Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

She reached the guards, dragging herself along by the port-hole, and here, leaning against the ship’s side for support, she began to tell her beads. She seemed so weak that the Captain expected to see her collapse at any moment on the deck, as he had seen her, the day before, fall in an inert mass in her cabin.

  She was of a death-like pallor, but her eyes were extraordinarily bright. She was praying, and her gaze was fixed on the Toper, who had just taken up the position of the day before and was apparently preparing to “post” his letter.

  Thus Barrachon comprehended the object of which Sister St. Mary was on deck. She had come up to warn Chéri-Bibi’s friend that he must put an end to the correspondence.

  It was this message, to all appearance, that was expressed so eloquently by her eyes, her wide, beautiful flashing eyes. It was this that was indicated by the slight movement of her head from right to left and left to right, a telegraphic negative. No more letters must be slipped between the planks. And it was this that the Toper understood, for the ruffian scrambled to his feet when he saw the Sister, and placed his hand in his pocket.

  Barrachon at once showed himself, and at a bound was at the side of the guards.

  “Search that man,” he cried, pointing to the convict. “At once... at once.... Seize him by the arms... seize him by the arms.”

  Two military overseers rushed at the Toper, but he quickly shook them off and was fumbling in his pocket for the paper, meaning to put it in his mouth.

  “The paper... the paper,...” shouted the Captain. “Seize him by the arms.”

  The convict was of herculean strength, and clutching one warder by the throat and getting free from the other, swallowed the paper. The first guard was gasping for breath, and unable to carry out the Captain’s orders.

  “Fire... fire, man,” he shouted.

  The Captain himself leveled his revolver, but it was a guard who fired the shot straight at the Toper’s heart.

  Nevertheless the convict did not receive the bullet. Sister St. Mary of the Angels had thrown herself into the fray, and lifted her shaking arm towards the weapon which hurled forth death. The shot passed through the poor girl’s hand and shoulder, and she sank in a huddled heap on the deck. The Toper, meantime, stood quietly with folded arms; and while Sister St. Mary was being carried off to the sick-bay, the Captain gave orders for him to be taken to the cells and put in irons. He was led away there and then. Barrachon, the Inspector, and the Overseer General went below to the lower deck with the procession of guards and their prisoner.

  The Captain was determined to question the Toper at once, for he would be tried the next day by court martial, and undoubtedly shot for mutiny and attempted murder of a warder. It was the moment, if there ever was one, to make an example.

  When they reached the alley-way in which the cells were situated, Sergeant Pascaud declared that there was but one cell available, since it would not do to put the Toper in the cell from which the Countess had escaped. The cavity had not yet been blocked up. The only remaining cell was that in which Chéri-Bibi had been placed in irons, and in which were found the bodies of the murdered warders. Barrachon gave orders for the cell door to be opened, and Pascaud opened it.

  The guards on a sign from the Captain were preparing to put the Toper in irons, an operation to which he offered no resistance, when they started back, uttering an exclamation. They could see something there in the darkness; a figure was lying there. A man in irons was there.

  The object could be seen only vaguely in the dim light, and the guards might have thought that Chéri-Bibi had miraculously returned. The Captain, the Inspector, and the Overseer General darted forward, and lanterns were brought nearer. There was a simultaneous cry: de Vilène!

  Yes, the object that lay there was indeed no other than Lieutenant de Vilène, the second-in-command on board, and his feet and wrists were imprisoned in Chéri-Bibi’s irons in place of Chéri-Bibi himself.... Moreover, the Lieutenant had assumed a dark hue and there was not the least sign of life about him.... A stout gag was bound over his mouth, nose and eyes.

  The gag was at once removed, and men carried the Lieutenant into the alley-way and made him breathe; at least they endeavored to restore his breathing. For some moments it looked as if he were a dead man.

  At length his breast heaved, and a deep sigh proclaimed that life had returned to his motionless body.

  De Vilene gazed around him with a dazed look and said:

  “Captain!”

  His life was saved. But it was a narrow escape. He confessed as much.

  “Oh, I thought it was all over with me,” he said.

  While they were lavishing attentions on the Lieutenant, to whom they gave a glass of rum brought by one of the guards, Barrachon went back to the cell, and the other officers followed him in order to verify the miracle once more.

  The cell was still completely closed like a box, and it was impossible to conceive by what artifice a man could get out and another man get in without passing through the door. Barrachon vented his rage on the walls, which he struck with his fists without being able to solve the mystery. There was but one key of the padlock, and it was said to be the only key that would unlock Chéri-Bibi’s irons.

  Now Chéri-Bibi had divested himself of the irons and fixed the Lieutenant in them, and locked them afterwards without using the key. Sergeant Pascaud, who was absolutely bewildered and still more cast down than the Captain when he learnt of the escape of No. 3216, exclaimed:

  “Upon my word, Captain, I’ve only once in my life seen anything to be compared with it. It was at the end of a performance by some jugglers in a café in my village. One of the men was shut up in a trunk, which was padlocked, bound with ropes, and sealed with red sealing wax by persons present. We took care to fasten the ropes ourselves in knots which we learnt how to tie from sailors. Well, a covering was thrown over the trunk, and the jugglers counted ten. When the covering was taken off our man was free, with nothing to hamper his movements, standing by the side of the trunk, which was still closed, tied firmly, sealed and padlocked. Do you know what I think? Chéri-Bibi may have been a conjurer at one time. He must know the tricks of all the trades, must that particular bird.”

  Meantime the Lieutenant was taken to his cabin, where the Captain joined him. He was ravenously hungry and thirsty, and food and drink were brought in. He was able to speak. And he told a story which was somewhat vague but extremely formidable, and gave those who were present food for thought regarding the extraordinary power of the diabolical Chéri-Bibi.

  The incident happened in the morning immediately after the burial service. De Vilène, in common with the Captain and everyone else, was astonished that Sister St. Mary was not present during the reading of the prayers for the dead. Was she ill? He determined to make inquiries, and proceeded to the nun’s cabin. He had nearly reached it, and was turning the corner by the canteen when he was seized from behind with incredible swiftness and violence.

  He could not make a movement nor utter a cry. A gag was suffocating him, and at least four men — de Vilène estimated that his aggressors consisted of not less than four men — reduced him to helplessness. Tied up as though he were a bundle, and unable to grasp what was happening, he did not know where they were taking him, nor could he say, even approximately, where they placed him for the time being.

  But he knew that they left him for a while to himself; and they even took the precaution to loosen slightly the gag which covered his nose so that he might not suffocate on the spot. Nevertheless, the place could not have been far from the cook’s galley for the odor of cooking reached him. True, the decks were impregnated with this odor toward lunch time.

  At length men came to fetch him. They carried him some distance; then they fastened a rope round him, and let him down into space. He wondered, for a moment, if his aggressors were not thus lowering him into the sea, intending to drown him quietly so that there might be no opportunity for anyone to come to his assistance. Soon, however, he reache
d a resting place. He struck against some hard surface. Here he was pushed along, then carried, and afterwards put down again, by persons who did not utter a word. More than once he was lifted over some obstacle to he let down again a few minutes later, and he imagined that he was in the hold. But in which hold? In which store-room? He was unable to say.

  After several rough impacts — they didn’t spare him, but treated him as though he were a bale of goods — they laid him on the planks, then on an iron bar, and slipped his feet and wrists into the fetters. He assumed that his enemies had decided to leave him there, in the hold, in irons, to die of hunger. A few minutes later his breathing failed him and he lost consciousness.

  The story was an appalling one because though it furnished no indication as to Chéri-Bibi’s hiding-place, it proved first that he was moving about the ship at will, and next that he had accomplices who were active and free, and whose numbers were unknown. It was this last consideration which was by far the most important, for it raised the question: whom could they trust in future?

  The Captain remained alone with the Lieutenant and expressed to him the thoughts to which the tragic accident gave rise. But de Vilène was no longer concerned with the danger from which he had escaped. Like the Captain, he realized, above all, that they were surrounded by foes, and that their troubles were, perhaps, only beginning.

  Newly embarked on an old vessel whose crew was gathered together at the last moment, with men and women passengers, clerks, and government officials, who for the most part had been sent to Cayenne because the metropolis had no further use for them, they did not know with whom they had to deal, and they had no inkling of the real mind of any of them.

  Nevertheless they could trust the sailors and the chiefs of the military guard who had stood the test elsewhere, but was it not possible that some black sheep had crept into the flock unknown to them? It was much to be feared. Indeed it was certain that, it was so.

  De Vilène had been attacked by several men. He could vouch for it. What were those men? Anarchists perhaps, or pretended anarchists.... At all events they knew that under cover of the name those men were capable of anything and everything. It was they, undoubtedly, who had, for so long, helped Chéri-Bibi to evade the police, who had backed him up in his monstrous crimes, who had sworn to avenge him, and who on the very morning of his trial had blown up Ferdy’s restaurant.

  What might not be expected from such bandits who had declared a deadly war on society? They would stick at nothing. Some of them, doubtless, had sailed on the same vessel as Chéri-Bibi in order to rescue him, and this, too, with the assistance of the authorities who were the first to be duped, and whom these men played with at their own sweet will. Well, if this were so, it was war; it meant fighting. Barrachon and de Vilène were fighting men. They shook each other by the hand.

  Cheered and strengthened by this demonstration, they stood silent for a while. A few minutes later they went on deck.

  Apart from the men on duty and the military guards, who maintained an eager watch, the deck was deserted. Everyone had returned to his berth. The Toper’s action and Sister St. Mary’s wound, followed by the amazing discovery of the Lieutenant in Chéri-Bibi’s irons — these things were discussed in all the cabins with bated breath.

  What was the mystery of the cell? What sort of cell was it in which such demoniacal things could happen? The ghostly figure of Chéri-Bibi seemed to increase to enormous dimensions. And the general terror was doubled by the growing feeling that anarchists were on board who were determined at any cost to save the monster. Supposing that they fired the ship? Supposing that they blew her up? Who could prevent them? When the passengers heard the least commotion behind the doors, how eager they were to explain it away! When they heard footsteps in the alley-way, how intensely they wished them to move on! Two nights had passed without sleep. If the Captain were wise he would at once return to Europe... that was certain... quickly... What a voyage it was!

  CHAPTER V

  THE ATTACK ON THE STORE-ROOM

  IN THE EARLY morning of the next day, the Bayard’s quarter-deck was swarming with women, and children huddled on their mothers’ laps. The women and children had taken refuge there. They thought that there would be less fear of a surprise than in the lower decks and gangways, where they trembled with fear. Moreover, a great piece of news formed the subject of conversation. It was stated that Sister St. Mary of the Angels was working hand in glove with Chéri-Bibi. That, of course, beat everything they thought.

  They knew now why and how the nun was wounded. She was acting as the convict’s go-between. And it was at the moment when she was about to receive a letter from the Toper that a bullet struck her in the shoulder. If this were true, she richly deserved her fate. For, after all, she could not be a real Sister of Mercy. She was probably a girl anarchist who had assumed the dress of a nun in order to be near Chéri-Bibi, and had been entrusted by his friends with the work of rescuing him. She had “caught it.” It was a case, if ever there was one, in which to say: “Serve her right.”

  Thus matters stood on the quarter-deck when Madame Pascaud, the wife of Sergeant Pascaud, appeared. She was out of breath, and obviously had something important to say, for, try as she might, her excitement prevented her from finding utterance. At last she quietened down and blurted out what she wished to say:

  “Do you know... she’s his sister.”

  At first they did not understand her. They asked her to repeat her words and to explain her meaning. Of whom was she speaking? Of Sister St. Mary of the Angels!

  “Well, she is the sister of..

  “Chéri-Bibi!”

  The amazement was general. And then doubts arose.

  “Are you certain?”

  “She told the Captain so herself. She thinks she’s going to die. So she told the truth!”

  “Oh, the poor thing!”

  A deep pity was in them; and they did not doubt that she was an innocent victim whose sole offense was to have such a brother.

  Madame Pascaud, conscious of the importance of the moment, entered into details.

  “Of course there’s nothing against her except carelessness, as the Captain told her when he freely forgave her. She came to minister to convicts because, as she said, her patron Saint Vincent de Paul used to minister among convicts. Pascaud heard every word. It seems that what happened brought tears to his eyes. She applied to be sent to Cayenne because she wanted to convert her brother. Convert Chéri-Bibi! She was a little over-confident. She wanted him to pray to the Almighty to pardon him for his crimes. After that she would die happy, she said. The reason why she kept secret the fact that she was his sister was because she felt convinced that she wouldn’t he allowed to stay with him, and that the Government would forbid her to go to Cayenne, because they’d believe that she was there to help him to escape. Say what you like, she’s a good girl who has the proper family instinct. But she’s been badly repaid.”

  The gossips pricked up their ears to listen to Madame Pascaud, and they were about to resume their praise of the nun with the secret hope that she might protect them from her brother, when there was a considerable stir on deck.

  A procession was approaching consisting of the principal officers of the ship with the Captain at their head. They were formed up round a stretcher carried by four sailors, and upon the stretcher lay Chéri-Bibi’s sister, whose name, in religion, was Sister St. Mary of the Angels.

  Her transparent face was as white as the sheet which covered her. She held in her bloodless hands a great crucifix which rested upon her breast and seemed already to be keeping vigil over the dead.

  Nevertheless Sister St. Mary’s eyes shone with incomparable brightness and her lips were moving as if in prayer.

  Behind the group, which was on its way to the cages, marched a number of sailors and a considerable portion of the staff. In a moment the quarterdeck was cleared. The women hastened to obtain the latest news, and they learnt that Sister St. Mary had expressed to
the Captain the wish to be carried from hold to hold before she died, so that she might call her brother and summon him to surrender to the justice of man to which he belonged, ere he appeared before the justice of God.

  The Captain promised that if Chéri-Bibi surrendered when his sister appealed to him, the life of the savage Toper should be spared.

  “Well, if that’s all the Captain is relying on to induce Chéri-Bibi to give in.. said one of the women.

  “He is quite right to make the attempt,” replied Madame Pascaud. “The sister considers that she was responsible for the Toper’s mutiny, and she doesn’t want him to be shot to-morrow, you may be sure.”

  “No; she would like to go straight to Paradise, poor girl, without having anything to reproach herself with. She’s a saint.”

  The stretcher was taken down to the lower deck and the convicts could see through the bars of their cages the white vision as it passed. When they recognized Sister St. Mary of the Angels, they took off their caps, and a few of them, who had not entirely lost all sense of religion, made the sign of the Gross.

  They reached the lower berth deck and opened the hatch leading to the hold into which it was supposed that Chéri-Bibi had escaped when he left his cell. A great silence fell around the stretcher illuminated by the lanterns carried by the sailors, and Sister St. Mary of the Angels raised her voice. It was an exceptionally powerful voice. She must have summoned up her entire strength in this supreme effort.

  “Chéri-Bibi!” she cried. “Chéri-Bibi, it’s I, your sister, who calls you. Have pity on me, Chéri-Bibi, I’m dying. You know how much I loved you when you were a little child. Chéri-Bibi, I still love you. Heaven will forgive you. In Heaven’s name I call upon you to surrender and die with me. Chéri-Bibi!... Chéri-Bibi!...”

  Her voice died away, and they listened for the least sound to ascend from the silence of the hold. But there was no movement and no answer in the darkness.

  At the end of a few moments the nun cried: