While Juve was devoting his marvellous skill and incomparable daring to
the elucidation of the new case with which the Criminal Investigation
Department had entrusted him in Paris, things were marching at Beaulieu,
where the whole machinery of the law was being set in motion for the
discovery and arrest of Charles Rambert.
* * * * *
With a mighty clatter and racket Bouzille came down the slope and
stopped before old mother Chiquard's cottage. He arrived in his own
equipage, and an extraordinary one it was!
Bouzille was mounted upon a tricycle of prehistoric design, with two
large wheels behind and a small steering wheel in front, and a rusty
handle-bar from which all the plating was worn off. The solid rubber
tyres which once had adorned the machine had worn out long ago, and were
now replaced by twine twisted round the felloes of the wheels; this was
for ever fraying away and the wheels were fringed with a veritable
lace-work of string. Bouzille must have picked up this impossible
machine for an old song at some local market, unless perhaps some
charitable person gave it to him simply to get rid of it. He styled this
tricycle his "engine," and it was by no means the whole of his equipage.
Attached to the tricycle by a stout rope was a kind of wicker
perambulator on four wheels, which he called his "sleeping-car," because
he stored away in it all the bits of rag he picked up on his journeys,
and also his very primitive bedding and the little piece of waterproof
canvas under which he often slept in the open air. Behind the
sleeping-car was a third vehicle, the restaurant-car, consisting of an
old soap box mounted on four solid wooden wheels, which were fastened to
the axles by huge conical bolts; in this he kept his provisions; lumps
of bread and fat, bottles and vegetables, all mixed up in agreeable
confusion. Bouzille made quite long journeys in this train of his, and
was well known throughout the south-west of France. Often did the
astonished population see him bent over his tricycle, with his pack on
his back, pedalling with extraordinary rapidity down the hills, while
the carriages behind him bumped and jumped over the inequalities in the
surface of the road until it seemed impossible that they could retain
their equilibrium.
Old mother Chiquard had recognised the cause of the racket. The healthy
life of the country had kept the old woman strong and active in spite of
the eighty-three years that had passed over her head, and now she came
to her door, armed with a broom, and hailed the tramp in angry,
threatening tones.
"So it's you, is it, you thief, you robber of the poor! It's shocking,
the way you spend your time in evil doing! What do you want now, pray?"
Slowly and sheepishly and with head bowed, Bouzille approached mother
Chiquard, nervously looking out for a whack over the head with the broom
the old lady held.
"Don't be cross," he pleaded when he could get in a word; "I want to
come to an arrangement with you, mother Chiquard, if it can be done."
"That's all according," said the old woman, eyeing the tramp with great
mistrust; "I haven't much faith in arrangements with you: rascals like
you always manage to do honest folk."
Mother Chiquard turned back into her cottage; it was no weather for her
to stop out of doors, for a strong north wind was blowing, and that was
bad for her rheumatism. Bouzille deliberately followed her inside and
closed the door carefully behind him. Without ceremony he walked up to
the hearth, where a scanty wood fire was burning, and put down his pack
so as to be able to rub his hands more freely.
"Miserable weather, mother Chiquard!"
The obstinate old lady stuck to her one idea.
"If it isn't miserable to steal my rabbit, this is the finest weather
that ever I saw!"
"You make a lot of fuss about a trifle," the tramp protested,
"especially since you will be a lot the better by the arrangement I'm
going to suggest."
The notion calmed mother Chiquard a little, and she sat down on a form,
while Bouzille took a seat upon the table.
"What do you mean?" the old woman enquired.
"Well," said Bouzille, "I suppose your rabbit would have fetched a
couple of shillings in the market; I've brought you two fowls that are
worth quite eighteen-pence each, and if you will give me some dinner at
twelve o'clock I will put in a good morning's work for you."
Mother Chiquard looked at the clock upon the wall; it was eight o'clock.
The tramp's proposal represented four hours' work, which was not to be
despised; but before striking the bargain she insisted on seeing the
fowls. These were extracted from the pack; tied together by the feet,
and half suffocated, the unfortunate creatures were not much to look at,
but they would be cheap, which was worth considering.
"Where did you get these fowls?" mother Chiquard asked, more as a matter
of form than anything else, for she was pretty sure they had not been
honestly come by.
Bouzille put his finger to his lip.
"Hush!" he murmured gently; "that's a secret between me and the poultry.
Well, is it a go?" and he held out his hand to the old lady.
She hesitated a moment and then made up her mind.
"It's a go," she said, putting her horny fingers into the man's hard
palm. "You shall chop me some wood first, and then go down to the river
for the rushes I have put in to soak; they must be well swollen by this
time."
Bouzille was glad to have made it up with mother Chiquard, and pleased
at the prospect of a good dinner at midday; he opened the cottage door,
and leisurely arranged a few logs within range of the axe with which he
was going to split them; mother Chiquard began to throw down some grain
to the skinny and famished fowls that fluttered round her.
"I thought you were in prison, Bouzille," she said, "over stealing my
rabbit, and also over that affair at the château of Beaulieu."
"Oh, those are two quite different stories," Bouzille replied. "You
mustn't mix them up together on any account. As for the château job,
every tramp in the district has been run in: I was copped by M'sieu
Morand the morning after the murder; he took me into the kitchen of the
château and Mme. Louise gave me something to eat. There was another chap
there with me, a man named François Paul who doesn't belong to these
parts; between you and me, I thought he was an evil-looking customer who
might easily have been the murderer, but it doesn't do to say that sort
of thing, and I'm glad I held my tongue because they let him go. I heard
no more about it, and five days later I went back to Brives to attend
the funeral of the Marquise de Langrune. That was a ceremony if you
like! The church all lighted up, and all the nobility from the
neighbourhood present. I didn't lose my time, for I knew all the
gentlemen and ladies and took the best part of sixteen shillings, and
the blind beggar who sits on the steps of the church called me all the
names he could put his tongue to!"
The tramp's story interested mother Chiquard mightily, but her former
idea still dominated her mind.
"So they didn't punish you for stealing my rabbit?"
"Well, they did and they didn't," said Bouzille, scratching his head.
"M'sieu Morand, who is an old friend of mine, took me to the lock-up at
Saint-Jaury, and I was to have gone next morning to the court at Brives,
where I know the sentence for stealing domestic animals is three weeks.
That would have suited me all right just now, for the prison at Brives
is quite new and very comfortable, but that same night Sergeant Doucet
shoved another man into the clink with, me at Saint-Jaury, a raving
lunatic who started smashing everything up, and tried to tear my eyes
out. Naturally, I gave him as good as I got, and the infernal row we
made brought in the sergeant. I told him the chap wanted to throttle
me, and he was nonplussed, for he couldn't do anything with the man, who
was fairly mad, and couldn't leave me alone there with him. So at last
the sergeant took me to one side and told me to hook it and not let him
see me again. So there it is."
While he was chattering like this Bouzille had finished the job set him
by mother Chiquard, who meanwhile had peeled some potatoes and poured
the soup on the bread. He wiped his brow, and seeing the brimming pot,
gave a meaning wink and licked his tongue.
"I'll make the fire up, mother Chiquard; I'm getting jolly hungry."
"So you ought to be, at half-past eleven," the old woman replied. "Yes,
we'll have dinner, and you can get the rushes out afterwards."
Mother Chiquard was the proud free-holder of a little cottage that was
separated from the bank of the Dordogne by the high road between Martel
and Montvalent. Round the cottage she had a small orchard, and opposite,
through a gap in the trees, was a view of the yellow waters of the
Dordogne and the chain of hills that stood up on the far side of the
river. Living here summer and winter, with her rabbits and her fowls,
mother Chiquard earned a little money by making baskets; but she was
crippled with rheumatism, and was miserable every time she had to go
down to the river to pull out the bundles of rushes that she put there
to soak; the work meant not merely an hour's paddling in mud up to the
knees, but also a fortnight's acute agony and at least a shilling for
medicine. So whoever wanted to make a friend of the old woman only had
to volunteer to get the rushes out for her.
As he ate, Bouzille told mother Chiquard of his plans for the coming
spring.
"Yes," he said, "since I'm not doing any time this winter I'm going to
undertake a long journey." He stopped munching for a second and paused
for greater effect. "I am going to Paris, mother Chiquard!" Then, seeing
that the old lady was utterly dumbfounded by the announcement, he leant
his elbows on the table and looked at her over his empty plate. "I've
always had one great desire--to see the Eiffel Tower: that idea has
been running in my head for the last fifteen years. Well, now I'm going
to gratify the wish. I hear you can get a room in Paris for
twopence-halfpenny a night, and I can manage that."
"How long will it take you to get there?" enquired the old woman,
immensely impressed by Bouzille's venturesome plan.
"That depends," said the tramp. "I must allow quite three months with my
train. Of course if I got run in on the way for stealing, or as a rogue
and vagabond, I couldn't say how long it would take."
The meal was over, and the old woman was quietly washing up her few
plates and dishes, when Bouzille, who had gone down to the river to
fetch the rushes, suddenly called shrilly to mother Chiquard.
"Mother Chiquard! Mother Chiquard! Come and look! Just fancy, I've
earned twenty-five francs!"
The summons was so urgent, and the news so amazing, that the old lady
left her house and hurried across the road to the river bank. She saw
the tramp up to his waist in the water, trying, with a long stick, to
drag out of the current a large object which was not identifiable at a
first glance. To all her enquiries Bouzille answered with the same
delighted cry, "I have earned twenty-five francs," too intent on
bringing his fishing job to a successful issue even to turn round. A few
minutes later he emerged dripping from the water, towing a large bundle
to the safety of the bank. Mother Chiquard drew nearer, greatly
interested, and then recoiled with a shriek of horror.
Bouzille had fished out a corpse!
It was a ghastly sight: the body of a very young man, almost a boy, with
long, slender limbs; the face was so horribly swollen and torn as to be
shapeless. One leg was almost entirely torn from the trunk. Through
rents in the clothing strips of flesh were trailing, blue and
discoloured by their long immersion in the water. On the shoulders and
back of the neck were bruises and stains of blood. Bouzille, who was
quite unaffected by the ghastliness of the object and still kept up his
gay chant "I have fished up a body, I've earned twenty-five francs,"
observed that there were large splinters of wood, rotten from long
immersion, sticking in some of the wounds. He stood up and addressed
mother Chiquard who, white as a sheet, was watching him in silence.
"I see what it is: he must have got caught in some mill wheel: that's
what has cut him up like that."
Mother Chiquard shook her head uneasily.
"Suppose it was a murder! That would be an ugly business!"
"It's no good my looking at him any more," said Bouzille. "I don't
recognise him; he's not from the country."
"That's sure," the old woman agreed. "He's dressed like a gentleman."
The two looked at each other in silence. Bouzille was not nearly so
complacent as he had been a few minutes before. The reward of
twenty-five francs prompted him to go at once to inform the police; the
idea of a crime, suggested by the worthy woman, disturbed him greatly,
and all the more because he thought it was well founded. Another murder
in the neighbourhood would certainly vex the authorities, and put the
police in a bad temper. Bouzille knew from experience that the first
thing people do after a tragedy is to arrest all the tramps, and that if
the police are at all crotchety they always contrive to get the tramps
sentenced for something else. He had had a momentary inclination to
establish his winter quarters in prison, but since then he had formed
the plan of going to Paris, and liberty appealed to him more. He reached
a sudden decision.
"I'll punt him back into the water!"
But mother Chiquard stayed him, just as he was putting his idea into
execution.
"You mustn't: suppose somebody has seen us already? It would land us in
no end of trouble!"
Half an hour later, convinced that it was his melancholy duty, Bouzille
left two-thirds of his train in mother Chiquard's custody, got astride
his prehistoric tricycle and slowly pedalled off towards Saint-Jaury.
* * * * *
New Year's Day is a melancholy and a tedious one for everybody whose
public or private relations do not make it an exceptionally interesting
one. There is the alteration in the date, for one thing, which is
provocative of thought, and there is the enforced idleness for another,
coming upon energetic folk like a temporary paralysis and leaving them
nothing but meditation wherewith to employ themselves.
Juve, comfortably installed in his own private study, was realising this
just as evening was falling on this first of January. He was a confirmed
bachelor, and for several years had lived in a little flat on the fifth
floor of an old house in the rue Bonaparte. He had not gone out to-day,
but though he was resting he was not idle. For a whole month past he had
been wholly engrossed in his attempt to solve the mystery surrounding
the two cases on which he was engaged, the Beltham case, and the
Langrune case, and his mind was leisurely revolving round them now as he
sat in his warm room before a blazing wood fire, and watched the blue
smoke curl up in rings towards the ceiling. The two cases were very
dissimilar, and yet his detective instinct persuaded him that although
they differed in details their conception and execution emanated not
only from one single brain but also from one hand. He was convinced that
he was dealing with a mysterious and dangerous individual, and that
while he himself was out in the open he was fighting a concealed and
invisible adversary; he strove to give form and substance to the
adversary, and the name of Fantômas came into his mind. Fantômas! What
might Fantômas be doing now, and, if he had a real existence, as the
detective most firmly believed, how was he spending New Year's Day?
A sharp ring at the bell startled him from his chair, and not giving his
man-servant time to answer it, he went himself to the door and took from
a messenger a telegram which he hastily tore open and read:
"Have found in the Dordogne drowned body of young man, face
unrecognisable, from description possibly Charles Rambert. Please
consider situation and wire course you will take."
The telegram had been handed in at Brives and was signed by M. de
Presles.
"Something fresh at last," the detective muttered. "Drowned in the
Dordogne, and face unrecognisable! I wonder if it really is Charles
Rambert?"
Since M. Etienne Rambert and his son had disappeared so unaccountably,
the detective naturally had formulated mentally several hypotheses, but
he had arrived at no conclusion which really satisfied his judgment. But
though their flight had not surprised him greatly, he had been rather
surprised that the police had not been able to find any trace of them,
for rightly or wrongly Juve credited them with a good deal of cleverness
and power. So it was by no means unreasonable to accept the death of the
fugitives as explanation of the failure of the police to find them.
However, this was a fresh development of the case, and he was about to
draft a reply to M. de Presles when once more the bell rang sharply.
This time Juve did not move, but listened while his man spoke to the
visitor. It was an absolute rule of Juve's never to receive visitors at
his flat. If anyone wanted to see him on business, he was to be found
almost every day in his office at head-quarters about eleven in the
morning; to a few people he was willing to give appointments at a quiet
and discreet little café in the boulevard Saint-Michel; but he invited
no one to his own rooms except one or two of his own relations from the
country, and even they had to be provided with a password before they
could obtain admission. So now, to all the entreaties of the caller,
Juve's servant stolidly replied with the assurance that his master would
see no one; yet the visitor's insistence was so great that at last the
servant was prevailed upon to bring in his card, albeit with some fear
as to the consequences for himself. But to his extreme relief and
surprise, Juve, when he had read the name engraved upon the card, said
sharply:
"Bring him in here at once!"
And in another couple of seconds M. Etienne Rambert was in the room!
The old gentleman who had fled so mysteriously a few days before, taking
with him the son over whom so dread a charge was hanging, bowed
deferentially to the detective, with the pitiful mien of one who is
crushed beneath the burden of misfortune. His features were drawn, his
face bore the stamp of deepest grief, and in his hand he held an evening
paper, which in his agitation he had crumpled almost into a ball.
"Tell me, sir, if it is true," he said in low trembling tones. "I have
just read that."
Juve pointed to a chair, took the paper mechanically, and smoothing it
out, read, below a large head-line, "Is this a sequel to the Beaulieu
Crime?" a story similar to that he had just gathered from M. de Presles'
telegram.
Juve contemplated M. Etienne Rambert in silence for a few minutes, and
then, without replying directly to his visitor's first question, asked
him a question in that quiet voice of his, the wonderful indifferent
tonelessness of which concealed the least clue to his inmost thoughts.
"Why do you come to me, sir?"
"To find out, sir," the old man answered.
"To find out what?"
"If that poor drowned corpse is--my son's: is my poor Charles!"
"It is rather you who can tell me, sir," said Juve, impassive as ever.
There was a pause. Despite his emotion, M. Rambert seemed to be thinking
deeply. Suddenly he appeared to make an important decision, and raising
his eyes to the detective he spoke very slowly:
"Have pity, sir, on a broken-hearted father. Listen to me: I have a
dreadful confession to make!"
Juve drew his chair close to M. Etienne Rambert.
"I am listening," he said gently, and M. Etienne Rambert began his
"dreadful confession."