Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  Just then a curious sound of whistling could be heard in the street. D’Askof stood up, scared, strode over to the window, lifted the curtain slightly and peered into the night, the impenetrable darkness of the square. Other whistles farther away could be heard seemingly in answer to the first. D’Askof let the curtain fall and returned to Vera shuddering.

  “I am well watched,” he said. “They are satisfied that while the blow is being struck to-night, and Subdamoun is burgling the Republic, I can’t give him away.”

  An atrocious grin swept over his face as he thought of Lavobourg having to carry out that task alone.

  “I am convinced that you have done idiotic things,” said Vera, endeavouring to draw a confession from him. “Had you done nothing he would not be keeping an eye on you in this way, nor playing the game of terrifying you with the thirteen peanuts.”

  “Yes, I have done idiotic things,” admitted d’Askof, lighting a cigarette, opening his liqueur stand, and taking out the decanter of vodka. “It was I who gave information to the police which enabled them to lay hands on Jacques’s and Lavobourg’s papers. You saw that they didn’t remain long in Carlier’s pocket, and the old man quickly got them back again — and how cleverly! It can’t be helped. I lost my head!... When I think that that fellow Jacques is going to succeed — the whole country is waiting for him — men, women and the Republic itself are behind him! Oh, Vera, don’t you think the whole thing is monstrous?”

  “The extraordinary thing to me in this business, you know, George, is that you should show so much hatred for a man who has never done you any harm, and to whom at worst you should have been indifferent. You have never told me why you hate him like this.”

  “Yes, I have told you a hundred times.... Because everyone else admires him.”

  “Because Sonia Liskinne loves him,” corrected Vera, suspicious and jealous.

  Then he burst out:

  “The moment is come to tell you why I hate him. I hate him because he is — my brother!”

  “What do you say?”

  “My first secret. It won’t be the only one today,” he added in a low, uneasy voice, “but listen — listen to what is happening in the street.”

  He hurried back to the window. Three whistles had just sounded anew. More shadowy figures stole quickly up to the garden railings, seeming to meet a small body of men who were running. And then d’Askof could perceive nothing more. Everything was blotted out in the darkness of the night. He dropped the curtain, went over to the writing-table, lifted the panel, and showed Vera a large sealed envelope ingeniously concealed therein.

  “The letter I told you about,” he explained in a whisper, letting down the panel which concealed the hiding-place.

  Vera, staggered by his amazing disclosure, exclaimed:

  “His brother! Then are you a de Touchais?”

  “The elder brother,” returned d’Askof, emptying his glass of vodka. “It is I who should be bearing the title of Marquis. It is mine — mine alone. But he has stolen it from me. Jacques has robbed me of everything. Now do you understand why I hate him?”

  “No, I don’t understand,” returned Vera, shaking her head. “I know he had an elder brother who died in America — and unless you are that brother.”

  “I am.”

  “Are you not a d’Askof?”

  “You never believed I was.”

  “I believed everything you cared to tell me — you know that. We women when we love ask only to be loved, and all else matters very little. There is but one crime in our eyes — unfaithfulness in the man we love.... Never mind that, dearest, tell me your story. Don’t be afraid — because I love you just as you are.... You Jacques’s brother! Why, you are not a bit like him.”

  “No, I am not a bit like him. I thank you for those words. I believe he is a bastard — and it means that a bastard has stolen my position, my rank...”

  “And your fortune.”

  “No, I myself squandered the fortune. I had to have my revenge, eh?... If you only knew how a boy, spoilt as I was by an unhappy mother, can suffer when he suddenly sees his mother’s caresses diverted from him, a grown-up lad, and lavished on the new-corner, the little unexpected belated brother who all in a moment becomes the idol of the house!...

  “But to cut short this early period of my life you must know that one fine day I went for him with a spade and nearly killed him. Then they packed me off, they banished me to England. From that day to this my mother and brother have never set eyes on me. They might meet, and even know, Baron d’Askof, but, you understand, Bernard — that was my name — is dead to them. I went from England to America, and there I squandered in business in general, and in one or two things in particular in which my brother’s honor was involved, pretty well the whole fortune....

  “What my life at that time was you who know me can imagine. I stopped at nothing. I felt an unholy joy in knowing that every one of my new — let me say new contrivances — was striking a blow at them in France, rending them, ruining them; and I was dreaming in San Francisco of a final stroke which should dishonour for ever the name of de Touchais, when suddenly a miserable-looking old man called on me....

  “This poor old man — you recognize him — was he. It was the man whom every one calls Daddy Peanuts.”

  “But his real name — his real name,” cried Vera.

  “Don’t ever wish to know his name.... You will not know it until I am dead. Then you will open the letter that I have shown you and learn definitely who he is.”

  “And you put yourself in this man’s power?”

  “Yes, and when he left my place with my signature I knew that I had become the slave of one of those diabolical characters wielding sufficient power to influence the fate of the world.”

  “But who was he? In whose power had you put yourself?”

  “When for the first time I was obliged to speak of the peanut dealer...”

  “It was the first time I saw you looking so pale and worn out...”

  “It meant that it was the first time I had roused his anger. And I had to confess to you, I had to tell you that my life depended upon this man, that he was the master of my secrets, the agent of a formidable political league which in my hour of need I had agreed to join and which I was compelled blindly to obey. Now I lied to you when I spoke of a political league. The man to whom I sold myself is the King of the Convict Settlement.”

  “What do you say!” exclaimed Vera, more and more distracted. “What do you mean by the King of the Convict Settlement?”

  “I mean that he is something like the head of the criminal classes of the world. Listen, Vera.... There have always been at all times — not only in fiction but in history — beings in every country who have found themselves at the head of the world’s outlaws, around whom all those who have sold their souls to the devil have gathered together in the shadows — condemned criminals, outcasts no longer possessing the power to kill or rob without concealment because they have been caught once. This prodigious gang, scattered and hidden in the underworld, disguised under false occupations or false names, submits to a leader, the King of the Convict Settlement. Le Dab du Pré, as these bandits say in their own language.

  “It is he who keeps the cash box, sends money when it is needed, collects it when the harvest is ripe. It is he who in the supposed interests of all does away at his own sweet will with those who refuse to obey him.

  “His men never fail him, his satellites never weaken. Crime brings him new recruits every year. And his recruiting is done systematically.... It is wonderful....

  “And who leads this army of evil? He does. Do you follow me? He alone knows precisely what has become of his men, continues to keep an eye on them, imposes a tax on their gains and fears. He helps and terrifies them in turn.”

  “But what made you agree to become a wheel in this awful piece of mechanism?”

  “Oh, I was the principal wheel!... He proposed that I should be his right-hand man. It was the
display of his power, made, Heaven knows, with such arrogance, that lured me on. And then, my dear, had I not agreed there would have been an end of it. I saw for myself that after such a proposal he would not have allowed me to enjoy life for long....

  “Moreover, as I told you, I had reached a crisis in my life when all is lost unless the devil comes to the rescue. He came! And in point of fact he only needed one formidable, terrible thing from me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am coming to that, to the mystery of mysteries, which will be my third and last secret. He needed my services only to build up the triumph of my brother.”

  “That is what I find so impossible to understand,” said Vera. “Why did he appeal to you, Jacques’s brother, to secure the triumph of Jacques, whom you hate?”

  “He wanted to punish me for my hatred. He afterwards told me so himself. He wanted to penalize me for nearly killing Jacques one day in a boyish quarrel, and indeed he could not have contrived a more subtle form of torture.”

  “But what is Jacques to this man?”

  “I will tell you what he said to me one day in one of those outbursts of ungovernable fury which made this man such a formidable and hideous sight. It was one day after I had declared that I had not become a d’Askof to work any longer for the honor of a de Touchais. He took me in his arms — in his arms, you understand — but not to embrace me, I can assure you. At first I thought he was going to smother me. He held me as in a vice, and I feared lest the vice should squeeze the life out of me.... But suddenly he threw me with the force of a catapult into a corner and spluttered: ‘You will work all your life at that job and others as well....

  All your life for having dared to touch a hair of Jacques’s head — all your life for bringing sorrow to Cecily I’

  “He did not say the Marchioness, but Cecily. If you only knew the tone of voice in which he spoke! I had never heard him speak like that before. And the wretch was shedding tears — yes, I saw tears in the eyes of the King of the Convicts! He walked away. The manner in which he spoke of Jacques and Cecily gave me food for thought. I have already told you that the Marchioness de Touchais, though married and a good mother, had not always lived happily with my father. Well, I began to look up this period of the de Touchais history. I got up the facts....

  “I made enquiries, exercising some caution, as you may believe. I reckoned things up, I made deductions, and I dared to draw certain conclusions. My mother, a Frenchwoman — her maiden name was Bourelier — a rich young girl, but belonging to the people, might have had, as the saying goes, a ‘best boy’ in the district before she married — some poor fellow who may have been madly in love with the young lady in the Villa de la Falaise.... She got married, became a Marchioness, and was as wretched as could be. The poor fellow during this time had ‘been in trouble,’ afterwards returning to the district. I am convinced that he saw my mother again. But how? Under what name, under what disguise? How did he manage to become friends with her? That is the mystery, the momentous, unfathomable mystery. And I cannot tell you more about that young man because here I come up against the secret to disclose which is punishable with death, but which you will find set down in my letter — if I am to die....”

  “Well, Vera, it is in this fact that your power to obtain a startling revenge consists. You will have but to throw the name contained in the letter in Jacques’s teeth publicly. He will fall never to rise again. And it will be the death of Daddy Peanuts...”

  “You believe then?...”

  “I believe Jacques is his son. I not only believe it, I am convinced of it.”

  Once more d’Askof, breathing heavily, stood up, his limbs shaking under him. From the street the sound of a long-drawn-out whistle could be heard, a kind of tremolo, fantastic and ominous.

  “The whistle of death,” he murmured. “He knows when we are thinking of betraying him, and he tells us by that whistle of death how dearly we shall pay for it. But all said, he cannot make away with me. After my death he would miss the joy of making me suffer. He can’t do without that.”

  Vera took time to think over all that she had been told.

  “The extraordinary part is that no one has ever, if not denounced, at least put the police on him,” she said.

  “My dear child, denounce him to the police! People have denounced him to the police twenty times. Not only men of his own gang, but official informers and also respectable citizens alarmed by his behaviour, and even policemen considering his movements suspicious — these people have waited on Cravely, the Chief of the Detective Service, and described the old man to him. Cravely, after thanking them, has sent for Daddy Peanuts and said: ‘Take care, Cartel, you are being found out. People are beginning to suspect you....’

  “But, my dear Vera, Daddy Peanuts forms part of Cravely’s police. He is his chief informer. He has given him plenty of proofs of his usefulness. He has betrayed plenty of ex-convicts who have ceased to do his bidding. Daddy Peanuts is Cravely’s most valuable assistant. Do you know what he is to Cravely? Why, a convict, called Cartel, escaped from the penal settlement. Do you see the point?...

  “And don’t you think it very clever, eh? Cartel, sentenced to twenty years in the penal settlement for swindling and attempted murder, returns to France and offers his services to the Chief of the Detective Department, and at once does such good work that Cravely leaves it to him to keep watch over Major Jacques! Thereupon Daddy Peanuts furnishes Major Jacques with two stalwarts, Jean Jean and Polydore, who stick to him like a leech, and, moreover, served under him in Subdamoun.... Well, Daddy did not hide from Cravely that those fellows were themselves escaped convicts, and on the plea of keeping watch on the Major they are guarding him for the police, which they dream of joining as a means of settling down....

  “And that will explain to you, my dear, why no one laid hands on the two sailors, notwithstanding their somewhat brutal intervention in the Chamber when they rushed into the hemicycle to defend the Major.”

  “Oh, it’s very ingenious,” exclaimed Vera, at last convinced.

  “Ingenious is the word, dearest. No! Nothing can be done against him. One can only count one’s thirteen peanuts, listen to the whistle of death, and wait here for the lightning stroke which is perhaps to strike one down. Denounce him to Cravely! You can imagine how Cravely would laugh. There is but one thing that could prevent Cravely from laughing — if, for instance, he receive the letter which is here” — he pointed to the spot where it was concealed— “and you must take it to him, Vera.”

  “Why not at once?”

  “Because we should have nothing to do but disappear.... Wait, therefore, until I am gone. This letter cannot save, but it can avenge me in the hands of a person who knows that once her revenge is effected she must die....”

  CHAPTER XIII

  TO LOVE — TO DIE

  THEY REMAINED SILENT for some moments, and then Vera could not repress a disconsolate moan.

  “What a terrible night,” she cried, sweeping her hand over her distraught face, aged in a few hours by ten years. “Do you know what Marie Thérèse said to me before you came in? She accused you of murdering her father at a shoot.”

  “No!”

  “Oh, how she detests you!”

  “Well, of course she does if she thinks I murdered her father,” returned d’Askof, coolly. “The idea scarcely surprises me, and I have often read it in her black looks. But after all, she never put it into words. What on earth came over her today?”

  “I caught her reading and writing love-letters.”

  “To whom? From whom?”

  “Frederic.”

  “Frederic Héloni?”

  “Yes. She is infatuated with that youth and wants to marry him. At my first word of objection she treated me to an amazing outburst, taunting me with my second marriage and your crime.... That is the word she used.”

  “Indeed. Never mind. What then?”

  “Then I threatened to send her to a convent, an
d seeing that she was up in arms I ended by telling her that she could marry whom she pleased, for after all I don’t care one way or the other.”

  The Baron gave his most wicked smile.

  “These young people are mad,” he said. “The sight of an officer’s tunic turns their heads. Mlle de la Morlière is in love with Jacques, Marie Thérèse is in love with Frederic. It’s very pretty, touching, idyllic. If they only knew how these beautiful officers in reality are making game of them and are only after their money!”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “I have the proofs in my pocket. Here they are.” D’Askof drew from his pocket-book the elegant little sachet containing Jacques’s letters to Sonia Liskinne which he had picked up from the table in the boudoir. He passed them over to Vera, who could not conceal her delight as she read them.

  “But this is all we want,” she cried. “When one reads these letters it is impossible to doubt the ties that bind Jacques and Sonia together. And as for Frederic, here are three notes that are absolutely clear.... The foursome in the country, eh? Jacques and Sonia, Frederic and Lucienne Drice, the actress, and these words from Jacques: ‘Fortunately, Lucienne was absorbed in Frederic and unable to hear our conversation.’ Oh, the poor darlings!”

  “Vera, I will lend you these letters. You must show them to Marie Thérèse, and Marie Thérèse must show them to Lydia. This is how you must set about it: Marie Thérèse is sure to ask you to leave them with her for a few hours. She is very religious. You will have to make her swear on the crucifix to return them after showing them to Lydia. You must make her swear, too, not to show them to anyone else.... Go now, Vera. I shall be waiting for you.”

  The Baroness did not need to be asked a second time. She gathered the letters together, put them in the sachet, and hastened to her daughter’s room.

  The interview did not take long.