CHAPTER XIII.
"I DO not know," thought Bernardet as he returned home. "What one knowsvery well indeed, what one cannot deny, oh, that would be impossible! isthat on the retina of the dead man's eye, reflected there at the suprememoment of the agony, is found the image of this Dantin, his face, hisfeatures; this man, in a word, denounced by this witness which is worthall other witnesses in the world! This assassinated man cast a last lookupon his murderer as he called for aid; a last cry for 'Help!' in thedeath rattle!--and this man says: 'I do not know!' But the dead manknew; and the kodak knows, also. It has no passion, no anger, no hate,because it registers what passes; fixes that which is fleeting!"
Bernardet was obstinate in his conviction. He was perfectly rooted init. What if he had not persisted in believing that photography wouldreveal the truth? What weighty reason, what even acceptable one wasthere which obliged Dantin to retain silent in the presence of theExamining Magistrate and his registrar--in the secret interview of anexamination--when in order to escape a prison, an accusation, he hadonly to speak two words? But if Dantin said nothing, was it because hehad nothing to say? If he had given no explanation, was it because hehad none to give? An innocent man does not remain silent. If at theinstant when M. Ginory pressed the ivory button the other day, if theman had been able to defend himself, would he not have done it? One knewthe secret reason of criminals for keeping silent. Their best reason istheir guilt.
Only, it seemed now certain that Dantin, although guilty, had anaccomplice. Yes, without doubt, the man with the sombrero, the seller ofthe portrait. Where could he now be in hiding?
"Not easy," Bernardet repeated the words: "Not easy; no, not easy at allto run him out of his rabbit hutch."
The Woman in Black, the visitor, would be another important clue. Onthis side the situation seemed a simple one. Or was this woman also anaccomplice, and would she remain silent, hidden in the Province? Orwould the death of Rovere draw her to Paris, where she might berecognized and become a witness for Justice?
But the days passed. What was called the mystery of the Boulevard deClichy continued to interest and excite the public. Violent andperplexing Parliamentary discussions could not distract attention from acrime committed in broad daylight, almost as one might say, in thestreet, and which made one doubt the security of the city, theefficiency of the police. The fall of a Ministry, predicted each morningand anticipated in advance, could not thrust aside morbid interest inthis murder. The death of the ex-Consul was a grand actuality!
Jacques Dantin thus became a dramatic personage; the reporters createdlegends about him; some declared him guilty and brought up in support oftheir conviction some anecdotes, some tales from the clubs, given asproofs; others asked if the suppositions were sufficiently well based toaccuse a man in advance of trial, and these latter ardently took up hisdefense. Paul Rodier had even, with much dexterity and eloquence,diplomatically written two articles, one on either side of the question.
"It is," he said to himself, "the sure way of having told the truth onone side or the other."
Bernardet did not renounce for an instant the hope of finding the manwho had sold the picture. It was not the first time that he had pickedthe needle from a cartful of hay. Paris is large, but this human sea hasits particular currents, as the ocean has special tides, and the policeofficer knew it well. Here or there, some day he would meet the man,cast up by the torrent like a waif.
First of all, the man was probably a stranger from some foreign land.Wearing a hat like a Spaniard, he had not had time to change the styleof dress of the country from which he had come in search of adventures.Bernardet haunted the hotels, searched the registers, made conversationwith the lodgers. He found poor persons who had come from foreigncountries, but whose motives for coming to Paris were all right.Bernardet never stopped searching a moment; he went everywhere, curiousand prying--and it pleased him, when he found a leisure evening, to goto some of the strange wine shops or ale houses (called cabarets) tofind subjects for observation. These cabarets are very numerous on theoutskirts of Montmartre, in the streets and boulevards at the foot ofthe Butte. Bizarre inventions, original and disagreeable creations,where the ingenuity of the enterprisers sometimes made them hideous inorder to attract; to cater to the idle, and to hold the loungers fromamong the higher classes. Cabarets born of the need for novelty, whichmight stimulate the blase; the demand for something eccentric almost tomorbid irony. A _Danse Macabre_ trod to the measures of an operetta;pleasantries of the bunglers adopting the cure-alls of the saw-bones,and juggling with their empty heads while dreaming the dreams of aHamlet.
Cabaret du Squelette!
The announcement of the droll promises--apparitions, visions,phantoms--had often made him smile when he passed near there to go tothe Prefecture; this wineshop, the front of which was bordered withblack, like a letter announcing a death, and which bore, grating as itswung at the end of an iron rod, a red lantern for a sign.
His little girls, when he laughingly spoke of the cabaret where thewaiters were dressed like undertakers' assistants, turned pale, andplump little Mme. Bernardet, ordinarily smiling, would say with a sigh:"Is it possible that such sacrilegious things are permitted in thequarter?"
Bernardet good-naturedly replied: "Ah, my dear, where is the harm?"
"I know what I am talking about," his good wife said; "they are thepleasure of the unhealthy minded. They mock at death as they mock ateverything else. Where will it all end? We shall see it"----
"Or we shall not see it," interrupted her husband, laughingly.
He went in there one evening, having a little time to himself, as hewould have gone into a theatre. He knew something about this Cabaret duSquelette (meaning the wine shop of the skeleton). He found the placevery droll.
A small hall which had a few months before been a common wine shop hadbeen transformed into a lugubrious place. The walls were painted a deadblack, and were hung with a large number of paintings--scenes frommasked balls, gondola parades, serenades with a balcony scene, some ofthe lovers' rendezvous of Venice and an ideal view of Granada, withcouples gazing at each other and sighing in the gondolas on the lagoons,or in the Andalusian courts--and in this strange place with its romanticpictures, souvenirs of Musset or of Carlo Gozzi, the tables were made inthe form of coffins with lighted candles standing upon them, and thewaiters were dressed as undertakers' assistants, with shiny black hatstrimmed with crape, on their heads.
"What poison will you drink before you die?" asked one of the creaturesof Bernardet.
Bernardet sat and gazed about him. A few "high-flyers" from the otherside of Paris were there. Here and there a thief from that quarter satalone at a table. Some elegants in white cravats, who had come there incorrect evening dress, were going later, after the opera, to sup withsome premiere. The police officer understood very well why the blasecame there. They wished to jog their jaded appetites; they sought tofind some _piment_, a curry, spice to season the tameness of their dailyexistence. The coffin-shaped tables upon which they leaned their elbowsamused them. Several of them had asked for a _bavaroise_, as they wereon milk diet.
They pointed out to each other the gas flaming from the jets fashionedin the form of a broken shin-bone.
"A little patience, my friends," said a sort of manager, who was dressedin deep mourning. "Before long we will adjourn to the Cave of Death!"
The drinkers in white cravats shouted. Bernardet experienced, on thecontrary, what Mme. Bernardet would have called a "creepy" sensation.Seasoned as he was to the bloody and villainous aspect of crime, he feltthe instinctive shrinking of a healthy and level-headed bourgeoisagainst these drolleries of the brain-diseased upper class and thepleasantries of the blase decadents.
At a certain moment, and after an explanation given by the manager, thegas was turned off, and the lovers in the gondolas, the guitar players,the singers of Spanish songs, the dancers infatuated with the MoulinRouge, changed suddenly in sinister fashion. In
place of the blond headsand rosy cheeks, skulls appeared; the smiles became grins which showedthe teeth in their fleshless gums. The bodies, clothed in doublets, invelvets and satins, a moment ago, were made by some interiorillumination to change into hideous skeletons. In his mocking tones themanager explained and commented on the metamorphosis, adding to thefuneral spectacle the pleasantry of a buffoon.
"See! diseased Parisians, what you will be on Sunday!"
The light went out suddenly; the skeletons disappeared; the sighinglovers in the gondolas on the lagoons of Venice reappeared; theAndalusian sweethearts again gazed into each other's eyes and sang theirlove songs. Some of the women laughed, but the laughs soundedconstrained.
"Droll! this city of Paris," Bernardet thought. He sat there, leaningback against the wall, where verses about death were printed among thewhite tears--as in those lodges of Free Masons where an outsider is shutup in order to give him time to make his will--when the door opened andBernardet saw a tall young man of stalwart and resolute mien enter. Ablack, curly beard surrounded his pale face. As he entered he cast aquick glance around the hall, the air of which was rather thick withcigar smoke. He seemed to be about thirty years of age, and had the airof an artist, a sculptor, or a painter, together with something militaryin his carriage. But what suddenly struck Bernardet was his hat, a largegray, felt hat, with a very wide brim, like the sombreros which the bullfighters wear.
Possibly, a few people passing through Paris might be found wearing suchhats. But they would probably be rare, and in order to find the sellerof Jacques Dantin's portrait, Bernardet had only this one clew.
"Oh! such a mean, little, weak, clew! But one must use it, just thesame!" Bernardet had said.
What if this young man with the strange hat was, by chance, the unknownfor whom he was seeking? It was not at all probable. No, when onethought of it--not at all probable. But truth is sometimes made up ofimprobabilities, and Bernardet again experienced the same shock, theinstinctive feeling that he had struck the trail, which he felt when theyoung man entered the wine shop.
"That hat!" murmured Bernardet, sipping his wine and stealing glancesover the rim of his glass at the young man. The unknown seemed to playdirectly into the police officer's hand. After standing by the door afew moments, and looking about the place, he walked over to thecoffin-shaped table at which Bernardet was seated, bringing himself faceto face with the officer. One of the waiters in his mourning dress cameto take his order, and lighted another candle, which he placed where itsrays fell directly on the young man's face. Thus Bernardet was able tostudy him at his ease. The pale face, with its expression, uneasy andslightly intense, struck Bernardet at once. That white face, with itsblack beard, with its gleaming eyes, was not to be passed by with acasual glance. The waiter placed a glass of brandy before him; he placedhis elbows on the table and leaned his chin upon his hands. He wasevidently not a habitue of the place nor a resident of the quarter.There was something foreign about his appearance. His glance was steady,as that of one who searches the horizon, looks at running water,contemplates the sea, asking for some "good luck" of the unknown.
"It would be strange," thought Bernardet, "if a simple hat and no otherclew should put us upon the track of the man for whom we are searching."
At once, with the ingenuity of a master of dramatic art, the agent beganto plot, and to put into action what lawyers, pleading and turning andtwisting a cause this way and that, call _an effect_. He waited untilthe manager informed them that they were about to pass into the Cave ofDeath, and gave them all an invitation into the adjoining hall; then,profiting by the general movement, he approached the unknown, and,almost shoulder to shoulder, he walked along beside him, through anarrow, dark passage to a little room, where, on a small stage stood,upright, an empty coffin.
It was a doleful spectacle, which the Cabaret du Squelette (the wineshop of the skeleton) offered to its clientele of idle loungers andmorbid curiosity seekers attracted to its halls by these exhibitions.Bernardet knew it all very well, and he knew by just what play oflights, what common chemical illuminations, they gave to the lookers onthe sinister illusion of the decomposition of a corpse in its narrowhome. This phantasmagoria, to which the people from the Boulevard came,in order to be amused, he had seen many times in the little theatres inthe fairs at Neuilly. The proprietor of the cabaret had explained it tohim; he had been curious and very keen about it, and so he followed thecrowd into this little hall, to look once more at the image of a man inthe coffin. He knew well to what purpose he could put it. The place wasfull. Men and women were standing about; the black walls made the narrowplace look still smaller. Occasional bizarre pleasantries were heard andnervous laughs rang out. Why is it, that no matter how sceptical peoplemay be, the idea, the proximity, the appearance of death gives them animpression of uneasiness, a singular sensation which is often displayedin nervous laughs or sepulchral drolleries?
Bernardet had not left the side of the young man with the gray felt hat.He could see his face distinctly in the light of the little hall, andcould study it at his ease. In the shadows which lurked about them theyoung man's face seemed like a white spot. The officer's sharp eyesnever left it for a moment.
The manager now asked if some one would try the experiment. This was tostep into the open coffin--that box, as he said--"from which yourfriends, your neighbors, can see you dematerialize and return tonothingness."
"Come, my friends," he continued, in his ironical tones, "this is a finething; it will permit your best friends to see you deliquesce! Are thereany married people here? It is only a question of tasting, in advance,the pleasures of a widowhood. Would you like to see your husbanddisappear, my sister? My brother, do you wish to see your wifedecompose? Sacrifice yourselves, I beg of you! Come! Come up here! Deathawaits you!"
They laughed, but here and there a laugh sounded strident or hysterical;the laugh did not ring true, but had the sound of cracked crystal. Noone stirred. This parody of death affected even these hardenedspectators.
"Oh, well, my friends, there is a cadaver belonging to the establishmentwhich we can use. It is a pity! You may readily understand that we donot take the dead for companions."
As no one among the spectators would enter the coffin, the manager, witha gesture, ordered one of the supernumeraries of the cabaret to enter;from an open door the figurant glided across the stage and entered thecoffin, standing upright. The manager wrapped him about with a shroud,leaving only the pale face of the pretended dead man exposed above thiswhiteness. The man smiled.
"He laughs, Messieurs, he laughs still!" said the manager. "You willsoon see him pay for that laugh. '_Rome rit et mourut!_' as Bossuetsaid."
Some of the audience shouted applause to this quotation from a famousauthor. Bernardet did not listen; he was studying from a corner of hiseye his neighbor's face. The man gazed with a sort of fascination atthis fantastic performance which was taking place before him. Hefrowned, he bit his lips; his eyes were almost ferocious in expression.The figurant in the coffin continued to laugh.
"Look! look keenly!" went on the manager, "you will see your brotherdematerialize after becoming changed in color. The flesh will disappearand you will see his skeleton. Think, think, my brothers, this is thefate which awaits you, perhaps, soon, on going away from here; think ofthe various illnesses and deaths by accidents which await you!Contemplate the magic spectacle offered by the Cabaret du Squelette andremember that you are dust and that to dust you must return! Make,wisely, this reflection, which the intoxicated man made to another manin like condition, but asleep. 'And that is how I shall be on Sunday!'While waiting, my brothers and sisters, for nothingness, look at thedematerialization of your contemporary if you please!"
The play of lights, while the man was talking, began to throw a greenishpallor and to make spots at first transparent upon the orbits of theeyes, then, little by little, the spots seemed to grow stronger, toblacken, to enlarge. The features, lightly picked out, appeared tochange gradually, to take o
n gray and confused tints, to slowlydisappear as under a veil, a damp vapor which covered, devoured thatface, now unrecognizable! It has been said that the manner in which thisphenomenon was managed was a remarkable thing; it is true, for thishuman body seemed literally to dissolve before this curious crowd, nowbecome silent and frightened. The work of death was accomplished therepublicly, thanks to the illusion of lighting. The livid man who smiled afew moments before was motionless, fixed, then passing through somesingular changes, the flesh seemed to fall from him in----
Suddenly the play of lights made him disappear from the eyes of thespectators and they saw, thanks to reflections made by mirrors, only askeleton. It was the world of spectres and the secret of the tombsrevealed to the crowd by a kind of scientific magic lantern.
Bernardet did not desire to wait longer to strike his blow--this was theexact moment to do it--the psychological moment!
The eager look of the man in the sombrero revealed a deep trouble. Therewas in this look something more than the curiosity excited by a novelspectacle. The muscles of his pale face twitched as with physicalsuffering; in his eyes Bernardet read an internal agony.
"Ah!" thought the police officer, "the living eye is a book which onecan read, as well as a dead man's eye."
Upon the stage the lights were rendering even more sinister the figurantwho was giving to this morbidly curious crowd the comedy of death. Onewould have now thought it was one of those atrocious paintings made inthe studios of certain Spanish painters in the _putridero_ of a VallesLeal. The flesh, by a remarkable scientific combination of lights, wasmade to seem as if falling off, and presented the horrible appearance ofa corpse in a state of decomposition. The lugubrious vision made a veryvisible shudder pass over the audience. Then Bernardet, drawing himselfup to his full height so as to get a good view of the face of this manso much taller, and approaching as near to him as possible, in fact, sothat his elbow and upper arm touched the young man's, he slowly,deliberately dropped, one by one, these words:
"That is about how M. Rovere ought to be now"----
And suddenly the young man's face expressed a sensation of fright, asone sees in the face of a pedestrian who suddenly finds that he is aboutto step upon a viper.
"Or how he will be soon!" added the little man, with an amiable smile.Bernardet dissimulated under this amiability an intense joy. Holding hisarm and elbow in an apparently careless manner close to his neighbor ashe pronounced Rovere's name, Bernardet felt his neighbor's whole bodytremble, and that he gave a very perceptible start. Why had he been soquickly moved by an unknown name if it had not recalled to his mind somefrightful thought? The man might, of course, know, as the public did,all the details of the crime, but, with his strong, energetic face, hisresolute look, he did not appear like a person who would be troubled bythe recital of a murder, the description of a bloody affray, or even bythe frightful scene which had just passed before his eyes in the hall.
"A man of that stamp is not chicken-hearted," thought Bernardet. "No!no!" Hearing those words evoked the image of the dead man, Rovere; theman was not able to master his violent emotion, and he trembled, as ifunder an electrical discharge. The shudder had been violent, of shortduration, however, as if he had mastered his emotion by his strong will.In his involuntary movement he had displayed a tragic eloquence.Bernardet had seen in the look, in the gesture, in the movement of theman's head, something of trouble, of doubt, of terror, as in a flash oflightning in the darkness of night one sees the bottom of a pool.
Bernardet smilingly said to him:
"This sight is not a gay one!"
"No," the man answered, and he also attempted to smile.
He looked back to the stage, where the sombre play went on.
"That poor Rovere!" Bernardet said.
The other man now looked at Bernardet as if to read his thoughts and tolearn what signification the repetition of the same name had. Bernardetsustained, with a naive look, this mute interrogation. He allowednothing of his thoughts to be seen in the clear, childlike depths of hiseyes. He had the air of a good man, frightened by a terrible murder, andwho spoke of the late victim as if he feared for himself. He waited,hoping that the man would speak.
In some of Bernardet's readings he had come across the magic ruleapplicable to love: "Never go! Wait for the other to come!"--"_Nec ire,fac venire_"--applicable also to hate, to that duel of magnetism betweenthe hunted man and the police spy, and Bernardet waited for the other to"come!"
Brusquely, after a silence, while on the little stage the transformationwas still going on, the man asked in a dry tone:
"Why do you speak to me of M. Rovere?"
Bernardet affably replied: "I? Because every one talks of it. It is theactuality of the moment. I live in that quarter. It was quite near therethat it happened, the affair"----
"I know!" interrupted the other.
The unknown had not pronounced ten words in questioning and replying,and yet Bernardet found two clues simply insignificant--terrible inreality. "I know!" was the man's reply, in a short tone, as if he wishedto push aside, to thrust away, a troublesome thought. The tone, thesound of the words, had struck Bernardet. But one word especially--theword Monsieur before Rovere's name. "Monsieur Rovere? Why did he speakto me of Monsieur Rovere?" Bernardet thought.
It seemed, then, that he knew the dead man.
All the people gathered in this little hall, if asked in regard to thismurder would have said: "Rovere!" "The Rovere affair!" "The Roveremurder!" Not one who had not known the victim would have said:
"Monsieur Rovere!"
The man knew him then. This simple word, in the officer's opinion, meantmuch.
The manager now announced that, having become a skeleton, the dearbrother who had lent himself to this experiment would return to hisnatural state, "fresher and rosier than before." He added, pleasantly,"A thing which does not generally happen to ordinary skeletons!"
This vulgar drollery caused a great laugh, which the audience heartilyindulged in. It made an outlet for their pent-up feelings, and they allfelt as if they had awakened from a nightmare. The man in the sombrero,whose pale face was paler than before, was the only one who did notsmile. He even frowned fiercely (noted by Bernardet) when the manageradded:
"You are not in the habit of seeing a dead man resuscitated the nextday. Between us, it would keep the world pretty full."
"Evidently," thought Bernardet, "my young gentleman is ill at ease."
His only thought was to find out his name, his personality, to establishhis identity and to learn where he had spent his life, and especiallyhis last days. But how?
He did not hesitate long. He left the place, even before the man in thecoffin had reappeared, smiling at the audience. He glided through thecrowd, repeating, "Pardon!" "I beg pardon!" traversed rapidly the hallwhere newcomers were conversing over their beverages, and stepped outinto the street, looked up and down. A light fog enveloped everything,and the gaslights and lights in the shop windows showed ghostly throughit. The passers-by, the cabs, the tramways, bore a spectral look.
What Bernardet was searching for was a policeman. He saw two chattingtogether and walking slowly along under the leafless trees. In threesteps, at each step turning his head to watch the people coming out ofthe cabaret, he reached the men. While speaking to them he did not takehis eyes from the door of that place where he had left the young man inthe gray felt hat.
"Dagonin," he said, "you must follow me, if you please, and 'pull mein!' I am going to pick a drunken quarrel with a particular person.Interfere and arrest us both. Understand?"
"Perfectly," Dagonin replied.
He looked at his comrade, who carried his hand to his shako and salutedBernardet.
The little man who had given his directions in a quick tone, was alreadyfar away. He stood near the door of the cabaret gazing searchingly ateach person who came out. The looks he cast were neither direct,menacing nor even familiar. He had pulled his hat down to his eyebrows,and he cast side glan
ces at the crowd pouring from the door of the wineshop.
He was astonished that the man in the sombrero had not yet appeared.Possibly he had stopped, on his way out, in the front hall. Glancingthrough the open door, Bernardet saw that he was right. The young manwas seated at one of those coffin-shaped oaken tables, with a glass ofgreenish liquor before him. "He needs alcohol to brace him up," growledthe officer.
The door was shut again.
"I can wait till he has finished his absinthe," said Bernardet tohimself.
He had not long to wait. After a small number of persons had left theplace, the door opened and the man in the gray felt hat appeared,stopped on the threshold, and, as Bernardet had done, scanned thehorizon and the street. Bernardet turned his back and seemed to bewalking away from the wine shop, leaving the man free. With a keenglance or two over his shoulder toward him, Bernardet crossed the streetand hurried along at a rapid pace, in order to gain on the young man,and by this manoeuvre to find himself directly in front of theunknown. The man seemed to hesitate, walked quickly down the Boulevard afew steps toward the Place Pigalle, in the direction where Rovere'sapartments were, but suddenly stopped, turned on his heel, repassed theCabaret du Squelette, and went toward the Moulin Rouge, which at first,Bernardet thought, he was about to enter. As he stood there the vanes ofthe Moulin Rouge, turning about, lighted up the windows of the oppositebuildings and made them look as if they were on fire. At last, obeyinganother impulse, he suddenly crossed the Boulevard, as if to returninto Paris, leaving Montmartre, the cabarets, and Rovere's house behindhim. He walked briskly along, and ran against a man--a little man--whomhe had not noticed, who seemed to suddenly detach himself from the wall,and who fell against his breast, hiccoughing and cursing in vicioustones.
"Imbecile!"
The young man wished to push away the intoxicated man who, with hat overhis eyes, clung to him and kept repeating:
"The street--the street--is it not free--the street?"
Yes, it was certainly a drunken man. Not a man in a smock, but a littlefellow, a bourgeois, with hat askew and thick voice.
"I--I am not stopping you. The street is free--I tell you!"
"Well, if it is free, I want it!"
The voice was vigorous, but showed sudden anger, a strident tone, aslight foreign accent, Spanish, perhaps.
The drunken man probably thought him insolent for, still hiccoughing, heanswered:
"Oh, you want it, do you? You want it? I want it! The king says 'wewish!' don't you know?"
With another movement, he lost his equilibrium and half fell, his headhanging over, and he clutched the man he held in a sudden embrace.
"It is mine also--the street--you know!"
With sudden violence, the man disembarrassed himself of this caressingcreature; he thrust aside his clinging arms with a movement so quick andstrong that the intoxicated man, this time, fell, his hat rolled intothe gutter, and he lay on the sidewalk.
But immediately, with a bound, he was on his feet, and as the man wentcalmly on his way, he followed him, seized his coat and clutched him sotightly that he could not proceed.
"Pardon;" he said, "you cannot go away like that!"
Then, as the light from a gas lamp fell on the little man's face, theyoung man recognized his neighbor of the cabaret, who had said to him:
"See, that is how Rovere must look!"
At this moment, Dagonin and his comrade appeared on the scene and laidvigorous hands on them both; the young man made a quick, instinctivemovement toward his right pocket, where, no doubt, he kept a revolver orknife. Bernardet seized his wrist, he twisted it and said:
"Do nothing rash!"
The young man was very strong, but the huge Dagonin had Herculean bicepsand the other man did not lack muscles. Fright, moreover, seemed toparalyze this tall, young gallant, who, as he saw that he was beinghustled toward a police station, demanded:
"Have you arrested me, and why?"
"First for having struck me," Bernardet replied, still bareheaded, andto whom a gamin now handed his soiled hat, saying to him:
"Is this yours, Monsieur Bernardet?"
Bernardet recognized in his own quarter! That was glory!
The man seemed to wish to defend himself and still struggled, but oneremark of Dagonin's seemed to pacify him:
"No rebellion! There is nothing serious about your arrest. Do not makeit worse."
The young man really believed that it was only a slight matter and hewould be liberated at once. The only thing that disquieted him was thatthis intoxicated man, suddenly become sober, had spoken to him as he dida few moments before in the cabaret.
The four men walked quickly along in the shadow of the buildings,through the almost deserted streets, where the shopkeepers were puttingout their lights and closing up their shops. Scarcely any one who metthem would have realized that three of these men were taking the fourthto a police station.
A tri-color flag floated over a door lighted by a red lantern; the fourmen entered the place and found themselves in a narrow, warm hall, wherethe agents of the police were either sleeping on benches or readingaround the stove by the light of the gas jets above their heads.
Bernardet, looking dolefully at his broken and soiled hat, begged theyoung man to give his name and address to the Chief of the Post. Theyoung man then quickly understood that his questioner of the Cabaret duSquelette had caught him in a trap. He looked at him with an expressionof violent anger--of concentrated rage.
Then he said:
"My name? What do you want of that? I am an honest man. Why did youarrest me? What does it mean?"
"Your name?" repeated Bernardet.
The man hesitated.
"Oh, well! I am called Prades. Does that help you any?"
The man wrote: "Prades. P-r-a-d-e-s with an accent. Prades. First name?"
"Charles, if you wish!"
"Oh!" said Bernardet, noticing the slight difference in the tone of hisanswer. "We wish nothing. We wish only the truth."
"I have told it."
Charles Prades furnished some further information in regard to himself.He was staying at a hotel in the Rue de Paradis-Poissonsiere, a smallhotel used by commercial travelers and merchants of the second class. Hehad been in Paris only a month.
Where was he from? He said that he came from Sydney, where he wasconnected with a commercial house. Or rather he had given up thesituation to come to Paris to seek his fortune. But while speaking ofSydney he had in his rather rambling answers let fall the name of BuenosAyres, and Bernardet remembered that Buenos Ayres was the place where M.Rovere had been French Consul. The officer paid no attention to this atthe time. For what good? Prades's real examination would be conducted byM. Ginory. He, Bernardet, was not an examining magistrate. He was theferret who hunted out criminals.
This Prades was stupefied, then furious, when, the examination over, helearned that he was not to be immediately set at liberty.
What! An absurd quarrel, a collision without a wound, in a street inParis, was sufficient to hold a man and make him pass the night in thestation house, with all the vagabonds of both sexes collected there!
"You may bemoan your fate to yourself to-morrow morning!" saidBernardet.
In the meantime they searched this man, who, very pale, making visiblypowerful efforts to control himself, biting his lips and his blackbeard, while they examined his pocketbook, while they looked at aSpanish knife with a short blade, which he had (Bernardet had divined itat the time of his arrest) in his right pocket.
The pocketbook revealed nothing. It contained some receipted weeklybills of the hotel in the Rue de Paradis, some envelopes withoutletters, without stamps and bearing the name, "Charles Prades,Merchant," two bank bills of 100 francs--nothing more.
Bernardet very simply asked Prades how it was that he had upon hisperson addressed letters which he evidently had not received, as theywere not stamped. He replied:
"They are not letters. They are addresses which I gave instead ofv
isiting cards, as I had not had time to procure cards."
"Then the addresses are in your writing?"
"Yes," Prades answered.
The police officer looked at them again; then, saluting the brigadierand his men, wished them good-night, and even added a little gesture,rather mocking, in the direction of the arrested man. Prades made anangry, almost menacing, movement toward Bernardet. The guards standingabout pulled him back, while the plump, smiling little man, caressinghis sandy mustache and humming a tune, went out into the street.
As he reached the passage which led to his house this couplet camemerrily from his lips as walked quickly along:
"Prends ton fusil, Gregoire, Prends ta gourde pourboire, Nos Messieurs sont partis A la chasse aux perdrix."
One would have taken M. Bernardet for a happy little bourgeois, goinghome from some theatre through the deserted streets and repeating averse from some vaudeville, rather than a police spy who had justsecured a prize. He walked quickly, he walked gaily. He reached hishome, where Mme. Bernardet, always rosy and pleasant, awaited him, andwhere his three little girls were sleeping. He felt that, like the Romanemperor, he had not lost his day.
He again hummed the quatrain, and, although not in a loud tone, still itsounded like a far off fanfare of victory in the gray fog of this Parisnight.
The Crime of the Boulevard Page 12
