File No. 113 by Emile Gaboriau (ebook reader browser TXT) 📖

“Very good. What rooms are on the first floor?”

“The kitchen, pantry, billiard-room, and dining-room.”

“And on the floor above?”

“Two drawing-rooms separated by folding doors, and a library.”

“Where do the servants sleep?”

“Raoul has none at present. He is waited on by a man and his wife, who live at Vesinet; they come in the morning, and leave after dinner.”

M. Verduret rubbed his hands gleefully.

“That suits our plans exactly,” he said; “there is nothing to prevent our hearing what Raoul has to say to this person who has come from Paris at ten o’clock at night, to see him. Let us go in.”

Prosper seemed averse to this, and said:

“It is a serious thing for us to do, monsieur.”

“Bless my soul! what else did we come here for? Did you think it was a pleasure-trip, merely to enjoy this lovely weather?” he said in a bantering tone.

“But we might be discovered.”

“Suppose we are? If the least noise betrays our presence, you have only to advance boldly as a friend come to visit a friend, and, finding the door open walked in.”

But unfortunately the heavy oak door was locked. M. Verduret shook it in vain.

“How foolish!” he said with vexation, “I ought to have brought my instruments with me. A common lock which could be opened with a nail, and I have not even a piece of wire!”

Thinking it useless to attempt the door, he tried successively every window on the ground-floor. Alas! each blind was securely fastened on the inside.

M. Verduret was provoked. He prowled around the house like a fox around a hen-coop, seeking an entrance, but finding none. Despairingly he came back to the spot in front of the house, whence he had the best view of the lighted window.

“If I could only look in,” he cried. “Just to think that in there,” and he pointed to the window, “is the solution of the mystery; and we are cut off from it by thirty or forty feet of cursed blank wall!”

Prosper was more surprised than ever at his companion’s strange behavior. He seemed perfectly at home in this garden; he ran about without any precaution; so that one would have supposed him accustomed to such expeditions, especially when he spoke of picking the lock of an occupied house, as if he were talking of opening a snuff-box. He was utterly indifferent to the rain and sleet driven in his face by the gusts of wind as he splashed about in the mud trying to find some way of entrance.

“I must get a peep into that window,” he said, “and I will, cost what it may!”

Prosper seemed to suddenly remember something.

“There is a ladder here,” he cried.

“Why did you not tell me that before? Where is it?”

“At the end of the garden, under the trees.”

They ran to the spot, and in a few minutes had the ladder standing against the wall.

But to their chagrin they found the ladder six feet too short. Six long feet of wall between the top of the ladder and the lighted window was a very discouraging sight to Prosper; he exclaimed:

“We cannot reach it.”

“We can reach it,” cried M. Verduret triumphantly.

And he quickly placed himself a yard off from the house, and, seizing the ladder, cautiously raised it and rested the bottom round on his shoulders, at the same time holding the two uprights firmly and steadily with his hands. The obstacle was overcome.

“Now mount,” he said to his companion.

Prosper did not hesitate. The enthusiasm of difficulties so skilfully conquered, and the hope of triumph, gave him a strength and agility which he had never imagined he possessed. He made a sudden spring, and, seizing the lower rounds, quickly climbed up the ladder, which swayed and trembled beneath his weight.

But he had scarcely looked in the lighted window when he uttered a cry which was drowned in the roaring tempest, and dropped like a log down on the wet grass, exclaiming:

“The villain! the villain!”

With wonderful promptness and vigor M. Verduret laid the ladder on the ground, and ran toward Prosper, fearing that he was dead or dangerously injured.

“What did you see? Are you hurt?” he whispered.

But Prosper had already risen. Although he had had a violent fall, he was unhurt; he was in a state when mind governs matter so absolutely that the body is insensible to pain.

“I saw,” he answered in a hoarse voice, “I saw Madeleine—do you understand, Madeleine—in that room, alone with Raoul!”

M. Verduret was confounded. Was it possible that he, the infallible expert, had been mistaken in his deductions?

He well knew that M. de Lagors’s visitor was a woman; but his own conjectures, and the note which Mme. Gypsy had sent to him at the tavern, had fully assured him that this woman was Mme. Fauvel.

“You must be mistaken,” he said to Prosper.

“No, monsieur, no. Never could I mistake another for Madeleine. Ah! you who heard what she said to me yesterday, answer me: was I to expect such infamous treason as this? You said to me then, ‘She loves you, she loves you!’ Now do you think she loves me? speak!”

M. Verduret did not answer. He had first been stupefied by his mistake, and was now racking his brain to discover the cause of it, which was soon discerned by his penetrating mind.

“This is the secret discovered by Nina,” continued Prosper. “Madeleine, this pure and noble Madeleine, whom I believed to be as immaculate as an angel, is in love with this thief, who has even stolen the name he bears; and I, trusting fool that I was, made this scoundrel my best friend. I confided to him all my hopes and fears; and he was her lover! Of course they amused themselves by ridiculing my silly devotion and blind confidence!”

He stopped, overcome by his violent emotions. Wounded vanity is the worst of miseries. The certainty of having been so shamefully deceived and betrayed made Prosper almost insane with rage.

“This is the last humiliation I shall submit to,” he fiercely cried. “It shall not be said that I was coward enough to stand by and let an insult like this go unpunished.”

He started toward the house; but M. Verduret seized his arm and said:

“What are you going to