The Room in the Dragon Volant

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  Chapter XXV

  DESPAIR

  A moment's hope, hope violent and fluctuating, hope that was nearlytorture, and then came a dialogue, and with it the terrors of despair.

  "Thank Heaven, Planard, you have come at last," said the Count, takinghim with both hands by the arm, and clinging to it and drawing himtoward me. "See, look at him. It has all gone sweetly, sweetly, sweetlyup to this. Shall I hold the candle for you?"

  My friend d'Harmonville, Planard, whatever he was, came to me, pullingoff his gloves, which he popped into his pocket.

  "The candle, a little this way," he said, and stooping over me he lookedearnestly in my face. He touched my forehead, drew his hand across it,and then looked in my eyes for a time.

  "Well, doctor, what do you think?" whispered the Count.

  "How much did you give him?" said the Marquis, thus suddenly stunteddown to a doctor.

  "Seventy drops," said the lady.

  "In the hot coffee?"

  "Yes; sixty in a hot cup of coffee and ten in the liqueur."

  Her voice, low and hard, seemed to me to tremble a little. It takes along course of guilt to subjugate nature completely, and prevent thoseexterior signs of agitation that outlive all good.

  The doctor, however, was treating me as coolly as he might a subjectwhich he was about to place on the dissecting-table for a lecture.

  He looked into my eyes again for awhile, took my wrist, and applied hisfingers to the pulse.

  "That action suspended," he said to himself.

  Then again he placed something, that for the moment I saw it looked likea piece of gold-beater's leaf, to my lips, holding his head so far thathis own breathing could not affect it.

  "Yes," he said in soliloquy, very low.

  Then he plucked my shirt-breast open and applied the stethoscope,shifted it from point to point, listened with his ear to its end, as iffor a very far-off sound, raised his head, and said, in like manner,softly to himself, "All appreciable action of the lungs has subsided."

  Then turning from the sound, as I conjectured, he said:

  "Seventy drops, allowing ten for waste, ought to hold him fast for sixhours and a half-that is ample. The experiment I tried in the carriagewas only thirty drops, and showed a highly sensitive brain. It would notdo to kill him, you know. You are certain you did not exceed_seventy_?"

  "Perfectly," said the lady.

  "If he were to die the evaporation would be arrested, and foreignmatter, some of it poisonous, would be found in the stomach, don't yousee? If you are doubtful, it would be well to use the stomach-pump."

  "Dearest Eugenie, be frank, be frank, do be frank," urged the Count.

  "I am _not_ doubtful, I am _certain_," she answered.

  "How long ago, exactly? I told you to observe the time."

  "I did; the minute-hand was exactly there, under the point of thatCupid's foot."

  "It will last, then, probably for seven hours. He will recover then; theevaporation will be complete, and not one particle of the fluid willremain in the stomach."

  It was reassuring, at all events, to hear that there was no intention tomurder me. No one who has not tried it knows the terror of the approachof death, when the mind is clear, the instincts of life unimpaired, andno excitement to disturb the appreciation of that entirely new horror.

  The nature and purpose of this tenderness was very, very peculiar, andas yet I had not a suspicion of it.

  "You leave France, I suppose?" said the ex-Marquis.

  "Yes, certainly, tomorrow," answered the Count.

  "And where do you mean to go?"

  "That I have not yet settled," he answered quickly.

  "You won't tell a friend, eh?"

  "I can't till I know. This has turned out an unprofitable affair."

  "We shall settle that by-and-by."

  "It is time we should get him lying down, eh," said the Count,indicating me with one finger.

  "Yes, we must proceed rapidly now. Are his night-shirt andnight-cap--you understand--here?"

  "All ready," said the Count.

  "Now, Madame," said the doctor, turning to the lady, and making her, inspite of the emergency, a bow, "it is time you should retire."

  The lady passed into the room in which I had taken my cup of treacherouscoffee, and I saw her no more. The Count took a candle and passedthrough the door at the further end of the room, returning with a rollof linen in his hand. He bolted first one door then the other.

  They now, in silence, proceeded to undress me rapidly. They were notmany minutes in accomplishing this.

  What the doctor had termed my night-shirt, a long garment which reachedbelow my feet, was now on, and a cap, that resembled a female nightcapmore than anything I had ever seen upon a male head, was fitted uponmine, and tied under my chin.

  And now, I thought, I shall be laid in a bed to recover how I can, and,in the meantime, the conspirators will have escaped with their booty,and pursuit be in vain.

  This was my best hope at the time; but it was soon clear that theirplans were very different. The Count and Planard now went, together,into the room that lay straight before me. I heard them talking low, anda sound of shuffling feet; then a long rumble; it suddenly stopped; itrecommenced; it continued; side by side they came in at the door, theirbacks toward me. They were dragging something along the floor that madea continued boom and rumble, but they interposed between me and it, sothat I could not see it until they had dragged it almost beside me; andthen, merciful heaven! I saw it plainly enough. It was the coffin I hadseen in the next room. It lay now flat on the floor, its edge againstthe chair in which I sat. Planard removed the lid. The coffin was empty.

  Chapter XXVI

  CATASTROPHE

  "Those seem to be good horses, and we change on the way," said Planard."You give the men a Napoleon or two; we must do it within three hoursand a quarter. Now, come; I'll lift him upright, so as to place his feetin their proper berth, and you must keep them together and draw thewhite shirt well down over them."

  In another moment I was placed, as he described, sustained in Planard'sarms, standing at the foot of the coffin, and so lowered backward,gradually, till I lay my length in it. Then the man, whom he calledPlanard, stretched my arms by my sides, and carefully arranged thefrills at my breast and the folds of the shroud, and after that, takinghis stand at the foot of the coffin made a survey which seemed tosatisfy him.

  The Count, who was very methodical, took my clothes, which had just beenremoved, folded them rapidly together and locked them up, as Iafterwards heard, in one of the three presses which opened by doors inthe panel.

  I now understood their frightful plan. This coffin had been prepared forme; the funeral of St. Amand was a sham to mislead inquiry; I had myselfgiven the order at Pere la Chaise, signed it, and paid the fees for theinterment of the fictitious Pierre de St. Amand, whose place I was totake, to lie in his coffin with his name on the plate above my breast,and with a ton of clay packed down upon me; to waken from thiscatalepsy, after I had been for hours in the grave, there to perish by adeath the most horrible that imagination can conceive.

  If, hereafter, by any caprice of curiosity or suspicion, the coffinshould be exhumed, and the body it enclosed examined, no chemistry coulddetect a trace of poison, nor the most cautious examination theslightest mark of violence.

  I had myself been at the utmost pains to mystify inquiry, should mydisappearance excite surmises, and had even written to my fewcorrespondents in England to tell them that they were not to look for aletter from me for three weeks at least.

  In the moment of my guilty elation death had caught me, and there was noescape. I tried to pray to God in my unearthly panic, but only thoughtsof terror, judgment, and eternal anguish crossed the distraction of myimmediate doom.

  I must not try to recall what is indeed indescribable--the multiformhorrors of my own thoughts. I will relate, simply, what befell, everydetail of which remains sharp in my memory as if cut in steel.

&nb
sp; "The undertaker's men are in the hall," said the Count.

  "They must not come till this is fixed," answered Planard. "Be goodenough to take hold of the lower part while I take this end." I was notleft long to conjecture what was coming, for in a few seconds moresomething slid across, a few inches above my face, and entirely excludedthe light, and muffled sound, so that nothing that was not very distinctreached my ears henceforward; but very distinctly came the working of aturnscrew, and the crunching home of screws in succession. Than thesevulgar sounds, no doom spoken in thunder could have been moretremendous.

  The rest I must relate, not as it then reached my ears, which was tooimperfectly and interruptedly to supply a connected narrative, but as itwas afterwards told me by other people.

  The coffin-lid being screwed down, the two gentlemen arranged the roomand adjusted the coffin so that it lay perfectly straight along theboards, the Count being specially anxious that there should be noappearance of hurry or disorder in the room, which might have suggestedremark and conjecture.

  When this was done, Doctor Planard said he would go to the hall tosummon the men who were to carry the coffin out and place it in thehearse. The Count pulled on his black gloves, and held his whitehandkerchief in his hand, a very impressive chief-mourner. He stood alittle behind the head of the coffin, awaiting the arrival of thepersons who accompanied Planard, and whose fast steps he soon heardapproaching.

  Planard came first. He entered the room through the apartment in whichthe coffin had been originally placed. His manner was changed; there wassomething of a swagger in it.

  "Monsieur le Comte," he said, as he strode through the door, followed byhalf-a-dozen persons, "I am sorry to have to announce to you a mostunseasonable interruption. Here is Monsieur Carmaignac, a gentlemanholding an office in the police department, who says that information tothe effect that large quantities of smuggled English and other goodshave been distributed in this neighborhood, and that a portion of themis concealed in your house. I have ventured to assure him, of my ownknowledge, that nothing can be more false than that information, andthat you would be only too happy to throw open for his inspection, at amoment's notice, every room, closet, and cupboard in your house."

  "Most assuredly," exclaimed the Count, with a stout voice, but a verywhite face. "Thank you, my good friend, for having anticipated me. Iwill place my house and keys at his disposal, for the purpose of hisscrutiny, so soon as he is good enough to inform me of what specificcontraband goods he comes in search."

  "The Count de St. Alyre will pardon me," answered Carmaignac, a littledryly. "I am forbidden by my instructions to make that disclosure; andthat I _am_ instructed to make a general search, this warrant willsufficiently apprise Monsieur le Comte."

  "Monsieur Carmaignac, may I hope," interposed Planard, "that you willpermit the Count de St. Alyre to attend the funeral of his kinsman, wholies here, as you see--" (he pointed to the plate upon the coffin)--"andto convey whom to Pere la Chaise, a hearse waits at this moment at thedoor."

  "That, I regret to say, I cannot permit. My instructions are precise;but the delay, I trust, will be but trifling. Monsieur le Comte will notsuppose for a moment that I suspect him; but we have a duty to perform,and I must act as if I did. When I am ordered to search, I search;things are sometimes hid in such bizarre places. I can't say, forinstance, what that coffin may contain."

  "The body of my kinsman, Monsieur Pierre de St. Amand," answered theCount, loftily.

  "Oh! then you've seen him?"

  "Seen him? Often, too often." The Count was evidently a good deal moved.

  "I mean the body?"

  The Count stole a quick glance at Planard.

  "N--no, Monsieur--that is, I mean only for a moment."

  Another quick glance at Planard.

  "But quite long enough, I fancy, to recognize him?" insinuated thatgentleman.

  "Of course--of course; instantly--perfectly. What! Pierre de St. Amand?Not know him at a glance? No, no, poor fellow, I know him too well forthat."

  "The things I am in search of," said Monsieur Carmaignac, "would fit ina narrow compass--servants are so ingenious sometimes. Let us raise thelid."

  "Pardon me, Monsieur," said the Count, peremptorily, advancing to theside of the coffin and extending his arm across it, "I cannot permitthat indignity--that desecration."

  "There shall be none, sir--simply the raising of the lid; you shallremain in the room. If it should prove as we all hope, you shall havethe pleasure of one other look, really the last, upon your belovedkinsman."

  "But, sir, I can't."

  "But, Monsieur, I must."

  "But, besides, the thing, the turnscrew, broke when the last screw wasturned; and I give you my sacred honor there is nothing but the body inthis coffin."

  "Of course, Monsieur le Comte believes all that; but he does not know sowell as I the legerdemain in use among servants, who are accustomed tosmuggling. Here, Philippe, you must take off the lid of that coffin."

  The Count protested; but Philippe--a man with a bald head and a smirchedface, looking like a working blacksmith--placed on the floor a leatherbag of tools, from which, having looked at the coffin, and picked withhis nail at the screw-heads, he selected a turnscrew and, with a fewdeft twirls at each of the screws, they stood up like little rows ofmushrooms, and the lid was raised. I saw the light, of which I thought Ihad seen my last, once more; but the axis of vision remained fixed. As Iwas reduced to the cataleptic state in a position nearly perpendicular,I continued looking straight before me, and thus my gaze was now fixedupon the ceiling. I saw the face of Carmaignac leaning over me with acurious frown. It seemed to me that there was no recognition in hiseyes. Oh, Heaven! that I could have uttered were it but one cry! I sawthe dark, mean mask of the little Count staring down at me from theother side; the face of the pseudo-Marquis also peering at me, but notso full in the line of vision; there were other faces also.

  "I see, I see," said Carmaignac, withdrawing. "Nothing of the kindthere."

  "You will be good enough to direct your man to re-adjust the lid of thecoffin, and to fix the screws," said the Count, taking courage;"and--and--really the funeral must proceed. It is not fair to thepeople, who have but moderate fees for night-work, to keep them hourafter hour beyond the time."

  "Count de St. Alyre, you shall go in a very few minutes. I will direct,just now, all about the coffin."

  The Count looked toward the door, and there saw a _gendarme_; andtwo or three more grave and stalwart specimens of the same force werealso in the room. The Count was very uncomfortably excited; it wasgrowing insupportable.

  "As this gentleman makes a difficulty about my attending the obsequiesof my kinsman, I will ask you, Planard, to accompany the funeral in mystead."

  "In a few minutes;" answered the incorrigible Carmaignac. "I must firsttrouble you for the key that opens that press."

  He pointed direct at the press in which the clothes had just been lockedup.

  "I--I have no objection," said the Count--"none, of course; only theyhave not been used for an age. I'll direct someone to look for the key."

  "If you have not got it about you, it is quite unnecessary. Philippe,try your skeleton-keys with that press. I want it opened. Whose clothesare these?" inquired Carmaignac, when, the press having been opened, hetook out the suit that had been placed there scarcely two minutes since.

  "I can't say," answered the Count. "I know nothing of the contents ofthat press. A roguish servant, named Lablais, whom I dismissed about ayear ago, had the key. I have not seen it open for ten years or more.The clothes are probably his."

  "Here are visiting cards, see, and here a markedpocket-handkerchief--'R.B.' upon it. He must have stolen them from aperson named Beckett--R. Beckett. 'Mr. Beckett, Berkeley Square,' thecard says; and, my faith! here's a watch and a bunch of seals; one ofthem with the initials 'R.B.' upon it. That servant, Lablais, must havebeen a consummate rogue!"

  "So he was; you are right, Sir."

  "It strik
es me that he possibly stole these clothes," continuedCarmaignac, "from the man in the coffin, who, in that case, would beMonsieur Beckett, and not Monsieur de St. Amand. For wonderful torelate, Monsieur, the watch is still going! The man in the coffin, Ibelieve, is not dead, but simply drugged. And for having robbed andintended to murder him, I arrest you, Nicolas de la Marque, Count de St.Alyre."

  In another moment the old villain was a prisoner. I heard his discordantvoice break quaveringly into sudden vehemence and volubility; nowcroaking--now shrieking as he oscillated between protests, threats, andimpious appeals to the God who will "judge the secrets of men!" And thuslying and raving, he was removed from the room, and placed in the samecoach with his beautiful and abandoned accomplice, already arrested;and, with two _gendarmes_ sitting beside them, they were immediatedriving at a rapid pace towards the Conciergerie.

  There were now added to the general chorus two voices, very different inquality; one was that of the gasconading Colonel Gaillarde, who had withdifficulty been kept in the background up to this; the other was that ofmy jolly friend Whistlewick, who had come to identify me.

  I shall tell you, just now, how this project against my property andlife, so ingenious and monstrous, was exploded. I must first say a wordabout myself. I was placed in a hot bath, under the direction ofPlanard, as consummate a villain as any of the gang, but now thoroughlyin the interests of the prosecution. Thence I was laid in a warm bed,the window of the room being open. These simple measures restored me inabout three hours; I should otherwise, probably, have continued underthe spell for nearly seven.

  The practices of these nefarious conspirators had been carried on withconsummate skill and secrecy. Their dupes were led, as I was, to bethemselves auxiliary to the mystery which made their own destructionboth safe and certain.

  A search was, of course, instituted. Graves were opened in Pere laChaise. The bodies exhumed had lain there too long, and were too muchdecomposed to be recognized. One only was identified. The notice for theburial, in this particular case, had been signed, the order given, andthe fees paid, by Gabriel Gaillarde, who was known to the officialclerk, who had to transact with him this little funereal business. Thevery trick that had been arranged for me, had been successfullypracticed in his case. The person for whom the grave had been ordered,was purely fictitious; and Gabriel Gaillarde himself filled the coffin,on the cover of which that false name was inscribed as well as upon atomb-stone over the grave. Possibly the same honor, under my pseudonym,may have been intended for me.

  The identification was curious. This Gabriel Gaillarde had had a badfall from a runaway horse about five years before his mysteriousdisappearance. He had lost an eye and some teeth in this accident,beside sustaining a fracture of the right leg, immediately above theankle. He had kept the injuries to his face as profound a secret as hecould. The result was, that the glass eye which had done duty for theone he had lost remained in the socket, slightly displaced, of course,but recognizable by the "artist" who had supplied it.

  More pointedly recognizable were the teeth, peculiar in workmanship,which one of the ablest dentists in Paris had himself adapted to thechasms, the cast of which, owing to peculiarities in the accident, hehappened to have preserved. This cast precisely fitted the gold platefound in the mouth of the skull. The mark, also, above the ankle, in thebone, where it had reunited, corresponded exactly with the place wherethe fracture had knit in the limb of Gabriel Gaillarde.

  The Colonel, his younger brother, had been furious about thedisappearance of Gabriel, and still more so about that of his money,which he had long regarded as his proper keepsake, whenever death shouldremove his brother from the vexations of living. He had suspected for along time, for certain adroitly discovered reasons, that the Count deSt. Alyre and the beautiful lady, his companion, countess, or whateverelse she was, had pigeoned him. To this suspicion were added some othersof a still darker kind; but in their first shape, rather the exaggeratedreflections of his fury, ready to believe anything, than well-definedconjectures.

  At length an accident had placed the Colonel very nearly upon the rightscent; a chance, possibly lucky, for himself, had apprised the scoundrelPlanard that the conspirators--himself among the number--were in danger.The result was that he made terms for himself, became an informer, andconcerted with the police this visit made to the Chateau de la Carque atthe critical moment when every measure had been completed that wasnecessary to construct a perfect case against his guilty accomplices.

  I need not describe the minute industry or forethought with which thepolice agents collected all the details necessary to support the case.They had brought an able physician, who, even had Planard failed, wouldhave supplied the necessary medical evidence.

  My trip to Paris, you will believe, had not turned out quite soagreeably as I had anticipated. I was the principal witness for theprosecution in this _cause celebre_, with all the _agremens_that attend that enviable position. Having had an escape, as my friendWhistlewick said, "with a squeak" for my life, I innocently fancied thatI should have been an object of considerable interest to Parisiansociety; but, a good deal to my mortification, I discovered that I wasthe object of a good-natured but contemptuous merriment. I was a_balourd, a benet, un ane_, and figured even in caricatures. Ibecame a sort of public character, a dignity,

  "Unto which I was not born,"

  and from which I fled as soon as I conveniently could, without evenpaying my friend, the Marquis d'Harmonville, a visit at his hospitablechateau.

  The Marquis escaped scot-free. His accomplice, the Count, was executed.The fair Eugenie, under extenuating circumstances--consisting, so far asI could discover of her good looks--got off for six years' imprisonment.

  Colonel Gaillarde recovered some of his brother's money, out of the notvery affluent estate of the Count and soi-disant Countess. This, and theexecution of the Count, put him in high good humor. So far frominsisting on a hostile meeting, he shook me very graciously by the hand,told me that he looked upon the wound on his head, inflicted by the knobof my stick, as having been received in an honorable though irregularduel, in which he had no disadvantage or unfairness to complain of.

  I think I have only two additional details to mention. The bricksdiscovered in the room with the coffin, had been packed in it, in straw,to supply the weight of a dead body, and to prevent the suspicions andcontradictions that might have been excited by the arrival of an emptycoffin at the chateau.

  Secondly, the Countess's magnificent brilliants were examined by alapidary, and pronounced to be worth about five pounds to a tragedyqueen who happened to be in want of a suite of paste.

  The Countess had figured some years before as one of the cleverestactresses on the minor stage of Paris, where she had been picked up bythe Count and used as his principal accomplice.

  She it was who, admirably disguised, had rifled my papers in thecarriage on my memorable night-journey to Paris. She also had figured asthe interpreting magician of the palanquin at the ball at Versailles. Sofar as I was affected by that elaborate mystification it was intended tore-animate my interest, which, they feared, might flag in the beautifulCountess. It had its design and action upon other intended victims also;but of them there is, at present, no need to speak. The introduction ofa real corpse--procured from a person who supplied the Parisiananatomists--involved no real danger, while it heightened the mystery andkept the prophet alive in the gossip of the town and in the thoughts ofthe noodles with whom he had conferred.

  I divided the remainder of the summer and autumn between Switzerland andItaly.

  As the well-worn phrase goes, I was a sadder if not a wiser man. A greatdeal of the horrible impression left upon my mind was due, of course, tothe mere action of nerves and brain. But serious feelings of another anddeeper kind remained. My afterlife was ultimately formed by the shock Ihad then received. Those impressions led me--but not till after manyyears--to happier though not less serious thoughts; and I have deepreason to be thankful to the all-merciful Ruler
of events for an earlyand terrible lesson in the ways of sin.