CHAPTER VII
TWENTY-THREE MINUTES PAST TWELVE
The great hall that ran from Rue Raynouard to the upper terrace of the garden was filled to half its extent by a wide staircase and divided the Essarès house into two parts communicating only by way of the hall.
On the left were the drawing-room and the library, which was followed by an independent block containing a private staircase. On the right were a billiard-room and the dining-room, both with lower ceilings. Above these were Essarès Bey's bedroom, on the street side, and Coralie's, overlooking the garden. Beyond was the servants' wing, where old Siméon also used to sleep.
Patrice was asked to wait in the billiard-room, with the Senegalese. He had been there about a quarter of an hour when Siméon and the maid were shown in.
The old secretary seemed quite paralyzed by the death of his employer and was holding forth under his breath, making queer gestures as he spoke. Patrice asked him how things were going; and the old fellow whispered in his ear:
"It's not over yet.. There's something to fear.. to fear!.. To-day.. presently."
"Presently?" asked Patrice.
"Yes.. yes," said the old man, trembling.
He said nothing more. As for the housemaid, she readily told her story in reply to Patrice' questions:
"The first surprise, sir, this morning was that there was no butler, no footman, no porter. All the three were gone. Then, at half-past six, M. Siméon came and told us from the master that the master had locked himself in his library and that he wasn't to be disturbed even for breakfast. The mistress was not very well. She had her chocolate at nine o'clock… At ten o'clock she went out with M. Siméon. Then, after we had done the bedrooms, we never left the kitchen. Eleven o'clock came, twelve.. and, just as the hour was striking, we heard a loud ring at the front-door. I looked out of the window. There was a motor, with four gentlemen inside. I went to the door. The commissary of police explained who he was and wanted to see the master. I showed them the way. The library-door was locked. We knocked: no answer. We shook it: no answer. In the end, one of the gentlemen, who knew how, picked the lock… Then.. then.. you can imagine what we saw… But you can't, it was much worse, because the poor master at that moment had his head almost under the grate… Oh, what scoundrels they must have been!.. For they did kill him, didn't they? I know one of the gentlemen said at once that the master had died of a stroke and fallen into the fire. Only my firm belief is."
Old Siméon had listened without speaking, with his head still half wrapped up, showing only his bristly gray beard and his eyes hidden behind their yellow spectacles. But at this point of the story he gave a little chuckle, came up to Patrice and said in his ear:
"There's something to fear.. to fear!.. Mme. Coralie… Make her go away at once.. make her go away… If not, it'll be the worse for her.."
Patrice shuddered and tried to question him, but could learn nothing more. Besides, the old man did not remain. A policeman came to fetch him and took him to the library.
His evidence lasted a long time. It was followed by the depositions of the cook and the housemaid. Next, Coralie's evidence was taken, in her own room. At four o'clock another car arrived. Patrice saw two gentlemen pass into the hall, with everybody bowing very low before them. He recognized the minister of justice and the minister of the interior. They conferred in the library for half an hour and went away again.
At last, shortly before five o'clock, a policeman came for Patrice and showed him up to the first floor. The man tapped at a door and stood aside. Patrice entered a small boudoir, lit up by a wood fire by which two persons were seated: Coralie, to whom he bowed, and, opposite her, the gentleman who had spoken to him on his arrival and who seemed to be directing the whole enquiry.
He was a man of about fifty, with a thickset body and a heavy face, slow of movement, but with bright, intelligent eyes.
"The examining-magistrate, I presume, sir?" asked Patrice.
"No," he replied, "I am M. Masseron, a retired magistrate, specially appointed to clear up this affair.. not to examine it, as you think, for it does not seem to me that there is anything to examine."
"What?" cried Patrice, in great surprise. "Nothing to examine?"
He looked at Coralie, who kept her eyes fixed upon him attentively. Then she turned them on M. Masseron, who resumed:
"I have no doubt, Captain Belval, that, when we have said what we have to say, we shall be agreed at all points.. just as madame and I are already agreed."
"I don't doubt it either," said Patrice. "All the same, I am afraid that many of those points remain unexplained."
"Certainly, but we shall find an explanation, we shall find it together. Will you please tell me what you know?"
Patrice waited for a moment and then said:
"I will not disguise my astonishment, sir. The story which I have to tell is of some importance; and yet there is no one here to take it down. Is it not to count as evidence given on oath, as a deposition which I shall have to sign?"
"You yourself, captain, shall determine the value of your words and the innuendo which you wish them to bear. For the moment, we will look on this as a preliminary conversation, as an exchange of views relating to facts.. touching which Mme. Essarès has given me, I believe, the same information that you will be able to give me."
Patrice did not reply at once. He had a vague impression that there was a private understanding between Coralie and the magistrate and that, in face of that understanding, he, both by his presence and by his zeal, was playing the part of an intruder whom they would gladly have dismissed. He resolved therefore to maintain an attitude of reserve until the magistrate had shown his hand.
"Of course," he said, "I daresay madame has told you. So you know of the conversation which I overheard yesterday at the restaurant?"
"Yes."
"And the attempt to kidnap Mme. Essarès?"
"Yes."
"And the murder?."
"Yes."
"Mme. Essarès has described to you the blackmailing scene that took place last night, with M. Essarès for a victim, the details of the torture, the death of the colonel, the handing over of the four millions, the conversation on the telephone between M. Essarès and a certain Grégoire and, lastly, the threats uttered against madame by her husband?"
"Yes, Captain Belval, I know all this, that is to say, all that you know; and I know, in addition, all that I discovered through my own investigations."
"Of course, of course," Patrice repeated. "I see that my story becomes superfluous and that you are in possession of all the necessary factors to enable you to draw your conclusions." And, continuing to put rather than answer questions, he added, "May I ask what inference you have arrived at?"
"To tell you the truth, captain, my inferences are not definite. However, until I receive some proof to the contrary, I propose to remain satisfied with the actual words of a letter which M. Essarès wrote to his wife at about twelve o'clock this morning and which we found lying on his desk, unfinished. Mme. Essarès asked me to read it and, if necessary, to communicate the contents to you. Listen."
M. Masseron proceeded to read the letter aloud:
"Coralie,
"You were wrong yesterday to attribute my departure to reasons which I dared not acknowledge; and perhaps I also was wrong not to defend myself more convincingly against your accusation. The only motive for my departure is the hatred with which I am surrounded. You have seen how fierce it is. In the face of these enemies who are seeking to despoil me by every possible means, my only hope of salvation lies in flight. That is why I am going away.
"But let me remind you, Coralie, of my clearly expressed wish. You are to join me at the first summons. If you do not leave Paris then, nothing shall protect you against my lawful resentment: nothing, not even my death. I have made all my arrangements so that, even in the contingency."
"The letter ends there," said M. Masseron, handing it back to Coralie, "and we know by an unimpeachable sign that the last lines were written immediately before M. Essarès' death, because, in falling, he upset a little clock which stood on his desk and which marked twenty-three minutes past twelve. I assume that he felt unwell and that, on trying to rise, he was seized with a fit of giddiness and fell to the floor. Unfortunately, the fireplace was near, with a fierce fire blazing in it; his head struck the grate; and the wound that resulted was so deep – the surgeon testified to this – that he fainted. Then the fire close at hand did its work.. with the effects which you have seen.."
Patrice had listened in amazement to this unexpected explanation:
"Then in your opinion," he asked, "M. Essarès died of an accident? He was not murdered?"
"Murdered? Certainly not! We have no clue to support any such theory."
"Still."
"Captain Belval, you are the victim of an association of ideas which, I admit, is perfectly justifiable. Ever since yesterday you have been witnessing a series of tragic incidents; and your imagination naturally leads you to the most tragic solution, that of murder. Only – reflect – why should a murder have been committed? And by whom? By Bournef and his friends? With what object? They were crammed full with bank-notes; and, even admitting that the man called Grégoire recovered those millions from them, they would certainly not have got them back by killing M. Essarès. Then again, how would they have entered the house? And how can they have gone out?.. No, captain, you must excuse me, but M. Essarès died an accidental death. The facts are undeniable; and this is the opinion of the divisional surgeon, who will draw up his report in that sense."
Patrice turned to Coralie:
"Is it Mme. Essarès' opinion also?"
She reddened slightly and answered:
"Yes."
"And old Siméon's?"
"Oh," replied the magistrate, "old Siméon is wandering in his mind! To listen to him, you would think that everything was about to happen all over again, that Mme. Essarès is threatened with danger and that she ought to take to flight at once. That is all that I have been able to get out of him. However, he took me to an old disused door that opens out of the garden on a lane running at right angles with the Rue Raynouard; and here he showed me first the watch-dog's dead body and next some footprints between the door and the flight of steps near the library. But you know those foot-prints, do you not? They belong to you and your Senegalese. As for the death of the watch-dog, I can put that down to your Senegalese, can't I?"
Patrice was beginning to understand. The magistrate's reticence, his explanation, his agreement with Coralie: all this was gradually becoming plain. He put the question frankly:
"So there was no murder?"
"No."
"Then there will be no magistrate's examination?"
"No."
"And no talk about the matter; it will all be kept quiet, in short, and forgotten?"
"Just so."
Captain Belval began to walk up and down, as was his habit. He now remembered Essarès' prophecy:
"I sha'n't be arrested… If I am, I shall be let go… The matter will be hushed up.."
Essarès was right. The hand of justice was arrested; and there was no way for Coralie to escape silent complicity.
Patrice was intensely annoyed by the manner in which the case was being handled. It was certain that a compact had been concluded between Coralie and M. Masseron. He suspected the magistrate of circumventing Coralie and inducing her to sacrifice her own interests to other considerations. To effect this, the first thing was to get rid of him, Patrice.
"Ugh!" said Patrice to himself. "I'm fairly sick of this sportsman, with his cool ironical ways. It looks as if he were doing a considerable piece of thimblerigging at my expense."
He restrained himself, however, and, with a pretense of wanting to keep on good terms with the magistrate, came and sat down beside him:
"You must forgive me, sir," he said, "for insisting in what may appear to you an indiscreet fashion. But my conduct is explained not only by such sympathy or feeling as I entertain for Mme. Essarès at a moment in her life when she is more lonely than ever, a sympathy and feeling which she seems to repulse even more firmly than she did before. It is also explained by certain mysterious links which unite us to each other and which go back to a period too remote for our eyes to focus. Has Mme. Essarès told you those details? In my opinion, they are most important; and I cannot help associating them with the events that interest us."
M. Masseron glanced at Coralie, who nodded. He answered:
"Yes, Mme. Essarès has informed me and even."
He hesitated once more and again consulted Coralie, who flushed and seemed put out of countenance. M. Masseron, however, waited for a reply which would enable him to proceed. She ended by saying, in a low voice:
"Captain Belval is entitled to know what we have discovered. The truth belongs as much to him as to me; and I have no right to keep it from him. Pray speak, monsieur."
"I doubt if it is even necessary to speak," said the magistrate. "It will be enough, I think, to show the captain this photograph-album which I have found. Here you are, Captain Belval."
And he handed Patrice a very slender album, covered in gray canvas and fastened with an india-rubber band.
Patrice took it with a certain anxiety. But what he saw on opening it was so utterly unexpected that he gave an exclamation:
"It's incredible!"
On the first page, held in place by their four corners, were two photographs: one, on the right, representing a small boy in an Eton jacket; the other, on the left, representing a very little girl. There was an inscription under each. On the right: "Patrice, at ten." On the left: "Coralie, at three."
Moved beyond expression, Patrice turned the leaf. On the second page they appeared again, he at the age of fifteen, she at the age of eight. And he saw himself at nineteen and at twenty-three and at twenty-eight, always accompanied by Coralie, first as a little girl, then as a young girl, next as a woman.
"This is incredible!" he cried. "How is it possible? Here are portraits of myself which I had never seen, amateur photographs obviously, which trace my whole life. Here's one when I was doing my military training… Here I am on horseback.. Who can have ordered these photographs? And who can have collected them together with yours, madame?"
He fixed his eyes on Coralie, who evaded their questioning gaze and lowered her head as though the close connection between their two lives, to which those pages bore witness, had shaken her to the very depths of her being.
"Who can have brought them together?" he repeated. "Do you know? And where does the album come from?"
M. Masseron supplied the answer:
"It was the surgeon who found it. M. Essarès wore a vest under his shirt; and the album was in an inner pocket, a pocket sewn inside the vest. The surgeon felt the boards through it when he was undressing M. Essarès' body."
This time, Patrice's and Coralie's eyes met. The thought that M. Essarès had been collecting both their photographs during the past twenty years and that he wore them next to his breast and that he had lived and died with them upon him, this thought amazed them so much that they did not even try to fathom its strange significance.
"Are you sure of what you are saying, sir?" asked Patrice.
"I was there," said M. Masseron. "I was present at the discovery. Besides, I myself made another which confirms this one and completes it in a really surprising fashion. I found a pendant, cut out of a solid block of amethyst and held in a setting of filigree-work."
"What's that?" cried Captain Belval. "What's that? A pendant? An amethyst pendant?"
"Look for yourself, sir," suggested the magistrate, after once more consulting Mme. Essarès with a glance.
And he handed Captain Belval an amethyst pendant, larger than the ball formed by joining the two halves which Coralie and Patrice possessed, she on her rosary and he on his bunch of seals; and this new ball was encircled with a specimen of gold filigree-work exactly like that on the rosary and on the seal.
The setting served as a clasp.
"Am I to open it?" he asked.
Coralie nodded. He opened the pendant. The inside was divided by a movable glass disk, which separated two miniature photographs, one of Coralie as a nurse, the other of himself, wounded, in an officer's uniform.
Patrice reflected, with pale cheeks. Presently he asked:
"And where does this pendant come from? Did you find it, sir?"
"Yes, Captain Belval."
"Where?"
The magistrate seemed to hesitate. Coralie's attitude gave Patrice the impression that she was unaware of this detail. M. Masseron at last said:
"I found it in the dead man's hand."
"In the dead man's hand? In M. Essarès' hand?"
Patrice had given a start, as though under an unexpected blow, and was now leaning over the magistrate, greedily awaiting a reply which he wanted to hear for the second time before accepting it as certain.
"Yes, in his hand. I had to force back the clasped fingers in order to release it."
Belval stood up and, striking the table with his fist, exclaimed:
"Well, sir, I will tell you one thing which I was keeping back as a last argument to prove to you that my collaboration is of use; and this thing becomes of great importance after what we have just learnt. Sir, this morning some one asked to speak to me on the telephone; and I had hardly answered the call when this person, who seemed greatly excited, was the victim of a murderous assault, committed in my hearing. And, amid the sound of the scuffle and the cries of agony, I caught the following words, which the unhappy man insisted on trying to get to me as so many last instructions: 'Patrice!.. Coralie!.. The amethyst pendant… Yes, I have it on me… The pendant… Ah, it's too late!.. I should so much have liked… Patrice… Coralie..' There's what I heard, sir, and here are the two facts which we cannot escape. This morning, at nineteen minutes past seven, a man was murdered having upon him an amethyst pendant. This is the first undeniable fact. A few hours later, at twenty-three minutes past twelve, this same amethyst pendant is discovered clutched in the hand of another man. This is the second undeniable fact. Place these facts side by side and you are bound to come to the conclusion that the first murder, the one of which I caught the distant echo, was committed here, in this house, in the same library which, since yesterday evening, witnessed the end of every scene in the tragedy which we are contemplating."
This revelation, which in reality amounted to a fresh accusation against Essarès, seemed to affect the magistrate profoundly. Patrice had flung himself into the discussion with a passionate vehemence and a logical reasoning which it was impossible to disregard without evident insincerity.
Coralie had turned aside slightly and Patrice could not see her face; but he suspected her dismay in the presence of all this infamy and shame.
M. Masseron raised an objection:
"Two undeniable facts, you say, Captain Belval? As to the first point, let me remark that we have not found the body of the man who is supposed to have been murdered at nineteen minutes past seven this morning."
"It will be found in due course."
"Very well. Second point: as regards the amethyst pendant discovered in Essarès' hand, how can we tell that Essarès Bey found it in the murdered man's hand and not somewhere else? For, after all, we do not know if he was at home at that time and still less if he was in his library."
"But I do know."
"How?"
"I telephoned to him a few minutes later and he answered. More than that, to sweep away any trace of doubt, he told me that he had rung me up but that he had been cut off."
M. Masseron thought for a moment and then said:
"Did he go out this morning?"
"Ask Mme. Essarès."
Without turning round, manifestly wishing to avoid Belval's eyes, Coralie answered:
"I don't think that he went out. The suit he was wearing at the time of his death was an indoor suit."
"Did you see him after last night?"
"He came and knocked at my room three times this morning, between seven and nine o'clock. I did not open the door. At about eleven o'clock I started off alone; I heard him call old Siméon and tell him to go with me. Siméon caught me up in the street. That is all I know."
A prolonged silence ensued. Each of the three was meditating upon this strange series of adventures. In the end, M. Masseron, who had realized that a man of Captain Belval's stamp was not the sort to be easily thrust aside, spoke in the tone of one who, before coming to terms, wishes to know exactly what his adversary's last word is likely to be:
"Let us come to the point, captain. You are building up a theory which strikes me as very vague. What is it precisely? And what are you proposing to do if I decline to accept it? I have asked you two very plain questions. Do you mind answering them?"
"I will answer them, sir, as plainly as you put them."
He went up to the magistrate and said:
"Here, sir, is the field of battle and of attack – yes, of attack, if need be – which I select. A man who used to know me, who knew Mme. Essarès as a child and who was interested in both of us, a man who used to collect our portraits at different ages, who had reasons for loving us unknown to me, who sent me the key of that garden and who was making arrangements to bring us together for a purpose which he would have told us, this man was murdered at the moment when he was about to execute his plan. Now everything tells me that he was murdered by M. Essarès. I am therefore resolved to lodge an information, whatever the results of my action may be. And believe me, sir, my charge will not be hushed up. There are always means of making one's self heard.. even if I am reduced to shouting the truth from the house-tops."
M. Masseron burst out laughing:
"By Jove, captain, but you're letting yourself go!"
"I'm behaving according to my conscience; and Mme. Essarès, I feel sure, will forgive me. She knows that I am acting for her good. She knows that all will be over with her if this case is hushed up and if the authorities do not assist her. She knows that the enemies who threaten her are implacable. They will stop at nothing to attain their object and to do away with her, for she stands in their way. And the terrible thing about it is that the most clear-seeing eyes are unable to make out what that object is. We are playing the most formidable game against these enemies; and we do not even know what the stakes are. Only the police can discover those stakes."
M. Masseron waited for a second or two and then, laying his hand on Patrice's shoulder, said, calmly:
"And, suppose the authorities knew what the stakes were?"
Patrice looked at him in surprise:
"What? Do you mean to say you know?"
"Perhaps."
"And can you tell me?"
"Oh, well, if you force me to!"
"What are they?"
"Not much! A trifle!"
"But what sort of trifle?"
"A thousand million francs."
"A thousand millions?"
"Just that. A thousand millions, of which two-thirds, I regret to say, if not three-quarters, had already left France before the war. But the remaining two hundred and fifty or three hundred millions are worth more than a thousand millions all the same, for a very good reason."
"What reason?"
"They happen to be in gold."