CHAPTER XIV
The sack
Following Rouletabille’s advice and with the assistance of Bernier, M. Darzac busied himself in removing all traces of the tragedy, and the Lady in Black, having changed her gown, hurried over to her father’s room before she was likely to meet any of the other inmates of the castle on the way. Her last word was a plea for prudence and silence.
It was then seven o’clock, and life awoke once more in and around the old castle. The sound of the fishermen’s songs came over the water. I threw myself down on my bed and, overcome by fatigue, was soon sound asleep. When I awoke, I lolled lazily on my couch for a moment, but suddenly sat up, remembering the incidents of the past night.
‘Really,’ I exclaimed out loud, ‘what he said about there being one body too many is surely impossible!’
For this was the curious thing. What stayed in the mind even more than the sheer horror of the past night was the inexplicability of that unexplained body. It was baffling, elusive and altogether bewildering. And I was not alone in being overwhelmed by this extraordinary sense of bewilderment. It was shared by all who had had anything to do, however remotely, with the curious drama of the Square Tower.
As the horror of the event itself faded – the horror of that dying body bundled into a sack, with a man carrying it off into the night to drop into some unknown tomb – the sheer elusiveness of this puzzle became almost maddening. There were some, like Mrs Rance, for example, who, from sheer habit of denying the existence of anything they cannot understand, denied the possibility of such a problem. But, in the end, they were all obliged to accept the evidence.
Firstly, there was the attack. How had it taken place? When? What intellectual siege had the assailant laid in order to deliver the castle into his hands? No answer came to set our minds at rest. Yet, as Rouletabille had said, we had to know.
It was by then eleven o’clock. Still puzzling over all this, I dressed hastily, and went downstairs to look for Rouletabille. His bed had not been slept in! I found him, however, in the courtyard. Slipping his arm into mine, he dragged me into the main hall of La Louve, where I was astonished to find everyone gathered: M. and Madame Darzac, Arthur Rance, extraordinarily stiff in his manner, and Mrs Rance, lounging in a corner. Catching sight of us, she exclaimed:
‘Ah, here is M. Rouletabille with his friend Sainclair! Now we shall find out what it is that he wants.’
Rouletabille immediately apologised for disturbing us at this early hour, but said that he had an urgent communication to make which would not bear delay. His tone in making this announcement was so mysterious that Mrs Rance affected a childish fear and shivered theatrically. But Rouletabille, apparently imperturbable, remarked:
‘Please reserve your shivers, Madame, until you know what you are shivering about! I have a piece of news to give you which is no laughing matter!’
We all stared at each other. Continuing to address Mrs Rance, Rouletabille went on:
‘To begin with, Madame, permit me to tell you that I have decided to get rid of the security system which I set up in here in order to protect M. and Madame Darzac. Though it caused you considerable inconvenience, you have been most courteous in permitting me to make whatever arrangements I thought desirable. You have been more than courteous; indeed, you have been most good-humoured about it.’
This, of course, was a direct allusion to Mrs Rance’s jokes about our fears. Our hostess smiled pleasantly and added, with affected gaiety:
‘Oh, really! So you’re going to get rid of the guards? Well, I’m delighted, though, to be sure, I did not mind in the least.’ (Affected fear, affected gaiety. I find Mrs Rance altogether very affected, and yet, curiously enough, this affectation charms me.) ‘No, I assure you, your guard rather appealed to my romantic temperament, but I am happy to see it disappear, because I take it to be a proof that M. and Madame Darzac are now no longer in danger.’
‘You are quite right, Madame. They have been out of danger since last night!’
Madame Darzac started, but no one noticed except myself.
‘So much the better!’ exclaimed Mrs Rance. ‘Thank Heavens for that! But are my husband and I the last to hear the news? Did anything of particular interest happen during the night? Perhaps it had something to do with M. Darzac’s drive? Didn’t he go to Castellar?’
While she babbled on in this way, I saw M. and Madame Darzac’s embarrassment increasing. After glancing at his wife, Darzac wished to speak, but Rouletabille would not let him.
‘I have no idea, Madame, where M. Darzac went last night, but there is something you must know, and that is the reason why M. and Madame Darzac are now safe. Your husband has no doubt told you about the Glandier affair and the important part played therein by…’
‘Frédéric Larsan. Yes, I know all that.’
‘You also know that if we kept such a diligent guard around M. and Madame Darzac here, it was because we had seen that man again.’
‘Certainly.’
‘Well, M. and Madame Darzac have nothing more to fear, for that particular individual will never again appear!’
‘What has become of him?’
‘He is dead.’
‘When did he die?’
‘During the night.’
‘How did he die?’
‘He was killed, Madame.’
‘Indeed! And where was he killed?’
‘In the Square Tower.’
At this, we all sprang from our chairs – Mr and Mrs Rance thunderstruck by what they had just heard, M. and Madame Darzac alarmed that Rouletabille should have spoken as he did.
‘In the Square Tower!’ exclaimed Mrs Rance. ‘Who killed him?’
‘M. Robert Darzac!’ replied Rouletabille, and begged us to resume our seats.
Curiously enough, we all sat down quietly, as if we had no option but to obey him.
But Mrs Rance rose at once and, going over to Darzac, shook him very cordially by the hand. She seemed genuinely pleased.
‘Bravo! You are a gentleman!’ Then she added, turning to her husband: ‘Here is a man worthy of being loved!’
After that, she rattled on, showering exaggerated compliments upon Madame Darzac (but perhaps it was her nature to exaggerate everything). She promised to be her faithful friend for ever, declaring that she and her husband were ready to do anything that might be of service to her under such trying circumstances, and that she could be counted upon to say anything she liked if the case ever came before the judges.
‘Quite so, Madame,’ Rouletabille broke in, ‘but we don’t want any judges involved in this affair. We do not need them. So far as the rest of the world is concerned, Larsan was dead before he was killed last night. Well, he will simply continue to be dead. We have decided that it would be useless to stir up the scandal of which M. and Madame Darzac and Professor Stangerson have already been such unhappy victims, and we count on your help in keeping the whole thing quiet. The drama took place under such mysterious circumstances that, had we not told you, you might never have known anything about it. However, M. and Madame Darzac realise what they owe to their hostess under such circumstances, and elementary politeness compelled them to inform you that they had killed someone in your house last night. However sure we may be of covering up this unfortunate affair, there is always the possibility of it leaking out through some unforeseen accident, and M. and Madame Darzac would not wish to run the risk of your hearing, either by public rumour or by the sudden appearance of the police at your door, of an event of such importance occurring under your own roof.’
Arthur Rance, who had turned deathly pale but had not, until then, uttered a word, said:
‘Frédéric Larsan is dead! So much the better. Nobody can be gladder than I am to hear it, and if he received his punishment at M. Darzac’s hands, I offer him my most sincere congratulations. But I do not think that M. Darzac should hide this noble deed. The best thing would be to notify the authorities without delay. If they learn of this aff
air through others than ourselves, just imagine the position we would be in! If we give ourselves up, we perform an act of justice, if we conceal the truth, we shall look like culprits. Then who knows what may be alleged against us.’
Listening to Rance overcome by his own emotions, stuttering and stammering as he spoke, one might have thought that he had killed Frédéric Larsan, that it was he who was accused of the crime, he before whom prison loomed. ‘We must tell everything, gentlemen, everything.’
Mrs Rance remarked:
‘I think my husband is quite right. Before we decide anything, though, it would be best to know exactly what happened.’
She addressed herself directly to M. and Madame Darzac, but they were still bewildered by the emotions aroused in them by Rouletabille’s behaviour, Rouletabille, who had promised to keep silence, and urged them to do the same. They were dumbstruck. Rance kept repeating:
‘Why hide anything? You must tell the whole story.’
Suddenly, Rouletabille seemed to come to a decision. I gathered from the strange light in his eyes that a great struggle was taking place. He leaned towards Rance, who was holding a walking-stick with a handsome ivory head, the work of a celebrated carver in Dieppe. Rouletabille took the cane from him.
‘May I see that?’ he asked. ‘I am a great admirer of ivory carving, and my friend Sainclair here has spoken to me about your stick. I had not noticed it before. It is a handsome piece of work. By Lambesse, isn’t it? There is no finer craftsman on the whole Normandy coast.’
The young man stared at the cane and seemed to be thinking of nothing else. Suddenly it fell, quite accidentally it seemed, at Madame Darzac’s feet. I rushed forward, picked it up and handed it back to Mr Rance. Rouletabille thanked me, but gave me a glacial look. I saw at once that I had acted foolishly.
Mrs Rance rose, evidently irritated by Rouletabille’s airs and by M. and Madame Darzac’s silence.
‘I see that you are very tired, my dear,’ she said to Madame Darzac. ‘You must be quite exhausted by the emotions of last night. Do come to our rooms for a while and rest.’
‘Forgive me for delaying you, Mrs Rance,’ said Rouletabille, ‘but what I have to say next is of particular interest to you.’
‘Speak then, please, and don’t keep us waiting any longer.’
She was right. Did Rouletabille realise what he was doing? Whether he did or not, he redeemed the slowness of his preliminary statements by the rapidity, clarity and precision with which he related the events of the preceding night. When he had finished, he asked Mrs Rance abruptly:
‘Well, Madame, do you still think that the authorities should be notified?’
‘I am more convinced than ever,’ she replied. ‘What we are powerless to discover, they will certainly find out.’ (This evident slur on my friend’s intellectual powers did not seem to affect him.) ‘I must say, though, that I think the authorities ought to have been notified a good deal sooner. You would then have been spared many sleepless nights and hours of watching, and all to no purpose, since they did not prevent the person you feared from getting into the castle.’
Rouletabille sat down, endeavouring to overcome a strange emotion which shook him visibly, and, in an attempt to appear indifferent, he once more laid hold of Rance’s cane, which was leaning against the arm of the chair. I said to myself:
‘Now, what on earth is he going to do with that stick? I certainly won’t touch it again!’
Toying with the stick, he answered Mrs Rance, who had just attacked him in direct, almost cruel, fashion:
‘Mrs Rance, you are wrong to suppose that all the precautions I took to ensure the safety of M. and Madame Darzac were in vain. They helped me to clear up the mystery of a certain presence here last night, they have also helped me to clear up the mystery of a certain absence this morning, and that is the absence of your uncle, Old Bob.’
‘Old Bob?’ she cried. ‘Has Old Bob disappeared?’
We all repeated in chorus after her:
‘Old Bob! Has Old Bob disappeared?’
‘Alas, yes!’ said Rouletabille and dropped the stick.
But the news of Old Bob’s disappearance so impressed the Rances and the Darzacs that none of us paid any attention to the falling stick.
‘My dear Sainclair,’ remarked Rouletabille, ‘be so kind as to pick up that stick, will you.’
I picked it up, and Rouletabille did not even deign to thank me. Meanwhile, Mrs Rance, with a wild shout, sprang like a lioness at M. Darzac, who visibly recoiled.
‘You have murdered my uncle!’
Her husband and I did all we could to calm her. On the one hand, we tried to reason with her that it did not follow that because her uncle could not be found he had necessarily been carried off in the potato sack, and, on the other hand, we were half angry with Rouletabille for the brutality with which he had advanced an opinion which might have no foundation in fact.
Mrs Rance gestured to her husband to be quiet, and, looking me up and down contemptuously, said:
‘I certainly hope, M. Sainclair, that my uncle has only disappeared temporarily and will soon reappear. If not, I would accuse you of being an accomplice in one of the most cowardly of crimes. As for you, sir,’ turning towards Rouletabille, ‘the mere fact of your having even considered the possibility that Larsan and Old Bob might be the same man means that I can never shake your hand again, and I hope you will lose no time in relieving me of your presence.’
‘Madame,’ said Rouletabille, bowing low, ‘I was about to ask your permission to withdraw. I have a journey of some twenty-four hours ahead of me. At the end of that time, I shall return and will then be most happy to assist you in any difficulty that may arise concerning the disappearance of your highly esteemed uncle.’
‘If my uncle has not come home in twenty-four hours, sir, I shall lodge a complaint with the Italian police.’
‘The Italian justice system is a wonderful thing, Madame, but before having recourse to it, I should advise you to question all the servants in whom you have confidence, particularly Mattoni. Do you trust Mattoni?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, then, question him. Oh, before I leave, permit me to present you with this excellent and highly instructive book,’ said Rouletabille, drawing a volume from his pocket.
‘What’s that?’ sneered Mrs Rance.
‘It is a copy of a work by M. Albert Bataille on celebrated criminal trials. I advise you to read it. It tells you all about the adventures, disguises, etc., of a notorious scoundrel whose real name was Ballmeyer.’
Rouletabille was not aware that I had spent two hours detailing these same adventures to Mrs Rance.
‘When you have finished the book,’ went on Rouletabille, ‘you may then ask yourself whether so clever a criminal as Ballmeyer would find any great problem in presenting himself before you disguised as an uncle, upon whom you had not set eyes for four years. For when you found your uncle in the South American pampas, it was after a four year absence. As for Mr Rance’s recollections of him, they were even less recent, and therefore even less trustworthy. I implore you, Madame, do not let us lose our tempers. The situation we are all in has never been graver. Do let us remain united. You tell me to leave. I shall go. But I shall return, for we are compelled to consider the dreadful possibility that Larsan may have taken the place of Old Bob, and in that case we must try and find the old gentleman himself. When it comes to that, I shall be at your disposal, and always your humble and obedient servant.’
Since Mrs Rance continued to play the tragedy queen, Rouletabille turned to Arthur Rance, and said:
‘I hope, Mr Rance, that you will accept my apologies for all that has taken place, and I count upon your good offices to persuade your wife to accept them too. You reproach me for the abruptness with which I explained my hypothesis, but permit me to remind you that, only a moment ago, you were upbraiding me for my slowness.’
Rance turned his back on the young man and was walking awa
y with his wife, when the door was flung open, and Walter, the stable-hand, rushed in. He was in a fearful state, his clothing torn and covered in mud. Disorderly locks of hair, moist with perspiration, clung to his forehead, and his face, purple with rage, bore such an expression of terror that we feared some new disaster. He carried a filthy piece of red cloth, which he threw on the table. This disgusting object, stained with reddish-brown blotches, we guessed at once to be the sack in which the body had been carried away.
Gesticulating wildly and mumbling incoherently in English, Walter recounted some evidently horrible incident of which none but Mr and Mrs Rance could understand a word.
Our host interrupted him from time to time, while the man went on shaking his fist violently at Robert Darzac. At one moment, we thought he was going to spring at him, but Mrs Rance brought him up short with a gesture. Rance then explained to us what it was all about.
‘He says that this morning he noticed bloodstains in the cart, and that Toby seemed very tired after his night’s outing. This struck him as so peculiar that he decided to mention the matter to Old Bob, but that he couldn’t find him. Prompted by a sinister presentiment, he followed the tracks left by the cart on the road, which was easy enough on account of the very wide wheels and the dampness of the earth. In this way he got as far as one of the crevasses in Old Castillon and climbed down into it, convinced that there he would find the body of his master. However, all he came back with was the empty sack, which may have contained Old Bob. He hurried back in a peasant’s cart, and now he insists on seeing his master; he wants to know what has become of him, and if he can’t see him, then he accuses Robert Darzac of having murdered the old gentleman.’
We were thunderstruck, but to our great astonishment, Mrs Rance was the first to regain her composure. She calmed Walter down, promised to take him to Old Bob shortly, and dismissed him. Then, turning to Rouletabille, she said:
‘You have twenty-four hours, sir, to bring my uncle back.’
‘Thank you,’ remarked Rouletabille, ‘but if he doesn’t come back, then I shall be proved right.’