The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (154 page)

Monte Cristo leant against a tree and, with an eye that was rarely deceived, tested the double pathway, examined the passers-by and looked up and down the neighbouring streets, to see if anyone was waiting in ambush. After ten minutes he was convinced that no one was waiting for him. He at once ran to the little side-door with Ali, hurried in and, using his key to the back stairs, reached his bedroom without opening or stirring a single curtain, so that the concierge himself could not have guessed that the house, which he thought to be empty, was once more occupied by its principal inhabitant.

When he got to the bedroom, the count signalled to Ali to stop there, then went into the dressing-room, which he examined. Everything was in its usual state: the precious bureau was in its place and the key in the bureau. He double-locked it, took the key, came back to the bedroom door, removed the double tumbler on the bolt and returned.

Meanwhile Ali had laid out on a table the weapons which the count had asked for: a short carbine and a pair of double pistols with superimposed barrels that allowed the user to aim as accurately as with a target pistol. Thus armed, the count held the lives of five men in his hands.

It was about half-past nine. The count and Ali quickly ate a piece of bread and drank a glass of Spanish wine. Then Monte Cristo slid back one of the moving panels that allowed him to see from one room into the next. His pistols and his carbine were within reach, and Ali, beside him, held one of those little Arab axes that have not changed in design since the Crusades. Through one of the bedroom windows, parallel to that in the dressing-room, the count could see into the street.

Two hours passed in this way. It was completely dark, and yet, through this darkness, Ali, thanks to his savage nature, and the count, no doubt thanks to an acquired ability, could distinguish even the slightest rustle of the trees in the courtyard. The little light in the porter’s lodge had long since been extinguished.

Presumably the attack, if one was really planned, would take place by the staircase from the ground floor and not through a window. In Monte Cristo’s mind, the criminals were after his life, not his money, so they would attack the bedroom, reaching it either by the hidden staircase, or through the dressing-room window. He placed Ali in front of the door to the staircase and continued his own watch on the dressing-room.

A quarter to twelve rang on the Invalides clock, the west wind carrying the dreary resonance of the three blows
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on its moist breath. As the last one faded, the count thought he could hear a faint noise from the dressing-room. This first sound – to be precise, this first scraping sound – was followed by another, then a third. At the fourth, the count knew what was going on. A firm and skilled hand was engaged in cutting the four sides of a window-pane with a diamond.

The count felt his heart beat faster. However much a man is
inured to taking risks, however well prepared he is for danger, the fluttering of his heart and the pricking of his skin will always let him know the vast difference that lies between dream and reality, planning and execution.

However, Monte Cristo only made a sign to alert Ali; and the latter, realizing that the danger came from the direction of the dressing-room, stepped over, closer to his master.

Monte Cristo was anxious to know what enemies and how many he had to deal with.

The window that was the object of attention was opposite the opening through which the count had been staring into the dressing-room. His eyes consequently focused on this window. He could see a thicker shadow against the darkness. Then one of the panes became entirely opaque, as if a sheet of paper had been stuck on to it from outside, and the glass cracked without falling. Through the opening a hand groped for the catch. A second later the window was opening on its hinges and a man entered.

The man was alone.

‘Here is a bold scoundrel,’ the count muttered.

At that moment he felt Ali touch his shoulder. He turned around. Ali was pointing to the window of the room where they were, which looked out on the street. Knowing the superb delicacy of his faithful servant’s senses, Monte Cristo went across to the window and there saw another man emerging from the shelter of a doorway and climbing on a boundary stone, apparently so that he could see what was happening in the count’s house.

‘So!’ he said. ‘There are two of them: one to act, the other to keep watch.’ He motioned to Ali to keep his eyes on the man in the street and returned to the one in his dressing-room. The glass-cutter had got inside and was taking his bearings, his arms extended in front of him. Finally he appeared to have understood everything. There were two doors in the dressing-room; he bolted each of them.

When he came across to the door into the bedroom, Monte Cristo thought he was about to enter, and raised one of the pistols; but he heard simply the noise of the bolts sliding in their bronze rings. It was merely a precaution: the nocturnal visitor, not realizing the care with which the count had removed the tumblers, could now consider himself at home and in safety.

Alone and free to act, the man now took something out of his pocket which the count could not make out in the darkness, put it
on a small table, then went directly over to the bureau and felt around the lock, only to find that, contrary to his expectations, the key was not in place.

But the glass-cutter was a resourceful fellow, who had made provision for every eventuality. The count soon heard the clink of iron on iron made by the rustling of that bunch of shapeless keys that locksmiths bring when you call for them to open a door, and which thieves call skeleton keys; or, if they are French thieves,
rossignols
, which means ‘nightingales’, no doubt because of the pleasure they experience on listening to their nocturnal song when they grate against the bolt of a lock.

‘Oh, oh!’ Monte Cristo murmured with a disappointed smile. ‘It’s only a thief.’

But the man, in the darkness, could not find the right key; so he reached for the object which he had placed on the table, and worked a spring. At once a pale light (though bright enough to see by) cast a golden hue across the man’s hands and face.

‘Well, I never!’ said Monte Cristo, starting back in surprise. ‘It’s…’

Ali raised his axe.

‘Don’t move,’ the count whispered. ‘And leave your axe here, we won’t need to be armed.’

He added a few more words in an even lower voice, because (stifled though it had been) the count’s involuntary exclamation of surprise had been enough to startle the man, who had remained in the pose of the antique knife-grinder.
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What the count had said to Ali was an order, because he at once tiptoed away and took down a black cloak and a three-cornered hat from the wall of the alcove. Meanwhile Monte Cristo rapidly removed his frock-coat, his waistcoat and his shirt. Now, by the ray of light glowing through the hole in the panelling, you could see that the count was wearing on his chest one of those finely woven and pliable tunics of mail; in a France where people are no longer afraid of being knifed, the last person to wear one of these was probably Louis XVI
⁴
, who did fear a dagger in his chest – but died from an axe to the head.

The mail-coat soon vanished under a long soutane, as the count’s hair did under a tonsured wig. The triangular hat, on top of the wig, completed the count’s transformation into an abbé.

Meanwhile the man had heard nothing more, so he got up and,
while Monte Cristo was changing his appearance, went back to the bureau and began to crack the lock with his ‘nightingale’.

‘Very well,’ the count muttered, doubtless aware of some secret of the lock-smith’s art unknown to the lockpick, skilled though he was. ‘You’ll be at it for a few minutes.’ And he went to the window.

The man whom he had seen climb on to a boundary stone had got down and was still walking up and down in the street; but oddly, instead of watching for anyone who might come, either along the Avenue des Champs-Elysées or down the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, he appeared to be concerned only with what was happening at the count’s: all his movements were designed to let him see what was going on in the dressing-room.

Suddenly Monte Cristo struck his forehead and allowed a silent laugh to play across his lips. Then he went over to Ali and whispered: ‘Stay here, hiding in the dark, and, whatever noise you may hear or whatever may happen, do not come in and show yourself unless I call you by name.’

Ali nodded to show that he had heard and that he would obey.

At this, Monte Cristo took a ready-lighted candle out of a cupboard and, at the moment when the thief was concentrating most attentively on his lock, quietly opened the door, making sure that the light in his hand completely illuminated his face. The door opened so quietly that the thief did not hear it. But, to his amazement, he suddenly saw the room light up. He swung around.

‘Well, good evening, dear Monsieur Caderousse,’ Monte Cristo said. ‘What the devil are you doing here at this hour?’

‘Abbé Busoni!’ cried Caderousse. And, quite at a loss to explain how this strange apparition had reached him, since he had locked the doors, he dropped his bunch of skeleton keys and remained motionless, as though struck dumb with astonishment. The count stepped between Caderousse and the window, cutting the terrified thief off from his only route of escape.

‘Abbé Busoni!’ Caderousse repeated, staring at the count in horror.

‘Yes, indeed, Abbé Busoni,’ Monte Cristo went on. ‘In person; and I am glad that you recognize me, Monsieur Caderousse, because it shows you have a good memory. If I’m not mistaken, it’s nearly ten years since we met.’

This calm, this irony, this power filled Caderousse with a dizzying sense of terror. ‘The abbé! The abbé!’ he muttered, his hands clasped and his teeth chattering.

‘So, are we trying to rob the Count of Monte Cristo?’ asked the counterfeit abbé.

‘Monsieur l’Abbé,’ Caderousse muttered, trying to reach the window, while the count pitilessly barred his way. ‘Father, I don’t know… Please believe me… I swear that…’

‘A broken window-pane,’ the count went on, ‘a dark lantern, a bunch of skeleton keys, a lock half forced… It seems clear enough.’

Caderousse was knotting his cravat around his neck, looking for a corner to hide in or a hole down which he might vanish.

‘Come, now,’ said the count. ‘I see you have not changed, my fine murderer.’

‘Monsieur l’Abbé, as you seem to know everything, you must know that it was not me; it was La Carconte. That was acknowledged at the trial, since they only sentenced me to the galleys.’

‘So, did you serve your time, since here you are trying to have yourself sent back for another term?’

‘No, father, someone released me.’

‘Whoever it was did society a rare favour.’

‘Ah!’ said Caderousse. ‘But I did promise…’

‘So, you’re breaking your parole?’ Monte Cristo interrupted.

‘Alas, yes,’ said Caderousse, deeply unsure of himself.

‘An unfortunate lapse which, if I’m not mistaken, will lead you to the block. Too bad, too bad,
diavolo
! – as worldly folk say in my country.’

‘Father, I gave way to temptation…’

‘All criminals say that.’

‘And necessity…’

‘Spare me that,’ Busoni said with contempt. ‘Necessity may make a man beg for alms or steal a loaf at the baker’s door, but not come and crack the lock of a bureau in a house that he thinks is uninhabited. When the jeweller Joannès had just paid you forty-five thousand francs in exchange for the diamond that I gave you, and you killed him so that you could have both the diamond and the money, was that also necessity?’

‘Forgive me, Monsieur l’Abbé,’ said Caderousse. ‘You saved me once, save me a second time.’

‘I’m not tempted to.’

‘Are you alone, father?’ Caderousse asked, clasping his hands. ‘Or do you have the police waiting, ready to take me in?’

‘I am entirely alone,’ said the abbé. ‘And I still feel pity for you. I shall let you go, at the risk of whatever new misfortune my weakness may bring, if you tell me the whole truth.’

‘Oh, Monsieur l’Abbé!’ Caderousse cried, clasping his hands and coming towards the count. ‘I can tell you, you are my saviour!’

‘You claim you were released from hard labour?’

‘Oh, yes, father. I swear on my honour!’

‘Who did that?’

‘An Englishman.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Lord Wilmore.’

‘I know him, so I shall know if you are lying.’

‘Monsieur l’Abbé, I’m telling you the absolute truth.’

‘So this Englishman protected you?’

‘Not me, but a young Corsican who was my fellow convict.’

‘What was this Corsican’s name?’

‘Benedetto.’

‘That’s a Christian name.’

‘He had no other; he was a foundling.’

‘So the young man escaped with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘We were working at Saint-Mandrier, near Toulon. Do you know Saint-Mandrier?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, while we were sleeping, from twelve to one…’