Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  He summoned the warders, and the chief inspectors and, in short, made a tremendous scene, which struck me at first as somewhat clumsy of him, for, after all, if any blunder had been committed, it was to his interest to endeavour to put it right without recourse to publicity. Rouletabille may still have been in prison. Was it not possible to lay him by the heels without all this fuss?

  Monsieur Mazeau acted as if everything were lost, and also as if he were eager to make a show of his amazement and wrath. His behaviour came back to my mind later, and I failed to draw the conclusion which he was certainly expecting me to draw, and which would have removed any suspicion of approval or complicity on his part. But I never learnt the truth. When I had the opportunity of sounding Rouletabille, he invariably took refuge in vague statements which were not without a touch of friendly chaff for poor Monsieur Mazeau, who, following the scandal of such an escape, was just simply removed from his position. But as he was appointed some time afterwards Governor of the Central prison in the South — which was the goal of his ambition — I do not see that he had much to complain of even if Rouletabille had, in fact, played him one of his tricks.

  At any rate it was ascertained that the prisoner had passed from the prison into the street attired in the great coat and cape, soft felt hat, and muffler, without which Monsieur Mazeau was never seen to leave the prison at this time of the year.

  I imagined, too, that there might have been other “accommodating friends” in this business. Rouletabille by virtue of his profession knew not only the men of the police force but all the old warders and door-keepers in the prison; and he possessed among these latter many fervent and almost fanatical admirers.

  Thus the escape must be explained in general terms for Rouletabille could never be brought to explain it in detail. In fact there was a suggestion of witchcraft about it. If we are to accept the assertions of the warders there was no breach of duty on the part of any man, and Rouletabille had passed through the doors and walls in the manner of an ordinary X-ray.

  No one had ever before escaped from that prison. The consternation inside and the sensation outside the building may be imagined. A rumour of the flight began to spread at midday. I went for a breath of fresh air on the boulevard, and was stopped almost at every step. The public was now filled with enthusiasm for Rouletabille. The tragedy itself and his irritating attitude were forgotten, and people began to see only this startling feat. And yet Rouletabille had run away from his judges like a common criminal!

  It was pitiful, of course. But on the boulevard people regarded it as “staggering!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  A REGISTERED LETTER

  SEVERAL SPECIAL EDITIONS of the newspapers were published during the day. The evening papers threw themselves with might and main into the invention of the most amusing and grotesque incidents, giving precise and wonderful details of the manner in which Rouletabille had rid himself of his custodians. The Courier declared that he had been seen airing himself unmolested on the boulevard. The Paris hinted that the whole thing could not have happened without government connivance, which had everything to gain by showing consideration not so much to the journalist on the Epoque as to the Epoque itself in view of its huge circulation. The Epoque itself set forth the facts without comment.

  This was enough to set the entire police force afoot in search of Rouletabille. I, myself, received a domiciliary visit from a detective, who asked me a number of questions which I was unable to answer. I told everyone that I regretted the escape.

  My house was kept under close observation. At seven o’clock that evening on lifting the curtain of my window I caught sight of two individuals standing on the opposite pavement, the nature of whose business could not be mistaken. I let the curtain fall with a shrug of the shoulders:

  “The police are always so stupid,” I said, thinking aloud. “This is the last place in which Rouletabille would let himself be caught.”

  Thereupon I endeavoured to settle down to work, when my man came in to tell me that the postman had brought a registered letter and wanted my receipt. I requested him to show him in. The postman entered and handed me a letter, which I took from him mechanically. I was surprised to notice that it did not bear any of the usual marks of a registered letter. Moreover, it was directed in an extremely odd manner: “To my old friend Sainclair”; then followed the address. I recognized Rouletabille’s handwriting. I eyed the postman, who stood motionless with his bag which was held across the pit of his stomach overflowing with bundles of letters and packages which he could scarcely keep in place.

  “Why, this letter is not registered!” I exclaimed in a tone of surprise.

  He made no answer.

  Growing more and more perplexed I tore open the envelope. There was a blank sheet of paper in it which I turned over and over and upside down.

  “Look here, what’s the joke?” I cried.

  “Hush! Sainclair, not so loud,” returned the postman. I rose from my chair, bewildered. This time I recognized Rouletabille’s voice. But it was quite impossible for me to recognize Rouletabille in that uniform, that greying beard covering most of his face, that greasy cap, whose peak came down to the eyes. And yet it was he!

  He put down his bag, took my hand and shook it warmly, saying:

  “You believe in my innocence?”

  I was a weak coward and answered:

  “Upon my word, I don’t know where I am. Why did you leave the prison? And why did you buy the revolver?”

  “I came here to explain how it was, my dear Sainclair. I’ve always told you the truth. When I left the house at Passy I was the most wretched of men, overwhelmed by the fatality that had befallen me, and convinced that Ivana had been brought there by the force of events for which I held one person alone responsible. I felt a deadly hatred of the woman who had sacrificed my happiness and Ivana’s honour to her own vain imagination. I bought that revolver in a passion of mental anguish in order to shoot Thérèse Boulenger. I was mad, but my reasoning was logical, for she was the cause of everything. I intended to go to her place, but I stopped midway. My fit of delirium was over. An immense disgust of everything and everybody seized hold of me. When I got back to my flat, poor Thérèse Boulenger was there. She had no idea of what had happened, but was pale and suffering as I was, and when she told me of the meetings at Dr. Schall’s nursing home, I could not help pitying her as I pitied myself. I treated her rather rudely. That was the finish. I was master of myself again. I allowed you to go off with her. I merely had the strength to wait for you in order to confess my wretched and hopeless state. That’s the explanation of my buying a revolver at the first gunsmith’s shop on the way.”

  The moment that followed Rouletabille’s outburst of confidence would have provided an unusual sight. Had my servant entered the room he would have seen me embracing the postman!

  Rouletabille adjusted his beard, cap and bag and took his leave.

  “I must go. Your man will end by considering this interview with a postman rather queer — a new postman whom he has never seen before, too! The other man is ill, it seems, but as he may call all the same, I’ll be off.”

  And he went away enjoining me to leave the Law Courts next day by the staircase leading to the Quay des Orfèvres, which would defeat any attempt to shadow me, and then to join him at a public-house in the Rue de Charonne, the address of which he gave me.

  I reached the place next day at nightfall. It was a small hole called “The Rabbit’s Skin.” No customers were present. An old woman, who was seated behind the counter, knitting for all she was worth, asked me no questions. In the partial gloom of a small, low-ceilinged room adjoining, I caught sight of my postman seated with his elbows on the table. We could talk without fear of being disturbed.

  “You see I could not remain in prison,” said Rouletabille. “That business of the revolver made things look black for me and consequently for her. As for myself I don’t care two straws, but I can’t allow people to go on assumi
ng that I killed her because I thought she was guilty. I did not kill her, and she was innocent. That is the truth which I must bring to light in the sight of all. Nor can I let those murders go unpunished. The person, man or woman, who shot down my beloved Ivana as though she were a light o’ love will have to suffer for it, I take my oath.”

  “Where are you hiding yourself? You must be wanting all sorts of things.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “You must want money. I’ve brought some with me.”

  “I don’t want it, but give it to me all the same. One never knows what may happen.” I handed him over the five thousand francs which I had brought with me on the off-chance.

  He then told me that he was in hiding at a local postman’s, to whom he had done a good service by placing his son at the Epoque in the electrical works department. Atfired in a postman’s uniform and a false beard, he could walk about anywhere, even in broad daylight, without incurring any risk of being recognized. Moreover, since the morning he had other disguises ready at hand.

  “I’ve not wasted my time,” he said. “Do you know where I spent part of last night?” He had quitted the prison at ten o’clock the previous evening.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Well, I spent it in the house at Passy. For that matter, I failed to discover anything which I hadn’t noticed when I was before the examining magistrate.”

  “But you declared that you hadn’t discovered anything.”

  “I had my reasons for that. Don’t you think that the police have taken up a peculiar attitude in this business?”

  “No. In what way?”

  “In what way!... You remember my asking Monsieur Hébert about Marius Poupardin, the barber in the Avenue Rameau?”

  “Why, of course. He told you—”

  “One moment. It was not he who told me. It was a detective, a man named Page, a chap, moreover, whom I was surprised to see there, for I know that he has been mixed up with a number of shady transactions, and is nearly always employed in certain secret... political investigations. Page answered straight away that the shop was closed on the day before the murders. Well, that’s false. The shop was closed the day after the murders.”

  “Then it was silly of Page to say such a thing, for, after all, it will be easy to verify the truth.”

  “Of course, but the secret police have gained time, and it seems that they wanted to gain time.”

  “Is there any question of politics involved in this matter?”

  “On one side of it, yes,” returned Rouletabille. “And now I’ll tell you what I discovered in the house. When I examined the servants’ staircase I not only found traces of footprints coming down the stairs, almost obliterated, but traces of these footprints going up, which were much more distinct, proving that they were made by a person whose boots had come in contact with the damp earth or rather moss from the garden path.”

  “So Ivana came down those stairs again?”

  “Ivana entered by the door in La Roche Lane, as I will prove to you presently. Then, after keeping the appointment, she descended the servants’ staircase — hence those slight traces of her footprints going down. She was leaving by the path which leads to the hidden door when she changed her mind and mounted the servants’ staircase again, leaving behind distinct and fresh footprints from the garden path. Why did she return by the servants’ path? That is the first question, and I will answer it later when it has ceased to be, in my mind, merely a conjecture. Why did Ivana go upstairs again? That is the second question, and I will at once answer it. She went back again, old man, because the tragedy had already begun upstairs and a great disturbance was taking place.”

  “Therefore a third person was present.”

  “Yes, as you rightly assume. A third person was present.”

  “What evidence have you?”

  “Just think of the care that I took to discover those footprints on the centre path leading from the door in La Roche Lane to the front of the lodge.”

  “Quite so. You were unable to find the footprints of a woman’s boots. Consequently the third person was a man.”

  “Not at all. The third person was a woman.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Have you noticed how women walk in the street when it rains or is muddy?”

  “Of course, and I have often admired the cleverness with which they keep their boots clean while we men—”

  “Well, remember that it had been raining and the centre path was soaking wet. A well-dressed woman might hesitate to use that path, but it is bordered by two strips of moss-covered bricks, and I myself discovered imprints on them which were not seen by others because they didn’t look for them.”

  I at once recognized Rouletabille’s great method which was to set out from some essentially sound idea; an idea which was forced on him in some way by inevitable necessity, and to seek for traces which would corroborate that idea. It was in this respect that his method differed from the inductive method adopted by Sherlock Holmes and others who fall a prey to certain clues or marks which they encounter by accident and which hold them in their power; that is to say, these clues lead them to fall into errors which are often contrived beforehand by interested parties.

  “Now,” went on Rouletabille, “these footprints were made by a woman’s boots. I discovered imprints of Ivana’s foot, and also others made by a longer and heavier boot; but someone wearing a boot with a pointed toe in the American style.”

  “Good heavens,” I cried, calling to mind the boots worn by a certain lady at Deauville the previous summer, which then seemed uncommon, for boots were still made with broad toes. “That would explain a good many things.... Unfortunately...”

  “Those footprints,” broke in Rouletabille, following up his idea or rather his explanation, “go backwards and forwards over the same garden path and, mark you, are there for some definite purpose. Now I was unable to find any sign of them in the house. I cannot help thinking that they would have left some impression, however faint, seeing that it was wet out of doors. The proof of that is that I found imprints of Ivana’s boots in three places on the front staircase; traces which all the more easily escaped attention at the magistrate’s investigation because no one looked for them. It is the old story of police blundering. The impressions of Ivana’s boots were palpable on the servants’ staircase, and these gentlemen straightway built up their case upon them, so why take any notice of traces on the front staircase which would have spoilt their little schemes? For years and years I have done my utmost to teach these gentlemen to allow themselves to be guided by the right end of their judgment.... I have had to give it up....

  “But let’s go back to the boots with the pointed toes. I found no trace of them in the house. There is one way of explaining their absence. We may assume that this person did not wish her footsteps to be heard. In that case the boots were taken off and put on again when the job was done.”

  “It’s too awful,” I said with a shudder.

  “That is merely a supposition. Don’t let’s fall into the error made by the gentlemen of the police and public prosecutor’s office,” returned Rouletabille. “But it is a possible supposition and worth thinking over, though it doesn’t prevent us from considering any other.”

  “I realize where your thoughts are taking you,” I said. “Unfortunately there is nothing to prove that those footprints in the garden were made at the time with which we are dealing.”

  “That remains to be seen,” whispered Rouletabille.

  “I myself have made some inquiry in that direction,” I went on, putting my mouth to his ear, “and I learnt in the most positive manner that Theodora Luigi left Paris at one o’clock on the afternoon of the same day — before the tragedy therefore.”

  “She left Paris at one o’clock the day of the crime,” snapped out Rouletabille, “as much as Marius Poupardin closed his shop the day before the crime. Who told you so, Sainclair?”

  “Why, I
learnt it at the Law Courts through Giraud, clerk to the magistrate of the ninth division, who is an intimate friend of the Deputy Chief of the Detective Service.”

  “What a wonderful service! Were they aware that the question came from you?”

  “Probably.”

  “My poor Sainclair!” exclaimed Rouletabille.

  “One moment,” I said, slightly vexed. I have already confessed that I was rather touchy, particularly with Rouletabille, whom I had known since his boyhood. “I myself went to the station and found that the information was correct.”

  “What did they tell you at the station?”

  “That Parapapoulos did in fact leave by the one o’clock Orient express on that particular Tuesday.”

  “What then?”

  “Well, in that case, as Théodora Luigi went away with him...”

  “She did not go away with him. She did not rejoin him until the next day, Wednesday.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “As certain as I am that Marius Poupardin didn’t shut up his shop on the day of the crime. The Detective Service lied to us. There is some strange mystery about Théodora Luigi. For that matter this is not the first time that I’ve seen that. You will now understand my reason for saying nothing to the examining magistrate of my discoveries when I was before him. My theory must have a solid basis before I can reveal it to him, for I am positive now that there are a good many people whose interest it is to destroy it.”

  “It’s terrible,” I whispered. “How could we imagine that these people would go so far as to bring about your conviction, knowing that you are an innocent man?”

  “First of all, it’s not certain that they do know that I am an innocent man. And then you must not suppose that one stands on ceremony when it’s a question of high policy.”

  At that moment we were interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the adjoining room.