Other People's Money, Emile Gaboriau [best ebook reader txt] 📗

“M. de Tregars!”

“Yes, yes, me.  But hurry and go!”

And he pushed her into the closet.

It was but time.  Vincent Favoral reappeared upon the threshold of the bedroom.  But, if it was a weapon he had gone for, it was not for the one which Marius and Mme. Cadelle supposed.  It was a bundle of papers which he held in his hand.  Seeing M. de Tregars there, instead of Mme. de Thaller, an exclamation of terror and surprise rose to his lips.  He understood vaguely what must have taken place; that the man who stood there must have been concealed in the glass closet, and that he had assisted the baroness to escape.

“Ah, the miserable wretch!” he stammered with a tongue made thick by passion, “the infamous wretch!  She has betrayed me; she has surrendered me.  I am lost!”

Mastering the most terrible emotion he had ever felt,

“No, no! you shall not be surrendered,” uttered M. de Tregars.

Collecting all the energy that the devouring passion which had blasted his existence had left him, the former cashier of the Mutual Credit took one or two steps forward.

“Who are you, then?” he asked.

“Do you not know me?  I am the son of that unfortunate Marquis de Tregars of whom you spoke a moment since.  I am Lucienne’s brother.”

Like a man who has received a stunning blow, Vincent Favoral sank heavily upon a chair.

“He knows all,” he groaned.

“Yes, all!”

“You must hate me mortally.”

“I pity you.”

The old cashier had reached that point when all the faculties, after being strained to their utmost limits, suddenly break down, when the strongest man gives up, and weeps like a child.

“Ah, I am the most wretched of villains!” he exclaimed.

He had hid his face in his hands; and in one second,—as it happens, they say, to the dying on the threshold of eternity,—he reviewed his entire existence.

“And yet,” he said, “I had not the soul of a villain.  I wanted to get rich; but honestly, by labor, and by rigid economy.  And I should have succeeded.  I had a hundred and fifty thousand francs of my own when I met the Baron de Thaller.  Alas! why did I meet him?  ‘Twas he who first gave me to understand that it was stupid to work and save, when, at the bourse, with moderate luck, one might become a millionaire in six months.”

He stopped, shook his head, and suddenly,

“Do you know the Baron de Thaller?” he asked.  And, without giving Marius time to answer,

“He is a German,” he went on, “a Prussian.  His father was a cab-driver in Berlin, and his mother waiting-maid in a brewery.  At the age of eighteen, he was compelled to leave his country, owing to some petty swindle, and came to take up his residence in Paris.  He found employment in the office of a stock-broker, and was living very poorly, when he made the acquaintance of a young laundress named Affrays, who had for a lover a very wealthy gentleman, the Marquis de Tregars, whose weakness was to pass himself off for a poor clerk.  Affrays and Thaller were well calculated to agree.  They did agree, and formed an association,—she contributing her beauty; he, his genius for intrigue; both, their corruption and their vices.  Soon after they met, she gave birth to a child, a daughter; whom she intrusted to some poor gardeners at Louveciennes, with the firm and settled intention to leave her there forever.  And yet it was upon this daughter, whom they firmly hoped never to see again, that the two accomplices were building their fortune.

“It was in the name of that daughter that Affrays wrung considerable sums from the Marquis de Tregars.  As soon as Thaller and she found themselves in possession of six hundred thousand francs, they dismissed the marquis, and got married.  Already, at that time, Thaller had taken the title of baron, and lived in some style.  But his first speculations were not successful.  The revolution of 1848 finished his ruin, and he was about being expelled from the bourse, when he found me on his way,—I, poor fool, who was going about everywhere, asking how I could advantageously invest my hundred and fifty thousand francs.”

He was speaking in a hoarse voice, shaking his clinched fist in the air, doubtless at the Baron de Thaller.

“Unfortunately,” he resumed, “it was only much later that I discovered all this.  At the moment, M. de Thaller dazzled me.  His friends, Saint Pavin and the bankers Jottras, proclaimed him the smartest and the most honest man in France.  Still I would not have given my money, if it had not been for the baroness.  The first time that I was introduced to her, and that she fixed upon me her great black eyes, I felt myself moved to the deepest recesses of my soul.  In order to see her again, I invited her, together with her husband and her husband’s friends, to dine with me, by the side of my wife and children.  She came.  Her husband made me sign every thing he pleased; but, as she went off, she pressed my hand.”

He was still shuddering at the recollection of it, the poor fellow!

“The next day,” he went on, “I handed to Thaller all I had in the world; and, in exchange, he gave me the position of cashier in the Mutual Credit, which he had just founded.  He treated me like an inferior, and did not admit me to visit his family.  But I didn’t care:  the baroness had permitted me to see her again, and almost every afternoon I met her at the Tuileries; and I had made bold to tell her that I loved her to desperation.  At last, one evening, she consented to make an appointment with me for the second following day, in an apartment which I had rented.

“The day before I was to meet her, and whilst I was beside myself with joy, the Baron de Thaller requested me to assist him, by means of certain irregular entries, to conceal a deficit arising from unsuccessful speculations.  How could I refuse a man, whom, as I thought, I was about to deceive grossly!  I did as he wished.  The next day Mme. de Thaller became my mistress; and I was a lost man.”

Was he trying to exculpate himself?  Was he merely yielding to that imperious sentiment, more powerful than the will or the reason, which impels the criminal to reveal the secret which oppresses him?

“From that day,” he went on, “began for me the torment of that double existence which I underwent for years.  I had given to my mistress all I had in the world; and she was insatiable.  She wanted money always, any way, and in heaps.  She made me buy the house in the Rue du Cirque for our meetings; and, between the demands of the husband and those of the wife, I was almost insane.  I drew from the funds of the Mutual Credit as from an inexhaustible mine; and, as I