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

past three months. I heard a noise just now. Someone was calling out for help. So I came down.”

“But how did you get in here?”

“By the staircase.”

“What staircase?”

“The iron staircase, at the end of the shop. The man who owned it before you had a flat on my floor and used to go up and down by that hidden staircase. You had the door shut off. I opened it.”

“But by what right, sir? It amounts to breaking in.”

“Breaking in is allowed, when there’s a fellow-creature to be rescued.”

“Once more, who are you?”

“Prince Rénine⁠ ⁠… and a friend of this lady’s,” said Rénine, bending over Hortense and kissing her hand.

Pancaldi seemed to be choking, and mumbled:

“Oh, I understand!⁠ ⁠… You instigated the plot⁠ ⁠… it was you who sent the lady.⁠ ⁠…”

“It was, M. Pancaldi, it was!”

“And what are your intentions?”

“My intentions are irreproachable. No violence. Simply a little interview. When that is over, you will hand over what I in my turn have come to fetch.”

“What?”

“The clasp.”

“That, never!” shouted the dealer.

“Don’t say no. It’s a foregone conclusion.”

“No power on earth, sir, can compel me to do such a thing!”

“Shall we send for your wife? Madame Pancaldi will perhaps realize the position better than you do.”

The idea of no longer being alone with this unexpected adversary seemed to appeal to Pancaldi. There was a bell on the table beside him. He struck it three times.

“Capital!” exclaimed Rénine “You see, my dear, M. Pancaldi is becoming quite amiable. Not a trace left of the devil broken loose who was going for you just now. No, M. Pancaldi only has to find himself dealing with a man to recover his qualities of courtesy and kindness. A perfect sheep! Which does not mean that things will go quite of themselves. Far from it! There’s no more obstinate animal than a sheep.⁠ ⁠…”

Right at the end of the shop, between the dealer’s writing-desk and the winding staircase, a curtain was raised, admitting a woman who was holding a door open. She might have been thirty years of age. Very simply dressed, she looked, with the apron on her, more like a cook than like the mistress of a household. But she had an attractive face and a pleasing figure.

Hortense, who had followed Rénine, was surprised to recognize her as a maid whom she had had in her service when a girl:

“What! Is that you, Lucienne? Are you Madame Pancaldi?”

The newcomer looked at her, recognized her also and seemed embarrassed. Rénine said to her:

“Your husband and I need your assistance, Madame Pancaldi, to settle a rather complicated matter a matter in which you played an important part.⁠ ⁠…”

She came forward without a word, obviously ill at ease, asking her husband, who did not take his eyes off her:

“What is it?⁠ ⁠… What do they want with me?⁠ ⁠… What is he referring to?”

“It’s about the clasp!” Pancaldi whispered, under his breath.

These few words were enough to make Madame Pancaldi realize to the full the seriousness of her position. And she did not try to keep her countenance or to retort with futile protests. She sank into a chair, sighing:

“Oh, that’s it!⁠ ⁠… I understand.⁠ ⁠… Mlle. Hortense has found the track.⁠ ⁠… Oh, it’s all up with us!”

There was a moment’s respite. The struggle between the adversaries had hardly begun, before the husband and wife adopted the attitude of defeated persons whose only hope lay in the victor’s clemency. Staring motionless before her, Madame Pancaldi began to cry. Rénine bent over her and said:

“Do you mind if we go over the case from the beginning? We shall then see things more clearly; and I am sure that our interview will lead to a perfectly natural solution.⁠ ⁠… This is how things happened: nine years ago, when you were lady’s maid to Mlle. Hortense in the country, you made the acquaintance of M. Pancaldi, who soon became your lover. You were both of you Corsicans, in other words, you came from a country where superstitions are very strong and where questions of good and bad luck, the evil eye, and spells and charms exert a profound influence over the lives of one and all. Now it was said that your young mistress’ clasp had always brought luck to its owners. That was why, in a weak moment prompted by M. Pancaldi, you stole the clasp. Six months afterwards, you became Madame Pancaldi.⁠ ⁠… That is your whole story, is it not, told in a few sentences? The whole story of two people who would have remained honest members of society, if they had been able to resist that casual temptation?⁠ ⁠… I need not tell you how you both succeeded in life and how, possessing the talisman, believing its powers and trusting in yourselves, you rose to the first rank of antiquarians. Today, well-off, owning this shop, ‘The Mercury,’ you attribute the success of your undertakings to that clasp. To lose it would to your eyes spell bankruptcy and poverty. Your whole life has been centred upon it. It is your fetish. It is the little household god who watches over you and guides your steps. It is there, somewhere, hidden in this jungle; and no one of course would ever have suspected anything⁠—for I repeat, you are decent people, but for this one lapse⁠—if an accident had not led me to look into your affairs.”

Rénine paused and continued:

“That was two months ago, two months of minute investigations, which presented no difficulty to me, because, having discovered your trail, I hired the flat overhead and was able to use that staircase⁠ ⁠… but, all the same, two months wasted to a certain extent because I have not yet succeeded. And Heaven knows how I have ransacked this shop of yours! There is not a piece of furniture that I have left unsearched, not a plank in the floor that I have not inspected. All to no purpose. Yes, there was one thing, an incidental discovery. In a secret recess in your writing-table, Pancaldi, I turned up a little account-book in which you have set