Chapter 4

"As to 'often,'" the garrulous fellow replied, "that depends on what you mean by the word. In winter time it's not bad business to go back to clink, because of the rotten weather; in the summer one would rather go easy, and then, too, in the summer there isn't so much crime; you can find all you want on the road; country people aren't so particular in the summer, while in the winter it's quite another thing; so they have done me down to-night for mother Chiquard's rabbit, I expect."

The gendarme, who had been listening with no great attention, chimed in.

"So it was you who stole the rabbit, was it, Bouzille?"

"What's the good of your asking me that, M'sieu Morand?" protested Bouzille. "I suppose you would have left me alone if you hadn't been sure of it?"

Bouzille's companion bent his head and whispered very low:

"There has been something worse than that: the job with the lady of this house."

"Oh, that!" said Bouzille with a gesture of complete indifference. But he did not proceed. The sergeant came back to the kitchen and said sternly:

"François Paul, forward: the examining magistrate will hear you now."

The man summoned stepped towards the sergeant, and quietly submitted to being taken by the arm, for his hands were fastened. Bouzille winked knowingly at the gendarme, now his sole remaining confidant, and remarked with satisfaction:

"Good luck! We are getting on to-day! Not too much 'remanded' about it," and as the gendarme, severely keeping his proper distance, made no reply, the incorrigible chatterbox went on merrily: "As a matter of fact it suits me just as well to be committed for trial, since the government give you your board and lodging, and especially since there's a really beautiful prison at Brives now." He leaned familiarly against the gendarme's shoulder. "Ah, M'sieu Morand, you didn't know it--you weren't old enough--why, it was before you joined the force--but the lock-up used to be in an old building just behind the Law Courts: dirty! I should think it was dirty! And damp! Why once, when I did three months there, from January to April, I came out so ill with the rheumatics that I had to go back into the infirmary for another fortnight! Gad!" he went on after a moment's pause during which he snuffed the air around him, "something smells jolly good here!" He unceremoniously addressed the cook who was busy at her work: "Mightn't there perhaps be a bit of a blow out for me, Mme. Louise?" and as she turned round with a somewhat scandalised expression he continued: "you needn't be frightened, lady, you know me very well. Many a time I've come and asked you for any old thing, and you've always given me something. M'sieu Dollon, too: whenever he has an old pair of shoes that are worn out, well, those are mine; and a crust of bread is what nobody ever refuses."

The cook hesitated, touched by the recollections evoked by the poor tramp; she looked at the gendarme for a sign of encouragement. Morand shrugged his shoulders and turned a patronising gaze on Bouzille.

"Give him something, if you like, Mme. Louise. After all, he is well known. And for my own part I don't believe he could have done it."

The tramp interrupted him.

"Ah, M'sieu Morand, if it's a matter of picking up trifles here and there, a wandering rabbit, perhaps, or a fowl that's tired of being lonely, I don't say no; but as for anything else--thank'ee kindly, lady."

Louise had handed Bouzille a huge chunk of bread which he immediately interned in the depths of his enormous bag.

"What do you suppose that other chap can have to tell Mr. Paul Pry? He did not look like a regular! Now when I get before the gentlemen in black, I don't want to contradict them, and so I always say, 'Yes, my lord,' and they are perfectly satisfied; sometimes they laugh and the president of the court says, 'Stand up, Bouzille,' and then he gives me a fortnight, or twenty-one days, or a month, as the case may be."

* * * * *

The sergeant came back, alone, and addressed the gendarme.

"The other man has been discharged," he said. "As for Bouzille, M. de Presles does not think there is any need to interrogate him."

"Am I to be punted out then?" enquired the tramp with some dismay, as he looked uneasily towards the window, against the glass of which rain was lashing.

The sergeant could not restrain a smile.

"Well, no, Bouzille," he said kindly, "we must take you to the lock-up; there's the little matter of the rabbit to be cleared up, you know. Come now, quick march! Take him to Saint-Jaury, Morand!"

The sergeant went back to the library to hold himself at the magistrate's disposal; through the torrential downpour of rain Bouzille and the gendarme wended their way to the village; and left alone in her kitchen, Louise put out her lamp, for despite the shocking weather it was getting lighter now, and communed with herself.

"I've a kind of idea that they would have done better to keep that other man. He was a villainous-looking fellow!"

The sad, depressing day had passed without any notable incident.

Charles Rambert and his father had spent the afternoon with Thérèse and the Baronne de Vibray continuously addressing large black-edged envelopes to the relations and friends of the Marquise de Langrune, whose funeral had been fixed for the next day but one.

A hasty dinner had been served at which the Baronne de Vibray was present. Her grief was distressing to witness. Somewhat futile to outward seeming, this woman had a very kind and tender heart; as a matter of course she had constituted herself the protector and comforter of Thérèse, and she had spent the whole of the previous day with the child at Brives, ransacking the local shops to procure her mourning.

Thérèse was terribly shocked by the dreadful death of her grandmother whom she adored, but she displayed unexpected strength of character and controlled her grief so that she might be able to look after the guests whom she was now entertaining for the first time as mistress of the house. The Baronne de Vibray had failed in her attempt to persuade Thérèse to come with her to Querelles to sleep. Thérèse was determined in her refusal to leave the château and what she termed her "post of duty."

"Marie will stay with me," she assured the kind Baronne, "and I promise you I shall have sufficient courage to go to sleep to-night."

So her friend got into her car alone at nine o'clock and went back to her own house, and Thérèse went up at once to bed with Marie, the faithful servant who, like Louise the cook, had been with her ever since she was born.

* * * * *

After having read all the newspapers, with their minute and often inaccurate account of the tragedy at Beaulieu--for everyone in the château had been besieged the previous day by reporters and representatives of various press agencies--M. Etienne Rambert said to his son simply, but with a marked gravity:

"Let us go upstairs, my son: it is time."

At the door of his room Charles deferentially offered his cheek to his father, but M. Etienne Rambert seemed to hesitate; then, as if taking a sudden resolution, he entered his son's room instead of going on to his own. Charles kept silence and refrained from asking any questions, for he had noticed how lost in sad thought his father had seemed to be since the day before.

Charles Rambert was very tired. He began to undress at once. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and was turning towards a looking-glass to undo his tie, when his father came up to him; with an abrupt movement M. Etienne Rambert put both his hands on his son's shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. Then in a stifled but peremptory tone he said:

"Now confess, unhappy boy! Confess to your father!"

Charles went ghastly white.

"What?" he muttered.

Etienne Rambert kept his eyes fixed upon him.

"It was you who committed the murder!"

The ringing denial that the young man tried to utter was strangled in his throat; he threw out his arms and groped with his hands as if to find something to support him in his faintness; then he pulled himself together.

"Committed the murder? I? You accuse me of having killed the Marquise? It is infamous, hateful, awful!"

"Alas, yes!"

"No, no! Good God, no!"

"Yes!" Etienne Rambert insisted.

The two men faced each other, panting. Charles controlled the emotion which was sweeping over him once more, and looking steadily at his father, said in tones of bitter reproach:

"And it is actually my own father who says that--who suspects me!"

Tears filled the young fellow's eyes and sobs choked him; he grew whiter still, and seemed so near collapse that his father had to support him to a chair, where he remained for several minutes utterly prostrated.

M. Rambert paced up and down the room a few times, then took another chair and sat down in front of his son. Passing a hand across his brow as if to sweep away the horrible nightmare that was haunting him, he spoke again.

"Come now, my boy, my poor boy, let us talk it over quietly. I do not know how it was, but yesterday morning when I saw you at the station I had a presentiment of something: you were haggard, and tired, and your eyes were drawn----"

"I told you before," Charles answered tonelessly "that I had had a bad night: I was over-excited and did not sleep: I was awake the whole night."

"By Jove, yes!" his father rapped out: "I can believe that! But if you were not asleep, how do you account for your not hearing anything?"

"Thérèse did not hear anything either," said Charles after a moment's reflection.

"Thérèse's room was a long way off," M. Rambert replied, "while there was only a thin wall between yours and that of the Marquise. You must have heard: you did hear! More than that----, oh, my boy, my unhappy boy!"

Charles was twisting and untwisting his hands, and great drops of cold perspiration beaded his brow.

"You are the only single person who thinks I committed such an awful crime!" he said, half questioningly.

"The only one?" Etienne Rambert muttered. "Perhaps! As yet! But you ought to know that you made a very bad impression indeed upon the friends of the Marquise during the evening before the crime, when President Bonnet was reading the particulars of a murder that had been committed in Paris by--somebody: I forget whom."

"Good heavens!" Charles exclaimed in indignation, "I did not say anything wrong. Do you mean to say that just because I am interested in stories of great criminals like Rocambole and Fantômas----"

"You created a deplorable impression," his father repeated.

"So they suspect me too, do they?" Charles enquired. "But you can't make accusations like that," he said, warming up: "you've got to have facts, and proofs." He looked at his father for the sympathy and encouragement of affection. "Listen, papa, I know you will believe me when I swear that I am innocent; but do you think other people----"

M. Etienne Rambert sat with his head between his hands, wrapped in thought; there was a short silence before the unhappy father replied:

"Unfortunately there is evidence against you," he said at last; "and damning evidence, too!" he added with a glance at his son that seemed to pulverise him. "Terrible evidence! Consider, Charles: the magistrates have decided, as a result of their investigations, that no one got into the château on the fatal night; you were the only man who slept there; and none but a man could possibly have committed such a horrible crime, such a monstrous piece of butchery!"

"Someone might have got in from outside," the unhappy lad urged, as if trying to escape from the network in which he was being entangled.

"No one did," Etienne Rambert insisted; "besides, how could you prove it?"

Charles was silent. He stood in the middle of the room, with trembling legs and haggard eyes, seemingly stupefied and incapable of coherent thought, vacantly watching his father. With bent head and shoulders bowed as though beneath a too-heavy load, Etienne Rambert moved towards the dressing-room attached to the bedroom.

"Come here," he said in an almost inaudible voice; "follow me."

He went into the dressing-room, and picking up the towels that were heaped anyhow on the lower rail of the washstand, he selected a very crumpled one and held it out in front of his son.

"Look at that!" he said in a low, curt tone.

And on the towel, thus held in the light, Charles Rambert saw red stains of blood. The lad started, and was about to burst into some protestation, but Etienne Rambert imperiously checked him.

"Do you still deny it? Unhappy, wretched boy, there is the convincing, irrefutable evidence of your guilt! These stains of blood proclaim it. Something always is overlooked! How are you to explain the presence of this blood-stained linen in your room? Can you still deny that it is proof positive of your guilt?"

"But I do deny it, I do deny it! I don't understand! I know nothing about it!" and once more Charles Rambert collapsed into the arm-chair; the unhappy lad was nothing but a human wreck, with no strength to argue or even utter a word.

His father's eyes rested on him, filled with infinite affection and profoundest pity.

"My poor, poor boy!" the unhappy Etienne Rambert murmured, and added, as if speaking only to himself: "I wonder if you are not entirely responsible--if there are circumstances to plead for you!"

"Do you still accuse me, papa? Do you really believe I am the murderer?"

Etienne Rambert shook his head hopelessly.

"Oh, I wish, I wish," he exclaimed, "that for the honour of our name, and for the sake of those who love us, I could prove you had congenital, hereditary tendencies that made you not responsible! Why could not I have watched over your upbringing? Why has fate decreed that I should only see my son three times at most in eighteen years, and come home to find him--a criminal? Oh, if science could but establish the fact that the child of a tainted mother----"

"Tainted?" Charles exclaimed; "what do you mean?"

"Tainted with a terrible and mysterious disease," Etienne Rambert went on: "a disease before which we are powerless and unarmed--insanity!"

"What?" cried Charles, growing momentarily more distressed and bewildered; "what is that, papa? Are my wits going? My mother insane?" And then he added hopelessly: "My God! You must be right! Often and often I have been amazed by her strange, puzzling looks and behaviour! But I--I have all my proper senses: I know what I am doing!"

"Was it, perhaps, some appalling hallucination," Etienne Rambert suggested: "some moment of irresponsibility?"

But Charles saw what he meant and cut him short.

"No, no, papa! I am not mad! I am not mad! I am not mad!"

In his intense excitement the young fellow never thought of moderating the tone of his voice, but shouted out what was in his mind, shouted it into the silence of the night, heedless of all but this terrible discussion he was having with the father whom he loved. Nor did Etienne Rambert lower his voice: his son's impassioned protest wrung the retort from him:

"Then, Charles, if you are right, your crime is beyond forgiveness! Murderer! Murderer!"

The two men stopped short as a slight sound in the passage caught their attention. A silence fell upon them that they could not break, and they stood dumbfounded, nervous and overwrought.

The door of the room opened very slowly, and a white form appeared against the darkness of the corridor outside.

Robed in a long night-dress, Thérèse stood there, with hair dishevelled, bloodless lips, and eyes dilated with horror; the child was shaking from head to foot; as if every movement hurt her, she painfully raised her arm and pointed to Charles.

"Thérèse!" Etienne Rambert muttered: "Thérèse, you were outside?"

The child's lips moved: she seemed to be making a more than human effort, and a whisper escaped her lips:

"Yes----"

But she could say no more: her eyes rolled, her whole frame tottered, and then, without sign or cry, she fell rigid and unconscious to the floor.

V. "ARREST ME!"

Twelve or thirteen miles from Souillac the main line from Brives to Cahors, which flanks the slope, describes a rather sharp curve. The journey is a particularly picturesque one, and travellers who make it during the daytime have much that is interesting and agreeable to see; but while they are admiring the country, which marks the transition from the severe region of the Limousin to the more laughing landscapes on the confines of the Midi, the train suddenly plunges into a tunnel which runs for half a mile and more through the heart of the mountain slope. Leaving the tunnel, the line continues along the slope, then gradually descends towards Souillac. Two or three miles from that little station, which is a junction, the line runs alongside the highroad to Salignac, skirts for a brief distance the Corrèze, one of the largest tributaries on the right bank of the Dordogne, and then plunges into the heart of Lot.

Torrential winter rains had seriously affected the railway embankment, particularly near the mouth of the tunnel; a succession of heavy storms in the early part of December had so greatly weakened the ballast that the chief engineers of the Company had been hastily summoned to the scene of the mischief. The experts decided that very important repairs were required close to the Souillac end of the tunnel. It was necessary to put in a complete system of drainage, with underground pipes through which the water that came down from the mountain could escape between the ballast and the side of the rock and so pass underneath the permanent way. The sleepers, too, had been loosened by the bad weather, and some of them had perished so much that the chairs were no longer fast, a matter which was all the more serious because the line described a very sharp curve at that precise spot.

Gangs of first-class navvies had been hurriedly requisitioned, but in spite of the fact that an exceptional rate of wages was paid, a local strike had broken out and for some days all work was stopped. Gradually, however, moderate counsels prevailed and for over a week now, nearly all the men had taken up their tools again. Nevertheless, for a month past, these various circumstances had resulted in all the trains running between Brives and Cahors, being regularly half an hour late. Further, in view of the dangerous state of the line, all engine drivers coming from Brives had received orders to stop their trains two hundred yards from the end of the tunnel, and all drivers coming from Cahors to stop their trains five hundred yards before the entrance to the tunnel, so that should a train appear while any work was going on which rendered it dangerous to pass, it could wait until the work was completed. The order was also issued with the primary object of preventing the workers on the line from being taken by surprise.

* * * * *

Day was just breaking this grey December morning, when the gang of navvies set to work under a foreman, fixing on the down line the new sleepers which had been brought up the day before. Suddenly a shrill whistle was heard, and in the gaping black mouth of the tunnel the light of two lamps became visible; a train bound for Cahors had stopped in accordance with orders, and was calling for permission to pass.

The foreman ranged his men on either side of the down line and walked to a small cabin erected at the mouth of the tunnel, where he pulled the hand-signal so as to show the green light, thereby authorising the train to proceed on its way.

There was a second short, sharp whistle; heavy puffs escaped from the engine, and belching forth a dense volume of black smoke it slowly emerged from the tunnel, followed by a long train of carriages, the windows of which were frosted all over by the cold temperature outside.

A man approached the cabin allotted to the plate-layer in charge of that section of the line in which the tunnel was included.

"I suppose this is the train due at Verrières at 6.55?" he said carelessly.

"Yes," the plate-layer answered, "but it's late, for the clock down there in the valley struck seven several minutes ago."

The train had gone by: the three red lamps fastened at the end of it were already lost in the morning mist.

The man who spoke to the plate-layer was no other than François Paul, the tramp who had been discharged by the magistrate installed at the château of Beaulieu, at precisely the same time the day before, after a brief examination. In spite of the deep wrinkle furrowed in his brow the man seemed to make an effort to appear friendly and to want to carry on the conversation.

"There aren't many people in this morning train," he remarked, "specially in the first-class carriages."

The plate-layer appeared in no wise unwilling to postpone for a few moments his tiring and chilly underground patrol; he put down his pick before answering.

"Well, that's not surprising, is it? People who are rich enough to travel first-class always come by the express which gets to Brives at 2.50 A.M."

"I see," said François Paul; "that's reasonable: and more practical for travellers to Brives or Cahors. But what about the people who want to get out at Gourdon, or Souillac, or Verrières, or any of the small stations where the express doesn't stop?"

"I don't know," said the plate-layer; "but I suppose they have to get out at Brives or Cahors and drive, or else travel by the day trains, which are fast to Brives and slow afterwards."

François Paul did not press the matter. He lit a pipe and breathed upon his benumbed fingers.

"Hard times, these, and no mistake!"

The plate-layer seemed sorry for him.

"I don't suppose you're an independent gentleman, but why don't you try to get taken on here?" he suggested. "They want hands here."

"Oh, do they?"

"That's the fact; this is the foreman coming along now: would you like me to speak to him for you?"

"No hurry," replied François Paul. "'Course, I'm not saying no, but I should like to see what sort of work it is they're doing here: it might not suit me; I shall still have time to get a couple of words with him," and with his eyes on the ground the tramp slowly walked along the embankment away from the plate-layer.

The foreman met and passed him, and came up to the plate-layer at the mouth of the tunnel.

"Well, Michu, how goes it with you? Still got the old complaint?"

"Middling, boss," the worthy fellow answered: "just keeping up, you know. And how's yourself? And the work? When shall you finish? I don't know if you know it, but these trains stopping regularly in my section give me an extra lot of work."

"How's that?" the foreman enquired in surprise.

"The engine drivers take advantage of the stop to empty their ash-pans, and they leave a great heap of mess there in my tunnel, which I'm obliged to clear away. In the ordinary way they dump it somewhere else: where, I don't know, but not in my tunnel, and that's all I care about."

The foreman laughed.

"You're a good 'un, Michu! If I were you I would ask the Company to give me another man or two."

"And do you suppose the Company would?" Michu retorted. "By the way, that poor devil who is going along there, shivering with cold and hunger, was grumbling to me just now, and I advised him to ask you to take him on. What do you think he said? Why, that he would have a look at the work first, and off he went."

"It's a fact, Michu, that it's mighty difficult to come across people who mean business nowadays. It's quite true that I want more hands. But if that chap doesn't ask me to engage him in another minute, I'll kick him out. The embankment is not public property, and I don't trust these rascals who are for ever coming and going among the workmen to see what mischief they can make. I'll go and cast an eye over the bolts and things, for there are all sorts of vagrants about the neighbourhood just now."