At two o’clock the same day Aurelie was dressing feebly. An old servant of the house of Valentine, who was now the only servant they had, had brought up her lunch to her room and had told her that Bregeac wished to speak to her.
She had not fully recovered from her illness. Pale and very feeble, she put some rouge on her lips and cheeks and forced herself to appear before the man she detested, carrying her head high.
Bregeac was waiting for her in his study on the first floor, a large room with closed shutters, lighted by an electric light.
“Sit down,” he said.
“No.”
“Sit down. You’re tired.”
“Tell me at once what you want to say and let me go back to my room,” she said coldly.
Bregeac walked up and down the room with an harassed and anxious air. He watched her furtively, with as much hostility as passion, as a man who finds himself balked by an indomitable will. Also he was full of pity for her. [188]
He came to her and putting his hand on her shoulder forced her to sit down and sat down himself.
“You’re right,” he said. “It will not take long. What I have to tell you can be said in a few words. You can then decide.”
They were near one another, yet further apart than two bitter enemies. Bregeac was aware of it. The words he was trying to speak would only widen the abyss between them.
He clenched his fists and said: “So you still do not understand that we are surrounded by enemies and that the situation cannot last?”
“What enemies?” she muttered.
“You know quite well,” he said. “Marescal, who detests you and is burning to avenge himself.”
He looked at her; but as she said nothing, he went on in a lower voice and yet more serious accents. “Listen, Aurelie. For some time we have been under observation. In the Ministry they search my drawers. Superiors and inferiors, all the world is in league against me. Why? Because they are all more or less in the pay of Marescal, and because they all know he is more powerful than I with the Minister. Now, you and I are linked to one another if only because he hates us both. And we are linked to one another by our past, which, whether you like it or not, is the same. I have brought you up. I am your guardian. My ruin is yours. And I even ask myself if it is not you [189]they are really about to attack for reasons of which I am ignorant. Yes; I have got the impression from certain facts that they will leave me strictly alone, but that you are directly threatened.”
She looked as if she were about to faint and asked: “What facts?”
He answered: “It’s worse than that. I have received an anonymous letter, written on the paper of the Ministry—an absurd and incoherent letter in which I am warned that a prosecution is going to be started against you.”
She had the strength to say: “A prosecution? You’re mad. And it’s because an anonymous letter——”
“Yes, I know what you’re going to say,” he said quickly. “Some idle official who has heard some stupid rumor. But all the same Marescal is capable of every abomination.”
“If you’re afraid, keep out of the business,” she said coldly.
“I’m afraid for you, Aurelie.”
“I’ve nothing to fear.”
“Yes, you have,” he said quickly. “This man has sworn to destroy you.”
“Then let me go.”
“Are you strong enough?”
“I’ve all the strength I need to escape from this [190]prison in which you keep me and never to see you again,” she said bitterly.
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of discouragement.
“Don’t say that,” he said. “I could not live without you. I have suffered too much during your absence. I would rather endure anything—anything rather than be separated from you. My whole life depends on your regard, on you.”
She drew herself up, trembling with indignation, and cried: “I forbid you to speak to me like that. You swore to me that I should never hear a word of that kind again—abominable words!”
She sank back in her chair, exhausted by the effort. He moved away from her and threw himself into an arm-chair, his head between his hands, his shoulders shaken by his sobs, like a vanquished man for whom existence is an intolerable burden.
After a long silence he began again in a dull voice: “We’re still worse enemies than we were before you went away. You have come back quite different. What did you do, Aurelie—not at Sainte-Marie—but during the first three weeks during which I was hunting for you like a mad-man, before I thought of the convent? That wretched fellow William—you did not love him that I know. Nevertheless, you followed him. Why? And what became of the two of you? What has become of him? I have an intuition that very [191]serious things happened. I see that you are worried to death. In your delirium you talked like one who had been flying without stopping; and you kept seeing blood-corpses.”
She shuddered. “No, no!” she cried. “It is not true. You misunderstood me.”
“I did not understand you,” he replied, shaking his head. “Look, at this very moment your eyes are terrified. One would think that your nightmare was still going on.”
He came nearer to her and said slowly: “You need a long rest, my poor child, and that is what I want to suggest to you. This morning I asked for leave and we will go away. I swear to you that I will not say a single word that might offend you. What is more, I will not say a word about that secret which you ought to have confided to me, since it belongs as much to me as to you. I will not even try to read it in the depths of your eyes in which it hides itself and in which I have so often tried, by force I confess, to find the key to this insoluble problem. I will leave your eyes alone, Aurelie. I will never look at you again. That is my definite promise. But come with me, poor child, you rack me with pity. You are waiting for I do not know what, and it is only misfortune which can respond to your appeal. Come with me.”
She kept silence with a stubborn obstinacy. The quarrel between them was past mending; it was impossible [192]to utter a word which would not inflict a wound, or be an outrage. The odious passion of Bregeac separated them more than all that had happened and than the profound reasons which had always set them in opposition.
“Will you?” he said at last.
She said firmly: “I will not. I cannot stand your presence any longer. I can no longer live in the same house with you. I shall go away at the first opportunity.”
“And not alone—any more than the first time,” he sneered. “It’s William, I suppose.”
“I’ve got rid of William.”
“Some one else then, some one for whom you are waiting, I’m convinced of it. Your eyes are always looking for him—your ears are always listening for him. Yes: at this very moment!”
The front door had been opened and shut.
“What did I tell you?” cried Bregeac with an evil laugh. “One would really think that you were hoping that some one was going to come. No, Aurelie; no one will come, neither William, nor any one else. It is Valentine whom I sent to the Ministry to fetch my courrier, for I shall not go there again.”
They heard the sound of the servant’s footsteps on the stairs to the first floor and then on the landing. He entered.
“Did you do as I told you, Valentine?” [193]
“Yes, sir.”
“There were letters—letters to be signed?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s odd. But my courrier?”
“He had just been transferred to M. Marescal.”
“But what right? Did Marescal dare?—Was Marescal there?” cried Bregeac in a tone of sudden anxiety.
“No, sir. He came and went away at once.”
“Came away? At half-past two? Then it must be some important affair.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you try to find out what it was?”
“Yes; but they did not know anything at the office.”
“Was he alone?”
“No: he went with Labonce, Tony, and Sauvinoux.”
“With Labonce and Tony?” cried Bregeac. “Well, in that case it’s a matter of an arrest! Why wasn’t I informed of it? What can be happening?”
Valentine went away. Bregeac once more began to walk up and down the room.
He said thoughtfully: “Tony, Marescal’s right-hand man,—Labonce, one of his favorites—and without informing me.”
He fell silent for a minute or two and paced up and down. Aurelie watched him anxiously. Then he went to one of the windows, opened one of the shutters a few inches, and looked out. [194]
“But they’re there at—the end of the street! They’re keeping watch!”
“Who?”
“Both of them, Marescal’s assistants—Tony and Labonce.”
“Well?” she said in a faint voice.
“Those are the two he always employs in important matters. It was with them he was working this morning.”
“And they’re there?” said Aurelie.
“They’re there. I’ve seen them.”
“And is Marescal coming?”
“Of course he is. You heard what Valentine said,” said Bregeac impatiently.
“He’s c-c-c-oming—he’s c-c-c-oming,” she stammered.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bregeac, astonished that she should be so disturbed.
“Nothing,” she said, again in control of herself. “One gets frightened in spite of one’s self. But there’s no real reason.”
Bregeac reflected. He too was hard put to it to keep his nerves under control. Then he said: “Of course there’s no reason. One generally gets excited for perfectly puerile reasons. I’ll go and question them and I’m sure that everything will be cleared up. Quite sure. For after all it looks rather as if they were watching the house opposite than us.” [195]
Aurelie raised her head sharply and said quickly: “What house?”
“I told you about the business—the man they arrested this morning, just before noon. If you’d only seen Marescal when he left his office at eleven. I met him as he left it. He was wearing an expression of immense satisfaction and simply ferocious hate. That’s what bothers me. One can only feel such hate as that in one’s life for some one person. And it is I whom he hates like that, or rather the two of us. So I thought it was we who were threatened.”
Aurelie rose to her feet, paler than ever.
“What’s that you say? An arrest in the house opposite?” she cried.
“Yes; a man of the name of Limézy, who pretends to be an explorer—a Baron de Limézy. I had news of the arrest at one o’clock at the Ministry. They had just brought him to Headquarters.”
She did not know Ralph’s name, but she was certain that Bregeac was talking of no one else, and asked in a trembling voice: “What has he done? Who is he? This Baron de Limézy?”
“According to Marescal he is the murderer of the express. The third confederate whom they were seeking.”
She was on the point of falling. She wore a distracted air and groped giddily in the empty air to find something to hold on to. [196]
“What’s the matter, Aurelie? What connection has this business——”
“We are lost,” she groaned.
“What do you mean?”
“You cannot understand.”
“Explain yourself. Do you know this man?” he cried on a rising note.
“Yes, yes. He rescued me. He saved me from Marescal and from William and from that man Jodot who used to come here. He would have saved us again to-day.”
He stared at her, confounded, and said: “Was it him you were waiting for?”
“Yes,” she said. “He promised to be on the spot. I was quite easy in mind. I have seen him do such things—fool Marescal.”
“Well?” said Bregeac.
“Well,” she replied in the same distracted tone. “It would perhaps be better to get into hiding—you as well as I. There are stories to your disadvantage—stories of years ago.”
“You’re mad!” cried Bregeac, aghast. “There’s nothing of the kind! For my part, I fear nothing!”
In spite of his denials, he went out of the room, dragging Aurelie with him on to the landing. It was she who at the last moment resisted.
“But no. What use would it be? We shall be [197]saved—he will come—he will escape. Why not wait for him?”
“One does not escape from Headquarters,” snarled Bregeac.
“You think not? Oh, how horrible all this is!”
She did not know what to do. Terrible ideas whirled through her mind, weakened by her illness—fear of Marescal and of immediate arrest—and the police who were going to seize her and twist her wrists.
The terror of her step-father decided her. Carried away by the fury of the storm, she ran to her room and reappeared at once with a suit-case in her hand. Bregeac was also ready. They had the air of two criminals who had nothing else to look at except a desperate flight. They went down the staircase and crossed the hall.
At that very moment the bell rang.
“Too late,” whispered Bregeac.
“No,” she said, encouraged by a sudden hope. “Perhaps he has come. He has come and is going to take me away.”
She thought of her friend and of the convent terrace. He had sworn never to abandon her and that at the very last minute even he would be able to save her. Obstacles? Were there any obstacles for him? Was he not master of men and of events?
The bell rang again.
The old servant came out of the dining-room. [198]
“Open,” said Bregeac to him, in a low voice.
They heard whisperings and the shuffling of feet on the other side of the door. Some one knocked.
“Open the door,” said Bregeac again.
On the doorstep stood Marescal with three men. She leaned against the bannisters of the staircase and groaned in such a low voice that Bregeac alone heard it:
“Heavens! It is not him!”
Confronted with his subordinate, Bregeac drew himself to his full height.
“What do you want, Monsieur? I have forbidden you the house,” he said sternly.
“I am here on an official matter, Monsieur le Directeur. By order of the Minister,” he said with a snarl.
“An order which concerns me?”
“Which concerns you and mademoiselle too,” said Marescal.
“And which compels you to secure the help of three men?”
Marescal laughed and said: “Goodness, no. That was a mere accident. They were taking a walk this way, we fell into conversation, and they came along with me. There’s nothing to be put out about.”
He entered and caught sight of the two suit-cases.
“Ah, a short journey. What? A minute later and my trouble would have been wasted.” [199]
“Monsieur Marescal,” said Bregeac firmly, “if you have a mission to perform—a communication to make to me, make it at once and here.”
“Don’t let’s have a scandal, Bregeac. And don’t let’s have any nonsense. No one knows anything so far, not even my men. Let’s talk things over in your study,” said Marescal in threatening accents.
“No one knows anything about what, Monsieur?” said Bregeac.
“About what is happening; and it’s serious enough. If your step-daughter has not told you about it, perhaps she will admit that an explanation without witnesses would be preferable. What do you think, Mademoiselle?” said Marescal in a jeering tone.
Pale as death, still holding on to the bannisters, Aurelie seemed on the point of fainting.
Bregeac slipped an arm round her and held her up.
“Come on up,” he said, helping her up the stairs.
She let him do so. Marescal told his men to enter.
“Don’t stir out of the hall, any of you, and don’t let any one come in, or go out,” he said. He turned to Valentine and added: “Go into the kitchen and stay there.”
Valentine went.
“If there’s any trouble upstairs, I’ll whistle,” he said to his men. “And Sauvinoux will come to the rescue. Do you understand?”
“We understand,” said Labonce. [200]
“Don’t make any mistake.”
“We shan’t make any mistake, chief. You know that we’re not novices. And that we’ll stand by you to a man,” said Sauvinoux.
“Even against Bregeac?”
“Rather.”
“Right. Give me the bottle, Tony.”
He took the bottle, or rather the cardboard case which held it, and went briskly up the stairs, assured that his orders would be obeyed, and entered the study out of which he had been so ignominiously turned six months before, with the air of a master. What a victory for him! And with what an insolence did he make his triumph plain! He walked round the study, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, looking at the photographs which hung upon the wall, photographs of Aurelie, as a baby, a little girl, and a young girl.
Bregeac snapped: “Try to behave yourself, Marescal.”
At once Marescal put him in his place.
“It’s no use, Bregeac; shut up!” he said. “Your weakness is that you don’t know the weapons I hold against Mademoiselle, and consequently against you. Perhaps, when you do know them, you’ll realize that it’s your duty to do as you’re told.”
Facing one another, drawn to their full height, the two enemies tried to stare one another down. Their hate for one another, springing from opposing ambitions, [201]warring instincts, and above all from a rivalry in love that all these other factors made more bitter, was equal. Beside them Aurelie waited, sitting upright on her chair.
The curious thing was, and it struck Marescal, that she seemed to have recovered herself. Still feeble, with drawn face, she no longer wore, as at the beginning of the attack, her air of a helpless, exhausted quarry. She maintained that rigid attitude which he had observed her assume on the bench at Sainte-Marie. Her eyes, open wide, wet with tears which trickled down her pale cheeks, were fixed on something invisible to either of them. Of what was she thinking? Sometimes from the very bottom of the abyss one rises again. Did she think that he, Marescal, could be moved to pity? Had she a plan of defense which would allow her to escape the penalty of the law?
He banged his fist down on the table and cried: “We’ll see about that!”
Leaving the girl out of it for the moment, he gave all his attention to Bregeac. He stepped right up to him, thrusting his face forward, so that his chief had to recoil a step, and said to him: “It won’t take me long to deal with you. The facts and only the facts! Some of them are known to you, Bregeac, as they are known to everybody; but to the majority of them there is no witness but me, or rather they have been discovered by me alone. Do not try to deny them; I am giving them [202]to you exactly as they are, in all their simplicity. Here they are in the form of an indictment. On the 26th of April last——”
Bregeac quivered, and said quickly: “The twenty-sixth of April was the day on which we met on the Boulevard Haussmann.”
“Yes; and it was the day on which your step-daughter left you,” said Marescal, and he added sharply: “It was also the day on which three persons were murdered on the Marseilles express.”
“What? What connection is there between the two facts?” asked Bregeac in astonished accents.
“Don’t be impatient,” said Marescal pompously. “You will get each fact in its place, in its chronological order.” He paused to cough. Then went on: “On April the twenty-sixth, car number five, in the express, was occupied by only four persons. In the last compartment were an English girl of the name of Miss Bakersfield—a crook she was—and Baron de Limézy, a pretended explorer. In the last compartment were two men, the brothers Loubeaux, residing at Neuilly-sur-Seine.
“In the car behind, the fourth car, besides several persons who played no part in the affair and knew nothing about it, were, firstly, a Commissary of the Secret Service, secondly, a young man and a young girl, alone in a compartment, in which they had covered the light and pulled down the curtains, as if they [203]were going to sleep, and consequently passed unnoticed by everybody, even by the Commissary. I was that Commissary, on the track of Miss Bakersfield. The young man was William Ancivel, a stock-jobber and burglar, a frequent guest at this house, who was flying secretly with his companion.”
“You lie! You lie!” cried Bregeac indignantly. “Aurelie is above suspicion!”
“I did not say that his companion was Mademoiselle,” Marescal retorted.
Bregeac scowled at him.
Marescal went on coldly: “As far as La Roche nothing happened. For another half hour nothing happened. Then came the abrupt and violent drama. The young man and girl emerge from the darkness and pass from the fourth car to the fifth. They are disguised by long gray blouses, caps, and masks. In the last compartment of the fifth car Baron de Limézy is waiting for them. The three of them murder and rob Miss Bakersfield. Then Baron de Limézy is tied up by his confederates, who hurry to the end of the car and murder and rob the two brothers. When they come back down the car they meet the conductor. There is a fight; and they escape. The conductor finds Baron de Limézy trussed up as one of their victims and pretending he has been robbed, also. That’s the first act. The second is their flight up the embankment and through the woods. But the [204]conductor has given the alarm. I learn what has happened; I take the necessary measures. The result is that the two fugitives are surrounded. One of them escapes. The other is arrested and shut up. I am informed of it. I go to examine him in the dark corner into which he has shrunk. It is a woman.”
“A woman?” said Bregeac in incredulous accents.
“Let me finish,” said Marescal. “Thanks to the pseudo-Baron, in trusting whom I made a mistake, this woman gets away and rejoins William Ancivel. I find traces of them at Monte Carlo. Then I lose track of them again. I hunt for it in vain till the day on which it occurs to me to return to Paris and to learn whether your investigations, Bregeac, have not been more fortunate than mine and whether you have discovered your step-daughter’s hiding-place. That was how I was able to reach the convent of Sainte-Marie several hours before you did and to make my way to a certain terrace on which Mademoiselle was listening to a tale of love. Only the lover has changed: instead of William Ancivel it is Baron de Limézy, that is to say, their confederate.”
Bregeac was listening to these monstrous accusations with a growing fear. It all seemed to him so inevitably true; it explained so exactly his own intuitions and agreed so closely with the half confidences Aurelie had just made to him with regard to her unknown savior. He did not even try to protest. At [205]intervals he looked at her, always to find her sitting, motionless and dumb, in her rigid attitude. Marescal’s words did not appear to penetrate to her understanding, one would have said that she was listening to noises outside rather than to his words. Was it that she still hoped for an impossible intervention?
“And then?” said Bregeac impatiently, as Marescal paused.
“Then,” replied the Commissary, “thanks to him, she succeeded once more in escaping. But to-day I swear to you I can laugh at all that, since—to-day I have my revenge.”
He paused to gloat over Aurelie, who seemed wholly unaware of his existence.
“And what a revenge, Bregeac!” he went on. “Do you remember that six months ago you dismissed me as if I had been a valet—one might almost say you kicked me out? And now I hold her—this child—in the hollow of my hand; and all is over.”
He turned his hand as if he were turning a key in a lock, and that so exact gesture showed so clearly and definitely his terrible resolution with regard to Aurelie that Bregeac exclaimed: “No, no. It isn’t true, Marescal! It can’t be true! You are not going to hand this child over to the police.”
“Down there at Sainte-Marie I offered her peace,” said Marescal in harsh accents. “She repulsed me. All the worse for her! To-day is too late!” [206]
Bregeac approached him with his hands stretched out in a gesture of supplication and began an incoherent prayer. He cut it short.
“It’s useless!” he cried. “All the worse for her! All the worse for you! She wouldn’t have me—she shall have nobody. And it’s mere justice. To pay her debt for the crime she has committed is to pay me for the harm she has done me. She must be punished; and I avenge myself in punishing her. All the worse for her!”
He emphasized his phrases by stamping his foot or banging on the table. Then giving way to the natural grossness of his nature he turned on Aurelie and cried: “Look at her, Bregeac! Is she thinking for a moment of asking my forgiveness? If you bow your head, does she show any humiliation? And do you know the reason of this dumbness, of this sustained and intractable hardness? It’s because she still hopes, Bregeac. Yes, she hopes; I’m certain of it. She hopes that the man who has saved her three times from my claws, will save her a fourth.”
Aurelie never stirred. He snatched up the receiver of the telephone and rang up the Prefecture of Police.
“Hullo! Is that the Prefecture? Put me on to Monsieur Phillipe—it’s M. Marescal speaking.”
He turned to the young girl and held the second receiver to her ear. Aurelie did not stir.
Some one answered at the other end of the line: [207]
“Is that you, Marescal?”
“Yes. Listen. There is a person here to whom I wish to afford complete certainty. Answer my questions exactly.”
“Right.”
“Where were you at noon to-day?”
“At Headquarters as you asked me to be. I received the person whom Labonce and Tony brought from you.”
“Where did we arrest him?”
“In his lodgings in the Rue de Courcelles in the house exactly opposite Bregeac’s.”
“Was he charged?”
“Before me.”
“Under what name?”
“Baron de Limézy.”
“And what did they charge him with?”
“With being the leader of the train robbers in the express case.”
“Have you seen him since this morning?”
“Yes. Just now, when they were taking his measurements. They’re taking them still.”
“Thanks, Phillipe, that’s what I wanted to know. Good-by.”
He hung up the receivers and cried: “Well, my pretty Aurelie, you know where your savior is! In prison! Jailed!”
“I knew it,” she said. [208]
He burst out laughing.
“She knew it! And she went on expecting him just the same! That’s really funny. He has the whole of the police and the weight of the law on the top of him—he’s a rag, a tatter, a straw in the wind, a soap-bubble, and she’s expecting him! The walls of his prison are going to fall down! The warders are going to offer him a car! He’s here! He’s going to come down the chimney or through the ceiling!”
Beside himself, he shook the young girl impassive and heedless of him, by the shoulder.
“There’s nothing to be done, Aurelie! There’s no more hope! Your savior’s done for! The Baron’s under lock and key! And in an hour it will be your turn, pretty one! Cropped hair! Saint Lazare! The court! I’ve wept often enough for your beautiful eyes, you little crook; and it is to them——”
The words were cut short on his tongue. Absorbed in Aurelie, he had forgotten Bregeac; and Bregeac gripped him by the throat from behind with two frenzied hands. The action had been involuntary. Marescal had gripped the girl’s shoulder; he came at him in a fury of revolt at such an outrage. Marescal staggered before his onset and the two men rolled on the floor. There was a furious fight. Both of them were beside themselves with rage, a rage aggravated by their fierce rivalry. Marescal was the more vigorous [209]and stronger, but Bregeac was sustained by such a savage jealousy that the issue remained long in doubt.
Aurelie gazed on them with horrified eyes; but she did not stir. Both of them were her enemies, equally detestable.
At last Marescal, who had freed himself from the strangling grip of Bregeac’s murderous hands, was able to make an effort to get at the revolver in his hip pocket. But Bregeac, seeing what he would be at, so twisted his right arm that it was paralyzed. But with his left hand Marescal got hold of his whistle which was hanging on a chain in his breast pocket and blew a shrill call on it. Bregeac tried once more with all his might to get his adversary by the throat. The door was flung open; a man came bounding into the room, and flung himself on to the struggling figures. Almost on the instant Marescal found himself free and Bregeac was looking down the barrel of a revolver about ten inches from his eyes.
“Bravo Sauvinoux!” cried Marescal. “I shan’t forget that little bit of help in a hurry, my lad!”
His rage was still so furious that he was cowardly enough to spit in Bregeac’s face.
“You cad! You blackguard! Did you think you were going to dispose of me as easily as that?” he shouted. “Your resignation, and at once! The Minister demands it—I have it in my pocket! You’ve only to sign it!” [210]
He produced a paper from his pocket.
“Your resignation—and Aurelie’s confession. I’ve written it out ready. Sign it, Aurelie. Come, read it. ‘I confess that I took part in the crime on the express, on the 26th of last April. That I fired at the brothers Loubeaux. I confess that—’ In fact it’s a resumé of the whole story. You needn’t bother to read it. Sign! Don’t waste any more time!”
He dipped a pen into the ink-pot and tried to force it between her fingers.
Slowly she pushed the hand of the Commissary aside, took the pen and signed, as Marescal had willed her to sign, without taking the trouble to read it. The handwriting was steady. Her hand did not tremble.
“Ah,” he said with a deep sigh of relief. “That’s done. I did not think that I could get it nearly so quickly. It’s a good thing, Aurelie, that you understood the situation. And now you, Bregeac.”
Bregeac shook his head and refused.
“What!” cried Marescal. “You refuse. Do you fancy that you can keep your post? Perhaps you think that you will be promoted. What? Promoted as the step-father of a criminal? That’s good, that is. And you would continue to give me orders, you, Bregeac? You’re a funny chap. Do you suppose that this scandal won’t be enough to clear you out, that to-morrow, when people read in the papers of the arrest of this child, you won’t be obliged to resign?” [211]
Bregeac’s fingers closed upon the pen held out to him. He read the letter of resignation and hesitated.
Aurelie said to him: “Sign, Monsieur.”
He signed.
“There we are!” said Marescal, pocketing the two papers—the confession and the resignation. “My chief is down and out; his post is empty; and it has been promised to me. And the girl will be in prison which little by little cures me of the love which was gnawing my heart.”
He said this with a cold cynicism, that bared the bottom of his vile soul.
Then, with a cruel laugh, he turned on Bregeac and went on: “But we haven’t finished yet, Bregeac. When I play a game, I play it to the end.”
Bregeac smiled bitterly: “You’re going still further? What’s the use of it?” he said.
“I’m going further,” said Marescal, glowering at him. “With regard to this child’s crimes, we’ve come to the end of them. Everything is settled. But are we to stop there?” He thrust forward his face and glared into Bregeac’s eyes. “What do you say about it?” He paused, then went on: “You know what I mean. If you hadn’t known, and known that it was true, you wouldn’t have signed, and you wouldn’t have let me take this tone I have with you. Your resignation is a confession. And if I am able to take this tone, Bregeac, it is because you are afraid!” [212]
“I’m afraid of nothing!” protested Bregeac. “I am bearing the burden of this unfortunate child’s crimes—crimes she must have committed in a moment of madness.”
“And the burden of what you have done yourself, Bregeac.”
“Besides that, there is nothing.”
“Besides that, there is the past,” said Marescal slowly and with gloomy severity. “We’ll say no more of the crime of to-day. But what about the crime of bygone days, Bregeac?”
“The crime of bygone days? What crime? What do you mean?”
Marescal banged on the table, his final argument, which perhaps emphasized an explosion of anger.
“Explanations? It’s I who am asking for explanations. What does that recent expedition of yours to the bank of the Seine mean? On Sunday morning? And your watch near the empty villa? And your pursuit of the man with the sack? Am I to refresh your memory and remind you that that villa belonged to the men your step-daughter murdered, and that the man you watched was an individual of the name of Jodot—I’m searching for him high and low, by the way—the partner of the brothers Loubeaux? Jodot whom I used to meet in this very house. Goodness, how it all hangs together! How clear the connection grows between all these events!” [213]
Bregeac shrugged his shoulders and muttered: “Absurdities! Imbecile hypotheses!”
“Hypotheses: yes—fancies to which I did not pay very much attention when I used to come here formerly—till I scented, like the keen sleuth I am, all the embarrassment, the reticence, the confused apprehension that colored your actions and your words. But hypotheses which have for some time and little by little been confirmed—which we are going to turn into certainties, Bregeac—yes: you and I together, Bregeac—without your being able to get out of it—of which I’m going to produce the irrefutable proof—and you a complete confession, without knowing it—here—immediately.”
He took up the cardboard case which he had brought with him and set it on the mantelpiece, and opened it. It contained one of those straw sheaths used to prevent bottles from breaking. There was a bottle in it. Marescal took it out and set it on the table in front of Bregeac.
“There, comrade Bregeac. You recognize it, don’t you? It’s the bottle you stole the other day from Jodot, which I took from you and which a third person stole from me before your eyes. That third person? It was Baron Limézy and no one else. I found it in his lodgings a little while ago. What? Do you understand, darling? This is a real treasure, this bottle is. Look at it, Bregeac. Look at its label and the formula [214]on it—of some mineral water—Eau de Jouvence. Here it is. Limézy has corked and sealed it with red sealing-wax. Look at it carefully. Do you see that little piece of rolled-up paper at the bottom of it. It’s certain that you wanted to get it from Jodot—a confession, to a dead certainty. A most compromising specimen of your handwriting. My poor Bregeac!”
It was his hour of triumph. As he knocked off the sealing-wax and uncorked the bottle he threw out phrases and interjections at haphazard.
“Marescal famous all the world over!… Arrest of the express murderers!… Bregeac’s past!… What surprises at the inquiry and at the assizes!… Sauvinoux, you have handcuffs for the girl?… Call Labonce and Tony.… Victory! Complete Victory!”
He turned the bottle upside down. The paper fell out of it. He picked it up, unfolded it, and carried away by this whirl of windy words, like a runner whom his dash carries beyond his goal, without pausing to grasp the meaning, he read out:
“Marescal is a blockhead!” [215]