“He’s stopping,” whispered Patrice.
“Yes,” said Coralie; “only I think …”
“Yes, Coralie, there’s someone in the hall. … Oh, we need not trouble to listen! We have only to remember. There: ‘He goes to the kitchen and digs as he did just now, but on the stones this time.’ … And then … and then … oh, Coralie, the same sound of broken glass!”
It was memories mingling with the grewsome reality. The present and the past formed but one. They foresaw events at the very instant when these took place.
The enemy went outside again; and, forthwith, the sound seemed “to travel up the house as though the wretch had to climb to a height in order to carry out his plans.”
And then … and then what would happen next? They no longer thought of consulting the inscription on the wall, or perhaps they did not dare. Their attention was concentrated on the invisible and sometimes imperceptible deeds that were being accomplished against them outside, an uninterrupted stealthy effort, a mysterious twenty-year-old plan whereof each slightest detail was settled as by clockwork!
The enemy entered the house and they heard a rustling at the bottom of the door, a rustling of soft things apparently being heaped or pushed against the wood. Next came other vague noises in the two adjoining rooms, against the walled doors, and similar noises outside, between the stones of the windows and the open shutters. And then they heard someone on the roof.
They raised their eyes. This time they felt certain that the last act was at hand, or at least one of the scenes of the last act. The roof to them was the framed skylight which occupied the center of the ceiling and admitted the only daylight that entered the room. And still the same agonizing question rose to their minds: what was going to happen? Would the enemy show his face outside the skylight and reveal himself at last?
This work on the roof continued for a considerable time. Footsteps shook the zinc sheets that covered it, moving between the right-hand side of the house and the edge of the skylight. And suddenly this skylight, or rather a part of it, a square containing four panes, was lifted, a very little way, by a hand which inserted a stick to keep it open.
And the enemy again walked across the roof and went down the side of the house.
They were almost disappointed and felt such a craving to know the truth that Patrice once more fell to breaking the boards of the wainscoting, removing the last pieces, which covered the end of the inscription. And what they read made them live the last few minutes all over again. The enemy’s return, the rustle against the walls and the walled windows, the noise on the roof, the opening of the skylight, the method of supporting it: all this had happened in the same order and, so to speak, within the same limit of time. Patrice’s father and Coralie’s mother had undergone the same impressions. Destiny seemed bent on following the same paths and making the same movements in seeking the same object.
And the writing went on:
“He is going up again, he is going up again. … There’s his footsteps on the roof. … He is near the skylight. … Will he look through? … Shall we see his hated face? …”
“He is going up again, he is going up again,” gasped Coralie, nestling against Patrice.
The enemy’s footsteps were pounding over the zinc.
“Yes,” said Patrice, “he is going up as before, without departing from the procedure followed by the other. Only we do not know whose face will appear to us. Our parents knew their enemy.”
She shuddered at her image of the man who had killed her mother; and she asked:
“It was he, was it not?”
“Yes, it was he. There is his name, written by my father.”
Patrice had almost entirely uncovered the inscription. Bending low, he pointed with his finger:
“Look. Read the name: Essarès. You can see it down there: it was one of the last words my father wrote.”
And Coralie read:
“The skylight rose higher, a hand lifted it and we saw … we saw, laughing as he looked down on us—oh, the scoundrel—Essarès! … Essarès! … And then he passed something through the opening, something that came down, that unrolled itself in the middle of the room, over our heads: a ladder, a rope-ladder.
“We did not understand. It was swinging in front of us. And then, in the end, I saw a sheet of paper rolled round the bottom rung and pinned to it. On the paper, in Essarès’ handwriting, are the words, ‘Send Coralie up by herself. Her life shall be saved. I give her ten minutes to accept. If not …’ ”
“Ah,” said Patrice, rising from his stooping posture, “will this also be repeated? What about the ladder, the rope-ladder, which I found in old Siméon’s cupboard?”
Coralie kept her eyes fixed on the skylight, for the footsteps were moving around it. Then they stopped. Patrice and Coralie had not a doubt that the moment had come and that they also were about to see their enemy. And Patrice said huskily, in a choking voice:
“Who will it be? There are three men who could have played this sinister part as it was played before. Two are dead, Essarès and my father. And Siméon, the third, is mad. Is it he, in his madness, who has set the machine working again? But how are we to imagine that he could have done it with such precision? No, no, it is the other one, the one who directs him and who till now has remained in the background.”
He felt Coralie’s fingers clutching his arm.
“Hush,” she said, “here he is!”
“No, no.”
“Yes, I’m sure of it.”
Her imagination had foretold what was preparing; and in fact, as once before, the skylight was raised higher. A hand lifted it. And suddenly they saw a head slipping under the open framework.
It was the head of old Siméon.
“The madman!” Patrice whispered, in dismay. “The madman!”
“But
