Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “Lespinasse, you have been a soldier and a good soldier,” said Jacques, fixing him with a burning look. “You must carry out my orders as a soldier obeys his chief in war time.”

  “At your service.”

  “You must go to Tissier.”

  “The second Vice-President of the Chamber? He lives quite near here — that’s quickly done.”

  “But Tissier refuses to have anything to do with it. I have sounded him myself,” cried Michel. “He’ll let things take their course — and keep to his bed.”

  “Hold your tongue, please.” And turning to Lespinasse, he gave him a document from the Commission of Inquiry. “You will show him his name on the list of persons against whom a warrant for arrest is to be issued this very day. If he wishes to save himself let him come. Don’t tell him that Lavobourg has left us in the lurch. Tell him, on the contrary, that Lavobourg will take the chair.... In short, bring him with you. With this document in your possession it will not be difficult.”

  “I understand,” said Lespinasse. “I will bring him along willy-nilly. Rely on it, Major. In a quarter of an hour at latest we shall be here.”

  “You amaze me,” exclaimed Michel, puffing loudly, and wiping the perspiration from his wide forehead. “I would never have believed that Tissier, Pagès’s friend, would be included in the Commission of Inquiry’s list.”

  “It was not in it,” returned Jacques calmly. “I added it myself, and to do so I imitated Coudry’s handwriting, old man.”

  “A forgery... I say,” exclaimed Michel admiringly. “You did not stop at forgery!”

  “Don’t let’s waste time,” returned Jacques. “Reassure those who are uneasy. Tell them Lavobourg has sent word that he will be here in five minutes. I will find out what’s happening in the Senate.”

  He hastened to the telephone and was at once put through to Frederic.

  Events had moved rapidly in the Senate. Frederic gave him the facts in a few words and explained the state of mind of the Senators. The proceedings had not taken long. The President brought forward a Bill for the Revision of the Constitution, a Bill drawn up by Oudard and Barclef, and it was passed without discussion.

  “You know what I’m expecting from you,” said Jacques, still at the telephone.

  “Yes, the President’s order entrusting General Mabel, the commander of the troops at Versailles, with the task of guarding the National Assembly. The President is about to draft it. I will bring it to you.”

  “I shall wait for you here. The Chamber will have finished its work within ten minutes. Let everyone make a start for Versailles.”

  “They won’t set out until they receive the news that the Chamber has also agreed to the Revision of the Constitution.”

  “They are about to receive it.... So long, Frederic.”

  Some twenty Deputies were standing near the telephone box waiting for him to speak to them. He told them that the sitting was over in the Senate and the Bill for Revision passed. A murmur of elation and enthusiasm spread to the Chamber.

  What was Lavobourg doing? It was rumoured that he had betrayed them, and consternation, a chilling fear, swept in a moment through the groups seething with excitement in the hemicycle. But it was reported almost immediately after that the Major had deprived him of any power to do mischief, and each one exchanged a glance of renewed fear. That was going beyond the usual methods. That was departing from the regular course. They had no great love of that. And then suddenly cries, gestures of impatience, the banging of desks, an extraordinary nervousness broke forth....

  “Why not get it over? The whole thing could have been finished in ten minutes,” exclaimed some. “Why disturb us at five o’clock in the morning for a debate at six o’clock?” And others began to play the innocent:— “Why have we been summoned? What is it that we have to debate? The Revision of the Constitution? Why were we not informed? It is senseless. We know nothing. No one has told us anything. What does it all mean?” While others again exclaimed: “We are here because it is our duty to be here, but whatever happens we wash our hands of the whole proceedings.”

  Meantime Jacques waited in a fever of expectancy for the Vice-President, whom Lespinasse had undertaken to bring to the Chamber. As he stood looking anxiously down the pallid and deserted quays he was not a little surprised to see a taxi draw up alongside the kerb with Jacqueline seated in it. She alighted. She held two letters in her hand, but when the uniformed men stopped her at the entrance she handed her letters to one of them, pointing to the Major, already starting to walk towards her.

  The letters were at once taken to him. One was addressed to him and the other to Frederic Héloni, and he recognized Lydia and Marie Thérèse’s handwriting. At that very moment Lespinasse came along with Tissier. From thenceforward he became oblivious of everything but his mission. He grew confident now of victory if no time were wasted, and postponed as a matter of course the reading of “love-letters” until later. Tissier was deadly pale. Lespinasse had obviously shown him the list of accused persons in which he had read his own name.

  “We were only waiting for you to save the Republic,” cried the Major.

  He drew him into the Chamber, where their entrance was greeted with murmurs of impatience. No one knew what was about to happen nor what to make of Lavobourg’s absence. The advent of Tissier, who had always maintained friendly relations with Pagès, notwithstanding the difference in their political views, seemed to indicate that the project had already leaked out and was ruined.

  But Jacques, leading Tissier to the steps to the President’s chair, said:

  “Gentlemen, in the absence of our friend Lavobourg, the victim of an odious outrage by our adversaries, our friend Tissier will, as is his bounden duty, preside at this sitting which must determine the fate of the Republic.”

  Loud cheers broke forth. Oh, of course, since Tissier was in it they felt a renewal of confidence! Lespinasse helped him to the President’s chair and Jacques darted into the tribune:

  “Gentlemen, the Senate, the supreme guardian of our Republican liberties, has just set us an example by passing a Bill for the Revision of the Constitution and decreeing a meeting of the National Assembly at Versailles. Unless you follow the Senate at once in the only path of safety that remains to us it is the end of the Republic and Republicans. I denounce from this place the hideous plot devised against the country and our liberties by the fomenters of terrorism.”

  The rough and impassioned language of Jacques’s speech readily inflamed his hearers, who had now heard too much to draw back. Amid a storm of cries, questions, applause, Jacques went on to read a violent indictment of the underhand intrigues of clubs and Communists in the provinces. Finally, after putting fear into their hearts by reading a list of suspects drawn up by the Commission of Inquiry, he ended by appealing to the courage and patriotic spirit of the Chamber. Not a single Deputy present asked for further explanation. The vote was carried. They held the pivot upon which the whole movement would henceforward turn. Nothing remained to be done but to set out for Versailles.

  Just then Frederic Héloni arrived with the order signed by the President of the Senate entrusting General Mabel with the defence of the National Assembly. He was received with thunders of applause. They all considered themselves safe, delivered absolutely from a revolutionary reign of terror, the masters of a new regime. Legally, constitutionally, they were about to give France a new Government without danger to themselves since they had the army behind them.

  “To Versailles!... To Versailles!”

  Even now a few Deputies, learning what was happening from friends desirous of implicating them, came hurrying up on foot or by car, furious at having been ignored. If the movement in the course of the day only just beginning hung fire and seemed like failure it was these Deputies who would precipitate the failure and display the greatest rancour.

  Jacques and Frederic were the last to leave the Chamber after shaking hands with some two hundred Deputies and instilling
courage into every heart.

  As they stepped into a car which was to drive them to the Place de l’Etoile, where General Mabel was waiting for them, Jacques thought of the letters handed to him by Jacqueline and meantime forgotten. He drew them from his pocket.

  CHAPTER XVI

  FIVE MINUTES

  “I HAVE A letter for you,” Jacques said, giving one to Frederic and opening his own. “This is, I should say, a delicate attention from our fiancées,” he went on, but he did not finish his sentence. He uttered a dull exclamation, and Frederic himself, who had read his own letter, uttered a cry of pain.

  “Pull up, driver!”

  They informed each other of the contents of the letters. The sentence in which Marie Thérèse gave them the final advice not to enter Lydia’s room with a light made a tremendous impression on them.

  Héloni, who had become as white as a sheet, said no word. He knew how precious every moment was for the success of the coup d’état in which Jacques had enlisted the lives of so many good men. He waited with a terrible anguish at his heart Jacques’s decision.

  “The simplest thing,” said Jacques in a voice that Frederic scarcely recognized, “would be for you to go at once to my mother’s house and, after raising the alarm and learning how matters stand, join me at Versailles, but there are no taxis about — not a single taxi.”

  A frightful struggle was raging in Jacques’s heart and conscience. Frederic gazed at him with dismay in his eyes. He clearly read in them the determination to order the chauffeur to proceed on his way — his chief’s terrible heroism was visible in his eyes. It was a sentence of death to Lydia and Marie Thérèse. Then, scarcely knowing what he did, he drew out his watch and said at haphazard:

  “We may have five minutes. We shouldn’t want more than five minutes.”

  “Let’s go there then,” roared Jacques in a desperate fury. He shouted the order for the chauffeur to drive to La Morlière.

  They did not wait for the car to stop before making a dash into the house. The concierge saw two men rush past with all the more alarm as they nearly knocked him down on their way. Jacques was even now at Lydia’s door.

  “Lydia! Lydia!” he cried, shaking the door. “It’s I, Jacques.... Open the door!”

  “Marie Thérèse!... Open the door!” cried Frederic in a choking voice.

  Then the two men took a sudden spring and threw themselves simultaneously against the door, which gave way. A horrible odour of gas swept into the passage and throughout the house. Jacques ran to the windows, shattered the panes, and, feeling faint, returned to Frederic, who was already carrying Marie Thérèse out. Jacques seized Lydia.... It seemed as if both girls were dead, for they lay inert in their arms. Jacques was shouting to the concierge to fetch a doctor when Cecily came up.

  What new misfortune was knocking at her door? She loved Lydia as a daughter. Was Fate about to take her away, too?

  The two girls were carried to Jacqueline’s room.

  “They tried to commit suicide,” groaned Frederic.

  “But they are still breathing,” returned Jacques, hopefully.

  Lydia opened her dimmed eyes and sighed.

  “Air... more air,” cried Jacques.

  Marie Thérèse in her turn opened her lifeless eyes and Frederic could not restrain his tears. He had found the two girls locked in each other’s arms as though they had met death with a chaste last kiss.... And he was utterly amazed by the tragedy of it, for it was not he who was to blame. The really guilty man implored his mother to save his fiancée’s life.

  Just then the doctor came in and applied the usual restoratives, but was unable to say at that moment whether their lives would be saved.

  “We shall know more in another five minutes,” he declared.

  Jacques, who was on his knees before Lydia, rose to his feet and beckoned Frederic to come with him.

  “Aren’t you going to wait to know whether they will live or die?” asked Cecily, surprised.

  “No, mother. We are confident, Frederic and I, that you will do everything in your power to save them. Good-bye, mother. We have no right to remain here another moment. We are expected elsewhere, and there, too, it is a question of life or death. As to Lydia and Maire Thérèse, when they can understand you, tell them that we still love them, and send us word at Versailles that their lives have been saved.”

  The car drove off at the same mad pace, but when Jacques and Frederic reached the Place de l’Etoile they looked in vain for General Mabel’s car and the General himself. He was no longer there.

  CHAPTER XVII

  VERSAILLES

  JACQUES LOOKED AT his watch.

  “We are five minutes behind the time he himself fixed as the latest for waiting. It’s our fault. We may, perhaps, overtake him on the road.”

  The car shot forward again like an arrow. It tore through woods, villages, plains.... On the way they sought General Mabel’s car, but it must have already reached Versailles. The General had doubtless been told what had happened in the Chamber and Senate, and perhaps had already seen the President of the Senate.

  The troops under his command, close on ten thousand strong, must have by now surrounded the Château. They passed several cars in which they recognized Parliamentary friends.

  As the old Comte de Chaume pointed out Jacques to Warren, of the great motor-car firm of Warren, who had placed over twenty cars at the disposal of the Senate, he said:

  “That fellow to-night will be on a lower level than Paillasse or above Epaminondes.”

  They reached Versailles not much behind time, but were dumbfounded on entering the Place du Château not to see a single soldier....

  What then had become of Mabel’s army? Where then was Mabel himself? And where was the Subdamoun battalion which ought by now to be in the Château courtyard? An indescribable confusion seemed to prevail there. The absence of regular troops dismayed the parliamentarians. A group of them made a rush towards Jacques when they saw him alight from his car.

  “Well, what about Mabel? Where’s Mabel?... We’re waiting for him. We’re waiting for you. What’s happening?”

  “Mabel is coming,” cried Jacques. “Let’s all take our seats. Where is the President of the Senate?”

  “Why, he’s waiting for Mabel. He’s waiting for you. We can do nothing without Mabel.”

  As Jacques strode into the Palais due Versailles he ran up against Michel coming out:

  “Mabel!... Mabel!” cried Michel.

  “I’ve just left him. Take your seats,” he shouted in the corridors. He acted as usher, furious at the sight of the discomfited, white-faced, flabby air of most of those present, no longer believing in success now that they were unable to see the promised bayonets.

  Some Deputies were already shrugging their shoulders. Others regretted being there. Others again sneered at the elaborate care and attention taken by the President of the Senate who wished the proceedings to be held in the usual surroundings, and had given orders during the night for a canvas canopy to be erected in the left wing of the Château facing the Hall of Congress.

  It was in the room usually reserved for Ministers on days of Congress that Jacques found the President with the Committee of the Senate and Oudard and Barclef. He left them again almost immediately. He met Frederic seated on one of the benches in red velvet fringed with gold in the vestibule ornamented by the busts of celebrated persons.

  “Come,” he said, “these fellows will do nothing without Mabel, and we don’t know what has become of him. We must try to work things without him.”

  In the courtyard and square men ran up to him:

  “Where are you going? Where are you going?”

  “I have an appointment with Mabel. I shall be back in five minutes with the General and the troops.”

  He asked to be taken to the barracks where the Subdamoun battalion was temporarily stationed under the command of officers of the Colonial Army, upon whom he could make any demand. The officer who succeeded
him in command of the crack regiment was Major Daniel, a friend who had served under him in the campaign. He found him in the barracks waiting impatiently for an order from Mabel which would place him at Jacques’s disposal.

  Daniel was surprised to see Jacques enter the barracks with Frederic, and drew him into a room.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Do you know what’s become of General Mabel?”

  “No.”

  “Nor do I. But I have just told everybody that I left him a moment ago. Here is a decree signed by the President of the National Assembly charging him with the safety of the representatives of the people. The Chamber and Senate, exercising their constitutional prerogatives, have resolved on the revision of the Constitution. If Mabel were here he would tell you, for the matter was arranged with him, to call out your men and lead them to the Château courtyard and place your services at the President’s disposal. Will you consider that you have already seen Mabel and thus carry out the decree? In half an hour I shall be appointed head of the Provisional Government, and I will take full responsibility, whatever happens.”

  “Major, my life belongs to you,” returned Daniel. The two men embraced.

  “Thanks, Daniel. Had you not agreed to follow me nothing would have remained for me to do but to blow my brains out.... Sound the call. And march to the Château at once.”

  Daniel gave his orders. The barracks at once became alive with the clatter of soldiery.

  “That’s not all,” went on Jacques. “If you wish to help me to see it through you will telephone to the commanders of the various corps telling them that you have received Mabel’s orders to march to the parade ground and the Château, and to pass on the order which must be executed here and now.”

  “I understand. Anything you please.... Superior and subordinate officers are as impatient to act as I am. We shall be running no risk with them, seeing that they are covered by the decree signed by the President of the National Assembly. Ah, why isn’t General Mabel here?”