Knives!
Crouched there in the gloom, I dropped my eyes again, and my brain was muddled with the crazy words which I heard. Then Galant laughed. His laughter had suddenly become high and giggling and obscene, jarring the nerves. 'Don't believe me, my dear,' he urged. 'Read the papers’ A silence. I did not dare put my eye to the crack again, lest I should betray myself by fumbling and tipping it over.
She said in a low, incredulous voice: 'You - did - that'
'Now please listen to me. I feared that exactly this might happen, from the moment your good Odette fell. I feared you might lose your nerve, or get an attack of conscience, and go to the police and explain your "accident", Mademoiselle Martel, I thought (and wisely), was less unstable. You might ruin us all. However, if you were bound to silence....'
'You stabbed Odette yourself.'
'Well, well, I may have hastened her death. She wouldn't have lived more than a few hours, anyway.' He was enjoying himself, and I heard a clink as he poured out more champagne. 'Did you fancy I would rush her to the hospital, and betray everything? No, no ! The police are too eager to hang something on me as it is. Better to finish her in the courtyard. Which - between ourselves - I did. You recall, you did not see her after she fell?'
I looked out again. She sat rigid, her face away from me. Galant was frowning musingly at his glass as he swirled round its contents. Behind his complacence you could feel the cold rage. I knew instinctively that he would never forgive her for one thing, above all - for striking at his vanity. He raised veiled eyes, clear cat-yellow now.
'The knife I used is - distinctive. And the crookedness of the blade left a distinctive mark. Somehow it found its way into your dressing-room. You wouldn't find it easily. But the police could. .. . You damned little fool’ he said, trying to hold back a rush of rage, 'they'll blame you for both murders! - that is, if I give them the tip. You put your neck right under the guillotine last night when Claudine Martel was killed! Don't you realize that? And yet you have the nerve, the impudence, the damned conceit to — '
For a moment I thought he would fling the glass at her. Then with an effort he composed his swollen face, seeming a bit alarmed at his own fury.
'Ah, well, my dear . .. won't do, will it, to get upset? No. Listen, please. I took her down, after dark, and dropped her into the river from my own car. There is no shred of proof to connect me with it. But you!'
'And Claudine- - ?'
'Gina, I don't know who killed Claudine. But you are going to tell me.'
This time he did not sit down on the lounge beside her. He drew up a chair opposite, where the lamplight painted his nose in grotesque shades. He slapped his knees, and out from the shadow bounded the white cat to climb up. For a time he was silent, stroking its fur, smiling obscurely at the champagne-glass.
'Now, my dear, if your emotions are quieted, let me continue. I will tell you precisely what I want of you. In planting this evidence against you I was only covering myself in case I came under any suspicion. I must never come under any suspicion, Gina dear; they must never be able to prove one single thing against me. ... Now, at the end of a long and useful career, I am going to leave Paris.'
'Leave - Paris ?'
He chuckled. 'In short, my dear, to retire. Why not? I am a fairly wealthy man, and I was never greedy of money. For a while I did not want to depart before I had settled matters with a certain man, your friend Bencolin,' he touched his nose, 'who gave me this. It has been my ambition to keep it as - a spur. And then my success with the ladies (oh, yes, my dear; with yourself also) has been due, curiously enough, in no small degree to this disfigurement. Why is it? A blotch on a handsome face invariably attracts them.' He shrugged. 'But as for my good friend Bencolin . .. well, my dear, that prudence which you seem not to like (ah, but it's saved my hide, darling, when others are at Devil's Island), that prudence' - he had a loathsome, chuckling way of accentuating the word - 'tells me to keep away from conflict with him.'
Galant took a delight in building up intricate sentences now. Each time he said 'prudence' he would smile and glance sideways at her.
'So I am going. To England, I think. I have always fancied the life of a country gentleman. I shall write fine books by a river, in a garden full of laurels. And my nose shall be reshaped by a surgeon, and I shall become handsome again, and, alas! no woman will look at me.'
'In God's name, what are you trying to say ?'
'As you may know,' he continued, comfortably, 'I own a large - a very large - interest in this establishment. Yes. Now, I have a partner, whose identity you would probably not suspect. Of course you have seen that I have no connexion with this "manager's office? Prudence again! It is run by my partner. . . . Well, my dear, I have sold out.'
'How docs it concern me? Please — !'
'Patience.' He waved his hand gently. Then his voice changed. It became alive with a kind of weak hatred. 'I want you to know this because it concerns your whole silly, rotten tribe! Do you know what I mean? I have owned this place for a number of years. I know every member; his and her innermost affairs; every scandal, every crookedness. .. . Ah, well. And did I use this information for what you call blackmail ? Only a little. I had a bigger purpose. To publish it, Gina. To publish it, with a purely altruistic purpose. To show' - his voice rose horribly - 'to show what a lot of thieving, crawling maggots masquerade as human beings, and - -'
The man was mad. Staring at his face through the crack, I could not doubt it. Brooding? Solicitude? Snubs? An idealist unhinged, a sensitive man and brilliant man beating at a cage in his own brain? His yellow eyes seemed to be fixed exactly on my own, burning with a light behind the eyeballs, and for a moment I fancied he had seen me. The cat let out a squeal as he pinched its neck, and streaked down from his lap. That seemed to rouse him. He recovered himself, and was looking at the girl now. She had shrunk back on the lounge....
'I entertained you,’ he said slowly, 'for a year. I could get you back now, if I wanted you. Because I had travelled and because I had read, and because I knew fine phrases, you were caught. You learned a glory your poor brainless head wouldn't have dreamed of; you learned it in a cheap secondhand way. I put Catullus in a primer for you. I dragged down Petrarch to your understanding; and De Musset, and Coleridge, and the others. Do you hear ? I taught you what songs to sing, and how to sing them; I set the "Donec gratus eram tibi" to music, and put it into better French than Ronsard's, for you to act out. Great emotions, pale loves, fidelity; and now we both know what a damned sham it is, don't we? And you know what I think of - people.'
He drew a deep breath.
'Down in my safe,' he said, resuming his sardonic manner, 'there are a number of manuscripts. Sealed in envelopes, ready to be sent out to every newspaper in Paris. They are the stories of the - the People, the true stories. And they are to go out soon, after I depart.' He grinned. 'They ought to pay me for it. It will be the news of the decade, if they dare to use it. And they'll use enough.. . .'
'You're mad,' she said flatly. 'My God! I don't know what to say to you. I knew what you were. But I didn't think you were stark — '
'I regret, of course,5 he told her, 'that it will blow this club sky-high and nobody will dare come near it. But I am no longer interested in it financially, and I fear that it will have to be my partner's look-out. ... Now, my dear, let us be practical. There could be much news about you in that packet. On the other hand, your name need not figure at all - Gina the spotless! - if ...'