The Hollow Needle, Maurice Leblanc [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

and two bits of straw, removed some footmarks from the carpet, went to the balcony, turned to the girls, made them a deep bow and disappeared.

Suzanne was the first to run to the little boudoir which separated the big drawing-room from her father’s bedroom. But, at the entrance, a hideous sight appalled her. By the slanting rays of the moon, she saw two apparently lifeless bodies lying close to each other on the floor. She leaned over one of them:

“Father!⁠—Father!⁠—Is it you? What has happened to you?” she cried, distractedly.

After a moment, the Comte de Gesvres moved. In a broken voice, he said:

“Don’t be afraid⁠—I am not wounded⁠—Daval?⁠—Is he alive?⁠—The knife?⁠—The knife?⁠—”

Two menservants now arrived with candles. Raymonde flung herself down before the other body and recognized Jean Daval, the count’s private secretary. A little stream of blood trickled from his neck. His face already wore the pallor of death.

Then she rose, returned to the drawing room, took a gun that hung in a trophy of arms on the wall and went out on the balcony. Not more than fifty or sixty seconds had elapsed since the man had set his foot on the top rung of the ladder. He could not, therefore, be very far away, the more so as he had taken the precaution to remove the ladder, in order to prevent the inmates of the house from using it. And soon she saw him skirting the remains of the old cloister. She put the gun to her shoulder, calmly took aim and fired. The man fell.

“That’s done it! That’s done it!” said one of the servants. “We’ve got this one. I’ll run down.”

“No, Victor, he’s getting up.⁠ ⁠… You had better go down by the staircase and make straight for the little door in the wall. That’s the only way he can escape.”

Victor hurried off, but, before he reached the park, the man fell down again. Raymonde called the other servant:

“Albert, do you see him down there? Near the main cloister?⁠—”

“Yes, he’s crawling in the grass. He’s done for⁠—”

“Watch him from here.”

“There’s no way of escape for him. On the right of the ruins is the open lawn⁠—”

“And, Victor, do you guard the door, on the left,” she said, taking up her gun.

“But, surely, you are not going down, miss?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, with a resolute accent and abrupt movements; “let me be⁠—I have a cartridge left⁠—If he stirs⁠—”

She went out. A moment later, Albert saw her going toward the ruins. He called to her from the window:

“He’s dragged himself behind the cloister. I can’t see him. Be careful, miss⁠—”

Raymonde went round the old cloisters, to cut off the man’s retreat, and Albert soon lost sight of her. After a few minutes, as he did not see her return, he became uneasy and, keeping his eye on the ruins, instead of going down by the stairs he made an effort to reach the ladder. When he had succeeded, he scrambled down and ran straight to the cloisters near which he had seen the man last. Thirty paces farther, he found Raymonde, who was searching with Victor.

“Well?” he asked.

“There’s no laying one’s hands on him,” replied Victor.

“The little door?”

“I’ve been there; here’s the key.”

“Still⁠—he must⁠—”

“Oh, we’ve got him safe enough, the scoundrel⁠—He’ll be ours in ten minutes.”

The farmer and his son, awakened by the shot, now came from the farm buildings, which were at some distance on the right, but within the circuit of the walls. They had met no one.

“Of course not,” said Albert. “The ruffian can’t have left the ruins⁠—We’ll dig him out of some hole or other.”

They organized a methodical search, beating every bush, pulling aside the heavy masses of ivy rolled round the shafts of the columns. They made sure that the chapel was properly locked and that none of the panes were broken. They went round the cloisters and examined every nook and corner. The search was fruitless.

There was but one discovery: at the place where the man had fallen under Raymonde’s gun, they picked up a chauffeur’s cap, in very soft buff leather; besides that, nothing.

The gendarmerie of Ouville-la-Rivière were informed at six o’clock in the morning and at once proceeded to the spot, after sending an express to the authorities at Dieppe with a note describing the circumstances of the crime, the imminent capture of the chief criminal and “the discovery of his headgear and of the dagger with which the crime had been committed.”

At ten o’clock, two hired conveyances came down the gentle slope that led to the house. One of them, an old-fashioned calash, contained the deputy public prosecutor and the examining magistrate, accompanied by his clerk. In the other, a humble fly, were seated two reporters, representing the Journal de Rouen and a great Paris paper.

The old château came into view⁠—once the abbey residence of the priors of Ambrumésy, mutilated under the Revolution, both restored by the Comte de Gesvres, who had now owned it for some twenty years. It consists of a main building, surmounted by a pinnacled clock-tower, and two wings, each of which is surrounded by a flight of steps with a stone balustrade. Looking across the walls of the park and beyond the upland supported by the high Norman cliffs, you catch a glimpse of the blue line of the Channel between the villages of Sainte-Marguerite and Varengeville.

Here the Comte de Gesvres lived with his daughter Suzanne, a delicate, fair-haired, pretty creature, and his niece Raymonde de Saint-Véran, whom he had taken to live with him two years before, when the simultaneous death of her father and mother left Raymonde an orphan. Life at the château was peaceful and regular. A few neighbors paid an occasional visit. In the summer, the count took the two girls almost every day to Dieppe. He was a tall man, with a handsome, serious face and hair that was turning gray. He was very rich, managed his fortune