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Updated: May 25, 2025
Speak ... and speak at once! If not ...!" M. de Lourtier had no strength left in him. All resistance was impossible. It was not that Renine's attack alarmed him, or that he was yielding to this act of violence, but he felt crushed by that indomitable will, which seemed to admit no obstacle, and he stammered: "You are right. It is my duty to tell everything, whatever comes of it."
The truth about this monstrous tragedy, which suddenly flashed upon you, this truth, if it were known, would spell dishonour to you, disgrace ... and you are shrinking from your duty." M. de Lourtier did not reply. Renine leant over him and, looking him in the eyes, whispered: "There will be no scandal. I shall be the only person in the world to know what has happened.
Renine received a sudden and terrifying conviction that, if this man took refuge in a stolid silence, there was no hope for Hortense Daniel; and he was so much infuriated by the thought that the key to the riddle lay there, within reach of his hand, that he clutched M. de Lourtier by the throat and forced him backwards: "I'll have no more lies! A woman's life is at stake!
She wanted sleep; and she steals the sleep of others! That's it, isn't it? For the past two years, she has been sleeping?" "For the past two years, she has been sleeping," stammered M. de Lourtier. Renine gripped him by the shoulder: "And it never occurred to you that her madness might go farther, that she would stop at nothing to win the blessing of sleep! Let us make haste, monsieur!
M. de Lourtier felt that nothing would bend him if the necessary words remained unspoken; but he could not bring himself to utter them: "You are mistaken," he said. "You think you have seen things that don't exist."
"That was what made me realize everything just now," said M. de Lourtier. "When you compared the different names, I at once reflected that my unhappy wife was called Hermance and that she was mad ... and all the proofs leapt to my mind." "But, though we understand the selection of the victims, how are we to explain the murders? What are the symptoms of her madness? Does she suffer at all?"
"This morning I published in all the newspapers an advertisement worded as follows: 'Excellent cook seeks situation. Write before 5 P.M. to Herminie, Boulevard Haussmann, etc. You continue to follow me, don't you, M. de Lourtier? Christian names beginning with an H and consisting of eight letters are extremely rare and are all rather out of date: Herminie, Hilairie, Hermione.
To see her children dying through all the hours of the long day and all the hours of the interminable night!" "Nevertheless," Renine objected, "it is not to drive away that picture that she commits murder?" "Yes, possibly," said M. de Lourtier, thoughtfully, "to drive it away by sleep." "I don't understand."
It was almost dark. M. de Lourtier said: "Here, this building standing a little way back.... Look at that window on the ground-floor. It belongs to one of the separate rooms ... and that is obviously how she slips out." "But the window seems to be barred." "Yes; and that is why no one suspected anything. But she must have found some way to get through."
"M. de Lourtier, the woman known as the lady with the hatchet is a madwoman." "But she would be locked up!" "We don't know that she's not. We don't know that she is not one of those half-mad people, apparently harmless, who are watched so slightly that they have full scope to indulge their little manias, their wild-beast instincts. Nothing could be more treacherous than these creatures.
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