"Copy of a letter brought by Maître Gérin to the Public Prosecutor, a letter addressed to Maître Gérin by the Baroness de Vibray."
"Copy of a letter brought by Maître Gérin to the Public Prosecutor, a letter addressed to Maître Gérin by the Baroness de Vibray."
"Oh, it's a plant!" cried Fandor.
"Go on reading, you will see...."
Fandor continued:
"My dear Maître,—You will forgive me, I am certain of that, for all the inconvenience I am going to cause you; I turn to you because you are the only friend in whom I have confidence.I have just received a letter from my bankers, Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil, of whom I have often spoken to you, who you know manage all my money affairs for me.This letter informs me that I am ruined. You quite understand—absolutely, completely ruined.The house I am living in, my carriage, the luxurious surroundings so necessary to me, I shall have to give it all up, so they tell me.These people have dealt me a terrible blow, struck me brutally....My dear maître, I learned this only two hours ago, and I am still stunned by it. I do not wish to wait for the inevitable moment when I shall begin to console myself, because I shall begin to hope that the disaster is exaggerated. I have no family, I am already old; apart from the satisfaction it gives me to use my influence on behalf of youthful talent, and to help forward its development, my life has no sense in it, it is without aim or object. My dear maître, there are not two ways of announcing to one's friends resolutions analogous to that I now take: when you receive this letter I shall be dead.I have in front of me, on my writing-table, a tiny phial of poison which I am going to drink to the last drop, without any weakening of will, almost without fear, as soon as I have posted this letter to you myself.I must confess that I have an instinctive horror of being dragged to the Morgue, as happens whenever there is some doubt about a suicide. It is on account of this I now write to you, so that, thanks to your intervention, all the mistakes justice is liable to make may be avoided.I kill myself, I only; that is certain.No one must be incriminated in connection with my death, if it be not Fatality, which has caused my ruin. I once more apologise, my dear maître, for all the measures you will be forced to take owing to my death, and I beg you to believe that my friendship for you was very sincere:Signed:Baroness de Vibray."
"My dear Maître,—
You will forgive me, I am certain of that, for all the inconvenience I am going to cause you; I turn to you because you are the only friend in whom I have confidence.
I have just received a letter from my bankers, Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil, of whom I have often spoken to you, who you know manage all my money affairs for me.
This letter informs me that I am ruined. You quite understand—absolutely, completely ruined.
The house I am living in, my carriage, the luxurious surroundings so necessary to me, I shall have to give it all up, so they tell me.
These people have dealt me a terrible blow, struck me brutally....
My dear maître, I learned this only two hours ago, and I am still stunned by it. I do not wish to wait for the inevitable moment when I shall begin to console myself, because I shall begin to hope that the disaster is exaggerated. I have no family, I am already old; apart from the satisfaction it gives me to use my influence on behalf of youthful talent, and to help forward its development, my life has no sense in it, it is without aim or object. My dear maître, there are not two ways of announcing to one's friends resolutions analogous to that I now take: when you receive this letter I shall be dead.
I have in front of me, on my writing-table, a tiny phial of poison which I am going to drink to the last drop, without any weakening of will, almost without fear, as soon as I have posted this letter to you myself.
I must confess that I have an instinctive horror of being dragged to the Morgue, as happens whenever there is some doubt about a suicide. It is on account of this I now write to you, so that, thanks to your intervention, all the mistakes justice is liable to make may be avoided.
I kill myself, I only; that is certain.
No one must be incriminated in connection with my death, if it be not Fatality, which has caused my ruin. I once more apologise, my dear maître, for all the measures you will be forced to take owing to my death, and I beg you to believe that my friendship for you was very sincere:
Signed:
Baroness de Vibray."
"Good for you!" cried Fandor. "Here's a go! What a pretty petard in prospect!... Jacques Dollon was innocent; you arrest him; he is so terrified that he hangs himself! Well, old boy, I must say you make some fine blunders on Clock Quay!"
"It is nobody's fault!" protested the young barrister.
"That is to say," retorted Fandor, "it is everybody's fault! By Jove! If you let innocent prisoners hang themselves in their cells, I am no longer surprised that you leave the guilty at liberty to walk the streets at their sweet will!"
"Don't make a joke of it, old boy!... You understand, of course, that so far no one in the Palais has seen the letter! It has just been brought to the Public Prosecutor's office by Madame de Vibray's solicitor, Maître Gérin. You came on the scene only a few minutes after I had sent up the original to the examining magistrate. The case is in Fuselier's hands."
"Is he in his office?"
"Certainly! He should proceed with the examination relative to poor Dollon this morning."
"Very well then, I will go up. I shall jolly soon get out of this booby of a Fuselier the information I need to make one of the best reports I have ever written. And you know, I am ever so obliged to you for the matter you've given me! But, mind you, I am going to put together a bit of copy that will not deal tenderly with our gentlemen of the robe—the lot of you! No, it is a bad, unlucky business enough, but it is even more funny—it is tragi-comedy!"
"For my part ..." began Fandor's barrister friend.
"Yes, yes! Good day, Pontius Pilate!" cried Fandor. "I am going up to Fuselier.... We must meet to-morrow!"
Hastening along the corridors, Fandor gained the office of the examining magistrate.
Fandor had known the magistrate a long while. Was not Fuselier the justice who, with Detective Juve, had had everything to do with the strangely mysterious cases associated with the name of Fantômas? In the course of his various judicial examinations he had often been able to give Fandor information and help. At first hostile to the constant preoccupation of Juve and Fandor—for long the arrest of Fantômas was their one aim—the young magistrate had gradually come to believe in what had seemed to him nothing but the detective's hypothesis. Open-minded, gifted with an alert intelligence, Fuselier had carefully followed the investigations of Juve and Fandor. He knew every detail, every vicissitude connected with the tracking of this elusive bandit. Since then the magistrate had taken the deepest interest in the pursuit of the criminal. Thanks to his support, Juve had been enabled to take various measures, otherwise almost impossible, avoid the many obstacles offered by legal procedure, risk the striking of many a blow he could not otherwise have ventured on.
Fuselier had a high opinion of Juve, and his attitude to Fandor was sympathetic.
Our journalist was going over the past as he hastened along:
Ah, if only Juve were here! If only this loyal servant of Justice, this sincerest of friends, this bravest of the brave, had not been struck down, Fandor would have been full of enthusiasm for the Dollon affair; for its interest was increasing, its mystery deepening! But Fandor was single-handed now! He had had a miraculous escape from the bomb which had blown up Lady Beltham's house on that tragic day when Juve had all but laid hands on Fantômas!
But Fandor would not allow himself to become disheartened—never that! In the school of his vanished friend he had learned to give himself up with single-minded devotion to any task he took up; his sole satisfaction being duty well fulfilled.... Well, the Dollon case should be cleared up!... To do so was to render a service to humanity! Having come to this conclusion he hastened to interview Monsieur Fuselier.
"Monsieur Fuselier," cried Fandor as he shook hands with the magistrate, "you must know quite well why I have come to see you!"
"About the rue Norvins affair?"
"Say rather about the Dépôt affair! It is there the affair became tragic."
Monsieur Fuselier smiled:
"You know then?"
"That Jacques Dollon has hanged himself? Yes. That he was innocent? Again, yes!" confessed Fandor, smiling in his turn: "You know that atLa Capitalewe get all the information going, and are the first to get it!"
"Evidently," conceded the magistrate. "But if you know all about it, why put my professional discretion to the torture by asking absurd questions?"
"Now, what the deuce are they about on Clock Quay? Don't they supervise the accused in their cells?"
"Certainly they do! When this Dollon arrived at the Dépôt he was immediately conducted to Monsieur Bertillon: there he was measured and tested, finger marks taken, and so on."
"Just so," said Fandor. "I saw Bertillon before coming on to you. He told me Dollon seemed crushed: he submitted to all the tests without making the slightest objection; but he never spoke of suicide, never said anything which could lead one to imagine such a fatal termination."
"Well, he would not cry it aloud on the housetops!... When he left Monsieur Bertillon, what then?"
"After!... Oh, the police took him to a cell, and left him there. At midnight the chief warder made his rounds and saw nothing abnormal. It was in the morning they found this unfortunate Dollon had hanged himself."
"What did he hang himself with?"
"With strips of his shirt twisted into a rope.... Oh, my dear fellow, I see what you are thinking! You fancy that there has been a want of common prudence—that the warders were lax—that they had let him retain his braces, his cravat or his shoe laces!... Well, it was not so—precautions were taken."
"And this suicide remains incomprehensible!"
"Well!... This wretched youth must have been ferociously energetic, because he had fastened these shirt ropes of his to the iron bars of his bed, and strangled himself by lying on his back. Death must have been long in coming to release him from his agony."
"Can I not see him?" asked Fandor.
"Why not photograph him?" asked the magistrate in a bantering tone.
"Oh, if it were possible!..." Fandor stopped short. A youth knocked and entered:
"A lady, who wishes to see you, monsieur."
"Tell her I am too busy."
"She asked me to say that it is urgent."
"Ask her name."
"Here is her card, monsieur."
Monsieur Fuselier looked at the card: he started!
"Elizabeth Dollon!... Ah ... Good Heavens, what am I to say to this poor girl? How am I to tell her?"
Just then the door was pushed violently open, and a girl, in tears, rushed towards him:
"Monsieur, where is my brother?"
"But, mademoiselle!..."
Whilst the magistrate mechanically asked his distracted visitor to sit down, Jérôme Fandor discreetly withdrew to the further side of the room; he was anxious that the magistrate should forget his presence, so that he might be a witness of what promised to be a most exciting interview.
"Pray control yourself, mademoiselle," begged the magistrate. "Your brother has perhaps been arrested through a mistake...."
"Oh, monsieur, I am sure of it, but it is frightful!"
"Mademoiselle, the dreadful thing would be that he was guilty."
"But they have not set him at liberty yet? He has not been able to clear himself?"
"Yes, yes, mademoiselle, he has vindicated himself, I even ..." Monsieur Fuselier stopped short, intensely pained, not knowing how to tell Elizabeth Dollon the terrible news.
At once she cried: "Ah, monsieur, you hesitate! You have learned something fresh? You are on the track of the assassins?"
"It is certain ... your brother is not guilty!"
The poor girl's countenance suddenly brightened. She had passed a horrible night after her return to Paris, and the receipt of the wire from Police Headquarters.
"What a nightmare!" she cried. "But the telegram said he was injured—nothing serious, is it?... Where is he now? Can I see him?"
"Mademoiselle," said the magistrate, "your brother has had a terrible shock!... It would be better!... I fear that!..."
Suddenly Elizabeth Dollon cried:
"Oh, monsieur, how you said that! How can seeing me do him harm?"
As Monsieur Fuselier did not reply, she burst into tears:
"You are hiding something from me! The papers said this morning that he also was a victim! Swear to me that he is not?"
"But ..."
"Youarehiding something from me!" The poor girl was frantic with terror: she wrung her hands in a state of despair: "Where is he? I must see him! Oh, take pity on me!"
As she watched the magistrate's downcast look, his air of discomfiture, the horrid truth flashed on Elizabeth Dollon:
"Dead!" she cried. She was shaken with sobs.
"Mademoiselle!... Oh, mademoiselle!" implored the magistrate, filled with pity. He tried to find some words of consolation, and this confirmed her worst fears:
"I swear to you!... It is certain your brother was not guilty!"
The distracted girl was beyond listening to the magistrate's words! Huddled up in an arm-chair, she lay inert, collapsed. Presently she rose like a person moving in some mad dream, her eyes wild:
"Take me to him!... I want to see him! They have killed him for me!... I must see him!"
Such was her insistence, the violence with which she claimed the right to go to her brother, to kneel beside him, that Monsieur Fuselier dared not refuse her this consolation.
"Control yourself, I beg of you! I am going to take you to him; but, for Heaven's sake, be reasonable! Control yourself!"
With his eyes he sought for the moral support of Fandor, whose presence he suddenly remembered. But our journalist, taking advantage of the momentary confusion, had quietly slipped from the room.
Evidently some unpleasant occurrence had upset the routine existence of the functionaries at the Dépôt. The warders were coming and going, talking among themselves, leaning against the doors of the numerous cells. The chief warder called one of his men:
"There must be no more of this disorder, Nibet!"
The chief warder was furious: he was about to hold forth to his subordinate, when an inspector approached.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Sergeant, it is Monsieur Jouet. He has a gentleman with him. He has a permit. Should I allow him to enter?"
"Who? Monsieur Jouet?"
"No, the gentleman accompanying him!"
"Hang it all! Why, yes—if he has a permit!"
The sergeant moved away shrugging his shoulders disgustedly.
"Not pleased with things this morning, the chief isn't," one of the warders remarked.
"Not likely, after last night's performance!"
"It's he who will catch it hot over this business!" The warder rubbed his hands, laughing.
Meanwhile, Fandor had appeared at the entrance of the corridor, under the guidance of a warder. He was thinking of the splendid copy he had secured: he was hoping that when Fuselier learned that a journalist had obtained admittance to the Dépôt, and had seen the corpse of Jacques Dollon in his cell, that he would not turn vicious: "But after all," said he to himself, "Fuselier is not the man to give me the go-by out of spite."
Fandor walked up and down the hall of the prison. He had informed the warders that he was waiting for the magistrate. "How strange life is!" thought he. "To think that once again I should be brought into close contact with Elizabeth Dollon, and that there is no likelihood of her recognising me—we were such children when we parted—she especially! Had she any recollection of the little rascal I was at the time of poor Madame de Langrune's assassination?" And, closing his eyes, Fandor tried to call to mind the features of the Jacques Dollon he used to know: it was useless! The body of Jacques Dollon he would be gazing at in a few minutes would be that of an unknown person, whose name alone awakened memories of bygone days....
So to pass the time Fandor continued his marching up and down.
Monsieur Fuselier appeared at the entrance to the Dépôt, supporting the unsteady steps of poor Elizabeth Dollon. Fandor quickly drew back into an obscure corner:
"Better not attract attention to myself just at present," thought Fandor; "I will wait until the cell door is opened. If Fuselier does not wish to give me permission to remain, I can at any rate cast a rapid glance round that ill-omened little cell!"
Fandor followed, at a distance, the wavering steps of the poor girl whom Monsieur Fuselier was supporting with fatherly care.
When they paused before one of the cells pointed out by the head warder, Monsieur Fuselier turned to Elizabeth Dollon:
"Do you think you are strong enough to bear this trial, mademoiselle?... You are determined to see your brother?"
Elizabeth bent her head; the magistrate turned towards the warder:
"Open," said he. As the key was turned in the lock he said: "According to instructions from the Head, we have placed him on his bed again.... There is nothing to frighten you ... he seems to be asleep.... Now then!"
But as he opened the door, stretching his arm in the direction of the bed where the body of Jacques Dollon should be, an oath escaped him:
"Great Heavens! The dead man is gone!"
In this cell with its bare walls, its sole furniture an iron bedstead and a stool riveted to the floor, in this little cell which the eye could glance round in a second, there was no vestige of a corpse: Jacques Dollon's body was not there!
"You have mistaken the cell," said the magistrate sharply.
"No, no!" cried the astounded warder.
"You can see, can't you, that Jacques Dollon is not there?"
"He was there a few minutes ago!"
"Then they must have taken him somewhere else!"
"The keys have never left me!"
"Oh, come now!"
"No, sir. He was there ... now he isn't there! That's all I know!... Hey! You down there!" yelled the warder: "Who knows what has become of the corpse of cell 12?... The corpse we laid out just now?"
One after the other the warders came running. All confirmed what their chief had said: the dead body of Jacques Dollon had been left there, lying on the bed: not a soul had entered the cell: not a soul had touched the corpse!... Yet it was no longer there! Jérôme Fandor, well in the background, followed the scene with an ironical smile. The frantic warders, the growing stupefaction of Monsieur Fuselier, amused him prodigiously. The magistrate was trying to understand the how, why, and wherefore of this incredible disappearance:
"As this man is not here, he cannot have been dead ... he has escaped ... but if he wanted to escape he must have been guilty!... Oh, I cannot make head or tail of it!"
Seizing the head warder by the shoulders, almost roughly, Monsieur Fuselier asked:
"Look here, chief, was this man dead, or was he not?"
Elizabeth Dollon was repeating:
"He lives! He lives!" and laughing wildly.
The warder raised his hand as though taking a solemn oath:
"As to being dead, he was dead right enough!... The doctor will tell you so, too: also my colleague, Favril, who helped me to lay out the body on the bed."
"But how can a dead body get away from here? If hewasdead, he could not have escaped!" said the magistrate.
"It is witchcraft!" declared the warder, with a shrug.
Fuselier flew into a rage:
"Had you not better confess that you and your colleagues did not keep proper watch and ward!... The investigation will show on whose shoulders the responsibility rests."
"But, sakes alive, monsieur!" expostulated the warder: "There aren't only two of us who have seen him dead!... There are all the hospital attendants of the Dépôt as well!... There is the doctor, and there are my colleagues to be counted in: the truth is, monsieur, some fifty persons have seen him dead!"
"So you say!" cried the impatient magistrate: "I am going to inform the Public Prosecutor of what has happened, and at once!"
As he was hurrying away, he spied Jérôme Fandor, who had not missed a single detail of the scene.
"You again!" exclaimed the irate magistrate: "How did you get in here?"
"By permit," replied our journalist.
"Well, you have learned what there is to know, haven't you? Be off, then! You are one too many here!... Frankly, there is no need for you to augment the scandal!... Will you, therefore, be kind enough to take yourself off?" And Fuselier, almost beside himself with rage, raced off to the Public Prosecutor's office.
After the magistrate's furious attack, Fandor could not possibly linger in the corridors of the Dépôt. The warders, too, were pressing their attentions on him and on Elizabeth Dollon:
"This way, monsieur!... Madame, this way!... Ah, it's a wretched business!... Here, this way! This way!... Be off, as fast as you can!"
Presently Fandor was descending the grand staircase of the Palais, steadying the uncertain steps of poor Elizabeth Dollon.
"I implore you to help me!" she cried: "Help me: help us! My brother is guiltless—I could swear to that!... He must—must be found!... This hideous nightmare must end!"
"Mademoiselle, I ask nothing better, only ... where to find him?"
"Ah, I have no idea, none!... I implore you, you who must know influential people in high places, do not leave any stone unturned, do all that is humanly possible to save him—to save us!"
Intensely moved by the poor girl's anguish of mind, Fandor could not trust himself to speak. He bent his head in the affirmative merely. Hailing a cab, he put her into it, gave the address to the driver, and as he was closing the door Elizabeth cried:
"Do all that is humanly possible—do everything in the world!"
"I swear to you I will get at the truth," was Fandor's parting promise. The cab had disappeared, but our journalist stood motionless, absorbed in his reflections. At last, uttering his thoughts aloud, he said:
"If the Baroness de Vibray has written that she has killed herself, then she has killed herself, and Dollon is innocent. It's true the letter may be fictitious ... therefore we must put it aside—we have no guarantee as to its genuineness.... Here is the problem: Jacques Dollon is dead, and yet has left the Dépôt! Yes, but how?"
Jérôme Fandor went off in the direction of the offices ofLa Capitaleso absorbed in thought that he jostled the passers-by, without noticing the angry glances bestowed on him:
"Jacques Dollon, dead, has left the Dépôt!" He repeated this improbable statement, so absurd, of necessity incorrect; repeated it to the point of satiety:
"Jacques Dollon is dead, and he has got away from the Dépôt!"
Then, in an illuminating flash, he perceived the solution of this apparently insoluble problem:
"A mystery such as this is incomprehensible, inexplicable, impossible, except in connection with one man! There is only one individual in the world capable of making a dead man seem to be alive after his death—and this individual is—Fantômas!"
To formulate this conclusion was to give himself a thrilling shock.... Since the disappearance of Juve, he had never had occasion to suspect the presence, the intervention of Fantômas in connection with any of the crimes he had investigated as reporter and student of human nature.
Fantômas! The sound of that name evoked the worst horrors! Fantômas! This bandit, this criminal who has not shrunk from any cruelty, any horror—Fantômas is crime personified!
Fantômas! He sticks at nothing!
Pronouncing these syllables of evil omen, Fandor lived over again all the extraordinary, improbable, impossible things that had really happened, and had put him on the watch for this terrifying assassin.
Fantômas!
It was certain that to whatever degree he had participated in the assassination of the Baroness de Vibray, one must not be astonished at anything; neither at anything inconceivable, nor at any mysterious details connected with the murder.
Fantômas!
He was the daring criminal—daring beyond all bounds of credibility. And whatever might be the dexterity, the ingenuity, the ability, the devotion of those who were pursuing him, such were his tricks, such his craft and cunning, such the fertility of his invention, so well conceived his devices, so great his audacity, that there were grounds for fearing he would never be brought to justice, and punished for his abominable crimes!
Fantômas!
Ah, if life ever brought Jérôme Fandor and this bandit face to face, there would ensue a struggle of every hour, day, and moment—a struggle of the most terrible nature, a struggle in which man was pitted against man, a struggle without pity, without mercy—a fight to the death! Fantômas would assuredly defend himself with all the immense elusive powers at his command: Jérôme Fandor would pursue him with heart and soul, with his very life itself! It was not only to satisfy his sense of duty at the promptings of honour that the journalist would take action: he would have as guide for his acts, and to animate his will, the passion of hate, and the hope of avenging his friend Juve, fallen a victim to the mysterious blows of Fantômas.
In his article forLa CapitaleFandor did not directly mention the possible participation of Fantômas in the crime of the rue Norvins. When it was finished he returned to his modest little flat on the fifth floor in the rue Bergere. He was about to enter the vestibule, when he noticed a piece of paper, which must have been slipped under his door. He stooped and picked up an envelope:
"Why, it is a letter—and there is no name and no stamp on it!"
Entering his study, he seated himself at his table and prepared to begin work. Then he bethought him of the letter, which he had carelessly thrown on the mantelpiece. He tore it open, and drew out a sheet of letter paper.
"Whatever is this?" he cried. His astonishment was natural enough, for the message was oddly put together. To prevent his handwriting being recognised, Fandor's correspondent had cut letters out of a newspaper, and had stuck them together in the desired order. The two or three lines of printed matter were as follows:
"Jérôme Fandor, pay attention, great attention! The affair on which you are concentrating all your powers is worthy of all possible interest, but may have terribly dangerous consequences."
"Jérôme Fandor, pay attention, great attention! The affair on which you are concentrating all your powers is worthy of all possible interest, but may have terribly dangerous consequences."
Of course there was no signature.
Evidently the warning referred to the Dollon case.
"Why," exclaimed Fandor, "this is simply an invitation not to busy myself hunting for the guilty persons!... Who has sent this invitation and warning? Surely the sender is the assassin, to whose interest it is that the inquiry into the rue Norvins murder should be dropped!... It must be Jacques Dollon!... But how could Dollon know my address? How could he have found time between his flight from the Dépôt and the present minute, to put this message of printed letters together, and take it to the rue Bergere?... And that at the risk of encountering someone who could recognise him, and might have him arrested afresh? Had he accomplices?"
Fandor was puzzled, agitated:
"But I am mad!... mad! It cannot be Dollon!... Dollon is dead—dead as a door nail—dead beyond dispute, because fifty men have seen him dead; dead, because the Dépôt doctors have certified his death!"
Daylight was fading; evening was coming on; Fandor was still turning the whole affair over in his mind. Every now and again he murmured:
"Fantômas! Fantômas has to do with this extraordinary, this mysterious affair! Fantômas is in it!... Fantômas!"
Jérôme Fandor had passed a bad night!
Visions of horror had continually arisen in his troubled mind. Between nightmare after nightmare he had heard all the horrors of the night sound out in the darkness and the glimmering dawn. Then he had fallen into a heavy sleep, which had left him on awaking broken with fatigue. He had given himself a cold douche, and this had calmed his nerves; then he had dressed quickly. When eight o'clock struck he was at his writing-table, thinking things over:
"It's no laughing matter. I thought at first that the Dollon affair was quite ordinary; but I am mistaken. The warning I received last night leaves me no doubts on that head. Since the guilty person thinks it necessary to ask me to keep quiet, it is evident he fears my intervention; if he is afraid of that it is because it must be hurtful to him; if disastrous to him, a criminal, it is evident that it must be useful to honest folk. My duty, then, is to go straight ahead at all costs...."
There was another motive besides this of duty which incited him to follow more closely the vicissitudes of the rue Norvins drama, a motive still indefinite, vague, but nevertheless terribly strong....
Jérôme Fandor had sworn to Elizabeth Dollon that he would get at the truth.
He recalled the girl's entreaty, her emotion; and when he closed his eyes, now and again, he seemed to see before him the tall, graceful, fair and fascinating sister of the vanished artist.... All Fandor would admit to himself was a chivalrous feeling towards her—Elizabeth Dollon was worth putting himself out for—that was all!
Our journalist spent the entire morning seated at his writing-table, his head between his hands, smoking cigarette after cigarette, arranging his plans for investigating the Dollon case:
"What I have to find out is how the dead man left the Dépôt. It is the first discovery to be made, the first impossibility to be explained—yes, and how am I to set about it?"
Suddenly Fandor jumped up, marched rapidly up and down his room, whistled a few bars of a popular melody, and in his exuberant gaiety attempted an operatic air in a voice deplorably out of tune.
"There are eighty chances out of a hundred that I shall not succeed," cried he; "but that still leaves me twenty chances of arriving at a satisfactory result—let us make the attempt!"
As Fandor was hurrying off, he called to the portress in passing:
"Madame Oudry, I don't know whether I shall be back this evening or no. Perhaps I may have to leave Paris for awhile, so would you be kind enough to pay particular attention to any letters that may come for me—be very particular about them, please!"
Fandor went off. A thought struck him. He turned back. He had something more to say to the good woman:
"I forgot to ask you whether anyone called to see me yesterday afternoon!"
"No, Monsieur Fandor, no one!"
"Good! If by any chance a messenger should bring a letter for me, look very carefully at him, Madame Oudry. I have a colleague or two who are playing a joke on me, and I should not be sorry to get even with them!"
This time Fandor really went off, having set his portress on the alert. In the rue Montmartre he hailed a cab:
"To the National Library! And as quick as you can!"
"By Jove! It's three o'clock! I've not a minute to lose!" cried Fandor as he got back his stick from the cloak-room of the National Library: he had handed it in there some hours ago. He entered the rue Richelieu. Now for an ironmonger's shop! He caught sight of one and went in:
"I should like fifty yards of fine cord, please; very strong and very pliable," said Fandor.
The shopkeeper stared at the smart young man:
"What do you want it for, sir?... I have various qualities."
Without the trace of a smile, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he replied:
"It is for one of my friends: he wants to hang himself!"
A shout of laughter was the response to this witticism, and the amused shopkeeper forthwith displayed various samples of cords. Fandor promptly made his choice and left the shop.
"Now for a watchmaker's!" said our journalist. He entered a jeweller's close by:
"I want an alarum clock—a small one—the cheapest you have!"
Provided with his alarum, Fandor looked at his watch again:
"Confound it all! It's half-past three!" he cried. He signalled to a closed cab:
"To the Palais de Justice! As hard as you can lick!"
Directly Fandor was well inside the vehicle, he drew down the blinds; took off his coat; unbuttoned his waistcoat!...
The great clock of the Palais de Justice had just struck four, and its silvery tones were echoing harmoniously along the corridors when Jérôme Fandor entered the tradesman's gallery. He turned to the right, and gained the little lobby in which the cloak-room is. He quietly entered it. Barristers were coming and going, full of business, throwing off their gowns, inspecting the letters put aside during the sittings of the Courts. Fandor made his way among the groups with the ease of custom. He seemed to be looking for someone, and finished by questioning one of the women employed in the cloak-room:
"Is Madame Marguerite not here?"
"Oh, yes, monsieur, she is down below."
Madame Marguerite was an old friend of Fandor's. She was head of the cloak-room staff, and by her kind offices she had often obtained an interview for our journalist with one or other of the big-wigs of the bar, who generally object strongly to being questioned by journalists. When she appeared, Fandor told her he only wanted a little bit of information from her.
"Oh, yes, I know all about that! There is someone you wish to see, and you want me to manage it for you!"
"No! Not a bit of it! What I want to know is, where these gentlemen of the Court of Justice robe and unrobe? I mean the Justices of the Assize Courts!"
This seemed to astonish Madame Marguerite considerably:
"But, Monsieur Fandor, if you wish to interview one of the puisne judges, it would be ten times quicker for you to go and see him at his own home: here, at the Palais, it's almost certain he will refuse to answer you...."
"Don't bother about that, Madame Marguerite! Just tell me where these worthy guardians of order, defenders of right and justice, divest themselves of their red robes?"
Madame Marguerite was too much accustomed to our young journalist's ridiculous questions and absurd requests and remarks to argue with him any longer.
"The robing-room of these gentlemen," said she, "is in one of the outer offices of the court, near the Council Chamber."
"There is an assistant in that room, isn't there?"
"Yes, Monsieur Fandor."
"Ah! That is just what I wanted to know! Many thanks, madame," and Fandor, grinning with satisfaction, made off in the direction of the Court of Assizes. He ran up the steps leading to the Council Chamber, and spying the messenger asked:
"Can President Guéchand see me, do you think?"
"Monsieur le President has gone."
Fandor seemed to be reflecting. He gazed searchingly round the room. As a matter of fact, he was verifying the correctness of Madame Marguerite's information. All round the room Fandor saw the little presses where the men of law kept their red robes. Yes, it was the robing and unrobing room of the puisne judges, the magistrates, right enough!
"So the President has gone? Ah, well ..." Fandor hesitated: he must think of some other name. He noticed the visiting cards nailed to each press, indicating the owner. He read one of the names and repeated it:
"Well, then, could Justice Hubert see me—could he possibly? Will you ask him to let me see him for five minutes?"
"What name shall I say?"
"My name will not tell him anything. Please say it is with reference to the—er—Peyru case—and I come from Maître Tissot."
"I will go and see," said the messenger, moving off.
Whilst he was in sight Fandor walked up and down in the regulation way, murmuring:
"Maître Tissot!... The Peyru case!... Go ahead, my good fellow! You will have a nice kind of reception down below there—with those made-up names."
Some minutes later, the messenger returned to his post, prepared to inform the importunate young man that he could not possibly be received by Justice Hubert. He stopped short on the threshold: not a soul was to be seen!
"Wherever has that young man got to? Taken himself off, most likely!... I expect he was one of those lawyer's clerks—confound them! A nice fool I should have looked if his Honour, Justice Hubert, had said he would receive him!"
With this reflection the messenger went back to his newspaper, not without having ascertained that it was four o'clock, and therefore he had still an hour to wait before he could have his coffee and cigar at the "Men of the Robe."
Through the great windows of the Court of Assizes, carefully closed as they were, not a ray of moonlight filtered into the court room. And this obscurity lent an added terror to a silence as profound as the grave, a silence which, with the falling shades of night, assumed possession of the vast hall, where so many criminals had listened to the fatal sentence—the sentence of death.
When the Court had risen, the assistants had, as usual, proceeded to put the place in order; then the police sergeant had made his rounds, and had gone away, double locking the doors behind him. After this the chamber had gradually sunk into complete repose: a repose which would be broken the following morning when the bustling routine of the legal day commenced once more.
Little by little, too, the many and varied noises, which had echoed and re-echoed the whole day through in the galleries of the Palais de Justice, had died down, and sunk into silence.
The custodians had made their last round; the barristers had quitted the robing-room; the poor wretches who had slunk in to warm themselves at the heating apparatus in the halls had shuffled back to the cold street, and the whistling blasts of the north wind. The immense pile was entirely deserted.
A clock began to strike.
Then, hardly had the last stroke of eleven sounded, awakening the echoes of the empty galleries, than in the Court of Assizes itself, under the monumental desk, before which the justices sat in state by day, a noise made itself heard, long, strident, nerve-racking—the noise of an alarum clock!
Just as the alarum ceased its raucous call, a loud yawn resounded through the empty spaces of the chamber. The sleeper, who had selected this spot that he might indulge, all undisturbed, in a revivifying sleep, evidently took no pains to smother the sound of his voice, for, after yawning enough to dislocate his jaws, he uttered a loud: "Ah!" He accompanied his yawns with exclamations:
"It's a fact, the Republic doesn't do things up to the scratch! The rugs here are of poor quality!... I'm aching all over!... The floor is strewn with peach kernels—surely?... At any rate, it's a quiet hotel, and one is not disturbed—a truly delectable refuge to have a jolly good snore in!"
The sleeper sat up:
"What's the time exactly? Let us have a light on it!" A match was struck, and a tiny flare of light shone from under the desk of the presiding judge:
"Ten past eleven! I've still five minutes to be lazy in—and I shall need all of it, for I've a rough night before me! I can rest awhile, and think things over!"
The speaker calmly lay down again, trying to find a comfortable position on what he christened mentally: "The administrative peach kernels":
"Let me see, now!" he went on aloud. "At five in the afternoon it was known that Jacques Dollon had committed suicide; was probably innocent, and that his corpse had disappeared. Yesterday, at half-past five,La Capitaleannounced that he had a very pretty sister.... To-night at ten past eleven behold me, shut up quite alone in the Palais de Justice, free to proceed to the little investigation I think of making.... Jérôme Fandor, my dear friend, I congratulate you! You have not managed badly!...
"Yes," went on our journalist, "what a joke it is! Here have I got myself shut up in the Palais without the slightest difficulty! It is true, that if the assistant had been obliged to open, and verify, the contents of all the robing-rooms of all the judges, he would never have finished. As for me, in my cupboard, I followed all the good fellow's movements, and he never suspected my presence. If I am to be congratulated, he cannot be blamed for it! There I was, there I remained, and now I must be off!"
Fandor drew a small wax taper from his pocket and lighted it with a match.
"What's to be done with the alarum?" he went on. "To leave it will be to betray my having passed this way—what of it?... In any case, even if this reporting job fails, I shall make a story out of it ... and how can they accuse me of stealing if I leave my cloak as a gift for his judgeship!"
Laughing, Fandor piled up the law books lying on the desk, and placed the alarum on the top; that done, he went to the principal entrance, the only one with double doors. He seized the heavy iron bar placed across the door and worked it loose. He drew the two leaves of the door towards him; and, although it had been locked as usual, he effected his escape, after a considerable trial of strength.
Out on the stairs, lighted taper in hand, the laughing Fandor closed the two leaves of the door with the utmost care, and went forward whistling a marching tune. His objective was a certain little staircase leading to the top story of the Palais, and this he mounted with vigorous determination. There was no likelihood of chance encounters, for there was not a soul in the vast building: the police were making their rounds outside it. Our adventurous journalist did not make his way upwards with stealthy tread—there was no need for that. Having gained the top floor, he went straight to a corner where an ebony ladder was ensconced, a ladder which had long been the joy and pride of the grand master of this part of the Palais, the amiable Monsieur Peter.
"Pretty heavy!" grumbled Fandor, as he carried it upwards. Under the roof he caught sight of a skylight, rested his ebony ladder against it, and climbed briskly on to the roof.
From thence Fandor had a view that was fairy-like. Spread out in the distance were the sparkling lights of Paris. He was divided from them by the vast mass of roofs about him, by a gulf of empty space, and beyond, by a dark blur—the two arms of the Seine flowing on either side of the Palais de Justice.... The mysterious darkness! The fascination of the sparkling points of light!... Fandor gave himself a mental shake.... This was no moment for dreaming under the stars!
From his pocket he took a tiny, folding dark lantern; from his pocket-book he drew a paper, which he spread out and proceeded to study. As he bent over it, he murmured:
"A bit of good luck that I was able to get hold of a complete and detailed plan of the Palais de Justice! Without it I never could have found my way among these roofs!"
He examined the plan for some minutes; made a note of various landmarks; then refolding it, he gained one of the sloping roofs facing the quay of the Leather Dressers:
"Now," thought Fandor, "I must be just above the Dépôt! And now to find out how Jacques Dollon, dead or living, has got out of the Dépôt! No use thinking of a window, for the cell has not got one! Fuselier has reason on his side when he declares that you do not get out of the cells of the Dépôt, nor out of the Palais!... Well, now—to carry off Dollon, dead or living, by way of the Palais Square, or by the boulevard, is out of the question: there are too many people about!... To carry him off by one of the exits, on to either of the quays, is equally out of the question: there are the sentries, in the first place, and then comes the Seine—then Jacques Dollon has left the Dépôt, or he has not, or, at any rate, he is still somewhere in the Palais—unless ..."
Fandor interrupted his cogitations to light a cigarette: smoking helped him to think things out:
"It is equally certain that if Dollon is still in the Palais, he cannot be in the Dépôt, for the Dépôt has been rigorously searched since his disappearance, and he would most certainly have been found, had he been anywhere about the Dépôt. It is also certain that he is not inside the Palais, because the only means of communication between the Dépôt and the Palais is a single staircase, and it is certain that a corpse could not have been taken that way unperceived.... Then it follows that Jacques Dollon must have got out by the only ways which are in communication with the Dépôt: that is to say, the drains and the chimneys!"
"How could he have got out, or been got out by the drains? As far as I know, there is no system of pipes large enough to allow of the passage of a man through the pipes which join the main sewers; but, as a set-off to that, there is a chimney—the ancient chimney of Marie Antoinette—which communicates with the Dépôt, and the roof I am now on: it must have been by this chimney that the escape was made! Let us see whether this is so or not!"
By the light of his tiny dark lantern Fandor studied afresh the plan of the Palais, and tried to identify the various chimneys about him. He soon picked out the orifice of Marie Antoinette's chimney. After a considering glance at it, he remarked:
"That's odd! Here is the only chimney whose opening is below the ledge of the roofs! It is certain that unless one had been warned, and had examined this roof from some neighbouring building, the orifice of this chimney would not be noticed. If Jacques Dollon passed out by it, no one would notice his exit!"
Our journalist continued his examination, full of excitement. Surely he was on the right track!
"Ah! Ah! Here are stones freshly scraped and scratched!" he cried delightedly. "And this white mark is just the kind of mark which would be made by a cord scraping against the wall! And look what a size this chimney is! It's not only one Jacques Dollon who could pass out by it, but two! But three! A whole army! Ah, ha, I believe I am on the right track! Now for it!"
Fandor bent over and looked down the interior of the chimney; and, at the risk of toppling over, he managed to reach something he saw shining in the darkness of the opening; he drew himself up, radiant:
"By Jove! There are irons fixed in the walls of the chimney to climb up and down by; and, what is more, they bear traces of a recent passage—the rust has been rubbed off here and there!... Yes, it is by this way Dollon has come out!... To whom else could it be an advantage to use this as an exit from the interior of the Palais, on to the roofs?"
Fandor was keen on the scent! Here, indeed, was matter for an article which would bring him into notice—good business for a journalist!
"If Dollon had been alive," reflected Fandor, "it is evident that, once on the roofs, he had a choice of three ways to escape: he could do what I have just done, but the other way about; he could break a skylight, jump into a garret, and lie hidden under the tiles, awaiting the propitious moment when he could gain the corridors below and, mingling with the crowd, slip unobserved into the street; or, he could hide among the roofs, and stay there; or, he could search for an opening—one of those air holes which put the cellars and drains in communication with the exterior.... But I have come to the conclusion that Dollon is dead! Then his corpse could only remain up here; or, it has been put down into some place where nobody goes. The garrets of the Palais are so incessantly visited by the clerks and registrars that no corpse could remain undiscovered in any of them. Therefore, either Jacques Dollon's corpse is somewhere on the roofs of the Palais, or there is some sort of communication between the roofs and the drains—it is obvious!"
Evidently the next step was to search every hole and corner of these same roofs. Armed with revolver and lantern, Fandor started on his tour of investigation; but prudently, for he was now almost certain that there were a number of accomplices involved in this Dollon affair.
To go carefully over the enormous roof of the Palais de Justice was no light task! One has only to consider the immensity of this monumental pile, its complicated architecture, the numberless little courts enclosed within its vast confines, to understand the difficulties with which our intrepid journalist had to contend. But Jérôme Fandor was not the man to be discouraged in the face of difficulties: he was determined to brave them—conquer them! He examined, minutely, the entire roofing of the Palais; he did not leave a corner or a morsel of shadow unexplored; there was not a gutter which he had not searched from end to end. When, after two hours of strenuous exertion, he returned to his starting-point, the chimney of Marie Antoinette, he was fain to confess that if Jacques Dollon had mounted to the roof of the Palais de Justice he certainly had not remained there.
Fandor unfolded his plan once more. It fluttered in the night breeze, as he carefully numbered all the chimneys opening on to this roof; then, one by one, he identified them with the real chimneys before his eyes. He exclaimed joyfully:
"There, now! It's just what I suspected!"
He had discovered there was one chimney not down on the plan: "Whither did it lead?" At all costs he must find out—make sure. He hastened to this extra chimney. Its orifice was large enough to allow of the passage of a man; also, here again, stones had been recently loosened, and a rope had rubbed against them:
"What the deuce is this chimney?" thought Fandor. "Another mystery! This chimney is not a chimney; there is not a trace of soot on it, even old soot!"
After a moment's reflection, he added:
"Can it be for ventilation only? But a ventilation hole could only communicate with one of the apartments in the Palais itself, and how the deuce could they drop a corpse down there? It would have been in the highest degree imprudent to attempt it! No, it is not by that road they have carried off Dollon's body! But then by what way?"
He glued his ear to the chimney. After a while, Fandor could make out a vague, intermittent sound—could catch a little, far-away, plashing sound.
"Can the chimney communicate with the Seine?" he asked himself. "No, we are too far off it. Why this opening, then?... Ah, I have it! It is a drain, a sewer, it communicates with!"
To verify that, there was nothing for it but to descend this chimney, which was no chimney! So be it!... Fandor took off his coat, and uncovered the long, fine cord, rolled round and round his middle. Weighting the cord with a flint, he let it slide down the chimney, testing the straightness of the descent by the balanced oscillations of the stone, and so ascertaining the even size of the opening, as far as the line would go. This was the work of a few minutes.
Fandor did not hesitate: he was eager to embark on the descent.
"After all," he murmured, "though I may find myself face to face with a band of assassins—what of it? It is all in the night's risks!"
He fastened the end of the cord to one of the neighbouring chimneys—fastened it firmly; then, his revolver handily stuck in his belt, Fandor seized the cord, twisted it round his legs, and let himself slowly down through the narrow opening.
It was a perilous descent! Fandor did not know whether his cord was long enough, and, lost in the darkness, with only the gleam of light from his lantern to guide him, he was naturally afraid of reaching the end of his rope unawares, and of falling into the black void beneath. But what he observed in the course of his descent excited him so much that he almost forgot the danger he was running. To those at all practised in police detective work, it was clear as daylight that men had passed this way, and recently.
"Here is a dislodged stone," muttered Fandor. "And here are scrapes and scratches—fresh ... and ... that mark looks like blood!"
Pushing his knees and his shoulders against the wall to support himself and stay his movements, he examined the mark. There was no doubt possible: Fandor's sharp eyes and the lantern's light had picked out a little red patch, which sullied one of the projecting stones in the chimney walls:
"This," reflected our amateur detective, "only confirms Dollon's death: if the wound which caused this mark had been made by a living body, the mark would have been larger, and there would have been others, for it must come from an abrasion of the skin made during the descent. But this blood mark has resulted from a dead body knocking against the stones of the wall: it is not a mark make by flowing blood, but by blood crushed out."
He descended a few yards further:
"Here's a find!" he cried. He had just perceived some hairs sticking to the rough surface of the stones. Again, with arched shoulders and bent knees, he supported himself against the wall, examined his discovery, left half the hairs where they were, took the rest, and carefully placed them in his pocket-book:
"The police must not be able to say that I have arranged this for their benefit," Fandor remarked. "Cost what it may, if I do not come across Dollon's corpse below, I must find out to-morrow whether these hairs resemble his."
Fandor went on descending, and first in one place, then in another, he saw on the walls of this chimney whitish patches such as might have been caused by the passage of a heavy mass or body, hanging at the end of a rope, and striking against the walls on its way down. Whilst he still believed himself to be some distance off the end of his downward journey, he felt a point of resistance beneath his feet. At first he mistook it for firm ground, much to his surprise. He was about to leave go of his cord when a remnant of prudence restrained him:
"How do I know there is not an abyss depths upon depths below me—down into the very bowels of the earth! I had better take care!"
What Fandor had taken for firm ground was nothing but an iron staple projecting from the wall. Fandor seized it, stopped for a minute or two's breathing space, ascertained, by drawing it up, that of his cord there were only a few yards remaining; but he also perceived, and with what relief, that from where he was resting, downwards the chimney was, as far as he could see by his lantern's light, marked off into regular spaces by these iron staples which are sometimes placed there for the use of chimney cleaners and masons. Fandor found them a most convenient kind of ladder. The descent now became easy, and in a short time our adventurous journalist reached the bottom of the chimney. At first he could not understand where he had got to. In the thick gloom around him his lantern's gleam of light showed him a kind of vaulted wall of massive masonry. He advanced a step or two with noiseless tread, listening, on the alert. Not a sound could he hear: he decided to expose the full light of his lantern.
The brighter light showed him that the chimney from which he was now standing some yards away ended in a kind of sewer, evidently no longer in use; and the plashing sound he had heard on the far up heights of the Palais roofs proceeded from a thin and muddy stream of water flowing in the middle of the sewer channel in the direction of the Seine. Kneeling at the foot of the chimney Fandor could distinguish marks of steps made by human feet; much deeper and very different indentations were visible also:
"Not only have men passed this way but a short while ago," he murmured, "but they were carrying a heavy burden: there are two kinds of footmarks, made by two kinds of shoes, and the heels have made much deeper marks in the soil than have the tips—yes, these men bore a heavy burden!"
Fandor was so pleased that he mentally rubbed his hands over this discovery. His quest was a success so far: he was on the track of Dollon's body! And what copy forLa Capitale! Then a sad thought came to dim his delight:
"Poor, poor Elizabeth Dollon! I swore to her I would get at the truth—and a lamentable truth it is! Her brother is dead: he died in the Dépôt: he was done to death—it was no suicide!"
Whilst talking to himself Fandor was scrutinising every inch of the ground as he moved forward: there might be fresh clues:
"It's a queer kind of sewer," he went on. "This streamlet is as much mud as water, is almost stagnant. Evidently this underground sewer way is no longer used—has been abandoned!"
A horrid spectacle struck him motionless. His lantern made visible a struggling, heaving mass of rats, fighting tooth and claw, enormous rats devouring some hidden thing!
Fandor's stomach rose at the sight.
Oh, horror! Could it be Jacques Dollon's body?
Fandor snatched up a stone and flung it furiously among the unclean beasts. They fled. On the ground he could distinguish a mass, a red, formless mass, saturated with congealed blood:
"Assuredly, if the corpse has disappeared, it is there the assassins must have cut it in pieces, that they might carry it more easily, and those vile creatures are in the thick of feasting on the poor victim's remains!... Pouah!"
Fandor moved on, only to discover another pool of blood almost as large, also besieged by rats:
"Evidently I shall find nothing else," thought Fandor: "the corpse no longer exists!"
He continued his advance, determined to find out what this underground way ended in. His lantern was flickering to a finish when he arrived at the end of the sewer and found, as he had foreseen, that its opening had been cut in the steep bank of the Seine:
"That's a bit of luck! I can get out this way instead of having to climb back the way I came, up to the Palais roof and down again!"
It was still night; darkness reigned save on the far horizon, where a faint, whitish line indicated the early dawn of an April day.
Fandor was just asking himself by what gymnastic feat he could regain the quay, and he was leaning over the opening of the sewer, his body bending far forward over the inky waters of the Seine. Before he had time to turn, before he could regain his balance, a brutal blow from behind half stunned him, and a vigorous thrust precipitated his body into the Seine.
"Come along, Cranajour! Let's have a sight of what they've given you for the frock coat and the whole outfit!"
The person thus challenged rummaged in the pockets of his old, much-patched and filthy garments, and after interminable fumblings and huntings, finished by extracting a certain number of silver pieces, which he counted over with the greatest care, finally he replied:
"Seventeen francs, Mother Toulouche."
Mother Toulouche showed her impatience:
"It's details I want! How much for the coat? How much for the whole suit? I've got to know, I tell you! I've got to write it all down, and I've got to see how much I've to hand over to each of the owners of the duds!... Try to remember, Cranajour!"
The individual who answered to this odd appellation reflected. After a silence, shrugging his shoulders, he replied:
"I don't know. I can't make myself remember—not anyhow!... And it's a long time since I sold the goods!"
Mother Toulouche shrugged in turn:
"A long time!" she grumbled. "What a wretched job! Why, it's only two hours since—barely that!... It's true," she went on, with a pitying look at the shabby, down-at-heel fellow, who had spread out his seventeen francs on the table, "it's true that you're known not to have two ha'p'orths of memory, and that at the end of an hour you have forgotten what you've done!"
"That's right enough," answered Cranajour.
"Let's have done with it, then," cried Mother Toulouche.
She held out a repulsive-looking specimen of old clothes:
"Be off with you! Go and pawn this academician's cast-off! When the comrades catch a sight of this bit of stuff to the fore, they'll understand they can come without danger!... No cops about the store on the lookout, are there?"
Mother Toulouche took the precaution to advance to the threshold of her store, cast a rapid glance around—not a suspicious person, nor a sign of one to be seen:
"A good thing," muttered she, "but I was sure of it! Those police spies are going to give us some peace for a bit!... Likely the whole lot of them are on this Dollon business! Isn't it so, Cranajour?"
As she retreated into her store again Mother Toulouche knocked against that individual, who had not budged: he had hung over his arm respectfully the miserable bit of stuff that had been styled an academician's robe:
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked she sharply.
"Nothing...."
"What are you going to do with that?"
Cranajour seemed to reflect:
"Haven't I told you," grumbled Mother Toulouche, "to go and stick it up outside?... Don't say you've gone and forgotten already!"
"No, no!" protested Cranajour, hastening to obey orders.
"What a specimen!" thought Mother Toulouche, whilst counting over the seventeen francs.
Cranajour was a remarkably queer fish, beyond question. How had he got into connection with Mother Toulouche and her intimates? That remained a mystery. One fine day this seedy specimen of humanity was found among the "comrades" exchanging vague remarks with one and another. He stuck to them in all their shifting from this place to that: no one had been able to get out of him what his name was, nor where he came from, for he was afflicted with a memory like a sieve—he could not remember things for two hours together. A feeble-minded, poor sort of fellow, with not a halfpenny's worth of wickedness in him, always ready to do a hand's turn for anyone: to judge by his looks he might have been any age between forty and seventy, for there is nothing like privations and misery to alter the looks of a man! Faced by this queer fish, with a brain like a sieve, they had christened him "Crâne à jour"—and the nickname had stuck to this anonymous individual. Besides, was not Cranajour the most complaisant of fellows, the least exacting of collaborators—always content with what was given him, always willing to do his best!
As to Mother Toulouche; she kept a little shop on the quay of the Clock. The sign over her little store read:
This alluring title was not justified by anything to be found inside this store, which was nothing but a common pick-up-anything shop: it was a receptacle for a hideous collection of lumber, for old broken furniture, for garments past decent wear, for indescribable odds and ends, where the wreckage of human misery lay huddled cheek by jowl with the beggarly offscourings of Parisian destitution.
Behind the store, whose little front faced the edge of the quay and looked over the Seine, was a sordid back-shop: here the pallet of Mother Toulouche, a kitchen stove out of order, and the overflow of the goods which were crowded out of the store were jumbled up in ill-smelling disorder. This back-shop communicated with the rue de Harlay by a narrow dark passage; thus the lair of old Mother Toulouche had two outlets, nor were they superfluous; in fact, they were indispensable for such as she—ever on the alert to escape the inquisitive attentions of the police, ever receiving visitors of doubtful morals and thoroughly bad reputation.
Mother Toulouche's quarters comprised not only the two stores, but a cellar both large and deep, to which one obtained access by a staircase pitch dark, crooked, and everlastingly covered with moisture, owing to the proximity of the river. The floor of the cellar was a kind of noisome cesspool: one slipped on the greasy mud—floundered about in it: for all that, this cellar was almost entirely filled with cases of all kinds, with queer-looking bundles, with objects of various shapes and sizes. Evidently the jumble store of Mother Toulouche did not confine itself to the rough-and-ready shop in the front; and, into the bargain, this basement might be used as a safe hiding-place in an emergency, a precious refuge for whoever might feel it necessary to cover his tracks, and thus escape the investigations of the police, for instance!
Mother Toulouche, as a matter of fact, needed such premises as hers: if she took ceaseless precautions it was because she had a reason for her uneasy watchfulness.
Mother Toulouche had already come into involuntary contact with the police; and her last and most serious encounter with them went as far back as those days of renown when the band of Numbers had as their chief the mysterious hooligan Loupart, also known under the name of Dr. Chaleck.[4]She had been arrested for complicity in a bank-note robbery, had been tried, and had been sentenced to twenty-two months' imprisonment.
Not turned in the slightest degree from the error of her ways, and possessing some money, which she had kept carefully hidden, Mother Toulouche had decided to set up shop close to the Palais de Justice, that Great House where those gentlemen of the robe judged and condemned poor folk! She would say:
"Being so close to the red-robed I shall end by making the acquaintance of one or two of them, and that may turn out a good job for me one of these days!"
But this was merely a blind, for other considerations had led to Mother Toulouche renting this shop on the Isle of the City, in opening on the quay of the Clock, a quay but little frequented, her wretched jumble store of odds and ends. She had kept in touch with the band of Numbers, which had gradually come together again as soon as the various numbers of it had finished serving their time.
For a while they had lived unmolested, but lately misfortunes had laid a heavy hand on the group. Still, as the band began to break up, other members came to replace those who had disappeared, either temporarily or for good and all.
At any rate, they could safely count on the assistance of an individual more valuable to them than anyone; this was a man named Nibet, who although he intervened but seldom, could, thanks to his influence, save the band many annoyances. This Nibet held an honourable official position; he was a warder at the Dépôt.
Whilst Mother Toulouche, from the back of her store, was watching with a derisive air the good-natured Cranajour fasten up the Academician's robe in a prominent position on the front of her nondescript emporium, someone stepped inside, and warmly greeted Mother Toulouche with a:
"Good day, old lady!"
It was big Ernestine,[5]who explained volubly that for a good half hour she had been prowling about near the statue of Henry IV, keeping the store well in view, but not daring to approach until the usual signal had been displayed. Those who frequented the place knew that when the store was under police observation and Mother Toulouche feared a raid she took care to hang out any kind of old clothes; but if the way was clear, if no lurking police were on the lookout, then the rallying flag would be hoisted, the flag being the old, patched, rusty, musty Academician's robe.
Ernestine had arrived looking thoroughly upset:
"Have you heard the latest?" she cried, "the bad news?"
"What news? Whose news?" questioned Mother Toulouche.
"Why, that poor Emilet has come down a regular cropper!"
"The poor fellow!... He isn't smashed up, is he?" Mother Toulouche lifted her hands.
"I haven't heard anything more than what I've told you!"
Consternation was on the faces of the two women.
Their good Mimile! He who knew how to take care of himself without leaving a comrade in the lurch, who stuck to them, working for the common good.
A few years previous to this Mimile, having refused to conform to military law, had been arrested in the tavern of a certain Father Korn during a particularly drastic police raid, and the defaulting youth had been straightway put under the penal military discipline administered to such as he. Instead of making himself notorious by his execrable conduct as those in his position generally did, he behaved like a little saint. Having thus made a reputation to trade on, he was twice able to steal the money from the regimental chest without a shadow of suspicion falling on him, and, what was worse, two of his innocent comrades had been accused of the crime, had been condemned and shot in his stead! Owing to his good conduct Mimile had been transferred to a regiment stationed in Algiers, and having a considerable amount of spare time on his hands, he got into close touch with the aeroplane mechanics.