The Crystal Stopper by Maurice Leblanc (good book club books .txt) 📗

killed her, perhaps without knowing what he was doing. But there was no evidence of all this; and Daubrecq was not even molested.”

“And what became of him next?”

“For some years we heard nothing of him. We knew only that he had lost all his money gambling and that he was travelling in America. And, in spite of myself, I forgot his anger and his threats and was only too ready to believe that he had ceased to love me and no longer harboured his schemes of revenge. Besides, I was so happy that I did not care to think of anything but my happiness, my love, my husband’s political career, the health of my son Antoine.”

“Antoine?”

“Yes, Antoine is Gilbert’s real name. The unhappy boy has at least succeeded in concealing his identity.”

Lupin asked, with some hesitation:

“At what period did... Gilbert... begin?”

“I cannot tell you exactly. Gilbert—I prefer to call him that and not to pronounce his real name—Gilbert, as a child, was what he is to-day: lovable, liked by everybody, charming, but lazy and unruly. When he was fifteen, we put him to a boarding-school in one of the suburbs, with the deliberate object of not having him too much at home. After two years’ time he was expelled from school and sent back to us.”

“Why?”

“Because of his conduct. The masters had discovered that he used to slip out at night and also that he would disappear for weeks at a time, while pretending to be at home with us.”

“What used he to do?”

“Amuse himself backing horses, spending his time in cafes and public dancing-rooms.”

“Then he had money?”

“Yes.”

“Who gave it him?”

“His evil genius, the man who, secretly, unknown to his parents, enticed him away from school, the man who led him astray, who corrupted him, who took him from us, who taught him to lie, to waste his substance and to steal.”

“Daubrecq?”

“Daubrecq.”

Clarisse Mergy put her hands together to hide the blushes on her forehead. She continued, in her tired voice:

“Daubrecq had taken his revenge. On the day after my husband turned our unhappy child out of the house, Daubrecq sent us a most cynical letter in which he revealed the odious part which he had played and the machinations by which he had succeeded in depraving our son. And he went on to say, ‘The reformatory, one of these days... Later on, the assize-court ... And then, let us hope and trust, the scaffold!’”

Lupin exclaimed:

“What! Did Daubrecq plot the present business?”

“No, no, that is only an accident. The hateful prophecy was just a wish which he expressed. But oh, how it terrified me! I was ailing at the time; my other son, my little Jacques, had just been born. And every day we heard of some fresh misdeed of Gilbert’s—forgeries, swindles—so much so that we spread the news, in our immediate surroundings, of his departure for abroad, followed by his death. Life was a misery; and it became still more so when the political storm burst in which my husband was to meet his death.”

“What do you mean?”

“A word will be enough: my husband’s name was on the list of the Twenty-seven.”

“Ah!”

The veil was suddenly lifted from Lupin’s eyes and he saw, as in a flash of lightning, a whole legion of things which, until then, had been hidden in the darkness.

Clarisse Mergy continued, in a firmer voice:

“Yes, his name was on it, but by mistake, by a piece of incredible ill-luck of which he was the victim. It is true that Victorien Mergy was a member of the committee appointed to consider the question of the Two-Seas Canal. It is true that he voted with the members who were in favour of the company’s scheme. He was even paid—yes, I tell you so plainly and I will mention the sum—he was paid fifteen thousand francs. But he was paid on behalf of another, of one of his political friends, a man in whom he had absolute confidence and of whom he was the blind, unconscious tool. He thought he was showing his friend a kindness; and it proved his own undoing. It was not until the day after the suicide of the chairman of the company and the disappearance of the secretary, the day on which the affair of the canal was published in the papers, with its whole series of swindles and abominations, that my husband knew that a number of his fellow-members had been bribed and learnt that the mysterious list, of which people suddenly began to speak, mentioned his name with theirs and with the names of other deputies, leaders of parties and influential politicians. Oh, what awful days those were! Would the list be published? Would his name come out? The torture of it! You remember the mad excitement in the Chamber, the atmosphere of terror and denunciation that prevailed. Who owned the list? Nobody could say. It was known to be in existence and that was all. Two names were sacrificed to public odium. Two men were swept away by the storm. And it remained unknown where the denunciation came from and in whose hands the incriminating documents were.”

“Daubrecq,” suggested Lupin.

“No, no!” cried Madame Mergy. “Daubrecq was nothing at that time: he had not yet appeared upon the scene. No, don’t you remember, the truth came out suddenly through the very man who was keeping it back: Germineaux, the ex-minister of justice, a cousin of the chairman of the Canal Company. As he lay dying of consumption, he wrote from his sick-bed to the prefect of police, bequeathing him that list of names, which, he said, would be found, after his death, in an iron chest in the corner of his room. The house was surrounded by police and the prefect took up his quarters by the sick man’s bedside. Germineaux died. The chest was opened and found to be empty.”

“Daubrecq, this time,” Lupin declared.

“Yes, Daubrecq,” said Madame Mergy, whose excitement was momentarily increasing. “Alexis Daubrecq, who, for six months, disguised beyond recognition, had acted as Germineaux’s secretary. It does not matter how he discovered that Germineaux was the possessor of the paper in question. The fact remains that he broke open the chest on the night before the death. So much was proved at the inquiry; and Daubrecq’s identity was established.”

“But he was not arrested?”

“What would have been the use? They knew well enough that he must have deposited the list in a place of safety. His arrest would have involved a scandal, the reopening of the whole case...”

“So...”

“So they