The Secret of Sarek Part 15

Suddenly Francois and Stephane made the same movement, the movement of marksmen taking aim.

There were two flashes, followed by the sound of a single report.

The heads of the two swimmers disappeared.

"Oh, the monsters!" stammered Veronique, almost swooning and falling on her knees.

Honorine, beside her, began screaming:

"Francois! Francois!"

Her voice did not carry, first because it was too weak and then the wind was in her face. But she continued:

"Francois! Francois!"

She next stumbled across the room and into the corridor, in search of something, and returned to the window, still shouting:

"Francois! Francois!"

She had ended by finding the sh.e.l.l which she used as a signal. But, on lifting it to her mouth, she found that she could produce only dull and indistinct sounds from it:

"Oh, curse the thing!" she cried, flinging the sh.e.l.l away. "I have no strength left . . . . Francois! Francois!"

She was terrible to look at, with her hair all in disorder and her face covered with the sweat of fever. Veronique implored her:

"Please, Honorine, please!"

"But look at them, look at them!"

The motor-boat was drifting forward down below, with the two marksmen at their posts, holding their guns ready for murder.

The survivors fled. Two of them hung back in the rear.

These two were aimed at. Their heads disappeared from view.

"But look at them!" Honorine said, explosively, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"They're hunting them down! They're killing them like game! . . . Oh, the poor people of Sarek! . . ."

Another shot. Another black speck vanished.

Veronique was writhing in despair. She shook the rails of the balcony, as she might have shaken the bars of a cage in which she was imprisoned.

"Vorski! Vorski!" she groaned, stricken by the recollection of her husband. "He's Vorski's son!"

Suddenly she felt herself seized by the throat and saw, close to her own face, the distorted face of the Breton woman.

"He's your son!" spluttered Honorine. "Curse you! You are the monster's mother and you shall be punished for it!"

And she burst out laughing and stamping her feet, in an overpowering fit of hilarity.

"The cross, yes, the cross! You shall be crucified, with nails through your hands! . . . What a punishment, nails through your hands!"

She was mad.

Veronique released herself and tried to hold the other motionless: but Honorine, filled with malicious rage, threw her off, making her lose balance, and began to climb into the balcony.

She remained standing outside the window, lifting up her arms and once more shouting:

"Francois! Francois!"

The first floor was not so high on this side of the house, owing to the slope of the ground. Honorine jumped into the path below, crossed it, pushed her way through the shrubs that lined it and ran to the ridge of rocks which formed the cliff and overhung the sea.

She stopped for a moment, thrice called out the name of the child whom she had reared and flung herself headlong into the deep.

In the distance, the man-hunt drew to a finish.

The heads sank one by one. The ma.s.sacre was completed.

Then the motor-boat with Francois and Stephane on board fled towards the coast of Brittany, towards the beaches of Beg-Meil and Concarneau.

Veronique was left alone on Coffin Island.

CHAPTER V

"FOUR WOMEN CRUCIFIED"

Veronique was left alone on Coffin Island. Until the sun sank among the clouds that seemed, on the horizon, to rest upon the sea, she did not move, but sat huddled against the window, with her head buried in her two arms resting on the sill.

The dread reality pa.s.sed through the darkness of her mind like pictures which she strove not to see, but which at times became so clearly defined that she imagined herself to be living through those atrocious scenes again.

Still she sought no explanation of all this and formed no theories as to all the motives which might have thrown a light upon the tragedy. She admitted the madness of Francois and of Stephane Maroux, being unable to suppose any other reasons for such actions as theirs. And, believing the two murderers to be mad, she did not even try to attribute to them any projects or definite wishes.

Moreover, Honorine's madness, of which she had, so to speak, observed the outbreak, impelled her to look upon all that had happened as provoked by a sort of mental upset to which all the people of Sarek had fallen victims. She herself at moments felt that her brain was reeling, that her ideas were fading away in a mist, that invisible ghosts were hovering around her.

She dozed off into a sleep which was haunted by these images and in which she felt so wretched that she began to sob. Also it seemed to her that she could hear a slight noise which, in her benumbed wits, a.s.sumed a hostile significance. Enemies were approaching. She opened her eyes.

A couple of yards in front of her, sitting upon its haunches, was a queer animal, covered with long mud-coloured hair and holding its fore-paws folded like a pair of arms.

It was a dog; and she at once remembered Francois' dog, of which Honorine had spoken as a dear, devoted, comical creature. She even remembered his name, All's-Well.

As she uttered this name in an undertone, she felt an angry impulse and was almost driving away the animal endowed with such an ironical nickname. All's-Well! And she thought of all the victims of the horrible nightmare, of all the dead people of Sarek, of her murdered father, of Honorine killing herself, of Francois going mad. All's-Well, forsooth!

Meanwhile the dog did not stir. He was sitting up as Honorine had described, with his head a little on one side, one eye closed, the corners of his mouth drawn back to his ears and his arms crossed in front of him; and there was really something very like a smile flitting over his face.

Veronique now remembered: this was the manner in which All's-Well displayed his sympathy for those in trouble. All's-Well could not bear the sight of tears. When people wept, he sat up until they in their turn smiled and petted him.