it is life, sir; it is history, it is the real thing!" he insisted. "Why, you yourself, in just a few words, have thrown an atmosphere round this Fantômas which makes him absolutely fascinating! I would give anything to have known Vidocq and Cartouche and Rocambole, and to have seen them at close quarters. Those were men!"
President Bonnet contemplated the young man in astonishment; his eyes flashed lightning at him and he burst out:
"You are mad, boy, absolutely mad! Vidocq — Rocambole! You mix up legend and history, bracket murderers with detectives, and make no distinction between right and wrong! You would not hesitate to set the heroes of crime and the heroes of law and order on one and the same pedestal!"
"You have said the word, sir," Charles Rambert exclaimed: "they all are heroes. But, better still, Fantômas —— "
The lad's outburst was so vehement and spontaneous and sincere, that it provoked unanimous indignation among his hearers. Even the indulgent Marquise de Langrune ceased to smile. Charles Rambert perceived that he had gone too far, and stopped abruptly.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he murmured. "I spoke without thinking; please forgive me."
He raised his eyes and looked at President Bonnet, blushing to the tips of his ears and looking so abashed that the magistrate, who was a kind-hearted man at bottom, tried to reassure him.
"Your imagination is much too lively, young man, much too lively. But you will grow out of that. Come, come: that's all right; lads of your age do talk without knowledge."
It was very late now, and a few minutes after this incident the guests of the Marquise de Langrune took their departure.
Charles Rambert accompanied the Marquise to the door of her own private rooms, and was about to bid her a respectful good night before going on to his bedroom, which adjoined hers, when she asked him to follow her.
"Come in and get the book I promised you, Charles. It should be on my writing-table." She glanced at that piece of furniture as she entered the room, and went on, "Or in it, perhaps; I may have locked it away."
"I don't want to give you any trouble," he protested, but the Marquise insisted.
"Put your light down on that table," she said. "Besides, I have got to open my desk, for I must look at the lottery tickets I gave to Thérèse a few weeks ago." She pushed back the roll top of her Empire desk and looked up at the young fellow. "It would be a piece of good luck if my little Thérèse won the first prize, eh, Charles? A million francs! That would be worth winning?"
"Rather!" said Charles Rambert with a smile.
The Marquise found the book she was searching for and gave it to the lad with one hand while with the other she smoothed out several variegated papers.
"These are my tickets," she said, and then broke off. "How stupid of me! I have not kept the number of the winning ticket that was advertised in La Capitale."
Charles Rambert immediately offered to go downstairs again to fetch the newspaper, but the Marquise would not let him.
"It is no good, my dear boy; it is not there now. You know — or rather you don't know — that the Abbé takes away all the week's newspapers every Wednesday night in order to read all the political articles." The old lady turned away from her writing-table, which she left wide open, conducted the young man to the door, and held out a friendly hand. "It is to-morrow morning already!" she said. "So now good night, dear Charles!"
In his own room, with the lights extinguished and the curtains closed, Charles Rambert lay wide awake, a prey to strange excitement. He turned and tossed in his bed nervously. In vain did he try to banish from his mind the words spoken during the evening by President Bonnet. In imagination Charles Rambert saw all manner of sinister and dramatic scenes, crimes and murders: hugely interested, intensely curious, craving for knowledge, he was ever trying to concoct plots and unravel mysteries. If for an instant he dozed off, the image of Fantômas took shape in his mind, but never twice the same: sometimes he saw a colossal figure with bestial face and muscular shoulders; sometimes a wan, thin creature, with strange and piercing eyes; sometimes a vague form, a phantom — Fantômas!
Charles Rambert slept, and woke, and dozed again. In the silence of the night he thought he heard creakings and heavy sounds. Then suddenly he felt a breath pass over his face — and again nothing! And suddenly again strange sounds were buzzing in his ears.
Bathed in cold sweat Charles Rambert started and sat upright in bed, every muscle tense, listening with all his ears. Was he dreaming, or had he really waked up? He did not know. And still, still he had a consciousness of Fantômas — of mystery — of Fantômas!
Charles Rambert heard the clock strike four.
II
A Tragic Dawn
As his cab turned by the end of the Pont Royal towards the Gare d'Orsay, M. Etienne Rambert looked at his watch and found, as he had anticipated, that he had a good quarter of an hour before the train that he intended to take was due to start. He called a porter, and gave him the heavy valise and the bundle of rugs that formed the whole of his hand baggage.
"Where is the office for forwarding luggage, my man?" he enquired.
The porter led him through the famous panelled hall of the Gare d'Orsay, and M. Etienne Rambert satisfied himself that his trunks had been properly registered for Verrières, the station at which he had to alight for the château of Beaulieu.
Still attended by the porter, who had conceived a respectful admiration for him in consequence of the authoritative tone in which he demanded information from the various railway servants, and who scented a probable munificent tip, M. Etienne Rambert proceeded to the booking-office and took a first-class ticket. He spent a few minutes more at the book-stall where he selected an imposing collection of illustrated papers, and then, his final preparations completed, he turned once more to the porter.
"The Luchon train," he said; "where is it?" and as the man only made a vague gesture and growled something wholly indistinct, he added: "Lead the way, and I will follow."
It was now just half-past eight, and the station showed all the animation inseparable from the departure of main-line trains. M. Etienne Rambert hurried onwards, and reaching the platform from which all the lines begin, was stayed by the porter who was laden with his baggage.
"You want the express, sir?"
"No, the slow train, my man."
The porter showed some surprise, but made no remark.
"Do you like the front or the back of the train?"
"The back by choice."
"First-class, isn't it?"
"Yes, first-class."
The porter, who had stopped a moment, picked up the heavy valise again.
"Then there isn't any choice. There are only two first-class carriages on the slow train, and they are both in the middle."
"They are corridor carriages,
