Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre (best ereader under 100 .TXT) 📕

where your depositions are absolutely required to conclude a case in which you are interested. Please bring, without exception, all the papers and documents entrusted to you by the Clerk of Assizes at Cahors, at the conclusion of the Langrune enquiry."

"It is signed Germain Fuselier," Dollon remarked. "I've often seen his name in the papers. He is a very well-known magistrate, and is employed in many criminal cases." He read the letter through once more, and turned to the postman. "Will you take a glass of wine, Muller?"

"That's a thing I never say 'no' to."

"Well, go into the house with Jacques, and while he is attending to you I will write a reply telegram which you can take to the office for me."

While the man was quenching his thirst Dollon wrote his reply:

"Will leave Verrières to-morrow evening by 7.20 train, arriving Paris 5 a.m. Wire appointment at your office to me at Hôtel Francs-Bourgeois, 152 rue du Bac."

He read the message over, signed it "Dollon" and considered.

"I wonder what they can want me for? Oh, if only they have found out something about the Langrune affair, how glad I shall be!"

XXIV. Under Lock and Key

After the preliminary examination as to his identity and so on, Gurn had been transferred to the Santé prison. At first the prisoner seemed to have terrible difficulty in accustoming himself to the rigours of confinement; he suffered from alternate paroxysms of rage and despair, but by sheer strength of character he fought these down. As a prisoner on remand he was entitled to the privilege of a separate cell, also during the first forty-eight hours he had been able to have his meals sent in from outside. Since then, however, his money had given out, and he was obliged to content himself with the ordinary prison dietary. But Gurn was not fastidious; this man whom Lady Beltham had singled out, or accepted, as her lover had often given proofs of an education and an intelligence above the average, yet now he appeared quite at ease in the atmosphere of a prison.

Gurn was walking quickly and alone round the exercise yard, when a breathless voice sounded in his ear.

"'Gad, Gurn, you know how to march! I was going to join you for a bit, but I could not keep up with you."

Gurn turned and saw old Siegenthal, the warder in charge of his division, in whose custody he was particularly placed.

"My word!" the old fellow panted, "anybody could tell you had been in the infantry. Well, so have I; though that wasn't yesterday, nor yet the day before; but we never marched as fast as you do. We made a fine march once though—at Saint-Privat."

Out of pity for the decent old fellow Gurn slackened his pace. He had heard the story of the battle of Saint-Privat a dozen times already, but he was quite willing to let Siegenthal tell it again. The warder, however, wandered to another point.

"By the way, I heard you were promoted sergeant out in the Transvaal: is that so?" and as Gurn nodded assent, he went on: "I never rose above the rank of corporal, but at any rate I have always led an honest life." A sudden compassion for his prisoner seized the old man, and he laid a kindly hand on Gurn's shoulder. "Is it really possible that an old soldier like you, who seem to be such a steady, serious, kind of man, can have committed such a crime?"

Gurn dropped his eyes and did not reply.

"I suppose there was a woman at the bottom of it?" Siegenthal said tentatively. "You acted on impulse, in a fit of jealousy, eh?"

"No," Gurn answered with sudden bluntness, "I may as well own up that I did it in anger, because I wanted money—for the sake of robbery."

"I'm sorry," said the old warder simply. "You must have been desperately hard up."

"No I wasn't."

Siegenthal stared at his prisoner. The man must be utterly callous to talk like that, he thought. Then a clock struck and the warder gave a curt order.

"Time, Gurn! We must go back," and he conducted the unresisting prisoner up the three flights of stairs that led to the division in which his cell was. "By the way," he remarked as they went, "I forgot to tell you that you and I have got to part."

"Oh?" said Gurn. "Am I to be transferred to another prison?"

"No, it's I who am going. Just fancy, I have been appointed head warder at Poissy; I go on leave to-night, and take up my new post in a week." Both halted before the door of cell number 127. "In with you," said Siegenthal, and when Gurn had obeyed he turned to go. Then he wheeled round again quickly, and put out his hand hurriedly, as if half afraid of being seen. "Put it there, Gurn," he said; "no doubt you are a murderer and, as you have confessed yourself, a thief; but I can't forget that if you had kept straight, you were the sergeant and I should have had to obey you. I'm sorry for you!" Gurn was touched and murmured a word of thanks. "That's all right, that's all right," Siegenthal muttered, not attempting to hide his emotion; "let us hope that everything will turn out well," and he left Gurn alone in the cell to his meditations.

Twice, Gurn reflected, relying on the sympathy which he knew he had evoked in the old warder's heart despite the number of criminals who had passed through his hands, he had been on the point of broaching a serious and delicate matter to him; but he had not actually spoken, being deterred by some undefinable scruple, as well as half suspecting that his application would be made in vain. And now he was glad he had been so cautious, for even if the warder had been amenable, his approaching removal to another prison would have prevented the idea from coming to fruition.

A sing-song voice echoed in the corridor.

"Number 127, you are wanted in the barristers' room. Get ready," and the next minute the door of the cell was thrown open, and a cheery-looking warder, with a strong Gascon accent, appeared. Gurn had noticed him before: he was the second warder in this division, a man named Nibet, and no doubt he would be promoted to Siegenthal's place when the chief warder left. Nibet looked curiously at Gurn, a certain sympathy in his quick brown eyes. "Ready, Gurn?"

Gurn growled an answer and pulled on his coat again. His counsel was Maître Barberoux, one of the foremost criminal barristers of the day; Gurn had thought it prudent to retain him for his defence, more especially as it would cost him nothing personally. But he had no particular desire to talk to him now; he had already told him everything he intended to tell him, and he had no intention of allowing the case to be boomed as a sensation; quite the reverse indeed: in his opinion, the flatter the case fell, the better it would be for his interests, though no doubt Maître Barberoux would not be of the same way of thinking.

But he said nothing, and merely walked in front of Nibet along the corridor towards the barristers' room, the way to which he was already familiar with. On the way they passed some masons who were at work in the prison, and these men stopped to watch him pass, but contrary to Gurn's apprehensions they did not seem to recognise him. He hoped it meant that the murder was already ceasing to be a nine days' wonder for the public at large.

Nibet pushed Gurn into the barristers' room, saying respectfully to the person in it already, "You only have to ring, sir, when you have finished," and then withdrew, leaving Gurn in presence, not of his counsel as he had expected, but of that personage's assistant, a young licentiate in law named Roger de Seras, who was also a most incredible dandy.

Roger de Seras greeted Gurn with an engaging smile and advanced as if to shake hands with him, but suddenly wondering whether that action might not suggest undue familiarity, he raised his hand to his own head instead and scratched it; the young fellow was still younger in his business, and did not rightly know whether it was etiquette for a barrister, or even a barrister's junior, to shake hands with a prisoner who was implicated in a notorious murder.

Gurn felt inclined to laugh, and on the whole was glad that it was the junior whom he had to see; the futile verbosity of this very young licentiate might possibly be amusing.

Maître Roger de Seras began with civil apologies.

"You will excuse me if I only stay for a few minutes, but I am most frightfully busy; besides, two ladies are waiting for me outside in my carriage: I may say confidentially that they are actresses, old friends of mine, and, just fancy, they are most frightfully anxious to see you! That's what it means to be famous, M. Gurn; eh, what?" Gurn nodded, not feeling unduly flattered. Roger de Seras continued. "Just to please them I have made any number of applications to the governor of the prison, but there was nothing doing, my dear chap; that beast of a magistrate, Fuselier, insists on your being kept in absolute seclusion. But none the less, I've got some news for you. I know heaps: why, my friends at the Law Courts call me 'the peripatetic paragraph!' Not bad, eh, what?" Gurn smiled and Roger de Seras was encouraged. "It's given me no end of a boom, my leader acting for you, and my being able to come and see you whenever I like! Everybody asks me how you are, and what you are like, and what you say, and what you think. You can congratulate yourself on having caused a sensation in Paris."

Gurn began to be irritated by all this chatter.

"I must confess I'm not the least interested in what people are saying about me. Is there anything new in my case?"

"Absolutely nothing that I am aware of," Roger de Seras replied serenely, without stopping to think whether there was or not. "I say—Lady Beltham——"

"Yes?" said Gurn.

"Well, I know her very well, you know: I go out a frightful lot and I have often met her: a charming woman, Lady Beltham!"

Gurn really did not know how to treat the idiot. Never one to suffer fools gladly, he grew irritable and would almost certainly have said something that would have put the garrulous young bungler in his place, had not the latter suddenly remembered something, just as he was on the point of getting up to go.

"Oh, by the way," he said with a laugh, "I was nearly forgetting the most important thing of all. Just fancy, that beast Juve, the marvellous detective whom the newspapers rave about, went to your place yesterday afternoon to make another official search!"

"Alone?" enquired Gurn, much interested.

"Quite alone. Now what do you suppose he found; the place has been ransacked dozens of times, you know; of course I mean something sensational in the way of a find. I bet you a thousand——"

"I never bet," Gurn snapped. "Tell me at once what it was."

The young fellow was proud of having caught the attention of his leader's notorious client, if only for a moment; he paused and wagged his head, weighing each word to give them greater emphasis.

"He found an ordnance map in your bookcase, my dear chap—an ordnance map with a bit torn out of it."

"Oh! And what then?" said Gurn, a frown upon his face.

The young barrister did not notice the expression on the murderer's countenance.

"Well, then it appears that Juve thought it was very important. Between you and me, my opinion is that