They had been discussing the date, Valentine and he, during the day. True to their compact of silence, neither of them had mentioned M. de Claviers. Landri continued to avoid explaining why he delayed in making the sommation, which would hasten the longed-for moment of their union, and she continued to avoid questioning him. He foresaw, however, from various indications,—glances, tones of voice, gestures,—that the heroic marquis himself would not endure much longer their too painful relations, and he was beginning to discuss with the dear companion of his life to come the details of their plans. In these discussions she showed herself as he had always known her, delicately judicious, and strong of heart.
The project of living on a large estate in the country gave place more and more definitely to the dream of carrying on a "ranch" in Western Canada—Ontario or Manitoba. A large amount of ready money would be necessary. So that a pretext was at hand for the visit to Métivier.
The apprehension of an overstrained perspicacity is so distressing at critical moments that Landri went several times as far as Place de la Madeleine before he could make up his mind to go up to the notary's office. He succeeded at last, as generally happens with over-sensitive imaginations, in overcoming that apprehension, and realized that it had been entirely subjective.
Métivier greeted him with the simple courtesy of a notary employed to do a certain thing, with whom to think of his client is to think of documents and figures. Of the family tragedy in which the Claviers-Grandchamps were nearing shipwreck he had no suspicion. On the other hand, he had shrewdly unravelled all the threads of the conspiracy entered into by Chaffin and his confederates, and when Landri, after speaking of certain formalities that were indispensable for the final settlement of his mother's estate, in order to account for his visit, touched upon the subject of his former tutor, Métivier exclaimed:—
"What did he do? Why, it's the simplest thing in the world. He came to an understanding with certain people from whom your father had borrowed money, in such wise as to secure a percentage of their profits. I am expecting Altona this very morning. If he should happen to come while you are here, you would see a superb specimen of the usurer of to-day. He is the dealer in curiosities, who sells you a portrait by Velasquez, a Boule cabinet, a bust by Houdon, for a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand francs, and buys them back for fifty or sixty thousand. The amusing feature of it is that the Velasquez and the Boule and the Houdon are genuine, and that the customer wouldn't do a bad bit of business by keeping them. This enables Master Altona to pass himself off as a collector, a dilettante, a connoisseur of art!—This fellow and his gang learned of Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers' financial embarrassment. I am somewhat to blame. I recommended your father to apply to a certain Gruet, whom I thought trustworthy, and he was of the same stripe as they! They knew also what the treasures of Grandchamp were worth. You see the scheme; it's familiar enough: to force the marquis to a sale by getting all his debts in one hand. Chaffin was to have his commission—thirty or forty thousand francs, perhaps more. He undertook to offer Monsieur de Claviers four millions, in Altona's name, for a list catalogued in the notes to your family history! He had the audacity to do that! And Monsieur le Marquis is so kind-hearted that he explained it to me: 'He thought he was doing me a service,' he said.—Luckily we were able to enlighten him by discovering the traces of a most commonplace rascality: bills settled twice, if you please—once to the tradesman, and once, to whom?—to Master Chaffin.—Monsieur de Claviers cut off his head. When I wrote you that he was severe, Cauvet, the advocate I got for you, had found only one of these bills. I said to myself that there was a chance for a mistake. For all a man's a notary, he has difficulty in believing in certain comedies, and this Chaffin played one for me when I questioned him, with your letter in my hand. To dismiss him so summarily was to run the risk of never getting to the bottom of many things. However, we're beginning to see daylight. As I always say to my cousin Jacques Molan, the dramatic author, the true modern comedy is played in our own homes."
"Then," queried Landri, as Métivier complacently mentioned his cousinship to an illustrious writer, of whom he was proud after having been very much ashamed of him, "then you think that Chaffin was interested in the Altona deal?"
"There's no doubt of it!" replied the notary. "By the way,"—one of his clerks had just knocked at the door and handed him a card,—"if you'll allow me to have him shown in here, you will see Altona himself. He is here. You can measure up the man; you will be able to judge whether it is possible that, having chosen the end, he resorted to the means, every means," and going through the motion of counting money, "this included."
Landri did not need this meeting with the usurer-antiquary to know what to think concerning the nature of the conspiracy against the pictures, the tapestries and the furniture of the château of Grandchamp. The recollection of the advice insinuated by Chaffin: "Ask for your property," would have sufficed of itself, without this visit to Métivier, to convince him that the sending of the anonymous letter might be explained simply by a desire for money. At the moment that Jaubourg's legacy fell in, M. de Claviers was in the clutches of the Altona claim. He could free himself only by selling the treasures of the château. Chaffin's disappointment was proportioned, no doubt, to the commission that he lost. His knew his master's temperament. To betray to him his wife's liaison with his false friend was to make that money impossible of acceptance by him. If the rascal had letters of Madame de Claviers in hand, all was explained. This theory was less chimerical than the other, but upon how many hypotheses did even it rest! For a moment it seemed certainty to Landri, ready to collapse, as the first had done, upon examination.
Meanwhile he exchanged a salutation with Master Altona, as the notary had slightingly dubbed the dealer in antiques. One had but to see the two men side by side, to understand that ten years earlier he would have called him "my boy," and ten years later he would call him "monsieur le baron."
Altona had one of those bloodless faces, faded for good and all, which have no age. He was very black-haired, with moustaches and an imperial cut in a fashion to give him the aspect of one of the portraits he dealt in. His brown, velvety eyes, which were like two spots on his pale face, betrayed his Oriental origin, as did the strange mixture of servility and arrogance displayed by his whole person. A little too well-dressed, with too much jewelry, too faultlessly correct, one realized nevertheless that one last touch of "side"—we use the language of the sharpers in his employ—would make of him a passably successful make-believe grand seigneur. Métivier, on the contrary, that highly esteemed notary, well-to-do and well established, but dull and heavy, and made apoplectic at fifty-five by his sedentary profession and by over-indulgence in eating and smoking, would never be anything more than a vulgar French bourgeois. Through the chance that brought them together, in the presence of the heir of a very great name on the eve of disappearing forever, the four walls of that green-box-lined office contained a striking abstract of contemporary history.