Fantômas

by Allain, Marcel; Souvestre, Pierre; Metcalfe, Cranstoun

  The tragedy at the château of Beaulieu had had one effect in knitting all the friends of the Marquise de Langrune in closer bonds of friendship. Prior to that event Etienne Rambert had scarcely known the Baronne de Vibray; now the two were intimate friends. The Baronne had not desisted from her first generous effort until she had persuaded the family council to appoint her guardian of the orphaned Thérèse Auvernois. At first she had installed the child at Querelles, and remained there with her, leading the quietest possible life, partly out of respect for Thérèse’s grief, and partly because she herself was also much upset by the distressing tragedy. She had even enjoyed the rest, and her new interest in playing mother, or rather elder sister, to Thérèse. But as the weeks went by and time accomplished its healing work, Paris called to the Baronne once more, and yielding to the solicitations of her many friends she brought her new ward to the capital and settled in a little flat in the rue Boissy-d’Anglais. At first she protested that she would go out nowhere, or at most pay only absolutely necessary visits, but by degrees she accepted first one and then many invitations, though always deploring the necessity of leaving Thérèse for several hours at a time.

  Happily there was always Etienne Rambert, who was also staying in Paris just now. It had gradually become the custom of the Baronne de Vibray, when she was dining out, to entrust Thérèse to Etienne Rambert’s care, and the young girl and the old man got on together perfectly. Their hearts had met across the awful chasm that fate had tried to cut between them.

  To Thérèse’s last words now Etienne Rambert replied:

  “You need not apologise for staying late, dear; you know how glad I am to see you. I wish the house were yours.”

  The girl glanced round the room that had grown so familiar to her, and with a sudden rush of feeling slipped her arm around the old man’s neck and laid her fair head on his shoulder.

  “I should so love to stay here with you, M. Rambert!”

  The old man looked oddly at her for a moment, repressing the words that he might perhaps have wished to say, and then gently released himself from her affectionate clasp and led her to a sofa, on which he sat down by her side.

  “That is one of the things that we must not allow ourselves to think about, my dear,” he said. “I should have rejoiced to receive you in my home, and your presence, and the brightness of your dear fair face would have given a charm to my lonely fireside; but unfortunately those are vain dreams. We have to reckon with the world, and the world would not approve of a young girl like you living in the home of a lonely man.”

  “Why not?” Thérèse enquired in surprise. “Why, you might be my father.”

  Etienne Rambert winced at the word.

  “Ah!” he said, “you must not forget, Thérèse, that I am not your father, but—his: the father of him who——” but Thérèse’s soft hand laid upon his lips prevented him from finishing what he would have said.

  To change the conversation Thérèse feigned concern about her own future.

  “When we left Querelles,” she said, “President Bonnet told me that you would tell me something about my affairs. I gather that my fortune is not a very brilliant one.”

  It was indeed the fact that after the murder of the Marquise the unpleasant discovery had been made that her fortune was by no means so considerable as had generally been supposed. The estate was mortgaged, and President Bonnet and Etienne Rambert had had long and anxious debates as to whether it might not be well for Thérèse to renounce her inheritance to Beaulieu, so doubtful did it seem whether the assets would exceed the liabilities.

  Etienne Rambert made a vague, but significant gesture when he heard the girl raise the point now, but Thérèse had all the carelessness of youth.

  “Oh, I shall not be down-hearted,” she exclaimed. “My poor grannie always gave me an example of energy and hard work; I’ve got plenty of pluck, and I will work too. Suppose I turn governess?”

  M. Rambert looked at her thoughtfully.

  “My dear child, I know how brave and earnest you are, and that gives me confidence. I have thought about your future a great deal already. Some day, of course, some nice and wealthy young fellow will come along and marry you——Oh, yes, he will: you’ll see. But in the meantime it will be necessary for you to have some occupation. I am wondering whether it will not be necessary to let, or even to sell Beaulieu. And, on the other hand, you can’t always stay with the Baronne de Vibray.”

  “No, I realise that,” said Thérèse, who, with the native tact that was one of her best qualities, had quickly seen that it would not be long before she would become a difficulty in the way of the independence of the kind Baronne. “That is what troubles me most.”

  “Your birth and your upbringing have been such that you would certainly suffer much in taking up the difficult and delicate, and sometimes painful, position of governess in a family; and, without wishing to be offensive, I must remind you that you need to have studied very hard to be a governess nowadays, and I am not aware that you are exactly a blue-stocking. But I have an idea, and this is it: for a great many years now I have been on the very friendliest terms with a lady who belongs to the very best English society: Lady Beltham; you may perhaps have heard me speak of her.” Thérèse opened wide eyes of astonishment, and Rambert went on: “A few months ago Lady Beltham lost her husband in strange circumstances, and since then she has been good enough to give me more of her confidence than previously. She is immensely rich, and very charitable, and I have frequently been asked by her to look after some of her many financial interests. Now I have often noticed that she has with her several young English ladies who live with her, not as companions, but, shall I say, secretaries? Do you understand the difference? She treats them like friends or relatives, and they all belong to the very best social class, some of them indeed being daughters of English peers. If Lady Beltham, to whom I could speak about it, would admit you into her little company, I am sure you would be in a most delightful milieu, and Lady Beltham, whom, I know, you would please, would almost certainly interest herself in your future. She knows what unhappiness is as well as you do, my dear,” he added, bending fondly over the girl, “and she would understand you.”

  “Dear M. Rambert!” murmured Thérèse, much moved: “do that; speak to Lady Beltham about me; I should be so glad!”

  Thérèse did not finish all she would have said. A loud ring at the front door bell broke in upon her words, and Etienne Ramberts rose and walked across the room.

  “That must be the good Baronne de Vibray come for you,” he said.

  XIV MADEMOISELLE JEANNE

  After she had so roughly disposed of the enterprising Henri Verbier, whose most unseemly advances had so greatly scandalised her, Mlle. Jeanne took to her heels, directly she was out of sight of the Royal Palace Hotel, and ran like one possessed. She stood for a moment in the brilliantly lighted, traffic-crowded Avenue Wagram, shaking with excitement and with palpitating heart, and then mechanically hailed a passing cab and told the driver to take her towards the Bois. There she gave another heedless order to go to the boulevard Saint-Denis, but as the cab approached the place de l’Etoile she realised that she was once more near the Royal Palace Hotel, and stopping the driver by the tram lines she dismissed him and got into a tram that was going to the station of Auteuil. It was just half-past eleven when she reached the station.

  “When is the next train for Saint-Lazaire?” she asked.

  She learned that one was starting almost at once, and hurriedly taking a second-class ticket she jumped into a ladies’ carriage and went as far as Courcelles. There she alighted, went out of the station, looked around her for a minute or two to get her bearings, and then walked slowly towards the rue Eugène-Flachat. She hesitated a second, and then walked firmly towards a particular house, and rang the bell.

  “A lady to see you, sir,” the footman said to M. Rambert.

  “Bring her in here at once,” said M. Rambert, supposing that the man had kept the Baronn
e de Vibray waiting in the anteroom.

  The drawing-room door was opened a little way, and someone came in and stepped quickly into the shadow by the door. Thérèse, who had risen to hurry towards the visitor, stopped short when she perceived that it was a stranger and not her guardian. Noticing her action, M. Etienne Rambert turned and looked at the person who had entered.

  It was a lady.

  “To what am I indebted——” he began with a bow; and then, having approached the visitor, he broke off short. “Good heavens——!”

  The bell rang a second time, and on this occasion the Baronne de Vibray hurried into the room, a radiant incarnation of gaiety.

  “I am most dreadfully late!” she exclaimed, and was hurrying towards M. Etienne Rambert with outstretched hands, full of some amusing story she had to tell him, when she too caught sight of the strange lady standing stiffly in the corner of the room, with downcast eyes.

  Etienne Rambert repressed his first emotion, smiled to the Baronne, and then went towards the mysterious lady.

  “Madame,” he said, not a muscle of his face moving, “may I trouble you to come into my study?”

  “Who is that lady, M. Rambert?” said Thérèse when presently M. Rambert came back into the drawing-room. “And how white you are!”

  M. Rambert forced a smile.

  “I am rather tired, dear. I have had a great deal to do these last few days.”

  The Baronne de Vibray was full of instant apologies.

  “It is all my fault,” she exclaimed. “I am dreadfully sorry to have kept you up so late,” and in a few minutes more the Baronne’s car was speeding towards the rue Boissy-d’Anglais.

  M. Rambert hurried back to his study, shut and locked the door behind him, and almost sprang towards the unknown lady, his fists clenched, his eyes starting out of his head.

  “Charles!” he exclaimed.

  “Papa!” the girl replied, and sank upon a sofa.

  There was silence. Etienne Rambert seemed utterly dumbfounded.

  “I won’t, I won’t remain disguised as a woman any longer. I’ve done with it. I cannot bear it!” the strange creature murmured.

  “You must!” said Rambert harshly, imperiously. “I insist!”

  The pseudo Mlle. Jeanne slowly took off the heavy wig that concealed her real features, and tore away the corsage that compressed her bosom, revealing the strong and muscular frame of a young man.

  “No, I will not,” replied the strange individual, to whom M. Rambert had not hesitated to give the name of Charles. “I would rather anything else happened.”

  “You have got to expiate,” Etienne Rambert said with the same harshness.

  “The expiation is too great,” the young fellow answered. “The torture is unendurable.”

  “Charles,” said M. Rambert very gravely, “do you forget that legally, civilly, you are dead?”

  “I would a thousand times rather be really dead!” the unhappy lad exclaimed.

  “Alas!” his father murmured, speaking very fast, “I thought your mind was more unhinged than it really is. I saved your life, regardless of all risk, because I thought you were insane, and now I know you are a criminal! Oh, yes, I know things, I know your life!”

  “Father,” said Charles Rambert with so stern and determined an expression that Etienne Rambert felt a moment’s fear. “I want to know first of all how you managed to save my life and make out that I was dead. Was that just chance, or was it planned deliberately?”

  Confronted with this new firmness of his son’s, Etienne Rambert dropped his peremptory tone; his shoulders drooped in distress.

  “Can one anticipate things like that?” he said. “When we parted, my heart bled to think that you, my son, must fall into the hands of justice, and that your feet must tread the path that led to the scaffold or, at least, to the galleys; I wondered how I could save you; then chance, chance, mark you, brought that poor drowned body in my way: I saw the fortunate coincidence of a faint resemblance, and resolved to pass it off for you; I got those woman’s clothes which you exchanged for yours, buried the dead man’s clothes and put yours on the corpse. Do you know, Charles, that I have suffered too? Do you know what agony and torture I, as a man of honour, have endured? Have you not heard the story of my appearance at the Assizes and of my humiliation in court?”

  “You did all that!” Charles Rambert murmured. “Strange chance, indeed!” Then his tone changed and he sobbed. “Oh, my poor father, what an awful fatality it all is!” Suddenly he sprang to his feet. “But I committed no crime, papa! I never killed the Marquise de Langrune! Oh, do believe me! Why, you have just this minute said that you know I am not mad!”

  Etienne Rambert looked at his son with distress.

  “Not mad, my poor boy? Yet perhaps you were mad—then?” Then he stopped abruptly. “Don’t let us go over all that again! I forbid it absolutely.” He leaned back on his writing-table, folded his arms and asked sternly: “Have you come here only to tell me that?”

  The curt question seemed to affect the lad strangely. All his former audacity dropped from him. Nervously he stammered:

  “I can’t remain a woman any longer!”

  “Why not?” snapped Etienne Rambert.

  “I can’t.”

  The two men looked at each other in silence, as if trying to read one another’s thoughts. Then Etienne Rambert seemed to see the inner meaning of the words his son had just said.

  “I see!” he answered slowly. “I understand. . . . The Royal Palace Hotel, where Mlle. Jeanne held a trusted post, has just been the scene of a daring robbery. Obviously, if anyone could prove that Charles Rambert and the new cashier were one and the same person——”

  But the young fellow understood the insinuation and burst out:

  “I did not commit that robbery!”

  “You did!” Etienne Rambert insisted: “you did. I read the newspaper accounts of the robbery, read them with all the agony that only a father like me with a son like you could feel. The detectives and the magistrates were at a loss to find the key to the mystery, but I saw clearly and at once what the solution of the mystery was. And I knew and understood because I knew it was—you!”

  “I did not commit the robbery,” Charles Rambert shouted. “Do you mean to begin all your horrible insinuations again, as you did at Beaulieu?” he demanded in almost threatening tones. “What evil spirit obsesses you? Why will you insist that your unhappy son is a criminal? I had nothing to do with those robberies at the hotel; I swear I had not, father!”

  M. Rambert shrugged his shoulders and clasped his hands.

  “What have I done,” he muttered, “to have so heavy a cross laid on me?” He turned again to his son. “Your defence is childish. What is the use of mere denials? Words don’t mean anything without proofs to support them.” The lad was silent, seeming to think it useless to attempt to convince a father who appeared so certain of his guilt, and also crushed by the thought of all that had happened at the hotel. His father betrayed some uneasiness at a new thought that had come into his mind. “I told you not to come to me again except as a last resource, when punishment was actually overtaking you, or when you had proved your innocence: why are you here now? Has something happened that I do not know about? What has happened? What else have you done? Speak!”

  Charles Rambert answered in a toneless voice, as if hypnotised:

  “There has been a detective in the hotel for the last few days. He called himself Henri Verbier, and was disguised, but I knew him, for I had seen him too lately, and in circumstances too deeply impressed upon my mind for me to be able to forget him, although I only saw him then for a few minutes.”

  “What do you mean?” said the elder man uneasily.

  “I mean that Juve was at the Royal Palace Hotel.”

  “Juve?” exclaimed Etienne Rambert. “And then—go on!”

  “Juve, disguised as Henri Verbier, subjected me to a kind of examination, and I don’t know what conclusion he came to. Th
en, this evening, barely two hours ago, he came up to my room and had a long talk, and while he was trying to get some information from me about a matter that I know nothing about—for I swear, papa, that I had nothing whatever to do with the robbery—he came up to me and took hold of me as a man does when he wants to make up to a woman. And I lost my head! I felt that in another minute all would be up with me—that he would establish my identity, which he perhaps suspected already—and I thought of all you had done to save my life by representing that I was dead, and——”

  Charles paused for breath. His father’s fists were clenched and his face contracted.

  “Go on!” he said, “go on, but speak lower!”

  “As Juve came close,” Charles went on, “I dealt him a terrific blow on the forehead, and he fell like a stone. And I got away!”

  “Is he dead?” Etienne Rambert whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  For ten minutes Charles Rambert remained alone in the study, where his father had left him, thinking deeply. Then the door opened and Etienne Rambert came back carrying a bundle of clothes.

  “There you are,” he said to his son: “here are some man’s clothes. Put them on, and go!”

  The young man hastily took off his woman’s garments and dressed himself in silence, while his father walked up and down the room, plunged in deepest thought. Twice he asked: “Are you quite sure it was Juve?” and twice his son replied “Quite sure.” And once again Etienne Rambert asked, in tones that betrayed his keen anxiety: “Did you kill him?” and Charles Rambert shrugged his shoulders and replied: “I told you before, I do not know.”

  And now Charles Rambert stood upon the threshold of the house, about to leave his father without a word of farewell or parting embrace. M. Etienne Rambert stayed him, holding out a pocket-book, filled full with bank-notes.