The long arm of Fantômas

The Grand Duchess Alexandra gave vent to an exclamation expressive both of surprise and triumph, as she greeted the visitor who stood before her. The latter, dropping his eyes and assuming a humble, almost abject mien, the bearing of a repentant sinner, murmured:

“I am happy, madam, to return your greeting.”

The grand duchess seemed sceptical; with panting breath, for she was greatly agitated, she questioned:

“Tell me, sir! tell me, Tom Bob, what fresh crisis, what pressing necessity obliges you to come to me like this?”

Tom Bob, for he it was, hesitated a moment before replying. Slowly he lifted his glance and fixed it on the grand duchess’s face. The lovely creature and the wily detective looked long into each other’s eyes.

The grand duchess?... Tom Bob? In truth, there was no need for play-acting between these two, they were by themselves, alone, without witnesses. They could avow to one another who they really were—she, Lady Beltham, the mysterious, the redoubtable mistress of the most abominable brigand in all the earth; he, that same brigand, Fantômas!

And now the tragic lovers, after a hundred changes of fortune, intentional or accidental, that had hindered their meeting, found themselves face to face and under untoward circumstances that forced them to exchange terrible, bitter speeches; for these two felt for one another at once an atrocious hate and an ineradicable love! Yes, in very deed, those two beings who were perpetually at daggers drawn, who had ever between them the most appalling episodes, the most fearful deeds and memories, were straitly bound one to the other by an unbreakable chain of love, whose links were riveted by the strongest of all implements, the crimes they had committed together.

“What have you come here for? what do you want?” demanded the lady; but Fantômas, in a hollow voice he endeavoured to make cold and peremptory, but which only the more betrayed his anguish, only replied by another question.

“Sonia Danidoff,” he asked, “what has happened to Sonia Danidoff?”

The brigand—he too was breathless with emotion—felt he must know the truth, his heart as a lover laid an obligation on him, an obligation that wounded his self-love, anxiously to question the mistress he had forsaken as to the fate which she, in her jealous rage, had reserved for the other who had now become the favourite. Lady Beltham fought hard against her agitation and the pain that tore her breast; she articulated in a voice that whistled between the clenched teeth:

“Sonia Danidoff! I wanted to kill her!”

Instinctively Fantômas doubled his fists and cast a look of menace at the speaker; he would have hurled himself upon his defiant mistress, but the latter with an air of sardonic insolence stood before him, a superb figure of defiance, and never flinched. Yes, she defied her lover; Fantômas dared not go near her; yet curiosity, the craving to know what had become of Sonia, compelled him to hide his anger.

“What have you done with her? Where is she? Speak!”

Breathing all her hate in a dolorous cry, Lady Beltham wrung her beautiful hands, and groaning aloud, cried:

“Go, Tom Bob, go and ask the officers of justice, go and learn from the police the fate I have reserved for your mistress, and the opinion she now has of you!”

“Of me!”

“Yes, sir, of you!”

It was the brigand’s turn now to tremble with apprehension, but such was the empire he possessed over himself, he was able to hide his agitation under a mask of smiling irony.

“Lady Beltham,” he asked quietly, “so you have told the princess who I am, have you?”

Fantômas bit his lips and his eyes fell, while Lady Beltham demanded in a questioning, defiant tone:

“And why should I not have told the princess who you were?”

Receiving no answer, she proceeded, smiling in her turn with a show of scornful dignity:

“You are afraid, it seems, that knowing you in your true aspect, she might cease to feel for you the fatal infatuation that consumes her? Poor princess! poor pitiful passion!... what matter the faults, the vices of the man a woman loves, when she truly loves him? Fantômas,” the sobs were rising to her lips as she went on, “I ask you, have your villainies, have your crimes silenced in me the fond feelings I entertain for you? Have I, for all the hideous life of blood and terror I live because of you, have I ceased to love you?”

Fantômas broke in:

“You profess to love me, madam, to love me still, and yet you harass me with your threats....”

Lady Beltham interrupted in her turn:

“Hate, Fantômas, is it not another form of love?”

But the outlaw shook his head sadly.

“Madam,” he declared, “I have lost all confidence; trusting to appearances, you have doubted my loyalty—I have proof of it, I know it; perhaps your distrustful attitude has gone for much in that I have shown towards you....”

“What do you mean?” demanded Lady Beltham, “have you not, many times over, tried to kill me? Remember, Fantômas, the evening of the Pré Catalan!”

“Say rather,” protested Lady Beltham, shuddering, “that hitch, that breakdown, seemingly providential, enabled you to start back alone and unhindered with the Princess Sonia Danidoff.”

Fantômas shrugged as he avowed with a cynical grin:

“Little I cared for her love, it was her jewels I was after; you see I have nothing to hide from you!”

“Scoundrel! ruffian!” screamed Lady Beltham, “so that is the alternative you offer me—to find my satisfaction in your thievish instincts to appease the horrid jealousy that stabs my heart. No, it must end, Fantômas, a life like this is become impossible, you must make your choice; choose betwixt us two, the princess and me. I do not mince my words: I bid you think of the consequences!”

A flash of rage flamed in Fantômas’ eye, but to-day the pirate, the outlaw had clearly no chance left to show himself, as usual, the master, the tyrant, the despot, who commands, and all men obey! He must condescend to parley, and in a choked voice he muttered:

“Let us leave that for the moment, Lady Beltham, let us leave it; more serious events are brewing, are imminent!”

The great lady laughed sardonically.

“Why, yes!” she sneered, “I don’t doubt that, if you are here, it is evidently ...”

Fantômas cut her short.

“Lady Beltham,” he assured her, “our plans have been frustrated, the scheme I had built up is crumbling to pieces; since yesterday Juve has been free and triumphant....”

“Juve!” cried Lady Beltham, thunderstruck, “is it possible?”

Fantômas nodded in confirmation.

“Juve!” reiterated his agonized mistress, “why, then it is the same existence of anguish and fear and never ending alarms will begin again, but worse than ever.”

“Yes, Juve is at large,” insisted Fantômas. Then he added; “But as you were saying just now, Lady Beltham, I think it must all end—yes, and soon?”

“What do you propose then?”

“Ask him up, madam,” he gave his orders, “you cannot do otherwise, you must!”

Lady Beltham obeyed and gave the required answer to the servant:

“Ask Monsieur Ascott kindly to come upstairs; show him into my rooms.”

In the midst of that Parisian oasis formed by the Parc des Princes, Lady Beltham had for some months been in occupation, under the name of the Grand Duchess Alexandra, of a magnificent mansion standing in the middle of a vast park. The front of the house was approached by great gates of wrought iron, dividing the boulevard from a fine gravelled drive that swept round a lawn before the main entrance. Behind the building was a short cut leading from the offices and opening into a deserted by-street; this could only be reached after crossing an orchard planted with fruit trees, a spot of quite a countrified and unpretending aspect. The path connecting the house with the exit into the by-street was completely overshadowed by a double row of clipped yews, a relic of a garden of an earlier date, and throughout its length were ranged a number of beehives, giving this part of the garden a homely and utilitarian appearance, a charm that was at once restful and picturesque.

But anyone who could have seen Fantômas when alone in the room would surely have suspected the man of some more sinister motive. The brigand did not stay near the half open door, shielded though it was by a heavy curtain. With preoccupied air and a brow wrinkled in anxious thought, he stepped up to the window, and long and carefully scrutinized what lay outside, if by any chance he might espy under the shadow of the trees some suspicious figure, some symptom of unknown danger.

Ascott was shown in by a footman to the grand duchess’s apartments. The Englishman appeared, his features drawn with anxiety, his limbs twitching in uncontrollable excitement. With a hurried bow, he sank into a chair.

“Excuse me, madam,” he stammered; then going straight to the point, he asked:

“Tom Bob is here, is he not? Oh! I beseech you, tell me; I must see him.”

So agitated was the young man he never noticed the look of terror his words brought to his hostess’s face. Hearing it said that Tom Bob was with her, she all but fainted, but recovering her self-possession:

“Who told you that?” she demanded: “What do you want with him?”

Then, without waiting for an answer, she questioned further:

“But tell me, what has happened to you?”

Ascott faltered in broken words that betrayed his confusion of mind:

“A calamity, madam, an appalling calamity has befallen me and still crushes me.”

He drew from his pocket a crumpled telegram, the tears welling to his eyes:

“Read, madam,” he cried, and could not articulate another word.

Lady Beltham glanced through the message; it announced that, in a motor-car accident, Ascott’s father, the well-known peer and member of the Upper House, and his son, the young man’s eldest brother, had been killed! The tragedy had occurred in Scotland, in the Highlands, without a soul in sight!

Lady Beltham was in a better position than anybody to realize that the rich Englishman must be right; assuredly, the further she went, the more she would hear set down to her baleful lover’s account the most appalling revelations.

Ascott, harking back to his first idea, again demanded an answer to his question, adjuring her to tell him where Tom Bob was.

“I must see him,” he urged, “I must see him and speak to him. Tom Bob is the only person on earth, madam, who by his perspicacity, his adroitness, his admirable detective skill, can extricate me from my difficulties, and put me in a position to avenge my relatives’ deaths. Tom Bob, madam, is the man who must fight Fantômas!”

Lady Beltham was like to die of distress and perplexity. No doubt, she had but to open a door to bring the young Englishman face to face with the bogus detective. But was it her duty to act so? Ought she not rather to enlighten Ascott, to tell him that Fantômas and Tom Bob were one and the same, just as Père Moche and Fantômas again were one single and identical person! This course was what her conscience bade her take. But would duty triumph over love?

What she had seen must have been something to cause both terror and despair, for Lady Beltham turned deadly pale, her splendid arms beat the air, she staggered and fell flat on the floor in a dead swoon. The look she had directed into the adjoining room and which had, in fact, determined her fainting fit, had passed unnoticed by the unfortunate young Englishman, too much preoccupied and agitated to observe the details of what was happening before his eyes. But now, seeing Lady Beltham’s condition, he hurried to her side and endeavoured to restore her to consciousness. His efforts proved vain, and shocked and alarmed, he rang the bell in the anteroom and called loudly for help.

Servants appeared in answer to his summons; Lady Beltham was laid on a couch and restoratives applied. In ten minutes, by slow degrees, the unhappy woman began to regain her senses.

But suddenly the tense silence was broken by the sound of shots. Lady Beltham shuddered and grew paler than ever.

“Great heavens!” she asked, “what is happening?”

Ascott could not tell her; the servants gathered about their mistress stood rooted to the spot in dumb bewilderment.

Fantômas, when he left Lady Beltham waiting to receive Ascott, had his plan already cut and dried. The desperate villain realized that the game was up, beyond redemption. Unmasked so far as Moche was concerned, he was no less so in his incarnation as Tom Bob—but only in the minds of Juve, of Fandor, and of Lady Beltham.

For one brief instant the criminal had debated with himself what course was best to adopt. The moment was surely near at hand when he must either take to flight and disappear, or play his last desperate card, defy the world and maintain that he was indeed Tom Bob and no one else. But would that suffice?

Still the hardy scoundrel did not go at once. Examining the room where he was, he noted a safe embedded in the wall. An evil smile crossed his pallid lips; cynically he muttered:

“So the Grand Duchess Alexandra has constituted herself treasurer of the fund for the good souls who were for subscribing Fantômas’ million! Fantômas,” he went on with a vile grin, “would be a simpleton indeed not to pay to himself what is meant for him.”

Evidently the ruffian knew the secret of the strongbox. Was it not he, in fact, who had advised Lady Beltham to purchase it? Fantômas opened the safe, drew out its contents in handfuls, stuffed his pockets full of gold and notes.

For a moment he was disturbed in this twice infamous robbery by the creak of an opening door; he looked round, startled and confused, but he could see nothing, the door had been reclosed. And Fantômas, never knowing that his last act of brigandage had so profoundly shocked his mistress that she had fallen fainting to the floor in the next room, went on with his thievery.

With infinite precautions, five minutes afterward, the thief was creeping surreptitiously down the back stairs; gaining the deserted offices, he found an open window, and leapt into the garden behind the house. He had his good reasons for not leaving by the front gates. Cowardly, like a traitor, like a wild beast pursued by the hunters, like a criminal hiding after a dastardly deed, he glided into the deep shade of the pleached alley, muffling his footsteps, revolver in hand, ready to resist the first attack, confident of escaping the most ingeniously laid trap.

“Juve, since yesterday a free man, and by a miracle escaped from the hands of my confederates, is perhaps at my heels?”

Then came a cry of rage! Suddenly, emerging from the bushes, a man had sprung at his throat. The man was Juve!

Fantômas fired, without a tremble of the outstretched arm, at point blank range. But the ball never reached its aim; piercing the thick roof of greenery above, it lost itself in the sky. For at the same instant he had caught sight of Juve and taken aim at his heart, Fantômas was attacked in the rear. A formidable blow across the loins upset his balance and the villain measured his length on the ground. Boiling with rage, he pressed the trigger and shot off at random the four remaining charges—quite without effect. The bullets struck no one; ploughing up the soil, they raised a thick cloud of dust, and that was all.

Juve had leapt upon his assailant instantly; kneeling on the man’s chest, he held him down, both hands gripping his throat. Looking up, Fantômas could see his face, and Fandor’s beside it. He was done for! his two implacable enemies had him in their power.

Hours ago officer and journalist had planned his arrest. Instead of hurrying off to find M. Havard, as the latter hoped, Juve and Fandor had sworn to themselves to set off at once, hot foot, on the track of the atrocious villain. They had been well advised in going straight to Lady Beltham’s, for no sooner did they reach the neighbourhood of the house in the Parc des Princes than they saw Fantômas slip in. Thereupon, making sure the outlaw would inevitably try to escape by way of the hidden pathway behind the building, they ensconced themselves in the deepest shadow of the trees and waited.

Fantômas was deep in thought:

“Once they get me as far as there, once they drag me over the threshold of that door, once I leave this garden, it is all up, I am done for!”

With amazing coolness the extraordinary man analysed the situation, and in two seconds drew his conclusion. He had a hundred yards still to go along the tree-shaded pathway; before that hundred yards was traversed, he must find a means of escape—or else ...

Any display of physical force was impossible! any exertion of strength would have been in vain; Juve and Fandor held him fast, each with a grip of steel, their strength doubled by the furious anger that tightened their muscles and the triumph that swelled their hearts to have captured the scoundrel. Nor could Fantômas dream of eluding their vigilance or asking any favour of his captors; the pitiless ruffian could hope for no pity!

The last fifty yards only remained, and Fantômas had devised nothing yet.

But suddenly a gleam of ferocity flashed in his eye. With a sudden spring, he threw himself to one side of the pathway, shouldering back Fandor who was on his left, dragging Juve on his right after him. Next moment, with a lightning dart neither officer nor journalist could anticipate, the brigand had fallen on two hives and kicked them over.

True, Juve and Fandor, instantly hauled him back to the middle of the path, but yells of agony now burst from their lips. The bees, disturbed in their peaceful labours, exasperated at the earthquake that had befallen them, rose in angry swarms and swooped down on the three men! Burning for revenge, the insects in their hurrying thousands fell upon their enemies!

Fantômas, on the contrary, who had had a second or two’s time to think what course was best to adopt after upsetting the hives, forced himself to stand absolutely still, refraining from making the slightest movement, barely stirring lips and eyelids. And the bees, in their blindness, never attacking the villain who was their real enemy, directed all their efforts to the two who, from the weird gesticulations they indulged in, seemed the most redoubtable foes.

Stung in a thousand places, Juve and Fandor shrieked in agony and, overmastered by the pain, let go their prisoner.

The latter, following the same tactics, dropped to the ground, burying his face in the grass by the side of the pathway. There Fantômas lay as still as death, while Juve and Fandor fell victims to the angry bees, all the more because they waved their arms wildly about and tried to defend themselves.

Beaten at last, the two martyrs abandoned all efforts to resist and rolled on the ground in transports of insufferable pain!

Two hours after, Juve and Fandor were discovered lying under the trees in the garden of the grand duchess’s house; they were unconscious, half dead, their faces so disfigured by the bees’ merciless stings as to be unrecognizable.

As for Tom Bob-Fantômas, he had disappeared. Once again that monster of iniquity was at large....

Would he add yet more atrocities to the long list of his crimes???