Betweenthe examining Magistrate, who questioned, and the man cited to appear before him, who replied, it was a duel; a close game, rapid and tragic, in which each feint might make a mortal wound; in which each parry and thrust might be decisive. No one in the world has the power of the man who, in a word, can change to a prisoner the one who enters the Palais as a passer-by. Behind this inquisitor of the law the prison stands; the tribunal in its red robes appears; the beams of the scaffold cast their sinister shadows, and the magistrate's cold chamber already seems to have the lugubrious humidity of the dungeons where the condemned await their fate.
Jacques Dantin arrived at the Palais in answer to the Magistrate's citation, with the apparent alacrity of a man who, regretting a friend tragically put out of the world, wishes to aid in avenging him. He did not hesitate a second, and Bernardet, who saw him enter the carriage, was struck with the seeming eagerness and haste with which he responded to the Magistrate's order. When M. Ginory was informed that Jacques Dantin had arrived,he allowed an involuntary "Ah!" to escape him. This ah! seemed to express the satisfaction of an impatient spectator when the signal is given which announces that the curtain is about to be raised. For the Examining Magistrate, the drama in which he was about to unravel the mystery was to begin. He kept his eyes fixed upon the door, attributing, correctly, a great importance to the first impression the comer would make upon him as he entered the room. M. Ginory found that he was much excited; this was to him a novel thing; but by exercising his strong will he succeeded in mastering the emotion, and his face and manner showed no trace of it.
In the open door M. Jacques Dantin appeared. The first view, for the Magistrate, was favorable. The man was tall, well built; he bowed with grace and looked straight before him. But at the same time M. Ginory was struck by the strange resemblance of this haughty face to that image obtained by means of Bernardet's kodak. It seemed to him that this image had the same stature, the same form as that man surrounded by the hazy clouds. Upon a second examination it seemed to the Magistrate that the face betrayed a restrained violence, a latent brutality. The eyes were stern, under their bristling brows; the pointed beard, quite thin on the cheeks, showed the heavy jaws, and under the gray mustache the under lip protrudedlike those of certain Spanish cavaliers painted by Velasquez.
"Prognathous," thought M. Ginory, as he noticed this characteristic. With a gesture he motioned M. Dantin to a chair. The man was there before the Judge who, with crossed hands, his elbows leaning on his papers, seemed ready to talk of insignificant things, while the registrar's bald head was bent over his black table as he rapidly took notes. The interview took on a grave tone, but as between two men who, meeting in a salon, speak of the morning or of the première of the evening before, and M. Ginory asked M. Dantin for some information in regard to M. Rovère.
"Did you know him intimately?"
"Yes, M. le Juge."
"For how many years?"
"For more than forty. We were comrades at a school in Bordeaux."
"You are a Bordelais?"
"Like Rovère, yes," Dantin replied.
"Of late, have you seen M. Rovère frequently?"
"I beg your pardon, M. le Juge, but what do you mean by of late?"
M. Ginory believed that he had discovered in this question put by a man who was himself being interrogated—a tactic—a means of finding before replying, time for reflection. He was accustomed to these manœuvres of the accused.
"When I say of late," he replied, "I mean during the past few weeks or days which preceded the murder—if that suits you."
"I saw him often, in fact, even oftener than formerly."
"Why?"
Jacques Dantin seemed to hesitate. "I do not know—chance. In Paris one has intimate friends, one does not see them for some months; and suddenly one sees them again, and one meets them more frequently."
"Have you ever had any reason for the interruptions in your relations with M. Rovère when you ceased to see him, as you say?"
"None whatever."
"Was there between you any sort of rivalry, any motive for coldness?"
"Any motive—any rivalry. What do you mean?"
"I do not know," said the great man; "I ask you. I am questioning you."
The registrar's pen ran rapidly and noiselessly over the paper, with the speed of a bird on the wing.
These words, "I am questioning you," seemed to make an unexpected, disagreeable impression on Dantin, and he frowned.
"When did you visit Rovère the last time?"
"The last time?"
"Yes. Strive to remember."
"Two or three days before the murder."
"It was not two or three days; it was two days exactly before the assassination."
"You are right, I beg your pardon."
The Examining Magistrate waited a moment, looking the man full in the eyes. It seemed to him that a slight flush passed over his hitherto pale face.
"Do you suspect anyone as the murderer of Rovère?" asked M. Ginory after a moment's reflection.
"No one," said Dantin. "I have tried to think of some one."
"Had Rovère any enemies?"
"I do not know of any."
The Magistrate swung around by a detour habitual with him to Jacques Dantin's last visit to the murdered man, and begged him to be precise, and asked him if anything had especially struck him during that last interview with his friend.
"The idea of suicide having been immediately dropped on the simple examination of the wound, no doubt exists as to the cause of death. Rovère was assassinated. By whom? In your last interview was there any talk between you of any uneasiness which he felt in regard to anything? Was he occupied with any especial affair? Had he—sometimes one has presentiments—any presentiment of an impending evil, that he was running any danger?"
"No," Dantin replied. "Rovère made no allusion to me of any peril which he feared. I have asked myself who could have any interest in his death. One might have done the deed for plunder."
"That seems very probable to me," said the Magistrate, "but the examination made in the apartment proves that not a thing had been touched. Theft was not the motive."
"Then?" asked Dantin.
The sanguine face of the Magistrate, that robust visage, with its massive jaws, lighted up with a sort of ironical expression.
"Then we are here to search for the truth and to find it." In this response, made in a mocking tone, the registrar, who knew every varying shade of tone in his Chief's voice, raised his head, for in this tone he detected a menace.
"Will you tell me all that passed in that last interview?"
"Nothing whatever which could in any way put justice on the track of the criminal."
"But yet can you, or, rather, I should say, ought you not to relate to me all that was said or done? The slightest circumstance might enlighten us."
"Rovère spoke to me of private affairs," Dantin replied, but quickly added: "They were insignificant things."
"What are insignificant things?"
"Remembrances—family matters."
"Family things are not insignificant, above all in a case like this. Had Rovère any family? No relative assisted at the obsequies."
Jacques Dantin seemed troubled, unnerved rather, and this time it was plainly visible. He replied in a short tone, which was almost brusque:
"He talked of the past."
"What past?" asked the Judge, quickly.
"Of his youth—of moral debts."
M. Ginory turned around in his chair, leaned back, and said in a caustic tone: "Truly, Monsieur, you certainly ought to complete your information and not make an enigma of your deposition. I do not understand this useless reticence, and moral debts, to use your words; they are only to gain time. What, then, was M. Rovère's past?"
Dantin hesitated a moment; not very long. Then he firmly said: "That, Monsieur le Juge, is a secret confided to me by my friend, and as it has nothing to do with this matter, I ask you to refrain from questioning me about it."
"I beg your pardon," the magistrate replied. "There is not, there cannot be a secret for an Examining Magistrate. In Rovère's interests, whose memory ought to have public vindication, yes, in his interests, and I ought to say also in your own, it is necessary that you should state explicitly what you have just alluded to. You tell me that there is a secret. I wish to know it."
"It is the confidence of a dead person, Monsieur," Dantin replied, in vibrating tones.
"There are no confidences when justice is in the balance."
"But it is also the secret of a living person," said Jacques Dantin.
"Is it of yourself of whom you speak?"
He gazed keenly at the face, now tortured and contracted.
Dantin replied: "No, I do not speak of myself, but of another."
"That other—who is he?"
"It is impossible to tell you."
"Impossible?"
"Absolutely impossible!"
"I will repeat to you my first question—'Why?'"
"Because I have sworn on my honor to reveal it to no one."
"Ah, ah!" said Ginory, mockingly; "it was a vow? That is perfect!"
"Yes, Monsieur le Juge; it was a vow."
"A vow made to whom?"
"To Rovère."
"Who is no longer here to release you from it. I understand."
"And," asked Dantin, with a vehemence which made the registrar's thin hand tremble as it flew over the paper, "what do you understand?"
"Pardon," said M. Ginory; "you are not here to put questions, but to answer those which are asked you. It is certain that a vow which binds the holder of a secret is a means of defence, but the accused have, by making common use of it, rendered it useless."
The Magistrate noticed the almost menacing frown with which Dantin looked at him at the words, "the accused."
"The accused?" said the man, turning in his chair. "Am I one of the accused?" His voice was strident, almost strangled.
"I do not know that," said M. Ginory, in a very calm tone; "I say that you wish to keep your secret, and it is a claim which I do not admit."
"I repeat, Monsieur le Juge, that the secret is not mine."
"It is no longer a secret which can remain sacred here. A murder has been committed, a murderer is to be found, and everything you know you ought to reveal to justice."
"But if I give you my word of honor that it has not the slightest bearing on the matter—with the death of Rovère?"
"I shall tell my registrar to write your very words in reply—he has done it—I shall continue to question you, precisely because you speak to me of a secret which has been confided to you andwhich you refuse to disclose to me. Because you do refuse?"
"Absolutely!"
"In spite of what I have said to you? It is a warning; you know it well!"
"In spite of your warning!"
"Take care!" M. Ginory softly said. His angry face had lost its wonted amiability. The registrar quickly raised his head. He felt that a decisive moment had come. The Examining Magistrate looked directly into Dantin's eyes and slowly said: "You remember that you were seen by the portress at the moment when Rovère, standing with you in front of his open safe, showed you some valuables?"
Dantin waited a moment before he replied, as if measuring these words, and searching to find out just what M. Ginory was driving at. This silence, short and momentous, was dramatic. The Magistrate knew it well—that moment of agony when the question seems like a cord, like a lasso suddenly thrown, and tightening around one's neck. There was always, in his examination, a tragic moment.
"I remember very well that I saw a person whom I did not know enter the room where I was with M. Rovère," Jacques Dantin replied at last.
"A person whom you did not know? Youknew her very well, since you had more than once asked her if M. Rovère was at home. That person is Mme. Moniche, who has made her deposition."
"And what did she say in her deposition?"
The Magistrate took a paper from the table in front of him and read: "When I entered, M. Rovère was standing before his safe, and I noticed that the individual of whom I spoke (the individual is you) cast upon the coupons a look which made me cold. I thought to myself: 'This man looks as if he is meditating some bad deed.'"
"That is to say," brusquely said Dantin, who had listened with frowning brows and with an angry expression, "that Mme. Moniche accuses me of having murdered M. Rovère!"
"You are in too much haste. Mme. Moniche has not said that precisely. She was only surprised—surprised and frightened—at your expression as you looked at the deeds, bills and coupons."
"Those coupons," asked Dantin rather anxiously, "have they, then, been stolen?"
"Ah, that we know nothing about," and the Magistrate smiled.
"One has found in Rovère's safe in the neighborhood of 460,000 francs in coupons, city of Paris bonds, shares in mining societies, rent rolls; but nothing to prove that there was before the assassination more than that sum."
"Had it been forced open?"
"No; but anyone familiar with the dead man, a friend who knew the secret of the combination of the safe, the four letters forming the word, could have opened it without trouble."
Among these words Dantin heard one which struck him full in the face—"friend." M. Ginory had pronounced it in an ordinary tone, but Dantin had seized and read in it a menace. For a moment the man who was being questioned felt a peculiar sensation. It seemed to him one day when he had been almost drowned during a boating party that same agony had seized him; it seemed that he had fallen into some abyss, some icy pool, which was paralyzing him. Opposite to him the Examining Magistrate experienced a contrary feeling. The caster of a hook and line feels a similar sensation; but it was intensified a hundred times in the Magistrate, a fisher of truth, throwing the line into a human sea, the water polluted, red with blood and mixed with mud.
A friend! A friend could have abused the dead man's secret and opened that safe! And that friend—what name did he bear? Whom did M. Ginory wish to designate? Dantin, in spite of hissang froid, experienced a violent temptation to ask the man what he meant by those words. But the strange sensation which this interview caused him increased. It seemed to him that he had beenthere a long time—a very long time since he had crossed that threshold—and that this little room, separated from the world like a monk's cell, had walls thick enough to prevent any one from hearing anything outside. He felt as if hypnotized by that man, who at first had met him with a pleasant air, and who now bent upon him those hard eyes. Something doubtful, like vague danger, surrounded him, menaced him, and he mechanically followed the gesture which M. Ginory made as he touched the ivory button of an electric bell, as if on this gesture depended some event of his life. A guard entered. M. Ginory said to him in a short tone: "Have the notes been brought?"
"M. Bernardet has just brought them to me, Monsieur le Juge."
"Give them to me!" He then added: "Is Monsieur Bernardet here?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Juge."
"Very well."
Jacques Dantin remembered the little man with whom he had talked in the journey from the house of death to the tomb, where he had heard some one call "Bernardet." He did not know at the time, but the name had struck him. Why did his presence seem of so much importance to this Examining Magistrate? And he looked, in his turn, at M. Ginory, who, a little near-sighted, was bending his head, with its sandy hair, its bald forehead, on whichthe veins stood out like cords, over his notes, which had been brought to him. Interesting notes—important, without doubt—for, visibly satisfied, M. Ginory allowed a word or two to escape him: "Good! Yes—Yes—Fine! Ah! Ah!—Very good!" Then suddenly Dantin saw Ginory raise his head and look at him—as the saying is—in the white of the eyes. He waited a moment before speaking, and suddenly put this question, thrust at Dantin like a knife-blow:
"Are you a gambler, as I find?"
The question made Jacques Dantin fairly bound from his chair. A gambler! Why did this man ask him if he was a gambler? What had his habits, his customs, his vices even, to do with this cause for which he had been cited, to do with Rovère's murder?
"You are a gambler," continued the Examining Magistrate, casting from time to time a keen glance toward his notes. "One of the inspectors of gambling dens saw you lose at the Cercle des Publicistes 25,000 francs in one night."
"It is possible; the only important point is that I paid them!" The response was short, crisp, showing a little irritation and stupefaction.
"Assuredly," said the Judge. "But you have no fortune. You have recently borrowed a considerable sum from the usurers in order to pay for some losses at the Bourse."
Dantin became very pale, his lips quivered, and his hands trembled. These signs of emotion did not escape the eyes of M. Ginory nor the registrar's.
"Is it from your little notes that you have learned all that?" he demanded.
"Certainly," M. Ginory replied. "We have been seeking for some hours for accurate information concerning you; started a sort of diary or rough draught of your biography. You are fond of pleasure. You are seen, in spite of your age—I pray you to pardon me, there is no malice in the remark: I am older than you—everywhere where is found the famous Tout-Paris which amuses itself. The easy life is the most difficult for those who have no fortune. And, according to these notes—I refer to them again—of fortune you have none."
"That is to say," interrupted Dantin, brusquely, "it would be very possible that, in order to obtain money for my needs, in order to steal the funds in his iron safe, I would assassinate my friend?"
M. Ginory did not allow himself to display any emotion at the insolent tone of these words, which had burst forth, almost like a cry. He looked Dantin full in the face, and with his hands crossed upon his notes, he said:
"Monsieur, in a matter of criminal investigation a Magistrate, eager for the truth ought to admitthat anything is possible, even probable, but in this case I ought to recognize the fact that you have not helped me in my task. A witness finds you tête-à-tête with the victim and surprises your trouble at the moment when you are examining Rovère's papers. I ask what it was that happened between you, you reply that that is your secret, and for explanation you give me your word of honor that it had nothing whatever to do with the murder. You would yourself think that I was very foolish if I insisted any longer. True, there was no trace of any violence in the apartment, whatever subtraction may have been made from the safe. It appears that you are in a position to know the combination; it appears, also, that you are certainly in need of money; as clearly known as it is possible to learn in a hurried inquiry such as has been made, while you have been here. I question you. I let you know what you ought to know, and you fly into a passion. And note well! it is you yourself, in your anger and your violence, who speaks first the word of which I have not pronounced a syllable. It is you who have jumped straight to a logical conclusion of the suppositions which are still defective, without doubt, but are not the less suppositions; yes, it is you who say that with a little logic one can certainly accuse you of the murder of the one whom you called your friend."
Each word brought to Dantin's face an angry or a frightened expression, and the more slowly M. Ginory spoke, the more measured his words, emphasizing his verbs, with a sort of professional habit, as a surgeon touches a wound with a steel instrument, the questioned man, put through a sharp cross-examination, experienced a frightful anger, a strong internal struggle, which made the blood rush to his ears and ferocious lightnings dart through his eyes.
"It is easy, moreover," continued M. Ginory, in a paternal tone, "for you to reduce to nothingness all these suppositions, and the smallest expression in regard to the rôle which you played in your last interview with Rovère would put everything right."
"Ah! must we go back to that?"
"Certainly, we must go back to that! The whole question lies there! You come to an Examining Magistrate and tell him that there is a secret; you speak of a third person, of recollections of youth, of moral debts—and you are astonished that the Judge strives to wrest the truth from you?"
"I have told it."
"The whole truth?"
"It has nothing to do with Rovère's murder, and it would injure some one who knows nothing about it. I have told you so. I repeat it."
"Yes," said M. Ginory, "you hold to your enigma! Oh, well, I, the Magistrate, demand that you reveal the truth to me. I command you to tell it."
The registrar's pen ran over the paper and trembled as if it scented a storm. The psychological moment approached. The registrar knew it well—that moment—and the word which the Magistrate would soon pronounce would be decisive.
A sort of struggle began in Dantin's mind—one saw his face grow haggard, his eyes change their expression. He looked at the papers upon which M. Ginory laid his fat and hairy hands; those police noteswhich gossiped, as peasants say, in speaking of papers or writing which they cannot read and which denounce them. He asked himself what more would be disclosed by those notes of the police agents of the scandals of the club, of the neighbors, of the porters. He passed his hands over his forehead as if to wipe off the perspiration or to ease away a headache.
"Come, now, it is not very difficult, and I have the right to know," said M. Ginory. After a moment Jacques Dantin said in a strong voice: "I swear to you, Monsieur, that nothing Rovère said to me when I saw him the last time could assist justice in any whatsoever, and I beg of you not to question me further about it."
"Will you answer?"
"I cannot, Monsieur."
"The more you hesitate the more reason you give me to think that the communication would be grave."
"Very grave, but it has nothing to do with your investigation."
"It's not for you to outline the duties of my limits or my rights. Once more, I order you to reply."
"I cannot."
"You will not."
"I cannot," brusquely said the man run to earth, with accent of violence.
The duel was finished.
M. Ginory began to laugh, or, rather, there was a nervous contraction of his mouth, and his sanguine face wore a scoffing look, while a mechanical movement of his massive jaws made him resemble a bulldog about to bite.
"Then," said he, "the situation is a very simple one and you force me to come to the end of my task. You understand?"
"Perfectly," said Jacques Dantin, with the impulsive anger of a man who stumbles over an article which he has left there himself.
"You still refuse to reply?"
"I refuse. I came here as a witness. I have nothing to reproach myself with, especially as I have nothing to fear. You must do whatever you choose to do."
"I can," said the Magistrate, "change a citation for appearance to a citation for retention. I will ask you once more"——
"It is useless," interrupted Dantin. "An assassin. I! What folly! Rovère's murderer! It seems as if I were dreaming! It is absurd, absurd, absurd!"
"Prove to me that it is absurd in truth. Do you not wish to reply?"
"I have told you all I know."
"But you have said nothing of what I have demanded of you."
"It is not my secret."
"Yes; there is your system. It is frequent, it is common. It is that of all the accused."
"Am I already accused?" asked Dantin, ironically.
M. Ginory was silent a moment, then, slowly taking from the drawer of his desk some paper upon which Dantin could discern no writing this time, but some figures, engraved in black—he knew not what they were—the Magistrate held them between his fingers so as to show them. He swung them to and fro, and the papers rustled like dry leaves. He seemed to attach great value to these papers, which the registrar looked at from a corner of his eye, guessing that they were the photographic proofs which had been taken.
"I beg of you to examine these proofs," said theMagistrate to Dantin. He held them out to him, and Dantin spread them on the table (there were four of them), then he put on his eyeglasses in order to see better. "What is that?" he asked.
"Look carefully," replied the Magistrate. Dantin bent over the proofs, examined them one by one, divined, rather than saw, in the picture which was a little hazy, the portrait of a man; and upon close examination began to see in the spectre a vague resemblance.
"Do you not see that this picture bears a resemblance to you?"
This time Dantin seemed the prey of some nightmare, and his eyes searched M. Ginory's face with a sort of agony. The expression struck Ginory. One would have said that a ghost had suddenly appeared to Dantin.
"You say that it resembles me?"
"Yes. Look carefully! At first the portrait is vague; on closer examination it comes out from the halo which surrounds it, and the person who appears there bears your air, your features, your characteristics"——
"It is possible," said Dantin. "It seems to resemble me; it seems as if I were looking at myself in a pocket mirror. But what does that signify?"
"That signifies—Oh! I am going to astonish you. That signifies"—M. Ginory turned toward his registrar: "You saw the other evening, Favarel,the experiment in which Dr. Oudin showed us the heart and lungs performing their functions in the thorax of a living man, made visible by the Roentgen Rays. Well! This is not any more miraculous. These photographs (he turned now toward Dantin) were taken of the retina of the dead man's eye. They are the reflection, the reproduction of the image implanted there, the picture of the last living being contemplated in the agony; the last visual sensation which the unfortunate man experienced. The retina has given to us—as a witness—the image of the living person seen by the dead man for the last time!"
A deep silence fell upon the three men in that little room, where one of them alone, lost his foothold at this strange revelation. For the Magistrate it was a decisive moment; when all had been said, when the man having been questioned closely, jumps at the foregone conclusion. As for the registrar, however blasé he may have become by these daily experiences, it was the decisive moment! the moment when, the line drawn from the water, the fish is landed, writhing on the hook!
Jacques Dantin, with an instinctive movement, had rejected, pushed back on the table those photographs which burned his fingers like the cards in which some fortune teller has deciphered the signs of death.
"Well?" asked M. Ginory.
"Well!" repeated Dantin in a strangled tone, either not comprehending or comprehending too much, struggling as if under the oppression of a nightmare.
"How do you explain how your face, your shadow if you prefer, was found reflected in Rovère's eyes, and that in his agony, this was probably what he saw; yes, saw bending over him?"
Dantin cast a frightened glance around the room, and asked himself if he was not shut up in a maniac's cell; if the question was real; if the voice he heard was not the voice of a dream!
"How can I explain? but I cannot explain, I do not understand, I do not know—it is madness, it is frightful, it is foolish!"
"But yet," insisted M. Ginory, "this folly, as you call it, must have some explanation."
"What do you wish to have me say? I do not understand. I repeat, I do not understand."
"What if you do not, you cannot deny your presence in the house at the moment of Rovère's death"——
"Why cannot I deny it?" Dantin interrupted.
"Because the vision is there, hidden, hazy, in the retina; because this photograph, in which you recognized yourself, denounces, points out, your presence at the moment of the last agony."
"I was not there! I swear that I was not there!" Dantin fervently declared.
"Then, explain," said the Magistrate.
Dantin remained silent a moment, as if frightened. Then he stammered: "I am dreaming!—I dreaming!" and M. Ginory replied in a calm tone:
"Notice that I attribute no exaggerated importance to these proofs. It is not on them alone that I base the accusation. But they constitute a strange witness, very disquieting in its mute eloquence. They add to the doubt which your desire for silence has awakened. You tell me that you were not near Rovère when he died. These proofs, irrefutable as a fact, seem to prove at once the contrary. Then, the day Rovère was assassinated where were you?"
"I do not know. At home, without doubt. I will have to think it over. At what hour was Rovère killed?"
M. Ginory made a gesture of ignorance and in a tone of raillery said: "That! There are others who know it better than I." And Dantin, irritated, looked at him.
"Yes," went on the Magistrate, with mocking politeness, "the surgeons who can tell the hour in which he was killed." He turned over his papers. "The assassination was about an hour before midday. In Paris, in broad daylight, at that hour, a murder was committed!"
"At that hour," said Jacques Dantin, "I was just leaving home."
"To go where?"
"For a walk. I had a headache. I was going to walk in the Champs-Elysées to cure it."
"And did you, in your walk, meet any one whom you knew?"
"No one."
"Did you go into some shop?"
"I did not."
"In short, you have noalibi?"
The word made Dantin again tremble. He felt the meshes of the net closing around him.
"Analibi! Ah that! Decidedly. Monsieur, you accuse me of assassinating my friend," he violently said.
"I do not accuse; I ask a question." And M. Ginory in a dry tone which gradually became cutting and menacing said: "I question you, but I warn you that the interview has taken a bad turn. You do not answer; you pretend to keep secret I know not what information which concerns us. You are not yet exactly accused. But—but—but—you are going to be"——
The Magistrate waited a moment as if to give the man time to reflect, and he held his pen suspended, after dipping it in the ink, as an auctioneer holds his ivory hammer before bringing it down to close a sale. "I am going to drop the pen," it seemed to say. Dantin, very angry, remainedsilent. His look of bravado seemed to say: "Do you dare? If you dare, do it!"
"You refuse to speak?" asked Ginory for the last time.
"I refuse."
"You have willed it! Do you persist in giving no explanation; do you entrench yourself behind I know not what scruple or duty to honor; do you keep to your systematic silence? For the last time, do you still persist in this?"
"I have nothing—nothing—nothing to tell you!" Dantin cried in a sort of rage.
"Oh, well! Jacques Dantin," and the Magistrate's voice was grave and suddenly solemn. "You are from this moment arrested." The pen, uplifted till this instant, fell upon the paper. It was an order for arrest. The registrar looked at the man. Jacques Dantin did not move. His expression seemed vague, the fixed expression of a person who dreams with wide-open eyes. M. Ginory touched one of the electric buttons above his table and pointed Dantin out to the guards, whose shakos suddenly darkened the doorway. "Take away the prisoner," he said shortly and mechanically, and, overcome, without revolt, Jacques Dantin allowed himself to be led through the corridors of the Palais, saying nothing, comprehending nothing, stumbling occasionally, like an intoxicated man or a somnambulist.
M. Bernardetwas triumphant. He went home to dinner in a jubilant mood. His three little girls, dressed alike, clasped him round the neck, all at the same time, while Mme. Bernardet, always fresh, smiling and gay, held up her face with its soft, round, rosy cheeks to him.
"My little ones," said the officer, "I believe that I have done well, and that my chief will advance me or give me some acknowledgment. I will buy you some bracelets, my dears, if that happens. But it is not the idea of filthy lucre which has urged me on, and I believe that I have certainly made a great stride in judiciary instruction, all owing to my kodak. It would be too long an explanation and, perhaps, a perfectly useless one. Let us go to dinner. I am as hungry as a wolf."
He ate, truly, with a good appetite, scarcely stopped to tell how the assassin was under lock and key. The man had been measured and had become a number in the collection, always increasing, of accused persons in the catalogue continued each day for the Museum of Crime.
"Ah! He is not happy," said Bernardet between two spoonfuls of soup. "Not happy, not happyat all! Not happy, and astonished—protesting, moreover, his innocence, as they all do. It is customary."
"But," sweetly asked good little Mme. Bernardet, "what if he is innocent?" And the three little girls, raising their heads, looked at their father, as if to repeat their mother's question. The eldest murmured: "Yes, what if mamma is right?"
Bernardet shrugged his shoulders.
"To hear them, if one listened to them, one would believe them all innocent, and the crimes would have to commit themselves. If this one is innocent I shall be astonished, as if I should see snow fall in Paris in June; he will have to prove that he is innocent. These things prove themselves. Give me some more soup, Mélanie."
As Mme. Bernardet turned a ladleful of hot soup into her husband's plate she softly asked: "Are there no innocent ones condemned? Do you never deceive yourself?" Bernardet did not stop eating. "I cannot say—no one is infallible, no one—the shrewdest deceive themselves; they are sometimes duped. But it is rare, very rare. As well to say that it does not happen—Lesurques, yes (and the three little girls opened wide their large blue eyes as at a play), the Lesurques of the Courier de Lyon, who has made you weep so many times at the theatre at Montmartre; one would like to revise his trial to reinstate him, but no one has beenable to do it. I have studied his trial—by my faith, I swear, I would condemn him still—ah! what good soup!"
"But this one to-day?" asked Mme. Bernardet; "art thou certain? What is his name?"
"Dantin—Jacques Dantin. Oh! He is a gentleman. A very fine man, elegant, indeed. Some Bohemian of the upper class, who evidently needed money, and who—Rovère had some valuables in his safe. The occasion made the thief—and there it is."
"Papa," interrupted the eldest of the three little girls, "canst thou take us to see the trial, when he shall be sworn?"
"That depends! It is not easy! I will try—I will ask. If thou wilt work hard—Oh, dame!" said Bernardet, "that will be a drama!"
"I will work hard."
At dessert, after he had taken his coffee, he allowed his three little girls to dip lumps of sugar into his saucer. He threw himself into his easy chair; he gave a sigh of satisfaction, like a man whose daily, wearisome tasks are behind him, and who is catching a moment's repose.
"Ah!" he said, opening a paper which his wife had placed on a table near him, together with a little glass of cordial sent to them by some cousins in Burgundy; "I am going to see what has happened and what those good journalists have inventedabout the affair in the Boulevard de Clichy. It is true, it is a steeplechase between the reporters and us. Sometimes they win the race in the mornings. At other times, when they know nothing—ah! Then they invent, they embroider their histories!"
A petroleum lamp lighted the paper which Bernardet unfolded and began to read.
"Let us see whatLutècesays."
He suddenly remembered what Paul Rodier had said to him. "Read my journal!" This woman in black, found in the province, did she really exist? Had the novelist written a romance in order to follow the example of his friend? He looked over the paper to see if Paul Rodier had collaborated, as his friend had. Bernardet skipped over the headlines and glanced at the theatrical news. "Politics—they are all the same to me—Ministerial crisis—nothing new about that. That could as well be published in yesterday's paper as in to-day's! 'The Crime of the Boulevard de Clichy'—ah! Good! Very good! We shall see." And he began to read. Had Paul Rodier invented all the information to which he had treated the public? What was certain was that the police officer frowned and now gave strict attention to what he was reading, as if weighing the reporter's words.
Rodier had republished the biography of the ex-Consul. M. Rovère had been mixed, in SouthAmerica, in violent dramas. He was a romantic person, about whom more than one adventure in Buenos Ayres was known. The reporter had gained his information from an Argentine journal, thePrensa, established in Paris, and whose editor, in South America, had visited, intimately, the French Consul. The appearance of a woman in black, those visits made on fixed dates, as on anniversaries, revealed an intimacy, a relationship perhaps, of the murdered man with that unknown woman. The woman was young, elegant and did not live in Paris. Rodier had set himself to discover her retreat, her name; and perhaps, thanks to her, to unravel the mystery which still enveloped the murder.
"Heuh!That is not very precise information," thought the police officer. But it at least awoke Bernardet's curiosity and intelligence. It solved no problem, but it put one. M. de Sartines's famous "search for the woman" came naturally to Paul Rodier's pen. And he finished the article with some details about Jacques Dantin, the intimate, the only friend of Louis Pièrre Rovère; and the reporter, when he had written this, was still ignorant that Dantin was under arrest.
"To-morrow," said Bernardet to himself, "he will give us Dantin's biography. He tells me nothing new in his report. And yet"——He folded up the paper and laid it on the table, and while sippinghis cordial he thought of that mysterious visitor—the woman in black—and told himself that truly the trail must be there. He would see Moniche and his wife again; he would question them; he would make a thorough search.
"But what for? We have the guilty man. It is a hundred to one that the assassin is behind bars. The woman might be an accomplice."
Then Bernardet, filled with passion for his profession, rather than vanity—this artist in a police sense; this lover of art for art's sake—rubbed his hands and silently applauded himself because he had insisted, and, as it were, compelled M. Ginory and the doctors to adopt his idea. He, the humble, unknown sub-officer, standing back and simply striving to do his duty, had influenced distinguished persons as powerful as magistrates and members of the Academy. They had obeyed his suggestion. The little Bernardet felt that he had done a glorious deed. He had experienced a strong conviction, which would not be denied. He had proved that what had been considered only a chimera was a reality. He had accomplished a seeming impossibility. He had evoked the dead man's secret even from the tomb.
"And M. Ginory thinks that it will not help his candidature at the Academy? He will wear the green robe, and he will owe it to me. There are others who owe me something, too."
With his faculty for believing in his dreams, of seeing his visions appear, realized and living—a faculty which, in such a man, seemed like the strange hallucination of a poet—Bernardet did not doubt for a moment the reality of this phantom which had appeared in the retina of the eye. It was nothing more, that eye removed by the surgeon's scalpel, than an avenging mirror. It accused, it overwhelmed! Jacques Dantin was found there in all the atrocity of his crime.
"When I think, when I think that they did not wish to try the experiment. It is made now!" thought Bernardet.
M. Ginory had strongly recommended that all that part of the examination should not be made public. Absolute silence was necessary. If the press could have obtained the slightest information, every detail of the experiment would have become public property, and the account would have been embellished and made as fantastic as possible. This would have been a deep mine for Edgar A. Poe, who would have worked that lode well and made the Parisians shudder. How the ink would have been mixed with Rovère's blood! It was well understood that if the suspected man would in the end confess his guilt, the result of the singular scientifically incredible experiment should be made known. But until then absolute silence. Every thing which had been said and done around the dissectingtable at the Morgue, or in the Examining Magistrate's room, would remain a secret.
But would Dantin confess?
The next day after M. Ginory had put him under arrest Bernardet had gone to the Palais for news. He wished to consult his chief about the "Woman in Black," to ask him what he thought of the article which had been published in the paper by Paul Rodier. M. Leriche attached no great importance to it.
"A reporter's information. Very vague. There is always a woman,parbleu!in the life of every man. But did this one know Dantin? She seems to me simply an old, abandoned friend, and who came occasionally to ask aid of the old boy"——
"The woman noticed by Moniche is young," said Bernardet.
"Abandoned friends are often young," M. Leriche replied, visibly enchanted with his observation.
As for Dantin, he still maintained his obstinate silence. He persisted in finding iniquitous an arrest for which there was no motive, and he kept the haughty, almost provoking attitude of those whom the Chief called the greatest culprits.
"Murderers in redingotes believe that they have sprung from Jupiter's thigh, and will not admit that any one should be arrested except those who wear smocks and peaked hats. They believe in an aristocracy and its privileges, and threaten to haveus removed—you know that very well, Bernardet. Then, as time passes, they become, in a measure, calm and meek as little lambs; then they whimper and confess. Dantin will do as all the others have done. For the moment he howls about his innocence, and will threaten us, you will see, with a summons from the Chamber. That is of no importance."
The Chief then gave the officer some instructions. He need not trouble himself any more, just now, about the Dantin affair, but attend to another matter of less importance—a trivial affair. After the murder and his experiences at the Morgue this matter seemed a low one to Bernardet. But each duty has its antithesis. The police officer put into this petty affair of a theft the same zeal, the same sharp attention with which he had investigated the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy. It was his profession.
Bernardet started out on his quest. It was near the Halles (markets) that he had to work this time. The suspected man was probably one of the rascals who prowl about day and night, living on adventures, and without any home; sleeping under the bridges, or in one of the hovels on the outskirts of the Rue de Venise, where vice, distress and crime flourished. Bernardet first questioned the owner of the stolen property, obtained all the information which he could about the suspected man,and, with his keen scent for a criminal aroused, he glanced at everything—men, things, objects that would have escaped a less practised eye. He was walking slowly along toward the Permanence, looking keenly at the passers-by, the articles in the shops, the various movements in the streets, to see if he could get a hint upon which to work.
It was his habit to thus make use of his walks. In a promenade he had more than once met a client, past or future. The boys fled before his piercing eyes; before this fat, jolly little man with the mocking smile which showed under his red mustache. This fright which he inspired made him laugh inwardly. He knew that he was respected, that he was feared. Among all these passers-by who jostled him, without knowing that he was watching them, he was a power, an unknown but sovereign power. He walked along with short, quick steps and watchful eyes, very much preoccupied with this affair, thinking of the worthless person for whom he was seeking, but he stopped occasionally to look at the wares spread out in some bric-a-brac shop or in some book store window. This also was his habit and his method. He ran his eye over the illustrated papers lying in a row in front; over the Socialistic placards, the song books. He kept himselfau courantwith everything which was thought, seen, proclaimed and sung.
"When one governs," thought Bernardet, "one ought to have the habit of going afoot in the street. One can learn nothing from the depths of a coupé, driven by a coachman wearing a tri-colored cockade." He was going to the Préfecture, the Permanence, when in the Rue des Bons-Enfants he was instinctively attracted to a shop window where rusty old arms, tattered uniforms, worn shakos, garments without value, smoky pictures, yellowed engravings and chance ornaments, rare old copies of books, old romances, ancient books, with eaten bindings, a mass of dissimilar objects—lost keys, belt buckles, abolished medals, battered sous—were mixed together in an oblong space as in a sort of trough. On either side of this shop window hung some soiled uniforms, a Zouave's vest, an Academician's old habit, lugubrious with its embroideries of green, a soiled costume which had been worn by some Pierrot at the Carnival. It was, in all its sad irony, the vulgar "hand-me-down that!" which makes one think of that other Morgue where the clothing has been rejected by the living or abandoned by the dead.
Bernardet was neither of a melancholy temperament nor a dreamer, and he did not give much time to the tearful side of the question, but he was possessed of a ravenous curiosity, and the sight, however frequent, of that shop window always attracted him. With, moreover, that sort of magnetismwhich the searchers, great or small, intuitively feel—a collector of knick-knacks, discoverers of unknown countries, book worms bent over the volumes at four sous apiece, or chemists crouched over a retort—Bernardet had been suddenly attracted by a portrait exposed as an object rarer than the others, in the midst of this detritus of abandoned luxury or of past military glory.
Yes, among the tobacco boxes, the belt buckles, the Turkish poniards, watches with broken cases, commonplace Japanese ornaments, a painting, oval in form, lay there—a sort of large medallion without a frame, and at first sight, by a singular attraction, it drew and held the attention of the police officer.
"Ah!" said Bernardet out loud, "but this is singular."
He leaned forward until his nose touched the cold glass, and peered fixedly at the picture. This painting, as large as one's hand, was the portrait of a man, and Bernardet fully believed at the first look he recognized the person whom the painter had reproduced.
As his shadow fell across the window Bernardet could not distinctly see the painting, for it was not directly in the front line of articles displayed, and he stepped to one side to see if he could get a better view. Assuredly, there could be no doubt, the oval painting was certainly the portrait of JacquesDantin, now accused of a crime. There was the same high forehead, the pointed beard, of the same color; the black redingote, tightly buttoned up and edged at the neck with the narrow line of a white linen collar, giving, in resembling a doublet, to this painting, the air of a trooper, of a swordsman, of a Guisard (a partisan of the Duke of Guise), of the time of Clouet.
Something of a connoisseur in painting, without doubt, in his quality of amateur photographer, much accustomed to criticise a portrait if it was not a perfect likeness, Bernardet found in this picture a startling resemblance to Jacques Dantin; it was the very man himself! He appeared there, his thin face standing out from its greenish-black sombre background; the poise of the head displayed the same vigor as in the original; the clear-cut features looked energetic, and the skin had the same pallor which was characteristic of Dantin's complexion. This head, admirably painted, displayed an astonishing lifelike intensity. It had been done by a master hand, no doubt of that. And although in this portrait Jacques Dantin looked somewhat younger—for instance, the hair and pointed beard showed no silvery streaks in them—the resemblance was so marvelous that Bernardet immediately exclaimed: "It is he!"
And most certainly it was Jacques Dantin himself. The more the officer examined it, the moreconvinced he became that this was a portrait of the man whom he had accompanied to the cemetery and to prison. But how could this picture have come into this bric-a-brac shop, and of whom could the dealer have obtained it? A reply to this would probably not be very difficult to obtain, and the police officer pushed back the door and found himself in the presence of a very large woman, with a pale, puffy face, which was surrounded by a lace cap. Her huge body was enveloped in a knitted woollen shawl. She wore spectacles.
Bernardet, without stopping to salute her, pointed out the portrait and asked to see it. When he held it in his hands he found the resemblance still more startling. It was certainly Jacques Dantin! The painting was signed "P. B., Bordeaux, 1871." It was oval in shape; the frame was gone; the edge was marked, scratched, marred, as if the frame had been roughly torn from the picture.
"Have you had this portrait a long time?" he asked of the shop woman.
"I put it in the window to-day for the first time," the huge woman answered. "Oh, it is a choice bit. It was painted by a wicked one."
"Who brought it here?"
"Some one who wished to sell it. A passer-by. If it would interest you to know his name"—
— "Yes, certainly, it would interest me to know it," Bernardet replied.
The shop woman looked at Bernardet defiantly and asked this question:
"Do you know the man whose portrait that is?"
"No. I do not know him. But this resembles one of my relatives. It pleases me. How much is it?"
"A hundred francs," said the big woman.
Bernardet suppressed at the same time a sudden start and a smile.
"A hundred francs!Diable!how fast you go. It is worth sous rather than francs."
"That!" cried the woman, very indignant. "That? But look at this material, this background. It is famous, I tell you—I took it to an expert. At the public sale it might, perhaps, bring a thousand francs. My idea is that it is the picture of some renowned person. An actor or a former Minister. In fact, some historic person."
"But one must take one's chance," Bernardet replied in a jeering tone. "But one hundred francs is one hundred francs. Too much for me. Who sold you the painting?"
The woman went around behind the counter and opened a drawer, from which she took a note book, in which she kept a daily record of her sales. She turned over the leaves.
"November 12, a small oval painting bought"—Shereadjusted her spectacles as if to better decipher the name.
"I did not write the name myself; the man wrote it himself." She spelled out:
"Charles—Charles Breton—Rue de la Condamine, 16"——
"Charles Breton," Bernardet repeated; "who is this Charles Breton? I would like to know if he painted this portrait, which seems like a family portrait and has come to sell it"——
"You know," interrupted the woman, "that that often happens. It is business. One buys or one sells all in good time."
"And this Breton; how old was he?"
"Oh, young. About thirty years old. Very good looking. Dark, with a full beard."
"Did anything about him especially strike you?"
"Nothing!" The woman shortly replied; she had become tired of these questions and looked at the little man with a troubled glance.
Bernardet readily understood; and assuming a paternal, a beaming air, he said with his sweet smile:
"I will notfenceany more; I will tell you the truth. I am a Police Inspector, and I find that this portrait strangely resembles a man whom we have under lock and key. You understand that it is very important I should know all that is to be ascertained about this picture."
"But I have told you all I know, Monsieur," said the shopkeeper. "Charles Breton, Rue de la Condamine, 16; that is the name and address. I paid 20 francs for it. There is the receipt—read it, I beg. It is all right. We keep a good shop. Never have we, my late husband and I, been mixed with anything unlawful. Sometimes the bric-a-brac is soiled, but our hands and consciences have always been clean. Ask any one along the street about the Widow Colard. I owe no one and every one esteems me"——
The Widow Colard would have gone on indefinitely if Bernardet had not stopped her. She had, at first mention of the police, suddenly turned pale, but now she was very red, and her anger displayed itself in a torrent of words. He stemmed the flood of verbs.
"I do not accuse you, Mme. Colard, and I have said only what I wished to say. I passed by chance your shop; I saw in the window a portrait which resembled some one I knew. I ask you the price and I question you about its advent into your shop. There is nothing there which concerns you personally. I do not suspect you of receiving stolen goods; I do not doubt your good faith. I repeat my question. How much do you want for this picture?"
"Twenty francs, if you please. That is what it cost me. I do not wish to have it draw me intoanything troublesome. Take it for nothing, if that pleases you."
"Not at all! I intend to pay you. Of what are you thinking, Mme. Colard?"
The shopwoman had, like all people of a certain class, a horror of the police. The presence of a police inspector in her house seemed at once a dishonor and a menace. She felt herself vaguely under suspicion, and she felt an impulse to shout aloud her innocence.
Always smiling, the good man, with a gesture like that of a prelate blessing his people, endeavored to reassure her, to calm her. But he could do nothing with her. She would not be appeased. In the long run this was perhaps as well, for she unconsciously, without any intention of aiding justice, put some clews into Bernardet's hands which finally aided him in tracing the man.
Mme. Colard still rebelled. Did they think she was a spy, an informer? She had never—no, never—played such a part. She did not know the young man. She had bought the picture as she bought any number of things.
"And what if they should cut off his head because he had confidence in entering my shop—I should never forgive myself, never!"
"It is not going to bring Charles Breton to the scaffold. Not at all, not at all. It is only to find out who he is, and of whom he obtained this portrait.Once more—did nothing in his face strike you?"
"Nothing!" Mme. Colard responded.
She reflected a moment.
"Ah! yes; perhaps. The shape of his hat. A felt hat with wide brim, something like those worn in South America or Kareros. You know, the kind they call sombrero. The only thing I said to myself was, 'This is probably some returned traveler,' and if I had not seen at the bottom of the picture, Bordeaux, I should have thought that this might be the portrait of some Spaniard, some Peruvian."
Bernardet looked straight into Mme. Colard's spectacles and listened intently, and he suddenly remembered what Moniche had said of the odd appearance of the man who had, like the woman in black, called on M. Rovère.
"Some accomplice!" thought Bernardet.
He again asked Mme. Colard the price of the picture.
"Anything you please," said the woman, still frightened. Bernardet smiled.
"Come! come! What do you want for it? Fifty francs, eh? Fifty?"
"Away with your fifty francs! I place it at your disposal for nothing, if you need it."
Bernardet paid the sum he had named. He had always exactly, as if by principle, a fifty-franc note in his pocketbook. Very little money; a few whitepieces, but always this note in reserve. One could never tell what might hinder him in his researches. He paid, then, this note, adding that in all probability Mme. Colard would soon be cited before the Examining Magistrate to tell him about this Charles Breton.
"I cannot say anything else, for I do not know anything else," said the huge widow, whose breast heaved with emotion.
She wrapped up the picture in a piece of silk paper, then in a piece of newspaper, which chanced to be the very one in which Paul Rodier had published his famous article on "The Crime of the Boulevard de Clichy." Bernardet left enchanted with his "find," and repeated over and over to himself: "It is very precious! It is a tid-bit!"
Should he keep on toward the Préfecture to show this "find" to his Chief, or should he go at once to hunt up Charles Breton at the address he had given?
Bernardet hesitated a moment, then he said to himself that, in a case like this, moments were precious; an hour lost was time wasted, and that as the address which Breton had given was not far away, he would go there first. "Rue de la Condamine, 16," that was only a short walk to such a tramper as he was. He had good feet, a sharp eye and sturdy legs; he would soon be at the Batignolles. He had taken some famous tramps in histime, notably one night when he had scoured Paris in pursuit of a malefactor. This, he admitted, had wearied him a little; but this walk from the Avenue des Bons-Enfants to the Rue de la Condamine was but a spurt. Would he find that a false name and a false address had been given? This was but the infancy of art. If, however, he found that this Charles Breton really did live at that address and that he had given his true name, it would probably be a very simple matter to obtain all the information he desired of Jacques Dantin.
"What do I risk? A short walk," thought Bernardet, "a little fatigue—that can be charged up to Profit and Loss."
He hurried toward the street and number given. It was a large house, several stories high. The concierge was sweeping the stairs, having left a card bearing this inscription tacked on the front door. "The porter is on the staircase." Bernardet hastened up the stairs, found the man and questioned him. There was no Charles Breton in the house; there never had been. The man who sold the portrait had given a false name and address. Vainly did the police officer describe the individual who had visited Mme. Colard's shop. The man insisted that he had never seen any one who in the least resembled this toreador in the big felt hat. It was useless to insist! Mme. Colard had been deceived. And now, how to find, in thisimmense city of Paris, this bird of passage, who had chanced to enter the bric-a-brac shop. The old adage of "the needle in the haystack" came to Bernardet's mind and greatly irritated him. But, after all, there had been others whom he looked for; there had been others whom he had found, and probably he might still be able to find another trail. He had a collaborator who seldom failed him—Chance! It was destiny which often aided him.
Bernardet took an omnibus in his haste to return to his Chief. He was anxious to show his "find" to M. Leriche. When he reached the Préfecture he was immediately received. He unwrapped the portrait and showed it to M. Leriche.
"But that is Dantin!" cried the Chief.
"Is it not?"
"Without doubt! Dantin when younger, but assuredly Dantin! And where did you dig this up?"
Bernardet related his conversation with Mme. Colard and his fruitless visit to the Rue de la Condamine.
"Oh, never mind," said M. Leriche. "This discovery is something. The man who sold this picture and Dantin are accomplices. Bravo, Bernardet! We must let M. Ginory know."
The Examining Magistrate was, like the Chief and Bernardet, struck with the resemblance of the portrait to Dantin. His first move would be toquestion the prisoner about the picture. He would go at once to Mazas. M. Leriche and Bernardet should accompany him. The presence of the police spy might be useful, even necessary.
The Magistrate and the Chief entered a fiacre, while Bernardet mounted beside the driver. Bernardet said nothing, although the man tried to obtain some information from him. After one or two monosyllabic answers, the driver mockingly asked:
"Are you going to the Souricière (trap) to tease some fat rat?"
M. Ginory and M. Leriche talked together of theWalkyrie, of Bayreuth; and the Chief asked, through politeness, for news about his candidature to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
"Do not let us talk of the Institute," the Magistrate replied. "It is like the beginning of a hunt; to sigh for the prize that brings unhappiness."
The sombre pile, the Mazas, opened its doors to the three men. They traversed the long corridors, with the heavy air which pervaded them in spite of all efforts to the contrary, to a small room, sparsely furnished (a table, a few chairs, a glass bookcase), which served as an office for the Examining Magistrates when they had to hold any interviews with the prisoners.
The guardian-in-chief walked along with M. Ginory, M. Leriche followed them, and Bernardet respectfully brought up the rear.
"Bring in Jacques Dantin!" M. Ginory ordered. He seated himself at the table. M. Leriche took a chair at one side, and Bernardet stood near the little bookcase, next the only window in the room.
Jacques Dantin soon appeared, led in by two guards in uniform. He was very pale, but still retained his haughty air and his defiant attitude. The Magistrate saluted him with a slight movement of the head, and Dantin bowed, recognizing in Bernardet the man with whom he had walked and conversed behind Rovère's funeral car.
"Be seated, Dantin," M. Ginory said, "and explain to me, I beg, all you know about this portrait. You ought to recognize it."
He quickly held the picture before Dantin's eyes, wishing to scrutinize his face to see what sudden emotion it would display. Seeing the portrait, Dantin shivered and said in a short tone: "It is a picture which I gave to Rovère."
"Ah!" said M. Ginory, "you recognize it then?"
"It is my portrait," Jacques Dantin declared. "It was made a long time ago. Rovère kept it in his salon. How did it come here?"
"Ah!" again said the Magistrate. "Explain that to me!"
M. Ginory seemed to wish to be a little ironical. But Dantin roughly said:
"M. le Juge, I have nothing to explain to you. I understand nothing, I know nothing. Or, rather, I know that in your error—an error which you will bitterly regret some day or other, I am sure—you have arrested me, shut me up in Mazas; but that which I can assure you of is, that I have had nothing, do you hear, nothing whatever to do with the murder of my friend, and I protest with all my powers against your processes."
"I comprehend that!" M. Ginory coldly replied. "Oh! I understand all the disagreeableness of being shut up within four walls. But then, it is very simple! In order to go out, one has only to give to the one who has a right to know the explanations which are asked. Do you still persist in your system? Do you still insist on keeping, I know not what secret, which you will not reveal to us?"
"I shall keep it, Monsieur, I have reflected," said Dantin. "Yes, I have reflected, and in the solitude to which you have forced me I have examined my conscience." He spoke with firmness, less violently than at the Palais de Justice, and Bernardet's penetrating little eyes never left his face; neither did the Magistrate's, nor the Chief's.
"I am persuaded," Dantin continued, "that this miserable mistake cannot last long, and you will recognize the truth. I shall go out, at least fromhere, without having abused a confidence which one has placed in me and which I intend to preserve."