The Eight Strokes of the Clock, Maurice Leblanc [summer books TXT] 📗

the letter upon him, he took it and tore it up.

“What does this mean?” asked the young man.

“It means that I will not charge myself with any message.”

“Why?”

“Because you are coming with us.”

“I?”

“Yes. You will see Mlle. Aymard tomorrow and ask for her hand in marriage.”

Jean Louis looked at Rénine with a rather disdainful air, as though he were thinking:

“Here’s a man who has not understood a word of what I’ve been explaining to him.”

But Hortense went up to Rénine:

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it will be as I say.”

“But you must have your reasons?”

“One only; but it will be enough, provided this gentleman is so kind as to help me in my enquiries.”

“Enquiries? With what object?” asked the young man.

“With the object of proving that your story is not quite accurate.”

Jean Louis took umbrage at this:

“I must ask you to believe, monsieur, that I have not said a word which is not the exact truth.”

“I expressed myself badly,” said Rénine, with great kindliness. “Certainly you have not said a word that does not agree with what you believe to be the exact truth. But the truth is not, cannot be what you believe it to be.”

The young man folded his arms:

“In any case, monsieur, it seems likely that I should know the truth better than you do.”

“Why better? What happened on that tragic night can obviously be known to you only at secondhand. You have no proofs. Neither have Madame d’Imbleval and Madame Vaurois.”

“No proofs of what?” exclaimed Jean Louis, losing patience.

“No proofs of the confusion that took place.”

“What! Why, it’s an absolute certainty! The two children were laid in the same cradle, with no marks to distinguish one from the other; and the nurse was unable to tell.⁠ ⁠…”

“At least, that’s her version of it,” interrupted Rénine.

“What’s that? Her version? But you’re accusing the woman.”

“I’m accusing her of nothing.”

“Yes, you are: you’re accusing her of lying. And why should she lie? She had no interest in doing so; and her tears and despair are so much evidence of her good faith. For, after all, the two mothers were there⁠ ⁠… they saw the woman weeping⁠ ⁠… they questioned her.⁠ ⁠… And then, I repeat, what interest had she⁠ ⁠… ?”

Jean Louis was greatly excited. Close beside him, Madame d’Imbleval and Madame Vaurois, who had no doubt been listening behind the doors and who had stealthily entered the room, stood stammering, in amazement:

“No, no⁠ ⁠… it’s impossible.⁠ ⁠… We’ve questioned her over and over again. Why should she tell a lie?⁠ ⁠…”

“Speak, monsieur, speak,” Jean Louis enjoined. “Explain yourself. Give your reasons for trying to cast doubt upon an absolute truth!”

“Because that truth is inadmissible,” declared Rénine, raising his voice and growing excited in turn to the point of punctuating his remarks by thumping the table. “No, things don’t happen like that. No, fate does not display those refinements of cruelty and chance is not added to chance with such reckless extravagance! It was already an unprecedented chance that, on the very night on which the doctor, his manservant and his maid were out of the house, the two ladies should be seized with labour-pains at the same hour and should bring two sons into the world at the same time. Don’t let us add a still more exceptional event! Enough of the uncanny! Enough of lamps that go out and candles that refuse to burn! No and again no, it is not admissable that a midwife should become confused in the essential details of her trade. However bewildered she may be by the unforeseen nature of the circumstances, a remnant of instinct is still on the alert, so that there is a place prepared for each child and each is kept distinct from the other. The first child is here, the second is there. Even if they are lying side by side, one is on the left and the other on the right. Even if they are wrapped in the same kind of binders, some little detail differs, a trifle which is recorded by the memory and which is inevitably recalled to the mind without any need of reflection. Confusion? I refuse to believe in it. Impossible to tell one from the other? It isn’t true. In the world of fiction, yes, one can imagine all sorts of fantastic accidents and heap contradiction on contradiction. But, in the world of reality, at the very heart of reality, there is always a fixed point, a solid nucleus, about which the facts group themselves in accordance with a logical order. I therefore declare most positively that Nurse Boussignol could not have mixed up the two children.”

All this he said decisively, as though he had been present during the night in question; and so great was his power of persuasion that from the very first he shook the certainty of those who for more than a quarter of a century had never doubted.

The two women and their son pressed round him and questioned him with breathless anxiety:

“Then you think that she may know⁠ ⁠… that she may be able to tell us.⁠ ⁠… ?”

He corrected himself:

“I don’t say yes and I don’t say no. All I say is that there was something in her behaviour during those hours that does not tally with her statements and with reality. All the vast and intolerable mystery that has weighed down upon you three arises not from a momentary lack of attention but from something of which we do not know, but of which she does. That is what I maintain; and that is what happened.”

Jean Louis said, in a husky voice:

“She is alive.⁠ ⁠… She lives at Carhaix.⁠ ⁠… We can send for her.⁠ ⁠…”

Hortense at once proposed:

“Would you like me to go for her? I will take the motor and bring her back with me. Where does she live?”

“In the middle of the town, at a little draper’s shop. The chauffeur will show you. Mlle. Boussignol: everybody knows her.⁠ ⁠…”

“And, whatever you do,” added Rénine, “don’t warn her in any way. If she’s uneasy, so much the better. But don’t