The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4283]
"I think, indeed, that we have nothing more to find out," replied Rouletabille.
"Have you found your criminal?" asked Larsan.
"Have you?"
"Yes."
"So have I," said Rouletabille.
"Can it be the same man?"
"I don't know if you have swerved from your original idea," said the young reporter. Then he added, with emphasis: "Monsieur Darzac is an honest man!"
"Are you sure of that?" asked Larsan. "Well, I am sure he is not. So it's a fight then?"
"Yes, it is a fight. But I shall beat you, Monsieur Frederic Larsan."
"Youth never doubts anything," said the great Fred laughingly, and held out his hand to me by way of conclusion.
Rouletabille's answer came like an echo:
"Not anything!"
Suddenly Larsan, who had risen to wish us goodnight, pressed both his hands to his chest and staggered. He was obliged to lean on Rouletabille for support, and to save himself from falling.
"Oh! Oh!" he cried. "What is the matter with me?--Have I been poisoned?"
He looked at us with haggard eyes. We questioned him vainly; he did not answer us. He had sunk into an armchair and we could get not a word from him. We were extremely distressed, both on his account and on our own, for we had partaken of all the dishes he had eaten. He seemed to be out of pain; but his heavy head had fallen on his shoulder and his eyelids were tightly closed. Rouletabille bent over him, listening for the beatings of the heart.
My friend's face, however, when he stood up, was as calm as it had been a moment before agitated.
"He is asleep," he said.
He led me to his chamber, after closing Larsan's room.
"The drug?" I asked. "Does Mademoiselle Stangerson wish to put everybody to sleep, to-night?"
"Perhaps," replied Rouletabille; but I could see he was thinking of something else.
"But what about us?" I exclaimed. "How do we know that we have not been drugged?"
"Do you feel indisposed?" Rouletabille asked me coolly.
"Not in the least."
"Do you feel any inclination to go to sleep?"
"None whatever."
"Well, then, my friend, smoke this excellent cigar."
And he handed me a choice Havana, one Monsieur Darzac had given him, while he lit his briarwood--his eternal briarwood.
We remained in his room until about ten o'clock without a word passing between us. Buried in an armchair Rouletabille sat and smoked steadily, his brow in thought and a far-away look in his eyes. On the stroke of ten he took off his boots and signalled to me to do the same. As we stood in our socks he said, in so low a tone that I guessed, rather than heard, the word:
"Revolver."
I drew my revolver from my jacket pocket.
"Cock it!" he said.
I did as he directed.
Then moving towards the door of his room, he opened it with infinite precaution; it made no sound. We were in the "off-turning" gallery. Rouletabille made another sign to me which I understood to mean that I was to take up my post in the dark closet.
When I was some distance from him, he rejoined me and embraced me; and then I saw him, with the same precaution, return to his room. Astonished by his embrace, and somewhat disquieted by it, I arrived at the right gallery without difficulty, crossing the landing-place, and reaching the dark closet.
Before entering it I examined the curtain-cord of the window and found that I had only to release it from its fastening with my fingers for the curtain to fall by its own weight and hide the square of light from Rouletabille--the signal agreed upon. The sound of a footstep made me halt before Arthur Rance's door. He was not yet in bed, then! How was it that, being in the chateau, he had not dined with Monsieur Stangerson and his daughter? I had not seen him at table with them, at the moment when we looked in.
I retired into the dark closet. I found myself perfectly situated. I could see along the whole length of the gallery. Nothing, absolutely nothing could pass there without my seeing it. But what was going to pass there? Rouletabille's embrace came back to my mind. I argued that people don't part from each, other in that way unless on an important or