The Hollow Needle, Page 2

“We shall see.”

  At that moment, the Comte de Gesvres entered, accompanied by the doctor. The count, who did not seem to feel the effects of the attack to which he had been subjected, welcomed the two officials. Then he opened the door of the boudoir.

  This room, which no one had been allowed to enter since the discovery of the crime, differed from the drawing room inasmuch as it presented a scene of the greatest disorder. Two chairs were overturned, one of the tables smashed to pieces and several objects—a traveling-clock, a portfolio, a box of stationery—lay on the floor. And there was blood on some of the scattered pieces of note-paper.

  The doctor turned back the sheet that covered the corpse. Jean Daval, dressed in his usual velvet suit, with a pair of nailed boots on his feet, lay stretched on his back, with one arm folded beneath him. His collar and tie had been removed and his shirt opened, revealing a large wound in the chest.

  “Death must have been instantaneous,” declared the doctor. “One blow of the knife was enough.”

  “It was, no doubt, the knife which I saw on the drawing room mantelpiece, next to a leather cap?” said the examining magistrate.

  “Yes,” said the Comte de Gesvres, “the knife was picked up here. It comes from the same trophy in the drawing room from which my niece, Mlle. de Saint-Veran, snatched the gun. As for the chauffeur’s cap, that evidently belongs to the murderer.”

  M. Filleul examined certain further details in the room, put a few questions to the doctor and then asked M. de Gesvres to tell him what he had seen and heard. The count worded his story as follows:

  “Jean Daval woke me up. I had been sleeping badly, for that matter, with gleams of consciousness in which I seemed to hear noises, when, suddenly opening my eyes, I saw Daval standing at the foot of my bed, with his candle in his hand and fully dressed—as he is now, for he often worked late into the night. He seemed greatly excited and said, in a low voice: ‘There’s some one in the drawing room.’ I heard a noise myself. I got up and softly pushed the door leading to this boudoir. At the same moment, the door over there, which opens into the big drawing room, was thrown back and a man appeared who leaped at me and stunned me with a blow on the temple. I am telling you this without any details, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, for the simple reason that I remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon one another with extraordinary swiftness.”

  “And after that?—”

  “After that, I don’t know—I fainted. When I came to, Daval lay stretched by my side, mortally wounded.”

  “At first sight, do you suspect no one?”

  “No one.”

  “You have no enemy?”

  “I know of none.”

  “Nor M. Daval either?”

  “Daval! An enemy? He was the best creature that ever lived. M. Daval was my secretary for twenty years and, I may say, my confidant; and I have never seen him surrounded with anything but love and friendship.”

  “Still, there has been a burglary and there has been a murder: there must be a motive for all that.”

  “The motive? Why, it was robbery pure and simple.”

  “Robbery? Have you been robbed of something, then?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “In that case—?”

  “In that case, if they have stolen nothing and if nothing is missing, they at least took something away.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. But my daughter and my niece will tell you, with absolute certainty, that they saw two men in succession cross the park and that those two men were carrying fairly heavy loads.”

  “The young ladies—”

  “The young ladies may have been dreaming, you think? I should be tempted to believe it, for I have been exhausting myself in inquiries and suppositions ever since this morning. However, it is easy enough to question them.”

  The two cousins were sent for to the big drawing room. Suzanne, still quite pale and trembling, could hardly speak. Raymonde, who was more energetic, more of a man, better looking, too, with the golden glint in her brown eyes, described the events of the night and the part which she had played in them.

  “So I may take it, mademoiselle, that your evidence is positive?”

  “Absolutely. The men who went across the park were carrying things away with them.”

  “And the third man?”

  “He went from here empty-handed.”

  “Could you describe him to us?”

  “He kept on dazzling us with the light of his lantern. All that I could say is that he is tall and heavily built.”

  “Is that how he appeared to you, mademoiselle?” asked the magistrate, turning to Suzanne de Gesvres.

  “Yes—or, rather, no,” said Suzanne, reflecting. “I thought he was about the middle height and slender.”

  M. Filleul smiled; he was accustomed to differences of opinion and sight in witnesses to one and the same fact:

  “So we have to do, on the one hand, with a man, the one in the drawing room, who is, at the same time, tall and short, stout and thin, and, on the other, with two men, those in the park, who are accused of removing from that drawing room objects—which are still here!”

  M. Filleul was a magistrate of the ironic school, as he himself would say. He was also a very ambitious magistrate and one who did not object to an audience nor to an occasion to display his tactful resource in public, as was shown by the increasing number of persons who now crowded into the room. The journalists had been joined by the farmer and his son, the gardener and his wife, the indoor servants of the chateau and the two cabmen who had driven the flies from Dieppe.

  M. Filleul continued:

  “There is also the question of agreeing upon the way in which the third person disappeared. Was this the gun you fired, mademoiselle, and from this window?”

  “Yes. The man reached the tombstone which is almost buried under the brambles, to the left of the cloisters.”

  “But he got up again?”

  “Only half. Victor ran down at once to guard the little door and I followed him, leaving the second footman, Albert, to keep watch here.”

  Albert now gave his evidence and the magistrate concluded:

  “So, according to you, the wounded man was not able to escape on the left, because your fellow-servant was watching the door, nor on the right, because you would have seen him cross the lawn. Logically, therefore, he is, at the present moment, in the comparatively restricted space that lies before our eyes.”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “And you, mademoiselle?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I, too,” said Victor.

  The deputy prosecutor exclaimed, with a leer:

  “The field of inquiry is quite narrow. We have only to continue the search commenced four hours ago.”

  “We may be more fortunate.”

  M. Filleul took the leather cap from the mantel, examined it and, beckoning to the sergeant of gendarmes, whispered:

  “Sergeant, send one of your men to Dieppe at once. Tell him to go to Maigret, the hatter, in the Rue de la Barre, and ask M. Maigret to tell him, if possible, to whom this cap was sold.”

  The “field of inquiry,” in the deputy’s phrase, was limited to the space contained between the house, the lawn on the right and the angle formed by the left wall and the wall opposite the house, that is to say, a quadrilateral of about a hundred yards each way, in which the ruins of Ambrumesy, the famous mediaeval monastery, stood out at intervals.

  They at once noticed the traces left by the fugitive in the trampled grass. In two places, marks of blackened blood, now almost dried up, were observed. After the turn at the end of the cloisters, there was nothing more to be seen, as the nature of the ground, here covered with pine-needles, did not lend itself to the imprint of a body. But, in that case, how had the wounded man succeeded in escaping the eyes of Raymonde, Victor and Albert? There was nothing but a few brakes, wh
ich the servants and the gendarmes had beaten over and over again, and a number of tombstones, under which they had explored. The examining magistrate made the gardener, who had the key, open the chapel, a real gem of carving, a shrine in stone which had been respected by time and the revolutionaries, and which, with the delicate sculpture work of its porch and its miniature population of statuettes, was always looked upon as a marvelous specimen of the Norman-Gothic style. The chapel, which was very simple in the interior, with no other ornament than its marble altar, offered no hiding-place. Besides, the fugitive would have had to obtain admission. And by what means?

  The inspection brought them to the little door in the wall that served as an entrance for the visitors to the ruins. It opened on a sunk road running between the park wall and a copsewood containing some abandoned quarries. M. Filleul stooped forward: the dust of the road bore marks of anti-skid pneumatic tires. Raymonde and Victor remembered that, after the shot, they had seemed to hear the throb of a motor car.

  The magistrate suggested:

  “The man must have joined his confederates.”

  “Impossible!” cried Victor. “I was here while mademoiselle and Albert still had him in view.”

  “Nonsense, he must be somewhere! Outside or inside: we have no choice!”

  “He is here,” the servants insisted, obstinately.

  The magistrate shrugged his shoulders and went back to the house in a more or less sullen mood. There was no doubt that it was an unpromising case. A theft in which nothing had been stolen; an invisible prisoner: what could be less satisfactory?

  It was late. M. de Gesvres asked the officials and the two journalists to stay to lunch. They ate in silence and then M. Filleul returned to the drawing room, where he questioned the servants. But the sound of a horse’s hoofs came from the courtyard and, a moment after, the gendarme who had been sent to Dieppe entered.

  “Well, did you see the hatter?” exclaimed the magistrate, eager at last to obtain some positive information.

  “I saw M. Maigret. The cap was sold to a cab-driver.”

  “A cab-driver!”

  “Yes, a driver who stopped his fly before the shop and asked to be supplied with a yellow-leather chauffeur’s cap for one of his customers. This was the only one left. He paid for it, without troubling about the size, and drove off. He was in a great hurry.”

  “What sort of fly was it?”

  “A calash.”

  “And on what day did this happen?”

  “On what day? Why, to-day, at eight o’clock this morning.”

  “This morning? What are you talking about?”

  “The cap was bought this morning.”

  “But that’s impossible, because it was found last night in the park. If it was found there, it must have been there; and, consequently, it must have been bought before.”

  “The hatter told me it was bought this morning.”

  There was a moment of general bewilderment. The nonplussed magistrate strove to understand. Suddenly, he started, as though struck with a gleam of light:

  “Fetch the cabman who brought us here this morning! The man who drove the calash! Fetch him at once!”

  The sergeant of gendarmes and his subordinate ran off to the stables. In a few minutes, the sergeant returned alone.

  “Where’s the cabman?”

  “He asked for food in the kitchen, ate his lunch and then—”

  “And then—?”

  “He went off.”

  “With his fly?”

  “No. Pretending that he wanted to go and see a relation at Ouville, he borrowed the groom’s bicycle. Here are his hat and greatcoat.”

  “But did he leave bare-headed?”

  “No, he took a cap from his pocket and put it on.”

  “A cap?”

  “Yes, a yellow leather cap, it seems.”

  “A yellow leather cap? Why, no, we’ve got it here!”

  “That’s true, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, but his is just like it.”

  The deputy sniggered:

  “Very funny! Most amusing! There are two caps—One, the real one, which constituted our only piece of evidence, has gone off on the head of the sham flyman! The other, the false one, is in your hands. Oh, the fellow has had us nicely!”

  “Catch him! Fetch him back!” cried M. Filleul. “Two of your men on horseback, Sergeant Quevillon, and at full speed!”

  “He is far away by this time,” said the deputy.

  “He can be as far as he pleases, but still we must lay hold of him.”

  “I hope so; but I think, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that your efforts should be concentrated here above all. Would you mind reading this scrap of paper, which I have just found in the pocket of the coat?”

  “Which coat?”

  “The driver’s.”

  And the deputy prosecutor handed M. Filleul a piece of paper, folded in four, containing these few words written in pencil, in a more or less common hand:

  “Woe betide the young lady, if she has killed the governor!”

  The incident caused a certain stir.

  “A word to the wise!” muttered the deputy. “We are now forewarned.”

  “Monsieur le Comte,” said the examining magistrate, “I beg you not to be alarmed. Nor you either, mademoiselle. This threat is of no importance, as the police are on the spot. We shall take every precaution and I will answer for your safety. As for you, gentlemen. I rely on your discretion. You have been present at this inquiry, thanks to my excessive kindness toward the Press, and it would be making me an ill return—”

  He interrupted himself, as though an idea had struck him, looked at the two young men, one after the other, and, going up to the first, asked:

  “What paper do you represent, sir?”

  “The Journal de Rouen.”

  “Have you your credentials?”

  “Here.”

  The card was in order. There was no more to be said. M. Filleul turned to the other reporter:

  “And you, sir?”

  “I?”

  “Yes, you: what paper do you belong to?”

  “Why, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I write for a number of papers—all over the place—”

  “Your credentials?”

  “I haven’t any.”

  “Oh! How is that?”

  “For a newspaper to give you a card, you have to be on its regular staff.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I am only an occasional contributor, a free-lance. I send articles to this newspaper and that. They are published or declined according to circumstances.”

  “In that case, what is your name? Where are your papers?”

  “My name would tell you nothing. As for papers, I have none.”

  “You have no paper of any kind to prove your profession!”

  “I have no profession.”

  “But look here, sir,” cried the magistrate, with a certain asperity, “you can’t expect to preserve your incognito after introducing yourself here by a trick and surprising the secrets of the police!”

  “I beg to remark, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that you asked me nothing when I came in, and that therefore I had nothing to say. Besides, it never struck me that your inquiry was secret, when everybody was admitted—including even one of the criminals!”

  He spoke softly, in a tone of infinite politeness. He was quite a young man, very tall, very slender and dressed without the least attempt at fashion, in a jacket and trousers both too small for him. He had a pink face like a girl’s, a broad forehead topped with close-cropped hair, and a scrubby and ill-trimmed fair beard. His bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. He seemed not in the least embarrassed and wore a pleasant smile, free from any shade of banter.

  M. Filleul looked at him with an aggressive air of distrust. The two gendarmes came forward. The young man exclaimed, gaily:

  “Monsieur le Juge d
’Instruction, you clearly suspect me of being an accomplice. But, if that were so, would I not have slipped away at the right moment, following the example of my fellow-criminal?”

  “You might have hoped—”

  “Any hope would have been absurd. A moment’s reflection, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, will make you agree with me that, logically speaking—”

  M. Filleul looked him straight in the eyes and said, sharply:

  “No more jokes! Your name?”

  “Isidore Beautrelet.”

  “Your occupation?”

  “Sixth-form pupil at the Lycee Janson-de-Sailly.”

  M. Filleul opened a pair of startled eyes.

  “What are you talking about? Sixth-form pupil—”

  “At the Lycee Janson, Rue de la Pompe, number—”

  “Oh, look here,” exclaimed M. Filleul, “you’re trying to take me in! This won’t do, you know; a joke can go too far!”

  “I must say, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that your astonishment surprises me. What is there to prevent my being a sixth-form pupil at the Lycee Janson? My beard, perhaps? Set your mind at ease: my beard is false!”

  Isidore Beautrelet pulled off the few curls that adorned his chin, and his beardless face appeared still younger and pinker, a genuine schoolboy’s face. And, with a laugh like a child’s, revealing his white teeth:

  “Are you convinced now?” he asked. “Do you want more proofs? Here, you can read the address on these letters from my father: ‘To Monsieur Isidore Beautrelet, Indoor Pupil, Lycee Janson-de-Sailly.’”

  Convinced or not, M. Filleul did not look as if he liked the story. He asked, gruffly:

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Why—I’m—I’m improving my mind.”

  “There are schools for that: yours, for instance.”

  “You forget, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that this is the twenty-third of April and that we are in the middle of the Easter holidays.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I have every right to spend my holidays as I please.”

  “Your father—”

  “My father lives at the other end of the country, in Savoy, and he himself advised me to take a little trip on the North Coast.”

  “With a false beard?”