Kitabı oku: «The Golden Triangle: The Return of Arsène Lupin», sayfa 6
CHAPTER VI
NINETEEN MINUTES PAST SEVEN
Patrice, in his bedroom at the home, was unable to sleep that night. He had a continual waking sensation of being oppressed and hunted down, as though he were suffering the terrors of some monstrous nightmare. He had an impression that the frantic series of events in which he was playing the combined parts of a bewildered spectator and a helpless actor would never cease so long as he tried to rest; that, on the contrary, they would rage with greater violence and intensity. The leave-taking of the husband and wife did not put an end, even momentarily, to the dangers incurred by Coralie. Fresh perils arose on every side; and Patrice Belval confessed himself incapable of foreseeing and still more of allaying them.
After lying awake for two hours, he switched on his electric light and began hurriedly to write down the story of the past twelve hours. He hoped in this way to some small extent to unravel the tangled knot.
At six o'clock he went and roused Ya-Bon and brought him back with him. Then, standing in front of the astonished negro, he crossed his arms and exclaimed:
"So you consider that your job is over! While I lie tossing about in the dark, my lord sleeps and all's well! My dear man, you have a jolly elastic conscience."
The word elastic amused the Senegalese mightily. His mouth opened wider than ever; and he gave a grunt of enjoyment.
"That'll do, that'll do," said the captain. "There's no getting a word in, once you start talking. Here, take a chair, read this report and give me your reasoned opinion. What? You don't know how to read? Well, upon my word! What was the good, then, of wearing out the seat of your trousers on the benches of the Senegal schools and colleges? A queer education, I must say!"
He heaved a sigh, and, snatching the manuscript, said:
"Listen, reflect, argue, deduct and conclude. This is how the matter briefly stands. First, we have one Essarès Bey, a banker, rich as Crœsus, and the lowest of rapscallions, who betrays at one and the same time France, Egypt, England, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece.. as is proved by the fact that his accomplices roast his feet for him. Thereupon he kills one of them and gets rid of four with the aid of as many millions, which millions he orders another accomplice to get back for him before five minutes are passed. And all these bright spirits will duck underground at eleven o'clock this morning, for at twelve o'clock the police propose to enter on the scene. Good."
Patrice Belval paused to take breath and continued:
"Secondly, Little Mother Coralie – upon my word, I can't say why – is married to Rapscallion Bey. She hates him and wants to kill him. He loves her and wants to kill her. There is also a colonel who loves her and for that reason loses his life and a certain Mustapha, who tries to kidnap her on the colonel's account and also loses his life for that reason, strangled by a Senegalese. Lastly, there is a French captain, a dot-and-carry-one, who likewise loves her, but whom she avoids because she is married to a man whom she abhors. And with this captain, in a previous incarnation, she has halved an amethyst bead. Add to all this, by way of accessories, a rusty key, a red silk bowstring, a dog choked to death and a grate filled with red coals. And, if you dare to understand a single word of my explanation, I'll catch you a whack with my wooden leg, for I don't understand it a little bit and I'm your captain."
Ya-Bon laughed all over his mouth and all over the gaping scar that cut one of his cheeks in two. As ordered by his captain, he understood nothing of the business and very little of what Patrice had said; but he always quivered with delight when Patrice addressed him in that gruff tone.
"That's enough," said the captain. "It's my turn now to argue, deduct and conclude."
He leant against the mantelpiece, with his two elbows on the marble shelf and his head tight-pressed between his hands. His merriment, which sprang from temperamental lightness of heart, was this time only a surface merriment. Deep down within himself he did nothing but think of Coralie with sorrowful apprehension. What could he do to protect her? A number of plans occurred to him: which was he to choose? Should he hunt through the numbers in the telephone-book till he hit upon the whereabouts of that Grégoire, with whom Bournef and his companions had taken refuge? Should he inform the police? Should he return to the Rue Raynouard? He did not know. Yes, he was capable of acting, if the act to be performed consisted in flinging himself into the conflict with furious ardor. But to prepare the action, to divine the obstacles, to rend the darkness, and, as he said, to see the invisible and grasp the intangible, that was beyond his powers.
He turned suddenly to Ya-Bon, who was standing depressed by his silence:
"What's the matter with you, putting on that lugubrious air? Of course it's you that throw a gloom over me! You always look at the black side of things.. like a nigger!.. Be off."
Ya-Bon was going away discomfited, when some one tapped at the door and a voice said:
"Captain Belval, you're wanted on the telephone."
Patrice hurried out. Who on earth could be telephoning to him so early in the morning?
"Who is it?" he asked the nurse.
"I don't know, captain… It's a man's voice; he seemed to want you urgently. The bell had been ringing some time. I was downstairs, in the kitchen.."
Before Patrice's eyes there rose a vision of the telephone in the Rue Raynouard, in the big room at the Essarès' house. He could not help wondering if there was anything to connect the two incidents.
He went down one flight of stairs and along a passage. The telephone was through a small waiting-room, in a room that had been turned into a linen-closet. He closed the door behind him.
"Hullo! Captain Belval speaking. What is it?"
A voice, a man's voice which he did not know, replied in breathless, panting tones:
"Ah!.. Captain Belval!.. It's you!.. Look here.. but I'm almost afraid that it's too late… I don't know if I shall have time to finish… Did you get the key and the letter?."
"Who are you?" asked Patrice.
"Did you get the key and the letter?" the voice insisted.
"The key, yes," Patrice replied, "but not the letter."
"Not the letter? But this is terrible! Then you don't know."
A hoarse cry struck Patrice's ear and the next thing he caught was incoherent sounds at the other end of the wire, the noise of an altercation. Then the voice seemed to glue itself to the instrument and he distinctly heard it gasping:
"Too late!.. Patrice.. is that you?.. Listen, the amethyst pendant.. yes, I have it on me… The pendant… Ah, it's too late!.. I should so much have liked to.. Patrice… Coralie.."
Then again a loud cry, a heart-rending cry, and confused sounds growing more distant, in which he seemed to distinguish:
"Help!.. Help!."
These grew fainter and fainter. Silence followed. And suddenly there was a little click. The murderer had hung up the receiver.
All this had not taken twenty seconds. But, when Patrice wanted to replace the telephone, his fingers were gripping it so hard that it needed an effort to relax them.
He stood utterly dumfounded. His eyes had fastened on a large clock which he saw, through the window, on one of the buildings in the yard, marking nineteen minutes past seven; and he mechanically repeated these figures, attributing a documentary value to them. Then he asked himself – so unreal did the scene appear to him – if all this was true and if the crime had not been penetrated within himself, in the depths of his aching heart. But the shouting still echoed in his ears; and suddenly he took up the receiver again, like one clinging desperately to some undefined hope:
"Hullo!" he cried. "Exchange!.. Who was it rang me up just now?.. Are you there? Did you hear the cries?.. Are you there?.. Are you there?."
There was no reply. He lost his temper, insulted the exchange, left the linen-closet, met Ya-Bon and pushed him about:
"Get out of this! It's your fault. Of course you ought to have stayed and looked after Coralie. Be off there now and hold yourself at my disposal. I'm going to inform the police. If you hadn't prevented me, it would have been done long ago and we shouldn't be in this predicament. Off you go!"
He held him back:
"No, don't stir. Your plan's ridiculous. Stay here. Oh, not here in my pocket! You're too impetuous for me, my lad!"
He drove him out and returned to the linen-closet, striding up and down and betraying his excitement in irritable gestures and angry words. Nevertheless, in the midst of his confusion, one idea gradually came to light, which was that, after all, he had no proof that the crime which he suspected had happened at the house in the Rue Raynouard. He must not allow himself to be obsessed by the facts that lingered in his memory to the point of always seeing the same vision in the same tragic setting. No doubt the drama was being continued, as he had felt that it would be, but perhaps elsewhere and far away from Coralie.
And this first thought led to another: why not investigate matters at once?
"Yes, why not?" he asked himself. "Before bothering the police, discovering the number of the person who rang me up and thus working back to the start, a process which it will be time enough to employ later, why shouldn't I telephone to the Rue Raynouard at once, on any pretext and in anybody's name? I shall then have a chance of knowing what to think.."
Patrice felt that this measure did not amount to much. Suppose that no one answered, would that prove that the murder had been committed in the house, or merely that no one was yet about? Nevertheless, the need to do something decided him. He looked up Essarès Bey's number in the telephone-directory and resolutely rang up the exchange.
The strain of waiting was almost more than he could bear. And then he was conscious of a thrill which vibrated through him from head to foot. He was connected; and some one at the other end was answering the call.
"Hullo!" he said.
"Hullo!" said a voice. "Who are you?"
It was the voice of Essarès Bey.
Although this was only natural, since at that moment Essarès must be getting his papers ready and preparing his flight, Patrice was so much taken aback that he did not know what to say and spoke the first words that came into his head:
"Is that Essarès Bey?"
"Yes. Who are you?"
"I'm one of the wounded at the hospital, now under treatment at the home.."
"Captain Belval, perhaps?"
Patrice was absolutely amazed. So Coralie's husband knew him by name? He stammered:
"Yes.. Captain Belval."
"What a lucky thing!" cried Essarès Bey, in a tone of delight. "I rang you up a moment ago, at the home, Captain Belval, to ask."
"Oh, it was you!" interrupted Patrice, whose astonishment knew no bounds.
"Yes, I wanted to know at what time I could speak to Captain Belval in order to thank him."
"It was you!.. It was you!." Patrice repeated, more and more thunderstruck.
Essarès' intonation denoted a certain surprise.
"Yes, wasn't it a curious coincidence?" he said. "Unfortunately, I was cut off, or rather my call was interrupted by somebody else."
"Then you heard?"
"What, Captain Belval?"
"Cries."
"Cries?"
"At least, so it seemed to me; but the connection was very indistinct."
"All that I heard was somebody asking for you, somebody who was in a great hurry; and, as I was not, I hung up the telephone and postponed the pleasure of thanking you."
"Of thanking me?"
"Yes, I have heard how my wife was assaulted last night and how you came to her rescue. And I am anxious to see you and express my gratitude. Shall we make an appointment? Could we meet at the hospital, for instance, at three o'clock this afternoon?"
Patrice made no reply. The audacity of this man, threatened with arrest and preparing for flight, baffled him. At the same time, he was wondering what Essarès' real object had been in telephoning to him without being in any way obliged to. But Belval's silence in no way troubled the banker, who continued his civilities and ended the inscrutable conversation with a monologue in which he replied with the greatest ease to questions which he kept putting to himself.
In spite of everything, Patrice felt more comfortable. He went back to his room, lay down on his bed and slept for two hours. Then he sent for Ya-Bon.
"This time," he said, "try to control your nerves and not to lose your head as you did just now. You were absurd. But don't let's talk about it. Have you had your breakfast? No? No more have I. Have you seen the doctor? No? No more have I. And the surgeon has just promised to take off this beastly bandage. You can imagine how pleased I am. A wooden leg is all very well; but a head wrapped up in lint, for a lover, never! Get on, look sharp. When we're ready, we'll start for the hospital. Little Mother Coralie can't forbid me to see her there!"
Patrice was as happy as a schoolboy. As he said to Ya-Bon an hour later, on their way to the Porte-Maillot, the clouds were beginning to roll by:
"Yes, Ya-Bon, yes, they are. And this is where we stand. To begin with, Coralie is not in danger. As I hoped, the battle is being fought far away from her, among the accomplices no doubt, over their millions. As for the unfortunate man who rang me up and whose dying cries I overheard, he was obviously some unknown friend, for he addressed me familiarly and called me by my Christian name. It was certainly he who sent me the key of the garden. Unfortunately, the letter that came with the key went astray. In the end, he felt constrained to tell me everything. Just at that moment he was attacked. By whom, you ask. Probably by one of the accomplices, who was frightened of his revelations. There you are, Ya-Bon. It's all as clear as noonday. For that matter, the truth may just as easily be the exact opposite of what I suggest. But I don't care. The great thing is to take one's stand upon a theory, true or false. Besides, if mine is false, I reserve the right to shift the responsibility on you. So you know what you're in for.."
At the Porte-Maillot they took a cab and it occurred to Patrice to drive round by the Rue Raynouard. At the junction of this street with the Rue de Passy, they saw Coralie leaving the Rue Raynouard, accompanied by old Siméon.
She had hailed a taxi and stepped inside. Siméon sat down by the driver. They went to the hospital in the Champs-Élysées, with Patrice following. It was eleven o'clock when they arrived.
"All's well," said Patrice. "While her husband is running away, she refuses to make any change in her daily life."
He and Ya-Bon lunched in the neighborhood, strolled along the avenue, without losing sight of the hospital, and called there at half-past one.
Patrice at once saw old Siméon, sitting at the end of a covered yard where the soldiers used to meet. His head was half wrapped up in the usual comforter; and, with his big yellow spectacles on his nose, he sat smoking his pipe on the chair which he always occupied.
As for Coralie, she was in one of the rooms allotted to her on the first floor, seated by the bedside of a patient whose hand she held between her own. The man was asleep.
Coralie appeared to Patrice to be very tired. The dark rings round her eyes and the unusual pallor of her cheeks bore witness to her fatigue.
"Poor child!" he thought. "All those blackguards will be the death of you."
He now understood, when he remembered the scenes of the night before, why Coralie kept her private life secret and endeavored, at least to the little world of the hospital, to be merely the kind sister whom people call by her Christian name. Suspecting the web of crime with which she was surrounded, she dropped her husband's name and told nobody where she lived. And so well was she protected by the defenses set up by her modesty and determination that Patrice dared not go to her and stood rooted to the threshold.
"Yet surely," he said to himself, as he looked at Coralie without being seen by her, "I'm not going to send her in my card!"
He was making up his mind to enter, when a woman who had come up the stairs, talking loudly as she went, called out:
"Where is madame?.. M. Siméon, she must come at once!"
Old Siméon, who had climbed the stairs with her, pointed to where Coralie sat at the far end of the room; and the woman rushed in. She said a few words to Coralie, who seemed upset and at once, ran to the door, passing in front of Patrice, and down the stairs, followed by Siméon and the woman.
"I've got a taxi, ma'am," stammered the woman, all out of breath. "I had the luck to find one when I left the house and I kept it. We must be quick, ma'am… The commissary of police told me to."
Patrice, who was downstairs by this time, heard nothing more; but the last words decided him. He seized hold of Ya-Bon as he passed; and the two of them leapt into a cab, telling the driver to follow Coralie's taxi.
"There's news, Ya-Bon, there's news!" said Patrice. "The plot is thickening. The woman is obviously one of the Essarès' servants and she has come for her mistress by the commissary's orders. Therefore the colonel's disclosures are having their effect. House searched; magistrate's inquest; every sort of worry for Little Mother Coralie; and you have the cheek to advise me to be careful! You imagine that I would leave her to her own devices at such a moment! What a mean nature you must have, my poor Ya-Bon!"
An idea occurred to him; and he exclaimed:
"Heavens! I hope that ruffian of an Essarès hasn't allowed himself to be caught! That would be a disaster! But he was far too sure of himself. I expect he's been trifling away his time.."
All through the drive this fear excited Captain Belval and removed his last scruples. In the end his certainty was absolute. Nothing short of Essarès' arrest could have produced the servant's attitude of panic or Coralie's precipitate departure. Under these conditions, how could he hesitate to interfere in a matter in which his revelations would enlighten the police? All the more so as, by revealing less or more, according to circumstances, he could make his evidence subservient to Coralie's interests.
The two cabs pulled up almost simultaneously outside the Essarès' house, where a car was already standing. Coralie alighted and disappeared through the carriage-gate. The maid and Siméon also crossed the pavement.
"Come along," said Patrice to the Senegalese.
The front-door was ajar and Patrice entered. In the big hall were two policemen on duty. Patrice acknowledged their presence with a hurried movement of his hand and passed them with the air of a man who belonged to the house and whose importance was so great that nothing done without him could be of any use.
The sound of his footsteps echoing on the flags reminded him of the flight of Bournef and his accomplices. He was on the right road. Moreover, there was a drawing-room on the left, the room, communicating with the library, to which the accomplices had carried the colonel's body. Voices came from the library. He walked across the drawing-room.
At that moment he heard Coralie exclaim in accents of terror:
"Oh, my God, it can't be!."
Two other policemen barred the doorway.
"I am a relation of Mme. Essarès'," he said, "her only relation.."
"We have our orders, captain."
"I know, of course. Be sure and let no one in! Ya-Bon, stay here."
And he went in.
But, in the immense room, a group of six or seven gentlemen, no doubt commissaries of police and magistrates, stood in his way, bending over something which he was unable to distinguish. From amidst this group Coralie suddenly appeared and came towards him, tottering and wringing her hands. The housemaid took her round the waist and pressed her into a chair.
"What's the matter?" asked Patrice.
"Madame is feeling faint," replied the woman, still quite distraught. "Oh, I'm nearly off my head!"
"But why? What's the reason?"
"It's the master.. just think!.. Such a sight!.. It gave me a turn, too."
"What sight?"
One of the gentlemen left the group and approached:
"Is Mme. Essarès ill?"
"It's nothing," said the maid. "A fainting-fit… She is liable to these attacks."
"Take her away as soon as she can walk. We shall not need her any longer."
And, addressing Patrice Belval with a questioning air:
"Captain?."
Patrice pretended not to understand:
"Yes, sir," he said, "we will take Mme. Essarès away. Her presence, as you say, is unnecessary. Only I must first."
He moved aside to avoid his interlocutor, and, perceiving that the group of magistrates had opened out a little, stepped forward. What he now saw explained Coralie's fainting-fit and the servant's agitation. He himself felt his flesh creep at a spectacle which was infinitely more horrible than that of the evening before.
On the floor, near the fireplace, almost at the place where he had undergone his torture, Essarès Bey lay upon his back. He was wearing the same clothes as on the previous day: a brown-velvet smoking-suit with a braided jacket. His head and shoulders had been covered with a napkin. But one of the men standing around, a divisional surgeon no doubt, was holding up the napkin with one hand and pointing to the dead man's face with the other, while he offered an explanation in a low voice.
And that face.. but it was hardly the word for the unspeakable mass of flesh, part of which seemed to be charred while the other part formed no more than a bloodstained pulp, mixed with bits of bone and skin, hairs and a broken eye-ball.
"Oh," Patrice blurted out, "how horrible! He was killed and fell with his head right in the fire. That's how they found him, I suppose?"
The man who had already spoken to him and who appeared to be the most important figure present came up to him once more:
"May I ask who you are?" he demanded.
"Captain Belval, sir, a friend of Mme. Essarès, one of the wounded officers whose lives she has helped to save."
"That may be, sir," replied the important figure, "but you can't stay here. Nobody must stay here, for that matter. Monsieur le commissaire, please order every one to leave the room, except the doctor, and have the door guarded. Let no one enter on any pretext whatever.."
"Sir," Patrice insisted, "I have some very serious information to communicate."
"I shall be pleased to receive it, captain, but later on. You must excuse me now."
