Part 34 (1/2)

The red-haired beauty cried impatiently:

”It's you ask me that?... Why ... I go to the frontier.”

”Correct,” said Juve. He would have welcomed further details. ”Well, then, when can we meet?” pressed this determined accordion player.

”How about next Wednesday?” suggested Bobinette.

”That will do. We will go to the theatre--a moving picture show!”

”Always to places in the dark, eh!” observed Bobinette maliciously.

Wilhelmine and Henri were coming nearer.

Juve-Vagualame turned as he was making off.

”Nine o'clock, before the moving picture place, rue des Poissonniers.”

With that, Juve-Vagualame disappeared into a smoky wine shop.

De Loubersac, very pale, and Wilhelmine, whose eyes were red, rejoined Bobinette, whose face became expressionless.

They went slowly off together.

When the coast was clear, Juve-Vagualame left the wine shop and proceeded towards the cemetery. Amid the cypresses and tombs of the necropolis, looming sad and shadowy in the fading light, he made his way slowly along the princ.i.p.al path, questing for traces of the lovers' footsteps in the sand. He was fortunate enough to come on them at once; the soil being moist, the lovers' footmarks could be clearly distinguished in the sand of the alleys. Guided by them, Juve turned into a little pathway on the right, pa.s.sing the mausoleums, and pausing before a new-made grave, that of Captain Brocq, a humble tomb.

A few fresh violets were scattered around it, from Wilhelmine's bunch, no doubt. The lovers had but tarried there. Juve continued to follow their footmarks, by many twists and turns, almost to the end of the cemetery. As he advanced he felt more and more certain that he had come this way some years ago, when his detective work had led him into a mysterious network of robberies and murders, the moving spirit of them all being Fantomas--the enigmatic Fantomas.

Juve was going over in memory those past days of mysterious doings and strange adventures, when he found himself facing a vault richly decorated with unusually beautiful sculpture. A bronze plaque was affixed to this tomb, and on it, engraved in letters of gold, was a name Juve had had occasion to utter many a time and oft:

_Lady Beltham_

Lady Beltham!

Lady Beltham?

A name Juve a.s.sociated with strange and terrible events.[3] Lady Beltham had been a sensational creature.

[Footnote 3: See _The Exploits of Juve,_ vol. ii of the Fantomas Series.]

After adventures, one more extraordinary than another, Juve had succeeded in identifying this English great lady as the mistress of a formidable criminal, relentlessly hunted down, for ever escaping--the elusive Fantomas!

Juve had lost track of both, when the discovery of an extraordinary crime had led to the identification of the victim, a woman: she was declared to be--Lady Beltham. The corpse had been buried in this very cemetery; distant relatives in England had guaranteed all expenses connected with the burial and erection of this costly tomb.

The public had believed this to be the end of Lady Beltham. Juve presently discovered that Lady Beltham was not dead: another woman had been buried in her place. He preserved absolute silence convinced that sooner or later this criminal great lady--for, in conjunction with Fantomas, she had committed abominable crimes--would reappear, and he could then arrest her. Time had pa.s.sed, but for all his efforts Juve could not discover the hiding-place of this strangely guilty woman.

When he saw a large bunch of violets lying before the door of Lady Beltham's vault, he divined them to be the offering of Wilhelmine.

Juve now asked himself if he had not come across this Wilhelmine in the past, this girl with pale gold hair, and clear deep eyes; if he had not, in the long ago, met under painful circ.u.mstances a little child who was now this pretty girl, beloved of Henri de Loubersac.