Mulot winked at Coudry, a raging youngster whom the last election had shot on to the Socialist benches in the Chamber. He spent his time barking at the heels of every speaker, intercepting their best periods when they happened to be not of his own party.
“Do you know whom we’ve got to work with?” went on Mulot after a pause.
“Lavobourg,” returned the other in an undertone.
Mulot made an approving motion of his head. Lavobourg was the chief Vice-President of the Chamber.
“Clearly there’s nothing but treachery all round,” declared Coudry.
“All round.”
“Then that’s why they say that Subdamoun spends all his time at the house of Lavobourg’s mistress, the beautiful Sonia. It is she who must have entrusted Subdamoun’s papers to Lavobourg for greater safety. The whole thing will come to a head in a few minutes. Come, let’s go. If Carlier is to be believed everyone will be nabbed. There’ll be arrests in the Chamber itself. Oh, we shall see what Subdamoun’s gang think of it. And Major Jacques will pull a long face when they march him off to the Conciergerie Prison!”
At the moment when Mulot and Coudry were about to leave the restaurant one of their colleagues descended from a taxi and darted towards them, eyes gleaming. It was Jolly the Questeur. He had been lunching at the Presidency with M. Bonchamps, President of the Chamber, a true Republican and a stalwart, on whom the Revolution could count, when Bonchamps suddenly put his hand to his heart with a stifled groan and fainted and was now dying.
“Bonchamps poisoned! Bonchamps poisoned!” was the cry that spread swiftly through the restaurants in the Rue Royale as the guests poured out.
The frenzied company of Deputies crossed the Place de la Concorde and the bridge, being joined on the way by friends hastening to the Palais Bourbon. They at once learnt that the sentries at the Chamber had been doubled, and troops confined to barracks ready for any emergency. The friends of the Ministry could be easy in their minds on this score, since Hérisson had appointed M. Flottard, a civilian, as head of the military government of Paris, and without his signature the General, the Deputy Governor, could issue no order of importance.
Mulot, Coudry and the others tore like a whirlwind into the lobby and turned to the right towards the President’s apartments, but were stopped by the door-keepers, who gave them reassuring news. The President was already much better; his indisposition was passing away. He himself had caused the rumour of poisoning to be contradicted. He hoped to be able to take the chair at the sitting.
“Whew! we have had a narrow escape,” exclaimed Mulot, drawing Coudry to the Salle des Pas Perdus. “The position of President reverts by right to Lavobourg, and a warrant is about to be issued against him.”
“Do you think his presence in the chair will embarrass us if Carlier turns informer?”
“We should see Carlier about that. But no one knows what has become of him since seven o’clock this morning when he left his house, so the President of the Council told me.”
“He is not wasting his time. You know him.”
“Here, as it happens, is Hérisson, and I must have a word with him.”
As a matter of fact Hérisson, President of the Council and Minister of the Interior, was crossing the ante-chamber, his portfolio under his arm. To everyone who accosted him he said, without stopping:
“Have you seen Carlier?... Have you seen Carlier?”
But no one had seen Carlier, and the naturally stern and gloomy face of the little short man showed signs of anxiety. At last Carlier hove in sight, tall, bent, a snarling expression on his face. They made a rush on him like dogs eager for the quarry. But he shook off the pack, carrying his portfolio crammed with papers. He at once disappeared, taking Mulot with him. Just then the order, “Attention!” from the officer on duty rang out in the ante-chamber for the march past of the President’s military escort.
But Bonchamps did not take the chair at the sitting. He had had a renewed attack of sickness and Lavobourg presided in his stead — Lavobourg, who strode forward between the two lines of soldiers as pale as though he were indeed walking to the scaffold which the Mulots and Coudrys spoke of erecting, as in the glorious days of ‘93, to chastize traitors to the Republic.
When Lavobourg was out of sight the general uproar increased. Rumour had it that the names of suspected persons would be read from the tribune. When members of the Conservative and Agrarian parties passed through the ante-chamber they were greeted with a regular outburst of hooting, and every throat cried, “Long live the Republic!”
The sitting promised to be an exciting one. The extremists made no secret of their purpose. “To prison with them!” they cried. If the Chamber did not shrink from its duty it would appoint a Commission of Inquiry charged with complete judicial powers. Coudry saw no other way of saving the Republic. Nevertheless to justify, even in part, such unwonted proceedings, Carlier would have to submit proofs from the tribune. Once more he had vanished, shutting himself up with Mulot. When Mulot appeared again he shouted to those who pressed round him:
“Let me be — I have nothing to tell you.”
Coudry ended by getting him all to himself at the moment when his colleagues were bustling their way to the Chamber for the beginning of the interpellation. Mulot was shaking with nervousness. He had read Carlier’s documents, the documents that had been filched from Lavobourg. That was something and yet it was nothing. Plans for a new constitution — everyone had a right to indulge in them. It was no crime to dream of revising the constitution. But evidence of an attempt to establish a dictatorship — where was it? And where was the incriminating list of conspirators? Carlier was still waiting for it.... Were they going to supply him with it? He swore they were! He was so utterly certain that he would not ask to be allowed to withdraw his interpellation. A withdrawal would have a disastrous effect. Moreover, with Lavobourg’s papers he had the wherewithal to put off the Chamber while waiting for the list.
“Where is the list?” asked Coudry.
“Well,” returned the other, casting a look round to make sure that no one was spying, “it was in the Major’s possession, but it has disappeared.”
“So that’s why the beautiful Sonia looks so pale. I saw her not long ago. My dear fellow, she seemed like a statue.”
“Oh, like her friend Lavobourg, she is trying to put a bold face upon it. But it’s Subdamoun’s face that we should see, and it will be long before he will show himself.”
“Perhaps he has already escaped.”
“You may ask Cravely that question.... Ah, there is Cravely.”
A man of robust appearance in spite of his white hair was approaching, hand in pockets, his ferret-like eyes gleaming behind his spectacles. The chief of the Detective Service had risen from the ranks; and he still looked as if he were “on the track of some crime” as in those far-off days when he hunted down the most notorious criminals.
“Well, is the Republic to be saved to-day?” asked Coudry.
“Is it in danger?” returned the other; and then, going up to Mulot, “Have you seen Carlier?”
“Yes.”
“Did they bring him the tempting morsel he expected?”
“Not yet. But how can you, the chief of the Detective Service, ask me such a question?”
“I came here to gather information.”
He passed on whistling. Mulot shrugged his shoulders. They went into the Chamber to hear Lavobourg say in a tone of voice that was unrecognizable and scarcely natural:
“I have received from M. Carlier a request for an interpellation on the measures which the Government intends to adopt against the enemies of the Republic, against the conspirators whose avowed object is to overthrow existing institutions by revolution.”
A storm of cries, uncontrolled laughter, humorous sallies arose from the Centre and Right while the entire Left stood up and applauded to the echo. Lavobourg struck his bell at brief intervals. He strove to appear calm, impartial, remote, almost indiff
erent. The truth was that he sat there like a man in a dream, his thoughts centred on the blow that was soon to be struck at him, for he knew not only that he had been robbed but, in particular, that the famous list at the head of which his own name stood had been stolen from the Major.
Although he tried hard he could not prevent his eyes wandering involuntarily to Sonia, the great actress, who had lured him into the mad adventure. She stood erect in her beauty, like a marble statue, between Baron and Baroness d’Askof, giving no more heed to Lavobourg than if he were not in the chair, addressing a word over her shoulder to a young man, no other than Jacques’s friend, Lieut. Frederic Héloni.
But Jacques himself was still absent. And yet with what vigor he had that very morning calmed the most panic-stricken among his friends. “Nothing is lost,” he declared, but he had not been seen since, and they all began to stare at his vacant seat. It was at the top, in the last row on the left, level with the President’s chair. But he was a member of no party — not even of the independents.
The President of the Council rose from his seat and said: “The Government is at the disposal of the Chamber to discuss at once M. Carlier’s interpellation.”
At that moment Jacques came in. The Extreme Left received him with a hostile demonstration, shouting: “Down with Subdamoun!... To the High Court!... To prison with Jacques!... Issue a warrant!” while Coudry’s piercing voice could be heard: “Guillotine him!”
An entire body of Deputies demanded silence, imploring these hysterical persons to hold their tongues and listen to Carlier, who had mounted the tribune. As to Major Jacques, he passed straight to his seat, thrusting aside gently but firmly the Deputies swarming in the hemicycle, and went up the steps to his place without seeming to hear either threats or insults.
He was of frail, almost delicate, appearance, but an indomitable will could be read in the dark eyes deep set beneath their straddling eyebrows, gleaming at times with a fire not easily withstood. His complexion was slightly tanned by the suns of Africa and the Far East. Hollow of cheek, his profile that of a Roman aristocrat, he was clean-shaven, with close-cropped upstanding hair. He seemed quite young. Of medium height, he was clad in a tight-fitting frock-coat of military cut, buttoned to the chin. An ardent spirit sustained him and manifested itself through its fragile envelope, throwing as it were a lustre over him.
“Gentlemen,” snorted Carlier, whose stentorian voice secured silence more effectually than the President’s bell, “Gentlemen, I ask you to save the Republic to-day. A seditious faction, a mere handful, has sworn to overthrow it....”
“Long live the Republic!’ shouted Coudry. “I ask to be heard.”
It was as much as Mulot could do to make him sit down. Carlier, in the tribune, folded his arms. Shouts from the Extreme Left greeted him: “Go on! Go on!” But it did not seem as if he were eager to proceed. He paused at the interruptions, waited for an impossible silence — in a word, seemed to wish to gain time. His reluctance was observed, and from every part of the Chamber impatient or perturbed voices cried: “Names! Names!”
He turned sharply to the left and rapped out: “I will give names. I shall not wait for the Commission of Inquiry. Moreover, you who demand these names know them as well as I do. You know the wretched individuals who, betraying the mandate received from the nation, are prepared to lay waste the country in order to achieve their monstrous dream of a dictatorship behind a seditious soldier whom the Army has dismissed from its ranks.” He had no need to point to Jacques, for every eye turned towards him. Were they about to hear his voice? Jacques did not move a muscle. So great an impassivity incensed even his friends.
“Answer! Answer!”
With a gold pencil he calmly took notes in a small notebook. Above him in the crowded public galleries the throng leaned forward. But in none of the galleries was the tension more acute than in one in which a woman had just taken a seat in the front row — a woman whose splendid white hair encircled a face that was still handsome and still retained its pristine purity of lineament in spite of her years. It was the Marchioness de Touchais, Major Jacques’s mother, whom the people of Dieppe called the beautiful Cecily when she lived in the town of her birth, and whom the social world of Paris now treated with infinite respect.
Seated beside her was her companion, whom she called “my dear Jacqueline,” clad in a semi-religious costume as befitted an ex-sister of St. Mary of the Angels, who had so greatly mourned her brother that terrible monster Chéri-Bibi. With the two older ladies a young girl of captivating charm had come in, and Sonia, seated in the gallery facing them, could not keep her eyes off her. It was Mlle Lydia de la Morlière, engaged, it was said, to Major Jacques who still continued to take notes....
“Proofs! Proofs!” was shouted in increasingly loud tones.
Carlier opened his portfolio as though inviting the Chamber to have patience while he cast his eyes more and more frequently to the door on the left through which the decisive evidence would come. He had been told: “You shall have the list at three o’clock,” and it was ten minutes past three. He began to feel uneasy.
“Gentlemen,” he said, taking out a document, “passions alien to our constitution, opinions subversive to our present social order, memories of a hateful and ill-omened despotism have disturbed our minds...”
“No speeches — proofs!”
Suddenly an usher mounted the steps of the tribune and handed him a letter which he at once opened and read. His face beamed.
“I have proofs,” he thundered, “but I have just received the most decisive of all. I ask for a ten minutes’ adjournment.”
His announcement was received with loud shouts and the banging of desks. Hérisson himself rose to his feet and asked the Chamber to agree to the adjournment. The majority was even now leaving the benches. Lavobourg put on his silk hat, but there was no need for him even to say, “The sitting stands adjourned”; and he descended the tribune, leaning on the banisters as though he had already received his death-blow.
Carlier left the Chamber. Crossing the Salle des Pas Perdus and the lobby, he was seen to enter quickly one of those small office-parlours in which Deputies may shut themselves up with an elector, receive the visits of friends, and discuss private matters. He was soon joined by a man whom no one knew — not even Cravely who, as if by chance, was passing by craftily pursuing his own business — a big fellow of austere appearance in a long black frock-coat. This man, like Carlier, carried a morocco leather portfolio under his arm. The door closed after them, and the crowd waited in an atmosphere of excitement.
Impatience reached the point of exasperation when it became known that the mysterious messenger in the Quakerish frock-coat had left the room some five minutes, but that Carlier still lingered. He must be arranging his notes, making his last preparations for the crucial struggle. But it was felt that he was taking too long to collect himself, and one or two friends knocked at the door. There was no answer.
Mulot took it upon himself to open the door. He started back in horror. Carlier lay stretched on the table, his clothes awry, his waistcoat open, a dagger in his heart.
CHAPTER II
THE BODY IN THE TRIBUNE
THE RUMOUR OF the murder spread like wild-fire. A tremendous uproar, a wild struggle surged round the dead man so that a company of the Republican Guard had to be sent for to clear the approaches to the room. But it was to no purpose. Nothing could prevent Carlier’s friends carrying the body of the victim to the Chamber, shouting as they entered, “Death to the assassins!”
Coudry, who supported the head and shoulders, and Mulot, who had made a grab at the portfolio to save its contents if possible, displayed faces distorted by a deep hatred. Shouts, clenched fists, rage on the one hand and consternation on the other formed a sort of mourning retinue to this sinister trophy which was laid on the shorthand writer’s table at the foot of the tribune.
The dead man’s friends pressed round the body, others in their delirium swore to be
revenged. Pagès, who had maintained his presence of mind and ordered the doors to be closed, endeavored to restrain the confusion and exchanged a few words now with the Head of the Government, who had sent for the Attorney-General, and now with the Questeurs.
Mulot had opened Carlier’s portfolio, but failed to find in it the papers stolen from Lavobourg. He at once joined Cravely in a corridor. Cravely assured him that not one of the accomplices would escape, and they would soon have the key to the mystery, for when the unknown visitor left the room he had put one of his best men on his track.
Lavobourg’s friends advised him to remain in the background if he wished to avoid being stabbed in his turn; and under the pretence of keeping guard over him Cravely, in agreement with Jolly, one of the Questeurs on whom he could rely, placed detectives with the Vice-President of the Chamber and thus made sure of him.
It was then that an old man, who seemed at death’s door and was held up by the ushers, said from the President’s chair:
“Gentlemen, the sitting is resumed.”
It was Bonchamps who, on hearing of the assassination, mastered the mysterious illness that was preying on him and drove to the Chamber to make sure that the President’s chair should not, in such tragic circumstances, be left in the hands of the reactionaries.
This unexpected appearance, this splendid gesture, those impressive words, the supreme calm of the man upon whom death had already cast its shadow, had an immediate result, temporarily lulling the storm. The fury of a group of Deputies who had made a rush on Major Jacques, guarded by his friends and motionless, seemed suspended. And the Chamber in a body, appalled by the horrible crime, cheered the man who had at once restored to it a sense of its own dignity. But the cheering had scarcely subsided when the Extreme Left turned towards a particular seat, the seat where Major Jacques still sat with folded arms, and Coudry’s voice could be heard above the others:
“There is the criminal!”
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