Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “What do you mean? What do you mean? Look here, have you lost your senses? Come, tell me this: What did they do when they fired upon us?”

  “They did their duty.”

  “And I tell you that you know absolutely nothing about it. You are a girl who can’t see the difference between one kind of death and another.” He went past the glass and caught sight of himself in uniform. “Many more men were killed at the Battle of Trafalgar!”

  He sincerely believed that his sister was quite unjust in comparing his “naval battle,” as he called it, with the criminal incidents in his extraordinary career.

  As she did not answer his sharp retort he turned round and observed that her head had fallen on to the pillow. Her face was so white that he was greatly alarmed, and thought of calling in the Kanaka, who had taken the place, in the sick-bay, of the chief surgeon killed on the field of honor. But she opened her eyes again and said with a sigh:

  “Chéri-Bibi, I hope that God, in His mercy is going to take me to Him. I will pray for you, but before I die you must promise me one thing, that you will respect the lives of the people who are left, and will not touch a hair of the heads of the women and children here.”

  “I can promise you, my sister, that we will land them uninjured on the coast as soon as we can do so without danger,” said Chéri-Bibi, almost forcing her to take a few drops of a draught which gave her renewed life. “The women and children are in their own quarters. I will see that they want for nothing. I am having them guarded, and there is nothing to fear on that score.”

  In spite of his promise Sister St. Mary betrayed a certain anxiety.

  “The poor things,” she complained. “I fear the worst from such ruffians.”

  “You can be easy in your mind, I assure you,” he replied with a knowing air. “The ruffians have everything they want.”

  “What do you mean?... You frighten me.”

  “Weren’t there women prisoners in the cages?”

  “Oh,” she muttered with a blush.

  “There’s no ‘Oh’ about it.... Both parties are made to understand each other. And then don’t think that my men are heartless. Some of them even burst into poetry. They used to write each other love letters, and the unfortunate thing was that they were kept apart. Well, now they are together. They are satisfied; they don’t want any wrong-doing, and they are as meek as lambs in my hands. Listen to this as an example: Yesterday, when we were clearing the ship of the dead bodies, throwing them into the sea, two men from the old financiers’ cage took advantage of our saying a De Profundis to fight like a couple of bruisers on the lower deck, for a woman, an old offender, uglier, upon my word, than the seven deadly sins. I broke the heads of both of them with my revolver.

  “Oh, but I intend to have some regard for morality on board. The men have grasped the position, and, please believe me, are now civil to women. For that matter I promised the Captain that it should be so, for he feared lest they might behave badly to the fair sex. Forgive me for speaking of these things, but you brought it on yourself.”

  “Where is the Captain?” —

  “He insisted on joining his crew and the military overseers who were already in the cages. I promised that their lives should be spared in return for their assistance, which we forced them to render us, in weathering the storm.”

  “How do you work the ship now?”

  “By our own resources,” replied Chéri-Bibi, “and with the assistance of the old crew. We’ve kept two helmsmen and the chief engineer, and such other men as are required for the ship’s working. They continue to help us, under pain of death, and subject to the authority of the Kanaka, the doctor who looks after you with so much devotion. He was a bit of a jack of all trades before he found himself among us. He was once at the naval school at Brest, then he studied medicine, afterwards he became a ship’s surgeon, and he’s been round the world several times. He knows a thing or two, and has been very useful to us.”

  “In what way has he been useful? You are convicts and madmen. The day is not far distant when you will he hunted out and punished. Have you considered that an adventure like this can lead to absolutely no good?”

  “My dear girl, people will think that the ship was lost with all hands in the storm. He shall know how to manage that. And afterwards, we shall take our chances like so many other people in the world. But, first of all, I promise you that all the men who are left over from the old crew shall be landed in a safe place. Furthermore, I hope that you will soon be well again. And you too, my dear Jacqueline, you shall be delivered from this hell.”

  “In which you are Satan, Chéri-Bibi. Oh, may the Lord lead you to think things over before you add new crimes to the old ones. Just now, you spoke of the desert. You wanted to become a hermit. If you wish it, Chéri-Bibi, I will go with you.”

  “Too late! I can’t leave my friends in the lurch, After getting them in such a fix, it would be cowardice, take that from Chéri-Bibi.”

  “Your friends?”

  “Of course,” said Chéri-Bibi, “they are detestable rascals. But I didn’t choose their company.... It was the judges who wrongly condemned me. It was society which put me in a cage as if I were a wild beast. It was Fatality which, as I know full well, one cannot fight against.”

  “I, too, Chéri-Bibi, have had my troubles. I, too, have been pursued by Fatality. But I took refuge in religion, not in crime.”

  “You! That’s a very different thing,” said Chéri-Bibi in a dogmatic tone. “You are a girl and I am a man.... There are certain things that a man will not take lying down if he has any grit in him. He begins to kick... particularly if he’s a butcher’s boy! You see, Jacqueline, they were too unjust to me. It was bound to lead to disaster.... But, tell me, what did you mean just now?...You spoke of another murder.”

  Sister St. Mary of the Angels once more raised her eyes to heaven.

  “One drop of blood,” she said, “a tiny drop of blood which was not shed by you in the red sea in which you are sailing.”

  “Out with it. It doesn’t often happen that any one says to me:— ‘You are not guilty of this crime.’

  To what crime are you referring?”

  “To the murder of the Marquis du Touchais, Cecily’s father-in-law.”

  “Cecily!... Tell me about her.... Tell me about her.... Now that my poor parents are dead I’m not interested in what may happen at Dieppe.... But Cecily... Just now when you recalled our walks on the cliff I was thinking of her.... I saw her as she was when sometimes she came among the corn with her mother.... She made herself garlands of corn and corn-poppies... and then afterwards when I delivered the meat she weighed the joints, and always ordered calves’ bones for the gravy.... She asked for them in so soft a voice.... She liked both of us.... Does she still believe that I murdered her father on purpose?”

  “Yes, she still believes it.”

  “Oh!... Does she still believe that I murdered her husband’s father as well?”

  “Yes, she still believes it.”

  The monster clenched his fists and wrung his fingers.

  “That, you see, is the most awful thing of all.... Because I can tell you, and perhaps you have guessed it... I was in love with Cecily. I idolized her.... Oh, of course, it was from such a distance that it couldn’t do her any harm. Well, I shall never forgive your God, you understand, Jacqueline, for allowing fate to sully my reputation in her eyes.... You may say so on my behalf.”

  “God knows that you are innocent of the Marquis du Touchais’s murder.”

  “God is not sufficient. Is there any one else who knows it? Tell me, Jacqueline.”

  “I know it.”

  “Any one else?”

  “Some woman whom you know very well, Chéri-Bibi.”

  “What’s her name?... You must tell me.... You must tell me everything.... As you may well believe, this is something more than a piece of childish nonsense. I am not asking you at random as though it were a date in French history. I insist
on your telling me. If I said that it was to demand justice you would laugh. Is there any justice for Chéri-Bibi? No! But I want justice done to me. Because the person who knows that I am innocent equally knows who is guilty. She knows the man in the gray hat. She might perhaps give me his name. Oh, pray to your God, Sister St. Mary of the Angels, for if it is true I may be able to lay hands on him.... Afterwards I will ask nothing better than to enter a Trappist monastery.”

  “Chéri-Bibi, I haven’t told you all this so that you may be revenged on him. Besides, I can’t help you to wreak your vengeance, for I do not know who the guilty one is.”

  “No, but there are people who do know. Come, my little sister, my little Jacqueline... tell me how it all happened... tell me what I ought to know. You say that you’re going to die. I tell you that it’s not true, but if you think so, you can’t wish to carry a secret like that to the grave with you. I’m listening.”

  “It’s not I who ought to speak, but some one else.... Some one who will reveal everything at the proper time.”

  “But suppose she dies, what would happen then?”

  “She has made arrangements for everything to be known when the time comes.”

  “When the time comes! A lot of good that will do me! But look here, is there no way of putting the clock on a bit? Tell me what you know about it.”

  He spoke to her, the better to persuade her, in the slightly sing-song schoolboy tone and in the rough phrases which were characteristic of the country round about Le Pollet.

  Sister St. Mary of the Angels passed her hand over her forehead, and seemed for a moment to be taking counsel with herself.

  “Yes,” she said, “you ought at least to know who it is that possesses the secret. Listen then, Chéri-Bibi. It occurred some days before Christmas. I was going round the country collecting subscriptions for the poor children in the public nursery. I called on the Marchioness du Touchais.”

  “Cecily.”

  “Yes, Cecily. She was still very friendly with me, often confiding her troubles to me, and never losing an opportunity of alleviating want when I brought a case under her notice, if it was in her power....”

  “What do you mean, if it was in her power? Hadn’t she always the power to do so? I thought those people were millionaires.”

  “They’re getting richer and richer every day, Chéri-Bibi. Old Bourrelier...”

  “The man I murdered,” he jeered in a dismal voice.

  Sister St. Mary went on as if she had not heard him.

  “Old Bourrelier invested his money well. After his death it was discovered that he had bought, for next to nothing, a considerable amount of property in Rouen, in the old St. Julien quarter, and an immense number of old tumble-down houses which, at that time, brought in very little, but which since the municipality transformed that locality have become one of the finest properties in Rouen. It all belonged to old Bourrelier, and it now belongs to the du Touchais’s People say that they cleared more than twenty million francs out of this affair alone.”

  “Twenty million francs!” sighed Chéri-Bibi with eyes upturned as if he could discern the promised land.

  “Oh, the du Touchais’s are immensely rich now. Madame Bourrelier is dead, and her death brought more grist to the mill.”

  “Not altogether,” said Chéri-Bibi. “Cecily Bourrelier had a brother.”

  “Yes, Robert.... She still has him, but I don’t think she’ll have him very long. Cecily’s husband will see to that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, it’s simple enough. The two young men were scarcely out of each other’s sight before Maxime was married. It is the same thing now. They lead very dissipated lives, you understand. Maxime is killing him by degrees with drink... and other things. He arranges for his brother-in-law always to be surrounded by a certain class of women who play his game for him.... For many years it’s been a great scandal in Dieppe. They carry on in a way which arouses comment in the entire district, particularly in the summer during the racing season. Robert Bourrelier is only the shadow of his former self. When he dies, his money, like the rest, will go to the Marquis.”

  “You always say the Marquis’s money,” returned Chéri-Bibi, who was listening to his sister with absorbed interest, “but I suppose it belongs in part to Cecily.... And with a fortune which exceeds thirty million francs, she can certainly help the poor and buy Christmas trees for the public nurseries,” he added dogmatically.

  “That’s exactly where you make a mistake.... There’s something that I haven’t explained. The Marquis keeps a tight hold of the purse strings in his wife’s house. She has nothing at her command. He controls everything. Sometimes she has to ask him for money as if she were a beggar woman.”

  “That’s too thick. But she’s only got to say the word. Everything belongs to her.”

  “I dare say; but she is forced to give way to her husband’s every wish because of their son, Bernard, whom his father is continually threatening to send to a boarding school in Paris to be brought up as he pleases. Remember that the only consolation the unhappy woman has is this son whom she worships, and trains and educates herself. She would rather die than be parted from him, and the thought that he might be taken from her and placed in a school, some distance away, is enough to make her submit to anything. Besides, she never opposes the arbitrary decisions of her husband, and her life is entirely bound up in Bernard. She knows that a part of the fortune, whatever her husband may do, must revert to her child. Consequently the Marquis can go his own way. For that matter he doesn’t worry himself, as I’ve explained. There are many things that I could tell you on that subject, things of an unheard-of cruelty to poor Cecily, but it does not behoove me to enter into those horrors.”

  “Yes, yes, please, Jacqueline, my little Jacqueline, tell me everything... everything that can make me still further loathe and detest the monster who took Cecily from me.”

  He spoke in such tones, alike of entreaty and fury, and the language seemed so extravagant coming from his lips that his sister paused in alarm.

  “When I say ‘took Cecily from me,’” muttered Chéri-Bibi, “I know what I mean, and I am certainly the only one who does know, seeing that she was never mine. But, after all, he robbed her of happiness. Well, it is as though he had robbed me of my happiness, assuming that I ever had any. Do you realize something of what I feel now? Go on, my little Jacqueline... what else has he done, the scoundrel?”

  “Many other things like those which I have just told you.... You will be able to grasp the position. The young Marchioness lived after her marriage at the Château du Touchais on the cliff which you know so well. She settled down there with the Dowager Marchioness, Maxime’s mother. Her own mother, I must tell you, died almost immediately after old Bourrelier.”

  “Yes, yes, you needn’t dwell on that,” said Chéri-Bibi.

  “You will remember what a princely domain the Chateau du Touchais was,” went on Sister St. Mary, “and how Maxime was as proud as Punch of it. Well, one day he made his wife and his mother give up the place, and do you know why? To establish there under the nose of the poor things a... a woman... his... exactly... you’ve guessed it.” Chéri-Bibi, incensed, gave a start.

  “That was too awful, you know, Jacqueline. I have done many things in my life,” he said in a tone of sincerity, “but I would never have hurt my mother’s feelings or put my wife to shame.... Where did the poor women go to live?”

  “They had no wish to leave the country in which they were both born. Cecily went back to the Bourreliers’ house, and the Dowager Marchioness rented a small cottage close by.”

  “I can imagine that there was a great deal of tittle-tattle in the country.”

  “You cannot conceive what a life the Marquis led her. Not a day passed without the other woman managing to inflict some affront upon her.... As you know, Puys is a small place; it’s almost like living in the same street. The odious woman had only to turn round to belittle the Marchioness wi
th her show, to splash her with her carriages and motor-cars. In short, as we say at home, she was the only one in it.

  .. Throughout the district, within a certain radius, although she did not belong to the place, people called her the ‘Belle of Dieppe.’ That was the name which the Parisians who stay at Dieppe during the summer christened her, because the Marquis’s yacht was called the Belle of Dieppe.”

  But what’s her real name? I don’t suppose she’s any better than she should be,” growled Chéri-Bibi, making a wry face. “Some woman who hangs about Paris, some chorus girl!”

  “No, no; she’s a lady, moving in fashionable Parisian society. She comes from Poland, and she has a name, a real name, and lives at her husband’s place during the summer. He is the Baron de Proskof.”

  “Well, and what does the husband say about it?”

  “He doesn’t say anything, and the story goes that he has no say in the matter.... It seems that the Marquis du Touchais took over the Baron’s wife, who is very beautiful, and paid the Baron a million francs.”

  “What a delightful world to live in!” exclaimed Chéri-Bibi, with a gesture of disgust, and tears in his eyes as he thought of Cecily. “Oh, I fancy I see her now.... She must suffer greatly with such carrion round her; she who is so fastidious and sensitive. I can’t help pitying her.... It’s all very fine to say that the creature is ‘the only one in it.’ It’s not fair to allow respectable women to be crushed by a thing like that.... Oh, if I had the power I’d make her sit up. So you say that poor Cecily...”

  “Well, yes.... All this has led me away from the subject, but you now realize that Cecily is not her own mistress and is very unhappy. Every one at Dieppe sympathizes with her... she is so kind.... As I was saying, I called on her one evening before Christmas. It was last winter. I went to see her at her house, but I was told that she had ‘returned’ with her son, the Dowager Marchioness, and Rose, the lady-companion, to Puys, to the Bourreliers’ villa, where they were intending to spend quietly the Christmas holidays. I had to see her at once since I wanted to make up a certain sum to buy a Christmas tree for the poor children. In spite of the snow and the rough weather I did not hesitate to climb the hill, and behold me ringing the bell at the Bourreliers’ house. I never go where we lived so happily with our parents, my poor Chéri-Bibi, without a feeling of emotion which you will readily understand.”