CHAPTER XLV.
THE HUNT FOR DESROLLES.
When Desrolles left the village under the shadow of Dartmoor, after bargaining for a handsome annuity, he meant to enter upon a new and delightful stage of existence. The world was changed for him. Assured of a handsome income, he felt as it were, new born. He would rove, butterfly-like, from city to city. He would sip of one sweet, and then fly to the rest. All that was fairest upon earth was at his command. The loveliest spots in southern Europe should be the cradle of his declining years. He would leave off brandy, and live decently. Henceforward he would have a full purse, and freedom from care; for what tortures can conscience have in reserve for a man who has set it at nought all his life?
Mr. Desrolles considered Paris as the first stage in that voyage of pleasure which he had planned for himself; but once having entered Paris, with money in his pocket, and a sense of independence, all his schemes became as nothing when weighed against the fascinations of that wonderful city. He had spent some of his most reckless years in Paris; he knew the city by heart, with all her charms, with all her vices, all those qualities which she possesses in common with the courtesans who spring from her soil. Paris for Desrolles in his decline had all the delights she had offered him in his youth. She stretched out her many arms to detain and hold him like an octopus. Her life of the streets and the café, her dancing places—where the dancing began at eleven at night and ended only at some unearthly hour of the morning—her singing places, where bare-necked brazen women sat smiling in the glare of the gas—her wine shops at every corner—her billiard-rooms over every café—all these were charms which for Desrolles proved irresistible. There was an all-pervading note of dissipation in the place that delighted him. In London he had felt himself a scamp. In Paris he fancied himself little worse than his fellow men. There were differences perhaps; but only differences of degree.
Desrolles had come to Paris with the intention of curing himself of brandy. He carried out this resolve with laudable firmness. He cured himself of brandy by taking to absinthe. He entered Paris with ninety-five pounds in his pocket, and a promise of a thousand a year. With the future so amply provided for, he was naturally somewhat reckless as to his expenditure in the present. He was not a man who cared for pomp or show. He had out-lived his taste for the refinements of life.With his purse full of money he had no inclination to put up at Meurice’s or the Bristol. The elegant luxury of those establishments would have seemedfadeto his perverted taste, just as brandy without the addition of cayenne pepper used to seem tasteless to a luckless English marquis, who burned life’s brief candle at both ends, and brought it to speedy extinction.
Desrolles, like the hare, wound back to his old form. Years ago he had lodged in the students’ quarter, and drunk at the students’ cafés, and lost his money among those profane young reprobates from whom were to issue the future senators, doctors, and lawyers of France. The lodging had been dirty and disreputable twenty years ago. It was so much the more dirty and no less disreputable after the lapse of twenty years. But Desrolles was grateful to Providence and the Prefect of the Seine for having left his old quarters standing.
The house, beneath whose weather-worn roof he had spent such wild nights of old, had been spared from demolition by accident only, and was soon to be numbered with the things of the past. Its doom was fixed, it existed only on sufferance, pending the complete reconstruction of the quarter. A mighty Boulevard, marching on with progress as relentless as Juggernaut’s car, had cut the narrow, dingy old street across, at right angles, letting daylight in upon all its shabbiness, its teeminglife, its contented poverty, its secret crime, squalid miseries, and sordid vices.
The house in which Desrolles had lived had but just escaped demolition. It stood at the corner of the broad, new Boulevard, where mighty stone palaces were being raised upon the ashes of departed hovels. Its next door neighbour had been razed to the ground, and the gaudy papers that had lined the vanished rooms were revealed to the open day, showing how, stage by stage, the rooms had waxed shabbier, lower, smaller, till on the sixth story they had dwindled to mere pigeon holes. The ragged paper rotted on the wall; black patches showed where the fire-places had stood; and a great black column marked the course of a demolished chimney-stack. This outside wall had been shored up, but, even thus supported, the tall, narrow, corner house, contemplated from the street below, had an insecure look.
Desrolles was delighted to find his ancient den still standing. How well he remembered the little wine-shop on the ground floor, the bright-coloured bottles in the windows, the odour of brandy within, the blouses sitting on the benches against the wall, squabbling loudly over dominoes, or playingécartewith the limpest and smallest of cards.
He inquired in the wine-shop if there wasune chambre de garçon—a bachelor’s room—to be had upstairs.
‘There is always room for a bachelor,’ answered the buxom female behind the counter. ‘Yes, there is a pretty little room on the fifth story, all that there is of the most commodious,où, monsieur aurait toutes ses aises.’
Desrolles shrugged his shoulders dubiously.
‘The fifth story,’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you think my legs are as young as they were twenty years ago?’
‘Monsieur looks full of youth and activity,’ said the woman.
‘Does La Veuve Chomard still keep the house?’
Alas, no. The widow Chomard had departed some nine years ago to the narrowest of houses in the cemetery of Mount Parnassus. The present proprietor was a gentleman in the commerce of wines, and also the proprietor of the shop.
That made nothing, Desrolles told the woman. All he wanted was a comfortable room on the first or second floor.
Unhappily thechambrette de garçonon the fifth stage was the only unoccupied room in the house, and after some hesitation Desrolles followed an ancient female of the portress species up the dirty old staircase, and into the chambrette.
‘That gives upon the new boulevard,’ said the portress, opening a small window. ‘C’est crânement gai.It is awfully lively!’
Desrolles looked down upon the broad new street, with its omnibuses, and waggons, and builders’ trollies, circulating up and down—its monstrous scaffolding, and lofty ladders, and workmen dangling between earth and sky, with an appearance of being in immediate peril of death.
The room was small, but to Desrolles’ eye it looked snug. There were comfortable stuff curtains to the mahogany bedstead, curtains to the window, a carpet on the red-tiled floor, a hearth on which a wood fire might burn cheerily, a cupboard for firewood, and a bureau with a lock and key, in which a man might put away a bottle or two for occasional use.
‘It’s an infernal way up,’ he said. ‘A man might as well live on the top of the gate of St. Denis. But I must make it serve. I am a staunch Conservative. I like old quarters.’
Of old the house had been free and easy in its habits. A lodger could come in at any hour he liked with his pass-key. Desrolles made an inquiry or two of the portress as to the present rule. He found that the old order still obtained. The present proprietor wasun bon enfant. He asked nothing of his lodgers, but that they should pay him his rent, and not embroil themselves with the police.
Desrolles flung down the small valise which contained all his worldly gear, paid the portress a month’s rent in advance, and went out to enjoy his Paris. That enchantress had him inher clutch already. He made up his mind by this time that he would defer his journey southward for a few weeks; perhaps until after the procession of theBœuf Grashad delighted the lively inhabitants of the liveliest city in the world.
He went back to his old haunts, loved twenty years ago, and always remembered with fondness. He found many changes, but the atmosphere was still the same. Absinthe was the one great novelty. That murderous stimulant had not attained a universal popularity at the beginning of the Second Empire. Desrolles took to absinthe as an infant takes to the gracious fountain heaven has provided for its sustenance. He renounced brandy in favour of the less familiar poison. He found plenty of new companions in his old haunts. They were not the same men, but they had the same habits, the same vices; and Desrolles’ idea of a friend was a bundle of sympathetic wickedness. He found men to gamble with and drink with, men whose tongues were as foul as his own, and who looked at life in this world and the next from the same standpoint.
His brutal nature sank even to a lower depth of brutality in such congenial company. Money gave him a temporary omnipotence. He was spending it with royal recklessness, believing himself secure against all future evils, when one morning chance flung an English newspaper in his way, and he read the report of John Treverton’s first appearance at the Bow Street Police-court.
The paper was more than a week old. The adjourned inquiry must have been held a day or two ago. Desrolles sat staring at the page in a half stupid wonderment, his brain bemused with absinthe, trying to consider what effect this arrest of John Treverton might exercise upon his own fortunes.
There was no mention of his own name in the report. So far he was entirely ignored. So far he felt himself safe.
Yet there was no knowing what might happen. An investigation of this kind once commenced, might extend its ramifications in the widest directions.
‘It is a pity,’ Desrolles said to himself. ‘The business was so comfortably settled. It must be the parson’s son, that young coxcomb I saw in Devonshire, who has set the thing moving again.’
His life in Paris suited him, it was indeed the only kind of life he cared for; yet so much was he disturbed by the idea of possible revelations to which this new inquiry might lead, that he began to consider the prudence of going further afield.
‘America is the place,’ he said to himself. ‘Some sea-coast city in South America would suit me down to the ground. But that kind of life would only be comfortable with an assured income;and how am I to feel sure of my income if I leave Europe? As to Treverton being in trouble—I can afford to take that coolly. They can’t hang him. The evidence against him is not strong enough to hang a mongrel dog. No, unless other names are brought up, the thing must blow over. But if I put the high seas between Mr. and Mrs. Treverton and me, how can I be sure of my pension? They may snap their fingers at me when I am on the other side of the herring-pond.’
This was a serious consideration, yet Desrolles had a lurking conviction that it would be wise for him to get to America as soon as he could. Paris might suit him admirably, but Paris was unpleasantly near London. The police of the two cities were doubtless in frequent communication.
He went to a shipping office, and got the time bill of the American steamers that were to sail from Havre during the next six weeks. He carried this document about with him for two or three days, and studied it frequently in hisquiet moments. He knew the names of the steamers and their tonnage by heart, but he had not yet made up his mind to which vessel he would entrust himself and his fortunes. There wasLa Reine Blanche, which sailed for Valparaiso in a week’s time. There was theZenobie, which sailed for Rio Janeiro in a fortnight. He was divided between these two.
He told himself that he must have an outfit of some kind for his voyage. This and his passage would cost at least fifty pounds. Of the hundred which John Treverton had given him he had only sixty remaining.
‘There will not be much left by the time I get to the south,’ he said to himself. ‘But I don’t think Laura will throw me over. Besides, if the money is paid to my account in Shepherd’s Inn—the Trevertons need never know my whereabouts.’
He made up his mind at last that he would go by theReine Blanche, the ship which sailed earliest. He went to the Belle Jardinière, and laid out ten pounds upon clothing, and bought himself a portmanteau to hold his new garments. He called at the agents to take his passage and pay the necessary deposit, to secure his berth.
He had intended to go to the New World with a new name, but exhausted nature had required a good deal of stimulant after the purchase of the outfit, and by the time he reached the office Mr. Desrolles was, in his own phraseology, rather far gone. It was as much as he could do to reckon his money when he took a handful of loose gold and silver from his pocket. The clerk had to help him. When the clerk asked him his name, he answered without thinking—Desrolles; but in the next moment a ray of light flashed through the darkness of his clouded brain, and he corrected himself.
‘Beg pardon,’ he ejaculated, spasmodically. ‘Desrolles a friend’s name. My name’s Mowbray. Colonel Mowbray, citizen, United States. Just finished a grand tour of Europe. ’Mericans very fond of Paris. Charming city. Good deal altered since my last tour—twent’ years ago. Not altered for the better.’
‘Oh, then your name is not Desrolles, but Mowbray,’ said the clerk, scanning the American colonel somewhat suspiciously.
‘Yes, Mowbray. M-o-w-b-r-a-y’ answered Desrolles, laboriously.
He left the office, and being too far gone to have any definite views as to his destination, drifted vaguely to the Palais Royal, where he came to anchor at the Café de la Rotonde, and there called for the usual dose of absinthe, into which he poured half a tumbler of water, with a tremulous hand.
He fell asleep in the snug corner by the stove, and slept off something of his intoxication; or at least he awoke so far refreshed as to remember an appointment he had made with one of his new friends of the Quartier Latin, to dine at a restaurant on the Quai des Grands Augustins.
He had plenty of time to spare, so he sauntered round the Palais Royal, and stared idly at the shop windows, till he came to one where there was a great display of diamonds, when he recoiled as if he had seen an adder, and turned quickly aside into the gravelly garden, where he flung himself upon a bench, trembling from head to foot. ‘Curse them,’ he muttered, ‘curse those shining shams. They have ruined me body and soul. I never took to drinking—hard—until after that.’
Beads of sweat broke out upon his contracted brow as he sat there, staring straight before him, as if at some horrid vision. Then he pulled himself together with an effort, braced his shattered nerves, and left the Palais Royal with something of the old ‘long sword, saddle, bridle’ swagger, which had been peculiar to him twenty years ago, when he called himself Captain Desmond, and had not yet forgotten his youthful days in a cavalry regiment.
He kept his appointment, treated his new friend like a prince, dined luxuriously, and drank deeply of the strongest Burgundy in the wine list, winding up with numerous glasses of Chartreuse. After dinner Mr. Desrolles and his guest repaired to a café on the Boulevard St. Michel, where there was a billiard table; and the rest of the evening was devoted to billiards, Desrolles growing noisier, more quarrelsome, and less distinct of utterance as the night wore on.
There were two things which Mr. Desrolles did not know; first, that his new friend was a distinguished member of the Parisian swell-mob, and was constantly under the surveillance of the police; secondly, that he himself had been watched andfollowed by an English detective ever since he left the Quai des Grands Augustins, which English detective knew all about Mr. Desrolles’ intended voyage in theReine Blanche.
Desrolles went home to his lodging, not too steady of foot, soon after midnight. He was prepared to encounter some slight difficulty in opening the door with his pass-key, and was pleased at finding that some other night-bird, returning to his nest a little earlier, had left the door ajar. He had only to push it open and go in.
Within all was gloom, save in one corner by the portress’s den, where a glimmer of gas showed the numbered board whereon hung the keys which admitted the lodgers to their several apartments. But Desrolles knew every twist of the corkscrew staircase. Drunk as he was, he wound his way up safely enough, with only an occasional lurch and an occasional stumble. He managed to unlock the door of his room, after trying the key upside down once or twice, and making some circuitous scratchings on the panel. He managed to strike a lucifer and light his candle, leaning against the mantelpiece as he performed that feat, and giving a drunken chuckle when it was done. But his nerves must have been in a very shaky condition, for when a man, who had crept softly into the room behind him, laid a strong hand upon his shoulder, he collapsed, and made as if he would have fallen to the ground. ‘What do you want?’ he asked in French.
‘You,’ answered the intruder in English. ‘I arrest you on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of La Chicot. You know all about it. You were examined at the inquest. Anything you say now will be used as evidence against you. You had better come quietly with me.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Desrolles, still in French. ‘I am a Frenchman.’
‘Oh, very much of that. You’ve been lodging here three weeks. You are known to be an Englishman. You took your passage to-day for Valparaiso. I called at the office to make inquiries an hour after you left it. No nonsense, Mr. Desrolles. All you’ve got to do is to come quietly with me.’
‘You’ve got some one else outside, I suppose,’ said Desrolles, with a savage glare at the door.
His expression in this moment was diabolical; a wild beast—a beast of a low type, not your kingly lion or your lordly tiger—at bay and knowing escape impossible, might so look; the thin lips curling upward above the long sharks’ teeth; the grizzled brows contracted—the eyes emitting sparks of lurid light.
‘Of course,’ answered the man coolly. ‘You don’t suppose I should be such a fool as to trust myself in a hole like this without help. I’ve got my mate on the landing, and we’ve both gotrevolvers. Ah, none of that now,’ ejaculated the detective suddenly, as Desrolles plunged his lean hand into his breast pocket. ‘Stow that, now. Is it a knife?’
It was a knife, and a murderous one. Desrolles had it out, and the long-pointed blade ready, before his captor could stop him. The man sprang upon him, caught him by the wrist, before the knife could do mischief; and then the two closed, hand against hand, limb against limb, Desrolles wrestling with his foe as only rage and despair can wrestle.
He had been a famous bruiser in days of old. To-night he had the unnatural strength given to the overtasked sinews by a mind on the edge of madness. He fought like a madman: he fought like a tiger. There was not a muscle—not a sinew—that was not strained to its utmost in that savage conflict.
For some moments Desrolles seemed the victor. The detective had lied when he said that he had help at hand. The French policeman who had planned to meet him at that house at midnight had not yet come, and the Englishman had been too impatient to wait, believing himself and his revolver more than a match for one drunken old man.
He did not want to use his revolver. It would have been a hazardous thing even to wound his man. It was his duty to take him alive, and surrender him safe and sound to be dealt with by the law of his country.
‘Come,’ he said, soothingly, having hardly enough breath for so much speech, ‘let me put the bracelets on and take you away quietly. What’s the use of this humbug?’
Desrolles, with his teeth set, answered never a word. He had got his antagonist very near the door; once across the threshold, a last vigorous thrust from his lean arms might hurl the man backwards down the steep staircase—certain death to the intruder. Desrolles’ eyes were fixed upon the doorway, the door standing conveniently open. His bloodshot eyeballs flashed fire. It was in his mind that the thing was to be done. One more herculean effort, and his foe would be across the threshold.
Possibly the detective saw that look of triumph in the savage face, and divined his danger. However that might be, he gathered himself together, and with a sudden impetus, flinging all his weight against Desrolles, he drove his foe before him across the narrow room, hurled him with all his might against the wall, casting him loose for the moment, in order to grip him tighter afterwards.
But as that tall figure fell with terrific force against the gaudy-papered wall, there was a sudden crashing sound, at which the detective recoiled with a cry of horror. The frail lath and plaster partition split asunder, the rotten wood crumbled and scattered itself in a cloud of dust, half that side of the room dropped intoruin, as if the house had been a house of cards, and, with one hoarse shriek, Desrolles rolled backwards into empty air.
They found him presently upon the pavement below, so battered and disfigured by that awful fall as to be hardly recognizable even by the eyes that had looked upon him a few minutes before. In falling he had struck against the timbers that shored up therotten old house, and life had been beaten out of him before he touched the stones below. It was a bad end of a bad man. There was nobody to be sorry for him except the detective, who had lost the chance of a handsome reward.
The Parisian journals next day made a feature of the catastrophe. ‘Fall of part of a house in the Boulevard Louis Capet. Horrible death of one of the inmates.’
The English newspapers of a later date contained the account of the pursuit and arrest of Desrolles, his desperate resistance, and awful death.