Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “Am I speaking French or Greek?” asked M. Hilaire, losing his temper. And he repeated: “Have the California apricots come?”

  Then, not daring to look at his wife, he fixed the junior assistant with such a threatening look that the boy, keeping his distance, summoned up sufficient courage to say:

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Does anyone here know?” growled M. Hilaire fiercely.

  Then the head assistant said:

  “Yes, sir, we have received two cases.”

  “Has the macaroni also come? And what about the quarter pound tins of truffle scraps?”

  M. Hilaire turned his back on the cash desk. He was conscious of the tempest rising behind him. A breath of the storm was wafted to him in these words:

  “Scraps yourself! What does it matter to you what happens here after your behavior?”

  It was M. Hilaire’s turn to make no answer. He merely went over and took from a drawer in the cash desk the key of the store-room and stepped forward to the trap-door in the floor leading to the cellars.

  “What are you going to do in the store-room? You’ve no need to go down there, and if you wish to do so, do me the favor to put on your cap and apron and take off that red dish-cloth round your waist.”

  “Mme Hilaire, I ask you to weigh your words,” said M. Hilaire in a tone never before adopted in public towards his wife. “They are more serious than you think. I shall continue to wear this red dish-cloth, as you call it. It is the emblem of my new office. I have been appointed Commissioner for the Arsenal Division.”

  “A pretty Commissioner, upon my word! Just look at the face of this Commissioner...”

  “Appointed to see that the orders of the Assembly are respected,” said M. Hilaire calmly. “Read this, madame.”

  As he spoke he pointed with the forefinger of his right hand to the placard hanging on the cash desk. Then he turned on his heels and went towards the trap-door.

  It was too much for Virginie. She leapt rather than stepped down from her office throne and rolled towards the trap-door, at the edge of which she prudently came to a stop. Then she stood erect before M. Hilaire.

  “I won’t have you go down in that finery,” she bellowed.

  “That finery!” echoed M. Hilaire. “That finery has been forced upon me by the nation and henceforward will never leave me.”

  “Really I am sorry for you! Go to bed. You must want a rest after your orgies.”

  She made a movement to drop the trap-door, thus preventing M. Hilaire from descending to the cellars. But now thoroughly incensed and determined to go to all lengths, he took her arm and led her to the placard:

  “The wife of a revolutionary citizen refusing to obey her husband renders herself liable to the death penalty.”

  But instead of being dismayed this resolute lady had the hardihood to burst out laughing, and tried to lay a sacrilegious hand on M. Hilaire’s placard. The Grocer-Commissioner no longer hesitated to call his men to his assistance. The two civic guards ran up and on M. Hilaire’s order made Mme Hilaire prisoner.

  When she saw herself between two bayonets, hustled by fellows who looked as if they meant business, she changed color several times.

  And just then the street resounded with a furious clamor, while a long procession of doubtful characters marched past, firing their revolvers in the air, waving their swords, acclaiming the first victory of the Revolution, and threatening with immediate death any citizen who refused to fly the red flag from his window. M. Hilaire showed his sash and was loudly cheered.

  It was the Revolution stalking abroad. Never had Mme Hilaire seen it at such close quarters. She felt that it was not a matter to treat lightly, and that the placard might possibly be no idle fancy at a time when men could permit themselves every latitude. Then she burst into tears, thus confessing herself beaten.

  “Put madame in the cash desk,” ordered M. Hilaire.

  The guards helped her to her seat.

  “Until further orders she is in your charge,” said the Grocer-Commissioner. “You are responsible for her behavior. If she stops making up her accounts and slips away from the cash desk you will have to give an explanation to me and the Club Committee, and we do not trifle with discipline. Stop crying, madame. Take this down — ten pounds of sugar—”

  She wrote as she sobbed, blew her nose, sighed, wiped her eyes and mouth, her double chin puffed out with despair.

  And every now and again when M. Hilaire’s back was turned she cast her eyes on what he was doing, admired his new bearing, his confident movements, such as she had never seen before, admired the Commissioner with his sash, whom the customers greeted with such deference. She was mastered....

  Where had he gone? What was he doing in the dining-room? One moment she heard him in the kitchen, and next he came back and went down into the cellars carrying a sort of hamper over which he had thrown an apron. She wondered what was happening, and why he had taken the key of the store-room, which was entered only on Saturdays when their stocks of provisions or liquids were replenished. She reckoned that he remained there nearly half an hour.

  And it seemed to her that he came up with a strange look of gloom on his face.... What was this new mystery?

  After giving instructions to his chief assistant he left the stores and did not return until an hour later, when he was accompanied by a coal dealer carrying a sack on his shoulders, and both went down into the cellars. The best of it was that M. Hilaire came up alone, leaving the coal dealer behind.

  “It’s the new coal dealer from next door,” said M. Hilaire as he passed the cash desk. “I have told him to put the sacks in order and sweep up the coal dust.”

  “But we shan’t want any more coal until the winter, dear,” Mme Hilaire ventured to suggest.

  “A woman who can’t see further than her nose may think so, of course,” returned M. Hilaire, “but a man who can foresee the almost immediate rise in prices will take his precautions.”

  “All right, dear.”

  “Oh, I was going to tell you — I have invited the coal dealer to lunch. That’s the neighborly thing to do.”

  “Oh, my dear!”

  She was almost choking. He had invited the coal dealer to lunch — he was indeed going off his head. She began to cry again.

  “No blubbing,” he said. “This is not the moment.” I have four other guests.”

  She wiped her eyes.

  “You might have told me so before. I would have got something special ready and changed my dress.”

  “That’s all right. I like you to be reasonable, as you are now. But don’t worry. Our guests are very ordinary people who will be quite satisfied to take pot luck, and there’s no need for you to put on your best frock.”

  “Suppose they are all like the coal dealer!” she thought.

  But she had no conception that she would see the arrival at midday of two sturdy market porters covered with flour, a hideous little imp wearing canvas shoes, and a distressful-looking old man, shriveled and bent with age, whom M. Hilaire introduced as Daddy Peanuts.

  Virginia grasped the position in a flash. M. Hilaire was taking care to keep on the right side of the common people. What a man! What a genius!

  “Hilaire, I am very sorry,” she said. “You can tell those two gentlemen with bayonets to leave the shop. I will do anything you please.”

  He sent the two civic guards to their quarters after standing treat at the bar, and then kissed Virginie.

  “Is it all over and done with?” he asked.

  “Yes, Hilaire.”

  “Then go and join our guests in the dining room. All you have to do is to be pleasant. You will see that things will work out all right. I have got rid of the maid.”

  “Got rid of the maid!”

  “Yes, she worried me with her chatter. In revolutionary times one has no use for maids. They misunderstand what is said, and they are the only creatures who give us away.”

  “You are right, Hilaire,
all the more so as I was longing to give her notice. It’s incredible the amount of metal polish she wasted.... But who is going to serve the lunch?”

  “You, of course.”

  “What about the shopmen’s lunch?”

  “I shall give them five francs each and tell them to get their lunch outside.”

  “But you’ll ruin us....”

  “They will be satisfied and won’t listen at the door.”

  “All right,” agreed Virginie, pensive.

  The lunch passed off more successfully than she would have thought. These “poor people” behaved quite well, and their conversation did not overstep the limit. As the coal dealer had washed his hands, she considered that he had “very fine hands” for a man working at his trade. The others called him “Monsieur Frederic,” and appeared to have known him some time. Monsieur Frederic called the two stalwarts from the market Polydore and Jean Jean.

  As to M. Mazeppa, the solicitor’s clerk, and the peanut dealer, they seemed to form a party to themselves and did not join in the general talk, which fell upon the events of the day and the arrest of Subdamoun, on whom they piled up the vilest abuse.

  Mme Hilaire spared no effort to be agreeable to her party. Observing that Daddy Peanuts looked depressed and was eating very little, she addressed a few kind words to him.

  “How is business with you at present?” she asked.

  “Well, madame,” returned the old man in a tone of great dejection, “I must admit that trade is very bad.”

  Then he sat silent and Mme Hilaire was left to her thoughts. What a queer lot of people they were, anyhow! What strange guests.... Still, they would not, presumably, be sitting down at her table every day.

  When she reached this point in her reflections and astonishment M. Hilaire confided to her that he had decided to invite Polydore and Jean Jean, the two stalwarts from the market, to stay with them, for they had had the misfortune that very morning to be turned out of their home by their landlord, a niggardly and foolhardy bourgeois, who expected to be paid his rent in these troublous times!

  Mme Hilaire at first failed to grasp his meaning; the suggestion seemed to her so monstrous. When at last she realized that these two ruffians were to have board and lodging with them she rose to her feet.... She had seen and heard enough this time.

  “Where are you going, dearest?” inquired M. Hilaire.

  She went into the kitchen. M. Hilaire followed her.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Have you broken anything?”

  She gave vent to a gasp like the bellows of a forge, and at last said:

  “Surely you are not going to give up our bed to them?”

  “No,” returned M. Hilaire calmly. “I shall put them in the cellar. They won’t inconvenience us there.”

  “In the cellar, where all the wine — hams — sausages — provisions are!... In the cellar!”

  To prevent herself from falling Mme Hilaire clung to the meat safe, which gave way, and M. Hilaire had to support both for a moment, which called forth one of the greatest efforts of his life. At last Virginie recovered her balance.

  “I don’t understand anything you tell me or what you are doing and I fear I shall go mad. Perhaps I am already mad.”

  Then, taking compassion, M. Hilaire kissed Mme Hilaire, who longed to bite him but after what had happened thought it more prudent to receive his caress with a smile.

  “Don’t try to understand, Virginie, and you will be happy.”

  Having said which he left her and returned to the dining-room and his guests, whose stations in life were so peculiar and whom Virginie did not know from Adam. But in the days that followed she outlived worse things.

  The dining-room became the bureau of a sort of council of war at which the fantastic peanut dealer, the little blackguard Mazeppa, the coal dealer, and the two freebooters, who never left the house, met at every hour of the day.

  It was these two, Polydore and Jean Jean, who irritated Mme Hilaire the most. To know that they were in the house at night doing as they pleased was “more than she could bear,” and “she was beside herself.”

  The worst of it was that M. Hilaire himself continued to take down to them what he called “a little snack for the night.” And what a little snack it was! Chicken, early fruit and vegetables — in fact the pick of everything. It seemed like a bad dream! Moreover, she had received the order not to go down into the cellar.

  “Now that a couple of men are living there, you understand, it’s no place for you,” M. Hilaire told her.

  CHAPTER XXV

  OF CERTAIN DISCOVERIES MADE BY MADAME HILAIRE AND THE RESULT

  BUT A DAY came — it happened to be the day on which the first tumbril appeared from the Conciergerie Prison — when Polydore and Jean Jean were absent from the house at the same time as M. Hilaire.

  Virginie lit a lantern, opened the trap-door, and went down into the cellar to penetrate the mystery.

  The place was in extraordinary confusion. Boxes had been turned upside down and some of them broken open. Wine had poured from the casks, saturating the ground as if it had been inundated by the waters of the Seine. A vat of light sparkling Anjou wine was empty. Half the contents of a barrel of red herrings lay on the sodden floor. A number of smoked hams had disappeared, or rather the bones that were left revealed that in spite of regular meals in the dining-room and M. Hilaire’s nightly “little snacks” Polydore and Jean Jean had allowed their rapacious appetites to have full play.

  Mme Hilaire, with her lantern, her sighs, and her hoarse exclamations, was pursuing her way amid the devastation when suddenly she heard the sound of voices from the far end of the cellar.

  She came to a stand, trembling all over. Who was speaking?

  She listened, but to no purpose. And yet she could not have been mistaken. The sound had indeed come from the back of the cellar, which was divided from the store-room by a wooden partition in which a thick door had been built.

  Mme Hilaire had to place her hand on her breast to repress the loud beating of her heart.

  She crept with infinite caution to the end of the underground passage. Two heavy casks had been placed against the store-room door to prevent anyone from entering.

  Hush!... She could hear once more the murmurs of voices.... A gasp broke in her throat. It was a woman’s voice! By the Blessed Virgin, M.

  Hilaire was hiding some woman in the store-room.

  Everything was now clear!

  The snacks and delicacies taken down to the cellar by M. Hilaire were not intended for Polydore and Jean Jean, who, as she had ascertained for herself, unfortunately, had no need of these to fill their stomachs. No — all those delicacies were for a woman.... What woman?... M. Hilaire’s mistress!... Damnation!... One of the upper classes doubtless, since she was in hiding like a suspect.

  M. Hilaire had always shown a liking for women in high places. His devotion to the Marchioness de Touchais was often incomprehensible to Mme Hilaire. And M. Hilaire must indeed have been smitten with this woman in the store-room to have employed those two monsters to guard her, those two insatiable bullies who were costing him a mint of money and ruining his business.

  In very truth that was the whole trouble. Was it surprising that she found him altered beyond recognition? It was this woman who had effected the change in him. It was on her account that she had so greatly suffered, on her account that she had been humiliated, threatened, turned into ridicule before them all. It was on account of this woman that she was no longer mistress in her own house....

  Well, time would show.

  Determined to be revenged in startling fashion, and knowing that revenge is a dish to be eaten cold, she hastened to return to the light of day and to avoid the least scene.

  Suddenly Daddy Peanuts appeared. M. Hilaire had not yet come back. Daddy Peanuts bowed to Mme Hilaire and told her that he had learned with pleasure on passing the Town Hall that M. Hilaire had just been appointed Inspector of Prisons.

  “M
y congratulations, madam,” he added. “Every day your husband rises to a higher position, obtains a new office. The Revolution is paying its respects to his great qualities of head and heart.”

  “Bravo!” agreed Jean Jean, who had just come in. “We’ll open a couple of bottles of champagne to celebrate it.”

  “Yes, and a flagon of old rum,” added Polydore.

  Mme Hilaire lowered her eyes to conceal the rage and hatred that possessed her. These wretched persons were all in league with her husband.

  At last M. Hilaire arrived and heard without undue surprise the news of his elevation to so important an office as Inspector of Prisons at a time when these places were full.

  Vain as he was, he took naturally to his honors. A fresh piece of news brought by his friend the “new coal dealer,” with the black face and white hands, seemed to affect him more.

  A shiver passed through him when M. Frederic, with an emotion by no means assumed, told of his regret on learning some minutes before that his predecessor the coal dealer who had so kindly transferred his business — deal boards, lathing, coal — had been found dead that morning in the Rue de Turenne with a dagger in his back.

  The worthy man had been for some time a friend of M. Hilaire’s, and had, as we know, rendered him service on the day when he was engaged in finding the de Touchais family a safe place of refuge. Was it not terrible for this man to be punished for those services by a stab in the back? Possibly he had let fall an indiscreet word in spite of M. Hilaire’s explicit injunctions.

  “Possibly that stab was merely a measure of precaution,” said the abominable and frightful Chéri-Bibi.

  Just then M. Barkimel appeared on the scene, pale and worn out. He had left the Revolutionary Tribunal and met on his way a colleague who had been present at the function in the Place de la Revolution and described how Tissier, the ex-President of the Chamber of Deputies, sentenced to death by Barkimel himself, had met his fate.

  “There’s no disputing,” said Barkimel in a melancholy tone, “that it gives one a turn to think that one was instrumental in sending a man to the scaffold — a man who a little while ago was breathing like you and me, talking and turning his head round...