The Eight Strokes of the Clock Read online

  “Mere bluff.”

  “Well, upon my word,” growled the bewildered inspector, “you’re a cool customer!”

  “Would you have taken action without my bluff?”

  “No.”

  “Then what more do you want?”

  Rénine stooped to stir the ashes. But there was nothing left, not even those remnants of stiff paper which still retain their shape.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s queer, all the same! How the deuce did he manage to set the thing alight?”

  He stood up, looking attentively about him. Hortense had a feeling that he was making his supreme effort and that, after this last struggle in the dark, he would either have devised his plan of victory or admit that he was beaten.

  Faltering with anxiety, she asked:

  “It’s all up, isn’t it?”

  “No, no,” he said, thoughtfully, “it’s not all up. It was, a few seconds ago. But now there is a gleam of light … and one that gives me hope.”

  “God grant that it may be justified!”

  “We must go slowly,” he said. “It is only an attempt, but a fine, a very fine attempt, and it may succeed.”

  He was silent for a moment; then, with an amused smile and a click of the tongue, he said:

  “An infernally clever fellow, that Dutreuil! His trick of burning the notes: what a fertile imagination! And what coolness! A pretty dance the beggar has led me! He’s a master!”

  He fetched a broom from the kitchen and swept a part of the ashes into the next room, returning with a hatbox of the same size and appearance as the one which had been burnt. After crumpling the tissue paper with which it was filled, he placed the hatbox on the little table and set fire to it with a match.

  It burst into flames, which he extinguished when they had consumed half the cardboard and nearly all the paper. Then he took from an inner pocket of his waistcoat a bundle of banknotes and selected six, which he burnt almost completely, arranging the remains and hiding the rest of the notes at the bottom of the box, among the ashes and the blackened bits of paper:

  “M. Morisseau,” he said, when he had done, “I am asking for your assistance for the last time. Go and fetch Dutreuil. Tell him just this: ‘You are unmasked. The notes did not catch fire. Come with me.’ And bring him up here.”

  Despite his hesitation and his fear of exceeding his instructions from the head of the detective service, the chief inspector was powerless to throw off the ascendancy which Rénine had acquired over him. He left the room.

  Rénine turned to Hortense:

  “Do you understand my plan of battle?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but it’s a dangerous experiment. Do you think that Dutreuil will fall into the trap?”

  “Everything depends on the state of his nerves and the degree of demoralization to which he is reduced. A surprise attack may very well do for him.”

  “Nevertheless, suppose he recognizes by some sign that the box has been changed?”

  “Oh, of course, he has a few chances in his favour! The fellow is much more cunning than I thought and quite capable of wriggling out of the trap. On the other hand, however, how uneasy he must be! How the blood must be buzzing in his ears and obscuring his sight! No, I don’t think that he will avoid the trap … He will give in … He will give in …”

  They exchanged no more words. Rénine did not move. Hortense was stirred to the very depths of her being. The life of an innocent man hung trembling in the balance. An error of judgment, a little bad luck … and, twelve hours later, Jacques Aubrieux would be put to death. And together with a horrible anguish she experienced, in spite of all, a feeling of eager curiosity. What was Prince Rénine going to do? What would be the outcome of the experiment on which he was venturing? What resistance would Gaston Dutreuil offer? She lived through one of those minutes of superhuman tension in which life becomes intensified until it reaches its utmost value.

  They heard footsteps on the stairs, the footsteps of men in a hurry. The sound drew nearer. They were reaching the top floor.

  Hortense looked at her companion. He had stood up and was listening, his features already transfigured by action. The footsteps were now echoing in the passage. Then, suddenly, he ran to the door and cried:

  “Quick! Let’s make an end of it!”

  Two or three detectives and a couple of waiters entered. He caught hold of Dutreuil in the midst of the detectives and pulled him by the arm, gaily exclaiming:

  “Well done, old man! That trick of yours with the table and the water-bottle was really splendid! A masterpiece, on my word! Only, it didn’t come off!”

  “What do you mean? What’s the matter?” mumbled Gaston Dutreuil, staggering.

  “What I say: the fire burnt only half the tissue paper and the hatbox; and, though some of the banknotes were destroyed, like the tissue paper, the others are there, at the bottom … You understand? The long-sought notes, the great proof of the murder: they’re there, where you hid them … As chance would have it, they’ve escaped burning … Here, look: there are the numbers; you can check them … Oh, you’re done for, done for, my beauty!”

  The young man drew himself up stiffly. His eyelids quivered. He did not accept Rénine’s invitation to look; he examined neither the hatbox nor the banknotes. From the first moment, without taking the time to reflect and before his instinct could warn him, he believed what he was told and collapsed heavily into a chair, weeping.

  The surprise attack, to use Rénine’s expression, had succeeded. On seeing all his plans baffled and the enemy master of his secrets, the wretched man had neither the strength nor the perspicacity necessary to defend himself. He threw up the sponge.

  Rénine gave him no time to breathe:

  “Capital! You’re saving your head, and that’s all, my good youth! Write down your confession and get it off your chest. Here’s a fountain pen … The luck has been against you, I admit. It was devilishly well thought out, your trick of the last moment. You had the banknotes, which were in your way and which you wanted to destroy. Nothing simpler. You take a big, round-bellied water bottle and stand it on the windowsill. It acts as a burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun on the cardboard and tissue paper, all nicely prepared. Ten minutes later, it bursts into flames. A splendid idea! And, like all great discoveries, it came quite by chance, what? It reminds one of Newton’s apple … One day, the sun, passing through the water in that bottle, must have set fire to a scrap of cotton or the head of a match; and, as you had the sun at your disposal just now, you said to yourself, ‘Now’s the time,’ and stood the bottle in the right position. My congratulations, Gaston! … Look, here’s a sheet of paper. Write down: ‘It was I who murdered M. Guillaume.’ Write, I tell you!”

  Leaning over the young man, with all his implacable force of will, he compelled him to write, guiding his hand and dictating the sentences. Dutreuil, exhausted, at the end of his strength, wrote as he was told.

  “Here’s the confession, Mr. Chief Inspector,” said Rénine. “You will be good enough to take it to M. Dudouis. These gentlemen,” turning to the waiters, from the restaurant, “will, I am sure, consent to serve as witnesses.”

  And, seeing that Dutreuil, overwhelmed by what had happened, did not move, he gave him a shake:

  “Hi, you, look alive! Now that you’ve been fool enough to confess, make an end of the job, my gentle idiot!”

  The others watched him, standing in front of him.

  “Obviously,” Rénine continued, “you’re only a simpleton. The hatbox was fairly burnt to ashes; so were the notes. That hatbox, my dear fellow, is a different one, and those notes belong to me. I even burnt six of them to make you swallow the stunt. And you couldn’t make out what had happened. What an owl you must be! To furnish me with evidence at the last moment, when I hadn’t a single proof of my own! And such evidence! A written confession! Written before witnesses! … Look here, my man, if they do cut off your head—a
s I sincerely hope they will—upon my word, you’ll have jolly well deserved it! Good-bye, Dutreuil!”

  Downstairs, in the street, Rénine asked Hortense Daniel to take the car, go to Madeleine Aubrieux and tell her what had happened.

  “And you?” asked Hortense.

  “I have a lot to do … urgent appointments …”

  “And you deny yourself the pleasure of bringing the good news?”

  “It’s one of the pleasures that pall upon one. The only pleasure that never flags is that of the fight itself. Afterwards, things cease to be interesting.”

  She took his hand and for a moment held it in both her own. She would have liked to express all her admiration to that strange man, who seemed to do good as a sort of game and who did it with something like genius. But she was unable to speak. All these rapid incidents had upset her. Emotion constricted her throat and brought the tears to her eyes.

  Rénine bowed his head, saying:

  “Thank you. I have my reward.”

  III. THE CASE OF JEAN LOUIS

  “Monsieur,” continued the young girl, addressing Serge Rénine, “it was while I was spending the Easter holidays at Nice with my father that I made the acquaintance of Jean Louis d’Imbleval …”

  Rénine interrupted her:

  “Excuse me, mademoiselle, but just now you spoke of this young man as Jean Louis Vaurois.”

  “That’s his name also,” she said.

  “Has he two names then?”

  “I don’t know … I don’t know anything about it,” she said, with some embarrassment, “and that is why, by Hortense’s advice, I came to ask for your help.”

  This conversation was taking place in Rénine’s flat on the Boulevard Haussmann, to which Hortense had brought her friend Geneviève Aymard, a slender, pretty little creature with a face overshadowed by an expression of the greatest melancholy.

  “Rénine will be successful, take my word for it, Geneviève. You will, Rénine, won’t you?”

  “Please tell me the rest of the story, mademoiselle,” he said.

  Geneviève continued:

  “I was already engaged at the time to a man whom I loathe and detest. My father was trying to force me to marry him and is still trying to do so. Jean Louis and I felt the keenest sympathy for each other, a sympathy that soon developed into a profound and passionate affection, which, I can assure you, was equally sincere on both sides. On my return to Paris, Jean Louis, who lives in the country with his mother and his aunt, took rooms in our part of the town; and, as I am allowed to go out by myself, we used to see each other daily. I need not tell you that we were engaged to be married. I told my father so. And this is what he said: ‘I don’t particularly like the fellow. But, whether it’s he or another, what I want is that you should get married. So let him come and ask for your hand. If not, you must do as I say.’ In the middle of June, Jean Louis went home to arrange matters with his mother and aunt. I received some passionate letters, and then just these few words:

  ‘There are too many obstacles in the way of our happiness. I give up. I am mad with despair. I love you more than ever. Good-bye and forgive me.’

  “Since then, I have received nothing: no reply to my letters and telegrams.”

  “Perhaps he has fallen in love with somebody else?” asked Rénine. “Or there may be some old connection which he is unable to shake off.”

  Geneviève shook her head:

  “Monsieur, believe me, if our engagement had been broken off for an ordinary reason, I should not have allowed Hortense to trouble you. But it is something quite different, I am absolutely convinced. There’s a mystery in Jean Louis’ life, or rather an endless number of mysteries which hamper and pursue him. I never saw such distress in a human face; and, from the first moment of our meeting, I was conscious in him of a grief and melancholy which have always persisted, even at times when he was giving himself to our love with the greatest confidence.”

  “But your impression must have been confirmed by minor details, by things which happened to strike you as peculiar?”

  “I don’t quite know what to say.”

  “These two names, for instance?”

  “Yes, there was certainly that.”

  “By what name did he introduce himself to you?”

  “Jean Louis d’Imbleval.”

  “But Jean Louis Vaurois?”

  “That’s what my father calls him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that was how he was introduced to my father, in Nice, by a gentleman who knew him. Besides, he carries visiting cards which describe him under either name.”

  “Have you never questioned him on this point?”

  “Yes, I have, twice. The first time, he said that his aunt’s name was Vaurois and his mother’s d’Imbleval.”

  “And the second time?”

  “He told me the contrary: he spoke of his mother as Vaurois and of his aunt as d’Imbleval. I pointed this out. He coloured up, and I thought it better not to question him any further.”

  “Does he live far from Paris?”

  “Right down in Brittany: at the Manoir d’Elseven, five miles from Carhaix.”

  Rénine rose and asked the girl, seriously:

  “Are you quite certain that he loves you, mademoiselle?”

  “I am certain of it, and I know, too, that he represents all my life and all my happiness. He alone can save me. If he can’t, then I shall be married in a week’s time to a man whom I hate. I have promised my father, and the banns have been published.”

  “We shall leave for Carhaix, Madame Daniel and I, this evening,” said Rénine.

  That evening he and Hortense took the train for Brittany. They reached Carhaix at ten o’clock in the morning; and, after lunch, at half past twelve o’clock, they stepped into a car borrowed from a leading resident of the district.

  “You’re looking a little pale, my dear,” said Rénine, with a laugh, as they alighted by the gate of the garden at Elseven.

  “I’m very fond of Geneviève,” she said. “She’s the only friend I have. And I’m feeling frightened.”

  He called her attention to the fact that the central gate was flanked by two wickets bearing the names of Madame d’Imbleval and Madame Vaurois respectively. Each of these wickets opened on a narrow path which ran among the shrubberies of box and aucuba to the left and right of the main avenue. The avenue itself led to an old manor house, long, low and picturesque, but provided with two clumsily built, ugly wings, each in a different style of architecture and each forming the destination of one of the side paths. Madame d’Imbleval evidently lived on the left and Madame Vaurois on the right.

  Hortense and Rénine listened. Shrill, hasty voices were disputing inside the house. The sound came through one of the windows of the ground floor, which was level with the garden and covered throughout its length with red creepers and white roses.

  “We can’t go any farther,” said Hortense. “It would be indiscreet.”

  “All the more reason,” whispered Rénine. “Look here: if we walk straight ahead, we shan’t be seen by the people who are quarrelling.”

  The sounds of conflict were by no means abating; and, when they reached the window next to the front door, through the roses and creepers they could both see and hear two old ladies shrieking at the tops of their voices and shaking their fists at each other.

  The women were standing in the foreground, in a large dining room where the table was not yet cleared; and at the farther side of the table sat a young man, doubtless Jean Louis himself, smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper, without appearing to trouble about the two old harridans.

  One of these, a thin, tall woman, was wearing a purple silk dress, and her hair was dressed in a mass of curls much too yellow for the ravaged face around which they tumbled. The other, who was still thinner, but quite short, was bustling round the room in a cotton dressing gown and displayed a red, painted face
blazing with anger:

  “A baggage, that’s what you are!” she yelped. “The wickedest woman in the world and a thief into the bargain!”

  “I, a thief!” screamed the other.

  “What about that business with the ducks at ten francs apiece: don’t you call that thieving?”

  “Hold your tongue, you low creature! Who stole the fifty-franc note from my dressing table? Lord, that I should have to live with such a wretch!”

  The other started with fury at the outrage and, addressing the young man, cried:

  “Jean, are you going to sit there and let me be insulted by your hussy of a d’Imbleval?”

  And the tall one retorted, furiously:

  “Hussy! Do you hear that, Louis? Look at her, your Vaurois! She’s got the airs of a superannuated barmaid! Make her stop, can’t you?”

  Suddenly Jean Louis banged his fist upon the table, making the plates and dishes jump, and shouted:

  “Be quiet, both of you, you old lunatics!”

  They turned upon him at once and loaded him with abuse:

  “Coward! … Hypocrite! … Liar! … A pretty sort of son you are! … The son of a slut and not much better yourself! …”

  The insults rained down upon him. He stopped his ears with his fingers and writhed as he sat at table like a man who has lost all patience and has need to restrain himself lest he should fall upon his enemy.

  Rénine whispered:

  “Now’s the time to go in.”

  “In among all those infuriated people?” protested Hortense.

  “Exactly. We shall see them better with their masks off.”

  And, with a determined step, he walked to the door, opened it and entered the room, followed by Hortense.

  His advent gave rise to a feeling of stupefaction. The two women stopped yelling, but were still scarlet in the face and trembling with rage. Jean Louis, who was very pale, stood up.

  Profiting by the general confusion, Rénine said briskly:

  “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Prince Rénine. This is Madame Daniel. We are friends of Mlle. Geneviève Aymard, and we have come in her name. I have a letter from her addressed to you, monsieur.”