The Eight Strokes of the Clock
By Maurice Leblanc.
Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
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Author’s Note
These adventures were told to me in the old days by Arsène Lupin, as though they had happened to a friend of his, named Prince Rénine. As for me, considering the way in which they were conducted, the actions, the behaviour and the very character of the hero, I find it very difficult not to identify the two friends as one and the same person. Arsène Lupin is gifted with a powerful imagination and is quite capable of attributing to himself adventures which are not his at all and of disowning those which are really his. The reader will judge for himself.
The Eight Strokes of the Clock
I
On the Top of the Tower
Hortense Daniel pushed her window ajar and whispered:
“Are you there, Rossigny?”
“I am here,” replied a voice from the shrubbery at the front of the house.
Leaning forward, she saw a rather fat man looking up at her out of a gross red face with its cheeks and chin set in unpleasantly fair whiskers.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, I had a great argument with my uncle and aunt last night. They absolutely refuse to sign the document of which my lawyer sent them the draft, or to restore the dowry squandered by my husband.”
“But your uncle is responsible by the terms of the marriage-settlement.”
“No matter. He refuses.”
“Well, what do you propose to do?”
“Are you still determined to run away with me?” she asked, with a laugh.
“More so than ever.”
“Your intentions are strictly honourable, remember!”
“Just as you please. You know that I am madly in love with you.”
“Unfortunately I am not madly in love with you!”
“Then what made you choose me?”
“Chance. I was bored. I was growing tired of my humdrum existence. So I’m ready to run risks. … Here’s my luggage: catch!”
She let down from the window a couple of large leather kit-bags. Rossigny caught them in his arms.
“The die is cast,” she whispered. “Go and wait for me with your car at the If crossroads. I shall come on horseback.”
“Hang it, I can’t run off with your horse!”
“He will go home by himself.”
“Capital! … Oh, by the way. …”
“What is it?”
“Who is this Prince Rénine, who’s been here the last three days and whom nobody seems to know?”
“I don’t know much about him. My uncle met him at a friend’s shoot and asked him here to stay.”
“You seem to have made a great impression on him. You went for a long ride with him yesterday. He’s a man I don’t care for.”
“In two hours I shall have left the house in your company. The scandal will cool him off. … Well, we’ve talked long enough. We have no time to lose.”
For a few minutes she stood watching the fat man bending under the weight of her traps as he moved away in the shelter of an empty avenue. Then she closed the window.
Outside, in the park, the huntsmen’s horns were sounding the reveille. The hounds burst into frantic baying. It was the opening day of the hunt that morning at the Château de la Marèze, where, every year, in the first week in September, the Comte d’Aigleroche, a mighty hunter before the Lord, and his countess were accustomed to invite a few personal friends and the neighbouring landowners.
Hortense slowly finished dressing, put on a riding-habit, which revealed the lines of her supple figure, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, which encircled her lovely face and auburn hair, and sat down to her writing-desk, at which she wrote to her uncle, M. d’Aigleroche, a farewell letter to be delivered to him that evening. It was a difficult letter to word; and, after beginning it several times, she ended by giving up the idea.
“I will write to him later,” she said to herself, “when his anger has cooled down.”
And she went downstairs to the dining-room.
Enormous logs were blazing in the hearth of the lofty room. The walls were hung with trophies of rifles and shotguns. The guests were flocking in from every side, shaking hands with the Comte d’Aigleroche, one of those typical country squires, heavily and powerfully built, who lives only for hunting and shooting. He was standing before the fire, with a large glass of old brandy in his hand, drinking the health of each new arrival.
Hortense kissed him absently:
“What, uncle! You who are usually so sober!”
“Pooh!” he said. “A man may surely indulge himself a little once a year! …”
“Aunt will give you a scolding!”
“Your aunt has one of her sick headaches and is
