“Now!” she said under her breath.
She turned the handle of the door and walked in.
Despite the ringing of the bells actuated by the opening door, no one came to meet her. The shop seemed to be empty. However, at the extreme end there was a room at the back of the shop and after that another, both crammed with furniture and knickknacks, many of which looked very valuable. Hortense followed a narrow gangway which twisted and turned between two walls built up of cupboards, cabinets and console tables, went up two steps, and found herself in the last room of all.
A man was sitting at a writing desk and looking through some account books. Without turning his head, he said, “I am at your service, madam... Please look round you...”
This room contained nothing but articles of a special character which gave it the appearance of some alchemist’s laboratory in the middle ages: stuffed owls, skeletons, skulls, copper alembics, astrolabes and all around, hanging on the walls, amulets of every description, mainly hands of ivory or coral with two fingers pointing to ward off ill luck.
“Are you wanting anything in particular, madam?” asked M. Pancaldi, closing his desk and rising from his chair.
It’s the man, thought Hortense.
He had in fact an uncommonly pasty complexion. A little forked beard, flecked with grey, lengthened his face, which was surmounted by a bald, pallid forehead beneath which gleamed a pair of small, prominent, restless, shifty eyes.
Hortense, who had not removed her veil or cloak replied, “I want a clasp.”
“They’re in this showcase,” he said, leading the way to the connecting room.
Hortense glanced over the glass case and said, “No, no.... I don’t see what I’m looking for. I don’t want just any clasp but a clasp which I lost out of a jewel case some years ago and which I have come to look for here.”
She was astounded to see the commotion displayed on his features. His eyes became haggard.
“Here?... I don’t think you are in the least likely... What sort of clasp is it?”
“A cornelian, mounted in gold filigree... of the 1830 period.”
“I don’t understand,” he stammered. “Why do you come to me?”
She now removed her veil and laid aside her cloak.
He stepped back, as though terrified by the sight of her, and whispered: “The blue gown!... The toque!... And — can I believe my eyes? — the jet necklace!”
It was perhaps the whiplash formed of three rushes that excited him most violently. He pointed his finger at it, began to stagger where he stood, and ended by beating the air with his arms like a drowning man and fainting away in a chair.
Hortense did not move.
“Whatever farce he may play,” Rénine had written, “have the courage to remain impassive.”
Perhaps he was not playing a farce. Nevertheless she forced herself to be calm and indifferent.
This lasted for a minute or two, after which M. Pancaldi recovered from his swoon, wiped away the perspiration streaming down his forehead and, striving to control himself, resumed, in a trembling voice:
“Why do you apply to me?”
“Because the clasp is in your possession.”
“Who told you that?” he said, without denying the accusation. “How do you know?”
“I know because it is so. Nobody has told me anything. I came here positive that I should find my clasp and with the immovable determination to take it away with me.”
“But do you know me? Do you know my name?”
“I don’t know you. I did not know your name before I read it over your shop. To me you are simply the man who is going to give me back what belongs to me.”
He was greatly agitated. He kept on walking to and fro in a small empty space surrounded by a circle of piled-up furniture at which he hit out idiotically, at the risk of bringing it down.
Hortense felt that she had the whip hand of him, and profiting by his confusion, she said suddenly, in a commanding and threatening tone, “Where is the thing? You must give it back to me. I insist upon it.”
Pancaldi gave way to a moment of despair. He folded his hands and mumbled a few words of entreaty. Then, defeated and suddenly resigned, he said, more distinctly, “You insist?”
“I do. You must give it to me.”
“Yes, yes, I must... I agree.”
“Speak!” she ordered, more harshly still.
“Speak, no, but write: I will write my secret... And that will be the end of me.”
He turned to his desk and feverishly wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper, which he put into an envelope and sealed it.
“See,” he said, “here’s my secret... It was my whole life.”
And, so saying, he suddenly pressed against his temple a revolver which he had produced from under a pile of papers and fired.
With a quick movement Hortense struck up his arm.
The bullet struck the mirror of a cheval-glass. But Pancaldi collapsed and began to groan as though he were wounded.
Hortense made a great effort not to lose her composure.
Rénine warned me, she reflected. The man’s a play-actor. He has kept the envelope. He has kept his revolver. I won’t be taken in by him.
Nevertheless, she realized that, despite his apparent calmness, the attempt at suicide and the revolver shot had completely unnerved her. All her energies were dispersed, like the sticks of a bundle whose string has been cut, and she had a painful impression that the man, who was grovelling at her feet, was in reality slowly getting the better of her.
She sat down, exhausted. As Rénine had foretold, the duel had not lasted longer than a few minutes, but it was she who had succumbed, thanks to her feminine nerves and at the very moment when she felt entitled to believe that she had won.
The man Pancaldi was fully aware of this, and, without troubling to invent a transition, he ceased his jeremiads, leapt to his feet, cut a sort of agile caper before Hortense’s eyes, and cried, in a jeering tone, “Now we are going to have a little chat, but it would be a nuisance to be at the mercy of the first passing customer, wouldn’t it?”
He ran to the street door, opened it, and pulled down the iron shutter which closed the shop. Then, still hopping and skipping, he came back to Hortense.
“Oof! I really thought I was done for! One more effort, madam, and you would have pulled it off. But then I’m such a simple chap! It seemed to me that you had come from the back of beyond, as an emissary of Providence, to call me to account, and, like a fool I was about to give the thing back... Ah, Mlle. Hortense — let me call you so: I used to know you by that name — Mlle. Hortense, the time has come to speak out. Who contrived this business? Not you, eh? It’s not in your style. Then who? I have always been honest in my life, scrupulously honest... except once... in the matter of that clasp. And whereas I thought the story was buried and forgotten, here it is suddenly raked up again. Why? That’s what I want to know.”
Hortense was no longer even attempting to fight. He was bringing to bear upon her all his virile strength, all his spite, all his fears, all the threats expressed in his furious gestures and on his features, which were both ridiculous and evil. “Speak, I want to know. If I have a secret foe, let me defend myself against him! Who is he? Who sent you here? Who urged you to take action? Is it a rival incensed by my good luck who wants in his turn to benefit by the clasp? Speak, can’t you, damn it all... or, I swear by Heaven, I’ll make you!”
She had an idea that he was reaching out for his revolver and stepped back, holding her arms before her, in the hope of escaping.
They thus struggled against each other; and Hortense, who was becoming more and more frightened, not so much of the attack as of her assailant’s distorted face, was beginning to scream when Pancaldi suddenly stood motionless with his arms before him, his fingers outstretched and his eyes staring above Hortense’s head.