“It is unfortunately true,” Rouletabille said in a strained voice, “that at one time I believed that my poor Ivana was about to yield to the entreaties of Professor Boulenger, who was madly in love with her. I will not now enter into details which would enable you to understand many things, and cause you to see my wife’s conduct in an entirely new and almost noble light, Monsieur le juge. It was a question with her of rescuing the Professor, in the interests of science, from a baneful and dreaded influence. That a plan which was difficult and dangerous to carry through should have led her to agree, without my knowledge, to keep an appointment in this house at Passy, so greatly perturbed me that I set to work to watch her movements, an espionage for which I publicly ask pardon from the memory of her who was deserving of every respect.”
An icy silence ensued for a few moments, and Rouletabille was in no doubt of its significance but he went on:
“I watched her and I had her watched, and I learnt that she was to come to this house on the Tuesday.
“On the Monday I possessed a key which enabled me to unlock the door opening on to the waste land. I knew the exact hour of the appointment. I got here a quarter of an hour after my wife. Roland Boulenger was already here. Monsieur, I take my oath that I was unarmed.... I am not one of those who arrogate to themselves the right to take life because a woman has smiled on another man. That sort of barbarism finds no place in my mind, and I am sorry that it still obtains in an age which claims to be civilized.... I came here to verify a terrible piece of deceit; but one does not kill a woman because she has lied.
“If she be unfaithful to her vows... if she deny her sacred and plighted word — one should leave her. Do not become her executioner. Master the instinct of possession which is but a relic of the old days of slavery, or submit yourself to the just laws of your country. Monsieur, if you can prove that I have done murder I demand to be sent to the guillotine, and I demand also your dismissal from your office for having by your observations just now encouraged the crime of murder.”
We were prepared for anything but such a diatribe. Rouletabille must have gone mad!
We were petrified — petrified is the word! As to Monsieur Hébert he would have liked to give way to his anger, but he was afraid lest he should appear ridiculous. There was a strained expression on his face, and in a tone of bitterness he made answer in words which more or less expressed the general feeling:
“I cannot restrain your language which at least bears witness to the intense mental confusion into which you have fallen. Innocent or guilty, your agitation is easily understood. I am only sorry that it prevents you from employing in your own case the clear and positive methods which enabled you to achieve a solution when other people’s affairs were in question.”
“Monsieur, you must have pity on me. My wife was murdered!”
And Rouletabille wept.
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT ROULETABILLE SAW AT PASSY
WE WERE MUCH more affected by Rouletabille’s tears than by his speech which was somewhat incoherent, or appeared to us to be so.
Monsieur Hébert became very gentle with him.
“Look here, when you entered this house by the hidden door you at once went to the servants’ staircase and thence mounted to the first floor. This is the way, moreover, which was taken by your wife, for we have traced her footprints up to the dressing-room. Madame Rouletabille did not wish to go in by the La Roche door where she might have been seen...”
“Did you find any traces of my footsteps on the servants’ staircase?” interrupted Rouletabille, suddenly aroused to interest by this formal examination.
“No,” Monsieur Hébert returned, “but, truth to tell, you were so adept in discovering traces in other cases that it was easy for you to cover up your own.”
“I will prove to you that I made no attempt to conceal anything. Traces of my footsteps hit you in the eye! But if you look for them where they will be useful for your purposes, you won’t find them. See, you will find them there,” he said, pointing to the garden path which at no great distance ran past the windows of the bed and dining-rooms.
“Monsieur le juge,” went on Rouletabille, “had you been less taken Op with your idea of my using the servants’ staircase, you might have seen that my footprints, which are almost obliterated on the moss-grown brick path leading from the hidden door to the servants’ staircase, appear suddenly on the left, that is to say, when they leave the brick path. Then they can be clearly seen on the soft earth, freshly made wet by the rain. I don’t know whether the detectives have mixed them all up in their investigations and movements to and fro, but those footprints should be there still. It was in this way that I came here and in this way that I went back.”
“We shall see about that later, and for the moment I will admit the fact,” observed Monsieur Hébert, who attached little importance to these details. “After all, whether you entered the house by the servants’ staircase or by any other way, it is none the less true that you joined the two victims.”
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur le juge, I did not join them. True, I came here in a most grievous, let us say despondent, but not at all in a ‘tragic’ frame of mind, in the sense that you attach to the word. And in proof of that, I repeat, I was unarmed.”
“That’s what you say.”
“I swear it. What was happening seemed so inconceivable that I wanted with my own eyes to make sure of it. However, I possessed no other key than that of the hidden door... and now I was wandering round the house. I knew that my wife was here with Roland Boulenger. The thought of it was dreadful. Suddenly I heard the sound of a voice. It came through the dining-room window, and it was the voice of Roland Boulenger who, employing the familiar second person, said:
“‘If you hadn’t come, I don’t know what would have happened. I have never loved anyone but you.’
“Having said which he closed the window. Then, Monsieur, I turned on my heel for the very reason that I did not want to take life. It’s all very fine to come unarmed and despise the brute in one, but there are moments when one’s lower nature rises in its most terrible form. Well, I had the strength of mind to subdue that feeling. I had the strength of mind to flee the place. That is the whole story as far as I am concerned. And you must know that I now regret having been driven forth by those words of Boulenger’s familiar tones. The Professor often spoke to his pupils in this fashion and I have heard him address my wife as “thou” in my presence. Had I remained behind, had I interfered, heavens above, my wife would be alive now. But it was as much as I could do to drive the brute that is in me to the door and make good my escape with that sentence ringing in my ears.”
“Yes, you had learnt enough,” returned Monsieur Hébert with an affectation of sorrow which scarcely veiled his bitter sarcasm. Rouletabille grew as white as a sheet.
“You have a pretty wit, Monsieur Hébert,” he rapped out as he shot a devastating glance at him, “but you make a poor examining magistrate. Fortunately I am here to save you from committing some miserable blunder like the one I prevented you from making in the Madieu trial; but you can rely on me. It’s my business to save my wife’s honour, and I shall succeed in spite of you.”
When the examining magistrate attempted to speak Rouletabille silenced him with a gesture. In truth it really seemed as if he were conducting the proceedings, and that the other persons present were there by his orders.
“No, Monsieur le juge, I did not leave the place because I had ‘learnt enough.’ On the contrary, I left it deceived by appearance as though I were an ordinary examining magistrate! At all events, when I left it the two persons who were keeping an appointment in ‘the little house at Passy’ were still alive. It was then precisely five o’clock.”
“And the watch worn by the Professor was struck by a bullet at five minutes to five!”
“Obviously. It’s a pity that you should draw from that fact such a false conclusion. Boulenger and Ivana were alive at five o’clock. His
watch stopped at five minutes to five. I can’t help that. I can’t prevent a watch from stopping at five minutes to five. Boulenger had possibly forgotten to wind it up. The watch was afterwards struck and shattered by a bullet. It is an unfortunate coincidence, but it doesn’t prove anything.”
“You are forgetting one theory with regard to Roland Boulenger’s watch. Why should it have stopped? Even if the murders took place a quarter or half an hour later, could not the bullet have struck it at half-past five? I repeat that it is only a theory that the watch was half an hour slow.”
“That may be,” exclaimed Rouletabille, strangely excited. “That may be, Monsieur le juge, but I left the place at five o’clock.”
“You left with staring eyes, talking loudly to yourself and looking like a madman. Though you had no revolver when you arrived, perhaps after leaving here you went to fetch one before returning.”
CHAPTER XIV
A FRESH SENSATION
ROULETABILLE REMAINED FOR a moment dumb before Monsieur Hébert’s retort, which was uttered in quite natural tones and which he himself did not imagine would be so crushing. I, who know Rouletabille so well, saw at a glance that he was staggered. He caught my eye and my heart was heavy for him. But could it be true? More than once in the course of this painful examination I failed to recognize the old Rouletabille. It was as though he meant to deceive himself and to deceive others by a flow of words, for obviously he was utterly distraught.
“We have tried to ascertain,” went on the examining magistrate in a hard voice, “what you did exactly from five o’clock when you left this house to the time, more than an hour later, when you returned to your flat.”
“That was a very short interval considering the state of mind in which I left this house,” he returned, knitting his brows and steadying his voice. “There’s no doubt I wasted half an hour in wandering about like a lost soul, but A where I went I don’t know... certainly in the neighbourhood somewhere. I can’t tell you.”
“Nor can I,” said Monsieur Hébert, whose turn seemed to have come at a moment when he least expected it. “I am bound to tell you, moreover, that if by chance you returned here — a visit which in your state of mind you may have totally forgotten — we know nothing about it.”
“I have nothing more to say to you at present,” answered Rouletabille, “but I have a request to make. Will you allow me to work on my own in the house?”
“By all means,” agreed Monsieur Hébert, who added in a slightly satirical tone. “Investigate for yourself and for me, and try to prevent me from making a blunder which this time might be disastrous for you.”
Half an hour passed during which Rouletabille minutely examined the place from garden to garret. We watched him on his hands and knees, searching under the furniture, scenting round like a dog at a hunt, just as I had seen him for the first time in the far-off days of “The Mystery of the Yellow Room.”
We were surprised to see him pass quickly through the rooms which were the scene of the tragedy. On the other hand he clambered up and descended again and again, on all fours, the servants’ staircase; he caused the cupboards in the kitchen and basement to be opened; and finally he concentrated much attention upon the path which ran from the front of the lodge to La Roche Lane, but which was not paved or bricked like the little tradesmen’s path leading to the waste land.
A great number of footprints were noticeable here on the soft earth, and we wondered whether Rouletabille would still be able to perceive any of the impressions which were made at first.
Monsieur Hébert seemed to feel sorry for him.
“Be assured, Monsieur,’’ he said, “that on the first investigation which the authorities opened here, a man’s footprints were traced going direct on this path from La Roche Lane to the house, but unfortunately no sign of them could be found making a return journey. These were Roland Boulenger’s footprints. They are the only ones. Not a single imprint made by a woman’s foot could be seen. That is the reason why I told you that Madame Rouletabille must have come in by the hidden door as you yourself did; but in any case the matter is of no importance.”
Rouletabille rose from his stooping posture. He was muddy, dirty, and his hair disordered.
“You must have questioned Poupardin, the barber at the corner of La Roche Lane. Did he by any chance notice anything?” he asked.
Thereupon one of the detectives made answer:
“I wanted to question him but his shop was closed. He went away on the Monday, that is to say, on the day before the murders. He had stated some time previously that he was about to take a trip to his own country. Marius Poupardin, therefore, could not have seen anything.”
“Well, have you discovered anything?” asked Monsieur Hebert for the last time, turning to Rouletabille.
“No, Monsieur,” he replied in a dull voice, without looking at us.
“Well then, we will conclude the examination for to-day. Let’s go,” he ordered.
I went up to Rouletabille and shook his hand, but he returned the pressure somewhat absent-mindedly. The detectives conducted him to a taxi. A considerable tumult could still be heard outside. We all parted without a word. We had to undergo an onslaught from the newspaper men. I went back home in a state of dejection, and I did not rouse myself from my prostration until eight o’clock that evening when I heard newspaper boys shouting: “Late Edition. The Rouletabille Case. Discovery of the Revolver.”
I ran down into the street to buy a paper.
Then I learnt the latest sensational piece of news. The police had discovered the gunsmith in the neighbourhood of L’Etoile from whom Rouletabille at quarter-past five on Tuesday, the day of the crime, had purchased a revolver. There was no room for any further doubt. Monsieur Hébert had by a lucky chance alighted upon the truth. Though Rouletabille was unarmed when he entered the house, he had left it in order to buy a revolver at the first shop that he could find. It was recognized now that the stoppage of the watch — as Rouletabille himself had declared, and as the hour at which he had acquired the revolver clearly proved — meant nothing.
The time at which the murders were committed was fixed, at half-past five, and this time was afterwards ascertained to be correct. Rouletabille therefore was guilty.
CHAPTER XV
ROULETABILLE IN PRISON
HOW COULD I fail to be convinced by this piece of evidence? When I write: “Rouletabille, therefore, was guilty,” I mean that at that time I believed him guilty. Thus as I take the reader through the successive phases of the story, I must explain the state of my mind at the time which I am describing. And thus I have not finished with the theories and facts, and seeming facts, which bear upon the part played by Rouletabille in what was called his “crime.”
At that time I believed Rouletabille was guilty, but my mind for all that was by no means clear about it. Far from it. I was unable to understand so ignominious an attitude in a matter in which he had taken the law into his own hands, nor in particular his deceit towards me, assuming that he had yielded to an irresistible impulse of the brute in him.
And then I reflected that he was bound to be very miserable, and I made up my mind to visit him in prison on the following-morning. As it happened I had obtained a “permit” signed the day before by Monsieur Hébert.
After a sleepless night I repaired to the prison in which Rouletabille was incarcerated, my thoughts turning gloomily to the changes which these tragedies of passion bring about even in the strongest men.
I could not help saying for myself: Why did he not frankly confess his crime since he was not in a position to deny it? The world would have found excuses for him. As it is, he is now merely an object of pity. But I was far from anticipating the surprise which lay in store for me, and which could not but corroborate my own and the general opinion of his culpability.
I went to the prison bureau in order to have my “permit” endorsed, and was making for my poor friend’s cell, accompanied by a warder, when I encountered Mo
nsieur Mazeau, the Governor of the prison, whom I had known for some time. He was going his rounds, and stopped to speak to me and to tell me in confidence that, in his view, things were shaping badly for Rouletabille. Unfortunately I knew that much as well as he did, or at least I believed so.
Monsieur Mazeau was a very popular figure, well known to all Paris, and before he was engaged in prison government had made a little niche for himself in the world of letters.
He was a conspicuous personage in the old Montmartre. He formed one of that noble host which gathered round Salis of the Chat Noir in the Rue de Layal, now the Rue Victor Massé. He then wore a spreading golden beard. His language was flowery, witty and high flown in imitation of the master of the house. Salis was the making of his disciples who, in truth, achieved successful careers. Some of them became members of the Academy, others, like Mazeau, filled positions of responsibility under government, while others again made their names in the newspaper press.
A figure so distinctly Parisian as Monsieur Mazeau was not unknown, as may readily be supposed, to Rouletabille. Though they were not intimate, they had met sufficiently often in the old days in the Gothic taverns of Montmartre to be on a friendly footing. It was this fact which explained the veritable tone of sorrow in which Monsieur Mazeau spoke of the grievous position in which the Epoque’s chief contributor then stood.
While speaking he accompanied me, and we found ourselves together outside Rouletabille’s cell, which the warder opened. We were not a little taken aback to discover that the cell was empty!
I must admit, however, that Monsieur Mazeau was more astounded than I was. I might have thought, indeed, that it was the hour for exercise in the prison yard. Besides,
I had no reason to suppose, though Rouletabille was not in his cell, that he had made his escape. But the Governor, who knew that his prisoner should have been there, could not understand why he was not there, and I saw him suddenly turn pale.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 94