CHAPTER XX
A WOMAN’S SELF-SACRIFICE
The ferry-boat that plies between the bank of the lake and the Ile de Beauté on which the Restaurant Azaïs stands had not actually touched the landing-stage before M. Havard, standing up on one of the thwarts of the boat, in which indeed he was the only passenger, leapt ashore, in a paroxysm of nervous excitement.
“What am I going to find here?” thought the Chief of the Criminal Bureau, “what fresh difficulties am I to be faced with, agitated as I am, and really not knowing what to do? Then how simply grotesque the visit I paid along with the Minister of Justice to that impossible person Tom Bob—grotesque to the uttermost degree! I arrive with a companion who is to be incognito; before I have been there three minutes the man addresses him by his name! I come to charge him with crimes committed at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s house; he has never set foot inside the place! Then, to crown all, he is rung up by Fantômas, offering him contemptuously a petty piece of revenge—by way of annoying the Department! Then presently, when we reach the prison, it is to find Juve wounded and declaring he knows no more about it than we do!”
M. Havard, so formal and precise a man, so staid and deliberate as a rule, was for the moment so enraged he entirely forgot his dignity and dashed helter skelter, running like a schoolboy, across the little terrace separating the Restaurant Azaïs from the lakeside. There were only a few diners that evening occupying the tables, and already the majority were hurrying for the ferry-boat, that was making ready, after landing the Chief on the island, to re-cross to the mainland. Only one man remained seated at a table at the farthest end of the restaurant, where he was finishing his meal. M. Havard recognized this solitary diner at once and ran up to him.
“Well?” he panted.
Tom Bob lifted his head and recognized the newcomer. Speaking in his quietest tones: “Oh! so there you are, M. Havard?” he observed.
“Yes ... well?” again asked the Chief.
“Take a chair, Monsieur Havard; you’ll help me drink my coffee? No?”
M. Havard was boiling over. “The devil take your coffee!” he shouted. “Have you seen anything?”
Still quite unmoved, Tom Bob shrugged.
“I have seen,” he said, “that the cooking here is quite decently good and that it’s an excellent place for eating a quiet dinner.”
“Devil take you and your dinner! Come now, answer me seriously ... Fantômas?”
“Fantômas has not come yet.”
M. Havard heaved a sigh of relief, and at last allowed himself to sink into the chair Tom Bob had pushed forward for him.
“Not come yet!” he exclaimed, “ah, well, I’m rather relieved after all. It was just a joker then?”
“A joker! Whom d’you mean?”
“Egad, why, the man who ’phoned you!”
“I don’t think so.”
“Still—as nothing has happened.”
Tom Bob called the waiter. “Bring the cigars,” he ordered. Then, turning again to the Head of the Criminal Bureau:
“Well, Monsieur Havard,” he said, “if nothing has happened, I fancy that’s because the time hasn’t come yet for anything to happen, that’s all.”
M. Havard growled out: “You think the ...”
“I think ... ’pon my word! Monsieur Havard, I think the wisest thing to do is to wait patiently. Anyway, Fantômas strikes me as being quite a man of the world. If he really means to destroy the charming surroundings where he has brought me for this little dinner, I think he has had the politeness to wait till I have finished. It was the least he could do.”
But M. Havard failed to appreciate the American detective’s irony. Interrupting him in the middle of his sentence, he sprang from his chair, and slapping his forehead:
“And my men?” he cried, “I must make sure they are there.”
“What men?”
“The officers.”
“You’ve sent police-officers here?”
“Ten inspectors from the Bureau, yes!”
An amused smile flitted over the detective’s lips as he looked at M. Havard whimsically.
“By the Lord!” he cried, “if I was Fantômas, I should be flattered; at a telephone ring from him, you set a little army in motion, Monsieur Havard! It’s a pretty compliment, d’you know, on your part.”
But M. Havard would hear no more.
“It’s a compliment, or it’s not a compliment,” he struck in in a dry tone that, he hoped, would cut short the American’s irony. “Anyhow, this is the way it is; you, if by any chance you succeeded in catching one glimpse of Fantômas, they’d all be shouting wonderful! miraculous! If I were to arrest him, why, they’d just say it was all in the day’s work; now, as I don’t arrest him, they throw stones at me!... Meet you again, directly, I’m off to see if my men are posted.”
M. Havard took three steps to go, then thinking better of it and coming up to Tom Bob again:
“Look here,” he excused himself, “I was a bit blunt with you; but you mustn’t be angry, for some while back I’ve had good cause to be irritable, you’ll admit that?”
“I do,” Tom Bob agreed.
“Then forgive me! Now tell me—you’ve done some smart things since your arrival in this country, I can’t deny you’re clever—tell me, have you any idea what Fantômas may try to do this evening?”
Tom Bob was evidently too good-hearted and too nice a fellow not to commiserate the bad temper M. Havard suffered from, for it was in a very cordial tone this time that he answered the Chief of the Criminal Bureau:
“I can form no supposition on that point—nay, I will go further, and admit there’s something that worries me ...”
“This; if Fantômas has invited us here, it is because he is quite confident we are not likely either to guess or parry the blow he is preparing. Moreover, I’ve been engaged since I got here, in making a cursory investigation, and having learnt nothing ...”
But M. Havard, to the last degree perplexed, had become deeply buried in his own thoughts.
“For my own part,” he admitted, “do you know what it is worries me?”
“No! What does?”
“I keep asking myself whether Fantômas has not enticed us here, has not enticed you here in particular, you, Tom Bob, on purpose to have a free hand at some other spot in the city which it was his pleasure perhaps to visit.”
Tom Bob too, debated the supposition M. Havard had just formulated.
“No, that would not be playing fair,” he said at last; “and Fantômas has never been dishonourable. No, I can’t believe he would do that.”
M. Havard shrugged his shoulders by way of answer; he distrusted the American’s psychological acumen.
After a short silence, M. Havard resumed:
“Well, as you please, Monsieur Bob, but my opinion is that for to-night, either we are the victims of some practical joker, or in any case the affair is off. Fantômas must have seen that my officers were here in force. For my part, I am going to take a turn to look after my men; I know where they are, hidden about the island. Then I shall take the ferry again and so back to the Prefecture. Will you join me?”
Tom Bob shook his head.
“No,” he declared, “I shall spend the night here. I make it a point to keep my tryst with Fantômas. However, M. Havard, I will go with you in the boat as far as the other bank; that will give me the pleasure of another row on this pretty lake, a perfect jewel at this time of an evening, the finest thing of its kind, surely, in Paris.”
Still in a hurry, M. Havard did not stop to listen to the American’s praises of the Bois de Boulogne. He crossed the little wooden bridge joining the two parts of the island, made sure that the officers he had sent there in the afternoon were at their posts, ordered them to keep a most careful watch all night on the lake and its approaches, then made his way back to Tom Bob.
“You are coming?”
“I am quite ready.”
The detective got up, paid the bill for his dinner, and took another cigar, while M. Havard, faithful to his usual habits, refused the Havana Tom Bob offered him and drew a cigarette from his case. The two police-officials left the restaurant and made for the landing, where the ferry-boat was again putting in.
“Get in,” M. Havard urged the American.
“After you!” protested the Head of the Criminal Bureau. “Halloa, have you a light about you? Will you pass me a match, I haven’t got one.”
Tom Bob looked at his cigar. “I’m not well alight myself,” he said, and pulling a box of vestas from his pocket, he lit one, handed it to M. Havard, then took it back and applied it to his own cigar; then, as the match was beginning to burn his fingers, he tossed it into the lake.
But then, suddenly, with terrifying intensity, with an incredible rapidity, a fantastic, unheard-of, appalling thing happened. The very instant the burning match touched the water, the lake caught fire and blazed up fiercely, giving off dense clouds of smoke and sending up huge flickering flames of red and blue that instantly covered the whole surface with a sheet of fire.
Fortunately Tom Bob had managed to grip M. Havard by the arm and drag him back from the boat he was just getting into, and both started running breathlessly for the middle of the island, accompanied as they went by the various employés of the Azaïs, the manager and a few customers who were still on the premises, all flying headlong before the flames. The sight was fairylike, unforgettable, but tragic to the last degree. The whole lake indeed was a veritable sea of fire, which the eye could not pierce. From this gigantic brazier a sooty smoke went up in swirling eddies, instantly veiling the sky with thick, heavy clouds. The heat was terrific, so intense that the sweat rolled in torrents down the faces of the unfortunates imprisoned on the island. The air indeed was almost unbreathable. All round the party branches kept breaking off the trees and the smaller boughs beginning to flare up, while the shrubs dipping in the water were in turn taking fire.
“We are done for!” groaned M. Havard. But Tom Bob preserved his presence of mind.
“To the middle of the island!” he shouted; “come this way,”—and he led all his companions to the centre of the little island. Once there, he proceeded to calm their apprehensions.
“Keep cool!” he said, “keep cool! If the lake is on fire, there can be only one explanation, that they’ve emptied over the surface barrels of naphtha or petroleum. Egad! Fantômas can’t be far; it’s a miracle we have escaped, Monsieur Havard; I imagine he was only waiting for both of us to be in the boat between the bank and the island to put a light to his naphtha and roast us to death.”
“Yes, indeed,” M. Havard agreed, “a minute more and we were dead men.”
Tom Bob shook his head gravely. “If only there are no fatalities,” he said. “Look, it strikes me the flames are not so fierce now? Evidently the layer of naphtha cannot have been very thick. Yes, the flames are dropping, but ... but ...”—as he spoke, fearful screams broke out coming from a little further away. M. Havard and the detective looked at each other in consternation. The cries grew louder and louder, and with one impulse the two men dashed to the rescue. They had distinctly heard the words:
“Help! help!... Fantômas! Fantômas! Fantômas is here!”
While M. Havard and the unlucky Tom Bob were in such imminent peril from the monstrous audacity of the ever elusive brigand, while the lake was taking fire with alarming rapidity, a tragedy had been enacting on its banks.
It was the day after the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s ball, and that very evening Lady Beltham, in fulfilment of her promise to Fandor, was to go and see Elisabeth Dollon to assure her of the journalist’s innocence. Fandor never doubted that the great lady would keep her engagement and find some way of meeting the girl. After the furious dagger thrust, against which his coat of mail had so fortunately protected him, after his flight from the grand duchess’s, a flight that lady had in fact facilitated, the journalist could no longer doubt that Fantômas had been really present at that festivity. And from that moment the death of the unfortunate police-officer was no riddle to him—Joffre had fallen by the hand of Fantômas. This fresh murder in no way surprised him.
Accordingly Jérôme Fandor, anxious above all things to meet Elisabeth Dollon and secure a renewal of the girl’s favour, had all the afternoon been watching for Lady Beltham’s arrival at the lake in the Bois. But it was only at nine in the evening that she arrived, and Fandor had of course taken care not to reveal his presence just then. When Lady Beltham should be returning and re-crossing the lake, then he would go to her and thank her and ask her if he might now go to Elisabeth to find her convinced of his innocence; for the moment it was very necessary to keep concealed.
But just as the boat reached the landing place of the Restaurant Azaïs, Fandor, who was still prowling on the road beside the lake, caught sight of M. Havard’s figure, and Tom Bob with him, both evidently intending to take the ferry on their way back to Paris.
Then in an instant came a flash, a blaze, an impassable wall of fire separating the journalist from the island and the restaurant. Like a madman, the unhappy man ran along the bank, wringing his hands in despair. But what could he do? what could he do? In an agony he pictured the terrible position, perhaps the fatal position ... in which the wretches now on the island might find themselves.
“Elisabeth!” he cried, “Elisabeth, oh! we are under a curse!”
Fandor in fact was asking himself if the fire was not going to reach the island, if indeed the island itself, drenched with petroleum, was not blazing too; if Elisabeth were not doomed to die by that awful death, the death that is worse than a thousand deaths, death by fire!
Fandor could divine the whole villainous plot. No, it was no mere coincidence that the lake should take fire at the very moment Elisabeth learned that he was innocent. Not a doubt of it this was another of the horrid acts of cruelty Fantômas loved. Fantômas had willed Elisabeth should die at that precise moment. Yes, for he knew all, he had learned the rendez-vous arranged with the grand duchess, for had he not been present at the whole conversation between Fandor and the great lady, when Fandor merely supposed he was looking at one of the many reflections in the mirrors ornamenting the walls of the winter garden.
The lake had been burning for nearly three minutes. Suddenly Fandor made up his mind; throwing off his coat, the brave young man ran to the bank of the lake, whose waters were still blazing; his face was pale, but a look of determination flashed in his eyes as he plunged into the torrent of fire!
“I will swim under water,” the daring fellow told himself. “No, I cannot let Elisabeth perish so; if she is to die, I will die near her, with her!”
It was a heroic but a mad venture. The channel separating the mainland from the island was broad, and half way across, he had no breath left and must at any cost come to the surface, magnificent swimmer though he was. The water was still blazing. Barely had he time to snatch a mouthful of mephitic, scarce breathable air, when he must dive under again on pain of being burnt alive.
“Ten strokes more!... five more ... three more!”—his knees grazed the bottom, he had reached the shore!
Panting, breathless, Fandor climbed on the bank, grievously hurt, bleeding, half dead; but he was near his goal. He cried, “Elisabeth!”—and in the distance, his eyes still dazzled with the glare of the fire, the journalist seemed to see a woman’s form. He staggered towards her, a haggard, terrifying figure. But no sooner was he near the girl, for it was really she, flying with Lady Beltham before the advancing flames—she had taken refuge there—than he started back, struck with consternation.
Lady Beltham had not yet had time to speak to Elisabeth Dollon, and the girl, seeing this dreadful apparition rise before her, Fandor, pale and bleeding, had screamed out in frantic terror:
“Fantômas! Fantômas! it is Fantômas!”
“Where is he gone!” Lady Beltham eagerly questioned M. Havard and Tom Bob, who had run up on hearing the cries. She had not recognized Fandor, but on the other hand she knew it was not Fantômas who had shown himself. Instinctively she pointed in the direction in which the journalist had taken to flight.
Thereupon followed a veritable man-hunt, duly organized. Blowing a shrill whistle, M. Havard called up his men, scattered more or less everywhere about the island.
“Fantômas is there” he yelled, “he has just swum over.... Dead or alive he must be taken, dead or alive!”
Not a clump of trees but was searched. The waters of the lake, no longer aflame, looked dark and gloomy as before, clouds of soot made the air oppressive to breathe, the only light to help the officers in their frantic search came from some trees that were still burning on the bank of the lake. From all sides sounded cries, shouts, exclamations. For Fandor was now in full flight before the pursuing myrmidons of the law.
What did it all mean? He was far from having any clear conception of this. Once more Fantômas had laid his plans marvellously well; once more Fortune had favoured him. He it was, Fandor could surely guess, who had contrived that Tom Bob and M. Havard were on the island at the very moment the lake was to burst into flame. Fantômas had of course felt no doubt that Fandor, prowling about the neighbourhood waiting to know the result of Lady Beltham’s visit, would be one of the first to make a dash for the island. In this way he would tumble into a regular trap.
Fandor was in full flight, seeing everywhere men hunting for him, revolver in hand, for the scattered conflagrations, dying down one by one, still afforded some light.
“By the Lord!” he thought to himself, “I have no choice. I must take to the water, stay as long as possible out in the middle of the lake; it’ll be the devil’s own luck if I don’t manage to put them off the scent.” But at that moment a ball whistled past his ear. He had imprudently come too close, an officer had caught sight of him and fired.
“Damnation!” muttered the young man, springing back sharply, “it seems a price is set on my head.”
“There! there, I tell you! God Almighty, give me a revolver!” The pursuit was still hot, when suddenly a splash was heard in the water. The police officers gathered in a crowd; “He’ll get away! and never a boat!”
But one of the men was equal to the occasion; “‘Dead or alive!’ M. Havard told us we were to capture Fantômas dead or alive! By God! it was childish to spare his life when we had him at our mercy. A volley!” cried the man, “Fire, all together!”
His advice was followed, the officers fired off their revolvers at a venture in the direction of the splash. And next instant, drowning the sound of the shots, a sharp cry rang through the night:
“Help!... oh!... help!”
“Hit! Fantômas is hit!”
But Tom Bob was already making for the restaurant at a run. A boat lay high and dry on the bank; swiftly he dragged it to the water’s edge, sprang in, and in a few strokes of the oars was at the spot the cries had come from.
“Fantômas” he yelled—he could be clearly heard from the shore—“Fantômas! surrender!”
Other boats came up; each second seemed an eternity. But now M. Havard, leaning over the side of his boat, gripped a dark shape struggling in the water; “I’ve got him!” Then in triumph, he shouted an order to the officer who was at the oars:
“Row, my man, bring us to the shore!... there, beside that tree, it is still burning, so we shall see plain, anyhow!... he must be seriously wounded, he has stopped struggling.”
But as the boat entered the zone illuminated by the blazing tree, M. Havard, still holding the mysterious human body he had gripped in the darkness, could not check an exclamation of dismay.
“Oh! curses on it! curses on it! It is not Fantômas! It is not the man! it is a woman!”
Others helped, and the inert form was soon carried ashore.
Then suddenly, Lady Beltham, who had looked on in frenzied distress at all this scene of horror, came forward, a tragic figure, her eyes wide with terror.
“Oh! it is horrible,” she groaned, falling on her knees beside the half-drowned woman’s body, “it is horrible, she tried to save him, to put them off the scent! They have killed an innocent woman! they have killed Elisabeth Dollon!”