The Teeth of the Tiger - Maurice Leblanc (feel good books txt) 📗

would appear, those mysterious letters prophesied on the list which he had found in the eighth volume of Shakespeare’s plays?

He looked at her steadily. She did not flinch. He answered:

“Yes, this is the night. I shall be there. Nothing in the world will prevent me.”

She was on the point of replying, but once more controlled her feelings.

That day Don Luis was on his guard. He lunched and dined out and arranged with Mazeroux to have the Place du Palais-Bourbon watched.

Mlle. Levasseur did not leave the house during the afternoon. In the evening Don Luis ordered Mazeroux’s men to follow anyone who might go out at that time.

At ten o’clock the sergeant joined Don Luis in Hippolyte Fauville’s workroom. Deputy Chief Detective Weber and two plainclothesmen were with him.

Don Luis took Mazeroux aside:

“They distrust me. Own up to it.”

“No. As long as M. Desmalions is there, they can do nothing against you. Only, M. Weber maintains⁠—and he is not the only one⁠—that you fake up all these occurrences yourself.”

“With what object?”

“With the object of furnishing proof against Marie Fauville and getting her condemned. So I asked for the attendance of the deputy chief and two men. There will be four of us to bear witness to your honesty.”

They all took up their posts. Two detectives were to sit up in turns.

This time, after making a minute search of the little room in which Fauville’s son used to sleep, they locked and bolted the doors and shutters. At eleven o’clock they switched off the electric chandelier.

Don Luis and Weber hardly slept at all.

The night passed without incident of any kind.

But, at seven o’clock, when the shutters were opened, they saw that there was a letter on the table. Just as on the last occasion, there was a letter on the table!

When the first moment of stupefaction was over, the deputy chief took the letter. His orders were not to read it and not to let anyone else read it.

Here is the letter, published by the newspapers, which also published the declarations of the experts certifying that the handwriting was Hippolyte Fauville’s:

“I have seen him! You understand, don’t you, my dear friend? I have seen him! He was walking along a path in the Bois, with his coat collar turned up and his hat pulled over his ears. I don’t think that he saw me. It was almost dark. But I knew him at once. I knew the silver handle of his ebony stick. It was he beyond a doubt, the scoundrel!

“So he is in Paris, in spite of his promise. Gaston Sauverand is in Paris! Do you understand the terrible significance of that fact? If he is in Paris, it means that he intends to act. If he is in Paris, it means certain death to me. Oh, the harm which I shall have suffered at that man’s hands! He has already robbed me of my happiness; and now he wants my life. I am terrified.”

So Fauville knew that the man with the ebony walking-stick, that Gaston Sauverand, was designing to kill him. Fauville declared it most positively, by evidence written in his own hand; and the letter, moreover, corroborating the words that had escaped Gaston Sauverand at his arrest, showed that the two men had at one time had relations with each other, that they were no longer friends, and that Gaston Sauverand had promised never to come to Paris.

A little light was therefore being shed on the darkness of the Mornington case. But, on the other hand, how inconceivable was the mystery of that letter found on the table in the workroom!

Five men had kept watch, five of the smartest men obtainable; and yet, on that night, as on the night of the fifteenth of April, an unknown hand had delivered the letter in a room with barricaded doors and windows, without their hearing a sound or discovering any signs that the fastenings of the doors or windows had been tampered with.

The theory of a secret outlet was at once raised, but had to be abandoned after a careful examination of the walls and after an interview with the contractor who had built the house, from Fauville’s own plans, some years ago.

It is unnecessary once more to recall what I may describe as the flurry of the public. The deed, in the circumstances, assumed the appearance of a sleight-of-hand trick. People felt tempted to look upon it as the recreation of some wonderfully skilful conjurer rather than as the act of a person employing unknown methods.

Nevertheless, Don Luis Perenna’s intelligence was justified at all points, for the expected incident had taken place on the twenty-fifth of April, as on the fifteenth. Would the series be continued on the fifth of May? No one doubted it, because Don Luis had said so and because everybody felt that Don Luis could not be mistaken. All through the night of the fifth of May there was a crowd on the Boulevard Suchet; and quidnuncs and night birds of every kind came trooping up to hear the latest news.

The Prefect of Police, greatly impressed by the first two miracles, had determined to see the next one for himself, and was present in person on the third night.

He came accompanied by several inspectors, whom he left in the garden, in the passage, and in the attic on the upper story. He himself took up his post on the ground floor with Weber, Mazeroux, and Don Luis Perenna.

Their expectations were disappointed; and this was M. Desmalions’s fault. In spite of the express opinion of Don Luis, who deprecated the experiment as useless, the Prefect had decided not to turn off the electric light, so that he might see if the light would prevent the miracle. Under these conditions no letter could appear, and no letter did appear. The miracle, whether a conjuring trick or a criminal’s device, needed the kindly aid of the darkness.

There were therefore ten days lost, always presuming that the diabolical postman would