Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  Yes, Chéri-Bibi was overcome with fear. Nevertheless if in the midst of such dread events he was able to retain the power of deliberate judgment which, since he had been lifted to a new career, had transformed him into one of the justest men of his day, he would not have failed to realise that if his turn had come it served him right. For after all, he had often, in his time, terrified honest people at night, and it was right that he should himself experience, at least once in his life, that feeling of intolerable anguish which renders the bravest man powerless, and makes him quiver like a child surrounded by the mysteries of the night.

  The Dodger had lost his courage. Groping in the dark his hands encountered a door which he shook in vain. It was a door that led to the upper floor, and it was locked. He made for the other door. He felt the lock; there was no key. But he lifted the latch and the door gave way. He had but to push it open.

  “This door opens on to the staircase leading down to the restaurant” he whispered to Chéri-Bibi, who was bending over him. “We have only to go down stairs. We can then open a window and jump out on to the quay.”

  Chéri-Bibi seized him by the wrist.

  “Don’t open it.”

  He feared some trap.

  It was hardly likely that this way out should have been reserved for them out of friendliness. And as they stood there in absolute bewilderment, Chéri-Bibi pressed his forehead with feverish fingers not knowing whether to advance or to retire.

  He thought of his wife and child, all that he loved in this world of misery. And he beheld the swift and harrowing vision of the sweetness of his home, of the calm restfulness of the soft nest at the Villa on the Cliff in which he ought to have been then, instead of wandering in the secret channels of darkness and crime, dressed and armed like a malefactor.

  “You see,” he said to the Dodger who was holding on to him like a child to the skirts of its mother, “there are some trades in which it is best to be without a family.”

  As he uttered those words of wisdom he felt something fall lightly on his hand. It was as though drops were trickling one by one from the ceiling. And at that very moment the terrible gasping which they had heard before broke out anew. It still came from the floor above.

  He caught a slight sound as of someone dragging himself along the floor. They had not moved a muscle and Chéri-Bibi’s hand was still clasped to his forehead; and he again felt the warm drops fall on his burning skin.

  What was happening in the room above?

  What was about to happen in that room? What was being planned against them? Into what snare would they be hurling themselves if they made the least movement? And what was the meaning of that gasping?

  Chéri-Bibi leant towards the Dodger who was suffering unutterable anguish and took his lantern from him. He uncovered the light with extreme care and looked at his hand. It was red with blood.

  Blood was dripping from the floor above.

  Chéri-Bibi started back in affright. It was long since he had been accustomed to that particular kind of dew.

  And drops of blood continued to fall from the ceiling on to the floor with the monotonous cadence of drops of rain trickling through a badly soldered gutter spout. The rain of blood added immensely to their feeling of terror.

  Brought to bay, they both stood in the gloom, their backs leaning against the door through which they dared not pass. The Dodger was armed with a knife, and Chéri-Bibi waved on high his jemmy as if it were a club, for they had forbidden themselves the use of firearms. Thus they waited for some event to take place which would enlighten them as to the extent of the calamity which was prepared for them. They would have preferred an open attack to this state of pitiable suspense in the darkness, while above their heads someone seemed to be lingering in his death agony.

  A small part of the floor was lit up by the rays of the lantern which they had placed at their feet. And within this compass of light the rain of blood continued to fall...

  Suddenly a white scrap of paper fluttered on to the same spot....

  There must have been sufficient room for the letter to slip between the rotten planks of the ceiling. Perhaps it contained a warning. Perhaps it would be the saving of them. Perhaps it set a new trap for them.... The thing was to be certain. Chéri-Bibi crept up to the bloodstained note picked it up and held it to the lantern. The few words on it had been written in blood:

  Tried to save you... I am dying.... Beware... Chéri-Bibi I love you... torture you until you sign away everything... the will I believe... gime.

  A few words were written between “I believe” and the last syllable “gime,” but they were so intermixed with the blood with which the note was smeared that they had become illegible.

  Chéri-Bibi lifted his eyes to the ceiling but the gasping had ceased; nor could he hear any movement along the floor.

  “The Countess,” he muttered, tearing up the note and placing the pieces in his pocket.

  In order to read it, he lay stretched on the floor nearly level with the lantern. He was greatly surprised when listening for the sounds from above which had suddenly stopped, to hear distinctly the murmur of voices from below.

  He glued his ear to the floor.

  And now he caught sundry phrases exchanged quickly in an undertone, such as: “Let’s wait”; “He must be at the job still”; “The safe is very strong”; and then a sentence which revealed to him his adversaries’ plan: “ They’ll have to come downstairs.”

  The enemy was lying in wait for them below as he had feared. It was there that they had made ready their trap. He congratulated himself on having pulled up the Dodger at the moment when he was about to go downstairs If he had not done so both of them would now be held prisoners by these miscreants while after all no such thing had happened.

  In spite of the appalling rain of blood which continued to drip from the upper floor, Chéri-Bibi gradually recovered his self-command. He knew that they were looking out for him. He had time to think things over, to consider what risks he could take. He no longer had anything to fear from the upper storey so long as he did not go upstairs, while he had everything to fear from the ground floor if he went downstairs.

  He had no intention of venturing upstairs to the assistance of the hapless woman who was in her death throes. The part which the Countess had played seemed to him too suspicious for him to spare any pity for her, or to cease to be on his guard against her interference. That blood and that death agony were perhaps only play-acting. No, the thing that he would like to know there and then was: How many men were below?

  At the moment when, to his surprise, he clearly heard the conversation between the accomplices below, he noticed that he had flattened his ear against a small trap door the ring of which fitted almost exactly into the wooden floor.

  It was a tiny trap door, not more than the width of two hands. It must have been used by the proprietor either to supervise the work of his staff when he happened to be upstairs, or to shout his orders to their or to observe for himself the character of his customers.

  Chéri-Bibi motioned to the Dodger to switch off the lantern once more, and he managed quite easily to put his finger in the ring and lift up the small board. He stooped over the hole thus exposed in the flooring. His face seemed as if it were lit up by a distant and mysterious glimmer, and almost immediately he drew back stifling an exclamation. Notwithstanding the quickness of the movement his companion had caught a momentary glimpse of Chéri-Bibi’s startled face.

  The Dodger taking a look in his turn, cast a glance above the small space so strangely luminous, and he, too, instinctively fell back in the same way. And then both of them. holding their breath, returned and crept to their peep-hole, and head to head, stared in dismay at the sight below them. Their hands, meantime, met again in a nervous grip which conveyed from one to the other the extent of their excitement.

  The spectacle that met their gaze was hardly calculated to reassure them. Lit up in ghostlike fashion by the niggard light of a small lamp,
which was almost entirely turned down, and shrouded by way of greater precaution with a band of paper which prevented its rays from penetrating throughout the dining room, parts of which were in complete darkness, certain faces, terrifying because they were the faces of men, who as it were, had come back from the dead, loomed up silent and motionless.

  Four men were seated round the table.

  The unspeakable dismay which filled Chéri-Bibi and the Dodger was comprehensible inasmuch as the four ghostly figures whom they recognised were the Toper, the Top, Carrots and another hardened criminal from the financier’s cage, called Barefoot, who was notorious for his cowardice and brutality.

  Thus the flower of the “Bayard” was there. They had accompanied the Kanaka in his travels and were reckoning on a stroke of fortune which, doubtless, he had promised them if they would assist him in his project against the Marquis. The Marquis had been far too easy a prey in the first instance, and they would attempt to repeat the experiment on a larger scale, and after subjecting him to a new imprisonment fleece him, this time, to the skin.

  From all appearance the Kanaka, who was physically weak and devoid of courage, had not dared to risk a struggle with Chéri-Bibi alone. And hence he had brought the gang with him so as to have Chéri-Bibi at his mercy.

  Suppose they knew everything? Suppose the Kanaka had told them the whole story? Chéri-Bibi put the questions to himself torn with anguish. Suppose they knew whom they were pursuing in the guise of the Marquis du Touchais?

  He called to mind Little Buddha’s satirical greeting to him on the card in the writing table.

  “The scoundrels know everything” said Chéri-Bibi hoarsely, dragging the Dodger into a corner of the room. “Did you recognise them? They all come from my cage. Oh the misery of it! The entire past comes back to me.”

  “Monsieur le Marquis, listen to me” said the Dodger shivering all over and conscious that since he had seen those terrifying faces his courage had ebbed away. “We had better give in.”

  Chéri-Bibi made no reply. He was deep in thought. He thought with the full force of his mind. In the interval between the crime that had been committed on the upper floor from which blood continued to drip, and that which was being prepared down below, he still found time to think. Little Buddha, the Toper and the others knew everything. They were fully aware of the secret which the sham Marquis du Touchais came to wrest from the mahogany writing table that stormy night. And since they were in possession of that secret, they would by degrees squeeze him until they drove him to death, after robbing him of every sou.

  Could he enter into negotiations with those men? Would it be possible to live with that menace perpetually hanging over him? Seven persons now were in the secret. Heaven only knew what they would do with it. Seven persons who would scatter over the four corners of the world, and who from time to time would return and show him their hang-dog faces and hold out their hands anew; seven persons who were brought together that night; for he did not doubt that the Kanaka was somewhere near, superintending the plot as well as the agony of the Countess if it were true that she was suffering death for trying to save him, of which he was not certain. Yes they were all there, all the men who knew or, at least, who were likely to know. Providentially they were all there! It was thus that the affair presented itself to him in the frightful blaze of conflicting thoughts with which his mind was consumed.

  And so after his waverings and fears he was himself again, the Chéri-Bibi of the old days, when he rushed headlong against his fate in order to triumph over it once more. But this time he was grateful to Fatalitas for bringing together for a single and definite task the last survivors of the men who could have encompassed his undoing.

  He would kill them all. He felt that he was a match for them all. The mania for murder was already throbbing in his hot veins. He turned to the Dodger whose trembling ceased when he saw, or rather felt, that he had become suddenly strong and said:

  “Kill the lot without a sound.”

  From that moment his plan was formed.

  Knowing what they wanted to know about the gang in the restaurant below, they had a marked advantage over them because the gang knew nothing of what was happening on the floor above, a fact which would end by unnerving and wearying them, and by forcing them to mount the stairs and see.

  Well, then, they should see. After all the thing was to dispose of two or three of them without creating a disturbance.

  Chéri-Bibi took up a position a little at the back, near the door, armed with his heavy jemmy.

  The Dodger returned to his post of observation. The ominous figures below had not stirred. Vaguely he caught on the table the pale glint of glasses which were being drained in silence.

  The Dodger had looked in vain for any sign of the Kanaka and Little Buddha, when suddenly the latter emerged from the darkness and bending his yellow face over the Toper whispered in his ear.

  The Toper’s eyes were raised to the ceiling; and it seemed as though they were talking of those whom they could already regard as their prisoners, and were expressing surprise that no further sound came from them. The Dodger almost at once discovered Little Buddha making signs, and the lamp which shed a feeble light was still further turned down and then taken away and placed on the mantelpiece. The Dodger went over to Chéri-Bibi and told him what he had seen.

  Chéri-Bibi pushed him aside so as to retain full liberty of movement, and standing him against the wall opposite gave him instructions not to budge.

  The rain had now ceased and as often happens after a violent storm, the moon shone out between two great clouds.

  Chéri-Bibi seemed to hear in the absolute silence the creaking of one of the stairs. He imagined that Little Buddha was tired of waiting, and had made up his mind to see for himself what was occurring on the first floor, and he held his breath. He was not mistaken. The sound was repeated, and soon after the handle of the door was turned and the door quietly opened.

  The moonlight streaming into the room revealed clearly the look of amazement on Little Buddha’s face, for he expected to find the two men engaged in opening the writing table. At a first glance he could perceive no one.

  His second look, perhaps, would have discovered Chéri-Bibi and his lieutenant standing against the wall, but he was not given the time for a second look.

  Like a beast in a slaughter-house which receives a blow from the axe which it does not expect, and which falls to the ground without a groan, Little Buddha collapsed without a sigh into the arms of the Dodger, who laid him with the utmost care on the floor, drawing him slightly back from the door so that his body might not be in the way of other inquisitive persons who would not fail, doubtless, to make their appearance.

  Chéri-Bibi’s jemmy, which a little while before had smashed the mahogany writing table somewhat clumsily, had cut open Little Buddha’s head quite neatly. In short Chéri-Bibi set to work with not a little promptitude and was “getting his hand in” to such purpose that without presumption he need not despair of completing his task.

  A good five minutes elapsed when they heard, through the little peep-hole which remained open, the noise of moving feet and some amount of whispering followed by the echo of a footstep on the stairs which there was no attempt to conceal.

  The door had been softly pushed back by the Dodger.

  The footsteps came to a stand half-way up and after a pause or a few seconds the Top’s hoarse voice was heard shouting aloud:

  “Well, what’s happening, Little Buddha?”

  Little Buddha was unable to reply and for a very good reason.

  “Damn it all” screeched the Toper, “I bet they’ve cleared off.” And he shouted “Little Buddha! Little Buddha!”

  When he reached the door he made the error of thrusting forward the tip of his nose to “see what was going on.”

  The terrible jemmy swooped down like a hammer on an anvil, only the anvil offered no resistance.

  “That’s two of them accounted for!” sai
d the Dodger in a tone of philosophy, placing the second body beside the first.

  The unfortunate part was that this fine performance could not be kept up with the same regularity. The Toper had fallen with a crash; and the three other men rushed pell-mell to the stairs.

  Chéri-Bibi and the Dodger recognised distinctly the voices of the Top, Barefoot and Carrots. They were all jabbering at once. There was no need to worry any more about the Kanaka. They had not seen him, nor had they heard them.

  “Oh the swine they’ve done ’em in, they’ve done ’em in, they’ve done ’em in” they shouted.

  “Hold your jaw” growled Carrots, “One cannot hear one’s self speak. If they don’t behave themselves upstairs we shall know how to cook their goose.”

  “Please let me speak” begged the Top of financial fame.

  Barefoot shouted:

  “Dodger be sensible up there! Look here, Dodger, we don’t want to do you any harm.”

  In other circumstances the three miscreants would have rushed headlong into the fray, and put their hearts in it without asking by your leave, but they seemed to have received some definite order which hampered them, notwithstanding that the fate which had befallen their two confederates was by no means calculated to reassure them. Someone must have said to them:

  “Whatever you do, don’t make a noise to disturb the neighbours, and don’t fire your revolvers.”

  It was not, of course, their business to kill their hostages, but to deprive them of all power of resistance, to have them at their mercy, and their numbers were five against two, not forgetting the Kanaka and the Countess and the fact that the Dodger, in their eyes, might be left out of account. It should have been easy for them to complete the business. Therefore they were taken aback, distraught, by the brutal fact that what had happened above had deprived them of two of their best men.