Castles in the Air

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

  4.

  Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventurewith that abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almoststrikes me dumb. To think that with my own hands and brains Iliterally put half a million into that man's pocket, and that herepaid me with the basest ingratitude, almost makes me lose my faithin human nature. Theodore, of course, I could punish, and did soadequately; and where my chastisement failed, Fate herself put thefinishing touch.

  But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!

  However, you shall judge for yourself.

  As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir,I can only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming thatMme. la Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands forinterviews and small doles of money, and that she would be willing tooffer a considerable sum to her first and only lawful husband inexchange for a firm guarantee that he would never trouble her again aslong as she lived.

  We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was totake the form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signedby the supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demandand offering the guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. laMarquise, and she, after the usual attack of hysterics, duly confidedthe matter to M. de Firmin-Latour.

  The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subjectwas touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquiscredit for playing his role in a masterly manner. At first he declaredto his dear Rachel that he did not know what to suggest, for in truthshe had nothing like half a million on which she could lay her hands.To speak of this awful pending scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not tobe thought of. He was capable of repudiating the daughter altogetherwho was bringing such obloquy upon herself and would henceforth be ofno use to him as a society star.

  As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had lessthan nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed--if he had one--atthe feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point oflosing her was more than he could bear, and the idea that she wouldsoon become the talk of every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap beput in prison for bigamy, wellnigh drove him crazy.

  What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could notthink, unless indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some ofher jewellery; but no! he could not think of allowing her to make sucha sacrifice.

  Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at astraw, bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, oncethe property of the Empress Marie-Therese, and had been given to heron her second marriage by her adoring father. No, no! she would nevermiss them; she seldom wore them, for they were heavy and more valuablethan elegant, and she was quite sure that at the Mont de Piete theywould lend her five hundred thousand francs on them. Then graduallythey could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their temporarydisappearance. Madame would save the money out of the liberalallowance she received from him for pin-money. Anything, anything waspreferable to this awful doom which hung over her head.

  But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud andfashionable Rachel going to the Mont de Piete to pawn her own jewels wasnot to be thought of. She would be seen, recognized, and the scandalwould be as bad and worse than anything that loomed on the black horizonof her fate at this hour.

  What was to be done? What was to be done?

  Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a veryreliable, trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, andtherefore a man of repute, who was often obliged in the exercise ofhis profession to don various disguises when tracking criminals in theoutlying quarters of Paris. M. le Marquis, putting all pride anddignity nobly aside in the interests of his adored Rachel, wouldborrow one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont de Piete withthe emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit themto the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for theaforementioned guarantee.

  Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in themidst of a flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longerdared to call her husband, and so the matter was settled for themoment. M. le Marquis undertook to have the deed of guarantee draftedby the same notary of repute whom he knew, and, if Madame approved ofit, the emeralds would then be converted into money, and the interviewwith M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday, October 10th, at someconvenient place, subsequently to be determined on--in allprobability at the bureau of that same ubiquitous attorney-at-law, M.Hector Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.

  All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted thedeed, and M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. Itwas so simply and so comprehensively worded that she expressed herselfthoroughly satisfied with it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her towrite to her shameful persecutor in order to fix the date and hour forthe exchange of the money against the deed duly signed and witnessed.M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for her letters, youunderstand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent fromtime to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to beentrusted with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost,would bring security and happiness once more in the sumptuous palaceof the Rue de Grammont.

  Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. laMarquise--whether prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, ormerely by natural curiosity--altered her mind about the appointment.She decided that M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, shouldbring the money to her, and she herself would go to the bureau of M.Hector Ratichon in the Rue Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whomshe had not seen for seven years, but who had once been very dear toher, and herself fling in his face the five hundred thousand francs,the price of his silence and of her peace of mind.

  At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To havedemurred, or uttered more than a casual word of objection, would inthe case of M. le Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that atonce, the moment he raised his voice in protest: and when Madamedeclared herself determined he immediately gave up arguing the point.

  The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulatenew plans. Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont dePiete to negotiate the emeralds, and the interview with the fabulousM. de Naquet was to take place a couple of hours later; and it was nowthree o'clock in the afternoon.

  As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he cameround to my office. He appeared completely at his wits' end, notknowing what to do.

  "If my wife," he said, "insists on a personal interview with deNaquet, who does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground.Nay, worse! for I shall be driven to concoct some impossibleexplanation for the non-appearance of that worthy, and heaven onlyknows if I shall succeed in wholly allaying my wife's suspicions.

  "Ah!" he added with a sigh, "it is doubly hard to have seen fortune sonear one's reach and then to see it dashed away at one fell swoop bythe relentless hand of Fate."

  Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of thesubtle mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.

  But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present onethat Hector Ratichon's genius soars up to the empyrean. It becamegreat, Sir; nothing short of great; and even the marvellous schemes ofthe Italian Macchiavelli paled before the ingenuity which I nowdisplayed.

  Half an hour's reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I hadmeasured the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Amongthese New Caledonia was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir;my genius could not stoop to measuring the costs of its flight. WhileM. de Firmin-Latour alternately raved and lamented I had alreadyplanned and contrived. As I say, we had very little time: a few hourswherein to render ourselves worthy of Fortune's smiles. And this iswhat I planned.

  You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which Ispeak. If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensat
ioncaused throughout the entire city by the disappearance of M. leMarquis de Firmin-Latour, one of the most dashing young officers insociety and one of its acknowledged leaders. It was the 10th day ofOctober. M. le Marquis had breakfasted in the company of Madame atnine o'clock. A couple of hours later he went out, saying he would behome for dejeuner. Madame clearly expected him, for his place waslaid, and she ordered the dejeuner to be kept back over an hour inanticipation of his return. But he did not come. The afternoon wore onand he did not come. Madame sat down at two o'clock to dejeuner alone.She told the major-domo that M. le Marquis was detained in town andmight not be home for some time. But the major-domo declared thatMadame's voice, as she told him this, sounded tearful and forced, andthat she ate practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish afteranother.

  The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and whenthe shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in thekitchen that M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or beenfoully murdered. No one, however, dared speak of this to Madame laMarquise, who had locked herself up in her room in the early part ofthe afternoon, and since then had refused to see anyone. Themajor-domo was now at his wits' end. He felt that in a measure theresponsibility of the household rested upon his shoulders. Indeed hewould have taken it upon himself to apprise M. Mauruss Mosenstein ofthe terrible happenings, only that the worthy gentleman was absentfrom Paris just then.

  Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eighto'clock. Then she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence ofsitting down to it; but again the major-domo declared that she atenothing, whilst subsequently the confidential maid who had undressedher vowed that Madame had spent the whole night walking up and downthe room.

  Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody.Madame la Marquise became more and more agitated, more and morehysterical as time went on, and the servants could not help but noticethis, even though she made light of the whole affair, and desperateefforts to control herself. The heads of her household, themajor-domo, the confidential maid, the chef de cuisine, did venture todrop a hint or two as to the possibility of an accident or of foulplay, and the desirability of consulting the police; but Madame wouldnot hear a word of it; she became very angry at the suggestion, anddeclared that she was perfectly well aware of M. le Marquis'swhereabouts, that he was well and would return home almostimmediately.

  As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it wascommon talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour haddisappeared from his home and that Madame was trying to put a boldface upon the occurrence. There were surmises and there was gossip--oh! interminable and long-winded gossip! Minute circumstances inconnexion with M. le Marquis's private life and Mme. la Marquise'saffairs were freely discussed in the cafes, the clubs and restaurants,and as no one knew the facts of the case, surmises soon became verywild.

  On the third day of M. le Marquis's disappearance Papa Mosensteinreturned to Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annualcure. He arrived at Rue de Grammont at three o'clock in the afternoon,demanded to see Mme. la Marquise at once, and then remained closetedwith her in her apartment for over an hour. After which he sent forthe inspector of police of the section, with the result that that verysame evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found locked up in anhumble apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou, notten minutes' walk from his own house. When the police--acting oninformation supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein--forced theirway into that apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis deFirmin-Latour there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, hislikely calls for help smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely roundthe lower part of his face.

  He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless andhelpless to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to benursed back to health by Madame his wife.