An idea suddenly pierced her heart like a red-hot iron; suppose they had only postponed the appointment till five o’clock? Suppose at that moment they were preparing to set out for this street, at the top of which this sinister watcher was waiting? The thought that, after all, that was possible at once transformed itself, as often happens when the imagination works around the danger to a person beloved, into a certainty. She could distinctly see Jacques walking towards this ambuscade. The resolution to stop him at once without a second’s delay possessed her with irresistible force. What could she do but hasten to the Place Delaborde, where she had a last chance of meeting Molan? She was afraid she would be noticed by Bonnivet, or he might hear her voice, if she took one of the cabs on the rank, so she hurried along the Rue de Clichy like a mad woman, calling cab after cab, and feeling, when at last she took her seat in an empty one, the horrible attack of a fresh hypothesis which almost made her faint. Supposing the two lovers had, on the other hand, put forward the time of their meeting and were in the rooms, while the husband warned by a paid or gratuitous spy was waiting for them? Camille could see them once more in her imagination, with the same inability to distinguish the possible from the real. Yes, she could see them, quite sure of their privacy, taking advantage of the gathering darkness to emerge arm in arm, and she could see Bonnivet rush and then.... This unknown conclusion varied between sudden murder and a terrible duel.
The unfortunate creature had hardly conceived this second hypothesis, when a tremor shook her to her very marrow. Her cab had set off at a fast trot in the direction of the Place Delaborde. What could she do then? In these instants when not only seconds, but halves and quarters of a second are counted, does real sentiment possess a mysterious double sight which decides persons with more certainty than any calculation or reasoning could do? Or are there, as Jacques Molan loved to say, destinies protected by singular favour of circumstance, which have constantly good luck, just as others constantly have bad luck? Still Camille, between two possibilities, chose by instinct that which turned out to be the true one.
At the precise moment that the cab turned into the Place de la Trinité she directed the driver to turn back to the Rue Nouvelle. Why? She could not have told. She stopped the cab and paid her fare at the top of this street. Her plan was made and she put it into execution with that courageous decision which danger sometimes inspires in souls like hers, passive on their own behalf, but all flame and energy in defence of their love. She could see that Bonnivet’s carriage was still in the same place. Her umbrella up to protect her from the sleet was sure to hide her face as she walked bravely along past the carriage and reached the house, the door of which the jealous husband was watching. Her doubts were removed, for a stream of light through the cracks of the shutters denoted some one’s presence in the rooms. She went in without hesitation and walked straight to the porter, who saluted her in an embarrassed way.
“I can assure you, mademoiselle, that M. Molan is not here,” he replied when she insisted, after his first denial.
“I tell you he is here with a lady,” she replied. “I saw the light through the windows.” Then sharply with the inexpressible authority which emanates from a person really in despair she said: “Wretch, you will repent for the rest of your life of not answering me frankly now. Stop,” she added, taking the astonished porter’s arm and pulling him out of the lodge. “Look in that carriage at the corner of the street on the right and take care you are not seen. You will see some one watching the house. He is the woman’s husband. If you want blood here directly when she leaves, all you have to do is to prevent me going up to warn them. Good God, what are you afraid of? Search me if you want to make sure I have no weapon and would not harm them. My lover deceives me, I know, but I love him; do you hear? I love him, and I wish to save him. Cannot you see that I am not lying to you?”
Dominated by a will stretched to its uttermost, the man allowed himself to be pulled to the door. Luck, that blind and inexplicable chance which is our salvation and destruction in similar crises, sometimes by the most insignificant of coincidences, that luck whose constant favour to the audacious Jacques I mentioned, willed that at the moment when the porter looked towards the carriage Bonnivet leaned out a little. The man turned to Camille Favier with an agitated look.
“I can see him,” he cried; “it is the gentleman who the day before yesterday asked me some questions about the occupants of the house. He asked me if a M. Molan lived here, and when I replied 'No’ according to orders, he took a pocket-book from his pocket. 'What do you take me for?’ I asked him. I ought to have given the rascal a good hiding. Wait while I go and ask him if he has authority from the police to watch houses.”
“He will answer you that the street is common property, which is quite true,” said Camille, whose coolness had returned with the danger. Was it the inspiration of love? Was it a vague remembrance of the usual happenings on the stage? For our profession acts in us like automatic mechanism in the confusion of necessity. A plan formed itself in her imagination in which the honest porter would take a part, she knew, for Molan knew the way to make himself liked. “You will not prevent that man from staying there,” she went on, “you will only make him think there is something it is necessary to hide. He will make no mistake as to what that something is. Before coming here he must have received positive information. You want to help me to save your master, don’t you? Obey me.”
“You are right, mademoiselle,” the porter answered, changing his tone; “if I go and make a scene with him he will understand, and if it is his wife, he has the right not to want to be what he is. I meant to have warned M. Jacques when he went upstairs that I had been questioned, but he came with that lady.”
“I will warn him,” Camille said, “I undertake to do so. Now go and call a cab, but do not bring it into the courtyard, and leave me to act. I swear I will save him.”