"I got my hand through and next my arm. Where was I? Why, over the telephone, of course! I knew that at once by feeling the wall and finding the wires. Then it took me quite half an hour to get hold of the instrument. I couldn't reach it with my arm.
"I managed at last with a piece of string and a slip-knot to fish up the receiver and hold it near my mouth, or, say, at ten inches from my mouth. And then I shouted and roared to make my voice carry; and, all the time, I was in pain. And then, at last, my string broke…. And then—and then—I hadn't an ounce of strength left in my body. Besides, you fellows had been warned; and it was for you to get yourselves out of the mess."
He looked at Mazeroux and asked him, as though certain of the reply:
"The explosion took place, didn't it?"
"Yes, Chief."
"At three o'clock exactly?"
"Yes."
"And of course M. Desmalions had the house cleared?"
"Yes."
"At the last minute?"
"At the last minute."
Don Luis laughed and said:
"I knew he would wait about and not give way until the crucial moment. You must have had a bad time of it, my poor Mazeroux, for of course you agreed with me from the start."
He kept on eating while he talked; and each mouthful seemed to bring back a little of his usual animation.
"Funny thing, hunger!" he said. "Makes you feel so light-headed. I must practise getting used to it, however."
"At any rate, Chief, no one would believe that you have been fasting for nearly forty-eight hours."
"Ah, that comes of having a sound constitution, with something to fall back upon! I shall be a different man in half an hour. Just give me time to shave and have a bath."
When he had finished dressing, he sat down to the breakfast of eggs and cold meat which Mazeroux had prepared for him; and then, getting up, said:
"Now, let's be off."
"But there's no hurry, Chief. Why don't you lie down for a few hours? The Prefect can wait."
"You're mad! What about Marie Fauville?"
"Marie Fauville?"
"Why, of course! Do you think I'm going to leave her in prison, or Sauverand, either? There's not a second to lose, old chap."
Mazeroux thought to himself that the chief had not quite recovered his wits yet. What? Release Marie Fauville and Sauverand, one, two, three, just like that! No, no, it was going a bit too far.
However, he took down to the Prefect's car a new Perenna, merry, brisk, and as fresh as though he had just got out of bed.
"Very flattering to my pride," said Don Luis to Mazeroux, "most flattering, that hesitation of the Prefect's, after I had warned him over the telephone, followed by his submission at the decisive moment. What a hold I must have on all those jokers, to make them sit up at a sign from little me! 'Beware, gentlemen!' I telephone to them from the bottomless pit. 'Beware! At three o'clock, a bomb!' 'Nonsense!' say they. 'Not a bit of it!' say I. 'How do you know?' 'Because I do.' 'But what proof have you?' 'What proof? That I say so.' 'Oh, well, of course, if you say so!' And, at five minutes to three, out they march. Ah, if I wasn't built up of modesty—"
They came to the Boulevard Suchet, where the crowd was so dense that they had to alight from the car. Mazeroux passed through the cordon of police protecting the approaches to the house and took Don Luis to the slope across the road.
"Wait for me here, Chief. I'll tell the Prefect of Police."
On the other side of the boulevard, under the pale morning sky in which a few black clouds still lingered, Don Luis saw the havoc wrought by the explosion. It was apparently not so great as he had expected. Some of the ceilings had fallen in and their rubbish showed through the yawning cavities of the windows; but the house remained standing. Even Fauville's built-out annex had not suffered overmuch, and, strange to say, the electric light, which the Prefect had left burning on his departure, had not gone out. The garden and the road were covered with stacks of furniture, over which a number of soldiers and police kept watch.
"Come with me, Chief," said Mazeroux, as he fetched Don Luis and led him toward the engineer's workroom.
A part of the floor was demolished. The outer walls on the left, near the passage, were cracked; and two workmen were fixing up beams, brought from the nearest timber yard, to support the ceiling. But, on the whole, the explosion had not had the results which the man who prepared it must have anticipated.
M. Desmalions was there, together with all the men who had spent the night in the room and several important persons from the public prosecutor's office. Weber, the deputy chief detective, alone had gone, refusing to meet his enemy.
Don Luis's arrival caused great excitement. The Prefect at once came up to him and said:
"All our thanks, Monsieur. Your insight is above praise. You have saved our lives; and these gentlemen and I wish to tell you so most emphatically. In my case, it is the second time that I have to thank you."
"There is a very simple way of thanking me, Monsieur le Préfet," said Don Luis, "and that is to allow me to carry out my task to the end."
"Your task?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet. My action of last night is only the beginning.
The conclusion is the release of Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand."
M. Desmalions smiled.
"Oh!"
"Am I asking too much, Monsieur le Préfet?"
"One can always ask, but the request should be reasonable. And the innocence of those people does not depend on me."
"No; but it depends on you, Monsieur le Préfet, to let them know if I prove their innocence to you."
"Yes, I agree, if you prove it beyond dispute."
"Just so."
Don Luis's calm assurance impressed M. Desmalions in spite of everything and even more than on the former occasions; and he suggested:
"The results of the hasty inspection which we have made will perhaps help you. For instance, we are certain that the bomb was placed by the entrance to the passage and probably under the boards of the floor."
"Please do not trouble, Monsieur le Préfet. These are only secondary details. The great thing now is that you should know the whole truth, and that not only through words."
The Prefect had come closer. The magistrate and detectives were standing round Don Luis, watching his lips and movements with feverish impatience. Was it possible that that truth, as yet so remote and vague, in spite of all the importance which they attached to the arrests already effected, was known at last?
It was a solemn moment. Every one was on tenterhooks. The manner in which Don Luis had foretold the explosion lent the value of an accomplished fact to his predictions; and the men whom he had saved from the terrible catastrophe were almost ready to accept as certainties the most improbable statements which a man of his stamp might make.
"Monsieur le Préfet," he said, "you waited in vain last night for the fourth letter to make its appearance. We shall now be able, by an unexpected miracle of chance, to be present at the delivery of the letter. You will then know that it was the same hand that committed all the crimes—and you will know whose hand that was."
And, turning to Mazeroux:
"Sergeant, will you please make the room as dark as you can? The shutters are gone; but you might draw the curtains across the windows and close the doors. Monsieur le Préfet, is it by accident that the electric light is on?"
"Yes, by accident. We will have it turned out."
"One moment. Have any of you gentlemen a pocket lantern about you? Or, no, it doesn't matter. This will do."
There was a candle in a sconce. He took it and lit it.
Then he switched off the electric light.
There was a half darkness, amid which the flame of the candle flickered in the draught from the windows. Don Luis protected the flame with his hand and moved to the table.
"I do not think that we shall be kept waiting long," he said. "As I foresee it, there will be only a few seconds before the facts speak for themselves and better than I could do."
Those few seconds, during which no one broke the silence, were unforgettable. M. Desmalions has since declared, in an interview in which he ridicules himself very cleverly, that his brain, over-stimulated by the fatigues of the night and by the whole scene before him, imagined the most unlikely events, such as an invasion of the house by armed assailants, or the apparition of ghosts and spirits.
He had the curiosity, however, he said, to watch Don Luis. Sitting on the edge of the table, with his head thrown a little back and his eyes roaming over the ceiling, Don Luis was eating a piece of bread and nibbling at a cake of chocolate. He seemed very hungry, but quite at his ease.
The others maintained that tense attitude which we put on at moments of great physical effort. Their faces were distorted with a sort of grimace. They were haunted by the memory of the explosion as well as obsessed by what was going to happen. The flame of the candle cast shadows on the wall.
More seconds elapsed than Don Luis Perenna had said, thirty or forty seconds, perhaps, that seemed endless. Then Perenna lifted the candle a little and said:
"There you are."
They had all seen what they now saw almost as soon as he spoke. A letter was descending from the ceiling. It spun round slowly, like a leaf falling from a tree without being driven by the wind. It just touched Don Luis and alighted on the floor between two legs of the table.
Picking up the paper and handing it to M. Desmalions, Don Luis said:
"There you are, Monsieur le Préfet. This is the fourth letter, due last night."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE "HATER"
M. Desmalions looked at him without understanding, and looked from him to the ceiling. Perenna said:
"Oh, there's no witchcraft about it; and, though no one has thrown that letter from above, though there is not the smallest hole in the ceiling, the explanation is quite simple!"
"Quite simple, is it?" said M. Desmalions.
"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet. It all looks like an extremely complicated conjuring trick, done almost for fun. Well, I say that it is quite simple—and, at the same time, terribly tragic. Sergeant Mazeroux, would you mind drawing back the curtains and giving us as much light as possible?"
While Mazeroux was executing his orders and M. Desmalions glancing at the fourth letter, the contents of which were unimportant and merely confirmed the previous ones, Don Luis took a pair of steps which the workmen had left in the corner, set it up in the middle of the room and climbed to the top, where, seated astride, he was able to reach the electric chandelier.
It consisted of a broad, circular band in brass, beneath which was a festoon of crystal pendants. Inside were three lamps placed at the corners of a brass triangle concealing the wires.
He uncovered the wires and cut them. Then he began to take the whole fitting to pieces. To hasten matters, he asked for a hammer and broke up the plaster all round the clamps that held the chandelier in position.
"Lend me a hand, please," he said to Mazeroux.
Mazeroux went up the steps; and between them they took hold of the chandelier and let it slide down the uprights. The detectives caught it and placed it on the table with some difficulty, for it was much heavier than it looked.
On inspection, it proved to be surmounted by a cubical metal box, measuring about eight inches square, which box, being fastened inside the ceiling between the iron clamps, had obliged Don Luis to knock away the plaster that concealed it.
"What the devil's this?" exclaimed M. Desmalions.
"Open it for yourself, Monsieur le Préfet: there's a lid to it," said Perenna.
M. Desmalions raised the lid. The box was filled with springs and wheels, a whole complicated and detailed mechanism resembling a piece of clockwork.
"By your leave, Monsieur le Préfet," said Don Luis.
He took out one piece of machinery and discovered another beneath it, joined to the first by the gearing of two wheels; and the second was more like one of those automatic apparatuses which turn out printed slips.
Right at the bottom of the box, just where the box touched the ceiling, was a semicircular groove, and at the edge of it was a letter ready for delivery.
"The last of the five letters," said Don Luis, "doubtless continuing the series of denunciations. You will notice, Monsieur le Préfet, that the chandelier originally had a fourth lamp in the centre. It was obviously removed when the chandelier was altered, so as to make room for the letters to pass."
He continued his detailed explanations:
"So the whole set of letters was placed here, at the bottom. A clever piece of machinery, controlled by clockwork, took them one by one at the appointed time, pushed them to the edge of the groove concealed between the lamps and the pendants, and projected them into space."
None of those standing around Don Luis spoke, and all of them seemed perhaps a little disappointed. The whole thing was certainly very clever; but they had expected something better than a trick of springs and wheels, however surprising.
"Have patience, gentlemen," said Don Luis. "I promised you something ghastly; and you shall have it."
"Well, I agree," said the Prefect of Police, "that this is where the letters started from. But a good many points remain obscure; and, apart from this, there is one fact in particular which it seems impossible to understand. How were the criminals able to adapt the chandelier in this way? And, in a house guarded by the police, in a room watched night and day, how were they able to carry out such a piece of work without being seen or heard?"
"The answer is quite easy, Monsieur le Préfet: the work was done before the house was guarded by the police."
"Before the murder was committed, therefore?"
"Before the murder was committed."
"And what is to prove to me that that is so?"
"You have said so yourself, Monsieur le Préfet: because it could not have been otherwise."
"But do explain yourself, Monsieur!" cried M. Desmalions, with a gesture of irritation. "If you have important things to tell us, why delay?"
"It is better, Monsieur le Préfet, that you should arrive at the truth in the same way as I did. When you know the secret of the letters, the truth is much nearer than you think; and you would have already named the criminal if the horror of his crime had not been so great as to divert all suspicion from him."
M. Desmalions looked at him attentively. He felt the importance of Perenna's every word and he was really anxious.
"Then, according to you," he said, "those letters accusing Madame Fauville and Gaston Sauverand were placed there with the sole object of ruining both of them?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet."
"And, as they were placed there before the crime, the plot must have been schemed before the murder?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet, before the murder. From the moment that we admit the innocence of Mme. Fauville and Gaston Sauverand, we are obliged to conclude that, as everything accuses them, this is due to a series of deliberate acts. Mme. Fauville was out on the night of the murder: a plot! She was unable to say how she spent her time while the murder was being committed: a plot! Her inexplicable drive in the direction of La Muette and her cousin Sauverand's walk in the neighbourhood of the house: plots! The marks left in the apple by those teeth, by Mme. Fauville's own teeth: a plot and the most infernal of all!
"I tell you, everything is plotted beforehand, everything is, so to speak, prepared, measured out, labelled, and numbered. Everything takes place at the appointed time. Nothing is left to chance. It is a work very nicely pieced together, worthy of the most skilful artisan, so solidly constructed that outside happenings have not been able to throw it out of gear; and that the scheme works exactly, precisely, imperturbably, like the clockwork in this box, which is a perfect symbol of the whole business and, at the same time, gives a most accurate explanation of it, because the letters denouncing the murderers were duly posted before the crime and delivered after the crime on the dates and at the hours foreseen."
M. Desmalions remained thinking for a time and then objected:
"Still, in the letters which he wrote, M. Fauville accuses his wife."
"He does."
"We must therefore admit either that he was right in accusing her or that the letters are forged?"
"They are not forged. All the experts have recognized M. Fauville's handwriting."
"Then?"
"Then—"
Don Luis did not finish his sentence; and M. Desmalions felt the breath of the truth fluttering still nearer round him.
The others, one and all as anxious as himself, were silent. He muttered:
"I do not understand—"
"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet, you do. You understand that, if the sending of those letters forms an integrate part of the plot hatched against Mme. Fauville and Gaston Sauverand, it is because their contents were prepared in such a way as to be the undoing of the victims."
"What! What! What are you saying?"
"I am saying what I said before. Once they are innocent, everything that tells against them is part of the plot."
Again there was a long silence. The Prefect of Police did not conceal his agitation. Speaking very slowly, with his eyes fixed on Don Luis's eyes, he said:
"Whoever the culprit may be, I know nothing more terrible than this work of hatred."
"It is an even more improbable work than you can imagine, Monsieur le Préfet," said Perenna, with growing animation, "and it is a hatred of which you, who do not know Sauverand's confession, cannot yet estimate the violence. I understood it completely as I listened to the man; and, since then, all my thoughts have been overpowered by the dominant idea of that hatred. Who could hate like that? To whose loathing had Marie Fauville and Sauverand been sacrificed? Who was the inconceivable person whose perverted genius had surrounded his two victims with chains so powerfully forged?
"And another idea came to my mind, an earlier idea which had already struck me several times and to which I have already referred in Sergeant Mazeroux's presence: I mean the really mathematical character of the appearance of the letters. I said to myself that such grave documents could not be introduced into the case at fixed dates unless some primary reason demanded that those dates should absolutely be fixed. What reason? If a human agency had been at work each time, there would surely have been some irregularity dependent on this especially after the police had become cognizant of the matter and were present at the delivery of the letters.
"Well," Perenna continued, "in spite of every obstacle, the letters continued to come, as though they could not help it. And thus the reason of their coming gradually dawned upon me: they came mechanically, by some invisible process set going once and for all and working with the blind certainty of a physical law. This was a case not of a conscious intelligence and will, but just of material necessity…. It was the clash of these two ideas—the idea of the hatred pursuing the innocent and the idea of that machinery serving the schemes of the 'hater'—it was their clash that gave birth to the little spark of light. When brought into contact, the two ideas combined in my mind and suggested the recollection that Hippolyte Fauville was an engineer by profession!"
The others listened to him with a sort of uneasy oppression. What was gradually being revealed of the tragedy, instead of relieving the anxiety, increased it until it became absolutely painful.
M. Desmalions objected:
"Granting that the letters arrived on the dates named, you will nevertheless have noted that the hour varied on each occasion.
"That is to say, it varied according as we watched in the dark or not, and that is just the detail which supplied me with the key to the riddle. If the letters—and this was an indispensable precaution, which we are now able to understand—were delivered only under cover of the darkness, it must be because a contrivance of some kind prevented them from appearing when the electric light was on, and because that contrivance was controlled by a switch inside the room. There is no other explanation possible.
"We have to do with an automatic distributor that delivers the incriminating letters which it contains by clockwork, releasing them only between this hour and that on such and such a night fixed in advance and only at times when the electric light is off. You have the apparatus before you. No doubt the experts will admire its ingenuity and confirm my assertions. But, given the fact that it was found in the ceiling of this room, given the fact that it contained letters written by M. Fauville, am I not entitled to say that it was constructed by M. Fauville, the electrical engineer?"
Once more the name of M. Fauville returned, like an obsession; and each time the name stood more clearly defined. It was first M. Fauville; then M. Fauville, the engineer; then M. Fauville, the electrical engineer. And thus the picture of the "hater," as Don Luis said, appeared in its accurate outlines, giving those men, used though they were to the strangest criminal monstrosities, a thrill of terror. The truth was now no longer prowling around them. They were already fighting with it, as you fight with an adversary whom you do not see but who clutches you by the throat and brings you to the ground.
And the Prefect of Police, summing up all his impressions, said, in a strained voice:
"So M. Fauville wrote those letters in order to ruin his wife and the man who was in love with her?"
"Yes."
"In that case—"
"What?"
"Knowing, at the same time, that he was threatened with death, he wished, if ever the threat was realized, that his death should be laid to the charge of his wife and her friend?"
"Yes."
"And, in order to avenge himself on their love for each other and to gratify his hatred of them both, he wanted the whole set of facts to point to them as guilty of the murder of which he would be the victim?"
"Yes."
"So that—so that M. Fauville, in one part of his accursed work, was—what shall I say?—the accomplice of his own murder. He dreaded death. He struggled against it. But he arranged that his hatred should gain by it. That's it, isn't it? That's how it is?"
"Almost, Monsieur le Préfet. You are following the same stages by which I travelled and, like myself, you are hesitating before the last truth, before the truth which gives the tragedy its sinister character and deprives it of all human proportions."
The Prefect struck the table with his two fists and, in a sudden fit of revolt, cried:
"It's ridiculous! It's a perfectly preposterous theory! M. Fauville threatened with death and contriving his wife's ruin with that Machiavellian perseverance? Absurd! The man who came to my office, the man whom you saw, was thinking of only one thing: how to escape dying! He was obsessed by one dread alone, the dread of death.
"It is not at such moments," the Prefect emphasized, "that a man fits up clockwork and lays traps, especially when those traps cannot take effect unless he dies by foul play. Can you see M. Fauville working at his automatic machine, putting in with his own hands letters which he has taken the pains to write to a friend three months before and intercept, arranging events so that his wife shall appear guilty and saying, 'There! If I die murdered, I'm easy in my mind: the person to be arrested will be Marie!'
"No, you must confess, men don't take these gruesome precautions. Or, if they do—if they do, it means that they're sure of being murdered. It means that they agree to be murdered. It means that they are at one with the murderer, so to speak, and meet him halfway. In short, it means—"
He interrupted himself, as if the sentences which he had spoken had surprised him. And the others seemed equally disconcerted. And all of them unconsciously drew from those sentences the conclusions which they implied, and which they themselves did not yet fully perceive.
Don Luis did not remove his eyes from the Prefect, and awaited the inevitable words.
M. Desmalions muttered:
"Come, come, you are not going to suggest that he had agreed—"
"I suggest nothing, Monsieur le Préfet," said Don Luis. "So far, you have followed the logical and natural trend of your thoughts; and that brings you to your present position."
"Yes, yes, I know, but I am showing you the absurdity of your theory. It can't be correct, and we can't believe in Marie Fauville's innocence unless we are prepared to suppose an unheard-of thing, that M. Fauville took part in his own murder. Why, it's laughable!"
And he gave a laugh; but it was a forced laugh and did not ring true.
"For, after all," he added, "you can't deny that that is where we stand."
"I don't deny it."
"Well?"
"Well, M. Fauville, as you say, took part in his own murder."
This was said in the quietest possible fashion, but with an air of such certainty that no one dreamed of protesting. After the work of deduction and supposition which Don Luis had compelled his hearers to undertake, they found themselves in a corner which it was impossible for them to leave without stumbling against unanswerable objections.
There was no longer any doubt about M. Fauville's share in his own death. But of what did that share consist? What part had he played in the tragedy of hatred and murder? Had he played that part, which ended in the sacrifice of his life, voluntarily or under compulsion? Who, when all was said and done, had served as his accomplice or his executioner?
All these questions came crowding upon the minds of M. Desmalions and the others. They thought of nothing but of how to solve them, and Don Luis could feel certain that his solution was accepted beforehand. From that moment he had but to tell his story of what had happened without fear of contradiction. He did so briefly, after the manner of a succinct report limited to essentials:
"Three months before the crime, M. Fauville wrote a series of letters to one of his friends, M. Langernault, who, as Sergeant Mazeroux will have told you, Monsieur le Préfet, had been dead for several years, a fact of which M. Fauville cannot have been ignorant. These letters were posted, but were intercepted by some means which it is not necessary that we should know for the moment. M. Fauville erased the postmarks and the addresses and inserted the letters in a machine constructed for the purpose, of which he regulated the works so that the first letter should be delivered a fortnight after his death and the others at intervals of ten days.
"At this moment it is certain that his plan was concerted down to the smallest detail. Knowing that Sauverand was in love with his wife, watching Sauverand's movements, he must obviously have noticed that his detested rival used to pass under the windows of the house every Wednesday and that Marie Fauville would go to her window.
"This is a fact of the first importance, one which was exceedingly valuable to me; and it will impress you as being equal to a material proof. Every Wednesday evening, I repeat, Sauverand used to wander round the house. Now note this: first, the crime prepared by M. Fauville was committed on a Wednesday evening; secondly, it was at her husband's express request that Mme. Fauville went out that evening to go to the opera and to Mme. d'Ersinger's."
Don Luis stopped for a few seconds and then continued:
"Consequently, on the morning of that Wednesday, everything was ready, the fatal clock was wound up, the incriminating machinery was working to perfection, and the proofs to come would confirm the immediate proofs which M. Fauville held in reserve. Better still, Monsieur le Préfet, you had received from him a letter in which he told you of the plot hatched against him, and he implored your assistance for the morning of the next day—that is to say, after his death!
"Everything, in short, led him to think that things would go according to the 'hater's' wishes, when something occurred that nearly upset his schemes: the appearance of Inspector Vérot, who had been sent by you, Monsieur le Préfet, to collect particulars about the Mornington heirs. What happened between the two men? Probably no one will ever know. Both are dead; and their secret will not come to life again. But we can at least say for certain that Inspector Vérot was here and took away with him the cake of chocolate on which the teeth of the tiger were seen for the first time, and also that Inspector Vérot succeeded, thanks to circumstances with which we are unacquainted, in discovering M. Fauville's projects."
"This we know," explained Don Luis, "because Inspector Vérot said so in his own agonizing words; because it was through him that we learned that the crime was to take place on the following night; and because he had set down his discoveries in a letter which was stolen from him.
"And Fauville knew it also, because, to get rid of the formidable enemy who was thwarting his designs, he poisoned him; because, when the poison was slow in acting, he had the audacity, under a disguise which made him look like Sauverand and which was one day to turn suspicion against Sauverand, he had the audacity and the presence of mind to follow Inspector Vérot to the Café du Pont-Neuf, to purloin the letter of explanation which Inspector Vérot wrote you, to substitute a blank sheet of paper for it, and then to ask a passer-by, who might become a witness against Sauverand, the way to the nearest underground station for Neuilly, where Sauverand lived! There's your man, Monsieur le Préfet."
Don Luis spoke with increasing force, with the ardour that springs from conviction; and his logical and closely argued speech seemed to conjure up the actual truth,
"There's your man, Monsieur le Préfet," he repeated. "There's your scoundrel. And the situation in which he found himself was such, the fear inspired by Inspector Vérot's possible revelations was such, that, before putting into execution the horrible deed which he had planned, he came to the police office to make sure that his victim was no longer alive and had not been able to denounce him.