Ralph de Limézy was strolling along the boulevards with the careless air of a happy man, who has only to look about him to enjoy the charming sights and the light gaiety which the life of Paris presents to the intelligent observer on certain luminous days in April. Of middle height, he had a figure at once slender and powerful.
As he passed the Gymnase, he had the impression that a man who was walking abreast of him was following a woman, an impression which he was presently able to assure himself was exact.
In the humor he was in nothing appeared more comic and amusing to Ralph than a man who followed a woman.
Only the vast experience of the Baron de Limézy enabled him to divine that this discreet gentleman was following the lady. Ralph de Limézy was no less discreet, and availing himself of the screen afforded by the throng, he quickened his steps in order to make a careful examination of these two persons. [12]
Viewed from behind, the gentleman was distinguished by an impeccable back-parting which divided exactly his black and pomaded hair, and by a coat, no less impeccable, which gave full value to his large shoulders and high waist. Seen from in front, his face was of extreme regularity, furnished with a carefully trimmed beard and a fresh, pink complexion. Thirty years of age perhaps. With a confident walk. Carrying himself with an air of importance. Vulgar in appearance. Rings on his fingers. A gold tip to the cigarette he was smoking.
Ralph again quickened his step. The lady, tall, self-possessed, of noble bearing, set firmly on the pavement an Englishwoman’s feet, which were redeemed by well-shaped legs and slim ankles. Her face was uncommonly pretty, lighted by eyes of a wonderful blue, crowned by a heavy mass of fair hair. Those who passed her half stopped and turned to stare after her. She displayed an utter indifference to this homage of the crowd.
“Goodness!” thought Ralph. “What an aristocrat! She deserves something better than that pomaded bounder who is following her. What is he up to? A jealous husband? A jilted lover? Or simply a lady-killer in search of adventure? Yes: that must be it. The fellow wore the air of a man lucky in love who believes himself to be irresistible.”
The girl crossed the Place de l’Opera without taking [13]any notice of the vehicles which thronged it. A dray was about to bar her way; she quietly seized the horse’s reins and stopped it. The driver jumped down from his seat in a fury and began to abuse her, thrusting his face into hers. She landed a jolting right hook on his nose that sent the blood gushing out of it. A policeman hurried up and demanded an explanation; she turned her back on him and went quietly on her way.
In the Rue Auber two small boys were fighting, she caught them by the scruff of the neck and flung them away from her with such violence that they rolled over and over for a good ten feet. Then she threw a ten-franc note to each of them.
On the Boulevard Haussmann she went into a confectioner’s and from a distance Ralph saw her sit down at a table. Since the man who was following her did not enter the shop, he went into it himself and took a seat in a quiet fashion that did not attract her attention to him.
She ordered tea and toast which she ate hungrily with magnificent teeth. The people sitting at the neighboring tables stared at her. She took no notice whatever of them. Presently she ordered more toast.
But another young woman, sitting at a table further off also excited Ralph’s curiosity. Fair as the English girl, with wavy hair, dressed less expensively but with a Parisienne’s surer taste, she was surrounded by three [14]poorly dressed children, whom she was feeding with cakes and glasses of grenadine.
More of a child than the children themselves, she was amusing herself infinitely as she babbled for the three of them.
“What was it you said to the young lady?”
“Louder … I did not hear.… No: you shouldn’t call me ‘Madame’. You should say: ‘Thank you, Mademoiselle.’ ”
Ralph was instantly enslaved by two things: the natural gayety of her expression, and the profound seductiveness of her large green eyes, the color of jade, and streaked with gold, from which one could not tear one’s own eyes once one had fixed them on them.
As a rule such eyes are filled with strangeness, thoughtful and melancholy; and that was perhaps the habitual expression of those eyes. But at the moment they diffused the same radiance of intense life as the rest of the face, the mischievous mouth, the dilated nostrils, and the warmly-colored cheeks with smiling dimples.
“Extravagant joys or excessive griefs: there is no mean for creatures of that kind,” said Ralph to himself; and he felt spring to sudden birth in him the desire to play a part in those joys and fight those sorrows.
He turned to the English girl again. She was really beautiful, with a powerful beauty compounded of balance, [15]poise, and quietness. But he found the girl with the green eyes, as he called her, far more fascinating. If one admired the former, one desired to know the latter, to discover the secret of her existence.
Nevertheless, when she had paid her bill and left the confectioner’s with the three children, he hesitated. Should he follow her? Or should he stay where he was? Which should carry the day? Green eyes? Blue eyes?
He rose hastily, dropped some money on the counter and went out into the street. The green eyes had their way with him.
As he came out his eyes fell on an unexpected sight. The girl with the green eyes stood on the curb talking to the lady-killer who, a little while before, had been following the English girl, with the air of a timid or jealous sweetheart. It was animated, heated talk too, on both sides—more like a dispute than a talk. It was evident that the young girl was trying to pass the lady-killer and that the lady-killer would not let her; and this was so evident that Ralph was, contrary to every convention, on the point of interposing.
He had no time to do so. A taxi stopped in front of the confectioner’s; a man sprang out of it who seemed to have already taken in the altercation on the curb, for he stepped up to the squabbling pair, raised his stick and with a hearty whack sent the lady-killer’s hat flying off his pomaded head. [16]
Dumfounded, he started back, then, careless of the people hurrying up, sprang forward and howled: “You’re mad! Absolutely mad!”
The newcomer, who was smaller and older, threw himself into a posture of defense, and, ready to strike, shouted:
“I’ve forbidden you to speak to this young lady! I’m her father and I tell you that you’re nothing but a rotter—a miserable rotter!”
Both of them were fairly shaking with spasms of hate. The lady-killer, stung by the insult, drew himself up to spring on the newcomer, whom the young girl had gripped by the arm and was trying to drag to the taxi. He had succeeded in separating them and snatching the newcomer’s cane, when he found himself glaring into a face which had suddenly interposed between him and his adversary, an unknown, curious face, the right eye of which was winking nervously, and the mouth, curved into an expression of the grimmest irony, holding a cigarette.
It was Ralph who had thus risen before him; and he said in harsh accents:
“Could you oblige me with a light?”
A truly inopportune request. What was this interloper up to? The pomaded one bristled.
“Clear off! I haven’t any matches!” he snapped.
“But you have. A minute ago you were smoking,” the interloper asserted. [17]
Beside himself, the lady-killer tried to thrust him away. Not succeeding in doing so and being unable even to move his arms, he looked down to see what was paralyzing them. He appeared thunderstruck. The two hands of the interloper gripped his hands in such a manner that it was impossible to move them. An iron band could not have paralyzed them more thoroughly. And the interloper did not cease to repeat in obstinate, worrying accents:
“Please oblige me with a light. It would be most unfortunate if you were to refuse me a light.”
The group that had gathered round them began to laugh. The exasperated lady-killer snarled:
“Will you leave me alone? I tell you I haven’t got a light!”
The interloper shrugged his shoulders with a melancholy air.
“Most uncivil, I call it,” he said mournfully. “I never heard of any one refusing a light when he was asked for it politely. But since you make such a fuss about rendering me this slight service—”
He loosed his grip. The liberated lady-killer turned and ran. But the taxi had gathered speed and was bearing away his adversary and the girl with the green eyes, at a pace that made it quite plain that the most strenuous effort on his part to catch them would prove vain.
“And a lot forwarder I’ve got,” said Ralph watching [18]him run. “I play the Don Quixote to a lovely unknown; and she rushes off without giving me her name and address! There isn’t a chance of finding her. Well?”
Well, he decided to return to the English girl. She also was withdrawing, having doubtless been a witness of the row. He followed her.
He found himself at one of those periods at which life is in a way suspended between the past and the future. When one is thirty years old, it is woman who appears to us to hold in her hands the key of our destiny. Since the green eyes had vanished he would guide his wavering steps by the light of the blue.
Then, almost immediately, having pretended to set out in the opposite direction and returned on his steps, he perceived that the pomaded lady-killer had betaken himself once more to the chase, and, rebuffed in one quarter had turned, like himself, to the other. And all three of them resumed their stroll without the English girl perceiving the maneuvers of her followers.
She walked along the crowded pavement, strolling quietly all the while, with a keen eye on the shop windows and careless of the homage lavished on her beauty. Strolling thus, she came to the Place de La Madeleine, and by way of the Rue Royale, reached the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and entered the Grand Hotel Concordia. The lady-killer stopped, walked on about fifty yards, bought a packet of cigarettes, came back, entered the [19]hotel. Three minutes later he came out and went off; and just as Ralph was about to question the clerk about the English girl, she herself came out of the hall and entered a car to which a servant had carried a small trunk. Was she then off on her travels?
Ralph hailed a taxi and said to the driver: “Follow that car.”
The English girl did some shopping and at eight o’clock stopped at the Paris-Lyon Station; there she went into the refreshment room and ordered dinner.
Ralph dined at a distant table.
When she had finished her dinner she smoked a couple of cigarettes and then she made her way to the 9.46 express.
Ralph considered for a few moments, then made up his mind. Those blue eyes were certainly worth a journey. Moreover it was in following those blue eyes that he had made the acquaintance of the green eyes; and it might be that by way of the English girl he might find the lady-killer and by way of the lady-killer come to the green eyes again.
He turned quickly and bought a ticket to Monte Carlo and hurried to the platform.
He saw the English girl step into the third compartment of car No. 5, slipped into the middle of a group and saw her, through the window, taking off her cloak.
There were but few passengers. It was some years before the war, the end of April, and this express, [20]without sleeping or restaurant car, was too uncomfortable to carry more than a few first-class passengers to the South. Ralph indeed only saw two, both men, who were in the compartment just in front of the one occupied by the English girl in car No. 5.
He strolled up and down the platform some distance from the car, hired two pillows, provided himself with a traveling library of papers and magazines, and when the whistle blew jumped on to the step, opened the door, and entered the third compartment of car No. 5 in the manner of a man who has caught the train by the skin of his teeth.
The English girl was alone in the corner by the window facing the engine; Ralph settled down, with his back to the engine, in the corner next to the corridor. She raised her eyes and glanced at the intruder, carelessly enough, and went on eating chocolates from the box open on her knee.
A conductor walked down the corridor and punched their tickets. The train rushed towards the outskirts; and the lights of Paris grew farther and farther between. Ralph ran his eye listlessly over the evening papers and since he found nothing to interest him in them, cast them aside.
“Nothing happening,” he said to himself. “Not even a sensational crime. How much more interesting is this young lady.”
The finding of one’s self alone in a small closed [21]compartment with a pretty unknown lady, of passing the night together and sleeping in the same compartment, had always appeared to him a rather diverting anomaly. But he saw no use in wasting time in reading magazines or in meditating or exchanging furtive glances. He moved to the middle of the seat. The English girl could not doubt that her traveling companion was about to speak to her, and, wholly unmoved, she neither seemed to avoid it nor to lend herself to it. The burden therefore of establishing relations fell upon Ralph alone. That did not worry him at all. In an infinitely respectful tone he said:
“However incorrectly I may be acting I should like to ask your permission to inform you of a fact which may be of importance to you. May I say a few words?”
She selected another chocolate and, without turning her head, said quietly: “If it’s only a matter of a few words, sir, you may.”
“Well, madam—”
“Mademoiselle,” she interjected.
“Well, mademoiselle, I happen to know that you’ve been followed all day in an uncommonly equivocal manner by a well-dressed man, who kept out of your sight, and—”
She interrupted him to say: “Your behavior is of an incorrectness which astonishes me on the part of a [22]Frenchman. It is no business of yours to keep an eye on the people who follow me.”
“It was because the fellow appeared to me a suspicious—”
“The gentleman, with whom I am acquainted—he was introduced to me last year—M. Marescal, at least has the delicacy to follow me at a distance and not to invade my compartment.”
Ralph, touched on the raw, bowed.
“Good, mademoiselle, a direct hit. I can only say no more,” he said mournfully.
“You can only say no more till the next station, where I advise you to get out,” she said drily.
“A thousand regrets. But business calls me to Monte Carlo,” he protested.
“It called you to Monte Carlo only when you knew that I was going there,” she said coldly.
“No, mademoiselle,” Ralph contradicted flatly. “Ever since I perceived you—hours ago—in a confectioner’s shop on the Boulevard Haussmann.”
The retort came swiftly.
“Inaccurate sir. Your admiration for the young person with the green eyes would certainly have drawn you along in her wake, if you had been able to rejoin her after that row in the street. Not being able to do that, you set out on my tracks—at first as far as the Hotel Concordia, like the person you have denounced to me, then to the railway refreshment room.” [23]
Ralph was frankly amused,
“I am indeed flattered that so few of my actions and movements have escaped you, mademoiselle,” he said smiling.
“Nothing escapes me, sir,” she said firmly.
“So I see. I expect that for two pins you would tell me my name.”
“Ralph de Limézy, explorer, just returned from Tibet and Central Asia.”
He could not hide his astonishment.
“I’m still more flattered. May I ask you as a result of what enquiry—”
“As a result of no enquiry,” she said quickly. “But when a lady sees a man come bursting into her compartment at the last minute, without as much as a suit-case, she owes it to herself to observe. You cut two or three pages of your magazine with one of your visiting cards. I read that card and I remembered a recent interview in which Ralph de Limézy gave an account of his last expedition. It’s quite simple.”
“Quite simple,” he agreed. “But one must have wonderful eyes to—”
“My eyes are excellent,” she said quickly,
“But they have never left your box of chocolates. And you’re already at the eighteenth chocolate,” he said.
“I have no need to look to see, nor to think to guess,” she retorted. [24]
“To guess what?”
“To guess that your real name is not Ralph de Limézy,” she said coolly. “If it were, the initials at the bottom of your hat would not be an H. and a V.… Always supposing that you are not wearing a friend’s hat.”
Ralph began to lose patience. It annoyed him that in any duel he chanced to be fighting his adversary should constantly get the better of him.
“And what, according to you, does this H. and V. stand for?” he asked with just a touch of warmth in his tone.
She crunched up her nineteenth chocolate and answered in the same careless tone:
“They are initials which you rarely find joined; and when by any chance I do come across them together my mind always makes an involuntary connection between them and the initials of two names that were once brought to my notice.”
She stopped and apparently was not going to continue. He said a trifle impatiently:
“And might I ask what they are?”
“If I were to tell you it would not enlighten you. The first is a name you never heard of,” she assured him.
“All the same?”
“Well, if you must know, it is Horace Valmont.”
“And who is Horace Valmont?” [25]
“Horace Valmont is one of the numerous false names behind which was hidden—”
She paused to yawn.
“Behind which was hidden?” he said yet more impatiently.
“Arsène Lupin.”
Ralph burst out laughing.
“Then I must be Arsène Lupin!” he cried.
“What an idea!” she protested quickly. “I only told you the remembrance called up in my mind, quite stupidly, by the letters in your hat. And I say to myself, also quite stupidly, that your pleasing name of Raoul de Limézy is uncommonly like the pleasing name of Ralph d’Andrésy, by which Arsène Lupin was also known.”
“An excellent answer, Mademoiselle. But if I had the honor to be Arsène Lupin, believe me I should not be playing the rather simple part I am now playing. With what mastery do you make a joke of the innocent Limézy!”
She held out the box of chocolates to him.
“A chocolate to console you for your defeat,” she said. “And now, let me go to sleep.”
“But surely our conversation is not going to stop at this point?” he said in pleading accents.
“No. If the innocent Limézy does not interest me, on the other hand people who have some one else’s name always excite my curiosity. What are their [26]reasons? Why do they disguise themselves? A rather perverse curiosity.…”
“A curiosity which a Bakersfield may permit herself,” he said a trifle clumsily. And he added. “As you see, Mademoiselle, I know your name as well as mine.”
“And so does Cook’s clerk,” she said laughing.
“Well,” said Ralph, “I’m beaten. I shall take my revenge at the first opportunity.”
“Opportunity most often presents itself when one is not seeking it,” she said gravely.
For the first time she frankly looked fairly and squarely into his eyes. He quivered.
“As lovely as you are mysterious,” he murmured.
“Not the least mysterious,” she protested. “My name is Constance Bakersfield. I am joining my father, Lord Bakersfield, at Monte Carlo, and I am going to play golf with him. Besides golf, I am fond of all games, and I contribute to the papers to increase my allowance and feel independent. My profession of reporteress enables me to have first hand information about all celebrities, statesmen, generals, chiefs of industry, and chevaliers d’industrie, great artists and illustrious burglars. I wish you goodnight, sir.”
Even as she spoke she was drawing over her face the folds of a shawl. She stretched herself at full length on the seat, drew a rug over herself, and buried her fair head in the pillow. [27]
Ralph who had started at the word “burglar” again spoke to her two or three times. His words did not seem to reach her ears; it was like knocking against a closed door. It was better to keep silent and wait for his revenge. He remained silent therefore in his corner, disconcerted by the way the adventure had turned out, but in his heart of hearts charmed and full of hope. What a delightful creature, original and ravishing, mysterious and so frank! And gifted with what keen powers of observation! What an insight she had shown into his motives! How she had revealed the slight errors which his contempt of danger sometimes allowed him to commit! In the matter of those two initials—
He took his hat from the rack, tore the silk lining out of it, stepped into the corridor, and threw it out of the window. Then he also laid himself at full length on the seat, buried his head in his two pillows and fell into an idle reverie. Life wore a rosy hue. His note-case was full of notes easily gained. Twenty profitable plans that he could certainly carry out jostled one another in his ingenious brain, and next morning he would awake with the pleasing sight of a charming girl in the corner facing him.
He dwelt on this thought with uncommon pleasure; presently in a doze he saw her beautiful blue eyes, the color of heaven. Then a strange thing happened. Slowly, to his surprise, they changed color and became [28]green, the color of the sea. He was no longer quite sure whether it was the eyes of the English girl or of the Parisienne that gazed at him in this half-light. Then the young Parisienne was smiling at him, a charming smile. In the end it was really she who slept on the seat facing him; and with a smile on his lips and an easy conscience he went to sleep himself.
He did not hear the opening of the door of the collapsible passageway, which was the means of communication with the car behind them, nor the stealthy approach of the three masked figures, clothed in long grey blouses, who came to a halt at the door of his compartment.
One of the men, revolver in hand, remained to keep watch in the corridor. The two others chose their quarries by signs and drew blackjacks from their pockets. The one was to strike the nearest passenger, the other the passenger who was sleeping under the rug. The signal of attack was given in a low voice, but low though it was, the murmur reached Ralph’s ear. He awoke and instantly the muscles of his arms and legs contracted. It was too late; the blackjack hit his forehead and stunned him. He scarcely felt his assailant’s grip on his throat; he did not see the figure that passed him fall upon Miss Bakersfield.
After that came a night of the blackest darkness into which he sank like a drowning man. Then came incoherent and painful impressions which later rose [29]to the surface of consciousness. Some one bound him and gagged him with feverish energy and wrapped his head in a rough piece of cloth. He was relieved of his bank notes.
“Good business!” murmured a voice. “But this is only the hors d’oeuvre. Have you tied up the other one?”
“The blow must have stunned him all right.”
On the instant it became clear that the blow had not stunned the other one sufficiently, and that that other one was resolved not to be tied up, for there came suddenly the noise of oaths and blows, of a furious struggle all over the opposite seat, then cries—then cries of a woman.
“Curse it! It’s a woman!” growled one of the voices. “She’s scratching and biting like hell. Here: do you recognize her?”
“You’re the one to recognize her, not me,” snapped the other.
“I must make her shut up first!”
The ruffian employed such means that little by little the girl grew quieter. Her cries grew fainter and sank to moans. Nevertheless she went on struggling; and Ralph was aware, as in a nightmare, of all the efforts of the assailant and her efforts to resist him.
Suddenly the struggle came to an end. A third voice from the corridor, evidently that of the man on watch, gave an order in a hushed voice. [30]
“Stop! Leave her alone! I hope to God you haven’t killed her!”
“I’m jolly well afraid I have. In any case I may as well search her,” said the voice of the ruffian who had been struggling with the girl.
“Stop! Be quiet, dammit!”
Their two assailants left the compartment. There was a discussion, a dispute rather, in the corridor; and Ralph who was recovering more and more of his wits and could now move his limbs, caught the words: “Yes … further down … the end compartment … and be quick about it … the conductor may come.”
One of the three thieves stepped into the compartment and bent down over him and snarled:
“If you move, you’re a dead man. Keep quiet!”
The three ruffians went along towards the end compartment in which Ralph had noticed two passengers. Already he was trying to loosen his bonds and working his jaws to get the gag out of his mouth.
Close to him the English girl was moaning more and more feebly in a manner which wrung his heart. He struggled to free himself with all his might, chilled by the fear lest he should be too late to save the unfortunate creature’s life. But his bonds were strong and firmly knotted.
However the cloth which blinded him, carelessly tied, suddenly fell to the floor. He saw the young [31]girl on her knees, her elbows on the seat, looking at him with eyes which no longer saw anything.
Then came the sound of shots at a distance. The three masked ruffians and the two passengers must be fighting in the end compartment. Almost on the instant one of the scoundrels came running down the corridor as fast as he could run with a bag in his hand. For two or three minutes the train had been slackening speed. Probably it was compelled to go slower by the fact that the track was being repaired; probably also the thieves had been aware of this and chosen that moment for their attack.
Ralph was at the end of his wits. As he strained against his unbreakable bonds, he succeeded in working his gag loose enough to mutter to the girl:
“For goodness sake hold out.… I shall be able to look after you in a minute.… What’s the matter? What have they done to you?”
The brutes must have squeezed the girl’s throat inordinately and twisted her neck, for she was black in the face; her features were distorted; she displayed all the symptoms of asphyxiation. Ralph thought that she was on the very point of death. She was gasping and trembling from head to foot.
Her chest was bent over the seat close to him. He could hear the faint harsh sound of her breathing and through what sounded to him the death-rattle he caught a few English words she muttered: [32]
“Monsieur.… Monsieur.… Listen.… I’m done for.”
“No!” he cried in anguish. “Try and raise yourself and reach the bell-rope.”
She was too feeble to make the effort; and not a chance remained of his being able to free himself, in spite of the superhuman energy with which he strove to do so. Used as he was to make his will prevail, he suffered horribly at being the impotent spectator of this dreadful death. Matters had passed entirely out of his hands; he seemed to turn giddy in a tempestuous whirl of horrible happenings.
The second of the masked scoundrels, revolver in hand, hurried along the corridor. Behind him came the third. Doubtless at the end of the car the two passengers had succumbed to their assault and since the train was moving more and more slowly along the line they were repairing, the murderers were about to escape unhindered.
Then to Ralph’s great surprise they stopped short just outside the compartment as if some formidable obstacle barred their way. Ralph guessed that some one had appeared at the entrance of the collapsible passageway—perhaps the conductor making his rounds.
At once there came an outcry of furious voices, then the sound of a struggle. The first thief had no time to use his revolver, which was dashed out of his hand, as a man in the uniform of a railway official grappled with [33]him and tripped him, and the two of them rolled on the floor. While the third scoundrel, a short, slight man whose gray blouse was now red with blood, and whose head was half-hidden by a hat much too large for him, to which was fastened a mask of black sateen, tried to free his comrade from the conductor’s grip.
“Good for the conductor!” cried the exasperated Ralph. “Help at last!”
But the conductor was weakening, one of his hands had been put out of action by the ruffian’s short, slight accomplice. The ruffian himself got the upper hand and hammered the conductor’s face with a shower of blows.
Then the short, slight accomplice rose to his feet and, as he rose, his mask caught in his sleeve and fell, dragging down with it his big hat. With a quick movement he covered his face with the mask and his head with the hat, but not before Ralph saw the fair hair and ravishing face, now livid with terror, of the unknown with green eyes whom he had chanced on that afternoon in the confectioner’s on the Boulevard Haussmann.
The tragedy came to an end. The two thieves fled. The astounded Ralph watched without a word the conductor drag himself slowly and painfully up to the communication cord and pull it. The English girl was [34]in her death agony. Almost with her last breath she muttered these incoherent words:
“For God’s sake.… Listen to me.… You must take——”
“What? I promise you I will.”
“For God’s sake take the wallet … get away the papers to——”
“Where?”
Her head fell back; she was dead.
The train stopped. [35]