The Widow Lerouge Part 28

The young woman alighted, crossed the pavement, and entered a shop where cashmeres and laces were sold.

"There," thought the old fellow, "is where the thousand franc notes go! Half a million in four years! What can these creatures do with the money so lavishly bestowed upon them? Do they eat it? On the altar of what caprices do they squander these fortunes? They must have the devil's own potions which they give to drink to the idiots who ruin themselves for them. They must possess some peculiar art of preparing and spicing pleasure; since, once they get hold of a man, he sacrifices everything before forsaking them."

The cab moved on once more, but soon stopped again.

The brougham had made a fresh pause, this time in front of a curiosity shop.

"The woman wants then to buy out half of Paris!" said old Tabaret to himself in a pa.s.sion. "Yes, if Noel committed the crime, it was she who forced him to it. These are my fifteen thousand francs that she is frittering away now. How long will they last her? It must have been for money, then, that Noel murdered Widow Lerouge. If so, he is the lowest, the most infamous of men! What a monster of dissimulation and hypocrisy! And to think that he would be my heir, if I should die here of rage! For it is written in my will in so many words, 'I bequeath to my son, Noel Gerdy!' If he is guilty, there isn't a punishment sufficiently severe for him. But is this woman never going home?"

The woman was in no hurry. The weather was charming, her dress irresistible, and she intended showing herself off. She visited three or four more shops, and at last stopped at a confectioner's, where she remained for more than a quarter of an hour.

The old fellow, devoured by anxiety, moved about and stamped in his cab. It was torture thus to be kept from the key to a terrible enigma by the caprice of a worthless hussy! He was dying to rush after her, to seize her by the arm, and cry out to her: "Home, wretched, creature, home at once! What are you doing here? Don't you know that at this moment your lover, he whom you have ruined, is suspected of an a.s.sa.s.sination? Home, then, that I may question you, that I may learn from you whether he is innocent or guilty. For you will tell me, without knowing it. Ah! I have prepared a fine trap for you! Go home, then, this anxiety is killing me!"

She returned to her carriage. It started off once more, pa.s.sed up the Rue de Faubourg Montmarte, turned into the Rue de Provence, deposited its fair freight at her own door, and drove away.

"She lives here," said old Tabaret, with a sigh of relief.

He got out of the cab, gave the driver his forty francs, bade him wait, and followed in the young woman's footsteps.

"The old fellow is patient," thought the driver; "and the little brunette is caught."

The detective opened the door of the concierge's lodge.

"What is the name of the lady who just came in?" he demanded.

The concierge did not seem disposed to reply.

"Her name!" insisted the old man.

The tone was so sharp, so imperative, that the concierge was upset.

"Madame Juliette Chaffour," he answered.

"On what floor does she reside?"

"On the second, the door opposite the stairs."

A minute later, the old man was waiting in Madame Juliette's drawing-room. Madame was dressing, the maid informed him, and would be down directly.

Tabaret was astonished at the luxury of the room. There was nothing flaring or coa.r.s.e, or in bad taste. It was not at all like the apartment of a kept woman. The old fellow, who knew a good deal about such things, saw that everything was of great value. The ornaments on the mantelpiece alone must have cost, at the lowest estimate, twenty thousand francs.

"Clergeot," thought he, "didn't exaggerate a bit."

Juliette's entrance disturbed his reflections.

She had taken off her dress, and had hastily thrown about her a loose black dressing-gown, trimmed with cherry-coloured satin. Her beautiful hair, slightly disordered after her drive, fell in cascades about her neck, and curled behind her delicate ears. She dazzled old Tabaret. He began to understand.

"You wished, sir, to speak with me?" she inquired, bowing gracefully.

"Madame," replied M. Tabaret, "I am a friend of Noel Gerdy's, I may say his best friend, and-"

"Pray sit down, sir," interrupted the young woman.

She placed herself on a sofa, just showing the tips of her little feet encased in slippers matching her dressing-gown, while the old man sat down in a chair.

"I come, madame," he resumed, "on very serious business. Your presence at M. Gerdy's-"

"Ah," cried Juliette, "he already knows of my visit? Then he must employ a detective."

"My dear child-" began Tabaret, paternally.

"Oh! I know, sir, what your errand is. Noel has sent you here to scold me. He forbade my going to his house, but I couldn't help it. It's annoying to have a puzzle for a lover, a man whom one knows nothing whatever about, a riddle in a black coat and a white cravat, a sad and mysterious being-"

"You have been imprudent."

"Why? Because he is going to get married? Why does he not admit it then?"

"Suppose that it is not true."

"Oh, but it is! He told that old shark Clergeot so, who repeated it to me. Any way, he must be plotting something in that head of his; for the last month he has been so peculiar, he has changed so, that I hardly recognize him."

Old Tabaret was especially anxious to know whether Noel had prepared an alibi for the evening of the crime. For him that was the grand question. If he had, he was certainly guilty; if not, he might still be innocent. Madame Juliette, he had no doubt, could enlighten him on that point.

Consequently he had presented himself with his lesson all prepared, his little trap all set.

The young woman's outburst disconcerted him a little; but trusting to the chances of conversation, he resumed.

"Will you oppose Noel's marriage, then?"

"His marriage!" cried Juliette, bursting out into a laugh; "ah, the poor boy! If he meets no worse obstacle than myself, his path will be smooth. Let him marry by all means, the sooner the better, and let me hear no more of him."

"You don't love him, then?" asked the old fellow, surprised at this amiable frankness.

"Listen, sir. I have loved him a great deal, but everything has an end. For four years, I, who am so fond of pleasure, have pa.s.sed an intolerable existence. If Noel doesn't leave me, I shall be obliged to leave him. I am tired of having a lover who is ashamed of me and who despises me."

"If he despises you, my pretty lady, he scarcely shows it here," replied old Tabaret, casting a significant glance about the room.

"You mean," said she rising, "that he spends a great deal of money on me. It's true. He pretends that he has ruined himself on my account; it's very possible. But what's that to me! I am not a grabbing woman; and I would much have preferred less money and more regard. My extravagance has been inspired by anger and want of occupation. M. Gerdy treats me like a mercenary woman; and so I act like one. We are quits."

"You know very well that he worships you."

"He? I tell you he is ashamed of me. He hides me as though I were some horrible disease. You are the first of his friends to whom I have ever spoken. Ask him how often he takes me out. One would think that my presence dishonoured him. Why, no longer ago than last Tuesday, we went to the theatre! He hired an entire box. But do you think that he sat in it with me? Not at all. He slipped away and I saw no more of him the whole evening."

"How so? Were you obliged to return home alone?"

"No. At the end of the play, towards midnight, he deigned to reappear. We had arranged to go to the masked ball at the Opera and then to have some supper. Ah, it was amusing! At the ball, he didn't dare to let down his hood, or take off his mask. At supper, I had to treat him like a perfect stranger, because some of his friends were present."

This, then, was the alibi prepared in case of trouble. Juliette, had she been less carried away by her own feelings, would have noticed old Tabaret's emotion, and would certainly have held her tongue. He was perfectly livid, and trembled like a leaf.

"Well," he said, making a great effort to utter the words, "the supper, I suppose, was none the less gay for that."

"Gay!" echoed the young woman, shrugging her shoulders; "you do not seem to know much of your friend. If you ever ask him to dinner, take good care not to give him anything to drink. Wine makes him as merry as a funeral procession. At the second bottle, he was more tipsy than a cork; so much so, that he lost nearly everything he had with him: his overcoat, purse, umbrella, cigar-case-"

Old Tabaret couldn't sit and listen any longer; he jumped to his feet like a raving madman.

"Miserable wretch!" he cried, "infamous scoundrel! It is he; but I have him!"

And he rushed out, leaving Juliette so terrified that she called her maid.

"Child," said she, "I have just made some awful blunder, have let some secret out. I am sure that something dreadful is going to happen; I feel it. That old rogue was no friend of Noel's, he came to circ.u.mvent me, to lead me by the nose; and he succeeded. Without knowing it I must have spoken against Noel. What can I have said? I have thought carefully, and can remember nothing; but he must be warned though. I will write him a line, while you find a messenger to take it."

Old Tabaret was soon in his cab and hurrying towards the Prefecture of Police. Noel an a.s.sa.s.sin! His hate was without bounds, as formerly had been his confiding affection. He had been cruelly deceived, unworthily duped, by the vilest and the most criminal of men. He thirsted for vengeance; he asked himself what punishment would be great enough for the crime.

"For he not only a.s.sa.s.sinated Claudine," thought he, "but he so arranged the whole thing as to have an innocent man accused and condemned. And who can say that he did not kill his poor mother?"

He regretted the abolition of torture, the refined cruelty of the middle ages: quartering, the stake, the wheel. The guillotine acts so quickly that the condemned man has scarcely time to feel the cold steel cutting through his muscles; it is nothing more than a fillip on the neck. Through trying so much to mitigate the pain of death, it has now become little more than a joke, and might be abolished altogether.

The certainty of confounding Noel, of delivering him up to justice, of taking vengeance upon him, alone kept old Tabaret up.

"It is clear," he murmured, "that the wretch forgot his things at the railway station, in his haste to rejoin his mistress. Will they still be found there? If he has had the prudence to go boldly, and ask for them under a false name, I can see no further proofs against him. Madame Chaffour's evidence won't help me. The hussy, seeing her lover in danger, will deny what she has just told me; she will a.s.sert that Noel left her long after ten o'clock. But I cannot think he has dared to go to the railway station again."

About half way down the Rue Richelieu, M. Tabaret was seized with a sudden giddiness.

"I am going to have an attack, I fear," thought he. "If I die, Noel will escape, and will be my heir. A man should always keep his will constantly with him, to be able to destroy it, if necessary."

A few steps further on, he saw a doctor's plate on a door; he stopped the cab, and rushed into the house. He was so excited, so beside himself, his eyes had such a wild expression, that the doctor was almost afraid of his peculiar patient, who said to him hoa.r.s.ely: "Bleed me!"

The doctor ventured an objection; but already the old fellow had taken off his coat, and drawn up one of his shirtsleeves.

"Bleed me!" he repeated. "Do you want me to die?"

The doctor finally obeyed, and old Tabaret came out quieted and relieved.

An hour later, armed with the necessary power, and accompanied by a policeman, he proceeded to the lost property office at the St. Lazare railway station, to make the necessary search. It resulted as he had expected. He learnt that, on the evening of Shrove Tuesday, there had been found in one of the second cla.s.s carriages, of train No. 45, an overcoat and an umbrella. He was shown the articles; and he at once recognised them as belonging to Noel. In one of the pockets of the overcoat, he found a pair of lavender kid gloves, frayed and soiled, as well as a return ticket from Chatou, which had not been used.

In hurrying on, in pursuit of the truth, old Tabaret knew only too well, what it was. His conviction, unwillingly formed when Clergeot had told him of Noel's follies, had since been strengthened in a number of other ways. When with Juliette, he had felt positively sure, and yet, at this last moment, when doubt had become impossible, he was, on beholding the evidence arrayed against Noel, absolutely thunderstruck.

"Onwards!" he cried at last. "Now to arrest him."

And, without losing an instant, he hastened to the Palais de Justice, where he hoped to find the investigating magistrate. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, M. Daburon was still in his office. He was conversing with the Count de Commarin, having related to him the facts revealed by Pierre Lerouge whom the count had believed dead many years before.

Old Tabaret entered like a whirlwind, too distracted to notice the presence of a stranger.

"Sir," he cried, stuttering with suppressed rage, "we have discovered the real a.s.sa.s.sin! It is he, my adopted son, my heir, Noel!"

"Noel!" repeated M. Daburon, rising. And then in a lower tone, he added, "I suspected it."

"A warrant is necessary at once," continued the old fellow. "If we lose a minute, he will slip through our fingers. He will know that he is discovered, if his mistress has time to warn him of my visit. Hasten, sir, hasten!"

M. Daburon opened his lips to ask an explanation; but the old detective continued: "That is not all. An innocent man, Albert, is still in prison."

"He will not be so an hour longer," replied the magistrate; "a moment before your arrival, I had made arrangements to have him released. We must now occupy ourselves with the other one."

Neither old Tabaret nor M. Daburon had noticed the disappearance of the Count de Commarin. On hearing Noel's name mentioned, he gained the door quietly, and rushed out into the pa.s.sage.

CHAPTER XIX.

Noel had promised to use every effort, to attempt even the impossible, to obtain Albert's release. He in fact did interview the Public Prosecutor and some members of the bar, but managed to be repulsed everywhere. At four o'clock, he called at the Count de Commarin's house, to inform his father of the ill success of his efforts.

"The Count has gone out," said Denis; "but if you will take the trouble to wait--"

"I will wait," answered Noel.

"Then," replied the valet, "will you please follow me? I have the count's orders to show you into his private room."

This confidence gave Noel an idea of his new power. He was at home, henceforth, in that magnificent house, he was the master, the heir! His glance, which wandered over the entire room, noticed the genealogical tree, hanging on the wall. He approached it, and read.

It was like a page, and one of the most ill.u.s.trious, taken from the golden book of French n.o.bility. Every name which has a place in our history was there. The Commarins had mingled their blood with all the great families; two of them had even married daughters of royalty. A warm glow of pride filled the advocate's heart, his pulse beat quicker, he raised his head haughtily, as he murmured, "Viscount de Commarin!"

The door opened. He turned, and saw the count entering. As Noel was about to bow respectfully, he was petrified by the look of hatred, anger, and contempt on his father's face.

A shiver ran through his veins; his teeth chattered; he felt that he was lost.

"Wretch!" cried the count.

And, dreading his own violence, the old n.o.bleman threw his cane into a corner. He was unwilling to strike his son; he considered him unworthy of being struck by his hand. Then there was a moment of mortal silence, which seemed to both of them a century.

At the same time their minds were filled with thoughts, which would require a volume to transcribe.

Noel had the courage to speak first.

"Sir," he began.

"Silence!" exclaimed the count hoa.r.s.ely; "be silent! Can it be, heaven forgive me! that you are my son? Alas, I cannot doubt it now! Wretch! you knew well that you were Madame Gerdy's son. Infamous villain! you not only committed this murder, but you did everything to cause an innocent man to be charged with your crime! Parricide! you have also killed your mother."

The advocate attempted to stammer forth a protest.

"You killed her," continued the count with increased energy, "if not by poison, at least by your crime. I understand all now; she was not delirious this morning. But you know as well as I do what she was saying. You were listening, and, if you dared to enter at that moment when one word more would have betrayed you, it was because you had calculated the effect of your presence. It was to you that she addressed her last word, 'a.s.sa.s.sin!'"