Chapter XI: Part 11

"Why, everything! Take one thing: do you know what were the motives of the different Fantomas-Dollon crimes?"

Juve replied to this:

"Oh, as for that, perfectly! The motives are clear as crystal!... Madame de Vibray was ruined, and really committed suicide because--you will pardon me, I am sure--because the Bourse transactions you advised were not successful.... She poisoned herself, and went to Jacques Dollon's studio to die: perhaps she felt for him a secret attachment! Fate willed it that the assassins should choose this very evening to make their way into the painter's studio ... by means of this first corpse they created an alibi for themselves, and prepared the scene which was bound to mislead justice and make lawyers and police believe in the murder of Madame de Vibray and the suicide of her murderer.... Unfortunately for them, Dollon was discovered before the poison they administered had done its deadly work on him, and Dollon was arrested.... You can imagine the fury, the distracted state of the guilty! Dollon had seen them--he was going to speak at the legal interrogation--very well, then--they will kill him--and they do kill him...."

"But Jacques Dollon lives, since his imprints are found here, there and everywhere!..." cried Monsieur Barbey.

Fandor replied:

"They kill Jacques Dollon, since it has been formally established that Jacques Dollon was seen dead; and once they have killed Dollon, they think that a dead man cannot be arrested by the police, and _they accept this dead man as one of their band_.... He, they decide, shall steal the pearls of Princess Danidoff!..."

"This is raving lunacy!"

"All that is pretty clearly proved, Monsieur Nanteuil!... It is he also who stole the millions in the rue du Quatre Septembre, a sensational robbery which would have ruined your bank, had not this issue of bullion been well covered by an insurance: this insurance signified that you were no losers by this robbery--in fact, owing to an ingenious combination of insurances, you have actually gained by the robbery! As we are on this subject, I might add that were I a member of the Band I should propose restoring to you the vanished ingots--robbers find bullion somewhat difficult to put into circulation: you might buy them back; then turn them into false coin, for instance--that would be all profit--for you!..."

"I wonder at you--making such a joke as that!" remarked Nanteuil.

"Please wonder at me!... To continue!... Having carried out their plan successfully, these robbers remembered something they had forgotten--a compromising paper, or something like it, which had been left in Elizabeth Dollon's possession. Thereupon, they send the dead man--Jacques Dollon--to look for it: he attempts to murder his sister: I arrive just in time to open the windows before she is past all human aid.... Meanwhile a series of cleverly arranged deals on the Bourse are brought off, so that if Thomery disappeared the Barbey-Nanteuil Bank would rake in important profits ... in haste the assassins get rid of an accomplice who is in their way--that duffer of a Jules, the rue Raffet servant, and they send Dollon to kill Thomery. After that they decide to rob your Bank which is stuffed with gold; for, were it not for this theft, it would be your Bank, burdened as it is, with Thomery shares, which would pay out to speculators the differences in value between past and present prices--which amounts would have to come out of the money paid in the day before. Messieurs, with regard to this, Thomery's death did you a great service.... Without his death, which enriched you, you would have had to settle up your sales by a certain date, and you would have lost more than you gained at the moment, owing to the sole fact of his disappearance!... I think you are very grateful to Jacques Dollon because of what he has done for you."

Monsieur Nanteuil, on hearing these last words, rose. He walked up to the journalist and said, in a voice quivering with some emotion:

"For my part, Monsieur Fandor, I think your way of explaining the Dollon affair is a very strange way!... You assert that this painter is dead, and you make him behave as if he were alive!... Besides, I have understood your words! In truth, what you say is senseless: you make wild statements! You have involved our Bank in every one of the Dollon crimes!... You have shown us as interested parties in all these robberies!"

Fandor said quietly:

"Nevertheless, it is unquestionably true that you are the gainers by these crimes: beginning with Madame de Vibray and ending with Thomery. Madame de Vibray might have brought an action against you for the loss of her fortune, owing to your risky speculations and bad management. Thomery's murder brought down his shares with a run, and you found that a most advantageous state of affairs--you gained by it!... But, of course, this is coincidence, since you are not Fantomas, since you are not Jacques Dollon, since you cannot imitate the imprint of his thumb!... I have only said this to show ..." Fandor stopped short.

"Hark!... Someone is coming upstairs! Here is Monsieur Havard!"

As the bankers were hurrying impatiently to the door, Fandor said in a bantering tone:

"Do not stir a step further, I beg of you! Not a step! Let us receive the chief of the detective force exactly in the position we were, not an hour ago, when we encountered him whom the chief has now come to arrest!"

Barbey and Nanteuil returned to their former positions. Those in the room could hear voices on the other side of the door exchanging brief remarks. The lock was being picked. Monsieur Havard entered and hurried up to the journalist.

"Well, my dear Fandor, I have followed all your instructions to the letter!... Ah! you here, too, Juve! Well?... Speak! Anything fresh since your extraordinary telephone communication?... What were you telling me?"

"I was saying, Monsieur Havard, that the assassin had entered this room, and assuredly had not left it--that he was here!..."

"Here?"

Monsieur Havard had recognised the bankers at the first glance.... His question betrayed a certain incredulity which piqued Fandor.

"Here! Yes! That is absolutely so, because it is impossible that he can have left the room! Besides, you shall convince yourself of that!... Monsieur Nanteuil, will you do me a small service? Will you draw a plan of the first floor of your house?"

The banker rose and seated himself at his writing-table, which was placed in a corner of the room.

"I am at your disposal." And he began to trace a plan, a pretty rough one, of the various rooms which made up the first floor of his house.

"Is that what you want?" he asked.

Jerome Fandor rose quickly and went towards Nanteuil.

The journalist's nerves must have been out of order--in a jumpy state, despite his apparent calm, for, in approaching the writing-table, he suddenly staggered, nearly fell, tried to regain his balance, and that so clumsily that he upset the contents of a large ink-pot on the writing-desk....

"Take care!" said Monsieur Nanteuil, who, to save himself from coming into contact with this inky inundation, threw himself back in his chair, and lifted his hands above the flood of ink....

The banker repeated:

"Take care!... Here is a fresh catastrophe!..."

But he did not finish what he intended to say! Quick as thought, Fandor steadied himself, and before anyone could guess his intention he seized the banker's right hand, pushed it forcibly into the wide-spreading ink, then, immediately after, pressed it on to a sheet of blotting paper which took the hand's imprint quite clearly....

This imprint he glanced at but a moment.... Like a flag, he waved it above his head!

"_It is the Jacques Dollon imprint!_" he shouted. "_The hand of Monsieur Nanteuil, whose characteristics are known in the anthropometric section, has just left the imprint of--Jacques Dollon!..._"

The journalist's action created a momentary stupour!

Juve rushed to him.

"Bravo! Bravo!" he cried.

But Monsieur Havard had gone quite pale. He said in a low voice:

"I don't understand!"

Barbey and Nanteuil retained their self-possession!

Then Monsieur Barbey rose. He looked fixedly at his partner. He spoke in a tone of sad finality:

"I suspected this!... Farewell...."

A shout of horror answered him: he had drawn a sharp dagger from inside his coat, and had plunged it in his heart up to the hilt!

Juve knelt by the fallen man. Monsieur Havard kept a sharp eye on Nanteuil.

"Here, then, is Jacques Dollon, the dead-alive!... Here is the elusive Fantomas!" said the chief of the detective force.

But the bandit brazened it out as he recoiled before the chief.

"Why do you arrest me because of this imprint?" he demanded. "It is a piece of juggling on the part of this journalist!... Take a fresh imprint of my hand, my fingers, my thumb, and you will see whether my hand could possibly leave such an impression as that put on the blotting pad, by some sleight-of-hand trick of this much too smart reporter!" He stretched out his arm in the direction of the blotting pad, as though begging for a fresh trial....

Fandor marched up to Nanteuil.

"Useless," said he, in a curt tone. "I have been watching you!... I know the trick!"

Nanteuil stood stock-still, dumb. Fandor lifted the cuff of Nanteuil's coat, and pointed out to Monsieur Havard, and to Juve, a sort of thin film of glove-like form. It was fastened to the wrist by an almost imperceptible piece of elastic.

"This is human skin," said Fandor. "Human skin marvellously preserved by some special process: all its lines and marks are intact. Can you not guess whence it came? Do you need to be told whose dead body has supplied this phantom glove?"

Monsieur Havard was as white as a sheet.

"The body of Jacques Dollon," he murmured.... "Yes, that is it!..."

There was a moment's intense silence in the room.

"How do you imagine this wretch set to work?" demanded Monsieur Havard.

"Simple enough," replied Fandor.... "Fantomas knows the danger criminals run, owing to the exact science of anthropometry: he knows that every imprint denounces the assassin: he knows that it is difficult to do anything without leaving such imprints--and that is why, every time he has committed a crime, he has taken care to glove his hands in the skin of Jacques Dollon's hands."

Nanteuil, at bay, attempted denial.

"You are talking mere newspaper romance," said he.

Fandor looked the banker in the eye.

"Fantomas!" said he. "Do not attempt to deny what is no longer possible to deny!... The trick is remarkably clever, and you have reason to be proud of your invention. Perhaps I should never have discovered it, if in this very room, this very night, you had not been imprudent enough to leave those imprints on my collar!... No one had left the room, therefore the guilty person was in the room--of necessity he was: _therefore, it followed, that someone had the hands of Dollon!..._ But how could this someone have the hands of Dollon?... Of course, naturally, the idea of these gloves occurred to me!..."

Fandor turned to the chief of the detective force.

"Monsieur Havard, Madame de Vibray committed suicide because she lost her fortune through Barbey-Nanteuil mismanagement--she might even have been poisoned by them! But that does not matter! Her death might compromise the Bank: they carried her dead body to Jacques Dollon's studio, and they tried to poison this painter, in order to put the law off their track. You know Dollon was saved! He was a dangerous witness. They killed him in his cell, some warder being accessory to the fact--killed him before his innocence could be established! Then they took his hands, that they might commit murders with them!... Dollon is dead, as I have held all along. It is Nanteuil who has committed the crimes ascribed to the most unfortunate Dollon. These crimes have profited the Barbey-Nanteuil Bank--as I pointed out just now!"

* * * * *

Whilst Nanteuil stood speechless, whilst Barbey, whom they had lifted to a sofa, was gasping out his last breath, whilst Juve was giving little nods of approval to what his dear lad was saying, Fandor was treating Monsieur Havard to a further version of the affair.

"When I telephoned to you I was morally certain of the approaching arrest. Not a soul quitted the room after the hands of Dollon had left imprints on my collar and on my neck. Therefore someone had the hands of Dollon. The finger imprints of all the personages present were known to me--therefore someone had a method by which he changed his own finger-prints into those of Dollon.... How was it done? It must be a removable method or means ... why, of course, it could only be by a pair of gloves that the trick was done ... of course it must be by means of _a pair of gloves made with the skin of Jacques Dollon's hands_!... I noticed that Nanteuil kept his hands obstinately behind his back. I guessed that it was he who had played the part of Dollon to-night, so I managed to prevent him removing those Dollon gloves, that I might take their imprint before your eyes--the rest can be guessed, can it not?... The imprint taken, profiting by the confusion, Nanteuil slipped off the glove which, as you see, was no thicker than a cigarette when rolled up.... To throw it aside was risky: he pushed it up his sleeve while pretending to arrange his cuff, and at the same time to put ink on his ungloved hand and so hide his trick!... Only I saw it all.... Monsieur Havard, it is not only the false Jacques Dollon I denounce, for Juve and I fully realised that he was also the elusive Fantomas! Here is this cloak with hooded mask, which is an irrefutable proof: besides he himself declared he was Fantomas.... Monsieur Havard, all you have to do now is seize this man: Juve and I will hand him over to you!"

It was a thrilling moment! Juve and Fandor, in this hour of decisive victory, mutely embraced. Monsieur Havard advanced with raised hands towards Nanteuil who retreated.

"Fantomas," he commenced, "in the name of the law I arr..."

The word was strangled in his throat!...

As he advanced another step, Nanteuil suddenly sprang backwards, and his hand rested on the moulding of a wooden panel.... At the same moment, Monsieur Havard, as if hampered by some invisible obstacle, stretched his length on the floor!

Juve and Fandor were about to rush to his aid ... but while Fandor, in his turn, measured his length on the floor also, Juve yelled:

"Good lord!... We are caught!... He escapes!..."

Whilst the detective made a frantic effort to move a step--_he seemed nailed to the floor_--Fantomas, quick as lightning, leaped over the prone body of Monsieur Havard, gained the door, and banged it to behind him!... They heard a triumphant burst of laughter.... Fantomas was escaping!

"This is sorcery!" shouted the chief of the detective force, in a voice hoarse with rage.

"Take your boots off!... Take your boots off!" yelled Juve, who, with bare feet, was rushing through the house, revolver in hand, hoping to come up with the banker bandit!...

But, when the detective arrived at the entrance gateway of the house, he found the policemen brought by Monsieur Havard chatting away quietly ... they had not seen a thing ... the street was deserted ... in a second Fantomas had disappeared, vanished into thin air ... he, the elusive one, had got away: once more he had escaped those who were pursuing him with such keen determination!

* * * * *

"It is very simple," explained Juve to Monsieur Havard and Fandor, who seemed deprived of speech. "Yes, it is simple enough; I guessed it at once when I saw you fall, Monsieur Havard, just after Fantomas had pressed the woodwork."

"He pressed an electric button, did he not?"

"Yes, Fandor, he established a current!... The wretch must have placed powerful electric magnets under the floor ... and the moment he realised that it was impossible to brazen it out any longer--was on the very point of being arrested--he established the current ... so we three were nailed to the ground by the attraction exercised by these electro-magnets on the nails of our shoes--he, Fantomas, was then free to cut and run for it, whose shoes must certainly have had soles made of some insulating material...."

Monsieur Havard and Fandor made no answer to this.

To have held Fantomas at their mercy, if only for a minute; to have believed that they were going to lay hands on the atrocious criminal, at last; to have seen him slip through their fingers--the thought of this almost brought tears to their eyes: they were in a state of the deepest despondency.

"There's a curse on us!" cried Fandor. "This time, at any rate, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with! We could not foresee that!..." Then, to himself in a low tone, he added:

"Poor Elizabeth!... How are we to tell her that we have let her brother's murderer escape?"

XXVIII

COURAGE

"Have some more chicken?"

"No, thanks: I am not hungry."

"But you should eat all the same!"

"Are you eating anything yourself?"

"Faith, I am not!"

"Well, then?"

In the private room of the Fat-Pheasant restaurant, where Juve and Fandor were dining, silence again fell. The two men sat motionless, gazing into space. They neither wished to eat food nor do anything at all. They were depressed to the last degree; they felt baffled: they were sick of every mortal thing!

All of a sudden, Fandor burst into tears. Juve, looking at his dear lad in such grief, bit his lip; his face with wrinkled brow wore a dejected, worried look.

An hour or two previous to that, Fandor, on returning to his flat, had found a black-edged envelope: the address in Elizabeth Dollon's handwriting. Fandor had opened it with fast beating heart and trembling hand!

For these past days, an evil Fate seemed relentlessly pursuing them. Now he feared to read of some fresh catastrophe.

He was reassured by the opening lines; but as he read on, and took in the meaning of Elizabeth's words, Fandor felt as though his heart were bursting with grief.

Elizabeth Dollon had written:

"I seem to be going mad ... yes, I love you!... Yesterday, I should have been glad to become your wife; but there came by the same post as your letter, another, which contained terrible revelations, proofs of their truth were given me!... I have not the right to curse you--or rather I have not the strength to do it; but never will I marry you, Jerome Fandor, you, Charles Rambert!..."[11]

[Footnote 11: See _Fantomas_ and _The Exploits of Juve_.]

It seemed to Fandor that everything was turning round about him.... He took a few steps, staggering. The weight of this terrible past, a past in which he was the innocent victim, but of which he could not clear himself, overwhelmed him!

Fandor cried, in a voice of despair:

"Fantomas! Fantomas has taken his revenge!"

And before the astounded portress, the unhappy young man turned about and fell in a heap on the ground.

On the other hand, shortly after the extraordinary flight of the banker--Nanteuil to the world in general--but Fantomas to him and Fandor--Juve had received from Monsieur Annion, the supreme head of the police detective department, who only manifested himself on sensational occasions, a note sent by pneumatic post:

"_Regret keenly that you revealed your personality in such
ridiculous circumstances, and that you failed to arrest a great
criminal._"

As Juve read these observations, he clinched his fists: he grew livid with rage!

Dinner was a mere farce to the two friends: they did not dine: they had no appetite! Juve and Fandor went over and over in their minds the deplorable events of which, all said and done, they were the victims. They gazed at each other full of self-pity. They felt they were two derelicts afloat on the immense sea of indifferent humanity.

"The worst suffering," said Fandor, with tears of misery in his voice, "is the pain of love."

"The most painful of wounds," said Juve bitterly, "is a wound to self-respect!..."

These two, men every inch of them, might have their moments of discouragement, but they were a sporting pair of the finest quality.

"Fandor!"

"Juve?"

"You are courageous?"

"I have courage, Juve!"

"Very well, my lad, let us sponge out the past, and start off afresh in pursuit of Fantomas!... I tell you the struggle has only begun.... Listen!..."

END