Chapter 7

The shades of night were falling from the tall trees when they entered the ancient forest of Brotonne, full of Roman remains and mediaeval relics. Renine knew the forest well and remembered that near a famous oak, known as the Wine-cask, there was a cave which must be the cave of the Happy Princess. He found it easily, switched on his electric torch, rummaged in the dark corners and brought Hortense back to the entrance:

"There's nothing inside," he said, "but here is the evidence which I was looking for. Dalbreque was obsessed by the recollection of the film, but so was Rose Andree. The Happy Princess had broken off the tips of the branches on the way through the forest. Rose Andree has managed to break off some to the right of this opening, in the hope that she would be discovered as on the first occasion."

"Yes," said Hortense, "it's a proof that she has been here; but the proof is three weeks old. Since that time...."

"Since that time, she is either dead and buried under a heap of leaves or else alive in some hole even lonelier than this."

"If so, where is he?"

Renine pricked up his ears. Repeated blows of the axe were sounding from some distance, no doubt coming from a part of the forest that was being cleared.

"He?" said Renine, "I wonder whether he may not have continued to behave under the influence of the film and whether the man of the woods in _The Happy Princess_ has not quite naturally resumed his calling. For how is the man to live, to obtain his food, without attracting attention? He will have found a job."

"We can't make sure of that."

"We might, by questioning the woodcutters whom we can hear."

The car took them by a forest-road to another cross-roads where they entered on foot a track which was deeply rutted by waggon-wheels. The sound of axes ceased. After walking for a quarter of an hour, they met a dozen men who, having finished work for the day, were returning to the villages near by.

"Will this path take us to Routot?" ask Renine, in order to open a conversation with them.

"No, you're turning your backs on it," said one of the men, gruffly.

And he went on, accompanied by his mates.

Hortense and Renine stood rooted to the spot. They had recognized the butler. His cheeks and chin were shaved, but his upper lip was covered by a black moustache, evidently dyed. The eyebrows no longer met and were reduced to normal dimensions.

* * * * *

Thus, in less than twenty hours, acting on the vague hints supplied by the bearing of a film-actor, Serge Renine had touched the very heart of the tragedy by means of purely psychological arguments.

"Rose Andree is alive," he said. "Otherwise Dalbreque would have left the country. The poor thing must be imprisoned and bound up; and he takes her some food at night."

"We will save her, won't we?"

"Certainly, by keeping a watch on him and, if necessary, but in the last resort, compelling him by force to give up his secret."

They followed the woodcutter at a distance and, on the pretext that the car needed overhauling, engaged rooms in the principal inn at Routot.

Attached to the inn was a small cafe from which they were separated by the entrance to the yard and above which were two rooms, reached by a wooden outer staircase, at one side. Dalbreque occupied one of these rooms and Renine took the other for his chauffeur.

Next morning he learnt from Adolphe that Dalbreque, on the previous evening, after all the lights were out, had carried down a bicycle from his room and mounted it and had not returned until shortly before sunrise.

The bicycle tracks led Renine to the uninhabited Chateau des Landes, five miles from the village. They disappeared in a rocky path which ran beside the park down to the Seine, opposite the Jumieges peninsula.

Next night, he took up his position there. At eleven o'clock, Dalbreque climbed a bank, scrambled over a wire fence, hid his bicycle under the branches and moved away. It seemed impossible to follow him in the pitchy darkness, on a mossy soil that muffled the sound of footsteps. Renine did not make the attempt; but, at daybreak, he came with his chauffeur and hunted through the park all the morning. Though the park, which covered the side of a hill and was bounded below by the river, was not very large, he found no clue which gave him any reason to suppose that Rose Andree was imprisoned there.

He therefore went back to the village, with the firm intention of taking action that evening and employing force:

"This state of things cannot go on," he said to Hortense. "I must rescue Rose Andree at all costs and save her from that ruffian's clutches. He must be made to speak. He must. Otherwise there's a danger that we may be too late."

That day was Sunday; and Dalbreque did not go to work. He did not leave his room except for lunch and went upstairs again immediately afterwards. But at three o'clock Renine and Hortense, who were keeping a watch on him from the inn, saw him come down the wooden staircase, with his bicycle on his shoulder. Leaning it against the bottom step, he inflated the tires and fastened to the handle-bar a rather bulky object wrapped in a newspaper.

"By Jove!" muttered Renine.

"What's the matter?"

In front of the cafe was a small terrace bordered on the right and left by spindle-trees planted in boxes, which were connected by a paling. Behind the shrubs, sitting on a bank but stooping forward so that they could see Dalbreque through the branches, were four men.

"Police!" said Renine. "What bad luck! If those fellows take a hand, they will spoil everything."

"Why? On the contrary, I should have thought...."

"Yes, they will. They will put Dalbreque out of the way ... and then? Will that give us Rose Andree?"

Dalbreque had finished his preparations. Just as he was mounting his bicycle, the detectives rose in a body, ready to make a dash for him. But Dalbreque, though quite unconscious of their presence, changed his mind and went back to his room as though he had forgotten something.

"Now's the time!" said Renine. "I'm going to risk it. But it's a difficult situation and I've no great hopes."

He went out into the yard and, at a moment when the detectives were not looking, ran up the staircase, as was only natural if he wished to give an order to his chauffeur. But he had no sooner reached the rustic balcony at the back of the house, which gave admission to the two bedrooms than he stopped. Dalbreque's door was open. Renine walked in.

Dalbreque stepped back, at once assuming the defensive:

"What do you want? Who said you could...."

"Silence!" whispered Renine, with an imperious gesture. "It's all up with you!"

"What are you talking about?" growled the man, angrily.

"Lean out of your window. There are four men below on the watch for you to leave, four detectives."

Dalbreque leant over the terrace and muttered an oath:

"On the watch for me?" he said, turning round. "What do I care?"

"They have a warrant."

He folded his arms:

"Shut up with your piffle! A warrant! What's that to me?"

"Listen," said Renine, "and let us waste no time. It's urgent. Your name's Dalbreque, or, at least, that's the name under which you acted in _The Happy Princess_ and under which the police are looking for you as being the murderer of Bourguet the jeweller, the man who stole a motor-car and forty thousand francs from the World's Cinema Company and the man who abducted a woman at Le Havre. All this is known and proved ... and here's the upshot. Four men downstairs. Myself here, my chauffeur in the next room. You're done for. Do you want me to save you?"

Dalbreque gave his adversary a long look:

"Who are you?"

"A friend of Rose Andree's," said Renine.

The other started and, to some extent dropping his mask, retorted:

"What are your conditions?"

"Rose Andree, whom you have abducted and tormented, is dying in some hole or corner. Where is she?"

A strange thing occurred and impressed Renine. Dalbreque's face, usually so common, was lit up by a smile that made it almost attractive. But this was only a flashing vision: the man immediately resumed his hard and impassive expression.

"And suppose I refuse to speak?" he said.

"So much the worse for you. It means your arrest."

"I dare say; but it means the death of Rose Andree. Who will release her?"

"You. You will speak now, or in an hour, or two hours hence at least. You will never have the heart to keep silent and let her die."

Dalbreque shrugged his shoulders. Then, raising his hand, he said:

"I swear on my life that, if they arrest me, not a word will leave my lips."

"What then?"

"Then save me. We will meet this evening at the entrance to the Parc des Landes and say what we have to say."

"Why not at once?"

"I have spoken."

"Will you be there?"

"I shall be there."

Renine reflected. There was something in all this that he failed to grasp. In any case, the frightful danger that threatened Rose Andree dominated the whole situation; and Renine was not the man to despise this threat and to persist out of vanity in a perilous course. Rose Andree's life came before everything.

He struck several blows on the wall of the next bedroom and called his chauffeur.

"Adolphe, is the car ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Set her going and pull her up in front of the terrace outside the cafe, right against the boxes so as to block the exit. As for you," he continued, addressing Dalbreque, "you're to jump on your machine and, instead of making off along the road, cross the yard. At the end of the yard is a passage leading into a lane. There you will be free. But no hesitation and no blundering ... else you'll get yourself nabbed. Good luck to you."

He waited till the car was drawn up in accordance with his instructions and, when he reached it, he began to question his chauffeur, in order to attract the detectives' attention.

One of them, however, having cast a glance through the spindle-trees, caught sight of Dalbreque just as he reached the bottom of the staircase. He gave the alarm and darted forward, followed by his comrades, but had to run round the car and bumped into the chauffeur, which gave Dalbreque time to mount his bicycle and cross the yard unimpeded. He thus had some seconds' start. Unfortunately for him as he was about to enter the passage at the back, a troop of boys and girls appeared, returning from vespers. On hearing the shouts of the detectives, they spread their arms in front of the fugitive, who gave two or three lurches and ended by falling.

Cries of triumph were raised:

"Lay hold of him! Stop him!" roared the detectives as they rushed forward.

Renine, seeing that the game was up, ran after the others and called out:

"Stop him!"

He came up with them just as Dalbreque, after regaining his feet, knocked one of the policemen down and levelled his revolver. Renine snatched it out of his hands. But the two other detectives, startled, had also produced their weapons. They fired. Dalbreque, hit in the leg and the chest, pitched forward and fell.

"Thank you, sir," said the inspector to Renine introducing himself. "We owe a lot to you."

"It seems to me that you've done for the fellow," said Renine. "Who is he?"

"One Dalbreque, a scoundrel for whom we were looking."

Renine was beside himself. Hortense had joined him by this time; and he growled:

"The silly fools! Now they've killed him!"

"Oh, it isn't possible!"

"We shall see. But, whether he's dead or alive, it's death to Rose Andree. How are we to trace her? And what chance have we of finding the place--some inaccessible retreat--where the poor thing is dying of misery and starvation?"

The detectives and peasants had moved away, bearing Dalbreque with them on an improvised stretcher. Renine, who had at first followed them, in order to find out what was going to happen, changed his mind and was now standing with his eyes fixed on the ground. The fall of the bicycle had unfastened the parcel which Dalbreque had tied to the handle-bar; and the newspaper had burst, revealing its contents, a tin saucepan, rusty, dented, battered and useless.

"What's the meaning of this?" he muttered. "What was the idea?..."

He picked it up examined it. Then he gave a grin and a click of the tongue and chuckled, slowly:

"Don't move an eyelash, my dear. Let all these people clear off. All this is no business of ours, is it? The troubles of police don't concern us. We are two motorists travelling for our pleasure and collecting old saucepans if we feel so inclined."

He called his chauffeur:

"Adolphe, take us to the Parc des Landes by a roundabout road."

Half an hour later they reached the sunken track and began to scramble down it on foot beside the wooded slopes. The Seine, which was very low at this time of day, was lapping against a little jetty near which lay a worm-eaten, mouldering boat, full of puddles of water.

Renine stepped into the boat and at once began to bale out the puddles with his saucepan. He then drew the boat alongside of the jetty, helped Hortense in and used the one oar which he shipped in a gap in the stern to work her into midstream:

"I believe I'm there!" he said, with a laugh. "The worst that can happen to us is to get our feet wet, for our craft leaks a trifle. But haven't we a saucepan? Oh, blessings on that useful utensil! Almost as soon as I set eyes upon it, I remembered that people use those articles to bale out the bottoms of leaky boats. Why, there was bound to be a boat in the Landes woods! How was it I never thought of that? But of course Dalbreque made use of her to cross the Seine! And, as she made water, he brought a saucepan."

"Then Rose Andree ...?" asked Hortense.

"Is a prisoner on the other bank, on the Jumieges peninsula. You see the famous abbey from here."

They ran aground on a beach of big pebbles covered with slime.

"And it can't be very far away," he added. "Dalbreque did not spend the whole night running about."

A tow-path followed the deserted bank. Another path led away from it. They chose the second and, passing between orchards enclosed by hedges, came to a landscape that seemed strangely familiar to them. Where had they seen that pool before, with the willows overhanging it? And where had they seen that abandoned hovel?

Suddenly both of them stopped with one accord:

"Oh!" said Hortense. "I can hardly believe my eyes!"

Opposite them was the white gate of a large orchard, at the back of which, among groups of old, gnarled apple-trees, appeared a cottage with blue shutters, the cottage of the Happy Princess.

"Of course!" cried Renine. "And I ought to have known it, considering that the film showed both this cottage and the forest close by. And isn't everything happening exactly as in _The Happy Princess_? Isn't Dalbreque dominated by the memory of it? The house, which is certainly the one in which Rose Andree spent the summer, was empty. He has shut her up there."

"But the house, you told me, was in the Seine-inferieure."

"Well, so are we! To the left of the river, the Eure and the forest of Brotonne; to the right, the Seine-inferieure. But between them is the obstacle of the river, which is why I didn't connect the two. A hundred and fifty yards of water form a more effective division than dozens of miles."

The gate was locked. They got through the hedge a little lower down and walked towards the house, which was screened on one side by an old wall shaggy with ivy and roofed with thatch.

"It seems as if there was somebody there," said Hortense. "Didn't I hear the sound of a window?"

"Listen."

Some one struck a few chords on a piano. Then a voice arose, a woman's voice softly and solemnly singing a ballad that thrilled with restrained passion. The woman's whole soul seemed to breathe itself into the melodious notes.

They walked on. The wall concealed them from view, but they saw a sitting-room furnished with bright wall-paper and a blue Roman carpet. The throbbing voice ceased. The piano ended with a last chord; and the singer rose and appeared framed in the window.

"Rose Andree!" whispered Hortense.

"Well!" said Renine, admitting his astonishment. "This is the last thing that I expected! Rose Andree! Rose Andree at liberty! And singing Massenet in the sitting room of her cottage!"

"What does it all mean? Do you understand?"

"Yes, but it has taken me long enough! But how could we have guessed ...?"

Although they had never seen her except on the screen, they had not the least doubt that this was she. It was really Rose Andree, or rather, the Happy Princess, whom they had admired a few days before, amidst the furniture of that very sitting-room or on the threshold of that very cottage. She was wearing the same dress; her hair was done in the same way; she had on the same bangles and necklaces as in _The Happy Princess_; and her lovely face, with its rosy cheeks and laughing eyes, bore the same look of joy and serenity.

Some sound must have caught her ear, for she leant over towards a clump of shrubs beside the cottage and whispered into the silent garden:

"Georges ... Georges ... Is that you, my darling?"

Receiving no reply, she drew herself up and stood smiling at the happy thoughts that seemed to flood her being.

But a door opened at the back of the room and an old peasant woman entered with a tray laden with bread, butter and milk:

"Here, Rose, my pretty one, I've brought you your supper. Milk fresh from the cow...."

And, putting down the tray, she continued:

"Aren't you afraid, Rose, of the chill of the night air? Perhaps you're expecting your sweetheart?"

"I haven't a sweetheart, my dear old Catherine."

"What next!" said the old woman, laughing. "Only this morning there were footprints under the window that didn't look at all proper!"

"A burglar's footprints perhaps, Catherine."

"Well, I don't say they weren't, Rose dear, especially as in your calling you have a lot of people round you whom it's well to be careful of. For instance, your friend Dalbreque, eh? Nice goings on his are! You saw the paper yesterday. A fellow who has robbed and murdered people and carried off a woman at Le Havre ...!"

Hortense and Renine would have much liked to know what Rose Andree thought of the revelations, but she had turned her back to them and was sitting at her supper; and the window was now closed, so that they could neither hear her reply nor see the expression of her features.

They waited for a moment. Hortense was listening with an anxious face. But Renine began to laugh:

"Very funny, really funny! And such an unexpected ending! And we who were hunting for her in some cave or damp cellar, a horrible tomb where the poor thing was dying of hunger! It's a fact, she knew the terrors of that first night of captivity; and I maintain that, on that first night, she was flung, half-dead, into the cave. Only, there you are: the next morning she was alive! One night was enough to tame the little rogue and to make Dalbreque as handsome as Prince Charming in her eyes! For see the difference. On the films or in novels, the Happy Princesses resist or commit suicide. But in real life ... oh, woman, woman!"

"Yes," said Hortense, "but the man she loves is almost certainly dead."

"And a good thing too! It would be the best solution. What would be the outcome of this criminal love for a thief and murderer?"

A few minutes passed. Then, amid the peaceful silence of the waning day, mingled with the first shadows of the twilight, they again heard the grating of the window, which was cautiously opened. Rose Andree leant over the garden and waited, with her eyes turned to the wall, as though she saw something there.

Presently, Renine shook the ivy-branches.

"Ah!" she said. "This time I know you're there! Yes, the ivy's moving. Georges, Georges darling, why do you keep me waiting? Catherine has gone. I am all alone...."

She had knelt down and was distractedly stretching out her shapely arms covered with bangles which clashed with a metallic sound:

"Georges!... Georges!..."

Her every movement, the thrill of her voice, her whole being expressed desire and love. Hortense, deeply touched, could not help saying:

"How the poor thing loves him! If she but knew...."

"Ah!" cried the girl. "You've spoken. You're there, and you want me to come to you, don't you? Here I am, Georges!..."

She climbed over the window-ledge and began to run, while Renine went round the wall and advanced to meet her.

She stopped short in front of him and stood choking at the sight of this man and woman whom she did not know and who were stepping out of the very shadow from which her beloved appeared to her each night.

Renine bowed, gave his name and introduced his companion:

"Madame Hortense Daniel, a pupil and friend of your mother's."

Still motionless with stupefaction, her features drawn, she stammered:

"You know who I am?... And you were there just now?... You heard what I was saying ...?"

Renine, without hesitating or pausing in his speech, said:

"You are Rose Andree, the Happy Princess. We saw you on the films the other evening; and circumstances led us to set out in search of you ... to Le Havre, where you were abducted on the day when you were to have left for America, and to the forest of Brotonne, where you were imprisoned."

She protested eagerly, with a forced laugh:

"What is all this? I have not been to Le Havre. I came straight here. Abducted? Imprisoned? What nonsense!"

"Yes, imprisoned, in the same cave as the Happy Princess; and you broke off some branches to the right of the cave."

"But how absurd! Who would have abducted me? I have no enemy."

"There is a man in love with you: the one whom you were expecting just now."

"Yes, my lover," she said, proudly. "Have I not the right to receive whom I like?"

"You have the right; you are a free agent. But the man who comes to see you every evening is wanted by the police. His name is Georges Dalbreque. He killed Bourguet the jeweller."

The accusation made her start with indignation and she exclaimed:

"It's a lie! An infamous fabrication of the newspapers! Georges was in Paris on the night of the murder. He can prove it."

"He stole a motor car and forty thousand francs in notes."

She retorted vehemently:

"The motor-car was taken back by his friends and the notes will be restored. He never touched them. My leaving for America had made him lose his head."

"Very well. I am quite willing to believe everything that you say. But the police may show less faith in these statements and less indulgence."

She became suddenly uneasy and faltered:

"The police.... There's nothing to fear from them.... They won't know...."

"Where to find him? I succeeded, at all events. He's working as a woodcutter, in the forest of Brotonne."

"Yes, but ... you ... that was an accident ... whereas the police...."

The words left her lips with the greatest difficulty. Her voice was trembling. And suddenly she rushed at Renine, stammering:

"He is arrested?... I am sure of it!... And you have come to tell me.... Arrested! Wounded! Dead perhaps?... Oh, please, please!..."

She had no strength left. All her pride, all the certainty of her great love gave way to an immense despair and she sobbed out.

"No, he's not dead, is he? No, I feel that he's not dead. Oh, sir, how unjust it all is! He's the gentlest man, the best that ever lived. He has changed my whole life. Everything is different since I began to love him. And I love him so! I love him! I want to go to him. Take me to him. I want them to arrest me too. I love him.... I could not live without him...."

An impulse of sympathy made Hortense put her arms around the girl's neck and say warmly: