The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Le Blanc

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"But by what right, sir? It amounts to breaking in."

"Breaking in is allowed, when there's a fellow-creature to be rescued."

"Once more, who are you?"

"Prince Renine ... and a friend of this lady's," said Renine, bending over
Hortense and kissing her hand.

Pancaldi seemed to be choking, and mumbled:

"Oh, I understand!... You instigated the plot ... it was you who sent the
lady...."

"It was, M. Pancaldi, it was!"

"And what are your intentions?"

"My intentions are irreproachable. No violence. Simply a little interview.
When that is over, you will hand over what I in my turn have come to
fetch."

"What?"

"The clasp."

"That, never!" shouted the dealer.

"Don't say no. It's a foregone conclusion."

"No power on earth, sir, can compel me to do such a thing!"

"Shall we send for your wife? Madame Pancaldi will perhaps realize the
position better than you do."

The idea of no longer being alone with this unexpected adversary seemed to
appeal to Pancaldi. There was a bell on the table beside him. He struck it
three times.

"Capital!" exclaimed Renine "You see, my dear, M. Pancaldi is becoming
quite amiable. Not a trace left of the devil broken loose who was going for
you just now. No, M. Pancaldi only has to find himself dealing with a man
to recover his qualities of courtesy and kindness. A perfect sheep! Which
does not mean that things will go quite of themselves. Far from it! There's
no more obstinate animal than a sheep...."

Right at the end of the shop, between the dealer's writing-desk and the
winding staircase, a curtain was raised, admitting a woman who was holding
a door open. She might have been thirty years of age. Very simply dressed,
she looked, with the apron on her, more like a cook than like the mistress
of a household. But she had an attractive face and a pleasing figure.

Hortense, who had followed Renine, was surprised to recognize her as a maid
whom she had had in her service when a girl:

"What! Is that you, Lucienne? Are you Madame Pancaldi?"

The newcomer looked at her, recognized her also and seemed embarrassed.
Renine said to her:

"Your husband and I need your assistance, Madame Pancaldi, to settle a
rather complicated matter a matter in which you played an important
part...."

She came forward without a word, obviously ill at ease, asking her husband,
who did not take his eyes off her:

"What is it?... What do they want with me?... What is he referring to?"

"It's about the clasp!" Pancaldi whispered, under his breath.

These few words were enough to make Madame Pancaldi realize to the full the
seriousness of her position. And she did not try to keep her countenance or
to retort with futile protests. She sank into a chair, sighing:

"Oh, that's it!... I understand.... Mlle. Hortense has found the track....
Oh, it's all up with us!"

There was a moment's respite. The struggle between the adversaries had
hardly begun, before the husband and wife adopted the attitude of defeated
persons whose only hope lay in the victor's clemency. Staring motionless
before her, Madame Pancaldi began to cry. Renine bent over her and said:

"Do you mind if we go over the case from the beginning? We shall then
see things more clearly; and I am sure that our interview will lead to a
perfectly natural solution.... This is how things happened: nine years ago,
when you were lady's maid to Mlle. Hortense in the country, you made the
acquaintance of M. Pancaldi, who soon became your lover. You were both of
you Corsicans, in other words, you came from a country where superstitions
are very strong and where questions of good and bad luck, the evil eye, and
spells and charms exert a profound influence over the lives of one and all.
Now it was said that your young mistress' clasp had always brought luck to
its owners. That was why, in a weak moment prompted by M. Pancaldi, you
stole the clasp. Six months afterwards, you became Madame Pancaldi.... That
is your whole story, is it not, told in a few sentences? The whole story
of two people who would have remained honest members of society, if they
had been able to resist that casual temptation?... I need not tell you how
you both succeeded in life and how, possessing the talisman, believing
its powers and trusting in yourselves, you rose to the first rank of
antiquarians. To-day, well-off, owning this shop, "The Mercury," you
attribute the success of your undertakings to that clasp. To lose it would
to your eyes spell bankruptcy and poverty. Your whole life has been centred
upon it. It is your fetish. It is the little household god who watches over
you and guides your steps. It is there, somewhere, hidden in this jungle;
and no one of course would ever have suspected anything--for I repeat, you
are decent people, but for this one lapse--if an accident had not led me to
look into your affairs."

Renine paused and continued:

"That was two months ago, two months of minute investigations, which
presented no difficulty to me, because, having discovered your trail, I
hired the flat overhead and was able to use that staircase ... but, all
the same, two months wasted to a certain extent because I have not yet
succeeded. And Heaven knows how I have ransacked this shop of yours! There
is not a piece of furniture that I have left unsearched, not a plank in
the floor that I have not inspected. All to no purpose. Yes, there was one
thing, an incidental discovery. In a secret recess in your writing-table,
Pancaldi, I turned up a little account-book in which you have set down your
remorse, your uneasiness, your fear of punishment and your dread of God's
wrath.... It was highly imprudent of you, Pancaldi! People don't write
such confessions! And, above all, they don't leave them lying about! Be
this as it may, I read them and I noted one passage, which struck me
as particularly important and was of use to me in preparing my plan of
campaign: 'Should she come to me, the woman whom I robbed, should she come
to me as I saw her in her garden, while Lucienne was taking the clasp;
should she appear to me wearing the blue gown and the toque of red leaves,
with the jet necklace and the whip of three plaited rushes which she was
carrying that day; should she appear to me thus and say: "I have come to
claim my property," then I shall understand that her conduct is inspired
from on high and that I must obey the decree of Providence.' That is what
is written in your book, Pancaldi, and it explains the conduct of the lady
whom you call Mlle. Hortense. Acting on my instructions and in accordance
with the setting thought out by yourself, she came to you, from the back of
beyond, to use your own expression. A little more self-possession on her
part; and you know that she would have won the day. Unfortunately, you are
a wonderful actor; your sham suicide put her out; and you understood that
this was not a decree of Providence, but simply an offensive on the part of
your former victim. I had no choice, therefore, but to intervene. Here I
am.... And now let's finish the business. Pancaldi, that clasp!"

"No," said the dealer, who seemed to recover all his energy at the very
thought of restoring the clasp.

"And you, Madame Pancaldi."

"I don't know where it is," the wife declared.

"Very well. Then let us come to deeds. Madame Pancaldi, you have a son of
seven whom you love with all your heart. This is Thursday and, as on every
Thursday, your little boy is to come home alone from his aunt's. Two of my
friends are posted on the road by which he returns and, in the absence of
instructions to the contrary, will kidnap him as he passes."

Madame Pancaldi lost her head at once:

"My son! Oh, please, please ... not that!... I swear that I know nothing.
My husband would never consent to confide in me."

Renine continued:

"Next point. This evening, I shall lodge an information with the public
prosecutor. Evidence: the confessions in the account-book. Consequences:
action by the police, search of the premises and the rest."

Pancaldi was silent. The others had a feeling that all these threats did
not affect him and that, protected by his fetish, he believed himself
to be invulnerable. But his wife fell on her knees at Renine's feet and
stammered:

"No, no ... I entreat you!... It would mean going to prison and I don't
want to go!... And then my son!... Oh, I entreat you!..."

Hortense, seized with compassion, took Renine to one side:

"Poor woman! Let me intercede for her."

"Set your mind at rest," he said. "Nothing is going to happen to her son."

"But your two friends?"

"Sheer bluff."

"Your application to the public prosecutor?"

"A mere threat."

"Then what are you trying to do?"

"To frighten them out of their wits, in the hope of making them drop a
remark, a word, which will tell us what we want to know. We've tried every
other means. This is the last; and it is a method which, I find, nearly
always succeeds. Remember our adventures."

"But if the word which you expect to hear is not spoken?"

"It must be spoken," said Renine, in a low voice. "We must finish the
matter. The hour is at hand."

His eyes met hers; and she blushed crimson at the thought that the hour to
which he was alluding was the eighth and that he had no other object than
to finish the matter before that eighth hour struck.

"So you see, on the one hand, what you are risking," he said to the
Pancaldi pair. "The disappearance of your child ... and prison: prison for
certain, since there is the book with its confessions. And now, on the
other hand, here's my offer: twenty thousand francs if you hand over the
clasp immediately, this minute. Remember, it isn't worth three louis."

No reply. Madame Pancaldi was crying.

Renine resumed, pausing between each proposal:

"I'll double my offer.... I'll treble it.... Hang it all, Pancaldi, you're
unreasonable!... I suppose you want me to make it a round sum? All right: a
hundred thousand francs."

He held out his hand as if there was no doubt that they would give him the
clasp.

Madame Pancaldi was the first to yield and did so with a sudden outburst of
rage against her husband:

"Well, confess, can't you?... Speak up!... Where have you hidden it?...
Look here, you aren't going to be obstinate, what? If you are, it means
ruin ... and poverty.... And then there's our boy!... Speak out, do!"

Hortense whispered:

"Renine, this is madness; the clasp has no value...."

"Never fear," said Renine, "he's not going to accept.... But look at
him.... How excited he is! Exactly what I wanted.... Ah, this, you know,
is really exciting!... To make people lose their heads! To rob them of all
control over what they are thinking and saying!... And, in the midst of
this confusion, in the storm that tosses them to and fro, to catch sight of
the tiny spark which will flash forth somewhere or other!... Look at him!
Look at the fellow! A hundred thousand francs for a valueless pebble ... if
not, prison: it's enough to turn any man's head!"

Pancaldi, in fact, was grey in the face; his lips were trembling and a
drop of saliva was trickling from their corners. It was easy to guess the
seething turmoil of his whole being, shaken by conflicting emotions, by the
clash between greed and fear. Suddenly he burst out; and it was obvious
that his words were pouring forth at random, without his knowing in the
least what he was saying:

"A hundred thousand francs! Two hundred thousand! Five hundred thousand! A
million! A two fig for your millions! What's the use of millions? One loses
them. They disappear.... They go.... There's only one thing that counts:
luck. It's on your side or else against you. And luck has been on my side
these last nine years. It has never betrayed me; and you expect me to
betray it? Why? Out of fear? Prison? My son? Bosh!... No harm will come to
me so long as I compel luck to work on my behalf. It's my servant, it's my
friend. It clings to the clasp. How? How can I tell? It's the cornelian,
no doubt.... There are magic stones, which hold happiness, as others hold
fire, or sulphur, or gold...."

Renine kept his eyes fixed upon him, watching for the least word, the least
modulation of the voice. The curiosity-dealer was now laughing, with a
nervous laugh, while resuming the self-control of a man who feels sure of
himself: and he walked up to Renine with jerky movements that revealed an
increasing resolution:

"Millions? My dear sir, I wouldn't have them as a gift. The little bit of
stone which I possess is worth much more than that. And the proof of it
lies in all the pains which you are at to take it from me. Aha! Months
devoted to looking for it, as you yourself confess! Months in which you
turned everything topsy-turvy, while I, who suspected nothing, did not even
defend myself! Why should I? The little thing defended itself all alone....
It does not want to be discovered and it sha'n't be.... It likes being
here.... It presides over a good, honest business that satisfies it....
Pancaldi's luck! Why, it's known to all the neighbourhood, among all the
dealers! I proclaim it from the house-tops: 'I'm a lucky man!' I even made
so bold as to take the god of luck, Mercury, as my patron! He too protects
me. See, I've got Mercuries all over my shop! Look up there, on that shelf,
a whole row of statuettes, like the one over the front-door, proofs signed
by a great sculptor who went smash and sold them to me.... Would you like
one, my dear sir? It will bring you luck too. Take your pick! A present
from Pancaldi, to make up to you for your defeat! Does that suit you?"

He put a stool against the wall, under the shelf, took down a statuette and
plumped it into Renine's arms. And, laughing heartily, growing more and
more excited as his enemy seemed to yield ground and to fall back before
his spirited attack, he explained:

"Well done! He accepts! And the fact that he accepts shows that we are all
agreed! Madame Pancaldi, don't distress yourself. Your son's coming back and
nobody's going to prison! Good-bye, Mlle. Hortense! Good-day, sir! Hope
to see you again! If you want to speak to me at any time, just give three
thumps on the ceiling. Good-bye ... don't forget your present ... and
may Mercury be kind to you! Good-bye, my dear Prince! Good-bye, Mlle.
Hortense!..."

He hustled them to the iron staircase, gripped each of them by the arm in
turn and pushed them up to the little door hidden at the top of the stairs.

And the strange thing was that Renine made no protest. He did not attempt
to resist. He allowed himself to be led along like a naughty child that is
taken up to bed.

Less than five minutes had elapsed between the moment when he made his
offer to Pancaldi and the moment when Pancaldi turned him out of the shop
with a statuette in his arms.

* * * * *

The dining-room and drawing-room of the flat which Renine had taken on the
first floor looked out upon the street. The table in the dining-room was
laid for two.

"Forgive me, won't you?" said Renine, as he opened the door of the
drawing-room for Hortense. "I thought that, whatever happened, I should
most likely see you this evening and that we might as well dine together.
Don't refuse me this kindness, which will be the last favour granted in our
last adventure."

Hortense did not refuse him. The manner in which the battle had ended was
so different from everything that she had seen hitherto that she felt
disconcerted. At any rate, why should she refuse, seeing that the terms of
the contract had not been fulfilled?

Renine left the room to give an order to his manservant. Two minutes later,
he came back for Hortense. It was then a little past seven.

There were flowers on the table; and the statue of Mercury, Pancaldi's
present, stood overtopping them.

"May the god of luck preside over our repast," said Renine.

He was full of animation and expressed his great delight at having her
sitting opposite him:

"Yes," he exclaimed, "I had to resort to powerful means and attract you by
the bait of the most fabulous enterprises. You must confess that my letter
was jolly smart! The three rushes, the blue gown; simply irresistible!
And, when I had thrown in a few puzzles of my own invention, such as the
seventy-five beads of the necklace and the old woman with the silver
rosary, I knew that you were bound to succumb to the temptation. Don't be
angry with me. I wanted to see you and I wanted it to be today. You have
come and I thank you."

He next told her how he had got on the track of the stolen trinket:

"You hoped, didn't you, in laying down that condition, that I shouldn't be
able to fulfil it? You made a mistake, my dear. The test, at least at the
beginning, was easy enough, because it was based upon an undoubted fact:
the talismanic character attributed to the clasp. I had only to hunt about
and see whether among the people around you, among your servants, there was
ever any one upon whom that character may have exercised some attraction.
Now, on the list of persons which I succeeded in drawing up. I at once
noticed the name of Mlle. Lucienne, as coming from Corsica. This was my
starting-point. The rest was a mere concatenation of events."

Hortense stared at him in amazement. How was it that he was accepting his
defeat with such a careless air and even talking in a tone of triumph,
whereas really he had been soundly beaten by Pancaldi and even made to look
just a trifle ridiculous?

She could not help letting him feel this; and the fashion in which she did
so betrayed a certain disappointment, a certain humiliation:

"Everything is a concatenation of events: very well. But the chain is
broken, because, when all is said, though you know the thief, you did not
succeed in laying hands upon the stolen clasp."

The reproach was obvious. Renine had not accustomed her to failure. And
furthermore she was irritated to see how heedlessly he was accepting a
blow which, after all, entailed the ruin of any hopes that he might have
entertained.

He did not reply. He had filled their two glasses with champagne and was
slowly emptying his own, with his eyes fixed on the statuette of Mercury.
He turned it about on its pedestal and examined it with the eye of a
delighted connoisseur:

"What a beautiful thing is a harmonious line! Colour does not uplift me
so much as outline, proportion, symmetry and all the wonderful properties
of form. Look at this little statue. Pancaldi's right: it's the work of
a great artist. The legs are both slender and muscular; the whole figure
gives an impression of buoyancy and speed. It is very well done. There's
only one fault, a very slight one: perhaps you've not noticed it?"

"Yes, I have," said Hortense. "It struck me the moment I saw the sign,
outside. You mean, don't you, a certain lack of balance? The god is leaning
over too far on the leg that carries him. He looks as though he were going
to pitch forward."

"That's very clever of you," said Renine. "The fault is almost
imperceptible and it needs a trained eye to see it. Really, however, as
a matter of logic, the weight of the body ought to have its way and, in
accordance with natural laws, the little god ought to take a header."

After a pause he continued:

"I noticed that flaw on the first day. How was it that I did not draw an
inference at once? I was shocked because the artist had sinned against
an aesthetic law, whereas I ought to have been shocked because he had
overlooked a physical law. As though art and nature were not blended
together! And as though the laws of gravity could be disturbed without
some fundamental reason!"

"What do you mean?" asked Hortense, puzzled by these reflections, which
seemed so far removed from their secret thoughts. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing!" he said. "I am only surprised that I didn't understand
sooner why Mercury did not plump forward, as he should have done."

"And what is the reason?"

"The reason? I imagine that Pancaldi, when pulling the statuette about to
make it serve his purpose, must have disturbed its balance, but that this
balance was restored by something which holds the little god back and which
makes up for his really too dangerous posture."

"Something, you say?"

"Yes, a counterweight."

Hortense gave a start. She too was beginning to see a little light. She
murmured:

"A counterweight?... Are you thinking that it might be ... in the
pedestal?"

"Why not?"

"Is that possible? But, if so, how did Pancaldi come to give you this
statuette?"

"He never gave me _this_ one," Renine declared. "I took this one
myself."

"But where? And when?"

"Just now, while you were in the drawing-room. I got out of that window,
which is just over the signboard and beside the niche containing the little
god. And I exchanged the two, that is to say, I took the statue which was
outside and put the one which Pancaldi gave me in its place."

"But doesn't that one lean forward?"

"No, no more than the others do, on the shelf in his shop. But Pancaldi
is not an artist. A lack of equilibrium does not impress him; he will see
nothing wrong; and he will continue to think himself favoured by luck,
which is another way of saying that luck will continue to favour him.
Meanwhile, here's the statuette, the one used for the sign. Am I to break
the pedestal and take your clasp out of the leaden sheath, soldered to the
back of the pedestal, which keeps Mercury steady?"

"No, no, there's no need for that," Hortense hurriedly murmured.

Renine's intuition, his subtlety, the skill with which he had managed the
whole business: to her, for the moment, all these things remained in the
background. But she suddenly remembered that the eighth adventure was
completed, that Renine had surmounted every obstacle, that the test had
turned to his advantage and that the extreme limit of time fixed for the
last of the adventures was not yet reached.

He had the cruelty to call attention to the fact:

"A quarter to eight," he said.

An oppressive silence fell between them. Both felt its discomfort to such
a degree that they hesitated to make the least movement. In order to break
it, Renine jested:

"That worthy M. Pancaldi, how good it was of him to tell me what I wished
to know! I knew, however, that by exasperating him, I should end by picking
up the missing clue in what he said. It was just as though one were to hand
some one a flint and steel and suggest to him that he was to use it. In the
end, the spark is obtained. In my case, what produced the spark was the
unconscious but inevitable comparison which he drew between the cornelian
clasp, the element of luck, and Mercury, the god of luck. That was enough.
I understood that this association of ideas arose from his having actually
associated the two factors of luck by embodying one in the other, or, to
speak more plainly, by hiding the trinket in the statuette. And I at once
remembered the Mercury outside the door and its defective poise...."

Renine suddenly interrupted himself. It seemed to him that all his remarks
were falling on deaf ears. Hortense had put her hand to her forehead and,
thus veiling her eyes, sat motionless and remote.

She was indeed not listening. The end of this particular adventure and the
manner in which Renine had acted on this occasion no longer interested her.
What she was thinking of was the complex series of adventures amid which
she had been living for the past three months and the wonderful behaviour
of the man who had offered her his devotion. She saw, as in a magic
picture, the fabulous deeds performed by him, all the good that he had
done, the lives saved, the sorrows assuaged, the order restored wherever
his masterly will had been brought to bear. Nothing was impossible to
him. What he undertook to do he did. Every aim that he set before him
was attained in advance. And all this without excessive effort, with the
calmness of one who knows his own strength and knows that nothing can
resist it.

Then what could she do against him? Why should she defend herself and how?
If he demanded that she should yield, would he not know how to make her do
so and would this last adventure be any more difficult for him than the
others? Supposing that she ran away: did the wide world contain a retreat
in which she would be safe from his pursuit? From the first moment of their
first meeting, the end was certain, since Renine had decreed that it should
be so.

However, she still cast about for weapons, for protection of some sort; and
she said to herself that, though he had fulfilled the eight conditions and
restored the cornelian clasp to her before the eighth hour had struck, she
was nevertheless protected by the fact that this eighth hour was to strike
on the clock of the Chateau de Halingre and not elsewhere. It was a formal
compact. Renine had said that day, gazing on the lips which he longed to
kiss:

"The old brass pendulum will start swinging again; and, when, on the fixed
date, the clock once more strikes eight, then...."

She looked up. He was not moving either, but sat solemnly, patiently
waiting.

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