XII. A Knock-out Blow
The staff of the Royal Palace Hotel were just finishing dinner, and the greatest animation prevailed in the vast white-tiled servants' hall. The tone of the conversation varied at different tables, for the servants jealously observed a strict order of precedence among themselves, but the present topic was the same at all, the recent sensational robbery from Mme. Van den Rosen and the Princess Sonia Danidoff. At one table, smaller than the rest, a party of upper servants sat, under-managers or heads of departments: M. Louis was here, the general manager, M. Muller the superintendent of the second floor, M. Ludovic chief valet, M. Maurice head footman, M. Naud chief cashier, and last but not least Mlle. Jeanne the young lady cashier whose special duty it was to take charge of all the moneys and valuables deposited in the custody of the hotel by guests who wished to relieve themselves of the responsibility of keeping these in their own rooms. This small and select company was increased to-night by the addition of M. Henri Verbier, a man of about forty years of age, who had left the branch hotel at Cairo belonging to the same Company to join the staff at the Royal Palace Hotel in Paris.
"I am afraid, M. Verbier, you will form a very bad opinion of our establishment," said M. Muller to him. "It is really a pity that you should have left the Cairo branch and come here just when these robberies have put the Royal Palace under a cloud."
Henri Verbier smiled.
"You need not be afraid of my attaching too much importance to that," he said. "I've been in hotel life for fifteen years now, in one capacity or another, and, as you may suppose, I've known similar cases before, so they don't surprise me much. But one thing does surprise me, M. Muller, and that is that no clue has yet been found. I suppose the Board have done everything that can be done to trace the culprit? The reputation of the hotel is at stake."
"I should think they have looked for him!" said M. Louis, with a pathetic shrug of his shoulders. "Why, they even upbraided me for having had the door opened for the thief! Luckily I had a good friend in Muller, who admitted that he had been completely imposed upon and that he had given the order for the fellow, whom he supposed to be the second-floor waiter, to be allowed to go out. I knew nothing about it."
"And how was I to guess that the man was an impostor?" Muller protested.
"All the same," Henri Verbier retorted, "it is uncommonly annoying for everybody when things like that happen."
"So long as one has not committed any breach of orders, and so can't be made a scapegoat of, one mustn't grumble," M. Muller said. "Louis and I did exactly what our duty required and no one can say anything to us. The magistrate acknowledged that a week ago."
"He does not suspect anybody?" Henri Verbier asked.
"No: nobody," Muller answered.
M. Louis smiled.
"Yes, he did suspect somebody, Verbier," he said, "and that was your charming neighbour Mlle. Jeanne there."
Verbier turned towards the young cashier.
"What? The magistrate tried to make out that you were implicated in it?"
The girl had only spoken a few words during the whole of dinner, although Henri Verbier had made several gallant attempts to draw her into the general conversation. Now she laughingly protested.
"M. Louis only says that to tease me."
But M. Louis stuck to his guns.
"Not a bit of it, Mademoiselle Jeanne: I said it because it is the truth. The magistrate was on to you: I tell you he was! Why, M. Verbier, he cross-examined her for more than half an hour after the general confrontation, while he finished with Muller and me in less than ten minutes."
"Gad, M. Louis, a magistrate is a man, isn't he?" said Henri Verbier gallantly. "The magistrate may have enjoyed talking to Mlle. Jeanne more than he did to you, if I may suggest it without seeming rude."
There was a general laugh at this sally on the part of the new superintendent, and then M. Louis continued:
"Well, if he wanted to make up to her he went a funny way to work, for he made her angry."
"Did he really?" said Henri Verbier, turning again to the girl. "Why did the magistrate cross-examine you so much?"
The young cashier shrugged her shoulders.
"We have thrashed it out so often, M. Verbier! But I will tell you the whole story: during the morning of the day when the robbery was committed I had returned to Princess Sonia Danidoff the pocket-book containing a hundred and twenty thousand francs which she had given into my custody a few days before; I could not refuse to give it to her when she asked for it, could I? How was I to know that it would be stolen from her the same evening? Customers deposit their valuables with me and I hand them a receipt: they give me back the receipt when they demand their valuables, and all I have to do is comply with their request, without asking questions. Isn't that so?"
"But that was not what puzzled the magistrate I suppose," said Henri Verbier. "You are the custodian of all valuables, and you only complied strictly with your orders."
"Yes," M. Muller broke in, "but Mlle. Jeanne has only told you part of the story. Just fancy: only a few minutes before the robbery Mme. Van den Rosen had asked Mlle. Jeanne to take charge of her diamond necklace, and Mlle. Jeanne had refused!"
"That really was bad luck for you," said Henri Verbier to the girl with a laugh, "and I quite understand that the magistrate thought it rather odd."
"They are unkind!" she protested. "From the way they put it, M. Verbier, you really might think that I refused to take charge of Mme. Van den Rosen's jewellery in order to make things easy for the thief, which is as much as to say that I was his accomplice."
"That is precisely what the magistrate did think," M. Louis interpolated.
The girl took no notice of the interruption, but went on with her explanation to Henri Verbier.
"What happened was this: the rule is that I am at the disposal of customers, to take charge of deposits or to return them to the owners, until nine p.m., and until nine p.m. only. After that, my time is up, and all I have to do is lock my safe and go: I am free until nine o'clock next morning. You know that it does not do to take liberties in a position like mine. So when, on the day of the robbery, Mme. Van den Rosen came with her diamond necklace at half-past nine, I was perfectly within my rights in refusing to accept the deposit."
"That's right enough," said M. Muller, who, having finished his dessert, was now sipping coffee into which he had tipped sugar until it was as thick as syrup: "but you were disobliging, my dear young lady, and that was what struck the magistrate; for really it would not have been much trouble to register the new deposit and take charge of Mme. Van den Rosen's necklace for her."
"No, it wouldn't," the girl replied; "but when there is a rule it seems to me that it ought to be obeyed. My time is up at nine o'clock, and I am forbidden to accept any deposits after nine o'clock: and that's why I refused that lady's. I was perfectly right; and I should do the same again, if the same thing happened."
Henri Verbier was manifestly anxious to conciliate the young cashier. He expressed his approval of her conduct now.
"I quite agree with you, it never does to put interpretations upon orders. It was your duty to close your safe at nine o'clock, and you did close it then, and no one can say anything to you. But, joking apart, what did the magistrate want?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of indifference.
"You see I was right just now: M. Louis is only trying to tease me by saying that the magistrate cross-examined me severely. As a matter of fact I was simply asked what I have just told you, and when I gave all this explanation, no fault at all was found with me." As she spoke, Mlle. Jeanne folded her napkin carefully, pushed back her chair and shook hands with her two neighbours at table. "Good night," she said. "I am going up to bed."
Mlle. Jeanne had hardly left the room before Henri Verbier also rose from the table and prepared to follow her example.
M. Louis gave M. Muller a friendly dig in his comfortable paunch.
"A pound to a penny," he said, "that friend Verbier means to make up to Mlle. Jeanne. Well, I wish him luck! But that young lady is not very easy to tame!"
"You didn't succeed," M. Muller replied unkindly, "but it doesn't follow that nobody else will!"
M. Louis was not deceived: Henri Verbier evidently did think his neighbour at table a very charming young woman.
Mlle. Jeanne had hardly reached her room on the fifth floor of the hotel, and flung open her window to gaze over the magnificent panorama spread out below her and inhale the still night air, when a gentle tap fell upon the door and, complying with her summons to come in, Henri Verbier entered the room.
"My room is next to yours," he said, "and as I saw you were standing dreaming at your window I thought perhaps you would condescend to smoke an Egyptian cigarette. I have brought some back from Cairo: it is very mild tobacco—real ladies' tobacco."
The girl laughed and took a dainty cigarette from the case that Henri Verbier offered her.
"It's very kind of you to think of me," she said. "I don't make a habit of smoking, but I let myself be tempted sometimes."
"If I have been kind, you can show your gratitude very easily," Henri Verbier replied: "by allowing me to stay here a few minutes and smoke a cigarette with you."
"By all means," said Mlle. Jeanne. "I love to spend a little time at my window at night, to get the air before going to bed. You will prevent me from getting tired of my own company, and can tell me all about Cairo."
"I'm afraid I know very little about Cairo," Henri Verbier replied; "you see I spent almost the whole of my time in the hotel. But as you seem so kind and so friendly disposed I wish you would tell me things."
"But I am a very ignorant young woman."
"You are a woman, and that's enough. Listen: I am a new-comer here, and I am quite aware that my arrival, and my position, will make me some enemies. Now, whom ought I to be on my guard against? Who is there, among the staff, of whom I ought to be careful as doubtful associates? I ask with all the more concern because I will tell you frankly that I had no personal introduction to the Board: I have not got the same chance that you have."
"How do you know I had any introduction?" the girl enquired.
"Gad, I'm sure of it," Henri Verbier answered: he was leaning his elbows on the window-sill and gradually drawing closer to the young cashier. "I don't suppose that an important position like the one you hold, requiring absolute integrity and competence, is given without fullest investigation. Your work is not tiring, but that does not mean it would be entrusted to anybody."
"You are quite right, M. Verbier: I did have an introduction to the Board: and I had first-rate testimonials too."
"Have you been in business long? Two years—three years?"
"Yes," Mlle. Jeanne replied, purposely refraining from being explicit.
"I only asked because I fancy I have seen you before somewhere. I recognise your eyes!" Henri Verbier smiled, and looked meaningly at the girl. "Mlle. Jeanne, on summer nights like this, when you are looking at a lovely view like this, don't you have a funny sort of feeling?"
"No. What do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know. But you see, I'm a sentimental chap unfortunately, and I really suffer a lot from always living in lonely isolation, without any affection: there are times when I feel as if love were an absolute necessity."
The cashier looked at him ironically.
"That's all foolishness. Love is only stupid, and ought to be guarded against as the worst possible mistake. Love always means misery for working people like us."
"It is you who are foolish," Henri Verbier protested gently, "or else you are mischievous. No: love is not stupid for working people like us; on the contrary, it is the only means we have of attaining perfect happiness. Lovers are rich!"
"In wealth that lets them die of hunger," she scoffed.
"No, no," he answered: "no. Look here: all to-day you and I have been working hard, earning our living; well, suppose you were not laughing at me but we were really lovers, would not this be the time to enjoy the living we have earned?" and as the girl did not reply, Henri Verbier, who like an experienced wooer had been drawing closer to her all the time, until now his shoulder was touching hers, took her hand. "Would not this be sweet?" he said. "I should take your little fingers into mine—like this; I should look at them so tenderly, and raise them to my lips——"
But the girl wrested herself away.
"Let me go! I won't have it! Do you understand?" And then, to mitigate the sharpness of her rebuke, and also to change the conversation, she said: "It is beginning to turn cold. I will put a cloak over my shoulders," and she moved away from the window to unhook a cloak from a peg on the wall.
Henri Verbier watched her without moving.
"How unkind you are!" he said reproachfully, disregarding the angry gleam in her eyes. "Can it really be wrong to enjoy a kiss, on a lovely night like this? If you are cold, Mademoiselle Jeanne, there is a better way of getting warm than by putting a wrap over one's shoulders: and that is by resting in someone else's arms."
He put out his arms as he spoke, ready to catch the girl as she came across the room, and was on the very point of taking her into his arms as he had suggested, when she broke from his grasp with a sudden turn and, furious with rage, dealt him a tremendous blow right on the temple. With a stifled groan, Henri Verbier dropped unconscious to the floor.
Mlle. Jeanne stared at him for a moment, as if dumbfounded. Then with quite amazing rapidity the young cashier sprang to the window and hurriedly closed it. She took down her hat from a hook on the wall, and put it on with a single gesture, opened a drawer and took out a little bag, and then, after listening for a minute to make sure that there was nobody in the passage outside her room, she opened her door, went out, rapidly turned the key behind her and ran down the stairs.
Two minutes later Mlle. Jeanne smilingly passed the porter on duty and wished him good night.
"Bye-bye," she said. "I'm going out to get a little fresh air!"
Slowly, as if emerging from some extraordinary dream, Henri Verbier began to recover from his brief unconsciousness: he could not understand at first what had happened to him, why he was lying on the floor, why his head ached so much, or why his blood-shot eyes saw everything through a mist. He gradually struggled into a sitting posture and looked around the room.
"Nobody here!" he muttered. Then as if the sound of his own voice had brought him back to life, he got up and hurried to the door and shook it furiously. "Locked!" he growled angrily. "And I can call till I'm black in the face! No one has come upstairs yet. I'm trapped!" He turned towards the window, with some idea of calling for help, but as he passed the mirror over the mantelpiece he caught sight of his own reflection and saw the bruise on his forehead, with a tiny stream of blood beginning to trickle from a cut in the skin. He went close to the glass and looked at himself in dismay. "Juve though I am," he murmured, "I've let myself be knocked out by a woman!" And then Juve, for Juve it was, cleverly disguised, uttered a sudden oath, clenching his fists and grinding his teeth in rage. "Confound it all, I'll take my oath that blow was never dealt by any woman!"
XIII. Thérèse's Future
M. Etienne Rambert was in the smoking-room of the house which he had purchased a few months previously in the Place Pereire, rue Eugène-Flachat, smoking and chatting with his old friend Barbey, who also was his banker. The two had been discussing investments, and the wealthy merchant had displayed considerable indifference to the banker's recommendation of various gilt-edged securities.
"To tell you the truth, my dear fellow," he said at length, "these things interest me very little; I've got used to big enterprises—am almost what you would call a plunger. Of course you know that nothing is so risky as the development of rubber plantations. No doubt the industry has prospered amazingly since the boom in motor-cars began, but you must remember that I went into it when no one could possibly foresee the immense market that the new means of locomotion would open for our produce. That's enough to prove to you that I'm no coward when it's a question of risking money." The banker nodded: his friend certainly did display a quite extraordinary energy and will-power for a man of his age. "As a matter of fact," M. Rambert went on, "any business of which I am not actually a director, interests me only slightly. You know I am not boasting when I say that my fortune is large enough to justify me in incurring a certain amount of financial risk without having to fear any serious modification of my social position if the ventures should happen to turn out ill. I've got the sporting instinct."
"It's a fine one," M. Barbey said with some enthusiasm. "And I don't mind telling you that if I were not your banker, and so had a certain responsibility in your case, I should not hesitate to put a scheme before you that has been running in my head for a year or two now."
"A scheme of your own, Barbey?" said M. Rambert. "How is it you have never told me about it? I should have thought we were close enough friends for that."
The hint of reproach in the words pricked the banker, and also encouraged him to proceed.
"It's rather a delicate matter, and you will understand my hesitation when I tell you—for I'll burn my boats now—that it isn't any ordinary speculation, such as I am in the habit of recommending to my customers. It is a speculation in which I am interested personally: in short, I want to increase the capital of my Bank, and convert my House into a really large concern."
"Oh-ho!" said M. Etienne Rambert, half to himself. "Well, you are quite right, Barbey. But if you want to suggest that I shall help to finance it, you had better put all the cards on the table and let me know exactly what the position is; I need not say that if nothing comes of it, I shall regard any information you give me as absolutely confidential."
The two men plunged into the subject, and for a good half-hour discussed it in all its bearings, making endless calculations and contemplating all contingencies. At last M. Rambert threw down his pen and looked up.
"I'm accustomed to the American method of hustle, Barbey. In principle I like your proposition quite well; but I won't be one of your financial partners; if the thing goes through I'll be the only one, or not one at all. I know what is in your mind," he went on with a smile, as he noticed the banker's surprise; "you know what my fortune is, or rather you think you do, and you are wondering where I shall get the million sterling, or thereabouts, that you want. Well, make your mind easy about that; if I talk like this, it's because I've got it." The banker's bow was very deferent, and M. Rambert continued: "Yes, the last year or two have been good, even very good, for me. I've made some lucky speculations and my capital has further been increased by some lotteries which have turned out right quite lately. Well!" he broke off with a sigh, "I suppose one can't always be unlucky in everything, though money can't cure, or even touch, the wounds in one's heart."
The banker made no answer: he shrank from waking, by untimely words, the sad memories which were hardly dormant yet in the old man's mind. But M. Rambert soon reverted to his business tone.
"I'm quite disposed to be interested in a financial venture like yours, Barbey. But you must understand that you will have a good deal more than a sleeping partner in me. Will that suit you? I should not ask you to abdicate your authority, but I tell you frankly I should follow all the operations of your house very closely indeed."
"There shall be no secrets from you, my dear friend, my dear partner, if I may call you that," said M. Barbey, rising: "quite the contrary!"
The banker looked towards the mantelpiece, as if expecting to see a clock there; M. Rambert understood the instinctive action and drew out his watch.
"Twenty minutes to eleven, Barbey: late hours for you. So off with you." He cut short the banker's half-hearted apologies for not prolonging the evening. "I am turning you out quite unceremoniously, my dear chap, and besides, as you know, I'm not lonely to-night as I generally am. I have a young and very charming companion, for whom I have the greatest possible affection, and I am going to join her."
M. Etienne Rambert conducted his friend to the hall door, heard the sound of his motor-car die away in the distance, and then walked across the hall and, instead of going back to the smoking-room, turned into the adjoining drawing-room. He paused for a moment in the doorway, tenderly contemplating the charming spectacle that met his eyes.
The shaded light from an electric lamp fell upon the bent head, oval face and delicate features of Thérèse Auvernois, who was intent upon a book. The girl was emerging from childhood into young womanhood now, and sorrow had heightened her natural distinction by giving her a stamp of gravity that was new. Her figure showed slight and supple, delicate and graceful, and her long, taper fingers turned over the pages of the book with slow and regular movement. Thérèse looked round towards Etienne Rambert when she heard him coming in, and laying down her book she came forward to meet him, moving with a very graceful, easy carriage.
"I am sure I am keeping you up most dreadfully late, dear M. Rambert," she said apologetically, "but what am I to do? I must wait for the Baronne de Vibray, and the dear thing is so often late!"
The tragedy at the château of Beaulieu had had one effect in knitting all the friends of the Marquise de Langrune in closer bonds of friendship. Prior to that event Etienne Rambert had scarcely known the Baronne de Vibray; now the two were intimate friends. The Baronne had not desisted from her first generous effort until she had persuaded the family council to appoint her guardian of the orphaned Thérèse Auvernois. At first she had installed the child at Querelles, and remained there with her, leading the quietest possible life, partly out of respect for Thérèse's grief, and partly because she herself was also much upset by the distressing tragedy. She had even enjoyed the rest, and her new interest in playing mother, or rather elder sister, to Thérèse. But as the weeks went by and time accomplished its healing work, Paris called to the Baronne once more, and yielding to the solicitations of her many friends she brought her new ward to the capital and settled in a little flat in the rue Boissy-d'Anglais. At first she protested that she would go out nowhere, or at most pay only absolutely necessary visits, but by degrees she accepted first one and then many invitations, though always deploring the necessity of leaving Thérèse for several hours at a time.
Happily there was always Etienne Rambert, who was also staying in Paris just now. It had gradually become the custom of the Baronne de Vibray, when she was dining out, to entrust Thérèse to Etienne Rambert's care, and the young girl and the old man got on together perfectly. Their hearts had met across the awful chasm that fate had tried to cut between them.
To Thérèse's last words now Etienne Rambert replied:
"You need not apologise for staying late, dear; you know how glad I am to see you. I wish the house were yours."
The girl glanced round the room that had grown so familiar to her, and with a sudden rush of feeling slipped her arm around the old man's neck and laid her fair head on his shoulder.
"I should so love to stay here with you, M. Rambert!"
The old man looked oddly at her for a moment, repressing the words that he might perhaps have wished to say, and then gently released himself from her affectionate clasp and led her to a sofa, on which he sat down by her side.
"That is one of the things that we must not allow ourselves to think about, my dear," he said. "I should have rejoiced to receive you in my home, and your presence, and the brightness of your dear fair face would have given a charm to my lonely fireside; but unfortunately those are vain dreams. We have to reckon with the world, and the world would not approve of a young girl like you living in the home of a lonely man."
"Why not?" Thérèse enquired in surprise. "Why, you might be my father."
Etienne Rambert winced at the word.
"Ah!" he said, "you must not forget, Thérèse, that I am not your father, but—his: the father of him who——" but Thérèse's soft hand laid upon his lips prevented him from finishing what he would have said.
To change the conversation Thérèse feigned concern about her own future.
"When we left Querelles," she said, "President Bonnet told me that you would tell me something about my affairs. I gather that my fortune is not a very brilliant one."
It was indeed the fact that after the murder of the Marquise the unpleasant discovery had been made that her fortune was by no means so considerable as had generally been supposed. The estate was mortgaged, and President Bonnet and Etienne Rambert had had long and anxious debates as to whether it might not be well for Thérèse to renounce her inheritance to Beaulieu, so doubtful did it seem whether the assets would exceed the liabilities.
Etienne Rambert made a vague, but significant gesture when he heard the girl raise the point now, but Thérèse had all the carelessness of youth.
"Oh, I shall not be down-hearted," she exclaimed. "My poor grannie always gave me an example of energy and hard work; I've got plenty of pluck, and I will work too. Suppose I turn governess?"
M. Rambert looked at her thoughtfully.
"My dear child, I know how brave and earnest you are, and that gives me confidence. I have thought about your future a great deal already. Some day, of course, some nice and wealthy young fellow will come along and marry you—— Oh, yes, he will: you'll see. But in the meantime it will be necessary for you to have some occupation. I am wondering whether it will not be necessary to let, or even to sell Beaulieu. And, on the other hand, you can't always stay with the Baronne de Vibray."
"No, I realise that," said Thérèse, who, with the native tact that was one of her best qualities, had quickly seen that it would not be long before she would become a difficulty in the way of the independence of the kind Baronne. "That is what troubles me most."
"Your birth and your upbringing have been such that you would certainly suffer much in taking up the difficult and delicate, and sometimes painful, position of governess in a family; and, without wishing to be offensive, I must remind you that you need to have studied very hard to be a governess nowadays, and I am not aware that you are exactly a blue-stocking. But I have an idea, and this is it: for a great many years now I have been on the very friendliest terms with a lady who belongs to the very best English society: Lady Beltham; you may perhaps have heard me speak of her." Thérèse opened wide eyes of astonishment, and Rambert went on: "A few months ago Lady Beltham lost her husband in strange circumstances, and since then she has been good enough to give me more of her confidence than previously. She is immensely rich, and very charitable, and I have frequently been asked by her to look after some of her many financial interests. Now I have often noticed that she has with her several young English ladies who live with her, not as companions, but, shall I say, secretaries? Do you understand the difference? She treats them like friends or relatives, and they all belong to the very best social class, some of them indeed being daughters of English peers. If Lady Beltham, to whom I could speak about it, would admit you into her little company, I am sure you would be in a most delightful milieu, and Lady Beltham, whom, I know, you would please, would almost certainly interest herself in your future. She knows what unhappiness is as well as you do, my dear," he added, bending fondly over the girl, "and she would understand you."
"Dear M. Rambert!" murmured Thérèse, much moved: "do that; speak to Lady Beltham about me; I should be so glad!"
Thérèse did not finish all she would have said. A loud ring at the front door bell broke in upon her words, and Etienne Rambert rose and walked across the room.
"That must be the good Baronne de Vibray come for you," he said.
XIV. Mademoiselle Jeanne
After she had so roughly disposed of the enterprising Henri Verbier, whose most unseemly advances had so greatly scandalised her, Mlle. Jeanne took to her heels, directly she was out of sight of the Royal Palace Hotel, and ran like one possessed. She stood for a moment in the brilliantly lighted, traffic-crowded Avenue Wagram, shaking with excitement and with palpitating heart, and then mechanically hailed a passing cab and told the driver to take her towards the Bois. There she gave another heedless order to go to the boulevard Saint-Denis, but as the cab approached the place de l'Etoile she realised that she was once more near the Royal Palace Hotel, and stopping the driver by the tram lines she dismissed him and got into a tram that was going to the station of Auteuil. It was just half-past eleven when she reached the station.
"When is the next train for Saint-Lazaire?" she asked.
She learned that one was starting almost at once, and hurriedly taking a second-class ticket she jumped into a ladies' carriage and went as far as Courcelles. There she alighted, went out of the station, looked around her for a minute or two to get her bearings, and then walked slowly towards the rue Eugène-Flachat. She hesitated a second, and then walked firmly towards a particular house, and rang the bell.
"A lady to see you, sir," the footman said to M. Rambert.
"Bring her in here at once," said M. Rambert, supposing that the man had kept the Baronne de Vibray waiting in the anteroom.
The drawing-room door was opened a little way, and someone came in and stepped quickly into the shadow by the door. Thérèse, who had risen to hurry towards the visitor, stopped short when she perceived that it was a stranger and not her guardian. Noticing her action, M. Etienne Rambert turned and looked at the person who had entered.
It was a lady.
"To what am I indebted——" he began with a bow; and then, having approached the visitor, he broke off short. "Good heavens——!"
The bell rang a second time, and on this occasion the Baronne de Vibray hurried into the room, a radiant incarnation of gaiety.
"I am most dreadfully late!" she exclaimed, and was hurrying towards M. Etienne Rambert with outstretched hands, full of some amusing story she had to tell him, when she too caught sight of the strange lady standing stiffly in the corner of the room, with downcast eyes.
Etienne Rambert repressed his first emotion, smiled to the Baronne, and then went towards the mysterious lady.
"Madame," he said, not a muscle of his face moving, "may I trouble you to come into my study?"
"Who is that lady, M. Rambert?" said Thérèse when presently M. Rambert came back into the drawing-room. "And how white you are!"
M. Rambert forced a smile.
"I am rather tired, dear. I have had a great deal to do these last few days."
The Baronne de Vibray was full of instant apologies.
"It is all my fault," she exclaimed. "I am dreadfully sorry to have kept you up so late," and in a few minutes more the Baronne's car was speeding towards the rue Boissy-d'Anglais.
M. Rambert hurried back to his study, shut and locked the door behind him, and almost sprang towards the unknown lady, his fists clenched, his eyes starting out of his head.
"Charles!" he exclaimed.
"Papa!" the girl replied, and sank upon a sofa.
There was silence. Etienne Rambert seemed utterly dumbfounded.
"I won't, I won't remain disguised as a woman any longer. I've done with it. I cannot bear it!" the strange creature murmured.
"You must!" said Rambert harshly, imperiously. "I insist!"
The pseudo Mlle. Jeanne slowly took off the heavy wig that concealed her real features, and tore away the corsage that compressed her bosom, revealing the strong and muscular frame of a young man.
"No, I will not," replied the strange individual, to whom M. Rambert had not hesitated to give the name of Charles. "I would rather anything else happened."
"You have got to expiate," Etienne Rambert said with the same harshness.
"The expiation is too great," the young fellow answered. "The torture is unendurable."
"Charles," said M. Rambert very gravely, "do you forget that legally, civilly, you are dead?"
"I would a thousand times rather be really dead!" the unhappy lad exclaimed.
"Alas!" his father murmured, speaking very fast, "I thought your mind was more unhinged than it really is. I saved your life, regardless of all risk, because I thought you were insane, and now I know you are a criminal! Oh, yes, I know things, I know your life!"
"Father," said Charles Rambert with so stern and determined an expression that Etienne Rambert felt a moment's fear. "I want to know first of all how you managed to save my life and make out that I was dead. Was that just chance, or was it planned deliberately?"
Confronted with this new firmness of his son's, Etienne Rambert dropped his peremptory tone; his shoulders drooped in distress.
"Can one anticipate things like that?" he said. "When we parted, my heart bled to think that you, my son, must fall into the hands of justice, and that your feet must tread the path that led to the scaffold or, at least, to the galleys; I wondered how I could save you; then chance, chance, mark you, brought that poor drowned body in my way: I saw the fortunate coincidence of a faint resemblance, and resolved to pass it off for you; I got those woman's clothes which you exchanged for yours, buried the dead man's clothes and put yours on the corpse. Do you know, Charles, that I have suffered too? Do you know what agony and torture I, as a man of honour, have endured? Have you not heard the story of my appearance at the Assizes and of my humiliation in court?"
"You did all that!" Charles Rambert murmured. "Strange chance, indeed!" Then his tone changed and he sobbed. "Oh, my poor father, what an awful fatality it all is!" Suddenly he sprang to his feet. "But I committed no crime, papa! I never killed the Marquise de Langrune! Oh, do believe me! Why, you have just this minute said that you know I am not mad!"
Etienne Rambert looked at his son with distress.
"Not mad, my poor boy? Yet perhaps you were mad—then?" Then he stopped abruptly. "Don't let us go over all that again! I forbid it absolutely." He leaned back on his writing-table, folded his arms and asked sternly: "Have you come here only to tell me that?"
The curt question seemed to affect the lad strangely. All his former audacity dropped from him. Nervously he stammered:
"I can't remain a woman any longer!"
"Why not?" snapped Etienne Rambert.
"I can't."
The two men looked at each other in silence, as if trying to read one another's thoughts. Then Etienne Rambert seemed to see the inner meaning of the words his son had just said.
"I see!" he answered slowly. "I understand.... The Royal Palace Hotel, where Mlle. Jeanne held a trusted post, has just been the scene of a daring robbery. Obviously, if anyone could prove that Charles Rambert and the new cashier were one and the same person——"
But the young fellow understood the insinuation and burst out:
"I did not commit that robbery!"
"You did!" Etienne Rambert insisted: "you did. I read the newspaper accounts of the robbery, read them with all the agony that only a father like me with a son like you could feel. The detectives and the magistrates were at a loss to find the key to the mystery, but I saw clearly and at once what the solution of the mystery was. And I knew and understood because I knew it was—you!"
"I did not commit the robbery," Charles Rambert shouted. "Do you mean to begin all your horrible insinuations again, as you did at Beaulieu?" he demanded in almost threatening tones. "What evil spirit obsesses you? Why will you insist that your unhappy son is a criminal? I had nothing to do with those robberies at the hotel; I swear I had not, father!"
M. Rambert shrugged his shoulders and clasped his hands.
"What have I done," he muttered, "to have so heavy a cross laid on me?" He turned again to his son. "Your defence is childish. What is the use of mere denials? Words don't mean anything without proofs to support them." The lad was silent, seeming to think it useless to attempt to convince a father who appeared so certain of his guilt, and also crushed by the thought of all that had happened at the hotel. His father betrayed some uneasiness at a new thought that had come into his mind. "I told you not to come to me again except as a last resource, when punishment was actually overtaking you, or when you had proved your innocence: why are you here now? Has something happened that I do not know about? What has happened? What else have you done? Speak!"
Charles Rambert answered in a toneless voice, as if hypnotised:
"There has been a detective in the hotel for the last few days. He called himself Henri Verbier, and was disguised, but I knew him, for I had seen him too lately, and in circumstances too deeply impressed upon my mind for me to be able to forget him, although I only saw him then for a few minutes."
"What do you mean?" said the elder man uneasily.
"I mean that Juve was at the Royal Palace Hotel."
"Juve?" exclaimed Etienne Rambert. "And then—go on!"
"Juve, disguised as Henri Verbier, subjected me to a kind of examination, and I don't know what conclusion he came to. Then, this evening, barely two hours ago, he came up to my room and had a long talk, and while he was trying to get some information from me about a matter that I know nothing about—for I swear, papa, that I had nothing whatever to do with the robbery—he came up to me and took hold of me as a man does when he wants to make up to a woman. And I lost my head! I felt that in another minute all would be up with me—that he would establish my identity, which he perhaps suspected already—and I thought of all you had done to save my life by representing that I was dead, and——"
Charles paused for breath. His father's fists were clenched and his face contracted.
"Go on!" he said, "go on, but speak lower!"
"As Juve came close," Charles went on, "I dealt him a terrific blow on the forehead, and he fell like a stone. And I got away!"
"Is he dead?" Etienne Rambert whispered.
"I don't know."
For ten minutes Charles Rambert remained alone in the study, where his father had left him, thinking deeply. Then the door opened and Etienne Rambert came back carrying a bundle of clothes.
"There you are," he said to his son: "here are some man's clothes. Put them on, and go!"
The young man hastily took off his woman's garments and dressed himself in silence, while his father walked up and down the room, plunged in deepest thought. Twice he asked: "Are you quite sure it was Juve?" and twice his son replied "Quite sure." And once again Etienne Rambert asked, in tones that betrayed his keen anxiety: "Did you kill him?" and Charles Rambert shrugged his shoulders and replied: "I told you before, I do not know."
And now Charles Rambert stood upon the threshold of the house, about to leave his father without a word of farewell or parting embrace. M. Etienne Rambert stayed him, holding out a pocket-book, filled full with bank-notes.
"There: take that," he said, "and go!"
XV. The Mad Woman's Plot
When Dr. Biron built his famous private asylum in the very heart of Passy, intended, according to his prospectus, to provide a retreat for people suffering from nervous breakdown or from overwork or over-excitement, and to offer hospital treatment to the insane, in order to secure a kind of official sanction for his institution, he took the wise precaution to proclaim from the housetops that he would enlist the services of ex-medical officers of the hospitals. The idea was a shrewd and a successful one, and his establishment throve.
Perret and Sembadel were having breakfast, and also were grumbling.
"I shouldn't curse the meanness of the management quite so much if they didn't put us on to all the jobs," said Sembadel. "Hang it all, man, we are both qualified, and when we undertook to assist Dr. Biron we did so, I presume, in order to top off our theoretical training with some practical clinical experience."
"Who's stopping you?" Perret enquired.
"How can we find the time, when besides all our actual work with the patients, we have to do all this administrative work, writing to people to say how the patients are, and all that? That ought to be done by clerks, not by us."
"Isn't one job as good as another?" Perret retorted. "Besides, we are the only people who know how the patients really are, so it's common sense that we should have to write to their friends."
"They might let us have a secretary, anyhow," Sembadel growled.
Perret saw that his friend was in a bad temper, so did not try to carry on the argument.
"Say," he said, "you ought to make a special note of that case of No. 25, for your thesis. She was in your ward for about six months, wasn't she?"
"No. 25?" said Sembadel. "Yes, I know: a woman named Rambert; age about forty; hallucination that people are persecuting her; anæmic, with alternate crises of excitement and melancholia, punctuated by fits of passion; treatment: rest, nourishment, anodynes."
"You evidently remember the case distinctly."
"She interested me; she has marvellous eyes. Well, what about her?"
"Why, when she was moved into my pavilion the diagnosis was bad and the prognosis very bad: she was supposed to be incurable. Just go and see her now: her brain is restored: she's a new woman." He came to the table and picked up some notepaper. "I wrote to her husband a day or two ago and told him he might expect to hear that his wife had recovered, but I imagine my letter miscarried, for I've had no answer. I have a good mind to write to him again and ask for permission to send her to the convalescent home. The mischief of it is that this Etienne Rambert may want to remove her altogether, and that would mean one paying patient less, which would put our worthy director in a bad temper for a month."
He turned to his correspondence, and for some minutes the silence in the room was only broken by the scratching of pens on paper. Then an attendant came in, bringing a quantity of letters. Perret picked them up and began to sort them out.
"None for you," he said to Sembadel. "Not one of those little mauve envelopes which you look for every day and which decide what your temper will be. I must look out for storms."
"Shan't even have time to grouse to-day," Sembadel growled again. "You forget that Swelding pays us an official visit to-day."
"The Danish professor? Is it this morning that he is coming?"
"So it seems."
"Just one of those foreign savants who haven't succeeded in becoming famous at home and so go abroad to worry other people under a pretext of investigations. That's why he wants to come here. Wrote some beastly little pamphlet on the ideontology of the hyper-imaginative. Never heard of it myself."
The conversation dropped, and presently the two men went off to their wards to see their patients, and warn the attendants to have everything in apple-pie order for the official inspection.
Meantime, in the great drawing-room, elaborate courtesies were being exchanged between Dr. Biron and Professor Swelding.
Dr. Biron was a man of about forty, with a high-coloured face and an active, vigorous frame. He gesticulated freely and spoke in an unctuous, fawning tone.
"I am delighted at the great compliment you pay me by coming here, sir," he said. "When I started this institution five years ago I certainly did not dare to hope that it would so soon win sufficient reputation to entitle it to the honour of inspection by men so eminent in the scientific world as yourself."
The professor listened with a courteous smile but evinced no hurry in replying.
Professor Swelding was certainly a remarkable figure. He might have been sixty, but he bore very lightly the weight of the years that laid their snows upon his thick and curly but startlingly white hair. It was this hair that attracted attention first; it was of extraordinary thickness and was joined on to a heavy moustache and a long and massive beard. He was like a man who might have taken a vow never to cut his hair. It covered his ears and grew low upon his forehead, so that hardly a vestige of the face could be seen, while, further, all the expression of the eyes was concealed behind large blue spectacles. The professor was enveloped in a heavy cloak, in spite of the bright sunshine; evidently he was one of those men from the cold North who do not know what real warmth is and have no idea of what it means to be too thickly clothed. He spoke French correctly, but with a slight accent and a slow enunciation that betrayed a foreign origin.
"I was really anxious, sir, to observe for myself the measures you have taken which have set your institution in the forefront of establishments of the kind," he replied. "I have read with the very greatest interest your various communications to the transactions of learned societies. It is a great advantage for a practitioner like myself to be able to profit by the experience of a savant of your high standing."
A few further compliments were exchanged and then Dr. Biron suggested a visit to the various wards, and led his guest out into the grounds of the institution.
If Dr. Biron did not possess that theoretical knowledge of insanity which has made French alienists famous throughout the world, he was certainly a first-rate organiser. His sanatorium was a model one. It was situated in one of the wealthiest, quietest and airiest quarters of Paris, and stood in a vast enclosure behind high walls; within this enclosure a number of small pavilions were built, all attractive in design, and communicating by broad flights of steps with a beautiful garden studded with trees and shrubs, but further subdivided into a series of little gardens separated from one another by white latticed palings.
"You see, Professor, I rely entirely on the isolation principle. A single block would have involved a deleterious collocation of various types of insanity, so I built this series of small pavilions, where my patients can be segregated according to their type of alienation. The system has great therapeutic advantages, and I am sure it is the explanation of my high percentage of cures."
Professor Swelding nodded approval.
"We apply the system of segregation in Denmark," he said, "but we have never carried it so far as to divide the general grounds. I see that each of your pavilions has its own private garden."
"I regard that as indispensable," Dr. Biron declared. He led his visitor to one of the little gardens, where a man of about fifty was walking about between two attendants. "This man is a megalomaniac," he said: "he believes that he is the Almighty."
"What is your treatment here?" Professor Swelding enquired. "I am aware that the books prescribe isolation, but that is not sufficient by itself."
"I nurse the brain by nursing the body," Dr. Biron replied. "I build up my patient's system by careful attention to hygiene, diet, and rest, and I pretend to ignore his mental alienation. There is always a spark of sound sense in a diseased brain. This man imagines he is the Almighty, but when he is hungry he has to ask for something to eat, and then we pretend to wonder why he has any need to eat if he is the Almighty; he has to concoct some explanation, and very gradually his reasoning power is restored. A man ceases to be insane the moment he begins to comprehend that he is insane."
The Professor followed the doctor, casting curious eyes at the various patients who were walking in their gardens.
"Have you many cures?"
"That is a difficult question to answer," said Dr. Biron. "The statistics are so very different in the different categories of insanity."
"Of course," said Professor Swelding; "but take some particular type of dementia, say, hallucination of persecution. What percentage of cures can you show there?"
"Twenty per cent absolute recoveries, and forty per cent definite improvements," the doctor replied promptly, and as the Professor evinced unmistakable astonishment at so high a percentage, Dr. Biron took him familiarly by the arm and drew him along. "I will show you a patient who actually is to be sent home in a day or two. I believe that she is completely cured, or on the very point of being completely cured."
A woman of about forty was sitting in one of the gardens by the side of an attendant, quietly sewing. Dr. Biron paused to draw his visitor's particular attention to her.
"That lady belongs to one of the best of our great merchant families. She is Mme. Alice Rambert, wife of Etienne Rambert, the rubber merchant. She has been under my care for nearly ten months. When she came here she was in the last stage of debility and anæmia and suffered from the most characteristic hallucination of all: she thought that assassins were all round her. I have built up her physical system, and now I have cured her mind. At the present moment that lady is not mad at all, in the proper sense of the term."
"She never shows any symptoms of reverting to her morbid condition?" Professor Swelding enquired with interest.
"Never."
"And would not, even if violently upset?"
"I do not think so."
"May I talk to her?"
"Certainly," and Dr. Biron led the visitor towards the seat on which the patient was sitting. "Madame Rambert," he said, "may I present Professor Swelding to you? He has heard that you are here and would like to pay his respects."
Mme. Rambert put down her needlework and rose and looked at the Danish professor.
"I am delighted to make the gentleman's acquaintance," she said, "but I should like to know how he was aware of my existence, my dear doctor."
"I regret that I cannot claim to know you, madame," said Professor Swelding, replying for Dr. Biron, "but I know that in addressing you I shall be speaking to the inmate of this institution who will testify most warmly to the scientific skill and the devotion of Dr. Biron."
"At all events," Mme. Rambert replied coldly, "he carries his kindness to the extent of wishing his patients never to be dull, since he brings unexpected visitors to see them."
The phrase was an implicit reproach of Dr. Biron's too ready inclination to exhibit his patients as so many rare and curious wild animals, and it stung him all the more because he was convinced that Mme. Rambert was perfectly sane. He pretended not to hear what she said, giving some order to the attendant, Berthe, who was standing respectfully by.
"I understand, madame," Professor Swelding replied gently. "You object to my visit as an intrusion?"
Mme. Rambert had picked up her work and already was sewing again, but suddenly she sprang up, so abruptly that the professor recoiled, and exclaimed sharply:
"Who called me? Who called me? Who——"
The Professor was attempting to speak when the patient interrupted him.
"Oh!" she cried, "Alice! Alice! His voice—his voice! Go away! You frighten me! Who spoke? Go away! Oh, help! help!" and she fled screaming towards the far end of the garden, with the attendant and Dr. Biron running after her. With all the cleverness of the insane she managed to elude them, and continued to scream. "Oh, I recognised him! Do go away, I implore you! Go! Murder! Murder!"
The attendant tried to reassure the doctor.
"Don't be frightened, sir. She is not dangerous. I expect the visit from that gentleman has upset her."
The poor demented creature had taken refuge behind a clump of shrubs, and was standing there with eyes dilated with anguish fixed on the Professor and hand pointing to him, trembling in every limb.
"Fantômas!" she cried: "Fantômas! There—I know him! Oh, help!"
The scene was horribly distressing, and Dr. Biron put an end to it by ordering the attendant to take Mme. Rambert to her room and induce her to rest, and to send at once for M. Perret. Then he turned to Professor Swelding.
"I am greatly distressed by this incident, Professor. It proves that the cure of this poor creature is by no means so assured as I had believed. But there are other cases which will not shake your faith in my judgment like this, I hope. Shall we go on?"
Professor Swelding tried to comfort the doctor.
"The brain is a pathetically frail thing," he said. "You could not have a more striking case to prove it: that poor lady, whom you believed to be cured, suddenly having a typical crisis of her form of insanity provoked by—what? Neither you nor I look particularly like assassins, do we?" And he followed Dr. Biron, who was much discomfited, to be shown other matters of interest.
"Better now, madame? Are you going to be good?"
Mme. Rambert was reclining on a sofa in her room, watching her attendant, Berthe, moving about and tidying up the slight disorder caused by her recent ministrations. The patient made a little gesture of despair.
"Poor Berthe!" she said. "If you only knew how unhappy I am, and how sorry for having given way to that panic just now!"
"Oh, that was nothing," said the attendant. "The doctor won't attach any importance to that."
"Yes, he will," said the patient with a weary smile. "I think he will attach importance to it, and in any case it will delay my discharge from this place."
"Not a bit of it, madame. Why, you know they have written to your home to say you are cured?"
Mme. Rambert did not reply for a minute or two. Then she said:
"Tell me, Berthe, what do you understand by the word 'cured'?"
The attendant was rather nonplussed.
"Why, it means that you are better: that you are quite well."
Her patient smiled bitterly.
"It is true that my health is better now, and that my stay here has done me good. But that is not what I was talking about. What is your opinion about my madness?"
"You mustn't think about that," the attendant remonstrated. "You are no more mad than I am."
"Oh, I know the worst symptom of madness is to declare you are not mad," Mme. Rambert answered sadly; "so I will be careful not to say it, Berthe. But, apart from this last panic, the reason for which I cannot tell you, have you ever known me do, or heard me say, anything that was utterly devoid of reason, in all the time that I have been in your charge?"
Struck by the remark, the attendant, in spite of herself, was obliged to confess:
"No, I never have—that is——"
"That is," Mme. Rambert finished for her, "I have sometimes protested to you that I was the victim of an abominable persecution, and that there was a tragic mystery in my life: in short, that if I was shut up here, it was because someone wanted me to be shut up. Come now, Berthe, has it never occurred to you that perhaps I was telling the truth?"
The attendant had been shaken for a minute by the calm self-possession of her patient; now she resumed her professional manner.
"Don't worry any more, Mme. Rambert, for you know as well as I do that Dr. Biron acknowledges that you are cured now. You are going to leave the place and resume your ordinary life."
"Ah, Berthe," said Mme. Rambert, twisting and untwisting her hands, "if you only knew! Why, if I leave this sanatorium, or rather if the doctor sends me back to my family, I shall certainly be put in some other sanatorium before two days are past! No, it isn't merely an idea that I have got into my head," she went on as the attendant protested. "Listen: during the whole ten months that I have been here, I have never once protested that I was not insane. I was quite glad to be in this place! For I felt safe here. But now I am not sure of that. I must go, but I must not go merely to return to my husband! I must be free, free to go to those who will help me to escape from the horrible trap in which I have spent the last few years of my life!"
Mme. Rambert's earnest tone convinced the attendant in spite of her own instinct.
"Yes?" she said enquiringly.
"I suppose you know that I am rich, Berthe?" Mme. Rambert went on. "I have always been generous to you, and higher fees are paid for me here than are paid for any other patient. Would you like to make sure of your future for ever, and quite easily? I have heard you talk about getting married. Shall I give you a dot? You might lose your situation here, but if you trust me I will make it up to you a hundredfold, if you will help me to escape from this place! And it cannot be too soon! I have not a minute to lose!"
Berthe tried to get away from her patient, but Mme. Rambert held her back, almost by force.
"Tell me your price," she said. "How much do you want? A thousand pounds? Two thousand pounds?" and as the attendant, bewildered by the mere suggestion of such fabulous sums, was silent, Mme. Rambert slipped a diamond ring off her finger and held it out to the young woman. "Take that as proof of my sincerity," she said. "If anybody asks me about it I will say that I have lost it. And from now, Berthe, begin to prepare a way for me to escape! The very night that I am free I swear you shall be a rich woman!"
Berthe got up, swaying, hardly knowing if she was awake or dreaming.
"A rich woman!" she murmured. "A rich woman!" and over the girl's face there suddenly crept a horrible expression of cupidity and desire.