Imperturbably, Lesécant made his preparations for the operation.
“Don’t be afraid, my boy, you won’t feel a thing. I’ll anesthetize you. Cocaine…good….”
While Lesécant was searching for poisons in his cupboard, however, a cavernous voice, seemingly emerging from the wall, made itself heard.
“No, no, pork butcher…you shan’t have her…it’s me…me….”
Nonplussed, the surgeon dropped the bottle he was holding, which broke. “Did you hear that?”
“Yesss,” hissed Vésigout, his face imprinted with terror.
“Oh, that’s bizarre!”
“Me…me…,” repeated the mysterious voice.
“Damn! But that’s Cordeau speaking. Damn it! I’ll clear this up. Two o’clock in the afternoon! I’ll go to see him.”
Putting off the operation once again, he untied Vésigout, scarcely took the time to change clothes, and set off at top speed—not without having carefully locked the gate of the Villa.
“Oof!” sighed Vésigout. “I can still get out, thanks to my professional talents…but afterwards? Zut! I’ve had my fill of this—I prefer my penury…and as I don’t want to face the fire of Monsieur le docteur Lesécant’s reproaches, I’ll take my leave of him by climbing over the gate. But politeness before all….”
And, taking a piece of paper, he traced a few words in a magisterial calligraphy:
The undersigned, Vésigout, thanks Dr. Lesécant for his kind concern, but doesn’t have the courage to continue the experiments. He has the honor of saluting Monsieur le docteur and, if it might be useful to him, testifies here to the value of his succulent tablets.
He signed the note, placed it on the table in plain sight, went to his room to get his things, and set about climbing over the gate.
Finally, as poor as before, he was free. But he had an obligation to fulfill. Rémois had to be informed. He went to the painter’s home. The other was not at home. Then he remembered the address of Mademoiselle Noirmont’s relatives.
I’ll surely find him there, he said to himself.
VII. In Full Settlement
A story ought to follow the pace of events. Ours must, therefore, accelerate.
The psychologist Cordeau had just returned home, and was standing, like a body without a soul, in front of his empty strong-box, ashamed, like a fox taken by a chicken. The supreme experiment had—is there any need to say it?—turned to confusion.
On the advice of Rémois, agent Fléchard had played a good trick—the last—on his injector.
That morning, negligently, Cordeau had allowed a glimpse of a wad of bonds to the value of fifty thousand francs. He had locked them in his strong-box within the sight the “subject,” and, without seeming to suspect his presence, had pronounced alone the secret word of the combination lock: “Psychology.” And he had gone out, announcing his intention of being absent until the afternoon.
Faithful to his instructions, Fléchard tried to open the safe. Alas, it did not work, for one very good reason: the worthy sleuth, expert in police work, was not as strong when it came to spelling. He tried psicoloji and psicologi, but nothing worked. An intelligent man, however, never allows himself to be thwarted.
“Damn it,” he said to himself. “He has words to drive you mad…so…but it doesn’t matter; I’ll go and find a dictillionary in his bookcase….”
Indeed, a Larousse came to his aid. In possession of the word, he opened the strong-box, took possession of the bonds, and put a small pile of notepaper in their place. Then he closed the safe again, left the Château Mesmer and took a cab to the Prefecture.
When Cordeau came back, he ran to the strong-box. “He hasn’t touched it! Surely—otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to lock it again.
Joyfully, he set up the combination.
Horror! The bonds were no longer there. He picked up the notepaper furiously, on which was written the insolent message: Chase away the natural and it come back at the gallop. And I’m running away….ditto.
“Stolen!” murmured the doctor. “Stolen! I went too quickly. The sum was too large. What can I do? Lodge a complaint? I’ll look ridiculous. And then if Lesécant hears about it….oh no! No, he shan’t have her, the pork butcher. The beautiful Hélène! It’s me…me….”
Then, prey to a crisis of wrath: “Yes, me, me! I’ll start again…there’s still time…before the deadline.”
Then he reflected. Would it not be better to have the thief arrested, and then continue the experiment he had begun with him. He therefore decided to go to the Prefecture.
He had scarcely emerged when he ran into Lesécant, who was also running.
“Monsieur.”
“Monsieur?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“No time.”
“Make some. Go back in.”
“I don’t want to. Why should I take any trouble on your behalf?”
“I’ll oblige you to do it, by force.”
“Try, then!”
“All right!”
And Lesécant, with a solid fist, obliged his colleague to turn back.
“You’ll render me satisfaction for this violence!” Cordeau roared.
“Whenever you wish, but before then, answer me: Was it you who pronounced these words just now: Pork butcher…shan’t have her…me, me…?”
“Yes, it was me.”
“You?”
“Certainly. What’s astonishing about it? Don’t I have the right to think aloud in my own home?”
“Yes, but what’s strange is that I heard you, just now, in Viroflay.”
“You’re mad.”
“No more than you. Thank you, Monsieur—that’s all I wanted to know. I shall study the matter and draw the conclusions that please me. Au revoir, Monsieur.”
“We’ll meet again with steel in hand.”
When Lesécant found Vésigout’s letter on his desk, he nearly choked with rage. While he was yielding to a fit of wrath unprecedented in his experience, the villa’s doorbell rang.
He mastered himself, and then went to open the door. He found himself in the presence of Rémois, who was smiling.
“Your Vésigout has run off, Monsieur.”
“I know, Monsieur Lesécant, but that’s a minor incident of no importance. Monsieur Noirmont will have reimbursed you within a fortnight.
A cold shower could not have produced a greater effect on the surgeon’s effervescence. He only had the strength to say: “That’s good, Monsieur…thank you….”
Cordeau had already heard the news.
Thanks to a speculation as skillful as it was fortunate, Monsieur Noirmont had restarted the enterprise at Chittingham on a larger scale. A letter had informed Hélène that her father would return in a fortnight, ready to free her from the nightmare of the doctors and marry her to Paul Rémois.
At the Prefecture, the psychologist had found the painter in the office of the secretary of the Head of the Sûreté. There, the fifty thousand francs had been returned to him and “the arrest of the thief” had been reported to him. In the satisfaction of recovering the bonds, Cordeau had left a two-thousand-franc tip for the agent who had captured the thief.
Those two thousand francs, and a thousand francs added by Hélène’s fiancé, plunged agent Fléchard into delight.
Vésigout, reformed and cured, took charge of the publicizing of the enterprise at Chittingham.
All’s well that ends well.
Forgetting their discord, Cordeau and Lesécant were reconciled; they begged Noirmont to forget their “folly” and to keep their funds—a decision of which they would have no reason to complain.
They never found out that Rémois had tricked them. Even vengeance fell before happiness. It was with glass in hand that they encountered him at Hélène’s wedding—but they found grounds for argument there. Which of them would be the first godfather?
“Draw lots,” advised Rémois.
They agreed; and that’s why y
ou are not threatened by the possibility of a sequel to “The Rival Colleagues.”
Jules Perrin: Monsieur Forbe’s Hallucination
(1908)
I
At seven o’clock in the evening on Friday 8 May, I stopped opposite the Théâtre de Vaudeville at the newspaper stand, where I have the habit of buying Le Temps in the course of my habitual stroll.
I was tired, glad to be taking the air, and enjoying my stroll sufficiently; I opened the paper while waiting for the vendor to give me the change for a two-franc piece. While reading, I held out my hand, and my young son amused himself by looking at the illustrated papers suspended from the awning all around the kiosk.
Suddenly, my little André uttered a cry, and at the same time, a violent shock shoved the table of planks and trestles, behind which the newsvendor was in the process of counting out my change, toward me. I raised my eyes to look at the woman in question who had just staggered, putting her hands to her breast in a mechanical gesture, to end up falling forwards, flat on her display.
Beside me I perceived one of those creatures with an expression of plaintive resignation, some seamstress or the like, with a wretched piece of faded lace enveloping her head and covering her ears, for she seemed consumptive, with her mouth slightly open in a dolorous expression, as though she had a toothache.
Beside her, my little André, pointing a finger at her, immediately cried in an indignant tone, which seemed to me at the time to be rather comical: “It was her, Papa! Yes, it was her who pushed the lady to make her fall.”
With the aid of a few passers-by who had rapidly gathered, I lifted up the newsvendor, whose contracted features were beginning to relax under the calming effect of death. And, indeed, imagine the general horror on perceiving, in the unfortunate woman’s breast, the black wooden handle of one of these small kitchen knives that housewives use to peel vegetables!
I turned to the woman who was still standing motionless beside me and I said, in a tone of surprise rather than violence: “Did you do that?”
Her eyes staring, slightly fearful, she seemed to emerge from a dream and started stammering, in a voice devoid of strength, as if unconsciously: “I…I don’t know…I think so.”
Meanwhile, the crowd had become so large that policemen ended up approaching. After a few explanations, one of them took the consumptive woman by the arm while the others carried the inanimate body of the newsvendor toward the nearest pharmacist’s shop.
Moved by professional conscience, I followed the latter group, but, as I had already diagnosed, the knife, plunged into the ventricles of the heart, had determined a brutal cessation of circulation, and when we extracted it from the wound, with the greatest care, hardly any blood flowed from the wound.
The unfortunate woman was dead.
It only remained to inform the family and to close the kiosk, around which a crowd had gathered with the keenest curiosity.
I had been a witness to the murder, however, and I had to go to the commissariat for the initial declarations. I had some difficulty finding little André, who was being interviewed by a reporter—he alone, in fact, having seen the murderous thrust delivered.
When we reached the station in the Rue de Provence, a secretary, in the Commissaire’s absence, was in the process of conducting an initial interrogation.
The accused had declared that her name was Emilie-Albertine Sourbelle.
“Where do you live?” asked the secretary.
“In the Rue Mogador,” Emilie Sourbelle replied, with meek politeness.
“What is your profession?”
She hesitated for a second, as if not quite understanding the question; she ended up saying; “What do I do? Oh, pardon me, Monsieur; I’m a milliner for hire. I have some skill.”
“Good. Are you married?”
Emilie Sourbelle nodded affirmatively.
“What does your husband do?”
In a pitiful voice she recounted that they had not had much luck, having had a small lingerie shop that had not prospered and which they had been obliged to sell at a loss. With what remained of their money her husband, a former mechanic, had left for America a few months before; according to his last letter he was far from having made a fortune there. By the resigned fashion in which she said all that, it was understandable that she had the patient and devoted nature that is the only thing that permits the unfortunate to support the vicissitudes of existence.
Poor woman! At present, she made me feel pity. I exchanged a glance with the police secretary, and we both contemplated her in silence, while she resumed sobbing softly.
“But after all,” I said, then, drawing nearer. “Why did you do that?”
She shrugged her shoulders slowly, her eyes dilated and her arms widespread in despair.
“I don’t know…I swear to you that I can’t explain it. I was sitting in my room, beside my stove, peeling my salad, when it seemed to me that I was lifted out of my chair. I stood up. I went downstairs and I came along the Chaussée d’Antin as far as the Vaudeville. I stopped in front of that lady, who I don’t know at all, I assure you; it seemed to me that I had a desire to hit her. Then...unfortunately, I was still holding the little knife that I was using to peel my salad. I struck without knowing it.”
There was a silence. I leaned toward the secretary: “Hysteria…hypnosis….some degenerate.”
The functionary looked at me and shook his head dubiously. Abandoning the unfortunate woman whom he left to weep, he stood up and came toward me.
“You’re a physician, it seems, Monsieur.”
I gave my name: “Doctor Forbe, Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. As you can see, I live a few steps away. Since Monsieur le Commissaire is absent, perhaps I can come back after dinner to make the deposition. It’s after half past seven—I fear that people will be getting anxious at home…because of my little boy.”
Brought to attention, André drew nearer; he took my hand, looked at the secretary, who smiled at him amiably, and said in a low voice: “All the more so as Grandma has just arrived by the six o’clock train, you know, Papa.”
André is seven years old; I spoil him slightly and I don’t often succeed in not giving into him. I thought that he was inventing a pretext and was internally amused by his mischievousness. Taking my leave of the secretary, I went out, drawing the child by the hand.
“Why did you lie?” I asked him, as we walked along the street.
“But Papa,” the child said, with tears in his eyes. “I didn’t lie. I swear to you that Grandma arrived by the six o’clock train.”
I shrugged my shoulders. There was no reason why Madame Forbe, who lives in Angers, should be in Paris; in any case, no letter had announced her visit.
Meanwhile, André was dragging me along, and it was almost at a run that he took me along the Rue de Provence, the Rue des Mathurins and across the Rue Auber to reach our house.
It was without gaiety that, every evening, I deposited my cane or my umbrella in the sandstone cylinder that decorates the left-hand corner of the antechamber, beside a moleskin-covered banquette.
That evening, my attention was attracted by a valise placed askew, as if thrown onto that banquette in haste.
“Whose is that, Berthe?” I asked the chambermaid who had come to open the door.
“It belongs to Madame’s mother, Monsieur,” said Berthe gravely, “who arrived a quarter of an hour ago.”
André clapped his hands joyfully. “There,” he said. “What did I say? You see, Papa, that I was right.” Already he was running toward his mother’s room shouting: “Grandma! Grandma! I knew that you were here.”
Is that child becoming neuropathic? I thought, with a hint of sadness.
Meanwhile, the chambermaid had picked up the valise and she accompanied me upstairs, complaining all the while. “Augustine could have helped me to take this upstairs before going to get dressed up,” she said. “Did Monsieur know that she’s coming back home? She says that she had a dream that one of her friends
is about to get married.”
I was scarcely listening; Distractedly, I went into the room where Madame Forbe was in bed. She was not ill, but that morning, at about ten o’clock, as she was coming downstairs, she had fallen, sliding on her back down fifteen steps. She was certainly more frightened than hurt, suffering more from emotion than bruises, but she had taken to her bed as a preventive measure.
Her mother was keeping her company—an excellent woman, still middle-aged, albeit in the later stages.
“Oh, my love,” murmured Madame Forbe, in a feeble voice, on seeing me come in, “Would you believe that Maman had a presentiment of what had happened to me?”
I was pleased to see my mother-in-law, for she’s a amiable woman full of common sense, respectful of my dignity; reason inspires her speech, which is very rarely due to enthusiasm or exaggeration, so I was immediately surprised to find her agitated and nervous.
“No, no,” she exclaimed, “not a presentiment: I saw her, quite clearly, at ten o’clock, putting her foot on a step, slipping, and sliding on her back down to the first floor landing. Honestly, I thought she was dead, or at least seriously injured.”
She turned to her daughter, whom she seized in her arms, hugging her ardently, as Lazarus’ sisters must have embraced their brother when he emerged from the tomb.
“Were you dreaming?” I asked.
She shook her head energetically. “Not at all. I was as wide awake as you are at this very moment.”
“How, then, did you see what you say?”
“This is what happened. I was in my little drawing room on the ground floor. The stairway of your house appeared to me, in the way that one sees things when one closes one’s eyes…you know…I saw Henriette, who was coming down, and who fell. It lasted two seconds, perhaps three, and then it all disappeared. It’s not a matter of a presentiment, but something quite precise, as if it were real, as if I had been on the stairway myself.”
I watched Madame Forbe’s mother while she was speaking: the plump, benevolent face, a trifle apoplectic, the bovine eyes, the little button nose, the fleshy mouth sustained by sparkling teeth acquired from the best dentist in Angers, the short hands agitating to punctuate the discourse and show off their outmoded rings, gemmed with all kinds of minerals, from diamonds to Madame Forbe’s first milk teeth….
The Revolt of the Machines Page 19