There was no lamp in the hall, but by the dim light of the kitchen
candle, which the girl had brought upstairs with her, I saw an
elderly lady steal noiselessly out of a back room on the ground
floor. She cast one viperish look at me as I entered the hall,
but said nothing, and went slowly upstairs without returning my
bow. My familiarity with Marian's journal sufficiently assured me
that the elderly lady was Madame Fosco.
The servant led me to the room which the Countess had just left.
I entered it, and found myself face to face with the Count.
He was still in his evening dress, except his coat, which he had
thrown across a chair. His shirt-sleeves were turned up at the
wrists, but no higher. A carpet-bag was on one side of him, and a
box on the other. Books, papers, and articles of wearing apparel
were scattered about the room. On a table, at one side of the
door, stood the cage, so well known to me by description, which
contained his white mice. The canaries and the cockatoo were
probably in some other room. He was seated before the box,
packing it, when I went in, and rose with some papers in his hand
to receive me. His face still betrayed plain traces of the shock
that had overwhelmed him at the Opera. His fat cheeks hung loose,
his cold grey eyes were furtively vigilant, his voice, look, and
manner were all sharply suspicious alike, as he advanced a step to
meet me, and requested, with distant civility, that I would take a
chair.
"You come here on business, sir?" he said. "I am at a loss to
know what that business can possibly he."
The unconcealed curiosity, with which he looked hard in my face
while he spoke, convinced me that I had passed unnoticed by him at
the Opera. He had seen Pesca first, and from that moment till he
left the theatre he had evidently seen nothing else. My name
would necessarily suggest to him that I had not come into his
house with other than a hostile purpose towards himself, but he
appeared to be utterly ignorant thus far of the real nature of my
errand.
"I am fortunate in finding you here to-night," I said. "You seem
to be on the point of taking a journey?"
"Is your business connected with my journey?"
"In some degree."
"In what degree? Do you know where I am going to?"
"No. I only know why you are leaving London."
He slipped by me with the quickness of thought, locked the door,
and put the key in his pocket.
"You and I, Mr. Hartright, are excellently well acquainted with
one another by reputation," he said. "Did it, by any chance,
occur to you when you came to this house that I was not the sort
of man you could trifle with?"
"It did occur to me," I replied. "And I have not come to trifle
with you. I am here on a matter of life and death, and if that
door which you have locked was open at this moment, nothing you
could say or do would induce me to pass through it."
I walked farther into the room, and stood opposite to him on the
rug before the fireplace. He drew a chair in front of the door,
and sat down on it, with his left arm resting on the table. The
cage with the white mice was close to him, and the little
creatures scampered out of their sleeping-place as his heavy arm
shook the table, and peered at him through the gaps in the smartly
painted wires.
"On a matter of life and death," he repeated to himself. "Those
words are more serious, perhaps, than you think. What do you
mean?"
"What I say."
The perspiration broke out thickly on his broad forehead. His
left hand stole over the edge of the table. There was a drawer in
it, with a lock, and the key was in the lock. His finger and
thumb closed over the key, but did not turn it.
"So you know why I am leaving London?" he went on. "Tell me the
reason, if you please." He turned the key, and unlocked the drawer
as he spoke.
"I can do better than that," I replied. "I can SHOW you the
reason, if you like."
"How can you show it?"
"You have got your coat off," I said. "Roll up the shirt-sleeve
on your left arm, and you will see it there."
The same livid leaden change passed over his face which I had seen
pass over it at the theatre. The deadly glitter in his eyes shone
steady and straight into mine. He said nothing. But his left
hand slowly opened the table-drawer, and softly slipped into it.
The harsh grating noise of something heavy that he was moving
unseen to me sounded for a moment, then ceased. The silence that
followed was so intense that the faint ticking nibble of the white
mice at their wires was distinctly audible where I stood.
My life hung by a thread, and I knew it. At that final moment I
thought with HIS mind, I felt with HIS fingers--I was as certain
as if I had seen it of what he kept hidden from me in the drawer.
"Wait a little," I said. "You have got the door locked--you see I
don't move--you see my hands are empty. Wait a little. I have
something more to say."
"You have said enough," he replied, with a sudden composure so
unnatural and so ghastly that it tried my nerves as no outbreak of
violence could have tried them. "I want one moment for my own
thoughts, if you please. Do you guess what I am thinking about?"
"Perhaps I do."
"I am thinking," he remarked quietly, "whether I shall add to the
disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the
fireplace."
If I had moved at that moment, I saw in his face that he would
have done it.
"I advise you to read two lines of writing which I have about me,"
I rejoined, "before you finally decide that question."
The proposal appeared to excite his curiosity. He nodded his
head. I took Pesca's acknowledgment of the receipt of my letter
out of my pocket-book, handed it to him at arm's length, and
returned to my former position in front of the fireplace.
He read the lines aloud: "Your letter is received. If I don't
hear from you before the time you mention, I will break the seal
when the clock strikes."
Another man in his position would have needed some explanation of
those words--the Count felt no such necessity. One reading of the
note showed him the precaution that I had taken as plainly as if
he had been present at the time when I adopted it. The expression
of his face changed on the instant, and his hand came out of the
drawer empty.
"I don't lock up my drawer, Mr. Hartright," he said, "and I don't
say that I may not scatter your brains about the fireplace yet.
But I am a just man even to my enemy, and I will acknowledge
beforehand that they are cleverer brains than I thought them.
Come to the point, sir! You want something of me?"
"I do, and I mean to have it."
"On conditions?"
"On no conditions."
His hand dropped into the drawer again.
"Bah! we are travelling in a circle," he said, "and those clever
brains of yours are in danger again. Your tone is deplorably
imprudent, sir--moderate it on the spot! The risk of shooting you
on the place where you stand is less to me than the risk of
letting you out of this house, except on conditions that I dictate
and approve. You have not got my lamented friend to deal with
now--you are face to face with Fosco! If the lives of twenty Mr.
Hartrights were the stepping-stones to my safety, over all those
stones I would go, sustained by my sublime indifference, self-
balanced by my impenetrable calm. Respect me, if you love your
own life! I summon you to answer three questions before you open
your lips again. Hear them--they are necessary to this interview.
Answer them--they are necessary to ME." He held up one finger of
his right hand. "First question!" he said. "You come here
possessed of information which may be true or may be false--where
did you get it?"
"I decline to tell you."
"No matter--I shall find out. If that information is true--mind I
say, with the whole force of my resolution, if--you are making
your market of it here by treachery of your own or by treachery of
some other man. I note that circumstance for future use in my
memory, which forgets nothing, and proceed." He held up another
finger. "Second question! Those lines you invited me to read are
without signature. Who wrote them?"
"A man whom I have every reason to depend on, and whom you have
every reason to fear."
My answer reached him to some purpose. His left hand trembled
audibly in the drawer.
"How long do you give me," he asked, putting his third question in
a quieter tone, "before the clock strikes and the seal is broken?"
"Time enough for you to come to my terms," I replied.
"Give me a plainer answer, Mr. Hartright. What hour is the clock
to strike?"
"Nine, to-morrow morning."
"Nine, to-morrow morning? Yes, yes--your trap is laid for me
before I can get my passport regulated and leave London. It is
not earlier, I suppose? We will see about that presently--I can
keep you hostage here, and bargain with you to send for your
letter before I let you go. In the meantime, be so good next as
to mention your terms."
"You shall hear them. They are simple, and soon stated. You know
whose interests I represent in coming here?"
He smiled with the most supreme composure, and carelessly waved
his right hand.
"I consent to hazard a guess," he said jeeringly. "A lady's
interests, of course!"
"My Wife's interests."
He looked at me with the first honest expression that had crossed
his face in my presence--an expression of blank amazement. I
could see that I sank in his estimation as a dangerous man from
that moment. He shut up the drawer at once, folded his arms over
his breast, and listened to me with a smile of satirical
attention.
"You are well enough aware," I went on, "of the course which my
inquiries have taken for many months past, to know that any
attempted denial of plain facts will be quite useless in my
presence. You are guilty of an infamous conspiracy! And the gain
of a fortune of ten thousand pounds was your motive for it."
He said nothing. But his face became overclouded suddenly by a
lowering anxiety.
"Keep your gain," I said. (His face lightened again immediately,
and his eyes opened on me in wider and wider astonishment.) "I am
not here to disgrace myself by bargaining for money which has
passed through your hands, and which has been the price of a vile
crime.
"Gently, Mr. Hartright. Your moral clap-traps have an excellent
effect in England--keep them for yourself and your own countrymen,
if you please. The ten thousand pounds was a legacy left to my
excellent wife by the late Mr. Fairlie. Place the affair on those
grounds, and I will discuss it if you like. To a man of my
sentiments, however, the subject is deplorably sordid. I prefer
to pass it over. I invite you to resume the discussion of your
terms. What do you demand?"
"In the first place, I demand a full confession of the conspiracy,
written and signed in my presence by yourself."
He raised his finger again. "One!" he said, checking me off with
the steady attention of a practical man.
"In the second place, I demand a plain proof, which does not
depend on your personal asseveration, of the date at which my wife
left Blackwater Park and travelled to London."
"So! so! you can lay your finger, I see, on the weak place," he
remarked composedly. "Any more?"
"At present, no more."
"Good! you have mentioned your terms, now listen to mine. The
responsibility to myself of admitting what you are pleased to call
the 'conspiracy' is less, perhaps, upon the whole, than the
responsibility of laying you dead on that hearthrug. Let us say
that I meet your proposal--on my own conditions. The statement
you demand of me shall be written, and the plain proof shall be
produced. You call a letter from my late lamented friend
informing me of the day and hour of his wife's arrival in London,
written, signed, and dated by himself, a proof, I suppose? I can
give you this. I can also send you to the man of whom I hired the
carriage to fetch my visitor from the railway, on the day when she
arrived--his order-book may help you to your date, even if his
coachman who drove me proves to be of no use. These things I can
do, and will do, on conditions. I recite them. First condition!
Madame Fosco and I leave this house when and how we please,
without interference of any kind on your part. Second condition!
You wait here, in company with me, to see my agent, who is coming
at seven o'clock in the morning to regulate my affairs. You give
my agent a written order to the man who has got your sealed letter
to resign his possession of it. You wait here till my agent
places that letter unopened in my hands, and you then allow me one
clear half-hour to leave the house--after which you resume your
own freedom of action and go where you please. Third condition!
You give me the satisfaction of a gentleman for your intrusion
into my private affairs, and for the language you have allowed
yourself to use to me at this conference. The time and place,
abroad, to be fixed in a letter from my hand when I am safe on the
Continent, and that letter to contain a strip of paper measuring
accurately the length of my sword. Those are my terms. Inform me
if you accept them--Yes or No."
The extraordinary mixture of prompt decision, far-sighted cunning,
and mountebank bravado in this speech, staggered me for a moment--
and only for a moment. The one question to consider was, whether
I was justified or not in possessing myself of the means of
establishing Laura's identity at the cost of allowing the
scoundrel who had robbed her of it to escape me with impunity. I
knew that the motive of securing the just recognition of my wife
in the birthplace from which she had been driven out as an
impostor, and of publicly erasing the lie that still profaned her
mother's tombstone, was far purer, in its freedom from all taint
of evil passion, than the vindictive motive which had mingled
itself with my purpose from the first. And yet I cannot honestly
say that my own moral convictions were strong enough to decide the
struggle in me by themselves. They were helped by my remembrance
of Sir Percival's death. How awfully, at the last moment, had the
working of the retribution THERE been snatched from my feeble
hands! What right had I to decide, in my poor mortal ignorance of
the future, that this man, too, must escape with impunity because
he escaped ME? I thought of these things--perhaps with the
superstition inherent in my nature, perhaps with a sense worthier
of me than superstition. It was hard, when I had fastened my hold
on him at last, to loosen it again of my own accord--but I forced
myself to make the sacrifice. In plainer words, I determined to
be guided by the one higher motive of which I was certain, the
motive of serving the cause of Laura and the cause of Truth.
"I accept your conditions," I said. "With one reservation on my
part."
"What reservation may that be?" he asked.
"It refers to the sealed letter," I answered. "I require you to
destroy it unopened in my presence as soon as it is placed in your
hands."
My object in making this stipulation was simply to prevent him
from carrying away written evidence of the nature of my
communication with Pesca. The fact of my communication he would
necessarily discover, when I gave the address to his agent in the
morning. But he could make no use of it on his own unsupported
testimony--even if he really ventured to try the experiment--which
need excite in me the slightest apprehension on Pesca's account.
"I grant your reservation," he replied, after considering the
question gravely for a minute or two. "It is not worth dispute--
the letter shall be destroyed when it comes into my hands."
He rose, as he spoke, from the chair in which he had been sitting
opposite to me up to this time. With one effort he appeared to
free his mind from the whole pressure on it of the interview
between us thus far. "Ouf!" he cried, stretching his arms
luxuriously, "the skirmish was hot while it lasted. Take a seat,
Mr. Hartright. We meet as mortal enemies here-after--let us, like
gallant gentlemen, exchange polite attentions in the meantime.
Permit me to take the liberty of calling for my wife."
He unlocked and opened the door. "Eleanor!" he called out in his
deep voice. The lady of the viperish face came in "Madame Fosco--
Mr. Hartright," said the Count, introducing us with easy dignity.
"My angel," he went on, addressing his wife, "will your labours of
packing up allow you time to make me some nice strong coffee? I
have writing business to transact with Mr. Hartright--and I
require the full possession of my intelligence to do justice to
myself."
Madame Fosco bowed her head twice--once sternly to me, once
submissively to her husband, and glided out of the room.
The Count walked to a writing-table near the window, opened his
desk, and took from it several quires of paper and a bundle of
quill pens. He scattered the pens about the table, so that they
might lie ready in all directions to be taken up when wanted, and
then cut the paper into a heap of narrow slips, of the form used
by professional writers for the press. "I shall make this a
remarkable document," he said, looking at me over his shoulder.
"Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One
of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man
can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense
privilege! I possess it. Do you?"
He marched backwards and forwards in the room, until the coffee
appeared, humming to himself, and marking the places at which
obstacles occurred in the arrangement of his ideas, by striking
his forehead from time to time with the palm of his hand. The
enormous audacity with which he seized on the situation in which I
placed him, and made it the pedestal on which his vanity mounted
for the one cherished purpose of self-display, mastered my
astonishment by main force. Sincerely as I loathed the man, the
prodigious strength of his character, even in its most trivial
aspects, impressed me in spite of myself.
The coffee was brought in by Madame Fosco. He kissed her hand in
grateful acknowledgment, and escorted her to the door; returned,
poured out a cup of coffee for himself, and took it to the
writing-table.
"May I offer you some coffee, Mr. Hartright?" he said, before he
sat down.
I declined.
"What! you think I shall poison you?" he said gaily. "The English
intellect is sound, so far as it goes," he continued, seating
himself at the table; "but it has one grave defect--it is always
cautious in the wrong place."
He dipped his pen in the ink, placed the first slip of paper
before him with a thump of his hand on the desk, cleared his
throat, and began. He wrote with great noise and rapidity, in so
large and bold a hand, and with such wide spaces between the
lines, that he reached the bottom of the slip in not more than two
minutes certainly from the time when he started at the top. Each
slip as he finished it was paged, and tossed over his shoulder out
of his way on the floor. When his first pen was worn out, THAT
went over his shoulder too, and he pounced on a second from the
supply scattered about the table. Slip after slip, by dozens, by
fifties, by hundreds, flew over his shoulders on either side of
him till he had snowed himself up in paper all round his chair.
Hour after hour passed--and there I sat watching, there he sat
writing. He never stopped, except to sip his coffee, and when
that was exhausted, to smack his forehead from time to time. One
o'clock struck, two, three, four--and still the slips flew about
all round him; still the untiring pen scraped its way ceaselessly
from top to bottom of the page, still the white chaos of paper
rose higher and higher all round his chair. At four o'clock I
heard a sudden splutter of the pen, indicative of the flourish
with which he signed his name. "Bravo!" he cried, springing to
his feet with the activity of a young man, and looking me straight
in the face with a smile of superb triumph.
"Done, Mr. Hartright!" he announced with a self-renovating thump
of his fist on his broad breast. "Done, to my own profound
satisfaction--to YOUR profound astonishment, when you read what I
have written. The subject is exhausted: the man--Fosco--is not.
I proceed to the arrangement of my slips--to the revision of my
slips--to the reading of my slips--addressed emphatically to your
private ear. Four o'clock has just struck. Good! Arrangement,
revision, reading, from four to five. Short snooze of restoration
for myself from five to six. Final preparations from six to
seven. Affair of agent and sealed letter from seven to eight. At
eight, en route. Behold the programme!"
He sat down cross-legged on the floor among his papers, strung
them together with a bodkin and a piece of string--revised them,
wrote all the titles and honours by which he was personally
distinguished at the head of the first page, and then read the
manuscript to me with loud theatrical emphasis and profuse
theatrical gesticulation. The reader will have an opportunity,
ere long, of forming his own opinion of the document. It will be
sufficient to mention here that it answered my purpose.
He next wrote me the address of the person from whom he had hired
the fly, and handed me Sir Percival's letter. It was dated from
Hampshire on the 25th of July, and it announced the journey of
"Lady Glyde" to London on the 26th. Thus, on the very day (the
25th) when the doctor's certificate declared that she had died in
St. John's Wood, she was alive, by Sir Percival's own showing, at
Blackwater--and, on the day after, she was to take a journey! When
the proof of that journey was obtained from the flyman, the
evidence would be complete.
"A quarter-past five," said the Count, looking at his watch.
"Time for my restorative snooze. I personally resemble Napoleon
the Great, as you may have remarked, Mr. Hartright--I also
resemble that immortal man in my power of commanding sleep at
will. Excuse me one moment. I will summon Madame Fosco, to keep
you from feeling dull."
Knowing as well as he did, that he was summoning Madame Fosco to
ensure my not leaving the house while he was asleep, I made no
reply, and occupied myself in tying up the papers which he had
placed in my possession.
The lady came in, cool, pale, and venomous as ever. "Amuse Mr.
Hartright, my angel," said the Count. He placed a chair for her,
kissed her hand for the second time, withdrew to a sofa, and, in
three minutes, was as peacefully and happily asleep as the most
virtuous man in existence.
Madame Fosco took a book from the table, sat down, and looked at
me, with the steady vindictive malice of a woman who never forgot
and never forgave.
"I have been listening to your conversation with my husband," she
said. "If I had been in HIS place--I would have laid you dead on
the hearthrug."
With those words she opened her book, and never looked at me or
spoke to me from that time till the time when her husband woke.
He opened his eyes and rose from the sofa, accurately to an hour
from the time when he had gone to sleep.
"I feel infinitely refreshed," he remarked. "Eleanor, my good
wife, are you all ready upstairs? That is well. My little packing
here can be completed in ten minutes--my travelling-dress assumed
in ten minutes more. What remains before the agent comes?" He
looked about the room, and noticed the cage with his white mice in
it. "Ah!" he cried piteously, "a last laceration of my sympathies
still remains. My innocent pets! my little cherished children!
what am I to do with them? For the present we are settled nowhere;
for the present we travel incessantly--the less baggage we carry
the better for ourselves. My cockatoo, my canaries, and my little
mice--who will cherish them when their good Papa is gone?"
He walked about the room deep in thought. He had not been at all
troubled about writing his confession, but he was visibly
perplexed and distressed about the far more important question of
the disposal of his pets. After long consideration he suddenly
sat down again at the writing-table.
"An idea!" he exclaimed. "I will offer my canaries and my
cockatoo to this vast Metropolis--my agent shall present them in
my name to the Zoological Gardens of London. The Document that
describes them shall be drawn out on the spot."
He began to write, repeating the words as they flowed from his
pen.
"Number one. Cockatoo of transcendent plumage: attraction, of
himself, to all visitors of taste. Number two. Canaries of
unrivalled vivacity and intelligence: worthy of the garden of
Eden, worthy also of the garden in the Regent's Park. Homage to
British Zoology. Offered by Fosco."
The pen spluttered again, and the flourish was attached to his
signature.
"Count! you have not included the mice," said Madame Fosco
He left the table, took her hand, and placed it on his heart.
"All human resolution, Eleanor," he said solemnly, "has its
limits. MY limits are inscribed on that Document. I cannot part
with my white mice. Bear with me, my angel, and remove them to
their travelling cage upstairs."
"Admirable tenderness!" said Madame Fosco, admiring her husband,
with a last viperish look in my direction. She took up the cage
carefully, and left the room.
The Count looked at his watch. In spite of his resolute
assumption of composure, he was getting anxious for the agent's
arrival. The candles had long since been extinguished, and the
sunlight of the new morning poured into the room. It was not till
five minutes past seven that the gate bell rang, and the agent
made his appearance. He was a foreigner with a dark beard.
"Mr. Hartright--Monsieur Rubelle," said the Count, introducing us.
He took the agent (a foreign spy, in every line of his face, if
ever there was one yet) into a corner of the room, whispered some
directions to him, and then left us together. "Monsieur Rubelle,"
as soon as we were alone, suggested with great politeness that I
should favour him with his instructions. I wrote two lines to
Pesca, authorising him to deliver my sealed letter "to the
bearer," directed the note, and handed it to Monsieur Rubelle.
The agent waited with me till his employer returned, equipped in
travelling costume. The Count examined the address of my letter
before he dismissed the agent. "I thought so!" he said, turning
on me with a dark look, and altering again in his manner from that
moment.
He completed his packing, and then sat consulting a travelling
map, making entries in his pocket-book, and looking every now and
then impatiently at his watch. Not another word, addressed to
myself, passed his lips. The near approach of the hour for his
departure, and the proof he had seen of the communication
established between Pesca and myself, had plainly recalled his
whole attention to the measures that were necessary for securing
his escape.
A little before eight o'clock, Monsieur Rubelle came back with my
unopened letter in his hand. The Count looked carefully at the
superscription and the seal, lit a candle, and burnt the letter.
"I perform my promise," he said, "but this matter, Mr. Hartright,
shall not end here."
The agent had kept at the door the cab in which he had returned.
He and the maid-servant now busied themselves in removing the
luggage. Madame Fosco came downstairs, thickly veiled, with the
travelling cage of the white mice in her hand. She neither spoke
to me nor looked towards me. Her husband escorted her to the cab.
"Follow me as far as the passage," he whispered in my ear; "I may
want to speak to you at the last moment."
I went out to the door, the agent standing below me in the front
garden. The Count came back alone, and drew me a few steps inside
the passage.
"Remember the Third condition!" he whispered. "You shall hear
from me, Mr. Hartright--I may claim from you the satisfaction of a
gentleman sooner than you think for." He caught my hand before I
was aware of him, and wrung it hard--then turned to the door,
stopped, and came back to me again.
"One word more," he said confidentially. "When I last saw Miss
Halcombe, she looked thin and ill. I am anxious about that
admirable woman. Take care of her, sir! With my hand on my heart,
I solemnly implore you, take care of Miss Halcombe!"
Those were the last words he said to me before he squeezed his
huge body into the cab and drove off.
The agent and I waited at the door a few moments looking after
him. While we were standing together, a second cab appeared from
a turning a little way down the road. It followed the direction
previously taken by the Count's cab, and as it passed the house
and the open garden gate, a person inside looked at us out of the
window. The stranger at the Opera again!--the foreigner with a
scar on his left cheek.
"You wait here with me, sir, for half an hour more!" said Monsieur
Rubelle.
"I do."
We returned to the sitting-room. I was in no humour to speak to
the agent, or to allow him to speak to me. I took out the papers
which the Count had placed in my hands, and read the terrible
story of the conspiracy told by the man who had planned and
perpetrated it.