Fantômas. Marcel Allain

at which the Baronne de Vibray was present. Her grief was distressing to witness. Somewhat futile to outward seeming, this woman had a very kind and tender heart; as a matter of course she had constituted herself the protector and comforter of Thérèse, and she had spent the whole of the previous day with the child at Brives, ransacking the local shops to procure her mourning.

      Thérèse was terribly shocked by the dreadful death of her grandmother whom she adored, but she displayed unexpected strength of character and controlled her grief so that she might be able to look after the guests whom she was now entertaining for the first time as mistress of the house. The Baronne de Vibray had failed in her attempt to persuade Thérèse to come with her to Querelles to sleep. Thérèse was determined in her refusal to leave the château and what she termed her "post of duty."

      "Marie will stay with me," she assured the kind Baronne, "and I promise you I shall have sufficient courage to go to sleep to-night."

      So her friend got into her car alone at nine o'clock and went back to her own house, and Thérèse went up at once to bed with Marie, the faithful servant who, like Louise the cook, had been with her ever since she was born.

      After having read all the newspapers, with their minute and often inaccurate account of the tragedy at Beaulieu—for everyone in the château had been besieged the previous day by reporters and representatives of various press agencies—M. Etienne Rambert said to his son simply, but with a marked gravity:

      "Let us go upstairs, my son: it is time."

      At the door of his room Charles deferentially offered his cheek to his father, but M. Etienne Rambert seemed to hesitate; then, as if taking a sudden resolution, he entered his son's room instead of going on to his own. Charles kept silence and refrained from asking any questions, for he had noticed how lost in sad thought his father had seemed to be since the day before.

      Charles Rambert was very tired. He began to undress at once. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and was turning towards a looking-glass to undo his tie, when his father came up to him; with an abrupt movement M. Etienne Rambert put both his hands on his son's shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. Then in a stifled but peremptory tone he said:

      "Now confess, unhappy boy! Confess to your father!"

      Charles went ghastly white.

      "What?" he muttered.

      Etienne Rambert kept his eyes fixed upon him.

      "It was you who committed the murder!"

      The ringing denial that the young man tried to utter was strangled in his throat; he threw out his arms and groped with his hands as if to find something to support him in his faintness; then he pulled himself together.

      "Committed the murder? I? You accuse me of having killed the Marquise? It is infamous, hateful, awful!"

      "Alas, yes!"

      "No, no! Good God, no!"

      "Yes!" Etienne Rambert insisted.

      The two men faced each other, panting. Charles controlled the emotion which was sweeping over him once more, and looking steadily at his father, said in tones of bitter reproach:

      "And it is actually my own father who says that—who suspects me!"

      Tears filled the young fellow's eyes and sobs choked him; he grew whiter still, and seemed so near collapse that his father had to support him to a chair, where he remained for several minutes utterly prostrated.

      M. Rambert paced up and down the room a few times, then took another chair and sat down in front of his son. Passing a hand across his brow as if to sweep away the horrible nightmare that was haunting him, he spoke again.

      "Come now, my boy, my poor boy, let us talk it over quietly. I do not know how it was, but yesterday morning when I saw you at the station I had a presentiment of something: you were haggard, and tired, and your eyes were drawn——"

      "I told you before," Charles answered tonelessly "that I had had a bad night: I was over-excited and did not sleep: I was awake the whole night."

      "By Jove, yes!" his father rapped out: "I can believe that! But if you were not asleep, how do you account for your not hearing anything?"

      "Thérèse did not hear anything either," said Charles after a moment's reflection.

      "Thérèse's room was a long way off," M. Rambert replied, "while there was only a thin wall between yours and that of the Marquise. You must have heard: you did hear! More than that——, oh, my boy, my unhappy boy!"

      Charles was twisting and untwisting his hands, and great drops of cold perspiration beaded his brow.

      "You are the only single person who thinks I committed such an awful crime!" he said, half questioningly.

      "The only one?" Etienne Rambert muttered. "Perhaps! As yet! But you ought to know that you made a very bad impression indeed upon the friends of the Marquise during the evening before the crime, when President Bonnet was reading the particulars of a murder that had been committed in Paris by—somebody: I forget whom."

      "Good heavens!" Charles exclaimed in indignation, "I did not say anything wrong. Do you mean to say that just because I am interested in stories of great criminals like Rocambole and Fantômas——"

      "You created a deplorable impression," his father repeated.

      "So they suspect me too, do they?" Charles enquired. "But you can't make accusations like that," he said, warming up: "you've got to have facts, and proofs." He looked at his father for the sympathy and encouragement of affection. "Listen, papa, I know you will believe me when I swear that I am innocent; but do you think other people——"

      M. Etienne Rambert sat with his head between his hands, wrapped in thought; there was a short silence before the unhappy father replied:

      "Unfortunately there is evidence against you," he said at last; "and damning evidence, too!" he added with a glance at his son that seemed to pulverise him. "Terrible evidence! Consider, Charles: the magistrates have decided, as a result of their investigations, that no one got into the château on the fatal night; you were the only man who slept there; and none but a man could possibly have committed such a horrible crime, such a monstrous piece of butchery!"

      "Someone might have got in from outside," the unhappy lad urged, as if trying to escape from the network in which he was being entangled.

      "No one did," Etienne Rambert insisted; "besides, how could you prove it?"

      Charles was silent. He stood in the middle of the room, with trembling legs and haggard eyes, seemingly stupefied and incapable of coherent thought, vacantly watching his father. With bent head and shoulders bowed as though beneath a too-heavy load, Etienne Rambert moved towards the dressing-room attached to the bedroom.

      "Come here," he said in an almost inaudible voice; "follow me."

      He went into the dressing-room, and picking up the towels that were heaped anyhow on the lower rail of the washstand, he selected a very crumpled one and held it out in front of his son.

      "Look at that!" he said in a low, curt tone.

      And on the towel, thus held in the light, Charles Rambert saw red stains of blood. The lad started, and was about to burst into some protestation, but Etienne Rambert imperiously checked him.

      "Do you still deny it? Unhappy, wretched boy, there is the convincing, irrefutable evidence of your guilt! These stains of blood proclaim it. Something always is overlooked! How are you to explain the presence of this blood-stained linen in your room? Can you still deny that it is proof positive of your guilt?"

      "But I do deny it, I do deny it! I don't understand! I know nothing about it!" and once more Charles Rambert collapsed into the arm-chair; the unhappy lad was nothing but a human wreck, with no strength to argue or even utter a word.

      His father's eyes rested on him, filled with infinite affection and profoundest pity.