“One day I noticed the body of a man under a sheet. His face was turned toward me and he didn’t look like he was having a party. He looked at me with fixed eyes, as though I owed him something — sure, he wasn’t carrying on much.
“As for being ill, that man there was sure ill — that’s what I said to myself. But I wonder what happened to him to put him in that state. I had seen him before, hale and hearty — when they didn’t talk about him, at the time when they hid him away from everybody.
“I’ll tell you, between ourselves, I thought there must have been some kind of a tragedy there. But every one to their own miseries. The poor have got to get their living. Mum’s the word, I said to myself. They are quite capable of throwing me out on to the pavement.
“So I went about my work as though there was nothing going on at all. When that Christine told me anything, I just looked stupid and took it all in. But it didn’t prevent me from saying to myself: ‘Ah, my beauty, you haven’t got a clear conscience.’
“To come back to the affair of the box. I told you that Mlle. Christine was alone in the shop when she opened it. I was in the dining room, but I could see plainly what was going on in the shop, through tire half open door. But I couldn’t see inside the box. But she — she already had her eyes inside.
“And say — what was she looking at? She went over to the window. She took out a little object which was all wrapped round with silver wire, it looked almost like the shape of a pistol.
“She didn’t seem to understand anything about it. She put it back in the box and, after hesitating a little while, she opened the door leading out to the garden, and went straight down toward the building in the rear, which old Norbert and M. Cotentin hardly ever left.
“She knocked on the door of the laboratory. Old man Norbert came out. His hair was all rumpled like I had never seen it before. His eyes seemed to be popping out of his head.
“‘What is it?’ he cried. ‘What do you want? You know very well that we don’t want you. You are too nervous! Leave us alone.’
“He seemed madlike.
“‘Listen, papa,’ she said, ‘I have received another letter from the poor thing.’
“‘Oh, your old madwoman — can’t you leave us in peace?’
“‘But,’ she insisted, T have a registered package that I want to show to Jacques!’
“‘You surely don’t want to interrupt Jacques?’
“‘Tell him that she has sent me the proof — the proof — I don’t know anything more.’
“But old Norbert was impatient and he only shrugged his shoulders and shut the door in her face.
“I don’t know what it was all about, but I saw there was something going on in that house and I was on hot coals.
“Mlle. Christine, still looking at the little box, dropped down on a seat in the garden.
“She wasn’t there five minutes when Sawbones came out.
“‘What’s the matter, Christine?’ he asked at once.
“‘Look!’ she said. ‘See what she has just sent me.’ And she passed him the box. They had their backs turned toward me. They looked in the box. I saw nothing. The doctor must have taken the object in his hand. He stretched his arms out and closed them again.
“‘It is very curious, very curious,’ he said.
“‘But what is it?’ Christine asked him.
“‘Well, my darling, that is a trocar.’
“Yes, that is what he said, ‘trocar’; he even repeated the word:
‘“It is a sort of trocar.’
“‘But what is a trocar?’ she demanded.
“He didn’t answer at first. He kept examining the object, and he seemed to be thinking. Then, suddenly, he cried out:
“‘Oh, the poor thing! The poor thing! No, she is not mad. She was right!’
“And he added:
“‘The villain!’
“Then Christine got up. She was all white.
“‘But tell me, Jacques,’ she said, ‘what is a trocar?’
“‘A trocar,’ he explained, ’is a hollow needle, and a pistol trocar is a sort of surgical instrument which resembles a little pistol; it works like a pistol. We use it to drive a hollow needle through the flesh of the abdomen when we want to know—’
“‘I understand! I understand!’ cried Christine.
“‘You understand,’ he continued, ‘this instrument acts on the same principle. He sends this hollow needle, previously filled with a stupefying liquid.’ He said those very words, I can still hear them in my ears.
“‘Yes, yes, I understand!’ exclaimed Christine, who looked frightened to death.
“‘But he sends it from a distance,’ explained the doctor; ‘it could be sent even from a good distance. Look at this spring, and this other contrivance, which accompanies the hollow needle and by means of which it is drawn back after it has struck and left its venom.’
“‘I understand, I understand!’
“‘It is this last spring which brings the needle back to the instrument which projected it.’
“‘Yes, yes!’
“‘You see how the needle is held back by this metal wire? Do you understand? Do you understand?’
“Did she understand? Besides it wasn’t very difficult, even I could understand how the instrument was made, without having seen it. I can say, anyway, that when it came to explaining, Sawbones was all right. Well, she just stood there, holding her white face with her hands.
“‘But she must be saved!’ she said.
“‘Without a doubt,’ said Cotentin, who had got quite calm, ‘she must be saved. Only I can’t get away just at this moment. No! I can’t leave Gabriel, although everything is going along better. But I can’t leave the work while it is still warm.’
“‘Well, then — when?’
“‘It will be a matter of five or six days.’
“‘But we have not the right to wait five or six days.’ “‘That is my opinion,’ he said. ‘But you can go at once and find Benedict Masson down in the country. Bring him back with you without losing an hour. We will talk it over then and decide what to do.’
“Then he got up and handed her back the box.
“I scooted off, for my work was nearly finished. I had heard too much, without knowing what it was all about. It was not till after the affair of the seventh woman that I began to understand something about it.”
CHAPTER XXXI
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SEVENTH
CHRISTINE COULD NOT get a train for Corbillieres until two o’clock in the afternoon, and then she took the wrong train. She had confused the through train with the express. She was in the through, which did not stop at Corbillieres. She had to go on to La Roche and wait there for a local on its way back to Paris.
When she got off at Corbillieres, it was seven o’clock in the evening. She expected to be there about three hours and to take Benedict Masson back with her on the ten o’clock train. At eleven o’clock they would be in Paris and on the same night they could decide with Jacques what plan to follow, so that the next morning — since Jacques could not leave Gabriel for awhile — she and Benedict Masson could leave for Coulteray.
She had determined to follow and save the unhappy woman, who, so often, had appealed to her without being understood. Christine accused herself of being blind. She could not understand how she had been able to so far submit herself to the evil influence of the marquis that she had also — she herself — become his victim, for, she also had been aimed at. She, also, had been bitten at a distance by the monster.
She had not been dreaming when she had seen him leaning over her, imbibing her very life blood with his gluttonous lips, through the scratch from the rosebush. It had been a kiss so odious that she had not wished to believe it when she awoke. A crime of another age, which she had relegated to the domain of a nightmare.
Yes, but there was the chloride of calcium, which stopped the blood, and there was the citrate of soda, which made it flow. And he had this t
rocar, which bit from a distance, poisoned from a distance, annihilated from a distance. That, indeed, was modern science, put to use by vampires. Then vampirism was real.
It was no longer the funereal, phantom-like, legendary thing that small modern minds spurned aside with eager disdain. It was the most monstrous and oldest of passions — the passion for human blood — now aided by chemistry and mechanics.
And she thought of the words of Jacques Cotentin, who had often remarked, with a certain circumspection and caution, that had more than once made her laugh: “The lie is not so much in the things which are related to us, which we do not understand, as in our ignorance.” The shadows of life envelop us so remorselessly, that even while we are feeling our way along slowly, we stumble at each step.
Corbillieres-on-the-water! When she had left the little station and found herself in the deserted square — between four plane trees, from where one could look out upon the marshy plain, over which, at the moment, big black clouds were hustled along by the west wind, the last shreds of the rainstorm, which had all afternoon been mingling the waters of heaven with those of earth — Christine understood at last, or thought she understood, why every time that she had spoken of Corbillieres-on-the-water, Benedict Masson had said to her:
“Above all, do not come there!”
She had never seen anything so gloomy.
And that was where he lived.
It was in this mortal solitude that he had gone to take refuge after the brutal, almost tragic scene which had parted them.
She did not blame him. On the contrary, she blamed herself. It had all been her fault. Why had she been so tender with him on that fatal evening?
Certainly she had no reason to blame herself for being coquettish with him. She had drifted quite naturally into taking him into her confidences as she would have taken another. She had felt a deep sympathy for him. She was attracted to him, in spite of his particularly unsociable character; and because he had such fine talent she did not hesitate to class him as a genius.
Only she could not overcome that movement of disgust at his physical approach.
Ugh! The kiss of an ugly man, she had not been strong enough to submit to it.
Well, she ought to have been aware of that, and she ought not to have placed herself in such an imprudent attitude, that it gave Benedict Masson the right to ask it of her.
She wanted to forget the scene of anger and harsh words. She had been insulted and browbeaten. Then he had thrown her from him like a hated object which he desired to reduce to atoms. And he had come to bury himself here.
Where? In what corner?
Who would take her to his home?
Night was falling. She did not feel very courageous.
Really, this countryside made her have a queer feeling; it seemed to hang about her shoulders like a damp, icy shroud.
She thought of returning to Paris by the next train and then returning the next day, in full daylight, with Jacques.
But she pictured the despairing face of the marchioness before her, she could imagine the agony of the poor creature in the depths of the château at Coulteray. The poor woman who was probably wondering if she had called in vain, if Christine would arrive too late. The last phrase of the last letter passed before her eyes: “And now, hurry, for he will kill me if I do not die quickly enough.”
A youngster just then came out of the only inn, looked slyly at the beautiful lady, who did not seem to know which way to go. She asked him: “Can you take me to Benedict Masson’s house? Do you know where he lives?”
“Redskin?” he exclaimed. “Sure I know where he lives. I used to do his errands for him up till a week ago — when Annie came.”
“Who is Annie?”
“That’s his last one. He says she is his little niece. She’s the one who gets his things for him now. But for two days we haven’t seen her. Another one gone off like the others, without asking his permission.”
“Will you take me to M. Masson’s house?” She held a two-franc piece before his eyes.
The youngster snatched the tip and said simply: “Follow me; my name is Phillippe.”
In order to understand what is to follow, it is perhaps necessary, before going further, to cast a glance on what has happened or what could have happened at Corbillieres since Benedict and Father Violette had had words at the Green Tree Inn.
It will be recalled that Benedict threatened the gamekeeper, saying that he would hold him responsible if his little niece went away, if Annie went like the others. Whereupon Mother Mouche had advised Father Violette to be careful. But Father Violette was not a man that could be intimidated.
He did not change his habits at all, but continued to watch the villa inhabited by the bookbinder, so that he might see Annie when she went for provisions.
He even risked showing his face between the hedges. But Annie went quickly on her way, avoiding all conversation with the ex-gamekeeper, evidently obeying orders that Benedict Masson had given.
CHAPTER XXXII
SHE NEVER SAW HIM AGAIN
BUT THE NEXT day, as he was cleaning his boat outside her hut, he saw her appear, looking very frightened.
“Oh, monsieur,” she said, “have you, by any chance, found his keys?”
“What?” asked the gamekeeper, frowning.
“His keys. He has lost them. He’s been looking everywhere for them. He was in such a state that I shudder. I have never seen him like that. Oh, dear me, one thinks one knows people! And all for a bunch of keys. I thought he was going to crush me. But I haven’t seen his keys. And now he’s looking for them out of doors. He’s down in the little patch by the willows, searching everywhere like a dog with his nose in the grass.”
Father Violette was very much interested in what Annie had said. He lit his pipe and let out a big laugh.
“He might as well leave his doors open, for all there is to steal from him. What does he think anybody would want of his keys? What does he use them for? Perhaps he thinks he has a treasure.”
“Ah, monsieur, he locks up everything behind him. I’m not even allowed to go down in the cellar. He has the oddest ways, but yet he is not a bad fellow.”
“Just now you told me he nearly crushed you to pieces. You must understand each other pretty well.”
“He certainly gets angry, when things don’t go according to his ideas,” said Annie.
“What kind of ideas has he got, can you tell me?” asked the gamekeeper, looking narrowly at Annie. “You know them better than I.”
But she either did not understand, or pretended that she did not understand. One can never be sure of anything with youngsters. She replied naively: “His only idea for the moment is to find his keys again.”
Then, in the distance, Benedict Masson was heard calling:
“Annie! Annie!”
“I’m off. If he knew that I had spoken to you, I should hear of it in all colors.”
The next day Father Violette had the occasion to speak to Annie, or rather it was she who spoke to him. “He found them — his keys,” she said.
“Where were they?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He only told me that he had found them, but he had such a look that I shall never forget it. I don’t know what I could have done to him, but he’s not a bit like he used to be to me, those first few days.”
“Oh, yes, we all know that,” sneered Father Violette, “the first days are all new, all fine.”
“Say, Father Violette, how did they go — those others?”
“Well, little one, that we don’t know.”
“Well, when they went away, somebody must have seen them pass. I brought a trunk with me. And I could not have been the only one to bring a trunk. I should have to have a carter if I want to go away.”
“Do you want to go away, Annie?”
“Yes, but I don’t dare tell him. I’m afraid to be here. He knows that I spoke to you, and he made a terrible scene. Be careful, he’s coming out of the ho
use.”
And she slipped behind the hedge like a snake.
At seven o’clock in the morning on the following day, Father Violette was waiting for the young girl, hidden behind an old wall at the edge of the village. He knew that she was coming to do the marketing. When she came abreast of him, he showed the end of his tufted snout. She ran to him, out of breath: “Oh, I’ve been looking for you. I don’t want to stay there. I can’t stay there any longer.”
“Well, get out at once.”
“But I don’t want to go without my trunk.”
“If that’s all, I’ll go and fetch it myself.”
“No, don’t do that. There’ll be trouble, the way he feels toward you. But this is what you can do — send Bicot, the man from the inn, with a cart to me about three o’clock. Redskin — that’s what they call him here at Corbillieres — goes out every day after lunch and prowls around in the grass, where I don’t know, and has his siesta. He never comes back before four o’clock. Bicot can get my trunk and I will follow him; you can watch from a distance. Only don’t show yourself, I tell you, for he may think you’re interfering, and it’s not you who can arrange matters, I tell you.”
That night, at the Green Tree Inn, Father Violette related his last conversation with Annie to Mother Mouche.
“I did what she asked me,” he explained. “I told Bicot. At three o’clock, I was already behind the little willow patch. Bicot came with his cart. He whistled. The window in the bedroom was opened, but it was Benedict Masson who showed his mug.”
“‘What do you want?’ he asked.
“‘Well, monsieur, I came for Annie’s trunk,’ replied Bicot who didn’t feel as though he was at a wedding.
“‘Annie has changed her mind. She isn’t going,’ shouted Benedict, and he closed the window.
“I felt like showing myself, but I said to myself: ‘What’s the good? That might spoil it all. Better wait for the little girl.’
“But she didn’t come out; neither did Benedict. What do you think of it, Mother Mouche?”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 398
