The Eight Strokes of the Clock (25 page)

“But if the word which you expect to hear is not spoken?”

“It must be spoken,” said Rénine, in a low voice. “We must finish the matter. The hour is at hand.”

His eyes met hers, and she blushed crimson at the thought that the hour to which he was alluding was the eighth and that he had no other object than to finish the matter before that eighth hour struck.

“So you see, on the one hand, what you are risking,” he said to the Pancaldi pair. “The disappearance of your child … and prison: prison for certain, since there is the book with its confessions. And now, on the other hand, here’s my offer: twenty thousand francs if you hand over the clasp immediately, this minute. Remember, it isn’t worth three louis.”

No reply. Madame Pancaldi was crying.

Rénine resumed, pausing between each proposal:

“I’ll double my offer … I’ll treble it … Hang it all, Pancaldi, you’re unreasonable! … I suppose you want me to make it a round sum? All right: a hundred thousand francs.”

He held out his hand as if there was no doubt that they would give him the clasp.

Madame Pancaldi was the first to yield and did so with a sudden outburst of rage against her husband:

“Well, confess, can’t you? … Speak up! … Where have you hidden it? … Look here, you aren’t going to be obstinate, what? If you are, it means ruin … and poverty … And then there’s our boy! … Speak out, do!”

Hortense whispered:

“Rénine, this is madness; the clasp has no value …”

“Never fear,” said Rénine, “he’s not going to accept … But look at him … How excited he is! Exactly what I wanted … Ah, this, you know, is really exciting! … To make people lose their heads! To rob them of all control over what they are thinking and saying! … And, in the midst of this confusion, in the storm that tosses them to and fro, to catch sight of the tiny spark which will flash forth somewhere or other! … Look at him! Look at the fellow! A hundred thousand francs for a valueless pebble … if not, prison: it’s enough to turn any man’s head!”

Pancaldi, in fact, was grey in the face; his lips were trembling and a drop of saliva was trickling from their corners. It was easy to guess the seething turmoil of his whole being, shaken by conflicting emotions, by the clash between greed and fear. Suddenly he burst out, and it was obvious that his words were pouring forth at random, without his knowing in the least what he was saying:

“A hundred thousand francs! Two hundred thousand! Five hundred thousand! A million! A two fig for your millions! What’s the use of millions? One loses them. They disappear … They go … There’s only one thing that counts: luck. It’s on your side or else against you. And luck has been on my side these last nine years. It has never betrayed me, and you expect me to betray it? Why? Out of fear? Prison? My son? Bosh! … No harm will come to me so long as I compel luck to work on my behalf. It’s my servant, it’s my friend. It clings to the clasp. How? How can I tell? It’s the cornelian, no doubt … There are magic stones, which hold happiness, as others hold fire, or sulphur, or gold …”

Rénine kept his eyes fixed upon him, watching for the least word, the least modulation of the voice. The curiosity dealer was now laughing, with a nervous laugh, while resuming the self-control of a man who feels sure of himself, and he walked up to Rénine with jerky movements that revealed an increasing resolution:

“Millions? My dear sir, I wouldn’t have them as a gift. The little bit of stone which I possess is worth much more than that. And the proof of it lies in all the pains which you are at to take it from me. Aha! Months devoted to looking for it, as you yourself confess! Months in which you turned everything topsy-turvy, while I, who suspected nothing, did not even defend myself! Why should I? The little thing defended itself all alone … It does not want to be discovered and it sha’n’t be … It likes being here … It presides over a good, honest business that satisfies it … Pancaldi’s luck! Why, it’s known to all the neighbourhood, among all the dealers! I proclaim it from the housetops: ‘I’m a lucky man!’ I even made so bold as to take the god of luck, Mercury, as my patron! He too protects me. See, I’ve got Mercuries all over my shop! Look up there, on that shelf, a whole row of statuettes, like the one over the front door, proofs signed by a great sculptor who went smash and sold them to me … Would you like one, my dear sir? It will bring you luck too. Take your pick! A present from Pancaldi, to make up to you for your defeat! Does that suit you?”

He put a stool against the wall, under the shelf, took down a statuette and plumped it into Rénine’s arms. And, laughing heartily, growing more and more excited as his enemy seemed to yield ground and to fall back before his spirited attack, he explained:

“Well done! He accepts! And the fact that he accepts shows that we are all agreed! Madame Pancaldi, don’t distress yourself. Your son’s coming back and nobody’s going to prison! Good-bye, Mlle. Hortense! Good day, sir! Hope to see you again! If you want to speak to me at any time, just give three thumps on the ceiling. Good-bye … don’t forget your present … and may Mercury be kind to you! Good-bye, my dear Prince! Good-bye, Mlle. Hortense! …”

He hustled them to the iron staircase, gripped each of them by the arm in turn and pushed them up to the little door hidden at the top of the stairs.

And the strange thing was that Rénine made no protest. He did not attempt to resist. He allowed himself to be led along like a naughty child that is taken up to bed.

Less than five minutes had elapsed between the moment when he made his offer to Pancaldi and the moment when Pancaldi turned him out of the shop with a statuette in his arms.

The dining room and drawing room of the flat which Rénine had taken on the first floor looked out upon the street. The table in the dining room was laid for two.

“Forgive me, won’t you?” said Rénine, as he opened the door of the drawing room for Hortense. “I thought that, whatever happened, I should most likely see you this evening and that we might as well dine together. Don’t refuse me this kindness, which will be the last favour granted in our last adventure.”

Hortense did not refuse him. The manner in which the battle had ended was so different from everything that she had seen hitherto that she felt disconcerted. At any rate, why should she refuse, seeing that the terms of the contract had not been fulfilled?

Rénine left the room to give an order to his manservant. Two minutes later, he came back for Hortense. It was then a little past seven.

There were flowers on the table, and the statue of Mercury, Pancaldi’s present, stood overtopping them.

“May the god of luck preside over our repast,” said Rénine.

He was full of animation and expressed his great delight at having her sitting opposite him:

“Yes,” he exclaimed, “I had to resort to powerful means and attract you by the bait of the most fabulous enterprises. You must confess that my letter was jolly smart! The three rushes, the blue gown; simply irresistible! And, when I had thrown in a few puzzles of my own invention, such as the seventy-five beads of the necklace and the old woman with the silver rosary, I knew that you were bound to succumb to the temptation. Don’t be angry with me. I wanted to see you and I wanted it to be today. You have come, and I thank you.”

He next told her how he had got on the track of the stolen trinket:

“You hoped, didn’t you, in laying down that condition, that I shouldn’t be able to fulfill it? You made a mistake, my dear. The test, at least at the beginning, was easy enough, because it was based upon an undoubted fact: the talismanic character attributed to the clasp. I had only to hunt about and see whether among the people around you, among your servants, there was ever anyone upon whom that character may have exercised some attraction. Now, on the list of persons which I succeeded in drawing up. I at once noticed the name of Mlle. Lucienne, as coming from Corsica. This was my starting point. The rest was a mere concatenation of events.”

Hortense stared at him in amazement. How was it that he was accepting his defeat with such a careless air and even talking in a tone of triumph, whereas really he had been soundly beaten by Pancaldi and even made to look just a trifle ridiculous?

She could not help letting him feel this, and the fashion in which she did so betrayed a certain disappointment, a certain humiliation:

“Everything is a concatenation of events: very well. But the chain is broken, because, when all is said, though you know the thief, you did not succeed in laying hands upon the stolen clasp.”

The reproach was obvious. Rénine had not accustomed her to failure. And furthermore she was irritated to see how heedlessly he was accepting a blow which, after all, entailed the ruin of any hopes that he might have entertained.

He did not reply. He had filled their two glasses with champagne and was slowly emptying his own, with his eyes fixed on the statuette of Mercury. He turned it about on its pedestal and examined it with the eye of a delighted connoisseur:

“What a beautiful thing is a harmonious line! Colour does not uplift me so much as outline, proportion, symmetry and all the wonderful properties of form. Look at this little statue. Pancaldi’s right: it’s the work of a great artist. The legs are both slender and muscular; the whole figure gives an impression of buoyancy and speed. It is very well done. There’s only one fault, a very slight one: perhaps you’ve not noticed it?”

“Yes, I have,” said Hortense. “It struck me the moment I saw the sign, outside. You mean, don’t you, a certain lack of balance? The god is leaning over too far on the leg that carries him. He looks as though he were going to pitch forward.”

“That’s very clever of you,” said Rénine. “The fault is almost imperceptible and it needs a trained eye to see it. Really, however, as a matter of logic, the weight of the body ought to have its way and, in accordance with natural laws, the little god ought to take a header.”

After a pause he continued:

“I noticed that flaw on the first day. How was it that I did not draw an inference at once? I was shocked because the artist had sinned against an aesthetic law, whereas I ought to have been shocked because he had overlooked a physical law. As though art and nature were not blended together! And as though the laws of gravity could be disturbed without some fundamental reason!”

“What do you mean?” asked Hortense, puzzled by these reflections, which seemed so far removed from their secret thoughts. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing!” he said. “I am only surprised that I didn’t understand sooner why Mercury did not plump forward, as he should have done.”

“And what is the reason?”

“The reason? I imagine that Pancaldi, when pulling the statuette about to make it serve his purpose, must have disturbed its balance, but that this balance was restored by something which holds the little god back and which makes up for his really too dangerous posture.”

“Something, you say?”

“Yes, a counterweight.”

Hortense gave a start. She too was beginning to see a little light. She murmured:

“A counterweight? … Are you thinking that it might be … in the pedestal?”

“Why not?”

“Is that possible? But, if so, how did Pancaldi come to give you this statuette?”

“He never gave me
this
one,” Rénine declared. “I took this one myself.”

“But where? And when?”

“Just now, while you were in the drawing room. I got out of that window, which is just over the signboard and beside the niche containing the little god. And I exchanged the two, that is to say, I took the statue which was outside and put the one which Pancaldi gave me in its place.”

“But doesn’t that one lean forward?”

“No, no more than the others do, on the shelf in his shop. But Pancaldi is not an artist. A lack of equilibrium does not impress him; he will see nothing wrong, and he will continue to think himself favoured by luck, which is another way of saying that luck will continue to favour him. Meanwhile, here’s the statuette, the one used for the sign. Am I to break the pedestal and take your clasp out of the leaden sheath, soldered to the back of the pedestal, which keeps Mercury steady?”

“No, no, there’s no need for that,” Hortense hurriedly murmured.

Rénine’s intuition, his subtlety, the skill with which he had managed the whole business: to her, for the moment, all these things remained in the background. But she suddenly remembered that the eighth adventure was completed, that Rénine had surmounted every obstacle, that the test had turned to his advantage and that the extreme limit of time fixed for the last of the adventures was not yet reached.

He had the cruelty to call attention to the fact:

“A quarter to eight,” he said.

An oppressive silence fell between them. Both felt its discomfort to such a degree that they hesitated to make the least movement. In order to break it, Rénine jested:

“That worthy M. Pancaldi, how good it was of him to tell me what I wished to know! I knew, however, that by exasperating him, I should end by picking up the missing clue in what he said. It was just as though one were to hand someone a flint and steel and suggest to him that he was to use it. In the end, the spark is obtained. In my case, what produced the spark was the unconscious but inevitable comparison which he drew between the cornelian clasp, the element of luck, and Mercury, the god of luck. That was enough. I understood that this association of ideas arose from his having actually associated the two factors of luck by embodying one in the other, or, to speak more plainly, by hiding the trinket in the statuette. And I at once remembered the Mercury outside the door and its defective poise …”

Rénine suddenly interrupted himself. It seemed to him that all his remarks were falling on deaf ears. Hortense had put her hand to her forehead and, thus veiling her eyes, sat motionless and remote.

She was indeed not listening. The end of this particular adventure and the manner in which Rénine had acted on this occasion no longer interested her. What she was thinking of was the complex series of adventures amid which she had been living for the past three months and the wonderful behaviour of the man who had offered her his devotion. She saw, as in a magic picture, the fabulous deeds performed by him, all the good that he had done, the lives saved, the sorrows assuaged, the order restored wherever his masterly will had been brought to bear. Nothing was impossible to him. What he undertook to do he did. Every aim that he set before him was attained in advance. And all this without excessive effort, with the calmness of one who knows his own strength and knows that nothing can resist it.