CHAPTER XXX.
THE BLOOD
Lady Dubarry had not seen the street door close after her before Balsamohurried up into the room where he had left Lorenza. But she was gone.
Her fine flowered cashmere shawl remained on the cushions as a token ofher stay in the room.
A painful thought struck him that she had feigned to sleep. Thus shewould have dispelled all uneasiness, doubts and mistrust in herhusband's mind only to flee at the first chance for liberty. This timeshe would be surer of what to do, instructed by her former experience.
This idea made him bound. He searched without avail after ringing forFritz to come to him. But nobody was about, as nobody had gone outbehind the countess.
To run about, moving the furniture, calling Lorenza, looking withoutseeing, listening without hearing, thrilling without living, andpondering without thinking--such was the state of the infuriate forthree minutes, which were as many ages.
He came out of his hallucination and dipping his hand in a vase of icedwater, he held it on his forehead. By his will he chased away thatthrobbing of the blood in the brains which goes on silently in life butwhen heard means madness or death.
"Come, come, let us reason," he said, "Lorenza is no more here, andconsequently must have gone forth. How? Through Andrea de Taverney I canascertain all--whether my incorruptible Fritz was bribed and--then, iflove is a sham, if science is an error, and fidelity a snare--Balsamowill punish without pity or reservation--like the powerful man smiteswhen he has put aside mercy and preserves but pride. I must let Fritzperceive nothing while I haste to Trianon."
In taking up his hat to go, he stopped.
"Goodness, I am forgetting the old man," he said. "I must attend toAlthotas before all. In my monstrous love, I left my unfortunate friendto himself--I have been inhuman and ungrateful."
With the fever animating his movements he sprang to the trap which helowered and on which he stepped.
Scarcely had he reached the level of the laboratory, than he was struckby the old man's voice crooning a song. To Balsamo's high astonishmenthis first words were not a reproach as he expected; he was received by anatural and simple outburst of gaiety.
The old man was lolling back in his easy chair, snuffing the air asthough he were drinking in new life at each sniff. His eyes were filledwith dull fire, but the smile on his lips made them lighter as they werefastened on the visitor.
In this close, warm atmosphere, Balsamo felt giddy as if respiration andhis strength failed him simultaneously.
"Master," said he, looking for something to lean against, "you must notstay here: one cannot breathe. Let me open a window overhead for thereseems to reek from the floor the odor of blood."
"Blood? ha, ha, ha!" roared Althotas. "I noticed it but did not mind: itis you who have tender heart and brain who is easily affected."
"But you have blood on your hands and it is on the table--this smell isof blood--and human blood," added the younger man, passing his hand overhis brow streaming with perspiration.
"Ha, he has a subtile scent," said the old sage. "Not only does herecognize blood but can tell it is human, too."
Looking round, Balsamo perceived a brass basin half full with a purpleliquid reflected on the sides.
"Whence comes this blood?" he gasped.
He uttered a terrible roar! Part of the table, usually cumbered byalembics, crucibles, flasks, galvanic batteries and the like, was nowclothed with a white damask sheet, worked with flowers. Among theflowers here and there, spots of a red hue oozed up. Balsamo took onecorner of the sheet and plucked the whole towards him.
His hair bristled up, and his opened mouth could not let the horribleyell come forth--it died in the gullet.
It was the corpse of Lorenza which stiffened on the board. The lividhead seemed still to smile and hung back as though drawn down by theweight of her hair.
A large cut yawned above the clavicle, but not a drop of blood wasissuing now. The hands were rigid and the eyes closed under the violetlids.
"Yes, thanks for your having placed her under my hand where I could soreadily take her," said the horrible old man; "in her have I found theblood I wanted."
"Villain of the vilest," screamed Balsamo, with the cry of despairbursting from all pores, "you have nothing to do but die--for this wasmy wife since four days ago! You have murdered her to no gain."
"She was not a virgin?"
Althotas quivered to the eyes at this revelation, as if an electricshock made them oscillate in their orbits. His pupils frightfullydilated; his gums gnashed for want of teeth; his hand let fall the phialof the elixir of long life, and it fell and shivered into a thousandsplinters. Stupefied, annihilated, struck at the same time in heart andbrain, he dropped back heavily in his armchair.
Balsamo, bending with a sob over the body of his wife, swooned as he waskissing the tresses.
Time passed silently and mournfully in the death-chamber where the bloodcongealed.
Suddenly in the midst of the night a bell rang in the room itself.
Fritz must have guessed that his master was in the laboratory ofAlthotas to have sent the warning thither. He repeated it three timesand still Balsamo did not lift his head.
In a few minutes the ringing came, still louder, without rousing themourner from his stupor.
But at another call, the impatient jangle made him look up though notwith a start. He questioned the space with the cold solemnity of acorpse coming forth from a grave.
The bell kept on ringing.
Energy, reviving, at last aroused intelligence in the husband of LorenzaFeliciani. He took away his head from hers; it had lost its warmthwithout warming hers.
"Great news or a great danger," he said to himself. "I should as liefmeet a great danger."
He rose upright.
"But why should I answer this appeal?" he asked without perceiving thesombre effect of his voice under the gloomy skylight and in the funeralchamber. "Is there anything in this world to alarm or interest me?"
As if to answer him the bell was so roughly shaken that the iron tonguebroke loose and fell on a glass alembic which it shivered on the floor.
He held back no longer; besides, it was important that neither Fritz noranother should come here to find him.
With a tranquil tread he opened the trap and descended. When he openedthe staircase door, Fritz stood on the top step, pale and breathless,holding a torch in one hand and the broken bell-pull in the other.
At sight of his master, he uttered a cry of satisfaction and then one ofsurprise and fright. Respectful as he usually was, he took the libertyof seizing him by the arm and dragging him up to a Venetian mirror.
"Look, excellency," he said.
Balsamo shuddered. In an hour he had grown twenty years older. In hiseyes were lustre; in his skin no blood; and over all his lineaments wasspread an expression of stupor and lack of intelligence. Bloody foambathed his lips, and on the white front of his shirt a large blood spotspread. He looked at himself for an instant without recognition. Thenhe plunged his glance steadily into that of his reflected self.
"You are quite right, Fritz," he said. "But why did you call me?"
"They are here, master," said the faithful servant, with disquiet: "thefive masters."
"All here?" queried Balsamo, starting.
"With each an armed servant in the yard. They are impatient which is whyI rang so often and roughly."
Without adjusting his dress or hiding the blood spot, Balsamo went downthe stairs to the parlor.
"Has your excellency no orders to give me about weapons?" asked thevalet.
"Why should I take a sword even?"
"I do not know, I only feared--I thought---- "
"Thanks, you can go."
"Yes: but your double-barrelled pistols are in the ebony box on thegilded buffet."
"Go, I bid you," said the master, and he entered the parlor.