The Lerouge Case, Émile Gaboriau [old books to read TXT] 📗

with the handsome young man. Ha! ha! I can well believe the dear old dame wanted for nothing. She had a secret worth a farm in Brie. But the old lady was extravagant; her expenses and her demands have increased year by year. Poor humanity! She has leaned upon the staff too heavily, and broken it. She has threatened. They have been frightened, and said, ‘Let there be an end of this!’ But who has charged himself with the commission? The papa? No; he is too old. By jupiter! The son⁠—the child himself! He would save his mother, the brave boy! He has slain the witness and burnt the proofs!”

Manette all this time had her ear to the keyhole, and listened intently. From time to time she gleaned a word, an oath, the noise of a blow upon the table; but that was all. “For certain,” thought she, “he is worried about his women. They want him to believe he is a father.” Her curiosity so overcame her prudence, that being no longer able to withstand the temptation, she ventured to open the door a little way. “Did you call for your coffee, sir?” she stammered timidly.

“No, but you may bring it to me,” replied Old Tabaret. He attempted to swallow it at a gulp, but scalded himself so severely that the pain brought him suddenly from speculation to reality.

“Thunder!” growled he; “but it is hot! Devil take the case! it has set me beside myself. They are right when they say I am too enthusiastic. But who amongst the whole lot of them could have, by the sole exercise of observation and reason, established the whole history of the assassination? Certainly not Gevrol, poor man! Won’t he feel vexed and humiliated, being altogether out of it. Shall I seek M. Daburon? No, not yet. The night is necessary to me to sift to the bottom all the particulars, and arrange my ideas systematically. But, on the other hand, if I sit here all alone, this confounded case will keep me in a fever of speculation, and as I have just eaten a great deal, I may get an attack of indigestion. My faith! I will call upon Madame Gerdy: she has been ailing for some days past. I will have a chat with Noel, and that will change the course of my ideas.”

He got up from the table, put on his overcoat, and took his hat and cane.

“Are you going out, sir?” asked Manette.

“Yes.”

“Shall you be late?”

“Possibly.”

“But you will return tonight?”

“I do not know.” One minute later, M. Tabaret was ringing his friend’s bell.

Madame Gerdy lived in respectable style. She possessed sufficient for her wants; and her son’s practice, already large, had made them almost rich. She lived very quietly, and with the exception of one or two friends, whom Noel occasionally invited to dinner, received very few visitors. During more than fifteen years that M. Tabaret came familiarly to the apartments, he had only met the curé of the parish, one of Noel’s old professors, and Madame Gerdy’s brother, a retired colonel. When these three visitors happened to call on the same evening, an event somewhat rare, they played at a round game called Boston; on other evenings piquet or all-fours was the rule. Noel, however, seldom remained in the drawing-room, but shut himself up after dinner in his study, which with his bedroom formed a separate apartment to his mother’s, and immersed himself in his law papers. He was supposed to work far into the night. Often in winter his lamp was not extinguished before dawn.

Mother and son absolutely lived for one another, as all who knew them took pleasure in repeating. They loved and honoured Noel for the care he bestowed upon his mother, for his more than filial devotion, for the sacrifices which all supposed he made in living at his age like an old man. The neighbours were in the habit of contrasting the conduct of this exemplary young man with that of M. Tabaret, the incorrigible old rake, the hairless dangler. As for Madame Gerdy, she saw nothing but her son in all the world. Her love had actually taken the form of worship. In Noel she believed she saw united all the physical and moral perfections. To her he seemed of a superior order to the rest of humanity. If he spoke, she was silent and listened: his word was a command, his advice a decree of Providence. To care for her son, study his tastes, anticipate his wishes, was the sole aim of her life. She was a mother.

“Is Madame Gerdy visible?” asked old Tabaret of the girl who opened the door; and, without waiting for an answer, he walked into the room like a man assured that his presence cannot be inopportune, and ought to be agreeable.

A single candle lighted the drawing-room, which was not in its accustomed order. The small marble-top table, usually in the middle of the room, had been rolled into a corner. Madame Gerdy’s large armchair was near the window; a newspaper, all crumpled, lay before it on the carpet. The amateur detective took in the whole at a glance. “Has any accident happened?” he asked of the girl.

“Do not speak of it, sir: we have just had a fright! oh, such a fright!”

“What was it? tell me quickly!”

“You know that madame has been ailing for the last month. She has eaten I may say almost nothing. This morning, even, she said to me⁠—”

“Yes, yes! but this evening?”

“After her dinner, madame went into the drawing-room as usual. She sat down and took up one of M. Noel’s newspapers. Scarcely had she begun to read, when she uttered a great cry⁠—oh, a terrible cry! We hastened to her; madame had fallen on to the floor, as one dead. M. Noel raised her in his arms, and carried her into her room. I wanted to fetch the doctor, sir, but he said there was no need; he knew what was the matter with her.”

“And