Le billet rouge. English

by Fortuné Du Boisgobey

  V.

  After his midnight mishap, Puymirol, still suffering from his fall,slowly and gloomily retraced his steps. What should he do with himself?He was in no humour to go to bed, and the thought occurred to him thathe might perhaps still retrieve his losses at the gaming-table. Thedoors of his own club were closed against him until his outstanding debtwas paid, but he knew other places easy of access, for in Paris thereare plenty of private gambling-dens to which a man can gain admission byfeeing the doorkeeper, as Puymirol was well aware. Thus in his greatneed, the idea of again trying his luck occurred to him, and he did notlose a moment in carrying it into execution. But, alas, the thirty louiswhich still remained to him were speedily lost in an establishment ofthe Chaussee d'Antin; and Puymirol, disheartened and exhausted, left thecard-room, and passing into an adjoining apartment flung himself upon asofa. He felt that irresistible longing to sleep which so often followsupon great crises. His eyes closed in spite of all his efforts to keepthem open, and in a few moments he fell into a profound slumber which noone at first disturbed, for at the gaming-table players don't troublethemselves about the wounded. He was still sleeping heavily when he wasroughly shaken by a footman; and when he opened his eyes in bewildermenthe found that it was broad daylight. "What time is it?" he inquired,with a yawn.

  "Past eight o'clock," replied the footman sullenly. "All the othergentlemen left a long while ago; and I must set the room in order. Thisisn't a lodging house."

  Puymirol felt strongly inclined to kick the fellow who had so rudelyrecalled him to the realities of life, but he restrained his wrath, androse up without a word. He found his hat and overcoat in thecloak-room, and forthwith left the establishment, having decided toreturn home at once so as to see George and procure the letters, for hislate reverses had discouraged him so much that he was now inclined toaccept Madame de Lescombat's offer. He accordingly walked towards theboulevard. Paris was already astir; the passers-by jostled him on theside walk, and vehicles went rapidly to and fro. As he was hasteningpast a doorway he narrowly escaped stumbling over a boy who was lyingthere, more than half asleep. At this, he paused, with a muttered oath,and heard the urchin mumble a few words which he did not at firstunderstand. Our friend was not in the best of humours by any means, andhe felt highly incensed with the little fellow, whom he suspected oflying in wait to trip up unwary passers-by. "What did you say, you youngrascal?" he cried savagely.

  "Buy the official list," sleepily responded the lad, rubbing his eyes.

  Seizing the little fellow by his coat collar, Puymirol set him on hisfeet in the twinkling of an eye. "Do you know," said he, "you verynearly broke my neck, and I have a great mind to call a policeman totake you to the station-house? What do you mean by going to sleep on thepavement?"

  "It is not my fault, sir," sobbed the boy. "I dared not go home becauseI hadn't sold all the lists. Mother would have been sure to beat me. SoI ran about the streets all the evening until I couldn't stand it anylonger, and then I sat down here to rest, and fell asleep. Don't have mearrested, please don't. I am going to set to work again now, and perhapsI shall manage to sell what I've got left."

  Puymirol was really kind-hearted, and the sight of the lad's distress sotouched him, that he put his hand in his pocket. He found himself richerthan he had supposed, for his pocket happened to contain a quantity ofsmall silver, which had escaped the croupier's rake. "What have you gotthere?" he asked.

  "Why, sir, I'm selling lists of the winning numbers of the Lottery ofthe Decorative Art Society. They cost only two sous apiece; buy one,sir."

  "Well, here are five francs, my lad. You don't look to me as if you hadmuch dinner yesterday. Go and get something to eat, and then go home tobed. You can take the money you have left to your mother, and she won'tbeat you."

  The boy took the money, trying to falter out his thanks; and as Puymirolhastened on, he ran after him, and forced one of the lists of winningnumbers into his hand, saying: "Please take it. It may bring you goodluck, sir."

  In Puymirol's present desperate plight the remark sounded very much likea sarcasm. Still he took the list, and as he went on his way he glancedat it mechanically, and beheld in large figures the number of the ticketwhich had won the grand prize of one hundred thousand francs.

  "Number 115,815!" he murmured. "That is to say, there is now somewherein Paris, or in the provinces, a fortunate mortal who paid a franc for ascrap of paper which he can now exchange for one hundred thousand francsin bank notes. And this lucky fellow is perhaps a millionaire who hasmore money than he knows what to do with already, whereas if I had onehundred thousand francs I should consider myself independent for life."So reflecting, Puymirol crumpled the list in his hand, and was about tothrow it away, when a new idea flashed through his brain. "Why, I stillhave those tickets I found in the pocket-book. While I was chasing thatrascal last night, I placed them in my waistcoat pocket. What if Ishould find one of the winning numbers among them? Let me see."

  He drew out the little packet of tickets, some two dozen in number, and,stopping short behind a newspaper kiosk, he slowly unfolded them. As heglanced at the topmost ticket he could scarcely believe his eyes, forthere was the number--the winning number printed in the centre of it. Heread and re-read it, examined it again and again, and compared it,figure by figure, with the list in his other hand; but it was all quitetrue, he certainly had in his possession No. 115,815, which entitled itsowner to the grand prize. He had nineteen francs in his pocket, nothingin his desk, and one hundred thousand francs between his fingers. Theshock was so great and so unexpected, that, proof as he had alwaysconsidered himself against emotion, he was obliged to lean against thenewspaper kiosk for support. His brain reeled. But suddenly a freshthought occurred to him. "Dash it! the ticket isn't mine! It belonged toDargental. In fact, it is the only piece of property he left for hisheirs, if he has any. I have no right to appropriate it. It would be atheft." Puymirol's face lengthened, but he quickly recovered himself. "Atheft, no. I did not steal it; I found it, or rather it was thrown tome, which amounted to the same thing as giving it to me."

  This sophistry did not deceive him, however. He had invented it to quiethis conscience; but he realised how shallow it was. Then he thought ofconsulting Caumont, but he felt a presentiment that George would advisehim to give up the ticket; and he did not care for advice which he didnot intend to follow. But where and how was this grand prize payable?Would it only be necessary to show this triumphant No. 115,815 at thelottery office to convert it into bank notes? One of these questions wasanswered on the back of the ticket. He there read that the office of theLottery of the Society of Decorative Arts was at the Palais del'Industrie, in the Champs Elysees, Door No. 4. Puymirol's position wastoo desperate for him to indulge in much reflection. He made a nervousgesture as if to say: "I must cross the Rubicon," and then he replacedthe tickets in his pocket. However, before going to the lottery office,he must set his toilet right. Still, this was easily managed. There weresome Turkish baths hard by, and after indulging in the wholesome luxuryof Oriental ablutions, he proceeded in due course to a fashionablebarber's, where he was shaved, cosmetiqued, and perfumed, so that hewould have been presentable anywhere, although he had not changed hislinen. These preparations occupied him until eleven o'clock, and then,after partaking of a light breakfast, which exhausted his remainingfunds, he hastened to the Palais de l'Industrie. At door No. 4, whichseemed to him very like the gate of Paradise, he found a liveriedfootman talking with two men whom he took for favourites of fortune,who, like himself, had come to receive their money. He explained why hewished to speak to the secretary, and the attendant having gazed at himwith admiring envy, told him to walk upstairs. The two persons who hadbeen waiting, followed in his wake, and they all three entered a largeante-room on the first floor. A clerk rose on seeing them, and Puymirolwas about to repeat his statement when one of the other fellows hastilyapproached the clerk, took him aside, and said a few words to him in alow tone; thereupon the clerk immediately opened a
side door, and theman passed out and disappeared.

  Turning to Puymirol, the clerk then inquired what he wanted, and onlearning that he had come to cash a winning ticket, he at once opened adoor leading into the office proper, where Puymirol found twoprepossessing-looking gentlemen. One of them sat in an arm-chair, whilethe other occupied a stool at the end of the same table, and had a largeleather case, such as is employed for the conveyance of documents,before him. "To whom have I the honour of speaking?" inquired thegentleman in the arm-chair.

  "I am the holder of ticket No. 115,815, which is mentioned as having wonone hundred thousand francs at your last drawing."

  "I congratulate you, sir. Will you take a seat?"

  Puymirol accepted the invitation; but in spite of his graciousreception, he felt ill at ease in the presence of these two persons.When a man has not a clear conscience, he sees danger everywhere, andPuymirol almost fancied himself a culprit arraigned before aninvestigating magistrate and his secretary. It was necessary to exhibitthe ticket, however, so he drew the whole packet from his pocket andhanded it to the gentleman in the arm-chair, who unfolded it, andexamined the tickets one after another. "Here are some that do notinterest us," he remarked: "the Tunisian Lottery, the AmsterdamLottery."

  "Yes," replied Puymirol, "I take a chance or two in all of them, but sofar I have never won anything."

  The official continued his examination, and finally lighted upon No.115,815. This he examined closely, first upon one side, and then uponthe other, and finally passed it to the gentleman seated at the end ofthe table. "Excuse this close examination," he remarked to Puymirol. "Itnot infrequently happens that spurious tickets are presented to us; thatis to say, tickets of which the numbers have been altered."

  "That is not the case with mine, I suppose?"

  "No, sir. It is a little soiled, but it has not been tampered with."

  "Then I can draw the amount?"

  "There are certain formalities which must be gone through first of all.Will you give me your name and address?"

  Puymirol coloured slightly. "Is this indispensable?" he asked. "I don'tcare to have my name in the papers. If it became known that I had wonthis prize," he added, a little nervously, "I should be beset on everyside by requests for money. All my impecunious friends would makedemands upon my purse, and my hundred thousand francs wouldn't lastlong."

  "Oh! you need have no fears, sir. We shall not publish your name. Thisisn't the first time that winners have requested us not to give theirnames, and we have always complied with such requests, although, bydoing so, we miss an excellent advertisement for our lottery. You neednot, therefore, object to giving us your name and address. They will berecorded upon our books, but no one will be allowed to see them."

  "That is all I ask. My name is Adhemar de Puymirol. I am a medicalstudent, and I reside at No. 14 Rue de Medicis."

  "Very well, sir, we will make a note of it. I forgot to mention that youwould be obliged to give this information, in any case, for no winnercan draw a penny of his money without giving a receipt to which hisaddress must be appended."

  "I fancied that it would only be necessary to present the ticket at youroffice so as to obtain the money, but I am ready and willing to give areceipt for it."

  The gentleman took no notice of this hint. He seemed to have becomesuddenly absorbed in the examination of some papers; however, the personwhom Adhemar had taken for a secretary, looked up, and, with his eyesfixed searchingly on the applicant's face, he curtly asked: "How old areyou?"

  "What difference can my age possibly make? I have attained my majority,as you see, and that is all that is necessary to make my receiptperfectly valid."

  "Where were you born?"

  "What business is that of yours?" replied Adhemar, exasperated by thesestrange questions.

  "You refuse to answer, then?"

  "Yes, certainly. I came here to draw the money due to me. I don't intendto be cross examined like some criminal."

  "Be careful, I am a commissary of police."

  Puymirol turned pale. He realised, at last, that he had plunged blindlyinto a frightful abyss, and that his imprudence was about to cost himdear. He was resolved to defend himself to the last, however. "I was notaware that the managers of this popular lottery required the assistanceof police officials in the performance of their duties," he retorted."This precaution will hardly favour the sale of tickets, should itbecome known to the public, and I will take good care to inform peopleabout it."

  "You are speaking to a magistrate, remember. Tell me where, and when,you purchased this ticket?"

  "At a tobacconist's, probably."

  "What tobacconist's?"

  "The deuce take me if I can remember. I purchased between twenty andthirty tickets, and in a dozen different places. They are all here onthe table."

  "Yes, I see you have brought them all. It is strange that the idea ofdetaching the winning ticket did not occur to you. One can not think ofeverything, however."

  "I brought the package exactly as I took it from my pocket-book."

  "Have you that pocket-book about you?"

  "No," stammered Puymirol, disconcerted by this question, which he mighthave foreseen, however. "I left it at home."

  "Of course, great as your audacity may be, you would hardly dare toproduce that. It bears other initials than yours."

  "Produce it if you can," retorted Puymirol, imprudently.

  "I understand. You have no fear of its being produced; you havedestroyed it."

  This time the commissary had made a mistake, and a suspicion that hadflashed across Puymirol's mind a few moments before, was effectuallydispelled. He had fancied that his assailant of the previous night mighthave been set upon his track by the police, who had taken forciblepossession of the pocket-book, by orders of his superiors. "I do notunderstand you, unfortunately," said Adhemar. "But let us put an end tothis. What are you aiming at?"

  "Well, a crime was committed in Paris about a fortnight ago. Awell-known gentleman, a man of fashion, was murdered at mid-day, in hisrooms. You must have heard of the affair?"

  "Yes, through the papers."

  "Well, the gentleman's valet was arrested; but, as there was no evidenceagainst him, he has been released. The murderer has not only escapeddetection so far, but the motive that prompted the crime has not yetbeen discovered. All that has been ascertained is that the victim alwayscarried a pocket-book, of which a full description has been given, andthat this pocket-book has disappeared."

  "All this is very interesting," sneered Puymirol. "The pocket-bookprobably contained a large sum of money?"

  "That is the general supposition, but one can not be sure. One thing,however, is certain; it contained several tickets of this lottery, andamong this gentleman's private papers, a list of these tickets wasfound. It occurred to the investigating magistrate that he might utilisethis information in the improbable event of one of these particulartickets winning a prize, and being presented for payment by themurderer. It was one chance in a million, and yet it has occurred. Assoon as the investigating magistrate ascertained that one of thesetickets had won the grand prize, he gave me orders to come here with twodetectives. Now, you must understand the situation. What have you tosay?"

  "Nothing."

  "Your silence is equivalent to a confession of guilt. You admit, then,that you purloined these tickets after killing the man who had themabout his person?"

  "I admit nothing of the kind."

  "Oh! it is patent that you took them from the body of your victim; andyou had the courage to open the pocket-book immediately after murderingthat unfortunate man. Look at this ticket. The mark of your bloodyfingers is still upon it."

  As the commissary spoke he spread the ticket out upon the table andpointed to a couple of pale red stains upon the back of it and whichPuymirol had not perceived when he had looked at the ticket on theboulevard. However he made no attempt to refute the commissary'sarguments. He had decided to defend himself in a different way. "So youre
ally accuse me of murder and robbery?" he asked.

  "I have merely stated the facts and the conclusions one must naturallydraw from them. It is for you to prove that my deductions are false.Now, do you still persist in declaring that you purchased the tickets ina cigar shop?"

  "No," was Adhemar's reluctant response. "I found them in a cab afortnight ago."

  "And you kept them until now?"

  "I attached very little importance to the occurrence. Lottery ticketsare seldom of any value."

  "Before the drawing, perhaps so; but afterwards when one of them has wona prize, it is very different."

  "I admit that I yielded to the temptation of trying to profit by whatseemed almost a godsend; I had no idea of doing so until this morning,however, when a list of the winning numbers happened to fall into myhands. I had the tickets in my pocket at the time, and impelled by avery natural curiosity to compare them with the list, I saw that thefirst prize had been won by No. 115,815. I yielded to the temptationwhich I regret, and I am certainly sufficiently punished."

  "Why did you not inform Monsieur Robergeot of the finding of thesetickets?" inquired the commissary, after a prolonged pause.

  "Who is Monsieur Robergeot?"

  "The investigating magistrate who sent for you on the day after themurder. I have his report here. You see I know everything."

  "But I had no reason to suppose that this ticket had ever belonged toDargental. The magistrate said nothing that would lead me to think so.He only asked me what I saw on entering the room in which the body waslying, and what I thought of the valet's connection with the affair."

  "At that time the memorandum had not been found. But from what you say,the tickets were in your possession when you were first examined."

  Puymirol bit his lip, but it was too late to retract this imprudentadmission. "Yes," he replied at last. "They had been in my possessionsince the previous day, though at the time I forgot all about them."

  "You picked them up in a cab you said. In that case, it is natural tosuppose that the murderer dropped them there, or that he left them thereintentionally. He certainly did not murder Monsieur Dargental to obtainpossession of them. However, where did you take this cab?"

  "At the cab-stand near my house outside the Luxembourg."

  "And it took you where?"

  "To the Lion d'Or restaurant where Dargental had asked me to meet him.He was giving a lunch that day to several friends."

  "At what hour did you reach the restaurant?"

  "About noon."

  "And the crime must have been committed at about eleven o'clock. It isstrange that the murderer should have driven back to the Odeon almost toyour very door."

  Puymirol made no reply. He felt that he was not capable of contendingwith the commissary. "Did you take the number of this cab?" added theofficial.

  "No. I had no special reason for taking it."

  "Excuse me: had you done so, you might have questioned the driver, andhave ascertained where he had left the passenger who had dropped thelottery tickets. It is true that you were not anxious to find him, asyou had already decided to keep them." Puymirol flushed, and hung hishead. To clear himself of the charge of murder he had placed himself insuch a position that he could not deny a fraudulent intention. "It is agreat pity," continued the commissary. "The driver's testimony would beof great importance, for the magistrate is not obliged to take yourword, and if you can produce no witness--Were you alone in the cab?"

  This time Puymirol hesitated. It was too great a risk to mention GeorgeCaumont's name, for George, who was ignorant of the real situation ofaffairs, would simply tell the truth, and then the pocket-book, whichPuymirol no longer possessed, would come into question; and besides,George would probably hand over the letters. Perhaps he would even tellthe magistrate that one of the letters was written by the Countess deLescombat, and one of the others probably by Blanche Pornic, in whichcase the least that could happen to Puymirol would be a conviction forperjury; so hoping to avert this new danger by a falsehood, he repliedunblushingly: "I was alone."

  "There is nothing left for us, then, but to try and find the driver,"replied the commissary coldly, "and we may, perhaps, succeed in findinghim. We have the exact date, as well as the point of departure, and theplace of destination. We will make inquiries at the office of the cabcompany, and at all the livery stables. If the driver remembers theoccurrence he can give us the clue we want."

  Puymirol knew perfectly well that the driver would recollect theoccurrence, as he had given the mysterious stranger who had purloinedthe pocket-book full information about it, so seeing that he was gettingdeeper and deeper into the mire, he decided to make a bold attempt tocut the interview short. "I reproach myself bitterly for having yieldedto a temptation for which I blush," he said. "You must blame me veryseverely, but I hope you will not carry matters to extremes. I belong toa respectable family, and my past life is without a stain. I shall be atyour disposal, of course, but I ask your permission to withdraw."

  "My powers are more limited than you suppose," said the commissarygravely. "The magistrate will pay due attention to your explanation, butyou must give it to him in person. He must now be at the Palais deJustice, and I will accompany you there."

  "Nothing would please me better. I thought of calling at his officeto-day, and as you are kind enough to accompany me--"

  "It is my duty."

  The commissary then rang. One of the detectives who had remained in theante-room entered, and received orders to fetch a cab: then, taking uphis case of documents, the commissary left the room in company withPuymirol, whose wonted assurance had nearly deserted him. They found thecab at the door, and entered it, one of the detectives climbing upon thebox, and seating himself beside the driver. The journey was a silentone, and ended upon the Quai de l'Horloge, at the entrance to thecourt-yard of the Conciergerie. "Where are you taking me?" askedPuymirol. "Monsieur Robergeot's office is in the building facing theboulevard."

  "You will soon be summoned there," replied the commissary. "But I mustsee him before you do, and in the meanwhile I must consign you to thedepot of the Prefecture of Police."