Fantômas
Page 30
Valgrand was reading the letter, carelessly to begin with, then with deep attention. He reached the signature at the end, and then read it through again, aloud this time, punctuating his reading with flippant comments: “‘In creating the part of the criminal in the tragedy to-night, you made yourself up into a most marvellous likeness of Gurn, the man who murdered Lord Beltham. Come to-night, at two o’clock, in your costume, to 22 rue Messier. Take care not to be seen, but come. Someone who loves you is waiting for you there.’”
“And it is signed——?” said the dresser.
“That, my boy, I’m not going to tell you,” said Valgrand, and he put the letter carefully into his pocket-book. “Why, man, what are you up to?” he added, as the dresser came up to him to take his clothes.
“Up to?” the servant exclaimed: “I am only helping you to get your things off.”
“Idiot!” laughed Valgrand. “Didn’t you understand? Give me my black tie and villain’s coat again.”
“What on earth is the matter with you?” Charlot asked with some uneasiness. “Surely you are not thinking of going?”
“Not going? Why, in the whole of my career as amorist, I have never had such an opportunity before!”
“It may be a hoax.”
“Take my word for it, I know better. Things like this aren’t hoaxes. Besides, I know the—the lady. She has often been pointed out to me: and at the trial——By Jove, Charlot, she is the most enchanting woman in the world: strangely lovely, infinitely distinguished, absolutely fascinating!”
“You are raving like a schoolboy.”
“So much the better for me! Why, I was half dead with fatigue, and now I am myself again. Be quick, booby! My hat! Time is getting on. Where is it?”
“Where is what?” the bewildered Charlot asked.
“Why, this place,” Valgrand answered irritably: “this rue Messier. Look it up in the directory.”
Valgrand stamped impatiently up and down the room while Charlot hurriedly turned over the pages of the directory, muttering the syllables at the top of each as he ran through them in alphabetical order.
“J . . . K . . . L . . . M . . . Ma . . . Me . . .—Why, M. Valgrand——”
“What’s the matter?”
“Why, it is the street where the prison is!”
“The Santé? Where Gurn is—in the condemned cell?” Valgrand cocked his hat rakishly on one side. “And I have an assignation at the prison?”
“Not exactly, but not far off: right opposite; yes, number 22 must be right opposite.”
“Right opposite the prison!” Valgrand exclaimed gaily. “The choice of the spot, and the desire to see me in my costume as Gurn, are evidence of a positive refinement in sensation! See? The lady, and I—the counterpart of Curn—and, right opposite, the real Gurn in his cell! Quick, man: my cloak! My cane!”
“Do think, sir,” Charlot protested: “it is absolutely absurd! A man like you——”
“A man like me,” Valgrand roared, “would keep an appointment like this if he had to walk on his head to get there! Goodnight!” and carolling gaily, Valgrand strode down the corridor.
Charlot was accustomed to these wild vagaries on his master’s part, for Valgrand was the most daring and inveterate rake it is possible to imagine. But while he was tidying up the litter in the room, after Valgrand had left him, the dresser shook his head.
“What a pity it is! And he such a great artiste! These women will make an absolute fool of him! Why, he hasn’t even taken his gloves or his scarf!” There was a tap at the door, and the door-keeper looked in.
“Can I turn out the lights?” he enquired. “Has M. Valgrand gone?”
“Yes,” said the dresser absently, “he has gone.”
“A great night,” said the door-keeper. “Have you seen the last edition of the Capitale, the eleven o’clock edition? There’s a notice of us already. The papers don’t lose any time nowadays. They say it is a great success.”
“Let’s look at it,” said the dresser, and, glancing through the notice, added, “yes, that’s quite true: ‘M. Valgrand has achieved his finest triumph in his last creation.’” He looked casually through the newspaper, and suddenly broke into a sharp exclamation. “Good heavens, it can’t be possible!”
“What’s the matter?” the door-keeper enquired.
Charlot pointed a shaking finger to another column.
“Read that, Jean, read that! Surely I am mistaken.”
The door-keeper peered over Charlot’s shoulder at the indicated passage.
“I don’t see anything in that; it’s that Gurn affair again. Yes, he is to be executed at daybreak on the eighteenth.”
“But that is this morning—presently,” Charlot exclaimed.
“May be,” said the door-keeper indifferently; “yes, last night was the seventeenth, so it is the eighteenth now! Are you ill, Charlot?”
Charlot pulled himself together.
“No, it’s nothing; I’m only tired. You can put out the lights. I shall be out of the theatre in five minutes; I only want to do one or two little things here.”
“All right,” said Jean, turning away. “Shut the door behind you when you leave, if I have gone to bed.”
Charlot sat on the arm of a chair and wiped his brow.
“I don’t like this business,” he muttered. “Why the deuce did he want to go? What does this woman want with him? I may be only an old fool, but I know what I know, and there have been no end of queer stories about this job already.” He sat there meditating, till an idea took shape in his mind. “Can I dare to go round there and just prowl about? Of course he will be furious, but suppose that letter was a decoy and he is walking into a trap? One never can tell. An assignation in that particular street, with that prison opposite, and Gurn to be guillotined within the next hour or so?” The man made up his mind, hurriedly put on his coat and hat, and switched off the electric lights in the exquisitely appointed dressing-room. “I’ll go!” he said aloud. “If I see anything suspicious, or if at the end of half an hour I don’t see M. Valgrand leaving the house—well!” Charlot turned the key in the lock. “Yes, I will go. I shall be much easier in my mind!”
XXXI. FELL TREACHERY
Number 22 rue Messier was a wretched one-storeyed house that belonged to a country vine-dresser who seldom came to Paris. It was damp, dirty, and dilapidated, and would have had to be rebuilt from top to bottom if it were to be rendered habitable. There had been a long succession of so-called tenants of this hovel, shady, disreputable people who, for the most part, left without paying any rent, the landlord being only too glad if occasionally they left behind them a little miserable furniture or worn out kitchen utensils. He was finding it ever more difficult to let the wretched house, and for weeks together it had remained unoccupied. But one day, about a month ago, he had been astonished by receiving an application for the tenancy from someone who vaguely signed himself Durand; and still further astonished by finding in the envelope bank-notes representing a year’s rent in advance. Delighted with this windfall, and congratulating himself on not having gone to the expense of putting the hovel into something like repair—unnecessary now, since he had secured a tenant, and a good one, for at least twelve months—the landlord promptly sent a receipt to this Durand, with the keys, and thought no more about the matter.
In the principal room, on the first floor of this hovel, a little poor furniture had been put; a shabby sofa, an equally shabby arm-chair, a few cane-bottomed chairs, and a deal table. On the table was a tea-pot, a small kettle over a spirit-stove, and a few cups and small cakes. A smoky lamp shed a dim light over this depressing interior, and a handful of coal was smouldering in the cracked grate.
And here, in these miserable surroundings, Lady Beltham was installed on this eighteenth of December.
The great lady was even paler than usual, and her eyes shone with a curious brilliance. That she was suffering from the most acute and feverish nervous excitement was patent from the wa
y in which she kept putting her hands to her heart as though the violence of its throbbing were unendurable, and from the restless way in which she paced the room, stopping at every other step to listen for some sound to reach her through the silence of the night. Once she stepped quickly from the middle of the room to the wall opposite the door that opened on to the staircase; she pushed ajar the door of a small cupboard and murmured “hush,” making a warning movement with her hands, as if addressing someone concealed there; then she moved forward again and, sinking on to the sofa, pressed her hands against her throbbing temples.
“No one yet!” she murmured presently. “Oh, I would give ten years of my life to——! Is all really lost?” Her eyes wandered round the room. “What a forbidding, squalid place!” and again she sprang to her feet and paced the room. Through the grimy panes of the window she could just see a long row of roofs and chimneys outlined against the sky. “Oh, those black roofs, those horrible black roofs!” she muttered. The already wretched light in the wretched room was burning dimmer, and Lady Beltham turned up the wick of the lamp. As she did so she caught a sound and stopped. “Can that be he?” she exclaimed, and hurried to the door. “Footsteps—and a man’s footsteps!”
The next moment she was sure. Someone stumbled in the passage below, came slowly up the stairs, was on the landing.
Lady Beltham recoiled to the sofa and sank down on it, turning her back to the door, and hiding her face in her hands.
“Valgrand!”
Valgrand was a man with a passion for adventure. But invariable success in his flirtations had made him blasé, and now it was only the absolutely novel that could appeal to him. And there could certainly be no question about the woman who had sent him the present invitation being anything but a commonplace one! Moreover, it was not just any woman who had asked him to keep this assignation in the outward guise of Gurn, but the one woman in whose heart the murderer ought to inspire the greatest abhorrence, the widow of the man whom Gurn had murdered. What should his deportment be when he came face to face with her? That was what preoccupied the actor as he left the theatre, and made him dismiss the taxi in which he had started, before he reached his destination.
Valgrand came into the room slowly, and with a trained eye for effect. He flung his cloak and hat theatrically on the armchair, and moved towards Lady Beltham, who still sat motionless with her face hidden in her hands.
“I have come!” he said in deep tones.
Lady Beltham uttered a little exclamation as if of surprise, and seemed even more anxious to hide from him.
“Odd!” thought Valgrand. “She seems to be really upset; what can I say to her, I wonder?”
But Lady Beltham made a great effort and sat up, looking at the actor with strained eyes, yet striving to force a smile.
“Thank you for coming, sir,” she murmured.
“It is not from you, madame, that the thanks should come,” Valgrand answered magnificently; “quite the reverse; I am infinitely grateful to you for having summoned me. Pray believe that I would have been here even sooner but for the delay inevitable on a first performance. But you are cold,” he broke off, for Lady Beltham was shivering.
“Yes, I am,” she said almost inaudibly, mechanically pulling a scarf over her shoulders. Valgrand was standing, taking in every detail of the squalid room in which he found himself with this woman whose wealth, and taste, and sumptuous home at Neuilly were notorious.
“I must clear up this mystery,” he thought, while he moved to the window to see that it was shut, and searched about, in vain, for a little coal to put upon the fire. While he was thus occupied Lady Beltham also rose, and going to the table poured out two cups of tea.
“Perhaps this will warm us, in the absence of anything better,” she said, making an effort to seem more amiable. “I am afraid it is rather strong, M. Valgrand; I hope you do not mind?” and, with a hand that trembled as if it held a heavy weight, she brought one of the cups to her guest.
“Tea never upsets me, madame,” Valgrand replied as he took the cup. “Indeed, I like it.” He came to the table and picked up the basin filled with castor sugar, making first as if to put some in her cup.
“Thanks, I never take sugar in tea,” she said.
Valgrand made a little grimace. “I admire you, but I will not imitate you,” he said, and unceremoniously tipped a generous helping of the sugar into his own cup.
Lady Beltham watched him with haggard eyes.
While they were sipping their tea, there was silence between them. Lady Beltham went back to the sofa, and Valgrand took a chair quite close to her. The conversation was certainly lacking in animation, he reflected whimsically; would the lady succeed in reducing him to the level of intelligence of a callow schoolboy? And she most certainly did seem to be horribly upset. He raised his eyes to her and found that she was gazing into infinity.
“One has got to draw upon psychology here,” Valgrand mused. “It is not me, myself, in whom this lovely creature takes any interest, or she would not have desired me to come in these trappings that make me look like Gurn; it’s his skin that I must stop in! But what is the proper attitude to adopt? The sentimental? Or the brutal? Or shall I appeal to her proselytising mania, and do the repentant sinner act? I’ll chance it; here goes!” and he rose to his feet.
As he moved, Lady Beltham looked round, uneasy, frightened, almost anguished: it seemed as though she realised that the moment had come for extraordinary things to happen.
Valgrand began to speak as he did upon the stage, restraining his effects at first and controlling his voice of set purpose to give full effect to it later on, modulating it cleverly.
“At your summons, madame, the prisoner Gurn has burst his bonds, broken through the door of his cell, and scaled his prison walls, triumphing over every obstacle with the single object of coming to your feet. He comes——” and he took a step nearer to her.
Lady Beltham stayed him with a gesture of terror.
“Don’t! Don’t! Please say no more!” she murmured.
“I’ve got a bite,” Valgrand said to himself. “Let’s try another bait,” and as if repeating a part he said dramatically: “Has your charitable heart turned towards the guilty soul that you fain would rescue from transgression? Men say you are so great a lady, so good, so near to heaven!”
Again Lady Beltham put up a protesting hand.
“Not that! Not that!” she said imploringly. “Oh, this is torture; go away!”
In her distress she was really superbly beautiful; but Valgrand knew too much about women of every temperament, neurotic, hysterical, and many another kind, not to suppose that here he was merely taking part in a sentimental comedy. He made a rough gesture and laid his hand on Lady Beltham’s arm.
“Do you not know me?” he said harshly. “I am Gurn! I will crush you to my heart!” and he tried to draw her close to him.
But this time Lady Beltham threw him off with the violence of despair. “Stand back! You brute!” she cried, in tones that there was no mistaking.
Valgrand recoiled in real dismay, and stood silent in the middle of the room, while Lady Beltham went to the wall farthest from him and leaned for support against it.
“Listen, madame,” Valgrand began presently, in dulcet tones that had the effect of making Lady Beltham try to control her emotion and murmur some faint words of apology. “Of course you know I am Valgrand, Valgrand the actor; I will apologise for having come to you like this, but I have some small excuse in your note!”
“My note?” she murmured. “Oh, yes; I forgot!”
Valgrand went on, seeming to pick his words.
“You have overestimated your strength, and now perhaps you find the resemblance too startling? Do not be frightened. But your letter came to me like healing balm upon a quivering wound. For weeks, long weeks——” The actor stopped, and mechanically rubbed his eyes. “It’s odd,” he thought to himself, “but I feel ever so much more inclined to go to sleep than to make love.�
� He shook off his real desire for sleep and began again. “I have loved you since the day I saw you first. I love you with an intensity——”
For some moments Lady Beltham had been looking at him with a calmer air, and eyes that were less hostile. The old amorist observed it, and made a tremendous effort to overcome his most inopportune drowsiness.
“How shall I be silent, when at last kind heaven is about to grant the fondest desire of my heart? When, all afire with love, I am kneeling at your feet?”
Valgrand dropped to his knees. Lady Beltham drew herself up, listening. In the distance a clock struck four.
“Oh, I can bear it no longer!” she cried stammeringly. “I can bear no more! Listen; four o’clock! No, no! It is too much, too much for me!” The woman seemed absolutely frantic. She paced up and down the room like a caged animal. Then she came close to Valgrand, and looked at him with an immense pity in her eyes. “Go, sir; if you believe in God, go away! Go as quickly as you can!”
Valgrand struggled to his feet. His head was heavy, and he had an irresistible desire to hold his tongue and just stay where he was. Partly from gallantry and partly from his desire not to move, he murmured, not without a certain aptness: “I believe only in the god of love, madame, and he bids me remain!”
In vain did Lady Beltham make every effort to rouse the actor and induce him to go away; in vain were all her frantic appeals to him to fly.
“I will stay,” was all he said, and he dropped heavily on the sofa by Lady Beltham’s side, and mechanically tried to put his arm round her.
“Listen!” she began, freeing herself from him: “in heaven’s name you must——And yet, I cannot tell you! Oh, it is horrible! I am going mad! How am I to choose! What am I to do! Which——? Oh, go—go—go! There is not a minute to lose!”
“I will stay!” said Valgrand again; this amazing drowsiness was gaining on him so fast that he had but one desire left—for sleep! Surely a strange assignation, this, and a poor kind of lover, too!