“Until tomorrow. It will be the day of a major drop.”
Maurice Carnaud left, and the député plunged into profound meditation.
Suddenly, he shook the table with a mighty blow of his fist. “Bastard!” He was thinking about his brother. “But for that swine, who kept ammunition against me, none of this would have happened. Everything was going marvelously. Now, it’s necessary to risk the lot! And what if it goes awry?”
At that moment, he heard a rustle behind him. “Is that you, Maman?” he said, without turning round. Having received no response, however, he looked over his shoulder. Nothing—he was alone in the room.
“However,” he murmured, “I thought I heard footsteps. This business is agitating me too much!”
He started making calculations, covering large sheets of paper with figures. Already, he had estimated what he would gain from the fall of the cabinet, independently of the portfolio that he would obtain in the scheme.
It was at that moment that Albert Baruyer came in.
“You sent for me, Georges—what’s up?” he said, his voice a trifle hoarse.
“You don’t have any idea?”
“Not the slightest. I’ve just gotten back from Lyon—you might have given me a little time to rest.”
The sincere response increased the député’s irritation.
“Of course!” he howled. “You don’t know anything, and you don’t suspect anything! And because of you, we’re in a fine mess! Wretch! You didn’t trust me, and you kept ammunition to use against me. That’s nice! Because of your knavery, you imbecile, we’ve risked prison or the labor camp.”
“Georges!”
“Oh yes, you’re in a funk now! And it’s me, yet again, who’ll have to bail us out. But have I never refused you anything? In spite of our follies, in spite of your imprudence, which has made me tremble a hundred times over, haven’t I always sustained you, with my cash and my influence? Did you think I’d betray you?”
“But after all,” exclaimed Albert, exasperated by these reproaches, “what have you got against me? Why this quarrel and these insults, the reasons for which I’m completely ignorant?”
“Here—read these.”
At the sight of the letters, the advocated became livid. He could scarcely stammer: “The letters of the Rodock affair! How did they get here?”
“You can’t guess who gave them to me?”
“No.”
“The Rodock son. Yes, our victim’s son. It isn’t worth the trouble of pulling that face.”
“But…where did he spring from?”
“Oh, I don’t know! What’s certain, however, is that he’s an energetic fellow.”
The député marched backed and forth across the room, and then turned to his brother and planted himself in front of him, his fists clenched.
“But why, you triple idiot, did you keep these dangerous letters? And what’s Walesport going to say? Oh, I see your game! You were waiting for the propitious moment to bring them out and blackmail me! You don’t change; you owe me everything, and you were thinking of turning on me, like a cut throat.”
“Georges…”
“Shut up! Without me, poor wretch, what would you be? If you have a name at the bar, it’s because I’ve given you sensational cases, and almost compromised myself obtaining favors for you that you don’t deserve! And your part in the Eskinen mine company, who gave you that? If you still had those shares, you’d be able to contribute to the restitution of a sum of three million that he demanded of me, but you squandered the lot! How insatiable are your vices, your needs? Tell me, then—do you think I haven’t done enough for you? Have I threatened to refuse you my collaboration? So why did you keep those letters? To have a hold on me, wasn’t it? To doom me, if I no longer wanted to be blackmailed? Child! Don’t you think that I know about the filthy crimes that you’ve committed, and of which I haven’t taken advantage?”
The advocate stood up, menacingly.
“Georges, you’re going too far. Oh, I’ve had enough, finally, of your imbecilic reproaches and your grand airs. If I’m a criminal, what are you? And then, if you’ve given me money, you’ve only paid me for my collaboration, for my work. You have a head for business, I don’t dispute that—but when there’s dirty work to be done, Georges, there’s no danger of you showing yourself. You’re too cowardly and too wary; you leave me to do the difficult work. It’s just like this Rodock business. You throw in my face the few shares that I had in the mining company, but you forget that they were to remunerate me for the fellow’s murder, arranged with that whore Jane Héling and Walesport. You imagine and you plan in the tranquility of your study, but when it requires energy to carry out your plans, you’re glad to have us—mother and me—because it’s only us who can carry your diabolical ideas through to the end. So what are you reproaching me for? If you’ve given me money, I’ve worked for you. We’re quits. You don’t have the right to bawl at me.” He lowered his voice, and went on: “Anyway, what’s this Rodock son that you’re throwing at my head? What does he want?”
“Three million! I told you—he demanded them in exchange for the letters. He’s gone.”
“Well, pay him. The affair has brought you double that, and will bring you more.”
“I have paid. Otherwise we’d have be arrested—but you’re going to pay your share, and Walesport his.”
“That’s all right, Georges,” said Albert, sniggering. “You can put it on the slate, since I haven’t a sou.”
“But into what unspeakable well have you thrown your money? I’ll wager it’s your dancer that we’ve enabled to dance! Imbecile! Look, it’s like these letters—would you care to tell me where you put them?”
“At home! Carefully hidden, I assure you.”
“Yes, well hidden,” Georges sniggered. “And who do you receive in your home?”
Albert Baruyer went frightfully pale. He remembered the key he had given to Mademoiselle Alexane, and he also remembered the handsome young man glimpsed in her dressing room on the day when he had introduced the “star” to Barsac. No, it wasn’t possible!
Suddenly, he perceived, on a corner of the desk, the card left by the young man.
“Ah!” Albert roared. “It’s Alexane that has brought off the coup! So Hans de Bliggen, her lover, is Rodock’s son!”
He was unable to say any more and collapsed into an armchair, but his brother had understood.
“Cretin!” he said. “Such gaffes at your age! Letting yourself be fleeced by a whore, like a student!”
But the advocate rebelled. “Well, yes, I have an excuse: passion. Oh, it’s not you who’ll make gaffes of that sort, for you only love your strong box. Leave me, in peace, now! And since you’re holding the purse strings, pay up. Pay for yourself, for me, for Walesport, for our mother—for all of us who’ve acted in your stead and risked our necks or prison to make you rich! You say that I need you? And don’t you need my audacity and my courage? You talk about Rodock, but I’m the one who got rid of him, and the others who were in your way. Do you want me to name them?”
“Oh, shut up!” cried Georges, advancing on his brother with his fists raised. “Shut up!”
“No—I’m not afraid of you! There’s no point in putting on your grim air of authority; we’re not in an electoral meeting now and your attitude doesn’t scare me. You’ve mocked my love, sullied the woman I adore with a nasty name—I won’t forgive you even if you can prove to me that that dancer of genius is a prostitute. Haven’t you lived throughout our youth on our mother’s prostitution?”
“Swine! At least respect the woman who gave birth to us!”
“No, old man, don’t expect me to play the respectful son. Remember that you went partying with the painter Fabio Danti for three years, and you knew full well that he was one of our mother’s lovers...”
Livid, George Baruyer hurled himself upon his brother. “Shut up! Shut up! If she heard you, wretch…!”
“She can hear these hard facts, because sh
e’s welcomed many others. Oh, we’re a fine family: thieves, murderers, pimps…the whole spectrum!”
He started to laugh nervously, like a madman, and Georges Baruyer seized his brother by the throat. “If you say another word, I’ll strangle you!”
But Albert had suddenly fallen silent. He remain still, petrified, his eyes fixed on the connecting door to the next room, the curtain of which slowly rose up to reveal the haughty silhouette of his mother—and the son’s gaze contained a haggard expression of sincere terror, for he divined that she had been there, behind the curtain, for some time, and that she knew everything about the ignoble dispute. He started to tremble like a leaf, and Georges, beside him, was consternated.
Then, as they did not say another word, or even make a gesture, the blind woman advanced.
“Imprudents,” she said, in a deep, strange voice. “I heard your raised voices.”
Albert’s anger had suddenly faded away before that apparition, which imposed itself upon him. Timid and ashamed now, facing the invalid, he felt crestfallen and heartsick, like a naughty child caught in the act.
“Excuse us, Mother,” he stammered. “We were quarreling, stupidly, because we’ve suffered a great misfortune.”
The blind woman replied, bitterly: “You’ve pronounced painful words. If I’ve sinned in the past, it was for you; I’ve always wanted you to be rich and happy. You ought not to have forgotten that...” She stopped speaking abruptly and turned toward the window. In an anxious tone, she said: “But who’s the confidant in front of whom you’re displaying the family’s dirty linen? Is it an intimate? Walesport? Why isn’t he saying anything?”
Astonished, the two brothers stared, without comprehending. The blind woman was still looking toward the window, and her extended hands seemed to be feeling the air and shivering.”
“Speak, then Monsieur. Who are you?”
Her voice was hoarse, strangled, and Georges, astounded, grasped his brother’s arm.
“My God, Albert—Mother’s gone mad...”
Although he had whispered, the blind woman had heard. “It’s you who’ve gone mad to shout out your secrets in front of a stranger. Come on, Monsieur, who are you?”
Now, with her arms extended, she advanced toward the window. With the curious divination of the blind, she substituted for her infirmity a means of an astonishing perception of the slightest sounds, even the most muffled, and the tactile sensations she experienced were of such finesse that she had only to extend her hands in front of her to “see,” so to speak, a person or object several meters away. In the vicinity of an object, the air no longer had the same density of temperature; the differences were infinitesimal, to be sure, but sufficient nevertheless to guide her.
Suddenly, she cried: “The door! Lock the door!”
Instinctively, Albert obeyed. He ran and turned the key, without knowing exactly why he was doing it.
Meanwhile, Georges had launched himself forward toward the blind woman.
“What can you see, Mother?” he said, in a tremulous voice.
“Oh, it’s you, my sons, who are blind! He’s there, now, in front of the desk...”
Georges leapt forward. He did not understand any of what was happening, but he was subject to the distraught will of his anxious mother. Subjugated by her conviction, held launched himself, arms forward; he encountered nothing but empty space.
However, a chair that no one had touched was knocked over, and fell in the middle of the room.
Then the two men felt their hair bristle, and an icy chill ran through them.
“There! There!” cried the blind woman, increasingly frightened as she indicated the approach of the mysterious being, divined in the darkness, followed in his slightest movements by her senses, sharpened by the perpetual night into which blindness had plunged her.
“But where?” articulated the advocate, with difficulty. “You’re mad, Mother—there’s no one here.”
She became angry at not being understood, and gasped: “I can see him! I can hear him, I tell you! There—look! He’s discovered our secrets—don’t let him escape, or we’re doomed. There! There! There!”
Her gestures indicated a precise, definite point, and the two men followed the direction of the blind woman’s fearful hands with their eyes, but nothing appeared to them. No one, no dangerous presence, was revealed, and yet their mother’s affirmation was so convincing that it acted, terribly, upon their consciousness and dread of their past crimes. Now they feared the unknown, the Invisible, whose presence was revealed to the blind woman’s refined senses.
“No, Mother,” said Georges, who, in spite of his assurance that he had neither heard not seen anyone, was looking fearfully behind the furniture. “I swear to you that we’re alone...”
“Yes! Yes! I tell you…there, behind you, Georges! Oh, there! I can see him! Catch him, then—he’s slipped between the two of you. He’s hiding behind the curtain, there, to the right…look! Albert, he’s beside you—get hold of him, then! Oh, I’m scared! I’m scared! What does this mean, my sons? Albert, Georges, my children, why can’t you see the man? Oh, my God, I understand! Are you blind, too?”
And her face suddenly took on an expression of awful terror. She uttered a heart-rending scream, and the two brothers leapt forward in order to sustain her.
They had to calm her down, to reassure her.
At that moment, the roll-top of the American desk rose and fell with a dry click—but nothing had changed behind them; they were still alone with the blind woman.
Now, gripped again by the terrible conviction that was taking hold of them, in spite of the testimony of their eyes, the rival brothers, allied by instinct against the unknown peril, began to hunt through the room for the invisible being that the blind woman could see with the superhuman gaze of her soul, with the eyes of her exalted senses.
The same atrocious fear was making the two men tremble, for they sensed the certainty gaining on them of a supernatural presence divined and betrayed by the tragically extended hands of the blind woman, whose tarnished, empty pupils were swiveling, peering into the darkness. And they were afraid of that being who was watching them, listening to them, but whom they could not see. They sensed him, as an invisible watcher of their actions, spying on their movements, perhaps waiting for the moment to strike a sure blow!
Rustling, the vague sounds of footfalls were now manifest to the ears of the two men, and they even perceived at moments, a human respiration, here, there...then elsewhere… And the respiration became noisier as the hunt became more active, in pursuit of the strange enemy that they could not reach.
They sensed him now, like dogs flushing out game, and tried to catch up with him in the void with leaps and bounds, with hands abruptly projected forward—but the invisible prey continued to evade them.
There was no longer any doubt about it: chairs were knocked over as the mysterious, supernatural being passed by, that violator of secrets who now knew everything about them, their infamous past, and of whom they did not know the form, the face or anything else.
There was no more doubt about it because, suddenly, Georges had bounded at a drape that moved and, when he had grasped nothing but fabric, strident, sarcastic laughter burst forth, freezing them all in tragic stupor.
It was true then: an enemy of superior essence, stronger than them, was spying on them. What did he want? Who was he?
Albert Baruyer uttered a cry of rage. On the desk, a Japanese dagger serving as a paper knife was overlapping the edge of a blotting pad on which it had been placed. He seized it and slashed the air around him with demented gestures, reminiscent of the American boxers who, in the course of straining, battle a shadow, their phantom!
Georges, for his part, had taken hold of a heavy candelabrum and was poised, ready to hurl it at the slightest movement of an object.
The blind woman was still guiding them.
“Quickly! Quickly, Georges! To you, Albert—between the safe and the fireplace! Over
there, now, in that corner! You have him! Strike, strike quickly! Strike, then! Oh, escaped again!” She uttered a scream. “He touched me! He’s touching you, Albert, to your right, there!”
Soon, the battle became more precise, because a curious phenomenon occurred, which aided the two brothers considerably. Without perceived the slightest human form, the two brothers nevertheless saw green fulgurations sparkling, here and there, in the tribulations of the terrible chase: emerald gleams, like bulging, living irises; a gaze that did not belong to anyone.
“There! There!” cried the blind woman. “Can’t you do anything? Don’t let him escape! Yes, Georges, you have him...”
With a terrible crash, the heavy candelabrum broke against the marble of the fireplace, and the blind woman moaned: “Oh, he’s escaped again!”
Suddenly, there was a frightful scream and then, immediately afterwards, a dolorous groan, a gasp of agony. Albert, who was close to his mother at that moment, recoiled against the desk, with which he collided violently, and his eyes were full of terror.
In front of him, the blind woman was nailed to the door by means of the Japanese dagger, which traversed her throat and made her resemble a great night bird, one of those owls that peasants crucify on the doors of their barns!
Her head bowed and her arms hung down. A jet of blood spurted, striking Albert full in the face.
“Bastard!” shouted Georges. “You’ve killed our mother!”
Crushed, Albert turned round, his teeth chattering. “What did you say?” he stammered. “What did you say?”
“Murderer! Murderer!” howled the député. “Help! Murder!”
Livid, his features utterly distressed, he made a rampart of the desk, moving around it in order to avoid his brother, who was pursuing him, trying to make him shut up. Albert, covered in blood, ran after Georges, who, mad with fear, continued to shout with all his might, while the mother, nailed to the door, seemed to be staring at them with eyes devoid of life.
People came running from outside. They were trying to open the locked door.
“Break it down!” shouted Georges, still circling the desk. “Help! Murder!”
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