Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “We certainly will do so, M. Titin. Did you wish to see father on anything urgent?”

  “Oh no, Mlle., I only wanted to pass the time of day — that’s all.”

  He was making for the door when Mme. Papajeudi appeared, bathed in tears.

  “Is he worse, mother?” cried the three young ladies.

  “Oh, my dears, he is delirious. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He is constantly calling for Titin — Titin and the priest.”

  “But M. Titin is here.”

  Mme. Papajeudi turned and saw him.

  “Oh my poor boy,” she sobbed. “Our dear Papajeudi is very ill. You must go up and talk to him. Besides, he does nothing but ask for you.”

  “I will go up,” said Titin.

  When the son of Carnival entered the room the invalid, who was in a high fever, seemed to wish to get out of bed to meet him.

  “There you are at last! Oh Titin, my good Titin, I didn’t want to die, you know, without telling you... without telling you that I am very fond of you....”

  “But you are not going to die, M. Papajeudi. I am very fond of you, too.... You have always treated me....”

  “Calm him,” whispered Mme. Papajeudi.

  M. Papajeudi looked at his wife.

  “You must leave us,” he said.

  “I will go now, dear.” And she whispered as she passed behind Titin: “My goodness, I have often told him, ‘whatever you do Papajeudi, don’t eat that pastry,’ but he always will puff himself out with it.... Oh you men!”

  When she had left the room Titin drew nearer the bed.

  “Bolt the door and come here. Give me your hand.”

  Papajeudi’s hand was burning hot.

  “I’m in a very bad way, my boy.... Yes, yes I tell you, I’m in a very bad way.... It’s the good God punishing me.... Sit down here Titin. I’ve got to talk to you.... Listen, I sent for my solicitor this morning.”

  “It’s safer, M. Papajeudi and, when all is said, that won’t kill you....”

  “I am going to die. I know what I’m saying. So everything is settled as far as the solicitor is concerned, but there’s still the priest and you, Titin.”

  “Me?” asked Titin ingenuously.

  “Yes, and I am glad to see you before the priest comes.

  Provided you will forgive me, of course.... He, too, will have to forgive me.”

  “What are you talking about? What have I to forgive you for, M. Papajeudi?”

  Papajeudi gave way to tears again and clasped Titin’s hand.

  “My poor Titin... my poor Titin... I am a wretch... a wicked man. I deserve.... Oh, if one only knew when one is young! But it was not altogether my fault. We took too much champagne that evening. I have suffered from remorse all my life, Titin.”

  M. Papajeudi began to “blub” loudly and then hugged Titin, who could not restrain his own emotion.

  “There were three of us. We didn’t know what we were doing. I did as the others did....”

  “Yes,” said Titin coldly. “And my poor mother went mad. She has just died.”

  “I know.... I know.... And I, too, am going to die.... Ah, if one only knew! There, I would give ten years of my life to wipe out the past. You may believe me, Titin.”

  “I believe you all the more, M. Papajeudi,” declared Titin in increasingly cold and distant tones, “as ten years of your life is not worth much now seeing, as you say, you are going to die.”

  “That’s true. But I wanted to tell you how bitterly I regret it.... Listen, Titin. Put yourself in my place. I was a married man. I was in business. I could not give myself up and say: I did it. You can imagine even now the scandal — prison. And my poor wife — she would have gone mad, too. There would have been two mad women instead of one. What good would that have done? All the more as it was me and yet it was not me. The others lured me on. Besides, the others held their tongues. And then what could they have said seeing the evil was done?... But when I knew that you had come into the world I said to myself: ‘That’s not the end of it. I must look after the youngster....’

  “Then I went to La Fourca and saw you with Mme. Bibi. You were as nice a little fellow as could be, and you caught hold of my nose in great glee. Oh, you won my heart right away! Then I made inquiries. ‘He will want for nothing,” said Mme. Bibi. ‘With me and the goats nobody need pity this child....’

  “And then you grew up there.... I kept an eye on you. I was proud of you. I should have liked to tell everyone: Le Bastardon is my son. But I could not, of course, on account of Mme. Papajeudi and my daughters. Afterwards you settled down in Nice.”

  “Settled down?”

  “Yes. You came to live in Nice. You had no money, you know.”

  “I know that,” said Titin.

  “You had a few miserable rags on your back and you did not always eat your fill. Well, you had but to come here. Have I ever refused you anything?”

  “Never.”

  “Admit that I’ve always been very good to you here.”

  “That’s true, M. Papajeudi. Had you been my acknowledged father I ask myself, what more could you have done for me.”

  “Yes, and what about Mme. Papajeudi? More than once she gave you my old clothes; and she never suspected anything. You must not forget that Titin.”

  “I am not forgetting it.”

  “Titin, I am going to die.... You must forgive me.”

  “Even if you don’t die I forgive you, M. Papajeudi, because I’m of no account.”

  “How do you mean — you are of no account? I am more anxious to have your good opinion than the priest’s, you understand.”

  “Oh, it’s not a matter for the priest. It concerns someone who may perhaps stand in your way up above — poor Tina.”

  “Alas, I have often thought of her of late I assure you, and I said to myself, if I do something for you here below poor Tina up above will be pleased.”

  “Oh, you have already done a great deal for me.”

  “No, no. That’s why I sent for my solicitor. I said to him: ‘I am going to die and must make amends for a youthful folly. I have a son; no one knows it, not even he, himself, and I want to leave him something to set him up in life, without Mme. Papajeudi knowing anything even after I am gone. This son was born after I was married and I don’t want my wife and daughters to hate my memory. What must I do? Do you know what he answered?”

  “That these matters can always be arranged,” returned Titin.

  He answered that nothing could be done, that Mme. Papajeudi and I were married under the law by which all our property is held in common, and that a legacy of that nature could not be concealed. He told me that I should be acting to the prejudice of my daughters — a material prejudice and above all a moral prejudice. And this, too, at the very time when they were going to be married. That, my dear Titin, was what the solicitor told me....

  “Then what could I do? I had no wish to see Mme. Papajeudi and the girls suffer for a wretch like me. For I am a wretch, Titin.”

  “Yes, yes, M. Papajeudi, you are an old wretch,” said Titin, rising. Papajeudi wildly held out his arms to him.

  “What are you going to do? It’s all the solicitor’s fault.”

  “Go to blazes with your solicitor.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I am disgusted with you.”

  “Titin.... Titin. You’re not going to leave me without forgiving me. I’m dying, Titin.”

  “Well die,” said Titin.

  Papajeudi started up and then fell back upon the bed, remaining motionless. Titin darted forward, called to him, took him in his arms, but held only a limp, heavy form, clammy with an icy perspiration.

  “God, I have killed him,” he cried.... “I forgive you, M. Papajeudi, I forgive you.”

  Papajeudi opened his eyes again, sighed and asked for something to drink.

  “Oh, that’s better,” he muttered, “I’m burning like a soul in hell. You may be satisfied Titin.
I’m going there right enough.”

  “You must live for your wife and daughters’ sake. You have nothing more to fear from me. I forgive you — on one condition. You must help me to find the man who made you drink so much champagne that night. Menica told me you knew his name.”

  “Menica! So you’ve seen Menica. What’s happened to him? They told me things had gone wrong with him.”

  “Yes. He has been down on his luck,” said Titin.

  “He had money too early. It’s a bad thing to have money too young. Think over what I am saying, Titin. Work — there’s nothing like it.... When one waits for dead men’s shoes....”

  “That’ll do, M. Papajeudi. It’s my turn to speak now. This other man — was he a rich man?”

  “Yes, very rich, but he is not rich now. It’s not worth while to trouble about him, Titin.”

  “I should like to know his name all the same.”

  “I can’t tell you. It would cause too much unpleasantness — unpleasantness in which I should necessarily be involved.... And seeing you have forgiven me....”

  “His name.”

  “I can’t tell you. He is a man who would shrink from nothing.”

  “His name.”

  “I have forgotten it, Titin. You know, I wasn’t personally acquainted with him. It was quite by chance, so he said, that he wanted to enjoy himself with the crowd. One Carnival day we met on the grandstand, and his name was mentioned, but I have forgotten it. He left Nice many years ago. When he came back he had greatly changed. I didn’t recognize him.”

  “His name.”

  Papajeudi shook his head. Titan strode towards the door.

  “Don’t leave me like this.”

  “I am going to call Mme. Papajeudi.”

  “Titin, my dear Titin....”

  “You will have to tell me his name before her. Seeing that he is to blame and seeing he led you on, he must pay for the others. Mme. Papajeudi will understand that, because someone, you know, has got to pay in this business.”

  “But I tell you he hasn’t a sou....”

  “That’s not the question. I know what I am about,” returned Titin, opening the door.

  “Don’t say anything, Titin. You shall know his name. But you must swear not to give me away.”

  “Of course. Come, I’m waiting.”

  “Well, it was an aristocrat, a foreign nobleman, a prince.”

  “Is he in Nice at present?”

  “I should think so.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Yes, you must have seen him.”

  Titin, who had sat down again, sprang from his chair. “It’s that Transylvania Prince,” he rapped out at the terrified Papajeudi.

  “Yes, Titin, that’s the man.”

  “Hippothadee?”

  “Oh, calm yourself. Calm yourself. Don’t shout. Oh, I wish I were dead.”

  “The man who is to marry Toinetta,” cried Titin, striking the bedside table such a terrible blow with his fist that it rocked and collapsed with a deafening crash of broken china and glass. At the sound of the tremendous clatter Mme. Papajeudi and her daughters came running into the room while Papajeudi, on his sick bed, fainted again.

  “What’s the matter? Good heavens, what’s the matter?” cried Mme. Papajeudi.

  “Nothing, madame, we did it while having a good laugh,” said Titin, rushing downstairs, cursing and swearing like one possessed and fingering a knife in his pocket that would indubitably make a few extra buttonholes in the new clothes presented by the Comtesse d’Azila to Prince Hippothadee, on his engagement.

  On chance, and possibly impelled by his unerring instinct, which manifested itself at moments of extreme excitement, Titin rushed straight to the magnificent new flat which the Prince with the help of M. Supia’s cash had taken in the Promenade des Anglais.

  Arriving in the entrance lobby, he came up against carpet layers, decorators, and other workmen who stood aside scared by the grim look on the face of him whom they scarcely recognized as Titin.... He tried to open a door. A flunkey appeared. The man uttered a few words but was flung violently to the landing to join, almost at once, the workmen now fleeing from the scene. Titin felt convinced that the Prince was in. In fact he was in and greatly surprised at the commotion in his entrance lobby. When he saw Titin he grasped that something was about to happen on which he had not reckoned, and that he was face to face, perhaps, with one of the most serious moments of his life.

  But the Prince had seen a great deal in his day. He had escaped so many past dangers that he did not lose his presence of mind. On the contrary, seeing before him a demented enemy, he summoned up all his self-control.

  “I am sorry to have come into your flat without being announced,” said Titin, “but the matter is so urgent that I thought I might dispense with the usual formalities. Monsieur, I am Titin le Bastardon, and I have come to tell you that I intend to kill you.”

  While the Prince’s composure was impressive, Titin’s was not less so. But Hippothadee could not control a start, though he quickly recovered himself again, adjusted his monocle, and eyeing Titin from head to foot, asked: “Fight me... or kill me?”

  “Kill you. I know that you are not lacking in courage and are an expert with the sword and pistol and saber. No, I do not intend to risk giving you an advantage of which you might avail yourself at my expense. I am going to kill you and have done with it, because one does not fight a duel with a man like you.”

  “You are afraid?”

  “Titin le Bastardon is not afraid of anyone. Only I don’t intend to be taken in and allow a low hound like you to run me through so that you may be able to continue calmly your little games.”

  The Prince had stealthily drawn nearer the button of an electric bell. Moreover, he had maneuvered in such fashion that a desk stood between him and Titin.

  “I did not expect such a long speech from an assassin,” he said in his quietest tone.

  “It means that I wanted you to know before you die why I am taking your life.”

  Titin was in deadly earnest. He fixed a bloodshot eye on this detestable man who, after victimizing his mother, wanted to make Toinetta his wife. He opened his knife. The Prince thrust his hand towards the wall and with unexpected strength shot the desk at Titin’s legs. But Titin, as nimble as a monkey, leapt over it and fell upon him before he could touch the bell. He threw him to the ground, put his knee upon him, and clutching him by the throat pressed hard. He lifted his knife.

  “For Tina,” he shouted in his ear. “Think of the Carnival in eighteen hundred and eighty....”

  But he had scarcely uttered these words when the Prince managed for a moment to thrust aside the fierce pressure of the fingers that were choking him and gasped:

  “Some mistake... mistake. Tina — never heard of her. Was not in Nice that year.”

  Before striking the decisive blow Titin thought it well to give the Prince further information.

  “Tina was my mother.”

  “I don’t care a rap about your mother. I never heard of her.”

  “I am your son.”

  “Why, you are mad — quite mad. I can tell you that at once. You are — confusing — me with someone — else. — ...

  Let me get up. — You have — been misinformed. — ... — You must be mixing me up with my brother.”

  “Are you or are you not Prince Hippothadee?” shouted Titin.

  “All our family are called Hippothadee.... Let me explain, and you’ll see that we shall end by understanding each other.... — Hang it all, how violent you are! It’s no easy matter to talk to a — man like you, you — know. In our family, we are all called Hippothadee, after a famous ancestor who, it seems, rendered great service to the country at the time of the first Turkish invasion. Since then all Princes of Transylvania have been called Hippothadee, And so I am called Vladimir Hippothadee and my elder brother is called Marie Hippothadee. In the West every one calls us Hippothadee. But at home I am Prince Vladi and
my brother is Prince Marie. Well, it was Prince Marie who came to Nice at the time you mention and behaved so badly towards your mother. As for myself, I had nothing to do with the matter. I did not come to Nice for the first time until some fifteen years later.”

  “I beg your pardon, Monsieur Hippothadee.... Vladimir....You may get up,” said Titin, closing his knife. “But we haven’t finished our talk for all that. I was on the point of killing you but it only depends on you for us to become good friends....

  “Besides I have made inquiries about you. The result is most unfavorable.... Let me continue, if you will. You are entirely on the rocks after ruining several of your mistresses. You are living at the moment at the expense of the Comtesse d’Azila — that’s your business. All the same you are not a very pretty gentleman. Well, in spite of these miserable affairs of the past, I might have some respect for you if you give up a plan which covers a last act of depravity, in which you have certainly allowed yourself to be drawn by the criminal schemes of a man I despise even more than I despise you. I mean M. Supia. Understand me, my reason for speaking to you on this matter is because I am interested. I have known Mlle. Agagnosc since she was a baby, and she has done me the honor to continue her friendship. She lost her parents when she was very young, and is not happy with the Supias. She is so far from being happy that to get away from them she has agreed to marry you. You or anyone else, it’s all the same to her. She does not know you. But I do know you.”

  “You mistook me just now for my brother.”

  “Let me continue. I know what a poor gentleman you are. Well, I who all but consider myself Mlle. Agagnosc’s foster-brother, say to you: this marriage shall not take place, and I ask you if you wish to remain good friends with me — I mean by that if you don’t want me to interfere in your affairs — I ask you to give up Mlle. Agagnosc on your own initiative.”

  “Well, M. Titin, suppose I tell you that the charm which I find in Mlle. Agagnosc has made a new man of me? Suppose I tell you that I feel quite capable of making her happy — that I am in love with her? Don’t you see in these circumstances, the difficulty?..

  “No,” interrupted Titin savagely. “No, that won’t do.”