The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Le Blanc

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"There are no tracks in the snow."

"Yes, there are."

"But they show him coming here and not going away from here."

"It's the same thing."

"What?"

"Of course it is. There's more than one way of walking. One doesn't always
go ahead by following one's nose."

"In what other way can one go ahead?"

"By walking backwards, Mr. Deputy."

These few words, spoken very simply, but in a clear tone which gave full
value to every syllable, produced a profound silence. Those present at
once grasped their extreme significance and, by adapting it to the actual
happenings, perceived in a flash the impenetrable truth, which suddenly
appeared to be the most natural thing in the world.

Renine continued his argument. Stepping backwards in the direction of the
window, he said:

"If I want to get to that window, I can of course walk straight up to it;
but I can just as easily turn my back to it and walk that way. In either
case I reach my goal."

And he at once proceeded in a vigorous tone:

"Here's the gist of it all. At half-past eight, before the snow fell, M. de
Gorne comes home from his father's house. M. Vignal arrives twenty minutes
later. There is a long discussion and a struggle, taking up three hours in
all. It is then, after M. Vignal has carried off Madame de Gorne and made
his escape, that Mathias de Gorne, foaming at the mouth, wild with rage,
but suddenly seeing his chance of taking the most terrible revenge, hits
upon the ingenious idea of using against his enemy the very snowfall upon
whose evidence you are now relying. He therefore plans his own murder, or
rather the appearance of his murder and of his fall to the bottom of the
well and makes off backwards, step by step, thus recording his arrival
instead of his departure on the white page."

The deputy sneered no longer. This eccentric intruder suddenly appeared to
him in the light of a person worthy of attention, whom it would not do to
make fun of. He asked:

"And how could he have left his father's house?"

"In a trap, quite simply."

"Who drove it?"

"The father. This morning the sergeant and I saw the trap and spoke to the
father, who was going to market as usual. The son was hidden under the
tilt. He took the train at Pompignat and is in Paris by now."

Renine's explanation, as promised, had taken hardly five minutes. He had
based it solely on logic and the probabilities of the case. And yet not a
jot was left of the distressing mystery in which they were floundering. The
darkness was dispelled. The whole truth appeared.

Madame de Gorne wept for joy and Jerome Vignal thanked the good genius who
was changing the course of events with a stroke of his magic wand.

"Shall we examine those footprints together, Mr. Deputy?" asked Renine. "Do
you mind? The mistake which the sergeant and I made this morning was to
investigate only the footprints left by the alleged murderer and to neglect
Mathias de Gorne's. Why indeed should they have attracted our attention?
Yet it was precisely there that the crux of the whole affair was to be
found."

They stepped into the orchard and went to the well. It did not need a
long examination to observe that many of the footprints were awkward,
hesitating, too deeply sunk at the heel and toe and differing from one
another in the angle at which the feet were turned.

"This clumsiness was unavoidable," said Renine. "Mathias de Gorne would
have needed a regular apprenticeship before his backward progress could
have equalled his ordinary gait; and both his father and he must have been
aware of this, at least as regards the zigzags which you see here since old
de Gorne went out of his way to tell the sergeant that his son had had too
much drink." And he added "Indeed it was the detection of this falsehood
that suddenly enlightened me. When Madame de Gorne stated that her husband
was not drunk, I thought of the footprints and guessed the truth."

The deputy frankly accepted his part in the matter and began to laugh:

"There's nothing left for it but to send detectives after the bogus
corpse."

"On what grounds, Mr. Deputy?" asked Renine. "Mathias de Gorne has
committed no offence against the law. There's nothing criminal in trampling
the soil around a well, in shifting the position of a revolver that doesn't
belong to you, in firing three shots or in walking backwards to one's
father's house. What can we ask of him? The sixty thousand francs? I
presume that this is not M. Vignal's intention and that he does not mean to
bring a charge against him?"

"Certainly not," said Jerome.

"Well, what then? The insurance-policy in favour of the survivor? But there
would be no misdemeanour unless the father claimed payment. And I should be
greatly surprised if he did.... Hullo, here the old chap is! You'll soon
know all about it."

Old de Gorne was coming along, gesticulating as he walked. His easy-going
features were screwed up to express sorrow and anger.

"Where's my son?" he cried. "It seems the brute's killed him!... My poor
Mathias dead! Oh, that scoundrel of a Vignal!"

And he shook his fist at Jerome.

The deputy said, bluntly:

"A word with you, M. de Gorne. Do you intend to claim your rights under a
certain insurance-policy?"

"Well, what do _you_ think?" said the old man, off his guard.

"The fact is ... your son's not dead. People are even saying that you were
a partner in his little schemes and that you stuffed him under the tilt of
your trap and drove him to the station."

The old fellow spat on the ground, stretched out his hand as though he
were going to take a solemn oath, stood for an instant without moving and
then, suddenly, changing his mind and his tactics with ingenuous cynicism,
he relaxed his features, assumed a conciliatory attitude and burst out
laughing:

"That blackguard Mathias! So he tried to pass himself off as dead? What a
rascal! And he reckoned on me to collect the insurance-money and send it
to him? As if I should be capable of such a low, dirty trick!... You don't
know me, my boy!"

And, without waiting for more, shaking with merriment like a jolly old
fellow amused by a funny story, he took his departure, not forgetting,
however, to set his great hob-nail boots on each of the compromising
footprints which his son had left behind him.

* * * * *

Later, when Renine went back to the manor to let Hortense out, he found
that she had disappeared.

He called and asked for her at her cousin Ermelin's. Hortense sent down
word asking him to excuse her: she was feeling a little tired and was lying
down.

"Capital!" thought Renine. "Capital! She avoids me, therefore she loves me.
The end is not far off."

VIII

AT THE SIGN OF MERCURY

_To Madame Daniel,
La Ronciere,
near Bassicourt._

"PARIS 30 NOVEMBER

"My Dearest Friend,--

"There has been no letter from you for a fortnight; so I don't expect now
to receive one for that troublesome date of the 5th of December, which we
fixed as the last day of our partnership. I rather wish it would come,
because you will then be released from a contract which no longer seems to
give you pleasure. To me the seven battles which we fought and won together
were a time of endless delight and enthusiasm. I was living beside you. I
was conscious of all the good which that more active and stirring existence
was doing you. My happiness was so great that I dared not speak of it to
you or let you see anything of my secret feelings except my desire to
please you and my passionate devotion. To-day you have had enough of your
brother in arms. Your will shall be law.

"But, though I bow to your decree, may I remind I you what it was that I
always believed our final adventure would be? May I repeat your words, not
one of which I have forgotten?

"'I demand,' you said, 'that you shall restore to me a small, antique
clasp, made of a cornelian set in a filigree mount. It came to me from my
mother; and every one knew that it used to bring her happiness and me too.
Since the day when it vanished from my jewel-case, I have had nothing but
unhappiness. Restore it to me, my good genius.'

"And, when I asked you when the clasp had disappeared, you answered, with a
laugh:

"'Seven years ago ... or eight ... or nine: I don't know exactly.... I
don't know when ... I don't know how ... I know nothing about it....'

"You were challenging me, were you not, and you set me that condition
because it was one which I could not fulfil? Nevertheless, I promised and I
should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place
life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your
confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a
value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the
mainspring of our best actions.

"Dear friend, if you had helped me, I should have achieved yet one more
victory. Alone and hard pushed by the proximity of the date, I have failed,
not however without placing things on such a footing that the undertaking
if you care to follow it up, has the greatest chance of success.

"And you will follow it up, won't you? We have entered into a mutual
agreement which we are bound to honour. It behooves us, within a fixed
time, to inscribe in the book of our common life eight good stories, to
which we shall have brought energy, logic, perseverance, some subtlety and
occasionally a little heroism. This is the eighth of them. It is for you to
act so that it may be written in its proper place on the 5th of December,
before the clock strikes eight in the evening.

"And, on that day, you will act as I shall now tell you.

"First of all--and above all, my dear, do not complain that my instructions
are fanciful: each of them is an indispensable condition of success--first
of all, cut in your cousin's garden three slender lengths of rush. Plait
them together and bind up the two ends so as to make a rude switch, like a
child's whip-lash.

"When you get to Paris, buy a long necklace of jet beads, cut into facets,
and shorten it so that it consists of seventy-five beads, of almost equal
size.

"Under your winter cloak, wear a blue woollen gown. On your head, a toque
with red leaves on it. Round your neck, a feather boa. No gloves. No rings.

"In the afternoon, take a cab along the left bank of the river to the
church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. At four o'clock exactly, there will be,
near the holy-water basin, just inside the church, an old woman dressed
in black, saying her prayers on a silver rosary. She will offer you holy
water. Give her your necklace. She will count the beads and hand it back
to you. After this, you will walk behind her, you will cross an arm of the
Seine and she will lead you, down a lonely street in the Ile Saint-Louis,
to a house which you will enter by yourself.

"On the ground-floor of this house, you will find a youngish man with a
very pasty complexion. Take off your cloak and then say to him:

"'I have come to fetch my clasp.'

"Do not be astonished by his agitation or dismay. Keep calm in his
presence. If he questions you, if he wants to know your reason for applying
to him or what impels you to make that request, give him no explanation.
Your replies must be confined to these brief formulas:

"'I have come to fetch what belongs to me. I don't know you, I don't know
your name; but I am obliged to come to you like this. I must have my clasp
returned to me. I must.'

"I honestly believe that, if you have the firmness not to swerve from
that attitude, whatever farce the man may play, you will be completely
successful. But the contest must be a short one and the issue will depend
solely on your confidence in yourself and your certainty of success. It
will be a sort of match in which you must defeat your opponent in the first
round. If you remain impassive, you will win. If you show hesitation or
uneasiness, you can do nothing against him. He will escape you and regain
the upper hand after a first moment of distress; and the game will be lost
in a few minutes. There is no midway house between victory or ... defeat.

"In the latter event, you would be obliged--I beg you to pardon me for
saying so--again to accept my collaboration. I offer it you in advance, my
dear, and without any conditions, while stating quite plainly that all that
I have been able to do for you and all that I may yet do gives me no other
right than that of thanking you and devoting myself more than ever to the
woman who represents my joy, my whole life."

* * * * *

Hortense, after reading the letter, folded it up and put it away at the
back of a drawer, saying, in a resolute voice:

"I sha'n't go."

To begin with, although she had formerly attached some slight importance
to this trinket, which she had regarded as a mascot, she felt very little
interest in it now that the period of her trials was apparently at an end.
She could not forget that figure eight, which was the serial number of the
next adventure. To launch herself upon it meant taking up the interrupted
chain, going back to Renine and giving him a pledge which, with his powers
of suggestion, he would know how to turn to account.

Two days before the 5th of December, she was still in the same frame of
mind. So she was on the morning of the 4th; but suddenly, without even
having to contend against preliminary subterfuges, she ran out into the
garden, cut three lengths of rush, plaited them as she used to do in her
childhood and at twelve o'clock had herself driven to the station. She was
uplifted by an eager curiosity. She was unable to resist all the amusing
and novel sensations which the adventure, proposed by Renine, promised her.
It was really too tempting. The jet necklace, the toque with the autumn
leaves, the old woman with the silver rosary: how could she resist their
mysterious appeal and how could she refuse this opportunity of showing
Renine what she was capable of doing?

"And then, after all," she said to herself, laughing, "he's summoning me to
Paris. Now eight o'clock is dangerous to me at a spot three hundred miles
from Paris, in that old deserted Chateau de Halingre, but nowhere else. The
only clock that can strike the threatening hour is down there, under lock
and key, a prisoner!"

She reached Paris that evening. On the morning of the 5th she went out and
bought a jet necklace, which she reduced to seventy-five beads, put on
a blue gown and a toque with red leaves and, at four o'clock precisely,
entered the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.

Her heart was throbbing violently. This time she was alone; and how acutely
she now felt the strength of that support which, from unreflecting fear
rather than any reasonable motive, she had thrust aside! She looked around
her, almost hoping to see him. But there was no one there ... no one except
an old lady in black, standing beside the holy water basin.

Hortense went up to her. The old lady, who held a silver rosary in her
hands, offered her holy water and then began to count the beads of the
necklace which Hortense gave her.

She whispered:

"Seventy-five. That's right. Come."

Without another word, she toddled along under the light of the
street-lamps, crossed the Pont des Tournelles to the Ile Saint-Louis and
went down an empty street leading to a cross-roads, where she stopped in
front of an old house with wrought-iron balconies:

"Go in," she said.

And the old lady went away.

* * * * *

Hortense now saw a prosperous-looking shop which occupied almost the
whole of the ground-floor and whose windows, blazing with electric light,
displayed a huddled array of old furniture and antiquities. She stood there
for a few seconds, gazing at it absently. A sign-board bore the words "The
Mercury," together with the name of the owner of the shop, "Pancaldi."
Higher up, on a projecting cornice which ran on a level with the first
floor, a small niche sheltered a terra-cotta Mercury poised on one foot,
with wings to his sandals and the caduceus in his hand, who, as Hortense
noted, was leaning a little too far forward in the ardour of his flight
and ought logically to have lost his balance and taken a header into the
street.

"Now!" she said, under her breath.

She turned the handle of the door and walked in.

Despite the ringing of the bells actuated by the opening door, no one came
to meet her. The shop seemed to be empty. However, at the extreme end there
was a room at the back of the shop and after that another, both crammed
with furniture and knick-knacks, many of which looked very valuable.
Hortense followed a narrow gangway which twisted and turned between two
walls built up of cupboards, cabinets and console-tables, went up two steps
and found herself in the last room of all.

A man was sitting at a writing-desk and looking through some account-books.
Without turning his head, he said:

"I am at your service, madam.... Please look round you...."

This room contained nothing but articles of a special character which
gave it the appearance of some alchemist's laboratory in the middle ages:
stuffed owls, skeletons, skulls, copper alembics, astrolabes and all
around, hanging on the walls, amulets of every description, mainly hands
of ivory or coral with two fingers pointing to ward off ill-luck.

"Are you wanting anything in particular, madam?" asked M. Pancaldi, closing
his desk and rising from his chair.

"It's the man," thought Hortense.

He had in fact an uncommonly pasty complexion. A little forked beard,
flecked with grey, lengthened his face, which was surmounted by a bald,
pallid forehead, beneath which gleamed a pair of small, prominent,
restless, shifty eyes.

Hortense, who had not removed her veil or cloak, replied:

"I want a clasp."

"They're in this show-case," he said, leading the way to the connecting
room.

Hortense glanced over the glass case and said:

"No, no, ... I don't see what I'm looking for. I don't want just any clasp,
but a clasp which I lost out of a jewel-case some years ago and which I
have to look for here."

She was astounded to see the commotion displayed on his features. His eyes
became haggard.

"Here?... I don't think you are in the least likely.... What sort of clasp
is it?..."

"A cornelian, mounted in gold filigree ... of the 1830 period."

"I don't understand," he stammered. "Why do you come to me?"

She now removed her veil and laid aside her cloak.

He stepped back, as though terrified by the sight of her, and whispered:

"The blue gown!... The toque!... And--can I believe my eyes?--the jet
necklace!..."

It was perhaps the whip-lash formed of three rushes that excited him most
violently. He pointed his finger at it, began to stagger where he stood and
ended by beating the air with his arms, like a drowning man, and fainting
away in a chair.

Hortense did not move.

"Whatever farce he may play," Renine had written, "have the courage to
remain impassive."

Perhaps he was not playing a farce. Nevertheless she forced herself to be
calm and indifferent.

This lasted for a minute or two, after which M. Pancaldi recovered from
his swoon, wiped away the perspiration streaming down his forehead and,
striving to control himself, resumed, in a trembling voice:

"Why do you apply to me?"

"Because the clasp is in your possession."

"Who told you that?" he said, without denying the accusation. "How do you
know?"

"I know because it is so. Nobody has told me anything. I came here positive
that I should find my clasp and with the immovable determination to take it
away with me."

"But do you know me? Do you know my name?"

"I don't know you. I did not know your name before I read it over your
shop. To me you are simply the man who is going to give me back what
belongs to me."

He was greatly agitated. He kept on walking to and fro in a small empty
space surrounded by a circle of piled-up furniture, at which he hit out
idiotically, at the risk of bringing it down.

Hortense felt that she had the whip hand of him; and, profiting by his
confusion, she said, suddenly, in a commanding and threatening tone:

"Where is the thing? You must give it back to me. I insist upon it."

Pancaldi gave way to a moment of despair. He folded his hands and mumbled a
few words of entreaty. Then, defeated and suddenly resigned, he said, more
distinctly:

"You insist?..."

"I do. You must give it to me."

"Yes, yes, I must ... I agree."

"Speak!" she ordered, more harshly still.

"Speak, no, but write: I will write my secret.... And that will be the end
of me."

He turned to his desk and feverishly wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper,
which he put into an envelope and sealed it:

"See," he said, "here's my secret.... It was my whole life...."

And, so saying, he suddenly pressed against his temple a revolver which he
had produced from under a pile of papers and fired.

With a quick movement, Hortense struck up his arm. The bullet struck the
mirror of a cheval-glass. But Pancaldi collapsed and began to groan, as
though he were wounded.

Hortense made a great effort not to lose her composure:

"Renine warned me," she reflected. "The man's a play-actor. He has kept the
envelope. He has kept his revolver, I won't be taken in by him."

Nevertheless, she realized that, despite his apparent calmness, the attempt
at suicide and the revolver-shot had completely unnerved her. All her
energies were dispersed, like the sticks of a bundle whose string has been
cut; and she had a painful impression that the man, who was grovelling at
her feet, was in reality slowly getting the better of her.

She sat down, exhausted. As Renine had foretold, the duel had not lasted
longer than a few minutes but it was she who had succumbed, thanks to her
feminine nerves and at the very moment when she felt entitled to believe
that she had won.

The man Pancaldi was fully aware of this; and, without troubling to invent
a transition, he ceased his jeremiads, leapt to his feet, cut a sort of
agile caper before Hortense' eyes and cried, in a jeering tone:

"Now we are going to have a little chat; but it would be a nuisance to be
at the mercy of the first passing customer, wouldn't it?"

He ran to the street-door, opened it and pulled down the iron shutter which
closed the shop. Then, still hopping and skipping, he came back to
Hortense:

"Oof! I really thought I was done for! One more effort, madam, and you
would have pulled it off. But then I'm such a simple chap! It seemed to me
that you had come from the back of beyond, as an emissary of Providence,
to call me to account; and, like a fool, I was about to give the thing
back.... Ah, Mlle. Hortense--let me call you so: I used to know you by that
name--Mlle. Hortense, what you lack, to use a vulgar expression, is gut."

He sat down beside her and, with a malicious look, said, savagely:

"The time has come to speak out. Who contrived this business? Not you; eh?
It's not in your style. Then who?... I have always been honest in my life,
scrupulously honest ... except once ... in the matter of that clasp. And,
whereas I thought the story was buried and forgotten, here it is suddenly
raked up again. Why? That's what I want to know."

Hortense was no longer even attempting to fight. He was bringing to bear
upon her all his virile strength, all his spite, all his fears, all the
threats expressed in his furious gestures and on his features, which were
both ridiculous and evil:

"Speak, I want to know. If I have a secret foe, let me defend myself
against him! Who is he? Who sent you here? Who urged you to take action? Is
it a rival incensed by my good luck, who wants in his turn to benefit by
the clasp? Speak, can't you, damn it all ... or, I swear by Heaven, I'll
make you!..."

She had an idea that he was reaching out for his revolver and stepped back,
holding her arms before her, in the hope of escaping.

They thus struggled against each other; and Hortense, who was becoming
more and more frightened, not so much of the attack as of her assailant's
distorted face, was beginning to scream, when Pancaldi suddenly stood
motionless, with his arms before him, his fingers outstretched and his eyes
staring above Hortense's head:

"Who's there? How did you get in?" he asked, in a stifled voice.

Hortense did not even need to turn round to feel assured that Renine was
coming to her assistance and that it was his inexplicable appearance that
was causing the dealer such dismay. As a matter of fact, a slender figure
stole through a heap of easy chairs and sofas: and Renine came forward with
a tranquil step.

"Who are you?" repeated Pancaldi. "Where do you come from?"

"From up there," he said, very amiably, pointing to the ceiling.

"From up there?"

"Yes, from the first floor. I have been the tenant of the floor above this
for the past three months. I heard a noise just now. Some one was calling
out for help. So I came down."

"But how did you get in here?"

"By the staircase."

"What staircase?"

"The iron staircase, at the end of the shop. The man who owned it before
you had a flat on my floor and used to go up and down by that hidden
staircase. You had the door shut off. I opened it."

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