Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Have they deciphered the word Damigni on one of the letters?”

  “No, but they have the name of the nearest town.”

  “What town is that?”

  “Alençon.”

  “And is that where you’re going?”

  “Yes, the Prefect of Police told me to go straightaway. I shall take the train at the Invalides.”

  “You mean you will come with me in my motor.”

  “Eh?”

  “We will both of us go, my lad. I want to be doing something; the atmosphere of this house is deadly for me.”

  “What are you talking about, Chief?”

  “Nothing. I know.”

  Half an hour later they were flying along the Versailles Road. Perenna himself was driving his open car and driving it in such a way that Mazeroux, almost stifling, kept blurting out, at intervals:

  “Lord, what a pace! Dash it all, how you’re letting her go, Chief! Aren’t you afraid of a smash? Remember the other day—”

  They reached Alençon in time for lunch. When they had done, they went to

  the chief post-office. Nobody knew the name of Langernault there.

  Besides, Damigni had its own post-office, though the presumption was that

  M. Langernault had his letters addressed poste restante at Alençon.

  Don Luis and Mazeroux went on to the village of Damigni. Here again the postmaster knew no one of the name of Langernault; and this in spite of the fact that Damigni contained only about a thousand inhabitants.

  “Let’s go and call on the mayor,” said Perenna.

  At the mayor’s Mazeroux stated who he was and mentioned the object of his visit. The mayor nodded his head.

  “Old Langernault? I should think so. A decent fellow: used to run a business in the town.”

  “And accustomed, I suppose, to fetch his letters at Alençon post-office?”

  “That’s it, every day, for the sake of the walk.”

  “And his house?”

  “Is at the end of the village. You passed it as you came along.”

  “Can we see it?”

  “Well, of course … only—”

  “Perhaps he’s not at home?”

  “Certainly not! The poor, dear man hasn’t even set foot in the house since he left it the last time, four years ago!”

  “How is that?”

  “Why, he’s been dead these four years!”

  Don Luis and Mazeroux exchanged a glance of amazement.

  “So he’s dead?” said Don Luis.

  “Yes, a gunshot.”

  “What’s that!” cried Perenna. “Was he murdered?”

  “No, no. They thought so at first, when they picked him up on the floor of his room; but the inquest proved that it was an accident. He was cleaning his gun, and it went off and sent a load of shot into his stomach. All the same, we thought it very queer in the village. Daddy Langernault, an old hunter before the Lord, was not the man to commit an act of carelessness.”

  “Had he money?”

  “Yes; and that’s just what clinched the matter: they couldn’t find a penny of it!”

  Don Luis remained thinking for some time and then asked:

  “Did he leave any children, any relations of the same name?”

  “Nobody, not even a cousin. The proof is that his property — it’s called the Old Castle, because of the ruins on it — has reverted to the State. The authorities have had the doors of the house sealed up, and locked the gate of the park. They are waiting for the legal period to expire in order to take possession.”

  “And don’t sightseers go walking in the park, in spite of the walls?”

  “Not they. In the first place, the walls are very high. And then — and then the Old Castle has had a bad reputation in the neighbourhood ever since I can remember. There has always been a talk of ghosts: a pack of silly tales. But still—”

  Perenna and his companion could not get over their surprise.

  “This is a funny affair,” exclaimed Don Luis, when they had left the mayor’s. “Here we have Fauville writing his letters to a dead man — and to a dead man, by the way, who looks to me very much as if he had been murdered.”

  “Some one must have intercepted the letters.”

  “Obviously. But that does not do away with the fact that he wrote them to a dead man and made his confidences to a dead man and told him of his wife’s criminal intentions.”

  Mazeroux was silent. He, too, seemed greatly perplexed.

  They spent part of the afternoon in asking about old Langernault’s habits, hoping to receive some useful clue from the people who had known him. But their efforts led to nothing.

  At six o’clock, as they were about to start, Don Luis found that the car

  had run out of petrol and sent Mazeroux in a trap to the outskirts of

  Alençon to fetch some. He employed the delay in going to look at the Old

  Castle outside the village.

  He had to follow a hedged road leading to an open space, planted with lime trees, where a massive wooden gate stood in the middle of a wall. The gate was locked. Don Luis walked along the wall, which was, in fact, very high and presented no opening. Nevertheless, he managed to climb over by means of the branches of a tree.

  The park consisted of unkept lawns, overgrown with large wild flowers, and grass-covered avenues leading on the right to a distant mound, thickly dotted with ruins, and, on the left, to a small, tumbledown house with ill-fitting shutters.

  He was turning in this direction, when he was much surprised to perceive fresh footprints on a border which had been soaked with the recent rain. And he could see that these footprints had been made by a woman’s boots, a pair of elegant and dainty boots.

  “Who the devil comes walking here?” he thought.

  He found more footprints a little farther, on another border which the owner of the boots had crossed, and they led him away from the house, toward a series of clumps of trees where he saw them twice more. Then he lost sight of them for good.

  He was standing near a large, half-ruined barn, built against a very tall bank. Its worm-eaten doors seemed merely balanced on their hinges. He went up and looked through a crack in the wood. Inside the windowless barn was in semi-darkness, for but little light came through the openings stopped up with straw, especially as the day was beginning to wane. He was able to distinguish a heap of barrels, broken wine-presses, old ploughs, and scrap-iron of all kinds.

  “This is certainly not where my fair stroller turned her steps,” thought

  Don Luis. “Let’s look somewhere else.”

  Nevertheless, he did not move. He had noticed a noise in the barn.

  He listened and heard nothing. But as he wanted to get to the bottom of things he forced out a couple of planks with his shoulder and stepped in.

  The breach which he had thus contrived admitted a little light. He could see enough to make his way between two casks, over some broken window frames, to an empty space on the far side.

  His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness as he went on. For all that, he knocked his head against something which he had not perceived, something hanging up above, something rather hard which, when set in motion, swung to and fro with a curious grating sound.

  It was too dark to see. Don Luis took an electric lantern from his pocket and pressed the spring.

  “Damn it all!” he swore, falling back aghast.

  Above him hung a skeleton!

  And the next moment he uttered another oath. A second skeleton hung beside the first!

  They were both fastened by stout ropes to rings fixed in the rafters of the barn. Their heads dangled from the slip-knots. The one against which Perenna had struck was still moving slightly and the bones clicked together with a gruesome sound.

  He dragged forward a rickety table, propped it up as best he could, and climbed onto it to examine the two skeletons more closely. They were turned toward each other, face to face. The first was considerably bigger t
han the second. They were obviously the skeletons of a man and a woman. Even when they were not moved by a jolt of any kind, the wind blowing through the crevices in the barn set them lightly swinging to and fro, in a sort of very slow, rhythmical dance.

  But what perhaps was most impressive in this ghastly spectacle was the fact that each of the skeletons, though deprived of every rag of clothing, still wore a gold ring, too wide now that the flesh had disappeared, but held, as in hooks, by the bent joints of the fingers.

  He slipped off the rings with a shiver of disgust, and found that they were wedding rings. Each bore a date inside, the same date, 12 August, 1887, and two names: “Alfred — Victorine.”

  “Husband and wife,” he murmured. “Is it a double suicide? Or a murder? But how is it possible that the two skeletons have not yet been discovered? Can one conceive that they have been here since the death of old Langernault, since the government has taken possession of the estate and made it impossible for anybody to walk in?”

  He paused to reflect.

  “Anybody? I don’t know about that, considering that I saw footprints in the garden, and that a woman has been there this very day!”

  The thought of the unknown visitor engrossed him once more, and he got down from the table. In spite of the noise which he had heard, it was hardly to be supposed that she had entered the barn. And, after a few minutes’ search, he was about to go out, when there came, from the left, a clash of things falling about and some hoops dropped to the ground not far from where he stood.

  They came from above, from a loft likewise crammed with various objects and implements and reached by a ladder. Was he to believe that the visitor, surprised by his arrival, had taken refuge in that hiding-place and made a movement that caused the fall of the hoops?

  Don Luis placed his electric lantern on a cask in such a way as to send the light right up to the loft. Seeing nothing suspicious, nothing but an arsenal of old pickaxes, rakes, and disused scythes, he attributed what had happened so some animal, to some stray cat; and, to make sure, he walked quickly to the ladder and went up.

  Suddenly, at the very moment when he reached the level of the floor, there was a fresh noise, a fresh clatter of things falling: and a form rose from the heap of rubbish with a terrible gesture.

  It was swift as lightning. Don Luis saw the great blade of a scythe cleaving the air at the height of his head. Had he hesitated for a second, for the tenth of a second, the awful weapon would have beheaded him. As it was, he just had time to flatten himself against the ladder. The scythe whistled past him, grazing his jacket. He slid down to the floor below.

  But he had seen.

  He had seen the dreadful face of Gaston Sauverand, and, behind the man of the ebony walking-stick, wan and livid in the rays of the electric light, the distorted features of Florence Levasseur!

  CHAPTER NINE

  LUPIN’S ANGER

  HE REMAINED FOR one moment motionless and speechless. Above was a perfect clatter of things being pushed about, as though the besieged were building themselves a barricade. But to the right of the electric rays, diffused daylight entered through an opening that was suddenly exposed; and he saw, in front of this opening, first one form and then another stooping in order to escape over the roofs.

  He levelled his revolver and fired, but badly, for he was thinking of Florence and his hand trembled. Three more shots rang out. The bullets rattled against the old scrap-iron in the loft. The fifth shot was followed by a cry of pain. Don Luis once more rushed up the ladder.

  Slowly making his way through the tangle of farm implements and over some cases of dried rape seed forming a regular rampart, he at last, after bruising and barking his shins, succeeded in reaching the opening, and was greatly surprised, on passing through it, to find himself on level ground. It was the top of the sloping bank against which the barn stood.

  He descended the slope at haphazard, to the left of the barn, and passed in front of the building, but saw nobody. He then went up again on the right; and although the flat part was very narrow, he searched it carefully for, in the growing darkness of the twilight, he had every reason to fear renewed attacks from the enemy.

  He now became aware of something which he had not perceived before. The bank ran along the top of the wall, which at this spot was quite sixteen feet high. Gaston Sauverand and Florence had, beyond a doubt, escaped this way.

  Perenna followed the wall, which was fairly wide, till he came to a lower part, and here he jumped into a ploughed field skirting a little wood toward which the fugitives must have run He started exploring it, but, realizing its denseness, he at once saw that it was waste of time to linger in pursuit.

  He therefore returned to the village, while thinking over this, his latest exploit. Once again Florence and her accomplice had tried to get rid of him. Once again Florence figured prominently in this network of criminal plots.

  At the moment when chance informed Don Luis that old Langernault had probably died by foul play, at the moment when chance, by leading him to Hanged Man’s Barn, as he christened it, brought him into the presence of two skeletons, Florence appeared as a murderous vision, as an evil genius who was seen wherever death had passed with its trail of blood and corpses.

  “Oh, the loathsome creature!” he muttered, with a shudder. “How can she have so fair a face, and eyes of such haunting beauty, so grave, sincere, and almost guileless?”

  In the church square, outside the inn, Mazeroux, who had returned, was filling the petrol tank of the motor and lighting the lamps. Don Luis saw the mayor of Damigni crossing the square. He took him aside.

  “By the way, Monsieur le Maire, did you ever hear any talk in the district, perhaps two years ago, of the disappearance of a couple forty or fifty years of age? The husband’s name was Alfred—”

  “And the wife’s Victorine, eh?” the mayor broke in. “I should think so! The affair created some stir. They lived at Alengon on a small, private income; they disappeared between one day and the next; and no one has since discovered what became of them, any more than a little hoard, some twenty thousand francs or so, which they had realized the day before by the sale of their house. I remember them well. Dedessuslamare their name was.”

  “Thank you, Monsieur le Maire,” said Perenna, who had learned all that he wanted to know.

  The car was ready. A minute after he was rushing toward Alençon with Mazeroux.

  “Where are we going, Chief?” asked the sergeant.

  “To the station. I have every reason to believe, first, that Sauverand was informed this morning — in what way remains to be seen — of the revelations made last night by Mme. Fauville relating to old Langernault; and, secondly, that he has been prowling around and inside old Langernault’s property to-day for reasons that also remain to be seen. And I presume that he came by train and that he will go back by train.”

  Perenna’s supposition was confirmed without delay. He was told at the railway station that a gentleman and a lady had arrived from Paris at two o’clock, that they had hired a trap at the hotel next door, and that, having finished their business, they had gone back a few minutes ago, by the 7:40 express. The description of the lady and gentleman corresponded exactly with that of Florence and Sauverand.

  “Off we go!” said Perenna, after consulting the timetable. “We are an hour behind. We may catch up with the scoundrel at Le Mans.”

  “We’ll do that, Chief, and we’ll collar him, I swear: him and his lady, since there are two of them.”

  “There are two of them, as you say. Only—”

  “Only what?”

  Don Luis waited to reply until they were seated and the engine started, when he said:

  “Only, my boy, you will keep your hands off the lady.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Do you know who she is? Have you a warrant against her?”

  “No.”

  “Then shut up.”

  “But—”

  “One word more, Alexandr
e, and I’ll set you down beside the road. Then you can make as many arrests as you please.”

  Mazeroux did not breathe another word. For that matter the speed at which they at once began to go hardly left him time to raise a protest. Not a little anxious, he thought only of watching the horizon and keeping a lookout for obstacles.

  The trees vanished on either side almost unseen. Their foliage overhead made a rhythmical sound as of moaning waves. Night insects dashed themselves to death against the lamps.

  “We shall get there right enough,” Mazeroux ventured to observe. “There’s no need to put on the pace.”

  The speed increased and he said no more.

  Villages, plains, hills; and then, suddenly in the midst of the darkness, the lights of a large town, Le Mans.

  “Do you know the way to the station, Alexandre?”

  “Yes, Chief, to the right and then straight on.”

  Of course they ought to have gone to the left. They wasted seven or eight minutes in wandering through the streets and receiving contradictory instructions. When the motor pulled up at the station the train was whistling.

  Don Luis jumped out, rushed through the waiting-room, found the doors shut, jostled the railway officials who tried to stop him, and reached the platform.

  A train was about to start on the farther line. The last door was banged to. He ran along the carriages, holding on to the brass rails.

  “Your ticket, sir! Where’s your ticket?” shouted an angry collector.

  Don Luis continued to fly along the footboards, giving a swift glance through the panes, thrusting aside the persons whose presence at the windows prevented him from seeing, prepared at any moment to burst into the compartment containing the two accomplices.

  He did not see them in the end carriages. The train started. And suddenly he gave a shout: they were there, the two of them, by themselves! He had seen them! They were there: Florence, lying on the seat, with her head on Sauverand’s shoulder, and he, leaning over her, with his arms around her!

  Mad with rage he flung back the bottom latch and seized the handle of the carriage door. At the same moment he lost his balance and was pulled off by the furious ticket collector and by Mazeroux, who bellowed: