Monsieur Lecoq, Émile Gaboriau [best non fiction books to read .txt] 📗

she called upon these “good gentlemen” to witness the shameful injustice with which she was treated⁠—she, an honest woman. Was she not the mainstay of her family (since her son Polyte was in custody, charged with pocket-picking), hence what would become of her daughter-in-law, and of her grandson Toto, who had no one to look after them but her?

Still, when her name had been taken, and a keeper was ordered to remove her, nature reasserted itself, and scarcely had she entered the corridor than she was heard quarreling with the guard.

“You are wrong not to be polite,” she said; “you are losing a good fee, without counting many a good drink I would stand you when I get out of here.”

Lecoq was now free until M. d’Escorval’s arrival. He wandered through the gloomy corridors, from office to office, but finding himself assailed with questions by everyone he came across, he eventually left the depot, and went and sat down on one of the benches beside the quay. Here he tried to collect his thoughts. His convictions were unchanged. He was more than ever convinced that the prisoner was concealing his real social standing, but, on the other hand, it was evident that he was well acquainted with the prison and its usages.

He had also proved himself to be endowed with far more cleverness than Lecoq had supposed. What self-control! What powers of dissimulation he had displayed! He had not so much as frowned while undergoing the severest ordeals, and he had managed to deceive the most experienced eyes in Paris.

The young detective had waited during nearly three hours, as motionless as the bench on which he was seated, and so absorbed in studying his case that he had thought neither of the cold nor of the flight of time, when a carriage drew up before the entrance of the prison, and M. d’Escorval alighted, followed by his clerk.

Lecoq rose and hastened, well-nigh breathless with anxiety, toward the magistrate.

“My researches on the spot,” said this functionary, “confirm me in the belief that you are right. Is there anything fresh?”

“Yes, sir; a fact that is apparently very trivial, though, in truth, it is of importance that⁠—”

“Very well!” interrupted the magistrate. “You will explain it to me by and by. First of all, I must summarily examine the prisoners. A mere matter of form for today. Wait for me here.”

Although the magistrate promised to make haste, Lecoq expected that at least an hour would elapse before he reappeared. In this he was mistaken. Twenty minutes later, M. d’Escorval emerged from the prison without his clerk.

He was walking very fast, and instead of approaching the young detective, he called to him at some little distance. “I must return home at once,” he said, “instantly; I can not listen to you.”

“But, sir⁠—”

“Enough! the bodies of the victims have been taken to the Morgue. Keep a sharp lookout there. Then, this evening make⁠—well⁠—do whatever you think best.”

“But, sir, I must⁠—”

“Tomorrow!⁠—tomorrow, at nine o’clock, in my office in the Palais de Justice.”

Lecoq wished to insist upon a hearing, but M. d’Escorval had entered, or rather thrown himself into, his carriage, and the coachman was already whipping up the horse.

“And to think that he’s an investigating magistrate,” panted Lecoq, left spellbound on the quay. “Has he gone mad?” As he spoke, an uncharitable thought took possession of his mind. “Can it be,” he murmured, “that M. d’Escorval holds the key to the mystery? Perhaps he wishes to get rid of me.”

This suspicion was so terrible that Lecoq hastened back to the prison, hoping that the prisoner’s bearing might help to solve his doubts. On peering through the grated aperture in the door of the cell, he perceived the prisoner lying on the pallet that stood opposite the door. His face was turned toward the wall, and he was enveloped in the coverlid up to his eyes. He was not asleep, for Lecoq could detect a strange movement of the body, which puzzled and annoyed him. On applying his ear instead of his eye to the aperture, he distinguished a stifled moan. There could no longer be any doubt. The death rattle was sounding in the prisoner’s throat.

“Help! help!” cried Lecoq, greatly excited. “The prisoner is killing himself!”

A dozen keepers hastened to the spot. The door was quickly opened, and it was then ascertained that the prisoner, having torn a strip of binding from his clothes, had fastened it round his neck and tried to strangle himself with the assistance of a spoon that had been left him with his food. He was already unconscious, and the prison doctor, who immediately bled him, declared that had another ten minutes elapsed, help would have arrived too late.

When the prisoner regained his senses, he gazed around him with a wild, puzzled stare. One might have supposed that he was amazed to find himself still alive. Suddenly a couple of big tears welled from his swollen eyelids, and rolled down his cheeks. He was pressed with questions, but did not vouchsafe so much as a single word in response. As he was in such a desperate frame of mind, and as the orders to keep him in solitary confinement prevented the governor giving him a companion, it was decided to put a straight waistcoat on him. Lecoq assisted at this operation, and then walked away, puzzled, thoughtful, and agitated. Intuition told him that these mysterious occurrences concealed some terrible drama.

“Still, what can have occurred since the prisoner’s arrival here?” he murmured. “Has he confessed his guilt to the magistrate, or what is his reason for attempting so desperate an act?”

VIII

Lecoq did not sleep that night, although he had been on his feet for more than forty hours, and had scarcely paused either to eat or drink. Anxiety, hope, and even fatigue itself, had imparted to his body the fictitious strength of fever, and to his intellect the unhealthy acuteness which is so often the result of intense mental