If the situation of the terrace at the top of the large garden, a spot where no one ever came and walled in by thick screens of trees, had afforded Aurelie and Ralph some weeks of absolute security, must it not be supposed that Marescal was going to get a few minutes he needed, and that Aurelie could hope for no help? Inevitably the scene would follow its course to the end willed by her enemy and the dénouement would be in accordance with his implacable will.
He was so sure of it that he did not hurry. He advanced slowly and stopped. The certainty of victory spoiled the harmony of his regular features and disturbed their usual immobility. A grin raised the left corner of his mouth and drew up the left half of his square beard. His teeth were shining; his eyes were hard and cruel.
He said in a jeering tone: “Well, mademoiselle, I think that things have turned out rather favorably for me. There is no way of escaping me, as at Beaucourt station, no means of driving me away, as in Paris. You will have to submit to the law of the stronger.”
Straight upright, with stiff arms, her fists clenched [144]on the stone bench, Aurelie gazed at him with an expression of wild anguish. Without a groan, she waited.
“How delightful it is to see you here, charming creature! When one loves in the rather excessive fashion in which I love you, it is not disagreeable to find one’s self confronted by revolt and terror. It makes one all the more eager to seize one’s prey. Magnificent prey,” he added in a low voice, “for you really are magnificently beautiful.”
Then he saw the open telegram and jeered again.
“That good fellow Bregeac, isn’t it, announcing his imminent arrival and your departure? I know, I know. For the last fortnight I’ve been keeping an eye on my beloved chief and I’m fully acquainted with his most secret plans. I have men devoted to me in his office. That is how I discovered your hiding-place and have been able to get here an hour or two ahead of him. I just had the time to study the ground, the forest, and the gorge, to catch sight of you in the distance and see you hurry up to this terrace. And I was able to climb up here and catch a glimpse of a figure leaving you. Some lover, wasn’t it?”
He made a few steps forward. She shrank away from him, and her back touched the lattice-work which ran round the bench. He lost his temper and cried: “That’s nice. I don’t suppose you shrank away like that just now when this lover was busy caressing you. Who is the happy man? A fiancé? More likely a [145]lover. I see that I have come just in time to look after my property and prevent the innocent boarder at Sainte-Marie from playing the fool! Ah, if ever I had suspected it!”
He curbed his anger and, bending over her, went on: “After all, all the better; it simplifies matters. The game I was playing was already excellent since I had all the trumps in my hands. But this is an extra piece of luck. Aurelie is not of an uncompromising virtue. One can rob and murder and escape the ditch—and now behold Aurelie quite ready to jump over all obstacles. Then why not in company? What, Aurelie, it may just as well be me as any one else, mayn’t it? If he has his advantages there are reasons in my favor which are not to be despised. What do you say, Aurelie?”
She kept silent stubbornly.
The anger of her enemy was inflamed by this terrified silence. And he went on, dwelling on each word: “We have no time for trifles, have we Aurelie, or to touch on one subject after another? It is necessary to speak clearly without mincing matters, in order that there may be no misunderstanding. To come straight to the point then—silence about the past and the humiliations I have suffered. Those no longer count. What does count is the present—the present is all important. Now, the present is the murder on the express, your flight through the woods, your capture [146]by the police; twenty proofs, every one of which is fatal to you. And the present is to-day, when I hold you in my grip and all I have to do is to take you and conduct you to your step-father and shout in his face, before witnesses: ‘The murderess, whom they are seeking everywhere, is here! The warrant for her arrest is in my pocket. Send for the police!’ ”
He stretched out his arm, ready, as he had said, to grasp the criminal, and with this threat hanging over her, he ended in yet harsher accents: “On the one hand, then, this: a public denunciation, the court, and a terrible punishment; on the other hand the alternative I offer to your choice: an alliance, an immediate alliance, on conditions I lay down. It is more than a promise I demand; it is an oath, taken on your knees. The oath that, once you have returned to Paris, you will come to see me, alone, at my flat. And more than that an immediate proof that the alliance is honest, signed by your lips on mine—and not with kiss of disgust and hatred, but with a voluntary kiss, like the kisses other women, as prettier and more difficult to win than you, Aurelie, have given me—a lover’s kiss. Answer, curse you!” he shouted in a sudden outburst of fury. “Answer that you accept! I’ve had enough of your airs of a lost soul! Answer, or I’ll jolly well arrest you and it will not only be the kiss but prison as well!”
His left hand fell heavily on her shoulder, while with his right, seizing her by the throat, he pressed back [147]her head against the lattice-work and bent down. But his head stopped short, midway to her lips. He felt her collapse; she had fainted.
This unexpected swoon took him aback. He had come without any very definite plan beyond that of speaking to her, and during the hour before the coming of Bregeac, of obtaining from her a solemn promise and the recognition of the fact that she was in his power. Now chance offered him an inert and helpless victim.
He remained some moments bending over her, gazing at her with greedy eyes. He looked round this sylvan retreat, enclosed and discreet. No witness; no interference possible.
But another idea brought him to the wall, and from among the trees he looked down on the deserted valley, the forest with its dark trees, black and mysterious, in which he had noticed as he paused the mouths of the grottos. Aurelie thrown into one of them, a prisoner, and held under the terrible threat of the police, Aurelie a prisoner for two days, three days, a week if necessary, was not that an unexpected, triumphant dénouement, the beginning and the end of the adventure?
He whistled sharply. Opposite him on the further bank of the pool two arms were waved above two bushes on the edge of the forest. The signal agreed on: two men were there, posted by him to help him [148]carry out his plans. On this side of the pool, a boat was rocking.
He hesitated no longer. He knew that opportunity is fleeting and that, if one does not seize it in its passing, it vanishes like a shadow. He crossed the terrace again and perceived that the girl seemed ready to come to.
“Let us act,” he said, “if not——”
He threw a handkerchief round her head and knotted it across her mouth to form a gag. Then he took her up in his arms and carried her away.
She was slight and hardly weighed anything at all. He was a strong man. His burden seemed light. Nevertheless as he came to the breach in the wall and perceived the almost vertical descent worn by storms in the lower part of it, he studied it carefully and decided that it was necessary to take precautions. Therefore he set Aurelie down at the edge of the breach.
Was she waiting for him to make this mistake? Was it a sudden inspiration? In any case his carelessness was at once punished. With an unexpected movement and with a swiftness and decision which took him aback, she tore the handkerchief from her mouth, and without caring what happened, let herself slide from the top to the bottom, like a loosened stone which rolls with an avalanche of pebbles and sand from which rises a cloud of dust.
Recovering from his surprise he dashed after her at [149]the risk of falling, and perceived that she was running at haphazard in a zigzag course from the cliff to the bank of the pool, like a hunted beast that does not know which way to fly.
“You’re lost, my dear,” he muttered. “There’s nothing for you to do but bend the knee.”
He had almost caught her, and she was tottering and staggering with fear, when he had an impression that something fell from the top of the terrace and struck the ground near him. He turned, saw a man coming at full speed, the lower part of his face masked by a handkerchief. It must be the man he had called Aurelie’s lover. He had time to grip his revolver, but not time to use it. A kick from this adversary, the kick of an expert savage fighter, caught him full in the chest and sent him flying into the sticky swamp on the edge of the pool. He sank, then rose, spluttering, to his feet, up to his knees in the mud. Furious and staggering, he aimed at Ralph, who, no more than twenty yards away, was lifting the girl into the boat.
“Stop! Or I’ll fire!” shouted Marescal.
Ralph did not answer. He caught up a rotting plank, rested it on a thwart like a protecting shield between Aurelie and himself and the revolver, then pushed off the boat with a vigorous shove which sent it dancing over the waves. Marescal fired. He fired six times, raging and furious. But, slipping about as he was in the ooze, the bullets went wild. Then, he whistled [150]more shrilly than before. The two men on the other shore sprang up from their lairs, like jacks-in-the-box.
Ralph found himself in the middle of the pool, about thirty yards, that is, from the opposite bank.
“Don’t shoot!” yelled Marescal.
Why shoot, indeed? The fugitive had no other course, to escape being dragged by the current towards the gulf in which the brook disappeared, than to row straight across and come to shore at the very spot at which Marescal’s men were waiting for him, revolver in hand.
He must have perceived this, for suddenly he brought the boat sharply round and rowed back to the shore on which he had to fight only one adversary with an empty revolver.
“Shoot! Shoot!” shouted Marescal, who perceived what Ralph would be at. “You must shoot now! He’s coming back! Shoot, damn you!”
One of the men fired.
There was a cry from the boat. Ralph let go the oars and fell back, and with a cry of despair the girl threw herself upon him. The oars floated away on the surface of the water. The boat remained still for a few moments, as it could not make up its mind, then slowly turned, with its prow pointing towards the current, and began to move backwards, slowly at first then more quickly. [151]
“G-G-Good Heavens!” stammered Marescal, horrified. “They’re done for!”
What could he do? There was no doubt what the end would be. The boat was caught by two bubbling torrents which were hurrying along both sides of the pool to a central point; once it turned completely round, then, taking a straight course, with the two bodies lying in the bottom of it, it rushed to the gaping cave and was engulfed!
All this happened in less than three minutes after the two fugitives had left the bank.
Marescal did not stir, his legs in the water, his features contorted with horror, he gazed at the accursed spot as if he were gazing at the mouth of Hell. His hat was floating towards it; mud and water dripped from his hair and beard.
“Is it p-p-possible—is it p-p-possible?” he stammered. “Aurelie! Aurelie! Aurelie!”
A shout from his men awoke him from his stupor. They made a long circuit and reached him ten minutes later. They found him drying himself.
“Is it true?” he asked.
“What?” said one of the men.
“The boat? The gulf?”
He no longer knew. In this way in nightmares abominable visions pass, leaving an impression of terrible realities. The three of them made their way above the mouth of the cavern which opened in a rock [152]crowned with brambles, its surface covered with water-plants. The water flowed into it in narrow rapids from which rose the rounded and shining tops of large boulders. They bent over the edge of the rock and listened. Nothing. Nothing but the murmur of hurrying waters—nothing but a cold blast, which rose white with flecks of foam.
“It’s hell!” murmured Marescal. “It’s one of the mouths of hell.”
Then he went on: “She is dead—she is drowned. How stupid! What a terrible death! If that damned fool had only left her alone—I should have—I should have——”
They went away through the woods. Marescal jogged along in a kind of stupor. Several times his companions questioned him. They were shady loafers whom he had picked up for this expedition and not regular men in his service; and he had only informed them roughly of his plans. He did not answer them. He thought of Aurelie, so gracious and so full of life, whom he loved so passionately. He was harassed by memories of her, by remorse and terror.
He was indeed uneasy in mind. The coming inquiry might very well involve him and throw part of the blame for this tragic accident on him. In that case it meant a scandal and ruin. Bregeac would be pitiless; he would be indefatigable in his efforts to avenge his step-daughter. [153]
Presently he could think of nothing but getting out of that part of the country as quietly as possible. He frightened his two assistants by telling them that a common danger menaced them and that it was imperative, if they would escape it, that each should go his own way and look after himself before the alarm was given and their presence marked. He gave them twice the money he had promised them, made a circuit round Luz, and took the road to Pierrefitte-Nestales in the hope of finding some conveyance which would bring him to the railway station in time for the seven o’clock train that evening.
It was not till he had walked three kilometers from Luz that a small two-wheeled cart, covered with a tarpaulin and driven by a countryman wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a Basque cap, overtook him.
He stopped the cart with an air of authority and said imperiously: “Five francs if you get me to Pierrefitte-Nestales in time to catch the train.”
The peasant did not appear to be greatly excited by this generous offer and did not even whip up the wretched animal which ambled along between shafts that were much too large for it.
It was a long journey. They crawled along. It almost looked as if the peasant was holding his beast back, instead of urging it on.
Marescal lost his temper. He seemed, indeed, to have lost all control whatever over himself and [154]whined: “We shall never get there—never. What a jade your horse is! Look here: I’ll give you ten francs if we catch that train. What about it?”
The country appeared to him hideous, peopled with phantoms and teaming with detectives on the trail of the detective Marescal. He could not endure the thought of passing the night in this district in which the body of the girl he had sent to her death was lying.
“Twenty francs!” he said.
And all at once, losing his head wholly, he shouted: “Fifty francs! I’ll give you fifty francs! It isn’t further than a mile and a quarter. A mile and a quarter in seven minutes, dammit! It can be done! Get on, curse you, thrash that nanny-goat of a horse! Fifty francs!”
On the instant the peasant became furiously energetic, and, as if he had only been waiting for this magnificent offer, set himself to lash the nanny-goat with such ardor that it set off at a gallop.
“Look out! Mind what you’re doing! You’ll have us in the ditch!” cried Marescal.
The countryman seemed not to care a hang whether they went into the ditch or not. Fifty francs! He beat his horse as hard as he could with a stick fitted with a large copper ferule. The maddened beast galloped faster and faster. The cart leaped from one side of the road to the other, Marescal grew more and more terrified. [155]
“But it’s idiotic!” he shouted. “You’re going to upset us! Go slower, confound you! You’re mad, I tell you—mad! That’s it, you fool! Here we go!”
They went, indeed. The countryman clumsily pulled the wrong rein; the cart made a wilder jump and the whole outfit, cart, driver, passenger and load, plunged into the ditch in such a disastrous fashion that the countryman and Marescal found themselves on their stomachs with the cart on the top of them while the horse, entangled in the harness, with its heels in the air, beat a tattoo on the foot-board. Marescal presently discovered that none of his bones were broken. But the countryman was crushing him with his full weight. He tried to push him off. He could not.
Then he heard a kindly voice murmur in his ear: “Could you oblige me with a light, Rudolph?”
Marescal felt his body chill from head to foot. Death and only death could produce that impression of limbs already stiff and cold that nothing would ever warm again.
He muttered through chattering teeth: “The man of the express!”
“The man of the express, the very man,” echoed the voice at his ear-hole.
“The man of the terrace!” moaned Marescal.
“Quite right—the man of the express, the man of the terrace—and also the man of Monte Carlo and the man [156]of Boulevard Haussmann and the murderer of the two brothers Loubeaux and the accomplice of Aurelie, and the navigator of the boat and the driver of the cart. That gives you plenty of warriors to fight, old chap; and I venture to say that they can all hold their own.”
The horse had finished its drumming on the foot-board and scrambled to its feet and dragged the cart off them. Ralph sat up, on the small of the detective’s back, quietly drew off his big cloak, and wrapped it round the detective, so paralyzing his legs and arms. He caught the reins, pulled the cart towards him and, keeping a foot painfully on the detective’s back, stripped the horse of the traces and reins and bound Marescal with excessive tightness. Then he picked him up and carried him to the top of the high embankment into a thicket. He went down again, came back with a couple of straps from the harness, and fastened the detective by the neck and chest to the trunk of a birch.
“I don’t seem to bring you any luck, poor old Rudolph. This is the second time I’ve tied you up like a mummy. Ah, don’t let me forget to use Aurelie’s handkerchief as a gag. The perfect prisoner should neither be seen nor heard. But you can see everything with your eyes and also listen with all your ears. Hark! Do you hear the whistle of the train? There it goes: puff, puff, puff! It has started for the North and it’s carrying away Aurelie and her step-father. I really must set your mind at rest. Aurelie’s as much [157]alive as you or I. A little tired, perhaps, after so many emotions. But a good night’s rest, and she won’t show a trace of them.”
He went away and tied the horse to a tree and cleared the fragments of the cart off the road. Then he came back and sat down by the Commissary.
“A queer business that shipwreck, wasn’t it?” he said amiably. “But there was no miracle about it, I assure you. And there was no luck about it either. That you may know better how to act in the future, you must know that I never rely on miracles or on luck, but solely on myself. So—but I hope that my little sermon is not boring you? Perhaps you’d rather go to sleep. No? Well, to continue—I had scarcely left Aurelie on the terrace when I turned anxious. Was it quite prudent to leave her like that? Can one ever be sure that some blackguard is not prowling about—that some pomade-pot of a lady-killer is not sneaking about the neighborhood? Intuitions like that form part of my system. I always act on them. So I went back. And what do I see? Rudolph, the infamous ravisher and faithless policeman, plunging into the valley on the track of his prey. Thereupon I fall from Heaven, I kick you into a cold bath, I carry off Aurelie, and there we are! The pool, the forest, the grottoes, that way lay liberty. Off we go! Then you whistle and two ugly-looking customers spring up at your call! What to do? An insoluble problem, if ever there was [158]one. No: A pleasing thought. Suppose I let myself be swallowed up by the gulf? At that very moment a revolver spits a bullet at me. I howl; I let go the oars; I pretend to be dead at the bottom of the boat. I explain my action to Aurelie, and bang we go headfirst into the abyss!”
Ralph tapped Marescal’s thigh.
“Don’t shudder, old chap, I beg you: we did not run any risk at all. All the countryside knows that, if you make use of that tunnel which the stream has cut through the chalk, you land two hundred yards lower down on a nice little sandy beach from which you mount by a short staircase cut in the cliff. On Sundays dozens of boys make the journey and drag their skiff back and make it again. There is no fear of as much as a scratch. And in that way we were able to observe from a distance your flabbergastedness and see you go off, with bowed head, crushed by remorse. Then I took Aurelie back to the convent garden. Her step-father came to fetch her in a carriage in time to catch the train. As for me, I went to look for my suit-case, bought the cart and cloak and cap from a peasant and started off, gently, with no other object in view than to cover the retreat of Aurelie.”
Ralph rested his head on Marescal’s shoulder.
“I needn’t tell you that this business has tired me a little and that a short nap seems to be in order. Watch over my dreams, Rudolph darling, and do not worry. [159]Everything is for the best in the best of worlds. Every one in it occupies the place he deserves; and blockheads serve as pillows for intelligent people like me.” He went to sleep.
Twilight came and then the night fell. Now and again Ralph awoke and said a few words about the shining stars or the clear light of the moon. Then he went to sleep again.
Towards midnight he grew hungry. He had some food in his suit-case. He removed Marescal’s gag, and offered him some.
“Eat, darling,” he said affectionately, putting a piece of cheese into his mouth.
But once again Marescal lost his temper; he spat out the cheese and growled:
“Imbecile! Idiot! You’re the blockhead! Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Certainly. I’ve rescued Aurelie. Her step-father is taking her back to Paris; and I’m going to join her there.”
“Her step-father!” cried Marescal. “You don’t know then?”
“What?”
“That’s he’s in love with her, her precious step-father!”
Ralph, of a sudden beside himself, buried his hands in Marescal’s hair, and tried to shake his strapped-up head. [160]
“Imbecile! Idiot! Why didn’t you tell me so, instead of hanging on my sermonizing lips? He’s in love with her, is he? The swine! Then everybody’s in love with that girl! A lot of silly brutes! Have you never looked at yourself in the glass? You, with your pomaded wig!”
He bent forward and added: “Listen to me, Marescal. I’m going to tear that little girl from her step-father. But leave her in peace. Don’t bother about us any more.”
“It’s impossible,” growled the Commissary savagely.
“Why?”
“She has murdered.”
“So that is your plan?”
“To hand her over to justice; and I shall carry it out, for I hate her.”
He spoke these words in an access of so savage a rancor that Ralph could not fail to understand that henceforth hate would have the better of love in Marescal’s heart.
“All the worse for you, Rudolph. I was going to propose a trifle of promotion to you, something in the way of the post of Commissioner of Police. But you prefer war. Have your own way. Begin with a night in the open air. Nothing is better for the health. As for me, I shall ride to Lourdes on the main line. Twenty kilometers—about three hours’ trot for my fiery steed. And to-night I shall be in Paris, where I [161]shall begin by putting Aurelie into a place of safety. Good-by, Rudolph.”
He mounted, fixed his suit-case in front of him as comfortably as he could, and without a saddle or spurs, whistling a hunting song, kicked his horse into a trot, and disappeared in the darkness.
That night in Paris an old lady of the name of Victorine, who had been his nurse, was waiting in a car, outside the house in which Bregeac lived. Ralph was at the wheel.
He kept watch there all night. In the early morning he saw a rag-picker, who was hunting with his hook through the orderly boxes that stood along the curb. Immediately with that sixth sense which enabled him to recognize people by their carriage and bearing, rather than by their faces, he recognized, under the rags and dirty cap, in spite of the fact that he had seen such a very little of him in the garden of the Villa Faradoni and on the road to Nice, the murderer Jodot.
“The devil!” murmured Ralph. “That gentleman’s at work already, is he?”
At a few minutes to eight a maid came out of the front door of the house and hurried across to a chemist’s shop lower down the street. Ralph hurried after her with a bank-note ready and accosted her. He learned that Aurelie, who had returned the night before [162]with her step-father, had been struck down by fever and was delirious.
In the middle of the afternoon Marescal was prowling about the house. [163]