The Club Dumas

For a moment he wondered what Nikon would think of him now, and his groin tingled and his mouth was dry, as he sat at the narrow table in the bar, watching the street and unable to leave because here, in the warmth and light, surrounded by cigarette smoke and the murmur of conversation, he felt tem­porarily safe from the dark premonition, from the danger with­out name or shape that he sensed approaching him through the deadening thickness of the gin in his blood, through the sinister low mist rising from the river. As on that English moor, in black and white. Nikon would have understood. Basil Rath-bone, alert, listening to the hound of the Baskervilles howling in the distance.

at LAST HE MADE up his mind. He finished his gin and left some coins on the table. Then he put the canvas bag over his shoulder and went out into the street, turning up his coat collar. As he crossed, he looked in both directions and, when he reached the stone bench where the girl had been reading, he turned and walked along the parapet on the left bank. The yellow lights of a barge on the river lit him from below as he passed a bridge, surrounding him with a halo of dirty mist.

The street and the riverside seemed deserted, with few cars passing. By the narrow passageway of the Rue Mazarin he hailed a taxi, but it didn’t stop. He walked on to the Rue Guenegaud, intending to cross the Pont Neuf to the Louvre. The mist and dark buildings gave the scene a somber, timeless appearance. Sniffing the air like a wolf sensing danger, Corso felt unusually anxious. He moved the bag to his other shoulder to free his right hand and stopped to look around, perplexed. In that precise spot—chapter 11: the plot thickens, d’Artagnan saw Constance Bonacieux emerge from the Rue Dauphine, also on her way toward the Louvre and the same bridge. She was accompanied by a gentleman who turned out to be the Duke of Buckingham, whose nocturnal adventure almost earned him a thrust of d’Artagnan’s sword through his body: / loved her, Milord, and I was jealous....

Maybe the feeling of danger was false, the perverse effect of the strange atmosphere and reading too many novels. But the girl’s telephone call and the gray BMW at the door hadn’t been figments of his imagination. A clock struck the hour in the distance and Corso breathed out. This was all absurd.

Then Rochefort jumped him. He seemed to emerge from the river, materializing from the shadows. In fact he had fol­lowed Corso along the riverside below the parapet, and then climbed a flight of stone steps to reach him. Corso found out - about the steps when he found himself rolling down them. He’d never fallen down steps before, and he thought it would go on for longer, one step at a time or something, as in films. But it was over very quickly. A very professional first punch behind the ear, and the night became a blur. The outside world seemed distant, as if he’d drunk a whole bottle of gin. Thanks to this, he didn’t feel much pain as he rolled down the steps, hitting the stone edges. He reached the bottom bruised but conscious. Possibly a little surprised not to hear the splash—a Conradian onomatopoeia, he thought incongruously—of his body hitting the water. From the ground, his head on damp paving stones and his legs on the bottom steps, he looked up, confused, and saw Rochefort’s black outline descend the steps three at a time and jump on top of him.

You’re buggered, Corso. This was all he had time to think. Then he did two things. First he tried to kick as Rochefort jumped over him. But his weak attempt hit only air. So all he had left was the old, familiar reflex of forming a ball and letting the gunfire fade into the dusk. With the damp from the river and his own private darkness—he’d lost his glasses in the scuffle—he winced. The guardsman dies but falls down the stairs too. So he formed a ball, curled up to protect the bag, which was still hanging from, or rather was tangled around, his shoulder. Maybe great-great-grandfather Corso from the other shore of Lethe would have appreciated his move. It was difficult to tell what Rochefort thought of it. Like Wellington, he rose to the occasion with traditional British efficiency: Corso heard a distant cry of pain, which he suspected came from his own mouth, as Rochefort dealt him a clean, precise kick in the back.