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

by Maurice Leblanc

  Half an hour later they reached the sunken track and began to scramble down it on foot beside the wooded slopes. The Seine, which was very low at this time of day, was lapping against a little jetty near which lay a worm-eaten, mouldering boat, full of puddles of water.

  Rénine stepped into the boat and at once began to bale out the puddles with his saucepan. He then drew the boat alongside of the jetty, helped Hortense in and used the one oar which he shipped in a gap in the stern to work her into midstream:

  “I believe I’m there!” he said, with a laugh. “The worst that can happen to us is to get our feet wet, for our craft leaks a trifle. But haven’t we a saucepan? Oh, blessings on that useful utensil! Almost as soon as I set eyes upon it, I remembered that people use those articles to bale out the bottoms of leaky boats. Why, there was bound to be a boat in the Landes woods! How was it I never thought of that? But of course Dalbrèque made use of her to cross the Seine! And, as she made water, he brought a saucepan.”

  “Then Rose Andrée ...?” asked Hortense.

  “Is a prisoner on the other bank, on the Jumièges peninsula. You see the famous abbey from here.”

  They ran aground on a beach of big pebbles covered with slime.

  “And it can’t be very far away,” he added. “Dalbrèque did not spend the whole night running about.”

  A tow-path followed the deserted bank. Another path led away from it. They chose the second and, passing between orchards enclosed by hedges, came to a landscape that seemed strangely familiar to them. Where had they seen that pool before, with the willows overhanging it? And where had they seen that abandoned hovel?

  Suddenly both of them stopped with one accord:

  “Oh!” said Hortense. “I can hardly believe my eyes!”

  Opposite them was the white gate of a large orchard, at the back of which, among groups of old, gnarled apple-trees, appeared a cottage with blue shutters, the cottage of the Happy Princess.

  “Of course!” cried Rénine. “And I ought to have known it, considering that the film showed both this cottage and the forest close by. And isn’t everything happening exactly as in The Happy Princess? Isn’t Dalbrèque dominated by the memory of it? The house, which is certainly the one in which Rose Andrée spent the summer, was empty. He has shut her up there.”

  “But the house, you told me, was in the Seine-inférieure.”

  “Well, so are we! To the left of the river, the Eure and the forest of Brotonne; to the right, the Seine-inférieure. But between them is the obstacle of the river, which is why I didn’t connect the two. A hundred and fifty yards of water form a more effective division than dozens of miles.”

  The gate was locked. They got through the hedge a little lower down and walked towards the house, which was screened on one side by an old wall shaggy with ivy and roofed with thatch.

  “It seems as if there was somebody there,” said Hortense. “Didn’t I hear the sound of a window?”

  “Listen.”

  Some one struck a few chords on a piano. Then a voice arose, a woman’s voice softly and solemnly singing a ballad that thrilled with restrained passion. The woman’s whole soul seemed to breathe itself into the melodious notes.

  They walked on. The wall concealed them from view, but they saw a sitting-room furnished with bright wall-paper and a blue Roman carpet. The throbbing voice ceased. The piano ended with a last chord; and the singer rose and appeared framed in the window.

  “Rose Andrée!” whispered Hortense.

  “Well!” said Rénine, admitting his astonishment. “This is the last thing that I expected! Rose Andrée! Rose Andrée at liberty! And singing Massenet in the sitting room of her cottage!”

  “What does it all mean? Do you understand?” “Yes, but it has taken me long enough! But how could we have guessed ...?”

  Although they had never seen her except on the screen, they had not the least doubt that this was she. It was really Rose Andrée, or rather, the Happy Princess, whom they had admired a few days before, amidst the furniture of that very sitting-room or on the threshold of that very cottage. She was wearing the same dress; her hair was done in the same way; she had on the same bangles and necklaces as in The Happy Princess; and her lovely face, with its rosy cheeks and laughing eyes, bore the same look of joy and serenity.

  Some sound must have caught her ear, for she leant over towards a clump of shrubs beside the cottage and whispered into the silent garden:

  “Georges ... Georges ... Is that you, my darling?”

  Receiving no reply, she drew herself up and stood smiling at the happy thoughts that seemed to flood her being.

  But a door opened at the back of the room and an old peasant woman entered with a tray laden with bread, butter and milk:

  “Here, Rose, my pretty one, I’ve brought you your supper. Milk fresh from the cow....”

  And, putting down the tray, she continued:

  “Aren’t you afraid, Rose, of the chill of the night air? Perhaps you’re expecting your sweetheart?”

  “I haven’t a sweetheart, my dear old Catherine.”

  “What next!” said the old woman, laughing. “Only this morning there were footprints under the window that didn’t look at all proper!”

  “A burglar’s footprints perhaps, Catherine.”

  “Well, I don’t say they weren’t, Rose dear, especially as in your calling you have a lot of people round you whom it’s well to be careful of. For instance, your friend Dalbrèque, eh? Nice goings on his are! You saw the paper yesterday. A fellow who has robbed and murdered people and carried off a woman at Le Havre ...!”

  Hortense and Rénine would have much liked to know what Rose Andrée thought of the revelations, but she had turned her back to them and was sitting at her supper; and the window was now closed, so that they could neither hear her reply nor see the expression of her features.

  They waited for a moment. Hortense was listening with an anxious face. But Rénine began to laugh:

  “Very funny, really funny! And such an unexpected ending! And we who were hunting for her in some cave or damp cellar, a horrible tomb where the poor thing was dying of hunger! It’s a fact, she knew the terrors of that first night of captivity; and I maintain that, on that first night, she was flung, half-dead, into the cave. Only, there you are: the next morning she was alive! One night was enough to tame the little rogue and to make Dalbrèque as handsome as Prince Charming in her eyes! For see the difference. On the films or in novels, the Happy Princesses resist or commit suicide. But in real life ... oh, woman, woman!”

  “Yes,” said Hortense, “but the man she loves is almost certainly dead.”

  “And a good thing too! It would be the best solution. What would be the outcome of this criminal love for a thief and murderer?”

  A few minutes passed. Then, amid the peaceful silence of the waning day, mingled with the first shadows of the twilight, they again heard the grating of the window, which was cautiously opened. Rose Andrée leant over the garden and waited, with her eyes turned to the wall, as though she saw something there.

  Presently, Rénine shook the ivy-branches.

  “Ah!” she said. “This time I know you’re there! Yes, the ivy’s moving. Georges, Georges darling, why do you keep me waiting? Catherine has gone. I am all alone....”

  She had knelt down and was distractedly stretching out her shapely arms covered with bangles which clashed with a metallic sound:

  “Georges!... Georges!...”

  Her every movement, the thrill of her voice, her whole being expressed desire and love. Hortense, deeply touched, could not help saying:

  “How the poor thing loves him! If she but knew....”

  “Ah!” cried the girl. “You’ve spoken. You’re there, and you want me to come to you, don’t you? Here I am, Georges!...”

  She climbed over the window-ledge and began to run, while Rénine went round the wall and advanced to meet her.

  She stopped short in front of him and stood chokin
g at the sight of this man and woman whom she did not know and who were stepping out of the very shadow from which her beloved appeared to her each night.

  Rénine bowed, gave his name and introduced his companion:

  “Madame Hortense Daniel, a pupil and friend of your mother’s.”

  Still motionless with stupefaction, her features drawn, she stammered:

  “You know who I am?... And you were there just now?... You heard what I was saying ...?”

  Rénine, without hesitating or pausing in his speech, said:

  “You are Rose Andrée, the Happy Princess. We saw you on the films the other evening; and circumstances led us to set out in search of you ... to Le Havre, where you were abducted on the day when you were to have left for America, and to the forest of Brotonne, where you were imprisoned.”

  She protested eagerly, with a forced laugh:

  “What is all this? I have not been to Le Havre. I came straight here. Abducted? Imprisoned? What nonsense!”

  “Yes, imprisoned, in the same cave as the Happy Princess; and you broke off some branches to the right of the cave.”

  “But how absurd! Who would have abducted me? I have no enemy.”

  “There is a man in love with you: the one whom you were expecting just now.”

  “Yes, my lover,” she said, proudly. “Have I not the right to receive whom I like?”

  “You have the right; you are a free agent. But the man who comes to see you every evening is wanted by the police. His name is Georges Dalbrèque. He killed Bourguet the jeweller.”

  The accusation made her start with indignation and she exclaimed:

  “It’s a lie! An infamous fabrication of the newspapers! Georges was in Paris on the night of the murder. He can prove it.”

  “He stole a motor car and forty thousand francs in notes.”

  She retorted vehemently:

  “The motor-car was taken back by his friends and the notes will be restored. He never touched them. My leaving for America had made him lose his head.”

  “Very well. I am quite willing to believe everything that you say. But the police may show less faith in these statements and less indulgence.”

  She became suddenly uneasy and faltered:

  “The police.... There’s nothing to fear from them.... They won’t know....”

  “Where to find him? I succeeded, at all events. He’s working as a woodcutter, in the forest of Brotonne.”

  “Yes, but ... you ... that was an accident ... whereas the police....”

  The words left her lips with the greatest difficulty. Her voice was trembling. And suddenly she rushed at Rénine, stammering:

  “He is arrested?... I am sure of it!... And you have come to tell me.... Arrested! Wounded! Dead perhaps?... Oh, please, please!...”

  She had no strength left. All her pride, all the certainty of her great love gave way to an immense despair and she sobbed out.

  “No, he’s not dead, is he? No, I feel that he’s not dead. Oh, sir, how unjust it all is! He’s the gentlest man, the best that ever lived. He has changed my whole life. Everything is different since I began to love him. And I love him so! I love him! I want to go to him. Take me to him. I want them to arrest me too. I love him.... I could not live without him....”

  An impulse of sympathy made Hortense put her arms around the girl’s neck and say warmly:

  “Yes, come. He is not dead, I am sure, only wounded; and Prince Rénine will save him. You will, won’t you, Rénine?... Come. Make up a story for your servant: say that you’re going somewhere by train and that she is not to tell anybody. Be quick. Put on a wrap. We will save him, I swear we will.”

  Rose Andrée went indoors and returned almost at once, disguised beyond recognition in a long cloak and a veil that shrouded her face; and they all took the road back to Routot. At the inn, Rose Andrée passed as a friend whom they had been to fetch in the neighbourhood and were taking to Paris with them. Rénine ran out to make enquiries and came back to the two women.

  “It’s all right. Dalbrèque is alive. They have put him to bed in a private room at the mayor’s offices. He has a broken leg and a rather high temperature; but all the same they expect to move him to Rouen to-morrow and they have telephoned there for a motor-car.”

  “And then?” asked Rose Andrée, anxiously.

  Rénine smiled:

  “Why, then we shall leave at daybreak. We shall take up our positions in a sunken road, rifle in hand, attack the motor-coach and carry off Georges!”

  “Oh, don’t laugh!” she said, plaintively. “I am so unhappy!”

  But the adventure seemed to amuse Rénine; and, when he was alone with Hortense, he exclaimed:

  “You see what comes of preferring dishonour to death! But hang it all, who could have expected this? It isn’t a bit the way in which things happen in the pictures! Once the man of the woods had carried off his victim and considering that for three weeks there was no one to defend her, how could we imagine — we who had been proceeding all along under the influence of the pictures — that in the space of a few hours the victim would become a princess in love? Confound that Georges! I now understand the sly, humorous look which I surprised on his mobile features! He remembered, Georges did, and he didn’t care a hang for me! Oh, he tricked me nicely! And you, my dear, he tricked you too! And it was all the influence of the film. They show us, at the cinema, a brute beast, a sort of long-haired, ape-faced savage. What can a man like that be in real life? A brute, inevitably, don’t you agree? Well, he’s nothing of the kind; he’s a Don Juan! The humbug!”

  “You will save him, won’t you?” said Hortense, in a beseeching tone.

  “Are you very anxious that I should?”

  “Very.”

  “In that case, promise to give me your hand to kiss.”

  “You can have both hands, Rénine, and gladly.”

  The night was uneventful. Rénine had given orders for the two ladies to be waked at an early hour. When they came down, the motor was leaving the yard and pulling up in front of the inn. It was raining; and Adolphe, the chauffeur, had fixed up the long, low hood and packed the luggage inside.

  Rénine called for his bill. They all three took a cup of coffee. But, just as they were leaving the room, one of the inspector’s men came rushing in:

  “Have you seen him?” he asked. “Isn’t he here?”

  The inspector himself arrived at a run, greatly excited:

  “The prisoner has escaped! He ran back through the inn! He can’t be far away!”

  A dozen rustics appeared like a whirlwind. They ransacked the lofts, the stables, the sheds. They scattered over the neighbourhood. But the search led to no discovery.

  “Oh, hang it all!” said Rénine, who had taken his part in the hunt. “How can it have happened?” “How do I know?” spluttered the inspector in despair. “I left my three men watching in the next room. I found them this morning fast asleep, stupefied by some narcotic which had been mixed with their wine! And the Dalbrèque bird had flown!”

  “Which way?”

  “Through the window. There were evidently accomplices, with ropes and a ladder. And, as Dalbrèque had a broken leg, they carried him off on the stretcher itself.”

  “They left no traces?”

  “No traces of footsteps, true. The rain has messed everything up. But they went through the yard, because the stretcher’s there.”

  “You’ll find him, Mr. Inspector, there’s no doubt of that. In any case, you may be sure that you won’t have any trouble over the affair. I shall be in Paris this evening and shall go straight to the prefecture, where I have influential friends.”

  Rénine went back to the two women in the coffee-room and Hortense at once said:

  “It was you who carried him off, wasn’t it? Please put Rose Andrée’s mind at rest. She is so terrified!”

  He gave Rose Andrée his arm and led her to the car. She was staggering and very pale; and she said, in a faint voice:

&nb
sp; “Are we going? And he: is he safe? Won’t they catch him again?”

  Looking deep into her eyes, he said:

  “Swear to me, Rose Andrée, that in two months, when he is well and when I have proved his innocence, swear that you will go away with him to America.”

  “I swear.”

  “And that, once there, you will marry him.”

  “I swear.”

  He spoke a few words in her ear.

  “Ah!” she said. “May Heaven bless you for it!”

  Hortense took her seat in front, with Rénine, who sat at the wheel. The inspector, hat in hand, fussed around the car until it moved off.

  They drove through the forest, crossed the Seine at La Mailleraie and struck into the Havre-Rouen road.

  “Take off your glove and give me your hand to kiss,” Rénine ordered. “You promised that you would.”

  “Oh!” said Hortense. “But it was to be when Dalbrèque was saved.”

  “He is saved.”

  “Not yet. The police are after him. They may catch him again. He will not be really saved until he is with Rose Andrée.”

  “He is with Rose Andrée,” he declared.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Turn round.”

  She did so.

  In the shadow of the hood, right at the back, behind the chauffeur, Rose Andrée was kneeling beside a man lying on the seat.

  “Oh,” stammered Hortense, “it’s incredible! Then it was you who hid him last night? And he was there, in front of the inn, when the inspector was seeing us off?”

  “Lord, yes! He was there, under the cushions and rugs!”

  “It’s incredible!” she repeated, utterly bewildered. “It’s incredible! How were you able to manage it all?”

  “I wanted to kiss your hand,” he said.

  She removed her glove, as he bade her, and raised her hand to his lips.

  The car was speeding between the peaceful Seine and the white cliffs that border it. They sat silent for a long while. Then he said:

  “I had a talk with Dalbrèque last night. He’s a fine fellow and is ready to do anything for Rose Andrée. He’s right. A man must do anything for the woman he loves. He must devote himself to her, offer her all that is beautiful in this world: joy and happiness ... and, if she should be bored, stirring adventures to distract her, to excite her and to make her smile ... or even weep.”