The Teeth of the Tiger by Maurice Leblanc (great novels to read txt) 📗

himself. "It doesn't do to entrust a job to people who do not suspect its importance."

His investigations led to the discovery of some traces of footsteps on the gravel, traces not sufficiently plain to enable him to distinguish the shape of the shoes that had left them, yet distinct enough to confirm his supposition. The scoundrels had been that way.

Suddenly he gave a movement of delight. Against the border of the path, among the leaves of a little clump of rhododendrons, he saw something red, the shape of which at once struck him. He stooped. It was an apple, the fourth apple, the one whose absence from the fruit dish he had noticed.

"Excellent!" he said. "Hippolyte Fauville did not eat it. One of them must have carried it away—a fit of appetite, a sudden hunger—and it must have rolled from his hand without his having time to look for it and pick it up."

He took up the fruit and examined it.

"What!" he exclaimed, with a start. "Can it be possible?"

He stood dumfounded, a prey to real excitement, refusing to admit the inadmissible thing which nevertheless presented itself to his eyes with the direct evidence of actuality. Some one had bitten into the apple; into the apple which was too sour to eat. And the teeth had left their mark!

"Is it possible?" repeated Don Luis. "Is it possible that one of them can have been guilty of such an imprudence! The apple must have fallen without his knowing … or he must have been unable to find it in the dark."

He could not get over his surprise. He cast about for plausible explanations. But the fact was there before him. Two rows of teeth, cutting through the thin red peel, had left their regular, semicircular bite clearly in the pulp of the fruit. They were clearly marked on the top, while the lower row had melted into a single curved line.

"The teeth of the tiger!" murmured Perenna, who could not remove his eyes from that double imprint. "The teeth of the tiger! The teeth that had already left their mark on Inspector Vérot's piece of chocolate! What a coincidence! It can hardly be fortuitous. Must we not take it as certain that the same person bit into this apple and into that cake of chocolate which Inspector Vérot brought to the police office as an incontestable piece of evidence?"

He hesitated a second. Should he keep this evidence for himself, for the personal inquiry which he meant to conduct? Or should he surrender it to the investigations of the police? But the touch of the object filled him with such repugnance, with such a sense of physical discomfort, that he flung away the apple and sent it rolling under the leaves of the shrubs.

And he repeated to himself:

"The teeth of the tiger! The teeth of the wild beast!"

He locked the garden door behind him, bolted it, put back the keys on the table and said to Mazeroux:

"Have you spoken to the Chief of Police?"

"Yes."

"Is he coming?"

"Yes."

"Didn't he order you to telephone for the commissary of police?"

"No."

"That means that he wants to see everything by himself. So much the better. But the detective office? The public prosecutor?"

"He's told them."

"What's the matter with you, Alexandre? I have to drag your answers out of you. Well, what is it? You're looking at me very queerly. What's up?"

"Nothing."

"That's all right. I expect this business has turned your head. And no wonder…. The Prefect won't enjoy himself, either, … especially as he put his faith in me a bit light-heartedly and will be called upon to give an explanation of my presence here. By the way, it's much better that you should take upon yourself the responsibility for all that we have done. Don't you agree? Besides, it'll do you all the good in the world.

"Put yourself forward, flatly; suppress me as much as you can; and, above all—I don't suppose that you will have any objection to this little detail—don't be such a fool as to say that you went to sleep for a single second, last night, in the passage. First of all, you'd only be blamed for it. And then … well, that's understood, eh? So we have only to say good-bye.

"If the Prefect wants me, as I expect he will, telephone to my address,
Place du Palais-Bourbon. I shall be there. Good-bye. It is not necessary
for me to assist at the inquiry; my presence would be out of place.
Good-bye, old chap."

He turned toward the door of the passage.

"Half a moment!" cried Mazeroux.

"Half a moment?… What do you mean?"

The detective sergeant had flung himself between him and the door and was blocking his way.

"Yes, half a moment … I am not of your opinion. It's far better that you should wait until the Prefect comes."

"But I don't care a hang about your opinion!"

"May be; but you shan't pass."

"What! Why, Alexandre, you must be ill!"

"Look here, Chief," said Mazeroux feebly. "What can it matter to you?
It's only natural that the Prefect should wish to speak to you."

"Ah, it's the Prefect who wishes, is it?… Well, my lad, you can tell him that I am not at his orders, that I am at nobody's orders, and that, if the President of the Republic, if Napoleon I himself were to bar my way … Besides, rats! Enough said. Get out of the road!"

"You shall not pass!" declared Mazeroux, in a resolute tone, extending his arms.

"Well, I like that!"

"You shall not pass."

"Alexandre, just count ten."

"A hundred, if you like, but you shall not…."

"Oh, blow your catchwords! Get out of this."

He seized Mazeroux by both shoulders, made him spin round on his heels and, with a push, sent him floundering over the sofa. Then he opened the door.

"Halt, or I fire!"

It was Mazeroux, who had scrambled to his feet and now stood with his revolver in his hand and a determined expression on his face.

Don Luis stopped in amazement. The threat was absolutely indifferent to him, and the barrel of that revolver aimed at him left him as cold as could be. But by what prodigy did Mazeroux, his former accomplice, his ardent disciple, his devoted servant, by what prodigy did Mazeroux dare to act as he was doing?

Perenna went up to him and pressed gently on the detective's outstretched arm.

"Prefect's orders?" he asked.

"Yes," muttered the sergeant, uncomfortably.

"Orders to keep me here until he comes?"

"Yes."

"And if I betrayed an intention of leaving, to prevent me?"

"Yes."

"By every means?"

"Yes."

"Even by putting a bullet through my skin?"

"Yes."

Perenna reflected; and then, in a serious voice:

"Would you have fired, Mazeroux?"

The sergeant lowered his head and said faintly:

"Yes, Chief."

Perenna looked at him without anger, with a glance of affectionate sympathy; and it was an absorbing sight for him to see his former companion dominated by such a sense of discipline and duty. Nothing was able to prevail against that sense, not even the fierce admiration, the almost animal attachment which Mazeroux retained for his master.

"I'm not angry, Mazeroux. In fact, I approve. Only you must tell me the reason why the Prefect of Police—"

The detective did not reply, but his eyes wore an expression of such sadness that Don Luis started, suddenly understanding.

"No," he cried, "no!… It's absurd … he can't have thought that!… And you, Mazeroux, do you believe me guilty?"

"Oh, I, Chief, am as sure of you as I am of myself!… You don't take life!… But, all the same, there are things … coincidences—"

"Things … coincidences …" repeated Don Luis slowly.

He remained pensive; and, in a low voice, he said:

"Yes, after all, there's truth in what you say…. Yes, it all fits in…. Why didn't I think of it?… My relations with Cosmo Mornington, my arrival in Paris in time for the reading of the will, my insisting on spending the night here, the fact that the death of the two Fauvilles undoubtedly gives me the millions…. And then … and then … why, he's absolutely right, your Prefect of Police!… All the more so as…. Well, there, I'm a goner!"

"Come, come, Chief!"

"A dead-goner, old chap; you just get that into your head. Not as Arsène Lupin, ex-burglar, ex-convict, ex-anything you please—I'm unattackable on that ground—but as Don Luis Perenna, respectable man, residuary legatee, and the rest of it. And it's too stupid! For, after all, who will find the murderers of Cosmo, Vérot, and the two Fauvilles, if they go clapping me into jail?"

"Come, come, Chief—"

"Shut up! … Listen!"

A motor car was stopping on the boulevard, followed by another. It was evidently the Prefect and the magistrates from the public prosecutor's office.

Don Luis took Mazeroux by the arm.

"There's only one way out of it, Alexandre! Don't say you went to sleep."

"I must, Chief."

"You silly ass!" growled Don Luis. "How is it possible to be such an ass!
It's enough to disgust one with honesty. What am I to do, then?"

"Discover the culprit, Chief."

"What! … What are you talking about?"

Mazeroux, in his turn, took him by the arm and, clutching him with a sort of despair, said, in a voice choked with tears:

"Discover the culprit, Chief. If not, you're done for … that's certain … the Prefect told me so. … The police want a culprit … they want him this evening…. One has got to be found…. It's up to you to find him."

"What you have, Alexandre, is a merry wit."

"It's child's play for you, Chief. You have only to set your mind to it."

"But there's not the least clue, you ass!"

"You'll find one … you must … I entreat you, hand them over somebody…. It would be more than I could bear if you were arrested. You, the chief, accused of murder! No, no…. I entreat you, discover the criminal and hand him over…. You have the whole day to do it in…and Lupin has done greater things than that!"

He was stammering, weeping, wringing his hands, grimacing with every feature of his comic face. And it was really touching, this grief, this dismay at the approach of the danger that threatened his master.

M. Desmalions's voice was heard in the hall, through the curtain that closed the passage. A third motor car stopped on the boulevard, and a fourth, both doubtless laden with policemen.

The house was surrounded, besieged.

Perenna was silent.

Beside him, anxious-faced, Mazeroux seemed to be imploring him.

A few seconds elapsed.

Then Perenna declared, deliberately:

"Looking at things all round, Alexandre, I admit that you have seen the position clearly and that your fears are fully justified. If I do not manage to hand over the murderer or murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son to the police in a few hours from now, it is I, Don Luis Perenna, who will be lodged in durance vile on the evening of this Thursday, the first of April."

CHAPTER FOUR THE CLOUDED TURQUOISE

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the Prefect of Police entered the study in which the incomprehensible tragedy of that double murder had been enacted.

He did not even bow to Don Luis; and the magistrates who accompanied him might have thought that Don Luis was merely an assistant of Sergeant Mazeroux, if the chief detective had not made it his business to tell them, in a few words, the part played by the stranger.

M. Desmalions briefly examined the two corpses and received a rapid explanation from Mazeroux. Then, returning to the hall, he went up to a drawing-room on the first floor, where Mme. Fauville, who had been informed of his visit, joined him almost at once.

Perenna, who had not stirred from the passage, slipped into the hall himself. The servants of the house, who by this time had heard of the murder, were crossing it in every direction. He went down the few stairs leading to a ground-floor landing, on which the front door opened.

There were two men there, of whom one said:

"You can't pass."

"But—"

"You can't pass: those are our orders."

"Your orders? Who gave them?"

"The Prefect himself."

"No luck," said Perenna, laughing. "I have been up all night and I