Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  Sir Archibald leaned towards me until his great beak of a nose was within a foot of my face. I should surely have clasped my hands over my ears to shut out his next words, if my hands had not been occupied in holding me down on my chair.

  “It’s a certain... a certain Victor!”

  “Who?”

  “Victor... Victor Bermont. You don’t know him, eh? He’s a barber, in a shop near the Stock Exchange, and lives in rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. He’s also a bookie on the side, and was at Deauville this summer.” Slowly I recovered my composure; but never had I been so near to losing it completely. The old man was on the right track, all right, and under any other circumstances I should not have been reassured by this discovery of Victor. But I had expected him to strike so much closer to home that his half-discovery was momentarily a relief to me. It at least gave me time to study my situation. Since he had spoken Victor’s name, my thoughts had begun to group themselves in a new pattern. My next task would be to plan my own future conduct, and there was no doubt as to what that should be: a prompt but prudent flight. No rash movement that would expose me....

  Profiting by this breathing spell, I said at random (and after all, it was what a lawyer would naturally have said):

  “Why didn’t you tell this to the court?”

  I thought for a moment that Sir Archibald was going to leap from his bed. He shook his arms as if in a frenzy. Before replying, he picked up a glass, which the young page had left on the table by the bed, and drained half of it in a swallow. Then he said, more calmly:

  “The courts have nothing to do with this. The Skarletts have always settled their affairs themselves!” The words were spoken simply, but their simplicity was as sharp-edged as Victor’s razors.

  We remained for several minutes without speaking. Then, with a melancholy effort, he resumed:

  “The person to be pitied in all this terrible business is Lady Skarlett.... Have you ever known anyone in the world more noble, more splendid, more worthy of a great name and fortune than Lady Skarlett?”

  “No,” I answered, with a sense of oppression on my chest. “Lady Skarlett is a great lady and a worthy wife.”

  “The greatest, young man, and the worthiest.”

  I lowered my head, reluctant to add a word to this trying conversation, and hoping with all my heart that it would soon be over. It seemed to me that I had already been in this room a thousand years.

  As the silence continued, I felt that I might rise and take my leave. Then I noticed that Sir Archibald was sleeping deeply. The potion he had drunk so recklessly was having its effect. I moved about the room, to notify the page that I was ready to leave, or perhaps to rouse Sir Archibald. But the sick man seemed to be made of lead, and no one appeared. Eventually I opened the door by which the page had gone out, and found him in the next room, turning over the leaves of a picture book.

  At a signal from me he put down the book and came to the door. I showed him Sir Archibald and explained that he had fallen suddenly asleep. The youth glanced at the half-emptied glass and replied:

  “His Lordship has drunk his sedative. That always quiets him at once. Did his Lordship have an attack?”

  “No, not actually an attack....”

  “Then he felt one coming on. He will awake in half an hour.”

  He led me to the vestibule door, opened it, and said good night. I heard him push the bolt.

  In my room, I found Durin laying out my dinner clothes on the bed. He asked me no questions about my visit; he was growing more and more taciturn. When I was alone, I looked about me with a sigh. Was I too destined to grow moldy in this dungeon? Where could I take refuge?

  An ocean did not seem too big to put between myself and my host of Black Rooks.

  I had just finished dressing when there was a discreet knock on my door, and I found myself looking into the slant eyes and enigmatic smile of the Indo-Chinese ex-dancer, Mina. At a sign from her I followed her to her room, which was close by, and directly above that of Helena. The latter was waiting for me in her friend’s room. Mina disappeared.

  “Reassure yourself,” I said. “He is still upset and his mind is filled with forebodings, but he spoke of you with respect and affection.”

  “The beastly hypocrite! I can’t go into his room without being watched by Bobby, that horrid little page of his, and I find Donald behind every door. But never mind that, let’s talk about you. What did he say to you?”

  “He told me he had sent for me to tell me certain things in confidence. I will tell you what they were. They are dangerous, but I got the impression that he knows nothing.”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “He knows everything. Are you never going to grow up, Ruddy? What you call confidences were a test!

  And I hope you came through it with at least moderate success. But what good would even that do? His mind is made up. And the terrible part of it is that I don’t know what he has in store for us!”

  She stood up and drew her scarf over her shoulders. “Meanwhile, let’s go to dinner.”

  I followed her with a sinking heart. The tone of helpless desolation with which she had pronounced these words plunged me once more into a state of apprehension.

  At dinner, Helena made an effort to be gay. Officially, her anxiety had disappeared with Sir Archibald’s return to life. But while a splendid and haughty smile played about her lips, her eyes were burning with a black, menacing glance. But menacing for whom?

  She avoided meeting my eyes and treated me with a distant politeness, which embarrassed me greatly. “The terrible part of it is that I don’t know what he has in store for us.” There was no doubt what she was thinking of — as I was. What plans were forming in her mind? “We shall escape together,” she had said. But Helena’s thoughts were never easy to read, and I could not help wondering if, in an emergency, she might not escape alone.

  Her light banter was powerless against the sense of danger that hung over all of us. Even the servants, it seemed to me, could not be taken in by it; and it was particularly ineffective on Arthur, the butler, whom Sir Archibald had brought from his town house in Edinburgh. His manner this evening was more impersonally correct than ever. Presently Lady Helena made the mistake of asking casually if the banshee had been heard again.

  The three servers seemed at once to have been turned into stone. And in a dry tone the butler replied: “Her Ladyship doubtless does not know what is being said. The banshee has been heard constantly since the night before his Lordship’s illness. Last night, someone visited the Green Lady!”

  Knowing her moods as well as I did, I felt rather than saw the shudder that ran through Helena at these words. As she drew herself up with rigid self-control, I knew that her wrists were trembling.

  “Who?”

  “You would have to ask Donald, your Ladyship. He is the only one who knows. But Donald has hardly been in his right senses since it began, and it is hard to tell what he means at times.”

  Turning to Mina, Helena said:

  “It is just as I told you. The banshee is driving Donald insane. And it will drive everybody else insane too, if it keeps up. This castle is becoming a madhouse.”

  “But who is this Green Lady?” I burst out.

  “Ah,” replied Helena, “that’s another one of our old legends. There are a thousand of them in Scotland. Every castle has its legend, its mysterious chamber... its Green Lady. If you are interested, I will tell you the story of the Green Lady of Black Rooks. There is a room in the depths of the castle which for generations has been considered haunted. At night there is a light in the windows and everything seems to indicate that some human being is there, in voluntary or forced confinement. And whenever any guest has lingered on the moat opposite the secret windows, the lord of the castle, for many generations, has taken him aside and requested him to pay no more attention to that part of the castle. I have seen Sir Archibald do it himself. I don’t need to tell you that this has only whetted people’s curio
sity, and that there have been many attempts to pierce the mystery. But no one has ever gone into that room except the servants who have had charge of it. And for generations they have all been of the same family; the last is Donald, who was given the responsibility by Sir Archibald’s father, Sir Edward Skarlett. I have tried to question my husband about it, but he always answers: ‘You must never disturb the banshee; even to talk of her brings bad luck.’ They also say that in former days that cell was the prison of the unhappy wife of one of the chiefs — perhaps a MacGregor, though I think the story is older than Rob Roy — and that in it she expiated some crime against the family name. After her death, the cell was probably transformed into a chapel, and the servant appointed merely to keep it in a condition worthy of the noble prisoner it had housed. That kind of delayed respect for those who in their lifetime have been the victims of Scottish pride is perfectly characteristic. I could give you a hundred examples. Of course, the people believe that the Green Lady’s ghost still lives in that cell. She is the spirit the peasants call ‘Jenny the Weaver’. Needless to say, she is unhappy and laments, and her groans fill the house whenever trouble is threatening.”

  “I have heard,” said Mina (I was always surprised at the sound of her soft, childlike voice), “that that cell was occupied by some deformed creature. They say it is a monster with the head of a frog.”

  “That’s the Highlands for you!” concluded Helena, turning towards me. “A country of superstition, black legends, brooding, and spells of frenzied gayety. But now you know as much as I do about it. Let’s talk of other things.”

  It was not true. She knew much more than she had told me, but before the night was over, I was to learn the rest....

  Her attitude of studied indifference was kept up throughout the evening. And when I finally withdrew to my room, I had a sensation of solitude and desertion which gripped my throat. Had I already been locked in the lowest dungeon of Black Rooks, I could not have felt more completely abandoned. I could not even escape without Helena. Supposing I made my way through these narrow corridors and locked courts to the outer walls, I would still be lost in the rocky gorges and forests that surrounded the castle on every side. And if I crept away like a thief, what an avowal of guilt it would seem! Every course of action seemed equally disastrous. I had only one reason for hope; experience had taught me that Helena was never so close to me as when she appeared, either by whim or prudence, to be most aloof.

  This was a single light that flickered at the bottom of my gloomy meditations, and that grew dimmer as the minutes passed, and a restless silence spread through the castle. At length there came a light tap on my door. It was Mina again.

  Once more I followed her, expecting to find Helena awaiting us. But Mina’s room was empty. Without a word of explanation, she slid the bolt into place. Then, moving aside an Oriental screen, she lifted a narrow trapdoor in the floor, and made me a sign to go down. Peering into the hole, I discerned a twisting stairway, hardly more solid than a ladder. Then I understood: I would find Helena at the bottom. The trap closed over my head and I climbed down into a semi-darkness, where I recognized the delicate fragrance of the powder Helena used. She was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, and led me to a low stone seat in the vast window. A red lamp, hung from the center of the ceiling, shed a dim light in the room, and allowed me to distinguish her features.

  “Helena,” I begged, “tell me, once and for all, what is this gruesome farce that is going on about us?”

  “It is gruesome, Ruddy, but it is not a farce. I wish it were. I have made our plans, however, and we shall soon be out of it. That I swear to you.”

  “But when?”

  “Tomorrow evening.”

  “Ah... not until then? When I remember the glitter in your husband’s eyes, Helena, I know that he is capable of anything in his present state...

  “He has always been capable of anything. In Afghanistan—”

  “Do you know what he said to me? ‘They have tried to poison me.’”

  I felt her grow rigid beside me:

  “I thought so! I was sure he suspected that! What were his exact words, Ruddy? Try to remember!”

  “What I have just said to you.”

  “Yes— ‘they have tried’ — I understand now the way he has watched me. I am included in that ‘they’, Ruddy. And it is terrible to me to think of, for it is quite possible that there has been an attempt to poison him. I have suspected it too, but I cannot be sure. Durin has grown tired of waiting! And he knows now why Sir Archibald came back to Paris to get him. He guesses what is in store for him here. When Sir Archibald had his bad attack, I thought it was really the end... that Durin had poisoned him to be free to marry me. I was to be sacrificed to make him rich!” She put her hands over her eyes, as if to shut out some horrible image. “No, no, I couldn’t stand it! It is too monstrous! Durin is no longer human. And he plans to bind me to himself for life. He knows that he can hold my past crimes over me like a whip; but they were not crimes like this. You must have been shocked when you saw me here, Ruddy. I am only a ghost of what I used to be, wandering between two living deaths: one with an aged neurasthenic who suspects me of plotting to murder him, the other with a demon who will come to me with that murder on his hands. Now do you understand my relief and my dismay when Donald told me that Sir Archibald was better? I am reduced to finding joy in the health of a man I have always detested, and whom I hate now, almost as much as I hate Durin himself.... Whether there has already been a poisoning, we shall probably never know. But this much is certain: there will be poisoning, and by that means or some other, Sir Archibald’s days are numbered. Have you seen the expression in Durin’s eyes?”

  “Yes, and I shuddered at what I read in it.”

  “You read the determination to stop at no crime. Well, we must not be here when that crime takes place. Do you understand?”

  “Then why not escape tonight?”

  “For your own safety, Ruddy, I have thought of everything. At least, I think I have. You must not give the impression of flight. You came as a guest, and you must go as a guest.”

  “But is it possible?”

  “Listen: tomorrow afternoon, you will receive a telegram from Paris, calling you back there on urgent business. I have arranged for that too. You will write a note to Sir Archibald, who will be asleep, leaving the telegram to prove the necessity for your departure, and I will drive you myself to Stirling, where you will be supposed to have taken the train to London.”

  “Why only supposed to?”

  “Because you will come back with me.”

  “Back to the castle?”

  “Yes, the important thing is for Albert Rose to leave, without arousing any suspicion, and not to be in the castle when something happens later — which I am going to explain to you.”

  I waited in silence, dreading what she might unfold next.

  “The rest will be nothing,” she continued, “and I shall be at your side. You don’t imagine we can leave without money, do you? And my only personal fortune is my jewels, which he has stolen from me.”

  “He?”

  “Sir Archibald! Since the death of Fathi, he is never separated from them. Right now they are in a little leather bag under his pillow. But there is something else in the bag too: a paper he has been writing on for the past two or three days. I haven’t seen it, but I suspect what is on it. It may well be the whole story of us three: a precaution he is taking in case he should die before settling with Durin and Lady Helena and Lady Helena’s darling little Ruddy. This paper he intends to give himself to the pastor from Oak Village, at the foot of the hill. The pastor is visiting his brother in Edinburgh at present, and Sir Archibald has left word at the parsonage that he is to come here as soon as he gets back, whatever hour of the day or night it may be. Here they have orders to take him at once to my husband’s room and leave him there, even if Sir Archibald is asleep. The good pastor will wait patiently until his Lordship wakes up, when Sir
Archibald will put the bag in his hands, with all that it contains: my jewels, my disgrace, and the story of Mr. Flow, Mr. Hooker, and Albert Rose. The Hundred and One Masks will be torn aside, and we three shall be ruined. That is why I am going to drive Monsieur Albert Rose to Stirling and bring back the good pastor to Black Rooks.... You will make an excellent pastor, I assure you!”

  I did not protest, our situation was too dangerous. In Helena’s eyes everything always seemed simple, but the tasks she heaped on me demanded the skill of a genius and the assurance of a master.

  “Granted that I assume this rôle,” I pointed out, “Sir Archibald will recognize me at the first words I say. Or even if I say nothing, he will know that I am not the pastor.”

  “You will not have to say a word, and he will not recognize you because he will be asleep. He takes his sleeping draught at regular hours, and we can plan on it. You will simply take the bag, leave quietly by the vestibule, without disturbing the page, who will be in the room in the rear, and join me. I will have the doors opened for you, and you will be saved. We shall both be saved, for I shall not be long in joining you. It’s the only solution.”

  “But if, by any chance, he should wake up?”

  “He won’t. He sleeps like a stone when he has drunk his medicine. And when he does wake up, he is always semiconscious for a time. In a pinch, you could tell him that you were the brother of the pastor from Oak Village, and that he has sent you because he could not come back yet himself. He has never seen the brother. In any case, he wouldn’t keep you, for he has nothing to say to the brother. And we must take some risk, if we are to escape from this nightmare.”

  “I know, I know.... But why not wait until the real pastor leaves the castle with the bag and rob him of it between Black Rooks and Oak Village? Wouldn’t that be simpler?”

  “That is out of the question; because I know that he will not be back from Edinburgh within four days, and before then everything will be finished.”