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

“It’s impossible!” she cried.

“It is the exact truth.  Haven’t you seen in the papers the case of Vincent Favoral, cashier of the Mutual Credit?”

And, taking a paper from his pocket, he handed it to the young woman, saying, “Read.”

But she pushed it back, not without a slight blush.  “Oh, I believe you!” she said.

The fact is, and Marius understood it, she did not read very fluently.

“The worst of M. Vincent Favoral’s conduct,” he resumed, “is, that, while he was throwing away money here by the handful, he subjected his family to the most cruel privations.”

“Oh!”

“He refused the necessaries of life to his wife, the best and the worthiest of women; he never gave a cent to his son; and he deprived his daughter of every thing.”

“Ah, if I could have suspected such a thing!” murmured Mme. Zelie.

“Finally, and to cap the—climax, he has gone, leaving his wife and children literally without bread.”

Transported with indignation,

“Why, that man must have been a horrible old scoundrel!” exclaimed the young woman.

This is just the point to which M. de Tregars wished to bring her.

“And now,” he resumed, “you must understand the enormous interest we have in knowing what has become of him.”

“I have already told you.”

M. de Tregars had risen, in his turn.  Taking Mme. Zelie’s hands, and fixing upon her one of those acute looks, which search for the truth down to the innermost recesses of the conscience,

“Come, my dear child,” he began in a penetrating voice, “you are a worthy and honest girl.  Will you leave in the most frightful despair a family who appeal to your heart?  Be sure that no harm will ever happen through us to Vincent Favoral.”

She raised her hand, as they do to take an oath in a court of justice, and, in a solemn tone,

“I swear,” she uttered, “that I went to the station with M. Vincent; that he assured me that he was going to Brazil; that he had his passage-ticket; and that all his baggage was marked, ‘Rio de Janeiro.’”

The disappointment was great:  and M. de Tregars manifested it by a gesture.

“At least,” he insisted, “tell me who the woman was whose place you took here.”

But already had the young woman returned to her feeling of mistrust.

“How in the world do you expect me to know?” she replied.  “Go and ask Amanda.  I have no accounts to give you.  Besides, I have to go and finish packing my trunks.  So good-by, and enjoy yourself.”

And she went out so quick, that she caught Amanda, the chambermaid, kneeling behind the door.

“So that woman was listening,” thought M. de Tregars, anxious and dissatisfied.

But it was in vain that he begged Mme. Zelie to return, and to hear a single word more.  She disappeared; and he had to resign himself to leave the house without learning any thing more for the present.

He had remained there very long; and he was wondering, as he walked out, whether Maxence had not got tired waiting for him in the little Café where he had sent him.

But Maxence had remained faithfully at his post.  And when Marius de Tregars came to sit by him, whilst exclaiming, “Here you are at last!” he called his attention at the same time with a gesture, and a wink from the corner of his eye, to two men sitting at the adjoining table before a bowl of punch.

Certain, now, that M. de Tregars would remain on the lookout, Maxence was knocking on the table with his fist, to call the waiter, who was busy playing billiards with a customer.

And when he came at last, justly annoyed at being disturbed,

“Give us two mugs of beer,” Maxence ordered, “and bring us a pack of cards.”

M. de Tregars understood very well that something extraordinary had happened; but, unable to guess what, he leaned over towards his companion.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“We must hear what these two men are saying; and we’ll play a game of piquet for a subterfuge.”

The waiter returned, bringing two glasses of a muddy liquid, a piece of cloth, the color of which was concealed under a layer of dirt, and a pack of cards horribly soft and greasy.

“My deal,” said Maxence.

And he began shuffling, and giving the cards, whilst M. de Tregars was examining the punch-drinkers at the next table.

In one of the two, a man still young, wearing a striped vest with alpaca sleeves, he thought he recognized one of the rascally-looking fellows he had caught a glimpse of in Mme. Zelie Cadelle’s carriage-house.

The other, an old man, whose inflamed complexion and blossoming nose betrayed old habits of drunkenness, looked very much like a coachman out of place.  Baseness and duplicity bloomed upon his countenance; and the brightness of his small eyes rendered still more alarming the slyly obsequious smile that was stereotyped upon his thin and pale lips.

They were so completely absorbed in their conversation, that they paid no attention whatever to what was going on around them.

“Then,” the old one was saying, “it’s all over.”

“Entirely.  The house is sold.”

“And the boss?”

“Gone to America.”

“What!  Suddenly, that way?”

“No.  We supposed he was going on some journey, because, every day since the beginning of the week, they were bringing in trunks and boxes; but no one knew exactly when he would go.  Now, in the night of Saturday to Sunday, he drops in the house like a bombshell, wakes up everybody, and says he must leave immediately.  At once we harness up, we load the baggage up, we drive him to the Western Railway Station, and good-by, Vincent!”

“And the young lady?”

“She’s got to get out in the next twenty-four hours; but she don’t seem to mind it one bit.  The fact is we are the ones who grieve the most, after all.”

“Is it possible?”

“It is so.  She was a good girl; and we won’t soon find one like her.”

The old man seemed distressed.