“But I haven’t anything else. Then what twenty million are you talking about?”
She turned pale.
“What have you done with the necklace, Rudy?”
“The necklace? Chavrier’s necklace? I gave it back.”
“Don’t fence with me. I mean my own necklace, the one you took at the Cambridge.”
“But it was only an imitation.”
Her face grew haggard as she asked her next question: “You haven’t got rid of it, have you? You haven’t given it to anybody? Have you still got it?”
I could not understand her anxiety, and shrugged my shoulders.
“Yes, I’ve still got it.”
She sat back in her chair and sighed, as if relieved of an inner anguish.
“You frightened me, Rudy I have never been so frightened in my life....”
She sighed again, deeply.
“Oh, Rudy, it would be enough to make one die of despair. Is it really the truth? You still have it? You are perfectly sure?... It is well hidden?”
“Hidden? No. It is in my bureau drawer.”
“Bureau drawer? Where? In that rickety old thing by the window?”
Why was she so interested in what had become of the copy of her necklace? What devilish scheme was concealed behind these questions?
“In that bureau drawer which anybody could open with a button-hook?” she continued. “Is that where you put my necklace? Then perhaps all is lost after all. Once more we may have to start from the beginning.”
She thought in silence for a few moments, her brows knit.
“Listen! You must get that taxi-driver who brought us here, and go back to your room at once. Find out if the necklace is still there. If it is, bring it back here. I will wait for you. But hurry! Do as I tell you. There is still a chance, but you can’t afford to lose a second. And don’t let anyone bump into you in the street. Put the necklace around your neck, under your shirt. And see that you are not followed when you come back. If somebody does follow you, shake him off. And hurry back! This evening we shall be far from here; I have already made plans. Hurry, hurry, Rudy!”
But I did not stir. What hocus-pocus was this? Had she forgotten that she herself had once explained to me the secret of the twelfth pearl? I knew how to recognize the real necklace. Good. — She was now playing to involve me in complications that I could not foresee. I would stay where I was. Perhaps I should never find out what her present scheme was, but it was something in which her “stupid little Frenchman” would not be her tool. Yet he had been foolish enough, only half an hour before, to believe in her love; to imagine it was genuine, disinterested love. It was time his eyes were opened and he learned to know this woman.
While these thoughts were crowding my mind she watched me closely.
“So it is I who must go?” she said. “You crave my kisses, but in your heart you hate me. Good-bye, Rudy. Give me one more kiss, since that is all you can give me. I had hoped that to-day was the beginning of a new life, but that hope is dead. Good-bye, my darling. And when you think of Helena let there be one doubt in your mind. May you say to yourself: Perhaps for once she was speaking the truth.”
Ah, what an actress! How neatly she rang in that line! And I was more moved than I was willing to admit. But my distrust was an armour against her devices.
“Helena, do not play with me again. I shall not be able to think that perhaps for once you told me the truth, for you have told me nothing. You have merely ordered me to leave you. But you have not explained why.”
“What good would it do? My darling Rudy will never believe that he got the real necklace from the Cambridge safe. He is thinking of the twelfth pearl... and imagining he is very clever.”
This exasperated me.
“In your — hands, Helena, I am never clever,” I said.
“I admit I am a child, and — I can neither — guess — your secrets nor understand your schemes. For some reason of your own you are now trying to convince me I have the original — necklace instead — of — the copy. — Why? I haven’t the — slightest idea, and — probably I never — shall have.”
She shrugged her shoulders. For the first time since I had known her her eyes were clouded with melancholy. In the past I had read on her face anger, courage, passion, terror, even love, but never this desolate sadness....
“Perhaps it is my fault,” she replied. “I have lied too much. Or, at least, you have thought I lied too much. If you knew all you would understand I have lied little — just enough to save my life — probably too little. Ah, Rudy, truth is not in words alone! What does it matter if the tongue says this or that, when the heart is faithful? You have my heart; if it were not for that you would not be alive to-day... and I should be happier.”
Suddenly her manner changed. Her brows drew together, and I recognized the Helena I had known in the past, with her resolute mouth, and the warrior’s gleam in her eyes.
“Enough of these laments! My lips were not made for complaints. I’ll tell you what you must know. If you believe me, you will do as I say. If not, you will stay in Paris and find another little Aimée Parmin, who will love you after your own style.”
I assumed an air of surprise, and protested that I didn’t know what she meant.
“I know,” she interrupted me sharply, “French gallantry. Never mind, my love, you are quite right. But that is not what I want to talk about. As you say, I owe you an explanation. You have the original necklace. I took the twelfth pearl off the real necklace and put it on the copy. Durin believes he has the original, but he has only the copy. He never lets it out of his hands. He wears it himself. To take it from him, you would have to kill him. And you know that one does not kill Durin as easily as that.”
“Nor does one make him take an imitation for the real thing.”
“I’ll tell you how it happened. About six months ago we were in an automobile accident in Scotland. We were coming home at night, and someone in the neighbourhood had placed a tree across the road. You have been at Black Rooks and you know the owners of the castle are not popular. The native Scots hated Sir Archibald, and they like Durin, or as they know him, Sir Douglas Sherfield, even less. And they are not very fond of me. Apparently they wanted to kill us — and they very nearly succeeded. The car turned over and we were thrown out. I suffered only a few bruises, and was on my feet almost at once. But Doug’s head struck against a tree, and he was knocked unconscious.
“Although I was weak from the shock, and in terror lest he die, I slipped the necklace from around his neck, and, in the glare of the headlights, took off the twelfth pearl and transferred it to the copy. It was not an easy job to unstring a necklace of pearls in the middle of the night on a dark road. But I did it. Then I put the copy, with the blemished pearl, about Douglas’s neck and wound the original about my own.
“This done, I lay down again on the side of the road and rubbed dust and mud over my face, and pretended I had fainted. I thought someone might come along, but we lay this way for some time and no one passed. Then it began to rain. I was so glad at heart that I did not feel it. But the cold patter roused Durin. I watched him from under my lids, and saw that his first move was to grope for the necklace. Then he lifted himself slowly to a sitting position, but he could not keep it, and fell back again in the rain. I did not stir.
“After a few minutes he sat up again. There was a little blood on his temples, but not so much as I had thought. It was evident he was not going to die.
“But there is no need for me to tell you the rest of the story. People came along after a while and took us home. I did not pretend to recover consciousness until I was in their car. I did not want Doug to have any suspicions. And he did not. The original necklace remained with me. When you came and took it the other night I could have clapped, I was so pleased. I murmured, ‘Oh, my darling!.. But Doug held me by the wrists and closed my mouth with a kiss, and naturally I could not move.”
Ah, yes! He closed her mouth with a k
iss and naturally she did not free herself. I could see them, the two accomplices, lying in their room in the Cambridge, while I opened the safe. I felt myself shaken with anger.
“And you had a good laugh together at my expense, didn’t you, Helena?”
“He laughed because he did not know it was the real necklace you had taken. But, in spite of his laughter, I think that at heart he admired you; he had seen you at work. Afterwards he said to me: ‘My compliments, Helena. Your pupil has become a master. He uses my saw as well as I would myself.’ And then I made a mistake. He had said that to find out what I would reply. Without realizing this, I answered too enthusiastically. From that moment he never left me. I was not allowed to go out shopping. I was his prisoner. This morning my chance to escape came. I hurried to you at once to say, ‘Rudy, I adore you. You have the necklace. We will run away together.’ But you are a child. And this time you will lose me for ever.
“You understand, don’t you,” she added, in a serious tone, “that as soon as he discovered I had run away, Doug must have said to himself: ‘If she leaves me, it means that I no longer have the real necklace.’ Then he must have examined the necklace, realized what had happened, and probably forced the drawer of your bureau already. We have lost too valuable time. Anybody can walk into your room.”
These last words were like a shaft of light to my mind. She herself had entered my room without trouble this morning. But if she had come out of love, why had she not knocked on my door? Why enter like a thief? I voiced my thought brutally.
“You are right, Helena. Anybody can walk into my room. It isn’t even necessary to ring the bell. All one has to do is turn the bolt with a little hook....”
She grew pale.
“You are unjust!” she protested. “If I had knocked or rung, you might not have let me in. Last night at the Cambridge you gave me such an angry glare when you were sitting with that horrid little man (that for you, Gorshman!). So I said to myself, if I can surprise him and remind him of the taste of my kisses, he will not put me out. That is the answer to your suspicions.”
She had a reply for everything. Probably she would tell me next that she had forced my door in order not to wake me up. She might say what she wished, and if I hesitated to believe her, she would take my head in her little hands and offer me her lips until I lost both the ability and the desire to think clearly. It was too simple! A beautiful woman, the most beautiful of all women, and an ardent young man who craved to be loved. There could be only one outcome to such a contest.
But I had had enough of being her tool.
“Last year, Helena,” I said, “you promised to run away with me. And you remember what happened. It turned out to be a trick to make me responsible for a crime that Durin committed. What crime are you meditating this time? What punishment do you plan to saddle me with while that scoundrel plays the rôle of the noble Englishman? Wasn’t it enough for me to have been the fake clergyman who was supposed to have murdered Sir Archibald Skarlett? No doubt this time you want more or you wouldn’t have invented so complicated and so preposterous a story.”
She made a movement to speak, but I ignored her.
“Last year I might have believed it, just as I believed anything you told me. But now, whatever you may think, I no longer am a child. Or, at least, I am a different sort of child. That is why I now smile at your stories of real necklaces and copies, which you string and unstring in the middle of the night, by the glare of headlights, on a dark road in Scotland, while the thief lies unconscious in the ditch. You have imagination, Helena. But your stories fail because they are incredible, and the old tricks are too obvious. Tell them to my janitor if you wish — he might believe them — but not me. If Durin didn’t have the necklace you would have left him. It is the necklace you love; you cannot live without it.”
“Do you believe that, Rudy? Then, since I come to you, why do you refuse to believe you have the real necklace?”
“Because you waited too long. Because you tell me an absurd story. Because I no longer believe anything you say. Because I hate you, even though I adore you. But especially because you would not hesitate to send me to prison, dishonour or death to spare yourself or your accomplice any danger. Leave me! And tell Durin not to worry; that he can go to my room any time he wishes and take the copy of the necklace. It makes no difference to me. But tell him also to beware, for sooner or later I shall down him. He will grovel at my feet. And you shall plead for him in vain, Helena.”
She listened with bewilderment.
“Tell him he has the original necklace now, but that I shall take it from him. You have taught me to ‘work,’ as you say, Helena. And you shall see how well I can work. The necklace now around his neck I shall take off. How? That also is my secret. The stupid little Frenchman will have his revenge. That I promise you. You have laughed at me, but the day of my vengeance is coming.”
She drew herself up.
“I am not laughing now.”
In truth she was weeping.
I wonder now how I could have stood there watching her weep. Her features were motionless, but from her eyes dropped slow tears, which she did not even think of wiping away. Tears on impassive marble. Helena did not weep like other women. Her shoulders did not tremble; she made no sound. The tears fell, that was all, and through them she gazed at me.
But some fury had taken possession of me. I had suffered too much, and it was too clear to me that she had come only to ruin me.
“Laugh or cry,” I said. “It makes no difference to me. We are going back to Paris. This evening you shall dine at the Cambridge and I shall dine there too. I shall see you sitting beside that murderer you love. And you will laugh then with as much sincerity as you are weeping now.”
“I forgive you all you have said, Rudy. If any other man had said it, I don’t know what I should do to him. But no doubt you have a right to talk as you have talked. Live in peace, Rudy. But let me give you one bit of advice before I leave you for ever.
“Perhaps, after all.... For men change, and it will not be long before you regret what you have said....
“Yes, this evening you will see me at the Cambridge. And I shall probably laugh. Nevertheless, here is my advice to you: If, when you go home, you find the copy, which is the original, in your bureau drawer, take it and hide it with care. Otherwise give it back to me. What difference can it make to you, since you are convinced it is not genuine?”
I was disarmed for the moment by her simple argument. But I soon saw its point.
“No, Helena. I need the copy to leave in the place of the real necklace when I take it. Durin must not notice his loss at once.”
She was no longer weeping. She shrugged her shoulders and gave me a pitying glance.
“I have said everything I ought to say, or could say. You definitely refuse to believe me?”
I also shrugged my shoulders.
“Ask anything you wish, except that I believe in you.”
“Very well then. There is only one thing left for me to do; that is to go back to Durin, the murderer, as you call him, and keep watch over the copy of my necklace. I may even prevent your taking it, my dear. You are really too stupid. And now will you call our taxi? And please don’t sulk any more. There is nothing to be gained by being disagreeable to me now; you have said the worst things you could possibly think of. Escort me home like a gentleman. I shall begin laughing now, so as to be in practice for this evening at the Cambridge. Will you be there again with that little fat man? Doug claims he is the one you robbed first. But that can’t be true. A man as scrupulous as you are would never be the guest of one he had robbed, would he?”
This bit of sarcasm betrayed the pique she was suffering at her failure to convince me, and I replied in the same ironical tone:
“Oh! How could a man as scrupulous as I am commit a robbery? Now I come to think of it, I believe my friend Gorshman did say he had had something or other stolen. But it was a certain Mr. Flow who broke into his roo
m for the sake of amusement, and afterwards gave back everything he took just to amuse himself, too.”
“Everything except a trifling sum of twenty-five thousand francs.”
“Peuh! Mr. Flow must have had some little expenses. He wouldn’t have wanted to keep more than he had spent.” —
“He can’t be a very rich man, and has probably never dined at the Cambridge — do you think so, Rudy?”
“Perhaps not. But you meet such undesirable people there nowadays...”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if you might even meet murderers there.”
“No doubt. The police are so incompetent.”
“Ah, there’s our taxi! What a beautiful day! We should have a delightful ride back.”
“With you it would be delightful whatever the day.”
“How gallant you Frenchmen are! You can say only pleasant things to women.”
“When they are deserved. It is easy to say what one thinks.”
At this moment I thought she was going to interrupt our little game. Her eyes flashed, but dulled again at once. We took our seats in the taxi, and the ride back was less moving than our trip out a few hours before. However, as we were passing through the outskirts of Paris, Helena caught my hand.
“Do as you wish, Rudy. But hide the necklace. And never give it back. And do not forget that I love you, and that I shall try to keep you from doing foolish things.”
I did not reply. I was feeling fairly well satisfied with myself. At last I was becoming a man. I could resist the madness of my passions; I had kept a clear head and stout heart through the greatest perils. Helena would remember me as a man who could not be swayed from his purpose.
She ordered the driver to take us to the Place de l’Etoile, where she left me. For a few moments I could follow her slim silhouette among the passers-by. Then I lost her... and I felt horribly alone.
VIII.
WARNING
ON RETURNING HOME I found a telegram from Gorshman:
“Don’t fail to come to the Cambridge to-night. I dream of the beautiful stranger.”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 481