At that moment the sound of a shot rang out on the night, followed by a cry of mortal agony! Ah, it was again the cry that I had heard two years ago in the “inexplicable gallery.” My hair rose on my scalp and Rouletabille tottered as though the bullet had struck himself.
And then he bounded toward the open window, filling the fortress with a despairing burst of anguish:
“Mother! Mother! Mother!”
CHAPTER XI
THE ATTACK OF THE SQUARE TOWER
I leaped after him and threw my arms around his body, dreading what he might attempt. There was in that cry, “Mother! Mother! Mother!” such a madness of despair, a call, or rather, an assurance of coming aid so beyond the realization of human strength, that I was obliged to fear that the young fellow had forgotten that he was only a man and had not the power to fly straight out of the window of the tower and to traverse, like a bird or a flash of lightning, the black space which separated him from the crime which had been committed and which he filled with his frightful cries. Quickly, he turned on me, threw me off, and precipitated himself wildly, through corridors, apartments, stairways and courts toward the accursed tower from which had come that same death cry that we both had heard—a moment ago, and also two years before when it had resounded through the “inexplicable gallery.”
As for me, I had thus far only had the time to gaze out of the window, rooted to my place by the horror of that cry. I was still there when the door of the Square Tower opened, and in its frame of light, there appeared the form of the Lady in Black. She was standing upright, living and unharmed, in spite of that cry of death, but her pale and ghastly visage reflected a terror like that of death itself. She stretched out her arms toward the night and the darkness cast Rouletabille into them, and the arms of the Lady in Black closed around him and I heard no more only sobs and moans and again the two syllables which the night repeated over and over, “Mother! Mother!”
I descended from my tower into the court, my temples throbbing, my heart beating so fast that it almost stifled me. What I had seen on the threshold of the Square Tower had not by any means assured me that nothing terrible had taken place. It was in vain that I attempted to reason with myself and to say: “Nonsense! At the very moment when we believed that all was lost, is not, on the contrary, everything found? Are not the mother and son united?”
But why, then, this cry of death when she was alive and well? Why that scream of agony before she had appeared standing on the threshold of the tower?
Strange to say, I found no one in the Court of the Bold when I crossed it. No one then had heard the pistol shot! No one had heard the cries! Where was M. Darzac? Where was Old Bob? Was he still working in the lower basement of the Round Tower? I might have believed so, for I perceived a light in the window of the tower. But Mattoni—Mattoni—had he heard nothing, either?—Mattoni, who kept watch at the postern of the gardener? And the Berniers? I saw neither of them. And the door of the Square Tower still stood open. Ah, the soft murmur, “Mother! Mother! Mother!” And I heard her voice answer back, tenderly, though choked with sobs, “My boy! My little one!” They had not even taken the precaution to close the door of Old Bob’s parlor. It was into that room where I had talked with her a little while before that she had led her child.
And they were there alone, clasped in each other’s arms, repeating over and over again, “Mother!” and “My little one!” And then they murmured broken sentences, phrases without end—with the divine foolishness of a mother and her child. “Then, you were not dead!” That was sufficient to make them both fall to sobbing. And then, how they embraced each other, as though to make up for all the years they had lost. I heard him murmur, “You know, mamma, it was not true that I stole!” And one would have thought from the sound of his voice that he was still the little lad of nine years—my poor Rouletabille. “No, my darling—you never stole! My little boy! my little boy!” Ah, it was not my fault that I heard—but my heart was torn in two as I listened.