“Sounds like moans.... And mother’s alone!”
Suddenly, a frightful scream rang out. All five rushed forward. Another scream, followed by cries of despair.
“We’re here! We’re coming!” shouted the eldest, who was leading.
And, as it was a roundabout way to the door, he smashed in a window with his fist and sprang into the old people’s bedroom. The room next to it was the linen-room, in which Mother Goussot spent most of her time.
“Damnation!” he said, seeing her lying on the floor, with blood all over her face. “Dad! Dad!”
“What? Where is she?” roared old Goussot, appearing on the scene. “Good lord, what’s this?... What have they done to your mother?”
She pulled herself together and, with outstretched arm, stammered:
“Run after him!... This way!... This way!... I’m all right ... only a scratch or two.... But run, you! He’s taken the money.”
The father and sons gave a bound:
“He’s taken the money!” bellowed old Goussot, rushing to the door to which his wife was pointing. “He’s taken the money! Stop thief!”
But a sound of several voices rose at the end of the passage through which the other three sons were coming:
“I saw him! I saw him!”
“So did I! He ran up the stairs.”
“No, there he is, he’s coming down again!”
A mad steeplechase shook every floor in the house. Farmer Goussot, on reaching the end of the passage, caught sight of a man standing by the front door trying to open it. If he succeeded, it meant safety, escape through the market square and the back lanes of the village.
Interrupted as he was fumbling at the bolts, the man turning stupid, lost his head, charged at old Goussot and sent him spinning, dodged the eldest brother and, pursued by the four sons, doubled back down the long passage, ran into the old couple’s bedroom, flung his legs through the broken window and disappeared.
The sons rushed after him across the lawns and orchards, now darkened by the falling night.
“The villain’s done for,” chuckled old Goussot. “There’s no way out for him. The walls are too high. He’s done for, the scoundrel!”
The two farm-hands returned, at that moment, from the village; and he told them what had happened and gave each of them a gun:
“If the swine shows his nose anywhere near the house,” he said, “let fly at him. Give him no mercy!”
He told them where to stand, went to make sure that the farm-gates, which were only used for the carts, were locked, and, not till then, remembered that his wife might perhaps be in need of aid:
“Well, mother, how goes it?”
“Where is he? Have you got him?” she asked, in a breath.
“Yes, we’re after him. The lads must have collared him by now.”
The news quite restored her; and a nip of rum gave her the strength to drag herself to the bed, with old Goussot’s assistance, and to tell her story. For that matter, there was not much to tell. She had just lit the fire in the living-hall; and she was knitting quietly at her bedroom window, waiting for the men to return, when she thought that she heard a slight grating sound in the linen-room next door:
“I must have left the cat in there,” she thought to herself.
She went in, suspecting nothing, and was astonished to see the two doors of one of the linen-cupboards, the one in which they hid their money, wide open. She walked up to it, still without suspicion. There was a man there, hiding, with his back to the shelves.
“But how did he get in?” asked old Goussot.
“Through the passage, I suppose. We never keep the back door shut.”
“And then did he go for you?”
“No, I went for him. He tried to get away.”
“You should have let him.”
“And what about the money?”
“Had he taken it by then?”
“Had he taken it! I saw the bundle of bank-notes in his hands, the sweep! I would have let him kill me sooner.... Oh, we had a sharp tussle, I give you my word!”
“Then he had no weapon?’
“No more than I did. We had our fingers, our nails and our teeth. Look here, where he bit me. And I yelled and screamed! Only, I’m an old woman you see.... I had to let go of him....”
“Do you know the man?”
“I’m pretty sure it was old Trainard.”
“The tramp? Why, of course it’s old Trainard!” cried the farmer. “I thought I knew him too.... Besides, he’s been hanging round the house these last three days. The old vagabond must have smelt the money. Aha, Trainard, my man, we shall see some fun! A number-one hiding in the first place; and then the police.... I say, mother, you can get up now, can’t you? Then go and fetch the neighbours.... Ask them to run for the gendarmes.... By the by, the attorney’s youngster has a bicycle.... How that damned old Trainard scooted! He’s got good legs for his age, he has. He can run like a hare!”
Goussot was holding his sides, revelling in the occurrence. He risked nothing by waiting. No power on earth could help the tramp escape or keep him from the sound thrashing which he had earned and from being conveyed, under safe escort, to the town gaol.
The farmer took a gun and went out to his two labourers:
“Anything fresh?”
“No, Farmer Goussot, not yet.”
“We sha’n’t have long to wait. Unless old Nick carries him over the walls....”
From time to time, they heard the four brothers hailing one another in the distance. The old bird was evidently making a fight for it, was more active than they would have thought. Still, with sturdy fellows like the Goussot brothers....
However, one of them returned, looking rather crestfallen, and made no secret of his opinion:
“It’s no use keeping on at it for the present. It’s pitch dark. The old chap must have crept into some hole. We’ll hunt him out to-morrow.”
“To-morrow! Why, lad, you’re off your chump!” protested the farmer.
The eldest son now appeared, quite out of breath, and was of the same opinion as his brother. Why not wait till next day, seeing that the ruffian was as safe within the demesne as between the walls of a prison?
“Well, I’ll go myself,” cried old Goussot. “Light me a lantern, somebody!”
But, at that moment, three gendarmes arrived; and a number of village lads also came up to hear the latest.
The sergeant of gendarmes was a man of method. He first insisted on hearing the whole story, in full detail; then he stopped to think; then he questioned the four brothers, separately, and took his time for reflection after each deposition. When he had learnt from them that the tramp had fled toward the back of the estate, that he had been lost sight of repeatedly and that he had finally disappeared near a place known as the Crows’ Knoll, he meditated once more and announced his conclusion:
“Better wait. Old Trainard might slip through our hands, amidst all the confusion of a pursuit in the dark, and then good-night, everybody!”
The farmer shrugged his shoulders and, cursing under his breath, yielded to the sergeant’s arguments. That worthy organized a strict watch, distributed the brothers Goussot and the lads from the village under his men’s eyes, made sure that the ladders were locked away and established his headquarters in the dining-room, where he and Farmer Goussot sat and nodded over a decanter of old brandy.
The night passed quietly. Every two hours, the sergeant went his rounds and inspected the posts. There were no alarms. Old Trainard did not budge from his hole.
The battle began at break of day.
It lasted four hours.
In those four hours, the thirteen acres of land within the walls were searched, explored, gone over in every direction by a score of men who beat the bushes with sticks, trampled over the tall grass, rummaged in the hollows of the trees and scattered the heaps of dry leaves. And old Trainard remained invisible.
“Well, this is a bit thick!” growled Goussot.<
br />
“Beats me altogether,” retorted the sergeant.
And indeed there was no explaining the phenomenon. For, after all, apart from a few old clumps of laurels and spindle-trees, which were thoroughly beaten, all the trees were bare. There was no building, no shed, no stack, nothing, in short, that could serve as a hiding-place.
As for the wall, a careful inspection convinced even the sergeant that it was physically impossible to scale it.
In the afternoon, the investigations were begun all over again in the presence of the examining-magistrate and the public-prosecutor’s deputy. The results were no more successful. Nay, worse, the officials looked upon the matter as so suspicious that they could not restrain their ill-humour and asked:
“Are you quite sure, Farmer Goussot, that you and your sons haven’t been seeing double?”
“And what about my wife?” retorted the farmer, red with anger. “Did she see double when the scamp had her by the throat? Go and look at the marks, if you doubt me!”
“Very well. But then where is the scamp?”
“Here, between those four walls.”
“Very well. Then ferret him out. We give it up. It’s quite clear, that if a man were hidden within the precincts of this farm, we should have found him by now.”
“I swear I’ll lay hands on him, true as I stand here!” shouted Farmer Goussot. “It shall not be said that I’ve been robbed of six thousand francs. Yes, six thousand! There were three cows I sold; and then the wheat-crop; and then the apples. Six thousand-franc notes, which I was just going to take to the bank. Well, I swear to Heaven that the money’s as good as in my pocket!”
“That’s all right and I wish you luck,” said the examining-magistrate, as he went away, followed by the deputy and the gendarmes.
The neighbours also walked off in a more or less facetious mood. And, by the end of the afternoon, none remained but the Goussots and the two farm-labourers.
Old Goussot at once explained his plan. By day, they were to search. At night, they were to keep an incessant watch. It would last as long as it had to. Hang it, old Trainard was a man like other men; and men have to eat and drink! Old Trainard must needs, therefore, come out of his earth to eat and drink.
“At most,” said Goussot, “he can have a few crusts of bread in his pocket, or even pull up a root or two at night. But, as far as drink’s concerned, no go. There’s only the spring. And he’ll be a clever dog if he gets near that.”
He himself, that evening, took up his stand near the spring. Three hours later, his eldest son relieved him. The other brothers and the farm-hands slept in the house, each taking his turn of the watch and keeping all the lamps and candles lit, so that there might be no surprise.
So it went on for fourteen consecutive nights. And for fourteen days, while two of the men and Mother Goussot remained on guard, the five others explored the Héberville ground.
At the end of that fortnight, not a sign.
The farmer never ceased storming. He sent for a retired detective-inspector who lived in the neighbouring town. The inspector stayed with him for a whole week. He found neither old Trainard nor the least clue that could give them any hope of finding old Trainard.
“It’s a bit thick!” repeated Farmer Goussot. “For he’s there, the rascal! As far as being anywhere goes, he’s there. So....”
Planting himself on the threshold, he railed at the enemy at the top of his voice:
“You blithering idiot, would you rather croak in your hole than fork out the money? Then croak, you pig!”
And Mother Goussot, in her turn, yelped, in her shrill voice:
“Is it prison you’re afraid of? Hand over the notes and you can hook it!”
But old Trainard did not breathe a word; and the husband and wife tired their lungs in vain.
Shocking days passed. Farmer Goussot could no longer sleep, lay shivering with fever. The sons became morose and quarrelsome and never let their guns out of their hands, having no other idea but to shoot the tramp.
It was the one topic of conversation in the village; and the Goussot story, from being local at first, soon went the round of the press. Newspaper-reporters came from the assize-town, from Paris itself, and were rudely shown the door by Farmer Goussot.
“Each man his own house,” he said. “You mind your business. I mind mine. It’s nothing to do with any one.”
“Still, Farmer Goussot....”
“Go to blazes!”
And he slammed the door in their face.
Old Trainard had now been hidden within the walls of Héberville for something like four weeks. The Goussots continued their search as doggedly and confidently as ever, but with daily decreasing hope, as though they were confronted with one of those mysterious obstacles which discourage human effort. And the idea that they would never see their money again began to take root in them.
One fine morning, at about ten o’clock, a motor-car, crossing the village square at full speed, broke down and came to a dead stop.
The driver, after a careful inspection, declared that the repairs would take some little time, whereupon the owner of the car resolved to wait at the inn and lunch. He was a gentleman on the right side of forty, with close-cropped side-whiskers and a pleasant expression of face; and he soon made himself at home with the people at the inn.
Of course, they told him the story of the Goussots. He had not heard it before, as he had been abroad; but it seemed to interest him greatly. He made them give him all the details, raised objections, discussed various theories with a number of people who were eating at the same table and ended by exclaiming:
“Nonsense! It can’t be so intricate as all that. I have had some experience of this sort of thing. And, if I were on the premises....”
“That’s easily arranged,” said the inn-keeper. “I know Farmer Goussot.... He won’t object....”
The request was soon made and granted. Old Goussot was in one of those frames of mind when we are less disposed to protest against outside interference. His wife, at any rate, was very firm:
“Let the gentleman come, if he wants to.”
The gentleman paid his bill and instructed his driver to try the car on the high-road as soon as the repairs were finished:
“I shall want an hour,” he said, “no more. Be ready in an hour’s time.”
Then he went to Farmer Goussot’s.
He did not say much at the farm. Old Goussot, hoping against hope, was lavish with information, took his visitor along the walls down to the little door opening on the fields, produced the key and gave minute details of all the searches that had been made so far.
Oddly enough, the stranger, who hardly spoke, seemed not to listen either. He merely looked, with a rather vacant gaze. When they had been round the estate, old Goussot asked, anxiously:
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Do you think you know?”
The visitor stood for a moment without answering. Then he said:
“No, nothing.”
“Why, of course not!” cried the farmer, throwing up his arms. “How should you know! It’s all hanky-panky. Shall I tell you what I think? Well, that old Trainard has been so jolly clever that he’s lying dead in his hole ... and the bank-notes are rotting with him. Do you hear? You can take my word for it.”
The gentleman said, very calmly:
“There’s only one thing that interests me. The tramp, all said and done, was free at night and able to feed on what he could pick up. But how about drinking?”
“Out of the question!” shouted the farmer. “Quite out of the question! There’s no water except this; and we have kept watch beside it every night.”
“It’s a spring. Where does it rise?”
“Here, where we stand.”
“Is there enough pressure to bring it into the pool of itself?”
“Yes.”
“And where does the water go when it runs out of the pool?”
“Into
this pipe here, which goes under ground and carries it to the house, for use in the kitchen. So there’s no way of drinking, seeing that we were there and that the spring is twenty yards from the house.”
“Hasn’t it rained during the last four weeks?”
“Not once: I’ve told you that already.”
The stranger went to the spring and examined it. The trough was formed of a few boards of wood joined together just above the ground; and the water ran through it, slow and clear.
“The water’s not more than a foot deep, is it?” he asked.
In order to measure it, he picked up from the grass a straw which he dipped into the pool. But, as he was stooping, he suddenly broke off and looked around him.
“Oh, how funny!” he said, bursting into a peal of laughter.
“Why, what’s the matter?” spluttered old Goussot, rushing toward the pool, as though a man could have lain hidden between those narrow boards.
And Mother Goussot clasped her hands.
“What is it? Have you seen him? Where is he?”
“Neither in it nor under it,” replied the stranger, who was still laughing.
He made for the house, eagerly followed by the farmer, the old woman and the four sons. The inn-keeper was there also, as were the people from the inn who had been watching the stranger’s movements. And there was a dead silence, while they waited for the extraordinary disclosure.
“It’s as I thought,” he said, with an amused expression. “The old chap had to quench his thirst somewhere; and, as there was only the spring....”
“Oh, but look here,” growled Farmer Goussot, “we should have seen him!”
“It was at night.”
“We should have heard him ... and seen him too, as we were close by.”
“So was he.”
“And he drank the water from the pool?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“From a little way off.”
“With what?”
“With this.”
And the stranger showed the straw which he had picked up:
“There, here’s the straw for the customer’s long drink. You will see, there’s more of it than usual: in fact, it is made of three straws stuck into one another. That was the first thing I noticed: those three straws fastened together. The proof is conclusive.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 160
