The trail of the serpent
every motive; but let him laugh on, lie on, till the time at which
it should be my pleasure to lift the mask, and say to him--Raymond
Marolles, charlatan! liar! fool! dupe! in the battle between Wisdom
and Cunning the gray-eyed goddess is the conqueror.”
“What, monsieur? Then you are doubly a murderer. You knew this man,
and yet abetted him in the vilest plot by which a wretched woman was
ever made to destroy the man she loved a thousand times better than her
worthless self!”
Laurent Blurosset smiled a most impenetrable smile.
“I acted for a purpose, madame. I wished to test the effects of a new
poison. Yours the murder--if there was a murder; not mine. You asked me
for a weapon; I put it into your hands; I did not compel you to use it.”
“No, monsieur; but you prompted me. If there is justice on earth,
you shall suffer for that act as well as Monsieur Marolles; if not,
there is justice in heaven! God’s punishments are more terrible than
those of men, and you have all the more cause to tremble, you and the
wretch whose accomplice you were--whose willing accomplice, by your own
admission, you were.”
“And yourself, madame? In dragging us to justice, may you not yourself
suffer?”
“Suffer!” She laughs a hollow bitter peal of mocking laughter, painful
to hear; very painful to the ears of the listener in the shadow, whose
face is still buried in his hands. “Suffer! No, Monsieur Blurosset, for
me on earth there is no more suffering. If in hell the wretches doomed
to eternal punishment suffer as I have suffered for the last eight
years, as I suffered on that winter’s night when the man I loved died,
then, indeed, God is an avenging Deity. Do you think the worst the law
can inflict upon me for that guilty deed is by one thousandth degree
equal to the anguish of my own mind, every day and every hour? Do you
think I fear disgrace? Disgrace! Bah! What is it? There never was but
one being on earth whose good opinion I valued, or whose bad opinion I
feared. That man I murdered. You think I fear the world? The world to
me was him; and he is dead. If you do not wish to be denounced as the
accomplice of a murderess and _her_ accomplice, do not let me quit
this room; for, by the heaven above me, so surely as I quit this room
alive I go to deliver you, Raymond Marolles, and myself into the hands
of justice!”
“And your son, madame--what of him?”
“I have made arrangements for his future happiness, monsieur. He will
return to France, and be placed under the care of my uncle.”
For a few moments there is silence. Laurent Blurosset seems lost
in thought. Valerie sits with her bright hollow eyes fixed on the
flickering flame of the low fire. Blurosset is the first to speak.
“You say, madame, that if I do not wish to be given up to justice
as the accomplice of a murderer, I shall not suffer you to leave
this room, but sacrifice you to the preservation of my own safety.
Nothing more easy, madame; I have only to raise my hand--to wave a
handkerchief, medicated in the manner of those the Borgias and Medicis
used of old, before your face; to scatter a few grains of powder into
that fire at your feet; to give you a book to read, a flower to smell;
and you do not leave this room alive. And this is how I should act, if
I were, what you say I am, the accomplice of a murderer.”
“How, monsieur!--you had no part in the murder of my husband?--you, who
gave me the drug which killed him?”
“You jump at conclusions, madame. How do you know that the drug which I
gave you killed Gaston de Lancy?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, do not juggle with me, Monsieur. Speak! What do
you mean?”
“Simply this, madame. That the death of your husband on the evening
of the day on which you gave him the drugged wine may have been--a
coincidence.”
“Oh, monsieur! in mercy----”
“Nay, madame, it was a coincidence. The drug I gave you was not a
poison. You are guiltless of your husband’s death.”
“Oh, heaven be praised! Merciful heaven be praised!” She falls on her
knees, and buries her head in her hands in a wild burst of tearful
thanksgiving.
While her face is thus hidden, Blurosset takes from a little cabinet on
one side of the fireplace a handful of a light-coloured powder, which
he throws upon the expiring cinders in the grate. A lurid flame blazes
up, illuminating the room with a strange unnatural glare.
“Valerie, Countess de Marolles,” he says, in a tone of solemn
earnestness, “men say I am a magician--a sorcerer--a disciple of the
angel of darkness! Nay, some more foolish than the rest have been so
blasphemous as to declare that I have power to raise the dead. Yours is
no mind to be fooled by such shallow lies as these. The dead never rise
again in answer to the will of mortal man. Lift your head, Valerie--not
Countess de Marolles. I no longer call you by that name, which is in
itself a falsehood. Valerie de Lancy, look yonder!”
He points in the direction of the open door. She rises, looks towards
the threshold, staggers a step forward, utters one long wild shriek,
and falls senseless to the floor.
In all the agonies she has endured, in all the horrors through which
she has passed, she has never before lost her senses. The cause must
indeed be a powerful one.
=Book the Sixth.=
ON THE TRACK.
CHAPTER I.
FATHER AND SON.
THREE days have passed since the interview of Valerie with Laurent
Blurosset, and Raymond de Marolles paces up and down his study in Park
Lane. He is not going to the bank to-day. The autumn rains beat in
against the double windows of the apartment, which is situated at the
back of the house, looking out upon a small square patch of so-called
garden. This garden is shut in by a wall, over which a weak-minded and
erratic-looking creeper sprawls and straggles; and there is a little
green door in this wall, which communicates with a mews.
A hopelessly wet day. Twelve by the clock, and not enough blue in the
gloomy sky to make the smallest article of wearing apparel--no, not
so much as a pair of wristbands for an unhappy seaman. Well to be
the Count de Marolles, and to have no occasion to extend one’s walk
beyond the purple-and-crimson border of that Turkey carpet on such a
day as this! The London sparrows, transformed for the time being into
a species of water-fowl, flutter dismally about the small swamp of
grass-plot, flanked here and there by a superannuated clump of withered
geraniums which have evidently seen better days. The sparrows seem to
look enviously at the bright blaze reflected on the double windows of
the Count’s apartment, and would like, perhaps, to go in and sit on
the hob; and I dare say they twitter to each other, in confidence, “A
fine thing to be the Count de Marolles, with a fortune which it would
take the lifetime of an Old Parr to calculate, and a good fire in wet
weather.”
Yet, for all this, Raymond de Marolles does not look the most enviable
object in creation on this particular rainy morning. His pale fair
face is paler than ever; there are dark circles round the blue eyes,
and a nervous and incessant twitching of the thin lower lip--signs
which never were, and never will be, indications of a peaceful mind. He
has not seen Valerie since the night on which Monsieur Paul Moucée,
_alias_ Signor Mosquetti, told his story. She has remained
secluded in her own apartments; and even Raymond de Marolles has scarce
cared to break upon the solitude of this woman, in whom grief is so
near akin to desperation.
“What will she do, now she knows all? Will she denounce me? If she
does, I am prepared. If Blurosset, poor scientific fool, only plays
his part faithfully, I am safe. But she will hardly reveal the truth.
For her son’s sake she will be silent. Oh, strange, inexplicable,
and mysterious chance, that this fortune for which I have so deeply
schemed, for which I have hazarded so much and worked so hard, should
be my own--my own!--this woman a mere usurper, and I the rightful heir
to the wealth of the De Cevennes! What is to be done? For the first
time in my life I am at fault. Should I fly to the Marquis--tell him
I am his son?--difficult to prove, now that old hag is dead; and even
if I prove it--as I would move heaven and earth to do--what if she
denounce me to her uncle, and he refuse to acknowledge the adventurer,
the poisoner? I could soon silence her. But unfortunately she has been
behind the scenes, and I fear she would scarcely accept a drop of water
from the hands of her devoted husband. If I had any one to help me! But
I have no one; no one that I can trust--no one in my power. Oh, Laurent
Blurosset, for some of your mighty secrets, so that the very autumn
wind blowing in at her window might seal the lips of my beautiful
cousin for ever!”
Pleasant thoughts to be busy with this rainy autumn day; but such
thoughts are by no means unfamiliar to the heart of Raymond de Marolles.
It is from a reverie such as this that he is aroused by the sound of
carriage-wheels, and a loud knocking and ringing at the hall-door. “Too
early for morning callers. Who can it be at such an hour? Some one from
the bank, perhaps?” He paces up and down the room rather anxiously,
wondering who this unexpected visitor might be, when the groom of the
chambers opens the door and announces, “The Marquis de Cevennes!”
“So, then,” mutters Raymond, “she has played her first card--she has
sent for her uncle. We shall have need of all our brains to-day. Now
then, to meet my father face to face.”
As he speaks, the Marquis enters.
Face to face--father and son. Sixty years of age--fair and pale, blue
eyes, aquiline nose, and thin lips. Thirty years of age--fair and
pale, blue eyes, aquiline nose, and thin lips again; and neither of
the two faces to be trusted; not one look of truth, not one glance
of benevolence, not one noble expression in either. Truly father and
son--all the world over, father and son.
“Monsieur le Marquis affords me an unexpected honour and pleasure,”
said Raymond Marolles, as he advanced to receive his visitor.
“Nay, Monsieur de Marolles, scarcely, I should imagine, unexpected;
I cease in accordance with the earnest request of my niece; though
what that most erratic young lady can want with me in this abominable
country of your adoption is quite beyond my poor comprehension.”
Raymond draws a long breath. “So,” he thinks, “he knows nothing
_yet_. Good! You are slow to play your cards, Valerie. I will take
the initiative; my leading trump shall commence the game.”
“I repeat,” said the Marquis, throwing himself into the easy-chair
which Raymond had wheeled forward, and warming his delicate white hands
before the blazing fire; “I repeat, that the urgent request of my very
lovely but extremely erratic niece, that I should cross the Channel
in the autumn of a very stormy year--I am not a good sailor--is quite
beyond my comprehension.” He wears a very magnificent emerald ring,
which is too large for the slender third finger of his left hand, and
he amuses himself by twisting it round and round, sometimes stopping
to contemplate the effect of it with the plain gold outside, when it
looks like a lady’s wedding-ring. “It is, I positively assure you,” he
repeated, looking at the ring, and not at Raymond, “utterly beyond the
limited powers of my humble comprehension.”
Raymond looks very grave, and takes two or three turns up and down the
room. The light blue eyes of the Marquis follow him for a turn and a
half--find the occupation monotonous, and go back to the ring and the
white hand, always interesting objects for contemplation. Presently the
Count de Marolles stops, leans on the easy-chair on the opposite side