The Clique of Gold, Emile Gaboriau [if you liked this book .txt] 📗

letters could never reach Count Ville-Handry. It sounded like an intense, irresistible passion, escaping from the control of the owner, and breaking forth terribly, like a long smouldering fire. Of Henrietta she said but little,—enough, however, to terrify Daniel, if he had not known the truth.

“That unfortunate, wayward girl,” she wrote, “has just caused her aged father such cruel and unexpected grief, that he was on the brink of the grave. Weary of the control which her indiscretions rendered indispensable, she has fled, we know not with whom; and all our efforts to find her have so far been unsuccessful.”

On the other hand, M. de Brevan wrote, “Deaf to my counsel and prayers even, Miss Ville-Handry has carried out the project of leaving her paternal home. Suspected of having favored her escape, I have been called out by Sir Thorn, and had to fight a duel with him. A paper which I enclose will give you the details of our meeting, and tell you that I was lucky enough to wound that gentleman of little honor, but of great skill with the pistol.

“Alas! my poor, excellent Daniel, why should I be compelled by the duties of friendship to confess to you that it was not for the purpose of remaining faithful to you, that Miss Henrietta was so anxious to be free? Do not desire to return, my poor friend! You would suffer too much in finding her whom you have loved so dearly unworthy of an honest man, unworthy of you. Believe me, I did all I could to prevent her irregularities, which now have become public. I only drew her hatred upon me, and I should not be surprised if she did all she could to make us all cut our throats.”

This impudence was bold enough to confound anybody’s mind, and to make one doubt one’s own good sense. Still he found the newspaper, which had been sent to him with the letter, and in it the account of the duel between M. de Brevan and M. Thomas Elgin. What did that signify? He once more read over, more attentively than at first, the letters of Maxime and the Countess Sarah; and, by comparing them with each other, he thought he noticed in them some traces of a beginning disagreement.

“It may be that there is discord among my enemies,” he said to himself, “and that they do no longer agree, now that, in their view, the moment approaches when they are to divide the proceeds of their crimes. Or did they never agree, and am I the victim of a double plot? Or is the whole merely a comedy for the purpose of deceiving me, and keeping me here, until the murderer has done his work?”

He was not allowed to torture his mind long with efforts to seek the solution of this riddle. The old doctor came back with the lawyer, and for more than half an hour he had to answer an avalanche of questions. But the investigation had been carried on with such rare sagacity, that Daniel could furnish the prosecution only a single new fact,—the surrender of his entire fortune into the hands of M. de Brevan.

And even this fact must needs, on account of its extreme improbability, remain untold in an investigation which was based upon logic alone. Daniel very naturally, somewhat ashamed of his imprudence, tried to excuse himself; and, when he had concluded his explanations, the lawyer said,—

“Now, one more question: would you recognize the man who attempted to drown you in the Dong-Nai in a boat which he had offered to you, and which he upset evidently on purpose?”

“No, sir.”

“Ah! that is a pity. That man was Crochard, I am sure; but he will deny it; and the prosecution will have nothing but probabilities to oppose to his denial, unless I can find the place where he changed his clothes.”

“Excuse me, there is a way to ascertain his identity.”

“How?”

“The voice of the wretch is so deeply engraven on my mind, that even at this moment, while I am speaking to you, I think I can hear it in my ear; and I would recognize it among a thousand.”

The lawyer made no reply, weighing, no doubt, in his mind the chances of a confrontation. Then he made up his mind, and said,—

“It is worth trying.”

And handing his clerk, who had been a silent witness of this scene, an order to have the accused brought to the hospital, he said,—

“Take this to the jail, and let them make haste.”

It was a month now since Crochard had been arrested; and his imprisonment, so far from discouraging him, had raised his spirits. At first, his arrest and the examination had frightened him; but, as the days went by, he recovered his insolence.

“They are evidently looking for evidence,” he said; “but, as they cannot find any, they will have to let me go.”

He looked, therefore, as self-assured as ever when he came into Daniel’s room, and exclaimed, while still in the door, with an air of intolerable arrogance,—

“Well? I ask for justice; I am tired of jail. If I am guilty, let them cut my throat; if I am innocent”—

But Daniel did not let him finish.

“That is the man!” he exclaimed; “I am ready to swear to it, that is the man!”

Great as was the impudence of Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, he was astonished, and looked with rapid, restless eyes at the chief surgeon, at the magistrate, and last at Lefloch, who stood immovable at the foot of the bed of his lieutenant. He had too much experience of legal forms not to know that he had given way to absurd illusions,—and that his position was far more dangerous than he had imagined. But what was their purpose? what had they found out? and what did they know positively? The effort he made to guess all this gave to his face an atrocious expression.

“Did you hear that, Crochard?” asked the lawyer.

But the accused had recovered his self-control by a great effort; and he replied,—

“I am not deaf.” And there was in his voice the unmistakable accent of the former vagabond of Paris. “I hear perfectly well; only I don’t understand.”

The magistrate, finding that, where he was seated, he could not very well observe Crochard, had quietly gotten up, and was now standing near the mantle-piece, against which he rested.

“On the contrary,” he said severely, “you understand but too well Lieut. Champcey says you are the man who tried to drown him in the Dong-Nai. He recognizes you.”

“That’s impossible!” exclaimed the accused. “That’s impossible; for”—

But the rest of the phrase remained in his throat. A sudden reflection had shown him the trap in which he had been caught,—a trap quite familiar to examining lawyers, and terrible by its very simplicity. But for that reflection, he would have gone on thus,—

“That’s impossible; for the night was too dark to distinguish a man’s features.”