XX
The invincible, all-powerful clutch which fastened me helpless to my chair, seemed to have paralyzed my tongue and some of the functions even of my brain. I was in full possession of consciousness. I could still think clearly and logically; and I could feel—what despair indeed was mine! But volition, the power to act, had left me; and my combativeness, also, my rage, my fury against these drinkers of human blood, these assassins of the girl I loved, were weakening, vacillating, melting away into a hazy, vaporous, indistinct emotion.
The Marquis Gaspard, after a pause, was again speaking, with that same obtrusive, labored, sinister urbanity.
“Monsieur le capitaine,” said he, “at the risk of seeming intolerably repetitious, I must here revert to something I have mentioned at least twice before, the fact, to wit, that everything under this roof is at your beck and call, without fear or refusal, save one single thing. Eventually, alas, we shall be constrained to broach the painful subject of that single thing, which, to our extreme regret, we shall have perforce to deny you. Will you not, therefore, carefully examine your mind in all its nooks and corners the better to acquaint us—and as specifically as possible—with all your desires? My honor as a gentleman, they will be satisfied, if the satisfaction be within our power.”
He fell silent, and looked up as though expecting me to speak. Indeed, with the final syllables of his last phrase, a curious, and very complex, sensation began coursing through me. At first, it was a sort of tingling in all my veins and arteries, where my blood seemed to be moving faster as my heart beat with a gradually increasing force. Then I began to understand: little by little, by imperceptible degrees, the control over me was slackening; an influence which my mind could not comprehend was lifting the weight that had settled on my limbs. I was not free, by any means; but neither was I completely helpless as before; so that, when the Marquis Gaspard repeated his question, directly, this time, and without so many mellifluous detours—“Monsieur, what do you wish?”—I was able to answer easily, and with absolute sincerity.
And answer I did—an answer that expressed the deepest, most ardent feelings in my heart: “There is nothing I wish, Monsieur. Kill me, as you have killed the girl I love. But kill me quickly: I am ready!”
In reply the Marquis Gaspard, as he had so often done before, laughed a laugh in that queer falsetto voice of his; and therewith, on the instant, the mysterious weight came down again upon my shoulders, while the clutch tightened again upon my nerves and muscles. Once more I was a prisoner, securely bound, my tongue clinging limp and lifeless to my teeth. Inert, body and soul, I felt the ironical voice of my conqueror again laving me with its scalding mirth.
“My word, Monsieur le capitaine! What are you dreaming of? Badly indeed I must have expressed myself! Are you not taking me for some feu Cartouche of the good old days, for some Monsieur de Paris, perhaps? Hah! Hah!”
And this time, as he laughed, he shrugged his shoulders in affected resignation; and I found a certain ironic exaggeration in the sweep of the hand with which he again took out his snuff-box.
“Well,” he continued, “I can see there is no help for it. Another bit of glossing will be far from wasted here. Your pardon, Monsieur le capitaine, if I, who should not, remind you, that the three men you see before you are three of the most reputable gentlemen of the Kingdom of France. This right hand of mine was never soiled with a drop of blood. Count François here, born in 1770, grew up in the days of your Revolution and was a ‘philosopher’ of the Jean Jacques style in the days when Rousseau was all the rage. Believe me, what he saw of the France of that time, a nation gone entirely mad, and bent on turning into a slaughter-house, disgusted him forever with Samsons and guillotines. As for the Vicomte Antoine, he came into the world in season to figure among those enfants du siècle who borrowed the pen of Alfred de Musset to wring the hearts of an admiring world with words of tender lassitude and languishing despair. Poor makings for a cannibal, in truth, monsieur! No, I can see the effects of the reading people do in these modern days. Too many novels, too many novels! A bad diet, I take it, for impressionable, imaginative minds. Who said a word here about killing anybody? The idea of putting you—or Madame de X....—to death had not occurred to us in the remotest degree. Count François, as I may have intimated, has a bit of the moralist under his skin. Give him half a chance and he starts preaching at you! Well, he will explain, if you choose to ask him, and have the patience to bear the consequences, how wholly improper it would be for men possessing the Secret of Long Life, for Men who really know what Living means, to deprive simple ordinary people of any portion of that brief course which leads them unfailingly and miserably to the Hereafter. We have the Powers Above to thank, Monsieur, that our Secret, the Secret, makes (barring a few chance exceptions, so infrequent as to be negligible), no cruel demands upon us. So far, Monsieur le capitaine, I have added a full century to my appointed years. Believe me, none of those additional days have I stolen from the lives of others. No, we are not of those who kill! Can you, Monsieur, a soldier, say as much? Many young people, to be sure, boys and girls alike, have passed through our laboratory. That I cannot deny. Nor could I swear that they departed thence without leaving something of their ultimate vitality. But, at the worst, their loss was a very slight, a very unappreciable one, Monsieur le capitaine; and this loss I might condone with the reflection that a single extra day of life for an ancient sage like me ought surely be worth some sacrifice—a sacrifice, I repeat, quite exceptional in point of fact, since all of the contributors on whom we draw, having once accomplished their generous task, return safe, sound and happy to their normal pursuits. Your friend, for instance, Madame de X...., is by no means so far gone as you imagine. When, tomorrow evening, she goes back to her home from another trip to ... Beaulieu, no one will take the trouble to observe that she is lighter by some pounds than at the time she went away—a relatively few ounces of blood, and bone, and flesh, which we have claimed from her youthful substance. Concede the fact yourself, Monsieur le capitaine: your indignation was a bit excessive. So now, I suppose, we are at the end of our misunderstandings. From what you have just said I gather simply that you have no particular desires except, I dare say, an early solution of your Adventure. In the latter case, Monsieur, we might proceed. What do you say? Shall we look for such a solution in a friendly spirit ... together?”
Again the iron grasp upon my being was loosened for the fraction of a second; I was permitted to nod in acquiescence.