“Perhaps the Anglo-Norman fault had ramifications in the affected areas?”
“I repeat, I saw only a narrow belt of land.”
“That is to say, you saw and crossed only the highest crests of the upheaved region, crests forming a ridge. But this region was thrown up altogether; and you must have noticed that the waves, instead of subsiding, were rolling over miles of beach.”
“That is so. Nevertheless the sea was there and is there no longer.”
“It is there no longer because it has receded. Phenomena of this extent produce reactions beyond their immediate field of activity and give rise to other phenomena, which in turn react upon the first. And, if this dislocation of the bottom of the Channel has raised one part, it may very well, in some other submarine part, have provoked subsidences and ruptures by which the sea has escaped through the crust. Observe that a reduction of level of six to nine feet was enough to turn those miles of barely covered beach into permanent dry land.”
“A supposition, my dear professor.”
“Nothing of the sort!” cried Old Sandstone, striking the table with his fists. “Nothing of the sort! I have positive evidence of this also; and I shall publish all my proofs at a suitable moment, which will not be long delayed.”
He drew from his pocket the famous locked wallet, whose grease-stained morocco had caught Simon’s eye at Newhaven, and declared:
“The truth will emerge from this, my lad, from this wallet in which my notes have been accumulating, four hundred and fifteen notes which must needs serve for reference. For, now that the phenomena has come to pass and all its mysterious causes have been wiped out by the upheaval, people will never know anything except what I have observed by personal experiments. They will put forward theories, draw inferences, form conclusions. But they will not see. Now I . . . have seen.”
Simon, who was only half listening, interrupted:
“In the meantime, my dear professor, I am hungry. Will you have some dinner?”
“No, thanks. I must catch the train to Dover and cross to-night. It seems the Calais-Dover boats are running again; and I have no time to lose if I’m to publish an article and take up a definite position.” He glanced at his watch. “Phew! It’s jolly late! . . . If only I don’t lose my train! . . . See you soon, my boy!” . . .
He departed.
The other person sitting in the dark had not stirred during this conversation and, to Simon’s great astonishment, did not stir either after Old Sandstone had taken his leave. Simon, at switching on the light, was amazed to find himself face to face with an individual resembling in every respect the man whose body he had seen near the wreck on the previous evening. There was the same brick-red face, the same prominent cheek-bones, the same long hair, the same buff leather clothing. This man, however, was very much younger, with a noble bearing and a handsome face.
“A true Indian chief,” thought Simon, “and it seems to me that I have seen him before. . . . Yes, I have certainly seen him somewhere. But where? And when?”
The stranger was silent. Simon asked him:
“What can I do for you, please?”
The other had risen to his feet. He went to the little table on which Simon had emptied his pockets, took up the coin with the head of Napoleon I. which Simon had found the day before and, speaking excellent French, but in a voice whose guttural tone harmonized with his appearance, said:
“You picked up this coin yesterday, on your way here, near a dead body, did you not?”
His guess was so correct and so unexpected that Simon could but confirm it:
“I did . . . near a man who had just been stabbed to death.”
“Perhaps you were able to trace the murderer’s footprints?”
“Yes.”
“They were prints of bathing-shoes or tennis-shoes, with patterned rubber soles?”
“Yes, yes!” said Simon, more and more puzzled. “But how do you know that?”
“Well, sir,” continued the man whom Simon silently called the Indian, without replying to the question, “Well, sir, yesterday one of my friends, Badiarinos by name, and his niece Dolores, wishing to explore the new land after the convulsions of the morning, discovered, in the harbour, amid the ruins, a narrow channel which communicated with the sea and was still free at that moment. A man who was getting into a boat offered to take my friend and his niece along with him. After rowing for some time, they saw several large wrecks and landed. Badiarinos left his niece in the boat and went off in one direction, while their companion took another. An hour later, the latter returned alone, carrying an old broken cash-box with gold escaping from it. Seeing blood on one of his sleeves, Dolores became alarmed and tried to get out of the boat. He flung himself upon her and, in spite of her desperate resistance, succeeded in tying her up. He took the oars again and turned back along the new coast-line. On the way, he decided to get rid of her and threw her overboard. She had the good luck to fall on a sandbank which became uncovered a few minutes later and which was soon joined to the mainland. For all that, she would have been dead if you had not released her.”
“Yes,” murmured Simon, “a Spaniard, isn’t she? Very beautiful. . . . I saw her again at the casino.”
“We spent the whole evening,” continued the Indian, in the same impassive tones, “hunting for the murderer, at the meeting in the casino, in the bars of the hotels, in the public-houses, everywhere. This morning we began again . . . and I came here, wishing also to bring you the coat which you had lent to my friend’s niece.”
“It was you, then? . . .”
“Now, on entering the corridor upon which your room opens, I heard someone groaning and I saw, a little way ahead of me — the corridor is very dark — I saw a man dragging himself along the floor, wounded, half-dead. A servant and I carried him into one of the rooms which are being used for infirmary purposes; and I could see that he had been stabbed between the shoulders . . . as my friend was! Was I on the track of the murderer? It was difficult to make enquiries in this great hotel, crammed with the mixed crowd of people who have come here for shelter. At last I discovered that, a little before nine o’clock, a lady’s maid, coming from outside, with a letter in her hand, had asked the porter for M. Simon Dubosc. The porter replied, ‘Second floor, room 44.’”
“But I haven’t had that letter!” Simon remarked.
“The porter, luckily for you, mistook the number. You’re in room 43.”
“And what became of it? Who sent it?”
“Here is a piece of the envelope which I picked up,” replied the Indian. “You can still make out a seal with Lord Bakefield’s arms. So I went to Battle House.”
“And you saw . . . ?”
“Lord Bakefield, his wife and his daughter had left for London this morning, by motor. But I saw the maid, the one who had been to the hotel with a letter for you from her mistress. As she was going upstairs, she was overtaken by a gentleman who said, ‘M. Simon Dubosc is asleep and said I was to let no one in. I’ll give him the letter.’ The maid therefore handed him the letter and accepted a tip of a louis. Here’s the louis. It’s one with the head of Napoleon I. and the date 1807 and is therefore precisely similar to the coin which you picked up near my friend’s body.”
“And then?” asked Simon, anxiously. “Then this man . . . ?”
“The man, having read the letter, went and knocked at room 44, which is the next room to yours. Your neighbour opened the door and was seized by the throat, while the murderer, with his free arm, drove a dagger into his neck, above the shoulders.”
“Do you mean to say that he was stabbed instead of me? . . .”
“Yes, instead of you. But he is not dead. They will pull him through.”
Simon was stunned.
“It’s dreadful!” he muttered. “Again, that particular way of striking! . . .”
After a short pause, he asked:
“Do you know nothing of the contents of the letter?”
“From some words
exchanged by Lord Bakefield and his daughter the maid gathered that they were discussing the wreck of the Queen Mary, the steamer on which Miss Bakefield had been shipwrecked the other day and which must be lying high and dry by now. Miss Bakefield appears to have lost a miniature.”
“Yes,” said Simon, thoughtfully, “yes, I dare say. But it is most distressing that this letter was not placed in my own hands. The maid ought never to have given it up.”
“Why should she have been suspicious?”
“What! Of the first person she met?”
“But she knew him.”
“She knew this man?”
“Certainly. She had often seen him at Lord Bakefield’s; he is a frequent visitor to the house.”
“Then she was able to give you his name?”
“She told me his name.”
“Well?”
“His name’s Rolleston.”
Simon gave a start.
“Rolleston!” he exclaimed. “But that’s impossible! . . . Rolleston! What madness! . . . What’s the fellow like? Give me a description of him.”
“The man whom the maid and I saw is very tall, which enables him to bend over his victims and stab them from above between the shoulders. He is thin . . . stoops a little . . . and he’s very pale. . . .”
“Stop!” ordered Simon, impressed by this description, which was that of Edward. “Stop! . . . The man is a friend of mine and I’ll answer for him as I would for myself. Rolleston a murderer! What nonsense!”
And Simon broke into a nervous laugh, while the Indian, still impassive, resumed:
“Among other matters, the maid told me of a public-house, frequented by rather doubtful people, where Rolleston, a great whiskey-drinker, was a familiar customer. This information was found to be correct. The barman, whom I tipped lavishly, told me that Rolleston had just been there, at about twelve o’clock, that he had enlisted half-a-dozen rascals who were game for anything and that the object of the expedition was the wreck of the Queen Mary. I was now fully informed. The whole complicated business was beginning to have a meaning; and I at once made the necessary preparations, though I made a point of coming back here constantly, so that I might be present when you awoke and tell you the news. Moreover, I took care that your friend, Mr. Sandstone, should watch over you; and I locked your pocketbook, which was lying there for anybody to help himself from, in this drawer. I took ten thousand francs out of it to finance our common business.”
Simon was past being astonished by the doings of this strange individual. He could have taken all the notes with which the pocketbook was crammed; he had taken only ten. He was at least an honest man.
“Our business?” said Simon. “What do you mean by that?”
“It will not take long to explain, M. Dubosc,” replied the Indian, speaking as a man who knows beforehand that he has won his cause. “It’s this. Miss Bakefield lost, in the wreck of the Queen Mary, a miniature of the greatest value; and her letter was asking you to go and look for it. The letter was intercepted by Rolleston, who was thus informed of the existence of this precious object and at the same time, no doubt, became acquainted with Miss Bakefield’s feelings towards you. If we admit that Rolleston, as the maid declares, is in love with Miss Bakefield, this in itself explains his pleasant intention of stabbing you. At any rate, after recruiting half-a-dozen blackguards of the worst kind, he set out for the wreck of the Queen Mary. Are you going to leave the road clear for him, M. Dubosc?”
Simon did not at once reply. He was thinking. How could he fail to be struck by the logic of the facts that had come to his notice? Nor could he forget Rolleston’s habits, his way of living, his love of whisky and his general extravagance. Nevertheless, he once more asserted;
“Rolleston is incapable of such a thing.”
“All right,” said the Indian. “But certain men have set out to seize the Queen Mary. Are you going to leave the road clear for them? I’m not. I have the death of my friend Badiarinos to avenge. You have Miss Bakefield’s letter to bear in mind. We will make a start then. Everything is arranged. Four of my comrades have been notified. I have bought arms, horses and enough provisions to last us. I repeat, everything is ready. What are you going to do?”
Simon threw off his dressing-gown and snatched at his clothes:
“I shall come with you.”
“Oh, well,” said the Indian smiling, “if you imagine that we can venture on the new land in the middle of the night! What about the water-courses? And the quicksands? And all the rest of it? To say nothing of the devil’s own fog! No, no, we shall start to-morrow morning, at four o’clock. In the meantime, eat, M. Dubosc, and sleep.”
Simon protested:
“Sleep! Why, I’ve done nothing else since yesterday!”
“That’s not enough. You have undergone the most terrible exertions; and this will be a trying expedition, very trying and very dangerous. You can take Lynx-Eye’s word for it.”
“Lynx-Eye?”
“Antonio or Lynx-Eye: those are my names,” explained the Indian. “Then to-morrow morning, M. Dubosc!”
Simon obeyed like a child. Since they had been living for the past few days in such a topsy-turvy world, could he do better than follow the advice of a man whom he had never seen, who was a Red Indian and who was called Lynx-Eye?
When he had had his meal, he glanced through an evening paper. There was an abundance of news, serious and contradictory. It was stated that Southampton and Le Havre were blocked. It was said that the British fleet was immobilized at Portsmouth. The rivers, choked at their mouths, were overflowing their banks. Everywhere all was disorder and confusion; communications were broken, harbours were filled with sand, ships were lying on their sides, trade was interrupted; everywhere devastation reigned and famine and despair; the local authorities were impotent and the governments distraught.
It was late when Simon at last fell into a troubled sleep.
It seemed to him that after an hour or two some one opened the door of his room; and he remembered that he had not bolted it. Light footsteps crossed the carpet. Then he had the impression that some one bent over him and that this some one was a woman. A cool breath caressed his face and in the darkness he divined a shadow moving quickly away.
He tried to switch on the light, but there was no current.
The shadow left the room. Was it the young woman whom he had released, who had come? But why should she have come?
CHAPTER VIII. ON THE WAR-PATH
AT FOUR O’CLOCK in the morning, the streets were almost empty. A few fruit and vegetable-carts were making their way between the demolished houses and the shattered pavements. But from a neighbouring avenue there emerged a little cavalcade in which Simon immediately recognized, at the head of the party, astride a monstrous big horse, Old Sandstone, wearing his rusty top-hat, with the skirts of his black frock-coat overflowing either side of a saddle with bulging saddle-bags.
Next came Antonio, alias Lynx-Eye, likewise mounted; then a third horseman, perched like the others behind heavy saddle-bags; and lastly three persons on foot, one of whom held the bridle of a fourth horse. The three pedestrians had brick-red faces and long hair and were dressed in the same style as Lynx-Eye, in soft leggings with leather fringes, velveteen breeches, flannel girdles, wide-brimmed felt hats, with gaudy ribbons: in short, a heterogeneous, picturesque band, with many-coloured accoutrements, in which the adornments dear to circus cow-boys were displayed side by side with those of one of Fenimore Cooper’s Redskins, or one of Gustave Aymard’s scouts. They carried rifles slung across their shoulders and revolvers and daggers in their belts.
“What the deuce!” exclaimed Simon. “Why, this is a martial progress! Are we going among savages?”
“We are going into a country,” replied Antonio, gravely, “Where there are no inhabitants, no inns, no victuals, but where there are already visitors as dangerous as beasts of prey, which is why we have to carry two days’ provisions and two days’ supply of oats and
compressed fodder for our mounts. This, then, is our escort. These are the brothers Mazzani, the elder and the younger. This is Forsetta. Here is Mr. Sandstone. Here, on horseback, is one of my personal friends. And here, lastly, for you, is Orlando III. a half-breed by Gracious out of Chiquita.”
And, at a sign from the Indian, a noble animal was led forward, lean, sinewy and nervous, standing very high on its long legs.
Simon mounted, much amused:
“And you, my dear professor?” he said to Old Sandstone: “Are you one of the party?”
“I lost my train,” said the old fellow, “and on returning to the hotel I met Lynx-Eye, who recruited me. I represent science and am entrusted with the geological, geographical, crographical, stratigraphical, palaeontological and other observations. I shall have plenty to do.”
“Forward, then!” commanded Simon. And, taking the lead with Antonio, he at once said, “Now tell me about your companions. And you, Lynx-Eye, where do you hail from? After all, if there are still a few specimens of Redskins left, they’re not out for a good time on the highways of Europe. Confess that you are, all of you, made up and disguised.”
“They are no more made up than I am,” said Antonio. “We come from the other side. For my part, I am the grandson of one of the last remaining Indian chiefs, Long Carbine who ran away with the little daughter of a Canadian trapper. My mother was a Mexican. You see that, though there’s a mixture, our origins are beyond dispute.”
“But afterwards, Lynx-Eye? What has happened afterwards? I’m not aware that the British government provides for the descendants of the Sioux or Mohicans?”
“There are other concerns besides the British government,” said the Indian.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there are concerns which are interested in keeping us going.”
“Really? What are they?”
“The cinema-firms.”
Simon struck his hand against his forehead:
“What an idiot I am! Why didn’t I think of that? Then you are. . . .”
“Simply film actors from the Far West, the Prairies and the Mexican frontier.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 372
