CHAPTER VI
THE DISCREET HOUSE AT ST. MANDÉ
IN A back room of the Villa Armande on the outskirts of Vincennes Woods, the charming old lady who had so briskly carried by assault M. de Goumay's book-loving mind was putting the finishing touch to her toilet.
The cosmetics on her table were of a kind that would have puzzled an Abigail, had Condesa Lucanor kept one. But in the solitary and discreet villa the only servant kept was an old woman of the general-utility order. The paint, the lip-salve, the pencils—which were now being applied with consummate skill—were of gray-white; subduing delicately the natural flush of cheek, the carmine of a small mouth fresh and firm; supplying the “crow's feet” which would not mark naturally, for many years to come, the corners of brilliant black eyes; tinging with ashes the natural brown of finely arched eyebrows. The lady brought the white bandeaux a little closer over temples and ears, shadowed this artistic sexagenarian tête under a fall of black lace, gazed at her glass critically and was satisfied.
A moment she stood in front of the window, deeply pensive. The church clock was striking the three-quarters. It meant nothing to her, except that soon now the guileless old man would make his appearance, and she was ready. A frown, however, suddenly hardened her face; she leaned forward, to make sure of what she saw.
A man was hurriedly coming up the path in the waste ground at the back of the discreet house. And, in spite of disguise—the long redingote closely buttoned up, the curly-winged Bolivar hat, the mustache, by nature so black and jaunty, now tinged with gray and drooping, all excellently suited to a person of official pursuits—she knew him.
“What an imprudence!” she said under her voice. “What an imprudence!”
Hastily she ran down and opened the door. He entered and without a word closed the door behind him:
“Has anything happened?” she asked rather breathlessly.
“Nothing but good,” he answered, taking her by the waist, about to kiss her lips. But he checked himself. “Your war-paint!” he said and instead kissed her on the nape of the neck. “Nothing but good,” he repeated, “nothing but what goes by program. Moloch's stroke is infallible. Properly spitted, the young bird. And the old bird?”
“The old bird,” she answered, “may alight any moment. But, Karl”
“Chut! Don't forget. Doktor Goertz.”
“Bah I” she went on impatiently “We are alone. I've sent the harridan to Paris on errands. But Karl, Karl, what brings you here? It seems to me absolute madness! You should be in England, mon cher. That's your part now. Any accident, any hitch to make you late on the day—and where should we be, all of us?”
She tapped her foot fretfully.
“Yes, I know. But still I felt bound to come. Too much depends on the last stroke. Do you know, ma toute belle, that this year's hunt after the millions has been a costly job. I am reduced to my last thousand francs or two. I felt I had to be here. You are clever, the cleverest of us all, perhaps. But still I am the one for the minute detail.”
He looked round the toilet-table.
“There!” he said, striding up to it. “These brushes and things—let them be discovered here after your vanishing today, and all the world knows that your age, like the youth of other women, was in the gallipot. And, instead of a nice feeble old lady, what has to be looked for is probably a young woman. Nay,” he added and his eyes kindled, “some fiery full-blooded, beautiful she-devil. But, no time for that now. You see how right I was to come. All that stuff should be burned. At any rate, in with it into your pockets. And now let me see your collation.” .
They went down again and into a front room. With the leader's eye he took in the display and approved. The napery, the glass, the silver, was of the right simplicity, tinged with elegance.”
“You have, I am glad to see, specially attended to the coffee. And this Liqueur des Iles, is it ready?” He looked at her smilingly.
“Not yet. Safer always to wait for the last moment—in case of contretemps.”
“So much the better,” he said. “I have had a new idea, a brilliant one. What more natural than that the old gentleman, so wrapped up in his son, should have a heart-attack when he learns—somewhere between one and two this day—what he will hear. Poison? Never! A heart-stroke—and natural enough, poor man! No, keep your stuff. This” he pulled out a small phial—“is chiefly digitalis, which M. Orfila vouches will stop a man's pulse within an hour or two.”
Coolly, carefully, he poured half the contents into the little decanter and corked the phial again.
“And the remainder,” he resumed, “to your own beautiful hands for the coffee! Two barrels, you see, lest one should miss fire; the old bird can't expect to escape both! And tonight, Ashtoreth, her own fair self once more, to Brussels. And Belphegor, for London. Moloch for the Hague, where Abaddon will meet him. By the way, at what time did Abaddon leave you?”
“ABADDON? Was he not with you?” She raised her brow, scenting danger.
“Has he not brought you my letter?”
She shook her head fiercely.
“Sacrament!” The baron stood a moment petrified. After a long pause, during which the brigand lovers looked fixedly into each other's eyes, “Laurette,” he said heavily, “something terrible has happened. What? I can't guess. But if Abaddon has not brought you my—that young cub was a deep one. And if so,” following his own thought, “if so, it may mean for us.”
The rumbling of wheels intruded into their cogitation. She made a bound to the window.
“There comes de Gournay,” she said and looked back at him. Then, with forced calmness, settling the laces round her young throat, “Are we going on with this?”
“Will you see it through?” he asked between his teeth.
“I will if you say yes, Karl,” she answered.
He gazed back at her, with widening eyes. Then the words exploded from him:
“Bei Gott, no. I'll not run your neck into it. If we are to come to grief, there's at least, as yet, nothing to connect you with the scheme, after all. Play this morning's game out. It has to be played out, were it but to avert suspicions. But no liqueur for that cursed ganache! Put it away! And nothing in the coffee. Send him off rejoicing with his books, that's all—I'll have you safe at any rate!”
The fiacre had stopped before the house.
“It is time for me to vanish the way I came. I can't help; I'm only a danger to you. Laurette, Laurette, play for your safety now! Put that liqueur away. Who knows? The game may not really be all lost. Even if we have to go halves with Gournay”
The bell rang. He leaped toward her, looked into her eyes a second and this time passionately kissed her on the lips. She listened pensively to the sound of his steps in the back passages. Then, upon a second summons of the bell, she went to open the front door. And from that moment the stream of Ashtoreth's life began to assume the ways of a torrent in spate.
The driver of the fiacre stood on the threshold, in his broad-brimmed white-glazed hat and his many-caped overcoat.
“This is the Villa Armande, hein, ma bourgeoise?” asked the man, in husky voice common to the profession.
“Yes.”
“It is here all right, bourgeois!” he cried over his shoulder.
The door of the fiacre opened. M. de Gournay came down; then he turned round to help out another passenger, whose face was half-hidden in bandages and who limped painfully.
“Good morning, Comtesse,” said the bibliophile with elaborate ease. “I am in good time, as you perceive. I trust you will not mind my bringing in this young gentleman, who, you see, has met with an accident. Allow me to enter,” he went on hastily, noticing the change that had swept over her face; “he is very feeble. I will explain. ”
She fell back a pace. He, still guiding his companion, brushed past her into the lobby. Instantly the driver closed the door, locked it and pocketed the key.
“You will explain, sir” she began haughtily, but with a panting breath.
“In a moment, madame. Is this the room?” pointing to a door through which could be seen the table, attractively spread with the awaiting déjeuner. “Sit down there—madame of course permits” he went on a little thickly. “Sit down, Mr. Ferrars.”
A cry rang into the room like the roar of a wounded panther.
“Ferrars! Did you say Ferrars?”
She had fallen back, almost crouching, against the wall, but the next instant she made a spring toward the bandaged man and was arrested, as it were, in midair by the driver's powerful arm.
“Holà!—Easy if you please, ma belle,” he said banteringly, holding her wrist in an inflexible grip. “Tout beau, Madame Ashtoreth!”
She had another gasp of rage. Swift and fierce in her movements as a fighting cat, with her free hand she lifted her skirt, revealing a vision of shapely young leg, and drew from her garter a small ivory-handled stiletto. The slender blue blade flashed a second loft—only to be seized in its flight by the man's bear-like paw and tossed into a corner of the room.
The fierce action had dragged aside the lace veil and, with it, the sedate white bandeaux. With complete deliberation he removed at one stroke the whole structure, baring thereby a head of short but vigorous brown hair, in strange contrast with the ghastly grayness of the face.
“This affair, you see,” he said, as now half-fainting she allowed herself to be pressed down into a seat, “has to be carried through roundly.”
So saying, he pulled the window open and from a boatswain's whistle threw into the air a piercing, undulating call. A moment later from the back of the house a door was heard, violently thrown open; then sounded footsteps, heavy, irregular, trampling, stumbling.
M. de Gournay, pale, trembling a little even—for men of generous temper are always affected to see violence dealt to a woman—stood mopping his forehead.
Mr. Ferrars, leaning forward in his seat, gazed on the scene with intense interest.
The soi-disant cab-driver had his back to the wall, facing the entrance, in a position to keep all present under his eye.
“In here,” he ordered.
THRUST forward by two men, who could be seen in the passage but remained outside, Baron von Hanstedt took a pace into the room. He was already manacled. His hair falling over his forehead, his coat torn and half-unbuttoned, testified to a furious struggle. His eyes, blood-rimmed like those of the vanquished wild boar, glared at the squat, broad-shouldered figure that now moved toward him. But he waited speechless. The driver removed his glazed hat.
“I am Vidocq,” he said, returning the glare steadily. “And I have got you safe, M. de Hanstedt.”
The baron made a dreadful attempt to smile.
“Are you indeed the great Vidocq of whom one hears so much these days? Well, M. Vidocq, you are making an ass of yourself for once. My name is Goertz.”
“Pretty name,” returned the policier, without an inflexion in his voice. “Perhaps not so pretty as others quite as handy—as Belphegor, for instance. But Hanstedt will do for me, today. Not to mention M. de Gournay here, no doubt Mr. Ferrars can identify”
From purple the baron grew livid. His wild eyes roamed the room, and fell upon the seated figure with the bandaged head.
“The cub!” he exclaimed in a toneless voice and brought his despairing look round upon the woman, who, with lids half-closed—Ups paler than their disguising salve—still lay where she had been thrown.
“Commend me to that for a fair giveaway!” said Vidocq. “We may say you've done for yourself—Belphegor. Your case is drawn clear.” Then, as if struck by a new idea, he cast his glance over the tempting array on the table and brought it meditatively to rest on the liqueur flagon. “I think,” he pursued, “you realize it yourself. You're not looking quite so well. Emotion—one understands that. You want a rouser. Try some of this.”
As he spoke he half-filled a tumbler with the amber liquid and sniffed at it. Then he handed the glass to the captive, who took it mechanically between his fettered hands.
“It smells delicious,” said Vidocq, keenly attentive to the man's face.
For a spell the baron remained stock-still, his eyes on the glass, lost in some dreadful musing. He raised them slowly and rested them in turns, with a renewal of their first fierceness, on each of the three men. But when they came upon the woman, all their hardness vanished; there was nought left in them but a passionate, immeasureable regret.
“I see,” went on Vidocq in his matter-of-fact voice. “I quite understand. You have your doubts about the quality of Madame Ashtoreth's liqueurs. Well, well, M. Le Professeur Orfila, who is a savant, must look into it.”
He stretched an arm to take back the glass. But before the deed could be prevented, Belphegor had raised his joined hands to his mouth, and in quick gulps had swallowed the draft.
“Karl—Karl!” Ashtoreth sprang to her feet, but her scream ended in a wail. She swayed and fell back, covering her face with her hands.
Whatever length of time a glass or two of liqueur might have required for action, the effect of this outrageous dose was fulgurating. The baron, dropping the tumbler, gave a gasp. Frantically endeavoring to press his fettered hands to his temples, he suddenly collapsed—a huddled heap, shaken now and again by a writhing convulsion.
Ferrars had jumped up. M. de Gournay, leaning forward over the back of a chair, stared, frozen with horror.
“There,” he murmured to himself, “but for the mercy of God, is the case that was meant to be mine.”
Vidocq, with his great bushy brows knitted, was pursing his Ups. His whole air was one of overwhelming vexation:
“You've made a slip there, Vidocq, my friend,” he muttered at last. “Yes, a bad slip! Yet who the devil would ever have believed that he—well, Belphegor has but cheated the galleys, if not the scaffold.”
The dying man's sterterous breathing had ceased. A heavy stillness reigned in the room. After a few seconds a new sound from outside broke the spell—the sound of hurried wheels abruptly checked—of hurried footsteps. Then the bell again and instantly, as the door opened, an eager voice:
“M. Gournay! Is M. de Gournay here?”
A man in groom's livery darted into the room, stumbling over the body on the floor.
“Ah, monsieur, monsieur! Quick! Our poor young master”
He paused, casting a scared look at the scene; then, dumbly he held out a slip of paper. M. de Gournay had grown ashen white.
“What is it? Ah, God! It is André—it's my son! What is it?”
He snatched the paper from the messenger, tried to read, passed his hand over his' dazed eyes and read again. A sighing groan, heart-rending, rose from his throat. He threw his arms above his head and Vidocq was only just in time to catch him as he fell forward.
“A fit—that's what it is. A coup de sang, poor gentleman,” said the policier, with more feeling than might be expected from one of that kidney. “I can guess. Well, what has happened?” he went on, turning half-round to look up at the groom.
“A duel—this morning—with one of those bandits of demi-solde Bonapartists. Ah, my poor young master!”
Vidocq drew the note from the unconscious man's fingers and read out—
“Come quickly, if you would find our André still alive.”
There was a moment's silence, and then he said:
“So—that was the scheme, a duel with a bretteur! We were just in time, here—but too late for the son.” Then, resuming command, “Mr. Ferrars, there is still work for me here, and then I must devote myself to this pretended half-pay, the spadassin. You, my boy,” he said to the groom, “must stop here. Mr. Ferrars will take this worthy gentleman back to his home. It's a stroke, a bad stroke, I fear,” he added, after looking at M. de Gournay's face. “You may congratulate yourself, sir, on a rather miraculous escape from the crew of Invisibles.”