Part 29
He was about to retire, when, on glancing round the room, he noticed a large casket, inlaid with silver, which had belonged to his wife ever since she was a girl, and which accompanied her everywhere. “That, no doubt, contains the solution of the mystery,” he said to himself. This was one of those moments when a man obeys the dictates of passion without pausing to reflect. Seeing the keys on the mantelpiece, he seized them, and endeavoured to find one that would fit the lock of the casket. The fourth key opened it. It was full of papers. With feverish haste, Martial examined their contents. He had thrown aside several unimportant letters, when he came to a bill that read as follows: “Search made for Madame de Sairmeuse’s child. Expenses for the third quarter of the year 18--.” Martial’s brain reeled. A child! His wife had a child! But he read on: “For the services of two agents at Sairmeuse, ----. For expenses attending my own journey, ----. Divers gratuities, ----. Etc., etc.” The total amounted to six thousand francs; and it was receipted “Chefteux.” With a sort of cold rage, Martial continued his examination of the casket’s contents, and found a miserably-written note, which said; “Two thousand francs this evening, or I will tell the duke the history of the affair at the Borderie.” Then there were several more of Chefteux’s bills; next, a letter from Aunt Medea, in which she spoke of prison and remorse; and, finally, at the bottom of the casket, he found the marriage certificate of Marie-Anne Lacheneur and Maurice d’Escorval, drawn up by the cure of Vigano and signed by the old physician and Corporal Bavois.
The truth was as clear as daylight. Stunned, frozen with horror, Martial scarcely had strength enough to place the letters in the casket again, and restore it to its place. Then he tottered back to his own room, clinging to the walls for support. “It was she who murdered Marie-Anne,” he murmured. He was confounded, terror-stricken, by the perfidy of this woman who was his wife--by her criminal audacity, cool calculation and assurance, and her marvellous powers of dissimulation.
Still he swore he would discover everything, either through the duchess or through the Widow Chupin; and he ordered Otto to procure him a costume such as was generally worn by the frequenters of the Poivriere. He did not know how soon he might have need of it. This happened early in February, and from that moment Blanche did not take a single step without being watched. Not a letter reached her that her husband had not previously read. And she had not the slightest suspicion of the constant supervision to which she was subjected. Martial did not leave his room; he pretended to be ill. He felt he could not meet his wife and remain silent. He remembered the oath of vengeance which he had sworn over Marie-Anne’s lifeless form only too well. However, the watch which Otto kept over the duchess, and the perusal of the letters addressed to her, did not yield any fresh information, and for this reason: Polyte Chupin had been arrested on a charge of theft, and this accident caused a delay in the execution of Lacheneur’s plans.
But at last the latter prepared everything for Shrove Sunday, the 20th of February. On the previous day, in accordance with her instructions, the Widow Chupin wrote to the duchess that she must come to the Poivriere on Sunday night at eleven o’clock. On that same evening, Jean was to meet his accomplices at a ball at the Rainbow--a wine-shop bearing a very unenviable reputation--and give them their final instructions. These accomplices were to open the scene; he was only to appear at the _denouement_. “All is well arranged; the mechanism will work of its own accord,” he said to himself. But, as is already known, the “mechanism,” as he styled it, failed to act.
On receiving the Widow Chupin’s summons, Blanche revolted for a moment. The lateness of the hour, the distance, the isolation of the appointed meeting place, frightened her. Still, she was obliged to submit, and on Sunday evening she furtively left the house, accompanied by Camille, the same maid who had been present when Aunt Medea died. The duchess and Camille were attired like women of the lowest order, and felt no fear of being recognized. And yet a man was watching who quickly followed them. This was Martial. He had perused the note appointing this rendezvous even before his wife, and had disguised himself in the costume Otto had procured for him--that of a labourer about the quays. Then, in hope of making himself absolutely unrecognizable, he had soiled and matted his hair and beard; his hands were grimed with dirt; and he really seemed to belong to the class of which he wore the attire. Otto had begged to be allowed to accompany his master; but the duke refused, remarking that his revolver would prove quite sufficient protection. He knew Otto well enough, however, to feel certain he would disobey him.
Ten o’clock was striking when Blanche and Camille left the house, and it did not take them five minutes to reach the Rue Taranne. There was only one cab on the stand, which they at once hired. This circumstance drew from Martial an oath worthy of his costume. But he reflected that, since he knew where to find his wife, a slight delay in obtaining a vehicle would not matter. He soon found one, and, thanks to a gratuity of ten francs, the driver started off to the Rue du Chateau-des-Rentiers as fast as his horse could go. However, the duke had scarcely alighted before he heard the rumbling of another vehicle which pulled up abruptly a little distance behind. “Otto is evidently following me,” he thought. And he then started across the open space in the direction of the Poivriere. The prevailing silence and absence of life were rendered still more oppressive by a chill fog which heralded an approaching thaw. Martial stumbled and slipped at almost every step he took over the rough, snow-covered ground; but at last through the mist he distinguished a building in the distance. This was the Poivriere. The light burning inside, filtered through the heart-shaped apertures cut in the upper part of the shutters, and it almost seemed as if a pair of lurid eyes were striving to peer through the fog.
Could it really be possible that the Duchess de Sairmeuse was there! Martial cautiously approached the window, and clinging to the hinges of the shutters, raised himself up so that he could glance through one of the apertures. Yes, there was no mistake. His wife and Camille were seated at a table before a large punch-bowl, in the company of two ragged, leering scoundrels, and a soldier of youthful appearance. In the centre of the room stood the Widow Chupin, with a small glass in her hand. She was talking with great volubility, and punctuating her sentences with occasional sips of brandy. The impression this scene produced on Martial was so acute that his hold relaxed and he dropped to the ground. A ray of pity stole into his soul, for he vaguely realized the frightful suffering which had been the murderess’s chastisement. But he wished for another glance, and so once more he lifted himself up to the opening and looked in. The old woman had disappeared; the young soldier had risen from the table, and was talking and gesticulating earnestly. Blanche and Camille were listening to him with the closest attention. The two men who were sitting face to face, with their elbows on the table, were looking at each other; and Martial saw them exchange a significant glance. He was not wrong. The scoundrels were plotting “a rich haul.” Blanche, who had dressed herself with much care, and to render her disguise perfect had encased her feet in large coarse shoes, that were causing her well nigh intolerable agony--Blanche had neglected to remove her superb diamond ear-rings. She had forgotten them, but Lacheneur’s accomplices had noticed them, and were now glancing at them with eyes that glittered more brilliantly than the diamonds themselves. While awaiting Lacheneur’s coming, these wretches as had been agreed upon, were playing the part which he had imposed upon them. For this, and their assistance afterwards, they were to receive a certain sum of money. But they were thinking that this sum did not represent a quarter of the value of these jewels, and their looks only too plainly said: “What if we could secure them and go off before Lacheneur comes!” The temptation was too strong to be resisted. One of the scoundrels suddenly rose, and, seizing the duchess by the back of the neck, forced her head down on the table. The diamonds would have been at once torn from her ears if it had not been for Camille, who bravely came to her mistress’s assistance. Martial could endure no more. He sprang to the door of the hovel, opened it, and entered, bolting it behind him.
“Martial!” “Monsieur le Duc!” cried Blanche and Camille in the same breath, for, despite his disguise, they had both recognised him. Their exclamations turned the momentary stupor of their assailants into fury; and both ruffians precipitated themselves on Martial, determined to kill him. But, springing on one side, the duke avoided them. He had his revolver in his hand; he fired twice, and both the scoundrels fell. However, he was not yet safe, for the young soldier rushed forward and attempted to disarm him. Then began a furious struggle, in the midst of which Martial did not leave off crying, in a panting voice, “Fly! Blanche, fly! Otto is not far off. The name--save the honour of the name!”
The two women obeyed him, making their escape through the back door, which opened into the garden; and they had scarcely done so, before a violent knocking was heard at the front entry. The police were coming! This increased Martial’s frenzy; and in a supreme effort to free himself from his assailant, he hurled him backwards so violently, that, striking his head against a corner of the table, the young soldier fell on to the floor, and lay there to all appearance dead. In the meanwhile, the Widow Chupin, who had hastened from the room above on hearing the uproar, was shrieking on the staircase, while at the front door a voice was crying: “Open in the name of the law!” Martial might have fled; but if he fled, the duchess might be captured, for he would certainly be pursued. He saw the peril at a glance, and determined to remain. Shaking the Widow Chupin by the arm, he said to her, in an imperious voice: “If you know how to hold your tongue you shall have a hundred thousand francs.” Then, drawing a table before the door opening into the back room, he intrenched himself behind it as behind a rampart, and awaited the enemy’s approach.
The next moment the door was forced open, and a squad of police agents, headed by Inspector Gevrol, entered the room. “Surrender!” cried the inspector.
Martial did not move; his revolver was turned towards the intruders. “If I can parley with them and hold them in check only two minutes, all may yet be saved,” he thought. He obtained the required delay; then throwing his weapon to the ground, he was about to bound through the back door, when a police agent, who had gone round to the rear of the house, seized him about the body, and threw him to the floor. From this side he expected only assistance, hence he exclaimed: “Lost! It is the Prussians who are coming!”
In the twinkling of an eye he was bound; and two hours later he was an inmate of the station-house at the Place d’Italie. He had played his part so perfectly, that he had deceived even Gevrol. His assailants were dead, and he could rely upon the Widow Chupin. But he knew that the trap had been set for him by Jean Lacheneur; and he read a whole volume of suspicion in the eyes of the young officer who had cut off his retreat, and who was called Lecoq by his companions.
XL.
The Duke de Sairmeuse was one of those men who remain superior to circumstances. He was possessed of vast experience, and great natural shrewdness. His mind was quick to act, and fertile in resources. But when he found himself immured in the damp and loathsome station-house at the Place d’Italie, after the terrible scene we have just recalled, he felt inclined to relinquish all hope. He knew that justice does not trust to appearances, and that when an investigating magistrate finds himself in presence of a mystery, he does not rest until he has fathomed it. He knew only too well, moreover, that if his identity was established, the authorities would endeavour to discover the reason that had led him to the Poivriere; now he could scarcely doubt but what this reason would soon be discovered, and, in that case, the crime at the Borderie, and the duchess’s guilt, would undoubtedly be made public. This meant the Assize Court for the woman who bore his name--imprisonment, perhaps execution, at all events, a frightful scandal, dishonour, eternal disgrace! And the power he had wielded in former days was a positive disadvantage to him now, when his past position was filled by his political adversaries. Among them were two personal enemies, whose vanity he once had wounded, and who had never forgiven him. They would certainly not neglect the present opportunity for revenge. At the thought of such an ineffaceable stain on the great name of Sairmeuse, which was his pride and glory, reason almost forsook him. “My God, inspire me,” he murmured. “How shall I save the honour of the name?”
He saw but one chance of salvation--death. They now believed him to be one of the miserable loafers who haunt the suburbs of Paris; if he were dead they would not trouble themselves about his identity. “It is the only way!” he thought, and he was indeed endeavouring to find some means of committing suicide, when suddenly he heard a bustle outside his cell. A few moments afterwards the door was opened and a man was thrust in--a man who staggered a few steps, fell heavily on to the floor, and then began to snore. The new arrival was apparently only some vulgar drunkard.
A minute or so elapsed, and then a vague, strange hope touched Martial’s heart--no, he must be mistaken--and yet--yes, certainly this drunkard was Otto--Otto in disguise, and almost unrecognizable! It was a bold ruse and no time must be lost in profiting by it. Martial stretched himself on a bench, as if to sleep, and in such a way that his head was close to Otto’s. “The duchess is out of danger,” murmured the faithful servant.
“For to-day, perhaps. But to-morrow, through me everything will be discovered.”
“Have you told them who you are?”
“No; all the police agents but one took me for a vagabond.”
“You must continue to personate that character.”
“What good will it do? Jean Lacheneur will betray me.” But Martial, though he little knew it, had no need to fear Lacheneur for the present, at least. A few hours previously, on his way in the dark from the Rainbow to to the Poivriere, Jean had fallen to the bottom of a stone quarry, and fractured his skull. The labourers, on returning to their work early in the morning, found him lying there senseless; and that very moment they were carrying him to the hospital.
Although Otto also was ignorant of this circumstances, he did not seem discouraged. “There will be some way of getting rid of Lacheneur,” said he, “if you will only sustain your present character. An escape is an easy matter when a man has millions at his command.”
“They will ask me who I am, where I’ve come from, and how I’ve lived.”
“You speak English and German, don’t you; tell them that you have just returned from foreign parts; that you were a foundling, and that you have always lived a roving life.”
“How can I prove that?”
Otto drew a little nearer his master, and said, impressively: “We must agree on our plans, for success depends on a perfect understanding between us. I have a sweetheart in Paris--and no one knows of our connection. She is as sharp as steel. Her name is Milner, and she keeps the Hotel de Mariembourg, in the Rue Saint-Quentin. You can say that you arrived here from Leipsic on Sunday; that you went to that hotel, that you left your trunk there, and that it has a card nailed to the top with your name--say May, foreign artist.”
“Capital!” said Martial, approvingly. And then, with extraordinary quickness and precision, they agreed, point by point, on their plan of defense. When everything had been arranged, Otto pretended to awake from the heavy sleep of intoxication; he clamoured to be released, and the keeper finally opened the door and set him at liberty. Before leaving the station-house, however, he succeeded in throwing a note to the Widow Chupin, who was imprisoned in the opposite cell. So, when Lecoq, after his skilful investigations at the Poivriere, rushed to the Place d’Italie, panting with hope and ambition, he found himself outwitted by these men, who were inferior to him in penetration, but whose tact was superior to his own.
Martial’s plans being fully formed, he intended to carry them out with absolute perfection of detail, and, after his removal to the Depot, he was preparing himself for the investigating magistrate’s visit, when Maurice d’Escorval entered his cell. They recognized each other. They were both terribly agitated, and the examination was an examination only in name. After Maurice’s departure Martial attempted to destroy himself; for he had no faith in his former enemy’s generosity. But when he found M. Segmuller occupying Maurice’s place the next morning, he really believed that he was saved.
Then began that struggle between the magistrate and Lecoq on one side, and the prisoner on the other--a struggle in which neither conquered. Martial knew that Lecoq was the only person he had to fear, still he bore him no ill-will. Faithful to his nature, which compelled him to be just even to his enemies, he could not help admiring the astonishing penetration and perseverance of this young police agent, who, undismayed by the obstacles surrounding him, struggled on, unassisted, to reach the truth. But Lecoq was always outwitted by Otto, the mysterious accomplice, who seemed to know his every movement in advance. At the Morgue, at the Hotel de Mariembourg, with Toinon, the wife of Polyte Chupin, as well as with Polyte himself Lecoq was always just a little too late. He detected the secret correspondence between the prisoner and his accomplice, and he was even ingenious enough to discover the key to it, but this served no purpose. A man, who had seen a rival, or rather a future master in Lecoq--in short, Gevrol--had betrayed him. If his efforts to arrive at the truth through the jeweller and the Marchioness d’Arlange had failed, it was only because Blanche had not purchased the diamond ear-rings she wore at the Poivriere at any shop, but from one of her friends, the Baroness de Watchau. And finally, if no one in Paris had missed the Duke de Sairmeuse, it was because--thanks to an understanding between the duchess, Otto, and Camille--no other inmates of the Hotel de Sairmeuse suspected his absence. All the servants supposed that the duke was confined to his room by illness. His breakfast and dinner were taken up to his private apartments every day; and soups and tisanes were prepared ostensibly for his benefit.
So the weeks went by, and Martial was expecting to be summoned before the Assize Court and condemned under the name of May, when he was afforded an opportunity to escape. Too shrewd not to discern the trap that had been set for him, it was only after horrible hesitation that he decided to alight from the prison-van, determined to run the risk, and commending himself for protection to his lucky star. And he decided wisely, for that same night he leaped over his own garden wall, leaving an escaped convict, Joseph Couturier by name, whom he had picked up in a low eating-house, as a hostage in Lecoq’s hands. Warned by Madame Milner, thanks to a blunder which Lecoq committed, Otto was waiting for his master. In the twinkling of an eye Martial’s beard fell under the razor; he plunged into the bath which was already prepared, and his clothes were burned. And he it was who, during the search a few minutes later, had the hardihood to call out: “Otto, by all means allow these men to do their duty.” But he did not breathe freely until the police-agents had departed. “At last,” he exclaimed, “honour is saved! We have outwitted Lecoq!”
He had just left his bath, and assumed a dressing-gown, when Otto handed him a letter from the duchess. He hastily opened the envelope and read: “You are safe. You know everything. I am dying. Farewell. I loved you.”
With two bounds he reached his wife’s apartments. The outer door was locked: he burst it open; but he came to late. Blanche was dead--poisoned, like Marie-Anne; but she had procured a drug having an instantaneous effect, and extended on her couch, clad in her wonted apparel, her hands folded over her breast, she seemed only asleep. A tear glistened in Martial’s eye. “Poor, unhappy woman!” he murmured; “may God forgive you as I forgive you--you whose crime has been so frightfully expiated here below!”
EPILOGUE.
SAFE, in his own princely mansion, and surrounded by an army of retainers, the Duke de Sairmeuse had triumphantly exclaimed: “We have outwitted Lecoq!”
In this he was right; for the young detective was certainly nonplussed for the time being; but when his grace fancied himself for ever beyond this wily, keen-witted, aspiring agent’s reach, he was most decidedly wrong. Lecoq was not the man to sit down with folded hands and brood over the humiliation of defeat. Before he went to old Tabaret, he was beginning to recover from his despondency; and when he left that experienced detective’s presence, he had regained his courage, energy, and command over his faculties. “Well, my worthy friend,” he remarked to Father Absinthe, who was trotting along by his side, “you heard what the great Monsieur Tabaret said, didn’t you? So you see I was right.”
But his companion evinced no enthusiasm. “Yes, you were right,” he responded, in woe-begone tones.
“Do you think we are ruined by two or three mistakes? Nonsense! I will soon turn to-day’s defeat into a glorious victory.”
“Ah! you might do so perhaps, if--they don’t dismiss us from the force.”
This doleful remark recalled Lecoq to a sense of his present position. He and Absinthe had allowed a prisoner to slip through their fingers. That was vexatious, it is true; but, on the other hand, they had captured a most notorious criminal--Joseph Couturier. Surely there was some comfort in that. Still, of course, they both might be dismissed--and yet Lecoq could have borne the prospect, dismal as it was, if it had not been for the thought that dismissal would for ever prevent him from following up the Poivriere affair. What would his superiors say when he told them that May and the Duke de Sairmeuse were one and the same person. They would, no doubt, shrug their shoulders and turn up their noses. “Still, M. Segmuller will believe me,” he thought. “But will he dare to take any action in the matter without patent evidence before him?”
This was very unlikely, as Lecoq fully realized, and for a moment he asked himself if he and his fellows could not make a descent on the Hotel de Sairmeuse, and, on some pretext or other, compel the duke to show himself. It would then be easy to identify him as the prisoner May. However, after a little thought he dismissed the idea. “It would be a stupid expedient!” he exclaimed. “Two such men as the duke and his accomplice are not likely to be caught napping. They are prepared for such a visit, and we should only have our labour for our pains.”
He made these reflections in a low tone of voice; and Father Absinthe’s curiosity was aroused. “Excuse me,” said the old veteran, “I don’t quite understand you.”