CHAPTER XXII

MADAME X SPEAKS

The speech was over. For a moment there was an awed hush. Then Raymond dropped heavily into his chair--exhausted and limp. His body lay half-way across the table, his face buried in his arms. He did not know until it was all over what the effort had cost in nervous force. A listless indifference and the feeling that he had failed came as a reaction to the exaltation of a moment before.

A quivering sigh swept through the room, followed by sounds of snuffling and the violent blowing of noses! And the spell was broken. The President drew a long breath and was turning to address the jury when there was an unexpected interruption. Victor Chouquet, who probably alone of those in the courtroom had been unmoved--for the reason that he couldn't understand--had had time to look around him with boorish curiosity. He had seen two men who, while they were dry-eyed, were listening with the appreciation of experts.

"Excuse me, M. the President!" he cried, in his high drawl. The President started.

"Who is speaking?"

"I, M. the President!" And Victor rose. The judge glanced at him impatiently.

"Have you anything else to say?"

"Yes, M. the President."

"Well? You may speak."

Victor did not lose any time. It had taken his dull mind some fifteen or twenty minutes to connect cause and effect, and he was ready. He turned and pointed along the front of the benches to the spot where the partners in confidential missions were seated.

"Those two over there came to the hotel and asked for M. Laroque before the boat came in," he said. "They came back and saw him after he arrived, and I took them up to his room. They went out with M. Laroque and stayed a long time. He came back about fifteen or twenty minutes before the murder was committed."

The judges and court officers gazed sharply at the two men, who were trying to conceal themselves behind the other spectators.

"This is important!" muttered the President "Have you anything else to say?"

"No, monsieur," replied Victor, resuming his seat.

"Usher, bring those two men to the bar!" commanded the President. "I have discretionary powers to question them as witnesses, although they have not previously been summoned--and I will use it."

The "confidential agents" looked nervously around the room as if seeking some way of escape as the usher advanced on them.

"For pity's sake, be careful!" whispered Perissard, anxiously. "Keep your mouth shut and leave it to me!"

"Don't worry! I won't say a word!" replied his colleague in the same tone.

"Gentlemen, if you please, this way!" cried the usher from the railing. As they came into the enclosure the President thought of something.

"Let one of them step forward and the other be taken to the waiting-room," he ordered. With another quick warning look at his confrère, M. Perissard walked up to the witness-stand while a gendarme escorted the other out behind the dock.

With one hand resting lightly on the railing in front of the witness-stand and the other nursing his immaculate silk hat, M. Perissard surveyed the judges and jury with an oily, benevolent smile.

"Your name and surname?" demanded the President.

"Perissard--Robert Henri!" replied the witness in his most unctuous tones, accompanying the answer with a half-bow.

"Your age?"

"Fifty-nine years, M. the President!"

"Your profession," continued the judge.

"Confidential missions," was the reply, with another bend.

"Your address?"

"No. 62 Rue Fribourg, Paris."

"Tell us what you know about the murder of Laroque!" the President commanded, and leaned back in his chair. M. Perissard's manner had not deceived him in the slightest measure. He knew the breed; and, knowing that the witness was a shrewd man, he tried to put him at a disadvantage by making him tell the story without questions.

But M. Perissard knew the danger of that system of examination as well as did the President.

"I know nothing about it at all, M. the President!" he declared earnestly. "I know absolutely nothing! And I cannot understand----"

"Did you know Laroque?" interrupted the judge, abruptly. M. Perissard shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.

"I used to know him years ago in Paris," he admitted, with a fine air of candor. "About six months ago I received a letter from him asking for work. I offered him a place in my office, and I went to see him when he arrived. That's all!"

Something familiar in the sound of his voice brought Floriot out of the stupor that succeeded the agony he had suffered. He raised his haggard face from his hands and met M. Perissard's eyes fixed upon him. He recognized him at once.

"Did you come from Paris to Bordeaux on purpose to see him?" pursued the examiner.

"No, M. the President, I had to come to Bordeaux to start a branch of my Paris house here."

"Is that the reason of your coming here to-day?"

M. Perissard paused and fixed his glance slowly and meaningly on the President of the Toulouse Court, over the judge's shoulder.

"No, M. the President," he said with deliberation. "I came to Bordeaux on a special matter of business, the business of one of my clients--a very delicate affair! It concerns the honor of a well-known family, and I hope to carry it through successfully. I am honorably known in my profession, and my clients know that they can always reckon_--always_ reckon, I repeat--on my entire discretion!"

"What did you say to Laroque in the course of your conversation with him?" continued the President.

"Nothing much, nothing much!" M. Perissard assured him, with an offhand gesture. "It was a business talk, in which I gave him a few general instructions about the work of my office. That is all!"

"You do not know anything about the shooting?"

"Not a thing, M. the President!" was the emphatic reply.

"Do you know the prisoner?"

M. Perissard turned and gave Jacqueline a long and careful scrutiny, as if he were not certain that he had ever seen her before.

"I saw her with Laroque," he said at last, "but I do not know who she is."

"You may----" began the President and stopped with a start. The prisoner was slowly rising. Her body was tense, and she leaned forward out of the dock with one rigid arm pointing at Perissard. With the black garb, livid face, and burning eyes and the clawlike hand pointing at the witness--whose fat pink cheeks had suddenly paled--she was like some uncanny sibyl about to launch a curse.

"But _I_ know _you_!" she cried in a hoarse voice that carried to the farthest corner. "_You are the real cause of the murder!_"

In a moment the audience was on its feet.

"I! I!" cried the blackmailer, stepping back with well-feigned astonishment while the usher hammered at his desk and shouted for order. But even the President was too much absorbed in the sudden dramatic development to heed the excitement in the court.

"Yes, _you_!" she repeated, stabbing at him with her stiff forefinger. "You found out that I was married and that I had left my husband, and you advised Laroque to find him and ask him for the money that I brought him on my marriage!"

M. Perissard had been in many a tight place--in many a situation where self-possession and nerve had saved him--and he quickly recovered from the shock of the denunciation. Ignoring the excitement that had upset the decorum of the court he turned to the President and said suavely:

"M. the President, Laroque told me during our conversation that his wife had had typhoid fever Hast year and that her brain had suffered."

But the woman was not to be silenced by such a trick.

"I nearly died last year, and my head was shaved," she said, slowly, turning and looking straight at Floriot, who was watching her with grief-stricken eyes. "That is why those who used to know me cannot recognize me now!"

Floriot hid his face in his hands and shuddered. Noel, white-faced, was gripping the railing in front of him with both hands.

"But I am not mad!" she cried, her voice rising to a shrill note as she faced Perissard once more. "I begged and prayed Laroque not to follow your hateful advice, and he refused to listen to me. As I would not run the risk of his seeing and speaking to my son, _I killed him_!"

Muttered imprecations and half-smothered exclamations of anger swept through the court, and the throng heaved forward against the railings. Raymond sprang up into the dock and with one arm around the woman's waist and the other resting on the arm nearest him, he gently forced her down into her chair once more. The usher pounded his desk and the gendarmes struggled to push the crowd back from the railing. It was several minutes before order was restored, but the President, hastily consulting his confrères on the bench, paid no heed.

"You may go!" he said, when the room had reached almost its normal semi-hush and the voices had dropped into excited whisperings. "Call the other witness!"

M. Perissard started hurriedly for the door, but at a signal from M. Valmorin the gendarmes stopped him.

"No, M. Perissard," said the prosecutor. "Do not leave the court, if you please. We may want you again."

"The presiding judge said I could go, and I have important business!" protested the blackmailer.

"And I ask you to stay!" repeated M. Valmorin, firmly. "Kindly sit down!"

He was escorted, muttering and grumbling, to the witnesses' bench.

"I really don't understand! It's disgraceful!" he fumed. "I was not regularly cited--Article 313 of the Code of Criminal Instruction. It's a shame!"

But no one paid any further attention to him, excepting a few jurors and the nearest of the spectators, who favored him with curious and unpleasant glances. The usher brought M. Merivel to the stand. He came with mincing steps, and many bows, and a confident smirk on his fat, heavy face.

The President eyed him with rather more dislike than he had shown for the other partner.

"Your name and surname!" he commanded, curtly.

"Merivel--Modiste Hyacinthe!" replied the junior partner, in his blandest professional tones.

"Your age?"

"Fifty-two years, M. the President!"

"Your profession?"

"Confidential missions!" replied M. Merivel, with an obsequious tow.

"Your address!" demanded the judge.

"No. 132 Rue St. Denis, Paris."

"What do you know about the murder of Laroque?"

M. Merivel threw open his hands and drew himself up.

"Nothing. M. the President!" he declared.

"Nothing?" questioned the judge with a frown.

"Nothing whatever!" M. Merivel assured him with much earnestness.

"Did you know Laroque?" was the next question.

"No, M. the President," was the prompt reply.

"Had you never seen him?"

"Never!" exclaimed the witness, without hesitation. Some one tittered and M. Perissard cursed his colleague heartily under his breath.

"You did not go to see him in his room at the Hotel of the Three Crowns on April 3d?"

"No, M. the President!" replied M. Merivel, with a solemn shake of the head. A ripple of laughter ran along the benches and M. Merivel began to perspire. His glance wavered before the President's stern eye.

"Be careful! The hotel people saw you!" he warned. M. Merivel glanced uneasily at his partner for a cue, but Perissard was afraid to give him a sign.

"They must have made a mistake, M. the President!" he said, at last, with a great assumption of firmness.

"Oh, what an ass!" growled his partner fiercely.

M. Valmorin rose suddenly.

"M. the President," he said, "the attitude of these two men is distinctly suspicious, and, by virtue of Article 330 of the Code of Criminal Instruction, I ask you to order their immediate arrest for perjury!"

M. Perissard bounded up with agility that fitted strangely with his corpulent figure.

"Look here!" he shouted angrily, "it isn't my fault if that fool----"

"Who are you calling a fool?" demanded his partner, advancing belligerently.

"Gendarmes, remove those two men!" commanded the President.

"I protest----" began M. Merivel, loudly, holding up his hand.

"You have no right to do this! It is perfectly----" stormed the other.

"Take them away!" interrupted the judge.

"I'll have my revenge!" foamed M. Merivel, in a voice that made the chairs tremble, as the gendarmes laid hold of him.

"Shut your mouth, you d----d idiot!" roared the other.

"I'll write to the papers! I'll----" And struggling, and threatening, cursing the court and each other, they were dragged off to be held on charges of perjury, while the crowd hissed them out. And this, it may be remarked here, ended their long careers of crookedness. Merivel was convicted of perjury, but the case against the senior partner could not be made to hold. Merivel was so enraged when the other was acquitted that he turned State's evidence and gave M. Valmorin the history of some of Perissard's "deals," with the result that both were sent to prison for long terms.

When the excitement attending the exit of the pair had subsided the President made one last appeal to the prisoner before giving the case to the jury.

"Woman Laroque," he said, gently, with a slight hesitation at the name, "have you anything to say in your defense? Tell the truth and the whole truth!"

To his astonishment, the woman slowly rose. A hush of eager expectancy fell over the room. Looking straight before her into the dead wall she began in a low, uncertain tone.

"My counsel has said all that could be said. I shall never forget his words, and I thank him from my heart!" The voice trembled and stopped.

"He was right!" she went on, unsteadily, her hands tightly clutching the desk as she struggled for control. "I was not naturally bad! A coward broke my life and made me what I have become!"

The President heard a muffled groan behind him where his guest was sitting, but he did not take; his eyes off the woman's face.

"I had wronged him, I admit, but I was sorry--and hated myself for my fault. I begged his pardon--begged for it on my knees! And he told me to go--threw me out into the streets! Me! His wife--the mother of his child!

"Thanks to him I rolled in the gutter! Thanks to him I have suffered a thousand deaths_--and I have killed_! I hate him! I hate him!" she cried wildly, her voice shaking with passion. "And with my last breath I will curse his name!"

She paused with a gasp and swallowed hard. Floriot sat with his face in his hands and his heaving shoulders told the story of his agony. Rose and Helene, their heads close together, were openly crying, and there were sounds of sobbing and snuffling from all over the room. The jury sat; like twelve men hypnotized. Raymond stood looking up into her face, while a hundred emotions swept him. The feeling of pity, the desire to comfort, that had moved him when she pressed his hand, returned with reawakened force. He could not know it--but she dared not glance down at him.

"And yet I do not complain," she went on, with a strange note of tenderness. "No, I do not complain! I have a son--a son whom I love, whom I love more than I can say!"

Once more she paused, and when she spoke again some of the excitement under which she had labored returned.

"But he does not know me!" she cried. "The sound of my voice--thank God!--can awaken no echo in his heart! He will never see me again--know nothing of my shame and," she faltered, "his memory of me will be vague and sweet and beautiful; for--when I became--lost to him--he was a child! He is so far--from me--now! But I love him! I worship him! All my heart is his. My one wish--is that he--should be happy--that--ah!"

The words ended in a long-drawn sob and she sank into her chair, huddled over the desk.