The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Page 9

  ‘Are you positive?’ exclaimed M. Darzac.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ I asked.

  ‘Bah!’ replied Rouletabille ‘There was the mark left by the bow on the beach, and I found in the sand the little portable stove that Tullio uses when he goes out after octopus on calm nights. The Custom House officers recognised it as being his.’

  ‘There can be no doubt about it,’ continued Darzac: ‘Larsan is at Rochers Rouges.’

  ‘Well, if he got off the boat at Rochers Rouges, he did not come back this way,’ said Rouletabille. ‘Both the Customs House buildings are on the narrow road leading into France, and it is impossible for anyone to pass that way, night or day, without being seen. As you know, the red rocks form a natural barrier about three hundred yards from the frontier. The road there runs between the rocks, which are in the form of a steep cliff some one hundred and eighty feet high, and the sea.’

  ‘Surely,’ said Rance, who appeared mystified, ‘he can’t have climbed up the cliff?’

  ‘He must have hidden in a cave,’ replied Darzac. ‘There are some pretty deep ones in the cliff.’

  ‘So I thought,’ said Rouletabille ‘I therefore sent Bernier back, and went on alone.’

  ‘How very imprudent!’ I said.

  ‘Not at all. It was prudence that made me do so,’ replied Rouletabille, correcting me. ‘I had certain things to say to Larsan that I did not wish to be heard by a third party. So, then, I went back to the caves at Rochers Rouges and called Larsan.’

  ‘You called him!’ exclaimed Rance.

  ‘Yes, I called to him in the twilight and waved my handkerchief like a flag of truce. But either he did not see my flag or he did not hear me, for he made no answer.’

  ‘Perhaps he was no longer there,’ I suggested.

  ‘I’m not so sure. I heard a noise in one of the caves.’

  ‘Did you go in?’ asked Rance excitedly.

  ‘No,’ Rouletabille answered quietly. ‘But don’t imagine that it was because I was afraid of him.’

  ‘Let’s go there at once,’ we all cried, springing up, ‘and settle this business immediately!’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Rance, ‘that we have never had a better opportunity to lay hold of Larsan, and in a spot like that we won’t have much difficulty in dealing with him as we want.’

  Darzac and Rance were ready to start, but I waited to hear what Rouletabille would say. Quite calmly he asked them to sit down.

  ‘We must bear in mind,’ he said, ‘that Larsan would have acted otherwise if his object had not been to draw us off to Rochers Rouges tonight. He shows himself to us, he goes ashore almost before our very eyes at Point Garibaldi. He couldn’t have been more eloquent or explicit if he had shouted out as he passed our windows: “I’ll be at Rochers Rouges. I shall expect you. Come along!” ’

  ‘You went to Rochers Rouges,’ said Rance, who seemed greatly impressed by Rouletabille’s argument, ‘and he did not appear. He is hiding preparatory to committing some abominable crime tonight. He must be flushed out of there.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rouletabille, ‘my excursion to Rochers Rouges produced no result, because I went alone, but if we were all to go, we might discover a result on our return.’

  ‘On our return?’ asked Darzac, who seemed not to understand.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Rouletabille ‘When we get back to the castle where we would have left Madame Darzac by herself, we might find she was no longer here. Oh,’ he went on, in the midst of the general silence, ‘this is merely a hypothesis, but, under the present circumstances, we cannot reason otherwise!’

  We stared at each other, overwhelmed by such a conjecture. If it had not been for Rouletabille, we would certainly have made a great, possibly disastrous mistake.

  Rouletabille stood up thoughtfully, and finally said:

  ‘Well, the best thing we can do tonight is to barricade ourselves in. This is merely a temporary barricade, for tomorrow I want the place to be absolutely secure. I have had the iron door closed, and have asked Old Jacques to guard it. I have posted Mattoni as sentinel in the chapel. I have built a barrier here under the gatehouse. which is the only vulnerable spot in the second enclosure, and I mean to guard that barrier myself. Bernier will sit up all night at the door of the Square Tower, and his wife, who has good eyesight, which I have improved still further by presenting her with a spyglass, will remain until tomorrow morning on the platform in the tower. Sainclair is to take up his position in the little palm arbour on the top of the Round Tower. From there he can overlook the second courtyard, the ramparts and battlements. Mr Rance and M. Darzac are to patrol the ramparts – one on the east, the other on the west – which flank the first courtyard facing the sea.

  Our duties will be arduous tonight, because we are not properly organised. Tomorrow we will draw up a list of our little garrison and the reliable servants upon whom we can positively depend. If there are any whom we have reason to doubt, they shall be dismissed. This little space will be converted into a secret arsenal, where we will store in readiness all the revolvers and rifles that we have to hand. Later, we will distribute them among ourselves, according to the needs of the occasion. Our orders are to shoot anyone refusing to answer the guard’s challenge and make himself known. No password has been chosen, for none is needed. In order to pass, all you need to do is to call out your name and show your face.

  Tomorrow, I shall set up at the inner entrance the iron grating which, until this evening, sealed the outer entrance of the northern gate, the outer being henceforth closed by the iron doors. In the daytime, tradespeople will be able to penetrate only as far as the grating, and will have to leave their goods in the little lodge, where Old Jacques has now taken up his quarters. Every night at seven o’clock the iron doors will be closed.

  Tomorrow morning, Mr Rance is to call in a number of masons and carpenters, who will on no account be permitted to go beyond the gatehouse in the second enclosure. On their arrival, and at their departure, these workmen will be counted, and they must be gone at the latest by seven o’clock. They will have only a day to complete the work that they have been called in to do and which will consist in building me a door for my gatehouse, in repairing a slight breach in the wall which joins the new Castle to Charles the Bold’s Tower, and another small breach near the old Round Tower in the corner [B on the plan] at the northwestern corner of the courtyard. After that I shall feel more secure, and Madame Darzac, who has been forbidden to leave the castle until further notice, being well protected, I shall be able to attempt a sortie, a serious reconnoitring expedition in search of Larsan’s camp.

  Now then, Mr Rance, bring me all the weapons you can gather together tonight. I have lent my revolver to Bernier, who is standing guard over Madame Darzac’s door.’

  Anyone ignorant of what had taken place at Glandier and hearing Rouletabille talk would doubtless have taken us all for a pack of lunatics. But, I repeat, anyone who had lived through the mysterious events at Glandier would have done as I did, loaded his revolver and awaited the dawn.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Concerning the history of Jean Roussel-Larsan-Ballmeyer

  In another hour we were all at our posts, pacing the ramparts and keeping a sharp watch on the earth, the sea and the sky, listening anxiously to the slightest noises of the night, the whispering of the waves and of the wind, which began to blow at around three o’clock in the morning. Mrs Rance had got up and joined Rouletabille in the gatehouse. The young man called me, set me to guard the gatehouse and Mrs Rance, and went off on a tour of inspection. Our hostess was in the most charming humour. Refreshed by sleep, she seemed hugely amused at her husband’s pale face, and brought him a whisky and soda.

  ‘Oh, what fun!’ she exclaimed, clapping her little hands. ‘What fun! How I should like to see that man Larsan!’

  A chill ran down my spine when she said that. There are some romantic little souls who really do tempt fate! If only she knew!

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bsp; I spent two delightful hours with Mrs Rance, telling her dreadful tales about Larsan, every one of which was true. While I am about it, I might as well take this opportunity to acquaint the reader with the nature of this fiend. Since he reaches new and unbelievable heights of audacity in the part he has to play, I deem it my duty to prove that I am merely the truthful reporter of a case unequalled in the annals of criminology and that I have not drawn upon my imagination in the slightest degree. Moreover, even were I tempted to elaborate, Rouletabille would make short work of my embroideries.

  The interests at stake are so great, and the facts I am about to detail so grave, that I have no choice but to adhere to the plain truth, even though, at times, it is somewhat common-place. I must therefore ask those who think they are reading some trumped-up detective yarn to refer back to the reports of the Versailles trial.

  The concluding speeches of Maître Henri-Robert and Maître André Hesse, who defended M. Robert Darzac, were masterpieces which must have been set down by the court reporters, and of which they have no doubt kept copies. It must not be forgotten, however, that long before Fate threw Larsan-Ballmeyer and Joseph Rouletabille together in a memorable struggle, that elegant scoundrel had given the police authorities a great deal of trouble.

  One has only to open the Court Gazette or glance through the reports in the newspapers published on the day when Ballmeyer was condemned by the Seine Court of Assizes to ten years’ hard labour, to become fully acquainted with the kind of man we are dealing with. It will then be readily understood that nothing can be left to the imagination concerning a man with a history such as that. Rouletabille’s reasons for placing a drawbridge between Larsan-Ballmeyer and Madame Darzac then become obvious.

  M. Albert Bataille, of Le Figaro, who has published a book on famous trials, has devoted some interesting pages to Ballmeyer.

  Ballmeyer had a happy childhood. He did not become a swindler, as so many others have done, through poverty. He was the son of a rich commission agent and could well have chosen a different career. While still a young man, he chose the profession of swindler as others might have chosen that of civil engineer. The story seems incredible. Ballmeyer got possession of a registered letter addressed to his father’s firm. He then set off for Lyon with the stolen money and wrote a letter to his father:

  ‘Sir, I am a retired soldier. My son is a post office employee, and, in order to pay a gambling debt, he stole a letter addressed to you. I have consulted the other members of our family and, in a few days, we should be able to collect together the money necessary to repay you. You yourself are a father. Have pity upon one who is also a parent! Do not ruin an otherwise unspotted reputation!’

  M. Ballmeyer nobly granted delays. He is still waiting for the first instalment, or, rather, not any more, for, ten years later, a sensational trial revealed to him who the real culprit was.

  According to M. Bataille, Ballmeyer seems to have been endowed by nature with all the attributes that go towards the making of an accomplished swindler. He had a prodigiously agile brain, the gift of deceiving the unwary, a sense of drama, a genius for disguise and an eye for detail; he was so meticulous that he even had his clothing marked with the appropriate initials every time he saw fit to change his name. But his chief characteristic, in addition to his defiance of the law and his extraordinary aptitude for escaping, was the delight he took in denouncing imaginary culprits, to the utter confusion of examining magistrates.

  Here are some of his most noteworthy achievements:

  Whilst doing his military service, he stole the contents of his company’s safe and accused his superior officer of the deed.

  He stole forty thousand pounds from the firm of Furet Brothers, and denounced M. Furet to the examining magistrates as having himself committed the deed. The Furet case will long be remembered as ‘The Telephone Affair’. Nothing cleverer has ever been recorded in the annals of swindling.

  Ballmeyer purloined a draft of forty thousand pounds from the mail of Furet Brothers, who were commission agents with offices in Rue Poissonnière, where they had allowed him to take up his quarters. Pretending to be M. Edmond Furet, he telephoned from the office in Rue Poissonnière to a M. Cohen, a banker, asking him if he would be willing to cash the draft. M. Cohen replied in the affirmative, and, ten minutes later, Ballmeyer, having cut the telephone wire to prevent further communication, collected the money through a fellow named Rivaud, whose acquaintance he had made in Africa, whither both had been sent as the result of dishonest dealings while serving in the same regiment.

  He took the lion’s share and then went to the authorities and denounced Rivaud, and, as I have said, the victim of the theft, M. Edmond Furet.

  An extraordinary scene then took place in the presence of M. Espierre, the examining magistrate.

  ‘Come now, my dear Furet!’ said Ballmeyer to the bewildered man. ‘It grieves me to have to accuse you, but you owe it to justice to tell the truth. Why not own up? It is not, after all, such a dreadful business. You needed those forty thousand pounds to settle a bet, and you simply made your firm pay for it. You know perfectly well that you telephoned M. Cohen.’

  ‘I did?’ shouted M. Furet, in amazement.

  ‘You can’t deny it. He recognised your voice.’

  The unfortunate victim spent a week in Mazas Prison, and the police furnished the most incriminating report concerning him, but eventually, Maître Cruppi, then Public Prosecutor and now Minister of Commerce, was compelled to offer M. Furet the court’s apologies. As for Rivaud, he was condemned, in absentia, to twenty years’ hard labour.

  Many more instances of a similar nature might be told concerning Ballmeyer. In those days, before he went in for tragedy, he devoted himself to comedy, and what comedy! The story of one of his escapes is an example. Nothing could be more comic than the tale of the prisoner who drew up a long, dull petition, solely for the purpose of being able to spread it out on the judge’s desk, and, by disturbing the papers on it, get a glimpse of the manner in which the orders for release were drawn up.

  When he got back to the prison, the felon wrote a letter, which he signed ‘Villiers,’ in which, using the conventional formulae which he had memorised, he begged the governor of the prison to set the prisoner Ballmeyer free without delay. But the letter lacked the official seal.

  Ballmeyer was not to be put off by such a trivial fact. The next day he appeared again before the judge, with his letter in his sleeve. He loudly declared his innocence, raised his voice, gesticulated wildly and, catching up the seal which lay near at hand and thumping with it on the table, managed to upset the inkstand over the guard’s blue trousers.

  While the unhappy guard was being helped to wipe the ink from his trousers by the magistrate and the clerk of the court, Ballmeyer, took advantage of the general confusion, stamped the seal upon his letter and added his protestations of regret to the prevailing hubbub.

  The trick worked. The felon marched out, tossed the letter, duly signed and bearing the official seal, to the guards as he went.

  ‘What does M. Villiers take me for,’ he said, ‘making me carry his papers for him? Does he think I’m his servant?’

  The guards picked up the precious paper and it was conveyed to the addressee. It was an order for Ballmeyer’s immediate release. That same evening he was free.

  That was his second escape. When he was arrested for the Furet theft, he got away by tripping up the guard who was in charge of him and throwing pepper in his eyes, and that very night, in black tie and tails, he attended the opening night of a new play at the Comédie Française.

  Once before, when he had been condemned to ten years’ penal servitude by the military authorities for having stolen the cashbox from the regimental safe, he had almost succeeded in escaping by hiding in a sack of wastepaper. Unfortunately, no one came to cart the paper away, and his plan failed.

  There would be no end to this story, however, if I were to relate all of Ballmeyer’s marvellous adventures. />
  First as Comte de Maupas, then as Vicomte Drouet d’Erlon, and as Comte de Bonneville, a dashing, handsome gambler, he frequented various watering-places, such as Biarritz, Aix-les-Bains and Lucon, where he would sometimes lose as much as ten thousand francs in one evening at the club. He was always surrounded by pretty women, who competed for his smiles, for this clever swindler was also a fascinating Don Juan. Do you understand, now, what manner of man he was?

  Well, it was this man that Rouletabille was about to do battle with.

  I thought that evening that I had finally been able to make Mrs Rance understand the sort of person this famous criminal was. She listened to me so silently that I was impressed. Then, when I leaned towards her, I saw she was asleep. This incident might have caused me to feel somewhat hurt, had it not given me the opportunity to gaze undisturbed upon her beauty; this, in turn, awoke in my heart feelings which, later, I tried in vain to dispel.

  The night passed without incident. When day finally dawned, I heaved a sigh of relief, but Rouletabille would not let me go to bed until eight o’clock, when he had organised his day-watch. He was already in the midst of the workmen, who were busily engaged in repairing the breach in the wall near Tower B.

  So promptly and well was the work carried out that by the evening of that same day, Chateau d’Hercule was now Fort Hercules, as tightly sealed as it appears to be in the plan. Seated on a mound that morning, with his drawing-board on his knees, Rouletabille was already sketching the plan which I have submitted to the reader, and while I, worn out with my night’s watch, sat blinking foolishly, he said to me:

  ‘Just think of it, Sainclair, these idiots think I’m fortifying the place like this for the purposes of defence! Well, that’s only partly true, for I have shut myself in like this so that I will be able to reason. I’m sealing up any breaches not so much because I want to keep Larsan from getting in, as because I don’t want my reason to get out. Now, for example, I couldn’t reason in a forest. How can you possibly reason in a forest? Your reason escapes in every direction. But in a fortified castle, tightly shut in, my friend, it’s like being a safe. If you’re inside and you’re not crazy, your reason will have to find itself!’