File No. 113, Emile Gaboriau [digital e reader txt] 📗

>“But who are these people, monsieur? Tell me, who dares send this money?”

“If I knew, my dear Prosper, my task would be at an end, for then I would know who committed the robbery. But we will continue our searches. I have finally procured evidence which will sooner or later become convincing proof. I have heretofore only made deductions more or less probable; I now possess knowledge which proves that I was not mistaken. I walked in darkness: now I have a light to guide me.”

As Prosper listened to M. Verduret’s reassuring words, he felt hope arising in his breast.

“Now,” said M. Verduret, “we must take advantage of this evidence, gained by the imprudence of our enemies, without delay. We will begin with the porter.”

He opened the door and called out:

“I say, my good man, step here a moment.”

The porter entered, looking very much surprised at the authority exercised over his lodger by this stranger.

“Who gave you this letter?” said M. Verduret.

“A messenger, who said he was paid for bringing it.”

“Do you know him?”

“I know him well; he is the errand-runner who keeps his cart at the corner of the Rue Pigalle.”

“Go and bring him here.”

After the porter had gone, M. Verduret drew from his pocket his diary, and compared a page of it with the notes which he had spread over the table.

“These notes were not sent by the thief,” he said, after an attentive examination of them.

“Do you think so, monsieur?”

“I am certain of it; that is, unless the thief is endowed with extraordinary penetration and forethought. One thing is certain: these ten thousand francs are not part of the three hundred and fifty thousand which were stolen from the safe.”

“Yet,” said Prosper, who could not account for this certainty on the part of his protector, “yet–-”

“There is no doubt about it: I have the numbers of all the stolen notes.”

“What! When even I did not have them?”

“But the bank did, fortunately. When we undertake an affair we must anticipate everything, and forget nothing. It is a poor excuse for a man to say, ‘I did not think of it’ when he commits some oversight. I thought of the bank.”

If, in the beginning, Prosper had felt some repugnance about confiding in his father’s friend, the feeling had now disappeared.

He understood that alone, scarcely master of himself, governed only by the inspirations of inexperience, never would he have the patient perspicacity of this singular man.

Verduret continued talking to himself, as if he had absolutely forgotten Prosper’s presence:

“Then, as this package did not come from the thief, it can only come from the other person, who was near the safe at the time of the robbery, but could not prevent it, and now feels remorse. The probability of two persons assisting at the robbery, a probability suggested by the scratch, is now converted into undeniable certainty. Ergo, I was right.”

Prosper listening attentively tried hard to comprehend this monologue, which he dared not interrupt.

“Let us seek,” went on the fat man, “this second person, whose conscience pricks him, and yet who dares not reveal anything.”

He read the letter over several times, scanning the sentences, and weighing every word.

“Evidently this letter was composed by a woman,” he finally said. “Never would one man doing another man a service, and sending him money, use the word ‘succor.’ A man would have said, loan, money, or some other equivalent, but succor, never. No one but a woman, ignorant of masculine susceptibilities, would have naturally made use of this word to express the idea it represents. As to the sentence, ‘There is one heart,’ and so on, it could only have been written by a woman.”

“You are mistaken, monsieur,” said Prosper: “no woman is mixed up in this affair.”

M. Verduret paid no attention to this interruption, perhaps he did not hear it; perhaps he did not care to argue the matter.

“Now, let us see if we can discover whence the printed words were taken to compose this letter.”

He approached the window, and began to study the pasted words with all the scrupulous attention which an antiquarian would devote to an old, half-effaced manuscript.

“Small type,” he said, “very slender and clear; the paper is thin and glossy. Consequently, these words have not been cut from a newspaper, magazine, or even a novel. I have seen type like this, I recognize it at once; Didot often uses it, so does Mme. de Tours.”

He stopped with his mouth open, and eyes fixed, appealing laboriously to his memory.

Suddenly he struck his forehead exultantly.

“Now I have it!” he cried; “now I have it! Why did I not see it at once? These words have all been cut from a prayer-book. We will look, at least, and then we shall be certain.”

He moistened one of the words pasted on the paper with his tongue, and, when it was sufficiently softened, he detached it with a pin. On the other side of this word was printed a Latin word, Deus.

“Ah, ha,” he said with a little laugh of satisfaction. “I knew it. Father Taberet would be pleased to see this. But what has become of the mutilated prayer-book? Can it have been burned? No, because a heavy-bound book is not easily burned. It is thrown in some corner.”

M. Verduret was interrupted by the porter, who returned with the messenger from the Rue Pigalle.

“Ah, here you are,” he said encouragingly. Then he showed the envelope of the letter, and said:

“Do you remember bringing this letter here this morning?”

“Perfectly, monsieur. I took particular notice of the direction; we don’t often see anything like it.”

“Who told you to bring it? a gentleman, or a lady?”

“Neither, monsieur; it was a porter.”

This reply made the porter laugh very much, but not a muscle of M. Verduret’s face moved.

“A porter? Well, do you know this colleague of yours.”

“I never even saw him before.”

“How does he look?”

“He was neither tall nor short; he wore a green vest, and his medal.”

“Your description is so vague that it would suit every porter in the city; but did your colleague tell you who sent the letter?”

“No, monsieur. He only put ten sous in my hand, and said, ‘Here, carry this to No. 39, Rue Chaptal: a coachman on the boulevard handed it to me.’ Ten sous! I warrant you he made more than that by it.”

This answer seemed to disconcert M. Verduret. So many precautions taken in sending the letter disturbed him, and disarranged his plans.

“Do you think you would recognize the porter again?”

“Yes, monsieur, if I saw him.”

“How much do you gain a day as a porter?”

“I can’t tell exactly; but my corner is a good stand, and I am busy doing errands nearly all day. I suppose I make from eight to ten francs.”

“Very well; I will give you ten francs a day if you will walk about the streets, and look for the porter who brought this letter. Every evening, at eight o’clock, come to the Archangel, on the Quai Saint Michel, give me a report of your search, and receive your pay. Ask for M. Verduret. If you find the man I will give you fifty francs. Do you accept?”

“I rather think I will, monsieur.”

“Then don’t lose a minute. Start off!”

Although ignorant of M. Verduret’s plans, Prosper began to comprehend the sense of his investigations. His fate depended upon their success, and yet he almost forgot this fact in his admiration of this singular man; for his energy, his bantering coolness when he wished to discover anything, the surety of his deductions, the fertility of his expedients, and the rapidity of his movements, were astonishing.

“Monsieur,” said Prosper when the porter had left the room, “do you still think you see a woman’s hand in this affair?”

“More than ever; and a pious woman too, and a woman who has two prayer-books, since she could cut up one to write to you.”

“And you hope to find the mutilated book?”

“I do, thanks to the opportunity I have of making an immediate search; which I will set about at once.”

Saying this, he sat down, and rapidly scratched off a few lines on a slip of paper, which he folded up, and put in his vest-pocket.

“Are you ready to go to M. Fauvel’s? Yes? Come on, then; we have certainly earned our breakfast to-day.”

VIII

When Raoul de Lagors spoke of M. Fauvel’s extraordinary dejection, he had not exaggerated.

Since the fatal day when, upon his denunciation, his cashier had been arrested, the banker, this active, energetic man of business, had been a prey to the most gloomy melancholy, and absolutely refused to take any interest in his affairs, seldom entering the banking-house.

He, who had always been so domestic, never came near his family except at meals, when he would swallow a few mouthfuls, and hastily leave the room.

Shut up in his study, he would deny himself to visitors. His anxious countenance, his indifference to everybody and everything, his constant reveries and fits of abstraction, betrayed the preoccupation of some fixed idea, or the tyrannical empire of some hidden sorrow.

The day of Prosper’s release, about three o’clock, M. Fauvel was, as usual, seated in his study, with his elbows resting on the table, and his face buried in his hands, when his office-boy rushed in, and with a frightened look said:

“Monsieur, the former cashier, M. Bertomy, is here with one of his relatives; he says he must see you on business.”

The banker at these words started up as if he had been shot.

“Prosper!” he cried in a voice choked by anger, “what! does he dare—”

Then remembering that he ought to control himself before his servant, he waited a few moments, and then said, in a tone of forced calmness:

“Ask them to walk in.”

If M. Verduret had counted upon witnessing a strange and affecting sight, he was not disappointed.

Nothing could be more terrible than the attitude of these two men as they stood confronting each other. The banker’s face was almost purple with suppressed anger, and he looked as if about to be struck by apoplexy. Prosper was as pale and motionless as a corpse.

Silent and immovable, they stood glaring at each other with mortal hatred.

M. Verduret curiously watched these two enemies, with the indifference and coolness of a philosopher, who, in the most violent outbursts of human passion, merely sees subjects for meditation and study.

Finally, the silence becoming more and more threatening, he decided to break it by speaking to the banker:

“I suppose you know, monsieur, that my young relative has just been released from prison.”

“Yes,” replied M. Fauvel, making an effort to control himself, “yes, for want of sufficient proof.”

“Exactly so, monsieur, and this want of proof, as stated in the decision of ‘Not proven,’ ruins the prospects of my relative, and compels him to leave here at once for America.”

M. Fauvel’s features relaxed as if he had been relieved of some fearful agony.

“Ah, he is going away,” he said, “he is going abroad.”

There was no mistaking the resentful, almost insulting intonation of the words, “going away!”

M. Verduret took no notice of M. Fauvel’s manner.

“It appears to me,” he continued, in an easy tone, “that Prosper’s determination is a wise one. I merely wished him, before leaving Paris, to come and pay his respects to his former chief.”

The banker smiled bitterly.

“M. Bertomy might have spared us both this painful meeting. I have nothing to say to him, and of course he can have nothing to tell me.”

This was a