Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  I will leave the reader to imagine the subdued excitement which arose when after the usual preliminary formalities the Presiding Judge uttered the words:

  “Let the prisoner be brought in.”

  The movement was one of curiosity, of course, but it was also one of intense sympathy, for Rouletabille was extraordinarily popular with the public as a newspaper man. I had a feeling of unspeakable anguish...

  He came into Court. His bright, open face was pale and stern. His eyes at once looked towards me. I held out my hands which he warmly seized. Our emotion seemed to pervade the entire assembly. The trial opened, it must be admitted, in a wonderful atmosphere. —

  “You have prepared my instructions? Hand them over to me,” I said.

  But he shook his head.

  “I really hope you won’t have to make a speech for me.”

  That was all. That was all for me and the Court.

  After answering the ordinary questions of identity put to him by the Judge, he replied to every other question that he “had nothing more to say for the present.”

  With terrible obstinacy he refused to enter into “conversation” with the Judge any more than with the Solicitor-General. To every allegation, accusation and request for an explanation he maintained an absolute silence. It made me feel quite ill. I entreated him to abandon an attitude which was setting everyone against him — the Presiding Judge, counsel, jury, and even the public. At last, incensed by this silence which seemed a hateful and outrageous exhibition of arrogance, the Presiding Judge exclaimed:

  “If it was for this that you returned and gave yourself up you might as well have remained where you were. It is precisely as if you allowed sentence to go by default.”

  The public almost broke into applause; at all events a loud murmur indicated the approval with which the Judge’s words were received. My friend was ruining himself. I was dumbfounded.

  Then he allowed his head to sink on his arms which rested on the front of the dock, and soon it seemed as if he were asleep.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE THUNDERBOLT

  THENCEFORWARD THE PROCEEDINGS moved quickly. The witnesses for the prosecution were heard in rapid succession. Then came the turn of the witnesses for the defence. In the circumstances in which this curious case appeared to me, I had, on the off chance, secured the attendance of Madame Boulenger and the witnesses present on the night of our investigations at Passy.

  There was a tremendous sensation when Madame Boulenger made her appearance. This woman of distinguished bearing was as famous as her husband. Everyone was familiar with the great part that she had played in his research work, and the admirable assistance that she had afforded him in the most difficult moments of his career as a scientist, envied by his colleagues and hated by the official world. Nor was anyone unaware of the feeling of self-sacrifice, amounting almost to saintliness, with which she had borne the worst conjugal affronts of a man who was the slave of every caprice.

  When she drew near the witness-box, clad in deep mourning, an immense sigh seemed to pass through the Court. She was still beautiful with a radiant, almost unearthly pallor. Nevertheless her hair was greying at the temples, and her lips were wan; and in the corners of her eyes suffering and secret tears had ploughed their furrows.

  The gesture with which she swore to speak the truth and nothing but the truth was one of majestic beauty. She turned her head towards Rouletabille who had not moved, but still remained with his head hidden in his arms. And straightway she proclaimed her belief in his innocence, and to the consternation of the Solicitor-General and the amazement of the public pronounced the name of Theodora Luigi.

  “When Rouletabille on Tuesday, the day of the tragedy, left the house at Passy,” she declared in solemn tones, “the two persons who were in it were still alive. Theodora Luigi entered the house after him, and half an hour later when she left it they were dead!”

  At this juncture the Solicitor-General sprang to his feet:

  “This is the first time that we have heard that name mentioned in this case,” he said. “We have too much respect for Madame Boulenger in her grief not to understand the feelings by which she is so naturally animated against a woman...”

  “Monsieur, it is not a question of my feelings,” interrupted Thérèse. “It is a question of the truth. I am here to speak the truth even if it causes embarrassment to certain persons. I am speaking the truth, and I will prove it.”

  “Let’s have the proof,” said the Judge.

  “Here is a letter which was found by Rouletabille,” went on Thérèse, taking a letter from her wrist-bag. “He entrusted it to me before his departure for abroad in order that I might make use of it if, by chance, he was not seen again. This letter, which was sent by my husband to Théodora Luigi, makes an assignation for Tuesday, the day when the crime was committed, at the house at Passy which she knew quite well. Théodora Luigi was then at Havre. It was there that Rouletabille found the letter. Apparently she did not reply to my husband as he had expected, and believing that this woman would not come, he invited Ivana to a repast which had not been prepared for her,... And he did so, I am convinced, in perfect good faith....

  “I was fully cognizant of the sentimental and scientific flirtation which was going on between my husband and Ivana, but I never doubted her. She acted recklessly but she was sure of herself and not for anything in the world would she have betrayed either my friendship or the being whom she loved with a real love — the man in the dock.”

  We expected to see Rouletabille draw himself up at these words. I went so far as to nudge his elbow, but he did not move a muscle. He still maintained his deplorable attitude. It was obvious that he was lending no assistance to those who were striving their utmost to save him.

  “Théodora Luigi came upon the scene,” went on Madame Boulenger, and one could have heard a pin drop, “and finding her place taken by another, struck the blow.”

  “One moment,” interposed the Judge. “This letter” — the usher had passed it to him—” does not prove that she was there.”

  “No, Monsieur, but there is something else which does prove it. It is this....”

  And looking a second time in her wrist-bag she drew out the slave bangle.

  “It is this which Théodora Luigi usually wore on her ankle — this bangle which slipped off in her flight and Rouletabille found in the house at Passy in the presence of witnesses who will be called before you. Rouletabille entrusted me with this bangle as he did with the letter.”

  A murmur of voices filled the Court. The usher passed the bangle to the Judge and the Court and then the Solicitor-General examined it. It was no easy matter to restore silence.

  “Even if it were proved that this bangle belonged to Théodora Luigi,” declared the Solicitor-General, “we should still require evidence that she who often visited the house at Passy lost it there on the day in question,”

  “A man saw her leave the house on that day and hour. This man kept a hairdresser’s shop at the corner of La Roche Lane. But it is quite likely that the prosecution was afraid to allow him to give evidence, for he was first made to leave Paris and afterwards France.”

  “And no one knows where he is now,” interposed the Judge.

  “That is a great pity,” emphasized the Solicitor-General, “because up to the present the witness has merely advanced a supposition — a pure supposition — and, allow me to say again, pardonable in Madame Boulenger but entirely improbable to anyone who chooses to think the matter over calmly.”

  It was then that Rouletabille was seen to rise and the Court was surprised to hear his voice.

  “Excuse me, Monsieur,” he said with a somewhat concerned and by no means sympathetic air. “Excuse me, but there is one person who could tell you better than Monsieur Poupardin — for such is the name of the hairdresser mentioned by Madame Boulenger — what Théodora Luigi did on the day in question and whether she went to Passy and entered the house.”

 
“Whom have you in mind?”

  “Why, Théodora Luigi herself.”

  “Of course,” admitted the Solicitor-General, with a smile, “but who is to tell us where she is?”

  “At this particular moment,” returned Rouletabille, maintaining his insufferable attitude of unconcern, “she was to be in the Harlay corridor with my friend La Candeur.”

  A tremor of excitement passed through the spectators and judges. As to myself, I no longer knew where I was. The Presiding Judge gave the usher an order in a low voice, but the man had scarcely passed through the door leading to the witness’s room when he returned and said:

  “Madame Théodora Luigi is here!

  “Show her in!”

  She came in. When she appeared a dead silence fell, like the hush which reigned in the square outside the Roquette prison in the old days of public executions when the door was opened and the condemned man was led out....

  The last incidents had changed the attitude of the onlookers. At that moment their sympathies were with Madame Boulenger and against this woman who had the reputation of bringing ruin and disaster in her train. Though the public were not yet convinced that she was the culprit they hoped that she was. And the audacity with which she came forward, seemed a crowning act of insolence, which rendered her in their eyes still more odious. “Oh, one can see that she is a woman who would stick at nothing,” was the unspoken comment.

  And yet she had never seemed so beautiful.

  Arrayed in the ample folds of a purple cloak, she advanced with the dignity of a tragedy queen. She did not so much as glance at Madame Boulenger, who, however, could not keep her eyes off her. What a duel to the death was about to engage between those two women! But here again we were mistaken. It was not between those two women that the fight was to be waged, though it was none the less terrible.

  She was sworn and began her evidence with the greatest simplicity.

  “I have come from abroad at the request of the man who is accused of these murders. It seems that I can help him to prove his innocence. However dangerous the truth may be to me I rely on him, and I shall tell it in its entirety. Here it is:

  “On receiving a letter from Monsieur Roland Boulenger making an appointment at Passy for the Tuesday, I left Havre on Monday. When I reached Paris I found word asking me to meet him at the house in La Roche Lane at five o’clock. I could not get there until half-past five. I possessed a key of the garden gate, and was mounting the front steps when I heard above my head on the first floor the sound of shouts and revolver shots.... I fled like a mad woman, closed the garden gate, and rushed into Poupardin’s shop. The barber was standing at his door, and must have seen me leave the house. I had no idea what tragedy was being enacted there.

  I bribed the man to keep silence and to establish himself in business elsewhere. My conduct possibly showed a lack of prudence. At all events, I have told you the whole truth, concealing nothing. That same evening I learnt of the murders. I, too, mourned for the dead... I went abroad to mourn for the dead....”

  “You ran away abroad, and now you think that you can come here and defy us with impunity. But do you know what this is?” cried Madame Boulenger, herself stepping forward and taking the bangle from the Judge and showing it to Theodora Luigi.

  “Yes, I know it quite well. It’s a slave bangle which I lost at the Villa Fleurie in St. Adresse.”

  “You lie,” retorted Thérèse with an agitation which seemed to be shared by the entire Court. “This bangle was picked up in the house at Passy, which proves that you were there. You lost it while making your escape after committing those infamous murders!”

  Théodora Luigi had suddenly grown pale.

  “Who found the bangle?” she asked, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “Rouletabille,” exclaimed Mme. Boulenger.

  Theodora turned her head towards Rouletabille.

  “Oh, Monsieur, you omitted to tell me that.”

  “Yes, I omitted to tell you that,” Rouletabille burst out loudly, “but Madame Boulenger omitted to tell you that though I found the bangle it was she who put it there.”

  The statement came as a thunderclap, and Madame Boulenger apparently was not the only one to be affected by it. We all seemed to be at cross purposes. When Madame Boulenger recovered her speech it was at first but to utter yague protests.

  “I? But what does he mean? He must be mad!”

  It seemed as though we were floundering on ground which had suddenly given way beneath our feet. We no longer knew what to cling to. Rouletabille alone held himself erect, hostile, amid the general confusion.

  The Presiding Judge, realizing that the case was slipping through his fingers, as water slips through one’s hands, made the gesture of a drowning man. Pie asked in a smothered voice:

  “But what evidence have you of this unpardonable allegation against Madame Boulenger?”

  “I have no other evidence than this,” returned Rouletabille. “On the two former occasions when I was making my investigations in the house at Passy — the first in the presence of the examining magistrate and the second alone — I did not discover anything, and it was not until the third occasion, when I was accompanied by Madame Boulenger and witnesses brought by her, that I found the bangle. Monsieur, when I have visited a place twice there is nothing which has escaped my attention, that I’ll swear.”

  “Unhappy man!” cried Mme. Boulenger. “Unhappy madman!”

  “But what reason—” began the Judge.

  “Yes, what reason could I have had?” repeated Thérèse, as if incapable of making further headway against such wild assertions.

  “What reason!” exclaimed Rouletabille loudly, “I will tell you, Madame. First because of your hatred of this woman, and next your interest in defeating the ends of justice. You are the murderer!”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CONFUSION

  “HE MUST BE mad! His wife’s death has turned his brain!”

  Madame Boulenger’s despairing cry seemed to give expression to the general feeling. The same indignation which shook this woman of radiant beauty in her last stage of martyrdom, filled every heart and tightened every throat. A united shout went up. For myself, I was fuming with suppressed rage and did not venture to look at Rouletabille.

  He maintained a deadly calm amid the storm which he had unloosed. He called for order as though he were presiding over the trial.

  “A few minutes ago you wanted me to speak, and now I ask you to hear me.”

  I shall always have ringing within me the somewhat harsh, grating voice which he occasionally assumed when he was inwardly incensed with us for failing to grasp a problem as quickly as himself. I shall always have ringing within me the words in which he explained how he received his first intuition of the truth.

  It came to him when he discovered that no trace of Théodora Luigi’s footprints, which started from the gate in La Roche Lane and returned to it, could be found in the lodge itself, whereas Ivana’s footprints when she left the back staircase continued to the door opening on to the waste land and then came back again to the lodge. In the one case the footprints were those of a person in flight. In the other they were the footprints of a person who at that very moment was going back. Why was the first running away and why was the other returning? What was the connection between them? A tragedy was taking place. A tragedy which was causing a commotion in the lodge. A tragedy which was driving Theodora Luigi away and bringing Ivana back.

  Besides these two persons, therefore, there were others; at least two — since the thought of suicide must be set aside — two others who were the actors in the drama. Roland Boulenger and someone else. Someone who was already there when Ivana left him — a person who knew, who must have known, that Ivana was coming that day to the house at Passy to meet Roland. How did that person become aware of it? Through Ivana herself....

  At this point Rouletabille paused for a few moments.

  When he resumed, his voice, as may be imagined, h
ad lost all trace of hardness. With what intense emotion he spoke of his wife!

  “Gentlemen, I want you to know something about Ivana...

  It was with difficulty that he restrained his tears.... And now the sympathies of the public were with him.

  I shall make no attempt to set down the language in which he described his wife’s lofty character, the enthusiasm with which she devoted herself to Roland Boulenger’s scientific work, her self-sacrifice in lending her aid to a game, dangerous to anyone but herself, to which she had submitted at Madame Boulenger’s entreaty. It was a question of rescuing Roland Boulenger from the clutches of Théodora Luigi.

  Who could tell how far her imagination, at once mystic and romantic, would lead Ivana? She acted wholly in concert with Madame Boulenger. She went to Dr. Schall’s nursing home because Madame Boulenger took her there. And she would never have paid one single visit to the house at Passy had not Madame Boulenger herself been there.

  “Gentlemen, the day after this fatal Tuesday we were to have set out for a long journey abroad. The terrible farce was drawing to a close. For some little time I had been insisting upon it. I had fixed the limit.... Before the final leave-taking,

  Roland Boulenger seems to have implored Ivana to meet him for the first and last time... employing those mad words and threats of suicide in which he was so adept. Ivana took refuge with Madame Boulenger. What happened between those two women? Ivana must have dreamt of bringing about a reconciliation between husband and wife who ought to have been devoted to one another — dreamt of leaving Roland in Thérèse’s loving arms.

  “Alas! Believing that she had fulfilled her splendid but perilous mission she was suddenly arrested by the sound of revolver shots, which reached her terrified ears as she was leaving the garden.... It was the tumult caused by the tragedy which was being enacted above her.