"File No. 113"
Émile Gaboriau, one of the best-known exponents of the "police
story," was born at Saujon, in France, on November 9, 1833. He
began life in a lawyer's office, became a volunteer in a
cavalry regiment, and, later, secretary to Paul Feval, the
novelist and dramatist. In the meantime, Gaboriau had
contributed a number of sketches dealing with military and
fashionable life to various minor Parisian journals, but it
was not until 1866, with the publication of "L'Affaire
Lerouge," that he suddenly sprang into fame. From that time
until his death, on September 28, 1873, story after story
appeared rapidly from his pen. "File No. 113" ("Le Dossier
113") was published in 1867, and was the first of a remarkable
series of detective tales introducing the figure of Lecoq.
"File No. 113" is perhaps the most characteristic specimen of
his work, exhibiting as it does a careful study of the Paris
police system, and a thorough acquaintance with all phases of
criminal life.
_I.--The Robbery and a Clue_
The first mention of the celebrated robbery which took place at M.
Fauvel's bank in Paris--the _dossier_ of the case is numbered 113 in the
police files--appeared in the evening papers, February 28, 1866.
On the previous day a certain Count Louis de Clameran sent word to M.
Fauvel that he wished to withdraw the following morning at ten o'clock
the sum of £12,000 which had been deposited in the bank by his brother,
an ironmaster from the south of France who had recently died.
M. Fauvel made it a rule never to keep any large sums of money on the
premises, but to deposit all such amounts in the keeping of the Bank of
France. As this sum, however, had to be paid the first thing in the
morning, the chief cashier, M. Prosper Bertomy, thought he was justified
in obtaining the amount from the Bank of France on the evening of the
27th, and in locking it up in the bank safe against the morning.
The safe was a formidable-looking affair constructed entirely of wrought
iron of treble thickness. An ingenious device regulated its opening. On
the massive door were five movable steel buttons engraved with the
letters of the alphabet. Before the key could be inserted in the lock,
these buttons had to be manipulated in the same order in which they had
been used when the safe was last shut. The buttons were arranged so that
the letters on them formed some word, which was changed from time to
time. This word was known only to M. Fauvel and his cashier, each of
whom possessed a key of the safe.
As soon as the bank opened on the morning of February 28, the count put
in an appearance, and Prosper Bertomy went to the safe to obtain the
money. When, a second later, he reappeared, his face was ashy pale, and
his steps tottered as he walked. The £12,000 had disappeared from within
the safe. What made the affair all the more mysterious was that the safe
was locked just as the cashier had left it the night before.
The room in which the safe was situated communicated with the bank by
another room in which every night a tried servant of the establishment
slept. By a second door admittance was obtained to the private
apartments of M. and Madame Fauvel and their niece Madeline.
As soon as M. Fauvel had heard the startling news, he first obtained the
necessary money from the Bank of France, settled the business with the
count, and then turned his attention to the elucidation of the robbery.
He summoned the cashier to his presence.
Bertomy was a young man of thirty to whom M. Fauvel had shown great
kindness, advancing his interests wherever possible until, though very
young for the position, he was his most important and most confidential
employee. Besides the paternal affection with which the bank manager
regarded his cashier, another tie tended to make their relations all the
stronger and more personal. Bertomy loved M. Fauvel's niece Madeline,
and though a curious estrangement had sprung up between them during the
previous nine or ten months, the banker always regarded their marriage
as practically arranged.
The interview between the two men was a curious one. To each it appeared
that the other must be the thief. They alone had the keys of the safe;
they alone knew the magic word which could open the massive door. The
banker urged Bertomy to confess, promising him forgiveness; the other
haughtily rejected the suggestion, and hinted that his employer had
converted the £12,000 to his own use. In the end M. Fauvel lost his
temper, sent for the police, and before twenty-four hours were up,
Prosper Bertomy, who but the day before had held one of the most
important and envied positions in the financial world of Paris, was
charged before a magistrate as being a common thief.
Investigation of the case was at first entrusted to a detective named
Fanferlot, nicknamed by his comrades the "Squirrel." Fanferlot's
examination of the premises resulted in little. All he discovered was a
scratch upon the door of the safe, but certain words that passed between
M. Fauvel and his niece, which seemed to indicate that the former was
secretly opposed to the marriage of Madeline with Bertomy, caused him to
jump to the conclusion that the banker had robbed his own safe in order
to bring disgrace upon his cashier. He connived, however, at the arrest
of Bertomy, hoping that later on he might obtain great kudos for himself
by unmasking the banker. What might have been the result of his improper
and unofficial methods will never be known, but in all probability great
inconvenience would have been caused to a number of innocent persons and
the whole course of justice thwarted had it not been for the
intervention of the great and famous M. Lecoq.
M. Lecoq's interest in the bank robbery case was largely a personal one.
Even detectives have hearts, and M. Lecoq had loved with heart and soul
a charming young girl named Nina Gipsy. Under the name of Caldas in one
of his innumerable disguises, he had wooed her for many months. When he
thought at last that he had won her affections, she had fled to the
protection of no less a person than Prosper Bertomy himself. The cashier
cared nothing for her, but embittered by an estrangement that had sprung
up between Madeline and himself, he had sought forgetfulness in her
society. Bertomy's arrest gave Lecoq an opportunity for a noble revenge.
He determined to prove to the woman he loved his superiority over his
rival by saving the cashier from disgrace.
Though the case looked black against Bertomy, for it was shown that he
was heavily in debt, and living far beyond his means, Lecoq was
satisfied that he had not committed the crime. When Fanferlot,
hopelessly befogged, called for his advice at his house in the Rue
Montmartre, the great detective deigned to explain the preliminary data
and the deductions from the data he had made.
The scratch on the safe door, slight and minute as it was, was his
starting-point. How had it been made? He had found by experiment that it
was impossible to make such a scratch upon the varnish without the
exercise of considerable force. It was clear, therefore, that the
scratch by the keyhole could not have been made by the thief in his
trembling anxiety to get the business he had undertaken accomplished.
But why was such force used?
For a long time Lecoq puzzled over this problem. Then, with Fanferlot,
he tried an experiment. In his room was an iron box varnished like the
safe. Taking the key of this box from his pocket, he ordered Fanferlot
to seize his arm just as he put it near the lock. The key slipped,
pulled away from the lock, and sliding along the surface of the door,
left upon it a diagonal scratch, almost an exact reproduction of the one
on the safe.
From this simple experiment Lecoq deduced that two people were present
when the safe was robbed; one wanted to take the money, the other wanted
to prevent it being taken. This was the basis of the case which he set
out to draw up against some person or persons unknown. He argued, with
his usual clear logic, that neither Fauvel nor Bertomy could have robbed
the safe. Both of them had keys; both of them knew the secret word and
could have robbed the safe whenever they pleased. Therefore, neither of
them would have committed the theft in the presence of somebody else.
_II.--A Mysterious Journey_
Lecoq's first steps after establishing these preliminary deductions was
to secure the release of Bertomy on the grounds of insufficient
evidence.
On the very morning of his release, Bertomy had received a mysterious
letter composed of printed words cut out letter by letter from a book
and pasted on paper.
"My dear Prosper," so the epistle ran, "a friend who knows the horror of
your situation sends you this help. There is one heart at least which
feels for you. Leave France; you are yourself. The future is before you.
Go, and may this money be of use."
Enclosed with this note were banknotes for £400. Lecoq, disguised as a
M. Verduret, a country merchant, a friend of Bertomy's father, secured
this epistle and studied it carefully. His knowledge of the various
types used by the printers in Paris showed him that the letters had been
taken from a book printed by a well-known firm who published volumes of
devotion. The correctness of this conclusion was established by the
discovery on the back of one of the small cuttings the word "Deus." The
words had been cut from a Catholic prayer-book. To find that prayer-book
was his next business.
In another disguise he sought out Nina Gipsy, and, by asking her
assistance to clear Prosper, induced her to take up the position of
lady's-maid in the Fauvel family, for it was there, he conceived, the
mutilated book of devotion would be found. Again his wonderful instinct
proved right. In a few days Nina brought him the very book--a prayer-
book, belonging to Madeline, which had been given her by Bertomy.
Why had Madeline sent the cashier this elaborately disguised letter? Why
had she wished him to leave France, confident as she was, so she told
him, of his innocence?
To find an answer to these important queries, Lecoq closely questioned
Bertomy. He learnt that the night before the robbery the cashier had
dined with his friend Raoul de Lagors, the wealthy, dissolute young
nephew of M. Fauvel's wife. This Lagors was the friend of Count Louis de
Clameran, whose demand for the £12,000 left him by his dead brother had
resulted in the discovery of the mysterious robbery.
Bertomy had nothing but the highest praise for Lagors, but, on the other
hand, spoke most disparagingly of the count. The count, it appeared, had
proposed for the hand of Madeline, and had pressed his suit with great
determination. And Madeline--and this was what provided a new problem
for Lecoq's consideration--had tacitly accepted his attention.
Through Nina, Lecoq had arranged a meeting between Bertomy and Madeline,
and satisfied himself that the girl was whole-heartedly and devotedly
attached to her uncle's cashier. Then why was she favouring the suit of
the count? Lecoq at once made it his business to inquire into the
count's past.
He was the second son of an old and noble family. His elder brother,
Gaston, having to fly the country in consequence of causing the death of
several men, he had inherited the property. A life of dissolute
pleasures had soon exhausted his patrimony and he was reduced to living
by his wits. Some weeks before the robbery, he had discovered that his
brother Gaston was alive and was living on a large estate in the south
of France, which he had purchased with the wealth he had accumulated in
business. Six weeks after the two brothers met again, the elder died and
the younger inherited his vast fortune.
Raoul de Lagors was the next character in the drama whose past the
detective made it his business to expose. Lagors, it has been said, was
the nephew of Madame Fauvel. To his surprise, Lecoq discovered, by
inquiries in her native place, that the banker's wife had never had any
brothers or sisters. Lagors, therefore, was not her nephew.
Fanferlot, acting on instructions, had kept a strict watch on the
movements of Madeline, and by this means Lecoq received timely warning
of a mysterious excursion which the girl made one night. He followed her
to a lonely house on the outskirts of the city. When she had gained
admittance, the appearance of a light in one of the windows on the first
floor seemed to indicate the room to which she had been taken. By the
aid of a ladder, Lecoq was able to watch what was going on within
through the shutters.
He saw Madeline standing opposite Lagors, evidently, from her attitude,
pleading with him. For some time he listened to her, with a cynical
smile upon his face, but after an hour he seemed to decide, with evident
reluctance, to comply with her request. Going to a cabinet, he took out
a bundle of pawn tickets and flung them on the table. Hastily going
through the collection, she selected three, and concealing them in her
dress, left the house.
By following her to a pawnshop, Lecoq discovered that she had redeemed
certain valuable articles of jewelry belonging to Madame Fauvel. Lecoq
knew, through Nina Gipsy, who still filled the part of lady's-maid in
the Fauvel family, that M. Fauvel had insisted on his wife accompanying
him on the following evening to a great fancy-dress ball which was to be
given by one of the wealthiest families in the capital. Obviously, then,
the jewelry that Madeline had redeemed was required by Madame Fauvel for
the occasion. Why had she pawned it for Lagors?
A theory had half formed itself in Lecoq's brain. He determined to prove
its truth. Disguised as a clown, he attended the fancy-dress ball, and
in the character of a mountebank collected a group of ladies and
gentlemen around him while he related with the inimitable skill of a
buffoon a romantic narrative. To most of the people present it was
simply an amusing story, but to the count and Lagors and Madame Fauvel,
who were among the listeners, it seemed something much more, for Lecoq
dressed out his theory of the robbery in the trappings of romance. Just
as he reached the climax of the story there was a cry, and Madame Fauvel
almost fell fainting on the floor. The count and Lagors rushed up
furiously to Lecoq.
"Master Clown," said Lagors, "your tongue is too long."
"Perhaps, my pretty boy," retorted Lecoq, "perhaps it is. But it is, I
can assure you, not so long as my arm."
"Who are you, M. le Clown?" the count exclaimed angrily.
"I am," replied Lecoq, "the best friend your brother Gaston had. I was
his counsellor. I am the confidant of his last wishes."
Though the solution of the problem seemed so tantalisingly near, there
were still some threads in the tangle which required sorting out before
Lecoq could say that the case was complete. Among other matters he
inquired of Bertomy the word which had been used to lock the safe on,
the night of the robbery. The word had been "gipsy." Bertomy was
confident that he had not mentioned it to anybody, but Nina Gipsy was
able to throw light on this part of the problem. She recollected a
chance remark of Bertomy's while sitting at dinner with herself and
Lagors on the night of the robbery. She had reproached Bertomy with
neglecting her.
"It's too bad for you to reproach me," cried the cashier, "for it is
your name which at this very moment guards the safe of M. Fauvel."
Lagors, therefore, had known the password. What did this new discovery
imply? How did it fit in with the rest of the data which Lecoq had so
brilliantly collected?
After his custom, he marshalled once more in his mind all the facts at
his disposal, but they were like so many loose links in a chain. They
required the connecting link to make the chain complete. To find that
link Lecoq spent a month in visiting the old home of the De Clamerans,
the estate formerly occupied by Gaston de Clameron, who had died a few
days before the robbery, and also in a trip to England. When he returned
to Paris, _dossier_ No. 113 was complete.
_III.--The Dossier_
In her extreme youth, Madame Fauvel had been secretly loved by Gaston de
Clameron. It was a result of certain contemptuous words spoken of the
girl he loved that Gaston had committed those deeds which had compelled
him to fly the country. Shortly after his flight, the girl, finding that
she was about to give birth to a child, imparted the secret to her
mother. Fearing a scandal, the mother, accompanied by a faithful nurse,
took her daughter over to England. There, near London, a child was born,
who was immediately handed over to some simple country people to adopt.
The unhappy girl returned to France, and shortly after married M.
Fauvel, the banker.
Years after, the Count Louis de Clameron, who had inherited and ruined
the estates of which his brother Gaston had been deprived, discovered
this secret from the nurse, and finding on inquiries in London that the
child had died, persuaded a young ne'er-do-well Englishman to play the
_rôle_ of his brother's son. He secretly introduced him to Madame
Fauvel, and through this means obtained what money he required from the
unhappy woman, who feared the discovery of her past secret by her
husband. The situation was complicated by the count falling in love with
Madeline and the sudden appearance of Gaston de Clameron, who was
thought to be dead.
The count poisoned his brother, and then, finding that Madeline refused
to give up Bertomy, determined to accomplish the cashier's ruin, and at
the same time obtain an amount of money large enough to buy off his
fellow-conspirator Lagors. Lagors, having learnt by chance the password
that guarded the safe, was sent to Madame Fauvel late at night with a
request for money.
At this time Madame Fauvel was at the end of her resources. Lagors
suggested taking the money from the safe. Tom between a desire to help
her supposed son and the risk of discovery, she at last consented.
Taking M. Fauvel's key, they descended silently to the safe-room. At the
last moment, just as the key was in the lock, Madame Fauvel attempted to
deter Lagors from his purpose. In the struggle that scratch was made on
the door which formed the basis of Lecoq's inquiries and enabled the
great detective to unravel the mystery.
Madeline, who all the while half guessed at the truth, and perceived
without being told that Madame Fauvel was at the mercy of the count, had
been prepared to sacrifice her future happiness in order to prevent the
scandal being made public.
M. Lecoq, armed with these facts, sought out Lagors. He arrived only in
time to prevent a tragedy. Warned by an anonymous letter that his wife
had pawned her diamonds for the benefit of Lagors, the banker came upon
them when they were together in Lagor's rooms. Imagining the young man
was his wife's lover, the banker drew a revolver and fired four times.
Fortunately, none of the shots took effect, and before he could fire
again Lecoq had rushed into the room and torn the weapon from his grasp.
It was the moment of the great detective's triumph. With the dramatic
skill of which he was a master, he laid bare the whole story and
disclosed the true identity of Raoul Lagors. Before he left he compelled
Lagors to refund the £12,000 he had stolen, and in order to avoid a
scandal allowed the young man to go free. Then, that nothing should be
wanting to his triumph, he obtained the consent of the banker to
Bertomy's marriage with Madeline.
Hurrying from the banker's house, Lecoq hastened to effect the arrest of
the count. He arrived too late. Realising that he was hopelessly in the
toils, the count was bereft of his senses and become a hopeless maniac.
Four days later M. Lecoq, the official M. Lecoq, awaited the arrival of
Nina Gipsy and Prosper Bertomy. They declared that they had come to meet
M. Verduret, who had saved Prosper Bertomy. The detective retired,
promising to summon the man they had come to see. A quarter of an hour
later M. Verduret entered the room. Facing them, he told them how a
friend of his named Caldas had fallen in love with a girl, and how that
girl had been won from him by a man who cared nothing for her.
"Caldas determined to revenge himself in his own way. It was his hand
that saved the man on the very verge of disgrace. I see you know that
you, Nina, are the woman, and you, Prosper, the man; while Caldas
is...."
With a quick gesture he removed his wig and whiskers, and the true Lecoq
appeared.
"Caldas!" cried Nina.
"No, not Caldas, not Verduret, but Lecoq, the detective."
After the moments of amazement had passed, Lecoq turned to leave the
room, but Nina barred the way.
"Caldas," she cried, "have you not punished me enough? Caldas...."
Prosper went from the office alone.
* * * * *