Baron Trigault's Vengeance, Emile Gaboriau [rom com books to read .txt] 📗

you at the end of it all. I am in it now. I await you there, for there you will surely, necessarily, inevitably come. Ah, ha! you will not then think my downfall so very strange. Let me pass! make way! if you please.”

He advanced with his head haughtily erect, and would actually have made his escape if a frightened servant had not at that moment appeared crying: “Monsieur—Monsieur le Baron! a commissary of police is downstairs. He is coming up. He has a warrant!”

The marquis’s frenzied assurance deserted him. He turned even paler than he already was if that were possible, and reeled like an ox but partially stunned by the butcher’s hammer. Suddenly a desperate resolution could be read in his eyes, the resolution of the condemned criminal, who, knowing that he cannot escape the scaffold, ascends it with a firm step.

He hastily approached Baron Trigault, and asked in a husky voice: “Will you allow me to be arrested in your house, baron? me—a Valorsay!”

It might have been supposed that the baron had expected this reproach, for without a word he led the marquis and M. de Coralth to a little room at the end of the hall, pushed them inside, and closed the door again.

It was time he did so, for the commissary of police was already upon the threshold. “Which of you gentlemen is the Marquis de Valorsay?” he asked. “Which of you is Paul Violaine, alias the Viscount de——”

The sharp report of firearms suddenly interrupted him. Every one at once rushed to the little room, where the wretched men had been conducted. There extended, face upward, on the floor, lay the Marquis de Valorsay, with his brains oozing from his fractured skull, and his right hand still clutching a revolver. He was dead. “And the other!” cried the throng; “the other!”

The open window, and a curtain rudely torn from its fastenings and secured to the balustrade, told how M. de Coralth had made his escape. It was not till later that people learned what precautions the baron had taken. On the table in that room he had laid two revolvers, and two packages containing ten thousand francs each. The viscount had not hesitated.

Pascal Ferailleur and Mademoiselle Marguerite de Chalusse were married at the church of Saint Etienne du Mont, only a few steps from the Rue d’Ulm. Those who knew the mystery connected with the bride’s parentage were greatly astonished when they saw Baron Trigault act as a witness on this occasion, in company with the venerable justice of the peace. But such was the fact, nevertheless. Treated more and more outrageously by his daughter and her husband, separated from his wife, who had nearly lost her reason, although her letters were saved, the baron has nowadays found affection and a home with Pascal and his wife. He plays cards but seldom now—only an occasional game of piquet with Madame Ferailleur, and he amuses himself by making her start when she is too long in discarding, by ejaculating, in a stentorian voice: “We are wasting precious time!” Sometimes they go out together, to the great astonishment of such as chance to meet the puritanical old lady leaning on the baron’s arm. She often goes to visit and console the widow Gordon, formerly known as Lia d’Argeles, who now keeps an establishment near Montrouge, where she provides poor, betrayed and forsaken girls with a home and employment. She has yet to receive any token of remembrance from her son. As for her husband, she supposes he is dead or incarcerated in some prison.

It is to Madame Gordon that the Fondeges are often indebted for bread. Obliged to disgorge their plunder, and left with no resources save the fifty francs a month allowed them by their son, who has been promoted to the rank of captain, their poverty is necessarily extreme. Oh! those Fondeges! M. Fortunat only speaks of them with horror. But he is loud in his praises of Madame Marguerite, who repaid him the forty thousand francs he had advanced to M. de Valorsay. He speaks in the highest terms of Chupin also; but in this, he is scarcely sincere, for Victor, who has been set up in business by Pascal, told him very plainly that he was determined not to put his hand to any more dirty work, and that expression, “dirty work,” rankles in M. Fortunat’s heart.

Chupin’s resolution did not, however, prevent him from attending the trial of Vantrasson and Madame Leon—the former of whom was sentenced to hard labor for life, and the latter to ten years’ imprisonment. Nothing is known concerning M. de Coralth; but his wife has disappeared, to the great disappointment of M. Mouchon. As a dentist, Dr. Jodon is successful. As for M. Wilkie, you can learn anything you wish to know concerning him in the newspapers, for his sayings, doings, and movements, are constantly being chronicled. The reporters exhaust all the resources of their vocabulary in describing his horses, carriages, and stables, and the gorgeous liveries of his servants. His changes of residence are always mentioned; his brilliant sayings are quoted. He is a social success; he is admired, fondled, and flattered. He makes a great stir in the fashionable world—in fact, he reigns over it like a king. After all, assurance is the winning card in the game of life!

End of Project Gutenberg’s Baron Trigault’s Vengeance, by Emile Gaboriau