The Teeth of the Tiger by Maurice Leblanc (win 10 ebook reader .txt) 📕

and to catch the real culprit. Only the task falls upon myself; and I swear that I shan't fail in it. This evening Florence Levasseur shall sleep in the lockup!"

"I'll help you, Chief," replied Mazeroux, in a queer tone of voice.

"I need nobody's help. If you touch a single hair of her head, I'll do for you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Chief."

"Then hold your tongue."

His anger was slowly returning and expressed itself in an increase of speed, which seemed to Mazeroux a revenge executed upon himself. They raced over the cobble-stones of Chartres. Rambouillet, Chevreuse, and Versailles received the terrifying vision of a thunderbolt tearing across them from end to end.

Saint-Cloud. The Bois de Boulogne …

On the Place de la Concorde, as the motor was turning toward the
Tuileries, Mazeroux objected:

"Aren't you going home, Chief?"

"No. There's something more urgent first: we must relieve Marie Fauville of her suicidal obsession by letting her know that we have discovered the criminals."

"And then?"

"Then I want to see the Prefect of Police."

"M. Desmalions is away and won't be back till this afternoon."

"In that case the examining magistrate."

"He doesn't get to the law courts till twelve; and it's only eleven now."

"We'll see."

Mazeroux was right: there was no one at the law courts.

Don Luis lunched somewhere close by; and Mazeroux, after calling at the detective office, came to fetch him and took him to the magistrate's corridor. Don Luis's excitement, his extraordinary restlessness, did not fail to strike Mazeroux, who asked:

"Are you still of the same mind, Chief?"

"More than ever. I looked through the newspapers at lunch. Marie Fauville, who was sent to the infirmary after her second attempt, has again tried to kill herself by banging her head against the wall of the room. They have put a straitjacket on her. But she is refusing all food. It is my duty to save her."

"How?"

"By handing over the real criminal. I shall inform the magistrate in charge of the case; and this evening I shall bring you Florence Levasseur dead or alive."

"And Sauverand?"

"Sauverand? That won't take long. Unless—"

"Unless what?"

"Unless I settle his business myself, the miscreant!"

"Chief!"

"Oh, dry up!"

There were some reporters near them waiting for particulars. He recognized them and went up to them.

"You can say, gentlemen, that from to-day I am taking up the defence of
Marie Fauville and devoting myself entirely to her cause."

They all protested: was it not he who had had Mme. Fauville arrested? Was it not he who had collected a heap of convicting proofs against her?

"I shall demolish those proofs one by one," he said. "Marie Fauville is the victim of wretches who have hatched the most diabolical plot against her, and whom I am about to deliver up to justice."

"But the teeth! The marks of the teeth!"

"A coincidence! An unparalleled coincidence, but one which now strikes me as a most powerful proof of innocence. I tell you that, if Marie Fauville had been clever enough to commit all those murders, she would also have been clever enough not to leave behind her a fruit bearing the marks of her two rows of teeth."

"But still—"

"She is innocent! And that is what I am going to tell the examining magistrate. She must be informed of the efforts that are being made in her favour. She must be given hope at once. If not, the poor thing will kill herself and her death will be on the conscience of all who accused an innocent woman. She must—"

At that moment he interrupted himself. His eyes were fixed on one of the journalists who was standing a little way off listening to him and taking notes.

He whispered to Mazeroux:

"Could you manage to find out that beggar's name? I can't remember where on earth I've seen him before."

But an usher now opened the door of the examining magistrate, who, on receiving Don Perenna's card, had asked to see him at once. He stepped forward and was about to enter the room with Mazeroux, when he suddenly turned to his companion with a cry of rage:

"It's he! It was Sauverand in disguise. Stop him! He's made off. Run, can't you?"

He himself darted away followed by Mazeroux and a number of warders and journalists, He soon outdistanced them, so that, three minutes later, he heard no one more behind him. He had rushed down the staircase of the "Mousetrap," and through the subway leading from one courtyard to the other. Here two people told him that they had met a man walking at a smart pace.

The track was a false one. He became aware of this, hunted about, lost a good deal of time, and managed to discover that Sauverand had left by the Boulevard du Palais and joined a very pretty, fair-haired woman—Florence Levasseur, obviously—on the Quai de l'Horloge. They had both got into the motor bus that runs from the Place Saint-Michel to the Gare Saint-Lazare.

Don Luis went back to a lonely little street where he had left his car in the charge of a boy. He set the engine going and drove at full speed to the Gare Saint-Lazare, From the omnibus shelter he went off on a fresh track which also proved to be wrong, lost quite another hour, returned to the terminus, and ended by learning for certain that Florence had stepped by herself into a motor bus which would take her toward the Place du Palais-Bourbon. Contrary to all his expectations, therefore, the girl must have gone home.

The thought of seeing her again roused his anger to its highest pitch. All the way down the Rue Royale and across the Place de la Concorde he kept blurting out words of revenge and threats which he was itching to carry out. He would abuse Florence. He would sting her with his insults. He felt a bitter and painful need to hurt the odious creature.

But on reaching the Place du Palais-Bourbon he pulled up short. His practised eye had counted at a glance, on the right and left, a half-dozen men whose professional look there was no mistaking. And Mazeroux, who had caught sight of him, had spun round on his heel and was hiding under a gateway.

He called him:

"Mazeroux!"

The sergeant appeared greatly surprised to hear his name and came up to the car.

"Hullo, the Chief!"

His face expressed such embarrassment that Don Luis felt his fears taking definite shape.

"Look here, is it for me that you and your men are hanging about outside my house?"

"There's a notion, Chief," replied Mazeroux, looking very uncomfortable.
"You know that you're in favour all right!"

Don Luis gave a start. He understood. Mazeroux had betrayed his confidence. To obey his scruples of conscience as well as to rescue the chief from the dangers of a fatal passion, Mazeroux had denounced Florence Levasseur.

Perenna clenched his fists in an effort of his whole being to stifle his boiling rage. It was a terrible blow. He received a sudden intuition of all the blunders which his mad jealousy had made him commit since the day before, and a presentiment of the irreparable disasters that might result from them. The conduct of events was slipping from him.

"Have you the warrant?" he asked.

Mazeroux spluttered:

"It was quite by accident. I met the Prefect, who was back. We spoke of the young lady's business. And, as it happened, they had discovered that the photograph—you know, the photograph of Florence Levasseur which the Prefect lent you—well, they have discovered that you faked it. And then when I mentioned the name of Florence, the Prefect remembered that that was the name."

"Have you the warrant?" Don Luis repeated, in a harsher tone.

"Well, you see, I couldn't help it…. M. Desmalions, the magistrate—"

If the Place du Palais Bourbon had been deserted at that moment, Don Luis would certainly have relieved himself by a swinging blow administered to Mazeroux's chin according to the most scientific rules of the noble art. And Mazeroux foresaw this contingency, for he prudently kept as far away as possible and, to appease the chief's anger, intended a whole litany of excuses:

"It was for your good, Chief…. I had to do it … Only think! You yourself told me: 'Rid me of the creature!' said you. I'm too weak. You'll arrest her, won't you? Her eyes burn into me—like poison! Well, Chief, could I help it? No, I couldn't, could I? Especially as the deputy chief—"

"Ah! So Weber knows?"

"Why, yes! The Prefect is a little suspicious of you since he understood about the faking of the portrait. So M. Weber is coming back in an hour, perhaps, with reinforcements. Well, I was saying, the deputy chief had learnt that the woman who used to go to Gaston Sauverand's at Neuilly—you know, the house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace—was fair and very good looking, and that her name was Florence. She even used to stay the night sometimes."

"You lie! You lie!" hissed Perenna.

All his spite was reviving. He had been pursuing Florence with intentions which it would have been difficult for him to put into words. And now suddenly he again wanted to destroy her; and this time consciously. In reality he no longer knew what he was doing. He was acting at haphazard, tossed about in turns by the most diverse passions, a prey to that inordinate love which impels us as readily to kill the object of our affections as to die in an attempt to save her.

A newsboy passed with a special edition of the Paris-Midi, showing in great black letters:

"SENSATIONAL DECLARATION BY DON LUIS PERENNA "MME. FAUVILLE IS INNOCENT. "IMMINENT ARREST OF THE TWO CRIMINALS"

"Yes, yes," he said aloud. "The drama is drawing to an end. Florence is about to pay her debt to society. So much the worse for her."

He started his car again and drove through the gate. In the courtyard he said to his chauffeur, who came up:

"Turn her around and don't put her up. I may be starting again at any moment."

He sprang out and asked the butler:

"Is Mlle. Levasseur in?"

"Yes, sir, she's in her room."

"She was away yesterday, wasn't she?"

"Yes, sir, she received a telegram asking her to go to the country to see a relation who was ill. She came back last night."

"I want to speak to her. Send her to me. At once."

"In the study, sir?"

"No, upstairs, in the boudoir next to my bedroom."

This was a small room on the second floor which had once been a lady's boudoir, and he preferred it to his study since the attempt at murder of which he had been the object. He was quieter up there, farther away; and he kept his important papers there. He always carried the key with him: a special key with three grooves to it and an inner spring.

Mazeroux had followed him into the courtyard and was keeping close behind him, apparently unobserved by Perenna, who having so far appeared not to notice it. He now, however, took the sergeant by the arm and led him to the front steps.

"All is going well. I was afraid that Florence, suspecting something, might not have come back. But she probably doesn't know that I saw her yesterday. She can't escape us now."

They went across the hall and up the stairs to the first floor. Mazeroux rubbed his hands.

"So you've come to your senses, Chief?"

"At any rate I've made up my mind. I will not, do you hear, I will not have Mme. Fauville kill herself; and, as there is no other way of preventing that catastrophe, I shall sacrifice Florence."

"Without regret?"

"Without remorse."

"Then you forgive me?"

"I thank you."

And he struck him a clean, powerful blow under the chin. Mazeroux fell without a moan, in a dead faint on the steps of the second flight.

Halfway up the stairs was a dark recess that served as a lumber room where the servants kept their pails and brooms and the soiled household linen. Don Luis carried Mazeroux to it, and, seating him comfortably on the floor, with his back to a housemaid's box, he stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth, gagged him with a towel, and bound his wrists and ankles with two tablecloths. The other ends of these he fastened to a couple of strong nails. As Mazeroux was slowly coming to himself, Don Luis said:

"I think