The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc (best book clubs .txt) 📕

off has been replaced by an exactly similar object. Let me hasten to add that possibly my argument may not be confirmed by the facts. But I maintain that it is the first argument that ought to occur to us and that we are not entitled to waive it until we have made a serious examination.”

“That’s true⁠—that’s true,” muttered the magistrate, who was obviously interested.

“Now,” continued Isidore, “what was there in this room that could arouse the covetousness of the burglars? Two things. The tapestry first. It can’t have been that. Old tapestry cannot be imitated: the fraud would have been palpable at once. There remain the four Rubens pictures.”

“What’s that you say?”

“I say that the four Rubenses on that wall are false.”

“Impossible!”

“They are false a priori, inevitably and without a doubt.”

“I tell you, it’s impossible.”

“It is very nearly a year ago, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, since a young man, who gave his name as Charpenais, came to the Château d’Ambrumésy and asked permission to copy the Rubens pictures. M. de Gesvres gave him permission. Every day for five months Charpenais worked in this room from morning till dusk. The copies which he made, canvases and frames, have taken the place of the four original pictures bequeathed to M. de Gesvres by his uncle, the Marqués de Bobadilla.”

“Prove it!”

“I have no proof to give. A picture is false because it is false; and I consider that it is not even necessary to examine these four.”

M. Filleul and Ganimard exchanged glances of unconcealed astonishment. The inspector no longer thought of withdrawing. At last, the magistrate muttered:

“We must have M. de Gesvres’s opinion.”

And Ganimard agreed:

“Yes, we must have his opinion.”

And they sent to beg the count to come to the drawing room.

The young sixth-form pupil had won a real victory. To compel two experts, two professionals like M. Filleul and Ganimard to take account of his surmises implied a testimony of respect of which any other would have been proud. But Beautrelet seemed not to feel those little satisfactions of self-conceit and, still smiling without the least trace of irony, he placidly waited.

M. de Gesvres entered the room.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the magistrate, “the result of our inquiry has brought us face to face with an utterly unexpected contingency, which we submit to you with all reserve. It is possible⁠—I say that it is possible⁠—that the burglars, when breaking into the house, had it as their object to steal your four pictures by Rubens⁠—or, at least, to replace them by four copies⁠—copies which are said to have been made last year by a painter called Charpenais. Would you be so good as to examine the pictures and to tell us if you recognize them as genuine?”

The count appeared to suppress a movement of annoyance, looked at Isidore Beautrelet and at M. Filleul and replied, without even troubling to go near the pictures:

“I hoped, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that the truth might have remained unknown. As this is not so, I have no hesitation in declaring that the four pictures are false.”

“You knew it, then?”

“From the beginning.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“The owner of a work is never in a hurry to declare that that work is not⁠—or, rather, is no longer genuine.”

“Still, it was the only means of recovering them.”

“I consider that there was another and a better.”

“Which was that?”

“Not to make the secret known, not to frighten my burglars and to offer to buy back the pictures, which they must find more or less difficult to dispose of.”

“How would you communicate with them?”

As the count did not reply, Isidore answered for him:

“By means of an advertisement in the papers. The paragraph inserted in the agony column of the Journal, the Écho de Paris and the Matin runs, ‘Am prepared to buy back the pictures.’ ”

The count agreed with a nod. Once again, the young man was teaching his elders. M. Filleul showed himself a good sportsman.

“There’s no doubt about it, my dear sir,” he exclaimed. “I’m beginning to think your schoolfellows were not quite wrong. By Jove, what an eye! What intuition! If this goes on, there will be nothing left for M. Ganimard and me to do.”

“Oh, none of this part was so very complicated!”

“You mean to say that the rest was more so I remember, in fact, that, when we first met you seemed to know all about it. Let me see, a far as I recollect, you said that you knew the name of the murderer.”

“So I do.”

“Well, then, who killed Jean Daval? Is the man alive? Where is he hiding?”

“There is a misunderstanding between us, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, or, rather, you have misunderstood the facts from the beginning. The murderer and the runaway are two distinct persons.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed M. Filleul. “The man whom M. de Gesvres saw in the boudoir and struggled with, the man whom the young ladies saw in the drawing-room and whom Mlle. de Saint-Véran shot at, the man who fell in the park and whom we are looking for: do you suggest that he is not the man who killed Jean Daval?”

“I do.”

“Have you discovered the traces of a third accomplice who disappeared before the arrival of the young ladies?”

“I have not.”

“In that case, I don’t understand.⁠—Well, who is the murderer of Jean Daval?”

“Jean Daval was killed by⁠—”

Beautrelet interrupted himself, thought for a moment and continued:

“But I must first show you the road which I followed to arrive at the certainty and the very reasons of the murder⁠—without which my accusation would seem monstrous to you.⁠—And it is not⁠—no, it is not monstrous at all.⁠—There is one detail which has passed unobserved and which, nevertheless, is of the greatest importance; and that is that Jean Daval, at the moment when he was stabbed, had all his clothes on, including his walking boots, was dressed, in short, as a man is dressed in the middle of