Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  Little Buddha, as we have already remarked, was at one time clerk to a sheriff’s officer, and even after his trip to a convict settlement had not lost his habit of choosing his language... “Well, here’s to you Dodger... Just try this old brandy. Why, you’re not going to be ill are you old man?”

  “No, no... I can’t get over my surprise.... astonishment... You see... I never expected...”

  “Of course you weren’t prepared for it... Well, is the governor keeping fit?”

  “Quite fit...” spluttered the Dodger almost choking from a drop of brandy that had gone the wrong way.

  “He’s a decent fellow. Personally I like him very much. I owe everything to the Marquis. It’s with my share of the proceeds that I’ve come to take up my quarters here, while the other fellows are squandering theirs down China way. As for myself, I’ve nothing but good wishes for the Marquis... No need to tell him so, is there?.... I’m not asking you to let him or anyone else know of my arrival in these parts.”

  “Look here” said the Dodger with a perplexed look. “There’s one thing that I don’t understand...”

  “What’s that my boy? Perhaps I shall be able to enlighten you—”

  “Well, it’s this: How is it that you’ve come to this part of the country where you were sure of meeting people who would recognise you?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense! Recognise me! Why, everyone thinks that I’m dead. First of all, I hardly ever saw your Marquis... And then there’s every chance that he won’t come to lunch here...”

  “All the same you’ve got a cheek Little Buddha.”

  “Certainly I’ve always had plenty of cheek.”

  “Aren’t you up to some mischief?”

  “I’m settling down I tell you.”

  “You bought this place more than a year ago. Why haven’t we seen you until to-day?”

  “I’ll tell you... I thought that my death was a little too recent to set up as a respectable man. So I had one more year in the grave... and let my beard grow...”

  “That didn’t prevent me from recognising you at the first glance.”

  “Because you’re fond of me Dodger.”

  And Little Buddha clinked glasses with the Dodger and laughed ominously.

  Just then Virginie came into the room with her trunk. She saw her intended husband in the act of drinking with the man who had behaved so grossly to her a little while before. She was taken aback and stood swinging her arms. At last she was able to say in an angry voice:

  “Monsieur Hilaire, I wonder how you dare...”

  “What... What’s the matter, my girl?” growled Little Buddha.

  But Hilaire who had turned pale had already risen and ne said in an agitated voice:

  “Monsieur Bénevent, let me introduce you to Mdlle. Virginie my future wife.”

  “Oh really” returned Little Buddha, “I congratulate you. She’s a superior woman, and I’m very sorry that she is already engaged or I should have offered her my hand!”

  “I gave you my hand across your face, you old rascal.”

  “Don’t you worry, I haven’t forgotten it” replied Little Buddha, with a crafty and threatening look which made the Dodger shudder. “Come, my beauty, how much do I owe you?”

  He settled the account, and asked her not to bear him any malice; and he forced the Dodger to have another drink with him while he sent for a conveyance to take the trunk, and stood in the doorway indulging in cynical and facetious remarks as Hilaire and Virginie disappeared in the direction of Le Pollet.

  Virginie was incensed. Her future husband had not shone in the incident, and she threatened in the face of such cowardice to “go home to her mother.”

  To her great surprise Hilaire who up to that moment had kept silent, recovered the use of his tongue, and told her that he entirely agreed with her, and that an immediate visit to her parents who lived in the neighbourhood could not but do her good, and afford her a much needed rest before she entered upon her new duties. She left him in a state of intense annoyance, unable to understand what had happened.

  The Dodger was no sooner alone than he ran like a madman until he reached the hill at Puys. Every now and then he stopped to take breath. He passed his fingers through his hair and quivering with emotion cried:

  “It was too good to last, it was too good to last. Hang it all what is the man doing here? What will Chéri-Bibi say?”

  Then he started off again. When he reached the Villa on the Cliff he was told that the Marquis was out. His mother, the Dowager Marchioness, whose illness, it seemed, had taken a less favourable turn had sent for him.

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHÉRI-BIBI AT THE BEDSIDE OF HIS MOTHER, THE MARCHIONESS

  IT WAS NOT without a certain trepidation that Chéri-Bibi proceeded to visit the old lady. It was to be his first interview with her. He had always dreaded to meet her.

  The Marchioness with the obstinacy of old people who are slow to forgive insults to their grey hairs, had hitherto refused to see her son, although after the departure of the “Belle of Dieppe,” he had allowed her once more to take up her residence at the Château du Touchais in which she desired to end her days. Nor had she yielded to the entreaties of her daughter-in-law who represented to her that Maxime had completely changed in character, and that the change was all to the good.

  Even when Jacques was born she refused to be moved by Cecily’s appeal on his behalf.

  “Later on” she said, “we will see if he is deserving of our compassion. Experience will teach us what value to attach to the fine sentiments of which you speak, but in which I cannot yet believe. It is impossible for me to forget, all at once, that he turned me out of my home.”

  “You are back again in it” Cecily reminded her.

  “Only until it pleases him again to install here one of those creatures” returned the Dowager with a harshness that struck a chill in her daughter-in-law’s heart.

  The truth was that the old lady was waiting for her son to take, by a spontaneous impulse, the step that was due to her after the affronts of the past, and to attempt, in person, a reconciliation in which she saw him at her feet, pleading forgiveness for the sins of his youth.

  So long as he himself had not made up his mind to undergo this essential humiliation, she was inclined to think that Cecily had mistaken her husband’s true feelings. And since Chéri-Bibi was in no hurry to fall at the Dowager’s feet, but on the contrary shirked every opportunity of meeting her, the position had remained unchanged during the last year.

  The Marchioness must have been really ill that day for Cecily to have sent word to her husband to come to the Château du Touchais. Chéri-Bibi sauntered very slowly to the stately home of his ancestors. He recollected reading stories in his youth in which mothers who were blind made no mistake about the identity of their children. Though he impersonated the Marquis du Touchais with great success he was, perhaps, not sufficiently the Marquis to deceive the perceptions of an old mother.

  Nevertheless he could not avoid the test. He consoled himself with the reflection that if the Marchioness were the first to detect the incredible phenomenon, she would straightway be treated as out of her senses. Moreover he had confidence in his lucky star which, during the last year had shone in the firmament of his life with great and splendid brilliance. And it seemed to him that his hopes were well founded, for he met Sister St. Mary of the Angels who was on her way to fetch a priest, and she cried:

  “Be quick monsieur le Marquis. The Marchioness is sinking. She is unable to recognise anyone now.”

  “It’s just as well” thought Chéri-Bibi.

  He gave the nun a charming smile and she fled as if she had seen an evil spirit.

  He entered the drawing room without meeting a servant, but almost immediately afterwards he was joined by Rose, the Dowager’s elderly companion, who was as pale as her dying mistress must have been.

  Whenever he saw Rose, Chéri-Bibi could not help thinking of the story that his sister had t
old him on the “Bayard.” He said to himself: “Rose knows everything. It is through her that we shall know one day who murdered the old Marquis. It is through her that I shall know one day who the man in the grey hat is, the man who before he killed the Marquis with Chéri-Bibi’s knife, threw old Bourrelier over the cliff after seizing the knife which poor Chéri-Bibi had unintentionally driven into his back!” Such were Chéri-Bibi’s thoughts whenever he encountered on the road near Puys the enigmatic form of Rose who invariably retreated when she caught sight of him.

  It was through her that he hoped to be revenged one day on the unknown individual who was the original cause of his misfortunes. The reason why he had not hitherto pursued that object with greater persistence was that his perfect happiness as the new Marquis du Touchais, had relegated to a second place his scheme of revenge as Chéri-Bibi. He at once took a step towards Rose who shrank back uttering an exclamation.

  “What’s the matter with you” he asked. “Are you afraid of me?”

  Rose’s pallor had increased, if that were possible, and trembling from head to foot she said without answering his question:

  “Dr. Walter wishes you to go up at once to the Marchioness’s bedroom. He hopes to save her life, but she must not undergo any excitement.”

  The few simple words were spoken in an almost inaudible voice, and she leant for support against the furniture as she crept from the room after casting a peculiar look upon Chéri-Bibi.

  “There’s another who will never forgive the Marquis’s evil deeds,” thought Chéri-Bibi. “Certainly I shall have to lead an exemplary life if I am to wipe out his sins. But I feel that in Cecily’s love I have the strength of a saint, and I shall win Rose over like the others. I have nothing to ask from Providence to-day but that Dr. Walter should not restore my honourable mother to too great a clearness of mind.”

  Deep down within himself, he cursed the return of that confounded doctor whom he did not know, who had left the place at the moment when he himself had arrived, and appeared on the scene in time to perform the miracle of saving his mother’s life when her departure to another world would have solved his difficulties.

  But he would have been ashamed to acknowledge such a thought. It was unworthy of the husband of Cecily. He strode up and down the room resigning himself to the play of that good fortune which had been spoiling him for so long.

  With his hands behind his back he sometimes stopped to take a long look at an old painting. The portraits of several of his ancestors hung on the walls. He was not sorry to make their acquaintance. He smiled or groaned at them as their faces pleased or displeased him. And thus he arrived before the portrait of his “father,” the Marquis du Touchais who was supposed to have been murdered by Chéri-Bibi.

  He could not repress an exclamation.

  Under the portrait, fixed to the frame, was a velvet case in which, held in place by gold wire, was the knife, the butcher’s knife, which had dealt the fatal blow. The Dowager Marchioness had obtained it, and brought it with her when sue returned to the Château.

  Chéri-Bibi recognised the knife. It was indeed his knife, the deadly weapon whose discovery had brought him to the Assize Court and secured his conviction for murder.

  Stains of rust had not been removed from the steel, and these were the stains of the Marquis’s blood. What memories were associated with the tragic object! How the past flashed before Chéri-Bibi!

  His eyes were rivetted on the knife when the servant came to take him to the bedside of the sick woman.

  He had the consolation of learning from the servant that the Marchioness was worse in spite of Dr. Walter’s efforts.

  When he entered the softly and dimly lighted room he saw Cecily on her knees by the bedside. Rose was standing near the doctor at the foot of the bed, and the Marchioness seemed to be already sleeping her last sleep.

  The lady’s companion was weeping quietly with her handkerchief before her eyes. As to the doctor, he was watching the patient in silence, as if he expected some result which had not come to pass.

  The doctor was a somewhat tall, thin, youngish man of English appearance, with clean shaven upper lip and sandy coloured side whiskers. He paid no attention to the entrance of Chéri-Bibi.

  Chéri-Bibi thinking from the awful silence that the Marchioness was all but gone, and consequently that he had nothing to fear, threw himself on his knees beside Cecily, took the Marchioness’s hand that lay on the bed, pressed a filial kiss upon it, and in a broken voice said:

  “Mother!”

  It was as though the inanimate figure was only waiting for that word to come to life again, for she heaved a deep sigh, opened her eyes, fixed them on her son, and recovering her forces which seemed to have ebbed away for ever, she withdrew her hand, and pointing to the door said with a sigh:

  “Go!”

  Dr. Walter’s voice was at once heard.

  “Her life is saved” he said.

  When the Marquis heard those words which ought to have filled him as a son with joy, he raised his head in dismay, and wild-eyed, stared at the man standing at the foot of the bed, while his lips murmured to himself in unspeakable horror.

  “The Kanaka!”

  And Chéri-Bibi fell in a dead faint like an ordinary mortal.

  CHAPTER IX

  A PASSING SHADOW

  WHEN CHÉRI-BIBI CAME to himself in an adjoining room where he had been carried, he observed that he was being tended by Dr. Walter, and that Cecily was bending over him with a face of wild anxiety. But it was not Cecily’s face that concerned him. It was the face of the ghost, of the man who knew his terrible secret, the man to whom he owed everything, and who might ruin everything, the man from whom he believed that death had relieved him.

  It was the Kanaka right enough, it was the Kanaka right enough.

  Neither the new colour of his hair nor his sandy whiskers could deceive him. He recognised him beyond the shadow of a doubt. He recognised his nose, his ascetic profile. He recognised his lack-lustre, cold, blue eyes; and still more the voice which had encouraged him on the “Bayard” to undergo the frightful suffering which had transformed a Chéri-Bibi into a Marquis du Touchais.

  What, by all the gods, was going to happen? What did he want? Why had he returned?

  Alas, was it not quite obvious! It was only too easy to imagine his object. He was about to extort hush-money. What amount would he require? It might be one, two, three or four million francs. And afterwards there would be other demands, still further demands, until Chéri-Bibi was ruined. What could he refuse a man of his calibre? Nothing. The Kanaka had only to open his mouth and Chéri-Bibi was done for. There would be no more Marquis, no more riches, no more Cecily. And his own son would be doomed to everlasting shame. Elis happiness would be a thing of the past.

  His good fortune had not lasted long. Providence had not spoilt him for long. The counterstroke had soon fallen.

  Fate was bearing down anew on the unfortunate Chéri-Bibi with a terrible weight that nothing, no human force, could resist. Fatalitas! Fatalitas in all its hideousness had reappeared.

  The doctor had but to take off Chéri-Bibi’s coat and turn back his shirt in order to disclose the chest and that part of the skin on which those indelible marks of his infamy and crimes were tatooed, those marks which the doctor had known how to preserve so that he might continue to hold him in his power, to make him his tool, his slave. Oh the misery of it! In truth there are people in this world who have more than their share of bad luck.

  Chéri-Bibi instinctively turned his eyes to his chest and he perceived that his shirt still covered his “birth certificate.” It was clear that the doctor had no interest in bringing about his immediate downfall.

  The Kanaka had merely taken off his collar and partly opened the neck of his shirt. Chéri-Bibi let his gaze stray to the man with the sandy whiskers who was making him inhale smelling salts. The doctor’s face still wore a smile, and the calm indifference with which he expressed himself, the quiet mo
vements with which he tended the poor being who in a moment had become Chéri-Bibi again, far from rendering him easy in his mind, caused him to shudder to the very marrow.

  “There, that’s over” said the doctor, “It’s my fault Madame” he went on turning to Cecily. “I ought not to have told the Marquis so abruptly that his mother’s life was saved. It made him lose his balance. The Marquis is very fond of his mother.”

  “Are you feeling better dear?” asked Cecily.

  Chéri-Bibi rose and quietly made himself presentable again. He caught the reflection of his wife, and Dr. Walter in the glass. Both of them were so “natural,” and the doctor seemed to trouble so little about him, that the Marquis wondered if he were dreaming, or if he were the sport of some optical illusion which in the painful circumstances through which he had passed — his mother’s illness — might have been explicable.

  The doctor gave Cecily injunctions as to the curative treatment to be applied to the Dowager Marchioness whose condition was still serious.

  “Have you a pen Madame?” he asked.

  After kissing her husband, without false shame, Cecily left the room to fetch the necessary material to enable the doctor to write out a prescription.

  As soon as he was alone with his formidable enemy Chéri-Bibi turned towards him. He was about to speak when the doctor interposed and said in the calmest of tones:

  “Monsieur le Marquis, you must have been painfully impressed by your mother’s attitude towards you when she came to herself after her attack. That attitude, together with the sincere pleasure that you felt when you learnt that she was out of danger, explains the sudden weakness to which you succumbed. You must not be astonished at the strength with which old people, who are apparently in a comatose condition, revive and take up again ancient quarrels which ought to have been forgotten long ago...