The Kill - Emile Zola [120]
The next day, Saccard decided to force the Charonne business to a conclusion. His wife was now his. He had just held her in his hands and felt her softness, her inertness—an object that has ceased to resist. What is more, the route of the boulevard du Prince-Eugène was about to be announced, and it was essential that Renée be stripped of her title before word of the upcoming expropriation leaked out. Throughout this business, Saccard proceeded with an artist’s love of his work. He watched his plan ripen with rapt devotion and set traps with the cunning of a hunter who prides himself on his sporting approach to his prey. With him there was a simple satisfaction in playing the game well, a particular pleasure in ill-gotten gains. If he could have the land for a crust of bread, he would gladly give his wife jewels worth a hundred thousand francs in the joy of triumph. The simplest operations grew complex, turned into dark dramas, whenever he became involved. Passion took hold of him, and he would have beaten his own father to lay hands on a hundred sous. And afterwards he would have strewn the gold about with royal largesse.
Before getting Renée to relinquish her share of the property, however, he took the precaution of sounding out Larsonneau about the extortion he suspected him of plotting. Saccard’s instinct saved him in this instance, for the expropriation agent had meanwhile come to the conclusion that the fruit was ripe for the picking. When Saccard walked into Larsonneau’s office on the rue de Rivoli, he found his colleague in a bad way, showing signs of the most violent desperation.
“Oh, my friend!” Larsonneau murmured, taking Saccard by the hand. “We’re done for. . . . I was about to run over to your place to figure a way out of this awful mess.”
While Larsonneau wrung his hands and attempted to force out a sob, Saccard noticed that he had been signing letters a moment before and that the signatures looked remarkably precise. He stared at him calmly and said, “Bah! So what’s happened to us?”
The other man did not answer immediately, however. He had flung himself down in a chair behind his desk, and there, with his elbows resting on the blotter, his forehead in his hands, he furiously shook his head. Finally, in a choking voice, he said, “Someone stole the ledger, you see. . . .”
The story he told was this: one of his clerks, a scoundrel worthy of the penitentiary, had made off with a large number of files, including the notorious ledger. Worse, the thief had realized what the document was worth and was asking for 100,000 francs in exchange for its return.
Saccard pondered the matter. The story struck him as a crude fabrication. Obviously Larsonneau didn’t much care whether or not he was believed. He was simply looking for a pretext to let it be known that he wanted 100,000 francs out of the Charonne deal and, indeed, that for that amount of money he would hand over the compromising papers in his possession. To Saccard the price seemed too steep. He would willingly have given his former partner a share in the spoils, but this attempt to spring a trap and this presumptuousness in taking him for a fool he found irritating. Yet he was not without worries. He knew the man he was dealing with and knew that he was quite capable of taking the papers to his brother the minister, who would certainly pay to hush up any scandal.
“Damn!” Saccard muttered, now taking a seat himself. “That’s a nasty