Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Fifteen minutes,” said the Italian.

  A few more seconds passed. Of a sudden they quivered. A hushed exclamation burst from the lips of each. The man’s eyelids had moved.

  In a moment the phenomenon was repeated, and so clearly and distinctly that further doubt was impossible. It was the twitching of two eyes that tried to open. At the same time the arms stirred. The hands quivered.

  “Oh!” stuttered the distracted notary. “He’s alive! He’s alive!”

  CHAPTER XIII

  LAZARUS

  DOROTHY GAZED; HER eyes missed no slightest movement. Like her, the young men remained motionless, with drawn faces. The Italian, however, just sketched the sign of the cross.

  “He’s alive!” broke in Maître Delarue. “Look; he’s looking at us.”

  A strange gaze. It did not shift; it did not try to see. The gaze of the newly born, animated by no thought. Vague, unconscious, it shunned the light of the lamps and seemed ready to be extinguished in a new sleep. On the other hand the rest of the body became instinct with life, as if the blood resumed its normal course under the impulsion of a heart which again began to beat. The arms and the hands moved with purposed movements. Then suddenly the legs slipped off the bed. The bust was raised. After several attempts the man sat up.

  Then they saw him face to face; and since one of the young men raised his lamp that its light might not shine in his eyes, that lamp lit up on the wall of the alcove above the bed the portrait of which the Marquis had made mention. They could then perceive that it was indeed the portrait of the man. The same enormous brow, the same eyes deeply sunk in their orbits, the same high cheek-bones, the same bony jaw, the same projecting ears. But the nun, contrary to the prediction in the letter, had greatly aged and grown considerably thinner, for the portrait represented a nobleman of good appearance and sufficiently plump.

  Twice he tried to stand upright without succeeding. He was too weak; his legs refused to support him. He seemed also to be laboring under a heavy oppression and to breathe with difficulty, either because he had lost the habit or because he needed more air. Dorothy observed two planks nailed to the wall, pointed them out to Dario and Webster, and signed to them to pull them down. It was easy to do so, for they were not nailed very firmly to the wall; and they uncovered a small round window, a bull’s-eye rather, not more than a foot or fifteen inches across.

  A whiff of fresh air blew into the room all round the man sitting on the bed; and for all that he appeared to have no understanding of anything, he turned towards the window, and opening his mouth, drew in great breaths.

  All these trifling incidents were spread over a considerable time. The astonished witnesses of them had a feeling that they were taking part in the mysterious phases of a resurrection which they were wholly unable to consider final. Every minute gained by this living dead man appeared to them a new miracle which passed all imagining, and they hoped for the inevitable event which would restore things to their natural order, and which would be as it were the disarticulation and crumbling away of this incredible automaton.

  Dorothy stamped her foot impatiently, as if she were struggling against herself and trying to shake off a torpor.

  She turned away from this sight which fascinated her, and her face took on an expression of such profound thought, that her companions withdrew their eyes from the man to watch her. Her eyes were seeking something. Their blue irises became of a deeper blue. They seemed to see beyond what ordinary eyes see and to pursue the truth into more distant regions.

  At the end of a minute or two she said:

  “We must try.”

  She went firmly to the bed. After all here was a clear and definite phenomenon; it had to be taken into account: this man was alive. It was necessary therefore to treat him as a living being, who has ears to hear and a mouth to speak with, and who distinguishes the things about him by a personal existence. This man had a name. Every circumstance pointed directly to the fact that his presence in this sealed chamber was the result not of a miracle — a hypothesis which they need only examine as a last resort — but of an experiment that had succeeded — a hypothesis which one had no right to set aside for a priori reasons, however astonishing it might appear to be.

  Then why not question him?

  She sat down beside him, took his hands, which were cold and moist, in hers and said gravely:

  “We have hastened hither at your summons... We are they to whom the gold medal—”

  She stopped. The words were not coming easily to her. They seemed to her absurd and childish; and she was quite certain that they must appear so to those who heard them. But she must make an effort to continue:

  “In our families the gold medal has passed from hand to hand right down to us.... It is now for two centuries that the tradition has been forming and that your will—”

  But she was incapable of continuing on these pompous lines. Another voice within her murmured:

  “Goodness, how idiotic what I am saying is!”

  However, the hands of the man were growing warm from their contact with hers. He almost wore an air of hearing the noise of her words and of understanding that they were addressed to him. And so, dropping the phrase-making, she brought herself to speak to him simply, as to a poor man whom his resurrection did not set apart from human necessities:

  “Are you hungry?... Do you want to eat?... to drink? Answer. What would you like?... My friends and I will try...”

  The old man, with the light full on his face, his mouth open, his lower lip hanging down, preserved a dull and stupid countenance, animated by no expression, no desire.

  Without turning away from him, Dorothy called out to the notary:

  “Don’t you think we ought to offer him the second envelope, Maître Delarue, the codicil? His understanding may perhaps awake at the sight of this paper which formerly belonged to him, and which, according to the instructions in the will, we’re to hand over to him.”

  Maître Delarue agreed with her and passed the envelope to her. She held it out to the old man, saying:

  “Here are the directions for finding the diamonds, written by yourself. No one knows these directions. Here they are.”

  She stretched out her hand. It was clear that the old man tried to respond with a similar movement. She accentuated the gesture. He lowered his eyes towards the envelope; and his fingers opened to receive it.

  “You quite understand?” she asked. “You are going to open this envelope. It contains the secret of the diamonds — a fortune.”

  Once more she stopped abruptly, as if struck by a sudden thought, something she had unexpectedly observed.

  Webster said to her:

  “He certainly understands. When he opens the letter and reads it, the whole of the past will come back to his memory. We may give it to him.”

  George Errington supported him.

  “Yes, mademoiselle, we may give it to him. It’s a secret which belongs to him.”

  Dorothy however did not perform the action she had suggested. She looked at the old man with the most earnest attention. Then she took the lamp, moved it away, then near, examined the mutilated hand, and then suddenly burst into a fit of wild laughter; it burst out with all the violence of laughter long restrained.

  Bent double, holding her ribs, she laughed till it hurt her. Her pretty head shook her wavy hair in a series of jerks. And it was a laugh so fresh and so young, of such irresistible gayety that the young men burst out laughing in their turn. Maître Delarue, on the other hand, irritated by a hilarity which seemed to him out of place in the circumstances protested in a tone of annoyance:

  “Really, I’m amazed.... There’s nothing to laugh at in all this.... We are in the presence of a really extraordinary occurrence..

  His shocked air redoubled Dorothy’s merriment. She stammered:

  “Yes — extraordinary — a miracle! Goodness, how funny it is! And what a pleasure it is to let one’s self go! I had been holding myself in quite
long enough. Yes, I was manifestly serious.... uneasy.... But all the same I did want to laugh!... It is all so funny!”

  The notary muttered:

  “I don’t see anything funny in it.... The Marquis — —”

  Dorothy’s delight passed all bounds. She repeated, wringing her hands, with tears in her eyes:

  “The Marquis!... The friend of Fontenelle! The revivified Marquis! Lazarus de Beau grevai! Then you didn’t see?”

  “I saw the film on the mirror... the eyes open.”

  “Yes, yes: I know. But the rest?”

  “What rest?’

  “In his mouth?”

  “What on earth is it?”

  “There’s a..

  “A what? Out with it!”

  “A false tooth!”

  Maître Delarue repeated slowly:

  “There’s a false tooth?”

  “Yes, a molar... a molar all of gold!”

  “Well, what about it?”

  Dorothy did not immediately reply. She gave Maître Delarue plenty of time to collect his wits and to grasp the full value of this discovery.

  He said again in a less assured tone:

  “Well?”

  “Well, there you are?” she said, very much out of breath. “I ask myself, with positive anguish: did they make gold teeth in the days of Louis XIV and Louis XV?... Because, you see, if the Marquis was unable to get his gold tooth before he died, he must have had his dentist come here — to this tower — while he was dead. That is to say, he must have learnt from the newspapers, or from some other source, that he could have a false tooth put in the place of the one which used to ache in the days of Louis XIV.”

  Dorothy had finally succeeded in repressing the ill-timed mirth which had so terribly shocked Maître Delarue. She was merely smiling — but smiling with an extremely mischievous and delighted air. Naturally the four strangers, grouped closely round her, were also smiling with the air of people amused beyond words.

  On his bed, the man, always impassive and stupid, continued his breathing exercises. The notary drew his companions out of the alcove, into the outer room

  so that they formed a group with their backs to the bed, and said in a low voice:

  “Then, according to you, mademoiselle, this is a mystification?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she said, tossing her head with a humorous air.

  “But the Marquis?”

  “The Marquis has nothing to do with the matter,” she said. “The adventure of the Marquis came to an end on the 12th of July, 1721, when he swallowed a drug which put an end to his brilliant existence for good and all. All that remains of the Marquis, in spite of his hopes of a resurrection, is firstly, a pinch of ashes mingled with the dust of this room; secondly, the authentic and curious letter which Maître Delarue read to us; thirdly, a lot of enormous diamonds hidden somewhere or other; fourthly, the clothes he was wearing at the supreme hour when he voluntarily shut himself up in his tomb, that is to say in this room.”

  “And those clothes?”

  “Our man is dressed in them — unless he bought others, since the old ones must have been in a very bad state.”

  “But how could he get here? This window is too narrow; besides its inaccessible. Then how?...”

  “Doubtless the same way we did.”

  “Impossible! Think of all the obstacles, the difficulties, the wall of briers which barred the road.”

  “Are we sure that this wall was not already pierced in some other place, that the plaster partition had not been broken down and reconstructed, that the door of this room had not been opened before we came?”

  “But it would have been necessary for this man to know the secret combinations of the Marquis, the mechanical device of the two stones and so on.”

  “Why not? Perhaps the Marquis left a copy of his letter... or a draft of it. But no.... Of course!... Better than that! We know the truth from the Marquis de Beaugreval himself.... He foresaw it, since he alludes to an always possible defection of his old servant, Geoffrey, and takes into account the possibility of the good fellow’s writing a description of what had taken place. This description the good fellow did write, and along different lines it has come down to our time.”

  “It’s a simple supposition.”

  “It’s a supposition more than probable, Maître Delarue, since besides us, besides these four young men and myself, there are other families in which the history, or a part of the history of Beaugreval, has been handed down; and as a consequence for some months I’ve been lighting for the possession of the indispensable gold medal stolen from my father.”

  Her words made a very deep impression. She entered into details:

  “The family of Chagny-Roborey in the Orne, the family of Argonne in the Ardennes, the family of Davernoie in Vendée, are so many focuses of the tradition. And around it dramas, robberies, assassinations, madness, a regular boiling up of passion and violence.”

  “Nevertheless,” observed Errington, “here there is no one but us. What are the others doing?”

  “They’re waiting. They’re waiting for a date of which they are ignorant. They are waiting for the medal. I saw in front of the church of Roche Périac a tramp and a factory hand, a woman, from Paris. I saw two poor mad people who came to the rendezvous and are waiting at the edge of the water. A week ago I handed over to the police a dangerous criminal of the name of d’Estreicher, a distant connection of my family, I who had committed a murder to obtain possession of the gold medal. Will you believe me now when I tell you that we are dealing with an impostor?”

  Dario said:

  “Then the man who is here has come to play the same part as the Marquis expected to play two hundred years after his death?”

  “Of course.”

  “With what object?”

  “The diamonds, I tell you — the diamonds!”

  “But since he knew of their existence, he had only to search for them and appropriate them.”

  “You can take it from me that he has searched for them and without ceasing, but in vain. A fresh proof that the man only knew Geoffrey’s story, since Geoffrey had not been informed by his master of their hiding-place. And it is in order to learn where this hiding-place is, to be present at the meeting of the descendants of the Marquis de Beaugreval, that he is playing to-day, the 12th of July, 1921, after months and years of preparation, the part of the Marquis.”

  “A dangerous part! An impossible part!”

  “Possible for at least some hours, which would be enough. What do I say, some hours? But just think: at the end of ten minutes we were all of one mind about giving him the second envelope which contains the key to the enigma, and which was probably the actual object of his enterprise. He must have known of the existence of a codicil, of a document giving directions. But where to find that document. No longer any scrivener Barbier — no longer any successors. But where to find it? Why here! At the meeting on the 12th of July. Logically, the codicil must be brought to that meeting. Logically, it would be handed over to him. And as a matter of fact I had it in my hand. I held it out to him. A second later he would have obtained from it the information he wanted. After that, good-bye. The Marquis de Beaugreval, once possessor of the diamonds of the Marquis de Beaugreval, would retire into the void, that is to say he would bolt at full speed.”

  Webster asked:

  “Why didn’t you give him the envelope? Did you guess?”

  “Guess? No. But I distrusted him. In offering it to him I was above all things making an experiment. What evidence it would be against him, if he accepted my offer by a gesture of acceptance, inexplicable at the end of such a short period? He did accept! I saw his hand tremble with impatience. I knew where I was. But at the same time Fortune was kind to me; I saw that little bit of gold in his mouth.”

  It was all linked together in a flawless chain of reasoning. Dorothy had set forth the coordination of events, causes and effects, as one displays a piece of tapestry in which the complic
ated play of design and color produces the most harmonious unity.

  The four young men were astounded; not one of them threw any doubt on her statement.

  Archibald Webster said:

  “One would think that you had been present throughout the whole adventure.”

  “Yes,” said Dario. “The revivified Marquis played a whole comedy before you.”

  “What a power of observation and what terrible logic!” said Errington, of London.

  And Webster added:

  “And what intuition!”

  Dorothy did not respond to the praise with her habitual smile. One would have said that events were happening in a manner far from pleasing to her, which seemed to promise others which she distrusted in advance. But what events? What was there to fear?

  In the silence Maître Delarue suddenly cried:

  “Well, for my part, I assert that you’re making a mistake. I’m not at all of your opinion, mademoiselle.”

  Maître Delarue was one of those people who cling the more firmly to an opinion the longer they have been adopting it. The resurrection of the Marquis suddenly appeared to him a dogma he was bound to defend.

  He repeated:

  “Not at all of your opinion! You are piling up unfounded hypotheses. No: this man is not an impostor. There is evidence in his favor which you do not take into account.”

  “What evidence?” she asked.

  “Well, his portrait! His indisputable resemblance to the portrait of the Marquis de Beaugreval, executed by Largillière!”

  “Who tells you that this is the portrait of the Marquis, and not the portrait of the man himself? It’s a very easy way of resembling any one.”

  “But this old frame? This canvas which dates from earlier days?”

  “Let us admit that the frame remained. Let us admit that the old canvas, instead of having been changed, has simply been painted over in such a way as to represent the false Marquis here present.”

  “And the cut-off finger?” exclaimed Maître Delarue triumphantly.

  “A finger can be cut off.”

  The notary became vehement: