“What is the matter, Sainclair?” whispered the lad, anxiously.
“My friend,” I returned in a tone as low as his own. “I dare not tell you; you would make sport of me.”
He drew me away from the table and we walked toward the west boulevard. After he had looked closely on every side and made sure that no one was near us, he said:
“No, Sainclair, no: I won’t make sport of you, for you are in the right in seeing him everywhere around us. If he were not there a little while ago, he is perhaps there now. Ah, he is stronger than the stones! He is stronger than anything else in the world. I fear him less within than without. And I should be very glad if the stones which I have called to my aid in hindering his entrance shall aid me to hold him inside. For, Sainclair, I feel that he is here!”
I pressed Rouletabille’s hand, for, strange as it may seem, I shared the same impression—I felt that the eyes of Larsan were upon me—I could hear him breathe. When and how this sensation had first come over me, I was unable to say. But it seemed to me that it had come with the appearance of Old Bob.
I said to Rouletabille, scarcely daring to put into words what was in my mind:
“Old Bob?”
He did not answer. At the end of a few moments, he said:
“Hold your left hand in your right for five minutes and then ask yourself: ‘Is it you, Larsan?’ And when you have replied to yourself, do not feel too sure, for he may, perhaps, have lied to you, and he may be in your own skin without your knowing it.”
With these words, Rouletabille left me alone in the west boulevard. It was there that Pere Jacques came to look for me. He brought me a telegram. Before reading it, I congratulated him on his appearance, for he showed no trace of the fact that, like all the rest of us, he had passed a sleepless night; but he informed me that the pleasure he experienced in seeing his “dear Mlle. Mathilde” happy had made him ten years younger. Then he tried to obtain from me some information in regard to the motives for the strange vigil of the night before, and the reason for the events which had occurred at the château since Rouletabille’s arrival and for the exceptional precautions which had been taken to prevent the entrance of any stranger. He added that if “that monster, Larsan,” were not dead, it would seem as if we dreaded his return. I told him that this was not the moment for explanations and reasoning, and that, as he was a worthy man, he ought, like all other soldiers, to observe the rules without seeking to understand them or to discuss them. He saluted me with a military gesture and started off, shaking his head. The old man was evidently puzzled, and it did not displease me at all that, since he had the watch of the North Gate, he had thought of Larsan. He also had narrowly escaped being one of Larsan’s victims; he had not forgotten the fact. It would make him a better sentinel.