The Mystery of Orcival, Emile Gaboriau [people reading books TXT] 📗

the rascal half an hour to go to the Rue des Saints-Peres, where he will find nobody; as long to get back; let us throw in fifteen minutes as a margin; in all, an hour and a quarter. There are forty minutes left us."

M. Plantat did not reply, but his companion said that he could not stay so long on his feet after the fatigues of the day, agitated as he was, and having eaten nothing since the evening before. He led him into a neighboring cafe, and forced him to eat a biscuit and drink a glass of wine. Then seeing that conversation would be annoying to the unhappy old man, he took up an evening paper and soon seemed to be absorbed in the latest news from Germany. The old justice, his head leaning on the back of his chair and his eyes wandering over the ceiling, passed in mental review the events of the past four years. It seemed to him but yesterday that Laurence, still a child, ran up his garden-path and picked his roses and honeysuckles. How pretty she was, and how divine were her great eyes! Then, as it seemed, between dusk and dawn, as a rose blooms on a June night, the pretty child had become a sweet and radiant young girl. She was timid and reserved with all but him—was he not her old friend, the confidant of all her little griefs and her innocent hopes? How frank and pure she was then; what a heavenly ignorance of evil!

Nine o'clock struck; M. Lecoq laid down his paper.

"Let us go," said he.

M. Plantat followed him with a firmer step, and they soon reached M.
Wilson's house, accompanied by Job and his men.

"You men," said M. Lecoq, "wait till I call before you go in; I will leave the door ajar."

He rang; the door swung open; and M. Plantat and the detective went in under the arch. The porter was on the threshold of his lodge.

"Monsieur Wilson?" asked M. Lecoq.

"He is out."

"I will speak to Madame, then."

"She is also out."

"Very well. Only, as I must positively speak with Madame Wilson, I'm going upstairs."

The porter seemed about to resist him by force; but, as Lecoq now called in his men, he thought better of it and kept quiet.

M. Lecoq posted six of his men in the court, in such a position that they could be easily seen from the windows on the first floor, and instructed the others to place themselves on the opposite sidewalk, telling them to look ostentatiously at the house. These measures taken, he returned to the porter.

"Attend to me, my man. When your master, who has gone out, comes in again, beware that you don't tell him that we are upstairs; a single word would get you into terribly hot water—"

"I am blind," he answered, "and deaf."

"How many servants are there in the house?"

"Three; but they have all gone out."

The detective then took M. Plantat by the arm, and holding him firmly:

"You see, my dear friend," said he, "the game is ours. Come along—and in Laurence's name, have courage!"

XXVII

All M. Lecoq's anticipations were realized. Laurence was not dead, and her letter to her parents was an odious trick. It was really she who lived in the house as Mme. Wilson. How had the lovely young girl, so much beloved by the old justice, come to such a dreadful extremity? The logic of life, alas, fatally enchains all our determinations to each other. Often an indifferent action, little wrongful in itself, is the beginning of an atrocious crime. Each of our new resolutions depends upon those which have preceded it, and is their logical sequence just as the sum-total is the product of the added figures. Woe to him who, being seized with a dizziness at the brink of the abyss, does not fly as fast as possible, without turning his head; for soon, yielding to an irresistible attraction, he approaches, braves the danger, slips, and is lost. Whatever thereafter he does or attempts he will roll down the faster, until he reaches the very bottom of the gulf.

Tremorel had by no means the implacable character of an assassin; he was only feeble and cowardly; yet he had committed abominable crimes. All his guilt came from the first feeling of envy with which he regarded Sauvresy, and which he had not taken the pains to subdue. Laurence, when, on the day that she became enamoured of Tremorel, she permitted him to press her hand, and kept it from her mother, was lost. The hand-pressure led to the pretence of suicide in order to fly with her lover. It might also lead to infanticide.

Poor Laurence, when she was left alone by Hector's departure to the Faubourg St. Germain, on receiving M. Lecoq's letter, began to reflect upon the events of the past year. How unlooked-for and rapidly succeeding they had been! It seemed to her that she had been whirled along in a tempest, without a second to think or act freely. She asked herself if she were not a prey to some hideous nightmare, and if she should not presently awake in her pretty maidenly chamber at Orcival. Was it really she who was there in a strange house, dead to everyone, leaving behind a withered memory, reduced to live under a false name, without family or friends henceforth, or anyone in the world to help her feebleness, at the mercy of a fugitive like herself, who was free to break to-morrow the bonds of caprice which to-day bound him to her? Was it she, too, who was about to become a mother, and found herself suffering from the excessive misery of blushing for that maternity which is the pride of pure young wives? A thousand memories of her past life flocked through her brain and cruelly revived her despair. Her heart sank as she thought of her old friendships, of her mother, her sister, the pride of her innocence, and the pure joys of the home fireside.

As she half reclined on a divan in Hector's library, she wept freely. She bewailed her life, broken at twenty, her lost youth, her vanished, once radiant hopes, the world's esteem, and her own self-respect, which she should never recover.

Of a sudden the door was abruptly opened.

Laurence thought it was Hector returned, and she hastily rose, passing her handkerchief across her face to try to conceal her tears.

A man whom she did not know stood upon the threshold, respectfully bowing. She was afraid, for Tremorel had said to her many times within the past two days, "We are pursued; let us hide well;" and though it seemed to her that she had nothing to fear, she trembled without knowing why.

"Who are you?" she asked, haughtily, "and who has admitted you here?
What do you want?"

M. Lecoq left nothing to chance or inspiration; he foresaw everything, and regulated affairs in real life as he would the scenes in a theatre. He expected this very natural indignation and these questions, and was prepared for them. The only reply he made was to step one side, thus revealing M. Plantat behind him.

Laurence was so much overcome on recognizing her old friend, that, in spite of her resolution, she came near falling.

"You!" she stammered; "you!"

The old justice was, if possible, more agitated than Laurence. Was that really his Laurence there before him? Grief had done its work so well that she seemed old.

"Why did you seek for me?" she resumed. "Why add another grief to my life? Ah, I told Hector that the letter he dictated to me would not be believed. There are misfortunes for which death is the only refuge."

M. Plantat was about to reply, but Lecoq was determined to take the lead in the interview.

"It is not you, Madame, that we seek," said he, "but Monsieur de
Tremorel."

"Hector! And why, if you please? Is he not free?"

M. Lecoq hesitated before shocking the poor girl, who had been but too credulous in trusting to a scoundrel's oaths of fidelity. But he thought that the cruel truth is less harrowing than the suspense of intimations.

"Monsieur de Tremorel," he answered, "has committed a great crime."

"He! You lie, sir."

The detective sorrowfully shook his head.

"Unhappily I have told you the truth. Monsieur de Tremorel murdered his wife on Wednesday night. I am a detective and I have a warrant to arrest him."

He thought this terrible charge would overwhelm Laurence; he was mistaken. She was thunderstruck, but she stood firm. The crime horrified her, but it did not seem to her entirely improbable, knowing as she did the hatred with which Hector was inspired by Bertha.

"Well, perhaps he did," cried she, sublime in her energy and despair; "I am his accomplice, then—arrest me."

This cry, which seemed to proceed from the most senseless passion, amazed the old justice, but did not surprise M. Lecoq.

"No, Madame," he resumed, "you are not this man's accomplice. Besides, the murder of his wife is the least of his crimes. Do you know why he did not marry you? Because in concert with Bertha, he poisoned Monsieur Sauvresy, who saved his life and was his best friend. We have the proof of it."

This was more than poor Laurence could bear; she staggered and fell upon a sofa. But she did not doubt the truth of what M. Lecoq said. This terrible revelation tore away the veil which, till then, had hidden the past from her. The poisoning of Sauvresy explained all Hector's conduct, his position, his fears, his promises, his lies, his hate, his recklessness, his marriage, his flight. Still she tried not to defend him, but to share the odium of his crimes.

"I knew it," she stammered, in a voice broken by sobs, "I knew it all."

The old justice was in despair.

"How you love him, poor child!" murmured he.

This mournful exclamation restored to Laurence all her energy; she made an effort and rose, her eyes glittering with indignation:

"I love him!" cried she. "I! Ah, I can explain my conduct to you, my old friend, for you are worthy of hearing it. Yes, I did love him, it is true—loved him to the forgetfulness of duty, to self-abandonment. But one day he showed himself to me as he was; I judged him, and my love did not survive my contempt. I was ignorant of Sauvresy's horrible death. Hector confessed to me that his life and honor were in Bertha's hands—and that she loved him. I left him free to abandon me, to marry, thus sacrificing more than my life to what I thought was his happiness; yet I was not deceived. When I fled with him I once more sacrificed myself, when I saw that it was impossible to conceal my shame. I wanted to die. I lived, and wrote an infamous letter to my mother, and yielded to Hector's prayers, because he pleaded with me in the name of my—of our child!"

M. Lecoq, impatient at the loss of time, tried to say something; but
Laurence would not listen to him.

"But what matter?" she continued. "I loved him, followed him, and am his! Constancy at all hazards is the only excuse for a fault like mine. I will do my duty. I cannot be innocent when Hector has committed a crime; I desire to suffer half the punishment."

She spoke with such remarkable animation that the detective despaired of calming her, when two whistles in the street struck his ear. Tremorel was returning and there was not a moment to be lost. He suddenly seized Laurence by the arm.

"You will tell all this to the judges, Madame," said he, sternly. "My orders are only for M. de Tremorel. Here is the warrant to arrest him."

He took out the warrant and laid it upon the table. Laurence, by the force of her will, had become almost calm.

"You will let me speak five minutes with the Count de Tremorel, will you not?" she asked.

M. Lecoq was delighted; he had looked for this request, and expected it.

"Five minutes? Yes," he replied. "But abandon all hope, Madame, of saving the prisoner; the house is watched; if you look in the court and in the street you will see my men in ambuscade. Besides, I am going to stay here in the next room."

The count was heard ascending the stairs.

"There's Hector!" cried Laurence, "quick, quick! conceal yourselves!"

She added, as they