The Teeth of the Tiger by Maurice Leblanc (page 4)

nevertheless retained the shape of the smile. The curve of the chin, the grace of the neck revealed above the dip of the linen collar, the line of the shoulders, the position of the arms, and of the hands resting on her knees: all this was charming and very gentle and, in a manner, very seemly and reassuring. Was it possible that this woman should be a murderess, a poisoner?

He said:

“I forget what you told me that your Christian name was. But the name you gave me was not the right one.”

“Yes, it was,” she said.

“Your name is Florence: Florence Levasseur.”

She started.

“What! Who told you? Florence? How do you know?”

“Here is your photograph, with your name on it almost illegible.”

“Oh!” she said, amazed at seeing the picture. “I can’t believe it! Where does it come from? Where did you get it from?” And, suddenly, “It was the Prefect of Police who gave it to you, was it not? Yes, it was he, I’m sure of it. I am sure that this photograph is to identify me and that they are looking for me, for me, too. And it’s you again, it’s you again–“

“Have no fear,” he said. “The print only wants a few touches to alter the face beyond recognition. I will make them. Have no fear.”

She was no longer listening to him. She gazed at the photograph with all her concentrated attention and murmured:

“I was twenty years old…. I was living in Italy. Dear me, how happy I was on the day when it was taken! And how happy I was when I saw my portrait!… I used to think myself pretty in those days…. And then it disappeared…. It was stolen from me like other things that had already been stolen from me, at that time–“

And, sinking her voice still lower, speaking her name as if she were addressing some other woman, some unhappy friend, she repeated:

“Florence…. Florence–“

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“She is not one of those who kill,” thought Don Luis. “I can’t believe that she is an accomplice. And yet–and yet–“

He moved away from her and walked across the room from the window to the door. The drawings of Italian landscapes on the wall attracted his attention. Next, he read the titles of the books on the shelves. They represented French and foreign works, novels, plays, essays, volumes of poetry, pointing to a really cultivated and varied taste.

He saw Racine next to Dante, Stendhal near Edgar Allan Poe, Montaigne between Goethe and Virgil. And suddenly, with that extraordinary faculty which enabled him, in any collection of objects, to perceive details which he did not at once take in, he noticed that one of the volumes of an English edition of Shakespeare’s works did not look exactly like the others. There was something peculiar about the red morocco back, something stiff, without the cracks and creases which show that a book has been used.

It was the eighth volume. He took it out, taking care not to be heard.

He was not mistaken. The volume was a sham, a mere set of boards surrounding a hollow space that formed a box and thus provided a regular hiding-place; and, inside this book, he caught sight of plain note-paper, envelopes of different kinds, and some sheets of ordinary ruled paper, all of the same size and looking as if they had been taken from a writing-pad.

And the appearance of these ruled sheets struck him at once. He remembered the look of the paper on which the article for the _Echo de France_ had been drafted. The ruling was identical, and the shape and size appeared to be the same.

On lifting the sheets one after the other, he saw, on the last but one, a series of lines consisting of words and figures in pencil, like notes hurriedly jotted down.

He read:

“House on the Boulevard Suchet.
“First letter. Night of 15 April.
“Second. Night of 25th.
“Third and fourth. Nights of 5 and 15 May. “Fifth and explosion. Night of 25 May.”

And, while noting first that the date of the first night was that of the actual day, and next that all these dates followed one another at intervals of ten days, he remarked the resemblance between the writing and the writing of the rough draft.

The draft was in a notebook in his pocket. He was therefore in a position to verify the similarity of the two handwritings and of the two ruled sheets of paper. He took his notebook and opened it. The draft was not there.

“Gad,” he snarled, “but this is a bit too thick!”

And, at the same time, he remembered clearly that, when he was telephoning to Mazeroux in the morning, the notebook was in the pocket of his overcoat and that he had left his overcoat on a chair near the telephone box. Now, at that moment, Mlle. Levasseur, for no reason, was roaming about the study. What was she doing there?

“Oh, the play-actress!” thought Perenna, raging within himself. “She was humbugging me. Her tears, her air of frankness, her tender memories: all bunkum! She belongs to the same stock and the same gang as Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand. Like them, she is an accomplished liar and actress from her slightest gesture down to the least inflection of her innocent voice.”

He was on the point of having it all out with her and confounding her. This time, the proof was undeniable. Dreading an inquiry which might have brought the facts home to her, she had been unwilling to leave the draft of the article in the adversary’s hands.

How could he doubt, from this moment, that she was the accomplice employed by the people who were working the Mornington affair and trying to get rid of him? Had he not every right to suppose that she was directing the sinister gang, and that, commanding the others with her audacity and her intelligence, she was leading them toward the obscure goal at which they were aiming?

For, after all, she was free, entirely free in her actions and movements. The windows opening on the Place du Palais-Bourbon gave her every facility for leaving the house under cover of the darkness and coming in again unknown to anybody.

It was therefore quite possible that, on the night of the double crime, she was among the murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son. It was quite possible that she had taken part in the murders, and even that the poison had been injected into the victims by her hand, by that little, white, slender hand which he saw resting against the golden hair.

A shudder passed through him. He had softly put back the paper in the book, restored the book in its place, and moved nearer to the girl.

All of a sudden, he caught himself studying the lower part of her face, the shape of her jaw! Yes, that was what he was making every effort to guess, under the curve of the cheeks and behind the veil of the lips. Almost against his will, with personal anguish mingled with torturing curiosity, he stared and stared, ready to force open those closed lips and to seek the reply to the terrifying problem that suggested itself to him.

Those teeth, those teeth which he did not see, were not they the teeth that had left the incriminating marks in the fruit? Which were the teeth of the tiger, the teeth of the wild beast: these, or the other woman’s?

It was an absurd supposition, because the marks had been recognized as made by Marie Fauville. But was the absurdity of a supposition a sufficient reason for discarding it?

Himself astonished at the feelings that agitated him, fearing lest he should betray himself, he preferred to cut short the interview and, going up to the girl, he said to her, in an imperious and aggressive tone:

“I wish all the servants in the house to be discharged. You will give them their wages, pay them such compensation as they ask for, and see that they leave to-day, definitely. Another staff of servants will arrive this evening. You will be here to receive them.”

She made no reply. He went away, taking with him the uncomfortable impression that had lately marked his relations with Florence. The atmosphere between them always remained heavy and oppressive. Their words never seemed to express the private thoughts of either of them; and their actions did not correspond with the words spoken. Did not the circumstances logically demand the immediate dismissal of Florence Levasseur as well? Yet Don Luis did not so much as think of it.

Returning to his study, he at once rang up Mazeroux and, lowering his voice so as not to let it reach the next room, he said:

“Is that you, Mazeroux?”

“Yes.”

“Has the Prefect placed you at my disposal?”

“Yes.”

“Well, tell him that I have sacked all my servants and that I have given you their names and instructed you to have an active watch kept on them. We must look among them for Sauverand’s accomplice. Another thing: ask the Prefect to give you and me permission to spend the night at Hippolyte Fauville’s house.”

“Nonsense! At the house on the Boulevard Suchet?”

“Yes, I have every reason to believe that something’s going to happen there.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I don’t know. But something is bound to take place. And I insist on being at it. Is it arranged?”

“Right, Chief. Unless you hear to the contrary, I’ll meet you at nine o’clock this evening on the Boulevard Suchet.”

Perenna did not see Mlle. Levasseur again that day. He went out in the course of the afternoon, and called at the registry office, where he chose some servants: a chauffeur, a coachman, a footman, a cook, and so on. Then he went to a photographer, who made a new copy of Mlle. Levasseur’s photograph. Don Luis had this touched up and faked it himself, so that the Prefect of Police should not perceive the substitution of one set of features for another.

He dined at a restaurant and, at nine o’clock, joined Mazeroux on the Boulevard Suchet.

Since the Fauville murders the house had been left in the charge of the porter. All the rooms and all the locks had been sealed up, except the inner door of the workroom, of which the police kept the keys for the purposes of the inquiry.

The big study looked as it did before, though the papers had been removed and put away and there were no books and pamphlets left on the writing-table. A layer of dust, clearly visible by the electric light, covered its black leather and the surrounding mahogany.

“Well, Alexandre, old man,” cried Don Luis, when they had made themselves comfortable, “what do you say to this? It’s rather impressive, being here again, what? But, this time, no barricading of doors, no bolts, eh? If anything’s going to happen, on this night of the fifteenth of April, we’ll put nothing in our friends’ way. They shall have full and entire liberty. It’s up to them, this time.”

Though joking, Don Luis was nevertheless singularly impressed, as he himself said, by the terrible recollection of the two crimes which he had been unable to prevent and by the haunting vision of the two dead bodies. And he also remembered with real emotion the implacable duel which he had fought with Mme. Fauville, the woman’s despair and her arrest.

“Tell me about her,” he said to Mazeroux. “So she tried to kill herself?”

“Yes,” said Mazeroux, “a thoroughgoing attempt, though she had to make it in a manner which she must have hated. She hanged herself in strips of linen torn from her sheets and underclothing and twisted together. She had to be restored by artificial respiration. She is out of danger now, I believe, but she is never left alone, for she swore she would do it again.”

“She has made no confession?”

“No. She persists in proclaiming her innocence.”

“And what do they think at the public prosecutor’s? At the Prefect’s?”

“Why should they change their opinion, Chief? The inquiries confirm every one of the charges brought against her; and, in particular, it has been proved beyond the possibility of dispute that she alone can have touched the apple and that she can have touched it only between eleven o’clock at night and seven o’clock in the morning. Now the apple bears the undeniable marks of her teeth. Would you admit that there are two sets of jaws in the world that leave the same identical imprint?”

“No, no,” said Don Luis, who was thinking of Florence Levasseur. “No, the argument allows of no discussion. We have here a fact that is clear as daylight; and the imprint is almost tantamount to a discovery in the act. But then how, in the midst of all this, are we to explain the presence of —–“

“Whom, Chief?”

“Nobody. I had an idea worrying me. Besides, you see, in all this there are so many unnatural things, such queer coincidences and inconsistencies, that I dare not count on a certainty which the reality of to-morrow may destroy.”

They went on talking for some time, in a low voice, studying the question in all its bearings.

At midnight they switched off the electric light in the chandelier and arranged that each should go to sleep in turn.

And the hours went by as they had done when the two sat up before, with the same sounds of belated carriages and motor cars; the same railway whistles; the same silence.

The night passed without alarm or incident of any kind. At daybreak the life out of doors was resumed; and Don Luis, during his waking hours, had not heard a sound in the room except the monotonous snoring of his companion.

“Can I have been mistaken?” he wondered. “Did the clue in that volume of Shakespeare mean something else? Or did it refer to events of last year, events that took place on the dates set down?”

In spite of everything, he felt overcome by a strange uneasiness as the dawn began to glimmer through the half-closed shutters. A fortnight before, nothing had happened either to warn him; and yet there were two victims lying near him when he woke.

At seven o’clock he called out:

“Alexandre!”

“Eh? What is it, Chief?”

“You’re not dead?”

“What’s that? Dead? No, Chief; why should I be?”

“Quite sure?”

“Well, that’s a good ‘un! Why not you?”

“Oh, it’ll be my turn soon! Considering the intelligence of those scoundrels, there’s no reason why they should go on missing me.”

They waited an hour longer. Then Perenna opened a window and threw back the shutter.

“I say, Alexandre, perhaps you’re not dead, but you’re certainly very green.”

Mazeroux gave a wry laugh:

“Upon my word, Chief, I confess that I had a bad time of it when I was keeping watch while you were asleep.”

“Were you afraid?”

“To the roots of my hair. I kept on thinking that something was going to happen. But you, too, Chief, don’t look as if you had been enjoying yourself. Were you also–“

He interrupted himself, on seeing an expression of unbounded astonishment on Don Luis’s face.

“What’s the matter, Chief?”

“Look! … on the table … that letter–“

He looked. There was a letter on the writing-table, or, rather, a letter-card, the edges of which had been torn along the perforation marks; and they saw the outside of it, with the address, the stamp, and the postmarks.

“Did you put that there, Alexandre?”

“You’re joking, Chief. You know it can only have been you.”

“It can only have been I … and yet it was not I.”

“But then–“

Don Luis took the letter-card and, on examining it, found that the address and the postmarks had been scratched out so as to make it impossible to read the name of the addressee or where he lived, but that the place of posting was quite clear, as was the date: Paris, 4 January, 19–.

“So the letter is three and a half months old,” said Don Luis.

He turned to the inside of the letter. It contained a dozen lines and he at once exclaimed:

“Hippolyte Fauville’s signature!”

“And his handwriting,” observed Mazeroux. “I can tell it at a glance. There’s no mistake about that. What does it all mean? A letter written by Hippolyte Fauville three months before his death?”

Perenna read aloud:

“MY DEAR OLD FRIEND:

“I can only, alas, confirm what I wrote to you the other day: the plot is thickening around me! I do not yet know what their plan is and still less how they mean to put it into execution; but everything warns me that the end is at hand. I can see it in her eyes. How strangely she looks at me sometimes!

“Oh, the shame of it! Who would ever have thought her capable of it?

“I am a very unhappy man, my dear friend.”

“And it’s signed Hippolyte Fauville,” Mazeroux continued, “and I declare to you that it’s actually in his hand … written on the fourth of January of this year to a friend whose name we don’t know, though we shall dig him out somehow, that I’ll swear. And this friend will certainly give us the proofs we want.”

Mazeroux was becoming excited.

“Proofs? Why, we don’t need them! They’re here. M. Fauville himself supplies them: ‘The end is at hand. I can see it in her eyes.’ ‘Her’ refers to his wife, to Marie Fauville, and the husband’s evidence confirms all that we knew against her. What do you say, Chief?”

“You’re right,” replied Perenna, absent-mindedly, “you’re right; the letter is final. Only–“

“Only what?”

“Who the devil can have brought it? Somebody must have entered the room last night while we were here. Is it possible? For, after all, we should have heard. That’s what astounds me.”

“It certainly looks like it.”

“Just so. It was a queer enough job a fortnight ago. But, still, we were in the passage outside, while they were at work in here, whereas, this time, we were here, both of us, close to this very table. And, on this table, which had not the least scrap of paper on it last night, we find this letter in the morning.”

A careful inspection of the place gave them no clue to put them on the track. They went through the house from top to bottom and ascertained for certain that there was no one there in hiding. Besides, supposing that any one was hiding there, how could he have made his way into the room without attracting their attention? There was no solving the problem.

“We won’t look any more,” said Perenna, “it’s no use. In matters of this sort, some day or other the light enters by an unseen cranny and everything gradually becomes clear. Take the letter to the Prefect of Police, tell him how we spent the night, and ask his permission for both of us to come back on the night of the twenty-fifth of April. There’s to be another surprise that night; and I’m dying to know if we shall receive a second letter through the agency of some Mahatma.”

They closed the doors and left the house.

While they were walking to the right, toward La Muette, in order to take a taxi, Don Luis chanced to turn his head to the road as they reached the end of the Boulevard Suchet. A man rode past them on a bicycle. Don Luis just had time to see his clean-shaven face and his glittering eyes fixed upon himself.

“Look out!” he shouted, pushing Mazeroux so suddenly that the sergeant lost his balance.

The man had stretched out his hand, armed with a revolver. A shot rang out. The bullet whistled past the ears of Don Luis, who had bobbed his head.

“After him!” he roared. “You’re not hurt, Mazeroux?”

“No, Chief.”

They both rushed in pursuit, shouting for assistance. But, at that early hour, there are never many people in the wide avenues of this part of the town. The man, who was making off swiftly, increased his distance, turned down the Rue Octave-Feuillet, and disappeared.

“All right, you scoundrel, I’ll catch you yet!” snarled Don Luis, abandoning a vain pursuit.

“But you don’t even know who he is, Chief.”

“Yes, I do: it’s he.”

“Who?”

“The man with the ebony stick. He’s cut off his beard and shaved his face, but I knew him for all that. It was the man who was taking pot-shots at us yesterday morning, from the top of his stairs on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, the one who killed Inspector Ancenis. The blackguard! How did he know that I had spent the night at Fauville’s? Have I been followed then and spied on? But by whom? And why? And how?”

Mazeroux reflected and said:

“Remember, Chief, you telephoned to me in the afternoon to give me an appointment. For all you know, in spite of lowering your voice, you may have been heard by somebody at your place.”

Don Luis did not answer. He thought of Florence.

That morning Don Luis’s letters were not brought to him by Mlle. Levasseur, nor did he send for her. He caught sight of her several times giving orders to the new servants. She must afterward have gone back to her room, for he did not see her again.

In the afternoon he rang for his car and drove to the house on the Boulevard Suchet, to pursue with Mazeroux, by the Prefect’s instructions, a search that led to no result whatever.

It was ten o’clock when he came in. The detective sergeant and he had some dinner together. Afterward, wishing also to examine the home of the man with the ebony stick, he got into his car again, still accompanied by Mazeroux, and told the man to drive to the Boulevard Richard-Wallace.

The car crossed the Seine and followed the right bank.

“Faster,” he said to his new chauffeur, through the speaking-tube. “I’m accustomed to go at a good pace.”

“You’ll have an upset one fine day, Chief,” said Mazeroux.

“No fear,” replied Don Luis. “Motor accidents are reserved for fools.”

They reached the Place de l’Alma. The car turned to the left.

“Straight ahead!” cried Don Luis. “Go up by the Trocadero.”

The car veered back again. But suddenly it gave three or four lurches in the road, took the pavement, ran into a tree and fell over on its side.

In a few seconds a dozen people were standing round. They broke one of the windows and opened the door. Don Luis was the first.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m all right. And you, Alexandre?”

They helped the sergeant out. He had a few bruises and a little pain, but no serious injury.

Only the chauffeur had been thrown from his seat and lay motionless on the pavement, bleeding from the head. He was carried into a chemist’s shop and died in ten minutes.

Mazeroux had gone in with the poor victim and, feeling pretty well stunned, had himself been given a pick-me-up. When he went back to the motor car he found two policemen entering particulars of the accident in their notebooks and taking evidence from the bystanders; but the chief was not there.

Perenna in fact had jumped into a taxicab and driven home as fast as he could. He got out in the square, ran through the gateway, crossed the courtyard, and went down the passage that led to Mlle. Levasseur’s quarters. He leaped up the steps, knocked, and entered without waiting for an answer.

The door of the room that served as a sitting-room was opened and Florence appeared. He pushed her back into the room, and said, in a tone furious with indignation:

“It’s done. The accident has occurred. And yet none of the old servants can have prepared it, because they were not there and because I was out with the car this afternoon. Therefore, it must have been late in the day between six and nine o’clock, that somebody went to the garage and filed the steering-rod three quarters through.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” she said, with a scared look.

“You understand perfectly well that the accomplice of the ruffians cannot be one of the new servants, and you understand perfectly well that the job was bound to succeed and that it did succeed, beyond their hopes. There is a victim, who suffers instead of myself.”

“But tell me what has happened, Monsieur! You frighten me! What accident? What was it?”

“The motor car was overturned. The chauffeur is dead.”

“Oh,” she said, “how horrible! And you think that I can have–Oh, dead, how horrible! Poor man!”

Her voice grew fainter. She was standing opposite to Perenna, close up against him. Pale and swooning, she closed her eyes, staggered.

He caught her in his arms as she fell. She tried to release herself, but had not the strength; and he laid her in a chair, while she moaned, repeatedly:

“Poor man! Poor man!”

Keeping one of his arms under the girl’s head, he took a handkerchief in the other hand and wiped her forehead, which was wet with perspiration, and her pallid cheeks, down which the tears streamed.

She must have lost consciousness entirely, for she surrendered herself to Perenna’s cares without the least resistance. And he, making no further movement, began anxiously to examine the mouth before his eyes, the mouth with the lips usually so red, now bloodless and discoloured.

Gently passing one of his fingers over each of them, with a continuous pressure, he separated them, as one separates the petals of a flower; and the two rows of teeth appeared.

They were charming, beautifully shaped, and beautifully white; a little smaller perhaps than Mme. Fauville’s, perhaps also arranged in a wider curve. But what did he know? Who could say that their bite would not leave the same imprint? It was an improbable supposition, an impossible miracle, he knew. And yet the circumstances were all against the girl and pointed to her as the most daring, cruel, implacable, and terrible of criminals.

Her breathing became regular. He perceived the cool fragrance of her mouth, intoxicating as the scent of a rose. In spite of himself, he bent down, came so close, so close that he was seized with giddiness and had to make a great effort to lay the girl’s head on the back of the chair and to take his eyes from the fair face with the half-parted lips.

He rose to his feet and went.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE DEVIL’S POST-OFFICE

Of all these events the public knew only of the attempted suicide of Mme. Fauville, the capture and escape of Gaston Sauverand, the murder of Chief Inspector Ancenis, and the discovery of a letter written by Hippolyte Fauville. This was enough, however, to reawaken their curiosity, as they were already singularly puzzled by the Mornington case and took the greatest interest in all the movements, however slight, of the mysterious Don Luis Perenna, whom they insisted on confusing with Arsene Lupin.

He was, of course, credited with the brief capture of the man with the ebony walking-stick. It was also known that he had saved the life of the Prefect of Police, and that, finally, having at his own request spent the night in the house on the Boulevard Suchet, he had become the recipient of Hippolyte Fauville’s famous letter. And all this added immensely to the excitement of the aforesaid public.

But how much more complicated and disconcerting were the problems set to Don Luis Perenna himself! Not to mention the denunciation in the anonymous article, there had been, in the short space of forty-eight hours, no fewer than four separate attempts to kill him: by the iron curtain, by poison, by the shooting on the Boulevard Suchet, and by the deliberately prepared motor accident.

Florence’s share in this series of attempts was not to be denied. And, now, behold her relations with the Fauvilles’ murderers duly established by the little note found in the eighth volume of Shakespeare’s plays, while two more deaths were added to the melancholy list: the deaths of Chief Inspector Ancenis and of the chauffeur. How to describe and how to explain the part played, in the midst of all these catastrophes, by that enigmatical girl?

Strangely enough, life went on as usual at the house in the Place du Palais-Bourbon, as though nothing out of the way had happened there. Every morning Florence Levasseur sorted Don Luis’s post in his presence and read out the newspaper articles referring to himself or bearing upon the Mornington case.

Not a single allusion was made to the fierce fight that had been waged against him for two days. It was as though a truce had been proclaimed between them; and the enemy appeared to have ceased his attacks for the moment. Don Luis felt easy, out of the reach of danger; and he talked to the girl with an indifferent air, as he might have talked to anybody.

But with what a feverish interest he studied her unobserved! He watched the expression of her face, at once calm and eager, and a painful sensitiveness which showed under the placid mask and which, difficult to control, revealed itself in the frequent quivering of the lips and nostrils.

“Who are you? Who are you?” he felt inclined to exclaim. “Will nothing content you, you she-devil, but to deal out murder all round? And do you want my death also, in order to attain your object? Where do you come from and where are you making for?”

On reflection, he was convinced of a certainty that solved a problem which had preoccupied him for a long time–namely, the mysterious connection between his own presence in the mansion in the Place du Palais-Bourbon and the presence of a woman who was manifestly wreaking her hatred on him.

He now understood that he had not bought the house by accident. In making the purchase he had been persuaded by an anonymous offer that reached him in the form of a typewritten prospectus. Whence did this offer come, if not from Florence, who wished to have him near her in order to spy upon him and wage war upon him?

“Yes,” he thought, “that is where the truth lies. As the possible heir of Cosmo Mornington and a prominent figure in the case, I am the enemy, and they are trying to do away with me as they did with the others. And it is Florence who is acting against me. And it is she who has committed murder.

“Everything tells against her; nothing speaks in her defence. Her innocent eyes? The accent of sincerity in her voice? Her serene dignity? And then? Yes, what then? Have I never seen women with that frank look who have committed murder for no reason, almost for pleasure’s sake?”

He started with terror at the memory of Dolores Kesselbach. What was it that made him connect these two women at every moment in his mind? He had loved one of them, that monster Dolores, and had strangled her with his own hands. Was fate now leading him toward a like love and a similar murder?

When Florence left him he would experience a sense of satisfaction and breathe more easily, as though released from an oppressive weight, but he would run to the window and see her crossing the courtyard and be still waiting when the girl whose scented breath he had felt upon his face passed to and fro.

One morning she said to him:

“The papers say that it will be to-night.”

“To-night?”

“Yes,” she said, showing him an article in one of the newspapers. “This is the twenty-fifth; and, according to the information of the police, supplied, they say, by you, there should be a letter delivered in the house on the Boulevard Suchet every tenth day, and the house is to be destroyed by an explosion on the day when the fifth and last letter appears.”

Was she defying him? Did she wish to make him understand that, whatever happened, whatever the obstacles, the letters would appear, those mysterious letters prophesied on the list which he had found in the eighth volume of Shakespeare’s plays?

He looked at her steadily. She did not flinch. He answered:

“Yes, this is the night. I shall be there. Nothing in the world will prevent me.”

She was on the point of replying, but once more controlled her feelings.

That day Don Luis was on his guard. He lunched and dined out and arranged with Mazeroux to have the Place du Palais-Bourbon watched.

Mlle. Levasseur did not leave the house during the afternoon. In the evening Don Luis ordered Mazeroux’s men to follow any one who might go out at that time.

At ten o’clock the sergeant joined Don Luis in Hippolyte Fauville’s workroom. Deputy Chief Detective Weber and two plain-clothesmen were with him.

Don Luis took Mazeroux aside:

“They distrust me. Own up to it.”

“No. As long as M. Desmalions is there, they can do nothing against you. Only, M. Weber maintains–and he is not the only one–that you fake up all these occurrences yourself.”

“With what object?”

“With the object of furnishing proof against Marie Fauville and getting her condemned. So I asked for the attendance of the deputy chief and two men. There will be four of us to bear witness to your honesty.”

They all took up their posts. Two detectives were to sit up in turns.

This time, after making a minute search of the little room in which Fauville’s son used to sleep, they locked and bolted the doors and shutters. At eleven o’clock they switched off the electric chandelier.

Don Luis and Weber hardly slept at all.

The night passed without incident of any kind.

But, at seven o’clock, when the shutters were opened, they saw that there was a letter on the table. Just as on the last occasion, there was a letter on the table!

When the first moment of stupefaction was over, the deputy chief took the letter. His orders were not to read it and not to let any one else read it.

Here is the letter, published by the newspapers, which also published the declarations of the experts certifying that the handwriting was Hippolyte Fauville’s:

“I have seen him! You understand, don’t you, my dear friend? I have seen him! He was walking along a path in the Bois, with his coat collar turned up and his hat pulled over his ears. I don’t think that he saw me. It was almost dark. But I knew him at once. I knew the silver handle of his ebony stick. It was he beyond a doubt, the scoundrel!

“So he is in Paris, in spite of his promise. Gaston Sauverand is in Paris! Do you understand the terrible significance of that fact? If he is in Paris, it means that he intends to act. If he is in Paris, it means certain death to me. Oh, the harm which I shall have suffered at that man’s hands! He has already robbed me of my happiness; and now he wants my life. I am terrified.”

So Fauville knew that the man with the ebony walking-stick, that Gaston Sauverand, was designing to kill him. Fauville declared it most positively, by evidence written in his own hand; and the letter, moreover, corroborating the words that had escaped Gaston Sauverand at his arrest, showed that the two men had at one time had relations with each other, that they were no longer friends, and that Gaston Sauverand had promised never to come to Paris.

A little light was therefore being shed on the darkness of the Mornington case. But, on the other hand, how inconceivable was the mystery of that letter found on the table in the workroom!

Five men had kept watch, five of the smartest men obtainable; and yet, on that night, as on the night of the fifteenth of April, an unknown hand had delivered the letter in a room with barricaded doors and windows, without their hearing a sound or discovering any signs that the fastenings of the doors or windows had been tampered with.

The theory of a secret outlet was at once raised, but had to be abandoned after a careful examination of the walls and after an interview with the contractor who had built the house, from Fauville’s own plans, some years ago.

It is unnecessary once more to recall what I may describe as the flurry of the public. The deed, in the circumstances, assumed the appearance of a sleight-of-hand trick. People felt tempted to look upon it as the recreation of some wonderfully skilful conjurer rather than as the act of a person employing unknown methods.

Nevertheless, Don Luis Perenna’s intelligence was justified at all points, for the expected incident had taken place on the twenty-fifth of April, as on the fifteenth. Would the series be continued on the fifth of May? No one doubted it, because Don Luis had said so and because everybody felt that Don Luis could not be mistaken. All through the night of the fifth of May there was a crowd on the Boulevard Suchet; and quidnuncs and night birds of every kind came trooping up to hear the latest news.

The Prefect of Police, greatly impressed by the first two miracles, had determined to see the next one for himself, and was present in person on the third night.

He came accompanied by several inspectors, whom he left in the garden, in the passage, and in the attic on the upper story. He himself took up his post on the ground floor with Weber, Mazeroux, and Don Luis Perenna.

Their expectations were disappointed; and this was M. Desmalions’s fault. In spite of the express opinion of Don Luis, who deprecated the experiment as useless, the Prefect had decided not to turn off the electric light, so that he might see if the light would prevent the miracle. Under these conditions no letter could appear, and no letter did appear. The miracle, whether a conjuring trick or a criminal’s device, needed the kindly aid of the darkness.

There were therefore ten days lost, always presuming that the diabolical postman would dare to repeat his attempt and produce the third mysterious letter.

* * * * *

On the fifteenth of May the wait was renewed, while the same crowd gathered outside, an anxious, breathless crowd, stirred by the least sound and keeping an impressive silence, with eyes gazing upon the Fauvilles’ house.

This time the light was put out, but the Prefect of Police kept his hand on the electric switch. Ten times, twenty times, he unexpectedly turned on the light. There was nothing on the table. What had aroused his attention was the creaking of a piece of furniture or a movement made by one of the men with him.

Suddenly they all uttered an exclamation. Something unusual, a rustling noise, had interrupted the silence.

M. Desmalions at once switched on the light. He gave a cry. A letter lay not on the table, but beside it, on the floor, on the carpet.

Mazeroux made the sign of the cross. The inspectors were as pale as death.

M. Desmalions looked at Don Luis, who nodded his head without a word.

They inspected the condition of the locks and bolts. Nothing had moved.

That day again, the contents of the letter made some amends for the really extraordinary manner of its delivery. It completely dispelled all the doubts that still enshrouded the double murder on the Boulevard Suchet.

Again signed by the engineer, written throughout by himself, on the eighth of February, with no visible address, it said:

“No, my dear friend, I will not allow myself to be killed like a sheep led to the slaughter. I shall defend myself, I shall fight to the last moment. Things have changed lately. I have proofs now, undeniable proofs. I possess letters that have passed between them. And I know that they still love each other as they did at the start, that they want to marry, and that they will let nothing stand in their way. It is written, understand what I say, it is written in Marie’s own hand; ‘Have patience, my own Gaston. My courage increases day by day. So much the worse for him who stands between us. He shall disappear.’

“My dear friend, if I succumb in the struggle you will find those letters (and all the evidence which I have collected against the wretched creature) in the safe hidden behind the small glass case: Then revenge me. Au revoir. Perhaps good-bye.”

Thus ran the third missive. Hippolyte Fauville from his grave named and accused his guilty wife. From his grave he supplied the solution to the riddle and explained the reason why the crimes had been committed: Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand were lovers.

Certainly they knew of the existence of Cosmo Mornington’s will, for they had begun by doing away with Cosmo Mornington; and their eagerness to come into the enormous fortune had hastened the catastrophe. But the first idea of the murder rose from an older and deep-rooted passion: Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand were lovers.

One problem remained to be solved: who was the unknown correspondent to whom Hippolyte Fauville had bequeathed the task of avenging his murder, and who, instead of simply handing over the letters to the police, was exercising his ingenuity to deliver them by means of the most Machiavellian contrivances? Was it to his interest also to remain in the background?

To all these questions Marie Fauville replied in the most unexpected manner, though it was one that fully accorded with her threats. A week later, after a long cross-examination at which she was pressed for the name of her husband’s old friend and at which she maintained the most stubborn silence, together with a sort of stupid inertia, she returned to her cell in the evening and opened the veins of her wrist with a piece of glass which she had managed to hide.

Don Luis heard the news from Mazeroux, who came to tell him of it before eight o’clock the next morning, just as he was getting out of bed. The sergeant had a travelling bag in his hand and was on his way to catch a train.

Don Luis was greatly upset.

“Is she dead?” he exclaimed.

“No. It seems that she has had one more let-off. But what’s the good?”

“How do you mean, what’s the good?”

“She’ll do it again, of course. She’s set her mind upon it. And, one day or another–“

“Did she volunteer no confession, this time either, before making the attempt on her life?”

“No. She wrote a few words on a scrap of paper, saying that, on thinking it over, she advised us to ask a certain M. Langernault about the mysterious letters. He was the only friend that she had known her husband to possess, or at any rate the only one whom he would have called, ‘My dear fellow,’ or, ‘My dear friend,’ This M. Langernault could do no more than prove her innocence and explain the terrible misunderstanding of which she was the victim.”

“But,” said Don Luis, “if there is any one to prove her innocence, why does she begin by opening her veins?”

“She doesn’t care, she says. Her life is done for; and what she wants is rest and death.”

“Rest? Rest? There are other ways in which she can find it besides in death. If the discovery of the truth is to spell her safety, perhaps the truth is not impossible to discover.”

“What are you saying, Chief? Have you guessed anything? Are you beginning to understand?”

“Yes, very vaguely, but, all the same, the really unnatural accuracy of those letters just seems to me a sign–“

He reflected for a moment and continued:

“Have they reexamined the erased addresses of the three letters?”

“Yes; and they managed to make out the name of Langernault.”

“Where does this Langernault live?”

“According to Mme. Fauville, at the village of Damigni, in the Orme.”

“Have they deciphered the word Damigni on one of the letters?”

“No, but they have the name of the nearest town.”

“What town is that?”

“Alencon.”

“And is that where you’re going?”

“Yes, the Prefect of Police told me to go straightaway. I shall take the train at the Invalides.”

“You mean you will come with me in my motor.”

“Eh?”

“We will both of us go, my lad. I want to be doing something; the atmosphere of this house is deadly for me.”

“What are you talking about, Chief?”

“Nothing. I know.”

Half an hour later they were flying along the Versailles Road. Perenna himself was driving his open car and driving it in such a way that Mazeroux, almost stifling, kept blurting out, at intervals:

“Lord, what a pace! Dash it all, how you’re letting her go, Chief! Aren’t you afraid of a smash? Remember the other day–“

They reached Alencon in time for lunch. When they had done, they went to the chief post-office. Nobody knew the name of Langernault there. Besides, Damigni had its own post-office, though the presumption was that M. Langernault had his letters addressed _poste restante_ at Alencon.

Don Luis and Mazeroux went on to the village of Damigni. Here again the postmaster knew no one of the name of Langernault; and this in spite of the fact that Damigni contained only about a thousand inhabitants.

“Let’s go and call on the mayor,” said Perenna.

At the mayor’s Mazeroux stated who he was and mentioned the object of his visit. The mayor nodded his head.

“Old Langernault? I should think so. A decent fellow: used to run a business in the town.”

“And accustomed, I suppose, to fetch his letters at Alencon post-office?”

“That’s it, every day, for the sake of the walk.”

“And his house?”

“Is at the end of the village. You passed it as you came along.”

“Can we see it?”

“Well, of course … only–“

“Perhaps he’s not at home?”

“Certainly not! The poor, dear man hasn’t even set foot in the house since he left it the last time, four years ago!”

“How is that?”

“Why, he’s been dead these four years!”

Don Luis and Mazeroux exchanged a glance of amazement.

“So he’s dead?” said Don Luis.

“Yes, a gunshot.”

“What’s that!” cried Perenna. “Was he murdered?”

“No, no. They thought so at first, when they picked him up on the floor of his room; but the inquest proved that it was an accident. He was cleaning his gun, and it went off and sent a load of shot into his stomach. All the same, we thought it very queer in the village. Daddy Langernault, an old hunter before the Lord, was not the man to commit an act of carelessness.”

“Had he money?”

“Yes; and that’s just what clinched the matter: they couldn’t find a penny of it!”

Don Luis remained thinking for some time and then asked:

“Did he leave any children, any relations of the same name?”

“Nobody, not even a cousin. The proof is that his property–it’s called the Old Castle, because of the ruins on it–has reverted to the State. The authorities have had the doors of the house sealed up, and locked the gate of the park. They are waiting for the legal period to expire in order to take possession.”

“And don’t sightseers go walking in the park, in spite of the walls?”

“Not they. In the first place, the walls are very high. And then–and then the Old Castle has had a bad reputation in the neighbourhood ever since I can remember. There has always been a talk of ghosts: a pack of silly tales. But still–“

Perenna and his companion could not get over their surprise.

“This is a funny affair,” exclaimed Don Luis, when they had left the mayor’s. “Here we have Fauville writing his letters to a dead man–and to a dead man, by the way, who looks to me very much as if he had been murdered.”

“Some one must have intercepted the letters.”

“Obviously. But that does not do away with the fact that he wrote them to a dead man and made his confidences to a dead man and told him of his wife’s criminal intentions.”

Mazeroux was silent. He, too, seemed greatly perplexed.

They spent part of the afternoon in asking about old Langernault’s habits, hoping to receive some useful clue from the people who had known him. But their efforts led to nothing.

At six o’clock, as they were about to start, Don Luis found that the car had run out of petrol and sent Mazeroux in a trap to the outskirts of Alencon to fetch some. He employed the delay in going to look at the Old Castle outside the village.

He had to follow a hedged road leading to an open space, planted with lime trees, where a massive wooden gate stood in the middle of a wall. The gate was locked. Don Luis walked along the wall, which was, in fact, very high and presented no opening. Nevertheless, he managed to climb over by means of the branches of a tree.

The park consisted of unkept lawns, overgrown with large wild flowers, and grass-covered avenues leading on the right to a distant mound, thickly dotted with ruins, and, on the left, to a small, tumbledown house with ill-fitting shutters.

He was turning in this direction, when he was much surprised to perceive fresh footprints on a border which had been soaked with the recent rain. And he could see that these footprints had been made by a woman’s boots, a pair of elegant and dainty boots.

“Who the devil comes walking here?” he thought.

He found more footprints a little farther, on another border which the owner of the boots had crossed, and they led him away from the house, toward a series of clumps of trees where he saw them twice more. Then he lost sight of them for good.

He was standing near a large, half-ruined barn, built against a very tall bank. Its worm-eaten doors seemed merely balanced on their hinges. He went up and looked through a crack in the wood. Inside the windowless barn was in semi-darkness, for but little light came through the openings stopped up with straw, especially as the day was beginning to wane. He was able to distinguish a heap of barrels, broken wine-presses, old ploughs, and scrap-iron of all kinds.

“This is certainly not where my fair stroller turned her steps,” thought Don Luis. “Let’s look somewhere else.”

Nevertheless, he did not move. He had noticed a noise in the barn.

He listened and heard nothing. But as he wanted to get to the bottom of things he forced out a couple of planks with his shoulder and stepped in.

The breach which he had thus contrived admitted a little light. He could see enough to make his way between two casks, over some broken window frames, to an empty space on the far side.

His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness as he went on. For all that, he knocked his head against something which he had not perceived, something hanging up above, something rather hard which, when set in motion, swung to and fro with a curious grating sound.

It was too dark to see. Don Luis took an electric lantern from his pocket and pressed the spring.

“Damn it all!” he swore, falling back aghast.

Above him hung a skeleton!

And the next moment he uttered another oath. A second skeleton hung beside the first!

They were both fastened by stout ropes to rings fixed in the rafters of the barn. Their heads dangled from the slip-knots. The one against which Perenna had struck was still moving slightly and the bones clicked together with a gruesome sound.

He dragged forward a rickety table, propped it up as best he could, and climbed onto it to examine the two skeletons more closely. They were turned toward each other, face to face. The first was considerably bigger than the second. They were obviously the skeletons of a man and a woman. Even when they were not moved by a jolt of any kind, the wind blowing through the crevices in the barn set them lightly swinging to and fro, in a sort of very slow, rhythmical dance.

But what perhaps was most impressive in this ghastly spectacle was the fact that each of the skeletons, though deprived of every rag of clothing, still wore a gold ring, too wide now that the flesh had disappeared, but held, as in hooks, by the bent joints of the fingers.

He slipped off the rings with a shiver of disgust, and found that they were wedding rings. Each bore a date inside, the same date, 12 August, 1887, and two names: “Alfred–Victorine.”

“Husband and wife,” he murmured. “Is it a double suicide? Or a murder? But how is it possible that the two skeletons have not yet been discovered? Can one conceive that they have been here since the death of old Langernault, since the government has taken possession of the estate and made it impossible for anybody to walk in?”

He paused to reflect.

“Anybody? I don’t know about that, considering that I saw footprints in the garden, and that a woman has been there this very day!”

The thought of the unknown visitor engrossed him once more, and he got down from the table. In spite of the noise which he had heard, it was hardly to be supposed that she had entered the barn. And, after a few minutes’ search, he was about to go out, when there came, from the left, a clash of things falling about and some hoops dropped to the ground not far from where he stood.

They came from above, from a loft likewise crammed with various objects and implements and reached by a ladder. Was he to believe that the visitor, surprised by his arrival, had taken refuge in that hiding-place and made a movement that caused the fall of the hoops?

Don Luis placed his electric lantern on a cask in such a way as to send the light right up to the loft. Seeing nothing suspicious, nothing but an arsenal of old pickaxes, rakes, and disused scythes, he attributed what had happened so some animal, to some stray cat; and, to make sure, he walked quickly to the ladder and went up.

Suddenly, at the very moment when he reached the level of the floor, there was a fresh noise, a fresh clatter of things falling: and a form rose from the heap of rubbish with a terrible gesture.

It was swift as lightning. Don Luis saw the great blade of a scythe cleaving the air at the height of his head. Had he hesitated for a second, for the tenth of a second, the awful weapon would have beheaded him. As it was, he just had time to flatten himself against the ladder. The scythe whistled past him, grazing his jacket. He slid down to the floor below.

But he had seen.

He had seen the dreadful face of Gaston Sauverand, and, behind the man of the ebony walking-stick, wan and livid in the rays of the electric light, the distorted features of Florence Levasseur!

CHAPTER NINE

LUPIN’S ANGER

He remained for one moment motionless and speechless. Above was a perfect clatter of things being pushed about, as though the besieged were building themselves a barricade. But to the right of the electric rays, diffused daylight entered through an opening that was suddenly exposed; and he saw, in front of this opening, first one form and then another stooping in order to escape over the roofs.

He levelled his revolver and fired, but badly, for he was thinking of Florence and his hand trembled. Three more shots rang out. The bullets rattled against the old scrap-iron in the loft. The fifth shot was followed by a cry of pain. Don Luis once more rushed up the ladder.

Slowly making his way through the tangle of farm implements and over some cases of dried rape seed forming a regular rampart, he at last, after bruising and barking his shins, succeeded in reaching the opening, and was greatly surprised, on passing through it, to find himself on level ground. It was the top of the sloping bank against which the barn stood.

He descended the slope at haphazard, to the left of the barn, and passed in front of the building, but saw nobody. He then went up again on the right; and although the flat part was very narrow, he searched it carefully for, in the growing darkness of the twilight, he had every reason to fear renewed attacks from the enemy.

He now became aware of something which he had not perceived before. The bank ran along the top of the wall, which at this spot was quite sixteen fee thigh. Gaston Sauverand and Florence had, beyond a doubt, escaped this way.

Perenna followed the wall, which was fairly wide, till he came to a lower part, and here he jumped into a ploughed field skirting a little wood toward which the fugitives must have run He started exploring it, but, realizing its denseness, he at once saw that it was waste of time to linger in pursuit.

He therefore returned to the village, while thinking over this, his latest exploit. Once again Florence and her accomplice had tried to get rid of him. Once again Florence figured prominently in this network of criminal plots.

At the moment when chance informed Don Luis that old Langernault had probably died by foul play, at the moment when chance, by leading him to Hanged Man’s Barn, as he christened it, brought him into the presence of two skeletons, Florence appeared as a murderous vision, as an evil genius who was seen wherever death had passed with its trail of blood and corpses.

“Oh, the loathsome creature!” he muttered, with a shudder. “How can she have so fair a face, and eyes of such haunting beauty, so grave, sincere, and almost guileless?”

In the church square, outside the inn, Mazeroux, who had returned, was filling the petrol tank of the motor and lighting the lamps. Don Luis saw the mayor of Damigni crossing the square. He took him aside.

“By the way, Monsieur le Maire, did you ever hear any talk in the district, perhaps two years ago, of the disappearance of a couple forty or fifty years of age? The husband’s name was Alfred–“

“And the wife’s Victorine, eh?” the mayor broke in. “I should think so! The affair created some stir. They lived at Alengon on a small, private income; they disappeared between one day and the next; and no one has since discovered what became of them, any more than a little hoard, some twenty thousand francs or so, which they had realized the day before by the sale of their house. I remember them well. Dedessuslamare their name was.”

“Thank you, Monsieur le Maire,” said Perenna, who had learned all that he wanted to know.

The car was ready. A minute after he was rushing toward Alencon with Mazeroux.

“Where are we going, Chief?” asked the sergeant.

“To the station. I have every reason to believe, first, that Sauverand was informed this morning–in what way remains to be seen–of the revelations made last night by Mme. Fauville relating to old Langernault; and, secondly, that he has been prowling around and inside old Langernault’s property to-day for reasons that also remain to be seen. And I presume that he came by train and that he will go back by train.”

Perenna’s supposition was confirmed without delay. He was told at the railway station that a gentleman and a lady had arrived from Paris at two o’clock, that they had hired a trap at the hotel next door, and that, having finished their business, they had gone back a few minutes ago, by the 7:40 express. The description of the lady and gentleman corresponded exactly with that of Florence and Sauverand.

“Off we go!” said Perenna, after consulting the timetable. “We are an hour behind. We may catch up with the scoundrel at Le Mans.”

“We’ll do that, Chief, and we’ll collar him, I swear: him and his lady, since there are two of them.”

“There are two of them, as you say. Only–“

“Only what?”

Don Luis waited to reply until they were seated and the engine started, when he said:

“Only, my boy, you will keep your hands off the lady.”

“Why should I?”

“Do you know who she is? Have you a warrant against her?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.”

“But–“

“One word more, Alexandre, and I’ll set you down beside the road. Then you can make as many arrests as you please.”

Mazeroux did not breathe another word. For that matter the speed at which they at once began to go hardly left him time to raise a protest. Not a little anxious, he thought only of watching the horizon and keeping a lookout for obstacles.

The trees vanished on either side almost unseen. Their foliage overhead made a rhythmical sound as of moaning waves. Night insects dashed themselves to death against the lamps.

“We shall get there right enough,” Mazeroux ventured to observe. “There’s no need to put on the pace.”

The speed increased and he said no more.

Villages, plains, hills; and then, suddenly in the midst of the darkness, the lights of a large town, Le Mans.

“Do you know the way to the station, Alexandre?”

“Yes, Chief, to the right and then straight on.”

Of course they ought to have gone to the left. They wasted seven or eight minutes in wandering through the streets and receiving contradictory instructions. When the motor pulled up at the station the train was whistling.

Don Luis jumped out, rushed through the waiting-room, found the doors shut, jostled the railway officials who tried to stop him, and reached the platform.

A train was about to start on the farther line. The last door was banged to. He ran along the carriages, holding on to the brass rails.

“Your ticket, sir! Where’s your ticket?” shouted an angry collector.

Don Luis continued to fly along the footboards, giving a swift glance through the panes, thrusting aside the persons whose presence at the windows prevented him from seeing, prepared at any moment to burst into the compartment containing the two accomplices.

He did not see them in the end carriages. The train started. And suddenly he gave a shout: they were there, the two of them, by themselves! He had seen them! They were there: Florence, lying on the seat, with her head on Sauverand’s shoulder, and he, leaning over her, with his arms around her!

Mad with rage he flung back the bottom latch and seized the handle of the carriage door. At the same moment he lost his balance and was pulled off by the furious ticket collector and by Mazeroux, who bellowed:

“Why, you’re mad, Chief! you’ll kill yourself!”

“Let go, you ass!” roared Don Luis. “It’s they! Let me be, can’t you!”

The carriages filed past. He tried to jump on to another footboard. But the two men were clinging to him, some railway porters came to their assistance, the station-master ran up. The train moved out of the station.

“Idiots!” he shouted. “Boobies! Pack of asses that you are, couldn’t you leave me alone? Oh, I swear to Heaven–!”

With a blow of his left fist he knocked the ticket collector down; with a blow of his right he sent Mazeroux spinning; and shaking off the porters and the station-master, he rushed along the platform to the luggage-room, where he took flying leaps over several batches of trunks, packing-cases, and portmanteaux.

“Oh, the perfect fool!” he mumbled, on seeing that Mazeroux had let the power down in the car. “Trust him, if there’s any blunder going!”

Don Luis had driven his car at a fine rate during the day; but that night the pace became vertiginous. A very meteor flashed through the suburbs of Le Mans and hurled itself along the highroad. Perenna had but one thought in his head: to reach the next station, which was Chartres, before the two accomplices, and to fly at Sauverand’s throat. He saw nothing but that: the savage grip of his two hands that would set Florence Levasseur’s lover gasping in his agony.

“Her lover! Her lover!” he muttered, gnashing his teeth. “Why, of course, that explains everything! They have combined against their accomplice, Marie Fauville; and it is she alone, poor devil, who will pay for the horrible series of crimes!”

“Is she their accomplice even?” he wondered. “Who knows? Who knows if that pair of demons are not capable, after killing Hippolyte and his son, of having plotted the ruin of Marie Fauville, the last obstacle that stood between them and the Mornington inheritance? Doesn’t everything point to that conclusion? Didn’t I find the list of dates in a book belonging to Florence? Don’t the facts prove that the letters were communicated by Florence?…

“Those letters accuse Gaston Sauverand as well. But how does that affect things? He no longer loves Marie, but Florence. And Florence loves him. She is his accomplice, his counsellor, the woman who will live by his side and benefit by his fortune…. True, she sometimes pretends to be defending Marie Fauville. Play-acting! Or perhaps remorse, fright at the thought of all that she has done against her rival, and of the fate that awaits the unhappy woman!

“But she is in love with Sauverand. And she continues to carry on the struggle without pity and without respite. And that is why she wanted to kill me, the interloper whose insight she dreaded. And she hates me and loathes me–“

To the hum of the engine and the sighing of the trees, which bent down at the approach, he murmured incoherent words. The recollection of the two lovers clasped in each other’s arms made him cry aloud with jealousy. He wanted to be revenged. For the first time in his life, the longing, the feverish craving to kill set his brain boiling.

“Hang it all!” he growled suddenly. “The engine’s misfiring! Mazeroux! Mazeroux!”

“What, Chief! Did you know that I was here?” exclaimed Mazeroux, emerging from the shadow in which he sat hidden.

“You jackass! Do you think that the first idiot who comes along can hang on to the footboard of my car without my knowing it? You must be feeling comfortable down there!”

“I’m suffering agonies, and I’m shivering with cold.”

“That’s right, it’ll teach you. Tell me, where did you buy your petrol?”

“At the grocer’s.”

“At a thief’s, you mean. It’s muck. The plugs are getting sooted up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Can’t you hear the misfiring, you fool?”

The motor, indeed, at moments seemed to hesitate. Then everything became normal again. Don Luis forced the pace. Going downhill they appeared to be hurling themselves into space. One of the lamps went out. The other was not as bright as usual. But nothing diminished Don Luis’s ardour.

There was more misfiring, fresh hesitations, followed by efforts, as though the engine was pluckily striving to do its duty. And then suddenly came the final failure, a dead stop at the side of the road, a stupid breakdown.

“Confound it!” roared Don Luis. “We’re stuck! Oh, this is the last straw!”

“Come, Chief, we’ll put it right. And we’ll pick up Sauverand at Paris instead of Chartres, that’s all.”

“You infernal ass! The repairs will take an hour! And then she’ll break down again. It’s not petrol, it’s filth they’ve foisted on you.”

The country stretched around them to endless distances, with no other lights than the stars that riddled the darkness of the sky.

Don Luis was stamping with fury. He would have liked to kick the motor to pieces. He would have liked–

It was Mazeroux who “caught it,” in the hapless sergeant’s own words. Don Luis took him by the shoulders, shook him, loaded him with insults and abuse and, finally, pushing him against the roadside bank and holding him there, said, in a broken voice of mingled hatred and sorrow.

“It’s she, do you hear, Mazeroux? it’s Sauverand’s companion who has done everything. I’m telling you now, because I’m afraid of relenting. Yes, I am a weak coward. She has such a grave face, with the eyes of a child. But it’s she, Mazeroux. She lives in my house. Remember her name: Florence Levasseur. You’ll arrest her, won’t you? I might not be able to. My courage fails me when I look at her. The fact is that I have never loved before.

“There have been other women–but no, those were fleeting fancies–not even that: I don’t even remember the past! Whereas Florence–! You must arrest her, Mazeroux. You must deliver me from her eyes. They burn into me like poison. If you don’t deliver me I shall kill her as I killed Dolores–or else they will kill me–or–Oh, I don’t know all the ideas that are driving me wild–!

“You see, there’s another man,” he explained. “There’s Sauverand, whom she loves. Oh, the infamous pair! They have killed Fauville and the boy and old Langernault and those two in the barn and others besides: Cosmo Mornington, Verot, and more still. They are monsters, she most of all–And if you saw her eyes-“

He spoke so low that Mazeroux could hardly hear him. He had let go his hold of Mazeroux and seemed utterly cast down with despair, a surprising symptom in a man of his amazing vigour and authority.

“Come, Chief,” said the sergeant, helping him up. “This is all stuff and nonsense. Trouble with women: I’ve had it like everybody else. Mme. Mazeroux–yes, I got married while you were away–Mme. Mazeroux turned out badly herself, gave me the devil of a time, Mme. Mazeroux did. I’ll tell you all about it, Chief, how Mme. Mazeroux rewarded my kindness.”

He led Don Luis gently to the car and settled him on the front seat.

“Take a rest, Chief. It’s not very cold and there are plenty of furs. The first peasant that comes along at daybreak, I’ll send him to the next town for what we want–and for food, too, for I’m starving. And everything will come right; it always does with women. All you have to do is to kick them out of your life–except when they anticipate you and kick themselves out…. I was going to tell you: Mme. Mazeroux–“

Don Luis was never to learn what had happened with Mme. Mazeroux. The most violent catastrophies had no effect upon the peacefulness of his slumbers. He was asleep almost at once.

It was late in the morning when he woke up. Mazeroux had had to wait till seven o’clock before he could hail a cyclist on his way to Chartres.

They made a start at nine o’clock. Don Luis had recovered all his coolness. He turned to his sergeant.

“I said a lot last night that I did not mean to say. However, I don’t regret it. Yes, it is my duty to do everything to save Mme. Fauville and to catch the real culprit. Only the task falls upon myself; and I swear that I shan’t fail in it. This evening Florence Levasseur shall sleep in the lockup!”

“I’ll help you, Chief,” replied Mazeroux, in a queer tone of voice.

“I need nobody’s help. If you touch a single hair of her head, I’ll do for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Then hold your tongue.”

His anger was slowly returning and expressed itself in an increase of speed, which seemed to Mazeroux a revenge executed upon himself. They raced over the cobble-stones of Chartres. Rambouillet, Chevreuse, and Versailles received the terrifying vision of a thunderbolt tearing across them from end to end.

Saint-Cloud. The Bois de Boulogne …

On the Place de la Concorde, as the motor was turning toward the Tuileries, Mazeroux objected:

“Aren’t you going home, Chief?”

“No. There’s something more urgent first: we must relieve Marie Fauville of her suicidal obsession by letting her know that we have discovered the criminals.”

“And then?”

“Then I want to see the Prefect of Police.”

“M. Desmalions is away and won’t be back till this afternoon.”

“In that case the examining magistrate.”

“He doesn’t get to the law courts till twelve; and it’s only eleven now.”

“We’ll see.”

Mazeroux was right: there was no one at the law courts.

Don Luis lunched somewhere close by; and Mazeroux, after calling at the detective office, came to fetch him and took him to the magistrate’s corridor. Don Luis’s excitement, his extraordinary restlessness, did not fail to strike Mazeroux, who asked:

“Are you still of the same mind, Chief?”

“More than ever. I looked through the newspapers at lunch. Marie Fauville, who was sent to the infirmary after her second attempt, has again tried to kill herself by banging her head against the wall of the room. They have put a straitjacket on her. But she is refusing all food. It is my duty to save her.”

“How?”

“By handing over the real criminal. I shall inform the magistrate in charge of the case; and this evening I shall bring you Florence Levasseur dead or alive.”

“And Sauverand?”

“Sauverand? That won’t take long. Unless–“

“Unless what?”

“Unless I settle his business myself, the miscreant!”

“Chief!”

“Oh, dry up!”

There were some reporters near them waiting for particulars. He recognized them and went up to them.

“You can say, gentlemen, that from to-day I am taking up the defence of Marie Fauville and devoting myself entirely to her cause.”

They all protested: was it not he who had had Mme. Fauville arrested? Was it not he who had collected a heap of convicting proofs against her?

“I shall demolish those proofs one by one,” he said. “Marie Fauville is the victim of wretches who have hatched the most diabolical plot against her, and whom I am about to deliver up to justice.”

“But the teeth! The marks of the teeth!”

“A coincidence! An unparalleled coincidence, but one which now strikes me as a most powerful proof of innocence. I tell you that, if Marie Fauville had been clever enough to commit all those murders, she would also have been clever enough not to leave behind her a fruit bearing the marks of her two rows of teeth.”

“But still–“

“She is innocent! And that is what I am going to tell the examining magistrate. She must be informed of the efforts that are being made in her favour. She must be given hope at once. If not, the poor thing will kill herself and her death will be on the conscience of all who accused an innocent woman. She must–“

At that moment he interrupted himself. His eyes were fixed on one of the journalists who was standing a little way off listening to him and taking notes.

He whispered to Mazeroux:

“Could you manage to find out that beggar’s name? I can’t remember where on earth I’ve seen him before.”

But an usher now opened the door of the examining magistrate, who, on receiving Don Perenna’s card, had asked to see him at once. He stepped forward and was about to enter the room with Mazeroux, when he suddenly turned to his companion with a cry of rage:

“It’s he! It was Sauverand in disguise. Stop him! He’s made off. Run, can’t you?”

He himself darted away followed by Mazeroux and a number of warders and journalists, He soon outdistanced them, so that, three minutes later, he heard no one more behind him. He had rushed down the staircase of the “Mousetrap,” and through the subway leading from one courtyard to the other. Here two people told him that they had met a man walking at a smart pace.

The track was a false one. He became aware of this, hunted about, lost a good deal of time, and managed to discover that Sauverand had left by the Boulevard du Palais and joined a very pretty, fair-haired woman–Florence Levasseur, obviously–on the Quai de l’Horloge. They had both got into the motor bus that runs from the Place Saint-Michel to the Gare Saint-Lazare.

Don Luis went back to a lonely little street where he had left his car in the charge of a boy. He set the engine going and drove at full speed to the Gare Saint-Lazare, From the omnibus shelter he went off on a fresh track which also proved to be wrong, lost quite another hour, returned to the terminus, and ended by learning for certain that Florence had stepped by herself into a motor bus which would take her toward the Place du Palais-Bourbon. Contrary to all his expectations, therefore, the girl must have gone home.

The thought of seeing her again roused his anger to its highest pitch. All the way down the Rue Royale and across the Place de la Concorde he kept blurting out words of revenge and threats which he was itching to carry out. He would abuse Florence. He would sting her with his insults. He felt a bitter and painful need to hurt the odious creature.

But on reaching the Place du Palais-Bourbon he pulled up short. His practised eye had counted at a glance, on the right and left, a half-dozen men whose professional look there was no mistaking. And Mazeroux, who had caught sight of him, had spun round on his heel and was hiding under a gateway.

He called him:

“Mazeroux!”

The sergeant appeared greatly surprised to hear his name and came up to the car.

“Hullo, the Chief!”

His face expressed such embarrassment that Don Luis felt his fears taking definite shape.

“Look here, is it for me that you and your men are hanging about outside my house?”

“There’s a notion, Chief,” replied Mazeroux, looking very uncomfortable. “You know that you’re in favour all right!”

Don Luis gave a start. He understood. Mazeroux had betrayed his confidence. To obey his scruples of conscience as well as to rescue the chief from the dangers of a fatal passion, Mazeroux had denounced Florence Levasseur.

Perenna clenched his fists in an effort of his whole being to stifle his boiling rage. It was a terrible blow. He received a sudden intuition of all the blunders which his mad jealousy had made him commit since the day before, and a presentiment of the irreparable disasters that might result from them. The conduct of events was slipping from him.

“Have you the warrant?” he asked.

Mazeroux spluttered:

“It was quite by accident. I met the Prefect, who was back. We spoke of the young lady’s business. And, as it happened, they had discovered that the photograph–you know, the photograph of Florence Levasseur which the Prefect lent you–well, they have discovered that you faked it. And then when I mentioned the name of Florence, the Prefect remembered that that was the name.”

“Have you the warrant?” Don Luis repeated, in a harsher tone.

“Well, you see, I couldn’t help it…. M. Desmalions, the magistrate–“

If the Place du Palais Bourbon had been deserted at that moment, Don Luis would certainly have relieved himself by a swinging blow administered to Mazeroux’s chin according to the most scientific rules of the noble art. And Mazeroux foresaw this contingency, for he prudently kept as far away as possible and, to appease the chief’s anger, intended a whole litany of excuses:

“It was for your good, Chief…. I had to do it … Only think! You yourself told me: ‘Rid me of the creature!’ said you. I’m too weak. You’ll arrest her, won’t you? Her eyes burn into me–like poison! Well, Chief, could I help it? No, I couldn’t, could I? Especially as the deputy chief–“

“Ah! So Weber knows?”

“Why, yes! The Prefect is a little suspicious of you since he understood about the faking of the portrait. So M. Weber is coming back in an hour, perhaps, with reinforcements. Well, I was saying, the deputy chief had learnt that the woman who used to go to Gaston Sauverand’s at Neuilly–you know, the house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace–was fair and very good looking, and that her name was Florence. She even used to stay the night sometimes.”

“You lie! You lie!” hissed Perenna.

All his spite was reviving. He had been pursuing Florence with intentions which it would have been difficult for him to put into words. And now suddenly he again wanted to destroy her; and this time consciously. In reality he no longer knew what he was doing. He was acting at haphazard, tossed about in turns by the most diverse passions, a prey to that inordinate love which impels us as readily to kill the object of our affections as to die in an attempt to save her.

A newsboy passed with a special edition of the _Paris-Midi_, showing in great black letters:

“SENSATIONAL DECLARATION BY DON LUIS PERENNA

“MME. FAUVILLE IS INNOCENT.

“IMMINENT ARREST OF THE TWO CRIMINALS”

“Yes, yes,” he said aloud. “The drama is drawing to an end. Florence is about to pay her debt to society. So much the worse for her.”

He started his car again and drove through the gate. In the courtyard he said to his chauffeur, who came up:

“Turn her around and don’t put her up. I may be starting again at any moment.”

He sprang out and asked the butler:

“Is Mlle. Levasseur in?”

“Yes, sir, she’s in her room.”

“She was away yesterday, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, sir, she received a telegram asking her to go to the country to see a relation who was ill. She came back last night.”

“I want to speak to her. Send her to me. At once.”

“In the study, sir?”

“No, upstairs, in the boudoir next to my bedroom.”

This was a small room on the second floor which had once been a lady’s boudoir, and he preferred it to his study since the attempt at murder of which he had been the object. He was quieter up there, farther away; and he kept his important papers there. He always carried the key with him: a special key with three grooves to it and an inner spring.

Mazeroux had followed him into the courtyard and was keeping close behind him, apparently unobserved by Perenna, who having so far appeared not to notice it. He now, however, took the sergeant by the arm and led him to the front steps.

“All is going well. I was afraid that Florence, suspecting something, might not have come back. But she probably doesn’t know that I saw her yesterday. She can’t escape us now.”

They went across the hall and up the stairs to the first floor. Mazeroux rubbed his hands.

“So you’ve come to your senses, Chief?”

“At any rate I’ve made up my mind. I will not, do you hear, I will not have Mme. Fauville kill herself; and, as there is no other way of preventing that catastrophe, I shall sacrifice Florence.”

“Without regret?”

“Without remorse.”

“Then you forgive me?”

“I thank you.”

And he struck him a clean, powerful blow under the chin. Mazeroux fell without a moan, in a dead faint on the steps of the second flight.

Halfway up the stairs was a dark recess that served as a lumber room where the servants kept their pails and brooms and the soiled household linen. Don Luis carried Mazeroux to it, and, seating him comfortably on the floor, with his back to a housemaid’s box, he stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth, gagged him with a towel, and bound his wrists and ankles with two tablecloths. The other ends of these he fastened to a couple of strong nails. As Mazeroux was slowly coming to himself, Don Luis said:

“I think you have all you want. Tablecloths–napkins–something in your mouth in case you’re hungry. Eat at your ease. And then take a little nap, and you’ll wake up as fresh as paint.”

He locked him in and glanced at his watch.

“I have an hour before me. Capital!”

At that moment his intention was to insult Florence, to throw up all her scandalous crimes in her face, and, in this way, to force a written and signed confession from her. Afterward, when Marie Fauville’s safety was insured, he would see. Perhaps he would put Florence in his motor and carry her off to some refuge from which, with the girl for a hostage, he would be able to influence the police. Perhaps–But he did not seek to anticipate events. What he wanted was an immediate, violent explanation.

He ran up to his bedroom on the second floor and dipped his face into cold water. Never had he experienced such a stimulation of his whole being, such an unbridling of his blind instincts.

“It’s she!” he spluttered. “I hear her! She is at the bottom of the stairs. At last! Oh, the joy of having her in front of me! Face to face! She and I alone!”

He returned to the landing outside the boudoir. He took the key from his pocket. The door opened.

He uttered a great shout: Gaston Sauverand was there! In that locked room Gaston Sauverand was waiting for him, standing with folded arms.

CHAPTER TEN

GASTON SAUVERAND EXPLAINS

Gaston Sauverand!

Instinctively, Don Luis took a step back, drew his revolver, and aimed it at the criminal:

“Hands up!” he commanded. “Hands up, or I fire!”

Sauverand did not appear to be put out. He nodded toward two revolvers which he had laid on a table beyond his reach and said:

“There are my arms. I have come here not to fight, but to talk.”

“How did you get in?” roared Don Luis, exasperated by this display of calmness. “A false key, I suppose? But how did you get hold of the key? How did you manage it?”

The other did not reply. Don Luis stamped his foot:

“Speak, will you? Speak! If not–“

But Florence ran into the room. She passed him by without his trying to stop her, flung herself upon Gaston Sauverand, and, taking no heed of Perenna’s presence, said:

“Why did you come? You promised me that you wouldn’t. You swore it to me. Go!”

Sauverand released himself and forced her into a chair.

“Let me be, Florence. I promised only so as to reassure you. Let me be.”

“No, I will not!” exclaimed the girl eagerly. “It’s madness! I won’t have you say a single word. Oh, please, please stop!”

He bent over her and smoothed her forehead, separating her mass of golden hair.

“Let me do things my own way, Florence,” he said softly.

She was silent, as though disarmed by the gentleness of his voice; and he whispered more words which Don Luis could not hear and which seemed to convince her.

Perenna had not moved. He stood opposite them with his arm outstretched and his finger on the trigger, aiming at the enemy. When Sauverand addressed Florence by her Christian name, he started from head to foot and his finger trembled. What miracle kept him from shooting? By what supreme effort of will did he stifle the jealous hatred that burnt him like fire? And here was Sauverand daring to stroke Florence’s hair!

He lowered his arm. He would kill them later, do with them what he pleased, since they were in his power, and since nothing henceforth could snatch them from his vengeance.

He took Sauverand’s two revolvers and laid them in a drawer. Then he went back to the door, intending to lock it. But hearing a sound on the first-floor landing, he leant over the balusters. The butler was coming upstairs with a tray in his hand.

“What is it now?”

“An urgent letter, sir, for Sergeant Mazeroux.”

“Sergeant Mazeroux is with me. Give me the letter and don’t let me be disturbed again.”

He tore open the envelope. The letter, hurriedly written in pencil and signed by one of the inspectors on duty outside the house, contained these words:

“Look out, Sergeant. Gaston Sauverand is in the house. Two people living opposite say that the girl who is known hereabouts as the lady housekeeper came in at half-past one, before we took up our posts. She was next seen at the window of her lodge.

“A few moments after, a small, low door, used for the cellars and situated under the lodge, was opened, evidently by her. Almost at the same time a man entered the square, came along the wall, and slipped in through the cellar door. According to the description it was Gaston Sauverand. So look out, Sergeant. At the least alarm, at the first signal from you, we shall come in.”

Don Luis reflected. He now understood how the scoundrel had access to his house, and how, hidden in the safest of retreats, he was able to escape every attempt to find him. He was living under the roof of the very man who had declared himself his most formidable adversary.

“Come on,” he said to himself. “The fellow’s score is settled–and so is his young lady’s. They can choose between the bullets in my revolver and the handcuffs of the police.”

He had ceased to think of his motor standing ready below. He no longer dreamt of flight with Florence. If he did not kill the two of them, the law would lay its hand upon them, the hand that does not let go. And