Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  It was therefore quite possible that, on the night of the double crime, she was among the murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son. It was quite possible that she had taken part in the murders, and even that the poison had been injected into the victims by her hand, by that little, white, slender hand which he saw resting against the golden hair.

  A shudder passed through him. He had softly put back the paper in the book, restored the book in its place, and moved nearer to the girl.

  All of a sudden, he caught himself studying the lower part of her face, the shape of her jaw! Yes, that was what he was making every effort to guess, under the curve of the cheeks and behind the veil of the lips. Almost against his will, with personal anguish mingled with torturing curiosity, he stared and stared, ready to force open those closed lips and to seek the reply to the terrifying problem that suggested itself to him.

  Those teeth, those teeth which he did not see, were not they the teeth that had left the incriminating marks in the fruit? Which were the teeth of the tiger, the teeth of the wild beast: these, or the other woman’s?

  It was an absurd supposition, because the marks had been recognized as made by Marie Fauville. But was the absurdity of a supposition a sufficient reason for discarding it?

  Himself astonished at the feelings that agitated him, fearing lest he should betray himself, he preferred to cut short the interview and, going up to the girl, he said to her, in an imperious and aggressive tone:

  “I wish all the servants in the house to be discharged. You will give them their wages, pay them such compensation as they ask for, and see that they leave to-day, definitely. Another staff of servants will arrive this evening. You will be here to receive them.”

  She made no reply. He went away, taking with him the uncomfortable impression that had lately marked his relations with Florence. The atmosphere between them always remained heavy and oppressive. Their words never seemed to express the private thoughts of either of them; and their actions did not correspond with the words spoken. Did not the circumstances logically demand the immediate dismissal of Florence Levasseur as well? Yet Don Luis did not so much as think of it.

  Returning to his study, he at once rang up Mazeroux and, lowering his voice so as not to let it reach the next room, he said:

  “Is that you, Mazeroux?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has the Prefect placed you at my disposal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, tell him that I have sacked all my servants and that I have given you their names and instructed you to have an active watch kept on them. We must look among them for Sauverand’s accomplice. Another thing: ask the Prefect to give you and me permission to spend the night at Hippolyte Fauville’s house.”

  “Nonsense! At the house on the Boulevard Suchet?”

  “Yes, I have every reason to believe that something’s going to happen there.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “I don’t know. But something is bound to take place. And I insist on being at it. Is it arranged?”

  “Right, Chief. Unless you hear to the contrary, I’ll meet you at nine o’clock this evening on the Boulevard Suchet.”

  Perenna did not see Mlle. Levasseur again that day. He went out in the course of the afternoon, and called at the registry office, where he chose some servants: a chauffeur, a coachman, a footman, a cook, and so on. Then he went to a photographer, who made a new copy of Mlle. Levasseur’s photograph. Don Luis had this touched up and faked it himself, so that the Prefect of Police should not perceive the substitution of one set of features for another.

  He dined at a restaurant and, at nine o’clock, joined Mazeroux on the

  Boulevard Suchet.

  Since the Fauville murders the house had been left in the charge of the porter. All the rooms and all the locks had been sealed up, except the inner door of the workroom, of which the police kept the keys for the purposes of the inquiry.

  The big study looked as it did before, though the papers had been removed and put away and there were no books and pamphlets left on the writing-table. A layer of dust, clearly visible by the electric light, covered its black leather and the surrounding mahogany.

  “Well, Alexandre, old man,” cried Don Luis, when they had made themselves comfortable, “what do you say to this? It’s rather impressive, being here again, what? But, this time, no barricading of doors, no bolts, eh? If anything’s going to happen, on this night of the fifteenth of April, we’ll put nothing in our friends’ way. They shall have full and entire liberty. It’s up to them, this time.”

  Though joking, Don Luis was nevertheless singularly impressed, as he himself said, by the terrible recollection of the two crimes which he had been unable to prevent and by the haunting vision of the two dead bodies. And he also remembered with real emotion the implacable duel which he had fought with Mme. Fauville, the woman’s despair and her arrest.

  “Tell me about her,” he said to Mazeroux. “So she tried to kill herself?”

  “Yes,” said Mazeroux, “a thoroughgoing attempt, though she had to make it in a manner which she must have hated. She hanged herself in strips of linen torn from her sheets and underclothing and twisted together. She had to be restored by artificial respiration. She is out of danger now, I believe, but she is never left alone, for she swore she would do it again.”

  “She has made no confession?”

  “No. She persists in proclaiming her innocence.”

  “And what do they think at the public prosecutor’s? At the Prefect’s?”

  “Why should they change their opinion, Chief? The inquiries confirm every one of the charges brought against her; and, in particular, it has been proved beyond the possibility of dispute that she alone can have touched the apple and that she can have touched it only between eleven o’clock at night and seven o’clock in the morning. Now the apple bears the undeniable marks of her teeth. Would you admit that there are two sets of jaws in the world that leave the same identical imprint?”

  “No, no,” said Don Luis, who was thinking of Florence Levasseur. “No, the argument allows of no discussion. We have here a fact that is clear as daylight; and the imprint is almost tantamount to a discovery in the act. But then how, in the midst of all this, are we to explain the presence of — —”

  “Whom, Chief?”

  “Nobody. I had an idea worrying me. Besides, you see, in all this there are so many unnatural things, such queer coincidences and inconsistencies, that I dare not count on a certainty which the reality of to-morrow may destroy.”

  They went on talking for some time, in a low voice, studying the question in all its bearings.

  At midnight they switched off the electric light in the chandelier and arranged that each should go to sleep in turn.

  And the hours went by as they had done when the two sat up before, with the same sounds of belated carriages and motor cars; the same railway whistles; the same silence.

  The night passed without alarm or incident of any kind. At daybreak the life out of doors was resumed; and Don Luis, during his waking hours, had not heard a sound in the room except the monotonous snoring of his companion.

  “Can I have been mistaken?” he wondered. “Did the clue in that volume of Shakespeare mean something else? Or did it refer to events of last year, events that took place on the dates set down?”

  In spite of everything, he felt overcome by a strange uneasiness as the dawn began to glimmer through the half-closed shutters. A fortnight before, nothing had happened either to warn him; and yet there were two victims lying near him when he woke.

  At seven o’clock he called out:

  “Alexandre!”

  “Eh? What is it, Chief?”

  “You’re not dead?”

  “What’s that? Dead? No, Chief; why should I be?”

  “Quite sure?”

  “Well, that’s a good ‘un! Why not you?”

  “Oh, it’ll be my turn soon! Considering the intelligence of those scoundre
ls, there’s no reason why they should go on missing me.”

  They waited an hour longer. Then Perenna opened a window and threw back the shutter.

  “I say, Alexandre, perhaps you’re not dead, but you’re certainly very green.”

  Mazeroux gave a wry laugh:

  “Upon my word, Chief, I confess that I had a bad time of it when I was keeping watch while you were asleep.”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “To the roots of my hair. I kept on thinking that something was going to happen. But you, too, Chief, don’t look as if you had been enjoying yourself. Were you also—”

  He interrupted himself, on seeing an expression of unbounded astonishment on Don Luis’s face.

  “What’s the matter, Chief?”

  “Look! … on the table … that letter—”

  He looked. There was a letter on the writing-table, or, rather, a letter-card, the edges of which had been torn along the perforation marks; and they saw the outside of it, with the address, the stamp, and the postmarks.

  “Did you put that there, Alexandre?”

  “You’re joking, Chief. You know it can only have been you.”

  “It can only have been I … and yet it was not I.”

  “But then—”

  Don Luis took the letter-card and, on examining it, found that the address and the postmarks had been scratched out so as to make it impossible to read the name of the addressee or where he lived, but that the place of posting was quite clear, as was the date: Paris, 4 January, 19 — .

  “So the letter is three and a half months old,” said Don Luis.

  He turned to the inside of the letter. It contained a dozen lines and he at once exclaimed:

  “Hippolyte Fauville’s signature!”

  “And his handwriting,” observed Mazeroux. “I can tell it at a glance.

  There’s no mistake about that. What does it all mean? A letter written by

  Hippolyte Fauville three months before his death?”

  Perenna read aloud:

  “MY DEAR OLD FRIEND:

  “I can only, alas, confirm what I wrote to you the other day: the plot is thickening around me! I do not yet know what their plan is and still less how they mean to put it into execution; but everything warns me that the end is at hand. I can see it in her eyes. How strangely she looks at me sometimes!

  “Oh, the shame of it! Who would ever have thought her capable of it?

  “I am a very unhappy man, my dear friend.”

  “And it’s signed Hippolyte Fauville,” Mazeroux continued, “and I declare to you that it’s actually in his hand … written on the fourth of January of this year to a friend whose name we don’t know, though we shall dig him out somehow, that I’ll swear. And this friend will certainly give us the proofs we want.”

  Mazeroux was becoming excited.

  “Proofs? Why, we don’t need them! They’re here. M. Fauville himself supplies them: ‘The end is at hand. I can see it in her eyes.’ ‘Her’ refers to his wife, to Marie Fauville, and the husband’s evidence confirms all that we knew against her. What do you say, Chief?”

  “You’re right,” replied Perenna, absent-mindedly, “you’re right; the letter is final. Only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Who the devil can have brought it? Somebody must have entered the room last night while we were here. Is it possible? For, after all, we should have heard. That’s what astounds me.”

  “It certainly looks like it.”

  “Just so. It was a queer enough job a fortnight ago. But, still, we were in the passage outside, while they were at work in here, whereas, this time, we were here, both of us, close to this very table. And, on this table, which had not the least scrap of paper on it last night, we find this letter in the morning.”

  A careful inspection of the place gave them no clue to put them on the track. They went through the house from top to bottom and ascertained for certain that there was no one there in hiding. Besides, supposing that any one was hiding there, how could he have made his way into the room without attracting their attention? There was no solving the problem.

  “We won’t look any more,” said Perenna, “it’s no use. In matters of this sort, some day or other the light enters by an unseen cranny and everything gradually becomes clear. Take the letter to the Prefect of Police, tell him how we spent the night, and ask his permission for both of us to come back on the night of the twenty-fifth of April. There’s to be another surprise that night; and I’m dying to know if we shall receive a second letter through the agency of some Mahatma.”

  They closed the doors and left the house.

  While they were walking to the right, toward La Muette, in order to take a taxi, Don Luis chanced to turn his head to the road as they reached the end of the Boulevard Suchet. A man rode past them on a bicycle. Don Luis just had time to see his clean-shaven face and his glittering eyes fixed upon himself.

  “Look out!” he shouted, pushing Mazeroux so suddenly that the sergeant lost his balance.

  The man had stretched out his hand, armed with a revolver. A shot rang out. The bullet whistled past the ears of Don Luis, who had bobbed his head.

  “After him!” he roared. “You’re not hurt, Mazeroux?”

  “No, Chief.”

  They both rushed in pursuit, shouting for assistance. But, at that early hour, there are never many people in the wide avenues of this part of the town. The man, who was making off swiftly, increased his distance, turned down the Rue Octave-Feuillet, and disappeared.

  “All right, you scoundrel, I’ll catch you yet!” snarled Don Luis, abandoning a vain pursuit.

  “But you don’t even know who he is, Chief.”

  “Yes, I do: it’s he.”

  “Who?”

  “The man with the ebony stick. He’s cut off his beard and shaved his face, but I knew him for all that. It was the man who was taking pot-shots at us yesterday morning, from the top of his stairs on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, the one who killed Inspector Ancenis. The blackguard! How did he know that I had spent the night at Fauville’s? Have I been followed then and spied on? But by whom? And why? And how?”

  Mazeroux reflected and said:

  “Remember, Chief, you telephoned to me in the afternoon to give me an appointment. For all you know, in spite of lowering your voice, you may have been heard by somebody at your place.”

  Don Luis did not answer. He thought of Florence.

  That morning Don Luis’s letters were not brought to him by Mlle. Levasseur, nor did he send for her. He caught sight of her several times giving orders to the new servants. She must afterward have gone back to her room, for he did not see her again.

  In the afternoon he rang for his car and drove to the house on the Boulevard Suchet, to pursue with Mazeroux, by the Prefect’s instructions, a search that led to no result whatever.

  It was ten o’clock when he came in. The detective sergeant and he had some dinner together. Afterward, wishing also to examine the home of the man with the ebony stick, he got into his car again, still accompanied by Mazeroux, and told the man to drive to the Boulevard Richard-Wallace.

  The car crossed the Seine and followed the right bank.

  “Faster,” he said to his new chauffeur, through the speaking-tube. “I’m accustomed to go at a good pace.”

  “You’ll have an upset one fine day, Chief,” said Mazeroux.

  “No fear,” replied Don Luis. “Motor accidents are reserved for fools.”

  They reached the Place de l’Alma. The car turned to the left.

  “Straight ahead!” cried Don Luis. “Go up by the Trocadéro.”

  The car veered back again. But suddenly it gave three or four lurches in the road, took the pavement, ran into a tree and fell over on its side.

  In a few seconds a dozen people were standing round. They broke one of the windows and opened the door. Don Luis was the first.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m all right. And you, Alexan
dre?”

  They helped the sergeant out. He had a few bruises and a little pain, but no serious injury.

  Only the chauffeur had been thrown from his seat and lay motionless on the pavement, bleeding from the head. He was carried into a chemist’s shop and died in ten minutes.

  Mazeroux had gone in with the poor victim and, feeling pretty well stunned, had himself been given a pick-me-up. When he went back to the motor car he found two policemen entering particulars of the accident in their notebooks and taking evidence from the bystanders; but the chief was not there.

  Perenna in fact had jumped into a taxicab and driven home as fast as he could. He got out in the square, ran through the gateway, crossed the courtyard, and went down the passage that led to Mlle. Levasseur’s quarters. He leaped up the steps, knocked, and entered without waiting for an answer.

  The door of the room that served as a sitting-room was opened and Florence appeared. He pushed her back into the room, and said, in a tone furious with indignation:

  “It’s done. The accident has occurred. And yet none of the old servants can have prepared it, because they were not there and because I was out with the car this afternoon. Therefore, it must have been late in the day between six and nine o’clock, that somebody went to the garage and filed the steering-rod three quarters through.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” she said, with a scared look.

  “You understand perfectly well that the accomplice of the ruffians cannot be one of the new servants, and you understand perfectly well that the job was bound to succeed and that it did succeed, beyond their hopes. There is a victim, who suffers instead of myself.”

  “But tell me what has happened, Monsieur! You frighten me! What accident?

  What was it?”

  “The motor car was overturned. The chauffeur is dead.”

  “Oh,” she said, “how horrible! And you think that I can have — Oh, dead, how horrible! Poor man!”

  Her voice grew fainter. She was standing opposite to Perenna, close up against him. Pale and swooning, she closed her eyes, staggered.