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

by Maurice Leblanc

  “We are straightening things out, M. Dubosc. I’ve sent a few squads north; and all these bands of cut-throats will fall into my hands or into those of the English troops, who, I’m told, have arrived. But what savages! And how glad I am that I came in time!”

  Simon thanked him in the name of Lord Bakefield and his daughter.

  “It’s not I whom you should thank,” he replied, “but that strange woman, whom I know only by the name of Dolores, and who brought me here.”

  The captain related how he had been operating since three o’clock in the out-posts of Boulogne, where he was garrisoned, when he received from the newly-appointed military governor an order instructing him to move towards Hastings, to take possession of the country as far as mid-way between the two coasts and to put down all excesses ruthlessly.

  “Well, this morning,” he said, “when we were patrolling two or three miles from there, I saw the woman ride up at a gallop. She told me in a few words what was happening inside these barricades, which she had not been able to pass, but behind which Simon Dubosc was in danger. Having succeeded in catching a horse, she had come to beg me to go to your assistance. You can imagine how quickly I marched in the direction she gave me, as soon as I heard the name of Simon Dubosc. And you will understand also why, when I saw that she in her turn was in danger, I rushed in pursuit of the man who was carrying her off.”

  “What then, captain?”

  “Well, she returned, quite quietly, all alone on her horse. She had thrown the Indian, whom my men picked up in the neighbourhood, rather the worse for his fall. He says he knows you.”

  Simon briefly related the part which Antonio had played in the tragedy.

  “Good!” cried the officer. “The mystery is clearing up!”

  “What mystery, captain?”

  “Oh, something quite in keeping with all the horrors that have been committed!”

  He drew Simon to the wreck and down, the companion-ladder.

  The wide gangway was littered with empty bags and baskets. All the gold had disappeared. The doors of the cabins occupied by Rolleston had been demolished. But, outside the last of these cabins and a little before the cupboard into which Antonio had locked Rolleston on the previous evening, Simon, by the light of an electric torch switched on by the officer, saw a man’s body hanging from the ceiling. The knees had been bent back and fastened to keep the feet from touching the floor.

  “There’s the wretched Rolleston,” said the captain. “Obviously he has got no more than his deserts. But, all the same. . . . Look closely. . . .”

  He threw the rays of the lamp over the upper part of the victim’s body. The face, covered with black clotted blood, was unrecognizable. The drooping head displayed the most hideous wound: the skull was stripped of its skin and hair.

  “It was Antonio who did that,” said Simon, remembering the Indian’s smile when he, Simon, had expressed the fear that the ruffians might succeed in finding and releasing their chief. “After the fashion of his ancestors, he has scalped the man whom he wished to punish. I tell you, we’re living in the midst of savagery.”

  A few minutes later, on leaving the wreck, they saw Antonio who was talking to Dolores near the spot where the submarine strengthened the former line of defence. Dolores was holding her horse by the bridle. The Indian was making gestures and seemed to be greatly excited.

  “She’s going away,” said the officer. “I’ve signed a safe-conduct for her.”

  Simon crossed the arena and went up to her:

  “You’re going, Dolores?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Where my horse chooses to take me . . . and as far as he can carry me.”

  “Won’t you wait a few minutes?”

  “No.”

  “I should have liked to thank you. . . . So would Miss Bakefield. . . .”

  “Miss Bakefield has my best wishes!”

  She mounted. Antonio snatched at the bridle, as though determined to detain her, and began to speak to her in a choking voice and in a language which Simon did not understand.

  She did not move. Her beautiful, austere face did not change. She waited, with her eyes on the horizon, until the Indian, discouraged, released the bridle. Then she rode away. Not once had her eyes met Simon’s.

  She rode away, mysterious and secretive to the last. Simon’s refusal, his conduct during the night which they had passed in the prehistoric dwelling must have humiliated her profoundly; and the best proof was this departure without farewell. But, on the other hand, what miracles of dogged heroism she must have wrought to cross this sinister region by herself and to save not only the man who had spurned her but the woman whom that man loved above all things in this world!

  A hand rested on Simon’s shoulder:

  “You, Isabel!” he said.

  “Yes. . . . I was over there, a little farther on. . . . I saw Dolores go.”

  The girl seemed to hesitate. At length, she murmured, watching him attentively:

  “You didn’t tell me she was so strikingly beautiful, Simon.”

  He felt slightly embarrassed. Looking her straight in the eyes, he replied:

  “I had no occasion to tell you, Isabel.”

  At five o’clock that afternoon, the French and British troops being now in touch, it was decided that Lord Bakefield and his daughter should make part of an English convoy which was returning to Hastings and which had a motor-ambulance at its disposal. Simon took leave of them, after asking Lord Bakefield’s permission to call on him at an early date.

  Simon considered that his mission was not yet completed in these days of confusion. Indeed, before the afternoon was over, an aeroplane alighted in sight of the camp and the captain was asked to send immediately reinforcements, as a conflict appeared inevitable between the French and a British detachment, both of which had planted their colours on a ridge overlooking the whole country. Simon did not hesitate for a moment. He took his place between the two airmen.

  It is needless to describe in all its details the part which he played in this incident, which might have had deplorable results: the way in which he threw himself between the adversaries, his entreaties, his threats and, at last, the order to withdraw which he gave to the French with such authority and such persuasive force. All this is history; and it is enough to recall the words uttered two days later by the British prime minister in the House of Commons:

  “I have to thank M. Simon Dubosc. But for him, there would have been a stain upon our country’s honour; French blood would have been shed by English hands. M. Simon Dubosc, the wonderful man who crossed what was once the Channel at one stride, understood that it would be necessary, at least for a few hours, to exercise a little patience towards a great nation which for so many centuries has been accustomed to feel that it was protected by the seas and which suddenly found itself disarmed, defenceless, deprived of its natural ramparts. Let us not forget that Germany, that very morning, with her customary effrontery, offered France an alliance and proposed the immediate invasion of Great Britain by the whole of the united forces of the two countries. Britannia delenda est! Mr. Speaker, it was Simon Dubosc who gave the reply, by achieving the miracle of a French retreat! All honour to Simon Dubosc!”

  France at once recognized Simon’s action by appointing the young man high commissioner for the new French territories. For four days longer he was ubiquitous, flying over the province which he had conquered, restoring order, enforcing harmony, discipline and security. Pursued and captured, all the bands of pillagers and spoilers were duly brought to trial. Aeroplanes sailed the heavens. Provision-lorries ran in all directions, assuring travellers the means of transport. Chaos was becoming organized.

  At last one day, Simon called at Lord Bakefield’s country-house near Battle. Here too tranquillity had returned. The servants had resumed their duties. Only a few cracks in the walls, a few gaps in the lawns reminded them of the hours of terror.

  Lord Bakefield, who appeare
d to be in excellent health, received Simon in the library and gave him the same cordial welcome as on the Brighton golf-links:

  “Well, young man, where do we stand now?”

  “On the twentieth day after my request for your daughter’s hand,” said Simon, smiling, “and as you gave me twenty days in which to perform a certain number of exploits, I come to ask you, on the appointed date, whether I have, in your opinion, fulfilled the conditions settled between us.”

  Lord Bakefield offered him a cigar and handed him a light.

  He made no further reply. Simon’s exploits and his rescue of Lord Bakefield when at the point of death, these obviously were interesting things, deserving the reward of a good cigar, with Isabel’s hand perhaps thrown into the bargain. But it was asking too much to expect thanks as well and praise and endless effusions. Lord Bakefield remained Lord Bakefield and Simon Dubosc a nobody.

  “Well, see you later, young man . . . Oh, by the way! I have had the marriage annulled which that reptile Rolleston forced upon Isabel. . . . The marriage wasn’t valid of course; but I’ve done what was necessary just as though it had been. Isabel will tell you all about it. You’ll find her in the park.”

  She was not in the park. She had heard that Simon had called and was waiting for him on the terrace.

  He told her of his interview with Lord Bakefield.

  “Yes,” she said, “my father accepts the position. He considers that you have satisfied the ordeal.”

  “And you, Isabel?”

  She smiled:

  “I have no right to be more difficult than my father. But remember that there were not only his conditions: there was one added by myself.”

  “Which condition was that, Isabel?”

  “Have you forgotten? . . . On the deck of the Queen Mary?”

  “Then, Isabel, you doubt me?”

  She took both his hands and said:

  “Simon, it sometimes makes me rather sad to think that in this great adventure it was not I but another who was your companion in danger, the one whom you defended and who protected you.”

  He shook his head:

  “No, Isabel, I never had but one companion, you, Isabel, and you alone. You were my only aim and my only thought, my one hope and my one desire.”

  After a moment’s reflection, she said:

  “I talked of her a good deal with Antonio, on the way home. Do you know, Simon, that girl is not only very beautiful, but capable of the noblest, loftiest feelings? I know nothing of her past; according to Antonio, it had its unsettled moments. But since then . . . since then . . . in spite of her present mode of life, in spite of all the admiration which she attracts, she leads an existence apart. You alone have really stirred her feelings. For you, from what I can see for myself and from what Antonio told me — and he, after all, is only a rejected and embittered lover — for you Dolores would have laid down her life and that from the first day. Did you know that, Simon?”

  He was silent.

  “You are right,” she said. “You can’t answer. However, there is one point, Simon, on which I ask you to tell me the absolute truth. I can look you straight in the face, can I not? There is not in the depths of your being a single memory that comes between us? . . . Not a weakness? . . . Not a disloyal thought?”

  He pressed her to him and, with his lips on hers, said:

  “There’s you, Isabel, and you alone: you in the past and you in the future.”

  “I believe you, Simon,” she declared.

  The wedding took place a month later; and they went to live in the wreck of the Ville de Dunkerque, the official residence of the French high commissioner of the new territories.

  It was here that the draft agreement was signed, in accordance with Simon Dubosc’s proposal and his preliminary investigations, for the great canal which was to bisect the Isthmus of Normandy, allotting to each country, right and left, an almost equal portion of land.

  Here too was signed the solemn covenant by which Great Britain and France declared eternal friendship and laid the foundations of the United States of Europe.

  And it was here that four children were born to Isabel and Simon.

  In after years, Simon often went on horseback or by aeroplane, accompanied by his wife, to visit his friend Edward Rolleston. When he had recovered from his wounds, Rolleston set to work and became the manager of a large fishing-industry on the new English coast, in which he employed Antonio. Rolleston married. The Indian lived alone for a long time, waiting for her who never came and of whom no one ever spoke. But one day he received a letter and went away. Some months later, he wrote from Mexico announcing his marriage to Dolores.

  But Isabel and Simon’s favourite walk led them to Old Sandstone’s house. He lived in a little bungalow, close to the prehistoric dwelling by the lake, where he pursued his researches into the new land. The showers of gold, now exhausted, no longer interested him; moreover, the problem had been solved. But what an indecipherable riddle was this building, standing on a site of the Eocene period!

  “There were apes in those days,” Old Sandstone declared. “There’s no doubt of that. But men! And men capable of building, of ornamenting their dwellings of carving stone! No, I confess this is a phenomenon which unsettles all one’s ideas. What do you make of it, Simon?”

  Simon made no reply. A boat was rocking on the lake. He took his place in it with Isabel and rowed with a care-free mind; nor did Dolores’ image ever rise from this limpid water, in which she had bathed on a certain voluptuous evening. Simon was the husband of one alone and this was the woman whom he had won.

  THE END

  The Eyes of Innocence

  Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

  CONTENTS

  I. GILBERTE

  II. THE SOLITARY

  III. THE UNKNOWN

  IV. AN EVENING AT MME. DE LA VAUDRAYE’S

  V. THE SUITORS

  VI. A NEW FRIEND

  VII. GILBERTE’S TWO FRIENDS

  VIII. THE APPOINTMENT

  IX. AFFIANCED

  X. THE DESERTED HOUSE

  XI. GILBERTE’S NAME

  The original frontispiece

  I. GILBERTE

  “WOULD YOU PLEASE give your name, madam?” asked the waiter.

  And he handed the elder of the two travellers a sheet of paper headed, “Villa-pension des Deux Mondes, Dieppe.”

  “Write down the name, Gilberte,” she said. “I am so tired.”

  Gilberte took the pen and wrote:

  “Mme. Armand and daughter, from London, bound for. . . . Now that I think of it, where are we going next, mother?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter!” said the waiter.

  And he took the paper and left the room.

  “Yes, Mr. Waiter,” cried the young girl, with a laugh. “Mme. Armand and her daughter, arriving from England, from Germany, from Russia, coming to France and delighted, especially Mlle. Armand, who does not yet know her own country!”

  “Will you find happiness here?” murmured her mother, sadly, drawing her daughter to her. “There is none left for me, since your poor father is dead; but you, my pet, my dear, loving Gilberte, what has the future in store for you?”

  “Why, joys, mother darling, nothing but the greatest joys: haven’t I you with me?”

  They exchanged a long embrace. Then Mme. Armand said:

  “Gilberte, the crossing has upset me; I feel I must lie down for a while. Go and sit on the terrace and come back in an hour. Then we will unpack our trunks and go to the post-office.”

  “Are you expecting a letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “From whom?”

  “How inquisitive you are!”

  “Oh, mummy, you’re always saying that! But are you sure that it’s not you who are a little — what shall I say — mysterious? You never answer even my simplest questions.”

  “I shall answer them one day, child, but not before I have to ..
. not before I have to.”

  Gilberte saw her mother’s face wrung with such anguish that she was silent and fondly kissed her hand. Mme. Armand went on:

  “Yes, you are right. I am a little mysterious, very mysterious even; but if you only know how it hurts me to be so! Still, I will answer you this time, dear: the letter I am expecting is from your nurse.”

  “From my nurse? Then I was brought up in France? But where?”

  Mme. Armand was silent. Gilberte waited a few moments, then put on her hat and cloak and said:

  “Go and lie down, mother. You poor dear, you look as you do on your bad days. ... There, I’ll leave you in peace.”

  “You won’t go out, will you, dear?”

  “Go out? I, who have never left your side? Why, I should be afraid to walk down the street all by myself! I shall be back soon, dearest.”

  She opened the door and went downstairs. Above the reception-rooms, which occupied a wing consisting of a single floor, to the right of the garden, was a terrace covered with tents and wicker chairs. She sat down there.

  It was a mild and balmy October day. The wide, deserted beach was bright with sunshine. The sea was very calm and edged with a narrow fringe of foam.

  An hour passed.

  “I will go in,” she said, “when that little boat disappears behind the jetty.”

  The boat disappeared and she rose to her feet. As she went up the stairs, a childish idea came into her head, an idea which she was destined long to remember, together with the smallest details of that terrible minute:

  “If mother is still asleep,” she thought, “I will blow on her forehead to wake her.”

  She listened at the door. Not a sound. She laughed roguishly. Then, slowly, cautiously, she opened the door. Mme. Armand lay stretched on the bed. Gilberte went up to her. For some indefinable reason, she forgot her intended joke and simply kissed her mother on the forehead.