Fantômas

by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain

  XVIII. A PRISONER AND A WITNESS

  Juve had spoken in a tone of command that brooked no reply. His keeneyes seemed to pierce through Paul and read his inmost soul. The winkinglight of the street lamp shed a wan halo round the lad, who obviouslywanted to move away from its radius, but Juve held him fast.

  "Come now, answer! You are Charles Rambert, and you were MademoiselleJeanne?"

  "I don't understand," Paul declared.

  "Really!" sneered Juve. He hailed a passing cab. "Get in," he orderedbriefly, and pushing the lad in before him he gave an address to thedriver, entered the cab and shut the door. Juve sat there rubbing hishands as if well pleased with his night's work. For several minutes heremained silent, and then turned to his companion.

  "You think it is clever to deny it," he remarked, "but do you imagine itisn't obvious to anyone that you are Charles Rambert, and that you weredisguised as Mademoiselle Jeanne?"

  "But you are wrong," Paul insisted. "Charles Rambert is dead."

  "So you know that, do you? Then you admit that you know whom I amtalking about?"

  The lad coloured and began to tremble. Juve looked out of the window,pretending not to notice him, and smiled gently. Then he went on in afriendly tone. "But you know it's stupid to deny what can't be denied.Besides, you should remember that if I know you are Charles Rambert Imust know something else as well; and therefore----"

  "Well, yes," Paul acknowledged, "I _am_ Charles Rambert, and I wasdisguised as Mademoiselle Jeanne. How did you know it? Why were you atthe Saint-Anthony's Pig? Had you come to arrest me? And where are youtaking me now--to prison?"

  Juve shrugged his shoulders.

  "You want to know too much, my boy. Besides, you ought to know Paris,and so ought to be able to guess where I told the driver to go, merelyby looking at the streets we are passing through."

  "That is exactly what frightens me," Charles Rambert replied. "We are onthe quays, near the Law Courts."

  "And the Police Station, my son. Quite so. Now it's quite useless tomake a scene: you will gain nothing by attempting to get away. You arein the hands of justice, or rather in my hands, which is not quite thesame thing, so come quietly. That is really good advice!"

  A few minutes later the cab stopped at the Tour Pointue which has suchmelancholy associations for so many criminals. Juve alighted and madehis companion alight as well, paid the driver, and walked up thestaircase to the first floor of the building. It was daylight now, andthe men were coming on duty; all of them saluted Juve as he walked alongwith his trembling captive. The detective went down one long passage,turned into another, and opened a door.

  "Go in there," he ordered curtly.

  Charles Rambert obeyed, and found himself in a small room the nature ofwhich he recognised immediately from the furniture it contained. It wasthe measuring room of the anthropometric service. So what he feared wasabout to happen: Juve was going to lock him up!

  But the detective called out in a loud tone: "Hector, please!" and oneof the men who remained on duty in the department, in case they wererequired by any of the detective inspectors to find the records of anypreviously convicted criminal, came hurrying in.

  "Ah, M. Juve, and with a bag too! So early? You think he has been herebefore?"

  "No," said Juve in a dry tone that put a stop to further indiscreetquestions. "I don't want you to look up my companion's record, but totake his measurements, and very carefully too."

  The man was somewhat surprised at the order, for it was not usual to beasked to do such work at so very early an hour. He was rather irritabletoo at being disturbed from the rest he was enjoying, and it was verycurtly that he spoke to Charles Rambert.

  "Come here, please: the standard first: take off your boots."

  Charles Rambert obeyed and stood under the standard of measurement, andthen, as the assistant ordered him, he submitted to having his fingerssmeared with ink so that his finger prints might be taken, to beingphotographed, full face and in profile, and finally to having the widthof his head, from ear to ear, measured with a special pair of calipercompasses.

  Hector was surprised by his docility.

  "I must say your friend is not very talkative, M. Juve. What has he beenup to?" and as the detective merely shrugged his shoulders and did notreply, he went on: "That's done, sir. We will develop the negatives andtake the prints, and recopy the measurements, and the record shall beclassified in the register in a couple of hours."

  Charles Rambert grew momentarily more scared. He felt that he wasdefinitely arrested now. But Juve left the arm-chair in which he hadbeen resting, and coming up to him laid his hand upon his shoulder,speaking the while with a certain gentleness.

  "Come: there are some other points as to which I wish to examine you."He led him from the anthropometric room along a dark corridor, andpresently taking a key from his pocket, opened a door and pushed the ladin before him. "Go in there," he said. "This is where we make thedynamometer tests."

  A layman looking round the room might almost have supposed that it wasmerely some carpenter's shop. Pieces of wood, of various shapes andsizes and sorts, were arranged along the wall or laid upon the floor; inglass cases were whole heaps of strips of metal, five or six incheslong, and of varying thickness.

  Juve closed the door carefully behind him.

  "For pity's sake, M. Juve, tell me what you are going to do with me,"Charles Rambert implored.

  The detective smiled.

  "Well, there you ask a question which I can't answer off-hand. What am Igoing to do with you, eh? That still depends upon a good many things."

  As he spoke Juve tossed his hat aside and, looking at a rather high kindof little table, proceeded to remove from it a grey cloth whichprotected it from dust, and drew it into the middle of the room. Thisarticle was composed of a metal body screwed on to a strong tripod, witha lower tray that moved backwards and forwards, and two lateralbuttresses with a steel cross-piece firmly bolted on to them above. Uponthis framework were two dynamometers worked by an ingenious piece ofmechanism. Juve looked at Charles Rambert and explained.

  "This is Dr. Bertillon's effraction dynamometer. I am going to make useof it to find out at once whether you are or are not deserving of somelittle interest. I don't want to tell you more just at present." Juveslipped into a specially prepared notch a thin strip of wood, which hehad selected with particular care from one of the heaps of materialarranged along the wall. From a chest he took a tool which CharlesRambert, who had had some intimate experience of late with thelight-fingered community, immediately recognised as a jemmy. "Take holdof that," said Juve, and as Charles took it in his hand he added: "Nowput the jemmy into this groove, and press with all your force. If youcan move that needle to a point which I know, and which it is difficultbut not impossible to reach, you may congratulate yourself on being inluck."

  Stimulated by this encouragement from the detective, Charles Rambertexerted all his force upon the lever, only afraid that he might not bestrong enough. Juve stopped him very soon.

  "That's all right," he said, and substituting a strip of sheet-iron forthe strip of wood, he handed another tool to the lad. "Now try again."

  A few seconds later Juve took a magnifying lens, and closely examinedboth the strip of metal and the strip of wood. He gave a littlesatisfied click with his tongue, and seemed to be very pleased.

  "Charles Rambert," he remarked, "I think we are going to do a very goodmorning's work. Dr. Bertillon's new apparatus is an uncommonly usefulinvention."

  The detective might have gone on with his congratulatory monologue hadnot an attendant come into the room at that moment.

  "Ah, there you are, M. Juve: I have been looking for you everywhere.There is someone asking for you who says he knows you will receive him.I told him this was not the proper time, but he was so insistent that Ipromised to bring you his card. Besides, he says you have given him anappointment."

  Juve took the card and glanced at it.

  "That's all right," he said
. "Take the gentleman into the parlour andtell him I will be with him in a minute." The attendant went out andJuve looked at Charles Rambert with a smile. "You are played out," hesaid; "before we do anything else common humanity requires that youshould get some rest. Come, follow me; I will take you to a room whereyou can throw yourself on a sofa and get a sleep for a good hour atleast while I go and see this visitor." He led the lad into a smallwaiting-room, and as Charles Rambert obediently stretched himself uponthe sofa, Juve looked at the pale and nervous and completely silent boy,and said with even greater gentleness: "There, go to sleep; sleepquietly, and presently----"

  Juve left the room, and called a man to whom he gave an order in a lowtone.

  "Stay with that gentleman, please. He is a friend of mine, but a friend,you understand, who must not leave this place. I am going to see someone, but I will come up again presently," and Juve hurried downstairs tothe parlour.

  The visitor rose as the door opened, and Juve made a formal bow.

  "M. Gervais Aventin?" he said.

  "M. Gervais Aventin," that gentleman replied. "And you areDetective-Inspector Juve?"

  "I am, sir," the detective answered, and pointing his visitor to a chairhe took a seat himself at a small table littered with officialdocuments.

  "Sir," Juve began, "I ventured to send you that pressing invitation tocome to Paris to-day, because from enquiries I had made about you, I wassure that you were a man with a sense of duty, who would not resentbeing put to inconvenience when it was a question of co-operating in awork of justice and of truth."

  The visitor, a man of perhaps thirty, of somewhat fashionable appearanceand careful though quiet dress, manifested much surprise.

  "Enquiries about me, sir? And pray, why? I must confess that I was verymuch astonished when I received your letter informing me that the famousDetective-Inspector Juve wished to see me, and at first I suspected somepractical joke. On consideration I decided to obey your summons withoutfurther pressing, but I did not imagine that you would have made anyenquiries about me. How do you know me, may I ask?"

  Juve smiled.

  "Is it the fact," he enquired, instead of replying directly, for likethe good detective that he was, intensely keen on his work, he enjoyedmystifying people with whom he conversed, "is it the fact that your nameis Gervais Aventin? A civil engineer? The possessor of considerableprivate means? About to be married? And that lately you made a shortjourney to Limoges?"

  The young man nodded and smiled.

  "Your information is perfectly correct in every particular. But I do notyet understand what crime of mine can have subjected me to theseenquiries on your part."

  Juve smiled again.

  "I wondered, sir, why you vouchsafed no answer to the local enquirieswhich have been made at my instance, to the advertisements which I havehad inserted in the papers, in which I discreetly made it known that thepolice wanted to get into communication with all the passengers whotravelled first class, in the slow train from Paris to Luchon, on thenight of the 23rd of December last."

  This time the young man looked anxious.

  "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "are you in the employment of my futurefather-in-law?"

  Juve burst into a roar of laughter.

  "First acknowledge that you did travel by that train on that night: thatyou got into it at Vierzon, where you live and where you are going to bemarried; and that you were going to Limoges to see a lady--and that youdid not want your fiancee's family to know anything about it."

  Gervais Aventin pulled himself together.

  "I had no idea that the official police undertook espionage of thatsort," he said rather drily. "But it is true, sir, that I went toLimoges--my last post before I was appointed to Vierzon--to take a finalfarewell to a lady. But since you are so accurately informed about allthis, since you even know what train I went by, a train I deliberatelychose because in little places like Vierzon so much notice is taken ofpeople who travel by the express, you must also know----"

  Juve checked him with a wave of the hand.

  "A truce to jesting," he said; "excuse me, sir, I was only amusingmyself by observing once more how quickly decent people, who have alittle peccadillo on their conscience, are disturbed when they thinkthey have been found out. Your love affairs do not matter to me, sir; Idon't want to know if you have a lady friend, or not. The information Iwant from you is of a very different nature. Tell me simply this: inwhat circumstances did you make that journey? What carriage did you getinto? Who travelled with you in that carriage? I am asking you because,sir, I have every reason to believe that you travelled that night with amurderer who committed a crime of particular atrocity, and I think youmay be able to give me some interesting information."

  The young man, who had been looking grave, smiled once more.

  "I would rather have that than an enquiry into my defunct love affairs.Well, sir, I got into the train at Vierzon, into a first-classcarriage----"

  "What kind of carriage?"

  "One of the old-fashioned corridor carriages; that is to say, not acorridor communicating with the other carriages, but a single carriagewith four compartments, two in the middle opening on to the corridor,and two at the ends communicating with the corridor by a small door."

  "I know," said Juve; "the lavatory is in the centre, and the endcompartments are like the ordinary noncorridor compartments, except thatthey have only seven seats, and also have the little door communicatingwith the narrow passage down one side of the carriage."

  "That's it. I got into the smoking compartment at the end."

  "Don't go too quick," said Juve. "Tell me whom you saw in the variouscompartments. Let us go even farther back. You were on the platform,waiting for the train; it came in; what happened then?"

  "You want to be very precise," Gervais Aventin remarked. "Well, when thetrain pulled up I looked for the first-class carriage; it was a fewyards away from me, and the corridor was alongside the platform. I gotinto the corridor and wanted to choose my compartment. I rememberclearly that I went first to the rear compartment, the last one in thecarriage. I could not get into that, for the door opening into it fromthe corridor was locked."

  "That is correct," Juve nodded. "I know from the guard that thatcompartment was empty. What did you do then?"

  "I turned back and, passing the ladies' compartment and the lavatory,decided to take my seat in the one next it communicating with thecorridor. But luck was against me: a pane of glass was broken and it wasbitterly cold there; so I had to fall back on the only compartment left,the smoking one towards the front of the train."

  "Were there many of you there?"

  "I thought at first that I was going to have a fellow-traveller, forthere was some luggage and a rug arranged on the seat. But the passengermust have been in the lavatory, for I didn't see him. I lay down on theother seat and went to sleep. When I got out of the train at Limoges, myfellow-traveller must have been in the lavatory again, for I rememberquite distinctly that he was not on the opposite seat. I thought at thetime how easy it would have been for me to steal his luggage and walkoff with his valise: nobody would have seen me."

  Juve had listened intently to every word of the story. He asked for onefurther detail with a certain anxiety in his tone.

  "Tell me, sir, when you woke up did you have any impression that thebaggage arranged on the seat opposite yours had been disturbed at all?Might the traveller, whom you did not see, have come in for a sleepwhile you yourself were asleep?"

  Gervais Aventin made a little gesture of uncertainty.

  "I can't answer in the affirmative, M. Juve. I did not notice that; and,besides, when I got into the compartment, the shade was pulled down overthe lamp, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. I hardly sawhow the things were arranged. And then, when I got out at Limoges I wasin a hurry, and only thought about finding my ticket and jumping on tothe platform. But I do not think the other fellow did take his placewhile I was asleep. I did not hear a sound, and yet I did not sleep
atall heavily."

  "So you travelled in a first-class compartment in the slow train fromParis to Luchon on the night of the 23rd of December, and in thatcompartment there was the luggage of a traveller whom you did notsee--who may not have been there?"

  "Yes," said Gervais Aventin, and, as the detective sat silent for amoment, he enquired: "Is my information too vague to be of any use toyou?"

  Juve was wondering inwardly why the dickens Etienne Rambert was not inthat compartment when, according to the depositions of the guard, hemust have been there; but he said nothing of this. Instead, he said:

  "Your information is most valuable, sir. You have told me everything Iwanted to know."

  Gervais Aventin displayed still more surprise.

  "Well," he said, "by way of return, M. Juve, tell me something whichpuzzles me. How did you know I travelled by that train that night?"

  The detective drew out his pocket-book, and from an inner pocketproduced a first-class ticket, which he held out to the engineer.

  "That is very simple," he replied. "Here is your ticket. I wanted toknow exactly who everyone was who travelled in that first-classcompartment, so I sent for all the first-class tickets which were givenup by passengers who left the train at the different stations. That'show I got yours: it had been issued at Vierzon, the station where yougot in, so I interrogated the clerk at the booking-office who gave me adescription of you; then I sent down an inspector to Vierzon to makediscreet enquiries, and he got me all the information I required. All Ihad to do then was to write and ask you to come here to-day; and theregrettable story of your broken relations with the lady was an ampleguarantee to me that you would be punctual at the appointment!"