“What about you, Doctor? You haven’t found the slightest indication? It’s known that you were associated with the victim...”
Castillan replied, casually: “Oh, as for me, I respect the judges’ decision. Since the verdict, I haven’t given the matter any further thought.”
And slyly, he added internally: And besides, it would be futile. In truth, at the present moment, I’m incapable myself of finding the poor devil who struck the blow...
He knew! He knew the murderer. Was that possible?
Oh, the rage of not being able to leap his throat, not being able to howl in his face: “I divine you. I can hear you. Speak. Say who killed him. Quickly. Immediately.”
But no. Brion was right. He would be taken for a madman. He would be locked up. He must even be careful not to give himself away. Alerted by a sign, a presentiment, Castillan might turn his mind away from his memories. With a new effort, he brought him back to the drama.
A poor devil, Castillan had thought. Mirande therefore affirmed: “Personally, I can’t get away from the idea that the crime was committed by a professional.”
“Do you think so?” said Castillan, skeptically.
And silently: What tells you that, honest Mirande? And what a professional! I can still see him, when they brought him to me at the hospital, that great body emaciated by liver disease, a distant repercussion of an old bout of yellow fever. I can hear his hoarse voice, his slum accent. Oh, a fine cure! But where the devil did gratitude take him? That cowardly wild beast, that river poacher, that pirate of the Seine, didn’t he want with all his might to thank me for my care by getting rid of an inconvenience for me? A skin! He offered me a skin as one offers one’s physician a copper coin. How many times did I find him outside the hospital door, waiting for me to leave, harassing me, tempting me with ingenuity. In truth, the opportunity was too good. Like a good hound, he almost divined the trail on which I wanted to launch him. He only needed the double indication: the blow to strike and the name of the man who had to be accused. Damn! Time was pressing, it was necessary to clear the way to the inheritance!
Abruptly, however, the train of thought changed course, at a word from Quatrefin. The financier attributed the murder of old Gagny to a vengeance.
Then, cordial and affectionate, Castillan took him by the shoulders and shook him familiarly. “Quatrefin, Quatrefin, my friend, let’s leave that affair tranquil. In France, we have the malady of judiciary error.”
Mirande had received the confession like a bullet to the head. It had penetrated him rapidly, with a murderous violence. His hand clenched on the back of a chair, he stiffened in order not to fall.
So, Castillan had guided the murderer’s hand, deflected suspicion on to Lacaze! Castillan, Simone’s husband! Oh, the necessity of remaining impassive under the frightful revelation, of being as calm as if one still did not know…!
But the name, the name of the guilty man? He needed it, in order to bring the truth to light, for he could not admit how it had been discovered. He needed, at all costs, to extract that name from Castillan, to make it light up in his memory.
He strove to recover his composure and his voice. “However, Doctor, what if the police were to discover a guilty party who confessed?”
“In that case,” Castillan declared, gravely, “I would concede.”
And he continued, within himself: And it wouldn’t cost me anything. The man would never betray me. These brutes have their special honor. Wounded in a brawl, his peers remain obstinately silent about the man who struck them. That savage, at the same time as he offered to rid me of an inconvenience, promised never to give me away. He’ll keep his word. Furthermore, it’s in his interest. Once taken, he’ll still be doomed, with or without an accomplice. Free, unsuspected, I can save him from the guillotine; sitting beside him, I can no longer be of use to him. But what’s the point of these chimeras? The man has sunk back into the lower depths. He’ll never be found there. I wouldn’t be able to find him myself if my life depended on it. At the hospital, he refused to reveal his identity. I don’t even know his name. He’s unknown to the anthropometric service. He’s a number over a bed, something vague, non-existent, evaporated. So, what can happen?
Mirande suppressed a gesture of despair. He would get nothing more out of that wretch. Thus, he was certain of Lacaze’s innocence, and certain of Castillan’s culpability, but he could do nothing to prove it! For he had to keep the secret of his certainties—and the murderer himself was out of reach.
Nevertheless, by combining the indications scattered in Castellan’s reminiscences, perhaps he could succeed in discovering his accomplice. Dominated by the instinct of the pursuit and the desire to triumph, distressed by his discovery, he wanted to think clearly himself, to escape the buzz of thoughts that were henceforth importunate, breathe the air outside.
As he took his leave of Simone, she said to him, afflicted: “Already? It’s given me pleasure to see you.”
Instinctively, he sketched a gesture of doubt. Then she insisted; “Yes, yes…and you must come back, you hear?”
Short phrases, but Mirande was moved to tears by them, for the words were the faithful echo of her thoughts. Better than that, they were wedded to them, like the tune and words of the same song: an accord that gave the sound frankness, a hymn of the heart, a delicious harmony that a human being was savoring for the first time…a music so sweet and so pure that it removed him from the world, that he forgot therein, momentarily the lying voices, the frightful discovery, the bloody cloaca that a forehead could conceal.
PART THREE
I
So, that monstrous thing was possible, certain! Castillan had ordered the death. That worldly doctor, flourishing and sought-after, was nothing but a murderer. And what a murderer! The most cowardly, the most vile. He had not even had the audacity to strike the blow. He had exploited, to make use of it, the gratitude of a brute.
Oh, that one of those pariahs, an item of the debris of the social organism, might lie in wait for his prey and fall upon it, was certainly abominable. But at least that one had suffered; he had been hungry; he had envied the felicity of the other bitterly; no interior voice had turned him away from evil; in his narrow mind he estimated the right to pleasure, to enjoyment. Crime is less unjust for the man crushed by injustice.
But Castillan...
Castillan, heaped with success, power, money! Castillan the murderer, Castillan unpunished, was that not the most revolting challenge hurled in society’s face?
In the street, after having left the Castillan house, Mirande abandoned himself to his indignant rage. So destiny, which had already given him that man as a rival, now designated him to his just condemnation. The same hand that had led Simone to the altar, had shown the path to the murderer, designated Lacaze to the tribunal...
His execration was exasperated. His hatred overflowed. He felt ready to be drawn to immediate imprudence. His scorn and his disgust spread out over humanity entire. He drew away from passers-by, in order not to glimpse some new abomination at every encounter.
However, the keen and chilly air outside gradually calmed him down. He strove to classify the facts he had acquired methodically.
So, Castillan, in order to assure the community of the entire Gagny inheritance, had killed the old man in such a Machiavellian fashion that the suspicions of the law had been sure to fall on the co-inheritor, Lacaze. And the man he had employed for that task was a grateful apache, a pirate of the Seine, whom he had treated during his service at the hospital for accidents indirectly consequent to yellow fever. A bandit, alas, whose name Castillan did not know, of whom he had lost track.
He had prescribed the act, as a great lord, to the hired killer whom gratitude had delivered to him. How had the murderer studied the house in the Avenue Raphael? How had he procured the file marked with Lacaze’s initial? How had he taken advantage of a day when the old man and his young cousin had quarreled violently? How and where had he hidden from all rese
arch? All that, Castillan did not know. And that was frightening for Mirande. He was advancing, plunging deeply, into the enigma, but it still remained just as obscure.
Would that grateful patient, well-founded in the power of the crime, never appear again to his master, to his savior? Castillan had faith in his discretion, in his special honor. Who could tell whether he might not surge forth in an hour of poverty and hunger, breathing threats and blackmail?
But how could he find out about that possible return of the pirate? How could he keep watch on Castillan closely enough to be immediately informed on the event? Ought Mirande to renew his visits, slipping into the intimacy of the household? He only envisaged the project to reject it. No, no. He would have suffered too much. Such a role was beyond his strength.
However, he admitted the utility of an active surveillance. Would it not be appropriate, in order to protect Simone, to penetrate her husband’s true attitude toward her? The bandit had shown his measure; he was capable of any cruelty. Eventually, on the day when, alerted by his subtle intelligence, he sensed that he was suspected, would he not seek to escape punishment, to take to the sea with his fortune made?
But who could he employ for that delicate work? For a moment, Mirande thought of Nitaud. Of his own accord, during their first meeting, the policeman had wanted to orientate his research in the direction of Castillan. But how could he explain and expose suspicions whose origin had to remain secret? Finally, Mirande admitted it to himself; it was repugnant to him to place near Simone, to install in her house, one of the shady associates he had glimpsed in Nitaud’s office.
He hesitated again when he went into the little apartment in the Rue Monge. Francette, who was agitating in the kitchen, was in loud conversation with Jeanne, who was occupied in her bedroom.
“Mademoiselle,” shouted Francette, “in your place, do you know what I’d do?”
“No, what?”
“I’d wouldn’t bother any more with the law, because it has nickeled feet, the law.”
“So?”
“So, me, I say that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go save a man from prison. Do you know Latude? I’ve seen Latude at the Théâtre des Gobelins. He was a rude fellow of olden times. So, why shouldn’t one see it again?”
The sound of the door closing cut the conversation short.
But that naïve ardor enlightened Mirande. Why seek elsewhere the intelligence, the bravery and the malice necessary for the investigation? They were there, at the service of devotion? And had Simone not said that she was looking for a chambermaid? By polishing Francette, dictating her role to her, she was perfectly capable of getting the lace...
Immediately, his decision was made. He would employ Francette. But it was necessary to prepare Jeanne for that new tactic. Already, he had let her know—and with what eagerness she had accepted his confession!—that he shared her faith, that in spite of the disquieting analysis of the bloodstain, he was fully convinced of Lacaze’s innocence. There was nothing surprising in his pursuing his investigation. He therefore invented a long conversation with Nitaud. The policeman—she would recall—wanted to look in Castillan’s direction. They had deflected him away from it, but he came back to it with insistence. He was not far from thinking that the physician knew the murderer. He therefore wanted an incessant surveillance around Castillan. Who could exercise it better than Francette, enrolled as a chambermaid?
In spite of her amazement, Jeanne was too pressed, too avid to succeed, to liberate her fiancé, to reject such a grave suspicion, or to question the means of clarifying it. Francette was, therefore, summoned
“You know, Francette, that we love you here?”
“And me the same.”
“Well, it’s necessary for you to render us a great—a very great—service.”
“At your disposal...”
“It’s a matter of the affair of our friend Lacaze. You can help us directly.”
Oh, the excitement, the joy of that singular girl, when she learned that she was to count for something in that story, which had been holding her under the grill for months! Finally! She was going to join the dance! Finally, they had thought of her! Yes, truly, she was intoxicated by the heady breath of battle, quivering with the heroism of a conscript about to risk his skin for his fatherland.
Gabriel Mirande, Jeanne Mirande and Henri Lacaze: her entire fatherland!
Never had the living contrast of her entire person been so striking. The furious bar of the brows, the fulgurant copper of the hair, and the long legs, boldly planted, expressed a vengeful ardor, and the pert tip of the nose, the teeth of a little puppy, the cunning gaze declared the malicious joy of succeeding where the law had failed.
“Understand me well, Francette...”
“Yes, yes, go on…I’m not a blockhead.”
And Mirande ventured to expose his plan.
Castillan had been suspected for some time. They were astonished by his bizarre appearances, certain shady relations, seeing him spend money beyond his means, to such a point that they wondered whether he might not have an interest in the crime that brought him a new inheritance. But they needed someone in the house to observe him, to keep watch on him, to protect Madame Castellan if necessary, for anything was to be feared on his part, if he were capable of such a calculation. A place as a chambermaid had just become vacant. The opportunity was there to fill the role, to unmask a possible conspiracy....
“Well, Francette, what do you say?”
Her attitude had changed while Mirande spoke. Her nose was tilted, her lips had closed, her gaze was extinct.
“Oh, me…it bores me, that chore.”
Well, no, it didn’t “bore” her. It pained her; it frightened her. Oh, what did he think he was asking of her, the petit patron? To serve Simone Castellan, that woman who had hurt him—him, who had never had the courage to ask for her in marriage! And then, the more direct chagrin of leaving her masters, that little nest that had become her own, this furniture, that parquet, those saucepans, everything that she polished, everything that she loved...
“It bores me…it bores me…,” she repeated.
Poor Francette. Even though his clairvoyant power was extinct, Mirande divined her. A tender pity invaded him. Without his sister’s anxious gaze, he would have renounced the idea. But Jeanne persuaded him.
“Francette…I’m asking you as a personal favor.”
Oh, in that case, since it was a personal favor for the petit patron, to please him, in that case, Francette no longer had any hesitation. She drove back into her inner depths all her repugnance, as she would have stowed clothes beyond use at the bottom of her trunk, and buckled the lid. Finished, the romance. She would attack! And, as quickly as they had darkened, her features resumed their radiance. Her nose lifted, her teeth shone.
“It bores me!” she said, this time joyfully. “But so what? Necessary to march? Well then, at the double! I march.”
Combatively, she abandoned the doorpost on which she had learned to receive the blow. She strode back and forth across the drawing-room, her head held high, like a Bellona. Her eyebrows were already devastating the enemy.
“Wait,” said Gabriel. “That isn’t all. It’s not just a matter of getting into the house. It’s necessary to stay there.”
“What! Why shouldn’t I stay there, in that boutique?”
“Precisely because the house isn’t a boutique, as you put it. It is, on the contrary, a very imposing town house, with a very stylish personnel. Now…this isn’t to make you any reproach…but your vivacity of language, your character, might be surprising in an another environment, where people don’t know you...”
“Understood,” she said. “Here, I don’t have to pose, do I? But do you want to know how I hold myself in society?”
Surprised, Gabriel and Jeanne saw her retire to a corner of the room, and then come back toward them, with a measured step, her eyes lowered, her little face suddenly masked by a serious modesty. Without awkwardness or affectat
ion, she bowed to an imaginary individual: “Bonjour, Monsieur le docteur. Are you well, Monsieur le docteur? Yes, yes, Madame is well too, she has slept like a log. You should do the same, Monsieur le docteur, you work too hard. Patients? Yes, there’s a full waiting room. Necessary to make them wait, Monsieur le docteur.”
She bowed again, so comical in her grave gentility that the brother and sister burst into benevolent laughter.
“Well, Francette, that’s a talent we didn’t know you had! One or two more rehearsals and you’ll no longer have anything to learn.”
In a single evening, Jeanne completed that apprenticeship. She informed Francette of the virtue of mutism and initiated her into the mysteries of the third person.”
And the following morning, equipped with a certificate of complaisance extracted from the worthy Doisteau—for she could not be coming from the Mirande residence—Francine presented herself at the Castillan house. After an hour, she returned triumphant. She had been hired on the spot.
The moment came or the final advice Above all, at the slightest suspect visit, the slightest hint of anything shady, sound the alert as soon as possible. There, a fortunate circumstance served Mirande, permitting him to remain in close communication with Francette. Always animated by a desire to act quickly, he had been thinking for some time about installing a telephone in his domicile. Again, he had experienced some embarrassment at confessing his plan to Jeanne, for he could not reveal his secret resources, his winnings at Dorville. He attributed it to the benefits he was obtaining from his new position at the Brion Institute, and the resultant necessity of remaining in constant communication with the laboratory.
“So, notify me immediately by telephone, Francette. The apparatus will be here in two days, and I already have the number, 1900-05. As for the laboratory, that’s 1326-21.
Francine became alarmed. “I’ll never remember that!” Then, traversed by a sudden inspiration: “Wait!” And she wrote the two numbers on the inside of her cuffs. “Now I’m a telephone directory,” she remarked, incorrigibly.
The Lynx Page 11