And then Jean, ashamed of his weakness, realized that it was not with tears that he would either find or revenge Odette and he sent the car along Les Saintes Maries road at full speed.
Soon the venerable church loomed up from the lagoon, its blackened walls standing erect on the edge of the waters, its machiolated towers and patrol path silhouetted on the skyline like a mediaeval citadel, and its apse seeming like the veritable donjon which, in the days of old, repulsed the assault of the Saracens.
Now the marching rabble of gipsies found cover within its shadow.
Suddenly Jean caught sight of the van of the army coming towards him. It was made up of gipsies from Germany and the Carpathians, who were the first to return to their distant homes. This year the mysterious rites had been quickly concluded. There were years, like this year, when the Romanys leave the country before the Provençal fêtes begin, years when they refuse to mingle with the “alien,” and when, as they leave the crypt after their fantastic devotions to St. Sarah, they flee as though they had committed some crime.
The retreating army were more cheerful than sullen. They were singing in their caravans. Young women with laughing eyes and the faces of old hags greeted him with gay gestures. “This is where Callista came from and where I ought to have left her,” thought Jean. “Why is she back again among this crew? Rouletabille is perhaps right in being troubled about it.” But as the thought led him away from Odette, following a line of reasoning which brought him back to de Lauriac, he soon ceased to think of Callista.
He reached Les Saintes Maries as dancing was beginning to the music of guitars and accordions. The main street, which was so narrow that no two vehicles could pass each other, was illuminated with Venetian lights. Canvas awnings spread from one roof to another, diffused their shade in the passage during the day, but now lay inert over an oppressive atmosphere filled with the reek of wine which the waiters were serving at the tables on the pavements.
An air of liveliness and high spirits prevailed. There was a great deal of noise, good-tempered noise, outbursts of laughter, joking remarks thrown out to passers-by, music, and now and again the explosion of a cracker flung slyly among the persons seated at the tables by young urchins.
Few gipsies were in the street. Those who had not yet set out homewards were camped near by on the sandhills as far as the beach.’ But a number of young women from Arles, attired in their distinctive and distinguished costume, made their way among the crowd of sailors, herdsmen, and shopkeepers who all stood aside and saluted them as they passed, for their domestic qualities and their intrepidity in the saddle were well known.
Groups of guests in the inns were discussing in low tones the event of the day. The terrible story from the Viek Castou-Nou cast a gloom over more than one face. The people were utterly nonplussed by Odette’s disappearance. The affair was so extraordinary that they scarcely trusted themselves to express an opinion upon it. And then though de Lauriac had few friends he was universally feared.
When Jean, after leaving his car in the square, made his way down the street, each one silently removed his hat. They felt sorry for him. They drew back to allow him to enter the Hôtel des Saintes Maries. The proprieter, an old sailor who had become an innkeeper, greeted him with sympathy, but refrained from asking any questions.
“Have you seen Rouletabille? “inquired Jean.
“Yes, monsieur, he was here a little while ago.”
“Where can I find him?”
“Upon my word, I can’t say. I fancy he must have gone away again.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, it’s like this: When he came in, he asked me if a lady was waiting for him. I tell you this because I know that you are hand in glove with him. I answered that no one had called for him. Thereupon he went out, and came back a little while later. He seemed to have something on his mind. He again asked me if the lady had called, and I told him no. Then he wrote a short note, slipped it in an envelope and said: ‘I don’t think she’ll come now, but if she does, give her this.’ So saying he went out and I haven’t seen him since; and that’s what made me say that he must have left Les Saintes Maries.”
“Did the lady turn up?”
“Yes, monsieur, she came not so very long ago and I gave her the note. She seemed rather vexed that Monsieur Rouletabille hadn’t waited for her.”
“Rouletabille wants to have an interview with Callista,” thought Jean. In reality he himself would not be sorry to meet her, if only to dispel every possibility of misunderstanding between them. After his last encounter with her, at which, with the degree of fatalism peculiar to her race, she had shown such perfect resignation, it never entered his mind that she could be guilty of the odious crime which Rouletabille imputed to her. She could not have forgotten all that Jean had done for her, and indeed, after his last gift which had assured her future and which she had accepted, there was nothing with which she could reproach him. She had come to Les Saintes Maries without making any secret of it and told her servants the object which she had in view. Rouletabille’s suspicions were sheer imagination.
Jean described Callista to the hotel proprietor, who told him, to his great surprise, that she in no way resembled the visitor. To begin with, the lady of whom he was speaking was dark, while the visitor was fair.
Jean reflected for a while and then suddenly an idea flashed across his mind.
“Did the lady wear a fringe over her forehead?”
“Yes, monsieur, you’re right this time.”
Jean drew nearer the hotel proprietor.
“The letter must have been addressed to someone,” he suggested.
But as the other maintained a discreet silence Jean blurted out:
“Wasn’t the letter addressed to Madame de Meyrens?”
The man indicated by a nod that it was so, whereupon Jean left him, his mind increasingly perturbed.
“He can’t do without that detestable woman,” he said to himself. “What can he want with her at a time like this? And why does he make appointments with her if he doesn’t care for her as he pretends?”
Leaving the question for the time being, he went in search of the herdsmen who usually formed de Lauriac’s society, for he was pursuing his own train of thought, but when he got beyond the full light of the street and found himself in the partial obscurity of the sandhills, his attention was attracted by two figures, at no great distance ahead, who seemed not unfamiliar to him.
A man and a woman were making their way along the walls. Then crossing a deserted space broken with shadows, they appeared in view once more in the flickering light of a fire outside a caravan.
Many similar fires were alight along the beach, forming a sort of semi-circle round Les Saintes Maries. They had been kindled by gipsies from Béziers and Pézenas, who were staying at Les Saintes Maries longer than their brethren, for, after all, these gipsies were in their own country and had no great distance to go to reach the roads along which they were accustomed to live.
Most of these bivouacs were deserted. The younger folk had left them to join in the dancing, and supper was being prepared under the watchful eyes of the old women.
Jean could not repress a faint exclamation when he recognized in the two forms whom he was following Olajai and the Octopus.
They seated themselves near an old gipsy woman, who, as they approached, stood up and eyed them with some suspicion. But Olajai spoke, and the old woman nodded her head, and clearly was now receiving the newcomers with the kindest welcome. The three drew closer and the conversation which was carried on in low tones was of such interest that Jean was able to take a few paces forward without arousing their attention. He would have liked to overhear what they were talking about, but it was impossible from where he stood.
Afterwards Olajai and the Octopus visited several other caravans, and then suddenly disappeared from view as if by magic, and Jean was unable to come up with them again. He went back to the lights of the main street wrapped
in thought and greatly excited by his experience, and here he was told that the herdsmen were gathered together at the Little Rhone Inn.
When he entered the inn the herdsmen, who were engaged in an animated discussion, suddenly stopped talking. Jean’s gaze wandered from one to the other of these men of rough appearance, set faces and hostile looks.
“You know what’s happened,” he said. “Do you think de Lauriac did it?”
“No, we are sure he didn’t,” they replied unanimously.
“Still, he is in prison for it. If anyone saw him on the night in question it might help him. Let him speak out...
The men remained silent.
“I don’t see Lou Rousso Fiamo here,” went on Jean. “Perhaps he can give us a little information.”
Lou Rousso Fiamo, a man with fiery-red hair, was at one time Hubert de Lauriac’s head man. He was well known for his strength and brutality, and blind devotion to his master.
“Lou Rousso Fiamo went off to Beaucaire the day before yesterday to get four bulls branded,” a voice volunteered.
“It’s the first time Lou Rousso Fiamo has missed Les Saintes Maries’ fête,” returned Jean. “He will certainly be very annoyed about it.”
He left the inn as it was no use persisting, for he knew that they would all stand together and he would get nothing out of them. Nevertheless, his journey to Les Saintes Maries had been far from useless, and he was eager to see Rouletabille again.
An hour and a half later he joined him at Lavardens.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, in spite of Olajaï’s warning I was determined to go to Les Saintes Maries,” returned Rouletabille, “but I no sooner got there than Olajai came up to me at a corner of the street and once more told me that Camargue was very unhealthy for me. I tried to obtain some explanation, but he left me hurriedly, saying:— ‘I’ve chattered too much already.’”
“So you came back here?”
“Yes, of course; especially as I still had a great deal to do here.”
“And then,” went on Jean, with a purpose which did not escape the journalist’s notice, “you did not meet the person whom you expected to meet.”
“I see that you’ve been told all about it,” returned Rouletabille, frowning.
“In any case, I know one thing,” declared Jean in a strained voice. “While Olajai succeeded in making you leave Les Saintes Maries he stayed there himself with the Octopus, whom you came to see, but did not see. But I saw them both working at some sort of secret job which cannot be either to your liking or mine, seeing that they take such pains to hide it from us.”
“Have no fear,” returned Rouletabille in increasingly gloomy tones. “Give me another twenty-four hours and neither Olajaï nor the Octopus will prevent me from rescuing’ Odette.”
“I’ve brought back information which may be of use to us,” said Jean, stopping Rouletabille, who made a movement to leave him. “If de Lauriac is guilty, as I believe more firmly than ever, he must undoubtedly have had accomplices, or at least one accomplice. Now, I’ve just learnt that Lou Rousso Fiamo has been away from Les Saintes Maries for the last two days.”
“I am aware of it,” returned Rouletabille.
He walked away abruptly, giving Jean, as the phrase goes, the slip. The latter did not persist. He took his seat at the wheel again and drove off to Beaucaire. He wanted to know for certain the truth about Lou Rousso Fiamo’s absence.
Extracts from Rouletabille’s diary at this date:
“Olajaï and the Octopus. Jean may be right. I have not been sufficiently on my guard against the Octopus. She cannot be of any further use to me. She can only do me harm. Now that I know from her that the police were in no way implicated in the attempted burglary at my flat, and also what happened at Les Saintes Maries, I ought to break entirely with her. This is not the first time that the idea has occurred to me, but I imagine that there is only just time to carry it through.
“As to Olajaï, there are times when I am on the point of learning his secret and then just as I seem to fathom it I fall into mystification again.
“The dangers which he prophesies and from which he pretends to wish to save me, fit in too well with the attempted burglary in Paris to make the close connection between them doubtful. It is this connection which utterly baffles me. What was the object in rifling my flat? That is the riddle; and I feel convinced that Olajaï could solve it in a word. But he has chattered too much already he says, and he advises me to get away from Les Saintes Maries, just as he advised me not to leave Lavardens. The whole thing stands together and yet remains a mystery to me.
“One thing alone is certain: some serious danger is hanging, over me. I was closely watched, I feel it, at every step I took at Lavardens and outside Lavardens; and I escape this secret espionage only with the greatest difficulty and by employing an incredible amount of cunning. However that may be, I managed to follow Callista’s trail almost step by step since her arrival at Les Saintes Maries, and I know everything that she did in the place up to the moment when she vanished not far from the Viei-Castou-Nou.
“Alighting from the train at Avignon, like ourselves, but twenty-four hours earlier, she was driven by car, like ourselves, to Arles. But here she left the car, passed through the town on foot, and took the first train at Arles-Trinquet wayside station, reaching Les Saintes Maries at ten minutes to ten. She was clad simply but stylishly in a nigger-brown velvet costume set off with beaver, and a hat trimmed with monkey fur. That was the dress which she wore when she last went out with Jean and me some days before he broke with her. Certainly she made no effort to keep in the background. She at once went to church and began her devotions. Next she called on the rector and asked him for an invitation for the afternoon ceremony of viewing the sacred relics. Afterwards she had a look round the town without any apparent object, interesting herself in the many sights which the gipsy encampments afforded her. At one moment she went up to a group which at first paid no more heed to her than to any other passer-by. A small boy asked her for alms. She spoke to him. A man seated in front of her at once turned his back on her, and threw her a look over his shoulder, and then in a flash stood up before her. He stared her in the face, took stock of her dress, and flung at her hoarsely between his clenched teeth in his own language the worst insults. She did not wince, but answering him shortly in his own tongue, walked away. When she was gone the man and the gipsies with him spat upon the ground.
“Callista seemingly left Les Saintes Maries, and its swarms of gipsies who had transformed the village into a zone of squalor, with perfect indifference. She went down to the most secluded spot on the beach and entered the ruins of a hut, in which she undressed and soon emerged ready for bathing. After a swim she lay stretched at full length on the sand like a weary animal.
“Suddenly there was a movement near her — it was the man! She was expecting him despite his insults. She began to laugh as her eyes met his. He silenced her by pressing his lips to hers in a savage kiss. The man was Andréa, who had chased her two years before, and from whom, to his sorrow, Jean had rescued her. If the finery in which Callista as a gipsy woman was attired just before was the cause of Andréa’s raging reception of her, she wore nothing now which could offend his eyes as he gazed at her. The whole incident had been carefully planned. She had found her man. He tried to seize her. She pushed him aside, but what must she not have promised him? He at once gave way to her. She went back to dress, and they left the place on the best possible terms with each other.
“Callista was not présentât the afternoon ceremony. She left the village surreptitiously in a cart driven by a gipsy, who dropped her at no great distance from Lavardens, and I lost sight of her. Andréa, too, disappeared from Les Saintes Maries. I lost track of him at Maguelonne-le-Sauveur, but there can be no doubt that I found it again in the dog-shearer mentioned by Estève.
“Andréa was on foot at Maguelonne-le-Sauveur. It is to be noted that neither of them took the tra
in for they would certainly have been seen by the porters, and the train to Arles at that hour was empty. Jean left me and, doubtless, went to Beaucaire to inquire about Lou Rousso Fiamo. After all, his journey will not be wholly futile. We must be prepared for anything in view of the fact that I found the gipsy emblem in Odette’s room — a present from de Lauriac! And now I must “pump” Estève. There is still much to be learnt from her. I asked Jean to give me twenty-four hours in which to save Odette — if there is still time to do so!”
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH ROULETABILLE EXPRESSES A DEFINITE OPINION ABOUT THE MURDERER
EXTRACT FROM ROULETABILLE’S diary of the 27th May:
“I was convinced that Estève knew a great deal more than she chose to say. In the end I made her admit that on several occasions during the last month she accompanied Odette to Lavardens woods, where the latter used to meet in secret a curious person whom Monsieur de Lavardens once caught talking to his daughter to his intense surprise. The person in question was an old woman who certainly did not belong to those parts, but lived away from everybody like a hermit, and went to earth in no one knows what sort of burrow.
“Odette told Estève that this old woman had aroused her pity and she had willingly given her a trifle for which she showed her gratitude in a sort of worship of Odette. She often told Odette’s fortune, predicting a brilliant future which only made the child laugh. She wanted to tell Estève’s fortune, but Estève, who is very superstitious and believes in witchcraft, invariably set herself against it. The old woman had a face that frightened her, and she failed to understand how her young mistress could find pleasure in the company of this old hag who said her name was Zina.
“Zina was obviously a gipsy judging from Estève’s description of her. Their meetings, as a rule, took place between Lavardens and Albaron, not far from the crossway at La Font. Now I managed to establish definitely that the car in which Odette was carried off was driven, towards Albaron and was not seen after it reached Albaron. I feel that I am ‘getting warmer and that the net of my inquiries is drawing closer round the chief persons concerned in the tragedy.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 107