The Teeth of the Tiger, Maurice Leblanc [top 10 inspirational books TXT] 📗

oh dear!” he moaned, in a voice full of pity. “What a position, Chief! How did you manage it all? Yes, I see: you must have dug down, where you lay, and gone on digging⁠—for more than a yard! And it took some pluck, I expect, on an empty stomach!”

When Don Luis was seated in his bedroom and had swallowed a few bits of bread and drunk what he wanted, he told his story:

“Yes, it took the devil’s own pluck, old man. By Jingo! when a chap’s ideas are whirling in his head and he can’t use his brain, upon my word, all he asks is to die? And then there was no air, you see. I couldn’t breathe. I went on digging, however, as you saw, went on digging while I was half asleep, in a sort of nightmare. Just look: my fingers are in a jelly. But there, I was thinking of that confounded business of the explosion and I wanted to warn you at all costs, and I dug away at my tunnel. What a job! And then, oof! I felt space at last!

“I got my hand through and next my arm. Where was I? Why, over the telephone, of course! I knew that at once by feeling the wall and finding the wires. Then it took me quite half an hour to get hold of the instrument. I couldn’t reach it with my arm.

“I managed at last with a piece of string and a slipknot to fish up the receiver and hold it near my mouth, or, say, at ten inches from my mouth. And then I shouted and roared to make my voice carry; and, all the time, I was in pain. And then, at last, my string broke.⁠ ⁠… And then⁠—and then⁠—I hadn’t an ounce of strength left in my body. Besides, you fellows had been warned; and it was for you to get yourselves out of the mess.”

He looked at Mazeroux and asked him, as though certain of the reply:

“The explosion took place, didn’t it?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“At three o’clock exactly?”

“Yes.”

“And of course M. Desmalions had the house cleared?”

“Yes.”

“At the last minute?”

“At the last minute.”

Don Luis laughed and said:

“I knew he would wait about and not give way until the crucial moment. You must have had a bad time of it, my poor Mazeroux, for of course you agreed with me from the start.”

He kept on eating while he talked; and each mouthful seemed to bring back a little of his usual animation.

“Funny thing, hunger!” he said. “Makes you feel so lightheaded. I must practise getting used to it, however.”

“At any rate, Chief, no one would believe that you have been fasting for nearly forty-eight hours.”

“Ah, that comes of having a sound constitution, with something to fall back upon! I shall be a different man in half an hour. Just give me time to shave and have a bath.”

When he had finished dressing, he sat down to the breakfast of eggs and cold meat which Mazeroux had prepared for him; and then, getting up, said:

“Now, let’s be off.”

“But there’s no hurry, Chief. Why don’t you lie down for a few hours? The Prefect can wait.”

“You’re mad! What about Marie Fauville?”

“Marie Fauville?”

“Why, of course! Do you think I’m going to leave her in prison, or Sauverand, either? There’s not a second to lose, old chap.”

Mazeroux thought to himself that the chief had not quite recovered his wits yet. What? Release Marie Fauville and Sauverand, one, two, three, just like that! No, no, it was going a bit too far.

However, he took down to the Prefect’s car a new Perenna, merry, brisk, and as fresh as though he had just got out of bed.

“Very flattering to my pride,” said Don Luis to Mazeroux, “most flattering, that hesitation of the Prefect’s, after I had warned him over the telephone, followed by his submission at the decisive moment. What a hold I must have on all those jokers, to make them sit up at a sign from little me! ‘Beware, gentlemen!’ I telephone to them from the bottomless pit. ‘Beware! At three o’clock, a bomb!’ ‘Nonsense!’ say they. ‘Not a bit of it!’ say I. ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because I do.’ ‘But what proof have you?’ ‘What proof? That I say so.’ ‘Oh, well, of course, if you say so!’ And, at five minutes to three, out they march. Ah, if I wasn’t built up of modesty⁠—”

They came to the Boulevard Suchet, where the crowd was so dense that they had to alight from the car. Mazeroux passed through the cordon of police protecting the approaches to the house and took Don Luis to the slope across the road.

“Wait for me here, Chief. I’ll tell the Prefect of Police.”

On the other side of the boulevard, under the pale morning sky in which a few black clouds still lingered, Don Luis saw the havoc wrought by the explosion. It was apparently not so great as he had expected. Some of the ceilings had fallen in and their rubbish showed through the yawning cavities of the windows; but the house remained standing. Even Fauville’s built-out annex had not suffered overmuch, and, strange to say, the electric light, which the Prefect had left burning on his departure, had not gone out. The garden and the road were covered with stacks of furniture, over which a number of soldiers and police kept watch.

“Come with me, Chief,” said Mazeroux, as he fetched Don Luis and led him toward the engineer’s workroom.

A part of the floor was demolished. The outer walls on the left, near the passage, were cracked; and two workmen were fixing up beams, brought from the nearest timber yard, to support the ceiling. But, on the whole, the explosion had not had the results which the man who prepared it must have anticipated.

M. Desmalions was there, together with all the men who had spent the night in the room and several important persons from the public prosecutor’s office. Weber, the deputy chief