"Fandor!"
When he came to himself again, Fandor found he was lying in one of the comfortable leather arm-chairs in Juve"s study. His temples and the lobes of his ears were being bathed with some refreshing liquid: the commingled scent of ether and eau-de-Cologne was in the air.
When he opened his eyes, it was with difficulty that he could credit the sight that met them!
Juve, his dear Juve, was bending over him, gazing at him tenderly, watching his return to consciousness with some anxiety.
Fandor vainly strove to rise: he felt dazed.
"Fandor!" murmured Juve, in a voice trembling with emotion. "Fandor, my little Fandor. My lad, my own dear lad!"
Oh, yes, this was Juve, his own Juve, whom Fandor saw before him!... He had aged a little, this dear Juve of his--had gone slightly grey at the temples: there were some fresh lines on his forehead, at the corners of his mouth, too; but it was the Juve of old times, for all that!... Juve, alert, souple, robust, Juve in his full vigour, in the prime of life!
Oh, a living, breathing, fatherly Juve: his respected master and most intimate friend--restored to him, after mourning the irreparable loss of him and his incomprehensible disappearance!
While Fandor slowly came to himself, Juve had lessened the disordered state of his appearance; he had taken off his workman"s clothes, and also the red beard which he had worn, when he ran up against the journalist in the place de l"Opera.
As soon as Fandor was himself again, not only did he feel intense joy, a quite wild joy, but he also knew the good of a keen curiosity. Now he would know why the detective had felt obliged to disappear, officially at any rate, from Paris life for so long a period.
Protestations of faithful attachment, or unalterable affection poured from Fandor"s excited lips, intermingled with questions: he wanted to know everything at once.
Juve smiled in silence, and gazed most affectionately at his dear lad.
At last he said:
"I am not going to ask you for your news, Fandor, for I have seen you repeatedly, and I know you are quite all right.... Why, I do believe you have put on flesh a little!"
Juve was smiling that enigmatic smile of his.
Fandor grew impatient, on fire with curiosity. Ah, this was indeed the Juve of bygone days, imperturbable, ironical, rather exasperating also!
However, Juve took pity on Fandor, who was still under the influence of the shock he had received.
"Well, now, dear lad, did you recognise me, a while ago?"
Fandor pulled himself together.
"To tell you the truth, Juve, I did not ... but, when our glances met, I had an intuition, a kind of interior revelation of what I had to do, and without any beating about the bush--I knew I had to follow you, follow you wherever you went."
Juve nodded his approval.
"Very good, dear fellow; your reply gives me infinite pleasure, and on two counts: in the first place, I perceive that your remarkable instinct for getting on to the right scent, strengthened by my teaching, has improved immensely since we parted; and, in the second place, I am delighted to know that I made my head and face so unrecognisable that even my old familiar friend, Fandor, did not know me when we were brought face to face!"
"Why this disguise, Juve?" demanded Fandor, his countenance alight with curiosity. "How was it I came across you at the very spot where the Barbey-Nanteuil load of gold had been submerged, for the moment, under bricks and mortar? And, with regard to that, Juve, how comes it ..."
Juve cut Fandor short.
"Gently! Fandor! Gently! You are putting the cart before the horse, old fellow; and if we continue to talk by fits and starts, never shall we come to the end of all we have to say to each other, and must say. Are you aware, Fandor, that we have been drawn into a succession of incomprehensible occurrences--a mysterious network of them?... But I have good hopes that now we shall be able to work together again; and I like to think that if we follow the different trails we have each started on, we shall end up by..."
It was Fandor"s turn to interrupt:
"Hang it all, Juve! I partly understand you, of course; but there"s a lot I don"t know yet.... What are you after, dear Juve? Are you, as I am, on the track of Jacques Dollon?"
There was a pause, then Juve said:
"I shall reserve the details for our leisure. What matters now is, that I should make clear to you the princ.i.p.al lines my existence has followed during the past three years or so. A few minutes will suffice to put you in possession of the main facts. Now, listen."
The narrative went back to the time when Juve, aided by Fandor, was close on the heels of their mortal enemy, the mysterious and elusive Fantomas. The detective and the journalist had succeeded in cooping up the formidable bandit in a house at Neuilly, belonging to a great English lady, known under the name of Lady Beltham. This Englishwoman was the mistress and accomplice of the notorious Fantomas.[9] But at the precise moment when Juve was about to arrest him, a frightful explosion occurred, and the building, blown up by dynamite, collapsed in ruins, burying the two friends and some fifteen policemen and detectives.
[Footnote 9: See _The Exploits of Juve_.]
Rescuers were on the spot in a very short time, and uninterruptedly, for forty-eight hours, they searched among the ruins for the victims of the disaster, dead or alive.
By a miraculous piece of good fortune, Fandor had been but slightly hurt, and at the end of a few days he was as well as ever. But the poor fellow had lost his best friend--Juve!
The search for Juve had been a useless one. Several corpses could not be identified owing to the injuries they had sustained; and, as it seemed incredible that the detective could have escaped, they had concluded that one of the unrecognisable bodies must be his.
Juve, however, was not one of the dead!
Saved in as miraculous a fashion as Fandor had been, less injured even, a few seconds after the frightful crash, he had been able to rise and make his escape. The distracted detective had raced away from the scene of disaster in search of Fandor, and also in pursuit of Fantomas, for he believed that both had made their escape.
After wandering about for some hours, he had returned to mingle with the crowd of rescuers, and had learned that Fandor had been found, and was not dangerously hurt: on the other hand, there were those present who declared that he, Juve, was killed!
This unexpected announcement gave him an idea: for an indefinite period he would accept this version! For, more than ever set upon catching his enemy, the detective said to himself, that if Fantomas could feel certain that Juve no longer existed, the pretended dead would have a far better chance of catching the living bandit!
Thereupon, Juve had submitted his project to his chief, Monsieur Havard; and the head of the police secret service had consented to ignore Juve"s presence among the living.
Juve knew that Lady Beltham had escaped to England.
Supposing that Fantomas would rejoin her without delay, the detective left Paris, crossed the Channel. He then went to America. For scarcely had he arrived in London when he learned that the bandits had gone off to the United States.
Juve travelled from place to place for some months. It was a vain quest: Fantomas had vanished, leaving not a trace behind, and the disgusted detective, now convinced that he had followed a false trail, returned to France.
He determined to set himself to study anew the prison world; he was all the more interested in it because, before his supposed death, Juve had effected the arrest of several members of a band of which Fantomas was the leader. Among these were the Cooper, the Beard, and old Mother Toulouche.
Then, at the prison connected with the asylum, Juve had come across a warder, who, some years previous to this, had been the warder in charge of a man condemned to death, one Gurn, who had not been guillotined because a subst.i.tuted person had been executed in his stead. Juve was convinced that the condemned criminal was none other than Fantomas. Juve strongly suspected that this warder, Nibet by name, knew a great deal about this old affair. But soon Nibet pa.s.sed to the Depot. The accomplices of Fantomas, having served the time of their respective sentences, some at Melun, others at Clermont, all this nice collection of criminals would meet once more on the pavements of Paris. Juve, therefore, had imperious reasons for mingling with this charming crowd!...
Fandor had followed Juve"s rapid narrative with the most intense interest.
"And then, Juve, what then?" insisted Fandor.
"And then," said the detective, "to make an end of it--for we must not be forever going over the past adventures--let me tell you, that after many and diverse happenings, a band of smugglers and false coiners, among whom are to be found individuals already known to you, notably the Beard, the Cooper, and also that wretch of a Mother Toulouche, one fine day made the acquaintance of a poor sort of creature, simple-minded, and anything but sharp-witted--an individual who goes by the name of Cranajour!"
"Cranajour?" queried Fandor, "I don"t in the least understand."
"Yes, Cranajour," repeated Juve. "Here is how it came about. You remember when Fantomas got an unfortunate actor named Valgrand executed in his stead? Well, our mysterious Fantomas, the better to mislead and bamboozle those who might suspect this atrocious jugglery, our bandit of genius--for Fantomas has genius--took the personality of Valgrand for several hours, and dared to go to the theatre where the real Valgrand was playing. However, as Fantomas was not capable of playing the part to a finish, he conceived the idea of making those about Valgrand believe that he had been suddenly afflicted with loss of memory, and from that moment could not remember anything whatever: Fantomas, the false Valgrand, could thus pa.s.s for the true Valgrand, and be taken as such by the true Valgrand"s intimates!... I humbly confess, Fandor, that I copied Fantomas by creating Cranajour...."