What he read did not seem to please him, for an expression of discontent passed across his face. He tore up his manuscript and burnt the pieces in the flame of the candle.
Then, with a fevered hand, he wrote a few words on a clean sheet, signed it savagely and rose from his chair.
But, seeing the rope at ten inches above his head, he sat down again suddenly with a great shudder of alarm.
Sernine distinctly saw his pale features, his lean cheeks, against which he pressed his clenched fists. A tear trickled slowly down his face, a single, disconsolate tear. His eyes gazed into space, eyes terrifying in their unutterable sadness, eyes that already seemed to behold the dread unknown.
And it was so young a face! Cheeks still so smooth, with not a blemish, not a wrinkle! And blue eyes, blue like an eastern sky! …
Midnight … the twelve tragic strokes of midnight, to which so many a despairing man has hitched the last second of his existence!
At the twelfth stroke, he stood up again and, bravely this time, without trembling, looked at the sinister rope. He even tried to give a smile, a poor smile, the pitiful grimace of the doomed man whom death has already seized for its own.
Swiftly he climbed the chair and took the rope in one hand.
For a moment, he stood there, motionless: not that he was hesitating or lacking in courage. But this was the supreme moment, the one minute of grace which a man allows himself before the fatal deed.
He gazed at the squalid room to which his evil destiny had brought him, the hideous paper on the walls, the wretched bed.
On the table, not a book: all were sold. Not a photograph, not a letter: he had no father, no mother, no relations. What was there to make him cling to life?
With a sudden movement he put his head into the slipknot and pulled at the rope until the noose gripped his neck.
And, kicking the chair from him with both feet, he leapt into space.
Ten seconds, fifteen seconds passed, twenty formidable, eternal seconds. …
The body gave two or three jerks. The feet had instinctively felt for a resting-place. Then nothing moved. …
A few seconds more. … The little glazed door opened.
Sernine entered.
Without the least haste he took the sheet of paper to which the young man had set his signature, and read:
“Tired of living, ill, penniless, hopeless, I am taking my own life. Let no one be accused of my death.
He put back the paper on the table where it could be seen, picked up the chair and placed it under the young man’s feet. He himself climbed up on the table and, holding the body close to him, lifted it up, loosened the slipknot and passed the head through it.
The body sank into his arms. He let it slide along the table and, jumping to the floor, laid it on the bed.
Then, with the same coolness, he opened the door on the passage:
“Are you there, all the three of you?” he whispered.
Someone answered from the foot of the wooden staircase near him:
“We are here. Are we to hoist up our bundle?”
“Yes, come along!”
He took the candle and showed them a light.
The three men trudged up the stairs, carrying the sack in which the “fellow” was tied up.
“Put him here,” he said, pointing to the table.
With a pocketknife, he cut the cords round the sack. A white sheet appeared, which he flung back. In the sheet was a corpse, the corpse of Pierre Leduc.
“Poor Pierre Leduc!” said Sernine. “You will never know what you lost by dying so young! I should have helped you to go far, old chap. However, we must do without your services. … Now then, Philippe, get up on the table; and you, Octave, on the chair. Lift up his head and fasten the slipknot.”
Two minutes later, Pierre Leduc’s body was swinging at the end of the rope.
“Capital, that was quite simple! Now you can all of you go. You, Doctor, will call back here tomorrow morning; you will hear of the suicide of a certain Gérard Baupré: you understand, Gérard Baupré. Here is his farewell letter. You will send for the divisional surgeon and the commissary; you will arrange that neither of them notices that the deceased has a cut finger or a scar on one cheek. …”
“That’s easy.”
“And you will manage so as to have the report written then and there, to your dictation.”
“That’s easy.”
“Lastly, avoid having the body sent to the Morgue and make them give permission for an immediate burial.”
“That’s not so easy.”
“Try. Have you examined the other one?”
He pointed to the young man lying lifeless on the bed.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “The breathing is becoming normal. But it was a big risk to run … the carotid artery might have …”
“Nothing venture, nothing have. … How soon will he recover consciousness?”
“In a few minutes.”
“Very well. Oh, by the way, don’t go yet, Doctor. Wait for me downstairs. There is more for you to do.”
The prince, when he found himself alone, lit a cigarette and puffed at it quietly, sending little blue rings of smoke floating up to the ceiling.
A sigh roused him from his thoughts. He went to the bed. The young man was beginning to move; and his chest rose and fell violently, like that of a sleeper under the influence of a nightmare. He put his hands to his throat, as though he felt a pain there; and this action suddenly made him sit up, terrified, panting. …
Then he saw Sernine in front of him:
“You?” he whispered, without understanding. “You? …”
He gazed at him stupidly, as though he had seen a ghost.
He again touched his throat, felt round his neck. … And suddenly he gave a hoarse cry; a mad terror dilated his eyes, made his hair stand on end, shook him from head to foot like an aspen-leaf! The prince had moved aside; and he saw the man’s corpse hanging from the rope.
He
