Other People's Money. Emile Gaboriau
M. Favoral was tottering like a drunken man. A terrible emotion convulsed his features. Casting a long look upon his wife and children:
“O Lord!” he murmured, “what will become of you?”
“Fear nothing, father,” uttered Maxence. “I am here. Neither my mother nor my sister will want for any thing.”
“My son!” resumed the cashier, “my children!”
Then, with a choking voice:
“I am worthy neither of your love nor your devotion, wretch that I am! I made you lead a miserable existence, spend a joyless youth. I imposed upon you every trial of poverty, whilst I—And now I leave you nothing but ruin and a dishonored name.”
“Make haste, father,” interrupted Mlle. Gilberte. It seemed as if he could not make up his mind.
“It is horrible to abandon you thus. What a parting! Ah! death would indeed be far preferable. What will you think of me? I am very guilty, certainly, but not as you think. I have been betrayed, and I must suffer for all. If at least you knew the whole truth. But will you ever know it? We will never see each other again.”
Desperately his wife clung to him.
“Do not speak thus,” she said. “Wherever you may find an asylum, I will join you. Death alone can separate us. What do I care what you may have done, or what the world will say? I am your wife. Our children will come with me. If necessary, we will emigrate to America; we’ll change our name; we will work.”
The knocks on the outer door were becoming louder and louder; and M. Desormeaux’ voice could be heard, endeavoring to gain a few moments more.
“Come,” said Maxence, “you cannot hesitate any longer.”
And, overcoming his father’s reluctance, he fastened one end of the sheets around his waist.
“I am going to let you down, father,” said he; “and, as soon as you touch the ground, you must undo the knot. Take care of the first-story windows; beware of the concierge; and, once in the street, don’t walk too fast. Make for the Boulevard, where you will be sooner lost in the crowd.”
The knocks had now become violent blows; and it was evident that the door would soon be broken in, if M. Desormeaux did not make up his mind to open it.
The light was put out. With the assistance of his daughter, M. Favoral lifted himself upon the window-sill, whilst Maxence held the sheets with both hands.
“I beseech you, Vincent,” repeated Mme. Favoral, “write to us. We shall be in mortal anxiety until we hear of your safety.”
Maxence let the sheets slip slowly: in two seconds M. Favoral stood on the pavement below.
“All right,” he said.
The young man drew the sheets back rapidly, and threw them under the bed. But Mlle. Gilberte remained long enough at the window to recognize her father’s voice asking the concierge to open the door, and to hear the heavy gate of the adjoining house closing behind him.
“Saved!” she said.
It was none too soon. M. Desormeaux had just been compelled to yield; and the commissary of police was walking in.
IV
The commissaries of police of Paris, as a general thing, are no simpletons; and, if they are ever taken in, it is because it has suited them to be taken in.
Their modest title covers the most important, perhaps, of magistracies, almost the only one known to the lower classes; an enormous power, and an influence so decisive, that the most sensible statesman of the reign of Louis Philippe ventured once to say, “Give me twenty good commissaries of police in Paris, and I’ll undertake to suppress any government: net profit, one hundred millions.”
Parisian above all, the commissary has had ample time to study his ground when he was yet only a peace-officer. The dark side of the most brilliant lives has no mysteries for him. He has received the strangest confidences: he has listened to the most astounding confessions. He knows how low humanity can stoop, and what aberrations there are in brains apparently the soundest. The work woman whom her husband beats, and the great lady whom her husband cheats, have both come to him. He has been sent for by the shop-keeper whom his wife deceives, and by the millionaire who has been blackmailed. To his office, as to a lay confessional, all passions fatally lead. In his presence the dirty linen of two millions of people is washed en famille.
A Paris commissary of police, who after ten years’ practice, could retain an illusion, believe in something, or be astonished at any thing in the world, would be but a fool. If he is still capable of some emotion, he is a good man.
The one who had just walked into M. Favoral’s apartment was already past middle age, colder than ice, and yet kindly, but of that commonplace kindliness which frightens like the executioner’s politeness at the scaffold.
He required but a single glance of his small but clear eyes to decipher the physiognomies of all these worthy people standing around the disordered table. And beckoning to the agents who accompanied him to stop at the door—“Monsieur Vincent Favoral?” he inquired. The cashier’s guests, M. Desormeaux excepted, seemed stricken with stupor. Each one felt as if he had a share of the disgrace of this police invasion. The dupes who are sometimes caught in clandestine “hells” have the same humiliated attitudes.
At last, and not without an effort,
“M. Favoral is no longer here,” replied M. Chapelain, the old lawyer.
The commissary of police started. Whilst they were discussing with him through the door, he had perfectly well understood that they were only trying to gain time; and, if he had not at once burst in the door, it was solely owing to his respect for M. Desormeaux himself, whom he knew personally, and still more for his title of head clerk at the Department of Justice. But his suspicions did not extend beyond the destruction of a few compromising papers. Whereas, in fact:
“You have helped M. Favoral to escape, gentlemen?” said he.
No one replied.
“Silence means assent,” he added. “Very well: which way did he get off?”
Still no answer. M. Desclavettes would have been glad to add something to the forty-five thousand francs he had just lost, to be, together with Mme. Desclavettes, a hundred miles away.
“Where is Mme. Favoral?” resumed the commissary, evidently well informed. “Where are Mlle. Gilberte and M. Maxence Favoral?”
They continued silent. No one in the dining-room knew what might have taken place in the other room; and a single word might be treason.
The commissary then became impatient.
“Take up a light,” said he to one of the agents who had remained at the door, “and follow me. We shall see.”
And without a shadow of hesitation, for it seems to be the privilege of police-agents to be at home everywhere, he crossed the parlor, and reached Mlle. Gilberte’s room just as she was withdrawing from the window.
“Ah, it is that way he escaped!” he exclaimed.
He rushed to the window, and remained long enough leaning on his elbows to thoroughly examine the ground, and understand the situation of the apartment.
“It’s evident,” he said at last, “this window opens on the courtyard of the next house.”
This was said to one of his agents, who bore an unmistakable resemblance to the servant who had been asking so many questions in the afternoon.
“Instead of gathering so