“The devil!” murmured Ralph. “That gentleman’s at work already, is he?”
At a few minutes to eight a maid came out of the front door of the house and hurried across to a chemist’s shop lower down the street. Ralph hurried after her with a bank-note ready and accosted her. He learned that Aurelie, who had returned the night before [[162]]with her step-father, had been struck down by fever and was delirious.
In the middle of the afternoon Marescal was prowling about the house. [[163]]
CHAPTER VIII
PLANS AND STRATAGEMS
Events had taken a course uncommonly favorable to Marescal. Aurelie’s confinement to her room meant checkmate to the plan that Ralph had had in mind; it rendered it impossible to fly; it kept her awaiting denunciation in a terrible suspense. Marescal took immediate precautions not to lose these advantages; the nurse they had to put in charge of her, was one of his creatures and, as Ralph was able to ascertain, let him have word every day of the condition of the sick girl. In the event of a sudden improvement, he would have acted.
“Yes,” said Ralph to himself. “But if he has not acted already, it must be that he has motives which prevent him still from laying information against her and prefer to await the end of her illness. He is making his preparations. Let us make our preparations too.”
Though he was opposed to too logical hypotheses which the event always upsets, Ralph had drawn from the facts of the affair some, so to speak, involuntary, conclusions. The strange truth of which no one in the world had dreamt for an instant, but which was so [[164]]simple, he saw in a confused fashion, rather owing to the weight of the facts than to any effort of his intelligence, and he understood that the moment had come to attack the problem with the utmost determination.
“In an enterprise,” he often said to himself, “the first step is often the most difficult of all.”