Chapter 3

Some minutes later he was crossing the hall of the Wandering Footsteps (as it is called), giving rapid, cordial greetings to all the barristers of his acquaintance--one never knew when they might impart a special piece of information which let an enterprising journalist into the know, or put him early on to a good thing--and finally reached the lobbies of the Law Courts proper. He was saying to himself as he went along:

"He is a good fellow, Jouet! The news is not known yet! He telephoned me first!"

His friend Jouet met him, with a warm handshake:

"You did not seem to be in a good temper at the telephone just now, although I was giving you a nice bit of information!"

"Yes," retorted Fandor, "but information which simply proved how much the administrators of justice, to which you have the misfortune to belong, can make egregious mistakes! When, for once, you succeed in immediately arresting the assassin of someone well known, and are in a position to bring into play all the power and rigour of the law, you are clumsy enough to give the fellow a chance of punishing himself, you let him commit suicide on the very first night of his arrest!"

Fandor had been speaking in a fairly loud voice, as usual, but, at imperative signs made by his friend, he lowered his tones:

"What is it?" he murmured.

His friend rose:

"What we are going to do, old boy, is to take a turn in the galleries! I have something to say to you, and, joking apart, you are not to breathe a word of it to a soul--sh?"

"Count on me!"

Presently the two friends found themselves in one of the corridors of the Palais, known only to barristers and those accused of law-breaking.

"Come now!" cried Fandor, "your assassin has hanged himself, hasn't he?"

"My assassin!" expostulated the junior barrister: "My assassin! Allow me to inform you that Jacques Dollon is innocent!"

"Innocent?" Jerome Fandor shrugged a disbelieving shoulder: "Innocent! It is the fashion of the day to transform all murderers into innocents!... What ground have you for making such a declaration of innocence?"

"Here is my ground! I have just copied it out for you! Read!..."

Fandor hastened to read the paper handed to him by his friend. It was headed thus:

"_Copy of a letter brought by Maitre Gerin to the Public Prosecutor, a letter addressed to Maitre Gerin by the Baroness de Vibray._"

"Oh, it's a plant!" cried Fandor.

"Go on reading, you will see...."

Fandor continued:

"_My dear Maitre_,--

_You will forgive me, I am certain of that, for all the inconvenience I am going to cause you; I turn to you because you are the only friend in whom I have confidence._

_I have just received a letter from my bankers, Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil, of whom I have often spoken to you, who you know manage all my money affairs for me._

_This letter informs me that I am ruined. You quite understand--absolutely, completely ruined._

_The house I am living in, my carriage, the luxurious surroundings so necessary to me, I shall have to give it all up, so they tell me._

_These people have dealt me a terrible blow, struck me brutally...._

_My dear maitre, I learned this only two hours ago, and I am still stunned by it. I do not wish to wait for the inevitable moment when I shall begin to console myself, because I shall begin to hope that the disaster is exaggerated. I have no family, I am already old; apart from the satisfaction it gives me to use my influence on behalf of youthful talent, and to help forward its development, my life has no sense in it, it is without aim or object. My dear maitre, there are not two ways of announcing to one's friends resolutions analogous to that I now take: when you receive this letter I shall be dead._

_I have in front of me, on my writing-table, a tiny phial of poison which I am going to drink to the last drop, without any weakening of will, almost without fear, as soon as I have posted this letter to you myself._

_I must confess that I have an instinctive horror of being dragged to the Morgue, as happens whenever there is some doubt about a suicide. It is on account of this I now write to you, so that, thanks to your intervention, all the mistakes justice is liable to make may be avoided._

_I kill myself, I only; that is certain._

_No one must be incriminated in connection with my death, if it be not Fatality, which has caused my ruin. I once more apologise, my dear maitre, for all the measures you will be forced to take owing to my death, and I beg you to believe that my friendship for you was very sincere:_

_Signed:_

BARONESS DE VIBRAY."

"Good for you!" cried Fandor. "Here's a go! What a pretty petard in prospect!... Jacques Dollon was innocent; you arrest him; he is so terrified that he hangs himself! Well, old boy, I must say you make some fine blunders on Clock Quay!"

"It is nobody's fault!" protested the young barrister.

"That is to say," retorted Fandor, "it is everybody's fault! By Jove! If you let innocent prisoners hang themselves in their cells, I am no longer surprised that you leave the guilty at liberty to walk the streets at their sweet will!"

"Don't make a joke of it, old boy!... You understand, of course, that so far no one in the Palais has seen the letter! It has just been brought to the Public Prosecutor's office by Madame de Vibray's solicitor, Maitre Gerin. You came on the scene only a few minutes after I had sent up the original to the examining magistrate. The case is in Fuselier's hands."

"Is he in his office?"

"Certainly! He should proceed with the examination relative to poor Dollon this morning."

"Very well then, I will go up. I shall jolly soon get out of this booby of a Fuselier the information I need to make one of the best reports I have ever written. And you know, I am ever so obliged to you for the matter you've given me! But, mind you, I am going to put together a bit of copy that will not deal tenderly with our gentlemen of the robe--the lot of you! No, it is a bad, unlucky business enough, but it is even more funny--it is tragi-comedy!"

"For my part ..." began Fandor's barrister friend.

"Yes, yes! Good day, Pontius Pilate!" cried Fandor. "I am going up to Fuselier.... We must meet to-morrow!"

Hastening along the corridors, Fandor gained the office of the examining magistrate.

* * * * *

Fandor had known the magistrate a long while. Was not Fuselier the justice who, with Detective Juve, had had everything to do with the strangely mysterious cases associated with the name of Fantomas? In the course of his various judicial examinations he had often been able to give Fandor information and help. At first hostile to the constant preoccupation of Juve and Fandor--for long the arrest of Fantomas was their one aim--the young magistrate had gradually come to believe in what had seemed to him nothing but the detective's hypothesis. Open-minded, gifted with an alert intelligence, Fuselier had carefully followed the investigations of Juve and Fandor. He knew every detail, every vicissitude connected with the tracking of this elusive bandit. Since then the magistrate had taken the deepest interest in the pursuit of the criminal. Thanks to his support, Juve had been enabled to take various measures, otherwise almost impossible, avoid the many obstacles offered by legal procedure, risk the striking of many a blow he could not otherwise have ventured on.

Fuselier had a high opinion of Juve, and his attitude to Fandor was sympathetic.

Our journalist was going over the past as he hastened along:

Ah, if only Juve were here! If only this loyal servant of Justice, this sincerest of friends, this bravest of the brave, had not been struck down, Fandor would have been full of enthusiasm for the Dollon affair; for its interest was increasing, its mystery deepening! But Fandor was single-handed now! He had had a miraculous escape from the bomb which had blown up Lady Beltham's house on that tragic day when Juve had all but laid hands on Fantomas!

But Fandor would not allow himself to become disheartened--never that! In the school of his vanished friend he had learned to give himself up with single-minded devotion to any task he took up; his sole satisfaction being duty well fulfilled.... Well, the Dollon case should be cleared up!... To do so was to render a service to humanity! Having come to this conclusion he hastened to interview Monsieur Fuselier.

* * * * *

"Monsieur Fuselier," cried Fandor as he shook hands with the magistrate, "you must know quite well why I have come to see you!"

"About the rue Norvins affair?"

"Say rather about the Depot affair! It is there the affair became tragic."

Monsieur Fuselier smiled:

"You know then?"

"That Jacques Dollon has hanged himself? Yes. That he was innocent? Again, yes!" confessed Fandor, smiling in his turn: "You know that at _La Capitale_ we get all the information going, and are the first to get it!"

"Evidently," conceded the magistrate. "But if you know all about it, why put my professional discretion to the torture by asking absurd questions?"

"Now, what the deuce are they about on Clock Quay? Don't they supervise the accused in their cells?"

"Certainly they do! When this Dollon arrived at the Depot he was immediately conducted to Monsieur Bertillon: there he was measured and tested, finger marks taken, and so on."

"Just so," said Fandor. "I saw Bertillon before coming on to you. He told me Dollon seemed crushed: he submitted to all the tests without making the slightest objection; but he never spoke of suicide, never said anything which could lead one to imagine such a fatal termination."

"Well, he would not cry it aloud on the housetops!... When he left Monsieur Bertillon, what then?"

"After!... Oh, the police took him to a cell, and left him there. At midnight the chief warder made his rounds and saw nothing abnormal. It was in the morning they found this unfortunate Dollon had hanged himself."

"What did he hang himself with?"

"With strips of his shirt twisted into a rope.... Oh, my dear fellow, I see what you are thinking! You fancy that there has been a want of common prudence--that the warders were lax--that they had let him retain his braces, his cravat or his shoe laces!... Well, it was not so--precautions were taken."

"And this suicide remains incomprehensible!"

"Well!... This wretched youth must have been ferociously energetic, because he had fastened these shirt ropes of his to the iron bars of his bed, and strangled himself by lying on his back. Death must have been long in coming to release him from his agony."

"Can I not see him?" asked Fandor.

"Why not photograph him?" asked the magistrate in a bantering tone.

"Oh, if it were possible!..." Fandor stopped short. A youth knocked and entered:

"A lady, who wishes to see you, monsieur."

"Tell her I am too busy."

"She asked me to say that it is urgent."

"Ask her name."

"Here is her card, monsieur."

Monsieur Fuselier looked at the card: he started!

"Elizabeth Dollon!... Ah ... Good Heavens, what am I to say to this poor girl? How am I to tell her?"

Just then the door was pushed violently open, and a girl, in tears, rushed towards him:

"Monsieur, where is my brother?"

"But, mademoiselle!..."

Whilst the magistrate mechanically asked his distracted visitor to sit down, Jerome Fandor discreetly withdrew to the further side of the room; he was anxious that the magistrate should forget his presence, so that he might be a witness of what promised to be a most exciting interview.

"Pray control yourself, mademoiselle," begged the magistrate. "Your brother has perhaps been arrested through a mistake...."

"Oh, monsieur, I am sure of it, but it is frightful!"

"Mademoiselle, the dreadful thing would be that he was guilty."

"But they have not set him at liberty yet? He has not been able to clear himself?"

"Yes, yes, mademoiselle, he has vindicated himself, I even ..." Monsieur Fuselier stopped short, intensely pained, not knowing how to tell Elizabeth Dollon the terrible news.

At once she cried: "Ah, monsieur, you hesitate! You have learned something fresh? You are on the track of the assassins?"

"It is certain ... your brother is not guilty!"

The poor girl's countenance suddenly brightened. She had passed a horrible night after her return to Paris, and the receipt of the wire from Police Headquarters.

"What a nightmare!" she cried. "But the telegram said he was injured--nothing serious, is it?... Where is he now? Can I see him?"

"Mademoiselle," said the magistrate, "your brother has had a terrible shock!... It would be better!... I fear that!..."

Suddenly Elizabeth Dollon cried:

"Oh, monsieur, how you said that! How can seeing me do him harm?"

As Monsieur Fuselier did not reply, she burst into tears:

"You are hiding something from me! The papers said this morning that he also was a victim! Swear to me that he is not?"

"But ..."

"You _are_ hiding something from me!" The poor girl was frantic with terror: she wrung her hands in a state of despair: "Where is he? I must see him! Oh, take pity on me!"

As she watched the magistrate's downcast look, his air of discomfiture, the horrid truth flashed on Elizabeth Dollon:

"Dead!" she cried. She was shaken with sobs.

"Mademoiselle!... Oh, mademoiselle!" implored the magistrate, filled with pity. He tried to find some words of consolation, and this confirmed her worst fears:

"I swear to you!... It is certain your brother was not guilty!"

The distracted girl was beyond listening to the magistrate's words! Huddled up in an arm-chair, she lay inert, collapsed. Presently she rose like a person moving in some mad dream, her eyes wild:

"Take me to him!... I want to see him! They have killed him for me!... I must see him!"

Such was her insistence, the violence with which she claimed the right to go to her brother, to kneel beside him, that Monsieur Fuselier dared not refuse her this consolation.

"Control yourself, I beg of you! I am going to take you to him; but, for Heaven's sake, be reasonable! Control yourself!"

With his eyes he sought for the moral support of Fandor, whose presence he suddenly remembered. But our journalist, taking advantage of the momentary confusion, had quietly slipped from the room.

Evidently some unpleasant occurrence had upset the routine existence of the functionaries at the Depot. The warders were coming and going, talking among themselves, leaning against the doors of the numerous cells. The chief warder called one of his men:

"There must be no more of this disorder, Nibet!"

The chief warder was furious: he was about to hold forth to his subordinate, when an inspector approached.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Sergeant, it is Monsieur Jouet. He has a gentleman with him. He has a permit. Should I allow him to enter?"

"Who? Monsieur Jouet?"

"No, the gentleman accompanying him!"

"Hang it all! Why, yes--if he has a permit!"

The sergeant moved away shrugging his shoulders disgustedly.

"Not pleased with things this morning, the chief isn't," one of the warders remarked.

"Not likely, after last night's performance!"

"It's he who will catch it hot over this business!" The warder rubbed his hands, laughing.

Meanwhile, Fandor had appeared at the entrance of the corridor, under the guidance of a warder. He was thinking of the splendid copy he had secured: he was hoping that when Fuselier learned that a journalist had obtained admittance to the Depot, and had seen the corpse of Jacques Dollon in his cell, that he would not turn vicious: "But after all," said he to himself, "Fuselier is not the man to give me the go-by out of spite."

Fandor walked up and down the hall of the prison. He had informed the warders that he was waiting for the magistrate. "How strange life is!" thought he. "To think that once again I should be brought into close contact with Elizabeth Dollon, and that there is no likelihood of her recognising me--we were such children when we parted--she especially! Had she any recollection of the little rascal I was at the time of poor Madame de Langrune's assassination?" And, closing his eyes, Fandor tried to call to mind the features of the Jacques Dollon he used to know: it was useless! The body of Jacques Dollon he would be gazing at in a few minutes would be that of an unknown person, whose name alone awakened memories of bygone days....

So to pass the time Fandor continued his marching up and down.

Monsieur Fuselier appeared at the entrance to the Depot, supporting the unsteady steps of poor Elizabeth Dollon. Fandor quickly drew back into an obscure corner:

"Better not attract attention to myself just at present," thought Fandor; "I will wait until the cell door is opened. If Fuselier does not wish to give me permission to remain, I can at any rate cast a rapid glance round that ill-omened little cell!"

Fandor followed, at a distance, the wavering steps of the poor girl whom Monsieur Fuselier was supporting with fatherly care.

When they paused before one of the cells pointed out by the head warder, Monsieur Fuselier turned to Elizabeth Dollon:

"Do you think you are strong enough to bear this trial, mademoiselle?... You are determined to see your brother?"

Elizabeth bent her head; the magistrate turned towards the warder:

"Open," said he. As the key was turned in the lock he said: "According to instructions from the Head, we have placed him on his bed again.... There is nothing to frighten you ... he seems to be asleep.... Now then!"

But as he opened the door, stretching his arm in the direction of the bed where the body of Jacques Dollon should be, an oath escaped him:

"Great Heavens! The dead man is gone!"

In this cell with its bare walls, its sole furniture an iron bedstead and a stool riveted to the floor, in this little cell which the eye could glance round in a second, there was no vestige of a corpse: Jacques Dollon's body was not there!

"You have mistaken the cell," said the magistrate sharply.

"No, no!" cried the astounded warder.

"You can see, can't you, that Jacques Dollon is not there?"

"He was there a few minutes ago!"

"Then they must have taken him somewhere else!"

"The keys have never left me!"

"Oh, come now!"

"No, sir. He was there ... now he isn't there! That's all I know!... Hey! You down there!" yelled the warder: "Who knows what has become of the corpse of cell 12?... The corpse we laid out just now?"

One after the other the warders came running. All confirmed what their chief had said: the dead body of Jacques Dollon had been left there, lying on the bed: not a soul had entered the cell: not a soul had touched the corpse!... Yet it was no longer there! Jerome Fandor, well in the background, followed the scene with an ironical smile. The frantic warders, the growing stupefaction of Monsieur Fuselier, amused him prodigiously. The magistrate was trying to understand the how, why, and wherefore of this incredible disappearance:

"As this man is not here, he cannot have been dead ... he has escaped ... but if he wanted to escape he must have been guilty!... Oh, I cannot make head or tail of it!"

Seizing the head warder by the shoulders, almost roughly, Monsieur Fuselier asked:

"Look here, chief, was this man dead, or was he not?"

Elizabeth Dollon was repeating:

"He lives! He lives!" and laughing wildly.

The warder raised his hand as though taking a solemn oath:

"As to being dead, he was dead right enough!... The doctor will tell you so, too: also my colleague, Favril, who helped me to lay out the body on the bed."

"But how can a dead body get away from here? If he _was_ dead, he could not have escaped!" said the magistrate.

"It is witchcraft!" declared the warder, with a shrug.

Fuselier flew into a rage:

"Had you not better confess that you and your colleagues did not keep proper watch and ward!... The investigation will show on whose shoulders the responsibility rests."

"But, sakes alive, monsieur!" expostulated the warder: "There aren't only two of us who have seen him dead!... There are all the hospital attendants of the Depot as well!... There is the doctor, and there are my colleagues to be counted in: the truth is, monsieur, some fifty persons have seen him dead!"

"So you say!" cried the impatient magistrate: "I am going to inform the Public Prosecutor of what has happened, and at once!"

As he was hurrying away, he spied Jerome Fandor, who had not missed a single detail of the scene.

"You again!" exclaimed the irate magistrate: "How did you get in here?"

"By permit," replied our journalist.

"Well, you have learned what there is to know, haven't you? Be off, then! You are one too many here!... Frankly, there is no need for you to augment the scandal!... Will you, therefore, be kind enough to take yourself off?" And Fuselier, almost beside himself with rage, raced off to the Public Prosecutor's office.

After the magistrate's furious attack, Fandor could not possibly linger in the corridors of the Depot. The warders, too, were pressing their attentions on him and on Elizabeth Dollon:

"This way, monsieur!... Madame, this way!... Ah, it's a wretched business!... Here, this way! This way!... Be off, as fast as you can!"

Presently Fandor was descending the grand staircase of the Palais, steadying the uncertain steps of poor Elizabeth Dollon.

"I implore you to help me!" she cried: "Help me: help us! My brother is guiltless--I could swear to that!... He must--must be found!... This hideous nightmare must end!"

"Mademoiselle, I ask nothing better, only ... where to find him?"

"Ah, I have no idea, none!... I implore you, you who must know influential people in high places, do not leave any stone unturned, do all that is humanly possible to save him--to save us!"

Intensely moved by the poor girl's anguish of mind, Fandor could not trust himself to speak. He bent his head in the affirmative merely. Hailing a cab, he put her into it, gave the address to the driver, and as he was closing the door Elizabeth cried:

"Do all that is humanly possible--do everything in the world!"

"I swear to you I will get at the truth," was Fandor's parting promise. The cab had disappeared, but our journalist stood motionless, absorbed in his reflections. At last, uttering his thoughts aloud, he said:

"If the Baroness de Vibray has written that she has killed herself, then she has killed herself, and Dollon is innocent. It's true the letter may be fictitious ... therefore we must put it aside--we have no guarantee as to its genuineness.... Here is the problem: Jacques Dollon is dead, and yet has left the Depot! Yes, but how?"

Jerome Fandor went off in the direction of the offices of _La Capitale_ so absorbed in thought that he jostled the passers-by, without noticing the angry glances bestowed on him:

"Jacques Dollon, dead, has left the Depot!" He repeated this improbable statement, so absurd, of necessity incorrect; repeated it to the point of satiety:

"Jacques Dollon is dead, and he has got away from the Depot!"

Then, in an illuminating flash, he perceived the solution of this apparently insoluble problem:

"A mystery such as this is incomprehensible, inexplicable, impossible, except in connection with one man! There is only one individual in the world capable of making a dead man seem to be alive after his death--and this individual is--Fantomas!"

To formulate this conclusion was to give himself a thrilling shock.... Since the disappearance of Juve, he had never had occasion to suspect the presence, the intervention of Fantomas in connection with any of the crimes he had investigated as reporter and student of human nature.

Fantomas! The sound of that name evoked the worst horrors! Fantomas! This bandit, this criminal who has not shrunk from any cruelty, any horror--Fantomas is crime personified!