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

know I can open my heart to you. I did not have the—the—cleverness to overcome all the restrictions which hamper this kind of business. I was imprudent, in spite of all Sir Thorn’s warnings. To-morrow there will be a meeting of the stockholders; and, if they do not grant me what I shall have to ask of them, I may be in trouble. And, when a man calls himself Count Ville-Handry, rather than appear in a police-court—you know what I mean!”

He was interrupted by one of the clerks, who brought him a letter. He read it, and said,—

“Tell them I am coming.”

Then, turning again to Daniel, he added,—

“I must leave you; but the countess is at home, and she would never forgive me if I did not take you in to present your respects to her. Come! But be careful and don’t say a word of my troubles. It would kill her.”

And, before Daniel could recover from his bewilderment, the count had opened a door, and pushed him into the room, saying,—

“Sarah, M. Champcey.”

Sarah started up as if she had received an electric shock. Her husband had left them; but, even if he had been still in the room, she would probably not have been any more able to control herself.

“You!” she cried, “Daniel, my Daniel!”

And turning to Mrs. Brian, who was sitting by the window, she said,—

“Leave us.”

“Your conduct is perfectly shocking, Sarah!” began the grim lady. But Sarah, as harshly as if she had been speaking to a servant, cut her short, saying,—

“You are in the way, and I beg you will leave the room.”

Mrs. Brian did so without saying a word; and the countess sank into an arm-chair, as if overcome by a sudden good fortune which she was not able to endure, looking intensely at Daniel, who stood in the centre of the room like a statue.

She had on a simple black merino dress; she wore no jewelry; but her marvellous, fatal beauty seemed to be all the more dazzling. The years had passed over her without leaving any more traces on her than the spring breeze leaves on a half-opened rose. Her hair still shone with its golden flashes; her rosy lips smiled sweetly; and her velvet eyes caressed you still, till hot fire seemed to run in your veins.

Once before Daniel had been thus alone with her; and, as the sensations he then felt rose in his mind, he began to tremble violently. Then, thinking of his purpose in coming here, and the treacherous part he was about to act, he felt a desire to escape.

It was she who broke the charm. She began, saying,—

“You know, I presume, the misfortunes that have befallen us. Your betrothed, Henrietta? Has the count told you?”

Daniel had taken a chair. He replied,—

“The count has said nothing about his daughter.”

“Well, then, my saddest presentiments have been fulfilled. Unhappy girl! I did what I could to keep her in the right way. But she fell, step by step, and finally so low, that one day, when a ray of sense fell upon her mind, she went and killed herself.”

It was done. Sarah had overcome the last hesitation which Daniel still felt. Now he was in the right temper to meet cunning with cunning. He answered in an admirably-feigned tone of indifference,—

“Ah!”

Then, encouraged by the joyous surprise he read in Sarah’s face, he went on,—

“This expedition has cost me dear. Count Ville-Handry has just informed me that he has lost his whole fortune. I am in the same category.”

“What! You are”—

“Ruined. Yes; that is to say, I have been robbed,—robbed of every cent I ever had. On the eve of my departure, I intrusted a hundred thousand dollars, all I ever possessed, to M. de Brevan, with orders to hold it at Miss Henrietta’s disposal. He found it easier to appropriate the whole to himself. So, you see, I am reduced to my pittance of pay as a lieutenant. That is not much.”

Sarah looked at Daniel with perfect amazement. In any other man, this prodigious confidence in a friend would have appeared to her the extreme of human folly; in Daniel, she thought it was sublime.

“Is that the reason why they have arrested M. de Brevan?” she asked.

Daniel had not heard of his arrest.

“What!” he said. “Maxime”—

“Was arrested last night, and is kept in close confinement.”

However well prepared Daniel was by Papa Ravinet’s account, he could never have hoped to manage the conversation as well as chance did. He replied,—

“It cannot be for having robbed me. M. de Brevan must have been arrested for having attempted to murder me.”

The lioness who has just been robbed of her whelps does not rise with greater fury in her eyes than Sarah did when she heard these words.

“What!” she cried aloud. “He has dared touch you!”

“Not personally; oh, no! But he hired for the base purpose a wretched felon, who was caught, and has confessed everything. I see that the order to apprehend my friend Maxime must have reached here before me, although it left Saigon some time later than I did.”

Might not M. de Brevan be as cowardly as Crochard when he saw that all was lost? This idea, one would think, would have made Sarah tremble. But it never occurred to her.

“Ah, the wretch!” she repeated. “The scoundrel, the rascal!”

And, sitting down by Daniel, she asked him to tell her all the details of these attempted assassinations, from which he had escaped only by a miracle.

The Countess Sarah, in fact, never doubted for a moment but that Daniel was as madly in love with her as Planix, as Malgat, and Kergrist, and all the others, had been, she had become so accustomed to find her beauty irresistible and all powerful. How could it ever have occurred to her, that this man, the very first whom she loved sincerely, should also be the first and the only one to escape from her snares? She was taken in, besides, by the double mirage of love and of absence.

During the last two years she had so often evoked the image of Daniel, she had so constantly lived with him in her thoughts, that she mistook the illusion of her desires for the reality, and was no longer able to distinguish between the phantom of her dreams and the real person.

In the meantime he entertained her by describing to her his actual position, lamenting over the treachery by which he had been ruined, and adding how hard he would find