IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN ONCE MORE THAT RICHES COME WHEN ONE IS ASLEEP
IT WAS NOT until two days after Rouletabille’s arrival in Marseilles that he discovered, while wandering about in a fresh disguise, Marius Poupardin’s new establishment.
Strolling down the Rue St. Ferréol he was held up by some scaffolding which blocked the pavement. Workmen were replastering the outside of a house, and a sign painter was tracing in gold lettering on a large glass window, words which enlightened him. He read in unfinished outline: Principal Hairdressing Saloon in the Phoccean Capital.
Marius Poupardin’s name did not shine forth because the signboard was not yet in its place, but Rouletabille had a feeling that at length he had found what he was looking for. He made his way into an empty room which the workmen had just left, and at once caught the sound of voices coming from a small room at the end of a passage.
He went down the passage and stopped outside a door with a ground glass window.
A voice that he knew full well riveted his attention. It was Madame Boulenger’s voice.
“These ten thousand francs are for you, Poupardin, but you must tell me the whole truth. You had that shop at the corner of La Roche Lane for two years and you know Théodora Luigi. Everyone in the district knows her. She made no secret of her presence when she stayed at the lodge. You frequently saw her during the past year. Now the woman who came into your shop on Tuesday, the day of the crime, gave you money. Don’t deny it, for your assistant was in the room behind the shop and heard you whispering and could give you the lie. With the money you received from that woman you have set up in business here. That woman was Théodora Luigi. How much did she give you? I will pay you even more. But you must speak out. I have sworn to discover the truth. I intend to know it. You know who I am. I am the widow of the unfortunate man who was murdered in that house, perhaps under your very eyes. I shall move heaven and earth to avenge him. Besides, you know that the man who was arrested is innocent. Surely you are not going to allow an innocent man to be sent to the guillotine?”
“Oh, he needn’t worry about that,” returned Poupardin in an oily voice. “First, he’s got away, and then even if he’s caught again he’ll be acquitted.”
“Poupardin, you are a wretch!”
“Marius Poupardin is an honest man and will tell the truth.”
It was Rouletabille who uttered this last sentence. At the stranger’s unexpected apparition, Madame Boulenger rose from her chair, and Marius Poupardin picked up quickly the ten thousand francs which lay on the table, giving vent to exceedingly unpleasant remarks about the intruder.
Rouletabille was somewhat shabbily dressed. The clothes, which he assumed as a disguise, had lost their shape, and his felt hat was old and worn, seeming to indicate that he belonged, if not to the poorer classes, to those who were “hard up.” The impression made by him was thus all the greater when, after carefully closing the door, he took from his pocket ten notes of a thousand francs each and placed them on the table at the very spot occupied a little while before by the notes which had vanished into Poupardin’s pocket.
“Another lot!” cried the barber in an intense fluster, which in any other circumstances would have been laughable. Madame Boulenger dropped into her chair, pale with emotion when she recognized Rouletabille. It was the first time that she had seen him since both were struck down by the same blow of fate.
After wanting to kill this woman who, hardly knowing what she did, had led Ivana to the abyss, Rouletabille went up to her and took her hand. She was following up the same trail as himself, performing the same task as himself, working for him.
“Oh, good heavens!” she moaned.
Rouletabille was more touched than he knew how to express. He turned his attention to Marius Poupardin, who was watching the scene with an air of increasing bewilderment.
“Yes,” said Rouletabille, “another ten thousand francs, and there’ll be more for you, but it’s time for you to speak out, and you must understand that you’ve got to choose between this money, which seems just now to overwhelm you, and the most disagreeable consequences.”
“But, Monsieur, I don’t want anything from you, and I am not afraid of your threats,” growled Marius.
“Well, get what you can and fear my threats.”
So saying Rouletabille took out his card, his police pass issued by Police Headquarters, and placing his thumb over the words which might disclose his position as a journalist, allowed those only to be seen which seemed to indicate that he belonged to the police. It was a little dodge which had often done duty, and once more it succeeded.
“Oh, you belong to the police,” exclaimed Poupardin in a constrained voice. “You ought to have said so....”
It must be admitted that the position was at least perplexing for him. He had seen this
“detective” shake Madame Boulenger by the hand. He was bound to believe that they were acting in common, and, moreover, they represented between them a power which he was by no means anxious to estrange, particularly in the somewhat peculiar position in which he found himself. Then again the police must have some interest in getting him to tell the truth seeing that they were ready to pay him so heavily for it. He quickly made up his mind. He would cease playing the fool, and make a clean breast of it.
“Ask me what you want to know,” he said to Rouletabille, taking a seat and heaving a deep sigh.
“Did you see Theodora Luigi leave the villa in La Roche Lane?”
“No, Monsieur, I did not see her leave it.”
“Then did you see her enter the villa?”
“No, Monsieur, I did not see her enter the villa.”
“Poupardin, you are mixed up in a very extraordinary business,” snorted Rouletabille, “and one which is particularly risky for you personally. The least thing and you are done for! Nothing but the truth can save you. I shan’t tell you so a second time.”
While speaking he rattled the keys in his pocket as though he were shaking a pair of handcuffs. Poupardin grew pale and stammered:
“But, Monsieur, I am speaking the truth.
I must tell you that a remarkable experience happened to me. You said just now that I was mixed up in an extraordinary business. I quite believe you! Just think, I am a poor devil who has always failed in everything. The reason why I was able to take the shop in La Roche Lane is that I got it for next to nothing, but even so I paid too big a price considering the few customers who came to it. My time was very little occupied, and I could take my forty winks, that I’ll swear. That was my position on the particular Tuesday.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was dozing with folded arms as I stood in my doorway, my shoulder propped up against the wall when I was suddenly jostled by a woman who came into the shop like a whirlwind. That woman, I admit, was Theodora Luigi.”
“At last!” exclaimed Rouletabille and Madame Boulenger in unison.
“What time was it?” questioned Rouletabille.
“Half-past five.”
“We’re all right,” exclaimed Rouletabille. “Go on Marius Poupardin, you are becoming interesting.”
“She was like a mad woman. Her face was deadly pale, and her hands shook. She said under her breath:
You shall have ten thousand francs within an hour, if you’ll swear that you’ll never tell anyone you saw me coming out of the lodge.’ I took my oath on it, and she went away....
“I could the more easily take that oath,” went on Poupardin, “because, as a matter of fact, I did not see her come out, and in reality at this present moment I am not going back on my oath, because I assure you that I did not see her leave the place.”
“Of course, your conscience is clear,” acquiesced Rouletabille, admiring the sound philosophy and remarkable logic of this humble barber. “It amounts to this — you failed to see or hear anything, even the revolver shots.”
“Yes, Monsieur. The lodge is too far away, and besides, if I had heard anything I should, of co
urse, have seen her leave....”
“Exactly. In any case you did see Théodora Luigi, which is something.”
“Yes, it was as if she dropped from the clouds.”
“To make you a present of ten thousand francs.”
“Quite so, but the best part of the thing happened an hour later when a little man, whom I did not know, came into the shop, and after shutting the door, whispered in my ear: ‘I’ve come from Theodora Luigi.’
“‘Yes, you’ve come with the ten thousand francs.’
“‘No, Monsieur, with the twenty thousand francs,’ answered the little man. ‘Only you must shut up your shop at once, and leave
Paris to-morrow and settle down a devil of a long way off.’ And he placed the twenty thousand francs on the table.”
“You thought it was a beautiful dream,” said Rouletabille.
“That is to say, I hadn’t got over it when this morning in the shop which I am about to open after the fashion of—”
“After the fashion of what?” asked Rouletabille, who had not lost a syllable of the words which fell from this native of Marseilles.
“Well, after the fashion of the most famous saloons in Paris. Our Rue St. Ferréol is our Rue de la Paix.”
“You were saying that this morning—”
“This morning I saw Madame come in, and before even telling me who she was she planked down on this table another ten thousand francs.”
“And then I arrived in my turn,” said Rouletabille superciliously.
“With yet another ten thousand francs. Well, Monsieur, it’s beyond me. A fortune so entirely unexpected which came to me when I was asleep, for that’s what it amounts to, begins to frighten me,” declared Poupardin, who, truth to tell, seemed more and more uneasy in his mind.
“The honest man sets misfortune at defiance,” said Rouletabille.
Having said which and dilated somewhat severely on the matter in general, he gave him to understand that he had everything to gain — that is to say, everything to keep — by holding his tongue until the time came when it would be unloosened for him. He would be asked simply to attend the Assize Court on the day of the trial, and to repeat the story which he had just told, namely that he had not seen Théodora Luigi enter or leave the lodge at half-past five on the day of the tragedy because he was asleep when she so abruptly came into his shop.
Marius Poupardin’s strange experiences were not to end there. In this terrible drama it stood out like the smile of a blind fate which could strike pitilessly on occasion. It often happens that in the most tragic cases incidents occur which appear incredible since they furnish within sight of the scaffold so much that is farcical and unsuspected.... I shall pursue my task to the end though the story would seem improbable but for the logic of facts and records which may be read, for instance, in the Police Gazette....
Less than ten minutes after Rouletabille and Madame Boulenger left the shop in the Rue St. Ferréol, Poupardin was visited by the little man who had handed to him in Paris on the evening of the tragedy the twenty thousand francs from Theodora Luigi. This man was no other than Tamar, who, after worming Poupardin’s secret out of him, had little difficulty in proving that his last visitor had assumed a fictitious character in pretending to belong to the police; and for another twenty thousand francs persuaded him of the necessity of leaving Marseilles with the utmost speed and taking up his abode for good and all in Smyrna, where he possessed relatives who were very fond of him.
“What a pity!” exclaimed Poupardin as he waved farewell to Marseilles. “In a few weeks I should have been a millionaire!”
CHAPTER XX
A GLEAM IN THE DARKNESS
THUS MARIUS POUPARDIN departed for foreign climes, but though Rouletabille and Madame Boulenger were unable to rely upon him as a witness at the Assize Court, they had none the less extracted from him an essential fact: Theodora Luigi was in the lodge at the hour when the crime was committed.
It was now only a question of obtaining absolute and indisputable proof of it. The letter contained an invitation but it was no evidence that she had in fact been there. As to the footprints which had escaped the examining magistrate’s attention, they must by this time be completely obliterated, and Rouletabille would have to dispense with them. Meanwhile, he would have to move and move quickly, for we were conscious that the shadow of some disaster worse even than prison was hanging over him.
Madame Boulenger confided her misgivings to me. She feared for his life, and when she spoke of him could not restrain her tears.
The time had come for us to decide upon serious measures. We held a meeting in secret at the house of V — , a professor at the Collège de France, a friend of Thérèse’s, at which it was determined to pursue Théodora to the ends of the earth, and at all costs to bring her to justice. For all that I could say, Rouletabille and Madame Boulenger’s scheme triumphed. Thérèse placed her fortune at his disposal.
On the day before Rouletabille was to cross the frontier to open his campaign against Parapapoulos’s fair lady friend, an event of decisive importance occurred. At Madame Boulenger’s suggestion Rouletabille determined to visit the house at Passy for the last time. — I met him there at his request, taking with me the head clerk of a solicitor friend of mine who might be useful as a witness. Madame Boulenger, on her side, brought Professor V — with her. At two o’clock in the morning when the police believed that Rouletabille was already abroad, thus giving us some hours of safety, we were gathered together in the dining-room on the first floor of the lodge...
In this house of death in which both Rouletabille and Madame Boulenger had lost the being whom they held most dear in the world, they exchanged glances like ghostly shades visiting the infernal regions.
And then Rouletabille seemed to forget us, fully intent upon his strange task. We followed him in silence, our hearts oppressed by an agony of suspense, like persons who allow themselves to be dominated by the manifestations in a spiritualistic or hypnotic séance.
We descended with him to the basement and the kitchen which also did duty as a pantry. It would seem that he discovered nothing, but I who had made a study of Rouletabille caught his glance which fell for half a second on a number of tumblers arranged in rows in a dresser, the door of which I had mechanically opened.
I remained in the kitchen after the others had mounted the stairs as if Rouletabille’s look had riveted me there. Nevertheless I observed nothing to engage my attention except a glass which was in its row but was not turned down like the others, that is to say it was not bottom upward but stood alone with rim upward. Was any inference to be drawn from that?
There may have been, but I had no time to give further thought to it for I caught the sound of a movement and the murmur of voices upstairs. As I reached the passage Professor V — , the solicitor’s head clerk, and Madame Boulenger were gathered round Rouletabille, who had made an important discovery.
He held in his hand a slave bangle which he had picked up between two broken slabs at the foot of the wrought iron rails of the staircase. It was one of those trinkets which some women wear round the ankle — a double hoop shaped like a serpent and forming a spring. The bangle might very easily have become loose and slipped off, given that it was caught in some projection in the stair rails “by the sudden rush of a person coming down quickly and eager to escape,” explained Rouletabille in a voice of peculiar calmness. We, however, were in a state of excitement because we recognized this slave bangle by its diamond head and ruby eyes.
Madame Boulenger almost fainted and I trembled with joy.
Rouletabille still held firmly in his hand this trinket which would be the saving of him.
“Thank heaven we came here on a moonlit night,” he said. “The moment the hall door was opened I saw something gleam in the darkness. And now let’s get away, for there’s nothing more to be done here.”
“With that bangle in your possession you have only to go before the examining magistrate and the w
hole thing will be over,” I ventured.
He eyed me with the expression which superior persons assume when they are dealing with the weak-minded.
Next day he once more disappeared.
CHAPTER XXI
MYSTERY
WEEKS SLIPPED AWAY which for me were the dark void into which I was continuing to sink like a lost soul in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The last “moonlit” visit to the house at Passy instead of bringing me peace of mind by establishing the theory to which we clung so tenaciously, left me with a vague and incomprehensible feeling of apprehension.
Why had Rouletabille vanished with the slave bangle, the trinket that “gleamed in the darkness,” the beginning of our enlightenment which shone from Théodora Luigi’s ankle!
Did he not know enough already? What was he hunting for at the other end of Europe? And why did he not return? For three months I was without tidings of him. Madame Boulenger and I imagined that he was dead. Other persons believed simply that he was guilty and had departed to some far away place in order to be forgotten here.
During this time the magistrate’s examination was concluded and it was resolved to give judgment by default.
On the eve of the trial I was pouring over my brief when the door of my office was flung open and the formidable La Candeur rushed in with flaming cheeks and eyes starting out of his head.
“He’s here! He’s back!” he cried.
“Do you mean Rouletabille?”
“Yes, Monsieur. He’s in Paris. He’ll be present to-morrow at the Assize Court.” Having said which he left the office before I could stir a limb.
When I reached the Court at an early hour next day an immense crowd had already congregated before the iron gates in the Clock Tower Hall. Barriers had been erected and a strong force of police was in attendance as in the days of great trials. Everyone present was aware that Rouletabille had returned...
I had heard nothing more from him since the previous day. It was but a few minutes before the opening of the Court when I received a message while seated in my place that he had surrendered. The report swiftly spread among the public, and the sound of a confused noise could be heard in the corridors round the Court.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 98
