File No. 113, Émile Gaboriau [best ereader for graphic novels .TXT] 📗

weather, went to Vésinet.

She would have been filled with consternation had she known that M. Verduret and Prosper were following close behind, and witnessed her interview from the top of a ladder.

Her bold step was fruitless. Raoul swore that he had divided with Prosper; that his own half of the money was spent, and that he had not a napoleon wherewith to redeem anything.

He even refused to give up the pledges; and Madeleine had to resort to threats of exposure, before she could induce him to surrender the tickets of four or five trifling articles that were indispensable to their toilet.

Clameran had ordered him to refuse positively to give up a single ticket, because he hoped that in their distress they would call upon him for relief.

The violent altercation witnessed by Clameran’s new valet, Joseph Dubois, had been caused by the exaction of this promise.

The accomplices were at that time on very bad terms. Clameran was seeking a safe means of getting rid of Raoul; and the young scamp, having a presentiment of his uncle’s intentions, was determined to outwit him.

Nothing but the certainty of impending danger could reconcile them. The danger was revealed to them both at the Jandidier ball.

Who was the mysterious mountebank that indulged in such transparent allusions to Mme. Fauvel’s private troubles, and then said, with threatening significance to Louis: “I was the best friend of your brother Gaston?”

Who he was, where he came from, they could not imagine; but they clearly saw that he was a dangerous enemy, and forthwith attempted to assassinate him upon his leaving the ball.

Having been followed and watched by their would-be victim, they became alarmed⁠—especially when he suddenly disappeared⁠—and wisely decided that the safest thing they then could do was to return quietly to their hotel.

“We cannot be too guarded in our conduct,” whispered Clameran; “we must discover who he is before taking any further steps in this matter.”

Once more, Raoul tried to induce him to give up his project of marrying Madeleine.

“Never!” he exclaimed fiercely, “I will marry her or perish in the attempt!”

He thought that, now they were warned, the danger of being caught was lessened; when on his guard, few people could entrap so experienced and skilful a rogue.

Little did Clameran know that a man who was a hundredfold more skilful than he was closely pursuing him.

XXII The Catastrophe

Such are the facts that, with an almost incredible talent for investigation, had been collected and prepared by the stout man with the jovial face who had taken Prosper under his protection, M. Verduret.

Reaching Paris at nine o’clock in the evening, not by the Lyons road as he had said, but by the Orleans train, M. Verduret hurried up to the Archangel, where he found the cashier impatiently expecting him.

“You are about to hear some rich developments,” he said to Prosper, “and see how far back into the past one has to seek for the primary cause of a crime. All things are linked together and dependent upon each other in this world of ours. If Gaston de Clameran had not entered a little café at Tarascon to play a game of billiards twenty years ago, your money-safe would not have been robbed three weeks ago.

“Valentine de la Verberie is punished in 1866 for the murder committed for her sake in 1840. Nothing is neglected or forgotten, when stern Retribution asserts her sway. Listen.”

And he forthwith related all that he had discovered, referring, as he went along, to a voluminous manuscript which he had prepared, with many notes and authenticated proofs attached.

During the last week M. Verduret had not had twenty-four hours’ rest, but he bore no traces of fatigue. His iron muscles braved any amount of labor, and his elastic nature was too well tempered to give way beneath such pressure.

While any other man would have sunk exhausted in a chair, he stood up and described, with the enthusiasm and captivating animation peculiar to him, the minutest details and intricacies of the plot that he had devoted his whole energy to unravelling; personating every character he brought upon the scene to take part in the strange drama, so that his listener was bewildered and dazzled by his brilliant acting.

As Prosper listened to this narrative of events happening twenty years back, the secret conversations as minutely related as if overheard the moment they took place, it sounded more like a romance than a statement of plain facts.

All these ingenious explanations might be logical, but what foundation did they possess? Might they not be the dreams of an excited imagination?

M. Verduret did not finish his report until four o’clock in the morning; then he cried, with an accent of triumph:

“And now they are on their guard, and sharp, wary rascals too: but they won’t escape me; I have cornered them beautifully. Before a week is over, Prosper, you will be publicly exonerated, and will come out of this scrape with flying colors. I have promised your father you shall.”

“Impossible!” said Prosper in a dazed way, “it cannot be!”

“What?”

“All this you have just told me.”

M. Verduret opened wide his eyes, as if he could not understand anyone having the audacity to doubt the accuracy of his report.

“Impossible, indeed!” he cried. “What! have you not sense enough to see the plain truth written all over every fact, and attested by the best authority? Your thick-headedness exasperates me to the last degree.”

“But how can such rascalities take place in Paris, in our very midst, without⁠—”

“Parbleu!” interrupted the fat man, “you are young, my friend! Are you innocent enough to suppose that crimes, forty times worse than this, don’t occur every day? You think the horrors of the police-court are the only ones. Pooh! You only read in the Gazette des Tribunaux of the cruel melodramas of life, where the actors are as cowardly as the knife, and as treacherous as the poison they use. It is at the family fireside, often under shelter of the law itself, that the real tragedies