shadow of the man reappeared all by itself, bent down again, bent over, remained motionless for a moment, and then sank into the boat which resumed its automatic sliding until it had completely left the red band… And the red band disappeared in its turn… Rouletabille had just entrusted Larsan’s corpse to the flow of Hercules. Epilogue Nice… Cannes… Saint-Raphaël… Toulon!… I watch without regret all these stages of my return journey pass before my eyes… The day after so many horrors, I am eager to leave the South, to return to Paris, to immerse myself in my affairs… and also… and above all, I am eager to find myself face to face with Rouletabille who is locked up there, two steps away from me, with the Lady in Black. Until the last minute, that is to say until Marseille where they will separate, I do not want to disturb their sweet, tender or desperate confidences, their plans for the future, their last farewells… Despite all of Mathilde’s prayers , Rouletabille wanted to leave, to return to Paris and his newspaper. He has this supreme heroism of stepping aside for the husband. The Lady in Black cannot resist Rouletabille; he has dictated his conditions… He wants Mr. and Mrs. Darzac to continue their honeymoon as if nothing extraordinary had happened at the Red Rocks. It is not the same Darzac who began it, it is another Darzac who will finish it, this happy journey, but for everyone Darzac will have been the same without any break in continuity. Mr. and Mrs. Darzac are married. Civil law unites them. As for religious law, there are accommodations with the Pope, as Rouletabille says, and they will both find in Rome the means to regularize their situation if it is proven that it needs it and to appease the scruples of their conscience. May Mr. and Mrs. Darzac be happy, definitely happy: they have earned it!… And perhaps no one would ever have suspected the horrible tragedy of the bag of one body too many if we did not find ourselves today when I write these lines, after years which have acquired for us the statute of limitations and freed us from all the hazards of a scandalous trial, in the necessity of making known to the public the whole mystery of the Red Rocks, as I once had to lift the veils which covered the secrets of the Glandier. The fault lies with that abominable Brignolles who is aware of many things and who, from the depths of America where he has taken refuge, wants to blackmail us. He threat of a dreadful libel, and as Professor Stangerson has now descended to this nothingness where, according to his theory, everything, every day, is lost, but which, every day, creates everything, we thought it best to take the initiative and tell the whole truth. Brignolles! What game had he been playing in this second and terrible affair? At the time I found myself—it was the day after the final drama—on the train taking me back to Paris, a stone’s throw from the Lady in Black and Rouletabille who were embracing each other and weeping, I was still wondering! How many questions I asked myself as I pressed my forehead against the window of the corridor of my sleeping car… A word, a sentence from Rouletabille would obviously have explained everything to me… but he had hardly thought of me since the day before… Since the day before, the Lady in Black and he had not left each other… We had said goodbye, even to the She-Wolf, to Professor Stangerson… Robert Darzac had left immediately for Bordighera where Mathilde was to join him… Arthur Rance and Mrs. Edith had accompanied us to the station. Mrs. Edith, contrary to what I had hoped, showed no sadness at my departure. I attributed this indifference to the fact that Prince Galitch had come to join us on the platform. She had given him news of old Bob, which was excellent, and had paid no further attention to me. I had felt real sorrow over this. And, here, it is time, I believe, to make a confession to the reader. I would never have let him guess the feelings I felt for Mrs. Edith if, a few years later, after the death of Arthur Rance, which was followed by real tragedies, which I may have to talk about one day, I had not married the blonde, melancholy, and terrible Edith. We are approaching Marseilles… Marseilles!… The farewells were heartbreaking. The Lady in Black and Rouletabille said nothing to each other. And, when the train had moved, she remained on the platform, without a gesture, her arms dangling, standing in her dark veils, like a statue of mourning and pain. Before me, Rouletabille’s shoulders were sobbing. Lyon!… We can’t sleep… we went down to the platform… we remember our time here… A few days ago… when we were running to the aid of the unfortunate woman… We are plunged back into the drama… Rouletabille now speaks… speaks… obviously he is trying to distract himself, to stop thinking about his pain which made him cry like a little child for hours… My old man, that Brignolles was a bastard! he told me in a reproachful tone which almost succeeded in making me believe that I had always considered this bandit to be an honest man… And then he tells me everything, the whole enormous thing which is contained in so few lines. Larsan had needed a relative of Darzac to have him locked up in a home for the mentally ill! And he had discovered Brignolles! He couldn’t have come at a better time. The two men understood each other immediately. We know how simple it is, even today, to have a person, whoever they may be, locked up within the four walls of a shed. The will of a relative and the signature of a doctor are still sufficient in France, however improbable the thing may seem, for this sinister and rapid task. A signature never embarrassed Larsan. He made a forgery and Brignolles, handsomely paid, took care of everything. When Brignolles came to Paris, he was already part of the scheme. Larsan had his plan: to take Darzac’s place before the wedding. The eye accident had been, as I myself had thought, one of the most unnatural. Brignolles’s mission was to arrange things so that Darzac’s eyes would be sufficiently damaged as soon as possible so that Larsan, who would replace him, could have this formidable asset in his hand: the black glasses! and, in the absence of glasses, which one cannot always wear, the right to shade! Darzac’s departure for the South was to strangely facilitate the plan of the two bandits. It was only at the end of his stay in San Remo that Darzac had been, through the care of Larsan, who had not stopped watching him, truly taken with the mentally ill home. He had been helped naturally in this circumstance by this special police, which has nothing to do with the official police, and which puts itself at the disposal of families in the most unpleasant cases, which require as much discretion as speed in execution… One day he was walking in the mountains… The mentally ill home was located in the mountains, a stone’s throw from the Italian border… everything had been prepared for a long time to receive the unfortunate man. Brignolles, before leaving for Paris, had come to an agreement with the director and had presented his attorney, Larsan… There are directors of mentally ill homes who do not ask for too many explanations, provided that they are in compliance with the law… and that they are well paid… and it was done quickly… and these are things that happen every day… But how did you find out all this? I asked Rouletabille. “You remember, my friend,” the reporter replied, “that little piece of paper you brought me back to the Château d’Hercule, the day when, without giving me any warning, you took it upon yourself to follow the trail of that excellent Brignolles who was coming for a little tour in the South. That piece of paper, which bore the letterhead of the Sorbonne and the two syllables bonnet…, was to be of the greatest help to me. First of all, the circumstances in which you discovered it, since you picked it up after the passage of Larsan and Brignolles, made it precious to me. And then, the place where he had been thrown was almost a revelation to me when I began to look for the real Darzac, after I had become certain that it was he, the extra body that had been put and taken away in the bag!… And Rouletabille, in the clearest way, took me through the different phases of his understanding of the mystery that was to remain incomprehensible to us until the end. First there was the brutal revelation that came to him about the drying of the paint, and then this other formidable revelation that came to him about the lie of one of the two Darzac manifestations! Bernier, in the interrogation that Rouletabille subjected him to before the return of the man who took the bag, reported the words of the lie of the one that everyone takes for Darzac! This one was astonished in front of Bernier. This one did not tell Bernier that the Darzac to whom Bernier opened the door at five o’clock was not him! He is already hiding this Darzac counter-demonstration and he can only have an interest in hiding it if this demonstration is the real one! He wants to conceal that there is or has been another Darzac in the world who is the real one! This is as clear as daylight! Rouletabille is dazzled by it; he is reeling… he would be in a bad way… his teeth are chattering!… But perhaps… he hopes… perhaps Bernier was mistaken… perhaps he misunderstood the words and the astonishment of M. Darzac… Rouletabille will question M. Darzac himself and he will see!… Ah! Let him come back quickly!… It is up to M. Darzac himself to close the circle!… How impatiently he awaits it!… And, when he returns, how he clings to the faintest hope… Have you looked at the man’s face? he asks, and when this Darzac answers him: No!… I didn’t look at it… Rouletabille does not hide his joy… It would have been so easy for Larsan to answer: I saw it! It was indeed Larsan’s face!… And the young man had not understood that this was a final piece of malice from the bandit, a deliberate negligence that fitted so well into his role: the real Darzac would not have acted otherwise! He would have gotten rid of the horrible remains without wanting to look at it again… But what could all the artifices of a Larsan do against the reasoning, a single reasoning of Rouletabille?… The false Darzac, on the very clear questioning of Rouletabille, closes the circle. ment!… Rouletabille, now, knows!… Besides, his eyes, which always see behind his reason, see now!… But what is he going to do?… Reveal Larsan at once, who, perhaps, will escape him? Tell his mother at the same time that she is remarried to Larsan and that she helped to kill Darzac? No! No! He needs to think, to know, to plan!… He wants to act with certainty! He asks for twenty-four hours!… He ensures the safety of the Lady in Black by having her live in Mr. Stangerson’s apartment and making her swear in secret that she will not leave the castle. He deceives Larsan by making him understand that he firmly believes in old Bob’s guilt . And, as Walter returns to the castle with the empty bag… He has one hope left… That perhaps Darzac is not dead!… Finally, dead or alive, he runs to look for him… Of Darzac, he has a revolver, the one he found in the Square Tower… a brand new revolver, the type of which he has already noticed at a gunsmith in Menton… He goes to this gunsmith… he shows the revolver… he learns that this weapon was bought the previous morning by a man whose description he is given: soft hat, loose, flowing gray overcoat, long beard like a collar… And then he immediately loses this trail… But he does not linger there!… He follows another trail, or rather he picks up another one which had led Walter to the well of Castillon. There, he does what Walter did not do. The latter, once he had found the bag, had no longer concerned himself with anything and had gone back down to the fort of Hercules. Now, Rouletabille, he continued to follow the trail… And he noticed that this trail (formed by the exceptional spacing of the mark of the two wheels of the small English cart) instead of going back down towards Menton, after having touched the well of Castillon, went back down the other side of the mountain slope towards Sospel. Sospel! Wasn’t Brignolles reported as having gone down to Sospel? Brignolles!… Rouletabille remembered my expedition… What was Brignolles doing in these parts!… His presence must have been closely linked to the drama. On the other hand, the disappearance and reappearance of the real Darzac attested that there had been a kidnapping… But where… Brignolles, who was in league with Larsan, must not have made the trip to Paris for nothing! Perhaps he had come, at that dangerous moment, to watch over that very sequestration!… Thinking thus and pursuing his logical thought, Rouletabille had questioned the owner of the inn in the Castillon tunnel, who confessed to him that he had been very intrigued the day before by the passage of a man who answered singularly to the description of the gunsmith’s client. This man had come into his house to drink; he seemed very impaired and his manners were so strange that one could have taken him for an escapee from the sanatorium… Rouletabille had the sensation that he was burning, and, in an indifferent voice: So you have a sanatorium around here? Why yes, replied the owner of the inn, the sanatorium of Mount Barbonnet! It was here that the two famous syllables bonnet took on their full meaning… From now on, Rouletabille had no more doubt that the real Darzac had been locked up by the fake as a mentally ill person in the health center on Mount Barbonnet. He jumped into his car and had himself driven to Sospel, which is at the foot of the mountain. Didn’t he run the risk of meeting Brignolles there?… But he didn’t see him and immediately took the road to Mount Barbonnet and the health center. He was determined to know everything, to dare everything. Thanks to his position as a reporter for the newspaper L’Époque, he would be able to make the director of this home for mentally ill people speak for professors at the Sorbonne!… And perhaps… perhaps… he would learn what had definitely happened to Robert Darzac… because, from the moment the bag had been found without the body… from the moment the trail of the little car led down to Sospel where, moreover, it was lost… from the moment Larsan had not seen fit to get rid of before Darzac by death, by throwing him, in the sack, to the bottom of the Castillon well, perhaps it had been in his interest to take Darzac, still alive, back to the sanatorium! And Rouletabille thus thought quite reasonable things, Darzac alive was indeed much more useful to Larsan than Darzac dead!… What a hostage for the day when Mathilde would realize his imposture!… This hostage made him the master of all the treaties that could ensue between the unfortunate woman and the bandit. Darzac dead, Mathilde would kill Larsan with his hands or deliver him to justice! And Rouletabille had guessed everything well. At the door of the sanatorium , he bumped into Brignolles. Then, without consideration, he jumped at his throat and threatened him with his revolver. Brignolles was a coward. He shouted to Rouletabille to spare him, that Darzac was alive! A quarter of an hour later, Rouletabille knew everything. But the revolver had not been enough, for Brignolles, who hated death, loved life and everything that made life pleasant, especially money. Rouletabille had no trouble convincing him that he was lost if he did not betray Larsan, but that he would have much to gain if he helped the Darzac family to emerge from this tragedy without scandal. They came to an understanding and both returned to the nursing home where the director received them and listened to their speeches with a certain stupor that soon transformed into fear, then into immense kindness, which resulted in the immediate release of Robert Darzac. Darzac, by a miraculous stroke of luck that I have already explained, was barely suffering from a wound that could have been fatal. Rouletabille, in a state of mad joy, seized it and brought it back to Menton at once. I’ll skip over the effusions. Brignolles had been left behind by arranging to meet him in Paris for the settlement of accounts. On the way, Rouletabille learned from Darzac that the latter, in his prison, had come across a local newspaper a few days earlier which reported the passage to the Fort d’Hercule of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac, whose marriage had just been celebrated in Paris! It had taken him no more to understand the source of all his misfortunes and to guess who had had the fantastic audacity to take his place beside an unfortunate woman whose still wavering mind made the craziest undertaking possible. This discovery had given him unknown strength . After stealing the director’s overcoat to hide his insane uniform and having taken a hundred francs from his purse , he had managed, at the risk of breaking his neck, to scale a wall which, in any other circumstances, would have seemed impassable. And he had gone down to Menton; and he had run to the fort of Hercules; and he had seen, with his own eyes, Darzac! He had seen himself!… He had given himself a few hours to look so much like himself that the other Darzac himself would have been mistaken!… His plan was simple. To enter the fort of Hercules as if it were his own home, to enter Mathilde’s apartment and show himself to the other, to confound him, in front of Mathilde!… He had questioned people from the coast and learned where the couple lived: at the back of the Tour Carrée… The couple!… All that Darzac had suffered until then was nothing compared to what these two words: their couple… made him suffer!… This suffering was not to cease until the moment when he saw again, during the bodily demonstration of the possibility of bodies too many, the Lady in Black!… Then he had understood!… she would never have dared to look at him like that… She would never have uttered such a cry of joy, she would never have recognized him so victoriously, if, for a second, in body and in spirit, she had, victim of the other’s evil spells, been the other’s wife!… They had been separated… but they had never lost each other! Before putting his plan into execution, he had gone to buy a revolver in Menton, then got rid of his overcoat which could have lost him, if anyone were looking for him, and had made the acquisition of a jacket which, in color and cut, could recall the costume of the other Darzac, and had waited until five o’clock for the moment to act. He had hidden behind the Villa Lucie, at the very top of the Boulevard de Garavan, at the top of a small mound from where he could see everything that was happening in the castle. At five o’clock, he had risked it, knowing that Darzac was in the Tour du Téméraire, and being therefore sure that he would not find him, at that moment, at the bottom of the Tour Carrée which was his goal. When he had passed by us and had seen us both, he had had a strong desire to shout to us who he was, but he had managed all the same to restrain himself, wanting to be recognized only by the Lady in Black! This hope alone sustained his steps. That alone was worth living for, and, an hour later, when he had at his disposal the life of Larsan who, in the same room, with his back to him , was doing his correspondence, he had not even been tempted by revenge. After so many trials, there was still no room in his heart for Larsan’s intolerance, so full was he forever of the love of the Lady in Black! Poor dear pitiful Mr. Darzac!… We know the rest of the adventure. What I did not know was how the real Mr. Darzac had penetrated a second time into the fort of Hercules, and had reached a second time even in the closet. And it was then that I learned that the very night he brought M. Darzac back to Menton, Rouletabille, who had learned from old Bob’s flight that there was an exit to the castle through the well, had, with the help of a boat, brought M. Darzac back into the castle, by the same route that old Bob had left! Rouletabille wanted to be master of the hour at which he would confound and strike Larsan. That night, it was too late to act, but he fully intended to finish with Larsan the following night. The trick was to hide M. Darzac one day on the peninsula. With the help of Bernier, he had found him a small, abandoned and quiet corner in the Château Neuf. As he passed by, I could not help interrupting Rouletabille with a cry that had the gift of making him burst into a hearty burst of laughter. So that was it! I cried. “Why, yes,” he said… “that was it.” —So that’s why I discovered Australia that evening! That evening, it was the real Darzac I had in front of me!… And I didn’t understand a thing about it!… Because after all, it wasn’t just Australia!… There was still the beard! And it was still there!… It was still there!… Oh! I understand everything now! — You took your time… replied Rouletabille placidly… That night, my friend, you really bothered us. When you appeared in the Cour du Téméraire, M. Darzac had just escorted me back to my well. I only had time to drop the wooden tray on me while M. Darzac escaped into the Château Neuf… But when you were in bed, after your experience with the beard, he came back to see me and we were quite embarrassed. If, by chance, you spoke of this adventure the next morning to the other Mr. Darzac, believing you were dealing with the Darzac of Château Neuf, it would be a catastrophe. And yet, I did not want to give in to the entreaties of Mr. Darzac, who wanted to go and tell you the whole truth. I was afraid that, knowing it, you would not be able to conceal it sufficiently during the following day. You have a rather impulsive nature, Sainclair, and the sight of a villain usually causes you a laudable irritation which, at the moment, could have harmed us. And then, the other Darzac was so clever!… So I decided to risk it without saying anything to you. I was to return ostentatiously to the château the next morning… We had to arrange things, between now and then, so that you would not meet Darzac. That is why, from the first hour, I sent you to fish for clams! — Oh! I understand!… — You always end up understanding, Sainclair! I hope you don’t hold it against me for that fishing trip that cost you an hour charming Mrs. Edith… — Speaking of Mrs. Edith, why did you take the malicious pleasure of putting me into a foolish rage?… I asked. — To have the right to unleash mine and forbid you from speaking to me and to Mr. Darzac from now on!… I repeat that I did not want you to speak to Mr. Darzac after your adventure of the night!… You must, however, continue to understand, Sainclair. — I continue, my friend… — My compliments… — And yet, I cried, there is still one thing I do not understand!… The death of Father Bernier!… Who killed Bernier? — It was the cane! said Rouletabille gloomily… It’s that damned cane… — I thought it was the oldest scraper… — There were two of them: the cane and the oldest scraper… But it was the cane that decided the death… The oldest scraper only executed… I looked at Rouletabille, wondering if, this time, I was not witnessing the end of this fine intelligence. You never understood, Sainclair—among other things— why, the day after I had understood everything, I dropped Arthur Rance’s cane in front of Mr. and Mrs. Darzac. It was because I hoped Mr. Darzac would pick it up. Do you
remember, Sainclair, Larsan’s cane with a raven’s beak, and the gesture that Larsan made with his cane, at Glandier!… He had a way of holding his cane that was all his own… I wanted to see… see this Darzac holding a cane with a raven’s beak like Larsan!… My reasoning was sound!… But I wanted to see, with my own eyes, Darzac with Larsan’s gesture … And this fixed idea pursued me until the next day, even after my visit to the home for the mentally ill!… even when I had hugged the real Darzac, I still wanted to see the fake one with Larsan’s gestures !… Ah! To see him suddenly brandish his cane like the bandit… forget the disguise of his height, for a second!… straighten his falsely bent shoulders… Hit me! Hit the Mortola coat of arms!… with great blows of the cane, dear, dear Mr. Darzac!… And he hit!… and I saw his full height!… all of it!… And another man saw it too, and died from it… It was poor Bernier, who was so struck by it that he staggered and fell so unfortunately on the oldest scraper, that he died from it!… He died from having picked up the scraper that had doubtless fallen from old Bob’s frock coat and that he must have been carrying to the professor’s office at the Round Tower… He died from having seen again, at the same moment, Larsan’s cane!… he died from having seen again, with all his height and all his gestures, Larsan!… All battles, Sainclair, have their innocent victims… We were silent for a moment. And then I could not help telling him how resentful I was that he had so little confidence in me. I couldn’t forgive him for trying to deceive me and everyone about his old Bob. He smiled. There’s one who didn’t concern me!… I was quite sure that he wasn’t the one in the bag… However, the night before he was fished out, as soon as I had put the real Darzac in the Château Neuf under Bernier’s supervision , and had left the well gallery after leaving my own boat there for my plans for the next day… a boat I had gotten from Paolo the fisherman, a friend of the Executioner of the Sea, I swam back to shore. I had naturally undressed and was carrying my clothes in a bundle on my head. As I was landing, I came across Paolo in the shadows, who was surprised to see me taking a bath at that hour, and who invited me to come and fish for octopus with him. The event allowed me to circle the castle of Hercules all night and keep an eye on it. I accepted. And then I learned that the boat I had been using was Tullio’s. The Sea Executioner had suddenly become rich and had announced to everyone that he was retiring to his native land. He had sold some precious shells to the old scholar for a very high price, he said, and, in fact, For several days, he had been seen with the old scholar every day. Paolo knew that before going to Venice, Tullio would stop in San Remo. For me, old Bob’s adventure was becoming clearer: he had needed a boat to leave the castle, and this boat was precisely that of the Executioner of the Sea. I asked for Tullio’s address in San Remo and sent Arthur Rance there, by means of an anonymous letter, convinced that Tullio could tell us about old Bob’s fate. In fact, old Bob had paid Tullio to accompany him that night to the cave and then disappeared… It was out of pity for the old professor that I decided to warn Arthur Rance in this way; some accident might have happened to his relative. As for me, on the contrary, I only asked one thing: that this exquisite old man not return until I had finished with Larsan, always wanting to make the false Darzac believe that old Bob was my main concern. So, when I learned that he had just been found, I was only half-rejoiced, but I will admit that the news of his chest wound, because of the chest wound of the man with the bag, caused me no pain. Thanks to it, I could hope, for a few more hours, to continue my game. — And why didn’t you stop it at once? — Don’t you understand that it was impossible for me to make Larsan’s body disappear in broad daylight? I needed all day to prepare for his disappearance in the night! But what a day we had with Bernier’s death! The arrival of the gendarmes was not calculated to simplify things. I waited to act until they had disappeared! The first shot you heard when we were in the Tour Carrée was to warn me that the last gendarme had just left the Albo inn, at the Pointe de Garibaldi, the second that the customs officers, back in their cabins, were having supper and that the sea was clear!… — Say, Rouletabille, I said, looking him straight into his clear eyes, when you left Tullio’s boat at the end of the well gallery for your projects, did you already know what that boat would carry the next day? Rouletabille lowered his head: No… he said dully… and slowly… no… don’t believe that, Sainclair… I didn’t think she would bring back a corpse… after all, he was my father!… I thought she would bring back one too many for the home for the mentally ill!… You see, Sainclair, I had only condemned him to prison… forever… But he killed himself… It was God who willed it!… may God forgive him!… We didn’t say another word all night. I wanted to give Laroche something hot to eat, but he feverishly refused me breakfast. He bought all the morning papers and rushed, head down, into the events of the day. The pages were full of news from Russia. A vast conspiracy against the Tsar had just been discovered in Petersburg. The facts recounted were so astounding that it was hard to believe them. I unfolded L’Époque and read in large capital letters in the first column of the first page: Departure of Joseph Rouletabille for Russia and, below: The Tsar demands it! I passed the newspaper to Rouletabille who shrugged his shoulders and said: Bah!… Without asking my opinion!… What does my director want me to do there?… He doesn’t interest me, the Tsar… with the revolutionaries… that’s his business!… it’s not mine!… In Russia?… I’m going to ask for leave, yes!… I need to rest, me!… Sainclair, my friend, will you?… We’ll go and rest together somewhere!… — No! No! I cried with a certain haste, thank you!… I’ve had enough of resting with you!… I have a mad desire to work… — As you wish, my friend! I don’t force people… And, as we approached Paris, he washed up a bit, emptied his pockets and was suddenly surprised to find in one of them a very red envelope which had got there without him being able to explain how. Ah! bah! he said, and he unsealed it. And he burst into a great burst of laughter. I found my gay Rouletabille again, I wanted to know the cause of this marvelous hilarity. But I’m leaving! old fellow! he said to me. But I’m leaving!… Ah! as long as it’s like that!… I’m leaving!… I’m taking the train this evening… — To where?… — To Saint Petersburg!… And he handed me the letter where I read: We know, sir, that your newspaper has decided to send you to Russia, following the incidents which are currently shaking up the court of Tsarkoye Selo… We are obliged to warn you that you will not arrive in Petersburg alive. Signed: THE CENTRAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE. I looked at Rouletabille, whose joy was overflowing more and more: Prince Galitch was at the station, I said simply. He understood me, shrugged his shoulders indifferently, and left: Ah! Good, old fellow! We’re going to have fun! And that was all I could get out of him despite my protests. That evening, when, at the Gare du Nord, I hugged him, begging him not to leave us and crying my desperate tears as a friend… He was still laughing, he kept repeating: Ah! Good, we’re going to have fun!… And that was his last goodbye. The next day, I resumed my business at the Palace. The first colleagues I met were Maîtres Henri Robert and André Hesse. Did you have a good vacation? they asked me. “Ah! Excellent!” I replied. But I looked so bad that they both dragged me to the refreshment bar. END [1] Here is a sketch of the Mediterranean coast, between Menton and the tip of Mortola, indicating the location of the Red Rocks and the Hercules Peninsula: [2] Historical. [3] Historical. [4] Historical. Thus ends The Perfume of the Lady in Black, a breathtaking fresco in which Gaston Leroux once again demonstrates his art of maintaining suspense until the last moment. Rouletabille, with his implacable logic and extraordinary insight, was able to thwart the darkest traps and reveal the secrets buried behind appearances. This novel, a true masterpiece of French detective literature, reminds us that the truth, even hidden under the most intoxicating perfumes, always ends up coming out. Thank you for sharing this literary journey with us. If this story captivated you, do not hesitate to explore other treasures from Leroux’s pen and come back for new exciting adventures on our channel.
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