The Hollow Needle, Maurice Leblanc [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

himself and looked after his extensive estates with the assistance of his secretary, Jean Daval.

Immediately upon his arrival, the examining magistrate took down the first observations of Sergeant Quevillon of the gendarmes. The capture of the criminal, imminent though it might be, had not yet been effected, but every outlet of the park was held. Escape was impossible.

The little company next crossed the chapter-hall and the refectory, both of which are on the ground floor, and went up to the first story. They at once remarked the perfect order that prevailed in the drawing room. Not a piece of furniture, not an ornament but appeared to occupy its usual place; nor was there any gap among the ornaments or furniture. On the right and left walls hung magnificent Flemish tapestries with figures. On the panels of the wall facing the windows were four fine canvases, in contemporary frames, representing mythological scenes. These were the famous pictures by Rubens which had been left to the Comte de Gesvres, together with the Flemish tapestries, by his maternal uncle, the Marqués de Bobadilla, a Spanish grandee.

M. Filleul remarked:

“If the motive of the crime was theft, this drawing room, at any rate, was not the object of it.”

“You can’t tell!” said the deputy, who spoke little, but who, when he did, invariably opposed the magistrate’s views.

“Why, my dear sir, the first thought of a burglar would be to carry off those pictures and tapestries, which are universally renowned.”

“Perhaps there was no time.”

“We shall see.”

At that moment, the Comte de Gesvres entered, accompanied by the doctor. The count, who did not seem to feel the effects of the attack to which he had been subjected, welcomed the two officials. Then he opened the door of the boudoir.

This room, which no one had been allowed to enter since the discovery of the crime, differed from the drawing room inasmuch as it presented a scene of the greatest disorder. Two chairs were overturned, one of the tables smashed to pieces and several objects⁠—a traveling-clock, a portfolio, a box of stationery⁠—lay on the floor. And there was blood on some of the scattered pieces of notepaper.

The doctor turned back the sheet that covered the corpse. Jean Daval, dressed in his usual velvet suit, with a pair of nailed boots on his feet, lay stretched on his back, with one arm folded beneath him. His collar and tie had been removed and his shirt opened, revealing a large wound in the chest.

“Death must have been instantaneous,” declared the doctor. “One blow of the knife was enough.”

“It was, no doubt, the knife which I saw on the drawing-room mantelpiece, next to a leather cap?” said the examining magistrate.

“Yes,” said the Comte de Gesvres, “the knife was picked up here. It comes from the same trophy in the drawing room from which my niece, Mlle. de Saint-Véran, snatched the gun. As for the chauffeur’s cap, that evidently belongs to the murderer.”

M. Filleul examined certain further details in the room, put a few questions to the doctor and then asked M. de Gesvres to tell him what he had seen and heard. The count worded his story as follows:

“Jean Daval woke me up. I had been sleeping badly, for that matter, with gleams of consciousness in which I seemed to hear noises, when, suddenly opening my eyes, I saw Daval standing at the foot of my bed, with his candle in his hand and fully dressed⁠—as he is now, for he often worked late into the night. He seemed greatly excited and said, in a low voice: ‘There’s someone in the drawing room.’ I heard a noise myself. I got up and softly pushed the door leading to this boudoir. At the same moment, the door over there, which opens into the big drawing room, was thrown back and a man appeared who leaped at me and stunned me with a blow on the temple. I am telling you this without any details, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, for the simple reason that I remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon one another with extraordinary swiftness.”

“And after that?⁠—”

“After that, I don’t know⁠—I fainted. When I came to, Daval lay stretched by my side, mortally wounded.”

“At first sight, do you suspect no one?”

“No one.”

“You have no enemy?”

“I know of none.”

“Nor M. Daval either?”

“Daval! An enemy? He was the best creature that ever lived. M. Daval was my secretary for twenty years and, I may say, my confidant; and I have never seen him surrounded with anything but love and friendship.”

“Still, there has been a burglary and there has been a murder: there must be a motive for all that.”

“The motive? Why, it was robbery pure and simple.”

“Robbery? Have you been robbed of something, then?”

“No, nothing.”

“In that case⁠—?”

“In that case, if they have stolen nothing and if nothing is missing, they at least took something away.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But my daughter and my niece will tell you, with absolute certainty, that they saw two men in succession cross the park and that those two men were carrying fairly heavy loads.”

“The young ladies⁠—”

“The young ladies may have been dreaming, you think? I should be tempted to believe it, for I have been exhausting myself in inquiries and suppositions ever since this morning. However, it is easy enough to question them.”

The two cousins were sent for to the big drawing room. Suzanne, still quite pale and trembling, could hardly speak. Raymonde, who was more energetic, more of a man, better looking, too, with the golden glint in her brown eyes, described the events of the night and the part which she had played in them.

“So I may take it, mademoiselle, that your evidence is positive?”

“Absolutely. The men who went across the park were carrying things away with them.”

“And the third man?”

“He went from here empty-handed.”

“Could you describe him to us?”

“He kept on dazzling us with the light of his lantern. All that I could say is