Her window and those of the next room opened on a very narrow balcony, or rather ledge of stone, and along this ledge it was barely possible for her to creep, and by means of the key of her own window, which accident had previously taught her fitted the others also, make her way into Madame de l’Orme’s chamber. It was a dangerous attempt; one too which, if successful, might draw down upon her her mistress’s anger. Still she would willingly risk that, if she were sure that the balcony could bear her weight. How frail it looked! And so high from the ground that if she fell—! Her head grew giddy at the thought, but she was a brave, unselfish girl, and her anxiety on Madame de l’Orme’s account nerved her to dare the perilous passage. As she stepped cautiously from the window she almost gave up the project in despair. The ledge was scarce two feet wide, the balustrade that guarded it only eighteen inches high; but she resolutely turned her eyes from the abyss beneath, and with the key in her hand reached the other window in safety. But the key was unnecessary, the window was open—! The start occasioned by this discovery almost caused her to overbalance herself, but the instinct of self-preservation taught her to clutch at the window-frame for support. She regained her equilibrium, thrust aside the closed curtain, and entered the room.
All was still as death; but as she glanced hastily round she perceived that the secretaire where Madame de l’Orme kept her money and valuable papers was open, and rifled of its contents; the jewel-casket left last night on the dressing-table was gone, and the wardrobes also were open, but apparently untouched. Could this have been done without rousing so light a sleeper as her mistress? A new fear fell upon her as she felt this was impossible, and with a tremulous step she advanced towards the bed. The curtains at its head were drawn as she was accustomed to find them in a morning, the bedclothes were unruffled. Nothing in the whole aspect of the bed gave token of violence, and yet she hesitated to withdraw the drapery.
“Madame, it is very late,” she whispered. There was no answer. She repeated the words in a louder tone, and at length ventured to touch the hand that lay placidly outside the coverlet. Its touch was sufficient—that chilling peculiar touch which nothing but Death can give. She tore the curtain aside—the sight paralyzed her.
Madame de l’Orme was murdered, foully murdered, as Hazael murdered his master. A thick towel, used by the comtesse in her morning bath, had been soaked in water and pressed down on the sleeper’s face, so that suffocation had ensued, and that so suddenly, that she appeared to have passed from slumber to death without a struggle.
Julie removed the cloth and gazed with tearful eyes on the altered countenance. The generous feelings of youth forgot the faults of the dead, and remembered only that she had sheltered and protected her—an orphan. And now who would protect her? Protect her! ah! Heavens, who would believe that she had no part in this great, this terrible crime? Like a flash of lightning, the full danger of her position darted across her mind. Every suspicion was against her, nothing was in her favor.
The result showed the truth of her fears. Every circumstance combined to prove her guilt. Even Madeline, the person first summoned to her aid, could only say that “It was a sad pity Mademoiselle Julie had been so imprudent. She might be innocent, but it was strange that she should have madame’s earrings on; and one could not but confess that the mode of madame’s death was one which could have been effected by a child. And Mademoiselle Julie was the only person in her mistress’s confidence, and it must have required one who knew where her valuables were and where she kept her keys—under her pillow it seemed—to select only the valuables and jewels, and articles of small bulk, and leave all that was heavy and useless. True, these things were not found among Julie’s little possessions, but a man in one of the opposite houses had seen her pass along the balcony, and she did it with such apparent ease that one could not but feel that what was done once might have been done fifty times.”
In short, the mass of evidence was so conclusive against Julie, that the popular voice which had lately spoken of her as the victim of a high-tempered woman’s harshness, now considered nothing bad enough for the ungrateful girl, and she might have been torn to pieces by the infuriated crowd had she not been rescued from them by the officers of justice.
Father Sylvester listened to every particular with unflagging attention, and every now and then put pertinent questions to Julie, intended to shake her testimony in her own favor were it possible she had attempted to deceive him. But she never swerved from the simple unvarnished truth, and when she came to the end she said simply, “And now can you save me?”
He shook his head. “The evidence against you is strong,” he said, gravely. “God alone can make you a way through his tangled thicket. But trust in Him whatever befalls you, remembering always that this life is not the end of all; that there is another world where righteous judgment is given; and there, if not here, you will be acquitted of this crime.”
“Ah! mon père, I would bear all willingly but for my Louis. It will cause him such bitter grief to believe his Julie a criminal.”
“I shall myself clear you to Louis if you are not acquitted by your judges, my daughter.” And cheered by this promise and by the good old man’s blessing, Julie laid her down on her prison couch and slept.
Through Father Sylvester’s influence the trial was delayed for many weeks, in the hope that the popular prejudice against Julie would pass away, or that some accident might offer a clue by which to trace out the real murderer.
The latter hope was disappointed, but the former was soon affected by the growing interest in the close of the fatal Russian campaign, and the return by twos and threes of the survivors. In these matters of public interest Julie had been almost forgotten by the inhabitants of St. Bignold, when a rumor arose that Monsieur de l’Orme had escaped the many dangers of the war, and was on the point of returning to the chateau. If such were the case, would it not be an insult to him to find that no steps had been taken to avenge his wife’s murderer? The trial must be no longer delayed. It took place. Everyone knows that in France such matters are very differently conducted from what they are with us. There no warning is given to the prisoner to beware lest he implicate himself by any confession. On the contrary, all means are employed by leading questions and cross-examinations to draw from the supposed criminal anything that may lead to his conviction, and poor Julie’s artless answers served rather to fix than to remove the imputations against her.
The trial ended in her conviction.
All hope was over now: but Father Sylvester’s teaching had not been in vain, and though doomed to a shameful and undeserved death, Julie bore her fate so meekly yet so bravely, that even the stern officers of the Court gave way when they saw the look of patient resignation that rested on that sweet face. As for the populace, its mood had changed once more. They now regretted the fate they had invoked upon her, and crowded round the door by which she was to pass out to express their sympathy and commiseration. But for Father Sylvester’s aid, the efforts of the officials had scarcely availed to save her from the pressure of the fickle crowd. At last a passage was made for her amid their ranks, and she had almost reached the door of her prison, when a man rushed forward, and, flinging himself straight in her path, exclaimed, “Julie, my Julie!” in such accents of grief that it did not require her sudden paleness, or her agonized whisper of “Louis,” to remind Father Sylvester that the toil-worn soldier before him was the girl’s lover.
Chapter III
The explanations that followed this terrible meeting, the sympathy of the crowd, the misery of Louis, may be imagined, but fortunately for both him and Julie neither his natural temper nor his late habits of life were of a kind to lead him to despair easily.
“Julie is innocent, and must be proved so,” was his ready answer, when the old priest endeavored to make him submit to his fate. “I shall save her even yet. I feel it—I am certain of it. Give me but three days more of that precious life and I shall save her.”
The old man
shook his head, but promised to do his utmost, and the boon was readily granted to the united prayers of the good father and of the gallant soldier, who had gone through that dreadful campaign. Louis, however, scarcely waited to hear that it was granted before he set energetically to work to track out the truth. He gained admission to the Hotel de l’Orme—he examined every part of it, as if still expecting to find traces of the murderer—he opened the windows one by one—he passed as Julie had done along the narrow ledge outside them, and paused as she had done at the open window of the mirrored boudoir.
“You have found something, my friend?” said the sergeant of police who had accompanied him in his search. “It does not, however, seem of much consequence,” he added, as he returned the fragment of a small steel instrument which Louis had discovered still sticking in the back of the window. “She used it, I suppose, to force back the bolt. It looks like the sharp point of a pair of scissors.”
“No,” said Louis, quietly, “it is part of a graver’s tool. Not a very likely instrument to be found in a woman’s repository; and, trifling as it is, it may be a clue to what I want. Are there many engravers at St. Bignold’s?”
“Let me see. Engravers? No, only one; Clement Lebrun by name.”
“I seem to have heard of him before.”
“Probably,” replied the sergeant, drily. “It was he who saw Mademoiselle Julie pass along the balcony.”
“Then he lives close by?”
“Yes, and no. It is a good quarter of a mile by the road to reach the Rue Sylvaine, and yet,” pointing out of the window, “that is his house right opposite.”
Louis gave a start as he said this, and leaned far out of the window, as if he longed to clear the narrow space between at a bound, then drawing back examined the balcony more minutely than before.
“You have an idea, my friend,” again suggested the sergeant.
“I have.”
“And I also.”
Louis looked keenly at his companion, but could read nothing in his imperturbable countenance. “Let us seek this Lebrun,” he said at last.
“He is not a man to be trifled with,” said the sergeant. “Nor am I,” was the calm, decided answer.
After tracing several intricate winding streets they reached the Rue Sylvaine, and entered Lebrun’s house, in everything a contrast to that they had just quitted. It was as much crowded with human beings as the Hotel de l’Orme was deserted; as full of life and sound as the other was empty of all but fearful memories.
Lebrun received them coldly but courteously, and learning from the sergeant that Louis was a friend of the de l’Orme family, and desirous to know all he could tell of the murder, he gave his story calmly and succinctly.
“All he knew,” he said, “was that, when sitting at work the morning after the murder, he had been attracted by seeing a girl step out from the opposite window, and, walking along the narrow ledge, enter the one adjoining it. It had struck him at the time as peculiar, and on hearing of the murder he naturally mentioned what he had seen.”
“And you could speak with authority,” said the sergeant; “for, though Madame de l’Orme’s house is some distance from this by the road, I should say that her windows were within thirty feet of yours. What say you, Monsieur Louis?”
“Thirty,” said Louis, leaning out of the wide casement, to do which more easily he removed a pot of flowers which stood against the balustrade. “I should say twenty was nearer the mark.”
“I never measured the distance,” said the engraver, sullenly.
His change of tone struck both the sergeant and Louis, but neither spoke in return, although each devoted himself to a careful examination of Lebrun’s premises; Louis by removing the flower-pots in the balcony one by one and examining the upper edge of the balustrade, the sergeant by scanning closely but unobtrusively the furniture of the workshop. There were only two things which seemed to either suspicious; but as they tallied with the idea that had occurred to both they observed them minutely. One was, that the plants in the window were far more valuable than seemed consistent with the poverty of the engraver; the other that, besides the various things essential to his trade, there was a very long plank of wood leaning against the wall in the darkest corner of the room. The sergeant also perceived that Lebrun’s eyes furtively followed his as they rested inquisitively on the hidden plank.
“Have you any more questions to ask me, gentlemen?” the engraver at last said, in a tone that had less of courtesy than the words he used, “for I am a poor man, and cannot afford to lose the daylight.”
“Yes,” said Louis, turning from the window. “I wish you to tell me what use you make of this?” selecting a particular tool from those that were lying on the table.
“It is a graver,” said the man at once.
“I thought so; and this is one also, is it not?” and he took from his pocket the fragment he had found at the Hotel de l’Orme.
“It seems so,” stammered Lebrun, growing suddenly pale; but added quickly, “Why do you ask me?”
“Because I wish to know whether it is yours?”
Before he could make up his mind how to answer the apparently simple, but evidently embarrassing question, the sergeant tapped him on the shoulder. “Mon ami,” he said, “I have measured the plank in the corner of your chamber. I find it is twenty feet long. Will you permit me to remove one to two of your beautiful flowers, and, resting it on the part of the balustrade already broken, thrust it across the street towards the Hotel de l’Orme? It seems to me it will find a resting-place on the broken part of the balustrade opposite madame’s chamber window. What think you, Monsieur Louis?”
During this courteous address Lebrun’s paleness changed to something still more ghastly—a grey hue, like that of death; and when, a moment afterwards, the sergeant, suddenly changing his tone, said, “Clement Lebrun, I arrest you as the murderer of Madame de l’Orme,” he made no effort to refute the accusation, but with the calmness of despair permitted the arrest to take place. Little more was necessary to prove Lebrun’s guilt and Julie’s innocence. As Louis had said, the finding of the broken graver, though a trifle, was the clue to the whole mystery. The position of Lebrun’s house, as respected the Hotel de l’Orme, naturally suggested to a military eye the possible means of passing from one to another, which the broken edge of the carved balustrade on either side confirmed. The rest was easy, and was made certain by the confession of the murderer. He had long resolved to possess himself of the jewels and money which Madame de l’Orme was said to keep in her own chamber, and had intended to secrete himself there during her absence at the ball and secure his booty at leisure. Julie s presence had prevented him. His was the face she had seen in the mirror; and her unconscious interference with his projects then had suggested to him afterwards the fiendish idea of turning the suspicion of the murder on her. His success had been more complete than he had dared to hope. But it is seldom indeed that, to use a Scotch expression, a murderer is not “so left to himself’ as to leave one fatal clue to his crime where all else has been concealed with consummate ability. In Lebrun’s case there were two—the broken tool and the plank of wood by which he had bridged over the abyss. But for this oversight on his part the innocent must have suffered for the guilty.
A month later and Julie’s love dream was fulfilled. Kneeling in her white dress before the altar of the chapel of the château, the wreath of orange-flowers on her head, and Monsieur de l’Orme himself honoring the ceremony by his presence, she became the wife of her faithful Louis; and each was dearer to the other because each had, though in such different circumstances, stood face to face with the grim king of terrors, Death, and been rescued from him by an arm more mighty still, in whom both had trusted even when hope had almost become despair.
The Magic Bullet by Edward D. Hoch (1930- )
Hoch is that most rara of avis, someone who fits the cliché “a legend in his own lifetime. “He is the only current crime writer who specializes in the short
story. For some years it has been virtually impossible—Heaven be praised—to pick up a mystery magazine from the newsstand without finding Hoch’s name prominent among the contributors. He has created some of the most memorable and best loved short-story detectives of all times—Simon Ark, who may or may not be 2000 years old; homicide detective Captain Leopold; Rand the counterspy; Nick Velvet of the bizarre taste in thefts; old-time Westerner Ben Snow, and so on and so forth. And let’s not forget Dr. Sam Hawthorne, the retired physician who investigated innumerable impossible crimes in the twenties and thirties, and now reveals all with the help of “a small libation.” But here’s one of Hoch’s puzzle-solvers you may not have heard of, mysterious Harry Ponder whose activities are so clandestine that only two cases, “The Magic Bullet” and “Siege Perilous, ‘‘have been reported.
I REALLY never believed in the magic bullet, even after I saw a man killed by it. But if it wasn’t a magic bullet, it was the next best thing.
My name is Harry Ponder, and at the time of the trouble, I was attached to the United States Embassy staff at Beneu. It was a pleasant country, with perfect weather and a nice breeze off the nearby ocean. The work was easy and there were lots of girls. But then the Communists, too, decided it was a nice country. Though I was directly responsible to a somewhat shadowy Washington agency, I was nominally under the ambassador, a gruff balding man named Jason McTurk who’d gotten the job after a good many years with the State Department. Places like Beneu too often had ambassadors who’d been little more than ward heelers back home, but McTurk was a different breed entirely. I liked him. He plunged into things and got results.
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