Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  The king of the Patagonians presented him to Irene:

  “This is Black Lake. You will recognize my high priest by his mouse skin cloak. It is he who will marry us.”

  She made no answer. She hastened to her cabin. She was longing for a bath which the old witch-doctor had forbidden in the creek, not on account of the sharks, but because he hated the “Mother of the Waters,” this siren which through the centuries had played so many tricks on the Botocudos.

  Strange to say, the thought of a bathroom, a looking-glass, a set of brushes, and dainty sheets after the miseries of the jungle, wiped out every anxiety from her mind, for she was getting used to nameless fears. She was about to open the door which led to that priceless blessing — a little comfort — and already the thought of it gladdened her, when, opening the door, her joy may be imagined as she beheld her maid. Yes, Sylvia was in the cabin. Sylvia herself, looking the same as ever with her prim austerity, her faded complexion, her pale green eyes, shrewd but without fire, her smooth hair, her black frock and her lace apron. She was seated engaged in needlework.

  Irene uttered a great cry and put out her arms. Had she found a beloved sister whom she had not seen for ten years she could not have been carried away by a deeper outburst of feeling. Sylvia rose, slightly surprised, and said:

  “I did not expect to see you so soon, madame.”

  “Kiss me, Sylvia.”

  Sylvia humbly kissed her hand.

  “You see, madame, that I am putting your linen in order.”

  “I asked you to kiss me.”

  “Oh, madame!”

  It was Irene who took her in her arms. She hugged her, almost stifling her. Sylvia wondered if her mistress had gone crazy, particularly when she began to sob on her shoulder.

  “Good gracious, what’s the matter? Why, how hot you are! You must be in a fever.” Until then she had not properly looked at her, for her back was to the light. But during this scene they had moved, and she saw Irene for the first time in all her misery and distress. She uttered an exclamation of pity.

  “Has the king of the Patagonians reduced you to this state?”

  “A monster, Sylvia, a monster.”

  “You were so enthusiastic about him in your letter!”

  “What letter?”.

  “The letter you wrote me telling me to come to you. At first I thought I should see you on the yacht. I was told afterwards that you had gone ahead with the king, and I should meet you in Montevideo. We can’t be far from Montevideo now.”

  “Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, if you only knew what I’ve been through.... But first of all let me have a bath — quickly. I will tell you all about it in the bath.”

  “Oh, I’ll look well after you, madame. You need it. You’ve come back to me in a terrible state.”

  When Irene was in the bath, perfumed with her own favourite scent, she closed her eyes the more fully to enjoy the unspeakable sweetness of that moment which she never expected to see.

  “And I who thought you were so happy with your king!” said Sylvia. “I said to myself: How good he must be for madame to forget everything for him and leave poor Monsieur Hauptmann and his tour to shift for themselves. Without her he won’t make his fortune.”

  Irene, whose eyes were still closed, asked Sylvia with a friendly gesture to stop talking. When she opened them she asked:

  “Was my letter delivered to you on board the Bahia?”

  “No, madame, at Rio de Janeiro.”

  “I can’t make it out.”

  “Nor can I. It was long after the Bahia sailed without me.”

  “What do you mean? Didn’t you go on board the Bahia at once when you left the hotel, as I told you?”

  “Why of course, madame, with all your luggage.”

  “Come, come, we shall never get at the truth like this. You must tell me exactly what occurred after I left you, and then I’ll tell you the horrible things that happened to me.”

  “You will remember leaving me with Don Manoel,” began Sylvia, blushing.

  “Yes, I remember and I thank you for it.”

  “I ought to-thank you, madame,” she returned, blushing still more.

  “By the way, he doesn’t want to commit suicide now, I suppose?”

  “No, but I am sure he is ready to die for you, madame,” and she flushed scarlet.

  “You sent him away before daybreak. Did anybody notice anything?”

  “Not even Don Manoel himself.... Oh, madame, he behaved perfectly... perfectly!”

  “Let’s get on, Sylvia. What then?”

  “Well, I left the hotel in the early morning and went on board the Bahia with the luggage. I was very much surprised to hear that you were not on the ship. But I thought you were bound to come soon, and that’s what I told Monsieur Hauptmann and the members of the company who were getting uneasy. I was more put out than they were.

  “Half an hour before the ship sailed Monsieur Hauptmann began to curse and swear, and spoke of going to fetch you. He questioned me. I told him you left the hotel before me, very early in the morning, and we began to wonder whether you had been the victim of some assault. What a terrible time we had! Well, ten minutes before the ship put off he asked the captain to blow the siren continuously. As you still failed to come he began to tear his hair. ‘What can I do in Montevideo without her? I must go back and look for her.’

  “He gave orders to his secretary, and the company remained on board. He got into a boat and I went with him, taking all the luggage which was in my charge. We drove to the hotel. No one had seen you again. The page-boy who went down to the quay with you told us everything he knew. Meanwhile the Bahia had put out to sea. Hauptmann rushed off to the prefect. It is at this point that matters began to go wrong for you, madame.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A hurried inquiry was held, and they learned, I can’t Say how, that Don Manoel had called at your hotel the evening before with some flowers, and had not returned home until the early dawn. They discovered that he had spent the night in your room, madame.”

  “Why, it’s monstrous!”

  “They rushed off to Don Manoel’s house and had the greatest difficulty in waking him up. When he heard what it was all about he turned pale. The prefect asked him not to hide from him anything that had occurred during the night, but Don Manoel was the soul of discretion. I say again he behaved perfectly — perfectly.”

  “That won’t prevent people from thinking he...”

  Irene did not put her thoughts more plainly into words, but noisily shot out of the bath in a greater fury than Diana surprised in her bath by Actæon.

  “Calm yourself, madame. They believed so before,” said Sylvia, “and let me in this regard point out my mistake, a mistake for which I am to blame for having listened to the voice of slander. Don Manoel never gave anyone to understand either by his attitude or words or silence that there was anything between him and you except the purest and most straightforward friendship. I say again, madame, he behaved like a gentleman.”

  “You do stand up for him!”

  “If you only knew how he loves you.”

  “You know more about it than I do!”

  “It was particularly obvious,” returned Sylvia, frankly, “when he thought that some calamity had befallen you. It was he who discovered that you had been victimized by the king. It was he who put himself at the head of the inquiry and made every search, for Monsieur Hauptmann had already chartered a steamer and sailed to join the company in Montevideo. I can say that Don Manoel moved all Brazil on your account. He raised a body of men for service on board a dispatch boat in order to give chase to the king’s yacht, obtaining from the government full liberty to act on his own judgment, and swearing — he who had never left his library but to attend to his birds — to find you even if you were in the heart of the jungle. Besides, he thought of everything. Before going on shipboard he called at all the newspaper offices and press agencies and made sure that nothing would leak out in the p
apers. He made an appeal to them on patriotic grounds. The world must never know that Mademoiselle Irene de Troie of the Comédie Française had suffered the slightest indignity on Brazilian soil.”

  “So far so good,” exclaimed Irene. “You are right. I misjudged this man.”

  “I wanted to go with him, taking the luggage. But it was he who advised me, in fact ordered me, in your interests, to stay in Rio. ‘So long as you are in Rio with the luggage,’ he said, ‘we can always pretend that your mistress is still here, and the reason why she does not go to Montevideo is that she is ill. That is, in fact, what Monsieur Hauptmann will announce should your mistress not rejoin the company in good time. In this way we shall avoid any public exposure in this extraordinary affair.’”

  “He can behave perfectly — perfectly!” cried Irene.

  “Did I not tell you so, madame.... I hadn’t heard from him for several days, when one day there was a knock at my door. A young man of colour brought me a letter. I thought it was a message from the grand master. Imagine my delight when I recognized your writing on the envelope! And imagine also my amazement when I learnt that you, for whose fate the world of Brazil was moved to pity, had simply run away with the king of the Patagonians, and were on his yacht of your own free will! Then I began to laugh...

  I laughed... I couldn’t stop laughing. Not on account of Don Manoel, who had behaved like a hero, but because of the trick you had played on that old brigand Hauptmann, whose only fear all the time was loss of business....

  “I told the young man I was ready to go with him. He urged me to keep things dark. As you may suppose, that advice was entirely unnecessary. We took the night train to San Paulo and thence to Santo. I gathered that we were going a roundabout way to put everybody off the scent. Next night at Santos we boarded a motor-boat, taking the luggage with us, of course. We soon came up with the yacht, which lay with all lights out waiting for us in a cove close in shore. There I learnt that you had suddenly come to your senses, and started off with the king to join Hauptmann in Montevideo as soon as possible. I thought it natural, too, that you should avoid entering the capital by yacht with the king to prevent any comment after what had occurred.

  “As you must have seen, I was easy in my mind, easy and happy, because I believed you were the same, and I thought it was high time for you to have a little diversion.”

  “Diversion! Well, Sylvia, I will tell you what sort of diversion I’ve had!”

  Irene was still talking long after she had finished dressing. When her terrible story was over, Sylvia rose to her feet with a gesture expressive of all her wrath and indignation, a gesture, moreover, modelled on the most splendid attitudes of her mistress.

  Almost at once they heard the distant boom of a gun... then another and another, and at the same time a great commotion arose on deck.

  “I bet de Carangola has come,” cried Sylvia.

  She rushed on deck. Irene followed her almost as quickly.

  A few miles away in the north a small vessel was firing blank cartridge at Ma Casa, commanding her to lay to.

  It was, in fact, Don Manoel on the warpath.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  OUENETROU XIV’S KINGDOM

  SAD HEART ON the poop was watching with a telescope to his eye the vessel bombarding them. Standing beside him Black Lake was waving his arms, engaged in a convulsive struggle with honacouvou, the spirit of evil. The Patagonians call this spirit also gualitchou, and they attribute to it all the evils which affect humanity, but the latter is a common term which a high priest of the rank and education of Black Lake would scorn to employ in his exorcisms....

  Sad Heart requested Black Lake to put an end to his invocations in order that he might give the crew the necessary instructions. These orders were promptly executed. Ma Casa put on full sail and full steam.

  Was it the effect of the high priest’s appeal to the unseen powers or the result of Languequetrou’s tactics? One thing is certain, the distance between the two vessels increased. When darkness fell the Brazilian vessel was lost to sight. Next morning and throughout the day she was nowhere to be seen. Ma Casa put out to sea from the La Plata estuary, standing off Montevideo, and then off Buenos Ayres. Irene lost all hope. As the grief to which she gave way was an annoyance and obstruction to the crew, she was shut up with Sylvia in her cabin.

  Some little while before sunset the two women were allowed on deck, and at that moment Don Manoel’s vessel appeared on the horizon in the north. She began to fire again, but it was now no longer a question of a simple warning. Shells could be seen rebounding over the waves in the distance. Darkness fell on this beginning of a naval drama which continued throughout the following day.

  Ma Casa stood in shore and rounded a headland which masked her completely, and here she lay to. Irene and Sylvia were bundled ashore with three bales, two chests bound with iron clamps, and a hat-box. Black Lake and Sad Heart were already on the beach. Languequetrou was wearing a waist-band bristling with revolvers and cartridges, and over his shoulder a rifle of the latest model was slung. With this equipment he in no way resembled Don Manoel, ignorant of firearms and threatening to commit suicide with ancient flintlock pistols.

  Ma Casa headed for the open sea with all lights out. Now the Brazilian vessel could give chase for days and nights together and even come up with her; but Don Manoel would not find the treasure on her which he was seeking; he would not find Irene. But she was not the only treasure put ashore by the king. The two chests with their solid iron clamps contained the fortune which he had turned into cash during the last few weeks.

  They spent the night in a sort of chalky hall contrived in the cliff itself. As they made their way into this prehistoric dwelling Languequetrou offered an apology.

  “I had dreamed, senhora, of receiving you in my kingdom with greater splendour, but circumstances are against me. We cannot even risk lighting a fire. The best thing to do at the moment is to sleep. We shall need all our strength and energies to-morrow morning.”

  The two women wrapped themselves in their cloaks. They caught a glimpse of the tall figure of Black Lake keeping watch at the entrance to the cavity. Languequetrou left them and did not appear again during the night. Irene silently wept. Sylvia held her hand and sighed. The maid would not have missed the adventure for a kingdom, unless it were Languequetrou’s kingdom. She had never seen so handsome a man. What a pity it was that he was such a savage!...

  Sylvia, who was a woman of method, inquisitive to a degree, fond of gathering information, did not fail to make notes in the course of a journey which she never expected would be so wonderfully exciting. Here are a few pages extracted from her diary:

  “It was the eighteenth of May when we first plunged into the wilderness of the Pampas, setting a westerly course. But as this period of the year synchronizes with winter-time in these parts, we anticipated rainy rather than fine weather. Indeed, torrential rains, aggravated by a tempestuous and icy wind, swept up from the depths of Patagonia and fiercely beset us on the very day of our departure. This terrible weather lasted four mortal days, during which we were compelled, when we camped, to lie on the sodden ground with no possibility of lighting a fire.

  “It was not until the fourth day that the rain ceased and a welcome gleam of sun appeared enabling us to dry our clothes.

  “Meanwhile Ouenetrou XIV continued to pay every attention to my poor mistress. We had only one old pack-horse with us, which the king had doubtless commandeered from one of his subjects during the first night we spent in the cave. The old hack, which struggled under the weight of the bales and preserved food put ashore from the yacht, could not, unfortunately, carry madame. Therefore when my unhappy mistress, who was in a greatly dejected mood, could no longer drag herself along, though I assisted her to the best of my ability, the king often carried her in his arms for hours together until fatigue compelled him to hand her over to me.

  “Then clinging to my arm and leaning on a stick which the king had cut for the pur
pose, she pluckily walked on as best she could, knowing, moreover, that were she to remain behind in this wilderness certain death would overtake her. Whether she was on foot or carried, the king continued to talk in kindly tones to her, promising that once we left the Pampas we should want for nothing. Madame did not answer him.

  “It was to no purpose that I endeavoured to make her listen to reason. He could not get a word out of her. I imagined that this attitude was not good policy, and he would end by losing patience with her. As to myself I did not exist for him. He ordered me about with a motion of his head as though I were a dog, but I had no cause to complain of any ill-usage. I was not offended with him, for we must judge people according to the manner in which they have been brought up.

  “I admired his great patience and infinite tact with madame; so much so, that calling to mind all that she had told me of her experiences in the fazenda, I thought that, influenced by the terror inspired in her by the Botocudos, she had been imagining things, and Languequetrou, whom I shall now call Ouenetrou, for that is his name in his own country, was guilty only of a too great love for her....

  “Such a belief on my part was not likely to make me loathe the king. As to the high priest, Black Lake, he was constantly conferring with his master. He, too, was loaded and carried madame’s hat-box. This hat-box was a riddle to me, for, after all, there were more important things to bring away from the ship than a hat-box. I thought at first that some mistake had been made, and I took it upon myself to inform the king of its contents. As usual he answered by a gesture which meant that I was to mind my own business.

  “The best of it was that he himself looked after the hat-box during the journey. When it rained he wrapped it in his own rug, and when the sun shone he protected it from its rays; so much so that in the end I felt convinced that he must have placed in this box some valuable articles on which he set great store; articles taken perhaps from the two iron-clamped chests which were too heavy to be carried by us, and were hidden in a recess of the cliff on the first night of our stay in Patagonia.