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Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

Page 472

by Gaston Leroux


  In the dark she leaned over and took my hand.

  “There is nothing for you to fear. A long black coat, a vest that buttons in back and a clerical collar, a white wig and a broad brimmed hat — with me to bring you in and let you out, and Sir Archibald asleep. That will be easy for you.”

  “Helena: just one thing more. Are you sure that Sir Archibald knows the rôle I played this summer? Do you know what he said to me about our famous Mr. Hooker? He told me that Mr. Hooker had been impersonated by Victor, the barber—”

  Helena started.

  “And you believed him? You thought he meant that? It was Victor who betrayed Durin! And it was from Victor Sir Archibald learned that you were Mr. Hooker at Deauville!”

  “My God!”

  “Well, are you willing to act now!”

  “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “Good. You will see that we will come out all right. And as for Victor, I have an idea that his account will be settled without us. Durin will take care of that. Sh! Did you hear that?”

  She rose, and crossing the room lifted a tapestry which concealed a low door in the wall. Pulling open the door, she disappeared down a flight of stone stairs toward the dungeons. I remained alone, in the dimly lighted room, a prey to the cold wind, which entered like a knife around the window, and to my own imaginings.

  Ten minutes later she reappeared and sat down silently beside me.

  “If I only knew what it is he is planning,” she whispered.

  Helena, who was always so courageous, trembled — and it was not with cold.

  “He has gone down again to the banshee’s. Yet no one has gone to the banshee’s cell since Sir Edward died... no one!”

  “But, Helena, what is this business about the banshee?”

  “There are only three people in the world who know the truth, since Kate died, and they are Sir Archibald, Donald, and myself.”

  “Who is Kate, and what has all this to do with us?”

  “You shall see, Ruddy, you shall see! I am going to tell you a family secret. You remember the story of David, the last of the MacGregors? Well, he was not slain by the wolves. That was a lie invented by Archibald’s father, Sir Edward, in order to get possession of the heritage. The truth was that Sir Edward had determined to put David to death, but his wife Elizabeth, who was a MacGregor, persuaded him to spare her brother’s life. He was kept a prisoner, fastened by chains in the Green Lady’s cell, until his death. A peasant from Oak Village and his daughter, Kate, were imprisoned in the castle too, to care for the prisoner and see that no one went near him. The peasant died in the castle.

  “But Kate fell in love with David and bore him a son. When Sir Edward learned of it, he had Kate bring the boy up in his father’s cell. As soon as he was old enough to wear them, he too was put in chains. He grew up in turn, and the father and son lived facing each other, chained to opposite walls.... Eventually the father died, and the son, the last of the MacGregors, the last descendant of Rob Roy, is perhaps still there....”

  Lowering her voice, she continued:

  “When the peasant died, after telling his secret to Sir Archibald, his place was taken by Donald. But Kate did not die without telling it to me. Donald has told no one: does he keep guard over a ghost or over a living prisoner? Kate has not been dead long, and she believed that her son was still alive.... And now Sir Archibald has gone down into this corner of hell. Do you think for a moment that it is to pray for the souls of the MacGregors? I will tell you what I think: Sir Archibald is preparing to restore the fortune of the MacGregors to their only living representative. To punish Philip, he will tell the truth to the pastor he has sent for and make restitution. As for me, he would not think of ruining me publicly. He has something else in mind for me — for all three of us — and he is determined to carry it out before his death. I must be gone before the family collapses. But I shall not wait for his permission to disappear. Do you understand now why we must escape? All that I have left in the world is my jewels and your love.”

  “What do you think he has in mind?”

  “Oh, something very simple and quite appropriate.... I crept downstairs behind him and listened to the noise of his steps and Donald’s. Sir Archibald went into the Banshee’s cell and Donald followed him; but before going in Donald gathered up some chains he had brought there!... If the last of the MacGregors is restored to his title, there will be no one in the banshee’s cell, and that would not be proper.... But the old order would be continued if we were chained there in his place. And we could watch each other die as the young MacGregor watched his father, David. I know Sir Archibald: I saw him in the Orient. To pass the time away, he would find a little extra torture, such as saving our souls. As for Durin, I don’t know what—”

  “Durin be damned. But you and I must not let ourselves be caught in this trap.”

  “It just occurs to me,” she said, sitting erect. “The clergyman! Perhaps Sir Archibald has sent for him to say the final prayers before walling us in.”

  “Stop!” I said. “This is too horrible!”

  I took her in my arms and closed her lips with mine. The hideous danger that hung over us added a dagger of fear to our kiss. Her arms closed about me, her lips clung to mine with pleading, passionate abandon. And in that kiss all consciousness of our difficulties vanished: together we were lifted into a white light of ecstasy. I felt the warmth of her exquisite, yielding body against me, the beat of her heart, the yearning of her blood. And when, finally, we drew apart, I was ready to attempt anything she proposed.

  The next day, which was to leave its mark on all the rest of my life and plunge me into an existence where I would never again find peace, brought me the proof that a scheme intelligently conceived and well prepared needed nothing more than a little effort, a little risk, and a little coolness of head to succeed.

  Everything went through as Helena had prophesied. The telegram from Paris arrived at the proper hour. I wrote a brief note of regret to Sir Archibald, whom I did not wish to disturb, and Helena drove me in her roadster to Stirling. Still accompanied by her, I bought my ticket and we went out on the platform to wait for the London express. By then it was dark. At one end of the platform, Helena guided me through a wicket gate, down a flight of iron stairs — and we were out of the station.

  The next step was to get back to the car. In the gloom of the great stone wall that lined the embankment, she handed me, one by one, the articles of my disguise. From head to foot I was turned into a Scotch clergyman.

  Under my crown of white hair, I meditated on one subject: success in the venture ahead of me. At the edge of the abyss over which I tottered, my only hope was a swift stroke which would free me forever and make it possible to seek refuge in a new part of the world. Was I to flee without a cent or with millions? The question did not even occur to me.

  Yet when the iron gate at Black Rooks once more creaked open and swallowed me up, the sense of being stifled that I had already experienced before each of the illegal tasks Helena had set me, was not spared me. But it lasted only a moment.

  She led me to the door of Sir Archibald’s apartment, and knocked softly. The page opened, his finger on his lips. His Lordship was asleep. The boy gave no sign of being surprised to see me and invited me to enter, while he closed the door — with polite excuses — in Lady Helena’s face.

  A moment later I was alone with the invalid, who was in a deep sleep. Bobby had evidently received instructions as to what to do. He requested me to wait until his Lordship awoke, for he had asked for me several times that day.

  The room was in a favorable obscurity. A night lamp burned on the table; beside it stood the partly emptied glass of the sleeping draught; the old man’s heavy breathing was the only sound to be heard in the room.

  I made a few movements about the room to assure myself that it would be safe to start. Nothing happened. Without waiting longer, I slipped my hand under the pillow and felt the leather bag which I drew towards me c
autiously. Dropping it in one of the capacious pockets of my pastor’s overcoat, I tiptoed to the door, drew the bolt and gained the hall, closing the door behind me.

  The door of Helena’s room stood ajar, and she was waiting for me. Once inside, I handed her the bag, trusting that this time we would not have the disagreeable surprise that had been our only reward on the previous occasion, in her hotel at Deauville. And, indeed, the jewels and the necklace were there! Helena emptied the bag over her bed; a sheet of heavy foolscap, folded twice, fell out with the jewels.

  “What did I tell you, Ruddy?”

  Her anxiety, which she made no effort to conceal, was plainly visible on her face as she read the paper.

  “Ah, we were not a minute too soon!”

  Without showing me the paper, she tossed it in the flames on the hearth, where it writhed and blackened before crumbling into a pinch of ashes, as Helena poked it with the tongs. When it had completely disappeared, she lifted her head:

  “We are saved, Ruddy.”

  Pouring the jewels back into the bag’ she took my face in both hands and gave me long kiss of loving gratitude.

  But there was no time to lose in congratulations or thanks. We made our way back to the outer gate with a dignity calculated to inspire respect. The halls were dark, and we passed only one or two servants, who bowed before me.

  “You are sure you don’t want someone to drive you back?” asked Helena, in the presence of the porter.

  I shook my head.

  “The Village is so near.”

  That had also been rehearsed between us. On our arrival at the castle, she had given the porter to understand that she had just met me a half-mile from Black Rooks and had picked me up in her car. She said good night to me at the gate. Thus, it would be easy for her to appear to have been deceived, like everyone else, by the supposed pastor, who would obviously be suspected, in the morning, of the theft. Everything, as I have said, had been marvellously foreseen by her!

  With my lantern (for the good pastor had brought a lantern to light him along the road) I set out. But a hundred yards from the castle I turned in the opposite direction from Oak Village. An hour later, after following Helena’s careful directions, I was in a little town which tourists had made popular and which had its garage. There no questions were asked. I had discarded my clergyman’s costume, and the owner of the garage himself drove me to Edinburgh. From there I was driven, after one more change of costume, and a little rearrangement of my features (I was becoming an old hand at camouflage) to Dundee, where I caught the boat to Holland. It was agreed that I was to wait for Helena in Rotterdam. She had promised that she would join me within forty-eight hours. The first thing I did, on setting foot on shore in Holland, was to throw myself on the papers. A wire from Edinburgh filled the column of “latest news,” and the blood rushed to my head as I read:

  MURDER OF SIR ARCHIBALD SKARLETT

  followed by the sub-title: The murderer wore the costume of a clergyman. And, beneath that, a second subtitle: The murderer escaped with jewels estimated at thirty millions.

  I did not need to read the article! I knew now what it would say.... And I could wait as long as I liked for Lady Skarlett! For now there was no need for her to flee — nor for Durin, either! They would be undisturbed, now, in their castle of Black Rooks. And Durin would enjoy the fruits of my herculean labors. What an ending to my career! And what a masterly stroke they had used to dismiss me! To have made me steal the jewels from the husband’s room and disappear; then to have strangled the husband behind me, thus laying both the thefts and the murder at my door!

  Ah, they understood each other well, that rascal and his sorceress! And to crown the adventure, Helena had seen to it that I left empty-handed....

  There was nothing to do but accept the inevitable. There are times in life when that is the highest art. Yet it was nothing compared with the art Helena had used to envelop me in an atmosphere of terror, with her tales of hereditary vengeance, haunted cells, and slow death that awaited us in the dungeon of Black Rooks. No doubt about it, she had twisted me around her little finger....

  I spent ten days in hiding in Holland. But it was time wasted. I had nothing to fear unless they denounced me, and they had as much reason as myself to keep silent. They had sealed my lips with a burning seal, red with blood....

  This time I suffered no fury of anger; the blow was too complete, too stunning. My life, my plans for the future, my trust in Helena, had collapsed under me like a house of cards; and I spent hours in my room at the hotel in Rotterdam, meditating over the ruins. I read all the papers with avidity, but found only an occasional paragraph devoted to the murder at Black Rooks.

  The clergyman’s disguise had been found in a swamp in the forest, but the trail of the clergyman had been lost. The inspector from Saint Jean had come, and had given it as his opinion that the crime was the work of the eternal Mr. Flow. He had been more lucky than at Deauville; but the jewels had cost him a high price. For in the past he had always worked without murder. But he had proved that, if necessary, he would not shrink even from that.

  The Edinburgh papers published a detailed article on the great grief of Lady Skarlett. Her friends found her inconsolable, and she had only praise for her late husband. Poor Durin, who owed so much to Sir Archibald since the ridiculous accusation that he was Mr. Flow himself, was overwhelmed by the tragedy.

  This final crime of Mr. Flow’s, moreover, had proved Durin’s innocence, for it was known that he had not left the castle that night, whereas the murderer, disguised as a pastor, had entered and left with that audacity which had established the reputation of the Man of a Hundred Masks throughout the world.

  In his despair, Durin left the service of the Skarletts and disappeared from view. Meanwhile, I had returned to Paris, taken up my practice again, and resumed my long, peaceful talks with’ the charming Nathalie. More than ever I appreciated the exquisite affection and quiet understanding that I found at her fireside. With infallible intuition, she realized that I had been plunged in some horrible experience. But she asked no questions and did not force her sympathy on me. The two sisters had taken an apartment of their own now, close to the bank where Clotilde had found a place in the department of disputed claims, and were keeping house. Many evenings during the long winter that followed I tramped through the snow and drizzling rains, to be welcomed in their bright, cozy retreat. Clotilde was carrying out her program as she had planned. Her intelligence, her efficiency in every task she undertook, and above all, her masculine power of will, guaranteed her eventual success. Nathalie was as purely feminine as her sister was masculine; and while Clotilde grew impatient and fretted at the universal stupidity and weakness of mankind, Nathalie accepted these things with a wise and unspoken understanding. After the tortuous ways of Helena’s vivid but incomprehensible temperament, I found this serenity of Nathalie’s unutterably soothing.

  One evening in the spring, as I stopped on the Boulevards to buy a paper, I learned from a discreet, two-line notice that Lady Skarlett, whose period of mourning was not yet over, had been privately betrothed. Her fiancé, it was added, had come from Northwest Canada, after seeing her picture in the paper, to ask for her hand in marriage.... The name of the fiancé was given as Sir Douglas Cherfield.

  I did not have to be told who this Douglas was. Ah, Helena! Helena! You have them both now, your jewels and your Douglas! The famous necklace hangs once more about your shining throat. But do not forget that the hands which restored it to you have themselves formed a necklace of a different kind, and with fatal effect, about the throat of your husband! Take care lest, some night, this other necklace shall also be yours!... I too have known your desires and your lies; but Douglas may be more merciless in punishing than I....

  At the word “lies” the paper dropped from my hand, and I stood motionless on the sidewalk, while the unceasing traffic of the Boulevards flowed past me. Had they been lies, or was there perhaps merely one more prisoner in Black
Rooks? Not in the dungeon this time, but nevertheless a prisoner, bound to the will of Durin more inescapably than if chained in the moldy, rat-ridden cell of the Green Lady?

  No, I could not believe in the innocence of Helena. The whole adventure, from my first conversation with Durin in the Paris prison, had been too diabolically carried out. In a flash it passed before me, like the film of a movie — and I knew that Durin and Helena had cranked the camera. I saw her as she had received me, that first night at the Royal Hotel in Deauville, her great limpid eyes of an Egyptian princess smiling at me with promises she had no intention of keeping.... I saw the haggard faces in the Inner Hall that night I had won a million... a million!... Our supper on the kitchen table of Jacob’s house in Rouen, when Helena had poured the wine and cut the bread and cheese, after... well, after the job was finished.... My plunge into the water at Rouen, with the police baying at my heels... Georgette... Trompette! At the vision of Trompette my heart welled with gratitude.... And last, the somber, menacing towers of Black Rooks. Helena’s smouldering beauty veiled by northern mists; the depths of her perfidy, and the heights of her strange, incalculable passions.... Woman or demon, her troubling beauty had served many ends.

  I shook myself as if to break off a nightmare too vivid to be real. The lights were going on along the Boulevards and honest citizens were returning to their homes after a good day’s work. I turned in the direction of Clotilde’s and Nathalie’s apartment. There the lamp would be burning softly in the spring dusk, a pleasant bustle of preparation for supper would enliven the room, and an affectionate welcome would await me. There I would find peace, and... perhaps... happiness.

  But I had tasted of a more dangerous ecstasy than happiness, a more divine intoxication. Would happiness now be enough?

  THE END

  Lady Helena by Louis Latzarus (1929)

  OR, THE MYSTERIOUS LADY

  A SEQUEL TO MISTER FLOW

  Anonymous Translation, 1927

  Original French Title: ‘Le Collier de Lady Helena’

 

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