The Clique of Gold by Emile Gaboriau (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📕

thought it a jest: it was the truth. Daniel did regret even the worst days of his mission. At that time his grave responsibility, overwhelming fatigues, hard work, and daily danger, had procured him at least some hours of oblivion. Now idleness left him, without respite or time, face to face with his distressing thoughts. It was the desire, the necessity almost, of escaping in some manner from himself, which made him accept an invitation to join a number of his comrades who wanted to try the charms of a great hunting party.

On the morning of the expedition, however, he had a kind of presentiment.

“A fine opportunity,” he thought, “for the assassin hired by Sarah Brandon!”

Then, shrugging his shoulders, he said with a bitter laugh,—

“How can I hesitate? As if a life like mine was worth the trouble of protecting it against danger!”

When they arrived on the following day on the hunting ground, he, as well as the other hunters, received their instructions, and had their posts assigned them by the leader. He found himself placed between two of his comrades, in front of a thicket, and facing a narrow ravine, through which all the game must necessarily pass as it was driven down by a crowd of Annamites.

They had been firing for an hour, when Daniel’s neighbors saw him suddenly let go his rifle, turn over, and fall.

They hurried up to catch him; but he fell, face forward, to the ground, saying aloud, and very distinctly,—

“This time they have not missed me!”

At the outcry raised by the two neighbors of Daniel, other hunters had hastened up, and among them the chief surgeon of “The Conquest,” one of those old “pill-makers,” who, under a jovial scepticism, and a rough, almost brutal outside, conceal great skill and an almost feminine tenderness. As soon as he looked at the wounded man, whom his friends had stretched out on his back, making a pillow of their overcoats, and who lay there pale and inanimate, the good doctor frowned, and growled out,—

“He won’t live.”

The officers were thunderstruck.

“Poor Champcey!” said one of them, “to escape the Kamboja fevers, and to be killed here at a pleasure party! Do you recollect, doctor, what you said on the occasion of his second accident,—‘Mind the third’?”

The old doctor did not listen. He had knelt down, and rapidly stripped the coat off Daniel’s back. The poor man had been struck by a shot. The ball had entered on the right side, a little behind; and between the fourth and the fifth rib, one could see a round wound, the edges drawn in. But the most careful examination did not enable him to find the place where the projectile had come out again. The doctor rose slowly, and, while carefully dusting the knees of his trousers, he said,—

“All things considered, I would not bet that he may not escape. Who knows where the ball may be lodged? It may have respected the vital parts.

“Projectiles often take curious turns and twists. I should almost be disposed to answer for M. Champcey, if I had him in a good bed in the hospital at Saigon. At all events, we must try to get him there alive. Let one of you gentlemen tell the sailors who have come with us to make a litter of branches.”

The noise of a struggle, of fearful oaths and inarticulate cries, interrupted his orders. Some fifteen yards off, below the place where Daniel had fallen, two sailors were coming out of the thicket, their faces red with anger, dragging out a man with a wretched gun, who hurled out,—

“Will you let me go, you parcel of good-for-nothings! Let me go, or I’ll hurt you!”

He was so furiously struggling in the arms of the two sailors, clinging with an iron grip to roots and branches and rocks, turning and twisting at every step, that the men at last, furious at his resistance, lifted him up bodily, and threw him at the chief surgeon’s feet, exclaiming,—

“Here is the scoundrel who has killed our lieutenant!”

It was a man of medium size, with a dejected air, and lack-lustre eyes, wearing a mustache and chin-beard, and looking impudent. His costume was that of an Annamite of the middle classes,—a blouse buttoned at the side, trousers made in Chinese style, and sandals of red leather. It was, nevertheless, quite evident that the man was a European.

“Where did you find him?” asked the surgeon of the men.

“Down there, commandant, behind that big bush, to the right of Lieut. Champcey, and a little behind him.”

“Why do you accuse him?”

“Why? We have good reasons, I should think. He was hiding. When we saw him, he was lying flat on the ground, trembling with fear; and we said at once, ‘Surely, there is the man who fired that shot.’”

The man had, in the meantime, raised himself, and assumed an air of almost provoking assurance.

“They lie!” he exclaimed. “Yes, they lie, the cowards!”

This insult would have procured him a sound drubbing, but for the old surgeon, who held the arm of the first sailor who made the attack. Then, continuing his interrogatory, he asked,—

“Why did you hide?”

“I did not hide.”

“What were you doing there, crouching in the bush?”

“I was at my post, like the others. Do they require a permit to carry arms in Cochin China? I was not invited to your hunting party, to be sure; but I am fond of game; and I said to myself, ‘Even if I were to shoot two or three head out of the hundreds their drivers will bring down, I would do them no great harm.’”

The doctor let him talk on for some time, observing him closely with his sagacious eye; then, all of a sudden, he broke in, saying,—

“Give me your gun!”

The man turned so visibly pale, that all the officers standing around noticed it. Still he did what he was asked to do, and said,—

“Here it is. It’s a gun one of my friends has lent me.”

The doctor examined the weapon very carefully; and, after having inspected the lock, he said,—

“Both barrels of your gun are empty; and they have not been emptied more than two minutes ago.”

“That is so; I fired both barrels at an animal that passed me within reach.”

“One of the balls may have gone astray.”

“That cannot be. I was aiming in the direction of the prairie; and, consequently, I was turning my back to the place where the officer was standing.”

To the great surprise of everybody, the doctor’s face, ordinarily crafty