Fantômas
Page 21
The allusion made Charles Rambert most uneasy.
“But that does not explain how you recognised me in Paul to-night. I recognised you in Henri Verbier at the hotel, but I had no idea that it was you last night.”
“That’s nothing,” said Juve with a shake of the head. “And you may understand once for all that when I have once looked anybody square in the face, he needs to be an uncommonly clever fellow to escape me afterwards by means of any disguise. You don’t know how to make up, but I do; and that’s why I took you in and you did not take me in.”
“What makes you believe I did not rob Princess Sonia Danidoff?” Charles Rambert asked after a pause. “I am quite aware that everything points to my having been the thief.”
“Not quite everything,” Juve answered gently. “There are one or two things you don’t know, and I’ll tell you one of them. The Princess was robbed by the same man who robbed Mme. Van den Rosen, wasn’t she? Well, Mme. Van den Rosen was the victim of a burglary: some of the furniture in her room was broken into, and the tests I made this morning with the dynamometer proved to me that you are not strong enough to have caused those fractures.”
“Not strong enough?” Charles Rambert ejaculated.
“No. I told you at the time that your innocence would be proved if you were strong enough, but I said that to prevent you from playing tricks and not putting out all your strength. As a matter of fact it was your comparative weakness that saved you. The dynamometer tests and the figures I obtained just now prove absolutely that you are innocent of the Van den Rosen robbery and, consequently, of the robbery from Sonia Danidoff.”
Again the lad reflected for a minute or two.
“But you didn’t know who I was when you came to the hotel, did you? And therefore had no suspicion that I was Charles Rambert? That’s true, isn’t it? How did you find out? I was supposed to be dead.”
“That was a child’s job,” Juve replied. “I got the anthropometric records of the body that had been buried as yours, and I planned to get symmetrical photographs of you in your character of Mademoiselle Jeanne, as I did of you to-day at headquarters. My first job was to lay hands upon Mademoiselle Jeanne, and I very soon found her, as I expected, turned into a man again, and living in the most disreputable company. I made any number of enquiries, and when I went to the Saint-Anthony’s Pig last evening I knew that it was some unknown person who had been buried in your stead; that Paul was Mademoiselle Jeanne; and that Mademoiselle Jeanne was Charles Rambert. It was my intention to arrest you, and to ascertain definitely by means of the dynamometer that you were innocent of the Langrune and the Danidoff crimes.”
“What you tell me about the dynamometer explains how you know I am not the man who committed the robbery at the hotel, but what clears me in your eyes of the Langrune murder?”
“Bless my soul!” Juve retorted, “you are arguing as if you wanted to prove you were guilty. Well, my boy, it’s the same story as the other. The man who murdered the Marquise de Langrune smashed things, and the dynamometer has proved that you are not strong enough to have been the man.”
“And suppose I had been mad at the time,” Charles Rambert said, his hesitation and his tone betraying his anxiety about the answer, “could I have been strong enough then? Might I have committed these crimes without knowing anything about it?”
But Juve shook his head.
“I know: you are referring to your mother, and are haunted by an idea that through some hereditary taint you might be a somnambulist and have done these things in your sleep. Come, Charles Rambert, finish your breakfast and put all that out of your head. To begin with, you would not have been strong enough, even then; and in the next place there is nothing at present to show that you are mad, nor even that your poor mother——But I need not go on: I’ve got some rather odd notions on that subject.”
“Then, M. Juve——”
“Drop the ‘monsieur’; call me ‘Juve.’”
“Then, if you know that I am innocent, you can go and tell my father? I have nothing to fear? I can reappear in my own name?”
Juve looked at the lad with an ironical smile.
“How you go ahead!” he exclaimed. “Please understand that although I do believe you are innocent, I am almost certainly the only person who does. And unfortunately I have not yet got any evidence that would be sufficiently convincing and certain to put the persuasion of your guilt out of your father’s head, or anybody else’s. This is not the time for you to reappear: it would simply mean that you would be arrested by some detective who knows less than I do, and thrown into prison as you confidently expected to be this morning.”
“Then what is to become of me?”
“What do you think of doing yourself?”
“Going to see my father.”
“No, no,” Juve protested once more. “I tell you not to go. It would be stupid and utterly useless. Wait a few days, a few weeks if need be. When I have put my hand on Fantômas’ shoulder, I will be the very first to take you to your father, and proclaim your innocence.”
“Why wait until Fantômas is arrested?” Charles Rambert asked, the mere sound of the name seeming to wake all his former enthusiasm on the subject of that famous criminal.
“Because if you are innocent of the charge brought against you, it is extremely likely that Fantômas is the guilty party. When he is laid by the heels you will be able to protest your innocence without any fear.”
Charles Rambert sat silent for some minutes, musing on the odd chance of destiny which required him to make his own return to normal life contingent on the arrest of a mysterious criminal, who was merely suspected, and had never been seen nor discovered.
“What do you advise me to do?” he asked presently.
The detective got up and began to pace the room.
“Well,” he began, “the first fact is that I am interested in you, and the next is, that while I was having that rough-and-tumble last night with that scoundrel in the supper-room, I thought for a minute or two that it was all up with me: your chipping in saved my life. On the other hand I may be said to have saved your life now by ascertaining your innocence and preventing your arrest. So we are quits in a way. But you began the delicate attentions, and I have only paid you back, so it’s up to me to start a new series and not turn you out into the street where you would inevitably get into fresh trouble. So this is what I propose: change your name and go and take a room somewhere; get into proper clothes and then come back to me, and I’ll give you a letter to a friend of mine who is on one of the big evening papers. You are well educated, and I know you are energetic. You are keen on everything connected with the police, and you’ll get on splendidly as a reporter. You will be able to earn an honest and respectable name that way. Would you like to try that idea?”
“It’s awfully good of you,” Charles Rambert said gratefully. “I should love to be able to earn my living by work so much to my taste.”
Juve cut his thanks short, and held out some bank-notes.
“There’s some money; now clear out; it’s high time we both got a little sleep. Get busy settling into rooms, and in a fortnight I shall expect you to be editor of La Capitale.”
“Under what name shall you introduce me to your friend?” Charles Rambert asked, after a little nervous pause.
“H’m!” said Juve with a smile: “it will have to be an alias of course.”
“Yes; and as it will be the name I shall write under it ought to be an easy one to remember.”
“Something arresting, like Fantômas!” said Juve chaffingly, amused by the curious childishness of this lad, who could take keen interest in such a trifle when he was in so critical a situation. “Choose something not too common for the first name; and something short for the other. Why not keep the first syllable of Fantômas? Oh, I’ve got it—Fandor; what about Jérôme Fandor?”
Charles Rambert murmured it over.
“Jérôme Fandor! Yes, you are right, it sounds well.”
“Well, Jérôme Fandor, leave me to my slumbers, and go and rig yourself out, and get ready for the new life that I’m going to open up for you!”
Bewildered by the amazing adventures of which he had just been the central figure, Charles Rambert, or Jérôme Fandor, walked down Juve’s staircase wondering. “Why should he take so much trouble about me? What interest or what motive can he have? And how on earth does he find out such a wonderful lot of things?”
XX. A CUP OF TEA
After the tragic death of her husband, Lady Beltham—whose previous life had inclined to the austere—withdrew into almost complete retirement. The world of gaiety and fashion knew her no more. But in the world where poverty and suffering reign, in hospital wards and squalid streets, a tall and beautiful woman might often be seen, robed all in black, with distinguished bearing and eyes serene and grave, distributing alms and consolation as she moved. It was Lady Beltham, kind, good and very pitiful, bent on the work of charity to which she had vowed her days.
Yet she had not allowed herself to be crushed by sorrow; after the tragedy which left her a widow, she had assumed the effective control of her husband’s property, and, helped by faithful friends, had carried on his interests and administered his estates, spreading a halo of kindness all around her.
To help her in the heavy correspondence entailed by all these affairs, she found three secretaries none too many. On M. Etienne Rambert’s recommendation, Thérèse Auvernois was now one of these, and the young girl was perfectly happy in her new surroundings; time was helping her to forget the tragedy which had taken her grandmother from her at Beaulieu, and she enjoyed the company of the well-born, well-bred English gentlewomen.
Lady Beltham was reclining on a sofa in the great hall of her house at Neuilly. It was a spacious room, furnished half as a lounge and half as an office, and Lady Beltham liked to receive people there. A large glass-enclosed balcony commanded a view over the garden and the boulevard Richard Wallace beyond, with the Bois de Boulogne beyond that again. A few minutes before, a footman had brought in a table and set out tea-things, and Lady Beltham was reading while Thérèse and the two young English girls were chattering among themselves.
The telephone bell rang and Thérèse answered it.
“Hullo? Yes . . . yes: you want to know if you may call this evening? The Reverend—oh, yes: you have just come from Scotland? Hold on a minute.” She turned to Lady Beltham. “It is Mr. William Hope, and he wants to know if you will see him to-night. He has just come from your place in Scotland.”
“The dear man!” exclaimed Lady Beltham; “of course he may come,” and as Thérèse turned lightly to convey her permission to the clergyman waiting at the other end of the line, she caught a smile on the face of one of the other girls. “What is the joke, Lisbeth?” she enquired.
The girl laughed brightly.
“I think the worthy parson must have smelt the tea and toast, and wants to make up for the wretched dinner he got in the train.”
“You are incorrigible,” Lady Beltham replied. “Mr. Hope is above such material matters.”
“Indeed he isn’t, Lady Beltham,” the girl persisted. “Why, only the other day he told Thérèse that all food deserved respect and esteem directly a blessing had been asked upon it, and that a badly cooked steak was a kind of sacrilege.”
“A badly cooked pheasant,” Thérèse corrected her.
“You are both wicked little slanderers,” Lady Beltham protested gently, “and don’t know the blessing a good appetite is. You do, Susannah, don’t you?”
Susannah, a pretty Irish girl, looked up from a letter she was reading, and blushed.
“Oh, Lady Beltham, I’ve been ever so much less hungry since Harry’s ship sailed.”
“I don’t quite see the connection,” Lady Beltham answered. “Love is good nourishment for the soul, but not for the body. However, a good appetite is nothing to be ashamed of, and you ought to keep your roses for your future husband, and qualify in every way to be an excellent mother of a family.”
“With lots and lots of children,” Lisbeth went on wickedly: “seven or eight daughters at the very least, all of whom will marry nice young clergymen when their time comes and——”
She stopped speaking and the light chatter died away as a footman entered and announced the Reverend William Hope, who followed him immediately into the room, an elderly man with a full, clean-shaven face and a comfortable portliness of figure.
Lady Beltham offered him a cordial hand.
“I am delighted you are back,” she said. “Will you have a cup of tea with us?”
The parson made a general bow to the girls gathered about the table.
“I got a wretched dinner in the train,” he began, but Lisbeth interrupted him.
“Don’t you think this tea smells delicious?” she asked.
The parson put out his hand to take the cup she offered to him, and bowed and smiled.
“Precisely what I was going to observe, Miss Lisbeth.”
Thérèse and Susannah turned away to hide their amusement, and Lady Beltham adroitly changed the subject. She moved towards her writing-table.
“Mr. Hope must have much to tell me, girls, and it is getting late. I must get to business. Did you have a good journey?”
“Quite as good as usual, Lady Beltham. The people at Scotwell Hill are very plucky and good, but it will be a hard winter; there is snow on the hills already.”
“Have the women and children had all their woollen things?”
“Oh, yes: twelve hundred garments have been distributed according to a list drawn up by the under-steward; here it is,” and he handed a paper to Lady Beltham, who passed it on to Susannah.
“I will ask you to check the list,” she said to the girl, and turned again to the clergyman. “The under-steward is a good fellow, but he is a rabid politician; he may have omitted some families that are openly radical; but I think charity should be given equally to all, for poverty makes no political distinctions.”
“That is the right Christian view,” the clergyman said approvingly.
“And what about the sanatorium at Glasgow?” Lady Beltham went on.
“It is very nearly finished,” the good man answered. “I have got your lawyers to cut down the contractor’s accounts by something like fifteen per cent, which means a saving of nearly three hundred pounds.”
“Excellent,” said Lady Beltham, and she turned to Thérèse. “You must add that three hundred pounds to the funds of the Scotwell Hill coal charity,” she said. “They will want all of it if the winter is going to be a hard one,” and Thérèse made a note of the instruction, full of admiration for Lady Beltham’s simple generosity.
But Mr. Hope was fidgeting on his chair. He seized an opportunity when Lady Beltham, busy making notes, had turned her deep and steady eyes away from him, to say in a low tone:
“Have I your permission just to mention—poor Lord Beltham?”
Lady Beltham started, and her face betrayed an emotion which she bravely controlled. Hearing the name pronounced, the three girls withdrew to the far end of the room, where they began to talk among themselves. Lady Beltham signified her assent, and Mr. Hope began.
“You know, dear friend, this has been my first visit to Scotland since Lord Beltham’s death. I found your tenants still grievously upset by the tragedy that occurred nearly a year ago. They have got by heart all the newspaper accounts of the mysterious circumstances attending Lord Beltham’s death, but those are not enough to satisfy the sympathetic curiosity of these excellent people, and I was obliged to tell them over and over again in full detail—all we knew.”
“I hope no scandal has gathered round his name,” said Lady Beltham quickly.
“You need have no fear of that,” the clergyman replied in the same low tone. “The rumour that got about when the crime was first discovered, that Lord Beltham had been surprised in an intrigue and killed in revenge
, has not won acceptance. Local opinion agrees that he was decoyed into a trap and killed by the man Gurn, who meant to rob him, but who was either surprised or thought he was going to be, and fled before he had time to take the money or the jewels from the body of his victim. They know that the murderer has never been caught, but they also know that there is a price on his head, and they all hope the police——Oh, forgive me for recalling all these painful memories!”
While he had been speaking, Lady Beltham’s face had expressed almost every shade of emotion and distress; it seemed to be drawn with pain at his concluding words. But she made an effort to control herself, and spoke resignedly.
“It cannot be helped, dear Mr. Hope. Go on.”
But the clergyman changed the topic.
“Oh, I was quite forgetting,” he said more brightly. “The under-steward has turned out the two Tillys, quite on his own authority: you must remember them, two brothers, blacksmiths, who drank a great deal and paid very little, and created so much scandal in the place.”
“I object to the under-steward doing any such thing without referring to me first,” Lady Beltham exclaimed warmly. “Man’s duty is to persuade and forgive, not to judge and punish. Kindness breeds kindness, and it is pity that wins amendment. Why should a subordinate, my under-steward, presume to do what I would not permit myself to do?”
She had sprung to her feet and was pacing excitedly about the room; she had wholly dropped the impassive mask she habitually wore, concealing her real personality.
The three girls watched her in silence.
The door opened anew, and Silbertown came in, the major-domo of Lady Beltham’s establishment at Neuilly. He brought the evening letters, and the girls speedily took all the envelopes and newspapers from the tray and began to sort and open them, while the major-domo entered into conversation with his mistress, and the Rev. William Hope seized the opportunity to say good night, and take his leave.