Chapter 10

In her blank astonishment Princess Sonia did not know whether to laugh or cry. Was she alone with a monster who, after having played with her as a cat plays with a mouse, would suddenly turn and kill her? Or was this merely some irresponsible lunatic, whom chance alone had enabled to get into her rooms? Whatever the fact might be, the man's last words had made her aware that her bath really was getting cold. A shiver shook her whole frame, and yet----

"Oh, go, please go!" she implored him.

He shook his head, an ironical smile in his eyes.

"For pity's sake," she entreated him again, "have mercy on a woman--a good woman!"

The man appeared to be considering.

"It is very embarrassing," he murmured, "and yet we must decide upon something soon, for I am most anxious you should not take a chill. Oh, it is very simple, Princess: of course you know the arrangement of everything here so well that you could find your dressing-gown at once, by merely feeling your way? We will put out the light, and then you will be able to get out of the bath in the dark without the least fear." He was on the very point of turning off the switch of the lamp, when he stopped abruptly and came back to the bath. "I was forgetting that exasperating bell," he said. "A movement is so very easily made: suppose you were to ring, by mere inadvertence, and regret it afterwards?" Putting his idea into action, the man made a quick cut with his razor and severed the two electric wires several feet above the ground. "That is excellent," he said. "By the way, I don't know where these other two wires go that run along the wall, but it is best to be on the safe side. Suppose there were another bell?" He lifted his razor once more and was trying to sever the electric wires when the steel blade cut the insulator and an alarming flash of light resulted. The man leaped into the air, and dropped his razor. "Good Lord!" he growled, "I suppose that will make you happy, madame: I have burnt my hand most horribly! These must be wires for the light! But no matter: I have still got one sound hand, and that will be enough for me to secure the darkness that you want. And anyhow, you can press the button of your bell as much as you like: it won't ring. So I am sure of a few more minutes in your company."

Sudden darkness fell upon the room. Sonia Danidoff hesitated for a moment and then half rose in the bath. All her pride as a great lady was in revolt. If she must defend her honour and her life, she was ready to do so, and despair would give her strength; but in any event she would be better out of the water, and on her feet, prepared. The darkness was complete, both in the bathroom and in the adjacent bedroom, and the silence was absolute. Standing up in the bath, Sonia Danidoff swept her arms round in a circle to feel for any obstacle. Her touch met nothing. She drew out one foot, and then the other, sprang towards the chair on which she had left her dressing-gown, slipped into it with feverish haste, slid her feet into her slippers, stood motionless for just a second and then, with sudden decision, moved to the switch by the door and turned on the light.

The man had gone from the bathroom, but taking two steps towards her bedroom Sonia Danidoff saw him smiling at her from the far end of that room.

"Sir," she said, "this--pleasantry--has lasted long enough. You must go. You shall, you shall!"

"Shall?" the stranger echoed. "That is a word that is not often used to me. But you are forgiven for not knowing that, Princess. I forgot for the moment that I have not been presented to you. But what is in your mind now?"

Between them was a little escritoire, on the top of which was lying the tiny inlaid revolver that Sonia Danidoff always carried when she went out at night. Could she but get that into her hands it would be a potent argument to induce this stranger to obey her. The Princess also knew that in the drawer of that escritoire which she could actually see half open, she had placed, only a few minutes before going in to her bath, a pocket-book filled with bank-notes for a hundred and twenty thousand francs, money she had withdrawn from the strong-room of the hotel that very morning in order to meet some bills next day. She looked at the drawer and wondered if the pocket-book was still there, or if this mysterious admirer of hers was only a vulgar hotel thief after all. The man had followed her eyes to the revolver.

"That is an unusual knick-knack to find in a lady's room, Princess," and he sprang in front of her as she was taking a step towards the escritoire, and took possession of the revolver. "Do not be alarmed," he added, noticing her little gesture of terror. "I would not do you an injury for anything in the world. I shall be delighted to give this back to you in a minute, but first let me render it harmless." He deftly slipped the six cartridges out of the barrel and then handed the now useless weapon to the Princess with a gallant little bow. "Do not laugh at my excess of caution: but accidents happen so easily!"

It was in vain that the Princess tried to get near her escritoire to ascertain if the drawer had been tampered with: the man kept between her and it all the time, still smiling, still polite, but watching every movement that she made. Suddenly he took his watch from his pocket.

"Two o'clock! Already! Princess, you will be vexed with me for having abused your hospitality to such an extent. I must go!" He appeared not to notice the sigh of relief that broke from her, but went on in a melodramatic tone. "I shall take my departure, not through the window like a lover, nor up the chimney like a thief, nor yet through a secret door behind the arras like a brigand of romance, but like a gentleman who has come to pay his tribute of homage and respect to the most enchanting woman in the world--through the door!" He made a movement as if to go, and came back. "And what do you think of doing now, Princess? Perhaps you will be angry with me? Possibly some unpleasant discovery, made after my departure, will raise some animosity in your breast against me? You might even ring, directly my back is turned, and alarm the staff, merely to embarrass me in my exit, and without paying any attention to the subsequent possible scandal. That is a complicated arrangement of bells and telephones beside your bed! It would be a pity to spoil such a pretty thing, and besides, I hate doing unnecessary damage!" The Princess's eyes turned once more to the drawer: it was practically certain that her money was not there now! But the man broke in again upon her thoughts. "What can I be thinking of? Just fancy my not having presented myself to you even yet! But as a matter of fact I do not want to tell you my name out loud: it is a romantic one, utterly out of keeping with the typically modern environment in which we are now. Ah, if we were only on the steep side of some mountain with the moon like a great lamp above us, or by the shore of some wild ocean, there would be some fascination in the proclamation of my identity in the silence of the night, or in the midst of lightning and thunder as the hurricane swept the seas! But here--in a third-floor suite of the Royal Palace Hotel, surrounded by telephones and electric light, and standing by a window overlooking the Champs Elysées--it would be a positive anachronism!" He took a card out of his pocket and drew near the little escritoire. "Allow me, Princess, to slip my card into this drawer, left open on purpose, it would seem," and while the Princess uttered an exclamation she could not repress, he suited the action to the word. "And now, Princess," he went on, compelling her to retreat before him right to the door of the anteroom opening on to the corridor, "you are too well bred, I am sure, not to wish to conduct your visitor to the door of your suite." His tone altered abruptly, and in a deep imperious voice that made the Princess quake he ordered her: "And now, not a word, not a cry, not a movement until I am outside, or I will kill you!"

Clenching her fists, and summoning all her strength to prevent herself from swooning, Sonia Danidoff led the man to the anteroom door. Slowly she unlocked the door and held it open, and the man stepped quietly through. The next second he was gone!

Leaping back into her bedroom Sonia Danidoff set every bell a-ringing; with great presence of mind she telephoned down to the hall porter: "Don't let anybody go out! I have been robbed!" and she pressed hard upon the special button that set the great alarm bell clanging. Footsteps and voices resounded in the corridor: the Princess knew that help was coming and ran to open her door. The night watchman, and the manager of the third floor came running up and waiters appeared in numbers at the end of the corridor.

"Stop him! Stop him!" the Princess shouted. "He has only just gone out: a man in a dinner jacket, with a great black beard!"

* * * * *

A lad came hurrying out of the lift.

"Where are you going? What is the matter?" enquired the hall porter, whose lodge was at the far end of the hall, next to the courtyard of the hotel, the door into which he had just closed.

"I don't know," he answered. "There is a thief in the hotel! They are calling from the other side."

"It's not in your set, then? By the way, what floor are you on?"

"The second."

"All right," said the hall porter, "it's the third floor that they are calling from. Go up and see what is wrong."

The lad turned on his heel, and disregarding the notice forbidding servants to use the passenger lift, hurried back into it and upstairs again. He was a stoutly built fellow, with a smooth face and red hair. On the third floor he stopped, immediately opposite Sonia Danidoff's suite. The Princess was standing at her door, taking no notice of the watchman Muller's efforts to soothe her excitement, and mechanically twisting between her fingers the blank visiting card which her strange visitor had left in place of her pocket-book and the hundred and twenty thousand francs. There was no name whatever on the card.

"Well," said Muller, to the red-headed lad, "where do you come from?"

"I'm the new man on the second floor," the fellow answered. "The hall porter sent me up to find out what was the matter."

"Matter!" said Muller. "Somebody has robbed the Princess. Here, send someone for the police at once."

"I'll run, sir," and as the lift, instead of being sent down, had carelessly been sent up to the top floor, the young fellow ran down the staircase at full speed.

Through the telephone, Muller was just ordering the hall porter to send for the police, when the second-floor servant rushed up and caught him by the arm, dragging him away from the instrument.

"Open the door for the Lord's sake! I'm off to the police station," and the hall porter made haste to facilitate his departure.

* * * * *

On the top floor cries of astonishment re-echoed. The servants had been alarmed by the uproar and, surprised to see the lift stop and nobody get out of it, they opened the door and found a heap of clothing, a false beard, and a wig. Two housemaids and a valet gazed in amazement at these extraordinary properties, and never thought of informing the manager, M. Louis. Meantime, however, that gentleman had hurried through the mazes of the hotel, and had just reached the third floor when he was stopped by the Baronne Van den Rosen, one of the hotel's oldest patronesses.

"M. Louis!" she exclaimed, bursting into sobs. "I have just been robbed of my diamond necklace. I left it in a jewel-case on my table before going down to dinner. When I heard the noise just now, I got up and looked through my jewel-case, and the necklace is not there."

M. Louis was too dazed to reply. Muller ran up to him.

"Princess Sonia Danidoff's pocket-book has been stolen," he announced; "but I have had the hotel doors shut and we shall be sure to catch the thief."

The Princess came near to explain matters, but at that moment the servants came down from upstairs, bringing with them the make-up articles which they had found in the lift. They laid these on the ground without a word and M. Louis was staring at them when Muller had a sudden inspiration.

"M. Louis, what is the new man on the second floor like?"

Just at that instant a servant appeared at the end of the corridor, a middle-aged man with white whiskers and a bald head.

"There he is, coming towards us," M. Louis replied. "His name is Arnold."

"Good God!" cried Muller; "and the red-headed fellow: the carroty chap?" M. Louis shook his head, not understanding, and Muller tore himself away and rushed down to the hall porter. "Has he gone out? Has anyone gone out?"

"No one," said the porter, "except, of course, the servant from the second floor, whom you sent for the police."

"The carroty chap?" Muller enquired.

"Yes, the carroty chap."

Princess Sonia Danidoff lay back in an easy chair, receiving the anxious attentions of Nadine, her Circassian maid. M. Louis was holding salts to her nostrils. The Princess still held in her hands the card left by the mysterious stranger who had just robbed her so cleverly of a hundred and twenty thousand francs. As she slowly came to herself the Princess gazed at the card as if fascinated, and this time her haggard eyes grew wide with astonishment. For upon the card, which hitherto had appeared immaculately white, marks and letters were gradually becoming visible, and the Princess read:

"Fan--tô--mas!"

XI. MAGISTRATE AND DETECTIVE

M. Fuselier was standing in his office in the law courts at Paris, meditatively smoothing the nap of his silk hat. His mind was busy with the enquiries he had been prosecuting during the day, and although he had no reason to be dissatisfied with his day's work he had no clear idea as to what his next steps ought to be.

Three discreet taps on the door broke in upon his thoughts.

"Come in," he said, and then stepped forward with a hearty welcome as he recognised his visitor. "Juve, by all that is wonderful! What good wind has blown you here? I haven't seen you for ages. Busy?"

"Frightfully."

"Well, it's a fact that there's no dearth of sensational crime just now. The calendar is terribly heavy."

Juve had ensconced himself in a huge easy chair in a corner of the room.

"Yes," he said, "you are quite right. But unfortunately the calendar won't be a brilliant one for the police. There may be lots of cases, but there are not lots that they have worked out to a finish."

"You've got nothing to grumble at," M. Fuselier smiled. "You have been in enough cases lately that were worked out to a finish. Your reputation isn't in any danger of diminishing."

"I don't know what you mean," Juve said deprecatingly. "If you refer to the Beltham and Langrune cases, you must admit that your congratulations are not deserved. I have achieved no definite result in either of those affairs."

M. Fuselier also dropped into a comfortable chair. He lighted a cigarette.

"You have found out nothing fresh about that mysterious murder of Lord Beltham?"

"Nothing. I'm done. It is an insoluble mystery to me."

"You seem to be very sorry for yourself, but really you needn't be, Juve. You cleared up the Beltham case, and you solved the Langrune case, although you try to make out you didn't. And allow me to inform you, those two successes count, my friend."

"You are very kind, but you are rather misinformed. Unfortunately I have not cleared up the Beltham case at all."

"You found the missing peer."

"Well, yes, but----"

"That was an amazing achievement. By the way, Juve, what led you to go to the rue Lévert to search Gurn's trunks?"

"That was very simple. You remember what an excitement there was when Lord Beltham disappeared? Well, when I was called in I saw at once that all ideas of accident or suicide might be dismissed, and that consequently the disappearance was due to crime. Once convinced of that, I very naturally suspected every single person who had ever had relations with Lord Beltham, for there was no single individual for me to suspect. Then I found out that the ex-Ambassador had been in continuous association with an Englishman named Gurn whom he had known in the South African war, and who led a very queer sort of life. That of course took me to Gurn's place, if for nothing else than to pick up information. And--well, that's all about it. It was just by going to Gurn's place to pump him, rather than anything else, that I found the noble lord's remains locked away in the trunk."

"Your modesty is delightful, Juve," said M. Fuselier with an approving nod. "You present things as if they were all matters of course, whereas really you are proving your extraordinary instinct. If you had arrived only twenty-four hours later the corpse would have been packed off to the Transvaal, and only the Lord knows if after that the extraordinary mystery ever would have been cleared up."

"Luck," Juve protested: "pure luck!"

"And were your other remarkable discoveries luck too?" enquired M. Fuselier with a smile. "There was your discovery that sulphate of zinc had been injected into the body to prevent it from smelling offensively."

"That was only a matter of using my eyes," Juve protested.

"All right," said the magistrate, "we will admit that you did not display any remarkable acumen in the Beltham case, if you would rather have it so. That does not alter the fact that you have solved the Langrune case."

"Solved it!"

M. Fuselier flicked the ash off his cigarette, and leant forward towards the detective.

"Of course you know that I know you were at the Cahors Assizes, Juve? What was your impression of the whole affair--of the verdict, and of Etienne Rambert's guilt or innocence?"

Juve got up and began to walk up and down the room, followed by the magistrate's eyes. He seemed to be hesitating as to whether he would answer at all, but finally he stopped abruptly and faced his friend.

"If I were talking to anybody but you, M. Fuselier, I would either not answer at all, or I would give an answer that was no answer! But as it is----, well, in my opinion, the Langrune case is only just beginning, and nothing certain is known at all."

"According to that, Charles Rambert is innocent?"

"I don't say that."

"What then? I suppose you don't think the father was the murderer?"

"The hypothesis is not absurd! But there! What is the real truth of the whole affair? That is what I am wondering all the time. That murder is never out of my head; it interests me more and more every day. Oh, yes, I've got lots of ideas, but they are all utterly vague and improbable: sometimes my imagination seems to be running away with me."

He stopped, and M. Fuselier wagged a mocking finger at him.

"Juve," he said, "I charge you formally with attempting to implicate Fantômas in the murder of the Marquise de Langrune!"

The detective replied in the same tone of raillery.

"Guilty, my lord!"

"Good lord, man!" the magistrate exclaimed, "Fantômas is a perfect obsession with you," and as Juve acquiesced with a laugh the magistrate dropped his bantering tone. "Shall I tell you something, Juve? I too am beginning to have an obsession for that fantastic miscreant! And what I want to know is why you have not come to me before to ask me about that sensational robbery at the Royal Palace Hotel?"

"The robbery from Princess Sonia Danidoff?"

"Yes: the Fantômas robbery!"

"Fantômas, eh?" Juve protested. "That remains to be seen."

"Why, man," M. Fuselier retorted, "you have heard that detail about the card the man left, haven't you?--the visiting card that was blank when the Princess found it, and on which the name of Fantômas afterwards became visible?"

"There's no Fantômas about that, in my opinion."

"Why not?"

"Well, it isn't one of Fantômas' little ways to leave clear traces behind him. One might as well picture him committing robbery or murder in a cap with a neat little band round it: 'Fantômas and Co.' He might even add 'Discretion and Dispatch!' No, it's most unlikely."

"You don't think Fantômas capable of throwing down his glove to the police in the shape of some such material proof of his identity?"

"I always base my arguments on the balance of probabilities," Juve replied. "What emerges from this Royal Palace story is that some common hotel thief conceived the ingenious idea of casting suspicion on Fantômas: it was just a trick to mislead the police: at least, that is my opinion."

But M. Fuselier declined to be convinced.

"No, you are wrong, Juve: it was no common hotel thief who stole Mme. Van den Rosen's necklace and Princess Sonia's hundred and twenty thousand francs; the prize was big enough to appeal to Fantômas: and the amazing audacity of the crime is suggestive too. Just think what coolness the man must have had to be able to paralyse the Princess's power of resistance when she tried to call for help: and also to get clear away in spite of the hosts of servants in the hotel and all the precautions taken!"

"Tell me all about the robbery, M. Fuselier," said Juve.

The magistrate sat down at his desk and took up the notes he had made in the course of his official enquiry that day. He told Juve everything he had been able to elicit.

"The most amazing thing to me," he said in conclusion, "is the way the fellow, when he had once got out of Princess Sonia's room, contrived to get into the lift, shed his evening dress, get into livery, and make his first attempt to escape. When the hall porter stopped him he did not lose his head, but got into the lift again, sent that flying up to the top of the hotel with the clothes that would have betrayed him, calmly presented himself before Muller, the night watchman, and contrived to be told to go for the police, ran down the stairs again, and took advantage of the night watchman's telephoning to the hall porter to get the latter to open the door for him, and so marched off as easily as you please. A man who kept his nerve like that and could make such amazing use of every circumstance, who was so quick and daring, and who was capable of carrying through such a difficult comedy in the middle of the general uproar, richly deserves to be taken for Fantômas!"

Juve sat in deep consideration of the whole story.

"That isn't what interests me most," he said at last. "His escape from the hotel might have been effected by any clever thief. What I think more remarkable is the means he took to prevent the Princess from screaming when he was just leaving her rooms: that really was masterly. Instead of trying to get her as far away as possible and shut her up in her bedroom, to take her with him to the very door opening on to the corridor, where the faintest cry might have involved the worst possible consequences, and to be sure that the terror he had inspired would prevent her from uttering that cry, to be able to assume that the victim was so overwrought that she would make no effort at all and could do nothing--that is really very good indeed: quite admirable psychology! Fine work!"

"So you see there are some unusual features in the case," said M. Fuselier complacently: "this, for instance: why do you suppose the fellow stayed such a long time with the Princess and went through all that comedy business in the bathroom? Don't forget that she came in late, and it is extremely probable that he might have finished his job before she returned."

Juve passed his hand through his hair, a characteristic trick when his mind was working.

"I can imagine only one answer to that question, M. Fuselier. But you have inspected the scene of the crime: tell me first, where do you think the rascal was hidden?"