Other People's Money by Emile Gaboriau (ebook smartphone txt) 📕

one may have been driven under the spur of some mad passion!”

And stamping violently his foot upon the carpet, from which arose clouds of dust,

“And yet,” he swore, “I must find him.  And, by thunder! wherever he may be hid, I shall find him.”

M. de Tregars was watching M. Saint Pavin with a scrutinizing eye.

“You have a great interest in finding him, then?” he said.

The other stopped short.

“I have the interest,” he replied, “of a man who thought himself shrewd, and who has been taken in like a child,—of a man to whom they had promised wonders, and who finds his situation imperilled, —of a man who is tired of working for a band of brigands who heap millions upon millions, and to whom, for all reward, they offer the police-court and a retreat in the State Prison for his old age, —in a word, the interests of a man who will and shall have revenge, by all that is holy!”

“On whom?”

“On the Baron de Thaller, sir!  How, in the world, has he been able to compel Favoral to assume the responsibility of all, and to disappear?  What enormous sum has he given to him?”

“Sir,” interrupted Maxence, “my father went off without a sou.”

M. Saint Pavin burst out in a loud laugh.

“And the twelve millions?” he asked.  “What has become of them?  Do you suppose they have been distributed in deeds of charity?”

And without waiting for any further objections,

“And yet,” he went on, “it is not with money alone that a man can be induced to disgrace himself, to confess himself a thief and a forger, to brave the galleys, to give up everything,—country, family, friends.  Evidently the Baron de Thaller must have had other means of action, some hold on Favoral—”

M. de Tregars interrupted him.

“You speak,” he said, “as if you were absolutely certain of M. de Thaller’s complicity.”

“Of course.”

“Why don’t you inform on him, then?”

The editor of “The Pilot” started back.  “What!” he exclaimed, “draw the fingers of the law into my own business!  You don’t think of it!  Besides, what good would that do me?  I have no proofs of my allegations.  Do you suppose that Thaller has not taken his precautions, and tied my hands?  No, no! without Favoral there is nothing to be done.”

“Do you suppose, then, that you could induce him to surrender himself?”

“No, but to furnish me the proofs I need, to send Thaller where they have already sent that poor Jottras.”

And, becoming more and more excited,

“But it is not in a month that I should want those proofs,” he went on, “nor even in two weeks, but to-morrow, but at this very moment.  Before the end of the week, Thaller will have wound up the operation, realized, Heaven knows how many millions, and put every thing in such nice order, that justice, who in financial matters is not of the first capacity, will discover nothing wrong.  If he can do that, he is safe, he is beyond reach, and will be dubbed a first-class financier.  Then to what may he not aspire!  Already he talks of having himself elected deputy; and he says everywhere that he has found, to marry his daughter, a gentleman who bears one of the oldest names in France,—the Marquis de Tregars.”

“Why, this is the Marquis de Tregars!” exclaimed Maxence, pointing to Marius.

For the first time, M. Saint Pavin took the trouble to examine his visitor; and he, who knew life too well not to be a judge of men, he seemed surprised.

“Please excuse me, sir,” he uttered with a politeness very different from his usual manner, “and permit me to ask you if you know the reasons why M. de Thaller is so prodigiously anxious to have you for a son-in-law.”

“I think,” replied M. de Tregars coldly, “that M. de Thaller would not be sorry to deprive me of the right to seek the causes of my father’s ruin.”

But he was interrupted by a great noise of voices in the adjoining room; and almost at once there was a loud knock at the door, and a voice called,

“In the name of the law!”

The editor of “The Pilot” had become whiter than his shirt.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said.  “Thaller has got ahead of me; and perhaps I may be lost.”

Meantime he did not lose his wits.  Quick as thought he took out of a drawer a package of letters, threw them into the fireplace, and set fire to them, saying, in a voice made hoarse by emotion and anger,

“No one shall come in until they are burnt.”

But it required an incredibly long time to make them catch fire; and M. Saint Pavin, kneeling before the hearth, was stirring them up, and scattering them, to make them burn faster.

“And now,” said M. de Tregars, “will you hesitate to deliver up the Baron de Thaller into the hands of justice?”

He turned around with flashing eyes.

“Now,” he replied, “if I wish to save myself, I must save him too.  Don’t you understand that he holds me?”

And, seeing that the last sheets of his correspondence were consumed,

“You may open now,” he said to Maxence.

Maxence obeyed; and a commissary of police, wearing his scarf of office, rushed into the room; whilst his men, not without difficulty, kept back the crowd in the outer office.

The commissary, who was an old hand, and had perhaps been on a hundred expeditions of this kind, had surveyed the scene at a glance.  Noticing in the fireplace the carbonized debris, upon which still fluttered an expiring flame,

“That’s the reason, then,” he said, “why you were so long opening the door?”

A sarcastic smile appeared upon the lips of the editor of “The Pilot.”

“Private matters,” he replied; “women’s letters.”

“This will be moral evidence against you, sir.”

“I prefer it to material evidence.”

Without condescending to notice the impertinence, the commissary was casting a suspicious glance on Maxence and M. de Tregars.

“Who are these gentlemen who were closeted with you?” he asked.

“Visitors, sir.  This is M. Favoral.”

“The son of the cashier of the Mutual