The Eight Strokes of the Clock - Maurice Leblanc (reading in the dark .TXT) 📗

though I bow to your decree, may I remind you what it was that I always believed our final adventure would be? May I repeat your words, not one of which I have forgotten?

“ ‘I demand,’ you said, ‘that you shall restore to me a small, antique clasp, made of a cornelian set in a filigree mount. It came to me from my mother; and everyone knew that it used to bring her happiness and me too. Since the day when it vanished from my jewel-case, I have had nothing but unhappiness. Restore it to me, my good genius.’

“And, when I asked you when the clasp had disappeared, you answered, with a laugh:

“ ‘Seven years ago⁠ ⁠… or eight⁠ ⁠… or nine: I don’t know exactly.⁠ ⁠… I don’t know when⁠ ⁠… I don’t know how⁠ ⁠… I know nothing about it.⁠ ⁠…’

“You were challenging me, were you not, and you set me that condition because it was one which I could not fulfil? Nevertheless, I promised and I should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the mainspring of our best actions.

“Dear friend, if you had helped me, I should have achieved yet one more victory. Alone and hard pushed by the proximity of the date, I have failed, not however without placing things on such a footing that the undertaking if you care to follow it up, has the greatest chance of success.

“And you will follow it up, won’t you? We have entered into a mutual agreement which we are bound to honour. It behooves us, within a fixed time, to inscribe in the book of our common life eight good stories, to which we shall have brought energy, logic, perseverance, some subtlety and occasionally a little heroism. This is the eighth of them. It is for you to act so that it may be written in its proper place on the 5th of December, before the clock strikes eight in the evening.

“And, on that day, you will act as I shall now tell you.

“First of all⁠—and above all, my dear, do not complain that my instructions are fanciful: each of them is an indispensable condition of success⁠—first of all, cut in your cousin’s garden three slender lengths of rush. Plait them together and bind up the two ends so as to make a rude switch, like a child’s whiplash.

“When you get to Paris, buy a long necklace of jet beads, cut into facets, and shorten it so that it consists of seventy-five beads, of almost equal size.

“Under your winter cloak, wear a blue woollen gown. On your head, a toque with red leaves on it. Round your neck, a feather boa. No gloves. No rings.

“In the afternoon, take a cab along the left bank of the river to the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. At four o’clock exactly, there will be, near the holy-water basin, just inside the church, an old woman dressed in black, saying her prayers on a silver rosary. She will offer you holy water. Give her your necklace. She will count the beads and hand it back to you. After this, you will walk behind her, you will cross an arm of the Seine and she will lead you, down a lonely street in the Ile Saint-Louis, to a house which you will enter by yourself.

“On the ground-floor of this house, you will find a youngish man with a very pasty complexion. Take off your cloak and then say to him:

“ ‘I have come to fetch my clasp.’

“Do not be astonished by his agitation or dismay. Keep calm in his presence. If he questions you, if he wants to know your reason for applying to him or what impels you to make that request, give him no explanation. Your replies must be confined to these brief formulas:

“ ‘I have come to fetch what belongs to me. I don’t know you, I don’t know your name; but I am obliged to come to you like this. I must have my clasp returned to me. I must.’

“I honestly believe that, if you have the firmness not to swerve from that attitude, whatever farce the man may play, you will be completely successful. But the contest must be a short one and the issue will depend solely on your confidence in yourself and your certainty of success. It will be a sort of match in which you must defeat your opponent in the first round. If you remain impassive, you will win. If you show hesitation or uneasiness, you can do nothing against him. He will escape you and regain the upper hand after a first moment of distress; and the game will be lost in a few minutes. There is no midway house between victory or⁠ ⁠… defeat.

“In the latter event, you would be obliged⁠—I beg you to pardon me for saying so⁠—again to accept my collaboration. I offer it you in advance, my dear, and without any conditions, while stating quite plainly that all that I have been able to do for you and all that I may yet do gives me no other right than that of thanking you and devoting myself more than ever to the woman who represents my joy, my whole life.”

Hortense, after reading the letter, folded it up and put it away at the back of a drawer, saying, in a resolute voice:

“I shan’t go.”

To begin with, although she had formerly attached some slight importance to this trinket, which she had regarded as a mascot, she felt very little interest in it now that the period of her trials was apparently at an end. She could not forget that figure eight, which was the serial number of the next adventure. To launch herself upon it meant taking up the interrupted chain, going back to Rénine