Bregeac scowled at him.
Marescal went on coldly: “As far as La Roche nothing happened. For another half hour nothing happened. Then came the abrupt and violent drama. The young man and girl emerge from the darkness and pass from the fourth car to the fifth. They are disguised by long gray blouses, caps, and masks. In the last compartment of the fifth car Baron de Limézy is waiting for them. The three of them murder and rob Miss Bakersfield. Then Baron de Limézy is tied up by his confederates, who hurry to the end of the car and murder and rob the two brothers. When they come back down the car they meet the conductor. There is a fight; and they escape. The conductor finds Baron de Limézy trussed up as one of their victims and pretending he has been robbed, also. That’s the first act. The second is their flight up the embankment and through the woods. But the [[204]]conductor has given the alarm. I learn what has happened; I take the necessary measures. The result is that the two fugitives are surrounded. One of them escapes. The other is arrested and shut up. I am informed of it. I go to examine him in the dark corner into which he has shrunk. It is a woman.”
“A woman?” said Bregeac in incredulous accents.
“Let me finish,” said Marescal. “Thanks to the pseudo-Baron, in trusting whom I made a mistake, this woman gets away and rejoins William Ancivel. I find traces of them at Monte Carlo. Then I lose track of them again. I hunt for it in vain till the day on which it occurs to me to return to Paris and to learn whether your investigations, Bregeac, have not been more fortunate than mine and whether you have discovered your step-daughter’s hiding-place. That was how I was able to reach the convent of Sainte-Marie several hours before you did and to make my way to a certain terrace on which Mademoiselle was listening to a tale of love. Only the lover has changed: instead of William Ancivel it is Baron de Limézy, that is to say, their confederate.”
Bregeac was listening to these monstrous accusations with a growing fear. It all seemed to him so inevitably true; it explained so exactly his own intuitions and agreed so closely with the half confidences Aurelie had just made to him with regard to her unknown savior. He did not even try to protest. At [[205]]intervals he looked at her, always to find her sitting, motionless and dumb, in her rigid attitude. Marescal’s words did not appear to penetrate to her understanding, one would have said that she was listening to noises outside rather than to his words. Was it that she still hoped for an impossible intervention?
“And then?” said Bregeac impatiently, as Marescal paused.
“Then,” replied the Commissary, “thanks to him, she succeeded once more in escaping. But to-day I swear to you I can laugh at all that, since—to-day I have my revenge.”
He paused to gloat over Aurelie, who seemed wholly unaware of his existence.
“And what a revenge, Bregeac!” he went on. “Do you remember that six months ago you dismissed me as if I had been a valet—one might almost say you kicked me out? And now I hold her—this child—in the hollow of my hand; and all is over.”
He turned his hand as if he were turning a key in a lock, and that so exact gesture showed so clearly and definitely his terrible resolution with regard to Aurelie that Bregeac exclaimed: “No, no. It isn’t true, Marescal! It can’t be true! You are not going to hand this child over to the police.”