The Teeth of the Tiger - Maurice Leblanc (feel good books txt) 📗

She nodded her head and murmured:

“Yes, yes⁠—there is an array of facts⁠—”

“An array of facts so significant,” he said, completing her sentence meaningly, “as to remove the least shadow of doubt. I can feel absolutely certain of the immediate intervention of my most ruthless and daring enemy. His presence here is proved. He is ready to act at any moment. His object is plain,” explained Don Luis. “By means of the anonymous article, by means of that half of the walking-stick, he meant to compromise me and have me arrested. By the fall of the curtain he meant to kill me or at least to keep me imprisoned for some hours. And now it’s poison, the cowardly poison which kills by stealth, which they put in my water today and which they will put in my food tomorrow. And next it will be the dagger and then the revolver and then the rope, no matter which, so long as I disappear; for that is what they want: to get rid of me.

“I am the adversary, I am the man they’re afraid of, the man who will discover the secret one day and pocket the millions which they’re after. I am the interloper. I stand mounting guard over the Mornington inheritance. It’s my turn to suffer. Four victims are dead already. I shall be the fifth. So Gaston Sauverand has decided: Gaston Sauverand or someone else who’s managing the business.”

Perenna’s eyes narrowed.

“The accomplice is here, in this house, in the midst of everything, by my side. He is lying in wait for me. He is following every step I take. He is living in my shadow. He is waiting for the time and place to strike me. Well, I have had enough of it. I want to know, I will know, and I shall know. Who is he?”

The girl had moved back a little way and was leaning against the round table. He took another step forward and, with his eyes still fixed on hers, looking in that immobile face for a quivering sign of fear or anxiety, he repeated, with greater violence:

“Who is the accomplice? Who in the house has sworn to take my life?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t know. Perhaps there is no plot, as you think, but just a series of chance coincidences⁠—”

He felt inclined to say to her, with his habit of adopting a familiar tone toward those whom he regarded as his adversaries:

“You’re lying, dearie, you’re lying. The accomplice is yourself, my beauty. You alone overheard my conversation on the telephone with Mazeroux, you alone can have gone to Gaston Sauverand’s assistance, waited for him in a motor at the corner of the boulevard, and arranged with him to bring the top half of the walking-stick here. You’re the beauty that wants to kill me, for some reason which I do not know. The hand that strikes me in the dark is yours, sweetheart.”

But it was impossible for him to treat her in this fashion; and he was so much exasperated at not being able to proclaim his certainty in words of anger and indignation that he took her fingers and twisted them violently, while his look and his whole attitude accused the girl even more forcibly than the bitterest words.

He mastered himself and released his grip. The girl freed herself with a quick movement, indicating repulsion and hatred. Don Luis said:

“Very well. I will question the servants. If necessary I shall dismiss any whom I suspect.”

“No, don’t do that,” she said eagerly. “You mustn’t. I know them all.”

Was she going to defend them? Was she yielding to a scruple of conscience at the moment when her obstinacy and duplicity were on the point of causing her to sacrifice a set of servants whose conduct she knew to be beyond reproach? Don Luis received the impression that the glance which she threw at him contained an appeal for pity. But pity for whom? For the others? Or for herself?

They were silent for a long time. Don Luis, standing a few steps away from her, thought of the photograph, and was surprised to find in the real woman all the beauty of the portrait, all that beauty which he had not observed hitherto, but which now struck him as a revelation. The golden hair shone with a brilliancy unknown to him. The mouth wore a less happy expression, perhaps, a rather bitter expression, but one which nevertheless retained the shape of the smile. The curve of the chin, the grace of the neck revealed above the dip of the linen collar, the line of the shoulders, the position of the arms, and of the hands resting on her knees: all this was charming and very gentle and, in a manner, very seemly and reassuring. Was it possible that this woman should be a murderess, a poisoner?

He said:

“I forget what you told me that your Christian name was. But the name you gave me was not the right one.”

“Yes, it was,” she said.

“Your name is Florence: Florence Levasseur.”

She started.

“What! Who told you? Florence? How do you know?”

“Here is your photograph, with your name on it almost illegible.”

“Oh!” she said, amazed at seeing the picture. “I can’t believe it! Where does it come from? Where did you get it from?” And, suddenly, “It was the Prefect of Police who gave it to you, was it not? Yes, it was he, I’m sure of it. I am sure that this photograph is to identify me and that they are looking for me, for me, too. And it’s you again, it’s you again⁠—”

“Have no fear,” he said. “The print only wants a few touches to alter the face beyond recognition. I will make them. Have no fear.”

She was no longer listening to him. She gazed at the photograph with all her concentrated attention and murmured:

“I was twenty years old.⁠ ⁠… I was living in Italy. Dear me, how happy I was on the day when it was taken! And