Fantômas - Pierre Souvestre (books to read for self improvement TXT) 📗
- Author: Pierre Souvestre
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M. de Presles shrugged his shoulders as the detective pronounced this half-mythical name.
"Upon my word, M. Juve, I should never have expected you to invoke Fantômas! Why, Fantômas is the too obvious subterfuge, the cheapest device for investing a case with mock honours. Between you and me, you know perfectly well that Fantômas is merely a legal fiction—a lawyers' joke. Fantômas has no existence in fact!"
Juve stopped in his stride. He paused a moment before replying; then spoke in a restrained voice, but with an emphasis on his words that always marked him when he spoke in all seriousness.
"You are wrong to laugh, sir; very wrong. You are a magistrate and I am only a humble detective inspector, but you have three or four years' experience, perhaps less, while I have fifteen years' work behind me. I know that Fantômas does exist, and I do anything but laugh when I suspect his intervention in a case."
M. de Presles could hardly conceal his surprise, and Juve went on:
"No one has ever said of me, sir, that I was a coward. I have looked death in the eyes; I have often hunted and arrested criminals who would not have had the least hesitation in doing away with me. There are whole gangs of rascals who have vowed my death. All manner of horrible revenges threaten me to-day. For all that I have the most complete indifference! But when people talk to me of Fantômas, when I fancy that I can detect the intervention of that genius of crime in any case, then, M. de Presles, I am in a funk! I tell you frankly I am in a funk. I am frightened, because Fantômas is a being against whom it is idle to use ordinary weapons; because he has been able to hide his identity and elude all pursuit for years; because his daring is boundless and his power unmeasurable; because he is everywhere and nowhere at once and, if he has had a hand in this affair, I am not even sure that he is not listening to me now! And finally, M. de Presles, because every one whom I have known to attack Fantômas, my friends, my colleagues, my superior officers, have one and all, one and all, sir, been beaten in the fight! Fantômas does exist, I know, but who is he? A man can brave a danger he can measure, but he trembles when confronted with a peril he suspects but cannot see."
"But this Fantômas is not a devil," the magistrate broke in testily; "he is a man like you and me!"
"You are right, sir, in saying he is a man; but I repeat, the man is a genius! I don't know whether he works alone or whether he is the head of a gang of criminals; I know nothing of his life; I know nothing of his object. In no single case yet has it been possible to determine the exact part he has taken. He seems to possess the extraordinary gift of being able to slay and leave no trace. You don't see him; you divine his presence: you don't hear him; you have a presentiment of him. If Fantômas is mixed up in this present affair, I don't know if we ever shall succeed in clearing it up!"
M. de Presles was impressed in spite of himself by the detective's earnestness.
"But I suppose you are not recommending me to drop the enquiry, are you, Juve?"
The detective forced a laugh that did not ring quite true.
"Come, come, sir," he answered, "I told you just now that I was frightened, but I never said I was a coward. You may be quite sure I shall do my duty, to the very end. When I first began—and that was not yesterday, nor yet the day before—to realise the importance and the power of this Fantômas, I took an oath, sir, that some day I would discover his identity and effect his arrest! Fantômas is an enemy of society, you say? I prefer to regard him first and foremost as my own personal enemy! I have declared war on him, and I am ready to lose my skin in the war if necessary, but by God I'll have his!"
Juve ceased. M. de Presles also was silent. But the magistrate was still sceptical, despite the detective's strange utterance, and presently he could not refrain from making a gentle protest and appeal.
"Do please bring in a verdict against someone, M. Juve, for really I would rather believe that your Fantômas is—a creation of the imagination!"
Juve shrugged his shoulders, seemed to be arriving at a mighty decision, and began:
"You are quite right, sir, to require me to draw some definite conclusion, even if you are not right in denying the existence of Fantômas. So I make the assertion that the murderer is——"
The sound of hurrying steps behind them made both men turn round. A postman, hot and perspiring, was hurrying to the château; he had a telegram in his hand.
"Does either of you gentlemen know M. Juve?" he asked.
"My name is Juve," said the detective, and he took the telegram and tore the envelope open. He glanced through it and then handed it to the magistrate.
"Please read that, sir," he said.
The telegram was from the Criminal Investigation Department, and ran as follows:
"Return immediately to Paris. Are convinced that extraordinary crime lies behind disappearance of Lord Beltham. Privately, suspect Fantômas' work."
VII. The Criminal Investigation Department"Does M. Gurn live here, please?"
Mme. Doulenques, the concierge at No. 147 rue Lévert, looked at the enquirer and saw a tall, dark man with a heavy moustache, wearing a soft hat and a tightly buttoned overcoat, the collar of which was turned up to his ears.
"M. Gurn is away, sir," she answered; "he has been away for some little time."
"I know," said the stranger, "but still I want to go up to his rooms if you will kindly go with me."
"You want——" the concierge began in surprise and doubt. "Oh, I know; of course you are the man from the what's-its-name company, come for his luggage? Wait a bit; what is the name of that company? Something funny—an English name, I fancy."
The woman left the door, which she had been holding just ajar, and went to the back of her lodge; she looked through the pigeon-holes where she kept the tenants' letters ready sorted, and picked out a soiled printed circular addressed to M. Gurn. She was busy putting on her spectacles when the stranger drew near and from over her shoulder got a glimpse of the name for which she was looking. He drew back again noiselessly, and said quietly:
"I have come from the South Steamship Company."
"Yes, that's it," said the concierge, laboriously spelling out the words: "the South—what you said. I can never pronounce those names. Rue d'Hauteville, isn't it?"
"That's it," replied the man in the soft hat in pleasant, measured tones.
"Well, it's very plain that you don't bustle much in your place," the concierge remarked. "I've been expecting you to come for M. Gurn's things for nearly three weeks; he told me you would come a few days after he had gone. However, that's your business."
Mme. Doulenques cast a mechanical glance through the window that looked on to the street, and then surveyed the stranger from top to toe; he seemed to be much too well dressed to be a mere porter.
"But you haven't got any handcart or truck," she exclaimed. "You're not thinking of carrying the trunks on your shoulder, are you? Why, there are at least three or four of them—and heavy!"
The stranger paused before answering, as though he found it necessary to weigh each word.
"As a matter of fact I merely wanted to get an idea of the size of the luggage," he said quietly. "Will you show me the things?"
"If I must, I must," said the concierge with a heavy sigh. "Come up with me: it's the fifth floor," and as she climbed the stairs she grumbled: "It's a pity you didn't come when I was doing my work: I shouldn't have had to climb a hundred stairs a second time then; it counts up at the end of the day, and I'm not so young as I was."
The stranger followed her up the stairs, murmuring monosyllabic sympathy, and regulating his pace by hers. Arrived at the fifth floor, the concierge drew a key from her pocket and opened the door of the flat.
It was a small modest place, but quite prettily decorated. The door on the landing opened into a tiny sort of anteroom, from which one passed into a front room furnished with little but a round table and a few arm-chairs. Beyond this was a bedroom, almost filled by the large bed, which was the first thing one saw on entering, and on the right there was yet another room, probably a little office. Both the first room, which was a kind of general living room, and the bedroom had wide windows overlooking gardens as far as one could see. An advantage of the flat was that it had nothing opposite, so that the occupant could move about with the windows open if he liked, and yet have nothing to fear from the inquisitiveness of neighbours.
The rooms had been shut up for several days, since the tenant had gone away indeed, and there was a stuffy smell about them, mingled with a strong smell of chemicals.
"I must air the place," the concierge muttered, "or else M. Gurn won't be pleased when he comes back. He always says he is too hot and can't breathe in Paris."
"So he does not live here regularly?" said the stranger, scanning the place curiously as he spoke.
"Oh, no, sir," the concierge answered. "M. Gurn is a kind of commercial traveller and is often away, sometimes for a month or six weeks together," and the gossiping woman was beginning a long and incoherent story when the stranger interrupted her, pointing to a silver-framed photograph of a young woman he had noticed on the mantelpiece.
"Is that Mme. Gurn?"
"M. Gurn is a bachelor," Mme. Doulenques replied. "I can't fancy him married, with his roaming kind of life."
"Just a little friend of his, eh?" said the man in the soft hat, with a wink and a meaning smile.
"Oh, no," said the concierge, shaking her head. "That photograph is not a bit like her."
"So you know her, then?"
"I do and I don't. That's to say, when M. Gurn is in Paris, he often has visits from a lady in the afternoon: a very fashionable lady, I can tell you, not the sort that one often sees in this quarter. Why, the woman who comes is a society lady, I am sure: she always has her veil down and passes by my lodge ever so fast, and never has any conversation with me; free with her money, too: it's very seldom she does not give me something when she comes."
The stranger seemed to find the concierge's communications very interesting, but they did not interrupt his mental inventory of the room.
"In other words, your tenant does not keep too sharp an eye on his money?" he suggested.
"No, indeed: the rent is always paid in advance, and sometimes M. Gurn even pays two terms in advance because he says he never can tell if his business won't be keeping him away when the rent falls due."
Just then a deep voice called up the staircase:
"Concierge: M. Gurn: have you any one of that name in the house?"
"Come up to the fifth floor," the concierge called back to the man. "I am in his rooms now," and she went back into the flat. "Here's somebody else for M. Gurn," she exclaimed.
"Does
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