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It is true that Victorien Mergy was a member of the committee appointed to consider the question of the Two-Seas Canal. It is true that he voted with the members who were in favour of the company's scheme. He was even paid yes, I tell you so plainly and I will mention the sum he was paid fifteen thousand francs.
But Vaucheray, that brute of a Vaucheray, there really could not be the least bond between Mme. Mergy and him.... Aha, by Jingo, it's my turn now!... He's watching me ... The inward soliloquy is turning upon myself... 'I wonder who that M. Nicole can be? Why has that little provincial usher devoted himself body and soul to Clarisse Mergy? Who is that old bore, if the truth were known?
Answer me in the same way, without reflecting: that's far better. The boy?" "I have him." "Give him back." "No." "Mme. Mergy will kill herself." "No, she won't." "I tell you she will." "And I tell you she will not." "But she's tried to, once." "That's just the reason why she won't try again." "Well, then..." "No." Lupin, after a moment, went on: "I expected that.
"When all the expenses are paid, I shall still be well to the good; and it's not over yet." Then turning to Clarisse Mergy, he asked: "Have you a bag?" "Yes, I bought one when I reached Nice, with some linen and a few necessaries; for I left Paris unprepared." "Get all that ready. Then go down to the office.
Three years ago, Mergy the deputy had blown out his brains in the lobby of the Chamber, without leaving a word of explanation behind him; and no one had ever discovered the slightest reason for that suicide. "Do you know the reason?" asked Lupin, completing his thought aloud. "Yes, I know it." "Gilbert, perhaps?"
The house was surrounded by police and the prefect took up his quarters by the sick man's bedside. Germineaux died. The chest was opened and found to be empty." "Daubrecq, this time," Lupin declared. "Yes, Daubrecq," said Madame Mergy, whose excitement was momentarily increasing. "Alexis Daubrecq, who, for six months, disguised beyond recognition, had acted as Germineaux's secretary.
I was born to do harm... And you will both beseech my mercy on your knees, on your knees, yes, on your knees... At that moment, my father entered the room; and, with his assistance and the footman's, Victorien Mergy flung the loathsome creature out of doors. Six weeks later, I married Victorien." "And Daubrecq?" asked Lupin, interrupting her. "Did he not try..."
He muttered, very calmly: "Daubrecq has been here." "Daubrecq!" "We can't suppose that Mme. Mergy has been amusing herself by cutting out those two words. Daubrecq has been here. Mme. Mergy thought that she was watching him. He was watching her instead." "How?" "Doubtless through that hall-porter who did not tell us that Mme. Mergy had been to the hotel, but who must have told Daubrecq. He came.
Mergy did not forget that the law was pursuing Gilbert with such rigour not so much because he was a criminal as because he was an accomplice of Arsene Lupin's. And then, notwithstanding all his efforts, notwithstanding his prodigious expenditure of energy, what result had Lupin achieved, when all was said? How far had his intervention benefited Gilbert?
D'Albufex had shown him how to set about it; and Clarisse Mergy would be inflexible where it was a question of saving her son. He took the rope with which he had provided himself and groped about to find a jagged piece of rock round which to pass it, so as to leave two equal lengths hanging, by which he could let himself down.
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