The Eight Strokes of the Clock (13 page)

“There is a man in love with you: the one whom you were expecting just now.”

“Yes, my lover,” she said, proudly. “Have I not the right to receive whom I like?”

“You have the right; you are a free agent. But the man who comes to see you every evening is wanted by the police. His name is Georges Dalbrèque. He killed Bourguet the jeweller.”

The accusation made her start with indignation and she exclaimed:

“It’s a lie! An infamous fabrication of the newspapers! Georges was in Paris on the night of the murder. He can prove it.”

“He stole a motorcar and forty thousand francs in notes.”

She retorted vehemently:

“The motorcar was taken back by his friends, and the notes will be restored. He never touched them. My leaving for America had made him lose his head.”

“Very well. I am quite willing to believe everything that you say. But the police may show less faith in these statements and less indulgence.”

She became suddenly uneasy and faltered:

“The police … There’s nothing to fear from them … They won’t know …”

“Where to find him? I succeeded, at all events. He’s working as a woodcutter, in the forest of Brotonne.”

“Yes, but … you … that was an accident … whereas the police …”

The words left her lips with the greatest difficulty. Her voice was trembling. And suddenly she rushed at Rénine, stammering:

“He is arrested? … I am sure of it! … And you have come to tell me … Arrested! Wounded! Dead perhaps? … Oh, please, please! …”

She had no strength left. All her pride, all the certainty of her great love gave way to an immense despair and she sobbed out.

“No, he’s not dead, is he? No, I feel that he’s not dead. Oh, sir, how unjust it all is! He’s the gentlest man, the best that ever lived. He has changed my whole life. Everything is different since I began to love him. And I love him so! I love him! I want to go to him. Take me to him. I want them to arrest me too. I love him … I could not live without him …”

An impulse of sympathy made Hortense put her arms around the girl’s neck and say warmly:

“Yes, come. He is not dead, I am sure, only wounded; and Prince Rénine will save him. You will, won’t you, Rénine? … Come. Make up a story for your servant: say that you’re going somewhere by train and that she is not to tell anybody. Be quick. Put on a wrap. We will save him, I swear we will.”

Rose Andrée went indoors and returned almost at once, disguised beyond recognition in a long cloak and a veil that shrouded her face, and they all took the road back to Routot. At the inn, Rose Andrée passed as a friend whom they had been to fetch in the neighbourhood and were taking to Paris with them. Rénine ran out to make enquiries and came back to the two women.

“It’s all right. Dalbrèque is alive. They have put him to bed in a private room at the mayor’s offices. He has a broken leg and a rather high temperature; but all the same they expect to move him to Rouen tomorrow, and they have telephoned there for a motorcar.”

“And then?” asked Rose Andrée, anxiously.

Rénine smiled:

“Why, then we shall leave at daybreak. We shall take up our positions in a sunken road, rifle in hand, attack the motor coach and carry off Georges!”

“Oh, don’t laugh!” she said, plaintively. “I am so unhappy!”

But the adventure seemed to amuse Rénine, and, when he was alone with Hortense, he exclaimed:

“You see what comes of preferring dishonour to death! But hang it all, who could have expected this? It isn’t a bit the way in which things happen in the pictures! Once the man of the woods had carried off his victim and considering that for three weeks there was no one to defend her, how could we imagine—we who had been proceeding all along under the influence of the pictures—that in the space of a few hours the victim would become a princess in love? Confound that Georges! I now understand the sly, humorous look which I surprised on his mobile features! He remembered, Georges did, and he didn’t care a hang for me! Oh, he tricked me nicely! And you, my dear, he tricked you too! And it was all the influence of the film. They show us, at the cinema, a brute beast, a sort of long-haired, ape-faced savage. What can a man like that be in real life? A brute, inevitably, don’t you agree? Well, he’s nothing of the kind; he’s a Don Juan! The humbug!”

“You will save him, won’t you?” said Hortense, in a beseeching tone.

“Are you very anxious that I should?”

“Very.”

“In that case, promise to give me your hand to kiss.”

“You can have both hands, Rénine, and gladly.”

The night was uneventful. Rénine had given orders for the two ladies to be waked at an early hour. When they came down, the motor was leaving the yard and pulling up in front of the inn. It was raining, and Adolphe, the chauffeur, had fixed up the long, low hood and packed the luggage inside.

Rénine called for his bill. They all three took a cup of coffee. But, just as they were leaving the room, one of the inspector’s men came rushing in:

“Have you seen him?” he asked. “Isn’t he here?”

The inspector himself arrived at a run, greatly excited:

“The prisoner has escaped! He ran back through the inn! He can’t be far away!”

A dozen rustics appeared like a whirlwind. They ransacked the lofts, the stables, the sheds. They scattered over the neighbourhood. But the search led to no discovery.

“Oh, hang it all!” said Rénine, who had taken his part in the hunt. “How can it have happened?”

“How do I know?” spluttered the inspector in despair. “I left my three men watching in the next room. I found them this morning fast asleep, stupefied by some narcotic which had been mixed with their wine! And the Dalbrèque bird had flown!”

“Which way?”

“Through the window. There were evidently accomplices, with ropes and a ladder. And, as Dalbrèque had a broken leg, they carried him off on the stretcher itself.”

“They left no traces?”

“No traces of footsteps, true. The rain has messed everything up. But they went through the yard, because the stretcher’s there.”

“You’ll find him, Mr. Inspector, there’s no doubt of that. In any case, you may be sure that you won’t have any trouble over the affair. I shall be in Paris this evening and shall go straight to the prefecture, where I have influential friends.”

Rénine went back to the two women in the coffee room and Hortense at once said:

“It was you who carried him off, wasn’t it? Please put Rose Andrée’s mind at rest. She is so terrified!”

He gave Rose Andrée his arm and led her to the car. She was staggering and very pale, and she said, in a faint voice:

“Are we going? And he: is he safe? Won’t they catch him again?”

Looking deep into her eyes, he said:

“Swear to me, Rose Andrée, that in two months, when he is well and when I have proved his innocence, swear that you will go away with him to America.”

“I swear.”

“And that, once there, you will marry him.”

“I swear.”

He spoke a few words in her ear.

“Ah!” she said. “May Heaven bless you for it!”

Hortense took her seat in front, with Rénine, who sat at the wheel. The inspector, hat in hand, fussed around the car until it moved off.

They drove through the forest, crossed the Seine at La Mailleraie and struck into the Havre-Rouen road.

“Take off your glove and give me your hand to kiss,” Rénine ordered. “You promised that you would.”

“Oh!” said Hortense. “But it was to be when Dalbrèque was saved.”

“He is saved.”

“Not yet. The police are after him. They may catch him again. He will not be really saved until he is with Rose Andrée.”

“He is with Rose Andrée,” he declared.

“What do you mean?”

“Turn round.”

She did so.

In the shadow of the hood, right at the back, behind the chauffeur, Rose Andrée was kneeling beside a man lying on the seat.

“Oh,” stammered Hortense, “it’s incredible! Then it was you who hid him last night? And he was there, in front of the inn, when the inspector was seeing us off?”

“Lord, yes! He was there, under the cushions and rugs!”

“It’s incredible!” she repeated, utterly bewildered. “It’s incredible! How were you able to manage it all?”

“I wanted to kiss your hand,” he said.

She removed her glove, as he bade her, and raised her hand to his lips.

The car was speeding between the peaceful Seine and the white cliffs that border it. They sat silent for a long while. Then he said:

“I had a talk with Dalbrèque last night. He’s a fine fellow and is ready to do anything for Rose Andrée. He’s right. A man must do anything for the woman he loves. He must devote himself to her, offer her all that is beautiful in this world: joy and happiness … and, if she should be bored, stirring adventures to distract her, to excite her and to make her smile … or even weep.”

Hortense shivered; and her eyes were not quite free from tears. For the first time he was alluding to the sentimental adventure that bound them by a tie which as yet was frail, but which became stronger and more enduring with each of the ventures on which they entered together, pursuing them feverishly and anxiously to their close. Already she felt powerless and uneasy with this extraordinary man, who subjected events to his will and seemed to play with the destinies of those whom he fought or protected. He filled her with dread and at the same time he attracted her. She thought of him sometimes as her master, sometimes as an enemy against whom she must defend herself, but oftenest as a perturbing friend, full of charm and fascination …

V. THÉRÈSE AND GERMAINE

The weather was so mild that autumn that, on the 12th of October, in the morning, several families still lingering in their villas at Étretat had gone down to the beach. The sea, lying between the cliffs and the clouds on the horizon, might have suggested a mountain lake slumbering in the hollow of the enclosing rocks, were it not for that crispness in the air and those pale, soft and indefinite colours in the sky which give a special charm to certain days in Normandy.

“It’s delicious,” murmured Hortense. But the next moment she added: “All the same, we did not come here to enjoy the spectacle of nature or to wonder whether that huge stone needle on our left was really at one time the home of Arsène Lupin.”

“We came here,” said Prince Rénine, “because of the conversation which I overheard, a fortnight ago, in a dining car, between a man and a woman.”

“A conversation of which I was unable to catch a single word.”

“If those two people could have guessed for an instant that it was possible to hear a single word of what they were saying, they would not have spoken, for their conversation was one of extraordinary gravity and importance. But I have very sharp ears, and though I could not follow every sentence, I insist that we may be certain of two things. First, that man and woman, who are brother and sister, have an appointment at a quarter to twelve this morning, the 12th of October, at the spot known as the Trois Mathildes, with a third person, who is married and who wishes at all costs to recover his or her liberty. Secondly, this appointment, at which they will come to a final agreement, is to be followed this evening by a walk along the cliffs, when the third person will bring with him or her the man or woman, I can’t definitely say which, whom they want to get rid of. That is the gist of the whole thing. Now, as I know a spot called the Trois Mathildes some way above Étretat and as this is not an everyday name, we came down yesterday to thwart the plan of these objectionable persons.”

“What plan?” asked Hortense. “For, after all, it’s only your assumption that there’s to be a victim and that the victim is to be flung off the top of the cliffs. You yourself told me that you heard no allusion to a possible murder.”

“That is so. But I heard some very plain words relating to the marriage of the brother or the sister with the wife or the husband of the third person, which implies the need for a crime.”

They were sitting on the terrace of the casino, facing the stairs which run down to the beach. They therefore overlooked the few privately owned cabins on the shingle, where a party of four men were playing bridge, while a group of ladies sat talking and knitting.

A short distance away and nearer to the sea was another cabin, standing by itself and closed.

Half a dozen bare-legged children were paddling in the water.

“No,” said Hortense, “all this autumnal sweetness and charm fails to attract me. I have so much faith in all your theories that I can’t help thinking, in spite of everything, of this dreadful problem. Which of those people yonder is threatened? Death has already selected its victim. Who is it? Is it that young, fair-haired woman, rocking herself and laughing? Is it that tall man over there, smoking his cigar? And which of them has the thought of murder hidden in his heart? All the people we see are quietly enjoying themselves. Yet death is prowling among them.”

“Capital!” said Rénine. “You too are becoming enthusiastic. What did I tell you? The whole of life’s an adventure, and nothing but adventure is worthwhile. At the first breath of coming events, there you are, quivering in every nerve. You share in all the tragedies stirring around you, and the feeling of mystery awakens in the depths of your being. See, how closely you are observing that couple who have just arrived. You never can tell: that may be the gentleman who proposes to do away with his wife? Or perhaps the lady contemplates making away with her husband?”

“The d’Ormevals? Never! A perfectly happy couple! Yesterday, at the hotel, I had a long talk with the wife. And you yourself …”

“Oh, I played a round of golf with Jacques d’Ormeval, who rather fancies himself as an athlete, and I played at dolls with their two charming little girls!”

The d’Ormevals came up and exchanged a few words with them. Madame d’Ormeval said that her two daughters had gone back to Paris that morning with their governess. Her husband, a great tall fellow with a yellow beard, carrying his blazer over his arm and puffing out his chest under a cellular shirt, complained of the heat:

“Have you the key of the cabin, Thérèse?” he asked his wife, when they had left Rénine and Hortense and stopped at the top of the stairs, a few yards away.