Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre (best ereader under 100 .TXT) 📕

title="[281]"> your letter came to me like healing balm upon a quivering wound. For weeks, long weeks——" The actor stopped, and mechanically rubbed his eyes. "It's odd," he thought to himself, "but I feel ever so much more inclined to go to sleep than to make love." He shook off his real desire for sleep and began again. "I have loved you since the day I saw you first. I love you with an intensity——"

For some moments Lady Beltham had been looking at him with a calmer air, and eyes that were less hostile. The old amorist observed it, and made a tremendous effort to overcome his most inopportune drowsiness.

"How shall I be silent, when at last kind heaven is about to grant the fondest desire of my heart? When, all afire with love, I am kneeling at your feet?"

Valgrand dropped to his knees. Lady Beltham drew herself up, listening. In the distance a clock struck four.

"Oh, I can bear it no longer!" she cried stammeringly. "I can bear no more! Listen; four o'clock! No, no! It is too much, too much for me!" The woman seemed absolutely frantic. She paced up and down the room like a caged animal. Then she came close to Valgrand, and looked at him with an immense pity in her eyes. "Go, sir; if you believe in God, go away! Go as quickly as you can!"

Valgrand struggled to his feet. His head was heavy, and he had an irresistible desire to hold his tongue and just stay where he was. Partly from gallantry and partly from his desire not to move, he murmured, not without a certain aptness: "I believe only in the god of love, madame, and he bids me remain!"

In vain did Lady Beltham make every effort to rouse the actor and induce him to go away; in vain were all her frantic appeals to him to fly.

"I will stay," was all he said, and he dropped heavily on the sofa by Lady Beltham's side, and mechanically tried to put his arm round her.

"Listen!" she began, freeing herself from him: "in heavens name you must—— And yet, I cannot tell you! Oh, it is horrible! I am going mad! How am I to choose! What am I to do! Which——? Oh, go—go—go! There is not a minute to lose!"

"I will stay!" said Valgrand again; this amazing drowsiness was gaining on him so fast that he had but one desire left—for sleep! Surely a strange assignation, this, and a poor kind of lover, too!

Lady Beltham stopped her torrent of appeal, and looked at the actor crumpled up beside her. Suddenly she started and listened: a slight noise became audible, coming from the staircase. Lady Beltham stood erect and rigid: then dropped to her knees upon the floor.

"Oh! It is all over!" she sobbed.

In spite of his overwhelming longing for sleep, Valgrand suddenly started. Two heavy hands fell on his shoulder, and then his arms were pulled behind him and his wrists rapidly bound together.

"Good God!" he cried, in stupefied surprise, turning quickly round. Two men stood before him, old soldiers by the look of them, in dark uniforms relieved only by the gleam of metal buttons. He was going to say more, but one of the men laid his hand over his lips.

"Hush!" he said peremptorily.

Valgrand made frantic efforts to prevent himself from falling.

"What does this mean? Let me go! What right——"

The two men began to drag him gently away.

"Come along," said one of them in his ear. "Time's up. Don't be obstinate."

"Besides, you know it's quite useless to resist, Gurn," the other added, not unkindly. "Nothing in the world could——"

"I don't understand," Valgrand protested feebly. "Who are you? And why do you call me Gurn?"

"Let me finish," growled one of the men irritably. "You know we are running an awful risk in getting you out of the prison and bringing you here when you are supposed to be with the chaplain; you swore you would behave squarely with us and go back when you were told. Now you've got to keep your promise."

"The lady paid us well to give you an hour with her," the other man put in, "but you've had more than an hour and a half, and we've got our characters and our situations to look after. So now, come along, Gurn, and don't let us have any nonsense."

Valgrand, fighting hard against his overpowering sleepiness, began to have some vague comprehension of what was happening. He recognised the uniforms, and guessed that the men were prison warders.

"Good God!" he exclaimed thickly, "the fools think I am Gurn! But I am not Gurn! Ask——" He cast a despairing eye at Lady Beltham who throughout the awful scene remained on her knees in a corner of the room, dumb with anguish, apparently deaf and turned to stone. "Tell them, madame," he implored her. "Oh, God save me!" but still the warders dragged him towards the door. By an herculean effort he swayed them back with him into the middle of the room. "I am not Gurn, I tell you," he shouted. "I am Valgrand, Valgrand the actor. Everybody in the world knows me. You know it too, but—— Search me, I tell you," and he made a sign with his head towards his left side. "Look in my pocket-book; my name's inside; and you'll find a letter too; proof of the trap I've been led into: the letter from that woman over there!"

"Better look and see, Nibet," one warder said to the other, and to Valgrand he added: "Not so much noise, man! Do you mean to get us all caught?"

Nibet passed a quick hand through Valgrand's pockets; there was no note-book there. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Besides, what about it?" he growled. "We brought Gurn here, didn't we? Well, we've got to take Gurn back again. That's all I know. Come on!"

Beaten down by the drowsiness that was quite irresistible, and worn out by his violent but futile efforts to resist the warders, Valgrand was half dragged, half carried out by the two men, his head drooping on his chest, his consciousness failing. But still as they were getting him down the stairs his voice could be heard in the half-dark room above, bleating more weakly and at longer intervals:

"I am not Gurn! I am not Gurn!"

Once more silence reigned in the room. After the three men had gone, Lady Beltham rose to her feet, tottered to the window, and stood there listening. She heard their footsteps crossing the street and stopping by the door into the prison. She waited for a few minutes to make sure that they had escaped unnoticed from their amazing adventure, then turned again to the sofa, struggled to unfasten the collar of her dress to get more air, drew a few deep sighs, and swooned.

The door opposite the staircase opened slowly, and noiselessly Gurn emerged from the darkness and went towards Lady Beltham. The murderer flung himself at her feet, covered her face with kisses, and pressed her hands in his.

"Maud!" he called. "Maud!"

She did not answer and he hunted about the room for something to revive her. Presently, however, she recovered consciousness unaided and uttered a faint sigh. Her lover hurried to her.

"Oh, Gurn," she murmured, laying her white hand on the wretch's neck: "it's you, dear! Come close to me, and hold me in your arms! It was too much for me! I almost broke down and told everything! I could have borne no more. Oh, what an appalling time!" She sat up sharply, her face drawn with terror. "Listen: I can hear him still!"

"Try not to think about it," Gurn whispered, caressing her.

"Did you hear him, how he kept on saying 'I am not Gurn! I am not Gurn!' Oh, heaven grant they may not find that out!"

Gurn himself was shaken by the horror of the plot he had contrived with his mistress to effect this substitution of another for himself; it surpassed in ghastliness anything that had gone before, and he had not dared to give the least hint of it to Nibet.

"The warders were well paid," he said to reassure her now. "They would deny everything." He hesitated a second, and then asked: "He drank the drug, didn't he?"

Lady Beltham nodded assent.

"It will take effect. It was acting already: so rapidly, that I thought for a moment he would fall unconscious there, at my feet!"

Gurn drew a deep breath.

"Maud, we are saved!" he exclaimed. "See," he went on, "as soon as it is light, and there are enough people in the street for us to mix with them unobserved, we will go away from here. While you were with—him—— I burned my other clothes, so I will take these to get away in." He picked up the hat and cloak which Valgrand had thrown upon the chair, and wrapped the heavy cloak around himself. "This will conceal me effectively."

"Let us go at once!" Lady Beltham exclaimed, but Gurn stayed her.

"I must get rid of this beard, and my moustache," he said, and he took a pair of scissors from his pocket and was walking towards a looking-glass when suddenly they both heard the distinct sound of footsteps coming slowly and steadily up the stairs. Gurn had no time to get back to his former hiding-place; all he could do was to sink into the one arm-chair that was in the room, and conceal his features as well as he could by turning down the brim of the hat and turning up the collar of the cloak which the actor had forgotten. The man went as white as a sheet, but Lady Beltham appeared to recover all her presence of mind, and strength, and daring, at the approach of danger, and she hurried to the door. But though she tried to keep it shut, it slowly turned upon the hinges, and a timid, hesitating figure appeared in the doorway and advanced towards the retreating woman.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Lady Beltham faltered.

"I beg you to excuse me, madame," the man began, "I came to——" He caught sight of Gurn and pointed to him. "M. Valgrand knows me well. I am Charlot, his dresser at the theatre, and I came to—I wanted to have a word—stay——" he took a small square parcel from his pocket. "M. Valgrand went off so hurriedly that he forgot his pocket-book, and so I came to bring it to him." The dresser was trying to get near the murderer, whom he supposed to be his master, but Lady Beltham, in the most acute anxiety, kept between the two men. Charlot misunderstood her intention. "I also came to——" He stopped again and whispered to Lady Beltham. "He does not speak: is he very angry with me for coming? I didn't come out of curiosity, or to cause you any trouble, madame; will you ask him not to be very angry with his poor old Charlot?"

Lady Beltham felt like swooning again; she could endure very little of this old man's garrulity.

"Go, for goodness' sake, go," she said peremptorily.

"I am going," Charlot said; "I know I am in the way; but I must explain to him," and he raised his voice and spoke to Gurn, who sat quite still, sinking as far as he could into the shadow of the chair. "You are not very angry with me, M. Valgrand, are you?" and getting no reply he looked apologetically at Lady Beltham. "It was all these stories, and then the street, and the prison opposite: but perhaps you do not know; you see, I read in the paper yesterday, or rather to-night, a couple of hours ago, that that man Gurn, who murdered the rich English gentleman, was to be executed this morning. And so I was rather what you might call uneasy; at first I only meant to follow M. Valgrand