Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “With whom were you playing tricks then when you ran off with my bicycle under my very eyes?”

  “Not with magistrates certainly, because I only borrowed it so as to help you.”

  “What did I say?” exclaimed Monsieur Bartholasse. “Here he is again with the same old humbug. Listen to him. Listen to him for yourself.”

  “Yes, listen to me,” assented Rouletabille. “I am much obliged to you, Monsieur Bartholasse, for this is the first time to-day that you’ve made a sensible remark.”

  “Look here, I had better leave the place, otherwise I shall do something rash,” said the clerk.

  “Let this man go to his camomile tea,” said the journalist, turning his back on him, “but you, Monsieur Crousillat, do you remember what I promised you for your dinner? — the arrest of the guilty parties. Well, don’t disturb yourself. Monsieur, your dinner is served!”

  With an illustrative gesture which a butler in the days of Louis XIV might have envied, he pointed to the feast which he had prepared: Andréa and Callista standing at the entrance of the door with a couple of gendarmes on either side.

  La Finette nudged the two gipsies, who took a step forward.

  Andréa folded his arms and gazed with a look of contempt and indifference at the persons present. He carried his head high. As he advanced into the room he spat forth a few words at Rouletabille, consigning him to eternal perdition, and afterwards seemed to take little interest in the proceedings. With his shoulder barely covered with a tattered shirt, and his neck and throat partly exposed, he seemed like the bronze statue of a god.

  Callista, on the other hand, had seated herself on the first chair within reach, without waiting to be asked, and was staring at her nails, which had lost some of their lustre since she left Paris.

  “You were looking for the persons who kidnapped Mademoiselle de Lavardens. Here they are!” said Rouletabille.

  “Mossieu, they don’t deny it,” broke in La Finette. “They’ve confessed it in our presence. The villains! They brag about it. Yes, indeed, I must tell you, between ourselves, that the young man over there” — pointing to Rouletabille—” pulled off the business very well.”

  Monsieur Crousillat looked in turn at the prisoner, the journalist, and La Finette. His excitement was such that he was speechless. La Finette went on:

  “He’s made a fine haul, what?”

  “But, confound it,” at last burst out Monsieur Crousillat, patting Rouletabille on the shoulder with his huge paw, “why did you not tell me you were going to pull off a thing like this? That would have been much more simple than stea — borrowing my bicycle. I would have given you all the gendarmes you needed.”

  “No, you would not have given me one. Our dear friend Monsieur Bartholasse would have known how to prevent you. It was much simpler to take the gendarmes from you. And when I borrowed your bicycle I was certain that they would come after me.

  Monsieur Crousillat did not persist. He turned to the prisoners.

  “So these are the vagabonds who are responsible. Young woman, stand up!”

  Callista obediently rose from her chair without apparent emotion.

  “You understand, both of you, what the charge is — the murder of Monsieur de Lavardens and the abduction, of his daughter. And you say, La Finette, that the prisoners have confessed?... Monsieur Bartholasse, please take this down.”

  “We haven’t murdered anybody,” declared Callista.

  “First of all, who are you?” went on the examining magistrate... What are these people? Gipsies, obviously.”

  “Monsieur can answer you,” said Callista, pointing to Rouletabille and still speaking very calmly. “He knows me.”

  Rouletabille went up to her, lifted the sleeve of her blouse, and disclosed round her amber-coloured arm the gold slave bangle which she had shown him on one occasion.

  “Yes, I know you,” he returned. “You are the woman who wears on her arm the sign of revenge. You meant to be revenged on Monsieur, de Santierne and you carried off the girl he was about to marry.”

  “But, look here, what does all this mean?” exclaimed Monsieur Crousillat. “Do you know this woman?”

  “Oh, Monsieur Rouletabille and I are old friends,” said Callista, with a peculiar smile. “He has often dined with me.”

  “Do people dine with you!” cried the examining magistrate, letting his gaze stray over the wretched garments in which this strange beauty was clad — if the term can be used.

  “Madame keeps an excellent cook and lives in a luxurious flat in one of the smartest parts of Paris.”

  “Do you mean to say that this woman is a Parisian?”

  “No, she is a gipsy, but thanks to Monsieur Jean de Santierne, who on one occasion rescued her from this man’s brutality — this man who is her accomplice to-day — she became one of the most attractive women in Paris whom I have ever met. I have no wish to forget the hospitality which she and her lover, her bear’s cub and her parrot offered me only a few days ago; and I am very sorry that she left Paris to assume these rags. But, as the saying goes, one always returns to one’s first love. For my part, I see no objection to that, but she must tell us what she has done with Mademoiselle de Lavardens.”

  “Never!” cried Callista in such savage tones that a shudder passed through them.

  “You forget, madame, that Monsieur de Lavardens has been murdered,” continued Rouletabille.

  “We had no hand in that.”

  “It suits you to say so,” interrupted Monsieur Crousillat, who had been following the colloquy without intervening, for he was gathering a considerable amount of information. “But the murder was committed at the same time as the abduction.”

  “And no one can entertain the shadow of a doubt,” argued Rouletabille, “that you killed Monsieur de Lavardens because he came rushing up to the assistance of his daughter. You say that you are innocent of the murder. Well, only one person in the world can establish that innocence, and that person is Mademoiselle de Lavardens.”

  “That’s as clear as daylight,” added Monsieur Crousillat. “Unless you hand over Mademoiselle de Lavardens to us, it means that you murdered her father.”

  “Do you understand?” went on Rouletabille, turning to Andréa. “It’s Mademoiselle de Lavardens or death for the pair of you.”

  Andréa did not even unfold his arms. He stared at Rouletabille over his shoulder and, indicating Callista by a sign of his head, said:

  “I’m quite ready to die with her.”

  “It would be much better to live with her,” returned Rouletabille in a wheedling voice.

  Callista cast a deadly look at the journalist, and then sat down declaring calmly that this attempt at blackmail by introducing a charge of murder was not badly conceived, but would have no result. The magistrate could do with them what he pleased, but he would not learn anything more from them.

  As to Monsieur Crousillat, he seemed to be present only in the person of Rouletabille, to whom from that moment, without being conscious of it, he Surrendered the control of the proceedings. It was a part for which the journalist possessed a natural gift, for he was accustomed to do the talking when the police had nothing more to say.

  “Callista, I cannot too strongly urge you to consider your interests a little more closely,” went on Rouletabille in his softest manner, ceasing to use threatening language. “I have never given you bad advice. If you and Jean had listened to me, we should none of us be in our present predicament. I understand your resentment against him; and you told me that, you were meditating some wicked act of revenge. For my part, I don’t think that you went so far as to murder Monsieur de Lavardens, but there’s no getting away from this murder, and you must take it into account. You won’t be able to save yourself in this business unless you restore that child, who does not know you and who has suffered enough through you. What is the use of being obstinate? Even though you refuse to speak I shall take Odette away from you. Give her back to us now.”

&nbs
p; “It is not within the power of anyone to give Odette back to you now.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “To prove to you that I know everything, would you like me to tell you what took place in old Zina’s den?...”

  Callista could not refrain from giving a start.

  “And what you did and said?”

  “Oh, really... I defy you to do so.”

  “Very well,” returned Rouletabille. “Monsieur Bartholasse, please write that Mademoiselle Callista admits going to old Zina’s den.”

  “But I am not here under your orders,” protested Monsieur Bartholasse, incensed by the journalist’s freedom.

  “No, but you are under Monsieur Crousillat’s orders, and Monsieur Crousillat orders you to take it down.”

  “Take it down,” echoed Monsieur Crousillat.

  “I say... I say,” spluttered Monsieur Bartholasse in a choking voice.

  “If you do not take it down I shall do so myself, and Mademoiselle Callista will sign it,” declared Rouletabille.

  Monsieur Bartholasse, mastered, dipped his pen in the ink with such a furious gesture that he almost knocked over the inkstand.

  “Mademoiselle Odette de Lavardens,” began Rouletabille, dictating to the clerk “having been carried in a half-unconscious condition to the den of an old gipsy fortune-teller, Zina by name, I went to see her.” (“It is Mademoiselle Callista who is speaking,” explained Rouletabille, “and if I make a mistake she will have the kindness to correct me.”) “My accomplice, Andréa, was with me.

  “As soon as Mademoiselle de Lavardens saw us she began to tremble with fear, for she recognized in this man who seized and carried her off, the dog-shearer who accosted her at Viei-Castou-Nou, and this man terrified her.... I motioned to Andréa to leave us, and I remained alone with Mademoiselle de Lavardens.”

  Little by little, as Rouletabille proceeded with his story, Callista who at first affected to listen with contempt, now stared at him with something in the nature of dismay.

  “I was alone with Mademoiselle de Lavardens,” went on the journalist, “because, in my mind, old Zina was a creature who did not matter. She was less than a servant; she was a slave...

  “‘Who are you? What do you want with me?’ asked Mademoiselle de Lavardens in a deathly voice.

  “I answered that I might become her friend and save her life if she would fall in with my wishes. I went on to say that the greatest dangers were hanging over her, that the persons who had stopped at nothing to obtain possession of her would not hesitate to make away with her once and for all if she forced them to do so. She answered me at first only with a sort of moan: ‘God, am I to die here!’ while her faltering eyes wandered round the hideous dwelling, on the walls of which old Zina had nailed dead owls and bats. An owl was perched over the fireplace and a bear’s cub was for ever strutting about in a corner. I persuaded her that I would get her out of this inferno. She ended by placing her burning hands in mine, for in order to inspire her with confidence I had indulged in the most honeyed words. ‘All this around me is nothing, but there are rats at night,’ she said to me with a shudder.”

  Callista, growing more and more perturbed, drew back her chair from Rouletabille and, white-faced, murmured in Romany:

  “He’s the very devil!”

  “My dear!” broke in Andréa in a muffled voice. And he spluttered a few words in the same language which seemed to comfort her, but Rouletabille had no intention of allowing his advantage to be lost, and with a masterful air and a peremptory sign to Monsieur Bartholasse he continued his story:

  “I asked Mademoiselle de Lavardens if, as far as she knew, she had any enemies. She answered ‘No.’

  “‘Well, you have one deadly enemy and her name is Callista.’ —

  “I had no sooner mentioned this name than Mademoiselle de Lavardens hid her head in her hands and sobbed aloud. Then it was that I determined to strike a great blow.

  “‘She made up her mind at first to have your life, I said, ‘but I have induced her to relent. Still, there is one condition; you must do everything I tell you to do.’

  “She gave me an anxious look through her tears.

  “‘You must write what I am about to dictate.’

  “I had with me some notepaper which I bought at Arles, and I slipped a small board on her knees.”

  “Is not all this absolutely correct?” demanded Rouletabille, still riveting her with his gaze.

  “Wizard!” Callista rapped out at him, drawing back her chair still farther.

  “Monsieur Bartholasse, please make a note that the female prisoner called Monsieur Rouletabille a ‘wizard,’ which is in itself a confession,” interposed Monsieur Crousillat.

  “Zina put on this small board a dirty ink bottle which had recently been filled and I dictated the following letter:

  “‘I do not love you, Jean. — I know now that Callista is your mistress. I prefer to run away from home rather than marry you. You will never see me again. Good-bye!’”

  “Was this not the exact wording?” demanded Rouletabille.

  Callista’s answer was an ice-cold stare.

  “I will continue the story as she offers no denial,” said Rouletabille.

  “Until then Mademoiselle de Lavardens seemed half-dead and unable to make the least exertion, but as soon as she heard what I wanted she leapt to her feet, upsetting the ink bottle, shattering the pen, and deluging my feet with ink.”

  “Show your feet,” exclaimed the journalist. “Show your feet, madame. The people of the road do not wash their feet every day, and though you brought your bear’s cub from Paris you left behind your chiropodist! Ah, you refuse to show your feet. Monsieur Bartholasse, take this down — write that madame refused to show her feet to the person named Rouletabille, which is equivalent to another confession.... I will continue:

  “After this outburst Mademoiselle de Lavardens declared to me, quivering all over, that she would never write a word which might make Monsieur Jean de Santierne believe that she did not love him: ‘I would rather have my hand cut off,’ and I answered:

  ‘Well, my beauty, you shall have your hand cut off.’”

  “Do you deny those words? Do you repudiate the knife? No, because they are your very words, and here is the actual knife.”

  Rouletabille threw a knife with a horn handle on the examining magistrate’s table, and added the further detail:

  “You bought it on the evening of the twenty-third at Bonnafous’, Les Saintes Maries.”

  “That was to frighten her,” muttered Callista, gasping like a hunted animal, at a loss to know when or how the attack was coming.

  “Perhaps.... Perhaps if she had signed the letter you would not have murdered her.”

  “Have they murdered her?” exclaimed the examining magistrate, who seemed to have become merely a spectator witnessing the tense excitement of a drama which was being conjured up before him.

  “No, but she wanted to murder her.”

  “That’s not true.” —

  “You say it’s not true. But this is what happened exactly. When you saw Mademoiselle de Lavardens’ determined attitude you said to her: ‘I am Callista. Your affianced husband is my lover. You must make your choice: either you give up Jean or you shall not leave this place alive.’ A frightful scene ensued from which, indeed, Mademoiselle de Lavardens would not have left the place alive if...”

  “If?” repeated the examining magistrate.

  “If at that moment an extraordinary thing had not happened....”

  On hearing these last words Callista displayed so much agitation that nothing but a fresh intervention by Andréa succeeded in soothing her. Then while Rouletabille, who closely followed what was passing between the two gipsies, went on with his narrative, the young woman continued to stare at her companion’s demoniacal face.

  “Yes, it was, in truth, an extraordinary thing, went on Rouletabille. “Odette might have been r
egarded as lost but for a poor creature, a poor old thing upon whom until then no one had bestowed any attention, unless it were to spurn her with a foot or to cast her aside in the dark, where as a rule she sat cowering.... In short, Zina threw herself between Callista and the child.... Andréa came in again prepared at any moment to assist his accomplice in her hideous revenge. But neither this man nor woman persisted in the face of a sign from Zina, who spoke certain words in a low voice, so low that no one could hear them except Callista, Andréa — and Rouletabille!”

  Callista and Andréa were now both deadly pale.

  “You are lying,” she said. “You were too far away to hear what she said. If you had heard you would have saved your Odette.”‘

  “Zina, who is a witch,” returned the journalist, “will tell you that a wizard can hear things which may be said at the end of the world, and even in the other world.... I am so well aware of what old Zina said that I know you have but one fear, both of you — the fear lest I should repeat her words, for it would be assumed that you repeated them, and there is not a Romany in the wide world who would forgive you for that....

  “Ah, you hang your head. Well, don’t be afraid. I shall not repeat those words spoken in old Zina’s den. I fully see now how difficult the position would be for both of you in the event of your wishing to give Odette back to us. Accordingly, I propose a bargain with you. Give me certain information and I will take the entire risk on my own shoulders. As far as you are concerned it will be made public that you refused to speak, even to save your head. In this way I shall save Odette and at the same time save you — provided you are innocent of Monsieur de Lavardens’ murder.”

  Rouletabille’s reasoning, as well as the hidden meaning which lay in his words, seemed once more greatly to disturb Callista, but Andréa gave her a peculiar look and she rapped out with a malicious smile:

  “As you are a wizard you will soon find Odette without our help.”

  “Of course, you she-devil,” exclaimed Rouletabille, exasperated at the futility of his efforts, “but I would gladly have gained time for her sake and yours by getting a word from you. You know how precious every minute is.”