M. Hilaire, as was natural, began to swear like a trooper.
“He would never forgive me for such a thing,” he said.
“Who is ‘he’?” asked Subdamoun.
“The Man up above,” said M. Hilaire, attempting to refasten the rope round Subdamoun.
CHAPTER XXXII
CHÉRI-BIBI AND HIS SON MEET AGAIN
CHÉRI-BIBI, AT THE top of the chimney, hauled away at the rope. He could hear an unusual commotion at the foot of the tower. It seemed as if the civic guards on the quay were being warned from the Conciergerie Prison of the drama on the roof. Suddenly shots rang out and bullets ricocheted from the tower.
The position was critical. They must act quickly. Chéri-Bibi pulled at the rope and at last a head and then a body appeared. Chéri-Bibi seized it with fierce joy.
“It’s me,” came from the breathless and anxious voice of M. Hilaire.
A yell of fury ascended heavenwards in the night, and Chéri-Bibi hurled M. Hilaire down the chimney again.
M. Hilaire crashed to the bottom in a somewhat sorry state. His hands and face were bleeding and he complained of backache.
“There, what did I tell you,” he said to Subdamoun, who deplored the result, and just then the door began to give way under the furious assaults upon it.
But the major had no time to condole with M. Hilaire. He was seized, borne down, tied up like a parcel by the demon who had descended from the clouds again, and hoisted up at the moment when the door gave way at its hinges.
Shots were fired up the chimney, but by a miracle they missed both the Man and Subdamoun.
More shots from the banks of the Seine greeted them as they emerged from the chimney. But here, too, they were missed. The Man took Subdamoun in his arms. He held him without roughness, almost with tenderness. He crept with him to the gutter of the roof.
“We are saved,” he said.
Subdamoun did not believe a word of it, but all the same he marveled at the Man’s courage. Chéri-Bibi placed him on the side opposite the quay so as to shelter him from the volleys fired by the civic guards and the shots of certain warders of the Conciergerie Prison appearing at windows in the roofs.
The Man hooked the grapnel at the end of his rope to a gutter and let the rope hang downwards so that the lower end fell on another roof below. Then he put the rope in Subdamoun’s hands. Subdamoun understood that he was to drop into the void. The rope swung with his weight. At last he reached a firm foothold.
The Man unhooked the grapnel so as not to part with his rope, rolled the rope round his shoulders, slid down a rain pipe with surprising dexterity, and was by Subdamoun’s side before he could make a false step which might have proved fatal.
They were in almost complete darkness, and Subdamount could not understand how the Man contrived to see things around him which were indistinct to him, though he had some experience of keeping a look-out for danger.
A regular wilderness of roofs and shadowy places lay around. Chimneys loomed up suddenly like so many enemies lying in wait for them. Subdamoun could not restrain a start from time to time when taken by surprise. At last the Man said: “Don’t be afraid,” and then at once corrected himself. “I beg your pardon,” he said, ashamed of advising a man like Subdamoun not to be afraid.
Subdamoun understood his meaning and was touched. He had not seen the Man’s face in the darkness. He was sure he would not know him again.
To begin with he was not unduly surprised by this nameless devotion. He had observed on the battlefield the need which ordinary men feel to devote themselves body and soul to their chiefs. This Man was doubtless some obscure soldier in the great civic battle that Subdamoun was waging against established authority. Nevertheless the events on the roof could not fail to rouse his highest appreciation, not only of the strength but of the presence of mind with which the man disposed of every obstacle likely to impede their progress.
He led their flight so as to keep away as far as possible from the vicinity of the quay whence the shots came. And Subdamoun felt vaguely, as they traversed the twists and turns of the various roofs and gutters in which his strange guide was moving as though he were at home, that they were making for some specific objective.
A storm broke forth. Rain fell in torrents. The Man took off his coat, a sort of cape, and threw it over Subdamoun’s shoulders.
Strange to say Subdamoun flung it aside with a shudder. The Man noticed his gesture and gave a groan.
“I am sorry,” he said meekly.
“I don’t want to deprive you of it,” returned Subdamoun, picking it up and giving it back to him. “You need it as much as I do.”
He was surprised at his own instinctive movement of repulsion. The Man did not persist.
Suddenly a flash of lightning blazed from one chimney to another. This time Subdamoun could see his rescuer’s features. He leant for support on a slate behind him, filled with horror.
“He has the mug of a convict,” he groaned.
Fortunately, the Man could not see Subdamoun’s face or he would have read on it such a look of disgust that he might perhaps have fallen backwards to the pavement. The sound of a body of men moving about around them could be heard.
“Look out, men are on the roof. Lie flat on your stomach.”
And in fact a number of figures appeared on a roof at their left. They were the helmeted shadows of firemen, who slid down between two gables and vanished the next moment.
The Man went off to reconnoitre, and saw the enemy again on the roof next to that on which he and Subdamoun were clinging. To reach their roof the firemen had thrown a ladder across which could be used as a footbridge.
They were creeping along this footbridge. Subdamoun, raising his head, could see them. Like shadows on a screen they stood out on the sky, lit by a blood-red moon which had just emerged from behind a heavy cloud.
The Man, after crawling along on hands and knees, stood up. He held in his hand the two ends of the ladder, and the human cluster were hurled in a screaming mass from a height of sixty feet into the court below.
The moon was veiled once more. All was darkness again. “It’s horrible!” wailed Subdamoun like a child.
Suddenly the man stopped. They could hear the rush and cries of pursuers behind the roofs which they were climbing. They came to an attic. The Man tapped at the window. At the sound a head appeared.
“Is that you, Fanor?”
“No, it’s Masson,” was the reply.
The Man pounced on the head and pulled. The body followed, struggling. It was flung into space. Subdamoun shrank back appalled. The Man took hold of Subdamoun and placed him carefully in the room from which Masson had made so dramatic an exit. Then the Man in his turn climbed over and closed the window.
“Now, we must keep silence.”
“What you did just now was murder.”
“You don’t suppose I did it for the fun of the thing,” said the Man in a stifled voice, wincing at the reproof.
But Subdamoun was so overwhelmed that the Man seemed to think some explanation necessary.
“I don’t know Masson. Oh, if it had been Fanor there would have been no trouble. I made a mistake in the attic. I am very sorry.”
Subdamoun did not answer. They could scarcely see in the darkness of the room. They were like two blotches of shadow facing each other.
“Who is he?” wondered Subdamoun. And the Man was in a state of consternation because he was conscious that his boy was angry.
“His boy!”
He had held him in his arms. Chéri-Bibi had held his son in his arms.... Oh, he had held him with all deference... almost tremblingly... and without daring to clasp him to his breast... his heart.
He felt how utterly unworthy of him he was.
The pride of the Republic in the arms of the pride of the Convict Settlement! He had profaned his son by holding him in his arms. He asked God’s forgiveness, and thanked the Devil for it!
Suddenly Subdamoun said i
n a low voice:
“I want to know who you are.”
Chéri-Bibi quivered from head to foot in the darkness.
“What is your name?” added Subdamoun.
“What does that matter to you? I am a detective in the Political Detective Service. I must not have any name.”
“A detective in the Political Detective Service!” repeated Subdamoun, unable to get over his surprise.
“Yes. You should ask M. Cravely my name when you have succeeded. I work for him. I am no party to this business. I carry out instructions. Do you follow me?”
Subdamoun could not believe his ears.
“Are my affairs in such a satisfactory state that Cravely is with me?” he asked incredulously.
“They are very satisfactory if you do not get nabbed. The worst part is over. We have but to go downstairs. But first of all put on Masson’s clothes.”
“Who is Masson?”
“Masson, like his colleague, is a messenger in the Procurator-General’s office,” explained Chéri-Bibi, collecting from a bed standing in a corner of the attic the uniform and insignia of the unfortunate man and placing them before Subdamoun. “We ourselves are at this moment under the same roof as the Procurator-General’s office, and it looks on to the Boulevard du Palais. We have but to go downstairs. I know the ins and outs of this house, and if we meet any inquisitive persons you must say nothing. You will follow me. Your uniform will enable you to go anywhere. In this way we shall reach without let or hindrance the Detective Department. I know a way which is perfectly safe.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, they know me. Are you ready?”
Five minutes later Subdamoun and the Man went quietly down the staircase of the Procurator General’s office. An indifferent light here and there illumined the spacious building, whose highly polished floors caused too loud an echo for Subdamoun’s liking.
Subdamoun had a new surprise when the Man underwent a transformation and became a miserable old fellow with bent back and knock-knees. Subdamoun later vaguely remembered making his way through a narrow and damp passages, the doors in which were opened by the old man with a master key. Here they came upon detectives, to whom he gave some pass-word impossible to understand.
Then they both found themselves out of doors in the darkness of the street. The old man led the way, and, leaving behind him the sounds of the city, turned towards the quay and threaded his way through a deserted street. At the end of the street a closed car with lights out stood waiting. The miserable old man went up to it and opened the door.
“Will you get in, my Prince,” he said in his rasping voice.
Jacques stepped in, and the old man closed the door.
The car got under way. There was no chauffeur, for it was driven from inside....
“Here you are at last, Jacques!”
“Frederic!”
The two companions in arms had many questions to put to each other, but Subdamoun first wished Frederic to tell him something about the old man who had saved his life in such marvelous circumstances.
“He is a great friend of Hilaire. We can have complete confidence in him.”
“It looks like it,” agreed Subdamoun, shaking his head. “But what’s his name?”
“I don’t know. We call him the ‘peanut dealer.’”
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHÉRI-BIBI MEETS HIS WIFE AGAIN
CHÉRI-BIBI WATCHED THE car drive away. When it was out of sight and he could no longer hear the throb of the engine he gave a sigh.
He walked away, and his mind turned to the work that he had still to do before he could go to bed. To begin with, though Subdamoun was out of prison he was not at the end of his difficulties; secondly, Subdamoun’s mother, the admirable Marchioness de Touchais, was still in M. Hilaire’s cellar waiting to be set free; thirdly, M. Hilaire himself was a victim in his turn of the enemies of the nation, and lodged in this Conciergerie Prison into which a gesture of ill-humor on the part of Chéri-Bibi had inopportunely flung him.
Was Chéri-Bibi to desert the faithful Dodger, the friend of his worst days? That would be very unlike him!
Suddenly he uttered a cry. It had flashed upon him that as M. Hilaire’s real mission at the Conciergerie Prison was discovered the police would make a search of his house and discover Cecily there.
Chéri-Bibi started to run like a madman. Other people were also running in front, behind, and around him, without paying attention to him. The sound of shouting could be heard in the locality. Vivid flashes of light shot up on the right like sheaves of rockets, and he heard a voice say:
“The Up-to-date Grocery Stores is on fire!”
Then he cut a gap for himself in the crowd as straight as a cannon ball.
He no longer thought of anything but Hilaire’s cellar and the stock of oil, petrol, and other spirits contained in it which would feed the flames, and in his mind’s eye he saw the deified figure of the Marchioness de Touchais, eyes lifted heavenwards, like Joan of Arc at the stake.
As he turned the corner of the street he came upon, or rather collided with, the police cordon with such violence that they looked upon him as a lunatic who meant to throw himself into the flames.
Two policemen darted forward, but were quickly forced back by the heat of the fire.
The fire-engines, however, set to work throwing in the centre of the building great jets of water which sparkled and glittered, seeming to sustain the fire. Firemen on the roofs used their axes to cut away some of the beams.
The cellar in which the refugees were imprisoned was underneath the “Up-to-date Grocery Stores.”
As we have already stated, this cellar could be reached by a low door, level with the pavement, which looked on to a narrow lane very little frequented, and used in the ordinary way for the delivery of casks. It was only with the greatest difficulty that this lane, masked by a veritable canopy of fire, could be approached. Chéri-Bibi, defying the danger, crept to a spot where no other man dared venture.
Just then he realized that the explosions around him were not caused entirely by the fire, for he was hit by a bullet which went right through his left hand. A firing party was shooting into the burning building from the opposite street. He just managed to rush into the shelter of a door when another volley was fired.
Then the door gave way under his weight, and he heard the well-known voice of his scout Mazeppa saying:
“This way, boss, if you don’t like bullets.”
At the same moment he found himself in the coal dealer’s place.
The shop was beginning to burn, and two women lay on the floor choking for breath, half asphyxiated, while two men, blackened by the fire through which they had passed, were bending over them.
He recognized Lieutenant Frederic Héloni and Polydore, one of Subdamoun’s redoubtable guards, to whom he had entrusted the care of the cellar when the Marchioness was shut up there with the other woman.
He threw himself on the ground, searching for Cecily. He found only Mlle Lydia de la Morlière and her friend Marie Thérèse.
“Where is the Marchioness?” he yelled.
“Jean Jean has saved her,” said Polydore.
“Do you mean it?”
“You can be easy in your mind. We got here in time,” explained Frederic.
“Is Subdamoun here?”
“No. He knows nothing. We drove to the place where we were expected. I saw Mazeppa there, and he told me that Hilaire’s stores were on fire. I left our chiefs to their deliberations and hastened here without saying a word to the Major.”
“Curse all liars,” growled Chéri-Bibi, shaking his bleeding hand. “Where is the Marchioness?” Polydore told him what had happened while Frederic continued his attentions to Lydia and Marie Thérèse, who were gradually coming to themselves.
“While we were running away from the fire they shot at us. I carried the young lady Lydia. Jean Jean took the Marchioness. We cut off in different directions to force the police t
o scatter. I saw Jean Jean with the Marchioness in his arms on the roofs beyond the stores. He was out of danger. When I got there I was too far behind him to pass that way. I came back here along the wall, knowing Mazeppa was waiting for me, and the coal dealer our Lieutenant, had brought the young lady Marie Thérèse here. Oh, you can be easy, boss, we looked after the ladies. Ask Mazeppa. Now we must think where to hop it, for it’s getting as hot here as a baker’s oven.”
But Chéri-Bibi did not appear to notice the heat. No longer troubling about Lydia and Marie Thérèse stretched on the floor, for whom the Lieutenant was doing his best, he asked, as though they were of no importance:
“Have they been firing on you long?”
He flattened the youth Mazeppa against the wall, and the young blackguard had to explain everything to him fully, while Polydore set to work to clear the far end of the cellar of the many sacks of coal that filled it so as to uncover a sort of underground passage leading to a court usually deserted, whence they could make their escape. “Well, here’s the whole story,” said Mazeppa.
“It’s a certainty, boss, we’ll get our hair singed here. The coal dealer” — he pointed to Frederic— “when he left me told me to come to him in the Avenue Jena if there was the least trouble, and when I saw police and a gang of men of the Division...”
“What then?” growled Chéri-Bibi, fuming with suppressed rage.
“Well, I cleared out. Wait a bit, boss. These fellows had come from the Arsenal Club to search the place as Hilaire had helped Subdamoun to escape, so they said. They were not in the shop five minutes before they were exchanging shots with Jean Jean and Polydore, who had come up from the cellar to prevent them from going down. The shop assistants turned tail, yelling like mad. I said to myself: ‘This is a wash-out. As I don’t know where the boss is I’ll go and tell the coal dealer.’ I slipped out in less than no time to find the Lieutenant. I saw him enter the back door of the house where he was expected with Subdamoun. The coal dealer noticed me. He came out again and drove me back here with him in the car. He didn’t waste any time, you bet. We did our seventy-five miles an hour. But things were pretty hot here. Furious at being kept out of the cellar, the police set the place on fire.... And the good ladies below were screaming. I heard Mme Hilaire’s voice shouting for help as if she were being roasted alive. Poor Mme Hilaire! She was the only one we didn’t bother about.... She soon stopped her noise....”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 233