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

“How do I know? But if that young damsel had been carried off by M. Maxime, if you were lending a hand in an elopement, I think you would be in a bad box. The law is pretty strict about it, in the case of a minor.”

The concierge protested with a solemn air.

“I have told you the whole truth,” he declared.

But Papa Ravinet did not by any means seem so sure of that.

“That is your lookout,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Still, you may be sure they will ask you how it could happen that one of your tenants should fall into such a state of abject poverty without your giving notice to anybody.”

“Why, in the first place, I do not wait upon my lodgers. They are free to do what they choose in their rooms.”

“Quite right, Master Chevassat! quite right! So you did not know that M. Maxime no longer came to see Miss Henrietta?”

“He still came to see her.”

In the most natural manner in the world, Papa Ravinet raised his arms to heaven, and exclaimed as if horror-struck,—

“What! is it possible? That handsome young man knew how the poor girl suffered? he knew that she was dying of hunger?”

Master Chevassat became more and more troubled. He began to see what the old merchant meant by his questions, and how unsatisfactory his answers were.

“Ah! you ask too many questions,” he said at last. “It was not my duty to watch over M. Maxime. As for Miss Henrietta, as soon as she is able to move, the serpent! I tell you I’ll send her off pretty quickly!”

The old merchant shook his head, and said in his softest voice,—

“My dear sir, you won’t do that, because from today I’ll pay the rent for her room. And, more than that, if you wish to oblige me, you will be very kind to the poor girl, you hear, and even respectful, if you please.”

There was no misunderstanding the meaning of the word “oblige,” from the manner in which he pronounced it; and yet he was about to enforce the recommendation, when a fretting voice exclaimed on the stairs,—

“Chevassat! where are you, Chevassat?”

“It’s my wife,” said the concierge.

And, delighted to get away, he said to Papa Ravinet—

“I understand; she shall be treated as politely as if she were the daughter of the owner of the house. But excuse me, I must attend to the door; they call me, and I must go down stairs.”

He slipped out without waiting for an answer, and utterly unable to guess why the old merchant should take such a sudden interest in the lodger on the fifth floor.

“The rascal!” said Papa Ravinet to himself,—“the rascal!”

But he had found out what he wanted to know. He was alone, and he knew he had no time to lose.

Quickly he drew the teakettle from the fire; and, pulling out Miss Henrietta’s two letters, he held the one that was addressed to M. Maxime de Brevan over the steam of the boiling water. In a moment the mucilage of the envelope was dissolved, and the letter could easily be opened without showing in any way that it had ever been broken open. And now the old man read the following words:—

“You are victorious, M. de Brevan. When you read this, I shall be no longer alive.

“You may raise your head again; you are relieved of all fears. Daniel can come back. I shall carry the secret of your infamy and your cowardice into the grave with me.

“And yet, no!

“I can pardon you, having but a few moments longer to live; but God will not pardon you. I—I shall be avenged. And, if it should require a miracle, that miracle will be done, so as to inform that honorable man who thought you were his friend, how and why the poor girl died whom he had intrusted to your honor. H.”

The old man was furious.

“The honor of Maxime de Brevan!” he growled with a voice of intense hatred,—“the honor of Maxime de Brevan!”

But his terrible excitement did not keep him from manipulating the other letter, addressed to Count Ville-Handry, in the same manner. The operation was successful; and, without the slightest hesitation, he read:—

“Dear father,—Broken down with anxiety, and faint from exhaustion, I have waited till this morning for an answer to my humble letter, which I had written to you on my knees.

“You have never replied to it; you are inexorable. I see I must die. I shall die. Alas! I can hardly say I die willingly.

“I must appear very guilty in your eyes, father, that you should abandon me thus to the hatred of Sarah Brandon and her people. And yet—ah! I have suffered terribly. I have struggled hard before I could make up my mind to leave your house,—the house where my mother had died, where I had been so happy, and so tenderly beloved as a child by both of you. Ah, if you but knew!

“And yet it was so little I asked of you!—barely enough to bury my undeserved disgrace in a convent.

“Yes, undeserved, father; for I tell you at this hour, when no one utters a falsehood, if my reputation was lost, my honor was not lost.”

Big tears rolled down the cheeks of the old man; and he said in a half-stifled voice,—

“Poor, poor child! And to think that for a whole year I have lived under the same roof with her, without knowing it. But I am here. I am still in time. Oh, what a friend chance can be when it chooses!”

Most assuredly not one of the inmates of the house would have recognized Papa Ravinet at this moment; he was literally transfigured. He was no longer the cunning dealer in second-hand articles, the old scamp with the sharp, vulgar face, so well known at all public sales, where he sat in the front rank, watching for good bargains, and keeping cool when all around him were in a state of fervent excitement.

The two letters he had just read had opened anew in his heart more than one badly-healed and badly-scarred wound. He was suffering intensely; and his pain, his wrath, and his hope of vengeance long delayed, gave to his features a strange expression of energy and nobility. With his elbows on the table, holding his head in his hands, and looking apparently into the far past, he seemed to call up the miseries of the past, and to trace out in the future the vague outlines of some great scheme. And as his thoughts began to overflow, so to say, he broke out in a strange, spasmodic monologue,—

“Yes,” he murmured, “yes, I recognize you, Sarah Brandon! Poor