File No. 113, Emile Gaboriau [ink book reader TXT] 📗

For did not the letter before him assert this to be a fact, and tell him how to convince himself of its truth?

M. Fauvel was as bewildered as if he had been knocked on the head with a club. It was impossible for his scattered ideas to take in the enormity of what these dreadful words intimated. He seemed to be mentally and physically paralyzed, as he sat there staring blankly at the letter.

But this stupefaction suddenly changed to indignant rage.

“What a fool I am!” he cried, “to listen to such base lies, such malicious charges against the purest woman whom God ever sent to bless a man!”

And he angrily crumpled up the letter, and threw it into the empty fireplace, saying:

“I will forget having read it. I will not soil my mind by letting it dwell upon such turpitude!”

He said this, and he thought it; but, for all that, he could not open the rest of his letters. The anonymous missive stood before his eyes in letters of fire, and drove every other thought from his mind.

That penetrating, clinging, all-corroding worm, suspicion, had taken possession of his soul; and as he leaned over his desk, with his face buried in his hands, thinking over many things which had lately occurred, insignificant at the time, but fearfully ominous now, this unwillingly admitted germ of suspicion grew and expanded until it became certainty.

But, resolved that he would not think of his wife in connection with so vile a deed, he imagined a thousand wild excuses for the mischief-maker who took this mode of annoying him; of course there was no truth in his assertions, but from curiosity he would like to know who had written it. And yet suppose——

“Merciful God! can it be true?” he wildly cried, as the idea of his wife’s guilt would obstinately return to his troubled mind.

Thinking that the writing might throw some light on the mystery, he started up and tremblingly picked the fatal letter out of the ashes. Carefully smoothing it out, he laid it on his desk, and studied the heavy strokes, light strokes, and capitals of every word.

“It must be from some of my clerks,” he finally said, “someone who is angry with me for refusing to raise his salary; or perhaps it is the one that I dismissed the other day.”

Clinging to this idea, he thought over all the young men in his bank; but not one could he believe capable of resorting to so base a vengeance.

Then he wondered where the letter had been posted, thinking this might throw some light upon the mystery. He looked at the envelope, and read the post-mark:

“Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.”

This fact told him nothing.

Once more he read the letter, spelling over each word, and trying to put a different construction on the horrible phrases that stared him in the face.

It is generally agreed that an anonymous letter should be treated with silent contempt, and cast aside as the malicious lies of a coward who dares not say to a man’s face what he secretly commits to paper, and forces upon him.

This is all very well in theory, but is difficult to practise when the anonymous letter comes. You throw it in the fire, it burns; but, although the paper is destroyed by the flames, doubt remains. Suspicion arises from its ashes, like a subtle poison penetrates the inmost recesses of the mind, weakens its holiest beliefs, and destroys its faith.

The trail of the serpent is left.

The wife suspected, no matter how unjustly, is no longer the wife in whom her husband trusted as he would trust himself: the pure being who was above suspicion no longer exists. Suspicion, no matter whence the source, has irrevocably tarnished the brightness of his idol.

Unable to struggle any longer against these conflicting doubts, M. Fauvel determined to resolve them by showing the letter to his wife; but a torturing thought, more terrible than any he had yet suffered, made him sink back in his chair in despair.

“Suppose it be true!” he muttered to himself; “suppose I have been miserably duped! By confiding in my wife, I shall put her on her guard, and lose all chance of discovering the truth.”

Thus were realized all Verduret’s presumptions.

He had said, “If M. Fauvel does not yield to his first impulse, if he stops to reflect, we have time to repair the harm done.”

After long and painful meditation, the banker finally decided to wait, and watch his wife.

It was a hard struggle for a man of his frank, upright nature, to play the part of a domestic spy, and jealous husband.

Accustomed to give way to sudden bursts of anger, but quickly mastering them, he would find it difficult to be compelled to preserve his self-restraint, no matter how dreadful the discoveries might be. When he collected the proofs of guilt one by one, he must impose silence upon his resentment, until fully assured of possessing certain evidence.

There was one simple means of ascertaining whether the diamonds had been pawned.

If the letter lied in this instance, he would treat it with the scorn it deserved. If, on the other hand, it should prove to be true!

At this moment, the servant announced breakfast; and M. Fauvel looked in the glass before leaving his study, to see if his face betrayed the emotion he felt. He was shocked at the haggard features which it reflected.

“Have I no nerve?” he said to himself: “oh! I must and shall control my feelings until I find out the truth.”

At table he talked incessantly, so as to escape any questions from his wife, who, he saw, was uneasy at the sight of his pale face.

But, all the time he was talking, he was casting over in his mind expedients of getting his wife out of the house long enough for him to search her bureau.

At last he asked Mme. Fauvel if she were going out before dinner.

“Yes,” said she: “the weather is dreadful, but Madeleine and I must do some shopping.”

“At what time shall you go?”

“Immediately after breakfast.”

He drew a long breath as if relieved of a great weight.

In a short time he would know the truth.

His uncertainty was so torturing to the unhappy man that he preferred the most dreadful reality to his present agony.

Breakfast over, he lighted a cigar, but did not remain in the dining-room to smoke it, as was his habit. He went into his study to try and compose his nerves.