The Eight Strokes of the Clock (19 page)

“What address?”

“Ville d’Avray.”

“Of course! In the very center of her operations … like a spider in the middle of her web! Oh, the shame of it!”

He was profoundly agitated. He saw the whole adventure in its monstrous reality.

“Yes, she kills them to steal their sleep, as she used to kill the animals. It is the same obsession, but complicated by a whole array of utterly incomprehensible practices and superstitions. She evidently fancies that the similarity of the Christian names to her own is indispensable and that she will not sleep unless her victim is an Hortense or an Honorine. It’s a madwoman’s argument; its logic escapes us and we know nothing of its origin, but we can’t get away from it. She has to hunt and has to find. And she finds and carries off her prey beforehand and watches over it for the appointed number of days, until the moment when, crazily, through the hole which she digs with a hatchet in the middle of the skull, she absorbs the sleep which stupefies her and grants her oblivion for a given period. And here again we see absurdity and madness. Why does she fix that period at so many days? Why should one victim ensure her a hundred and twenty days of sleep and another a hundred and twenty-five? What insanity! The calculation is mysterious and of course mad, but the fact remains that, at the end of a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five days, as the case may be, a fresh victim is sacrificed; and there have been six already and the seventh is awaiting her turn. Ah, monsieur, what a terrible responsibility for you! Such a monster as that! She should never have been allowed out of sight!”

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau made no protest. His air of dejection, his pallor, his trembling hands, all proved his remorse and his despair: “She deceived me,” he murmured. “She was outwardly so quiet, so docile! And, after all, she’s in a lunatic asylum.”

“Then how can she …?”

“The asylum,” explained M. de Lourtier, “is made up of a number of separate buildings scattered over extensive grounds. The sort of cottage in which Hermance lives stands quite apart. There is first a room occupied by Félicienne, then Hermance’s bedroom and two separate rooms, one of which has its windows overlooking the open country. I suppose it is there that she locks up her victims.”

“But the carriage that conveys the dead bodies?”

“The stables of the asylum are quite close to the cottage. There’s a horse and carriage there for station work. Hermance no doubt gets up at night, harnesses the horse and slips the body through the window.”

“And the nurse who watches her?”

“Félicienne is very old and rather deaf.”

“But by day she sees her mistress moving to and fro, doing this and that. Must we not admit a certain complicity?”

“Never! Félicienne herself has been deceived by Hermance’s hypocrisy.”

“All the same, it was she who telephoned to Madame de Lourtier first, about that advertisement …”

“Very naturally. Hermance, who talks now and then, who argues, who buries herself in the newspapers, which she does not understand, as you were saying just now, but reads through them attentively, must have seen the advertisement and, having heard that we were looking for a servant, must have asked Félicienne to ring me up.”

“Yes … yes … that is what I felt,” said Rénine, slowly. “She marks down her victims … With Hortense dead, she would have known, once she had used up her allowance of sleep, where to find an eighth victim … But how did she entice the unfortunate women? How did she entice Hortense?”

The car was rushing along, but not fast enough to please Rénine, who rated the chauffeur:

“Push her along, Adolphe, can’t you? … We’re losing time, my man.”

Suddenly the fear of arriving too late began to torture him. The logic of the insane is subject to sudden changes of mood, to any perilous idea that may enter the mind. The madwoman might easily mistake the date and hasten the catastrophe, like a clock out of order which strikes an hour too soon.

On the other hand, as her sleep was once more disturbed, might she not be tempted to take action without waiting for the appointed moment? Was this not the reason why she had locked herself into her room? Heavens, what agonies her prisoner must be suffering! What shudders of terror at the executioner’s least movement!

“Faster, Adolphe, or I’ll take the wheel myself! Faster, hang it.”

At last they reached Ville d’Avray. There was a steep, sloping road on the right and walls interrupted by a long railing.

“Drive round the grounds, Adolphe. We mustn’t give warning of our presence, must we, M. de Lourtier? Where is the cottage?”

“Just opposite,” said M. de Lourtier-Vaneau.

They got out a little farther on. Rénine began to run along a bank at the side of an ill-kept sunken road. It was almost dark. M. de Lourtier said:

“Here, this building standing a little way back … Look at that window on the ground floor. It belongs to one of the separate rooms … and that is obviously how she slips out.”

“But the window seems to be barred.”

“Yes, and that is why no one suspected anything. But she must have found some way to get through.”

The ground floor was built over deep cellars. Rénine quickly clambered up, finding a foothold on a projecting ledge of stone.

Sure enough, one of the bars was missing.

He pressed his face to the windowpane and looked in.

The room was dark inside. Nevertheless he was able to distinguish at the back a woman seated beside another woman, who was lying on a mattress. The woman seated was holding her forehead in her hands and gazing at the woman who was lying down.

“It’s she,” whispered M. de Lourtier, who had also climbed the wall. “The other one is bound.”

Rénine took from his pocket a glazier’s diamond and cut out one of the panes without making enough noise to arouse the madwoman’s attention. He next slid his hand to the window-fastening and turned it softly, while with his left hand he levelled a revolver.

“You’re not going to fire, surely!” M. de Lourtier-Vaneau entreated.

“If I must, I shall.”

Rénine pushed open the window gently. But there was an obstacle of which he was not aware, a chair which toppled over and fell.

He leapt into the room and threw away his revolver in order to seize the madwoman. But she did not wait for him. She rushed to the door, opened it and fled, with a hoarse cry.

M. de Lourtier made as though to run after her.

“What’s the use?” said Rénine, kneeling down, “Let’s save the victim first.”

He was instantly reassured: Hortense was alive.

The first thing that he did was to cut the cords and remove the gag that was stifling her. Attracted by the noise, the old nurse had hastened to the room with a lamp, which Rénine took from her, casting its light on Hortense.

He was astounded: though livid and exhausted, with emaciated features and eyes blazing with fever, Hortense was trying to smile. She whispered:

“I was expecting you … I did not despair for a moment … I was sure of you …”

She fainted.

An hour later, after much useless searching around the cottage, they found the madwoman locked into a large cupboard in the loft. She had hanged herself.

Hortense refused to stay another night. Besides, it was better that the cottage should be empty when the old nurse announced the madwoman’s suicide. Rénine gave Félicienne minute directions as to what she should do and say; and then, assisted by the chauffeur and M. de Lourtier, carried Hortense to the car and brought her home.

She was soon convalescent. Two days later, Rénine carefully questioned her and asked her how she had come to know the madwoman.

“It was very simple,” she said. “My husband, who is not quite sane, as I have told you, is being looked after at Ville d’Avray, and I sometimes go to see him, without telling anybody, I admit. That was how I came to speak to that poor madwoman and how, the other day, she made signs that she wanted me to visit her. We were alone. I went into the cottage. She threw herself upon me and overpowered me before I had time to cry for help. I thought it was a jest, and so it was, wasn’t it: a madwoman’s jest? She was quite gentle with me … All the same, she let me starve. But I was so sure of you!”

“And weren’t you frightened?”

“Of starving? No. Besides, she gave me some food, now and then, when the fancy took her … And then I was sure of you!”

“Yes, but there was something else: that other peril …”

“What other peril?” she asked, ingenuously.

Rénine gave a start. He suddenly understood—it seemed strange at first, though it was quite natural—that Hortense had not for a moment suspected and did not yet suspect the terrible danger which she had run. Her mind had not connected with her own adventure the murders committed by the lady with the hatchet.

He thought that it would always be time enough to tell her the truth. For that matter, a few days later her husband, who had been locked up for years, died in the asylum at Ville d’Avray, and Hortense, who had been recommended by her doctor a short period of rest and solitude, went to stay with a relation living near the village of Bassicourt, in the centre of France. 

^*
See 
The Telltale Film
. 

VII. FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

To Prince Serge Rénine,
Boulevard Haussmann,
Paris

LA RONCIÈRE
NEAR BASSICOURT,
14 NOVEMBER.

“MY DEAR FRIEND,—

“You must be thinking me very ungrateful. I have been here three weeks, and you have had not one letter from me! Not a word of thanks! And yet I ended by realizing from what terrible death you saved me and understanding the secret of that terrible business! But indeed, indeed I couldn’t help it! I was in such a state of prostration after it all! I needed rest and solitude so badly! Was I to stay in Paris? Was I to continue my expeditions with you? No, no, no! I had had enough adventures! Other people’s are very interesting, I admit. But when one is one’s self the victim and barely escapes with one’s life? … Oh, my dear friend, how horrible it was! Shall I ever forget it? …

“Here, at la Roncière, I enjoy the greatest peace. My old spinster cousin Ermelin pets and coddles me like an invalid. I am getting back my colour and am very well, physically … so much so, in fact, that I no longer ever think of interesting myself in other people’s business. Never again! For instance (I am only telling you this because you are incorrigible, as inquisitive as any old charwoman, and always ready to busy yourself with things that don’t concern you), yesterday I was present at a rather curious meeting. Antoinette had taken me to the inn at Bassicourt, where we were having tea in the public room, among the peasants (it was market day), when the arrival of three people, two men and a woman, caused a sudden pause in the conversation.

“One of the men was a fat farmer in a long blouse, with a jovial, red face, framed in white whiskers. The other was younger, was dressed in corduroy and had lean, yellow, cross-grained features. Each of them carried a gun slung over his shoulder. Between them was a short, slender young woman, in a brown cloak and a fur cap, whose rather thin and extremely pale face was surprisingly delicate and distinguished-looking.

“‘Father, son and daughter-in-law,’ whispered my cousin.

“‘What! Can that charming creature be the wife of that clodhopper?’

“‘And the daughter-in-law of Baron de Gorne.’

“‘Is the old fellow over there a baron?’

“‘Yes, descended from a very ancient, noble family which used to own the château in the old days. He has always lived like a peasant: a great hunter, a great drinker, a great litigant, always at law with somebody, now very nearly ruined. His son Mathias was more ambitious and less attached to the soil and studied for the bar. Then he went to America. Next, the lack of money brought him back to the village, whereupon he fell in love with a young girl in the nearest town. The poor girl consented, no one knows why, to marry him, and for five years past she has been leading the life of a hermit, or rather of a prisoner, in a little manor house close by, the Manoir-au-Puits, the Well Manor.’

“‘With the father and the son?’ I asked.

“‘No, the father lives at the far end of the village, on a lonely farm.’

“‘And is Master Mathias jealous?’

“‘A perfect tiger!’

“‘Without reason?’

“‘Without reason, for Natalie de Gorne is the straightest woman in the world and it is not her fault if a handsome young man has been hanging around the manor house for the past few months. However, the de Gornes can’t get over it.’

“‘What, the father neither?’

“‘The handsome young man is the last descendant of the people who bought the château long ago. This explains old de Gorne’s hatred. Jérôme Vignal—I know him and am very fond of him—is a good-looking fellow and very well-off, and he has sworn to run off with Natalie de Gorne. It’s the old man who says so, whenever he has had a drop too much. There, listen!’

“The old chap was sitting among a group of men who were amusing themselves by making him drink and plying him with questions. He was already a little bit ‘on’ and was holding forth with a tone of indignation and a mocking smile which formed the most comic contrast:

“‘He’s wasting his time, I tell you, the coxcomb! It’s no manner of use his poaching round our way and making sheep’s eyes at the wench … The coverts are watched! If he comes too near, it means a bullet, eh, Mathias?’

“He gripped his daughter-in-law’s hand:

“‘And then the little wench knows how to defend herself, too,’ he chuckled. ‘Eh, you don’t want any admirers, do you, Natalie?’

“The young wife blushed, in her confusion at being addressed in these terms, while her husband growled:

“‘You’d do better to hold your tongue, father. There are things one doesn’t talk about in public.’

“‘Things that affect one’s honour are best settled in public,’ retorted the old one. ‘Where I’m concerned, the honour of the de Gornes comes before everything, and that fine spark, with his Paris airs, sha’n’t … ’

“He stopped short. Before him stood a man who had just come in and who seemed to be waiting for him to finish his sentence. The newcomer was a tall, powerfully built young fellow, in riding kit, with a hunting crop in his hand. His strong and rather stern face was lighted up by a pair of fine eyes in which shone an ironical smile.