“The teeth of the tiger!” murmured Perenna, who could not remove his eyes from that double imprint. “The teeth of the tiger! The teeth that had already left their mark on Inspector Vérot’s piece of chocolate! What a coincidence! It can hardly be fortuitous. Must we not take it as certain that the same person bit into this apple and into that cake of chocolate which Inspector Vérot brought to the police office as an incontestable piece of evidence?”
He hesitated a second. Should he keep this evidence for himself, for the personal inquiry which he meant to conduct? Or should he surrender it to the investigations of the police? But the touch of the object filled him with such repugnance, with such a sense of physical discomfort, that he flung away the apple and sent it rolling under the leaves of the shrubs.
And he repeated to himself:
“The teeth of the tiger! The teeth of the wild beast!”
He locked the garden door behind him, bolted it, put back the keys on the table and said to Mazeroux:
“Have you spoken to the Chief of Police?”
“Yes.”
“Is he coming?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t he order you to telephone for the commissary of police?”
“No.”
“That means that he wants to see everything by himself. So much the better. But the detective office? The public prosecutor?”
“He’s told them.”
“What’s the matter with you, Alexandre? I have to drag your answers out of you. Well, what is it? You’re looking at me very queerly. What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s all right. I expect this business has turned your head. And no wonder…. The Prefect won’t enjoy himself, either, … especially as he put his faith in me a bit light-heartedly and will be called upon to give an explanation of my presence here. By the way, it’s much better that you should take upon yourself the responsibility for all that we have done. Don’t you agree? Besides, it’ll do you all the good in the world.
“Put yourself forward, flatly; suppress me as much as you can; and, above all — I don’t suppose that you will have any objection to this little detail — don’t be such a fool as to say that you went to sleep for a single second, last night, in the passage. First of all, you’d only be blamed for it. And then … well, that’s understood, eh? So we have only to say good-bye.
“If the Prefect wants me, as I expect he will, telephone to my address,
Place du Palais-Bourbon. I shall be there. Good-bye. It is not necessary
for me to assist at the inquiry; my presence would be out of place.
Good-bye, old chap.”
He turned toward the door of the passage.
“Half a moment!” cried Mazeroux.
“Half a moment?… What do you mean?”
The detective sergeant had flung himself between him and the door and was blocking his way.
“Yes, half a moment … I am not of your opinion. It’s far better that you should wait until the Prefect comes.”
“But I don’t care a hang about your opinion!”
“May be; but you shan’t pass.”
“What! Why, Alexandre, you must be ill!”
“Look here, Chief,” said Mazeroux feebly. “What can it matter to you?
It’s only natural that the Prefect should wish to speak to you.”
“Ah, it’s the Prefect who wishes, is it?… Well, my lad, you can tell him that I am not at his orders, that I am at nobody’s orders, and that, if the President of the Republic, if Napoleon I himself were to bar my way … Besides, rats! Enough said. Get out of the road!”
“You shall not pass!” declared Mazeroux, in a resolute tone, extending his arms.
“Well, I like that!”
“You shall not pass.”
“Alexandre, just count ten.”
“A hundred, if you like, but you shall not….”
“Oh, blow your catchwords! Get out of this.”
He seized Mazeroux by both shoulders, made him spin round on his heels and, with a push, sent him floundering over the sofa. Then he opened the door.
“Halt, or I fire!”
It was Mazeroux, who had scrambled to his feet and now stood with his revolver in his hand and a determined expression on his face.
Don Luis stopped in amazement. The threat was absolutely indifferent to him, and the barrel of that revolver aimed at him left him as cold as could be. But by what prodigy did Mazeroux, his former accomplice, his ardent disciple, his devoted servant, by what prodigy did Mazeroux dare to act as he was doing?
Perenna went up to him and pressed gently on the detective’s outstretched arm.
“Prefect’s orders?” he asked.
“Yes,” muttered the sergeant, uncomfortably.
“Orders to keep me here until he comes?”
“Yes.”
“And if I betrayed an intention of leaving, to prevent me?”
“Yes.”
“By every means?”
“Yes.”
“Even by putting a bullet through my skin?”
“Yes.”
Perenna reflected; and then, in a serious voice:
“Would you have fired, Mazeroux?”
The sergeant lowered his head and said faintly:
“Yes, Chief.”
Perenna looked at him without anger, with a glance of affectionate sympathy; and it was an absorbing sight for him to see his former companion dominated by such a sense of discipline and duty. Nothing was able to prevail against that sense, not even the fierce admiration, the almost animal attachment which Mazeroux retained for his master.
“I’m not angry, Mazeroux. In fact, I approve. Only you must tell me the reason why the Prefect of Police—”
The detective did not reply, but his eyes wore an expression of such sadness that Don Luis started, suddenly understanding.
“No,” he cried, “no!… It’s absurd … he can’t have thought that!… And you, Mazeroux, do you believe me guilty?”
“Oh, I, Chief, am as sure of you as I am of myself!… You don’t take life!… But, all the same, there are things … coincidences—”
“Things … coincidences …” repeated Don Luis slowly.
He remained pensive; and, in a low voice, he said:
“Yes, after all, there’s truth in what you say…. Yes, it all fits in…. Why didn’t I think of it?… My relations with Cosmo Mornington, my arrival in Paris in time for the reading of the will, my insisting on spending the night here, the fact that the death of the two Fauvilles undoubtedly gives me the millions…. And then … and then … why, he’s absolutely right, your Prefect of Police!… All the more so as…. Well, there, I’m a goner!”
“Come, come, Chief!”
“A dead-goner, old chap; you just get that into your head. Not as Arsène Lupin, ex-burglar, ex-convict, ex-anything you please — I’m unattackable on that ground — but as Don Luis Perenna, respectable man, residuary legatee, and the rest of it. And it’s too stupid! For, after all, who will find the murderers of Cosmo, Vérot, and the two Fauvilles, if they go clapping me into jail?”
“Come, come, Chief—”
“Shut up! … Listen!”
A motor car was stopping on the boulevard, followed by another. It was evidently the Prefect and the magistrates from the public prosecutor’s office.
Don Luis took Mazeroux by the arm.
“There’s only one way out of it, Alexandre! Don’t say you went to sleep.”
“I must, Chief.”
“You silly ass!” growled Don Luis. “How is it possible to be such an ass!
It’s enough to disgust one with honesty. What am I to do, then?”
“Discover the culprit, Chief.”
“What! … What are you talking about?”
Mazeroux, in his turn, took him by the arm and, clutching him with a sort of despair, said, in a voice choked with tears:
“Discover the culprit, Chief. If not, you’re done for
… that’s certain … the Prefect told me so. … The police want a culprit … they want him this evening…. One has got to be found…. It’s up to you to find him.”
“What you have, Alexandre, is a merry wit.”
“It’s child’s play for you, Chief. You have only to set your mind to it.”
“But there’s not the least clue, you ass!”
“You’ll find one … you must … I entreat you, hand them over somebody…. It would be more than I could bear if you were arrested. You, the chief, accused of murder! No, no…. I entreat you, discover the criminal and hand him over…. You have the whole day to do it in…and Lupin has done greater things than that!”
He was stammering, weeping, wringing his hands, grimacing with every feature of his comic face. And it was really touching, this grief, this dismay at the approach of the danger that threatened his master.
M. Desmalions’s voice was heard in the hall, through the curtain that closed the passage. A third motor car stopped on the boulevard, and a fourth, both doubtless laden with policemen.
The house was surrounded, besieged.
Perenna was silent.
Beside him, anxious-faced, Mazeroux seemed to be imploring him.
A few seconds elapsed.
Then Perenna declared, deliberately:
“Looking at things all round, Alexandre, I admit that you have seen the position clearly and that your fears are fully justified. If I do not manage to hand over the murderer or murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son to the police in a few hours from now, it is I, Don Luis Perenna, who will be lodged in durance vile on the evening of this Thursday, the first of April.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE CLOUDED TURQUOISE
IT WAS ABOUT nine o’clock in the morning when the Prefect of Police entered the study in which the incomprehensible tragedy of that double murder had been enacted.
He did not even bow to Don Luis; and the magistrates who accompanied him might have thought that Don Luis was merely an assistant of Sergeant Mazeroux, if the chief detective had not made it his business to tell them, in a few words, the part played by the stranger.
M. Desmalions briefly examined the two corpses and received a rapid explanation from Mazeroux. Then, returning to the hall, he went up to a drawing-room on the first floor, where Mme. Fauville, who had been informed of his visit, joined him almost at once.
Perenna, who had not stirred from the passage, slipped into the hall himself. The servants of the house, who by this time had heard of the murder, were crossing it in every direction. He went down the few stairs leading to a ground-floor landing, on which the front door opened.
There were two men there, of whom one said:
“You can’t pass.”
“But—”
“You can’t pass: those are our orders.”
“Your orders? Who gave them?”
“The Prefect himself.”
“No luck,” said Perenna, laughing. “I have been up all night and I am starving. Is there no way of getting something to eat?”
The two policemen exchanged glances and one of them beckoned to Silvestre and spoke to him. Silvestre went toward the dining-room, and returned with a horseshoe roll.
“Good,” thought Don Luis, after thanking him. “This settles it. I’m nabbed. That’s what I wanted to know. But M. Desmalions is deficient in logic. For, if it’s Arsène Lupin whom he means to detain here, all these worthy plain-clothesmen are hardly enough; and, if it’s Don Luis Perenna, they are superfluous, because the flight of Master Perenna would deprive Master Perenna of every chance of seeing the colour of my poor Cosmo’s shekels. Having said which, I will take a chair.”
He resumed his seat in the passage and awaited events.
Through the open door of the study he saw the magistrates pursuing their investigations. The divisional surgeon made a first examination of the two bodies and at once recognized the same symptoms of poisoning which he himself had perceived, the evening before, on the corpse of Inspector Vérot.
Next, the detectives took up the bodies and carried them to the adjoining bedrooms which the father and son formerly occupied on the second floor of the house.
The Prefect of Police then came downstairs; and Don Luis heard him say to the magistrates:
“Poor woman! She refused to understand…. When at last she understood, she fell to the ground in a dead faint. Only think, her husband and her son at one blow!… Poor thing!”
From that moment Perenna heard and saw nothing. The door was shut. The Prefect must afterward have given some order through the outside, through the communication with the front door offered by the garden, for the two detectives came and took up their positions in the hall, at the entrance to the passage, on the right and left of the dividing curtain.
“One thing’s certain,” thought Don Luis. “My shares are not booming. What a state Alexandre must be in! Oh, what a state!”
At twelve o’clock Silvestre brought him some food on a tray.
And the long and painful wait began anew.
In the study and in the house, the inquiry, which had been adjourned for lunch, was resumed. Perenna heard footsteps and the sound of voices on every side. At last, feeling tired and bored, he leaned back in his chair and fell asleep.
* * * * *
It was four o’clock when Sergeant Mazeroux came and woke him. As he led him to the study, Mazeroux whispered:
“Well, have you discovered him?”
“Whom?”
“The murderer.”
“Of course!” said Perenna. “It’s as easy as shelling peas!”
“That’s a good thing!” said Mazeroux, greatly relieved and failing to see the joke. “But for that, as you saw for yourself, you would have been done for.”
Don Luis entered. In the room were the public prosecutor, the examining magistrate, the chief detective, the local commissary of police, two inspectors, and three constables in uniform.
Outside, on the Boulevard Suchet, shouts were raised; and, when the commissary and his three policemen went out, by the Prefect’s orders, to listen to the crowd, the hoarse voice of a newsboy was heard shouting:
“The double murder on the Boulevard Suchet! Full particulars of the death of Inspector Vérot! The police at a loss!—”
Then, when the door was closed, all was silent.
“Mazeroux was quite right,” thought Don Luis. “It’s I or the other one: that’s clear. Unless the words that will be spoken and the facts that will come to light in the course of this examination supply me with some clue that will enable me to give them the name of that mysterious X, they’ll surrender me this evening for the people to batten on. Attention, Lupin, old chap, the great game is about to commence!”
He felt that thrill of delight which always ran through him at the approach of the great struggles. This one, indeed, might be numbered among the most terrible that he had yet sustained.
He knew the Prefect’s reputation, his experience, his tenacity, and the keen pleasure which he took in conducting important inquiries and in personally pushing them to a conclusion before placing them in the magistrate’s hands; and he also knew all the professional qualities of the chief detective, and all the subtlety, all the penetrating logic possessed by the examining magistrate.
The Prefect of Police himself directed the attack. He did so in a straightforward fashion, without beating about the bush, and in a rather harsh voice, which had lost its former tone of sympathy for Don Luis. His attitude also was more formal and lacked that geniality which had struck Don Luis on the previous day.
“Monsieur,” he said, “circumstances having brought about that, as the residuary legatee and representative of Mr. Cosmo Mornington, you spent the night on this ground floor while a double murder was being committed here, we wish to receive your detailed evidence as to the different incidents that occurred last night.”
“In other words, Monsieur le Préfet,” said Perenna, replying directly to the atta
ck, “in other words, circumstances having brought about that you authorized me to spend the night here, you would like to know if my evidence corresponds at all points with that of Sergeant Mazeroux?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning that the part played by myself strikes you as suspicious?”
M. Desmalions hesitated. His eyes met Don Luis’s eyes; and he was visibly impressed by the other’s frank glance. Nevertheless he replied, plainly and bluntly:
“It is not for you to ask me questions, Monsieur.”
Don Luis bowed.
“I am at your orders, Monsieur le Préfet.”
“Please tell us what you know.”
Don Luis thereupon gave a minute account of events, after which M.
Desmalions reflected for a few moments and said:
“There is one point on which we want to be informed. When you entered this room at half-past two this morning and sat down beside M. Fauville, was there nothing to tell you that he was dead?”
“Nothing, Monsieur le Préfet. Otherwise, Sergeant Mazeroux and I would have given the alarm.”
“Was the garden door shut?”
“It must have been, as we had to unlock it at seven o’clock.”
“With what?”
“With the key on the bunch.”
“But how could the murderers, coming from the outside, have opened it?”
“With false keys.”
“Have you a proof which allows you to suppose that it was opened with false keys?”
“No, Monsieur le Préfet.”
“Therefore, until we have proofs to the contrary, we are bound to believe that it was not opened from the outside, and that the criminal was inside the house.”
“But, Monsieur le Préfet, there was no one here but Sergeant Mazeroux and myself!”
There was a silence, a pause whose meaning admitted of no doubt.
M. Desmalions’s next words gave it an even more precise value.
“You did not sleep during the night?”
“Yes, toward the end.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 250
