The Eight Strokes of the Clock (23 page)

“Well, what do
you
think?” said the old man, off his guard.

“The fact is … your son’s not dead. People are even saying that you were a partner in his little schemes and that you stuffed him under the tilt of your trap and drove him to the station.”

The old fellow spat on the ground, stretched out his hand as though he were going to take a solemn oath, stood for an instant without moving and then, suddenly, changing his mind and his tactics with ingenuous cynicism, he relaxed his features, assumed a conciliatory attitude and burst out laughing:

“That blackguard Mathias! So he tried to pass himself off as dead? What a rascal! And he reckoned on me to collect the insurance money and send it to him? As if I should be capable of such a low, dirty trick! … You don’t know me, my boy!”

And, without waiting for more, shaking with merriment like a jolly old fellow amused by a funny story, he took his departure, not forgetting, however, to set his great hobnail boots on each of the compromising footprints which his son had left behind him.

Later, when Rénine went back to the manor to let Hortense out, he found that she had disappeared.

He called and asked for her at her cousin Ermelin’s. Hortense sent down word asking him to excuse her: she was feeling a little tired and was lying down.

“Capital!” thought Rénine. “Capital! She avoids me, therefore she loves me. The end is not far off.”

VIII. AT THE SIGN OF MERCURY

To Madame Daniel,
La Roncière,
near Bassicourt.
“PARIS 30 NOVEMBER

“My Dearest Friend,—

“There has been no letter from you for a fortnight, so I don’t expect now to receive one for that troublesome date of the 5th of December, which we fixed as the last day of our partnership. I rather wish it would come, because you will then be released from a contract which no longer seems to give you pleasure. To me the seven battles which we fought and won together were a time of endless delight and enthusiasm. I was living beside you. I was conscious of all the good which that more active and stirring existence was doing you. My happiness was so great that I dared not speak of it to you or let you see anything of my secret feelings except my desire to please you and my passionate devotion. Today you have had enough of your brother in arms. Your will shall be law.

“But, though I bow to your decree, may I remind you what it was that I always believed our final adventure would be? May I repeat your words, not one of which I have forgotten?

“‘I demand,’ you said, ‘that you shall restore to me a small, antique clasp, made of a cornelian set in a filigree 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.’

“And, when I asked you when the clasp had disappeared, you answered, with a laugh:

“‘Seven years ago … or eight … or nine; I don’t know exactly … I don’t know when … I don’t know how … I know nothing about it … ’

“You were challenging me, were you not, and you set me that condition because it was one which I could not fulfill? Nevertheless, I promised and I should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the mainspring of our best actions.

“Dear friend, if you had helped me, I should have achieved yet one more victory. Alone and hard pushed by the proximity of the date, I have failed, not however without placing things on such a footing that the undertaking if you care to follow it up, has the greatest chance of success.

“And you will follow it up, won’t you? We have entered into a mutual agreement which we are bound to honour. It behooves us, within a fixed time, to inscribe in the book of our common life eight good stories, to which we shall have brought energy, logic, perseverance, some subtlety and occasionally a little heroism. This is the eighth of them. It is for you to act so that it may be written in its proper place on the 5th of December, before the clock strikes eight in the evening.

“And, on that day, you will act as I shall now tell you.

“First of all—and above all, my dear, do not complain that my instructions are fanciful: each of them is an indispensable condition of success—first of all, cut in your cousin’s garden three slender lengths of rush. Plait them together and bind up the two ends so as to make a rude switch, like a child’s whiplash.

“When you get to Paris, buy a long necklace of jet beads, cut into facets, and shorten it so that it consists of seventy-five beads, of almost equal size.

“Under your winter cloak, wear a blue woollen gown. On your head, a toque with red leaves on it. Round your neck, a feather boa. No gloves. No rings.

“In the afternoon, take a cab along the left bank of the river to the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. At four o’clock exactly, there will be, near the holy water basin, just inside the church, an old woman dressed in black, saying her prayers on a silver rosary. She will offer you holy water. Give her your necklace. She will count the beads and hand it back to you. After this, you will walk behind her, you will cross an arm of the Seine and she will lead you, down a lonely street in the Ile Saint-Louis, to a house which you will enter by yourself.

“On the ground floor of this house, you will find a youngish man with a very pasty complexion. Take off your cloak and then say to him:

“‘I have come to fetch my clasp.’

“Do not be astonished by his agitation or dismay. Keep calm in his presence. If he questions you, if he wants to know your reason for applying to him or what impels you to make that request, give him no explanation. Your replies must be confined to these brief formulas:

“‘I have come to fetch what belongs to me. I don’t know you, I don’t know your name, but I am obliged to come to you like this. I must have my clasp returned to me. I must.’

“I honestly believe that, if you have the firmness not to swerve from that attitude, whatever farce the man may play, you will be completely successful. But the contest must be a short one and the issue will depend solely on your confidence in yourself and your certainty of success. It will be a sort of match in which you must defeat your opponent in the first round. If you remain impassive, you will win. If you show hesitation or uneasiness, you can do nothing against him. He will escape you and regain the upper hand after a first moment of distress, and the game will be lost in a few minutes. There is no midway house between victory or … defeat.

“In the latter event, you would be obliged—I beg you to pardon me for saying so—again to accept my collaboration. I offer it you in advance, my dear, and without any conditions, while stating quite plainly that all that I have been able to do for you and all that I may yet do gives me no other right than that of thanking you and devoting myself more than ever to the woman who represents my joy, my whole life.”

Hortense, after reading the letter, folded it up and put it away at the back of a drawer, saying, in a resolute voice:

“I sha’n’t go.”

To begin with, although she had formerly attached some slight importance to this trinket, which she had regarded as a mascot, she felt very little interest in it now that the period of her trials was apparently at an end. She could not forget that figure eight, which was the serial number of the next adventure. To launch herself upon it meant taking up the interrupted chain, going back to Rénine and giving him a pledge which, with his powers of suggestion, he would know how to turn to account.

Two days before the 5th of December, she was still in the same frame of mind. So she was on the morning of the 4th, but suddenly, without even having to contend against preliminary subterfuges, she ran out into the garden, cut three lengths of rush, plaited them as she used to do in her childhood and at twelve o’clock had herself driven to the station. She was uplifted by an eager curiosity. She was unable to resist all the amusing and novel sensations which the adventure, proposed by Rénine, promised her. It was really too tempting. The jet necklace, the toque with the autumn leaves, the old woman with the silver rosary: how could she resist their mysterious appeal and how could she refuse this opportunity of showing Rénine what she was capable of doing?

“And then, after all,” she said to herself, laughing, “he’s summoning me to Paris. Now eight o’clock is dangerous to me at a spot three hundred miles from Paris, in that old deserted Château de Halingre, but nowhere else. The only clock that can strike the threatening hour is down there, under lock and key, a prisoner!”

She reached Paris that evening. On the morning of the 5th she went out and bought a jet necklace, which she reduced to seventy-five beads, put on a blue gown and a toque with red leaves and, at four o’clock precisely, entered the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

Her heart was throbbing violently. This time she was alone, and how acutely she now felt the strength of that support which, from unreflecting fear rather than any reasonable motive, she had thrust aside! She looked around her, almost hoping to see him. But there was no one there … no one except an old lady in black, standing beside the holy water basin.

Hortense went up to her. The old lady, who held a silver rosary in her hands, offered her holy water and then began to count the beads of the necklace which Hortense gave her.

She whispered:

“Seventy-five. That’s right. Come.”

Without another word, she toddled along under the light of the streetlamps, crossed the Pont des Tournelles to the Ile Saint-Louis and went down an empty street leading to a crossroads, where she stopped in front of an old house with wrought-iron balconies:

“Go in,” she said.

And the old lady went away.

Hortense now saw a prosperous-looking shop which occupied almost the whole of the ground floor and whose windows, blazing with electric light, displayed a huddled array of old furniture and antiquities. She stood there for a few seconds, gazing at it absently. A signboard bore the words “The Mercury,” together with the name of the owner of the shop, “Pancaldi.” Higher up, on a projecting cornice which ran on a level with the first floor, a small niche sheltered a terra-cotta Mercury poised on one foot, with wings to his sandals and the caduceus in his hand, who, as Hortense noted, was leaning a little too far forward in the ardour of his flight and ought logically to have lost his balance and taken a header into the street.

“Now!” she said, under her breath.

She turned the handle of the door and walked in.

Despite the ringing of the bells actuated by the opening door, no one came to meet her. The shop seemed to be empty. However, at the extreme end there was a room at the back of the shop and after that another, both crammed with furniture and knickknacks, many of which looked very valuable. Hortense followed a narrow gangway which twisted and turned between two walls built up of cupboards, cabinets and console tables, went up two steps and found herself in the last room of all.

A man was sitting at a writing desk and looking through some account books. Without turning his head, he said:

“I am at your service, madam … Please look round you …”

This room contained nothing but articles of a special character which gave it the appearance of some alchemist’s laboratory in the middle ages: stuffed owls, skeletons, skulls, copper alembics, astrolabes and all around, hanging on the walls, amulets of every description, mainly hands of ivory or coral with two fingers pointing to ward off ill-luck.

“Are you wanting anything in particular, madam?” asked M. Pancaldi, closing his desk and rising from his chair.

“It’s the man,” thought Hortense.

He had in fact an uncommonly pasty complexion. A little forked beard, flecked with grey, lengthened his face, which was surmounted by a bald, pallid forehead, beneath which gleamed a pair of small, prominent, restless, shifty eyes.

Hortense, who had not removed her veil or cloak, replied:

“I want a clasp.”

“They’re in this showcase,” he said, leading the way to the connecting room.

Hortense glanced over the glass case and said:

“No, no … I don’t see what I’m looking for. I don’t want just any clasp, but a clasp which I lost out of a jewel case some years ago and which I have to look for here.”

She was astounded to see the commotion displayed on his features. His eyes became haggard.

“Here? … I don’t think you are in the least likely … What sort of clasp is it? …”

“A cornelian, mounted in gold filigree … of the 1830 period.”

“I don’t understand,” he stammered. “Why do you come to me?”

She now removed her veil and laid aside her cloak.

He stepped back, as though terrified by the sight of her, and whispered:

“The blue gown! … The toque! … And—can I believe my eyes?—the jet necklace! …”

It was perhaps the whiplash formed of three rushes that excited him most violently. He pointed his finger at it, began to stagger where he stood and ended by beating the air with his arms, like a drowning man, and fainting away in a chair.

Hortense did not move.

“Whatever farce he may play,” Rénine had written, “have the courage to remain impassive.”

Perhaps he was not playing a farce. Nevertheless she forced herself to be calm and indifferent.

This lasted for a minute or two, after which M. Pancaldi recovered from his swoon, wiped away the perspiration streaming down his forehead and, striving to control himself, resumed, in a trembling voice:

“Why do you apply to me?”

“Because the clasp is in your possession.”

“Who told you that?” he said, without denying the accusation. “How do you know?”

“I know because it is so. Nobody has told me anything. I came here positive that I should find my clasp and with the immovable determination to take it away with me.”

“But do you know me? Do you know my name?”

“I don’t know you. I did not know your name before I read it over your shop. To me you are simply the man who is going to give me back what belongs to me.”