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

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. Everyone 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.”

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