“Enough,” she echoed, “you are right. Enough words between us. Besides, there is one fact that stands out above everything: your flight. That amounts to a confession. You’re afraid of the police.”
He shrugged his shoulders a second time:
“I’m afraid of nobody.”
“Very well, but you’re going.”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s have it out. When are you going?”
“Presently, at twelve o’clock.”
“And if you’re arrested?”
“I sha’n’t be arrested.”
“If you are arrested, however?”
“I shall be let go.”
“At least there will be an inquiry, a trial?”
“No, the matter will be hushed up.”
“You hope so.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“God grant it! And you will leave France, of course?”
“As soon as I can.”
“When will that be?”
“In a fortnight or three weeks.”
“Send me word of the day, so that I may know when I can breathe again.”
“I shall send you word, Coralie, but for another reason.”
“What reason?”
“So that you may join me.”
“Join you!”
He gave a cruel smile:
“You are my wife,” he said. “Where the husband goes the wife goes; and you know that, in my religion, the husband has every right over his wife, including that of life and death. Well, you’re my wife.”
Coralie shook her head, and, in a tone of indescribable contempt, answered:
“I am not your wife. I feel nothing for you but loathing and horror. I don’t wish to see you again, and, whatever happens, whatever you may threaten, I shall not see you again.”
He rose, and, walking to her, bent in two, all trembling on his legs, he shouted, while again he shook his clenched fists at her:
“What’s that you say? What’s that you dare to say? I, I, your lord and master, order you to join me the moment that I send for you.”
“I shall not join you. I swear it before God! I swear it as I hope to be saved.”
He stamped his feet with rage. His face underwent a hideous contortion; and he roared:
“That means that you want to stay! Yes, you have reasons which I don’t know, but which are easy to guess! An affair of the heart, I suppose. There’s some one in your life, no doubt. . . . Hold your tongue, will you? . . . Haven’t you always detested me? . . . Your hatred does not date from to-day. It dates back to the first time you saw me, to a time even before our marriage. . . . We have always lived like mortal enemies. I loved you. I worshipped you. A word from you would have brought me to your feet. The mere sound of your steps thrilled me to the marrow. . . . But your feeling for me is one of horror. And you imagine that you are going to start a new life, without me? Why, I’d sooner kill you, my beauty!”
He had unclenched his fists; and his open hands were clutching on either side of Coralie, close to her head, as though around a prey which they seemed on the point of throttling. A nervous shiver made his jaws clash together. Beads of perspiration gleamed on his bald head.
In front of him, Coralie stood impassive, looking very small and frail. Patrice Belval, in an agony of suspense and ready at any moment to act, could read nothing on her calm features but aversion and contempt.
Mastering himself at last, Essarès said:
“You shall join me, Coralie. Whether you like it or not, I am your husband. You felt it just now, when the lust to murder me made you take up a weapon and left you without the courage to carry out your intention. It will always be like that. Your independent fit will pass away and you will join the man who is your master.”
“I shall remain behind to fight against you,” she replied, “here, in this house. The work of treason which you have accomplished I shall destroy. I shall do it without hatred, for I am no longer capable of hatred, but I shall do it without intermission, to repair the evil which you have wrought.”
He answered, in a low voice:
“I am capable of hatred. Beware, Coralie. The very moment when you believe that you have nothing more to fear will perhaps be the moment when I shall call you to account. Take care.”
He pushed an electric bell. Old Siméon appeared.
“So the two men-servants have decamped?” asked Essarès. And, without waiting for the answer, he went on, “A good riddance. The housemaid and the cook can do all I want. They heard nothing, did they? No, their bedroom is too far away. No matter, Siméon: you must keep a watch on them after I am gone.”
He looked at his wife, surprised to see her still there, and said to his secretary:
“I must be up at six to get everything ready; and I am dead tired. Take me to my room. You can come back and put out the lights afterwards.”
He went out, supported by Siméon. Patrice Belval at once perceived that Coralie had done her best to show no weakness in her husband’s presence, but that she had come to the end of her strength and was unable to walk. Seized with faintness, she fell on her knees, making the sign of the cross.
When she was able to rise, a few minutes later, she saw on the carpet, between her and the door, a sheet of note-paper with her name on it. She picked it up and read:
“Little Mother Coralie, the struggle is too much for you. Why not appeal to me, your friend? Give a signal and I am with you.”
She staggered, dazed by the discovery of the letter and dismayed by Belval’s daring. But, making a last effort to summon up her power of will, she left the room, without giving the signal for which Patrice was longing.
CHAPTER VI. NINETEEN MINUTES PAST SEVEN
PATRICE, IN HIS bedroom at the home, was unable to sleep that night. He had a continual waking sensation of being oppressed and hunted down, as though he were suffering the terrors of some monstrous nightmare. He had an impression that the frantic series of events in which he was playing the combined parts of a bewildered spectator and a helpless actor would never cease so long as he tried to rest; that, on the contrary, they would rage with greater violence and intensity. The leave-taking of the husband and wife did not put an end, even momentarily, to the dangers incurred by Coralie. Fresh perils arose on every side; and Patrice Belval confessed himself incapable of foreseeing and still more of allaying them.
After lying awake for two hours, he switched on his electric light and began hurriedly to write down the story of the past twelve hours. He hoped in this way to some small extent to unravel the tangled knot.
At six o’clock he went and roused Ya-Bon and brought him back with him. Then, standing in front of the astonished negro, he crossed his arms and exclaimed:
“So you consider that your job is over! While I lie tossing about in the dark, my lord sleeps and all’s well! My dear man, you have a jolly elastic conscience.”
The word elastic amused the Senegalese mightily. His mouth opened wider than ever; and he gave a grunt of enjoyment.
“That’ll do, that’ll do,” said the captain. “There’s no getting a word in, once you start talking. Here, take a chair, read this report and give me your reasoned opinion. What? You don’t know how to read? Well, upon my word! What was the good, then, of wearing out the seat of your trousers on the benches of the Senegal schools and colleges? A queer education, I must say!”
He heaved a sigh, and, snatching the manuscript, said:
“Listen, reflect, argue, deduct and conclude. This is how the matter briefly stands. First, we have one Essarès Bey, a banker, rich as Crœsus, and the lowest of rapscallions, who betrays at one and the same time France, Egypt, England, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece . . . as is proved by the fact that his accomplices roast his feet for him. Thereupon he kills one of them and gets rid of four with the aid of as many millions, which millions he orders another accomplice to get back for him before five minutes are passed. And all these bright spirits will duck underground at eleven o’clock this
morning, for at twelve o’clock the police propose to enter on the scene. Good.”
Patrice Belval paused to take breath and continued:
“Secondly, Little Mother Coralie — upon my word, I can’t say why — is married to Rapscallion Bey. She hates him and wants to kill him. He loves her and wants to kill her. There is also a colonel who loves her and for that reason loses his life and a certain Mustapha, who tries to kidnap her on the colonel’s account and also loses his life for that reason, strangled by a Senegalese. Lastly, there is a French captain, a dot-and-carry-one, who likewise loves her, but whom she avoids because she is married to a man whom she abhors. And with this captain, in a previous incarnation, she has halved an amethyst bead. Add to all this, by way of accessories, a rusty key, a red silk bowstring, a dog choked to death and a grate filled with red coals. And, if you dare to understand a single word of my explanation, I’ll catch you a whack with my wooden leg, for I don’t understand it a little bit and I’m your captain.”
Ya-Bon laughed all over his mouth and all over the gaping scar that cut one of his cheeks in two. As ordered by his captain, he understood nothing of the business and very little of what Patrice had said; but he always quivered with delight when Patrice addressed him in that gruff tone.
“That’s enough,” said the captain. “It’s my turn now to argue, deduct and conclude.”
He leant against the mantelpiece, with his two elbows on the marble shelf and his head tight-pressed between his hands. His merriment, which sprang from temperamental lightness of heart, was this time only a surface merriment. Deep down within himself he did nothing but think of Coralie with sorrowful apprehension. What could he do to protect her? A number of plans occurred to him: which was he to choose? Should he hunt through the numbers in the telephone-book till he hit upon the whereabouts of that Grégoire, with whom Bournef and his companions had taken refuge? Should he inform the police? Should he return to the Rue Raynouard? He did not know. Yes, he was capable of acting, if the act to be performed consisted in flinging himself into the conflict with furious ardor. But to prepare the action, to divine the obstacles, to rend the darkness, and, as he said, to see the invisible and grasp the intangible, that was beyond his powers.
He turned suddenly to Ya-Bon, who was standing depressed by his silence:
“What’s the matter with you, putting on that lugubrious air? Of course it’s you that throw a gloom over me! You always look at the black side of things . . . like a nigger! . . . Be off.”
Ya-Bon was going away discomfited, when some one tapped at the door and a voice said:
“Captain Belval, you’re wanted on the telephone.”
Patrice hurried out. Who on earth could be telephoning to him so early in the morning?
“Who is it?” he asked the nurse.
“I don’t know, captain. . . . It’s a man’s voice; he seemed to want you urgently. The bell had been ringing some time. I was downstairs, in the kitchen. . . .”
Before Patrice’s eyes there rose a vision of the telephone in the Rue Raynouard, in the big room at the Essarès’ house. He could not help wondering if there was anything to connect the two incidents.
He went down one flight of stairs and along a passage. The telephone was through a small waiting-room, in a room that had been turned into a linen-closet. He closed the door behind him.
“Hullo! Captain Belval speaking. What is it?”
A voice, a man’s voice which he did not know, replied in breathless, panting tones:
“Ah! . . . Captain Belval! . . . It’s you! . . . Look here . . . but I’m almost afraid that it’s too late. . . . I don’t know if I shall have time to finish. . . . Did you get the key and the letter? . . .”
“Who are you?” asked Patrice.
“Did you get the key and the letter?” the voice insisted.
“The key, yes,” Patrice replied, “but not the letter.”
“Not the letter? But this is terrible! Then you don’t know . . .”
A hoarse cry struck Patrice’s ear and the next thing he caught was incoherent sounds at the other end of the wire, the noise of an altercation. Then the voice seemed to glue itself to the instrument and he distinctly heard it gasping:
“Too late! . . . Patrice . . . is that you? . . . Listen, the amethyst pendant . . . yes, I have it on me. . . . The pendant. . . . Ah, it’s too late! . . . I should so much have liked to . . . Patrice. . . . Coralie. . . .”
Then again a loud cry, a heart-rending cry, and confused sounds growing more distant, in which he seemed to distinguish:
“Help! . . . Help! . . .”
These grew fainter and fainter. Silence followed. And suddenly there was a little click. The murderer had hung up the receiver.
All this had not taken twenty seconds. But, when Patrice wanted to replace the telephone, his fingers were gripping it so hard that it needed an effort to relax them.
He stood utterly dumfounded. His eyes had fastened on a large clock which he saw, through the window, on one of the buildings in the yard, marking nineteen minutes past seven; and he mechanically repeated these figures, attributing a documentary value to them. Then he asked himself — so unreal did the scene appear to him — if all this was true and if the crime had not been penetrated within himself, in the depths of his aching heart. But the shouting still echoed in his ears; and suddenly he took up the receiver again, like one clinging desperately to some undefined hope:
“Hullo!” he cried. “Exchange! . . . Who was it rang me up just now? . . . Are you there? Did you hear the cries? . . . Are you there? . . . Are you there? . . .”
There was no reply. He lost his temper, insulted the exchange, left the linen-closet, met Ya-Bon and pushed him about:
“Get out of this! It’s your fault. Of course you ought to have stayed and looked after Coralie. Be off there now and hold yourself at my disposal. I’m going to inform the police. If you hadn’t prevented me, it would have been done long ago and we shouldn’t be in this predicament. Off you go!”
He held him back:
“No, don’t stir. Your plan’s ridiculous. Stay here. Oh, not here in my pocket! You’re too impetuous for me, my lad!”
He drove him out and returned to the linen-closet, striding up and down and betraying his excitement in irritable gestures and angry words. Nevertheless, in the midst of his confusion, one idea gradually came to light, which was that, after all, he had no proof that the crime which he suspected had happened at the house in the Rue Raynouard. He must not allow himself to be obsessed by the facts that lingered in his memory to the point of always seeing the same vision in the same tragic setting. No doubt the drama was being continued, as he had felt that it would be, but perhaps elsewhere and far away from Coralie.
And this first thought led to another: why not investigate matters at once?
“Yes, why not?” he asked himself. “Before bothering the police, discovering the number of the person who rang me up and thus working back to the start, a process which it will be time enough to employ later, why shouldn’t I telephone to the Rue Raynouard at once, on any pretext and in anybody’s name? I shall then have a chance of knowing what to think. . . .”
Patrice felt that this measure did not amount to much. Suppose that no one answered, would that prove that the murder had been committed in the house, or merely that no one was yet about? Nevertheless, the need to do something decided him. He looked up Essarès Bey’s number in the telephone-directory and resolutely rang up the exchange.
The strain of waiting was almost more than he could bear. And then he was conscious of a thrill which vibrated through him from head to foot. He was connected; and some one at the other end was answering the call.
“Hullo!” he said.
“Hullo!” said a voice. “Who are you?”
It was the voice of Essarès Bey.
Although this was only natural, since at that moment Essarès must be getting his papers ready and preparing his flight, Patrice was so much taken
aback that he did not know what to say and spoke the first words that came into his head:
“Is that Essarès Bey?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“I’m one of the wounded at the hospital, now under treatment at the home. . . .”
“Captain Belval, perhaps?”
Patrice was absolutely amazed. So Coralie’s husband knew him by name? He stammered:
“Yes . . . Captain Belval.”
“What a lucky thing!” cried Essarès Bey, in a tone of delight. “I rang you up a moment ago, at the home, Captain Belval, to ask . . .”
“Oh, it was you!” interrupted Patrice, whose astonishment knew no bounds.
“Yes, I wanted to know at what time I could speak to Captain Belval in order to thank him.”
“It was you! . . . It was you! . . .” Patrice repeated, more and more thunderstruck.
Essarès’ intonation denoted a certain surprise.
“Yes, wasn’t it a curious coincidence?” he said. “Unfortunately, I was cut off, or rather my call was interrupted by somebody else.”
“Then you heard?”
“What, Captain Belval?”
“Cries.”
“Cries?”
“At least, so it seemed to me; but the connection was very indistinct.”
“All that I heard was somebody asking for you, somebody who was in a great hurry; and, as I was not, I hung up the telephone and postponed the pleasure of thanking you.”
“Of thanking me?”
“Yes, I have heard how my wife was assaulted last night and how you came to her rescue. And I am anxious to see you and express my gratitude. Shall we make an appointment? Could we meet at the hospital, for instance, at three o’clock this afternoon?”
Patrice made no reply. The audacity of this man, threatened with arrest and preparing for flight, baffled him. At the same time, he was wondering what Essarès’ real object had been in telephoning to him without being in any way obliged to. But Belval’s silence in no way troubled the banker, who continued his civilities and ended the inscrutable conversation with a monologue in which he replied with the greatest ease to questions which he kept putting to himself.
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 194