The World's Greatest Books - Volume 4 Part 28

"File No. 113" is perhaps the most characteristic specimen of his work, exhibiting as it does a careful study of the Paris police system, and a thorough acquaintance with all phases of criminal life.

_I.--The Robbery and a Clue_

The first mention of the celebrated robbery which took place at M.

Fauvel's bank in Paris--the _dossier_ of the case is numbered 113 in the police files--appeared in the evening papers, February 28, 1866.

On the previous day a certain Count Louis de Clameran sent word to M.

Fauvel that he wished to withdraw the following morning at ten o'clock the sum of 12,000 which had been deposited in the bank by his brother, an ironmaster from the south of France who had recently died.

M. Fauvel made it a rule never to keep any large sums of money on the premises, but to deposit all such amounts in the keeping of the Bank of France. As this sum, however, had to be paid the first thing in the morning, the chief cashier, M. Prosper Bertomy, thought he was justified in obtaining the amount from the Bank of France on the evening of the 27th, and in locking it up in the bank safe against the morning.

The safe was a formidable-looking affair constructed entirely of wrought iron of treble thickness. An ingenious device regulated its opening. On the ma.s.sive door were five movable steel b.u.t.tons engraved with the letters of the alphabet. Before the key could be inserted in the lock, these b.u.t.tons had to be manipulated in the same order in which they had been used when the safe was last shut. The b.u.t.tons were arranged so that the letters on them formed some word, which was changed from time to time. This word was known only to M. Fauvel and his cashier, each of whom possessed a key of the safe.

As soon as the bank opened on the morning of February 28, the count put in an appearance, and Prosper Bertomy went to the safe to obtain the money. When, a second later, he reappeared, his face was ashy pale, and his steps tottered as he walked. The 12,000 had disappeared from within the safe. What made the affair all the more mysterious was that the safe was locked just as the cashier had left it the night before.

The room in which the safe was situated communicated with the bank by another room in which every night a tried servant of the establishment slept. By a second door admittance was obtained to the private apartments of M. and Madame Fauvel and their niece Madeline.

As soon as M. Fauvel had heard the startling news, he first obtained the necessary money from the Bank of France, settled the business with the count, and then turned his attention to the elucidation of the robbery.

He summoned the cashier to his presence.

Bertomy was a young man of thirty to whom M. Fauvel had shown great kindness, advancing his interests wherever possible until, though very young for the position, he was his most important and most confidential employee. Besides the paternal affection with which the bank manager regarded his cashier, another tie tended to make their relations all the stronger and more personal. Bertomy loved M. Fauvel's niece Madeline, and though a curious estrangement had sprung up between them during the previous nine or ten months, the banker always regarded their marriage as practically arranged.

The interview between the two men was a curious one. To each it appeared that the other must be the thief. They alone had the keys of the safe; they alone knew the magic word which could open the ma.s.sive door. The banker urged Bertomy to confess, promising him forgiveness; the other haughtily rejected the suggestion, and hinted that his employer had converted the 12,000 to his own use. In the end M. Fauvel lost his temper, sent for the police, and before twenty-four hours were up, Prosper Bertomy, who but the day before had held one of the most important and envied positions in the financial world of Paris, was charged before a magistrate as being a common thief.

Investigation of the case was at first entrusted to a detective named Fanferlot, nicknamed by his comrades the "Squirrel." Fanferlot's examination of the premises resulted in little. All he discovered was a scratch upon the door of the safe, but certain words that pa.s.sed between M. Fauvel and his niece, which seemed to indicate that the former was secretly opposed to the marriage of Madeline with Bertomy, caused him to jump to the conclusion that the banker had robbed his own safe in order to bring disgrace upon his cashier. He connived, however, at the arrest of Bertomy, hoping that later on he might obtain great kudos for himself by unmasking the banker. What might have been the result of his improper and unofficial methods will never be known, but in all probability great inconvenience would have been caused to a number of innocent persons and the whole course of justice thwarted had it not been for the intervention of the great and famous M. Lecoq.

M. Lecoq's interest in the bank robbery case was largely a personal one.

Even detectives have hearts, and M. Lecoq had loved with heart and soul a charming young girl named Nina Gipsy. Under the name of Caldas in one of his innumerable disguises, he had wooed her for many months. When he thought at last that he had won her affections, she had fled to the protection of no less a person than Prosper Bertomy himself. The cashier cared nothing for her, but embittered by an estrangement that had sprung up between Madeline and himself, he had sought forgetfulness in her society. Bertomy's arrest gave Lecoq an opportunity for a n.o.ble revenge.

He determined to prove to the woman he loved his superiority over his rival by saving the cashier from disgrace.

Though the case looked black against Bertomy, for it was shown that he was heavily in debt, and living far beyond his means, Lecoq was satisfied that he had not committed the crime. When Fanferlot, hopelessly befogged, called for his advice at his house in the Rue Montmartre, the great detective deigned to explain the preliminary data and the deductions from the data he had made.

The scratch on the safe door, slight and minute as it was, was his starting-point. How had it been made? He had found by experiment that it was impossible to make such a scratch upon the varnish without the exercise of considerable force. It was clear, therefore, that the scratch by the keyhole could not have been made by the thief in his trembling anxiety to get the business he had undertaken accomplished.

But why was such force used?

For a long time Lecoq puzzled over this problem. Then, with Fanferlot, he tried an experiment. In his room was an iron box varnished like the safe. Taking the key of this box from his pocket, he ordered Fanferlot to seize his arm just as he put it near the lock. The key slipped, pulled away from the lock, and sliding along the surface of the door, left upon it a diagonal scratch, almost an exact reproduction of the one on the safe.

From this simple experiment Lecoq deduced that two people were present when the safe was robbed; one wanted to take the money, the other wanted to prevent it being taken. This was the basis of the case which he set out to draw up against some person or persons unknown. He argued, with his usual clear logic, that neither Fauvel nor Bertomy could have robbed the safe. Both of them had keys; both of them knew the secret word and could have robbed the safe whenever they pleased. Therefore, neither of them would have committed the theft in the presence of somebody else.

_II.--A Mysterious Journey_

Lecoq's first steps after establishing these preliminary deductions was to secure the release of Bertomy on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

On the very morning of his release, Bertomy had received a mysterious letter composed of printed words cut out letter by letter from a book and pasted on paper.

"My dear Prosper," so the epistle ran, "a friend who knows the horror of your situation sends you this help. There is one heart at least which feels for you. Leave France; you are yourself. The future is before you.

Go, and may this money be of use."

Enclosed with this note were banknotes for 400. Lecoq, disguised as a M. Verduret, a country merchant, a friend of Bertomy's father, secured this epistle and studied it carefully. His knowledge of the various types used by the printers in Paris showed him that the letters had been taken from a book printed by a well-known firm who published volumes of devotion. The correctness of this conclusion was established by the discovery on the back of one of the small cuttings the word "Deus." The words had been cut from a Catholic prayer-book. To find that prayer-book was his next business.

In another disguise he sought out Nina Gipsy, and, by asking her a.s.sistance to clear Prosper, induced her to take up the position of lady's-maid in the Fauvel family, for it was there, he conceived, the mutilated book of devotion would be found. Again his wonderful instinct proved right. In a few days Nina brought him the very book--a prayer- book, belonging to Madeline, which had been given her by Bertomy.

Why had Madeline sent the cashier this elaborately disguised letter? Why had she wished him to leave France, confident as she was, so she told him, of his innocence?

To find an answer to these important queries, Lecoq closely questioned Bertomy. He learnt that the night before the robbery the cashier had dined with his friend Raoul de Lagors, the wealthy, dissolute young nephew of M. Fauvel's wife. This Lagors was the friend of Count Louis de Clameran, whose demand for the 12,000 left him by his dead brother had resulted in the discovery of the mysterious robbery.

Bertomy had nothing but the highest praise for Lagors, but, on the other hand, spoke most disparagingly of the count. The count, it appeared, had proposed for the hand of Madeline, and had pressed his suit with great determination. And Madeline--and this was what provided a new problem for Lecoq's consideration--had tacitly accepted his attention.

Through Nina, Lecoq had arranged a meeting between Bertomy and Madeline, and satisfied himself that the girl was whole-heartedly and devotedly attached to her uncle's cashier. Then why was she favouring the suit of the count? Lecoq at once made it his business to inquire into the count's past.

He was the second son of an old and n.o.ble family. His elder brother, Gaston, having to fly the country in consequence of causing the death of several men, he had inherited the property. A life of dissolute pleasures had soon exhausted his patrimony and he was reduced to living by his wits. Some weeks before the robbery, he had discovered that his brother Gaston was alive and was living on a large estate in the south of France, which he had purchased with the wealth he had acc.u.mulated in business. Six weeks after the two brothers met again, the elder died and the younger inherited his vast fortune.

Raoul de Lagors was the next character in the drama whose past the detective made it his business to expose. Lagors, it has been said, was the nephew of Madame Fauvel. To his surprise, Lecoq discovered, by inquiries in her native place, that the banker's wife had never had any brothers or sisters. Lagors, therefore, was not her nephew.

Fanferlot, acting on instructions, had kept a strict watch on the movements of Madeline, and by this means Lecoq received timely warning of a mysterious excursion which the girl made one night. He followed her to a lonely house on the outskirts of the city. When she had gained admittance, the appearance of a light in one of the windows on the first floor seemed to indicate the room to which she had been taken. By the aid of a ladder, Lecoq was able to watch what was going on within through the shutters.

He saw Madeline standing opposite Lagors, evidently, from her att.i.tude, pleading with him. For some time he listened to her, with a cynical smile upon his face, but after an hour he seemed to decide, with evident reluctance, to comply with her request. Going to a cabinet, he took out a bundle of p.a.w.n tickets and flung them on the table. Hastily going through the collection, she selected three, and concealing them in her dress, left the house.

By following her to a p.a.w.nshop, Lecoq discovered that she had redeemed certain valuable articles of jewelry belonging to Madame Fauvel. Lecoq knew, through Nina Gipsy, who still filled the part of lady's-maid in the Fauvel family, that M. Fauvel had insisted on his wife accompanying him on the following evening to a great fancy-dress ball which was to be given by one of the wealthiest families in the capital. Obviously, then, the jewelry that Madeline had redeemed was required by Madame Fauvel for the occasion. Why had she p.a.w.ned it for Lagors?

A theory had half formed itself in Lecoq's brain. He determined to prove its truth. Disguised as a clown, he attended the fancy-dress ball, and in the character of a mountebank collected a group of ladies and gentlemen around him while he related with the inimitable skill of a buffoon a romantic narrative. To most of the people present it was simply an amusing story, but to the count and Lagors and Madame Fauvel, who were among the listeners, it seemed something much more, for Lecoq dressed out his theory of the robbery in the trappings of romance. Just as he reached the climax of the story there was a cry, and Madame Fauvel almost fell fainting on the floor. The count and Lagors rushed up furiously to Lecoq.

"Master Clown," said Lagors, "your tongue is too long."

"Perhaps, my pretty boy," retorted Lecoq, "perhaps it is. But it is, I can a.s.sure you, not so long as my arm."

"Who are you, M. le Clown?" the count exclaimed angrily.

"I am," replied Lecoq, "the best friend your brother Gaston had. I was his counsellor. I am the confidant of his last wishes."

Though the solution of the problem seemed so tantalisingly near, there were still some threads in the tangle which required sorting out before Lecoq could say that the case was complete. Among other matters he inquired of Bertomy the word which had been used to lock the safe on, the night of the robbery. The word had been "gipsy." Bertomy was confident that he had not mentioned it to anybody, but Nina Gipsy was able to throw light on this part of the problem. She recollected a chance remark of Bertomy's while sitting at dinner with herself and Lagors on the night of the robbery. She had reproached Bertomy with neglecting her.

"It's too bad for you to reproach me," cried the cashier, "for it is your name which at this very moment guards the safe of M. Fauvel."

Lagors, therefore, had known the pa.s.sword. What did this new discovery imply? How did it fit in with the rest of the data which Lecoq had so brilliantly collected?

After his custom, he marshalled once more in his mind all the facts at his disposal, but they were like so many loose links in a chain. They required the connecting link to make the chain complete. To find that link Lecoq spent a month in visiting the old home of the De Clamerans, the estate formerly occupied by Gaston de Clameron, who had died a few days before the robbery, and also in a trip to England. When he returned to Paris, _dossier_ No. 113 was complete.

_III.--The Dossier_

In her extreme youth, Madame Fauvel had been secretly loved by Gaston de Clameron. It was a result of certain contemptuous words spoken of the girl he loved that Gaston had committed those deeds which had compelled him to fly the country. Shortly after his flight, the girl, finding that she was about to give birth to a child, imparted the secret to her mother. Fearing a scandal, the mother, accompanied by a faithful nurse, took her daughter over to England. There, near London, a child was born, who was immediately handed over to some simple country people to adopt.

The unhappy girl returned to France, and shortly after married M.

Fauvel, the banker.