The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon

his companions for twenty years. Presently he arranges them in groups of threes, fives, sevens, and nines, on the green baize, reserving a few cards in his hand; then the blue spectacles are lifted and contemplate Valerie for two or three seconds.

      “Your friend is the queen of spades,” he says, turning to Raymond.

      “Decidedly,” replies Monsieur Marolles. “How the insipid diamond beauties fade beside this gorgeous loveliness of the south!”

      Valerie does not hear the compliment, which at another time she would have resented as an insult. She is absorbed in watching the groups of cards over which the blue spectacles are so intently bent.

      Monsieur Blurosset seems to be working some abstruse calculations with these groups of cards, assisted by those he has in his hand. The spectacles wander from the threes to the nines; from the sevens to the fives; back again; across again; from five to nine, from three to seven; from five to three, from seven to nine. Presently he says—

      “The king of spades is everywhere here.” He does not look up as he speaks—never raising the spectacles from the cards. His manner of speaking is so passionless and mechanical, that he might almost be some calculating automaton.

      “The king of spades,” says Raymond, “is a dark and handsome young man.”

      “Yes,” says Blurosset, “he’s everywhere beside the queen of spades.”

      Valerie in spite of herself is absorbed by this man’s words. She never takes her eyes from the spectacles and the thin pale lips of the fortune-teller.

      “I do not like his influence. It is bad. This king of spades is dragging the queen down, down into the very mire.” Valerie’s cheeks can scarcely grow whiter than it has been ever since the revelation of the Bois de Boulogne, but she cannot repress a shudder at these words.

      “There is a falsehood,” continues Monsieur Blurosset; “and there is a fair woman here.”

      “A fair woman! That girl we saw to-night is fair,” whispers Raymond. “No doubt Monsieur Don Giovanni admires blondes, having himself the southern beauty.”

      “The fair woman is always with the king of spades,” says the fortune-teller. “There is here no falsehood—nothing but devotion. The king of spades can be true; he is true to this diamond woman; but for the queen of spades he has nothing but treachery.”

      “Is there anything more on the cards?” asks Raymond.

      “Yes! A priest—a marriage—money. Ah! this king of spades imagines that he is within reach of a great fortune.”

      “Does he deceive himself?”

      “Yes! Now the treachery changes sides. The queen of spades is in it now—— But stay—the traitor, the real traitor is here; this fair man—the knave of diamonds——”

      Raymond Marolles lays his white hand suddenly upon the card to which Blurosset is pointing, and says, hurriedly,—

      “Bah! You have told us all about yesterday; now tell us of to-morrow.” And then he adds, in a whisper, in the ear of Monsieur Blurosset,—

      “Fool! Have you forgotten your lesson?”

      “They will speak the truth,” mutters the fortune-teller. “I was carried away by them. I will be more careful.”

      This whispered dialogue is unheard by Valerie, who sits immovable, awaiting the sentence of the oracle, as if the monotonous voice of Monsieur Blurosset were the voice of Nemesis.

      “Now then for the future,” says Raymond. “It is possible to tell what has happened. We wish to pass the confines of the possible: tell us, then, what is going to happen.”

      Monsieur Blurosset collects the cards, shuffles them, and rearranges them in groups, as before. Again the blue spectacles wander. From three to nine; from nine to seven; from seven to five; Valerie following them with bright and hollow eyes. Presently the fortune-teller says, in his old mechanical way,—

      “The queen of spades is very proud.”

      “Yes,” mutters Raymond in Valerie’s ear. “Heaven help the king who injures such a queen!”

      She does not take her eyes from the blue spectacles of Monsieur Blurosset; but there is a tightening of her determined mouth which seems like an assent to this remark.

      “She can hate as well as love. The king of spades is in danger,” says the fortune-teller.

      There is, for a few minutes, dead silence, while the blue spectacles shift from group to group of cards; Valerie intently watching them, Raymond intently watching her.

      This time there seems to be something difficult in the calculation of the numbers. The spectacles shift hither and thither, and the thin white lips move silently and rapidly, from seven to nine, and back again to seven.

      “There is something on the cards that puzzles you,” says Raymond, breaking the deathly silence. “What is it?”

      “A death!” answers the passionless voice of Monsieur Blurosset. “A violent death, which bears no outward sign of violence. I said, did I not, that the king of spades was in danger?”

      “You did.”

      From three to five, from five to nine, from nine to seven, from seven to nine: the groups of cards form a circle: three times round the circle, as the sun goes; back again, and three times round the circle in a contrary direction: across the circle from three to seven, from seven to five, from five to nine, and the blue spectacles come to a dead stop at nine.

      “Before twelve o’clock to-morrow night the king of spades will be dead!” says the monotonous voice of Monsieur Blurosset. The voices of the clocks of Paris seem to take up Monsieur Blurosset’s voice as they strike the hour of midnight.

      Twenty-four hours for the king of spades!

      Monsieur Blurosset gathers up his cards and drops them into his pocket. Malicious people say that he sleeps with them under his pillow; that he plays écarté by himself in his sleep; and that he has played piquet with a very tall dark gentleman, whom the porter never let either in or out, and who left a sulphureous and suffocating atmosphere behind him in Monsieur Blurosset’s little apartment.

      “Good!” says Monsieur Raymond Marolles. “So much for the pasteboard. Now for the crucible.”

      For the first time since the discovery of the treachery of her husband Valerie de Lancy smiles. She has a beautiful smile, which curves the delicate lips without distorting them, and which brightens in her large dark eyes with a glorious fire of the sunny south. But for all that, Heaven save the man who has injured her from the light of such a smile as hers of to-night.

      “You want my assistance in some matters of chemistry?” asks Blurosset.

      “Yes! I forgot to tell you, madame, that my friend Laurent Blurosset—though he chooses to hide himself in one of the most obscure streets of Paris—is perhaps one of the greatest men in this mighty city. He is a chemist who will one day work a revolution in the chemical science; but he is a fanatic, madame, or, let me rather say, he is a lover, and his crucible is his mistress. This blind devotion to a science is surely only another form of the world’s great madness—love! Who knows what bright eyes a problem in Euclid may have replaced? Who can tell what fair hair may not have been forgotten in the search after a Greek root?”

      Valerie shivers. Heaven help that shattered heart! Every word that touches on the master-passion of her life is a wound that pierces it to the core.

      “You do not smoke, Blurosset. Foolish man you do not know how to live. Pardon, madame.” He lights his cigar at the green-shaded gas-lamp, seats himself close to the stove, and smokes for a few minutes in silence.

      Valerie, still seated before the little table, watches him with fixed eyes, waiting for him to speak.

      In the utter shipwreck of her every hope this