Other People's Money by Emile Gaboriau (ebook smartphone txt) 📕

for suddenly the door opened, and he appeared upon the threshold.  There are people for whom the unforeseen does not exist, and whom no event can disconcert.  Having ventured every thing, they expect every thing.  Such was the Baron de Thaller.  With a sagacious glance he examined his wife and M. de Tregars; and in a cordial tone,

“We are quarreling here?” he said.

“I am glad you have come!” exclaimed the baroness.

“What is the matter?”

“The matter is, that M. de Tregars is endeavoring to take an odious advantage of some incidents of our past life.”

“There’s woman’s exaggeration for you!” he said laughing.

And, holding out his hand to Marius,

“Let me make your peace—for you, my dear marquis,” he said:  “that’s within the province of the husband.”  But, instead of taking his extended hand, M. de Tregars stepped back.

“There is no more peace possible, sir, I am an enemy.”

“An enemy!” he repeated in a tone of surprise which was wonderfully well assumed, if it was not real.

“Yes,” interrupted the baroness; “and I must speak to you at once, Frederic.  Come:  M. de Tregars will wait for you.”

And she led her husband into the adjoining room, not without first casting upon Marius a look of burning and triumphant hatred.

Left alone, M. de Tregars sat down.  Far from annoying him, this sudden intervention of the manager of the Mutual Credit seemed to him a stroke of fortune.  It spared him an explanation more painful still than the first, and the unpleasant necessity of having to confound a villain by proving his infamy to him.

“And besides,” he thought, “when the husband and the wife have consulted with each other, they will acknowledge that they cannot resist, and that it is best to surrender.”  The deliberation was brief.  In less than ten minutes, M. de Thaller returned alone.  He was pale; and his face expressed well the grief of an honest man who discovers too late that he has misplaced his confidence.

“My wife has told me all, sir,” he began.

M. de Tregars had risen.  “Well?” he asked.

“You see me distressed.  Ah, M. le Marquis! how could I ever expect such a thing from you?—you, whom I thought I had the right to look upon as a friend.  And it is you, who, when a great misfortune befalls me, attempts to give me the finishing stroke.  It is you who would crush me under the weight of slanders gathered in the gutter.”

M. de Tregars stopped him with a gesture.

“Mme. de Thaller cannot have correctly repeated my words to you, else you would not utter that word ‘slander.’”

“She has repeated them to me without the least change.”

“Then she cannot have told you the importance of the proofs I have in my hands.”

But the Baron persisted, as Mlle. Cesarine would have said, to “do it up in the tender style.”

“There is scarcely a family,” he resumed, “in which there is not some one of those painful secrets which they try to withhold from the wickedness of the world.  There is one in mine.  Yes, it is true, that before our marriage, my wife had had a child, whom poverty had compelled her to abandon.  We have since done everything that was humanly possible to find that child, but without success.  It is a great misfortune, which has weighed upon our life; but it is not a crime.  If, however, you deem it your interest to divulge our secret, and to disgrace a woman, you are free to do so:  I cannot prevent you.  But I declare it to you, that fact is the only thing real in your accusations.  You say that your father has been duped and defrauded.  From whom did you get such an idea?

“From Marcolet, doubtless, a man without character, who has become my mortal enemy since the day when he tried a sharp game on me, and came out second best.  Or from Costeclar, perhaps, who does not forgive me for having refused him my daughter’s hand, and who hates me because I know that he committed forgery once, and that he would be in prison but for your father’s extreme indulgence.  Well, Costeclar and Marcolet have deceived you.  If the Marquis de Tregars ruined himself, it is because he undertook a business that he knew nothing about, and speculated right and left.  It does not take long to sink a fortune, even without the assistance of thieves.

“As to pretend that I have benefitted by the embezzlements of my cashier that is simply stupid; and there can be no one to suggest such a thing, except Jottras and Saint Pavin, two scoundrels whom I have had ten times the opportunity to send to prison and who were the accomplices of Favoral.  Besides, the matter is in the hands of justice; and I shall prove in the broad daylight of the court-room, as I have already done in the office of the examining judge, that, to save the Mutual Credit, I have sacrificed more than half my private fortune.”

Tired of this speech, the evident object of which was to lead him to discuss, and to betray himself,

“Conclude, sir,” M. de Tregars interrupted harshly.  Still in the same placid tone,

“To conclude is easy enough,” replied the baron.  “My wife has told me that you were about to marry the daughter of my old cashier,—a very handsome girl, but without a sou.  She ought to have a dowry.”

“Sir!”

“Let us show our hands.  I am in a critical position:  you know it, and you are trying to take advantage of it.  Very well:  we can still come to an understanding.  What would you say, if I were to give to Mlle. Gilberte the dowry I intended for my daughter?”

All M. de Tregars’ blood rushed to his face.

“Ah, not another word!” he exclaimed with a gesture of unprecedented violence.  But, controlling himself almost at once,

“I demand,” he added, “my father’s fortune.  I demand that you should restore to the Mutual Credit Company the twelve millions which have been abstracted.”

“And if not?”

“Then I shall apply to the courts.”

They remained for a moment face to face, looking into each other’s eyes.  Then,

“What have you decided?” asked M. de Tregars.

Without perhaps, suspecting that his offer was a new insult,

“I will go as far as fifteen hundred thousand francs,” replied M. de Thaller, “and I pay cash.”

“Is that your last word?”

“It is.”

“If I enter a complaint, with the proofs in my hands, you are lost.”

“We’ll see about