The Eight Strokes of the Clock Read Online Free PDF Page A

carefully taking all his measurements, and calculating all his distances, on a Sunday, the 5th of September, when the house was empty, he killed them with two shots.”
    The truth was becoming apparent. The light of day was breaking. The count muttered:
    “Yes, that’s what must have happened. I expect that my cousin d’Aigleroche …”
    “The murderer,” Rénine continued, “stopped up the loophole neatly with a clod of earth. No one would ever know that two dead bodies were decaying on the top of that tower, which was never visited and of which he took the precaution to demolish the wooden stairs. Nothing therefore remained for him to do but to explain the disappearance of his wife and his friend. This presented no difficulty. He accused them of having eloped together.”
    Hortense gave a start. Suddenly, as though the last sentence were a complete and to her an absolutely unexpected revelation, she understood what Rénine was trying to convey:
    “What do you mean?” she asked.
    “I mean that M. d’Aigleroche accused his wife and his friend of eloping together.”
    “No, no!” she cried. “I can’t allow that! … You are speaking of a cousin of my uncle’s? Why mix up the two stories?”
    “Why mix up this story with another which took place at that time?” said the prince. “But I am not mixing them up, my dear madame; there is only one story, and I am telling it as it happened.”
    Hortense turned to her uncle. He sat silent, with his arms folded, and his head remained in the shadow cast by the lampshade. Why had he not protested?
    Rénine repeated in a firm tone:
    “There is only one story. On the evening of that very day, the 5th of September at eight o’clock, M. d’Aigleroche, doubtless alleging as his reason that he was going in pursuit of the runaway couple, left his house after boarding up the entrance. He went away, leaving all the rooms as they were and removing only the firearms from their glass case. At the last minute, he had a presentiment, which has been justified today, that the discovery of the telescope which had played so great a part in the preparation of his crime might serve as a clue to an enquiry; and he threw it into the clock-case, where, as luck would have it, it interrupted the swing of the pendulum. This unreflecting action, one of those which every criminal inevitably commits, was to betray him twenty years later. Just now, the blows which I struck to force the door of the drawing room released the pendulum. The clock was set going, struck eight o’clock … and I possessed the clue of thread which was to lead me through the labyrinth.”
    “Proofs!” stammered Hortense. “Proofs!”
    “Proofs?” replied Rénine, in a loud voice. “Why, there are any number of proofs, and you know them as well as I do. Who could have killed at that distance of eight hundred yards, except an expert shot, an ardent sportsman? You agree, M. d’Aigleroche, do you not? … Proofs? Why was nothing removed from the house, nothing except the guns, those guns which an ardent sportsman cannot afford to leave behind—you agree, M. d’Aigleroche—those guns which we find here, hanging in trophies on the walls!—Proofs? What about that date, the 5th of September, which was the date of the crime and which has left such a horrible memory in the criminal’s mind that every year at this time—at this time alone—he surrounds himself with distractions and that every year, on this same 5th of September, he forgets his habits of temperance? Well, today is the 5th of September … Proofs? Why, if there weren’t any others, would that not be enough for you?”
    And Rénine, flinging out his arm, pointed to the Comte d’Aigleroche, who, terrified by this evocation of the past, had sunk huddled into a chair and was hiding his head in his hands.
    Hortense did not attempt to argue with him. She had never liked her uncle, or rather her husband’s uncle. She now accepted the accusation laid against