by Jules Verne
It was too late!
The chief of the police, who held a paper in his hand, advanced toward the prisoner.
"Before all of you," said Joam Dacosta, "let me tell you, sir, that it only rested with me to get away, and that I would not do so."
The chief of the police bowed his head, and then, in a voice which he vainly tried to control:
"Joam Dacosta," he said, "the order has this moment arrived from the chief justice at Rio Janeiro."
"Father!" exclaimed Manoel and Benito.
"This order," asked Joam Dacosta, who had crossed his arms, "this order requires the execution of my sentence?"
"Yes!"
"And that will take place?"
"To-morrow."
Benito threw himself on his father. Again would he have dragged him from his cell, but the soldiers came and drew away the prisoner from his grasp.
At a sign from the chief of the police Benito and Manoel were taken away. An end had to be put to this painful scene, which had already lasted too long.
"Sir," said the doomed man, "before to-morrow, before the hour of my execution, may I pass a few moments with Padre Passanha, whom I ask you to tell?"
"It will be forbidden."
"May I see my family, and embrace for a last time my wife and children?"
"You shall see them."
"Thank you, sir," answered Joam; "and now keep guard over that window; it will not do for them to take me out of here against my will."
And then the chief of the police, after a respectful bow, retired with the warder and the soldiers.
The doomed man, who had now but a few hours to live, was left alone.
CHAPTER XVIII. FRAGOSO
AND SO the order had come, and, as Judge Jarriquez had foreseen, it was an order requiring the immediate execution of the sentence pronounced on Joam Dacosta. No proof had been produced; justice must take its course.
It was the very day--the 31st of August, at nine o'clock in the morning of which the condemned man was to perish on the gallows.
The death penalty in Brazil is generally commuted except in the case of negroes, but this time it was to be suffered by a white man.
Such are the penal arrangements relative to crimes in the diamond arrayal, for which, in the public interest, the law allows no appear to mercy.
Nothing could now save Joam Dacosta. It was not only life, but honor that he was about to lose.
But on the 31st of August a man was approaching Manaos with all the speed his horse was capable of, and such had been the pace at which he had come that half a mile from the town the gallant creature fell, incapable of carrying him any further.
The rider did not even stop to raise his steed. Evidently he had asked and obtained from it all that was possible, and, despite the state of exhaustion in which he found himself, he rushed off in the direction of the city.
The man came from the eastern provinces, and had followed the left bank of the river. All his means had gone in the purchase of this horse, which, swifter far than any pirogue on the Amazon, had brought him to Manaos.
It was Fragoso!
Had, then, the brave fellow succeeded in the enterprise of which he had spoken to nobody? Had he found the party to which Torres belonged? Had he discovered some secret which would yet save Joam Dacosta?
He hardly knew. But in any case he was in great haste to acquaint Judge Jarriquez with what he had ascertained during his short excursion.
And this is what had happened.
Fragoso had made no mistake when he recognized Torres as one of the captains of the party which was employed in the river provinces of the Madeira.
He set out, and on reaching the mouth of that tributary he learned that the chief of these _capitaes da mato_ was then in the neighborhood.
Without losing a minute, Fragoso started on the search, and, not without difficulty, succeeded in meeting him.
To Fragoso's questions the chief of the party had no hesitation in replying; he had no interest in keeping silence with regard to the few simple matters on which he was interrogated. In fact, three questions only of importance were asked him by Fragoso, and these were:
"Did not a captain of the woods named Torres belong to your party a few months ago?"
"Yes."
"At that time had he not one intimate friend among his companions who has recently died?"
"Just so!"
"And the name of that friend was?"
"Ortega."
This was all that Fragoso had learned. Was this information of a kind to modify Dacosta's position? It was hardly likely.
Fragoso saw this, and pressed the chief of the band to tell him what he knew of this Ortega, of the place where he came from, and of his antecedents generally. Such information would have been of great importance if Ortega, as Torres had declared, was the true author of the crime of Tijuco. But unfortunately the chief could give him no information whatever in the matter.
What was certain was that Ortega had been a member of the band for many years, that an intimate friendship existed between him and Torres, that they were always seen together, and that Torres had watched at his bedside when he died.
This was all the chief of the band knew, and he could tell no more. Fragoso, then, had to be contented with these insignificant details, and departed immediately.
But if the devoted fellow had not brought back the proof that Ortega was the author of the crime of Tijuco, he had gained one thing, and that was the knowledge that Torres had told the truth when he affirmed that one of his comrades in the band had died, and that he had been present during his last moments.
The hypothesis that Ortega had given him the document in question had now become admissible. Nothing was more probable than that this document had reference to the crime of which Ortega was really the author, and that it contained the confession of the culprit, accompanied by circumstances which permitted of no doubt as to its truth.
And so, if the document could be read, if the key had been found, if the cipher on which the system hung were known, no doubt of its truth could be entertained.
But this cipher Fragoso did not know. A few more presumptions, a half-certainty that the adventurer had invented nothing, certain circumstances tending to prove that the secret of the matter was contained in the document--and that was all that the gallant fellow brought back from his visit to the chief of the gang of which Torres had been a member.
Nevertheless, little as it was, he was in all haste to relate it to Judge Jarriquez. He knew that he had not an hour to lose, and that was why on this very morning, at about eight o'clock, he arrived, exhausted with fatigue, within half a mile of Manaos. The distance between there and the town he traversed in a few minutes. A kind of irresistible presentiment urged him on, and he had almost come to believe that Joam Dacosta's safety rested in his hands.
Suddenly Fragoso stopped as if his feet had become rooted in the ground. He had reached the entrance to a small square, on which opened one of the town gates.
There, in the midst of a dense crowd, arose the gallows, towering up some twenty feet, and from it there hung the rope!
Fragoso felt his consciousness abandon him. He fell; his eyes involuntarily closed. He did not wish to look, and these words escaped his lips: "Too late! too late!" But by a superhuman effort he raised himself up. No; it was _not_ too late, the corpse of Joam Dacosta was _not_ hanging at the end of the rope!
"Judge Jarriquez! Judge Jarriquez!" shouted Fragoso, and panting and bewildered he rushed toward the city gate, dashed up the principal street of Manaos, and fell half-dead on the threshold of the judge's house. The door was shut. Fragoso had still strength enough left to knock at it.
One of the magistrate's servants came to open it; his master would see no one.
In spite of this denial, Fragoso pushed back the man who guarded the entrance, and with a bound threw himself into the judge's study.
"I come from the province where Torres pursued his calling as captain o
f the woods!" he gasped. "Mr. Judge, Torres told the truth. Stop--stop the execution?"
"You found the gang?"
"Yes."
"And you have brought me the cipher of the document?"
Fragoso did not reply.
"Come, leave me alone! leave me alone!" shouted Jarriquez, and, a prey to an outburst of rage, he grasped the document to tear it to atoms.
Fragoso seized his hands and stopped him. "The truth is there!" he said.
"I know," answered Jarriquez; "but it is a truth which will never see the light!"
"It will appear--it must! it must!"
"Once more, have you the cipher?"
"No," replied Fragoso; "but, I repeat, Torres has not lied. One of his companions, with whom he was very intimate, died a few months ago, and there can be no doubt but that this man gave him the document he came to sell to Joam Dacosta."
"No," answered Jarriquez--"no, there is no doubt about it--as far as we are concerned; but that is not enough for those who dispose of the doomed man's life. Leave me!"
Fragoso, repulsed, would not quit the spot. Again he threw himself at the judge's feet. "Joam Dacosta is innocent!" he cried; "you will not leave him to die? It was not he who committed the crime of Tijuco; it was the comrade of Torres, the author of that document! It was Ortega!"
As he uttered the name the judge bounded backward. A kind of calm swiftly succeeded to the tempest which raged within him. He dropped the document from his clenched hand, smoothed it out on the table, sat down, and, passing his hand over his eyes--"That name?" he said--"Ortega? Let us see," and then he proceeded with the new name brought back by Fragoso as he had done with the other names so vainly tried by himself.
After placing it above the first six letters of the paragraph he obtained the following formula:
O r t e g a _P h y j s l_
"Nothing!" he said. "That give us--nothing!"
And in fact the _h_ placed under the _r_ could not be expressed by a cipher, for, in alphabetical order, this letter occupies an earlier position to that of the _r._
The _p,_ the _y,_ the _j,_ arranged beneath the letters _o, t, e,_ disclosed the cipher 1, 4, 5, but as for the _s_ and the _l_ at the end of the word, the interval which separated them from the _g_ and the _a_ was a dozen letters, and hence impossible to express by a single cipher, so that they corresponded to neither _g_ nor _a_.
And here appalling shouts arose in the streets; they were the cries of despair.
Fragoso jumped to one of the windows, and opened it before the judge could hinder him.
The people filled the road. The hour had come at which the doomed man was to start from the prison, and the crowd was flowing back to the spot where the gallows had been erected.
Judge Jarriquez, quite frightful to look upon, devoured the lines of the document with a fixed stare.
"The last letters!" he muttered. "Let us try once more the last letters!"
It was the last hope.
And then, with a hand whose agitation nearly prevented him from writing at all, he placed the name of Ortega over the six last letters of the paragraph, as he had done over the first.
An exclamation immediately escaped him. He saw, at first glance, that the six last letters were inferior in alphabetical order to those which composed Ortega's name, and that consequently they might yield the number.
And when he reduced the formula, reckoning each later letter from the earlier letter of the word, he obtained.
O r t e g a 4 3 2 5 1 3 _S u v j h d_
The number thus disclosed was 432513.
But was this number that which had been used in the document? Was it not as erroneous as those he had previously tried?
At this moment the shouts below redoubled--shouts of pity which betrayed the sympathy of the excited crowd. A few minutes more were all that the doomed man had to live!
Fragoso, maddened with grief, darted from the room! He wished to see, for the last time, his benefactor who was on the road to death! He longed to throw himself before the mournful procession and stop it, shouting, "Do not kill this just man! do not kill him!"
But already Judge Jarriquez had placed the given number above the first letters of the paragraph, repeating them as often as was necessary, as follows:
4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 _P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h_
And then, reckoning the true letters according to their alphabetical order, he read:
"Le véritable auteur du vol de----"
A yell of delight escaped him! This number, 432513, was the number sought for so long! The name of Ortega had enabled him to discover it! At length he held the key of the document, which would incontestably prove the innocence of Joam Dacosta, and without reading any more he flew from his study into the street, shouting:
"Halt! Halt!"
To cleave the crowd, which opened as he ran, to dash to the prison, whence the convict was coming at the last moment, with his wife and children clinging to him with the violence of despair, was but the work of a minute for Judge Jarriquez.
Stopping before Joam Dacosta, he could not speak for a second, and then these words escaped his lips:
"Innocent! Innocent!"
CHAPTER XIX. THE CRIME OF TIJUCO
ON THE ARRIVAL of the judge the mournful procession halted. A roaring echo had repeated after him and again repeated the cry which escaped from every mouth:
"Innocent! Innocent!"
Then complete silence fell on all. The people did not want to lose one syllable of what was about to be proclaimed.
Judge Jarriquez sat down on a stone seat, and then, while Minha, Benito, Manoel, and Fragoso stood round him, while Joam Dacosta clasped Yaquita to his heart, he first unraveled the last paragraph of the document by means of the number, and as the words appeared by the institution of the true letters for the cryptological ones, he divided and punctuated them, and then read it out in a loud voice. And this is what he read in the midst of profound silence:
_Le véritable auteur du vol des diamants et de_ 43 251343251 343251 34 325 134 32513432 51 34 _Ph yjslyddf dzxgas gz zqq ehx gkfndrxu ju gi l'assassinat des soldats qui escortaient le convoi,_ 32513432513 432 5134325 134 32513432513 43 251343 _ocytdxvksbx bhu ypohdvy rym huhpuydkjox ph etozsl
commis dans la nuit du vingt-deux janvier mil_ 251343 2513 43 2513 43 251343251 3432513 432 _etnpmv ffov pd pajx hy ynojyggay meqynfu q1n
huit-cent vingt-six, n'est donc pas Joam Dacosta,_ 5134 3251 3425 134 3251 3432 513 4325 1343251 _mvly fgsu zmqiz tlb qgyu gsqe uvb nrcc edgruzb
injustement condamné à mort, c'est moi, les misérable_ 34325134325 13432513 4 3251 3432 513 43 251343251 _l4msyuhqpz drrgcroh e pqxu fivv rpl ph onthvddqf
employé de l'administration du district diamantin,_ 3432513 43 251343251343251 34 32513432 513432513 _hqsntzh hh nfepmqkyuuexkto gz gkyuumfv ijdqdpzjq
out, moi seul, qui signe de mon vrai nom, Ortega._ 432 513 4325 134 32513 43 251 3432 513 432513 _syk rpl xhxq rym vkloh hh oto zvdk spp suvjhd._
"The real author of the robbery of the diamonds and of the murder of the soldiers who escorted the convoy, committed during the night of the twenty-second of January, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six, was thus not Joam Dacosta, unjustly condemned to death; it was I, the wretched servant of the Administration of the diamond district; yes, I alone, who sign this with my true name, Ortega."
The reading of this had hardly finished when the air was rent with prolonged hurrahs.
What could be more conclusive than this last paragraph, which summarized the whole of the document, and proclaimed so absolutely the innocence of the fazender of Iquitos, and which snatched from the gallows this victim of a frightful judicial mistake!
Joam Dacosta, surrounded by his wife, his children, and his friends, was unable to shake the hands which were held out to him. Such was the strength of his character that a reaction occurred, tears of joy escaped from his eyes, and at the same instant his heart was lifted up to that Pr
ovidence which had come to save him so miraculously at the moment he was about to offer the last expiation to that God who would not permit the accomplishment of that greatest of crimes, the death of an innocent man!
Yes! There could be no doubt as to the vindication of Joam Dacosta. The true author of the crime of Tijuco confessed of his own free will, and described the circumstances under which it had been perpetrated!
By means of the number Judge Jarriquez interpreted the whole of the cryptogram.
And this was what Ortega confessed.
He had been the colleague of Joam Dacosta, employed, like him, at Tijuco, in the offices of the governor of the diamond arrayal. He had been the official appointed to accompany the convoy to Rio de Janeiro, and, far from recoiling at the horrible idea of enriching himself by means of murder and robbery, he had informed the smugglers of the very day the convoy was to leave Tijuco.
During the attack of the scoundrels, who awaited the convoy just beyond Villa Rica, he pretended to defend himself with the soldiers of the escort, and then, falling among the dead, he was carried away by his accomplices. Hence it was that the solitary soldier who survived the massacre had reported that Ortega had perished in the struggle.
But the robbery did not profit the guilty man in the long run, for, a little time afterward, he was robbed by those whom he had helped to commit the crime.
Penniless, and unable to enter Tijuco again, Ortega fled away to the provinces in the north of Brazil, to those districts of the Upper Amazon where the _capitaes da mato_ are to be found. He had to live somehow, and so he joined this not very honorable company; they neither asked him who he was nor whence he came, and so Ortega became a captain of the woods, and for many years he followed the trade of a chaser of men.
During this time Torres, the adventurer, himself in absolute want, became his companion. Ortega and he became most intimate. But, as he had told Torres, remorse began gradually to trouble the scoundrel's life. The remembrance of his crime became horrible to him. He knew that another had been condemned in his place! He knew subsequently that the innocent man had escaped from the last penalty, but that he would never be free from the shadow of the capital sentence! And then, during an expedition of his party for several months beyond the Peruvian frontier, chance caused Ortega to visit the neighborhood of Iquitos, and there in Joam Garral, who did not recognize him, he recognized Joam Dacosta.