Fantômas - Pierre Souvestre (books to read for self improvement TXT) 📗

that: he was subtle enough to abstract the compromising fragment and substitute another fragment for it—the one found on the body."

"Perhaps," said the President; "that is possible, but I repeat, Gurn was in prison at the time."

"True! True!" said Juve, throwing up his hands. "I am prepared to swear that it was Gurn who did the murder, but I cannot yet explain how he did it, since he was in solitary confinement in the Santé."

Silence fell upon the court; Juve refrained from saying anything more, but a sarcastic smile curled his lip.

"Have you anything else to say?" the President asked after a pause.

"Nothing: except that anything is possible to Fantômas."

The President turned to the prisoner.

"Gurn, have you anything to say, any confession to make? The jury will listen to you."

Gurn rose to his feet.

"I do not understand a word of what the detective has just been saying," he said.

The President looked at Juve again.

"You suggest that there shall be a supplementary investigation?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Solicitor-General, have you any application to make on that subject?" the President asked the Public Prosecutor.

"No," said the functionary. "The witness's allegations are altogether too vague."

"Very well. The Court will deliberate forthwith."

The judges gathered round the President of the Court, and held a short discussion. Then they returned to their places and the President announced their decision. It was that after consideration of the statement of the witness Juve, their opinion was that it rested merely upon hypotheses, and their decision was that there was no occasion for a supplementary enquiry.

And the President immediately called upon the Public Prosecutor to address the Court.

Neither in the lengthy address of that functionary, nor in the ensuing address of Maître Barberoux on behalf of the defendant, was the slightest allusion made to the fresh facts adduced by the detective. The theories he put forward were so unexpected and so utterly astonishing that nobody paid the least attention to them! Then the sitting was suspended while the jury considered their verdict. The judges retired and guards removed the prisoner, and Juve, who had accepted the dismissal of his application for a further enquiry with perfect equanimity, went up to the press-box and spoke to a young journalist sitting there.

"Shall we go out for a quarter of an hour, Fandor?" and when they were presently in the corridor, he smote the young fellow in a friendly way on the shoulder and enquired: "Well, my boy, what do you say to all that?"

Jérôme Fandor seemed to be overwhelmed.

"You accuse my father? You really accuse Etienne Rambert of being Gurn? Surely I am dreaming!"

"My dear young idiot," Juve growled, "do pray understand one thing: I am not accusing your father, your real father, but only the man who represented himself to be your father! Just think: if my contention is right—that the Etienne Rambert who killed the Marquise is Gurn—it is perfectly obvious that Gurn is not your father, for he is only thirty-five years of age! He has merely represented himself to be your father."

"Then who is my real father?"

"I don't know anything about that," said the detective. "That's a matter we will look into one of these fine days! You take it from me that we are only just at the beginning of all these things."

"But the Court has refused a supplementary enquiry."

"'Gad!" said Juve, "I quite expected it would! I have not got the proofs to satisfy the legal mind; and then, too, I had to hold my tongue about the most interesting fact that I knew."

"What was that?"

"Why, that you are not dead, Charles Rambert! I had to conceal that fact, my boy, for the melancholy reason that I am a poor man and depend on my job. If I had let out that I had known for a long time that Charles Rambert was alive when he was supposed to be dead, and that I had known him first as Jeanne and then as Paul, and yet had said nothing about it, I should have been dismissed from the service as sure as eggs are eggs—and it is equally certain that you would have been arrested; which is precisely what I do not wish to happen!"

In tense silence the foreman of the jury rose.

"In the presence of God and man, and upon my honour and my conscience, I declare that the answer of a majority of the jury is 'yes' to all the questions submitted to them."

Then he sat down: he had made no mention of extenuating circumstances.

The words of the fatal verdict fell like a knell in the silent Court of Assize, and many a face went white.

"Have you anything to say before sentence is passed?"

"Nothing," Gurn replied.

In rapid tones the President read the formal pronouncement of the Court. It seemed horribly long and unintelligible, but presently the President's voice became slower as it reached the fatal words: there was a second's pause, and then he reached the point:

"—the sentence on the prisoner Gurn is death."

And almost simultaneously he gave the order:

"Guards, take the condemned away!"

Juve, who had returned to court with Fandor, spoke to the young journalist.

"'Gad!" he exclaimed, "I know what pluck is. That man is a truly remarkable man: he never turned a hair!"

XXX. An Assignation

The final curtain had fallen upon the first performance of the new drama at the Grand Treteau.

The night had been one long triumph for Valgrand, and although it was very late the Baronne de Vibray, who plumed herself on being the great tragedian's dearest friend, had made her way behind the scenes to lavish praise and congratulations on him, and have a little triumph of her own in presenting her friends to the hero of the hour. In vain had Charlot, the old dresser, tried to prevent her invasion of his master's dressing-room. He was not proof against her perseverance, and ere long she had swept into the room with the proud smile of a general entering a conquered town. The Comte de Baral, a tall young man with a single eyeglass, followed close in her wake.

"Will you please announce us," he said to the dresser.

Charlot hesitated a moment in surprise, then broke into voluble explanations.

"M. Valgrand is not here yet. What, didn't you know? Why, at the end of the performance the Minister of Public Instruction sent for him to congratulate him! That's a tremendous honour, and it's the second time it has been paid to M. Valgrand."

Meanwhile the other two ladies in the party were roaming about the dressing-room: Mme. Simone Holbord, wife of a colonel of the Marines who had just covered himself with distinction in the Congo, and the Comtesse Marcelline de Baral.

"How thrilling an actor's dressing-room is!" exclaimed Mme. Holbord, inspecting everything in the room through her glass. "Just look at these darling little brushes! I suppose he uses those in making up? And, oh, my dear! There are actually three kinds of rouge!"

The Comtesse de Baral was fascinated by the photographs adorning the walls.

"'To the admirable Valgrand from a comrade,'" she read in awe-struck tones. "Come and look, dear, it is signed by Sarah Bernhardt! And listen to this one: 'At Buenos Ayres, at Melbourne, and New York, wherever I am I hear the praises of my friend Valgrand!'"

"Something like a globe-trotter!" said Mme. Holbord. "I expect he belongs to the Comédie Française."

Colonel Holbord interrupted, calling to his wife.

"Simone, come and listen to what our friend de Baral is telling me: it is really very curious."

The young woman approached, and the Comte began again for her benefit.

"You have come back too recently from the Congo to be up to date with all our Paris happenings, and so you will not have noticed this little touch, but in the part that he created to-night Valgrand made himself up exactly like Gurn, the man who murdered Lord Beltham!"

"Gurn?" said Mme. Holbord, to whom the name did not convey much. "Oh, yes, I think I read about that: the murderer escaped, didn't he?"

"Well, they took a long time to find him," the Comte de Baral replied. "As usual, the police were giving up all hope of finding him, when one day, or rather one night, they did find him and arrested him; and where do you suppose that was? Why, with Lady Beltham! Yes, really: in her own house at Neuilly!"

"Impossible!" cried Simone Holbord. "Poor woman! What an awful shock for her!"

"Lady Beltham is a brave, dignified, and truly charitable woman," said the Comtesse de Baral. "She simply worshipped her husband. And yet, she pleaded warmly for mercy for the murderer—though she did not succeed in getting it."

"What a dreadful thing!" said Simone Holbord perfunctorily; her attention was wandering to all the other attractions in this attractive room. A pile of letters was lying on a writing-table, and the reckless young woman began to look at the envelopes. "Just look at this pile of letters!" she cried. "How funny! Every one of them in a woman's hand! I suppose Valgrand gets all sorts of offers?"

Colonel Holbord went on talking to the Comte de Baral in a corner of the room.

"I am enormously interested in what you tell me. What happened then?"

"Well, this wretch, Gurn, was recognised by the police as he was leaving Lady Beltham's, and was arrested and put in prison. The trial came on at the Court of Assize about six weeks ago. All Paris went to it, of course including myself! This man Gurn is a brute, but a strange brute, rather difficult to define; he swore that he had killed Lord Beltham after a quarrel, practically for the sake of robbing him, but I had a strong impression that he was lying."

"But why else should he have committed the murder?"

The Comte de Baral shrugged his shoulders.

"Nobody knows," he said: "politics, perhaps, nihilism, or perhaps again—love. There was one fact, or coincidence, worth noting: when Lady Beltham came home from the Transvaal after the war, during which, by the way, she did splendid work among the sick and wounded, she sailed by the same boat that was taking Gurn to England. Gurn also was a bit of a popular hero just then: he had volunteered at the beginning of the war, and came back with a sergeant's stripes and a medal for distinguished conduct. Can Gurn and Lady Beltham have met and got to know each other? It is certain that the lady's behaviour during the trial lent itself to comment, if not exactly to scandal. She had odd collapses in the presence of the murderer, collapses which were accounted for in very various ways. Some people said that she was half out of her mind with grief at the loss of her husband; others said that if she was mad, it was over someone, over this vulgar criminal—martyr or accomplice, perhaps. They even went so far as to allege that Lady Beltham had an intrigue with Gurn!"

"Come! come!" the Colonel protested: "a great lady like Lady Beltham, so religious and so austere? Absurd!"

"People say all sorts of things," said the Comte de Baral vaguely. He turned to another subject. "Anyhow, the case caused a tremendous sensation; Gurn's condemnation to death was very popular, and the case was so typically Parisian that our friend Valgrand, knowing that he was going to create the part of the murderer in this tragedy to-night, followed every phase of the Gurn trial closely, studied the man in detail, and literally identified himself with him in this character. It was a shrewd idea. You noticed the sensation when he came on the stage?"

"Yes, I did," said the Colonel; "I wondered what the exclamations from all over the house meant."

"Try to find a portrait of Gurn in some one of the illustrated papers," said the Comte, "and compare it with—— Ah, I think this is Valgrand coming!"

The Baronne de Vibray had tired of her conversation with the old