The van was now filled with a formidable growling. She recognised it as a repet.i.tion of the sound she had heard when nearing her sinister rendezvous.
Bobinette understood!... She knew!... It was a bear!... It had been asleep. She had waked it!
Fantomas had shut her in with a bear: she was to be devoured alive!
Bobinette softly withdrew to the other side of the van. She waited. No growling sound reached her. The bear must have gone to sleep again.
She could hear its heavy breathing. As the air became exhausted in the confined s.p.a.ce the noisome odour of the beast caught her by the throat.... What was she to do? Bobinette asked herself this again and again as the slow and dreadful hours of that night wore on.
"The bear sleeps," she said to herself; "but he will wake in the morning hungry: he will hurl himself on me and I shall be done for!"
After interminable hours of waiting, of aching immobility, of dull agony of mind, the interior of the van was becoming slowly visible....
She had listened to the lessening fury of the wind: the rain had ceased. The wan light of early day came through the cracks in the planking. Bobinette could see the bear waking up: it turned, yawned: suddenly it fixed its eyes on her and crouched.
What should she do? What could she do?
Bobinette had once read that the human eye could frighten a wild beast into submission: she forced herself to stare at the animal with concentrated energy. Alas! she was too frightened herself to terrify a ferocious animal into harmless submission!
The bear licked itself. As though sure of its prey, which he would presently fall upon and rend, he took his time and proceeded to make his toilette.
It was grotesquely tragic, the leisurely tranquillity of this beast face to face with this girl who could count the seconds of life remaining to her.
Now and again Bobinette could hear the rapid pa.s.sings of motor-cars on the high road outside, speeding to Paris or Versailles, pa.s.sing the van abandoned, left derelict by the wayside. Far, indeed, were these pa.s.sers from suspecting the terrible drama of which it was the theatre.
Call out?
That were madness! Her cries might pa.s.s unheeded. Why should she suppose the drivers of these cars racing on their appointed way would stop, locate the cry, and succour her? No, it would but excite the anger of the bear, rouse it to action, thus hasten her own dreadful end!...
A man was walking on the Sceaux road--walking fast. He wore the clothes of a working man. He was leading a sorry nag.... The man halted and let the nag go free. A sound had caught his ear--a growling sound.
He listened intently.
"Did I imagine it?" he murmured.
Again that growling, punctuated by a woman"s sharp scream. The man was off at racing speed towards the van, which was but a hundred yards away.
"Great Heaven! Shall I arrive too late?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the man.
Reaching it, breathless, he glued his ear to the door. The van shook with the movement and growling of some beast of prey about to spring.
The man drew back, rushed forward, hurled himself against the door and drove it inwards.
A shot broke the silence of the morning.
The man rolled over the body of the bear, shot dead through the heart.
The man freed himself; escaped the convulsive movement of its limbs, and crawled towards a crumpled heap huddled in a corner of this tragic stage. Bobinette"s poor face, exposed to view, was slashed and torn: it bore the dreadful claw-marks of the bear.
The man placed his hand on her heart.
"She lives!" he said softly.
Supporting her with infinite gentleness, the man addressed her in a voice trembling with emotion:
"Do not be afraid, Bobinette! You are saved! It is Juve who is telling you so! It is Juve!"
x.x.xII
FREE AND PRISONER
Isolated in the cell which had served him as dwelling-place for the past fortnight, Jerome Fandor had had his ups and downs, hours of deepest depression, hours of violent exasperation when he suffered an intolerable martyrdom between his four walls--suffered morally and physically.
Yet his imprisonment had been rendered as tolerable as possible. He could have his meals brought in from outside and obtain from the library such books as there were.
How he longed for a talk with Juve; but that detective was rigorously excluded from the prison. Juve was to be a witness at the trial.
As Fandor was to conduct his own case there were no consultations with his counsel to relieve the monotony of the days; nor were newspapers allowed him. He had no friends or relatives to visit and console him or divert him.
In his sleepless hours Fandor"s thoughts would revert to his past, to the frightful drama of his boyhood, to the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Marquise de Langrune, when he, a youth of eighteen, had been suspected, had even been accused of committing this murder, the accuser being his own father![8]
[Footnote 8: See _Fantomas_: vol. i, Fantomas Series.]
He remembered that, commencing the very day after the discovery of the crime, his existence had been that of a pariah flying from the police, from those who knew him; remembered how he had a.s.sumed disguise after disguise, denied by his father, ignored by his mother, an unfortunate woman who had lost her reason and was shut up in a lunatic asylum.
The only gleam of happiness which had come to illumine the dreary darkness of his youth resolved itself into a memory picture of a pale dawn when the lad, Charles Rambert, leaving a wine-shop, had been caught by Juve, who, believing in his innocence, had taken him under his protection, had given him the name of Jerome Fandor, and helped him to start a new life.[9]
[Footnote 9: See _The Exploits of Juve_> vol. ii, Fantomas Series.]
From then onwards that timid lad, disheartened by his misfortunes, had regained courage and hope, and had boldly plunged into the struggle to live.
His heart and soul were in his journalistic work. Of an enquiring turn of mind, Fandor had not been content with the episodic work of a mere reporter: he eagerly pursued the guilty, took a lively interest in the victims, and became Juve"s valuable collaborator, with whom the bonds of friendship strengthened day by day.
Thus Fandor, in Juve"s company, was drawn into the hurly-burly, into the troubles and torments of criminal affairs so mysterious, so phenomenal, that, for several years in succession, they created a sensation, not only in Paris but throughout France.
He const.i.tuted himself one of the most implacable enemies of Fantomas.
The more so, because he was satisfied that the "Genius of Crime," as this monster had been called, had had a considerable share in the vicissitudes and troubles of his own life. Fandor felt that this monster"s sinister influence was still being exercised against him.
Too often, in those wakeful hours when he reviewed his life, following the course of it in a kind of mental cinematograph, did Fandor think of Elizabeth Dollon. It was with sad yet sweet emotion, with a piercing regret, but with an unfailing hope, that he saw before his inner vision the charming, the adored face, and figure of Elizabeth Dollon, for whom he had felt, and felt still, an affection profound and sincere. He loved her: he would always love her.[10]
[Footnote 10: See _Messengers of Evil_: vol. iii, Fantomas Series.]
He thought of her brother"s death and the extraordinary disappearance of his body, of his own pursuit of the a.s.sa.s.sin, of the discovery, made with Juve, that the murderer of Jacques Dollon was none other than the elusive Fantomas.