The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(921)
“‘You hesitate,’ he said sharply, while his sparkling eyes transfixed me. ‘Perhaps you can’t come today. You have other things to do. Perhaps you want to go and see Desgrais, or have an interview with D’Argenson or La Regnie. Take care, my boy, that the talons you are thinking of calling down on others, don’t tear you.’ At this my sorely tried spirit found vent.
“‘Those,’ I said, ‘who are conscious of horrible crimes may dread the names which you have mentioned, but I do not. I have nothing to do with them.’
“‘Remember, Olivier,’ he resumed, ‘that it is an honour to you to work with me—the most renowned Master of his time everywhere highly esteemed for his truth and goodness; any foul calumny would fall back on the head of its originator. As to Madelon, I must tell you that it is her alone whom you have to thank for my yielding. She loves you with a devotion that I should never have believed her capable of. As soon as you were gone, she fell at my feet, clasped my knees and vowed with copious tears, that she could never live without you. I thought this was mere imagination, for those young things always think they’re going to die of love whenever a young wheyface looks at them a little kindly. But my Madelon really did fall quite sick and ill; and when I tried to talk her out of the silly nonsense, she called out your name a thousand times. Last evening I told her I gave in and agreed to everything, and would go to fetch you today; so this morning she is blooming again like any rose, and waiting for you, quite beside herself with longing.’
“May the eternal power of Heaven forgive me, but—I don’t know how it came about—I suddenly found myself in Cardillac’s house, where Madelon, with loud cries of ‘Olivier!—my Olivier!—my beloved! my husband!’ clasped both her arms about me, and pressed me to her heart; whilst I, in the plenitude of my bliss, swore by the Virgin and all the Saints never, never to leave her.”
Overcome by the remembrance of this decisive moment, Olivier was obliged to pause. Horrified at the crime of a man whom she had looked on as the incarnation of probity and goodness, Mademoiselle de Scudéri cried: “Dreadful!—René Cardillac a member of that band of murderers who have so long made Paris into a robbers’ den!”
“A member of the band, do you say, Mademoiselle?” said Olivier. “There never was any band; it was René Cardillac alone who sought and found his victims with such diabolical ingenuity and activity. It was in the fact of his being alone that his impunity lay—the practical impossibility of coming upon the murderer’s track. But let me go on. What is coming will clear up the mystery, and reveal the secrets of the wickedest and at the same time most wretched of all mankind. You at once see the position in which I now stood towards my master. The step was taken, and I could not go back. At times it seemed to me that I had rendered myself Cardillac’s accomplice in murder, and it was only in Madelon’s love that I temporarily forgot the inward pain which tortured me; only in her society could I drive away all outward traces of the nameless horror. When I was at work with the old man in the workshop, I could not look him in the face could—scarcely speak a word—for the horror which pervaded me in the presence of this terrible being, who fulfilled all the duties of the tender father and the good citizen, while the night shrouded his atrocities. Madelon, pure and pious as an angel, hung upon him with the most idolatrous affection. It pierced my heart when I thought that, if ever vengeance should overtake this masked criminal she would be the victim of the most terrible despair. That, of itself closed my lips, though the consequence of my silence should be a criminal’s death for myself. Although much was to be gathered from what the Marechaussée had said, still Cardillac’s crimes, their motive and the manner in which he carried them out, were a riddle to me. The solution of it soon came.
One day Cardillac—who usually excited my horror by laughing and jesting during our work, in the highest of spirits—was very grave and thoughtful. Suddenly he threw the piece of work he was engaged on aside, so that the pearls and other stones rolled about the floor, started to his feet, and said: ‘Olivier! things cannot go on between us like this; the situation is unendurable What the ablest and most ingenious efforts of Desgrais and his myrmidons failed to find out, chance has thrown into your hands. You saw me at my nocturnal work, to which my Evil Star compels me, so that no resistance is possible for me; and it was your own Evil Star, moreover which led you to follow me; which wrapped and hid you in an impenetrable mantle; which gave that lightness to your footfall that enabled you to move along with the noiselessness of the smaller animals, so that I—who see clear by night, as doth the tiger, and hear the smallest sound, the humming of the gnats, streets away—did not observe you. Your Evil Star brought you to me, my comrade—my accomplice! You see, now, that you can’t betray me; therefore you shall know all.”