The Clique of Gold, Emile Gaboriau [if you liked this book .txt] 📗

She paused a moment, turned her head aside, and said with a visible effort,—

“Finally, M. Thomas Elgin assured me that Sarah Brandon had been your mistress, and that the marriage with my father took place only in consequence of a quarrel between you.”

Daniel had listened to her, trembling with indignation. He now cried out,—

“And you could believe these false calumnies! Oh, no, no! tell me that there is no need for me to justify myself to”—

Then turning to Papa Ravinet, he said,—

“Suppose, we admit, for a moment, that she might have been in love, as you say, what would that prove?”

The cunning old dealer remained apparently unmoved for a time; but his small eyes were sparkling with malicious delight and satisfaction.

“Ah! you would not talk so, if you knew Sarah Brandon’s antecedents as well as I do. Ask my sister about her and Maxime de Brevan, and she will tell you why I look upon that apparently trifling circumstance as so very important.”

Mrs. Bertolle made a sign that she assented; and he, sure, henceforth, that his sagacity had not been at fault, continued,—

“Pardon me, M. Champcey, if I insist, and especially if I do so in Miss Henrietta’s presence; but our interest, I might almost say our safety, requires it. Maxime de Brevan is caught, to be sure; but he is only a vulgar criminal; and we have, as yet, neither Thomas Elgin, nor Mrs. Brian, who are far more formidable, nor, above all, Sarah Brandon, who is a thousand times more wicked, and more guilty, than all the rest. You will tell me that we have ninety-nine chances out of a hundred on our side; maybe! Only a single, slight mistake may lead us altogether astray; and then there is an end to all our hopes, and these rascals triumph after all!”

He was but too right. Daniel felt it; and hence he said, without hesitating any longer, but looking stealthily at Henrietta’s face,—

“Since that is so, I will not conceal from you that the Countess Sarah has written me a dozen letters of at least extraordinary nature.”

“You have kept them, I hope?”

“Yes; they are all in one of my trunks.”

Papa Ravinet was evidently much embarrassed; but at last he said,—

“Ah! if I might dare? But no; it would be asking too much, perhaps, to beg you to let me see them?”

He did not know how ready Daniel was to grant the request. Ready as he was, to tell Henrietta everything, he could not but wish that she should read these letters, as she would see from them, that, if the countess had written to him, he had never returned an answer.

“You can never ask too much, M. Ravinet,” he replied. “Lefloch, my servant, must have come up by this time with the trunks; and, if you give me time to go down to my room, you shall have the letters at once.”

He was on the point of leaving the room, when the old dealer held him back, and said,—

“Sir, you forget the man who has been following you all the way from Marseilles. Wait till my sister has made sure that there is nobody watching you.”

Mrs. Bertolle at once went out; but she noticed nothing suspicious, and found all the passages silent and deserted. The spy had probably gone to make his report to his employers. Daniel went down promptly; and, when he came back, he held in his hand a bundle of faded and crumpled papers, which he handed to Papa Ravinet, with the words,—

“Here they are!”

Strange as it may seem, when the old gentleman touched these letters, impregnated with the peculiar perfume affected by Sarah Brandon, he trembled and turned pale. Immediately, however, perhaps in order to conceal his embarrassment, or to be the better able to reflect, he took a candlestick from the mantlepiece, and sat down aside, at one of the small tables. Mrs. Bertolle, Daniel, and Henrietta were silent; and nothing broke the stillness but the rustling of the paper, and the old gentleman’s voice as he muttered,—

“This is fabulous,—Sarah writing such things! She did not even disguise her handwriting,—she who never committed an imprudence in her life; she ruins herself. And she signs her name!”

But he had seen enough. He folded up the letters, and, rising again, said to Champcey,—

“No doubt now! Sarah loves you madly, insanely. Ah! how she does love! Well, well, all heartless women love thus when a sudden passion conquers them, setting their brains and their senses on fire, and”—

Daniel noticed in Henrietta’s face a sign of concern; and, quite distressed, he beckoned to the old gentleman to say nothing more. But he saw nothing, full as he was of his notion, and went on,—

“Now I understand. Sarah Brandon has not been able to keep her secret; and Brevan, seeing her love, and furious with jealousy, did not consider that to hire an assassin was to ruin himself.”

The indignation he felt had restored the blood to his face; and, as he struck the packet of letters with the palm of his hand, he exclaimed,—

“Yes, all is clear now; and by this correspondence, Sarah Brandon, you are ours!”

What could be the plan of Papa Ravinet? Did he expect to use these letters as weapons against her? or did he propose to send them to Count Ville-Handry in order to open his eyes? Daniel trembled at the idea; for his loyalty rebelled against such a vengeance; he felt as if he would have become a traitor.

“You see, to use a woman’s correspondence, however odious and contemptible she may be, would always be very repugnant to me.”

“I had no idea of asking such a thing of you,” replied the old dealer. “No; it is something very different I want you to do.”

And, when Daniel still seemed to be embarrassed, he added,—

“You ought not to give way to such exaggerated delicacy, M. Champcey. All weapons are fair when we are called upon to defend our lives and our honor against rascals; and that is where we are. If we do not hasten to strike Sarah Brandon, she will anticipate us; and then”—

He had been leaning against the mantlepiece, close to Mrs. Bertolle, who sat there silent and immovable; and now he raised his head, and, looking attentively at Henrietta and Daniel by turns, he added,—

“Perhaps you are both not exactly conscious of the position in which you stand. Having been reunited to-night, after such terrible trials, and having, both of you, escaped, almost by a miracle, from death, you feel, no doubt, as if all trouble was at an end, and the future was yours. I must undeceive you. You are precisely where you were the day before M.