He stopped for a moment, as though to read in Don Luis’s face the effect produced by his story. Don Luis did not conceal his anxious attention. What astonished him most was Gaston Sauverand’s extraordinary calmness, the peaceful expression of his eyes, the quiet ease with which he set forth, without hurrying, almost slowly and so very simply, the story of that family tragedy.
“What an actor!” he thought.
And as he thought it, he remembered that Marie Fauville had given him the same impression. Was he then to hark back to his first conviction and believe Marie guilty, a dissembler like her accomplice, a dissembler like Florence? Or was he to attribute a certain honesty to that man?
He asked:
“And afterward?”
“Afterward I travelled about. I resumed my life of work and pursued my studies wherever I went, in my bedroom at the hotels, and in the public laboratories of the big towns.”
“And Mme. Fauville?”
“She lived in Paris in her new house. Neither she nor her husband ever referred to the past.”
“How do you know? Did she write to you?”
“No. Marie is a woman who does not do her duty by halves; and her sense of duty is strict to excess. She never wrote to me. But Florence, who had accepted a place as secretary and reader to Count Malonyi, your predecessor in this house, used often to receive Marie’s visits in her lodge downstairs.
“They did not speak of me once, did they, Florence? Marie would not have allowed it. But all her life and all her soul were nothing but love and passionate memories. Isn’t that so, Florence?
“At last,” he went on slowly, “weary of being so far away from her, I returned to Paris. That was our undoing…. It was about a year ago. I took a flat in the Avenue du Roule and went to it in the greatest secrecy, so that Hippolyte Fauville might not know of my return. I was afraid of disturbing Marie’s peace of mind. Florence alone knew, and came to see me from time to time. I went out little, only after dark, and in the most secluded parts of the Bois. But it happened — for our most heroic resolutions sometimes fail us — one Wednesday night, at about eleven o’clock, my steps led me to the Boulevard Suchet, without my noticing it, and I went past Marie’s house.
“It was a warm and fine night and, as luck would have it, Marie was at her window. She saw me, I was sure of it, and knew me; and my happiness was so great that my legs shook under me as I walked away.
“After that I passed in front of her house every Wednesday evening; and Marie was nearly always there, giving me this unhoped-for and ever-new delight, in spite of the fact that her social duties, her quite natural love of amusement, and her husband’s position obliged her to go out a great deal.”
“Quick! Why can’t you hurry?” said Don Luis, urged by his longing to know more. “Look sharp and come to the facts. Speak!”
He had become suddenly afraid lest he should not hear the remainder of the explanation; and he suddenly perceived that Gaston Sauverand’s words were making their way into his mind as words that were perhaps not untrue. Though he strove to fight against them, they were stronger than his prejudices and triumphed over his arguments.
The fact is, that deep down in his soul, tortured with love and jealousy, there was something that disposed him to believe this man in whom hitherto he had seen only a hated rival, and who was so loudly proclaiming, in Florence’s very presence, his love for Marie.
“Hurry!” he repeated. “Every minute is precious!”
Sauverand shook his head.
“I shall not hurry. All my words were carefully thought out before I decided to speak. Every one of them is essential. Not one of them can be omitted, for you will find the solution of the problem not in facts presented anyhow, separated one from the other, but in the concatenation of the facts, and in a story told as faithfully as possible.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“Because the truth lies hidden in that story.”
“But that truth is your innocence, isn’t it?”
“It is Marie’s innocence.”
“But I don’t dispute it!”
“What is the use of that if you can’t prove it?”
“Exactly! It’s for you to give me proofs.”
“I have none.”
“What!”
“I tell you, I have no proof of what I am asking you to believe.”
“Then I shall not believe it!” cried Don Luis angrily. “No, and again no! Unless you supply me with the most convincing proofs, I shall refuse to believe a single word of what you are going to tell me.”
“You have believed everything that I have told you so far,” Sauverand retorted very simply.
Don Luis offered no denial. He turned his eyes to Florence Levasseur; and it seemed to him that she was looking at him with less aversion, and as though she were wishing with all her might that he would not resist the impressions that were forcing themselves upon him. He muttered:
“Go on with your story.”
And there was something really strange about the attitude of those two men, one making his explanation in precise terms and in such a way as to give every word its full value, the other listening attentively and weighing every one of those words; both controlling their excitement; both as calm in appearance as though they were seeking the philosophical solution in a case of conscience. What was going on outside did not matter. What was to happen presently did not count.
Before all, whatever the consequences of their inactivity at this moment when the circle of the police was closing in around them, before all it was necessary that one should speak and the other listen.
“We are coming,” said Sauverand, in his grave voice, “we are coming to the most important events, to those of which the interpretation, which is new to you, but strictly true, will make you believe in our good faith. Ill luck having brought me across Hippolyte Fauville’s path in the course of one of my walks in the Bois, I took the precaution of changing my abode and went to live in the little house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, where Florence came to see me several times.
“I was even careful to keep her visits a secret and, moreover, to refrain from corresponding with her except through the poste restante. I was therefore quite easy in my mind.
“I worked in perfect solitude and in complete security. I expected nothing. No danger, no possibility of danger, threatened us. And, I may say, to use a commonplace but very accurate expression, that what happened came as an absolute bolt from the blue. I heard at the same time, when the Prefect of Police and his men broke into my house and proceeded to arrest me, I heard at the same time and for the first time of the murder of Hippolyte Fauville, the murder of Edmond, and the arrest of my adored Marie.”
“Impossible!” cried Don Luis, in a renewed tone of aggressive wrath. “Impossible! Those facts were a fortnight old. I cannot allow that you had not heard of them.”
“Through whom?”
“Through the papers,” exclaimed Don Luis. “And, more certainly still, through Mlle. Levasseur.”
“Through the papers?” said Sauverand. “I never used to read them. What! Is that incredible? Are we under an obligation, an inevitable necessity, to waste half an hour a day in skimming through the futilities of politics and the piffle of the news columns? Is your imagination incapable of conceiving a man who reads nothing but reviews and scientific publications?
“The fact is rare, I admit,” he continued. “But the rarity of a fact is no proof against it. On the other hand, on the very morning of the crime I had written to Florence saying that I was going away for three weeks and bidding her good-bye. I changed my mind at the last moment; but this she did not know; and, thinking that I had gone, not knowing where I was, she was unable to inform me of the crime, of Marie’s arrest, or, later, when an accusation was brought against the man with the ebony walking-stick, of the search that was being made for me.”
“Exactly!” declared Don Luis. “You cannot pretend that the man with the ebony walkin
g-stick, the man who followed Inspector Vérot to the Café du Pont-Neuf and purloined his letter—”
“I am not the man,” Sauverand interrupted.
And, when Don Luis shrugged his shoulders, he insisted, in a more forcible tone of voice:
“I am not that man. There is some inexplicable mistake in all this, but I have never set foot in the Café du Pont-Neuf. I swear it. You must accept this statement as positively true. Besides, it agrees entirely with the retired life which I was leading from necessity and from choice. And, I repeat, I knew nothing.
“The thunderbolt was unexpected. And it was precisely for this reason, you must understand, that the shock produced in me an equally unexpected reaction, a state of mind diametrically opposed to my real nature, an outburst of my most savage and primitive instincts. Remember, Monsieur, that they had laid hands upon what to me was the most sacred thing on earth. Marie was in prison. Marie was accused of committing two murders!… I went mad.
“At first controlling myself, playing a part with the Prefect of Police, then overthrowing every obstacle, shooting Chief Inspector Ancenis, shaking off Sergeant Mazeroux, jumping from the window, I had only one thought in my head — that of escape. Once free, I should save Marie. Were there people in my way? So much the worse for them.
“By what right did those people dare to attack the most blameless of women? I killed only one man that day! I would have killed ten! I would have killed twenty! What was Chief Inspector Ancenis’s life to me? What cared I for the lives of any of those wretches? They stood between Marie and myself; and Marie was in prison!”
Gaston Sauverand made an effort which contracted every muscle of his face to recover the coolness that was gradually leaving him. He succeeded in doing so, but his voice, nevertheless, remained tremulous, and the fever with which he was consumed shook his frame in a manner which he was unable to conceal.
He continued:
“At the corner of the street down which I turned after outdistancing the Prefect’s men on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, Florence saved me just as I believed that all was lost. Florence had known everything for a fortnight past. She learnt the news of the double murder from the papers, those papers which she used to read out to you, and which you discussed with her. And it was by being with you, by listening to you, that she acquired the opinion which everything that happened tended to confirm: the opinion that Marie’s enemy, her only enemy, was yourself.”
“But why? Why?”
“Because she saw you at work,” exclaimed Sauverand, “because it was more to your interest than to that of any one else that first Marie and then I should not come between you and the Mornington inheritance, and lastly—”
“What?”
Gaston Sauverand hesitated and then said, plainly:
“Lastly, because she knew your real name beyond a doubt, and because she felt that Arsène Lupin was capable of anything.”
They were both silent; and their silence, at such a moment, was impressive to a degree. Florence remained impassive under Don Luis Perenna’s gaze; and he was unable to discern on her sealed face any of the feelings with which she must needs be stirred.
Gaston Sauverand continued:
“It was against Arsène Lupin, therefore, that Florence, Marie’s terrified friend, engaged in the struggle. It was to unmask Lupin that she wrote or rather inspired the article of which you found the original in a ball of string. It was Lupin whom she spied upon, day by day, in this house. It was Lupin whom she heard one morning telephoning to Sergeant Mazeroux and rejoicing in my imminent arrest. It was to save me from Lupin that she let down the iron curtain in front of him, at the risk of an accident, and took a taxi to the corner of the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, where she arrived too late to warn me, as the detectives had already entered my house, but in time to screen me from their pursuit.
“Her mistrust and terror-stricken hatred of you were told to me in an instant,” Sauverand declared. “During the twenty minutes which we employed in throwing our assailants off the scent, she hurriedly sketched the main lines of the business and described to me in a few words the leading part which you were playing in it; and we then and there prepared a counter-attack upon you, so that you might be suspected of complicity.
“While I was sending a message to the Prefect of Police, Florence went home and hid under the cushions of your sofa the end of the stick which I had kept in my hand without thinking. It was an ineffective parry and missed its aim. But the fight had begun; and I threw myself into it headlong.
“Monsieur, to understand my actions thoroughly, you must remember that I was a student, a man leading a solitary life, but also an ardent lover. I would have spent all my life in work, asking no more from fate than to see Marie at her window from time to time at night. But, once she was being persecuted, another man arose within me, a man of action, bungling, certainly, and inexperienced, but a man who was ready to stick at nothing, and who, not knowing how to save Marie Fauville, had no other object before him than to do away with that enemy of Marie’s to whom he was entitled to ascribe all the misfortunes that had befallen the woman he loved…. This started the series of my attempts upon your life. Brought into your house, concealed in Florence’s own rooms, I tried — unknown to her: that I swear — to poison you.”
He paused for an instant to mark the effect of his words, then went on:
“Her reproaches, her abhorrence of such an act, would perhaps have moved me, but, I repeat, I was mad, quite mad; and your death seemed to me to imply Marie’s safety. And, one morning, on the Boulevard Suchet, where I had followed you, I fired a revolver at you.
“The same evening your motor car, tampered with by myself — remember, Florence’s rooms are close to the garage — carried you, I hoped, to your death, together with Sergeant Mazeroux, your confederate…. That time again you escaped my vengeance. But an innocent man, the chauffeur who drove you, paid for you with his life; and Florence’s despair was such that I had to yield to her entreaties and lay down my arms.
“I myself, terrified by what I had done, shattered by the remembrance of my two victims, changed my plans and thought only of saving Marie by contriving her escape from prison….
“I am a rich man. I lavished money upon Marie’s warders, without, however, revealing my intentions. I entered into relations with the prison tradesmen and the staff of the infirmary. And every day, having procured a card of admission as a law reporter, I went to the law courts, to the examining magistrates’ corridor, where I hoped to meet Marie, to encourage her with a look, a gesture, perhaps to slip a few words of comfort into her hand….”
Sauverand moved closer to Don Luis.
“Her martyrdom continued. You struck her a most terrible blow with that mysterious business of Hippolyte Fauville’s letters. What did those letters mean? Where did they come from? Were we not entitled to attribute the whole plot to you, to you who introduced them into the horrible struggle?
“Florence watched you, I may say, night and day. We sought for a clue, a glimmer of light in the darkness…. Well, yesterday morning, Florence saw Sergeant Mazeroux arrive. She could not overhear what he said to you, but she caught the name of a certain Langernault and the name of Damigni, the village where Langernault lived. She remembered that old friend of Hippolyte Fauville’s. Were the letters not addressed to him and was it not in search of him that you were going off in the motor with Sergeant Mazeroux?…
“Half an hour later we were in the train for Alençon. A carriage took us from the station to just outside Damigni, where we made our inquiries with every possible precaution. On learning what you must also know, that Langernault was dead, we resolved to visit his place, and we had succeeded in effecting an entrance when Florence saw you in the grounds. Wishing at all costs to avoid a meeting between you and myself, she dragged me across the lawn and behind the bushes. You followed us, however, and when a barn appeared in sight she pushed one of the doors which half opened and let us through. We managed to slip q
uickly through the lumber in the dark and knocked up against a ladder. This we climbed and reached a loft in which we took shelter. You entered at that moment….
“You know the rest: how you discovered the two hanging skeletons; how your attention was drawn to us by an imprudent movement of Florence; your attack, to which I replied by brandishing the first weapon with which chance provided me; lastly, our flight through the window in the roof, under the fire of your revolver. We were free. But in the evening, in the train, Florence fainted. While bringing her to I perceived that one of your bullets had wounded her in the shoulder. The wound was slight and did not hurt her, but it was enough to increase the extreme tension of her nerves. When you saw us — at Le Mans station wasn’t it? — she was asleep, with her head on my shoulder.”
Don Luis had not once interrupted the latter part of this narrative, which was told in a more and more agitated voice and quickened by an accent of profound truth. Thanks to a superhuman effort of attention, he noted Sauverand’s least words and actions in his mind. And as these words were uttered and these actions performed, he received the impression of another woman who rose up beside the real Florence, a woman unspotted and innocent of all the shame which he had attributed to her on the strength of events.
Nevertheless, he did not yet give in. How could Florence possibly be innocent? No, no, the evidence of his eyes, which had seen, and the evidence of his reason, which had judged, both rebelled against any such contention.
He would not admit that Florence could suddenly be different from what she really was to him: a crafty, cunning, cruel, blood-thirsty monster. No, no, the man was lying with infernal cleverness. He put things with a skill amounting to genius, until it was no longer possible to differentiate between the false and the true, or to distinguish the light from the darkness.
He was lying! He was lying! And yet how sweet were the lies he told! How beautiful was that imaginary Florence, the Florence compelled by destiny to commit acts which she loathed, but free of all crime, free of remorse, humane and pitiful, with her clear eyes and her snow-white hands! And how good it was to yield to this fantastic dream!
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 263
