813

by Maurice Leblanc

  “A woman, a woman without a hat, a servant-girl, it might be … And good-looking, I’m told, with red hair.”

  “Eh, what! You say she had red hair?”

  “Yes.”

  M. Lenormand turned round with a bound, ran down the stairs four steps at a time, hurried across the courtyard and came out on the Quai des Orfèvres:

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  A victoria and pair was driving off. It was Mrs. Kesselbach’s carriage. The coachman heard and pulled up his horses. M. Lenormand sprang on the step:

  “I beg a thousand pardons, madame, but I cannot do without your assistance. I will ask you to let me go with you … But we must act swiftly … Gourel, where’s my taxi?”

  “I’ve sent it away, chief.”

  “Well then, get another, quick!” …

  The men all ran in different directions. But ten minutes elapsed before one of them returned with a motor-cab. M. Lenormand was boiling with impatience. Mrs. Kesselbach, standing on the pavement, swayed from side to side, with her smelling-salts in her hand.

  At last they were seated.

  “Gourel, get up beside the driver and go straight to Garches.”

  “To my house?” asked Dolores, astounded.

  He did not reply. He leant out of the window, waved his pass, explained who he was to the policeman regulating the traffic in the streets. At last, when they reached the Cours-la-Reine, he sat down again and said:

  “I beseech you, madame, to give me plain answers to my questions. Did you see Mlle. Geneviève Ernemont just now, at about four o’clock?”

  “Geneviève? … Yes … I was dressing to go out.”

  “Did she tell you of the advertisement about Steinweg in the Journal?”

  “She did.”

  “And it was that which made you come to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you alone during Mlle. Ernemont’s visit?”

  “Upon my word, I can’t say … Why?”

  “Recollect. Was one of your servants present?”

  “Probably … as I was dressing …”

  “What are their names?”

  “Suzanne and Gertrude.”

  “One of them has red hair, has she not?”

  “Yes, Gertrude.”

  “Have you known her long?”

  “Her sister has always been with me … and so has Gertrude, for years … She is devotion and honesty personified …”

  “In short, you will answer for her?”

  “Oh, absolutely!”

  “Very well … very well.”

  It was half-past seven and the daylight was beginning to wane when the taxi-cab reached the House of Retreat. Without troubling about his companion, the chief detective rushed into the porter’s lodge:

  “Mrs. Kesselbach’s maid has just come in, has she not?”

  “Whom do you mean, the maid?”

  “Why, Gertrude, one of the two sisters.”

  “But Gertrude can’t have been out, sir. We haven’t seen her go out.”

  “Still some one has just come in.”

  “No, sir, we haven’t opened the door to anybody since—let me see—six o’clock this evening.”

  “Is there no other way out than this gate?”

  “No. The walls surround the estate on every side and they are very high …”

  “Mrs. Kesselbach, we will go to your house, please.”

  They all three went. Mrs. Kesselbach, who had no key, rang. The door was answered by Suzanne, the other sister.

  “Is Gertrude in?” asked Mrs. Kesselbach.

  “Yes, ma’am, in her room.”

  “Send her down, please,” said the chief detective.

  After a moment, Gertrude came downstairs, looking very attractive and engaging in her white embroidered apron.

  She had, in point of fact, a rather pretty face, crowned with red hair.

  M. Lenormand looked at her for a long time without speaking, as though he were trying to read what lay behind those innocent eyes.

  He asked her no questions. After a minute, he simply said:

  “That will do, thank you. Come, Gourel.”

  He went out with the sergeant and, at once, as they followed the darkling paths of the garden, said:

  “That’s the one!”

  “Do you think so, chief? She looked so placid!”

  “Much too placid. Another would have been astonished, would have wanted to know why I sent for her. Not this one! Nothing but the concentrated effort of a face that is determined to smile at all costs. Only, I saw a drop of perspiration trickle from her temple along her ear.”

  “So that …?

  “So that everything becomes plain. Gertrude is in league with the two ruffians who are conspiring round the Kesselbach case, in order either to discover and carry out the famous scheme, or to capture the widow’s millions. No doubt, the other sister is in the plot as well. At four o’clock, Gertrude, learning that I know of the advertisement in the Journal, takes advantage of her mistress’s absence, hastens to Paris, finds Ribeira and the man in the soft hat and drags them off to the Palais, where Ribeira annexes Master Steinweg for his own purposes.”

  He reflected and concluded:

  “All this proves, first, the importance which they attach to Steinweg and their fear of what he may reveal; secondly, that a regular plot is being hatched around Mrs. Kesselbach; thirdly, that I have no time to lose, for the plot is ripe.”

  “Very well,” said Gourel, “but one thing remains unexplained. How was Gertrude able to leave the garden in which we now are and to enter it again, unknown to the porter and his wife?”

  “Through a secret passage which the rogues must have contrived to make quite recently.”

  “And which would end, no doubt,” said Gourel, “in Mrs. Kesselbach’s house.”

  “Yes, perhaps,” said M. Lenormand, “perhaps … But I have another idea.”

  They followed the circuit of the wall. It was a bright night; and, though their two forms were hardly distinguishable, they themselves could see enough to examine the stones of the walls and to convince themselves that no breach, however skilful, had been effected.

  “A ladder, very likely?” suggested Gourel.

  “No, because Gertrude is able to get out in broad daylight. A communication of the kind I mean can evidently not end out of doors. The entrance must be concealed by some building already in existence.”

  “There are only the four garden-houses,” objected Gourel, “and they are all inhabited.”

  “I beg your pardon: the third, the Pavillon Hortense, is not inhabited.”

  “Who told you so?”

  “The porter. Mrs. Kesselbach hired this house, which is near her own, for fear of the noise. Who knows but that, in so doing, she acted under Gertrude’s influence?”

  He walked round the house in question. The shutters were closed. He lifted the latch of the door, on the off-chance; the door opened.

  “Ah, Gourel, I think we’ve struck it! Let’s go in. Light your lantern … Oh, the hall … the drawing-room … the dining-room … that’s no use. There must be a basement, as the kitchen is not on this floor.”

  “This way, chief … the kitchen-stairs are here.”

  They went down into a rather large kitchen, crammed full of wicker-work garden-chairs and flower-stands. Beside it was a wash-house, which also served as a cellar, and which presented the same untidy sight of objects piled one on the top of the other.

  “What is that shiny thing down there, chief?”

  Gourel stooped and picked up a brass pin with a head made of an imitation pearl.

  “The pearl is quite bright still,” said M. Lenormand, “which it would not be if it had been lying in this cellar long. Gertrude passed this way, Gourel.”

  Gourel began to demolish a great stack of empty wine-casks, writing desks and old rickety tables.

  “You are
wasting your time,” said M. Lenormand. “If that is the way out, how would she have time first to move all those things and then to replace them behind her? Look, here is a shutter out of use, which has no valid reason for being fastened to the wall by that nail. Draw it back.”

  Gourel did so. Behind the shutter, the wall was hollowed out. By the light of the lantern they saw an underground passage running downwards.

  “I was right,” said M. Lenormand.. “The communication is of recent date. You see, it’s a piece of work hurriedly done, and not intended to last for any length of time … No masonry … Two planks placed cross-wise at intervals, with a joist to serve as a roof; and that is all. It will hold up as best it may: well enough, in any case, for the object in view, that is to say …”

  “That is to say what, chief?”

  “Well, first to allow of the going backwards and forwards between Gertrude and her accomplices … and then, one day, one day soon, of the kidnapping, or rather the total, miraculous, incomprehensible disappearance of Mrs. Kesselbach.”

  They proceeded cautiously, so as not to knock against certain beams which did not look over-safe. It at once became evident that the tunnel was much longer than the fifty yards at most that separated the house from the boundary of the garden. It must, therefore, end at a fair distance from the walls and beyond the road that skirted the property.

  “We are not going in the direction of Villeneuve and the lake are we?” asked Gourel.

  “Not at all, the other way about,” declared M. Lenormand.

  The tunnel descended with a gentle slope. There was a step, then another; and they veered toward the right. They at once knocked up against a door which was fitted into a rubble frame, carefully cemented. M. Lenormand pushed it and it opened.

  “One second, Gourel,” he said, stopping. “Let us think … It might perhaps be wiser to turn back.”

  “Why?”

  “We must reflect that Ribeira will have foreseen the danger and presume that he has taken his precautions, in case the underground passage should be discovered. Now he knows that we are on his track. He knows that we are searching the garden. He no doubt saw us enter the house. How do I know that he is not at this moment laying a trap for us?”

  “There are two of us, chief …”

  “And suppose there were twenty of them?”

  He looked in front of him. The tunnel sloped upward again, closed by another door, which was at five or six yards’ distance.

  “Let us go so far,” he said. “Then we shall see.”

  He passed through, followed by Gourel, whom he told to leave the first door open, and walked to the other door, resolving within himself to go no farther. But this second door was shut; and though the lock seemed to work, he could not succeed in opening it.

  “The door is bolted,” he said. “Let us make no noise and go back. The more so as, outside, by remembering the position of the tunnel, we can fix the line along which to look for the other outlet.”

  They therefore retraced their steps to the first door, when Gourel, who was walking ahead, gave an exclamation of surprise:

  “Why, it’s closed! …”

  “How is that? When I told you to leave it open!”

  “I did leave it open, chief, but the door must have fallen back of its own weight.”

  “Impossible! We should have heard the sound.”

  “Then? …”

  “Then … then … I don’t know …” He went up to the door. “Let’s see, … there’s a key … does it turn? … Yes, it turns. But there seems to be a bolt on the other side.”

  “Who can have fastened it?”

  “They, of course! Behind our backs! … Perhaps they have another tunnel that runs above this one, alongside of it … or else they were waiting in that empty house … In any case, we’re caught in a trap …”

  He grew angry with the lock, thrust his knife into the chink of the door, tried every means and then, in a moment of weariness, said:

  “There’s nothing to be done!”

  “What, chief, nothing to be done? In that case, we’re diddled!”

  “I dare say!” said M. Lenormand …

  They returned to the other door and came back again to the first. Both were solid, made of hard wood, strengthened with cross-beams … in short, indestructible.

  “We should want a hatchet,” said the chief of the detective-service, “or at the very least, a serious implement … a knife even, with which we might try to cut away the place where the bolt is most likely to be … and we have nothing …”

  He was seized with a sudden fit of rage and flung himself upon the obstacle, as though he hoped to do away with it. Then, powerless, beaten, he said to Gourel:

  “Listen, we’ll look into this in an hour or two … I am tired out … I am going to sleep … Keep watch so long … and if they come and attack us …”

  “Ah, if they come, we shall be saved, chief!” cried Gourel, who would have been relieved by a fight, however great the odds.

  M. Lenormand lay down on the ground. In a minute, he was asleep.

  When he woke up, he remained for some seconds undecided, not understanding; and he also asked himself what sort of pain it was that was tormenting him:

  “Gourel!” he called. “Come! Gourel!”

  Obtaining no reply, he pressed the spring of his lantern and saw Gourel lying beside him, sound asleep.

  “What on earth can this pain be?” he thought. “Regular twitchings … Oh, why, of course, I am hungry, that’s all … I’m starving! What can the time be?”

  His watch marked twenty minutes past seven, but he remembered that he had not wound it up. Gourel’s watch was not going either.

  Gourel had awoke under the action of the same inward pangs, which made them think that the breakfast-hour must be long past and that they had already slept for a part of the day.

  “My legs are quite numbed,” said Gourel, “and my feet feel as if they were on ice. What a funny sensation!” He bent down to rub them and went on: “Why, it’s not on ice that my feet were, but in water … Look, chief … there’s a regular pool near the first door …”

  “Soaked through,” M. Lenormand replied. “We’ll go back to the second door; you can dry yourself …”

  “But what are you doing, chief?”

  “Do you think I am going to allow myself to be buried alive in this vault? … Not if I know it; I haven’t reached the age! … As the two doors are closed, let us try to pass through the walls.”

  One by one he loosened the stones that stood out at the height of his hand, in the hope of contriving another gallery that would slope upwards to the level of the soil. But the work was long and painful, for in this part of the tunnel, as he perceived the stones were cemented.

  “Chief … chief,” stammered Gourel, in a stifled voice …

  “Well?”

  “You are standing with your feet in the water.”

  “Nonsense! … Why, so I am! … Well, it can’t be helped … I’ll dry them in the sun …”

  “But don’t you see?”

  “What?”

  “Why, it’s rising, chief, it’s rising! …”

  “What’s rising?”

  “The water! …”

  M. Lenormand felt a shudder pass over his skin. He suddenly understood. It was not a casual trickling through, as he had thought, but a carefully-prepared flood, mechanically, irresistibly produced by some infernal system.

  “Oh, the scoundrel!” he snarled. “If ever I lay hands on him … !”

  “Yes, yes, chief, but we must first get out of this … And, as far as I can see …”

  Gourel seemed completely prostrated, incapable of having an idea, of proposing a plan.

  M. Lenormand knelt down on the ground and measured the rate at which the water was rising. A quarter, or thereabouts, of the first door was covered; and the water was half-way toward the second door.

&nbs
p; “The progress is slow, but uninterrupted,” he said “In a few hours it will be over our heads.”

  “But this is terrible, chief, it’s horrible!” moaned Gourel.

  “Oh, look here, don’t come boring me with your lamentations, do you understand? Cry, if it amuses you, but don’t let me hear you!”

  “It’s the hunger that weakens me, chief; my brain’s going round.”

  “Bite your fist!”

  As Gourel said, the position was terrible; and, if M. Lenormand had had less energy, he would have abandoned the vain struggle. What was to be done? It was no use hoping that Ribeira would have the charity to let them out. It was no use either hoping that the brothers Doudeville would rescue them, for the inspectors did not know of the existence of the tunnel. So no hope remained … no hope but that of an impossible miracle …

  “Come, come,” said M. Lenormand, “this is too silly. We’re not going to kick the bucket here! Hang it all, there must be something! … Show me a light, Gourel.”

  Flattening himself against the second door, he examined it from top to bottom, in every corner. There was an enormous bolt on that side, just as there probably was on the other. He unfastened the screws with the blade of his knife; and the bolt came off in his hand.

  “And what next?” asked Gourel.

  “What next?” he echoed. “Well, this bolt is made of iron, pretty long and very nearly pointed. Certainly, it’s not as good as a pick-axe, but it’s better than nothing and …”

  Without finishing his sentence, he drove the implement into the side-wall of the tunnel, a little in front of the pillar of masonry that supported the hinges of the door. As he expected, once he had passed the first layer of cement and stones, he found soft earth:

  “To work!” he cried.

  “Certainly, chief, but would you explain …?”

  “It’s quite simple. I want to dig round this pillar a passage, three or four yards long, which will join the tunnel on the other side of the door and allow us to escape.”

  “But it will take us hours; and meanwhile, the water is rising.”

  “Show me a light, Gourel.”

  “In twenty minutes, or half an hour at most, it will have reached our feet.”

  “Show me a light, Gourel.”

  M. Lenormand’s idea was correct and, with some little exertion, by pulling the earth, which he first loosened with his implement, towards him and making it fall into the tunnel, he was not long in digging a hole large enough to slip into.