Free The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Leblanc Page B

Madame d’Imbleval; my mother, Madame Vaurois.”
    For some time no one spoke. Rénine bowed. Hortense did not know with whom she should shake hands, with Madame d’Imbleval, the mother, or with Madame Vaurois, the mother. But what happened was that Madame d’Imbleval and Madame Vaurois both at the same time attempted to snatch the letter which Rénine was holding out to Jean Louis, while both at the same time mumbled:
    “Mlle. Aymard! … She has had the coolness … she has had the audacity … !”
    Then Jean Louis, recovering his self-possession, laid hold of his mother d’Imbleval and pushed her out of the room by a door on the left and next of his mother Vaurois and pushed her out of the room by a door on the right. Then, returning to his two visitors, he opened the envelope and read, in an undertone:
    “I am to be married in a week, Jean Louis. Come to my rescue, I beseech you. My friend Hortense and Prince Rénine will help you to overcome the obstacles that baffle you. Trust them. I love you.
    GENEVIÈVE.”
    He was a rather dull-looking young man, whose very swarthy, lean and bony face certainly bore the expression of melancholy and distress described by Geneviève. Indeed, the marks of suffering were visible in all his harassed features, as well as in his sad and anxious eyes.
    He repeated Geneviève’s name over and over again, while looking about him with a distracted air. He seemed to be seeking a course of conduct.
    He seemed on the point of offering an explanation but could find nothing to say. The sudden intervention had taken him at a disadvantage, like an unforeseen attack which he did not know how to meet.
    Rénine felt that the adversary would capitulate at the first summons. The man had been fighting so desperately during the last few months and had suffered so severely in the retirement and obstinate silence in which he had taken refuge that he was not thinking of defending himself. Moreover, how could he do so, now that they had forced their way into the privacy of his odious existence?
    “Take my word for it, monsieur,” declared Rénine, “that it is in your best interests to confide in us. We are Geneviève Aymard’s friends. Do not hesitate to speak.”
    “I can hardly hesitate,” he said, “after what you have just heard. This is the life I lead, monsieur. I will tell you the whole secret, so that you may tell it to Geneviève. She will then understand why I have not gone back to her … and why I have not the right to do so.”
    He pushed a chair forward for Hortense. The two men sat down, and, without any need of further persuasion, rather as though he himself felt a certain relief in unburdening himself, he said:
    “You must not be surprised, monsieur, if I tell my story with a certain flippancy, for, as a matter of fact, it is a frankly comical story and cannot fail to make you laugh. Fate often amuses itself by playing these imbecile tricks, these monstrous farces, which seem as though they must have been invented by the brain of a madman or a drunkard. Judge for yourself. Twenty-seven years ago, the Manoir d’Elseven, which at that time consisted only of the main building, was occupied by an old doctor who, to increase his modest means, used to receive one or two paying guests. In this way, Madame d’Imbleval spent the summer here one year and Madame Vaurois the following summer. Now these two ladies did not know each other. One of them was married to a Breton of a merchant vessel and the other to a commercial traveller from the Vendée.
    “It so happened that they lost their husbands at the same time, at a period when each of them was expecting a baby. And, as they both lived in the country, at places some distance from any town, they wrote to the old doctor that they intended to come to his house for their confinement … He agreed. They arrived almost on the same day, in the autumn. Two small bedrooms were prepared for them, behind the room in which we are sitting. The