The Eight Strokes of the Clock

The bicycle tracks led Rénine to the uninhabited Château des Landes, five miles from the village. They disappeared in a rocky path which ran beside the park down to the Seine, opposite the Jumièges peninsula.

Next night, he took up his position there. At eleven o'clock, Dalbrèque climbed a bank, scrambled over a wire fence, hid his bicycle under the branches and moved away. It seemed impossible to follow him in the pitchy darkness, on a mossy soil that muffled the sound of footsteps. Rénine did not make the attempt; but, at daybreak, he came with his chauffeur and hunted through the park all the morning. Though the park, which covered the side of a hill and was bounded below by the river, was not very large, he found no clue which gave him any reason to suppose that Rose Andrée was imprisoned there.

He therefore went back to the village, with the firm intention of taking action that evening and employing force:

"This state of things cannot go on," he said to Hortense. "I must rescue Rose Andrée at all costs and save her from that ruffian's clutches. He must be made to speak. He must. Otherwise there's a danger that we may be too late."

That day was Sunday; and Dalbrèque did not go to work. He did not leave his room except for lunch and went upstairs again immediately afterwards. But at three o'clock Rénine and Hortense, who were keeping a watch on him from the inn, saw him come down the wooden staircase, with his bicycle on his shoulder. Leaning it against the bottom step, he inflated the tires and fastened to the handle-bar a rather bulky object wrapped in a newspaper.

"By Jove!" muttered Rénine.

"What's the matter?"

In front of the café was a small terrace bordered on the right and left by spindle-trees planted in boxes, which were connected by a paling. Behind the shrubs, sitting on a bank but stooping forward so that they could see Dalbrèque through the branches, were four men.

"Police!" said Rénine. "What bad luck! If those fellows take a hand, they will spoil everything."

"Why? On the contrary, I should have thought...."

"Yes, they will. They will put Dalbrèque out of the way … and then? Will that give us Rose Andrée?"

Dalbrèque had finished his preparations. Just as he was mounting his bicycle, the detectives rose in a body, ready to make a dash for him. But Dalbrèque, though quite unconscious of their presence, changed his mind and went back to his room as though he had forgotten something.

"Now's the time!" said Rénine. "I'm going to risk it. But it's a difficult situation and I've no great hopes."

He went out into the yard and, at a moment when the detectives were not looking, ran up the staircase, as was only natural if he wished to give an order to his chauffeur. But he had no sooner reached the rustic balcony at the back of the house, which gave admission to the two bedrooms than he stopped. Dalbrèque's door was open. Rénine walked in.

Dalbrèque stepped back, at once assuming the defensive:

"What do you want? Who said you could...."

"Silence!" whispered Rénine, with an imperious gesture. "It's all up with you!"

"What are you talking about?" growled the man, angrily.

"Lean out of your window. There are four men below on the watch for you to leave, four detectives."

Dalbrèque leant over the terrace and muttered an oath:

"On the watch for me?" he said, turning round. "What do I care?"

"They have a warrant."

He folded his arms:

"Shut up with your piffle! A warrant! What's that to me?"

"Listen," said Rénine, "and let us waste no time. It's urgent. Your name's Dalbrèque, or, at least, that's the name under which you acted in The Happy Princess and under which the police are looking for you as being the murderer of Bourguet the jeweller, the man who stole a motor-car and forty thousand francs from the World's Cinema Company and the man who abducted a woman at Le Havre. All this is known and proved … and here's the upshot. Four men downstairs. Myself here, my chauffeur in the next room. You're done for. Do you want me to save you?"

Dalbrèque gave his adversary a long look:

"Who are you?"

"A friend of Rose Andrée's," said Rénine.

The other started and, to some extent dropping his mask, retorted:

"What are your conditions?"

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

A strange thing occurred and impressed Rénine. Dalbrèque'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 Andrée. 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."

Dalbrèque 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."

Rénine reflected. There was something in all this that he failed to grasp. In any case, the frightful danger that threatened Rose Andrée dominated the whole situation; and Rénine was not the man to despise this threat and to persist out of vanity in a perilous course. Rose Andrée'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 café, right against the boxes so as to block the exit. As for you," he continued, addressing Dalbrèque, "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 Dalbrèque 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 Dalbrèque 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.

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

"Stop him!"

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

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

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

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

Rénine 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 Andrée. 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 Dalbrèque with them on an improvised stretcher. Rénine, 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 Dalbrèque 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.

Rénine 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 Dalbrèque made use of her to cross the Seine! And, as she made water, he brought a saucepan."

"Then Rose Andrée …?" asked Hortense.

"Is a prisoner on the other bank, on the Jumièges 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. "Dalbrèque 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 Rénine. "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 Dalbrèque dominated by the memory of it? The house, which is certainly the one in which Rose Andrée spent the summer, was empty. He has shut her up there."

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

"Well, so are we! To the left of the river, the Eure and the forest of Brotonne; to the right, the Seine-inférieure. 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 Andrée!" whispered Hortense.

"Well!" said Rénine, admitting his astonishment. "This is the last thing that I expected! Rose Andrée! Rose Andrée 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 Andrée, 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 Dalbrèque, 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 Rénine would have much liked to know what Rose Andrée 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 Rénine 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 Dalbrèque 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 Andrée leant over the garden and waited, with her eyes turned to the wall, as though she saw something there.

Presently, Rénine 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 Rénine 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.

Rénine 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 …?"

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

"You are Rose Andrée, 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 Dalbrèque. 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 Rénine, 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 Rénine will save him. You will, won't you, Rénine?… 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 Andrée 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 Andrée passed as a friend whom they had been to fetch in the neighbourhood and were taking to Paris with them. Rénine ran out to make enquiries and came back to the two women.

"It's all right. Dalbrèque 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 Andrée, anxiously.

Rénine 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 Rénine; 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, Rénine, and gladly."

The night was uneventful. Rénine 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.

Rénine 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 Rénine, 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 Dalbrèque bird had flown!"

"Which way?"

"Through the window. There were evidently accomplices, with ropes and a ladder. And, as Dalbrèque 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."