The Mystery of Orcival, Émile Gaboriau [fiction novels to read TXT] 📗

other. They saw them everywhere, written in letters of fire. There was a moment of stupor, of silence so profound that Hector heard his temples beat. Sauvresy had got back under the bedclothes again. He laughed loudly, wildly, just as a skeleton might have laughed whose jaws and teeth rattled together.

But Bertha was not one of those persons who are overcome by a single blow, terrible as it might be. She trembled like a leaf; her legs staggered; but her mind was already at work seeking a subterfuge. What had Sauvresy seen⁠—anything? What did he know? For even had he seen the vial, this might be explained. It could only have been by simple chance that he had touched her at the moment when she was using the poison. All these thoughts flashed across her mind in a moment, as rapid as lightning shooting between the clouds. And then she dared to approach the bed, and, with a frightfully constrained smile, to say:

“How you frightened me then!”

He looked at her a moment, which seemed to her an age⁠—and simply replied:

“I understand it.”

There was no longer any uncertainty. Bertha saw only too well in her husband’s eyes that he knew something. But what⁠—how much? She nerved herself to go on:

“Are you still suffering?”

“No.”

“Then why did you get up?”

He raised himself upon his pillow, and with a sudden strength, he continued:

“I got up to tell you that I have had enough of these tortures, that I have reached the limits of human energy, that I cannot endure one day longer the agony of seeing myself put to death slowly, drop by drop, by the hands of my wife and my best friend!”

He stopped. Hector and Bertha were thunderstruck. “I wanted to tell you also, that I have had enough of your cruel caution, and that I suffer. Ah, don’t you see that I suffer horribly? Hurry, cut short my agony! Kill me, and kill me at a blow⁠—poisoners!”

At the last word, the Count de Trémorel sprang up as if he had moved by a spring, his eyes haggard, his arms stretched out. Sauvresy, seeing this, quickly slipped his hand under the pillow, pulled out a revolver, and pointed the barrel at Hector, crying out:

“Don’t advance a step!”

He thought that Trémorel, seeing that they were discovered, was going to rush upon him and strangle him; but he was mistaken. It seemed to Hector as though he were losing his mind. He fell down as heavily as if he were a log. Bertha was more self-possessed; she tried to resist the torpor of terror which she felt coming on.

“You are worse, my Clement,” said she. “This is that dreadful fever which frightens me so. Delirium⁠—”

“Have I really been delirious?” interrupted he, with a surprised air.

“Alas, yes, dear, that is what haunts you, and fills your poor sick head with horrid visions.”

He looked at her curiously. He was really stupefied by this boldness, which constantly grew more bold.

“What! you think that we, who are so dear to you, your friends, I, your⁠—”

Her husband’s implacable look forced her to stop, and the words expired on her lips.

“Enough of these lies, Bertha,” resumed Sauvresy, “they are useless. No, I have not been dreaming, nor have I been delirious. The poison is only too real, and I could tell you what it is without your taking it out of your pocket.”

She recoiled as if she had seen her husband’s hand stretched out to snatch the blue vial.

“I guessed it and recognized it at the very first; for you have chosen one of those poisons which, it is true, leave scarcely any trace of themselves, but the symptoms of which are not deceptive. Do you remember the day when I complained of a morbid taste for pepper? The next day I was certain of it, and I was not the only one. Doctor R⁠⸺, too, had a suspicion.”

Bertha tried to stammer something; her husband interrupted her.

“People ought to try their poisons,” pursued he, in an ironical tone, “before they use them. Didn’t you understand yours, or what its effects were? Why, your poison gives intolerable neuralgia, sleeplessness, and you saw me without surprise, sleeping soundly all night long! I complained of a devouring fire within me, while your poison freezes the blood and the entrails, and yet you are not astonished. You see all the symptoms change and disappear, and that does not enlighten you. You are fools, then. Now see what I had to do to divert Doctor R⁠⸺’s suspicions. I hid the real pains which your poison caused, and complained of imaginary, ridiculous ones. I described sensations just the opposite of those which I felt. You were lost, then⁠—and I saved you.”

Bertha’s malignant energy staggered beneath so many successive blows. She wondered whether she were not going mad; had she heard aright? Was it really true that her husband had perceived that he was being poisoned, and yet said nothing; nay, that he had even deceived the doctor? Why? What was his purpose?

Sauvresy paused several minutes, and then went on:

“I have held my tongue and so saved you, because the sacrifice of my life had already been made. Yes, I had been fatally wounded in the heart on the day that I learned that you were faithless to me.”

He spoke of his death without apparent emotion; but at the words, “You were faithless to me,” his voice faltered and trembled.

“I would not, could not believe it at first. I doubted the evidence of my senses, rather than doubt you. But I was forced to believe at last. I was no longer anything in my house but a laughingstock. But I was in your way. You and your lover needed more room and liberty. You were tired of constraint and hypocrisy. Then it was that, believing that my death would make you free and rich, you brought in poison to rid yourselves of me.”

Bertha had at least the heroism of crime. All was discovered; well, she threw down