The Eight Strokes of the Clock Part 20

Renine made no direct reply, but, during a pause in the performance, continued:

"I sometimes console myself for an indifferent film by watching the subordinate characters. It seems to me that those poor devils, who are made to rehea.r.s.e certain scenes ten or twenty times over, must often be thinking of other things than their parts at the time of the final exposure. And it's great fun noting those little moments of distraction which reveal something of their temperament, of their instinct self. As, for instance, in the case of that butler: look!"

The screen now showed a luxuriously served table. The Happy Princess sat at the head, surrounded by all her suitors. Half-a-dozen footmen moved about the room, under the orders of the butler, a big fellow with a dull, coa.r.s.e face, a common appearance and a pair of enormous eyebrows which met across his forehead in a single line.

"He looks a brute," said Hortense, "but what do you see in him that's peculiar?"

"Just note how he gazes at the princess and tell me if he doesn't stare at her oftener than he ought to."

"I really haven't noticed anything, so far," said Hortense.

"Why, of course he does!" Serge Renine declared. "It is quite obvious that in actual life he entertains for Rose Andree personal feelings which are quite out of place in a nameless servant. It is possible that, in real life, no one has any idea of such a thing; but, on the screen, when he is not watching himself, or when he thinks that the actors at rehearsal cannot see him, his secret escapes him. Look...."

The man was standing still. It was the end of dinner. The princess was drinking a gla.s.s of champagne and he was gloating over her with his glittering eyes half-hidden behind their heavy lids.

Twice again they surprised in his face those strange expressions to which Renine ascribed an emotional meaning which Hortense refused to see:

"It's just his way of looking at people," she said.

The first part of the film ended. There were two parts, divided by an _entr'acte_. The notice on the programme stated that "a year had elapsed and that the Happy Princess was living in a pretty Norman cottage, all hung with creepers, together with her husband, a poor musician."

The princess was still happy, as was evident on the screen, still as attractive as ever and still besieged by the greatest variety of suitors.

n.o.bles and commoners, peasants and financiers, men of all kinds fell swooning at her feet; and prominent among them was a sort of boorish solitary, a s.h.a.ggy, half-wild woodcutter, whom she met whenever she went out for a walk. Armed with his axe, a formidable, crafty being, he prowled around the cottage; and the spectators felt with a sense of dismay that a peril was hanging over the Happy Princess' head.

"Look at that!" whispered Renine. "Do you realise who the man of the woods is?"

"No."

"Simply the butler. The same actor is doubling the two parts."

In fact, notwithstanding the new figure which he cut, the butler's movements and postures were apparent under the heavy gait and rounded shoulders of the woodcutter, even as under the unkempt beard and long, thick hair the once clean-shaven face was visible with the cruel expression and the bushy line of the eyebrows.

The princess, in the background, was seen to emerge from the thatched cottage. The man hid himself behind a clump of trees. From time to time, the screen displayed, on an enormously enlarged scale, his fiercely rolling eyes or his murderous hands with their huge thumbs.

"The man frightens me," said Hortense. "He is really terrifying."

"Because he's acting on his own account," said Renine. "You must understand that, in the s.p.a.ce of three or four months that appears to separate the dates at which the two films were made, his pa.s.sion has made progress; and to him it is not the princess who is coming but Rose Andree."

The man crouched low. The victim approached, gaily and unsuspectingly. She pa.s.sed, heard a sound, stopped and looked about her with a smiling air which became attentive, then uneasy, and then more and more anxious. The woodcutter had pushed aside the branches and was coming through the copse.

They were now standing face to face. He opened his arms as though to seize her. She tried to scream, to call out for help; but the arms closed around her before she could offer the slightest resistance. Then he threw her over his shoulder and began to run.

"Are you satisfied?" whispered Renine. "Do you think that this fourth-rate actor would have had all that strength and energy if it had been any other woman than Rose Andree?"

Meanwhile the woodcutter was crossing the skirt of a forest and plunging through great trees and ma.s.ses of rocks. After setting the princess down, he cleared the entrance to a cave which the daylight entered by a slanting crevice.

A succession of views displayed the husband's despair, the search and the discovery of some small branches which had been broken by the princess and which showed the path that had been taken. Then came the final scene, with the terrible struggle between the man and the woman when the woman, vanquished and exhausted, is flung to the ground, the sudden arrival of the husband and the shot that puts an end to the brute's life....

"Well," said Renine, when they had left the picture-palace--and he spoke with a certain gravity--"I maintain that the daughter of your old piano-teacher has been in danger ever since the day when that last scene was filmed. I maintain that this scene represents not so much an a.s.sault by the man of the woods on the Happy Princess as a violent and frantic attack by an actor on the woman he desires. Certainly it all happened within the bounds prescribed by the part and n.o.body saw anything in it--n.o.body except perhaps Rose Andree herself--but I, for my part, have detected flashes of pa.s.sion which leave not a doubt in my mind. I have seen glances that betrayed the wish and even the intention to commit murder. I have seen clenched hands, ready to strangle, in short, a score of details which prove to me that, at that time, the man's instinct was urging him to kill the woman who could never be his."

"And it all amounts to what?"

"We must protect Rose Andree if she is still in danger and if it is not too late."

"And to do this?"

"We must get hold of further information."

"From whom?"

"From the World's Cinema Company, which made the film. I will go to them to-morrow morning. Will you wait for me in your flat about lunch-time?"

At heart, Hortense was still sceptical. All these manifestations of pa.s.sion, of which she denied neither the ardour nor the ferocity, seemed to her to be the rational behaviour of a good actor. She had seen nothing of the terrible tragedy which Renine contended that he had divined; and she wondered whether he was not erring through an excess of imagination.

"Well," she asked, next day, not without a touch of irony, "how far have you got? Have you made a good bag? Anything mysterious? Anything thrilling?"

"Pretty good."

"Oh, really? And your so-called lover...."

"Is one Dalbreque, originally a scene-painter, who played the butler in the first part of the film and the man of the woods in the second and was so much appreciated that they engaged him for a new film. Consequently, he has been acting lately. He was acting near Paris. But, on the morning of Friday the 18th of September, he broke into the garage of the World's Cinema Company and made off with a magnificent car and forty thousand francs in money. Information was lodged with the police; and on the Sunday the car was found a little way outside Dreux. And up to now the enquiry has revealed two things, which will appear in the papers to-morrow: first, Dalbreque is alleged to have committed a murder which created a great stir last year, the murder of Bourguet, the jeweller; secondly, on the day after his two robberies, Dalbreque was driving through Le Havre in a motor-car with two men who helped him to carry off, in broad daylight and in a crowded street, a lady whose ident.i.ty has not yet been discovered."

"Rose Andree?" asked Hortense, uneasily.

"I have just been to Rose Andree's: the World's Cinema Company gave me her address. Rose Andree spent this summer travelling and then stayed for a fortnight in the Seine-inferieure, where she has a small place of her own, the actual cottage in _The Happy Princess_. On receiving an invitation from America to do a film there, she came back to Paris, registered her luggage at the Gare Saint-Lazare and left on Friday the 18th of September, intending to sleep at Le Havre and take Sat.u.r.day's boat."

"Friday the 18th," muttered Hortense, "the same day on which that man...."

"And it was on the Sat.u.r.day that a woman was carried off by him at Le Havre. I looked in at the Compagnie Transatlantique and a brief investigation showed that Rose Andree had booked a cabin but that the cabin remained unoccupied. The pa.s.senger did not turn up."

"This is frightful. She has been carried off. You were right."

"I fear so."

"What have you decided to do?"

"Adolphe, my chauffeur, is outside with the car. Let us go to Le Havre. Up to the present, Rose Andree's disappearance does not seem to have become known. Before it does and before the police identify the woman carried off by Dalbreque with the woman who did not turn up to claim her cabin, we will get on Rose Andree's track."

There was not much said on the journey. At four o'clock Hortense and Renine reached Rouen. But here Renine changed his road.

"Adolphe, take the left bank of the Seine."

He unfolded a motoring-map on his knees and, tracing the route with his finger, showed Hortense that, if you draw a line from Le Havre, or rather from Quillebeuf, where the road crosses the Seine, to Dreux, where the stolen car was found, this line pa.s.ses through Routot, a market-town lying west of the forest of Brotonne:

"Now it was in the forest of Brotonne," he continued, "according to what I heard, that the second part of _The Happy Princess_ was filmed. And the question that arises is this: having got hold of Rose Andree, would it not occur to Dalbreque, when pa.s.sing near the forest on the Sat.u.r.day night, to hide his prey there, while his two accomplices went on to Dreux and from there returned to Paris? The cave was quite near. Was he not bound to go to it? How should he do otherwise? Wasn't it while running to this cave, a few months ago, that he held in his arms, against his breast, within reach of his lips, the woman whom he loved and whom he has now conquered? By every rule of fate and logic, the adventure is being repeated all over again ...

but this time in reality. Rose Andree is a captive. There is no hope of rescue. The forest is vast and lonely. That night, or on one of the following nights, Rose Andree must surrender ... or die."