Chapter III: The Hunt for the Man (1)

M. de Presles, the examining magistrate in charge of the Court at Brives, had just arrived at the château of Beaulieu, having been notified of the tragedy by the police sergeant stationed at Saint-Jaury. The magistrate was a young, fashionable, and rather aristocratic man of the world, whose grievance it was to be tied down to work that was mechanical rather than intellectual. He was essentially modern in his ideas, and his chief ambition was to get away as quickly as possible from the small provincial town to which he had been exiled by the changes and chances of promotion; he was sick of Brives, and now it occurred to him that a crime like this present one would give him an opportunity of displaying his gifts of intuition and deduction, prove his quality, and so might enable him to get another appointment. After Dollon had received him at the château, the magistrate had first of all made enquiry as to who was in the house at the time. From the information given him he was satisfied that it was unnecessary to subject either Thérèse or Charles Rambert to immediate examination, both of the young people being much too upset to be able to reply to serious questions, and both having been taken away to the house of the Baronne de Vibray. It was, also, clear that M. Rambert senior, who had only arrived after the crime, could not furnish any interesting information.

"Tell me exactly how you discovered the crime, M. Dollon," he said as, pale and trembling, the steward accompanied him along the corridor to the scene of the murder.

"I went this morning as usual, sir," the steward replied, "to say good morning to Mme. de Langrune and receive her orders for the day. I knocked at her door as I always did, but got no answer. I knocked louder, but still there was no answer. I don't know why I opened the door instead of going away; perhaps I had some kind of presentiment. Oh, I shall never forget the shock I had when I saw my poor dear mistress lying dead at the foot of her bed, steeped in blood, and with such a horrible gash in her throat that for a moment I thought her head was severed from the trunk."

The police sergeant corroborated the steward's story.

"The murder certainly was committed with peculiarly horrible violence, sir," he remarked. "The body shows that the victim was struck with the utmost fury. The murderer must have gone mad over the corpse from sheer lust of blood. The wounds are shocking."

"Knife wounds?" M. de Presles asked.

"I don't know," said the sergeant uncertainly. "Your worship can form your own opinion."

The magistrate followed the steward into the room where Dollon had taken care that nothing was touched.

In its furniture and general arrangement Mme. de Langrune's room corresponded with the character of the old lady. It was large, and quietly furnished with old presses, arm-chairs, chairs and old-fashioned tables. It was evident that she had had no liking for modern fashions, but had preferred to have her own room stamped with the rather severe, yet very comfortable character of former days.

The whole of one side of the room was filled by the Marquise's bed. It was large, and raised upon a kind of dais covered with a carpet of subdued tones. At the foot of the bed, on the right, was a large window, fastened half open despite the keen cold, no doubt for hygienic reasons. In the middle of the room was a round mahogany table with a few small articles upon it, a blotting-pad, books and so on. In one corner a large crucifix was suspended from the wall with a prie-Dieu in front of it, the velvet of which had been worn white by the old lady's knees. Finally, a little further away, was a small escritoire, half open now, with its drawers gaping and papers scattered on the floor.

There were only two ways of ingress into the room: one by the door through which the magistrate had entered, which opened on to the main corridor on the first floor, and the other by a door communicating with the Marquise's dressing-room; this dressing-room was lighted by a large window, which was shut.

The magistrate was shocked by the spectacle presented by the corpse of the Marquise. It was lying on its back on the floor, with the arms extended; the head was towards the bed, the feet towards the window. The body was almost naked. A gash ran almost right across the throat, leaving the bones exposed. Torrents of blood had saturated the victim's clothes, and on the carpet round the body a wide stain was still slowly spreading wider.

M. de Presles stooped over the dead woman.

"What an appalling wound!" he muttered. "The medical evidence will explain what weapon it was made with; but no doctor is required to point out the violence of the blow or the fury of the murderer." He turned to the old steward who, at sight of his mistress, could hardly restrain his tears. "Nothing has been moved in the room, eh?"

"Nothing, sir."

The magistrate pointed to the escritoire with its open drawers.

"That has not been touched?"

"No, sir."

"I suppose that is where Mme. de Langrune kept her valuables?"

The steward shook his head.

"The Marquise could not have had any large sum of money in the house: a few hundred francs perhaps for daily expenses, but certainly no more."

"So you do not think robbery was the motive of the crime?"

The steward shrugged his shoulders.

"The murderer may have thought that Mme. de Langrune had money here, sir. But anyhow he must have been disturbed, because he did not take away the rings the Marquise had laid upon the dressing-table before she got into bed."

The magistrate walked slowly round the room.

"This window was open?" he asked.

"The Marquise always left it like that; she liked all the fresh air she could get."

"Might not the murderer have got in that way?"

The steward shook his head.

"It is most unlikely, sir. See: the windows are fitted outside with a kind of grating pointing outwards and downwards, and I think that would prevent anyone from climbing in."

M. de Presles saw that this was so. Continuing his investigation, he satisfied himself that there was nothing about the furniture in that room, or in the dressing-room, to show that the murderer had been through them, except the disorder on and about the little escritoire. At last he came to the door which opened on to the corridor.

"Ah!" he exclaimed: "this is interesting!" and with a finger he pointed to the inner bolt on the door, the screws of which were wrenched half out, showing that an attempt had been made to force the door. "Did Mme. de Langrune bolt her door every night?" he asked.

"Yes, always," Dollon answered. "She was very nervous, and if I was the first to come to bid her good morning I always heard her unfasten that bolt when I knocked."

M. de Presles made no reply. He made one more tour of the room, minutely considering the situation of each single article.

"M. Dollon, will you kindly take me where I can have the use of a table and inkstand, and anything else I may need to get on with my preliminary enquiry?"

"Your clerk is waiting for you in the library, sir," the steward replied. "He has everything ready for you there."

"Very well. If it is convenient to you we will join him now."

* * * * *

M. de Presles followed Dollon down to the library on the ground floor, where his enterprising clerk had already established himself. The magistrate took his seat behind a large table and called to the police sergeant.

"I shall ask you to be present during my enquiry, sergeant. The first investigations will devolve upon you, so it will be well for you to hear all the details the witnesses can furnish me with. I suppose you have taken no steps as yet?"

"Beg pardon, sir: I have sent my men out in all directions, with orders to interrogate all tramps and to detain any who do not give a satisfactory account of their time last night."

"Good! By the way, while I think of it, have you sent off the telegram I gave you when I arrived--the telegram to the police head-quarters in Paris, asking for a detective to be sent down?"

"I took it to the telegraph office myself, sir."

His mind made easy on this score, the young magistrate turned to Dollon.

"Will you please take a seat, sir?" he said and, disregarding the disapproving looks of his clerk, who had a particular predilection for all the long circumlocutions and red tape of the law, he pretermitted the usual questions as to name and age and occupation of the witnesses, and began his enquiry by questioning the old steward. "What is the exact plan of the château?" was his first enquiry.

"You know it now, sir, almost as well as I do. The passage from the front door leads to the main staircase, which we went up just now, to the first floor where the bedroom of the Marquise is situated. The first floor contains a series of rooms separated by a corridor. On the right is Mlle. Thérèse's room, and then come guest-chambers which are not occupied now. On the left is the bedroom of the Marquise, followed by her dressing-room on the same side, and after that there is another dressing-room and then the bedroom occupied by M. Charles Rambert."

"Good. And the floor above: how is that arranged?"

"The second floor is exactly like the first floor, sir, except that there are only servants' rooms there. They are smaller, and there are more of them."

"What servants sleep in the house?"

"As a general rule, sir, the two maid-servants, Marie the housemaid and Louise the cook, and also Hervé the butler; but Hervé did not sleep in the château last night. He had asked the mistress's permission to go into the village, and she had given it to him on condition that he did not come back that night."

"What do you mean?" enquired the magistrate, rather surprised.

"The Marquise was rather nervous, sir, and did not like the idea of anyone being able to get into the house at night; so she was always careful to double-lock the front door and the kitchen door herself every night. She went round all the rooms too every night, and made sure that all the iron shutters were properly fastened, and that it was impossible for anyone to get into the house. When Hervé goes out in the evenings he either sleeps in the village and does not return till the following morning, which is what he did to-day, or else he asks the coachman to leave the yard door unlocked, and sleeps in a room above the stables which as a rule is not occupied."

"That is where the other servants sleep, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir. The gardeners, the coachman, and the keepers all live in the out-buildings. With regard to myself, I have a small cottage a little farther away in the park."

M. de Presles sat silent for a few moments, thinking deeply. The only sound in the room was the irritating squeak of the clerk's quill pen, as he industriously wrote down all the steward's replies. At last M. de Presles looked up.

"So, on the night of the crime the only persons sleeping in the château were Mme. de Langrune, her granddaughter Mlle. Thérèse, M. Charles Rambert and the two maids. Is that so?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then it does not seem likely that the crime was committed by anyone living in the château?"

"That is so, sir:--and yet I do not believe that anybody got into the château; only two people had a key of the front door--the Marquise and myself. When I got to the house this morning I found the door open, because Mlle. Thérèse went out early with M. Charles Rambert to meet M. Rambert, senior, at the station, and she opened the door with the keys that the Marquise had given into her care the night before; but she told me herself that when she started to meet the train at five o'clock the door was shut. Mlle. Thérèse had put her keys under her pillow, and my bunch had never left my possession."

"Is it not possible," the magistrate suggested, "that someone may have got in during the day, hidden himself, and have committed the crime when night came? Remember, M. Dollon, the bolt inside Mme. de Langrune's bedroom door has been wrenched away: that means that the murderer made his entrance by that door, and made it by force."

But the steward shook his head.

"No, sir, nobody could have secreted himself in the château during the day; people are always coming to the kitchen, so the back door is under constant supervision; and all yesterday afternoon there were gardeners at work on the lawn in front of the main entrance; if any stranger had presented himself there he would certainly have been seen; and finally, Mme. de Langrune had given orders, which I always attended to myself, to keep the door locked through which one gets down to the cellars. So the murderer could not have hidden in the basement, and where else could he have hidden? Not in the rooms on the ground floor: there was company to dinner last night, and all the rooms were used more or less; the Marquise, or some one of the guests, would certainly have discovered him. So he would have had to be upstairs, either on the first or second floor: that is most unlikely: it would have been very risky; besides, the big house-dog is fastened up at the foot of the staircase during the day, and he would not have let any stranger pass him: either the dog must have known the man, or at all events some meat must have been thrown to him; but there are no traces to show that anything of the sort was done."

The magistrate was much perplexed.

"Then the crime is inexplicable, M. Dollon. You have just told me yourself that there was no one in the château but Mme. de Langrune, the two young people Thérèse and Charles, and the two maids: it certainly is not any one of those who can be the guilty person, for the way in which the crime was committed, and the force of the blows dealt, show that the criminal was a man--a professional murderer in fact. Consequently the guilty person must have got in from outside. Come now, have you no suspicions at all?"

The steward raised his arms and let them fall in utter dejection.

"No," he replied at last, "I do not suspect anybody! I cannot suspect anybody! But, sir, as far as I am concerned, I feel certain that although the murderer was not one of those who occupied the château last night he nevertheless did not come in from outside. It was not possible! The doors were locked and the shutters were fastened."

"Nevertheless," M. de Presles remarked, "inasmuch as someone has committed a murder, it must necessarily be the fact, either that that someone was hidden inside the château when Mme. de Langrune herself locked the front door, or else that he got in during the night. Do you not see yourself, M. Dollon, that one or other of these two hypotheses must be correct?"

The steward hesitated.

"It is a mystery, sir," he declared at last. "I swear to you, sir, that nobody could have got in, and yet it is perfectly clear also that neither M. Charles nor Mlle. Thérèse, nor yet either of the two maids, Marie and Louise, is the murderer."

M. de Presles sat wrapped in thought for a few minutes and then desired the old steward to fetch the two women servants.

"Come back, yourself," he added, as the old man went away; "I may require further particulars from you."

Dollon left the room, and Gigou, the clerk, leant forward towards the magistrate: tact was not the most shining of M. Gigou's qualities.

"When your enquiry is finished, sir--presently--we shall have to pay a visit to the Mayor of Saint-Jaury. That is in accordance with the usual procedure. And then he cannot do less than invite us to stay to dinner!"

IV. "NO! I AM NOT MAD!"

The next day but one after the crime, on the Friday, Louise the cook, who was still terribly upset by the dreadful death of the good mistress in whose service she had been for fifteen years, came down to her kitchen early. It was scarcely daybreak, and the good woman was obliged to light a lamp to see by. With her mind anywhere but on her work, she was mechanically getting breakfast for the servants and for the visitors to the château, when a sharp knock on the back door made her jump. She went to open it, and uttered a little scream as she saw the cocked hats of gendarmes silhouetted against the wan light of the early morning.

Between the gendarmes were two miserable-looking specimens of humanity. Louise had only opened the door a few inches when the sergeant, who had known her for many years, took a step forward and gave her a military salute.

"I must ask your hospitality for us and for these two fellows whom we have taken up to-night, prowling about the neighbourhood," he said.

The dismayed Louise broke in.

"Good heavens, sergeant, are you bringing thieves here? Where do you expect me to put them? Surely there's enough trouble in the house as it is!"

The gendarme, Morand, smiled with the disillusioned air of a man who knows very well what trouble is, and the sergeant replied:

"Put them? Why, in your kitchen, of course," and as the servant made a sign of refusal, he added: "I am sorry, but you must; besides, there's nothing for you to be afraid of; the men are handcuffed, and we shall not leave them. We are going to wait here for the magistrate who will examine them."

The gendarmes had pushed their wretched captives in before them, two tramps of the shadiest appearance.

Louise, who had gone mechanically to raise the lid of a kettle beginning to boil over, looked round at his last words.

"The magistrate?" she said: "M. de Presles? Why, he is here now--in the library."

"No?" exclaimed the sergeant, jumping up from the kitchen chair on which he had seated himself.

"He is, I tell you," the old woman insisted; "and the little man who generally goes about with him is here too."

"You mean M. Gigou, his clerk?"

"Very likely," muttered Louise.

"I leave the prisoners with you, Morand," said the sergeant curtly; "don't let them out of your sight. I am going to the magistrate. I have no doubt he will wish to interrogate these fellows at once."

The gendarme came to attention and saluted.

"Trust me, sergeant!"

It looked as if Morand's job was going to be an easy one; the two tramps, huddled up in a corner of the kitchen opposite the stove, showed no disposition to make their escape. The two were utterly different in appearance. One was a tall, strongly built man, with thick hair crowned by a little jockey cap, and was enveloped in a kind of overcoat which might have been black once but which was now of a greenish hue, the result of the inclemency of the weather; he gnawed his heavy moustache in silence and turned sombre, uneasy looks on all, including his companion in misfortune. He wore hobnailed shoes and carried a stout cudgel. He was more like a piece of the human wreckage one sees in the street corners of great cities than a genuine tramp. Instead of a collar, there was a variegated handkerchief round his neck. His name, he had told the sergeant, was François Paul.

The other man, who had been discovered at the back of a farm just as he was about to crawl inside a stack, was a typical country tramp. An old soft felt hat was crammed down on his head, and a shock of rebellious red and grey hair curled up all round it, while a hairy beard entirely concealed all the features of his face. All that could be seen of it was a pair of sparkling eyes incessantly moving in every possible direction. This second man contemplated with interest the place into which the police had conducted him. On his back he bore a heavy sort of wallet in which he stowed articles of the most varied description. Whereas his companion maintained a rigid silence, this man never stopped talking. Nudging his neighbour every now and then he whispered:

"Say, where do you come from? You're not from these parts, are you? I've never seen you before have I? Everybody round here knows me: Bouzille--my name's Bouzille," and turning to the gendarme he said: "Isn't it true, M'sieu Morand, that you and I are old acquaintances? This is the fourth or fifth time you've pinched me, isn't it?"

Bouzille's companion vouchsafed him a glance.

"So it's a habit of yours, is it?" he said in the same low tone; "you often get nabbed?"

"As to 'often,'" the garrulous fellow replied, "that depends on what you mean by the word. In winter time it's not bad business to go back to clink, because of the rotten weather; in the summer one would rather go easy, and then, too, in the summer there isn't so much crime; you can find all you want on the road; country people aren't so particular in the summer, while in the winter it's quite another thing; so they have done me down to-night for mother Chiquard's rabbit, I expect."

The gendarme, who had been listening with no great attention, chimed in.

"So it was you who stole the rabbit, was it, Bouzille?"

"What's the good of your asking me that, M'sieu Morand?" protested Bouzille. "I suppose you would have left me alone if you hadn't been sure of it?"

Bouzille's companion bent his head and whispered very low:

"There has been something worse than that: the job with the lady of this house."

"Oh, that!" said Bouzille with a gesture of complete indifference. But he did not proceed. The sergeant came back to the kitchen and said sternly:

"François Paul, forward: the examining magistrate will hear you now."

The man summoned stepped towards the sergeant, and quietly submitted to being taken by the arm, for his hands were fastened. Bouzille winked knowingly at the gendarme, now his sole remaining confidant, and remarked with satisfaction:

"Good luck! We are getting on to-day! Not too much 'remanded' about it," and as the gendarme, severely keeping his proper distance, made no reply, the incorrigible chatterbox went on merrily: "As a matter of fact it suits me just as well to be committed for trial, since the government give you your board and lodging, and especially since there's a really beautiful prison at Brives now." He leaned familiarly against the gendarme's shoulder. "Ah, M'sieu Morand, you didn't know it--you weren't old enough--why, it was before you joined the force--but the lock-up used to be in an old building just behind the Law Courts: dirty! I should think it was dirty! And damp! Why once, when I did three months there, from January to April, I came out so ill with the rheumatics that I had to go back into the infirmary for another fortnight! Gad!" he went on after a moment's pause during which he snuffed the air around him, "something smells jolly good here!" He unceremoniously addressed the cook who was busy at her work: "Mightn't there perhaps be a bit of a blow out for me, Mme. Louise?" and as she turned round with a somewhat scandalised expression he continued: "you needn't be frightened, lady, you know me very well. Many a time I've come and asked you for any old thing, and you've always given me something. M'sieu Dollon, too: whenever he has an old pair of shoes that are worn out, well, those are mine; and a crust of bread is what nobody ever refuses."

The cook hesitated, touched by the recollections evoked by the poor tramp; she looked at the gendarme for a sign of encouragement. Morand shrugged his shoulders and turned a patronising gaze on Bouzille.

"Give him something, if you like, Mme. Louise. After all, he is well known. And for my own part I don't believe he could have done it."

The tramp interrupted him.

"Ah, M'sieu Morand, if it's a matter of picking up trifles here and there, a wandering rabbit, perhaps, or a fowl that's tired of being lonely, I don't say no; but as for anything else--thank'ee kindly, lady."

Louise had handed Bouzille a huge chunk of bread which he immediately interned in the depths of his enormous bag.

"What do you suppose that other chap can have to tell Mr. Paul Pry? He did not look like a regular! Now when I get before the gentlemen in black, I don't want to contradict them, and so I always say, 'Yes, my lord,' and they are perfectly satisfied; sometimes they laugh and the president of the court says, 'Stand up, Bouzille,' and then he gives me a fortnight, or twenty-one days, or a month, as the case may be."

* * * * *

The sergeant came back, alone, and addressed the gendarme.

"The other man has been discharged," he said. "As for Bouzille, M. de Presles does not think there is any need to interrogate him."

"Am I to be punted out then?" enquired the tramp with some dismay, as he looked uneasily towards the window, against the glass of which rain was lashing.

The sergeant could not restrain a smile.

"Well, no, Bouzille," he said kindly, "we must take you to the lock-up; there's the little matter of the rabbit to be cleared up, you know. Come now, quick march! Take him to Saint-Jaury, Morand!"

The sergeant went back to the library to hold himself at the magistrate's disposal; through the torrential downpour of rain Bouzille and the gendarme wended their way to the village; and left alone in her kitchen, Louise put out her lamp, for despite the shocking weather it was getting lighter now, and communed with herself.

"I've a kind of idea that they would have done better to keep that other man. He was a villainous-looking fellow!"

The sad, depressing day had passed without any notable incident.

Charles Rambert and his father had spent the afternoon with Thérèse and the Baronne de Vibray continuously addressing large black-edged envelopes to the relations and friends of the Marquise de Langrune, whose funeral had been fixed for the next day but one.

A hasty dinner had been served at which the Baronne de Vibray was present. Her grief was distressing to witness. Somewhat futile to outward seeming, this woman had a very kind and tender heart; as a matter of course she had constituted herself the protector and comforter of Thérèse, and she had spent the whole of the previous day with the child at Brives, ransacking the local shops to procure her mourning.

Thérèse was terribly shocked by the dreadful death of her grandmother whom she adored, but she displayed unexpected strength of character and controlled her grief so that she might be able to look after the guests whom she was now entertaining for the first time as mistress of the house. The Baronne de Vibray had failed in her attempt to persuade Thérèse to come with her to Querelles to sleep. Thérèse was determined in her refusal to leave the château and what she termed her "post of duty."

"Marie will stay with me," she assured the kind Baronne, "and I promise you I shall have sufficient courage to go to sleep to-night."

So her friend got into her car alone at nine o'clock and went back to her own house, and Thérèse went up at once to bed with Marie, the faithful servant who, like Louise the cook, had been with her ever since she was born.

* * * * *

After having read all the newspapers, with their minute and often inaccurate account of the tragedy at Beaulieu--for everyone in the château had been besieged the previous day by reporters and representatives of various press agencies--M. Etienne Rambert said to his son simply, but with a marked gravity:

"Let us go upstairs, my son: it is time."

At the door of his room Charles deferentially offered his cheek to his father, but M. Etienne Rambert seemed to hesitate; then, as if taking a sudden resolution, he entered his son's room instead of going on to his own. Charles kept silence and refrained from asking any questions, for he had noticed how lost in sad thought his father had seemed to be since the day before.

Charles Rambert was very tired. He began to undress at once. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and was turning towards a looking-glass to undo his tie, when his father came up to him; with an abrupt movement M. Etienne Rambert put both his hands on his son's shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. Then in a stifled but peremptory tone he said:

"Now confess, unhappy boy! Confess to your father!"

Charles went ghastly white.

"What?" he muttered.

Etienne Rambert kept his eyes fixed upon him.

"It was you who committed the murder!"

The ringing denial that the young man tried to utter was strangled in his throat; he threw out his arms and groped with his hands as if to find something to support him in his faintness; then he pulled himself together.

"Committed the murder? I? You accuse me of having killed the Marquise? It is infamous, hateful, awful!"

"Alas, yes!"

"No, no! Good God, no!"

"Yes!" Etienne Rambert insisted.

The two men faced each other, panting. Charles controlled the emotion which was sweeping over him once more, and looking steadily at his father, said in tones of bitter reproach:

"And it is actually my own father who says that--who suspects me!"

Tears filled the young fellow's eyes and sobs choked him; he grew whiter still, and seemed so near collapse that his father had to support him to a chair, where he remained for several minutes utterly prostrated.

M. Rambert paced up and down the room a few times, then took another chair and sat down in front of his son. Passing a hand across his brow as if to sweep away the horrible nightmare that was haunting him, he spoke again.

"Come now, my boy, my poor boy, let us talk it over quietly. I do not know how it was, but yesterday morning when I saw you at the station I had a presentiment of something: you were haggard, and tired, and your eyes were drawn----"

"I told you before," Charles answered tonelessly "that I had had a bad night: I was over-excited and did not sleep: I was awake the whole night."

"By Jove, yes!" his father rapped out: "I can believe that! But if you were not asleep, how do you account for your not hearing anything?"

"Thérèse did not hear anything either," said Charles after a moment's reflection.

"Thérèse's room was a long way off," M. Rambert replied, "while there was only a thin wall between yours and that of the Marquise. You must have heard: you did hear! More than that----, oh, my boy, my unhappy boy!"

Charles was twisting and untwisting his hands, and great drops of cold perspiration beaded his brow.

"You are the only single person who thinks I committed such an awful crime!" he said, half questioningly.

"The only one?" Etienne Rambert muttered. "Perhaps! As yet! But you ought to know that you made a very bad impression indeed upon the friends of the Marquise during the evening before the crime, when President Bonnet was reading the particulars of a murder that had been committed in Paris by--somebody: I forget whom."

"Good heavens!" Charles exclaimed in indignation, "I did not say anything wrong. Do you mean to say that just because I am interested in stories of great criminals like Rocambole and Fantômas----"

"You created a deplorable impression," his father repeated.

"So they suspect me too, do they?" Charles enquired. "But you can't make accusations like that," he said, warming up: "you've got to have facts, and proofs." He looked at his father for the sympathy and encouragement of affection. "Listen, papa, I know you will believe me when I swear that I am innocent; but do you think other people----"

M. Etienne Rambert sat with his head between his hands, wrapped in thought; there was a short silence before the unhappy father replied:

"Unfortunately there is evidence against you," he said at last; "and damning evidence, too!" he added with a glance at his son that seemed to pulverise him. "Terrible evidence! Consider, Charles: the magistrates have decided, as a result of their investigations, that no one got into the château on the fatal night; you were the only man who slept there; and none but a man could possibly have committed such a horrible crime, such a monstrous piece of butchery!"

"Someone might have got in from outside," the unhappy lad urged, as if trying to escape from the network in which he was being entangled.

"No one did," Etienne Rambert insisted; "besides, how could you prove it?"

Charles was silent. He stood in the middle of the room, with trembling legs and haggard eyes, seemingly stupefied and incapable of coherent thought, vacantly watching his father. With bent head and shoulders bowed as though beneath a too-heavy load, Etienne Rambert moved towards the dressing-room attached to the bedroom.

"Come here," he said in an almost inaudible voice; "follow me."

He went into the dressing-room, and picking up the towels that were heaped anyhow on the lower rail of the washstand, he selected a very crumpled one and held it out in front of his son.

"Look at that!" he said in a low, curt tone.

And on the towel, thus held in the light, Charles Rambert saw red stains of blood. The lad started, and was about to burst into some protestation, but Etienne Rambert imperiously checked him.

"Do you still deny it? Unhappy, wretched boy, there is the convincing, irrefutable evidence of your guilt! These stains of blood proclaim it. Something always is overlooked! How are you to explain the presence of this blood-stained linen in your room? Can you still deny that it is proof positive of your guilt?"

"But I do deny it, I do deny it! I don't understand! I know nothing about it!" and once more Charles Rambert collapsed into the arm-chair; the unhappy lad was nothing but a human wreck, with no strength to argue or even utter a word.

His father's eyes rested on him, filled with infinite affection and profoundest pity.

"My poor, poor boy!" the unhappy Etienne Rambert murmured, and added, as if speaking only to himself: "I wonder if you are not entirely responsible--if there are circumstances to plead for you!"

"Do you still accuse me, papa? Do you really believe I am the murderer?"

Etienne Rambert shook his head hopelessly.

"Oh, I wish, I wish," he exclaimed, "that for the honour of our name, and for the sake of those who love us, I could prove you had congenital, hereditary tendencies that made you not responsible! Why could not I have watched over your upbringing? Why has fate decreed that I should only see my son three times at most in eighteen years, and come home to find him--a criminal? Oh, if science could but establish the fact that the child of a tainted mother----"

"Tainted?" Charles exclaimed; "what do you mean?"

"Tainted with a terrible and mysterious disease," Etienne Rambert went on: "a disease before which we are powerless and unarmed--insanity!"

"What?" cried Charles, growing momentarily more distressed and bewildered; "what is that, papa? Are my wits going? My mother insane?" And then he added hopelessly: "My God! You must be right! Often and often I have been amazed by her strange, puzzling looks and behaviour! But I--I have all my proper senses: I know what I am doing!"

"Was it, perhaps, some appalling hallucination," Etienne Rambert suggested: "some moment of irresponsibility?"

But Charles saw what he meant and cut him short.

"No, no, papa! I am not mad! I am not mad! I am not mad!"

In his intense excitement the young fellow never thought of moderating the tone of his voice, but shouted out what was in his mind, shouted it into the silence of the night, heedless of all but this terrible discussion he was having with the father whom he loved. Nor did Etienne Rambert lower his voice: his son's impassioned protest wrung the retort from him:

"Then, Charles, if you are right, your crime is beyond forgiveness! Murderer! Murderer!"

The two men stopped short as a slight sound in the passage caught their attention. A silence fell upon them that they could not break, and they stood dumbfounded, nervous and overwrought.

The door of the room opened very slowly, and a white form appeared against the darkness of the corridor outside.

Robed in a long night-dress, Thérèse stood there, with hair dishevelled, bloodless lips, and eyes dilated with horror; the child was shaking from head to foot; as if every movement hurt her, she painfully raised her arm and pointed to Charles.

"Thérèse!" Etienne Rambert muttered: "Thérèse, you were outside?"

The child's lips moved: she seemed to be making a more than human effort, and a whisper escaped her lips:

"Yes----"

But she could say no more: her eyes rolled, her whole frame tottered, and then, without sign or cry, she fell rigid and unconscious to the floor.

V. "ARREST ME!"

Twelve or thirteen miles from Souillac the main line from Brives to Cahors, which flanks the slope, describes a rather sharp curve. The journey is a particularly picturesque one, and travellers who make it during the daytime have much that is interesting and agreeable to see; but while they are admiring the country, which marks the transition from the severe region of the Limousin to the more laughing landscapes on the confines of the Midi, the train suddenly plunges into a tunnel which runs for half a mile and more through the heart of the mountain slope. Leaving the tunnel, the line continues along the slope, then gradually descends towards Souillac. Two or three miles from that little station, which is a junction, the line runs alongside the highroad to Salignac, skirts for a brief distance the Corrèze, one of the largest tributaries on the right bank of the Dordogne, and then plunges into the heart of Lot.

Torrential winter rains had seriously affected the railway embankment, particularly near the mouth of the tunnel; a succession of heavy storms in the early part of December had so greatly weakened the ballast that the chief engineers of the Company had been hastily summoned to the scene of the mischief. The experts decided that very important repairs were required close to the Souillac end of the tunnel. It was necessary to put in a complete system of drainage, with underground pipes through which the water that came down from the mountain could escape between the ballast and the side of the rock and so pass underneath the permanent way. The sleepers, too, had been loosened by the bad weather, and some of them had perished so much that the chairs were no longer fast, a matter which was all the more serious because the line described a very sharp curve at that precise spot.

Gangs of first-class navvies had been hurriedly requisitioned, but in spite of the fact that an exceptional rate of wages was paid, a local strike had broken out and for some days all work was stopped. Gradually, however, moderate counsels prevailed and for over a week now, nearly all the men had taken up their tools again. Nevertheless, for a month past, these various circumstances had resulted in all the trains running between Brives and Cahors, being regularly half an hour late. Further, in view of the dangerous state of the line, all engine drivers coming from Brives had received orders to stop their trains two hundred yards from the end of the tunnel, and all drivers coming from Cahors to stop their trains five hundred yards before the entrance to the tunnel, so that should a train appear while any work was going on which rendered it dangerous to pass, it could wait until the work was completed. The order was also issued with the primary object of preventing the workers on the line from being taken by surprise.

* * * * *

Day was just breaking this grey December morning, when the gang of navvies set to work under a foreman, fixing on the down line the new sleepers which had been brought up the day before. Suddenly a shrill whistle was heard, and in the gaping black mouth of the tunnel the light of two lamps became visible; a train bound for Cahors had stopped in accordance with orders, and was calling for permission to pass.

The foreman ranged his men on either side of the down line and walked to a small cabin erected at the mouth of the tunnel, where he pulled the hand-signal so as to show the green light, thereby authorising the train to proceed on its way.

There was a second short, sharp whistle; heavy puffs escaped from the engine, and belching forth a dense volume of black smoke it slowly emerged from the tunnel, followed by a long train of carriages, the windows of which were frosted all over by the cold temperature outside.

A man approached the cabin allotted to the plate-layer in charge of that section of the line in which the tunnel was included.

"I suppose this is the train due at Verrières at 6.55?" he said carelessly.

"Yes," the plate-layer answered, "but it's late, for the clock down there in the valley struck seven several minutes ago."

The train had gone by: the three red lamps fastened at the end of it were already lost in the morning mist.

The man who spoke to the plate-layer was no other than François Paul, the tramp who had been discharged by the magistrate installed at the château of Beaulieu, at precisely the same time the day before, after a brief examination. In spite of the deep wrinkle furrowed in his brow the man seemed to make an effort to appear friendly and to want to carry on the conversation.

"There aren't many people in this morning train," he remarked, "specially in the first-class carriages."

The plate-layer appeared in no wise unwilling to postpone for a few moments his tiring and chilly underground patrol; he put down his pick before answering.

"Well, that's not surprising, is it? People who are rich enough to travel first-class always come by the express which gets to Brives at 2.50 A.M."

"I see," said François Paul; "that's reasonable: and more practical for travellers to Brives or Cahors. But what about the people who want to get out at Gourdon, or Souillac, or Verrières, or any of the small stations where the express doesn't stop?"

"I don't know," said the plate-layer; "but I suppose they have to get out at Brives or Cahors and drive, or else travel by the day trains, which are fast to Brives and slow afterwards."

François Paul did not press the matter. He lit a pipe and breathed upon his benumbed fingers.

"Hard times, these, and no mistake!"

The plate-layer seemed sorry for him.

"I don't suppose you're an independent gentleman, but why don't you try to get taken on here?" he suggested. "They want hands here."

"Oh, do they?"

"That's the fact; this is the foreman coming along now: would you like me to speak to him for you?"

"No hurry," replied François Paul. "'Course, I'm not saying no, but I should like to see what sort of work it is they're doing here: it might not suit me; I shall still have time to get a couple of words with him," and with his eyes on the ground the tramp slowly walked along the embankment away from the plate-layer.

The foreman met and passed him, and came up to the plate-layer at the mouth of the tunnel.

"Well, Michu, how goes it with you? Still got the old complaint?"

"Middling, boss," the worthy fellow answered: "just keeping up, you know. And how's yourself? And the work? When shall you finish? I don't know if you know it, but these trains stopping regularly in my section give me an extra lot of work."

"How's that?" the foreman enquired in surprise.

"The engine drivers take advantage of the stop to empty their ash-pans, and they leave a great heap of mess there in my tunnel, which I'm obliged to clear away. In the ordinary way they dump it somewhere else: where, I don't know, but not in my tunnel, and that's all I care about."

The foreman laughed.

"You're a good 'un, Michu! If I were you I would ask the Company to give me another man or two."

"And do you suppose the Company would?" Michu retorted. "By the way, that poor devil who is going along there, shivering with cold and hunger, was grumbling to me just now, and I advised him to ask you to take him on. What do you think he said? Why, that he would have a look at the work first, and off he went."

"It's a fact, Michu, that it's mighty difficult to come across people who mean business nowadays. It's quite true that I want more hands. But if that chap doesn't ask me to engage him in another minute, I'll kick him out. The embankment is not public property, and I don't trust these rascals who are for ever coming and going among the workmen to see what mischief they can make. I'll go and cast an eye over the bolts and things, for there are all sorts of vagrants about the neighbourhood just now."

"And criminals, too," said old Michu. "I suppose you have heard of the murder up at the château of Beaulieu?"

"Rather! My men are talking of nothing else. But you are right, Michu, I will get a closer look at all strangers, and at your friend in particular."

The foreman stopped abruptly; he had been examining the foot of the embankment, and was standing quite still, watching. The plate-layer followed his glance, and also stood fixed. After a few moments' silence the two men looked at each other and smiled. In the half-light of the valley they had seen the outline of a gendarme; he was on foot and appeared to be looking for somebody, while making no attempt to remain unseen himself.

"Good!" whispered Michu; "that's sergeant Doucet: I know him by his stripes. They say the murder was not committed by anyone belonging to this part of the country; everybody was fond of the Marquise de Langrune."

"Look! Look!" the foreman broke in, pointing to the gendarme who was slowly climbing up the embankment. "It looks as if the sergeant were making for the gentleman who was looking for work just now and hoped he would not find it. The sergeant's got a word for him, eh, what?"

"That might be," said Michu after a moment's further watching. "That chap has a villainous, ugly face. One can tell from the way he's dressed that he don't belong to our parts."

The two men waited with utmost interest to see what was going to happen.

Sergeant Doucet reached the top of the embankment at last and hurried past the navvies, who stopped their work to stare inquisitively after the representative of authority. Fifty yards beyond them, François Paul, wrapped in thought, was walking slowly down towards the station of Verrières. Hearing the sound of steps behind him, he turned. When he saw the sergeant he frowned. He glanced rapidly about him and saw that while he was alone with the gendarme, so that no one could overhear what they said, however loudly they might speak, they were yet in such a position that every sign and movement they made would be perfectly visible to whoever might watch them. And as the gendarme paused a few paces from him and--remarkable fact--seemed to be on the point of bringing his hand to his cap in salute, the mysterious tramp rapped out:

"I thought I said no one was to disturb me, sergeant?"

The sergeant took a pace forward.

"I beg your pardon, Inspector, but I have important news for you."

For this François Paul, whom the sergeant thus respectfully addressed as Inspector, was no other than an officer of the secret police who had been sent down to Beaulieu the day before from head-quarters in Paris.

He was no ordinary officer. As if M. Havard had had an idea that the Langrune affair would prove to be puzzling and complicated, he had singled out the very best of his detectives, the most expert inspector of them all--Juve. It was Juve who for the last forty-eight hours had been prowling about the château of Beaulieu disguised as a tramp, and had had himself arrested with Bouzille that he might prosecute his own investigations without raising the slightest suspicion as to his real identity.

Juve made a face expressive of his vexation at the over-deferential attitude of the sergeant.

"Do pay attention!" he said low. "We are being watched. If I must go back with you, pretend to arrest me. Slip the handcuffs on me!"

"I beg your pardon, Inspector: I don't like to," the gendarme answered.

For all reply, Juve turned his back on him.

"Look here," he said, "I will take a step or two forward as if I meant to run away; then you must put your hand on my shoulder roughly, and I will stumble; when I do, slip the bracelets on."

From the mouth of the tunnel the plate-layer, the foreman and the navvies all followed with their eyes the unintelligible conversation passing between the gendarme and the tramp a hundred yards away. Suddenly they saw the man try to get off and the sergeant seize him almost simultaneously. A few minutes later the individual, with his hands linked together in front of him, was obediently descending the steep slope of the embankment, by the gendarme's side, and then the two men disappeared behind a clump of trees.

"I understand why that chap was not very keen on getting taken on here," said the foreman. "His conscience was none too easy!"

As they walked briskly in the direction of Beaulieu Juve asked the sergeant:

"What has happened at the château, then?"

"They know who the murderer is, Inspector," the sergeant answered. "Little Mlle. Thérèse----"

VI. "FANTÔMAS, IT IS DEATH!"

Hurrying back towards the château with the sergeant, Juve ran into M. de Presles outside the park gate. The magistrate had just arrived from Brives in a motor-car which he had commandeered for his personal use during the last few days.

"Well," said Juve in his quiet, measured tones, "have you heard the news?" And as the magistrate looked at him in surprise he went on: "I gather from your expression that you have not. Well, sir, if you will kindly fill up a warrant we will arrest M. Charles Rambert."

Juve briefly repeated to the magistrate what the sergeant had reported to him, and the sergeant added a few further details. The three men had now reached the foot of the steps before the house and were about to go up when the door of the château was opened and Dollon appeared. He hurried towards them, with unkempt hair and haggard face, and excitedly exclaimed:

"Didn't you meet the Ramberts? Where are they? Where are they?"

The magistrate, who was bewildered by what Juve had told him, was trying to form a coherent idea of the whole sequence of events, but the detective realised the situation at once, and turned to the sergeant.

"The bird has flown," he said. The sergeant threw up his hands in dismay.

* * * * *

Inside the hall Juve and M. de Presles ordered Dollon to give them an exact account of the discovery made by Thérèse in the course of the previous night.