The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Le Blanc

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"What are your conditions?"

"Rose Andree, whom you have abducted and tormented, is dying in some hole
or corner. Where is she?"

A strange thing occurred and impressed Renine. Dalbreque's face, usually so
common, was lit up by a smile that made it almost attractive. But this was
only a flashing vision: the man immediately resumed his hard and impassive
expression.

"And suppose I refuse to speak?" he said.

"So much the worse for you. It means your arrest."

"I dare say; but it means the death of Rose Andree. Who will release her?"

"You. You will speak now, or in an hour, or two hours hence at least. You
will never have the heart to keep silent and let her die."

Dalbreque shrugged his shoulders. Then, raising his hand, he said:

"I swear on my life that, if they arrest me, not a word will leave my
lips."

"What then?"

"Then save me. We will meet this evening at the entrance to the Parc des
Landes and say what we have to say."

"Why not at once?"

"I have spoken."

"Will you be there?"

"I shall be there."

Renine reflected. There was something in all this that he failed to grasp.
In any case, the frightful danger that threatened Rose Andree dominated the
whole situation; and Renine was not the man to despise this threat and to
persist out of vanity in a perilous course. Rose Andree's life came before
everything.

He struck several blows on the wall of the next bedroom and called his
chauffeur.

"Adolphe, is the car ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Set her going and pull her up in front of the terrace outside the cafe,
right against the boxes so as to block the exit. As for you," he continued,
addressing Dalbreque, "you're to jump on your machine and, instead of
making off along the road, cross the yard. At the end of the yard is a
passage leading into a lane. There you will be free. But no hesitation and
no blundering ... else you'll get yourself nabbed. Good luck to you."

He waited till the car was drawn up in accordance with his instructions
and, when he reached it, he began to question his chauffeur, in order to
attract the detectives' attention.

One of them, however, having cast a glance through the spindle-trees,
caught sight of Dalbreque just as he reached the bottom of the staircase.
He gave the alarm and darted forward, followed by his comrades, but had
to run round the car and bumped into the chauffeur, which gave Dalbreque
time to mount his bicycle and cross the yard unimpeded. He thus had some
seconds' start. Unfortunately for him as he was about to enter the passage
at the back, a troop of boys and girls appeared, returning from vespers. On
hearing the shouts of the detectives, they spread their arms in front of
the fugitive, who gave two or three lurches and ended by falling.

Cries of triumph were raised:

"Lay hold of him! Stop him!" roared the detectives as they rushed forward.

Renine, seeing that the game was up, ran after the others and called out:

"Stop him!"

He came up with them just as Dalbreque, after regaining his feet, knocked
one of the policemen down and levelled his revolver. Renine snatched it out
of his hands. But the two other detectives, startled, had also produced
their weapons. They fired. Dalbreque, hit in the leg and the chest, pitched
forward and fell.

"Thank you, sir," said the inspector to Renine introducing himself. "We owe
a lot to you."

"It seems to me that you've done for the fellow," said Renine. "Who is he?"

"One Dalbreque, a scoundrel for whom we were looking."

Renine was beside himself. Hortense had joined him by this time; and he
growled:

"The silly fools! Now they've killed him!"

"Oh, it isn't possible!"

"We shall see. But, whether he's dead or alive, it's death to Rose Andree.
How are we to trace her? And what chance have we of finding the place--some
inaccessible retreat--where the poor thing is dying of misery and
starvation?"

The detectives and peasants had moved away, bearing Dalbreque with them on
an improvised stretcher. Renine, who had at first followed them, in order
to find out what was going to happen, changed his mind and was now standing
with his eyes fixed on the ground. The fall of the bicycle had unfastened
the parcel which Dalbreque had tied to the handle-bar; and the newspaper
had burst, revealing its contents, a tin saucepan, rusty, dented, battered
and useless.

"What's the meaning of this?" he muttered. "What was the idea?..."

He picked it up examined it. Then he gave a grin and a click of the tongue
and chuckled, slowly:

"Don't move an eyelash, my dear. Let all these people clear off. All this
is no business of ours, is it? The troubles of police don't concern us. We
are two motorists travelling for our pleasure and collecting old saucepans
if we feel so inclined."

He called his chauffeur:

"Adolphe, take us to the Parc des Landes by a roundabout road."

Half an hour later they reached the sunken track and began to scramble down
it on foot beside the wooded slopes. The Seine, which was very low at this
time of day, was lapping against a little jetty near which lay a
worm-eaten, mouldering boat, full of puddles of water.

Renine stepped into the boat and at once began to bale out the puddles with
his saucepan. He then drew the boat alongside of the jetty, helped Hortense
in and used the one oar which he shipped in a gap in the stern to work her
into midstream:

"I believe I'm there!" he said, with a laugh. "The worst that can happen
to us is to get our feet wet, for our craft leaks a trifle. But haven't we
a saucepan? Oh, blessings on that useful utensil! Almost as soon as I set
eyes upon it, I remembered that people use those articles to bale out the
bottoms of leaky boats. Why, there was bound to be a boat in the Landes
woods! How was it I never thought of that? But of course Dalbreque made use
of her to cross the Seine! And, as she made water, he brought a saucepan."

"Then Rose Andree ...?" asked Hortense.

"Is a prisoner on the other bank, on the Jumieges peninsula. You see the
famous abbey from here."

They ran aground on a beach of big pebbles covered with slime.

"And it can't be very far away," he added. "Dalbreque did not spend the
whole night running about."

A tow-path followed the deserted bank. Another path led away from it. They
chose the second and, passing between orchards enclosed by hedges, came to
a landscape that seemed strangely familiar to them. Where had they seen
that pool before, with the willows overhanging it? And where had they seen
that abandoned hovel?

Suddenly both of them stopped with one accord:

"Oh!" said Hortense. "I can hardly believe my eyes!"

Opposite them was the white gate of a large orchard, at the back of which,
among groups of old, gnarled apple-trees, appeared a cottage with blue
shutters, the cottage of the Happy Princess.

"Of course!" cried Renine. "And I ought to have known it, considering
that the film showed both this cottage and the forest close by. And isn't
everything happening exactly as in _The Happy Princess_? Isn't
Dalbreque dominated by the memory of it? The house, which is certainly the
one in which Rose Andree spent the summer, was empty. He has shut her up
there."

"But the house, you told me, was in the Seine-inferieure."

"Well, so are we! To the left of the river, the Eure and the forest of
Brotonne; to the right, the Seine-inferieure. But between them is the
obstacle of the river, which is why I didn't connect the two. A hundred and
fifty yards of water form a more effective division than dozens of miles."

The gate was locked. They got through the hedge a little lower down and
walked towards the house, which was screened on one side by an old wall
shaggy with ivy and roofed with thatch.

"It seems as if there was somebody there," said Hortense. "Didn't I hear
the sound of a window?"

"Listen."

Some one struck a few chords on a piano. Then a voice arose, a woman's
voice softly and solemnly singing a ballad that thrilled with restrained
passion. The woman's whole soul seemed to breathe itself into the melodious
notes.

They walked on. The wall concealed them from view, but they saw a
sitting-room furnished with bright wall-paper and a blue Roman carpet. The
throbbing voice ceased. The piano ended with a last chord; and the singer
rose and appeared framed in the window.

"Rose Andree!" whispered Hortense.

"Well!" said Renine, admitting his astonishment. "This is the last thing
that I expected! Rose Andree! Rose Andree at liberty! And singing Massenet
in the sitting room of her cottage!"

"What does it all mean? Do you understand?"

"Yes, but it has taken me long enough! But how could we have guessed ...?"

Although they had never seen her except on the screen, they had not the
least doubt that this was she. It was really Rose Andree, or rather,
the Happy Princess, whom they had admired a few days before, amidst the
furniture of that very sitting-room or on the threshold of that very
cottage. She was wearing the same dress; her hair was done in the same way;
she had on the same bangles and necklaces as in _The Happy Princess_;
and her lovely face, with its rosy cheeks and laughing eyes, bore the same
look of joy and serenity.

Some sound must have caught her ear, for she leant over towards a clump of
shrubs beside the cottage and whispered into the silent garden:

"Georges ... Georges ... Is that you, my darling?"

Receiving no reply, she drew herself up and stood smiling at the happy
thoughts that seemed to flood her being.

But a door opened at the back of the room and an old peasant woman entered
with a tray laden with bread, butter and milk:

"Here, Rose, my pretty one, I've brought you your supper. Milk fresh from
the cow...."

And, putting down the tray, she continued:

"Aren't you afraid, Rose, of the chill of the night air? Perhaps you're
expecting your sweetheart?"

"I haven't a sweetheart, my dear old Catherine."

"What next!" said the old woman, laughing. "Only this morning there were
footprints under the window that didn't look at all proper!"

"A burglar's footprints perhaps, Catherine."

"Well, I don't say they weren't, Rose dear, especially as in your calling
you have a lot of people round you whom it's well to be careful of. For
instance, your friend Dalbreque, eh? Nice goings on his are! You saw the
paper yesterday. A fellow who has robbed and murdered people and carried
off a woman at Le Havre ...!"

Hortense and Renine would have much liked to know what Rose Andree thought
of the revelations, but she had turned her back to them and was sitting at
her supper; and the window was now closed, so that they could neither hear
her reply nor see the expression of her features.

They waited for a moment. Hortense was listening with an anxious face. But
Renine began to laugh:

"Very funny, really funny! And such an unexpected ending! And we who were
hunting for her in some cave or damp cellar, a horrible tomb where the poor
thing was dying of hunger! It's a fact, she knew the terrors of that first
night of captivity; and I maintain that, on that first night, she was
flung, half-dead, into the cave. Only, there you are: the next morning
she was alive! One night was enough to tame the little rogue and to
make Dalbreque as handsome as Prince Charming in her eyes! For see the
difference. On the films or in novels, the Happy Princesses resist or
commit suicide. But in real life ... oh, woman, woman!"

"Yes," said Hortense, "but the man she loves is almost certainly dead."

"And a good thing too! It would be the best solution. What would be the
outcome of this criminal love for a thief and murderer?"

A few minutes passed. Then, amid the peaceful silence of the waning day,
mingled with the first shadows of the twilight, they again heard the
grating of the window, which was cautiously opened. Rose Andree leant over
the garden and waited, with her eyes turned to the wall, as though she saw
something there.

Presently, Renine shook the ivy-branches.

"Ah!" she said. "This time I know you're there! Yes, the ivy's moving.
Georges, Georges darling, why do you keep me waiting? Catherine has gone.
I am all alone...."

She had knelt down and was distractedly stretching out her shapely arms
covered with bangles which clashed with a metallic sound:

"Georges!... Georges!..."

Her every movement, the thrill of her voice, her whole being expressed
desire and love. Hortense, deeply touched, could not help saying:

"How the poor thing loves him! If she but knew...."

"Ah!" cried the girl. "You've spoken. You're there, and you want me to come
to you, don't you? Here I am, Georges!..."

She climbed over the window-ledge and began to run, while Renine went round
the wall and advanced to meet her.

She stopped short in front of him and stood choking at the sight of this
man and woman whom she did not know and who were stepping out of the very
shadow from which her beloved appeared to her each night.

Renine bowed, gave his name and introduced his companion:

"Madame Hortense Daniel, a pupil and friend of your mother's."

Still motionless with stupefaction, her features drawn, she stammered:

"You know who I am?... And you were there just now?... You heard what I
was saying ...?"

Renine, without hesitating or pausing in his speech, said:

"You are Rose Andree, the Happy Princess. We saw you on the films the other
evening; and circumstances led us to set out in search of you ... to Le
Havre, where you were abducted on the day when you were to have left for
America, and to the forest of Brotonne, where you were imprisoned."

She protested eagerly, with a forced laugh:

"What is all this? I have not been to Le Havre. I came straight here.
Abducted? Imprisoned? What nonsense!"

"Yes, imprisoned, in the same cave as the Happy Princess; and you broke off
some branches to the right of the cave."

"But how absurd! Who would have abducted me? I have no enemy."

"There is a man in love with you: the one whom you were expecting just
now."

"Yes, my lover," she said, proudly. "Have I not the right to receive whom I
like?"

"You have the right; you are a free agent. But the man who comes to see you
every evening is wanted by the police. His name is Georges Dalbreque. He
killed Bourguet the jeweller."

The accusation made her start with indignation and she exclaimed:

"It's a lie! An infamous fabrication of the newspapers! Georges was in
Paris on the night of the murder. He can prove it."

"He stole a motor car and forty thousand francs in notes."

She retorted vehemently:

"The motor-car was taken back by his friends and the notes will be
restored. He never touched them. My leaving for America had made him lose
his head."

"Very well. I am quite willing to believe everything that you say. But the
police may show less faith in these statements and less indulgence."

She became suddenly uneasy and faltered:

"The police.... There's nothing to fear from them.... They won't know...."

"Where to find him? I succeeded, at all events. He's working as a
woodcutter, in the forest of Brotonne."

"Yes, but ... you ... that was an accident ... whereas the police...."

The words left her lips with the greatest difficulty. Her voice was
trembling. And suddenly she rushed at Renine, stammering:

"He is arrested?... I am sure of it!... And you have come to tell me....
Arrested! Wounded! Dead perhaps?... Oh, please, please!..."

She had no strength left. All her pride, all the certainty of her great
love gave way to an immense despair and she sobbed out.

"No, he's not dead, is he? No, I feel that he's not dead. Oh, sir, how
unjust it all is! He's the gentlest man, the best that ever lived. He has
changed my whole life. Everything is different since I began to love him.
And I love him so! I love him! I want to go to him. Take me to him. I want
them to arrest me too. I love him.... I could not live without him...."

An impulse of sympathy made Hortense put her arms around the girl's neck
and say warmly:

"Yes, come. He is not dead, I am sure, only wounded; and Prince Renine will
save him. You will, won't you, Renine?... Come. Make up a story for your
servant: say that you're going somewhere by train and that she is not to
tell anybody. Be quick. Put on a wrap. We will save him, I swear we will."

Rose Andree went indoors and returned almost at once, disguised beyond
recognition in a long cloak and a veil that shrouded her face; and they all
took the road back to Routot. At the inn, Rose Andree passed as a friend
whom they had been to fetch in the neighbourhood and were taking to Paris
with them. Renine ran out to make enquiries and came back to the two women.

"It's all right. Dalbreque is alive. They have put him to bed in a private
room at the mayor's offices. He has a broken leg and a rather high
temperature; but all the same they expect to move him to Rouen to-morrow
and they have telephoned there for a motor-car."

"And then?" asked Rose Andree, anxiously.

Renine smiled:

"Why, then we shall leave at daybreak. We shall take up our positions in a
sunken road, rifle in hand, attack the motor-coach and carry off Georges!"

"Oh, don't laugh!" she said, plaintively. "I am so unhappy!"

But the adventure seemed to amuse Renine; and, when he was alone with
Hortense, he exclaimed:

"You see what comes of preferring dishonour to death! But hang it all, who
could have expected this? It isn't a bit the way in which things happen
in the pictures! Once the man of the woods had carried off his victim and
considering that for three weeks there was no one to defend her, how could
we imagine--we who had been proceeding all along under the influence of
the pictures--that in the space of a few hours the victim would become a
princess in love? Confound that Georges! I now understand the sly, humorous
look which I surprised on his mobile features! He remembered, Georges did,
and he didn't care a hang for me! Oh, he tricked me nicely! And you, my
dear, he tricked you too! And it was all the influence of the film. They
show us, at the cinema, a brute beast, a sort of long-haired, ape-faced
savage. What can a man like that be in real life? A brute, inevitably,
don't you agree? Well, he's nothing of the kind; he's a Don Juan! The
humbug!"

"You will save him, won't you?" said Hortense, in a beseeching tone.

"Are you very anxious that I should?"

"Very."

"In that case, promise to give me your hand to kiss."

"You can have both hands, Renine, and gladly."

The night was uneventful. Renine had given orders for the two ladies to
be waked at an early hour. When they came down, the motor was leaving the
yard and pulling up in front of the inn. It was raining; and Adolphe, the
chauffeur, had fixed up the long, low hood and packed the luggage inside.

Renine called for his bill. They all three took a cup of coffee. But, just
as they were leaving the room, one of the inspector's men came rushing in:

"Have you seen him?" he asked. "Isn't he here?"

The inspector himself arrived at a run, greatly excited:

"The prisoner has escaped! He ran back through the inn! He can't be far
away!"

A dozen rustics appeared like a whirlwind. They ransacked the lofts, the
stables, the sheds. They scattered over the neighbourhood. But the search
led to no discovery.

"Oh, hang it all!" said Renine, who had taken his part in the hunt. "How
can it have happened?"

"How do I know?" spluttered the inspector in despair. "I left my three men
watching in the next room. I found them this morning fast asleep, stupefied
by some narcotic which had been mixed with their wine! And the Dalbreque
bird had flown!"

"Which way?"

"Through the window. There were evidently accomplices, with ropes and a
ladder. And, as Dalbreque had a broken leg, they carried him off on the
stretcher itself."

"They left no traces?"

"No traces of footsteps, true. The rain has messed everything up. But they
went through the yard, because the stretcher's there."

"You'll find him, Mr. Inspector, there's no doubt of that. In any case, you
may be sure that you won't have any trouble over the affair. I shall be in
Paris this evening and shall go straight to the prefecture, where I have
influential friends."

Renine went back to the two women in the coffee-room and Hortense at once
said:

"It was you who carried him off, wasn't it? Please put Rose Andree's mind
at rest. She is so terrified!"

He gave Rose Andree his arm and led her to the car. She was staggering and
very pale; and she said, in a faint voice:

"Are we going? And he: is he safe? Won't they catch him again?"

Looking deep into her eyes, he said:

"Swear to me, Rose Andree, that in two months, when he is well and when
I have proved his innocence, swear that you will go away with him to
America."

"I swear."

"And that, once there, you will marry him."

"I swear."

He spoke a few words in her ear.

"Ah!" she said. "May Heaven bless you for it!"

Hortense took her seat in front, with Renine, who sat at the wheel. The
inspector, hat in hand, fussed around the car until it moved off.

They drove through the forest, crossed the Seine at La Mailleraie and
struck into the Havre-Rouen road.

"Take off your glove and give me your hand to kiss," Renine ordered. "You
promised that you would."

"Oh!" said Hortense. "But it was to be when Dalbreque was saved."

"He is saved."

"Not yet. The police are after him. They may catch him again. He will not
be really saved until he is with Rose Andree."

"He is with Rose Andree," he declared.

"What do you mean?"

"Turn round."

She did so.

In the shadow of the hood, right at the back, behind the chauffeur, Rose
Andree was kneeling beside a man lying on the seat.

"Oh," stammered Hortense, "it's incredible! Then it was you who hid him
last night? And he was there, in front of the inn, when the inspector was
seeing us off?"

"Lord, yes! He was there, under the cushions and rugs!"

"It's incredible!" she repeated, utterly bewildered. "It's incredible! How
were you able to manage it all?"

"I wanted to kiss your hand," he said.

She removed her glove, as he bade her, and raised her hand to his lips.

The car was speeding between the peaceful Seine and the white cliffs that
border it. They sat silent for a long while. Then he said:

"I had a talk with Dalbreque last night. He's a fine fellow and is ready
to do anything for Rose Andree. He's right. A man must do anything for
the woman he loves. He must devote himself to her, offer her all that is
beautiful in this world: joy and happiness ... and, if she should be bored,
stirring adventures to distract her, to excite her and to make her smile
... or even weep."

Hortense shivered; and her eyes were not quite free from tears. For the
first time he was alluding to the sentimental adventure that bound them by
a tie which as yet was frail, but which became stronger and more enduring
with each of the ventures on which they entered together, pursuing them
feverishly and anxiously to their close. Already she felt powerless and
uneasy with this extraordinary man, who subjected events to his will and
seemed to play with the destinies of those whom he fought or protected. He
filled her with dread and at the same time he attracted her. She thought of
him sometimes as her master, sometimes as an enemy against whom she must
defend herself, but oftenest as a perturbing friend, full of charm and
fascination....

V

THERESE AND GERMAINE

The weather was so mild that autumn that, on the 12th of October, in the
morning, several families still lingering in their villas at Etretat had
gone down to the beach. The sea, lying between the cliffs and the clouds on
the horizon, might have suggested a mountain-lake slumbering in the hollow
of the enclosing rocks, were it not for that crispness in the air and those
pale, soft and indefinite colours in the sky which give a special charm to
certain days in Normandy.

"It's delicious," murmured Hortense. But the next moment she added: "All
the same, we did not come here to enjoy the spectacle of nature or to
wonder whether that huge stone Needle on our left was really at one time
the home of Arsene Lupin."

"We came here," said Prince Renine, "because of the conversation which I
overheard, a fortnight ago, in a dining-car, between a man and a woman."

"A conversation of which I was unable to catch a single word."

"If those two people could have guessed for an instant that it was possible
to hear a single word of what they were saying, they would not have spoken,
for their conversation was one of extraordinary gravity and importance. But
I have very sharp ears; and though I could not follow every sentence, I
insist that we may be certain of two things. First, that man and woman, who
are brother and sister, have an appointment at a quarter to twelve this
morning, the 12th of October, at the spot known as the Trois Mathildes,
with a third person, who is married and who wishes at all costs to recover
his or her liberty. Secondly, this appointment, at which they will come
to a final agreement, is to be followed this evening by a walk along the
cliffs, when the third person will bring with him or her the man or woman,
I can't definitely say which, whom they want to get rid of. That is the
gist of the whole thing. Now, as I know a spot called the Trois Mathildes
some way above Etretat and as this is not an everyday name, we came down
yesterday to thwart the plan of these objectionable persons."

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