Part 55

“Your gentleman is a monster. He is leaving everything to the Crown. Now, you cannot plead against the Crown.... The will cannot be disputed.... We are robbed, ruined, spoiled, and murdered!”

“What has he left to me?”

“Two hundred francs a year.”

“A pretty come-down!... Why, he is a finished scoundrel.”

“Go and see,” said Fraisier, “and I will put your scoundrel’s will back again in the envelope.”

While Mme. Cibot’s back was turned, Fraisier nimbly slipped a sheet of blank paper into the envelope; the will he put in his pocket. He next proceeded to seal the envelope again so cleverly that he showed the seal to Mme. Cibot when she returned, and asked her if she could see the slightest trace of the operation. La Cibot took up the envelope, felt it over, assured herself that it was not empty, and heaved a deep sigh. She had entertained hopes that Fraisier himself would have burned the unlucky document while she was out of the room.

“Well, my dear M. Fraisier, what is to be done?”

“Oh! that is your affair! I am not one of the next-of-kin, myself; but if I had the slightest claim to any of that” (indicating the collection), “I know very well what I should do.”

“That is just what I want to know,” La Cibot answered, with sufficient simplicity.

“There is a fire in the grate----” he said. Then he rose to go.

“After all, no one will know about it, but you and me----” began La Cibot.

“It can never be proved that a will existed,” asserted the man of law.

“And you?”

“I?... If M. Pons dies intestate, you shall have a hundred thousand francs.”

“Oh yes, no doubt,” returned she. “People promise you heaps of money, and when they come by their own, and there is talk of paying they swindle you like--” “Like Elie Magus,” she was going to say, but she stopped herself just in time.

“I am going,” said Fraisier; “it is not to your interest that I should be found here; but I shall see you again downstairs.”

La Cibot shut the door and returned with the sealed packet in her hand. She had quite made up her mind to burn it; but as she went towards the bedroom fireplace, she felt the grasp of a hand on each arm, and saw--Schmucke on one hand, and Pons himself on the other, leaning against the partition wall on either side of the door.

La Cibot cried out, and fell face downwards in a fit; real or feigned, no one ever knew the truth. This sight produced such an impression on Pons that a deadly faintness came upon him, and Schmucke left the woman on the floor to help Pons back to bed. The friends trembled in every limb; they had set themselves a hard task, it was done, but it had been too much for their strength. When Pons lay in bed again, and Schmucke had regained strength to some extent, he heard a sound of sobbing. La Cibot, on her knees, bursting into tears, held out supplicating hands to them in very expressive pantomime.

“It was pure curiosity!” she sobbed, when she saw that Pons and Schmucke were paying attention to her proceedings. “Pure curiosity; a woman’s fault, you know. But I did not know how else to get a sight of your will, and I brought it back again--”

“Go!” said Schmucke, standing erect, his tall figure gaining in height by the full height of his indignation. “You are a monster! You dried to kill mein goot Bons! He is right. You are worse than a monster, you are a lost soul!”

La Cibot saw the look of abhorrence in the frank German’s face; she rose, proud as Tartuffe, gave Schmucke a glance which made him quake, and went out, carrying off under her dress an exquisite little picture of Metzu’s pointed out by Elie Magus. “A diamond,” he had called it. Fraisier downstairs in the porter’s lodge was waiting to hear that La Cibot had burned the envelope and the sheet of blank paper inside it. Great was his astonishment when he beheld his fair client’s agitation and dismay.

“What has happened?”

“This has happened, my dear M. Fraisier. Under pretence of giving me good advice and telling me what to do, you have lost me my annuity and the gentlemen’s confidence....”

One of the word-tornadoes in which she excelled was in full progress, but Fraisier cut her short.

“This is idle talk. The facts, the facts! and be quick about it.”

“Well; it came about in this way,”--and she told him of the scene which she had just come through.

“You have lost nothing through me,” was Fraisier’s comment. “The gentlemen had their doubts, or they would not have set this trap for you. They were lying in wait and spying upon you.... You have not told me everything,” he added, with a tiger’s glance at the woman before him.

“I hide anything from you!” cried she--“after all that we have done together!” she added with a shudder.