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Updated: May 11, 2025
"She marks down her victims.... With Hortense dead, she would have known, once she had used up her allowance of sleep, where to find an eighth victim.... But how did she entice the unfortunate women? How did she entice Hortense?" The car was rushing along, but not fast enough to please Renine, who rated the chauffeur: "Push her along, Adolphe, can't you?... We're losing time, my man."
Unless we go for a stroll?..." "I had rather wait till the afternoon: do you mind? I have a lot of letters to write this morning." "Very well. We'll go on the cliff." Hortense and Renine exchanged a glance of surprise. Was this suggestion accidental? Or had they before them, contrary to their expectations, the very couple of whom they were in search?
"The murderer," Renine 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.
Renine had said that day, gazing on the lips which he longed to kiss: "The old brass pendulum will start swinging again; and, when, on the fixed date, the clock once more strikes eight, then...." She looked up. He was not moving either, but sat solemnly, patiently waiting.
Nevertheless, twenty minutes passed and twenty-five; and no one stirred. "Perhaps Madame d'Ormeval has gone." Hortense suggested, anxiously. "She is no longer on her balcony." "If she is at the Trois Mathildes," said Renine, "we will go and catch her there."
Hortense did not return; nor did she return next day. "Not a word to any one," said Renine to the maid. "Say that your mistress is in the country and that you are going to join her." For his own part, he had not a doubt: Hortense's disappearance was explained by the very fact of the date, the 18th of October. She was the seventh victim of the lady with the hatchet.
When the waiter had left him alone with Hortense and Dutreuil, he took down the receiver with a resolute air: "Hullo!... Prefecture of police, please.... Hullo! Hullo!... Is that the Prefecture of police? Please put me on to the criminal investigation department. I have a very important communication to make. You can say it's Prince Renine."
Renine beckoned to his chauffeur, who was waiting at some little distance, and pushed Gaston Dutreuil into the car, asking: "What address? Where does Madame Aubrieux live?" "23 bis, Avenue du Roule." After helping Hortense in, Renine repeated the address to the chauffeur and, as soon as they drove off, tried to question Gaston Dutreuil: "I know very little of the case," he said.
Besides, he had warned her, in his smiling, masterful way, that he would expect her. She was weeping with rage and humiliation. At that moment, had she found herself face to face with Prince Renine, she could have struck him with her riding-whip.
He stopped his ears with his fingers and writhed as he sat at table like a man who has lost all patience and has need to restrain himself lest he should fall upon his enemy. Renine whispered: "Now's the time to go in." "In among all those infuriated people?" protested Hortense. "Exactly. We shall see them better with their masks off."
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