Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  M. Florent took a different view. He told him so flatly. The two friends continued to wrangle, and M. Hilaire, obviously irritated, suddenly rose, and begging them not to disturb themselves, stated that he would be back soon. He left the dance. It was the third time that he had sneaked off in this way.

  “He is a mystery. I shall remember his evening out,” declared M. Florent.

  After M. Hilaire had left, a gentleman with a spreading beard, clad in a loose-fitting great-coat and soft felt hat pulled well over his eyes, sat down in the vacant seat.

  “That chair is taken,” said M. Barkimel.

  “It belongs to one of our friends who is coming back and won’t like to find his seat occupied,” added M. Florent.

  But say what they might the intruder did not seem to hear them.

  “Are you deaf?”

  “What’s that? What’s the matter? What did you say?”

  “We said that this chair is engaged.”

  “No, gentlemen, this chair is not engaged. When a chair is engaged you put something on it, but nothing was on this chair. I shall keep it.”

  “Look here,” said M. Florent with a dignity that excited M. Barkimel’s admiration, “do you take us for a couple of idiots?”

  “Yes, gentlemen,” the man in the soft felt hat made answer.

  Barkimel and Florent exchanged glances with gleaming eyes as though they were thinking of reducing this impertinent interloper to pulp, and then M. Florent with the same dignity said:

  “Since you talk in that style we have nothing more to say.”

  “Quite right,” said M. Barkimel.

  The man imperceptibly moved his chair away from the table, drawing nearer the box occupied by the beautiful Sonia.

  “He’s afraid,” said M. Florent.

  “You sat upon him,” said M. Barkimel.

  Just then M. Hilaire returned and was surprised to find his chair gone.

  “That gentleman took it from you,” explained M. Barkimel.

  “The devil he did,” cried M. Hilaire.

  At that moment the man rose from his seat and leant his back against the corner of Sonia’s box, and M. Hilaire ran over and regained his chair, whereupon the man smiled.

  “He never said a word. At heart he is a coward,” said M. Barkimel.

  “Not to mention the peculiar ways of the swanker,” said M. Florent. “Look at him slipping in front of the box with his hands behind his back.”

  “If I were in the beautiful Sonia’s place I wouldn’t take any risks and let my wrist-bag hang down like that.”

  “Look the man is in front of the bag. Now he has passed it and the bag is gone!”

  “Thief! Stop thief!” shouted M. Hilaire in a shrill voice.

  The man was even now some distance away, creeping among groups of persons near the exit. M. Hilaire darted forward: “Thief! Thief! Stop thief!” he shouted again. He was at once surrounded, hustled, and even struck.

  “What thief? What thief?” some one asked, raining blows on him.

  Rescued by a municipal guard, he at last explained himself:

  “A man ran off with Mlle Sonia Liskinne’s wrist-bag.”

  Every eye was fixed on the actress’s box.

  “Have you been robbed of your wrist-bag?” asked the municipal guard.

  “I? Why, I didn’t bring a wrist-bag with me,” she returned.

  “But, hang it all, I was not dreaming,” cried M. Hilaire, driven to exasperation. “A few minutes ago a wrist-bag, held in madame’s hand, was hanging out of the box.”

  “The man is mad,” said Sonia.

  “When a person indulges in these sort of jokes he should confine himself to tap-room dances,” said another.

  “You are not accustomed to fashionable society,” said a strange, muffled, harsh voice which seemed to come from the ground.

  M. Hilaire gave a start. He saw an old man, almost bent in two by the weight of years, stealing from one place to another like a spectre, and leaving at most of the tables on the ledges of the boxes a few peanuts from the barrel under his arm.

  “Ah, there’s Daddy Peanuts!” came from various tables.

  M. Hilaire had at last discovered the peanut dealer whom he was seeking. He was exactly as Mlle Jacqueline had described him. It was indeed the man in whom the Marchioness de Touchais had expressed so much interest. Therefore he forgot everything to apply himself to Daddy Peanuts, and he returned and sat down once more at his table watching every movement of the strange old fellow.

  “That voice.... That voice... M. Hilaire said to himself. “I have heard it somewhere. But when? It was a very long time ago it seems to me — a very long time ago. Good! He is returning this way. Look out! He is passing the boxes. Now the people in the beautiful Sonia’s box are beckoning him. But he doesn’t care a hang. He’s not going to hurry himself for her.... There! He is placing a pink paper bag in the box. But what’s the matter with the beautiful Sonia? And the gentleman beside her with the golden beard — is he going to faint?

  True enough Daddy Peanuts’ movements created a sensation in the box. Sonia was at first amused by the eccentric old man, greeted by shouts and buffoonery on every side. Then she felt some surprise that the management of so flourishing an establishment should permit this miserable specimen in rags and tatters to appear in such luxurious surroundings.

  “Oh, it would be no easy matter to prevent Daddy Peanuts from going anywhere he wanted to go,” said d’Askof. “He is known in all the night restaurants. He is the friend of all revellers and night birds. I hear he has more money than one would think to look at him, and by selling olives and peanuts has been able to lay by a little hoard. Many stories are told about Daddy Peanuts.”

  “I have been told that he belongs to the police,” said Lavobourg.

  “Very likely,” returned the Baron. “Everything is possible in that matter. But Daddy Peanuts seems to me too old and broken-down for his services to be of any value...

  “Would there be anything surprising in the police using him to send out certain watchwords?” asked Lavobourg in a low voice. “We ourselves have had the same idea.”

  “Exactly,” returned the Baron with a laugh. “I got the idea of using peanuts one night on seeing Daddy Peanuts dole them out to his customers with his melodramatic air.”

  “Look, he is coming this way. Attract his attention.”

  Lavobourg called the old man, and d’Askof, with a calm look and his mind at rest, seated at the back of the box, watched Daddy Peanuts approach them.

  The poor old fellow came up without haste and said to Sonia in his hoarse, hollow voice:

  “Olives? Peanuts?”

  “Peanuts,” returned Sonia.

  “How much?”

  “I leave it to you.”

  The old fellow took a spoon and scooped up and poured the peanuts into a paper bag which he closed and placed on the ledge of the box.

  Sonia could not repress a slight cry.

  The bag was made of pink paper exactly like that which contained the famous list stolen from Jacques and returned to her in so unaccountable a fashion.

  “Oh, that paper!” she said in a whisper, putting out her trembling hand.

  “What is it, lady? Don’t you like the peanuts?” asked the hoarse, hollow voice.

  “Yes, yes,” returned Sonia, quickly opening the bag.

  Then she read on the paper: “Long live Major Jacques.”

  “Isn’t this extraordinary?” she said to Lavobourg, pointing to the bag.

  “I have slogans suitable for every taste. Daddy Peanuts doesn’t care a rap for politics. I have slogans: ‘Long live Major Jacques’ and others: ‘Long live the Government.’ But no one will have those wishing long life to the Government. It’s a pity, for I shall have some left.”

  “That’ll do,” said Lavobourg, losing patience.

  “All right, I’m off,” said Daddy Peanuts. “But I still have a few peanuts over — they are for the gentleman in the box with
you, lady. Not the one who is so impatient, but the other — the silent one at the back.”

  The Baron held out his hand, smiling. The old man put a number of peanuts in it, counting them the while:

  “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven” — at this number the Baron made a movement of surprise— “twelve” — his hand shook— “thirteen” — the Baron leant against the partition....

  Sonia and Lavobourg looked at him. He had become deadly pale.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Are you ill?”

  “No.... Yes.... A passing giddiness.”

  “Well, let’s go,” said Sonia, rising.

  She cast a glance at Daddy Peanuts, now chatting with the three men, who had stared so persistently at her when she entered the box.

  “Lean on my arm, you seem in pain,” she said to d’Askof....

  If the trifling incidents that marked Daddy Peanuts’ presence in Sonia’s box seriously stirred the beautiful actress, what can be said of the ever-increasing anguish with which M. Hilaire heard the old man’s voice?

  How it resembled another voice that was very dear to him in the long ago! A voice that he could never hear without a tremor, a voice that aroused in him every fear and yet every heroic impulse.... To be sure it could not be the same voice. It was without that terrible ring that caused the men between decks to tremble in those wonderful days when it issued orders for the general uprising and revolt of the convicts on the Bayard. [See The Floating Prison, by Gaston Leroux. Translated by Hannaford Bennett.]

  What thoughts!... What memories!... O Book of the Past which he imagined would never again be opened!... So much blood wiped away by so much treacle in the “Up-to-date Grocery Stores!” Poor M. Hilaire! Pitiable Dodger! In the old days as thin as a lath and to-day as plump as a sausage.... He shivered in his Sunday clothes as formerly he used to shiver in the rags that covered his miserable form when he had to work hard to gain a little peace in this vale of tears....

  M. Hilaire, like everyone else, bought peanuts.

  “I say, Daddy Peanuts,” he said, overcoming the emotion that clutched at his throat, “do you know that I too sell peanuts?”

  “What is that to do with me?” returned the old fellow in a disagreeable tone.

  “Nothing, perhaps, but to me it means competition,” explained M. Hilaire, wishing to be pleasant in spite of every rebuff.

  “This gentleman is in the grocery business,” interposed M. Florent.

  “You needn’t tell me that — it’s self-evident.”

  “How much do I owe you, my good man?” asked M. Hilaire, greatly piqued.

  “Have you been in the grocery business long?” asked the old man, pocketing his money.

  “Over fifteen years,” said M. Barkimel.

  “Fifteen years!” repeated Daddy Peanuts. “The Commercial Exchange will have to look after itself!”

  “Let’s clear out,” said M. Hilaire, whose patience was now exhausted.

  But Daddy Peanuts caught the incensed M. Hilaire by his coat-tail.

  “I’m sorry, my lord. But just tell me, do you sell cod in your shop?”

  “Of course we sell cod. What then?”

  “I mean the real, genuine article. Cod prepared in the Spanish way?”

  At those words M. Hilaire staggered. Ah, how fond the other had been of cod prepared in the Spanish way!

  While lost in bewilderment his eyes sought the figure of the peanut dealer who had disappeared, and his lips murmured to himself alone, so low that not a soul could have heard him, the fateful words beginning with a C and a B.

  “Ché... Bi... Bi... Ché... Bi... Bi...”

  Just then a great clamour burst forth in the assemblage. A man mounted a table and read in a loud voice an extract from the Journal des Clubs, the evening paper supporting Coudry; and M. Hilaire, despite the pitiful state to which the mention of cod in the Spanish way had reduced his ego, could not help hearing.

  “Arsenal Club: Citizen Tholosée in the Chair: Report of this evening’s meeting: Citizen Tholosée proposed and succeeded in carrying by a show of hands, amid frantic enthusiasm, a resolution calling upon all Clubs in Paris to unite in urging the Chamber to reimpose the death penalty in political crimes, and recommending the Government to erect the people’s guillotine in the Place de la Concorde so that this place should be worthy of being called the Place de la Liberté.... At the conclusion of the meeting Citizen Tholosée carried a resolution suggesting that the first head to fall in this way should be that of Major Jacques de Touchais, a traitor to France and the Republic.”

  At once a confusion of shouts, cheers, insults and fisticuffs ensued. Some cried, “Long live the Major!” others, “Down with the Major!” and others again, “Send Tholosée to a madhouse!”

  “Set fire to the Arsenal Club!” and what was more important to M. Hilaire, “Duck the Secretary!” M. Hilaire, who had dropped almost fainting into a seat, found himself, as if by magic, alone. Barkimel and Florent had vanished. Then he was suddenly threatened by a hostile crowd.

  “You are the Secretary of the Arsenal Club.”

  “I?” exclaimed M. Hilaire, and having a brain wave: “I can’t even read!”

  Unfortunately his pockets were crammed with newspapers, a fact that did not escape notice, and they were not exactly of that shade of political opinion appreciated by the Major’s friends.

  “Duck him! Duck the Secretary!” was shouted, and a couple of sturdy fellows made a movement to hoist him on their shoulders.

  Suddenly a hoarse voice cried:

  “Leave my friend alone, please. You’re not going to do him any harm, I hope. That’s the grocer who supplies me with peanuts for nothing.”

  “Ah, you should have told us so, Daddy Peanuts.”

  And they loosed their hold of M. Hilaire, by now more dead than alive.

  M. Hilaire gazed at the peanut dealer beside him with unspeakable emotion. He could barely stammer two words in his gratitude, and even so he dared not utter them aloud. “Chér...Bib... Chér... Bib,” he whispered with clasped hands and trembling limbs.

  “Hush!” said the old man, placing a finger on his lip. He made a gesture for M. Hilaire to follow him, and gave a hollow laugh.

  “Oh, it’s his laugh right enough. I recognize his laugh. You can’t mistake a laugh like that. There isn’t another laugh in the whole world like Chér... Bi... laugh.”

  From what infernal region had this ghost of the past returned? M. Hilaire, his body aching and his mind affected, not knowing exactly whether to rejoice or be dismayed by this miraculous encounter, followed the formidable spectre as it crept in the obscurity through the Grand Parc.

  CHAPTER XI

  AN HISTORIC NIGHT

  HISTORY WILL RECORD the Sunday night that preceded the daring attempt to set up a Dictatorship as among the great “historic nights.”

  Major Jacques’s secret emissaries had informed his principal supporters that they must hold themselves in readiness that night for every contingency. In the Senate President Baruch had a long conference with Michel, Oudard, Barclef, and the big Jew Saroch. The latter told them that an effort to corrupt the patriotic and revolutionary integrity of Flottard, the civilian head of the military Government, had entirely failed.

  “We shall know how to do without him,” said Baruch to Oudard, breaking into lamentations. “The Major has promised me that at the decisive hour Flottard will not be allowed to leave his house.”

  Baruch was a wizened, obstinate, little old man who had learned to love the Republic with the staunch and incorruptible Republicans, and had sworn to wrest it from the hands of the revolutionaries and bring it back to the healthy traditions of the good old days when Government was all powerful. To this end he had not hesitated to unite his fortunes, for the time being, with those of a soldier whose assistance was absolutely necessary to him, but he declared to the great Republicans who were in the plot and feared the future while deploring t
he present, that since he was a party to it the “Republic had nothing to fear.”

  Jacques had sounded him with a view to his joining the Provisional Government, but Baruch, born artful, declined, preferring to remain at the head of the Senate and thus to safeguard the near future without rousing suspicion. At heart he considered that the reign of the Provisional Government would be of short duration, for the work of revising the Constitution would be carried through without delay, after which the great Republicans, once more masters of the situation, would be free to rid themselves of the temporary duumvirate with more or less good grace according to the attitude adopted by Jacques.

  What was Jacques doing that night? Shut up in the mysterious and elegant little room in the house in the Boulevard Pereire with Frederic Héloni, he was giving his last orders to his faithful lieutenant and making his final preparations while Cravely’s police believed them both to be in the Avenue de Jena.

  Downstairs in the main room of Little Buddha’s Inn a regular bodyguard under various disguises was waiting for him fully armed — a bodyguard which was to escort him to the Chamber and defend him to the death against every attempt to kidnap him, the only danger to be feared from the treachery which he must needs provide against.

  But the treachery was to arise from a source that he had not foreseen. It entered the house with Lavobourg on his return with Sonia from the Grand Parc ball.

  The car had put down d’Askof at his own door. The unhappy man had excited Sonia’s pity, but she was nothing loth to leave him for, she reflected, his part was played, and they had no further use for him. As she had remained seated between Lavobourg and d’Askof during the evening she felt sure that d’Askof knew nothing of the final arrangements which they had mapped out. Moreover, she had complete confidence in Lavobourg, and was glad to see him so resolved to go through with it at the decisive moment.

  “It’s done,” she said on entering the boudoir. “My wrist-bag has reached its destination. The notices convoking the Chamber and Senate are being distributed now.”

  Jacques thanked her with a motion of his head, continuing to dictate to Frederic Héloni the proclamation which he was to take to the printers immediately the resolution was passed by the two Houses decreeing the revision of the Constitution and the meeting of both Houses in a National Assembly at Versailles. The proclamation was not to be published and posted throughout France until a telephone message was received from the Provisional Government at Versailles.