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

have every confidence and for whom I entertain the greatest respect asked me to hand you certain papers. They appear to concern the question which is the object of your meeting today.”

“The question of awarding the Mornington inheritance?”

“Yes.”

“You know that, if this claim had not been made in the course of the present sitting, it would have had no effect?”

“I came as soon as the papers were handed to me.”

“Why were they not handed to you an hour or two earlier?”

“I was not there. I had to leave the house where I am staying, in a hurry.”

Perenna did not doubt that it was his intervention that upset the enemy’s plans by causing Florence to take to flight.

The Prefect continued:

“So you are ignorant of the reasons why you received the papers?”

“Yes, Monsieur le Préfet.”

“And evidently you are also ignorant of how far they concern you?”

“They do not concern me, Monsieur le Préfet.”

M. Desmalions smiled and, looking into Florence’s eyes, said, plainly:

“According to the letter that accompanies them, they concern you intimately. It seems that they prove, in the most positive manner, that you are descended from the Roussel family and that you consequently have every right to the Mornington inheritance.”

“I?”

The cry was a spontaneous exclamation of astonishment and protest.

And she at once went on, insistently:

“I, a right to the inheritance? I have none at all, Monsieur le Préfet, none at all. I never knew Mr. Mornington. What is this story? There is some mistake.”

She spoke with great animation and with an apparent frankness that would have impressed any other man than the Prefect of Police. But how could he forget Don Luis’s arguments and the accusation made beforehand against the person who would arrive at the meeting?

“Give me the papers,” he said.

She took from her handbag a blue envelope which was not fastened down and which he found to contain a number of faded documents, damaged at the folds and torn in different places.

He examined them amid perfect silence, read them through, studied them thoroughly, inspected the signatures and the seals through a magnifying glass, and said:

“They bear every sign of being genuine. The seals are official.”

“Then, Monsieur le Préfet⁠—?” said Florence, in a trembling voice.

“Then, Mademoiselle, let me tell you that your ignorance strikes me as most incredible.”

And, turning to the solicitor, he said:

“Listen briefly to what these documents contain and prove. Gaston Sauverand, Cosmo Mornington’s heir in the fourth line, had, as you know, an elder brother, called Raoul, who lived in the Argentine Republic. This brother, before his death, sent to Europe, in the charge of an old nurse, a child of five who was none other than his daughter, a natural but legally recognized daughter whom he had had by Mlle. Levasseur, a French teacher at Buenos Aires.

“Here is the birth certificate. Here is the signed declaration written entirely in the father’s hand. Here is the affidavit signed by the old nurse. Here are the depositions of three friends, merchants or solicitors at Buenos Aires. And here are the death certificates of the father and mother.

“All these documents have been legalized and bear the seals of the French consulate. For the present, I have no reason to doubt them; and I am bound to look upon Florence Levasseur as Raoul Sauverand’s daughter and Gaston Sauverand’s niece.”

“Gaston Sauvarand’s niece?⁠ ⁠… His niece?” stammered Florence.

The mention of a father whom she had, so to speak, never known, left her unmoved. But she began to weep at the recollection of Gaston Sauverand, whom she loved so fondly and to whom she found herself linked by such a close relationship.

Were her tears sincere? Or were they the tears of an actress able to play her part down to the slightest details? Were those facts really revealed to her for the first time? Or was she acting the emotions which the revelation of those facts would produce in her under natural conditions?

Don Luis observed M. Desmalions even more narrowly than he did the girl, and tried to read the secret thoughts of the man with whom the decision lay. And suddenly he became certain that Florence’s arrest was a matter resolved upon as definitely as the arrest of the most monstrous criminal. Then he went up to her and said:

“Florence.”

She looked at him with her tear-dimmed eyes and made no reply.

Slowly, he said:

“To defend yourself, Florence⁠—for, though I am sure you do not know it, you are under that obligation⁠—you must understand the terrible position in which events have placed you.

“Florence, the Prefect of Police has been led by the logical outcome of those events to come to the final conclusion that the person entering this room with an evident claim to the inheritance is the person who killed the Mornington heirs. You entered the room, Florence, and you are undoubtedly Cosmo Mornington’s heir.”

He saw her shake from head to foot and turn as pale as death. Nevertheless, she uttered no word and made no gesture of protest.

He went on:

“It is a formal accusation. Do you say nothing in reply?”

She waited some time and then declared:

“I have nothing to say. The whole thing is a mystery. What would you have me reply? I do not understand!”

Don Luis stood quivering with anguish in front of her. He stammered:

“Is that all? Do you accept?”

After a second, she said, in an undertone:

“Explain yourself, I beg of you. What you mean, I suppose, is that, if I do not reply, I accept the accusation?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“Arrest⁠—prison⁠—”

“Prison!”

She seemed to be suffering hideously. Her beautiful features were distorted with fear. To her mind, prison evidently represented the torments undergone by Marie and Sauverand. It must mean despair, shame, death, all those horrors which Marie and Sauverand had been unable to avoid and of which she in her turn would become the victim.

An awful sense of hopelessness overcame her, and she moaned:

“How tired I am! I feel that there is nothing to be done! I am stifled by the mystery around me! Oh, if I could only see and understand!”

There was another long