The Eight Strokes of the Clock
Maurice Le Blanc



[Illustration: The girl gasped as Renine (Arsene Lupin) drew forth the
mysterious telescope.]


              THE EIGHT STROKES OF THE CLOCK

                           BY

                    MAURICE LE BLANC




AUTHOR'S NOTE

These adventures were told to me in the old days by Arsène Lupin, as
though they had happened to a friend of his, named Prince Rénine. As for
me, considering the way in which they were conducted, the actions, the
behaviour and the very character of the hero, I find it very difficult not
to identify the two friends as one and the same person. Arsène Lupin is
gifted with a powerful imagination and is quite capable of attributing to
himself adventures which are not his at all and of disowning those which
are really his. The reader will judge for himself.

M. L.




CONTENTS


I    ON THE TOP OF THE TOWER
II   THE WATER BOTTLE
III  THE CASE OF JEAN LOUIS
IV   THE TELL-TALE FILM
V    THÉRÈSE AND GERMAINE
VI   THE LADY WITH THE HATCHET
VII  FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
VIII AT THE SIGN OF MERCURY



I

ON THE TOP OF THE TOWER


Hortense Daniel pushed her window ajar and whispered:

"Are you there, Rossigny?"

"I am here," replied a voice from the shrubbery at the front of the house.

Leaning forward, she saw a rather fat man looking up at her out of a gross
red face with its cheeks and chin set in unpleasantly fair whiskers.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well, I had a great argument with my uncle and aunt last night. They
absolutely refuse to sign the document of which my lawyer sent them the
draft, or to restore the dowry squandered by my husband."

"But your uncle is responsible by the terms of the marriage-settlement."

"No matter. He refuses."

"Well, what do you propose to do?"

"Are you still determined to run away with me?" she asked, with a laugh.

"More so than ever."

"Your intentions are strictly honourable, remember!"

"Just as you please. You know that I am madly in love with you."

"Unfortunately I am not madly in love with you!"

"Then what made you choose me?"

"Chance. I was bored. I was growing tired of my humdrum existence. So I'm
ready to run risks.... Here's my luggage: catch!"

She let down from the window a couple of large leather kit-bags. Rossigny
caught them in his arms.

"The die is cast," she whispered. "Go and wait for me with your car at the
If cross-roads. I shall come on horseback."

"Hang it, I can't run off with your horse!"

"He will go home by himself."

"Capital!... Oh, by the way...."

"What is it?"

"Who is this Prince Rénine, who's been here the last three days and whom
nobody seems to know?"

"I don't know much about him. My uncle met him at a friend's shoot and
asked him here to stay."

"You seem to have made a great impression on him. You went for a long ride
with him yesterday. He's a man I don't care for."

"In two hours I shall have left the house in your company. The scandal will
cool him off.... Well, we've talked long enough. We have no time to lose."

For a few minutes she stood watching the fat man bending under the weight
of her traps as he moved away in the shelter of an empty avenue. Then she
closed the window.

Outside, in the park, the huntsmen's horns were sounding the reveille. The
hounds burst into frantic baying. It was the opening day of the hunt that
morning at the Château de la Marèze, where, every year, in the first week
in September, the Comte d'Aigleroche, a mighty hunter before the Lord,
and his countess were accustomed to invite a few personal friends and the
neighbouring landowners.

Hortense slowly finished dressing, put on a riding-habit, which
revealed the lines of her supple figure, and a wide-brimmed felt hat,
which encircled her lovely face and auburn hair, and sat down to her
writing-desk, at which she wrote to her uncle, M. d'Aigleroche, a farewell
letter to be delivered to him that evening. It was a difficult letter to
word; and, after beginning it several times, she ended by giving up the
idea.

"I will write to him later," she said to herself, "when his anger has
cooled down."

And she went downstairs to the dining-room.

Enormous logs were blazing in the hearth of the lofty room. The walls were
hung with trophies of rifles and shotguns. The guests were flocking in from
every side, shaking hands with the Comte d'Aigleroche, one of those typical
country squires, heavily and powerfully built, who lives only for hunting
and shooting. He was standing before the fire, with a large glass of old
brandy in his hand, drinking the health of each new arrival.

Hortense kissed him absently:

"What, uncle! You who are usually so sober!"

"Pooh!" he said. "A man may surely indulge himself a little once a
year!..."

"Aunt will give you a scolding!"

"Your aunt has one of her sick headaches and is not coming down. Besides,"
he added, gruffly, "it is not her business ... and still less is it yours,
my dear child."

Prince Rénine came up to Hortense. He was a young man, very smartly
dressed, with a narrow and rather pale face, whose eyes held by turns
the gentlest and the harshest, the most friendly and the most satirical
expression. He bowed to her, kissed her hand and said:

"May I remind you of your kind promise, dear madame?"

"My promise?"

"Yes, we agreed that we should repeat our delightful excursion of yesterday
and try to go over that old boarded-up place the look of which made us so
curious. It seems to be known as the Domaine de Halingre."

She answered a little curtly:

"I'm extremely sorry, monsieur, but it would be rather far and I'm feeling
a little done up. I shall go for a canter in the park and come indoors
again."

There was a pause. Then Serge Rénine said, smiling, with his eyes fixed on
hers and in a voice which she alone could hear:

"I am sure that you'll keep your promise and that you'll let me come with
you. It would be better."

"For whom? For you, you mean?"

"For you, too, I assure you."

She coloured slightly, but did not reply, shook hands with a few people
around her and left the room.

A groom was holding the horse at the foot of the steps. She mounted and set
off towards the woods beyond the park.

It was a cool, still morning. Through the leaves, which barely quivered,
the sky showed crystalline blue. Hortense rode at a walk down winding
avenues which in half an hour brought her to a country-side of ravines and
bluffs intersected by the high-road.

She stopped. There was not a sound. Rossigny must have stopped his engine
and concealed the car in the thickets around the If cross-roads.

She was five hundred yards at most from that circular space. After
hesitating for a few seconds, she dismounted, tied her horse carelessly, so
that he could release himself by the least effort and return to the house,
shrouded her face in the long brown veil that hung over her shoulders and
walked on.

As she expected, she saw Rossigny directly she reached the first turn in
the road. He ran up to her and drew her into the coppice!

"Quick, quick! Oh, I was so afraid that you would be late ... or even
change your mind! And here you are! It seems too good to be true!"

She smiled:

"You appear to be quite happy to do an idiotic thing!"

"I should think I _am_ happy! And so will you be, I swear you will!
Your life will be one long fairy-tale. You shall have every luxury, and all
the money you can wish for."

"I want neither money nor luxuries."

"What then?"

"Happiness."

"You can safely leave your happiness to me."

She replied, jestingly:

"I rather doubt the quality of the happiness which you would give me."

"Wait! You'll see! You'll see!"

They had reached the motor. Rossigny, still stammering expressions of
delight, started the engine. Hortense stepped in and wrapped herself in a
wide cloak. The car followed the narrow, grassy path which led back to the
cross-roads and Rossigny was accelerating the speed, when he was suddenly
forced to pull up. A shot had rung out from the neighbouring wood, on the
right. The car was swerving from side to side.

"A front tire burst," shouted Rossigny, leaping to the ground.

"Not a bit of it!" cried Hortense. "Somebody fired!"

"Impossible, my dear! Don't be so absurd!"

At that moment, two slight shocks were felt and two more reports were
heard, one after the other, some way off and still in the wood.

Rossigny snarled:

"The back tires burst now ... both of them.... But who, in the devil's
name, can the ruffian be?... Just let me get hold of him, that's all!..."

He clambered up the road-side slope. There was no one there. Moreover, the
leaves of the coppice blocked the view.

"Damn it! Damn it!" he swore. "You were right: somebody was firing at the
car! Oh, this is a bit thick! We shall be held up for hours! Three tires to
mend!... But what are you doing, dear girl?"

Hortense herself had alighted from the car. She ran to him, greatly
excited:

"I'm going."

"But why?"

"I want to know. Some one fired. I want to know who it was."

"Don't let us separate, please!"

"Do you think I'm going to wait here for you for hours?"

"What about your running away?... All our plans ...?"

"We'll discuss that to-morrow. Go back to the house. Take back my things
with you.... And good-bye for the present."

She hurried, left him, had the good luck to find her horse and set off at a
gallop in a direction leading away from La Marèze.

There was not the least doubt in her mind that the three shots had been
fired by Prince Rénine.

"It was he," she muttered, angrily, "it was he. No one else would be
capable of such behaviour."

Besides, he had warned her, in his smiling, masterful way, that he would
expect her.

She was weeping with rage and humiliation. At that moment, had she found
herself face to face with Prince Rénine, she could have struck him with her
riding-whip.

Before her was the rugged and picturesque stretch of country which lies
between the Orne and the Sarthe, above Alençon, and which is known as
Little Switzerland. Steep hills compelled her frequently to moderate her
pace, the more so as she had to cover some six miles before reaching her
destination. But, though the speed at which she rode became less headlong,
though her physical effort gradually slackened, she nevertheless persisted
in her indignation against Prince Rénine. She bore him a grudge not only
for the unspeakable action of which he had been guilty, but also for his
behaviour to her during the last three days, his persistent attentions, his
assurance, his air of excessive politeness.

She was nearly there. In the bottom of a valley, an old park-wall, full
of cracks and covered with moss and weeds, revealed the ball-turret of a
château and a few windows with closed shutters. This was the Domaine de
Halingre.

She followed the wall and turned a corner. In the middle of the
crescent-shaped space before which lay the entrance-gates, Serge Rénine
stood waiting beside his horse.

She sprang to the ground, and, as he stepped forward, hat in hand, thanking
her for coming, she cried:

"One word, monsieur, to begin with. Something quite inexplicable happened
just now. Three shots were fired at a motor-car in which I was sitting. Did
you fire those shots?"

"Yes."

She seemed dumbfounded:

"Then you confess it?"

"You have asked a question, madame, and I have answered it."

"But how dared you? What gave you the right?"

"I was not exercising a right, madame; I was performing a duty!"

"Indeed! And what duty, pray?"

"The duty of protecting you against a man who is trying to profit by your
troubles."

"I forbid you to speak like that. I am responsible for my own actions, and
I decided upon them in perfect liberty."

"Madame, I overheard your conversation with M. Rossigny this morning and it
did not appear to me that you were accompanying him with a light heart. I
admit the ruthlessness and bad taste of my interference and I apologise for
it humbly; but I risked being taken for a ruffian in order to give you a
few hours for reflection."

"I have reflected fully, monsieur. When I have once made up my mind to a
thing, I do not change it."

"Yes, madame, you do, sometimes. If not, why are you here instead of
there?"

Hortense was confused for a moment. All her anger had subsided. She looked
at Rénine with the surprise which one experiences when confronted with
certain persons who are unlike their fellows, more capable of performing
unusual actions, more generous and disinterested. She realised perfectly
that he was acting without any ulterior motive or calculation, that he was,
as he had said, merely fulfilling his duty as a gentleman to a woman who
has taken the wrong turning.

Speaking very gently, he said:

"I know very little about you, madame, but enough to make me wish to be of
use to you. You are twenty-six years old and have lost both your parents.
Seven years ago, you became the wife of the Comte d'Aigleroche's nephew by
marriage, who proved to be of unsound mind, half insane indeed, and had
to be confined. This made it impossible for you to obtain a divorce and
compelled you, since your dowry had been squandered, to live with your
uncle and at his expense. It's a depressing environment. The count and
countess do not agree. Years ago, the count was deserted by his first wife,
who ran away with the countess' first husband. The abandoned husband and
wife decided out of spite to unite their fortunes, but found nothing but
disappointment and ill-will in this second marriage. And you suffer the
consequences. They lead a monotonous, narrow, lonely life for eleven months
or more out of the year. One day, you met M. Rossigny, who fell in love
with you and suggested an elopement. You did not care for him. But you were
bored, your youth was being wasted, you longed for the unexpected, for
adventure ... in a word, you accepted with the very definite intention of
keeping your admirer at arm's length, but also with the rather ingenuous
hope that the scandal would force your uncle's hand and make him account
for his trusteeship and assure you of an independent existence. That is how
you stand. At present you have to choose between placing yourself in M.
Rossigny's hands ... or trusting yourself to me."

She raised her eyes to his. What did he mean? What was the purport of this
offer which he made so seriously, like a friend who asks nothing but to
prove his devotion?

After a moment's silence, he took the two horses by the bridles and tied
them up. Then he examined the heavy gates, each of which was strengthened
by two planks nailed cross-wise. An electoral poster, dated twenty years
earlier, showed that no one had entered the domain since that time.

Rénine tore up one of the iron posts which supported a railing that ran
round the crescent and used it as a lever. The rotten planks gave way. One
of them uncovered the lock, which he attacked with a big knife, containing
a number of blades and implements. A minute later, the gate opened on a
waste of bracken which led up to a long, dilapidated building, with a
turret at each corner and a sort of a belvedere, built on a taller tower,
in the middle.

The prince turned to Hortense:

"You are in no hurry," he said. "You will form your decision this evening;
and, if M. Rossigny succeeds in persuading you for the second time, I give
you my word of honour that I shall not cross your path. Until then, grant
me the privilege of your company. We made up our minds yesterday to inspect
the château. Let us do so. Will you? It is as good a way as any of passing
the time and I have a notion that it will not be uninteresting."

He had a way of talking which compelled obedience. He seemed to be
commanding and entreating at the same time. Hortense did not even seek
to shake off the enervation into which her will was slowly sinking. She
followed him to a half-demolished flight of steps at the top of which was
a door likewise strengthened by planks nailed in the form of a cross.

Rénine went to work in the same way as before. They entered a spacious
hall paved with white and black flagstones, furnished with old sideboards
and choir-stalls and adorned with a carved escutcheon which displayed the
remains of armorial bearings, representing an eagle standing on a block of
stone, all half-hidden behind a veil of cobwebs which hung down over a pair
of folding-doors.

"The door of the drawing-room, evidently," said Rénine.

He found this more difficult to open; and it was only by repeatedly
charging it with his shoulder that he was able to move one of the doors.

Hortense had not spoken a word. She watched not without surprise this
series of forcible entries, which were accomplished with a really masterly
skill. He guessed her thoughts and, turning round, said in a serious voice:

"It's child's-play to me. I was a locksmith once."

She seized his arm and whispered:

"Listen!"

"To what?" he asked.

She increased the pressure of her hand, to demand silence. The next moment,
he murmured:

"It's really very strange."

"Listen, listen!" Hortense repeated, in bewilderment. "Can it be possible?"

They heard, not far from where they were standing, a sharp sound, the sound
of a light tap recurring at regular intervals; and they had only to listen
attentively to recognise the ticking of a clock. Yes, it was this and
nothing else that broke the profound silence of the dark room; it was
indeed the deliberate ticking, rhythmical as the beat of a metronome,
produced by a heavy brass pendulum. That was it! And nothing could be more
impressive than the measured pulsation of this trivial mechanism, which by
some miracle, some inexplicable phenomenon, had continued to live in the
heart of the dead château.

"And yet," stammered Hortense, without daring to raise her voice, "no one
has entered the house?"

"No one."

"And it is quite impossible for that clock to have kept going for twenty
years without being wound up?"

"Quite impossible."

"Then ...?"

Serge Rénine opened the three windows and threw back the shutters.

He and Hortense were in a drawing-room, as he had thought; and the room
showed not the least sign of disorder. The chairs were in their places. Not
a piece of furniture was missing. The people who had lived there and who
had made it the most individual room in their house had gone away leaving
everything just as it was, the books which they used to read, the
knick-knacks on the tables and consoles.

Rénine examined the old grandfather's clock, contained in its tall carved
case which showed the disk of the pendulum through an oval pane of glass.
He opened the door of the clock. The weights hanging from the cords were at
their lowest point.

At that moment there was a click. The clock struck eight with a serious
note which Hortense was never to forget.

"How extraordinary!" she said.

"Extraordinary indeed," said he, "for the works are exceedingly simple and
would hardly keep going for a week."

"And do you see nothing out of the common?"

"No, nothing ... or, at least...."

He stooped and, from the back of the case, drew a metal tube which was
concealed by the weights. Holding it up to the light:

"A telescope," he said, thoughtfully. "Why did they hide it?... And they
left it drawn out to its full length.... That's odd.... What does it mean?"

The clock, as is sometimes usual, began to strike a second time, sounding
eight strokes. Rénine closed the case and continued his inspection without
putting his telescope down. A wide arch led from the drawing-room to a
smaller apartment, a sort of smoking-room. This also was furnished, but
contained a glass case for guns of which the rack was empty. Hanging on
a panel near by was a calendar with the date of the 5th of September.

"Oh," cried Hortense, in astonishment, "the same date as to-day!... They
tore off the leaves until the 5th of September.... And this is the
anniversary! What an astonishing coincidence!"

"Astonishing," he echoed. "It's the anniversary of their departure ...
twenty years ago to-day."

"You must admit," she said, "that all this is incomprehensible.

"Yes, of course ... but, all the same ... perhaps not."

"Have you any idea?"

He waited a few seconds before replying:

"What puzzles me is this telescope hidden, dropped in that corner, at
the last moment. I wonder what it was used for.... From the ground-floor
windows you see nothing but the trees in the garden ... and the same, I
expect, from all the windows.... We are in a valley, without the least open
horizon.... To use the telescope, one would have to go up to the top of the
house.... Shall we go up?"

She did not hesitate. The mystery surrounding the whole adventure excited
her curiosity so keenly that she could think of nothing but accompanying
Rénine and assisting him in his investigations.

They went upstairs accordingly, and, on the second floor, came to a landing
where they found the spiral staircase leading to the belvedere.

At the top of this was a platform in the open air, but surrounded by a
parapet over six feet high.

"There must have been battlements which have been filled in since,"
observed Prince Rénine. "Look here, there were loop-holes at one time. They
may have been blocked."

"In any case," she said, "the telescope was of no use up here either and we
may as well go down again."

"I don't agree," he said. "Logic tells us that there must have been some
gap through which the country could be seen and this was the spot where the
telescope was used."

He hoisted himself by his wrists to the top of the parapet and then saw
that this point of vantage commanded the whole of the valley, including the
park, with its tall trees marking the horizon; and, beyond, a depression
in a wood surmounting a hill, at a distance of some seven or eight hundred
yards, stood another tower, squat and in ruins, covered with ivy from top
to bottom.

Rénine resumed his inspection. He seemed to consider that the key to the
problem lay in the use to which the telescope was put and that the problem
would be solved if only they could discover this use.

He studied the loop-holes one after the other. One of them, or rather the
place which it had occupied, attracted his attention above the rest. In
the middle of the layer of plaster, which had served to block it, there
was a hollow filled with earth in which plants had grown. He pulled out
the plants and removed the earth, thus clearing the mouth of a hole some
five inches in diameter, which completely penetrated the wall. On bending
forward, Rénine perceived that this deep and narrow opening inevitably
carried the eye, above the dense tops of the trees and through the
depression in the hill, to the ivy-clad tower.

At the bottom of this channel, in a sort of groove which ran through it
like a gutter, the telescope fitted so exactly that it was quite impossible
to shift it, however little, either to the right or to the left.

Rénine, after wiping the outside of the lenses, while taking care not to
disturb the lie of the instrument by a hair's breadth, put his eye to the
small end.

He remained for thirty or forty seconds, gazing attentively and silently.
Then he drew himself up and said, in a husky voice:

"It's terrible ... it's really terrible."

"What is?" she asked, anxiously.

"Look."

She bent down but the image was not clear to her and the telescope had to
be focussed to suit her sight. The next moment she shuddered and said:

"It's two scarecrows, isn't it, both stuck up on the top? But why?"

"Look again," he said. "Look more carefully under the hats ... the
faces...."

"Oh!" she cried, turning faint with horror, "how awful!"

The field of the telescope, like the circular picture shown by a magic
lantern, presented this spectacle: the platform of a broken tower, the
walls of which were higher in the more distant part and formed as it were
a back-drop, over which surged waves of ivy. In front, amid a cluster of
bushes, were two human beings, a man and a woman, leaning back against a
heap of fallen stones.

But the words man and woman could hardly be applied to these two forms,
these two sinister puppets, which, it is true, wore clothes and hats--or
rather shreds of clothes and remnants of hats--but had lost their eyes,
their cheeks, their chins, every particle of flesh, until they were
actually and positively nothing more than two skeletons.

"Two skeletons," stammered Hortense. "Two skeletons with clothes on. Who
carried them up there?"

"Nobody."

"But still...."

"That man and that woman must have died at the top of the tower, years and
years ago ... and their flesh rotted under their clothes and the ravens ate
them."

"But it's hideous, hideous!" cried Hortense, pale as death, her face drawn
with horror.

       *       *       *       *       *

Half an hour later, Hortense Daniel and Rénine left the Château de
Halingre. Before their departure, they had gone as far as the ivy-grown
tower, the remains of an old donjon-keep more than half demolished. The
inside was empty. There seemed to have been a way of climbing to the top,
at a comparatively recent period, by means of wooden stairs and ladders
which now lay broken and scattered over the ground. The tower backed
against the wall which marked the end of the park.

A curious fact, which surprised Hortense, was that Prince Rénine had
neglected to pursue a more minute enquiry, as though the matter had lost
all interest for him. He did not even speak of it any longer; and, in the
inn at which they stopped and took a light meal in the nearest village, it
was she who asked the landlord about the abandoned château. But she learnt
nothing from him, for the man was new to the district and could give her no
particulars. He did not even know the name of the owner.

They turned their horses' heads towards La Marèze. Again and again Hortense
recalled the squalid sight which had met their eyes. But Rénine, who was
in a lively mood and full of attentions to his companion, seemed utterly
indifferent to those questions.

"But, after all," she exclaimed, impatiently, "we can't leave the matter
there! It calls for a solution."

"As you say," he replied, "a solution is called for. M. Rossigny has to
know where he stands and you have to decide what to do about him."

She shrugged her shoulders: "He's of no importance for the moment. The
thing to-day...."

"Is what?"

"Is to know what those two dead bodies are."

"Still, Rossigny...."

"Rossigny can wait. But I can't. You have shown me a mystery which is now
the only thing that matters. What do you intend to do?"

"To do?"

"Yes. There are two bodies.... You'll inform the police, I suppose."

"Gracious goodness!" he exclaimed, laughing. "What for?"

"Well, there's a riddle that has to be cleared up at all costs, a terrible
tragedy."

"We don't need any one to do that."

"What! Do you mean to say that you understand it?"

"Almost as plainly as though I had read it in a book, told in full detail,
with explanatory illustrations. It's all so simple!"

She looked at him askance, wondering if he was making fun of her. But he
seemed quite serious.

"Well?" she asked, quivering with curiosity.

The light was beginning to wane. They had trotted at a good pace; and the
hunt was returning as they neared La Marèze.

"Well," he said, "we shall get the rest of our information from people
living round about ... from your uncle, for instance; and you will see how
logically all the facts fit in. When you hold the first link of a chain,
you are bound, whether you like it or not, to reach the last. It's the
greatest fun in the world."

Once in the house, they separated. On going to her room, Hortense found her
luggage and a furious letter from Rossigny in which he bade her good-bye
and announced his departure.

Then Rénine knocked at her door:

"Your uncle is in the library," he said. "Will you go down with me? I've
sent word that I am coming."

She went with him. He added:

"One word more. This morning, when I thwarted your plans and begged you to
trust me, I naturally undertook an obligation towards you which I mean to
fulfill without delay. I want to give you a positive proof of this."

She laughed:

"The only obligation which you took upon yourself was to satisfy my
curiosity."

"It shall be satisfied," he assured her, gravely, "and more fully than you
can possibly imagine."

M. d'Aigleroche was alone. He was smoking his pipe and drinking sherry. He
offered a glass to Rénine, who refused.

"Well, Hortense!" he said, in a rather thick voice. "You know that it's
pretty dull here, except in these September days. You must make the most
of them. Have you had a pleasant ride with Rénine?"

"That's just what I wanted to talk about, my dear sir," interrupted the
prince.

"You must excuse me, but I have to go to the station in ten minutes, to
meet a friend of my wife's."

"Oh, ten minutes will be ample!"

"Just the time to smoke a cigarette?"

"No longer."

He took a cigarette from the case which M. d'Aigleroche handed to him, lit
it and said:

"I must tell you that our ride happened to take us to an old domain which
you are sure to know, the Domaine de Halingre."

"Certainly I know it. But it has been closed, boarded up for twenty-five
years or so. You weren't able to get in, I suppose?"

"Yes, we were."

"Really? Was it interesting?"

"Extremely. We discovered the strangest things."

"What things?" asked the count, looking at his watch.

Rénine described what they had seen:

"On a tower some way from the house there were two dead bodies, two
skeletons rather ... a man and a woman still wearing the clothes which
they had on when they were murdered."

"Come, come, now! Murdered?"

"Yes; and that is what we have come to trouble you about. The tragedy must
date back to some twenty years ago. Was nothing known of it at the time?"

"Certainly not," declared the count. "I never heard of any such crime or
disappearance."

"Oh, really!" said Rénine, looking a little disappointed. "I hoped to
obtain a few particulars."

"I'm sorry."

"In that case, I apologise."

He consulted Hortense with a glance and moved towards the door. But on
second thought:

"Could you not at least, my dear sir, bring me into touch with some persons
in the neighbourhood, some members of your family, who might know more
about it?"

"Of my family? And why?"

"Because the Domaine de Halingre used to belong and no doubt still belongs
to the d'Aigleroches. The arms are an eagle on a heap of stones, on a rock.
This at once suggested the connection."

This time the count appeared surprised. He pushed back his decanter and his
glass of sherry and said:

"What's this you're telling me? I had no idea that we had any such
neighbours."

Rénine shook his head and smiled:

"I should be more inclined to believe, sir, that you were not very eager to
admit any relationship between yourself ... and the unknown owner of the
property."

"Then he's not a respectable man?"

"The man, to put it plainly, is a murderer."

"What do you mean?"

The count had risen from his chair. Hortense, greatly excited, said:

"Are you really sure that there has been a murder and that the murder was
done by some one belonging to the house?"

"Quite sure."

"But why are you so certain?"

"Because I know who the two victims were and what caused them to be
killed."

Prince Rénine was making none but positive statements and his method
suggested the belief that he supported by the strongest proofs.

M. d'Aigleroche strode up and down the room, with his hands behind his
back. He ended by saying:

"I always had an instinctive feeling that something had happened, but I
never tried to find out.... Now, as a matter of fact, twenty years ago,
a relation of mine, a distant cousin, used to live at the Domaine de
Halingre. I hoped, because of the name I bear, that this story, which,
as I say, I never knew but suspected, would remain hidden for ever."

"So this cousin killed somebody?"

"Yes, he was obliged to."

Rénine shook his head:

"I am sorry to have to amend that phrase, my dear sir. The truth, on the
contrary, is that your cousin took his victims' lives in cold blood and in
a cowardly manner. I never heard of a crime more deliberately and craftily
planned."

"What is it that you know?"

The moment had come for Rénine to explain himself, a solemn and
anguish-stricken moment, the full gravity of which Hortense understood,
though she had not yet divined any part of the tragedy which the prince
unfolded step by step."

"It's a very simple story," he said. "There is every reason to believe that
M. d'Aigleroche was married and that there was another couple living in
the neighbourhood with whom the owner of the Domaine de Halingre were on
friendly terms. What happened one day, which of these four persons first
disturbed the relations between the two households, I am unable to say. But
a likely version, which at once occurs to the mind, is that your cousin's
wife, Madame d'Aigleroche, was in the habit of meeting the other husband
in the ivy-covered tower, which had a door opening outside the estate. On
discovering the intrigue, your cousin d'Aigleroche resolved to be revenged,
but in such a manner that there should be no scandal and that no one
even should ever know that the guilty pair had been killed. Now he had
ascertained--as I did just now--that there was a part of the house, the
belvedere, from which you can see, over the trees and the undulations of
the park, the tower standing eight hundred yards away, and that this was
the only place that overlooked the top of the tower. He therefore pierced
a hole in the parapet, through one of the former loopholes, and from
there, by using a telescope which fitted exactly in the grove which he
had hollowed out, he watched the meetings of the two lovers. And it was
from there, also, that, after carefully taking all his measurements, and
calculating all his distances, on a Sunday, the 5th of September, when the
house was empty, he killed them with two shots."

The truth was becoming apparent. The light of day was breaking. The count
muttered:

"Yes, that's what must have happened. I expect that my cousin
d'Aigleroche...."

"The murderer," Rénine continued, "stopped up the loop-hole neatly with a
clod of earth. No one would ever know that two dead bodies were decaying
on the top of that tower which was never visited and of which he took the
precaution to demolish the wooden stairs. Nothing therefore remained for
him to do but to explain the disappearance of his wife and his friend. This
presented no difficulty. He accused them of having eloped together."

Hortense gave a start. Suddenly, as though the last sentence were a
complete and to her an absolutely unexpected revelation, she understood
what Rénine was trying to convey:

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean that M. d'Aigleroche accused his wife and his friend of eloping
together."

"No, no!" she cried. "I can't allow that!... You are speaking of a cousin
of my uncle's? Why mix up the two stories?"

"Why mix up this story with another which took place at that time?" said
the prince. "But I am not mixing them up, my dear madame; there is only one
story and I am telling it as it happened."

Hortense turned to her uncle. He sat silent, with his arms folded; and
his head remained in the shadow cast by the lamp-shade. Why had he not
protested?

Rénine repeated in a firm tone:

"There is only one story. On the evening of that very day, the 5th of
September at eight o'clock, M. d'Aigleroche, doubtless alleging as his
reason that he was going in pursuit of the runaway couple, left his house
after boarding up the entrance. He went away, leaving all the rooms as
they were and removing only the firearms from their glass case. At the
last minute, he had a presentiment, which has been justified to-day, that
the discovery of the telescope which had played so great a part in the
preparation of his crime might serve as a clue to an enquiry; and he threw
it into the clock-case, where, as luck would have it, it interrupted
the swing of the pendulum. This unreflecting action, one of those which
every criminal inevitably commits, was to betray him twenty years later.
Just now, the blows which I struck to force the door of the drawing-room
released the pendulum. The clock was set going, struck eight o'clock ...
and I possessed the clue of thread which was to lead me through the
labyrinth."

"Proofs!" stammered Hortense. "Proofs!"

"Proofs?" replied Rénine, in a loud voice. "Why, there are any number
of proofs; and you know them as well as I do. Who could have killed at
that distance of eight hundred yards, except an expert shot, an ardent
sportsman? You agree, M. d'Aigleroche, do you not?... Proofs? Why was
nothing removed from the house, nothing except the guns, those guns
which an ardent sportsman cannot afford to leave behind--you agree, M.
d'Aigleroche--those guns which we find here, hanging in trophies on the
walls!... Proofs? What about that date, the 5th of September, which was
the date of the crime and which has left such a horrible memory in the
criminal's mind that every year at this time--at this time alone--he
surrounds himself with distractions and that every year, on this same 5th
of September, he forgets his habits of temperance? Well, to-day, is the 5th
of September.... Proofs? Why, if there weren't any others, would that not
be enough for you?"

And Rénine, flinging out his arm, pointed to the Comte d'Aigleroche, who,
terrified by this evocation of the past, had sunk huddled into a chair and
was hiding his head in his hands.

Hortense did not attempt to argue with him. She had never liked her uncle,
or rather her husband's uncle. She now accepted the accusation laid against
him.

Sixty seconds passed. Then M. d'Aigleroche walked up to them and said:

"Whether the story be true or not, you can't call a husband a criminal for
avenging his honour and killing his faithless wife."

"No," replied Rénine, "but I have told only the first version of the story.
There is another which is infinitely more serious ... and more probable,
one to which a more thorough investigation would be sure to lead."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean this. It may not be a matter of a husband taking the law into his
own hands, as I charitably supposed. It may be a matter of a ruined man who
covets his friend's money and his friend's wife and who, with this object
in view, to secure his freedom, to get rid of his friend and of his own
wife, draws them into a trap, suggests to them that they should visit that
lonely tower and kills them by shooting them from a distance safely under
cover."

"No, no," the count protested. "No, all that is untrue."

"I don't say it isn't. I am basing my accusation on proofs, but also on
intuitions and arguments which up to now have been extremely accurate. All
the same, I admit that the second version may be incorrect. But, if so, why
feel any remorse? One does not feel remorse for punishing guilty people."

"One does for taking life. It is a crushing burden to bear."

"Was it to give himself greater strength to bear this burden that M.
d'Aigleroche afterwards married his victim's widow? For that, sir, is
the crux of the question. What was the motive of that marriage? Was M.
d'Aigleroche penniless? Was the woman he was taking as his second wife
rich? Or were they both in love with each other and did M. d'Aigleroche
plan with her to kill his first wife and the husband of his second wife?
These are problems to which I do not know the answer. They have no interest
for the moment; but the police, with all the means at their disposal, would
have no great difficulty in elucidating them."

M. d'Aigleroche staggered and had to steady himself against the back of a
chair. Livid in the face, he spluttered:

"Are you going to inform the police?"

"No, no," said Rénine. "To begin with, there is the statute of limitations.
Then there are twenty years of remorse and dread, a memory which will
pursue the criminal to his dying hour, accompanied no doubt by domestic
discord, hatred, a daily hell ... and, in the end, the necessity of
returning to the tower and removing the traces of the two murders, the
frightful punishment of climbing that tower, of touching those skeletons,
of undressing them and burying them. That will be enough. We will not ask
for more. We will not give it to the public to batten on and create a
scandal which would recoil upon M. d'Aigleroche's niece. No, let us leave
this disgraceful business alone."

The count resumed his seat at the table, with his hands clutching his
forehead, and asked:

"Then why ...?"

"Why do I interfere?" said Rénine. "What you mean is that I must have
had some object in speaking. That is so. There must indeed be a penalty,
however slight, and our interview must lead to some practical result. But
have no fear: M. d'Aigleroche will be let off lightly."

The contest was ended. The count felt that he had only a small formality to
fulfil, a sacrifice to accept; and, recovering some of his self-assurance,
he said, in an almost sarcastic tone:

"What's your price?"

Rénine burst out laughing:

"Splendid! You see the position. Only, you make a mistake in drawing me
into the business. I'm working for the glory of the thing."

"In that case?"

"You will be called upon at most to make restitution."

"Restitution?"

Rénine leant over the table and said:

"In one of those drawers is a deed awaiting your signature. It is a draft
agreement between you and your niece Hortense Daniel, relating to her
private fortune, which fortune was squandered and for which you are
responsible. Sign the deed."

M. d'Aigleroche gave a start:

"Do you know the amount?"

"I don't wish to know it."

"And if I refuse?..."

"I shall ask to see the Comtesse d'Aigleroche."

Without further hesitation, the count opened a drawer, produced a document
on stamped paper and quickly signed it:

"Here you are," he said, "and I hope...."

"You hope, as I do, that you and I may never have any future dealings? I'm
convinced of it. I shall leave this evening; your niece, no doubt,
tomorrow. Good-bye."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the drawing-room, which was still empty, while the guests at the
house were dressing for dinner, Rénine handed the deed to Hortense. She
seemed dazed by all that she had heard; and the thing that bewildered her
even more than the relentless light shed upon her uncle's past was the
miraculous insight and amazing lucidity displayed by this man: the man who
for some hours had controlled events and conjured up before her eyes the
actual scenes of a tragedy which no one had beheld.

"Are you satisfied with me?" he asked.

She gave him both her hands:

"You have saved me from Rossigny. You have given me back my freedom and my
independence. I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

"Oh, that's not what I am asking you to say!" he answered. "My first and
main object was to amuse you. Your life seemed so humdrum and lacking in
the unexpected. Has it been so to-day?"

"How can you ask such a question? I have had the strangest and most
stirring experiences."

"That is life," he said. "When one knows how to use one's eyes. Adventure
exists everywhere, in the meanest hovel, under the mask of the wisest of
men. Everywhere, if you are only willing, you will find an excuse for
excitement, for doing good, for saving a victim, for ending an injustice."

Impressed by his power and authority, she murmured:

"Who are you exactly?"

"An adventurer. Nothing more. A lover of adventures. Life is not worth
living except in moments of adventure, the adventures of others or personal
adventures. To-day's has upset you because it affected the innermost depths
of your being. But those of others are no less stimulating. Would you like
to make the experiment?"

"How?"

"Become the companion of my adventures. If any one calls on me for help,
help him with me. If chance or instinct puts me on the track of a crime or
the trace of a sorrow, let us both set out together. Do you consent?"

"Yes," she said, "but...."

She hesitated, as though trying to guess Rénine's secret intentions.

"But," he said, expressing her thoughts for her, with a smile, "you are a
trifle sceptical. What you are saying to yourself is, 'How far does that
lover of adventures want to make me go? It is quite obvious that I attract
him; and sooner or later he would not be sorry to receive payment for his
services.' You are quite right. We must have a formal contract."

"Very formal," said Hortense, preferring to give a jesting tone to the
conversation. "Let me hear your proposals."

He reflected for a moment and continued:

"Well, we'll say this. The clock at Halingre gave eight strokes this
afternoon, the day of the first adventure. Will you accept its decree and
agree to carry out seven more of these delightful enterprises with me,
during a period, for instance, of three months? And shall we say that, at
the eighth, you will be pledged to grant me...."

"What?"

He deferred his answer:

"Observe that you will always be at liberty to leave me on the road if I
do not succeed in interesting you. But, if you accompany me to the end, if
you allow me to begin and complete the eighth enterprise with you, in three
months, on the 5th of December, at the very moment when the eighth stroke
of that clock sounds--and it will sound, you may be sure of that, for the
old brass pendulum will not stop swinging again--you will be pledged to
grant me...."

"What?" she repeated, a little unnerved by waiting.

He was silent. He looked at the beautiful lips which he had meant to claim
as his reward. He felt perfectly certain that Hortense had understood and
he thought it unnecessary to speak more plainly:

"The mere delight of seeing you will be enough to satisfy me. It is not for
me but for you to impose conditions. Name them: what do you demand?"

She was grateful for his respect and said, laughingly:

"What do I demand?"

"Yes."

"Can I demand anything I like, however difficult and impossible?"

"Everything is easy and everything is possible to the man who is bent on
winning you."

Then she said:

"I demand that you shall restore to me a small, antique clasp, made of a
cornelian set in a silver mount. It came to me from my mother and everyone
knew that it used to bring her happiness and me too. Since the day when it
vanished from my jewel-case, I have had nothing but unhappiness. Restore it
to me, my good genius."

"When was the clasp stolen?"

She answered gaily:

"Seven years ago ... or eight ... or nine; I don't know exactly ... I don't
know where ... I don't know how ... I know nothing about it...."

"I will find it," Rénine declared, "and you shall be happy."




II

THE WATER-BOTTLE


Four days after she had settled down in Paris, Hortense Daniel agreed to
meet Prince Rénine in the Bois. It was a glorious morning and they sat down
on the terrace of the Restaurant Impérial, a little to one side.

Hortense, feeling glad to be alive, was in a playful mood, full of
attractive grace. Rénine, lest he should startle her, refrained from
alluding to the compact into which they had entered at his suggestion.
She told him how she had left La Marèze and said that she had not heard
of Rossigny.

"I have," said Rénine. "I've heard of him."

"Oh?"

"Yes, he sent me a challenge. We fought a duel this morning. Rossigny got
a scratch in the shoulder. That finished the duel. Let's talk of something
else."

There was no further mention of Rossigny. Rénine at once expounded to
Hortense the plan of two enterprises which he had in view and in which he
offered, with no great enthusiasm, to let her share:

"The finest adventure," he declared, "is that which we do not foresee. It
comes unexpectedly, unannounced; and no one, save the initiated, realizes
that an opportunity to act and to expend one's energies is close at hand.
It has to be seized at once. A moment's hesitation may mean that we are too
late. We are warned by a special sense, like that of a sleuth-hound which
distinguishes the right scent from all the others that cross it."

The terrace was beginning to fill up around them. At the next table sat
a young man reading a newspaper. They were able to see his insignificant
profile and his long, dark moustache. From behind them, through an open
window of the restaurant, came the distant strains of a band; in one of
the rooms a few couples were dancing.

As Rénine was paying for the refreshments, the young man with the long
moustache stifled a cry and, in a choking voice, called one of the waiters:

"What do I owe you?... No change? Oh, good Lord, hurry up!"

Rénine, without a moment's hesitation, had picked up the paper. After
casting a swift glance down the page, he read, under his breath:

    "Maître Dourdens, the counsel for the defence in the trial of Jacques
    Aubrieux, has been received at the Élysée. We are informed that the
    President of the Republic has refused to reprieve the condemned man
    and that the execution will take place to-morrow morning."

After crossing the terrace, the young man found himself faced, at the
entrance to the garden, by a lady and gentleman who blocked his way; and
the latter said:

"Excuse me, sir, but I noticed your agitation. It's about Jacques Aubrieux,
isn't it?"

"Yes, yes, Jacques Aubrieux," the young man stammered. "Jacques, the friend
of my childhood. I'm hurrying to see his wife. She must be beside herself
with grief."

"Can I offer you my assistance? I am Prince Rénine. This lady and I would
be happy to call on Madame Aubrieux and to place our services at her
disposal."

The young man, upset by the news which he had read, seemed not to
understand. He introduced himself awkwardly:

"My name is Dutreuil, Gaston Dutreuil."

Rénine beckoned to his chauffeur, who was waiting at some little distance,
and pushed Gaston Dutreuil into the car, asking:

"What address? Where does Madame Aubrieux live?"

"23 _bis_, Avenue du Roule."

After helping Hortense in, Rénine repeated the address to the chauffeur
and, as soon as they drove off, tried to question Gaston Dutreuil:

"I know very little of the case," he said. "Tell it to me as briefly as you
can. Jacques Aubrieux killed one of his near relations, didn't he?"

"He is innocent, sir," replied the young man, who seemed incapable of
giving the least explanation. "Innocent, I swear it. I've been Jacques'
friend for twenty years ... He is innocent ... and it would be
monstrous...."

There was nothing to be got out of him. Besides, it was only a short drive.
They entered Neuilly through the Porte des Sablons and, two minutes later,
stopped before a long, narrow passage between high walls which led them to
a small, one-storeyed house.

Gaston Dutreuil rang.

"Madame is in the drawing-room, with her mother," said the maid who opened
the door.

"I'll go in to the ladies," he said, taking Rénine and Hortense with him.

It was a fair-sized, prettily-furnished room, which, in ordinary times,
must have been used also as a study. Two women sat weeping, one of whom,
elderly and grey-haired, came up to Gaston Dutreuil. He explained the
reason for Rénine's presence and she at once cried, amid her sobs:

"My daughter's husband is innocent, sir. Jacques? A better man never lived.
He was so good-hearted! Murder his cousin? But he worshipped his cousin! I
swear that he's not guilty, sir! And they are going to commit the infamy of
putting him to death? Oh, sir, it will kill my daughter!"

Rénine realized that all these people had been living for months under the
obsession of that innocence and in the certainty that an innocent man could
never be executed. The news of the execution, which was now inevitable, was
driving them mad.

He went up to a poor creature bent in two whose face, a quite young face,
framed in pretty, flaxen hair, was convulsed with desperate grief.
Hortense, who had already taken a seat beside her, gently drew her head
against her shoulder. Rénine said to her:

"Madame, I do not know what I can do for you. But I give you my word of
honour that, if any one in this world can be of use to you, it is myself.
I therefore implore you to answer my questions as though the clear and
definite wording of your replies were able to alter the aspect of things
and as though you wished to make me share your opinion of Jacques Aubrieux.
For he is innocent, is he not?"

"Oh, sir, indeed he is!" she exclaimed; and the woman's whole soul was in
the words.

"You are certain of it. But you were unable to communicate your certainty
to the court. Well, you must now compel me to share it. I am not asking you
to go into details and to live again through the hideous torment which you
have suffered, but merely to answer certain questions. Will you do this?"

"I will."

Rénine's influence over her was complete. With a few sentences Rénine had
succeeded in subduing her and inspiring her with the will to obey. And once
more Hortense realized all the man's power, authority and persuasion.

"What was your husband?" he asked, after begging the mother and Gaston
Dutreuil to preserve absolute silence.

"An insurance-broker."

"Lucky in business?"

"Until last year, yes."

"So there have been financial difficulties during the past few months?"

"Yes."

"And the murder was committed when?"

"Last March, on a Sunday."

"Who was the victim?"

"A distant cousin, M. Guillaume, who lived at Suresnes."

"What was the sum stolen?"

"Sixty thousand-franc notes, which this cousin had received the day before,
in payment of a long-outstanding debt."

"Did your husband know that?"

"Yes. His cousin told him of it on the Sunday, in the course of a
conversation on the telephone, and Jacques insisted that his cousin ought
not to keep so large a sum in the house and that he ought to pay it into a
bank next day."

"Was this in the morning?"

"At one o'clock in the afternoon. Jacques was to have gone to M. Guillaume
on his motor-cycle. But he felt tired and told him that he would not go
out. So he remained here all day."

"Alone?"

"Yes. The two servants were out. I went to the Cinéma des Ternes with my
mother and our friend Dutreuil. In the evening, we learnt that M. Guillaume
had been murdered. Next morning, Jacques was arrested."

"On what evidence?"

The poor creature hesitated to reply: the evidence of guilt had evidently
been overwhelming. Then, obeying a sign from Rénine, she answered without
a pause:

"The murderer went to Suresnes on a motorcycle and the tracks discovered
were those of my husband's machine. They found a handkerchief with my
husband's initials; and the revolver which was used belonged to him.
Lastly, one of our neighbours maintains that he saw my husband go out
on his bicycle at three o'clock and another that he saw him come in at
half-past four. The murder was committed at four o'clock."

"And what does Jacques Aubrieux say in his defence?"

"He declares that he slept all the afternoon. During that time, some one
came who managed to unlock the cycle-shed and take the motor-cycle to go
to Suresnes. As for the handkerchief and the revolver, they were in the
tool-bag. There would be nothing surprising in the murderer's using them."

"It seems a plausible explanation."

"Yes, but the prosecution raised two objections. In the first place,
nobody, absolutely nobody, knew that my husband was going to stay at
home all day, because, on the contrary, it was his habit to go out on
his motor-cycle every Sunday afternoon."

"And the second objection?"

She flushed and murmured:

"The murderer went to the pantry at M. Guillaume's and drank half a bottle
of wine straight out of the bottle, which shows my husband's finger-prints."

It seemed as though her strength was exhausted and as though, at the same
time, the unconscious hope which Rénine's intervention had awakened in her
had suddenly vanished before the accumulation of adverse facts. Again she
collapsed, withdrawn into a sort of silent meditation from which Hortense's
affectionate attentions were unable to distract her.

The mother stammered:

"He's not guilty, is he, sir? And they can't punish an innocent man. They
haven't the right to kill my daughter. Oh dear, oh dear, what have we done
to be tortured like this? My poor little Madeleine!"

"She will kill herself," said Dutreuil, in a scared voice. "She will never
be able to endure the idea that they are guillotining Jacques. She will
kill herself presently ... this very night...."

Rénine was striding up and down the room.

"You can do nothing for her, can you?" asked Hortense.

"It's half-past eleven now," he replied, in an anxious tone, "and it's to
happen to-morrow morning."

"Do you think he's guilty?"

"I don't know.... I don't know.... The poor woman's conviction is too
impressive to be neglected. When two people have lived together for years,
they can hardly be mistaken about each other to that degree. And yet...."

He stretched himself out on a sofa and lit a cigarette. He smoked three in
succession, without a word from any one to interrupt his train of thought.
From time to time he looked at his watch. Every minute was of such
importance!

At last he went back to Madeleine Aubrieux, took her hands and said, very
gently:

"You must not kill yourself. There is hope left until the last minute has
come; and I promise you that, for my part, I will not be disheartened until
that last minute. But I need your calmness and your confidence."

"I will be calm," she said, with a pitiable air.

"And confident?"

"And confident."

"Well, wait for me. I shall be back in two hours from now. Will you come
with us, M. Dutreuil?"

As they were stepping into his car, he asked the young man:

"Do you know any small, unfrequented restaurant, not too far inside Paris?"

"There's the Brasserie Lutetia, on the ground-floor of the house in which I
live, on the Place des Ternes."

"Capital. That will be very handy."

They scarcely spoke on the way. Rénine, however, said to Gaston Dutreuil:

"So far as I remember, the numbers of the notes are known, aren't they?"

"Yes. M. Guillaume had entered the sixty numbers in his pocket-book."

Rénine muttered, a moment later:

"That's where the whole problem lies. Where are the notes? If we could lay
our hands on them, we should know everything."

At the Brasserie Lutetia there was a telephone in the private room where
he asked to have lunch served. When the waiter had left him alone with
Hortense and Dutreuil, he took down the receiver with a resolute air:

"Hullo!... Prefecture of police, please.... Hullo! Hullo!... Is that the
Prefecture of police? Please put me on to the criminal investigation
department. I have a very important communication to make. You can say it's
Prince Rénine."

Holding the receiver in his hand, he turned to Gaston Dutreuil:

"I can ask some one to come here, I suppose? We shall be quite
undisturbed?"

"Quite."

He listened again:

"The secretary to the head of the criminal investigation department? Oh,
excellent! Mr. Secretary, I have on several occasions been in communication
with M. Dudouis and have given him information which has been of great use
to him. He is sure to remember Prince Rénine. I may be able to-day to show
him where the sixty thousand-franc notes are hidden which Aubrieux the
murderer stole from his cousin. If he's interested in the proposal, beg him
to send an inspector to the Brasserie Lutetia, Place des Ternes. I shall
be there with a lady and M. Dutreuil, Aubrieux's friend. Good day, Mr.
Secretary."

When Rénine hung up the instrument, he saw the amazed faces of Hortense and
of Gaston Dutreuil confronting him.

Hortense whispered:

"Then you know? You've discovered ...?"

"Nothing," he said, laughing.

"Well?"

"Well, I'm acting as though I knew. It's not a bad method. Let's have some
lunch, shall we?"

The clock marked a quarter to one.

"The man from the prefecture will be here," he said, "in twenty minutes at
latest."

"And if no one comes?" Hortense objected.

"That would surprise me. Of course, if I had sent a message to M. Dudouis
saying, 'Aubrieux is innocent,' I should have failed to make any
impression. It's not the least use, on the eve of an execution, to attempt
to convince the gentry of the police or of the law that a man condemned
to death is innocent. No. From henceforth Jacques Aubrieux belongs to
the executioner. But the prospect of securing the sixty bank-notes is a
windfall worth taking a little trouble over. Just think: that was the
weak point in the indictment, those sixty notes which they were unable
to trace."

"But, as you know nothing of their whereabouts...."

"My dear girl--I hope you don't mind my calling you so?--my dear girl, when
a man can't explain this or that physical phenomenon, he adopts some sort
of theory which explains the various manifestations of the phenomenon and
says that everything happened as though the theory were correct. That's
what I am doing."

"That amounts to saying that you are going upon a supposition?"

Rénine did not reply. Not until some time later, when lunch was over, did
he say:

"Obviously I am going upon a supposition. If I had several days before me,
I should take the trouble of first verifying my theory, which is based upon
intuition quite as much as upon a few scattered facts. But I have only two
hours; and I am embarking on the unknown path as though I were certain that
it would lead me to the truth."

"And suppose you are wrong?"

"I have no choice. Besides, it is too late. There's a knock. Oh, one word
more! Whatever I may say, don't contradict me. Nor you, M. Dutreuil."

He opened the door. A thin man, with a red imperial, entered:

"Prince Rénine?"

"Yes, sir. You, of course, are from M. Dudouis?"

"Yes."

And the newcomer gave his name:

"Chief-inspector Morisseau."

"I am obliged to you for coming so promptly, Mr. Chief-inspector," said
Prince Rénine, "and I hope that M. Dudouis will not regret having placed
you at my disposal."

"At your entire disposal, in addition to two inspectors whom I have left in
the square outside and who have been in the case, with me, from the first."

"I shall not detain you for any length of time," said Rénine, "and I will
not even ask you to sit down. We have only a few minutes in which to settle
everything. You know what it's all about?"

"The sixty thousand-franc notes stolen from M. Guillaume. I have the
numbers here."

Rénine ran his eyes down the slip of paper which the chief-inspector handed
him and said:

"That's right. The two lists agree."

Inspector Morisseau seemed greatly excited:

"The chief attaches the greatest importance to your discovery. So you will
be able to show me?..."

Rénine was silent for a moment and then declared:

"Mr. Chief-inspector, a personal investigation--and a most exhaustive
investigation it was, as I will explain to you presently--has revealed
the fact that, on his return from Suresnes, the murderer, after replacing
the motor-cycle in the shed in the Avenue du Roule, ran to the Ternes and
entered this house."

"This house?"

"Yes."

"But what did he come here for?"

"To hide the proceeds of his theft, the sixty bank-notes."

"How do you mean? Where?"

"In a flat of which he had the key, on the fifth floor."

Gaston Dutreuil exclaimed, in amazement:

"But there's only one flat on the fifth floor and that's the one I live
in!"

"Exactly; and, as you were at the cinema with Madame Aubrieux and her
mother, advantage was taken of your absence...."

"Impossible! No one has the key except myself."

"One can get in without a key."

"But I have seen no marks of any kind."

Morisseau intervened:

"Come, let us understand one another. You say the bank-notes were hidden in
M. Dutreuil's flat?"

"Yes."

"Then, as Jacques Aubrieux was arrested the next morning, the notes ought
to be there still?"

"That's my opinion."

Gaston Dutreuil could not help laughing:

"But that's absurd! I should have found them!"

"Did you look for them?"

"No. But I should have come across them at any moment. The place isn't big
enough to swing a cat in. Would you care to see it?"

"However small it may be, it's large enough to hold sixty bits of paper."

"Of course, everything is possible," said Dutreuil. "Still, I must repeat
that nobody, to my knowledge, has been to my rooms; that there is only one
key; that I am my own housekeeper; and that I can't quite understand...."

Hortense too could not understand. With her eyes fixed on Prince Rénine's,
she was trying to read his innermost thoughts. What game was he playing?
Was it her duty to support his statements? She ended by saying:

"Mr. Chief-inspector, since Prince Rénine maintains that the notes have
been put away upstairs, wouldn't the simplest thing be to go and look? M.
Dutreuil will take us up, won't you?"

"This minute," said the young man. "As you say, that will be simplest."

They all four climbed the five storeys of the house and, after Dutreuil
had opened the door, entered a tiny set of chambers consisting of a
sitting-room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, all arranged with fastidious
neatness. It was easy to see that every chair in the sitting-room occupied
a definite place. The pipes had a rack to themselves; so had the matches.
Three walking-sticks, arranged according to their length, hung from
three nails. On a little table before the window a hat-box, filled with
tissue-paper, awaited the felt hat which Dutreuil carefully placed in it.
He laid his gloves beside it, on the lid.

He did all this with sedate and mechanical movements, like a man who loves
to see things in the places which he has chosen for them. Indeed, no sooner
did Rénine shift something than Dutreuil made a slight gesture of protest,
took out his hat again, stuck it on his head, opened the window and rested
his elbows on the sill, with his back turned to the room, as though he were
unable to bear the sight of such vandalism.

"You're positive, are you not?" the inspector asked Rénine.

"Yes, yes, I'm positive that the sixty notes were brought here after the
murder."

"Let's look for them."

This was easy and soon done. In half an hour, not a corner remained
unexplored, not a knick-knack unlifted.

"Nothing," said Inspector Morisseau. "Shall we continue?"

"No," replied Rénine, "The notes are no longer here."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that they have been removed."

"By whom? Can't you make a more definite accusation?"

Rénine did not reply. But Gaston Dutreuil wheeled round. He was choking
and spluttered:

"Mr. Inspector, would you like _me_ to make the accusation more
definite, as conveyed by this gentleman's remarks? It all means that
there's a dishonest man here, that the notes hidden by the murderer were
discovered and stolen by that dishonest man and deposited in another and
safer place. That is your idea, sir, is it not? And you accuse me of
committing this theft don't you?"

He came forward, drumming his chest with his fists: "Me! Me! I found the
notes, did I, and kept them for myself? You dare to suggest that!"

Rénine still made no reply. Dutreuil flew into a rage and, taking Inspector
Morisseau aside, exclaimed:

"Mr. Inspector, I strongly protest against all this farce and against
the part which you are unconsciously playing in it. Before your arrival,
Prince Rénine told this lady and myself that he knew nothing, that he was
venturing into this affair at random and that he was following the first
road that offered, trusting to luck. Do you deny it, sir?"

Rénine did not open his lips.

"Answer me, will you? Explain yourself; for, really, you are putting
forward the most improbable facts without any proof whatever. It's easy
enough to say that I stole the notes. And how were you to know that they
were here at all? Who brought them here? Why should the murderer choose
this flat to hide them in? It's all so stupid, so illogical and absurd!...
Give us your proofs, sir ... one single proof!"

Inspector Morisseau seemed perplexed. He questioned Rénine with a glance.
Rénine said:

"Since you want specific details, we will get them from Madame Aubrieux
herself. She's on the telephone. Let's go downstairs. We shall know all
about it in a minute."

Dutreuil shrugged his shoulders:

"As you please; but what a waste of time!"

He seemed greatly irritated. His long wait at the window, under a blazing
sun, had thrown him into a sweat. He went to his bedroom and returned with
a bottle of water, of which he took a few sips, afterwards placing the
bottle on the window-sill:

"Come along," he said.

Prince Rénine chuckled.

"You seem to be in a hurry to leave the place."

"I'm in a hurry to show you up," retorted Dutreuil, slamming the door.

They went downstairs to the private room containing the telephone. The room
was empty. Rénine asked Gaston Dutreuil for the Aubrieuxs' number, took
down the instrument and was put through.

The maid who came to the telephone answered that Madame Aubrieux had
fainted, after giving way to an access of despair, and that she was now
asleep.

"Fetch her mother, please. Prince Rénine speaking. It's urgent."

He handed the second receiver to Morisseau. For that matter, the voices
were so distinct that Dutreuil and Hortense were able to hear every word
exchanged.

"Is that you, madame?"

"Yes. Prince Rénine, I believe?"

"Prince Rénine."

"Oh, sir, what news have you for me? Is there any hope?" asked the old
lady, in a tone of entreaty.

"The enquiry is proceeding very satisfactorily," said Rénine, "and you
may hope for the best. For the moment, I want you to give me some very
important particulars. On the day of the murder, did Gaston Dutreuil come
to your house?"

"Yes, he came to fetch my daughter and myself, after lunch."

"Did he know at the time that M. Guillaume had sixty thousand francs at his
place?"

"Yes, I told him."

"And that Jacques Aubrieux was not feeling very well and was proposing not
to take his usual cycle-ride but to stay at home and sleep?"

"Yes."

"You are sure?"

"Absolutely certain."

"And you all three went to the cinema together?"

"Yes."

"And you were all sitting together?"

"Oh, no! There was no room. He took a seat farther away."

"A seat where you could see him?"

"No."

"But he came to you during the interval?"

"No, we did not see him until we were going out."

"There is no doubt of that?"

"None at all."

"Very well, madame. I will tell you the result of my efforts in an hour's
time. But above all, don't wake up Madame Aubrieux."

"And suppose she wakes of her own accord?"

"Reassure her and give her confidence. Everything is going well, very well
indeed."

He hung up the receiver and turned to Dutreuil, laughing:

"Ha, ha, my boy! Things are beginning to look clearer. What do you say?"

It was difficult to tell what these words meant or what conclusions Rénine
had drawn from his conversation. The silence was painful and oppressive.

"Mr. Chief-inspector, you have some of your men outside, haven't you?"

"Two detective-sergeants."

"It's important that they should be there. Please also ask the manager not
to disturb us on any account."

And, when Morisseau returned, Rénine closed the door, took his stand in
front of Dutreuil and, speaking in a good-humoured but emphatic tone, said:

"It amounts to this, young man, that the ladies saw nothing of you between
three and five o'clock on that Sunday. That's rather a curious detail."

"A perfectly natural detail," Dutreuil retorted, "and one, moreover, which
proves nothing at all."

"It proves, young man, that you had a good two hours at your disposal."

"Obviously. Two hours which I spent at the cinema."

"Or somewhere else."

Dutreuil looked at him:

"Somewhere else?"

"Yes. As you were free, you had plenty of time to go wherever you liked ...
to Suresnes, for instance."

"Oh!" said the young man, jesting in his turn. "Suresnes is a long way
off!"

"It's quite close! Hadn't you your friend Jacques Aubrieux's motor-cycle?"

A fresh pause followed these words. Dutreuil had knitted his brows as
though he were trying to understand. At last he was heard to whisper:

"So that is what he was trying to lead up to!... The brute!..."

Rénine brought down his hand on Dutreuil's shoulder:

"No more talk! Facts! Gaston Dutreuil, you are the only person who on that
day knew two essential things: first, that Cousin Guillaume had sixty
thousand francs in his house; secondly, that Jacques Aubrieux was not
going out. You at once saw your chance. The motor-cycle was available. You
slipped out during the performance. You went to Suresnes. You killed Cousin
Guillaume. You took the sixty bank-notes and left them at your rooms. And
at five o'clock you went back to fetch the ladies."

Dutreuil had listened with an expression at once mocking and flurried,
casting an occasional glance at Inspector Morisseau as though to enlist
him as a witness:

"The man's mad," it seemed to say. "It's no use being angry with him."

When Rénine had finished, he began to laugh:

"Very funny!... A capital joke!... So it was I whom the neighbours saw
going and returning on the motor-cycle?"

"It was you disguised in Jacques Aubrieux's clothes."

"And it was my finger-prints that were found on the bottle in M.
Guillaume's pantry?"

"The bottle had been opened by Jacques Aubrieux at lunch, in his own house,
and it was you who took it with you to serve as evidence."

"Funnier and funnier!" cried Dutreuil, who had the air of being frankly
amused. "Then I contrived the whole affair so that Jacques Aubrieux might
be accused of the crime?"

"It was the safest means of not being accused yourself."

"Yes, but Jacques is a friend whom I have known from childhood."

"You're in love with his wife."

The young man gave a sudden, infuriated start:

"You dare!... What! You dare make such an infamous suggestion?"

"I have proof of it."

"That's a lie! I have always respected Madeleine Aubrieux and revered
her...."

"Apparently. But you're in love with her. You desire her. Don't contradict
me. I have abundant proof of it."

"That's a lie, I tell you! You have only known me a few hours!"

"Come, come! I've been quietly watching you for days, waiting for the
moment to pounce upon you."

He took the young man by the shoulders and shook him:

"Come, Dutreuil, confess! I hold all the proofs in my hand. I have
witnesses whom we shall meet presently at the criminal investigation
department. Confess, can't you? In spite of everything, you're tortured
by remorse. Remember your dismay, at the restaurant, when you had seen
the newspaper. What? Jacques Aubrieux condemned to die? That's more than
you bargained for! Penal servitude would have suited your book; but the
scaffold!... Jacques Aubrieux executed to-morrow, an innocent man!...
Confess, won't you? Confess to save your own skin! Own up!"

Bending over the other, he was trying with all his might to extort a
confession from him. But Dutreuil drew himself up and coldly, with a sort
of scorn in his voice, said:

"Sir, you are a madman. Not a word that you have said has any sense in it.
All your accusations are false. What about the bank-notes? Did you find
them at my place as you said you would?"

Rénine, exasperated, clenched his fist in his face:

"Oh, you swine, I'll dish you yet, I swear I will!"

He drew the inspector aside:

"Well, what do you say to it? An arrant rogue, isn't he?"

The inspector nodded his head:

"It may be.... But, all the same ... so far there's no real evidence."

"Wait, M. Morisseau," said Rénine. "Wait until we've had our interview with
M. Dudouis. For we shall see M. Dudouis at the prefecture, shall we not?"

"Yes, he'll be there at three o'clock."

"Well, you'll be convinced, Mr. Inspector! I tell you here and now that you
will be convinced."

Rénine was chuckling like a man who feels certain of the course of events.
Hortense, who was standing near him and was able to speak to him without
being heard by the others, asked, in a low voice:

"You've got him, haven't you?"

He nodded his head in assent:

"Got him? I should think I have! All the same, I'm no farther forward than
I was at the beginning."

"But this is awful! And your proofs?"

"Not the shadow of a proof ... I was hoping to trip him up. But he's kept
his feet, the rascal!"

"Still, you're certain it's he?"

"It can't be any one else. I had an intuition at the very outset; and I've
not taken my eyes off him since. I have seen his anxiety increasing as my
investigations seemed to centre on him and concern him more closely. Now I
know."

"And he's in love with Madame Aubrieux?"

"In logic, he's bound to be. But so far we have only hypothetical
suppositions, or rather certainties which are personal to myself. We shall
never intercept the guillotine with those. Ah, if we could only find the
bank-notes! Given the bank-notes, M. Dudouis would act. Without them, he
will laugh in my face."

"What then?" murmured Hortense, in anguished accents.

He did not reply. He walked up and down the room, assuming an air of gaiety
and rubbing his hands. All was going so well! It was really a treat to take
up a case which, so to speak, worked itself out automatically.

"Suppose we went on to the prefecture, M. Morisseau? The chief must be
there by now. And, having gone so far, we may as well finish. Will M.
Dutreuil come with us?"

"Why not?" said Dutreuil, arrogantly.

But, just as Rénine was opening the door, there was a noise in the passage
and the manager ran up, waving his arms:

"Is M. Dutreuil still here?... M. Dutreuil, your flat is on fire!... A man
outside told us. He saw it from the square."

The young man's eyes lit up. For perhaps half a second his mouth was
twisted by a smile which Rénine noticed:

"Oh, you ruffian!" he cried. "You've given yourself away, my beauty! It was
you who set fire to the place upstairs; and now the notes are burning."

He blocked his exit.

"Let me pass," shouted Dutreuil. "There's a fire and no one can get in,
because no one else has a key. Here it is. Let me pass, damn it!"

Rénine snatched the key from his hand and, holding him by the collar of his
coat:

"Don't you move, my fine fellow! The game's up! You precious blackguard! M.
Morisseau, will you give orders to the sergeant not to let him out of his
sight and to blow out his brains if he tries to get away? Sergeant, we rely
on you! Put a bullet into him, if necessary!..."

He hurried up the stairs, followed by Hortense and the chief inspector, who
was protesting rather peevishly:

"But, I say, look here, it wasn't he who set the place on fire! How do you
make out that he set it on fire, seeing that he never left us?"

"Why, he set it on fire beforehand, to be sure!"

"How? I ask you, how?"

"How do I know? But a fire doesn't break out like that, for no reason at
all, at the very moment when a man wants to burn compromising papers."

They heard a commotion upstairs. It was the waiters of the restaurant
trying to burst the door open. An acrid smell filled the well of the
stair-case.

Rénine reached the top floor:

"By your leave, friends. I have the key."

He inserted it in the lock and opened the door.

He was met by a gust of smoke so dense that one might well have supposed
the whole floor to be ablaze. Rénine at once saw that the fire had gone out
of its own accord, for lack of fuel, and that there were no more flames:

"M. Morisseau, you won't let any one come in with us, will you? An intruder
might spoil everything. Bolt the door, that will be best."

He stepped into the front room, where the fire had obviously had its chief
centre. The furniture, the walls and the ceiling, though blackened by the
smoke, had not been touched. As a matter of fact, the fire was confined to
a blaze of papers which was still burning in the middle of the room, in
front of the window.

Rénine struck his forehead:

"What a fool I am! What an unspeakable ass!"

"Why?" asked the inspector.

"The hat-box, of course! The cardboard hat-box which was standing on the
table. That's where he hid the notes. They were there all through our
search."

"Impossible!"

"Why, yes, we always overlook that particular hiding-place, the one just
under our eyes, within reach of our hands! How could one imagine that a
thief would leave sixty thousand francs in an open cardboard box, in which
he places his hat when he comes in, with an absent-minded air? That's just
the one place we don't look in.... Well played, M. Dutreuil!"

The inspector, who remained incredulous, repeated:

"No, no, impossible! We were with him and he could not have started the
fire himself."

"Everything was prepared beforehand on the supposition that there might be
an alarm.... The hat-box ... the tissue paper ... the bank-notes: they must
all have been steeped in some inflammable liquid. He must have thrown a
match, a chemical preparation or what not into it, as we were leaving."

"But we should have seen him, hang it all! And then is it credible that
a man who has committed a murder for the sake of sixty thousand francs
should do away with the money in this way? If the hiding-place was such
a good one--and it was, because we never discovered it--why this useless
destruction?"

"He got frightened, M. Morisseau. Remember that his head is at stake
and he knows it. Anything rather than the guillotine; and they--the
bank-notes--were the only proof which we had against him. How could he
have left them where they were?"

Morisseau was flabbergasted:

"What! The only proof?"

"Why, obviously!"

"But your witnesses? Your evidence? All that you were going to tell the
chief?"

"Mere bluff."

"Well, upon my word," growled the bewildered inspector, "you're a cool
customer!"

"Would you have taken action without my bluff?"

"No."

"Then what more do you want?"

Rénine stooped to stir the ashes. But there was nothing left, not even
those remnants of stiff paper which still retain their shape.

"Nothing," he said. "It's queer, all the same! How the deuce did he manage
to set the thing alight?"

He stood up, looking attentively about him. Hortense had a feeling that he
was making his supreme effort and that, after this last struggle in the
dark, he would either have devised his plan of victory or admit that he was
beaten.

Faltering with anxiety, she asked:

"It's all up, isn't it?"

"No, no," he said, thoughtfully, "it's not all up. It was, a few seconds
ago. But now there is a gleam of light ... and one that gives me hope."

"God grant that it may be justified!"

"We must go slowly," he said. "It is only an attempt, but a fine, a very
fine attempt; and it may succeed."

He was silent for a moment; then, with an amused smile and a click of the
tongue, he said:

"An infernally clever fellow, that Dutreuil! His trick of burning the
notes: what a fertile imagination! And what coolness! A pretty dance the
beggar has led me! He's a master!"

He fetched a broom from the kitchen and swept a part of the ashes into the
next room, returning with a hat-box of the same size and appearance as the
one which had been burnt. After crumpling the tissue paper with which it
was filled, he placed the hat-box on the little table and set fire to it
with a match.

It burst into flames, which he extinguished when they had consumed half
the cardboard and nearly all the paper. Then he took from an inner pocket
of his waistcoat a bundle of bank-notes and selected six, which he burnt
almost completely, arranging the remains and hiding the rest of the notes
at the bottom of the box, among the ashes and the blackened bits of paper:

"M. Morisseau," he said, when he had done, "I am asking for your assistance
for the last time. Go and fetch Dutreuil. Tell him just this: 'You are
unmasked. The notes did not catch fire. Come with me.' And bring him up
here."

Despite his hesitation and his fear of exceeding his instructions from the
head of the detective service, the chief-inspector was powerless to throw
off the ascendancy which Rénine had acquired over him. He left the room.

Rénine turned to Hortense:

"Do you understand my plan of battle?"

"Yes," she said, "but it's a dangerous experiment. Do you think that
Dutreuil will fall into the trap?"

"Everything depends on the state of his nerves and the degree of
demoralization to which he is reduced. A surprise attack may very well do
for him."

"Nevertheless, suppose he recognizes by some sign that the box has been
changed?"

"Oh, of course, he has a few chances in his favour! The fellow is much more
cunning than I thought and quite capable of wriggling out of the trap.
On the other hand, however, how uneasy he must be! How the blood must be
buzzing in his ears and obscuring his sight! No, I don't think that he will
avoid the trap.... He will give in.... He will give in...."

They exchanged no more words. Rénine did not move. Hortense was stirred to
the very depths of her being. The life of an innocent man hung trembling in
the balance. An error of judgment, a little bad luck ... and, twelve hours
later, Jacques Aubrieux would be put to death. And together with a horrible
anguish she experienced, in spite of all, a feeling of eager curiosity.
What was Prince Rénine going to do? What would be the outcome of the
experiment on which he was venturing? What resistance would Gaston Dutreuil
offer? She lived through one of those minutes of superhuman tension in
which life becomes intensified until it reaches its utmost value.

They heard footsteps on the stairs, the footsteps of men in a hurry. The
sound drew nearer. They were reaching the top floor.

Hortense looked at her companion. He had stood up and was listening, his
features already transfigured by action. The footsteps were now echoing in
the passage. Then, suddenly, he ran to the door and cried:

"Quick! Let's make an end of it!"

Two or three detectives and a couple of waiters entered. He caught hold of
Dutreuil in the midst of the detectives and pulled him by the arm, gaily
exclaiming:

"Well done, old man! That trick of yours with the table and the
water-bottle was really splendid! A masterpiece, on my word! Only, it
didn't come off!"

"What do you mean? What's the matter?" mumbled Gaston Dutreuil, staggering.

"What I say: the fire burnt only half the tissue-paper and the hat-box;
and, though some of the bank-notes were destroyed, like the tissue-paper,
the others are there, at the bottom.... You understand? The long-sought
notes, the great proof of the murder: they're there, where you hid them....
As chance would have it, they've escaped burning.... Here, look: there
are the numbers; you can check them.... Oh, you're done for, done for, my
beauty!"

The young man drew himself up stiffly. His eyelids quivered. He did not
accept Rénine's invitation to look; he examined neither the hat-box nor
the bank-notes. From the first moment, without taking the time to reflect
and before his instinct could warn him, he believed what he was told and
collapsed heavily into a chair, weeping.

The surprise attack, to use Rénine's expression, had succeeded. On seeing
all his plans baffled and the enemy master of his secrets, the wretched man
had neither the strength nor the perspicacity necessary to defend himself.
He threw up the sponge.

Rénine gave him no time to breathe:

"Capital! You're saving your head; and that's all, my good youth! Write
down your confession and get it off your chest. Here's a fountain-pen....
The luck has been against you, I admit. It was devilishly well thought
out, your trick of the last moment. You had the bank-notes which were in
your way and which you wanted to destroy. Nothing simpler. You take a big,
round-bellied water-bottle and stand it on the window-sill. It acts as
a burning-glass, concentrating the rays of the sun on the cardboard and
tissue-paper, all nicely prepared. Ten minutes later, it bursts into
flames. A splendid idea! And, like all great discoveries, it came quite
by chance, what? It reminds one of Newton's apple.... One day, the sun,
passing through the water in that bottle, must have set fire to a scrap of
cotton or the head of a match; and, as you had the sun at your disposal
just now, you said to yourself, 'Now's the time,' and stood the bottle in
the right position. My congratulations, Gaston!... Look, here's a sheet of
paper. Write down: 'It was I who murdered M. Guillaume.' Write, I tell
you!"

Leaning over the young man, with all his implacable force of will he
compelled him to write, guiding his hand and dictating the sentences.
Dutreuil, exhausted, at the end of his strength, wrote as he was told.

"Here's the confession, Mr. Chief-inspector," said Rénine. "You will be
good enough to take it to M. Dudouis. These gentlemen," turning to the
waiters, from the restaurant, "will, I am sure, consent to serve as
witnesses."

And, seeing that Dutreuil, overwhelmed by what had happened, did not move,
he gave him a shake:

"Hi, you, look alive! Now that you've been fool enough to confess, make an
end of the job, my gentle idiot!"

The other watched him, standing in front of him.

"Obviously," Rénine continued, "you're only a simpleton. The hat-box was
fairly burnt to ashes: so were the notes. That hat-box, my dear fellow, is
a different one; and those notes belong to me. I even burnt six of them to
make you swallow the stunt. And you couldn't make out what had happened.
What an owl you must be! To furnish me with evidence at the last moment,
when I hadn't a single proof of my own! And such evidence! A written
confession! Written before witnesses!... Look here, my man, if they do cut
off your head--as I sincerely hope they will--upon my word, you'll have
jolly well deserved it! Good-bye, Dutreuil!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Downstairs, in the street, Rénine asked Hortense Daniel to take the car, go
to Madeleine Aubrieux and tell her what had happened.

"And you?" asked Hortense.

"I have a lot to do ... urgent appointments...."

"And you deny yourself the pleasure of bringing the good news?"

"It's one of the pleasures that pall upon one. The only pleasure that never
flags is that of the fight itself. Afterwards, things cease to be
interesting."

She took his hand and for a moment held it in both her own. She would have
liked to express all her admiration to that strange man, who seemed to
do good as a sort of game and who did it with something like genius. But
she was unable to speak. All these rapid incidents had upset her. Emotion
constricted her throat and brought the tears to her eyes.

Rénine bowed his head, saying:

"Thank you. I have my reward."




III

THE CASE OF JEAN LOUIS


"Monsieur," continued the young girl, addressing Serge Rénine, "it was
while I was spending the Easter holidays at Nice with my father that I made
the acquaintance of Jean Louis d'Imbleval...."

Rénine interrupted her:

"Excuse me, mademoiselle, but just now you spoke of this young man as Jean
Louis Vaurois."

"That's his name also," she said.

"Has he two names then?"

"I don't know ... I don't know anything about it," she said, with some
embarrassment, "and that is why, by Hortense's advice, I came to ask for
your help."

This conversation was taking place in Rénine's flat on the Boulevard
Haussmann, to which Hortense had brought her friend Geneviève Aymard, a
slender, pretty little creature with a face over-shadowed by an expression
of the greatest melancholy.

"Rénine will be successful, take my word for it, Geneviève. You will,
Rénine, won't you?"

"Please tell me the rest of the story, mademoiselle," he said.

Geneviève continued:

"I was already engaged at the time to a man whom I loathe and detest. My
father was trying to force me to marry him and is still trying to do so.
Jean Louis and I felt the keenest sympathy for each other, a sympathy that
soon developed into a profound and passionate affection which, I can assure
you, was equally sincere on both sides. On my return to Paris, Jean Louis,
who lives in the country with his mother and his aunt, took rooms in our
part of the town; and, as I am allowed to go out by myself, we used to see
each other daily. I need not tell you that we were engaged to be married. I
told my father so. And this is what he said: 'I don't particularly like the
fellow. But, whether it's he or another, what I want is that you should get
married. So let him come and ask for your hand. If not, you must do as I
say.' In the middle of June, Jean Louis went home to arrange matters with
his mother and aunt. I received some passionate letters; and then just
these few words:

    'There are too many obstacles in the way of our happiness. I give up.
    I am mad with despair. I love you more than ever. Good-bye and forgive
    me.'

"Since then, I have received nothing: no reply to my letters and
telegrams."

"Perhaps he has fallen in love with somebody else?" asked Rénine. "Or there
may be some old connection which he is unable to shake off."

Geneviève shook her head:

"Monsieur, believe me, if our engagement had been broken off for an
ordinary reason, I should not have allowed Hortense to trouble you. But it
is something quite different, I am absolutely convinced. There's a mystery
in Jean Louis' life, or rather an endless number of mysteries which hamper
and pursue him. I never saw such distress in a human face; and, from
the first moment of our meeting, I was conscious in him of a grief and
melancholy which have always persisted, even at times when he was giving
himself to our love with the greatest confidence."

"But your impression must have been confirmed by minor details, by things
which happened to strike you as peculiar?"

"I don't quite know what to say."

"These two names, for instance?"

"Yes, there was certainly that."

"By what name did he introduce himself to you?"

"Jean Louis d'Imbleval."

"But Jean Louis Vaurois?"

"That's what my father calls him."

"Why?"

"Because that was how he was introduced to my father, at Nice, by a
gentleman who knew him. Besides, he carries visiting-cards which describe
him under either name."

"Have you never questioned him on this point?"

"Yes, I have, twice. The first time, he said that his aunt's name was
Vaurois and his mother's d'Imbleval."

"And the second time?"

"He told me the contrary: he spoke of his mother as Vaurois and of his aunt
as d'Imbleval. I pointed this out. He coloured up and I thought it better
not to question him any further."

"Does he live far from Paris?"

"Right down in Brittany: at the Manoir d'Elseven, five miles from Carhaix."

Rénine rose and asked the girl, seriously:

"Are you quite certain that he loves you, mademoiselle?"

"I am certain of it and I know too that he represents all my life and all
my happiness. He alone can save me. If he can't, then I shall be married
in a week's time to a man whom I hate. I have promised my father; and the
banns have been published."

"We shall leave for Carhaix, Madame Daniel and I, this evening," said
Rénine.

That evening he and Hortense took the train for Brittany. They reached
Carhaix at ten o'clock in the morning; and, after lunch, at half past
twelve o'clock they stepped into a car borrowed from a leading resident of
the district.

"You're looking a little pale, my dear," said Rénine, with a laugh, as they
alighted by the gate of the garden at Elseven.

"I'm very fond of Geneviève," she said. "She's the only friend I have. And
I'm feeling frightened."

He called her attention to the fact that the central gate was flanked by
two wickets bearing the names of Madame d'Imbleval and Madame Vaurois
respectively. Each of these wickets opened on a narrow path which ran among
the shrubberies of box and aucuba to the left and right of the main avenue.
The avenue itself led to an old manor-house, long, low and picturesque, but
provided with two clumsily-built, ugly wings, each in a different style of
architecture and each forming the destination of one of the side-paths.
Madame d'Imbleval evidently lived on the left and Madame Vaurois on the
right.

Hortense and Rénine listened. Shrill, hasty voices were disputing inside
the house. The sound came through one of the windows of the ground-floor,
which was level with the garden and covered throughout its length with red
creepers and white roses.

"We can't go any farther," said Hortense. "It would be indiscreet."

"All the more reason," whispered Rénine. "Look here: if we walk straight
ahead, we shan't be seen by the people who are quarrelling."

The sounds of conflict were by no means abating; and, when they reached the
window next to the front-door, through the roses and creepers they could
both see and hear two old ladies shrieking at the tops of their voices and
shaking their fists at each other.

The women were standing in the foreground, in a large dining-room where
the table was not yet cleared; and at the farther side of the table sat a
young man, doubtless Jean Louis himself, smoking his pipe and reading a
newspaper, without appearing to trouble about the two old harridans.

One of these, a thin, tall woman, was wearing a purple silk dress; and her
hair was dressed in a mass of curls much too yellow for the ravaged face
around which they tumbled. The other, who was still thinner, but quite
short, was bustling round the room in a cotton dressing-gown and displayed
a red, painted face blazing with anger:

"A baggage, that's what you are!" she yelped. "The wickedest woman in the
world and a thief into the bargain!"

"I, a thief!" screamed the other.

"What about that business with the ducks at ten francs apiece: don't you
call that thieving?"

"Hold your tongue, you low creature! Who stole the fifty-franc note from my
dressing-table? Lord, that I should have to live with such a wretch!"

The other started with fury at the outrage and, addressing the young man,
cried:

"Jean, are you going to sit there and let me be insulted by your hussy of a
d'Imbleval?"

And the tall one retorted, furiously:

"Hussy! Do you hear that, Louis? Look at her, your Vaurois! She's got the
airs of a superannuated barmaid! Make her stop, can't you?"

Suddenly Jean Louis banged his fist upon the table, making the plates and
dishes jump, and shouted:

"Be quiet, both of you, you old lunatics!"

They turned upon him at once and loaded him with abuse:

"Coward!... Hypocrite!... Liar!... A pretty sort of son you are!... The son
of a slut and not much better yourself!..."

The insults rained down upon him. He stopped his ears with his fingers and
writhed as he sat at table like a man who has lost all patience and has
need to restrain himself lest he should fall upon his enemy.

Rénine whispered:

"Now's the time to go in."

"In among all those infuriated people?" protested Hortense.

"Exactly. We shall see them better with their masks off."

And, with a determined step, he walked to the door, opened it and entered
the room, followed by Hortense.

His advent gave rise to a feeling of stupefaction. The two women stopped
yelling, but were still scarlet in the face and trembling with rage. Jean
Louis, who was very pale, stood up.

Profiting by the general confusion, Rénine said briskly:

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Prince Rénine. This is Madame Daniel.
We are friends of Mlle. Geneviève Aymard and we have come in her name. I
have a letter from her addressed to you, monsieur."

Jean Louis, already disconcerted by the newcomers' arrival, lost
countenance entirely on hearing the name of Geneviève. Without quite
knowing what he was saying and with the intention of responding to Rénine's
courteous behaviour, he tried in his turn to introduce the two ladies and
let fall the astounding words:

"My mother, Madame d'Imbleval; my mother, Madame Vaurois."

For some time no one spoke. Rénine bowed. Hortense did not know with whom
she should shake hands, with Madame d'Imbleval, the mother, or with Madame
Vaurois, the mother. But what happened was that Madame d'Imbleval and
Madame Vaurois both at the same time attempted to snatch the letter which
Rénine was holding out to Jean Louis, while both at the same time mumbled:

"Mlle. Aymard!... She has had the coolness ... she has had the
audacity...!"

Then Jean Louis, recovering his self-possession, laid hold of his mother
d'Imbleval and pushed her out of the room by a door on the left and next of
his mother Vaurois and pushed her out of the room by a door on the right.
Then, returning to his two visitors, he opened the envelope and read, in an
undertone:

    "I am to be married in a week, Jean Louis. Come to my rescue, I beseech
    you. My friend Hortense and Prince Rénine will help you to overcome the
    obstacles that baffle you. Trust them. I love you.

    "GENEVIÈVE."

He was a rather dull-looking young man, whose very swarthy, lean and bony
face certainly bore the expression of melancholy and distress described by
Geneviève. Indeed, the marks of suffering were visible in all his harassed
features, as well as in his sad and anxious eyes.

He repeated Geneviève's name over and over again, while looking about him
with a distracted air. He seemed to be seeking a course of conduct.

He seemed on the point of offering an explanation but could find nothing
to say. The sudden intervention had taken him at a disadvantage, like an
unforseen attack which he did not know how to meet.

Rénine felt that the adversary would capitulate at the first summons. The
man had been fighting so desperately during the last few months and had
suffered so severely in the retirement and obstinate silence in which he
had taken refuge that he was not thinking of defending himself. Moreover,
how could he do so, now that they had forced their way into the privacy of
his odious existence?

"Take my word for it, monsieur," declared Rénine, "that it is in your best
interests to confide in us. We are Geneviève Aymard's friends. Do not
hesitate to speak."

"I can hardly hesitate," he said, "after what you have just heard. This is
the life I lead, monsieur. I will tell you the whole secret, so that you
may tell it to Geneviève. She will then understand why I have not gone back
to her ... and why I have not the right to do so."

He pushed a chair forward for Hortense. The two men sat down, and, without
any need of further persuasion, rather as though he himself felt a certain
relief in unburdening himself, he said:

"You must not be surprised, monsieur, if I tell my story with a certain
flippancy, for, as a matter of fact, it is a frankly comical story and
cannot fail to make you laugh. Fate often amuses itself by playing these
imbecile tricks, these monstrous farces which seem as though they must have
been invented by the brain of a madman or a drunkard. Judge for yourself.
Twenty-seven years ago, the Manoir d'Elseven, which at that time consisted
only of the main building, was occupied by an old doctor who, to increase
his modest means, used to receive one or two paying guests. In this way,
Madame d'Imbleval spent the summer here one year and Madame Vaurois the
following summer. Now these two ladies did not know each other. One of them
was married to a Breton of a merchant-vessel and the other to a commercial
traveller from the Vendée.

"It so happened that they lost their husbands at the same time, at a period
when each of them was expecting a baby. And, as they both lived in the
country, at places some distance from any town, they wrote to the old
doctor that they intended to come to his house for their confinement....
He agreed. They arrived almost on the same day, in the autumn. Two small
bedrooms were prepared for them, behind the room in which we are sitting.
The doctor had engaged a nurse, who slept in this very room. Everything
was perfectly satisfactory. The ladies were putting the finishing touches
to their baby-clothes and were getting on together splendidly. They were
determined that their children should be boys and had chosen the names of
Jean and Louis respectively.... One evening the doctor was called out to a
case and drove off in his gig with the man-servant, saying that he would
not be back till next day. In her master's absence, a little girl who
served as maid-of-all-work ran out to keep company with her sweetheart.
These accidents destiny turned to account with diabolical malignity. At
about midnight, Madame d'Imbleval was seized with the first pains. The
nurse, Mlle. Boussignol, had had some training as a midwife and did not
lose her head. But, an hour later, Madame Vaurois' turn came; and the
tragedy, or I might rather say the tragi-comedy, was enacted amid the
screams and moans of the two patients and the bewildered agitation of the
nurse running from one to the other, bewailing her fate, opening the window
to call out for the doctor or falling on her knees to implore the aid of
Providence.... Madame Vaurois was the first to bring a son into the world.
Mlle. Boussignol hurriedly carried him in here, washed and tended him and
laid him in the cradle prepared for him.... But Madame d'Imbleval was
screaming with pain; and the nurse had to attend to her while the newborn
child was yelling like a stuck pig and the terrified mother, unable to stir
from her bed, fainted.... Add to this all the wretchedness of darkness and
disorder, the only lamp, without any oil, for the servant had neglected to
fill it, the candles burning out, the moaning of the wind, the screeching
of the owls, and you will understand that Mlle. Boussignol was scared
out of her wits. However, at five o'clock in the morning, after many
tragic incidents, she came in here with the d'Imbleval baby, likewise a
boy, washed and tended him, laid him in his cradle and went off to help
Madame Vaurois, who had come to herself and was crying out, while Madame
d'Imbleval had fainted in her turn. And, when Mlle. Boussignol, having
settled the two mothers, but half-crazed with fatigue, her brain in a
whirl, returned to the new-born children, she realized with horror that she
had wrapped them in similar binders, thrust their feet into similar woolen
socks and laid them both, side by side, _in the same cradle_, so that
it was impossible to tell Louis d'Imbleval from Jean Vaurois!... To make
matters worse, when she lifted one of them out of the cradle, she found
that his hands were cold as ice and that he had ceased to breathe. He was
dead. What was his name and what the survivor's?... Three hours later, the
doctor found the two women in a condition of frenzied delirium, while the
nurse was dragging herself from one bed to the other, entreating the two
mothers to forgive her. She held me out first to one, then to the other,
to receive their caresses--for I was the surviving child--and they first
kissed me and then pushed me away; for, after all, who was I? The son of
the widowed Madame d'Imbleval and the late merchant-captain or the son of
the widowed Madame Vaurois and the late commercial traveller? There was
not a clue by which they could tell.... The doctor begged each of the two
mothers to sacrifice her rights, at least from the legal point of view,
so that I might be called either Louis d'Imbleval or Jean Vaurois. They
refused absolutely. 'Why Jean Vaurois, if he's a d'Imbleval?' protested the
one. 'Why Louis d'Imbleval, if he's a Vaurois?' retorted the other. And I
was registered under the name of Jean Louis, the son of an unknown father
and mother."

Prince Rénine had listened in silence. But Hortense, as the story
approached its conclusion, had given way to a hilarity which she could no
longer restrain and suddenly, in spite of all her efforts, she burst into
a fit of the wildest laughter:

"Forgive me," she said, her eyes filled with tears, "do forgive me; it's
too much for my nerves...."

"Don't apologize, madame," said the young man, gently, in a voice free
from resentment. "I warned you that my story was laughable; I, better than
any one, know how absurd, how nonsensical it is. Yes, the whole thing is
perfectly grotesque. But believe me when I tell you that it was no fun in
reality. It seems a humorous situation and it remains humorous by the force
of circumstances; but it is also horrible. You can see that for yourself,
can't you? The two mothers, neither of whom was certain of being a mother,
but neither of whom was certain that she was not one, both clung to Jean
Louis. He might be a stranger; on the other hand, he might be their own
flesh and blood. They loved him to excess and fought for him furiously.
And, above all, they both came to hate each other with a deadly hatred.
Differing completely in character and education and obliged to live
together because neither was willing to forego the advantage of her
possible maternity, they lived the life of irreconcilable enemies who can
never lay their weapons aside.... I grew up in the midst of this hatred and
had it instilled into me by both of them. When my childish heart, hungering
for affection, inclined me to one of them, the other would seek to inspire
me with loathing and contempt for her. In this manor-house, which they
bought on the old doctor's death and to which they added the two wings, I
was the involuntary torturer and their daily victim. Tormented as a child,
and, as a young man, leading the most hideous of lives, I doubt if any one
on earth ever suffered more than I did."

"You ought to have left them!" exclaimed Hortense, who had stopped
laughing.

"One can't leave one's mother; and one of those two women was my mother.
And a woman can't abandon her son; and each of them was entitled to believe
that I was her son. We were all three chained together like convicts, with
chains of sorrow, compassion, doubt and also of hope that the truth might
one day become apparent. And here we still are, all three, insulting one
another and blaming one another for our wasted lives. Oh, what a hell! And
there was no escaping it. I tried often enough ... but in vain. The broken
bonds became tied again. Only this summer, under the stimulus of my love
for Geneviève, I tried to free myself and did my utmost to persuade the two
women whom I call mother. And then ... and then! I was up against their
complaints, their immediate hatred of the wife, of the stranger, whom I
was proposing to force upon them.... I gave way. What sort of a life would
Geneviève have had here, between Madame d'Imbleval and Madame Vaurois? I
had no right to victimize her."

Jean Louis, who had been gradually becoming excited, uttered these last
words in a firm voice, as though he would have wished his conduct to
be ascribed to conscientious motives and a sense of duty. In reality,
as Rénine and Hortense clearly saw, his was an unusually weak nature,
incapable of reacting against a ridiculous position from which he had
suffered ever since he was a child and which he had come to look upon as
final and irremediable. He endured it as a man bears a cross which he has
no right to cast aside; and at the same time he was ashamed of it. He had
never spoken of it to Geneviève, from dread of ridicule; and afterwards, on
returning to his prison, he had remained there out of habit and weakness.

He sat down to a writing-table and quickly wrote a letter which he handed
to Rénine:

"Would you be kind enough to give this note to Mlle. Aymard and beg her
once more to forgive me?"

Rénine did not move and, when the other pressed the letter upon him, he
took it and tore it up.

"What does this mean?" asked the young man.

"It means that I will not charge myself with any message."

"Why?"

"Because you are coming with us."

"I?"

"Yes. You will see Mlle. Aymard to-morrow and ask for her hand in
marriage."

Jean Louis looked at Rénine with a rather disdainful air, as though he were
thinking:

"Here's a man who has not understood a word of what I've been explaining to
him."

But Hortense went up to Rénine:

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it will be as I say."

"But you must have your reasons?"

"One only; but it will be enough, provided this gentleman is so kind as to
help me in my enquiries."

"Enquiries? With what object?" asked the young man.

"With the object of proving that your story is not quite accurate."

Jean Louis took umbrage at this:

"I must ask you to believe, monsieur, that I have not said a word which is
not the exact truth."

"I expressed myself badly," said Rénine, with great kindliness. "Certainly
you have not said a word that does not agree with what you believe to be
the exact truth. But the truth is not, cannot be what you believe it to
be."

The young man folded his arms:

"In any case, monsieur, it seems likely that I should know the truth better
than you do."

"Why better? What happened on that tragic night can obviously be known to
you only at secondhand. You have no proofs. Neither have Madame d'Imbleval
and Madame Vaurois."

"No proofs of what?" exclaimed Jean Louis, losing patience.

"No proofs of the confusion that took place."

"What! Why, it's an absolute certainty! The two children were laid in the
same cradle, with no marks to distinguish one from the other; and the nurse
was unable to tell...."

"At least, that's her version of it," interrupted Rénine.

"What's that? Her version? But you're accusing the woman."

"I'm accusing her of nothing."

"Yes, you are: you're accusing her of lying. And why should she lie? She
had no interest in doing so; and her tears and despair are so much evidence
of her good faith. For, after all, the two mothers were there ... they saw
the woman weeping ... they questioned her.... And then, I repeat, what
interest had she ...?"

Jean Louis was greatly excited. Close beside him, Madame d'Imbleval and
Madame Vaurois, who had no doubt been listening behind the doors and who
had stealthily entered the room, stood stammering, in amazement:

"No, no ... it's impossible.... We've questioned her over and over again.
Why should she tell a lie?..."

"Speak, monsieur, speak," Jean Louis enjoined. "Explain yourself. Give your
reasons for trying to cast doubt upon an absolute truth!"

"Because that truth is inadmissible," declared Rénine, raising his voice
and growing excited in turn to the point of punctuating his remarks by
thumping the table. "No, things don't happen like that. No, fate does not
display those refinements of cruelty and chance is not added to chance with
such reckless extravagance! It was already an unprecedented chance that, on
the very night on which the doctor, his man-servant and his maid were out
of the house, the two ladies should be seized with labour-pains at the same
hour and should bring two sons into the world at the same time. Don't let
us add a still more exceptional event! Enough of the uncanny! Enough of
lamps that go out and candles that refuse to burn! No and again no, it
is not admissable that a midwife should become confused in the essential
details of her trade. However bewildered she may be by the unforeseen
nature of the circumstances, a remnant of instinct is still on the alert,
so that there is a place prepared for each child and each is kept distinct
from the other. The first child is here, the second is there. Even if they
are lying side by side, one is on the left and the other on the right.
Even if they are wrapped in the same kind of binders, some little detail
differs, a trifle which is recorded by the memory and which is inevitably
recalled to the mind without any need of reflection. Confusion? I refuse
to believe in it. Impossible to tell one from the other? It isn't true. In
the world of fiction, yes, one can imagine all sorts of fantastic accidents
and heap contradiction on contradiction. But, in the world of reality, at
the very heart of reality, there is always a fixed point, a solid nucleus,
about which the facts group themselves in accordance with a logical order.
I therefore declare most positively that Nurse Boussignol could not have
mixed up the two children."

All this he said decisively, as though he had been present during the night
in question; and so great was his power of persuasion that from the very
first he shook the certainty of those who for more than a quarter of a
century had never doubted.

The two women and their son pressed round him and questioned him with
breathless anxiety:

"Then you think that she may know ... that she may be able to tell us....?"

He corrected himself:

"I don't say yes and I don't say no. All I say is that there was something
in her behaviour during those hours that does not tally with her statements
and with reality. All the vast and intolerable mystery that has weighed
down upon you three arises not from a momentary lack of attention but from
something of which we do not know, but of which she does. That is what I
maintain; and that is what happened."

Jean Louis said, in a husky voice:

"She is alive.... She lives at Carhaix.... We can send for her...."

Hortense at once proposed:

"Would you like me to go for her? I will take the motor and bring her back
with me. Where does she live?"

"In the middle of the town, at a little draper's shop. The chauffeur will
show you. Mlle. Boussignol: everybody knows her...."

"And, whatever you do," added Rénine, "don't warn her in any way. If she's
uneasy, so much the better. But don't let her know what we want with her."

Twenty minutes passed in absolute silence. Rénine paced the room, in which
the fine old furniture, the handsome tapestries, the well-bound books and
pretty knick-knacks denoted a love of art and a seeking after style in Jean
Louis. This room was really his. In the adjoining apartments on either
side, through the open doors, Rénine was able to note the bad taste of the
two mothers.

He went up to Jean Louis and, in a low voice, asked:

"Are they well off?"

"Yes."

"And you?"

"They settled the manor-house upon me, with all the land around it, which
makes me quite independent."

"Have they any relations?"

"Sisters, both of them."

"With whom they could go to live?"

"Yes; and they have sometimes thought of doing so. But there can't be any
question of that. Once more, I assure you...."

Meantime the car had returned. The two women jumped up hurriedly, ready to
speak.

"Leave it to me," said Rénine, "and don't be surprised by anything that I
say. It's not a matter of asking her questions but of frightening her, of
flurrying her.... The sudden attack," he added between his teeth.

The car drove round the lawn and drew up outside the windows. Hortense
sprang out and helped an old woman to alight, dressed in a fluted linen
cap, a black velvet bodice and a heavy gathered skirt.

The old woman entered in a great state of alarm. She had a pointed face,
like a weasel's, with a prominent mouth full of protruding teeth.

"What's the matter, Madame d'Imbleval?" she asked, timidly stepping into
the room from which the doctor had once driven her. "Good day to you,
Madame Vaurois."

The ladies did not reply. Rénine came forward and said, sternly:

"Mlle. Boussignol, I have been sent by the Paris police to throw light
upon a tragedy which took place here twenty-seven years ago. I have just
secured evidence that you have distorted the truth and that, as the result
of your false declarations, the birth-certificate of one of the children
born in the course of that night is inaccurate. Now false declarations in
matters of birth-certificates are misdemeanours punishable by law. I shall
therefore be obliged to take you to Paris to be interrogated ... unless
you are prepared here and now to confess everything that might repair the
consequences of your offence."

The old maid was shaking in every limb. Her teeth were chattering. She was
evidently incapable of opposing the least resistance to Rénine.

"Are you ready to confess everything?" he asked.

"Yes," she panted.

"Without delay? I have to catch a train. The business must be settled
immediately. If you show the least hesitation, I take you with me. Have
you made up your mind to speak?"

"Yes."

He pointed to Jean Louis:

"Whose son is this gentleman? Madame d'Imbleval's?"

"No."

"Madame Vaurois', therefore?"

"No."

A stupefied silence welcomed the two replies.

"Explain yourself," Rénine commanded, looking at his watch.

Then Madame Boussignol fell on her knees and said, in so low and dull a
voice that they had to bend over her in order to catch the sense of what
she was mumbling:

"Some one came in the evening ... a gentleman with a new-born baby wrapped
in blankets, which he wanted the doctor to look after. As the doctor wasn't
there, he waited all night and it was he who did it all."

"Did what?" asked Rénine. "What did he do? What happened?"

"Well, what happened was that it was not one child but the two of them that
died: Madame d'Imbleval's and Madame Vaurois' too, both in convulsions.
Then the gentleman, seeing this, said, 'This shows me where my duty lies. I
must seize this opportunity of making sure that my own boy shall be happy
and well cared for. Put him in the place of one of the dead children.' He
offered me a big sum of money, saying that this one payment would save him
the expense of providing for his child every month; and I accepted. Only, I
did not know in whose place to put him and whether to say that the boy was
Louis d'Imbleval or Jean Vaurois. The gentleman thought a moment and said
neither. Then he explained to me what I was to do and what I was to say
after he had gone. And, while I was dressing his boy in vest and binders
the same as one of the dead children, he wrapped the other in the blankets
he had brought with him and went out into the night."

Mlle. Boussignol bent her head and wept. After a moment, Rénine said:

"Your deposition agrees with the result of my investigations."

"Can I go?"

"Yes."

"And is it over, as far as I'm concerned? They won't be talking about this
all over the district?"

"No. Oh, just one more question: do you know the man's name?"

"No. He didn't tell me his name."

"Have you ever seen him since?"

"Never."

"Have you anything more to say?"

"No."

"Are you prepared to sign the written text of your confession?"

"Yes."

"Very well. I shall send for you in a week or two. Till then, not a word to
anybody."

He saw her to the door and closed it after her. When he returned, Jean
Louis was between the two old ladies and all three were holding hands. The
bond of hatred and wretchedness which had bound them had suddenly snapped;
and this rupture, without requiring them to reflect upon the matter, filled
them with a gentle tranquillity of which they were hardly conscious, but
which made them serious and thoughtful.

"Let's rush things," said Rénine to Hortense. "This is the decisive moment
of the battle. We must get Jean Louis on board."

Hortense seemed preoccupied. She whispered:

"Why did you let the woman go? Were you satisfied with her statement?"

"I don't need to be satisfied. She told us what happened. What more do you
want?"

"Nothing.... I don't know...."

"We'll talk about it later, my dear. For the moment, I repeat, we must get
Jean Louis on board. And immediately.... Otherwise...."

He turned to the young man:

"You agree with me, don't you, that, things being as they are, it is best
for you and Madame Vaurois and Madame d'Imbleval to separate for a time?
That will enable you all to see matters more clearly and to decide in
perfect freedom what is to be done. Come with us, monsieur. The most
pressing thing is to save Geneviève Aymard, your _fiancée_."

Jean Louis stood perplexed and undecided. Rénine turned to the two women:

"That is your opinion too, I am sure, ladies?"

They nodded.

"You see, monsieur," he said to Jean Louis, "we are all agreed. In great
crises, there is nothing like separation ... a few days' respite. Quickly
now, monsieur."

And, without giving him time to hesitate, he drove him towards his bedroom
to pack up.

Half an hour later, Jean Louis left the manor-house with his new friends.

"And he won't go back until he's married," said Rénine to Hortense, as they
were waiting at Carhaix station, to which the car had taken them, while
Jean Louis was attending to his luggage. "Everything's for the best. Are
you satisfied?"

"Yes, Geneviève will be glad," she replied, absently.

When they had taken their seats in the train, Rénine and she repaired to
the dining-car. Rénine, who had asked Hortense several questions to which
she had replied only in monosyllables, protested:

"What's the matter with you, my child? You look worried!"

"I? Not at all!"

"Yes, yes, I know you. Now, no secrets, no mysteries!"

She smiled:

"Well, since you insist on knowing if I am satisfied, I am bound to
admit that of course I am ... as regards my friend Geneviève, but that,
in another respect--from the point of view of the adventure--I have an
uncomfortable sort of feeling...."

"To speak frankly, I haven't 'staggered' you this time?"

"Not very much."

"I seem to you to have played a secondary part. For, after all, what have I
done? We arrived. We listened to Jean Louis' tale of woe. I had a midwife
fetched. And that was all."

"Exactly. I want to know if that _was_ all; and I'm not quite sure.
To tell you the truth, our other adventures left behind them an impression
which was--how shall I put it?--more definite, clearer."

"And this one strikes you as obscure?"

"Obscure, yes, and incomplete."

"But in what way?"

"I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with that woman's confession.
Yes, very likely that is it. It was all so unexpected and so short."

"Well, of course, I cut it short, as you can readily imagine!" said Rénine,
laughing. "We didn't want too many explanations."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, if she had given her explanations with too much detail, we should
have ended by doubting what she was telling us."

"By doubting it?"

"Well, hang it all, the story is a trifle far-fetched! That fellow arriving
at night, with a live baby in his pocket, and going away with a dead one:
the thing hardly holds water. But you see, my dear, I hadn't much time to
coach the unfortunate woman in her part."

Hortense stared at him in amazement:

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Well, you know how dull-witted these countrywomen are. And she and I
had no time to spare. So we worked out a little scene in a hurry ... and
she really didn't act it so badly. It was all in the right key: terror,
_tremolo_, tears...."

"Is it possible?" murmured Hortense. "Is it possible? You had seen her
beforehand?"

"I had to, of course."

"But when?"

"This morning, when we arrived. While you were titivating yourself at
the hotel at Carhaix, I was running round to see what information I
could pick up. As you may imagine, everybody in the d