The Champdoce Mystery by Emile Gaboriau (best novels in english txt) 📖

The barrel of the revolver was but a few inches from George de Croisenois’ heart, and the finger of his most inveterate enemy was curved round the trigger; but his feelings had been so highly wrought up that he thought not of this danger. He only remembered that he had four minutes in which to make up his mind. The events of the last thirty minutes had pressed upon each other’s heels with such surprising alacrity that he could hardly believe that they had really occurred, and it seemed to him as if it might not, after all, be only a hideous vision of the night.

“You have only two minutes more,” remarked the Duke.

Croisenois started; his soul was far away from the terrible present. He glanced at the clock, then at his enemy, and lastly at Marie, who lay upon the couch, and from her ashen complexion might have been regarded as dead, save for the hysterical sobs which convulsed her frame. He felt that it was impossible to leave her in such a condition without aid of any kind, but he saw well that any show of pity on his part would only aggravate his offence. “Heaven have mercy on us!” muttered he. “We are at the mercy of a maniac,” and with a feeling of deadly fear he asked himself what would be the fate of this woman, whom he loved so devotedly, were he to die. “For her sake,” he thought, “I must slay this man, or her life will be one endless existence of torture—and slay him I will.”

“I accept your terms,” said he aloud.

He spoke just in time, for as the words were uttered came the whirr of the machinery and then the first clear stroke of the bell.

“I thank you,” answered Norbert coldly as he lowered the muzzle of his revolver.

The icy frigidity of manner in a period of extreme danger, which is the marked characteristic of a certain type of education, had now vanished from the Marquis’s tone and behavior.

“But that is not all,” he continued; “I, too, have certain conditions to propose.”

“But we agreed—”

“Let me explain; we are going to fight in the dark in your garden without seconds. We are to dig a grave and the survivor is to bury his dead antagonist. Tell me, am I right?”

Norbert bowed.

“But,” went on the Marquis, “how can you be certain that all will end here, and that the earth will be content to retain our secret? You do not know, and you do not seem to care, that if one day the secret will be disclosed and the survivor accused of being the murderer of the other, arrested, dragged before a tribunal, condemned, and sent to a life-long prison——”

“There is a chance of that, of course.”

“And do you think that I will consent to run such a risk as that?”

“There is such a risk, of course,” answered Norbert phlegmatically; “but that will be an incentive for you to conceal my death as I should conceal yours.”

“That will not be sufficient for me,” returned De Croisenois.

“Ah! take care,” sneered Norbert, “or I shall begin to think that you are afraid.”

“I am afraid; that is, afraid of being called a murderer.”

“That is a danger to which I am equally liable with yourself.”

Croisenois, however, was fully determined to carry his point. “You say,” continued he, “that our chances are equal; but if I fall, who would dream of searching here for my remains? You are in your own house and can take every precaution; but suppose, on the other hand, I kill you. Shall I look to the Duchess to assist me? Will not the finger of suspicion be pointed at her? Shall she say to her gardener when all Paris is hunting for you, ‘Mind that you do not meddle with the piece of land at the end of the garden.’”

The thought of the anonymous letter crossed Norbert’s mind, and he remembered that the writer of it must be acquainted with the coming of George de Croisenois. “What do you propose then?” asked he.

“Merely that each of us, without stating the grounds of our quarrel, write down the conditions and sign our names as having accepted them.”

“I agree; but use dispatch.”

The two men, after the conditions had been described, wrote two letters, dated from a foreign country, and the survivor of the combat was to post his dead adversary’s letter, which would not fail to stop any search after the vanished man. When this talk was concluded, Norbert rose to his feet.

“One word in conclusion,” said he: “a soldier is leading the horse on which I rode here up and down in the Place des Invalides. If you kill me, go and take the horse from the man, giving him the twenty francs I promised him.”

“I will.”

“Now let us go down.”

They left the room together. Norbert was stepping aside to permit Croisenois to descend the stairs first, when he felt his coat gently pulled, and, turning round, saw that the Duchess, too weak to rise to her feet, had crawled to him on her knees. The unhappy woman had heard everything, and in an almost inaudible voice she uttered an agonized prayer:

“Mercy, Norbert! Have mercy! I swear to you that I am guiltless. You never loved me, why should you fight for me. Have pity! To-morrow, by all that I hold sacred, I swear to you that I will enter a convent, and you shall never see my face again. Have pity!”

“Pray heaven, madame, that it may be your lover’s sword that pierces my heart. It is your only hope, for then you will be free.”

He tore his coat from her fingers with brutal violence, and the unhappy woman fell to the floor with a shriek as he closed the door upon her, and followed his antagonist downstairs.