am not setting a trap for you,” added M. Daburon; “I give you my word of honour. She has told me all, you understand?”
This time Albert decided to speak.
His explanations corresponded exactly with Claire’s; not one detail more. Henceforth, doubt was impossible.
Mademoiselle d’Arlange had not been imposed upon. Either Albert was innocent, or she was his accomplice.
Could she knowingly be the accomplice of such an odious crime? No; she could not even be suspected of it.
But who then was the assassin?
For, when a crime has been committed, justice demands a culprit.
“You see, sir,” said the magistrate severely to Albert, “you did deceive me. You risked your life, sir, and, what is also very serious, you exposed me, you exposed justice, to commit a most deplorable mistake. Why did you not tell me the truth at once?”
“Mademoiselle d’Arlange, sir,” replied Albert, “in according me a meeting, trusted in my honour.”
“And you would have died sooner than mention that interview?” interrupted M. Daburon with a touch of irony. “That is all very fine, sir, and worthy of the days of chivalry!”
“I am not the hero that you suppose, sir,” replied the prisoner simply. “If I told you that I did not count on Claire, I should be telling a falsehood. I was waiting for her. I knew that, on learning of my arrest, she would brave everything to save me. But her friends might have hid it from her; and that was what I feared. In that event, I do not think, so far as one can answer for oneself, that I should have mentioned her name.”
There was no appearance of bravado. What Albert said, he thought and felt. M. Daburon regretted his irony.
“Sir,” he said kindly, “you must return to your prison. I cannot release you yet; but you will be no longer in solitary confinement. You will be treated with every attention due to a prisoner whose innocence appears probable.”
Albert bowed, and thanked him; and was then removed.
“We are now ready for Gevrol,” said the magistrate to his clerk.
The chief of detectives was absent: he had been sent for from the Prefecture of Police; but his witness, the man with the earrings, was waiting in the passage.
He was told to enter.
He was one of those short, thick-set men, powerful as oaks, who look as though they could carry almost any weight on their broad shoulders.
His white hair and whiskers set off his features, hardened and tanned by the inclemency of the weather, the sea winds and the heat of the tropics.
He had large callous black hands, with big sinewy fingers which must have possessed the strength of a vice.
Great earrings in the form of anchors hung from his ears. He was dressed in the costume of a well-to-do Normandy fisherman, out for a holiday.
The clerk was obliged to push him into the office, for this son of the ocean was timid and abashed when on shore.
He advanced, balancing himself first on one leg, then on the other, with that irregular walk of the sailor, who, used to the rolling and tossing of the waves, is surprised to find anything immovable beneath his feet.
To give himself confidence, he fumbled over his soft felt hat, decorated with little lead medals, like the cap of king Louis XI. of devout memory, and also adorned with some if that worsted twist made by the young country girls, on a primitive frame composed of four or five pins stuck in a hollow cork.
M. Daburon examined him, and estimated him at a glance. There was no doubt but that he was the sunburnt man described by one of the witnesses at La Jonchere.
It was also impossible to doubt his honesty. His open countenance displayed sincerity and good nature.
“Your name?” demanded the investigating magistrate.
“Marie Pierre Lerouge.”
“Are you, then, related to Claudine Lerouge?”
“I am her husband, sir.”
What, the husband of the victim alive, and the police ignorant of his existence!
Thus thought M. Daburon.
What, then, does this wonderful progress in invention accomplish?
To-day, precisely as twenty years ago, when Justice is in doubt, it requires the same inordinate loss of time and money to obtain the slightest information.
On Friday, they had written to inquire about Claudine’s past life; it was now Monday, and no reply had arrived.
And yet photography was in existence, and the electric telegraph. They had at their service a thousand means, formerly unknown; and they made no use of them.
“Every one,” said the magistrate, “believed her a widow. She herself pretended to be one.”
“Yes, for in that way she partly excused her conduct. Besides, it was an arrangement between ourselves. I had told her that I would have nothing more to do with her.”
“Indeed? Well, you know that she is dead, victim of an odious crime?”
“The detective who brought me here told me of it, sir,” replied the sailor, his face darkening. “She was a wretch!” he added in a hollow voice.
“How? You, her husband, accuse her?”
“I have but too good reason to do so, sir. Ah, my dead father, who foresaw it all at the time, warned me! I laughed, when he said, ‘Take care, or she will dishonour us all.’ He was right. Through her, I have been hunted down by the police, just like some skulking thief. Everywhere that they inquired after me with their warrant, people must have said ‘Ah, ha, he has then committed some crime!’ And here I am before a magistrate! Ah, sir, what a disgrace! The Lerouges have been honest people, from father to son, ever since the world began. Inquire of all who have ever had dealings with me, they will tell you, ‘Lerouge’s word is as good as another man’s writing.’ Yes, she was a wicked woman; and I have often told her that she would come to a bad end.”
“You told her that?”
“More than a hundred times, sir.”
“Why? Come, my friend, do not be uneasy, your honour is not at stake here, no one questions it. When did you warn her so wisely?”
“Ah, a long time ago, sir,” replied the sailor, “the first time was more than thirty years back. She had ambition even in her blood; she wished to mix herself up in the intrigues of the great. It was that that ruined her. She said that one got money for keeping secrets; and I said that one got disgraced and that was all. To help the great to hide their villainies, and to expect happiness from it, is like making your bed of thorns, in the hope of sleeping well. But she had a will of her own.”
“You were her husband, though,” objected M. Daburon, “you had the right to command her obedience.”
The
