The Greatest Works of Émile Gaboriau. Emile Gaboriau
approached the window, and began to study the pasted words with all the scrupulous attention which an antiquarian would devote to an old, half-effaced manuscript.
“Small type,” he said, “very slender and clear; the paper is thin and glossy. Consequently, these words have not been cut from a newspaper, magazine, or even a novel. I have seen type like this, I recognize it at once; Didot often uses it, so does Mme. de Tours.”
He stopped with his mouth open, and eyes fixed, appealing laboriously to his memory.
Suddenly he struck his forehead exultantly.
“Now I have it!” he cried; “now I have it! Why did I not see it at once? These words have all been cut from a prayer-book. We will look, at least, and then we shall be certain.”
He moistened one of the words pasted on the paper with his tongue, and, when it was sufficiently softened, he detached it with a pin. On the other side of this word was printed a Latin word, Deus.
“Ah, ha,” he said with a little laugh of satisfaction. “I knew it. Father Taberet would be pleased to see this. But what has become of the mutilated prayer-book? Can it have been burned? No, because a heavy-bound book is not easily burned. It is thrown in some corner.”
M. Verduret was interrupted by the porter, who returned with the messenger from the Rue Pigalle.
“Ah, here you are,” he said encouragingly. Then he showed the envelope of the letter, and said:
“Do you remember bringing this letter here this morning?”
“Perfectly, monsieur. I took particular notice of the direction; we don’t often see anything like it.”
“Who told you to bring it? a gentleman, or a lady?”
“Neither, monsieur; it was a porter.”
This reply made the porter laugh very much, but not a muscle of M. Verduret’s face moved.
“A porter? Well, do you know this colleague of yours.”
“I never even saw him before.”
“How does he look?”
“He was neither tall nor short; he wore a green vest, and his medal.”
“Your description is so vague that it would suit every porter in the city; but did your colleague tell you who sent the letter?”
“No, monsieur. He only put ten sous in my hand, and said, ‘Here, carry this to No. 39, Rue Chaptal: a coachman on the boulevard handed it to me.’ Ten sous! I warrant you he made more than that by it.”
This answer seemed to disconcert M. Verduret. So many precautions taken in sending the letter disturbed him, and disarranged his plans.
“Do you think you would recognize the porter again?”
“Yes, monsieur, if I saw him.”
“How much do you gain a day as a porter?”
“I can’t tell exactly; but my corner is a good stand, and I am busy doing errands nearly all day. I suppose I make from eight to ten francs.”
“Very well; I will give you ten francs a day if you will walk about the streets, and look for the porter who brought this letter. Every evening, at eight o’clock, come to the Archangel, on the Quai Saint Michel, give me a report of your search, and receive your pay. Ask for M. Verduret. If you find the man I will give you fifty francs. Do you accept?”
“I rather think I will, monsieur.”
“Then don’t lose a minute. Start off!”
Although ignorant of M. Verduret’s plans, Prosper began to comprehend the sense of his investigations. His fate depended upon their success, and yet he almost forgot this fact in his admiration of this singular man; for his energy, his bantering coolness when he wished to discover anything, the surety of his deductions, the fertility of his expedients, and the rapidity of his movements, were astonishing.
“Monsieur,” said Prosper when the porter had left the room, “do you still think you see a woman’s hand in this affair?”
“More than ever; and a pious woman too, and a woman who has two prayer-books, since she could cut up one to write to you.”
“And you hope to find the mutilated book?”
“I do, thanks to the opportunity I have of making an immediate search; which I will set about at once.”
Saying this, he sat down, and rapidly scratched off a few lines on a slip of paper, which he folded up, and put in his vest-pocket.
“Are you ready to go to M. Fauvel’s? Yes? Come on, then; we have certainly earned our breakfast to-day.”
VIII
When Raoul de Lagors spoke of M. Fauvel’s extraordinary dejection, he had not exaggerated.
Since the fatal day when, upon his denunciation, his cashier had been arrested, the banker, this active, energetic man of business, had been a prey to the most gloomy melancholy, and absolutely refused to take any interest in his affairs, seldom entering the banking-house.
He, who had always been so domestic, never came near his family except at meals, when he would swallow a few mouthfuls, and hastily leave the room.
Shut up in his study, he would deny himself to visitors. His anxious countenance, his indifference to everybody and everything, his constant reveries and fits of abstraction, betrayed the preoccupation of some fixed idea, or the tyrannical empire of some hidden sorrow.
The day of Prosper’s release, about three o’clock, M. Fauvel was, as usual, seated in his study, with his elbows resting on the table, and his face buried in his hands, when his office-boy rushed in, and with a frightened look said:
“Monsieur, the former cashier, M. Bertomy, is here with one of his relatives; he says he must see you on business.”
The banker at these words started up as if he had been shot.
“Prosper!” he cried in a voice choked by anger, “what! does he dare—”
Then remembering that he ought to control himself before his servant, he waited a few moments, and then said, in a tone of forced calmness:
“Ask them to walk in.”
If M. Verduret had counted upon witnessing a strange and affecting sight, he was not disappointed.
Nothing could be more terrible than the attitude of these two men as they stood confronting each other. The banker’s face was almost purple with suppressed anger, and he looked as if about to be struck by apoplexy. Prosper was as pale and motionless as a corpse.
Silent and immovable, they stood glaring at each other with mortal hatred.
M. Verduret curiously watched these two enemies, with the indifference and coolness of a philosopher, who, in the most violent outbursts of human passion, merely sees subjects for meditation and study.
Finally, the silence becoming more and more threatening, he decided to break it by speaking to the banker:
“I suppose you know, monsieur, that my young relative has just been released from prison.”
“Yes,” replied M. Fauvel, making an effort to control himself, “yes, for want of sufficient proof.”
“Exactly so, monsieur, and this want of proof, as stated in the decision of ‘Not proven,’ ruins the prospects of my relative, and compels him to leave here at once for America.”
M. Fauvel’s features relaxed as if he had been relieved of some fearful agony.
“Ah, he is going