“The Octopus again,” thought Jean. “ What assistance can he hope to obtain from her?”
He tried to dissuade Rouletabille from his intention, reminding him that she had joined forces with de Lauriac at Innsbruck, and come to Sever Turn solely to inflict upon them a final blow.
But Rouletabille did not even listen to him.
“I must find this woman,” he said. “Give me one hour’s liberty.”
Jean shrugged his shoulders.
“You don’t suppose that they will allow you to slip away like this.”
“I leave my friends here as hostages,” Rouletabille went on. “If I do not return within an hour you may do as you please with them.”
“Very pretty,” said Jean, astounded by the simplicity and effrontery of the proposal. “Ah, he intends to leave us in the lurch!”
“Let little Zo do things his own way,” said Odette in her soft voice. “We have no right to take offence. One never knows what his scheme is until afterwards. You will see that he will get us out of our difficulties.”
The Elders held a whispered colloquy. Rouletabille’s departure would not inconvenience Andréa; on the contrary he sincerely hoped that he would not see him again, and they would then make short work of Jean. However, the Elders decided that Rouletabille should be provided with an escort.
He accepted without demur the three men appointed by Andréa.
“Before the hour is over I will bring them back again,” he said to the Patriarch, pointing to the three guards. “But promise me, on your part, to keep de Lauriac here.”
“Where is he?” asked the Patriarch.
“Here!” exclaimed Rouletabille, lifting in a flash the purple hangings behind the Patriarch’s chair. “ Here he is. He has been listening. I should say that he has found our conversation highly interesting.”
De Lauriac had heard every word.
“Go, monsieur, go and fetch Madame de Meyrens,” he said with a grim smile. And he turned his back on Rouletabille, so confident was he of the result.
The journalist darted out of the room. The guards had some difficulty in keeping pace with him. Outside the shouting of the people had increased.
Extract from Rouletabille’s diary:
“And now we come to the great performance. It is the one thing that can save us. But it is terribly dangerous for me because there are persons who will never forgive me for this particular game. Things must obviously have reached their worst point when I do not hesitate to deprive myself of the most powerful weapon in my armoury. Well, the hour has struck to throw that too on the scrap heap. Alas, I shall leave this old curiosity shop, Sever Turn, a poor man for some time. But I must get out of it, and above all get the others out of it.... Come, let me take courage.
To the Octopus!... The Octopus!”
These are the last lines set down by Rouletabille in his diary. The events which followed and marked the conclusion of this extraordinary and formidable business, were known to the newspaper press only in outline, and related by them at no great length. True, there were many reasons why the facts should be suppressed for the time being, but now that these reasons no longer exist, we are able, thanks to evidence which recently came to our knowledge, to follow the shifting fortunes of the drama first in Sever Turn and afterwards in Paris.
The guards who accompanied Rouletabille were ordered not to let him out of their sight but to obey him in all things. But they were to be back at the Palace with their prisoner within an hour. Rouletabille, therefore, had an hour in which to find the Octopus.
By taking certain by-roads which he knew better than his guards, he avoided the crowds massed in the forecourt of the temple, and, in a sense, besieging the Palace. Thus he arrived without let or hindrance at the Hôtel des Balkans, where Vladislas Kamenos greeted him with a thousand curses.
An attempt had been made to fire the hotel, and the proprietor held him and his friends responsible, if not for the conflagration which had not occurred, at least for the pillage which had taken the place of it. His visitors, of course, had fled without paying their bills.
“Even Monsieur Tournesol?” questioned Rouletabille.
“Even Monsieur Tournesol, and he is not likely to come back. They have plundered his store rooms as they have plundered my cellars.... Another man who has much to thank you for!”
“Did he go away alone?” asked Rouletabille, who seemed as calm as Kamenos was excited.
“What do you mean?”
“You know very well what I mean, guv’nor. We are here, these gentlemen and myself, with the object of getting from you the latest news of the young lady traveller to whom Monsieur Tournesol paid such devoted attention.”
“You mean, I suppose, Madame de Meyrens.”
“Exactly. What has became of her?”
“I might reply that it was no business of mine to keep a watch on her. Still, as her luggage is in her room, I don’t disguise my hope of seeing her again soon.... Another unsettled bill, Monsieur Rouletabille.”
“Don’t worry about that. You will be paid, Monsieur Kamenos,” returned Rouletabille, making quickly for the first floor.
“By whom?”
“Monsieur Tournesol.”
“Where are you going now?”
“To Madame de Meyrens’ room.”
“But I tell you she is not in her room.”
“How do you know? I want to make sure.”
“I won’t have you go to her room.... I am responsible...”
The hotel proprietor made a dash after Rouletabille and his escort.
“Besides, the door of her room is locked,” he cried.
“Here’s the key,” said Rouletabille, taking it from his pocket. —
“How do you come to have Madame de Meyrens key?
“Don’t ask indiscreet questions,” he returned in a bantering tone, putting the key in the lock.
Monsieur Kamenos expressed his intention of entering the room with Rouletabille.
“Either Madame de Meyrens is or is not there,” said Rouletabille firmly. “If she is not there I shall come out again at once; if she is there, I have been entrusted by the Patriarch to make a communication to her which is no business of yours, Monsieur Kamenos.”
He gave the guards to understand that they should secure the person of the worthy Monsieur Kamenos for a few minutes so that he might not be disturbed.
Rouletabille must have found Madame de Meyrens in her room, and doubtless he had important things to say to her, for ten minutes elapsed, then twenty, then thirty, and still he failed to show himself again.
Monsieur Kamenos was not alone in betraying a certain anxiety at the journalist’s extraordinary behaviour. His guards began to grow impatient at his long absence, for the responsible leader had knocked several times at Madame de Meyrens’ door without receiving any reply. —
Growing more and more impatient, the man inquired of the hotel proprietor whether the room possessed other doors or ways out, and when he learnt that it was possible to leave by a servants’ staircase which led to the backyard and the rabbit hutches, he did not hesitate to break in the door; but he found neither Rouletabille nor Madame de Meyrens in the room; nothing but a small rabbit which, fleeing the noise and pillage out of doors, had taken refuge in the room, dragging with it a cabbage leaf!
A rabbit and a cabbage leaf!
“Not so bad for a journalist,” Monsieur Nicolas Tournesol might have said if Monsieur Nicolas Tournesol still felt any interest in Sever Turn...
But he had left the city, swearing never to return to it, carrying away with him only Madame de Meyrens’ photograph; a snap-shot which he had himself taken between a couple of cocktails, and wore next his heart, for whatever he might have said, the memory of this singular lady traveller haunted him day and night.
Meanwhile the guards who had allowed Rouletabille to slip through their fingers, could think of no better excuse for their blundering than to hold the hotel proprietor to blame. They had set ou
t with Rouletabille, and they returned to the Palace with Vladislas Kamenos in spite of his vigorous protests. They maintained that but for his complicity the journalist would be still in their charge.
The argument was still continuing when the guards, in a state of great concern, were driven with their Kamenos into the presence of the Patriarch, the Elders — and Rouletabille! Rouletabille was there in the flesh as smiling as the others were astonished.
“I gave this man into your custody, and you bring me back another man,” said the Patriarch severely.
The guards bent their heads while their prisoner renewed his protests. In their conscience they appeared to think that their orders had only in part been broken. When one is responsible for a prisoner it is preferable to produce another man rather than none at all. This way of looking at things is not wholly confined to police headquarters in Sever Turn.
“Fortunately,” continued the Patriarch in a grave voice, “our prisoner is an honest man, and returned of his own accord.”
“Bringing with me the lady of whom I was in search,” interposed Rouletabille.
“Madame de Meyrens!” exclaimed Vladislas Kamenos. “So she was in her room.”
“Certainly, monsieur.”
“Well, I’ll confess the truth. I thought she had left with Monsieur Tournesol.”
Rouletabille shrugged his shoulders.
“Monsieur Tournesol! Madame de Meyrens was always laughing at Monsieur Tournesol. The reason why she was in her room to-day was because she was expecting to see me.”
“In that case, you will pay her bill.”
“No,” returned Rouletabille. “Neither I nor Monsieur Tournesol will pay her bill. That will be settled by another friend of hers — I mean Monsieur Hùbert de Lauriac.... ‘ Gentlemen, I ask that he be confronted with this lady.”
As Rouletabille surmised, de Lauriac heard their last words uttered before the Patriarch, and it was not without a feeling of dread that he saw the moment arrive when he would be face to face with the Octopus. True, he felt confident of her. They were playing the same game, but Rouletabille was bound to have one of his own particular manœuvres up his sleeve which might be difficult to meet, unless Madame de Meyrens and himself could come to an understanding beforehand.
If they could only have a few minutes private conversation! And besides, the Octopus was probably better informed than he was. — ... — Thus — he — could not repress a start of joy when he — saw — Madame de Meyrens in the entrance hall of the Council room in which they were both about to be admitted. Moreover, by the happiest of chances the entrance hall was for the time being empty. De Lauriac hastened to the Octopus.
“Why did you let yourself be brought here?”
“I’m done for. Rouletabille got me here by a trick, and I am now a prisoner. It’s all your fault,” she said with growing anger.— “If — you had — chosen to get rid of Rouletabille some — time — ago — .. — .but you thought only of Odette... and Jean. You ought not to have put the book in Jean’s luggage but in Rouletabille’s.”
“Don’t let us waste time in useless recriminations. It’s they who’ll be done for if we act together. What do they want from us?”
“They want me to tell them all that I know about you. That’s the price they set on my liberty. Rouletabille has managed to convince the Patriarch that it was you who put the book in Jean’s luggage.”
“But they have no proof of it,” protested de Lauriac in a muffled voice. “Do you take me for a fool? I assure you that not a soul saw me.
He had no sooner uttered these last words than the hangings near which they were standing were thrust aside, and a company of gipsies made a rush at them, shouting: “Death to both of them!”
De Lauriac was seized by Andréa, and the band was preparing under the eyes of the Patriarch and the Elders to lay violent hands on the Octopus, when in a trice she removed hat and veil and wig and appeared before their astonished gaze with the features of Rouletabille!
CHAPTER LVIII
MISERERE! MISERERE!
THE TRAGEDY HAD reached its logical climax in farce. The Patriarch and the librarian had lent themselves to the performance. After bringing from the hotel the puppet-like weapons which Rouletabille needed to carry the one piece of artifice which would save them to a successful issue, he had not hesitated to take the Patriarch and the librarian into his confidence, and in so doing he felt intuitively that he was on the right road. The Patriarch, as the head of the state, was nothing loth to hand over to popular fury, which demanded its scapegoat, a victim less known than Rouletabille and of less mark in the diplomatic world than de Santierne — he had already received a visit on his behalf from the Wallachian Consul — not to mention that the death of these two young men would involve a queen in spite of herself. The responsibility lay only with the plotters.... Moreover, was not the Patriarch himself in part to blame in this adventure?
Here were more reasons than were needed to make truth in the end prevail. It stood forth triumphantly, but in so unforeseen a fashion, that taking advantage of the confusion into which Rouletabille’s disguises had thrown some of the company, de Lauriac was able to shake himself free from Andréa, make a grab at a window ledge, and leap into a garden, drawing in his wake a maddened band of gipsies, whose pursuit of him was encouraged by word and gesture by the Patriarch himself.
Meanwhile, what was Odette doing? She was laughing at Rouletabille, who had not yet had time to rid himself of his skirt, and clad partly as a man and partly as a woman was the drollest sight imaginable.
“I told you that we had only to let little Zo do things his own way.”
“So that was why you were so anxious about your luggage? So that was what you were thinking about when you spoke of your dressing-case? You had already thought out your little scheme. Your disguise was ready to hand. Why couldn’t you tell us so?”
“What do you think?” grunted Rouletabille. “It is the old story. Suppose I had said: ‘Wait for me, I’m going to fetch Madame de Meyrens’ hat and veil and things, you wouldn’t have waited had Odette not been with you.”
“Yes, but I was there,” said Odette, “and I had no intention of going without little Zo.”
“Odette is a dear,” said Rouletabille.
“What about me?” asked Jean.
“You are an ass, like all lovers.”
“Thank you.... Well, the ass will give you a piece of advice, for I imagine that when Madame de Meyrens discovers the trick which you have played...”
“Never mind about that. Have no fear. We don’t intend to hang about here for ever,” said Rouletabille.
And now that he was himself again, he went before the Patriarch and addressed him more or less in these terms:
“If they do not overtake the-guilty man he will escape! In any case, there is nothing to keep us here now, for in the first place we are not anxious to witness his execution, and secondly it would be a pity if, after you have acknowledged our innocence, we were to witness our own execution!”
The Patriarch considered that this was the language of wisdom, and at once set to work to assist Rouletabille and his friends to leave the city without delay. Moreover, he disguised their hurried departure by straightway promulgating a decree of expulsion.
In the meantime, the pursuit of de Lauriac was continuing and he had the opportunity, in those tragic hours, of employing all the resource and strength and courage which heroes in ancient and mediaeval times have displayed. History repeats itself, which is more or less tantamount to saying that nothing changes, and that time itself is but an illusion. And this fantastic horseman enveloped by a swarm of foes, whom he discomfited by mighty blows struck in a twilight of blood, even as he struck mighty blows under the blazing sun — we have seen this fantastic horseman on the plains of Troy, in the amphitheatres of death in the Chanson of Roland, and on the golden plains of Camargue — before he fell and was swallowed up in the insidious depths of a morass on the borders of the plague
country.
Hubert died like a hero, whom love had enslaved and death regenerated. It was a splendid fight. How he leapt at the stallion and unhorsed his rider, charging his foes like a meteor, throwing them to the ground and forcing them to retreat!... And then he passed through the gates of the city into the open country, the gathering darkness, and, seemingly, life and liberty.
But it was not to be. After his fight with men he encountered the rush of wild bulls, who made an end of him. The bottomless pit drew the four hoofs of his horse and did not give back its prey. And he, too, riding to his death, sank into the abyss. A struggle did but hasten the end.
De Lauriac died for love of Odette, who had no love for him. He died for a smile from her who refused to smile on him. Whatever his sins: Miserere! Miserere!... Poor man!
CHAPTER LIX
IN WHICH WE ARE BROUGHT TOGETHER IN PARIS FOR A CONVERSATION
“A MARRIAGE HAS been arranged between Monsieur Jean de Santierne and Mademoiselle Odette de Lavardens, but in consequence of a recent family bereavement it will be celebrated privately. The ceremony will take place in the church in Lavardens.”
Rouletabille, who was back home again in the Faubourg Poissonière, re-read the brief announcement which appeared in the morning’s papers. He re-read it as he smoked his pipe, without any greater betrayal of the feeling with which he was stirred than a certain quickness in inhaling the smoke and in blowing it out again through his nostrils. Obviously that was a sign which could not be taken as an expression of any great satisfaction. But why not? In what respect was he dissatisfied? Did he himself know? What more could he hope for? Was not his task completed? Were not the few lines that danced before his eyes the crown of his efforts? He had assured the happiness of his friends. What more did he want? That was the question which he asked himself and to which at length he made answer aloud: “Nothing!”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 135
