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

“You think so, do you? Was it also to hasten matters that you took it into your head to marry Madeleine? That made it necessary to let her into the secret; and, ever since, she has advised and set her aunt against us. I would not be surprised if she makes her confess everything to M. Fauvel, or even inform against us at the police-office.”

“I love Madeleine!”

“You told me that before. And suppose you do love her. You led me into this piece of business without having studied its various bearings, without knowing what you were about. No one but an idiot, my beloved uncle, would go and put his foot into a trap, and then say, ‘If I had only known about it!’ You should have made it your business to know everything. You came to me, and said, ‘Your father is dead,’ which was a lie to start with; perhaps you call it a mistake. He is living; and, after what we have done, I dare not appear before him. He would have left me a million, and now I shall not get a sou. He will find his Valentine, and then good-by.”

“Enough!” angrily interrupted Louis. “If I have made a mistake, I know how to redeem it. I can save everything yet.”

“You can? How so?”

“That is my secret,” said Louis gloomily.

Louis and Raoul were silent for a minute. And this silence between them, in this lonely spot, at dead of night, was so horribly significant that both of them shuddered.

An abominable thought had flashed across their evil minds, and without a word or look they understood each other.

Louis broke the ominous silence, by abruptly saying:

“Then you refuse to disappear if I pay you a hundred and fifty thousand francs? Think it over before deciding: it is not too late yet.”

“I have fully thought it over. I know you will not attempt to deceive me any more. Between certain ease, and the probability of an immense fortune, I choose the latter at all risks. I will share your success or your failure. We will swim or sink together.”

“And you will follow my instructions?”

“Blindly.”

Raoul must have been very certain of Louis’s intentions of resorting to the most dangerous extremities, must have known exactly what he intended to do; for he did not ask him a single question. Perhaps he dared not. Perhaps he preferred doubt to shocking certainty, as if he could thus escape the remorse attendant upon criminal complicity.

“In the first place,” said Louis, “you must at once return to Paris.”

“I will be there in forty-eight hours.”

“You must be very intimate at Mme. Fauvel’s, and keep me informed of everything that takes place in the family.”

“I understand.”

Louis laid his hand upon Raoul’s shoulder, as if to impress upon his mind what he was about to say.

“You have a sure means of being restored to your mother’s confidence and affection, by blaming me for everything that has happened to distress her. Abuse me constantly. The more odious you render me in her eyes and those of Madeleine, the better you will serve me. Nothing would please me more than to be denied admittance to the house when I return to Paris. You must say that you have quarrelled with me, and that, if I still come to see you, it is because you cannot prevent it, and you will never voluntarily have any intercourse with me. That is the scheme; you can develop it.”

Raoul listened to these strange instructions with astonishment.

“What!” he cried: “you adore Madeleine, and take this means of showing it? An odd way of carrying on a courtship, I must confess. I will be shot if I can comprehend.”

“There is no necessity for your comprehending.”

“All right,” said Raoul submissively; “if you say so.”

Then Louis reflected that no one could properly execute a commission without having at least an idea of its nature.

“Did you ever hear,” he asked Raoul, “of the man who burnt down his lady-love’s house so as to have the bliss of carrying her out in his arms?”

“Yes: what of it?”

“At the proper time, I will charge you to set fire, morally, to Mme. Fauvel’s house; and I will rush in, and save her and her niece. Now, in the eyes of those women my conduct will appear more magnanimous and noble in proportion to the contempt and abuse they have heaped upon me. I gain nothing by patient devotion: I have everything to hope from a sudden change of tactics. A well-managed stroke will transform a demon into an angel.”

“Very well, a good idea!” said Raoul approvingly, when his uncle had finished.

“Then you understand what is to be done?”

“Yes, but will you write to me?”

“Of course; and if anything should happen at Paris——”

“I will telegraph to you.”

“And never lose sight of my rival, the cashier.”

“Prosper? not much danger of our being troubled by him, poor boy! He is just now my most devoted friend. Trouble has driven him into a path of life which will soon prove his destruction. Every now and then I pity him from the bottom of my soul.”

“Pity him as much as you like; but don’t interfere with his dissipation.”

The two men shook hands, and separated apparently the best friends in the world; in reality the bitterest enemies.

Raoul would not forgive Louis for having attempted to appropriate all the booty, and leave him in the lurch, when it was he who had risked the greatest dangers.

Louis, on his part, was alarmed at the attitude taken by Raoul. Thus far he had found his nephew tractable, and even blindly obedient; and now he had suddenly become rebellious and threatening. Instead of ordering Raoul, he was forced to consult and bargain with him.

What could be more wounding to his vanity and self-conceit than the reproaches, well founded though they were, to which he had been obliged to listen, from a mere youth?

As he walked back to his brother’s house, thinking over what had just occurred, Louis swore that sooner or later he would be revenged, and that, as soon as he could get rid of Raoul he would do so, and would do him some great injury.

But, for the present, he was so afraid lest the young villain should betray him, or thwart his plans in some way, that he wrote to him the next day, and every succeeding day, full particulars of everything that