LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

this time, but they could none of them go to sleep before I had kissed them."

      She held out her hand to the prince:

      "Thank you once more. . . ."

      "Are you going?" he asked quickly.

      "Yes, if you will excuse me; grandmother will see you out."

      He bowed low and kissed her hand. As she opened the door, she turned round and smiled. Then she disappeared. The prince listened to the sound of her footsteps diminishing in the distance and stood stock-still, his face white with emotion.

      "Well," said the old lady, "so you did not speak?"

      "No. . . ."

      "That secret . . ."

      "Later. . . . To-day . . . oddly enough . . . I was not able to."

      "Was it so difficult? Did not she herself feel that you were the stranger who took her away twice. . . . A word would have been enough. . . ."

      "Later, later," he repeated, recovering all his assurance. "You can understand . . . the child hardly knows me. . . . I must first gain the right to her affection, to her love. . . . When I have given her the life which she deserves, a wonderful life, such as one reads of in fairy-tales, then I will speak."

      The old lady tossed her head:

      "I fear that you are making a great mistake. Geneviève does not want a wonderful life. She has simple tastes."

      "She has the tastes of all women; and wealth, luxury and power give joys which not one of them despises."

      "Yes, Geneviève does. And you would do much better . . ."

      "We shall see. For the moment, let me go my own way. And be quite easy. I have not the least intention, as you say, of mixing her up in any of my manœuvers. She will hardly ever see me. . . . Only, we had to come into contact, you know. . . . That's done. . . . Good-bye."

      He left the school and walked to where his motor-car was waiting for him. He was perfectly happy:

      "She is charming . . . and so gentle, so grave! Her mother's eyes, eyes that soften you . . . Heavens, how long ago that all is! And what a delightful recollection! A little sad, but so delightful!" And he said, aloud, "Certainly I shall look after her happiness! And that at once! This very evening! That's it, this very evening she shall have a sweetheart! Is not love the essential condition of any young girl's happiness?"

      He found his car on the high-road:

      "Home," he said to Octave.

      When Sernine reached home, he rang up Neuilly and telephoned his instructions to the friend whom he called the doctor. Then he dressed, dined at the Rue Cambon Club, spent an hour at the opera and got into his car again:

      "Go to Neuilly, Octave. We are going to fetch the doctor. What's the time?"

      "Half-past ten."

      "Dash it! Look sharp!"

      Ten minutes later, the car stopped at the end of the Boulevard Inkerman, outside a villa standing in its own grounds. The doctor came down at the sound of the hooter. The prince asked:

      "Is the fellow ready?"

      "Packed up, strung up, sealed up."

      "In good condition?"

      "Excellent. If everything goes as you telephoned, the police will be utterly at sea."

      "That's what they're there for. Let's get him on board."

      They carried into the motor a sort of long sack shaped like a human being and apparently rather heavy. And the prince said:

      "Go to Versailles, Octave, Rue de la Vilaine. Stop outside the Hôtel des Deux-Empereurs."

      "Why, it's a filthy hotel," observed the doctor. "I know it well; a regular hovel."

      "You needn't tell me! And it will be a hard piece of work, for me, at least. . . . But, by Jove, I wouldn't sell this moment for a fortune! Who dares pretend that life is monotonous?"

      They reached the Hôtel des Deux-Empereurs. A muddy alley; two steps down; and they entered a passage lit by a flickering lamp.

      Sernine knocked with his fist against a little door.

      A waiter appeared, Philippe, the man to whom Sernine had given orders, that morning, concerning Gérard Baupré.

      "Is he here still?" asked the prince.

      "Yes."

      "The rope?"

      "The knot is made."

      "He has not received the telegram he was hoping for?"

      "I intercepted it: here it is."

      Sernine took the blue paper and read it:

      "Gad!" he said. "It was high time. This is to promise him a thousand francs for to-morrow. Come, fortune is on my side. A quarter to twelve. . . . In a quarter of an hour, the poor devil will take a leap into eternity. Show me the way, Philippe. You stay here, Doctor."

      The waiter took the candle. They climbed to the third floor, and, walking on tip-toe, went along a low and evil-smelling corridor, lined with garrets and ending in a wooden staircase covered with the musty remnants of a carpet.

      "Can no one hear me?" asked Sernine.

      "No. The two rooms are quite detached. But you must be careful not to make a mistake: he is in the room on the left."

      "Very good. Now go downstairs. At twelve o'clock, the doctor, Octave and you are to carry the fellow up here, to where we now stand, and wait till I call you."

      The wooden staircase had ten treads, which the prince climbed with definite caution. At the top was a landing with two doors. It took Sernine quite five minutes to open the one of the right without breaking the silence with the least sound of a creaking hinge.

      A light gleamed through the darkness of the room. Feeling his way, so as not to knock against one of the chairs, he made for that light. It came from the next room and filtered through a glazed door covered with a tattered hanging.

      The prince pulled the threadbare stuff aside. The panes were of ground glass, but scratched in parts, so that, by applying one eye, it was easy to see all that happened in the other room.

      Sernine saw a man seated at a table facing him. It was the poet, Gérard Baupré. He was writing by the light of a candle.

      Above his head hung a rope, which was fastened to a hook fixed in the ceiling. At the end of the rope was a slip-knot.

      A faint stroke sounded from a clock in the street.

      "Five minutes to twelve," thought Sernine. "Five minutes more."

      The young man was still writing. After a moment, he put down his pen, collected the ten or twelve sheets of paper which he had covered and began to read them over.

      What he read did not seem to please him, for an expression of discontent passed across his face. He tore up his manuscript and burnt the pieces in the flame of the candle.

      Then, with a fevered hand, he wrote a few words on a clean sheet, signed it savagely and rose from his chair.

      But, seeing the rope at ten inches above his head, he sat down again suddenly with a great shudder of alarm.

      Sernine distinctly saw his pale features, his lean cheeks, against which he pressed his clenched fists. A tear trickled slowly down his face, a single, disconsolate tear. His eyes gazed into space, eyes terrifying in their unutterable sadness, eyes that already seemed to behold the dread unknown.

      And it was so young a face! Cheeks still so smooth, with not a blemish, not a wrinkle! And blue eyes, blue like an eastern sky! . . .

      Midnight . . . the twelve tragic strokes of midnight, to which so many a despairing man has

Скачать книгу