The Detective Megapack

by Various Writers

  “I am the magistrate,” replied M. Segmuller.

  “No, the other one.”

  “What other one?”

  “The one who came to question me last evening.”

  “He has met with an accident. Yesterday, after leaving you, he fell down and broke his leg.”

  “Oh!”

  “And I am to take his place.”

  The prisoner was apparently deaf to the explanation. Excitement had seemingly given way to stupor. His features, hitherto contracted with anger, now relaxed. He grew pale and tottered, as if about to fall.

  “Compose yourself,” said the magistrate in a benevolent tone; “if you are too weak to remain standing, take a seat.”

  Already, with a powerful effort, the man had recovered his self-possession. A momentary gleam flashed from his eyes. “Many thanks for your kindness,” he replied, “but this is nothing. I felt a slight sensation of dizziness, but it is over now.”

  “Is it long since you have eaten anything?”

  “I have eaten nothing since that man”—and so saying he pointed to Lecoq—“brought me some bread and wine at the station house.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to take something?”

  “No—and yet—if you would be so kind—I should like a glass of water.”

  “Will you not have some wine with it?”

  “I should prefer pure water.”

  His request was at once complied with. He drained a first glassful at a single draft; the glass was then replenished and he drank again, this time, however, more slowly. One might have supposed that he was drinking in life itself. Certainly, when he laid down the empty glass, he seemed quite another man.

  Eighteen out of every twenty criminals who appear before our investigating magistrates come prepared with a more or less complete plan of defense, which they have conceived during their preliminary confinement. Innocent or guilty, they have resolved, on playing some part or other, which they begin to act as soon as they cross the threshold of the room where the magistrate awaits them.

  The moment they enter his presence, the magistrate needs to bring all his powers of penetration into play; for such a culprit’s first attitude as surely betrays his plan of defense as an index reveals a book’s contents. In this case, however, M. Segmuller did not think that appearances were deceitful. It seemed evident to him that the prisoner was not feigning, but that the excited frenzy which marked his entrance was as real as his after stupor.

  At all events, there seemed no fear of the danger the governor of the Depot had spoken of, and accordingly M. Segmuller seated himself at his desk. Here he felt stronger and more at ease for his back being turned to the window, his face was half hidden in shadow; and in case of need, he could, by bending over his papers, conceal any sign of surprise or discomfiture.

  The prisoner, on the contrary, stood in the full light, and not a movement of his features, not the fluttering of an eyelid could escape the magistrate’s attention. He seemed to have completely recovered from his indisposition; and his features assumed an expression which indicated either careless indifference, or complete resignation.

  “Do you feel better?” asked M. Segmuller.

  “I feel very well.”

  “I hope,” continued the magistrate, paternally, “that in future you will know how to moderate your excitement. Yesterday you tried to destroy yourself. It would have been another great crime added to many others—a crime which—”

  With a hasty movement of the hand, the prisoner interrupted him. “I have committed no crime,” said he, in a rough, but no longer threatening voice. “I was attacked, and I defended myself. Any one has a right to do that. There were three men against me. It was a great misfortune; and I would give my right hand to repair it; but my conscience does not reproach me—that much!”

  The prisoner’s “that much,” was a contemptuous snap of his finger and thumb.

  “And yet I’ve been arrested and treated like an assassin,” he continued. “When I saw myself interred in that living tomb which you call a secret cell, I grew afraid; I lost my senses. I said to myself: ‘My boy, they’ve buried you alive; and it is better to die—to die quickly, if you don’t wish to suffer.’ So I tried to strangle myself. My death wouldn’t have caused the slightest sorrow to any one. I have neither wife nor child depending upon me for support. However, my attempt was frustrated. I was bled; and then placed in a strait-waistcoat, as if I were a madman. Mad! I really believed I should become so. All night long the jailors sat around me, like children amusing themselves by tormenting a chained animal. They watched me, talked about me, and passed the candle to and fro before my eyes.”

  The prisoner talked forcibly, but without any attempt at oratorical display; there was bitterness but not anger in his tone; in short, he spoke with all the seeming sincerity of a man giving expression to some deep emotion or conviction. As the magistrate and the detective heard him speak, they were seized with the same idea. “This man,” they thought, “is very clever; it won’t be easy to get the better of him.”

  Then, after a moment’s reflection, M. Segmuller added aloud: “This explains your first act of despair; but later on, for instance, even this morning, you refused to eat the food that was offered you.”

  As the prisoner heard this remark, his lowering face suddenly brightened, he gave a comical wink, and finally burst into a hearty laugh, gay, frank, and sonorous.

  “That,” said he, “is quite another matter. Certainly, I refused all they offered me, and now I will tell you why. As I had my hands confined in the strait-waistcoat, the jailor tried to feed me just as a nurse tries to feed a baby with pap. Now I wasn’t going to submit to that, so I closed my lips as tightly as I could. Then he tried to force my mouth open and push the spoon in, just as one might force a sick dog’s jaws apart and pour some medicine down its throat. The deuce take his impertinence! I tried to bite him: that’s the truth, and if I had succeeded in getting his finger between my teeth, it would have stayed there. However, because I wouldn’t be fed like a baby, all the prison officials raised their hands to heaven in holy horror, and pointed at me, saying: ‘What a terrible man! What an awful rascal!’”

  The prisoner seemed to thoroughly enjoy the recollection of the scene he had described, for he now burst into another hearty laugh, to the great amazement of Lecoq, and the scandal of Goguet, the smiling clerk.

  M. Segmuller also found it difficult to conceal his surprise. “You are too reasonable, I hope,” he said, at last, “to attach any blame to these men, who, in confining you in a strait-waistcoat, were merely obeying the orders of their superior officers with the view of protecting you from your own violent passions.”

  “Hum!” responded the prisoner, suddenly growing serious. “I do blame them, however, and if I had one of them in a corner—But, never mind, I shall get over it. If I know myself aright, I have no more spite in my composition than a chicken.”

  “Your treatment depends on your own conduct,” rejoined M. Segmuller, “If you will only remain calm, you shan’t be put in a strait-waistcoat again. But you must promise me that you will be quiet and conduct yourself properly.”

  The murderer sadly shook his head. “I shall be very prudent hereafter,” said he, “but it is terribly hard to stay in prison with nothing to do. If I had some comrades with me, we could laugh and chat, and the time would slip by; but it is positively horrible to have to remain alone, entirely alone, in that cold, damp cell, where not a sound can be heard.”

  The magistrate bent over his desk to make a note. The word “comrades” had attracted his attention, and he proposed to ask the prisoner to explain it at a later stage of the inquiry.

  “If you are innocent,” he remarked, “you will soon be released: but it is necessary to prove your innocence.”

  “What must I do to prove it?”

  “Tell the truth, the whole truth: answer my questions honestly without reserve.”

  “As for that, you may depend upon me.” A
s he spoke the prisoner lifted his hand, as if to call upon God to witness his sincerity.

  But M. Segmuller immediately intervened: “Prisoners do not take the oath,” said he.

  “Indeed!” ejaculated the man with an astonished air, “that’s strange!”

  Although the magistrate had apparently paid but little attention to the prisoner, he had in point of fact carefully noted his attitude, his tone of voice, his looks and gestures. M. Segmuller had, moreover, done his utmost to set the culprit’s mind at ease, to quiet all possible suspicion of a trap, and his inspection of the prisoner’s person led him to believe that this result had been attained.

  “Now,” said he, “you will give me your attention; and do not forget that your liberty depends upon your frankness. What is your name?”

  “May.”

  “What is your Christian name?”

  “I have none.”

  “That is impossible.”

  “I have been told that already three times since yesterday,” rejoined the prisoner impatiently. “And yet it’s the truth. If I were a liar, I could easily tell you that my name was Peter, James, or John. But lying is not in my line. Really, I have no Christian name. If it were a question of surnames, it would be quite another thing. I have had plenty of them.”

  “What were they?”

  “Let me see—to commence with, when I was with Father Fougasse, I was called Affiloir, because you see—”

  “Who was this Father Fougasse?”

  “The great wild beast tamer, sir. Ah! he could boast of a menagerie and no mistake! Lions, tigers, and bears, serpents as big round as your thigh, parrakeets of every color under the sun. Ah! it was a wonderful collection. But unfortunately—”

  Was the man jesting, or was he in earnest? It was so hard to decide, that M. Segmuller and Lecoq were equally in doubt. As for Goguet, the smiling clerk, he chuckled to himself as his pen ran over the paper.

  “Enough,” interrupted the magistrate. “How old are you?”

  “Forty-four or forty-five years of age.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “In Brittany, probably.”

  M. Segmuller thought he could detect a hidden vein of irony in this reply.

  “I warn you,” said he, severely, “that if you go on in this way your chances of recovering your liberty will be greatly compromised. Each of your answers is a breach of propriety.”

  As the supposed murderer heard these words, an expression of mingled distress and anxiety was apparent in his face. “Ah! I meant no offense, sir,” he sighed. “You questioned me, and I replied. You will see that I have spoken the truth, if you will allow me to recount the history of the whole affair.”

  “When the prisoner speaks, the prosecution is enlightened,” so runs an old proverb frequently quoted at the Palais de Justice. It does, indeed, seem almost impossible for a culprit to say more than a few words in an investigating magistrate’s presence, without betraying his intentions or his thoughts; without, in short, revealing more or less of the secret he is endeavoring to conceal. All criminals, even the most simple-minded, understand this, and those who are shrewd prove remarkably reticent. Confining themselves to the few facts upon which they have founded their defense, they are careful not to travel any further unless absolutely compelled to do so, and even then they only speak with the utmost caution. When questioned, they reply, of course, but always briefly; and they are very sparing of details.

  In the present instance, however, the prisoner was prodigal of words. He did not seem to think that there was any danger of his being the medium of accomplishing his own decapitation. He did not hesitate like those who are afraid of misplacing a word of the romance they are substituting for the truth. Under other circumstances, this fact would have been a strong argument in his favor.

  “You may tell your own story, then,” said M. Segmuller in answer to the prisoner’s indirect request.

  The presumed murderer did not try to hide the satisfaction he experienced at thus being allowed to plead his own cause, in his own way. His eyes sparkled and his nostrils dilated as if with pleasure. He sat himself dawn, threw his head back, passed his tongue over his lips as if to moisten them, and said: “Am I to understand that you wish to hear my history?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must know that one day about forty-five years ago, Father Tringlot, the manager of a traveling acrobatic company, was going from Guingamp to Saint Brieuc, in Brittany. He had with him two large vehicles containing his wife, the necessary theatrical paraphernalia, and the members of the company. Well, soon after passing Chatelaudren, he perceived something white lying by the roadside, near the edge of a ditch. ‘I must go and see what that is,’ he said to his wife. He stopped the horses, alighted from the vehicle he was in, went to the ditch, picked up the object he had noticed, and uttered a cry of surprise. You will ask me what he had found? Ah! good heavens! A mere trifle. He had found your humble servant, then about six months old.”

  With these last words, the prisoner made a low bow to his audience.

  “Naturally, Father Tringlot carried me to his wife. She was a kind-hearted woman. She took me, examined me, fed me, and said: ‘He’s a strong, healthy child; and we’ll keep him since his mother has been so wicked as to abandon him by the roadside. I will teach him; and in five or six years he will be a credit to us.’ They then asked each other what name they should give me, and as it happened to be the first day of May, they decided to call me after the month, and so it happens that May has been my name from that day to this.”

  The prisoner paused again and looked from one to another of his listeners, as if seeking some sign of approval. None being forthcoming, he proceeded with his story.

  “Father Tringlot was an uneducated man, entirely ignorant of the law. He did not inform the authorities that he had found a child, and, for this reason, although I was living, I did not legally exist, for, to have a legal existence it is necessary that one’s name, parentage, and birthplace should figure upon a municipal register.

  “When I grew older, I rather congratulated myself on Father Tringlot’s neglect. ‘May, my boy,’ said I, ‘you are not put down on any government register, consequently there’s no fear of your ever being drawn as a soldier.’ I had a horror of military service, and a positive dread of bullets and cannon balls. Later on, when I had passed the proper age for the conscription, a lawyer told me that I should get into all kinds of trouble if I sought a place on the civil register so late in the day; and so I decided to exist surreptitiously. And this is why I have no Christian name, and why I can’t exactly say where I was born.”

  If truth has any particular accent of its own, as moralists have asserted, the murderer had found that accent. Voice, gesture, glance, expression, all were in accord; not a word of his long story had rung false.

  “Now,” said M. Segmuller, coldly, “what are your means of subsistence?”

  By the prisoner’s discomfited mien one might have supposed that he had expected to see the prison doors fly open at the conclusion of his narrative. “I have a profession,” he replied plaintively. “The one that Mother Tringlot taught me. I subsist by its practise; and I have lived by it in France and other countries.”

  The magistrate thought he had found a flaw in the prisoner’s armor. “You say you have lived in foreign countries?” he inquired.

  “Yes; during the seventeen years that I was with M. Simpson’s company, I traveled most of the time in England and Germany.”

  “Then you are a gymnast and an athlete. How is it that your hands are so white and soft?”

  Far from being embarrassed, the prisoner raised his hands from his lap and examined them with evident complacency. “It is true they are pretty,” said he, “but this is because I take good care of them and scarcely use them.”

  “Do they pay you, then, for doing nothing?”

  “Ah, no, indeed! But, sir, my duty consists in speaking to the public, in turning a compliment, in making
things pass off pleasantly, as the saying is; and, without boasting, I flatter myself that I have a certain knack—”

  M. Segmuller stroked his chin, according to his habit whenever he considered that a prisoner had committed some grave blunder. “In that case,” said he, “will you give me a specimen of your talent?”

  “Ah, ha!” laughed the prisoner, evidently supposing this to be a jest on the part of the magistrate. “Ah, ha!”

  “Obey me, if you please,” insisted M. Segmuller.

  The supposed murderer made no objection. His face at once assumed a different expression, his features wearing a mingled air of impudence, conceit, and irony. He caught up a ruler that was lying on the magistrate’s desk, and, flourishing it wildly, began as follows, in a shrill falsetto voice: “Silence, music! And you, big drum, hold your peace! Now is the hour, now is the moment, ladies and gentlemen, to witness the grand, unique performance of these great artists, unequaled in the world for their feats upon the trapeze and the tight-rope, and in innumerable other exercises of grace, suppleness, and strength!”

  “That is sufficient,” interrupted the magistrate. “You can speak like that in France; but what do you say in Germany?”

  “Of course, I use the language of that country.”

  “Let me hear, then!” retorted M. Segmuller, whose mother-tongue was German.

  The prisoner ceased his mocking manner, assumed an air of comical importance, and without the slightest hesitation began to speak as follows, in very emphatic tones: “Mit Be-willigung der hochloeblichen Obrigkeit, wird heute, vor hiesiger ehrenwerthen Burgerschaft, zum erstenmal aufgefuhrt—Genovesa, oder—”

  This opening of the prisoner’s German harangue may be thus rendered: “With the permission of the local authorities there will now be presented before the honorable citizens, for the first time—Genevieve, or the—”

  “Enough,” said the magistrate, harshly. He rose, perhaps to conceal his chagrin, and added: “We will send for an interpreter to tell us whether you speak English as fluently.”