The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Page 23

  Having made quite sure that the door was securely bolted, Rouletabille returned to the table and picked up a compass.

  ‘I have,’ he said, ‘to carry out my demonstration in the very place where the mysterious occurrence we are trying to explain took place. That way, it will be all the more convincing.’

  With the compass he measured the circle on M. Darzac’s plan which represented Charles the Bold’s Tower, and traced a similar one upon a clean sheet of paper, which he fastened to the board with drawing pins. When the circle was completed, Rouletabille took up the saucer of red paint and asked Darzac if he recognised it as his. Darzac, who was evidently as much at a loss as the rest of us to know what the young man was driving at, replied that he did, that he had mixed the colour for his own use. At least half of the paint had dried in the saucer, but Darzac thought that what remained would give about the same result in tone as the paint he had used for his wash drawing.

  ‘It has not been touched,’ said Rouletabille solemnly. ‘The paint has had only a drop or two added to it, and you will see that a drop more or less will in no way affect my argument.’

  Having dipped the brush in the paint, he proceeded to colour the paper within the circle. This he did with the same meticulousness which had so astonished me when, in the Round Tower, he had apparently amused himself by drawing while a murder was being committed. When he had finished, he glanced at his huge watch and said:

  ‘You see, ladies and gentlemen, that the paint on my paper is neither thicker nor thinner than that on M. Darzac’s drawing. It is practically the same shade.’

  ‘We can see that,’ interrupted Darzac, ‘but what does it all mean?’

  ‘Wait!’ answered Rouletabille. ‘You accept, do you not, that this drawing and this paint are yours?’

  ‘Yes, except that Old Bob spoiled my drawing by rolling the skull over it.’

  ‘Now we have it,’ remarked Rouletabille. He picked up the skull, and, turning it over so that the red jaw was clearly visible, asked Darzac if it was his opinion that the paint on the skull had come off his drawing.

  ‘Certainly. There isn’t the slightest doubt about it. The skull was still standing on the drawing when we went into the Round Tower.’

  ‘Then so far, we are in agreement.’ Tucking the skull under his arm, Rouletabille stepped into the embrasure that M. Darzac had converted into a dressing room and which was illumined by a large barred window. Here he struck a match, and, lighting a little spirit lamp which stood on a small table, placed a kettle of water over the flame. He was still holding the skull under his arm.

  Throughout this whole curious performance none of us took our eyes off him. We were more mystified than ever. The more he explained and moved about the less we understood, and we all had a feeling that someone among us must be feeling unspeakable terror. Who was it? Perhaps the one who seemed the least disturbed. Certainly the calmest of all was Rouletabille with his kettle and skull. As we watched him, his silhouette irresistibly suggested the profile of … Larsan! How like his father Rouletabille is!

  We all felt for his mother as Rouletabille stepped out of the nook that had momentarily framed him and made him look exactly like the criminal.

  Rouletabille dipped a cloth in the hot water and cleaned the skull. The operation was completed. Every trace of paint had disappeared. He called our attention to the fact, after which, resuming his position behind the table, he remained in mute contemplation of his own drawing. About ten minutes had elapsed, during which, in obedience to a sign from Rouletabille, we remained silent. Ten anxious minutes. What can he be waiting for? Suddenly, he rolled the skull over the drawing several times as if he were playing bowls. Then, picking it up, he asked us to note that the skull did not bear the slightest trace of paint on it. Having glanced at his watch again, he said:

  ‘The paint on the drawing is dry. It has taken about fifteen minutes to dry. On the eleventh of the month we saw M. Darzac go into the Square Tower at five o’clock in the afternoon. Now M. Darzac tells us that he went to his room, bolted the door, and did not come out again until after six o’clock, when we went to fetch him. As for Old Bob, we saw him enter the Round Tower at six o’clock with the skull under his arm and at that time there was no paint whatever on it.

  How is it that this paint, which has just now dried in fifteen minutes, was wet enough more than an hour after M. Darzac had stopped painting to stain the skull that Old Bob threw down in a rage on the table when he went into the tower? There is only one explanation, and I defy you to find another. And it is that the M. Darzac who went into the Square Tower at five o’clock, and whom nobody saw coming out, was not the same M. Darzac who was painting in the Round Tower when Old Bob went in there at six o’clock. He was not the same M. Darzac who is with us now. We must therefore conclude that there were two M. Darzacs.’

  With this Rouletabille looked at Darzac. He, like the rest of us, was dumbfounded by the youthful reporter’s lucid demonstration. Our minds were filled by two feelings – a renewed one of intense fear and a tremendous admiration for Rouletabille’s extraordinary intelligence.

  Darzac exclaimed:

  ‘Then that’s how he managed to get into the Square Tower! He was disguised as myself, and hid in the cupboard, so that I did not see him when I came into my room to write after leaving the Round Tower where I had been drawing. But how is it that Bernier opened the door for him?’

  ‘That’s simple enough,’ said Rouletabille, taking the hand of the Lady in Black in his own, as if to comfort her ‘He thought it was you.’

  ‘Now I understand why I found my door unlocked. Bernier thought I was already in here!’

  ‘Just so,’ said Rouletabille. ‘Bernier opened the door for the first Darzac, but had nothing to do with the second, inasmuch as he never saw him, any more than the rest of us did. You must have reached the Square Tower while Bernier was with us on the ramparts, watching Old Bob gesticulating wildly at Mrs Rance and the Prince on the beach.’

  ‘But,’ asked Darzac, ‘how is it that Bernier’s wife, who was in the lodge, did not notice me, and was not surprised to see M. Darzac coming in when she had not noticed him go out?’

  ‘Just suppose,’ replied Rouletabille, with a pitying smile, ‘that the good woman was then – that is to say, when the second Darzac passed by – busy picking up the potatoes I had scattered on the floor, and you will be supposing the truth.’

  ‘Well, I can congratulate myself on still being alive!’

  ‘By all means, M. Darzac, congratulate yourself!’

  ‘To think that as soon as I came in and bolted the door, as I told you, and sat down to write, that scoundrel was behind me all the time! He could easily have killed me!’

  Rouletabille stepped up to him and looked him squarely in the eyes.

  ‘Why didn’t he?’

  ‘You know perfectly well that he was waiting for someone else,’ replied Darzac, looking sadly at the Lady in Black.

  Rouletabille was now very close to Darzac. Placing his hands upon the other’s shoulders, he said:

  ‘M. Darzac,’ and his voice was once more clear and steady, ‘I have a confession to make. When I realised how the surplus body had got into the tower, and when I saw that you did nothing to correct the mistake that everyone but myself made in supposing that you came in at five o’clock, I was justified in concluding that the murderer was not the man who came to the tower at five o’clock disguised as M. Darzac. I even thought that that Darzac might very well be the real one, and that you were the impostor! In other words, I suspected you!’

  ‘That’s nonsense!’ exclaimed Darzac. ‘I didn’t say exactly what time it was when I came in, because I couldn’t remember precisely and attached no importance to the fact in any case.’

  ‘Indeed,’ went on Rouletabille, without paying the slightest attention to the interruption, or to the Lady in Black’s evident distress, or to the wonder apparent on all our faces, ‘I may even have gone so far as to suppose that,
if you were Larsan, then the man in the sack was Darzac! Oh, dear, dear, how my imagination ran away with me! What an extraordinary thing to suspect!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Darzac gloomily, ‘we’re all under suspicion here.’

  Rouletabille spun round on his heel, thrust his hands in his pockets, and addressed himself to the Lady in Black, who looked as if she were on the point of fainting:

  ‘Be brave just a little longer,’ he said.

  His voice now resumed its didactic tone and he looked like a teacher expounding a problem in mathematics.

  ‘You see, my dear M. Darzac, there were two of you. My business was to find out which one was the real one, and which was Larsan in disguise. I had to think rationally and investigate both Darzacs, quite impartially. Therefore, I began with you.’

  ‘That will do,’ exclaimed Darzac, ‘since you don’t suspect me now. Tell me immediately which of us is Larsan? I insist upon it!’

  ‘Yes, now!’ we all exclaimed, crowding round the two men.

  Mathilde flung herself in front of her son and shielded him with her body, as if some danger threatened him. The scene had lasted too long already, and we were all excited and impatient.

  ‘If he knows, let him tell us. We have had enough of this,’ shouted Rance.

  At that moment, we were startled by the sound of a second shot. Rouletabille’s expression changed immediately. He now seemed filled with new energy. Abandoning the offensive tone he had assumed towards M. Darzac, and gently pushing away the Lady in Black, who persisted in trying to screen him, he crossed his arms and leaned against the door.

  ‘In such an affair as this nothing must be omitted,’ he went on. ‘Two Darzacs came in and two went out, and one of the two who went out did so in the potato sack. It is very confusing. I don’t want to say anything foolish again, but, I hope that the M. Darzac here present will understand that I had more than enough reasons for suspecting him.’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ I thought, ‘I’m sorry he didn’t mention it to me. I might have saved him a good deal of trouble by showing him Australia.’

  Stepping up to Rouletabille, Darzac demanded savagely:

  ‘What reasons? What reasons?’

  ‘My dear sir,’ replied Rouletabille calmly, ‘when I began to investigate your impersonation of Darzac, I said to myself: “If he is Larsan, Professor Stangerson’s daughter would have noticed it!” Of course. You agree with me, don’t you? But when I came to analyse Madame Darzac’s behaviour, I was more than ever persuaded that she believed you all the time to be Larsan.’

  Mathilde, who had sunk into a chair, sprang to her feet with a gesture of timid protest. The expression on Darzac’s face was terrible to see.

  ‘Mathilde,’ he murmured, ‘is it possible that you thought that?’

  Mathilde’s only reply was to bow her head. With a relentless cruelty for which I could then find no excuse, Rouletabille continued:

  ‘When I thought over Madame Darzac’s attitude after your return from San Remo, it seemed to me to indicate a secret terror, a terror lest she betray the fear oppressing her. Don’t interrupt, M. Darzac. I must explain myself, we all have to explain ourselves and put things straight. Nothing about Miss Stangerson’s conduct at that time was normal. Her prompt acquiescence in your wish to hasten the ceremony showed how much she wanted to be rid of her fears for good. I remember well how her eyes seemed to say: “Why do I see Larsan everywhere, even in the man who is leading me to the altar and who will take me away?” I am told that the way in which she said goodbye at the station was heartrending. She was already crying out for help! Against what? Her own thoughts? Against you? She dared not confess her thoughts, however, lest people should think she was …’

  And Rouletabille leaned towards Darzac and whispered, not low enough to escape my ears, but too low to be heard by Mathilde, ‘lest people should think she was going mad again.’ He moved back a little, and continued aloud:

  ‘Now, my dear M. Darzac, I hope I have made everything clear, and that you understand the reason for the strange coldness with which you have been treated, as well as the delicate attentions which your wife’s remorse led her to pay you. Let me add that sometimes I have seen you look so sad, that I was led to think that you had discovered what was in Madame Darzac’s mind, and that at the bottom of her heart she was sure that you were Larsan. But what was it that drove away my suspicions?’

  ‘It might have been the simple deduction,’ sneered Darzac, ‘that if I had been Larsan and was now the husband of Miss Stangerson, I had every reason for wishing her to go on believing him dead. I certainly would not have resurrected myself! Did I not lose Mathilde the moment that Larsan appeared?’

  ‘Forgive me, my dear sir,’ said Rouletabille now white as a sheet, ‘your reasoning is at fault. My deduction was that if your wife believed you to be Larsan you would naturally try to prove to her that someone else was Larsan.’

  On hearing this, the Lady in Black sprang to Rouletabille’s side and fixed her frightened eyes upon Darzac’s face, which had become terribly hard and set. As for the rest of us, we were so impressed by the novelty and closeness of Rouletabille’s reasoning that we had no desire to interrupt him, and wondered, not without awe, where this extraordinary hypothesis would lead. The young man continued quietly:

  ‘Whatever may have been your interest in proving that Larsan existed in the person of another man, let us imagine a case in which it might become absolutely necessary for you to do so. For the mere sake of argument, we will assume you to be Larsan masquerading as Darzac. Let us suppose an … accident. You are at Bourg, in the restaurant. You think your wife is waiting for you outside the station, as she said she would. Having finished your correspondence, you decide to return to your compartment to take a look at your disguise and to see if all is in order. The mask tires you: indeed, it tires you so much that you think you will allow yourself a few minutes’ rest. You take off the beard and the dark glasses and, just as you do so, the door of the compartment opens. It is your wife! She catches sight of the beardless Larsan face in the mirror and runs off, screaming. You realise the danger. You are lost if your wife does not immediately find Darzac, her husband, somewhere else. You slip on your mask, jump out of the train on the wrong side and hurry to the restaurant. You get there before your wife, who has gone to look for you. You do not even have time to sit down. Are you safe? No, this is only the beginning of your troubles. Your wife is possessed by the awful thought that you are Darzac and Larsan in one. On the platform, as you walk past a gas jet, she looks at you, drops your hand and rushes into the stationmaster’s office. Once more you have to chase away the vision. You step out of the office and come back in, hurriedly shutting the door, pretending that you too have seen Larsan. To keep her quiet, and also to throw us off the scent if she ventures to tell us what she thinks, you are the first to notify us. You send me a telegram. From that point on, your game is quite easy to follow. You cannot refuse to join her father, for she would go without you. Since nothing has been lost so far, you hope to regain your ground. During the journey, your wife is alternately afraid and hopeful. She gives you her revolver, in an impulse which might be interpreted thus: “If he is Darzac, let him defend me, if he is Larsan, let him kill me, but let this uncertainty end!”

  When you get to Rochers Rouges, you feel that she is again so far from you in spirit that you must show her Larsan again. Do you see, my dear M. Darzac, how all this worked itself out in my mind. Even your appearance as Larsan, at Menton, while you were on the way to Cannes as Darzac to meet us, confirmed my view. You might have taken the train in the presence of your friends at Menton-Garavan, and by getting off at the following station – Menton – slipped off your disguise and appeared as Larsan to the same friends who had gone there on an excursion.

  The next train would take you to Cannes, where we met. But, greatly to your annoyance, you heard from Rance on the same day that Madame Darzac had not noticed your appearance in
the morning and that your Larsan impersonation had been wasted. You were obliged, therefore, to show her Larsan that same night in Tullio’s boat beneath the windows of the Square Tower. You can see how things that seem terribly complicated would become simple and logical if my suspicions proved to be correct.’

  At this, even I, who had seen and touched ‘Australia’, could not help shuddering as I looked almost pityingly at Darzac. Rouletabille’s arguments seemed so clearly to prove his guilt that we wondered how he would manage to establish his innocence. But Darzac, after being much agitated, now looked comparatively calm, and listened to the young man with the expression of a prisoner in a courtroom when the public prosecutor delivers one of those admirable addresses which prove, even to the prisoner himself, that he has committed a crime, of which however, he knows himself to be guiltless. When Darzac spoke, his voice bore no trace of anger, but was pregnant with the emotion one would imagine that an innocent man, just convicted of murder, might show.

  ‘But since you no longer suspect me,’ he said, ‘I should like to know, after all you have told me, what it was that removed your suspicions.’

  ‘For that, my dear sir, I required a certainty: a simple but absolute proof as to which of the two Darzacs was Larsan. This proof you yourself supplied when, after having stated that you bolted the door immediately on entering your room, which was the truth, you lied in not letting us know that you went to that room at six o’clock and not as Bernier said, and as we had seen for ourselves, at five o’clock. Don’t pretend that you attached no importance to the exact time, for the time would make it plain to you that another Darzac had entered the tower. And the Darzac who entered then was the real one. Your silence about this all-important difference in time betrayed you. What interest could the real Darzac have in hiding the fact that another Darzac, who might be Larsan, had come and hidden in the Square Tower before you came in? Larsan was the only one who could have a reason for concealing the knowledge that there was another Darzac besides himself. Of the two, the false and the real Darzac, the false one was necessarily the one who lied. Thus were my suspicions dispelled by a certainty. You were Larsan, and the man in the wardrobe was Darzac!’