“Oh, he hasn’t seen me, he isn’t here yet. He is coming here for Cravely, who is waiting for him in a private room; and I’m pretty sure, like you, he won’t recognize me.”
“No, but he will recognize me,” said the Baroness.
“That’s not certain, but don’t let us waste time. Your last letter gave me some hope of success.
“As it happens, I shall probably be delivering her washing to-night.”
“Then have you at last got the address where she is hiding?”
“Not yet. But the boss will have to give it to me. The Marchioness must be reduced to her last garment.”
“Are you certain that you are dealing with the Marchioness?”
“Well, of course. The boss knows her linen well enough, I suppose — she has done her washing for years.”
“Oh, if we only knew where she was hiding it would be a splendid stroke. If we had the beautiful Cecily and Mlle de la Morlière in our hands we should at once be able to ask whatever we liked from Daddy Peanuts.”
“Meantime?” asked Vera.
“Meantime things are not too bad. Some of them are dropping him. I have ten of them under control at present. Ten notorious fellows who, like me, used to have a holy terror of him.... Well I have talked to them. I have made them see that we can’t go on like this and had better take advantage of the present row to get rid of this friend who is exploiting us. And, upon my word, they, too, have given him up. With eleven of us together we shall make up a force that Daddy Peanuts will soon have to reckon with; all the more so as the fellow has been in a bit of a funk since the coup d’état failed. That fairly upset him.
“At first he took up his quarters in the courtyard of the hotel at Versailles. He managed to get civic cards, issued by the Arsenal Club, distributed to his pals. With those civic cards he could do what he liked. That was how he got Pagès himself to appoint him to take charge of the beautiful Sonia and Lavobourg.
“His object was obviously to bring about Sonia’s escape and to denounce Lavobourg, who had betrayed Subdamoun too late to receive much consideration from the revolutionaries.
“Now it so happened that, concerned solely with the fate of Subdamoun, who had been arrested, Daddy forgot to give any order to his pals, and when he came back to look for these louts, as he calls them, they had surrendered both Sonia and Lavobourg to Pagès’s men, who had come in search of them.
“That was how Sonia and Lavobourg came to be lodged in the Conciergerie Prison at once while Subdamoun was only transferred there in the night. Take it from me, Daddy doesn’t know which way to turn.”
“We shall never get out of the clutches of that brute,” sighed Vera.
“What nonsense! Let dear little Jacques die on the guillotine and it will be all up with Chéri-B...”
The Baron was about to utter the name but had ventured to pronounce only the first syllables when he turned pale and came to an abrupt stop. At that moment the door was slowly opened — very slowly. And the sham Russian student and the sham laundry-maid started back in terror. Daddy Peanuts himself came in and reclosed the door as softly as he opened it.
“Please excuse me, everybody,” he said in a voice that was almost dead, “but you, Baron and Baroness, will certainly forgive my indiscretion when you know the cause that brought me here.”
Never had he seemed so poverty-stricken, so pitiable. His shoulders were still more bent, and his miserable head drooped on his chest as if the segments of his spinal column had lost their power to support it, and swayed from side to side with a constant nervous twitching painful to the sight.
Vera retreated to the wall. She could not move a limb, hypnotized by the sinister figure that had loomed up before her. As to the Baron, he uttered a growl, his jaws set in an impulse of revolt, and between his teeth he cursed the malevolent fate that made him for ever the sport of this monster.
“I’m sorry,” at last the old man gasped. “You must give me time to pull myself together.... I’ve been running. Just fancy, I was afraid of missing you and the Baroness, and as I like you both very much I should never have forgiven myself...”
“No more of this jesting, Daddy,” broke in d’Askof in a blank voice. “How did you learn that we were here?”
He already suspected the ex-flunkey of giving him away.
“Well, it’s like this,” clucked the old man, “we patronize the same laundress.... Well, well, a little laundress in the Rue aux Phoques, my children, who does washing for all Daddy Peanuts’s friends.... A very respectable business, don’t you think so, my child?” he said to Vera.
D’Askof gave a gasp of admiration for this king of bandits.
“Even that!” he said to himself. “He even has the same laundress.”
When it was a question after the grievous business of the coup d’état for them to escape alike the clutches of the new Government and Chéri-Bibi, it was at once the Baroness’s laundress and Chéri-Bibi’s laundress — Chéri-Bibi’s laundress! — who offered them her services, furnished Vera with a disguise, and employed her as ironer — pending better times and Chéri-Bibi’s orders!
Meantime the Baron had lived in the suburbs and passed himself off with others who, like himself, were traitors to the peanut dealer, as a Russian Communist. Well, that was another secret society which Chéri-Bibi could snap his fingers at, and d’Askof was prepared to bet now that old Zim, the proprietor of a public-house, who made them welcome and gave them meat and drink in his resort of artists, full of old pictures and bric-a-brac, was another of Chéri-Bibi’s men....
Chéri-Bibi for the moment gave his attention to the Baroness.
“You will presently go back to the shop, having done your errands. You will enter the laundress’s office. The dear lady is waiting for you in the little study, where she keeps her books of accounts. She is waiting for you at the window. I prefer to tell you now so that you may not be taken too much by surprise when you arrive — she is waiting for you, hanging by the neck at the window.”
The “little laundry-maid” began to sway in her chair, but Chéri-Bibi’s tremendous paw kept her from falling.
“She has left a short letter on her desk, wishing her lover good-bye. In the eyes of the world the dear lady will have died over a love-affair.... Died of love at her age — she was fifty-two! But the brave never bring forward the excuse of old age — nor do fools. We who are clever, madame, know why this woman died. We have only to look at her tongue for that. When you go into the laundress’s little study, look at her tongue. It is tremendously long. Your employer died because she had too long a tongue!”
Vera looked as if she were about to faint. D’Askof intervened, pale and grave. He could imagine Chéri-Bibi massacring them both as though they were dogs at the mere thought of the Baroness and himself suspecting Cecily’s retreat. He realized that never had there been a more serious moment in the relations between himself, the Baroness and the peanut dealer.
“Now let us speak of the matter that I came to see you about, my dear d’Askof. You must lend me a hand to get Subdamoun out of prison.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked d’Askof, digging his nails into his hands in his helplessness.
“What do I want you to do to get him out of prison?” repeated the old man, rubbing his huge hands. “Well, to do that it will be enough for you to go into it!”
“How do you expect me to go into the Conciergerie Prison?” asked d’Askof.
“There’s a price on my husband’s head. They are hunting him high and low,” wailed the laundry-maid. “They will recognize him at once. Do you wish to ruin him? If that is what you want, say so, and have done with torturing us.”
“How you love him!” said Chéri-Bibi gravely. “But I, too, am fond of him — because I need him. Therefore, don’t be afraid. I will bring him back to you, dead or alive.”
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” gasped Vera in tears.
“Besides, I will do the best I can, and Daddy Peanuts, you know, c
an do what he likes, particularly if his orders are carried out. If you will take my advice, dear lady, you will at once say good-bye to your husband and go straight back to the Rue aux Phoques without turning your head. Do you understand me? Without turning your head — whatever happens, whatever you hear, whatever is said to you. If you do that nothing will happen but what must happen in the interest of all of us, my dear Baroness.”
Chéri-Bibi opened the door. The Baroness went out slowly, with her basket of linen on her arm. Tears trickled down her pale cheeks. She tried to speak, but it was beyond her power. Moreover, the door closed after her.
Chéri-Bibi was about to resume the conversation when the sound of an altercation was heard at the end of the passage, followed by the trampling of feet, the tumult of many voices, and suddenly a piercing cry:
“Stay where you are!”
D’Askof tried to throw himself on the door but Chéri-Bibi barred the way.
“Surely you heard her cry: ‘Stay where you are!’”
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?” asked d’Askof breathlessly.
“I will tell you,” replied the old man roughly. “But you see how difficult it is to deal with women. I told her to go right ahead, whatever she saw or heard. The first thing she did when she left this room was to cry out.... The silly fool!...”
“But why did she cry out?”
“Because she saw the passage full of detectives, who have come for you.”
“What!”
“Don’t get excited. They won’t come in until I go out. It is understood that they will not interrupt our conversation. So you see, if I have to hand you over to Cravely it’s entirely your own fault — you have only yourself to blame...
“I had Cravely’s confidence,” went on Chéri-Bibi, “but you and your friends have done your best to weaken it. You have warned him so often to beware of Daddy Peanuts that he hesitates now about working with me. And I have never needed his help so much as now that Subdamoun is in prison.... My dear fellow, I shall never completely win back Cravely’s confidence until I have made him a present of Baron d’Askof. Do you grasp my meaning.
“You will hand me over?” he cried.
“So as to make sure of saving you, my boy — you and Subdamoun. As you can see for yourself, you can be of some service to me there, and believe me it’s a master stroke on my part. I wipe out at once, let us say your inconsistencies, and make you pay for them, and consequently I have nothing further up against you. I save Subdamoun’s life, and it stands to reason yours into the bargain.... Moreover, I win back Cravely’s confidence. Come, Baron d’Askof, you ought to congratulate me.... And now, good-bye, and rely on me!”
D’Askof’s frenzy, and his powerlessness to give vent to his feelings, betrayed itself for a few moments in involuntary and confused gestures. But after his distorted face had revealed the bitter hatred that he bore for Chéri-Bibi and his rage at being called upon to risk his own neck to save that of a brother whom he would gladly have led to the scaffold, he had to bow to the inevitable. In other words, there was nothing for it but to submit.
“How shall we communicate in the Conciergerie Prison?” he asked in a whisper.
“Through the Inspector of Prisons, an intimate friend of mine, and the delegate of the Central Vigilance Committee.”
“What!” he growled, at an utter loss. “The Inspector of Prisons, the delegate of the Central Vigilance, is your friend and you need me to rescue Subdamoun from the Conciergerie Prison?...”
“You ass!... My friend has not yet been appointed to the position.”
“When is he to be appointed?”
“Cravely will not appoint him until I have handed d’Askof over to him. Do you see, my friend?”
“So that’s the idea,” was all he could say.... Assuredly the boss was still the boss, and there was no fighting against him! “All right — anything you like,” he added. “I am your man. Have me arrested when you please.”
Chéri-Bibi gave a whistle and, picking up his tub, opened the door and went out. In the passage some twenty detectives were gathered. They fell upon d’Askof, who offered no resistance, but quietly submitted to the handcuffs. They dragged him into the café. At the street door a taxi stood waiting. He was bundled into it and driven off at once to the Conciergerie Prison....
The peanut dealer followed a man whose face was beaming up the stairs leading to the first floor private rooms. The man opened a door and pushed the dealer into a small room, where pen and ink lay upon a table. The dealer held a paper in his hand.
“I want you to sign this at once.”
“Anything you please, Daddy Peanuts,” agreed Cravely. “But are you certain the plot is as serious as you say?”
“Well, the whole prison is in it. It means prisoners murdering their warders — and they will be provided with arms.”
“But suppose we transfer Subdamoun to another prison?”
“Don’t do that on any account. Nothing must be allowed to leak out, and soon we shall have the whole gang in our hands. But I must have an Inspector of Prisons who can be absolutely relied on.”
“Do you answer for him? What must I say to Coudry when I ask him to put the Committee’s seal on his appointment?”
“Say it’s most urgent. Moreover, the man for the job is the same Hilaire, secretary of the Arsenal Club, who with a dozen friends kept Lavobourg and the beautiful Sonia prisoners in one of the hotel rooms.”
“Ah, that’s all right.... A capital idea.... Besides, he will do anything I ask him when I tell him that d’Askof has been taken....”
Cravely signed the document.
CHAPTER XXII
M. FLORENT ON THORNS
AS MAY BE assumed, respectable citizens in those troublous times remained in their burrows like rabbits. But the rabbit that left his burrow least of all was M. Florent.
After the failure of the attempt to establish a dictatorship he returned to Paris in a state of consternation.
Truth to tell M. Florent’s despondency was due less to the dangerous condition of the country, which, according to his own expression, was in the power of murderous demagogues, than to an unpleasant fear for his own personal safety. He bitterly upbraided himself for having without being forced to do so declared publicly in Versailles that the Republic was “on its last legs.” Every one of his anti-revolutionary utterances at a time when the Revolution, in spite of his prognostics, was succeeding, seemed to him to be so many incalculable blunders.
M. Florent lived in a small flat on the fifth floor of an old house in the Marais quarter. It was his intention to shut himself up in it and to go out as little as possible, exercising the greatest caution.
He was on good terms with the concierge Talon, a cobbler, an honest man, who shared his political opinions and professed great contempt for supporters of public meetings. Therefore M. Florent hoped to get through, without overmuch difficulty, the worst days which, in his belief, would soon be over, for he still maintained that the whole tragicomedy would collapse. Nevertheless, when at a corner of the street he encountered a mob waving swords and pikes he began to think that things were taking a turn for the worse.
A yelling crowd was pouring out of a military museum which it had plundered of its obsolete weapons, and as the screaming figures of women mingled with it, such as may be seen in old French prints of the time of the taking of the Bastille, M. Florent could believe that they were back again in those stirring times.
He was seized with an attack of weakness and took refuge in a porch to allow the mob to pass. Suddenly the street was filled with an immense crowd shouting: “Down with Subdamoun! Long live the Revolution!” escorting in triumph a number of prominent men of the day. M. Florent, thinking that he was possibly being watched, shouted at the top of his voice: “To the lamp-posts with all aristocrats!”
Thereupon a self-possessed gentleman, M. Saw, whom he knew quite well, for he used to lend him books from his circulating library when he was i
n business, and whose quiet manners and moderate opinions were the object of general commendation, said:
“M. Florent, there are no lamp-posts now.”
M. Saw strode forward and mounted a passing bus. M. Florent flushed crimson. M. Saw was aware of his opinions and would certainly regard him as a weak coward. Disgusted with himself, he hurried away.
On reaching his flat he was struck with the furtive air with which Citizen Talon greeted him. Seated at the back of his badly lighted workshop wearing a dirty cap and fiercely hammering the sole of a boot, the concierge seemed to suggest to M. Florent’s mind Simon the Cobbler. He thought it well to explain that he had been taking a breath of fresh air in the country and, having just returned, knew nothing of the latest news.
“All right,” growled Talon. “But to-morrow you must call at the Arsenal Club and get a card of good citizenship, otherwise I shall be compelled to inform against you.”
“You, M. Talon — would you do that?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind. Representatives of the Club have been here. They are visiting every house. As times go, and seeing that the bourgeois are longing to overthrow the Republic, the least the people can do is to defend themselves. Between ourselves, M. Florent, let me tell you for your own good, it’s high time you changed your opinions.”
“Well, for my part I am only too anxious to live in peace,” returned M. Florent in increasing anxiety. “You are quite right.... And I see as far as you are concerned you haven’t hesitated either.”
“How dare you,” broke in Talon, rudely. “You don’t know what you are talking about. You have never known my real opinions because I have always concealed them. But to-day it’s an easy matter for me to show them.... As we are the masters we needn’t make a fuss about anyone.... Look here, I admire the way they treated suspects in the time of the Commune, as it is called, in 1871.”
“Don’t talk to me of the Commune, M. Talon. The Revolution gave us a Government. The Terror gave us a Government. But the Commune gave us nothing at all — it was simply brigandage — yes, plunder and arson.”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 223