The Teeth of the Tiger, Maurice Leblanc [top 10 inspirational books TXT] 📗

no denying the fact: Hippolyte Fauville was guided by revenge and by revenge alone. If not, why should he have acted as he did, seeing that Cosmo Mornington’s millions reverted to him by the fullest of rights? Besides, if he had wished to enjoy those millions, he would not have begun by killing himself.

“One thing, therefore, is certain: the inheritance in no way affected Hippolyte Fauville’s resolves or actions. And, nevertheless, one after the other, with inflexible regularity, as if they had been struck down in the very order called for by the terms of the Mornington inheritance, they all disappeared: Cosmo Mornington, then Hippolyte Fauville, then Edmond Fauville, then Marie Fauville, then Gaston Sauverand. First, the possessor of the fortune; next, all those whom he had appointed his legatees; and, I repeat, in the very order in which the will enabled them to lay claim to the fortune!”

“Is it not strange?” asked Perenna, “and are we not bound to suppose that there was a controlling mind at the back of it all? Are we not bound to admit that the formidable contest was influenced by that inheritance, and that, above the hatred and jealousy of the loathsome Fauville, there loomed a being endowed with even more tremendous energy, pursuing a tangible aim and driving to their deaths, one by one, like so many numbered victims, all the unconscious actors in the tragedy of which he tied and of which he is now untying the threads?”

Don Luis leaned forward and continued earnestly:

“Monsieur le Préfet, the public instinct so thoroughly agrees with me, a section of the police, with M. Weber, the deputy chief detective at its head, argues in a manner so exactly identical with my own, that the existence of that being is at once confirmed in every mind. There had to be someone to act as the controlling brain, to provide the will and the energy. That someone was myself. After all, why not? Did not I possess the condition which was indispensable to make anyone interested in the murders? Was I not Cosmo Mornington’s heir?

“I will not defend myself. It may be that outside interference, it may be that circumstances, will oblige you, Monsieur le Préfet, to take unjustifiable measures against me; but I will not insult you by believing for one second that you can imagine the man whose acts you have been able to judge for the last two months capable of such crimes. And yet the public instinct is right in accusing me.

“Apart from Hippolyte Fauville, there is necessarily a criminal; and that criminal is necessarily Cosmo Mornington’s heir. As I am not the man, another heir of Cosmo Mornington exists. It is he whom I accuse, Monsieur le Préfet.

“There is something more than a dead man’s will in the wicked business that is being enacted before us. We thought for a time that there was only that; but there is something more. I have not been fighting a dead man all the time; more than once I have felt the very breath of life strike against my face. More than once I have felt the teeth of the tiger seeking to tear me.

“The dead man did much, but he did not do everything. And, even then, was he alone in doing what he did? Was the being of whom I speak merely one who executed his orders? Or was he also the accomplice who helped him in his scheme? I do not know. But he certainly continued a work which he perhaps began by inspiring and which, in any case, he turned to his own profit, resolutely completed and carried out to the very end. And he did so because he knew of Cosmo Mornington’s will. It is he whom I accuse, Monsieur le Préfet.

“I accuse him at the very least of that part of the crimes and felonies which cannot be attributed to Hippolyte Fauville. I accuse him of breaking open the drawer of the desk in which Maître Lepertuis, Cosmo Mornington’s solicitor, had put his client’s will. I accuse him of entering Cosmo Mornington’s room and substituting a phial containing a toxic fluid for one of the phials of glycero-phosphate which Cosmo Mornington used for his hypodermic injections. I accuse him of playing the part of a doctor who came to certify Cosmo Mornington’s death and of delivering a false certificate. I accuse him of supplying Hippolyte Fauville with the poison which killed successively Inspector Vérot, Edmond Fauville, and Hippolyte Fauville himself. I accuse him of arming and turning against me the hand of Gaston Sauverand, who, acting under his advice and his instructions, tried three times to take my life and ended by causing the death of my chauffeur. I accuse him of profiting by the relations which Gaston Sauverand had established with the infirmary in order to communicate with Marie Fauville, and of arranging for Marie Fauville to receive the hypodermic syringe and the phial of poison with which the poor woman was able to carry out her plans of suicide.”

Perenna paused to note the effect of these charges. Then he went on:

“I accuse him of conveying to Gaston Sauverand, by some unknown means, the newspaper cuttings about Marie Fauville’s death and, at the same time, foreseeing the inevitable results of his act. To sum up, therefore, without mentioning his share in the other crimes⁠—the death of Inspector Vérot, the death of my chauffeur⁠—I accuse him of killing Cosmo Mornington, Edmond Fauville, Hippolyte Fauville, Marie Fauville, and Gaston Sauverand; in plain words, of killing all those who stood between the millions and himself. These last words, Monsieur le Préfet, will tell you clearly what I have in my mind.

“When a man does away with five of his fellow creatures in order to secure a certain number of millions, it means that he is convinced that this proceeding will positively and mathematically insure his entering into possession of the millions. In short, when a man does away with a millionaire