The report of the interrogatory before theJuge d'Instructionwas followed by a page of notes written by the police-officer Drubarde.
The child Léonie Lemarque was not again in a condition to give her evidence. A violent attack of brain-fever succeeded her second appearance before theJuge d'Instruction, and on her recovery from the fever it was found that her mind had suffered seriously from the shock she had undergone. Memory was a blank. TheJuge d'Instructionvisited her in her own home when she was convalescent, and tried to recall the impressions made upon her at the time of the murder, in the hope of identifying the murderer; but she had forgotten the whole circumstances of her aunt's death, and yet she suffered agonies from a vague terror associated in her enfeebled mind with the very name of that aunt.
As soon as she was well enough to travel she was taken to the Ursuline convent at Dinan by a good priest who had befriended her grandmother for many years. After this transference to the convent the police lost sight of the child Lemarque.
Throughout the evening, even amidst the distractions of a finely acted comedy by Augier, and in the wakeful intervals of a somewhat disturbed night, Edward Heathcote brooded over the details of the evidence which he had read, not once, but several times, before he closed the volume of reports.
The detective instinct, which is a characteristic of every well-trained lawyer's mind, had been suddenly developed into almost a passion. He no longer limited his desire to the unravelling of the web of Léonie Lemarque's fate; he ardently longed to discover the mystery of Marie Prévol's murder—to succeed where one of the most accomplished Parisian detectives had ignominiously failed. His eagerness to hear more about Drubarde's efforts and failures in this particular case led him to the Quai des Grands Augustins at an early hour, in time to surprise the worthy Félix in the act of breakfasting temperately uponcafé au laitand boiled eggs.
Monsieur Drubarde gave his new friend a cheery welcome. It was a lovely morning, balmy as midsummer, and the little garden on the leads was bright with gaily-coloured asters, nasturtiums, and geraniums, and agreeably perfumed with mignonette.
"Do you perceive the exquisite odours?" asked Drubarde.
"Your mignonette is delicious."
"My mignonette!" cried the police-officer scornfully. "Why, when the wind blows straight from the flower-market, as it does to-day, I can sit in my garden and enjoy all the perfumes of the Riviera. I can revel in orange-blossoms, drink my fill of tube-roses and stephanotis, Maréchal Niel and Jacqueline roses. And look what a view! Not a touch of the sculptor's chisel that I cannot see yonder on the old kings of Notre Dame; not a cornice or a column in the new hospital that does not stand clear in the morning light! And yet Paris is peopled with fools who do not make gardens on their housetops!"
"Perhaps every landlord would not be so complaisant as yours, Monsieur Drubarde, nor every housetop so adapted to horticulture."
"True, your Parisian landlord is a churl and a niggard, and a good many of our housetops are no doubt impracticable. But the inventive mind, the love of the beautiful, is more often wanting. I see you have been good enough to bring back my volume. You have read the report, I suppose?"
"Every line, every syllable, three times over."
"And you are interested?"
"Deeply. I was never more intensely interested in any case that has come within my knowledge: yet as a lawyer I have become acquainted with many strange stories. Yes, I am more interested than I can say in the fate of that unhappy actress, in the character of her mysterious lover: and yet I doubt if this former crime has any bearing upon the murder of Léonie Lemarque."
"It would certainly be going somewhat far to suppose a link between the death of a girl travelling alone in Cornwall—a death which may after all have been accidental—and the murder of her aunt ten years before in the forest of Saint-Germain. However, it is only by the minutest scrutiny of Léonie's past life that you can arrive at the motive which took her to England, and discover whether she had an enemy in that country—that is to say, if she was lured across the Channel in order to be made away with by that enemy. A very wild and far-fetched supposition I think you will admit, Monsieur, and one which our talented friend Mr. Distin would not entertain for five minutes."
"Professional acumen like Mr. Distin's is apt to run in grooves—to be too intent upon following the practical and the possible, to shut out the romantic element, to strangle the imagination, and to forget that it is very often by following the apparently impossible that we arrive at the truth."
"I see you are an enthusiast, Monsieur."
"I have never tried to subjugate my imagination. As a lawyer I found ideality the most useful faculty of my brain. Now, I have been thinking about Léonie Lemarque's fate from every possible point of view, from the standpoint of imagination as well as from the standpoint of common sense; and it has occurred to me that if the murderer of Marie Prévol were living, he would be Léonie's natural enemy."
"Why so?"
"Because she was the only witness of his crime. She alone would have the power to identify him as the murderer."
"You forget that it is just that power which the poor girl lost during her illness. The fever deprived her of memory."
"That effect of the fever may not have been permanent. The agitation which she showed at the mention of her aunt's name—when Sister Gudule questioned her about the silk handkerchief given to her by Marie Prévol—would indicate that memory was not a blank. And again, if she had forgotten the person of the murderer, or even the fact of the murder, he would not know that, and would regard her existence as a source of danger to himself."
Félix Drubarde smiled the superior smile of experience reproving folly.
"And you think that after having allowed this one witness of his crime to exist unmolested for ten years, the assassin all at once took it into his head to murder her; that with this view he carried her to your barbarous province of Cornuailles, and there flung her over an embankment. I am tempted to paraphrase the Scripture, Monsieur, and to exclaim, 'Are there not viaducts and embankments in this vast France of ours, that a man should go to the remote west of your little England in order to commit murder in that particular fashion!'"
Heathcote felt that the police-officer had the best of the argument.
"I grant that it would have been a clumsy method of getting rid of the girl," he said, "but murder has been clumsily done before to-day, and imagination can conceive no crime so improbable as not to be paralleled by fact. However, it is perhaps too soon to speculate that the murderer of Marie Prévol was also the murderer of Léonie Lemarque. What we have to do is to find out the reason of the girl's journey to England. But before we set about that task, I should like you to tell me what steps you took in your endeavour to trace the murderer after the examination before theJuge d'Instruction."
"I looked over the case in my note-book last night, as I was prepared for you to ask for those details," replied Drubarde. "It was a case that interested me profoundly, all the more so, perhaps, because I made so little headway in my investigations. My first endeavour was to trace the murderer's proceedings immediately after the crime. He must have made his escape from Saint-Germain somehow, unless he had killed himself in some obscure corner of the wood. Even then the finding of the body would have been a question of so many days, weeks, or months. Alive, it would have been impossible for him to remain in hiding in the forest for a week, as the wood was searched thoroughly during the three days immediately succeeding the murder. On the third day a hat was found in a boggy bit of ground, ever so far from the scene of the crime. The hat was a gentleman's hat, but it had been lying three days and nights in a bog. It had been rained upon for two days out of the three—there was no maker's name—no indication by which the owner of the hat could be traced. That it had been found so far off seemed to me to prove that the murderer had been roaming the wood in a wild and disordered frame of mind, and walking at a tremendous pace, or he could never have got over the distance between the time when he was seen by the waiter at the Henri Quatre, to turn the corner of the terrace, and the period of the murder."
"You believe, then, that the man seen by the waiter was actually the murderer?"
"I have no doubt of it. That spasmodic walk, that hesitancy, the looking back, and then hurrying on—all these indicated a mind engaged upon some agitating theme. The man was seen watching the window inside which Marie Prévol and her admirer were seated. He moved away when he saw himself observed. He had disguised himself as much as he could by turning up the collar of his coat; and who can doubt that this was the same man who had been seen by Léonie in the railway-station, watching Marie Prévol and her lover from behind the door of the waiting-room? The dark spectacles were part of a disguise. These are all details that point to one conclusion. The finding of the hat induced me to visit every shop in Saint-Germain where a hat could be bought. It was clear that the murderer could not have gone far from the forest bare-headed, without attracting attention. He must have procured a hat somehow; and it was not long before I ascertained that a hat had been bought late on that very evening. At a shop in an out-of-the-way corner of the town I was told that a boy, agamin, had come in on the night of the murder, and had asked for a cloth travelling-cap. He had chosen one with flaps to protect the ears, a form of cap intended to give the utmost protection from cold. He paid for his purchase with a napoleon, and seemed in a great hurry to be gone, not even stopping to count his change. The shopkeeper had wondered at such a little ragamuffin being intrusted with a purchase of the kind. The man had been on the point of closing his shop, and therefore was quite positive as to the hour. It was his invariable habit to put up his shutters at nine o'clock, and the clock was striking as the boy came to the door of the shop, breathless and heated, as if he had been running for some distance."
"And you conclude that this travelling-cap was bought for the murderer?"
"Hear the sequel, and judge for yourself. I went from the hatter's to the railway-station, and there, after having been bandied about from pillar to post, I succeeded in finding a tolerably intelligent official who remembered the night of the murder—now ten days past—and who could recall most of the passengers who had left for Paris by the half-past nine o'clock train upon that particular night. The news of the murder had not been brought to the station before the starting of the train: a most criminal neglect on the part of the local police. No suspicious-looking person had been observed to enter the train; but upon my questioning him closely, the man remembered having noticed a traveller who wore a cloth cap with flaps over the ears—a seemingly needless protection upon a mild September evening. 'There is one who takes care of himself,' the railway official had thought. For the rest, this passenger had looked like a gentleman, tall, erect, well-built, a bigger man than the majority of Frenchmen—what the railway official permitted himself to callun bel homme. Had he appeared agitated, breathless, in a hurry? No, the official had noticed nothing extraordinary in his manner. He wore smoke-coloured spectacles, which concealed the expression of his eyes. He had a return-ticket for Paris. The train was scarcely out of the station when the police came to make inquiries. The murder had been known of at the police-station at a quarter past eight, and it was not until after half-past nine that the police thought of setting a watch upon the railway-station. That is how your rustic police favour the escape of a criminal."
"Did you trace your gentleman in the cloth cap any further?"
"Not an inch. No one had observed him at Saint-Lazare, nor at any intermediate station where the train stopped. I wearied myself during the next six weeks in the endeavour to trace the man called Georges, who must have had some local habitation in Paris besides Marie Prévol's apartment. In vain. In no quarter of Paris could I hear of any apartment occupied by a man answering to the description of this man who called himself Georges—rich, independent, handsome, in the prime of life. I could trace no such man among the prosperous classes of Paris, and my machinery for tracking any individual in the wilderness of this great city had hitherto proved almost infallible. This man baffled me. I 'touched on him' now and again, as you English say of your hunted fox, but I could never get upon a scent strong enough to follow; and in the end I gave up all hope of finding him. He must have sneaked out of France under the very noses of the police; for I had set a watch upon every probable exit from this country."
"No doubt he was clever enough to choose the most improbable point of departure. Did you see much of Madame Lemarque after the murder?"
"No. My interest in her ceased when I gave up the case as hopeless. I had fresh cases—new interests; and the murder of Marie Prévol remained in my mind only as a tradition, until you recalled the story of the crime."
"I telegraphed yesterday to the principal of the Ursuline convent at Dinan," said Mr. Heathcote, "and I have obtained from her the address at which Madame Lemarque was living two years ago, when her niece was sent back to Paris in company with other pupils. After leaving you I shall go to that address, and try to find Madame Lemarque. I may have the painful duty of informing her of her granddaughter's death; and yet I can but think that were the grandmother still living she must have heard of the girl's death, and would have communicated with the Cornish police."
"That is to suppose her more intelligent than the average Frenchwoman," said Drubarde, as if he belonged to another nation. "Suppose I accompany you in your search for Madame Lemarque? That ought to be interesting."
"I shall be delighted to secure your aid."
Monsieur Drubarde and his guest descended the ladder. The detective put on a gray overcoat, which concealed and subjugated the airiness of his summer attire. He put on the hat of sober commonplace existence, and contrived to give himself an almost patriarchal aspect before he left his lodging.
The street in which Madame Lemarque had been living when the nuns of Dinan last heard of her was a narrow and shabby little street between Saint-Sulpice and the Luxembourg. The house was decently kept, and had a respectable air, and was evidently not one of those caravanserais where lodgers come and go with every term. It had a settled sober appearance, and the brass plates upon the door told of permanent residents with reputable avocations. One of these plates informed society that Mesdames Lemarque and Beauville,Robes et Modes, occupied the third floor. The staircase was clean and quiet, and the first sound that saluted Mr. Heathcote's ears as he went up-stairs was the screech of a parrot, which became momentarily louder as the visitors approached the third floor.
On the door on the left of the landing appeared another brass plate—Mesdames Lemarque et Beauville, Robes, Modes, Chapeaux.
Heathcote rang the bell. He felt curiously agitated at the thought that in the next minute he might be face to face with the dead girl's grandmother.
The door was opened by an elderly woman in black, very sallow, very thin, with prominent cheekbones and hungry black eyes. She was neatly clad, her rusty silk gown fitting her fleshless form to perfection, her linen collar and cuffs spotlessly clean, her iron-gray hair carefully arranged; but poverty was stamped upon every fold of her gown, and written in every line upon her forehead.
"Madame Lemarque?" inquired Heathcote, while theci-devantpolice-officer looked over his shoulder.
"No, I am not Madame Lemarque, but I am her business representative. Any orders intended for Madame Lemarque can be executed by me. I am Mademoiselle Beauville."
"Alas, Mademoiselle, it is not a question of orders," replied Heathcote, in his most courteous tones. "I have come on a painful errand. I have to impart very sad news to Madame Lemarque."
Madame Beauville sighed and shrugged her thin shoulders.
"Madame Lemarque is taking her rest in a place where all the events of this earth are alike indifferent," she said. "Take the trouble to enter my humble apartment, gentlemen. Madame Lemarque was my partner and my friend."
Heathcote and his companion followed the dressmaker into her littlesalon, where a dilapidated old gray cockatoo was clambering upon a perch, seemingly in danger of doing himself to death head downwards at every other minute. Thesalonwas like the appearance of Mademoiselle Beauville, scrupulously neat, painfully pinched and spare. A poor little old-fashioned walnut table, polished to desperation, a cheap little china vase of common flowers, a carpet which covered only a small island in an ocean of red tiles, an old mahogany secrétaire with materials for writing, and by way of decoration the fashion-plates ofLe Folletneatly pinned against the dingy wall-paper. There was a work-basket on the table, and Mademoiselle Beauville had apparently been busily remaking a very old gown of her own, in order to keep her hand in during the dead season.
Heathcote discovered later that Mademoiselle Beauville cherished one bitter and unappeasable hatred, and that was against Messrs. Spricht, Van Klopen, and the whole confraternity of men-milliners.
"Then Madame Lemarque is dead, I apprehend, Mademoiselle?"
"Madame Lemarque died last June."
"Suddenly?"
"No, she had been ailing for some time. But the end came more quickly than she expected. My poor friend had but a short time in which to arrange her affairs."
"Was her granddaughter Léonie living with her at the time of her death?"
"She was. But what do you know about Léonie?"
The ex-detective laid his hand hastily upon Heathcote's wrist before he could answer.
"Answer nothing until we have heard what she can tell us," he whispered.
"I know very little about her, but I am anxious to know more; and if you should be a loser by the waste of your time in answering my inquiries, I shall be most happy to recompense you for that loss," said Heathcote.
The spinster's hungry eyes sparkled. Decent poverty has depths unknown to the professed pauper. Mademoiselle's larder would have exhibited a touching spectacle to the eye of the philosopher or physiologist. The philosopher would have wondered that woman can endure privation with such patience: the physiologist would have been surprised that humanity can sustain life upon so little. For weeks past Mademoiselle Beauville's most luxurious idea of dinner had been an egg. For the last week her daily ration had been two halfpenny rolls.
"Tell me all you can about your friend and her grandchild," asked Heathcote eagerly. "I am particularly interested in knowing everything; but as it is dry work talking, and as neither my friend nor I have lunched, it might be a good idea to get a bottle of Bordeaux and a few biscuits, if Mademoiselle will permit us to refresh ourselves in her apartment."
His keen glance had noted the hollow cheeks and glittering eyes of the dressmaker, and he wanted an excuse for giving life and warmth to that impoverished form. Drubarde caught at the idea, thinking that his client's design was to loosen the lady's tongue by the agency of Bacchus. It was altogether an amateur's notion, crude, wanting in subtlety; but the genial Drubarde was willing to indulge a beginner who was feeling his way in the elements of a great art.
"I'll fetch a bottle of wine myself," he said cheerily; "I know where I can get one close by, and of the best."
"Bring two," said Heathcote. "Mademoiselle will accept the second bottle by way of souvenir."
"Monsieur, do you wish to make me a drunkard? I have not tasted wine since my poor friend's death," protested Mademoiselle Beauville, but there was a look in her face which told Heathcote that his gift would not be unwelcome.
Drubarde ran down-stairs like a boy, and was back in five minutes, carrying a couple of sealed bottles, labelled St. Estèphe, and a large bag of biscuits.
Mademoiselle had set out a tray in the mean time, with her poor little stock of glasses, three in all, and one of those cracked, and an old china plate for the biscuits. Again her eyes glistened when she saw the ample biscuit-bag.
"Let me look at the name on the bag," said Heathcote.
Strange, it was the very name upon that biscuit-bag which he carried at this moment, neatly folded in his pocket-book, the bag which had been found in the second-class compartment from which the girl fell!
"And now, Mademoiselle, tell me all you can about your deceased friend and her granddaughter. You had known Madame Lemarque for some time, I conclude?"
"I had lived with her for nearly ten years."
"For nearly ten years? Then you must have joined your fortunes with hers very soon after the murder of her daughter, Marie Prévol?"
"You have heard of that terrible event, then, Monsieur?" asked the dressmaker. "It is so long since it happened that I thought it had been forgotten by all the world except me."
"No, Mademoiselle; a tragedy so terrible as that can never be forgotten by those who study the physiology of crime. I am keenly interested in tracing the murderer of Marie Prévol."
"After ten years!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Beauville, with an incredulous smile. "Only a dreamer could think of such a thing, Monsieur."
"Then I am such a dreamer, Mademoiselle, and I hope you will help me to realise my dream."
"Does Monsieur know that Monsieur Mardoche, one of the most distinguished of ourJuges d'Instruction, took up this case with enthusiasm; that the police were never more earnest than in their endeavour to find poor Marie Prévol's murderer? Does Monsieur know that it was a double murder, and that the Baron de Maucroix, a young man of high family and large fortune, was also a victim? Does Monsieur suppose that the Baron's friends were idle—that no inducement was offered to the police?"
"I am aware of all this, Mademoiselle, and I know that the cleverest police in the world——"
"Except Russia. We must always bow to the superior genius of the north," interjected Drubarde.
"I am aware that the police failed. But you must consider, Mademoiselle, that when the police of Paris were keenest in their pursuit of the assassin, the assassin was most upon his guard. The consciousness of his crime, the horror of his position, intensified his intelligence. He had but one thought—to escape detection. Every act, every movement, every word was planned with that purpose. But now ten years have gone by—ten years of security. The murderer may be less guarded, more open to detection. He will have grown careless—foolhardy even—believing that after such an interval detection must be impossible. If Mademoiselle will do me the honour to touch glasses, we will discuss this question at our leisure."
He had filled the three glasses, but he had perceived that the dressmaker had a delicacy in drinking the wine he had provided, so he took up his glass and offered the edge of it to hers; and, emboldened by this friendly movement, the spinster clinked her glass against the rim of his, then against that of the patriarchal Drubarde, while the cockatoo, wondering at this unwonted revelry, screeched his loudest.
"To your good health, gentlemen," faltered the dressmaker, before she sipped her wine.
"To the speedy discovery of Marie Prévol's murderer," said Heathcote.
"Did you know our poor Marie, Monsieur, that you are thus interested in her dark fate?"
"No, Mademoiselle."
"O, if you had but known her, I should understand your desire to avenge her death. She was so lovely. To know her was to adore her. Even a soured old maid such as I could but yield to her charm. She was as loving as she was lovable; a clinging disposition, a poetical nature. Her life was not blameless, perhaps—who knows? We will not scrutinise too closely. She was as different from those harpies whom one hears of in Paris as a wild rose in the hedge is different from a jewel that has gone the round of every Mont-de-Piété in the city. Her heart was pure as the heart of a child. She had no ambition but to love and to be loved. The man who absorbed her life for a long time, whose hand perhaps slew her, was rich, lavish. He would have loaded her with gifts if she had let him, he would have taken her off the stage and allowed her to play the fine lady; but to the last she preserved the same modest ideas—generous to others, careless of herself."
"Did you ever see the man who called himself Georges?"
"Never. He was a man of curious habits. He loved the night better than the day. Nothing delighted him more than a moonlight drive in the Bois after midnight, a supper at the Cascade. He patronised the restaurants that keep open half the night. Marie and he used to sup together at the Café de Paris, sometimes with one or two chosen friends, but much more often alone. I was not Madame Lemarque's partner at that time; but I occupied a room in the roof of this house, and I used to work by the day for Madame and for Marie. I have spent many days working for her in the Rue de Lafitte. I made all her gowns, and I was proud that she should challenge comparison with actresses who squandered their thousands upon such impostors as Spricht and Van Klopen. Imagine, Monsieur, a man—a stern rugged nature which can have no true feeling for the beauty of woman's dress—a being of angles and hard lines—a creature without grace orflou. No wonder that square shoulders and pointed elbows have come into fashion since men have dictated the dress of women!"
Mademoiselle had mounted her hobby, and was riding furiously.
"Doubtless it is a mistake in art, and one that must be discovered before long," said Heathcote soothingly. "But tell me, Mademoiselle, in all your visits to the Rue de Lafitte, did you never encounter Georges?"
"Never."
"Strange! And did your friend Mademoiselle Prévol talk much of this Monsieur Georges?"
"Yes, she used to talk to me a great deal about him at one time, poor child: I think she talked even more freely to me than to her mother. Madame Lemarque was just a little too fond of money, too eager for gifts from her child, and that wounded Marie's generous nature. 'You value people only for what they can give you,' she said once to her mother. 'If Georges were Satan, you would like him just as well—provided you got enough of his money.' And then there was a quarrel, as you may suppose, Monsieur. There were excuses to be made for Madame Lemarque, poor soul. She had been rich once—an atelier in the Rue de la Paix—a country house at Asnières—but these man-milliners had spoiled her trade, and at this time she was very poor, living in these rooms which you see, and working for half a dozen shabby customers who ground her to the dust by their meanness. And then when Marie gave her money she spent it recklessly—she ate and drank like a princess—she took avoiture de place, whenever she went out: she thought that Marie could never do too much for her or her son's orphan child Léonie."
"Léonie lived with her grandmother, did she not?"
"Yes, Madame Lemarque had kept her since she was three years old. It was a dull life for a child. She used to sit on a little stool in that corner, and thread needles for her grandmother. When she was eight years old she could work very neatly; she ran errands too. She earned her daily bread, poor child. But her happiest days were those she spent with her aunt in the Rue Lafitte."
"Mademoiselle Prévol was good to her?"
"Good to her? Yes, and to every one who came in her way. I tell you she was a creature made up of sweetness and love."
"And was she devoted to this Monsieur Georges?"
"At one time, yes. It was an adoration on both sides. Marie used to tell me of their journeys in foreign countries, under a southern sky. Of their happy life, far away from the crowd; of his boundless love for her, his generosity, his devotion. She had a fever in Venice, and he nursed her, and watched beside her bed day and night—thirteen days and thirteen nights—till she was out of danger. It was a love such as one reads of in poetry."
"Have you any reason to think that she was his lawful wife?"
"I cannot tell. His constancy and devotion were those of the best of husbands. She wore a wedding-ring, and she was always called by his name when they travelled, as well as in her lodgings. It was almost at the beginning of their attachment that he took her to England. I have sometimes thought that they were married in England."
"Did he introduce her to his friends in Paris?"
"Only a few artists and writers whom she used to meet at supper. They were some of the wildest young men in Paris."
"But he introduced her to no ladies—to no families of good standing?"
"I doubt if he could have had any such friends. He lived too eccentric a life to cultivate what you call respectable acquaintance."
"Was he himself an artist?"
"I think not. He was too rich for a painter or an author."
"And you have never heard of him since Marie Prévol's death?"
"Never."
"What became of the jewels and other property which had belonged to Mademoiselle Prévol?"
"They were sold by her mother, who lived upon the proceeds of the sale for some years. She paid for Léonie's schooling out of the same fund. It was only in the last years of her life that she again became poor. But to the very last she had means of her own—a small income, the source of which was unknown to me. She might have lived very comfortably if she had not been extravagant; but she had no prudence, and there were times when she was almost penniless. She took me into partnership very soon after her daughter's death. She had sent the little girl to a convent, and she felt lonely and nervous in these rooms. Her spirits never recovered from the shock of that terrible murder—the horror of the night in which Léonie was brought home to her by the police from Saint-Germain, who told her the history of the murder. She invited me to share her apartment, and to work for her, taking half the profits of the business. The profits were of the smallest, but she gave me my board and lodging, and I was too fond of Madame Lemarque, and of Jacko," added the spinster, looking fondly at the cockatoo.
"That is Madame Lemarque's parrot, I conclude?"
"Yes. He belonged to poor Marie. Ah, he could tell us a great deal, if he would but talk sense instead of repeating foolish songs. She bought him from a sailor at Marseilles, and brought him home with her after one of her autumn holidays. She used to teach him lines from the songs she sang at the theatre."
"Moi, je suis le radis noir!" shrieked the parrot.
"You were living with Madame Lemarque when her granddaughter returned from Dinan, I suppose?" said Heathcote.
"Ah, you seem to know all about it. Yes, I was with Madame when she went to Saint-Lazare to meet the child. Such a bright, pretty girl she had grown—so amiable, and clever, and industrious. I never thought she would act towards me as she has done."
"In what way has she acted badly?"
"She went to England directly after her grandmother's death—that is more than two months ago—and she has not written to me once since then. No doubt she has found powerful friends—rich friends—and has no need of a poor old woman like me."
"There may be some other reason for her silence," said Heathcote gravely.
"What other reason?"
"Some misfortune; an accident, perhaps. She had to travel by steamer and by railway. Might not something have happened?"
"I have thought of that sometimes," said the dressmaker, with a distressed look, "and if I had had a friend in England—one single friend—I should have written to ask that friend to make inquiries. But I have so few friends—hardly any one in Paris, no one outside Paris," she concluded dejectedly.
"But surely you knew Léonie's errand? You knew to whom she was going? You might have written to that person."
"I know nothing. The girl's errand was a secret from me. On her death-bed Madame Lemarque gave her granddaughter some commission. There were letters or papers of some kind, I think, which she was to take to somebody in England, and that person was expected to befriend her. The grandmother was very secret about it. She would not speak to Léonie on the subject while I was in the room, but on reëntering rather suddenly I saw some papers on the bed. I overheard a few words—-something about a friend of Monsieur Georges, rich, powerful."
"And it was to this friend of Georges, the murderer, that Léonie was to appeal for protection and help?"
"Remember we are not certain that Georges was the murderer. It is only a supposition."
"But a supposition so well grounded as to be almost certainty. An adoring lover, who disappears immediately after the murder of his mistress—a lover who had good ground for jealousy, and is known to have been madly jealous, mark you; a murder that could only have been inspired by madness or by jealousy. If these facts are not strong enough to condemn Monsieur Georges, what does circumstantial evidence mean?"
"Don't talk to me about it," muttered Drubarde impatiently. "Georges was the murderer. The police were at fault in their search for him, but they were never in doubt as to his guilt."
"And it was to a friend of her daughter's murderer that Madame Lemarque sent her granddaughter?"
"What other resources had she, do you think?" exclaimed the dressmaker. "She was dying, penniless, friendless, leaving her grandchild to the mercy of strangers. She knew that Monsieur Georges was a rich man, and that any friend of Monsieur Georges was likely to be well off. I daresay she knew no more than the name of this friend."
"Did you hear the name?"
"Never. I heard her tell Léonie that the gentleman was in London. He was living at some hotel, the name of which I forget."
"Would you recognise it if you heard it?" asked Heathcote.
"Perhaps. I am not sure."
He went over the names of the principal hotels, without success. Mademoiselle Beauville could not remember to have heard any one of them.
"You are sure that Mademoiselle Lemarque was to go to London," inquired Heathcote, "and no further than London? You heard no mention of Cornwall or Plymouth?"
He repeated the names of county and town—giving each the true Gallic intonation—but they suggested nothing to Mademoiselle Beauville.
"She was to go to London—nowhere else. But why do you ask?"
"I will tell you that presently. Did Léonie Lemarque leave Paris immediately after her grandmother's death?"
"She left the evening after the funeral. She did not even wait to get a mourning-gown made. She had worn a black gown belonging to me at the funeral, and she changed it for her gray alpaca gown before she left."
"Did she take no luggage?"
"Only a change of linen in a handbag."
"How did she travel?"
"She went from the Station du Nord at eight o'clock. I walked to the station with her, poor child. We were both very sad, and very tired. She was to cross from Calais to Dover in the night, and she would arrive in London early next morning. She promised me to write on the day of her arrival. I told her that I thought it was a dangerous thing for a young girl to go alone to meet a stranger, a man whose face she had never seen. She said her grandmother had told her that he was a good and honourable man, who had befriended her in her poverty, and she (Léonie) was to trust him. She begged me not to ask her any questions. Her grandmother had warned her to say nothing until after she had arrived in England, when she was to write to me and tell me of her new home. When I pressed her to give me her confidence, she began to cry; but I managed to find out that she was going to London with the idea of being placed in some rich and aristocratic family, where she would be a companion to the children and teach them her own language. She was not accomplished enough to be a governess of a superior kind."
"How did she get the money for her journey?"
"Her grandmother gave it her on her death-bed; but as there had been hardly any money in the house for the last week of Madame Lemarque's illness, I concluded that this money had been sent from the person in England in reply to an application from Madame Lemarque."
"Did you post any letter addressed to England during your friend's illness?"
"I did not; but Léonie may have done so. She went out every day upon some errand or other. And now, Monsieur, pray tell me how you came to know all about Léonie, and if you have any bad news for me."
"Alas, Mademoiselle, I have the worst possible news. Your young friend is dead."
"Dead! And there was no one to tell me. The gentleman who was to befriend her, to whom she went as to a protector and benefactor, he did not even take the trouble to tell me her fate."
"She may never have found him, poor child. She may have been lured away from her destination and from London by a villain. She met her death more than two hundred miles from London. She fell from a railway-bridge, and was killed instantly; but whether that death was an accident or a murder, no one yet knows, except the Great Judge of all human actions."
"You believe it was——"
"Murder. I am here to discover the motive of that crime."
There was a silence of some minutes, during which Mademoiselle Beauville wept quietly. And then Heathcote and the ex-police-officer rose to take leave.
"I thank you sincerely, Mademoiselle, for having given me all the information in your power to give, and I must beg you to accept some small compensation for the time I have wasted," said Mr. Heathcote, slipping a couple of twenty-franc pieces into the dressmaker's hand.
The lonely spinster's eyes shone with a feverish light as her skinny fingers closed upon the gold. It was like manna dropped from heaven. Long and weary weeks had passed since herrobes et modeshad brought her so much money. Her chief customers of late had been the grisettes of the quarter, who had dribbled out their payments by two or three francs at a time, and who had exacted the maximum of labour for the minimum of pay. Mademoiselle's hollow cheeks were flushed with the warm red wine, her heart glowed with the thought that she could now pay her last term to the Harpagon landlord—not much worse, perhaps, than the rest of his species, but all landlords seem Harpagons when they claim their due from the needy.
"Monsieur is too good, too generous," murmured the seamstress; "I should refuse all remuneration, only work has been so slack of late——"
"Not one word, Mademoiselle. Stay, I have one more question, and that an important one, to ask before I take my leave. Can you give me the exact date upon which Léonie Lemarque left Paris for Dover?"
"Assuredly, Monsieur. It was on the 4th of July."
"The 4th! And it was on the evening of the 5th she met with her death. You say she carried a small handbag containing linen."
"Yes. Her clothes were of the fewest, dear child; but everything she had was neat and nice of its kind. She had a change of linen with her."
"Had she nothing else in the bag?"
"Nothing. I went into the room while she was packing, and I saw her take a small sealed packet from under her pillow, and put it in her bosom. I had seen the same packet under her grandmother's pillow before she died. It looked like a parcel of letters or papers of some kind."
"Do you know what station Léonie was to arrive at?"
"Yes. It was the terminus of Charing."
"Charing Cross?"
"Precisely. It was a double name like that."
"Good. Adieu, Mademoiselle. My friend and I may come to you again perhaps to make further inquiries."
"You shall be very welcome, Monsieur. And if you discover the secret of my poor young friend's fate, you will tell me——"
"Assuredly."
"One word, Monsieur. Where is our little Léonie buried? Has she a decent grave in your English land?"
"She lies in a rustic churchyard under a great yew-tree. There is a stone upon her grave, with a brief record of when and how she met her death. Her name and age shall now be added to the inscription."
"Indeed, Monsieur! But what kind friend was it who placed a stone over the grave of a nameless stranger?"
"That was my care. It was a very small thing to do."
"Ah, Monsieur, it is in doing these small things that a great heart shows itself."
Mr. Heathcote and his companion made their adieux, accompanied to the landing by the spinster, who felt as if she had entertained angels unawares; but when the sound of their footsteps had died away upon the stairs she went back to her room, and wept over the fate of her young friend.
"I have nothing left in this world to love but you," she said, piteously addressing the cockatoo.
"J'ai bien des chos's au Mont-d'-Piété," replied the bird.
It was one o'clock by the time Mr. Heathcote and Monsieur Drubarde left the dressmaker's apartment, so the Englishman suggested a light luncheon at the Restaurant Lapérouse, within a stone's throw of Drubarde's apartment; and the suggestion being received favourably by the ex-policeman, they were soon afterwards seated at a little table, in a private room with a window overlooking the river, ready to do justice to theplat du jour, africandeau aux épinards, and to a bottle ofMouton-Rothschild. The wine-bibbing at the dressmaker's apartment had been merely a benevolent excuse for providing the spinster with a little good Bordeaux.
"Now, Monsieur Drubarde, we are alone and at our ease. You have now all the facts of Léonie Lemarque's death well within your knowledge; and it is for you to give me your opinion."
"A very difficult case in which to come to a decided opinion," answered Drubarde. "At present my conclusions and yours are antagonistic. My niece wrote out a careful translation of your newspaper report. I have her translation in my pocket-book. You can look it over if you like, to see that it is faithfully done. I have read it three or four times, with keenest attention, and I can so far see nothing out of the common in Léonie Lemarque's fate. A pretty girl travelling alone, a common ruffian, a common murder."
"And you see no link between this crime and that former murder?"
"Not a thread—not a hair. A deed done ten years ago—unpunished, the murderer undiscovered."
"Do you forget that Léonie went to London with credentials to a friend of this very murderer? Perhaps a friend so devoted, so bound to the guilty man, that he might not stop at murder to get rid of the one witness of his friend's crime."
"To imagine that is to imagine an impossible friendship. Men do not risk their necks nowadays, whatever they may have done in the time of Damon and Pythias."
"Then you see nothing extraordinary or mysterious in the violent death of this girl, within twenty-four hours of her leaving Paris, carrying with her documents which may, in some manner, have betrayed the secret of the double murder. Perhaps a letter from the lover to his mistress, a letter written by a man maddened by jealousy, threatening to do the deed which was afterwards done. You see no sufficient ground for connecting one crime with the other, for seeking the secret of the second crime in the history of the first."
"Honestly, I do not," replied Drubarde, who had fastened his napkin under his chin, had nibbled a radish or two, and destroyed the symmetry of a dish of prawns, by way of preparation for thefricandeau. "I only wish I could see my way to such an opinion. It would make as pretty a complication as ever I was concerned in. However, there is no knowing what new discoveries we may hit upon, if we go to work patiently. My present view of the case is that Léonie Lemarque, being young, silly, and inexperienced, and not knowing a word of English, altogether a wrong person to attempt such a journey alone, got into bad hands at the very beginning. I believe that, instead of meeting this person who was to have befriended her, and who must have been a man of standing and respectability, or the old grandmother would not have sent her to him, she fell into the hands of a scoundrel, and was lured into your train for Cornwall."
"You must remember that Paddington Station is some miles from Charing Cross," said Heathcote. "The girl could not be smuggled from one train to the other unawares. She must have traversed half London on foot, or in a conveyance of some kind."
"Possibly. But, as likely as not, she was in the companionship of the wrong man. Consider her ignorance, her helplessness. What an easy prey for a villain!"
Heathcote was unconvinced.
"I cannot imagine a crime so motiveless as that which you suggest," he said thoughtfully.
He began to lose faith in the old sleuthhound. He began to think that Félix Drubarde was worn-out; that scent, and pace, and tongue were things of the past. He began to think that the work of finding the link between the two crimes must be done by himself rather than by Drubarde.
"What became of the girl's bag?" asked Drubarde, after he had eaten a liberal portion of veal and spinach. "There is no mention of a bag in your newspaper."
"There was no bag found. If there had been, the victim might have been identified earlier."
"And the sealed packet?"
"There was no packet. There was nothing but a little basket containing a few cherries and a biscuit-bag. There was no clue to identity. The murderer had done his work well."
"The best thing you can do is to put Mr. Distin in possession of the details you heard from Mademoiselle Beauville. He can make inquiries at the Charing Cross Station, where it is just possible the girl may be remembered by some of the porters. A girl travelling alone, and meeting a gentleman on the platform. The meeting may have been observed even there, where hundreds meet and part every hour. Railway officials are observant and keen-witted. It is within the limits of the possible that this poor girl may not have passed altogether unremarked."
"I will write to Distin this afternoon," said Heathcote. "And there is another thing I can do. If your theory is correct, Léonie Lemarque missed the person who was to have met her at the station, and fell into bad hands. If that is so, the fact ought to be arrived at easily by an appeal to the person whom she should have met."
He took out his pencil and pocket-book, and wrote the rough draft of an advertisement:
"The person who was to have met Léonie Lemarque at Charing Cross Station on the morning of July 5th last is earnestly requested to communicate immediately with Messrs. Distin & Son, Solicitors, Furnival's Inn."
He translated this advertisement to Monsieur Drubarde.
"Yes, that is a wise test," said the police-officer. "I see you have the trueflair. If the man is innocent, he will answer that advertisement—always supposing that it come to his knowledge."
"I will repeat it so often in theTimesthat it will not be easy for the appeal to escape him," answered Heathcote.
"Then if there is no sign, we shall say guilty," said Drubarde.
"And in that case we have to find the villain."
"You may add a postscript to your letter to Monsieur Distin, advising him to inquire at the cloak-room of Charing Cross Station for an unclaimed handbag left there on July 5th. Something must have been done with that handbag, and, in our civilised condition, it is not easy to get rid of even a handbag."
After having made this suggestion, Monsieur Drubarde devoted himself entirely to the pleasures of the table. Heathcote ate very little, and was too troubled in mind to know what he ate. He saw himself no nearer a solution of the problem which he had pledged himself to solve. Yet this he felt, that the sky was growing clearer round Bothwell Grahame. The secret of the girl's death seemed to lie between the man whom she was to have met at Charing Cross and the phenomenal villain of Drubarde's imagination, who had lured her into the Cornish train with darkest intent.
He left Félix Drubarde directly after luncheon, and walked back to the Hôtel de Bade, where he devoted the afternoon to his correspondence. He wrote at fullest length to Joseph Distin, enclosing the advertisement for theTimes, with a cheque, and an order for its daily appearance until further notice. He wrote a cheery letter to Hilda, telling her to be hopeful; and he wrote to Mrs. Wyllard, telling her that the result of his investigations up to the present hour had gone far to dispel his suspicion of her cousin's guilt.
"I am still groping in the dark," he concluded, "and am very far from having achieved any tangible result; but I am working with all my mind and all my strength, and I hope that Providence will not compel me to abandon my task until I have fathomed the mystery of Léonie Lemarque's death."
He wrote thus, unconsciously forgetting that Dora Wyllard did not know even the name of the victim. The discovery of the girl's identity, made three days ago, at Dinan, seemed, to him an old history, so exclusively had his mind dwelt upon this one subject since his interview with the nuns. The fact that the name must be a new thing to Dora never struck him.
He dined alone in his private sitting-room, he who at any other time would have enjoyed the glitter and life of the Boulevard in all its evening brilliancy. He wanted to be free from all sound and movement, from the sight of strange faces, so that his mind should work undisturbed upon the problem he had set himself to solve.
And now over his solitary cutlet, with his pocket-book open before him, he marshalled his facts, and reflected upon each detail of the story.
The murderer of Marie Prévol and Maxime de Maucroix had escaped, and in all probability was still living. He appeared to have been rich, independent of all ties, a Bohemian in his habits, a man who could live in any country. Hardly possible that such a man would remain within a narrow radius of the scene of his crime. He was not to be looked for assuredly in Paris, or even in France. It was far more likely that he had crossed the Atlantic, and sunk his identity in that wider, freer society of the United States, where money and cleverness outweigh a man's antecedents, where no one asks what a man has been, only what he is, or is worth in the present. Or it might be that such a man as this Georges—a night-bird, a man of fervid temperament, a lover of pleasure rather than work, unambitious, a voluptuary—would turn his face to Southern America, and dream away the after stages of an exhausted life in some romantic city upon the Seaboard of the Pacific. Not in Europe—or not in the accessible quarters of Europe—should he be sought for.
But in the mean time, here in this city of Paris, there was something to be done. Vain to look for the man himself, perhaps; but those who had known the man—his chosen friends, the companions of his midnight orgies—might still be found. From them the man's antecedents might be learned; and possibly some glimmer of light could be obtained as to his adventures and whereabouts after the murder.
Edward Heathcote reviewed his Parisian acquaintance in search of such men as might be likely to have known this Monsieur Georges. It was almost impossible for a man, spending his money lavishly, the favoured admirer of a beautiful actress, not to be in some measure a man of mark, and widely known in the faster section of Parisian society.
Mr. Heathcote knew his Paris well, and loved it well. After that bitter loss which had changed the current of his life, he had found hard work in his office his best cure, and next best to hard mental labour he had found relief of mind in the society of the artistic and keen-witted idlers of the Boulevard and the Bohemian clubs. He had found a week in Paris—a week of Boulevard idleness and Boulevard society—the best remedy for the dulness and the depression that come from an unsatisfied heart and an overworked brain: and in these occasional plunges into Parisian society he had made a wider acquaintance with the artistic classes than it is often granted to a provincial Englishman to make.
He ran over the names of the men he knew best in Paris, trying to hit upon the likeliest person to suit his purpose. It must be a man who had been well to the fore ten years ago, when Marie Prévol was a famous beauty, and her lover was spending his nights and his fortune on the Boulevard. It should not be difficult, he thought, to hit upon such a man.
"Volney Dugarge, Bize, Pontruche, Trottier. Yes, Trottier. That is the man; a thorough-going Bohemian, a haunter of supper-tables and gambling-dens, a hanger-on of lorettes, steeped to the tips of his nails in the atmosphere of thedemi-monde, a man who had known Gautier and Nerval and Gustave Planche, anhabituéof the Boulevard theatres; poor, keen-witted, a member of the band of paragraphists, the men who invent scandals, political, social, literary, theatrical, according to the prevailing demand, who write smart paragraphs for the most audacious of the newspapers, and puffs for enterprising tradesmen."
Trottier, thus humble in his pursuits, a man utterly without pride, or, as his enemies said, without self-respect, was one of the most agreeable men in Paris. He had been a Boulevardier for the last thirty years, had seen the Boulevard extend its glittering length into regions which he had known as a wilderness of gloom and poverty. He remembered the time when the Palais Royal was the focus of Parisian gaiety, the temple of fashion and taste.
"If this man Georges had any status in Bohemian society, Sigismond Trottier must have known him," thought Heathcote.
The next thing was to find Trottier. He was a man who only began to live after dinner. He might be looked for on the Boulevard between nine o'clock and midnight. He might be found at a club much favoured by actors and journalists, a club which had taken for itself a name from the history of the mediæval drama, and rejoiced in the title ofLes Enfants Sans Souci, more briefly known as theSans Souci. TheSans Soucihad its nest on anentresolin the Rue Vivienne, six low-ceiled rooms opening one out of another, three of them furnished with divans in true Oriental style. These were the smoking-rooms. Then came a fourth and much more spacious apartment, provided with numerous small tables, writing materials, and the newspapers. Tapestriedportièreson the right and left of the fireplace in this reading-room opened into the sanctuary of the club, two medium-sized rooms, furnished with green cloth tables for baccarat, thickly curtained, thickly carpeted, lighted only from the courtyard of the house, which was like a dry well.
Edward Heathcote strolled along the Boulevard, looking for his friend as he went. It was nearly ten o'clock, a delicious night, balmy, starlit, summer-like; a night upon which Sigismond Trottier might naturally have been found seated amidst the idlers clustered on the asphalte in front of a popular café. But in the groups which Heathcote passed between the Hôtel de Bade and the corner of the Place de la Bourse there was no sign of Trottier's ferret-face and long gray hair. So the Englishman continued his walk to the Rue Vivienne, and entered the lamp-lit vestibule which led to the mysteries of theSans Souci.
He had been taken there more than once by Trottier, and had been amused and interested by the people he met.
"Can you tell me if Monsieur Trottier is here this evening?" he asked of the porter.
"Yes, Monsieur. He came half an hour ago. Monsieur Trottier generally comes here at the same hour every evening to write his article for theTaon."
The rooms were almost empty. Neither journalists nor actors mustered strong before midnight. In a comfortable corner of the writing-room, at a little table brilliantly lighted by a green-shaded lamp, Edward Heathcote found the man he came to seek.
Sigismond Trottier was at least sixty years of age, tall, spare to attenuation, with a long narrow face of almost livid pallor, and long gray hair, falling over a greasy olive-green velvet collar, choice ornament of a threadbare and faded olive-green frock-coat. His jaw was narrow and projecting, his lips were thin and pinched, his nose was long and sharp, his eyebrows were gray and shaggy. The only features that gave life or colour to the face were the restless and brilliant black eyes, small, keen, observant, the eyes of a creature always on the watch. Ah, how many of the darkest mysteries of Paris had that keen glance discovered, how many a loathsome depth had that ruthless gaze explored, how many a social ulcer, how many a domestic disease, how many a wound of heart and honour, how many an atrophy of purse and reputation had those eyes pierced and scrutinised, while all the rest of the world was still blind to the coming ruin, the inevitable disgrace! Sigismond Trottier was a student of society. It was his boast that he knew this Paris of the Third Republic as well as Saint-Simon knew the Paris of the great Louis; knew it in all its strength; and in all its weakness; knew it to the core of its rotten heart.
Needless to say that such a man was invaluable as a paragraphist. He had the same keen scent for a scandal that the well-trained detective has for a crime. A whisper, a shrug was enough to put him on the right track. He was a genius at that modern style of hint and innuendo which just stops short of libel. He had killed more reputations than any man in Paris: and he had never been to prison. His safety lay in the keenness of his perception, which never allowed him to fall into such mistakes as have ruined other society gossips. Whatever Sigismond Trottier wrote was true. He had an extraordinary power of winnowing the chaff from the corn in the floating scandals of the Boulevard. He knew what to accept and what to reject. His judgment was infallible. When Parisian society saw the hint of an elopement, the suggestion of a marital wrong signed by Sigismond's hieroglyphic—an Egyptian beetle—the thing was received as a fact. The pen of the unerring recorder had proclaimed a truth. Happily he was not a physical coward, though a professional assailant of man's honour and woman's reputation. He had given good proof of his courage on several occasions, had stood up before famous swordsmen, had faced marksmen of repute. That deep dint in his lean and livid cheek was the mark of a bullet from the Duke of Midlothian's pistol—that famousviveurwho expired suddenly amidst the fading flowers and flaring tapers of a Boulevard supper-room—the very spirit of profligate pleasure extinguished in a breath. That long slanting scar upon the left jaw, a shade more livid than the normal lividity of the complexion, was the result of five minutes' sword-play between the Boulevard chronicler and the Marquis du Bois-Chaufonds, the reminiscence of a duel which set all Paris talking twenty years ago, when the Walewska was in the zenith of her charms. From scalp to sole the paragraphist could have shown the scars of past battles. He had never been known to refuse a challenge.
Trottier was so absorbed in his task when Heathcote approached his table as to be quite unconscious of any one's presence. Heathcote seated himself upon the other side of the table, and took up a newspaper, to wait till the journalist came to the end of a sheet.
He had not long to wait. Before he had read more than half a dozen paragraphs in theTaon, each signed with the familiar beetle, Sigismond paused to blot a page, looked up, and recognised his English acquaintance.
"Good-evening," he said. Then, with a mighty effort, he burst into English, and exclaimed, "'Owderyoudo?" all as one word, having achieved which feat he laughed long and loud, surprised at his own talent for foreign tongues. "We begin to talk your language of horses, we others," he said triumphantly. "We have taken all your words for the sport, and now we begin to take your greetings and salutations, your shake-hand, your 'owderyoudo. And what brings you to Paris, Monsieur Effcott, at the dead season?"
"I should rather ask what you, chosen chronicler of fashionable society, can find to record in the dead season?"
"My dear friend, the most stupendous scandals are those that happen in the dead season, when Paris is a desert, and a man thinks he can murder his neighbour or run away with his neighbour's wife with equal impunity. Ah, my friend, for the development of intrigue, for the ripening of social mysteries, the working out of domestic tragedies, there can be no better time than this dull blank interval of the year, when there is no one in Paris. What stolen meetings, what little suppers in closely-sealed cabinets, when Madame is at the seaside and Monsieur is shooting wild boar in Auvergne! Heaven only forbid that Monsieur and Madame should happen to take their supper in adjacent cabinets, and that Monsieur should recognise the voice of Madame on the other side of the lath and plaster! Yes, there is no richer harvest-time for the chronicler than the season when there is not a mortal in Paris."
"Cynic!" exclaimed Heathcote. "And so you still live by exposing the faults and follies of your fellow-creatures."
"I try to reform them by proving to them that sooner or later all social secrets are known. I am about the only preacher whose sermons scare them nowadays."
"Then you consider your trade a strictly honourable one, no doubt."
"In French no doubt means perhaps," replied Trottier, "videMichelet. No, I will say nothing for my calling, except that a man must live. You may not see the necessity of my living, but the existence of the lowest of us has its value to the man himself. The world might get on very well without me, but I can't get on without the world."
"A man of your talent might have done well in any other line—"
"Pardon; mine is not a talent. It is a specialty. I should have succeeded in no other line. If I had been rich and high-placed, like Saint-Simon, I should have kept my impressions to myself while I lived, and should have left a big book behind me when I died. But I am poor and a nobody, so I have had to live upon my impressions."
"You put the case neatly," said Heathcote, "and you are right. We are most of us the thing which circumstances make us. The man who will not allow himself to be moulded by circumstance, who will strike out into the empyrean of ideal good, is one man in a thousand."
"And the odds are that your one in a thousand, your honest man, is an eminently disagreeable personage—like Diogenes or Thomas Carlyle," said Trottier.
"You have not finished your evening's work, I suppose?"
"No; I am in for another hour."
"Good," said Heathcote; "then at midnight you will be free. Will you sup with me at the Café de Paris when your work is done? I believe it is in your power to do me a material service merely by calling upon your recollection of the past. Will you meet me at the Café de Paris at twelve?"
"With pleasure; and if my poor memories of men and events can help you, the record is at your service."
"A thousand thanks. I will go and order supper, and stroll on the Boulevard till it is ready.Au revoir!"
"Until midnight!"
Sigismond Trottier was a man who kept his appointments. He was not neat in his person, or punctual in his payments. He never went to church, and he did not always wash. But if he promised a page of copy to a newspaper, the page was delivered in due time. If he offered to frank a friend to the theatre, in his quality as critic, he was waiting in the vestibule at the appointed hour, ready to keep his word. If he accepted an invitation to supper, he never kept his host waiting. Invitations to dinner he invariably declined.
"A dinner-party is an anti-climax," he protested. "A man gets drunk too early, and spoils his evening."
At midnight Monsieur Trottier's evening began, and he was ready for the feast.
Mr. Heathcote received him in one of the cosiest little rooms in the café. The Englishman's first act on entering had been to light all the wax candles on the mantelpiece, which the waiters had left unlighted. This established him at once as a man who knew his Paris, and his judicious choice of wines having strengthened his position, everything was ready when Trottier's shabby olive-green coat came meekly into the radiance of the wax candles. Trottier was known at the Café de Paris, and his shabby coat commanded the reverence of the waiters. Was he not a man who, as it were, carried reputations in his pocket, who could make a head-waiter famous by a stroke of his pen?
The supper was delicate,recherché, Parisian; the wine was Johannisberger of princely quality, and a magnum of Mumms decanted in a cut-crystal pitcher appeared with the last course. The two men talked of general topics during supper. It was only when the waiters had withdrawn, and when Sigismond Trottier had thrown himself back in his chair and lighted his cigarette, that Heathcote approached the business of the evening. It was half-past one o'clock, and the roll of wheels upon the asphalte below the open window had been gradually diminishing. There was no longer the roar of the Boulevard to disturb the speakers.
"If I can be of the slightest use to you, as an embodied chronicle of Paris, command me," said Trottier. "Here I am at your service—an open book. You have only to turn my leaves."
"Do you remember a double murder—the murder of an actress and her lover—which happened ten years ago, in the forest of Saint-Germain?"
"Do I remember? Yes, as if the thing had happened last week; and for a good reason. The man who was suspected—the lover, or, as some thought, the husband, of the actress—was my familiar friend."