Jérôme Vignal's story was finished. He had told it straight off the reel, like a story learnt by heart and incapable of revision in any detail.
There was a brief pause, during which Hortense whispered:
"It all sounds quite possible and, in any case, very logical."
"There are the objections to come," said Rénine. "Wait till you hear them. They are very serious. There's one in particular...."
The deputy-procurator stated it at once:
"And what became of M. de Gorne in all this?"
"Mathias de Gorne?" asked Jérôme.
"Yes. You have related, with an accent of great sincerity, a series of facts which I am quite willing to admit. Unfortunately, you have forgotten a point of the first importance: what became of Mathias de Gorne? You tied him up here, in this room. Well, this morning he was gone."
"Of course, Mr. Deputy, Mathias de Gorne accepted the bargain in the end and went away."
"By what road?"
"No doubt by the road that leads to his father's house."
"Where are his footprints? The expanse of snow is an impartial witness. After your fight with him, we see you, on the snow, moving away. Why don't we see him? He came and did not go away again. Where is he? There is not a trace of him … or rather...."
The deputy lowered his voice:
"Or rather, yes, there are some traces on the way to the well and around the well … traces which prove that the last struggle of all took place there.... And after that there is nothing … not a thing...."
Jérôme shrugged his shoulders:
"You have already mentioned this, Mr. Deputy, and it implies a charge of homicide against me. I have nothing to say to it."
"Have you anything to say to the fact that your revolver was picked up within fifteen yards of the well?"
"No."
"Or to the strange coincidence between the three shots heard in the night and the three cartridges missing from your revolver?"
"No, Mr. Deputy, there was not, as you believe, a last struggle by the well, because I left M. de Gorne tied up, in this room, and because I also left my revolver here. On the other hand, if shots were heard, they were not fired by me."
"A casual coincidence, therefore?"
"That's a matter for the police to explain. My only duty is to tell the truth and you are not entitled to ask more of me."
"And if that truth conflicts with the facts observed?"
"It means that the facts are wrong, Mr. Deputy."
"As you please. But, until the day when the police are able to make them agree with your statements, you will understand that I am obliged to keep you under arrest."
"And Madame de Gorne?" asked Jérôme, greatly distressed.
The deputy did not reply. He exchanged a few words with the commissary of police and then, beckoning to a detective, ordered him to bring up one of the two motor-cars. Then he turned to Natalie:
"Madame, you have heard M. Vignal's evidence. It agrees word for word with your own. M. Vignal declares in particular that you had fainted when he carried you away. But did you remain unconscious all the way?"
It seemed as though Jérôme's composure had increased Madame de Gorne's assurance. She replied:
"I did not come to, monsieur, until I was at the château."
"It's most extraordinary. Didn't you hear the three shots which were heard by almost every one in the village?"
"I did not."
"And did you see nothing of what happened beside the well?"
"Nothing did happen. M. Vignal has told you so."
"Then what has become of your husband?"
"I don't know."
"Come, madame, you really must assist the officers of the law and at least tell us what you think. Do you believe that there may have been an accident and that possibly M. de Gorne, who had been to see his father and had more to drink than usual, lost his balance and fell into the well?"
"When my husband came back from seeing his father, he was not in the least intoxicated."
"His father, however, has stated that he was. His father and he had drunk two or three bottles of wine."
"His father is not telling the truth."
"But the snow tells the truth, madame," said the deputy, irritably. "And the line of his footprints wavers from side to side."
"My husband came in at half-past-eight, monsieur, before the snow had begun to fall."
The deputy struck the table with his fist:
"But, really, madame, you're going right against the evidence!… That sheet of snow cannot speak false!… I may accept your denial of matters that cannot be verified. But these footprints in the snow … in the snow...."
He controlled himself.
The motor-car drew up outside the windows. Forming a sudden resolve, he said to Natalie:
"You will be good enough to hold yourself at the disposal of the authorities, madame, and to remain here, in the manor-house...."
And he made a sign to the sergeant to remove Jérôme Vignal in the car.
The game was lost for the two lovers. Barely united, they had to separate and to fight, far away from each other, against the most grievous accusations.
Jérôme took a step towards Natalie. They exchanged a long, sorrowful look. Then he bowed to her and walked to the door, in the wake of the sergeant of gendarmes.
"Halt!" cried a voice. "Sergeant, right about … turn!… Jérôme Vignal, stay where you are!"
The ruffled deputy raised his head, as did the other people present. The voice came from the ceiling. The bulls-eye window had opened and Rénine, leaning through it, was waving his arms:
"I wish to be heard!… I have several remarks to make … especially in respect of the zigzag footprints!… It all lies in that!… Mathias had not been drinking!…"
He had turned round and put his two legs through the opening, saying to Hortense, who tried to prevent him:
"Don't move.... No one will disturb you."
And, releasing his hold, he dropped into the room.
The deputy appeared dumfounded:
"But, really, monsieur, who are you? Where do you come from?"
Rénine brushed the dust from his clothes and replied:
"Excuse me, Mr. Deputy. I ought to have come the same way as everybody else. But I was in a hurry. Besides, if I had come in by the door instead of falling from the ceiling, my words would not have made the same impression."
The infuriated deputy advanced to meet him:
"Who are you?"
"Prince Rénine. I was with the sergeant this morning when he was pursuing his investigations, wasn't I, sergeant? Since then I have been hunting about for information. That's why, wishing to be present at the hearing, I found a corner in a little private room...."
"You were there? You had the audacity?…"
"One must needs be audacious, when the truth's at stake. If I had not been there, I should not have discovered just the one little clue which I missed. I should not have known that Mathias de Gorne was not the least bit drunk. Now that's the key to the riddle. When we know that, we know the solution."
The deputy found himself in a rather ridiculous position. Since he had failed to take the necessary precautions to ensure the secrecy of his enquiry, it was difficult for him to take any steps against this interloper. He growled:
"Let's have done with this. What are you asking?"
"A few minutes of your kind attention."
"And with what object?"
"To establish the innocence of M. Vignal and Madame de Gorne."
He was wearing that calm air, that sort of indifferent look which was peculiar to him in moments of actions when the crisis of the drama depended solely upon himself. Hortense felt a thrill pass through her and at once became full of confidence:
"They're saved," she thought, with sudden emotion. "I asked him to protect that young creature; and he is saving her from prison and despair."
Jérôme and Natalie must have experienced the same impression of sudden hope, for they had drawn nearer to each other, as though this stranger, descended from the clouds, had already given them the right to clasp hands.
The deputy shrugged his shoulders:
"The prosecution will have every means, when the time comes, of establishing their innocence for itself. You will be called."
"It would be better to establish it here and now. Any delay might lead to grievous consequences."
"I happen to be in a hurry."
"Two or three minutes will do."
"Two or three minutes to explain a case like this!"
"No longer, I assure you."
"Are you as certain of it as all that?"
"I am now. I have been thinking hard since this morning."
The deputy realized that this was one of those gentry who stick to you like a leech and that there was nothing for it but to submit. In a rather bantering tone, he asked:
"Does your thinking enable you to tell us the exact spot where M. Mathias de Gorne is at this moment?"
Rénine took out his watch and answered:
"In Paris, Mr. Deputy."
"In Paris? Alive then?"
"Alive and, what is more, in the pink of health."
"I am delighted to hear it. But then what's the meaning of the footprints around the well and the presence of that revolver and those three shots?"
"Simply camouflage."
"Oh, really? Camouflage contrived by whom?"
"By Mathias de Gorne himself."
"That's curious! And with what object?"
"With the object of passing himself off for dead and of arranging subsequent matters in such a way that M. Vignal was bound to be accused of the death, the murder."
"An ingenious theory," the deputy agreed, still in a satirical tone. "What do you think of it, M. Vignal?"
"It is a theory which flashed through my own mind. Mr. Deputy," replied Jérôme. "It is quite likely that, after our struggle and after I had gone, Mathias de Gorne conceived a new plan by which, this time, his hatred would be fully gratified. He both loved and detested his wife. He held me in the greatest loathing. This must be his revenge."
"His revenge would cost him dear, considering that, according to your statement, Mathias de Gorne was to receive a second sum of sixty thousand francs from you."
"He would receive that sum in another quarter, Mr. Deputy. My examination of the financial position of the de Gorne family revealed to me the fact that the father and son had taken out a life-insurance policy in each other's favour. With the son dead, or passing for dead, the father would receive the insurance-money and indemnify his son."
"You mean to say," asked the deputy, with a smile, "that in all this camouflage, as you call it, M. de Gorne the elder would act as his son's accomplice?"
Rénine took up the challenge:
"Just so, Mr. Deputy. The father and son are accomplices.
"Then we shall find the son at the father's?"
"You would have found him there last night."
"What became of him?"
"He took the train at Pompignat."
"That's a mere supposition."
"No, a certainty."
"A moral certainty, perhaps, but you'll admit there's not the slightest proof."
The deputy did not wait for a reply. He considered that he had displayed an excessive goodwill and that patience has its limits and he put an end to the interview:
"Not the slightest proof," he repeated, taking up his hat. "And, above all, … above all, there's nothing in what you've said that can contradict in the very least the evidence of that relentless witness, the snow. To go to his father, Mathias de Gorne must have left this house. Which way did he go?"
"Hang it all, M. Vignal told you: by the road which leads from here to his father's!"
"There are no tracks in the snow."
"Yes, there are."
"But they show him coming here and not going away from here."
"It's the same thing."
"What?"
"Of course it is. There's more than one way of walking. One doesn't always go ahead by following one's nose."
"In what other way can one go ahead?"
"By walking backwards, Mr. Deputy."
These few words, spoken very simply, but in a clear tone which gave full value to every syllable, produced a profound silence. Those present at once grasped their extreme significance and, by adapting it to the actual happenings, perceived in a flash the impenetrable truth, which suddenly appeared to be the most natural thing in the world.
Rénine continued his argument. Stepping backwards in the direction of the window, he said:
"If I want to get to that window, I can of course walk straight up to it; but I can just as easily turn my back to it and walk that way. In either case I reach my goal."
And he at once proceeded in a vigorous tone:
"Here's the gist of it all. At half-past eight, before the snow fell, M. de Gorne comes home from his father's house. M. Vignal arrives twenty minutes later. There is a long discussion and a struggle, taking up three hours in all. It is then, after M. Vignal has carried off Madame de Gorne and made his escape, that Mathias de Gorne, foaming at the mouth, wild with rage, but suddenly seeing his chance of taking the most terrible revenge, hits upon the ingenious idea of using against his enemy the very snowfall upon whose evidence you are now relying. He therefore plans his own murder, or rather the appearance of his murder and of his fall to the bottom of the well and makes off backwards, step by step, thus recording his arrival instead of his departure on the white page."
The deputy sneered no longer. This eccentric intruder suddenly appeared to him in the light of a person worthy of attention, whom it would not do to make fun of. He asked:
"And how could he have left his father's house?"
"In a trap, quite simply."
"Who drove it?"
"The father. This morning the sergeant and I saw the trap and spoke to the father, who was going to market as usual. The son was hidden under the tilt. He took the train at Pompignat and is in Paris by now."
Rénine's explanation, as promised, had taken hardly five minutes. He had based it solely on logic and the probabilities of the case. And yet not a jot was left of the distressing mystery in which they were floundering. The darkness was dispelled. The whole truth appeared.
Madame de Gorne wept for joy and Jérôme Vignal thanked the good genius who was changing the course of events with a stroke of his magic wand.
"Shall we examine those footprints together, Mr. Deputy?" asked Rénine. "Do you mind? The mistake which the sergeant and I made this morning was to investigate only the footprints left by the alleged murderer and to neglect Mathias de Gorne's. Why indeed should they have attracted our attention? Yet it was precisely there that the crux of the whole affair was to be found."
They stepped into the orchard and went to the well. It did not need a long examination to observe that many of the footprints were awkward, hesitating, too deeply sunk at the heel and toe and differing from one another in the angle at which the feet were turned.
"This clumsiness was unavoidable," said Rénine. "Mathias de Gorne would have needed a regular apprenticeship before his backward progress could have equalled his ordinary gait; and both his father and he must have been aware of this, at least as regards the zigzags which you see here since old de Gorne went out of his way to tell the sergeant that his son had had too much drink." And he added "Indeed it was the detection of this falsehood that suddenly enlightened me. When Madame de Gorne stated that her husband was not drunk, I thought of the footprints and guessed the truth."
The deputy frankly accepted his part in the matter and began to laugh:
"There's nothing left for it but to send detectives after the bogus corpse."
"On what grounds, Mr. Deputy?" asked Rénine. "Mathias de Gorne has committed no offence against the law. There's nothing criminal in trampling the soil around a well, in shifting the position of a revolver that doesn't belong to you, in firing three shots or in walking backwards to one's father's house. What can we ask of him? The sixty thousand francs? I presume that this is not M. Vignal's intention and that he does not mean to bring a charge against him?"
"Certainly not," said Jérôme.
"Well, what then? The insurance-policy in favour of the survivor? But there would be no misdemeanour unless the father claimed payment. And I should be greatly surprised if he did.... Hullo, here the old chap is! You'll soon know all about it."
Old de Gorne was coming along, gesticulating as he walked. His easy-going features were screwed up to express sorrow and anger.
"Where's my son?" he cried. "It seems the brute's killed him!… My poor Mathias dead! Oh, that scoundrel of a Vignal!"
And he shook his fist at Jérôme.
The deputy said, bluntly:
"A word with you, M. de Gorne. Do you intend to claim your rights under a certain insurance-policy?"
"Well, what do you think?" said the old man, off his guard.
"The fact is … your son's not dead. People are even saying that you were a partner in his little schemes and that you stuffed him under the tilt of your trap and drove him to the station."
The old fellow spat on the ground, stretched out his hand as though he were going to take a solemn oath, stood for an instant without moving and then, suddenly, changing his mind and his tactics with ingenuous cynicism, he relaxed his features, assumed a conciliatory attitude and burst out laughing:
"That blackguard Mathias! So he tried to pass himself off as dead? What a rascal! And he reckoned on me to collect the insurance-money and send it to him? As if I should be capable of such a low, dirty trick!… You don't know me, my boy!"
And, without waiting for more, shaking with merriment like a jolly old fellow amused by a funny story, he took his departure, not forgetting, however, to set his great hob-nail boots on each of the compromising footprints which his son had left behind him.
Later, when Rénine went back to the manor to let Hortense out, he found that she had disappeared.
He called and asked for her at her cousin Ermelin's. Hortense sent down word asking him to excuse her: she was feeling a little tired and was lying down.
"Capital!" thought Rénine. "Capital! She avoids me, therefore she loves me. The end is not far off."
VIII
AT THE SIGN OF MERCURY
To Madame Daniel,
La Roncière,
near Bassicourt
"PARIS 30 NOVEMBER
"My Dearest Friend,–
"There has been no letter from you for a fortnight; so I don't expect now to receive one for that troublesome date of the 5th of December, which we fixed as the last day of our partnership. I rather wish it would come, because you will then be released from a contract which no longer seems to give you pleasure. To me the seven battles which we fought and won together were a time of endless delight and enthusiasm. I was living beside you. I was conscious of all the good which that more active and stirring existence was doing you. My happiness was so great that I dared not speak of it to you or let you see anything of my secret feelings except my desire to please you and my passionate devotion. To-day you have had enough of your brother in arms. Your will shall be law.
"But, though I bow to your decree, may I remind I you what it was that I always believed our final adventure would be? May I repeat your words, not one of which I have forgotten?
"'I demand,' you said, 'that you shall restore to me a small, antique clasp, made of a cornelian set in a filigree mount. It came to me from my mother; and every one knew that it used to bring her happiness and me too. Since the day when it vanished from my jewel-case, I have had nothing but unhappiness. Restore it to me, my good genius.'
"And, when I asked you when the clasp had disappeared, you answered, with a laugh:
"'Seven years ago … or eight … or nine: I don't know exactly.... I don't know when … I don't know how … I know nothing about it....'
"You were challenging me, were you not, and you set me that condition because it was one which I could not fulfil? Nevertheless, I promised and I should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the mainspring of our best actions.
"Dear friend, if you had helped me, I should have achieved yet one more victory. Alone and hard pushed by the proximity of the date, I have failed, not however without placing things on such a footing that the undertaking if you care to follow it up, has the greatest chance of success.
"And you will follow it up, won't you? We have entered into a mutual agreement which we are bound to honour. It behooves us, within a fixed time, to inscribe in the book of our common life eight good stories, to which we shall have brought energy, logic, perseverance, some subtlety and occasionally a little heroism. This is the eighth of them. It is for you to act so that it may be written in its proper place on the 5th of December, before the clock strikes eight in the evening.
"And, on that day, you will act as I shall now tell you.
"First of all–and above all, my dear, do not complain that my instructions are fanciful: each of them is an indispensable condition of success–first of all, cut in your cousin's garden three slender lengths of rush. Plait them together and bind up the two ends so as to make a rude switch, like a child's whip-lash.
"When you get to Paris, buy a long necklace of jet beads, cut into facets, and shorten it so that it consists of seventy-five beads, of almost equal size.
"Under your winter cloak, wear a blue woollen gown. On your head, a toque with red leaves on it. Round your neck, a feather boa. No gloves. No rings.
"In the afternoon, take a cab along the left bank of the river to the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. At four o'clock exactly, there will be, near the holy-water basin, just inside the church, an old woman dressed in black, saying her prayers on a silver rosary. She will offer you holy water. Give her your necklace. She will count the beads and hand it back to you. After this, you will walk behind her, you will cross an arm of the Seine and she will lead you, down a lonely street in the Ile Saint-Louis, to a house which you will enter by yourself.
"On the ground-floor of this house, you will find a youngish man with a very pasty complexion. Take off your cloak and then say to him:
"'I have come to fetch my clasp.'
"Do not be astonished by his agitation or dismay. Keep calm in his presence. If he questions you, if he wants to know your reason for applying to him or what impels you to make that request, give him no explanation. Your replies must be confined to these brief formulas:
"'I have come to fetch what belongs to me. I don't know you, I don't know your name; but I am obliged to come to you like this. I must have my clasp returned to me. I must.'
"I honestly believe that, if you have the firmness not to swerve from that attitude, whatever farce the man may play, you will be completely successful. But the contest must be a short one and the issue will depend solely on your confidence in yourself and your certainty of success. It will be a sort of match in which you must defeat your opponent in the first round. If you remain impassive, you will win. If you show hesitation or uneasiness, you can do nothing against him. He will escape you and regain the upper hand after a first moment of distress; and the game will be lost in a few minutes. There is no midway house between victory or … defeat.
"In the latter event, you would be obliged–I beg you to pardon me for saying so–again to accept my collaboration. I offer it you in advance, my dear, and without any conditions, while stating quite plainly that all that I have been able to do for you and all that I may yet do gives me no other right than that of thanking you and devoting myself more than ever to the woman who represents my joy, my whole life."
Hortense, after reading the letter, folded it up and put it away at the back of a drawer, saying, in a resolute voice:
"I sha'n't go."
To begin with, although she had formerly attached some slight importance to this trinket, which she had regarded as a mascot, she felt very little interest in it now that the period of her trials was apparently at an end. She could not forget that figure eight, which was the serial number of the next adventure. To launch herself upon it meant taking up the interrupted chain, going back to Rénine and giving him a pledge which, with his powers of suggestion, he would know how to turn to account.
Two days before the 5th of December, she was still in the same frame of mind. So she was on the morning of the 4th; but suddenly, without even having to contend against preliminary subterfuges, she ran out into the garden, cut three lengths of rush, plaited them as she used to do in her childhood and at twelve o'clock had herself driven to the station. She was uplifted by an eager curiosity. She was unable to resist all the amusing and novel sensations which the adventure, proposed by Rénine, promised her. It was really too tempting. The jet necklace, the toque with the autumn leaves, the old woman with the silver rosary: how could she resist their mysterious appeal and how could she refuse this opportunity of showing Rénine what she was capable of doing?
"And then, after all," she said to herself, laughing, "he's summoning me to Paris. Now eight o'clock is dangerous to me at a spot three hundred miles from Paris, in that old deserted Château de Halingre, but nowhere else. The only clock that can strike the threatening hour is down there, under lock and key, a prisoner!"
She reached Paris that evening. On the morning of the 5th she went out and bought a jet necklace, which she reduced to seventy-five beads, put on a blue gown and a toque with red leaves and, at four o'clock precisely, entered the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
Her heart was throbbing violently. This time she was alone; and how acutely she now felt the strength of that support which, from unreflecting fear rather than any reasonable motive, she had thrust aside! She looked around her, almost hoping to see him. But there was no one there … no one except an old lady in black, standing beside the holy water basin.
Hortense went up to her. The old lady, who held a silver rosary in her hands, offered her holy water and then began to count the beads of the necklace which Hortense gave her.
She whispered:
"Seventy-five. That's right. Come."
Without another word, she toddled along under the light of the street-lamps, crossed the Pont des Tournelles to the Ile Saint-Louis and went down an empty street leading to a cross-roads, where she stopped in front of an old house with wrought-iron balconies:
"Go in," she said.
And the old lady went away.
Hortense now saw a prosperous-looking shop which occupied almost the whole of the ground-floor and whose windows, blazing with electric light, displayed a huddled array of old furniture and antiquities. She stood there for a few seconds, gazing at it absently. A sign-board bore the words "The Mercury," together with the name of the owner of the shop, "Pancaldi." Higher up, on a projecting cornice which ran on a level with the first floor, a small niche sheltered a terra-cotta Mercury poised on one foot, with wings to his sandals and the caduceus in his hand, who, as Hortense noted, was leaning a little too far forward in the ardour of his flight and ought logically to have lost his balance and taken a header into the street.
"Now!" she said, under her breath.
She turned the handle of the door and walked in.
Despite the ringing of the bells actuated by the opening door, no one came to meet her. The shop seemed to be empty. However, at the extreme end there was a room at the back of the shop and after that another, both crammed with furniture and knick-knacks, many of which looked very valuable. Hortense followed a narrow gangway which twisted and turned between two walls built up of cupboards, cabinets and console-tables, went up two steps and found herself in the last room of all.
A man was sitting at a writing-desk and looking through some account-books. Without turning his head, he said:
"I am at your service, madam.... Please look round you...."
This room contained nothing but articles of a special character which gave it the appearance of some alchemist's laboratory in the middle ages: stuffed owls, skeletons, skulls, copper alembics, astrolabes and all around, hanging on the walls, amulets of every description, mainly hands of ivory or coral with two fingers pointing to ward off ill-luck.
"Are you wanting anything in particular, madam?" asked M. Pancaldi, closing his desk and rising from his chair.
"It's the man," thought Hortense.
He had in fact an uncommonly pasty complexion. A little forked beard, flecked with grey, lengthened his face, which was surmounted by a bald, pallid forehead, beneath which gleamed a pair of small, prominent, restless, shifty eyes.
Hortense, who had not removed her veil or cloak, replied:
"I want a clasp."
"They're in this show-case," he said, leading the way to the connecting room.
Hortense glanced over the glass case and said:
"No, no, … I don't see what I'm looking for. I don't want just any clasp, but a clasp which I lost out of a jewel-case some years ago and which I have to look for here."
She was astounded to see the commotion displayed on his features. His eyes became haggard.
"Here?… I don't think you are in the least likely.... What sort of clasp is it?…"
"A cornelian, mounted in gold filigree … of the 1830 period."
"I don't understand," he stammered. "Why do you come to me?"
She now removed her veil and laid aside her cloak.
He stepped back, as though terrified by the sight of her, and whispered:
"The blue gown!… The toque!… And–can I believe my eyes?–the jet necklace!…"
It was perhaps the whip-lash formed of three rushes that excited him most violently. He pointed his finger at it, began to stagger where he stood and ended by beating the air with his arms, like a drowning man, and fainting away in a chair.
Hortense did not move.
"Whatever farce he may play," Rénine had written, "have the courage to remain impassive."
Perhaps he was not playing a farce. Nevertheless she forced herself to be calm and indifferent.
This lasted for a minute or two, after which M. Pancaldi recovered from his swoon, wiped away the perspiration streaming down his forehead and, striving to control himself, resumed, in a trembling voice: