The Mystery of Orcival, Émile Gaboriau [fiction novels to read TXT] 📗

of two hundred percent interest. Madame has, at these rates, considerable custom, and yet has not made a large fortune. She must necessarily risk a great deal, and bears heavy losses as well as receives large profits. Then she is, as she is pleased to say, too honest; and true enough, she is honest⁠—she would rather sell her dress off her back than let her signature go to protest.

Madame is a blonde, slight, gentle, and not wanting in a certain distinction of manner; she invariably wears, whether it be summer or winter, a black silk dress. They say she has a husband, but no one has ever seen him, which does not prevent his reputation for good conduct from being above suspicion. However, honorable as may be Mme. Charman’s profession, she has more than once had business with M. Lecoq; she has need of him and fears him as she does fire. She, therefore, welcomed the detective and his companion⁠—whom she took for one of his colleagues⁠—somewhat as the supernumerary of a theatre would greet his manager if the latter chanced to pay him a visit in his humble lodgings.

She was expecting them. When they rang, she advanced to meet them in the antechamber, and greeted M. Lecoq graciously and smilingly. She conducted them into her drawing-room, invited them to sit in her best armchairs, and pressed some refreshments upon them.

“I see, dear Madame,” began M. Lecoq, “that you have received my little note.”

“Yes, Monsieur Lecoq, early this morning; I was not up.”

“Very good. And have you been so kind as to do the service I asked?”

“How can you ask me, when you know that I would go through the fire for you? I set about it at once, getting up expressly for the purpose.”

“Then you’ve got the address of Pélagie Taponnet, called Jenny?”

“Yes, I have,” returned Mme. Charman, with an obsequious bow. “If I were the kind of woman to magnify my services, I would tell you what trouble it cost me to find this address, and how I ran all over Paris and spent ten francs in cab hire.”

“Well, let’s come to the point.”

“The truth is, I had the pleasure of seeing Miss Jenny day before yesterday.”

“You are joking!”

“Not the least in the world. And let me tell you that she is a very courageous and honest girl.”

“Really!”

“She is, indeed. Why, she has owed me four hundred and eighty francs for two years. I hardly thought the debt worth much, as you may imagine. But Jenny came to me day before yesterday all out of breath and told me that she had inherited some money, and had brought me what she owed me. And she was not joking, either; for her purse was full of bank notes, and she paid me the whole of my bill. She’s a good girl!” added Mme. Charman, as if profoundly convinced of the truth of her encomium.

M. Lecoq exchanged a significant glance with the old justice; the same idea struck them both at the same moment. These banknotes could only be the payment for some important service rendered by Jenny to Trémorel. M. Lecoq, however, wished for more precise information.

“What was Jenny’s condition before this windfall?” asked he.

“Ah, Monsieur Lecoq, she was in a dreadful condition. Since the count deserted her she has been constantly falling lower and lower. She sold all she had piece by piece. At last, she mixed with the worst kind of people, drank absinthe, they say, and had nothing to put to her back. When she got any money she spent it on a parcel of hussies instead of buying clothes.”

“And where is she living?”

“Right by, in a house in the Rue Vintimille.”

“If that is so,” replied M. Lecoq, severely, “I am astonished that she is not here.”

“It’s not my fault, dear Monsieur Lecoq; I know where the nest is, but not where the bird is. She was away this morning when I sent for her.”

“The deuce! But then⁠—it’s very annoying; I must hunt her up at once.”

“You needn’t disturb yourself. Jenny ought to return before four o’clock, and one of my girls is waiting for her with orders to bring her here as soon as she comes in, without even letting her go up to her room.”

“We’ll wait for her then.”

M. Lecoq and his friend waited about a quarter of an hour, when Mme. Charman suddenly got up.

“I hear my girl’s step on the stairs,” said she.

“Listen to me,” answered M. Lecoq, “if it is she, manage to make Jenny think that it was you who sent for her; we will seem to have come in by the merest chance.”

Mme. Charman responded by a gesture of assent. She was going towards the door when the detective detained her by the arm.

“One word more. When you see me fairly engaged in conversation with her, please be so good as to go and overlook your work-people in the shops. What I have to say will not interest you in the least.”

“I understand.”

“But no trickery, you know. I know where the closet of your bedroom is, well enough to be sure that everything that is said here may be overheard in it.”

Mme. Charman’s emissary opened the door; there was a loud rustling of silks along the corridor; and Jenny appeared in all her glory. She was no longer the fresh and pretty minx whom Hector had known⁠—the provoking large-eyed Parisian demoiselle, with haughty head and petulant grace. A single year had withered her, as a too hot summer does the roses, and had destroyed her fragile beauty beyond recall. She was not twenty, and still it was hard to discern that she had been charming, and was yet young. For she had grown old like vice; her worn features and hollow cheeks betrayed the dissipations of her life; her eyes had lost their long, languishing lids; her mouth had a pitiful expression of stupefaction; and absinthe had broken the clear tone of her voice. She was richly dressed in a new robe, with a great deal of lace and a jaunty hat; yet