An hour elapsed, during which he did not catch a glimpse of M. de Meyrentin, look for him as he might. At last, the wheel arrived and, together with the wheel, a fresh array of passengers, newly alighted from the train, who were taking advantage of the delay of the diligence to make use of this unhoped-for connection with the Chevalet district.
There were fourteen of these new passengers. Never had the yard of the Black Sun contained such a crowd. It did not occur to Patrice to feel astonished at this rush of travellers nor at their curious demeanour. And yet, for common people who had done a journey together, was it not difficult to understand that they had nothing to say to one another? There were peasants among them who wore their smocks very clumsily: for instance, they did not know where to find their pockets, as though they had forgotten where they were put. Then again, these yokels were sad-looking men, with white faces or yellow, never red and wrinkled, like the ordinary faces of the Morvan peasants.
They asked no questions of Roubion. He, on the other hand, asked questions of them, but they only gave vague answers and turned their backs on him. Roubion felt so greatly puzzled that he went and woke up Mme. Roubion, who sat down at her window, in her night-gown, with her hair in curlers, to watch the departure of those extraordinary customers.
Patrice, who had retired to a corner of the room, left it only to take his seat in the diligence. When about to do so, he was alarmed at the crowd that filled the inside, especially as two more passengers appeared at that moment, carrying between them a small portmanteau which seemed to be very heavy. They packed themselves and the portmanteau into the coach and, strange to say, none of the occupants protested against the introduction of that luggage into a space already so well filled.
Patrice had come down from the step. Mme. Roubion called out to him:
“Why don’t you go outside, M. Patrice?...The weather’s fine!...”
The young man raised his flushed face. How loudly she had bawled his name! It must have been heard all over the village...as far as the Vautrins’, at the end of the road...
He made a hasty reply, for politeness’ sake, and, so as not to attract attention to himself, scrambled up to the top, which was empty, whereas the inside and the coupé (*) were crammed. And he flung himself into a corner of the tarpaulin, out of the way of the trunks which Michel, assisted by the ostler standing on a ladder, was strapping down.
(*) The coupé is a half-compartment in front of the main body of a French coach or diligence and immediately behind or under the driver’s box. — TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The horses were put to and stood shaking their bells impatiently.
“It’ll be a nice time to get there!” grumbled Michel, adding, between his teeth, “If we get there at all!...”
But Patrice did not hear him. He thought only of concealing himself, he wondered if he would pass unperceived when the diligence entered the forest near the Three Brothers’ cabin.
A start was made at last, amid much horn-blowing, whip-flourishing and jolting over the cobbles of the Rue Neuve, and the vehicle lumbered off at a slow trot.
Before they entered the forest, Patrice ventured to glance at the Vautrins’ shanty: it was closed and there was nothing suspicious on that side; but his eyes, looking up higher, at the manor-house, saw the dainty figure of Madeleine waving her handkerchief from the little door that opened on the woods.
Patrice felt a pang at his heart: not that that organ swelled straightway with immoderate love, but rather with a sudden fear produced by this imprudent act.
“Well,” he said to himself, “I don’t call that at all clever of her. I should have thought that she knew better!”
However, he recovered his composure in the forest. Every yard that took him farther from Saint-Martin added a trifle to his peace of mind.
It was not to last. They had not gone much over a mile through the trees, when Michel gave an oath and pulled in his horses, one of which had suddenly shied:
“Oh, it’s that Zoé!” snarled Michel through his toothless gums.
Zoé!...So she was everywhere...everywhere that he, Patrice, was! She was pursuing him...Perspiring with fright, he huddled under his tarpaulin, but she most certainly saw him, for she called out:
“Ah, good-morning, M. Patrice!...So you are off!...Where are you going?...”
And, when the other failed to reply, she yelled a “Good-bye!” to him, accompanying the salutation with a fit of laughter that sent a cold shiver down the young man’s back. Long after Zoé had disappeared from sight, pursued by a parting cut of Michel’s whip, Patrice beheld her ominous little figure skipping in the white dust of the road.
“Do you think that we shall reach Saint-Barthelemy before dark?” Patrice asked the driver.
“Not before ten o’clock to-night!” replied the other, ill-temperedly, cracking his whip. “We sha’n’t be at Mongeron, for lunch, till two.”
The prospect of travelling part of the night through the forest was far from delightful to Patrice, who relapsed into his very gloomiest thoughts.
Michel was clearly not a talkative person. He did not even turn his head when the young man spoke to him; he seemed very busy with his horses and also with the road, which he watched carefully and constantly with his little red lidded eyes. Patrice was surprised at being alone on the roof, when there were so many inside, and imparted this reflection to Michel, who replied, drily:
“That’s their business!”
Most of the passengers stepped out when the diligence began to toil up hill. Only the two travellers with the portmanteau did not stir from their corner on the back seat, near the coupe. They had put the portmanteau under the seat. Michel remained on his box and Patrice did not get down either. He felt not the least inclination to stroll along the roadside and gather wild flowers.
The journey continued thus, monotonously and with out incident; until Mongeron, where they arrived at two o’clock and where a cold lunch was served.
Patrice had thought, for a moment, of sleeping at Mongeron and resuming his journey next morning in a hired carriage, so as to avoid going through the forest at night; but he ended by preferring the risk of travelling, even at night, as one of a numerous company to that of staying in that lonely inn right in the middle of the woods.
Nothing happened during lunch. When the diligence started, the passengers took the same seats as in the morning. They were chattier now and, when climbing the hills, began to talk to one another like old friends. They even looked as though they were exchanging confidences around the diligence, which they were careful to keep in sight.
Patrice more than ever regretted the fatal notion that had made him hit upon this way of escaping from Saint-Martin. The high-road, since he had seen Zoé, now appeared to him the most dangerous of all, especially since it was beginning to grow dark. They had long ago come to the tall, thick trees which gave this southern forest its gloomy name of the Black Woods. The daylight made its way with difficulty through the dense foliage. And, under the great trees, what a silence! The crack of Michel’s whip alone from time to time awakened the echoes of that wilderness.
However, Michel was no longer so silent as in the morning. The Mongeron innkeeper had given him of his best and filled his drinking-can with good white wine. Patrice heard him talking to himself at intervals, with many a knowing head-shake. He seemed to have resigned himself to something known to himself alone and kept on saying:
“Go ahead!...Go ahead!...”
It might be six o’clock in the evening when they arrived at the Côte du Loup, so-called because the hill is overhung by a rock which, with a slight stretch of the imagination, almost resembles the shape of a wolf. The coach was once more emptied of its passengers; and Michel, dozing on his box, was letting the reins drag on the horses’ cruppers, when he was suddenly roused from his slumbers by a voice that shouted to him from the road:
“Don’t go to sleep, Switch!”
Patrice’s own eyes were suddenly opened!...Switch!..
.Who had shouted, “Switch?”...And whom was it meant for?...He bent over the road and saw standing by the horses a man who, until then, had stayed inside the coach on all the hills, one of the two who had hustled him on the step, in the morning, as they were lifting in the small, heavy portmanteau. He was a little wizened chap, with a cap on his head, and his appearance corresponded pretty closely with the description which Hubert Vautrin had given when telling his brothers about “Switch and the little bloke.”
The little wizened chap had his nose in the air and was looking up, half-jestingly, at the driver, who playfully gave him one with his whip between the legs.
Patrice moved his eyes from the road to the box of the diligence:
“What!” he said, with an agitation which he did not strive to conceal. “Are you Switch?”
Michel did not reply.
“Excuse me, monsieur,” Patrice insisted, “but are you Switch?”
“What’s that to do with you? My name’s Michel Pottevin, but they can me Switch, in these parts, for fun. It’s a nickname like, which Mother Vautrin gave me, as a lark, in the old days. We used to dance together, at Saint-Martin Fair, before she lost the use of her legs. She’s no good at that now. Seems that, in her jargon, ‘Switch’ stands for ‘the driver.’ Perhaps it means that because of my whip: true enough, I always look as if I had a switch in my hand, same as a man who goes fishing. Is that all you want to know? Are you satisfied?”
Patrice was unable to reply at once. The wizened little fellow in the cap had scrambled up beside Michel and was whispering in his ear. The other shrugged his shoulders. The little chap got down again and Switch said:
“Well and good, if it suits you. I’m not keen on it, myself!”.
A strange gleam suddenly lit up the situation in Patrice’ bewildered brain. Was there ever such luck as his? Here was he taking the diligence to escape adventures and finding himself let in for one of the most dangerous affairs imaginable since the attack on the Lyons mail: a coach-robbery! How was it that he had seen nothing, guessed nothing since the morning? His brain must be full of past events, not to have noticed what was being plotted around him! Oh, he was sure of it now! The two-hundred-thousand-franc job was to come off presently, at once, perhaps!...Yes, yes, it was quite simple, too simple!...The heavy little portmanteau contained the cash to pay the workmen; and it did not take much to guess the kind of cashiers that all those passengers were!...He understood it all: the two and a half hours’ delay of the diligence; M. de Meyrentin’s persistency in remaining with Mme. Godefroy, the postmistress, whom he had gone to pull out of bed, immediately after his conversation with Patrice!...Ah, the magistrate had taken all the time he wanted, after contriving the trick of the wheel, to arrange for the protection of the two hundred thousand francs!...It was he who had sent to the prefecture, by special train, for all these sham peasants, with the aid of whom he hoped to lay hold of the Vautrin gang, the whole gang, the Three Brothers and the mysterious accomplice!...
Patrice’s only hope now was that the plan might prove too simple. He thought that the Three must already be warned and that it was not for nothing that Zoé had kept watch at the station and in the forest. They would never dare risk it. And Patrice was now crossing the Black Woods guarded by a whole regiment of detectives...
The poor lad tried to screw up his courage with these arguments, for he was utterly down-hearted. The last discovery had done for him. And, above all, he was angry with M. de Meyrentin for not warning him.
It grew darker and darker. It was not yet night, but the dank dusk that fell from the arch of gloomy verdure under which the coach was now driving was more impressive than night itself, for the darkness did not seem natural, but rather contrived with sinister intentions by the evil genii of the forest.
“Don’t be silly, get back inside!” said Michel to the little wizened man, who was trotting along, cracking his jokes, under the horses’ noses. “I don’t like the Côte du Loup!...”
At these words, the passengers on the road manoeuvred so as to keep closer around the diligence, gradually, without any apparent order. It was easy fat Patrice to see that the approaches to the carriage were well guarded. Those gentry were ready for all eventualities, with their hands in their pockets or under their smocks, doubtless concealing their weapons.
“Mr. Switch,” said Patrice, creeping nearer to the driver, “it was I who spoke to M. de Meyrentin, the magistrate, this morning!”
This time, the other turned right round on his seat: “Ah, it was you who discovered the job got up by the Three Brothers, was it? Well, you’ve done a pretty thing, my boy, you have!” said Switch, lighting his pipe. “I can’t congratulate you.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Patrice, taken aback.
“Why, you must be fond of whacks to mix yourself up with such things!...Well, there, you’re a plucky one!...I don’t care, after all...I’m all right with them; they won’t hurt me...and I sha’n’t do anything to make them, you take my word....But, as for you, my lad, since you’ve chosen to prate, you’d be better off if you were safe at home!”
“Then I oughtn’t to have said anything?” asked the young man, not knowing which of his saints to invoke and mechanically wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
“You’d have done wiser not to,” said the other.
“Not as far as you’re concerned, at any rate! If I’d said nothing, you would have been much more certain to be attacked and there would have been no one to protect you!”
“It’s not me,” replied Michel, logically enough, “it’s not me they’d have attacked: it’s the cash-box of those contractor-chaps; and a fat lot I care for the cash-box of those contractor-chaps!...There may be a million inside, for all I know!...It’s not for me, is it?...The others would have taken it away quietly; and I should have gone my road, that’s all, see?...Now, let’s understand each other...I know nothing: it’s you who know all about it...The judge says to me, the Vautrins are going to do so-and-so!...I, I don’t say no, I say nothing!...It’s the first time they’ve been informed against...and it’s you who’ve had the cheek to do it!...Well, my lad, I hope it may bring you luck!...”
All these words of Michel’s, while giving Patrice a sense of the magnitude of his courage and the immensity of his imprudence, filled him with the greatest confusion.
He felt a fool and bitterly regretted interfering in this matter of the two hundred thousand francs which might turn out so badly for him.
“But, when all is said,” he sighed, “you surely don’t believe that the Three Brothers will dare to attack us, protected as we are!”
“I don’t say that they will,” the driver retorted, obstinately, “but I don’t see why they shouldn’t, if they want to!”
“Do you think they won’t realize that all this pack of sham peasants are only coming with us to protect the cash?”
“Oh, if it’s they who are to do the job, you may be sure they know all about it by now!...They must have watched us from more than one corner of the road!...”
“Can they follow us as easily as all that?”
“Oh, they’re as quick as quick can be!...There’s not a quicker animal in the forest, that’s sure...They’ll have seen us from in front, from behind and from both sides; and they have cross-roads which take them all round is without our suspecting it for a minute!...Yes, my gentleman, you might almost say it was they that made the forest and not Providence!”
“I’ve heard a lot about what they do in the forest...”
“And about what they don’t do, I expect!...I wasn’t born yesterday — you’re so something more of a chicken — and it’s longer ago than yesterday since people began to speak of the Mystery of the Black Woods!”
“What’s the Mystery of the Black Woods?”
“You’d better ask the people who sometimes travelfrom the Chevalet country to the Cerdogne country. They may answer...but there’s not one who’ll ever complain, you bet your boots!”
&nb
sp; “Is it truee what they tell about travellers being stopped by a gang of masked highwaymen?”
“Oh, that’s very old, very old!...That’s a worn-out trick, the trick of the black masks...Nowadays, when people travel by diligence, they feel almost comfortable...provided they behave properly to the Wolf Stone.”
“What do you mean by behaving properly to the Wolf Stone?”
“Have you a five-franc piece about you?”
“What for?”
“Give it to me!” said the other, taking the coin which Patrice produced from his pocket.
And he threw it to the little wizened man, who stood in the midst of the group, cap in hand. The little man picked up the five-franc piece, without asking for explanations, and climbed the bank a few steps away. This bank was surmounted by the enormous Wolf Stone which was seen so clearly from the bottom of the hill. He hung on to the slope and emptied the contents of his cap into a hollow in the stone, which emitted a silvery sound. Then he threw the five-franc piece in and scrambled down again.
Patrice watched this performance without understanding a bit of it. His eyes wandered from the Wolf Stone to the passengers and the driver. Michel chuckled with delight at seeing his mystification:
“What you have just seen, young gentlemen, is the wolf’s pence”— “Click, clack!” — with the whip— “that’s it: the wolf’s pence” — and he gave another “Click, clack!” for the wolf’s pence.— “Catch the idea? You don’t? Well, when a traveller has paid his wolf’ spence, he can feel more or less comfortable between Cerdogne and Chevalet, young gentleman!...Now that you have given your five francs, I could tell you to set your mind at rest, if this was an ordinary day. But to-day it’s another pair of shoes: there’s the matter of that wages chest downstairs, young gentleman!”
“Then is that the Mystery of the Black Woods?”
“Part of it...”
“So they’ll come presently and fetch the wolf’s pence? The men below have paid so as not to rouse the Vautrins’ suspicions, I suppose?” added Patrice, knowingly.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 292